Aaron put his hand to his heart. “But why should she be able to see? Here have all our families studied this for centuries, and none of them—and not you nor I—has ever seen the Fool move. There’s only a tale to tell us that it does move. Why should this woman be able to see it?”
“Why should she pretend if she doesn’t?” Henry retorted. “Besides, I tell you she’s a woman of great power. She possesses herself entirely; I’ve never seen anything dismay or distract her. She’s like the Woman on the cards, but she doesn’t know it—hierophantic, maid and matron at once.”
“But what do you mean?” Aaron urged. “She knew nothing of the cards or the images. She didn’t know why they danced or how. She’s merely commonplace—a fool, and the sister of a fool.”
“None of us has ever known what the Fool of the Tarots is,” the other said. “You say yourself that no one has ever seen it move. But this woman couldn’t see it in the place where we all look for it. She saw it completing the measures, fulfilling the dance.”
“She doesn’t know the dance,” Aaron said.
“She doesn’t know what she does or doesn’t know,” Henry answered. “Either she was lying, I tell you, or by some impossible chance she can see what we can’t see; and if she can, then the most ancient tale of the whole human race is true, and the Fool does move.”
“But then she’ll know the thing that’s always been missing,” Aaron almost sobbed. “And she’s going away next week!”
“It’s why she could manage Joanna as she did,” Henry went on unheeding. “She’s got some sort of a calm, some equanimity in her heart. She—the only eyes that can read the future exactly, and she doesn’t want to know the future. Everything’s complete for her in the moment. It’s beautiful, it’s terrific—and what do we do about it?” He stopped dead in his walk and stared at Aaron.
“She’s going away next week,” the old man repeated.
Henry flung himself back into a chair. “Let us see,” he said. “The Tarots are brought back to the images; there is a woman who can read the movements rightly; and let us add one more thing, for what it’s worth—that I and Nancy are at the beginning of great experiments. On the other hand, the Tarots may be snatched from us by the idiot who pretends to own them; and the woman may leave us and go God knows where; and Nancy may fail. But, fail or not, that’s a separate thing, and my own business. The other is a general concern, and yours. When the Tarots have been brought back to the dancers, and we can read the meaning of the dance, are you willing to let them go?”
“But let us see then,” Aaron said, “what we can do to keep them.”
Henry looked over at him and brooded. “If we once let them out of this house we may not see them again—they will be hidden in the Museum while we and our children die and rot; locked in a glass case, with a ticket under them, for hogs’ faces of ignorance to stare at or namby-pamby professors to preach about.” He leaped to his feet. “When I think of it,” he said, “I grow as mad as Joanna, with her wails about a dismembered god. Shall we let the paintings and the images be torn apart once more?”
Aaron, crouching over the table, looked up sneeringly. “Go and pray to Horus, as Joanna does,” he said, “or run about the fields and think yourself Isis the Divine Mother. Bah! why do you jump and tramp? I’m an old man now, desire is going out of me, but if I’d your heat I’d do more with it than waste it cursing and shouting. Sit down; let us talk. There are four days before they go.”
Henry stamped. “You can’t be sure of four hours,” he said. “Any moment that fool may take offense and be off. Get over tomorrow safely, and he can’t go on Christmas Day, but after that how can we keep him against his will?”
“By leaving him to use his will,” Aaron said.
Henry came slowly back to the table. “What do you mean?” he asked. “You won’t run the risk of violence, will you? How can we? We don’t know what the result on the Tarots may be; there are warnings against it. Besides—it would be hard to see how to do it without——Oh no, it’s impossible.”
Aaron said, “He has the Tarots—can’t he be given to the Tarots? Is wind nothing? Is water nothing? Let us give him wind and water, and let us see if the obstinacy that can keep the cards will bring himself safely through the elements of the cards. Don’t shed blood, don’t be violent; let’s loose the Tarots upon him.”
Henry leaned forward and looked at the ground for a long time. “I’ve thought of something of the sort,” he said at last. “But there’s Nancy.”
