Joan waited awhile and then peered through the window. She believed little of Samuel’s story as to his design of murdering Henry, setting it down as an idle tale that he had invented to alarm her. Therefore she directed her thoughts to the possibility of escape.
While she was thus engaged she saw a sight which terrified her indeed: the figure of her husband vanishing into the shadows of the twilight, holding in his hand the double-barrelled gun with which he had shot the dog and threatened her. Could it, then, be true? He was walking straight for Ramborough, and swiftly walking like a man who has some purpose to fulfil. She called to him wildly, but no answer came; though once he turned, looking towards the house, threw up his arm and laughed.
Then he disappeared over the brow of the slope.
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.