SIR POMFRETT AND THE DRAGON

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 73, 19 December 1925, Page 23

SIR POMFRETT AND THE DRAGON

Christmas is the season of ghosts, dragons, goblins, and other fantasies of the imagination of juvenile frightfulness. Here is a dragon story, by Alan Ivimey and Owen Copeland in the “London Magazine,” which has a modern flavour in the telling.

■ PON a time there was, in the land of Lyonesse which ' the seas have long since coveftfl, a forest. , It measured t w e l v e ‘ leagues, more or less, from east to west and as man more north and south. ' " Now there was every kind of tree growing in the forest, both. of those sorts that may yet be found in England, and of many others besides that have been for ever drowned. Such as the wattle, the hemmis, and the scedlc tree. ‘ - But especially there were pine trees and thousands upon thousands of rhododendrons with blossoms as big as a man’s face, of mauve and crimson and purple and white And there were also many hides of open covered with bracken and with here and there aii oak. And again there was much heath land, which is to say that heather and broom grew there and bilberries and gorse. And in places there were pools with little yellow cliffs where sand martins built. , « And over this great woodland, which Was called the Forest of Faihr, ruled a knight, Sir Perkin Pomfrett, who also styled himself Sir Perkin of Wanhopc, Lord of Faihr, and Vavasour of .Whevthorpe with Limping. His castle of Wanliope was built beside a mere called the Mere of Rooth. because its waters were black and bitter and no birds came there. All round the shallow parts of this pool and right up to the walls of the outer bailey thick, dark green rushes thrust out ot the sombre water and, curving, grew down again so Jliat the multitude of them, leaning'this way and that athwart each other, made it seem as though the bed of the mere Mid sprouted with a scant and wiry growth of ’'X’et upon the other side'of the castle the view was fair with steading and upland and spinney. Often the knight would look from the keep and watchthe reapers in the harvest or the blueblack crows flapping behind the. ploughmen and the sun upon the new furrows. V ’ So that he' was gay or gloomy , according as he looked first over the mere or over the land. . And upon his gay days lie uided at home and watched his daughters at their talnbour frames or listened .to ms wife, the Lady Pomfrett, when she sang to the cittern. '• But upon his gloomy days he quested dragons. Sir Pomfrett was, by long and cateful trial and experience, very cunning in the matter of dragons and the ways of dragons. It was his especial charge to keep down or check the growth and undue multiplication of dragons in all that part of Lyonesse. . Only in the remotest and most marshy paits of the Forest of Faihr were there any dragons left. Nor durst any one of them play too openly at .the dragons’ favourite sport of carrying off fair maidens. It may be as well to record 1 here that dragons have .no leanings towards fair maidens for either their beauty or their maidenhood, save in so far as these shall make them eat tenderly. No The maidens are the infalhb|e bait for a knight-errant, than which there is no mote joyful sight to a proper and" riiat'fial dragon. For. the meeting of the two means first a fight and, for such dragons as are lucky, the great joy of peeling the stricken J.varrior of his armour for which purpose the beasts have special peelers or claws upon their forefeet and then a full meal and after that | a quet siesta among the ferns. | And all this time their next meal swoons bcauteously against a treetrunk bound hand and foot, and praying for the advent of the next hero. Often dragons have been • known to keep a maiden for. days and. bait likely spots with her, and, in this way, be the undoing, in every sense, of many gallant men-at-arms. - , But as I h'ave told you, this .sort of thing could no longer be done on any large scale witbin the marches of the Lord of Wanliope- . And all the woodmen of Faihr and their wives, and all the, socmen, franklevns, reeves, fremcn, and villeins of Whevthorpe and of Limping and their wives, blessed Sir Perkin Poinfrett in that he came so manfully between them and the dread flying things with red eyes that-kept them from their 61C And all round the great hall of Wanhope there hung testimonials and illuminated addresses, and the signed complaints of the various deputations thathad waited upon Sir Perkin from time to time. There were also Letters latent from the King himself conferring upon him the title of Keeper of the King’ o Peace and an illuminated manuscript'of the Song of Solomon done by the royal scrivener himself. AH these either mentioned dragons or were a reward for removing them. The gallant knight then had every reason to be pioml of himself, so. far as his knighthood permitted. But there was one matter upon which he could never for long set his mind on the other_sidc of the heath-,

