Lady Into Fox

by

David Garnett











LADY INTO FOX



By



DAVID GARNETT



ILLUSTRATED WITH WOOD ENGRAVINGS



BY R. A. GARNETT



1922















TO



DUNCAN GRANT







[Illustration: MR. AND MRS. TEBRICK AT HOME]





Wonderful or supernatural events are not so uncommon, rather they are

irregular in their incidence. Thus there may be not one marvel to speak

of in a century, and then often enough comes a plentiful crop of them;

monsters of all sorts swarm suddenly upon the earth, comets blaze in

the sky, eclipses frighten nature, meteors fall in rain, while mermaids

and sirens beguile, and sea-serpents engulf every passing ship, and

terrible cataclysms beset humanity.



But the strange event which I shall here relate came alone, unsupported,

without companions into a hostile world, and for that very reason

claimed little of the general attention of mankind. For the sudden

changing of Mrs. Tebrick into a vixen is an established fact which we

may attempt to account for as we will. Certainly it is in the

explanation of the fact, and the reconciling of it with our general

notions that we shall find most difficulty, and not in accepting for

true a story which is so fully proved, and that not by one witness but

by a dozen, all respectable, and with no possibility of collusion

between them.



But here I will confine myself to an exact narrative of the event and

all that followed on it. Yet I would not dissuade any of my readers from

attempting an explanation of this seeming miracle because up till now

none has been found which is entirely satisfactory. What adds to the

difficulty to my mind is that the metamorphosis occurred when Mrs.

Tebrick was a full-grown woman, and that it happened suddenly in so

short a space of time. The sprouting of a tail, the gradual extension of

hair all over the body, the slow change of the whole anatomy by a

process of growth, though it would have been monstrous, would not have

been so difficult to reconcile to our ordinary conceptions, particularly

had it happened in a young child.



But here we have something very different. A grown lady is changed

straightway into a fox. There is no explaining that away by any natural

philosophy. The materialism of our age will not help us here. It is

indeed a _miracle_; something from outside our world altogether; an

event which we would willingly accept if we were to meet it invested

with the authority of Divine Revelation in the scriptures, but which we

are not prepared to encounter almost in our time, happening in

Oxfordshire amongst our neighbours.



The only things which go any way towards an explanation of it are but

guesswork, and I give them more because I would not conceal anything,

than because I think they are of any worth.



Mrs. Tebrick's maiden name was certainly Fox, and it is possible that

such a miracle happening before, the family may have gained their name

as a _soubriquet_ on that account. They were an ancient family, and have

had their seat at Tangley Hall time out of mind. It is also true that

there was a half-tame fox once upon a time chained up at Tangley Hall in

the inner yard, and I have heard many speculative wiseacres in the

public-houses turn that to great account--though they could not but

admit that "there was never one there in Miss Silvia's time." At first I

was inclined to think that Silvia Fox, having once hunted when she was

a child of ten and having been blooded, might furnish more of an

explanation. It seems she took great fright or disgust at it, and

vomited after it was done. But now I do not see that it has much bearing

on the miracle itself, even though we know that after that she always

spoke of the "poor foxes" when a hunt was stirring and never rode to

hounds till after her marriage when her husband persuaded her to it.



She was married in the year 1879 to Mr. Richard Tebrick, after a short

courtship, and went to live after their honeymoon at Rylands, near

Stokoe, Oxon. One point indeed I have not been able to ascertain and

that is how they first became acquainted. Tangley Hall is over thirty

miles from Stokoe, and is extremely remote. Indeed to this day there is

no proper road to it, which is all the more remarkable as it is the

principal, and indeed the only, manor house for several miles round.



Whether it was from a chance meeting on the roads, or less romantic but

more probable, by Mr. Tebrick becoming acquainted with her uncle, a

minor canon at Oxford, and thence being invited by him to visit Tangley

Hall, it is impossible to say. But however they became acquainted the

marriage was a very happy one. The bride was in her twenty-third year.

She was small, with remarkably small hands and feet. It is perhaps worth

noting that there was nothing at all foxy or vixenish in her appearance.

On the contrary, she was a more than ordinarily beautiful and agreeable

woman. Her eyes were of a clear hazel but exceptionally brilliant, her

hair dark, with a shade of red in it, her skin brownish, with a few dark

freckles and little moles. In manner she was reserved almost to shyness,

but perfectly self-possessed, and perfectly well-bred.



She had been strictly brought up by a woman of excellent principles and

considerable attainments, who died a year or so before the marriage. And

owing to the circumstance that her mother had been dead many years, and

her father bedridden, and not altogether rational for a little while

before his death, they had few visitors but her uncle. He often stopped

with them a month or two at a stretch, particularly in winter, as he was

fond of shooting snipe, which are plentiful in the valley there. That

she did not grow up a country hoyden is to be explained by the

strictness of her governess and the influence of her uncle. But perhaps

living in so wild a place gave her some disposition to wildness, even in

spite of her religious upbringing. Her old nurse said: "Miss Silvia was

always a little wild at heart," though if this was true it was never

seen by anyone else except her husband.



On one of the first days of the year 1880, in the early afternoon,

husband and wife went for a walk in the copse on the little hill above

Rylands. They were still at this time like lovers in their behaviour and

were always together. While they were walking they heard the hounds and

later the huntsman's horn in the distance. Mr. Tebrick had persuaded her

to hunt on Boxing Day, but with great difficulty, and she had not

enjoyed it (though of hacking she was fond enough).



Hearing the hunt, Mr. Tebrick quickened his pace so as to reach the edge

of the copse, where they might get a good view of the hounds if they

came that way. His wife hung back, and he, holding her hand, began

almost to drag her. Before they gained the edge of the copse she

suddenly snatched her hand away from his very violently and cried out,

so that he instantly turned his head.



_Where his wife had been the moment before was a small fox, of a very

bright red._ It looked at him very beseechingly, advanced towards him a

pace or two, and he saw at once that his wife was looking at him from

the animal's eyes. You may well think if he were aghast: and so maybe

was his lady at finding herself in that shape, so they did nothing for

nearly half-an-hour but stare at each other, he bewildered, she asking

him with her eyes as if indeed she spoke to him: "What am I now become?

Have pity on me, husband, have pity on me for I am your wife."



So that with his gazing on her and knowing her well, even in such a

shape, yet asking himself at every moment: "Can it be she? Am I not

dreaming?" and her beseeching and lastly fawning on him and seeming to

tell him that it was she indeed, they came at last together and he took

her in his arms. She lay very close to him, nestling under his coat and

fell to licking his face, but never taking her eyes from his. The

husband all this while kept turning the thing in his head and gazing on

her, but he could make no sense of what had happened, but only comforted

himself with the hope that this was but a momentary change, and that

presently she would turn back again into the wife that was one flesh

with him.



One fancy that came to him, because he was so much more like a lover

than a husband, was that it was his fault, and this because if anything

dreadful happened he could never blame her but himself for it.



So they passed a good while, till at last the tears welled up in the

poor fox's eyes and she began weeping (but quite in silence), and she

trembled too as if she were in a fever. At this he could not contain his

own tears, but sat down on the ground and sobbed for a great while, but

between his sobs kissing her quite as if she had been a woman, and not

caring in his grief that he was kissing a fox on the muzzle.



They sat thus till it was getting near dusk, when he recollected

himself, and the next thing was that he must somehow hide her, and then

bring her home.



He waited till it was quite dark that he might the better bring her into

her own house without being seen, and buttoned her inside his topcoat,

nay, even in his passion tearing open his waistcoat and his shirt that

she might like the closer to his heart. For when we are overcome with

the greatest sorrow we act not like men or women but like children

whose comfort in all their troubles is to press themselves against their

mother's breast, or if she be not there to hold each other tight in one

another's arms.



When it was dark he brought her in with infinite precautions, yet not

without the dogs scenting her after which nothing could moderate their

clamour.



Having got her into the house, the next thing he thought of was to hide

her from the servants. He carried her to the bedroom in his arms and

then went downstairs again.



Mr. Tebrick had three servants living in the house, the cook, the

parlour-maid, and an old woman who had been his wife's nurse. Besides

these women there was a groom or a gardener (whichever you choose to

call him), who was a single man and so lived out, lodging with a

labouring family about half a mile away.



Mr. Tebrick going downstairs pitched upon the parlour-maid.



"Janet," says he, "Mrs. Tebrick and I have had some bad news, and Mrs.

Tebrick was called away instantly to London and left this afternoon, and

I am staying to-night to put our affairs in order. We are shutting up

the house, and I must give you and Mrs. Brant a month's wages and ask

you to leave to-morrow morning at seven o'clock. We shall probably go

away to the Continent, and I do not know when we shall come back. Please

tell the others, and now get me my tea and bring it into my study on a

tray." Janet said nothing for she was a shy girl, particularly before

gentlemen, but when she entered the kitchen Mr. Tebrick heard a sudden

burst of conversation with many exclamations from the cook.



When she came back with his tea, Mr. Tebrick said: "I shall not require

you upstairs. Pack your own things and tell James to have the waggonette

ready for you by seven o'clock to-morrow morning to take you to the

station. I am busy now, but I will see you again before you go."



When she had gone Mr. Tebrick took the tray upstairs. For the first

moment he thought the room was empty, and his vixen got away, for he

could see no sign of her anywhere. But after a moment he saw something

stirring in a corner of the room, and then behold! she came forth

dragging her dressing-gown, into which she had somehow struggled.



