As soon as I released her, my lascivious vixen simply ceased mewing and even purring. She sprawled on the carpet, rolling about a little, softly rubbing her cheek. I looked at her from a distance and felt seething in me a strange mixture of desire and repulsion—one I had felt before, it is true, on several occasions but never with the violence of that night. Luckily for me, Sylva instantly dropped into slumber, like a very young child. She fell asleep with such animal languor, too, that the last fires died within me, leaving room only for tenderness. I took advantage of her abandon to make her take a bath. She gave no more than a little start when the warm water touched her, and continued to sleep. And I carried her, still asleep, to her bed. I had put a fresh chemise on her.
A long time ago I had lost the habit of praying, but that night I thanked the Lord for His assistance. I felt, without quite being able to explain it, that I had escaped from a particularly heinous sin. I remembered how insidiously temptation had overcome my senses while I was clasping in my arms my little vixen in human shape. Why, who’d know about it? I had said to myself. Not even she: you’ll pass in her like a sword through water, like a lizard over a stone, she won’t even remember it tomorrow… I thank Thee, my Lord, for having spared the sinner the shame of his own remembrance in the gray morning light of a nauseous awakening…
I went to bed in my turn. As often now in the middle of the night, I felt a weight, a warmth against me. This presence so close and tempting, roused again my senses and their sting for a moment. But I had recovered my self-control. Having resisted at the height of the tempest, I was not going to succumb on reaching the port.
Chapter 11
NEVERTHELESS, a disappointment lay in store for me the next morning. When she felt I was stirring, Sylva too woke up, yawned, stretched herself and finally jumped to the floor. And almost at once she was at the door again, scratching and sniffing. Then trotting around the room. Then looking through the window, whining softly.
“So you want to run away again!” I said to myself sadly. “Are you incapable, then, of the least memory… ?” To see what she would do, and knowing that the whole house had been locked up for the night, I opened the door. She almost knocked me down and ran along the corridor, but on the point of starting to descend the staircase she seemed to hesitate, slowed down and remained leaning over the bannister with an air of uncertainty and alarm, as if she were listening to sounds I could not hear. She remained thus for so long that finally I went to her. And she let herself relax against me, nuzzling her little face into my armpit as if to seek shelter there against the hardships of the world. I did not dare to move. But when at last I lifted her chin to look at her face, I saw a tear roll down.
I felt stirred by a deep emotion. Tears! The first tears she had shed! Hitherto she had moaned very often, whimpered sometimes, but never any tears. Was this the prelude to a change? Was it something to hope for or fear? At any rate, without a shadow of doubt, it was the sudden emergence of memory. As long as we had kept her imprisoned in the house all her instinct, as a wild animal, strained toward freedom. In the locked bedroom this morning, awakening, it was still this instinct—and this instinct only—which had flooded back and filled her entirely. But when I had let her out, when she had thought she could escape again to the forest, to her fox and her cubs, the memory of the day before must suddenly have surged up in all its cruelty. One could not otherwise explain, I believe, that she had so brusquely stopped short, showing her grief and those tears. For the first time, therefore, my little vixen had not automatically followed her unreflecting instinct, but had drawn the lesson of a misadventure like a sentient being. I did not, however, indulge in exaggerated illusions: this is the sort of memory, after all, which is not lacking in my dogs. I was moved and uncertain whether to rejoice or not.
I led her back to the bedroom—I did not have to lead her, she was sticking to me as she had done on the day of the train journey, as if she were afraid of losing me; and no words could have made me understand more clearly that since the forest was rejecting her, this room and I had now become her whole universe. Yet for many nights to come I would still hear her trot along the walls, sniff and scratch at her door, at the window. Any other behavior would have been surprising on the part of a creature who was still steeped to the core in atavistic independence. It would have been most surprising if the memory of her mishaps had not faded at times, in her savage soul, before the irresistible call of her native earth. Was it not already wonderful that I could now open doors and windows, at least in the daytime, without having to dread her escape? Fear of the unknown seemed to have succeeded the lure of the forest. Inside the house she would not now leave my side, any more than a puppy would. And when I came home from the farm I would find her behind the door, sitting cross-legged, waiting for me.
I felt calm and reassured at last. It never crossed my mind that this tranquillity might still prove deceptive.
Meanwhile, according to her promise, Dorothy had arrived on the Wednesday following Sylva’s return. As she got out of the pony trap which she drove herself, the first word she said was: “Well?”
I answered, “She is back!”
With a big smile, Dorothy passed the reins to the farm boy to take the trap around to the stables, and cried, “I told you so!” She was carrying a small traveling bag. “I have brought my things but is there any need now?”
I took the bag out of her hand. “You don’t imagine I’m going to let you go away again!” I exclaimed, and preceded her into the house.
We entered. She first warmed herself at the fire and then I said, “I’ll show you to your room.” We went upstairs. As we passed the door of my bedroom we could hear the noise of trotting feet, scratching on wood, impatient whining.
Dorothy stopped me. “Is that she?”
I nodded.
“Oh!” she said, “I’d love to see her!”
“Settle in first, then I’ll take her to you.”
“Oh no! Right now!” she said. She was so eager, her face alight with curiosity, that I could not resist.
“Stay there,” I said, and went to open the door. Sylva was standing behind it in her woolen shirt. Seeing I was in company, she gave a start and tried to run away. I held her back by the wrist. “Come on, come… don’t be afraid…”
Dorothy gently stepped forward, one hand outstretched, smiling exaggeratedly as one does for a very small child. Sylva watched her approach with fixed eyes. Her lips drew up, baring her sharp little teeth. And a deep snarl rose from her throat.
I quickly warned: “Don’t come closer!” There was no doubt that if Dorothy persisted she would be bitten. She must have realized it, for she swiftly pulled her hand back and looked at me with deep dismay.
“She is a little wild animal,” I said. “Give her time to get used to you.”
“Animals generally like me,” she complained, “and let me stroke them.”
I smiled. “It’s not quite the same thing. Didn’t you say so yourself last Sunday?”
“Do you mean… it might be… feminine jealousy?”
“Might be. It’s not impossible.”
Sylva never took her eyes off the newcomer, nor did she stop growling darkly.
A little later, when Dorothy was back in the living room with me, the poor reception she had been given still seemed to rankle a little.
“She is very pretty to look at,” she admitted. “But what a foul temper!”
“Go on! Complain!” I protested. “She has let herself be locked up unprotestingly. Have you often come across such meekness in a wild beast? Or in a jealous woman?”