The Black Fox

by H. F. Heard

  Had he not, by then, been looking at the ground, as men do when they are turning over their thoughts, had he thought that the Canon could really help him in his diagnostic doubt, he certainly would not have been helped. On the contrary, he would have been considerably distracted. For his really quite considerable psychological knowledge would have found itself faced with quite another question in the face he would have seen.

  “Well, well.” He roused himself and raised his eyes looking across the lawn to the house of his patient. “We are now doing all we can and must wait, wait on the vis medicatrix naturae, always by far the greatest of our allies, the organism’s basic will to live.”

  He bowed and left. But the Canon himself did not move for a few moments. Then he said to himself in clearer tones each time, three times and slowly with summary earnestness, “Pure coincidence, absolutely pure coincidence.” Then he turned and began to walk toward his house. But he still found it necessary to say a fourth time, as he had reached the door and was putting the latch-key into the lock, “Really one of those absurd coincidences. It is the kind of contingency which makes the ignorant and credulous mind,—the uneducated that has never had a grounding in mathematics, still less in the calculus of probabilities—imagine that there is evidence for such fancies as thought transference. My poor old Sufis, it is true”—he was now in the hall taking off his great-coat—“thought such things could happen. But we must defend them so far that even they confined such action to great wizards and great saints. Besides, they had the transmitting or refracting medium in the thickly opalescent atmosphere of faith.”

  As he washed his hands—and with something more than his usual careful cleansing—he looked at himself in the mirror that hung over the basin. He scanned the features carefully and then smiled deliberately at the rather grim grey face that was looking out at him.

  “You really must polish up your sense of humour,” he remarked to the reflection. “This is one of those events on which all humour is based. Luck, or as we who have had the advantage of an education at Cambridge know to call it, contingency, working at its great loom of probabilities, spinning its great wheels of causality, brings opposite to each other two completely unrelated events: We are amused, not surprised, still less dismayed. Dermatitis appears in Case A shortly after, or really in point of fact quite a number of days after, a purely private and personal psychotherapy is worked by B to humour his own emotional sense of fun. Post hoc, propter hoc, the commonest diagnostic mistake of half-trained minds. How my medico consultant would laugh at the superstition of the Church, still lurking behind a front of scholarship. I should lose all status in his eyes.”

  Then he put the smile a whole wrinkle wider until it was almost a grin. “And you must confess,” as he turned from his leering reflection, “that as a joke it is really an uncommonly good one, in that perfect ill-taste that makes retailing forever impossible and private consumption all the more to be relished. Humour to be good can never be too extravagant and this gets its flavour because it is about an absolute impossibility, pure fantasy, pure farce.”

  The last words were said with an emphasis that made the slam of the door come as a fitting close.

  7

  The subject, however, followed him in to tea. He ought to have suspected that the news of the Archdeacon’s involuntary tonsure would already have circled the Close, at least on that inner circuit of the Cathedral ladies. But his sister’s rather quickly sympathetic comment and sigh, “Poor Archdeacon,” roused, like a cat’s-paw gust on a lake, a sudden resentment.

  “A good verbal inspirationist such as he ought to see some fulfillment of prophecy or a return of the plagues of Egypt because of our infidelity.” He added a chuckle as an alibi against charges of uncharitableness.

  “Oh don’t say that!” Instead of warning him that he had not succeeded in disguising some malice, her rejoinder only made his ill will break out on her.

  “Oh don’t be a fool, Laetitia! Can you really be taking my jest seriously! ‘Oh don’t say that,’” he parodied her tone. “You would think that this wasn’t nineteenth century England. How thin is the layer of culture. How few set minds compose the rock of reason covering the lava flow of superstition. And then women venture to say they should be given the vote!”

  His sister sighed again. Though this time it was more silently it was certainly not less sincerely. She was sorry for the Simpkinses. Her conscience upbraided her for not having understood that the Archdeacon’s wife had been gauche that day she called because she was already anxious. She, as hostess, should have put her guest at her ease—all the more if she felt herself to be her visitor’s social superior. But in any case her brother would not have been likely to maintain the intimacy they had been enjoying. After all, she reflected, the fair weather was too good to last, like their summer climate described with some wit by a French scholar who had visited them the year before—“Three lovely days and then a thunderstorm.” Well, she had had, during this spell of mental weather, rather more than that and she could be thankful. Her admiration of her brother was as deep as it was wisely silent and her sympathy was not less. She still suspected that his disappointment over the Archdeaconry had been all the more severe because suppressed and she was sure that both his past amiability and present outburst were successive symptoms, though there was something in the whole matter that puzzled her to the verge of constant uneasiness.

  He had left the room after his outburst, leaving tea and toast untouched. As he strode along to his study he muttered, “Just a small experiment that was really negative—though it would seem to the uneducated to be positive. The therapeutic value failed to emerge, through one of those one in a decillion chances. Well the thing was first to last really a joke. And there’s certainly not the slightest need for a sane man to draw false conclusions and see utterly unreal connections. Exceptions prove the rule and disprove and discredit the fool.”

