Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/212

186 186 THE GUILT OF MR. CHESTERTON It is true, no doubt, that some of these qualities will simply exasperate the downright democrats whom Mr. Chesterton wants specially to cheer, and that they will tickle the palates of precisely the people whom in his heartiness he affects to despise. True, toOj perhaps, that we have here a repetition of the great Notting Hill blunder. Adam Wayne wanted to prove modern London romantic, but adopted the curi- ously cumbrous and expensive process of painting its buildings with hot blood. Mr. Chesterton, too, would drive home to us the unconquerable queerness of things — the picturesqueness of sweetshops and suburbs — but tries to do it by cramming daft fairy-tale crimes into the middle of the unregarded streets. Somehow, he will not realize that his fingers flourish a weapon far more effective in such affairs than Wayne's big sword ; that his cool picture of that " quaint, quiet square " brings out all its elfin magic like a spell ; that a pantomime troupe pouring into it simply turns it back into a bit of stage scenery. But these are little errors and ironies that the reader, carried away by the pantomime, will not allow to sadden him unduly. It is when he is half-way through the book that he becomes aware of a sudden change — a change so sinister that he may very well wonder whether the madness has not mounted to his head. He gets the dark, indescribable sensation of being in the presence of something actually evil. All this violence and vividness become horribly akin to the insane lucidity of nightmare. Yet, queerly, as he perceives on reflection, this change coincides with another which seems a pure triumph of virtue. Flam- beau, the great criminal, the author of the fantastic crimes he has been tracking hitherto, suddenly re- pents ; and Father Brown is at liberty to roam more largely about the world, holding Flambeau by the hand, a brand snatched from the burning, like a little