lands, among the. pine woods and the thickest lived a solitary dragon. The last of its race in that neighbourhood. It had/survived its relatives—which had all been*killed off or had emigrated to China—by superior agility and fighting powers, and had come to a sort of .understanding with Sir Pomfrett. It was tins/ understanding which was causing the knight, so much unease. He doubted whether a knight of. the first land of Christendom and a Keeper of the King’s Peace to boot had any business to. come to an understanding with a dragon. The pact between them allowed it herbergage, which.is to say board and lodging, in. all 'the eastern part of the forest provided that it did not come within . a mile of any habitation by flight or within a league by day, and kept its diet within the strict vegetarian limit. Sir Perkin, on his part, undertook,to see that it was not molested- in any way. The dragon kept loyally to its part of the bargain, and the knight, it is sufficient to say, had given his word. Still, the fact remained, there was, i dragon, ami that ti large one, warning at will in at; otherwise dragon-free part of the Forest of Faihr. You' are not ’to suppose that Sir Pomfrett had not given very serious thought to the matter before making such a bargain. To capture the beast alive was out of all question. ' For no matter how many men could be mustered, the dragon’s ears, which always listened even while the rest of it was asleep, were much too sharp for any s - 1

one to approach within a mile unheard. And even if that could have been done in some way and a hundred men had bound it with a hundred’ ropes to a hundred of the strongest horses or five score of the stoutest trees, yet the monster had merely to breathe gently upon the ropes and they would char and snap, and then it would just 11 v away. ' Even—and it shows how skilled a dragon-fighter Sir Perkin really was, for he had thought also of this—even, I say, if the dragon might chance to have so severe a cold in the bead as to be unable to breathe fire, yet so strong were its wings that it could have broken any ropes, chains, or other bonds soever. All this is merely to show yon that if the knight decided on the impregnability of a particular dragon, that was good enough for--anybody, even the King. . / There were left, then, only two other ways of getting rid of it. \ The first way was, of course, to kill it. But von may guess, if this dragon would make so much fuss about being taken alive, how much more difficulty it would raise over being killed. Unfortunately, too, its promise to abstain from eating people had got it into a habit of- living exclusively on fruit and vegetables, except at Christmas

time, wlnii the Lady Pomfrett used to semi it-a hamper. So that there was no chance at all of coming across it, gorged and sleepy, 'after devouring a maiden; or suffering with indigestion—at such times dragons are particularly troubled with hiccoughs —through inadvertently swallowing a baldrick or a vambrace or some other oddment of knightly habiliment as •sometimes happened through careless peeling. So this dragon could not be killed. The last way, which Sir Pomfrett hgd not thought of till the time this story begins, was -simply to ask it to go away. So one day the Lord ol Faihr donned his' best jupon and a cote-hardie of the finest sajin and rode away with his squire Auhbric over the heath to/ the dragon. Nowi as you will havq noticed in the title of this story, the dragon was not an-ordinary dragon. It was a pareelious dragon. This word needs, when applied to dragons, a certain amount of explanation, A paieelious dragon, then, is one whose habit or delight it is to fly very quickly and at a distance of about four feet from the ground through woods, tilting from side to side to avoid the lower branches. So that this kind df dragon' naturally .frequents woods where there are long glades through which it can pared comfortably. Most of the time it. keeps its great wings stiff and they curve beautifully, like an open umbrella.

It is a parlous and formidable adventure to meet a dragon parceling down

an avenue of forest in which it takes all the. room. Should you stand up you are cut in half, and if you lie down the beast i swoops slightly, picks you up, jerks itself and 10, yon are withiq* Now the Forest of Faihr had miles and mitts of such glades. After riding for about four hours Sir Perkin and Auhbric came to a place where the rhododendrons were particularly thick and tall and fine. The squire was bidden to seek around nnd presently came back and reported sounds of scratching. So the knight got from his horse, which was beginning to sidle, and, throwing the reins to Auhbric, pushed through the bushes, scattering coloured petals at every step until after much difficulty lie came to an open space entirely enclosed amid the boskage. .The diagon was facing him. It was sitting on one hind leg and two front ones and had plainly paused in the middle of scratching behind its ear. The claw it had used now hung uncertainly in mid-air, contracting slowly as the whole limb gradually sank. If the dragon had had eyebrows thev would have been raised. “Give thee God den,” sair Sir Domfrett. It got up and exchanged greetings nnd then they both sat down upon a bed of brown bracken.

"Seasonable weather,” said the dragon politely. “Well enough,” nodded the knight, and stared thoughtfully between his toes.

