Nanny complied, with all the tact of which she was capable. We could not immediately gauge the effect of this revelation. Sylva had listened with that air of absent-minded attention which she often assumed when she felt something was beyond her grasp and wanted to ponder later and at leisure over what she had been told. She was very quiet till the evening, although slightly aloof, a little distraught, and she went to bed as usual. But next morning she had disappeared.
This was her fourth escapade within a few months, and I was beginning to get used to them. Probably I would not have worried very greatly if we had not discovered an entirely new fact: Sylva had gone away with a suitcase!
She had taken clothes, lingerie and toilet things with her. To go where? Certainly not very far; she was still too unsure of herself to travel alone, or to go up to town. Jeremy’s hut? I realized with a happy sigh of relief that I no longer feared she might have joined him. That period lay well in the past. I shall cut short the account of my searches and deductions, for in any case they did not have much time to operate. A message from the innkeeper told me that the runaway was at the Unicorn. He had not dared refuse her a room but was afraid there might be trouble and preferred to let me know. He did not add that Sylva had not a brass farthing on her.
After some thought I decided not to force her to come back at once. Instead I sent Mrs. Bumley to reconnoiter. They had a long talk together, necessarily difficult and confused, from which, however, Nanny was able to grasp the gist. For Sylva, I was “Bonny,” that is to say, her father, brother, protector, and according to what she had digested of the doctrines of the Church—the cardinal virtues, the links of parentage, sin, hell and all the rest—she could not admit that I might be the father of the child she was carrying. She simply denied it, with the most stubborn energy, and she was still dim-witted enough to believe with a fierce candor that what she denied did not exist. Roused to impatience by such pigheadedness, Nanny suddenly brushed aside the obstacles of various kinds that had hitherto restrained her, and launched out into a full explanation of love, pleasure, and the rest.
Sylva let her talk, her eyes fixed on her, and when Nanny caught her breath and her chin began to quiver between her sagging cheeks, the young girl simply said, “I know.” There was nothing more to be got out of her. Nanny came home most discomfited and exceedingly displeased with herself.
During the following days Sylva refused to see even Nanny. Then she changed her mind and received her. On the condition, however, that I should not come with her, she said. In the course of those days of waiting, I could measure the power of my love for Sylva. I remember few periods in my life when I reached such a degree of feverish bewilderment, hopeless distress, indecision and stupor. A hundred times I resolved to bring her back by force, a hundred times an inner voice warned me not to do anything of the kind. I had great misgivings of the danger she was in, all alone in that inn, amidst all those village bumpkins whose heads would be turned by her simplicity and beauty. But at the same time I guessed that if I compelled her to come back there was a risk of turning her against me for a long time. Moreover, Nanny calmed my fears a little.
“In the first place,” she said, “you can be sure that your little vixen loves you—even if her brand-new heart has not yet told her how.”
Besides, good old Nanny made friends with the innkeeper’s wife, who kept an eye on Sylva as if she were her own daughter. And finally, Nanny herself went to the Unicorn every day, to continue her role as an educator. She thus had an eye on the male patrons and their comings and goings. But she hesitated for a long while, she told me, before owning up to her worries for me on account of a very assiduous, new visitor at the inn: my friend J. F. Walburton’s younger son. I knew the boy welclass="underline" a handsome lad. And the girl—quite ingenuously, according to Nanny, and without thinking of any harm—smilingly tolerated his advances.
If my candid Sylva had been a cunning woman of the world, she could not have chosen a shrewder course of action to sweep away my ultimate and cowardly hesitations. But perhaps she had become both worldly-wise and a woman? Perhaps her departure this time was one of those feminine ruses, in which women pretend they are running away from a man’s love when what they really want in secret, sometimes even without admitting it to themselves, is to exasperate him to his breaking point? However this may be, there I was, reluctantly deprived of her presence, worried, jealous, dependent for the least scrap of news on Nanny as an intermediary (and suspecting her of connivance).
If what Sylva wanted was to open my eyes to the power and true nature of my affection for her, she succeeded in this most marvelously, for I no longer slept and only thought of one thing: our marriage. I had plenty of leisure during those sleepless nights to realize with striking clarity what she would henceforth mean in my life. No longer only a woman (as for thinking of her as a vixen, a fox bitch still, I would have blushed with shame) , no longer only a human being, but at last a “person”; yes, Sylva was now quite simply the one person on earth I loved, the person I wanted to live with, whom I would never yield to another, whom I would marry against the whole world, for I simply could no longer live without her.
And I am convinced that in marrying her I have done the wisest thing I ever did in my life. Sylva’s gentleness, her joy of life, her bubbling tenderness, her eagerness to learn about everything, have never ceased, nor has she ever given me cause to be anything but proud of her, and her charm and grace have brought me honor on many occasions. That is why I find it hard today to remember that silly time when people’s opinion kept me back, when my own mind was still clogged with stupid old prejudices. And I sometimes tremble at the thought that, were it not for that revealing absence, I might perhaps still be hesitant. But once the scales had fallen from my eyes, I was frantic with impatience and shrugged off the rest. The child? What matter if it looked like the gorilla or anyone else, I would not be the first man to take charge of a natural child for love of its mother; and who cared if “they” turned up their noses?
But I am bragging a little. In actual fact, I believe I secretly kept hoping that there would be a miscarriage or a stillborn child. Or that, if it did survive, it would resemble me. Or if not me, at least not too obviously the gorilla. And if it did… ah well, I would just have to make advance arrangements, see to it that the confinement was as discreet as possible so that I might, as a last resort, entrust the baby to some faraway crêche…
But the first thing of all was to get Sylva’s consent. She must therefore be persuaded to come home. Nanny was not up to that task, for torn between Sylva and me, she no longer knew which way to turn. Sylva loved me too, I had every reason to be sure of it. I would shut myself up with her, I would convince her in the end. She must understand and follow me! I jumped on my horse and galloped down to the inn.
There I found everything at sixes and sevens. Where was Nanny? She appeared just as I was asking for her, carrying a basin of hot water. She simply said, “So there you are, are you?” and passed without stopping.
I followed her.
She said, “Stay where you are.”
“But what’s going on?” I cried.
And Nanny, over her shoulder: “She is in labor.”
This was much earlier than we had expected. And I had been planning a discreet confinement! I paced up and down in the corridor, chain-smoking as custom has it, until after half an hour, I heard Nanny call me in a voice that gave me goose flesh.
I ran up to her. She was carrying the first-born in her arms.
There could be no room for doubt: it was a fox cub.