Dean Spanley: The Novel

‘I quite agree,’ I said, for the Dean had paused.

‘You can hear footsteps,’ he went on, ‘and you can follow a smell, and you can tell the sort of person you have to deal with, by the kind of smell he has. But folk without any smell have no right to be going about among those that have. That’s what I didn’t like about the moon. And I didn’t like the way it stared one in the face. And there was a look in his stare as though everything was odd and the house not properly guarded. The house was perfectly well guarded, and so I said at the time. But he wouldn’t stop that queer look. Many’s the time I’ve told him to go away and not to look at me in that odd manner; and he pretended not to hear me. But he knew all right, he knew he was odd and strange and in league with magic, and he knew what honest folks thought of him: I’ve told him many a time.’

‘I should stand no nonsense from him,’ I said.

‘Entirely my view,’ said the Dean.

There was a silence then such as you sometimes see among well-satisfied diners.

‘I expect he was afraid of you,’ I said; and only just in time, for the Dean came back as it were with a jerk to the subject.

‘Ah, the moon,’ he said. ‘Yes, he never came any nearer. But there’s no saying what he’d have done if I hadn’t been there. There was a lot of strangeness about him, and if he’d come any nearer everything might have been strange. They had only me to look after them.

‘Only me to look after them,’ he added reflectively. ‘You know, I’ve known them talk to a man that ought at least to be growled at; stand at the front door and talk to him. And for what was strange or magical they never had any sense; no foreboding I mean. Why, there were sounds and smells that would make my hair rise on my shoulders before I had thought of the matter, while they would not even stir. That was why they so much needed guarding. That of course was our raison d’être, if I may put it in that way. The French often have a way of turning a phrase, that seems somehow more deft than anything that we islanders do. Not that our literature cannot hold its own.’

‘Quite so,’ I said to check this line of thought, for he was wandering far away from where I wanted him. ‘Our literature is very vivid. You have probably many vivid experiences in your own memory, if you cast your mind back. If you cast your mind back, you would probably find material worthy of the best of our literature.’

And he did. He cast his mind back as I told him. ‘My vividest memory,’ he said, ‘is a memory of the most dreadful words that the ears can hear. “Dirty dog.” Those unforgettable words; how clear they ring in my memory. The dreadful anger with which they were always uttered; the emphasis, the miraculous meaning! They are certainly the most, the most prominent words, of all I have ever heard. They stand by themselves. Do you not agree?’

‘Undoubtedly,’ I said. And I made a very careful mental note that, whenever he wandered away from the subject that so much enthralled me, those might be the very words that would call him back.

‘Yes, dirty dog,’ he went on. ‘Those words were never uttered lightly.’

‘What used to provoke them?’ I asked. For the Dean had paused, and I feared lest at any moment he should find a new subject.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘They came as though inspired, but from no cause. I remember once coming into the drawing-room on a lovely bright morning, from a very pleasant heap that there was behind the stable yard, where I sometimes used to go to make my toilet; it gave a very nice tang to my skin, that lasted some days; a mere roll was sufficient, if done in the right place; I came in very carefully smoothed and scented and was about to lie down in a lovely patch of sunlight, when these dreadful words broke out. They used to come like lightning, like thunder and lightning together. There was no cause for them; they were just inspired.’

He was silent, reflecting sadly. And before his reflections could change I said, ‘What did you do?’

‘I just slunk out,’ he said. ‘There was nothing else to do. I slunk out and rolled in ordinary grass and humbled myself, and came back later with my fur all rough and untidy and that lovely aroma gone, just a common dog. I came back and knocked at the door and put my head in, when the door was opened at last, and kept it very low, and my tail low too, and I came in very slowly; and they looked at me, holding their anger back by the collar; and I went slower still, and they stood over me and stooped; and then in the end they did not let their anger loose, and I hid in a corner I knew of. Dirty dog. Yes, yes. There are few words more terrible.’

The Dean then fell into a reverie, till presently there came the same look of confusion, and even alarm, on his face, that I had noticed once before, when he had suddenly cried out, ‘What am I talking about?’ And to forestall any such uncomfortable perplexity I began to talk myself. ‘The lighting, the upkeep and the culinary problems,’ I said, ‘are on the one hand. On the other, the Committee should so manage the club that its amenities are available to all, or even more so. You, no doubt, agree there.’

‘Eh?’ he said. ‘Oh yes, yes.’

I tried no more that night, and the rest of our conversation was of this world, and of this immediate sojourn.

