With an
inscrutable symmetry these facts may and do fit in with the universal
theory of the power of the spirit-world to execute a curse from the
grave. Look at that beggar in the street! How dare you ignore the
theory of the sorrowing soul, the logic of the lacerated heart, even
though your reason laughs it to scorn?'
And then at last my laughter would turn to moans, and, replacing the
cross in the cabinet, I would creep hack to my bed ashamed, like a
guilty thing--ashamed before myself.
But the more I felt at my throat the claws of the ancestral ogre
Superstition, the more enraged I became with myself for feeling them
there. And the auger against my ancestors' mysticism grew with the
growing consciousness that I was rapidly yielding to the very same
mysticism myself. And then I would get up again and take from my
escritoire the sheaf of Fenella Stanley's letters which I had brought
from Raxton, and read again those stories about curses, such as that
about the withering of a Romany family under a dead man's curse which
Winnie had described to me that night on the sands.
Pages:
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458