The Black Fox

by H. F. Heard

  He did not even smile frostily at the new Archdeacon’s look—half childish disappointment at the aborted boast, half nervous surprise. Indeed Simpkins was sufficiently disconcerted to turn nervously to the small mirror-faced cabinet and picking out the brush from behind it, to give a touch or two to his coiffeur. Perhaps the flourished surplice sleeve and the brush disturbed some dust—there was certainly enough about. Suddenly he gasped, fumbled in his robes, just in time dragged out a large pocket-handkerchief and into its crumpled mass discharged a sneeze that shook even his compacted curls. A second and a third explosion followed, leaving the sneezer gasping but with the offending particle of dust evidently discharged. He fumbled to replace under his surplice the handkerchief which had had to face and contain the three charges.

  Feeling a not displeasing disgust Throcton turned away to don surplice, hood and scarf. Once more his interest had started outrunning the present and glancing the future, as sight-seers run ahead of a procession so as to see it pass some particular street corner. And again he was able to produce for his private pleasure five-second-ahead prophecies. He whispered under his breath, in front of the Bishop’s confirmatory boom,

  “Come along Archdeacon. The Dean, you know, can’t be here. Gout again—it sounds like Dickens. But it’s the real thing and hurts, well like what Catholics believe about purgatory. I must see that everyone knows his position. Quite a time since an installment. Never neglect detail: see to it yourself. Canon, follow us as soon as you are robed. The two juniors are already with the choir. Special Lesson.…”

  The Chief Shepherd, pushing his new sheep-dog before him, went through the door dividing the shepherds’ retiring room from that of their singing sheep. As the linen and lawn-enlarged figures left the inner room vacant and silent, for a moment the one left to himself found his mind blank. The next sentence, which he had been reading one line ahead, that dialogue soundtrack was vacant. Then his attention was caught by the hairbrush that had been left lying by the drinking glasses. A shudder of disgust, as strong as a rigor, shook him. He went over and lifted the object. The disgust rose to nausea, as almost under an external compulsion he touched the tangle of black hairs that now matted the bristles making a loose web in their stiff woof. It was with the relief that a sleeper feels a nightmare being broken by a noise in the house, that he heard the Bishop’s boom, “Canon Throcton, Canon Throcton.” Putting the brush into its place behind the mirror he hurried out, was quickly marshalled and the processional rite began.

  Again he found that he could not bring himself to attend to the words, but played instead the game of petty prevision—“Now the organist will cough: now the litany clerk’s wife will sneeze.” But this time it was not the First Lesson but the Second Lesson which brought him suddenly back to present-minded attention. The words that had roused him seemed to be the middle of a sentence and insignificant, if not quite senseless, “Paul having shorn his head, for he had a vow.” Again he looked up blindly aware of attention. Again he found that he had been a moment too late. The now fully installed Archdeacon was examining with an interest more archaeological than religious—considering the time—the carving of his stall’s canopy.

  The rest of the service Canon Throcton’s mind spent wondering what was going to happen when it was over. When he tried to stretch his previsionary insight that far he could observe that it refused to work. Then his mind turned to consider his emotional state. He had heard that men severely disappointed or overstrained could get heart attacks or chronic indigestion. But it was really ridiculous for a sound scholar left to exercise his gift, to let a petty piece of caddishness not merely sour his temper but actually disturb, yes addle his mind! Like all intellectuals this fine linguist could hardly bring himself to believe that his emotions might not obey rational instruction. None the less it was his automatic reflexes that took his body safely and in seemly movement back again into the vestry. It was almost the same level of consciousness that, with the proper tone and the right excuse—the one which he had not called up and the other that he could not recall—extricated him from the Bishop’s quite kindly invitation that they should all warm themselves before the big fire in the Palace hall with a cup of tea.

  Again the same levels evidently ordered that he should disrobe so slowly that by the time he was again in his outdoor clothes he found he was alone. He could just hear the sub-verger pacing about in the transept waiting to lock up when he should come out. Then his surface consciousness came back with the same unpleasant vividness that it had had, when, half an hour before, he had last been alone in this narrow dingy dim room. He felt at the same time the rising revulsion and compulsion—the drive that sent him across to the dirty little cabinet and the closing of his throat that was almost a retch. The brush was now in his hands. He raised it till he could see the flakes and clotted specks of dandruff and smell the blend of the cheap-scented Macassar oil and stale perspiration. Then he seized the comb—itself a small laocoön with the coils of hair that had wound round its prongs—and curried strongly the brush’s bristles. The comb became nearly choked. He threw the brush back onto its shelf and with a piece of paper drew off most of the tangled hair that he had reaped. Dropping this on the table he peered again into the cupboard. In a corner he discovered a small bottle of the hair oil. The dust had made a kind of mud round where drops had spilt down the neck. He put the bottle on the table by the piece of paper and investigated again. This time, in the very corner of the shelf (it must have been hidden behind the bottle) he found a small screw of soiled tissue paper. Untwisting this, he saw with a fresh disgust a number of flakes like minute clippings of parchment. For a moment it seemed as though he would fling the whole of this routage into the waste-paper basket. Indeed he looked under the baize-covered table to find it but doing so his attention was distracted. He bent down further. His face when he rose was flushed, though the exertion had been slight. What he had retrieved was the pocket-handkerchief that had had to endure such a storm of the nasal elements, and then, when it should have been stored in its subsurplice pouch, had fallen and evidently been kicked under the table. He held it between his thumb and finger. Disgust was clearly very strong but some positive passion was stronger. He no longer tried to find the waste-paper basket. For a moment he hesitated, then was caught by a choking cough and with his disengaged hand put his own handkerchief to his mouth. He retched for a moment and his face went livid. Then, as though it were as natural a semiconscious gesture as was putting his own handkerchief back into its pocket, he thrust this other handkerchief, the small wrap of combings, the little almost dried up oil bottle and the paper twist of nail-parings, into one of the big side pockets of his overcoat.

