Lady into Fox
Page 6
be happy somehow together even if she did eat offthe floor. So he called out to her then:
"Silvia, come now, be good, you shan't wear any more clothes if youdon't want to, and you needn't sit at table neither, I promise. Youshall do as you like in that, but you must give up one thing, and thatis you must stay with me and not go out alone, for that is dangerous. Ifany dog came on you he would kill you."
Directly he had finished speaking she came to him joyously, beganfawning on him and prancing round him so that in spite of his vexationwith her, and being cold, he could not help stroking her.
"Oh, Silvia, are you not wilful and cunning? I see you glory in beingso, but I shall not reproach you but shall stick to my side of thebargain, and you must stick to yours."
He built a big fire when he came back to the house and took a glass ortwo of spirits also, to warm himself up, for he was chilled to the verybone. Then, after they had dined, to cheer himself he took anotherglass, and then another, and so on till he was very merry, he thought.Then he would play with his vixen, she encouraging him with her prettysportiveness. He got up to catch her then and finding himself unsteadyon his legs, he went down on to all fours. The long and the short of itis that by drinking he drowned all his sorrow; and then would be a beasttoo like his wife, though she was one through no fault of her own, andcould not help it. To what lengths he went then in that drunken humour Ishall not offend my readers by relating, but shall only say that he wasso drunk and sottish that he had a very imperfect recollection of whathad passed when he woke the next morning. There is no exception to therule that if a man drink heavily at night the next morning will show theother side to his nature. Thus with Mr. Tebrick, for as he had beenbeastly, merry and a very dare-devil the night before, so on hisawakening was he ashamed, melancholic and a true penitent before hisCreator. The first thing he did when he came to himself was to call outto God to forgive him for his sin, then he fell into earnest prayer andcontinued so for half-an-hour upon his knees. Then he got up and dressedbut continued very melancholy for the whole of the morning. Being inthis mood you may imagine it hurt him to see his wife running aboutnaked, but he reflected it would be a bad reformation that began withbreaking faith. He had made a bargain and he would stick to it, and sohe let her be, though sorely against his will.
For the same reason, that is because he would stick to his side of thebargain, he did not require her to sit up at table, but gave her herbreakfast on a dish in the corner, where to tell the truth she on herside ate it all up with great daintiness and propriety. Nor she did makeany attempt to go out of doors that morning, but lay curled up in anarmchair before the fire dozing. After lunch he took her out, and shenever so much as offered to go near the ducks, but running before himled him on to take her a longer walk. This he consented to do very muchto her joy and delight. He took her through the fields by the mostunfrequented ways, being much alarmed lest they should be seen byanyone. But by good luck they walked above four miles across country andsaw nobody. All the way his wife kept running on ahead of him, and thenback to him to lick his hand and so on, and appeared delighted at takingexercise. And though they startled two or three rabbits and a hare inthe course of their walk she never attempted to go after them, onlygiving them a look and then looking back to him, laughing at him as itwere for his warning cry of "Puss! come in, no nonsense now!"
Just when they got home and were going into the porch they came face toface with an old woman. Mr. Tebrick stopped short in consternation andlooked about for his vixen, but she had run forward without any shynessto greet her. Then he recognised the intruder, it was his wife's oldnurse.
"What are you doing here, Mrs. Cork?" he asked her.
Mrs. Cork answered him in these words:
"Poor thing. Poor Miss Silvia! It is a shame to let her run about like adog. It is a shame, and your own wife too. But whatever she looks like,you should trust her the same as ever. If you do she'll do her best tobe a good wife to you, if you don't I shouldn't wonder if she did turninto a proper fox. I saw her, sir, before I left, and I've had no peaceof mind. I couldn't sleep thinking of her. So I've come back to lookafter her, as I have done all her life, sir," and she stooped down andtook Mrs. Tebrick by the paw.
Mr. Tebrick unlocked the door and they went in. When Mrs. Cork saw thehouse she exclaimed again and again: "The place was a pigstye. Theycouldn't live like that, a gentleman must have somebody to look afterhim. She would do it. He could trust her with the secret."
