The Black Fox

by H. F. Heard

  The cat on her lap began to groom itself contentedly. Its self-assured ignorance soothed her. She settled down to enjoy her limited content. “Sufficient unto the day”? Might one then not add, sufficient unto the place, this quiet place by the fire? A knock at the door did then disturb her growing calm. The interruption was too apt.

  “Mrs. Simpkins, Ma’am, and are you At Home?” The maid looked quite neutral.

  It would have been quite safe to say the magic word “Out” that would banish not only the maid but the caller. And “Out” when you were really ensconced by your own warm fire in precious solitude did not involve a fib. It was the acknowledged courtesy way of saying without hurting feelings, “Need we meet today?” She had indeed almost said No when the thought of her brother checked her. His aloofness—it had not made him less immune—rather more. The further he retired the more he was vexed by possible intrusions. If she herself wanted to have calm simplicity why not produce it herself. You either raised the crop yourself or went without. Besides, Mrs. Simpkins might be worried and this was not the time to be distant with her.

  “Please ask her to come in, and bring another cup.”

  She had been right. Archdeacon Simpkins, as the Close was fond of commenting, owed everything to his energy. The “recessive” phrase to this “dominant” was, of course, that he owed nothing to “breeding.” And to breeding, the Close held, with considerable truth, that the rest of the Cathedral dignitaries owed considerably more than to brains. Further, Archdeacon Simpkins, when he had chosen a helpmeet, himself chose, or was chosen not by breeding but by energy. The dress of the day suited Mrs. Simpkins. She bustled. But today the vigour had largely gone out of her fuss. Nevertheless she kept up, for the initial courtesy exchanges, the required comments on general events. Had Miss Throcton seen the opera troupe that had been performing at the city’s small theatre? Yes, she herself had gone to Figaro. The music and acting carried you along, didn’t it? One does not need to know actually what the words mean, does one? “Indeed I sometimes think foreign languages were invented for opera. Such tongues, so unlike our English, were obviously just made for singing when what you say doesn’t really matter. It’s all sentiment and no real sense, isn’t it?”

  Miss Throcton smiled at the philological theory. She could now surely inquire.

  “I hope the Archdeacon is feeling better?”

  “Oh, well that would be a little sudden wouldn’t it? The Doctor thinks it may have been coming on for some time, you know?”

  “Sometimes, however, when such things come out, the worst is really over—in jaundice, for example?”

  “Yes, yes, you’re right and jaundice is a horrible upset, isn’t it?” Mrs. Simpkins paused. “Jaundice, the old wives used to say, is caused by jealousy.…” She hesitated again. “But Wilkins—I mean Mr. Simpkins—was never a jealous character.…”

  Miss Throcton could not check her mind’s noting, “Surely no grounds?” Then her thought glanced again, “Can she be suggesting that someone else’s jealousy has ‘wished’ on her husband his attack?” She felt inclined to titter and so turned the topic slightly by remarking aloud how fortunate they all were in having a Doctor so up to date and free of any ancient medical dogmas. “Tradition is needed in the Church but not in the hospital.” But the attempt to shepherd the conversation onto the comparatively safe ground of physiology failed. The slight coolness that she had felt, she was now sure was growing.

  “I am glad that you feel that in these times we should be very firm about our Faith.” Laetitia Throcton felt that the “you” was meant to except “him who is not in this room but in this house.” She was annoyed with herself to find that she was getting annoyed and then smiled in a nettled way to find her mind up to those complex refractions and counter-reflections that so disturbed her in her brother.

  Her guest obviously could not follow these ramifications. But she sensed well enough that she was vexing her hostess and thus was added another in that long series of inferior feelings toward this lady who was very clearly one. Ever uncertain of her own status and now tired and filled with deep anxiety, she could only then rise stiffly.

  The other rose quickly enough to convey a certain relief. Even the real cordiality with which she tried to let things part on a note of amiability, did not carry over. Her “You will let me know how things go, won’t you?” was met with “The Archdeacon really doesn’t like any indisposition he has talked about. He is so singularly free of such weaknesses—in a spot where ill health seems all too common.”