The dragon glanced at him sideways and saw that there was something on his mind. 1

It was warm and drowsy in that lair among the bushes with the faint smell of resin. A great bumble bee, heavy- with honey, waxed and waned across the space above their heads which was faintly striped by the sunbeams and shadows with gossamer bars of hazy gold and blue. The dragon started to yawn—and coloured fire rippled upon its blue-green scales —put a claw to its mouth, checked itself and sighed instead. Lwentv feet above its nostrils a bunch of pine needles shrivelled and became brown. With a slight rustle of bracken the knight turned his head.' / "I have perceived,” lie said, "in our parlevs together, that thou art not miacaualnted with the usages of chivalry and the behaviour of gentlemen of coatarmour. And you will know, therefore, that when a cavalier is in Ins dutv he must needs do it sans let or hindrance from any enticements of his own preferring.*' “That’s so,” nodded the dragon slumbrouslv.

"I am conic hither then, as the servant of mv sovereign liege the King, to crave that vou depart from within the marches of ’ Faihr,'before the , eve next of Saint Chrvsostom.” - The dragon stared; absent-mindedly it allowed a claw to revisit its left ear —which was hardly polite. It had lost the customary urbanity of dragons; Not for long, however. : Presently, with an air of sweet reasonableness and a rattle of scales as it settled, itself more comfortably: “Let us discuss the matter,” it said. If Sir Perkin felt some relief, at this attitude he did not show it. Still, he had left his suit of plate at home--even a sword had seemed a breach of good taste. He looked round for Auhbric; .Auhbric was afield after the genet. She never had stood dragons. The creature waited without a trace of impatience. It had known Lao Tzu in its youth. The knight recollected himself and prepared his case. “If in the right pursuance of his devoir,” he began, "a devoir laid upon him by his liege the King which howsoe’er perilous 'the emprise lie is in all honour bounded ’’ "Sans let or hindrance—yes, yes,” said the dragon. “Yon were speaking of my—er —impending departure?’’ "If—er—yes. If after much hardiesse a cavalier in his. last encounter should entreat his foes and parley with them, his liege would have great dole thereat and forgetting victories amany would say, ‘Lo, the emprise was too perilous for him.’ And forasmuch—— ” “Very well, then,” admitted the dragon. "Now I asks you, am I perilous?” "Through all the realms of chivlary where the gests of drakes and worms are sgng, the fame of thy food ” "Bilberries,” unctuously. “I wish you wouldn’t interrupt,” said the knight, “You put me off.” "Sorry. 1. take it you want me to go?” ' “I was only trying to explain my point of view.” Sir Perkin let his gaze wander back undecidedly to his feet. Thq business was proving more difficult, than he had thought.. Besides, to look long at a dragon had always made his eyes smart. “I trust that your gracious lady is in good - health ?” murmured the dragon ; it was only trying to put the other, at his ease. / The knight looked up suspiciously, “The Lady Pomfrett is very well, I thank you,” he replied at length. Another pause. It was an argument of many silences. Both shifted their positions somewhat. The late spiking afternoon had worn on and a' shaft of hot sunlight came slanting through the tree-trunks, glanced, overxthe purple-crowned .Summit of a rhododendron bush and filled the little clearing 'with a steamy fragrance. The bumble-bee had now taken refuge in an. open foxglove ,bell and was buzzing there somnolentlv. The seasons, of course, are always slightly advanced in the neighbourhood of a dragon’s lair. The denizen of the lair, whose impulses were kindly—in the old, bad days it bad always tied its bait sitting and put down bracken for her—bethought itself of subjects for knightly converse and laid itself out to please. The knight brightened slowly and for a while, the talk was about gerfalcons and the odds given iii Caerleon on the Quest of the Grail. However, there was business to be settled, and already it was growing late. After one of the longer pauses, emboldened by his reception, Sir Perkin coughed and resumed the broken thread. Compromise, he maintained, was the banc of chivalry. The knightly duty, be said, was .to choose a gaoFworthy of high ■ endeavour and to ensure it looking neither to the right hand nor to the left. , Compromise, proclaimed the dragon, was the law of the universe. Nay, it was the mainspring, the essence, the universe itself. “Nennv, nennv,” exclaimed the knight, "the ways of God arc dark, but His laws are straight, and to His own ends though we know them not be moveth as an arrow from a bow. Yea, even as the goose-quill to an arrow so are the laws of God to the order of chivalry.” In effect the King was the .mouthpiece of Heaven; the 1 King had enjoined the removal of dragons from th* land; upon Sir Perkin it devolved to see that dragons went; the dragon must go. , 1 To mv wav of thinking,” said the dragon, “no laws are as simple as that. Compromise am| again compromise! Peer ini > the smallest particle of matter or send your gaze into the limitless depths’ of the sky, and vou will perceive that there is no motion but nv reason of most delicate, adjustments. “At every turn there is a poised balance between warring elements. Life itself‘is a treaty between fire and earth, between bo.lv and soul, between iminortalitv and corruption. “The Jade Dragon of the Waters and the Golden Dragon of the Air exist by an eternal compromise. Without their agreement there could be no clouds, no r; in, no rivers, no growth; the earth could not breathe; the whole process of atmospheric metabolism would be upset. 1 become too technical for you? The knight growled uneasily. “The Tec is the right path' and the Tao cannot be attained but by compromise. The seeker must put himself in perfect harmony, not with one but with everv element, until each sense is a window of eternity ami all material phenomena op«n paths to the spiritual ” Ami so on. , The dragon, ’ it must be admitted,

