Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 2

The Fox-9

No, she was another being. She was something quite different. Seeing her always in the hard-cloth breeches, wide on the hips, buttoned on the knee, strong as armour, and in the brown puttees and thick boots, it had never occurred to him that she had a woman’s legs and feet. Now it came upon him. She had a woman’s soft, skirted legs, and she was accessible. He blushed to the roots of his hair, shoved his nose in his tea-cup and drank his tea with a little noise that made Banford simply squirm: and strangely, suddenly he felt a man, no longer a youth. He felt a man, with all a man’s grave weight of responsibility. A curious quietness and gravity came over his soul. He felt a man, quiet, with a little of the heaviness of male destiny upon him.

She was soft and accessible in her dress. The thought went home in him like an everlasting responsibility.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, say something, somebody,’ cried Banford fretfully. ‘It might be a funeral.’ The boy looked at her, and she could not bear his face.

‘A funeral!’ said March, with a twisted smile. ‘Why, that breaks my dream.’

Suddenly she had thought of Banford in the wood-box for a coffin.

‘What, have you been dreaming of a wedding?’ said Banford sarcastically.

‘Must have been,’ said March.

‘Whose wedding?’ asked the boy.

‘I can’t remember,’ said March.

She was shy and rather awkward that evening, in spite of the fact that, wearing a dress, her bearing was much more subdued than in her uniform. She felt unpeeled and rather exposed. She felt almost improper.

They talked desultorily about Henry’s departure next morning, and made the trivial arrangement. But of the matter on their minds, none of them spoke. They were rather quiet and friendly this evening; Banford had practically nothing to say. But inside herself she seemed still, perhaps kindly.

At nine o’clock March brought in the tray with the everlasting tea and a little cold meat which Banford had managed to procure. It was the last supper, so Banford did not want to be disagreeable. She felt a bit sorry for the boy, and felt she must be as nice as she could.

He wanted her to go to bed. She was usually the first. But she sat on in her chair under the lamp, glancing at her book now and then, and staring into the fire. A deep silence had come into the room. It was broken by March asking, in a rather small tone:

‘What time is it, Jill?’

‘Five past ten,’ said Banford, looking at her wrist.

And then not a sound. The boy had looked up from the book he was holding between his knees. His rather wide, cat-shaped face had its obstinate look, his eyes were watchful.

‘What about bed?’ said March at last.

‘I’m ready when you are,’ said Banford.

‘Oh, very well,’ said March. ‘I’ll fill your bottle.’

She was as good as her word. When the hot-water bottle was ready, she lit a candle and went upstairs with it. Banford remained in her chair, listening acutely. March came downstairs again.

‘There you are, then,’ she said. ‘Are you going up?’

‘Yes, in a minute,’ said Banford. But the minute passed, and she sat on in her chair under the lamp.

Henry, whose eyes were shining like a cat’s as he watched from under his brows, and whose face seemed wider, more chubbed and cat-like with unalterable obstinacy, now rose to his feet to try his throw.

‘I think I’ll go and look if I can see the she-fox,’ he said. ‘She may be creeping round. Won’t you come as well for a minute, Nellie, and see if we see anything?’

‘Me!’ cried March, looking up with her startled, wondering face.

‘Yes. Come on,’ he said. It was wonderful how soft and warm and coaxing his voice could be, how near. The very sound of it made Banford’s blood boil. ‘Come on for a minute,’ he said, looking down into her uplifted, unsure face.

And she rose to her feet as if drawn up by his young, ruddy face that was looking down on her.

‘I should think you’re never going out at this time of night, Nellie!’ cried Banford.

‘Yes, just for a minute,’ said the boy, looking round on her, and speaking with an odd, sharp yelp in his voice.

March looked from one to the other, as if confused, vague. Banford rose to her feet for battle.

‘Why, it’s ridiculous. It’s bitter cold. You’ll catch your death in that thin frock. And in those slippers. You’re not going to do any such thing.’

There was a moment’s pause. Banford turtled up like a little fighting c**k, facing March and the boy.

‘Oh, I don’t think you need worry yourself,’ he replied. ‘A moment under the stars won’t do anybody any damage. I’ll get the rug off the sofa in the dining-room. You’re coming, Nellie.’

His voice had so much anger and contempt and fury in it as he spoke to Banford: and so much tenderness and proud authority as he spoke to March, that the latter answered:

‘Yes, I’m coming.’

And she turned with him to the door.

Banford, standing there in the middle of the room, suddenly burst into a long wail and a spasm of sobs. She covered her face with her poor, thin hands, and her thin shoulders shook in an agony of weeping. March looked back from the door.

‘Jill!’ she cried in a frantic tone, like someone just coming awake. And she seemed to start towards her darling.

But the boy had March’s arm in his grip, and she could not move. She did not know why she could not move. It was as in a dream when the heart strains and the body cannot stir.

‘Never mind,’ said the boy softly. ‘Let her cry. Let her cry. She will have to cry sooner or later. And the tears will relieve her feelings. They will do her good.’

So he drew March slowly through the doorway. But her last look was back to the poor little figure which stood in the middle of the room with covered face and thin shoulders shaken with bitter weeping.

In the dining-room he picked up the rug and said:

‘Wrap yourself up in this.’

She obeyed — and they reached the kitchen door, he holding her soft and firm by the arm, though she did not know it. When she saw the night outside she started back.

‘I must go back to Jill,’ she said. ‘I MUST! Oh yes, I must.’

