Sylva

by Jean Bruller

  “We must believe the Scriptures,” he said at last.

  I shook my head.

  “I’m talking of miracles that happen in our day,” ] explained, “before our very eyes.”

  He seemed taken aback.

  “In order to answer you, there’d first have to be some. But I haven’t seen a single one in all my long life.”

  “What about Lourdes, though?”

  He shook a disbelieving finger.

  “Allow me to keep my reservations. I’m not a Papist and I give little credit to their parsons’ tales. Moreover, many doctors, even believing Roman Catholics, are agreed. A number of those alleged healings, supposing they really have occurred, can be explained without a miracle. A sudden acceleration of a normal biological process, under the impact of strong emotion, would be enough to account for it.”

  “And nobody’s yet seen a leg grow again,” remarked Dorothy.

  I took the cup she was handing me and said:

  “Excuse me, you’re forgetting the miracle of Calanda, where Miguel Juan Pellicer, by the grace of our Lady of Pilar of Saragossa, did indeed recover his amputated leg.”

  “When was that?” asked Dorothy, holding out the sugar bowl.

  “In the seventeenth century.”

  “That’s a long time ago,” said Dorothy. “Nothing since?”

  “Not to my knowledge, but just on this point David Garnett has made a very pertinent remark. Miracles are not so uncommon as one thinks, he says; they rather occur irregularly. Sometimes a whole century goes by without anyone observing the least little miracle, and then there’s suddenly a rich crop of them, in quick succession.”

  Stirring the spoon in my cup, I added:

  “I don’t know if a series of them has started. But in any case I have seen one.”

  “A miracle?” said Dorothy.

  She did have rather beautiful eyes, when she opened them wide like this. They were blue but in the background there seemed to lurk a black glint that troubled their blueness—and troubled me. They strangely adorned a face that was a little too regular, the purity of the features obscured by a symmetry which, at first sight, seemed deceptively banal. “Do tell!” she said. Her father’s eyes were not agape; he had knit his brows and was gazing at me thoughtfully, gnawing at his lip.

  “I would like to ask you two favors,” I began. “First, to believe what I’m going to tell you, which won’t be easy. And then, not to take me for a madman. And finally, not to tell a soul alive what you’re going to hear.”

  “That makes three,” Dorothy corrected me playfully—it was obvious that she thought it was just a joke. “But it’s a promise all the same.”

  The doctor too acquiesced, but less affirmatively, with a simple nod. He must have realized from my tone of voice that I was speaking seriously.

  I was about to say “I’ve seen a fox change into a woman,” but on the point of uttering what I thought were easy words, they seemed even to me so preposterous that I swallowed them. There followed a long silence during which I saw their eyes slowly fill with astonishment, then with alarm. In the end I shook my head with discouragement.

  “No, I can’t,” I breathed, “it’s impossible.”

  And since they evidently could not understand, I added; “You wouldn’t be able to believe me.” Dorothy stretched out one hand to seize mine, but I snatched it away. I put my cup down and got up.

  “Forgive me,” I said. “I’m cutting short our reunion, and even spoiling it, I’m afraid. I shouldn’t have talked about it so soon. But you cannot imagine how I… Never mind, the fat’s in the fire, it’s too late to draw back and talk of other things. But I do see now it would defy belief unless you’re properly prepared for it. And I also realize that I’ll have to keep you out of it, Dorothy, at least to begin with. I beg you not to take offense, but I’ll have to speak to your father first: it would be inconceivable otherwise.”

  She did not seem disappointed or saddened, rather a little frightened. I laughed to reassure her and said, “Don’t worry!” but found nothing to add in support of this advice. I went on: “It would be better, much better, if your father first came by himself. Yes,” I said, turning toward him, “may I ask you to call again at Richwick Manor some day soon? If it doesn’t inconvenience you too much?”

  I caught father and daughter exchanging a glance in which even the least observant could have read a veiled alarm.

  “I can come tomorrow, if you like,” he said.

