The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (104 page)

“
It’s
very good of you to tell me this,” he said. “I’m really awfully grateful, for we
may have to do something about it. If it were only people like you and the general,
it might be only a private matter; but if Sir John Cockspur is going to spread
some sort of scare in his papers — well, he’s a Toronto Orangeman, and we can
hardly keep out of it.”

“
But
what will you say about it?” asked Mallow anxiously.

“
The
first thing I should say about it,” said Father Brown, “is that, as you tell it,
it doesn’t sound like life. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we are all
pessimistic vampires blighting all human happiness. Suppose I’m a pessimistic
vampire.” He scratched his nose with the teddy bear, became faintly conscious
of the incongruity, and put it down. “Suppose we do destroy all human and
family ties. Why should we entangle a man again in an old family tie just when
he showed signs of getting loose from it? Surely it’s a little unfair to charge
us both with crushing such affection and encouraging such infatuation. I don’t
see why even a religious maniac should be that particular sort of monomaniac,
or how religion could increase that mania, except by brightening it with a
little hope.”

Then
he said, after a pause: “I should like to talk to that general of yours.”

“
It
was his wife who told me,” said Mallow.

“
Yes,”
replied the other; “but I’m more interested in what he didn’t tell you than in what
she did.”

“
You
think he knows more than she does?”

“
I
think he knows more than she says,” answered Father Brown. “You tell me he used
a phrase about forgiving everything except the rudeness to his wife. After all,
what else was there to forgive?”

Father
Brown had risen and shaken his shapeless clothes, and stood looking at the young
man with screwed up eyes and slightly quizzical expression. The next moment he
had turned, and picking up his equally shapeless umbrella and large shabby hat,
went stumping down the street.

He
plodded through a variety of wide streets and squares till he came to a handsome
old-fashioned house in the West End, where he asked the servant if he could see
General Outram. After some little palaver he was shown into a study, fitted out
less with books than with maps and globes, where the bald-headed, black-whiskered
Anglo-Indian sat smoking a long, thin, black cigar and playing with pins on a
chart.

“
I
am sorry to intrude,” said the priest, “and all the more because I can’t help the
intrusion looking like interference. I want to speak to you about a private matter,
but only in the hope of keeping it private. Unfortunately, some people are
likely to make it public. I think, general, that you know Sir John Cockspur.”

The
mass of black moustache and whisker served as a sort of mask for the lower half
of the old general’s face; it was always hard to see whether he smiled, but his
brown eyes often had a certain twinkle.

“
Everybody
knows him, I suppose,” he said. “I don’t know him very well.”

“
Well,
you know everybody knows whatever he knows,” said Father Brown, smiling, “when he
thinks it convenient to print it. And I understand from my friend Mr. Mallow,
whom, I think, you know, that Sir John is going to print some scorching anti-clerical
articles founded on what he would call the Marne Mystery. ‘Monks Drive Marquis
Mad,’ etc.”

“
If
he is,” replied the general, “I don’t see why you should come to me about it. I
ought to tell you I’m a strong Protestant.”

“
I’m
very fond of strong Protestants,” said Father Brown. “I came to you because I was
sure you would tell the truth. I hope it is not uncharitable to feel less sure
of Sir John Cockspur.”

The
brown eyes twinkled again, but the general said nothing.

“
General,”
said Father Brown, “suppose Cockspur or his sort were going to make the world ring
with tales against your country and your flag. Suppose he said your regiment
ran away in battle, or your staff were in the pay of the enemy. Would you let
anything stand between you and the facts that would refute him? Wouldn’t you
get on the track of the truth at all costs to anybody? Well, I have a regiment,
and I belong to an army. It is being discredited by what I am certain is a
fictitious story; but I don’t know the true story. Can you blame me for trying
to find it out?”

The
soldier was silent, and the priest continued:

“
I
have heard the story Mallow was told yesterday, about Marne retiring with a broken
heart through the death of his more than brother. I am sure there was more in
it than that. I came to ask you if you know any more.”

“
No,”
said the general shortly; “I cannot tell you any more.”

“
General,”
said Father Brown with a broad grin, “you would have called me a Jesuit if I had
used that equivocation.”

The
soldier laughed gruffly, and then growled with much greater hostility.

“
Well,
I won’t tell you, then,” he said. “What do you say to that?”

“
I
only say,” said the priest mildly, “that in that case I shall have to tell you.”

The
brown eyes stared at him; but there was no twinkle in them now. He went on:

“
You
compel me to state, less sympathetically perhaps than you could, why it is obvious
that there is more behind. I am quite sure the marquis has better cause for his
brooding and secretiveness than merely having lost an old friend. I doubt
whether priests have anything to do with it; I don’t even know if he’s a convert
or merely a man comforting his conscience with charities; but I’m sure he’s
something more than a chief mourner. Since you insist, I will tell you one or
two of the things that made me think so.

“
First,
it was stated that James Mair was engaged to be married, but somehow became unattached
again after the death of Maurice Mair. Why should an honourable man break off
his engagement merely because he was depressed by the death of a third party?
He’s much more likely to have turned for consolation to it; but, anyhow, he was
bound in decency to go through with it.”

The
general was biting his black moustache, and his brown eyes had become very watchful
and even anxious, but he did not answer.

“
A
second point,” said Father Brown, frowning at the table. “James Mair was always
asking his lady friend whether his cousin Maurice was not very fascinating, and
whether women would not admire him. I don’t know if it occurred to the lady that
there might be another meaning to that inquiry.”

The
general got to his feet and began to walk or stamp about the room.

“
Oh,
damn it all,” he said, but without any air of animosity.

