The Black Fox A Novel Of The Seventies (10 page)

The only indication that he gave to his sister (a clue which her generosity mistook for an improvement in his own condition) was to remark, "The Bishop is shrewd, as indeed many men who have no pretence to learning often are. I believe, after all, he may have been right to prefer Simpkins to the Archdeaconry."

To her "He certainly is working hard." he nodded, "A plough horse takes kindly to the plough," and left her with that.

"How fortunate we are." she reflected with a sigh half of relief, half of regret, "who aren't clever. The able seem to have to feel as insults what we take for granted—the fact that we may be passed over. But surely his wound is healing?"

Had she asked her brother instead of herself, even had he wished, it is very doubtful whether he could have answered. His interest was swinging over from past disappointment to future hope. He hadn't forgiven; it is doubtful whether in the whole of his far from unsuccessful life he had ever forgiven anyone. The few injuries he had suffered he either revenged, and so discharged from his mental system, by holding up the injurer to a quite effective contempt, or he used a method perhaps not less dangerous, of refusing to mention the matter again, repressing the memory by the powerful concentration of attention which as a scholar he had learnt to command.

In his study, though his notes and index cards passed through his fingers, under his eyes and before his mind, his reverie was hardly disturbed. For now he was free to attend to the issue of his ambitions. He need no longer either repress or generate counter-spleen. It could well turn out to have been the best thing for Simpkins to have been shunted into the Archdeaconry— put out to grass. He felt he had been a little crude, even. For the Bishop may really have meant it, when he made the quite true remark that just having to do administrative work was absurd waste of a true scholar's time.

He owned that he had never thought of the Archdeaconry as a post in which he could stay and shine. No, not if it meant that a mitre might be added to crown the apron and gaiters; he could say honestly nolo episcopari. For him it meant a step to the Deanery—this one or one of the greater—perhaps the "Peculiar" of Westminster. Here even the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primate of All England, had, when he came within those central walls, to walk only alongside the Dean. Yes, the Archdeaconry was not a step but a shelf. And, further, it was now filled by a man who the more he suited it, the more he proved he was un-suited for the higher office of Dean.

"Of course it is a Crown Appointment, while the Archdeaconry lies in the direct gift of the Bishop" His reverie ran on. "But Bendwell himself was an appointee, and a staunch supporter of the Government, indeed more than once of considerable use to them in The Lords. This time he could make no slip. He must put his best—in fact, his only ranking scholar—in the scholar's post and stall. Besides, the very thing that these oafs have brought against me—my Semitic scholarship would tell with the Prime Minister, himself an Oriental. Yes, it is all opening out into the plainest of plain sailing, 'pon my souL"

His voice was now quietly cheerful, "I'm amazed at my own pettiness and lack of foresight! But," he added with that philosophic leniency that is nearly always extended to one's own past extravagances, "after all, I've probably been able to make this quick and good readjustment to the shock of a very unpleasant insight into a colleague's character—a man never a gentleman but who had been mistaken for being a Christian—by not being ashamed to take the matter seriously,"

That was certainly a satisfactory way of putting it. His voice ran on giving him the conviction of another opinion confirming his thought. "Yes," he summed up, and began to smile with an even more generous self-leniency, "and then there came that ridiculous coincidence which I can now see turned the whole thing into a joke, all the better for being all for myself and, indeed, I can maintain, wholly against myself and at my expense. Yes, I can own now, I haven't an iota, not a jot of resentment against that poor fellow, whose natural ambition and ignorant prejudice thought the post he now has should be his and not mine. I wish to allow that he's filling the job quite well and I'd add as a parting blessing that his looks are actually improved with the cleaning off of those locks far more suited to the stage than the choir."

It is possible that certain kinds of hope-can transmute themselves into a form of working faith. Whether that was so in this case or whether another cause was in action, there is no doubt that a result much desired by the Canon soon became known to him. He was particularly glad that he had not snubbed but even encouraged Dr. Wilkes when one March day the general practitioner came over to him on the street.

"I am just From the Deanery, hardly more than a routine visit, and of course nothing that might cause misgiving, I agree, should be done, such as requesting prayers. So I have said nothing to the family save to advise a little more quiet and a slightly lower diet. There is a slight congestion at the base of one lung. Puts a strain on the heart. And gout is quite enough for that organ after it's been beating almost a score more years beyond the 'three-score-and-ten.'"

