The wisdom of Father Brown
a swamp. He had deliberately chosen the least frequented side of his
palace, but even that was more frequented than he liked. But there was
no particular chance of officious or diplomatic pursuit, for his exit
had been a sudden impulse. All the full-dressed diplomatists he left
behind were unimportant. He had realized suddenly that he could do
without them.
“His great passion was not the much nobler dread of death, but the
strange desire of gold. For this legend of the gold he had left
Grossenmark and invaded Heiligwaldenstein. For this and only this he
had bought the traitor and butchered the hero, for this he had long
questioned and cross-questioned the false Chamberlain, until he had come
to the conclusion that, touching his ignorance, the renegade really
told the truth. For this he had, somewhat reluctantly, paid and promised
money on the chance of gaining the larger amount; and for this he had
stolen out of his palace like a thief in the rain, for he had thought of
another way to get the desire of his eyes, and to get it cheap.
“Away at the upper end of a rambling mountain path to which he was
making his way, among the pillared rocks along the ridge that hangs
above the town, stood the hermitage, hardly more than a cavern fenced
with thorn, in which the third of the great brethren had long hidden
himself from the world. He, thought Prince Otto, could have no real
reason for refusing to give up the gold. He had known its place for
years, and made no effort to find it, even before his new ascetic creed
had cut him off from property or pleasures. True, he had been an enemy,
but he now professed a duty of having no enemies. Some concession to his
cause, some appeal to his principles, would probably get the mere
money secret out of him. Otto was no coward, in spite of his network of
military precautions, and, in any case, his avarice was stronger than
his fears. Nor was there much cause for fear. Since he was certain there
were no private arms in the whole principality, he was a hundred times
more certain there were none in the Quaker’s little hermitage on the
hill, where he lived on herbs, with two old rustic servants, and with
no other voice of man for year after year. Prince Otto looked down
with something of a grim smile at the bright, square labyrinths of the
lamp-lit city below him. For as far as the eye could see there ran the
rifles of his friends, and not one pinch of powder for his enemies.
Rifles ranked so close even to that mountain path that a cry from him
would bring the soldiers rushing up the hill, to say nothing of the fact
that the wood and ridge were patrolled at regular intervals; rifles so
far away, in the dim woods, dwarfed by distance, beyond the river, that
an enemy could not slink into the town by any detour. And round the
palace rifles at the west door and the east door, at the north door and
the south, and all along the four facades linking them. He was safe.
“It was all the more clear when he had crested the ridge and found
how naked was the nest of his old enemy. He found himself on a small
platform of rock, broken abruptly by the three corners of precipice.
Behind was the black cave, masked with green thorn, so low that it was
hard to believe that a man could enter it. In front was the fall of the
cliffs and the vast but cloudy vision of the valley. On the small rock
platform stood an old bronze lectern or reading-stand, groaning under a
great German Bible. The bronze or copper of it had grown green with the
eating airs of that exalted place, and Otto had instantly the thought,
‘Even if they had arms, they must be rusted by now.’ Moonrise had
already made a deathly dawn behind the crests and crags, and the rain
had ceased.
“Behind the lectern, and looking across the valley, stood a very old
man in a black robe that fell as straight as the cliffs around him, but
whose white hair and weak voice seemed alike to waver in the wind.
He was evidently reading some daily lesson as part of his religious
exercises. ‘They trust in their horses...’
“‘Sir,’ said the Prince of Heiligwaldenstein, with quite unusual
courtesy, ‘I should like only one word with you.’
“‘...and in their chariots,’ went on the old man weakly, ‘but we
will trust in the name of the Lord of Hosts....’ His last words were
inaudible, but he closed the book reverently and, being nearly blind,
made a groping movement and gripped the reading-stand. Instantly his two
servants slipped out of the low-browed cavern and supported him. They
wore dull-black gowns like his own, but they had not the frosty silver
on the hair, nor the frost-bitten refinement of the features. They were
peasants, Croat or Magyar, with broad, blunt visages and blinking eyes.
For the first time something troubled the Prince, but his courage and
diplomatic sense stood firm.
“‘I fear we have not met,’ he said, ‘since that awful cannonade in which
your poor brother died.’
“‘All my brothers died,’ said the old man, still looking across the
valley. Then, for one instant turning on Otto his drooping, delicate
features, and the wintry hair that seemed to drip over his eyebrows like
icicles, he added: ‘You see, I am dead, too.’
“‘I hope you’ll understand,’ said the Prince, controlling himself almost
to a point of conciliation, ‘that I do not come here to haunt you, as a
mere ghost of those great quarrels. We will not talk about who was right
or wrong in that, but at least there was one point on which we were
never wrong, because you were always right. Whatever is to be said of
the policy of your family, no one for one moment imagines that you were
moved by the mere gold; you have proved yourself above the suspicion
that...’
“The old man in the black gown had hitherto continued to gaze at him
with watery blue eyes and a sort of weak wisdom in his face. But
when the word ‘gold’ was said he held out his hand as if in arrest of
something, and turned away his face to the mountains.
