small, on account of being the youngest, I suppose, and my brothers used to beat me when she wasn't looking. Not that they were as thick as you'd think — we were never much of a loving family — and I've seen Joss thrash Matt until he couldn't stand. Matt was a funny devil; he was quiet, more like my mother. He was drowned down in the marsh yonder. You could shout there until your lungs burst, no one would hear you except a bird or two and a stray pony. I've been nearly caught there myself in my time.'
'How long has your mother been dead?' said Mary.
'Seven years this Christmas,' he answered, helping himself to more boiled mutton. 'What with my father hanged, and Matt drowned, and Joss gone off to America, and me growing up as wild as a hawk, she turned religious and used to pray here by the hour, calling on the Lord. I couldn't abide that, and I cleared off out of it. I shipped on a Padstow schooner for a time, but the sea didn't suit my stomach, and I came back home. I found Mother gone as thin as a skelton. 'You ought to eat more,' I told her, but she wouldn't listen to me, so I went off again, and stayed in Plymouth for a while, picking up a shilling or two in my own way. I came back here to have my Christmas dinner, and I found the place deserted and the door locked up. I was mad. I hadn't eaten for twenty-four hours. I went back to North Hill, and they told me my mother had died. She'd been buried three weeks. I might just as well have stayed in Plymouth for all the dinner I got that Christmas. There's a piece of cheese in the cupboard behind you. Will you eat the half of it? There's maggots in it, but they won't hurt you.'
Mary shook her head, and she let him get up and reach for it himself.
'What's the matter?' he said. 'You look like a sick cow. Has the mutton turned sour on you already?'
Mary watched him return to his seat and spread the hunk of dry cheese onto a scrap of stale bread. 'It will be a good thing when there's not a Merlyn left in Cornwall,' she said. 'It's better to have disease in a country than a family like yours. You and your brother were born twisted and evil. Do you never think of what your mother must have suffered?'
Jem looked at her in surprise, the bread and cheese halfway to his mouth.
'Mother was all right,' he said. 'She never complained. She was used to us. Why, she married my father at sixteen; she never had time to suffer. Joss was born the year after, and then Matt. Her time was taken up in rearing them, and by the time they were out of her hands she had to start all over again with me. I was an afterthought, I was. Father got drunk at Launceston fair, after selling three cows that didn't belong to him. If it wasn't for that I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you now. Pass that jug.'
Mary had finished. She got up and began to clear away the plates in silence.
'How's the landlord of Jamaica Inn?' said Jem, tilting back on his chair and watching her dip the plates in water.
'Drunk, like his father before him,' said Mary shortly.
'That'll be the ruin of Joss,' said his brother seriously. 'He soaks himself insensible and lies like a log for days. One day he'll kill himself with it. The damned fool! How long has it lasted this time?'
'Five days.'
'Oh, that's nothing to Joss. He'd lay there for a week if you let him. Then he'll come to, staggering on his feet like a newborn calf, with a mouth as black as Trewartha Marsh. When he's rid himself of his surplus liquid, and the rest of the drink has soaked into him — that's when you want to watch him; he's dangerous then. You look out for yourself.'
'He'll not touch me; I'll take good care of that,' said Mary. 'He's got other things to worry him. There's plenty to keep him busy.'
'Don't be mysterious, nodding to yourself with your mouth pursed up. Has anything been happening at Jamaica?'
'It depends how you look at it,' said Mary, watching him over the plate she was wiping. 'We had Mr. Bassat from North Hill last week.'
Jem brought his chair to the ground with a crash. 'The devil you did,' he said. 'And what had the squire to say to you?'
'Uncle Joss was from home,' said Mary, 'and Mr. Bassat insisted on coming into the inn and going through the rooms. He broke down the door at the end of the passage, he and his servant between them, but the room was empty. He seemed disappointed, and very surprised, and he rode away in a fit of temper. He asked after you, as it happened, and I told him I'd never set eyes on you.'
Jem whistled tunelessly, his expression blank as Mary told her tale, but when she came to the end of her sentence, and the mention of his name, his eyes narrowed, and then he laughed. 'Why did you lie to him?' he asked.
'It seemed less trouble at the time,' said Mary. 'If I'd thought longer, no doubt I'd have told him the truth. You've got nothing to hide, have you?'
'Nothing much, except that black pony you saw by the brook belongs to him,' said Jem carelessly. 'He was dapple-grey last week, and worth a small fortune to the squire, who bred him himself. I'll make a few pounds with him at Launceston if I'm lucky. Come down and have a look at him.'
They went out into the sun, Mary wiping her hands on her apron, and she stood for a few moments at the door of the cottage while Jem went off to the horses. The cottage was built on the slope of the hill above the Withy Brook, whose course wound away in the valley and was lost in the further hills. Behind the house stretched a wide and level plain, rising to great tors on either hand, and this grassland — like a grazing place for cattle — with no boundary as far as the eye could reach except the craggy menace of Kilmar, must be the strip of country known as Twelve Men's Moor.
Mary pictured Joss Merlyn running out of the doorway here as a child, his mat of hair falling over his eyes in a fringe, with the gaunt, lonely figure of his mother standing behind him, her arms folded, watching him with a question in her eyes. A world of sorrow and silence, anger and bitterness too, must have passed beneath the roof of this small cottage.
There was a shout and a clatter of hoofs, and Jem rode up to her round the corner of the house, astride the black pony. 'This is the fellow I wanted you to have,' he said, 'but you're so close with your money. He'd carry you well, too; the squire bred him for his wife. Are you sure you won't change your mind?'
Mary shook her head and laughed. 'You'd have me tie him up in the stable at Jamaica, I suppose,' she said, 'and when Mr. Bassat calls again he wouldn't be likely to recognise him, would he? Thanking you for your trouble, but I'd rather not risk it all the same. I've lied enough for your family, Jem Merlyn, for one lifetime.' Jem pulled a long face and slid to the ground.
'You've refused the best bargain that you'll ever have offered to you,' he said, 'and I won't give you the chance again. He'll go to Launceston on Christmas Eve; the dealers there will swallow him up.' He clapped his hands on the hindquarters of the pony. 'Get on with you, then'; and the animal made a startled dash for the gap in the bank.
Jem broke off a piece of grass and began to chew it, glancing sideways at his companion. 'What did Squire Bassat expect to see at Jamaica Inn?' he said.
Mary looked him straight in the eyes. 'You ought to know that better than I do,' she answered. Jem chewed his grass thoughtfully, spitting out little bits of it onto the ground.
'How much do you know?' he said suddenly, throwing the stalk away.
Mary shrugged her shoulders. 'I didn't come here to answer questions,' she said. 'I had enough of that with Mr. Bassat.'
'It was lucky for Joss the stuff had been shifted,' said his brother quietly. 'I told him last week he was sailing too close to the wind. It's only a matter of time before they catch him. And all he does in self-defence is to get drunk, the damned fool.'
Mary said nothing. If Jem was trying to trap her by this exhibition of frankness he would be disappointed.
'You must have a good view from that little room over the porch,' he said. 'Do they wake you out of your beauty sleep?'
'How do you know that's my room?' Mary asked swiftly.
He looked taken aback at her question; she saw the surprise flash through his eyes. Then he laughed and picked another piece of grass from the bank.
'The window was wide open when I rode into the yard the other morning,' he said, 'and there was a little bit of blind blowing in the wind. I've never seen a window open at Jamaica Inn before.'