This must surely have been a comical sight, but poor Mr. Tebrick was

altogether too distressed then or at any time afterwards to divert

himself at such ludicrous scenes. He only called to her softly:



"Silvia--Silvia. What do you do there?" And then in a moment saw for

himself what she would be at, and began once more to blame himself

heartily--because he had not guessed that his wife would not like to go

naked, no notwithstanding the shape she was in. Nothing would satisfy

him then till he had clothed her suitably, bringing her dresses from the

wardrobe for her to choose. But as might have been expected, they were

too big for her now, but at last he picked out a little dressing-jacket

that she was fond of wearing sometimes in the mornings. It was made of

a flowered silk, trimmed with lace, and the sleeves short enough to sit

very well on her now. While he tied the ribands his poor lady thanked

him with gentle looks and not without some modesty and confusion. He

propped her up in an armchair with some cushions, and they took tea

together, she very delicately drinking from a saucer and taking bread

and butter from his hands. All this showed him, or so he thought, that

his wife was still herself; there was so little wildness in her

demeanour and so much delicacy and decency, especially in her not

wishing to run naked, that he was very much comforted, and began to

fancy they could be happy enough if they could escape the world and live

always alone.



From this too sanguine dream he was aroused by hearing the gardener

speaking to the dogs, trying to quiet them, for ever since he had come

in with his vixen they had been whining, barking and growling, and all

as he knew because there was a fox within doors and they would kill it.



He started up now, calling to the gardener that he would come down to

the dogs himself to quiet them, and bade the man go indoors again and

leave it to him. All this he said in a dry, compelling kind of voice

which made the fellow do as he was bid, though it was against his will,

for he was curious. Mr. Tebrick went downstairs, and taking his gun from

the rack loaded it and went out into the yard. Now there were two dogs,

one a handsome Irish setter that was his wife's dog (she had brought it

with her from Tangley Hall on her marriage); the other was an old fox

terrier called Nelly that he had had ten years or more.



When he came out into the yard both dogs saluted him by barking and

whining twice as much as they did before, the setter jumping up and down

at the end of his chain in a frenzy, and Nelly shivering, wagging her

tail, and looking first at her master and then at the house door, where

she could smell the fox right enough.



There was a bright moon, so that Mr. Tebrick could see the dogs as

clearly as could be. First he shot his wife's setter dead, and then

looked about him for Nelly to give her the other barrel, but he could

see her nowhere. The bitch was clean gone, till, looking to see how she

had broken her chain, he found her lying hid in the back of her kennel.

But that trick did not save her, for Mr. Tebrick, after trying to pull

her out by her chain and finding it useless--she would not come,--thrust

the muzzle of his gun into the kennel, pressed it into her body and so

shot her. Afterwards, striking a match, he looked in at her to make

certain she was dead. Then, leaving the dogs as they were, chained up,

Mr. Tebrick went indoors again and found the gardener, who had not yet

gone home, gave him a month's wages in lieu of notice and told him he

had a job for him yet--to bury the two dogs and that he should do it

that same night.



But by all this going on with so much strangeness and authority on his

part, as it seemed to them, the servants were much troubled. Hearing the

shots while he was out in the yard his wife's old nurse, or Nanny, ran

up to the bedroom though she had no business there, and so opening the

door saw the poor fox dressed in my lady's little jacket lying back in

the cushions, and in such a reverie of woe that she heard nothing.



Old Nanny, though she was not expecting to find her mistress there,

having been told that she was gone that afternoon to London, knew her

instantly, and cried out:



"Oh, my poor precious! Oh, poor Miss Silvia! What dreadful change is

this?" Then, seeing her mistress start and look at her, she cried out:

"But never fear, my darling, it will all come right, your old Nanny

knows you, it will all come right in the end."



But though she said this she did not care to look again, and kept her

eyes turned away so as not to meet the foxy slit ones of her mistress,

for that was too much for her. So she hurried out soon, fearing to be

found there by Mr. Tebrick, and who knows, perhaps shot, like the dogs,

for knowing the secret.



Mr. Tebrick had all this time gone about paying off his servants and

shooting his dogs as if he were in a dream. Now he fortified himself

with two or three glasses of strong whisky and went to bed, taking his

vixen into his arms, where he slept soundly. Whether she did or not is

more than I or anybody else can say.



In the morning when he woke up they had the place to themselves, for on

his instructions the servants had all left first thing: Janet and the

cook to Oxford, where they would try and find new places, and Nanny

going back to the cottage near Tangley, where her son lived, who was the

pigman there.



So with that morning there began what was now to be their ordinary life

together. He would get up when it was broad day, and first thing light

the fire downstairs and cook the breakfast, then brush his wife, sponge

her with a damp sponge, then brush her again, in all this using scent

very freely to hide somewhat her rank odour. When she was dressed he

carried her downstairs and they had their breakfast together, she

sitting up to table with him, drinking her saucer of tea, and taking her

food from his fingers, or at any rate being fed by him. She was still

fond of the same food that she had been used to before her

transformation, a lightly boiled egg or slice of ham, a piece of

buttered toast or two, with a little quince and apple jam. While I am on

the subject of her food, I should say that reading in the encyclopedia

he found that foxes on the Continent are inordinately fond of grapes,

and that during the autumn season they abandon their ordinary diet for

them, and then grow exceedingly fat and lose their offensive odour.



This appetite for grapes is so well confirmed by Aesop, and by passages

in the Scriptures, that it is strange Mr. Tebrick should not have known

it. After reading this account he wrote to London for a basket of grapes

to be posted to him twice a week and was rejoiced to find that the

account in the encyclopedia was true in the most important of these

particulars. His vixen relished them exceedingly and seemed never to

tire of them, so that he increased his order first from one pound to

three pounds and afterwards to five. Her odour abated so much by this

means that he came not to notice it at all except sometimes in the

mornings before her toilet. What helped most to make living with her

bearable for him was that she understood him perfectly--yes, every word

he said, and though she was dumb she expressed herself very fluently by

looks and signs though never by the voice.



Thus he frequently conversed with her, telling her all his thoughts and

hiding nothing from her, and this the more readily because he was very

quick to catch her meaning and her answers.



"Puss, Puss," he would say to her, for calling her that had been a habit

with him always. "Sweet Puss, some men would pity me living alone here

with you after what has happened, but I would not change places while

you were living with any man for the whole world. Though you are a fox I

would rather live with you than any woman. I swear I would, and that too

if you were changed to anything." But then, catching her grave look, he

would say: "Do you think I jest on these things, my dear? I do not. I

swear to you, my darling, that all my life I will be true to you, will

be faithful, will respect and reverence you who are my wife. And I will

do that not because of any hope that God in His mercy will see fit to

restore your shape, but solely because I love you. However you may be

changed, my love is not."



Then anyone seeing them would have sworn that they were lovers, so

passionately did each look on the other.



Often he would swear to her that the devil might have power to work some

miracles, but that he would find it beyond him to change his love for

her.



These passionate speeches, however they might have struck his wife in an

ordinary way, now seemed to be her chief comfort. She would come to him,

put her paw in his hand and look at him with sparkling eyes shining

with joy and gratitude, would pant with eagerness, jump at him and lick

his face.



Now he had many little things which busied him in the house--getting his

meals, setting the room straight, making the bed and so forth. When he

was doing this housework it was comical to watch his vixen. Often she

was as it were beside herself with vexation and distress to see him in

his clumsy way doing what she could have done so much better had she

been able. Then, forgetful of the decency and the decorum which she had

at first imposed upon herself never to run upon all fours, she followed

him everywhere, and if he did one thing wrong she stopped him and showed

him the way of it. When he had forgot the hour for his meal she would

come and tug his sleeve and tell him as if she spoke: "Husband, are we

to have no luncheon to-day?"



This womanliness in her never failed to delight him, for it showed she

was still his wife, buried as it were in the carcase of a beast but with

a woman's soul. This encouraged him so much that he debated with himself

whether he should not read aloud to her, as he often had done formerly.

At last, since he could find no reason against it, he went to the shelf

and fetched down a volume of the "History of Clarissa Harlowe," which he

had begun to read aloud to her a few weeks before. He opened the volume

where he had left off, with Lovelace's letter after he had spent the

night waiting fruitlessly in the copse.



"Good God!



"What is now to become of me?



"My feet benumbed by midnight wanderings through the heaviest dews

that ever fell; my wig and my linen dripping with the hoarfrost

dissolving on them!



"Day but just breaking...." etc.



While he read he was conscious of holding her attention, then after a

few pages the story claimed all his, so that he read on for about

half-an-hour without looking at her. When he did so he saw that she was

not listening to him, but was watching something with strange eagerness.

Such a fixed intent look was on her face that he was alarmed and sought

the cause of it. Presently he found that her gaze was fixed on the

movements of her pet dove which was in its cage hanging in the window.

He spoke to her, but she seemed displeased, so he laid "Clarissa

Harlowe" aside. Nor did he ever repeat the experiment of reading to her.



Yet that same evening, as he happened to be looking through his writing

table drawer with Puss beside him looking over his elbow, she spied a

pack of cards, and then he was forced to pick them out to please her,

then draw them from their case. At last, trying first one thing, then

another, he found that what she was after was to play piquet with him.

They had some difficulty at first in contriving for her to hold her

cards and then to play them, but this was at last overcome by his

stacking them for her on a sloping board, after which she could flip

them out very neatly with her claws as she wanted to play them. When

they had overcome this trouble they played three games, and most

heartily she seemed to enjoy them. Moreover she won all three of them.

After this they often played a quiet game of piquet together, and

cribbage too. I should say that in marking the points at cribbage on the

board he always moved her pegs for her as well as his own, for she could

not handle them or set them in the holes.



The weather, which had been damp and misty, with frequent downpours of

rain, improved very much in the following week, and, as often happens in

January, there were several days with the sun shining, no wind and light

frosts at night, these frosts becoming more intense as the days went on

till bye and bye they began to think of snow.



