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 gun 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 gun 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 gun 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 gun 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 c
rucified. 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 licking 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.’
‘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 bu
nch 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.’
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 524