Maurier Daphne du - Jamaica Inn

The two men who had been shot sprawled in the lane beside the cart. Whether they still breathed or not was not a matter to be discussed; their bodies bore witness, and must be destroyed. It was Harry the pedlar who dragged them to the fire. It burnt well; much of the carriage was already consumed, while one red wheel stuck out above the charred and splintered wood.

Joss Merlyn led the remaining horse to the traces, and without a word the two men climbed into the cart and jerked the horse to action.

Lying on her back in the cart, Mary watched the low clouds pass across the sky. Darkness had gone; the morning was damp and grey. She could still hear the sound of the sea, more distant and less insistent, a sea that had spent its full fury and now let itself be carried by the tide.

The wind had dropped too; the tall stems of grass on the banks above the gully were still, and a silence had come upon the coast. There was a smell in the air of damp earth and turnips, of a mist that had lain overnight upon the land. The clouds became one with the grey sky. Once again a thin mizzle of rain fell upon Mary's face and upon her upturned hands.

The wheels of the cart crunched the uneven lane, and, turning right, came out upon a smoother surface of gravel that was a road, running northwards between low hedges. From far away, across many fields and scattered ploughlands, came the merry peal of bells, odd and discordant, in the morning air.

She remembered suddenly that it was Christmas Day.

The square pane of glass was familiar to her. It was larger than the carriage window and had a ledge before it, and there was a crack across the pane that she remembered well. She kept her eyes upon it, struggling with memory, and she wondered why she no longer felt the rain on her face and the steady current of wind. There was no movement under her, and her first thought was that the carriage had come to a standstill, thrust against the bank in the gullyway once more, and that circumstance and fate would compel her to react in frightful repetition the things she had already performed. When she climbed through the window she would fall and bruise herself, and, heading yet again up the twisting lane, would come upon Harry the pedlar, squatting in his ditch; but this time she would not have the strength to withstand him. Down on the shingle strand the men waited for the tide, and the great black turtle of a ship rolled flat and monstrous in the trough of the sea. Mary moaned and turned her head restlessly from side to side; out of the tail of her eye she saw the brown discoloured wall beside her, and the rusty nailhead where a text had once been hung.

She was lying in her bedroom at Jamaica Inn.

The sight of this room she hated, however cold it was and drear, was at least protection from the wind and the rain and from the hands of Harry the pedlar. Nor could she hear the sea. The roar of surf would not disturb her again. If Death came now, he would be an ally; existence was not a thing she welcomed any more. Life had been crushed from her, anyway, and the body lying on the bed did not belong to her. She had no wish to live. Shock had made a dummy of her and taken away her strength; tears of self-pity welled into her eyes.

Now there was a face bending down to her, and she shrank back against the pillow, her hands thrust outward and protesting; for the puffy mouth and broken teeth of the pedlar were ever in her mind.

Her hands were held gently, though, and the eyes that peered at her, red rimmed like her own from weeping, were tremulous and blue.

It was Aunt Patience. They clung to one another, seeking comfort in proximity; and after Mary had wept awhile, easing herself of sorrow and allowing the tide of emotion to carry her to the limit, nature took command of her again and she was strengthened, something of the old courage and force coming back to her again.

"You know what has happened?" she asked, and Aunt Patience held her hands tightly, so that they could not be withdrawn, the blue eyes begging dumbly for forgiveness, like an animal punished through no fault of his own.

"How long have I lain here?" Mary questioned, and she was told that this was the second day. For a moment or two Mary was silent, considering the information, new to her and sudden; two days was a long time to one who but a few moments ago had watched the dawn break on the coast.

Much could happen in that time, and she had been on her bed here, helpless.

"You should have woken me," she said roughly, pushing away the hands that clung to her. "I'm not a child, to be mothered and pampered because of a few bruises. There's work for me to do; you don't understand."

Aunt Patience stroked her, the caress timid and ineffectual.

"You could not move," she whimpered. "Your poor body was bleeding and broken. I bathed you while you were still unconscious; I thought at first they had injured you terribly, but thank the dear God no real harm has come to you. Your bruises will heal, and your long sleep has rested you."

"You know who did it, don't you? You know where they took me?"

Bitterness had made her cruel. She knew that the words acted like a lash, and she could not stop herself. She began to talk about the men on the shore. Now it was the elder woman's turn to whimper, and when Mary saw the thin mouth working, the vapid blue eyes stare back at her in terror, she became sickened of herself and could not continue. She sat up in bed and swung her legs to the floor, her head swimming with the effort, her temples throbbing.

"What are you going to do?" Aunt Patience pulled at her nervously, but her niece shook her aside and began to drag on her clothes.

"I have business of my own," she said curtly.

"Your uncle is below. He will not let you leave the inn."

"I'm not afraid of him."

"Mary, for your sake, for my sake, do not anger him again. You know what you have suffered already. Ever since he returned with you he has sat below, white and terrible, a gun across his knees; the doors of the inn are barred. I know you have seen and endured horrible, unspeakable things; but, Mary, don't you understand if you go down now he may hurt you again — he may even kill you?… I have never seen him like this. I can't answer for his mood. Don't go down, Mary. I beg you on my knees not to go down."

