Du Maurier, Daphne by Jamaica Inn Read Free Book Online Page A

she yearned for the words to be unsaid. It was too late, though, now. The damage had been done.
    A strange expression crept upon the woman’s face, and her great hollow eyes stared across the table in terror. Her mouth trembled, and her hand wandered to her throat. She looked fearful, haunted.
    Mary pushed back her chair and knelt by her side. She put her arms round Aunt Patience, and held her close, and kissed her hair.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “Don’t be angry with me; I’m rude and impertinent. It’s none of my business, and I’ve no right to question you, and I’m ashamed of myself. Please, please forget what I said.”
    Her aunt buried her face in her hands. She sat motionless and paid no attention to her niece. For some minutes they sat there in silence, while Mary stroked her shoulder and kissed her hands.
    Then Aunt Patience uncovered her face and looked down at her.
    The fear had gone from her eyes, and she was calm. She took Mary’s hands in hers and gazed into her eyes.
    “Mary,” she said, and her voice was hushed and low, scarcely above a whisper. “Mary, I can’t answer your questions, for there’s many I don’t know the answer of myself. But because you are my niece, my own sister’s child, I must give you a word of warning.”
    She glanced over her shoulder, as though she were afraid that Joss himself stood in the shadows behind the door.
    “There’s things that happen at Jamaica, Mary, that I’ve never dared to breathe. Bad things. Evil things. I can’t ever tell you; I dare not even admit them to myself. Some of it in time you’ll come to know. You can’t avoid it, living here. Your Uncle Joss mixes with strange men, who follow a strange trade. Sometimes they come by night, and from your window above the porch you will hear footsteps, and voices, and knocking at the door. Your uncle lets them in, and takes them along that passage to the room with the locked door. They go inside, and from my bedroom above I can hear the mutter of their voices through the long hours. Before dawn they are away, and no sign left that they have ever been. When they come, Mary, you will say nothing to me or to your Uncle Joss. You must lie in bed, and put your fingers to your ears. You must never question me, nor him, nor anyone, for if you came to guess but half of what I know, your hair would go grey, Mary, as mine has done, and you would tremble in your speech and weep by night, and all that lovely careless youth of yours would die, Mary, as mine has died.”
    Then she rose from the table and pushed aside her chair, and Mary heard her climb the staircase with heavy, faltering feet, and go along the landing to her room, and close the door.
    Mary sat on the floor beside the empty chair, and she saw through the kitchen window that the sun had already disappeared behind the furthest hill, and that before many hours had passed the grey malevolence of a November dusk would have fallen upon Jamaica once again.

Chapter 4
    Joss Merlyn was away from home for nearly a week, and during that time Mary came to know something of the country.
    Her presence was not required in the bar, for no one came to it when the landlord was from home, and, after giving her aunt a hand with the housework and in the kitchen, she was free to wander where she pleased. Patience Merlyn was no walker; she had no wish to stir beyond the chicken run at the back of the inn, and she had no sense of direction. She had a vague idea of the names of the tors, for she had heard them mentioned by her husband, but where they were, and how anyone found them, she did not know. So Mary would strike off on her own at midday, with nothing but the sun to guide her and a certain deep-grained common sense which was her natural inheritance as a countrywoman.
    The moors were even wilder than she had at first supposed. Like an immense desert they rolled from east to west, with tracks here and there across the surface and great hills breaking the