The Greater Trumps Read online

  “Right ho!” Ralph said. “I’ll call out the numbers. Are they in order? It doesn’t look like it. Number ninety-four.”

  “I think I will read, Sybil,” Mr. Coningsby said. “I’ve heard Duncannon talk of them often and it’s more suitable. Perhaps you’d pick them up and call the numbers out. And then the young people can look at them.”

  “Give me that chair, then, if you will, Henry,” Sybil assented. Her brother sat down on the other side of a small table, and the “young people” thronged round it.

  “Number—,” Sybil began and paused. “Ralph, if you wouldn’t mind going on the same side as Nancy and Henry, I could see too.”

  Ralph obeyed, unaware that this movement, while removing an obstacle from his aunt’s gaze, also removed his own from the two lovers. Sybil, having achieved the maximum of general satisfaction with the minimum of effort, said again, “Number—”

  “I didn’t think you’d be very interested, aunt,” Ralph, with a belated sense of apology, threw in.

  Sybil smiled at him and said again, “Number—”

  “I have never known your aunt not to be interested in anything, my boy,” Mr. Coningsby said severely, looking up, but more at Sybil than at Ralph, as if he were inclined to add, “and how the devil she does it I can’t think!”

  “Darling,” said Nancy, “aunt’s a perfect miracle, but can’t we leave her for now and get on with the cards?”

  “We are on the point of ‘getting on’ with them, as you call it, Nancy,” her father answered. “I wish you’d remember this is something of an ordeal to me, and treat it more seriously.”

  Nancy’s hand, under the table, squeezed its impatience into Henry’s and relieved her tongue. When the momentary silence had achieved seriousness but had not reached self-consciousness, Sybil’s voice collected and, as it were, concluded it with the words, “Number ninety-four.”

  “Ninety-four,” Mr. Coningsby read out, “‘French; circa 1789. Supposed to have been designed by David. A special Revolutionary symbolism. In this pack the Knaves are painted as a peasant, a beggar, an aubergiste, and a sansculotte respectively; the Queens (Marie Antoinette) have each a red line round the neck, as if guillotined; the Kings are reversed; over the ace is the red cap of liberty. Round the edge of each card is the legend, La République, une, libre, indivisible.’”

  “Number nine,” Sybil said, and put down another pack.

  “Nine,” read Mr. Coningsby. “‘Spanish pack, eighteenth century. The Court cards are ecclesiastical—cardinals, bishops, and priests. It is unlikely that this pack was ever used for playing; probably it was painted as an act of devotion or thanksgiving. See Appendix for possible portraits.’”

  “Number three hundred and forty-one,” Sybil said.

  “‘Most rare,’” Mr. Coningsby read. “‘Very early pack of Tarot cards. I have not been able to trace the origin of these; they have some resemblances to a fifteenth-century pack now in the Louvre, but would seem to be even earlier. The material of which they are made is unusual—? Papyrus. The four suits are, as usual, sceptres, swords, cups, and coins; the Greater Trumps are in the following order (numbered at the foot in Roman): (i) The Juggler, (ii) The Empress, (iii) The High Priestess, or Woman Pope—’”

  “The what?” Nancy exclaimed. “What! Pope Joan? Sorry, father, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “‘(iv) The Pope—or Hierophant, (v) The Emperor—or Ruler, (vi) The Chariot, (vii) The Lovers, (viii) The Hermit, (ix) Temperance, (x) Fortitude, (xi) Justice, (xii) The Wheel of Fortune, (xiii) The Hanged Man.’”

  “Jolly game of bridge we could have with these,” Ralph remarked. “I lead the Hanged Man.”

  There was a tremendous pause. “Ralph, if you can only make fun—” Mr. Coningsby began, and stopped.

  “Do go on,” Sybil Coningsby’s voice implored. “I should have had to say something silly if Ralph hadn’t. It’s so exciting.”

  Mr. Coningsby gave a suppressed grunt, fortunately missed Nancy’s low-breathed comment on it—“The Hanged Man!”—and proceeded.

  “‘(xiv) Death, (xv) The Devil, (xvi) The Falling Tower, (xvii) The Star, (xviii) The Moon, (xix) The Sun, (xx ) The Last Judgment—’”

  Mr. Coningsby paused to shift his eyeglasses. In a perfect silence the others waited.

