In the Land of Time (46 page)

“To avoid tiring the satyr by keeping it standing too long Meddin used to allow it, or him, as they now called it, to grub up bulbs for a bit, so long as he kept himself hidden. Lucy all that time was full of alarm and implored her brother never to paint the satyr again, and when the picture was finished he gave the promise that she had found it impossible to cajole him to give her before.

“The brother and sister discussed the question of food for the satyr.

“ ‘I'd like to extend his range of diet a bit,' said Meddin. ‘We owe him a bit more than tulip-bulbs for all the work he is doing for us.'

“For he worked in the garden for them as well as in the house, and cut up wood for the fire and carried in buckets of water.

“ ‘It's not our tulip-bulbs that I grudge him,' said Lucy. ‘It's our respectability. It's everything. Who would ever call on either of us again if they knew that we kept a satyr?'

“‘Oh, that's all right,' said Meddin. ‘He isn't a satyr any longer.'

“ ‘Isn't a satyr?' said Lucy.

“ ‘Not in those trousers,' said Meddin. ‘And not unless Mrs. Speldridge says he is.'

“ ‘Someone will see him one of these days,' she said, ‘slinking about in the orchard, and they'll see what he is, and say that we keep a satyr.'

“ ‘No, no, they won't,' said Meddin reassuringly. But he felt the fear too.

“Noticing some resemblance in the satyr's habits to those of the badger, Meddin decided to try him with honey; and this, provided that it was offered him in the comb, the satyr ate with delight.

“ ‘He must have a name, of course,' said Meddin.

“ ‘He has got Thomas' clothes,' said Lucy; ‘he can have his name too.'

“ ‘I'll tell him,' said Meddin.

“So the satyr became Thomas. He worked all day; he waited at table, cleaned up after, washed Meddin's brushes in turpentine and then in soap and water, did everything that used to be done by the charwoman, looked after the garden; in fact did the work of two men and two women, and all for no wages. Yet Meddin had to work too. For instance he could not trust the thing with a razor, and dare not let its hair grow; so he shaved the satyr every morning himself. And all the while Meddin and Lucy were constantly inventing devices that should prevent the neighbours from finding out the secret their house hid. And it's all very well to be critical of those people's conventions, but I doubt if many of you would care to call at a house in which they kept a perfectly wild satyr; for, however much they had dressed him and shaved him, you don't alter the character of any woodland thing by keeping it for a few days in a house. More than once during those days Lucy had said: ‘I only wish we could take him back to a wood.'

“And Meddin had replied: ‘There aren't any left.'

“ ‘We could find one further off,' insisted Lucy.

“ ‘Oh, we can't get rid of Thomas,' Meddin said.

“‘I suppose not,' said Lucy, and sighed. And the clouds of anxiety that hope had lifted for a few seconds came down upon her again. And Meddin was under the same cloud too. They did not often travel beyond the village of Rillswood, and had nowhere to go if they did. If Rillswood refused to call on them, they could be exiled as well in their garden as in the remote lands to which Romans or Greeks sent their exiles. And they knew well enough that a house that kept a satyr was not a house on which Rillswood people would call. And so things were for some days, uncertain and full of anxieties. Those warm Spring evenings, and the birds singing happily, gave no hint of the fears that hid in the hearts of the Meddins. And then one day the thunderbolt seemed to be over their heads. A note for Lucy came by hand after breakfast. It asked if Lady Rillswood would find them in, if she came to tea that afternoon. Lady Rillswood was the widow of the man who had bought the Rillswood estate, which she was now developing. She was good-looking and energetic; indeed she had ample energies for all the activities that the village of Rillswood needed, and all these she largely directed. She did not admit to being forty, nor did she look it. Rumour spoke often of her remarriage, but, with a curious deficiency in anything so well-informed as rumour, it had never yet named a new husband. She loomed as a thunderbolt threatening to ruin the Meddins, because not only had Lady Rillswood travelled widely, but she had actually all round her in her house all kinds of antique marbles; and Lucy knew well enough and so did Meddin, that, however simple Mrs. Speldridge might be, Lady Rillswood would know a satyr the moment she saw one. And if Lady, Rillswood gave up calling on them that would be the exile I spoke of. I do not mean that it would have mattered if she had not called on them for ten years, but if she had any reason for not doing so, that reason would get out, and no one else in Rillswood would go near them. Well, they drilled the satyr the whole morning, and after they had had lunch they felt more easy about him. So willing, alert and active was he, and even intelligent in a woodland sort of way, that but for the tight breeches and the very alien profile and the tanned skin, he would have seemed the perfect servant; and, after all, the profile was a very fine one and the sun-tanned skin was handsome, if only it did not remind people of a satyr. This is how Meddin summed it all up to Lucy as tea-time drew near: ‘She's got to notice him first, then she's got to see what he is, and then she's got to prove it.'

