The Satyr's Children: A Fable

AN aged satyr, living in the space between two rocks in an old Roman road, called his children to him as he lay dying.

“Remember that you are growing older every hour,” he said. “I have always felt that your life in these damp recesses was too narrow. You had better go out into the world.”

Within a few minutes he closed his black eyelids and died.

On the next midnight, which happened also to be at the full of the moon, the other satyrs came out of the grassy sides of the road, and buried their old companion in the middle of the plain it bordered. Here through the long night they played mournfully on their pipes, moaned, and flung themselves on the ground in an abandonment of grief. At about five o’clock in the morning a light shower arose; and with the breaking of the rainy dawn, by a sudden change of mood, they all clattered back into the road-bed, splashing each other in the little puddles, and shrieking with laughter.

The two young orphaned satyrs, who could not run so fast as the others, were left scampering behind. “What is going to be done about those little devils?” a good-natured old grandmother called in a gruff voice over her dark shoulder.

“Father told us to go out into the world,” screamed the smallest satyr.

“Ho-ho! Ho-ho! Stay where you are, then,” several of the big goat-men shouted. A cock crew; and all the laughing faces and twitching hairy ears vanished into the ancient way. The two little human beasts stood, stamping and crying, out on the wet plain. With the light the road had become a compact surface. It was impossible for them to find a chink through which they might creep back into their loamy, comfortable past.

At last, after running about in a panic for some time, they sheltered themselves under a little clump of chestnut brush. Here they lay close together, trembling as you would tremble cast away in gathering darkness on some undreamed, barbaric coast. So in the cool fall air they watched the strange light of day slowly dawning on them in an unknown country of civilization.

It rained until evening. Then the sky cleared in the darkness. The moon rose. The satyrs ran out, and picked and ate some late berries, wet and fresh, and chased each other over the plain. With the first faint tissue of morning light, they hid themselves again. In such wise they lived for nearly a week. On several occasions during this time three creatures passed, quite different from the fauns and satyrs and the forsaken gods and goddesses of their past existence under the plain and the wood through which the road ran. These three creatures were a student, a woodcutter, and his wife.

“Come, let’s run out and snap at their fingers,” whispered the little satyr girl. “Father told us to go out into the world.”

“ Oh, no, no,” whispered the little satyr boy. “You know father may have been playing a trick on us.”

So not one human being knew there were satyrs in the province till one still, bright afternoon, when the woodcutter’s wife walked out over the plain with her knitting, and, in order to be in the shade, sat down close to the chestnut brush.

The little satyrs, almost breathless with terror, lay as still as death. The old woman’s face, brown like a hard-baked biscuit, looked so fierce, her sabots looked so big, and her glittering knittingneedles looked so cruel. For ten terrible minutes there was not a motion over the whole plain but their quick, slight flitting. Not the shadow of a blade of grass quivered. At last the thread of the yarn fell tickling against the little satyr girl’s ear; it twitched; the old woman saw the little hairy tip flick; she leaned around the bush, — and looked straight down into the eyes of the little human beasts.

The satyr girl sprang at her like a tiger, striking at her with her beautiful brown hands, and kicking at her with her white hoofs; and the satyr boy ran butting against her with his black head and white horns. The woodcutter’s wife caught them both and held them fast in her arms, struggling with them and chuckling. They were too small to hurt her; and she stayed playing with them till the stars were all out, when she put them to sleep in her lap, and laid them back again under the brush.

The truth was that the woodcutter’s wife, a rough, warm-hearted old woman, had a strong passion for all kinds of queer young creatures, funny, leggy calves, gawky colts, and round, clumsy babies. She was now ravished to the core of her nature by the young satyrs. She could scarcely wait to have them fast in her arms again, burrowing their heads against her shoulders, and biting at her fingers.

On the next morning she carried out to them a bowl of hot, salty, smoking porridge. After that she came every day to play with them, and to feed them. When the weather grew colder she gave them her woolly gray shawl, and an old dogskin to cover themselves up with. But she said nothing about them to her husband, nor to the student, for fear they would think the little goat-children too queen, and would chase them away. However, when the equinoctial storms began to fall, the thought of the little satyrs shuddering in the wet brush nipped her like pincers. So she took from an old chest some clothes that had belonged to her own children, now grown up and gone away, and with these clothes she disguised the little satyrs. In smocks, with little caps pulled down over their horns and furry ears, in long stockings covering their graceful furry legs, and in sabots covering their hoofs, they looked just like little human beings, with unusually elusive, mocking faces.

