In the Land of Time (45 page)

“A satyr!” exclaimed Terbut, who was on the window-seat with us.

“Yes,” said Jorkens, “and a full-grown one. A young satyr, Meddin thought, but quite full-grown; and it was looking straight at Meddin from round the trunk of the apple-tree, as he hadn't hidden himself very well.”

“Do you usually get satyrs in suburban gardens?” said Terbut.

“No,” said Jorkens, “that's just the point of it. They live in woods. But this wood had been cut down; and the satyr had nowhere to go. When it first put its head round the apple-tree, Meddin says, its lips were twitching as though it were hungry. Then it saw him, and surprise spread over its face, and it gave a low whistle. Meddin's first thought, as he put his gun down on the ground, was that he had got a model, such a model as even Corot had probably never had. But there were many more thoughts to come, thoughts that worried Meddin and his sister for weeks, until Lady Rillswood called.”

“How did she come into it?” asked Terbut.

“I'm getting ahead of my story,” said Jorkens. “The first thing was what on earth Meddin was to do with the satyr. It was cold and had no wood to go to; and he couldn't leave it there in his garden, hiding behind apple-trees for one of the neighbours to find it, quite naked.

“The first to speak was Meddin. ‘Come here,' he said. And the satyr whistled again. ‘Come here,' repeated Meddin, ‘and don't make that noise. Where do you come from?'

“ ‘The wood,' said the satyr.

“ ‘What's your name?' asked Meddin.

“And the satyr laughed.

“ ‘Are you hungry?' said Meddin.

“The satyr nodded quickly.

“ ‘What do you get to eat?' asked Meddin.

“ ‘Roots,' said the satyr.

“ ‘Out of my garden, I suppose,' said Meddin.

“ ‘Yes,' said the satyr. ‘They're good.'

“It was many years before the B.B.C. spoke to everyone every evening, and the satyr's accent was wild and beastly. But Meddin understood him.

“ ‘Where do you sleep?' he asked.

“ ‘I hide,' said the satyr.

“ ‘So I thought,' said Meddin.

“And looking round he saw that there were few hiding-places left, now that the wood was gone, and it could not be many hours before someone would see the satyr. What was to be done? The question perplexed Meddin, for a reason that I find it rather hard to make clear. Briefly, then, at the dawn of this century there was a certain system of civilization in England, remnants of which still survive; and it had its definite rules. For instance, if a newcomer in any neighbourhood called first on an oldcomer, the act was classed with burglaries: nobody ever did call thus on an older resident, but, if anyone had, that is how it would have been looked on. That was one of the rules. The rules were not written out, because everyone knew them. And another of the rules, which everyone knew instinctively, but which was never even mentioned, let alone written, because no one ever contemplated a breach of it, was that you did not keep a satyr in your garden.

“ ‘Well, hide now,' said Meddin. ‘You'd better get into this rhododendron bush, while I get you some clothes.'

“ ‘Don't wear clothes,' said the satyr.

“ ‘Then you don't eat food,' said Meddin.

“ ‘Roots?' said the satyr.

“ ‘Yes, plenty of roots,' said Meddin. For he had a heap of potatoes in a shed, and several tulip bulbs.

“So the satyr took a dive into the rhododendron, and Meddin went to get him some clothes.

“ ‘Lucy,' he said when he got back to the house and found his sister waiting for news, ‘you know those things Corot used to put into his landscapes.'

“‘Satyrs?' she said.

“ ‘Yes,' replied Meddin. ‘I wonder if he ever saw one.'

“ ‘No,' said Lucy, ‘they're all nonsense.'

“ ‘Well, there's one in the garden now,' said her brother.

“ ‘In the garden now?' said Lucy.

“ ‘Yes,' said Meddin, ‘in the rhododendron. And it's only a matter of time before one of the neighbours will see it.'

“Lucy saw at once that her brother really meant it, so she saved time on exclamations or wonder, and got her mind instantly to the thing that really mattered, which was to protect the respectability of their garden. If a neighbour should see that satyr, or even anything half so odd, she knew that their house would not be a place at which anybody would call. And if no one called on you; well, you would not be much better than this thing, whatever it was, in the garden. They must hide the satyr; that was clear to both of them; or the satyr would drag them down.

