XXXI.
THE DOOR IN THE WALL.
I.
One confidential evening, not three months ago, Lionel Wallace told methis story of the Door in the Wall. And at the time I thought that so faras he was concerned it was a true story.
He told it me with such a direct simplicity of conviction that I could notdo otherwise than believe in him. But in the morning, in my own flat, Iwoke to a different atmosphere, and as I lay in bed and recalled thethings he had told me, stripped of the glamour of his earnest slow voice,denuded of the focussed, shaded table light, the shadowy atmosphere thatwrapped about him and me, and the pleasant bright things, the dessert andglasses and napery of the dinner we had shared, making them for the time abright little world quite cut off from everyday realities, I saw it all asfrankly incredible. "He was mystifying!" I said, and then: "How well hedid it!... It isn't quite the thing I should have expected him, of allpeople, to do well."
Afterwards as I sat up in bed and sipped my morning tea, I found myselftrying to account for the flavour of reality that perplexed me in hisimpossible reminiscences, by supposing they did in some way suggest,present, convey--I hardly know which word to use--experiences it wasotherwise impossible to tell.
Well, I don't resort to that explanation now. I have got over myintervening doubts. I believe now, as I believed at the moment of telling,that Wallace did to the very best of his ability strip the truth of hissecret for me. But whether he himself saw, or only thought he saw, whetherhe himself was the possessor of an inestimable privilege or the victim ofa fantastic dream, I cannot pretend to guess. Even the facts of his death,which ended my doubts for ever, throw no light on that.
That much the reader must judge for himself.
I forget now what chance comment or criticism of mine moved so reticent aman to confide in me. He was, I think, defending himself against animputation of slackness and unreliability I had made in relation to agreat public movement, in which he had disappointed me. But he plungedsuddenly. "I have," he said, "a preoccupation----
"I know," he went on, after a pause, "I have been negligent. The fact is--it isn't a case of ghosts or apparitions--but--it's an odd thing to tellof, Redmond--I am haunted. I am haunted by something--that rather takesthe light out of things, that fills me with longings..."
He paused, checked by that English shyness that so often overcomes us whenwe would speak of moving or grave or beautiful things. "You were at SaintAethelstan's all through," he said, and for a moment that seemed to mequite irrelevant. "Well"--and he paused. Then very haltingly at first, butafterwards more easily, he began to tell of the thing that was hidden inhis life, the haunting memory of a beauty and a happiness that filled hisheart with insatiable longings, that made all the interests and spectacleof worldly life seem dull and tedious and vain to him.
Now that I have the clue to it, the thing seems written visibly in hisface. I have a photograph in which that look of detachment has been caughtand intensified. It reminds me of what a woman once said of him--a womanwho had loved him greatly. "Suddenly," she said, "the interest goes out ofhim. He forgets you. He doesn't care a rap for you--under his verynose..."
Yet the interest was not always out of him, and when he was holding hisattention to a thing Wallace could contrive to be an extremely successfulman. His career, indeed, is set with successes. He left me behind him longago: he soared up over my head, and cut a figure in the world that Icouldn't cut--anyhow. He was still a year short of forty, and they say nowthat he would have been in office and very probably in the new Cabinet ifhe had lived. At school he always beat me without effort--as it were bynature. We were at school together at Saint Aethelstan's College in WestKensington for almost all our school-time. He came into the school as mycoequal, but he left far above me, in a blaze of scholarships andbrilliant performance. Yet I think I made a fair average running. And itwas at school I heard first of the "Door in the Wall"--that I was to hearof a second time only a month before his death.
To him at least the Door in the Wall was a real door, leading through areal wall to immortal realities. Of that I am now quite assured.
And it came into his life quite early, when he was a little fellow betweenfive and six. I remember how, as he sat making his confession to me with aslow gravity, he reasoned and reckoned the date of it. "There was," hesaid, "a crimson Virginia creeper in it--all one bright uniform crimson,in a clear amber sunshine against a white wall. That came into theimpression somehow, though I don't clearly remember how, and there werehorse-chestnut leaves upon the clean pavement outside the green door. Theywere blotched yellow and green, you know, not brown nor dirty, so thatthey must have been new fallen. I take it that means October. I look outfor horse-chestnut leaves every year and I ought to know.
"If I'm right in that, I was about five years and four months old."