  The maid had answered the bell to show Mrs. Simpkins out. They shook hands, but Mrs. Simpkins as she smiled and bobbed to the other remarked to herself with no wish to censor her reverie, “She thinks herself so well bred that we have to come to report to her instead of her calling to enquire.”

  On the floor above Canon Throcton had been at work arranging some references for his promised essay on Arabian Religious Travellers. He had often found that so doing would set his pen running. Now it might also set his mind afloat from this dank Close—well had the Bishop christened it a sink—out over the Hindu Kush, the Altai, the Kuenlun and others of those fabulous frontier ranges that these indefatigable footmen had stepped up and over and beyond. He had climbed among the Alps fairly often as a younger man and had found that the poet who was contented with his Sabine Farm was mistaken in one of his most quoted psychological remarks. Changing your sky—at least if you did it in the right way—vertically—you can quite often change your self, or at least your mood. “Of course, it’s all a matter of oxygen,” he remarked in his usual soliloquy whisper. “In this place there isn’t real air but something that wants to change into water but hasn’t either the weight or the clarity to do so.”

  He picked up another section of index cards. “For people whose one Faith was One God and one far more inaccessible than the summit of Everest, these thirteenth century tourists, one must own, did quite a lot of shrine-grubbing. I suppose they had to believe that holiness was an atmosphere rather than an attitude. Our muscular Christianity could beat them there, if we weren’t so damned narrow.” The word of final sentence slipped out, driven by some expletive force. And, as that worn epithet still had at that date and on such lips some tang of its former sulfuric awfulness, for a moment he checked. “Well anyhow,” he appended as an apology to any unseen listener, “there’s no ‘Upper atmosphere’ in this worn socket of religion—only the mustiness of a book given over to silver-fish, or a tree eaten out with dry-rot. Even this house, in spite of Laetitia’s constantly directed massage of polishing, has mould in its bones.”

  He shrugged his shoulders, as if with his own shoulder-blades to chafe his spine: then sniffed the air. Was the fire smoking? No: and the smell wasn’t ordinary smoke but smoke more like the cheap incense of a Roman Catholic chapel—smoke, fume, with an undertow of some ammoniacal flavour. How typical was incense of that corrupt religion—the blend of mental fog, cheap emotionalism and the rank sudor of the unwashed ignorant masses.

  He got up and raised the window. Yes, it had turned mild. The room was too hot and the air had become stagnant. Perhaps the fire had smoked a little; Mary, when she laid it in the morning, to save herself trouble may have put a little paraffin on it, though she had been told repeatedly not to do so—it was dangerous, might set the house on fire. Perhaps part of her forbidden oblation was only now vaporizing. He stood at the open window using his lungs more than his eyes.

  However, as he gazed idly on the narrow empty road that separated the line of the Canon’s residences from the broad lawn that spread right across the West Front of the Cathedral, his eye was caught by one small moving object. A large cat—too low-slung for a dog surely—was slinking along near the curb—“seeking whom he may devour.” He could just pick out the prowler as it appeared a faint black blur wherever the light of some window made a pale band across the little road.

  His lungs full of air, at least cold if not clear, he felt cooler and pulling down the
sash, went back to his seat. “Seeking whom he may devour?” What was the quotation? Who devoured? Oh, the Devil, of course. Well an Everestine God no doubt existed. But the Devil? Yes, he certainly was a projection of the very unhygienic horror, hate and holiness of that queer mixture the medieval mind—and the latter fought the former with septic holy water and fusty incense. Well, scholarship is our weapon. If we can keep the Tractarians at bay—and they fear history as the Devil is supposed to hate holy water—in another twenty years just the weight of evidence will have carried us to a lighter, cleaner religion.

  It was his turn next morning, when coming in from a short walk in the midget city, to run into the Doctor. Dr. Wilkes, like most small-town physicians, was not unwilling to be seen at talk with one of the persons of importance.

