The innocence of Father Brown
“The parson at the door he says all serene, ‘Sorry to confuse your
accounts, but it’ll pay for the window.’ ‘What window?’ I says. ‘The
one I’m going to break,’ he says, and smashed that blessed pane with his
umbrella.”
All three inquirers made an exclamation; and the inspector said under
his breath, “Are we after escaped lunatics?” The waiter went on with
some relish for the ridiculous story:
“I was so knocked silly for a second, I couldn’t do anything. The man
marched out of the place and joined his friend just round the corner.
Then they went so quick up Bullock Street that I couldn’t catch them,
though I ran round the bars to do it.”
“Bullock Street,” said the detective, and shot up that thoroughfare as
quickly as the strange couple he pursued.
Their journey now took them through bare brick ways like tunnels;
streets with few lights and even with few windows; streets that seemed
built out of the blank backs of everything and everywhere. Dusk was
deepening, and it was not easy even for the London policemen to guess
in what exact direction they were treading. The inspector, however, was
pretty certain that they would eventually strike some part of Hampstead
Heath. Abruptly one bulging gas-lit window broke the blue twilight like
a bull’s-eye lantern; and Valentin stopped an instant before a little
garish sweetstuff shop. After an instant’s hesitation he went in; he
stood amid the gaudy colours of the confectionery with entire gravity
and bought thirteen chocolate cigars with a certain care. He was clearly
preparing an opening; but he did not need one.
An angular, elderly young woman in the shop had regarded his elegant
appearance with a merely automatic inquiry; but when she saw the door
behind him blocked with the blue uniform of the inspector, her eyes
seemed to wake up.
“Oh,” she said, “if you’ve come about that parcel, I’ve sent it off
already.”
“Parcel?” repeated Valentin; and it was his turn to look inquiring.
“I mean the parcel the gentleman left--the clergyman gentleman.”
“For goodness’ sake,” said Valentin, leaning forward with his first
real confession of eagerness, “for Heaven’s sake tell us what happened
exactly.”
“Well,” said the woman a little doubtfully, “the clergymen came in about
half an hour ago and bought some peppermints and talked a bit, and then
went off towards the Heath. But a second after, one of them runs
back into the shop and says, ‘Have I left a parcel!’ Well, I looked
everywhere and couldn’t see one; so he says, ‘Never mind; but if it
should turn up, please post it to this address,’ and he left me the
address and a shilling for my trouble. And sure enough, though I thought
I’d looked everywhere, I found he’d left a brown paper parcel, so I
posted it to the place he said. I can’t remember the address now; it
was somewhere in Westminster. But as the thing seemed so important, I
thought perhaps the police had come about it.”
“So they have,” said Valentin shortly. “Is Hampstead Heath near here?”
“Straight on for fifteen minutes,” said the woman, “and you’ll come
right out on the open.” Valentin sprang out of the shop and began to
run. The other detectives followed him at a reluctant trot.
The street they threaded was so narrow and shut in by shadows that when
they came out unexpectedly into the void common and vast sky they were
startled to find the evening still so light and clear. A perfect dome
of peacock-green sank into gold amid the blackening trees and the dark
violet distances. The glowing green tint was just deep enough to pick
out in points of crystal one or two stars. All that was left of the
daylight lay in a golden glitter across the edge of Hampstead and that
popular hollow which is called the Vale of Health. The holiday makers
who roam this region had not wholly dispersed; a few couples sat
shapelessly on benches; and here and there a distant girl still shrieked
in one of the swings. The glory of heaven deepened and darkened around
the sublime vulgarity of man; and standing on the slope and looking
across the valley, Valentin beheld the thing which he sought.
Among the black and breaking groups in that distance was one especially
black which did not break--a group of two figures clerically clad.
Though they seemed as small as insects, Valentin could see that one of
them was much smaller than the other. Though the other had a student’s
stoop and an inconspicuous manner, he could see that the man was well
over six feet high. He shut his teeth and went forward, whirling his
stick impatiently. By the time he had substantially diminished the
distance and magnified the two black figures as in a vast microscope,
he had perceived something else; something which startled him, and yet
which he had somehow expected. Whoever was the tall priest, there could
be no doubt about the identity of the short one. It was his friend of
the Harwich train, the stumpy little cure of Essex whom he had warned
about his brown paper parcels.
