The young moon had grown old, had dwindled, and disappeared. The sound of the clashed jaws ceased to be a novelty. The vesperal gatherings in the valley became smaller. The great column of smoke,by day and by night, was for the homelanders a grim reminder of what had happened, and of what would happen again if once they failed to fulfil the needs of their uninvited guest. They were resolved that they would not fail. In this resolution they had a sombre sense of security. But there came, before the leaves of the trees were yellow, an evening when the dragon left untasted the feast spread for him, and crawled down the hill. He was half-way down before any one noticed his coming. And on that night, a longer night than the other, he made a wider journey around the homeland, and took a heavier toll of lives.
Thenceforth always, at sunset, guards were posted to watch the hill and to give, if need were, the alarm. Nor did even this measure suffice. In the dawn of a day in winter, when snow was lying thick on the homeland, a goat-herd observed with wonder a wide pathway through the snow from the dragon’s cave; and presently he saw afar on the level ground the dragon himself, with his head inside the mouth of a lonely hut that was the home of a young man recently wedded. From the hut’smouth crept forth clouds of smoke, and, as the dragon withdrew his head, the goat-herd, finding voice, raised such a cry as instantly woke many sleepers. That day lived long in the memory of the homelanders. The dragon was very active. He did not plod through the snow. He walked at his full speed upon the ground, the snow melting before him at the approach of his fiery breath. It was the homelanders that plodded. Some of them stumbled head foremost into snowdrifts and did not escape their pursuer. There was nothing slothful in the dragon’s conduct that day. Hour after hour in the keen frosty air he went his way, and not before nightfall did he go home.
Thus was inaugurated what we may call the Time of Greater Stress. No one could know at what hour of night or day the dragon might again raid the homeland. Relays of guards had to watch the hill always. No one, lying down to sleep, knew that the dragon might not forthcome before sunrise; no one, throughout the day, knew that the brute might not be forthcoming at any moment. True, he forthcameseldom. The daily offerings of slain beasts and birds sufficed him, mostly. But he was never to be depended on—never.
Shib’s name somewhat fell in the general esteem. Nor was it raised again by the execution of a scheme that he conceived. The roe and buck stuffed with poisonous herbs were swallowed by the dragon duly, but the column of smoke from the cave’s mouth did not cease that evening, as had been hoped. And on the following afternoon—a sign that the stratagem had not been unnoticed—one of the men who were placing the food in front of the cave perished miserably in the dragon’s jaws.
Other devices of Shib’s failed likewise. The homelanders had to accept the dragon as a permanent factor in their lives. Year by year, night and day, rose the sinister column of smoke, dense, incessant. Happy those tiny children who knew not what a homeland without a dragon was like! So, at least, thought the elders.
And yet, were these elders so much less happy than they had erst been? Were they not—could they but have known it—happier? Did not the danger in which theylived make them more appreciative of life? Surely they had a zest that in the halcyon days was not theirs? Certainly they were quicker-witted. They spoke less slowly, their eyes were brighter, all their limbs nimbler. Perhaps this was partly because they ate less meat. The dragon’s diet made it necessary that they should somewhat restrict their own, all the year round. The dragon, without knowing it, was a good physician to them.
Without being a moralist or a preacher, he had also improved their characters. Quarrels had become rare. Ill-natured gossip was frowned on. Suspicions throve not. Manners had unstiffened. The homelanders now liked one another. They had been drawn charmingly together in brotherhood and sisterhood. You would have been surprised at the change in them.
But for his bright red hair, perhaps you would not have recognised Thol at all.He was a great gawky youth now. Spiritually, however, he had changed little. He was still intent on slaying the dragon.
In the preceding years he had thought of little else than this, and as he never had said a word about it he was not accounted good company. Nor had he any desire to shine—in any light but that of a hero. The homelanders would have been cordial enough to him, throughout those years, if he had wished them to be so. But he never was able to forget how cold and unkind they had been to him in his early childhood. It was not for their sake that he had so constantly nursed and brooded over his great wish. It was for his own sake only.
