The Black Fox A Novel Of The Seventies

by Gerald Heard

  She stood listening. In the stillness of the house—it was the younger servants' night out and Cook was an early retirer—she could hear his tread go along the passage, up the staircase and into his bedroom which was above the parlor. He was moving about methodically. At last all was quiet. She lit her own candle and turned off the small tap that extinguished the gas-fed chandelier, then went back to the window for a last look at the garden. The moon was now actually touching the top of the yew hedge. The effect of a white-masked watcher peering over a wall was ridiculously convincing. The rest of the place was therefore in dense shadow.

  "How strange." she said quietly but aloud. 'We fear the calm and the rest of the night and think the day, in which our passions and resentments are unleased at each other, the safe and normal time, cheerful and fresh."

  She turned back from looking at the almost level light of the moon. The cold beam passed over her shoulder into the salon. The room had now no other light in it. Her candle had gone out. She could see the tiny point of red which showed the still smouldering wick and could smell the rank incense of its smoke. For a moment a spasm of panic, as keen as that she had felt there in the garden, took her.

  Then she understood. Something was attacking, but it had no real certainty of success. It had no purchase on her. If she refused to admit the fear, if she demanded why, on what grounds rational or moral, she should be frightened, then it would have to show itself or retire. She stood still with her back to the window. The tiny glow of the candle wick, the other side of the room, died down. The rank smell of smoulder died also. She walked over, lit the candle again—it hesitated a moment before kindling—then as the flame established itself, she opened the door and went up to her bedroom. The sense of being no longer mentally in the dark grew in her as she rose up the dark wide steps, "wide enough"—she repeated to herself the old saying—"to bring a coffin down."

  She was now facing something that, no doubt, had power to inflict defeat and dissolution, if you were weak, if you were infected and had no right resistance. But only able to scare you, only able to threaten and howl if you stood your ground.

  Certainly she was no longer attacked from within by further misgivings and the distressing feeling that she was at a loss. That did not mean, however, that she was unaware that she was confronted by something very dark or that she had no fears. Indeed her grounds for these rapidly increased. Her brother's behaviour became steadily more strange. Now that he had been able to show, or had been forced to uncover, his real state of mind, a great part of his long-acquired, carefully built up ashlar of impassivity was flaking away.

  It was hardly a week after the walk in the garden. He had not referred to that scene. But she noticed that he had not gone into the garden again though she had most days walked in it, hoping thereby to encourage him to come out. The new confidence was naturally a complaint. Again it was about the servants. Family prayers were just completed and the domestic staff, led out by Cook, had just trooped from the room. But he remained standing, looking after them. Then he turned to her and evidently was going to speak, but, after a couple of hesitations, sat down. She noticed that he ate little. Indeed it was not till the afternoon that he managed to say what was on his mind. They were just going into the parlor for tea as they had come in from Evensong, when, as his hand was on the door, he turned and asked,

  "Now, don't you notice anything?"

  Then, as she did not at once reply he continued, "I am sorry to seem excessively fastidious and I wish to say that it is not a complaint. Perhaps if you notice nothing. . . . But then."—he smiled wryly—"Clement of Alexandria does warn the women on this point, that their olfactory sense is not as keen as man's. . . ." He paused.

  'What is it?" she encouraged him.

  "I can't help it," he brought up his trouble, "I can't help it. It makes me feel quite ill. It's one of the servants, I know. That dreadfully coarse vulgar scent. They really must be told not to use it. I suppose it is some cheap hair oil."

  She breathed in quietly and deeply. She could smell the cedar-wood oil with which the mahogany door by which they stood was polished, the faint scent of the potpourri in the big bowl in the bay window at the other end of the passage, and farthest away the toast which must now have readied the kitchen table ready to advance and be offered with their tea.

  She replied quietly, "I am sure that none of the maids use hair-oil." Then seeing his distress increase she added, "I must ask them if they are using any of those rather strong-scented furniture polishes."

  She saw the relief on his face as he said, "Yes, yes, that quite possibly might be it. I confess I had not thought of such a, a natural explanation. And you will see that we go back to whatever the unscented variety may have been that was in use previously?"

  She assured him that she would,

  He did not raise this matter of protest again, but his complaints were now frequent. He went back to his concern with dusting and would ask whether she was really keeping the maids up to their old standard in this new and of course somewhat larger and so more exacting house. Then one day he actually asked her to come into his study.

  'You know," he remarked over his shoulder as they went rather hurriedly along the passage, Tin not complaining, I certainly do not want my study turned upside down. But if they do tidy my desk"—now they had entered the room and he took her up to the big desk table where he worked—"then they should not actually leave my writing pad in that state. To quote Scripture, 'the last state is worse than the first.' "

  She scanned the site at which he was pointing, going closer both to assure him and to reassure herself. A folio sheet of blotting paper, perfectly fresh, and, on that, some quarto sheets of plain paper also innocent of any blot, mark or stroke of pen or pencil.

  "I don't quite understand?" she asked him turning round.

  'You don't see!"

  She did see the expression in his eyes and that was enough to show that at the least she must say something at once that was positive.

