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I found out that much." And evidently Aunt Philippa had taken an unholy joy in finding it out. "I dare say some of our own ancestors deserved to go to the penitentiary, even if they never did," I remarked. "Who is that woman driving past, Aunt Philippa? She must have been very pretty once." "She was and that was all the good it did her. 'Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain, Ursula.
"Because I won't have Mary taken to that place to mix with the people who frequent it." "I see. This is exclusiveness with a vengeance. Perhaps you consider that those unholy doors should be shut to me also." "I have no right to express an opinion as to where my father should or should not go; but if you ask me, I think that, under all the circumstances, you would do best to keep away."
The messenger turned towards him, and with a frown repeated the word more solemnly than before; then told his errand, which was, in brief, that the people of Kingston had been greatly terrified for some nights past by hideous revels, held by witches beneath the gibbet within a mile of the town, and related and deposed to by chance wayfarers who had passed within ear-shot of the spot; that the sound of their voices in their wild orgies had been plainly heard by many persons; that three old women laboured under strong suspicion, and that precedents had been consulted and solemn council had, and it was found that to identify the hags some single person must watch upon the spot alone; that no single person had the courage to perform the task; and that he had been despatched express to solicit John Podgers to undertake it that very night, as being a man of great renown, who bore a charmed life, and was proof against unholy spells.
The unholy ease with which he had done it gave him a secret thrill of admiration. It was apparently all surface the exquisite masquerader, the surrounding detail, the technical graciousness and flow of line and contour, the effortless brush-work.
When it retired he floundered without a rudder, in confusion. With the flood of morning sunshine the value of much she had said evaporated. Her presence alone had supplied the key to the cipher. But while the indigestible portions he rejected, there remained a good deal he had already assimilated. The discomfort remained; and with it the grave, unholy reality of it all.
Nothing impure, nothing unholy can ever cross that threshold, least of all impure motives or self seeking desires. These must be burnt away before an entrance to that world can be gained.
In absence of legitimate amusement, he is considered fair game for his companions; and I have seen him reduced to the ignominy of having a tin kettle tied to his tail. His ears and tail have generally been docked to suit the caprice of the unholy band of which he is a member; and if he has any spunk, he is invariably pitted against larger dogs in mortal combat.
Two men got down and picked their way through the vile street, searching out the house numbers as they progressed. They passed the all-night dives and brothels, whence came the sounds of unrestrained and unrefined revelry, and came at last to a spot beneath a huge wooden boot that hung suspended above the door of the most unholy structure in the narrow street.
Lastly the girl fortified herself with the reflexion, grotesque in the conditions and conducing to prove her sense of humour not high, that her father was after all not a man to be played with. It seemed to her at any rate that if she HAD baffled his unholy purpose she could bear anything bear imprisonment and bread and water, bear lashes and torture, bear even his lifelong reproach.
And though this so accidental world, by its manifold beauties and excitements, may arouse our romantic enthusiasm, it is fundamentally an unholy world. Its creation, he adds in italics, "is something which reason would wish had never taken place". For we must not suppose that God, when God is defined as infinite Being, can be the creator of the world.
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