"Please do not quibble,Mr.Raven,"I rejoined."Please to take my question as you know I mean it.""There is in your house a door,one step through which carries me into a world very much another than this.""A better?"
"Not throughout;but so much another that most of its physical,and many of its mental laws are different from those of this world.As for moral laws,they must everywhere be fundamentally the same.""You try my power of belief!"I said.
"You take me for a madman,probably?"
"You do not look like one."
"A liar then?"
"You give me no ground to think you such."
"Only you do not believe me?"
"I will go out of that door with you if you like:I believe in you enough to risk the attempt.""The blunder all my children make!"he murmured."The only door out is the door in!"I began to think he must be crazy.He sat silent for a moment,his head resting on his hand,his elbow on the table,and his eyes on the books before him.
"A book,"he said louder,"is a door in,and therefore a door out.--Isee old Sir Up'ard,"he went on,closing his eyes,"and my heart swells with love to him:--what world is he in?""The world of your heart!"I replied;"--that is,the idea of him is there.""There is one world then at least on which your hall-door does not open?""I grant you so much;but the things in that world are not things to have and to hold.""Think a little farther,"he rejoined:"did anything ever become yours,except by getting into that world?--The thought is beyond you,however,at present!--I tell you there are more worlds,and more doors to them,than you will think of in many years!"He rose,left the library,crossed the hall,and went straight up to the garret,familiar evidently with every turn.I followed,studying his back.His hair hung down long and dark,straight and glossy.His coat was wide and reached to his heels.His shoes seemed too large for him.
In the garret a light came through at the edges of the great roofing slabs,and showed us parts where was no flooring,and we must step from joist to joist:in the middle of one of these spaces rose a partition,with a door:through it I followed Mr.Raven into a small,obscure chamber,whose top contracted as it rose,and went slanting through the roof.
"That is the door I spoke of,"he said,pointing to an oblong mirror that stood on the floor and leaned against the wall.I went in front of it,and saw our figures dimly reflected in its dusty face.
There was something about it that made me uneasy.It looked old-fashioned and neglected,but,notwithstanding its ordinary seeming,the eagle,perched with outstretched wings on the top,appeared threatful.
"As a mirror,"said the librarian,"it has grown dingy with age;but that is no matter:its doorness depends on the light.""Light!"I rejoined;"there is no light here!"He did not answer me,but began to pull at a little chain on the opposite wall.I heard a creaking:the top of the chamber was turning slowly round.He ceased pulling,looked at his watch,and began to pull again.
"We arrive almost to the moment!"he said;"it is on the very stroke of noon!"The top went creaking and revolving for a minute or so.Then he pulled two other chains,now this,now that,and returned to the first.A moment more and the chamber grew much clearer:a patch of sunlight had fallen upon a mirror on the wall opposite that against which the other leaned,and on the dust I saw the path of the reflected rays to the mirror on the ground.But from the latter none were returned;they seemed to go clean through;there was nowhere in the chamber a second patch of light!
"Where are the sunrays gone?"I cried.
"That I cannot tell,"returned Mr.Raven;"--back,perhaps,to where they came from first.They now belong,I fancy,to a sense not yet developed in us."He then talked of the relations of mind to matter,and of senses to qualities,in a way I could only a little understand,whence he went on to yet stranger things which I could not at all comprehend.
He spoke much about dimensions,telling me that there were many more than three,some of them concerned with powers which were indeed in us,but of which as yet we knew absolutely nothing.His words,however,I confess,took little more hold of me than the light did of the mirror,for I thought he hardly knew what he was saying.
Suddenly I was aware that our forms had gone from the mirror,which seemed full of a white mist.As I gazed I saw,growing gradually visible beyond the mist,the tops of a range of mountains,which became clearer and clearer.Soon the mist vanished entirely,uncovering the face of a wide heath,on which,at some distance,was the figure of a man moving swiftly away.I turned to address my companion;he was no longer by my side.I looked again at the form in the mirror,and recognised the wide coat flying,the black hair lifting in a wind that did not touch me.I rushed in terror from the place.