It was then that the hands took him. At first he did not realize, he did not even notice, what was happening. Filled with a sense of Nancy’s possible danger, himself choking and groping in that intolerable shining cloud, and fighting all the time to keep securely upright in the persistent wind, he hardly felt the light clasp that took hold of one ankle. But as he began to move his foot he found it fixed, and fixed by what felt like a hand. He looked hastily down; nothing could be seen through the floating gold. He tried to pull his foot up from the ground; he could not do it. On the point of bending to free his ankle, he hesitated; the mist was so thick down there. He jerked it sharply; the grasp of whatever held it grew tighter, and something slid round the other ankle and held fast. Certainly they were hands; he felt the fingers and thumbs. On the realization he stood still; against these adversaries it was no use battling like a frightened child. Perhaps if something hostile indeed lived in this world he could overcome it—so long as his will held. But what was his will to do?
His feet were being drawn together. He set his will against it, but compulsion moved them. He swept an arm round him, and as it came to his rear his wrist also was seized, and the arm was drawn against his back and held there. The grasp was not harsh, it was even gentle, but it was absolute. It, or another like it, caught his other wrist and drew that also back. The wind ceased; it might have been blowing merely to delay him until the imprisonment was complete.
For what seemed hours nothing more happened, only he was held. His strong and angry imagination strove in vain to find some method of release, and failed miserably. There came to him out of the mist, which had receded a little from him, the sound of music, now increasing, now diminishing, as if something went past him and again returned. He could, once or twice, have believed that he heard voices calling, but they also died away. A faint light shone at intervals; the mist shook as if trembling with a quick passage. But more than these hints of existences he could not catch. He stood there, seeing nothing else. His heart began to faint; this perhaps was the end. Motionless in the place of the Tarots, as motionless as the Fool that stood in the center—he himself, indeed, a fool of the Tarots. And Nancy—was she also held—her young delight, her immortal courage, her desire for love, in this unchanging golden mist? “If we are divided, remember that I always wanted to love.” There was nothing here to love but himself—if indeed he wanted to love.
The hours grew into days, into years. Imperceptibly the grasp had tightened; that round his ankles had drawn them together, and that also round his wrists. He was still incapable of movement, but his incapacity was more closely constrained; he was forced more tightly into the mere straight shape of his enclosed body, for the mist closed again round him and molded itself to his form. He was defined as himself, a bas-relief of him was shaped on that cloud, now almost plastic in its consistency; he could breathe and that was all. His thoughts began to fail within him; he was aware only of his senses, and they were now limited to the sight and feel of the mist. If it had not been for the slight tingling everywhere which the golden vagueness seemed to cause as it pressed on him, and the strong grasp upon his limbs, he would not have been conscious of anything at all—there would have been nothing of which to be conscious. He could no longer even strive to free himself, for the very idea of freedom was passing from him. There was no freedom for there was no knowledge; he was separated from all that he had been, except that dimly, within or without, in that aeonian solitude, there occasionally loomed something of a memory of one or other of the Greater Trumps of the Tarots. Somewhere, very vaguely, he would think that he saw in front of him, fashioned of the mist, yet thrown up against the mist, the hierophantic Woman or the Lovers, or the great Tower which reached almost out of sight, so loftily it grew up and then always—just as his dimmed eyes strained to see the rising walls—tottered and swayed and began in a horrible silence to fall apart, but never quite apart. It was raised by hands which, from within the rising walls, came climbing over, building themselves into a tower, thrusting those below them into place, fists hammering them down, so that the whole Tower was made up of layers of hands. But as it grew upward they changed; masonry below, thinner levels of masonry above, and, still above, masonry changing into hands, a few levels of moving hands, and (topmost of all) the busy working fists and fingers. And then a sudden spark of sunlight would fall on it from above, and the fists would fall back out of sight, and the hands would disjoin, swiftly but reluctantly, holding on to each other till the ruin tore them apart, and the apparent masonry, as it was rent by some invisible force, would again change back into clutching and separating hands. They clung together fantastically; they shivered and writhed to avoid some principle of destruction that lurked within them, and as he felt that ugly living twist and evasion they would altogether fade back into the mist from which they grew. The years went by, and every now and then, once in every four or five, the Tower was again shown, and each time it was a little closer than before.
