The Scandal of Father Brown

1. THE SCANDAL OF FATHER BROWN-2

But in this the lady was mistaken; as she sometimes was. For Agar Rock was not Agar Rock of the Minneapolis Meteor. He was at that moment merely Agar Rock; there had surged up in him a great and sincere moral impulsion, beyond the coarse courage of the interviewer. A feeling profoundly mixed of a chivalrous and national sensibility to beauty, with an instant itch for moral action of some definite sort, which was also national, nerved him to face a great scene; and to deliver a noble insult. He remembered the original Hypatia, the beautiful Neo-Platonist, and how he had been thrilled as a boy by Kingsley’s romance in which the young monk denounces her for harlotries and idolatries. He confronted her with an iron gravity and said:

‘If you’ll pardon me. Madam, I should like to have a word with you in private.’

‘Well,’ she said, sweeping the room with her splendid gaze, ‘I don’t know whether you consider this place private.’

Rock also gazed round the room and could see no sign of life less vegetable than the orange trees, except what looked like a large black mushroom, which he recognized as the hat of some native priest or other, stolidly smoking a black local cigar, and otherwise as stagnant as any vegetable. He looked for a moment at the heavy, expressionless features, noting the rudeness of that peasant type from which priests so often come, in Latin and especially Latin-American countries; and lowered his voice a little as he laughed.

‘I don’t imagine that Mexican padre knows our language,’ he said. ‘Catch those lumps of laziness learning any language but their own. Oh, I can’t swear he’s a Mexican; he might be anything; mongrel Indian or n****r, I suppose. But I’ll answer for it he’s not an American. Our ministries don’t produce that debased type.’

‘As a matter of fact,’ said the debased type, removing his black cigar, ‘I’m English and my name is Brown. But pray let me leave you if you wish to be private.’

‘If you’re English,’ said Rock warmly, ‘you ought to have some normal Nordic instinct for protesting against all this nonsense. Well, it’s enough to say now that I’m in a position to testify that there’s a pretty dangerous fellow hanging round this place; a tall fellow in a cloak, like those pictures of crazy poets.’

‘Well, you can’t go much by that,’ said the priest mildly; ‘a lot of people round here use those cloaks, because the chill strikes very suddenly after sunset.’

Rock darted a dark and doubtful glance at him; as if suspecting some evasion in the interests of all that was symbolized to him by mushroom hats and moonshine. ‘It wasn’t only the cloak,’ he growled, ‘though it was partly the way he wore it. The whole look of the fellow was theatrical, down to his damned theatrical good looks. And if you’ll forgive me, Madam, I strongly advise you to have nothing to do with him, if he comes bothering here. Your husband has already told the hotel people to keep him out—’

Hypatia sprang to her feet and, with a very unusual gesture, covered her face, thrusting her fingers into her hair. She seemed to be shaken, possibly with sobs, but by the time she had recovered they had turned into a sort of wild laughter.

‘Oh, you are all too funny,’ she said, and, in a way very unusual with her, ducked and darted to the door and disappeared.

‘Bit hysterical when they laugh like that,’ said Rock uncomfortably; then, rather at a loss, and turning to the little priest: ‘as I say, if you’re English, you ought really to be on my side against these Dagos, anyhow. Oh, I’m not one of those who talk tosh about Anglo-Saxons; but there is such a thing as history. You can always claim that America got her civilization from England.’

‘Also, to temper our pride,’ said Father Brown, ‘we must always admit that England got her civilization from Dagos.’

Again there glowed in the other’s mind the exasperated sense that his interlocutor was fencing with him, and fencing on the wrong side, in some secret and evasive way; and he curtly professed a failure to comprehend.

‘Well, there was a Dago, or possibly a Wop, called Julius Caesar,’ said Father Brown; ‘he was afterwards killed in a stabbing match; you know these Dagos always use knives. And there was another one called Augustine, who brought Christianity to our little island; and really, I don’t think we should have had much civilization without those two.’

‘Anyhow, that’s all ancient history,’ said the somewhat irritated journalist, ‘and I’m very much interested in modern history. What I see is that these scoundrels are bringing Paganism to our country, and destroying all the Christianity there is. Also destroying all the common sense there is. All settled habits, all solid social order, all the way in which the farmers who were our fathers and grandfathers did manage to live in the world, melted into a hot mush by sensations and sensualities about filmstars who divorced every month or so, and make every silly girl think that marriage is only a way of getting divorced.’

‘You are quite right,’ said Father Brown. ‘Of course I quite agree with you there. But you must make some allowances. Perhaps these Southern people are a little prone to that sort of fault. You must remember that Northern people have other kinds of faults. Perhaps these surroundings do encourage people to give too rich an importance to mere romance.’

The whole integral indignation of Agar Rock’s life rose up within him at the word.

