The Lavender Dragon

by Eden Phillpotts

  “And how does it work?” inquired the knight, whereupon his host drained his vast beaker and made answer.

  “My own modest experience appears to work well; but, of course, it is difficult to be sure if I am really in the right road. You might guess that, where everybody strives to be gracious and useful to everybody else, a condition so unusual in human intercourse would have cast the whole enterprise into confusion; but it is not so. The people are happy and we progress in amenities of life. We live and let live; consequently we live and learn. Without a doubt we are going ahead and getting cleverer in the art of a justified and dignified existence. And the people are happy; because if they were not so, none would stop in Dragonsville. But they remain, though under no compulsion to do so; they assure me that such a life as this meets their requirements and is well worth living.”

  “They never desert you?”

  “Never—hence doubtless the general suspicion at Pongley, and many other places, that I devour them. Once only did a very good man—a holy clerk—declare a desire to return to his grot in the hills. He was a minister of the Christian faith, and having failed to succeed and win his flock as a parish priest, became a hermit and communed in secret with his Maker, living meantime in a natural cavern upon the fruits of the earth. I snapped up Father Lazarus at his own matin prayers, brought him here and talked to him as I have talked to you. He was much annoyed at first, but soon calmed down and enjoyed our home comforts for a season. Then he showed uneasiness and a desire to return to the desert. Presently, however—thanks to his fellow men and women, not to me—he changed his mind, on the condition that I would build him a place wherein he might worship his God and advance the happiness of those who shared his religious opinions.

  “I willingly agreed, for you must understand that I am no propagandist, but welcome any ideas which directly or indirectly advance happiness. Upon one point only was I definite. But that’s another story and shall be told you at another time. Father Lazarus is a most excellent and high-minded priest, and we are close friends. The people respect him, and it is his custom to seek me on the first day of every month and devote a morning to my personal welfare. He much desires to convert me to his own predilections in the matter of religion; and since the effort is a part of his duty and gives him satisfaction, I always make leisure to attend his discourses.”

  “You marry and are given in marriage?”

  “Certainly. Father Lazarus has celebrated many alliances, and the occasion of a marriage is always a day of rejoicing. I hope you may see such ceremonies. Our children will be a delight to you—if you are fond of children.”

  “And now a delicate question,” ventured Sir Jasper. “All you have told me, Sir Dragon, is of deep interest and instruction; but it is my habit of mind ever to look forward. What of the future of your colony? You, I take it, are but mortal, and cannot live for ever.”

  “The future,” replied L.D., “must look after itself—as it always has done and always will do. I have never been one to bother my brains about anything but the present. I trust the future handsomely, as you already know, but my own concerns have been with my own few centuries. When I die—probably in a year, or it may be two—I shall be laid beside my wife; and having planted hawthorns over me, the duty of the community, so far as I am concerned, will be at an end. The greater duty to themselves I do not seek to influence. Some will probably desire to remain; others, to return to the larger world and the complexities of a higher civilisation than ours. Probsire to remain; others, to return to the larger world and ably Dragonsville will disappear, when the walls return to the earth from which they were raised; and if a measure of what I have endeavoured to do and advance is carried into the greater world and proves, in its small way, of any service, I shall not have lived in vain.”

  Sir Jasper nodded.

  “I am deeply impressed and much edified,” he declared; “but I do not think you must ask me to stop with you. To break a precedent is a pity, and the life frankly invites me by reason of its simplicity, dignity and general charm; but my aim and purpose have ever been to redress wrong and fight evil. Here things are so happily ordered that an armed knight—a man of war such as myself—whose business is to destroy the enemies of mankind and strike bitter and bloody blows that the world may be cleaner, safer and happier—such a man, honourable Dragon, would find nothing to do in this place.”

  “Why not beat your sword into a ploughshare, your lance into a pruning hook, your armour into kitchen utensils?” asked the other. “I can imagine your silver helmet making an exquisite holder for a pot plant in the boudoir of my dear Lilian.”

  A slight warmth of colour mantled the cheek of the hero.

  “You are not quite as ingenuous as you pretend, I fear,” he answered.

  “Consult her,” urged the Lavender Dragon. “You might do worse, for to her outward charm is united a very beautiful mind, and I have little doubt that, in reality, she comes of descent as long and noble as your own. Take occasion to have discourse with her before you decide. Speaking generally, your argument is capable of refutation, for the gift of skill in the field is not, I think, your sole claim to distinction. Given good will, the prime motive power of all progress, and a desire to help our body politic, a man of your high principles and exalted sentiments should not be at a loss even here. I, for example, shall beg you to throw light upon much that puzzles my dragon mind. To-day I have done all the talking, but think not that I cannot listen too. Many of my friends and neighbours have helped me vastly with their practical knowledge of your species, and the rising generation is not backward of still more valuable ideas. However, you are free to go when you please; but I should think it courteous and considerate if you would undertake to stay a month with us.”

  “That I will gladly do,” replied his guest. “There is, however, one privilege I would beg. My squire, George Pipkin, must be suffering the extremity of grief on my account, and he will, not unnaturally, fear for me a very different fate than this I now enjoy. Is it within your power, think you, to unite us? I may tell you that he will certainly seek me and push his way, sooner or later, to your outer walls. If, on reaching them, he might be admitted into this happy land, I should thank you heartily.”

