The dreadful dragon of Hay Hill

by Sir Max Beerbohm

Thol within five years of the dragon’s death, Thol with his immense red beard and his stately deportment, was of course very definitely an elder; and still more so was that wife of his, that rather beautiful dark woman, Thia, whose face was so set and stern that she looked almost as though she—she!—were dancing. Thol was liked by the young people. They made much of him. They did not at all object to his being rather pompous: after all, he had slain that dragon, and they thought it quite natural that their parents should imagine he was a god. They liked him to be pompous. They humoured him. They enjoyed drawing him out. Among the youths there were several who, in the hours not devoted to earnest dancing and cursory guardianship of flocks, made pictures upon white stones or upon slabs of chalk. They liked especially to make pictures of Thol, because he was so ready to pose for them, and because he stood so still for them. They drew in a manner of their own, a manner, which made the veins of poor old Veo stand out upon his forehead, and moved him to declare that they would die young and would die in shame and in agony. Thol, however, was no critic. He was glad to be portrayed in any manner. And it much pleased him to have the colour of his mane and beard praised constantly by the young artists. He had supposed the colour was wrong. Thia had been wont to laugh at it, in her laughing days. Thia had never called him beautiful, in her praising days. It gladdened him that there were now many young women—Afa, for instance, and Ola, and Ispa, and Moa—who called him, to his face, ‘terribly’ beautiful.

Thol’s face, which Thia had admired for its steadfast look, and later had begun to like less for its heavy look, had now a look that was rather fatuous. Afa and the others did not at all object to this. They liked it; they encouraged it by asking him to dance with them. He did not, as they supposed, think that he was too old to dance: he only thought that he might not dance well and might lose his power over them. He believed that they loved him. How should they not? Thia, though she never told him so now, loved him with her whole heart, of course, and, for all the harsh words she spoke at times, thought that no man was his equal. How should not these much gentler young women not have given their hearts to him? He felt that he himself could love one of them, if he were not Thia’s husband. They were not beautiful, as Thia was; and they were not wise, as she was; but he felt that if he had never seen Thia he might love one of them, or even all of them.

For lack of a calendar, the homelanders had not the habit of keeping anniversaries. They never knew on what day of the year a thing had happened—did not even know that there was a year. But they knew the four seasons. They remembered that the apple-trees had been in blossom when Thol slew the dragon, and that since then the apple-trees had blossomed four times. And it seemed good to them that at the close of a day when those blossoms were again on those branches, a feast should be held in that part of the valley where the great deed had been done. Shib, who organised the feast, was anxious that it should be preceded by a hymn in praise of the slayer god. He thought this would have a good effect on the rising generation. But Thol opposed the idea, and it was dropped. Shib had also been anxious that Thia should attend the feast, sitting at Thol’s right hand and signifying to the young the blessedness of the married state. Thol promised that he would beg her to come; and he did so, as a matter of form, frequently. But Thia of course did not grace the convivial scene.

It was at a late hour of the moonlit night that Thol, flushed with adulation, withdrew from the revels, amidst entreaties that he should remain. He was still wearing the chaplet of flowers that Afa had woven for him. Afa herself was clinging to one of his arms, Moa to the other, as he went round to the eastern spur of the hill; and Ola and Ispa and many others were footing around lightly and lingeringly, appealingly. It was rather the thought of Thia’s love for him than of his for her that withheld him from kissing these attendants before he bade them good-night. For his own sake he wished, as he climbed the hill, that they would not stand cooing so many farewells up to him so loudly. Thia might not understand how true he was to her. He hoped she was sleeping. But she was awake. Nor was he reassured by the laughter with which, after a moment, she greeted him. She was looking at his head. He became suddenly aware that he had not shed that chaplet. He snatched it off. She laughed the more, but with no kindness in the sound of her laughter.

‘O Thia,’ he said, after a search for words, ‘be not wroth against those maidens! I love none of them.’

‘Is that not cruel of you, O Thol? Do they not love you?’

‘Though they love me, O Thia, I swear to you that I love not them.’

‘Why should you not?’ she laughed. ‘Are you so foolish that you think I should be sorry?’

‘O Thia,’ he rebuked her, ‘you speak empty words. You speak as though you did not love me.’