  “‘(xxi) The Universe, (o) The Fool.’”

  “Nought usually comes at the beginning,” Ralph said.

  “Not necessarily,” said Sybil. “It might come anywhere. Nought isn’t a number at all. It’s the opposite of number.”

  Nancy looked up from the cards. “Got you, aunt,” she said. “What about ten? Nought’s a number there; it’s part of ten.”

  “Quite right, Nancy,” Mr. Coningsby said with something like pleasure. “I think the child has you, Sybil.”

  “Well, if you say that any mathematical arrangement of one and nought really makes ten——” Sybil smiled. “Can it possibly be more than a way of representing ten?”

  “It doesn’t matter, anyhow,” Nancy said hastily. “Aren’t they fascinating? But why are they? And what do they all mean? Henry, why are you looking at them like that?”

  Henry indeed was examining the first card, the Juggler, with close attention, as if investigating the smallest details. It was a man in a white tunic, but the face, tilted back, was foreshortened and darkened by the brim of some black cap that he wore, a cap so black that something of night itself seemed to have been used in the painting. The heavy shadow and the short pointed beard hid the face from the observer. On the breast of the tunic were three embroidered circles, the first made of swords and staffs and cups and coins, balanced one on the other from the coin at the bottom to the apex of two pointing swords at the top. Within this was a circle, so far as Nancy could see, made up of rounded representations of twenty of the superior cards each in its own round; and within that was a circle containing one figure, but that was so small she couldn’t make out what it was. The man was apparently supposed to be juggling; one hand was up in the air, one was low and open towards the ground, and between them, in an arch, as if tossed and caught and tossed again, were innumerable shining balls. In the top left-hand corner of the card was a complex device of curiously interwoven lines.

  Henry put it down slowly as Nancy spoke and turned his eyes to her. But hers, as they looked to plunge into that other depth—ocean pouring into ocean and itself receiving ocean—found themselves thwarted. Instead of oceans they saw pools, abandoned by a tide already beyond sight; she blenched as a bather might do in the cold wind across an empty shore. “Henry!” she exclaimed.

  It was, surely, no such great thing, only a momentary preoccupation. But he was already glancing again at the cards; he had already picked up another and was scrutinizing the figure of the hierophantic woman. It had been drawn sitting on an ancient throne between two heavy pillars; a cloud of smoke rolled high above the priestly head-dress and solemn veil that she wore, and under her feet were rivers pouring out in falling cataracts. One hand was stretched out as if directing the flow of those waters, the other lay on a heavy open volume, with great clasps undone, that rested on her knees. This card also was stamped in the top left-hand corner with an involved figure of intermingled lines.

  “Well!” said Nancy, as she stared at it.

  “But, look here,” Ralph asked, “does one play with them, or what?” He peered over Henry’s shoulder. “Old Maid, I suppose, and Beggar my Neighbor with the first.”

  “They’re very wonderfully done, aren’t they?” Sbyil Coningsby asked, and herself delicately picked up one of what her brother had called the Greater Trumps. It was the nineteenth card—that named the Sun—and was perfectly simple; the sun shone full in a clear sky, and two children—a boy and a girl—played happily below. Sybil smiled again as she contemplated them. “Aren’t they the loveliest things?” she breathed, and indeed they were—so vivid, so intense, so rapturous under that beneficent light, of which some sort of reflection passed into Sybil�
��s own face while she brooded. Or so it seemed to Henry, who had put down his card when Ralph spoke and over Nancy’s bent head was now watching her aunt. Sybil looked up and saw him. “Aren’t they perfect, Henry?” she asked.

  “They are very, very fine,” Lee said, and yet seemed a little puzzled, as if he had expected something, but not quite that.

  “But what are they all about?” Ralph asked. “What’s the idea of it?”

  “Duncannon used to tell me,” Mr. Coningsby said (he had put down his catalogue now and was standing by the table with the others his high, bald forehead gleaming a little in the light, his thin, dissatisfied face bent towards the pack), “that the Tarot cards were an invention of the fourteenth century, though supposed by some to be Egyptian.” He stopped, as if everything were explained.

