Chapter IV: Part 4

“I invited him to join me at breakfast and spoke of the glories of vegetarian diet. Whereupon he became abusive and said that he supposed his uncle to be a dragon, not a cow. I warned him that as he had come to Rome, he must do as Rome does, and fall in with my customs until he had opportunity to study them and perceive their dignity and worth; but he was ravenous and revealed all the overbearing habits of our race. Hunger, indeed, strips both men and dragons bare. He saw no charm whatsoever in my attitude of mind; he heard my principles with growing indignation. Then, calling me ‘Impostor,’ ‘Renegade,’ and so forth, he blew fire from his gullet, opened his wings and leapt from the ground in fury.

“But it is not my habit to yield at the first rebuff. He was a dragon of but one hundred years, and swiftly through my mind there flashed many an instance, gleaned from the annals of humanity, wherein we have seen the young sinner turn from evil and become a radiant convert. I thought upon Themistocles, who was cast out and disowned by his own father for his debaucheries and vile manner of life, yet became the most noble of all Greeks and a portent in Europe and Asia. I reflected on Valerius Flaccus, who from luxury and evil rose to be created Flamen and became as saintly a man as beforetime he was a rascal. I also remembered Polemo of Athens, saved from a life of scandal and a death of ignominy by the wisdom of Xenocrates, the philosopher, who charmed him to virtue and made of him a great and wise person. Did not Titus Vespasianus, from a cruel scoundrel become the darling and exemplar of mankind? And, to seek in the chronicles of Christianity, need we look farther than Saint Augustine, the Manichee, who, after an incontinent and lamentable youth, ascended by the ministry of Ambrose to salvation and saintship? These and other examples fortified hope, and so, taking thought for this son of a brother long departed, I spread wing and followed him.

“But it was all to no purpose whatsoever. He is an inveterate dragon of the prime, with bloody ideas and convictions that I could neither change nor shake. I persisted, however, until, losing his little store of patience, he turned upon me, cried that he held me as a craven abomination, doubtless in the pay of some accursed human monarch, and warned me that if I dogged his footsteps another day, he would forget what youth owed to age and turn and rend me. Indeed, he appeared doubtful whether it were not his duty to rid the world of ‘a pestiferous and pusillanimous worm’--his own expression as nearly as I can translate it; and he declared that but for our relationship he should have done so at the first, and not suffered my bleating for five minutes.

“Worn out in body and mind, I left the callous reactionary, and were it not that he is my nephew, I should instantly direct you, Sir Jasper, to set out in quest of him and see whether your lance and spear cannot bring him in reach of reason. But I have decided to leave him with his reflections for the present. I may have done better than appeared. I live in faint hope that some of the good seed has taken root and will presently induce the fellow to return among us with an altered mind.”

“I will go willingly,” declared the knight. “It is to destroy just such a typical dragon as this that I set out upon my mission. Let us depart instantly, for my squire and I are equipped and were now about to seek you yourself.”

But the weary monster would not sanction any immediate punitive expedition.

“Suffer a little time to pass,” he said. “And now pull down the blinds and leave me. My foot must be fomented with a decoction of scalding poppies, and I will drink some physic: then, if the pain abates, I shall sleep for a couple of days and nights and probably awake restored.”

As he foretold, the Lavender Dragon, once eased of his acute suffering, slumbered for eight-and-forty hours, and the reverberations from his nostrils rumbled like genial thunder in the ears of his thankful people during that period. At the end of this time he awoke refreshed, hungry and better of his ailment. Whereupon he took a bath in the morning sunshine, ate prodigiously and dismissed this unfortunate failure from his mind and conversation.

He was now in excellent humour and full of the approaching nuptials and the dwellings destined for the wedded pairs.

X

_FROM JOY TO WOE_

On the day before the double wedding, the Lavender Dragon was in a didactic mood, and said many interesting things which won the applause of some among his listeners but, as usual, made Sir Jasper, Sir Claude, Father Lazarus and other good men sad.

The monster spoke with his usual directness on the limitation of families.

“A great source of human unhappiness is over-crowding,” he declared to them, “and here, as we know, it is agreed, with general accord, to expand in a ratio which bears directly upon the well-being and prosperity of all.”

“You interfere with the liberty of the subject, Sir Dragon,” ventured George Pipkin.