CHAPTER THREE (#u63571dd5-7405-5855-bb5c-ab50b45e2492)

‘I was the hell of a dog,’ said the Dean, when next I was able to tempt him with the Tokay to that eminence of the mind from which he had this remarkable view down the ages; but it was not easily done, in fact it took me several weeks. ‘A hell of a dog. I had often to growl so as to warn people. I used to wag my tail at the same time, so as to let them know that I was only meaning to warn them, and they should not think I was angry. Sometimes I used to scratch up the earth, merely to feel my strength and to know that I was stronger than the earth, but I never went on long enough to harm it. Other dogs never dared do more than threaten me; I seldom had to bite them, my growl was enough, and a certain look that I had on my face and teeth, and my magnificent size, which increased when I was angry, so that they could see how large I really was.

‘They were lucky to have me guard them. It was an inestimable privilege to serve them; they had unearthly wisdom; but …’

‘But they needed guarding,’ I said. For I remembered this mood of his. And my words kept him to it.

‘They needed it,’ he said. ‘One night I remember a fox came quite near to the house and barked at them. Came out of the woods and on to our lawn and barked. You can’t have that sort of thing. There’s no greater enemy of Man than the fox. They didn’t know that. They hunted him now and then for sport; but they never knew what an enemy he was. I knew. They never knew that he has no reverence for Man, and no respect for his chickens. I knew. They never knew of his plots. And here he was on the lawn barking at men. I was unfortunately in the drawing-room, and the doors were shut, or my vengeance would have been frightful. I should have gone out and leapt on him, probably in one single bound from the hall door, and I should have torn him up into four or five pieces and eaten every one of them. And that is just what I told him, holding back nothing. And then I told him all over again. Somebody had to tell him.

‘Then one of the Wise Ones came and told me not to make so much noise; and out of respect to him I stopped. But when he went away the fox was still within hearing, so I told him about it again. It was better to tell him again, so as to make quite sure. And so I guarded the house against all manner of dangers and insults, of which their miraculous wisdom had never taken account.’

‘What other dangers?’ I asked. For the Dean was looking rather observantly at objects on the table, peering at them from under his thick eyebrows, so that in a few moments his consciousness would have been definitely in the world of the outer eye, and far away from the age that has gone from us.

‘Dangers?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I replied.

‘The dark of the woods,’ he answered, ‘and the mystery of night. There lurked things there of which Man himself knew nothing, and even I could only guess.’

‘How did you guess?’ I asked him.

‘By smells and little sounds,’ said the Dean.

It was this remark about the woods and the night, and the eager way in which he spoke of the smells and the sounds, that first made me sure that the Dean was speaking from knowledge, and that he really had known another life in a strangely different body. Why these words made me sure I cannot say; I can only say that it is oddly often the case that some quite trivial remark in a man’s conversation will suddenly make you sure that he knows what he is talking about. A man will be talking perhaps about pictures, and all at once he will make you feel that Raphael, for instance, is real to him, and that he is not merely making conversation. In the same way I felt, I can hardly say why, that the woods were real to the Dean, and the work of a dog no less to him than an avocation. I do not think I have explained how I came to be sure of this, but from that moment any scientific interest in what my Tokay was revealing was surpassed by a private anxiety to gather what hints I could for my own ends. I did not like to be adrift as I was in a world in which transmigration must be recognised as a fact, without the faintest idea of the kind of problems with which one would have to deal, if one should suddenly find oneself a dog, in what was very likely an English rectory. That possibility came on me with more suddenness than it probably does to my reader, to whom I am breaking it perhaps more gently. From now on I was no longer probing a man’s eccentric experience, so much as looking to him for advice. Whether it is possible to carry any such advice forward to the time one might need it is doubtful, but I mean to try my best by committing it carefully to memory, and all that I gleaned from the Dean is of course at my reader’s disposal. I asked him first about the simple things; food, water and sleep. I remember particularly his advice about sleep, probably because it confused me and so made me think; but, whatever the cause, it is particularly clear in my memory. ‘You should always pull up your blanket over your lips,’ he said. ‘It ensures warm air when you sleep, and it is very important.’

It was some time since he had had a glass of Tokay, and to have questioned him as to his meaning would at once have induced in him a logical, or reasonable, frame of mind. We boast so much of our reason, but what can it see compared to that view down the ages that was now being laid before me? It is blind, compared to the Dean.

Luckily I did not have to question him, for by a little flash of memory I recalled a dog sleeping, a certain spaniel I knew; and I remembered how he always tucked the feathery end of his tail over his nostrils in preparation for going to sleep; he belonged to an ignorant man who had neglected to have his tail cut off as a puppy. It was a tail that the Dean meant, not a blanket.

Clear though the meaning was to me the moment I thought of the spaniel, I saw that the confusion of the Dean’s remark could only mean that a mist was beginning to gather over his view of time, and I hastily filled his glass. I watched anxiously till he drank it; it must have been his third or fourth; and soon I saw from the clearness of his phrases, and a greater strength in all his utterances, that he was safely back again looking out over clear years.

‘The Wise Ones, the Great Ones,’ he went on meditatively, ‘they give you straw. But they do not, of course, make your bed for you. I trust one can do that. One does it, you know, by walking round several times, the oftener the better. The more you walk round, the better your bed fits you.’

