The Black Fox A Novel Of The Seventies (32 page)

The half hour over he went up and knocked on his host's door. They were soon settled by his fire. But Dr. McPhail seemed to have gone into a brown study looking at the coals. Finally he turned round and unlocking a side drawer of his desk, reached back inside, bringing out a largish envelope of parchment-coloured paper. Without looking at Dean Throcton he remarked,

"This letter came for you from Sheik ibn-Khaldun."

"But could he have heard and written so soon? Very kind, very prompt, but, no, I don't see how he could have had time?"

"Oh, but I see it has not been through the mail," he added as he put out his hand for it.

"It was," the bander remarked yielding it. "I should have said, enclosed in one to me."

"But when did it arrive?" The voice was half curious, half peremptory.

The reply seemed to be unaware of the tone in which the question had been put, "It came with the Sheik's courtesy letter as soon as he returned to Cairo. He had enjoyed, he said, the visit and had found the long journey profoundly worth while."

"But why, why then was I . , . I mean why did you delay...?"

"I was, of course, acting on his instructions. . . "

"But what strange behaviour. Surely even an Oriental would know our customs of courtesy—at least such a man. . . "

"Yes, I do not think we need have any doubt of that. He is a man of both worlds, of this as much as of the other."

"Then why... ? Surely I have a need, a right to be answered!"

"I think, indeed, I am as sure as I can be, short of not having seen a word of its contents, that the best answer would be found in that envelope which you now hold,"

Dr. McPhail said no more but turned his attention wholly to the fire. The only sounds in the room were the gentle crackling of its flames and the rustle of the stiff paper as the envelope was torn and the enclosed, sheets spread. Then nothing but the licking of the fire relieved the silence for perhaps half an hour. At last the Dean's voice began, though the tone was unlike any that Dr. McPhail had ever heard him use. There was in it an urgency and what was even stranger something that might have been humility.

"I am told to read you this. After reading it myself half a dozen times I see nothing to do but to obey." And, without change of tone, he read on:

DEAR MR. DEAN:

This letter will be delivered to you when it is due. That date will be settled not by us but by the strength of resistance and power of what I shall call absorption that resides in an heroic soul. The extent of that, the capacity for spiritual endurance, is known only to Allah, Whose dooms be hid. We know that He succors His servants, when, through them, he combats evil. Therefore with them, as with Him, time is not to be held as we hold it. That at some time He will deliver his servant, as the Scripture says, "out of the power of the dog," we know. Because there will then have been accomplished all that the dedicated human will may do for another.

The Dean's voice became lower but remained clear.

When that is done, then, I would dare to judge that the evil which has been roused and permitted entry, by folly disguising itself as' learning and pride pretending that it is understanding, will have been brought to an arrest. I use the term advisedly for I would warn most strongly against any shallow hope that would now believe that there has been worked a final cure, a true exorcism. The actual precipitate is temporarily dissolved and has to reform itself. A blend of scorn, hatred, pride and folly had created the atmosphere in which evil could—I use the chemical analogy—ignite.

You must also, perhaps inadvertently, have used some physical, some material expression of your rage, some incompetent and accidental aping of one of the psychophysical techniques which you call—and dismiss as—magic. This acted as the spark. I need attempt no further to explain this to you. For this instant, precipitate and aggressive form of the molestation has been cancelled. It was nullified by the extent to which devotion and purity of intention could be expressed by one in touch with him who made the criminal mistake. Therefore are you now, at the price of your sister's death, freed from the immediate and almost successful assault of the enemy. Your freedom has been given back to you. That is all that Allah ever gives even to His chosen. Therefore it is all that the most loving may win, even for those to whom they would gladly give all. For you to complete and perpetuate what has been begun for you, you must make her sacrifice effective. There is forgiveness at the hands of the supreme justice. But only if true reparation has been made. As one who has chosen to be a teacher in religion, you should not need this initial instruction. But I have known you to resist all effort to help you. Had you not so spurned that help when first offered, she whom you may now begin to rate at her true worth, might still be alive.

