Du Maurier, Daphne by Jamaica Inn Read Free Book Online

uncle Joss doesn’t encourage folks to stay,” she said at length. “He says you never know who you are going to get. Why, in a lonely spot like this we might be murdered in our beds. There’s all sorts on a road like this. It wouldn’t be safe.”
    “Aunt Patience, you’re talking nonsense. What is the use of an inn that cannot give an honest traveller a bed for the night? For what other purpose was it built? And how do you live, if you have no custom?”
    “We have custom,” returned the woman sullenly. “I’ve told you that. There’s men come in from the farms and outlying places. There are farms and cottages scattered over these moors for miles around, and folk come from there. There are evenings when the bar is full of them.”
    “The driver on the coach yesterday told me respectable people did not come to Jamaica any more. He said they were afraid.”
    Aunt Patience changed colour. She was pale now, and her eyes roved from side to side. She swallowed, and ran her tongue over her lips.
    “Your uncle Joss has a strong temper,” she said; “you have seen that for yourself. He is easily roused; he will not have folk interfering with him.”
    “Aunt Patience, why should anyone interfere with a landlord of an inn who goes about his rightful business? However hot tempered a man may be, his temper doesn’t scare people away. That’s no excuse.”
    Her aunt was silent. She had come to the end of her resources and sat stubborn, as a mule. She would not be drawn. Mary tried another question.
    “Why did you come here in the first place? My mother knew nothing of this; we believed you to be in Bodmin; you wrote from there when you married.”
    “I met your uncle in Bodmin, but we never lived there,” replied Aunt Patience slowly. “We lived near Padstow for a while, and then we came here. Your uncle bought the inn from Mr. Bassat. It had stood empty a number of years, I believe, and your uncle decided it would suit him. He wanted to settle down. He’s travelled a lot in his time; he’s been to more places than I can remember the names. I believe he was in America once.”
    “It seems a funny thing to come to this place to settle,” said Mary. “He couldn’t have chosen much worse, could he?”
    “It’s near his old home,” said her aunt. “Your uncle was born only a few miles away, over on Twelve Men’s Moor. His brother Jem lives there now in a bit of a cottage, when he’s not roaming the country. He comes here sometimes, but your uncle Joss does not care for him much.”
    “Does Mr. Bassat ever visit the inn?”
    “No.”
    “Why not, if he sold it to my uncle?”
    Aunt Patience fidgeted with her fingers and worked her mouth.
    “There was some misunderstanding,” she replied. “Your uncle bought it through a friend. Mr. Bassat did not know who Uncle Joss was until we were settled in, and then he was not very pleased.”
    “Why did he mind?”
    “He had not seen your uncle since he lived at Trewartha as a young man. Your uncle was wild as a lad; he got a name for acting rough. It wasn’t his fault, Mary, it was his misfortune. The Merlyns all were wild. His young brother Jem is worse than ever he was, I am sure of that. But Mr. Bassat listened to a pack of lies about Uncle Joss, and was in a great way when he discovered that he’d sold Jamaica to him. There, that’s all there is to it.”
    She leant back in her chair, exhausted from her cross-examination. Her eyes begged to be excused further questioning, and her face was pale and drawn. Mary saw she had suffered enough, but with the rather cruel audacity of youth she ventured one question more.
    “Aunt Patience,” she said, “I want you to look at me and answer me this, and then I won’t worry you again: What has the barred room at the end of the passage to do with the wheels that stop outside Jamaica Inn by night?”
    As soon as she had spoken she was sorry, and, like many a one before her who has spoken too hastily and too soon,