"No, he has been in the district since Christmas. He told me so himself. As a matter of fact, it had come to his ears that I had given you shelter, and he came up to me with a message for you. "Tell her how sorry I am." That is what he said. I presume he referred to your aunt."
"Was that all he said?"
"I believe he would have said more, but Mr. Bassat interrupted us."
"Mr. Bassat? Mr. Bassat was there when he spoke to you?"
"Why, of course. There were several of the gentlemen in the room. It was just before I came away from North Hill this evening, when the discussion was closed for the day."
"Why was Jem Merlyn present at the discussion?"
"He had a right, I suppose, as brother of the deceased. He did not appear much moved by his loss, but perhaps they did not agree."
"Did--did Mr. Bassat and the gentlemen question him?"
"There was a considerable amount of talk among them the whole day. Young Merlyn appears to possess intelligence. His answers were most astute. He must have a far better brain than his brother ever had. You told me he lived somewhat precariously, I remember. He stole horses, I believe."
Mary nodded. Her fingers traced a pattern on the tablecloth.
"He seems to have done that when there was nothing better to do," said the vicar, "but when a chance came for him to use his intelligence he took it, and small blame to him, I suppose. No doubt he was well paid."
The gentle voice wore away at her nerves, pinpricking them with every word, and she knew now that he had defeated her, and she could no longer keep up the pretense of indifference. She lifted her face to him, her eyes heavy with the agony of restraint, and she spread out her hands in supplication.
"What will they do to him, Mr. Davey?" she said. "What will they do to him?"
The pale, expressionless eyes stared back at her, and for the first time she saw a shadow pass across them, and a flicker of surprise.
"Do?" he said, obviously puzzled. "Why should they do anything? I suppose he has made his peace with Mr. Bassat and has nothing more to fear. They will hardly throw old sins in his face after the service he has done them."
"I don't understand you. What service has he done?"
"Your mind works slowly tonight, Mary Yellan, and I appear to talk in riddles. Did you not know that it was Jem Merlyn who informed against his brother?"
She stared at him stupidly, her brain clogged and refusing to work. She repeated the words after him like a child who learns a lesson.
"Jem Merlyn informed against his brother?"
The vicar pushed away his plate and began to set the things in order on the tray. "Why, certainly," he said; "so Mr. Bassat gave me to understand. It appears that it was the squire himself who fell in with your friend at Launceston on Christmas Eve, and carried him off to North Hill as an experiment. 'You've stolen my horse,' said he, 'and you're as big a rogue as your brother. I've the power to clap you in jail tomorrow and you wouldn't set eyes on a horse for a dozen years or more. But you can go free if you bring me proof that your brother at Jamaica Inn is the man I believe him to be.'
"Your young friend asked for time; and when the time was up he shook his head. 'No,' said he; 'you must catch him yourself if you want him. I'm damned if I'll have truck with the law.' But the squire pushed a proclamation under his nose. 'Look there, Jem,' he said, 'and see what you think of that. There's been the bloodiest wreck on Christmas Eve since the Lady of Gloucester went ashore above Padstow last winter. Now will you change your mind?' As to the rest of the story, the squire said little in my hearing--people were coming and going all the time, you must remember--but I gather your friend slipped his chain and ran for it in the night, and then came back again yesterday morning, when they thought to have seen the last of him, and went straight to the squire as he came out of church and said, as cool as you please, 'Very well, Mr. Bassat, you shall have your proof.' And that is why I remarked to you just now that Jem Merlyn had a better brain than his brother."
The vicar had cleared the table and set the tray in the corner, but he continued to stretch his legs before the fire and take his ease in the narrow high-backed chair. Mary took no account of his movements. She stared before her into space, her whole mind split, as it were, by his information, the evidence she had so fearfully and so painfully built against the man she loved collapsing into nothing like a pack of cards.
"Mr. Davey," she said slowly, "I believe I am the biggest fool that ever came out of Cornwall."
