“Besides, couldn’t the animal have passed through those holes in the hedge, after all?”
“Of course,” I laughed, “and that’s just what it did. Only the point is this: why didn’t the hounds follow it? Isn’t that inexplicable? And why did they suddenly stop barking?”
“Because,” the doctor retorted, laughing too, “they must have come up slap against one of your ghosts. I’ve always suspected Richwick Manor of harboring whole regiments of them.”
“Ghosts, my foot!” I growled, not laughing any more, and the doctor looked at me intrigued. “You won’t tell anyone about it?” I said suddenly, with some agitation, for we were getting near. “You remember your promise, don’t you?”
“Of course, of course! What are you afraid of?”
“Neither explicitly nor implicitly?” I persisted. “By hinting for instance that, don’t you see, you must hold your tongue but if you only could…”
“I swear, you latterday Hamlet, do calm yourself! Damn it all, it’s only a fox! You couldn’t be more excited if you’d committed a murder!”
“If only I’d committed a murder,” I sighed, “I’d be in less of a stew.”
“Am I the first person you’ve told about this?”
“The second one, after Mrs. Bumley.”
“Who is Mrs. Bumley?”
“Sylva’s governess.”
“And who is Sylva? Have you many more unknown females up your sleeve?”
“No, only those two. But we’re almost there. You’ll soon get an answer to all this.”
We had indeed arrived. We left the carriage at the farm and walked into the house. Mrs. Bumley was up in her room (I had asked her to stay there). I suggested we should first have another double scotch to give ourselves courage.
“Upon my word, you’re beginning to worry me,” said the doctor, still making an effort to laugh. “Are you hiding a corpse?”
I said that he certainly couldn’t have the slightest notion of the surprise I had in store for him. Then I took my courage in both hands and said, “All right, let’s go up.”
I walked up the stairs before him. I listened at the door. Nothing. Sylva must be asleep. I knocked with my fist to wake her up and did indeed hear her trot. Then I opened the door wide and pushed the doctor in before me.
I was counting on the passably strange appearance of this man in black, long as a breadless day, with his horsy face and foaming mane, to give my vixen a shock of surprise, and I was not disappointed. Sylva was wearing her chemise. She jumped up, yelped, and scampered all over the room in a panic, trying to climb up the curtains as she had once done, leaping at last onto the chest of drawers and from there on top of the wardrobe, whence she observed us, all atremble. That was what I had expected, so I closed the door again and said to the doctor, “You have seen her. Let’s go back.”
If I had said, “Let’s climb on the roof,” he would probably have followed me too. He was plainly so utterly stunned that he marched behind me like an automaton, stumbling a little on the steps. Only after we had sat down in the living room did he recover his speech sufficiently to exclaim in a toneless voice: “Heavens alive!” and asked at last: “Who is that creature?”
Then I told him everything, from the beginning. When I had finished, he said, “It can’t be,” and began to pace up and down the room.
I simply said, “If you can give me another explanation…” but he shook his head.
“If what you have told me is true, then it is really a miracle. There is no possible explanation from a biological point of view. It isn’t a question, as at Lourdes, of a somatic evolution accelerated by the psyche. Such a transformation, in the matter of size alone, is beyond any natural process, even the most exceptional one. As a scientist I have absolutely no right to believe in it.”
“But as a believer?”
“It would seem to me exceedingly hazardous.”
I sighed.
“Very well,” I said, “then don’t give it another thought. You have not seen anything. Go home and forget all about it. But remember your promise!”
He stopped still to gaze at me with pathetic insistence.
“And do you swear,” he asked, “that you have told me the truth?”
“I swear it. Why should I want to hoax you?”
He went on staring at me in silence and then began to massage his skull, though it was red enough as it was, with an air of bewilderment. “I’ll be damned… I’ll be damned…” was all I heard him grunt during the minutes that followed. Then he moved his big chin up and down, and finally said:
“What actually do you expect me to do?”
“Nothing in particular,” I admitted. “You’d have discovered her some day, anyhow. I preferred to show her to you myself. And perhaps I’m expecting some confirmation from you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, couldn’t you examine her, perhaps? Do you think it’s possible that she has a perfectly normal constitution?”
“How the devil do you expect me to know?”
Anyway, how could one get Sylva to submit to such an examination? One would have to tie her up hand and foot or bash her on the head.