He was, he said, rather a precocious little boy--he learnt to talk at anabnormally early age, and he was so sane and "old-fashioned," as peoplesay, that he was permitted an amount of initiative that most childrenscarcely attain by seven or eight. His mother died when he was two, and hewas under the less vigilant and authoritative care of a nursery governess.His father was a stern, preoccupied lawyer, who gave him little attention,and expected great things of him. For all his brightness he found life alittle grey and dull, I think. And one day he wandered.
He could not recall the particular neglect that enabled him to get away,nor the course he took among the West Kensington roads. All that had fadedamong the incurable blurs of memory. But the white wall and the green doorstood out quite distinctly.
As his memory of that childish experience ran, he did at the very firstsight of that door experience a peculiar emotion, an attraction, a desireto get to the door and open it and walk in. And at the same time he hadthe clearest conviction that either it was unwise or it was wrong of him--he could not tell which--to yield to this attraction. He insisted upon itas a curious thing that he knew from the very beginning--unless memory hasplayed him the queerest trick--that the door was unfastened, and that hecould go in as he chose.
I seem to see the figure of that little boy, drawn and repelled. And itwas very clear in his mind, too, though why it should be so was neverexplained, that his father would be very angry if he went in through thatdoor.
Wallace described all these moments of hesitation to me with the utmostparticularity. He went right past the door, and then, with his hands inhis pockets and making an infantile attempt to whistle, strolled rightalong beyond the end of the wall. There he recalls a number of mean dirtyshops, and particularly that of a plumber and decorator with a dustydisorder of earthenware pipes, sheet lead, ball taps, pattern books ofwall paper, and tins of enamel. He stood pretending to examine thesethings, and _coveting_, passionately desiring, the green door.
Then, he said, he had a gust of emotion. He made a run for it, lesthesitation should grip him again; he went plump with outstretched handthrough the green door and let it slam behind him. And so, in a trice, hecame into the garden that has haunted all his life.
It was very difficult for Wallace to give me his full sense of that gardeninto which he came.
There was something in the very air of it that exhilarated, that gave onea sense of lightness and good happening and well-being; there wassomething in the sight of it that made all its colour clean and perfectand subtly luminous. In the instant of coming into it one was exquisitelyglad--as only in rare moments, and when one is young and joyful one can beglad in this world. And everything was beautiful there...
Wallace mused before he went on telling me. "You see," he said, with thedoubtful inflection of a man who pauses at incredible things, "there weretwo great panthers there... Yes, spotted panthers. And I was not afraid.There was a long wide path with marble-edged flower borders on eitherside, and these two huge velvety beasts were playing there with a ball.One looked up and came towards me, a little curious as it seemed. It cameright up to me, rubbed its soft round ear very gently against the sm
allhand I held out, and purred. It was, I tell you, an enchanted garden. Iknow. And the size? Oh! it stretched far and wide, this way and that. Ibelieve there were hills far away. Heaven knows where West Kensington hadsuddenly got to. And somehow it was just like coming home.
"You know, in the very moment the door swung to behind me, I forgot theroad with its fallen chestnut leaves, its cabs and tradesmen's carts, Iforgot the sort of gravitational pull back to the discipline and obedienceof home, I forgot all hesitations and fear, forgot discretion, forgot allthe intimate realities of this life. I became in a moment a very glad andwonder-happy little boy--in another world. It was a world with a differentquality, a warmer, more penetrating and mellower light, with a faint cleargladness in its air, and wisps of sun-touched cloud in the blueness of itssky. And before me ran this long wide path, invitingly, with weedless bedson either side, rich with untended flowers, and these two great panthers.I put my little hands fearlessly on their soft fur, and caressed theirround ears and the sensitive corners under their ears, and played withthem, and it was as though they welcomed me home. There was a keen senseof home-coming in my mind, and when presently a tall, fair girl appearedin the pathway and came to meet me, smiling, and said 'Well?' to me, andlifted me, and kissed me, and put me down, and led me by the hand, therewas no amazement, but only an impression of delightful rightness, of beingreminded of happy things that had in some strange way been overlooked.There were broad red steps, I remember, that came into view between spikesof delphinium, and up these we went to a great avenue between very old andshady dark trees. All down this avenue, you know, between the red chappedstems, were marble seats of honour and statuary, and very tame andfriendly white doves...