“That the liberty of the community shall not be interfered with, George,” replied L.D. “The need to rear and fatten armies and navies for slaughter does not, you see, arise with us. We are a feeble, but not a fearful, folk, and we know that there are too many people in the world. Authority cannot cope with the increase and Nature does so--in a manner very painful to all of good will. Reason bewails the starved souls and bodies of many little ones, while superstition, patriotism and other faulty inspirations, still too much in evidence, clamour for more of these failures. It will presently, however, be driven into man’s thick skull that quality is of greater force in affairs than quantity, and that war, famine and pestilence are cruel and abominable engines to keep the race in bounds. And when he makes this discovery, what will he do? He will first reach limitation of swords and spears, then, being a logical beast in his saner moments, attain to limitation of his own species. For when men compose their differences without shedding of blood, masses to murder and be murdered are an anachronism, and over-production becomes folly. It is argued that restriction may rob us of occasional great men. But can great men only be bred at cost of misery to thousands of small ones? If so, then let us struggle on without great men and rest content with the healthy and the sane. Our danger lies in the Orient world, whose fecundity is awful to contemplate and renders it a great obstacle to the security of the earth. East will not listen to the West on so delicate a subject, for Asia has family ideals and superstitions in this matter which must take centuries of time to dissipate.”

“You want better bread than is made of wheat,” said Sir Claude, and his voice was drearier than usual.

“Of course I do,” replied the Lavender Dragon. “Most certainly I do; and you also, I should hope, and every man and woman who has a spirit worth calling one, and intelligence to measure things as they are. I deprecate discontent and covetousness as you will admit; but there is a discontent of the soul, Sir Claude, without which man is no better than the tadpole. Plenty of hearty, healthy children let us have by all means; and let us learn more from them and about them before we begin pouring in the varied and doubtful nonsense always on tap for their little, empty heads; let us wait in patience until they are ready to pronounce some opinion on the nostrums we hold to their infant lips.”

“Do we not know far better than they, what is good for them, dear friend!” asked Father Lazarus.

“No, best of men, we do not,” replied the dragon firmly. “I have studied the child for many hundreds of years, and I tell you this: the young are often far more reasonably minded than their parents. Nature leads them to take an honest view of life, and if that view is unvitiated by grown-up lumber, it will not seldom develop and display a very rational estimate of conduct. But the work of our schoolmen in this virgin soil is often disastrous, and woe betide those who sow tares at that critical season when the rich material is best fitted to nourish and sustain them. To warp youthful intelligence and poison growing reason is a great fallacy and evil. There are precious, humanistic instincts of inquiry in well-nurtured and intelligent children, and that we should graft upon this spirit our questionable conclusions, rules of conduct, conventions, hatred of reality, chronic untruthfulness of outlook and imbecile pride, is utterly to spoil them in a very large proportion of cases. The potential power and value of many future men and women has thus been diminished; they are by so much rendered inferior, both as doers and thinkers. The stream of progress is dammed, the evolution of morals retarded. For, as I have often told you, the evolution of morals is a glorious fact; and that it should tend upwards is still more glorious; because upon this assurance hangs the destiny of mankind--all pessimists and doubters to the contrary notwithstanding. Let us, therefore, suffer the children to follow their bent, guarded and guided by pure reason; let us not catch them too young and foul the well-springs of their souls with a thousand uncertain and preposterous theories. Why, for example, does good Father Lazarus always agitate to get the children? Because he firmly believes that their future happiness and usefulness depend upon his doing so. He is much mistaken. Teach them to be clean, honest and faithful, just and merciful to the weak, humble, tolerant of others, scornful of self. Let them understand that certain instincts and temptations belong to their ancestry and original endowment; explain wherein good and evil consist according to our present worthiest values; but for the creeds and dogmas, the myths and magics, the mysteries and metaphysics, concerning which there is such an infinite diversity of opinion, let us spare them these until they reach years of discretion and are qualified to judge of their value to life and their correspondence with truth. This is not to weaken faith, but set it upon a basis of reason; for think not that faith and reason are opposed. Reason is founded upon our faith in all things reasonable.”

Nicholas Warrender agreed with his master.

