Serpents in Paradise
Page 6
The popularity of Father Brown has meant that Chesterton’s other work in the detective genre has been under-estimated, and his other detectives (such as Horne Fisher) overshadowed. This story—which opens with a characteristic Chestertonian paradox—is not only entertaining but also a good illustration of the author’s interest in politics and hostility towards corrupt capitalists.
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A thing can sometimes be too extraordinary to be remembered. If it is clean out of the course of things, and has apparently no causes and no consequences, subsequent events do not recall it; and it remains only a subconscious thing, to be stirred by some accident long after. It drifts apart like a forgotten dream; and it was in the hour of many dreams, at daybreak and very soon after the end of dark, that such a strange sight was given to a man sculling a boat down a river in the West Country. The man was awake; indeed, he considered himself rather wide awake, being a rising political journalist named Harold March, on his way to interview various political celebrities in their country seats. But the thing he saw was so inconsequent that it might have been imaginary. It simply slipped past his mind and was lost in later and utterly different events; nor did he even recover the memory, till he had long afterwards discovered the meaning.
Pale mists of morning lay on the fields and the rushes along one margin of the river; along the other side ran a wall of dark red brick almost overhanging the water. He had shipped his oars and was drifting for a moment with the stream, when he turned his head and saw that the monotony of the long brick wall was broken by a bridge; rather an elegant, eighteenth century sort of bridge, with little columns of white stone turning grey. There had been floods and the river still stood very high, with dwarfish trees waist deep in it, and rather a narrow arc of white dawn gleamed under the curve of the bridge.
As his own boat went under the dark archway he saw another boat coming towards him, rowed by a man as solitary as himself. His posture prevented much being seen of him; but as he neared the bridge he stood up in the boat and turned round. He was already so close to the dark entry, however, that his whole figure was black against the morning light; and March could see nothing of his face except the ends of two long whiskers or moustaches that gave something sinister to the silhouette, like the horns in the wrong place. Even these details March would never have noticed but for what happened in the same instant. As the man came under the low bridge he made a leap at it and hung, with his legs dangling, letting the boat float away from under him. March had a momentary vision of two black kicking legs; then of one black kicking leg, and then of nothing except the eddying stream and the long perspective of the wall. But whenever he thought of it again, long afterwards when he understood the story in which it figured, it was always fixed in that one fantastic shape; as if those wild legs were a grotesque graven ornament of the bridge itself, in the manner of a gargoyle. At the moment he merely passed staring down the stream. He could see no flying figure on the bridge, so it must have already fled; but he was half conscious of some faint significance in the fact that among the trees round the bridge-head opposite the wall he saw a lamp-post, and, beside the lamp-post, the broad blue back of an unconscious policeman.
Even before reaching the shrine of his political pilgrimage he had many other things to think of besides the odd incident of the bridge; for the management of a boat by a solitary man was not always easy even on such a solitary stream. And, indeed, it was only by an unforeseen accident that he was solitary. The boat had been purchased and the whole expedition planned in conjunction with a friend, who had at the last moment been forced to alter all his arrangements. Harold March was to have travelled with his friend Horne Fisher on that inland voyage to Willowood Place, where the Prime Minister was a guest at the moment. More and more people were hearing of Harold March; for his striking political articles were opening to him the doors of larger and larger salons; but he had never met the Prime Minister yet. Scarcely anybody among the general public had ever heard of Horne Fisher; but he had known the Prime Minister all his life. For these reasons, had the two taken the projected journey together, March might have been slightly disposed to hasten it and Fisher vaguely content to lengthen it out. For Fisher was one of those people who are born knowing the Prime Minister. The knowledge seemed to have no very exhilarant effect; and in his case bore some resemblance to being born tired. Horne Fisher was a tall, fair man, with a bald brow and a listless manner; and it was seldom that he expressed irritation in any warmer form than that of weariness. But he was distinctly annoyed to receive, just as he was doing a little light packing of fishing tackle and cigars for the journey, a telegram from Willowood asking him to come down at once by train, as the Prime Minister had to leave that night. Fisher knew that his friend the journalist could not possibly start till the next day; and he liked his friend the journalist, and had looked forward to a few days on the river. He did not particularly like or dislike the Prime Minister; but he intensely disliked the alternative of a few hours in the train. Nevertheless, he accepted Prime Ministers as he accepted railway trains; as part of a system which he at least was not the revolutionist sent on earth to destroy. So he telephoned to March asking him, with many apologetic curses and faint damns, to take the boat down the river as arranged, that they might meet at Willowood by the time appointed. Then he went outside and hailed a taxicab to take him to the railway station. There he paused at the bookstall to add to his light luggage a number of cheap murder stories, which he read with great pleasure, and without any premonition that he was about to walk into as strange a story in real life.
