Back door

“ This door opened out instead of in,—this I also knew when planning this surreptitious intrusion, but, after pulling it open and reaching for the curtain, which hung completely across it, I found it not so easy to proceed as I had imagined. The stealthiness of my action held back my hand; then the faint sounds I heard within advised me that she was not alone, and that she might very readily regard with displeasure my unexpected entrance by a door of which she was possibly ignorant. ”

“ You that wear elegant clothes and live in great houses are no better than the beggar—the tramp—that goes from one back door to another—in the matter of sin. The back door of the Father's house is the door we'll have to go to when we want to enter into heaven. ”

“ But she examined the window shutters at the back, and the fastenings of the street door, with a good deal of care, and then went back to the kitchen, put on her shoes again, and looked over the locks and bolts of the back door. ”

“ Folks don't jump from second-story windows in broad daylight, and as to leaving by the doors, the front door closes with such a slam all the house can hear it from top to bottom, and as for the back-door, no one that goes out of that can get clear of the yard without going by the kitchen window, and no one can go by our kitchen window without the cook's a-seeing of them, that I can just swear to. ”

“ I should say that there will be one sentry outside the door, and perhaps two inside. If there is a door or a window at the back of the house, we need not bother about the man in front. I must do for the two men inside. You bring the two horses round within a hundred yards of the back of the house, and we will drop out of the window, if there is one, or walk out of the door. ”

“ There is a door leading to the open air at the back, and another door a little to its left, leading into an inner room. There is a window, a settle, and a large dresser on the right side of the room, and a great bowl of primroses on the sill of the window. ”

“ In these days of the cold early spring, the way from the lawn into the house, through the drawing-room window, was not as yet open, and it was necessary to go round by the kitchen-garden on to the road, and thence in by the front door; or else to pass through the back door, and into the house by the kitchen. ”

“ Can I never be alone—"
"Alone in the garden!... A pretty talk! Eh, I will tell thy father, I will have a stop put to this—hush, would you have him hear?" she admonished, in a sudden whisper, as they opened the little door at the foot of the dark well of spiral steps.
Like conspirators they fled up the staircase, and then with fumbling haste the old nurse dragged off the girl's mantle and veil, muttering at the pins that secured it. She shook out the pale-flowered chiffon of her rumpled frock and gathered back a strand of her dark, disordered hair. ”

“ Just as I had come to this conclusion I heard a heavy step approaching behind the great door, and saw through the chinks the gleam of a coming light. Then there was the sound of rattling chains and the clanking of massive bolts drawn back. A key was turned with the loud grating noise of long disuse, and the great door swung back. ”

“ A bright light then pervades the cupboard, and the body of the man would be discovered if it were there. But it is not. The putting the key in the lock of the back door was a signal on hearing which the person concealed brought his body forward to an angle as acute as possible—throwing it altogether, or nearly so, into the main compartment. ”

“ Some nice ladies who are afraid of catching cold, having observed that the maids and fellows below stairs often forget to shut the door after them, as they come in, or go out into the back yards, have contrived that a pulley and a rope, with a large piece of lead at the end, should be so fixed, as to make the door shut of itself, and require a strong hand to open it ”

“ (The feast-room in GUNNAR'S house. The entrance-door is in the back; smaller doors in the side-walls. In front, on the left, the greater high-seat; opposite it on the right, the lesser. In the middle of the floor, a wood fire is burning on a built-up hearth. In the background, on both sides of the door, are daises for the women of the household. From each of the high-seats, a long table, with benches, stretches backwards, parallel with the wall. It is dark outside; the fire lights the room.) ”

“ I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, nor how lowly the room which it adorns. Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with it all the cares of the outer world, plunge back into the soothing company of the great dead, and then you are through the magic portal into that fair land whither worry and vexation can follow you no more. You have left all that is vulgar and all that is sordid behind you. There stand your noble, silent comrades, waiting in their ranks. Pass your eye down their files. Choose your man. ”

“ When a prisoner sees the door of his dungeon open, he dashes for it without stopping to think where he shall get his dinner outside. ”

“ If it isn't one thing it's another, cleaning your shoes, or combing your hair, or brushing your clothes, or using your handkerchief, or shutting the door softly, or holding your spoon with your fingers and not in your fist, or keeping your finger out of your glass when you drink—something the whole blessed time. Forever and eternally picking at a fellow about something. ”

“ I am on my feet, and something is impelling me toward the door that leads out into the gardens. I wish to stop; but cannot. Some immutable power is opposed to my will, and I go slowly forward, unwilling and resistant. My glance flies 'round the room, helplessly, and stops at the window. The great swine-face has disappeared, and I hear, again, that stealthy pad, pad, pad. It stops outside the door—the door toward which I am being compelled....
There succeeds a short, intense silence; then there comes a sound. It is the rattle of the latch, being slowly lifted. ”

“ You have a good many of them in your house, and you are moving them all day long. We are going to talk about a door.
How impossible it is to open a door and walk in, if it is locked and bolted against us! Open doors take us into delightful places, but they can also take us into prison. What important parts of a house they are! How safe you feel in bed at night knowing that all the house doors are shut and fastened inside! ”

“ I take the stone steps in three jumps and knock at the door. Children's voices die abruptly to silence, a step sounds over the floor, the latch clicks, and the door opening wraps us in a gust of warm air. ”

“ So much may lie behind a tightly closed door! But my hesitation, if hesitation it was, lasted but a moment. My natural impatience and the promptings of my vanity overcame the dictates of my judgment, and, reckless of consequences, perhaps disdainful of them, I soon had the knob in my grasp. I gave a slight push to the door and, on seeing a crack of light leap into life along the jamb, pushed the door wider and wider till the whole room stood revealed.
The instantaneous banging of a shutter in one of its windows proved the room to be the very one which we had seen lighted from below. ”

