AT this same time, while Gilbert and Timothy were continuing their journey homeward through the darkness and the driving sleet after their encounter with the unknown robbers in Beddington Dingle, Lord Champernoun and his household were seated at the supper-table in the great dining-hall of Modbury Manor. Some friends were with them—high-born ladies and noble gentlemen who had been of a hawking party that day, and had come back very weary and full of the enjoyment of the sport. Chief among the ladies, both for her beauty and wit and for her noble birth, was the Lady Elizabeth Oglander—or Lady Betty, as she was familiarly called—who, as the widow of the Honourable Edmund Oglander, was now the mistress of Modbury Manor; and among the men, Sir Walter Raleigh and those two gallant seamen, Sir Francis Drake and Sir Richard Grenville.
It was a very large and splendid hall, with a high arched roof and tall embrasured windows, whose broad panes were rich with heraldic devices in coloured glass. The walls were panelled with carved oak and adorned with stags' horns, suits of armour, halberds, swords, and crossbows. The lower parts of the windows and the heavy clamped doors were covered with tapestry to keep out the draught, and in the huge red cavern of the fireplace the flaming logs roared and crackled, sending forth strange moving shadows across the rush-strewn floor, and casting a bright flicker of light upon the wings of the brass pelicans that stood gazing out from either side of the hearth.
At the head of the long table sat the aged baron himself, Gilbert Oglander's grandfather, a kindly, white-haired, white-bearded gentleman, wearing a doublet of black velvet with gold chains and a snowy white ruff. His guests and the members of his household were all grown-up persons, with the one exception of Drusilla Oglander; and Drusilla, who was still scarce more than a little girl and had but lately left the nursery, seemed to be very lonely in consequence. She had no companion near her at the table saving the family bloodhound, Nero, whose ponderous head rested upon her knee, ready to gobble such morsels of meat as the girl might pick from her plate and give to him. There was a vacant seat at her side, but her brother Gilbert, who had gone into Plymouth that afternoon, had not returned to occupy it, and she was perforce content to listen silently to the talk that was going on among her elders at the upper end of the table. Yet quite as often did she find entertainment in listening to the men and women who sat below the great salt-cellar—the barrier which separated them from those who were above them in station.
One of the men, a rosy-faced young falconer who had been with the hawking party, was boasting of how Sir Walter Raleigh had deigned to hold speech with him, and to ask his opinion concerning the possibility of stopping a falcon in its full flight and making the bird return obediently to the lure. The fact that the great courtier had thus honoured him seemed to have given the man the right to speak with authority on all matters with which Sir Walter Raleigh was personally concerned.
"Wait until the meal is over," Drusilla heard him say; "wait and you shall see him taking tobacco. 'Tis a wonderous sight, my masters. I have seen him at it with mine own eyes. He can blow the smoke out through his nostrils in two long tubes, or drink it down into his inside as one might drink a cup of malmsey. Ay, 'tis a marvellous habit, is it not, Christopher Pym?"
He glanced across the table at a pale, abstracted-looking man, with straight black hair and lack-lustre eyes. Christopher Pym seemed to feel himself out of place among these his table companions, for in spite of his threadbare cloak and his ragged wristbands he was still a ripe scholar and a born gentleman. He smiled faintly and answered:
"Ay, truly, Master Hawksworth, 'tis a marvellous habit—marvellous in that it is indulged in by gentlefolk. For my own part, I like it not. As well might you make a chimney of your throat at once, and call in the chimney-sweep o' mornings to sweep out the black soot."
"'Tis plain to see that thou hast never tried it," remarked Hawksworth. "But after all, 'twas never intended for poor schoolmasters."
Christopher Pym quietly broke off a few crumbs from his piece of bread, and holding them in his thin fingers proceeded slowly to cleanse his platter.