The Door in the Wall and Other Stories | Page 9

it wasn't for
Carnaby, but for the garden, for the beautiful afternoon I had hoped for,
for the sweet friendly women and the waiting playfellows and the game
I had hoped to learn again, that beautiful forgotten game . . . . .
"I believed firmly that if I had not told-- . . . . . I had bad times after
that--crying at night and woolgathering by day. For two terms I
slackened and had bad reports. Do you remember? Of course you
would! It was YOU--your beating me in mathematics that brought me
back to the grind again."
III
For a time my friend stared silently into the red heart of the fire. Then
he 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
my way to Oxford and a scholarship. I had just one momentary glimpse.
I was leaning over the apron of my hansom smoking a cigarette, and no
doubt thinking myself no end of a man of the world, and suddenly there
was the door, the wall, the dear sense of unforgettable and still

attainable things.
"We clattered by--I too taken by surprise to stop my cab until we were
well past and round a corner. Then I had a queer moment, a double and
divergent movement of my will: I tapped the little door in the roof of
the cab, and brought my arm down to pull out my watch. 'Yes, sir!' said
the cabman, smartly. 'Er-- well--it's nothing,' I cried. 'MY mistake! We
haven't much time! Go on!' and he went on . . .
"I got my scholarship. And the night after I was told of that I sat over
my fire in my little upper room, my study, in my father's house, with
his praise--his rare praise--and his sound counsels ringing in my ears,
and I smoked my favourite pipe--the formidable bulldog of
adolescence--and thought of that door in the long white wall. 'If I had
stopped,' I thought, 'I should have missed my scholarship, I should have
missed Oxford--muddled all the fine career before me! I begin to see
things better!' I fell musing deeply, but I did not doubt then this career
of mine 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
another door opening--the door of my career."
He stared again into the fire. Its red lights picked out a stubborn
strength in his face for just one flickering moment, and then it vanished
again.
"Well", he said and sighed, "I have served that career. I have
done--much work, much hard work. But I have dreamt of the enchanted
garden a thousand dreams, and seen its door, or at least glimpsed its
door, four times since then. Yes--four times. For a while this world was
so bright and interesting, seemed so full of meaning and opportunity
that the half-effaced charm of the garden was by comparison gentle and
remote. Who wants to pat panthers on the way to dinner with pretty
women and distinguished men? I came down to London from Oxford, a
man of bold promise that I have done something to redeem.
Something--and yet there have been disappointments . . . . .
"Twice I have been in love--I will not dwell on that--but once, as I went
to someone who, I know, doubted whether I dared to come, I took a
short cut at a venture through an unfrequented road near Earl's Court,
and so happened on a white wall and a familiar green door. 'Odd!' said I
to myself, 'but I thought this place was on Campden Hill. It's the place I

never could find somehow--like counting Stonehenge--the place of that
queer day dream of mine.' And I went by it intent upon my purpose. It
had no appeal to me that afternoon.
"I had just a moment's impulse to try the door, three steps aside were
needed at the most--though I was sure enough in my heart that it would
open to me--and then I thought that doing so might delay me on the
way to that appointment in which I thought my honour was involved.
Afterwards I was sorry for my punctuality--I might at least have peeped
in I thought, and waved a hand to those panthers, but I knew enough by
this time not to seek again belatedly that which is not found by seeking.
Yes, that time made me very sorry . . . . .
"Years of hard work after that and never a sight of the door. It's only
recently it has come back to me. With it there has come