  “I will bring him myself,” promised the Lavender Dragon. “A man so faithful and of such devotion to his master is worthy of all respect.”

  Sir Jasper sighed and reviewed his tremendous experience.

  “What the world would think of me, I cannot guess,” he said.

  “What the world thinks of us is of prodigious unimportance, my friend,” replied the saurian. “The only thing that really matters is what we think of ourselves. In nothing is reason so flouted as in our ridiculous self-estimates; but when we suffer her to help us read our own hearts and judge the real worth of our own abilities and ambitions, then we shall begin to know what moral progress may mean.”

  VII

  GREAT NEWS FOR GEORGE PIPKIN

  EARLY ON the morrow the Lavender Dragon set forth to seek George Pipkin and, after sleeping soundly in a most comfortable and cheerful chamber, the latest arrival at Dragonsville went among the people and saw and heard much that gave him pleasure.

  His host had not returned at the hour of midday dinner, but certain elderly and dignified persons of both sexes joined Sir Jasper at the meal. He found Father Lazarus, the priest, to be of the party, together with Nicholas Warrender, the seneschal, a grey-haired dame or two, and an old but venerable man whom the others addressed as “Sir Claude.” There were also present Amory Doncaster, the Lavender Dragon’s doctor, and Lilian Lovenot, who, radiant in a gown of azure blue, decorated with pearls as large as filberts, sat beside the new-comer.

  Conversation proved by no means parochial and his new friends manifested great interest in Sir Jasper’s professional experiences and the doings of the outer world. The old people expressed a hope that life ran in more gracious channels than of yore, and that he found an increase of prosperity and happ
iness upon his travels; while, when he confessed that new wars were in the making and new discontents battering and bruising humanity on every side, the younger men and women present declared their impatience and indignation at the slow progress of the race.

  “I cannot but think,” said Lilian Lovenot, “that a time is near when the rising generation of Dragonsville will be called to abandon this life of ease and happiness, and go forth to carry the principles and theories of L.D. into the outer darkness.”

  “A tremendous opinion,” replied a youth by the name of Howard Harris. “But it may come to that. We have all made one another as happy as it is possible to be at Dragonsville, and, for my own part, I sometimes sigh for other fields wherein to conquer.”

  “Or be conquered,” said Sir Claude, and looking upon Mm, the younger knight observed the first face in this city which betokened a mind not wholly at rest.

  After the meal was ended, Sir Jasper, his fellow knight and Lilian walked to the grave of the Lavender Dragon’s wife and sat upon it under the shadow of the flowering shrubs. Then Sir Claude, having found that his own adventures in chivalry belonged to a period far anterior to the visitor’s, explained the reason of that settled melancholy which appeared upon his grey and wrinkled countenance.

  “I am Sir Claude Pontifex Fortescue, of the Strong Shield,” he said, “and it was I, Sir Jasper, who, sixty years ago, laid lance in rest against L.D. That awful error of judgment has haunted me and cast the sour shadow of remorse upon my long, and, I hope, subsequently blameless career.”

  “I did no less in thought,” confessed Sir Jasper. “My one desire was to slaughter this prodigious person and cut his head off. Surely he is the last to blame you, or harbour any suspicion of resentment. It is summed in a word, Sir Knight; you and I knew no better. I will go further and declare that there was no reason why we should.”

  “Exactly; and he has told you so a dozen times, Sir Claude,” added Lilian. “It is irrational of you to harbour this sorrow for more than half a century. You merely scratched his side and did not shorten his precious life by an hour.”

  The ancient knight only shook his head.

  “I deserved death, for he strove to address me before I charged, and I would not listen.”

  “But he spared you to be useful; and no doubt you have been useful,” suggested Sir Jasper.

  “He has,” vowed Lilian. “L.D. himself declares that Sir Claude has been his right paw for sixty years.”

  But Sir Claude dwelt morbidly on the details of that far-away disaster.

  “He merely thumped me; then he brought me here, healed my bruises and exalted me into a position of trust and honour. Would that I had been worthy of such forgiveness, my friends.”

  He refused to be comforted, and presently Sir Jasper and Lilian left him, still sighing to himself, and went their way through the gardens of the castle.

  “Come and look at our carpet bedding,” suggested the beautiful maiden, and her companion soon stood where five-and-twenty gardeners were busy arranging a little horticultural surprise for the dragon on his return. Sir Jasper, however, was no authority on these subjects and he turned the conversation into more personal channels. Lilian, at his entreaty, related the brief particulars of her own career as far as she remembered it; but she shared the dragon’s opinion concerning her advent into the world and agreed with the inhabitants of Pongley-in-the-Marsh that the excellent Lovenots were not her parents.

  “I loved them dearly,” she said, “but I never felt towards them as a daughter, and when L.D. discovered me weeping at the well, he knew, by a marvellous intuition peculiar to him and doubtless the result of his vast experience, that I was no true child of the hamlet.”