“ Knock in the door—break open the door! the front door—that is the best, because it leads to all parts of the house, and we can secure any one who attempts to move from one to the other, as they come down. ”

“ I was so crippled, bruised and sore, men took me home upon a door. It shows how useful doors can be; I always carry two or three.
We’re always viewing doors, you know; they face us everywhere we go; on doors we knock, at doors we wait, and if they’re handsome, smooth and straight, they strike us as a work of art, they’re soothing to the mind and heart. ”

“ This is the hidden closet to which we have no key, for the very good reason that the door opens from within. In the silence of the night, in the peace of lovely gardens, when men are far and nature is near, listen to the melody singing from within that secret recess, and open the door. ”

“ He sauntered down the lane, keeping carefully in the shadow. He loitered within that deep-set door—and felt a queer throb of emotion at the sight of it—and so, sauntering and loitering, he waited in the darkening night, promising himself disgustedly through the dragging moments to clear out and be done with this, but still interminably lingering, his pulses throbbing with that disowned expectancy. ”

“ It is somewhat disconcerting to the nervous incomer to be met, the door still in his hand, by a sound as of people springing suddenly into the air, followed by a weird scuttling of feet, and then to discover the occupants sitting stiffly in opposite corners, deeply engaged in book or needlework. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A second door which opens into the interior of the house is also ajar, and a man’s head, with smiling face, which I should never have recognised to be that of my father, is looking in; the beautiful, blooming, fair-haired creature being, however, too much occupied with the lovely vision she was contemplating in the mirror to be aware of the presence of the intruder. ”

“ And yonder door, made of solid oak, thick as a hand's palm, and covered with sheets of iron and enormous nails—that door is the door of the chamber in which the treasures of the noble seigneur are kept. Only he keeps the key. ”

“ He said that the door of any and every room in which he was always appeared to be ajar, and round the edge of the door—I declare it frightens me even to think of it—round the corner, as it were, just coming into the room, he always saw the hand and half the face of a man—never more, and never less. ”

“ The door-chain was softly unfastened; the door opened; and a tall, ill-favoured man, with black hair, and a face, as the surgeon often declared afterwards, as pale and haggard, as the countenance of any dead man he ever saw, presented himself. ”

“ The opening and closing of doors are the most significant actions of man's life. What a mystery lies in doors!
No man knows what awaits him when he opens a door. Even the most familiar room, where the clock ticks and the hearth glows red at dusk, may harbor surprises. ”

“ There are trapdoors, sliding doors, double doors, stage doors, prison doors, glass doors. But the symbol and mystery of a door resides in its quality of concealment. A glass door is not a door at all, but a window. The meaning of a door is to hide what lies inside ”

“ A door! And why should a door be there except to lead to another room? There was a door, and that presupposed something on the other side. And what a door it was! More of a barricade than a partition. The iron hinges were built to support weight and give complete defense and support. There was a keyhole, and if the key corresponded with the size of the hole, it was the largest that I had ever heard of.
Naturally, I wanted to open the door. As master of the villa, I had a right to. Upstairs the old woman seemed unable to understand me and ended by telling me to see her husband. ”

“ Whereby the unsuspecting stranger, entering what, in his innocence, he supposes to be the front doorway of a house, walks along the hall and is presently astonished to find himself walking out of another front door into another thoroughfare. ”

“ Nothing like that, sir; a softer light, more like a glow-worm; but much brighter. I went around and tried the door, and it was locked. Then I remembered the door at the other end, and I cut round by the path between the houses and the wall, so that I had no chance to see the light again, until I got to the other door. ”

“ Set the hinge in motion and unfold the stubborn door.
That which I pray for is small: let the door be half-opened
And admit me through a small gap sideways.
Long love has diminished my body for such practice
And by reducing me size has given me limbs apt for it;
Love shows men how to pass swiftly through the watches of sentries
And guides their unhindered steps. ”

“ There,—do you see that door beside the staircase?"
"Oh, yes, good, kind gentleman; I see it."
"Well, one of the farm labourers sleeps in that room. You will only just have to run to him. He never locks his door; and he will come to your father in an instant." ”

“ It frightened me so that I thought of calling the watchers, but finally determined to open the door myself, thinking it might be some of those who had been sent for. Going out and opening the door a little way, I saw that a strange man, wrapped up in mufflers and furs, was standing at the gate, as if he had despaired of an answer to his knock and was going away. ”

“ Whether we have stone facings or no,—whether our parlor has cornices or marble mantels or no,—whether our doors are machine-made or hand-made. All our fixtures shall be of the plainest and simplest, but we will have fresh air. We will open our door with a latch and string, if we cannot afford lock and knob and fresh air too,—but in our house we will live cleanly and Christianly. ”

“ The street door falls not a knell in his heart, the foot on the staircase, though he lives on the third pair, sends no spasm through his anatomy; at the rap of his door he can crow 'come in,' and his pulse still beats healthfully. ”

“ At the end of a silent, damp, and gloomy lane may be seen the arch of a door, or rather gate, high enough and wide enough to admit a man on horseback,—a circumstance which proves of itself that when this building was erected carriages did not exist. ”

“ He saw a door which stood ajar, and through which he distinctly heard sighs, mingled with sobs. He pushed open the door with his bill, but remained on the threshold, astonished at the sight which met his eyes. ”

“ To fasten the door on the inside, is to denounce myself as plainly as if I had written above, ‘No admittance,—the king is within!’ Even now, sire, at this very moment, there is nothing to prevent the door opening, and your majesty being seen here. ”