Sylva

She was trembling like a leaf. I brought her into the study and poured her a big glass of whisky which she downed with fervor. She was still shivering.

“Would it set your mind at rest if I had a look?”

“Oh yes!” she said, nodding vehemently.

I went upstairs, came back. “You’re having visions, my poor girl. There’s nothing there, everything is just as usual.”

She slowly recovered her peace of mind. I made her drink a second whisky. Eventually she believed me and joined in my laughter. “And yet I saw it quite clearly! Fancy me seeing things now! It looked just like someone who’d been drowned.”

I went with her to the well to draw some more water. The window was dark and empty-I breathed with relief. Then I escorted Fanny back to the farm. She thanked me and I went home.

The danger was over, but the risk remained too great. I definitely could not keep the secret to myself any longer nor remain the sole guardian of a creature who was only waiting for an opportunity to run away. I told myself that since the progress made in “breaking her in” had by now rendered my vixen more or less presentable, it was high time to engage a trustworthy person to watch over her when I was out in the fields, to keep her company, supervise her future education and develop her speech and mental capacities if possible-in other words to try to turn her, with patience and plenty of time, into a creature of respectable appearance whom I might one day show to my friends without constantly being afraid or ashamed.

Naturally, I had already concocted a watertight story for the farmer’s family as well as for the future nurse: a sister of mine, in Scotland, was marrying again and had asked me to take charge of the unfortunate girl until such time as her new husband became used to the idea of having an abnormal child living with them. I therefore advertised in the Sunday Times for a nurse to take care of a spastic girl. I went through the replies with great care, corresponded with two or three applicants and finally fixed my choice on a former schoolmistress, herself the mother of a backward child whom she had lost at the age of twelve and who, since this bereavement, had dedicated her life to helping similar unfortunates.

I arranged to meet her in the lounge of Brompton House Hotel in London, one Wednesday morning. I drove off the night before without telling anybody and took care not to be seen as I left the manor with Sylva. I put up the horse and gig at the inn by the station, as usual. To avoid any trouble, I had contrived a set of handcuffs out of two old dog collars which kept us linked together by the wrists. We would be back with the nurse early in the afternoon of the following day.

On the outward journey Sylva behaved fairly well, although her behavior would certainly have seemed strange in the eyes of fellow passengers, had we had any. But I had taken care to book a whole compartment for ourselves. The darkness, the station, the din of the steam engine, at first frightened her out of her wits, and when I opened the door of the compartment she must have been so terrified lest she be left on the platform that she jostled to clamber into the carriage before me, pulling me along so brutally that I almost missed my step. But once inside the carriage with the doors safely shut, I released her and she began to sniff and smell in all the corners and even under the seats. She next tried to climb up onto the luggage rack, and I had no end of trouble to keep her still on her seat, on which she squatted with her legs crossed under her instead of letting them dangle. Gradually the train’s vibration made her drowsy; I switched off the light and she fell asleep.

The most difficult part was our arrival at Paddington.

Though at this station taxis and cabs are allowed to come right alongside the train, I still had to drag Sylva along as hard as I could while she emitted inarticulate yells, panic-stricken by the stream of travelers, the lights, noise and movement. The sight of the cab horses intensified her panic, and I was very hard put to approach a taxi. People were turning toward us, the driver eyed us suspiciously. Fortunately, I look rather respectable and bear myself with a certain authority that never fails to make some impression. Sylva was squirming at my side, but she did not reach up to my shoulder and with the handcuffs I kept her pretty well in place.

I merely said to the driver with an air of dignified affliction, “Don’t mind her, the poor child,” and he opened the door of the cab himself when we arrived and helped us to get out. At the hotel I asked with the same air of superior self-denial for the help of a maid, who attended to Sylva with a mixture of pity and repulsion.