Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 2

The Fox-3

‘Oh, well,’ broke in March, ‘we don’t believe in living for nothing but work.’

‘Don’t you?’ he answered. And again the quick young laugh came over his face. He kept his eyes steadily on the obscure woman in the corner.

‘But what will you do when you’ve used up all your capital?’ he said.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ answered March laconically. ‘Hire ourselves out for land-workers, I suppose.’

‘Yes, but there won’t be any demand for women land-workers now the war’s over,’ said the youth.

‘Oh, we’ll see. We shall hold on a bit longer yet,’ said March, with a plangent, half-sad, half-ironical indifference.

‘There wants a man about the place,’ said the youth softly.

Banford burst out laughing.

‘Take care what you say,’ she interrupted. ‘We consider ourselves quite efficient.’

‘Oh,’ came March’s slow plangent voice, ‘it isn’t a case of efficiency, I’m afraid. If you’re going to do farming you must be at it from morning till night, and you might as well be a beast yourself.’

‘Yes, that’s it,’ said the youth. ‘You aren’t willing to put yourselves into it.’

‘We aren’t,’ said March, ‘and we know it.’

‘We want some of our time for ourselves,’ said Banford.

The youth threw himself back on the sofa, his face tight with laughter, and laughed silently but thoroughly. The calm scorn of the girls tickled him tremendously.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but why did you begin then?’

‘Oh,’ said March, ‘we had a better opinion of the nature of fowls then than we have now.’

‘Of Nature altogether, I’m afraid,’ said Banford. ‘Don’t talk to me about Nature.’

Again the face of the youth tightened with delighted laughter.

‘You haven’t a very high opinion of fowls and cattle, have you?’ he said.

‘Oh no — quite a low one,’ said March.

He laughed out.

‘Neither fowls nor heifers,’ said Banford, ‘nor goats nor the weather.’

The youth broke into a sharp yap of laughter, delighted. The girls began to laugh too, March turning aside her face and wrinkling her mouth in amusement.

‘Oh, well,’ said Banford, ‘we don’t mind, do we, Nellie?’

‘No,’ said March, ‘we don’t mind.’

The youth was very pleased. He had eaten and drunk his fill. Banford began to question him. His name was Henry Grenfel — no, he was not called Harry, always Henry. He continued to answer with courteous simplicity, grave and charming. March, who was not included, cast long, slow glances at him from her recess, as he sat there on the sofa, his hands clasping his knees, his face under the lamp bright and alert, turned to Banford. She became almost peaceful at last. He was identified with the fox — and he was here in full presence. She need not go after him any more. There in the shadow of her corner she gave herself up to a warm, relaxed peace, almost like sleep, accepting the spell that was on her. But she wished to remain hidden. She was only fully at peace whilst he forgot her, talking to Banford. Hidden in the shadow of the corner, she need not any more be divided in herself, trying to keep up two planes of consciousness. She could at last lapse into the odour of the fox.

For the youth, sitting before the fire in his uniform, sent a faint but distinct odour into the room, indefinable, but something like a wild creature. March no longer tried to reserve herself from it. She was still and soft in her corner like a passive creature in its cave.

At last the talk dwindled. The youth relaxed his clasp of his knees, pulled himself together a little, and looked round. Again he became aware of the silent, half-invisible woman in the corner.

‘Well,’ he said unwillingly, ‘I suppose I’d better be going, or they’ll be in bed at the “Swan “.’

‘I’m afraid they’re in bed, anyhow,’ said Banford. ‘They’ve all got this influenza.’

‘Have they!’ he exclaimed. And he pondered. ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘I shall find a place somewhere.’

‘I’d say you could stay here, only — ’ Banford began.

He turned and watched her, holding his head forward.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘Oh, well,’ she said, ‘propriety, I suppose.’ She was rather confused.

‘It wouldn’t be improper, would it?’ he said, gently surprised.

‘Not as far as we’re concerned,’ said Banford.

‘And not as far as I’M concerned,’ he said, with grave naivete. ‘After all, it’s my own home, in a way.’

Banford smiled at this.

‘It’s what the village will have to say,’ she said.

There was a moment’s blank pause.

‘What do you say, Nellie?’ asked Banford.

‘I don’t mind,’ said March, in her distinct tone. ‘The village doesn’t matter to me, anyhow.’

‘No,’ said the youth, quick and soft. ‘Why should it? I mean, what should they say?’

‘Oh, well,’ came March’s plangent, laconic voice, ‘they’ll easily find something to say. But it makes no difference what they say. We can look after ourselves.’

‘Of course you can,’ said the youth.

‘Well then, stop if you like,’ said Banford. ‘The spare room is quite ready.’

His face shone with pleasure.

‘If you’re quite sure it isn’t troubling you too much,’ he said, with that soft courtesy which distinguished him.

‘Oh, it’s no trouble,’ they both said.

He looked, smiling with delight, from one to another.

‘It’s awfully nice not to have to turn out again, isn’t it?’ he said gratefully.

‘I suppose it is,’ said Banford.

March disappeared to attend the room. Banford was as pleased and thoughtful as if she had her own young brother home from France. It gave her just the same kind of gratification to attend on him, to get out the bath for him, and everything. Her natural warmth and kindliness had now an outlet. And the youth luxuriated in her sisterly attention. But it puzzled him slightly to know that March was silently working for him too. She was so curiously silent and obliterated. It seemed to him he had not really seen her. He felt he should not know her if he met her in the road.

