The Black Fox A Novel Of The Seventies (31 page)

It did not stir at the sound of his voice nor did he stir to come near it. He bent his eyes to go on reading. After a little while, when he put out his hand to touch the bell, he saw that the hearth rug was vacant.

This absence continued for some three days. Then, though the snuffling did not come at his bedroom door again, he saw the creature in most of the other rooms and in fairly good light. It appeared last of all in his bedroom. He had gone to sleep but woke up, he judged, before long. The waking was of that sort that he felt not the slightest drowsiness left in him. On the contrary, he was restless and, acting on the impulse, got out of bed. The moonlight was coming through a chink left by the curtains not being close drawn. He went across and looked out at the night. The moon was still fairly high—a partial moon, the incomplete disk made by sections of two convex curves. He looked at it for some time, as though he were trying to recall something. Then he drew the curtains and turned back toward the bed.

The room naturally now appeared to him completely dark. But knowing his position and that the dressing table was near him, he put out his hand. A box of matches was kept there to light the two candles which stood each side of the big mirror. His hand found it and he struck a light He saw himself looming in the long glass and behind his white figure the white glimmering surface of the bed with the sheets thrown back. On this vague whiteness there was a small dark body.

He whirled round so fast that the match in the draft went out. He felt behind him—he did not dare to turn his back—found the matches again, succeeded in lighting one and this time looked directly at the bed. There was nothing there but the rumpled sheeting. Carefully he turned again and lit one of the candles, peering into the glass as soon as he had done so. Again the bed was obviously vacant. He did not dare, though, to go to it. He lit the other candle, went to the wardrobe, took out a heavy dressing gown and sat himself in an easy chair. The candles burnt down to the socket but at last the dawn came. He had not dozed for a moment. He drew the curtains and looked out at the grey morning. Then he looked in the mirror at a face far more grey and dismal, a face that became almost ghastly as he involuntarily looked over the mirror-image's shoulder and scanned the empty bed. He brought himself to go and look directly at the sheets. No, there was nothing there, no trace, imprint, not a hair. He sat down utterly exhausted after that, with his eyes closed.

At last he said one word, "Laetitia!"

THE DEAN LEFT HIS HOUSE AS SOON AS HE HAD MADE A PRETENCE of breakfasting and conducting family prayers. Outside he started in the direction of the Palace but after a few steps he changed his course and went toward the town. He met Dr. Wilkes just leaving on an early round and asked him if he could spare him a minute. Still he needed the Doctor to begin the interview for him.

"Mr. Dean, remember the old advice a stitch in time—to which I would tack on a later saw, Better a little now than nothing soon!"

"You think I have become tired again so soon!"

"This is to be expected. You have been through much." He added as complimentary enquiry, "Don't you find that those who can best show least must feel most? No one can practise the care and cure of bodies and not realize how the mind takes it out of the body."

"But"—the, Dean disregarded the personal reference "—the Dean's task is not that of a rest-taker whether lying abed in the Deanery or 'lying abroad' as the old phrase was about ambassadors."

The minimal joke eased a little their exchange. The Doctor was able to press his point.

"I don't think you realize how tired you were last time and therefore how remarkable was your resilience and the benefit you won from such short change. If I may say so, sooner or later a man of flawless health is confronted with a problem weaker humanity is prepared for by a lifetime of intermittent ailing. There comes a day when the best of us discover that we must give ourselves more time, must wait while Nature makes necessary time-taking replacements. As I say, this knowledge tends to come suddenly on the outstandingly hale. An expected external shock precipitates—"

He left the sentence uncompleted. He felt genuinely sorry for this stiff, fineminded, withered-hearted man, now left in that complete loneliness that in the end envelopes those who have only permitted as much intimacy and affection as they can use for their own convenience.

'Well, that's my advice. And I'm making it for the Close as much as for yourself."

He felt a certain pleasure in being able to advise one so aloof, the genial patronage of the expert called in to speak as a special witness.