was carried away by its own eloquence, and the warmth of its convictions caused the air above its scaly length to shimmer dizzily. Perhaps, too, its manner had unconsciously become a trifle didactic, for the knight was slowly growing angrier and angrier. “Pardee!” he cried.- ‘.‘Wilt go or wilt not?” “Not,” said the dragon. "There is no finer bilberry wood between here and Cathay.” Sir Perkin had sprung to his feet and was now leaning, arms .crossed,

against a trunk. Save for the spilled wine in the western sky, it was all but night, though a growing radiance gave promise of a moon. As its silvery, glow waxed the rhododendron blooms, red and white and purple, turned to softer shades of grev. A few early moths fluttered uncertainly round the glow from the dragon’s nostrils. The earth soon lost the heat of the short spring day. The knight shivered in'spite of his wrath; obligingly the dragon breathed a little haraer. ’"By my hilt, and thou shalt go!” shouted the standing figure. "And thou wilt not, then'shall 1 make thee!” “Without touching on the means you propose to employ, may I remind you of voitr knightlv word?” > > “True,” leplied the knight, abashed at his 'apse. “I-l ” He lost'control. “I shall stop .your Christmas hamperl” , , “Indeed?” said the dragon with a good-humoured shrug. “I find bilberries verv satisfying. I'ut that, too, you

know, would scarcely oe a knightly act.” “Ladv Pomfrett’s hamper was not m the contract.” The dragon checked and y. look ot pain dawned in its eyes as the significance of Sir Pomfrett’s mumbled answer same home. It had lived all this time in the Forcst of Faihr, it is true, under an arrangement that a huckster might have

called a “contract”; but now the knight, forgetting his gentic upbringing,- was insisting, like any Lombardy burgher in his usury, on the letter instead of the spirit of the law. To introduce Lady Pomfrett’s hamper, even that lady’s name, into the firgument, was unworthy and contemptible, the act of a pinchbeck scrivener’s clerk. Sir Pomfre.t was belying his gentle upbringing, and behaving in a manner unworthy of a knight. Subterfuge was death to the dragon’s finer feelings; even its meals had once been flavoured with chivalry.

It gave the knight a long, cold stare of reproof. The muscles rippled under its scales at it gathered itself (together. Sir Perkin started back into the undergrowth; but.-before lie could/give a cry the great creature had leapt into the air and was parceling down the glade with a drum "f jyind beneath its leathcrly wings, a mass .of dim and ominous darkness that rose and circled until it was clear of the tree-tops, circled again and shot upwards into the night. • | ’ . •alighcr still it •went and higher, until it entered the region, of moonbeams that had not yet descended to the earth, and there for a lingering moment) it poised and undulated in the rippling rotary danci of dragon.-, a ,thing; of flashing loveliness which seemed to fill the firmament with the glimmer of its bluegreen scales. And then it set its nostrils to the east. ■

When it was no more than the occasional eclipse of a star, the Lord of

: Wanhope silently sought for Auhbric and rode thoughtfully back to a be--1 lated dinner. Even the mess of saynaws from the home stewpond which f his wife had kept warm for him could - not rouse him frofii his moody silence. - ‘ “What was it,” he asked at last, with 'The dullard would never understand. - a sidelong glance of suspicion at the - Lady I’omfrett, “that you used to put - into the dragon’s Christmas hampers?”