With this spell of fine weather it was but natural that Mr. Tebrick

should think of taking his vixen out of doors. This was something he had

not yet done, both because of the damp rainy weather up till then and

because the mere notion of taking her out filled him with alarm. Indeed

he had so many apprehensions beforehand that at one time he resolved

totally against it. For his mind was filled not only with the fear that

she might escape from him and run away, which he knew was groundless,

but with more rational visions, such as wandering curs, traps, gins,

spring guns, besides a dread of being seen with her by the

neighbourhood. At last however he resolved on it, and all the more as

his vixen kept asking him in the gentlest way: "Might she not go out

into the garden?" Yet she always listened very submissively when he told

her that he was afraid if they were seen together it would excite the

curiosity of their neighbours; besides this, he often told her of his

fears for her on account of dogs. But one day she answered this by

leading him into the hall and pointing boldly to his gun. After this he

resolved to take her, though with full precautions. That is he left the

house door open so that in case of need she could beat a swift retreat,

then he took his gun under his arm, and lastly he had her well wrapped

up in a little fur jacket lest she should take cold.



He would have carried her too, but that she delicately disengaged

herself from his arms and looked at him very expressively to say that

she would go by herself. For already her first horror of being seen to

go upon all fours was worn off; reasoning no doubt upon it, that either

she must resign herself to go that way or else stay bed-ridden all the

rest of her life.



Her joy at going into the garden was inexpressible. First she ran this

way, then that, though keeping always close to him, looking very sharply

with ears cocked forward first at one thing, then another and then up to

catch his eye.



For some time indeed she was almost dancing with delight, running round

him, then forward a yard or two, then back to him and gambolling beside

him as they went round the garden. But in spite of her joy she was full

of fear. At every noise, a cow lowing, a cock crowing, or a ploughman in

the distance hulloaing to scare the rooks, she started, her ears pricked

to catch the sound, her muzzle wrinkled up and her nose twitched, and

she would then press herself against his legs. They walked round the

garden and down to the pond where there were ornamental waterfowl, teal,

widgeon and mandarin ducks, and seeing these again gave her great

pleasure. They had always been her favourites, and now she was so

overjoyed to see them that she behaved with very little of her usual

self-restraint. First she stared at them, then bouncing up to her

husband's knee sought to kindle an equal excitement in his mind. Whilst

she rested her paws on his knee she turned her head again and again

towards the ducks as though she could not take her eyes off them, and

then ran down before him to the water's edge.



But her appearance threw the ducks into the utmost degree of

consternation. Those on shore or near the bank swam or flew to the

centre of the pond, and there huddled in a bunch; and then, swimming

round and round, they began such a quacking that Mr. Tebrick was nearly

deafened. As I have before said, nothing in the ludicrous way that arose

out of the metamorphosis of his wife (and such incidents were

plentiful) ever stood a chance of being smiled at by him. So in this

case, too, for realising that the silly ducks thought his wife a fox

indeed and were alarmed on that account he found painful that spectacle

which to others might have been amusing.



Not so his vixen, who appeared if anything more pleased than ever when

she saw in what a commotion she had set them, and began cutting a

thousand pretty capers. Though at first he called to her to come back

and walk another way, Mr. Tebrick was overborne by her pleasure and sat

down, while she frisked around him happier far than he had seen her ever

since the change. First she ran up to him in a laughing way, all smiles,

and then ran down again to the water's edge and began frisking and

frolicking, chasing her own brush, dancing on her hind legs even, and

rolling on the ground, then fell to running in circles, but all this

without paying any heed to the ducks.



But they, with their necks craned out all pointing one way, swam to and

fro in the middle of the pond, never stopping their quack, quack quack,

and keeping time too, for they all quacked in chorus. Presently she came

further away from the pond, and he, thinking they had had enough of this

sort of entertainment, laid hold of her and said to her:



"Come, Silvia, my dear, it is growing cold, and it is time we went

indoors. I am sure taking the air has done you a world of good, but we

must not linger any more."



She appeared then to agree with him, though she threw half a glance over

her shoulder at the ducks, and they both walked soberly enough towards

the house.



When they had gone about halfway she suddenly slipped round and was off.

He turned quickly and saw the ducks had been following them.



So she drove them before her back into the pond, the ducks running in

terror from her with their wings spread, and she not pressing them, for

he saw that had she been so minded she could have caught two or three of

the nearest. Then, with her brush waving above her, she came gambolling

back to him so playfully that he stroked her indulgently, though he was

first vexed, and then rather puzzled that his wife should amuse herself

with such pranks.



But when they got within doors he picked her up in his arms, kissed her

and spoke to her.



"Silvia, what a light-hearted childish creature you are. Your courage

under misfortune shall be a lesson to me, but I cannot, I cannot bear to

see it."



Here the tears stood suddenly in his eyes, and he lay down upon the

ottoman and wept, paying no heed to her until presently he was aroused

by her licking his cheek and his ear.



After tea she led him to the drawing room and scratched at the door till

he opened it, for this was part of the house which he had shut up,

thinking three or four rooms enough for them now, and to save the

dusting of it. Then it seemed she would have him play to her on the

pianoforte: she led him to it, nay, what is more, she would herself pick

out the music he was to play. First it was a fugue of Handel's, then one

of Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, and then "The Diver," and then

music from Gilbert and Sullivan; but each piece of music she picked out

was gayer than the last one. Thus they sat happily engrossed for perhaps

an hour in the candle light until the extreme cold in that unwarmed room

stopped his playing and drove them downstairs to the fire. Thus did she

admirably comfort her husband when he was dispirited.



Yet next morning when he woke he was distressed when he found that she

was not in the bed with him but was lying curled up at the foot of it.

During breakfast she hardly listened when he spoke, and then impatiently,

but sat staring at the dove.



Mr. Tebrick sat silently looking out of window for some time, then he

took out his pocket book; in it there was a photograph of his wife taken

soon after their wedding. Now he gazed and gazed upon those familiar

features, and now he lifted his head and looked at the animal before

him. He laughed then bitterly, the first and last time for that matter

that Mr. Tebrick ever laughed at his wife's transformation, for he was

not very humorous. But this laugh was sour and painful to him. Then he

tore up the photograph into little pieces, and scattered them out of the

window, saying to himself: "Memories will not help me here," and turning

to the vixen he saw that she was still staring at the caged bird, and

as he looked he saw her lick her chops.



He took the bird into the next room, then acting suddenly upon the

impulse, he opened the cage door and set it free, saying as he did so:



"Go, poor bird! Fly from this wretched house while you still remember

your mistress who fed you from her coral lips. You are not a fit

plaything for her now. Farewell, poor bird! Farewell! Unless," he added

with a melancholy smile, "you return with good tidings like Noah's

dove."



But, poor gentleman, his troubles were not over yet, and indeed one may

say that he ran to meet them by his constant supposing that his lady

should still be the same to a tittle in her behaviour now that she was

changed into a fox.



Without making any unwarrantable suppositions as to her soul or what had

now become of it (though we could find a good deal to the purpose on

that point in the system of Paracelsus), let us consider only how much

the change in her body must needs affect her ordinary conduct. So that

before we judge too harshly of this unfortunate lady, we must reflect

upon the physical necessities and infirmities and appetites of her new

condition, and we must magnify the fortitude of her mind which enabled

her to behave with decorum, cleanliness and decency in spite of her new

situation.



Thus she might have been expected to befoul her room, yet never could

anyone, whether man or beast, have shown more nicety in such matters.

But at luncheon Mr. Tebrick helped her to a wing of chicken, and leaving

the room for a minute to fetch some water which he had forgot, found her

at his return on the table crunching the very bones. He stood silent,

dismayed and wounded to the heart at this sight. For we must observe

that this unfortunate husband thought always of his vixen as that gentle

and delicate woman she had lately been. So that whenever his vixen's

conduct went beyond that which he expected in his wife he was, as it

were, cut to the quick, and no kind of agony could be greater to him

than to see her thus forget herself. On this account it may indeed be

regretted that Mrs. Tebrick had been so exactly well-bred, and in

particular that her table manners had always been scrupulous. Had she

been in the habit, like a continental princess I have dined with, of

taking her leg of chicken by the drumstick and gnawing the flesh, it had

been far better for him now. But as her manners had been perfect, so the

lapse of them was proportionately painful to him. Thus in this instance

he stood as it were in silent agony till she had finished her hideous

crunching of the chicken bones and had devoured every scrap. Then he

spoke to her gently, taking her on to his knee, stroking her fur and fed

her with a few grapes, saying to her:



"Silvia, Silvia, is it so hard for you? Try and remember the past, my

darling, and by living with me we will quite forget that you are no

longer a woman. Surely this affliction will pass soon, as suddenly as

it came, and it will all seem to us like an evil dream."



Yet though she appeared perfectly sensible of his words and gave him

sorrowful and penitent looks like her old self, that same afternoon, on

taking her out, he had all the difficulty in the world to keep her from

going near the ducks.



There came to him then a thought that was very disagreeable to him,

namely, that he dare not trust his wife alone with any bird or she would

kill it. And this was the more shocking to him to think of since it

meant that he durst not trust her as much as a dog even. For we may

trust dogs who are familiars, with all the household pets; nay more, we

can put them upon trust with anything and know they will not touch it,

not even if they be starving. But things were come to such a pass with

his vixen that he dared not in his heart trust her at all. Yet she was

still in many ways so much more woman than fox that he could talk to her

on any subject and she would understand him, better far than the

oriental women who are kept in subjection can ever understand their

masters unless they converse on the most trifling household topics.



Thus she understood excellently well the importance and duties of

religion. She would listen with approval in the evening when he said the

Lord's Prayer, and was rigid in her observance of the Sabbath. Indeed,

the next day being Sunday he, thinking no harm, proposed their usual

game of piquet, but no, she would not play. Mr. Tebrick, not

understanding at first what she meant, though he was usually very quick

with her, he proposed it to her again, which she again refused, and

this time, to show her meaning, made the sign of the cross with her paw.