The years grew into centuries. He was no longer looking at anything; sight also had departed. Very slowly the Tower had moved right up against him; he could see it no more, for he was one with it. A quiver began at the bottom of his spine, spreading through his loins, and then it ceased, and he felt rigidity within him—up, up, till he was petrified from loins to head, himself a tower of stone. Even so, he meant to do something, to lift a great marble arm and reach up and pick the stars from heaven and tangle them into a crown—a hard sharp golden crown—for a head such as Nimrod’s, perhaps his own. He was setting up a gigantic image of himself for heaven and earth to adore. He was strong and great enough to do what no man had done before, and to stand on the top of some high place which would be stable among the circling lights of the celestial world. And then always, just as he felt his will becoming fixed and strong enough to raise his arm and break the clasp of those cold hands, just as he dreamed of the premonitory prick of the starry spikes upon his head, something within him began to fall. He trembled with giddiness; he would have swayed but could not. There ran a downward rippling through his flesh; his lower jaw dropped; his knees shook; his loins quivered; he was dragged at from within in every direction; he was on the edge of being torn into destruction. Then again slowly he was steadied, and again his long petrifaction proceeded, and so through cycle after cycle of years the making and breaking of his will went on, and slowly after many repetitions his heart failed within him and he assented to the impossibility of success. The stars were beyond his reach; Babel was forever doomed to fall. At the last minute, when the plains of heaven lay but a few yards beyond its rising structure, confusion invaded it, and spread, and the incoherent workers fled, and the elements of the world roared out each upon its own passage and came together again in wars and tumults, conflicts and catastrophes. But now, each time that he felt the dreadful ruin go falling through him, he heard also one voice rising among that strange and shattered chorus and saying, “Remember, I wanted to love.” Out of each overthrow it sounded, and at every overthrow more clearly. This alone of all his past was urgent; this alone had meaning in the void to which his purpose crashed.
It came more quickly; it was repeated again and again; it grew shorter, words dropping away from it. The centuries ended; a quicker rush of years began. Vehemently the call reached him, and as he strove to answer it with some single willingness of intention, the hands of the supernatural powers released their hold. He moved and stumbled; times rushed round him; something brushed against his legs; the mist swirled and broke, and as he stepped uncertainly forward he found himself looking into the face of Joanna, and then the golden cloud again swept between them and parted once more the two most passionate seekers of the Tarots.
13
GOING FORTH BY NIGHT
MR. CONINGSBY had been lying in bed for some time, but he was not asleep. He was restless; his mind was restless. It was all very well, this going to bed, this being put to bed in case he got a bad cold, but—but—he had a continual vision of S
ybil before his eyes. Sybil, he had rather dimly gathered, wasn’t in bed, and wasn’t in the least proposing to go. And if she was up, why was he where he was? Of course, it showed a very nice spirit, no more than he would have expected of the old man, who didn’t seem to know anything about Henry’s indescribable fatuous insolence in hoping, in rather more than hoping, even expecting, or something like it, that he should be given a set of cards which were part of the only memory he himself possessed of an old and dear friend, a friendship the value of which a young pigeon-stealer like Henry couldn’t possibly know. Gipsies never made friends, or only of their own kind, vagrants and beggars, the kind of person Nancy had never met—though certainly the grandfather seemed different; probably the mother—the daughter—had run away, only the name was identical, so it must have been the father, but then the family would be the same—however, Aaron Lee was a very different kind of creature, and had behaved very properly. Still, though in the first shock of getting back he had allowed himself to be looked after and waited on and almost cosseted—still, the fact remained that after an hour or so of solitude he didn’t like the idea. He wasn’t so old that he couldn’t be out in a snowstorm and laugh at it. He did a kind of mocking laugh at the blizzard swirling about the curtained windows, to which the blizzard responded by making such a frantic attack on the house that Mr. Coningsby unintentionally abandoned his laughter and looked uneasily at the curtains. If the infernal thing broke the glass and burst in, a nice sight he’d look, dancing round the room and trying to get dressed in a hurry. He had a momentary glimpse of himself feeling for a stud on a snowy dressing-table and trying to fix a tie which continually, “torn but flying,” streamed away upon the wind. Really, there was a lot to be said for getting up. Besides, Sybil was up and Sybil wasn’t a girl any longer, and, though he’d been out in the storm longer than she had, yet he was a man and he had been rather underlining his own active habits, in an old half-unconscious comparison of himself with the rest. Aaron, Sybil—he supposed Nancy and Henry were up too—while he was tucked up with a hot-water bottle. A hot-water bottle! That was all that the young thought their parents wanted. “And when,” thought Mr. Coningsby, led on by the metaphor, “when they get into hot water, with their jumpings and their jazzings, and their minstrels and their night clubs, who do they go to to get them out? To the old fellow tucked up with the bottle.” Nothing less likely than any appeal in a crisis by Nancy or Ralph to their father could well have been imagined, but that actual division was hidden from him in his view of the sentimental. They were all up—dining probably. No one so far had brought him any dinner; however, perhaps they weren’t dining yet. “I’m a fair-minded man,” Mr. Coningsby thought. “I dare say dinner’s a bit late. So much the better. I shall get up. If my sister can be about, so can I.”
