“She has gone, with her two-pronged bit.”
While I was searching the stable Nanny had heard the front door open and close again. She had first thought that it was my return, but the lightly mounting steps on the stairs, their nimble swiftness, could not be mistaken. She had immediately hurried upstairs, but what with her old legs, you see, and her tired heart… On the upper floor in the corridor not a soul, nor in Sylva’s room. The pillow in disarray. Nanny had then run toward the back staircase, the one that leads down to the pantry, just in time to hear down there a soft, patter of steps, a door slamming. She had dashed to the small bull’s-eye window, and in the intermingled glow of the rising moon and the fading twilight she had seen a slender silhouette run away in the direction of the woods.
What was she to do? Nanny could not dream of pursuing her. She had slowly gone back to the room. And suddenly, goodness knows why, had thought of that precious bit. When I arrived she had just made sure it was not in its usual place, under the pillow.
What could I do? I wondered in my turn. I thought I understood the last attempt, the last hope of this quite new soul against the ominous destiny in which she found herself caught. Just as a despairing old man seeks in his childhood memories a vain remedy for his decrepitude, so my little vixen, with the help of her swallow-tailed sheet anchor, was fleeing from death toward her forest of the perennial present, toward the impossible refuge of her lost unconscious. What could I do? I kept repeating to myself.
At any rate, it was too late for an organized search. And where was one to look for her? In Jeremy’s shack? The thought struck me suddenly, brutally, in an upsurge of hate and fury. And for a moment I pictured myself and the farmer’s son saddling the two horses, riding through the forest by torchlight, trampling the gorilla under the stallion’s hoofs, and carrying my damsel off on my crupper with savage joy. This imaginary ride soothed my nerves, I overcame my fit of furious jealousy, and with returning calm recovered my feelings of tenderness. Jeremy? Oh, let her, I thought, let her for the last time, if she wants to and is still able to, find with him the candid young animal joys that have been spoiled forever. Grant her this last favor—a last feast for the little vixen in her state of innocence, a last blaze of sinless pleasure.
We went to bed early and I spent a very bad night.
As usual in the case of insomnia, I fell at daybreak into such a heavy sleep that I could not tear myself out of it. Yet somebody was trying to wake me. I felt that it was being done as gently as possible. But as is also usual with those belated slumbers, I could not manage to open an eye without at once closing it again, pulled down to the depths by an enormous, nauseous hand. Gradually, however, I extricated myself from this sticky slime. When I had at last recovered my wits completely, I found myself in Sylva’s arms. She had come back! Shock, joy, relief and gratitude made me sit up straight with a jerk.
A weight against my chest pushed me back toward the pillow. Sylva was holding me in her arms but her head weighed on my breast. She was not asleep. A hand was kneading my shoulder with a kind of nervous tenderness. I heard her sniff softly. I hoisted myself up as best I could. I took her head in my hands, lifted it, turned her pointed face toward mine.
The look in her eyes!
It was unrecognizable, and I experienced such surprise, such a commotion rather, such deep and almost rapturous excitement that it can only be called a revelation. Hitherto I had seen quite well that Sylva’s gaze, her narrow, fixed eyes gleaming with mineral brilliance, had always hovered on the surface, never had any background. The eyes fastened on things with a kind of sharp grip which yet remained vague and distant, and they would detach themselves in the same way, without having really weighed them, questioned them.
Where have I read that there are two kinds of women’s eyes: those that look at you and those that let themselves be looked at? There is a third kind: the look of the feline’s eye, which does not offer itself but takes, never touching, never lingering, never caressing. Two attentive emeralds glowing with an icy fire. I realized that in her most affectionate, intimate moments, those most laden with warm curiosity, Sylva had never ceased to have those eyes, eyes behind which things might perhaps happen, but in deep darkness, without ever reaching the surface.
Whereas now—whereas the eyes now resting on mine! They were no longer eyes that only saw, they penetrated, bored into mine, as if they, in turn, would have liked to discover an answer, a secret. I had actually seen that look in them once before, two months ago, when she had recognized herself in the mirror, but it was a look of such short duration, so quickly averted, forgetful, forgotten… And even then it had not reached this intensity, the deep concentration, the pathetic introspection that it presented at this moment as it rested on me with such rapt attention, brimming over with feelings of such heaviness.
I was pressing her face between my hands. I was saying, “You’ve come back.” I do not know whether she could understand what lay behind those softly spoken words, if she could guess or feel all the tenderness, the gratitude, the sadness, joy and sweetness that they contained. She did not answer. She simply kept her eyes on my lips which had spoken.
I repeated, “You’ve come back,” and then I began to kiss her gently on her forehead, her eyes, all over her face. She let me. I kissed her as one kisses a tenderly loved woman, and she let herself be kissed like a woman, her head thrown back a little, dangling, abandoned, and as I thus kissed her like a woman I felt an upsurge of emotion close to the tears of a mother for her cured but still fragile child, of a lover for his mistress on the eve of a long separation. Not for an instant did I think of a vixen or even wonder if there did not, after all, remain something of a fox under my lips. No, I never thought of it, I only thought, She’s come back, with an immense tenderness, a poignant gratitude, and I kissed her with the infinitely gentle warmth of a wistful gladness.
I said, “You were not cold last night?” and she shook her head without ceasing to look at me.
“Not cold,” she said after a moment.
I hesitated for a long time before I asked her, “Where were you?” But perhaps she did not understand or else she did not want to answer. She simply looked at me, with that meditative insistence which, since my awakening, had pierced my heart with an almost painful delight.
And then she murmured, “Bonny.” She uttered that ridiculous nickname, nothing else, but in a voice that was so new to me, with a tone of such anxious trust, like a lost child or one that had been found again, that I pressed her face more tightly, nodding as if to say: “Yes, yes, darling, I am here…”
She leaned her forehead against the palms of my hands, pressing heavily against them to part them, and rested it again on my chest—yes, rested it for repose, whether more weary or more trusting I do not know. She said nothing more. Nor did I. We remained like this for a very long time and I believe in the end we fell asleep from sheer peace and serenity.
We went downstairs to have breakfast in the dining room. Nanny must have known before me that Sylva was back, for she smiled at us without surprise. She waited on us. Sylva did not throw herself on her kippers with her usual voracity. She ate and drank absent-mindedly. Perhaps because she was ceaselessly observing the two of us as if, back from the Americas after many long years, she was comparing our well-loved but so aged faces with those she held in her memory. The features of her own face marked a kind of slipping, a subtle sagging which seemed to me, like her avid curiosity, expressive of a fierce but anxious affection.
My heart was stirred by a strange happiness, made up of compassion, pride, and hope. The love Sylva bore us henceforth, I thought to myself, would no longer be that of a little domestic animal, hungering for protection. It would now be the love of a creature who had become one of us, who had discovered our common misery and so communed with us in this mortal frailness, with all her being. I thought also that human love differs from that of the beasts in that it has death for a background, and that Sylva could now at last love me with this kind of love.