"Along this cool avenue my girl-friend led me, looking down--I recall thepleasant lines, the finely-modelled chin of her sweet kind face--asking mequestions in a soft, agreeable voice, and telling me things, pleasantthings I know, though what they were I was never able to recall...Presently a little Capuchin monkey, very clean, with a fur of ruddy brownand kindly hazel eyes, came down a tree to us and ran beside me, lookingup at me and grinning, and presently leapt to my shoulder. So we two wenton our way in great happiness."
He paused.
"Go on," I said.
"I remember little things. We passed an old man musing among laurels, Iremember, and a place gay with paroquets, and came through a broad shadedcolonnade to a spacious cool palace, full of pleasant fountains, full ofbeautiful things, full of the quality and promise of heart's desire. Andthere were many things and many people, some that still seem to stand outclearly and some that are a little vague; but all these people werebeautiful and kind. In some way--I don't know how--it was conveyed to methat they all were kind to me, glad to have me there, and filling me withgladness by their gestures, by the touch of their hands, by the welcomeand love in their eyes. Yes----"
He mused for a while. "Playmates I found there. That was very much to me,because I was a lonely little boy. They played delightful games in agrass-covered court where there was a sun-dial set about with flowers. Andas one played one loved...
"But--it's odd--there's a gap in my memory. I don't remember the games weplayed. I never remembered. Afterwards, as a child, I spent long hourstrying, even with tears, to recall the form of that happiness. I wanted toplay it all over again--in my nursery--by myself. No! All I remember isthe happiness and two dear playfellows who were most with me... Thenpresently came a sombre dark woman, with a grave, pale face and dreamyeyes, a sombre woman, wearing a soft long robe of pale purple, who carrieda book, and beckoned and took me aside with her into a gallery above ahall--though my playmates were loth to have me go, and ceased their gameand stood watching as I was carried away. Come back to us!' they cried.'Come back to us soon!' I looked up at her face, but she heeded them notat all. Her face was very gentle and grave. She took me to a seat in thegallery, and I stood beside her, ready to look at her book as she openedit upon her knee. The pages fell open. She pointed, and I looked,marvelling, for in the living pages of that book I saw myself; it was astory about myself, and in it were all the things that had happened to mesince ever I was born...
"It was wonderful to me, because the pages of that book were not pictures,you understand, but realities."
Wallace paused gravely--looked at me doubtfully.
"Go on," I said. "I understand."
"They were realities---yes, they must have been; people moved and thingscame and went in them; my dear mother, whom I had near forgotten; then myfather, stern and upright, the servants, the nursery, all the familiarthings of home. Then the front door and the busy streets, with traffic toand fro. I looked and marvelled, and looked half doubtfully again into thewoman's face and turned the pages over, skipping this and that, to seemore of this book and more, and so at last I came to myself hovering andhesitating outside the green door in the long white wall, and felt againthe conflict and the fear.
"'And next?' I cried, and would have turned on, but the cool hand of thegrave woman delayed me.
"'Next?' I insisted, and struggled gently with her hand, pulling up herfingers with all my childish strength, and as she yielded and the pagecame over she bent down upon me like a shadow and kissed my brow.
"But the page did not show the enchanted garden, nor the panthers, nor thegirl who had led me by the hand, nor the playfellows who had been so lothto let me go. It showed a long grey street in West Kensington, in thatchill hour of afternoon before the lamps are lit, and I was there, awretched little figure, weeping aloud, for all that I could do to restrainmyself, and I was weeping because I could not return to my dearplayfellows who had called after me, 'Come back to us! Come back to ussoon!' I was there. This was no page in a book, but harsh reality; thatenchanted place and the restraining hand of the grave mother at whose kneeI stood had gone--whither had they gone?"
He halted again, and remained for a time staring into the fire.
"Oh! the woefulness of that return!" he murmured.
"Well?" I said, after a minute or so.
"Poor little wretch I was!--brought back to this grey world again! As Irealised the fulness of what had happened to me, I gave way to quiteungovernable grief. And the shame and humiliation of that public weepingand my disgraceful home-coming remain with me still. I see again thebenevolent-looking old gentleman in gold spectacles who stopped and spoketo me--prodding me first with his umbrella. 'Poor little chap,' said he;'and are you lost then?'--and me a London boy of five and more! And hemust needs bring in a kindly young policeman and make a crowd of me, andso march me home. Sobbing, conspicuous, and frightened, I came back fromthe enchanted garden to the steps of my father's house.
