A Hermit in Chesterton's "The Fairy Tale of Father Brown"
From among the many Father Brown mystery stories by English writer G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), a hermit appears in "The Fairy Tale of Father Brown," chapter 12 of 12 short stories in Chesterton's The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914). The story in question is the last chapter.
The hermit fits a familiar archetype of "man of the world retiring to a hermitage," in this case also bearing an important secret that lends ambiguity to the hermit's motive. Father Brown and Flambeau discuss the murder mystery. Father Brown's musings to solve the probable events comprise a "fairy tale," for the whole story is reminiscent of a medieval or early modern fairy tale.
The setting is presented. Father Brown initiates the conversation.
The picturesque city and state of Heiligwaldenstein was one of those toy kingdoms of which certain parts of the German Empire still consist. It had come under the Prussian hegemony quite late in history -- hardly fifty years before the fine summer day when Flambeau and Father Brown found themselves sitting in its gardens and drinking its beer.
Father Brown speaks first.
"I wonder," he said, "whether one would have real adventures in a place like this, if one put oneself in the way? It's a splendid back-scene for them, but I always have a kind of feeling that they would fight you with pasteboard sabres more than real, horrible swords."
"You are mistaken," said his friend. "In this place they not only fight with swords, but kill without swords. And there's worse than that."
"Why, what do you mean?" asked Father Brown.
"Why," replied the other, "I should say this was the only place in Europe where a man was ever shot without firearms."
"Do you mean a bow and arrow?" asked Brown in some wonder.
"I mean a bullet in the brain," replied Flambeau.
Flambeau goes on to describe the fate of the last prince of the state, Prince Otto of Grossenmark, mysteriously shot and killed by his own sentry. Otto had intervened in Heiligwaldenstein to rule it on behalf of the Empire, but was resisted by three "guerilla patriots," the three Arnhold brothers. Flambeau continues.
"It is by no means certain that the occupation would ever have been successful had not one of the three brothers, Paul, despicably, but very decisively declined to abide these things any longer, and, by surrendering all the secrets of the insurrection, ensured its overthrow and his own ultimate promotion to the post of chamberlain to Prince Otto. After this, Ludwig [king of Heiligwaldenstein] ... was killed, sword in hand, in the capture of the city; and the third, Heinrich, who, though not a traitor, had always been tame and even timid compared with his active brothers, retired into something like a hermitage, became converted to a Christian quietism which was almost Quakerish, and never mixed with men except to give nearly all he had to the poor. They tell me that not long ago he could still be seen about the neighbourhood occasionally, a man in a black cloak, nearly blind, with very wild, white hair, but a face of astonishing softness."
Prince Otto had been quite paranoid before his death.
"Died," repeated Flambeau, "and that's about as much as we can say. You must understand that towards the end of his life he began to have those tricks of the nerves not uncommon with tyrants. He multiplied the ordinary daily and nightly guard round his castle till there seemed to be more sentry-boxes than houses in the town, and doubtful characters were shot without mercy. He lived almost entirely in a little room that was in the very centre of the enormous labyrinth of all the other rooms, and even in this he erected another sort of central cabin or cupboard, lined with steel, like a safe or a battleship. Some say that under the floor of this again was a secret hole in the earth, no more than large enough to hold him, so that, in his anxiety to avoid the grave, he was willing to go into a place pretty much like it. But he went further yet. The populace had been supposed to be disarmed ever since the suppression of the revolt, but Otto now insisted, as governments very seldom insist, on an absolute and literal disarmament. It was carried out, with extraordinary thoroughness and severity, by very well-organized officials over a small and familiar area, and, so far as human strength and science can be absolutely certain of anything, Prince Otto was absolutely certain that nobody could introduce so much as a toy pistol into Heiligwaldenstein."
Otto was obsessed with the rumor of gold within the walls of Heiligwaldenstein, gold used over the years in the remarkable defense against rival states, to buy them off or to hire defenders. The traitor chamberlain Paul professed to know nothing about gold. Otto invited geologists and mineralogists from Paris and Berlin to his castle to confer, but on scheduled evening of the first meeting, Otto was missing. Later that night he is found shot and killed.
At this point, Father Brown spins a "fairy tale" to solve the mystery of Prince Otto's murder.
"His great passion was not the much nobler dread of death, but the strange
desire of gold. For this legend of the gold he had left Grossenmark and invaded
Heiligwaldenstein. For this and only this he had bought the traitor and
butchered the hero, for this he had long questioned and cross-questioned the
false Chamberlain, until he had come to the conclusion that, touching his
ignorance, the renegade really told the truth. For this he had, somewhat
reluctantly, paid and promised money on the chance of gaining the larger amount;
and for this he had stolen out of his palace like a thief in the rain, for he
had thought of another way to get the desire of his eyes, and to get it cheap.
