The Fox in the Attic Read Free

even: not one open window, nor a single curl of smoke from any of its hundred chimneys. The men’s sodden boots on the stone paving made little sound, but there was none other.
    This topmost terrace ended at a tall hexagonal Victorian orangery projecting rather incongruously from the older building, the clear lights in its Gothic cast-iron traceries deep-damasked here and there with dark panes of red and blue Bristol. In the angle this projection made with the main structure a modest half-glazed door was set in the house’s ancient stone-work, and here at last the two men halted: the young man with the small body over his shoulder took charge of the guns as well and sent the furtive, feral-looking older man away. Then the young man with the burden and the wet dog went in by themselves, and the door closed with a hollow sound.
2
    Augustine was the young man’s name (the dog’s name I forget).
    Augustine had the thick white skin which often goes with such sandy red hair as his, the snub lightly-freckled nose, the broad intelligent forehead. Normally this young face was serene; but now it was beginning to show the first effects of shock and for a full minute he stood stockstill in his dewy oilskins, staring round the familiar walls of this warm and cozy room with new and seemingly astonished eyes. Then Augustine’s dilated pupils focused—fascinated, as if seeing it for the first time—on his great-grandfather’s gun. This stood in the place of honor in the tall glass-fronted case which was the room’s chief furnishing: a beautiful double-barreled hammer-gun damascened with silver, its blue-black barrels worn paper-thin with firing. Pinned to the wooden back of the case behind it there was an old photograph of someone short and bushy standing with this very gun over his arm; and with him two bowler-hatted keepers, equally bushy. The print was faded to a browny-yellow, but now as Augustine’s abnormal gaze lit on it the faint figures seemed to him to clarify and grow—to take on for him an advisory look. At that his gaze widened to include the whole family of these beloved guns racked in that great glass gunroom case there: guns of all calibers from rook-rifles and a boy’s 20-bore by Purdey to a huge 4-bore punt-gun: grouped round the veteran, they too now seemed veritable councillors.
    Then his eyes shifted. In a corner of the room stood the collection of his fishing-rods. Their solid butts were set in a cracked Ming vase like arrows in a quiver; but he felt now as if their wispy twitching ends were tingling, like antennae— his antennae. Above them the mounted otters’-masks on the peeling walls grinned. The tiny wisp of steam from the ever-simmering kettle on the round coke-stove seemed to be actively inviting the brown teapot that stood on the shelf above —the loaf, and the knife, and the pot of jam. In short, these guns and rods of his, and even the furniture, the kettle and the loaf had suddenly become living tentacles of “him.” It was as if he and this long-loved gunroom were now one living continuous flesh. It was as if for the time being “he” was no longer cooped up entirely within his own skin: he had expanded, and these four walls had become now his final envelope. Only outside these walls did the hostile, alien “world” begin.
    All this passed in a matter of seconds: then mentally Augustine shook himself, aware that his state was more than a little abnormal and reminded at the same time of that dead mite of alien world he had brought in here and carried on his shoulder still.
    An old lancet window suggested this had been a domestic chapel once; all the same, not even for a moment could he put her down in here .
    In the middle of the room a round oak table stood nowadays; but under the morning’s crumbs, under the oilstains where for years guns had been cleaned on it and under the bloodstains where game had been rested on it