The Black Fox A Novel Of The Seventies (2 page)

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THE FOLLOWING MORNING A CERTAIN ABSTRACTIVESS MIGHT easily be excused. The day was fresh and sunny but those who had gone through a night that first suffocated and then stormed could hardly be expected to show an equal resilience. Canon Throcton was no longer of the age of which a shining morning face can be expected. The surface was what photographers call "mat," the profile handsome without being good-looking. The nose was a little too large but so little so that it looked commanding, and the eyes on the small side yet so slightly that they appeared shrewd rather than suspicious.

This morning both nose and eyes showed signs of the late weather, the one a little more bent and the other a trifle more drooped. Miss Throcton who presided over the Residence observed these past-weather signals as indicating her brother's need for silence. She had observed that need (in the observational and observant senses of that word) for fifty years and therefore had a hold upon his house that the rest of her virtues—which were considerable—might never have won her. 'We know each other below speech level," she once remarked with some finality to Canon Simpkins' wife. That lady had been employing condolence as a vehicle for enquiry—a common Trojan-horse method in the female strategy that manoeuvres across cathedral close lawns. Miss Throcton added as a quietus—for the condolence was on the grounds that too much silence was really worse than too much speech—that she was an unwavering upholder of the gold-standard.

Her brother, however, after speaking no more at table than courtesy and family prayers prescribed, when he gained the shelter of his study became more communicative to himself than he had been last night, carrying on his concern a further step. The weather's recovery, too, was echoed in his whisperings.

"Of course the Bishop was simply being cautious, letting libel have its lip and pretending for peace' sake to agree. Bendwell doesn't belie his name! That pompous bulk is at heart if not soft, wonderfully supple. He spoke the truth, too! He just can't go against public opinion. The Times would give him a flick of its whip if he dared to appoint such an—" he paused and changed just below speech-level "oaf into "anomaly" "—as Simpkins. All I have to do is to be a little more punctilious at Matins and Evensong and put a slightly more precise and narrow an accent into the theology of my sermons, for the next quarter. That should not be too severe a strain and I have now an added incentive—what does Rumi say? "He to whom Allah discloses the designs of his enemies, by this revelation does the Most High reveal His intention to scatter their machinations."

Nevertheless the Canon had made a triple misreading of the situation. He was wrong in his application of Rumi's general remark to his particular case. He was wrong in his estimate of his Bishop's action. And—this added an intolerable sting to the matter—he was wrong also about public opinion. The injury seemed doubly intolerable when he saw the clerical and congregational equanimity in the face of the new appointment. Practically no comment was made when it was announced that the next Archdeacon would be Canon Simpkins. Indeed the Bishop showed now his complete indifference to seemliness by remarking to Canon Throcton that, naturally, his scholarship demanded freedom from all administrative cares.

Further this shepherd of shepherds so ill-read the countenance of his sub-pastor that, after such a left-handed compliment, he could remark to Simpkins: "Though Throcton may have desired the small step in preferment, it is fortunately clear that he can accept his passing over for a more practical man with the philosophic detachment of the scholar when he might have lacked the true resignation of a Christian. Perhaps also the fact that the public has accepted this solution as the right one, weighs with him."

Whether there might have been still another reason did not occur to either of the speakers. That was not surprising, for the disappointed man certainly did not communicate it—even to his closest relation. He asked no sympathy from his sister. . . . Partly because it seemed to offer one of those rare opportunities when she might dispense herself from the self-denying ordinance which was more her defence in public than her comfort at home, partly because she not unnaturally felt some clan resentment (Mrs. Simpkins would now in Cathedral society take precedence), Miss Throcton told her brother, "It was a shame!"

"Put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of man."