This exceedingly rejoiced and comforted him in his distress. He begged

her pardon, and fervently thanked God for having so good a wife, who, in

spite of all, knew more of her duty to God than he did. But here I must

warn the reader from inferring that she was a papist because she then

made the sign of the cross. She made that sign to my thinking only on

compulsion because she could not express herself except in that way. For

she had been brought up as a true Protestant, and that she still was one

is confirmed by her objection to cards, which would have been less than

nothing to her had she been a papist. Yet that evening, taking her into

the drawing room so that he might play her some sacred music, he found

her after some time cowering away from him in the farthest corner of the

room, her ears flattened back and an expression of the greatest anguish

in her eyes. When he spoke to her she licked his hand, but remained

shivering for a long time at his feet and showed the clearest symptoms

of terror if he so much as moved towards the piano. On seeing this and

recollecting how ill the ears of a dog can bear with our music, and how

this dislike might be expected to be even greater in a fox, all of whose

senses are more acute from being a wild creature, recollecting this he

closed the piano and taking her in his arms, locked up the room and

never went into it again. He could not help marvelling though, since it

was but two days after she had herself led him there, and even picked

out for him to play and sing those pieces which were her favourites.



That night she would not sleep with him, neither in the bed nor on it,

so that he was forced to let her curl herself up on the floor. But

neither would she sleep there, for several times she woke him by

trotting around the room, and once when he had got sound asleep by

springing on the bed and then off it, so that he woke with a violent

start and cried out, but got no answer either, except hearing her

trotting round and round the room. Presently he imagines to himself that

she must want something, and so fetches her food and water, but she

never so much as looks at it, but still goes on her rounds, every now

and then scratching at the door.



Though he spoke to her, calling her by her name, she would pay no heed

to him, or else only for the moment. At last he gave her up and said to

her plainly: "The fit is on you now Silvia to be a fox, but I shall keep

you close and in the morning you will recollect yourself and thank me

for having kept you now."



So he lay down again, but not to sleep, only to listen to his wife

running about the room and trying to get out of it. Thus he spent what

was perhaps the most miserable night of his existence. In the morning

she was still restless, and was reluctant to let him wash and brush her,

and appeared to dislike being scented but as it were to bear with it for

his sake. Ordinarily she had taken the greatest pleasure imaginable in

her toilet, so that on this account, added to his sleepless night, Mr.

Tebrick was utterly dejected, and it was then that he resolved to put a

project into execution that would show him, so he thought, whether he

had a wife or only a wild vixen in his house. But yet he was comforted

that she bore at all with him, though so restlessly that he did not

spare her, calling her a "bad wild fox." And then speaking to her in

this manner: "Are you not ashamed, Silvia, to be such a madcap, such a

wicked hoyden? You who were particular in dress. I see it was all

vanity--now you have not your former advantages you think nothing of

decency."



His words had some effect with her too, and with himself, so that by the

time he had finished dressing her they were both in the lowest state of

spirits imaginable and neither of them far from tears.



Breakfast she took soberly enough, and after that he went about getting

his experiment ready, which was this. In the garden he gathered together

a nosegay of snowdrops, those being all the flowers he could find, and

then going into the village of Stokoe bought a Dutch rabbit (that is a

black and white one) from a man there who kept them.



When he got back he took her flowers and at the same time set down the

basket with the rabbit in it, with the lid open. Then he called to her:

"Silvia, I have brought some flowers for you. Look, the first

snowdrops."



At this she ran up very prettily, and never giving as much as one glance

at the rabbit which had hopped out of its basket, she began to thank him

for the flowers. Indeed she seemed indefatigable in shewing her

gratitude, smelt them, stood a little way off looking at them, then

thanked him again. Mr. Tebrick (and this was all part of his plan) then

took a vase and went to find some water for them, but left the flowers

beside her. He stopped away five minutes, timing it by his watch and

listening very intently, but never heard the rabbit squeak. Yet when he

went in what a horrid shambles was spread before his eyes. Blood on the

carpet, blood on the armchairs and antimacassars, even a little blood

spurtled on to the wall, and what was worse, Mrs. Tebrick tearing and

growling over a piece of the skin and the legs, for she had eaten up all

the rest of it. The poor gentleman was so heartbroken over this that he

was like to have done himself an injury, and at one moment thought of

getting his gun, to have shot himself and his vixen too. Indeed the

extremity of his grief was such that it served him a very good turn, for

he was so entirely unmanned by it that for some time he could do nothing

but weep, and fell into a chair with his head in his hands, and so kept

weeping and groaning.



After he had been some little while employed in this dismal way, his

vixen, who had by this time bolted down the rabbit skin, head, ears and

all, came to him and putting her paws on his knees, thrust her long

muzzle into his face and began licking him. But he, looking at her now

with different eyes, and seeing her jaws still sprinkled with fresh

blood and her claws full of the rabbit's fleck, would have none of it.



But though he beat her off four or five times even to giving her blows

and kicks, she still came back to him, crawling on her belly and

imploring his forgiveness with wide-open sorrowful eyes. Before he had

made this rash experiment of the rabbit and the flowers, he had promised

himself that if she failed in it he would have no more feeling or

compassion for her than if she were in truth a wild vixen out of the

woods. This resolution, though the reasons for it had seemed to him so

very plain before, he now found more difficult to carry out than to

decide on. At length after cursing her and beating her off for upwards

of half-an-hour, he admitted to himself that he still did care for her,

and even loved her dearly in spite of all, whatever pretence he affected

towards her. When he had acknowledged this he looked up at her and met

her eyes fixed upon him, and held out his arms to her and said:



"Oh Silvia, Silvia, would you had never done this! Would I had never

tempted you in a fatal hour! Does not this butchery and eating of raw

meat and rabbit's fur disgust you? Are you a monster in your soul as

well as in your body? Have you forgotten what it is to be a woman?"



Meanwhile, with every word of his, she crawled a step nearer on her

belly and at last climbed sorrowfully into his arms. His words then

seemed to take effect on her and her eyes filled with tears and she wept

most penitently in his arms, and her body shook with her sobs as if her

heart were breaking. This sorrow of hers gave him the strangest mixture

of pain and joy that he had ever known, for his love for her returning

with a rush, he could not bear to witness her pain and yet must take

pleasure in it as it fed his hopes of her one day returning to be a

woman. So the more anguish of shame his vixen underwent, the greater his

hopes rose, till his love and pity for her increasing equally, he was

almost wishing her to be nothing more than a mere fox than to suffer so

much by being half-human.



At last he looked about him somewhat dazed with so much weeping, then

set his vixen down on the ottoman, and began to clean up the room with a

heavy heart. He fetched a pail of water and washed out all the stains of

blood, gathered up the two antimacassars and fetched clean ones from the

other rooms. While he went about this work his vixen sat and watched him

very contritely with her nose between her two front paws, and when he

had done he brought in some luncheon for himself, though it was already

late, but none for her, she having lately so infamously feasted. But

water he gave her and a bunch of grapes. Afterwards she led him to the

small tortoiseshell cabinet and would have him open it. When he had done

so she motioned to the portable stereoscope which lay inside. Mr.

Tebrick instantly fell in with her wish and after a few trials adjusted

it to her vision. Thus they spent the rest of the afternoon together

very happily looking through the collection of views which he had

purchased, of Italy, Spain and Scotland. This diversion gave her great

apparent pleasure and afforded him considerable comfort. But that night

he could not prevail upon her to sleep in bed with him, and finally

allowed her to sleep on a mat beside the bed where he could stretch down

and touch her. So they passed the night, with his hand upon her head.



The next morning he had more of a struggle than ever to wash and dress

her. Indeed at one time nothing but holding her by the scruff prevented

her from getting away from him, but at last he achieved his object and

she was washed, brushed, scented and dressed, although to be sure this

left him better pleased than her, for she regarded her silk jacket with

disfavour.



Still at breakfast she was well mannered though a trifle hasty with her

food. Then his difficulties with her began for she would go out, but as

he had his housework to do, he could not allow it. He brought her

picture books to divert her, but she would have none of them but stayed

at the door scratching it with her claws industriously till she had worn

away the paint.



At first he tried coaxing her and wheedling, gave her cards to play

patience and so on, but finding nothing would distract her from going

out, his temper began to rise, and he told her plainly that she must

wait his pleasure and that he had as much natural obstinacy as she had.

But to all that he said she paid no heed whatever but only scratched the

harder. Thus he let her continue until luncheon, when she would not sit

up, or eat off a plate, but first was for getting on to the table, and

when that was prevented, snatched her meat and ate it under the table.

To all his rebukes she turned a deaf or sullen ear, and so they each

finished their meal eating little, either of them, for till she would

sit at table he would give her no more, and his vexation had taken away

his own appetite. In the afternoon he took her out for her airing in the

garden.



She made no pretence now of enjoying the first snowdrops or the view

from the terrace. No--there was only one thing for her now--the ducks,

and she was off to them before he could stop her. Luckily they were all

swimming when she got there (for a stream running into the pond on the

far side it was not frozen there).



When he had got down to the pond, she ran out on to the ice, which would

not bear his weight, and though he called her and begged her to come

back she would not heed him but stayed frisking about, getting as near

the ducks as she dared, but being circumspect in venturing on to the

thin ice.



Presently she turned on herself and began tearing off her clothes, and

at last by biting got off her little jacket and taking it in her mouth

stuffed it into a hole in the ice where he could not get it. Then she

ran hither and thither a stark naked vixen, and without giving a glance

to her poor husband who stood silently now upon the bank, with despair

and terror settled in his mind. She let him stay there most of the

afternoon till he was chilled through and through and worn out with

watching her. At last he reflected how she had just stripped herself and

how in the morning she struggled against being dressed, and he thought

perhaps he was too strict with her and if he let her have her own way

they could manage to be happy somehow together even if she did eat off

the floor. So he called out to her then:



"Silvia, come now, be good, you shan't wear any more clothes if you

don't want to, and you needn't sit at table neither, I promise. You

shall do as you like in that, but you must give up one thing, and that

is you must stay with me and not go out alone, for that is dangerous. If

any dog came on you he would kill you."



