A BROKEN SWORD.
Ariadne had been happy for five days beyond the time she had expected
to be--five days beyond the one when her husband selected those men
out of Lewis Granger's house to go forth and serve the King. For
Geoffrey, still looking about in likely quarters, while sending
also a press-gang ashore under the command of an old grey-haired
lieutenant who had never found promotion--a man old enough to be
Geoffrey's father--and still another gang under the command of his
master-at-arms, had been enabled to thus long delay his departure. But
now--now--the time had come to part; he had the full complement of men
their Lordships had directed him to procure, and from their Lordships
also had come a message by an Admiralty tender, bidding him sail for
the fleets at once.
Wherefore poor Ariadne, tearful and woebegone, was now superintending
the preparations necessary for quitting the _Mignonne_, while Geoffrey
was intent on comforting her in every way in his power.
"Yet, cheer up, dear heart," he said again and again to her.
"Remember, 'tis not for long at present. Once I have delivered these
men into the ships requiring them (and some are no farther off than
the Nore), then back I come to seek for more. We shall not fight
Conflans yet; he advances not in spite of all his threats to invade
us. So, heart up, mine own; in a week the _Mignonne_ will be anchored
here once more, and thou on board with thy fond husband."
"But a week, Geoff--a week! Alas! to me it seems an eternity. And then
to think of what is to follow. And they say that that corsair, Thurot,
is at the mouth of the river. If that should be so!"
"I hope it may. If I could but seize him now, what a feather in my cap
'twould be. He is a brave sea-dog, although he is a Frenchman."
"I shall be distracted during thy absence. I know not what to do. Oh,
Geoff, what is to become of me!"
"You are to stay in the lodgings, my dear one," her husband said,
"which we have chosen over there;" and he nodded his head towards the
shore. "They are sweet and clean, and you can observe our anchorage.
Therefore, you will see the _Mignonne_ sail. Also," he added, with a
happy thought, "you will see her return. Think on that."
Ariadne did think on it in the hours after he had left her, her
husband going on board at midnight in preparation for his departure at
dawn. Think on it--ay! indeed she did--as also on his last kiss
pressed to her lips before he left, and of many, many others he had
given her as the hours flew by and evening turned into night. She
thought on it each time she crept from her bed to the window of the
lodgings he had taken for her, to see if yet the daybreak was at hand
(though she knew well enough that it could not come for still some
hours); if yet the ship that held her husband, her lover, was making
ready to depart. And always by her side stood Anne, who had been
bidden to come and sleep with Ariadne on this the first night of her
desolation since she had been married; Anne, who had long since
determined never to part from her mistress again.
She had done it once when--in the exuberance of her youthful spirits,
and proud of the possession of a good voice, which she knew how to
manage in the _bravura_ style, as well as a considerable facility for
dancing in a manner fitted to obtain popular applause--she had left
her home at Fanshawe Manor to earn her own living in London as a
public performer. But, alas! what had been the result? Her little
sister who had gone with her as companion, after both had pleaded long
and frequently to her mistress and their mother for permission to do
so, had encountered ruin at the hands of a scoundrel, and death as the
result of her shame; while, for herself, what had happened? What! A
life destroyed through her impetuous determination to exact a terrible
atonement from the villain who had done her sister to death; an
existence destroyed and rendered barren, loveless, and blank, through
her tempestuous desire for vengeance.
She had left her mistress once; now she vowed often that never would
she do it again. Never again.
"I have indeed made myself an Iphigenia, as Sir Geoffrey calls me,"
she would say to Ariadne during the passage of those eight months, "by
wandering from your and mother's side; but, no more. Henceforth I stay
with you, if you will let me."
And the two girls, who had never been parted since they were children,
except for that year of a wild life on Anne's part in London: the two
girls, of whom one had now become a happy wife, and the other a wife
loathing and despising the man whom she had trepanned into marrying
her--the man on whom, if chance came in her way, she would exercise
still further vengeance--had kissed and embraced each other, and vowed
that they would always remain together. For, although Anne called
Ariadne her mistress, and was spoken of as the latter's maid and
servant, they had from infancy been always more like sisters than
aught else, and had grown up together loving each other fondly, while
Anne's three extra years of age had made her like the elder and graver
sister.
Now, together and alone--since Mrs. Pottle had departed some day or
two before to Fanshawe Manor, to which they were to follow later, when
the _Mignonne_ would have sailed on her final cruise to join the fleet
and take part in fighting France--they watched for the dawn to come;
watched knowing that, with it, the lights on the frigate's masts would
be put out, the sails be bent, and then--then--Ariadne would be
desolate.
