Selected Short Stories of H.G. Wells: The Door in the Wall

But in the morning, in my own flat, I woke to a different atmosphere, and as I lay in bed and recalled the things he had told me, stripped of the glamour of his earnest slow voice, denuded of the focussed, shaded table light, the shadowy atmosphere that wrapped about him and me, and the pleasant bright things, the dessert and glasses and napery of the dinner we had shared, making them for the time a bright little world quite cut off from everyday realities, I saw it all as frankly incredible.

But in the morning, in my own flat, I woke to a different atmosphere, and as I lay in bed and recalled the things he had told me, stripped of the glamour of his earnest slow voice, denuded of the focussed, shaded table light, the shadowy atmosphere that wrapped about him and me, and the pleasant bright things, the dessert and glasses and napery of the dinner we had shared, making them for the time a bright little world quite cut off from everyday realities, I saw it all as frankly incredible.

I have got over my intervening doubts.

I forget now what chance comment or criticism of mine moved so reticent a man to confide in me.

He was, I think, defending himself against an imputation of slackness and unreliability I had made in relation to a great public movement, in which he had disappointed me.

Yet the interest was not always out of him, and when he was holding his attention to a thing Wallace could contrive to be an extremely successful man.

He was, he said, rather a precocious little boy—he learnt to talk at an abnormally early age, and he was so sane and "old-fashioned," as people say, that he was permitted an amount of initiative that most children scarcely attain by seven or eight.

His mother died when he was two, and he was under the less vigilant and authoritative care of a nursery governess.

His mother died when he was two, and he was under the less vigilant and authoritative care of a nursery governess.

He stood pretending to examine these things, and coveting, passionately desiring, the green door.

"You see," he said, with the doubtful inflection of a man who pauses at incredible things, "there were two great panthers there...Yes, spotted panthers. And I was not afraid..."

...I forgot the sort of gravitational pull back to the discipline and obedience of home, I forgot all hesitations and fear, forgot discretion, forgot all the intimate realities of this life.

Presently a little Capuchin monkey, very clean, with a fur of ruddy brown and kindly hazel eyes, came down a tree to us and ran beside me, looking up at me and grinning, and presently leapt to my shoulder.

We passed an old man musing among laurels, I remember, and a place gay with paroquets, and came through a broad shaded colonnade to a spacious cool palace, full of pleasant fountains, full of beautiful things, full of the quality and promise of heart's desire.

We passed an old man musing among laurels, I remember, and a place gay with paroquets, and came through a broad shaded colonnade to a spacious cool palace, full of pleasant fountains, full of beautiful things, full of the quality and promise of heart's desire.

Sobbing, conspicuous, and frightened, I came back from the enchanted garden to the steps of my father's house.

This seems odd to me now, but I think that very probably a closer watch was kept on my movements after this misadventure to prevent my going astray.

I tried rather desperately a street that seemed a cul-de-sac, and found a passage at the end.

'I shall do it yet,' I said, and passed a row of frowsy little shops that were inexplicably familiar to me, and behold! there was my long white wall and the green door that led to the enchanted garden!

Yes, I must have thought of the garden that morning just as a jolly sort of place to which one might resort in the interludes of a strenuous scholastic career.

Perhaps, too, my state of inattention brought down impositions upon me, and docked the margin of time necessary for the detour.

Carnaby held a council over me for wanton lying.

But I do begin to find life toilsome, its rewards, as I come near them, cheap.

I do not see how I could have done otherwise then. And the next occasion was as I rushed to my father's bedside to bid that stern old man farewell. Then, too, the claims of life were imperative.

That weighed with me. A thousand inconceivably petty worldlinesses weighed with me in that crisis.

"I know. I know. I am left now to work it out, to stick to the tasks that held me so strongly when my moments came. You say I have success—this vulgar, tawdry, irksome, envied thing. I have it."

"I know. I know. I am left now to work it out, to stick to the tasks that held me so strongly when my moments came. You say I have success—this vulgar, tawdry, irksome, envied thing. I have it."

I can see now his rather pallid face, and the unfamiliar sombre fire that had come into his eyes.

I can see now his rather pallid face, and the unfamiliar sombre fire that had come into his eyes.

And then did the pale electric lights near the station cheat the rough planking into a semblance of white?