Directly he had finished speaking she came to him joyously, began

fawning on him and prancing round him so that in spite of his vexation

with her, and being cold, he could not help stroking her.



"Oh, Silvia, are you not wilful and cunning? I see you glory in being

so, but I shall not reproach you but shall stick to my side of the

bargain, and you must stick to yours."



He built a big fire when he came back to the house and took a glass or

two of spirits also, to warm himself up, for he was chilled to the very

bone. Then, after they had dined, to cheer himself he took another

glass, 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 pretty

sportiveness. He got up to catch her then and finding himself unsteady

on his legs, he went down on to all fours, The long and the short of it

is that by drinking he drowned all his sorrow; and then would be a beast

too like his wife, though she was one through no fault of her own, and

could not help it. To what lengths he went then in that drunken humour I

shall not offend my readers by relating, but shall only say that he was

so drunk and sottish that he had a very imperfect recollection of what

had passed when he woke the next morning. There is no exception to the

rule that if a man drink heavily at night the next morning will show the

other side to his nature. Thus with Mr. Tebrick, for as he had been

beastly, merry and a very dare-devil the night before, so on his

awakening was he ashamed, melancholic and a true penitent before his

Creator. The first thing he did when he came to himself was to call out

to God to forgive him for his sin, then he fell into earnest prayer and

continued so for half-an-hour upon his knees. Then he got up and dressed

but continued very melancholy for the whole of the morning. Being in

this mood you may imagine it hurt him to see his wife running about

naked, but he reflected it would be a bad reformation that began with

breaking faith. He had made a bargain and he would stick to it, and so

he let her be, though sorely against his will.



For the same reason, that is because he would stick to his side of the

bargain, he did not require her to sit up at table, but gave her her

breakfast on a dish in the corner, where to tell the truth she on her

side ate it all up with great daintiness and propriety. Nor she did make

any attempt to go out of doors that morning, but lay curled up in an

armchair before the fire dozing. After lunch he took her out, and she

never so much as offered to go near the ducks, but running before him

led him on to take her a longer walk. This he consented to do very much

to her joy and delight. He took her through the fields by the most

unfrequented ways, being much alarmed lest they should be seen by

anyone. But by good luck they walked above four miles across country and

saw nobody. All the way his wife kept running on ahead of him, and then

back to him to lick his hand and so on, and appeared delighted at taking

exercise. And though they startled two or three rabbits and a hare in

the course of their walk she never attempted to go after them, only

giving them a look and then looking back to him, laughing at him as it

were 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 to

face with an old woman. Mr. Tebrick stopped short in consternation and

looked about for his vixen, but she had run forward without any shyness

to greet her. Then he recognised the intruder, it was his wife's old

nurse.



"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 a

dog. 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 to

be a good wife to you, if you don't I shouldn't wonder if she did turn

into a proper fox. I saw her, sir, before I left, and I've had no peace

of mind. I couldn't sleep thinking of her. So I've come back to look

after her, as I have done all her life, sir," and she stooped down and

took Mrs. Tebrick by the paw.



Mr. Tebrick unlocked the door and they went in. When Mrs. Cork saw the

house she exclaimed again and again: "The place was a pigstye. They

couldn't live like that, a gentleman must have somebody to look after

him. 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 being

woken in him by his drunkenness of the night before he was heartily

ashamed of his own management of the business, moreover the old woman's

words that "it was a shame to let her run about like a dog," moved him

exceedingly. Being in this mood the truth is he welcomed her.



But we may conclude that Mrs. Tebrick was as sorry to see her old Nanny

as her husband was glad. If we consider that she had been brought up

strictly 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 whatever

she did, but would always think her wicked to be a fox at all, there

seems good reason for her dislike. And it is possible, too, that there

may have been another cause as well, and that is jealousy. We know her

husband was always trying to bring her back to be a woman, or at any

rate to get her to act like one, may she not have been hoping to get him

to be like a beast himself or to act like one? May she not have thought

it easier to change him thus than ever to change herself back into

being a woman? If we think that she had had a success of this kind only

the night before, when he got drunk, can we not conclude that this was

indeed the case, and then we have another good reason why the poor lady

should hate to see her old nurse?



It is certain that whatever hopes Mr. Tebrick had of Mrs. Cork affecting

his wife for the better were disappointed. She grew steadily wilder and

after a few days so intractable with her that Mr. Tebrick again took her

under his complete control.



The first morning Mrs. Cork made her a new jacket, cutting down the

sleeves of a blue silk one of Mrs. Tebrick's and trimming it with swan's

down, and directly she had altered it, put it on her mistress, and

fetching a mirror would have her admire the fit of it. All the time she

waited on Mrs. Tebrick the old woman talked to her as though she were a

baby, and treated her as such, never thinking perhaps that she was

either the one thing or the other, that is either a lady to whom she

owed respect and who had rational powers exceeding her own, or else a

wild creature on whom words were wasted. But though at first she

submitted passively, Mrs. Tebrick only waited for her Nanny's back to be

turned to tear up her pretty piece of handiwork into shreds, and then

ran gaily about waving her brush with only a few ribands still hanging

from her neck.



So it was time after time (for the old woman was used to having her own

way) until Mrs. Cork would, I think, have tried punishing her if she had

not been afraid of Mrs. Tebrick's rows of white teeth, which she often

showed her, then laughing afterwards, as if to say it was only play.



Not content with tearing off the dresses that were fitted on her, one

day Silvia slipped upstairs to her wardrobe and tore down all her old

dresses 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 or

rag left big enough to dress a doll in. On this, Mr. Tebrick, who had

let the old woman have most of her management to see what she could make

of her, took her back under his own control.



He was sorry enough now that Mrs. Cork had disappointed him in the hopes

he had had of her, to have the old woman, as it were, on his hands. True

she 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 was

in her keeping, and the more now that she had tried her hand with his

wife and failed. For he saw that vanity had kept her mouth shut if she

had won over her mistress to better ways, and her love for her would

have grown by getting her own way with her. But now that she had failed

she bore her mistress a grudge for not being won over, or at the best

was become indifferent to the business, so that she might very readily

blab.



For the moment all Mr. Tebrick could do was to keep her from going into

Stokoe to the village, where she would meet all her old cronies and

where there were certain to be any number of inquiries about what was

going on at Rylands and so on. But as he saw that it was clearly beyond

his power, however vigilant he might be, to watch over the old woman and

his wife, and to prevent anyone from meeting with either of them, he

began to consider what he could best do.



Since he had sent away his servants and the gardener, giving out a story

of having received bad news and his wife going away to London where he

would join her, their probably going out of England and so on, he knew

well enough that there would be a great deal of talk in the

neighbourhood.



And as he had now stayed on, contrary to what he had said, there would

be further rumour. Indeed, had he known it, there was a story already

going round the country that his wife had run away with Major Solmes,

and that he was gone mad with grief, that he had shot his dogs and his

horses and shut himself up alone in the house and would speak with no

one. This story was made up by his neighbours not because they were

fanciful or wanted to deceive, but like most tittle-tattle to fill a

gap, as few like to confess ignorance, and if people are asked about

such or such a man they must have something to say, or they suffer in

everybody's opinion, are set down as dull or "out of the swim." In this

way I met not long ago with someone who, after talking some little while

and not knowing me or who I was, told me that David Garnett was dead,

and died of being bitten by a cat after he had tormented it. He had long

grown a nuisance to his friends as an exorbitant sponge upon them, and

the world was well rid of him.



Hearing this story of myself diverted me at the time, but I fully

believe it has served me in good stead since. For it set me on my guard

as perhaps nothing else would have done, against accepting for true all

floating rumour and village gossip, so that now I am by second nature a

true sceptic and scarcely believe anything unless the evidence for it is

conclusive. Indeed I could never have got to the bottom of this history

if I had believed one tenth part of what I was told, there was so much

of it that was either manifestly false and absurd, or else contradictory

to the ascertained facts. It is therefore only the bare bones of the

story which you will find written here, for I have rejected all the

flowery embroideries which would be entertaining reading enough, I

daresay, for some, but if there be any doubt of the truth of a thing it

is poor sort of entertainment to read about in my opinion.



To get back to our story: Mr. Tebrick having considered how much the

appetite of his neighbours would be whetted to find out the mystery by

his remaining in that part of the country, determined that the best

thing he could do was to remove.



After some time turning the thing over in his mind, he decided that no

place would be so good for his purpose as old Nanny's cottage. It was

thirty miles away from Stokoe, which in the country means as far as

Timbuctoo does to us in London. Then it was near Tangley, and his lady

having known it from her childhood would feel at home there, and also it

was utterly remote, there being no village near it or manor house other

than Tangley Hall, which was now untenanted for the greater part of the

year. Nor did it mean imparting his secret to others, for there was only

Mrs. Cork's son, a widower, who being out at work all day would be

easily outwitted, the more so as he was stone deaf and of a slow and

saturnine disposition. To be sure there was little Polly, Mrs. Cork's

granddaughter, but either Mr. Tebrick forgot her altogether, or else

reckoned her as a mere baby and not to be thought of as a danger.



He talked the thing over with Mrs. Cork, and they decided upon it out of

hand. The truth is the old woman was beginning to regret that her love

and her curiosity had ever brought her back to Rylands, since so far she

had got much work and little credit by it.



When it was settled, Mr. Tebrick disposed of the remaining business he

had at Rylands in the afternoon, and that was chiefly putting out his

wife's riding horse into the keeping of a farmer near by, for he thought

he would drive over with his own horse, and the other spare horse tandem

in the dogcart.



