So, then, life’s boy is he, life’s trustful child; life’s guileful-guileless Fox is he, but not life’s angel, not life’s fool. Will get at all things like a fox—not full-tilt at the fences, not head-on, but through coverts peering, running at fringes of the wood, or by the wall; will swing round on the pack and get behind the hounds, cross them up and be away and gone when they are looking for him where he’s not—he will not mean to fox them, but he will.
Gets round the edges of all things the way a fox does. Never takes the main route or the worn handle. Sees the worn handle, what it is, says: “Oh,” but knows it’s not right handle though most used: gets right handle right away and uses it. No one knows how it is done, neither knows the Fox, but does it instantly. It seems so easy when Fox does it, easy as a shoe, because he has had it from his birth. It is a genius.
Our Fox is never hard or fancy, always plain. He makes all plays look easy, never brilliant; it seems that anyone can do it when Fox does it. He covers more ground than any other player in the game, yet does not seem to do so. His style is never mannered, seems no style at all; the thrilled populace never holds its breath in hard suspense when he takes aim, because no one ever saw the Fox take aim, and yet he never misses. Others spend their lives in learning to take aim: they wear just the proper uniform for taking aim, they advance in good order, they signal to the breathless world for silence—“We are taking aim!” they say, and then with faultless style and form, with flawless execution, they bring up their pieces, take aim—and miss! The great Fox never seems to take aim, and never misses. Why? He was just born that way—fortunate, a child of genius, innocent and simple—and a Fox!
“And ah!—a cunning Fox!” the Aimers and the Missers say. “A damned subtle, devilish, and most cunning Fox!” they cry, and grind their teeth. “Be not deceived by his appearance—‘tis a cunning Fox! Put not your faith in Foxes, put not your faith in this one, he will look so shy, and seem so guileless and so bewildered—but he will never miss!”
“But how”—the Aimers and the Missers plead with one another in exasperation—“how does he do it? What has the fellow got? He’s nothing much to look at—nothing much to talk to. He makes no appearance! He never goes out in the world—you never see him at receptions, parties, splendid entertainments—he makes no effort to meet people—no, or to talk to them! He hardly talks at all!...What has he got? Where does it come from? Is it chance or luck? There is some mystery----”
“Well, now,” says one, “I’ll tell you what my theory is----”
Their heads come close, they whisper craftily together until----
“No!” another cries. “It is not that. I tell you what he does, it’s----”
And again they whisper close, argue and deny, get more confused than ever, and finally are reduced to furious impotence:
“Bah!” cries one. “How does the fellow do it, anyway? How does he get away with it? He seems to have no sense, no knowledge, no experience. He doesn’t get round the way we do, lay snares and traps. He doesn’t seem to know what’s going on, or what the whole thing’s all about—and yet----”
“He’s just a snob!” another snarls. “When you try to be a good fellow, he high-hats you! You try to kid him, he just looks at you! He never offers to shake hands with you, he never slaps you on the back the way real fellows do! You go out of your way to be nice to him—to show him you’re a real guy and that you think he is, too—and what does he do? He just looks at you with that funny little grin and turns away—and wears that damned hat in the office all day long—I think he sleeps with it! He never asks you to sit down—and gets up while you’re talking to him—leaves you cold—begins to wander up and down outside, staring at everyone he sees—his own associates—as if he were some half-wit idiot boy—and wanders back into his office twenty minutes later—stares at you as if he never saw your face before—and jams that damned hat farther down round his ears, and turns away—takes hold of his lapels—looks out the window with that crazy grin—then looks at you again, looks you up and down, stares at your face until you wonder if you’ve changed suddenly into a baboon—and turns back to the window without a word—then stares at you again—finally pretends to recognise you, and says: ‘Oh, it’s you!’...I tell you he’s a snob, and that’s his way of letting you know you don’t belong! Oh, I know about him—I know what he is! He’s an old New Englander—older than God, by God! Too good for anyone but God, by God!—and even God’s a little doubtful! An aristocrat—a rich man’s son—a Groton-Harvard boy—too fine for the likes of us, by God!—too good for the ‘low bounders’ who make up this profession! He thinks we’re a bunch of business men and Babbitts—and that’s the reason that he looks at us the way he does—that’s the reason that he grins his grin, and turns away, and catches at his coat lapels, and doesn’t answer when you speak to him—”