  “Here you are happier?” inquired the knight.

  “It may sound ungrateful, but I am. I do love comfort and cleanliness and, I am afraid, luxury,” confessed Lilian. “Silk next the skin, swansdown to sleep upon, crystal to drink out of, instead of cloam, and so on—weak—very weak, Sir Jasper.”

  “Doubtless the blood in your veins demands these modest additions to life,” he declared. “There can be no sort of doubt that the fairies, after their somewhat malicious custom, played a trick upon your foster-mother and your real one; and now the daughter of the Lovenots probably occupies a position of high estate and has usurped your connections and your lawful style and title.”

  “It may be so, but I am perfectly happy here,” said Lilian. “In the fragrant atmosphere of the Lavender Dragon, we live a life of such fine quality that no distinction could better it. I naturally mourn my own dear parents sometimes, and wonder what they make of the girl who bears my name, whatever that may be; but I daresay they have found a better daughter than I should have been to them.”

  “That is quite impossible,” he asserted, and was lost in thought for the space of twenty minutes.

  Sir Jasper then spoke again and put a question.

  “Is it beyond reason that I should be permitted to gaze at your left elbow?” he inquired, and the lady started at a request so unusual.

  “Who told you about that, Sir Jasper?” she asked in her turn.

  “Nobody told me anything, fair mistress; but, as they say, the world is small, and I have in my mind a noble West-country family, who lost a daughter and found a changeling under somewhat distressing circumstances about sixteen years ago. The changeling ran away with a wine-drawer when she was fifteen, and no great search was made to find either of them. The noble family of the Traceys, who are always said to have the wind in their faces, happen to be neighbours of my own kin, and we are therefore familiar with a tradition among them. The eldest son always exhibits a birthmark on his left shoulder-blade in the shape of a poignard; while the eldest daughter’s left elbow never fails to reveal an auburn mole in shape of a cuddy wren.”

  Lilian’s aquamarine eyes shone like ocean pools when the tide is out, and she exhibited the wildest astonishment.

  “But I have a little wren upon my left elbow,” she cried.

  “Then you are the vanished daughter of the far-famed Lord Meavybrook, of the family of Tracey in the West country, whose manor adjoins our lands of Pomeroy. I salute Mistress Lovenot no longer, but the Honourable Camilla Petronell Thomasin Tracey and kiss her hand!”

  At this dramatic moment a shadow fell upon the carpet bedding, and the aerial music of the Lavender Dragon’s wings announced his return. In a few moments he had descended, whereupon George Pipkin and his roan charger reached the ground together. Instantly George perceived his master and, rushing to him, praised God and flung himself at Sir Jasper’s feet. The knight raised his squire, cheered him heartily, bade him rejoice, assured him that all was well, and presently surrendered him to the good offices of half a dozen friendly spirits, who hastened to pleasure the new arrival.

  The translated maiden meantime attended upon the dragon, and, after L.D. had enjoyed a mighty meal of hay and fine oats, informed him of the amazing discovery concerning herself. He was gratified but by no means surprised, and when Sir Jasper returned from a talk with George, all particulars were demanded.

  The knight, however, could add no more to the story than he had already told. He was permitted to study the white elbow of the lady and there, exquisitely fashioned by Nature’s self, appeared a wee cuddy wren that, upon the milky purity of the skin, suggested an agate cameo carved by a master’s hand.

  “One takes these happenings in a large spirit,” said the dragon. “I am well-pleased to have my intuition proved correct, and for the moment only a single thought occurs to me. We have now a choice of three names for Mistress Tracey, and what I want to know is this: does she desire that we call her henceforth Camilla, Petronell, or Thomasin?”

  The girl looked at Sir Jasper and smiled so radiantly that a mavis on a bough burst into music and added certain notes to his repertory that have been in every grey bird’s song since then.

  “It is Sir Jasper, after my gossips, who has given me these pleasant names,” she said; �
��he shall, therefore, determine by which I must henceforth be addressed.”

  “Let L.D. choose,” begged the knight, but the dragon declined.

  “Then let it be Camilla on Sundays and Petronell through the week, save upon Fridays, when she shall be called Thomasin.”

  It was decided so, and in high good humour the Lavender Dragon retired to sleep, and the knight and the lady were again left in each other’s company.

  Strange emotions already agitated Sir Jasper and he found in his mind a new sensation, which left him a little bemused. Bitter-sweet under-currents of. thought possessed him and led to some slight loss of manners; for so occupied was he with his own reflections that more than once he forgot to reply when Petronell questioned him, and thrice he permitted himself to gaze upon her with a direct glare of his blue eyes that cast her into maidenly confusion.

  For these lapses he apologised in stumbling words, and he had no sooner done so when he committed the like errors again. Anon she left him and walked pensively to the castle, while he returned to George. Pipkin was now well fed and had changed his travel-stained jerkin of leather and oft-mended boots for a murry-coloured velvet tunic and small clothes of orange-tawny laced with black. He had entirely recovered from the shock of the morning, and having related how the dragon had snapped him, as he was about to plunge into the Woods of Blore, he dismissed the subject and declared his great satisfaction at the turn of events.