I could see from the way he spoke that the Dean was speaking the truth. After all, I had made no new discovery. In vino veritas; that was all. Though the boundaries of this adage had been extended by my talks with Dean Spanley, beyond, I suppose, any limits previously known to man; at any rate this side of Asia.

‘Clean straw is bad,’ continued the Dean; ‘because there is no flavour to it. No.’

He was meditating again, and I let him meditate, leaving him to bring up out of that strange past whatever he would for me.

‘If you find anything good, hide it,’ he continued. ‘The world is full of others; and they all seem to get to know, if you have found anything good. It is best therefore to bury it. And to bury it when no one is looking on. And to smooth everything over it. Anything good always improves with keeping a few days. And you know it’s always there when you want it. I have sometimes smoothed things over it so carefully that I have been unable to find it when requiring it, but the feeling that it’s there always remains. It is a very pleasant feeling, hard to describe. Those buryings represent wealth, which of course is a feeling denied to those greedy fellows who eat every bone they find, the moment they find it. I have even buried a bone when I’ve been hungry, for the pleasure of knowing that it was there. What am I saying! Oh Heavens, what am I saying!’

So sudden, so unexpected was this rush back down the ages, and just when I thought that he had had ample Tokay, that I scarcely knew what to do. But, whatever I did, it had to be done instantly; and at all costs I had to preserve from the Dean the secret that through his babblings I was tapping a source of knowledge that was new to this side of the world, for I knew instinctively that he would have put a stop to it. He had uttered once before in my hearing a similar exclamation, but not with anything like the shocked intensity with which he was now vibrating, and his agitation seemed even about to increase. I had, as I say, to act instantly. What I did made a certain coldness between me and the Dean, that lasted unfortunately for several weeks, but at least I preserved the secret. I fell forward over the table and lay unconscious, as though overcome by Tokay.

CHAPTER FOUR (#u63571dd5-7405-5855-bb5c-ab50b45e2492)

There was one advantage in the awkwardness that I felt when I next saw the Dean at the club, and that was that my obvious embarrassment attracted his attention away from the direction in which a single wandering thought might have ruined everything. It was of vital importance to my researches that any question about over-indulgence in a rare wine should be directed solely at me. My embarrassment was not feigned, but there was no need to conceal it. I passed him by one day rather sheepishly as I crossed the main hall of the club and saw him standing there looking rather large. I knew he would not give me away to the other members, nor quite condone my lapse. And then one day I very humbly apologised to him in the reading-room.

‘That Tokay,’ I said. ‘I am afraid it may have been a little stronger than I thought.’

‘Not at all,’ said the Dean.

And I think we both felt better after that; I for having made my apology, he for the generosity with which his few kind words had bestowed forgiveness. But it was some while before I felt that I could quite ask him to dine with me. Much roundabout talk about the different dates and vintages of imperial Tokay took place before I could bring myself to do that; but in the end I did, and so Dean Spanley and I sat down to dinner again.

Now I don’t want to take credit for things that I have not done, and I will not claim that I manoeuvred my guest to take up a certain attitude; I think it was merely due to a mood of the Dean. But certainly what happened was that the Dean took up a broad and tolerant line and drank his Tokay like a man, with the implication made clear, in spite of his silence, that there was no harm in Tokay, but only in not knowing where to stop. The result was that the Dean arrived without any difficulty, and far more quickly than I had hoped, at that point at which the truth that there is in wine unlocked his tongue to speak of the clear vision that the Tokay gave him once more. No chemist conducting experiments in his laboratory is likely to have mixed his ingredients with more care than I poured out the Tokay from now on. I mean, of course, for the Dean. I knew now how very narrow was the ridge on which his intellect perched to peer into the past; and I tended his glass with Tokay with the utmost care.

‘We were talking, last time, about bones,’ I said.

And if it had turned out to be the wrong thing to say I should have turned the discussion aside on to grilled bones. But no, there was nothing wrong with it. I had got him back to just the very point at which we left off last time.

‘Ah, bones,’ said the Dean. ‘One should always bury them. Then they are there when you want them. It is something to know that, behind all the noise and panting that you may make, there is a good solid store of bones, perhaps with a bit of meat on them, put away where others can’t find it. That is always a satisfaction. And then, however hungry one may feel, one knows that the meat is improving all the time. Meat has no taste until it has been hidden away awhile. It is always best to bury it. Very often, when I had nothing special to do, I would tear up a hole in the ground. I will tell you why I did that: it attracted attention. Then, if eavesdropping suspicious busybodies wanted to get your bone, they probably looked in the wrong place. It is all part of the scheme of a well-planned life: those that do not take these little precautions seldom get bones. Perhaps they may pick up a dry one now and again, but that is about all. Yes, always bury your bone.’