Dear Dragon

by Sara Seale

  At last he folded it up and stood there holding it as if it was something precious.

  "It's all there in the letter, Emma," he said, and sounded infinitely weary. "She must have written it when she went to bed before she could think things out coherently. She had to explain in the end, she says, because she couldn't bear me to go on thinking ill of her when she had gone . . ."

  "Explain what?" asked Emma patiently.

  "The truth about all those fabrications Trelawny cooked up."

  "But you didn't believe them, surely?"

  "Only at the time, when I was savage with jealously and bitterly hurt. She wouldn't, you see, deny it, and perhaps I wanted to believe before I made a fool of myself."

  "My poor man! Would you expect her to deny it when you clearly didn't believe her?"

  "There was an opportunity later."

  "Don't be so dense! Weren't you probably magnanimous and rather high-handed, as if the thing no longer mattered to you? I'm beginning to know you at last, Pendragon, but I doubt if you know yourself."

  "Yes, I was damnable!" he said bitterly. "I tried to bludgeon her into a confession because I wanted to hurt as I'd been hurt. Her refusal to be browbeaten got me on the raw—even when I was convinced that the whole business had been a pack of lies I wouldn't help her out, and last night—well, she can have hardly taken my proposal as a compliment. By then, you see, I didn't know how to reach her except by being flippant."

  "And she, I imagine, didn't know how to reach you by being herself," she said softly. "Pood Pendragon . . . what

  a lot of time you've wasted most of your life just being Pendragon . . . You're as vulnerable as a boy, my dear. Go after her—and don't make a mess of it this time."

  He drove as recklessly as Keverne over the moorland road. The misunderstandings between them which he had wantonly permitted came back to mock him with his own arrogance. How could she, poor child, be expected to understand the confusion of a man so much older, and in love for the first time? He could see her now, in her pink cotton frock with her hair tied up in that ridiculous pony-tail, sitting on the edge of her chair while she listened un-comprehendingly to the nonsense he had talked to her. Had he taken her in his arms and confessed his own weakness, the evening might have had a different ending.

  The little station was deserted except for the old porter who had been there for years. Yes, he remembered the little maid from Polgrame; yes, she had caught the next train going up the line when she knew the express had gone; didn't go anywhere, of course, after Trevane, but her wouldn't listen . . .

  Keir drove on to Trevane, beginning to feel anxious. The little stopping train would have reached there long ago, and there must, he supposed, be slow connections which eventually reached a junction for London. At Trevane there was no sign of her, but the ticket collector vaguely remembered a young girl getting on a train for Truan; didn't seem to know where she was bound for, he said. At Truan the trail petered out; no one seemed to have noticed a stranger, and there were no more trains to connect with the junction, anyway.

  Keir went slowly back to his car; there seemed nothing more to be done. He remembered that there was a short cut across the moor back to St. Mewan that was seldom used as it was little more than a rough track, waterlogged in winter time, and he turned the car that way, bumping over the uneven surface with little regard to his springs. Where would she fetch up for the night, the crazy loon, he wondered savagely, getting into any train, regardless of where it was going? Then quite suddenly he saw her.

  She was walking along the road ahead of him in the pink cotton frock, her hair still in a pony-tail, bobbing up and down as she walked, but the ribbon had slipped and

  hung limply. There was something desolate and defeated about the small figure with the suitcase bumping wearily against her legs, and every so often she stumbled and slipped on the rough ground as if her legs were too tired to carry her much further.

  He pressed his horn gently and she turned thankfully to thumb a lift, then as the car drew up beside her and she saw who it was, her face crumpled like a child's and she burst into tears. He was out of the car in an instant, gathering her, weeping, into his arms, but even then, relief at finding her after the hours of hopeless search made him speak harshly.

  "Where the hell do you think you're going?" he demanded.

  "I don't know," she sobbed, no longer caring that he should be angry, not even very surprised that he should have found her on this endless piece of unfamiliar moorland which seemed to lead nowhere. "None of the trains seem to go anywhere. ... I thought it was b-best in the end to walk and find somewhere to stay."

