[adapted]

by
H. G. Wells

I

One private evening, less than three months ago, Lionel Wallace told me this story of the Door in the Wall. And at the time I thought that for him it was a true story.

He told it to me with such clear simple belief that I could not help believing him. But in the morning, in my own flat, I woke to a different feeling, and as I lay in bed and remembered the things he had told me, without the charm of his serious slow voice, without the soft, shaded table light, the dim air that surrounded him and me, and the pleasant bright things, the dessert and glasses and the tablecloth and napkins of the dinner we had shared, making them, for the time, a bright little world quite cut off from everyday life, I saw it all as plainly unbelievable. “He was making it mysterious!” I said, and then: “How well he did it!… It isn’t quite the kind of thing I would have expected him, of all people, to do well.”

After that as I sat up in bed and drank my morning tea, I found myself trying to explain the feeling of reality that confused me in his impossible memories, by thinking they did in some way suggest, show, tell — I do not know which word to use — experiences that were impossible to tell in any other way.

Well, I don’t use that explanation now. I have got over my doubts in the meantime. I believe now, as I believed when he was telling it, that Wallace did, as well as he could, tell me the truth of his secret. But whether he himself saw, or only thought he saw, whether he himself was the owner of a very special gift or the victim of a wild dream, I cannot even try to guess. Even the facts of his death, which ended my doubts for ever, do not explain that.

That much the reader must decide for himself.

I forget now what chance comment or criticism of mine made so quiet a man talk to me. He was, I think, defending himself against the blame of laziness and not being reliable that I had made about a great public movement, in which he had disappointed me. But he started suddenly. “I have,” he said, “a worry —

“I know,” he continued, after a pause, “I have been careless. The fact is — it isn’t about ghosts or spirits — but — it’s a strange thing to tell, Redmond — I am haunted. I am haunted by something — that sort of takes the joy out of things, that makes me want things very much…”

He paused, held back by that English shyness that so often comes over us when we want to speak of sad or serious or beautiful things. “You were at Saint Aethelstan’s all through,” he said, and for a moment that seemed to me not related at all. “Well” — and he paused. Then very slowly with many pauses at first, but after that more easily, he began to tell about the thing that was hidden in his life, the memory that would not go away of a beauty and a happiness that filled his heart with strong wishes that never ended, that made all the interests and show of life in the world seem dull and boring and useless to him.

Now that I have the clue to it, the thing seems clearly written on his face. I have a photograph where that look of not caring has been caught and made stronger. It reminds me of what a woman once said about him — a woman who had loved him very much. “Suddenly,” she said, “he loses interest. He forgets you. He doesn’t care at all about you — right in front of him…”

Yet the interest was not always gone from him, and when he kept his attention to a thing Wallace could manage to be a very successful man. His career, in fact, is full of successes. He left me behind him long ago: he rose up over my head, and became important in the world in a way that I couldn’t — anyhow. He was still a year under forty, and they say now that he would have been in office and very likely in the new Cabinet if he had lived. At school he always beat me without effort — as if by nature.

We were at school together at Saint Aethelstan’s College in West Kensington for almost all our school time. He came into the school as my equal, but he left far ahead of me, with many scholarships and great success. Yet I think I did fairly well on average. And it was at school I first heard of the “Door in the Wall” — and I was to hear of it a second time only a month before his death.

To him at least the Door in the Wall was a real door, going through a real wall to things that last forever. Of that I am now quite sure.

And it came into his life quite early, when he was a little fellow between five and six. I remember how, as he sat telling me his secret very slowly and seriously, he thought and worked out the date of it. “There was,” he said, “a deep red Virginia creeper in it — all one bright even deep red, in a clear golden sunshine against a white wall. That became part of the memory somehow, though I don’t clearly remember how, and there were horse-chestnut leaves upon the clean pavement outside the green door. They were spotted yellow and green, you know, not brown or dirty, so that they must have been newly fallen. I think that means October. I look out for horse-chestnut leaves every year and I should know.

“If I am right about that, I was about five years and four months old.”

He was, he said, rather a quick little boy for his age — he learnt to talk very early, and he was so sensible and “old-fashioned,” as people say, that he was allowed to do things on his own in a way most children do not get until they are seven or eight. His mother died when he was two, and he was under the less careful and strict care of a nanny. His father was a strict, busy lawyer, who gave him little attention, and expected a lot from him. Even though he was bright, he found life a little grey and dull, I think. And one day he walked off.

He could not remember the exact lack of care that let him get away, or the way he went through the West Kensington roads. All that had faded in the unclear blurs of memory. But the white wall and the green door stood out quite clearly.