"Away at the upper end of a rambling mountain path to which he was making his
way, among the pillared rocks along the ridge that hangs above the town, stood
the hermitage, hardly more than a cavern fenced with thorn, in which the third
of the great brethren had long hidden himself from the world. He, thought Prince
Otto, could have no real reason for refusing to give up the gold. He had known
its place for years, and made no effort to find it, even before his new ascetic
creed had cut him off from property or pleasures. True, he had been an enemy,
but he now professed a duty of having no enemies. Some concession to his cause,
some appeal to his principles, would probably get the mere money secret out of
him.
"Otto was no coward, in spite of his network of military precautions, and, in any case, his avarice was stronger than his fears. Nor was there much cause for fear. Since he was certain there were no private arms in the whole principality, he was a hundred times more certain there were none in the Quaker's little hermitage on the hill, where he lived on herbs, with two old rustic servants, and with no other voice of man for year after year.
"Prince Otto looked down with something of a grim smile at the bright, square labyrinths of the lamp-lit city below him. For as far as the eye could see there ran the rifles of his friends, and not one pinch of powder for his enemies. Rifles ranked so close even to that mountain path that a cry from him would bring the soldiers rushing up the hill, to say nothing of the fact that the wood and ridge were patrolled at regular intervals; rifles so far away, in the dim woods, dwarfed by distance, beyond the river, that an enemy could not slink into the town by any detour. And round the palace rifles at the west door and the east door, at the north door and the south, and all along the four facades linking them. He was safe.
Prince Otto is going to question the hermit Heinrich.
"It was all the more clear when he had crested the ridge and found how naked was the nest of his old enemy. He found himself on a small platform of rock, broken abruptly by the three corners of precipice. Behind was the black cave, masked with green thorn, so low that it was hard to believe that a man could enter it. In front was the fall of the cliffs and the vast but cloudy vision of the valley. On the small rock platform stood an old bronze lectern or reading-stand, groaning under a great German Bible. The bronze or copper of it had grown green with the eating airs of that exalted place, and Otto had instantly the thought, "Even if they had arms, they must be rusted by now." Moonrise had already made a deathly dawn behind the crests and crags, and the rain had ceased.
"Behind the lectern, and looking across the valley, stood a very old man in a black robe that fell as straight as the cliffs around him, but whose white hair and weak voice seemed alike to waver in the wind. He was evidently reading some daily lesson as part of his religious exercises. 'They trust in their horses...'
"'Sir,' said the Prince of Heiligwaldenstein, with quite unusual courtesy, 'I should like only one word with you.'
"'...and in their chariots,' went on the old man weakly, 'but we will trust in the name of the Lord of Hosts....' His last words were inaudible, but he closed the book reverently and, being nearly blind, made a groping movement and gripped the reading-stand. Instantly his two servants slipped out of the low-browed cavern and supported him. They wore dull-black gowns like his own, but they had not the frosty silver on the hair, nor the frost-bitten refinement of the features. They were peasants, Croat or Magyar, with broad, blunt visages and blinking eyes. For the first time something troubled the Prince, but his courage and diplomatic sense stood firm.
"'I fear we have not met,' he said, 'since that awful cannonade in which your poor brother died.'
"'All my brothers died,' said the old man, still looking across the valley. Then, for one instant turning on Otto his drooping, delicate features, and the wintry hair that seemed to drip over his eyebrows like icicles, he added:
'You see, I am dead, too.'
"'I hope you'll understand,' said the Prince, controlling himself almost to a point of conciliation, 'that I do not come here to haunt you, as a mere ghost of those great quarrels. We will not talk about who was right or wrong in that, but at least there was one point on which we were never wrong, because you were always right. Whatever is to be said of the policy of your family, no one for one moment imagines that you were moved by the mere gold; you have proved yourself above the suspicion that ...'
"The old man in the black gown had hitherto continued to gaze at him with watery blue eyes and a sort of weak wisdom in his face. But when the word 'gold' was said he held out his hand as if in arrest of something, and turned away his face to the mountains.
"'He has spoken of gold,' he said. 'He has spoken of things not lawful. Let him cease to speak.'
"Otto had the vice of his Prussian type and tradition, which is to regard success not as an incident but as a quality. He conceived himself and his like as perpetually conquering peoples who were perpetually being conquered. Consequently, he was ill acquainted with the emotion of surprise, and ill prepared for the next movement, which startled and stiffened him. He had opened his mouth to answer the hermit, when the mouth was stopped and the voice strangled by a strong, soft gag suddenly twisted round his head like a tourniquet. It was fully forty seconds before he even realized that the two Hungarian servants had done it, and that they had done it with his own military scarf.