'We're proud of you, Mr. Dean, and we want our scholar who gives this quiet little place its prestige, to live out finely his full allotment of years. I think you will agree with me that scholarship is a fruit which, like the fig, depends on a late warm summer."

A friendliness which certainly had in it an assumption of at least temporary equality, and would certainly at any other time have been resented, now seemed almost welcome.

"Well"—and the Dean tried to keep his tone at the same officially unanxious level—"today you of the lancet and the bottle speak with the authority once possessed by the pastoral staff and the mitre. I'll think it over."

"He d better," Dr. Wilkes said aloud as he watched the tall black figure stride back toward the Cathedral gate. 'That walk is too rigid. He's brittle. If he wasn't a Dean you'd think that masked nervous hurry showed a bad conscience. Well he may blame himself for his sister s death and maybe has some right Steady selfishness probably accounts for more murders—by causing a kind of anaemia of the spirit in the kindly—than does arsenic."

The Dean, however, at that moment was thinking what he would say to the Bishop. Arriving at the Palace he was shown up at once. Bishop Bendwell was at work at his desk with young Halliwell who withdrew. The Bishop rose and put his hand on his visitor's shoulder.

"Sit down, sit down."

Then having done so himself he looked with his head on one side at the figure which certainly showed a slackness that was as uncharacteristic as it was significant. And with a snap-judgment speed that was as uncharacteristic of himself the Bishop found himself saying, "Easter will give us time this year. Do you know, just before we get into Lent, it strikes me it would be wise for you to run off and have a week at Cambridge or Brighton if it suits you better. Cambridge did you so much good last year, and now with this sorrow—yes, I advise it as your spiritual physician."

"Well." There was a faint relief in the voice. "Do you know that was the very question on which I came to consult you. The man of the body has just pressed the same counsel on me."

"Out of the mouth of two witnesses shall everything be established." The Bishop quoted with kindly unction, then rose. Tm as busy as a banker at a quarter day. You get off as soon as you can and be back as fresh as you were on your last return so we

can get through Lent and Easter all right. You know there can be no help from me once the Confirmations begin!"

Halliwell, hearing the visitor go, returned.

"Well," remarked his master, not looking up as the assistant resumed his place, "at least I didn't waste any time with the inevitable and on the irrelevant. It's nerves of course. He's obviously physically as strong, and probably as temperamentally touchy, as one of his Arab horses. A good deal of remorse, no doubt, and aperture of expression atrophied. My oculist told me if the tear duct is blocked and you want to weep it may be quite painful. You have no comment? Well discretion, Anglicanism, pet virtue, has been called the silent hyphen between Charity and Truth."

He smiled now, looking across at his reseated Chaplain. The smile, however, was reflected only as far as the mouth's courtesy-contour. It did not rise to the eyes. They were questioning. The Bishop did not wish to disturb his deeper doubts with questions of obscure motive. He turned to some patronage requests—the psychology there was simple enough.

The Dean went back to the Deanery, not comforted, but (the penultimate word the Bishop had used came sounding aptly into his mind) confirmed. The mail was now laid out. He had forgotten to look at it before he had left after breakfast. He ran it through his hands as he stood in the hall—it was composed of local messages, most of them no doubt conventional condolences. Ah, there was one with the Cambridge postmark. He looked round the hall for a moment before tearing it open. No, he was quite alone in the empty stone place. He glanced again at the handwriting. Of course! How absent-minded he was becoming: it was McPhail's. It ran:

MY DEAR DEAN:

I should have written to you before. But, as I was able, after those days last summer, to judge to some extent the degree of your

bereavement, I felt I should wait until, as the Scriptures say, the days of mourning were accomplished. Please do not think that I am suggesting that a sorrow such as yours will disappear with time. My intention only is to say that it will as we know clarify into an acceptance. And, though in the first days there is a numbing shock, after that—if I may put it so—the voice of a friend and his company need not prove that "vinegar upon nitre" of which the Book of Proverbs speaks.

