The Black Fox

by H. F. Heard

  To all this she kept a smiling, non-committal, unquestioning face, knowing too well to ask him to explain or enlarge, and feeling for him too deeply to let his hopes take form in actual words. She was really more of a realist than he and she felt that his mind was less armed against disappointment than her own.

  Certainly nothing outwardly seemed to point to the issue being decided one way or the other. The Dean seemed once more, with that infinite capacity for shamming death that sometimes characterizes nonagenarians, to have stabilized on a new low. Yet this pause on a still lower rung of life’s ladder did not discourage the Canon.

  The Archdeacon continued zealous in his outlying work—“A true sheep-dog racing over the outlying pastures,” said the Canon to his sister and she noticed that, though satirical, the voice was not ungenial. On his side, since his talk with the Bishop the Canon gave plenty of attention to the Cathedral. By nature commanding and able to manage well enough anything that he thought worth while mastering, he had no difficulty in keeping the queer team under him at the pace and in the step he thought right. Everyone looked upon him now as being virtually in command and, as most people who are routineers like being managed and only give trouble if not controlled, he was on the whole approved.

  “If you know your own mind people will save themselves the trouble of consulting their own,” he remarked to his sister.

  “Well,” she consented, “I suppose if anywhere a hierarchy should rule it would be in a Close.”

  Himself he often counselled, “It may be a little tedious, but detail now mustn’t be neglected. With the prize at one’s fingertips it would be criminal carelessness to neglect any precaution. Every small efficiency goes to build up inevitability. The place has not been so well run for fifty years—perhaps never. And when the end comes to this long hiatus why the transit will hardly be noticed. What has become actual will merely be formalized and the services which I’ve rendered will merely be given their recognition—after which I in turn will be able to rest in my scholarship and appoint someone else as my vicar!”

  Even when the Archdeacon was home he was pleasantly passive and never challenged what was being done. He seemed too tired, or preoccupied, by his extramural work to pay attention to what was taking form in the Precincts themselves.

  Nor could Dr. Wilkes, sounding for impatience, be sure that he detected any increase in congestion of temper. He and Throcton nearly always stopped and spoke as they passed now-a-days. So the physician on being found coming from the Deanery saw an opportunity for taking, as he put it to himself, that pulse of spirit that can be read in the face. He remarked with a humour meant to appear as a disguised condolence while in reality to provoke a possible reaction, “I have never known such a staunchless fund of suspended animation! Wherever the Very Reverend soul may now be, the animal vitality now at bay and bed is certainly managing to keep the decanal body still undecomposed.”

  The Canon was not to be drawn either into theological speculation or human self-pity. His mind, that when unsettled had made him give way to that outbreak with his sister, was now certain of itself because so sure of its prospects. With something like supple geniality he then side-stepped the suggested condolence by turning the conversation on himself.

  “I believe I am the one resident of these Precincts who consistently keeps you ‘professionally’ at a distance.”

  The tone might be taken for that of easy friendship and certainly caused the Doctor grateful pleasure. But his gratitude did not move him to become unsteadily indiscreet. He was aware that, though he had not been rebuffed but rather welcomed, his probe had met resistance under the genial surface. His counter-move was clear. It would still be well and wise to share every detail of the superslow descent of the Dean to decease. Yes, there was no doubt about that. But it would be wiser not to speak of another’s condition which interested and puzzled him far more—that of the Archdeacon. It was a hunch, but of the sort that he had never found at fault. And if the Canon, au fond, was not going to trust him, well it would certainly be wiser to keep this stranger issue to himself.

