"Very well," he said; "we'll strike a bargain, you and I, as you suggested. We'll come to handsome terms. I've changed my mind after all, my loving friend, and with your help we'll take the road to Devon. There's stuff in this place worth taking, as you reminded me, nor can I load alone. Tomorrow is Sunday, and a blessed day of rest. Not even the wrecking of fifty ships will drag the people of this country from their knees. There'll be blinds down, and sermons, and long faces, and prayers offered for poor sailor-men who come by misadventure by the Devil's hand; but they'll not go seeking the Devil on the Sabbath.
"Twenty-four hours we have, Harry, my boy, and tomorrow night, when you've broken your back spading turf and turnips over my property in the farm-cart, and kissed me good-bye, and Patience too, and maybe Mary there as well--why, then you can go down on your knees and thank Joss Merlyn for letting you go free with your life, instead of squatting on your scut in a ditch, where you belong to be, with a bullet in your black heart."
He raised his gun again, edging the cold muzzle close to the man's throat. The pedlar whimpered, showing the whites of his eyes. The landlord laughed.
"You're a pretty marksman in your way, Harry," he said. "Isn't that the spot you touched on Ned Santo the other night? You laid his windpipe bare, and the blood whistled out in a stream. He was a good boy, was Ned, but hasty with his tongue. That's where you got him, wasn't it?"
Closer the muzzle pressed against the pedlar's throat. "If I made a mistake now, Harry, your windpipe would come clean, just like poor Ned's. You don't want me to make a mistake, do you?"
The pedlar could not speak. His eyes rolled up in a squint and his hand opened wide, the four fingers spread square, as though clamped to the floor.
The landlord shifted his gun, and, bending down, he jerked the pedlar to his feet. "Come on," he said; "do you think I'm going to play with you all night? A jest is a jest for five minutes; after that it becomes a burden on the flesh. Open the kitchen door, and turn to the right, and walk down the passage until I tell you to stop. You can't escape through the entrance to the bar; every door and window in this place is barred. Your hands have been itching to explore the wreckage we brought from the shore, haven't they, Harry? You shall spend the night in the store-room among it all. Do you know, Patience, my dear, I believe this is the first time we've offered hospitality at Jamaica Inn. I don't count Mary there; she's part of the household." He laughed, in high good humor, his mood switched round now like a weathercock, and, butting his gun into the pedlar's back, he prodded him out of the kitchen and down the dark flagged passage to the store. The door, that had been battered in rough-and-ready manner by Squire Bassat and his servant, had been reinforced with new planking and post, and was now as strong as, if not stronger than, before. Joss Merlyn had not been entirely idle during the past week.
After he had turned the key on his friend, with a parting injunction not to feed the rats, whose numbers had increased, the landlord returned to the kitchen, a rumble of laughter in his chest.
"I thought Harry would turn sour," he said. "I've seen it coming in his eyes for weeks, long before this mess landed on us. He'll fight on the winning side, but he'll bite your hand when the luck turns. He's jealous; he's yellow-green with it, rotten through and through. He's jealous of me. They're all jealous of me. They knew I had brains, and hated me for it. What are you staring at me for, Mary? You'd better get your supper and go to bed. You have a long journey before you tomorrow night, and I warn you here and now it won't be an easy one."
Mary looked at him across the table. The fact that she would not be going with him did not concern her for the moment; he might think as he liked about it. Tired as she was, for the strain of all she had seen and done weighed heavily upon her, her mind was seething with plans.