"I believe you are, Mary Yellan," said the vicar.
His dry tone, so cutting after the gentle voice she knew, was a rebuke in itself, and she accepted it with humility.
"Whatever happens," she continued, "I can face the future now, bravely and without shame."
"I am glad of that," he said.
She shook her hair back from her face and smiled for the first time since he had known her. The anxiety and the dread had gone from her at last.
"What else did Jem Merlyn say and do?" she asked.
The vicar glanced at his watch, and replaced it with a sigh.
"I wish I had the time to tell you," he said, "but it is nearly eight already. The hours go by too fast for both of us. I think we have talked enough about Jem Merlyn for the present."
"Tell me one thing--was he at North Hill when you left?"
"He was. In fact, it was his last remark that hurried me home."
"What did he say to you?"
"He did not address himself to me. He announced his intention of riding over tonight to visit the blacksmith at Warleggan."
"Mr. Davey, you are playing with me now."
"I most certainly am not. Warleggan is a long trek from North Hill, but I daresay he can find his way in the dark."
"What has it to do with you if he visits the blacksmith?"
"He will show the nail he picked up in the heather, down in the field below Jamaica Inn. The nail comes from a horse's shoe; the job was carelessly done, of course. The nail was a new one, and Jem Merlyn, being a stealer of horses, knows the work of every blacksmith on the moors. 'Look here,' he said to the squire. 'I found it this morning in the field behind the inn. Now you have had your discussions and want me no more, I'll ride to Warleggan, with your leave, and throw this in Tom Jory's face as bad workmanship.' "
"Well, and what then?" said Mary.
"Yesterday was Sunday, was it not? And on Sunday no blacksmith plies his trade unless he has great respect for his customer. Only one traveler passed Tom Jory's smithy yesterday, and begged a new nail for his lame horse, and the time was, I suppose, somewhere near seven o'clock in the evening. After which the traveler continued his journey by way of Jamaica Inn."
"How do you know this?" said Mary.
"Because the traveler was the vicar of Altarnun," he said.
17
A silence had fallen upon the room. Although the fire burned steady as ever, there was a chill in the air that had not been there before. Each waited for the other to speak, and Mary heard Francis Davey swallow once. At length she looked into his face, and saw what she expected: the pale, steadfast eyes staring at her across the table, cold no longer, but burning in the white mask of his face like living things at last. She knew now what he would have her know, but still she said nothing; she clung to ignorance as a source of protection, playing for time as the only ally in her favor.
His eyes compelled her to speak, and she continued to warm her hands at the fire, forcing a smile. "You are pleased to be mysterious tonight, Mr. Davey."
He did not answer at once; she heard him swallow again, and then he leaned forward in his chair, with an abrupt change of subject.
"You lost your confidence in me today before I came," he said. "You went to my desk and found the drawing; you were disturbed. No, I did not see you; I am no keyhole watcher; but I saw that the paper had been moved. You said to yourself, as you have said before, 'What manner of man is this vicar of Altarnun?' and when you heard my footsteps on the path you crou
ched in your chair there, before the fire, rather than look upon my face. Don't shrink from me, Mary Yellan; there is no longer any need for pretense between us, and we can be frank with one another, you and I."
Mary turned to him, and then away again; there was a message in his eyes she feared to read. "I am very sorry I went to your desk," she said; "such an action was unforgivable, and I don't yet know how I came to it. As for the drawing, I am ignorant of such things, and whether it be good or bad I cannot say."
"Never mind if it be good or bad, the point was that it frightened you?"
"Yes, Mr. Davey, it did."
"You said to yourself again, 'This man is a freak of nature, and his world is not my world.' You were right there, Mary Yellan. I live in the past, when men were not so humble as they are today. Oh, not your heroes of history in doublet and hose and narrow-pointed shoes--they were never my friends--but long ago in the beginning of time, when the rivers and the sea were one, and the old gods walked the hills."
