CHESTERTON-THE INNOCENT OF FR BROWN - The Honour of Israel Gow
A stormy evening of olive and silver was closing in, as Father
Brown, wrapped in a grey Scotch plaid, came to the end of a grey
Scotch valley and beheld the strange castle of Glengyle. It
stopped one end of the glen or hollow like a blind alley; and it
looked like the end of the world. Rising in steep roofs and
spires of seagreen slate in the manner of the old French-Scotch
chateaux, it reminded an Englishman of the sinister steeple-hats
of witches in fairy tales; and the pine woods that rocked round
the green turrets looked, by comparison, as black as numberless
flocks of ravens. This note of a dreamy, almost a sleepy devilry,
was no mere fancy from the landscape. For there did rest on the
place one of those clouds of pride and madness and mysterious
sorrow which lie more heavily on the noble houses of Scotland than
on any other of the children of men. For Scotland has a double
dose of the poison called heredity; the sense of blood in the
aristocrat, and the sense of doom in the Calvinist.
The priest had snatched a day from his business at Glasgow to
meet his friend Flambeau, the amateur detective, who was at
Glengyle Castle with another more formal officer investigating the
life and death of the late Earl of Glengyle. That mysterious
person was the last representative of a race whose valour,
insanity, and violent cunning had made them terrible even among
the sinister nobility of their nation in the sixteenth century.
None were deeper in that labyrinthine ambition, in chamber within
chamber of that palace of lies that was built up around Mary Queen
of Scots.
The rhyme in the country-side attested the motive and the
result of their machinations candidly:
As green sap to the simmer trees
Is red gold to the Ogilvies.
For many centuries there had never been a decent lord in
Glengyle Castle; and with the Victorian era one would have thought
that all eccentricities were exhausted. The last Glengyle,
however, satisfied his tribal tradition by doing the only thing
that was left for him to do; he disappeared. I do not mean that
he went abroad; by all accounts he was still in the castle, if he
was anywhere. But though his name was in the church register and
the big red Peerage, nobody ever saw him under the sun.
If anyone saw him it was a solitary man-servant, something
between a groom and a gardener. He was so deaf that the more
business-like assumed him to be dumb; while the more penetrating
declared him to be half-witted. A gaunt, red-haired labourer,
with a dogged jaw and chin, but quite blank blue eyes, he went by
the name of Israel Gow, and was the one silent servant on that
deserted estate. But the energy with which he dug potatoes, and
the regularity with which he disappeared into the kitchen gave
people an impression that he was providing for the meals of a
superior, and that the strange earl was still concealed in the
castle. If society needed any further proof that he was there,
the servant persistently asserted that he was not at home. One
morning the provost and the minister (for the Glengyles were
Presbyterian) were summoned to the castle. There they found that
the gardener, groom and cook had added to his many professions
that of an undertaker, and had nailed up his noble master in a
coffin. With how much or how little further inquiry this odd fact
was passed, did not as yet very plainly appear; for the thing had
never been legally investigated till Flambeau had gone north two
or three days before. By then the body of Lord Glengyle (if it
was the body) had lain for some time in the little churchyard on
the hill.
As Father Brown passed through the dim garden and came under
the shadow of the chateau, the clouds were thick and the whole air
damp and thundery. Against the last stripe of the green-gold
sunset he saw a black human silhouette; a man in a chimney-pot
hat, with a big spade over his shoulder. The combination was
queerly suggestive of a sexton; but when Brown remembered the deaf
servant who dug potatoes, he thought it natural enough. He knew
something of the Scotch peasant; he knew the respectability which
might well feel it necessary to wear "blacks" for an official
inquiry; he knew also the economy that would not lose an hour's
digging for that. Even the man's start and suspicious stare as
the priest went by were consonant enough with the vigilance and
jealousy of such a type.