"The old man went again weakly to his great brazen-supported Bible, turned over the leaves, with a patience that had something horrible about it, till he came to the Epistle of St James, and then began to read:
'The tongue is a little member, but --'
At this point, the prince flees back to his castle, but the sash is so tightly bound that he cannot cry out when a sentry demands to know who goes thereabouts. Father Brown continues.
"Something in the very voice made the Prince turn suddenly and plunge down the mountain-path he had climbed. He was half-way towards the gardens of the palace before he even tried to tear the strangling scarf from his neck and jaws. He tried again and again, and it was impossible; the men who had knotted that gag knew the difference between what a man can do with his hands in front of him and what he can do with his hands behind his head. His legs were free to leap like an antelope on the mountains, his arms were free to use any gesture or wave any signal, but he could not speak. A dumb devil was in him.
"He had come close to the woods that walled in the castle before he had quite realized what his wordless state meant and was meant to mean. Once more he looked down grimly at the bright, square labyrinths of the lamp-lit city below him, and he smiled no more. He felt himself repeating the phrases of his former mood with a murderous irony. Far as the eye could see ran the rifles of his friends, every one of whom would shoot him dead if he could not answer the challenge. Rifles were so near that the wood and ridge could be patrolled at regular intervals; therefore it was useless to hide in the wood till morning. Rifles were ranked so far away that an enemy could not slink into the town by any detour; therefore it was vain to return to the city by any remote course. A cry from him would bring his soldiers rushing up the hill. But from him no cry would come.
"The moon had risen in strengthening silver, and the sky showed in stripes of
bright, nocturnal blue between the black stripes of the pines about the castle.
Flowers of some wide and feathery sort -- for he had never noticed such things
before -- were at once luminous and discoloured by the moonshine, and seemed
indescribably fantastic as they clustered, as if crawling about the roots of the
trees. Perhaps his reason had been suddenly unseated by the unnatural captivity
he carried with him, but in that wood he felt something unfathomably German -- the
fairy tale. He knew with half his mind that he was drawing near to the castle of
an ogre -- he had forgotten that he was the ogre. He remembered asking his mother
if bears lived in the old park at home. He stooped to pick a flower, as if it
were a charm against enchantment. The stalk was stronger than he expected, and
broke with a slight snap. Carefully trying to place it in his scarf, he heard
the halloo, `Who goes there?' Then he remembered the scarf was not in its usual
place.
"He tried to scream and was silent. The second challenge came; and then a shot
that shrieked as it came and then was stilled suddenly by impact. Otto of
Grossenmark lay very peacefully among the fairy trees, and would do no more harm
either with gold or steel; only the silver pencil of the moon would pick out and
trace here and there the intricate ornament of his uniform, or the old wrinkles
on his brow. May God have mercy on his soul.
"The sentry who had fired, according to the strict orders of the garrison,
naturally ran forward to find some trace of his quarry. He was a private named
Schwartz, since not unknown in his profession, and what he found was a bald man
in uniform, but with his face so bandaged by a kind of mask made of his own
military scarf that nothing but open, dead eyes could be seen, glittering
stonily in the moonlight. The bullet had gone through the gag into the jaw; that
is why there was a shot-hole in the scarf, but only one shot. Naturally, if not
correctly, young Schwartz tore off the mysterious silken mask and cast it on the
grass; and then he saw whom he had slain.
"We cannot be certain of the next phase. But I incline to believe that there was
a fairy tale, after all, in that little wood, horrible as was its occasion.
Whether the young lady named Hedwig had any previous knowledge of the soldier
she saved and eventually married, or whether she came accidentally upon the
accident and their intimacy began that night, we shall probably never know. But
we can know, I fancy, that this Hedwig was a heroine, and deserved to marry a
man who became something of a hero. She did the bold and the wise thing. She
persuaded the sentry to go back to his post, in which place there was nothing to
connect him with the disaster; he was but one of the most loyal and orderly of
fifty such sentries within call. She remained by the body and gave the alarm;
and there was nothing to connect her with the disaster either, since she had not
got, and could not have, any firearms.
"Well," said Father Brown rising cheerfully "I hope they're happy."
"Where are you going?" asked his friend.
"I'm going to have another look at that portrait of the Chamberlain, the Arnhold who betrayed his brethren," answered the priest. "I wonder what part -- I wonder if a man is less a traitor when he is twice a traitor?"
And he ruminated long before the portrait of a white-haired man with black eyebrows and a pink, painted sort of smile that seemed to contradict the black warning in his eyes.
Here ends the story. Was it Paul the chamberlain, who was twice a traitor, to his brother and to his prince? Or was it the Heinrich the hermit?
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