I had no need to explain. Sylva had been found. Or rather, her whereabouts were known: she was at a wood-cutter’s shack. There had always been a fair number of them working in the forest. The man concerned was a young chap named Jeremy Hull, taciturn and—so they said—a bit half-witted. The other woodcutters were older than he and bullied him, only too happy to relieve their own misery by wreaking their malice on someone more wretched than themselves. He therefore lived apart, shy and suspicious, withdrawn in his solitude. On Monday evening, they had caught a glimpse of Jeremy coming back from his work in the company of a young lady. From a distance she seemed elegant, but she also appeared to be very tired. At first they had thought it was Walburton’s daughter, for she often rode to hounds with her father. They thought she might have got lost and spent the night in the thickets where Jeremy had probably found her, and after leading her to his hut for a meal and a rest he would take her back to the village.
It was not without surprise and indignation (nor, I suspect, without jealousy) that they saw Sylva reappear with Jeremy the next morning when he set out. She was following him like a shadow. She returned with him in the evening. The virtuous woodcutters pondered their duty deeply and only an hour before one of them had been delegated to inform Walburton. He had expected to find a distraught father but the door was opened by Miss Walburton herself. The Mayor and he had then wondered who that creature of the woods could be. The sketchy description given by the woodcutters tallied with none of the girls of the neighborhood. Then it had suddenly occurred to Walburton, he himself told me, that he had never seen my adopted daughter or niece, and he was on the point of riding over to me when I had appeared on his doorstep.
We set out at once. In the forest the woodcutters showed us the way and we soon discovered Jeremy’s shack. It stood in the middle of a narrow clearing, under the verdant shimmer of trailing birches. There was no one in it. But according to his cronies, Jeremy was used to coming back for a snack around ten o’clock. It was past nine. I asked Walburton to be good enough to wait with me and he accepted with a jovial alacrity which barely concealed a keen curiosity. We examined the shack. It was a rather dreadful hovel. I could see that my friend’s eyes, like mine, roved obstinately toward the shapeless litter that served as a bed. At the foot of the litter lay something that, at a pinch, might be taken for a pallet of leaves and dry twigs. With a little willingness, Sylva could have laid herself down and slept there amidst a welter of heterogeneous objects: rusty, peeling household utensils, more or less warped and worn-out tools, and other decrepit oddments in such an inextricable muddle that it was almost impossible to identify them.
Walburton was sucking at his mustache. There was an odd, somewhat sly glint in his bulging eyes which he tried to extinguish before turning toward me. He was shaking his head with a look of gravity on his face but his big, carroty nose twitched peculiarly. “I hope,” he said, “that this den has not been the scene of some regrettable impropriety…”
He seemed to be waiting for me to express a similar hope; but after the wise resolutions I had taken I no longer knew what, if anything, I was hoping for. All I could produce in answer was an embarrassed grunt, and he added in a slow, emphatic drawclass="underline" “Because if, don’t you see, there were any consequences… I mean to say, between this half-wit, don’t you know, and this… h’m… poor child…”
But I did not say a word, and he became irritated. “Can you imagine the consequences?” he said with some brutality.
“Oh, you never know,” I stammered in a dubious tone, but he brushed the words aside with a “Come now, really!” which he rapped out so ruthlessly that he left no room for the least uncertainty. He kept his eyes fastened on me and repeated: “Can you imagine?” and I acquiesced mutely, but with a more worried expression than I actually felt.
Try as I would, I could not manage to find myself guilty. “Consequences”? Well, if there were any, worse luck, I’d take care of them, that was all. As for the rest, the “regrettable impropriety,” ever since the brainstorm I had passed through, victoriously as I believed, I flattered myself on accepting it as what it was in fact for those primitive creatures: a mere act of nature, an innocent obedience to instincts, very far removed from what we called good or evil, or sin.
But when, twenty minutes later, I saw the supposed “culprits” returning, my fine composure abandoned me in a jiffy.
A stiff, matted mop of hair which must have been fair but was blackened with soot and ashes; a young but wrinkled, ravaged face stuck upon the massive hulk of an orangutan; the torso itself crushing the legs into a pair of brackets like those of stiff-jointed old horsemen; moreover, a swelling of the throat which, without being a goiter, was at least a crop; vacant eyes blinking under the jutting visor of a brow arched like a Romanesque vault and bristling with stubble. In a word, a brute of the Stone Age.
Sylva was walking at his side, hanging slightly back. When she recognized me, she flung herself on my neck with quiet joy, cuddled up a little and kissed me under the chin in her fashion, with a flick of her tongue. Seeing us, the fellow had stopped six steps away. He rapped at her with a rough, caveman’s voice:
“Who’s the man? Be he your father?”
She turned her face toward him, but did not answer: how could she? The word “father” was still unknown to her. He took a few strides on his bandy legs and gripped her wrist. He repeated more loudly, motioning toward me with his chin, with an increasingly furious look on his face:
“I’m askin’ yer who that feller is, be he yer father?”
He was shaking her by the arm. She must have realized unconsciously what was upsetting her swain for she said “Bonny” and kissed me.
The lad planted himself right in front of us. I towered over him by a good head and he had to raise his. I saw his eyes flash under the bristly brows. He growled, “What ’ave yer come for?” and without even waiting for my reply, he yelled, “She’s mine. D’ye hear? Be off and leave us alone!” He clasped the fragile wrist even more tightly.
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: