Tales of Wonder

  The Bird of the Difficult Eye

  Observant men and women that know their Bond Street well willappreciate my astonishment when in a jewellers' shop I perceived thatnobody was furtively watching me. Not only this but when I even pickedup a little carved crystal to examine it no shop-assistants crowdedround me. I walked the whole length of the shop, still no one politelyfollowed.

  Seeing from this that some extraordinary revolution had occurred inthe jewelry business I went with my curiosity well aroused to a queerold person half demon and half man who has an idol-shop in a byway ofthe City and who keeps me informed of affairs at the Edge of theWorld. And briefly over a pinch of heather incense that he takes byway of snuff he gave me this tremendous information: that Mr. NeepyThang the son of Thangobrind had returned from the Edge of the Worldand was even now in London.

  The information may not appear tremendous to those unacquainted withthe source of jewelry; but when I say that the only thief employed byany West-end jeweller since famous Thangobrind's distressing doom isthis same Neepy Thang, and that for lightness of fingers and swiftnessof stockinged foot they have none better in Paris, it will beunderstood why the Bond Street jewellers no longer cared what becameof their old stock.

  There were big diamonds in London that summer and a few considerablesapphires. In certain astounding kingdoms behind the East strangesovereigns missed from their turbans the heirlooms of ancient wars,and here and there the keepers of crown jewels who had not heard thestockinged feet of Thang, were questioned and died slowly.

  And the jewellers gave a little dinner to Thang at the Hotel GreatMagnificent; the windows had not been opened for five years and therewas wine at a guinea a bottle that you could not tell from champagneand cigars at half a crown with a Havana label. Altogether it was asplendid evening for Thang.

  But I have to tell of a far sadder thing than a dinner at a hotel. Thepublic require jewelry and jewelry must be obtained. I have to tell ofNeepy Thang's last journey.

  That year the fashion was emeralds. A man named Green had recentlycrossed the Channel on a bicycle and the jewellers said that a greenstone would be particularly appropriate to commemorate the event andrecommended emeralds.

  Now a certain money-lender of Cheapside who had just been made a peerhad divided his gains into three equal parts; one for the purchase ofthe peerage, country house and park, and the twenty thousand pheasantsthat are absolutely essential, and one for the upkeep of the position,while the third he banked abroad, partly to cheat the nativetax-gatherer and partly because it seemed to him that the days of thePeerage were few and that he might at any moment be called upon tostart afresh elsewhere. In the upkeep of the position he includedjewelry for his wife and so it came about that Lord Castlenormanplaced an order with two well-known Bond-street jewellers namedMessrs. Grosvenor and Campbell to the extent of L100,000 for a fewreliable emeralds.

  But the emeralds in stock were mostly small and shop-soiled and NeepyThang had to set out at once before he had had as much as a week inLondon. I will briefly sketch his project. Not many knew it, for wherethe form of business is blackmail the fewer creditors you have thebetter (which of course in various degrees applies at all times).

  On the shores of the risky seas of Shiroora Shan grows one tree onlyso that upon its branches if anywhere in the world there must buildits nest the Bird of the Difficult Eye. Neepy Thang had come by thisinformation, which was indeed the truth, that if the bird migrated toFairyland before the three eggs hatched out they would undoubtedly allturn into emeralds, while if they hatched out first it would be a badbusiness.

  When he had mentioned these eggs to Messrs. Grosvenor and Campbellthey had said, "The very thing": they were men of few words, inEnglish, for it was not their native tongue.

  So Neepy Thang set out. He bought the purple ticket at VictoriaStation. He went by Herne Hill, Bromley and Bickley and passed St.Mary Cray. At Eynsford he changed and taking a footpath along awinding valley went wandering into the hills. And at the top of a hillin a little wood, where all the anemones long since were over and theperfume of mint and thyme from outside came drifting in with Thang, hefound once more the familiar path, age-old and fair as wonder, thatleads to the Edge of the World. Little to him were its sacred memoriesthat are one with the secret of earth, for he was on business, andlittle would they be to me if I ever put them on paper. Let it sufficethat he went down that path going further and further from the fieldswe know, and all the way he muttered to himself, "What if the eggshatch out and it be a bad business!" The glamour that is at all timesupon those lonely lands that lie at the back of the chalky hills ofKent intensified as he went upon his journeys. Queerer and queerergrew the things that he saw by little World-End Path. Many a twilightdescended upon that journey with all their mysteries, many a blaze ofstars; many a morning came flaming up to a tinkle of silvern horns;till the outpost elves of Fairyland came in sight and the glitteringcrests of Fairyland's three mountains betokened the journey's end. Andso with painful steps (for the shores of the world are covered withhuge crystals) he came to the risky seas of Shiroora Shan and saw thempounding to gravel the wreckage of fallen stars, saw them and heardtheir roar, those shipless seas that between earth and the fairies'homes heave beneath some huge wind that is none of our four. And therein the darkness on the grizzly coast, for darkness was swoopingslantwise down the sky as though with some evil purpose, there stoodthat lonely, gnarled and deciduous tree. It was a bad place to befound in after dark, and night descended with multitudes of stars,beasts prowling in the blackness gluttered [See any dictionary, but invain.] at Neepy Thang. And there on a lower branch within easy reachhe clearly saw the Bird of the Difficult Eye sitting upon the nest forwhich she is famous. Her face was towards those three inscrutablemountains, far-off on the other side of the risky seas, whose hiddenvalleys are Fairyland. Though not yet autumn in the fields we know, itwas close on midwinter here, the moment as Thang knew when those eggshatch out. Had he miscalculated and arrived a minute too late? Yet thebird was even now about to migrate, her pinions fluttered and her gazewas toward Fairyland. Thang hoped and muttered a prayer to those pagangods whose spite and vengeance he had most reason to fear. It seemsthat it was too late or a prayer too small to placate them, for thereand then the stroke of midwinter came and the eggs hatched out in theroar of Shiroora Shan or ever the bird was gone with her difficult eyeand it was a bad business indeed for Neepy Thang; I haven't the heartto tell you any more.

  "'Ere," said Lord Castlenorman some few weeks later to Messrs.Grosvenor and Campbell, "you aren't 'arf taking your time about thoseemeralds."