“Man is credulous enough through his aboriginal forefathers, without making him more so and teaching him to believe in goblins--good and bad--from his youth up,” said the seneschal. “Thus you stain his dawning intellect, and soak it to such a colour that only one in a thousand ever gets the fabric of thought clean again. Remember that youth is the time of leisure, and when the young grow up, life and its immediate cares and occupations intervene, so that few have opportunity, let alone inclination, to go back and intelligently examine the opinions that have been implanted in them. They take these for granted henceforth, and bolt the doors of the mind upon inquiry. But what do you call them who decline to live behind bolted doors and seek for freedom instead? What name do you give to such as exercise liberty of thought and reject the learning thrust upon their infancy? ‘Infidel’ is the title reserved for such persons. Yet unto what are they unfaithful? Not to honour, justice, mercy, self-denial or charity. Only to the goblins. Thus the mass of men, who care not two pins for this subject, and whose sole concern is to prosper and preserve the approval of their neighbours, succeed in doing so, while such as honour their own gift of understanding and perceive these great and vital questions of religious faith and a world beyond the grave demand the very quintessence of their reverent examination, are cast out, persecuted, horribly destroyed for their pains, when and where the hierophants possess power to destroy them.”

“And what is the melancholy result, my friends?” asked L.D. “In the Golden Age, the idea that religion should come between man and wisdom entered no head. The philosophers instructed and the sages questioned and argued without let and hindrance; for then it was understood that progress depended upon the spirit of inquiry. But now alas! official and state-supported superstitions block this spirit at every turn; prosperous error bars the way to afflicted truth, and he who approaches these profound subjects through any other road than that pointed out for him by his rulers, will soon find himself a trespasser on forbidden ground.”

“All religions are a scaffolding, and our children’s children will yet see the scaffolding pulled down,” declared Nicholas Warrender. “These opinions are yet in the tide of their career, but must presently remain with us only as the useless hair upon our bodies and the tell-tale fragments of our anatomy which point to purposes now out-worn.”

“Consider,” added the dragon, “how many shapes man has given to his divinities. It was long before he exalted God to his own image. He ransacked the categories of Nature before he conceived those august forms of the later and human pantheons beyond which he cannot go. The Egyptians worshipped Apis, the ox; at Arsinoe, the crocodile was deity; in the city of Hercules, the ichneumon. Others adored a cat, an ibis, a falcon. The people of Hispanola kneel to invisible fairies and pray to them under the name of Zemini. In the Isle of Java the thing first met of a morning is the god for the day, no matter whether a reptile, beast or fowl. Those of Manta have made an emerald the Everlasting, and offer prayer and pilgrimage to it, bringing the inevitable gifts which the priesthood of that precious stone know how to charm from them. The Romans created a goddess of a city, and the people of Negapatam built their Pagod, a massy monster drawn upon a chariot of many wheels and over-laid with gold. The warlike Alani worship a naked sword, which is the only god they know who can answer their petitions; and in Ceylon, upon the peak of Adam, is kept the tooth of an ape--held by the Cingalese to be the holiest thing and the most potent in all Asia. With a more noble faith do the Assyrians confront us, for they worshipped the Sun and the Earth, from which they received life. The dove was sacred among them; it is a symbol still held in holiest esteem among the Christians, as you know. At Ekron the Lord of Flies enjoyed first place, and Baalzebub, the Larder-god, doubtless received many prayers to keep his myriads under control. Those of Peru adored the corpses of their Emperors, and ancestor worship persists among certain Oriental people unto this day.

“A thousand other manifestations of divinity are in the knowledge of the learned before we come to the solitary god of the Jew--a Being nobly exalted and purified, but, even as the Allah of Mahomet, One still all too human in his essence and behaviour. These deities occupied my profound attention and I made this discovery, concerning the different interpretations put upon them, that not Absolutism or Idealism, not Immanentism or Pragmatism, or any other ‘ism,’ or scism whatsoever, will lead mankind’s few and uncertain footsteps through his short life to happiness, or security. To suppose, as these people do, that their gods possess the potency, impatience and selfishness of Oriental panjandrums is vain; and whether such Eternal Beings are transcendent or immanent, universal or particular, matters nothing at all. What does matter is that they are not gentlemen; and to how parlous a state must that divinity be reduced who can learn manners, discipline and conduct from the like of us! The gods who behave worse than their creatures and make it needful that their chosen ministers should for ever apologise and explain their unsocial conduct, are not gods; for right must be right and wrong must be wrong, whether committed by a deity or a dragon; and if it be admitted that these Supreme Beings know how to choose, direct and control with utmost wisdom and purest virtue, what shall be thought while they themselves, in their almighty power, daily perpetrate or sanction abominations for which the world would execrate any child of man?

