Du Maurier, Daphne (18 page)

At first she had felt sick, deadly sick; she had lain on her bed that night, praying for the mercy of sleep, and it had been denied her. There were faces in the darkness that she had not known; the worn and weary faces of drowned people. There was a child with broken wrists; and a woman whose long wet hair clung to her face; and the screaming, frightened faces of men who had never learnt to swim. Sometimes it seemed to her that her own mother and father were amongst them; they looked up at her with wide eyes and pallid lips, and they stretched out their hands. Perhaps this was what Aunt Patience suffered, alone in her room at night; the faces came to her too, and pleaded, and she pushed them away. She would not give them release. In her own way Aunt Patience was a murderer too. She had killed them by her silence. Her guilt was as great as Joss Merlyn’s himself, for she was a woman and he was a monster. He was bound to her flesh, and she let him remain.

Now that it was the third day, and the first horror had passed, Mary felt indifferent, rather old, and very tired. Most of the feeling had gone from her. It seemed to her that she had always known now; that at the back of her mind she had been prepared. The first sight of Joss Merlyn, standing beneath the porch with a lantern in his hands, had been a warning; while the sound of the coach rattling away down the highroad and out of her hearing had rung like a farewell.

In the old days at Helford, there had been whispers of these things: little snatches of gossip overheard in the village lanes, a fragment of story, a denial, a shake of the head, but men did not talk much, and the stories were discouraged. Twenty, fifty years ago, perhaps, when her father had been young; but not now, not in the light of the new century. Once more she saw her uncle’s face pressed close to hers, and she heard his whisper in her ear, “Did you never hear of wreckers before?” These were words that she had never heard breathed, but Aunt Patience had lived amongst them for ten years…. Mary did not consider her uncle any more. She had lost her fear of him. There was only loathing left in her heart, loathing and disgust. He had lost all hold on humanity. He was a beast that walked by night. Now that she had seen him drunk, and she knew him for what he was, he could not frighten her. Neither he nor the rest of his company. They were things of evil, rotting the countryside, and she would never rest until they were trodden underfoot, and cleared, and blotted out. Sentiment would not save them again.