A little before sunset he arrived with his light suitcase in his hand before the gate of the long riverside gardens of Willowood Place, one of the smaller seats of Sir Isaac Hook, the master of much shipping and many newspapers. He entered by the gate giving on the road, at the opposite side to the river; but there was a mixed quality in all that watery landscape which perpetually reminded a traveller that the river was near. White gleams of water would shine suddenly like swords or spears in the green thickets; and even in the garden itself, divided into courts and curtained with hedges and high garden trees, there hung everywhere in the air the music of water. The first of the green courts which he entered appeared to be a somewhat neglected croquet lawn, in which was a solitary young man playing croquet against himself. Yet he was not an enthusiast for the game, thus snatching a moment’s practice; and his sallow but well-featured face looked rather sullen than otherwise. He was only one of those young men who cannot support the burden of consciousness unless they are doing something, and whose conceptions of doing something are limited to a game of some kind. He was dark and well dressed in a light holiday fashion, and Fisher recognized him at once as a young man named James Bullen, called for some unknown reason Bunker. He was the nephew of Sir Isaac. But, what was much more important at the moment, he was also the private secretary of the Prime Minister.
“Hallo, Bunker,” observed Horne Fisher. “You’re the sort of man I wanted to see. Has your chief come down yet?”
“He’s only staying for dinner,” replied Bullen, with his eye on the yellow ball. “He’s got a great speech to-morrow at Birmingham, and he’s going straight through to-night. He’s motoring himself there; driving the car, I mean. It’s the one thing he’s really proud of.”
“You mean you’re staying here with your uncle, like a good boy?” replied Fisher. “But what will he do at Birmingham without the epigrams whispered to him by his brilliant secretary?”
“Don’t you start ragging me,” said the young man called Bunker. “I’m only too glad not to go trailing after him. He doesn’t know a thing about maps or money or hotels or anything, and I have to dance about like a courier. As for my uncle, as I’m supposed to come into the estate it’s only decent to be here sometimes.”
“Very proper,” replied the other. “Well, I shall see you later on”; and crossing the lawn he passed out through a gap in the hedge.
“You were looking so comfortable,” said Fisher, “that I thought you must be one of the servants. I’m looking for somebody to take this bag of mine. I haven’t brought a man down, as I came away in a hurry.”
“Nor have I, for that matter,” replied the duke with some pride. “I never do. If there’s one animal alive I loathe it’s a valet. I learnt to dress myself at an early age, and was supposed to do it decently. I may be in my second childhood, but I’ve not got so far as being dressed like a child.”
“The Prime Minister hasn’t brought a valet, he’s brought a secretary instead,” observed Fisher. “Devilish inferior job. Didn’t I hear that Harker was staying down here?”
“He’s over there on the landing-stage,” replied the duke indifferently, and resumed the study of the Morning Post.
Fisher made his way beyond the last green wall of the garden on to a sort of towing-path looking on the river and a wooded island opposite. There indeed he saw a lean dark figure with a stoop almost like that of a vulture; a posture well known in the law courts as that of Sir John Harker, the Attorney-General. His face was lined with headwork, for alone among the three idlers in the garden he was a man who had made his own way; and round his bald brow and hollow temples clung dull red hair quite flat like plates of copper.
“I haven’t seen my host yet,” said Horne Fisher in a slightly more serious tone than he had used to the others. “But I suppose I shall meet him at dinner.”
“You can see him now, but you can’t meet him,” answered Harker.
He nodded his head towards one end of the island opposite, and looking steadily in the same direction the other guest could see the dome of a bald head and the top of a fishing-rod, both equally motionless, rising out of the tall undergrowth against the background of the stream beyond. The fisherman seemed to be seated against the stump of a tree and facing towards the other bank, so that his face could not be seen, but the shape of his head was unmistakable.
“He doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s fishing,” continued Harker. “It’s a sort of fad of his to eat nothing but fish; and he’s very proud of catching his own. Of course he’s all for simplicity, like so many of these millionaires. He likes to come in saying he’s worked for his daily food like a labourer.”
“Does he explain how he blows all the glass and stuffs all the upholstery?” asked Fisher, “and makes all the silver forks, and grows all the grapes and peaches, and designs all the patterns on the carpets? I’ve always heard he was a busy man.”
“I don’t think he mentioned it,” answered the lawyer. “What is the meaning of this social satire?”
