JOAN HASTE, H. RIDER HAGGARD [free ereaders TXT] 📗

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 went, scanning the heath and the cliff with eager eyes, in the hope that she might discover the man she sought. It was in vain; the place was empty and desolate, a home of solitude.

At length she stood upon the border of the cliff road, and the Abbey was in line with her some two hundred yards to the right. Here she paused awhile, staring into the shadows and listening earnestly. But there was nothing to be seen except the varying outlines of the clouds, and nothing to be heard save the murmur of the sea, the stirring of the wind among the grasses, and now and again the cry of some gull seeking its food by night.

Now it was, as she stood thus, that a great fear of death took her, and it seemed as though all her past life went before her in pictures, full, every one of them, of exact and bewildering detail. For the most part these pictures were not pleasant, yet it chilled her to remember that the series might so soon be ended. At the least they were human and comprehensible, whereas what lay beyond might be inhuman and above her understanding. Also it came home to her that she was not fit to die: until her child was taken from her, she had never turned much to religion, and of late she had thought more of her own cruel misfortunes and of her lost lover than of her spiritual responsibilities, of the future welfare of her soul.

She was minded to fly; she had escaped from her prison, and no law could force her to live with a madman. Why should she not go back to Monk's Lodge, or to London, to seek a new existence for herself, leaving these troubles behind her? After all, she was young and beautiful, and it was sweet to live; and now that she was near to it the death which once she had so passionately desired seemed a grim, unfriendly thing.

But then there was Henry. He was lost to her, indeed, and the husband of another woman; yet, if she deserted him now, what would become of him? His career was before him--a long and happy career--and it was pitiable to think that within some few minutes he might be lying in the grass murdered for her sake by a wretched lunatic. And yet, if she offered herself up for him, what must be the end of it? It would be that after a period of shock and disturbance his life would fall back into its natural courses, and, surrounded by the love of wife and children, he would forget her, or, at the best, remember her at times with a vague, affectionate regret. No man could spend his days in mourning continually over a passionate and inconvenient woman, who had brought him much sorrow and anxiety, even though in the end she chanced to have given him the best proof possible of her affection, by laying down her life for his.

Well, so let it be. Afraid or not afraid, she would offer what she had, and the gift must be valued according to its worth in the eyes of him to whom it was given. Existence was a tangle which she had been quite unable to loose, and now, although her dread was deep, she was willing that Death should cut its knot; for here she had no hope, and, unless it pleased fate that it should be otherwise, to Death she would consign herself.

All these thoughts, and many others, passed through her mind in that brief minute, while, tossed between love and terror, Joan stood to search the landscape and recover her breath. Then, with one last glance over the moorland, she stepped on to the road and began to walk slowly towards the Abbey. Fifty yards away the three paths met, but the ground lay so that to reach the Cross-Roads, their junction, and to see even a little distance along the other two of them, she must pass the corner of the broken churchyard wall. Dared she do it, knowing that perchance there her death awaited her? Coward that she was, while she lingered Henry might be murdered! Even now, perhaps this very instant, he was passing to his doom by one of the routes which she could not see.

She paused a moment, looking up the main road in the hope that she might catch sight of Henry advancing down it. But she could perceive no one; an utter loneliness brooded on the place. Moreover, the moon at this moment was obscured by a passing cloud. For aught she knew, the deed was already done--only then she would have heard the shot--or perhaps Henry had driven to Rosham, or had gone by the beach, or the fit of homicidal mania had passed from her husband's mind. Should she go on, or wait there, or run away? No, she /must/ reach the Cross-Roads: she would not run; she would play the hand out.

Of a sudden a strange excitement or exaltation of mind took possession of her; her nerves tingled, and the blood drummed in her ears. She felt like some desperate gambler staking his wealth and reputation on a throw, and tasted of the gambler's joy. For a moment, under the influence of this new mood, the uncertainty of her fate became delightful to her, and she smiled to think that few have played such a game as this, of which the issues were the salvation of her lover and the