The great door was opened by Flambeau himself, who had with
him a lean man with iron-grey hair and papers in his hand:
Inspector Craven from Scotland Yard. The entrance hall was mostly
stripped and empty; but the pale, sneering faces of one or two of
the wicked Ogilvies looked down out of black periwigs and
blackening canvas.
Following them into an inner room, Father Brown found that the
allies had been seated at a long oak table, of which their end was
covered with scribbled papers, flanked with whisky and cigars.
Through the whole of its remaining length it was occupied by
detached objects arranged at intervals; objects about as
inexplicable as any objects could be. One looked like a small
heap of glittering broken glass. Another looked like a high heap
of brown dust. A third appeared to be a plain stick of wood.
"You seem to have a sort of geological museum here," he said,
as he sat down, jerking his head briefly in the direction of the
brown dust and the crystalline fragments.
"Not a geological museum," replied Flambeau; "say a
psychological museum."
"Oh, for the Lord's sake," cried the police detective laughing,
"don't let's begin with such long words."
"Don't you know what psychology means?" asked Flambeau with
friendly surprise. "Psychology means being off your chump."
"Still I hardly follow," replied the official.
"Well," said Flambeau, with decision, "I mean that we've only
found out one thing about Lord Glengyle. He was a maniac."
The black silhouette of Gow with his top hat and spade passed
the window, dimly outlined against the darkening sky. Father
Brown stared passively at it and answered:
"I can understand there must have been something odd about the
man, or he wouldn't have buried himself alive--nor been in such
a hurry to bury himself dead. But what makes you think it was
lunacy?"
"Well," said Flambeau, "you just listen to the list of things
Mr. Craven has found in the house."
"We must get a candle," said Craven, suddenly. "A storm is
getting up, and it's too dark to read."
"Have you found any candles," asked Brown smiling, "among your
oddities?"
Flambeau raised a grave face, and fixed his dark eyes on his
friend.
"That is curious, too," he said. "Twenty-five candles, and
not a trace of a candlestick."
In the rapidly darkening room and rapidly rising wind, Brown
went along the table to where a bundle of wax candles lay among
the other scrappy exhibits. As he did so he bent accidentally
over the heap of red-brown dust; and a sharp sneeze cracked the
silence.
"Hullo!" he said, "snuff!"
He took one of the candles, lit it carefully, came back and
stuck it in the neck of the whisky bottle. The unrestful night
air, blowing through the crazy window, waved the long flame like a
banner. And on every side of the castle they could hear the miles
and miles of black pine wood seething like a black sea around a
rock.
"I will read the inventory," began Craven gravely, picking up
one of the papers, "the inventory of what we found loose and
unexplained in the castle. You are to understand that the place
generally was dismantled and neglected; but one or two rooms had
plainly been inhabited in a simple but not squalid style by
somebody; somebody who was not the servant Gow. The list is as
follows:
"First item. A very considerable hoard of precious stones,
nearly all diamonds, and all of them loose, without any setting
whatever. Of course, it is natural that the Ogilvies should have
family jewels; but those are exactly the jewels that are almost
always set in particular articles of ornament. The Ogilvies would
seem to have kept theirs loose in their pockets, like coppers.
"Second item. Heaps and heaps of loose snuff, not kept in a
horn, or even a pouch, but lying in heaps on the mantelpieces, on
the sideboard, on the piano, anywhere. It looks as if the old
gentleman would not take the trouble to look in a pocket or lift a
lid.
"Third item. Here and there about the house curious little
heaps of minute pieces of metal, some like steel springs and some
in the form of microscopic wheels. As if they had gutted some
mechanical toy.
