The Black Fox A Novel Of The Seventies (4 page)

ing a rubbish-Leap. And now well be ruled by an Archdeacon ignorant or contemptuous of the very rudiments of hygiene. If I leave this garbage in the waste-paper basket no doubt he would cite me before the Chapter for insubordination ... trespass on his rights and the dignity of his office."

.4

BACK IN HIS ALMOST STATELY RESIDENCE, KEPT THROUGHOUT AS

though it were a museum-piece, his disgust abated. As he hung up his overcoat in the hall he took from the pocket, the barber-and-laundry debris without a return of the odd, fascinated revulsion, and going up to his study threw the clotted bottle, the two twists of stained paper and the handkerchief into his big waste-paper basket. He left the room. On returning he lifted his hands to his face. The inspection was evidently satisfying. The bell rang for tea and his sister as she handed it to him in her sitting < room where he generally took it, noticed that he seemed less tense than for some considerable time. He even began to speak to her about his current work.

"I think during the rest of the winter I might settle down to a tractate on the Arabian Globe-trotter. Our parvenue Protestantism assumes that till the Industrial Revolution made Anglican canons mobile, ecclesiastical scholars—save for such charming eccentrics as the eighteenth century Bishop of Bristol—had never travelled just for geographical curiosity and not under the impetus of theological invasion."

Perhaps, as in post-hypnotic patients, the remark was a ra-

tionalization to explain or excuse to the patient his irrational subconscious urge, perhaps the source of the drive lay elsewhere. In any case when Canon Throcton regained his study he certainly tool the first step toward fulfilling his word. He went over to the book-case, shelf and volume where he had found relief when, that August night, his peace of mind had been so disturbed by what the unnatural stillness had allowed him to overhear. Indeed Canon Throcton was so careful to resume his reading that he first looked up the page reference he had made that inauspicious night and then sure that he had found the place settled down. That was the precise word. Like most accurate scholars he was never a rapid reader. Even so it was noteworthy that a quarter of an hour had been tolled off by his desk clock, and loudly confirmed by the Westminster Chime in the South-west Tower of the Cathedral, and yet he had not turned the page. It was clear that he was repeatedly reading the same passage as though he would learn it by heart.

At last he began to smile, the smile broke into a laugh and the laugh set him talking again to himself,

< WeU I could at least do something to buttress my decayed

orthodoxy by rebutting the Arabian! And to do so I must not be

. content with words but with acts. I must prove him wrong by

experiment. And to experiment I have at hand the required

materia medical"

He was silent for a moment after that. The only sound in the room, beyond the quiet lapping of the fire and the discrete ticking of the clock, was the small rasp as tentatively the flattened fingers of his left hand stroked his chin rough with its evening stubble. Then the laugh broke out again; but this time more peremptorily, defiantly almost.

'Well, heavens above, if really I am so absurd as to think such a farcical pretence of an experiment could have any result but a negative one, surely that shows that I ought to perform it

—just to establish beyond any possibility of doubt that it is the grotesque nonsense that I know it to be. If you wale up in the night because youVe dreamt too vividly that a burglar is under the bed and your one wish is to get to sleep—well a sensible man doesn't waste time trying to argue his sleepy mind into sense—and so driving away sleep or simply bringing on again the nightmare. He settles his silliness in the quickest, most sensible way by looking under the bed and making the fool in him see that there isn't any concealed robber waiting for him to doze off again!"

The words evidently convinced him he should take some similar action. For he rose quickly and swung round, as though not quite certain that he was alone. As he stood he held the big volume against his chest, keeping his place with a finger thrust between the pages. For a moment he looked like one of those melodramatic Protestant illustrations of The Reformer Surprised and called 'The Forbidden Bible." Then, putting the book on a small lectern by his chair, he bent down by his big desk and lifting the waste-paper basket, stood it on the seat from which he had just risen. His movements now were quick and methodical and his words confirmed that his mind was as clear.

"It's no use fooling with foolishness. The shortest way with a sham is to take a superstition at its own pretence. So you expose it, as you best expose a liar, not by laughing at him but by asking him quietly, seriously to perform what he boasts. If I am to do this I must do it properly."