Sometime, somehow, before tomorrow night, she must go to Altarnun. Once there, her responsibility was over. Action would be taken by others. It would be hard for Aunt Patience, hard for herself at first, perhaps; she knew nothing of the jingle and complexities of the law; but at least justice would win. It would be easy enough to clear her own name, and her aunt's. The thought of her uncle, who sat before her now, his mouth full of stale bread and cheese, standing as he would with his hands bound behind him, powerless for the first time and forever, was something that afforded her exquisite pleasure, and she turned the picture over and over in her mind, improving upon it. Aunt Patience would recover in time; and the years would drain away from her, bringing her peace at last, and quietude. Mary wondered how the capture would be effected when the moment came. Perhaps they would set out upon the journey as he had arranged, and as they turned out upon the road, he laughing in his assurance, they would be surrounded by a band of men, strong in number and in arms, and as he struggled against them hopelessly, borne to the ground by force, she would lean down to him and smile. "I thought you had brains, uncle," she would say to him, and he would know.
She dragged her eyes away from him, and turned to the dresser for her candle. "I'll have no supper tonight," she said.
Aunt Patience made a little murmur of distress, lifting her eyes from the plain slab of bread on the plate before her, but Joss Merlyn kicked at her for silence. "Let her stay sulky if she has the mind, can't you?" he said. "What does it matter to you if she eats or not? Starvation is good for women and beasts; it brings 'em to heel. She'll be humble enough in the morning. Wait, Mary; you shall sleep sounder still if I turn the key on you. I want no prowlers in the passage."
His eyes strayed to the gun against the wall, and half-consciously back to the shutter, that still gaped open before the kitchen window.
"Fasten that window, Patience," he said thoughtfully, "and put the bar across the shutter. When you have finished your supper, you too can go to bed. I shall not leave the kitchen tonight."
His wife looked up at him in fear, struck by the tone of his voice, and would have spoken, but he cut her short. "Haven't you learned by now not to question me?" he shouted. She rose at once and went to the window. Mary, her candle alight, waited by the door. "All right," he said. "Why are you standing there? I told you to go." Mary went out into the dark passage, her candle throwing her shadow behind her as she walked. No sound came from the store at the end of the passage, and she thought of the pedlar lying there in the darkness, watching and waiting for the day. The thought of him was abhorrent to her; like a rat he was, imprisoned among his fellows, and she suddenly pictured him with rat's claws scratching and gnawing at the framework of the door, scraping his way to freedom in the silence of the night.
She shuddered, strangely thankful that her uncle had decided to make a prisoner of her as well. The house was treacherous tonight, her very footsteps sounding hollow on the flags, and there were echoes that came unbidden from the walls. Even the kitchen, the one room in the house to possess some measure of warmth and normality, gaped back at her as she left it, yellow and sinister in the candlelight. Was her uncle going to sit there, then, the candles extinguished, his gun across his knee, waiting for something?... for someone?... He crossed into the hall as she mounted the stairs, and he followed her along the landing to the bedroom over the porch.
"Give me your key," he said, and she handed it to him without a word. He lingered for a moment, looking down at her, and then he bent low and laid his fingers on her mouth.
"I've a soft spot for you, Mary," he said; "you've got spirit still, and pluck, for all the knocks I've given you. I've seen it in your eyes tonight. If I'd been a younger man I'd have courted you, Mary--aye, and won you too, and ridden away with you to glory. You know that, don't you?"
She said nothing. She stared back at him as he stood beyond the door, and her hand that held the candlestick trembled slightly without her knowledge.
He lowered his voice to a whisper. "There's danger for me ahead," he said. "Never mind the law; I can bluff my way to freedom if it comes to that. The whole of Cornwall can come running at my heels for all I care. It's other game I have to watch for--footsteps
, Mary, that come in the night and go again, and a hand that would strike me down."
His face looked lean and old in the half-light, and there was a flicker of meaning in his eyes that leaped like a flame to tell her, and then dulled again. "We'll put the Tamar between us and Jamaica Inn," he said; and then he smiled, the curve of his mouth painfully familiar to her, and known, like an echo from the past. He shut the door upon her and turned the key.
She heard him tramp down the stairs and so down into the passage, and he turned the corner to the kitchen and was gone.