“Then you, my own dear Christians, have discovered a triune God--Three in One and One in Three. And who shall presume to question your convictions if you abide in them peacefully, without hating and murdering other people who cannot see eye to eye with you? Truth asks for nothing but open and honourable warfare against Falsehood. Given a fair field, she cannot be defeated. The story will reach its conclusion, however, because, when there is a means of return to independence, freedom with security, and consequent renewed progress, mankind must be swift to take that way. We shall presently see philosophers, each with his personal God. They will write books about their deities and every one will seek to show how his own concept of the Eternal transcends all others. Some of these home-made divinities may not be all powerful; some will even depend upon their creatures to strengthen their knees and help their difficult task. They are much to the good--these personal gods conceived by clever and earnest people, even though no two of them will ever have more than a family resemblance. Time does not stand still, and evolution continues to do her perfect work.”

But the Christians had all stolen away, led by Sir Claude and Father Lazarus. The dragon found only his seneschal still left to listen; and he was not listening: the old man had gone to sleep.

A glorious autumn day dawned for the weddings, and Dragonsville made holiday. Only those whose duty it was to milk the cows and feed the cattle put a hand to work, and though it was impossible for L.D. to go to church, the building not being constructed to admit him, he sat just outside with his huge head on the earth, where he might listen to the marriage service and the admirable address delivered to the wedded couples by Father Lazarus. In this exordium the good priest took occasion to traverse sharply and caustically many of the Lavender Dragon’s own most cherished sentiments; but the monster felt no unkindly emotion before such an attack. He loved Father Lazarus and never quarrelled with the least person who declined to share his own ideas. Any sort of persecution caused him violent uneasiness, for he held that nothing excused loss of temper and cruelty, fanaticism and intolerance.

L.D. fell into error at the banquet which followed the nuptials and, despite his doctor’s entreaties, drank far too much cider and ate too many sugared kidney beans.

After all was consumed, the dragon went into his treasure house and produced wedding gifts and also presents for everybody, to the least infant on his mother’s lap.

“I cannot give the little ones anything they value,” exclaimed L.D. to Sir Jasper, “for the idea of property vanishes in a generation or two when once human nature begins to share the ethical purity of the ant. It is better to want than to have; it is better still not to want. They do not want. But you see everybody takes my gifts for my sake; and you must do the same. These jewels are of priceless value, according to the world’s opinion, but of none whatever in Dragonsville. Even for beauty, a necklace of bluebells beats them hollow.”

The happy couples departed for their honeymoons in a distant part of the kingdom half a day’s ride from town. There, in a notable spot known as the Valley of Ferns, stood two bungalows sacred to the newly wed, and in this sequestered and attractive region the Lady Pomeroy and Mrs. George Pipkin wandered very happily with their husbands.

Then they returned to hear sad news, which at L.D.’s orders had been kept from their ears until they did so.

The Lavender Dragon had fallen dangerously ill with an attack of gout, which involved not only his four gigantic paws, but threatened his vitals also.

A gloom as of eclipse sat upon the faces of the people. All merry-making had ceased; even the children only played the quietest games and could put little heart into their pleasure.

XI

_THE PASSING_

By slow and gradual stages the Lavender Dragon approached his end. Sometimes he rallied, and the gallons of colchicum which he consumed, while rendering him very languid, sufficed to lessen his misery. Now and then he was lifted on to a gigantic trolley and dragged for half a mile through the gardens, that he might take the air and see the people; but his activities were over, and though his mind continued clear and his spirit cheerful, his body lost all strength and he knew that he would never take wing again. To the prospect of a final flight under the sunshine he clove for a long while; then he abandoned the hope with rational resignation.

“It is good,” he said, “that we do not know when we perform a well-loved action for the last time. Ignorance in such a matter is mercy, for, looking back after many days, we can bear the knowledge that must have wakened active grief at the moment....”

He was in a pensive mood on an occasion when Sir Jasper and Petronell sat beside him and cheered him with their conversation.

