Between the young lovers hand in hand on one side, and on the other the solitary figure of Sybil, whose hand was still stretched out over shapes that might, as Nancy saw them, have been blown heaps of snow or might have been such forms as had come rioting up from the center of the storm but were now still and crouching—between those reconciled minds the distracted voice of Joanna pealed on. Nancy had meant to speak, to try to soothe or satisfy, but she dared not. If she did, if she asked and was answered, it would not be an answer that she could comprehend. Witches at the stake, with the fire already about them, might have been shrieking so, with as little chance that the stricken hearers would know the names they adjured. But it was not of witches that Nancy thought, for all the screams and the flames; she heard a more human cry. She heard the wail that rang through the curses, and it was a wail that went up from the depths of the world. Her hand clasped Henry’s passionately, for the sound of that universal distress terrified her young soul. On the edge of a descent an antique misery was poised, and from the descent, from the house, from the earth, misery beyond telling lamented and complained—to men who could not aid, to gods who made no sign, for it was the gods themselves that had been lost. “Ah! ah! ah!”—something final was gone, something beyond description precious; “Ah! ah! ah!”—the little child was dead. They were weeping for it everywhere, as they had been always. She who stood there screamed and stabbed for torment of hate and loss, and from marshes and cities all desire that had not learned its own futility rose and swelled in hers. The litany of anguish poured out as if it were the sound of the earth itself rushing through space, and comfortless forever the spinning globe swept on, turning upon itself, crying to itself; and space was the echo of its lament, and time was the measure of its sobs.
But more than mere awe of such unavailing grief and desire awoke in Nancy then; cold at her heart, a personal fear touched her and stayed. It was a fear of that actual moment, but futurity lived in it. One hand was in Henry’s, but the other was torn by Joanna’s nails. Joanna stood in the way; beyond her the way led on to Sybil. She could see Sybil—ever so far off, in that descent upon which the great stairs opened. But Joanna stood in her, overarching the way, pouring out her voice like the way itself. She wanted to go to Sybil, and that voice was in the way—O folly of cowardice! that voice was the way. Why didn’t Sybil move? Why didn’t Sybil come? Around her, before her, glimmering the red glow that was uncertainly breaking from those ever-busy hands, she saw the mighty golden shapes looming. They were looming out of the cloud which was at once their background and yet they. It was difficult to see, but she caught the form of the designs she had studied—the one and twenty revelations of the Greater Trumps. The red glow leaped and faded; but the crown of the Emperor, but the front of the sphinx-drawn Chariot, but the stretched sickle of the image of Death, but the sandals of the two children playing together under an unshaped sun, themselves shedding the light by which they played, but the girdle of the woman who danced alone—all these and other fragmentary visions struck on her straining eyes. The glow faded; her dazzled eyes refused to see more distinction in those walls of mist. But as she shut them she heard Sybil call, and then she heard a sudden rush close by her. She opened her eyes hastily, in time to see—of all mad things—the cat that had crouched on the altar dash down the stairs towards Sybil. That wild and alien thing which Sybil had found in the magical storm, which had followed Joanna to her room and led her thence to the room of the images, which had almost made a way for the snow to break into the house, which had dashed from snow to mist and from mist to snow as if it were the living secret of uncontrolled power, which had instinctively assisted at the attempted sacrifice to uncontrolled desire, itself unshaping since lacking the instruments of shape, now rushed to the foot of the stairs and absurdly checked itself, and then with high feline grace stepped across the hall to Sybil’s feet.
Sybil dropped her hand towards it and dropped it a soft word; it jumped delicately towards her hand and played round her foot, and jumped again. As it rushed, as it stayed, Joanna’s cry also ceased. The power of it was withdrawn; all power, all utterance, was withdrawn. The unexpected silence was more awful than even the wailing, for it was not a silence of relief but of impotence. The cry of the world was choked; the ball, tossed from the Juggler’s hand, revolved in unspoken anguish. The madwoman reeled once, as if she had been struck on the mouth; then, recovering, turned darting eyes to Sybil in the hall below. Through the silence Sybil called to her, “The child’s found, Joanna; the child’s alive and lovely. All’s well; the child’s found.” Joanna tried to speak and could not. She shuffled towards the stair; she turned her pointing hands, bearing their fiery weapon, as if she herself carried the sword of the crowned chieftain of fire, downward towards that other confronting form. Sybil took a step forward, the cat leaping up against her, and called again, “He’s here. Come and adore.”
