There are few strains more intolerable in life than waiting for the arrival of unwelcome guests.
The barriers were down. It was a queer feeling, as though I sat naked in my chair.
Some of us would go away, or suffer, or die; the future stretched away in front of us, unknown, unseen, not perhaps what we wanted, not what we planned. This moment was safe though, this could not be touched.
Non ramentare che le ore felici.
No, and no again,” he said. “I tell you for the final time, I’ll not be a party to it. I’ll break with you now and forever, and put an end to the agreement. That’s murder you’d have me do, Mr. Merlyn; there’s no other name for it – it’s common murder.
For I had no illusions left now, I no longer made any effort to pretend. Last night had shown me too well. My marriage was a failure. All the things that people would say about it if they knew, were true. We did not get on. We were not companions. We were not suited to one another. I was too young for Maxim, too inexperienced, and, more important still, I was not of his world.
No, I’m thinking of my conscience and of Almighty God; and though I’ll face any man in a fair fight, and take punishment if need be, when it comes to the killing of innocent folk, and maybe women and children among them, that’s going straight to hell, Joss Merlyn, and you know it as well as I do.
I know I must seem unsympathetic and cold, but this is the nineteenth century, you know, and men don’t murder one another without reason. I believe I have as much right to drive you on the King’s highway as your uncle himself. Having gone so far, don’t you think you had better let me hear the rest of your story? What is your name, and how long have you been living at Jamaica Inn?
To me, lonely, anxious, and a survivor of too many emotional shipwrecks, he came almost as a savior, as an answer to prayer. To be strong as he was, and tender too, lacking all personal conceit, I had not met with that. I know what he was to me. But I to him...
Perhaps she had exaggerated; people very often were wrong about their relatives.
I had become like a prisoner in chains, and the dungeon was deep.
Although there was nothing to do there, no one to play with, somehow it did not matter, I was happy, and at peace. Billy would be up in her bedroom writing letters – she had so many friends, she was always writing letters – she had so many friends, she was always writing letters – or she would talk to her pekinese dog Ching, which she adored, and which tried to bite her every time she groomed him.
I had only one plan, which was to finish the book, and Jennifer was turning out to be a hard-headed young woman, quite different from how I had intended her. This must surely mean I had no control over my characters.
And she passed through the stage door and was inside the theater. Her heart was still beating fast, and her hands were burning, but she felt steadier suddenly, the feeling of panic had gone from her. It was because she was inside the theater.
If Michael Joseph of Curtis Brown tells me he doesn’t like it, or I must rewrite, he can go to hell. I can’t go back to it any more.
In November, Foy Quiller-Couch and I went on another riding expedition, this time to Bodmin moors, putting up at the wayside hostelry, Jamaica Inn.
I wrote on the birthday itself, ’and as for being twenty-one, I’ll leave it at that. I can’t see that years make any difference, or days, or hours, it’s things that happen to one that matter. I shan’t look back. No guttering candles and dripping wicks for me. When I go let me go quickly, still a bright flame, no flickering! Meanwhile Adams and I celebrated my majority by taking Annabelle Lee out to sea and catching 13 pollock, which was a good start for the boat.
He did not belong to me at all, he belonged to Rebecca. He still thought about Rebecca. He would never love me because of Rebecca. She was in the house still, as Mrs Danvers had said; she was in that room in the west wing, she was in the library, in the morning-room, in the gallery above the hall.
He had no answer to that, or to any of her thoughts, and the smile that hovered a moment at the corner of her mouth and went as swiftly – it happened now, in her pretence of sleep – had no connection with him, or with his feelings, or with their life together. It was remote, the smile of someone he had never known.
And looking north, inland from the Gribben, I could just make out the grey roof of a house there, set in its own grounds amongst trees. Yes, Angela and I were told. That would be Menabilly. Belongs to Dr Rashleigh, but he seldom lives there.