“Do you really mean,” cried Jarvis, “that the strange woman who haunted him like a ghost was only the Mrs. Mandeville we know?” But he received no answer; for Father Brown was staring into vacancy with a blank expression almost like an idiot’s. He always did look most idiotic at the instant when he was most intelligent.
The next moment he scrambled to his feet looking very harassed and distressed. “This is awful,” he said. “I’m not sure it isn’t the worst business I ever had. But I’ve got to go through with it. Would you go and ask Mrs. Mandeville if I may speak to her in private?”
“Oh, certainly,” said Jarvis, as he turned towards the door. “But what’s the matter with you?”
“Only being a born fool,” said Father Brown; “a very common complaint in this vale of tears. I was fool enough to forget altogether that the play was The School for Scandal.”
He walked restlessly up and down the room until Jarvis reappeared at the door with an altered and even alarmed face.
“I can’t find her anywhere,” he said. “Nobody seems to have seen her.”
“They haven’t seen Norman Knight either, have they?” asked Father Brown dryly. “Well, it saves me the most painful interview of my life. Saving the grace of God, I was very nearly frightened of that woman. But she was frightened of me, too; frightened of something I’d seen or said. Knight was always begging her to bolt with him. Now she’s done it; and I’m devilish sorry for him.”
“For him?” inquired Jarvis.
“Well, it can’t be very nice to elope with a murderess,” said the other dispassionately. “But as a matter of fact she was something very much worse than a murderess.”
“And what is that?”
“An egoist,” said Father Brown. “She was the sort of person who had looked in the mirror before looking out of the window, and it is the worst calamity of mortal life. The looking-glass was unlucky for her, all right; but rather because it wasn’t broken.”
“I can’t understand what all this means,” said Jarvis. “Everybody regarded her as a person of the most exalted ideals, almost moving on a higher spiritual plane than the rest of us. …”
“She regarded herself in that light,” said the other. “And she knew how to hypnotize everybody else into it. Perhaps I hadn’t known her long enough to be wrong about her. But I knew the sort of person she was five minutes after I clapped eyes on her.”
“Oh, come!” cried Jarvis; “I’m sure her behaviour about the Italian was beautiful.”
“Her behaviour always was beautiful,” said the other. “I’ve heard from everybody here all about her refinements and subtleties and spiritual soarings above poor Mandeville’s head. But all these spiritualities and subtleties seem to me to boil themselves down to the simple fact that she certainly was a lady and he most certainly was not a gentleman. But, do you know, I have never felt quite sure that St. Peter will make that the only test at the gate of heaven.
“As for the rest,” he went on with increasing animation, “I knew from the very first words she said that she was not really being fair to the poor Italian, with all her fine airs of frigid magnanimity. And again, I realized it when I knew that the play was The School for Scandal.”
“You are going rather too fast for me,” said Jarvis in some bewilderment. “What does it matter what the play was?”
“Well,” said the priest, “she said she had given the girl the part of the beautiful heroine and had retired into the background herself with the older part of a matron. Now that might have applied to almost any play; but it falsifies the facts about that particular play. She can only have meant that she gave the other actress the part of Maria, which is hardly a part at all. And the part of the obscure and self-effacing married woman, if you please, must have been the part of Lady Teazle, which is the only part any actress wants to act. If the Italian was a first-rate actress who had been promised a first-rate part, there was really some excuse, or at least some cause, for her mad Italian rage. There generally is for mad Italian rages; Latins are logical and have a reason for going mad. But that one little thing let in daylight for me on the meaning of her magnanimity. And there was another thing, even then. You laughed when I said that the sulky look of Mrs. Sands was a study in character; but not in the character of Mrs. Sands. But it was true. If you want to know what a lady is really like, don’t look at her; for she may be too clever for you. Don’t look at the men round her, for they may be too silly about her. But look at some other woman who is always near to her, and especially one who is under her. You will see in that mirror her real face; and the face mirrored in Mrs. Sands was very ugly.
“And as for all the other impressions, what were they? I heard a lot about the unworthiness of poor old Mandeville; but it was all about his being unworthy of her, and I am pretty certain it came indirectly from her. And, even so, it betrayed itself. Obviously, from what every man said, she had confided in every man about her confounded intellectual loneliness. You yourself said she never complained; and then quoted her about how her uncomplaining silence strengthened her soul. And that is just the note; that’s the unmistakable style. People who complain are just jolly, human, Christian nuisances; I don’t mind them. But people who complain that they never complain are the devil. They are really the devil; isn’t that swagger of stoicism the whole point of the Byronic cult of Satan? I heard all this; but for the life of me I