“Fate,” he said, “has an art to take what we most value and deny the summit of our ambition, while granting gifts small by comparison in our eyes, though infinitely precious to others, who lack them. He who desires fame is offered wealth, or love. The hungry for love may win to high place by their art, or craft, yet would gladly barter it for the female they dream about. The genius goes childless, though like enough he would thankfully sacrifice his master endowment for little children on his knee; while the man with a full quiver yearns for that peace and lack of responsibility which he supposes would enable him to do great deeds. It is in fact a sad but blessed human quality to covet what lies beyond our reach. The content are ever negligible, for only frozen sympathies and peddling minds can be so.”

He spoke of the Latin god, Pan, with great affection, and declared himself to be in union and understanding with that divinity.

“But in Pan lurks a peril against which you must guard,” warned the dragon. “There is a panic terror, a fear and dread of him, that may awake at any moment to ruin life; and there is a panic trust, equally destructive--that blind, cowardly repose in his shadow which tends to rob us of self-command and self-expression. Both these extremes stultify existence, and other gods than Pan are also responsible for them.”

Sometimes the fading monster was in a cheerful humour and delighted to tell stories. Indeed he never tired of doing so until the end, and children were admitted to him, fifty at a time, to listen while he related the fables and historic tales they loved.

On one such occasion the little sons of Sally Pipkin replied, when he asked what he should tell the young people assembled, and begged for the narrative of the Jeweller.

“I too, like that story,” answered the dragon, “and am well pleased to rehearse it once again. A certain jeweller in the time of Galienus displayed a soup-tureen of exquisite workmanship, which he declared was wrought of a single ruby; and the Empress, doting on the treasure, prevailed with the Emperor Galienus to purchase it for her. To please his lass was the Cæsar’s first delight at all times; so he paid a mighty price for the soup-tureen, and the jeweller, who had long desired a snug villa on the Sabine Hills, now retired from business and prepared to spend the remainder of his life among his vines and olives in luxury and ease.

“But there came a man from the East, of great wisdom in all jewels and precious things, and having heard concerning this wonder he went to court and prayed that it might be permitted him to gladden his eyes with the ruby soup-tureen--a jewel beyond even his experience. Aware of the Oriental’s fame he was made welcome by Galienus and permitted to see the magnificent collections of the royal palace; and then, after he had beheld and admired a thousand works of art and nature, the crowning glory was placed in his hands and he examined the soup-tureen carved of a single ruby.

“But no word of praise rewarded this masterpiece. Instead, the wise man frowned, sighed heavily, and making obeisance to the Empress, addressed her with Eastern politeness and wrapped his harsh news in flowery words.

“He declared that, from the first, he had suspected fraud, because a ruby of size to make a soup-tureen was clean contrary to Nature. And now his fears had been too bitterly confirmed, for the soup-tureen was only glass. It possessed small intrinsic value and no interest whatever, excepting of a tragical and painful character.

“Thereupon the Empress ran to the Emperor with many tears, and Galienus, a just prince, despatched swift soldiers to the jeweller’s villa, arrested the rascal as he was about to eat his dinner, and hastened him to a dungeon.

“At a later hour he stood before the outraged Emperor and heard his doom. ‘What,’ enquired Galienus, ‘shall be done to him who robs his monarch and fools the Queen? The least, I think, would be that he should make a Roman holiday. In a word, guilty man, you will only see the light of day again upon the sands of the stadium at our next festivity.’

“With this dreadful promise the guilty jeweller was hustled from his sovereign’s presence, nothing left to hope for but a terrible and uncertain death; and he had no support in his trial and no consciousness of right behind him to assist his spirit through the evil hours that still remained. For very well indeed he knew that the soup-tureen was glass, since he had himself designed and executed it in secret.

“Not long was the jeweller called to wait execution of sentence, for on the third day after arrest, he found himself blindfolded, led away and presently permitted to see again. He now stood on the sand of the amphitheatre amid an immense concourse of his fellow countrymen; while above him, in the royal box, sat the deluded Empress and her spouse, together with the notables of Rome about them.

“Only one other creature shared that bitter expanse of sand with the jeweller. It was a huge, African lion with black mane and tawny pelt; and the spectators, who had thronged the place to see this gaunt monster already waiting for his prey, felt no little astonishment that a lion, kept without food for a week, should hesitate before the plump and succulent spectacle of the erring jeweller now within his reach.

