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 traveller 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 traveller continued his journey by way of Jamaica Inn.'
'How do you know this?' said Mary.
'Because the traveller was the vicar of Altarnun,' he said.
Chapter 17
A silence had fallen upon the room. Although the fire burnt 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 favour.
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 leant 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 crouched 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 pretence 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 are not upon us. We have eternity before us. One thing at least, we have no traps or baggage, but can travel light, as they travelled 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 amongst 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 amongst 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 Rough Tor, 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
