Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 2

The Fox-7

As he stood under the oaks of the wood-edge he heard the dogs from the neighbouring cottage up the hill yelling suddenly and startlingly, and the wakened dogs from the farms around barking answer. And suddenly it seemed to him England was little and tight, he felt the landscape was constricted even in the dark, and that there were too many dogs in the night, making a noise like a fence of sound, like the network of English hedges netting the view. He felt the fox didn’t have a chance. For it must be the fox that had started all this hullabaloo.

Why not watch for him, anyhow! He would, no doubt, be coming sniffing round. The lad walked downhill to where the farmstead with its few pine trees crouched blackly. In the angle of the long shed, in the black dark, he crouched down. He knew the fox would be coming. It seemed to him it would be the last of the foxes in this loudly-barking, thick-voiced England, tight with innumerable little houses.

He sat a long time with his eyes fixed unchanging upon the open gateway, where a little light seemed to fall from the stars or from the horizon, who knows. He was sitting on a log in a dark corner with the g*n across his knees. The pine trees snapped. Once a chicken fell off its perch in the barn with a loud crawk and cackle and commotion that startled him, and he stood up, watching with all his eyes, thinking it might be a rat. But he FELT it was nothing. So he sat down again with the g*n on his knees and his hands tucked in to keep them warm, and his eyes fixed unblinking on the pale reach of the open gateway. He felt he could smell the hot, sickly, rich smell of live chickens on the cold air.

And then — a shadow. A sliding shadow in the gateway. He gathered all his vision into a concentrated spark, and saw the shadow of the fox, the fox creeping on his belly through the gate. There he went, on his belly like a snake. The boy smiled to himself and brought the g*n to his shoulder. He knew quite well what would happen. He knew the fox would go to where the fowl door was boarded up and sniff there. He knew he would lie there for a minute, sniffing the fowls within. And then he would start again prowling under the edge of the old barn, waiting to get in.

The fowl door was at the top of a slight incline. Soft, soft as a shadow the fox slid up this incline, and crouched with his nose to the boards. And at the same moment there was the awful crash of a g*n reverberating between the old buildings, as if all the night had gone smash. But the boy watched keenly. He saw even the white belly of the fox as the beast beat his paws in death. So he went forward.

There was a commotion everywhere. The fowls were scuffling and crawking, the ducks were quark-quarking, the pony had stamped wildly to his feet. But the fox was on his side, struggling in his last tremors. The boy bent over him and smelt his foxy smell.

There was a sound of a window opening upstairs, then March’s voice calling:

‘Who is it?’

‘It’s me,’ said Henry; ‘I’ve shot the fox.’

‘Oh, goodness! You nearly frightened us to death.’

‘Did I? I’m awfully sorry.’

‘Whatever made you get up?’

‘I heard him about.’

‘And have you shot him?’

‘Yes, he’s here,’ and the boy stood in the yard holding up the warm, dead brute. ‘You can’t see, can you? Wait a minute.’ And he took his flash-light from his pocket and flashed it on to the dead animal. He was holding it by the brush. March saw, in the middle of the darkness, just the reddish fleece and the white belly and the white underneath of the pointed chin, and the queer, dangling paws. She did not know what to say.

‘He’s a beauty,’ he said. ‘He will make you a lovely fur.’

‘You don’t catch me wearing a fox fur,’ she replied.

‘Oh!’ he said. And he switched off the light.

‘Well, I should think you’ll come in and go to bed again now,’ she said.

‘Probably I shall. What time is it?’

‘What time is it, Jill?’ called March’s voice. It was a quarter to one.

That night March had another dream. She dreamed that Banford was dead, and that she, March, was sobbing her heart out. Then she had to put Banford into her coffin. And the coffin was the rough wood-box in which the bits of chopped wood were kept in the kitchen, by the fire. This was the coffin, and there was no other, and March was in agony and dazed bewilderment, looking for something to line the box with, something to make it soft with, something to cover up the poor, dead darling. Because she couldn’t lay her in there just in her white, thin nightdress, in the horrible wood-box. So she hunted and hunted, and picked up thing after thing, and threw it aside in the agony of dream-frustration. And in her dream-despair all she could find that would do was a fox-skin. She knew that it wasn’t right, that this was not what she should have. But it was all she could find. And so she folded the brush of the fox, and laid her darling Jill’s head on this, and she brought round the skin of the fox and laid it on the top of the body, so that it seemed to make a whole ruddy, fiery coverlet, and she cried and cried, and woke to find the tears streaming down her face.

The first thing that both she and Banford did in the morning was to go out to see the fox. Henry had hung it up by the heels in the shed, with its poor brush falling backwards. It was a lovely dog-fox in its prime, with a handsome, thick, winter coat: a lovely golden-red colour, with grey as it passed to the belly, and belly all white, and a great full brush with a delicate black and grey and pure white tip.

‘Poor brute!’ said Banford. ‘If it wasn’t such a thieving wretch, you’d feel sorry for it.’

March said nothing, but stood with her foot trailing aside, one hip out; her face was pale and her eyes big and black, watching the dead animal that was suspended upside down. White and soft as snow his belly: white and soft as snow. She passed her hand softly down it. And his wonderful black-glinted brush was full and frictional, wonderful. She passed her hand down this also, and quivered. Time after time she took the full fur of that thick tail between her fingers, and passed her hand slowly downwards. Wonderful, sharp, thick, splendour of a tail. And he was dead! She pursed her lips, and her eyes went black and vacant. Then she took the head in her hand.

