“Then-can’t anything be done about it? They were horrible dreams-horribly vivid, not like dreams at all.”
“I can quite understand that.”
“Is it something that can’t be cured?”
“The reason you cannot be cured is that you are not ill.”
“But there must be something wrong. It’s surely not natural to have dreams like that.”
There was a pause. “I think,” said Miss Ironwood, “I had better tell you the whole truth.”
“Yes, do,” said Jane in a strained voice. The other’s words had frightened her.
“And I will begin by saying this,” continued Miss Ironwood. “You are a more important person than you imagine.”
Jane said nothing, but thought inwardly, “She is humouring me. She thinks I am mad.”
“What was your maiden name?” asked Miss Ironwood.
“Tudor,” said Jane. At any other moment she would have said it rather self consciously, for she was very anxious not to be supposed vain of her ancient ancestry.
“The Warwickshire branch of the family?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever read a little book-it is only forty pages long-written by an ancestor of yours about the battle of Worcester?”
“No. Father had a copy-the only copy, I think he said. But I never read it. It was lost when the house was broken up after his death.”
“Your father was mistaken in thinking it the only copy. There are at least two others: one is in America, and the other is in this house.”
“Well?”
“Your ancestor gave a full and, on the whole, correct account of the battle, which he says he completed on the same day on which it was fought. But he was not at it. He was in York at the time.”
Jane, who had not really been following this, looked at Miss Ironwood.
“If he was speaking the truth,” said Miss Ironwood, “and we believe that he was, he dreamed it. Do you understand?”
“Dreamed about the battle?”
“Yes. But dreamed it right. He saw the real battle in his dream.”
“I don’t see the connection.”
“Vision-the power of dreaming realities-is sometimes hereditary,” said Miss Ironwood.
Something seemed to be interfering with Jane’s breathing. She felt a sense of injury-this was just the sort of thing she hated: something out of the past, something irrational and utterly uncalled for, coming up from its den and interfering with her.
“Can it be proved?” she asked. “I mean, we have only his word for it.”
“We have your dreams,” said Miss Ironwood. Her voice, always grave, had become stern. A fantastic thought crossed Jane’s mind. Could this old woman have some idea that one ought not to call even one’s remote ancestors liars?
“My dreams?” she said a little sharply.
“Yes,” said Miss Ironwood.
“What do you mean?”
“My opinion is that you have seen real things in your dreams. You have seen Alcasan as he really sat in the condemned cell: and you have seen a visitor whom he really had.”
“But-but-oh, this is ridiculous,” said Jane. “That part was a mere coincidence. The rest was just nightmare. It was all impossible. He screwed off his head, I tell you. And they . . . dug up the horrible old man. They made him come to life.”
“There are some confusions there, no doubt. But in my opinion there are realities behind even those episodes.”
“I am afraid I don’t believe in that sort of thing,” said Jane coldly.
“Your upbringing makes it natural that you should not,” replied Miss Ironwood. Unless, of course, you have discovered for yourself that you have a tendency to dream real things.”
Jane thought of the book on the table which she had apparently remembered before she saw it: and then there was Miss Ironwood’s own appearance-that, too, she had seen before she saw it. But it must be nonsense.
“Can you, then, do nothing for me?”
“I can tell you the truth,” said Miss Ironwood. “I have tried to do so.”
“I mean, can you not stop it-cure it?”
“Vision is not a disease.”
“But I don’t want it,” said Jane passionately. “I must stop it. I hate this sort of thing.” Miss Ironwood said nothing.
“Don’t you even know of anyone who could stop it?” said Jane. “Can’t you recommend anyone?”
“If you go to an ordinary psychotherapist,” said Miss Ironwood, “he will proceed on the assumption that the dreams merely reflect your own subconscious. He would try to treat you. I do not know what would be the results of treatment based on that assumption. I am afraid they might be very serious. And-it would certainly not remove the dreams.”
“But what is this all about?” said Jane. “I want to lead an ordinary life. I want to do my own work. It’s unbearable! Why should I be selected for this horrible thing?”
“The answer to that is known only to authorities much higher than myself.”
There was a short silence. Jane made a vague movement and said, rather sulkily, “Well, if you can do nothing for me, perhaps I’d better be going . . .” Then suddenly she added, “But how can you know all this? I mean . . . what realities are you talking about?”
“I think,” said Miss Ironwood, “that you yourself have probably more reason to suspect the truth of your dreams than you have yet told me. If not, you soon will have. In the meantime I will answer your question. We know your dreams to be partly true because they fit in with information we already possess. It was because he saw their importance that Dr. Dimble sent you to us.”
“Do you mean he sent me here not to be cured but to give information?” said Jane. The idea fitted in with things she had observed in his manner when she first told him.
“Exactly.”
“I wish I had known that a little earlier,” said Jane coldly, and now definitely getting up to go. “I’m afraid it has been a misunderstanding. I had imagined Dr. Dimble was trying to help me.”
“He was. But he was also trying to do something more important at the same time.”
“I suppose I should be grateful for being considered at all,” said Jane dryly. “And how, exactly, was I to be helped by-by all this sort of thing?” The attempt at icy irony collapsed as she said these last words and red, undisguised anger rushed back into her face. In some ways she was very young.
“Young lady,” said Miss Ironwood. “You do not at all realise the seriousness of this matter. The things you have seen concern something compared with which the happiness, or even the life, of you and me is of no importance. I must beg you to face the situation. You cannot get rid of your gift. You can try to suppress it, but you will fail, and you will be very badly frightened. On the other hand, you can put it at our disposal. If you do so, you will be much less frightened in the long run and you will be helping to save the human race from a very great disaster. Or thirdly, you may tell someone else about it. If you do that, I warn you that you will almost certainly fall into the hands of other people who are at least as anxious as we to make use of your faculty and who will care no more about your life and happiness than about those of a fly. The people you have seen in your dreams are real people. It is not at all unlikely that they know you have, involuntarily, been spying on them. And if so, they will not rest till they have got hold of you. I would advise you, even for your own sake, to join our side.”
“You keep on talking of we and us. Are you some kind of company?”
“Yes. You may call it a company.”
Jane had been standing for the last few minutes: and she had almost been believing what she heard. Then suddenly all her repugnance came over her again-all her wounded vanity, her resentment of. the meaningless complication in which she seemed to be caught, and her general dislike of the mysterious and the unfamiliar. At
