The Lavender Dragon Read online

  THE

  LAVENDER

  DRAGON

  THE

  LAVENDER

  DRAGON

  Eden Phillpotts

  Dover Publications, Inc.

  Mineola, New York

  Bibliographical Note

  This Dover edition, first published in 2017, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by The Macmillan Company, New York, in 1923.

  International Standard Book Number

  ISBN-13: 978-0-486-81725-5

  ISBN-10: 0-486-81725-3

  Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

  817253012017

  www.doverpublications.com

  THE

  LAVENDER

  DRAGON

  Contents

  IPONGLEY-IN-THE-MARSH

  IITHE APPOINTMENT FOR RAINBARROW

  IIIVIGIL

  IVTHE DRAGON KEEPS HIS WORD

  VTHE DRAGON EXPLAINS

  VITHE DRAGON GOES ON EXPLAINING

  VIIGREAT NEWS FOR GEORGE PIPKIN

  VIIITHREE SONGS AND A STORY

  IXANOTHER DRAGON GIVES A LOUDER ROAR

  XFROM JOY TO WOE

  XITHE PASSING

  XIIBUTTERFLIES

  I

  PONGLEY-IN-THE-MARSH

  NIGH ABOUT the middle of the Dark Ages, when ignorance, greed and superstition largely ruled the world, pretty much in fact as do these forces at present, a knight and his squire proceeded to their destination under the setting sun. Sir Jasper de Pomeroy, descendant of that distinguished man who assisted William the Conqueror, and received for his service fair hundreds in the County of Devon, was a youth who favoured his English mother and betrayed little of the Norman in his appearance or composition. He conformed to a style formerly regarded as noble and now considered somewhat fatuous. His architecture befitted the times and was Gothic, supple and exquisite. The knight’s hair flashed golden in the evening sunshine; his eyes were large, prominent and very blue; his complexion, though warmed to ruddiness by outdoor life, had naturally been pink and white. He wore a heavy amber moustache, which often caught in the mouthpiece of his helmet and gave him a painful tweak. His nose had a lofty bridge and his brow was high but wanted breadth. The purest ideals, combined with a profound lack of humour, characterised Sir Jasper’s quality. He resembled an admirable mother; and his father, a man of average ability and more than average selfishness, had bluntly told the young fellow that he possessed a heart of gold and a brain of clay. Weighing the criticism without resentment, Sir Jasper, determined on his career, took all the proper vows, and dedicated himself to the service of knight errantry.

  He now approached the conclusion of his first circuit, and, up to the present, nothing of any note had challenged his knightly courage, or offered an obstacle to his uneventful progress. His squire, George Pipkin, was a plain dealer of large experience. He had filled similar appointments on former occasions, seen life and felt it, for he chanced to be unhappily married. A grizzled, lean Yorkshireman of fifty was George, and since Sir Jasper enjoyed great wealth and entertained the highest opinion of his supporter, the squire felt well satisfied of his present employ. The better was he pleased, because their expedition, now drawing to its close, had encountered no hardships and proceeded with reasonable comfort, smiled upon by good weather, devoid of any adventure whatsoever.

  Sir Jasper rode a magnificent stallion with large chestnut markings on a white ground. In the Middle Ages a circus was not known, and therefore your piebald horse awakened no anticipation of merriment. Nor, in any case, had the knight been a man to find amusement in the color of his steed. As for George Pipkin, he bestrode an elderly roan, as tough and wiry and experienced as himself.

  The elder was talking as they traversed rough tracks of moorland, which ceased suddenly at an edge of limestone crags. Beneath these boundaries there subtended fertile plains, ran a river, and stood an attractive hamlet with gabled roof-trees and white-washed walls.

  “What makes life picturesque,” declared the squire, “are the people who prefer their own experience to that of others—such men as yourself, Sir Jasper. But those who trust tradition and the accumulated wisdom of the race, go farther, are generally more satisfactory and invariably more prosperous members of society. They are safe and therefore rather dull to watch; while the adventurer, who casts loose for good or ill, is nearly always entertaining. Not that his experiences will be novel, or probably outside our own; but the freshness and charm of the spectacle he presents lie in the fact that familiar, old things are happening to a new spirit, unarmed against them with the trite weapons of precaution. Such a young man’s retort to the primitive tests of love, danger, temptation and so forth cannot be foretold. Hence every one of his adventures has the charm of novelty.”