  “Our new Archdeacon,” the Doctor began at once, “well, we’ve seen that kind of attack before. D’you know, Mr. Canon, that quite often when a man comes into new office—even when admirably suited for it …”—and he glanced for a moment to see by this sounding whether he had sufficient depth of water to sail nearer the rocks—“even when particularly suited”—and he saw it was safe to smile, at least with one’s eyes, before passing on—“often, far more often than a layman, if I may use such a term, would suspect, shows what I might call rightful diffidence, especially.…”

  There was, no doubt, a question in his voice, a request whether he might go still a little further. It was clear that the face he was watching refused the concession, and the diagnostician wisely retreated to the obvious, “… especially when the recipient of new responsibilities may have been a little tired before entering upon them.”

  Dr. Wilkes might not know very much more about that mysterious bag, the body, than was known by what he called “his friends of the Cloth,” but his profession had taught him more than the clergy seemed to wish to know about the human character that hovers and forms over the humours of that uneasy still. Of economic necessity his chief study (all the more sedulous because largely unconscious) was to acquire that nice judgment which ruled when blunt truth could be borne; or there was prescribed the prevarication that brought temporary relief to the patient and the fee to the physician. Dr. Wilkes was an honest man. He was trusted, and he was not mistrustful of others, still less suspicious. But his profession had taught a heart that liked men and a mind that cared for their bodies. How sadly little they could stand the truth about themselves and therefore how mercifully slight were the certainties of medical knowledge. To state the case as it seems to you, the doctor, who knows that death is always at the door and today may have decided to cross the threshold, is not really to state it to the patient. You have come from a death-bed and are going to another. You have the death-certificate book in your bag with a blank form ready, sooner or later for every one of your patients. But the immediate patient lying before you in his bed, he sees you as Health Incarnate come to put him on his legs. And it is just as likely as not that he will get a reprieve this time. Further, if you can encourage him enough, it is more likely to come than not. After all it is always the vis medicatrix naturae (not medici) that won the battle and postponed the ultimate defeat. But the medicus had to know how to put into the right, believable words the particular patient’s will-to-believe-he-would-be-well. The hearty, rousing challenge given, say, to an ailing squire: the careful summing-up of the points-in-favour, advisable with a sick fellow-physician—why, there were as many styles of encouragement as there were people who could sicken. The first step, and often the conclusive one, was to recognize the type you were facing and to take care to try and talk the language (yes, indeed, and employ the style and accent) that it understood and approved.

  Of course you liked to be taken for a gentleman; but it was not merely the snobbery of the times that made Dr. Wilkes try to frame his sentences like Canon Throcton’s. He would, he knew, help the Close’s health more if he spoke their tongue (and so made them concede he might be worth their respect) than if he simply looked at theirs, shook his head and silently scrawled a prescription. But it was a nice art and a slow, exacting study this winning of confidence. He often remarked to his wife that Sugar of Sympathy incautiously administered to one who was suffering from what the Psalmist calls a “proud stomach,” would often cause so violent an acid reaction that your soothing sweet would be thrown up in your face as though you had offered a bitter insult.

  “Pride lives in constant fear of Patronage.” He remembered the saying as now he watched. True enough, the Canon did not wish to be sympathized with. Very well, another tack must be taken. Yes, that would do, he must be informed. Even a Pope will listen with attention to a spy.

  “Yes, yes, as I was saying, quite a normal reaction. And, to a medical man, interesting in one way, and clear sailing in another. Just a cutaneous reaction.”

  “You mean that you will have him on his feet and out on his rather larger rounds, quite soon?”

  “Oh, Mr. Canon, please don’t quote me as a prophet. That, again, is your province.”

  “Humph: the Prophets and the priests never got on well, as far as I know. And, in the end, we seem to have put them out of business—to put you in!”

  “Oh no! Non digni sumus. Besides, all science shuns forecasting.”

  “But you can foretell somewhat—after all you have to gauge probabilities, don’t you?”

