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

Now she began to act her part, walking forward with a limp like Henry's, till she was opposite to and some five yards away from the angle of the churchyard wall. Here a swift change came over her; the false excitement passed away, and again she grew mortally afraid. She could not do it! The Cross-Roads were now not twenty paces from her, and once there she might see him and save him. But never could she walk past that wall, knowing that behind it a murderer might be lurking, that every stone and bush and tuft of grass might hide him who would send her to a violent and cruel death. It was very well to make these heroic resolutions at a distance, but when the spot and moment of their execution were at hand--ah! then the thing was different! She prayed God that Henry had escaped, or might escape, but she could not take this way to preserve him. Her mind was willing, but the poor flesh recoiled from it. She would call aloud to her husband, and reveal herself to him if he were there. No, for then he would guess her mission, render her helpless in this way or that--what chance had she against a madman?--and afterwards do the deed. So it came to this: she must go back and wait, upon the chance of meeting Henry on the cliff road, for forward she dared not go.

Already she had turned to fly, when her ear caught a sound in the intense silence--such a sound as might have been made by some beast of prey dragging itself stealthily towards its victim. Instantly Joan became paralysed; the extremity of terror deprived her of all use of her limbs or voice, and so she stood with her back towards the wall. Now there was a new sound, as of something rising quickly through deep grass or brushwood, and then she heard the dull noise of the hammer of a gun falling upon an uncapped nipple. In a flash she interpreted its meaning: her husband had forgotten to reload that barrel with which he shot the dog!

There was still a chance of life for her, and in this hope Joan's vital powers returned. Uttering a great cry, she swung round upon her heel so swiftly that the hat fell from her head, and the moonlight passing from the curtain of a cloud, shone upon her ashy face. As she turned, her eyes fell upon another face, the face of a devil--of Samuel Rock. He was standing behind the wall, that reached to his breast, and the gun in his hand was levelled at her. A tongue of flame shot out, and, in the glare of it, it seemed to her that his countenance of hellish hate had changed its aspect to one of agony. Then Joan became aware of a dull shock at her breast, and down she sank senseless on the roadway.

Joan was right. Perceiving her from the Cross-Roads knoll, his place of outlook, whence, although himself invisible, he commanded a view of the three paths, Rock, deceived by her disguise and assumed lameness, into the belief that his wife was Henry advancing by the cliff road, had crept towards her under shelter of the wall to kill her as she stood. But in that last moment he learned his error--too late! Yes, before the deed was done he tasted the agony of knowing that he was wreaking murder upon the woman he desired, and not upon the man she loved. Too late! Already his finger had contracted on the trigger, and the swift springs were at their work. He tried to throw up the gun, but as the muzzle stirred, the charge left it to bury itself in the bosom of his wife.

Casting down the gun, he sprang over the wall and ran to her. She was lying on her back, dead as he thought, with opened eyes and arms thrown wide. Once he looked, then with yells of horror the madman bounded from her side and rushed away, he knew not whither.

When Henry parted with Joan in the Monk's Lodge summer-house that morning, anger and bitter resentment were uppermost in his mind, directed first against his father-in-law, and next against his family, more particularly his mother. He had been trapped and deluded, and now, alas! it was too late to right the wrong. Indeed, so far as his wife was concerned, he could not even speak of it. Joan spoke truly when she said that Emma must never hear of these iniquities, or learn that both the name she had borne and the husband whom she loved had been filched from another woman. Poor girl! at least she was innocent; it must be his duty to protect her from the consequences of the guilt of others, and even from a knowledge of it.

But Levinger, her father, was not innocent, and towards him he was under no such obligation. Therefore, sick or well, he would pour out his wrath upon him, and to his face would call him the knave and liar that he was.

But it was not fated that in this world Mr. Levinger should ever listen to the reproaches of his son-in-law. When Henry reached the house he was informed that the sick man had fallen into a restless sleep, from which he must not be disturbed. Till nine o'clock that sleep endured, while Henry waited with such patience as he could command; then suddenly there was a cry and a stir, and the news was brought to him that, without the slightest warning or premonition of immediate danger, Mr. Levinger had passed from sleep into death.

