Although he had seemingly talked to himself, I realized he would have liked to hear me say: “What then is the point?” But despite my curiosity I didn’t ask it. He settled down on the box and I said, “Have a good ride!”
He gave a click with his reins and his tongue, and the carriage moved off, creaking. I had caught a glimpse, behind my back, of Nanny on the threshold. She was gazing inquisitively after the receding vehicle, holding Sylva fast behind her. Suppose the old man turned around! But he was content to wave his arm widely, and the carriage at last disappeared around a bend of the road. I walked back to the house, mopping my forehead.
Chapter 8
ON the following Sunday, therefore, I went to have tea at Dunstan’s, as promised. Nothing much had changed in the dear old house during those ten years, nor had we aged so greatly as to be forced reluctantly to measure the years gone by. Each one had instinctively taken his accustomed place-the doctor in his deep armchair, Dorothy on the chesterfield whose needlework seat she had once stitched herself, and I between the two of them. The same muffins and the same scones accompanied the tea, which always was a strong brew at Dunstan’s. It seemed to me that we were resuming an old conversation at the point where we had left off. Except that I could not recapture my former sentiments. And I was not even sure of that, because I felt such sweetness and warmth. But I had hardly any time to question myself clearly, for a single preoccupation filled my thoughts: how was I to announce Sylva’s existence to them?
Just as in the old days, Dr. Sullivan was the most talkative of the three of us. He spoke slowly and accompanied his words with sweeping gestures of his arm, which made him look at times as if he were in the pulpit. Dorothy smiled in silence with the same mysterious smile that used to trouble me so much in my young days. I answered the old man’s questions as far as my obsession with what I was going to say would let me. While Dorothy was pouring a third cup of tea, there was a pause, and I turned it to account to blurt out a stupidly precipitate question:
“Tell me, Doctor, do you believe in miracles?”
Dorothy stopped still for a second, the teapot in midair. Her father gulped back what he had been about to say and stared at me in surprise. His eyelids fluttered. The doctor is a religious man, with a solid, deep-rooted faith, though he fervently defends Darwin ’s theories against his old chum, the Bishop of Yeovil.
“We must believe the Scriptures,” he said at last.
I shook my head.
“I’m talking of miracles that happen in our day,”] explained, “before our very eyes.”
He seemed taken aback.
“In order to answer you, there’d first have to be some. But I haven’t seen a single one in all my long life.”
“What about Lourdes, though?”
He shook a disbelieving finger.
“Allow me to keep my reservations. I’m not a Papist and I give little credit to their parsons’ tales. Moreover, many doctors, even believing Roman Catholics, are agreed. A number of those alleged healings, supposing they really have occurred, can be explained without a miracle. A sudden acceleration of a normal biological process, under the impact of strong emotion, would be enough to account for it.”
“And nobody’s yet seen a leg grow again,” remarked Dorothy.
I took the cup she was handing me and said:
“Excuse me, you’re forgetting the miracle of Calanda, where Miguel Juan Pellicer, by the grace of our Lady of Pilar of Saragossa, did indeed recover his amputated leg.”
“When was that?” asked Dorothy, holding out the sugar bowl.
“In the seventeenth century.”
“That’s a long time ago,” said Dorothy. “Nothing since?”
“Not to my knowledge, but just on this point David Garnett has made a very pertinent remark. Miracles are not so uncommon as one thinks, he says; they rather occur irregularly. Sometimes a whole century goes by without anyone observing the least little miracle, and then there’s suddenly a rich crop of them, in quick succession.”
Stirring the spoon in my cup, I added:
“I don’t know if a series of them has started. But in any case I have seen one.”
“A miracle?” said Dorothy.
She did have rather beautiful eyes, when she opened them wide like this. They were blue but in the background there seemed to lurk a black glint that troubled their blueness-and troubled me. They strangely adorned a face that was a little too regular, the purity of the features obscured by a symmetry which, at first sight, seemed deceptively banal. “Do tell!” she said. Her father’s eyes were not agape; he had knit his brows and was gazing at me thoughtfully, gnawing at his lip.
“I would like to ask you two favors,” I began. “First, to believe what I’m going to tell you, which won’t be easy. And then, not to take me for a madman. And finally, not to tell a soul alive what you’re going to hear.”
“That makes three,” Dorothy corrected me playfully-it was obvious that she thought it was just a joke. “But it’s a promise all the same.”
