Having resolved on flight Eustacia at times seemed anxious that
something should happen to thwart her own intention. The only event
that could really change her position was the appearance of Clym. The
glory which had encircled him as her lover was departed now; yet some
good simple quality of his would occasionally return to her memory and
stir a momentary throb of hope that he would again present himself
before her. But calmly considered it was not likely that such a
severance as now existed would ever close up: she would have to live
on as a painful object, isolated, and out of place. She had used to
think of the heath alone as an uncongenial spot to be in; she felt it
now of the whole world.
Towards evening on the sixth her determination to go away again
revived. About four o'clock she packed up anew the few small articles
she had brought in her flight from Alderworth, and also some belonging
to her which had been left here: the whole formed a bundle not too
large to be carried in her hand for a distance of a mile or two. The
scene without grew darker; mud-coloured clouds bellied downwards from
the sky like vast hammocks slung across it, and with the increase of
night a stormy wind arose; but as yet there was no rain.
Eustacia could not rest indoors, having nothing more to do, and she
wandered to and fro on the hill, not far from the house she was soon
to leave. In these desultory ramblings she passed the cottage of
Susan Nunsuch, a little lower down than her grandfather's. The door
was ajar, and a riband of bright firelight fell over the ground
without. As Eustacia crossed the firebeams she appeared for an
instant as distinct as a figure in a phantasmagoria--a creature of
light surrounded by an area of darkness: the moment passed, and she
was absorbed in night again.
A woman who was sitting inside the cottage had seen and recognized
her in that momentary irradiation. This was Susan herself, occupied
in preparing a posset for her little boy, who, often ailing, was now
seriously unwell. Susan dropped the spoon, shook her fist at the
vanished figure, and then proceeded with her work in a musing, absent
way.
At eight o'clock, the hour at which Eustacia had promised to signal
Wildeve if ever she signalled at all, she looked around the premises
to learn if the coast was clear, went to the furze-rick, and pulled
thence a long-stemmed bough of that fuel. This she carried to the
corner of the bank, and, glancing behind to see if the shutters were
all closed, she struck a light, and kindled the furze. When it was
thoroughly ablaze Eustacia took it by the stem and waved it in the
air above her head till it had burned itself out.
She was gratified, if gratification were possible to such a mood, by
seeing a similar light in the vicinity of Wildeve's residence a minute
or two later. Having agreed to keep watch at this hour every night,
in case she should require assistance, this promptness proved how
strictly he had held to his word. Four hours after the present time,
that is, at midnight, he was to be ready to drive her to Budmouth, as
prearranged.
Eustacia returned to the house. Supper having been got over she
retired early, and sat in her bedroom waiting for the time to go by.
The night being dark and threatening, Captain Vye had not strolled out
to gossip in any cottage or to call at the inn, as was sometimes his
custom on these long autumn nights; and he sat sipping grog alone
downstairs. About ten o'clock there was a knock at the door. When
the servant opened it the rays of the candle fell upon the form of
Fairway.
"I was a-forced to go to Lower Mistover tonight," he said, "and Mr.
Yeobright asked me to leave this here on my way; but, faith, I put it
in the lining of my hat, and thought no more about it till I got back
and was hasping my gate before going to bed. So I have run back with
it at once."
He handed in a letter and went his way. The girl brought it to the
captain, who found that it was directed to Eustacia. He turned it
over and over, and fancied that the writing was her husband's, though
he could not be sure. However, he decided to let her have it at once
if possible, and took it upstairs for that purpose; but on reaching
the door of her room and looking in at the keyhole he found there was
no light within, the fact being that Eustacia, without undressing, had
flung herself upon the bed, to rest and gather a little strength for
her coming journey. Her grandfather concluded from what he saw that
he ought not to disturb her; and descending again to the parlour he
placed the letter on the mantelpiece to give it to her in the morning.
