Sylva

We decided on a halfway course: to forestall her questions, Nanny disclosed to her the mystery of birth, but not of conception. So that, if Sylva’s mind had been more fully formed, she would have been bound to believe that the child to be born would be the Holy Ghost’s. For the time being, however, this solved Sylva’s personal problems and indeed she began to show a childish impatience for her future baby. But it did not in any way solve her social problem. I decided to consult Dr. Sullivan.

“Didn’t I tell you the answer a long time ago?” he answered with kindly earnestness. “I told you so the first day: you can’t get away with it without marrying her.”

It was quite true, and to think that at the time I had taken those words for a joke in poor taste! Everything went to show today that he had been right, that any other solution would do Sylva, and later her child, an irreparable wrong. It followed, rather paradoxically, that it would be very much better for everybody if the child had been unquestionably mine; and much better, too, if I had shown less self-control as regards my vixen instead of straining her virtue to the point of compelling her to that springtime escapade when she had met her gorilla. But if so, what on earth are the laws of decency and propriety founded on? Could they have such shaky foundations that I had transgressed them when trying so hard to respect them?

All this opened once again most equivocal and dubious vistas on the merits of morality. It seemed to show that its principles were quite fortuitous, and that one should always be prepared to call them into question in changed circumstances. However this might be, in the present situation there was only one remedy: marriage. At heart, I rather rejoiced over this obligation which gratified my innermost wishes. Moreover, it was no longer open to doubt that given a reasonable lapse of time and a reasonable amount of patience Sylva would turn out to be a perfectly presentable, well-bred young person. She still spoke like a very young child, but so do quite a few respectable Englishwomen, don’t they? Their artlessness, their baby talk are even considered an added charm. I should be quite wrong to worry about it.

Still, though more than half decided, I remained passive and took no steps. I was well aware of the sole rather ticklish obstacle to our marriage and yet did nothing to overcome it: Sylva still had not the least scrap of a lawful existence. She was not born, not even of unknown parents, and I had not so far found a subterfuge to get over this lack of identity. The idea of resorting to forged papers was distasteful to me. I therefore waited for a brain wave, telling myself that there was no hurry. But the truth was, I am afraid, that I am not lionhearted. Deep inside me I was worried about what people would say. I was frightened of the difficult moments that were certainly in store for me in our milieu if I married this “native,” as Dorothy had said-and an unmarried mother to boot! I had a tendency to forget my stout new maxim about what constituted the quality of a being when I was faced with the effort that would be needed to impress others with its truth. I kept thinking more of myself than of Sylva.

In the meanwhile, Sylva was getting bigger. She also began to wonder what her baby would be like. Never having seen one, she had the most fantastic ideas about it. Nanny brought her my family album, on which a score of newborn babies could be seen lying flat on their tummies on a variety of rugs and cushions. Sylva wanted us to show her a picture of herself at that age. This led to extremely embroiled explanations to which she at first listened without batting an eyelid. But we saw her growing sad and sullen as the days went by, and there was a strained, drawn look on her face. We eventually realized, rather horrified, that she was consumed with grief at the idea that Nanny surely was her mother and I her father, and that we were hiding it from her. If we let her go on believing such rubbish, this would hardly facilitate our future marriage! I therefore deemed the time was ripe for Nanny to explain to Sylva that, far from being her father, I was the one who had fathered her child.

Nanny complied, with all the tact of which she was capable. We could not immediately gauge the effect of this revelation. Sylva had listened with that air of absent-minded attention which she often assumed when she felt something was beyond her grasp and wanted to ponder later and at leisure over what she had been told. She was very quiet till the evening, although slightly aloof, a little distraught, and she went to bed as usual. But next morning she had disappeared.

This was her fourth escapade within a few months, and I was beginning to get used to them. Probably I would not have worried very greatly if we had not discovered an entirely new fact: Sylva had gone away with a suitcase!