The Dean's voice was now a whisper, but Dr. McPhail could hear it.

Here is the simple formula that you should have known as a child and observed all your days: Contrition, to be the effective acid that can clean away the crust under which the soul is decaying, must be threefold. You must own that you have done and wished to do evil. You must vow that never again will you do so, nor put yourself in that situation where it might befall you so that you would so act. And thirdly, it is incumbent on you to make all the reparation that it still lies within your power to make. Thus, and thus only, may you escape that which is contained but not turned from you, and which, should you delay, then one day or another you will be persuaded yourself to summon back; when, as it is written, "The last state of that man is worse than the first."

The letter fell from his hands. Dr. McPhail took it up, remarking, "I can but repeat what I said to your sister when I had to assure her—with such heroic results—that she could trust the Sheik. I have never known him to be mistaken and I have known him, I should add to you now, give such judgments as that which you have now just read."

"But what am I to do?" All the pride, a lifelong-incrustation, seemed to have been flayed off the man and to have left exposed under the raw surface a terribly afflicted child.

"He sent further instructions to me in his covering letter. Here it is." Dr. McPhail had turned to the desk drawer and brought out a couple of similar sheets. He read in as low and accentless a tone as had the Dean:

If this unhappy man shall, when you have given him my letter, really wish to save his life, the course, though it will test his intention, is open and simple, owing to the aid already given. All he has to do is to resign that which he gained by evil. TTiat is reparation. Thereafter, I am prepared, because of the greatness of the sacrifice already made for him on my instruction, and to assure that nothing should be lacking to consummate it, I offer to take him, should he come out here, and to teach him, if it be the Will of Allah, the rudiments of that knowledge beside which all learning of the tongue and the brain is but withered bark on the tree of life.

The Dean sat quiet for another half hour. Dr. McPhail only moved once to replenish the fire. Then his guest rose.

"There is no other course. I have sufficient funds to do as he orders and to comply by attending on him. Thereafter he will have to decide."

He stood silent and then went on more to himself than to his listener, "And I, who in vanity used to taunt my colleagues about the great learning of the Arabians, so sane, so simple, so stylistically satisfying, now Justice, in its merciful wish to save me from the degradation of madness, sends me, a disgraced, detected impostor, to sit in poverty at the feet of a teacher whom I would have dismissed as a fraud but who now will spare me no knowledge."

Dr. McPhail also stood up.

"Then I may tell you one more thing, something which, until you had decided of yourself, I might not say. Our instructor told me also that so long as you stayed here you would never be safe from the molestation which you had wantonly admitted onto your track. Here is what he says:"

In this matter of the mind and the body, the spirit and matter, we have to be pure empiricists. What we do know from practical and tragic experience, is that the only safety that may be relied upon by one who has torn the veil is to flee the land where that disaster befell him. It has been found that if he puts water between himself and his tracker then he may find some rest. If he should also accept instruction then he may hope for peace and live to thank the All Merciful for the judgement that fell upon him. Allah is the All Merciful but He is the God of Law. He gives a way out through which the soul may escape. If it will not then it must endure the terror of being overtaken.

TWO DAYS AFTERWARDS THE TWO LOBES OF THE DIOCESAN BRAIN were working at the big study table under the oriel window that commanded the Palace garden. The larger lobe turned for a moment from the close-up of correspondence to the larger, lovelier view seen through the glass.

"There's Jevons with the mail. More letters, and these still to be dispatched! Halliwell, I wish I had that man's composure. Every day he becomes more episcopal. Look at him now. The Archbishop himself, carrying the Crown Imperial, could not be more majestic."

The figure disappeared through the arched door beneath them. But the ear now took up the tale, the stateliness of his approach being conveyed by the discrete boom of his measured step.

