The Greater Trumps by Charles Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

anything.”
    â€œThen we shan’t be expected to sit with him,” Sybil said happily, “and, as Nancy and Henry certainly wouldn’t want to, you and I will be much freer.”
    â€œIf I thought I was expected to sit with a senile old man——” Mr. Coningsby said in alarm, “but Henry implied that he’d got all his faculties. Have you heard anything?”
    â€œGood heavens, no!” said Sybil, and, being in what her brother called one of her perverse moods, added, “I love that phrase.”
    â€œWhat phrase?” Mr. Coningsby asked, having missed anything particular.
    â€œGood heavens,” Sybil repeated, separating the words. “It says everything almost, doesn’t it? I don’t like to say ‘Good God’ too often; people so often misunderstand.”
    â€œSometimes you talk exactly in Nancy’s irresponsible way, Sybil,” her brother complained. “I don’t see any sense in it. Why should one want to say ‘Good God’?”
    â€œWell, there isn’t really much else to say, is there?” Sybil asked, and added hastily, “No, my dear, I’m sorry, I was only …” She hesitated for a word.
    â€œI know you were,” Mr. Coningsby said, as if she had found it, “but I don’t think jokes of that kind are in the best of taste. It’s possible to be humorous without being profane.”
    â€œI beg your pardon, Lothair,” Sybil said meekly. She tried her best not to call her brother “Lothair,” because that was one of the things which seemed to him to be profane without being humorous. But it was pain and grief to her; there wasn’t all that time to enjoy everything in life as it should be enjoyed, and the two of them could have enjoyed that ridiculous name so much better together. However, since she loved him, she tried not to force the good God’s richness of wonder too much on his attention, and so she went on hastily, “Nancy’s looking forward to it so much.”
    â€œAt her age,” Mr. Coningsby remarked, “one naturally looks forward.”
    â€œAnd at ours,” Sybil said, “when there isn’t the time there isn’t the necessity; the present’s so entirely satisfactory.”
    Mr. Coningsby just stopped himself saying, “Good God,” with quite a different intonation. He waited a minute or two and said, “You know Henry’s offered to take us down in his car?”
    â€œNice of him,” Sybil answered, and allowed herself to become involved in a discussion of what her brother would or would not take, at the end of which he suddenly said, “Oh, and by the way, you might look through those packs of cards and put in a few of the most interesting—and the catalogue—especially the set we were looking at the other evening. Nancy asked me; it seems there are some others down there, and Henry and she want to compare them. A regular gipsy taste! But if it amuses them … He’s promised to show her some tricks.”
    â€œThen I hope,” Miss Coningsby said, “that Nancy won’t try to show them to us before she’s practiced them. Not that I mind being surprised in an unintentional way, but it’d show a state of greater sanctity on her part.”
    â€œSanctity!” Mr. Coningsby uttered derisively. “Nancy’s not very near sanctity.”
    â€œMy dear, she’s in love,” his sister exclaimed.
    â€œAnd what’s that got to do with sanctity?” Mr. Coningsby asked triumphantly, and enjoyed the silence to which Sybil sometimes found herself driven. Anyone who didn’t realize the necessary connection between love and sanctity left her incapable of explanation.
    â€œTricks” was hardly the word which Nancy would have used that same evening, though it was one which Henry himself had used to her a week or so before. It was still some ten days to