The innocence of Father Brown
collapse was close, and resolved on suicide. Yet ordinary suicide would
blazon the very idea he dreaded. As the campaign approached the clouds
came thicker on his brain; and at last in a mad moment he sacrificed his
public duty to his private. He rushed rashly into battle, hoping to fall
by the first shot. When he found that he had only attained capture and
discredit, the sealed bomb in his brain burst, and he broke his own
sword and hanged himself.”
He stared firmly at the grey façade of forest in front of him, with the
one black gap in it, like the mouth of the grave, into which their path
plunged. Perhaps something menacing in the road thus suddenly swallowed
reinforced his vivid vision of the tragedy, for he shuddered.
“A horrid story,” he said.
“A horrid story,” repeated the priest with bent head. “But not the real
story.”
Then he threw back his head with a sort of despair and cried: “Oh, I
wish it had been.”
The tall Flambeau faced round and stared at him.
“Yours is a clean story,” cried Father Brown, deeply moved. “A sweet,
pure, honest story, as open and white as that moon. Madness and despair
are innocent enough. There are worse things, Flambeau.”
Flambeau looked up wildly at the moon thus invoked; and from where he
stood one black tree-bough curved across it exactly like a devil’s horn.
“Father--father,” cried Flambeau with the French gesture and stepping
yet more rapidly forward, “do you mean it was worse than that?”
“Worse than that,” said Paul like a grave echo. And they plunged into
the black cloister of the woodland, which ran by them in a dim tapestry
of trunks, like one of the dark corridors in a dream.
They were soon in the most secret entrails of the wood, and felt close
about them foliage that they could not see, when the priest said again:
“Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest. But what does he do
if there is no forest?”
“Well, well,” cried Flambeau irritably, “what does he do?”
“He grows a forest to hide it in,” said the priest in an obscure voice.
“A fearful sin.”
“Look here,” cried his friend impatiently, for the dark wood and the
dark saying got a little on his nerves; “will you tell me this story or
not? What other evidence is there to go on?”
“There are three more bits of evidence,” said the other, “that I have
dug up in holes and corners; and I will give them in logical rather
than chronological order. First of all, of course, our authority for the
issue and event of the battle is in Olivier’s own dispatches, which
are lucid enough. He was entrenched with two or three regiments on the
heights that swept down to the Black River, on the other side of which
was lower and more marshy ground. Beyond this again was gently rising
country, on which was the first English outpost, supported by others
which lay, however, considerably in its rear. The British forces as a
whole were greatly superior in numbers; but this particular regiment was
just far enough from its base to make Olivier consider the project of
crossing the river to cut it off. By sunset, however, he had decided to
retain his own position, which was a specially strong one. At daybreak
next morning he was thunderstruck to see that this stray handful of
English, entirely unsupported from their rear, had flung themselves
across the river, half by a bridge to the right, and the other half by a
ford higher up, and were massed upon the marshy bank below him.
“That they should attempt an attack with such numbers against such a
position was incredible enough; but Olivier noticed something yet more
extraordinary. For instead of attempting to seize more solid ground,
this mad regiment, having put the river in its rear by one wild charge,
did nothing more, but stuck there in the mire like flies in treacle.
Needless to say, the Brazilians blew great gaps in them with artillery,
which they could only return with spirited but lessening rifle fire. Yet
they never broke; and Olivier’s curt account ends with a strong tribute
of admiration for the mystic valour of these imbeciles. ‘Our line then
advanced finally,’ writes Olivier, ‘and drove them into the river;
we captured General St. Clare himself and several other officers. The
colonel and the major had both fallen in the battle. I cannot resist
saying that few finer sights can have been seen in history than the last
stand of this extraordinary regiment; wounded officers picking up the
rifles of dead soldiers, and the general himself facing us on horseback
bareheaded and with a broken sword.’ On what happened to the general
afterwards Olivier is as silent as Captain Keith.”
“Well,” grunted Flambeau, “get on to the next bit of evidence.”
“The next evidence,” said Father Brown, “took some time to find, but it
will not take long to tell. I found at last in an almshouse down in the
Lincolnshire Fens an old soldier who not only was wounded at the Black
River, but had actually knelt beside the colonel of the regiment when
he died. This latter was a certain Colonel Clancy, a big bull of an
Irishman; and it would seem that he died almost as much of rage as of
bullets. He, at any rate, was not responsible for that ridiculous raid;
it must have been imposed on him by the general. His last edifying
words, according to my informant, were these: ‘And there goes the damned
old donkey with the end of his sword knocked off. I wish it was his
head.’ You will remark that everyone seems to have noticed this detail
about the broken sword blade, though most people regard it somewhat
more reverently than did the late Colonel Clancy. And now for the third
fragment.”