The next morning they locked up the house and they departed, having

first secured Mrs. Tebrick in a large wicker hamper where she would be

tolerably comfortable. This was for safety, for in the agitation of

driving she might jump out, and on the other hand, if a dog scented her

and she were loose, she might be in danger of her life. Mr. Tebrick

drove with the hamper beside him on the front seat, and spoke to her

gently very often.



She was overcome by the excitement of the journey and kept poking her

nose first through one crevice, then through another, turning and

twisting the whole time and peeping out to see what they were passing.

It was a bitterly cold day, and when they had gone about fifteen miles

they drew up by the roadside to rest the horses and have their own

luncheon, for he dared not stop at an inn. He knew that any living

creature in a hamper, even if it be only an old fowl, always draws

attention; there would be several loafers most likely who would notice

that he had a fox with him, and even if he left the hamper in the cart

the dogs at the inn would be sure to sniff out her scent. So not to take

any chances he drew up at the side of the road and rested there, though

it was freezing hard and a north-east wind howling.



He took down his precious hamper, unharnessed his two horses, covered

them with rugs and gave them their corn. Then he opened the basket and

let his wife out. She was quite beside herself with joy, running hither

and thither, bouncing up on him, looking about her and even rolling over

on the ground. Mr. Tebrick took this to mean that she was glad at making

this journey and rejoiced equally with her. As for Mrs. Cork, she sat

motionless on the back seat of the dogcart well wrapped up, eating her

sandwiches, but would not speak a word. When they had stayed there

half-an-hour Mr. Tebrick harnessed the horses again, though he was so

cold he could scarcely buckle the straps, and put his vixen in her

basket, but seeing that she wanted to look about her, he let her tear

away the osiers with her teeth till she had made a hole big enough for

her to put her head out of.



They drove on again and then the snow began to come down and that in

earnest, so that he began to be afraid they would never cover the

ground. But just after nightfall they got in, and he was content to

leave unharnessing the horses and baiting them to Simon, Mrs. Cork's

son. His vixen was tired by then, as well as he, and they slept

together, he in the bed and she under it, very contentedly.



The next morning he looked about him at the place and found the thing

there that he most wanted, and that was a little walled-in garden where

his wife could run in freedom and yet be in safety.



After they had had breakfast she was wild to go out into the snow. So

they went out together, and he had never seen such a mad creature in all

his life as his wife was then. For she ran to and fro as if she were

crazy, biting at the snow and rolling in it, and round and round in

circles and rushed back at him fiercely as if she meant to bite him. He

joined her in the frolic, and began snowballing her till she was so wild

that it was all he could do to quiet her again and bring her indoors for

luncheon. Indeed with her gambollings she tracked the whole garden over

with her feet; he could see where she had rolled in the snow and where

she had danced in it, and looking at those prints of her feet as they

went in, made his heart ache, he knew not why.



They passed the first day at old Nanny's cottage happily enough, without

their usual bickerings, and this because of the novelty of the snow

which had diverted them. In the afternoon he first showed his wife to

little Polly, who eyed her very curiously but hung back shyly and seemed

a good deal afraid of the fox. But Mr. Tebrick took up a book and let

them get acquainted by themselves, and presently looking up saw that

they had come together and Polly was stroking his wife, patting her and

running her fingers through her fur. Presently she began talking to the

fox, and then brought her doll in to show her so that very soon they

were very good playmates together. Watching the two gave Mr. Tebrick

great delight, and in particular when he noticed that there was

something very motherly in his vixen. She was indeed far above the child

in intelligence and restrained herself too from any hasty action. But

while she seemed to wait on Polly's pleasure yet she managed to give a

twist to the game, whatever it was, that never failed to delight the

little girl. In short, in a very little while, Polly was so taken with

her new playmate that she cried when she was parted from her and wanted

her always with her. This disposition of Mrs. Tebrick's made Mrs. Cork

more agreeable than she had been lately either to the husband or the

wife.



Three days after they had come to the cottage the weather changed, and

they woke up one morning to find the snow gone, and the wind in the

south, and the sun shining, so that it was like the first beginning of

spring.



Mr. Tebrick let his vixen out into the garden after breakfast, stayed

with her awhile, and then went indoors to write some letters.



When he got out again he could see no sign of her anywhere, so that he

ran about bewildered, calling to her. At last he spied a mound of fresh

earth by the wall in one corner of the garden, and running thither found

that there was a hole freshly dug seeming to go under the wall. On this

he ran out of the garden quickly till he came to the other side of the

wall, but there was no hole there, so he concluded that she was not yet

got through. So it proved to be, for reaching down into the hole he felt

her brush with his hand, and could hear her distinctly working away with

her claws. He called to her then, saying: "Silvia, Silvia, why do you do

this? Are you trying to escape from me? I am your husband, and if I keep

you confined it is to protect you, not to let you run into danger. Show

me how I can make you happy and I will do it, but do not try to escape

from me. I love you, Silvia; is it because of that that you want to fly

from me to go into the world where you will be in danger of your life

always? There are dogs everywhere and they all would kill you if it were

not for me. Come out, Silvia, come out."



But Silvia would not listen to him, so he waited there silent. Then he

spoke to her in a different way, asking her had she forgot the bargain

she made with him that she would not go out alone, but now when she had

all the liberty of a garden to herself would she wantonly break her

word? And he asked her, were they not married? And had she not always

found him a good husband to her? But she heeded this neither until

presently his temper getting somewhat out of hand he cursed her

obstinacy and told her if she would be a damned fox she was welcome to

it, for his part he could get his own way. She had not escaped yet. He

would dig her out for he still had time, and if she struggled put her in

a bag.



These words brought her forth instantly and she looked at him with as

much astonishment as if she knew not what could have made him angry.

Yes, she even fawned on him, but in a good-natured kind of way, as if

she were a very good wife putting up wonderfully with her husband's

temper.



These airs of hers made the poor gentleman (so simple was he) repent his

outburst and feel most ashamed.



But for all that when she was out of the hole he filled it up with great

stones and beat them in with a crowbar so she should find her work at

that point harder than before if she was tempted to begin it again.



In the afternoon he let her go again into the garden but sent little

Polly with her to keep her company. But presently on looking out he saw

his vixen had climbed up into the limbs of an old pear tree and was

looking over the wall, and was not so far from it but she might jump

over it if she could get a little further.



Mr. Tebrick ran out into the garden as quick as he could, and when his

wife saw him it seemed she was startled and made a false spring at the

wall, so that she missed reaching it and fell back heavily to the ground

and lay there insensible. When Mr. Tebrick got up to her he found her

head was twisted under her by her fall and the neck seemed to be broken.

The shock was so great to him that for some time he could not do

anything, but knelt beside her turning her limp body stupidly in his

hands. At length he recognised that she was indeed dead, and beginning

to consider what dreadful afflictions God had visited him with, he

blasphemed horribly and called on God to strike him dead, or give his

wife back to him.



"Is it not enough," he cried, adding a foul blasphemous oath, "that you

should rob me of my dear wife, making her a fox, but now you must rob me

of that fox too, that has been my only solace and comfort in this

affliction?"



Then he burst into tears and began wringing his hands and continued

there in such an extremity of grief for half-an-hour that he cared

nothing, neither what he was doing, nor what would become of him in the

future, but only knew that his life was ended now and he would not live

any longer than he could help.



All this while the little girl Polly stood by, first staring, then

asking him what had happened, and lastly crying with fear, but he never

heeded her nor looked at her but only tore his hair, sometimes shouted

at God, or shook his fist at Heaven. So in a fright Polly opened the

door and ran out of the garden.



At length worn out, and as it were all numb with his loss, Mr. Tebrick

got up and went within doors, leaving his dear fox lying near where she

had fallen.



He stayed indoors only two minutes and then came out again with a razor

in his hand intending to cut his own throat, for he was out of his

senses in this first paroxysm of grief. But his vixen was gone, at

which he looked about for a moment bewildered, and then enraged,

thinking that somebody must have taken the body.



The door of the garden being open he ran straight through it. Now this

door, which had been left ajar by Polly when she ran off, opened into a

little courtyard where the fowls were shut in at night; the woodhouse

and the privy also stood there. On the far side of it from the garden

gate were two large wooden doors big enough when open to let a cart

enter, and high enough to keep a man from looking over into the yard.



When Mr. Tebrick got into the yard he found his vixen leaping up at

these doors, and wild with terror, but as lively as ever he saw her in

his life. He ran up to her but she shrank away from him, and would then

have dodged him too, but he caught hold of her. She bared her teeth at

him but he paid no heed to that, only picked her straight up into his

arms and took her so indoors. Yet all the while he could scarce believe

his eyes to see her living, and felt her all over very carefully to find

if she had not some bones broken. But no, he could find none. Indeed it

was some hours before this poor silly gentleman began to suspect the

truth, which was that his vixen had practised a deception upon him, and

all the time he was bemoaning his loss in such heartrending terms, she

was only shamming death to run away directly she was able. If it had not

been that the yard gates were shut, which was a mere chance, she had got

her liberty by that trick. And that this was only a trick of hers to

sham dead was plain when he had thought it over. Indeed it is an old and

time-honoured trick of the fox. It is in Aesop and a hundred other

writers have confirmed it since. But so thoroughly had he been deceived

by her, that at first he was as much overcome with joy at his wife still

being alive, as he had been with grief a little while before, thinking

her dead.



He took her in his arms, hugging her to him and thanking God a dozen

times for her preservation. But his kissing and fondling her had very

little effect now, for she did not answer him by licking or soft looks,

but stayed huddled up and sullen, with her hair bristling on her neck

and her ears laid back every time he touched her. At first he thought

this might be because he had touched some broken bone or tender place

where she had been hurt, but at last the truth came to him.