‘I hate Romance,’ he said, hitting the little table before him. ‘I’ve fought the papers I worked for for forty years about the infernal trash. Every blackguard bolting with a barmaid is called a romantic elopement or something; and now our own Hypatia Hard, a daughter of a decent people, may get dragged into some rotten romantic divorce case, that will be trumpeted to the whole world as happily as a royal wedding. This mad poet Romanes is hanging round her; and you bet the spotlight will follow him, as if he were any rotten little Dago who is called the Great Lover on the films. I saw him outside; and he’s got the regular spotlight face. Now my sympathies are with decency and common sense. My sympathies are with poor Potter, a plain straightforward broker from Pittsburgh, who thinks he has a right to his own home. And he’s making a fight for it, too. I heard him hollering at the management, telling them to keep that rascal out; and quite right too. The people here seem a sly and slinky lot; but I rather fancy he’s put the fear of God into them already.’

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Father Brown, ‘I rather agree with you about the manager and the men in this hotel; but you mustn’t judge all Mexicans by them. Also I fancy the gentleman you speak of has not only hollered, but handed round dollars enough to get the whole staff on his side. I saw them locking doors and whispering most excitedly. By the way, your plain straightforward friend seems to have a lot of money.’

‘I’ve no doubt his business does well,’ said Rock. ‘He’s quite the best type of sound business man. What do you mean?’

‘I fancied it might suggest another thought to you,’ said Father Brown; and, rising with rather heavy civility, he left the room.

Rock watched the Potters very carefully that evening at dinner; and gained some new impressions, though none that disturbed his deep sense of the wrong that probably threatened the peace of the Potter home. Potter himself proved worthy of somewhat closer study; though the journalist had at first accepted him as prosaic and unpretentious, there was a pleasure in recognizing finer lines in what he considered the hero or victim of a tragedy. Potter had really rather a thoughtful and distinguished face, though worried and occasionally petulant. Rock got an impression that the man was recovering from an illness; his faded hair was thin but rather long, as if it had been lately neglected, and his rather unusual beard gave the onlooker the same notion. Certainly he spoke once or twice to his wife in a rather sharp and acid manner, fussing about tablets or some detail of digestive science; but his real worry was doubtless concerned with the danger from without. His wife played up to him in the splendid if somewhat condescending manner of a Patient Griselda; but her eyes also roamed continually to the doors and shutters, as if in half-hearted fear of an invasion. Rock had only too good reason to dread, after her curious outbreak, the fact that her fear might turn out to be only half-hearted.

It was in the middle of the night that the extraordinary event occurred. Rock, imagining himself to be the last to go up to bed, was surprised to find Father Brown still tucked obscurely under an orange-tree in the hall, and placidly reading a book. He returned the other’s farewell without further words, and the journalist had his foot on the lowest step of the stair, when suddenly the outer door sprang on its hinges and shook and rattled under the shock of blows planted from without; and a great voice louder than the blows was heard violently demanding admission. Somehow the journalist was certain that the blows had been struck with a pointed stick like an alpenstock. He looked back at the darkened lower floor, and saw the servants of the hotel sliding here and there to see that the doors were locked; and not unlocking them. Then he slowly mounted to his room, and sat down furiously to write his report.

He described the siege of the hotel; the evil atmosphere; the shabby luxury of the place; the shifty evasions of the priest; above all, that terrible voice crying without, like a wolf prowling round the house. Then, as he wrote, he heard a new sound and sat up suddenly. It was a long repeated whistle, and in his mood he hated it doubly, because it was like the signal of a conspirator and like the love-call of a bird. There followed an utter silence, in which he sat rigid; then he rose abruptly; for he had heard yet another noise. It was a faint swish followed by a sharp rap or rattle; and he was almost certain that somebody was throwing something at the window. He walked stiffly downstairs, to the floor which was now dark and deserted; or nearly deserted. For the little priest was still sitting under the orange shrub, lit by a low lamp; and still reading his book.

‘You seem to be sitting up late,’ he said harshly.

‘Quite a dissipated character,’ said Father Brown, looking up with a broad smile, ‘reading Economics of Usury at all wild hours of the night.’

‘The place is locked up,’ said Rock.

‘Very thoroughly locked up,’ replied the other. ‘Your friend with the beard seems to have taken every precaution. By the way, your friend with the beard is a little rattled; I thought he was rather cross at dinner.’

‘Natural enough,’ growled the other, ‘if he thinks savages in this savage place are out to wreck his home life.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better,’ said Father Brown, ‘if a man tried to make his home life nice inside, while he was protecting it from the things outside.’

‘Oh, I know you will work up all the casuistical excuses,’ said the other; ‘perhaps he was rather snappy with his wife; but he’s got the right on his side. Look here, you seem to me to be rather a deep dog. I believe you know more about this than you say. What the devil is going on in this infernal place? Why are you sitting up all night to see it through?’