“There’s no hurry,” I said after some moments’ thought. “Cheer up! You’ve seen her, that’s already something. You have time to think about it while I am gradually breaking her in. Come and see us now and then so that she gets used to you. And bring Dorothy along-Sylva very soon got used to Mrs. Bumley. The day will come when you’ll be able to study her physique thoroughly and at leisure.”
Was he listening? He did not answer. After a certain while he said:
“This is a pretty kettle of fish, anyhow! I wonder how you’ll get out of it in the long run.”
That was just the kind of reflection I needed! As if I hadn’t realized myself, and for some time already, what a hornets’ nest I had brought about my ears!
“Still, you aren’t suggesting, are you,” I said, “that I should call in the vet and have her put to sleep?”
This was so obviously out of the question that he rubbed his skull even harder. Suddenly he gave a funny laugh.
“Shall I tell you? The only way you’ll get out of this scrape is by marrying her!”
This last remark was so obviously meant as a silly joke that I did not even reply.
Chapter 9
ONLY after he had gone did I belatedly realize that he had not believed me, after all. It is bad form to show openly a wounding incredulity, whatever the circumstances. Moreover, it is an old English habit, I suppose, to concede that everything is possible in this world-whence our timeworn belief in ghosts. Dr. Sullivan had behaved toward me like a man of breeding: he had not doubted my words although he did not put the slightest faith in my story. How could I blame him?
But what had he tried to insinuate with that last remark? When you considered it closely, it hardly disguised what he thought: I was hiding in my house-for reasons of my own-a young person who was certainly weird but rather too pretty. I told some people that she was my niece, when in fact I had no sister; and to others I tried to account for her presence by an improbable miracle which nobody in his senses could believe. In the long run it could only result in one thing: a public scandal-unless I scotched it by marrying the girl.
And that, I thought with an unpleasant twinge, is what he’ll tell his daughter on his return! I could not doubt that he had lately nursed the hope that I might represent a possible future for Dorothy. Nor, in consequence, that he must have been rather unfavorably impressed by my story of a vixen turned into a woman, and by the pres-ence-more or less surreptitious or mendaciously explained-of that young person in my house. I could certainly be sure of his discretion and even, if need be, of his public support, but assuredly not of his private approval. Was I to lose then, if not a friendship, at least an esteem by which I set great store? And with his esteem, that of Dorothy’s?
The blow this dealt me made me realize how much I still needed the young woman’s affectionate respect. No, I won’t lose it without a struggle, I told myself. After all, I am not guilty! It is a miracle! Sylva is really only a fox in human guise! I have nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of, I have no need to prevaricate. The old doctor hadn’t believed me, had he? Well, he’ll just have to believe me, and so will Dorothy!
This was my state of mind at the end of the nerve-racking Sunday that followed the doctor’s visit. I promptly wrote the Sullivans a note saying I would come to see them the Sunday after. But by the end of the week I had become less cocksure. What proof could I offer them? It is the mark of such a phenomenon that it contains no proof. What I would have to obtain, on the strength of my testimony alone, was an act of faith.
As bad luck would have it, on the Tuesday of that week Mrs. Bumley received an urgent telegram from one of her sisters; her mother had just had a stroke and was at death’s door. This spoiled everything. I had more or less planned to take her along to the Sullivans and make her talk: she would explain to them the differences between Sylva and a “retarded child,” and there was a chance that the opinion of a professional nurse might be accepted by them as supporting evidence. That chance was now washed away. I could obviously not detain her. She took the train that very evening, leaving me alone with Sylva.
I then decided, in the absence of Mrs. Bumley, to take my vixen herself along to Dunstan’s Cottage. Wasn’t she the most convincing proof of the truth of my story? Of course, the difficulties of such a project soon became apparent to me. First of all, elementary common sense obliged me to foresee her behavior, or rather misbehavior, in a strange house, and the resultant wreckage. To chase after her amid a hundred precious knickknacks might provide a film sequence worthy of Mack Sennett, but was unthinkable in respectable real life. Furthermore, if Nanny had acquired the knack of dressing her almost decently, I myself only succeeded at the cost of disheartening difficulties which, on some days, even proved insuperable. And neither I nor the nurse was as yet able to force her to have a bath. With the result that when the doors and windows were kept shut her room was very soon impregnated with a rather powerful animal odor. This was the case once more in Nanny’s absence, since I was busy on the farm and unable to keep watch on her all day. When I returned in the evening, the smell almost choked me.