The doctor too acquiesced, but less affirmatively, with a simple nod. He must have realized from my tone of voice that I was speaking seriously.
I was about to say “I’ve seen a fox change into a woman,” but on the point of uttering what I thought were easy words, they seemed even to me so preposterous that I swallowed them. There followed a long silence during which I saw their eyes slowly fill with astonishment, then with alarm. In the end I shook my head with discouragement.
“No, I can’t,” I breathed, “it’s impossible.”
And since they evidently could not understand, I added; “You wouldn’t be able to believe me.” Dorothy stretched out one hand to seize mine, but I snatched it away. I put my cup down and got up.
“Forgive me,” I said. “I’m cutting short our reunion, and even spoiling it, I’m afraid. I shouldn’t have talked about it so soon. But you cannot imagine how I… Never mind, the fat’s in the fire, it’s too late to draw back and talk of other things. But I do see now it would defy belief unless you’re properly prepared for it. And I also realize that I’ll have to keep you out of it, Dorothy, at least to begin with. I beg you not to take offense, but I’ll have to speak to your father first: it would be inconceivable otherwise.”
She did not seem disappointed or saddened, rather a little frightened. I laughed to reassure her and said, “Don’t worry!” but found nothing to add in support of this advice. I went on: “It would be better, much better, if your father first came by himself. Yes,” I said, turning toward him, “may I ask you to call again at Richwick Manor some day soon? If it doesn’t inconvenience you too much?”
I caught father and daughter exchanging a glance in which even the least observant could have read a veiled alarm.
“I can come tomorrow, if you like,” he said.
“Oh, there isn’t that much of a hurry!” I protested. “Besides,” I added precipitately, for the idea had just flashed through my mind, “I’d like us to meet at the Unicorn. You don’t mind going to the pub first?”
“Wherever you like, whenever you like,” said the doctor, and we fixed a date for a drink before lunch in the middle of the coming week. “So as to be undisturbed,” I explained. And after an exchange of affectionate courtesies, behind which each of us took pains to conceal his surprise or embarrassment, I took my leave at once.
The innkeeper’s name was Anthony Brown, and his ruling passion was fox hunting. I was almost certain that he had followed the hunt in which my vixen had vanished before the hunters’ eyes. In any case I knew that the matter had been hotly debated at the Unicorn, and a score of theories aired though none adopted. That’s why I had chosen the place to meet Dr. Sullivan. When we had sat down at a table apart, I asked Mr. Brown to have a drink with us. I had no difficulty in leading him on to his favorite sport. We first had to listen at length to numerous tedious exploits in which he had figured with modest dash.
“Since we are on the subject,” I broke in, “what’s that story, Mr. Brown, about a fox having vanished in thin air? I’ve been told that you were present at the time.”
“Present! You may say I saw it, with my own eyes, bursting like a soap bubble!” he cried.
“Go on! Tell us about it.”
“By the way, now I think of it, didn’t it happen just outside your place?” He turned to Dr. Sullivan. “The fox was leading us straight on to Richwick Manor. It was a cunning beast, it had led the hounds a hell of a dance almost till nightfall. But its game was up. The pack was after it. There wasn’t much light any more, it’s true, but I have sharp ears. When the hounds are all set for the kill, you’d have to be a raw novice to mistake the noise they make. They were right on top of it, and no mistake.”
“And it disappeared?” asked the doctor.
“Burst like a ruddy bubble before their very noses, I tell you! I’ve never seen such a stunned pack of curs as those we found when we got there. Dumb-struck they were, a right lot of idiots! Not that we,” he added with a laugh, “looked any brighter than they!”
“I’ve had a good look at my hedge, you know,” I said with casual hypocrisy. “It’s full of holes.”
“Do you think if that devilish beast had slipped through a hole,” he cried, “the hounds wouldn’t have followed it? I don’t want to speak ill of your hedge, Mr. Richwick, but they’ve jumped higher ones than yours! No, just a blasted bubble, that’s the word for it. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it in fox hunters’ memory. We haven’t stopped arguing about it. Do you hunt, too?” he asked the doctor.
Sullivan said he didn’t. The discussion went on for a while, and then we bade the innkeeper good-by. I got into the doctor’s carriage and while he clicked his tongue to the horse, I said:
“I take it this has convinced you of that strange disappearance?”
“Is that your miracle?” asked the doctor.
“Heavens no, unfortunately! It’s only half of it. I’m taking you along to the other half.”