"Fourth item. The wax candles, which have to be stuck in
bottle necks because there is nothing else to stick them in. Now
I wish you to note how very much queerer all this is than anything
we anticipated. For the central riddle we are prepared; we have
all seen at a glance that there was something wrong about the last
earl. We have come here to find out whether he really lived here,
whether he really died here, whether that red-haired scarecrow who
did his burying had anything to do with his dying. But suppose
the worst in all this, the most lurid or melodramatic solution you
like. Suppose the servant really killed the master, or suppose
the master isn't really dead, or suppose the master is dressed up
as the servant, or suppose the servant is buried for the master;
invent what Wilkie Collins' tragedy you like, and you still have
not explained a candle without a candlestick, or why an elderly
gentleman of good family should habitually spill snuff on the
piano. The core of the tale we could imagine; it is the fringes
that are mysterious. By no stretch of fancy can the human mind
connect together snuff and diamonds and wax and loose clockwork."
"I think I see the connection," said the priest. "This
Glengyle was mad against the French Revolution. He was an
enthusiast for the ancien regime, and was trying to re-enact
literally the family life of the last Bourbons. He had snuff
because it was the eighteenth century luxury; wax candles, because
they were the eighteenth century lighting; the mechanical bits of
iron represent the locksmith hobby of Louis XVI; the diamonds are
for the Diamond Necklace of Marie Antoinette."
Both the other men were staring at him with round eyes. "What
a perfectly extraordinary notion!" cried Flambeau. "Do you really
think that is the truth?"
"I am perfectly sure it isn't," answered Father Brown, "only
you said that nobody could connect snuff and diamonds and clockwork
and candles. I give you that connection off-hand. The real truth,
I am very sure, lies deeper."
He paused a moment and listened to the wailing of the wind in
the turrets. Then he said, "The late Earl of Glengyle was a thief.
He lived a second and darker life as a desperate housebreaker. He
did not have any candlesticks because he only used these candles
cut short in the little lantern he carried. The snuff he employed
as the fiercest French criminals have used pepper: to fling it
suddenly in dense masses in the face of a captor or pursuer. But
the final proof is in the curious coincidence of the diamonds and
the small steel wheels. Surely that makes everything plain to
you? Diamonds and small steel wheels are the only two instruments
with which you can cut out a pane of glass."
The bough of a broken pine tree lashed heavily in the blast
against the windowpane behind them, as if in parody of a burglar,
but they did not turn round. Their eyes were fastened on Father
Brown.
"Diamonds and small wheels," repeated Craven ruminating.
"Is that all that makes you think it the true explanation?"
"I don't think it the true explanation," replied the priest
placidly; "but you said that nobody could connect the four things.
The true tale, of course, is something much more humdrum. Glengyle
had found, or thought he had found, precious stones on his estate.
Somebody had bamboozled him with those loose brilliants, saying
they were found in the castle caverns. The little wheels are some
diamond-cutting affair. He had to do the thing very roughly and
in a small way, with the help of a few shepherds or rude fellows
on these hills. Snuff is the one great luxury of such Scotch
shepherds; it's the one thing with which you can bribe them. They
didn't have candlesticks because they didn't want them; they held
the candles in their hands when they explored the caves."
"Is that all?" asked Flambeau after a long pause. "Have we
got to the dull truth at last?"
"Oh, no," said Father Brown.
As the wind died in the most distant pine woods with a long
hoot as of mockery Father Brown, with an utterly impassive face,
went on:
"I only suggested that because you said one could not plausibly
connect snuff with clockwork or candles with bright stones. Ten
false philosophies will fit the universe; ten false theories will
fit Glengyle Castle. But we want the real explanation of the
castle and the universe. But are there no other exhibits?"
Craven laughed, and Flambeau rose smiling to his feet and
strolled down the long table.
"Items five, six, seven, etc.," he said, "and certainly more
varied than instructive. A curious collection, not of lead
pencils, but of the lead out of lead pencils. A senseless stick
of bamboo, with the top rather splintered. It might be the
instrument of the crime. Only, there isn't any crime. The only
other things are a few old missals and little Catholic pictures,
which the Ogilvies kept, I suppose, from the Middle Ages--their
family pride being stronger than their Puritanism. We only put
them in the museum because they seem curiously cut about and
defaced."
