CHAPTER TEN

It was exactly as Wrather had said, when the dinner came off; he did lead the Dean to the point which we both of us, for very different reasons, desired: and to-day with all its trappings; sights, noises and points of view; fell away from him with the sudden completeness of snow on a southern slope, when the spring sun charms it thence and the sleeping grass is laid bare. At a certain stage of our dinner, and evidently just the right one, I had referred to his reminiscences. And at that moment I had addressed him not as Mr. Dean, but by his earlier name of Wag. Just plain Wag.

‘As soon as they brought me round from my own house,’ said the Dean, ‘I used to have breakfast. And after that I used to run round to look for some food, in various places I knew of. There was the pig-sty for one. A very greedy devil, the pig, and a lot of good stuff was brought to him; and, if one knew just where to look, there was always a lot of it to be found that had slopped over into the mud; and even when one found nothing to get one’s teeth into, there was always a very meaty taste in the water of all the puddles round there. And then there was a heap near the stables where a lot of good things were put. Various places, you know. On a lucky day I would sometimes eat till dinnertime; then have dinner, and go out to look for a bit more. That is one way of eating, and a very satisfying way. Another way is to hunt your own game and eat it nice and hot. They say it gives one an appetite; which of course it does; but there is no need for that; one always has an appetite. Still, life would not be complete without hunting. Hunting and dog-fighting should be one’s main pursuits, as guarding is a duty, and eating a pastime.

‘I shouldn’t like you to go away with the idea, by the way, that I would eat anything. That was not so. One had a certain position to keep up, and a certain (shall I say?) dignity to preserve; and to preserve it I made a point of never eating bread. There were those that offered it to me, until they got to know me, but I always had to leave it on the carpet. There is no harm in bread, yet it has not only no flavour, but is one of those things that do not develop a flavour even when buried for a long time, so that it can never become interesting. To be a bread-eater is to my mind to be lacking in refinement or self-respect. I do not of course refer to soft toast, on which perhaps a snipe has been lying, all saturated with gravy: such things may be very precious.

‘And cake of course is never to be confused with bread; it has a similar taste and the same disabilities, but is a far more important food, so that there can never be any loss of dignity in eating a piece of cake. The Wise Ones eat cake by itself, but to bread they always add something before eating it, which shows the unimportance of bread. And from this I come to table manners. One should catch one’s food as neatly as possible. By fixing one’s eyes on the Wise Ones before they throw, it is almost impossible to miss.’

Wrather moved slowly nearer to me, sideways. I knew what he was going to say.

‘Do you think,’ he whispered, ‘that the old dog would catch anything now?’

I could not explain to Wrather at this time what in any case I had led him to believe was not the case, that this was research work on my part, not mere amusement. So all I said to him was, ‘Don’t whisper;’ a rudeness that he forgave me at once with a twinkling eye.

‘Eh? What?’ said the Dean. ‘I was saying that one should fix one’s eyes on the Wise Ones. There are those that do not appreciate intense devotion at meal-times. But it is not for us to withhold our devotion on that account. It is born in all of us, and increased by beatings. A few sharp words should not diminish it. And sometimes it brings us abundant bones.’

‘I say,’ said Wrather, ‘the old dog wants bucking up a bit.’

‘Don’t!’ I said in an undertone. ‘You’ll bring him round.’

‘No I shan’t,’ said Wrather. And to the Dean he said, ‘Did you never have any more exciting experiences?’

‘Exciting?’ replied the Dean. ‘Life is full of excitement, except while one is sleeping.’

‘Anything specially thrilling, I mean,’ said Wrather.

I couldn’t stop him. But Dean Spanley, far from being brought back by him to our own time leaned forward and looked at Wrather, and said: ‘I was out for a walk by myself, and I saw a nursery-maid and two children and a dog coming my way; and a strange new smell ran past me, and I glanced up and saw the look in the eyes of the dog. And I ran. I started just in time and he never came after me. It was rabies. And the nursery-maid and the children came quietly on, walking as they do on a Sunday.’

‘Rabies!’ said Wrather, all hushed. ‘How did you know?’

‘How did I know?’ said the Dean. ‘I saw his eyes. And the look was there.’

‘And you couldn’t have been mistaken?’ I asked.

‘It was glaring,’ replied the Dean.

And that was one thing I learnt from him.

Wrather drank off a whole glass of Tokay, and said: ‘Tell us something more cheerful.’

I was afraid every moment that Wrather would bring him back.

‘Down,’ I said to Wrather, who understood what I meant; and the sharp command helped, I think, to keep the Dean where he was among his old memories. Nevertheless he answered Wrather, and seemed to do what he asked.

‘I remember the hounds coming once to our house; professional hunters, you know. I should have liked to have asked them whether they had been permitted to come there by the wise master, and whether their intentions were entirely correct, and indeed a great many other things; and, if their answers had been satisfactory, I should have liked to have told them all about our woods and all about who lived in them. I could have helped them in hundreds of ways. But unfortunately I was shut up. I shouted a good deal to them from my house; but I should have liked to have gone with them and showed them the way; I should have liked to have gone round and see that they were all quite well. And I should have liked to have chased the horses, so that they should not think, on account of their size, that they were more important than me. But there it was; I was shut up.

‘I had an enormous amount to do when they left. I had to go and find out who they all were, and where they had come from, and if they were all quite well. Every tuft of grass had news of them. There were the scents of the hounds themselves, and scents from the roads they had come by, and tracks and scents of the horses: the field in front of our house was nothing less than a history; and it took me a long time to go through it. I was a bit behindhand owing to having been shut up, but scents that had gone from lawns and paths still hung in the taller grasses, and I was able to gather all the information that I required.’

‘What for?’ blurted out Wrather, before I could stop him.

‘To guard the house,’ said the Dean. ‘It was my duty to guard it. And I had to know who had come near it, and what their business was. Our house was sacred, and we couldn’t have people coming near it unless we knew what they had come for: there might have been an enemy among them. You will not suggest, I trust, that anybody and everybody should be allowed without enquiry, and without the most careful enquiry, near a sacred house.’

‘Not at all,’ said Wrather.

And I felt it necessary to add: ‘Of course not.’

‘Ours was a particularly sacred house,’ said the Dean, still somewhat nettled. ‘Even the butcher’s cart had to be barked at, though at many houses such a cart as that would be allowed to drive up without question. I certainly could not have all those people coming without enquiring into their motives, and, as a matter of general interest, their state of health. So I naturally had a very busy morning. They went visiting in our wood while I was still shut up, and I heard them leave the wood hunting. They all shouted out that they were after a fox, and quite right too, but I could not allow them merely on that account to come near a house such as ours without proper investigations.

‘And there were two or three light carriages that had come to our stables, and that were fortunately still there when I was let out. So I sniffed at the wheels to get news of what was going on in the world, and I left a message with all of them to say that I was quite well.’