  "And where did you imagine you'd find somewhere to stay on this bit of moor?" he enquired grimly."There's not a house round here for miles, let alone an inn. If you'd gone on before your strength gave out you'd have found yourself back at Polrame."

  "Would I?" she said wonderingly, as if he had said she was making for home.

  "Yes, you would, and that's where you're going now. The very idea! Cutting short an afternoon's work when we are all behind and making me chase half over the Duchy for you!" he said, and picked her up and sat her in the car. "You've some explaining to do, Miss Alice Brown."

  He slammed the car into gear and drove on. He could not yet trust himself to speak without venting on her the anger she seemed to expect, and she sat wedged up into a corner, nursing her tired feet, having discarded her shoes on the floor.

  "They hurt," she said, but he only replied: "Serve you right!" and neither of them spoke again until they reached the strip of moorland which stretched to the gates of Polrame, and was a familiar spot to Alice for picnics.

  Pendragon stopped the car by a little stream that fol-

  lowed its stony course through the heather and down to the sea. He lifted Alice out and sat her gently in the heather.

  "If you take your stockings off, I'll bathe your feet while you tell me why you ran away," he said.

  "But you know. It was all in the letter. Didn't you get my letter?"

  "Oh, yes, I got it, and it made me want to weep," he said.

  "You—weep? Dragons don't weep . . . they emit smoke from their nostrils . . . you've often told me . . ."

  "I've often told you a number of things you couldn't be expected to understand, sweetheart."

  "Sweeheart?"

  "Yes, sweetheart. Is it so strange that I should call you that?"

  She sat silent, watching his black head as he knelt to bathe her feet, and saw again the tiny threads of grey as the breeze parted his hair.

  "You've done this before for me," she said, and sounded so very tired, so utterly defeated.

  "And doubtless will again if I lived long enough to survive the shocks you have in store for me," he retorted, and looked up at her with the sudden smile of tenderness that always turned her bones to water.

  "Oh, dear Dragon . . ." she said and her eyes were bright with tears again. "You did know none of it was true, didn't you?"

  "Yes, I knew. The explaining, after all, is not for you to do. I wanted to hurt you because I'd been hurt myself, and I loved you so very much—can you understand that, I wonder? And when you avoided me as, indeed, was only natural, I couldn't bring myself to help you out. Pride is such a strange thing, Alice; mine—and yours, too—building up such an ugly barrier. And last night, when I asked you to marry me, I made it sound all wrong. Didn't your Aunt Brown plan a doting husband for you?"

  "Oh, yes, but she hadn't met the Pendragons. You— doting?"

  "You would find me a very doting husband, I assure you," he said with odd humility. "I'm not a fierce dragon

  at all, when you get to know me. Can you forgive me— and may I ask you again?"

  The stream ran with a carefree bubble of sound over the delicate fronds of weed that spread like tresses under the water. Alice's eyes were as clear and green as the water as she looked at him, understanding, perhaps, at last.

  "To marry you?" she said. "If you'd once said y
ou cared . . . if I'd known that you were hurt and—and rather stupid ..."

  "Will I ever make you understand how blind and stubborn a man in love can be? Listen, Alice—do you remember the legend of the unicorn?"

  "The gentle maiden was put out as bait . . ." she repeated. "And the unicorn came trotting up and trustfully laid his head in her lap . . . and then-"

  "And then," Pendragon said, resting his forehead on her knees, "he was caught."

  She put her arms about his shoulders, drawing him to her breast, and felt the sudden urgency of his hands as they clung to her.

  "Dear unicorn . . . have I really caught you?" she said, and lifted her face to his kiss, tasting salt on his lips that might come from the sea or tears.

  He picked her up then, swinging her high into his arms to carry her back to the car and bring her home. She nuzzled her head into his shoulder confidingly, and he felt a soft strand of her hair blow across his face.

  "One last word of warning," he said, his dark face grave and autocratic as she remembered it. "That motto of ours is not to be disregarded. I take—I hold. Remember that always, sweetheart, for I shall see to it that it's true.

  She ran a finger down the deep lines on either side of his mouth, then touched his lips and smiled.

  "Yes, dear Dragon," she said. "I'll remember . . ."