The Black Fox A Novel Of The Seventies (15 page)

'Tes, Minnie really looks a wonder now, doesn't she! And it is a wonder and no mistake. And a bit of a mystery, too, if one might so put it. For there she'd been so that you'd have thought —even if you didn't see much of doctors—that she was straight set for a decline. And here she is now really a positive tomboy as you might put it"

Half a dozen exchanges and Dr. Wilkes had the story in all the detail and with some cross-checkings that he needed. A sixpence to the daughter, a smile to the mother and he left with far more than a handful of tea-time vegetables. With the sudden dart of a true diagnostician he was sure he had now something which he might use.

"Through the greengrocer I glance and find my real instrument at die butcher's," he smiled to himself. 'Well it's certainly simple to try and no harm done if it's no more than

coincidence. Past hoc, propter hoc? Well who really knows about causality? The germ or the general resistance? The bottle or the bedside manner? Thank heaven I am a G.P. and don't have to explain how things work—or take too much blame when they don't"

The liver treatment of course worked. Dr. Wilkes was wise enough not to draw attention to what he was doing, still less to talk about making a remarkable cure. After all, the condition was not acute, and many conditions, even cancer itself, do, on occasion, remedy themselves. All that the Cathedral public knew was that the Dean had rallied. And rallied he remained as the year went on upon its course. The Bishop was pleased and attributed the improvement to his sagacious swapping of the posts. The Archdeacon tried to disguise his impatience. On meeting the Doctor he could not, however, prevent himself asking for a forecast: was the improvement due to temporary alleviating measures? He had heard that sometimes such conditions, when there was present some anaemia, were benefited, for a time, by arsenic? He trusted the Dean was finding some relief through such alleviants?

Dr. Wilkes, though a far more tolerant man than Archdeacon Throcton, shared the ecclesiastic's objection to trespass on his own ground. Besides, his natural prejudice was amply supported by a quite rightful wish not to share any more confidences with one of whose goodwill he felt less and less sure. He therefore replied with perfect honesty and equal discretion that he now had considerable hopes and would venture to think that grave worsening of the condition might long be postponed. The reaction this almost non-committal statement awoke in his listener's mind was, however, so strong that even the Doctor, who sensed that this general good news might here be a little less than welcome, would have been surprised. Though not surprised lie was nevertheless quite a little shocked when the rather grim

face that he was looking at suddenly showed something like a sneer, "Are we to endure another living corpse at the centre of our corporate life here!"

That rhetorical question he had met with the rightly discreet answer that his task was to preserve life; to the Church belonged to say what were its uses. "Besides," he added, "with a little caution there is no reason not to hope that the recovery might prove so extensive and sustained that the patient might well undertake all the specific Cathedral duties."

Faced with that possible prospect the face opposite him began to show an even grimmer aspect. But the anger that was becoming evident to the onlooker had evidently risen to such internal force and with such speed that the cautious brain overlooking the undisciplined will, threw its considerable weight against any further expression. Here then, too, a respite was gained. Archdeacon Throcton realized now that he had shocked the Doctor —that he had let his impatience render him unguarded—and for no purpose. But the sheer force of the thing that had twisted within him, almost unseating his power of judgment! As he found his heart beating rapidly and his breathing shallow he was almost more shocked at himself. The spasm of frustrated violent anger gave him real alarm. He loathed all passion, as the coldly selfish do. He had never thought that he was capable of such black rage, any more than of lechery.

"You are right. Of course quite right. We must hope for the best." The voice was gruff but the words were conventionally suitable and with them discharged—a dust of decency over the larva-leakage—he turned on his heel.

The other stood looking after him. "If only we knew the connection between anger, greed and fear and the organs of the body we'd know more about illness than the chemists will ever be able to tell us."

He repeated the remark to his wife when he got home, giving her the occasion that had made the generalization form in his mind. But Archdeacon Throcton had no confidant. He would not have trusted himself with his sister had not years of domineering distance made any real intimacy, any freedom of communication, as difficult as the movement of an arthritic finger. He knew that she watched him and, though lacking the definite and sharp lines of information to draw round the vague intuitions of misgivings, she was aware of his moods and in general knew their sources. It made no difference that she had a deep affection for him. What he dreaded was that she should—however sympathetic—see that he was not the man he had masked himself to appear. Her very loyalty, the fact that he knew she would endure seeing him as he now himself sometimes feared he might be becoming, only added to his sense of frustration and inner fear.

