Sylva

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.