Du Maurier, Daphne (14 page)

“I believe you, of course,” he said, after a moment or so. “You haven’t the face of a liar, and I doubt if you know the meaning of hysteria. But your story wouldn’t go in a court of law—not as you’ve told it tonight, anyhow. It’s too much of a fairy tale. And another thing—it’s a scandal and an outrage, we all know that, but smuggling is rife all over the country, and half the magistrates do very well out of it. That shocks you, doesn’t it? But I can assure you it’s the truth. If the law was stricter there would be greater supervision, and your uncle’s little nest at Jamaica Inn would have been blotted out long ago. I have met Mr. Bassat once or twice, and I believe him to be an honest, genuine sort of fellow, but, between ourselves, a bit of a fool. He’d bluster and talk, but that’s about all. He’ll keep this morning’s expedition very quiet, unless I’m much mistaken. Actually he had no business to walk into the inn and search the rooms, and if it becomes known that he did so, and found nothing for his pains, he’ll become the laughingstock of the countryside. I can tell you one thing, though: his visit will have scared your uncle, and he’ll lie low now for a time. There won’t be any more waggons to Jamaica Inn for some while. I think you can be certain of that.”

Mary listened to his reasoning with some misgiving. She had hoped he would be appalled, once admitting the truth of her story, but here he was, apparently quite unmoved, taking it all as a matter of course.

He must have seen the disappointment in her face, for he spoke again.

“I could see Mr. Bassat, if you like,” he said, “and put your story to him. But unless he can catch your uncle at work, as it were, with the waggons in the yard, there’s little chance of convicting him. That’s what I must impress upon your mind. I’m afraid I sound very unhelpful, but the position is a difficult one from every point of view. And then again, you don’t want your uncle to be implicated in the business, but I don’t see how it can be avoided, if it comes to an arrest.”

“What do you suggest I should do, then?” said Mary helplessly.

“If I were you I should play a waiting game,” he replied. “Keep a close watch on your uncle, and when the waggons do come again you can report at once to me. We can then decide together what is best to be done. That is, if you will honour me again with your confidence.”

“What about the stranger who disappeared?” said Mary. “He was murdered. I’m certain of that. Do you mean to say that nothing can ever be done about it?”

“I’m afraid not, unless his body is found, which is extremely unlikely,” said the vicar. “It is quite possible that he was never killed at all, for that matter. Forgive me, but I think you allowed your imagination to run away with you over that. All you saw was a piece of rope, remember. If you had actually seen the man dead, or even wounded—well, that’s a different tale altogether.”

“I heard my uncle threaten him,” persisted Mary. “Isn’t that enough?”

“My dear child, people threaten one another every day in the year, but they don’t hang for it. Now listen to me. I am your friend, and you can trust me. If you ever become worried or distressed in any way, I want you to come and tell me about it. You are not afraid of walking, judging by your performance this afternoon, and Altarnun is only a few miles by the highroad. If you come at any time and I’m not in, Hannah will be here, and she will look after you. Now that’s a bargain between us, isn’t it?”

“Thank you very much.”

“Now put on your stockings again, and your shoes, while I go to the stable and get the trap. I’m going to drive you back to Jamaica Inn.”

The thought of returning was hateful to Mary, but it had to be faced. The contrast between this peaceful room with the gentle shaded candles, the warm log fire, the deep chair, and the cold grim passages of Jamaica Inn, with her own little cupboard of a room over the porch, must be avoided at all costs. There was one thing to bear in mind, and that was that she could come back here when she wished.

The night was fine; the dark clouds of the early evening had passed away, and the sky was ablaze with stars. Mary sat beside Francis Davey on the high seat of the dogcart, wrapped in a greatcoat with a top collar of velvet. This was not the same horse that he had been riding when she met him on the moor; this was a big grey cob who, fresh from his sojourn in the stable, went like the wind. It was a strange, exhilarating drive. The wind blew in Mary’s face, stinging her eyes. The climb from Altarnun had been slow at first, for the hill was steep, but now they were upon the highroad, with their faces turned to Bodmin, the vicar pricked the cob with his whip, so that he laid his ears flat to his head and galloped like a mad thing.