She went then to her bed, and sat down upon it, her hands in her lap; and, for some reason forever unexplained, thrust away from her later and forgotten, side by side with the little old sins of childhood and those dreams never acknowledged to the sturdy day, she put her fingers to her lips as he had done, and let them stray thence to her cheek and back again.
And she began to cry, softly and secretly, the tears tasting bitter as they fell upon her hand.
13
She had fallen asleep where she lay, without undressing, and her first conscious thought was that the storm had come again, bringing with it the rain which streamed against her window. She opened her eyes, and saw that the night was still, without a tremor of wind from without or the patter of rain. Her senses were alert at once, and she waited for a repetition of the sound that had woken her. It came again in an instant--a shower of earth flung against the pane of glass from the yard outside. She swung her legs to the floor and listened, weighing in her mind the possibility of danger.
If this was a warning signal, the method was a crude one, and better ignored. Someone with little idea of the geography of the inn might have mistaken her window for the landlord's. Her uncle waited below with his gun across his knee in preparation for a visitor; perhaps the visitor had come, and was now standing in the yard... Curiosity gained the better of her in the end, and she crept softly to the window, holding herself in the shadow of the jutting wall. The night was black still, and there were shadows everywhere, but low in the sky a thin line of cloud foretold the dawn.
She had not been mistaken, though; the earth on the floor was real enough, and so was the figure standing directly beneath the porch: the figure of a man. She crouched by the window, waiting for his further movement. He bent again to the ground, fumbling in the barren flower-bed outside the parlor window, and then he raised his hand and threw the little clod of earth at her window, spattering the pane with pebbles and soft mud.
This time she saw his face, and the wonder of it made her cry out in surprise, forgetting the caution to which she had trained herself.
It was Jem Merlyn standing below her in the yard. She leaned forward at once, opening her window, and would have called to him, but he lifted his hand for silence. He came close against the wall, skirting the porch which would have hidden her from him, and he cupped his hands to his mouth and whispered up to her, "Come down to the door here, and unbolt it for me."
She shook her head at him. "I cannot do that. I am locked here in my room," she told him. He stared at her, nonplussed and evidently puzzled, and he looked back at the house as though it might offer some solution of its own. He ran his hands along the slates, testing them, feeling for rusted nails used long ago for creeper, that might afford him foothold of a sort. The low tiles of the porch were within his reach, but they had no gripping surface; he would swing his legs from the ground to no purpose.
"Fetch me the blanket from your bed," he called softly.
She guessed at once his meaning, and tied one end of her blanket to the foot of her bed, throwing the other out of the window, where it dragged limply above his head. This time he had holding power, and, swinging himself to the low roof of the jutting porch, he was able to wedge his body between it and the walls of the house, his feet gripping the slates, and in this manner haul himself up the porch on a level with her window.
He swung his legs over, and straddled the porch, his face close to hers now, the blanket hanging loosely beside him. Mary struggled with the framework of the window, but her efforts were useless. The window opened only a foot or so; he could not enter the room without smashing the glass.
"I shall have to talk to you here," he said. "Come closer, where I can see you." She knelt on the floor of her room, her face at the window gap, and they stared at one another for a moment without speaking. He looked worn, and his eyes were hollow like one who has not slept and has endured fatigue. There were lines about his mouth she had not noticed before, nor did he smile.
"I owe you an apology," he said at length. "I deserted you without excuse at Launceston on Christmas Eve. You can forgive me or not, as you feel; but the reason for it--that I can't give you. I'm sorry."
This attitude of harshness did not suit him; he appeared to have changed much, and the change was unwelcome to her.
"I was anxious for your safety," she said. "I traced you to the White Hart and there I was told you had entered a carriage with some gentleman; nothing beyond that, no message, no word of explanation. Those men were there, standing before the fire, the horse-dealer who spoke with you in the market square. They were horrible men, curious, and I mistrusted them. I wondered if the theft of the pony had been discovered. I was wretched and worried. I blame you for nothing. Your business is your own."