It was his usual whisper but delivered succinctly as some one speaks who, with a clear insight as to how a muddle may be cleared up, rearranges the data in right order. And, as though suiting the action to the word, at each sentence's close, he brought out and laid in line, on the small fire-side table that flanked his chair's other arm, the waste-paper basket's upper

layer. There was no longer a trace of his former revulsion. He was tidying up a small nuisance—such as a spilt ink bottle or an overset pin tray. He turned to some inbuilt drawers which formed the base of the bookcases that panelled the walls. On coming back he was carrying a candle and some matches, remarking as he returned, "If I am really sane then I am only accountable for five foolishly wasted minutes. If, on the other hand, I am under more strain than I recognize, I am sure I do not know a better way of relaxing. When young, and before our frocks became so long that we feared any gesture that might question our decorum, we used to 'blow off steam' with abuse. As we are too pompous to be let have that sensible relief —well, we must have it out here in private."

He went over to the fire and raked it. It glowed cheerily. But the bed of incandescent coals was too well set to blaze, as under provocation a well-nourished elderly man smiles an easy after-dinner smile, when a younger would flash with resentment.

The Canon stopped his stoking for a moment to listen. Then he stood up, pulling, as he did so, at the long-tassled bell-cord that hung down by the mantel-piece. After that he went over to the door and waited. When he heard the maid's footsteps stop in the passage outside, he spoke emphatically enough so that he did not have to open to convey his message,

"Tell your mistress that I shall not be down to dinner."

His autocracy was such that not only were no questions asked, no alternatives—such as a tray in his room—were ever offered even by the vicereine. He could hear the accentless "Very well, Sir" and the retreating steps. As they died away he quietly locked the door. Then, returning to the fire-place, he scanned the rubbish lying on the small table. Released by the warmth of the newly-roused fire, the whiff of Macassar oil rose to his nostrils. A flare of rage leaped up in him.

"That oily-faced hypocrite—that ..." A spasm contorted his

face, changing in a moment to a wry smile. "If I get so exercised it shows that I need to exorcise myself! An auto-da-fe, an act of faith, as the Spaniards euphemistically called cremating the living, well I'll perform it with my occasions of outrage. Now for what my Arabian anthropologist has to tell us."

He began to read aloud in a low, rapid voice from The Travels of Tbn Bamuna.

When I was travelling on the inner borders of Cathay, I found much witchcraft, or, should I not say, the fear of it, lying like a fog over the countryside. Every village lived in terror of wizardry. All these distant parts being still at the very frontiers of the Faith, where, on the boundaries of the habitable world, and not far from the final ocean, the Power of Evil makes its last stand against the dawn of Allah's Light, the spear of Islam is piercing but, as yet, its sword does not wholly rend the shroud of Iblis. I confess that when in the cultured world of the Prophet, where the clear light of the Koran shines, I had often doubted whether such things could be true. And even when among these depraved creatures, I still thought that all they said was but the foul imaginings—the horrid wish of their darkened hearts. Falling in, however, with a learned Sufi, who had lived for years, wandering in these deserts for the sake of the Faith and the honour of his Order, he assured me that the local magicians, called Bon, commanded powers of evil now by Allah's Mercy unknown to us. They commonly and as a matter of professional traffic, practised the overthrow of their enemies, and indeed the destruction of those whom they accept payment to molest, even to death, through their skill in sorcery,

"Of course that's sheer nonsense." The Canon paused to comment on his text. "Childish superstition as far as hurting any other person is concerned. But I see it could well be quite a sound, if rather a quaint therapeutic method, for destroying a grotesquely repulsive and compulsive idea that has rooted itself in one's own mind. Like as not, our poor verbal-inspirationist Sufi and our charmingly credulous Ibn Barnuna mistook, when

studying the superstitious and despised Chinese, an advanced psychology for an atavistic magic."

