warmer, protesting all the while that only her state of health prevented her from making the journey, too, for which Mary was utterly thankful, Mrs. Bassat being hardly the ideal companion for so improvident and dangerous an escapade.
In a quarter of an hour the trap drove up to the door, with Richards in charge, Mary recognising him at once as the servant who had ridden with Mr. Bassat originally to Jamaica Inn. His reluctance at leaving his fireside on a Sunday night was soon overcome when he learnt his mission, and with two large pistols stuck in his belt, and orders to fire at anyone who threatened the trap, he assumed at once an air of truculence and authority hitherto unknown to him. Mary climbed in beside him, the dogs baying a chorus of farewell, and it was only when the drive twisted and the house was out of sight that Mary realised she had set out on what was probably to be a foolhardy and dangerous expedition.
Anything might have happened during the five hours she had been absent from Jamaica Inn, and even with the trap she could scarcely hope to arrive there before half past ten. She could make no plans, and her action depended upon the moment when it came. With the moon now high in the sky and the soft air blowing upon her she felt emboldened to face disaster when it came, and this ride to the scene of action, however dangerous, was better than sitting like a helpless child listening to the prattle of Mrs. Bassat. This man Richards was armed, and she herself would use a gun if necessary. He was burning with curiosity, of course, but she gave short answers to his questions and did not encourage him.
The drive was silent then, for the most part, with no other sound but the steady clopping of the horses's hoofs upon the road, and now and again an owl hooted from the still trees. The rustle of hedgerow and the creeping country whispers were left behind when the trap came out upon the Bodmin road, and once again the dark moor stretched out on either side, lapping the road like a desert. The ribbon of the highway shone white under the moon. It wound and was lost in the fold of the further hill, bare and untrodden. There were no travellers but themselves upon the road tonight. On Christmas Eve, when Mary had ridden here, the wind had lashed venomously at the carriage wheels, and the rain hammered the windows; now the air was still cold and strangely still, and the moor itself lay placid and silver in the moonlight. The dark tors held their sleeping faces to the sky, the granite features softened and smoothed by the light that bathed them. Theirs was a peaceful mood, and the old gods slept undisturbed.
Briskly the horse and trap covered the weary miles that Mary had walked alone. She recognised each bend in the road now, and how at times the moor encroached upon it, with high tufts of grass or twisted stem of broom.
There, beyond her in the valley, would be the lights of Altarnun, and already the Five Lanes branched out from the road like fingers from a hand.
The wild stretch to Jamaica lay before them. Even when the night was still the wind played here, bare and open as it was to every compass point, and tonight it hummed from Rough Tor in the west, keen as a knife and cold, gathering the marsh smells as it came, over the bitter turf and the running streams. There was still no sign of man or beast upon the road, which rose and dipped again across the moor, and, though Mary strained her eyes and her ears, she could hear nothing. On such a night the slightest sound would be magnified, and the approach of Mr. Bassat's party, numbering, as they would, a dozen men or so, said Richards, would easily be heard two miles or more away.
'We shall find them there before us, as likely as not,' he told Mary, 'and the landlord, with his hands bound, breathing fire at the squire. It will be a good thing for the neighbourhood when he's put out of harm's way, and he would have been before now, if the squire could have had his way. It's a pity we were not here sooner; there'll have been some sport in taking him, I reckon.'
'Little sport if Mr. Bassat finds that his bird has flown,' said Mary quietly. 'Joss Merlyn knows these moors like the back of his hand, and he'll not linger once he has the start of an hour, or less than that.'
'My master was bred here, same as the landlord,' said Richards; 'if it comes to a chase across country, I'd lay odds on the squire every time. He's hunted here, man and boy, for nearly fifty years, I should say, and where a fox will go the squire will follow. But they'll catch this one before he starts to run, if I'm not mistaken.' Mary let him continue; his occasional jerky statements did not worry her as the kindly prattle of his mistress had done, and his broad back and honest rugged face gave her some confidence in this night of strain.