She began to drag on the floor, clutching at Mary's skirt, clasping at her hands and kissing them. The sight was miserable, unnerving.

"Aunt Patience, I have gone through enough out of loyalty to you. You can't expect me to stand any more. Whatever Uncle Joss may have been to you once, he is inhuman now. All your tears won't save him from justice; you must realise that. He's a brute, half mad with brandy and blood. Men were murdered by him on the shore; don't you understand? Men were drowned in the sea. I can see nothing else. I shall think of nothing else to my dying way."

Her voice rose, dangerously high; hysteria was not far away. She was still too weak for consecutive thought, and saw herself running out upon the highroad, crying loudly for the help that would surely be forthcoming.

Aunt Patience prayed too late for silence; the warning finger was unheeded. The door opened, and the landlord of Jamaica Inn stood on the threshold of the room. He stooped his head under the beam and stared at them. He looked haggard and grey; the cut above his eye was still a vivid scarlet. He was filthy and unwashed, and there were black shadows beneath his eyes.

"I thought I heard voices in the yard," he said. "I went to a chink in the shutters, downstairs in the parlour, but I saw no one. Did you hear anything, from this room?"

Nobody answered. Aunt Patience shook her head, the little nervous smile that she conjured for his presence trailing uneasily across her face without her knowledge. He sat down on the bed, his hands plucking at the clothes, his restless eyes roaming from the window to the door.

"He'll come," he said; "he's bound to come. I've cut my own throat; I've gone against him. He warned me once, and I laughed at him; I didn't listen. I wanted to play the game on my own. We're as good as dead, all three of us sitting here — you, Patience, and Mary, and I.

"We're finished, I tell you; the game is up. Why did you let me drink? Why didn't you break every blasted bottle in the house, and turn the key on me, and let me lie? I'd not have hurt you; I'd not have touched a hair of your heads, either of you. Now it's too late. The end has come."

He looked from one to the other of them, his blood-shot eyes hollow, his massive shoulders humped to his neck. They stared back at him without understanding, dumbfounded and awed at the expression on his face they had not seen before.

"What do you mean?" said Mary at length. "Who are you afraid of? Who warned you?"

He shook his head, and his hands strayed to his mouth, the fingers restless. "No," he said slowly, "I'm not drunk now, Mary Yellan; my secrets are still my own. But I'll tell you one thing — and there's no escape for you; you're in it now as much as Patience there — we have enemies on either side of us now. We have the law on one hand, and on the other—" He checked himself, the old cunning in his eyes once more as he glanced at Mary.

"You'd like to know, wouldn't you?" he said. "You'd like to sneak out of the house with the name on your lips and betray me. You'd like to see me hanged. All right, I don't blame you for it; I've hurt you enough to make you remember to the rest of your days, haven't I? But I saved you too, didn't I? Have you thought what that rabble would have done to you had I not been there?" He laughed and spat on the floor, something of his usual self returning to him. "You can put one good mark against me for that alone," he said. "Nobody touched you that night but myself, and I've not spoilt your pretty face. Cuts and bruises mend, don't they? Why, you poor weak thing, you know as well as I do I could have had you your first week at Jamaica Inn if I'd wanted you. You're a woman after all. Yes, by heaven, and you'd be lying at my feet now, like your Aunt Patience, crushed and contented and clinging, another God-damn bloody fool. Let's get out of here. The room stinks of damp and decay."

He shambled to his feet, dragging her after him into the passage, and, when they came onto the landing, he thrust her against the wall, beneath the candle stuck in the bracket, so that the light fell upon her bruised, cut face. He took her chin in his hands and held her for a moment, smoothing the scratches with delicate, light fingers. She stared back at him in loathing and disgust, the gentle, graceful hands reminding her of all she had lost and renounced; and, when he bent his hated face lower, indifferent of Patience, who stood beside him, and his mouth, so like his brother's, hovered an instant on hers, the illusion was horrible and complete; and she shuddered and closed her eyes. He blew out the light; they followed him down the stairs without a word, their footsteps pattering sharply through the empty house.

He led the way into the kitchen, where even there the door was bolted and the window barred. Two candles were on the table to light the room.

The he turned and faced the two women, and, reaching for a chair, he straddled his legs across it and considered them, fumbling in his pocket for his pipe meanwhile and filling it.

"We've got to think out a plan of campaign," he said; "we've been sitting here for nigh on two days now, like rats in a trap, waiting to be caught. And I've had enough, I tell you. I never could play that sort of game; it gives me the horrors. If there's going to be a scrap, then, by Almighty God, let's have it in the open." He puffed awhile at his pipe, staring moodily at the floor, tapping his foot on the stone flags.

"Harry's loyal enough," he continued, "but he'd split and have the house about our ears if he thought there'd be profit for himself, As for the rest — they're scattered over the countryside, whining, their tails between their legs, like a blasted pack of curs. This has scared 'em forever. Yes, and it's scared me too, you can know that. I'm sober now, all right; I can see the damn-fool unholy mess I've landed in, and we'll be lucky, all of us, if we get out of it without swinging. You, Mary, can laugh if you like, with your white, contemptuous face; it'll be as bad for you as for Patience and I. You're in it too, up to the neck; you'll not escape.

Why didn't you turn the key on me, I say? Why didn't you stop me from drinking?"