"Your Mr. Varduk is a mysterious fellow. I need not enlarge on that, though I might remind you of the excellent reason for his strange character and behavior."
"Byron's blood?"
"Exactly. And Byron's curse."
I stopped in mid-stride and turned to face the judge. He smiled somewhat apologetically.
"I know, Connatt," he said, "that modern men and women think such things impossible. They think it equally impossible that anyone of good education and normal mind should take occultism seriously. But I disprove the latter impossibility, at least—I hold degrees from three world-famous universities, and my behavior, at least, shows that I am neither morbid nor shallow."
"Certainly not," I assented, thinking of his hearty appetite, his record of achievement in many fields, his manifest kindness and sincerity.
"Then consent to hear my evidence out." He resumed his walk, and I fell into step with him. "It's only circumstantial evidence, I fear, and as such must not be entirely conclusive. Yet here it is:
"Byron was the ideal target for a curse, not only personally but racially. His forebears occupied themselves with revolution, dueling, sacrilege and lesser sins—they were the sort who attract and merit disaster. As for his immediate parents, it would be difficult to choose a more depraved father than Captain 'Mad Jack' Byron, or a more unnatural mother than Catherine Gordon of Gight. Brimstone was bred into the child's very soul by those two. Follow his career, and what is there? Pride, violence, orgy, disgrace. Over his married life hangs a shocking cloud, an unmentionable accusation—rightly or not we cannot say. As for his associates, they withered at his touch. His children, lawful and natural, died untimely and unhappy. His friends found ruin or death. Even Doctor Polidori, plagiarist of the Ruthven story, committed suicide. Byron himself, when barely past his first youth, perished alone and far from home and friends. Today his bright fame is blurred and tarnished by a wealth of legend that can be called nothing less than diabolic."
"Yet he wasn't all unlucky," I sought to remind my companion. "His beauty and brilliance, his success as a poet——"
"All part of the curse. When could he be thankful for a face that drew the love of Lady Caroline Lamb and precipitated one of London's most fearful scandals? As for his poetry, did it not mark him for envy, spite and, eventually, a concerted attack? I daresay Byron would have been happier as a plain-faced mechanic or grocer."