Sylva

“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?”