Lady Into Fox - David Garnett
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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 lie 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, 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.