Then cocking his head on one side as a sparrow will sometimes glance at a solemn rook, the speaker added differentially, "Of course in all big, slow-moving institutions there has to be a good deal of foresight. In this Close, as indeed in the Government itself, many eventualities have to be considered. Forewarned is, is it not, foreappointed?"

The slight flavour of general compliment and deference, referring to the Church as part of the ruling of the realm, made the really quite delicate sugar-coating for the otherwise possibly resented assumption of inner confidence almost amounting to intimacy. The Canon was therefore able to take the tip, as his informant might have put it, had he been calling on one of his hunting or racing patients.

The two parted with something approaching friendliness based upon private confidence. For the Canon, no less than the Doctor, wished to keep the information of a change for the worse-better, or better-worse, in the Deanery to himself. There should be nothing precipitate this time if he could prevent it; everything as far as he could manage it should be put in the most favourable posture.before the final bolt be drawn back and the moribund obstacle be slid out of view and its stall left vacant. As far as inconvenient rumour was concerned he felt safe in regard to the Dean's family itself. They would keep as quiet as he and the Doctor.

The weather was doing its part by proving exacting, at least to lungs whose reactions were getting slow. Looking out of his window at the racing dark clouds Canon Throcton quoted, "He blew with His winds and they were scattered." West and east kept up a shuttlecock game across the heavens. For three days the west would send in roaring rain-gales, and then, as "February Fill-Dyke's" excess must be balanced by March's "Peck of dust, worth a King's Ransom," the east, with what seemed staunchless breath, would hiss cold dry gritty air—no doubt necessary for the water-logged land but "neither good for man or beast."

Miss Throcton, with her feet on the fender and her fingers grooming Tissaphernes fur (that stood electrically on end in the dry wind and became tangled and matted in the wet), thought she should enquire about the most vulnerable of the Cathedral healths. She. had heard nothing through the distaff side of Close communications. Her brother, however, seemed without concern or interest. "It would take more than a whirlwind straight from the mouth of Boreas to budge our leading limpet from his carved rock."

Then sitting back in his chair he smiled easily, "For that matter for all we know his Very Reverence may have already breathed his last but by his imperceptible dying have cheated decay and turned into a fossil, not a cadaver. Is a funeral necessary for a fossil? A nice point for Cathedral casuists to follow up, when they have settled die moot question When is a stall vacant?

When the actual stall has been unoccupied for a number of years, when the occupant has lost two and a half out of the five senses (or to be generous, three), or when the sanitary authorities demand that his residence shall not be used as a sarcophagus?"

Her "My dear should we mock at their grief?" only brought the reply-raillery, "Why, I'm congratulating the family on their possible luck! The Arabians say of some of their Sufi Sheiks that they don't decay or indeed die when they stop breathing. They pass into a potent state of what I suppose our lively little leach would call catalepsy perpetualis. And they are treasured, in the diadems of sanctity, as gems of the first water, though dry, of course, as the dust. What a jest if our Church of England, with its most malleable motto, 'All things to all men' should here produce on its own an imperishable Dean—to be shown on pilgrimage days like the head of Siena's Catherine, I wonder how our Anglo-Catholic wing would take such a queer answer from heaven to their wish for miracles and relics!"

Again Miss Throcton attempted to check his exuberance. She found the subject macabre and even more disquieting the jaunti-ness of his humour. A word taught her by her Scotch nurse came back into her mind, "Fey," those irrational and unsteady high spirits which attack the mind when it is approaching a crisis in its fate.

He was checked by the slight offence he felt at her mild censure, and retired to his study.

When they met again he was his normal self, neither friendly nor unfriendly but aloof, treating her as another species which shares one's-house but not one's thought. They were, it appeared, back at their normally distantly tepid relationship. It seemed, the more she thought of it, that her disquietude had been as groundless as the other extravagance had been any hopes of a growing intimacy and confidence.

As it happened everything was favouring the secrecy the Canon desired: Even to the point that the Bishop came back into Residence and the Archdeacon was away again on his widespread diocesan duties: Even to the point that the Bishop asked the Canon over to tea at the Palace to discuss the Easter services. And these ever finer points came to the needle-fineness of perfect opportunity—of an opening as natural as it was inviting.