  The last wheeze of his cough modulated into coherent whispering, “The Dean is now all but a dotard. The Cathedral’s becoming a rubbish-heap. And now we’ll be ruled by an Archdeacon ignorant or contemptuous of the very rudiments of hygiene. If I leave this garbage in the waste-paper basket no doubt he would cite me before the Chapter for insubordination … trespass on his rights and the dignity of his office.”

  4

  Back in his almost stately residence, kept throughout as though it were a museum-piece, his disgust abated. As he hung up his overcoat in the hall he took from the pocket, the barber-and-laundry debris without a return of the odd, fascinated revulsion, and going up to his study threw the clotted bottle, the two twists of stained paper and the handkerchief into his big waste-paper basket. He left the room. On returning he lifted his hands to his face. The inspection was evidently satisfying. The bell rang for tea and his sister as she handed it to him in her sitting room where he generally took it, noticed that he seemed less tense than for some considerable time. He even began to speak to her about his current work.

  “I think during the rest of the winter I might settle down to a tractate on the Arabian Globe-trotter. Our parvenue Protestantism assumes that till the Industrial Revolution made Anglican canons mobile, ecclesiastical scholars—save for such char
ming eccentrics as the eighteenth century Bishop of Bristol—had never travelled just for geographical curiosity and not under the impetus of theological invasion.”

  Perhaps, as in post-hypnotic patients, the remark was a rationalization to explain or excuse to the patient his irrational subconscious urge, perhaps the source of the drive lay elsewhere. In any case when Canon Throcton regained his study he certainly took the first step toward fulfilling his word. He went over to the book-case, shelf and volume where he had found relief when, that August night, his peace of mind had been so disturbed by what the unnatural stillness had allowed him to overhear. Indeed Canon Throcton was so careful to resume his reading that he first looked up the page reference he had made that inauspicious night and then sure that he had found the place settled down. That was the precise word. Like most accurate scholars he was never a rapid reader. Even so it was noteworthy that a quarter of an hour had been tolled off by his desk clock, and loudly confirmed by the Westminster Chime in the South-west Tower of the Cathedral, and yet he had not turned the page. It was clear that he was repeatedly reading the same passage as though he would learn it by heart.

  At last he began to smile, the smile broke into a laugh and the laugh set him talking again to himself,

  “Well I could at least do something to buttress my decayed orthodoxy by rebutting the Arabian! And to do so I must not be content with words but with acts. I must prove him wrong by experiment. And to experiment I have at hand the required materia medica!”

  He was silent for a moment after that. The only sound in the room, beyond the quiet lapping of the fire and the discrete ticking of the clock, was the small rasp as tentatively the flattened fingers of his left hand stroked his chin rough with its evening stubble. Then the laugh broke out again; but this time more peremptorily, defiantly almost.

  “Well, heavens above, if really I am so absurd as to think such a farcical pretence of an experiment could have any result but a negative one, surely that shows that I ought to perform it—just to establish beyond any possibility of doubt that it is the grotesque nonsense that I know it to be. If you wake up in the night because you’ve dreamt too vividly that a burglar is under the bed and your one wish is to get to sleep—well a sensible man doesn’t waste time trying to argue his sleepy mind into sense—and so driving away sleep or simply bringing on again the nightmare. He settles his silliness in the quickest, most sensible way by looking under the bed and making the fool in him see that there isn’t any concealed robber waiting for him to doze off again!”

  The words evidently convinced him he should take some similar action. For he rose quickly and swung round, as though not quite certain that he was alone. As he stood he held the big volume against his chest, keeping his place with a finger thrust between the pages. For a moment he looked like one of those melodramatic Protestant illustrations of The Reformer Surprised and called “The Forbidden Bible.” Then, putting the book on a small lectern by his chair, he bent down by his big desk and lifting the waste-paper basket, stood it on the seat from which he had just risen. His movements now were quick and methodical and his words confirmed that his mind was as clear.

  “It’s no use fooling with foolishness. The shortest way with a sham is to take a superstition at its own pretence. So you expose it, as you best expose a liar, not by laughing at him but by asking him quietly, seriously to perform what he boasts. If I am to do this I must do it properly.”