  “Oh, there isn’t that much of a hurry!” I protested. “Besides,” I added precipitately, for the idea had just flashed through my mind, “I’d like us to meet at the Unicorn. You don’t mind going to the pub first?”

  “Wherever you like, whenever you like,” said the doctor, and we fixed a date for a drink before lunch in the middle of the coming week. “So as to be undisturbed,” I explained. And after an exchange of affectionate courtesies, behind which each of us took pains to conceal his surprise or embarrassment, I took my leave at once.

  The innkeeper’s name was Anthony Brown, and his ruling passion was fox hunting. I was almost certain that he had followed the hunt in which my vixen had vanished before the hunters’ eyes. In any case I knew that the matter had been hotly debated at the Unicorn, and a score of theories aired though none adopted. That’s why I had chosen the place to meet Dr. Sullivan. When we had sat down at a table apart, I asked Mr. Brown to have a drink with us. I had no difficulty in leading him on to his favorite sport. We first had to listen at length to numerous tedious exploits in which he had figured with modest dash.

  “Since we are on the subject,” I broke in, “what’s that story, Mr. Brown, about a fox having vanished in thin air? I’ve been told that you were present at the time.”

  “Present! You may say I saw it, with my own eyes, bursting like a soap bubble!” he cried.

  “Go on! Tell us about it.”

  “By the way, now I think of it, didn’t it happen just outside your place?” He turned to Dr. Sullivan. “The fox was leading us straight on to Richwick Manor. It was a cunning beast, it had led the hounds a hell of a dance almost till nightfall. But its game was up. The pack was after it. There wasn’t much light any more, it’s true, but I have sharp ears. When the hounds are all set for the kill, you’d have to be a raw novice to mistake the noise they make. They were right on top of it, and no mistake.”

  “And it disappeared?” asked the doctor.

  “Burst like a ruddy bubble before their very noses, I tell you! I’ve never seen such a stunned pack of curs as those we found when we got there. Dumb-struck they were, a right lot of idiots! Not that we,” he added with a laugh, “looked any brighter than they!”

  “I’ve had a good look at my hedge, you know,” I said with casual hypocrisy. “It’s full of holes.”

  “Do you think if that devilish beast had slipped through a hole,” he cried, “the hounds wouldn’t have followed it? I don’t want to speak ill of your hedge, Mr. Richwick, but they’ve jumped higher ones than yours! No, just a blasted bubble, that’s the word for it. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it in fox hunters’ memory. We haven’t stopped arguing about it. Do you hunt, too?” he asked the doctor.

  Sullivan said he didn’t. The discussion went on for a while, and then we bade the innkeeper good-by. I got into the doctor’s carriage and while he clicked his tongue to the horse, I said:

  “I take it this has convinced you of that strange disappearance?”

  “Is that your miracle?” asked the doctor.

  “Heavens no, unfortunately! It’s only half of it. I’m taking you along to the other half.”

  “Besides, couldn’t the animal have passed through those holes in the hedge, after all?”

  “Of course,” I laughed, “and that’s just what it did. Only the point is this: why didn’t the hounds follow it? Isn’t that inexplicable? And why did they suddenly stop barking?”

  “Because,” the doctor retorted, laughing too, “they must have
come up slap against one of your ghosts. I’ve always suspected Richwick Manor of harboring whole regiments of them.”

  “Ghosts, my foot!” I growled, not laughing any more, and the doctor looked at me intrigued. “You won’t tell anyone about it?” I said suddenly, with some agitation, for we were getting near. “You remember your promise, don’t you?”

  “Of course, of course! What are you afraid of?”

  “Neither explicitly nor implicitly?” I persisted. “By hinting for instance that, don’t you see, you must hold your tongue but if you only could…”

  “I swear, you latterday Hamlet, do calm yourself! Damn it all, it’s only a fox! You couldn’t be more excited if you’d committed a murder!”

  “If only I’d committed a murder,” I sighed, “I’d be in less of a stew.”

  “Am I the first person you’ve told about this?”

  “The second one, after Mrs. Bumley.”