That evening he sat in his study before the empty fireplace. He could neither work at his routine duties—there were plenty of letters to be written: for a "faculty" to be granted to put up a hideous, painted glass window with mendacious inscription in the church of Pugton Regis, for an inquiry whether the incumbent of Melcombe Porcorum should or should not be let have a reredos with a Nativity in high relief, et cetera ad nauseam. Nor could he turn to his Arabian studies. He turned over the increasingly irritating letters, which, as letters do, grew the more exasperating the more he neglected them.

"So now he won't die and here am I caught again," he muttered to himself. "You'd think I was being played with ... by what, whom? I'm getting the feeling of being trapped. Those attacks of anger, too. I usen't to have them. A bad sign. They can't be good for the heart. They must come, I suppose, from the digestion. Perhaps I ought to see a doctor—and turn myself into a hypochondriac and join the choir of croaking incurables that this place seems to produce as its sour vintage. And give

a clue to that shrewd-eyed little leech. No, that would put the fat in the fire. But I don't feel rational when that bile rises in me, I suppose old Hippocrates was right. We are creatures whose moods are the fume given off by our organs' secretions. What a fool I was to show my impatience in front of a suspicious physician. Of course he dislikes me and the Dean hates me and the Bishop despises me. What a fool I was to fall into seeing omens in the burning of that nauseous garbage and thinking that such a piece of foolery might help get the gall out of my system. The fact that the silly thing, even on its own ridiculous level, failed to work, obviously affected my mind. I suppose if you take omens and they go wrong you have to pay the silly forfeit. If you appeal to the witch doctor you will find yourself bound to pay if the fool decides against you. Perhaps I've appealed to a Caesar of the underworld and unto Caesar I must go."

He got up and began to pace the floor. Finally he came to a halt not at his chair but at the bookcase. After a moment he reached behind a big row of volumes on the last shelf that, breast-high, stood on the base made of built-in drawers. He groped for a moment. When he straightened up he had between thumb and finger a key. He fitted it into the keyhole of the top drawer, turned it, drew on the knob and looked in. After a pause he remarked, "I expect it's acting like a red rag to a bull. If I'm not rational then it's only rational to act as though I weren't!" He smiled wryly. "But I must get rid of those rage attacks. Perhaps hoarding this rubbish somehow inflames the back of my mind. If we are really chemical machines, well, chemical mixtures outside the body may affect it, just as much as those within. Dr. Pasteur certainly seems to have proved that invisible microbes can attack and kill us over very considerable distances. Perhaps our medical science will find that there's something in the fairy-tale view of things. So I'd better follow that sort of logic, at least with myself."

Once he had decided to act he was again methodical and deft. What was to be destroyed was to be given swift and proper dispatch. He lifted out the old, soiled handkerchief, now discoloured and musty, and the little glass bottle become opaquely iridescent with the dried scum of the hair oil. The mixed odour of mould and stale scent made him wince. "Smells like a tomb," he muttered, taking the noisome handful and depositing it by the fender. Recrossing the room, he locked the door. The weather now was held to be too mild for fires and so a fan of blue-fluted paper attempted to relieve the gaping blackness of the hearth. "Our social magic," he sneered looking at it. 'We put azure decorations in the place of winter warmth, to encourage summer skies and so gain heat from heaven."

He flicked out the fan and, picking up the refuse, threw it into the empty grate. The contents of his waste-paper basket and a packet of squills he added, remarking, "I can say that I had to bum a few confidential papers, matters of administrative discretion." He added, to aid combustibility, some pieces of sealing-wax from his desk and the contents of a sticking-gum bottle. He lit the little pyre cautiously perhaps afraid that there might be the sudden outburst that had followed his first auto-da-fe.

On the contrary, however, the ignition was slow: but once started was persistent. Hardly any flame showed—only masses of smoke poured out. The hearth was cold, there was little or no updraught. The opaque fumes, therefore, instead of going up the chimney, crawled down out over the hearth toward the fender and hearth-rug. One heavy skein slowly rose toward the ceiling. A whiff of it touched his face. It felt like a greasy feather smeared across the nostrils and the smell and taste were nauseous. It was the smell of carrion being slowly charred. He raised himself, for he had been half crouched watching his experiment. On the table by his desk stood a carafe of water. He snatched it and poured it over the smouldering heap. There was

a hiss and steam mixing with the smoke began to fill the room. Once again he was driven to the window. As he opened it, the fumes poured up past him, into the still, clear air. As before, he noticed the calm outside—a quiet evening sky and, on its lapis background, like a cameo, a moon that might be taken for a mask held before the face of an invisible watcher.