Her tone sounded final. The boy let go of her and she turned indoors. But he seized her again and arrested her.

‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘Wait a minute. Even if you go, you’re not going yet.’

‘Leave go! Leave go!’ she cried. ‘My place is at Jill’s side. Poor little thing, she’s sobbing her heart out.’

‘Yes,’ said the boy bitterly. ‘And your heart too, and mine as well.’

‘Your heart?’ said March. He still gripped her and detained her.

‘Isn’t it as good as her heart?’ he said. ‘Or do you think it’s not?’

‘Your heart?’ she said again, incredulous.

‘Yes, mine! Mine! Do you think I haven’t GOT a heart?’ And with his hot grasp he took her hand and pressed it under his left breast. ‘There’s my heart,’ he said, ‘if you don’t believe in it.’

It was wonder which made her attend. And then she felt the deep, heavy, powerful stroke of his heart, terrible, like something from beyond. It was like something from beyond, something awful from outside, signalling to her. And the signal paralysed her. It beat upon her very soul, and made her helpless. She forgot Jill. She could not think of Jill any more. She could not think of her. That terrible signalling from outside!

The boy put his arm round her waist.

‘Come with me,’ he said gently. ‘Come and let us say what we’ve got to say.’

And he drew her outside, closed the door. And she went with him darkly down the garden path. That he should have a beating heart! And that he should have his arm round her, outside the blanket! She was too confused to think who he was or what he was.

He took her to a dark corner of the shed, where there was a tool-box with a lid, long and low.

‘We’ll sit here a minute,’ he said.

And obediently she sat down by his side.

‘Give me your hand,’ he said.

She gave him both her hands, and he held them between his own. He was young, and it made him tremble.

‘You’ll marry me. You’ll marry me before I go back, won’t you?’ he pleaded.

‘Why, aren’t we both a pair of fools?’ she said.

He had put her in the corner, so that she should not look out and see the lighted window of the house across the dark garden. He tried to keep her all there inside the shed with him.

‘In what way a pair of fools?’ he said. ‘If you go back to Canada with me, I’ve got a job and a good wage waiting for me, and it’s a nice place, near the mountains. Why shouldn’t you marry me? Why shouldn’t we marry? I should like to have you there with me. I should like to feel I’d got somebody there, at the back of me, all my life.’

‘You’d easily find somebody else who’d suit you better,’ she said.

‘Yes, I might easily find another girl. I know I could. But not one I really wanted. I’ve never met one I really wanted for good. You see, I’m thinking of all my life. If I marry, I want to feel it’s for all my life. Other girls: well, they’re just girls, nice enough to go a walk with now and then. Nice enough for a bit of play. But when I think of my life, then I should be very sorry to have to marry one of them, I should indeed.’

‘You mean they wouldn’t make you a good wife.’

‘Yes, I mean that. But I don’t mean they wouldn’t do their duty by me. I mean — I don’t know what I mean. Only when I think of my life, and of you, then the two things go together.’

‘And what if they didn’t?’ she said, with her odd, sardonic touch.

‘Well, I think they would.’

They sat for some time silent. He held her hands in his, but he did not make love to her. Since he had realized that she was a woman, and vulnerable, accessible, a certain heaviness had possessed his soul. He did not want to make love to her. He shrank from any such performance, almost with fear. She was a woman, and vulnerable, accessible to him finally, and he held back from that which was ahead, almost with dread. It was a kind of darkness he knew he would enter finally, but of which he did not want as yet even to think. She was the woman, and he was responsible for the strange vulnerability he had suddenly realized in her.

‘No,’ she said at last, ‘I’m a fool. I know I’m a fool.’

‘What for?’ he asked.

‘To go on with this business.’

‘Do you mean me?’ he asked.

‘No, I mean myself. I’m making a fool of myself, and a big one.’

‘Why, because you don’t want to marry me, really?’

‘Oh, I don’t know whether I’m against it, as a matter of fact. That’s just it. I don’t know.’

He looked at her in the darkness, puzzled. He did not in the least know what she meant.

‘And don’t you know whether you like to sit here with me this minute or not?’ he asked.

‘No, I don’t really. I don’t know whether I wish I was somewhere else, or whether I like being here. I don’t know, really.’

‘Do you wish you were with Miss Banford? Do you wish you’d gone to bed with her?’ he asked, as a challenge.

She waited a long time before she answered:

‘No,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t wish that.’

‘And do you think you would spend all your life with her — when your hair goes white, and you are old?’ he said.

‘No,’ she said, without much hesitation. ‘I don’t see Jill and me two old women together.’

‘And don’t you think, when I’m an old man and you’re an old woman, we might be together still, as we are now?’ he said.

‘Well, not as we are now,’ she replied. ‘But I could imagine — no, I can’t. I can’t imagine you an old man. Besides, it’s dreadful!’

‘What, to be an old man?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Not when the time comes,’ he said. ‘But it hasn’t come. Only it will. And when it does, I should like to think you’d be there as well.’

‘Sort of old age pensions,’ she said dryly.

Her kind of witless humour always startled him. He never knew what she meant. Probably she didn’t quite know herself.

‘No,’ he said, hurt.

‘I don’t know why you harp on old age,’ she said. ‘I’m not ninety.’

‘Did anybody ever say you were?’ he asked, offended.

They were silent for some time, pulling different ways in the silence.

‘I don’t want you to make fun of me,’ he said.