  He had reached his room. The curtains were drawn, the fire well settled, the quiet green glass shade of his reading lamp set on his desk inviting him to come into port. He could berth himself securely between these two reassuring lights. Here he might enjoy undisturbed that pleasant play with words which the literary are allowed instead of the tedious limitations of “Patience” with which the unliterary lonely must pass their empty time. The scene was both tempting and soothing. True, he hesitated a moment by the big bookcase with the built-in drawers under it, but only for a moment. Then he drew up his chair and began his game with the ever-growing index-cards—so much richer than the weary limitations of the playing-card pack.

  Dr. Wilkes’ faith worked, or his prophecy was sound. It is unlikely that his physic had much to do with it. An astrologer could quite as well have said that the amelioration was due to the change in the moon. Certainly as soon as the sickle, cold and thin as a curved icicle, was seen low in the sky, where the west was still red from a frosty sunset, the Archdeacon was up and about. His hair, however, did not return. Bishop Bendwell who had been away throughout the little crisis, now back at the Palace, tried the joke about the tonsure. It was wise that a Father-in-God chose to be the laughing comforter. His advances were received so stonily that his second card, about God tempering the wind to the shorn lamb and hence we might expect a mild Christmas, was wisely left unplayed.

  Canon Throcton was wary enough to avoid a meeting. Certainly, whatever the queer coincidence might mean or develop into, his clearly was a waiting game. And in two days the Archdeacon had left on his visitation circuit. Dr. Wilkes was of course not a little pleased at the recovery but also a little more puzzled than usual. So, as the Canon had evidently been interested by his diagnosis—if it could be so called—when they next passed in the street, he made to stop, and the Canon consented to be brought to a stand-still.

  Further, to the Doctor’s “Well, we had an even swifter recovery than we hoped!” the antiphon, “And no further outbreaks—the plague seems to have been stayed, satisfied with one victim?” show
ed an obvious agreeability, even a certain lightness of humour.

  Dr. Wilkes therefore added, “I let him go on his rounds. He was so anxious not to begin ill—as one might say—the first step, you know, how often it sets the pace, free or halting. But.…”

  By the speed of the rapid reply question, “But what?” the Doctor saw it was safe to add, “I confess I would like him to go carefully. I am inclined now to think—you will recall it was one of the links in the sequence as I diagnosed it—that there may be a general blood condition. There so often is—and in this case perhaps—a potential anaemia of a none too benignant aspect, aggravating, if not causing such a severe and, I fear, final alopecia. The relationship of the hair to the general vitality—well the extravagancies of folk-lore have frightened off investigation. The fact however remains, there’s no better criterion of the curve of vitality than the condition of the hair.”

  The Doctor pushed back his high black hat and rubbed his temple on which like a sundial his age was well marked by the retreating shadow of his hair line. “Yes, he must take care. That’s my prognosis and prescription, reasonable care. Yes, I believe in the old adage, ‘After forty a fool or a physician.’ We are rightly called medical advisers—as you are spiritual directors.”

  Pleased with his reception and that he had been able to close the interview leaving the Canon in no doubt of the precedence that medicine was prepared to grant theology, he did not attempt to hold his honoured guest longer. But when left, the Canon walked away with no symptom of relief at being set free for his own reflections.

  By the time that the Archdeacon returned from his circuit the Doctor had ventured to speak in the same tone to the Bishop. Dr. Wilkes had been summoned to the Palace for the humble duty of examining the inflamed throat of the second kitchen maid. Mrs. Bendwell, ample, kind and shrewd, wisely did not like infected throats bending over food to be served shortly after at the high episcopal board. She asked that the Doctor be told to wait on her when he left after his visit to the patient. As he left her salon, after reassuring her that it was no more than a slight catarrh that had affected the larynx, the lord of the Palace entered.

  Bishop Bendwell was rightly more popular with the laity than with his clergy, for the latter he had to control while the former it was his duty, as well as his taste, to persuade. Sure of his own position with all but the nobility he was kindness itself, affability incarnate to the professional classes. “They are our problem and our objective,” he used to remark to the Chapter meetings when discussing diocesan strategy. “Hold them, or at least do not alienate them, and then there is nothing to fear from the masses going Socialist or Catholic. Always, my brethren, you will perceive throughout history it is because the clergy and the aristocracy lost touch with, lost the respect of, the professional classes—that now like to call themselves the intelligentsia, as we once liked to call ourselves the spirituals and still are called divines—always it was that loss of contact that was the first and the irretrievable step toward revolution.

  So finding the Doctor in the door leaving conference with his wife, the Bishop took him by the arm bringing him back into the drawing room. His wife remarked,

  “Dr. Wilkes has reassured me about Emma’s throat. There is no danger of infection.”

  “Good, good,” the Bishop replied perfunctorily and then thinking how he might leave an impression of friendliness on the summoned visitor, who otherwise would not be invited to the Palace, he thought of Archdeacon Simpkins.

  “Well, Dr. Wilkes, we owe another piece of competent repairing—if I may so phrase it—to your skill. I am glad to hear that our new Archdeacon was so soon on his feet again and hard at his new work so soon after the strange little upset that somewhat inauspiciously marked his initiation into his overseer-office.”