“‘No clothes of course,' said Meddin.

“ ‘No,' said Lucy.

“ ‘We've got that old suit that Thomas had.'

“For they had had an odd man to do the work of the house, but had sent him away for economy. Such fluctuations depended upon the sale of pictures. And now they had only a cook, and a charwoman occasionally.

“They got the old suit out, and some hyacinth bulbs, that had been intended for pots in a window, and were the nearest roots to hand: Meddin knew they were edible, because pheasants had come to his garden in the days of the wood and had always gone for those bulbs. And with the suit of clothes and a handful of bulbs he went back to the rhododendron. The boots of his former employé had walked away with that odd man, so Meddin had to bring an old pair of his own. He hoped that the rule would apply to the satyr that seemed to apply to tramps, which was that any pair of old boots always fitted. And so it fortunately did. But he had the greatest difficulty with the suit of clothes; for not only had the satyr never put on any clothes before, but the breeches were tight for him. Well, he got them on eventually, and back they came to the house and Meddin took the satyr straight up to his room and said: ‘Now shave off that beard.'

“But he might just as well have told a goat to shave, as of course he soon realized; and then he shaved off the satyr's small pointed beard himself and carefully clipped the tufts from the tops of his ears, while the satyr munched the bulbs.

“ ‘I expect you'd have got many already if I'd planted them out in the garden,' said Meddin as he pointed at the last of his hyacinth bulbs, which was already sprouting.

“ ‘Yes,' said the satyr. ‘They're good.'

“Then they came downstairs to the parlour, the satyr hobbling uncomfortably, for of course no boots could have really fitted him; boots were for him a concealment, not a fit. He wanted to take them off, but curtly received from Meddin the words that he heard so often at this period that at a later date he took them for his motto: ‘It can't be done.'

“‘What do you think of him now?' said Meddin to Lucy. And to the satyr, ‘This is my sister.'

“Lucy held out her hand to the satyr, and he licked it. That was only one of a thousand things that they taught him not to do later. They brought him into the dining-room there and then, and taught him to hand them dishes while they had supper; and from that very hour they both of them concentrated on hiding away all traces by which the neighbours might guess that they kept a satyr. Their work was difficult and, though they got an odd man for no wages, who seemed delighted to work for them and who could be fed on much cheaper roots than the bulbs of tulips and hyacinths, it would have been a relief to get rid of him. But whenever the question of sending him back arose, as at first it often did, there came the answer at once, ‘But the wood is gone.' So they kept their secret and lived in perpetual fear, either because they were too kind-hearted to get rid of the satyr, or because they couldn't think of a way to do it.

“One day when Lucy was not in the room Meddin said to the satyr: ‘Were there any nymphs in the wood?'

“ ‘Oh, yes,' said the satyr.

“‘What happened to them?' asked Meddin.

“ ‘They ran,' said the satyr and began to cry, so that Meddin could get no more information about them.

“It had dog-like gratitude and was perpetually willing, so that they were even able to teach it to make tea for them, though it was always afraid of fire. As for appearance, which counted so much in those days, as to some extent it does still, its clumsiness in boots, and the tight breeches, were drawbacks, but on the other hand its face was distinctly handsome, and its eyes were alert and so were most of its movements. With the beard gone and the ears clipped there was only the light-brown skin to hint that this was a creature of the woods, and it was barely a hint.

“I gather there was tension and strain on the two Meddins for some time; and then one anxious day the Vicar's wife called. They saw her at the door ringing the bell.

“ ‘It is Mrs. Speldridge,' said Lucy.

“‘What shall we do?' said Meddin.

“ ‘Make it answer the door,' said Lucy. ‘It's got to start somewhere. And look here, we must stop calling it it.'

“So the satyr opened the door and did it quite well, asking, as they had taught it to ask, ‘Who shall I say?' in its forest accent. And then it brought in tea, carrying everything in with the grace which goes with strength.

