Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 2

The Fox-6

‘You will, won’t you? You will?’ he insisted softly.

‘Nellie! NELLIE! What ever are you so long for?’ came Banford’s faint cry from the outer darkness.

But he held her fast, and was murmuring with that intolerable softness and insistency:

‘You will, won’t you? Say yes! Say yes!’

March, who felt as if the fire had gone through her and scathed her, and as if she could do no more, murmured:

‘Yes! Yes! Anything you like! Anything you like! Only let me go! Only let me go! Jill’s calling.’

‘You know you’ve promised,’ he said insidiously.

‘Yes! Yes! I do!’ Her voice suddenly rose into a shrill cry. ‘All right, Jill, I’m coming.’

Startled, he let her go, and she went straight upstairs.

In the morning at breakfast, after he had looked round the place and attended to the stock and thought to himself that one could live easily enough here, he said to Banford:

‘Do you know what, Miss Banford?’

‘Well, what?’ said the good-natured, nervy Banford.

He looked at March, who was spreading jam on her bread.

‘Shall I tell?’ he said to her.

She looked up at him, and a deep pink colour flushed over her face.

‘Yes, if you mean Jill,’ she said. ‘I hope you won’t go talking all over the village, that’s all.’ And she swallowed her dry bread with difficulty.

‘Whatever’s coming?’ said Banford, looking up with wide, tired, slightly reddened eyes. She was a thin, frail little thing, and her hair, which was delicate and thin, was bobbed, so it hung softly by her worn face in its faded brown and grey.

‘Why, what do you think?’ he said, smiling like one who has a secret.

‘How do I know!’ said Banford.

‘Can’t you guess?’ he said, making bright eyes and smiling, pleased with himself.

‘I’m sure I can’t. What’s more, I’m not going to try.’

‘Nellie and I are going to be married.’

Banford put down her knife out of her thin, delicate fingers, as if she would never take it up to eat any more. She stared with blank, reddened eyes.

‘You what?’ she exclaimed.

‘We’re going to get married. Aren’t we, Nellie?’ and he turned to March.

‘You say so, anyway,’ said March laconically. But again she flushed with an agonized flush. She, too, could swallow no more.

Banford looked at her like a bird that has been shot: a poor, little sick bird. She gazed at her with all her wounded soul in her face, at the deep-flushed March.

‘Never!’ she exclaimed, helpless.

‘It’s quite right,’ said the bright and gloating youth.

Banford turned aside her face, as if the sight of the food on the table made her sick. She sat like this for some moments, as if she were sick. Then, with one hand on the edge of the table, she rose to her feet.

‘I’ll NEVER believe it, Nellie,’ she cried. ‘It’s absolutely impossible!’

Her plaintive, fretful voice had a thread of hot anger and despair.

‘Why? Why shouldn’t you believe it?’ asked the youth, with all his soft, velvety impertinence in his voice.

Banford looked at him from her wide, vague eyes, as if he were some creature in a museum.

‘Oh,’ she said languidly, ‘because she can never be such a fool. She can’t lose her self-respect to such an extent.’ Her voice was cold and plaintive, drifting.

‘In what way will she lose her self-respect?’ asked the boy.

Banford looked at him with vague fixity from behind her spectacles.

‘If she hasn’t lost it already,’ she said.

He became very red, vermilion, under the slow, vague stare from behind the spectacles.

‘I don’t see it at all,’ he said.

‘Probably you don’t. I shouldn’t expect you would,’ said Banford, with that straying, mild tone of remoteness which made her words even more insulting.

He sat stiff in his chair, staring with hot, blue eyes from his scarlet face. An ugly look had come on his brow.

‘My word, she doesn’t know what she’s letting herself in for,’ said Banford, in her plaintive, drifting, insulting voice.

‘What has it got to do with you, anyway?’ said the youth, in a temper.

‘More than it has to do with you, probably,’ she replied, plaintive and venomous.

‘Oh, has it! I don’t see that at all,’ he jerked out.

‘No, you wouldn’t,’ she answered, drifting.

‘Anyhow,’ said March, pushing back her hair and rising uncouthly. ‘It’s no good arguing about it.’ And she seized the bread and the tea-pot and strode away to the kitchen.

Banford let her fingers stray across her brow and along her hair, like one bemused. Then she turned and went away upstairs.

Henry sat stiff and sulky in his chair, with his face and his eyes on fire. March came and went, clearing the table. But Henry sat on, stiff with temper. He took no notice of her. She had regained her composure and her soft, even, creamy complexion. But her mouth was pursed up. She glanced at him each time as she came to take things from the table, glanced from her large, curious eyes, more in curiosity than anything. Such a long, red-faced, sulky boy! That was all he was. He seemed as remote from her as if his red face were a red chimney-pot on a cottage across the fields, and she looked at him just as objectively, as remotely.

At length he got up and stalked out into the fields with the g*n. He came in only at dinner-time, with the devil still in his face, but his manners quite polite. Nobody said anything particular; they sat each one at the sharp corner of a triangle, in obstinate remoteness. In the afternoon he went out again at once with the g*n. He came in at nightfall with a rabbit and a pigeon. He stayed in all the evening, but hardly opened his mouth. He was in the devil of a temper, feeling he had been insulted.