When they had closed their business session and decided what should be yielded to the demands of the Ritualists in way of new vestments and what retained for the Evangelical Lows in regard to postures and attitudes, the Bishop relaxed to a cigar. While drawing on it quietly he remarked with that easy geniality and apparent frankness that his critics allowed was his chief asset, "I'd like to say, Canon, that you took that disappointment very well" He looked through a fine wreath of blue smoke at his visitor as an intelligent octopus might view, through the skein of sepia, a diver rather uncertain of his ground. "No, don't try to deny it: I felt it in my way as much as you—that disappointment about the Archdeaconry, well, very well. I am a Father-in-God as well, thank God, as just the rather weary administrator of too much patronage. And I did for a moment fear that the— the postponement of preferment might cast a cloud of embitter-ment over the bright quiet field of pure scholarship. But it didn't, and I'm grateful to God that your natural resilience, your pure interest in learning and your religious exercises have stood you in good stead."

To this statement both bland and wary, for under its assumptions there was surely a question which he was meant to answer with reassurance, the Canon presented a mien of dutiful acquiescence. He was ready to make his submission. But his mind had ceased following the sermonic flow when it had turned into its peroration. For it had been arrested by the Bishop's hesitation over one word in the easy run of the practised verbiage, the word "postponement." All this talk, yes without a doubt it was to sound out its hearer as to whether he was suitable to be put forward for the Deanery. If he was still sulking, why then no doubt he would be passed over just to teach him not to flout authority. It was clear that the Bishop would not place closer to himself any man that would not second that geniality and general adaptability which had brought him his preferment and might raise him still higher. Clearly everything now turned on his making exactly the right impression at this moment.

He looked up with quite a convincing assumption of frankness. 'Thank you, My Lord, for your counselling. I see that your eye is over your sub-shepherds just as much as over the more general and larger flock. I'll confess—and you have shown that denial would be of no use confronted with your diagnosis—that I was disappointed, wrongly disappointed. I see now that you were not only wise to the diocese but kind to me—a gracious and statesmanlike blend, if I may say so. I would not have been suited to the duties of maintenance of structure and inspectign of parochial administration: that work would have suffered and my own work, which is my vocation, that would have lost too. May I then, as a dutiful son, thank you for your wisdom and kindliness not only to all of us in this our big family of the diocese, but to me in particular."

He looked up. The large kindly face of the Bishop (who like the aging Caesar liked to have men about him "that are fat, sleek-headed men and such as sleep o j nights"— and sometimes even to take a nap after lunch), that handsome round of wide brow and large smooth jowl, beamed like a mild September sun. It was a real relief to his soul, which remained honest enough because of its limited objectives and moderate dreams, a real relief that once more he might feel the Precincts were free of malice and envy. Maybe not a high ideal, but alas, as he very well knew, harder to achieve than could be imagined by those

who lived far from what seemed the easy sleep of Cathedral closes.

Indeed he was so pleased that he actually went further than he intended. He, too, had been aware that he hesitated over the word "postponement." He could have said "passing over" or simply "loss." But those words had about them a flavor of finality that might depress his hearer. He was truly a kind if adroit man. And now that his wishes had been fallen in with by the man who had undoubtedly suffered, now that the matter was closed and at last taken well, surely would it not be safe to give him a little encouragement—in a most general way? Throcton knew as well as himself that the actual gift of the Deanery was in the hands of the Crown, Yes, it was a position where something was to be gained and nothing lost by good wishes that higher authorities in the end could overrule. And now that the quiet, proud man opposite him seems to have been relaxed by the hope, it might be wise to take the opportunity to learn something of his outlook and work. After all, for all one knew, he might very well be the next Dean, the political situation being what it was.

"How goes the work?"

"I believe that there is increasing evidence that Arabic studies are being perceived as an essential correlate to Hebrew—indeed as much as Hebrew is to Greek."

"I expect you are right. Indeed when last in London at the Athenaeum I had the pleasure of passing the time of day with the Prime Minister. And of course I need not tell you that, as he is of a stock which has come within the Fold, he has hopes that if we will strive to understand them better, the 'Jews, Turks, Infidels and Heretics'—as we shall soon be praying in the Good Friday Collect—may yet be brought within the one Flock."

Canon Throcton now felt that he might safely, with advantage and indeed ought out of courtesy, take the opening that was being offered. He could now be more particular as to his studies and show their relevance to religion. Now, with a clear conscience he could remove the least fear from the Bishop's mind that, should he advocate him as Dean, there might be a peril of paganism. An explanation that he would have despised himself for offering to Simpkins and indeed would have denied to the Bishop a few months ago when he felt that Bendwell had betrayed his rightful hopes, now could be offered to aid his prospects and yet not to lower by a jot his amour-propre. Indeed what he would now say might be passed on directly to the real Fount of all Preferment, the Head of the Government.