  “Stupendous bit of work—inventing them,” Ralph said gravely. “But why did anyone bother? What I mean—it seems rather … rather needless, doesn’t it?”

  “We have a tale about them,” Henry Lee began, with a cautious ease, and Mr. Coningsby said, “We?”

  Ever so slightly the young man flushed. “I mean the gipsies,” he answered lightly, and added to Nancy, “That’s your fault, darling, for always pretending that I’m a real gipsy with a caravan, a tin kettle, and a grandmother with a black pipe.”

  “Wouldn’t she love these cards?” Nancy said enthusiastically. “Henry, darling, do have a grandmother, so that she can tell us stories about Tarots, and perhaps even tell fortunes with—what did you call them, father?—the Greater Trumps.”

  “Well,” said Ralph, abandoning the whole subject, “shall we look at some more?”

  “At least, I’ve a grandfather—” Henry said to Nancy.

  “Oh, a grandfather!” she mocked him. “But he lives in a house with electric light, doesn’t he? Not in a caravan under the moon. Still, can he tell us what this is?” She picked up the last card, numbered nought, and exhibited it. It might have needed some explanation, for it was obscure enough. It was painted with the figure of a young man, clothed in an outlandish dress of four striped colors, black and grey and silver and red; his legs and feet and arms and hands were bare, and he had over one shoulder a staff, carved into serpentine curves, that carried a round bag, not unlike the balls with which the Juggler played. The bag rested against his shoulder, so that as he stood there he supported as well as bore it. Before him a dragon-fly, or some such airy creature, danced; by his side a larger thing, a lynx or young tiger, stretched itself up to him—whether in affection or attack could not be guessed, so poised between both the beast stood. The man’s eyes were very bright. He was smiling, and the smile was so intense and rapt that those looking at it felt a quick motion of contempt—no sane man could be as happy as that. He was painted as if pausing in his stride, and there was no scenic background; he and his were seen against a flatness of dull gold.

  “No,” said Henry, “that’s the difficulty—at least, it’s the unknown factor.”

  “The unknown factor in what?” Mr. Coningsby asked.

  “In——” Henry paused a second, then he added, “in telling fortunes by the Tarots. There are different systems, you know, but none of them is quite convincing in what it does with the Fool. They all treat it as if it were to be added to the Greater Trumps—making twenty-two.”

  “So there are twenty-two,” Mr. Coningsby said. “I’ve just read them out.”

  “No, sir,” Henry answered, almost reluctantly, “not exactly. Strictly there are the twenty-one and the nought. As Miss Coningsby said. And you see the nought—well, it’s nought—nothing—unaccountable.”

  “Well, shall we look at some more?” Ralph asked.

  “Can you tell fortunes by them?” Nancy said eagerly, but Henry shook his head.

  “Not properly,” he answered; “at least, I’d rather not try. It can be done; my grandfather might know. They are very curious cards, and this is a very curious pack.”

  “Why are they curious cards?” Nancy went on questioning.

  Henry, still staring at them, answered, “It’s said that the shuffling of the cards is the earth, and the pattering of the cards is the rain, and the beating of the cards is the wind, and the pointing of the cards is the fire. That’s of the four suits. But the Greater Trumps, it’s said, are the meaning of all process and the measure of the everlasting dance.”

  “Some folk-lore survival, I suppose?” Mr. Coningsby said, wishing that his daughter hadn’t herself got mixed up with a fellow very much like a folk-lore survival.

  “Certainly, it may be that, sir,” the young man answered, “from the tales my people used to tell round their fires while they were vagabonds.”

  “It sounds frightfully thrilling,” Nancy said. “What is the everlasting dance, Henry darling?”

  He put his arm round her as Mr. Coningsby turned back to his chair. “Don’t you know?” he whispered. “Look at the seventh card.”

  She obeyed, and on it, under the stamped monogram, she saw the two lovers, each aureoled, each with hands stretched out, each clad in some wild beast’s skin, dancing side by side down a long road that ran from a far-off point right down to the foreground. Her hand closed on Henry’s and she smiled at him. “Just that?” she said.

  “That’s at least the first movement,” he answered, “unless you go with the hermit.”