  It was his usual whisper but delivered succinctly as some one speaks who, with a clear insight as to how a muddle may be cleared up, rearranges the data in right order. And, as though suiting the action to the word, at each sentence’s close, he brought out and laid in line, on the small fire-side table that flanked his chair’s other arm, the waste-paper basket’s upper layer. There was no longer a trace of his former revulsion. He was tidying up a small nuisance—such as a spilt ink bottle or an overset pin tray. He turned to some inbuilt drawers which formed the base of the bookcases that panelled the walls. On coming back he was carrying a candle and some matches, remarking as he returned, “If I am really sane then I am only accountable for five foolishly wasted minutes. If, on the other hand, I am under more strain than I recognize, I am sure I do not know a better way of relaxing. When young, and before our frocks became so long that we feared any gesture that might question our decorum, we used to ‘blow off steam’ with abuse. As we are too pompous to be let have that sensible relief—well, we must have it out here in private.”

  He went over to the fire and raked it. It glowed cheerily. But the bed of incandescent coals was too well set to blaze, as under provocation a well-nourished elderly man smiles an easy after-dinner smile, when a younger would flash with resentment.

  The Canon stopped his stoking for a moment to listen. Then he stood up, pulling, as he did so, at the long-tassled bell-cord that hung down by the mantel-piece. After that he went over to the door and waited. When he heard the maid’s footsteps stop in the passage outside, he spoke emphatically enough so that he did not have to open to convey his message,

  “Tell your mistress that I shall not be down to dinner.”

  His autocracy was such that not only were no questions asked, no alternatives—such as a tray in his room—were ever offered even by the vicereine. He could hear the accentless “Very well, Sir” and the retreating steps. As they died away he quietly locked the door. Then, returning to the fire-place, he scanned the rubbish lying on the small table. Released by the warmth of the newly-roused fire, the whiff of Macassar oil rose to his nostrils. A flare of rage leaped up in him.

  “That oily-faced hypocrite—that.…” A spasm contorted his face, changing in a moment to a wry smile. “If I get so exercised it shows that I need to exorcise myself! An auto-da-fé, an act of faith, as the Spaniards euphemistically called cremating the living, well I’ll perform it with my occasions of outrage. Now for what my Arabian anthropologist has to tell us.”

  He began to read aloud in a low, rapid voice from The Travels of Ibn Barnuna.

  When I was travelling on the inner borders of Cathay, I found much witchcraft, or, should I not say, the fear of it, lying like a fog over the countryside. Every village lived in terror of wizardry. All these distant parts being still at the very frontiers of the Faith, where, on the boundaries of the habitable world, and not far from the final ocean, the Power of Evil makes its last stand against the dawn of Allah’s Light, the spear of Islam is piercing but, as yet, its sword does not wholly rend the shroud of Iblis. I confess that when in the cultured world of the Prophet, where the clear light of the Koran shines, I had often doubted whether such things could be true. And even when among these depraved creatures, I still thought that all they said was but the foul imaginings—the horrid wish of their darkened hearts. Falling in, however, with a learned Sufi, who had lived for years, wandering in these deserts for the sake of the Faith and the honour of his Order, he assured me that the local magicians; called Bon, commanded powers of evil now by Allah’s Mercy unknown to us. They commonly and as a matter of professional traffic, practised the overthrow of their enemies, and indeed the destruction of those whom they accept payment to molest, even to death, through their skill in sorcery.

  “Of course that’s sheer nonsense.” The Canon paused to comment on his text. “Childish superstition as far as hurting any other person is concerned. But I see it could well be quite a sound, if rather a quaint therapeutic method, for destroying a grotesquely repulsive and compulsive idea that has rooted itself in one’s own mind. Like as not, our poor verbal-inspirationist Sufi and our charmingly credulous Ibn Barnuna mistook, when studying the superstitious and despised Chinese, an advanced psychology for an atavistic magic.”

  He continued to read aloud to himself,

  The general method whereby they compass their evil end is through a process of two parts. They first collect such personal fragments of their intended victim as they may secure. If they may not obtain his blood, then sputum or a seminal or menstruous cl
oth is much favoured. Should even these be lacking, they will make shift with skin, hair, nail-parings, or indeed any object that has been about the person of their prey. Then they wait until the moon is gibbous.…

  The reader smiled, remarking, “Well, I’m so ignorant of astronomy or astrology that I can’t answer at this moment as to where or in what phase Selene may be. Indeed am I quite sure that I could say off-hand what gibbous actually indicates—the waning moon, I rather think? Anyhow let’s get over our cathartic play. It certainly won’t depend for its efficacy on precise knowledge of the lunar calendar.”

  The first night that this is so, they take their spoil, dividing it carefully into two parts. For I should say that their theory being that the citadel of man must be assaulted warily, because God has strongly defended the seat of the soul, their blind ingenuity leads them to try—and I fear full often to obtain—a first purchase on the exterior parts of their victim. They therefore put in one division anything that may have to do, or has had to do, with the external area of the body. This is generally—for it is obviously most easy to secure—some hair. And they give another reason for this, which I will set down later, and which has reason, were we to allow—as I must—the method in their madness. As I have said, then, they place in one parcel every hair they have secured and any skin, from the scalp especially.