Thus he was again to suffer, and though the pain of knowing her

treachery to him was nothing to the grief of losing her, yet it was more

insidious and lasting. At first, from a mere nothing, this pain grew

gradually until it was a torture to him. If he had been one of your

stock ordinary husbands, such a one who by experience has learnt never

to enquire too closely into his wife's doings, her comings or goings,

and never to ask her, "How she has spent the day?" for fear he should be

made the more of a fool, had Mr. Tebrick been such a one he had been

luckier, and his pain would have been almost nothing. But you must

consider that he had never been deceived once by his wife in the course

of their married life. No, she had never told him as much as one white

lie, but had always been frank, open and ingenuous as if she and her

husband were not husband and wife, or indeed of opposite sexes. Yet we

must rate him as very foolish, that living thus with a fox, which beast

has the same reputation for deceitfulness, craft and cunning, in all

countries, all ages, and amongst all races of mankind, he should expect

this fox to be as candid and honest with him in all things as the

country girl he had married.



His wife's sullenness and bad temper continued that day, for she cowered

away from him and hid under the sofa, nor could he persuade her to come

out from there. Even when it was her dinner time she stayed, refusing

resolutely to be tempted out with food, and lying so quiet that he heard

nothing from her for hours. At night he carried her up to the bedroom,

but she was still sullen and refused to eat a morsel, though she drank a

little water during the night, when she fancied he was asleep.



The next morning was the same, and by now Mr. Tebrick had been through

all the agonies of wounded self-esteem, disillusionment and despair that

a man can suffer. But though his emotions rose up in his heart and

nearly stifled him he showed no sign of them to her, neither did he

abate one jot his tenderness and consideration for his vixen. At

breakfast he tempted her with a freshly killed young pullet. It hurt him

to make this advance to her, for hitherto he had kept her strictly on

cooked meats, but the pain of seeing her refuse it was harder still for

him to bear. Added to this was now an anxiety lest she should starve

herself to death rather than stay with him any longer.



All that morning he kept her close, but in the afternoon let her loose

again in the garden after he had lopped the pear tree so that she could

not repeat her performance of climbing.



But seeing how disgustedly she looked while he was by, never offering to

run or to play as she was used, but only standing stock still with her

tail between her legs, her ears flattened, and the hair bristling on her

shoulders, seeing this he left her to herself out of mere humanity.



When he came out after half-an-hour he found that she was gone, but

there was a fair sized hole by the wall, and she just buried all but her

brush, digging desperately to get under the wall and make her escape.



He ran up to the hole, and put his arm in after her and called to her to

come out, but she would not. So at first he began pulling her out by the

shoulder, then his hold slipping, by the hind legs. As soon as he had

drawn her forth she whipped round and snapped at his hand and bit it

through near the joint of the thumb, but let it go instantly. They

stayed there for a minute facing each other, he on his knees and she

facing him the picture of unrepentant wickedness and fury. Being thus on

his knees, Mr. Tebrick was down on her level very nearly, and her muzzle

was thrust almost into his face. Her ears lay flat on her head, her gums

were bared in a silent snarl, and all her beautiful teeth threatening

him that she would bite him again. Her back too was half-arched, all her

hair bristling and her brush held drooping. But it was her eyes that

held his, with their slit pupils looking at him with savage desperation

and rage.



The blood ran very freely from his hand but he never noticed that or the

pain of it either, for all his thoughts were for his wife.



"What is this, Silvia?" he said very quietly, "what is this? Why are you

so savage now? If I stand between you and your freedom it is because I

love you. Is it such torment to be with me?" But Silvia never stirred a

muscle.



"You would not do this if you were not in anguish, poor beast, you want

your freedom. I cannot keep you, I cannot hold you to vows made when you

were a woman. Why, you have forgotten who I am."



The tears then began running down his cheeks, he sobbed, and said to

her:



"Go--I shall not keep you. Poor beast, poor beast, I love you, I love

you. Go if you want to. But if you remember me come back. I shall never

keep you against your will. Go--go. But kiss me now."



He leant forward then and put his lips to her snarling fangs, but though

she kept snarling she did not bite him. Then he got up quickly and went

to the door of the garden that opened into a little paddock against a

wood.



When he opened it she went through it like an arrow, crossed the paddock

like a puff of smoke and in a moment was gone from his sight. Then,

suddenly finding himself alone, Mr. Tebrick came as it were to himself

and ran after her, calling her by name and shouting to her, and so went

plunging into the wood, and through it for about a mile, running almost

blindly.



At last when he was worn out he sat down, seeing that she had gone

beyond recovery and it was already night. Then, rising, he walked slowly

homewards, wearied and spent in spirit. As he went he bound up his hand

that was still running with blood. His coat was torn, his hat lost, and

his face scratched right across with briars. Now in cold blood he began

to reflect on what he had done and to repent bitterly having set his

wife free. He had betrayed her so that now, from his act, she must lead

the life of a wild fox for ever, and must undergo all the rigours and

hardships of the climate, and all the hazards of a hunted creature. When

Mr. Tebrick got back to the cottage he found Mrs. Cork was sitting up

for him. It was already late.



"What have you done with Mrs. Tebrick, sir? I missed her, and I missed

you, and I have not known what to do, expecting something dreadful had

happened. I have been sitting up for you half the night. And where is

she now, sir?" She accosted him so vigorously that Mr. Tebrick stood

silent. At length he said: "I have let her go. She has run away."



"Poor Miss Silvia!" cried the old woman, "Poor creature! You ought to be

ashamed, sir! Let her go indeed! Poor lady, is that the way for her

husband to talk! It is a disgrace. But I saw it coming from the first."



The old woman was white with fury, she did not mind what she said, but

Mr. Tebrick was not listening to her. At last he looked at her and saw

that she had just begun to cry, so he went out of the room and up to

bed, and lay down as he was, in his clothes, utterly exhausted, and fell

into a dog's sleep, starting up every now and then with horror, and then

falling back with fatigue. It was late when he woke up, but cold and

raw, and he felt cramped in all his limbs. As he lay he heard again the

noise which had woken him--the trotting of several horses, and the

voices of men riding by the house. Mr. Tebrick jumped up and ran to the

window and then looked out, and the first thing that he saw was a

gentleman in a pink coat riding at a walk down the lane. At this sight

Mr. Tebrick waited no longer, but pulling on his boots in mad haste, ran

out instantly, meaning to say that they must not hunt, and how his wife

was escaped and they might kill her.



But when he found himself outside the cottage words failed him and fury

took possession of him, so that he could only cry out:



"How dare you, you damned blackguard?" And so, with a stick in his hand,

he threw himself on the gentleman in the pink coat and seized his

horse's rein, and catching the gentleman by the leg was trying to throw

him. But really it is impossible to say what Mr. Tebrick intended by his

behaviour or what he would have done, for the gentleman finding himself

suddenly assaulted in so unexpected a fashion by so strange a touzled

and dishevelled figure, clubbed his hunting crop and dealt him a blow on

the temple so that he fell insensible.



Another gentleman rode up at this moment and they were civil enough to

dismount and carry Mr. Tebrick into the cottage, where they were met by

old Nanny who kept wringing her hands and told them Mr. Tebrick's wife

had run away and she was a vixen, and that was the cause that Mr.

Tebrick had run out and assaulted them.



The two gentlemen could not help laughing at this; and mounting their

horses rode on without delay, after telling each other that Mr. Tebrick,

whoever he was, was certainly a madman, and the old woman seemed as mad

as her master.



This story, however, went the rounds of the gentry in those parts and

perfectly confirmed everyone in their previous opinion, namely that Mr.

Tebrick was mad and his wife had run away from him. The part about her

being a vixen was laughed at by the few that heard it, but was soon left

out as immaterial to the story, and incredible in itself, though

afterwards it came to be remembered and its significance to be

understood. When Mr. Tebrick came to himself it was past noon, and his

head was aching so painfully that he could only call to mind in a

confused way what had happened.



However, he sent off Mrs. Cork's son directly on one of his horses to

enquire about the hunt.



At the same time he gave orders to old Nanny that she was to put out

food and water for her mistress, on the chance that she might yet be in

the neighbourhood.



By nightfall Simon was back with the news that the hunt had had a very

long run but had lost one fox, then, drawing a covert, had chopped an

old dog fox, and so ended the day's sport.



This put poor Mr. Tebrick in some hopes again, and he rose at once from

his bed, and went out to the wood and began calling his wife, but was

overcome with faintness, and lay down and so passed the night in the

open, from mere weakness.



In the morning he got back again to the cottage but he had taken a

chill, and so had to keep his bed for three or four days after.



All this time he had food put out for her every night, but though rats

came to it and ate of it, there were never any prints of a fox.



At last his anxiety began working another way, that is he came to think

it possible that his vixen would have gone back to Stokoe, so he had his

horses harnessed in the dogcart and brought to the door and then drove

over to Rylands, though he was still in a fever, and with a heavy cold

upon him. After that he lived always solitary, keeping away from his

fellows and only seeing one man, called Askew, who had been brought up a

jockey at Wantage, but was grown too big for his profession. He mounted

this loafing fellow on one of his horses three days a week and had him

follow the hunt and report to him whenever they killed, and if he could

view the fox so much the better, and then he made him describe it

minutely, so he should know if it were his Silvia. But he dared not

trust himself to go himself, lest his passion should master him and he

might commit a murder.



Every time there was a hunt in the neighbourhood he set the gates wide

open at Rylands and the house doors also, and taking his gun stood

sentinel in the hope that his wife would run in if she were pressed by

the hounds, and so he could save her. But only once a hunt came near,

when two fox-hounds that had lost the main pack strayed on to his land

and he shot them instantly and buried them afterwards himself.



It was not long now to the end of the season, as it was the middle of

March.



