“Why should you expect it to?” Henry asked.
“I can’t think,” Nancy admitted. “Perhaps it was Aunt Sybil saying it was that made me think it ought to be.”
“Well,” Sybil said, “there we are! If you all agree that it’s not moving, I expect it isn’t. Perhaps my eyes have got St. Vitus’ dance or something. But it certainly seems to me to be dancing everywhere.”
There was a short and profound silence, broken at last by Nancy. “What did you mean about fortune-telling?” she said, addressing ostensibly Mr. Lee, but in fact Henry.
Both of them came jerkily back to consciousness of her. But the old man was past speech; he could only look at his grandson. For a moment Henry didn’t seem to know what to say. But Nancy’s eager and devoted eyes were full on him, and something natural in him responded. “Why, yes,” he said, “it’s here that fortunes can be told. If your father will let us use his pack of cards?” He looked inquiringly across.
Mr. Coningsby’s earlier suspicion poked up again, but he hesitated to refuse. “Oh, if you choose,” he said. “I’m afraid you’ll find nothing in it, but do as you like. Get them, Nancy; they’re in my bag.”
“Right,” said Nancy. “No, darling,” as Henry made a movement to accompany her. “I won’t be a minute; you stay here.” There had been a slight effect of separation between them, and she was innocently anxious to let so brief a physical separation abolish the mental; he, reluctant to leave Aaron to deal with Mr. Coningsby’s conversation, assented.
“Don’t be long,” he said, and she, under her breath, “Could I?” and was gone. As she ran she puzzled a little over her aunt’s difficulty in seeing the motionless image, and over the curious vibration that it seemed to her to possess. So these were what Henry had meant; he would tell her more about them presently, perhaps, because he certainly hadn’t yet told her all he meant to. But what part then in the mystery did the central figure play, and why was its mobility or immobility of such concern to him? Though—of course it wasn’t usual for four people to see a thing quite still while another saw it dancing. Supposing anyone saw her now, could they think of her as quite still, running at this speed? Sometimes one had funny feelings about stillness and motion—there had been her own sensation in the car yesterday, but that had only been a feeling, not a looking, so to speak. No one ever saw a motionless car tearing along the roads.
She found the Tarot pack and ran back again, thinking this time how agreeable it was to run and do things for Henry. She wished she found it equally agreeable to run for her father. But then her father—it was her father’s fault, wasn’t it? Was it? Wasn’t it? If she could feel as happy—if she could feel. Could she? Could she, not only do, but feel happy to do? Couldn’t she? Could she? More breathless within than without, she came again to the room of the golden dance.
She was aware, as through the dark screen of the curtain she entered the soft spheral light and heard, as they had all heard, that faint sound of music, of something changed in three of those who waited for her. Henry and her father were standing near each other, as if they had been talking. But also they were facing each other, and it was not a friendly opposition. Mr. Coningsby was frowning, and Henry was looking at him with a dominating hostility. She guessed immediately what had been happening—Henry had himself raised the possibility of his buying or being given or otherwise procuring the cards. And her father, with that persistent obstinacy which made even his reasonable decisions unreasonable, had refused. He was so often in a right which his immediate personal grievance turned into a wrong; his manners changed what was not even an injury into something worse than an insult. To be so conscious of himself was—Nancy felt though she did not define it—an insult to everyone else; he tried to defy the human race with a plaintive antagonism—even the elder sons of the younger sons of peers might (he seemed to suggest) outrage his decencies by treading too closely on his heels. So offended, so outraged, he glanced at Henry now.
She came to them before either had time to speak. Aaron Lee and Sybil had been listening to the finished colloquy, and both of them willingly accepted her coming.
“Here we are,” she said. “Henry, how frightfully exciting!” It wasn’t, she thought at the same moment, not in the least. Not exciting; that was wholly the wrong word for this rounded chamber, and the moving figures, and the strange pack in her hand by which the wonder of earth had happened, and the two opposed faces, and Aaron Lee’s anxious eyes, and the immortal tenderness of Sybil’s. No—not exciting, but it would serve. It would ease the moment. “Who’ll try first?” she went on, holding out the Tarots. “Father? Aunt? Or will you, Mr. Lee?”
