It had been settled at dinner on Christmas Eve that the three Coningsbys would go to the village church on Christmas Day. Mr. Coningsby theoretically went to church every Sunday, which was why he always filled up census forms with the statement “Church of England”. Of the particular religious idea which the Church of England maintains he had never made any special investigation, but he had retained the double habit of going to church on Christmas morning and for a walk on Christmas afternoon. In his present state of irritation with the Lees he would rather have walked to church than not have gone, especially as Aaron pleaded his age and Henry professional papers as reasons for not going. But Aaron had put the car and chauffeur at his disposal for the purpose, so that he was not reduced to any such unseemly effort. Mr. Coningsby held strongly that going to church, if and when he did go, ought to be as much a part of normal life as possible, and ought not to demand any peculiar demonstration of energy on the part of the church-goer.
Sybil, he understood, had the same view; she agreed that religion and love should be a part of normal life. With a woman’s natural exaggeration, she had once said that they were normal life, that they were indeed life. He wasn’t very clear whether she usually went to church or not; if she did, she said nothing much about it, and was always back in time for meals. He put her down as “Church of England” too; she never raised any objection. Nancy went under the same heading, though she certainly didn’t go to church. But her father felt that she would when she got older; or that, anyhow, if she didn’t she would feel it was right to do so. Circumstances very often prevented one doing what one wished: if one was tired or bothered, it was no good going to church in an improper state of mind.
Nancy’s actual state of mind on the Christmas morning was too confused for her to know much about it. She was going with her father partly because she always had done, but even more because she badly needed a short refuge of time and place from these shattering new experiences. She felt that an hour or so somewhere where just for once even Henry couldn’t get at her was a highly desirable thing. Her mind hadn’t functioned very clearly during the rest of the time they had spent in the inner room; or else her memory of it wasn’t functioning clearly now. Henry had explained something about the possibility of reading the fortunes of the world in the same manner as those of individuals could be read, but she had been incapable of listening; indeed, she had beaten a rather scandalous retreat, and (for all his earlier promises of sound sleep) had lain awake for a long time, seeing only that last wild rush together of the Fool and the juggler, that falling torrent of balls breaking into a curtain of golden spray, which thickened into cloud before her. One last glance at the table had shown her upon it the figure of the Fool still poised motionless, so she hadn’t seen what Aunt Sybil had seen. But she had seen the Fool move in that other vision. She wanted to talk to her aunt about it, but her morning sleep had only just brought her down for breakfast, and there had been no opportunity afterwards before church. She managed to keep Sybil between herself and her father as they filed into a pew, and sat down between her and a pillar with a sense of protection. Nothing unusual was likely to happen for the next hour or two, unless it was the vicar’s new setting of the Athanasian Creed. Aaron Lee had remarked that the man was a musical enthusiast, doing the best he could with the voices at his disposal, assisted by a few friends whom he had down at Christmas. This Christmas, it seemed, he was attempting a little music which he himself had composed. Nancy was quite willing that he should — nothing seemed more remote from excitement or mystery than the chant of the Athanasian Creed. During the drive down her father had commented disapprovingly on the Church’s use of that creed. Sybil had asked why he disliked it. Mr. Coningsby had asked if she thought it Christian; and Sybil said she didn’t see anything very unChristian about it — not if you remembered the hypothesis of Christianity.
“And what,” Mr. Coningsby said, as if this riddle were entirely unanswerable, “what do you call the hypothesis of Christianity?”
“The Deity of Love and the Incarnation of Love?” Sybil suggested, adding, “Of course, whether you agree with it is another thing.”
“Certainly I agree with Christianity,” Mr. Coningsby said. “Perhaps I shouldn’t put it quite like that. It’s a difficult thing to define. But I don’t see how the damnatory clauses —”
However, there they reached the church. Nancy thought, as she looked at the old small stone building, that if Henry was right about the dance, then this member of it must be sitting out some part of the time on some starry stair. Nothing less mobile had ever been imagined. But her intelligence reminded her, even as she entered, that the apparent quiescence, the solidity, the attributed peace of the arched doorway was one aspect of what, in another aspect, was a violent and riotous conflict of . . . whatever the latest scientific word was. Strain and stress were everywhere; the very arch held itself together by extreme force; the latest name for matter was Force, wasn’t it? Electrical nuclei or something of that sort. If this antique beauty was all made of electrical nuclei, there might be-there must be-a dance going on somewhere in which even that running figure with the balls flying over it in curves would be outpaced. She herself outpaced Sybil by a step and entered the pew first.
And she then, as she knelt decorously down, was part of the dance; she was the flying feet passing and repassing; she was the conjunction of the images whose movement the cards symbolized and from which they formed the prophecy of her future. “A man shall owe you everything”— everything? Did she really want Henry to owe her everything, or did she — against her own quick personal desire — desire rather that there should be something in him to which she owed everything? “And a woman shall govern you”— that was the most distasteful of all; she had no use at all for women governing her; anyhow, she would like to see the woman who would do it. “And you shall die very rich”— by this time she had got up from her knees, and had sat down again — well, that was very fortunate. If it meant what it said —“You shall die very rich”— but the forms of Death and the Devil and the Queen of Chalices had danced round her, and the words shook with threat, with promise, with obscure terror. But what could even that do to harm her while Henry and she together dared it? While that went on, it was true in its highest and most perfect meaning; if that went on, she would die very rich.
