Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 2

The Fox-8

‘Don’t you think,’ said the youth, ‘we ought to get married before I go — and then go together, or separate, according to how it happens?’

‘I think it’s a terrible idea,’ cried Banford.

But the boy was watching March.

‘What do you think?’ he asked her.

She let her eyes stray vaguely into space.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I shall have to think about it.’

‘Why?’ he asked pertinently.

‘Why?’ She repeated his question in a mocking way and looked at him laughing, though her face was pink again. ‘I should think there’s plenty of reasons why.’

He watched her in silence. She seemed to have escaped him. She had got into league with Banford against him. There was again the queer, sardonic look about her; she would mock stoically at everything he said or which life offered.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to press you to do anything you don’t wish to do.’

‘I should think not, indeed,’ cried Banford indignantly.

At bed-time Banford said plaintively to March:

‘You take my hot bottle up for me, Nellie, will you?’

‘Yes, I’ll do it,’ said March, with the kind of willing unwillingness she so often showed towards her beloved but uncertain Jill.

The two women went upstairs. After a time March called from the top of the stairs: ‘Good-night, Henry. I shan’t be coming down. You’ll see to the lamp and the fire, won’t you?’

The next day Henry went about with the cloud on his brow and his young cub’s face shut up tight. He was cogitating all the time. He had wanted March to marry him and go back to Canada with him. And he had been sure she would do it. Why he wanted her he didn’t know. But he did want her. He had set his mind on her. And he was convulsed with a youth’s fury at being thwarted. To be thwarted, to be thwarted! It made him so furious inside that he did not know what to do with himself. But he kept himself in hand. Because even now things might turn out differently. She might come over to him. Of course she might. It was her business to do so.

Things drew to a tension again towards evening. He and Banford had avoided each other all day. In fact, Banford went in to the little town by the 11.20 train. It was market day. She arrived back on the 4.25. Just as the night was falling Henry saw her little figure in a dark-blue coat and a dark-blue tam-o’-shanter hat crossing the first meadow from the station. He stood under one of the wild pear trees, with the old dead leaves round his feet. And he watched the little blue figure advancing persistently over the rough winter-ragged meadow. She had her arms full of parcels, and advanced slowly, frail thing she was, but with that devilish little certainty which he so detested in her. He stood invisible under the pear tree, watching her every step.

And if looks could have affected her, she would have felt a log of iron on each of her ankles as she made her way forward. ‘You’re a nasty little thing, you are,’ he was saying softly, across the distance. ‘You’re a nasty little thing. I hope you’ll be paid back for all the harm you’ve done me for nothing. I hope you will — you nasty little thing. I hope you’ll have to pay for it. You will, if wishes are anything. You nasty little creature that you are.’

She was toiling slowly up the slope. But if she had been slipping back at every step towards the Bottomless Pit, he would not have gone to help her with her parcels. Aha, there went March, striding with her long, land stride in her breeches and her short tunic! Striding downhill at a great pace, and even running a few steps now and then, in her great solicitude and desire to come to the rescue of the little Banford. The boy watched her with rage in his heart. See her leap a ditch, and run, run as if a house was on fire, just to get to that creeping, dark little object down there! So, the Banford just stood still and waited. And March strode up and took ALL the parcels except a bunch of yellow chrysanthemums. These the Banford still carried — yellow chrysanthemums!

‘Yes, you look well, don’t you?’ he said softly into the dusk air. ‘You look well, pottering up there with a bunch of flowers, you do. I’d make you eat them for your tea if you hug them so tight. And I’d give them you for breakfast again, I would. I’d give you flowers. Nothing but flowers.’

He watched the progress of the two women. He could hear their voices: March always outspoken and rather scolding in her tenderness, Banford murmuring rather vaguely. They were evidently good friends. He could not hear what they said till they came to the fence of the home meadow, which they must climb. Then he saw March manfully climbing over the bars with all her packages in her arms, and on the still air he heard Banford’s fretful:

‘Why don’t you let me help you with the parcels?’ She had a queer, plaintive hitch in her voice. Then came March’s robust and reckless:

‘Oh, I can manage. Don’t you bother about me. You’ve all you can do to get yourself over.’

‘Yes, that’s all very well,’ said Banford fretfully. ‘You say, Don’t you bother about me, and then all the while you feel injured because nobody thinks of you.’

‘When do I feel injured?’ said March.

‘Always. You always feel injured. Now you’re feeling injured because I won’t have that boy to come and live on the farm.’

‘I’m not feeling injured at all,’ said March. ‘I know you are. When he’s gone you’ll sulk over it. I know you will.’

‘Shall I?’ said March. ‘We’ll see.’

‘Yes, we SHALL see, unfortunately. I can’t think how you can make yourself so cheap. I can’t IMAGINE how you can lower yourself like it.’

‘I haven’t lowered myself,’ said March.

‘I don’t know what you call it, then. Letting a boy like that come so cheeky and impudent and make a mug of you. I don’t know what you think of yourself. How much respect do you think he’s going to have for you afterwards? My word, I wouldn’t be in your shoes, if you married him.’

‘Of course you wouldn’t. My boots are a good bit too big for you, and not half dainty enough,’ said March, with rather a misfire sarcasm.