  As he went on his way he too indulged in what he would call a piece of social diagnosis. Rooks were already squabbling in the tops of the lime-trees for favourable nest sites. “Mr. Darwin is right,” he remarked aloud alone. “There’s not merely the vitality of each individual but there’s the struggle between the individuals in the group—the group is a kind of body and generally in poorer shape than its constituents because the members war one with another as St. Paul, isn’t it? says. There’s still ‘an unreduced dislocation’ between those two important members of this queer Cathedral body. I suppose I ought not have spoken to Canon Throcton first about this. But then I didn’t realize this inflammation, and the Bishop was away. Now it would serve no purpose … do harm. You can only give true inside information if you are giving it to a true insider, not to one alienated by ill will. Yet someone ought to be told. The Bishop is available now.”

  His steps had taken him out of the Close and by a lane that skirted round the garden walls of the Palace. He had no more patients to see that morning. Why not ask if the Bishop was at home and would be able to see him for ten minutes. He felt a little shy and even clandestine. Well it would be all the better to get over it. If the Bishop said he could not see him then he would think over further what should be done.

  But the answer came down that he should go up. And the interview turned out well, confirming his hope. Bishop Bendwell was gracious, concerned, thanked him for coming and agreed that they should keep the matter “entre nous.”

  “And what do you think should be done, Dr. Wilkes?”

  “Rest, My Lord; when the body is showing signs of hesitancy in its resilience then we must give it more time. Every fatality begins with fatigue.”

  “But no archdeaconry can be a rest-post, though men have no doubt turned such mobile commissions into sessile wards and even cubicles and not been removed. I cannot have it held again by one who is not strong enough to do the work. I don’t understand …” he went on, almost to himself, “I don’t understand. I picked him because he was still youngish and seemed a man of outstanding energy—a better choice for the hard work of the office than any—that could have been suitable. Then that curious indisposition as soon as he took office. And now again, according to you, he seems to be ailing?”

  “I don’t know, My Lord, if I would use quite so strong a term as ailing. But certainly not now with his full energy … depleted … enervated …”

  “Well what is your diagnosis?”

  “I think, My Lord, I would rather not yet define my views to that extent. I am observing, not as yet prescribing. And if I may say so, I have come to you not merely as a possible informant but to ask for your insight. Still I might offer a prognostic. You know that there are preconsumptive, precancerous, preanaemic conditions when a touch may send the organism one way or the other, when some slight shock or strain may suddenly precipitate a manifest morbidity, which rest and peace of mind would have permitted to dissipate. That’s the state I hold him to be in. You see it is on the very borders of my field and, if I may say, where it adjoins that of the Church. Alas we are usually called in when the enemy has already taken all but the citadel and then are asked to oust him.”

  “In brief you mean that prevention is better than cure?”

  The Doctor nodded a trifle crest-fallen that the man of the pulpit should have been more succinct than he of the pharmacy. The Bishop was silent. Then he rose. “Thank you again for coming. Please say nothing of this to anyone. I will see what can be done. It is difficult. Of course …” and now he was again almost talking to himself, “There are others through the diocese; two or three that might fill the post—but, but.…” Then turning to the door, and giving the Doctor his hand, “Well, good-bye. We will no doubt have time for another consultation on this matter. There is nothing to be feared at once?”

  “Oh no. We have time, certainly. It was because I wished that you,
My Lord, should have the earliest advices that I ventured to call. Thank you for granting me this consultation when we can see ahead.”

  But they could not. There was not time. True, the Archdeacon remained much the same. But not the Dean. Without word or warning while one of his great-nieces was reading to him—or to be more exact reading in the presence of the body on the bed—for the hundredth time Jane Austen’s Emma, she noticed as she rose quietly at the ending of the usual evening portion that the coverlet was no longer being raised and let fall however slightly.

  The Dean was at last undeniably, certifiably dead.

  The Archdeacon was naturally back in the Close for the funeral, and, as at such times the worthies of the city liked to make prophecies as to who would go next, his pale appearance gained him quite a few votes for this ultimate preferment. The Bishop eyed him too, and solicitously agreed, when asked to give an interview. “Come over at once,” he replied, as they unrobed in the vestry, and Canon Throcton had gone out to see to those minutiae of routine which everyone now took for granted were his concern.