  “Well, if I were a betting man, I’d take a modest wager that if the patient will follow the regime I have proposed he’ll be out and about in a week, ten days or a fortnight. You see I can’t be definite, but such are, I’d put it, reasonable hopes. Things run their courses, you know, and illness and health have their cycles.”

  They parted with that. The Canon was therefore a little surprised and almost as much displeased when that very afternoon as he was crossing the Close he should be buttonholed again by Dr. Wilkes. A distant bow was quite sufficient. Because they had had a fairly long exchange on what was almost a matter of business there was no need for a man hardly a gentleman to try and enlarge the acquaintance.

  “I feel I owe you an apology.” The well-chosen words smoothed a little his not really very ruffled mood, especially when to them was added,

  “I really wanted a word with you because, I own, this morning, in good faith, I made a mistake. You asked me to forecast; and, within the limits to which you permitted me to confine my views, I did feel fairly sure. But it shows how dark the future is even when one tries to be informed.”

  “Yes, yes!”

  “In fact the Archdeacon’s state puzzles me. And I’m speaking in confidence because; as the Bishop is up in London and the Dean is so largely bedridden, you are the person in control.”

  The appeal had gained attention. The “I trust there is nothing grave to report?” certainly showed interest (the Doctor was glad, with his quick eye and really kind if cautious heart, to notice) and something like real concern. “That’s fine,” he said to himself. “Yes, I’ll trust him, for he might well have shown some slight satisfaction. He must have been quite sore about his passing over.”

  Aloud he continued, “You know how puzzling to us—as I said this morning—and interesting, are all mind-body relations. The queer connection between, for instance, the nerve ends just under the skin and the moods and mental states of the man as a whole. Many, how many we really can’t know, are just disturbances caused by just nervousness, you recall my saying that?”

  “Yes, yes.” The two further assents showed rising impatience. Though the Doctor was nervous himself, for some reason, he now tried to hurry on.

  “And others are infections—some again quite slight; one or two, on the other hand, quite grave—for instance erysipelas—quite. Well, Mr. Canon, I’m mentioning all this rather confidential and professional matter to you, because it seems to me just possible that the Archdeacon may have picked up some infection.”

  “How?” The question had an edge of sharpness on it.

  “Oh, in a dozen different ways—using someone els
e’s toilet articles, leaning on a cushion in a railway carriage compartment. Once there is a strong strain of infection, well anyone might pick up such a thing anywhere. For example, one of the choir might, by touching the same towel or something of that sort, pass on the germ. It would probably fail to make a lesion on the hand. But who can avoid for long touching their head with their hand. An infection of that sort, of very little virulence in its ‘host’ (if I may use our technical term) invading a system in a state of some strain—well, we don’t know anything about resistance, really—once such a toxin gets hold it may suddenly flare up and the condition become, well, baffling.”

  He felt he was talking too much, but evidently his listener was not impatient yet. He hurried on hastily—apologetically. “You see I thought I ought to ask—and you are the proper person—that all towels and such things be carefully washed. Of course, if there is no further trouble in a week or so, we shall know that, whatever the danger was, it has at least spared everyone else.”

  He was getting ready to take his leave on the bright note, the well-known exit line of successful doctors, so much more important even than the bright entry. But the Canon actually held him with, “I shall certainly give orders that what you have suggested shall be done—a very right request and I share your hope that we shall all escape the contagion. But I would like you, as we are acting in this matter now in something of a joint capacity, to tell me something of the actual condition of the Archdeacon?”

  “I’m hopeful, yes, I’m hopeful … for the face is still clear—it is certainly not the usual erysipeloid syndrome. But, but the top of the head is severely attacked. Of course.…” Now that he was speaking freely he had begun really to speak to himself; the censored confidence is of all human communications the hardest to achieve for we are either secretive or quite unguarded. “Of course, you will say, why not suspect herpes? But there again, has one ever known a herpetic case which brought about such swift and complete alopecia?”