The Mayor had stepped forward. He loomed very high above all three of us.
“Listen, my lad. You’ll have no trouble if you’re reasonable. But this girl is under age. You have a good chance of getting sent to jail, I’m warning you.”
“I want ter wed ’er,” said the other somberly.
“Well, then,” answered Walburton, laughing, “you’ll make your official proposal of marriage at the proper place and time. Till then, be a good lad,” he repeated, “and let her go home with her uncle. You can pay your respects to her, if you like, every Sunday. Right?” he said, looking at me.
I had not yet been able to utter a word, so choked was I with rage, so hard was it for me to contain myself. That savage, that monster, that ape! To think he may already have crushed her under his hairy chest! All my fine feelings of generous wisdom had evaporated; I was consumed with torturing anger. Fool! Fool! I raged to myself with stark male fury which could no longer even be called jealousy. I would have liked to seize Sylva by the hair, drag her to the first mossy litter on my way, make her groan with pleasure in my arms and then let her rot there, if she wanted to.
I retained just enough common sense to note the intrigued glance w?hich Walburton cast at me. I had not answered his question and my pallor must have betrayed my feelings. I controlled myself in time to save appearances, before the ironic glint of surprise which lurked in his gray eyes had lit up altogether. And I managed to utter in a voice, whose roughness masked its tremor:
“He can come when he likes. Come on, let’s go.”
In my turn, I gripped Sylva by the wrist; the brute did not let go of the one he held. For a long moment, we stood glaring at each other. If I had been alone, I don’t know what turn things would have taken. I believe, yes, I do believe that we would have fought and torn each other like two reindeer stags at rutting time until death had put an end to one or the other. Happily, the presence of that distinguished giant, the phlegmatic, civilized man of taste that was my friend Walburton, spared me this extremity. He was patting the horrible, hairy arm, saying over and over again: “Come on, come on… no rough stuff… be sensible…” and the brute did indeed loosen his grip.
I said gently, “Come…” and began to pull Sylva along. She seemed to give in at first and followed me unresistingly. So that I too gripped her wrist less strongly.
We thus took a few steps. And then, with such unexpected suddenness that I did not immediately grasp what was happening, she wrenched herself free and, in three jumps across the fern, reached the thick undergrowth. And the crackle of breaking twigs faded in the distance.
For a moment we stood speechless, all three of us, staring at the bushes that had closed upon their prey as if to defend her from pursuit. What broke the silence was the brute’s enormous roar of laughter—triumphant, insulting. “Well, go and take ’er away now, what are yer waitin’ for?” and already he was shambling off to his lair, his laughter bellowing ever more loudly.
“Just a moment, my lad!”
It was the Mayor speaking, and his voice was so hard and peremptory, so threatening, that the fellow shut up and turned around. He was glowering at the tranquil giant from under his monstrous eyebrows, with a crafty but not very reassured look.
“You’ve been warned,” said the colossus. “The girl is under age. If you don’t bring her back yourself to Richwick Manor before night, of your own free will, I’ll send the constabulary out tomorrow. And you are good for a stretch in jail, maybe even hard labor. So get that into your thick skull and mind what you do.”
And without giving him time to answer, he gripped me by the arm and dragged me away.
Chapter 16
WE made our way back through the forest without exchanging a word. He was walking in front of me on the narrow path, and while his back was toward me I tried to regain control of myself. I found it very hard. It has been said that love is an itch you cannot scratch. That was just the sort of unbearable, nagging discomfort I felt, and it blighted all efforts to be cool and collected.
On the edge of the forest we parted, and he said to me: “Don’t worry. Hull will bring her back to you or else the police will. In any case, no need to be alarmed. Anyhow,” he added, with a genial laugh (why “anyhow,” and why did he laugh?), “anyhow, these primitive creatures have sometimes more chivalrous feelings than one gives them credit for. You know young Nancy, the barmaid at the inn? He was courting her for a long time—if that’s the right word. It tickled her all the more since he never once dared to kiss her, not even on the finger tips.”
Was he saying that to reassure me? That Nancy with her mocking laughter had scared the poor chap was natural enough. It was a case of awe rather than chivalry. But why should he be awed by Sylva?
The most elementary good manners required that I should ask Walburton to come home for a drink. I did not have the will power. I was so impatient to be alone again, to be able to “scratch” myself to my fill, that I let him leave.
I did not go home right away. The idea of having to face Nanny in my present state (and in the state she must be in) was more than I could stand. I tried to wear out my agitation by striding fast all the way to the ancient windmill whose crumbling frame towers above the gorse at the top of Swallowsnest Hill. There I sat down, among the ruins thickly clad with immemorial ivy, recovered my breath and made an effort to think calmly.
When I want to ponder over a personal problem I always begin by honestly examining my rights. This gives me a twofold advantage: first, I feel honest, which is not at all negligible; second, if my rights are confirmed (and they rarely fail to be) I no longer fear fresh trouble with my conscience when riding roughshod over all obstacles. This is a mental hygiene which has always proved effective.
But this time it was not so simple. Far from confirming my rights toward Sylva, careful consideration rather confirmed those I did not possess. The only right I could grant myself was the de facto authority one has over a domestic animal. She was neither my daughter, sister nor fiancée, not even an orphan or a child entrusted to me by a friend. I could claim no other rights over her than those one assumes as a matter of course over one’s dog, one’s horse. Very well! I tried to triumph, you don’t let a tabby cat run loose in spring, you prevent its misalliance and pick a mate worthy of her. So far, so good: you refuse to give Sylva to this ape man, and you are certainly well advised. But what other mate do you offer her instead?
That’s where the trouble started. I could think of two or three handsome chaps in the village. And I became aware that, far from satisfying me, the thought of their mating with Sylva revolted me no less than that of the ape man, perhaps even more. An insistent voice took advantage of this to suggest, despite my opposition: “Well, then… what about you?… Why not?” Of course I rejected the suggestion but it would obstinately return, so that in the end I had to face it squarely. Except that I put myself in the position of a spectator. I imagined the respectable Albert Richwick lying with a fox bitch whose only human characteristic was her anatomy, indulging in a beastly copulation with an anatomy for the sole purpose of stilling, deep inside a creature without mind or soul, a mere impatience, a blind hunger, a carnal itch. Repulsive! All in all, the business was less repulsive with a cave man, much less.
Did honor and wisdom command, then, that I should leave Sylva in the arms of that gorilla? Wouldn’t he, after all, be the best match for a fox-woman? Weren’t they made for each other, spurred by the common savagery of their primitive natures? Made to suit and understand each other without need of words, destined to mate in innocence? Hadn’t that heavy-jowled oaf sensed that no woman could fit him so well, could give him more happiness? And what about her? I asked myself, and the answer was so obvious that it stabbed me like a dagger. She too would never find a companion better attuned to her state. She too had guessed it with the sureness of her instinct: male and female, a fox and his vixen, nothing more, nothing less. It was their truth, it could never be mine.