There remained Aunt Patience—and Jem Merlyn. He broke into her thoughts against her will, and she did not want him. There was enough on her mind without reckoning with Jem. He was too like his brother. His eyes, and his mouth, and his smile. That was the danger of it. She could see her uncle in his walk, in the turn of his head; and she knew why Aunt Patience had made a fool of herself ten years ago. It would be easy enough to fall in love with Jem Merlyn. Men had not counted for much in her life up to the present; there had been too much to do on the farm at Helford to worry about them. There had been lads who had smiled at her in church and gone with her to picnics harvest-time; once a neighbour had kissed her behind a hayrick after a glass of cider. It was all very foolish, and she had avoided the man ever since; a harmless enough fellow, too, who forgot the incident five minutes later. Anyway, she would never marry; it was a long while since she had decided that. She would save money in some way and do a man’s work on a farm. Once she got away from Jamaica Inn and could put it behind her, and make some sort of a home for Aunt Patience, she was not likely to have time on her hands to think of men. And there, in spite of herself, came Jem’s face again, with the growth of beard like a tramp, and his dirty shirt, and his bold offensive stare. He lacked tenderness; he was rude; and he had more than a streak of cruelty in him; he was a thief and a liar. He stood for everything she feared and hated and despised; but she knew she could love him. Nature cared nothing for prejudice. Men and women were like the animals on the farm at Helford, she supposed; there was a common law of attraction for all living things, some similarity of skin or touch, and they would go to one another. This was no choice made with the mind. Animals did not reason, neither did the birds in the air. Mary was no hypocrite; she was bred to the soil, and she had lived too long with birds and beasts, had watched them mate, and bear their young, and die. There was precious little romance in nature, and she would not look for it in her own life. She had seen the girls at home walk with the village lads; and there would be a holding of hands, and blushing and confusion, and long-drawn sighs, and a gazing at the moonlight on the water. Mary would see them wander down the grass lane at the back of the farm—Lovers’ Lane they called it, though the older men had a better word for it than that— and the lad would have his arm round the waist of his girl, and she with her head on his shoulder. They would look at the stars and the moon, or the flaming sunset if it was summer weather, and Mary, coming out of the cowshed, wiped the sweat from her face with dripping hands, and thought of the newborn calf she had left beside its mother. She looked after the departing couple, and smiled, and shrugged her shoulders, and, going into the kitchen, she told her mother there would be a wedding in Helford before the month was past. And then the bells would ring, and the cake be cut, and the lad in his Sunday clothes would stand on the steps of the church with shining face and shuffling feet with his bride beside him dressed in muslin, her straight hair curled for the occasion; but before the year was out the moon and the stars could shine all night for all they cared, when the lad came home at evening tired from his work in the fields, and calling sharply that his supper was burnt, not fit for a dog, while the girl snapped back at him from the bedroom overhead, her figure sagging and her curls gone, pacing backward and forward with a bundle in her arms that mewed like a cat and would not sleep. There was no talk then of the moonlight on the water. No, Mary had no illusions about romance. Falling in love was a pretty name for it, that was all. Jem Merlyn was a man, and she was a woman, and whether it was his hands or his skin or his smile she did not know, but something inside her responded to him, and the very thought of him was an irritant and a stimulant at the same time. It nagged at her and would not let her be. She knew she would have to see him again. Once more she looked up at the grey sky and the low-flying clouds. If she was going to Launceston, then it was time to make ready and be away. There would be no excuses to make; she had grown hard in the last four days. Aunt Patience could think what she liked. If she had any intuition, she must guess that Mary did not want to see her. And she would look at her husband, with his bloodshot eyes and his shaking hands, and she would understand. Once more, perhaps for the last time, the drink had loosened his tongue. His secret was spilt; and Mary held his future in her hands. She had not yet determined what use to make of her knowledge, but she would not save him again. Today she would go to Launceston with Jem Merlyn, and this time it was he who would answer her questions; he would show some humility too when he realised she was no longer afraid of them, but could destroy them when she chose. And tomorrow—well, tomorrow could take care of itself. There was always Francis Davey and his promise; there would be peace and shelter for her at the house in Altarnun.

This was a strange Christmastide, she pondered, as she strode across the East Moor with Hawk’s Tor as her guide, and the hills rolling away from her on either side. Last year she had knelt beside her mother in church, and prayed that health and strength and courage should be given to them both. She had prayed for peace of mind and security; she had asked that her mother might be spared to her long, and that the farm should prosper. For answer came sickness, and poverty, and death. She was alone now, caught in a mesh of brutality and crime, living beneath a roof she loathed, amongst people she despised; and she was walking out across a barren, friendless moor to meet a horse thief and a murderer of men. She would offer no prayers to God this Christmas.

Mary waited on the high ground above Rushyford, and in the distance she saw the little cavalcade approach her: the pony, the jingle, and two horses tethered behind. The driver raised his whip in a signal of welcome. Mary felt the colour flame into her face and drain away. This weakness was a thing of torment to her, and she longed for it to be tangible and alive so that she could tear it from her and trample it underfoot. She thrust her hands into her shawl and waited, her forehead puckered in a frown. He whistled as he approached her and flung a small package at her feet. “A happy Christmas to you,” he said. “I had a silver piece in my pocket yesterday and it burnt a hole. There’s a new handkerchief for your head.”

She had meant to be curt and silent on meeting him, but this introduction made it difficult for her. “That’s very kind of you,” she said. “I’m afraid you’ve wasted your money all the same.”

“That’s doesn’t worry me, I’m used to it,” he told her, and he looked her up and down in the cool offensive way of his, and whistled a tuneless song. “You were early here,” he said. “Were you afraid I’d be going without you?”

She climbed into the cart beside him and gathered the reins in her hands. “I like to have the feel of them again,” she said, ignoring his remark. “Mother and I, we would drive into Helston once a week on market days. It all seems very long ago. I have a pain in my heart when I think of it, and how we used to laugh together, even when times were bad. You wouldn’t understand that, of course. You’ve never cared for anything but yourself.”

He folded his arms and watched her handle the reins.