His reply from one of the more worn liturgical antiphons did strike her as being sufficiently out of character to send her back into her silence. One of the few religious confidences which he ever reposed in her had concerned what he called the gross overuse of the Psalter. "One hundred and fifty psalms of very mixed morality and many of minor, yes even minimal poetry—why even the few which are masterpieces could not sustain the incessant, careless traffic of our tongues! Bad and good, savage dance of revengeful triumph, lashing vituperation, paean, lyric, threnody—they have been 'cast out and trodden under foot' until, truly 'there is no savour in them.' Why cannot we use some of the incomparable—I say it advisedly—poems of Rumi and Furdusi? Why Miriam and Jael when we could have Rabbia?" She had spoiled that promising philippic against the inadequacy of the Western liturgy by remarking that neither the outbursts of Moses' sister, nor the praise of Heber s wife because she broke the sacred law of primitive hospitality, were part of the Psalter. He had gazed at her as Balaam had regarded his ass. Miss Throcton was far from "dumb" but her brother was almost as far from knowing it. Concentration on books requisite to inform the mind up to the standards of high scholarship often leaves the finished scholar signally ignorant of minds whose information and insight are not bookish.

The sister, remembering more clearly than the brother this former event, did not recall it to him. But for her own use noted the anomaly—the wise woman's rule canonized in the text "She hid all these things in her heart"—not repressing them, nor assuming as yet she could understand them, but awaiting. She did not even repeat her protest of loyalty.

When left alone her brother, however, sought his usual relief of self-whispering. He was taking up and out a strain of thought that had evidently been flowing for some time,

"Fantasy is a relief. The fairy-tale has its place. The wise man is surely he who knowing that all ultimate truth is myth or only to be stated so, orders his mind by distracting it from the hard fact of defeat by turning it deliberately to wishful fantasy. So we by-pass our passions."

He had actually turned to the bookcase to take out again the volume of Ibn Barnuna, when the sound of the Evensong Cathedral bell interrupted him.

"They shan't think of me as an Achilles sulking in his tent." He left his study and went toward the Cathedral pleased with

his power to disguise his real feelings. Often, however, when we decide to brave things out for fear successful rivals should think us cowards, we find they test us more severely than we had assumed we should be tried. When he entered to robe in the inner clerical vestry Canon Simpkins was already there. Of course he should have recalled that Simpkins' quarterly term as Canon-in-Residence began this week. His becoming Archdeacon would not affect that?

His unspoken question was answered by his successful rival— always a little unsettling even with a neutral acquaintance. The suspicion that another has looked into the speaker's mind is never pleasant. The whole thing was made worse by a mock friendliness. No doubt Simpkins was feeling three things: Guilty, sure that his guilt was unknown to his victim, and, so, to the dislike we have for those we have wronged, was added contempt. Certainly his opening would have been unhappy even if his second feeling had been sound:

'Well, well, deserting the Arabians to join us of the narrower path." Then having shown his desire to snub, he added, "The Bishop thinks the installation should take place on the eve of All Saints so I shall remain as plain Canon Resident till then. After that my duties being wider may limit the time I can spare for this intramural routine."

Had Canon Throcton not had interior knowledge of the other s duplicity no doubt he would have been startled at least into irritability. A scratch may sting intolerably: a deep cut not even be felt for the first few minutes. But now he was in the position—provided he showed no sign—of being superior to the man who was able and quite willing to show contempt for him. The other was behaving with cockscomb vanity, proud of an office because he thought his defeated rival thought that he, the winner, had won the promotion through obvious superiority.

To the man with interior knowledge there was offered in consequence the more dangerously satisfying role. He might now feel, in return for the other's raillery, a contempt so deep that it could afford to be silent. The defeated could actually relish the feeling of being so alien to this fool—clumsy even in his deceit-fulness—that even if it were possible and wise he would not stoop to expose him. For exposed he might be driven to the grace of shame. The bitter delight rose from the thought of, year by year, being able to watch this ape in his hypocritical exhibition of piety and all the while naked to his foe. Without, of course, being aware of his condition, Canon Throcton was beginning to feel that cold hate which is of all passions the most soothing, that sedative which offers its opiate as the one escape from a condition of frustrated insult, which otherwise renders the proud man in danger of madness—the ultimate disgrace in his own eyes—nervous breakdown. The relief given by such hate is so great that recovery from the addiction to it is rare; when a high fever suddenly drops, though the patient is going to die, he feels better, and so with a severe haemorrhage, there is a sense of refreshing rest.