The heady tempest without drove a dreadful wrack of clouds
across Glengyle and threw the long room into darkness as Father
Brown picked up the little illuminated pages to examine them. He
spoke before the drift of darkness had passed; but it was the
voice of an utterly new man.
"Mr. Craven," said he, talking like a man ten years younger,
"you have got a legal warrant, haven't you, to go up and examine
that grave? The sooner we do it the better, and get to the bottom
of this horrible affair. If I were you I should start now."
"Now," repeated the astonished detective, "and why now?"
"Because this is serious," answered Brown; "this is not spilt
snuff or loose pebbles, that might be there for a hundred reasons.
There is only one reason I know of for this being done; and the
reason goes down to the roots of the world. These religious
pictures are not just dirtied or torn or scrawled over, which
might be done in idleness or bigotry, by children or by
Protestants. These have been treated very carefully--and very
queerly. In every place where the great ornamented name of God
comes in the old illuminations it has been elaborately taken out.
The only other thing that has been removed is the halo round the
head of the Child Jesus. Therefore, I say, let us get our warrant
and our spade and our hatchet, and go up and break open that
coffin."
"What do you mean?" demanded the London officer.
"I mean," answered the little priest, and his voice seemed to
rise slightly in the roar of the gale. "I mean that the great
devil of the universe may be sitting on the top tower of this
castle at this moment, as big as a hundred elephants, and roaring
like the Apocalypse. There is black magic somewhere at the bottom
of this."
"Black magic," repeated Flambeau in a low voice, for he was
too enlightened a man not to know of such things; "but what can
these other things mean?"
"Oh, something damnable, I suppose," replied Brown impatiently.
"How should I know? How can I guess all their mazes down below?
Perhaps you can make a torture out of snuff and bamboo. Perhaps
lunatics lust after wax and steel filings. Perhaps there is a
maddening drug made of lead pencils! Our shortest cut to the
mystery is up the hill to the grave."
His comrades hardly knew that they had obeyed and followed him
till a blast of the night wind nearly flung them on their faces in
the garden. Nevertheless they had obeyed him like automata; for
Craven found a hatchet in his hand, and the warrant in his pocket;
Flambeau was carrying the heavy spade of the strange gardener;
Father Brown was carrying the little gilt book from which had been
torn the name of God.
The path up the hill to the churchyard was crooked but short;
only under that stress of wind it seemed laborious and long. Far
as the eye could see, farther and farther as they mounted the
slope, were seas beyond seas of pines, now all aslope one way
under the wind. And that universal gesture seemed as vain as it
was vast, as vain as if that wind were whistling about some
unpeopled and purposeless planet. Through all that infinite
growth of grey-blue forests sang, shrill and high, that ancient
sorrow that is in the heart of all heathen things. One could
fancy that the voices from the under world of unfathomable foliage
were cries of the lost and wandering pagan gods: gods who had gone
roaming in that irrational forest, and who will never find their
way back to heaven.
"You see," said Father Brown in low but easy tone, "Scotch
people before Scotland existed were a curious lot. In fact,
they're a curious lot still. But in the prehistoric times I fancy
they really worshipped demons. That," he added genially, "is why
they jumped at the Puritan theology."
"My friend," said Flambeau, turning in a kind of fury, "what
does all that snuff mean?"
"My friend," replied Brown, with equal seriousness, "there is
one mark of all genuine religions: materialism. Now, devil-worship
is a perfectly genuine religion."
They had come up on the grassy scalp of the hill, one of the
few bald spots that stood clear of the crashing and roaring pine
forest. A mean enclosure, partly timber and partly wire, rattled
in the tempest to tell them the border of the graveyard. But by
the time Inspector Craven had come to the corner of the grave,
and Flambeau had planted his spade point downwards and leaned on
it, they were both almost as shaken as the shaky wood and wire.
At the foot of the grave grew great tall thistles, grey and silver
in their decay. Once or twice, when a ball of thistledown broke
under the breeze and flew past him, Craven jumped slightly as if
it had been an arrow.
