The path narrowed amidst the fern and trees. We could not walk abreast. Sylva left my side, slipped in front to walk ahead. I noticed, to my great confusion, that it was my heart now that beat with emotion. What was I expecting, then? I do not know. Perhaps to see her turn into a fox again, before my eyes? I caught myself, if not precisely wishing it, at least contemplating the possibility with a sort of secret longing which left me half amazed, half troubled. Did I not love her any more? Did I (for Dorothy’s sake perhaps) want to lose her? At this thought my heart beat more violently and dictated to me a very different fantasy which filled my chest with the fragrance of the woods: the fantasy that we should both meet again as foxes.
Which of us has not wished some time to be a gazelle, a dolphin, a swallow? In other words, to regain Eden—innocence, joy and freedom—to cast off the burden of the human estate, the strictness of the state of a Christian, the glum duties of the condition of a British subject… Oh, to be able to gallop along the tracks with my vixen, leap over the ferns, pursue a hare, a stoat… These kinds of wish-dreams are never very serious, and this one hardly any more so, but if I did not really wish to become a fox, could I still long, then, for her to become one without me? Besides, wasn’t she a fox anyhow, despite her appearance?
I gradually realized that what I regretted was that she was in fact neither woman nor fox. Seeing her in this human shape so brutally “detached” from her natural setting, as a scissor cut is “detached,” a silhouette cut out amidst this vast organic element which we passed through but with which we could not merge, I realized intensely the extent to which her little soul must unconsciously feel wrenched and lonely. Before, she had breathed with the forest’s breath, mingling with it fiber by fiber; now she too could only watch it like a spectacle, enjoy it from outside like myself, however much we were inside it. What had been a communion of each moment, each look, each movement, was now no more than a foreign scrutiny, a face-reading, however fascinating it still might be. And seeing her move her head this way and that with the quickness of a squirrel; raise it to follow the flight of a wood pigeon, a linnet; leave the path with a doe’s leap to inspect an anthill; scratch in passing as if with claws the trunk of a dead tree to try and discover in it a little honey of wild bees; start up at the cracking of a bough, stop dead at the stifled complaint of a stone marten—seeing her thus repeat her foxy movements though they could no longer be those of a wild beast but only a vain imitation, a make-believe, my heart contracted with pity and tenderness.
And yet what a lovely sight she was in the forest, my Sylva! Her hair had the flamboyant hue of larches in autumn; her neck rose proud and straight, supple and nervous and strong like a horse’s leg; her slender back, molded in a sweater that was the color of autumn leaves too, rippled and quivered at the slightest noise, the softest breath; as for her legs, they were so noble and beautiful that one could have loved them for their own sake, a supple pair of salmon swimming a continuous minuet in the subaqueous light of the undergrowth…
Thus we strolled, she in front and perpetually in a buoyant rhythm halfway between walking and running, all her pores—or so it seemed—open to the thousand murmurs, the thousand scents, the thousand tremors of the springtime awakening; and I walking behind, forgotten, I told myself, so completely forgotten…
But though I may have thought it with a little melancholy, it did not really pain me; on the contrary, I was hoping, hoping with all my heart and all my strength at that moment, that she might recapture however little of that—but what can one call it? pulsation? rapture?—ah! a little of the bubbling delight that was hers before the transformation, a little of the ineffable fullness of her life as a fox subjected only to its nature—to Nature.
Three hours thus passed like a minute. Only when I noticed that I was dragging my legs did my sudden fatigue make me abruptly aware of the lapse of time. I looked at my wrist watch: half past twelve! I was not even very sure where we were, since Sylva had been pulling me along in all sorts of directions, on the spur of her impulses. But I figured that Richwick Manor must be quite a mile away. What would Nanny say! The Sunday dinner would be burned. Sylva continued to gambol with the same winged ease, impervious to tiredness. I called her.
I thought at first that she had not heard me—or did not wrant to hear. I called more loudly and she turned around, gave me a faithful doggy look with a facial twitch that could have been a smile had she known how to smile. But she set off again at a run. This time I shouted her name peremptorily, with a hint of anger in my voice. She began to trot in a circle, almost turning around herself, but still trotting until she was face to face with me. She waited. I said, “It’s very late, we must go home.”
She remained silent, gazing at me with an attentive, distant look in her eyes.
“And I don’t even know where we are! Can you guide us?”
As if in answer, she passed in front and streaked off like an arrow. “Not so fast!” I cried, laughing.
She probably did not understand and went on. I had to make an effort to catch up with her, grab her skirt, pull her back.
“Not so fast,” I repeated, and she slowed down her pace. We walked like that for a good quarter of an hour. I was not in the least worried about the way we were going: I was sure that she still had that innate sense of direction which civilized man has lost with his wildness. And indeed we soon found ourselves at the edge of the wood—-much closer, happily, than I had feared.
Sylva had stopped on the verge of the forest, she let me pass, as if courteously stepping aside in a doorway. I took a few steps forward, in the direction of the house where I could see Nanny anxiously waiting for us on the threshold. She motioned to me wildly. I was gaily waving back when, I don’t know why, I had the feeling that Sylva was not following me. I just caught a fleeting glimpse of both Nanny’s arms flung up in despair before I turned around.
Sylva was no longer there.
Chapter 14
I RUSHED into the forest in an immediate reflex, calling her as on the day of her first flight. But once I found myself among the trees and bushes, amid all this forest murmur deeper than silence, I did not take long to recover my wits and recognize wisely—with consternation—that it would be a waste of time to search for her. Sylva had vanished in the forest like a lizard in long grass; it was quite vain to pursue her.
Thus, what I so much feared on setting out had completely slipped my mind on the way back, had taken me completely unawares. I was furious and vexed, though more the latter, for once again, beneath my anger against myself, I found the subtle feeling of serenity, if not of elation, that I had felt a little earlier at the thought that she might resume her original shape. The pleasure of knowing Sylva free in her former kingdom weighed in my heart against the displeasure of seeing her disappear. I could measure in these contradictory emotions the strength of my affection for her.
In any case, this loss no longer racked me to excess. As I have said, I had envisaged this accident and even foreseen what might follow: probably a spontaneous return when Sylva had roamed to her heart’s content; if not, a combined search that could not reasonably be expected to meet with failure.
I walked back to the house. On the edge of the wood I almost knocked down a panic-stricken Nanny, breathless from running on her short legs. I soothed her as best I could, but she gave me a thorough dressing down. When she saw us walk toward the forest, she could have sworn this would happen! she cried. What stupid imprudence, what reckless foolishness! A man of my age! And what would happen to her now, poor mite?