Henry was sauntering up, so Banford walked rather pointedly away. March stood there bemused, with the head of the fox in her hand. She was wondering, wondering, wondering over his long, fine muzzle. For some reason it reminded her of a spoon or a spatula. She felt she could not understand it. The beast was a strange beast to her, incomprehensible, out of her range. Wonderful silver whiskers he had, like ice-threads. And pricked ears with hair inside. But that long, long, slender spoon of a nose! — and the marvellous white teeth beneath! It was to thrust forward and bite with, deep, deep, deep into the living prey, to bite and bite the blood.

‘He’s a beauty, isn’t he?’ said Henry, standing by.

‘Oh yes, he’s a fine big fox. I wonder how many chickens he’s responsible for,’ she replied.

‘A good many. Do you think he’s the same one you saw in the summer?’

‘I should think very likely he is,’ she replied.

He watched her, but he could make nothing of her. Partly she was so shy and virgin, and partly she was so grim, matter-of-fact, shrewish. What she said seemed to him so different from the look of her big, queer, dark eyes.

‘Are you going to skin him?’ she asked.

‘Yes, when I’ve had breakfast, and got a board to peg him on.’

‘My word, what a strong smell he’s got! Pooo! It’ll take some washing off one’s hands. I don’t know why I was so silly as to handle him.’ And she looked at her right hand, that had passed down his belly and along his tail, and had even got a tiny streak of blood from one dark place in his fur.

‘Have you seen the chickens when they smell him, how frightened they are?’ he said.

‘Yes, aren’t they!’

‘You must mind you don’t get some of his fleas.’

‘Oh, fleas!’ she replied, nonchalant.

Later in the day she saw the fox’s skin nailed flat on a board, as if crucified. It gave her an uneasy feeling.

The boy was angry. He went about with his mouth shut, as if he had swallowed part of his chin. But in behaviour he was polite and affable. He did not say anything about his intention. And he left March alone.

That evening they sat in the dining-room. Banford wouldn’t have him in her sitting-room any more. There was a very big log on the fire. And everybody was busy. Banford had letters to write. March was sewing a dress, and he was mending some little contrivance.

Banford stopped her letter-writing from time to time to look round and rest her eyes. The boy had his head down, his face hidden over his job.

‘Let’s see,’ said Banford. ‘What train do you go by, Henry?’

He looked up straight at her.

‘The morning train. In the morning,’ he said.

‘What, the eight-ten or the eleven-twenty?’

‘The eleven-twenty, I suppose,’ he said.

‘That is the day after tomorrow?’ said Banford.

‘Yes, the day after tomorrow.’

‘Mm!’ murmured Banford, and she returned to her writing. But as she was l*****g her envelope, she asked:

‘And what plans have you made for the future, if I may ask?’

‘Plans?’ he said, his face very bright and angry.

‘I mean about you and Nellie, if you are going on with this business. When do you expect the wedding to come off?’ She spoke in a jeering tone.

‘Oh, the wedding!’ he replied. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Don’t you know anything?’ said Banford. ‘Are you going to clear out on Friday and leave things no more settled than they are?’

‘Well, why shouldn’t I? We can always write letters.’

‘Yes, of course you can. But I wanted to know because of this place. If Nellie is going to get married all of a sudden, I shall have to be looking round for a new partner.’

‘Couldn’t she stay on here if she were married?’ he said. He knew quite well what was coming.

‘Oh,’ said Banford, ‘this is no place for a married couple. There’s not enough work to keep a man going, for one thing. And there’s no money to be made. It’s quite useless your thinking of staying on here if you marry. Absolutely!’

‘Yes, but I wasn’t thinking of staying on here,’ he said.

‘Well, that’s what I want to know. And what about Nellie, then? How long is SHE going to be here with me, in that case?’

The two antagonists looked at one another.

‘That I can’t say,’ he answered.

‘Oh, go along,’ she cried petulantly. ‘You must have some idea what you are going to do, if you ask a woman to marry you. Unless it’s all a hoax.’

‘Why should it be a hoax? I am going back to Canada.’

‘And taking her with you?’

‘Yes, certainly.’

‘You hear that, Nellie?’ said Banford.

March, who had had her head bent over her sewing, now looked up with a sharp, pink blush on her face, and a queer, sardonic laugh in her eyes and on her twisted mouth.

‘That’s the first time I’ve heard that I was going to Canada,’ she said.

‘Well, you have to hear it for the first time, haven’t you?’ said the boy.

‘Yes, I suppose I have,’ she said nonchalantly. And she went back to her sewing.

‘You’re quite ready, are you, to go to Canada? Are you, Nellie?’ asked Banford.

March looked up again. She let her shoulders go slack, and let her hand that held the needle lie loose in her lap.

‘It depends on HOW I’m going,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I want to go jammed up in the steerage, as a soldier’s wife. I’m afraid I’m not used to that way.’

The boy watched her with bright eyes.

‘Would you rather stay over here while I go first?’ he asked.

‘I would, if that’s the only alternative,’ she replied.

‘That’s much the wisest. Don’t make it any fixed engagement,’ said Banford. ‘Leave yourself free to go or not after he’s got back and found you a place, Nellie. Anything else is madness, madness.’