Sobered and calmed by the shock of such tidings, Henry gave those orders which were necessary, and then started for home, where he must break the fact of her father's death to Emma. He had arranged to return to Bradmouth by the last train; but it was already gone, so he drove thither in the dog-cart that went to advise Dr. Childs and others of what had happened, and thence set out to walk to Rosham half an hour or so later than he had intended. He might have hired a cart and driven, but being the bearer of this heavy news, naturally enough he had no wish to hurry; moreover he was glad of the space of quiet that a lonely walk by night afforded him, for he had much to think of and to grieve over. It was, he felt, a good thing that the old man should have died before he spoke with him; for though certainly he would have done it, there was little use in reproaching him with falsehoods and treachery the results of which could not now be remedied.

Poor Joan! Hers was indeed a hard lot--harder even than his own! It was a year this day, he remembered, since first he had met her yonder by the ruins of Ramborough Abbey. Who could know all that she had suffered during this eventful year, or measure what was left for her to suffer in the time to come? Alas! he could see no escape for her; she had entered on an unnatural marriage, but still it was a marriage, and she must abide by her bargain, from which nothing could free her except the death of her husband or of herself. And this she had done for his sake, to safeguard him: ah! there was the bitterest part of it.

While Henry walked on, chewing the cud of these unhappy reflections, suddenly from the direction of Ramborough Abbey, that was a quarter of a mile or more away, there floated to his ear the sound of a single cry--far off, indeed, but strangely piercing, followed almost instantly by the report of a gun loaded with black powder. He halted and listened, trying to persuade himself that the cry was that of some curlew which a poacher had shot out of season; only to abandon the theory so soon as he conceived it, for something in his heart told him that this scream was uttered by mortal lips--by the lips of a woman in despair or agony. A few seconds passed, and he heard other sounds, those of short, sharp yells uttered in quick succession, but of so inhuman a note that he was unable to decide if they proceeded from a man or from some wounded animal.

He started forward at a run to solve the mystery, and as he went on the yells grew louder and came nearer. Presently he halted, for there, from over the crest of a little rise in the road, and not fifteen paces away, appeared the figure of a man running with extraordinary swiftness. His hat had fallen from him, his long hair seemed to stand up upon his head, his eyes stared white in terror and were ablaze with the fire of madness, his face was contorted and ashy white, and from his open mouth issued hideous and unearthly sounds. So shocking was his aspect in the moonlight that Henry sprang to one side and bethought him of the tale of the Ramborough goblin. Now the man was level with him, and as he went by he turned his head to look at him, and Henry knew the face for that of Samuel Rock.

"Dead!" shrieked the madman, wringing his hands, "dead, /dead!/" and he was gone.

Henry gasped, for his heart grew cold with fear. Joan had left him to join her husband; and now, what had happened? That cry, the gunshot, and the sight that he had seen, all seemed to tell of suicide or murder. No, no, he would not believe it! On he went again, till presently he saw a lad running towards him who called to him to stop.

"Who are you?" he gasped, "and what is the matter here?"

"I'm Willie Hood, and that's just what I should like to know, Sir Henry," was the answer, "more especial as not five minutes since I thought that I saw you walking up to the Abbey yonder."

"You saw /me/ walking there! Rubbish! I have just come from Bradmouth. Did you see that man, Rock, run by?"

"Yes, I see'd him fast enough. I should say by the looks of him that he has been doing murder and gone mad. Half an hour ago, before you came along, or begging your pardon, some one as limped like you, he had a gun in his hand, but that's gone now."

"Look here, young man," said Henry, as they went forward, "what are you doing here, that you come to see all these things?"

"Well, sir, to tell the truth, I was driving my donkeys to feed on Rock's land, and when I saw him coming along with a gun I hid in the bracken; for we had words about my taking his feed this very morning, and he swore then that if he caught me at it again he'd shoot me and the dickies too; so I lay pretty close till I saw the other man go by and heard the shriek and the shot."

"Come along, for Heaven's sake!" said Henry: "that devil must have killed some one."

Now they were near to the Abbey wall, and Willie, catching his companion by the arm, pointed to a dark shape which lay in the white dust of the roadway, and in a terrified whisper said, "Look there! what's /that?/"

Henry dashed forward and knelt down beside the shape, peering at its face. Then of a sudden he groaned aloud and said, "It is Joan Haste, and he has shot her!"

"Look at her breast!" whispered Willie, peeping over his shoulder. "I told her how it would be. It was I who found you both a year ago just here and looking like that, and now you see we have all come together again. I told her it was a bad beginning, and would come to