Nothing is more impossible than to predict what one's emotions will be in any given crisis. If any one had told Christopher Neville that lying in a shed under accusation of murder, believed guilty by his lady love, cast off by his friend, his most acute sensation would be envy of the tobacco which the sentry was smoking outside the door, he would have laughed the prophet to scorn; yet so it was.
The nervous strain, added to the cold of the tobacco-house, was more than he could bear, and beyond any spiritual help he craved physical stimulant, something to make "a man of him" again, to give him back that courage and coolness which had never yet deserted him, but which he felt now slipping away fast.
At length he felt shame at such loss of manhood, and began to take himself to task.
"Come, now, Christopher Neville, thou sourfaced son of ill fortune!" he said aloud, as if talking to another person, "state thy woes, one by one, and I will combat them with what heart I may. Begin then!--What first?"
"Where many a better man has been before thee. In a palace thou mightst be in worse company."
"Pull down yonder tobacco-leaf and chew it."
"My sweetheart has turned the cold shoulder to me."
"Then do thou turn thy back full to her. Use thy reason, man alive! Hast thou lived to nigh forty years, to be hurt like a boy by a woman's inconstancy? Laugh at her, revile her if thou wilt, rip out round oaths; but, an thou be not quite demented, put not thy courage beneath the foot of her scorn!"
"Ah, poor fool! There thou hast me. Thou knowst well I have no balm in my box to medicine that hurt. Yet what can't be cured, may be forgot, for a while at least. Wine would do it. Perchance tobacco may--Curse that guard! How good his pipe smells!--I would I had one."
Neville had never yet failed of a benefit for lack of asking, so now he set up a tattoo with his fists on the wall.
"What's wanted within there?" came gruffly from the guard.
"What would you want if you'd been shut up in this cold hole for a night and a day?"
"I might _want_ ortolans and pheasants and a bottle of old Madeira; but if I was a murderer, and as good as a dead man myself, I shouldn't look to get them--not in _this_ world."
Neville kept his temper. It was all he had left.