  “Who is Mrs. Bumley?”

  “Sylva’s governess.”

  “And who is Sylva? Have you many more unknown females up your sleeve?”

  “No, only those two. But we’re almost there. You’ll soon get an answer to all this.”

  We had indeed arrived. We left the carriage at the farm and walked into the house. Mrs. Bumley was up in her room (I had asked her to stay there). I suggested we should first have another double scotch to give ourselves courage.

  “Upon my word, you’re beginning to worry me,” said the doctor, still making an effort to laugh. “Are you hiding a corpse?”

  I said that he certainly couldn’t have the slightest notion of the surprise I had in store for him. Then I took my courage in both hands and said, “All right, let’s go up.”

  I walked up the stairs before him. I listened at the door. Nothing. Sylva must be asleep. I knocked with my fist to wake her up and did indeed hear her trot. Then I opened the door wide and pushed the doctor in before me.

  I was counting on the passably strange appearance of this man in black, long as a breadless day, with his horsy face and foaming mane, to give my vixen a shock of surprise, and I was not disappointed. Sylva was wearing her chemise. She jumped up, yelped, and scampered all over the room in a panic, trying to climb up the curtains as she had once done, leaping at last onto the chest of drawers and from there on top of the wardrobe, whence she observed us, all atremble. That was what I had expected, so I closed the door again and said to the doctor, “You have seen her. Let’s go back.”

  If I had said, “Let’s climb on the roof,” he would probably have followed me too. He was plainly so utterly stunned that he marched behind me like an automaton, stumbling a little on the steps. Only after we had sat down in the living room did he recover his speech sufficiently to exclaim in a toneless voice: “Heavens alive!” and asked at last: “Who is that creature?”

  Then I told him everything, from the beginning. When I had finished, he said, “It can’t be,” and began to pace up and down the room.

  I simply said, “If you can give me another explanation…” but he shook his head.

  “If what you have told me is true, then it is really a miracle. There is no possible explanation from a biological point of view. It isn’t a question, as at Lourdes, of a somatic evolution accelerated by the psyche. Such a transformation, in the matter of size alone, is beyond any natural process, even the most exceptional one. As a scientist I have absolutely no right to believe in it.”

  “But as a believer?”

  “It would seem to me exceedingly hazardous.”

  I sighed.

  “Very well,” I said, “then don’t give it another thought. You have not seen anything. Go home and forget all about it. But remember your promise!”

  He stopped still to gaze at me with pathetic insistence.

  “And do you swear,” he asked, “that you have told me the truth?”

  “I swear it. Why should I want to hoax you?”

  He went on staring at me in silence and then began to massage his skull, though it was red enough as it was, with an air of bewilderment. “I’ll be damned… I’ll be damned…” was all I heard him grunt during the minutes that followed. Then he moved his big chin up and down, and finally said:

  “What actually do you expect me to do?”

  “Nothing in particular,” I admitted. “You’d have discovered her some day, anyhow. I preferred to show her to you myself. And perhaps I’m expecting some confirmation from you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, couldn’t you examine her, perhaps? Do you think it’s possible that she has a perfectly normal constitution?”

  “How the devil do you expect me to know?”

  Anyway, how could one get Sylva to submit to such an examination? One would have to tie her up hand and foot or bash her on the head.

  “There’s no hurry,” I said after some moments’ thought. “Cheer up! You’ve seen her, that’s already something. You have time to think about it while I am gradually breaking her in. Come and see us now and then so that she gets used to you. And bring Dorothy along—Sylva very soon got used to Mrs. Bumley. The day will come when you’ll be able to study her physique thoroughly and at leisure.”

  Was he listening? He did not answer. After a certain while he said:

  “This is a pretty kettle of fish, anyhow! I wonder how you’ll get out of it in the long run.”

  That was just the kind of reflection I needed! As if I hadn’t realized myself, and for some time already, what a hornets’ nest I had brought about my ears!

  “Still, you aren’t suggesting, are you,” I said, “that I should call in the vet and have her put to sleep?”

