"It nerves me," he muttered. "It will serve me till it kills me at the last. And it clears my mind. Others it makes drunk, but me it fortifies--at present!"
He did not drink again, however; did not pour down glass after glass--such an act as that was reserved for the nights when he stupefied himself regularly ere seeking that sleep which never came easily; instead, he put the bottle away, after standing regarding it fixedly.
"Strange," he muttered, "strange. Glastonbury is drinking himself to death at Ratisbon, they say, because he possesses Sophy, but not her love; I am drinking myself to death here because she loved me--perhaps loves me now--and I have lost her. Through him, that venomous snake; that reptile!"
An onlooker might almost have thought, could one have been present, that the wretched, broken man had taken his dram and was indulging in such thoughts with a view to strengthening himself in some resolve that he had made. Would have thought so could he, that observer, have seen Lewis Granger go to a cupboard next, and, plunging his hand in, draw forth a sword in its scabbard. A naval sword, the handle of which he grasped, bringing out from the sheath, as he did so, but half a blade--a blade broken short off halfway down. The onlooker might have thought so if he had seen the man turn up the scabbard now, and let the other half of the weapon fall out with a clang to the floor.
"I broke it," he whispered once more, and from his eyes the tears welled forth and rolled down his cheeks, "on that night, the night after I saw its point towards me when they led me back to the main cabin of the Warwick to learn my doom. That I was condemned! I broke it as my life was broken--my future--my all. Ruined by him."
Then he replaced the two pieces of the blade in the sheath and returned the latter to the cupboard, kissing the former ere he did so. "I loved you so," he whispered again, his lips trembling, "I hoped so much from you; that you would bring me honour and renown; make my mother proud that she had borne me, Sophy proud to be my wife. And now. Now!"
He closed the cupboard after thrusting the weapon back, and prepared to descend to his room below. Yet, by this time his mood had changed again; again he was the Lewis Granger of everyday life--sullen, evil-looking. And he wept no more. But instead, there was upon his face the sardonic expression most usual to it.
"Barry did believe yesterday--at last--not that I was innocent, but that I might by some strange chance be so. He did, he did! I saw it in his softer look, heard it in his gentler speech. And, for reward, I am about to send his fair young wife and Bufton's own wife to worse than death. I am about to do that!"
Whereon he laughed so loud and long at this thought that the crone preparing his breakfast below shook her head ominously and wondered if her master was beginning a fresh day with a fresh drinking bout.