Aaron sneered again. “Spare the father for the child’s sake, hey?” he said. “You fool, what other way is there? If you steal the cards from him, if you could, can you show them to her or use them with her? D’you think she won’t be bothered and troubled, and will that be good for your experiment? She’ll always be worried over her honesty.”
“I might show her that our use and knowledge is a high matter,” Henry said uncertainly, “and teach her …”
“All in time, all in time,” the old man exclaimed, “and any day he may give the Tarots to the Museum. Besides, there’s the woman.”
“The woman!” Henry said. “That’s as great a difficulty. Can you persuade her to come and live with you and be the hierophant of the images of the cabalistic dance?”
“If,” said Aaron slowly, stretching out a hand and laying it on the young man’s arm, “if her brother was—gone, and if her niece was married to you, would it be so unlikely that she should live with her niece? If her niece studied the images, and loved to talk of them, and asked this woman for help, would it be so unlikely that she would say what she can see?” He ceased, and there was a pause.
At last—“I know,” Henry said. “I saw it—vaguely—even tonight I saw it. But it may be dangerous.”
“Death is one of the Greater Trumps,” Aaron said. “If I had the strength, I would do it alone; as it is, I can’t. I haven’t the energy or will to control the cards. I can only study and read them. You must do the working, and however I can help you I will.”
“The Greater Trumps——” Henry said doubtfully. “I can’t yet use—that’s the point with Nancy—I want to see whether she and I can live—and she mustn’t know——”
“There are wind and water, as I told you before,” the old man answered. “I don’t think your Mr. Coningsby will manage to save himself even from the twos and threes and fours of the scepters and cups. He has no will. I am more afraid of Joanna.”
“Joanna!” Henry said. “I never heard that she saw the movement of the Fool.”
Aaron shrugged. “She looked to find that out when she had succeeded in carrying out her desire,” he said.
“She was right,” Henry said.
“And has Sybil Coningsby carried out her desire?” Aaron asked. “What was it, then?”
“I can’t tell you,” Henry said, “but she found it and she stands within it, possessing it perfectly. Only she doesn’t know what she’s done. But she doesn’t matter at the moment, nor Joanna. Only Nancy and … and that man.”
“Shall there then be only Nancy?” Aaron asked softly.
Henry looked at him steadily. “Yes,” he answered, “unless he can overcome the beating of the cards.”
“Be clear upon one thing,” Aaron said. “I will have no part in this which you are wanting to achieve with them. I do not want even to know it. If all things go well, it will be enough for me to have restored the knowledge of the dance, and perhaps to have traced something of the law of its movement. But supposing Nancy—later—discovers somehow, in the growth of her wisdom, what you’ve done? Have you considered that?”
“I will believe,” Henry said, “that if indeed it’s the growth of her wisdom that discovers it, her wisdom will justify me. She’ll know that one man must not keep in being the division of unity; she’ll acknowledge that his spirit denied something greater than itself and perished inevitably. His spirit? His mere habitual peevish greed.”
“You will take that risk?” A
aron said.
“It is no risk,” Henry answered; “if it were, then the whole intention is already doomed.”
Aaron nodded, and got to his feet. “Yet ten minutes ago you weren’t so certain,” he said.
“I hadn’t then determined,” Henry answered. “It’s only when one has quite determined that one understands.”
“When will you do it?” Aaron asked. “Do you want me to help you? You should consider that if what you do succeeds, then the girl may be too distressed to go your way for a while.”
“If it may be,” Henry said slowly, “I will wait over tomorrow, for tomorrow I mean to show her the fortunes of nations. But we must not wait too long—and you’re right in what you say; she will need time, so that I won’t try to carry her with me till later. And if after Christmas her father should determine to go … it would be done more conveniently here. Let’s see how things fall out, but if possible let it be done on Christmas Day. He always walks in the afternoon—he told me weeks ago that he hasn’t missed a sharp walk on Christmas afternoon for thirty-four years.”