An unsympathetic character? Stay!—let me tell you that since the dawn of his adolescence another sake had come in to join his own: Thia’s sake.
From the moment when she, in childhood, had called him a coward, it always had been Thia especially that he wished to impress. But in recent times his feeling had changed. How should such a lout as he ever hope to impress Thia, who was agoddess? Thol hoped only to make Thia happy, to see her go dancing and singing once more, with flowers in her hair. Thol did not even dare hope that Thia would thank him. Thol was not an unsympathetic character at all.
As for Thia, she was more fascinating than ever. Do not be misled by her seeming to Thol a goddess. Remember that the homelanders worshipped cherry-trees and rain and fire and running water and all such things. There was nothing of the statuesque Hellenic ideal about Thia. She had not grown tall, she was as lissom and almost as slight as ever; and her alien dark hair had not lost its wildness: on windy days it flew out far behind her, like a thunder cloud, and on calm days hid her as in a bush. She had never changed the task that she chose on the day of the dragon’s advent. She was still a goose-girl. But perhaps she was conscious now that the waddling gait of her geese made the grace of her own gait the lovelier by its contrast. Certainly she was familiar with her face. She had often leaned over clear pools to study it—to see what the homelanders sawin it. She was very glad of her own charms because they were so dear to all those beloved people. But sometimes her charms also saddened her. She had had many suitors—youths of her own age, and elder men too. Even Veo, thinking her almost as beautiful as the dragon, had laid his hands upon her shoulders, in the ritual mode. Even the intellectual Shib had done so. And even from such elders as these it was dreadful to turn away. Nor was Thia a girl of merely benevolent nature: she had warm desires, and among the younger suitors more than one had much pleased her fancy. But stronger than any other sentiment in her was her love for the homeland. Not until the dragon were slain or were gone away across the waters would Thia be wife of any man.
So far as she knew, she had sentenced herself to perpetual maidenhood. Even had she been aware of Thol’s inflexible determination, she would hardly have become hopeful. Determination is one thing, doing is another.
The truth of that old adage sometimesforced itself on poor Thol himself, as he sat watching the sheep that he herded near his cave on the way to the marshes; and at such time his sadness was so great that it affected even his sheep, causing them to look askance at him and bleat piteously, and making drearier a neighbourhood that was in itself dreary.
But, one day in the eighteenth summer of his years, Thol ceased to despond. There came, wet from the river and mossy from the marshes, an aged wanderer. He turned his dark eyes on Thol and said with a smile, pointing towards the thick smoke on the hill, ‘A dragon is here now?’
‘Yea, O wanderer,’ Thol answered.
‘There was none aforetime,’ said the old man. ‘A dragon was what your folk needed.’
‘They need him not. But tell me, O you that have so much wandered, and have seen many dragons, tell me how a dragon may be slain!’
‘Mind your sheep, young shepherd. Let the dragon be. Let not your sheep mourn you.’
‘They shall not. I shall slay the dragon. Only tell me how! Surely there is a way?’
‘It is a way that would lead you into his jaws, O fool, and not hurt him. Only through the roof of his mouth can a dragon be pierced and wounded. He opens not his jaws save when they are falling upon his prey. Do they not fall swiftly, O fool?’
‘O wanderer, yea. But’——
‘Could you deftly spear the roof of that great mouth, O prey, in that little time?’
‘Yea, surely, if so the dragon would perish.’
The old man laughed. ‘So would the dragon perish, truly; but so only. So would be heard what few ears have heard—the cry that a dragon utters as he is slain. But so only.’ And he went his way northward.
From that day on, Thol did not watch his sheep very much. They, on the other hand, spent most of their time in watching him. They rather thought he was mad, standing in that odd attitude and ever lunging hiscrook up at one of the nodding boughs of that ash tree.