"That is as well as I can remember my vision of that garden--the gardenthat haunts me still. Of course, I can convey nothing of thatindescribable quality of translucent unreality, that _difference_from the common things of experience that hung about it all; but that--that is what happened. If it was a dream, I am sure it was a day-time andaltogether extraordinary dream... H'm!--naturally there followed aterrible questioning, by my aunt, my father, the nurse, the governess--everyone...
"I tried to tell them, and my father gave me my first thrashing fortelling lies. When afterwards I tried to tell my aunt, she punished meagain for my wicked persistence. Then, as I said, everyone was forbiddento listen to me, to hear a word about it. Even my fairytale books weretaken away from me for a time--because I was too 'imaginative.' Eh? Yes,they did that! My father belonged to the old school... And my story wasdriven back upon myself. I whispered it to my pillow--my pillow that wasoften damp and salt to my whispering lips with childish tears. And I addedalways to my official and less fervent prayers this one heartfelt request:'Please God I may dream of the garden. Oh! take me back to my garden!'Take me back to my garden! I dreamt often of the garden. I may have addedto it, I may have changed it; I do not know... All this, you understand,is an attempt to reconstruct from fragmentary memories a very earlyexperience. Between that and the other consecutive mem
ories of my boyhoodthere is a gulf. A time came when it seemed impossible I should ever speakof that wonder glimpse again."
I asked an obvious question.
"No," he said. "I don't remember that I ever attempted to find my way backto the garden in those early years. This seems odd to me now, but I thinkthat very probably a closer watch was kept on my movements after thismisadventure to prevent my going astray. No, it wasn't till you knew methat I tried for the garden again. And I believe there was a period--incredible as it seems now--when I forgot the garden altogether--when Iwas about eight or nine it may have been. Do you remember me as a kid atSaint Aethelstan's?"
"Rather!"
"I didn't show any signs, did I, in those days of having a secret dream?"
II.
He looked up with a sudden smile.
"Did you ever play North-West Passage with me?... No, of course you didn'tcome my way!"
"It was the sort of game," he went on, "that every imaginative child playsall day. The idea was the discovery of a North-West Passage to school. Theway to school was plain enough; the game consisted in finding some waythat wasn't plain, starting off ten minutes early in some almost hopelessdirection, and working my way round through unaccustomed streets to mygoal. And one day I got entangled among some rather low-class streets onthe other side of Campden Hill, and I began to think that for once thegame would be against me and that I should get to school late. I triedrather desperately a street that seemed a _cul-de-sac_, and found apassage at the end. I hurried through that with renewed hope. 'I shall doit yet,' I said, and passed a row of frowsy little shops that wereinexplicably familiar to me, and behold! there was my long white wall andthe green door that led to the enchanted garden!
"The thing whacked upon me suddenly. Then, after all, that garden, thatwonderful garden, wasn't a dream!"
He paused.
"I suppose my second experience with the green door marks the world ofdifference there is between the busy life of a schoolboy and the infiniteleisure of a child. Anyhow, this second time I didn't for a moment thinkof going in straight away. You see----. For one thing, my mind was full ofthe idea of getting to school in time--set on not breaking my record forpunctuality. I must surely have felt _some_ little desire at least totry the door--yes. I must have felt that... But I seem to remember theattraction of the door mainly as another obstacle to my overmasteringdetermination to get to school. I was immensely interested by thisdiscovery I had made, of course--I went on with my mind full of it--but Iwent on. It didn't check me. I ran past, tugging out my watch, found I hadten minutes still to spare, and then I was going downhill into familiarsurroundings. I got to school, breathless, it is true, and wet withperspiration, but in time. I can remember hanging up my coat and hat...Went right by it and left it behind me. Odd, eh?"
He looked at me thoughtfully, "Of course I didn't know then that itwouldn't always be there. Schoolboys have limited imaginations. I supposeI thought it was an awfully jolly thing to have it there, to know my wayback to it, but there was the school tugging at me. I expect I was a gooddeal distraught and inattentive that morning, recalling what I could ofthe beautiful strange people I should presently see again. Oddly enough Ihad no doubt in my mind that they would be glad to see me... Yes, I musthave thought of the garden that morning just as a jolly sort of place towhich one might resort in the interludes of a strenuous scholastic career.