“But comfort that was not real was rejected by Lucy. ‘She'll only have to say it,' she said, ‘No one will ask Lady Rillswood to prove it.'

“This was true, for it was not only that she owned all Rillswood, but she actively worked all its committees and leagues, so much that neither of the Meddins knew for what purpose she was coming to see them; nor did they ever find out for certain.

“ ‘She'll not notice Thomas,' said Meddin again.

“And then Lady Rillswood arrived. And the first thing they saw was that her eyes were fixed on the satyr, as it showed her into the parlour. Then it had to bring in the tea; but the moment that Lucy heard the step of the satyr she turned to Lady Rillswood and said, ‘We think that my brother does such clever pictures. But we are afraid that they might not interest you. But we would be so glad if you cared to look at them.'

“Lady Rillswood did not run all Rillswood by not being interested in things that her neighbours had to show. She got up at once and was away with Meddin before the satyr returned to the room. Suddenly a dark thought came to Lucy: could Alfred (that was her brother) be trusted to keep the new picture hid? She rose, and hurried after them. Lady Rillswood was charmed with all the pictures she saw; and then she turned to one with its face to the wall saying, ‘And may I see that one?'

“ ‘Oh, that one's unfinished, Lady Rillswood,' said Lucy.

“And Lady Rillswood turned away, seeing by Lucy's attitude, and hearing by the tone of her voice, before she had finished her sentence, that she did not want that picture to be looked at. She was walking out of the studio. And then Meddin blurted out: ‘Oh, that one. I really think you might like it. The light of a late evening on brown skin. And an apple-tree too, an old one with lichen on it. I think you might like it.'

“And he went to the picture.

“ ‘I think,' said Lucy, but she found no more to say, and felt that she stood upon the edge of her world, and that the edge was crumbling. The words checked Meddin, but his hand had already gone to the canvas, and he saw no way of telling Lady Rillswood that he did not mean to show it her after all.

“ ‘The light, you see,' he said, ‘on . . .'

“ ‘Yes, charming,' said Lady Rillswood.

“Then they came back to the parlour. Meddin watched his guest at the tea-table, and her eyes seemed full of thought. He could not make out whether she knew or not. But to Lucy one thing was certain, and that was that if Lady Rillswood saw the satyr again, after seeing that picture, any doubts that she might yet have would be gone for ever. And she could not think of any means of keeping Thomas out of the way in their little house. And so she sat there helpless. Meddin, from whom I had a full account of all this, has not the slightest remembrance of what they talked of all tea-time, but he remembers very vividly that all the time he was wondering when the satyr would next appear. And then Lady Rillswood said, ‘If I might ask for my carriage.'

“And there was nothing to do but to ring the bell. And the satyr came hopping in. Lady Rillswood took one glance at him. Worse than that, it turned its back on her; or at any rate allowed her to see behind it, the tight breeches and the trace of its tail. Meddin saw that, and Lucy saw it, and both knew Lady Rillswood knew everything.

“Lady Rillswood said goodbye to them both with all her usual charm. Then they sat there looking greyly into the future, barely speaking a word to each other.

“I think it's good for people to look at ruin sometimes, and then to turn away from the dark chasm to find all the world more radiant, as Alfred and Lucy did.”

“What happened?” I asked Jorkens, for he was sitting quite silent.

