The Book of Wonder | Page 5

There watched him,
apathetically, over the narrow way, that grim and dubious woman
whose house is Night. Thangobrind, hearing no longer the sound of
suspicious feet, felt easier now. He was all but come to the end of the
narrow way, when the woman listlessly uttered that ominous cough.
The cough was too full of meaning to be disregarded. Thangobrind
turned round and saw at once what he feared. The spider-idol had not
stayed at home. The jeweller put his diamond gently upon the ground
and drew his sword called Mouse. And then began that famous fight
upon the narrow way in which the grim old woman whose house was
Night seemed to take so little interest. To the spider-idol you saw at
once it was all a horrible joke. To the jeweller it was grim earnest. He
fought and panted and was pushed back slowly along the narrow way,
but he wounded Hlo-hlo all the while with terrible long gashes all over
his deep, soft body till Mouse was slimy with blood. But at last the
persistent laughter of Hlo-hlo was too much for the jeweller's nerves,
and, once more wounding his demoniac foe, he sank aghast and
exhausted by the door of the house called Night at the feet of the grim
old woman, who having uttered once that ominous cough interfered no
further with the course of events. And there carried Thangobrind the
jeweller away those whose duty it was, to the house where the two men
hang, and taking down from his hook the left-hand of the two, they put
that venturous jeweller in his place; so that there fell on him the doom
that he feared, as all men know though it is so long since, and there
abated somewhat the ire of the envious gods.
And the only daughter of the Merchant Prince felt so little gratitude for
this great deliverance that she took to respectability of the militant kind,
and became aggressively dull, and called her home the English Riviera,

and had platitudes worked in worsted upon her tea-cosy, and in the end
never died, but passed away in her residence.

THE HOUSE OF THE SPHINX
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