“‘He has spoken of gold,’ he said. ‘He has spoken of things not lawful.
Let him cease to speak.’
“Otto had the vice of his Prussian type and tradition, which is to
regard success not as an incident but as a quality. He conceived himself
and his like as perpetually conquering peoples who were perpetually
being conquered. Consequently, he was ill acquainted with the emotion
of surprise, and ill prepared for the next movement, which startled and
stiffened him. He had opened his mouth to answer the hermit, when the
mouth was stopped and the voice strangled by a strong, soft gag suddenly
twisted round his head like a tourniquet. It was fully forty seconds
before he even realized that the two Hungarian servants had done it, and
that they had done it with his own military scarf.
“The old man went again weakly to his great brazen-supported Bible,
turned over the leaves, with a patience that had something horrible
about it, till he came to the Epistle of St James, and then began to
read: ‘The tongue is a little member, but--’
“Something in the very voice made the Prince turn suddenly and plunge
down the mountain-path he had climbed. He was half-way towards the
gardens of the palace before he even tried to tear the strangling scarf
from his neck and jaws. He tried again and again, and it was impossible;
the men who had knotted that gag knew the difference between what a man
can do with his hands in front of him and what he can do with his hands
behind his head. His legs were free to leap like an antelope on the
mountains, his arms were free to use any gesture or wave any signal, but
he could not speak. A dumb devil was in him.
“He had come close to the woods that walled in the castle before he had
quite realized what his wordless state meant and was meant to mean.
Once more he looked down grimly at the bright, square labyrinths of
the lamp-lit city below him, and he smiled no more. He felt himself
repeating the phrases of his former mood with a murderous irony. Far as
the eye could see ran the rifles of his friends, every one of whom would
shoot him dead if he could not answer the challenge. Rifles were so
near that the wood and ridge could be patrolled at regular intervals;
therefore it was useless to hide in the wood till morning. Rifles were
ranked so far away that an enemy could not slink into the town by
any detour; therefore it was vain to return to the city by any remote
course. A cry from him would bring his soldiers rushing up the hill. But
from him no cry would come.
“The moon had risen in strengthening silver, and the sky showed in
stripes of bright, nocturnal blue between the black stripes of the pines
about the castle. Flowers of some wide and feathery sort--for he had
never noticed such things before--were at once luminous and discoloured
by the moonshine, and seemed indescribably fantastic as they clustered,
as if crawling about the roots of the trees. Perhaps his reason had been
suddenly unseated by the unnatural captivity he carried with him, but in
that wood he felt something unfathomably German--the fairy tale. He knew
with half his mind that he was drawing near to the castle of an ogre--he
had forgotten that he was the ogre. He remembered asking his mother if
bears lived in the old park at home. He stooped to pick a flower, as
if it were a charm against enchantment. The stalk was stronger than he
expected, and broke with a slight snap. Carefully trying to place it in
his scarf, he heard the halloo, ‘Who goes there?’ Then he remembered the
scarf was not in its usual place.
“He tried to scream and was silent. The second challenge came; and then
a shot that shrieked as it came and then was stilled suddenly by impact.
Otto of Grossenmark lay very peacefully among the fairy trees, and would
do no more harm either with gold or steel; only the silver pencil of the
moon would pick out and trace here and there the intricate ornament of
his uniform, or the old wrinkles on his brow. May God have mercy on his
soul.
“The sentry who had fired, according to the strict orders of the
garrison, naturally ran forward to find some trace of his quarry. He was
a private named Schwartz, since not unknown in his profession, and what
he found was a bald man in uniform, but with his face so bandaged by a
kind of mask made of his own military scarf that nothing but open, dead
eyes could be seen, glittering stonily in the moonlight. The bullet had
gone through the gag into the jaw; that is why there was a shot-hole
in the scarf, but only one shot. Naturally, if not correctly, young
Schwartz tore off the mysterious silken mask and cast it on the grass;
and then he saw whom he had slain.
“We cannot be certain of the next phase. But I incline to believe that
there was a fairy tale, after all, in that little wood, horrible as
was its occasion. Whether the young lady named Hedwig had any previous
knowledge of the soldier she saved and eventually married, or whether
she came accidentally upon the accident and their intimacy began that
night, we shall probably never know. But we can know, I fancy, that this
Hedwig was a heroine, and deserved to marry a man who became something
of a hero. She did the bold and the wise thing. She persuaded the sentry
to go back to his post, in which place there was nothing to connect him
with the disaster; he was but one of the most loyal and orderly of fifty
such sentries within call. She remained by the body and gave the alarm;
and there was nothing to connect her with the disaster either, since she
had not got, and could not have, any firearms.
“Well,” said Father Brown rising cheerfully “I hope they’re happy.”
“Where are you going?” asked his friend.
“I’m going to have another look at that portrait of the Chamberlain, the
Arnhold who betrayed his brethren,” answered the priest. “I wonder what