At any rate, the next meet was not due until the following Saturday. What was I to do till then? On Sunday I rode through the woods again, for a long time and without result, before knocking at the Sullivans’ door as I had promised.
The door was opened by Dorothy. I must have looked rather wild with my clothes torn and my hair sticky with perspiration, for she exclaimed, “Good Lord! What’s the matter?” She called her father and showed me into the drawing room. While she was pouring me a glass of whisky and the old doctor, sitting opposite me, was silently gazing down at me from above his black frock coat, I recovered some of my self-control. I even managed to laugh like someone poking fun at himself.
“Don’t take any notice. I’ve been riding cross-country all day and I’m fagged out. An idiotic story.”
I turned to the young woman.
“Your father was splendid the other day, but I’m not cherishing any illusions. My story did not convince him. I suppose he told you?”
She acknowledged it, but was obviously on her guard.
“What did you think of it?” I asked bravely.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Told like that to someone who hasn’t seen anything, it really sounds past belief,” she admitted. “Will you show me that… the creature?”
“Too late,” I said. “She’s escaped.”
“How’s that?” cried the doctor.
“Through the window. She’s run off into the woods.”
I must have looked distraught. There was a pause and the old man said:
“Come now, isn’t that the best joke she could play on you? You’re well rid of her now.”
“Yes,” I agreed sourly, “that’s no doubt what I ought to be thinking, if I were sensible. Unfortunately I’m thinking the very opposite. I am reproaching myself most bitterly.”
I told them of all I feared: the hunters, perhaps the lunatic asylum.
Dorothy remarked, a little edgily, “But if she’s only a vixen, what do you care? You aren’t responsible for her any more!”
I said that, on the contrary, I felt deeply responsible. That I didn’t know why exactly, but if she met with an accident I would find it hard to forgive myself. And moreover, in the village, she was now considered my niece. I could no longer let her disappear just like that.
After a moment Dorothy asked, “But how do you yourself consider her? Still as a vixen or already as a girl?”
The question delighted me. For the putting of it meant that Dorothy must have begun to accept things as they were. But it also embarrassed me.
“That’s just it, I don’t know.” I sighed. “She has a woman’s form but the mind of a fox. Is anatomy enough?”
“If she behaves in all respects like a fox…” Dorothy started but broke off and blushed slightly.
I finished the thought for her:
“You’d leave her in the forest, if you were I?”
She probably didn’t dare answer “yes” and slowly rubbed the side of her nose. I turned toward her father. “What do you think, Doctor?”
“Supposing she’s a real vixen?” he asked cautiously.
“Yes, supposing she is. What would you answer if you were sent for to treat her? Would you say, ‘This is a vet’s business?’ ”
“Of course not, but that, as you said yourself, is just a question of anatomy. I’d attend her, even if she were a vixen. But afterward I’d recommend that she be put away. It’s the only solution, believe me,” he added, looking hard into my eyes.
Was he beginning to believe in the miracle, too? Or was it only a piece of… not quite disinterested advice? I looked away and said:
“No, really, that’s impossible! She’d die in a mental home. Just as she’ll die in the forest if she persists in staying there. She has need of me.”
“And you of her, perhaps?” said Dorothy in a tone that seemed to me a little acid.
“Perhaps I do,” I agreed very quietly, “I’ve grown used to her presence.”
Tibbles, the Siamese kitten, was fondly rubbing himself against one of my legs. I fondled him with one hand while smiling at his mistress.
“And if Tibbles disappeared, wouldn’t you miss him?”
“That’s true,” said Dorothy. And as if this remark, by defining the nature of my feelings, had cheered her up, she returned my smile with friendliness. She added, however, “But that’s not quite the same thing, is it?”
My smile broadened. “No, not quite…” Tibbles jumped onto my knee and purred under my stroking. Dorothy and I were now looking at each other with a kind of complicity.
“I’d like to see her,” she said, “when she’s back at the manor.”
“Do you think she’ll come back?” I cried.
“Tibbles often runs away but he always comes back.”
“Sylva isn’t a cat, she’s a fox,” I said in a worried tone.
Dorothy put a sympathetic hand on mine.
“Would it help you to be patient if I came and kept you company for a few days?”
“Who would look after your father in the meantime?”
“We’re having the Dean in to lunch on Tuesday,” the doctor reminded her.
“I’ll be along on Wednesday,” Dorothy decided.
This visit calmed me a little. I slept fairly well. On Monday the various jobs on the farm occupied my actions and thoughts all day. I reached home tired, but it was a welcome fatigue. After dinner I settled down by the fire and tried to read. It was an uneasy attempt, preoccupied as I was. Nevertheless I was just beginning to succeed when a soft scratching on the door made me raise my head. The scratching was repeated several times. I went to open the door with a throbbing heart. It was Sylva.
She slipped inside like a shadow and sank down beside the fireplace. She was panting a little, though almost quietly. But her appearance wrung my heart: her poor chemise hung in pitiful rags, and her body underneath was clawed, bleeding, prickling with thorns. She had slumped down on her side, in the gently relaxed, weary attitude of a greyhound after a race, her head thrown back a little, her hair spread out. She closed her eyes and breathed less noisily.
I knelt down beside her and started to pull away her rags which in places were stuck with clotted blood and sweat. She let me do it, only quivering a little when I had to pull at the cloth to make it come away. I went to fetch a basin of water and began to sponge her gently, extracting a thorn, a bur here and there. She did not object, just moaned a little, but without resistance. I also discovered tooth marks: she must have tried to return to her burrow, to her fox and fox cubs. But she was a woman; how could they have recognized her? They had defended themselves against her as against an intruder, an enemy.
For how long after that had she gone on roaming, too tall and clumsy and hurt by every thorn, before she had decided to come back? Perhaps she had also fled from the fox hunt.
When I had cleansed her thoroughly, I applied a healing balm to her scratches and sprayed talcum powder all over her body. We were near the fire; it was warm; she nestled close to me and began to murmur gently with sleepiness and well-being. I wrapped my arms around her and rocked her softly like a child. It was the first time I had dared to take her close to me, naked and abandoned. I am a self-respecting man but a prudent one, too, and I have always considered that the surest way of resisting temptation is to avoid it. But on that evening Sylva’s return—when I had already almost despaired of it—the intense relief at seeing my fears dispelled, my slightly overwrought joy at her sweet fidelity, all overwhelmed my watchfulness. I felt lighthearted, gay, carefree with a dash of boldness in which there soon mingled a new tenderness that was freer, more unrestrained, soon even more audacious and almost reckless, and gradually tending to libertinism… After all, I told myself with a sort of delightful dizziness, she’s a woman, isn’t she? What harm would there be? And if she’s a fox, she probably hasn’t even a soul, so what sin would there be in it? She was purring under the caresses with which I was soothing her to sleep, very chaste caresses but which I now found hard to control, for they were wandering a little over her arched hips, her breasts. My fingers were trembling.