“Well, I am a trifle tired,” said Fisher, “of the Simple Life and the Strenuous Life as lived by our little set. We’re all really dependent in nearly everything, and we all make a fuss about being independent in something. The Prime Minister prides himself on doing without a chauffeur, but he can’t do without a factotum and jack-of-all-trades; and poor old Bunker has to play the part of a universal genius, which God knows he was never meant for. The duke prides himself on doing without a valet; but for all that, he must give a lot of people an infernal lot of trouble to collect such extraordinary old clothes as he wears. He must have them looked up in the British Museum or excavated out of the tombs. That white hat alone must require a sort of expedition fitted out to find it, like the North Pole. And here we have old Hook pretending to produce his own fish when he couldn’t produce his own fish-knives or fish-forks to eat it with. He may be simple about simple things like food, but you bet he’s luxurious about luxurious things, especially little things. I don’t include you; you’ve worked too hard to enjoy playing at work.”
“I sometimes think,” said Harker, “that you conceal a horrid secret of being useful sometimes. Haven’t you come down here to see Number One before he goes on to Birmingham?”
Horne Fisher answered in a lower voice: “Yes; and I hope to be lucky enough to catch him before dinner. He’s got to see Sir Isaac about something just afterwards.”
“Hallo,” exclaimed Harker, “Sir Isaac’s finished his fishing. I know he prides himself on getting up at sunrise and going in at sunset.”
The old man on the island had indeed risen to his feet, facing round and showing a bush of grey beard with rather small sunken features but fierce eyebrows and keen choleric eyes.
Carefully carrying his fishing tackle he was already making his way back to the mainland across a bridge of flat stepping-stones a little way down the shallow stream; then he veered round, coming towards his guests and civilly saluting them. There were several fish in his basket, and he was in a good temper.
“Yes,” he said, acknowledging Fisher’s polite expression of surprise, “I get up before anybody else in the house, I think. The early bird catches the worm.”
“Unfortunately,” said Harker, “it is the early fish that catches the worm.”
“But the early man catches the fish,” replied the old man gruffly.
“But from what I hear, Sir Isaac, you are the late man, too,” interposed Fisher. “You must do with very little sleep.”
“I never had much time for sleeping,” answered Hook, “and I shall have to be the late man to-night anyhow. The Prime Minister wants to have a talk, he tells me. And all things considered I think we’d better be dressing for dinner.”
Dinner passed off that evening without a word of politics and little enough but ceremonial trifles. The Prime Minister, Lord Merivale, who was a long slim man with curly grey hair, was gravely complimentary to his host about his success as a fisherman, and the skill and patience he displayed; the conversation flowed like the shallow stream through the stepping-stones.
“It wants patience to wait for fish, no doubt,” said Sir Isaac, “and skill to play them, but I’m generally pretty lucky with them.”
“Does a big fish ever break the line and get away?” inquired the politician with respectful interest.
“Not the sort of line I use,” answered Hook with satisfaction. “I rather specialize in tackle, as a matter of fact. If he were strong enough to do that, he’d be strong enough to pull me into the river.”
“A great loss to the community,” said the Prime Minister bowing.
Fisher had listened to all these futilities with inward impatience, waiting for his own opportunity, and when their host rose he sprang to his feet with an alertness he rarely showed. He managed to catch Lord Merivale before Sir Isaac bore him off for the final interview. He had only a few words to say, but he wanted to get t
hem said.
He said in a low voice as he opened the door for the Premier: “I have seen Montmirail; he says that unless we protest immediately on behalf of Denmark, Sweden will certainly seize the ports.”
Lord Merivale nodded.
“I’m just going to hear what Hook has to say about it,” he said.
“I imagine,” said Fisher with a faint smile, “that there is very little doubt what he will say about it.”
Merivale did not answer but lounged gracefully towards the library, whither his host had already preceded him. The rest drifted towards the billiard-room; Fisher merely remarking to the lawyer: “They won’t be long. We know they’re practically in agreement.”
“Hook entirely supports the Prime Minister,” assented Harker.
“Or the Prime Minister entirely supports Hook,” said Horne Fisher; and began idly to knock the balls about on the billiard-table.
Horne Fisher came down next morning in a late and leisurely fashion, as was his reprehensible habit; he had evidently no appetite for catching worms. But the other guests seemed to have felt a similar indifference, and they helped themselves to breakfast from the sideboard at intervals during the hours verging upon lunch. So that it was not many hours later when the first sensation of that strange day came upon them. It came in the form of a young man with light hair and a candid expression who came sculling down the river and disembarked at the landing-stage. It was in fact no other than Mr. Harold March, the journalistic friend of Mr. Fisher, whose journey had begun far away up the river in the earliest hours of that day. He arrived late in the afternoon, having stopped for tea in a large riverside town, and he had a pink evening paper sticking out of his pocket. He fell on the riverside garden like a quiet and well-behaved thunderbolt; but he was a thunderbolt without knowing it.
The first exchange of salutations and introductions was commonplace enough, and consisted indeed of the inevitable repetition of excuses for the eccentric seclusion of the host. He had gone fishing again, of course, and must not be disturbed till the appointed hour, though he sat within a stone’s throw of where they stood.