A door opened; the congregation stirred; a voice from the vestry said: “Hymn 61. ‘Christians, awake,’ Hymn 61.” Everyone awoke, found the place, and stood up. The choir started at once on the hymn and the procession. Nancy docilely sent her voice along with them.
Christians, awake, salute the happy morn, Whereon the Saviour of the world was born: Rise to a —
Her voice ceased; the words stared up at her. The choir and the congregation finished the line:
adore the mystery of love.
“The mystery of love.” But what else was in her heart? The Christmas associations of the verse had fallen away; there was the direct detached cry, bidding her do precisely and only what she was burning to do. “Rise to adore the mystery of love.” What on earth were they doing, singing about the mystery of love in church? They couldn’t possibly be meaning it. Or were they meaning it and had she misunderstood the whole thing?
The church was no longer a defence; it was itself an attack. From another side the waves of some impetuous and greater life swept in upon her. She turned her head abruptly towards Sybil, who felt the movement and looked back, her own voice pausing on “the praises of redeeming love”. Nancy, her finger pointing to the first of those great verses, whispered a question, “Is it true?” Sybil looked at the line, looked back at Nancy, and answered in a voice both aspirant and triumphant, “Try it, darling.” The tall figure, the wise mature face, the dark ineffable eyes, challenged, exhorted, and encouraged. Nancy throbbed to the voice that broke into the next couplet —“God’s highest glory was their anthem still.”
She looked back at the hymn and hastily read it — it was really a very commonplace hymn, a very poor copy of verses. Only that one commanding rhythm still surged through her surrendered soul —“Rise to adore the mystery of love.” But now everyone else was shutting up hymn-books and turning to prayer-books; she took one more glance at the words, and did the same.
The two lovers had run straight on — not straight on; they had been divided. Separately they had run up the second part of the way, separately each had danced with the skeleton. She could see them now, but more clearly even than them she remembered the juggler —“neither God nor not-God,” Henry had said — running to meet the unknown Fool. “Amen,” they were singing all round her; this wasn’t getting very far from the dance. It hadn’t occurred to her that there was so much singing, so much exchanging of voices, so much summoning and crying out in an ordinary church service. Sybil’s voice rose again —“As it was in the beginning, is now —” What was in the beginning and was now? Glory, glory.
Nancy sat down for the Proper Psalms, though she was aware her father had looked at her disapprovingly behind Sybil’s back. It couldn’t be helped; her legs wouldn’t hold her up in the midst of these dim floods of power and adoration that answered so greatly to the power and adoration which abode in her heart, among these songs and flights of dancing words which wheeled in her mind and seemed themselves to become part of the light of the glorious originals of the Tarots.
She was still rather overwhelmed when they came to the Athanasian Creed, and it may have been because of her own general chaos that even that despised formulary took part in the general break-up which seemed to be proceeding within her. All the first part went on in its usual way; she knew nothing about musical setting of creeds, so she couldn’t tell what to think of this one. The men and the boys of the choir exchanged metaphysical confidences; they dared each other, in a kind of rapture — which, she supposed, was the setting — to deny the Trinity or the Unity; they pointed out, almost mischievously, that though they were compelled to say one thing, yet they were forbidden to say something else exactly like it; they went into particulars about an entirely impossible relationship, and concluded with an explanation that something wasn’t true which the wildest dream of any man but the compiler of the creed could hardly have begun to imagine. All this Nancy half-ignored.
But the second part — and it was of course the setting — for one verse held her. It was of course the setting, the chance that sent one boy’s voice sounding exquisitely through the church. But the words which conveyed that beauty sounded to her full of sudden significance. The mingled voices of men and boys were proclaiming the nature of Christ —“God and man is one in Christ”; then the boys fell silent, and the men went on, “One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the manhood into God”. On the assertion they ceased, and the boys rushed joyously in, “One altogether, not”— they looked at the idea and tossed it airily away —“not by confusion of substance, but by unity”— they rose, they danced, they triumphed —“by unity, by unity”— they were silent, all but one, and that one fresh perfection proclaimed the full consummation, each syllable rounded, prolonged, exact, “by unity of person”.
It caught the young listening creature; the enigmatic phrase quivered with beautiful significance. Sybil at her side somehow answered to it; she herself perhaps — she herself in love. Something beyond understanding but not beyond achievement showed itself, and then the choir were plunging through the swift record of the Christhood on earth, and once more the attribution of eternal glory rose and fell —“is now,” “is now and ever shall be”. Then they were all kneeling down and the vicar was praying in ritual utterance of imperial titles for “our sovereign lord King George”.