"I didn't go that day at all. The next day was a half holiday, and thatmay have weighed with me. Perhaps, too, my state of inattention broughtdown impositions upon me, and docked the margin of time necessary for the_detour_. I don't know. What I do know is that in the meantime theenchanted garden was so much upon my mind that I could not keep it tomyself.
"I told. What was his name?--a ferrety-looking youngster we used to callSquiff."
"Young Hopkins," said I.
"Hopkins it was. I did not like telling him. I had a feeling that in someway it was against the rules to tell him, but I did. He was walking partof the way home with me; he was talkative, and if we had not talked aboutthe enchanted garden we should have talked of something else, and it wasintolerable to me to think about any other subject. So I blabbed.
"Well, he told my secret. The next day in the play interval I found myselfsurrounded by half a dozen bigger boys, half teasing, and wholly curiousto hear more of the enchanted garden. There was that big Fawcett--youremember him?--and Carnaby and Morley Reynolds. You weren't there by anychance? No, I think I should have remembered if you were...
"A boy is a creature of odd feelings. I was, I really believe, in spite ofmy secret self-disgust, a little flattered to have the attention of thesebig fellows. I remember particularly a moment of pleasure caused by thepraise of Crawshaw--you remember Crawshaw major, the son of Crawshaw thecomposer?--who said it was the best lie he had ever heard. But at the sametime there was a really painful undertow of shame at telling what I feltwas indeed a sacred secret. That beast Fawcett made a joke about the girlin green----"
Wallace's voice sank with the keen memory of that shame. "I pretended notto hear," he said. "Well, then Carnaby suddenly called me a young liar,and disputed with me when I said the thing was true. I said I knew whereto find the green door, could lead them all there in ten minutes. Carnabybecame outrageously virtuous, and said I'd have to--and bear out my wordsor suffer. Did you ever have Carnaby twist your arm? Then perhaps you'llunderstand how it went with me. I swore my story was true. There wasnobody in the school then to save a chap from Carnaby, though Crawshaw putin a word or so. Carnaby had got his game. I grew excited and red-eared,and a little frightened. I behaved altogether like a silly little chap,and the outcome of it all was that instead of starting alone for myenchanted garden, I led the way presently--cheeks flushed, ears hot, eyessmarting, and my soul one burning misery and shame--for a party of sixmocking, curious, and threatening schoolfellows.
"We never found the white wall and the green door..."
"You mean----?"
"I mean I couldn't find it. I would have found it if I could.
"And afterwards when I could go alone I couldn't find it. I never foundit. I seem now to have been always looking for it through my school-boydays, but I never came upon it--never."
"Did the fellows--make it disagreeable?"
"Beastly... Carnaby held a council over me for wanton lying. I rememberhow I sneaked home and upstairs to hide the marks of my blubbering. Butwhen I cried myself to sleep at last it wasn't for Carnaby, but for thegarden, for the beautiful afternoon I had hoped for, for the sweetfriendly women and the waiting playfellows, and the game I had hoped tolearn again, that beautiful forgotten game...
"I believed firmly that if I had not told--... I had bad times afterthat--crying at night and wool-gathering by day. For two terms I slackenedand had bad reports. Do you remember? Of course you would! It was_you_--your beating me in mathematics that brought me back to thegrind again."
III.
For a time my friend stared silently into the red heart of the fire. Thenhe said: "I never saw it again until I was seventeen.
"It leapt upon me for the third time--as I was driving to Paddington on myway to Oxford and a scholarship. I had just one momentary glimpse. I wasleaning over the apron of my hansom smoking a cigarette, and no doubtthinking myself no end of a man of the world, and suddenly there was thedoor, the wall, the dear sense of unforgettable and still attainablethings.
"We clattered by--I too taken by surprise to stop my cab until we werewell past and round a corner. Then I had a queer moment, a double anddivergent movement of my will: I tapped the little door in the roof of thecab, and brought my arm down to pull out my watch. 'Yes, sir!' said thecabman, smartly. 'Er--well--it's nothing,' I cried. '_My_ mistake! Wehaven't much time! Go on!' And he went on...