“She married it almost at once,” said Jorkens.

“Who? What?” said Terbut.

“Lady Rillswood married the satyr,” said Jorkens. “I believe she was extraordinarily happy with him, till she died three or four years ago. And, as for him, you saw it go by just now.”

Whatever actual fact there is in the following story, which Jorkens told in our club, however true it may ring, I must admit at the outset that he distinctly told us that not only names were fictitious, but whole incidents and all surrounding geography. This alteration of names and events he said was absolutely necessary, because he said that otherwise there were several people who would write to him, and even perhaps to the papers, to say that that was not the way they did things, or that things were done at all; and in that case, Jorkens said, he would be faced with the alternatives of proving that they were really done in that way, and always had been, or, by remaining silent, to allow the impression to gain currency that he had exaggerated, or even invented. And, things being like that, the reader will probably suit himself in deciding whether the story is to be regarded as bearing the stamp of truth, or whether it should be classed with those anecdotes that tell of things which, in historical fact, have never really occurred. Be that as it may, Jorkens, one day in the Club, was asked, by one of our members, in a manner that appeared to make the question one put for mere information, whether he had not met several very interesting people.

“Yes, at one time or another,” said Jorkens.

I was afraid he was going to say no more, so I asked him who was the most interesting of all these.

“Well, I don't know,” said Jorkens. “That's hard to say. You can say who does the most work, but you can't always say he is more interesting than someone who may have done a good deal less.”

“Who's done the most work of all the people you've met, Jorkens?” I asked, for I was afraid he was evading the question, and that he might reveal to us none of his experiences at all.

“That,” said Jorkens, “is more easily answered, I was passing once through a country whose name I will not give you, because the man I will tell you about was one of its most important citizens, and for various reasons I had better not identify him.”

And he gave us some of the reasons that I have already mentioned.

“I saw the man walking one day into the Royal Market Place: it was some sort of gala day. As a matter of fact it was Onion-selling Day, which doesn't mean much to us, but it commemorated the opening of the market about a thousand years ago, and is the principal day of their year. Well, we won't go into that. But it was a lovely bright summer day, and I saw this man walking slowly along in a dark blue tail-coat and wearing two huge silver stars, upon which I commented to the man who was showing me round. Well, I'm not especially observant, but my noticing those two stars evidently pleased my foreign friend a good deal, for he explained to me that I had noticed something that to them was quite memorable, and practically unique. There are only two parties in that country, and only two important decorations, one to each party, and this old fellow in the blue coat had both of them. ‘Very lucky,' I said, for they were very fine stars, and I had to make some comment.

“ ‘No, no,' he said, ‘it wasn't luck at all. That is one of the most industrious men our country has ever had.'

“ ‘What did he do?' I asked.

“And then he told me the story. To begin with he explained at some length, and with what seemed like perfectly fair impartiality, what the two parties stood for. One party was for the old things that always had been, and he had a great deal to say about those things: they shaped our forbears, he said, and they shaped us, and our outlook harmonised with these old things and there was no getting away from them; to alter them was like disfiguring yourself, or destroying a part of your mind, and certainly a part of one's contentment. Shaped as one was by these things one could not get on without them, and so on and so on and so on. The other party, he explained, were more practical. In fact the practical thing was their sole test. And he said a good deal about that too. Well, the old fellow that I had seen walking into the Royal Market Place, in his blue tail-coat and two stars, belonged to that party and started working for it as soon as he grew up, and no one ever worked harder.

“There was a hill in those days at the end of the main street of the city, just between it and the harbour, quite a low hill, in fact no more than a mound, and yet it blotted out from that street the whole view of the sea. The practical party were in power in those days, and they were unanimous about removing the mound and thereby letting in a wide and splendid view, which it almost entirely obscured, but the difficulty was getting the labour and drawing a sum to pay for it; and that is where the opposition were able to hamper them, and even delay them for years. Well, he told me again that this man was the most industrious man that their state had ever known; and he was not the only man that was industrious, but what he did, that many an industrious man does not, was to get down to the work at once, the moment the question was raised, and work at it for thirty years.”