  'Til look into the matter myself." she remarked in a cheerful routine tone. And, suiting action to word, she picked up the paper, rolled it together and went toward the door. There she turned round. He was looking after her with an expression half of relief, half of puzzlement. Then as she added, 'Til be back in a moment with dean paper," he smiled at her.

  "Very kind of you, very kind." There was real gratitude in his voice.

  As she went down the passage, though it was broad day and the sun hot outside, she felt the darkest wave of black fear rise up in her that she had so far had to face. She knew, however, she could endure it. For, deeper than any fear at what might be approaching, she knew there was mounting so strong a pity in her that about the courage she would need she did not have to question.

  She did look over the sheets of paper in her room. "Of course there is nothing," she remarked quietly to herself as though checking over an item in household expenses. She went back with them, then, to her brother's room. He was waiting, standing by his desk as she had left him.

  'These sheets are clean ones," she remarked, and spread them on the table. He looked at them and then without a word, but granting a small nod, he sat down and, taking up his pen, drew a small sheaf of notes toward him.

  For three days he seemed to be working quietly. Still, she was not surprised when he asked her to come with him again, though her heart, she noticed, did sink a little further when instead of going along to his study they mounted the stair and reached his bedroom. It was clear, too, he was in a more nervous state than before. As they entered the room he no longer led but actually gave her a gentle push forward.

  "Look at the pillow!" he commanded. "You see, I was right. Whoever makes the bed is really so grossly careless, untidy, disgustingly untidy"—his voice was straining—"squalid, that it is unhygienic. You must speak. . . ."

  She had approached the bed and was looking at the pillow. It was Monday. New linen had been put on the bed perhaps an hour before. She saw it wa
s spotless.

  "You can't see the state the pillow is in! Your sight must be going. I saw it the moment I came back to this room alter breakfast this morning. It must be the maid. I saw her leaving with the old sheets." Talking rapidly he had come up behind her. She could hear his shallow quick breath. Suddenly he put his hand on her shoulder, gripping it. His grasp was hard but trembling. He was pinching with all his strength. But to the startling discomfort she made no response because of what her eyes now saw. The pillow-slip had something on it, a stain, as of oil, and in the stain she could surely see a number of tangled coarse black hairs. She drew her breath sharply. He left hold of her shoulder.

  "You see it!" he said. "You see it now!"

  But now she only saw the smooth plump white pillow in its new cover. She bent over it, moving close to the bed so that he could not reach her, for he held back, evidently afraid to come closer. She scented, as a cat will nose over the carpet. Then she turned round.

  "I think Cook has been a little careless. I always have the laundry as soon as it comes in from the wash dried in front of the kitchen range—a precautionary measure, but damp sheets are dangerous. Over-zealous she has singed this pillow-slip ever so slightly."

  She picked up the pillow. He gave way to her. As she left him at his study door—for he had followed her keeping to her heels— she added quietly, "Cook is white-haired and the other two maids are light."

  Whether her action checked in some way his psychosis—at least in that district where she could make response and give him replies and support—certainly the attack, when it was resumed, was from a quarter out of her province.

  He told her some ten days later that he was not going to Evensong. And, on her asking what would be detaining him, he replied, almost with a smile, that this was not a matter wherein she could assist.

  "The verger is too old." he complained. "Always did make mistakes in so many little details. But now he cannot get his staff to carry out even the most rudimentary cleaning. It puts my teeth on edge. The reading desk in my stall is filthy; dust, cobwebbing, wisps of hair. The fluff is always getting on my sleeves. I'm no maker of troubles, though, I don't want the poor old creature turned out. I have decided what to do. I'll wait. When others complain, as soon they must, well then it won't seem as though the new broom were tyrannously officious and determined to make the old mop feel ashamed and only fit for the bonfire."

  He actually chuckled or rather gave a kind of titter—a sound she had never heard him make before—and looked at her side-longly.

  The last phase of the attack was entered before he made any reference to it. The information came, in fact, from one of the maids.

  "I'm sorry, Ma'am, if Fm saying what is not in my place to say, but please, the Master is not using his bed now. It seems that he sleeps, if sleep he does, in the big wing-chair drawn up near the fire-place in the bedroom."

  So far no sign had better shown how far his old self-reliance had broken down than when, the evening after she had been given the above information, she suddenly said to him as they sat in her room, "Wouldn't you prefer to lie on the couch here? And then I could keep a small fire going all night."

  Slowly, he replied, "Can you sleep in die day?"

  She had to. None was to be gained at night under this arrangement. That did not mean that he did not. Indeed she it was who used to rouse him. He would begin to doze almost as soon as she had wrapped some covers round him, for though the evenings were still warm, once the sun set his skin was cold, and on the occasions on which she touched his hand she felt it was clammy. Soon, however, rugs and some cushions were all the covers that

  he xvould permit. Sheets and pillow-cases she learned were repugnant to him, stirring some deep terror—a terror he could fight so long as he was fully conscious, but which showed itself as a panic that flung them from him as soon as he began to dream. Then as the sleep deepened his distress grew. She would go over and wake him. Once he was fully roused he could still quite quickly regain his composure.

