The wisdom of Father Brown
taken him on a cruise in a small yacht with Sir Cecil Fanshaw, a young
Cornish squire and an enthusiast for Cornish coast scenery. But Brown
was still rather weak; he was no very happy sailor; and though he was
never of the sort that either grumbles or breaks down, his spirits did
not rise above patience and civility. When the other two men praised the
ragged violet sunset or the ragged volcanic crags, he agreed with them.
When Flambeau pointed out a rock shaped like a dragon, he looked at it
and thought it very like a dragon. When Fanshaw more excitedly indicated
a rock that was like Merlin, he looked at it, and signified assent. When
Flambeau asked whether this rocky gate of the twisted river was not the
gate of Fairyland, he said “Yes.” He heard the most important things and
the most trivial with the same tasteless absorption. He heard that the
coast was death to all but careful seamen; he also heard that the ship’s
cat was asleep. He heard that Fanshaw couldn’t find his cigar-holder
anywhere; he also heard the pilot deliver the oracle “Both eyes bright,
she’s all right; one eye winks, down she sinks.” He heard Flambeau say
to Fanshaw that no doubt this meant the pilot must keep both eyes open
and be spry. And he heard Fanshaw say to Flambeau that, oddly enough, it
didn’t mean this: it meant that while they saw two of the coast lights,
one near and the other distant, exactly side by side, they were in the
right river-channel; but that if one light was hidden behind the other,
they were going on the rocks. He heard Fanshaw add that his country was
full of such quaint fables and idioms; it was the very home of romance;
he even pitted this part of Cornwall against Devonshire, as a claimant
to the laurels of Elizabethan seamanship. According to him there had
been captains among these coves and islets compared with whom Drake was
practically a landsman. He heard Flambeau laugh, and ask if, perhaps,
the adventurous title of “Westward Ho!” only meant that all Devonshire
men wished they were living in Cornwall. He heard Fanshaw say there was
no need to be silly; that not only had Cornish captains been heroes, but
that they were heroes still: that near that very spot there was an
old admiral, now retired, who was scarred by thrilling voyages full
of adventures; and who had in his youth found the last group of eight
Pacific Islands that was added to the chart of the world. This Cecil
Fanshaw was, in person, of the kind that commonly urges such crude but
pleasing enthusiasms; a very young man, light-haired, high-coloured,
with an eager profile; with a boyish bravado of spirits, but an almost
girlish delicacy of tint and type. The big shoulders, black brows and
black mousquetaire swagger of Flambeau were a great contrast.
All these trivialities Brown heard and saw; but heard them as a tired
man hears a tune in the railway wheels, or saw them as a sick man sees
the pattern of his wall-paper. No one can calculate the turns of mood in
convalescence: but Father Brown’s depression must have had a great deal
to do with his mere unfamiliarity with the sea. For as the river mouth
narrowed like the neck of a bottle, and the water grew calmer and the
air warmer and more earthly, he seemed to wake up and take notice like
a baby. They had reached that phase just after sunset when air and water
both look bright, but earth and all its growing things look almost
black by comparison. About this particular evening, however, there was
something exceptional. It was one of those rare atmospheres in which
a smoked-glass slide seems to have been slid away from between us and
Nature; so that even dark colours on that day look more gorgeous than
bright colours on cloudier days. The trampled earth of the river-banks
and the peaty stain in the pools did not look drab but glowing umber,
and the dark woods astir in the breeze did not look, as usual, dim blue
with mere depth of distance, but more like wind-tumbled masses of some
vivid violet blossom. This magic clearness and intensity in the colours
was further forced on Brown’s slowly reviving senses by something
romantic and even secret in the very form of the landscape.
The river was still well wide and deep enough for a pleasure boat so
small as theirs; but the curves of the country-side suggested that it
was closing in on either hand; the woods seemed to be making broken and
flying attempts at bridge-building--as if the boat were passing from
the romance of a valley to the romance of a hollow and so to the supreme
romance of a tunnel. Beyond this mere look of things there was little
for Brown’s freshening fancy to feed on; he saw no human beings, except
some gipsies trailing along the river bank, with faggots and osiers
cut in the forest; and one sight no longer unconventional, but in
such remote parts still uncommon: a dark-haired lady, bare-headed, and
paddling her own canoe. If Father Brown ever attached any importance to
either of these, he certainly forgot them at the next turn of the river
which brought in sight a singular object.
The water seemed to widen and split, being cloven by the dark wedge of
a fish-shaped and wooded islet. With the rate at which they went, the
islet seemed to swim towards them like a ship; a ship with a very high
prow--or, to speak more strictly, a very high funnel. For at the extreme
point nearest them stood up an odd-looking building, unlike anything
they could remember or connect with any purpose. It was not specially
high, but it was too high for its breadth to be called anything but a
tower. Yet it appeared to be built entirely of wood, and that in a most
unequal and eccentric way. Some of the planks and beams were of good,
seasoned oak; some of such wood cut raw and recent; some again of white
pinewood, and a great deal more of the same sort of wood painted black
with tar. These black beams were set crooked or crisscross at all kinds
of angles, giving the whole a most patchy and puzzling appearance. There
were one or two windows, which appeared to be coloured and leaded in an
old-fashioned but more elaborate style. The travellers looked at it with
that paradoxical feeling we have when something reminds us of something,
and yet we are certain it is something very different.