I am writing this letter, then, for two reasons: First, to express to you the deepest sympathy for the loss of so fine and indeed, I would say advisedly, so noble a character and companion as Miss Throcton (for though I had the pleasure of but a short acquaintance, I had the opportunity of forming the highest estimate of her worth); and, secondly, to ask whether you would not consider coming to stay with me for a few days. It may be that we might turn our minds to those studies which because they deal with the great insights of philosophy need not, and I believe should not, be considered as distractions from sorrow but rather as true anodynes for grief.

"That which is said three times should not be neglected," was all that the Dean remarked as he put the letter in his pocket. 

He acted, however, with dispatch. A note to the Doctor and another to the Bishop were written, while his orders for his clothes to be packed and a fly engaged to take him to the afternoon express were being carried out. He had still some hours so he went over to the Cathedral to speak to the Canon-in-Resi-dence. He also had a few words with the minor canon who was on duty and with the verger. The big Gothic machine was turning over its cogs efficiently enough, slow but sure, if left to its own pace, like the monster late-medieval clock, whose giant pendulum swung with a soothing cluck to and fro on the west wall of the north transept, winnowing away the spirits of men and letting the 'gross grain of their bodies fall under the dated slabs that paved the Cathedral floor. As he turned from watching it, where he had paused, crossing die nave to return to the house, young Halliwell came up to him.

''Excuse me, Mr. Dean. I wanted personally to offer you my condolences. I delayed writing. I thought I might speak to you. Miss Throcton was. . . "

"Thank you, thank you."

The Dean did not offer his hand, and made the slight bow of acknowledgement an opportunity to withdraw.

"I would like . . ." Halliwell was continuing, but already the elder man had turned his back, his dark figure moving into the shadows of the north aisle. The younger sighed.

But as far as the Dean could see, and he kept his eyes fixed on the immediate agenda, everything was going with speed and directness, with the kind of rapid foregone completeness that marks a dream in its final stages. Time and again as he walked about making his final dispositions he would glance sharply behind him, but nothing caught his eye. Yet his mood appeared not to be one of relief. His face showed a settled urgency, that was all. Mrs. Binyon, who was motherly and felt herself now to be really the matron of the house, knocked and came in when he had sent his lunch out nearly untasted. He would excuse her, she was sure, but might she put up a little something for him in the train, seeing that he had eaten hardly a crumb all day and it would be late ere the train came to Cambridge? And, might she be so bold, but would he rest a little as there was yet the best part of an hour before the fly would be round?

Her concern irritated him sufficiently that he could not resist quoting the reply of the Lord Protector Cromwell, as he lay waiting for his call and the attendants asked him to eat something or sleep a little, "I am concerned neither to eat nor to sleep but to be gone."

She looked at him a little queerly at that and then asked might she know when he would be back.

"Certainly, certainly," he said, but added nothing, so that she had to leave in the confidence that he would not come back and she "with not a thing in the house."

When he arrived late that night at Cambridge, Dr. McPhail was on the platform. They drove in silence to the Don's house, said no more than was necessary when they were there—the Dean refused refreshment—and parted to their rooms.

Again the night, for the Dean, was uninterrupted. He came down to breakfast and Dr. McPhail, to make conversation, pointed out to him the birds that came round the French window to be fed. They took out crumbs to them and were feeding them when Dr. McPhail remarked,

"The cats never grant an armistice. Birds have to snatch their livings, poor little febrile things. Look there, in the damp earth of that bed, is the mark of a prowler. I'm afraid I've often, by this attempt at charity, given one of those carnivores a meal he or she would never otherwise have had."

He pointed down to the small paw-prints that came close up to the threshold window-ledge. The Dean looked.

"Those aren't . . ," he began, then went on, "I think I'll go inside. It's a little chilly. May I help myself to another cup of coffee?"

His host waited till he had finished it and then left him, suggesting as he reached the door, "Shall we meet in half an hour in my study? I have a few papers I would like to go over with you."

The Dean nodded, waited till the door was closed, then went over to the French window. He made no attempt to reopen it but he peered down through the glass for some time.