Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (257 page)

"I'm
so
sorry,"
said
Secretan
Jones,
looking,
I
thought,
a
little worried,
"but
I
am
afraid
it's
jammed,
or
something
of
that
kind. It
has
always
been
an
awkward
door,
and
I
hardly
ever
use
it."

So
we
went
through
the
house,
and
on
the
doorstep
he
pressed me
to
come
again,
and
was
so
cordial
that
I
agreed
to
his
suggestion of
the
Saturday
sennight.
And
so
at
last
I
got
an
answer
to
the question
with
which
my
newspaper
had
originally
entrusted
me;
but an
answer
by
no
means
for
newspaper
use.
The
tale,
or
the
experience, or
the
impression,
or
whatever
it
may
be
called,
was
delivered
to me
by
very
slow
degrees,
with
hesitations,
and
in
a
manner
of tentative
suggestion
that
often
reminded
me
of
our
first
talk
together. It
was
as
if
Jones
were
again
and
again
questioning
himself
as
to the
matter
of
his
utterances,
as
if
he
doubted
whether
they
should not
rather
be
treated
as
dreams,
and
dismissed
as
trifles
without consequence.

He
said
once
to
me:
"People
do
tell
their
dreams,
I
know;
but isn't
it
usually
felt
that
they
are
telling
nothing?
That's
what
I am
afraid
of."

I
told
him
that
I
thought
we
might
throw
a
great
deal
of
light
on very
dark
places
if
more
dreams
were
told.

"But
there,"
I
said,
"is
the
difficulty.
I
doubt
whether
the
dreams that
I
am
thinking
of
can
be
told.
There
are
dreams
that
are
perfectly lucid
from
beginning
to
end,
and
also
perfectly
insignificant.
There
are others
which
are
blurred
by
a
failure
of
memory,
perhaps
only
on
one point:
you
dream
of
a
dead
man
as
if
he
were
alive.
Then
there
are dreams
which
are
prophetic:
there
seems,
on
the
whole,
no
doubt
of that.
Then
you
may
have
sheer
clotted
nonsense;
I
once
chased
Julius Ca?sar
all
over
London
to
get
his
recipe
for
curried
eggs.
But,
besides these,
there
is
a
certain
dream
of
another
order:
utter
lucidity
up to
the
moment
of
waking,
and
then
perceived
to
be
beyond
the power
of
words
to
express.
It
is
neither
sense
nor
nonsense;
it
has, perhaps,
a
notation
of
its
own,
but
.
.
.
well,
you
can't
play
Euclid on
the
violin."

Secretan
Jones
shook
his
head.
"I
am
afraid
my
experiences
are rather
like
that,"
he
said.
It
was
clear,
indeed,
that
he
found
great difficulty
in
finding
a
verbal
formula
which
should
convey
some hint
of
his
adventures.

But
that
was
later.
To
start
with,
things
were
fairly
easy;
but, characteristically
enough,
he
began
his
story
before
I
realised
that the
story
was
begun.
I
had
been
talking
of
the
queer
tricks
a
man's memory
sometimes
plays
him.
I
was
saying
that
a
few
days
before,
I was
suddenly
interrupted
in
some
work
I
was
doing.
It
was
necessary that
i
should
clear
my
desk
in
a
hurry.
I
shuffled
a
lot
of
loose
papers together
and
put
them
away,
and
awaited
my
caller
with
a
fresh writing-pad
before
me.
The
man
came.
I
attended
to
the
business with
which
he
was
concerned,
and
went
back
to
my
former
affair when
he
had
gone.
But
I
could
not
find
the
sheaf
of
papers.
I
thought I
had
put
them
in
a
drawer.
They
were
not
in
the
drawer;
they
were not
in
any
drawer,
or
in
the
blotting-book,
or
in
any
place
where one
might
reasonably
expect
to
find
them.
They
were
found
next morning
by
the
servant
who
dusted
the
room,
stuffed
hard
down
into the
crevice
between
the
seat
and
the
back
of
an
armchair,
and carefully
hidden
under
a
cushion.