  It was clear, however, that this could not go on. In spite of all she could do, he was losing ground. The shadow life was advancing to engulf his day-time consciousness, as at sunset the livid mist of oncoming night mounts up from the east to take over the empty sky. And her own strength would not stand it. Alone with him in the small hours as he struggled with his phantoms, it was now taking all her strength to keep clear her own conviction: that the atmosphere in the still room was subjective not objective: that it was only sympathy, yes and a relic of her old admiration for him, that made her feel that a positive presence had invaded the place. Yet to whom could she go? To the Doctor, and have him wish to commit her brother to an asylum! The thought of the Bishop and his advice was if anything less helpful, for his recommendation would be even less practical, rest. Rest? "Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?"

  The dawn, with the cold alien look it has for all those who have passed through a night of wakeful misery, showed the vast fretted mass of the Cathedral emerging from the low lying mist. The mouldered Gothic design looked like some splintered reef left by a retreating tide. "Once it was a fortress of faith," she whispered to herself as she glanced through the curtains. "The poor Bishop." she mused, "always haunted, always dogged by senility or premature breakdown, like one who struggles to keep a lamp trimmed but the wicks are either too old or the oil has water in it."

  She pulled herself together, went over silently and stood looking down at her brother, who, with the returning light, was gain-

  ing the few minutes of sleep without nightmare that he could snatch at such an hour* After all, he looked so cairn now, so much master of his situation and his mind, that surely Nature itself would work a cure. Even should she question the Doctor, what could she ask. As yet she had no real clue, no adequate set of symptoms that she could describe and he deduce from.

  A few nights after she had begun to wish that even this knowledge might be granted her, it was given. He had been awake while she was beside him, and she had only turned to attend to the fire when she heard him breathing heavily and muttering to himself. She paused, listening. He was saying over one phrase, a name surely, yes, "Ibn Barnuna, Ibn Barnuna." She knew enough of his books to recall that name printed in gold letters on the back of one, perhaps more than one, of his big handsomely bound quartos—those massive volumes, more like furniture than books. She remembered calling forth his humourous contempt when once remarking that they made the handsomest wall-paper that any man's study could have.

  The voice had grown urgent. She went back to the couch and touched him on the shoulder. He woke but his eyes did not turn to hers. They looked across the room. She followed them, her hand still on his arm. For a moment she heard nothing but the quiet lapping of the flame in the grate, lapping and licking the new small log she had put on. Then the sound seemed no longer to be coming from the grate but from a dark corner of the room. Her brother put his hand over hers. Before he said "You see!" she had caught sight of a dark body, a darker shadow in the corner's dusk. It looked like a black animal lying on its side. Every now and then the wavering light of the fire—for she had turned the gas to a pin-point—made it seem that the creature twisted round and licked its flank. Her brother started up, pulling himself out of her touch. She saw that the corner had only shadow in it The sound, it was clear, came from die flames.

  When the sunrise came—for the days were yet long—she left him for a moment. He was awake but did not mind being left, it seemed, if it was light. She did not, however, go to her bedroom. Instead she entered his study. Yes, there stood the volumes as she recalled them. She could read from the door the fine gilt lettering on their backs. His book treasures, his bound "letters-patent" of the nobility of learning, of the high sanity of scholarship, stood ranged in the fine mahogany bookcases he had had made specially for them. " 'Embalmed minds' as Milton calls them," he had remarked (it was a comfort now to recall an intellectual assurance that then sounded arrogant), "have surely as much r
ight to their carved stalls as our present Minster minds, most of whom have waited too long for their embalming."

  She went across and took out one marked The Travels of Ibn Barnuna. Her long years as forewoman of a staff of cleaners made her, in spite of the few weeks they had been in this their new residence, glance automatically at the gap and into the fissure left by the heavy volume she had lifted away. With her free hand she then reached into the gap. She had noticed something that must have been left there by mistake. Her fingers brought out a key. She looked at it for a moment with doubt; then recognized, with her orderly memory, where it belonged. She slipped it into the lock of the drawer just below the shelf on which the big volumes stood. Yes, that was it, it fitted; it was the key, for it turned freely in the lock and the drawer opened. There was nothing in the drawer; but a strange smell seemed to float out—strange because incongruous to rise here—a smell of stale linen, familiar enough, but not in such a place. And what could be exhaling it? And with it, surely, now she could detect a cheap scent—that, too, was a very unlikely odour. And further, this too had, it seemed, no source. Of course it was a little thing, but, though small, it seemed to her completely incomprehensible. She stood for a moment, therefore, looking into the empty drawer and recognizing how offensive the smell, though weak, appeared to her. Then she shut the drawer, putting the key in her pocket.

  She turned her attention to the big volume cradled on her left forearm. With her fingers she began to turn the pages until, with what seemed a movement of its own, the volume spread itself open. It had been strained at this page—it was clear that the binding had been partly broken. She read for a while in the passage that had been presented to her eyes. Then she closed the book, put it in its place and left the room.