They were approaching the dip in the road and the narrow bridge that spanned the river Fowey; Mary could hear the ripple and play of the stream as it ran swiftly over the stones. The steep hill to Jamaica rose in front of them, white beneath the moon, and as the dark chimneys appeared above the crest, Richards fell silent, fumbling with the pistols in his belt, and he cleared his throat with a nervous jerk of his head. Mary's heart beat fast now, and she held tight to the side of the trap. The horse bent to the climb, his head low, and it seemed to Mary that the clop of his hoofs rang too loudly on the surface of the road, and she wished they had been more silent.
As they drew near to the summit of the hill, Richards turned and whispered in her ear, 'Would it be best for you to wait here, in the trap, by the side of the road, and I go forward and see if they are there?'
Mary shook her head. 'Better for me to go,' she said, 'and you follow a pace or two behind, or stay here and wait until I call. From the silence, it seems as though the squire and his party are not yet come, after all, and that the landlord has escaped. Should he be there, however — my uncle, I mean — I can risk an encounter with him, when you could not. Give me a pistol; I shall have little to fear from him then.'
'I hardly think it right for you to go alone,' said the man doubtfully. 'You may walk right into him, and I hear no sound from you again. It's strange, as you say, this silence. I'd expected shouting and fighting, and my master's voice topping it all. It's almost unnatural, in a way. They must have been detained in Launceston. I half fancy there'd be more wisdom if we turned aside down that track there and waited for them to come.'
'I've waited long enough tonight, and gone half mad with it,' said Mary. 'I'd rather come upon my uncle face to face than lie here in the ditch, seeing and hearing nothing. It's my aunt I'm thinking of. She's as innocent as a child in all this business, and I want to care for her if I can. Give me a pistol and let me go. I can tread like a cat, and I'll not run my head into a noose, I promise you.' She threw off the heavy cloak and hood that had protected her from the cold night air, and seized hold of the pistol that he handed down to her reluctantly. 'Don't follow me unless I call or give some signal,' she said. 'Should you hear a shot fired, then perhaps it would be as well to come after me. But come warily, for all that. There's no need for both of us to run like fools into danger. For my part, I believe my uncle to have gone.'
She hoped now that he had, and by driving into Devon made an end to the whole business. The country would be rid of him, and in the cheapest possible way. He might, even as he had said, start life again, or, more likely still, dig himself in somewhere five hundred miles from Cornwall and drink himself to death. She had no interest now in his capture; she wanted it finished and thrust aside; she wanted above all to lead her own life and forget him, and to put the world between her and Jamaica Inn. Revenge was an empty thing. To see him bound and helpless, surrounded by the squire and his men, would be of little satisfaction. She had spoken to Richards with confidence, but for all that she dreaded an encounter with her uncle, armed as she was; and the thought of coming upon him suddenly in the passage of the inn, with his hands ready to strike, and his bloodshot eyes staring down upon her, made her pause in her stride, before the yard, and glance back to the dark shadow in the ditch that was Richards and the trap. Then she levelled her pistol, her finger upon the trigger, and looked round the corner of the stone wall to the yard.
It was empty. The stable door was shut. The inn was as dark and silent as when she had left it nearly seven hours before, and the windows and the door were barred. She looked up to her window, and the pane of glass gaped empty and wide, unchanged since she had climbed from it that afternoon.
There were no wheel marks in the yard, no preparations for departure. She crept across to the stable and laid her ear against the door. She waited a moment, and then she heard the pony move restlessly in his stall; she heard his hoofs clink on the cobbles.
Then they had not gone, and her uncle was still at Jamaica Inn.
Her heart sank; and she wondered if she should return to Richards and the trap, and wait, as he had suggested, until Squire Bassat and his men arrived. She glanced once more at the shuttered house. Surely, if her uncle intended to leave, he would have gone before now. The cart alone would take an hour to load, and it must be nearly eleven o'clock. He might have altered his plans and decided to go on foot, but then Aunt Patience could never accompany him. Mary hesitated; the situation had become odd now, and unreal.
She stood by the porch and listened. She even tried the handle of the door. It was locked, of course. She ventured a little way round the corner of the house, past the entrance to the bar, and so to the patch of garden
