Joan Haste by H. Rider Haggard (cat reading book .TXT) 📖

CHAPTER XL

FULL MEASURE, PRESSED DOWN AND RUNNING OVER

 

Joan staggered back from the window, gasping in her terror. Her

husband was mad with jealousy and hate and every other passion. She

could see now that he had always been more or less mad, and that his

frantic love for herself was but a form of insanity, which during the

long months of their separation had deepened and widened until it

obtained a complete mastery over his mind. Then by an evil fortune he

had witnessed the piteous and passionate scene between Henry and

herself, or some part of it, and at the sight the last barriers of his

reason broke down, and he became nothing but an evil beast filled with

the lust of revenge and secret murder. Now he had gone to shoot down

his rival in cold blood; and this was the end of her scheming and

self-sacrifice—that she had given herself to a lunatic and her lover

to a bloody death!

 

So awful was the thought that for a while Joan felt as though her own

brain must yield beneath it. Then of a sudden the desperate nature of

the emergency came home to her, and her mind cleared. Henry was still

unharmed, and perhaps he might be saved. Oh! if only she could escape

from this prison, surely it would be possible for her to save him, in

this way or in that. But how? If she could find any one about she

might send to warn him and to obtain help; but this she knew was not

likely, for nobody lived at Moor Farm except its master, and by now

the labourers would have gone to their homes in the valley, a mile

away. Well, once out of the house she might run to meet him herself?

No, for then possibly she would be too late. Besides, there were at

least three ways by which Henry could walk from Bradmouth—by the

cliff road, by the fen path, or straight across the heath; and all

these separate routes converged at a spot beneath the wall of the old

Abbey, known as the Cross-Roads. That was why Samuel had chosen this

place for his deed of blood: as he had told her, he knew that if he

came at all his victim must pass within a few paces of a certain

portion of the ruined churchyard fence.

 

What, then, could be done? Joan flung herself upon the bed and thought

for a while, and as she lay thus a dreadful inspiration came into her

mind.

 

If she could get free it would be easy for her to personate Henry.

There upon the pegs hung a man’s coat and a hat, not unlike those

which he was wearing that day. They were much of a height, her hair

was short, and she could copy the limp in his gait. Who then would

know them apart, in the uncertain glimmer of the night? Surely not the

maddened creature crouching behind some bush that he might satisfy his

hate in blood. But so, if things went well, and if she did not chance

to meet Henry in time to save him, as she hoped to do, she herself

must die within an hour, or at the best run the risk of death! What of

it? At least he would escape, for, whether or not her husband

discovered his error, after all was over, she was sure that one murder

would satiate his vengeance. Also would it not be better to die than

to live the life that lay before her? Would it not even be sweet to

die, if thereby she could preserve the man she loved more than herself

a thousand times? She had made many a sacrifice for him; and this, the

last, would be the lightest of them, for then he would learn how true

she was to him, and always think of her with tenderness, and long to

greet her beyond the nothingness of death. Besides, it might not come

to this. Providence might interpose to rescue her and him. She might

see him in time coming by the cliff road, or she might find her

husband and turn him from his purpose.

 

Oh! her mind was mazed with terror for Henry, and torn by perplexities

as to how she best might save his life. Well, there was no more

leisure to search out a better plan; if she would act, it must be at

once. Springing from the bed, she ran to the window, and throwing it

wide, screamed for help. Her cries echoed through the silent air, but

the only answer to them was the baying of the dog. There were matches

on the mantelpiece—she had seen them; and, groping in the dark, she

found the box and lit the candles. Then she tried the door; it was

locked on the outside, and she could not stir it. Next she examined

the window place, against which the ladder that Rock had set there was

still standing. It was secured by three iron bars let into the

brickwork at the top and screwed to the oaken sill at the bottom.

 

Scrutinising these bars closely, she saw that, although her husband

had not been able to wrench them away, he had loosened the centre one,

for in the course of many years the rust of the iron mixing with the

tannin in the oak had widened the screw holes, so that the water,

settling in them, had rotted that portion of the sill. Could she but

force out this bar she would be able to squeeze her body through the

gap and to set her feet upon the ladder.

 

There was a fireplace in the room, and, resting on the dogs in front

of it, lay a heavy old-fashioned poker. Seizing it, she ran to the

window and struck the bottom of the centre bar again and again with

all her strength. The screws began to give. Now they were half-way out

of the decaying woodwork, but she could force them no farther with

blows. For a moment Joan seemed to be baffled, then she took refuge in

a new expedient. Thrusting the poker outside of the bar to the right,

and the end of it inside that which she was seeking to dislodge, she

obtained a powerful leverage and pulled in jerks. At the third jerk

her hand came suddenly in contact with the sharp angle of the

brickwork, that rasped the skin from the back of it; the screws gave

way, and the bar, slipping from the hole in which its top end was set,

fell clattering down the ladder.

 

Now the road was open, and it remained only for her to dress herself

to the part. Half crying with the pain of her hurt and bleeding hand,

quickly Joan put on the hat and overcoat, remembering even then that

they were the same which Rock had worn when he came to see her in

London, and, going to the window, she struggled through the two

remaining bars on to the ladder. Reaching the ground, she ran through

the garden to the heathland, for she feared lest the surviving dog

should espy and attack her. But no dog appeared: perhaps the corpse of

its brother that still lay by the gate kept it away.

 

Now she was upon the heathland and heading straight for the ruins of

Ramborough, which lay at a distance of about three-quarters of a mile

from the house. The night was fine and the air soft, but floating

clouds now and again obscured the face of the half-moon, that lay low

in the sky, causing great shadows to strike suddenly across the moor.

Her way ran past the meres, where the wind whispered drearily amongst

the growing reeds and the nesting wildfowl called to each other across

the water. There was a great loneliness about the place; no living

creature was to be seen; and, at the moment, this feeling of solitude

weighed more heavily upon her numbed heart than the sense of the death

that she was courting. The world was still with her, and its moods and

accidents affected her as they had always done; but the possibilities

of that other unrisen world upon whose brink she stood, and the fear

of it, moved her but little, and she scarcely thought of what or where

she might or might not be within an hour. Those terrors were to come.

 

She was past the meres, and standing on a ridge of ground that lies

between them and the cliff. Before her, when the moon shone out, she

could see the glimmer of the ocean, the white ribbon of the road, and

the ruins of Ramborough showing distinctly against the delicate beauty

of the twilight summer sky. On she