“
The
third point,” went on Father Brown, “is James Mair’s curious manner of mourning
— destroying all relics, veiling all portraits, and so on. It does sometimes happen,
I admit; it might mean mere affectionate bereavement. But it might mean something
else.”

“
Confound
you,” said the other. “How long are you going on piling this up?”

“
The
fourth and fifth points are pretty conclusive,” said the priest calmly, “especially
if you take them together. The first is that Maurice Mair seems to have had no
funeral in particular, considering he was a cadet of a great family. He must
have been buried hurriedly; perhaps secretly. And the last point is, that James
Mair instantly disappeared to foreign parts; fled, in fact, to the ends of the
earth.

“
And
so,” he went on, still in the same soft voice, “when you would blacken my religion
to brighten the story of the pure and perfect affection of two brothers, it
seems — —”

“
Stop!”
cried Outram in a tone like a pistol shot. “I must tell you more, or you will fancy
worse. Let me tell you one thing to start with. It was a fair fight.”

“
Ah,”
said Father Brown, and seemed to exhale a huge breath.

“
It
was a duel,” said the other. “It was probably the last duel fought in England, and
it is long ago now.”

“
That’s
better,” said Father Brown. “Thank God; that’s a great deal better.”

“
Better
than the ugly things you thought of, I suppose?” said the general gruffly. “Well,
it’s all very well for you to sneer at the pure and perfect affection; but it
was true for all that. James Mair really was devoted to his cousin, who’d grown
up with him like a younger brother. Elder brothers and sisters do sometimes devote
themselves to a child like that, especially when he’s a sort of infant phenomenon.
But James Mair was the sort of simple character in whom even hate is in a sense
unselfish. I mean that even when his tenderness turns to rage it is still
objective, directed outwards to its object; he isn’t conscious of himself. Now
poor Maurice Mair was just the opposite. He was far more friendly and popular;
but his success had made him live in a house of mirrors. He was first in every
sort of sport and art and accomplishment; he nearly always won and took his
winning amiably. But if ever, by any chance, he lost, there was just a glimpse
of something not so amiable; he was a little jealous. I needn’t tell you the
whole miserable story of how he was a little jealous of his cousin’s
engagement; how he couldn’t keep his restless vanity from interfering. It’s
enough to say that one of the few things in which James Mair was admittedly
ahead of him was marksmanship with a pistol; and with that the tragedy ended.”

“
You
mean the tragedy began,” replied the priest. “The tragedy of the survivor. I thought
he did not need any monkish vampires to make him miserable.”

“
To
my mind he’s more miserable than he need be,” said the general. “After all, as I
say, it was a ghastly tragedy, but it was a fair fight. And Jim had great provocation.”

“
How
do you know all this?” asked the priest.

“
I
know it because I saw it,” answered Outram stolidly. “I was James Mair’s second,
and I saw Maurice Mair shot dead on the sands before my very eyes.”

“
I
wish you would tell me more about it,” said Father Brown reflectively. “Who was
Maurice Mair’s second?”

“
He
had a more distinguished backing,” replied the general grimly. “Hugo Romaine was
his second; the great actor, you know. Maurice was mad on acting and had taken
up Romaine (who was then a rising but still a struggling man), and financed the
fellow and his ventures in return for taking lessons from the professional in
his own hobby of amateur acting. But Romaine was then, I suppose, practically
dependent on his rich friend; though he’s richer now than any aristocrat. So
his serving as second proves very little about what he thought of the quarrel.
They fought in the English fashion, with only one second apiece; I wanted at
least to have a surgeon, but Maurice boisterously refused it, saying the fewer
people who knew, the better; and at the worst we could immediately get help.
‘There’s a doctor in the village not half a mile away,’ he said; ‘I know him
and he’s got the fastest horse in the country. He could be brought here in no
time; but there’s no need to bring him here till we know.’ Well, we all knew
that Maurice ran most risk, as the pistol was not his weapon; so when he
refused aid nobody liked to ask for it. The duel was fought on a flat stretch
of sand on the east coast of Scotland; and both the sight and sound of it were
masked from the hamlets inland by a long rampart of sandhills patched with rank
grass; probably part of the links, though in those days no Englishman had heard
of golf. There was one deep, crooked cranny in the sandhills through which we
came out on the sands. I can see them now; first a wide strip of dead yellow,
and beyond, a narrower strip of dark red; a dark red that seemed already like
the long shadow of a deed of blood.

“
The
thing itself seemed to happen with horrible speed; as if a whirlwind had struck
the sand. With the very crack of sound Maurice Mair seemed to spin like a teetotum
and pitch upon his face like a ninepin. And queerly enough, while I’d been
worrying about him up to that moment, the instant he was dead all my pity was
for the man who killed him; as it is to this day and hour. I knew that with that,
the whole huge terrible pendulum of my friend’s life-long love would swing
back; and that whatever cause others might find to pardon him, he would never
pardon himself for ever and ever. And so, somehow, the really vivid thing, the
picture that burns in my memory so that I can’t forget it, is not that of the
catastrophe, the smoke and the flash and the falling figure. That seemed to be
all over, like the noise that wakes a man up. What I saw, what I shall always
see, is poor Jim hurrying across towards his fallen friend and foe; his brown
beard looking black against the ghastly pallor of his face, with its high
features cut out against the sea; and the frantic gestures with which he waved
me to run for the surgeon in the hamlet behind the sandhills. He had dropped
his pistol as he ran; he had a glove in one hand and the loose and fluttering
fingers of it seemed to elongate and emphasize his wild pantomime of pointing
or hailing for help. That is the picture that really remains with me; and there
is nothing else in that picture, except the striped background of sands and sea
and the dark, dead body lying still as a stone, and the dark figure of the dead
man’s second standing grim and motionless against the horizon.”