In a forced and horrible croak, as if speech broke through against commandment and against control, Joanna said, “It’s you all the time. I shall see him when you’re dead. When you’re dead and the world’s destroyed, I’ll see my desire.”
Amabel, crouching by the drawing-room door, saw the strange lady, her left hand rising and falling in a dance with the leaping cat, stretch out the right as if in invitation. The open palm, the curved fingers, the arching thumb, took on a reflection of the cloud that hung over all things. It seemed to Amabel that Miss Coningsby held out a golden hand towards the staircase down which Joanna was beginning to creep. The hand which had helped Lothair and comforted Nancy and healed Aaron, which had picked up the kitten and closed the door and controlled the storm, was stretched to gather in this last reverted madness of man. It lay there, very still, the center of all things, the power and the glory, the palm glowing with a ruddy passion veiled by the aureate flesh—the hand of all martyrs, enduring; of all lovers, welcoming; of all rulers, summoning. And, as if indeed it summoned, the cloud of gold rushed down towards it, but it moved in shapes and figures, the hands of all the symbols stretched towards the hand that, being human, was so much more than symbol.
Nancy and Henry from above beheld them, hands imperial and sacerdotal, single and joined, the working hands that built the Tower, the helpless hands that formed the Wheel, white hands stretching from the snow, fiery hands thrusting from between Joanna’s that burned downwards and vanished, all activities rushing towards that repose through which activity beat in the blood that infused it. So the hand of the Juggler had been stretched to cast and catch the tossed balls of existence; so the hand of the Fool had at last fulfilled the everlasting promise and yielded its secrets to the expected hour. The cloud swirled once around that open palm, as the intermingling shapes trod out a last circling measure, hiding all other forms, so that the hand itself was all that could be seen as the rapturous powers wheeled inwards to it. For an infinitesimal fraction of time the immortal dance stood still to receive the collection of that ever-moving and never-broken repose of sovereign being. Then suddenly they were gone, and the cloud was gone, and everywhere, breaking from Sybil’s erect figure, shone a golden light, as of the fullness of the sun in his glory, expanding in a rich fruition. Over the snow spread and heaped around, over Aaron and the others by him, over the stairs and the landing and those who were on it, and so over and through the whole house, the light shone, exquisite and full of promise, radiant and full of perfection.
The chaos of the hall was a marvel of new shape and color; the faces of those who stood around were illumined from within. It was Christmas night, but the sunlight shed itself about the whole house, and in the sunlight, between Sybil and Joanna, seriously engrossed, two small strange children played. The mystery which that ancient seer had worked in the Greater Trumps had fulfilled itself, at that time and in that place, to so high a point of knowledge. Sybil stood there, and from her the sun of the Tarots ruled, and the holy children of the sun, the company of the blessed, were seen at least by some of the eyes that watched. For Am
abel saw them and was ignorantly at peace; and Aaron saw them and was ashamed; and Nancy and Henry saw them, and Nancy laughed for mere joy of seeing, and when he heard it Henry felt his heart labor as it had never done before with the summons and the power; and Sybil saw them and adored, and saw beyond them, running down the stairs between herself and Nancy as if he were their union, and poised behind Joanna as if he supported and protected her, the vivid figure of the Fool. He had come from all sides at once, yet he was but one. All-reconciling and perfect, he was there, running down the stairs as he had run down the storm. And as he passed, receiving and bestowing light, Nancy, on an impulse, turned and kissed Henry—before the light should vanish, so that she might have done it, might have done it if in days to come she should ever find herself a part of that dreadful cry which had gone up from the world. But even in the kiss she felt her smarting hand throbbing an answer, an answer and an oath that years should see valiantly kept. When she looked back, the figure of the Fool was gone; she heard Joanna cry out in a natural voice, and she saw the children cease from their play and look up, and then Joanna ran down the rest of the stairs, and, as she reached the bottom, cried out once more as if in pain, and stumbled and fell.