As he remembered that childhood experience, he did at the very first look at that door feel a strange feeling, a pull, a wish to get to the door and open it and walk in. And at the same time he had the very clear belief that either it was not wise or it was wrong for him — he could not tell which — to give in to this pull. He kept saying it as a strange thing that he knew from the very start — unless memory has played him the strangest trick — that the door was not locked, and that he could go in as he wanted.

I think I can see that little boy, pulled and pushed away. And it was very clear in his mind, too, though no one ever said why, that his father would be very angry if he went in through that door.

Wallace described all these moments of not being sure to me with very great detail. He went right past the door, and then, with his hands in his pockets and trying like a child to whistle, walked slowly on past the end of the wall. There he remembers a number of small, dirty shops, and especially that of a plumber and decorator with a dusty mess of clay pipes, sheets of lead, ball taps, pattern books of wallpaper, and tins of enamel. He stood pretending to look at these things, and wanting, very much wanting, the green door.

Then, he said, he had a sudden strong feeling. He ran for it, so he would not stop and think again; he went straight with his hand held out through the green door and let it slam behind him. And so, in a moment, he came into the garden that he has thought about all his life.

It was very hard for Wallace to tell me fully what he felt about that garden he went into.

There was something in the very air of it that made one feel excited and happy, that gave one a feeling of lightness and good things and being well; there was something in the sight of it that made all its colour clear and perfect and softly shining. At the moment of coming into it one was very glad — as only in rare moments, and when one is young and very happy one can be glad in this world. And everything was beautiful there…

Wallace thought for a moment before he went on telling me. “You see,” he said, in the doubtful voice of a man who stops at unbelievable things, “there were two big panthers there… Yes, panthers with spots. And I was not afraid. There was a long wide path with flower borders with marble edges on either side, and these two huge soft animals were playing there with a ball.

One looked up and came towards me, a little curious as it seemed. It came right up to me, rubbed its soft round ear very gently against the small hand I held out, and purred. It was, I tell you, a magic garden. I know. And the size? Oh! it went far and wide, this way and that. I believe there were hills far away. I do not know where West Kensington had suddenly gone. And somehow it was just like coming home.

“You know, at the very moment the door closed behind me, I forgot the road with its fallen chestnut leaves, its taxis and workers’ carts, I forgot the kind of strong pull back to the rules and obedience of home, I forgot all doubts and fear, forgot being careful, forgot all the close real things of this life. I became in a moment a very glad and full of wonder little boy — in another world. It was a world with a different feel, a warmer, deeper and softer light, with a light, clear happiness in its air, and thin clouds touched by the sun in its blue sky. And before me ran this long wide path, inviting me, with beds without weeds on either side, full of flowers that no one looked after, and these two big panthers.”

I put my little hands without fear on their soft fur, and stroked their round ears and the soft places under their ears, and played with them, and it was as if they welcomed me home. There was a strong feeling of coming home in my mind, and when soon a tall, fair-haired girl appeared on the path and came to meet me, smiling, and said ‘Well?’ to me, and lifted me, and kissed me, and put me down, and led me by the hand, I was not surprised, but only had a feeling that it was pleasantly right, as if I was being reminded of happy things that had in some strange way been forgotten.

There were wide red steps, I remember, that appeared between tall delphinium flowers, and up these we went to a long path between very old and shady dark trees. All along this path, you know, between the red cracked trunks, were marble seats of honour and statues, and very tame and friendly white doves…

“Along this cool path my girl-friend led me, looking down — I remember the nice shape, the well-shaped chin of her sweet, kind face — asking me questions in a soft, pleasant voice, and telling me things, pleasant things I know, though what they were I could never remember… Soon a small Capuchin monkey, very clean, with a fur of reddish brown and kind light brown eyes, came down a tree to us and ran beside me, looking up at me and smiling, and soon jumped to my shoulder. So we two went on our way very happy.”

He paused.

“Go on,” I said.

“I remember little things. We passed an old man thinking among laurel bushes, I remember, and a place bright with parakeets, and came through a wide shaded walkway with columns to a large cool palace, full of nice fountains, full of beautiful things, full of the feeling and promise of heart’s desire. And there were many things and many people, some that still seem very clear and some that are a little unclear; but all these people were beautiful and kind. In some way — I don’t know how — it was shown to me that they all were kind to me, glad to have me there, and making me feel happy by the way they moved, by the touch of their hands, by the welcome and love in their eyes. Yes — ”

He thought for a while. “I found playmates there. That was very important to me, because I was a lonely little boy. They played fun games in a yard covered with grass where there was a sundial surrounded by flowers. And as you played you loved…”

“But — it’s strange — there is something missing in my memory. I don’t remember the games we played. I never remembered. After that, as a child, I spent long hours trying, even crying, to remember what that happiness was like. I wanted to play it all over again — in my playroom — by myself. No! All I remember is the happiness and two dear playmates who were with me the most…”

Then soon came a dark, sad woman, with a serious, pale face and dreamy eyes, a sad woman, wearing a soft long robe of light purple, who carried a book, and waved to me and took me aside with her into a balcony above a hall — though my playmates did not want to let me go, and stopped their game and stood watching as I was taken away. Come back to us!’ they cried. ‘Come back to us soon!’ I looked up at her face, but she did not listen to them at all.

