Lady Into Fox quotes

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.

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;

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?”

… 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.

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.

”

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.

“

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.”

Every one of her foxy 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.

… happy, and that he had found complete happiness now, living from day to day, careless of the future, surrounded every morning by playful and affectionate little creatures whom he loved tenderly, and sitting beside their mother, whose simple happiness was the source of his own.

“True happiness,” he said to himself, “is to be found in bestowing love; there is no such happiness as that of the mother for her babe, unless I have attained it in mine for my vixen and her children.”

With these feelings he waited impatiently for the hour on the morrow when he might hasten to them once more.