Their path through the woodland began to go upward, and the speaker
paused a little for breath before he went on. Then he continued in the
same business-like tone:
“Only a month or two ago a certain Brazilian official died in England,
having quarrelled with Olivier and left his country. He was a well-known
figure both here and on the Continent, a Spaniard named Espado; I knew
him myself, a yellow-faced old dandy, with a hooked nose. For various
private reasons I had permission to see the documents he had left; he
was a Catholic, of course, and I had been with him towards the end.
There was nothing of his that lit up any corner of the black St. Clare
business, except five or six common exercise books filled with the diary
of some English soldier. I can only suppose that it was found by the
Brazilians on one of those that fell. Anyhow, it stopped abruptly the
night before the battle.
“But the account of that last day in the poor fellow’s life was
certainly worth reading. I have it on me; but it’s too dark to read it
here, and I will give you a resume. The first part of that entry is full
of jokes, evidently flung about among the men, about somebody called the
Vulture. It does not seem as if this person, whoever he was, was one of
themselves, nor even an Englishman; neither is he exactly spoken of as
one of the enemy. It sounds rather as if he were some local go-between
and non-combatant; perhaps a guide or a journalist. He has been closeted
with old Colonel Clancy; but is more often seen talking to the major.
Indeed, the major is somewhat prominent in this soldier’s narrative;
a lean, dark-haired man, apparently, of the name of Murray--a north of
Ireland man and a Puritan. There are continual jests about the contrast
between this Ulsterman’s austerity and the conviviality of
Colonel Clancy. There is also some joke about the Vulture wearing
bright-coloured clothes.
“But all these levities are scattered by what may well be called the
note of a bugle. Behind the English camp and almost parallel to the
river ran one of the few great roads of that district. Westward the road
curved round towards the river, which it crossed by the bridge before
mentioned. To the east the road swept backwards into the wilds, and some
two miles along it was the next English outpost. From this direction
there came along the road that evening a glitter and clatter of
light cavalry, in which even the simple diarist could recognise with
astonishment the general with his staff. He rode the great white horse
which you have seen so often in illustrated papers and Academy pictures;
and you may be sure that the salute they gave him was not merely
ceremonial. He, at least, wasted no time on ceremony, but, springing
from the saddle immediately, mixed with the group of officers, and fell
into emphatic though confidential speech. What struck our friend the
diarist most was his special disposition to discuss matters with Major
Murray; but, indeed, such a selection, so long as it was not marked, was
in no way unnatural. The two men were made for sympathy; they were men
who ‘read their Bibles’; they were both the old Evangelical type of
officer. However this may be, it is certain that when the general
mounted again he was still talking earnestly to Murray; and that as
he walked his horse slowly down the road towards the river, the tall
Ulsterman still walked by his bridle rein in earnest debate. The
soldiers watched the two until they vanished behind a clump of trees
where the road turned towards the river. The colonel had gone back to
his tent, and the men to their pickets; the man with the diary lingered
for another four minutes, and saw a marvellous sight.
“The great white horse which had marched slowly down the road, as it had
marched in so many processions, flew back, galloping up the road towards
them as if it were mad to win a race. At first they thought it had run
away with the man on its back; but they soon saw that the general, a
fine rider, was himself urging it to full speed. Horse and man swept up
to them like a whirlwind; and then, reining up the reeling charger, the
general turned on them a face like flame, and called for the colonel
like the trumpet that wakes the dead.
“I conceive that all the earthquake events of that catastrophe tumbled
on top of each other rather like lumber in the minds of men such as our
friend with the diary. With the dazed excitement of a dream, they found
themselves falling--literally falling--into their ranks, and learned
that an attack was to be led at once across the river. The general and
the major, it was said, had found out something at the bridge, and there
was only just time to strike for life. The major had gone back at once
to call up the reserve along the road behind; it was doubtful if even
with that prompt appeal help could reach them in time. But they must
pass the stream that night, and seize the heights by morning. It is with
the very stir and throb of that romantic nocturnal march that the diary
suddenly ends.”
Father Brown had mounted ahead; for the woodland path grew smaller,
steeper, and more twisted, till they felt as if they were ascending
a winding staircase. The priest’s voice came from above out of the
darkness.
“There was one other little and enormous thing. When the general urged
them to their chivalric charge he half drew his sword from the scabbard;
and then, as if ashamed of such melodrama, thrust it back again. The
sword again, you see.”
A half-light broke through the network of boughs above them, flinging
the ghost of a net about their feet; for they were mounting again to the
faint luminosity of the naked night. Flambeau felt truth all round him
as an atmosphere, but not as an idea. He answered with bewildered brain:
“Well, what’s the matter with the sword? Officers generally have swords,
don’t they?”
“They are not often mentioned in modern war,” said the other
dispassionately; “but in this affair one falls over the blessed sword
everywhere.”
“Well, what is there in that?” growled Flambeau; “it was a twopence
coloured sort of incident; the old man’s blade breaking in his last