"I got my scholarship. And the night after I was told of that I sat overmy fire in my little upper room, my study, in my father's house, with hispraise--his rare praise--and his sound counsels ringing in my ears, and Ismoke
d my favourite pipe--the formidable bulldog of adolescence--andthought of that door in the long white wall. 'If I had stopped,' Ithought, 'I should have missed my scholarship, I should have missedOxford--muddled all the fine career before me! I begin to see thingsbetter!' I fell musing deeply, but I did not doubt then this career ofmine was a thing that merited sacrifice.
"Those dear friends and that clear atmosphere seemed very sweet to me,very fine but remote. My grip was fixing now upon the world. I saw anotherdoor opening--the door of my career."
He stared again into the fire. Its red light picked out a stubbornstrength in his face for just one flickering moment, and then it vanishedagain.
"Well," he said and sighed, "I have served that career. I have done--muchwork, much hard work. But I have dreamt of the enchanted garden a thousanddreams, and seen its door, or at least glimpsed its door, four times sincethen. Yes--four times. For a while this world was so bright andinteresting, seemed so full of meaning and opportunity, that thehalf-effaced charm of the garden was by comparison gentle and remote. Whowants to pat panthers on the way to dinner with pretty women anddistinguished men? I came down to London from Oxford, a man of boldpromise that I have done something to redeem. Something--and yet therehave been disappointments...
"Twice I have been in love--I will not dwell on that--but once, as I wentto someone who, I knew, doubted whether I dared to come, I took a shortcut at a venture through an unfrequented road near Earl's Court, and sohappened on a white wall and a familiar green door. 'Odd!' said I tomyself, 'but I thought this place was on Campden Hill. It's the place Inever could find somehow--like counting Stonehenge--the place of thatqueer daydream of mine.' And I went by it intent upon my purpose. It hadno appeal to me that afternoon.
"I had just a moment's impulse to try the door, three steps aside wereneeded at the most--though I was sure enough in my heart that it wouldopen to me--and then I thought that doing so might delay me on the way tothat appointment in which I thought my honour was involved. Afterwards Iwas sorry for my punctuality--might at least have peeped in, I thought,and waved a hand to those panthers, but I knew enough by this time not toseek again belatedly that which is not found by seeking. Yes, that timemade me very sorry...
"Years of hard work after that, and never a sight of the door. It's onlyrecently it has come back to me. With it there has come a sense as thoughsome thin tarnish had spread itself over my world. I began to think of itas a sorrowful and bitter thing that I should never see that door again.Perhaps I was suffering a little from overwork--perhaps it was what I'veheard spoken of as the feeling of forty. I don't know. But certainly thekeen brightness that makes effort easy has gone out of things recently,and that just at a time--with all these new political developments--when Iought to be working. Odd, isn't it? But I do begin to find life toilsome,its rewards, as I come near them, cheap. I began a little while ago towant the garden quite badly. Yes--and I've seen it three times."
"The garden?"
"No---the door! And I haven't gone in!"
He leant over the table to me, with an enormous sorrow in his voice as hespoke. "Thrice I have had my chance--_thrice_! If ever that dooroffers itself to me again, I swore, I will go in, out of this dust andheat, out of this dry glitter of vanity, out of these toilsome futilities.I will go and never return. This time I will stay... I swore it, and whenthe time came--_I didn't go_.
"Three times in one year have I passed that door and failed to enter.Three times in the last year.
"The first time was on the night of the snatch division on the Tenants'Redemption Bill, on which the Government was saved by a majority of three.You remember? No one on our side--perhaps very few on the opposite side--expected the end that night. Then the debate collapsed like eggshells. Iand Hotchkiss were dining with his cousin at Brentford; we were bothunpaired, and we were called up by telephone, and set off at once in hiscousin's motor. We got in barely in time, and on the way we passed my walland door--livid in the moonlight, blotched with hot yellow as the glare ofour lamps lit it, but unmistakable. 'My God!' cried I. 'What?' saidHotchkiss. 'Nothing!' I answered, and the moment passed.
"'I've made a great sacrifice,' I told the whip as I got in. 'They allhave,' he said, and hurried by.
"I do not see how I could have done otherwise then. And the next occasionwas as I rushed to my father's bedside to bid that stern old man farewell.Then, too, the claims of life were imperative. But the third time wasdifferent; it happened a week ago. It fills me with hot remorse to recallit. I was with Gurker and Ralphs--it's no secret now, you know, that I'vehad my talk with Gurker. We had been dining at Frobisher's, and the talkhad become intimate between us. The question of my place in thereconstructed Ministry lay always just over the boundary of thediscussion. Yes--yes. That's all settled. It needn't be talked about yet,but there's no reason to keep a secret from you... Yes--thanks! thanks!But let me tell you my story.