“Let it be so, then,” his grandfather answered. “I will talk to the women, and do you rouse the winds. If by any chance it fails, it can be tried again. At a pinch you could do it with the fire in the car when you return.”
Henry made a face. “And what about Nancy and her aunt?” he asked.
Aaron nodded. “I forgot,” he said. “Well, there will be always means.”
7
THE DANCE IN THE WORLD
THE SENSE of strain that had come into being on the Thursday night existed still on the morning of Christmas Eve. Henry and Mr. Coningsby were markedly the centers of conflicting emotions, and Mr. Coningsby was disposed to make his daughter into the battle-field since she seemed to hesitate to support him with a complete alliance. He alluded, as the two of them talked after a slightly uncomfortable breakfast, to the unusual sight which had been exposed to them the night before.
“I must say,” he remarked, “that I thought it showed poorer taste than I had hoped for in Henry, to try that trick of the moving dolls on us.”
“But why do you call it a trick, father?” Nancy objected. “They were moving; and that was all Henry said.”
“It was not by any means all,” Mr. Coningsby answered. “To be quite candid, Nancy, he disappointed me very much; he practically tried to swindle me out of that pack of cards by making an excuse that the dolls were very much like them. Am I to give up everything that belongs to me because anyone has got something like it?”
Nancy thought over this sentence without at once replying.
Put like that, it did sound unreasonable. But how else could it be put, to convince her father? Could she say, “Father, I’ve created earth, and seen policemen and nurses become emperors and empresses, and moved in a golden cloud where I had glimpses of a dance that went all through my blood?” Could she? Could she tell him that her mind still occasionally remembered, as if it were a supernatural riddle, the shock of seeing the crucifix with its head above its feet, and the contrast with the Hanged Man of the cards? She said at last, “I don’t think Henry meant it quite like that. I’d like you to be fair to him.”
“I hope I’m always fair,” said Mr. Coningsby, meaning that he couldn’t imagine Eternal Justice disagreeing with him, “but I must say I’m disappointed in Henry.”
Nancy looked at the fire. Dolls? She would have been annoyed, only she was too bothered. Her father must be there, if she could only get at him. But, so far as that went, he might as well be shut away from her in the gleaming golden mist. He might as well be a gray automaton—he was much more like a moving doll than the images of the hidden room, than Henry, than Sybil and Joanna hand in hand, than the white-cloaked governor of the roads, than Henry, than the witches of Macbeth’s encounter, than the staring crucifix, than the earth between her hands, than Henry. She looked at him dubiously. She had meant to ask him if she and Henry might have the Tarot pack again that evening, because Henry wanted to tell her something more, and she wanted to know. But he wouldn’t, he certainly wouldn’t. Might she borrow them for an hour without asking him? It wouldn’t hurt them or him. They were on his dressing-table; she had seen them there and wondered why he hadn’t locked them away. But she knew—it was because he hadn’t really expected them to be taken; he had only wanted to be nasty to Henry. Suppose she asked him and he refused—it would be too silly! But was she to lose all this wonder, which so terrified and exalted her, because he wanted to annoy Henry? Oh, in heaven’s name, what would a girl who was trying to love do?
Love (presumably) at that moment encouraged Mr. Coningsby, meditating on his own fair-mindedness and his generous goodwill, to say, “I’d always be willing for him to borrow them, if I could be sure of getting them back. But——”
Nancy lifted eyes more affectionate than she knew. “If I promised I’d give them back, father, whenever you liked?”
Mr. Coningsby, a little taken aback, said evasively, “It isn’t you I’m doubtful about. You’re my daughter and you know there’s such a thing as decency.”
It would be only decent, Nancy thought, for her not to take the cards for use without his consent; but it would also be only decent for him to lend them. She said, “You’d trust me with them?”
