The Greater Trumps by Charles Williams Page A

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.”
    â€œRight,” 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.
    â€œDon’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.
    â€œHere 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