Had the old woman come the day before it is likely enough that Mr.Tebrick would have sent her packing. But the voice of conscience beingwoken in him by his drunkenness of the night before he was heartilyashamed of his own management of the business, moreover the old woman'swords that "it was a shame to let her run about like a dog," moved himexceedingly. Being in this mood the truth is he welcomed her.
But we may conclude that Mrs. Tebrick was as sorry to see her old Nannyas her husband was glad. If we consider that she had been brought upstrictly by her when she was a child, and was now again in her power,and that her old nurse could never be satisfied with her now whatevershe did, but would always think her wicked to be a fox at all, thereseems good reason for her dislike. And it is possible, too, that theremay have been another cause as well, and that is jealousy. We know herhusband was always trying to bring her back to be a woman, or at anyrate to get her to act like one, may she not have been hoping to get himto be like a beast himself or to act like one? May she not have thoughtit easier to change him thus than ever to change herself back intobeing a woman? If we think that she had had a success of this kind onlythe night before, when he got drunk, can we not conclude that this wasindeed the case, and then we have another good reason why the poor ladyshould hate to see her old nurse?
It is certain that whatever hopes Mr. Tebrick had of Mrs. Cork affectinghis wife for the better were disappointed. She grew steadily wilder andafter a few days so intractable with her that Mr. Tebrick again took herunder his complete control.
The first morning Mrs. Cork made her a new jacket, cutting down thesleeves of a blue silk one of Mrs. Tebrick's and trimming it with swan'sdown, and directly she had altered it, put it on her mistress, andfetching a mirror would have her admire the fit of it. All the time shewaited on Mrs. Tebrick the old woman talked to her as though she were ababy, and treated her as such, never thinking perhaps that she waseither the one thing or the other, that is either a lady to whom sheowed respect and who had rational powers exceeding her own, or else awild creature on whom words were wasted. But though at first shesubmitted passively, Mrs. Tebrick only waited for her Nanny's back to beturned to tear up her pretty piece of handiwork into shreds, and thenran gaily about waving her brush with only a few ribands still hangingfrom her neck.
So it was time after time (for the old woman was used to having her ownway) until Mrs. Cork would, I think, have tried punishing her if she hadnot been afraid of Mrs. Tebrick's rows of white teeth, which she oftenshowed her, then laughing afterwards, as if to say it was only play.
Not content with tearing off the dresses that were fitted on her, oneday Silvia slipped upstairs to her wardrobe and tore down all her olddresses and made havoc with them, not sparing her wedding dress either,but tearing and ripping them all up so that there was hardly a shred orrag left big enough to dress a doll in. On this, Mr. Tebrick, who hadlet the old woman have most of her management to see what she could makeof her, took her back under his own control.
He was sorry enough now that Mrs. Cork had disappointed him in the hopeshe had had of her, to have the old woman, as it were, on his hands. Trueshe could be useful enough in many ways to him, by doing the housework,the cooking and mending, but still he was anxious since his secret wasin her keeping, and the more now that she had tried her hand with hiswife and failed. For he saw that vanity had kept her mouth shut if shehad won over her mistress to better ways, and her love for her wouldhave grown by getting her own way with her. But now that she had failedshe bore her mistress a grudge for not bei
ng won over, or at the bestwas become indifferent to the business, so that she might very readilyblab.
For the moment all Mr. Tebrick could do was to keep her from going intoStokoe to the village, where she would meet all her old cronies andwhere there were certain to be any number of inquiries about what wasgoing on at Rylands and so on. But as he saw that it was clearly beyondhis power, however vigilant he might be, to watch over the old woman andhis wife, and to prevent anyone from meeting with either of them, hebegan to consider what he could best do.
Since he had sent away his servants and the gardener, giving out a storyof having received bad news and his wife going away to London where hewould join her, their probably going out of England and so on, he knewwell enough that there would be a great deal of talk in theneighbourhood.
And as he had now stayed on, contrary to what he had said, there