“That pony would cross the moor blindfold,” he told her. “Give him his head, can’t you? He’s never stumbled in his life. That’s better. He’s taking charge of you, remember, and you can leave him to it. What were you saying?”

Mary held the reins lightly in her hands and looked at the track ahead of her. “Nothing very much,” she answered. “In a way I was talking to myself. So you’re going to sell two ponies at the fair, then?”

“Double profit, Mary Yellan, and you shall have a new dress if you help me. Don’t smile and shrug your shoulder. I hate ingratitude. What’s the matter with you today? Your colour is gone, and you’ve no light in your eyes. Are you feeling sick, or have you a pain in your belly?”

“I’ve not been out of the house since I saw you last,” she said. “I stayed up in my room with my thoughts. They didn’t make cheerful company. I’m a deal older than I was four days ago.”

“I’m sorry you’ve lost your looks,” he went on. “I fancied jogging into Launceston with a pretty girl beside me, and fellows looking up as we passed and winking. You’re drab today. Don’t lie to me, Mary. I’m not as blind as you think. What’s happened at Jamaica Inn?”

“Nothing’s happened,” she said. “My aunt patters about in the kitchen, and my uncle sits at the table with his head in his hands and a bottle of brandy in front of him. It’s only myself that has changed.”

“You’ve had no more visitors, have you?”

“None that I know of. Nobody’s crossed the yard.”

“Your mouth is set very firm, and there are smudges under your eyes. You’re tired. I’ve seen a woman look like that before, but there was a reason for it. Her husband came back to her at Plymouth after four years at sea. You can’t make that excuse. Have you been thinking about me by any chance?”

“Yes, I thought about you once,” she said. “I wondered who would hang first, you or your brother. There’s little in it, from what I can see.”

“If Joss hangs, it will be his own fault,” said Jem. “If ever a man puts a rope around his own neck, he does. He goes three quarters of the way to meet trouble. When it does get him it will serve him right, and there’ll be no brandy bottle to save him then. He’ll swing sober.”

They jogged along in silence, Jem playing with the throng of the whip, and Mary aware of his hands beside her. She glanced down at them out of the tail of her eye, and she saw they were long and slim; they had the same strength, the same grace, as his brother’s. These attracted her; the others repelled her. She realised for the first time that aversion and attraction ran side by side; that the boundary line was thin between them. The thought was an unpleasant one, and she shrank from it. Supposing this had been Joss beside her ten, twenty years ago? She shuttered the comparison at the back of her mind, fearing the picture it conjured. She knew now why she hated her uncle.

His voice broke in upon her thoughts. “What are you looking at?” he said. She lifted her eyes to the scene in front of her. “I happened to notice your hands,” she said briefly; “they are like your brother’s. How far do we go across the moor? Isn’t that the highroad winding away yonder?”

“We strike it lower down, and miss two or three miles of it. So you notice a man’s hands, do you? I should never have believed it of you. You’re a woman after all, then, and not a half-fledged farm boy. Are you going to tell me why you’ve sat in your room for four days without speaking, or do you want me to guess? Women love to be mysterious.”

“There’s no mystery in it. You asked me last time we met if I knew why my aunt looked like a living ghost. Those were your words, weren’t they? Well, I know now, that’s all.”

Jem watched her with curious eyes, and then he whistled again.

“Drink’s a funny thing,” he said, after a moment or two. “I got drunk once, in Amsterdam, the time I ran away to sea. I remember hearing a church clock strike half past nine in the evening, and I was sitting on the floor with my arms round a pretty red-haired girl. The next thing I knew, it was seven in the following morning, and I was lying on my back in the gutter, without any boots or breeches. I often wonder what I did during those ten hours. I’ve thought and thought, but I’m damned if I can remember.”

“That’s very fortunate for you,” said Mary. “Your brother is not so lucky. When he gets drunk he finds his memory instead of losing it.”

The pony slacked in his stride, and she flicked at him with the reins. “If he’s alone he can talk to himself,” she continued; “it wouldn’t have much effect on the walls of Jamaica Inn. This time he was not alone, though. I happened to be there when he woke from his stupor. And he’d been dreaming.”