Then the woodcutter’s wife took them home, telling her husband they were two waifs she had found in the wood. At first he hated the idea of keeping them, and scolded about it constantly. But gradually he hated it less. Finally he liked it, and scolded only at intervals, for the sake of consistency. The student was delighted with his two new little fellow-lodgers. He at once named the little girl Faustina, because he first saw her dark eyes sparkling under the edge of her white cap across the table from him, when he happened to glance up from his favorite volume of Faust legends. The little boy he named Vulpes, on account of his slight resemblance to a fox.

The satyrs made no trouble for him, for the woodcutter, or for any one else. They ran in the wood and over the plain all day. Late at night they crept up by outside stairs to the bed the woodcutter’s wife had made for them in the warm, dark loft, where no one could see them taking off their stockings. At school, it is true, they were late and irregular. But they learned their lessons very quickly, especially the ancient history and the mythology; though in these classes they always laughed and wriggled so and looked at each other with such meaning that the teacher would be obliged to make them sit on opposite sides of the room. With the other children of the neighborhood they seldom played.

So they fared in the world for a year. Then what was inevitable happened. Every one learned the truth about them. It was on a cold Saturday afternoon. They had joined the other children in an autumn search for nuts. These they chanced to find in plenty in a little copse between the cluster of cottages where they lived and the city where Wolf studied and the woodcutter sold his wood. A light, cold wind blew. It seemed to have caught up and to be twisting around near the copse a small rising whirlpool of thousands of dead leaves. The children, Faustina and Vulpes with the rest, rushed and rustled around in it, kicking their feet in the leaves and shouting, while the wind blew as cold as water in their mouths.

Then suddenly Faustina’s cap blew off — and she did n’t care. Her flood of hair tumbled loose and black over her shoulders, with her little snowy horns pointing up through it at the temples — and she did n’t care. Her brown ankles and white, fleet hoofs leapt free from her heavy sabots and stockings,—and glad enough she was to kick them off, and to fly and to vault in the great airy funnel of leaves, reckless, in the exhilaration of that free instant, of whatever might come after. Not Vulpes, who had also lost his cap, nor any of the rest, could possibly keep up with her. She ran as fast as an antelope, with her cloud of dark hair streaming behind her, her white blouse and blue skirt rippling about her, and her little hoofs leaping and stepping like lightning, so that you could hardly tell when she was on the ground and when she was in the air. The wind blew faster and faster, and she whirled around and around, buoying herself in its sweep, like a swallow, to the very tops of the little tamarack trees: until at last the breeze died down, and, swaying and dancing lightly with the last flickering leaf, she sank breathless on the brown heap, her eyes sparkling with still delight. Then, raising her glance over the heads of the children, as she shook back her hair to gather it up again, she saw the eyes of Wolf and of the woodcutter fixed upon her with coldness and with astonishment.

In returning from the town they had reached the copse a few minutes after Faustina’s cap blew off. A great weight of gloom seemed to fall from them on all the children, and most heavily on Faustina. She put on her shoes and stockings, without daring to lift her eyes from the ground. All thought of nutting was abandoned. The children walked home together in little separate groups, with their bags hanging very limp over their arms. They whispered apart from the satyrs, who followed, sad and bewildered, the silent steps of the woodcutter and Wolf. It is so painful to find that one has not pleased the taste of those whom one likes.

Inside the house the satyrs sat together miserably, on the floor, under the table; and the husband buried his face in his hands, while Wolf, walking the floor, poured out to the old mother an account of what had happened.

“See what you have brought us to,” said the woodcutter. “No respectable people will ever look at us again. Such a thing has never happened to any one else we know. It is unheard of.”

“I did n’t think you would mind so much, ” said the old mother calmly. “ The poor little things had nowhere to go; and how could I suppose Wolf would care ? I thought he was pleased with unheard-of things, like stories about witchcraft, and Dr. Faustus, and his black poodle that was the devil.”

“Dear me,” said Wolf testily. “Those belong to the kind of quaint, romantic, unheard-of things that every one has known about and heard of. But who has ever had anything to do with goatchildren ? I would advise you to drown them.”

“I am not going to drown them,” said the old mother with placidity. “ They are far too cunning and too good. As for their being partly goats, every one has something queer and fierce and like a beast in him. My husband has it when he breaks plates and scolds because he has to pay the rent he promised. Heaven knows I myself sometimes get up in the morning feeling as though I would like to bite out the eyes of the next person that spoke to me. And you are like that when you tell me to drown my nice children, who have never tried to hurt one hair of any one’s head.”

“Yes. Yes. She is right,” said the woodcutter with a heavy groan. He was a morose and perverse man, but just. The little satyrs under the table butted their horns fast against each other, and the tears streamed over their faces.

Wolf now began to pile up his books anti to fold up his gown to put into his ruck-sack. At last he exclaimed, in the gloomy silence,—

“You have no idea where those creatures came from in the very beginning, and you cannot tell what will become of them in the end.”

“No,” said the old mother quietly. “ That cannot be known about any one.”