Twice in the course of the autumn the dragon came down the hill; but when the watchman sounded the alarm Thol did not go forth to meet him. He was not what his flock thought him.
He had now exchanged his crook for a spear—a straight well-seasoned sapling of oak, with a long sharp head of flint. With this, day by day, hour after hour, he lunged up at the boughs of fruit-trees. His flock, deploring what seemed to them mania, could not but admire his progressive skill. Rarely did he fail now in piercing whatever plum or apple he aimed at.
When winter made bare the branches, it was at the branches that Thol aimed his thrusts. His accuracy was unerring now. But he had yet to acquire the trick of combining the act of transfixion with the act of leaping aside. Else would he perish even in victory.
Spring came. As usual, her first care was to put blossoms along the branches of such almond trees as were nearest to the marshes.
The ever side-leaping Thol pricked off any little single blossom that he chose.
Spring was still active in the homeland when, one day, a little while before sunset, the watchers of the hill blew their horns. There came from all quarters the usual concourse of young and old, to watch the direction of the dragon and to keep out of it. Down came the familiar great beast, the never-ageing dragon, picking his way into the green valley. And he saw an unwonted sight there. He saw somebody standing quite still on the nearer bank of the stream; a red-haired young person, holding a spear. About this young person he formed a theory which had long been held by certain sheep.
Little wonder that the homelanders also formed that theory! Little wonder that they needed no further proof of it when, deaf to the cries of entreaty that theyuttered through the evening air, Thol stood his ground!
Slowly, as though to give the wretched young lunatic a chance, the dragon advanced.
But quickly, very terribly and quickly, when he was within striking distance, he reared his neck up. An instant later there rang through the valley—there seemed to rend the valley—a single screech, unlike anything that its hearers had ever heard.
Those who dared to look saw the vast length of the dragon, neck on grass, coiling slowly round. The tip of the tail met the head and parted from it. Presently the vast length was straight, motionless.
Yet even of those who had dared look none dared believe that the dragon was indeed dead.
But for its death-cry, Thol himself would hardly have believed.
The second firm believer was Thia. Thia, with swift conviction, plucked some flowers and put them loosely into her hair. Thia, singing as well as though she had never ceased to sing, and dancing as prettily as though she had for years been practisingher steps, went singing and dancing towards the stream. Lightly she lept the stream, and then very seriously and quietly walked to the spot where Thol stood. She looked up at him, and then, without a word, raised her arms and put her hands upon his shoulders. He, who had slain the dragon, trembled.
‘O Thol,’ she said gently, ‘you turn not away from me, but neither do you raise me from the ground.’
Then Thol raised Thia thrice from the ground.
And he said, ‘Let our home be the cave that was my father’s.’
Hand in hand, man and wife, they went up the hill, and round to the eastern side of its summit. But when they came to the mouth of the old cave there, he paused and let go her hand.
‘O Thia,’ he said wonderingly, ‘is it indeed true that you love me?’
‘O Thol,’ she answered, ‘it is most true.’
‘O Thia,’ he said, ‘love me always!’
‘I have long ceased to love you, O Thol,’ she said, five years later, in a low voice.But I see that I have outstripped my narrative. I must hark back.
The sun had already risen far when Thol and Thia were wakened by a continuous great hum as of many voices. When they looked forth and down from the mouth of their high home, it seemed to them that all the homelanders were there beneath them, gazing up.
And this was indeed so. Earlier in the morning, by force of habit, all the homelanders had gone to what we call Berkeley Square, the place where for so many years they had daily besought the sun to call the dragon away across the waters. There, where lay the great smokeless and harmless carcass, was no need for prayers now; and with one accord the throng had moved from the western to the eastern foot of the hill, and stayed there gazing in reverence up to the home of a god greater than the sun.