"I often wonder whether even the Last Day could discompose him. I expect him to rise saying 'Dinner is served!'"

The door, still vibrating from the knock requesting entry, swung open.

"The mail, My Lord," Jevons announced, deposited a large silver salver almost hidden under its white skillfully piled load, wheeled and was gone.

So, too, under this heaping cloud of further correspondence, was the Bishop's struggling humour. He took up the letter that had been given pride of place, glanced across the table and saw that his colleague had gone back to the earlier deposits they had been working. Then after a couple of minutes reading of the latest news,

"Halliwell," he asked, "do you know what I have just learned?"

"News of the Dean?"

"How did you guess that?"

"I don't know. He came into my mind the moment you looked up and saw Jevons approaching—perhaps association of ideas— they're both what I'd call 'unapproachables."

"Above pity and above approach; a modern parody of the medieval ideal!" The Bishop's humour gleamed faintly over the rising cloud of care,

"Well, he's got consumption."

"He can't have!"

"There's no doubt he has. Why do you say he hasn't?"

'Well, really, Sir, I don't know. I just felt that couldn't be the . . . the . . . reason: just as I felt sure Jevons was bringing you a letter from him."

'Well, listen to this: 'I have today received advice as to my condition. I am informed by an eminent consultant whose diagnosis I am in no position to challenge and whose judgement is very highly rated by competent authorities, that I am in an un-suspectedly advanced state of decline. So acute has die condition been found to be that instant action is demanded of me, if the gravest consequences are to be avoided. I am instructed that I must leave the country for the South without any delay, otherwise I am in momentary danger of a fatal attack."

The Bishop looked up over the letter's edge, "You see, it is consumption, not a shadow of doubt." Then he went on.

" 'About the length of absence that this recuperation must require, I have been unable to obtain any judgement.-1 am informed that recovery itself cannot even now be assured. In these circumstances I have no choice but to leave without returning to Norminster and I am therefore writing this letter to place with deepest regret my resignation of the Deanery in your hands."

"Well," the Bishop sighed more conclusively than sadly, "we must be thankful for the mercies that can be detected. On the whole it is certainly better to have a clean vacancy, 'an extraction' as our dentists put it, than that condition from which this Close has so long suffered, slow decay in situ. It's tuberculosis without a doubt and without a doubt our doubly damp Close is no place for such a patient. A highly polished Arabic style is no compensation for a highly infectious cough! I think we may trust the Prime Minister again to do well by us. He certainly meant well last time. We may have to go outside the diocese, but there are two or three names I might suggest to his Secretary "

The Bishop's own Secretary seemed a couple of times about to say something but instead dipped his pen. "Here's an addressed envelope," he concluded. "You'll be writing him a note by this mail, won't you?" He looked at his senior officer in the army of faith. This was the way his Father-in-God took things. Maybe it was the way to face mysteries, to face them over with practical applications and next steps to be taken, to look at the brighter side of things, brighter because it came on top, because it didn't penetrate down.

'I've a feeling, too," the Bishop went on, "that our crisis, epidemic, call it what you will, may be over. You're surprised at my having hunches, no doubt. Oh yes, I have them. But, like Samuel Rogers with his religious views, I keep them to myself."

The quizzical play of the elder man's features gradually converted the younger's expression of puzzled query into an answering smile.

"And when you're my age, and no doubt of equal if not superior ecclesiastical elevation, you will be as cautious about publishing them—not because they have proved so often wrong but because they may have turned out to be so largely, so disconcertingly right."

He dived down on the still disconcertingly large heap of mail. It kept them busy on the bubbling surface of things till lunch— and after, until, as the Cathedral clock struck two forty-five, the Bishop exclaimed,

"I must take a turn in the Close and get a breathful of fresh air before Evensong."

He had time for half a dozen turns. Completing the third he saw that Dr. Wilkes was coming up behind him. There would be just time for a genial greeting and not enough to be detained. It would be interesting, too, to see the physician's reaction.