“Of course, of course, if the necessity arose,” Mr. Coningsby said, a trifle embarrassed, and feeling glad that the necessity couldn’t arise. Nancy, relieved from her chief embarrassment, decided that the necessity had arisen. She felt that it would be silly to compel her father to a clearer statement. She said, as clearly as possible, “I’ll take care of them,” but Sybil came into the room at that moment and the remark was lost. Nancy, a little bewildered by the sudden appearance in her life of a real moral problem, and hoping sincerely that she had tried to solve it sincerely, slid away and went to look for Henry.
It was with Henry, and holding the Tarots, that she entered the room that evening and passed the curtains; together they stood before the golden images. Nancy felt the difference; what had on the previous night been a visit of curiosity, of interest, was now a more important thing. It was a deliberate repetition, an act of intention, however small; but it was also something more. By her return, and her return with Henry, she was inviting a union between the mystery of her love and the mystery of the dance. As she stood, again gazing at it, she felt suddenly a premonition of that union, or of the heart of it. It must be in herself that the union must be, in a discovery of some new state perhaps as unlike her love and her vision as they were unlike the ignorant Nancy of the previous year—there was no other place nor other means, whatever outward change took place. All that she did could but more deeply reveal her to herself; if only the revelation could be as good and lovely as … as Henry found her. Could she believe in herself so? Dared she trust that such a beauty was indeed the final answer, or could be made so?
But before she could search out her own thoughts, he spoke to her.
“You saw last night how fortunes can be told,” he said. “The cards that you held are the visible channel between the dance and you. You hold them in your hands and——”
“Tell me first,” she said, “now we’re here alone, tell me more of this dance. It’s more than fortune-telling, isn’t it? Why do the cards make earth? Why do you call some of them the Greater Trumps? Is it only a name? Tell me; you must tell me now.”
He drew a deep breath, began to speak, and then, checking, made a despairing movement with his hands. “Oh, how shall I explain,” he cried out, “what we can only be taught to imagine? what only a few among my own people can imagine? I’ve brought you here, I’ve wanted you here, and now it’s too much for me. There aren’t any words—you’ll think me as mad as that wretched woman on the roads.”
“How do you know I think her mad?” Nancy said. “Did Aunt Sybil seem to? You must try and tell me, Henry—if you think it’s important. If you don’t,” she added gravely, lifting serious eyes to his, “I should be s
orry, because it would all be only a conjurer’s trick.”
He stood away from her a step or two, and then, looking not at her but at the table, he began again to speak. “Imagine, then, if you can,” he said, “imagine that everything which exists takes part in the movement of a great dance—everything, the electrons, all growing and decaying things, all that seems alive and all that doesn’t seem alive, men and beasts, trees and stones, everything that changes, and there is nothing anywhere that does not change. That change—that’s what we know of the immortal dance; the law in the nature of things—that’s the measure of the dance, why one thing changes swiftly and another slowly, why there is seeming accident and incalculable alteration, why men hate and love and grow hungry, and cities that have stood for centuries fall in a week, why the smallest wheel and the mightiest world revolve, why blood flows and the heart beats and the brain moves, why your body is poised on your ankles and the Himalaya are rooted in the earth—quick or slow, measurable or immeasurable, there is nothing at all anywhere but the dance. Imagine it—imagine it, see it all at once and in one!”
She did not speak, and after a minute’s silence he broke out again.
“This is all that there is to learn; our happiest science guesses at the steps of a little of it. It’s always perfect because it can’t be anything else. It knows nothing of joy or grief; it’s movement, quick as light, slow as the crumbling of a stone tomb in the jungle. If you cry, it’s because the measure will have it so; if you laugh, it’s because some gayer step demands it, not because you will. If you ache, the dance strains you; if you are healthy, the dance carries you. Medicine is the dance; law, religion, music, and poetry—all these are ways of telling ourselves the smallest motion that we’ve known for an instant before it utterly disappears in the unrepeatable process of that. Oh Nancy, see it, see it—that’s the most we can do, to see something of it for the poor second before we die!”