They regard each other silently, shaking their heads.
Fox gets at all things round the edges in this way—sees the whole thing, whole, clear, instant, unperplexed, then all the little things as well. Will see a man in the crowd, notice the way his ear sticks out, his length of chin, his short upper lip, the way his face is formed, something about the cheek-bones—a man well dressed and well behaved, conventional in appearance, no one but the Fox would look a second time at him—and suddenly the Fox will find himself looking into the naked eyes of a wild animal. Fox will see the cruel and savage tiger prowling in that man, let loose in the great jungle of the city, sheathed in harmless and deceptive grey—a wild beast, bloody, rending, fierce, and murderous—and stalking free and unsuspected on the sheep of life! And Fox will turn away appalled and fascinated, look at the people all round him with astonishment—“Can’t they see? Don’t they know?“—then will return again and walk past the tiger with hands clutching coat lapels, will bend, crane his head, and stare fixedly into tiger’s eye until tiger’s eye, discovered and unguarded now, blazes back at Fox—and all the people, puzzled and perturbed, are staring at Fox, too. Like children, they don’t know what to make of it: “What does that guy see?” And Fox, astounded: “Can’t they see?”
Sees all life foxwise, really: has acute animal perceptions—does not let concrete, brick, stone, skyscrapers, motor-cars, or clothes obscure the thing itself. Finds the tiger looking out at life, and then sees all the people who are lions, bulls, mastiffs, terriers, bulldogs, greyhounds, wolves, owls, eagles, hawks, rabbits, reptiles, monkeys, apes, and—foxes. Fox knows the world is full of them. He sees them every day. He might have found one in C. Green, too—cat, rabbit, terrier, or snipe—could he have seen him.
He reads the news in this way, sniffing sharply, with keen relish, at the crisp, ink-pungent pages. He also reads the paper with a kind of eager hopelessness. Fox has no hope, really; he is beyond despair. (If there’s a lack, we’ll smell it out. Is this not one? Is this not a lack-American? Can Fox be wholly of us if he has no hope?) Fox really has no hope that men will change, that life will ever get much better. He knows the forms will change: perhaps new changes will bring better forms. The shifting forms of change absorb him—this is why he loves the news. Fox would give his life to keep or increase virtue—to save the savable, to grow the growable, to cure the curable, to keep the good. But for the thing unsavable, for life ungrowable, for the ill incurable, he has no care. Things lost in nature hold no interest for him.
Thus will grow grey at the temples, haggard-eyed, and thin if one of his children has an ailment. One daughter has been in a motor wreck, escapes unhurt apparently, days later has a slight convulsion. It comes a second time, returns weeks later, goes away, and comes again—not much, not long, just a little thing, but Fox grows grey with worry. He takes the girl from college, gets doctors, specialists, the best people in the world, tries everything, can find nothing wrong, yet the attacks continue; at length comes through it, finds out the trouble, pulls the girl out, and sees her married. His eyes are clear again. Yet if the girl had had a cureless ailment, Fox would not have worried much.
He goes home, sleeps soundly, seems indifferent, shows no worry, the night the daughter has a child. Next morning, when informed he is a grandfather, looks blank, puzzled, finally says: “Oh”—then, turning away with a disdainful sniffing of the nose, says scornfully:
“Another woman, I suppose?”
Informed it is a man-child, says: “Oh,” dubiously, then whispers contemptuously:
“I had supposed such a phenomenon was impossible in this family.”
And for some weeks thereafter persists in referring to his grandson as “She”, to the indignation, resentment, excited protest of the—_Women!_
(A cunning Fox—knows slyly how to tease.)