"Love would be safe in his own storm"

Sybil Coningsby stepped out into the storm and tried to see before her.  It was becoming very difficult, and the force of the wind for the moment staggered and even distressed her.  She yielded to it a little both in body and mind; she knew well that to the oppositions of the world she could in herself offer no certain opposition.  As her body swayed and let itself move aside under the blast, she surrendered herself to the only certain thing that her life had discovered: she adored in this movement also the extreme benevolence of Love.  She sank before the wind, but not in impotence; rather as the devotee sinks before the outer manifestations of the God that he may be made more wholly one with that which manifests.  Delaying as if both she and it might enjoy the exquisite promise of its arrival, it nevertheless promised, and, as always, came.  She recovered her balance, swaying easily to each moment's need, and the serene content which it bestowed filled again and satisfied her.

It satisfied, but for no more than the briefest second did she allow herself to remain aware of that.  Time to be aware, and to be grateful for that awareness, she enjoyed; literally enjoyed, for both knowledge and thankfulness grew one, and joy was their union, but that union darted out towards a new subject and centre.  Darted out and turned in; its occupation was Lothair Coningsby, and Lothair was already within it.  It did not choose a new resting-place, but rather ordered its own content, by no greater a movement than the shifting of the accent from one syllable back to the other.  So slight a variation as gives the word to any speaker a new meaning gave to this pure satisfaction a new concern.  She was intensely aware of her brother; she drew up the knowledge of him from within her, and gave it back within her.  In wave after wave the ocean of peace changed its "multitudinous laughter" from one myriad grouping to another.  And all, being so, was so.

Such a state, in which the objects of her concern no longer struck upon her thoughts from without, recalled by an accident, a likeness, or a dutiful attention, but existed rather as they did in their own world-a state in which they were brought into being as by the same energy which had produced their actual natures-had not easily been reached.  That sovereign estate, the inalienable heritage of man, had been in her, as in all, falsely mortgaged to the intruding control of her own greedy desires.  Even when the true law was discovered, when she knew that she had the right and the power to possess all things, on the one condition that she was herself possessed, even then her freedom to yield herself had been won by many conflicts.  Days of pain and nights of prayer had passed while her lonely soul escaped; innocent joys as well as guilty hopes had been starved.  There had been a time when the natural laughter that attended on her natural intelligence had been hushed, when her brother had remarked that "Sybil seemed very mopy".  She had been shocked when she heard this by a sense of her disloyalty, since she believed enjoyment to be a debt which every man owes to his fellows, partly for its own sake, partly lest he at all diminish their own precarious hold on it.  She attempted dutifully to enjoy and failed, but while she attempted it the true gift was delivered into her hands.

When the word Love had come to mean for her the supreme greatness of man she could hardly remember: one incident and another had forced it on her mind--the moment when her mother, not long before death, had said to her, "Love, Sybil, if you dare; if you daren't, admit it"; the solemn use of the name in the great poets, especially her youthful reading of Dante; a fanatic in a train who had given her a tract: Love God or go to Hell.  It was only after a number of years that she had come to the conclusion that the title was right, except perhaps for go to--since the truth would have been more accurately rendered by be in Hell.  She was doubtful also about God; Love would have been sufficient by itself but it was necessary at first to concentrate on something which could be distinguished from all its mortal vessels, and the more one lived with that the more one found that it possessed in fact all the attributes of Deity.  She had tried to enjoy, and she remembered vividly the moment when, walking down Kingsway, it had struck her that there was no need for her to try or to enjoy: she had only to be still, and let that recognized Deity itself enjoy, as its omnipotent nature was.  She still forgot occasionally; her mortality still leapt rarely into action, and confused her and clouded the sublime operation of--of It.  But rarely and more rarely those moments came; more and more securely the working of that Fate which was Love possessed her.  For it was fatal in its nature; rich and austere at once, giving death and life in the same moment, restoring beyond belief all the things it took away--except the individual will.

Its power rose in her now and filled her with the thought of her brother.  As she came from the drive into the road she looked as alertly as she could before her in case he staggered into sight.  Whether she was going to find him or not she couldn't tell, but it was apparently her business to look for him, or she wouldn't have felt so strongly the conviction that, of all those in the house, she alone was to go out and search.  That she should be walking so lightly through the storm didn't strike her as odd, because it wasn't really she who was walking, it was Love, and naturally Love would be safe in his own storm.  It was, certainly, a magnificent storm; she adored the power that was displayed in it.  Lothair, she thought, wouldn't be adoring it much at the moment: something in her longed passionately to open his eyes, so that the two of them could walk in it happily together.  And Nancy, and Henry--O, and Aaron Lee, and Ralph, and everyone they all knew, until the vision of humanity rejoicing in this tumultuous beauty seemed to show itself to her, and the delight of creation answered the delight of the Creator, joy triumphing in joy.

Charles Williams

The Greater Trumps (1930)

Chapter Nine - Sybil