He turned back to the room—his seemly study as squalid as a pot-house. The smoke, however, continued to pour out past him: the reading lamp on his desk shone with its tranquilizing green glow. He went over to the hearth and taking the poker rummaged in the charred paper. The fire had done its work better than he had thought. The handkerchief was gone and what paper as was left untouched showed clearly it was merely routine correspondence. He changed weapons, taking the tongs. With these he recovered the small bottle, black but unbroken. After cooling it a moment by the fender he bent down and took it in his hand, went over to the window again and then, bending sideways, he flung it out with all his strength. The curve of its fall carried it till it bounded and rolled on the Cathedral lawn.

"The Close gardener will put it in his basket tomorrow morning," he remarked. Then, half-way turned from the window, he stopped. A large slinking cat had come out of the shadow of the low Close wall and was approaching the bottle. He could just see the faint gleam of it lying on the grass. When the beast reached the object it sniffed at it for a moment, then turned and looked up at the house. Archdeacon Throcton was sure of that, because the light in the room behind him caught the animal's eyes and made them gleam bright green. Somehow the creature seemed considerably bigger than Tissaphernes or any of his tribe. But, of course, dusk always makes objects larger when we add to their actual bulk their shadow. He was just waiting to see whether, when it made off—on discovering the inedibility of the bottle—he would be able to observe it

better, when he was startled by a knock on the door behind him. • He wheeled round, "Who's there!"

"Oh, Sir." piped a mahogany-muted voice, "oh, Sir, you're there. I thought, Sir, you just mightn't be and it might be your fire was smoking bad—p'raps a coal'd jumped and caught the carpet?"

"Everything is all right!" he boomed a dismissal

"Certainly, Sir, sorry to disturb you . . . only thought. . . ." The voice died away carrying its thought beyond earshot.

Archdeacon Throcton listened, however, carefully, till far away he heard a dull but specific bump. That was given by the spring-hinged baize door that, like the veil in the Jewish Temple, kept the profane from the reverend side of the house. Cautiously even then, he unlocked the door and let a draught blow through the room. Fortunately the wind was now from the back of the house. Yet after ten minutes the room still had not lost its unpleasant smell while it had been stripped of its pleasant warmth. Leaving the door open he went down to visit his sister. On her lap dozed Tissaphernes.

"Not much use for mice," he remarked taking a chair. "Has he been drowsing like that for long?"

"Well, as his working 'day' is polar to ours, it is only beginning. He's taking his last nap before going on watch."

Gradually their conversation became easy, almost unguarded, and as earlier she felt her feeling-tone of hopefulness spread over her mind—the quiet, though long-postponed day-dreams that someday they would be intimate, with full confidence in each other. But again, as low clouds skirt the far horizon shown by a clear evening, she felt as though, from a greater distance Cwhile she watched the spread of hope) there rose a vaster, vaguer misgiving. Why should she be so queerly pessimistic, always trying to find justifying fears to explain surely not too irrational hopes? She knew that her nature was neither cowardly

nor gloomy. Was it wrong to hope that though she had had great blessings things might turn out a little better, especially as the improvement would be for the sake of one who she knew was not happy? Why must she suspect that he was showing and indeed feeling such pleasure in her company because . . , because, well, not because of any enjoyable element in that, but because he who so often had shown he preferred his own company to any others',- now did not, now disliked, feared even, being alone? She felt an additional overtone of uneasiness that she should be entertaining such thoughts—entertainment, what an unhappy word for this involuntary harbourage, almost invasion —while keeping up the appearance of being at ease, in the complete calm that this room and this company seemed outwardly to guarantee. Surely, she reflected, as she looked round and listened to the purr of cat and kettle, the sound seeming the very echo of the visible peace, surely it was absurd to suspect her brother of uneasiness, still more of nervousness. Even had he been a nervous type, this place, these sounds would soon allay such a state of tension. Her mind then began to wonder whether he suspected her divided attention, next felt he must. And then a further flash of uneasiness shot into her mind as she reflected that surely, if he did not, his mind must be obsessed with some secret concern or be suspiciously determined not to disturb the appearance of peace.