When at length the god showed himself, there arose from the throng a great roar of adoration. The throng went down on its knees to him, flung up its arms to him, half-closed its eyes so as not to be blinded by the sight of him. His little mortal mate, knowing not that he was a god, thinking only that he was a brave man and her own, was astonished at the doings of her dear ones. The god himself, sharing her ignorance, was deeply embarrassed, and he blushed to the roots of his hair.
‘Laugh, O Thol,’ she whispered to him. ‘It were well for them that you should laugh.’ But he never had laughed in all his life, and was much too uncomfortable to begin doing so just now. He backed into the cave. The religious throng heaved a deep moan of disappointment as he did so. Thia urged him to come forth and laugh as she herself was doing. ‘Nay,’ he said, ‘but do you, whom they love, dance a little for them and sing. Then will they go away happy.’
It seemed to Thia that really this was the next best plan, and so, still laughing,she turned round and danced and sang with great animation and good-will. The audience, however, was cold. It gave her its attention, but even this, she began to feel, was not its kind attention. Indeed, the audience was jarred. After a while—for Thia’s pride forbade her to stop her performance—the audience began to drift away.
There were tears in her eyes when she danced back into the cave. But these she brushed away, these she forgot instantly in her lover’s presence.
Love is not all. ‘I must go drive my geese,’ said the bride.
‘And I my sheep,’ said the bridegroom.
‘There is good grass, O Thol, round my geese’s pond. Let your sheep graze there always. Thus shall not our work sever us.’
As they went forth, some children werecoming up the hill, carrying burdens. The burdens were cold roast flesh, dried figs, and a gourd of water, sent by some elders as a votive offering to the god. The children knelt at sight of the god and then ran shyly away, leaving their gifts on the ground. The god and his mate feasted gladly. Then they embraced and parted, making tryst at the pond.
When Thia approached the pond, she did not wonder that Thol was already there, for sheep go quicker than geese. But—where were his sheep? ‘Have they all strayed?’ she cried out to him.
He came to meet her, looking rather foolish.
‘O Thia,’ he explained, ‘as I went to the fold, many men and women were around it. I asked them what they did there. They knelt and made answer, “We were gazing at the sheep that had been the god’s.” When I made to unpen the flock, there was a great moaning. There was gnashing of teeth, O Thia, and tearing of hair. It was said by all that the god must herd sheep nevermore.’
‘And you, beloved, what said you?’
‘I said nothing, O Thia, amid all that wailing. I knew not what to say.’
Thia laughed long but tenderly. ‘And your sheep, beloved, what said they?’
‘How should I know?’ asked Thol.
‘And you left them there? Do you not love them?’
‘I have never loved them.’
‘But they were your task?’
‘O Thia, the dragon was my task.’
She stroked his arm. ‘The dragon is dead, O Thol. You have slain the dragon, O my brave dear one. That task is done. You must find some other. All men must work. Since you loved not your sheep, you shall love my geese, and I will teach you to drive them with me.’
‘That,’ said Thol, ‘would not be a man’s work, O Thia.’
‘But they say you are a god! And I think a god may do as he will.’
Her flock had swum out into the pond. She called it back to her, and headed it away towards some willows. From one of these she plucked for Thol a long twig such as she herself carried, and, havingstripped it of its leaves, gave it to him and began to teach him her art.
There was, as Thia had known there must be, a great concourse of people around and about the dragon.
There was a long line of children riding on its back; there were infants in arms being urged by their mothers never to forget that they had seen it; there were many young men and women trying to rip off some of its scales, as reminders; and there were elders exchanging reminiscences of its earliest raids and correcting one another on various points. And the whole crowd of holiday-makers was so intent that the gradual approach of that earnest worker, Thol, was not noticed until he came quite near.