“Yet, for a time the ferocious beast moved not, but sat with its green, unblinking eyes upon the sinner. It opened its mouth, to reveal a formidable circle of white fangs, and it slowly swept the dust with its tufted tail. But, as a sybarite, who delays his delicious morsel for the pleasure of anticipation, the lion still delayed. The jeweller also delayed and made no effort to shorten the distance between himself and the instrument of punishment, until a voice--the Emperor’s own--was lifted in command. He ordered the victim to save the lion further trouble and the company longer delay. Whereupon the doomed man, himself weary of such horrid suspense, crept--a stout, solitary figure in a blue toga--to the denizen of the desert.

“The crouching lion lashed his tail, and the man came nearer and nearer, until he stood within half a yard of his destroyer’s gaping jaws. Doubtless he then felt that the monster might be invited to do the rest. But thereupon an astounding thing happened, for Galienus himself, to the horror of his wife and the company, leapt alone and unarmed into the arena and joined the shaking criminal and the lion appointed to devour him. Then, in a loud and cheerful voice which reached all corners of that mighty concourse, the Emperor spoke.

“‘May it please you, my august wife, my ministers and my dear people, to learn what this mystery means. I have, as you well know, been ever of opinion that the punishment should fit the crime; and upon hearing this fat rascal was a cheat, it struck me that to cheat him again would be a very just and proper reward for his villainy. He thought that he was going to die and make a meal for a fine and hungry lion. Well, he’s sold, for this lion is but a thing of putty, paint and straw, with a cunning contrivance inside him to make him open his jaws and wag his tail.’

“Galienus kicked the lion as he spoke and the effigy toppled over upon its side; he then kicked the jeweller and told him to be off and mend his abominable ways. Whereupon the thankful fellow fell on his knees, kissed the purple shoon of his monarch and scuttled sweating from the arena amid roars of laughter.

“But whether the Empress laughed we know not; for it may have been a joke for which she lacked the necessary humour. Galienus, however, won the applause of a vast majority on that occasion, since empires can easiest bear the yoke of tyrants who enjoy a sense of fun.”

The children lifted their voices in familiar delight, for this was a story that never wearied them, and they were not saddened by the knowledge that L.D. would never tell it again.

On another occasion the seneschal, Sir Claude, Doctor Doncaster and other of the elders invited the Lavender Dragon to indicate his wishes for the future, concerning which there existed much difference of opinion among them.

“First,” said Warrender, “we most desire to render your own great name immortal.”

The Lavender Dragon smiled and considered the subject with closed eyes; then, according to his wont, he traced parallel instances from history when a like problem had arisen.

He drank a huge jorum of colchicum and spoke to them.

“You remind me of ingenious men who have desired that their fame should shine after they had gone beyond reach of it. There was that Seventh wonder of the world which Sostratus built for Ptolemy Philadelphus. ‘The Tower of Pharos’ it was called, and in secret the architect wrote upon it: ‘Sostratus to the gods, and for the safety of sailors’; but these words, carved in enduring stone, he hid behind a covering of plaster inscribed with the name and title and glory of Ptolemy. And this he did, well knowing that the waves of the sea would presently wash the monarch’s claim away and reveal his own name engraved on marble for subsequent generations. Yet where is that Pharos now? Again, when Alexander the Great threw down the walls of Thebes, Phryne offered to rebuild them at her own charges, provided that she might record thereon how Alexander had destroyed and Phryne had restored. Remember, too, Trajan, who set his name on every stone he erected, until the wits gave him a new name, and called him ‘Pellitory of the Wall.’

“No, my dear Nicholas, and you, my good friends,” he continued. “I have not the least desire for posthumous honour, or to be remembered save by the kind hearts that have beaten with my own and aided my endeavour. As to the future, they often have ill-fortune who seek to tie up the time to come with dead hands. For the future will not be dictated to, and no man can prophesy how human values may change, or say when one kingdom shall desire a monarch, another a republic and a third anarchy. True it is that we groan and labour under dead laws and the decayed enactments of vanished generations and pestilential precedents; but that is only because for the most part we richly reward the knaves who enforce them, and the nation as a whole is too ignorant, or lazy, to cast off its burden.

“You remind me of an Emperor of Constantinople, Anastasius by name, who, being short of friends and well knowing that his time was at hand, paused to reflect on his successor. Near issue he had none, and the choice lay between three nephews--brothers, concerning whom he knew little good, or ill. In his esteem they were equal; and since reason could not decide between them, he trusted to chance, for he caused three beds to be set in a sleeping chamber and hid the empire’s crown in the tester of one. Then, sending for the boys, he entertained them and, when night was come, bade them go sleep and choose which bed they would. With morn the Emperor himself entered the apartment of the brothers, to learn which had reposed beneath the crown. And what did he discover? The eldest boy slumbered in a bed innocent of the diadem; and to the second, whose sleep also was not frowned upon by the awful symbol, had crept his smallest brother--for company. The regal couch lay untenanted.”

