Chapter 3 Reueals the Dragon in his Den

Around the sullen towers of Oyster-le-Main the snow was falling steadily. It was slowly banking up in the deep sills of the windows, and Hubert the Sacristan had given up sweeping the steps. Patches of it, that had collected on the top of the great bell as the slanting draughts blew it in through the belfry-window, slid down from time to time among the birds which had nestled for shelter in the beams below. From the heavy main outer-gates, the country spread in a white unbroken sheet to the woods. Twice, perhaps, through the morning had wayfarers toiled by along the nearly-obliterated high-road.

"Good luck to the holy men!" each had said to himself as he looked at the chill and austere walls of the Monastery. "Good luck! and I hope that within there they be warmer than I am." Then I think it very likely that as he walked on, blowing the fingers of the hand that held his staff, he thought of his fireside and his wife, and blessed Providence for not making him pious enough to be a monk and a bachelor.

This is what was doing in the world outside. Now inside the stone walls of Oyster-le-Main, whose grim solidity spoke of narrow cells and of pious knees continually bent in prayer, not a monk paced the corridors, and not a step could be heard above or below in the staircase that wound up through the round towers. Silence was everywhere, save that from a remote quarter of the Monastery came a faint sound of music. Upon such a time as Christmas Eve, it might well be that carols in plenty would be sung or studied by the saintly men. But this sounded like no carol. At times the humming murmur of the storm drowned the measure, whatever it was, and again it came along the dark, cold entries, clearer than before. Away in a long vaulted room, whose only approach was a passage in the thickness of the walls, safe from the intrusion of the curious, a company is sitting round a cavernous chimney, where roars and crackles a great blazing heap of logs. Surely, for a monkish song, their melody is most odd; yet monks they are, for all are clothed in gray, like Father Anselm, and a rope round the waist of each. But what can possibly be in that huge silver rundlet into which they plunge their goblets so often? The song grows louder than ever.

We are the monks of Oyster-le-Main,
Hooded and gowned as fools may see;
Hooded and gowned though we monks be,
Is that a reason we should abstain
From cups of the gamesome Burgundie?

Though our garments make it plain
That we are Monks of Oyster-le-Main,
That is no reason we should abstain
From cups of the gamesome Burgundie.

"I'm sweating hot," says one. "How for disrobing, brothers? No danger on such a day as this, foul luck to the snow!"

Which you see was coarse and vulgar language for any one to be heard to use, and particularly so for a godly celibate. But the words were scarce said, when off fly those monks' hoods, and the waist-ropes rattle as they fall on the floor, and the gray gowns drop down and are kicked away.

Every man jack of them is in black armour, with a long sword buckled to his side.

"Long cheer to the Guild of Go-as-you-Please!" they shouted, hoarsely, and dashed their drinking-horns on the board. Then filled them again.

"Give us a song, Hubert," said one. "The day's a dull one out in the world."

"Wait a while," replied Hubert, whose nose was hidden in his cup; "this new Wantley tipple is a vastly comfortable brew. What d'ye call the stuff?"

"Malvoisie, thou oaf?" said another; "and of a delicacy many degrees above thy bumpkin palate. Leave profaning it, therefore, and to thy refrain without more ado."

"Most unctuous sir," replied Hubert, "in demanding me this favour, you seem forgetful that the juice of Pleasure is sweeter than the milk of Human Kindness. I'll not sing to give thee an opportunity to outnumber me in thy cups."

And he filled and instantly emptied another sound bumper of the Malvoisie, lurching slightly as he did so. "Health!" he added, preparing to swallow the next.

"A murrain on such pagan thirst!" exclaimed he who had been toasted, snatching the cup away. "Art thou altogether unslakable? Is thy belly a lime-kiln? Nay, shalt taste not a single drop more, Hubert, till we have a stave. Come, tune up, man!"

"Give me but leave to hold the empty vessel, then," the singer pleaded, falling on one knee in mock supplication.

"Accorded, thou sot!" laughed the other. "Carol away, now!"

They fell into silence, each replenishing his drinking-horn. The snow beat soft against the window, and from outside, far above them, sounded the melancholy note of the bell ringing in the hour for meditation.

So Hubert began:

When the sable veil of night
Over hill and glen is spread,
The yeoman bolts his door in fright,
And he quakes within his bed.
Far away on his ear
There strikes a sound of dread:
Something comes! it is here!
It is passed with awful tread.
There's a flash of unholy flame;
There is smoke hangs hot in the air:
'Twas the Dragon of Wantley came:
Beware of him, beware!

But we beside the fire
Sit close to the steaming bowl;
We pile the logs up higher,
And loud our voices roll.

When the yeoman wakes at dawn
To begin his round of toil,
His garner's bare, his sheep are gone,
And the Dragon holds the spoil.
All day long through the earth
That yeoman makes his moan;
All day long there is mirth
Behind these walls of stone.
For we are the Lords of Ease,
The gaolers of carking Care,
The Guild of Go-as-you-Please!
Beware of us, beware!

So we beside the fire
Sit down to the steaming bowl;
We pile the logs up higher,
And loud our voices roll.

The roar of twenty lusty throats and the clatter of cups banging on the table rendered the words of the chorus entirely inaudible.

"Here's Malvoisie for thee, Hubert," said one of the company, dipping into the rundlet. But his hand struck against the dry bottom. They had finished four gallons since breakfast, and it was scarcely eleven gone on the clock!

"Oh, I am betrayed!" Hubert sang out. Then he added, "But there is a plenty where that came from." And with that he reached for his gown, and, fetching out a bunch of great brass keys, proceeded towards a tall door in the wall, and turned the lock. The door swung open, and Hubert plunged into the dark recess thus disclosed. An exclamation of chagrin followed, and the empty hide of a huge crocodile, with a pair of trailing wings to it, came bumping out from the closet into the hall, giving out many hollow cracks as it floundered along, fresh from a vigourous kick that the intemperate minstrel had administered in his rage at having put his hand into the open jaws of the monster instead of upon the neck of the demijohn that contained the Malvoisie.

"Beshrew thee, Hubert!" said the voice of a new-comer, who stood eyeing the proceedings from a distance, near where he had entered; "treat the carcase of our patron saint with a more befitting reverence, or I'll have thee caged and put upon bread and water. Remember, that whosoever kicks that skin in some sort kicks me."

"Long life to the Dragon of Wantley!" said Hubert, reappearing, very dusty, but clasping a plump demijohn.

"Hubert, my lad," said the new-comer, "put back that vessel of inebriation; and, because I like thee well for thy youth and thy sweet voice, do not therefore presume too far with me."

A somewhat uneasy pause followed upon this; and while Hubert edged back into the closet with his demijohn, Father Anselm frowned slightly as his eyes turned upon the scene of late hilarity.

But where is the Dragon in his den? you ask. Are we not coming to him soon? Ah, but we have come to him. You shall hear the truth. Never believe that sham story about More of More Hall, and how he slew the Dragon of Wantley. It is a gross fabrication of some unscrupulous and mediocre literary person, who, I make no doubt, was in the pay of More to blow his trumpet so loud that a credulous posterity might hear it. My account of the Dragon is the only true one.