Sylva

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 my 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 pla

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 Se

I could not ask Fa

To get rid of this unbearable odor I would have to throw the room open to wholesome drafts, spread the rugs and blankets out in the garden. But how could I, all by myself, leave a window open without ru

Take advantage of her sleep? Her slumber was too light and tense, too wary to ensure success. She still slept like a fox; anything would wake her. I eventually decided that I had only one chance to succeed: during our games. For Sylva loved to play with Na

And we found we had to be willing, if only to keep her awake. For whenever we did not busy ourselves with her, the time that was not occupied by eating or trying to get out of the room—trotting, sniffing, whining, despite our efforts to make her drop this habit—was spent by her almost entirely in sleeping. The most painful ordeal that besets an animal in idleness is boredom. As if, as soon as it is unoccupied, the living being becomes aware of its condition as an inexplicable, unexplained creature whose existence seems void of all usefulness as well as of any reasonable motive. The animal’s boredom, even more than ours, takes on a meaning of utter futility, and against so vast a tedium the animal has but one remedy: sleep.

Twenty times a day Sylva would yawn her head off, like a dog who has been shut up, and with the same long, plaintive whine. Like a dog, she would curl up and fall asleep for ten minutes, a quarter of an hour. No sooner did she wake than she would start to prowl about, seeking to play. If Na

When I was about and in a mood to join in, she preferred to play with me. I was more amusing than a chair although the game did not vary: a sham fight. I was much stronger than she, but she was much nimbler, and it was not always deliberately that I let her get the better of me. She would then playfully snap at my ear, my throat. I could not let the game go on for too long: to grapple with a pretty girl in light attire is not the best way to keep one’s self-control, even if one knows she is only a fox. I would push her back a little roughly; she did not take it amiss but simply remained motionless, gazing at me out of her cold and fixed onyx eyes, then she would yawn, whine, and go to sleep.

It was during one of those sessions that I grasped the opportunity to slip my belt around her waist. It is not easy to close a buckle singlehanded, but I was just about to manage it all the same when she realized what was happening. She tried to escape but the buckle held fast. I thought she would kill herself, so much did she struggle, but the chain was solid, the bed heavy and, though at the end of this hurricane, frantic capers, somersaults and jerks fit to strangle her waist, the bed had landed all askew at the other end of the room, Sylva, for her part, found herself lying on the ground, exhausted and breathless as on the day of the hunt after the hounds had pursued her.