‘I thought you had too much pride, really I did. A woman’s got to hold herself high, especially with a youth like that. Why, he’s impudent. Even the way he forced himself on us at the start.’

‘We asked him to stay,’ said March.

‘Not till he’d almost forced us to. And then he’s so cocky and self-assured. My word, he puts my back up. I simply can’t imagine how you can let him treat you so cheaply.’

‘I don’t let him treat me cheaply,’ said March. ‘Don’t you worry yourself, nobody’s going to treat me cheaply. And even you aren’t, either.’ She had a tender defiance and a certain fire in her voice.

‘Yes, it’s sure to come back to me,’ said Banford bitterly. ‘That’s always the end of it. I believe you only do it to spite me.’

They went now in silence up the steep, grassy slope and over the brow, through the gorse bushes. On the other side of the hedge the boy followed in the dusk, at some little distance. Now and then, through the huge ancient hedge of hawthorn, risen into trees, he saw the two dark figures creeping up the hill. As he came to the top of the slope he saw the homestead dark in the twilight, with a huge old pear tree leaning from the near gable, and a little yellow light twinkling in the small side windows of the kitchen. He heard the clink of the latch and saw the kitchen door open into light as the two women went indoors. So they were at home.

And so! — this was what they thought of him. It was rather in his nature to be a listener, so he was not at all surprised whatever he heard. The things people said about him always missed him personally. He was only rather surprised at the women’s way with one another. And he disliked the Banford with an acid dislike. And he felt drawn to the March again. He felt again irresistibly drawn to her. He felt there was a secret bond, a secret thread between him and her, something very exclusive, which shut out everybody else and made him and her possess each other in secret.

He hoped again that she would have him. He hoped with his blood suddenly firing up that she would agree to marry him quite quickly: at Christmas, very likely. Christmas was not far off. He wanted, whatever else happened, to snatch her into a hasty marriage and a consummation with him. Then for the future, they could arrange later. But he hoped it would happen as he wanted it. He hoped that tonight she would stay a little while with him, after Banford had gone upstairs. He hoped he could touch her soft, creamy cheek, her strange, frightened face. He hoped he could look into her dilated, frightened dark eyes, quite near. He hoped he might even put his hand on her bosom and feel her soft breasts under her tunic. His heart beat deep and powerful as he thought of that. He wanted very much to do so. He wanted to make sure of her soft woman’s breasts under her tunic. She always kept the brown linen coat buttoned so close up to her throat. It seemed to him like some perilous secret, that her soft woman’s breasts must be buttoned up in that uniform. It seemed to him, moreover, that they were so much softer, tenderer, more lovely and lovable, shut up in that tunic, than were the Banford’s breasts, under her soft blouses and chiffon dresses. The Banford would have little iron breasts, he said to himself. For all her frailty and fretfulness and delicacy, she would have tiny iron breasts. But March, under her crude, fast, workman’s tunic, would have soft, white breasts, white and unseen. So he told himself, and his blood burned.

When he went in to tea, he had a surprise. He appeared at the inner door, his face very ruddy and vivid and his blue eyes shining, dropping his head forward as he came in, in his usual way, and hesitating in the doorway to watch the inside of the room, keenly and cautiously, before he entered. He was wearing a long-sleeved waistcoat. His face seemed extraordinarily like a piece of the out-of-doors come indoors: as holly-berries do. In his second of pause in the doorway he took in the two women sitting at table, at opposite ends, saw them sharply. And to his amazement March was dressed in a dress of dull, green silk crape. His mouth came open in surprise. If she had suddenly grown a moustache he could not have been more surprised.

‘Why,’ he said, ‘do you wear a dress, then?’

She looked up, flushing a deep rose colour, and twisting her mouth with a smile, said:

‘Of course I do. What else do you expect me to wear but a dress?’

‘A land girl’s uniform, of course,’ said he.

‘Oh,’ she cried, nonchalant, ‘that’s only for this dirty, mucky work about here.’

‘Isn’t it your proper dress, then?’ he said.

‘No, not indoors it isn’t,’ she said. But she was blushing all the time as she poured out his tea. He sat down in his chair at table, unable to take his eyes off her. Her dress was a perfectly simple slip of bluey-green crape, with a line of gold stitching round the top and round the sleeves, which came to the elbow. It was cut just plain and round at the top, and showed her white, soft throat. Her arms he knew, strong and firm muscled, for he had often seen her with her sleeves rolled up. But he looked her up and down, up and down,

Banford, at the other end of the table, said not a word, but piggled with the sardine on her plate. He had forgotten her existence. He just simply stared at March while he ate his bread and margarine in huge mouthfuls, forgetting even his tea.

‘Well, I never knew anything make such a difference!’ he murmured, across his mouthfuls.

‘Oh, goodness!’ cried March, blushing still more. ‘I might be a pink monkey!’

And she rose quickly to her feet and took the tea-pot to the fire, to the kettle. And as she crouched on the hearth with her green slip about her, the boy stared more wide-eyed than ever. Through the crape her woman’s form seemed soft and womanly. And when she stood up and walked he saw her legs move soft within her modernly short skirt. She had on black silk stockings, and small patent shoes with little gold buckles.