  “Do not imagine, George, that I flout tradition,” answered the younger. “My grandfather was a famous knight without fear or reproach. Indeed, my father devotes such leisure as he allows himself from the business of money-making and enjoyment of luxury, to writing a full and punctual account of Sir Hugo de Pomeroy’s attractive career.”

  “Yes, he does; and that is the difference between you and your parent,” answered Pipkin. “He sees no charm in a suit of steel and the life that you have adopted. He feels it far more convenient to write of another’s devotion to high causes than seek high causes himself; while you, on the contrary, would emulate your famous ancestor.”

  Sir Jasper sighed.

  “Would that I might,” he replied. “The world has changed since his romantic day. The times are tame, George. The giants are dead and the dragons have fled; not a robber baron to chastise; not a village to rescue out of tyranny; not a maiden in need of succour from her oppressors.”

  “We never know our greatest blessings,” replied Pipkin. “Many a knight has rued the day when he rescued a fair damsel. I need not repeat the story of a former master, Hildebrand of the Iron Forehead. You recollect particulars of his married life. When he passed to glory, under the scimitars of a thousand Saracens, there was a smile of pure happiness on his forbidding features. As for my own career, had I not wedded his lady’s serving maid, I should be a home-staying man at this moment.”

  “Be sure that your wife will welcome you with awakened affection when you see her again, next September,” said Sir Jasper kindly; but George Pipkin shook his head.

  “For the most part,” he answered, “marriage is like following the ocean. What married man, or mariner, would not change his state if he could do so? But they plunge into wedlock, or go down to the sea in ships, as the case may be, and only regret it once, and that is for ever afterwards.”

  They had now reached the declivities, and Sir Jasper smiled at the scene of rural peace and beauty extended in the valley beneath them. George drew a roll of paper from his wallet and consulted a rough map, made by the innkeeper with whom they had lodged on the previous night.

  “This will be Pongley-in-the-Marsh,” he said. “A populous hamlet apparently and good, no doubt, for comfortable quarters.”

  “A place without a care as far as one may judge,” declared Sir Jasper, surveying the smiling thorpe. “Still we will proceed, as ever, with enthusiasm to inspire and hope to guide.”

  The sun flamed upon his splendid figure and flashed along his armour and crested helm, so that it seemed a shooting-star descended the bridle-path into the valley. Indeed, an object so conspicuous could not be missed even by peasant eyes, and when, half an hour later, the knight and his companion approached the outskirts of Pongley-in-the-Marsh, he perceived some concourse of the folk.

  George Pipkin frowned, for his experienced eyes feared a deputation, and a deputation usually meant labour at no distant date
.

  Some fifty people, of rustic and humble pattern, approached Sir Jasper, and at the head of the company marched a majestic, old man who bore a staff of office. He wore homespun garments, but was decorated with a chain round his neck and a badge upon his breast. His long, white hair curled about his stooping shoulders, and he appeared a little nervous, for his mouth worked tremulously.

  “Welcome to Pongley-in-the-Marsh, most noble knight,” he said. “We are your servants, Sire, one and all, and beg that you will accept such simple but ample hospitality as we can offer, and such comfort as we know. The best we have is yours to command.”

  Sir Jasper felt gratified, for the country folk were not wont to receive him thus, and George Pipkin stepped forward to rehearse in a loud voice his master’s style and title.

  “Sir Jasper de Pomeroy,” he concluded, “rides the world to right all wrong, redress all grievance and place his sword and his lance at the service of the humblest sufferer, be he noble or simple. Therefore, if there are any among you who smart undeservedly, or endure evil within the power of a doughty knight to defeat, let him speak, that Sir Jasper of the Silver Lance may judge whether his cause be such as to claim right, as well as might, and unchain his unconquerable puissance upon the side of God and man.”