The feeling under the last sentence was, in fact, not so simple as it seemed—and he knew it. There floated in his mind, though he avoided it, a horrible wonder whether in effect he had really saved Sybil quite as much as he thought. Lothair Coningsby was in many things fantastic, but he was not merely stupid. He never insisted on seeing facts wrongly, though he did a busy best to persuade the facts to arrange themselves according to his personal preference. But sometimes a fact refused—Nancy’s arrangement with Henry, Ralph’s determined departure for Christmas—and then there was nothing to do but to condole with himself over it or to look at it and send it away. The afternoon’s experience had been a fact of such a kind. He had meant to be saving Sybil, he had thought he was saving her, he had been very anxious about her, but now, in his warm comfort of repose, he couldn’t help seeing that she had been very active about it all; her voice had been very fresh, and she had … she certainly had … been gently singing to herself while they waited for the door to open. He himself had not been singing, but then he didn’t generally sing; he believed in opening his mouth at the proper times, and outside a shut door in a howling snowstorm wasn’t one of them. She’d come out to meet him—yes, of course; but which of them—oh good heavens, which of them—had really been thankful for the other’s presence? Perhaps it didn’t matter; perhaps they’d both been thankful? Reciprocal help. Sybil rather believed in reciprocity, so that was all right. So did he, only, in the way the world went, he always seemed having to be more reciprocal than anybody else. But this afternoon?
This was becoming intolerable. The wind banged at the window again and startled him into decision. He would get up. It was Christmas Day—by heaven, so it was! He had never spent Christmas evening in bed. He always took a good-natured part in any fun that there was. Fun perhaps was too much to expect in this house, but there’d be talk, no doubt, and perhaps—Aaron had hinted as much—a rather unusual wine; perhaps a little music or what not. Anyhow, what not or no what not, he wasn’t going to lie here like an abandoned log while the other logs were … well, were downstairs. Sybil should see that if she had helped him, it was only momentary, and if he’d helped her, then it was silly for her to be up and him not. And then, if the storm did burst into his window, he’d be able to move to another room more easily. So any way and every way it was better to get up. Especially as everyone seemed to have forgotten him, his host, Henry, Nancy, Sybil—everyone. Well, he would go down; he wouldn’t complain, but if anyone expressed surprise he might just say a word, “Oh well, lying by oneself——”; “Unless one’s really ill, one likes to see something of people——”; perhaps, even better, “I thought I’d rather be among you,” with just the faintest stress on the “among you”—not enough for them to treat him as an invalid, but just enough to cause a flicker of regret in Sybil’s and perhaps Aaron’s heart; he didn’t much expect to cause even a flicker in Nancy’s, and he rather hoped that Henry would be a little annoyed.
While he was dressing, he went on trying over various words to say. Every now and then the English language appeared to Mr. Coningsby almost incapable of expressing his more delicate shades of emotion. But then life—getting other people to understand exactly what you meant and wanted and thought and felt—was a very complex business, and, as he never wanted to push himself on others, he was usually satisfied if he could lightly indicate what he was feeling. One mustn’t be selfish—especially on Christmas Day. He abandoned a plaintive, “I thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind me coming down,” in favor of a jocund, “Ha, ha! Well, you see, I didn’t need much putting right. Ah, Sybil, you … your … you don’t …” Rather peevishly he gave that up. He simply could not think of anything at all jocund to say to Sybil. He finished dressing and went to the door. His hand on it, he switched off the light, opened it, and stepped out. His room was near the top of the staircase, next to Aaron’s bedroom. The corridor into which he came ran to his right and left, at each end turning into a short concluding corridor. In the extreme corner to his right was the door of Aaron’s study, within which lay that curious inner room, exposed to the wind on almost all sides, where were the absurd little marionettes. He had been rather pleased when he used the word to Henry, and it recurred to him as he stared towards it. For, much to his surprise, he saw a small procession going stealthily along the corridor. It had only just passed his door when he opened it, quietly, as it happened, and had not heard him. Indeed, the tall young masculine back at which he found himself gazing was what had startled him. It wasn’t Henry’s; it wasn’t anybody’s that he knew. It was wearing a chauffeur’s outdoor coat, but as its arms stuck inches out beyond the sleeves and its neck rose high and thick over the collar it probably wasn’t the chauffeur. Besides the chauffeur wouldn’t be wandering about like that in his master’s house. Mr. Coningsby’s eyes passed it as he wondered, and lit on someone whom he vividly remembered. There, her eyes on the ground, a blanket clutched round her—“extraordinary dress!” the astonished and already indignant visitor thought—was the old madwoman they had encountered on their journey down. Oh it was she undoubtedly; the tangled white hair brought that other evening back in full recognition, and the bent form, and the clutching hand hold
ing the blanket round its neck. She was following something; her head was thrust forward and downwards. Mr. Coningsby instinctively leaned sideways and craned to see what it was, and saw, a yard or so in front of her, a kitten. He stared blankly, as the curious train went on—first the kitten, going gently, pausing now and then with a sudden kittenish crouch, then getting up and going on again, its head turning from side to side; and after it the old woman, with that amazing blanket; and after her the young man in the coat three sizes and more too small for him. Mr. Coningsby’s flesh crept at the mere sight of them. Why a kitten? Why should even a mad old hag go so softly and carefully after a kitten? Perhaps it was her kitten and she was trying to catch it; she wasn’t hurrying it or hurrying after it; if it stopped, she stopped; when it went on, she went on. And so with the third member of the procession, who copied her in all things—moving or staying as she did. It was uncanny; it was rather horrible. His hand still on the door-handle, Mr. Coningsby for a few moments stood gaping after them.