The innocence of Father Brown
brown furs that it was hard to say which was hair and which was fur. But
for the attractive face she might have been a small toddling bear.
The winter afternoon was reddening towards evening, and already a ruby
light was rolled over the bloomless beds, filling them, as it were, with
the ghosts of the dead roses. On one side of the house stood the stable,
on the other an alley or cloister of laurels led to the larger garden
behind. The young lady, having scattered bread for the birds (for
the fourth or fifth time that day, because the dog ate it), passed
unobtrusively down the lane of laurels and into a glimmering plantation
of evergreens behind. Here she gave an exclamation of wonder, real or
ritual, and looking up at the high garden wall above her, beheld it
fantastically bestridden by a somewhat fantastic figure.
“Oh, don’t jump, Mr. Crook,” she called out in some alarm; “it’s much
too high.”
The individual riding the party wall like an aerial horse was a tall,
angular young man, with dark hair sticking up like a hair brush,
intelligent and even distinguished lineaments, but a sallow and almost
alien complexion. This showed the more plainly because he wore an
aggressive red tie, the only part of his costume of which he seemed to
take any care. Perhaps it was a symbol. He took no notice of the girl’s
alarmed adjuration, but leapt like a grasshopper to the ground beside
her, where he might very well have broken his legs.
“I think I was meant to be a burglar,” he said placidly, “and I have no
doubt I should have been if I hadn’t happened to be born in that nice
house next door. I can’t see any harm in it, anyhow.”
“How can you say such things!” she remonstrated.
“Well,” said the young man, “if you’re born on the wrong side of the
wall, I can’t see that it’s wrong to climb over it.”
“I never know what you will say or do next,” she said.
“I don’t often know myself,” replied Mr. Crook; “but then I am on the
right side of the wall now.”
“And which is the right side of the wall?” asked the young lady,
smiling.
“Whichever side you are on,” said the young man named Crook.
As they went together through the laurels towards the front garden
a motor horn sounded thrice, coming nearer and nearer, and a car of
splendid speed, great elegance, and a pale green colour swept up to the
front doors like a bird and stood throbbing.
“Hullo, hullo!” said the young man with the red tie, “here’s somebody
born on the right side, anyhow. I didn’t know, Miss Adams, that your
Santa Claus was so modern as this.”
“Oh, that’s my godfather, Sir Leopold Fischer. He always comes on Boxing
Day.”
Then, after an innocent pause, which unconsciously betrayed some lack of
enthusiasm, Ruby Adams added:
“He is very kind.”
John Crook, journalist, had heard of that eminent City magnate; and
it was not his fault if the City magnate had not heard of him; for in
certain articles in _The Clarion_ or _The New Age_ Sir Leopold had been
dealt with austerely. But he said nothing and grimly watched the
unloading of the motor-car, which was rather a long process. A large,
neat chauffeur in green got out from the front, and a small, neat
manservant in grey got out from the back, and between them they
deposited Sir Leopold on the doorstep and began to unpack him, like some
very carefully protected parcel. Rugs enough to stock a bazaar, furs
of all the beasts of the forest, and scarves of all the colours of
the rainbow were unwrapped one by one, till they revealed something
resembling the human form; the form of a friendly, but foreign-looking
old gentleman, with a grey goat-like beard and a beaming smile, who
rubbed his big fur gloves together.
Long before this revelation was complete the two big doors of the porch
had opened in the middle, and Colonel Adams (father of the furry young
lady) had come out himself to invite his eminent guest inside. He was a
tall, sunburnt, and very silent man, who wore a red smoking-cap like a
fez, making him look like one of the English Sirdars or Pashas in Egypt.
With him was his brother-in-law, lately come from Canada, a big and
rather boisterous young gentleman-farmer, with a yellow beard, by name
James Blount. With him also was the more insignificant figure of the
priest from the neighbouring Roman Church; for the colonel’s late wife
had been a Catholic, and the children, as is common in such cases, had
been trained to follow her. Everything seemed undistinguished about
the priest, even down to his name, which was Brown; yet the colonel had
always found something companionable about him, and frequently asked him
to such family gatherings.
In the large entrance hall of the house there was ample room even for
Sir Leopold and the removal of his wraps. Porch and vestibule, indeed,
were unduly large in proportion to the house, and formed, as it were, a
big room with the front door at one end, and the bottom of the staircase
at the other. In front of the large hall fire, over which hung the
colonel’s sword, the process was completed and the company, including
the saturnine Crook, presented to Sir Leopold Fischer. That venerable
financier, however, still seemed struggling with portions of his
well-lined attire, and at length produced from a very interior tail-coat
pocket, a black oval case which he radiantly explained to be his
Christmas present for his god-daughter. With an unaffected vain-glory
that had something disarming about it he held out the case before them
all; it flew open at a touch and half-blinded them. It was just as if a
crystal fountain had spurted in their eyes. In a nest of orange velvet
lay like three eggs, three white and vivid diamonds that seemed to set
the very air on fire all round them. Fischer stood beaming benevolently
and drinking deep of the astonishment and ecstasy of the girl, the grim
admiration and gruff thanks of the colonel, the wonder of the whole
group.
