quite a wild effort of imagination to be so conventional. To want one
potty little object as seriously as all that. But you can do it.... You
can get nearer to it. Begin by thinking of being a greedy child; of how
you might have stolen a sweet in a shop; of how there was one particular
sweet you wanted ... then you must subtract the childish poetry; shut off
the fairy light that shone on the sweet stuff shop; imagine you really
think you know the world and the market value of sweets ... you contract
your mind like the camera focus ... the thing shapes and then
sharpens ... and then, suddenly, it comes!"
He spoke like a man who had once captured a divine vision.
Grandison Chace was still looking at him with a frown of mingled
mystification and interest. It must be confessed that there did flash
once beneath his heavy frown a look of something almost like alarm. It
was as if the shock of the first strange confession of the priest still
thrilled faintly through him like the last vibration of a thunderclap in
the room. Under the surface he was saying to himself that the mistake
had only been a temporary madness; that, of course. Father Brown could
not really be the monster and murderer he had beheld for that blinding
and bewildering instant. But was there not _something_ wrong with the man
who talked in that calm way about being a murderer? Was it possible that
the priest was a little mad?
"Don't you think," he said, abruptly; "that this notion of yours, of a
man trying to feel like a criminal, might make him a little too tolerant
of crime?"
Father Brown sat up and spoke in a more staccato style.
"I know it does just the opposite. It solves the whole problem of time
and sin. It gives a man his remorse beforehand."
There was a silence; the American looked at the high and steep roof that
stretched half across the enclosure; his host gazed into the fire
without moving; and then the priest's voice came on a different note, as
if from lower down.
"There are two ways of renouncing the devil," he said; "and the
difference is perhaps the deepest chasm in modern religion. One is to
have a horror of him because he is so far off; and the other to have it
because he is so near. And no virtue and vice are so much divided as
those two virtues."
They did not answer and he went on in the same heavy tone, as if he were
dropping words like molten lead.
"You may think a crime horrible because you could never commit it. I
think it horrible because I could commit it. You think of it as
something like an eruption of Vesuvius; but that would not really be so
terrible as this house catching fire. If a criminal suddenly appeared in
this room----"
"If a criminal appeared in this room," said Chace, smiling, "I think you
would be a good deal too favourable to him. Apparently you would start
by telling him that you were a criminal yourself and explaining how
perfectly natural it was that he should have picked his father's pocket
or cut his mother's throat. Frankly, I don't think it's practical. I
think that the practical effect would be that no criminal would ever
reform. It's easy enough to theorize and take hypothetical cases; but we
all know we're only talking in the air. Sitting here in M. Duroc's nice,
comfortable house, conscious of our respectability and all the rest of
it, it just gives us a theatrical thrill to talk about thieves and
murderers and the mysteries of their souls. But the people who really
have to deal with thieves and murderers have to deal with them
differently. We are safe by the fireside; and we know the house is not
on fire. We know there is not a criminal in the room."
The M. Duroc to whom allusion had been made rose slowly from what had
been called his fireside, and his huge shadow flung from the fire seemed
to cover everything and darken even the very night above him.
"There _is_ a criminal in this room," he said. "I am one. I am Flambeau,
and the police of two hemispheres are still hunting for me."
The American remained gazing at him with eyes of a stony brightness; he
seemed unable to speak or move.
"There is nothing mystical, or metaphorical, or vicarious about my
confession," said Flambeau. "I stole for twenty years with these two
hands; I fled from the police on these two feet. I hope you will admit
that my activities were practical. I hope you will admit that my judges
and pursuers really had to deal with crime. Do you think I do not know
all about their way of reprehending it? Have I not heard the sermons of
the righteous and seen the cold stare of the respectable; have I not
been lectured in the lofty and distant style, asked how it was possible
for anyone to fall so low, told that no decent person could ever have
dreamed of such depravity? Do you think all that ever did anything but
make me laugh? Only my friend told me that he knew exactly why I stole;
and I have never stolen since."
Father Brown made a gesture as of deprecation; and Grandison Chace at
last let out a long breath like a whistle.
"I have told you the exact truth," said Flambeau; "and it is open to you
to hand me over to the police."
There was an instant of profound stillness, in which could be faintly
heard the belated laughter of Flambeau's children in the high, dark
house above them, and the crunching and snorting of the great, grey pigs
in the twilight. And then it was cloven by a high voice, vibrant and
with a touch of offence, almost surprising for those who do not
understand the sensitive American spirit, and how near, in spite of
commonplace contrasts, it can sometimes come to the chivalry of Spain.
"Monsieur Duroc," he said rather stiffly. "We have been friends, I hope,
for some considerable period; and I should be pretty much pained to
suppose you thought me capable of playing you such a trick while I was
enjoying your hospitality and the society of your family, merely because
you chose to tell me a little of your own autobiography of your own free
will. And when you spoke merely in defence of your friend--no, sir, I
can't imagine any gentleman double-crossing another under such
circumstances; it would be a damned sight better to be a dirty informer
and sell men's blood for money. But in a case like this----! Could you
conceive any man being such a Judas?"
"I could try," said Father Brown.