Very gradual, very tortuous and irregular, his approach was. Thia, just now, was letting him shift for himself, offering no hints at all. For the homelanders’ sake,she wished him to be seen at his worst. It was ill that they should worship a false god. To her, he was something better than a real god. But this was another matter. To the homelanders, he ought to seem no more than a man who had done a great deed and set a high example. And for his own sake, and so for hers—for how could his not be hers?—she wished him to have no more honour than was his due. Splendid man though he was, and only a year younger than herself, he was yet a child; and children, thought Thia—though she was conscious that she herself, for all the petting she had received, was rather perfect—are easily spoilt. Altogether, the goose-girl’s motives were as pure as her perception was keen. Admirable, too, were her tactics; and they should have succeeded. Yet they failed. In the eyes of the homelanders the goose-god lost not a jot of his divinity.
No hint of disillusion was in the moans evoked by the sight of him. Grief, shame, horror at his condescension, and a deep wrath against the whilom darling Thia, were all that was felt by the kneeling and swaying crowd.
Thia knew it. She was greatly disappointed. Indeed, she was near to shedding tears again. Pride saved her from that. Besides, she was angry, and not only angry but amused. And in a clear voice that was audible above the collective moaning, ‘Have patience, O homelanders,’ she cried. ‘He is new to his work. He will grow in skill. These geese will find that he is no fool. And it may be that hereafter, if you are all very good, I will teach him to sing and dance for you, with flowers in his bright red hair.’
Having thus spoken, she ran to overtake her husband, and soon, guiding the flock in good order, went her way with him back to the pond.
There was a general desire that the dragon should not be buried anywhere within the confines of the homeland. Shib conceived that if the trunks of felled trees were used as rollers the carcass might be transported to the swamps and be sunk there. Byits vast weight the carcass frustrated this scheme. A long deep trench must be dug beside it. All the able-bodied men of the homeland offered their services, and of course Shib was a most efficient director of the work.
You will be glad to hear that Shib was a more sympathetic character than he once was. The public spirit that had always been his was unmarred now by vanity and personal ambition. He was a quiet, disinterested, indefatigable worker for the common weal, burning always with that hard, gem-like flame which Mr. Pater discerned in the breasts of our own Civil Servants. He had forgotten, or he remembered without bitterness, the time when he was a popular hero. Thol’s great deed was a source of genuine pleasure to him. Nay (for he had long ago outgrown his callow atheism), he accepted Thol as a god, though he was too cautious to rate him higher than the sun.
Thus he was much shocked when Thol came wishing to help in the labour. Rising, at Thol’s earnest entreaty, from his knees, he ventured to speak firmly to the god—reverentlybut very firmly pointing out to him that the labourers, if their religious feelings were flouted, would probably cease work; and he hinted that he himself would have to consider whether he could retain his post. So Thol went back to the goose-pond and was so much chidden by Thia for his weakness that he almost wished she believed him to be a god. Of course he was not a god. Of course Thia was right. Still, Shib was known to be a very wise man. It was strange that Shib should be mistaken. Inwardly, he could not agree with Thia that Shib was a fool. And I think she must have suspected him of this reservation, for she looked at him with much trouble in her eyes and was for a while silent, and then, fondlingly, made him promise that he never would trust any one’s thoughts but hers.
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 memorialof 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. Tholsaying 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 notsocial, 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 toldherself 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 thembetter 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.
But her ardour was always flaming up again.
She had very soon exempted him from that task which failed to cure the homelanders of their delusion about him. She agreed that goose-driving was not a man’s work. As he did not wish to be a shepherd again, and as it was needful for his own good that he should be set to some sort of work, she urged him to be a goat-herd. Goats, she said, were less dull than sheep; fiercer; more like dragons. So, beside the goose-pond, he herded goats; but without the enthusiasm that she had hoped for.
