Whenever Sir Godfrey had come home with new wine, and after the labels had been pasted on the casks, then Popham, with Whelpdale beside him, had these carefully set down in the cellar, which was a vast dim room, the ceilings supported by heavy arches; the barrels, bins, kegs, hogsheads, tuns, and demijohns of every size and shape standing like forests and piled to the ceiling. And now something was wrong there.
“This ’ere’s a hawful succumstence, sir,” observed Whelpdale the Buttons to his superior, respectfully.
“It is, indeed, a himbroglio,” replied Popham, who had a wide command of words, and knew it.
Neither domestic spoke again for some time. They were seated in the buttery. The Butler crossed his right leg over his left, and waved the suspended foot up and down,—something he seldom did unless very grievously perturbed. As for poor little Whelpdale, he mopped his brow with the napkins that were in a basket waiting for the wash.
Then the bell rang.
“His ludship’s study-bell,” said Popham. “Don’t keep him waiting.”
“Hadn’t you better apprise his ludship of the facks?” asked Whelpdale, in a weak voice.
Popham made no reply. He arose and briefly kicked Buttons out of the buttery. Then he mounted a chair to listen better. “He has hentered his ludship’s apawtment,” he remarked, hearing the sound of voices come faintly down the little private staircase that led from Sir Godfrey’s study to the buttery: the Baron was in the habit of coming down at night for crackers and cheese before he went to bed. Presently one voice grew much louder than the other. It questioned. There came a sort of whining in answer. Then came a terrific stamp on the ceiling and a loud “Go on, sir!”
“Now, now, now!” thought Popham.
Do you want to hear at once, without waiting any longer, what little Whelpdale is telling Sir Godfrey? Well, you must know that for the past thirteen years, ever since 1190, the neighbourhood had been scourged by a terrible Dragon. The monster was covered with scales, and had a long tail and huge unnatural wings, beside fearful jaws that poured out smoke and flame whenever they opened. He always came at dead of night, roaring, bellowing, and sparkling and flaming over the hills, and horrid claps of thunder were very likely to attend his progress. Concerning the nature and quality of his roaring, the honest copyholders of Wantley could never agree, although every human being had heard him hundreds of times. Some said it was like a mad bull, only much louder and worse. Old Gaffer Piers the ploughman swore that if his tomcat weighed a thousand pounds it would make a noise almost as bad as that on summer nights, with the moon at the full and other cats handy. But farmer Stiles said, “Nay, ’tis like none of your bulls nor cats. But when I have come home too near the next morning, my wife can make me think of this Dragon as soon as ever her mouth be open.”
This shows you that there were divers opinions. If you were not afraid to look out of the window about midnight, you could see the sky begin to look red in the quarter from which he was approaching, just as it glares when some distant house is on fire. But you must shut the window and hide before he came over the hill; for very few that had looked upon the Dragon ever lived to that day twelvemonth. This monster devoured the substance of the tenantry and yeomen. When their fields of grain were golden for the harvest, in a single night he cut them down and left their acres blasted by his deadly fire. He ate the cows, the sheep, the poultry, and at times even sucked eggs. Many pious saints had visited the district, but not one had been able by his virtue to expel the Dragon; and the farmers and country folk used to repeat a legend that said the Dragon was a punishment for the great wickedness of the Baron’s ancestor, the original Sir Godfrey Disseisin, who, when summoned on the first Crusade to Palestine, had entirely refused to go and help his cousin Godfrey de Bouillon wrest the Holy Sepulchre from the Paynim. The Baron’s ancestor, when a stout young lad, had come over with William the Conqueror; and you must know that to have an ancestor who had come over with William the Conqueror was in those old days a much rarer thing than it is now, and any one who could boast of it was held in high esteem by his neighbours, who asked him to dinner and left their cards upon him continually. But the first Sir Godfrey thought one conquest was enough for any man; and in reply to his cousin’s invitation to try a second, answered in his blunt Norman French, “Nul tiel verte dedans ceot oyle,” which displeased the Church, and ended forever all relations between the families. The Dragon did not come at once, for this gentleman’s son, the grandfather of our Sir Godfrey, as soon as he was twenty-one, went off to the Holy Land himself, fought very valiantly, and was killed, leaving behind him at Wantley an inconsolable little wife and an heir six months old. This somewhat appeased the Pope; but the present Sir Godfrey, when asked to accompany King Richard Lion Heart on his campaign against the Infidel, did not avail himself of the opportunity to set the family right in the matter of Crusades. This hereditary impiety, which the Pope did not consider at all mended by the Baron’s most regular attendance at the parish church on all Sundays, feast days, fast days, high days, low days, saints’ days, vigils, and octaves, nor by his paying his tithes punctually to Father Anselm, Abbot of Oyster-le-Main (a wonderful person, of whom I shall have a great deal to tell you presently), this impiety, I say, finished the good standing of the House of Wantley. Rome frowned, the earth trembled, and the Dragon came. And (the legend went on to say) this curse would not be removed until a female lineal descendant of the first Sir Godfrey, a young lady who had never been married, and had never loved anybody except her father and mother and her sisters and brothers, should go out in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve, all by herself, and encounter the Dragon single handed.
Now, of course, this is not what little Whelpdale is trying to tell the Baron up in the study; for everybody in Wantley knew all about the legend except one person, and that was Miss Elaine, Sir Godfrey’s only daughter, eighteen years old at the last Court of Piepoudre, when her father (after paying all the farmers for all the cows and sheep they told him had been eaten by the Dragon since the last Court) had made his customary proclamation, to wit: his good-will and protection to all his tenantry; and if any man, woman, child, or other person, caused his daughter, Miss Elaine, to hear anything about the legend, such tale-bearer should be chained to a tree, and kept fat until the Dragon found him and ate him. So everybody obligingly kept the Baron’s secret.
Sir Godfrey is just this day returned from France with some famous tuns of wine, and presents for Elaine and Mrs. Mistletoe. His humour is (or was, till Whelpdale, poor wretch! answered the bell) of the best possible. And now, this moment, he is being told by the luckless Buttons that the Dragon of Wantley has taken to drinking, as well as eating, what does not belong to him; has for the last three nights burst the big gates of the wine-cellar that open on the hillside the Manor stands upon; that a hogshead of the Baron’s best Burgundy is going; and that two hogsheads of his choicest Malvoisie are gone!
One hundred and twenty-eight gallons in three nights’ work! But I suppose a fire-breathing Dragon must be very thirsty.
There was a dead silence in the study overhead, and old Popham’s calves were shaking loose as he waited.
“And