Sylva

by Jean Vercors

  “Not half an hour ago,” I confessed in conclusion, “I never guessed I would tell you all this. I was prepared to let you find out for yourself a sufficient number of oddities to come pressing me with questions. But you’ve made me feel I can trust you,” I added, putting my hand on hers. “I am sure you won’t give me away.”

  She understood this familiar gesture which the strange circumstances warranted, and for a long while she left her hand beneath mine, giving me a hesitant smile, a moist, anxious look. Then she got up, in a flutter of excitement.

  “This is even… even more thrilling!” she cried in a stifled voice. She was devouring Sylva with her eyes, with far more avidity than Sylva displayed in eating her kipper. “I said right away that… that she seemed different from all the girls I’d known!”

  “But you’ll keep all this to yourself, won’t you?” I said imperatively.

  “Of course!”

  “They’d shut us both up!”

  She gave a little giggle.

  “Most likely, indeed! In fact, it did cross my mind, a moment ago, to have you put in a strait jacket.”

  “Or else we might be accused of goodness knows what -abduction, illegal restraint, all the rest of it.”

  “She is your niece,” said Mrs. Bumley firmly. “Your sister is getting married again, she lives in Scotland and has entrusted you with her daughter. I know nothing else.”

  To familiarize Sylva with her nurse, I asked Mrs. Bumley a little later to give Sylva her lunch (a pair of pigeons bought in Soho) and they became friends. The kind-hearted nurse tried hard to start a conversation with her new pupil, but failed at once. Sylva was still incapable of understanding any abstract question, however simple, if it was not intimately linked to her most immediate material needs.

  Mrs. Bumley heaved a sigh. “Maybe she knows a lot already for a fox, but it is awfully little for a woman-even a very backward one.”

  We traveled back to Wardley in an ordinary compartment; that is to say, I had not booked it entirely for ourselves this time. The presence of a nurse would render any possible incidents less significant in the eyes of fellow passengers, and it seemed to us that this was a useful time for experiment. Sylva proved docile between Mrs. Bumley and myself. We had come early to take our seats in order to be the first. Every time a passenger came in, Sylva gave a start and we had some trouble calming her fears. During the whole beginning of the journey she remained nervous and watchful, her eyes glued on the people opposite her, scared by their slightest movement, their every word.

  Our attitude toward her had at once enlightened our fellow passengers and they showed no surprise at the unwonted behavior of “the poor child.” Embarrassed and constrained at first, as one usually is in such a case, they averted their eyes. But our placid serenity put them at ease, they relaxed and even displayed much kindliness, smiling frequently at the young girl, asking us if they could offer her a piece of chocolate.

  Mrs. Bumley shook her head. “She does not care for sweets. Now if you had a sausage about you,” she said humorously, “a piece of meat…”

  “Does she understand what one says?” asked an elderly lady, with eager solicitude.

  “You can talk freely in front of her,” I assured her. “She understands only the simplest words.”

  I had to answer a slightly perverse, though kindly and compassionate curiosity. I had the pleasure of hearing Mrs. Bumley butt in to supply imaginary facts that were far more authoritative than any I could have given. When the slow train stopped at Wardley Station, the whole compartment helped us to get out, vying in kindliness and tokens of friendship. Sylva had by now become quite reassured. To the passengers’ “good-by” she even answered “Bye… bye…” which increased their smiles and friendly waves: she was so sweet, so charming to look at! When the train had left, Mrs. Bumley and I exchanged a proud smile-and a sigh of relief. It had been a ticklish experiment and it had succeeded; our hopes had not been disappointed.

  We found the horse and the gig where I had left them, and drove back to the manor. I introduced Mrs. Bumley and her ward to the farmer and his family, with the explanations I had previously prepared. They greeted these with the same blank indifference they showed for all that did not concern their own affairs. I had been a little worried about Fanny’s recollections, but she made no link whatsoever with the “ghost” she had perceived a fortnight earlier. She came with us to help Mrs. Bumley get her room ready as well as the one, between her room and mine, which Sylva was to occupy henceforth, if she consented to sleep in it. We had no great hopes in this respect and expected to meet with strong resistance. On this point we were neither right nor wrong, for Sylva’s behavior proved very different from what we had foreseen.