Now, so far as this went, everything fitted in finally and rationally
enough. Valentin had learned by his inquiries that morning that a Father
Brown from Essex was bringing up a silver cross with sapphires, a
relic of considerable value, to show some of the foreign priests at the
congress. This undoubtedly was the “silver with blue stones”; and Father
Brown undoubtedly was the little greenhorn in the train. Now there
was nothing wonderful about the fact that what Valentin had found out
Flambeau had also found out; Flambeau found out everything. Also there
was nothing wonderful in the fact that when Flambeau heard of a sapphire
cross he should try to steal it; that was the most natural thing in all
natural history. And most certainly there was nothing wonderful about
the fact that Flambeau should have it all his own way with such a silly
sheep as the man with the umbrella and the parcels. He was the sort of
man whom anybody could lead on a string to the North Pole; it was not
surprising that an actor like Flambeau, dressed as another priest, could
lead him to Hampstead Heath. So far the crime seemed clear enough; and
while the detective pitied the priest for his helplessness, he almost
despised Flambeau for condescending to so gullible a victim. But when
Valentin thought of all that had happened in between, of all that had
led him to his triumph, he racked his brains for the smallest rhyme or
reason in it. What had the stealing of a blue-and-silver cross from a
priest from Essex to do with chucking soup at wall paper? What had it
to do with calling nuts oranges, or with paying for windows first and
breaking them afterwards? He had come to the end of his chase; yet
somehow he had missed the middle of it. When he failed (which was
seldom), he had usually grasped the clue, but nevertheless missed the
criminal. Here he had grasped the criminal, but still he could not grasp
the clue.
The two figures that they followed were crawling like black flies
across the huge green contour of a hill. They were evidently sunk in
conversation, and perhaps did not notice where they were going; but they
were certainly going to the wilder and more silent heights of the Heath.
As their pursuers gained on them, the latter had to use the undignified
attitudes of the deer-stalker, to crouch behind clumps of trees and
even to crawl prostrate in deep grass. By these ungainly ingenuities the
hunters even came close enough to the quarry to hear the murmur of the
discussion, but no word could be distinguished except the word “reason”
recurring frequently in a high and almost childish voice. Once over
an abrupt dip of land and a dense tangle of thickets, the detectives
actually lost the two figures they were following. They did not find the
trail again for an agonising ten minutes, and then it led round the brow
of a great dome of hill overlooking an amphitheatre of rich and desolate
sunset scenery. Under a tree in this commanding yet neglected spot was
an old ramshackle wooden seat. On this seat sat the two priests still in
serious speech together. The gorgeous green and gold still clung to
the darkening horizon; but the dome above was turning slowly from
peacock-green to peacock-blue, and the stars detached themselves more
and more like solid jewels. Mutely motioning to his followers, Valentin
contrived to creep up behind the big branching tree, and, standing there
in deathly silence, heard the words of the strange priests for the first
time.
After he had listened for a minute and a half, he was gripped by a
devilish doubt. Perhaps he had dragged the two English policemen to the
wastes of a nocturnal heath on an errand no saner than seeking figs on
its thistles. For the two priests were talking exactly like priests,
piously, with learning and leisure, about the most aerial enigmas of
theology. The little Essex priest spoke the more simply, with his round
face turned to the strengthening stars; the other talked with his
head bowed, as if he were not even worthy to look at them. But no more
innocently clerical conversation could have been heard in any white
Italian cloister or black Spanish cathedral.
The first he heard was the tail of one of Father Brown’s sentences,
which ended: “... what they really meant in the Middle Ages by the
heavens being incorruptible.”
The taller priest nodded his bowed head and said:
“Ah, yes, these modern infidels appeal to their reason; but who can
look at those millions of worlds and not feel that there may well be
wonderful universes above us where reason is utterly unreasonable?”
“No,” said the other priest; “reason is always reasonable, even in the
last limbo, in the lost borderland of things. I know that people charge
the Church with lowering reason, but it is just the other way. Alone
on earth, the Church makes reason really supreme. Alone on earth, the
Church affirms that God himself is bound by reason.”
The other priest raised his austere face to the spangled sky and said:
“Yet who knows if in that infinite universe--?”
“Only infinite physically,” said the little priest, turning sharply
in his seat, “not infinite in the sense of escaping from the laws of
truth.”
Valentin behind his tree was tearing his fingernails with silent fury.
He seemed almost to hear the sniggers of the English detectives whom
he had brought so far on a fantastic guess only to listen to the
metaphysical gossip of two mild old parsons. In his impatience he lost
the equally elaborate answer of the tall cleric, and when he listened
again it was again Father Brown who was speaking:
“Reason and justice grip the remotest and the loneliest star. Look
at those stars. Don’t they look as if they were single diamonds and
sapphires? Well, you can imagine any mad botany or geology you please.
Think of forests of adamant with leaves of brilliants. Think the moon
is a blue moon, a single elephantine sapphire. But don’t fancy that all
that frantic astronomy would make the smallest difference to the reason
and justice of conduct. On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out of
pearl, you would still find a notice-board, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’”
Valentin was just in the act of rising from his rigid and crouching
attitude and creeping away as softly as might be, felled by the one
great folly of his life. But something in the very silence of the tall
priest made him stop until the latter spoke. When at last he did speak,
he said simply, his head bowed and his hands on his knees:
“Well, I think that other worlds may perhaps rise higher than our
reason. The mystery of heaven is unfathomable, and I for one can only
bow my head.”
Then, with brow yet bent and without changing by the faintest shade his
attitude or voice, he added:
“Just hand over that sapphire cross of yours, will you? We’re all alone