Her face was very kind and serious. She took me to a seat in the gallery, and I stood beside her, ready to look at her book as she opened it on her knee. The pages fell open. She pointed, and I looked, amazed, for in the pages of that book that seemed alive I saw myself; it was a story about myself, and in it were all the things that had happened to me since I was born…

“It was wonderful to me, because the pages of that book were not pictures, you understand, but real things.”

Wallace paused seriously — looked at me with doubt.

“Please continue,” I said. “I understand.”

“They were real — yes, they must have been; people moved and things came and went in them; my dear mother, whom I had almost forgotten; then my father, serious and good, the servants, the children’s room, all the usual things of home. Then the front door and the busy streets, with traffic back and forth. I looked and was amazed, and looked a little unsure again into the woman’s face and turned the pages over, skipping this and that, to see more of this book and more, and so at last I found myself standing and unsure outside the green door in the long white wall, and felt again the struggle and the fear.”

“‘And next?’ I shouted, and was going to go on, but the cool hand of the serious woman held me back.

“‘Next?’ I asked again, and pulled softly at her hand, lifting her fingers with all my strength as a child, and as she let me and the page turned over she bent down over me like a shadow and kissed my forehead.

“But the page did not show the magic garden, nor the panthers, nor the girl who had led me by the hand, nor the playmates who did not want to let me go. It showed a long grey street in West Kensington, in that cold hour of afternoon before the lamps are lit, and I was there, a sad little figure, crying out loud, for all I could do to stop myself, and I was crying because I could not return to my dear playmates who had called after me, ‘Come back to us! Come back to us soon!’ I was there. This was no page in a book, but real life; that magic place and the holding-back hand of the serious mother by whose knee I stood had gone — where had they gone?”

He stopped again, and stayed for a while, staring into the fire.

“Oh! the sadness of that return!” he whispered.

“Well?” I said, after about a minute.

“Poor little thing I was! — brought back to this grey world again! When I understood fully what had happened to me, I began to cry with grief I could not control. And the shame and deep embarrassment of that crying in public and my shameful coming home stay with me still. I see again the kind-looking old gentleman in gold glasses who stopped and spoke to me — poking me first with his umbrella. ‘Poor little boy,’ he said; ‘and are you lost then?’ — and me a London boy of five and more! And he had to bring in a kind young policeman and gather a crowd around me, and so walk me home. Sobbing, seen by everyone, and frightened, I came back from the magic garden to the steps of my father’s house.

“That is as well as I can remember my picture of that garden — the garden that stays in my mind still. Of course, I cannot tell anything of that feeling I cannot describe, that clear, unreal feeling, that difference from the ordinary things I have known that seemed to be around it all; but that — that is what happened. If it was a dream, I am sure it was a day-time and very unusual dream… H’m! — of course then came a terrible questioning, by my aunt, my father, the nurse, the home teacher — everyone…”

“I tried to tell them, and my father gave me my first beating for telling lies. When later I tried to tell my aunt, she punished me again for not giving up. Then, as I said, everyone was not allowed to listen to me, to hear a word about it. Even my fairy-tale books were taken away from me for a while — because I imagined too much. Eh? Yes, they did that! My father was very old-fashioned… And I had to keep my story to myself. I whispered it to my pillow — my pillow that was often wet and salty to my whispering lips with childish tears.”

“And I added always to my formal and less strong prayers this one deep wish: ‘Please God I may dream of the garden. Oh! take me back to my garden!’ Take me back to my garden! I often dreamed of the garden. I may have added to it, I may have changed it; I do not know… All this, you understand, is an attempt to put together from bits of memories a very early experience. Between that and the other memories of my boyhood that come in order there is a big gap. A time came when it seemed impossible I would ever speak of that wonderful glimpse again.”

I asked a simple question.

“No,” he said. “I don’t remember that I ever tried to find my way back to the garden in those early years. This seems strange to me now, but I think that very likely people watched me more closely after this accident to stop me from getting lost. No, I did not try to find the garden again until you knew me. And I believe there was a time — hard to believe now — when I forgot the garden completely — it may have been when I was about eight or nine. Do you remember me as a kid at Saint Aethelstan’s?”

“Yes!”

“I didn’t show any signs, did I, in those days of having a secret dream?”

II