The cry shook the golden light; it vanished. Amabel, gazing, saw Miss Coningsby in the hall and the old woman lying in a heap at the foot of the stairs, and before she had time to move she saw the other visitors come flying down them. They came very swiftly, but as if they also came in order; the lovers first, still hand in hand, and after them Mr. Coningsby, still anxiously watching Nancy, and thinking as fast as he could that he must keep in touch with her, whatever happened. And after him again came Ralph and Stephen, distracted from their mutual hostility, but with all their strength ready and vigilant. The three great orders of grace and intellect and corporeal strength, in those immature servants of their separate degrees, gathered round the place where Sybil knelt by Joanna, and the search within and the search without were joined.
Mr. Coningsby peered over Henry’s shoulder. “Has she collapsed?” he said hopefully.
Nancy had knelt down also, and Sybil’s hands and hers were busy with easing and helping. Amabel, released at last from what she felt must have been a deliciously thrilling nightmare, ran of her own accord to get some water. Aaron came over to the rest. Joanna opened her eyes, and they fell on Nancy. She looked, uncertainly and then eagerly, at the grave young face bending over her, then a great gladness shone in her own. She put out a trembling hand, and Nancy clasped it. She murmured something, and Nancy in similar indistinguishable words answered. Sybil stood up, and Mr. Coningsby edged round to her.
“What’s she doing?” he asked, not quite knowing why he was speaking in a whisper. “Is she apologizing or what?”
Sybil did not immediately answer. She looked at him with a smile; then with the same smile she looked round the hall, and her eyes lingered on a little heap that lay where she had been standing just before, a little heap of golden dust, strewn with charred and flimsy scraps, so light that already one or two were floating away in the mere stir of the air. She looked at them tenderly; then she turned back to her brother, and said, “She has found her child.”
“Has she?” Mr. Coningsby said. “Where?” And he also looked round the hall, as if he suspected that Joanna’s child was likely to be a fresh nuisance.
“She thinks Nancy is her child,” Sybil said.
Mr. Coningsby stared, tried to grasp it, moved a little, was gently pushed out of the way by Amabel with an “Excuse me, sir,” glowered after her, and said, “Nancy?”
“She thinks so,” Sybil answered.
“But … but, I mean … what about the age?” her brother protested. “She can’t think a girl of twenty—forty, perhaps, if she thought she’d grown up, or four if she hadn’t. But not twenty.”
“She’s looking at something immortal,” Sybil said. “Age …” She delicately shrugged it away.
Mr. Coningsby stared at her, and then realized that he was a little frightened of her though he couldn’t think why. “But,” he began again, and suddenly remembered a single simple fact, “but I thought her child was a boy. I’m sure someone told me it was a boy. She doesn’t think Nancy’s a boy, does she? Don’t you mean Henry?”
“No,” Sybil said, “I mean Nancy. I don’t think it much matters about girl or boy. She thought her child was Messias.”
“Oh!” Mr. Coningsby said. “And is Nancy Messias?”
“Near enough,” Sybil answered. “There’ll be pain and heart-burning yet, but, for the moment, near enough.”
About the Author
Charles Williams (1886–1945) was a British author and longtime editor at Oxford University Press. He was one of the three most prominent members of the literary group known as the Inklings—the other two being C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Williams wrote poetry, drama, biography, literary criticism, and more, but is best known for his novels, which explored the primal conflict between good and evil. T. S. Eliot, who wrote an introduction to Williams’s All Hallows’ Eve, praised the author’s “profound insight into … the heights of Heaven and the depths of Hell, which provides both the immediate thrill, and the permanent message of his novels,” and Time magazine called him “one of the most gifted and influential Christian writers England has produced this century.”
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1932 by The Estate of Charles Williams
Cover design by Kat Lee
ISBN: 978-1-5040-0660-6
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Charles Williams, The Greater Trumps
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