“ ‘Our man is always basking in the sun, Mrs. Speldridge,' said Meddin.

“ ‘Whenever we let him off for a moment,' ” said Lucy, ‘he always goes out and basks.'

“ ‘I haven't seen him in church,' said Mrs. Speldridge.

“ ‘Of course he must go,' said Meddin.

“ ‘Yes, of couse,' said Lucy.

“ ‘I was wondering,' said Mrs. Speldridge, and she launched out into a parochial matter, and the talk was for a while of bazaars and of Lady Rillswood, who ran them, and the satyr came in and out two or three times, doing just as he had been told; and everything went well. And when it showed Mrs. Speldridge out, always turning towards her, as one should to a lady, in spite of the tight breeches she saw no sign of a tail.

“And so the Meddins were left over the remnants of tea in triumph. It was perhaps more wonderful that there had been no suspicion in their own kitchen; but they had not expected there would be, and they were right. They knew Mrs. Smew's attitude to any man in the kitchen: with every odd man they had had, it was always the same.

“‘What do you think of him?' Lucy had asked her straight out, the day after the satyr came.

“ ‘Looks like the devil, and probably is,' said Mrs. Smew and went on with her work.

“It was just the same attitude she had taken with Thomas, when he had worn those breeches; and Lucy was satisfied. That she was satisfied did not mean that the fear had entirely lifted. I think I mentioned that at the beginning of this century you could not possibly keep a satyr in your garden. They were keeping one in the house; and had he not been so docile, so grateful and so obedient, but had gone about in the village, as other odd men did, discovery would have come immediately. There is a great deal to be said for convention; and I am not at all sure that it would not save the world from the disasters that seem to be coming. There was only one convention in those days really; the convention that you did the thing that was done, and that nothing else was possible. But the convention grew old and wore out, or the world grew too strong for it. Of course there were exceptions, and here was one of them, two people on whom the Vicar's wife called once a year hiding a common satyr in the house. Never a day passed but that the Meddins talked it all over; and they never found a way of getting rid of their satyr, and they never felt quite safe.”

“I don't know that people objected to satyrs so much at the end of the Victorian era,” said Terbut, who was quite as old as Jorkens. “You see satyrs in every kind of ornament, and in hundreds of pictures of that period. You mentioned Corot yourself.”

“Yes,” said Jorkens. “But satyrs at a distance, satyrs far away among willows, as Corot painted them, satyrs high up on walls, or in poems or fanciful pictures, satyrs as fabulous things. But here was one in the house, opening the door for you, handing round plates. That is quite a different thing. There are many romantic things that cannot be tolerated for a moment in a parlour; certainly not in a parlour to which a vicar's wife would ever come again if they were, or any of her husband's parishioners. And, you know, there was a great deal to be said for their point of view. Well, here they were, Meddin and his sister, with their problem, and they would have done well to have concentrated all their attention on it, for to hide that satyr was not an easy problem. And for a while they did concentrate all their attention upon it; and then one day the artist broke out in Meddin and he insisted on painting the satyr. It was a risky business, whatever way you looked at it: first of all there was the danger of being found out while at it, for of course he stripped the satyr, and he painted it out in his orchard. And then there was the evidence that the picture provided against the Meddin household; for anybody could see that the picture was done from life, and quite close, and that it was no imaginary thing such as a fanciful painter might put into one of his landscapes. Lucy implored him not to do it, but Meddin was adamant: he had seen the light one day on the satyr's skin, and had formed the idea that he must paint him at all costs. And paint him he did. He got him hidden by a trunk in the orchard, the great bole of an old tree, and only went out with the satyr to paint late in the evening. The little dark beard of course had to go in from memory, but the dim light on the satyr's skin and on the mossy trunk beside him made a picture that would have been hung in any exhibition, had Meddin dared to show it. He noticed in those evenings that birds on their way home had no fear of the satyr, and would go as close to him as they would to a horse, and stay there undisturbed, till they saw Meddin.