Why had not Romaine moved instantly? It was the natural thing for a second to do, in common humanity, let alone friendship. Even if there were some double-dealing or darker motive not yet understood, one would think it would be done for the sake of appearances. Anyhow, when the thing was all over, it would be natural for the second to stir long before the other second had vanished beyond the sandhills.
“Does this man Romaine move very slowly?” he asked.
“It’s queer you should ask that,” answered Outram, with a sharp glance. “No, as a matter of fact he moves very quickly when he moves at all. But, curiously enough, I was just thinking that only this afternoon I saw him stand exactly like that, during the thunderstorm. He stood in that silver-clasped cape of his, and with one hand on his hip, exactly and in every line as he stood on those bloody sands long ago. The lightning blinded us all, but he did not blink. When it was dark again he was standing there still.”
“I suppose he isn’t standing there now?” inquired Father Brown. “I mean, I suppose he moved sometime?”
“No, he moved quite sharply when the thunder came,” replied the other. “He seemed to have been waiting for it, for he told us the exact time of the interval … is anything the matter?”
“I’ve pricked myself with one of your pins,” said Father Brown. “I hope I haven’t damaged it.” But his eyes had snapped and his mouth abruptly shut.
“Are you ill?” inquired the general, staring at him.
“No,” answered the priest; “I’m only not quite so stoical as your friend Romaine. I can’t help blinking when I see light.”
He turned to gather up his hat and umbrella; but when he had got to the door he seemed to remember something and turned back. Coming up close to Outram, he gazed up into his face with a rather helpless expression, as of a dying fish, and made a motion as if to hold him by the waistcoat.
“General,” he almost whispered, “for God’s sake don’t let your wife and that other woman insist on seeing Marne again. Let sleeping dogs lie, or you’ll unleash all the hounds of hell.”
The general was left alone with a look of bewilderment in his brown eyes, as he sat down again to play with his pins.
Even greater, however, was the bewilderment which attended the successive stages of the benevolent conspiracy of the general’s wife, who had assembled her little group of sympathizers to storm the castle of the misanthrope. The first surprise she encountered was the unexplained absence of one of the actors in the ancient tragedy. When they assembled by agreement at a quiet hotel quite near the castle, there was no sign of Hugo Romaine, until a belated telegram from a lawyer told them that the great actor had suddenly left the country. The second surprise, when they began the bombardment by sending up word to the castle with an urgent request for an interview, was the figure which came forth from those gloomy gates to receive the deputation in the name of the noble owner. It was no such figure as they would have conceived suitable to those sombre avenues or those almost feudal formalities. It was not some stately steward or majordomo, nor even a dignified butler or tall and ornamental footman. The only figure that came out of the cavernous castle doorway was the short and shabby figure of Father Brown.
“Look here,” he said, in his simple, bothered fashion. “I told you you’d much better leave him alone. He knows what he’s doing and it’ll only make everybody unhappy.”
Lady Outram, who was accompanied by a tall and quietly-dressed lady, still very handsome, presumably the original Miss Grayson, looked at the little priest with cold contempt.
“Really, sir,” she said; “this is a very private occasion, and I don’t understand what you have to do with it.”
“Trust a priest to have to do with a private occasion,” snarled Sir John Cockspur. “Don’t you know they live behind the scenes like rats behind a wainscot burrowing their way into everybody’s private rooms. See how he’s already in possession of poor Marne.” Sir John was slightly sulky, as his aristocratic friends had persuaded him to give up the great scoop of publicity in return for the privilege of being really inside a society secret. It never occurred to him to ask himself whether he was at all like a rat in a wainscot.
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Father Brown, with the impatience of anxiety. “I’ve talked it over with the marquis and the only priest he’s ever had anything to do with; his clerical tastes have been much exaggerated. I tell you he knows what he’s about; and I do implore you all to leave him alone.”
“You mean to leave him to this living death of moping and going mad in a ruin!” cried Lady Outram, in a voice that shook a little. “And all because he had the bad luck to shoot a man in a duel more than a quarter of a century ago. Is that what you call Christian charity?”
“Yes,” answered the priest stolidly; “that is what I call Christian charity.”
“It’s about all the Christian charity you’ll ever get out of these priests,” cried Cockspur bitterly. “That’s their only idea of pardoning a poor fellow for a piece of folly; to wall him up alive and starve him to death with fasts and penances and pictures of hellfire. And all because a bullet went wrong.”
“Really, Father Brown,” said General Outram, “do you honestly think he deserves this? Is that your Christianity?”
“Surely the true Christianity,” pleaded his wife more gently, “is that which knows all and pardons all; the love that can remember—and forget.”
“Father Brown,” said young Mallow, very earnestly, “I generally
