Dean Spanley: The Novel

‘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.

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