Banford’s eyes were red, she had evidently been crying. But her manner was more remote and supercilious than ever; the way she turned her head if he spoke at all, as if he were some tramp or inferior intruder of that sort, made his blue eyes go almost black with rage. His face looked sulkier. But he never forgot his polite intonation, if he opened his mouth to speak. March seemed to flourish in this atmosphere. She seemed to sit between the two antagonists with a little wicked smile on her face, enjoying herself. There was even a sort of complacency in the way she laboriously crocheted this evening.

When he was in bed, the youth could hear the two women talking and arguing in their room. He sat up in bed and strained his ears to hear what they said. But he could hear nothing, it was too far off. Yet he could hear the soft, plaintive drip of Banford’s voice, and March’s deeper note.

The night was quiet, frosty. Big stars were snapping outside, beyond the ridge-tops of the pine trees. He listened and listened. In the distance he heard a fox yelping: and the dogs from the farms barking in answer. But it was not that he wanted to hear. It was what the two women were saying.

He got stealthily out of bed and stood by his door. He could hear no more than before. Very, very carefully he began to lift the door latch. After quite a time he had his door open. Then he stepped stealthily out into the passage. The old oak planks were cold under his feet, and they creaked preposterously. He crept very, very gently up the one step, and along by the wall, till he stood outside their door. And there he held his breath and listened. Banford’s voice:

‘No, I simply couldn’t stand it. I should be dead in a month. Which is just what he would be aiming at, of course. That would just be his game, to see me in the churchyard. No, Nellie, if you were to do such a thing as to marry him, you could never stop here. I couldn’t, I couldn’t live in the same house with him. Oh! — oh! I feel quite sick with the smell of his clothes. And his red face simply turns me over. I can’t eat my food when he’s at the table. What a fool I was ever to let him stop. One ought NEVER to try to do a kind action. It always flies back in your face like a boomerang.’

‘Well, he’s only got two more days,’ said March.

‘Yes, thank heaven. And when he’s gone he’ll never come in this house again. I feel so bad while he’s here. And I know, I know he’s only counting what he can get out of you. I KNOW that’s all it is. He’s just a good-for-nothing, who doesn’t want to work, and who thinks he’ll live on us. But he won’t live on me. If you’re such a fool, then it’s your own lookout. Mrs Burgess knew him all the time he was here. And the old man could never get him to do any steady work. He was off with the g*n on every occasion, just as he is now. Nothing but the g*n! Oh, I do hate it. You don’t know what you’re doing, Nellie, you don’t. If you marry him he’ll just make a fool of you. He’ll go off and leave you stranded. I know he will, if he can’t get Bailey Farm out of us — and he’s not going to, while I live. While I live he’s never going to set foot here. I know what it would be. He’d soon think he was master of both of us, as he thinks he’s master of you already.’

‘But he isn’t,’ said Nellie.

‘He thinks he is, anyway. And that’s what he wants: to come and be master here. Yes, imagine it! That’s what we’ve got the place together for, is it, to be bossed and bullied by a hateful, red-faced boy, a beastly labourer. Oh, we DID make a mistake when we let him stop. We ought never to have lowered ourselves. And I’ve had such a fight with all the people here, not to be pulled down to their level. No, he’s not coming here. And then you see — if he can’t have the place, he’ll run off to Canada or somewhere again, as if he’d never known you. And here you’ll be, absolutely ruined and made a fool of. I know I shall never have any peace of mind again.’

‘We’ll tell him he can’t come here. We’ll tell him that,’ said March.

‘Oh, don’t you bother; I’m going to tell him that, and other things as well, before he goes. He’s not going to have all his own way while I’ve got the strength left to speak. Oh, Nellie, he’ll despise you, he’ll despise you, like the awful little beast he is, if you give way to him. I’d no more trust him than I’d trust a cat not to steal. He’s deep, he’s deep, and he’s bossy, and he’s selfish through and through, as cold as ice. All he wants is to make use of you. And when you’re no more use to him, then I pity you.’

‘I don’t think he’s as bad as all that,’ said March.

‘No, because he’s been playing up to you. But you’ll find out, if you see much of him. Oh, Nellie, I can’t bear to think of it.’

‘Well, it won’t hurt you, Jill, darling.’

‘Won’t it! Won’t it! I shall never know a moment’s peace again while I live, nor a moment’s happiness. No, Nellie — ’ and Banford began to weep bitterly.

The boy outside could hear the stifled sound of the woman’s sobbing, and could hear March’s soft, deep, tender voice comforting, with wonderful gentleness and tenderness, the weeping woman.

His eyes were so round and wide that he seemed to see the whole night, and his ears were almost jumping off his head. He was frozen stiff. He crept back to bed, but felt as if the top of his head were coming off. He could not sleep. He could not keep still. He rose, quietly dressed himself, and crept out on to the landing once more. The women were silent. He went softly downstairs and out to the kitchen.

Then he put on his boots and his overcoat and took the g*n. He did not think to go away from the farm. No, he only took the g*n. As softly as possible he unfastened the door and went out into the frosty December night. The air was still, the stars bright, the pine trees seemed to bristle audibly in the sky. He went stealthily away down a fence-side, looking for something to shoot. At the same time he remembered that he ought not to shoot and frighten the women.

So he prowled round the edge of the gorse cover, and through the grove of tall old hollies, to the woodside. There he skirted the fence, peering through the darkness with dilated eyes that seemed to be able to grow black and full of sight in the dark, like a cat’s. An owl was slowly and mournfully whooing round a great oak tree. He stepped stealthily with his g*n, listening, listening, watching.