  The ancient Portreeve of Pongley bowed to the earth, and the company behind him did the like. A rabblement of urchins were driven back, and a mongrel dog, who dared to sniff at the heels of Sir Jasper’s piebald steed, received a kick and howled unmelodiously. When silence had been restored, the old man spoke.

  “Never have we heard a more gracious message, or welcomed a rarer knight,” he declared. “My name, Sir Jasper de Pomeroy, is Jacob Pratt, and I am master here by accordant vote of my friends and neighbours. You come to us at a moment when trouble and concern are heavy in the land, and when, despite the promise of good harvest and other propitious signs, we are cast into deep tribulation. For years we have suffered from a melancholy scourge, and but a week ago, after periods of peace, the evil broke forth again and our inveterate enemy has struck in the tenderest quarter and robbed us of the fairest maiden who ever brightened Pongley-in-the-Marsh with her radiant presence. In a word, Sir Knight, there is a dragon of formidable proportions and utmost malevolence, who abides in an impenetrable lair but a league and a half from this unhappy hamlet. From time to time he breaks upon us in our most secure hours and snatches from our midst now one citizen and now another. Not only men, but women and orphan children he devours; and such is his incredible cunning, that though our trained bands have often marched against him, he evades their sallies and is never faced save by unarmed and helpless persons. He flies through the air on immense pinions, but at a height invariably beyond bow-shot; nor would any cloth-yard shaft pierce the monster—of that be sure. Only once within my memory has an errant knight ever before visited Pongley; but nothing came of it; and we pray on our bended knees that you may have a stouter courage and better appetite to rid us of this cruel tyrant than had he.”

  Sir Jasper’s eyes sparkled as he turned to Pipkin.

  “My vade-mecum, George,” he said, and on receiving a little, well-thumbed volume, he turned to the index and looked up “Dragons.”

  “These misbegotten monsters are few,” he told them. “I find here not above six or seven right, authentic dragons left in the land of the living, and of these four flourish abroad—two in Italy, one in France, and one in the Holy Land. We still appear to have ‘a great Worm’ in the Peak and—yes, ‘The Lavender Dragon’ of Yorkshire!”

  “The Lavender Dragon! The Lavender Dragon!” cried the inhabitants of Pongley in melancholy chorus.

  “He is our accursed foe, Sir Jasper,” explained Jacob Pratt. “He dwells some ten miles distant, amidst the impenetrable Woods of Blore, and from Caytor Fell good eyes may see a huge wall that circles his domain and strange, barbaric buildings of enormous size erected therein. For the monster is no cave-dweller, or laidly wretch, who lives beneath the earth. To such a measure of understanding has he attained, that he dares to assume human manners, lives in a castle and hides his iniquities behind cyclopean masonry. In fact, he is a dragon with a brain—the most perilous combination of mind and matter it is possible to imagine. For his intelligence only lends power to his ferocity, and though he may dwell in a castle and ape his betters, he does not scruple to destroy the sons and daughters of mankind and behave otherwise after the horrible custom of his own species.”

  “My perambulation draws to a close,” replied Sir Jasper, “and it is a source of the keenest satisfaction to me that Providence has seen fit to guide my charger’s steps to this secluded spot. We will sup with you, Jacob Pratt, and accept the best that your means afford; and at the dawn of another day, having heard particulars, we will set forth into the marches of the Lavender Dragon and draw not rein until either he, or ourselves, have returned to the merciful Father of us all.”

  Upon which welcome assurance, Sir Jasper and his squire proceeded among a joyful gathering into the village. After supper and before he retired for the night, the fearless lad sat by a fire of peat and listened to his host’s discourse, while George, in an adjoining chamber, overhauled the hero’s armour, his sword and his famous Silver Lance, all grown a little rusty from long disuse.

  The Portreeve perceived that he had to do with a brave and stalwart hero; but he threw no shadow on the immense difficulties of the enterprise.