He continued to read aloud to himself,

The general method whereby they compass their evil end is through a process of two parts. They first collect such personal fragments of their intended victim as they may secure. If they may not obtain his blood, then sputum or a seminal or menstruous cloth is much favoured. Should even these be lacking, they will make shift with skin, hair, nail-parings, or indeed any object that has been about the person of their prey. Then they wait until the moon is gibbous. . . .

The reader smiled, remarking, 'Well, I'm so ignorant of astronomy or astrology that I can't answer at this moment as to where or in what phase Selene may be. Indeed am I quite sure that I could say off-hand what gibbous actually indicates—the waning moon, I rather think? Anyhow let's get over our cathartic play. It certainly won't depend for its efficacy on precise knowledge of the lunar calendar."

The first night that this is so, they take their spoil, dividing it carefully into two parts. For I should say that their theory being that the citadel of man must be assaulted warily, because God has strongly defended the seat of the soul, their blind ingenuity leads them to try—and I fear full often to obtain—a first purchase on the exterior parts of their victim. They therefore put in one division anything that may have to do, or has had to do, with the external area of the body. This is generally—for it is obviously most easy to secure—some hair. And they give another reason for this, which I will set down later, and which has reason, were we to allow—as I must—the method in their madness. As I have said, then, they place in one parcel every hair they have secured and any skin, from the scalp especially.

Canon Throcton glanced sideways, touched gingerly the ranged debris, putting on one side the soiled handkerchief.

While doing this his voice hardly checked in its flow of commentary:

They take this wisp and with the aid of some aromatic gum— my informant told me that he himself had generally found them using (for which they paid highly, as they well might, considering the distance it had to he brought) the oil shipped from the city of Macassar, out of the spice island of Celebes. I say, with this gum or oil they will make out of the hair, nail-parings and such skin as they may have secured, a small object, a model, rough and miniature, of the human head. This made, they burn it, claiming that thereafter, as the moon begins to wane, so the hair of their enemy—or victim—will fall, and his scalp will become not only naked, but afflicted. Further, they assert—as above I said I would show at this point—that this, though seeming a trivial punishment, and a surface affliction, is a preliminary and essential step in their larger and implacable design. For, by destroying the hair, the vital strength of man is assaulted. And the power of the mind—which it is their ultimate intention to overthrow (and thus lead their victim to destroy himself, so flinging his own soul into hell) cannot be struck at, until the vital strength has been undermined and sapped.

Canon Throcton ceased for a moment his recital, in order that, smiling to himself, he might whisper, 'We may be thankful that our Church has retained for us so much folk-lore through its fancy that the Old Testament is a divinely inspired collection. Why, it cannot be so many days ago that our liturgy was recalling that queer sun-myth of Samson shorn of his hirsute halo. I'm sure I recall it—a pretty illustrative coincidence."

He shrugged his shoulders, as though already feeling more at'his ease, "Yes," he added, a rising note of content coming into his voice, "Yes, one knows enough of superstition to know that particular mistake. We are now on the firm and open ground of manifestly false analogy. At this pace we shall be well out of the wood by bedtime. This now is certainly nothing but subjective symbolic therapy: destroy the object associated with your

irrational, but not wholly unhygienic disgust, and you will find the clear, male reason once again easy master of the female, vapourish emotions."

He turned at that. Leaving the "book, he snatched up the combings and taking the candle flung it, the clot of hairs and the contents of the small bottle onto the glowing bed of coals. For a moment the red flush, chilled by the new objects, went an angrier, deeper tinge. Then, with a sudden sputter, the candle-wax melted, the oil caught fire, the hair sizzled and flamed. A dense mass of oily smoke poured up. At that moment a cold draft, perhaps set in motion by throwing the objects on the fire, came down the chimney. All the soot-charged fumes poured out into the room, an impenetrable, whirling fog.

The smoke-pall, striking the ceiling, spread, and began to curl down over the whole room. It sank to the level of his eyes and stung them till he could hardly keep them open, stung also his nose and throat so that he began to gasp and cough. The green-shaded colza-oil reading lamp and the low red light of the fire—the only lights in the room—glowered through the murk, like the port and starboard lanterns of a ship that suddenly looms ahead, running you down in a fog. Feeling almost panic, and having to choke back the impulse to shout