and with throbbing head and smarting eyes she saw a sea of grinning faces through the smoke. What they said or did hardly mattered to her any more, and the longing for sleep and forgetfulness became a torment.
When they saw how lifeless she was, and dull, her presence lost its flavour; even the songs lost sting, and Joss Merlyn fumbled in his pocket and produced a pack of cards. They turned from her at once to this new interest, and, in the momentary lull that blessed her, Mary shrank closer in her corner, away from the hot, animal smell of her uncle, and, closing her eyes, she resigned herself to the movement of the swaying, jolting carriage. Her fatigue was such that full consciousness was no longer part of her; she was swinging in a trance land across the border. She was aware of pain, and the rocking carriage wheels, and in the far distance a murmur of voices; but these things moved away from her and not with her; she could not identify them with her own existence. Darkness came upon her like a boon from heaven, and she felt herself slip away into it; and so was lost. Time had nothing to do with her then. It was the cessation of movement that dragged her back to the world; the sudden stillness, and the cold damp air blowing upon her face through the open carriage window.
She was alone in her corner. The men had gone, taking their light with them. She sat motionless at first, fearing to bring them back and uncertain what had befallen her; and then, when she leant forward to the window, the pain and stiffness in her body were intolerable. A weal of pain ran across her shoulders where the cold had numbed her, and her bodice was still damp from the rain that had soaked her early in the evening. She waited a moment and then leant forward again. It was still blowing hard, but the driving rain had ceased, and only a thin cold mizzle pattered against the window. The carriage had been abandoned in a narrow gullyway with high banks on either side, and the horse had been taken from the traces. The gully appeared to descend sharply, the path becoming rough and broken. Mary could not see more than a few yards in front of her. The night had thickened considerably, and in the gullyway it was black like a pit. There were no stars now in the sky, and the sharp wind of the moors had become a boisterous thing of noise and bluster, trailing a wet fog for company. Mary put her hand out of the window and touched the bank.
Her fingers came upon loose sand and stems of grass, sodden through with the rain. She tried the handle of the door, but it was locked. Then she listened intently. Her eyes strained to pierce the darkness ahead of her, down the sharp descent of the gullyway, and borne up to her on the wind came a sound at once sullen and familiar, a sound that for the first time in her life she could not welcome, but must recognise with a leap of her heart and a shiver of foreboding.
It was the sound of the sea. The gully was a pathway to the shore.
She knew now why a softness had crept upon the air, and why the mizzle of rain fell on her hand lightly, with a tang of salt. The high banks gave a false feeling of shelter in contrast to the bleak wilderness of the moors, but once away from their deceptive shadow the illusion would be lost and the tearing gale cry louder than before. There could be no stillness where the sea broke upon the rockbound shore. She heard it again now, and continually; a murmur and a sigh as the spent water gave itself to the strand and withdrew reluctantly, and then a pause as the sea gathered itself for a renewal of effort — a momentary fragment in time — and then once more the thunder and the crash of fulfilment, the roar of surf upon shingle and the screaming scatter of stones as they followed the drag of the sea. Mary shuddered; somewhere in the darkness below, her uncle and his companions waited for the tide. If she could have heard some sound of them, the waiting in the empty carriage would have been more bearable. The wild shouting, the laughter, and the singing with which they had fortified themselves for the journey would have been a relief, however loathsome; but this deadly quietude was sinister. Business had sobered them, and they had found work for their hands. Now that her senses were her own again, and her first fatigue cast aside, Mary found inactivity impossible. She considered the size of the window. The door was locked, as she knew, but with straining and wriggling she might yet attempt to squeeze her body through the narrow frame.
The endeavour was worth the risk. Whatever happened tonight, her own life could be counted of little value; her uncle and his companions could find her and kill her if they wished. This country was known to them, and not to her. They could trace her in a moment if they wanted, like a pack of hounds. She worked and strained at the window, leaning backwards through the gap, the effort made even more difficult because of her stiff shoulder and her back. The roof of the carriage was slippery and wet, giving no grip to her fingers, but she struggled and pushed through the gap, and then, with a sickening squeeze and pressure, her hips were through, the frame of the window scraping the flesh and turning her faint. She lost foothold and balance, and fell backwards through the window to the ground below.