Aaron waved them on. “No, no,” he said hurriedly. “Pray one of you—they’re yours. Do try—one of you.”
“Not for me, thank you. I’ve no wish to be amused so——” Her father hesitated for an adverb, and Sybil also with a gesture put them by.
“Oh, aunt, do!” Nancy said, feeling that if her aunt was in it things would be safer.
“Really, Nancy. I’d rather not—if you don’t mind,” Sybil said, apologetic, but determined. “It’s—it’s so much like making someone tell you a secret.”
“What someone?” Henry said, anger still in his voice.
“I don’t mean someone exactly,” Sybil said, “but things … the universe, so to speak. If it’s gone to all this trouble to keep the next minute quiet, it seems rude to force its confidence. Do forgive me.” She did not, Nancy noticed, add, as she sometimes did, that it was probably silly of her.
Nancy frowned at the cards. “Don’t you think we ought to?” she asked.
“Of course, if you can,” Sybil answered. “It’s just—do excuse me—that I can’t.”
“You sound,” Henry said, recovering a more normal voice, “on remarkably intimate terms with the universe. Mayn’t it cheat you? Supposing it had something unpleasant waiting for you?”
“But,” said Sybil, “as somebody says in Dickens, ‘It hasn’t, you know, so we won’t suppose it.’ Traddles, of course. I’m forgetting Dickens; I must read him again. Well, Nancy, it’s between you and Henry.”
Nancy looked at her lover. He smiled at her at first with that slight preoccupation behind his eyes which always seemed to be there, she thought a little ruefully, since the coming of the Tarots. But in a moment this passed, and they changed, though whether she or that other thing were now the cause of their full, deep concentration, she could not tell. He laid his hand on hers that held the Tarots.
“And what does it matter which?” he said. “But I’d rather we tried yours, if you don’t mind.”
“Can’t we try them together?” she asked, “and say good night to separation?”
“Let’s believe we’ve said it,” he answered, “but you shall try them for us both and let me read the fates. Do you believe that it’s true?”
“Is it true?” she asked.
“As the earth in your hands,” he answered, and Mr. Coningsby’s hostility only just conquered his curiosity, so as to prevent him from asking what on earth Henry meant. “It’s between those”—he pointed to the ever-moving images—“and your hands that the power flows, and on the power the cards move. See.”
He turned her, and Aaron Lee, who stood between her and the table, moved hastily back. Then, taking the cards from their case, he made her hold them in her hands, as she had held the suit of deniers on that other evening, and the memory of it came back to her with sudden force. But this time, having settled her hands, he did not enclose them in his own; instead, he stepped away from her and waved away Sybil also, who was close on her left side, so that she stood alone, facing the golden table, her hands extended towards it, holding within them the whole pack of cards, opened a little fanwise so that from left to right the edges made a steeply sloping ascent.
“Move forward, slowly,” he said, “till I tell you to stop. Go on.”
The earth that had lain in her hands … and now she was to go forward a step, or stop.
It was not beyond her power to withdraw; she might pause and laugh and apologize to them all—and to Henry privately and beyond all—and lay aside the things she held. It was not beyond her power to refuse to enter the light that seemed now to grow to a golden sheen, a veil and mist of gold between her and the table; she could step back, she could refuse to advance, to know, to be. In the large content of the love that filled her she had no strong desire to find her future—if the cards indeed could tell her of it—though she could not feel, as Sybil did, that the universe itself was love. But, pausing on the verge of the future, she could find no reason noble enough for retreat—retreat would be cowardice or … no, nothing but cowardice. She was Henry’s will; she was her own will to accomplish that will; having no moral command against her, she must needs go on.
