When I came to the House of the Sphinx it was already dark. They made
me eagerly welcome. And I, in spite of the deed, was glad of any
shelter from that ominous wood. I saw at once that there had been a
deed, although a cloak did all that a cloak may do to conceal it. The
mere uneasiness of the welcome made me suspect that cloak.
The Sphinx was moody and silent. I had not come to pry into the
secrets of Eternity nor to investigate the Sphinx's private life, and
so had little to say and few questions to ask; but to whatever I did
say she remained morosely indifferent. It was clear that either she
suspected me of being in search of the secrets of one of her gods, or
of being boldly inquisitive about her traffic with Time, or else she
was darkly absorbed with brooding upon the deed.
I saw soon enough that there was another than me to welcome; I saw it
from the hurried way that they glanced from the door to the deed and
back to the door again. And it was clear that the welcome was to be a
bolted door. But such bolts, and such a door! Rust and decay and
fungus had been there far too long, and it was not a barrier any
longer that would keep out even a determined wolf. And it seemed to be
something worse than a wolf that they feared.
A little later on I gathered from what they said that some imperious
and ghastly thing was looking for the Sphinx, and that something that
had happened had made its arrival certain. It appeared that they had
slapped the Sphinx to vex her out of her apathy in order that she
should pray to one of her gods, whom she had littered in the house of
Time; but her moody silence was invincible, and her apathy Oriental,
ever since the deed had happened. And when they found that they could
not make her pray, there was nothing for them to do but to pay little
useless attentions to the rusty lock of the door, and to look at the
deed and wonder, and even pretend to hope, and to say that after all
it might not bring that destined thing from the forest, which no one
named.
It may be said I had chosen a gruesome house, but not if I had
described the forest from which I came, and I was in need of any spot
wherein I could rest my mind from the thought of it.
I wondered very much what thing would come from the forest on account
of the deed; and having seen that forest--as you, gentle reader, have
not--I had the advantage of knowing that anything might come. It was
useless to ask the Sphinx--she seldom reveals things, like her
paramour Time (the gods take after her), and while this mood was on
her, rebuff was certain. So I quietly began to oil the lock of the
door. And as soon as they saw this simple act I won their confidence.
It was not that my work was of any use--it should have been done long
before; but they saw that my interest was given for the moment to the
thing that they thought vital. They clustered round me then. They
asked me what I thought of the door, and whether I had seen better,
and whether I had seen worse; and I told them about all the doors I
knew, and said that the doors of the baptistry in Florence were better
doors, and the doors made by a certain firm of builders in London were
worse. And then I asked them what it was that was coming after the
Sphinx because of the deed. And at first they would not say, and I
stopped oiling the door; and then they said that it was the
arch-inquisitor of the forest, who is investigator and avenger of all
silverstrian things; and from all that they said about him it seemed to me
that this person was quite white, and was a kind of madness that would
settle down quite blankly upon a place, a kind of mist in which reason
could not live; and it was the fear of this that made them fumble
nervously at the lock of that rotten door; but with the Sphinx it was
not so much fear as sheer prophecy.
The hope that they tried to hope was well enough in its way, but I did
not share it; it was clear that the thing that they feared was the
corollary of the deed--one saw that more by the resignation upon the
face of the Sphinx than by their sorry anxiety for the door.
The wind soughed, and the great tapers flared, and their obvious fear
and the silence of the Sphinx grew more than ever a part of the
atmosphere, and bats went restlessly through the gloom of the wind
that beat the tapers low.
Then a few things screamed far off, then a little nearer, and
something was coming towards us, laughing hideously. I hastily gave a
prod to the door that they guarded; my finger sank right into the
mouldering wood--there was not a chance of holding it. I had not
leisure to observe their fright; I thought of the back-door, for the
forest was better than this; only the Sphinx was absolutely calm, her
prophecy was made and she seemed to have seen her doom, so that no new
thing could perturb her.
But by mouldering rungs of ladders as old as Man, by slippery edges of
the dreaded abyss, with an ominous dizziness about my heart and a
feeling of horror in the soles of my feet, I clambered from tower to
tower till I found the door that I sought; and it opened on to one of
the upper branches of a huge and sombre pine, down which I climbed on
to the floor of the forest. And I was glad to be back again in the
forest from which I had fled.
And the Sphinx in her menaced house--I know not how she fared--whether
she gazes for ever, disconsolate, at the deed, remembering only in her
smitten mind, at which the little boys now leer, that she once knew
well those things at which man stands aghast; or whether in the end
she crept away, and clambering horribly from abyss to abyss, came at
last to higher things, and is wise and eternal still. For who knows of
madness whether it is divine or whether it be of the pit?