That night March dreamed vividly. She dreamed she heard a singing outside which she could not understand, a singing that roamed round the house, in the fields, and in the darkness. It moved her so that she felt she must weep. She went out, and suddenly she knew it was the fox singing. He was very yellow and bright, like corn. She went nearer to him, but he ran away and ceased singing. He seemed near, and she wanted to touch him. She stretched out her hand, but suddenly he bit her wrist, and at the same instant, as she drew back, the fox, turning round to bound away, whisked his brush across her face, and it seemed his brush was on fire, for it seared and burned her mouth with a great pain. She awoke with the pain of it, and lay trembling as if she were really seared.

In the morning, however, she only remembered it as a distant memory. She arose and was busy preparing the house and attending to the fowls. Banford flew into the village on her bicycle to try and buy food. She was a hospitable soul. But alas, in the year 1918 there was not much food to buy. The youth came downstairs in his shirt-sleeves. He was young and fresh, but he walked with his head thrust forward, so that his shoulders seemed raised and rounded, as if he had a slight curvature of the spine. It must have been only a manner of bearing himself, for he was young and vigorous. He washed himself and went outside, whilst the women were preparing breakfast.

He saw everything, and examined everything. His curiosity was quick and insatiable. He compared the state of things with that which he remembered before, and cast over in his mind the effect of the changes. He watched the fowls and the ducks, to see their condition; he noticed the flight of wood-pigeons overhead: they were very numerous; he saw the few apples high up, which March had not been able to reach; he remarked that they had borrowed a draw-pump, presumably to empty the big soft-water cistern which was on the north side of the house.

‘It’s a funny, dilapidated old place,’ he said to the girls, as he sat at breakfast.

His eyes were wise and childish, with thinking about things. He did not say much, but ate largely. March kept her face averted. She, too, in the early morning could not be aware of him, though something about the glint of his khaki reminded her of the brilliance of her dream-fox.

During the day the girls went about their business. In the morning he attended to the guns, shot a rabbit and a wild duck that was flying high towards the wood. That was a great addition to the empty larder. The girls felt that already he had earned his keep. He said nothing about leaving, however. In the afternoon he went to the village. He came back at tea-time. He had the same alert, forward-reaching look on his roundish face. He hung his hat on a peg with a little swinging gesture. He was thinking about something.

‘Well,’ he said to the girls, as he sat at table. ‘What am I going to do?’

‘How do you mean — what are you going to do?’ said Banford.

‘Where am I going to find a place in the village to stay?’ he said.

‘I don’t know,’ said Banford. ‘Where do you think of staying?’

‘Well’ — he hesitated — ‘at the “Swan” they’ve got this flu, and at the “Plough and Harrow” they’ve got the soldiers who are collecting the hay for the army: besides, in the private houses, there’s ten men and a corporal altogether billeted in the village, they tell me. I’m not sure where I could get a bed.’

He left the matter to them. He was rather calm about it. March sat with her elbows on the table, her two hands supporting her chin, looking at him unconsciously. Suddenly he lifted his clouded blue eyes, and unthinking looked straight into March’s eyes. He was startled as well as she. He, too, recoiled a little. March felt the same sly, taunting, knowing spark leap out of his eyes, as he turned his head aside, and fall into her soul, as it had fallen from the dark eyes of the fox. She pursed her mouth as if in pain, as if asleep too.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ Banford was saying. She seemed reluctant, as if she were afraid of being imposed upon. She looked at March. But, with her weak, troubled sight, she only saw the usual semi-abstraction on her friend’s face. ‘Why don’t you speak, Nellie?’ she said.

But March was wide-eyed and silent, and the youth, as if fascinated, was watching her without moving his eyes.

‘Go on — answer something,’ said Banford. And March turned her head slightly aside, as if coming to consciousness, or trying to come to consciousness.

‘What do you expect me to say?’ she asked automatically.

‘Say what you think,’ said Banford.

‘It’s all the same to me,’ said March.

And again there was silence. A pointed light seemed to be on the boy’s eyes, penetrating like a needle.

‘So it is to me,’ said Banford. ‘You can stop on here if you like.’

A smile like a cunning little flame came over his face, suddenly and involuntarily. He dropped his head quickly to hide it, and remained with his head dropped, his face hidden.

‘You can stop on here if you like. You can please yourself, Henry,’ Banford concluded.

Still he did not reply, but remained with his head dropped. Then he lifted his face. It was bright with a curious light, as if exultant, and his eyes were strangely clear as he watched March. She turned her face aside, her mouth suffering as if wounded, and her consciousness dim.

Banford became a little puzzled. She watched the steady, pellucid gaze of the youth’s eyes as he looked at March, with the invisible smile gleaming on his face. She did not know how he was smiling, for no feature moved. It seemed only in the gleam, almost the glitter of the fine hairs on his cheeks. Then he looked with quite a changed look at Banford.

‘I’m sure,’ he said in his soft, courteous voice, ‘you’re awfully good. You’re too good. You don’t want to be bothered with me, I’m sure.’

‘Cut a bit of bread, Nellie,’ said Banford uneasily, adding: ‘It’s no bother, if you like to stay. It’s like having my own brother here for a few days. He’s a boy like you are.’

‘That’s awfully kind of you,’ the lad repeated. ‘I should like to stay ever so much, if you’re sure I’m not a trouble to you.’

‘No, of course you’re no trouble. I tell you, it’s a pleasure to have somebody in the house beside ourselves,’ said warmhearted Banford.

‘But Miss March?’ he said in his soft voice, looking at her.

‘Oh, it’s quite all right as far as I’m concerned,’ said March vaguely.

His face beamed, and he almost rubbed his hands with pleasure.

‘Well then,’ he said, ‘I should love it, if you’d let me pay my board and help with the work.’

‘You’ve no need to talk about board,’ said Banford.