She took a step forward, and her heart beat fast and high as she seemed to move into the clouded golden mist that received her and fantastically enlarged and changed the appearance of her hands and the cards within them. She took another step, and the Tarots quivered in her hold, and through the mist she saw but dimly the stately movement of the everlasting measure trodden out before her, but the images were themselves enlarged and heightened, and she was not very sure of what nature they were. But nothing could daunt the daring in which she went; she took a third step, and Henry’s voice cried to her suddenly, “Stop there and wait for the cards.”
She half turned her head towards him at the words, but he was too far behind for her to see him. Only, still looking through that floating and distorting veil of light, she did see a figure, and knew it for Aaron’s; yet it was more like one of the Tarots—it was the Knight of Scepters. The old man’s walking-stick was the raised scepter; the old face was young again, and yet the same. The skull-cap was a heavy medieval head-dress—but as the figure loomed it moved also, and the mist swirled and hid it. The cards shook in her hands; she looked back at them, and suddenly one of them floated right out into the air and slowly sank towards the floor; another issued, and then another, and so they followed in a gentle persistent rain. She did not try to retain them; could she have tried she knew she could not succeed. The figures before her appeared and disappeared, and as each one showed, so in spiral convolution some card of those she still held slipped out and wheeled round and round and fell from her sight into the ever-swirling mist.
They were huge things now, as if the great leaves of some aboriginal tree, the sacred bodhi-tree under which our Lord Gautama achieved Nirvana or that Northern dream of Igdrasil or the olives of Gethsemane, were drifting downward from the cluster round which her hands were clasped. The likenesses were not in her mind, but the sense of destiny was, and the vision of leaves falling slowly, slowly, carried gently upon a circling wind that touched her also in its passage, and blew the golden cloud before it. She grew faint in gazing; the grotesque hands that stretched out were surely not those of Nancy Coningsby, but of a giant form she did not know. With an effort she wrested her eyes from the sight, and looked before her, only more certainly to see the dancers. And these now were magnified to twenty times their first height; they were manikins, dwarfs, grotesques, yet living. More definitely visible than any before, a sudden mingled group grew out of the mist before her. Three forms were there—with their left arms high-arched, and finger-tips touching, wheeling round a common center; she knew them as she gazed—the Queen of Chalices, holding her cup against her heart; and the naked figure of the peasant Death, his sickle in his right hand; and a more ominous form still, Set of the Egyptians, with the donkey head, and the captives chained to him, the power of infinite malice. Round and round, ever more swiftly, they whirled, and each as it passed seemed to stretch out towards her the symbol of itself that it carried; and the music that had been all this while in her ears rose to the shrieking of a great wind, and the wind about her grew cold and strong. Higher still went the shrieking; more bitterly against her the fierce wind beat. The cold struck and nipped her; she was alone and her hands were empty, and the bleak wind died; only she saw the last fragments of the golden mist blown and driven upon it. But as it passed, and as she gaspingly realized that her lover and friends were near her, she seemed yet for a moment to be the center of that last measure; the three dancers whirled round her, their left hands touching over her head, separating and enclosing her. Some knowledge struck to her heart, and her heart ached in answer, a dull pain unlike her glorious agony when it almost broke with the burden of love. It existed and it ceased.
Henry’s voice said from behind her, “Happy fortune, darling. Let’s look at the cards.”
She felt for the moment that she would rather he looked at her. There she was, feeling rather pitiable, and there were all the cards lying at her feet in a long twining line, and there was her father looking a trifle annoyed, and there was Henry kneeling by the cards, and there was Aaron Lee bending over him, and then between her and the table at which she didn’t want to look came the form of her aunt. So she looked at her instead, which seemed much more satisfactory, and went so far as to slip an arm into Sybil’s, though she said nothing. They both waited for Henry, and both with a certain lack of immediate interest. But this Henry, immersed in the cards, did not notice.
“You’re likely to travel a long distance,” he said, “apparently in the near future, and you’ll come under a great influence of control, and you’ll find your worst enemy in your own heart. You may run serious risks of illness or accident, but it looks as if you might be successful in whatever you undertake. And a man shall owe you everything, and a woman shall govern you, and you shall die very rich.”
