Mrs. Fox

“ Fox later, coming up behind Susan on the porch, and slipping an arm girlishly about her waist.
"What was?" asked Susan, after greetings.
"Why, to ask what your first name was, and say that as she hated the name of Brown, she was going to call you Susan!" said Mrs. Fox sweetly. "Don't you find her very dear and simple?"
"Why, I just met her--" Susan said, disliking the arm about her waist, and finding Mrs. Fox's interest in her opinion of Dolly Ripley quite transparent.
"Ah, I know her so well!" Mrs. Fox added, with a happy sigh. "Always bright and interested when she meets people. ”

“ Fox released a little screech of pleasure at this extremely witty sally.
You do say the funniest things, Mrs. Bierbauer!
Well, ain't it so? What else can he do? Foolin' round all day with that old maid school-teacher. He orter be spanked an' put to work.
That's where he belongs, Mrs. Fox agreed. Boys o' that age ain't got no business loafin'.
You speak the gospel, Mrs. Fox. When Eddie was five years old he was earnin' his livin'.
Mr. Fox begun at ten. First thing you know, that boy'll get it in the neck where the chicken got the ax. ”

“ Old as she was, she felt the indescribable spell of Fox’s genius, and knowing her son’s heart as she did, she foresaw difficulties in the way of his happiness if his cousin should forget his old love and find a new one. Much as she had desired and endeavored to break up the unfortunate intimacy between Fox and the Whites, she had not foreseen that her own son’s happiness might be, in a way, dependent on Margaret’s power to hold her place in the regard of her early lover. ”

“ I have not a shilling I can call my own----"
"Don't stop me, Fox," cried Mrs. Fox-Cordery, thoroughly enraged; "I must speak! You shameless creature, how dare you utter these falsehoods? You have a beautiful gown, and a hat, and boots, and everything a woman can wish for; and you stand there, and deny it to my face!"
"I do deny it, mother. Are these things really mine? If they are, why do you keep them locked up in your wardrobe, and why do you allow me to wear them only when I go out with you, or when any particular visitor comes to the house?" ”

“ Rose came forward with a blushing but eager welcome, but Fox stood in a moment of awkwardness which both vexed and amused the woman. Men have no resources, she thought bitterly.
As for him he experienced a shock of dismay; he was trying to shake off a vague feeling which possessed him that he had no right to be there, that he owed allegiance still to Margaret, that her look, her manner, her very presence demanded it while, in fact, she had long ago forfeited all claims upon him. ”

“ Fox, I cast an appealing glance at the former and was greatly chagrined to find him already on his feet.
“Enjoy your dance,” he cried; “I have a word to say to Mrs. Fairbrother,” and was gone before my new partner had taken me on his arm.
Was Mrs. Fairbrother the lady with the diamond? Yes; as I turned to enter the parlor with my partner, I caught a glimpse of Mr. Durand’s tall figure just disappearing from the step behind the sage-green curtains.
“Who is Mrs. Fairbrother?” I inquired of Mr. Fox at the end of the dance.
Mr. Fox, who is one of society’s perennial beaux, knows everybody. ”

“ Soon recognizing them, I nevertheless lay still, having no desire to stir, until Fox, seeing me look about, shouted at the top of his voice:
"Hurrah, he's coming round!"
At this I sighed and turned away my face in shame that I should forever show such weakness when others were brave and strong. Bringing some kind of liquor, he forced it down my throat, exclaiming:
"Cheer up, my lad; you will be all right in a minute. It's only a chill, and chills are nothing to the young." ”

“ She had come at last to look upon the beautiful house, the lavish display, the sumptuous living as so much gilded misery, and, possessing no talisman to give her contentment, her stormy nature spent itself in rebellion and in a growing regret for her own folly. She saw, at last, in Fox all the qualities which she most admired; her mind answered his with a subtilty, a kindred sympathy which seemed to assure her of his love, to justify her assumption that his feeling had never changed. ”

“ Marie-Louise spoke of Geoffrey Fox. "Miss Warfield knows him. She knows how he came to write his book."
Anne told them how he came to write it. Of Peggy ill at Bower's, of the gray plush pussy cat, and of how, coming up the hall with the bowl of soup in her hand, she had found Fox in a despairing mood and had suggested the plot.
Austin, watching her, decided that she was most unusual. She was beautiful, but there was something more than beauty. It was as if she was lighted from within by a fire which gave warmth not only to herself but to those about her. ”

“ They had a few days together before Fox sailed for the West Indies, and again on his return, and so on.
Men and women who give their most intense and sustained sympathies to Christian enterprises, often have to suffer for it in their home relations. "We were very willing both of us," says Mrs. Fox after her husband's death, "to live apart for some years upon God's account and His truth's service, and to deny ourselves of that comfort which we might have in being together, for the sake of the service of the Lord and His truth ”

“ What had she read in the kindled [76] sympathy of that look at Rose Temple? She bit her lip, staring into the mirror with haggard eyes. Could he give her up? She, who knew so much of the brutal egotism of which a man can be capable, she who had seen such a nature as White’s revealed in the scorching intimacy of married life,—dared she picture Fox as unselfish enough to be still true to her, to content himself with comforting her wretchedness when love and youth and beauty—beauty such as she had never worn—might be his? Her sore heart throbbed passionately in her bosom. ”

“ The throng had closed up again, the gay murmur of talk rose; the musicians were just beginning to play a waltz and the ballroom was filling with dancers.
Margaret, laughing and talking gayly, stood in the door. Fox, looking across at her, experienced a feeling of deep amazement. What an actress a woman can be! It seemed to him that he had dreamed that scene in White’s house, that it was impossible, untrue, a phantasm of his troubled brain. ”

