The dreadful dragon of Hay Hill

by Sir Max Beerbohm

Three days later the great trench was finished; and down into it, by leverage of many stakes heftily wielded in unison, was heaved the dragon (and there, to this day, deep down under the eastern side of the garden and road-way of Berkeley Square, is the dragon’s skeleton—an occult memorial of Thol’s deed). Down into the trench, with a great thud that for a moment shook the ground, fell Thol’s victim. Presently the trench brimmed with earth, and this earth was stamped firm by exultant feet, and more earth was added to it and stamped on till only a long brown path, that would soon be green and unnoticeable, marked the place of sepulture.

The great occasion lacked only the god’s presence. Of course the god had been invited. Shib, heading a deputation on the banks of the goose-pond, had besought him that he would deign to throw the first clod of earth upon the dragon; and he had diplomatically added that all the homelanders were hoping that Thia might be induced to sing and dance on the grave as soon as it had been filled. But Thia had answered that she could not give her husband leave, inasmuch as he had been idle at his work that day; he would like very much to come; but it was for that very reason that she would not let him: he must be punished. As for herself, she too would very much like to come, but she must stay and keep him to his work. Thol saying nothing, the deputation had then withdrawn, not without many obeisances, which Thia, with as many curtseys, roguishly took to herself.

However, even without the light of the god’s countenance on it, the festival was a great and glorious one. Perhaps indeed the revellers enjoyed themselves more than would have been possible in the glare of that awful luminary. The revels lasted throughout the night, and throughout the next day, and did not cease even then. Dazed with sleepiness and heavy with surfeits of meat, the homelanders continued to caper around bonfires and to clap one another on the back; and only because they had not the secret of fermented liquor were there no regrettable scenes of intoxication. The revels had become a habit. It seemed as though they would never cease. But human strength is finite.

Thia would have liked to be in the midst of the great to-do. It was well that the homelanders should rejoice. And the homelanders were as dear to her as ever, though she had so much offended them for Thol’s sake and theirs. Thol’s nature was not social, as hers was; but she knew that even he would have liked to have glimpses of the fun. It grieved her to keep him aloof with her among the geese. She sang and danced round him and petted him and made much of him, all day long.

The autumn was rainy; and the winter was rainy too; and thus the brown path over the dragon’s grave vanished even before spring came. Green also was the grass that had for so many years been black above and around the mouth of the dragon’s cave. Valley and hill smiled as blandly at each other as though they had never seen a dragon.

Little by little, likewise, the souls of the homelanders had reverted, as we should say, to type. There were no signs now of that mutual good-will which had been implanted in them by the common peril and had overflowed so wildly at the time when the peril ended. Mistrustfulness had revived, and surliness with it, and quickness to take offence, and a dull eagerness to retaliate on the offender. The shortcomings of others were once more the main preoccupation of the average homelander. Next to these, the weather was once more the favourite topic of conversation, especially if the weather were bad; but even if it were good, the prospect of bad weather was dwelt on with a more than sufficient emphasis. Work, of course, had to be done; but as little of it was done as might be, and that glumly, and not well. Meals were habitually larger than appetites. Eyes were duller, complexions less clear, chests narrower, stomachs more obtrusive, arms and legs less well-developed, than they had been under the dragon’s auspices. And prayers, of course, were not said now.

Thia in her childhood had thought the homelanders perfect; and thus after the coming of the dragon she had observed no improvement in them. But now, with maturer vision, she did see that they were growing less worthy of high esteem. This grieved her. She believed that she loved the homelanders as much as ever, she told herself truly enough that it was much her own fault that they had ceased to love her. In point of fact, their coldness to her, in course of time, cooled her feeling for them: she was human. What she did love as much as ever was the homeland. What grieved her was that the homeland should have an imperfect population.

She talked constantly to Thol about her sorrow. He was not a very apt auditor. Being a native of the homeland, he could not see it, as she could, from without. It was not to him an idea, as it was to Thia’s deep alien eyes. It was just the homeland. As for the homelanders themselves, he had never, as you may remember, loved them; but he liked them quite well now. He supposed he really was not a god; but it no longer embarrassed him to be thought so; indeed it pleased him to be thought so. The homelanders no longer knelt when he passed by. He had asked them not to, and they reverently obeyed his wish. He supposed Thia was right in saying that they were less good than in the days of the dragon; but in those days he had hardly known them. He was glad to know them better now. His nature had, in fact, become more expansive. He wished Thia were not so troubled about the homeland. He wished she would think more gently of the homelanders, and think less about them, and talk less to him about them.

Sometimes she even tried to enlist his help. ‘To me,’ she would say, ‘they would not hearken. But you, O Thol, whom in their folly they still believe to be a god, could give light to them and shame them back to goodness and strength, and so to happiness. I would teach you what words to say.’ But Thol, even though he was to be spared the throes of composition, would look so blankly wretched that Thia’s evangelical ardour was quenched in laughter. He did not know why she was laughing, and he hoped it was not at him that she was laughing: after all, he had slain the dragon. Nevertheless, her gaiety was a relief to him.