  “Sybil, I’m waiting,” Mr. Coningsby said, and Sybil hastily picked up another pack, while Ralph very willingly collected and put away the Tarots.

  But the interest had flagged. Henry and Nancy were preoccupied, Mr. Coningsby and his son were beginning to be bored, and in a few minutes Sybil said pleasantly, “Don’t you all think we’ve looked at about enough for tonight?”

  “She really does know when to stop,” Mr. Coningsby thought to himself, but he only said cheerfully, “Just as you like, just as you like. What do you say, Henry?”

  “Eh? … Oh, just as you like,” Henry agreed with a start.

  “I vote we put them back then,” Ralph said, even more cheerfully than his father. “Jolly good collection. But those what-you-may-call-them are the star lot.”

  Hours later, by the door, the sight of a single star low in the heavens brought one of the “what-you-may-call-thems” back to Nancy’s mind. “Oh and darling,” she said, “will you teach me how to tell fortunes by those other cards—you know, the special ones?”

  “The Tarots?” Henry asked her, with a touch of irony in his voice.

  “If that’s what you call them,” she said. “I can do a bit by the ordinary ones.”

  “Have you got the sleight of hand for it?” he asked. “You have to feel how the cards are going and let yourself do what they mean.”

  Nancy looked at her hands and flexed them. “I don’t see why not, unless you have to do it very quickly. Do try me, Henry sweet.”

  He took both her hands in one of his. “We’ll try, darling,” he answered. “We’ll try what you can do with the Greater Trumps. If it’s the pack I think it is. Tell me, do you think your father would ever sell them to me?”

  “Why? Do you want them?” she asked in surprise. “Henry, I believe you’re a real gipsy after all! Will you disguise yourself and go to the races? Oh, let’s, and I’ll be the gipsy maiden—‘Kind sir, kind sir,’” she trilled, “and everyone will cross my palm with pound notes because I’m so beautiful, and perhaps the King will kiss me before all the Court ladies. Would you like that? He might give me a diamond ring too, and you could show it to the judges when they came to tea. No, don’t tell me they won’t, because when you’re a judge they will, and you’ll all talk about your cases till I shall only have the diamond ring to think about, and how the King of England once gave it to Nancy the little gipsy girl before she became Lady Lee, and tried to soften her husband’s hard heart for the poor prisoners the ruffians in the police brought to him. So when you see me dreaming you’ll know what I’m dreaming of, and you must never, never interrupt.”

  “I don’t real
ly have much chance, do I?” Henry asked.

  “Oh, cruel!” she said, “to mock your Nancy so! Will you call me a chatterbox before all the world? Or shall I always talk to you on my fingers, like that?”—they gleamed before him, shaping the letters—“and tell you on them what shop I’ve been to each day, as if I were dumb and you were deaf?”

  He caught a hand in one of his and lightly struck the fingers of his other over its palm. “Don’t flaunt your beauties,” he said, “or when I’m a judge you’ll be before me charged with having a proud heart, and I’ll send you to spoil your hands doing laundry-work in a prison.”

  “Then I’ll trap the governor’s son and escape,” she said, “and make a ballad of a wicked judge, and how first he beat and then shut up his own true sweetheart. Darling, you must be getting on. I’ll see you tomorrow, won’t I? Oh, good night. Do go home and sleep well. Good night. Don’t let anything happen to you, will you?”

  “I’ll stop it at once,” he said. “If anything starts to happen, I’ll be very angry with it.”

  “Do,” she said, “for I don’t want anything to happen ever any more. Oh, good night—why aren’t you gone? It doesn’t take you long to get home, does it? You’ll be asleep by midnight.”

  But when she herself fell asleep Henry was driving his car out of London southward, and it was long past midnight before he stopped it at a lonely house among the Downs.

  2

  THE HERMIT

  AN OLD MAN was sitting alone in a small room. He was at a table facing the door; behind him was another door. The walls were bare of pictures; the table was a large one, and it was almost completely covered with a set of Tarot cards. The old man was moving them very carefully from place to place, making little notes on a sheet of paper and sometimes consulting an old manuscript book that lay by him. He was so absorbed that he did not hear the step outside, and it was not till the door opened that he looked up with a sudden exclamation. Henry Lee came lightly into the room.