His hoofs thundered on the hard white road, raising a cloud of dust, and Mary was flung against her companion. He made no effort to rein in his horse, and, glancing up at him, Mary saw that he was smiling. “Go on,” he said, “go on; you can go faster than this”; and his voice was low and excited, as though he were talking to himself. The effect was unnatural, a little startling, and Mary was aware of a feeling of discomfiture, as though he had betaken himself to another world and had forgotten her existence.

Seated where she was, she could observe him for the first time in profile, and she saw how clear-cut were his features, how prominent the thin nose; perhaps it was the peculiarity of nature’s creating him white in the beginning that made him different from any man she had ever seen before.

He looked like a bird. Crouched in his seat, with his black cape-coat blown out by the wind, his arms were like wings. He might be any age, and she could not place him at all. Then he smiled down at her and was human again.

“I love these moors,” he said. “You have had a bad introduction to them, of course, so you can’t understand me. If you knew them as well as I do, and had seen them in every mood, winter and summer, you would love them too. They have a fascination unlike any other part of the county. They go back a long way in time. Sometimes I think they are the survival of another age. The moors were the first things to be created; afterwards came the forests, and the valleys, and the sea. Climb Rough Tor one morning before sunrise and listen to the wind in the stones. You’ll know what I mean then.”

Mary kept thinking of the parson at her home. He was a cheerful little man with a long string of children exactly like himself, and his wife made damson cheese. He preached the same sermon always on Christmas Day, and his parishioners could have prompted him anywhere. She wondered what Francis Davey said in his church at Altarnun. Did he preach about Rough Tor, and the light on Dozmary pool? They had come to the dip in the road now, where a cluster of trees made a little valley for the river Fowey, and in front of them stretched the climb to the high, unsheltered ground, Already Mary could see the tall chimneys of Jamaica Inn outlined against the sky.

The drive was ended, and the exhilaration went from her. The old dread and loathing for her uncle returned. The vicar stopped his horse just short of the yard, under the lee of the grass bank.

“There’s no sign of anyone,” he said quietly. “It’s like a house of the dead. Would you like me to try the door?”

Mary shook her head. “It’s bolted always,” she whispered, “and the windows are barred. That’s my room, over the porch. I can scramble up there, if you let me climb on your shoulder. I’ve managed worse places than that at home. My window is open at the top; once on the porch, it will be easy enough.”

“You’ll slip on those slates,” he answered. “I won’t let you do it. It’s absurd. Is there no other way of getting in? What about the back?”

“The door of the bar will be bolted, and the kitchen too,” said Mary. “We can slip round, if you like, and make certain.”

She led the way round to the other side of the house, and then she turned to him suddenly, her finger to her lips. “There’s a light in the kitchen,” she whispered. “That means my uncle is there. Aunt Patience always goes up early. There are no curtains to the window; if we pass by he will see us.” She leant back against the wall of the house. Her companion motioned her to be still.

“Very well,” he said, “I will take care he does not see me. I am going to look in at the window.”

She watched him to the side of the window, and he stood there for a few minutes gazing into the kitchen. Then he beckoned to her to follow, that same tense smile on his face she had noticed before. His face looked very pale against his black shovel hat. “There’ll be no argument tonight with the landlord of Jamaica Inn,” he said.

Mary followed the direction of his eyes and pressed forwards to the window. The kitchen was lit by a single candle stuck sideways into a bottle. It had already burnt down halfway, and great blobs of grease clung to the side of it. The flame itself wavered and spluttered in the draught from the door, which was wide open to the garden. Joss Merlyn sprawled at the table in a drunken stupor, his great legs stretched out on either side of him, his hat on the back of his head. He stared before him at the guttering candle, his eyes glazed and fixed like a dead man’s. Another bottle lay with its neck smashed on the table, and beside it an empty glass. The peat fire had smouldered itself to nothing.

Francis Davey pointed to the open door. “You can walk inside and go upstairs to bed,” he said. “Your uncle will not even see you. Fasten the door after you, and blow out the candle. You don’t want a fire on your hands. Good night to you, Mary Yellan. If you are ever in trouble and need me, I shall be waiting for you at Altarnun.”

Then he turned the corner of the house and was gone.