One day, about a year after their marriage, he even suggested that he should have a lad to help him. She said, with a curl of the lip, that she had not known he was old and feeble. He replied, seriously, that he was younger than she; and as for feebleness, he asked her to remember that he, not she, had slain the dragon. He then walked away, leaving his goats to their own devices, and his wife to hers, and spent the rest of the day in company that was more appreciative of him. He returned of course before sundown, fearful of a lecture. Thia, who had already driven his goats into their pen, did but smile demurely, saying thatshe would always be glad to do his work for him, and that she was trustier than any lad.
But, as time went on, her temper was not always so sweet. Indeed, it ceased to be sweet. In his steady, rather bovine way, he loved her as much as ever; but his love of being with her was less great, and his pleasure in the society of others was greater, than of yore. Perhaps if Thia had borne a child, she might have been less troubled about the welfare of the homelanders. But this diversion and solace was not granted. Thia’s maternal instinct had to spend itself on a community which she could not help and did not now genuinely love, and on a husband who did not understand her simplest thoughts and was moreover growing fat. Her disposition suffered under the strain. One day, when she was talking to him about the homeland, she paused with sudden suspicion and asked him what she had said last; and he could make no answer; and she asked him to tell her what he had been thinking about; and he said that he had been thinking about his having slain the dragon; and she, insteadof chiding him tenderly, as she would have done in the old days, screamed. She screamed that she would go mad if ever again he spoke to her of that old dragon. She flung her arms out towards the hills across the waters and said, with no lowering of her voice, that every day, out yonder, men were slaying dragons and thinking nothing of it, and doing their work, and not growing fat. He asked her whether she meant that he himself was growing fat. ‘Yea,’ she answered. He said that then indeed she was mad. Away he strode, nor did he return at sundown; and it was late in the night before the god retired from a cheery party of worshippers and went up to the cave, where Thia, faintly visible in the moonlight, lay sleeping, with a look of deep disdain on her face.
Sometimes Thia wondered whether in her childhood the characters and ways of the homelanders had been as they werenow. She hated to think that they had not been perfect in those days; but she reasoned that they could not have been: before the coming of the dragon they must have been as they were now, and the only difference was that they had then loved her. Thus even the memory of her bright careless early years was embittered to her.
In point of fact, the homelanders had not been exactly as they now were. The sudden cessation of the strain imposed on them by the dragon’s presence, and of the comparative hardships also imposed by it, had caused a reaction so strong as to restore to them in a rather accentuated form what faults had originally been theirs. Human nature had grown rather more human than ever. Labour was a less than ever alluring thing. Responsibilities had a greater irksomeness. Freedom was all. And, as having special measure of vital force, especially were youths and maidens intent on making the most of their freedom. Their freedom was their religion; and, as every religion needs rites, they ritualistically danced. They danced much during the day, and then much by moonlight or starlight or firelight,in a grim and purposeful, an angular and indeflexible manner, making it very clear that they were not to be trifled with.
Thia, when first she saw them engaged thus, had been very glad; she imagined that they must be doing something useful. When she realised that they were dancing, she drew a deep breath. She remembered how she herself had danced—danced thoughtlessly and anyhow, from her heart, with every scrap of her body. She blushed at the recollection. She did not wonder that the homelanders had resented her dance on the morning after her marriage. She wondered that they had encouraged her to dance when she was a child. And she felt that there must, after all, be in these young people a deep fund of earnestness, auguring well for their future.
Time had not confirmed this notion. The young people danced through the passing seasons and the passing years with ever greater assiduity and solemnity; but other forms of seriousness were not manifested by them. Few of them seemed to find time even for falling in love and marrying. They all, however, called one another ‘beloved,’and had a kind of mutual good-will which their elders, among themselves, would have done well to emulate. And for those elders they had a tolerant feeling which ought to have been, yet was not, fully reciprocated.
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, becausehe 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 todance: 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 theapple-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 clingingto 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.’
‘I have long ceased to love you, O Thol,’ she said in a low voice.
He stared at her blankly in the moonlight. His slow mind strove hard. ‘But you are my wife,’ he said at last. ‘I am your husband. O Thia, is it indeed true that you have ceased to love me?’
