You _did_--I know you did! You
_must_ 'a done it--so no lies; for that wur the on'y thing as ever
skeared 'er, arstin' 'er about 'er father, pore dear....Why, man
alive! what _are_ you a-gurnin' at? an' what are you a-smackin' your
forred wi' your 'and like that for, an' a-gurnin' in my face like a
Chessy cat? Blow'd if I don't b'lieve you're drunk. An' who the
dickens are you a-callin' a fool, Mr. Imperance?'
It was not the woman but myself I was cursing when I cried out,
'Fool! besotted fool!'
Not till now had the wild hope fled which had led me back to the den.
As I stood shuddering on the doorstep in the cold morning light,
while the whole unbearable truth broke in upon me, I could hear my
lips murmuring,
'Fool of ancestral superstitions! Fenella Stanley's fool! Philip
Aylwin's fool! Where was the besotted fool and plaything of besotted
ancestors, when the truth was burning so close beneath his eyes that
it is wonderful they were not scorched into recognising it? Where was
he when, but for superstitions grosser than those of the negroes on
the Niger banks, he might have saved the living heart and centre of
his little world? Where was the rationalist when, but for
superstitions sucked in with his mother's milk, he would have gone to
a certain studio, seen a certain picture which would have sent him on
the wings of the wind to find and rescue and watch over the one for
whom he had renounced all the ties of kindred? Where was then the
most worthy descendant of a line of ancestral idiots--Romany and
Gorgio--stretching back to the days when man's compeers, the mammoth
and the cave-bear, could have taught him better? Rushing down to
Raxton church to save her!--to save her by laying a poor little
trinket upon a dead man's breast!'
After the paroxysm of self-scorn had partly exhausted itself, I
stood staring in the woman's face.
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