CHAPTER XI
Good-night, good sleep, good rest from sorrow
To these that shall not have good morrow.
—Swinburne.
At first when Sir John Ayloffe threw open the door of the public room, Stowmaries was only conscious of an almost Satanic din; he certainly could see nothing through the dense cloud of smoke which filled every corner of the long, narrow hall.
Gradually, however, his eyes, still dimmed from recent libations and acute excitement, became accustomed to this haze-covered gloom, whilst his ears distinguished isolated sounds, drunken songs, loud oaths or hoarse laughter from out the deafening roar which surged towards him like the noise of breakers against a rock.
A narrow deal table ran from end to end of the room, from the main door at the top to the small latticed window at the bottom. The floor was strewn with rushes on which sprawled recumbent figures in various stages of drunken sleep, in the very midst of a litter of debris, broken glasses, overthrown mugs, patches of spilt wine or ale, bones and remnants of pastry and of bread—all evil-smelling and unspeakably dirty. On the table itself the remnants of pies and cooked meats, and a forest of empty mugs and bottles. One by one the tallow candles which had been placed at intervals throughout the whole length of the table had thrown up their last flicker of feeble light, had spluttered their last with a hissing sound and finally died out in a column of grimy smoke.
There were but some half dozen or so left now, which threw uncertain yellow gleams through the thick veil of tobacco fumes, on the prostrate figures that sprawled across the table, on overthrown goblets and jugs, on all the unsavoury debris—remnants of the past orgy.
The rest of the room was in darkness, and through the gloom the figure of a young man, with flushed face and dark brown hair innocent of perruque, moved backwards and forwards to the rhythmic cadence of a boisterous chorus of song.