‘O Thol, it is most true.’
Then, by stress of the great anger that rose in him, his mind worked more quickly—or rather his tongue was loosened. He told Thia that she had never loved him. She denied this coldly. He said that she had never understood him. She denied this warmly. He reminded her that even when she was a little girl she had once called him a coward; and this too she denied; but he maintained that it was so; and she reminded him that after he had been beaten by his master for seeing the dragon he said that she too ought to havebeen beaten for seeing the dragon; and he denied this; but she persisted that it was so; and he then said that she ought to have been beaten; and she replied that she could be now, and she challenged him to beat her; but he did not accept her challenge; and this, she said, proved that he was a coward; and he asked her to repeat this, and she repeated it, and he then reminded her that he had slain the dragon; and she, stamping her foot, said she only wished the dragon had slain him; and she made a face at him, and rushed out of the cave, and if there had been a door she would have slammed it; and really he was quite glad that she had gone; and after she had run far she lay down upon the grass and slept till dawn, and then, rising and brushing the dew off her arms and legs, went in search of some lonely spot where she should build her a hut of clay and wattles.
And perhaps it was a sign of her alien blood that the spot chosen by her was in what we call Soho. It was the spot on which, many years later, many of my coævals were to dine in the little Restaurant du Bon-Accueil, half-way along Gerrard Street.Gone, as utterly as Thia’s hut, is the dear little Restaurant du Bon-Accueil. But again I must hark back.
‘Very surely,’ thought Thol, some moments after the sun had waked him and shown him the empty cave and brought back last night to his memory, ‘I shall find her by the pond.’
Thither, with much dignity of gait, but with the promise of forgiveness on his brow, he presently went. She was not there. There only her geese were.
These he unpenned and let go into the pond, and then, having freed his goats also, sat down and waited. He waited all day long. She did not come. Nor was she there for him in the cave when he went back to it at sunset. Neither was she at the pond next morning. Not even her geese were there now.
That she had wanted them, and not him, was a bitter thought to Thol. He hadnot, till now, known how much he loved her. That she had been here this morning, or in the night, made the ground somehow wonderful to him. But he frowned away from his brow the promise of forgiveness. He would not forgive Thia now. Still less would he go in quest of her. He freed his goats, guided them to some long grass and, sitting down, tried to take an intelligent interest in their doings and a lively interest in their welfare, and not wonder where Thia was.
For three whole days he tried hard—tried with all that fixity of purpose which had enabled him at last to slay the dragon. It was Afa’s visit that unmanned him.
Not she nor any other of those maidens had ever come to him at the pond in Thia’s time. If they happened to pass that way, they would gaze straight before them, or up at the sky, greeting neither the husband nor the wife, and simpering elaborately, as much as to say, ‘We are unworthy.’ But now it was straight at Thol that the approaching Afa simpered. And she said, ‘I am come to be the goat-herd’s help!’
He marvelled that there was a time whenhe had thought he might have loved one of these maidens. He was not even sure that he knew which of them this one was. He was sure only that he despised them all. And this sentiment so contorted his mild face that there was nothing for Afa to do but toss her head and laugh and leave him.
Presently the look of great scorn in his face was succeeded by a look of even greater love. He arose and went in search of Thia. But he did not in his quest of her throw dignity to the winds. He did not ask anybody where he should find her. He walked slowly, as though bent on no errand. It was near sunset when at length he espied his lost one near to a lonely pool at the edge of the forest.
She did not see him. She sat busily plaiting wattles. There was a great pile of these beside her. And in and around the pool were her geese.
It was they that saw him first, and at sight of him they began to quack, as though in warning. Thia looked up quickly and saw Thol. He held out his arms to her, he strode towards her, calling her name;but she was up, she was gone into the darkness of the forest.
Long he peered into that darkness, and called into it, and even groped through it, but vainly.