“ Poor Fox, who sent a thrill of joy into the hearts of thousands of little folks and caused their rosy lips to over-bubble with silvery laughter, his was a hard, an undeserved fate—death in a madhouse, without a glint of reason to light him on his journey across the dark river. ”

“ And now, as Fox ferried William over the water on a crisp October morning, he bade him waste no more time, but begin to court Christie like a lover if so be he wanted her.
"We're your side as you know," said Jimmy Fox, "and my wife and I are very wishful to see it happen; but you've got to set on to her, for she's young and a fine sight in the eyes of her own generation. In fact she may fall in love any minute with something better to look at than you." ”

“ My reason is this—and, Fox, there must, I reckon, be some confidence between two situated as we are—it is this, that long, long ago I did dearly love another, and I love him still."
"Now, Bessie!" exclaimed Fox, standing still in the road, and she halted also, "you assured me that you had given your heart to none."
"I have given it to none, for none asked it of me."
"I do not understand. You speak riddles."
"Not at all. Cannot a poor, ugly girl love a man—noble, wise and good—and never let him know it, and never expect that it will be returned? ”

“ The attacks grew more virulent as the night advanced. He groaned and raved, and said things—oh, the most astounding things in gibberish that upset one's nerves and everything else. At the height he sang hymns, and then, as the fits passed, relapsed into incredible clear-headedness. It gave me, I say, a new idea of Fox. It was as if, for all the time I had known him, he had been playing a part, and that only now, in the delirium of his pain, in the madness into which he drank himself, were fragments of the real man thrown to the surface. ”

“ The light from the lobby, brilliantly illuminating the space beneath the awning, outlined her as sharply as a silhouette against the darkness, and her figure,—she was a young and slender girl,—was thrown into high relief; the quiet elegance of her dress, the [10] sables on her shoulders, as well as the large picture hat which framed her face, being merely superfluous accessories to beauty of a type at once unusual and spiritual.
Fox, startled out of a revery which was largely pervaded by the personality of another woman, could not but observe this radiant picture ”

“ Fox.
"I rushed downstairs, just in time to hide myself behind a cask, when you, Mr. Fox, came in dragging the young lady by the arm. And, as you passed me, Mr. Fox, I thought I saw you try and get off her diamond ring, and when you could not, Mr. Fox, it seemed to me in my dream, that you out with your sword and hacked off the poor lady's hand to get the ring."
"It is not so, nor it was not so. And God forbid it should be so," said Mr. Fox, and was going to say something else as he rose from his seat, when Lady Mary cried out:
"But it is so, and it was so. ”

“ David S. Fox, son of John and Margaret Fox, lived about two miles from the home of his father in Arcadia.
Maggie and Katie Fox were as full of petty devilment as any two children of their age ever [Pg 84] were. They delighted to tease their excellent old mother, who by all who knew her is described as simple, gentle and true-hearted. In their antics, they would resort to all sorts of ingenious devices, and bed-time witnessed almost invariably the gayest of larks. ”

“ Fox put my manuscript under his empty tumbler.
“Yes,” he said, sharply. “He will do, I think. H’m, yes. Why, yes.”
“You’re a friend of Mr. Callan’s, aren’t you?” Mrs. Hartly asked, “What a dear, nice man he is! You should see him at rehearsals. You know I’m doing his ‘Boldero’; he’s given me a perfectly lovely part—perfectly lovely. And the trouble he takes. He tries every chair on the stage.”
“H’m; yes,” Fox interjected, “he likes to have his own way.” ”

“ Pitt was slender, boyish, precise, punctilious in attire, his native composure only occasionally lightened by a flash of humor or sweetened by a show of playfulness, old beyond his years and young to the end of his short life, sternly self-restrained and self-commanded, gracious in a kind of melancholy, unconscious charm, a curiously unadorned, uncolored personality, that attracted where it did attract with a magnetism that was perhaps all the more potent for being somewhat difficult to explain. Fox was always a lover in many kinds of love, fugitive, venal, illicit, honorable, and enduring. ”

“ Fox stood still, rooted to the spot, his mind darkened by the fierce tumult of feeling which clamored against fate and against Margaret. She had broken with him long ago, what right had she to thrust herself into his life? Then the picture of her in her forlorn grief, in her appeal [207] to him, came back with an abruptness which wrung a groan from his lips. What man, so placed as he, could fling her unhappy love in her face?
And Rose? What she believed of him, shaping her thoughts by that stern old moralist her father, it was not difficult to imagine! ”

“ Fox was a huge Dan Donnelly of a brute, a very hero of the slates, and the terror of all the cats in the neighbourhood, save one; he walloped them right and left; and many a smirking sylph of the gutters, wont to pick her steps daintily to avoid all possible contact with the wet, was seen to scamper away screaming when Fox appeared in view, for truth obliges me to record that he spared neither age nor sex. Nor was he formidable to the brute creation alone—humanity often suffered under his visitations. ”

“ There was Fox, I should find him at the office. But it needed a change of tone before I could contemplate with equanimity the meeting of that individual. I had been preparing myself to confront all the ethically excellent young men and Fox was, ethically speaking, far from excellent, middle-aged, rubicund, leery—a free lance of genius. I made the necessary change in my tone of mind and ran him to earth.
The Watteau room was further enlivened by the introduction of a scarlet plush couch of sumptuous design. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fox, and later received this account of the interview which followed between them and Dr. Perry.
“Is this girl telling the truth?” asked District Attorney Fox, as soon as the three were closeted and each could speak his own mind. “Doctor, what do you think?”
“I do not question her veracity in the least. A woman who for purely moral reasons could defy pain and risk the loss of a beauty universally acknowledged as transcendent, would never stoop to falsehood even in her desire to save a brother’s life. I have every confidence in her. Fox, and I think you may safely have the same.” ”