Read Online The Fox in the Attic by Richard Hughes - Free Book Online Page A

Gwilym’s old mother—took endless pains to find her somewhere on his own property, now that the birthplace she’d hankered back to was become a waterworks. Mr. Augustine was better than he’d let himself be, there were some like that ...
    Then Mrs. Winter’s stomach rumbled, and she looked at the clock. But that very moment came the expected knock and the door opened, briefly releasing into the “Room” a distant merry burst of young west-country voices and wild laughter with even a snapshot through it of “that Jimmy,” ham-frill for crown and sceptered with toasting-fork, prancing in the midst of a veritable bevy of “all those girls.”
    It was Lily, the fifteen-year-old scullery-maid, who had just come in, with her cheeks flushed and her eyes still flashing. Lily had brought their tea, of course, with hot buttered scones straight from the oven, and cherrycake:
    â€œLike a nice slice of cake, Love?” Mrs. Winter asked Polly. Even the glacé cherries in it were Mellton-grown and of her own candying. But Polly shook her head. Her cold had spoiled her appetite. Instead she begun plunging her hand in each of Mr. Wantage’s pockets in turn to see what she could find. Gently he began to prise open her fingers to rescue his spectacles; but she insisted on placing them on his nose.
    Mrs. Winter also was putting on her spectacles, for the tea-tray bore her usual weekly letter from her younger sister Nellie ... Poor Nellie! The clever one of the family—and the one Life had treated hardest.—Still, Nellie had Little Rachel to comfort her ...
    â€œMrs.” Winter’s own title only marked professional status, like “Dr.” or “Rev.”; but Nellie had married, and married young. She had married a budding minister, a Welsh boy out of the mines. Clever as paint—but not strong, though, ever. Nellie was wed as soon as the young man got his first Call, to a chapel in the Rhondda Valley.
    When the War came, being a minister of religion he didn’t have to go—and how thankful Nellie had been! But her Portion of Trouble was coming to her just the same. 1915—three years married, the first baby at last and born big-headed! Water, of course ... Six months he died, the second already on the way.
    Wasn’t it anxiety enough for Nellie, wondering after that how the new one would turn out? Yet Gwilym (that was the father’s outlandish name) must needs add to it. He took on now in a crazy fashion. He reckoned some sin of his had made the first one born that way: he must expiate his sin or the second would be the same.
    Not to sit comfortable preaching the word in the Valleys to the ticking Chapel clock while other men died! That’s how the notion took him. But the Army wouldn’t have him for a chaplain: so he said he’d go for a stretcher-bearer, in the Medical Corps. It was for the unborn baby’s sake he’d got to go, so he couldn’t even wait for little Rachel-to-be to be born. Nellie couldn’t hold him.
    Nor could his angry deacons either: they were of a very pacifist turn, and counted stretchering nearly as bad as downright shooting—they’d never have him back after, not once he’d put on any kind or shape of army uniform! When he still went, they turned Nellie out of the Chapel house; for they’d have no soldier’s brat born there.
    Once Rachel was weaned, Nellie got a war-job teaching infant school in Gloucester.
    As for Rachel—the sweetest little maid she grew and clever as a little monkey! A proper little fairy. No wonder her mother was all wrapped up in her! Her Aunt Maggie was downright fearful sometimes of the mother’s doting, it was so greedy: yet even a mere aunt couldn’t help marveling at the little thing, and doting a bit likewise.
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    Thus Mrs. Winter had never quite succeeded in setting Polly on a pedestal as the rest of the household at the Chase all did: for