  In the Palace the younger man turned to his superior, “I should never have taken the post. I have tried to do my duty.…”

  “You have; you have.” The Bishop was both concerned and embarrassed. Was there going to be a nervous breakdown? As were most of those men who survived to reach the higher levels of Anglicanism, he was bland. Blandness is a curious and rather fine glaze which to the casual eye is assumed to have a base of dullness or indifference. The reverse is the truth. It is generally the patina or exprecipitation produced by a sensitive and wary nature exposed to situations in which a frank response is impossible. It is their defence against “the corrosion of the world’s dull stain.” A double price is paid: the bright, clear response to events is lost—that unguarded reaction of the innocent—and also, under this crust of circumspect culture, the repressed sensitiveness hurts the man, making him dread any show of emotion. The tougher the nail, the quicker the quick. Perhaps then the Bishop’s only passionate revulsion was for what he called with a monosyllabic emphasis, alien to his pulpit style, “Scenes.” But he was not to be spared.

  “I should never have taken it,” the voice rose to that thin whine that in a dog’s distress immediately precedes the full howl.

  “But you have done well. You’ve simply strained yourself a little too much—that’s all—the willing horse, you know. Just learn to take it in your stride. You’ll get the pace.…”

  “No, no, I must tell you; you are our Father-in-God. Do you, My Lord, remember that night last year when I dared to counsel you against making the appointment which you thought might be required of you. I was wrong, very wrong. The office belonged to him by a certain prescriptive right—and you were right.…”

  “I don’t think I can enter into that now.” The Bishop felt that he might and should let his immunity of position be known unmistakably. Health was one thing; policy quite another. “Besides”—as he saw the poor man’s face draw into an even deeper mope—“Besides, I can assure you that the person to whom I presume you are referring bears not the slightest hard feeling. I cannot of course infringe even on the frontiers of confidence but I must ask you with my authority to believe that.”

  The appeal for faith was not well received; indeed it led to something like a resumption of the storm. Perhaps the man was going to have a real bout of hysteria, here in his study. It was the incongruousness of the thing that made Bishop Bendwell feel something like gooseflesh under his gaiters. He could meet crises as well as any man provided he felt himself on familiar ground. But Anglicanism has naturally never thought of having an answer to insanity. Its success, and it was not inconsiderable, lay in its power to disregard the abnormal.

  The voice rose in its thin intensity, “I beg you, My Lord, I beg you to let him have what I know he desired, this wretched office.”

  “But what of you?” the Bishop asked with that kind of kindliness that is at the edge of exasperation. The Canonry that Simpkins had evacuated when he took the archidiaconal stall was already filled by one of the deserving diocesan clergy. The other man simply hung his head. He looked like a chased animal completely spent, not caring whether it is caught or no. After a pause he did speak but mainly in a mutter and to himself.

  “It all started the moment I took office. I had a guilty conscience, I could feel his resentment and had to own I deserved it—a guilty conscience, fatal for any religious work. I am ready to resign.”

  The Bishop’s concern became acute enough to overcome his suppressed fear of emotion. Something must be done. The man couldn’t be let drift till he was no use to himself and had gone outside any help that the Bishop would be at liberty to grant. There was one thing that could be done. It was really not out of the question and this crisis made it necessary to break through conventions—after all David did eat the shewbread and the Highest Authority condoned the breach of ecclesiastical order. He got up and put his hand on the huddled shoulder of the man who was still crouching in his chair. His sympathy grew as he felt the thinness of the muscle and the poor tone of the sinews. “Believe me, it will come all right and trust me as your Father-in-God. I will do all I can to get the matter settled satisfactorily.”