Flambeau drove the blade of his spade through the whistling
grass into the wet clay below. Then he seemed to stop and lean on
it as on a staff.
"Go on," said the priest very gently. "We are only trying to
find the truth. What are you afraid of?"
"I am afraid of finding it," said Flambeau.
The London detective spoke suddenly in a high crowing voice
that was meant to be conversational and cheery. "I wonder why he
really did hide himself like that. Something nasty, I suppose;
was he a leper?"
"Something worse than that," said Flambeau.
"And what do you imagine," asked the other, "would be worse
than a leper?"
"I don't imagine it," said Flambeau.
He dug for some dreadful minutes in silence, and then said in
a choked voice, "I'm afraid of his not being the right shape."
"Nor was that piece of paper, you know," said Father Brown
quietly, "and we survived even that piece of paper."
Flambeau dug on with a blind energy. But the tempest had
shouldered away the choking grey clouds that clung to the hills
like smoke and revealed grey fields of faint starlight before he
cleared the shape of a rude timber coffin, and somehow tipped it
up upon the turf. Craven stepped forward with his axe; a
thistle-top touched him, and he flinched. Then he took a firmer
stride, and hacked and wrenched with an energy like Flambeau's
till the lid was torn off, and all that was there lay glimmering
in the grey starlight.
"Bones," said Craven; and then he added, "but it is a man," as
if that were something unexpected.
"Is he," asked Flambeau in a voice that went oddly up and
down, "is he all right?"
"Seems so," said the officer huskily, bending over the obscure
and decaying skeleton in the box. "Wait a minute."
A vast heave went over Flambeau's huge figure. "And now I
come to think of it," he cried, "why in the name of madness
shouldn't he be all right? What is it gets hold of a man on these
cursed cold mountains? I think it's the black, brainless
repetition; all these forests, and over all an ancient horror of
unconsciousness. It's like the dream of an atheist. Pine-trees
and more pine-trees and millions more pine-trees--"
"God!" cried the man by the coffin, "but he hasn't got a head."
While the others stood rigid the priest, for the first time,
showed a leap of startled concern.
"No head!" he repeated. "No head?" as if he had almost
expected some other deficiency.
Half-witted visions of a headless baby born to Glengyle, of a
headless youth hiding himself in the castle, of a headless man
pacing those ancient halls or that gorgeous garden, passed in
panorama through their minds. But even in that stiffened instant
the tale took no root in them and seemed to have no reason in it.
They stood listening to the loud woods and the shrieking sky quite
foolishly, like exhausted animals. Thought seemed to be something
enormous that had suddenly slipped out of their grasp.
"There are three headless men," said Father Brown, "standing
round this open grave."
The pale detective from London opened his mouth to speak, and
left it open like a yokel, while a long scream of wind tore the
sky; then he looked at the axe in his hands as if it did not
belong to him, and dropped it.
"Father," said Flambeau in that infantile and heavy voice he
used very seldom, "what are we to do?"
His friend's reply came with the pent promptitude of a gun
going off.
"Sleep!" cried Father Brown. "Sleep. We have come to the end
of the ways. Do you know what sleep is? Do you know that every
man who sleeps believes in God? It is a sacrament; for it is an
act of faith and it is a food. And we need a sacrament, if only a
natural one. Something has fallen on us that falls very seldom on
men; perhaps the worst thing that can fall on them."
Craven's parted lips came together to say, "What do you mean?"
The priest had turned his face to the castle as he answered:
"We have found the truth; and the truth makes no sense."
He went down the path in front of them with a plunging and
reckless step very rare with him, and when they reached the castle
again he threw himself upon sleep with the simplicity of a dog.