Throughout the discussion she had been walking round the room, working and cooking. The little satyrs had crept away; and she now took their supper up to them in the warm, dark loft, where she hugged them and chuckled to them and told them not to mind. As the supper was very well cooked, both the men and the goat-children ate it up. Then they all went to bed in the comfort of the old mother’s house, though very uneasy,—the satyrs because they had made so much bother, and the men because the little goatchildren were so very queer.

The next day was stormy, cold, and miserable. Wolf was obliged to unpack his ruck-sack in order to take out what he needed in the house for the day; and after this it seemed undignified to pack everything up again; so that he did not set out at once.

After breakfast Christina, a neighbor, came in tears to talk to the woodcutter’s wife, and to beg that the satyrs be sent away, because she feared having them so near her own children.

“ Have they ever said or done anything that could harm your children?” asked the woodcutter gravely.

“No,” said the neighbor, hesitating. “Oh, sir, I know it is a delicate thing to mention; but it does seem to me so fearfully peculiar for them to have goats’ legs.”

“Fearfully peculiar! A delicate thing to mention! ” said the woodcutter, suddenly mimicking the unfortunate visitor in a niminy, squeaking voice of contempt. “My children,” he added, with a sudden change of tone, “came as they are, hoof and hide, without disgrace from their old mother earth,—like you, like me, and every one. If your children are afraid, let them keep out of the way.”

He picked up his pipe conclusively, and began smoking, while the neighbor crept out at the door. Throughout the discussion the old mother had been working about the room, burnishing the kettle and putting wood on the fire, quietly, but with a slightly jocose expression. Well, well, she knew that Christina was right in considering the children’s horns and tails odd. Yet there they were, — after all, not more freakish than her husband’s perversity, or many another fact of nature through which, during a long life, she had been sustained by a sense of fun, still but powerful.

Now that everybody knew the little satyrs were largely beasts, the fact seemed to make remarkably little difference. Even when Vulpes, as he went to the head of his class in school, tore off his cap, shrieked at the top of his lungs, kicked off his sabots, and danced round and round the schoolroom floor, no harm seemed to result from his behavior. Even when, as the children sang, Faustina’s voice, wild and ecstatic, rose above all the others with a buoyant tone like cool pipes in a wood, and when strange light calls and cries answered from outdoors, — even then life continued unbroken in its course.

But as time went on another load of care bore heavily on the woodcutter. “What will become of our goat-children when we are gone ? We can leave enough to take care of one, but never to take care of two,” he would say to his wife. “And they will always be prevented from doing well for themselves while there are fools in the world like Christina, such as there will always be.”

“Our goat-children are happy now,” said the old mother reassuringly. “And for the future, — why, time takes every one through everything.”

So the years went by. Wolf finished his studies at the university, packed his rucksack, and really went away at last, but only by the convenience of circumstance. The woodcutter and his wife aged, and Faustina and Vulpes grew into the flower of their youth.

At about this time it happened, one rainy morning in spring, while the satyrs were in school, that the woodcutter and his wife, working in their kitchen with the door open, heard pipes near them playing an air lovely beyond belief. — so lovely that they left their fagot-tying, and stood listening on the threshold. But the pipes’ notes stopped then. They saw no one near except an old man in a dark cape, evidently the artist they had heard spoken of as walking sometimes through the village.

The rain ceased to fall as he approached the door, asking for a boy named Vulpes; and he refused to enter. “I have come to strike a bargain with you about that goatboy,” he said. “I wish to hire him as a model for a statue.”

“Have you ever seen our Vulpes?" said the woodcutter. “After you have, you may not care to make a statue of him. I cannot conceal from you that he is as ugly as possible to be.”

“No matter,” said the old artist grandly. “ It makes not a bit of difference to me whether some turn of creation that attracts me goes by the name of beautiful or of hideous. What I like may be the foaming swirl of a splendid cloud, or it may be the texture of an alley ashheap crumbling to black velvet dust in a shadowed corner. From all that I have heard I think that dark, fantastic boy would make a fine statue.”

“ Just exactly as he is ? ” said the woodcutter.”

“ Just exactly as he is.”

The woodcutter thought for a while. “You would not care to put in his ears, I suppose.”

“Yes. I should be obliged to put in his ears.”

Again the woodcutter considered. “Surely you would not wish his tail, though. That would be beneath such a grand art as sculpture.”

“The tail I must have,” said the visitor with decision.

After that there was silence for some minutes. “It could never be concealed from any one again,” said the woodcutter, “that Vulpes is half a beast.”

“Never.”

“ He would be known to every one for just exactly what he is,” put in the old mother. “No better, and no worse.”

“And what would you do for him in return ? ” asked the woodcutter.

“I would take the most responsible care of his entire future,” said the artist quietly.