“A good tale,” said the seneschal, “but no answer, L.D.”

“When I chanced upon my own nephew, not so long ago,” confessed the dragon, “I own a passing inspiration flashed to my brain and led me to wonder if, by good hap, he might be disposed to carry on our labours and consent to take my place and uphold my tradition. But, as you know, any hope in that direction swiftly vanished. Nor will I even emulate Julian, the Emperor, and leave the helm to him your living judgments may approve. It pleases me better to think that Dragonsville shall be thrown open to the world, and that our modest enterprise may be seen and considered for what it is worth by all men of good will. Let the young go forth and carry with them our principles, and let the middle-aged and old, if they so will, remain here and illustrate them. Let it be shown how that happiness is only real which has been procured by a man for his fellow man; let a community be discovered that is actuated by this rule of conduct. Invite the people to survey Dragonsville, since herein lies our proof; and ask the mighty and the wise and those inspired with love for their kind to determine whether or no our theories admit of application on a more generous scale. Perhaps not; it may be that only such a primitive folk as ourselves, satisfied with little and no longer stung by lust of possession, could pursue this ingenuous manner of life; but much might be done, and I die firmly persuaded that if we could but strike at the root of man’s selfishness, his superstition and his egregious desire to prosper at the expense of everybody else, then substantial progress would be merely a question of time. I have lived to see the two bitterest enemies of man, and their names are Greed and Creed; while the handmaid of their happiness, the Cinderella that toils for them with little thanks, and still waits patiently to become their queen, is Reason. And, sooner or later, she will assuredly reign over a united earth, since without reason unity is impossible.”

Within a few weeks of this speech, and after another winter’s frost was melted out of the ground, the dragon directed that his grave should be begun.

“It will take a long time,” he said, “and I should like to see it finished.”

Therefore, with many tears (for this business impressed upon them what was soon to happen), the people began to dig a mighty pit, one hundred yards long, twenty-five yards broad and twenty yards deep. It yawned beside the grove of budding hawthorns which covered the tumulus of his wife; and L.D. lived to see the scented glory of the may before he passed.

There was an incident at the early digging and, for the first and only time, Dicky Gollop, the jester, made the Lavender Dragon laugh. For while the monster inspected his grave, as yet but five feet deep, Dicky failed to see where he was stepping and fell in backwards. Thus at last he reached to his ambition, though in a left-handed sort of manner, and genuinely entertained his master.

After the completion of this work the Lavender Dragon failed rapidly, and there came a day in June when with the dawn he died. About him were assembled the seneschal and other old men and women, Father Lazarus, Sir Jasper and Petronell, Sir Claude and Doctor Doncaster, who ministered to the expiring monster. The Lavender Dragon’s last words were not forgotten by those who heard them.

“Fetch the trolley, while I have strength to crawl upon it,” he said. “It will save you much trouble afterwards.”

They obeyed, and with an expiring effort, L.D. stretched his bulk upon the vehicle and lost consciousness. His heart heaved behind the mighty ribs a little longer; then the beat grew slow and stopped; the blinds of his lids rolled down slowly over the fading opals of his eyes, and he was quite dead.

XII

_BUTTERFLIES_

Upon the night after the funeral, as though to indicate that the old order had changed for ever, the walls of Dragonsville fell to the earth and the empire of the Lavender Dragon ceased to exist as a separate kingdom, defended and preserved behind its own ramparts. An immense restlessness already infected the people, and when it was known that the walls had crumbled, many feared and many rejoiced. The young would lead away their kinsfolk into the outer world, and not a few consented to accompany them; but others remained and hoped that they might be permitted to do so. Of these were Nicholas Warrender, who took now the lead at the wish of all, with George Pipkin for his right-hand man. Sir Claude of the Strong Shield also determined to spend the balance of his time in tending the dragon’s grave.

As for Sir Jasper of Pomeroy and his fair wife, they set forth on a cloudless morning in hope to find welcome and waken far-spreading happiness at home in the West-country; while many from Pongley-in-the-Marsh and elsewhere also returned to their places, somewhat over-sanguine that the message of goodwill and good tidings they brought might reconcile their heirs to their return.

