it to have a smell. Then you know where you are.’
‘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.
‘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