But living as he did at this time, Mr. Tebrick grew more and more to be

a true misanthrope. He denied admittance to any that came to visit him,

and rarely showed himself to his fellows, but went out chiefly in the

early mornings before people were about, in the hope of seeing his

beloved fox. Indeed it was only this hope that he would see her again

that kept him alive, for he had become so careless of his own comfort in

every way that he very seldom ate a proper meal, taking no more than a

crust of bread with a morsel of cheese in the whole day, though

sometimes he would drink half a bottle of whiskey to drown his sorrow

and to get off to sleep, for sleep fled from him, and no sooner did he

begin dozing but he awoke with a start thinking he had heard something.

He let his beard grow too, and though he had always been very particular

in his person before, he now was utterly careless of it, gave up

washing himself for a week or two at a stretch, and if there was dirt

under his finger nails let it stop there.



All this disorder fed a malignant pleasure in him. For by now he had

come to hate his fellow men and was embittered against all human

decencies and decorum. For strange to tell he never once in these months

regretted his dear wife whom he had so much loved. No, all that he

grieved for now was his departed vixen. He was haunted all this time not

by the memory of a sweet and gentle woman, but by the recollection of an

animal; a beast it is true that could sit at table and play piquet when

it would, but for all that nothing really but a wild beast. His one hope

now was the recovery of this beast, and of this he dreamed continually.

Likewise both waking and sleeping he was visited by visions of her; her

mask, her full white-tagged brush, white throat, and the thick fur in

her ears all haunted him.



Every one of her foxey ways was now so absolutely precious to him that I

believe that if he had known for certain she was dead, and had thoughts

of marrying a second time, he would never have been happy with a woman.

No, indeed, he would have been more tempted to get himself a tame fox,

and would have counted that as good a marriage as he could make.



Yet this all proceeded one may say from a passion, and a true conjugal

fidelity, that it would be hard to find matched in this world. And

though we may think him a fool, almost a madman, we must, when we look

closer, find much to respect in his extraordinary devotion. How

different indeed was he from those who, if their wives go mad, shut them

in madhouses and give themselves up to concubinage, and nay, what is

more, there are many who extenuate such conduct too. But Mr. Tebrick was

of a very different temper, and though his wife was now nothing but a

hunted beast, cared for no one in the world but her.



But this devouring love ate into him like a consumption, so that by

sleepless nights, and not caring for his person, in a few months he was

worn to the shadow of himself. His cheeks were sunk in, his eyes hollow

but excessively brilliant, and his whole body had lost flesh, so that

looking at him the wonder was that he was still alive.



Now that the hunting season was over he had less anxiety for her, yet

even so he was not positive that the hounds had not got her. For between

the time of his setting her free, and the end of the hunting season

(just after Easter), there were but three vixens killed near. Of those

three one was a half-blind or wall-eyed, and one was a very grey

dull-coloured beast. The third answered more to the description of his

wife, but that it had not much black on the legs, whereas in her the

blackness of the legs was very plain to be noticed. But yet his fear

made him think that perhaps she had got mired in running and the legs

being muddy were not remarked on as black. One morning the first week

in May, about four o'clock, when he was out waiting in the little copse,

he sat down for a while on a tree stump, and when he looked up saw a fox

coming towards him over the ploughed field. It was carrying a hare over

its shoulder so that it was nearly all hidden from him. At last, when it

was not twenty yards from him, it crossed over, going into the copse,

when Mr. Tebrick stood up and cried out, "Silvia, Silvia, is it you?"



The fox dropped the hare out of his mouth and stood looking at him, and

then our gentleman saw at the first glance that this was not his wife,

For whereas Mrs. Tebrick had been of a very bright red, this was a

swarthier duller beast altogether, moreover it was a good deal larger

and higher at the shoulder and had a great white tag to his brush. But

the fox after the first instant did not stand for his portrait you may

be sure, but picked up his hare and made off like an arrow.



Then Mr. Tebrick cried out to himself: "Indeed I am crazy now! My

affliction has made me lose what little reason I ever had. Here am I

taking every fox I see to be my wife! My neighbours call me a madman and

now I see that they are right. Look at me now, oh God! How foul a

creature I am. I hate my fellows. I am thin and wasted by this consuming

passion, my reason is gone and I feed myself on dreams. Recall me to my

duty, bring me back to decency, let me not become a beast likewise, but

restore me and forgive me, Oh my Lord."



With that he burst into scalding tears and knelt down and prayed, a

thing he had not done for many weeks.



When he rose up he walked back feeling giddy and exceedingly weak, but

with a contrite heart, and then washed himself thoroughly and changed

his clothes, but his weakness increasing he lay down for the rest of the

day, but read in the Book of Job and was much comforted.



For several days after this he lived very soberly, for his weakness

continued, but every day he read in the bible, and prayed earnestly, so

that his resolution was so much strengthened that he determined to

overcome his folly, or his passion, if he could, and at any rate to live

the rest of his life very religiously. So strong was this desire in him

to amend his ways that he considered if he should not go to spread the

Gospel abroad, for the Bible Society, and so spend the rest of his days.



Indeed he began a letter to his wife's uncle, the canon, and he was

writing this when he was startled by hearing a fox bark.



Yet so great was this new turn he had taken that he did not rush out at

once, as he would have done before, but stayed where he was and finished

his letter.



Afterwards he said to himself that it was only a wild fox and sent by

the devil to mock him, and that madness lay that way if he should

listen. But on the other hand he could not deny to himself that it might

have been his wife, and that he ought to welcome the prodigal. Thus he

was torn between these two thoughts, neither of which did he completely

believe. He stayed thus tormented with doubts and fears all night.



The next morning he woke suddenly with a start and on the instant heard

a fox bark once more. At that he pulled on his clothes and ran out as

fast as he could to the garden gate. The sun was not yet high, the dew

thick everywhere, and for a minute or two everything was very silent. He

looked about him eagerly but could see no fox, yet there was already joy

in his heart.



Then while he looked up and down the road, he saw his vixen step out of

the copse about thirty yards away. He called to her at once.



"My dearest wife! Oh, Silvia! You are come back!" and at the sound of

his voice he saw her wag her tail, which set his last doubts at rest.



But then though he called her again, she stepped into the copse once

more though she looked back at him over her shoulder as she went. At

this he ran after her, but softly and not too fast lest he should

frighten her away, and then looked about for her again and called to her

when he saw her among the trees still keeping her distance from him. He

followed her then, and as he approached so she retreated from him, yet

always looking back at him several times.



He followed after her through the underwood up the side of the hill,

when suddenly she disappeared from his sight, behind some bracken.

When he got there he could see her nowhere, but looking about him found

a fox's earth, but so well hidden that he might have passed it by a

thousand times and would never have found it unless he had made

particular search at that spot.



But now, though he went on his hands and knees, he could see nothing of

his vixen, so that he waited a little while wondering.



Presently he heard a noise of something moving in the earth, and so

waited silently, then saw something which pushed itself into sight. It

was a small sooty black beast, like a puppy. There came another behind

it, then another and so on till there were five of them. Lastly there

came his vixen pushing her litter before her, and while he looked at her

silently, a prey to his confused and unhappy emotions, he saw that her

eyes were shining with pride and happiness.



She picked up one of her youngsters then, in her mouth, and brought it

to him and laid it in front of him, and then looked up at him very

excited, or so it seemed.



Mr. Tebrick took the cub in his hands, stroked it and put it against his

cheek. It was a little fellow with a smutty face and paws, with staring

vacant eyes of a brilliant electric blue and a little tail like a

carrot. When he was put down he took a step towards his mother and then

sat down very comically.



Mr. Tebrick looked at his wife again and spoke to her, calling her a

good creature. Already he was resigned and now, indeed, for the first

time he thoroughly understood what had happened to her, and how far

apart they were now. But looking first at one cub, then at another, and

having them sprawling over his lap, he forgot himself, only watching the

pretty scene, and taking pleasure in it. Now and then he would stroke

his vixen and kiss her, liberties which she freely allowed him. He

marvelled more than ever now at her beauty; for her gentleness with the

cubs and the extreme delight she took in them seemed to him then to make

her more lovely than before. Thus lying amongst them at the mouth of the

earth he idled away the whole of the morning.



First he would play with one, then with another, rolling them over and

tickling them, but they were too young yet to lend themselves to any

other more active sport than this. Every now and then he would stroke

his vixen, or look at her, and thus the time slipped away quite fast and

he was surprised when she gathered her cubs together and pushed them

before her into the earth, then coming back to him once or twice very

humanly bid him "Good-bye and that she hoped she would see him soon

again, now he had found out the way."



So admirably did she express her meaning that it would have been

superfluous for her to have spoken had she been able, and Mr. Tebrick,

who was used to her, got up at once and went home.



But now that he was alone, all the feelings which he had not troubled

himself with when he was with her, but had, as it were, put aside till

after his innocent pleasures were over, all these came swarming back to

assail him in a hundred tormenting ways.



Firstly he asked himself: Was not his wife unfaithful to him, had she

not prostituted herself to a beast? Could he still love her after that?

But this did not trouble him so much as it might have done. For now he

was convinced inwardly that she could no longer in fairness be judged as

a woman, but as a fox only. And as a fox she had done no more than other

foxes, indeed in having cubs and tending them with love, she had done

well.



Whether in this conclusion Mr. Tebrick was in the right or not, is not

for us here to consider. But I would only say to those who would censure

him for a too lenient view of the religious side of the matter, that we

have not seen the thing as he did, and perhaps if it were displayed

before our eyes we might be led to the same conclusions.



This was, however, not a tenth part of the trouble in which Mr. Tebrick

found himself. For he asked himself also: "Was he not jealous?" And

looking into his heart he found that he was indeed jealous, yes, and

angry too, that now he must share his vixen with wild foxes. Then he

questioned hims