"The local Fold and the world-wide Flock, yes, my particular studies have often kept that key passage from the Theological Gospel before my mind. Again and again I am impressed with the extent that Christian thought permeated Islam."

"I once read that at an early age Mohammed himself was instructed by a Nestorian monk?"

"Yes, I believe it to be true. And we must remember that Nestorianism was cast out of the Church because of its Protestant refusal to consent to that new and temerarious title for the Virgin, Mother of God."

This, too, was well said. The Bishop, like most of his colleagues, was being given more trouble by his Anglo-Catholic clergy than by any other of those sectional semi-schisms which the Establishment combined and contained, more through a common endowment than by a common obedience. Bishop Bendwell therefore continued interested, more interested than he had expected, in what he was hearing,

"But, surely, as our German theologians say (and then those Tubingen rascals do the very thing), Mohammed emptied out the baby with the bath?"

"True, My Lord, true. But, to go to true culture for a motto— Eocpellas Naturam a furco tamen usque recurret. The saints of Islam, and such I can't deny many of their Sufis seem in the

past to have been, these men appear to have restored many practices which would go far to redeem the religion of the Koran from its original superficiality—or at least aridity."

"Oh, I thought Sufi was just the accurate name for Dancing Dervish—fanatics like the Holy Rollers of the Commonwealth times and the Revivalistic frenzies among the Nonconformists now?"

"It is a natural mistake. I understand that the many orders of devout Sufis have—as in the Church of Rome and, for that matter, as you have said in our Protestant sects—fringes of 'enthusiasts.' But the main bodies deserve attention and, as far as I know, respect."

There was a knock at the door and it was opened by the Chaplain.

"Oh, come in Halliwell. Canon Throcton is bringing me up to date in his advanced studies."

The Bishop felt it would be no harm that his Secretary should act as a second listener now that there seemed an opportunity of getting the Canon to explain his position unguardedly. If the Deanery should become his, then young Halliwell could answer any such questions about the new incumbent's views on theological matters. It would be better than that the Bishop should have to say anything in his defence.

"Take a chair." Then turning to the Canon, "You won't mind my Chaplain being in on this informal instruction, will you? Remarkable, what you were saying in regard to the Islam devotees and their widening of their rather narrow religion."

The Canon was certainly not displeased to have an audience, if only of two, if the two were the Bishop and his confidant. "Yes, remarkable, because, though Islam is so severe, yes in a way such an obvious religion, these Sufis have added to it a depth which one might suppose to spring from a profounder metaphysic."

"Have they elaborate rites on their own?"

"To the best of my knowledge, no. Their liturgy, as far as I have read, strictly conforms with the Koran. It is their type or quality of what I suppose would be called meditation or contemplation that is said to be the reason for their spiritual prestige."

'Weren't the greatest Persian poets nearly all mystics?"

It was HalliwelTs question, and, pleased that the junior was showing interest on his own, and not merely attention by command, the Canon agreed with some cordiality.

"Yes, I believe it is an exception for any of the authors of the great classic period of Persian verse not to be a Sufi. Indeed I owe such knowledge of Persian as I have acquired to the fascination of this poetry. Even as an outsider—and I certainly have as little claim or wish to be a mystic as to be a Persian—I do not find it hard to understand the Persian pride in this work. They assert that it is the equal of any poetry in the world."

Then with a slight hesitation, "Of course it is strange to take as the theme of lyric love, devotion to Deity, and to such an unqualified Transcendence as Islam preaches." He paused again and then added, "And surely even odder to use the simile of intoxication to describe the state of mind such . , . such prayer produces!"

He felt that he might have wandered too far into speculation, lured by the wish to make his case, to show the religiosity of his subjects and at the same time his interest, informed but restrained. It was awkward even to mention in comparative privacy such emotionalism even when, as in the case he had been discussing, it gave rise to a literature that for polish and power could compare with the Greek—and surpass the Hebrew—and rose from men who were evidently, apart from the extravagance of their devotion, of the highest respectability, intelligence and most careful theological severity. Partly to deflect the subject and possibly even to gain support, he turned and asked the

appreciative Chaplain, "How did you happen to hear of these very neglected devotees?"

