The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [574]
At this point two or three children began to straggle across the sands, and the priest waved them to him with the wooden spade, theatrically tapping the automatic machine. Muggleton guessed that it was mainly to prevent their straying towards the horrible heap on the shore.
'One more penny left in the world,' said Father Brown, 'and then we must go home to tea. Do you know, Doris, I rather like those revolving games, that just go round and round like the Mulberry - Bush. After all, God made all the suns and stars to play Mulberry - Bush. But those other games, where one must catch up with another, where runners are rivals and run neck and neck and outstrip each other; well - much nastier things seem to happen. I like to think of Mr Red and Mr Blue always jumping with undiminished spirits; all free and equal; and never hurting each other. “Fond lover, never, never, wilt thou kiss - or kill.” Happy, happy Mr Red!
He cannot change; though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever will thou jump; and he be Blue.
Reciting this remarkable quotation from Keats, with some emotion. Father Brown tucked the little spade under one arm, and giving a hand to two of the children, stumped solemnly up the beach to tea.
SIX: The Crime of the Communist
Three men came out from under the lowbrowed Tudor arch in the mellow facade of Mandeville College, into the strong evening sunlight of a summer day which seemed as if it would never end; and in that sunlight they saw something that blasted like lightning; well - fitted to be the shock of their lives.
Even before they had realized anything in the way of a catastrophe, they were conscious of a contrast. They themselves, in a curious quiet way, were quite harmonious with their surroundings. Though the Tudor arches that ran like a cloister round the College gardens had been built four hundred years ago, at that moment when the Gothic fell from heaven and bowed, or almost crouched, over the cosier chambers of Humanism and the Revival of Learning - though they themselves were in modern clothes (that is in clothes whose ugliness would have amazed any of the four centuries) yet something in the spirit of the place made them all at one. The gardens had been tended so carefully as to achieve the final triumph of looking careless; the very flowers seemed beautiful by accident, like elegant weeds; and the modern costumes had at least any picturesqueness that can be produced by being untidy. The first of the three, a tall, bald, bearded maypole of a man, was a familiar figure in the Quad in cap and gown; the gown slipped off one of his sloping shoulders. The second was very square - shouldered, short and compact, with a rather jolly grin, commonly clad in a jacket, with his gown over his arm. The third was even shorter and much shabbier, in black clerical clothes. But they all seemed suitable to Mandeville College; and the indescribable atmosphere of the two ancient and unique Universities of England. They fitted into it and they faded into it; which is there regarded as most fitting.
The two men seated on garden chairs by a little table were a sort of brilliant blot on this grey - green landscape. They were clad mostly in black and yet they glittered from head to heel, from their burnished top - hats to their perfectly polished boots. It was dimly felt as an outrage that anybody should be so well - dressed in the well - bred freedom of Mandeville College. The only excuse was that they were foreigners. One was an American, a millionaire named Hake, dressed in the spotlessly and sparklingly gentlemanly manner known only to the rich