At last, the dayspring was at hand. Towards the east, beneath the dark
blue and windswept heavens, they saw the primrose hue coming; soon
they knew that there would appear a brighter, more vivid yellow, and
then the sun, and with that sun, departure. Already poor Ariadne could
see, even without the perspective glass which Geoffrey had left behind
for her use, that all was excitement and bustle aboard the ship. For
by now the pipes were sounding, they could hear the hawsers coming on
board, and the men singing too; and then Ariadne, her hand clutching
Anne's arm, saw the outer jib loosed to the light south-westerly
breeze which was blowing from where London lay.
"Oh, Anne!" she whispered, "it is the first time he has left me since
we were wed. The first time, and now he is going. Look at those
hateful sails, and--oh! how can they sing?"
"Be brave," said Anne, whose husband was not going away to sea; Anne,
who, had he been doing so, would certainly have felt no regret; "heart
up, you are a sailor's wife."
But that did not comfort the girl, who watched now, without
understanding, everything taking place; for--although she knew not the
meaning of fore and main top-gallant sails and spankers, nor anything
of mainsails, nor mainroyals and mizzen top-gallants, nor staysails
and jibs--she could see that the _Mignonne_ was moving, going down the
river towards where the sea was, with on it, perhaps, the great French
fleet and also the dreaded Thurot who was reported to be lurking near.
"He sees me!" she cried; "he sees me! Oh, God! he waves a handkerchief
from--what is it?--the waist! He sees me--ah! Anne--Anne--look--oh!"
she cried, "the ship is passing round that point. Oh! Anne, she is
gone."
"Heart up," again said Anne, comforting, yet still resolute. "'Tis but
for a week. He will come back, my dear."
Then she led the girl to her bed, and, getting into it herself, took
her in her arms and caressed and soothed her.
* * * * * * *
Meanwhile, not more than a mile off from where the two women were,
Lewis Granger was himself preparing to begin a new day. It was
necessary that here, he who in London had rarely left his bed until
the morning was almost gone, should rise early, for he had much
business to attend to besides that of trafficking in what he termed
his "cattle" business, such as supplying all kinds of vessels with
flour and meat and provisions of every sort. He was not actually the
owner of this concern which he conducted, but, instead, only the
superintendent or manager of it for a very wealthy man whom he had
known when he was himself a gentleman--a wealthy man who, having lost
his former superintendent and meeting Granger by accident about the
time of Bufton's marriage, suggested that, as the latter said his
circumstances were low, he should take the position.
"You have been a sailor yourself, you know; you are also an Essex
man," this person remarked, as they sat in a coffee-house; "therefore
you understand something about the requisites of the sea. And you may
make some money. There is, of course, a good percentage, and, in
absolute fact, you can grow well-to-do." After which he explained to
Granger what his occupation would be.
Whereon he, knowing that, henceforth, even the beggarly keeping which
he had received from the man who had once ruined him was certain to
come to an end after the latter had been tricked into marrying Anne
Pottle, took the position. It would at least be food, he told himself.
And now he was indeed growing well-to-do; in those eight months which
had gone by since the day he had parted from Bufton he had been making
money fast, both for himself and his master; making money by ways
which once he would have scorned and have reviled himself for--by
crimping and kidnapping, by hocus-pocussing men and making them drunk,
by inducing simpletons to believe they were going to freedom and
wealth in Delaware and Virginia and Massachusetts, or in Jamaica or
Barbadoes, when in truth they were going to slavery, and as often as
not to death. But also helping to fit out ships which, calling on the
West African coast, should purchase from one successful tribe of
negroes the prisoners they had taken from another they had defeated,
and, transporting those who lived--the dead, as well as the sickly
ones, being flung over to the sharks--should sell them also into
slavery.
He was growing well-to-do, was putting by money, even while he stifled
his conscience as to the way in which it was acquired; almost he had
begun to forget that he, a gentleman, a King's sailor, with no worse
faults originally than those of dissipation and a love for gambling,
had been ruined, degraded, disgraced by a scheming scoundrel. And,
also, almost was he forgetting that he had sworn to have an awful
vengeance on this scoundrel, this man who had deprived him of the
woman he loved and had caused her to cast him off. He came nigh to
forgetting that his mother died of a broken heart--a heart broken by
his ruin and disgrace.
"Ay," he said to himself, as now he dressed in preparation for his
day's work, "ay! I had almost forgotten. Almost! And then he must
needs find his way here, as full of evil as before. And the bait
took--he swallowed it greedily. Anne's sister--I--my mother--the woman
I worshipped, are not enough. He is a cormorant of cruelty, and seeks
still more victims. Well--there shall be more. His craft and devilish
subtlety shall find another. Yet how--how--how is it to be done? I
must think."
It was still early, not yet seven o'clock, but because of evil habits
which he had contracted of late years, and which he could not now
break off, much as he endeavoured to do so, he went to a side table
where, taking up a dram bottle--a thing always to his hand now--he
drank from it.
"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.