  Chapter 7

  ACTUALLY, she did not refuse to sleep anywhere, but she was not content with any one bed, either. Each night she emigrated several times from one to the other, apparently gripped-even more so in the darkness-by a feverish agitation which seemed to come over her whenever she was left alone. I would suddenly feel her warmth and weight on my feet, she would sleep there for an hour, rolled up in a ball, then a sudden lightening would wake me, she was no longer there. It was now Mrs. Bumley’s turn to receive her visit, or else it would be the other way around; we could never foresee in which room, on whose bed, we would find her in the morning. We did try locking ourselves in to force her to stay in her own room, but she scratched at our doors so obstinately that we could not sleep. We had to adapt to this restless, fickle disposition, and not only did we soon stop noticing it but even when, much later, these visits suddenly stopped, we found ourselves at a loss, disturbed in an old-established habit and positively unhappy to be abandoned, as we laughingly had to admit.

  Mrs. Bumley called me “sir” and I called her “Nanny.” Hearing this repeatedly, Sylva too began to address me as “sir,” so I persuaded Nanny, despite her profound reluctance, to call me Bonny, which was the name I went by in my childhood. Sylva called “Nanny” at all hours of the day, but whenever I happened to be at home, it was “Bonny” that could be heard all over the place.

  Mrs. Bumley was a little hurt by this preference, although she admitted I was entitled to it, at least by seniority. We did not dare suggest that there might, perhaps, also come into it a question of sex, but we both thought of it. Nanny therefore had her eye on me; I knew it, and it would have helped me in case of need. I readily admit, too, that it was not quite fair that I remained the favorite: for food, play, and toilet were now Nanny’s concern.

  One Thursday morning, after breakfast, while Nanny was helping Sylva to dress, I received an unexpected visit which made me see the danger I was still exposed to despite the presence of the nurse, as long as I had not publicly put matters right. And this, as one knows, was not an easy thing on account of Sylva’s official nonexistence.

  It was not such a surprising visit, either. Though not exactly my neighbor, Dr. Sullivan lived in the vicinity, in an old house called Dunstan’s Cottage, at some small distance from Wardley. It is a charming place, a little reminiscent of the house that sheltered the blind Milton and his daughters near Aylesbury, which every respectable Englishman has been to see: walls of weather-beaten old brick, narrow windows with small panes, a steep low roof that must have been thatched in the old days, a garden ablaze with a thousand flowers in spring but of modest size.

  Our relationship, though close and cordial, was only intermittently renewed. Five or six miles is not much of a drive, but you have to prepare for it: get the gig out or saddle a horse, and as I have no telephone-what would I do with one?-one can never be sure that one is not taking a lot of trouble for nothing. We generally dropped a line to invite one another or to announce a forthcoming visit, no more than twice or three times a year. Numerous friendships are fed on absence; and we thus preserved an old affection which had succeeded the one that had linked my father to him: they had been to the same public school, near Taunton.

  Dr. Sullivan had been widowed
early in life; his wife died in giving birth to their first child, a girl whom he called Dorothy after the departed. With the years, he has come to look more and more like some eighteenth-century figure straight out of Rowlandson’s caricatures. He has always worn, and still does, a loose black jacket, a waistcoat that mounts right up to his stiff white collar, stovepipe trousers that are tight around his knees and ankles. In fact, he looks like a bishop in mufti. He has the big nose of a fat vulture, a forehead which, for lack of hair, climbs halfway up his shiny skull; and this carries aft a frill of soft white, curly, almost fuzzy hair which shivers like foam in the wind.

  His daughter is the same age as I, more or less. At twenty, she contracted a very bad marriage. Fortunately she was hardly given time to suffer from it: her husband got himself knocked on the head in some disreputable place in Chelsea. A rather mysterious murder, in circumstances that were probably more than a little sordid. He was found unconscious in some fetid alleyway where the murderer had shoved him behind some dustbins. He died on his way to the hospital.

  The marriage had been a blow to me. I had been pretty much in love with her. But I was still a greenhorn, quite powerless to compete against the enticements of a glib adventurer. Once he was dead, I had hoped the young woman would come back, so I might try to win her heart, on the rebound from her disappointment and grief. But she did not come back. She found a job and stayed on in London. And gradually I forgot her-I mean that with absence and the passage of time my feelings changed, and when next I saw her again, a few years later, my love had dissolved into friendship. I went to see her in her little flat at the far end of Fulham, to take her a message from her father; and though we fell into each other’s arms, we did so like two childhood friends, who know each other too well to entertain anything more vivid than an old mutual tenderness. At least so I believed.