She was hurt by his manner. She had expected anything but this. When she saw him first, in the yard outside her window, she thought of him only as the man she loved, who had come now to her in the night, seeking her presence. His coolness damped her flame, and she withdrew inside herself at once, trusting that he had not seen the blank disappointment in her face.
He did not even ask how she returned that night, and his indifference stunned her. "Why are you locked in your room?" he questioned.
She shrugged her shoulders, and her voice was flat and dull when she replied.
"My uncle does not care for eavesdroppers. He fears I should wander in the passage and stumble upon his secrets. You appear to have the same dislike of intrusion. To ask you why you are here tonight would be an offense, I suppose?"
"Oh, be as bitter as you like; I deserve it," he flashed suddenly. "I know what you think of me. One day I may be able to explain, if you're not out of my reach by then. Be a man for the moment, and send your hurt pride and your curiosity to hell. I'm treading delicate ground, Mary, and one false step will finish me. Where is my brother?"
"He told us he would spend the night in the kitchen. He is afraid of something, or someone; the windows and doors are barred, and he has his gun."
Jem laughed harshly. "I don't doubt he's afraid. He'll be more frightened still before many hours are passed, I can tell you that. I came here to see him, but if he sits there with a gun across his knee I can postpone my visit until tomorrow, when the shadows are gone."
"Tomorrow may be too late."
"What do you mean?"
"He intends to leave Jamaica Inn at nightfall."
"Are you telling me the truth?"
"Why should I lie to you now?"
Jem was silent. The news had evidently come as a surprise to him, and he was turning it over in his mind. Mary watched him, tortured by doubt and indecision; she was thrown back now upon her old suspicion of him. He was the visitor expected by her uncle, and therefore hated by him and feared. He was the man who held the threads of her uncle's life between his hands. The sneering face of the pedlar returned to her again, and his words, that so provoked the landlord to a flame of fury: "Listen here, Joss Merlyn, do you take your orders from one above you?" The man whose wits made service of the landlord's strength, the man who had hidden in the empty room.
She thought again of the laughing, carefree Jem who had driven her to Launceston, who had swung hands with her in the market square, who had kissed her and held her. Now he was grave and silent, his face in shadow. The idea of dual personality troubled her, and frightened her as well. He was like a stranger to her tonight, obsessed by some grim purpose she could not u
nderstand. Warning him of the landlord's intended flight had been a false move on her part; it might confound the issue of her plans. Whatever Jem had done or intended to do, whether he were false and treacherous and a murderer of men, she loved him, in the weakness of her flesh, and owed him warning.
"You'd best have a care for yourself when you see your brother," she said. "His mood is dangerous; whoever interferes with his plans now risks his life. I tell you this for your own safety."
"I have no fear of Joss, nor ever had."
"Perhaps not; but what if he is afraid of you?"
To this he said nothing, but, leaning forward suddenly, he looked into her face and touched the scratch that ran from her forehead to her chin.
"Who did this?" he said sharply, turning from the scratch to the bruise on her cheek. She hesitated a moment, and then answered him.
"I got them Christmas Eve."
The gleam in his eye told her at once that he understood, and had knowledge of the evening, and because of it was here now at Jamaica Inn.
"You were there with them, on the shore?" he whispered.
She nodded, watching him carefully, wary of speech, and for answer he cursed aloud, and, reaching forward, smashed the pane of glass with his fist, careless of the splitting sound of glass and the blood that spouted immediately from his hand. The gap in the window was wide enough now for entrance, and he had climbed into the room and was beside her before she realized what he had done. He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed, and laid her down upon it; and, fumbling in the darkness for a candle, he found it at length and lit it, and came back to the bed and knelt beside it, throwing the light upon her face. He traced the bruises with his finger down her neck, and when she winced with the pain he drew in his breath quickly, and again she heard him swear. "I might have spared you this," he said; and then, blowing out the light, he sat down beside her on the bed and reached for her hand, which he held a moment, tight, and then gave back to her.