“I’m so glad,” Nancy said in a small voice. She was feeling very tired, but she felt she ought to show a little interest.
“Henry,” she went on, “why is the card marked nought lying right away from the others?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “but I told you that no one can reckon the Fool. Unless you can?” he added quickly, to Sybil.
“No,” said Sybil. “I can see it right away from the others too.” She waited a minute, but, as Henry showed no signs of moving, she added in a rather deliberately amiable voice, “Aren’t you rather tired, Nancy? Henry dear, it’s been the most thrilling evening, and the way you read fortunes is superb. I’m so glad Nancy’s to be successful. But would you think it very rude if she and I went to bed now? I know it’s early, but the air of your Downs …”
“I beg your pardon?” Henry said. “I’m afraid I wasn’t listening.”
Sybil, even more politely, said it all again. Henry sprang to his feet and came over to them. “My darling, how careless of me,” he said to Nancy, while his eyes searched and sought in hers, “of course you must be fagged out. We’ll all go back now—unless,” he added politely to Mr. Coningsby, “you’d like to try anything further with”—there was the slightest pause—“your cards.”
“No, thank you,” Mr. Coningsby said frigidly. “I may as well take them down myself”; and he looked at them where they lay on the floor.
“I’ll come back and collect them as soon as I’ve seen Nancy along,” Henry answered. “They’ll be safe enough till then.”
“I think I would as soon take them now,” Mr. Coningsby said. “Things have a way of getting mislaid sometimes.”
“Nothing was ever mislaid in this room,” Henry answered scornfully.
“But the passages and other rooms might be less fortunate,” Mr. Coningsby sneered. “Nancy can wait a minute, I’m sure.”
“Nancy,” she said, “will pick them up while you’re talking about it,” and moved to do it. But Henry forestalled her, though his dark skin flushed slightly, as he rose with the pack, restored it to its case, and ostentatiously presented it to Mr. Coningsby, who clasped it firmly, threw a negligent look at the dancing figures, and walked to the opening in the curtains. Henry drew Nancy from her aunt into his own care and followed him; as they passed through she said idly, “Why do you have curtains?”
He leaned to her ear. “I will show yo
u now, if you like,” he said, “the sooner the better. Are you really too tired? or will you see what larger futures the cards show us?”
She looked back at the room. “Darling, will tomorrow do?” she said. “I do feel rather done.”
“Rest, then,” he answered; “there’s always sound sleep in this house. Tomorrow, I’ll show you something else—if,” he added, speaking still more softly, “if you can borrow the cards. Nancy, what good can they possibly be to your father?”
She smiled faintly. “Did you quarrel with him about them?” she said, but as she saw him frown added swiftly, “None.”
“Yet he will hold on to them,” Henry said. “Don’t you think they belong to—those behind us?”
“I suppose so,” Nancy said uncertainly. “I feel as if we all belonged to them, whatever they are. Your golden images have got into my bones, darling, and my heart’s dancing to them instead of to you. Aren’t you sorry?”
“We’ll dance to them together,” he said. “The images and the cards, and the hands and the feet—we’ll bring them all together yet.”
“That’s what your aunt said,” she answered, “something coming together. What did she mean by Horus?”
“My aunt’s as mad as your father,” he answered, “and Horus has been a dream for more than two thousand years.”
6
THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE FOOL
IT WAS some time later, their visitors having all retired, after more or less affectionate partings, that Henry came to his grandfather in the outer room. The old man was waiting eagerly; as the door shut behind his grandson he broke out, “Did you hear? Did she mean it?”
Henry came across and sat down. “She must have meant it,” he said; “there’s no conceivable way by which she could have known what we need. Besides, unless she was playing with us—but she wouldn’t; she’s not that kind. So if she saw——” He got up again and walked in extreme excitement about the room. “It can’t be—but why not? If we’ve found the last secret of the images! If time’s at last brought sight along with the cards!”