He rose from his chair and stood before the fire, a lean black figure with white hair and eyes, and his voice was gentle now, as she had known it first.
"Were you a student, you would understand," he said, "but you are a woman, living already in the nineteenth century, and because of this my language is strange to you. Yes, I am a freak in nature and a freak in time. I do not belong here, and I was born with a grudge against the age, and a grudge against mankind. Peace is very hard to find in the nineteenth century. The silence is gone, even on the hills. I thought to find it in the Christian Church, but the dogma sickened me, and the whole foundation is built upon a fairy-tale. Christ Himself is a figurehead, a puppet thing created by man himself.
"However, we can talk of these things later, when the heat and turmoil of pursuit is not upon us. We have eternity before us. One thing at least, we have no traps or baggage, but can travel light, as they traveled of old."
Mary looked up at him, her hands gripping the sides of her chair.
"I don't understand you, Mr. Davey."
"Why, yes, you understand me very well. You know by now that I killed the landlord of Jamaica Inn, and his wife too; nor would the pedlar have lived had I known of his existence. You have pieced the story together in your own mind while I talked to you just now. You know that it was I who directed every move made by your uncle, and that he was a leader in name alone. I have sat here at night, with him in your chair there and the map of Cornwall spread out on the table before us. Joss Merlyn, the terror of the countryside, twisting his hat in his hands and touching his forelock when I spoke to him. He was like a child in the game, powerless without my orders, a poor blustering bully that hardly knew his right hand from his left. His vanity was like a bond between us, and the greater his notoriety among his companions the better was he pleased. We were successful, and he served me well; no other man knew the secret of our partnership.
"You were the block, Mary Yellan, against which we stubbed our toes. With your wide enquiring eyes and your gallant inquisitive head you came among us, and I knew that the end was near. In any case, we had played the game to its limit and the time had come to make an end. How you pestered me with your courage and your conscience, and how I admired you for it! Of course you must hear me in the empty guest-room at the inn, and must creep down to the kitchen and see the rope upon the beam: that was your first challenge.
"And then you steal out upon the moor after your uncle, who had tryst with me on Roughtor, and, losing him in the darkness, stumble upon myself and make me confidant. Well, I became your friend, did I not, and gave you good advice? Which, believe me, could not have been bettered by a magistrate himself. Your uncle knew nothing of our strange alliance, nor would he have understood. He brought his own death upon himself, by disobedience. I knew something of your determination, and that you would betray him at the first excuse. Therefore he should give you none, and time alone would quiet your suspicions. But your uncle must drink himself to madness on Christmas Eve, and, blundering like a savage and a fool, set the whole country in a blaze. I knew then he had betrayed himself, and with the rope around his neck would play his last card and name me master. Therefore he had to die, Mary Yellan, and your aunt, who was his shadow; and, had you been at Jamaica Inn last night when I passed by, you too--No, you would not have died."
He leaned down to her, and, taking her two hands, he pulled her to her feet, so that she stood level with him, looking in his eyes.
"No," he repeated, "you would not have died. You would have come with me then as you will come tonight."
She stared back at him, watching his eyes. They told her nothing--they were clear and cold as they had been before--but his grip upon her wrists was firm and held no promise of release.
"You are wrong," she said; "you would have killed me then as you will kill me now. I am not coming with you, Mr. Davey."
"Death to dishonor?" he said, smiling, the thin line breaking the mask of his face. "I face you with no such problem. You have gained your knowledge of the world from old books, Mary, where the bad man wears a tail beneath his cloak and breathes fire through his nostrils. You have proved yourself a dangerous opponent, and I prefer you by my side; there, that is a tribute. You are young, and you have a certain grace which I should hate to destroy. Besides, in time we will take up the threads of our first friendship, which has gone astray tonight."
