JOAN HASTE by H. RIDER HAGGARD (e reader comics TXT) 📕

"Now, dear, you shall drink a toast," he said. "Repeat it after me. 'Your health, dearest husband, and long may we live together.'"

Having no option but to fall into his humour, or run the risk of worse things, Joan murmured the words, although they almost choked her, and drank the wine--for which she was very thankful, for by now it was past seven o'clock, and she had touched nothing since the morning. Then she made shift to swallow some food, washing it down with sips of champagne. If she ate little, however, her husband ate less, though she noticed with alarm that he did not spare the bottle.

"It is not often that I drink wine, Joan," he said, "for I hold it sinful waste--not but what there'll always be wine for you if you want it. But this is a night to make merry on, seeing that a man isn't married every day," and he finished the last of the champagne. "Oh! Joan," he added, "it's like a dream to think that you've come to me at last. You don't know how I've longed for you all these months; and now you are mine, mine, my own beautiful Joan--for those whom God has joined together no man can put asunder, however much they may try. I kept my oath to you faithful, didn't I, Joan? and now it's your turn to keep yours to me. You remember what you swore--that you would be a true and good wife to me, and that you wouldn't see nothing of that villain who deceived you. I suppose that you haven't seen him during all these months, Joan?"

"If you mean Sir Henry Graves," she answered, "I met him to-day as I walked to Monk's Vale station."

"Did you now?" he said, with a curious writhing of the lips: "that's strange, isn't it, that you should happen to go to Monk's Lodge without saying nothing to your husband about it, and that there you should happen to meet /him/ within a few hours of his getting back to England? I suppose you didn't speak to him, did you?"

"I spoke a few words."

"Ah! a few words. Well, that was wrong of you, Joan, for it's against your oath; but I dare say that they were to tell him just to keep clear in future?"

Joan nodded, for she dared not trust herself to speak.

"Well, then, that's all right, and he's done with. And now, Joan, as we've finished supper, you come here like a good wife, and put your arms round my neck and kiss me, and tell me that you love me, and that you hate that man, and are glad that the brat is dead."

Joan sat silent, making no answer. For a few moments he waited as though expecting her to move, then he rose and came towards her with outstretched arms.

Seeing his intention, she sprang from her chair and slipped to the other side of the table.

"Come," he said, "don't run from me, for our courting days are over, and it's silly in a wife. Are you going to say what I asked you, Joan?"

"No," she answered in a quiet voice, for her instincts overcame her fears; "I have promised to live with you, though you know why I married you, and I'll do it till it kills me, even if you are mad; but I'll not tell you a lie, for I never promised to love you, and I hate you now more than ever I did."

Samuel turned deadly white, then poured out a glass of neat brandy and drank it before he answered.

"That's straight, anyway, Joan. But it's queer that while you won't lie to me of one thing you ain't above doing it about another. P'raps you didn't know it, but I was there to-day when you had your 'few words' with your lover. He never saw me, but I followed him from Bradmouth step for step, though sometimes I had to hide behind trees and hedges to do it. You see I thought he would lead me to you; and so he did, for I saw you kissing and hugging--yes, you who belong to me--I saw you holding that man in your arms. Mad, do you say I am? Yes, I went mad then, though mayhap if you'd done that I asked you just now I might have got over it, for I felt my brain coming right; but now it is going again, going, going! And, Joan, since you hate me so bad, there is only one thing left to do, and that is----" And with a wild laugh he dashed towards the mantelpiece to reach down the gun which hung above it.

Then Joan's nerve broke down, and she fled. From the house itself there was no escape, for every door was locked; so, followed by the madman, she ran panting with terror upstairs to the room where she had washed her hands, and, shutting the door, shot the strong iron bolt--not too soon, for next instant her husband was dashing his weight against it. Very shortly he gave up the attempt, for he could make no impression upon oak and iron; and she heard him lock the door on the outside, raving the while. Then he tramped downstairs, and for a time there was silence. Presently she became aware of a scraping noise at the lattice; and, creeping along under shelter of the wall, she peeped round the corner of the window place. Already the light was low, but she could see the outlines of a white face glowering into the room through the iron bars without. Next instant there was a crash, and fragments of broken glass fell tinkling to the carpet. Then a voice spoke, saying, "Listen to me, Joan: I am here, on a ladder. I won't hurt you, I swear it; I was mad just now, but I am sane again. open the door, and let us make it up."

Joan crouched upon the floor and made no answer.

Now there came the sounds of a man wrenching at the bars, which apparently withstood all the strength that he could exert. For twenty minutes or more this went on, after which there was silence for a while, and gradually it grew dark in the room. At length through the broken pane she heard a laugh, and Samuel's voice saying:

"Listen to me, my pretty: you won't come out, and you won't let me in, but I'll be square with you for all that. You sha'n't have any lover to kiss to-morrow, because I'm going to make cold meat of him. It isn't you I want to kill; I ain't such a fool, for what's the use of you to me dead? I should only sit by your bones till I died myself. I've gone through too much to win you to want to be rid of you so soon. You'd be all right if it wasn't for the other man, and once he's gone you'll tell me that you love me fast enough; so now, Joan, I'm going to kill him. If he sticks to what I heard him tell his servant this morning, he should be walking back to Rosham in about an hour's time, by one of the paths that run past Ramborough Abbey wall. Well, I shall be waiting for him there, at the Cross-Roads, so that I can't miss him whichever way he comes, and this time we will settle our accounts. Good-bye, Joan: I hope you won't be lonely till I get home. I suppose that you'd like me to bring you a lock of his hair for a keepsake, wouldn't you? or will you have that back again which you gave him this day--the dead brat's, you know? You sit in there and say your prayers, dear, that it may please Heaven to make a good wife of you; for one thing's certain, you can't get out," and he began to descend the ladder.

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.

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