  This was so obviously out of the question that he rubbed his skull even harder. Suddenly he gave a funny laugh.

  “Shall I tell you? The only way you’ll get out of this scrape is by marrying her!”

  This last remark was so obviously meant as a silly joke that I did not even reply.

  Chapter 9

  ONLY after he had gone did I belatedly realize that he had not believed me, after all. It is bad form to show openly a wounding incredulity, whatever the circumstances. Moreover, it is an old English habit, I suppose, to concede that everything is possible in this world—whence our timeworn belief in ghosts. Dr. Sullivan had behaved toward me like a man of breeding: he had not doubted my words although he did not put the slightest faith in my story. How could I blame him?

  But what had he tried to insinuate with that last remark? When you considered it closely, it hardly disguised what he thought: I was hiding in my house—for reasons of my own—a young person who was certainly weird but rather too pretty. I told some people that she was my niece, when in fact I had no sister; and to others I tried to account for her presence by an improbable miracle which nobody in his senses could believe. In the long run it could only result in one thing: a public scandal—unless I scotched it by marrying the girl.

  And that, I thought with an unpleasant twinge, is what he’ll tell his daughter on his return! I could not doubt that he had lately nursed the hope that I might represent a possible future for Dorothy. Nor, in consequence, that he must have been rather unfavorably impressed by my story of a vixen turned into a woman, and by the pres-ence—more or less surreptitious or mendaciously explained—of that young person in my house. I could certainly be sure of his discretion and even, if need be, of his public support, but assuredly not of his private approval. Was I to lose then, if not a friendship, at least an esteem by which I set great store? And with his esteem, that of Dorothy’s?

  The blow this dealt me made me realize how much I still needed the young woman’s affectionate respect. No, I won’t lose it without a struggle, I told myself. After all, I am not guilty! It is a miracle! Sylva is really only a fox in human guise! I have nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of, I have no need to prevaricate. The old doctor hadn’t believed me, had he? Well, he’ll just have to believe me, and so will Dorothy!

  This was m
y state of mind at the end of the nerve-racking Sunday that followed the doctor’s visit. I promptly wrote the Sullivans a note saying I would come to see them the Sunday after. But by the end of the week I had become less cocksure. What proof could I offer them? It is the mark of such a phenomenon that it contains no proof. What I would have to obtain, on the strength of my testimony alone, was an act of faith.

  As bad luck would have it, on the Tuesday of that week Mrs. Bumley received an urgent telegram from one of her sisters; her mother had just had a stroke and was at death’s door. This spoiled everything. I had more or less planned to take her along to the Sullivans and make her talk: she would explain to them the differences between Sylva and a “retarded child,” and there was a chance that the opinion of a professional nurse might be accepted by them as supporting evidence. That chance was now washed away. I could obviously not detain her. She took the train that very evening, leaving me alone with Sylva.

  I then decided, in the absence of Mrs. Bumley, to take my vixen herself along to Dunstan’s Cottage. Wasn’t she the most convincing proof of the truth of my story? Of course, the difficulties of such a project soon became apparent to me. First of all, elementary common sense obliged me to foresee her behavior, or rather misbehavior, in a strange house, and the resultant wreckage. To chase after her amid a hundred precious knickknacks might provide a film sequence worthy of Mack Sennett, but was unthinkable in respectable real life. Furthermore, if Nanny had acquired the knack of dressing her almost decently, I myself only succeeded at the cost of disheartening difficulties which, on some days, even proved insuperable. And neither I nor the nurse was as yet able to force her to have a bath. With the result that when the doors and windows were kept shut her room was very soon impregnated with a rather powerful animal odor. This was the case once more in Nanny’s absence, since I was busy on the farm and unable to keep watch on her all day. When I returned in the evening, the smell almost choked me.

  I could not ask Fanny to replace me: she dared not come close to “my poor niece” who, she confessed scared the life out of her. “I haven’t much brains as it is,” she said, “and to see some who have none at all gives me the creeps! I’d ever so much rather run away,” she added, and did as she said.