"Then, on that night things were very much in the air. My position was avery delicate one. I was keenly anxious to get some definite word fromGurker, but was hampered by Ralphs' presence. I was using the best powerof my brain to keep that light and careless talk not too obviouslydirected to the point that concerned me. I had to. Ralphs' behaviour sincehas more than justified my caution... Ralphs, I knew, would leave usbeyond the Kensington High Street, and then I could surprise Gurker by asudden frankness. One has sometimes to resort to these little devices...And then it was that in the margin of my field of vision I became awareonce more of the white wall, the green door before us down the road.
"We passed it talking. I passed it. I can still see the shadow of Gurker'smarked profile, his opera hat tilted forward over his prominent nose, themany folds of his neck wrap going before my shadow and Ralphs' as wesauntered past.
"I passed within twenty inches of the door. 'If I say good-night to them,and go in,' I asked myself, 'what will happen?' And I was all a-tingle forthat word with Gurker.
"I could not answer that question in the tangle of my other problems.'They will think me mad,' I thought. 'And suppose I vanish now!---Amazingdisappearance of a prominent politician!' That weighed with me. A thousandinconceivably petty worldlinesses weighed with me in that crisis."
Then he turned on me with a sorrowful smile, and, speaking slowly, "Here Iam!" he said.
"Here I am!" he repeated, "and my chance has gone from me. Three times inone year the door has been offered me--the door that goes into peace, intodelight, into a beauty beyond dreaming, a kindness no man on earth canknow. And I have rejected it, Redmond, and it has gone----"
"How do you know?"
"I know. I know. I am left now to work it out, to stick to the tasks thatheld me so strongly when my moments came. You say I have success--thisvulgar, tawdry, irksome, envied thing. I have it." He had a walnut in hisbig hand. "If that was my success," he said, and crushed it, and held itout for me to see.
"Let me tell you something, Redmond. This loss is destroying me. For twomonths, for ten weeks nearly now, I have done no work at all, except themost necessary and urgent duties. My soul is full of inappeasable regrets.At nights--when it is less likely I shall be recognised--I go out. Iwander. Yes. I wonder what people would think of that if they knew. ACabinet Minister, the responsible head of that most vital of alldepartments, wandering alone--grieving--sometimes near audibly lamenting--for a door, for a garden!"
IV.
I can see now his rather pallid face, and the unfamiliar sombre fire thathad come into his eyes. I see him very vividly to-night. I sit recallinghis words, his tones, and last evening's _Westminster Gazette_ stilllies on my sofa, containing the notice of his death. At lunch to-day theclub was busy with his death. We talked of nothing else.
They found his body very early yesterday morning in a deep excavation nearEast Kensington Station. It is one of two shafts that have been made inconnection with an extension of the railway southward. It is protectedfrom the intrusion of the public by a hoarding upon the high road, inwhich a small doorway has bee
n cut for the convenience of some of theworkmen who live in that direction. The doorway was left unfastenedthrough a misunderstanding between two gangers, and through it he made hisway...
My mind is darkened with questions and riddles.
It would seem he walked all the way from the House that night--he hasfrequently walked home during the past Session--and so it is I figure hisdark form coming along the late and empty streets, wrapped up, intent. Andthen did the pale electric lights near the station cheat the roughplanking into a semblance of white? Did that fatal unfastened door awakensome memory?
Was there, after all, ever any green door in the wall at all?
I do not know. I have told his story as he told it to me. There are timeswhen I believe that Wallace was no more than the victim of the coincidencebetween a rare but not unprecedented type of hallucination and a carelesstrap, but that indeed is not my profoundest belief. You may think mesuperstitious, if you will, and foolish; but, indeed, I am more thanhalf convinced that he had, in truth, an abnormal gift, and a sense,something--I know not what---that in the guise of wall and door offeredhim an outlet, a secret and peculiar passage of escape into another andaltogether more beautiful world. At any rate, you will say, it betrayedhim in the end. But did it betray him? There you touch the inmost mysteryof these dreamers, these men of vision and the imagination. We see ourworld fair and common, the hoarding and the pit. By our daylight standardhe walked out of security into darkness, danger, and death.
But did he see like that?