Sylva

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.”

He seemed taken aback.

“In order to answer you, there’d first have to be some. But I haven’t seen a single one in all my long life.”

“What about Lourdes, though?”

He shook a disbelieving finger.

“Allow me to keep my reservations. I’m not a Papist and I give little credit to their parsons’ tales. Moreover, many doctors, even believing Roman Catholics, are agreed. A number of those alleged healings, supposing they really have occurred, can be explained without a miracle. A sudden acceleration of a normal biological process, under the impact of strong emotion, would be enough to account for it.”

“And nobody’s yet seen a leg grow again,” remarked Dorothy.

I took the cup she was handing me and said:

“Excuse me, you’re forgetting the miracle of Calanda, where Miguel Juan Pellicer, by the grace of our Lady of Pilar of Saragossa, did indeed recover his amputated leg.”

“When was that?” asked Dorothy, holding out the sugar bowl.

“In the seventeenth century.”

“That’s a long time ago,” said Dorothy. “Nothing since?”

“Not to my knowledge, but just on this point David Garnett has made a very pertinent remark. Miracles are not so uncommon as one thinks, he says; they rather occur irregularly. Sometimes a whole century goes by without anyone observing the least little miracle, and then there’s suddenly a rich crop of them, in quick succession.”

Stirring the spoon in my cup, I added:

“I don’t know if a series of them has started. But in any case I have seen one.”

“A miracle?” said Dorothy.

She did have rather beautiful eyes, when she opened them wide like this. They were blue but in the background there seemed to lurk a black glint that troubled their blueness-and troubled me. They strangely adorned a face that was a little too regular, the purity of the features obscured by a symmetry which, at first sight, seemed deceptively banal. “Do tell!” she said. Her father’s eyes were not agape; he had knit his brows and was gazing at me thoughtfully, gnawing at his lip.

“I would like to ask you two favors,” I began. “First, to believe what I’m going to tell you, which won’t be easy. And then, not to take me for a madman. And finally, not to tell a soul alive what you’re going to hear.”

“That makes three,” Dorothy corrected me playfully-it was obvious that she thought it was just a joke. “But it’s a promise all the same.”

The doctor too acquiesced, but less affirmatively, with a simple nod. He must have realized from my tone of voice that I was speaking seriously.

I was about to say “I’ve seen a fox change into a woman,” but on the point of uttering what I thought were easy words, they seemed even to me so preposterous that I swallowed them. There followed a long silence during which I saw their eyes slowly fill with astonishment, then with alarm. In the end I shook my head with discouragement.

“No, I can’t,” I breathed, “it’s impossible.”

And since they evidently could not understand, I added; “You wouldn’t be able to believe me.” Dorothy stretched out one hand to seize mine, but I snatched it away. I put my cup down and got up.

“Forgive me,” I said. “I’m cutting short our reunion, and even spoiling it, I’m afraid. I shouldn’t have talked about it so soon. But you cannot imagine how I… Never mind, the fat’s in the fire, it’s too late to draw back and talk of other things. But I do see now it would defy belief unless you’re properly prepared for it. And I also realize that I’ll have to keep you out of it, Dorothy, at least to begin with. I beg you not to take offense, but I’ll have to speak to your father first: it would be inconceivable otherwise.”

She did not seem disappointed or saddened, rather a little frightened. I laughed to reassure her and said, “Don’t worry!” but found nothing to add in support of this advice. I went on: “It would be better, much better, if your father first came by himself. Yes,” I said, turning toward him, “may I ask you to call again at Richwick Manor some day soon? If it doesn’t inconvenience you too much?”

I caught father and daughter exchanging a glance in which even the least observant could have read a veiled alarm.

“I can come tomorrow, if you like,” he said.

“Oh, there isn’t that much of a hurry!” I protested. “Besides,” I added precipitately, for the idea had just flashed through my mind, “I’d like us to meet at the Unicorn. You don’t mind going to the pub first?”