Father Brown, even when he was mystified, was clever in analysing his
own mystification. And he found himself reflecting that the oddity
seemed to consist in a particular shape cut out in an incongruous
material; as if one saw a top-hat made of tin, or a frock-coat cut out
of tartan. He was sure he had seen timbers of different tints arranged
like that somewhere, but never in such architectural proportions. The
next moment a glimpse through the dark trees told him all he wanted to
know and he laughed. Through a gap in the foliage there appeared for a
moment one of those old wooden houses, faced with black beams, which are
still to be found here and there in England, but which most of us see
imitated in some show called “Old London” or “Shakespeare’s England’.
It was in view only long enough for the priest to see that, however
old-fashioned, it was a comfortable and well-kept country-house, with
flower-beds in front of it. It had none of the piebald and crazy look of
the tower that seemed made out of its refuse.
“What on earth’s this?” said Flambeau, who was still staring at the
tower.
Fanshaw’s eyes were shining, and he spoke triumphantly. “Aha! you’ve not
seen a place quite like this before, I fancy; that’s why I’ve brought
you here, my friend. Now you shall see whether I exaggerate about the
mariners of Cornwall. This place belongs to Old Pendragon, whom we call
the Admiral; though he retired before getting the rank. The spirit of
Raleigh and Hawkins is a memory with the Devon folk; it’s a modern fact
with the Pendragons. If Queen Elizabeth were to rise from the grave
and come up this river in a gilded barge, she would be received by
the Admiral in a house exactly such as she was accustomed to, in every
corner and casement, in every panel on the wall or plate on the table.
And she would find an English Captain still talking fiercely of fresh
lands to be found in little ships, as much as if she had dined with
Drake.”
“She’d find a rum sort of thing in the garden,” said Father Brown,
“which would not please her Renaissance eye. That Elizabethan domestic
architecture is charming in its way; but it’s against the very nature of
it to break out into turrets.”
“And yet,” answered Fanshaw, “that’s the most romantic and Elizabethan
part of the business. It was built by the Pendragons in the very days
of the Spanish wars; and though it’s needed patching and even rebuilding
for another reason, it’s always been rebuilt in the old way. The story
goes that the lady of Sir Peter Pendragon built it in this place and
to this height, because from the top you can just see the corner where
vessels turn into the river mouth; and she wished to be the first to see
her husband’s ship, as he sailed home from the Spanish Main.”
“For what other reason,” asked Father Brown, “do you mean that it has
been rebuilt?”
“Oh, there’s a strange story about that, too,” said the young squire
with relish. “You are really in a land of strange stories. King Arthur
was here and Merlin and the fairies before him. The story goes that Sir
Peter Pendragon, who (I fear) had some of the faults of the pirates
as well as the virtues of the sailor, was bringing home three Spanish
gentlemen in honourable captivity, intending to escort them to
Elizabeth’s court. But he was a man of flaming and tigerish temper, and
coming to high words with one of them, he caught him by the throat and
flung him by accident or design, into the sea. A second Spaniard, who
was the brother of the first, instantly drew his sword and flew at
Pendragon, and after a short but furious combat in which both got three
wounds in as many minutes, Pendragon drove his blade through the other’s
body and the second Spaniard was accounted for. As it happened the ship
had already turned into the river mouth and was close to comparatively
shallow water. The third Spaniard sprang over the side of the ship,
struck out for the shore, and was soon near enough to it to stand up to
his waist in water. And turning again to face the ship, and holding
up both arms to Heaven--like a prophet calling plagues upon a wicked
city--he called out to Pendragon in a piercing and terrible voice, that
he at least was yet living, that he would go on living, that he would
live for ever; and that generation after generation the house of
Pendragon should never see him or his, but should know by very certain
signs that he and his vengeance were alive. With that he dived under the
wave, and was either drowned or swam so long under water that no hair of
his head was seen afterwards.”
“There’s that girl in the canoe again,” said Flambeau irrelevantly,
for good-looking young women would call him off any topic. “She seems
bothered by the queer tower just as we were.”
Indeed, the black-haired young lady was letting her canoe float slowly
and silently past the strange islet; and was looking intently up at the
strange tower, with a strong glow of curiosity on her oval and olive
face.
“Never mind girls,” said Fanshaw impatiently, “there are plenty of them
in the world, but not many things like the Pendragon Tower. As you may
easily suppose, plenty of superstitions and scandals have followed in
the track of the Spaniard’s curse; and no doubt, as you would put it,
any accident happening to this Cornish family would be connected with
it by rural credulity. But it is perfectly true that this tower has been
burnt down two or three times; and the family can’t be called lucky,
for more than two, I think, of the Admiral’s near kin have perished by