The drop was nothing; but the fall shook her, and she felt a little trickle of blood run down her side where the window had caught her. She gave herself a moment to recover, and then she dragged herself to her feet and began to creep uncertainly up the lane, in the dark shelter of the bank. She had not yet formed a plan in her head, but, with her back turned away from the gully and the sea, she would be putting distance between herself and her late companions. There was little doubt that they had descended to the shore. This lane, winding upwards and to the left, would take her at least to the high ground of the cliffs, where in spite of the darkness she would be able to make something of the land. Somewhere there would be a road — the carriage itself must have travelled by one; and if there was a road there would be dwelling houses before long; there would be honest men and women to whom she could tell her tale, and who would rouse the countryside when they heard her story.
She felt her way along the narrow ditch, stumbling now and again over the stones, her hair blowing into her eyes and troubling her, and, coming suddenly round the sharp corner of the bank, she put up her hands to screw back the loose strands from her eyes, and because of this she did not see the humped figure of a man kneeling in the ditch with his back towards her, his eyes watchful of the winding lane ahead. She came against him, knocking the breath from her body, and he, taken by surprise, fell with her, crying out in mingled terror and rage, smashing at her with his clenched fist.
They fought on the ground, she straining away from him, her hands tearing at his face, but in a moment he was too strong for her, and, rolling her over on her side, he twisted his hands in her hair, pulling at the roots, until the pain forced her to stillness. He leant on her, breathing heavily, for the fall had winded him, and then he peered closely at her, his gaping mouth showing yellow broken teeth.
It was Harry the pedlar. Mary lay motionless: the first move should come from him; and meanwhile she cursed herself for a fool in blundering up the lane the way she had, with never a thought of the outpost that even a child at play would have placed in his position.
He expected her to cry or struggle, but when she did neither he shifted his weight to his elbow and smiled at her slyly, jerking his head in the direction of the shore. 'Didn't think to see me, did you?' he said. 'Thought I was down on the shore with the landlord and the rest, baiting the pots. And so you woke up from your beauty sleep and took a walk up the lane. And now you're here I'll make you very welcome.' He grinned at her, touching her cheek with a black fingernail. 'It's been cold and damp in the ditch,' he said, 'but that's no odds now. They'll be hours down there yet. I can see you've turned against Joss, by the way you spoke to him tonight. He's no right to keep you up at Jamaica like a bird in a cage, with no pretty things to wear. I doubt if he's given you as much as a brooch for your bodice, has he? Don't you mind about that. I'll give you lace for your neck, and bangles for your wrist, and soft silk for your skin. Let's look now….'
He nodded at her, reassuring her, smiling still, smirking and sly, and she felt his furtive hand fasten itself upon her. She moved swiftly, lashing out at him, and her fist caught him underneath the chin, shutting his mouth like a trap, with his tongue caught between his teeth. He squealed like a rabbit, and she struck him again, but this time he grabbed at her and lurched sideways upon her, all pretence of gentle persuasion gone, his strength horrible, his face drained of all colour. He was fighting now for possession, and she knew it, and, aware that his strength was greater than hers and must prevail in the end, she lay limp suddenly, to deceive him, giving him the advantage for the moment. He grunted in triumph, relaxing his weight, which was what she intended, and as he moved his position and lowered his head she jabbed at him swiftly with the full force of her knee, at the same time thrusting her fingers in his eyes. He doubled up at once, rolling onto his side in agony, and in a second she had struggled from under him and pulled herself to her feet, kicking at him once more as he rocked defenceless, his hands clasped to his belly. She grabbed in the ditch for a stone to fling at him, finding nothing but loose earth and sand, and she dug handfuls of this, scattering it in his face and in his eyes, so that he was blinded momentarily and could make no return. Then she turned again and began to run like a hunted thing up the twisting lane, her mouth open, her hands outstretched, tripping and stumbling over the ruts in the path; and when she heard his shout behind her once more, and the padding of his feet, a sense of panic swamped her reason and she started to climb up the high bank that bordered the lane, her foot slipping at every step in the soft earth, until with the very madness of effort born in terror she reached the top, and crawled, sobbing, through a gap in the thorn hedge that bordered the bank. Her