Throcton felt suddenly and surprisingly calm as he turned to take his surplice. When he had pulled it over his head and arranged its folds he saw that Simpkins, who already had donned his, was now standing before a small glass rebrushing his hair which was thick, wavy, black and worn rather long. His attention was evidently wholly engaged by this and the watcher found his own unanalysed peace of mind was growing as he looked on at the grooming. He was faintly aware that he had never felt anything quite like this, some subverse of the joy that is felt by the scholar at a singular felicity of phrase. He caught a hardly focused glimpse of himself, year after year collecting ever-accumulating evidence of this creature's copious invariable dis-gustingness. Why think of trying to get some post at one of the big universities, the great laboratories of understanding, when

here, in this quiet nook, the true field-naturalist of that odd insect, man, could find species so fascinatingly repulsive. He had always felt his fellow clergy to be invariably dull—now he had found a colleague who might be worth the most devoted attention. The more he permitted this stream of unreflected thought to flow deep down, the more the vague impression quieted him. He saw, with something like tranquil relief, that he need never— indeed must never—do anything about it. That would spoil all. The attempt to push the creature into some further absurd ineptitude might rouse it from its instinctive trance of grotesque exhibitionism. His role was that of the fully appreciative scientist, too content with his superiority even to laugh. Further at the penumbra of his thought was the realization that this new pleasure was to be essentially personal. He might—if he kept his secret really to himself, letting no one suspect it—go even further; rise to a higher point of contemptuous detachment than that of the lonely naturalist who has chosen as his study dung-beetles. He might become the master of this object as no naturalist can control the species he studies. He might, he felt sure with an unanalysed certainty, come, if he was patient, to control this creature's destiny as an hypnotist controls the after-behaviour of his trance-patient.

Throcton did not feel that he was thinking these thoughts, putting them together. Rather they flowed out quietly as from some dark source, as ripples on a pool at dusk spread out, welling up from a palely lit centre and then spreading till lost in the sedge limits of its shore. Though quiet these thoughts must, however, have been moving fast. The thinker felt that he had surveyed years but he saw with his eyes that the hairbrush had only been wielded for a few deft strokes and was now put down smartly. Hardly troubling to face his listener, Canon Simpkins remarked over his shoulder, "I must see that the choir is ready." and disappeared into the outer vestry.

The clock showed two fifty-seven. Canon Throcton walked slowly down to the end of the narrow room alongside of which were the wardrobes, at the end of which was a small table with a carafe and two glasses on an electroplated dish. Above that was a small cupboard and on its door hung the mirror. Canon Throcton, however, did not approach it to inspect his face, nor, had he done so in his present mood, would he have noticed a change in it. He swung open the door. On the shelf inside lay the hairbrush with its attendant comb. He took the brush out. Its dark stiff bristles were fringed and festooned with hairs as dark, but curly like suckers from a hedge too long unpruned. He turned the brush in his hand. 'Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallombrosa"—the worn line was not apt, but the falling leaf theme evidently pleased him. Then he raised the brush nearer his face and wincing smiled—the smell of Macassar oil was as coarse as the hairs. He put the thing away, wiped his hands on a small towel and going out into the main vestry joined his colleague who was already presiding over the choir and the vergers drawn up to process. He and Simpkins walked together, dividing when they reached the stalls, each entering his own on opposite sides.

The Anglican Evensong—"To be said daily throughout the year"—centuries of use has smoothed from a stately decorum, in which a style of perfect urbanity had from the beginning made vivid conviction somewhat unlikely, to a routine that now rendered fully conscious attention improbable. Certainly, to a mind as profoundly concerned as Canon Throcton's had now become, the counter-appeal of the service was insignificant. Indeed not till they all sat down to listen to the First Lesson was he aware of any words. The Lessons change (and so offer occasions for mis-readings) more than any other part of this strictly confined liturgy: the Old Testament is at its strongest—and indeed almost unsurpassed in its strength—when it deals with dramatic nar-