Despite his mystic praise of slumber, Father Brown was up
earlier than anyone else except the silent gardener; and was found
smoking a big pipe and watching that expert at his speechless
labours in the kitchen garden. Towards daybreak the rocking storm
had ended in roaring rains, and the day came with a curious
freshness. The gardener seemed even to have been conversing, but
at sight of the detectives he planted his spade sullenly in a bed
and, saying something about his breakfast, shifted along the lines
of cabbages and shut himself in the kitchen. "He's a valuable
man, that," said Father Brown. "He does the potatoes amazingly.
Still," he added, with a dispassionate charity, "he has his faults;
which of us hasn't? He doesn't dig this bank quite regularly.
There, for instance," and he stamped suddenly on one spot. "I'm
really very doubtful about that potato."
"And why?" asked Craven, amused with the little man's hobby.
"I'm doubtful about it," said the other, "because old Gow was
doubtful about it himself. He put his spade in methodically in
every place but just this. There must be a mighty fine potato
just here."
Flambeau pulled up the spade and impetuously drove it into the
place. He turned up, under a load of soil, something that did not
look like a potato, but rather like a monstrous, over-domed
mushroom. But it struck the spade with a cold click; it rolled
over like a ball, and grinned up at them.
"The Earl of Glengyle," said Brown sadly, and looked down
heavily at the skull.
Then, after a momentary meditation, he plucked the spade from
Flambeau, and, saying "We must hide it again," clamped the skull
down in the earth. Then he leaned his little body and huge head
on the great handle of the spade, that stood up stiffly in the
earth, and his eyes were empty and his forehead full of wrinkles.
"If one could only conceive," he muttered, "the meaning of this
last monstrosity." And leaning on the large spade handle, he
buried his brows in his hands, as men do in church.
All the corners of the sky were brightening into blue and
silver; the birds were chattering in the tiny garden trees; so
loud it seemed as if the trees themselves were talking. But the
three men were silent enough.
"Well, I give it all up," said Flambeau at last boisterously.
"My brain and this world don't fit each other; and there's an end
of it. Snuff, spoilt Prayer Books, and the insides of musical
boxes--what--"
Brown threw up his bothered brow and rapped on the spade
handle with an intolerance quite unusual with him. "Oh, tut, tut,
tut, tut!" he cried. "All that is as plain as a pikestaff. I
understood the snuff and clockwork, and so on, when I first opened
my eyes this morning. And since then I've had it out with old
Gow, the gardener, who is neither so deaf nor so stupid as he
pretends. There's nothing amiss about the loose items. I was
wrong about the torn mass-book, too; there's no harm in that. But
it's this last business. Desecrating graves and stealing dead
men's heads--surely there's harm in that? Surely there's black
magic still in that? That doesn't fit in to the quite simple
story of the snuff and the candles." And, striding about again,
he smoked moodily.
"My friend," said Flambeau, with a grim humour, "you must be
careful with me and remember I was once a criminal. The great
advantage of that estate was that I always made up the story
myself, and acted it as quick as I chose. This detective business
of waiting about is too much for my French impatience. All my
life, for good or evil, I have done things at the instant; I
always fought duels the next morning; I always paid bills on the
nail; I never even put off a visit to the dentist--"
Father Brown's pipe fell out of his mouth and broke into three
pieces on the gravel path. He stood rolling his eyes, the exact
picture of an idiot. "Lord, what a turnip I am!" he kept saying.
"Lord, what a turnip!" Then, in a somewhat groggy kind of way, he
began to laugh.
"The dentist!" he repeated. "Six hours in the spiritual
abyss, and all because I never thought of the dentist! Such a
simple, such a beautiful and peaceful thought! Friends, we have
passed a night in hell; but now the sun is risen, the birds are
singing, and the radiant form of the dentist consoles the world."
"I will get some sense out of this," cried Flambeau, striding
forward, "if I use the tortures of the Inquisition."
Father Brown repressed what appeared to be a momentary
disposition to dance on the now sunlit lawn and cried quite
piteously, like a child, "Oh, let me be silly a little. You don't
know how unhappy I have been. And now I know that there has been
no deep sin in this business at all. Only a little lunacy, perhaps
--and who minds that?"
