Now active fear got hold upon Margaret. In spirit she heard Rhoda's voice; she listened to the indictment; she pictured David's incredulity. He would surely start to see Bartley Crocker on the instant; and he would find Bartley gone for ever. And then? Her thoughts turned again to her own people. She cried out from her heart for protection. Her mental weakness gained upon her as she grew physically more feeble. Her legs trembled under her. She turned, and crouched, and crept behind a wall, that no chance eye from 'Meavy Cot' might see her aloft on the hill. Then she started to go to Coombeshead, and ran some distance until she grew suddenly weak and was forced to sit and rest herself for fear of fainting. David would doubtless guess that she had gone home. He would follow; he was certain to be upon the way now, and he must overtake her long before she reached Coombeshead. Increasing terror and decreasing reason threw her into a shivering sweat. She jumped up and left the road to Coombeshead, and so in reality avoided David, who had now set out for the farm of the Stanburys. She actually saw him pass within a hundred yards of her, and she rejoiced at her escape. Then, when he had gone by, she went forward to Crazywell and hid there, in deep gorse brakes not far distant from the water. Here she was safe enough for the present. She drank from a spring, and then sat on a stone until she grew very cold.
The time for useful thought or a sensible decision was past; the critical hours, when this woman's humble intellect might have led her to salvation, had gone by. Now she stood weak every way--physically reduced, mentally depressed and fear-stricken. She had declined upon a state which found her a prey to unreal terrors, phantom-driven, pervious to the secret evils of heredity. These intrinsic ills, latent in her blood and brain, now found their vantage, and presently reduced the daughter of Constance Stanbury to a condition of peril. It was in this pitiful case, as she wandered some hours later near Crazywell, that there came to her two children, and she had speech with them. She was light-headed; but they did not know it. They stared at the things she said and thought that brother David's wife was making very queer jokes.
Samson and Richard, with their basket carried between them, staggered steadily homewards through thickening dusk. They wondered which of the luxuries in the basket their father would eat first; and they rather envied him his collapse, when they considered the attractive nature of these prescriptions. Then they came suddenly upon Margaret standing by the gorse-brakes. She started and was about to dive into cover, like a frightened beast or bird, when she recognised the boys.
"Hullo!" cried Samson. "Why, 'tis Madge! Whatever be you doing up here all by yourself?"
She stared at them as they set down their basket and rested their arms.
"Oh, Lord, these good things be heavy!" declared Richard.
"Have 'e got a bit of meat there, Dicky?" she asked, her nature crying for food.
"I should just think we had. A half of a calf's head for soup, and three bottles of jelly, and a bottle of wine. I wish I was faither!"
"And grapes, took out of a barrel of sawdust," said Samson.
"A long journey for your little legs; but nought to mine," she said. "You must know, you boys, that I be going to set out on a journey myself as far as from here to the stars--or further."