The woodcutter was silent with astonishment.

Just at that moment they saw the satyr youth, rough and shaggy, walking across the plain toward them.

“It is strange enough, ” said the woodcutter. “No one can tell how things will fall. We have always been anxious about our boy on account of the strangeness of his appearance; and now it seems to be the very thing in him that you admire, and that can provide honestly for him in the world.”

“So you are willing I should make the statue ? ” said the artist. “And at last you will stand for the truth of nature. Enough! Enough! He is cared for forever.” At that he gave a tremendous guffaw; and there, instead of the artist, stood a great god, half a goat and half a man, with horns and hairy ears wreathed with grape vine, and an oaten pipe in his hand.

At the first ecstatic notes he blew as he lifted it to his mouth, Vulpes leapt toward him in a transport of delight; and then, dancing and shrieking together, suddenly they disappeared from sight. Deep under the spring loam of the plain, fragrant with violets, wild hyacinth, and anemone, the notes of the pipes could be heard, fainter and fainter, and at last everything was still.

Some months after this it happened, one evening when the day had been warm, that the woodcutter was sitting with his wife near the door of their little dark summer kitchen, looking out at the wood and the plain all bathed in a great flood of moonlight. For long now another load of care had borne heavily on the good man. “What will become of my poor little Faustina when we are gone ? ” he said to his wife. “She will be all alone. Miseries will certainly, certainly come on her while there are fools in the world like Christina, such as there will always be.”

And no words of sense could drive this worry from his mind. To-night, after his day of work, all was calm around him. His corduroy coat hung over the end of the bench. He had his pipe in his hand; and he tried to rest in the coolness and peace of the place. But he grew constantly more restless. While the torment of his anxiety for Faustina was nagging him most sharply, she appeared in the door. Her hair fell loose around her waist, and her little white hoofs shone in the moonlight. Never before had she looked so wild, so sweet.

Just as she had laughed on the days when she was hiding in the brush, she laughed now, and looked up at the old mother; and she kissed the woodcutter between his eyes. “It is a sin,” she said, “to stay indoors on such a night. Besides, this has been Midsummer’s Day. Come out with me to the edge of the wood,” she whispered, “and I will show you something there.”

And as she spoke, and as she stood there, all the ways of the manifold earth appeared to the woodcutter free and divine. Such a serenity breathed in the air about him, his every care had vanished. At that instant the odor of the pine bench, the dark wood and worn utensils of the familiar little kitchen,—every minute of his existence flying, flying past,— were as a miracle to him. His whole life there in the midst of creation was known to him to be a thing unaccountable as the flash of the Northern Lights in the sky, and as unreasonable a cause for care.

He rose. The little satyr girl ran ahead of him and the old mother to the familiar cluster of chestnuts; and here, sitting in the darkness of its shadow7, they now watched her in her world, just as she had once watched them in theirs.

“Good-by. Good-by,” she said, and she touched each one with a thrilling touch, and ran out into the plain. There they saw standing on the gray prairie a great white goddess with filleted hair, starry eyes, and a silver bow and quiver. Beside her a stag with glistening antlers listened, still as the sky, to the wide whispers of the open.

She raised her horn, and blew a call on it. An answering call sounded from the wood; and at the same instant there was a sound of thousands and thousands of hurrying feet and voices. It came nearer and nearer, and then the little Faustina was lost to the hidden watchers in the midst of a great concourse of women, young, strong, and beautiful, coming out of the recesses of the wood into the open. The moonlight fell on their bare shoulders hung with quivers, their straight ankles, the turn of their twisted hair, and their white-feathered arrows.

Diana, standing before the dark, rustling grove, received the obeisance of all. Again she raised her horn to blow on it a call clear and light; and then, with one swift step, still as the fall of snow, she had leapt from the little mound, and was running, running, running like the wind, with all her nymphs, and none so fleet as she, behind her.

Like a marble frieze now the speeding huntress and her virgins streamed past against the starry distance of the sky, around the plain, and back again to the forest. Last of all ran the little satyr girl, throwing out her arms to the wood before her, all black-silvered and murmuring in the cool light, the roll of the pillared tree-boles gleaming, the dark glades opening like some spacious hall prepared free and fresh for hours of delight.

Long, long, the woodcutter and his wife looked at the path of the procession after its faintest glimmer had vanished, and the last white flick of the little goatgirl’s hoof had disappeared in the big, still wood. Then they knew that she had gone forever, and they rose from the little copse and went home in the moonlight.

“Do you know what that wood is tonight? ” said the mother, “the old, old wood they all came out of and they all went back to ? It is the Past — and Death itself.”

“Yes,” said the woodcutter with calm, “that will be her future. None I could plan would be so beautiful for her.” And he worried no more.