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 he 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 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.
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