  To be held in conference by the Bishop in the Palace was of course even a higher pleasure, considerably higher than to be seen in the street talking at some length to one of his Canons. Besides there was no reason why he should not tell the Bishop what he thought of the case. Perhaps it was his duty.…

  “Yes, My Lord, a very encouraging beginning of convalescence.…”

  “Beginning? But then was it wise to let him go out so soon?”

  “Often, My Lord, to restrain a man who is fretting under a nervous condition brought on by some strain, is a mistake. The balance between the rest of work and the rest of lassitude—I mean, the doctor’s task is very difficult when he has to judge whether stimulant or sedative is the right course. It all depends on the diagnosis.”

  Bishop Bendwell was listening—he generally did—as human beings really interested him. But now he pricked his inner ear. This little leach was no fool. Perhaps he might not be able to diagnose—who really could?—where was spiritual direction in the Church, but he could observe. A few moments more would not be wasted. Anyhow he would see some of his alien intimates—as to his wife he sometimes called the Chapter—from another angle. The appointment of Simpkins to the Archdeaconry was of course right. Still he did not enjoy the fact that he was sure of Canon Throcton’s resentment and the other fact that Simpkins, though with a perfectly good case, had influenced things in his own favour.

  “And the diagnosis in this case? If, of course, you choose to confide in me to what might be taken to be a professional limit of discretion.…”

  “Oh no, My Lord. In any case are you not the Shepherd of all of us in this county and to whom should the veterinary report but to the guide and overseer of the flock? Archdeacon Simpkins is undoubtedly tired and the little trouble is lurking, possibly, still in the system. But change of place, of air, of occupation—these three so often can rouse the organism, turn it as it were, on another facet. No, My Lord, you will never find me among the materialists—as long as I observe human beings as they actually behave and respond.…”

  “Well then?”

  “Well, my Lord, I wish you could see our patient on his return. I would value highly your impression. I still stick to my faith that exercise in this case is the thing, change and meeting new people and—if I may put it that way—the evidence that he is at work and”—he hesitated—“is respected. I mean everything that tells against introversion, against moping, and takes his mind off himself. These nervous conditions, and I still think this at base is one, these nerve-ending irritations, they are such delicate adjustments, responses. Often I feel that something—how shall I put it?—is being balked in the patient and that this blind invisible force can find expression either in outward activity or in some inward and, in the end, morbid frustration.”

  The Bishop had been increasingly interested. But though he gave quite a handsome share of his attention to anyone who gained his ear and was giving over-weight in this case, like all born administrators he never became engrossed. He had two perspectives out over which he was looking as he spoke and listened: as a preacher he knew you must never forget the clock, and as a discreet holder of confidences he knew the need to remember where you are. While they had talked he had steered Dr. Wilkes out from his wife’s presence chamber and down the broad stairs. Both the time-table and the area of private conference were being kept in view and observed.

  “Well”—they had now reached the big hall and were by its massive door—“you would like me to have a conference with Archdeacon Simpkins as soon as he returns? Yes, I think I can just manage it.”

  And with that the two wary men parted each pleased with each other and with what he had gained and given.

  Bishop Bendwell kept his word without any reluctance. He postponed a couple of days his going to London and to his fellow Lords Spiritual in order that he might have the promised interview with his new Archdeacon. True, he did not suffer much from intuitions but in this case he could not help feeling that there was present some element of potential conflict which he himself had not yet even to diagnose. His kindliness was more composed of a native sense of kinship and insight into human motive than of the theological virtue of pure charity, but i
t too was roused when he saw his lieutenant. The man looked undeniably tired. Of course sudden total calvine baldness does give an effect of rapid aging. Further, no doubt, to go straight from a sick-bed to a full round of new work might easily prove severely fatiguing. But the man’s colour didn’t look right: his lips were a grey only subtinged with red; his skin a curious waxen tint and his teeth—he still had as fine teeth as once hair—were still as even. But they looked more as though made of dull glass than of ivory.

  “Yes, you must take my advice and go quietly, for a little.”

  “Hardly possible, My Lord, when you rightly put me in because my predecessor had gone too quietly for too long.”

  “Well, better a little now than nothing soon!”

  “My Lord, it is not for us to say, as the Scriptures put it, ‘I shall go softly all my days.’”

  His wife asked the Bishop how he had found the new Archdeacon. “Oh, a bit tired, but, as I suppose one of your household staff would say, A new broom is bound to lose a few of its hairs at the first attack it makes on what the old one has neglected.” She smiled and seeing that he was not going to tell her more, nor feeling much wish to do more herself than express a casual interest, she changed the subject.

  8

  Retiring to work in his study Bishop Bendwell found his Chaplain-Secretary. “Just a few papers, Sir, for your work in London. May I run through them with you?”

  “Halliwell, you serve the unleavened bread of legality and politics made palatable by efficient sympathy!”

  The young confidant smiled. The Bishop had picked him as his squire because he saw that he was one of those boys who under a cheerful healthiness disguised uncommon adaptability and method. In the ancient atmosphere of a Close it was good to have at least one contact with the energy of youth.