"You are right to treat me as a child and a fool, Mr. Davey," said Mary. "I have been both since I stumbled against your horse that November evening. Any friendship we may have shared was a mockery and a dishonor, and you gave me counsel with the blood of an innocent man scarce dry upon your hands. My uncle at least was honest; drunk or sober, he blurted his crime to the four winds, and dreamed of them by night--to his terror. But you--you wear the garments of a priest of God to shield you from suspicion; you hide behind the Cross. You talk to me of friendship..."
"Your revolt and your disgust please me the more, Mary Yellan," he replied. "There is a dash of fire about you that the women of old possessed. Your companionship is not a thing to be thrown aside. Come, let us leave religion out of our discussion. When you know me better we will return to it, and I will tell you how I sought refuge from myself in Christianity, and found it to be built upon hatred, and jealousy, and greed--all the man-made attributes of civilization, while the old pagan barbarism was naked and clean.
"I have had my soul sickened... Poor Mary, with your feet fast in the nineteenth century and your bewildered faun face looking up to mine, who admit myself a freak of nature and a shame upon your little world. Are you ready? Your cloak hangs in the hall, and I am waiting."
She backed to the wall, her eyes upon the clock; but he still held her wrists and tightened his grip upon them.
"Understand me," he said gently, "the house is empty, you know that, and the pitiful vulgarity of screams would be heard by no one. The good Hannah is in her cottage by her own fireside, the other side of the church. I am stronger than you would suppose. A poor white ferret looks frail enough and misleads you, doesn't he?--but your uncle knew my strength. I don't want to hurt you, Mary Yellan, or spoil that trace of beauty you possess, for the sake of quiet; but that I shall have to do if you withstand me. Come, where is that spirit of adventure which you have made your own? Where is your courage, and your gallantry?"
She saw by the clock that he must have overstepped already his margin of time and had little in reserve. He concealed his impatience well, but it was there, in the flicker of his eye and the tightening of his lips. It was half past eight, and by now Jem would have spoken with the blacksmith at Warleggan. Twelve miles lay between them perhaps, but no more. And Jem was not the fool that Mary herself had been. She thought rapidly, weighing the chances of failure and success. If she went now with Francis Davey she would be a drag upon him, and a brake on his speed: that was inevitable, and he must have gambled upon it. The chase would follow hard upon his heels, and her presence would betray him in the end. Should she refuse t
o go, why then there would be a knife in her heart at best, for he would not encumber himself with a wounded companion, for all his flattery.
Gallant he had called her, and possessed with the spirit of adventure. Well, he should see what distance her courage took her, and that she could gamble with her life as well as he. If he were insane--and this she believed him to be--why, then his insanity would bring about his destruction; if he were not mad, she would be that same stumbling-block she had been to him from the beginning, with her girl's wits matched against his brains. She had the right upon her side, and faith in God, and he was an outcast in a hell of his own creation.
She smiled then, and looked into his eyes, having made her decision.
"I'll come with you, Mr. Davey," she said, "but you'll find me a thorn in the flesh and a stone in your path. You will regret it in the end."
"Come as enemy or friend, that does not matter to me," he told her. "You shall be the millstone round my neck, and I'll like you the better for it. You'll soon cast your mannerisms aside, and all your poor trappings of civilization that you sucked into your system as a child. I'll teach you to live, Mary Yellan, as men and women have not lived for four thousand years or more."
"You'll find me no companion on your road, Mr. Davey."
"Roads? Who spoke of roads? We go by the moors and the hills, and tread granite and heather as the Druids did before us."
She could have laughed in his face, but he turned to the door and held it open for her, and she bowed to him, mocking, as she passed into the passage. She was filled with the wild spirit of adventure, and she had no fear of him, and no fear of the night. Nothing mattered now, because the man she loved was free and had no stain of blood upon him. She could love him without shame, and cry it aloud had she the mind; she knew what he had done for her, and that he would come to her again. In fancy she heard him ride upon the road in their pursuit, and she heard his challenge, and his triumphant cry.
She followed Francis Davey to the stable where the horses were saddled, and this was a sight for which she was ill prepared.
"Do you not mean to take the trap?" she said.
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