  As the Archdeacon had gone into the Palace his wife had called at the Throcton residence. When brother and sister had come in from the funeral the Canon had gone straight to his study saying that he would not be down to tea as he must now settle a number of pressing details. He was already having to give a considerable part of his time to the Cathedral’s agenda and the actual death of the Dean had rapidly increased the dependency that the staff now put on the accepted successor. The organist, naturally the last of the crew to be reduced to obedience, had now—as often happens—become a constant asker for interviews. Indeed Canon Throcton was discovering that it may be less fatiguing to carry on campaigns against rebels than to manage every detail for slaves. Now, however, that it must be a matter of no more than a fortnight before the prize was awarded him, he was determined to finish with finish. Once appointed, once de jure, then let who will manage the finicking detail. Till then if the sub-verger couldn’t light a candle or mark the right Lesson without the match being lit for him or the marker put in the proper page—well he would be at every underling’s shoulder. He would oversee every detail right up to the day on which, with the effrontery of Absolute Power, “The Crown” (whose real name happened to be Benjamin ben Israel) informed the Chapter that it was free to elect the person chosen for them to choose.

  The organist proved as long-winded as his Voluntaries. The Canon began to wish quite strongly for his tea. He would not, and by his social station was indeed forbidden to, offer the organist any refreshment. Miss Throcton was, however, on this occasion relieved that he was detained. She felt determined to remedy the unkindness into which at the last visit she felt she had drifted. Besides, surely Mrs. Simpkins would not have called again in so short a time and after so “short” a parting, had there not been a sufficiently unusual reason. Perhaps she needed help. The putty-coloured face of the Archdeacon came into her mind—not an attractive impression but not without appeal. In her resolution to do better she was, however, more than taken at her word. Miss Throcton began to find that she was losing sight of her objective, indeed really losing sight of her guest, as she became involved with herself, contemptuous of her own contempt. Why did the poor Archdeaconess (what a dismal title and yet no doubt her guest would like it), why did the poor woman grate on her? From the moment her ill-shaped button-boots squeaked across the floor to that other equally protracted moment when she had equally noisy trouble with her veil and the tea, those small, wordless contretemps that feed contempt and prepare us for overt acts of ill will, followed without relief. So when the visitor—the preliminary speech-conventions exhausted—volunteered a remark it was inevitably unhappy.

  “What strange tea!—almost like stale pepper. It quite caught my breath!”

  “It’s Ch
ina.”

  “I always say to my husband, ‘If we have been given an Empire and have given India the Gospel, we owe it to them to drink their tea.’”

  “I don’t quite see the inference?”

  The subacid reply-question led to a succession of ever-widening exchanges. From tea to theology the steps were short and swift. “My husband has found a shocking state of affairs in the diocese. It has worn him down. It seems that we who live a sheltered life can’t have any notion.…”

  “Of what?”

  “Why, Romanism among the clergy and, in consequence, open infidelity among the laity. That is what we pay, for letting our Protestantism go out of our preaching. Scholarship may have its place, but it can’t win souls. What then is it doing in the pulpit!”

  “I thought that St. Paul said we were to give a reason for the faith that is in us?”

  “If we have one!” The Archdeaconess ruffled her magenta plumes. Her taste in colour was aniline. Her hostess preferred Pre-Raphaelite tones. Suddenly Miss Throcton’s sense of humour won respite from complete break-down. The nodding purple bonnet—giving a culmination of apoplectic colouring to the flushed face from which it reared—the poor Archdeaconess looked like a cornered hen. A hen with its back to the wall loses a great deal of its normal silliness for it is usually defending its chicks. Humour often rouses interest and interest may warm into charity.

  “Yes,” Miss Throcton found herself saying, “faith is the crux, isn’t it? St. James says faith can heal not only the soul but the body also, doesn’t he?” Her surface mind felt that she must have said this to lead her ruffled guest off controversy and to ground on which they could agree. For the Close had lately closed ranks when one of the most troublesome of the ritualistic parish clergy had begun to anoint his sick with consecrated oils. Her deep mind was signalling up to her some stranger significance when she was distracted by a sudden change in the fat homely face confronting her. It wasn’t relaxation: it was increased tension. Fuss had been replaced by fear. Through the show of defiance was now emerging the real reason for the visit.