He spun round once more, then faced them with gravity.
"This is not a story of crime," he said; "rather it is the
story of a strange and crooked honesty. We are dealing with the
one man on earth, perhaps, who has taken no more than his due. It
is a study in the savage living logic that has been the religion
of this race.
"That old local rhyme about the house of Glengyle--
As green sap to the simmer trees
Is red gold to the Ogilvies--
was literal as well as metaphorical. It did not merely mean that
the Glengyles sought for wealth; it was also true that they
literally gathered gold; they had a huge collection of ornaments
and utensils in that metal. They were, in fact, misers whose
mania took that turn. In the light of that fact, run through all
the things we found in the castle. Diamonds without their gold
rings; candles without their gold candlesticks; snuff without the
gold snuff-boxes; pencil-leads without the gold pencil-cases; a
walking stick without its gold top; clockwork without the gold
clocks--or rather watches. And, mad as it sounds, because the
halos and the name of God in the old missals were of real gold;
these also were taken away."
The garden seemed to brighten, the grass to grow gayer in the
strengthening sun, as the crazy truth was told. Flambeau lit a
cigarette as his friend went on.
"Were taken away," continued Father Brown; "were taken away--
but not stolen. Thieves would never have left this mystery.
Thieves would have taken the gold snuff-boxes, snuff and all; the
gold pencil-cases, lead and all. We have to deal with a man with
a peculiar conscience, but certainly a conscience. I found that
mad moralist this morning in the kitchen garden yonder, and I
heard the whole story.
"The late Archibald Ogilvie was the nearest approach to a good
man ever born at Glengyle. But his bitter virtue took the turn of
the misanthrope; he moped over the dishonesty of his ancestors,
from which, somehow, he generalised a dishonesty of all men. More
especially he distrusted philanthropy or free-giving; and he swore
if he could find one man who took his exact rights he should have
all the gold of Glengyle. Having delivered this defiance to
humanity he shut himself up, without the smallest expectation of
its being answered. One day, however, a deaf and seemingly
senseless lad from a distant village brought him a belated
telegram; and Glengyle, in his acrid pleasantry, gave him a new
farthing. At least he thought he had done so, but when he turned
over his change he found the new farthing still there and a
sovereign gone. The accident offered him vistas of sneering
speculation. Either way, the boy would show the greasy greed of
the species. Either he would vanish, a thief stealing a coin; or
he would sneak back with it virtuously, a snob seeking a reward.
In the middle of that night Lord Glengyle was knocked up out of
his bed--for he lived alone--and forced to open the door to
the deaf idiot. The idiot brought with him, not the sovereign,
but exactly nineteen shillings and eleven-pence three-farthings
in change.
"Then the wild exactitude of this action took hold of the mad
lord's brain like fire. He swore he was Diogenes, that had long
sought an honest man, and at last had found one. He made a new
will, which I have seen. He took the literal youth into his huge,
neglected house, and trained him up as his solitary servant and
--after an odd manner--his heir. And whatever that queer
creature understands, he understood absolutely his lord's two
fixed ideas: first, that the letter of right is everything; and
second, that he himself was to have the gold of Glengyle. So far,
that is all; and that is simple. He has stripped the house of
gold, and taken not a grain that was not gold; not so much as a
grain of snuff. He lifted the gold leaf off an old illumination,
fully satisfied that he left the rest unspoilt. All that I
understood; but I could not understand this skull business.
I was really uneasy about that human head buried among the
potatoes. It distressed me--till Flambeau said the word.
"It will be all right. He will put the skull back in the
grave, when he has taken the gold out of the tooth."
And, indeed, when Flambeau crossed the hill that morning, he
saw that strange being, the just miser, digging at the desecrated
grave, the plaid round his throat thrashing out in the mountain
wind; the sober top hat on his head.
CHESTERTON-THE INNOCENT OF FR BROWN - The Honour of Israel Gow