Father Lazarus remained at Dragonsville, and it was in connection with this honourable and faithful man that the first hard words were spoken within that township after the decease of the founder.

Sir Jasper was just about to depart upon his long journey southward when this unfortunate thing happened. He rode his piebald charger, and Lady Petronell sat beside him on her riding-horse, a powerful and mettlesome beast. One accompanied them, having his own steed, and a second, whereon their trifling luggage was bestowed. He was a lad born and bred at Dragonsville, who had entered the knight’s service. The priest, with Nicholas Warrender, Sir Claude, George Pipkin and many others, collected to bid the voyagers god-speed, and as he drank the stirrup cup, Sir Jasper spoke of their departed friend.

“May his humane and gentle spirit enter into us, and help us to advance the happiness of a weary world,” said he.

“It has done so,” declared his wife. “None who enjoyed knowledge of our dear dragon can ever be quite the same afterwards.”

“Be sure that we shall yet welcome him in a place of perfect happiness when it is our turn,” asserted Sir Claude with an unusual ray of hope; but Father Lazarus sighed and refused to echo any such sentiment.

“A vain aspiration,” he answered. “We must be brave in this matter and not palter with conscience. None can feel greater grief than myself to recognise the truth; but the truth is ever unassailable. In a word, L.D. has gone where the bad dragons go, since there is no appointed place for good dragons, and it were vain to deceive ourselves and pretend otherwise. To this fate is he fallen, not because he himself was bad--far from it--I never met such a saintly character on two feet, let alone four; but because, having brain and wit to choose the right path, he preferred to remain upon the wrong one; and virtue is of nothing worth that springs from foundations that will not bear the test of Faith.”

The seneschal snorted, and Sir Jasper spoke.

“Haply he will be pitied and pardoned in credit of his good works,” ventured the knight.

“Alas! We have the highest authority for refusing to believe any such thing,” replied Father Lazarus sadly. “He would be the first to own it himself.”

“Out on you!” cried Nicholas Warrender, his eye flashing and his white beard a-bristle. “What manner of man are you to deny salvation to your benefactor and first friend? Did not the Almighty make you both, and make him worth a thousand of you?”

They wrangled so that they forgot to bid the parting pair “farewell,” and Sir Jasper, who lacked not sympathy for either side, rode forward with his wife and left them to it. But neither convinced the other, since they had entered upon that age-long argument, wherein only a time yet to come shall declare the victory.

* * * * *

For six generations after his disappearance the dragon’s grave continued to be a scene of pilgrimage; and then his rede was forgotten and the things he had attempted to do no longer remembered. He sank into a myth, and his castle and his city crumbled away under the sleights of time. The owl hooted in his dining hall; the bat hung aloft in his sleeping chamber; and presently the ivy, with steadfast might, dragged all down until not one stone remained upon another. Then did the watchful Woods of Blore, finding no hindrance, creep forward with sapling legions that swiftly bulked to trees and so engulfed and swallowed that happy valley, until all evidence of man and his labour alike disappeared.

Yet, even to this day at the season of high summer, the wanderer with faith may chance upon a knoll still open to the sky, and find the great mound bright in a robe of scented lavender, agleam with vanessa butterflies--black and scarlet, crimson and purple. The living jewels dance in sunshine and fragrance, and round about sing birds and patter the furry creatures of the wild.

Beneath lie the bones of a vast saurian--that excellent mystery known to the Dark Ages as the Lavender Dragon; and since all history is but an echo and a reverberation, it may happen that his theory shall yet revive, to challenge the mind of man, and his practice be again attempted.

We have made a measure of progress since the days of Dragonsville, and the fact that we are so widely, keenly alive to the need for yet swifter advance is the most hopeful thing about us. There speaks the evolution of our moral nature, wakening from long dalliance; there moves the spirit of good will, struck into a cruel coma by the torment of recent years. Mighty powers are they, to help humanity correct its values, purify its ambitions and seek those ideals of generosity, abnegation and selfless purpose, without which no pathway of advancement through darkness into day can be discovered. Dawn is upon the mountain tops and, as the sun arises, light will descend into the homes and heart of mankind--because it can do no other.

THE END

Transcriber's Notes:

Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.

Perceived typographical errors have been changed.