The Fox

by Isabelle Drake

  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. She had made herself accessible to him. No doubt that was her intention. He blushed to the roots of his hair, shoved his nose in his teacup 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, so she turned sourly away from him.

  “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. And the fox wrapped around her neck. Then later, her running from Henry, racing through the darkness and from—what? Now, she couldn’t remember what she had been racing towards. Or had she been racing away from something? Whatever it had been must not matter, for if it had, surely she would have remembered it.

  “What, have you been dreaming of a wedding?” said Banford sarcastically.

  “Must have been,” said March, shifting in her skirt.

  “Whose wedding?” asked the boy, taking the opportunity of speaking to her as a reason to look her up and down again.

  “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. But at the same time a delicious power ran through her. If only she could label it and make use of it.

  They talked desultorily about Henry’s departure next morning, and made the trivial arrangements. 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. The plans for his departure made everything so much more pleasant.

  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.

  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. His body, having made the shift from boyhood to manhood, felt different. Ready. Anxious. Tense. He wanted to leap up and shove Banford out of the room and up the stairs.

  “What about bed?” said March at last.

  Henry’s body stiffened.

  “I’m ready when you are,” said Banford.

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

  She rose and headed across the room. Henry watched each sway of her hips and studied the way her skirt hem brushed across the stockings. 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, still wearing the dress, stockings and shoes. The buckles caught the light of the fire and glimmered. He would touch her there first and take off the shoes. Then he might yank off the stockings. Or maybe he would tell her to take them off, slowly, while he was seated before her.

  “There you are, then,” she said. “Are you going up?”

  Going and not coming. There was a certain difference in the words that meant everything.

  “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. His heart thumped inside his chest, pushing hot blood through his veins. The heat in his upper thighs was nearly unbearable, so intense that all he could think of was easing it.

  “I think I’ll go and look if I can see the she-fox,” he said, adjusting his trousers so that Banford could not see the effects of his musings about March. “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. A wave of self-assured power rolled over him. Of course she would look at him that way. He was her master.

  “I should think you’re never going out at this time of night, Nellie!” cried Banford, her gaze sharp behind her spectacles.

  “Yes, just for a minute,” said the boy, looking round on her, and speaking with an odd, sharp yelp in his voice that he instantly regretted. He had meant for his voice to be low, calm and assured. It was the damn tension in his thighs and groin and the hot blood stealing his control.

  March looked from one to the other, as if confused, vague. Banford rose to her feet for battle. Henry puffed out his thin chest and curled his hands into fists.

  “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 cock, facing March and the boy. The logs continued to burn, and outside the wind continued to blow. Yet the three of them stood that way for too long, none of them ready to admit defeat. Finally Henry, whose blood continued to pound through his body, but now more from anger than desire, spoke firmly.

  “Oh, I don’t think you need worry yourself,” he said. “A moment under the stars won’t do anybody any damage.” Then, to March, “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 smoothed out her dress and touched her neck as she 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 weep
ing.

  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, looking her up and down in the way he often did, reminding her of the difference between them. He was angular, lean and demanding. She was soft, open and weak. “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, using his height to impose himself upon her. “Or do you think it’s not?”

  “Your heart?” she said again, incredulous.

  She tried to back away from him, away from his towering form, but he moved with her. He would not let her go. Not then. Not ever.

  “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. 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 and as weak as he knew her to be. She forgot Jill. She could not think of Jill any more. She could not think of her. That terrible signalling from outside! And the fierce signalling from within herself. It was as though a switch had been turned and her own body had become foreign.

  The boy put his arm round her waist and pulled her to him. She twisted and turned, trying to find herself, but he would not let her go. He used his knee to guide her legs apart then lifted his leg and pressed it into her crotch. Oh, the glorious pressure he supplied. It was everything she needed and wanted.

  “Come with me,” he said gently, lowering his leg and stealing away the delicious pain. “Come and let us say what we’ve got to say.”

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

  He took her to a corner of the shed, where there was a tool-box with a lid, long and low. Rays of yellow moonlight came in through the window.

  “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. But she too was trembling. Not from the winter cold, but from anticipation.

  “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 garden. He wanted all of her, both her body and her mind, 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, fighting for a reason to say no.

  “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.” She said the last words with a touch of bitterness, although she wasn’t that sure why. Being a good wife wasn’t a bad thing. But still, she resented these younger girls she’d never met. Ones who would be good for a bit of fun.

  “Yes, I mean that,” he said, not noticing the bitterness on March’s tongue. “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.” He thought about the situation with a new seriousness now that they had spoken so frankly and he’d finally had the opportunity to talk freely without the ever-present Banford censoring his every word. The heat in his body had cooled and been replaced by something else. But what it was he did not know. It was not anger, he knew that.

  They sat for some time silent. He held her hands in his, but he did not make love to her. Since he had realised that she was a woman, and vulnerable, accessible, a certain heaviness had possessed his soul. He did not want to make love to her. Now that they had spoken and he had accepted the responsibilities, 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 realised in her. Her weakness, which had been the thing he most wanted her to expose, now frightened him.

  “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 dim light, puzzled. He did not in the least know what she meant. Her uncertainty matched his own. No, that wasn’t quite it. He knew he wanted to marry her—that he did know.

  “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. He brushed his shoulder against hers then leaned against her.

  “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.” She was actually laughing just a bit and the light sound made him smile.

  “Not when the time comes,” he said. “But it hasn’t co
me. 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, the small laughter gone.

  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.

  “Don’t you?” she replied, enigmatic.

  “No, because just this minute I’m serious. And when I’m serious, I believe in not making fun of it.”

  “You mean nobody else must make fun of you,” she replied.

  “Yes, I mean that. And I mean I don’t believe in making fun of it myself. When it comes over me so that I’m serious, then—there it is, I don’t want it to be laughed at.”

  She was silent for some time. Then she said, in a vague, almost pained voice, “No, I’m not laughing at you.”

  A hot wave rose in his heart.

  “You believe me, do you?” he asked.

  “Yes, I believe you,” she replied, with a twang of her old, tired nonchalance, as if she gave in because she was tired. But he didn’t care. His heart was suddenly hot and clamorous and the tension was returning.

  “So you agree to marry me before I go—perhaps at Christmas?”

  She looked up at him and studied him with her careful eyes. Finally she responded, “Yes, I agree.”