  “A high soul and a trusty spear are only the first essentials,” he ventured to say. “Craft must be met with craft, your honour, and cunning with cunning. He is a dragon of great age and vast experience. It is vain to suppose that no knight until now has tackled the ruffian; and as he still flourishes like the green bay tree, we are to fear that he has triumphed on previous occasions, when justice demanded another issue to the conflict. Too well we know, in this hard world, that might is often allowed to conquer right—doubtless for heavenly purposes by us not understood.”

  Sir Jasper nodded.

  “It is idle to blink facts,” he confessed. “One hears of our knightly triumphs, but the troubadours seldom sing those unhappy failures which tact conceals, though knowledge cannot deny. The dragon you say lies hidden upon the path of solitary individuals and spirits them away?”

  “We have reason to believe that he devours them in situ,” answered Jacob Pratt. “So far as we can judge, the monster consumes them as we eat a radish, for not a fragment of mortality, not a garment, not a cap, not a tag, or shoestring, ever remains to tell the tale. Dusk is his happy hunting hour, and such as wander in the gloaming of dawn or night take their lives into their hands. Sometimes a scream is heard and the hurtle of his infernal wings and the scent of lavender, which always accompanies his progress by land and air. Then that lonely soul is gone for ever. He has a strange art to choose the widow, or the widower, and such as lack for friends or substance. As I have told you, an orphan possesses a horrible fascination for him, and children he cannot resist even in the noon of day. For many years he was but an evil legend; but of late his activities increase. Within my experience, as Portreeve of Pongley, he has snapped Thomas Fagg, the woodman; Nicol Prance, the thatcher; old John Cobbley, a swineherd; and Hugh Hobanob, the baker’s man. Of females we have lost Avisa Snell and her child—devoured together; Mary Fern, a good girl, who lost her man in the wars; Betsy Snow, a widow; Jenifer Mardle, another widow; and, only last week, Lilian Lovenot, the belle of the village and the noblest, worthiest, loveliest maiden that ever gladdened the eyes of her fellow creatures. Her parents are both dead, or I should say her foster parents, for there is a mystery attaching to her birth, and we have never believed that such a homely pair as Peter and Nancy Lovenot could have begotten so distinguished a child as Lilian. But now she, too, has been snatched away, and as for the children, both boys and girls that he has laid his claws upon, their numbers can hardly be remembered. Thus our cup of grief is full, and you will guess with what gratitude we learn that you will destroy this abomina
tion, or perish in the attempt.”

  Sir Jasper pulled his great moustache, drank another stoup of metheglin and looked thoughtfully at the fire.

  “What manner of knight was he of whom you spoke when first we met?” he inquired.

  “One Sir Rollo Malherbe,” replied the Portreeve; “but——”

  “Enough,” said George Pipkin, who had joined them for a drink; “if that gallant gentlemen indeed learned that a formidable dragon was wasting your quarters, it is certain that he put no great tax upon the hospitality of Pong-ley-in-the-Marsh.”

  “He stayed but four and twenty hours,” admitted Jacob Pratt. “On the morrow of his arrival he set forth, conducted by our valiant young men, and beheld the Lavender Dragon roaming at will along the Valley of Red Rocks, a favourite haunt nigh the Woods of Blore. One glance, at a distance of half a mile, proved enough for Sir Rollo. He remembered him of a fire-drake which he had undertaken to slay somewhere in the South Riding, many leagues distant, and, saying that he must keep faith, but would return at an early date, spurred his charger and was never seen again.”

  “Your fire-drake, or hippogriff, is found but six to ten feet long,” mused Sir Jasper, “whereas your right dragon may number six hundred feet—or more.”

  “Our enemy is computed to be perhaps five and thirty rods from beak to tail,” said the Portreeve’s right-hand man—a little, plump fellow with a cane-coloured beard and fat, pock-marked cheeks. “He is of a coerulean blue colour, having a rich rosy sheen in direct sunlight; and when he spreads his pinions they are as a flower-garden for beauty, being all shades of emerald and azure, purple and gold. In truth a lovelier beast God never made; yet within this fair and glittering carcase there hides the heart of a crocodile and the brain of a demon.”

  “It would seem that I have my work cut out for me,” said Sir Jasper grimly.