The Door in the Wall and Other Stories | Page 6

that they all were kind to me, glad to have me there,
and filling me with gladness by their gestures, by the touch of their
hands, by the welcome and love in their eyes. Yes--"
He mused for awhile. "Playmates I found there. That was very much to
me, because I was a lonely little boy. They played delightful games in a
grass-covered court where there was a sun-dial set about with flowers.
And as one played one loved . . . .
"But--it's odd--there's a gap in my memory. I don't remember the games
we played. I never remembered. Afterwards, as a child, I spent long
hours trying, even with tears, to recall the form of that happiness. I
wanted to play it all over again--in my nursery --by myself. No! All I
remember is the happiness and two dear playfellows who were most
with me . . . . Then presently came a sombre dark woman, with a grave,
pale face and dreamy eyes, a sombre woman wearing a soft long robe
of pale purple, who carried a book and beckoned and took me aside
with her into a gallery above a hall--though my playmates were loth to
have me go, and ceased their game and 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 not at all. Her face was very gentle
and grave. She took me to a seat in the gallery, and I stood beside her,
ready to look at her book as she opened it 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 a story about myself, and in it were all
the things that had happened to me since 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
things came and went in them; my dear mother, whom I had near
forgotten; then my father, stern and upright, the servants, the nursery,
all the familiar things of home. Then the front door and the busy streets,
with traffic to and fro: I looked and marvelled, and looked half

doubtfully 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 came to myself hovering and hesitating outside the green door in the
long white wall, and felt again the conflict and the fear.
"'And next?' I cried, and would have turned on, but the cool hand of the
grave woman delayed me.
"'Next?' I insisted, and struggled gently with her hand, pulling up her
fingers with all my childish strength, and as she yielded and the page
came 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
the girl who had led me by the hand, nor the playfellows who had been
so loth to let me go. It showed a long grey street in West Kensington,
on that chill hour of afternoon before the lamps are lit, and I was there,
a wretched little figure, weeping aloud, for all that I could do to restrain
myself, and I was weeping because I could not return to my dear
play-fellows 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 harsh reality; that
enchanted place and the restraining hand of the grave mother at whose
knee I stood had gone--whither have they gone?"
He halted again, and remained for a time, staring into the fire.
"Oh! the wretchedness 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 I
realised the fulness of what had happened to me, I gave way to quite
ungovernable grief. And the shame and humiliation of that public
weeping and my disgraceful homecoming remain with me still. I see
again the benevolent-looking old gentleman in gold spectacles who
stopped and spoke to 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 he must needs bring in a kindly young policeman
and make a crowd of me, and so march me home. Sobbing,
conspicuous and frightened, I came from the enchanted garden to the
steps