  Nevertheless, when Dr. Sullivan and I met, two or three times a year, we would avoid talking of his daughter. He too had been distressed by her marriage, and later deeply hurt that she should prefer to stay in London. Nevertheless he would go and look her up there, from time to time. I have no idea what made him think he had guessed that I was still in love with her. I did not know how to undeceive him. So that it was probably to spare my feelings that he made an effort not to mention her, whereas I did likewise to spare his.

  Now on that Thursday morning, I was busy straightening the accounts for the annual audit when I heard the gravel of the drive crunch under the wheels of a carriage. And getting up to have a look I recognized Dr. Sullivan alighting from it.

  He waved a long, black-sleeved arm, laughing and shouting:

  “Just thought I might have a look-in!”

  While I was helping him park the carriage behind the elms, I was wondering and worrying what he had come to “look in” on. Had he already heard about Sylva? He wouldn’t for a second believe the myth of my sister in Scotland. I am an only child and he knows it well.

  “I am on my way back from old Trilling,” he explained. “He had the wind up for a mere chill. I thought I’d find you in. I know you rarely leave the estate at this time of year.”

  We went into the drawing room. He flung his greatcoat over an easy chair and walked across to the fireplace.

  “I seized the chance of being in the neighborhood to tell you a great piece of news. Dorothy will be back on Sunday.”

  “She’s coming back to Dunstan’s Cottage? You mean she’s leaving London? For good?”

  “I hope so. I’m getting old, and she’s a good girl after all. She worries about my being all on my own.”

  He rubbed his hands in front of the fire with cheerful vigor, his long, ruddy old clergyman’s face beaming with pleasure.

  “Moreover, the job she had in London held no future for her. She never really got used to city life.”

  “I’ve often wondered why she stayed on.”

  The doctor’s face clouded over. He made a vague motion with his hand. “Pride, I suppose. Let’s say self-respect, if you like. She didn’t want to return as a prodigal, I imagine.”

  But the tone was as vague as the gesture had been. It seemed to me not so much an answer as an evasion.

  “This is great news indeed,” I said with less assurance in my voice than I would have liked.

  I did not know what to think of this return. Quite simply I ought to have been glad of it, but for some reason I could not explain, some disquiet mingled with my gladness.

  The old doctor must have ascribed my confusion to more obvious motives. He gazed at me with a broad grin and said:

  “It was she who asked me to let you know.”

  “Do thank her. Does she expect me to meet her at the station on Sunday?”

  “You’d have to get up too early; the night train gets in just after six. No, don’t. Just come to Dunstan’s whenever you like, later in the day. We’ll have dinner together.”

  I told myself it would have been more friendly to insist on meeting her. But I devoted my Sunday mornings to Sylva. It would have seemed to me cruel, for her as well as for me, to give up the only morning we still had together since Mrs. Bumley had taken over.

  “Actually,” I said, “it wouldn’t be very easy to make myself free. Do ask Dorothy to excuse me, give her my love and tell her I’ll drive over at teatime.”

  He picked up his coat, but on the doorstep he seemed to hesitate. It was obvious he would have liked to talk to me at greater length about his daughter of whom we had spoken so little during the past ten years. But I dared not retain him for fear of seeing Nanny and her protegée appear at any moment at the top of the stairs. What would I say, how would I explain? I had not yet prepared anything, and I reproached myself for my lack of foresight.

  “Don’t talk to Dorothy of her marriage,” the old man said at last, with some embarrassment.

  Strange advice: he knew very well that I had seen his daughter several times in London.

  “I never have,” I reassured him nonetheless, accompanying him back to his carriage. I was increasingly afraid that he might linger a little too long.

  “She was eighteen at the time… a chunk of juicy young flesh for that wolf in sheep’s clothing. I’ve been racked with remorse and regret that I didn’t unmask him when there was still time.”

  We had reached the dogcart. He untied the horse. Before climbing onto the seat he grasped my hand in his for a moment, one foot on the step.

  “If my blindness turned out to have spoiled Dorothy’s life, I’d never forgive myself,” he said, looking at me with moist eyes and an insistence that embarrassed me.

  “She is still very young!” I stammered.

  “Not as young as all that,” he murmured, then dropped my hand and hoisted himself onto the step. “That isn’t the point, anyway,” he muttered into his scarf, without turning around.

  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.”