For the rest of the service Nancy moved and rose and sat and knelt according to the ritual, without being very conscious of what was going on. She felt two modes of being alternating within her — now the swift rush of her journey in the car, of her own passion, of the images seen in the night, of the voices roaring upward in the ceremonies of Christmas; now again the pause, the silence and full restraint of the Emperor, of Sybil, of her own expectation, of that single voice declaring unity, of the Fool amid the dance of the night. She flew with the one; she was suspended with the other; and, with downcast eyes and parted lips, she sought to control her youth till one should disappear or till both should come together. Everything was different from what it had so lately seemed; even the two who sat beside her. Her respect for her aunt had become something much more like awe; “Try it, darling,” was a summons to her from one who was a sibyl indeed. Her father was different too. He seemed no more the absurd, slightly despicable, affected and pompous and irritating elderly man whom she had known; all that was unimportant. He walked alone, a genie from some other world, demanding of her something which she had not troubled to give. If she would not find out what that was, it was no good blaming him for the failure of their proper relation. She, she only, was to blame; the sin lay in her heart whenever that heart set itself against any other. He might be funny sometimes, but she herself was very funny sometimes. Aunt Sybil had told her she didn’t love anyone; and she had been slightly shocked at the suggestion. The colour swept into her cheeks as she thought of it, sitting still during the sermon. But everything would be different now. She would purify herself before she dared offer herself to Henry for the great work he contemplated.
At lunch it appeared that his ordinary work, however, was going to occupy him for the afternoon as well as the morning. He apologized to her for this in a rather troubled way, and she mocked him gently.
“Father’s going,” she said, “and you’ll be shut up. It’ll be perfect heaven to look at the furniture or read a murder story — only your grandfather doesn’t seem to have many murder stories, does he, darling? All his literature seems so very serious, and quite a lot of it’s in foreign languages. But there’s yesterday’s paper, if I’m driven to it.”
“I must do it,” Henry said, rather incoherently. “There’s no other way.”
“Where there’s a will there’s a way,” she said. “You haven’t got the will, Henry. You don’t think the world’s well lost for me.”
“I’ve a will for what’s useful,” he said, so seriously that she was startled.
“I know you have, dearest,” she said. “I’m not annoying you, am I? You sounded as if you were going to do something frightfully important, that I hadn’t a notion of.”
He found no answer to that, but wandered off and stood looking out of the window into the frosty clearness of the day. He dared not embrace her lest she should feel his heart beating more intensely than ever it had beaten for his love; nor speak lest his voice should alarm her sensitive attention to wonder what he purposed. It was one thing to see what had to be done, and if it had not been for Nancy he could have done it easily enough, he thought. But to sit at lunch with her and “the murdered man”. If she ever knew, would she understand? She must, she must! If she didn’t, then he had told his grandfather rightly that all his intention was already doomed. But if she did, if she could see clearly that her father’s life was little compared to the restoration of the Tarots, so that in future there might be a way into the mystical dance, and from within their eyes might see it, from within they — more successful than Joanna — might govern the lesser elements, and perhaps send an heir to all their knowledge out into the world. If they perished, they perished in an immense effort, and no lesser creature, though it were Nancy’s father or his own — though it were Nancy herself, should she shrink — must be allowed to stand in the way. She would understand when she knew; but till she had learned more he dared not tell her. It would be, he told himself, cruel to her; the decision for both of them must be his.
The sombre determination brooded over the meal. As if a grey cloud had overcast the day and the room, those sitting at the table were dimmed and oppressed by the purpose which two of them cherished. Aaron’s eyes fixed themselves, spasmodically and anxiously, on the women whom his business was to amuse; Henry once or twice, in a sudden sharp decision, looked up at Mr. Coningsby, who went on conversing about Christmas lunches he had known, about lunches in general, the ideal lunch, the discovery of cooking, fire, gas-fires, air, space, modern science, science in the Press, the present state of newspapers, and other things. Sybil assisted him, more talkative than usual, because the other three were more silent. Nancy felt unexpectedly tired and chilly, though the room was warm enough. A natural reaction of discouragement took her, a natural — yet to her unnatural — disappointment with Henry. Her eyes went to him at intervals, ready to be placated and delighted, but no answering eyes met hers. She saw him, once, staring at his own hands, and she looked at them too, without joy, as if they were two strange instruments working at a little-understood experiment. The dark skin, the long fingers, the narrow wrists — the hands that had struck and caressed hers, to which she had given her free kisses, which she had pressed and stroked and teased — they were so strange that they made her union with them strange; they were inhuman, and their inhumanity crept deeper into the chill of her being. Her glance swept the table; five pairs of hands were moving there, all alien and incomprehensible. Prehensile . . . monkeys swaying in the trees: not monkeys . . . something more than monkeys. She felt Sybil looking at her, and refused to look back. Her father’s voice maddened her; he was still talking — stupid, insane talk. He a Warden in Lunacy! He was a lunatic himself, the worse for being uncertifiable. O, why didn’t he die?
A fork and spoon tinkled. Mr. Coningsby was saying that forks came in w............