"Oh, my father was, when at Cambridge, inspired by the example of Henry Martin. After that pioneer in the mission field had died my father went out over his tracks. And, like Martin before him, he was surprised when he reached Persia to find these strange but to him really quite sympathetic people. He used to say to me that he thought they must be more like what the first generation of Quakers seem to have been, and he'd quote Robert Barclay, the early Quaker apologist, about there being no true Quakerism without quaking."

Both the elder men looked at the younger who now also felt the need to take refuge in a question. "Mr. Canon, have you come across—I suppose you must have, in your reading—the, the . . . well, what I suppose we'd call the fairy-tale side of their records?"

"Of course, of course! Spiritual, and indeed scholarly prestige —we see it from our own mediaeval record—among an uneducated people, always is refracted as thaumaturgy. The white light of Reason, falling on the scored surface of the popular mind, breaks into iridescence. Besides, as I've said, they were themselves often superb poets and the rainbow metaphor of the lord of language can only be translated by the vulgar into the materialism, both gross and fantastic, of 'the pot of gold.'"

"But, but my father used to tell me of some very odd things he himself had seen. Once in Pars, an ancient and now largely ruined town—I believe Persia is named after it ... ?"

The Canon allowed that. But it was dear that his guard was now mounted.

'Well, three Sufis, with whom he used to meet on Fridays for silent prayer . . . they knew, he was sure, a great deal. . . . He said the atmosphere was very remarkable at such times. One day

be had a fever, a troublesome one. It went while he was at the meeting. . . ."

"Such fevers are notoriously undulant."

"Yes, but they laid their hands on him."

"The commonest—I had almost said the vulgarest—way of impressing anyone." The Canon tried a little to soften his sceptical scorn with a smile. The contempt, however, only roused his unsuccessful informant to continue.

"But the next Friday, or the one after next, a beggar came in. They never latched the door of their unfurnished meeting room. He had a horrible sore on his shin. He did not ask for money or food, but settled down quietly behind them as they sat in their little square. As the group broke up, the leader leant back, quietly and quickly putting out his hand behind my father who was seated next him, and my father, glancing, saw the Sufi's first two fingers touch the sore's centre. He was shocked, and then grateful that as they only bowed when parting he did not have to touch that hand. Then, next Friday, the same tramp walked in and sat with the group. As he sat cross-legged my father saw the lesion was completely healed."

"Typical story, if I may say so. I could from my authors quote you a score such and a hundred even more entertainingly impossible."

"But would that actually prove that HalliwelTs father was completely deceived?"

It was the Bishop driven to defend logic, not psychical research. Then, seeing the Canon bridle and hearing him utter, "Post hoc, propter hoc —the very gateway of superstition," he tried to soothe. After all, the subject was the Canon's speciality. So retreating to his home-base and putting the accommodating flavour of a question into the reference, he remarked, "After all, as far as we can judge, St. James and his church apparently believed, didn't they, in the laying on of hands?"

"My Lord," the Canon suddenly challenged, "you have had, these last Lenten weeks, to add the round of Confirmation Services to your other heavy duties. May I ask (and I do so for instruction), is the additional labour of the administration of the rite evidentially worth your time and fatigue?"

The Bishop felt that with Halliwell present, this small conference, as it had become, demanded that he should answer unequivocally. How could he in honesty sound the Canon unless he himself would be sounded because he was sound? "The Greek Orthodox Church permits all priests to practice the confirma-tional laying on of hands. I do not see why we should not. As it is, you are right, it puts a strain on the Diocesan."

Halliwell rose, evidently aware that his master might soon be put in a difficult position. Loyalty to his father and his present Father-in-God moved him to break up the small meeting. "My Lord, might I—as soon as you and Canon Throcton have finished your business—see you about some small diurnal questions?"

He withdrew and as he did so the Bishop rose. "Very well, Canon. Thank you for this interesting discussion. I feel I am now up to date in your researches and can share, in general outlook, your point of view. And thank you for your help. Whatever we may personally think of the physiological aspect of the charismata—and I think that we of the Church of England are permitted a certain very considerable latitude of view—we know that the sharp points of ritual are not getting any easier to accommodate. Easter is always a busy time and I own the Lenten Confirmation visits—having to be discharged and intercalated with one's presence at Westminster—have taken it out of me considerably. And Easter always gives us a staff depleted by some form of catarrh. Catarrh and choirs have naturally an affinity. And the Dean really compelling me to put his office into commission, I have to look upon you as a kind of temporary and de facto Dean, don't I? I am sorry to encroach on your work...."