Mary tiptoed into the kitchen and closed and fastened the door. She could have slammed it had she wished, it would not have roused her uncle.

He had gone to his kingdom of heaven, and the little world was lost to him. She blew out the light beside him and left him alone in the darkness.

Joss Merlyn was drunk for five days. He was insensible most of the time and lay stretched out on a bed in the kitchen that Mary and her aunt had improvised between them. He slept with his mouth wide open, and the sound of his breathing could be heard from the bedrooms above. About five in the evening he would wake for half an hour or so, shouting for brandy and sobbing like a child. His wife went to him at once and soothed him and settled his pillow. She gave him a little weak brandy-and-water, talking to him gently as she would to a sick child, holding the glass to his lips; and he stared around him with glaring bloodshot eyes, muttering to himself, and shivering like a dog.

Aunt Patience became another woman, showing a calm coolness and a presence of mind that Mary had not believed her capable of possessing. She gave herself up entirely to this nursing of her husband. She was obliged to do everything for him, and Mary watched her change his blankets and his linen with a sick feeling of disgust in her own heart, for she could not have borne to go near him. Aunt Patience took it as a matter of course, and the oaths and screams with which he greeted her did not appear to frighten her. These were the only times when she had the controlling of him, and he would let her sponge his forehead with a towel and hot water without a protest. Then she would tuck the fresh blanket under him, and smooth his mat of hair, and in a few minutes he would be asleep again, his face purple and his mouth wide open, with his tongue protruding, snoring like a bull. It was impossible to live in the kitchen, and Mary and her aunt turned the little disused parlour into a dwelling room for themselves. For the first time Aunt Patience became something of a companion. She chatted happily of the old days in Helford, when she and Mary’s mother had been girls together; she moved swiftly and lightly about the house, and sometimes Mary would hear her humming snatches of old hymns as she passed backwards and forwards to the kitchen. It seemed that every two months or so Joss Merlyn would have these bouts of drinking. The times used to be further apart, but now they were becoming more frequent, and Aunt Patience was never quite certain when they would occur. This present one had been caused by the visit of Squire Bassat to the inn—the landlord had been very angry and upset, she told Mary—and when he came back from the moors at six in the evening he went straight to the bar. She knew then what would happen.

Aunt Patience accepted without question her niece’s explanation of losing herself on the moors. She told her she must beware of the bogs and left it at that. Mary was greatly relieved. She did not want to give details of the adventure, and she was determined to say nothing of her meeting with the vicar of Altarnun. Meanwhile Joss Merlyn lay in his stupor in the kitchen, and the two women spent five comparatively peaceful days.

The weather was cold and grey and did not tempt Mary from the house, but on the fifth morning the wind dropped and the sun shone, and, in spite of the adventure that had befallen her only a few days before, Mary decided to brave the moors again. The landlord was awake at nine and began to shout at the top of his voice, and what with the noise he made, and the smell from the kitchen that now pervaded the rest of the house, and the sight of Aunt Patience bustling downstairs with clean blankets over her arm, Mary was seized with a rush of disgust and a loathing for the whole business.

Feeling very ashamed of herself, she slipped out of the house, rolling a crust of bread in a handkerchief, and crossed the highroad to the moors. This time she made for the East Moor, striking out towards Kilmar, and with the whole day in front of her there was no fear of being lost. She kept thinking about Francis Davey, her strange vicar of Altarnun, and she realised how little he had told her of himself, while he had from her a life history in an evening. She thought what an odd figure he must have looked, painting his picture beside the waters of Dozmary, hatless, perhaps, his halo of white hair standing up around his head; and there would be gulls flying inland from the sea, skimming the surface of the lake. He would look like Elijah in the wilderness.

She wondered what had called him to priesthood, and whether he was loved by the people of Altarnun. It was nearly Christmas now, and home at Helford people would be decorating with holly and evergreen and mistletoe. There would be a great baking of pastry and cakes, and a fattening of turkeys and geese. The little parson, wearing a festive air, would beam upon his world, and on Christmas Eve he would ride up after tea to drink sloe gin at Trelowarren. Did Francis Davey decorate his church with holly and call down a blessing upon the people?