The Greater Trumps by Charles Williams Page A

picture, but I can.”
    He stooped to pick up the case and restored to it the swords, the staffs, and the cups, and the Greater Trumps, all in silence; then he laid it by and took up the suit of deniers, or coins, or pentacles.
    â€œNow,” he said, smiling at her, “shall we see what your hands and mine can do?”
    â€œTell me,” she answered.
    He gave the fourteen cards to her, and, standing close by her, he made her hold them in both hands and laid his own over hers. “Now listen,” he said in her ear, speaking slowly and commandingly, “you will think of earth, garden-mold, the stuff of the fields, and the dry dust of the roads: the earth your flowers grow in, the earth to which our bodies are given, the earth which in one shape or another makes the land as parted from the waters. Will you do as I say?”
    Very serious, she looked up at him. “Yes, Henry,” she said, and her voice lingered a little on the second word, as if she gave herself so the more completely to his intention. He said again, “Earth, earth of growing and decaying things—fill your mind with the image of it. And let your hands be ready to shuffle the cards. Hold them securely but lightly, and if they seem to move let them have their way. Help them; help them to slide and shuffle. I put my hands over yours; are you afraid?”
    She answered quite simply, “Need I be?”
    â€œNever at all,” he said, “neither now nor hereafter. Don’t be afraid; these things can be known, and it’s good for us to know them. Now—begin.”
    She bent her mind to its task, a little vaguely at first, but soon more definitely. She filled it with the thought of the garden, the earth that made it up, dry dust sometimes, sometimes rich loam—the worms that crawled in it and the roots of the flowers thrusting down—no, not worms and roots—earth, deep thick earth. Great tree-roots going deep into it—along the roots her mind penetrated into it, along the dividing, narrowing, dwindling roots, all the crannies and corners filled with earth, rushing up into her shoulder-pits, her elbows sticking out, little bumps on those protracted roots. Mold clinging together, falling apart; a spade splitting it almost as if thrust into her thoughts, a spadeful of mold. Digging—holes, pits, mines, tunnels, graves—no, those things were not earth . Graves—the bodies in them being made one with the earth about them, so that at last there was no difference. Earth to earth—she herself earth; body, shoulders, limbs, earth in her arms, in her hands.
    There were springs, deep springs, cisterns and wells and rivers of water down in the earth, water floating in rocky channels or oozing through the earth itself; the earth covering, hampering, stifling them, they bursting upwards through it. No, not water— earth . Her feet clung to it, were feeling it, were strangely drawing it up into themselves, and more and more and higher and higher that sensation of unity with the stuff of her own foundation crept. There were rocks, but she was not a rock—not yet; something living, like an impatient rush of water, was bubbling up within her, but she felt it as an intrusion into the natural part of her being. Her lips were rough against each other; her face must be stained and black. She almost put up her wrist to brush the earth from her cheek—not her hand, for that also was dirty; her fingers felt the grit. They were, both hands, breaking and rubbing a lump of earth between them; they were full and heaped with earth that was slipping over them and sliding between the fingers, and she was trying to hold it in—not to let it escape.
    â€œGently, gently,” a voice murmured in her ear. The sound brought her back with a start and dispelled the sensation that held her; she saw again the cards in her hands and saw now that her hands, with Henry’s lying over them, were