Free The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] by G.K. Chesterton Page B

dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched.”
    “ You’re
a rum sort of cloak-room clerk,” said the other.
    “ I
am a priest, Monsieur Flambeau,” said Brown, “and I am ready to hear your confession.”
    The
other stood gasping for a few moments, and then staggered back into a chair.
    The
first two courses of the dinner of The Twelve True Fishermen had proceeded with
placid success. I do not possess a copy of the menu; and if I did it would not convey
anything to anybody. It was written in a sort of super-French employed by
cooks, but quite unintelligible to Frenchmen. There was a tradition in the club
that the hors d’oeuvres should be various and manifold to the point of madness.
They were taken seriously because they were avowedly useless extras, like the
whole dinner and the whole club. There was also a tradition that the soup
course should be light and unpretending — a sort of simple and austere vigil
for the feast of fish that was to come. The talk was that strange, slight talk
which governs the British Empire, which governs it in secret, and yet would scarcely
enlighten an ordinary Englishman even if he could overhear it. Cabinet
ministers on both sides were alluded to by their Christian names with a sort of
bored benignity. The Radical Chancellor of the Exchequer, whom the whole Tory
party was supposed to be cursing for his extortions, was praised for his minor
poetry, or his saddle in the hunting field. The Tory leader, whom all Liberals
were supposed to hate as a tyrant, was discussed and, on the whole, praised —
as a Liberal. It seemed somehow that politicians were very important. And yet,
anything seemed important about them except their politics. Mr. Audley, the
chairman, was an amiable, elderly man who still wore Gladstone collars; he was
a kind of symbol of all that phantasmal and yet fixed society. He had never
done anything — not even anything wrong. He was not fast; he was not even particularly
rich. He was simply in the thing; and there was an end of it. No party could
ignore him, and if he had wished to be in the Cabinet he certainly would have
been put there. The Duke of Chester, the vice-president, was a young and rising
politician. That is to say, he was a pleasant youth, with flat, fair hair and a
freckled face, with moderate intelligence and enormous estates. In public his
appearances were always successful and his principle was simple enough. When he
thought of a joke he made it, and was called brilliant. When he could not think
of a joke he said that this was no time for trifling, and was called able. In
private, in a club of his own class, he was simply quite pleasantly frank and
silly, like a schoolboy. Mr. Audley, never having been in politics, treated
them a little more seriously. Sometimes he even embarrassed the company by
phrases suggesting that there was some difference between a Liberal and a
Conservative. He himself was a Conservative, even in private life. He had a
roll of grey hair over the back of his collar, like certain old-fashioned statesmen,
and seen from behind he looked like the man the empire wants. Seen from the
front he looked like a mild, self-indulgent bachelor, with rooms in the Albany
— which he was.
    As
has been remarked, there were twenty-four seats at the terrace table, and only twelve
members of the club. Thus they could occupy the terrace in the most luxurious style
of all, being ranged along the inner side of the table, with no one opposite,
commanding an uninterrupted view of the garden, the colours of which were still
vivid, though evening was closing in somewhat luridly for the time of year. The
chairman sat in the centre of the line, and the vice-president at the
right-hand end of it. When the twelve guests first trooped into their seats it
was the custom (for some unknown reason) for all the fifteen waiters to stand
lining the wall like troops presenting arms to the king, while the fat
proprietor stood and bowed to the club with radiant