Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (260 page)

Secretan
Jones
could
not
make
it
out
at
all.
He
supposed
he
must have
put
the
papers
where
they
were
found
and
then
forgotten
all about
it,
and
he
was
uneasy,
feeling
afraid
that
he
was
on
the
brink of
a
nervous
breakdown.
Then
there
were
difficulties
about
his
books, as
to
which
he
was
very
precise,
every
book
having
its
own
place. One
morning
he
wanted
to
consult
the
Missale
de
Arbuthnott, a
big
red
quarto,
which
lived
at
the
end
of
a
bottom
shelf
near
the window.
It
was
not
there.
The
unfortunate
man
went
up
to
his bedroom,
and
felt
the
bed
all
over
and
looked
under
his
shirts
in the
chest
of
drawers,
and
searched
all
the
room
in
vain.
However, determined
to
get
what
he
wanted,
he
went
to
the
Reading
Room, verified
his
reference,
and
returned
to
Canonbury:
and
there
was
the red
quarto
in
its
place.
Now
here,
it
seemed
certain,
there
was
no room
for
loss
of
memory;
and
Secretan
Jones
began
to
suspect
his servants
of
playing
tricks
with
his
possessions,
and
tried
to
find
a reason
for
their
imbecility
or
villainy—he
did
not
know
what
to call
it.
But
it
would
not
do
at
all.
Papers
and
books
disappeared
and reappeared,
or
now
and
then
vanished
without
return.
One
afternoon, struggling,
as
he
told
me,
against
a
growing
sense
of
confusion
and bewilderment,
he
had
with
considerable
difficulty
filled
two
quarto sheets
of
ruled
paper
with
a
number
of
extracts
necessary
to
the subject
he
had
in
hand.
When
this
was
done,
he
felt
his
bewilderment
thickening
like
a
cloud
about
him:
"It
was,
physically
and mentally,
as
if
the
objects
in
the
room
became
indistinct,
were presented
in
a
shimmering
mist
or
darkness."
He
felt
afraid,
and rose,
and
went
out
into
the
garden.
The
two
sheets
of
paper
he
had left
on
his
table
were
lying
on
the
path
by
the
garden
door.

I
remember
he
stopped
dead
at
this
point.
To
tell
the
tmth,
I was
thinking
that
all
these
instances
were
rather
matter
for
the
ear of
a
mental
specialist
than
for
my
hearing.
There
was
evidence
enough of
a
bad
nervous
breakdown,
and,
it
seemed
to
me,
of
delusions.
I wondered
whether
it
was
my
duty
to
advise
the
man
to
go
to
the
best doctor
he
knew,
and
without
delay.
Then
Secretan
Jones
began again:

"I
won't
tell
you
any
more
of
these
absurdities.
I
know
they
are drivel,
pantomime
tricks
and
traps,
children's
conjuring;
contemptible, all
of
it.

"But
it
made
me
afraid.
I
felt
like
a
man
walking
in
the
dark, beset
with
uncertain
sounds
and
faint
echoes
of
his
footsteps
that seem
to
come
from
a
vast
depth,
till
he
begins
to
fear
that
he
is treading
by
the
edge
of
some
awful
precipice.
There
was
something unknown
about
me;
and
I
was
holding
on
hard
to
what
I
knew,
and wondering
whether
I
should
be
sustained.