“I’ll put ’em back now, my dear,” said Fischer, returning the case to
the tails of his coat. “I had to be careful of ’em coming down. They’re
the three great African diamonds called ‘The Flying Stars,’ because
they’ve been stolen so often. All the big criminals are on the track;
but even the rough men about in the streets and hotels could hardly have
kept their hands off them. I might have lost them on the road here. It
was quite possible.”
“Quite natural, I should say,” growled the man in the red tie. “I
shouldn’t blame ’em if they had taken ’em. When they ask for bread, and
you don’t even give them a stone, I think they might take the stone for
themselves.”
“I won’t have you talking like that,” cried the girl, who was in a
curious glow. “You’ve only talked like that since you became a horrid
what’s-his-name. You know what I mean. What do you call a man who wants
to embrace the chimney-sweep?”
“A saint,” said Father Brown.
“I think,” said Sir Leopold, with a supercilious smile, “that Ruby means
a Socialist.”
“A radical does not mean a man who lives on radishes,” remarked Crook,
with some impatience; “and a Conservative does not mean a man who
preserves jam. Neither, I assure you, does a Socialist mean a man who
desires a social evening with the chimney-sweep. A Socialist means a
man who wants all the chimneys swept and all the chimney-sweeps paid for
it.”
“But who won’t allow you,” put in the priest in a low voice, “to own
your own soot.”
Crook looked at him with an eye of interest and even respect. “Does one
want to own soot?” he asked.
“One might,” answered Brown, with speculation in his eye. “I’ve heard
that gardeners use it. And I once made six children happy at Christmas
when the conjuror didn’t come, entirely with soot--applied externally.”
“Oh, splendid,” cried Ruby. “Oh, I wish you’d do it to this company.”
The boisterous Canadian, Mr. Blount, was lifting his loud voice in
applause, and the astonished financier his (in some considerable
deprecation), when a knock sounded at the double front doors. The priest
opened them, and they showed again the front garden of evergreens,
monkey-tree and all, now gathering gloom against a gorgeous violet
sunset. The scene thus framed was so coloured and quaint, like a back
scene in a play, that they forgot a moment the insignificant figure
standing in the door. He was dusty-looking and in a frayed coat,
evidently a common messenger. “Any of you gentlemen Mr. Blount?” he
asked, and held forward a letter doubtfully. Mr. Blount started, and
stopped in his shout of assent. Ripping up the envelope with evident
astonishment he read it; his face clouded a little, and then cleared,
and he turned to his brother-in-law and host.
“I’m sick at being such a nuisance, colonel,” he said, with the cheery
colonial conventions; “but would it upset you if an old acquaintance
called on me here tonight on business? In point of fact it’s Florian,
that famous French acrobat and comic actor; I knew him years ago out
West (he was a French-Canadian by birth), and he seems to have business
for me, though I hardly guess what.”
“Of course, of course,” replied the colonel carelessly--“My dear chap,
any friend of yours. No doubt he will prove an acquisition.”
“He’ll black his face, if that’s what you mean,” cried Blount, laughing.
“I don’t doubt he’d black everyone else’s eyes. I don’t care; I’m not
refined. I like the jolly old pantomime where a man sits on his top
hat.”
“Not on mine, please,” said Sir Leopold Fischer, with dignity.
“Well, well,” observed Crook, airily, “don’t let’s quarrel. There are
lower jokes than sitting on a top hat.”
Dislike of the red-tied youth, born of his predatory opinions and
evident intimacy with the pretty godchild, led Fischer to say, in his
most sarcastic, magisterial manner: “No doubt you have found something
much lower than sitting on a top hat. What is it, pray?”
“Letting a top hat sit on you, for instance,” said the Socialist.
“Now, now, now,” cried the Canadian farmer with his barbarian
benevolence, “don’t let’s spoil a jolly evening. What I say is, let’s
do something for the company tonight. Not blacking faces or sitting on
hats, if you don’t like those--but something of the sort. Why couldn’t
we have a proper old English pantomime--clown, columbine, and so on. I
saw one when I left England at twelve years old, and it’s blazed in my
brain like a bonfire ever since. I came back to the old country
only last year, and I find the thing’s extinct. Nothing but a lot of
snivelling fairy plays. I want a hot poker and a policeman made into
sausages, and they give me princesses moralising by moonlight, Blue
Birds, or something. Blue Beard’s more in my line, and him I like best
when he turned into the pantaloon.”
“I’m all for making a policeman into sausages,” said John Crook. “It’s a
better definition of Socialism than some recently given. But surely the
get-up would be too big a business.”
“Not a scrap,” cried Blount, quite carried away. “A harlequinade’s the
quickest thing we can do, for two reasons. First, one can gag to any
degree; and, second, all the objects are household things--tables and
towel-horses and washing baskets, and things like that.”
“That’s true,” admitted Crook, nodding eagerly and walking about.
“But I’m afraid I can’t have my policeman’s uniform? Haven’t killed a
policeman lately.”
Blount frowned thoughtfully a space, and then smote his thigh. “Yes,
we can!” he cried. “I’ve got Florian’s address here, and he knows every
costumier in London. I’ll phone him to bring a police dress when he
comes.” And he went bounding away to the telephone.
“Oh, it’s glorious, godfather,” cried Ruby, almost dancing. “I’ll be
columbine and you shall be pantaloon.”
The millionaire held himself stiff with a sort of heathen solemnity. “I