the experience i am about to set down was perhaps the result, and at any rate it was the sequel, of a conversation engaged between three men in london in the year 1903.
of these three men one was returned but recently from south africa, where he had seen all too much of the war; another was a kindly, wealthy, sober sort of man, young, virtuous, and full of inquiry; the third was a hack.
it was about the season of easter and of spring, when actually and physically one can feel and handle the force of life about one, all ready to break bounds; but these young men (for no one of them was yet of middle age) preferred to talk of things more shadowy and less certain than the air and the life and the english spring all around. things more shadowy and less certain, but to the mind of youth, being a vigorous mind things fixed and absorbing; destiny, for instance, and the nature of man.
not one of these three, however, affirmed in this conversation (which i so well remember!) any definite scheme. they spoke in terms of violent opinion, of argument, and of analogy, but none of the three came forward with a faith or even with[271] a philosophy from which one felt he could not be shaken. the more remarkable was it, therefore, that one of them on his return in the early morning to his rooms, after this young and long conversation of a mixed sort, such as men entering upon life will often indulge, should have suffered and should have remembered an exact and even terrible vision. it would indeed be inexplicable that he should have suffered such a thing as a consequence of his waking thoughts, though, if there be influences upon minds other than the influences they themselves can bring—if there be influences from without, and other wills determining our dreams—then what next followed is less difficult to comprehend. for, when he had fallen asleep, it seemed to him at once that he was in the midst of a very gay and pleasant company in a sort of palace whereof the vast room in which he stood was one out of very many that opened one into the other in sequence. the crowd, and he with it, went forward slowly towards a banquet which he heard was prepared. he did not see among those he spoke to, and who spoke to him, any face with which he was familiar or to which he could attach a name; and yet he seemed to know them all, in that curious inconsequence of dreams, and one in especial, at some distance from him, which seemed to have been lost once, and now to be seen again through the crowd, was a face the sight of which moved in him a very passionate memory: yet it was no early memory.
[272]so they went forward, and soon they were all seated at a table of enormous length, so long that its length seemed to have some purpose about it; and at the farther end of this table was a door leading out of that hall. it was a door not very large for so magnificent a space; such a door as a man or woman could easily open with a common gesture, and pass through and shut behind them quickly.
now, for the first time, when they were eating and drinking, it seemed to him that the conversation took on meaning, and a more consecutive meaning than is usual in dreams; when, just as that new phase of his dream had begun, one of the guests, a little to the left of the place opposite to him, a woman of middle age who had been somewhat silent, rose without apology, and without warning left her place he hardly knew how, and passed out of the room through the door that he had noticed. it shut behind her. no one mentioned or noticed her going, but in a little while another and another had risen and had gone. and still as each guest departed, some in the midst of a sentence, some during a silence in the talk, there increased upon him an appalling sense of unusual things; it was appalling to him that no one said good-bye, that none of the fellows of those who so departed turned to them or noticed their going, and that none of those who so departed returned or made any promise to return. next he noticed with an increasing ill-ease, by some inconsequence[273] of his dream, that when he watched the departure of a guest (as the others did not) he saw the empty chair and the gap left in the ranks; but when he looked again after speaking to some other to the right or left the gap was somehow less defined, and when he looked yet again it was no longer to be noticed or perceived; though it could not be said that the chair was filled or was removed, but in some way the absence of the man or woman who had been there ceased to be marked, and it was as though they had never been present at all. it was not often that he cared to look for more than a moment at one or another of these risings from the feast; yet in the moment’s observation he could see very different things. some rose as though in terror; some as though in weariness; some startled, as at a sudden command which they alone could hear; some in a natural manner as though at an appointed moment. but there was no order or method in their going: only all went through that door.
his mind was now oppressed by the change which comes in dreams, and turns them sometimes from phantasy to horror. there sat opposite him a man somewhat older than himself, with a face vigorous and yet despairing, not without energy, and trained in self-command. and this man answered his thoughts at once, as thoughts are answered in dreams. he said that it was of no use wondering why any guest left that feast, nor what there was, if there was anything, beyond the door through which this inconsequential[274] passage was made. even as he was saying this he himself, suddenly looking towards it with an expression of extreme sadness and abandonment, rose abruptly, bowed to no one, and went out. at his departure the dreamer heard a little sigh, and he who had sighed said that doors of their nature led from one place to another, and then he tittered a little as though he had said a clever thing. then another, a large happy man, laughed somewhat too loudly, and said that only fools discussed what none could know. a third, still upon that same theme, said in fixed, contented manner, that, in the nature of things, nothing was beyond the door. at which, the first who had spoken tittered again, and said doors of their nature led somewhere. even as he said it his eyes filled with tears, and he also rose and went out.
for the first time during this increasing pressure of mystery and disaster (for so the dreamer felt it) he watched the figure of that guest; none of his companions about him dared or chose to do so; but the dreamer fixedly watched, and he saw the figure going down the long perspective of the hall very rapidly and very directly. it did not hesitate nor look back for one moment, it passed through—it was gone.
the dreamer suddenly felt the wine of that feast, the words spoken round him, more full of meaning and of novelty; the noise of speech, though more confused, was more pleasing and louder the candles were far more bright. he had forgotten, or was just[275] forgetting, all that other mood of his dream, when it seemed to him that in a sense all that converse was struck dumb. he heard no sound; he was cut off. their hands still moved, their eyes and lips framed words and repeated glances, but around him, and for him, there was silence. the candles burned bright through the length of the room, and brightest, as in a guiding manner, towards the end of it where was the door. he felt a thrill pass from his face. he rose and walked directly—no one speaking to him or noticing him at all—down the long, narrow space behind their chairs. it took him but a moment, innumerable as were those whom he must pass. his hand was upon the latch; with his head bent forward somewhat, and downwards, in the attitude of a man hurrying, he passed through. and, not knowing what he did, but doing it as though by habit, he shut the door between him and the feast, and immediately he was in a complete and utterly silent darkness. but he still was.