At eleven o'clock he went to bed himself, smoked for some time in his
bedroom, put out his light at half-past eleven, and then, as was his
invariable custom, pulled up the blind before getting into bed, that
he might see which way the wind blew on opening his eyes in the
morning, his bedroom window commanding a view of the flagstaff and
vane. Just as he had lain down he was surprised to observe the white
pole of the staff flash into existence like a streak of phosphorus
drawn downwards across the shade of night without. Only one
explanation met this--a light had been suddenly thrown upon the pole
from the direction of the house. As everybody had retired to rest the
old man felt it necessary to get out of bed, open the window softly,
and look to the right and left. Eustacia's bedroom was lighted up,
and it was the shine from her window which had lighted the pole.
Wondering what had aroused her, he remained undecided at the window,
and was thinking of fetching the letter to slip it under her door,
when he heard a slight brushing of garments on the partition dividing
his room from the passage.
The captain concluded that Eustacia, feeling wakeful, had gone for a
book, and would have dismissed the matter as unimportant if he had not
also heard her distinctly weeping as she passed.
"She is thinking of that husband of hers," he said to himself. "Ah,
the silly goose! she had no business to marry him. I wonder if that
letter is really his?"
He arose, threw his boat-cloak round him, opened the door, and said,
"Eustacia!" There was no answer. "Eustacia!" he repeated louder,
"there is a letter on the mantelpiece for you."
But no response was made to this statement save an imaginary one from
the wind, which seemed to gnaw at the corners of the house, and the
stroke of a few drops of rain upon the windows.
He went on to the landing, and stood waiting nearly five minutes.
Still she did not return. He went back for a light, and prepared
to follow her; but first he looked into her bedroom. There, on the
outside of the quilt, was the impression of her form, showing that the
bed had not been opened; and, what was more significant, she had not
taken her candlestick downstairs. He was now thoroughly alarmed; and
hastily putting on his clothes he descended to the front door, which
he himself had bolted and locked. It was now unfastened. There was no
longer any doubt that Eustacia had left the house at this midnight
hour; and whither could she have gone? To follow her was almost
impossible. Had the dwelling stood in an ordinary road, two persons
setting out, one in each direction, might have made sure of overtaking
her; but it was a hopeless task to seek for anybody on a heath in the
dark, the practicable directions for flight across it from any point
being as numerous as the meridians radiating from the pole. Perplexed
what to do, he looked into the parlour, and was vexed to find that the
letter still lay there untouched.
At half-past eleven, finding that the house was silent, Eustacia had
lighted her candle, put on some warm outer wrappings, taken her bag in
her hand, and, extinguishing the light again, descended the staircase.
When she got into the outer air she found that it had begun to rain,
and as she stood pausing at the door it increased, threatening to come
on heavily. But having committed herself to this line of action there
was no retreating for bad weather. Even the receipt of Clym's letter
would not have stopped her now. The gloom of the night was funereal;
all nature seemed clothed in crape. The spiky points of the fir trees
behind the house rose into the sky like the turrets and pinnacles of
an abbey. Nothing below the horizon was visible save a light which
was still burning in the cottage of Susan Nunsuch.
Eustacia opened her umbrella and went out from the enclosure by
the steps over the bank, after which she was beyond all danger of
being perceived. Skirting the pool, she followed the path towards
Rainbarrow, occasionally stumbling over twisted furze-roots, tufts
of rushes, or oozing lumps of fleshy fungi, which at this season lay
scattered about the heath like the rotten liver and lungs of some
colossal animal. The moon and stars were closed up by cloud and rain
to the degree of extinction. It was a night which led the traveller's
thoughts instinctively to dwell on nocturnal scenes of disaster in the
chronicles of the world, on all that is terrible and dark in history
and legend--the last plague of Egypt, the destruction of Sennacherib's
host, the agony in Gethsemane.
Eustacia at length reached Rainbarrow, and stood still there to think.
Never was harmony more perfect than that between the chaos of her mind
and the chaos of the world without. A sudden recollection had flashed
on her this moment: she had not money enough for undertaking a long
journey. Amid the fluctuating sentiments of the day her unpractical
mind had not dwelt on the necessity of being well-provided, and now
that she thoroughly realized the condition she sighed bitterly and
ceased to stand erect, gradually crouching down under the umbrella as
if she were drawn into the Barrow by a hand from beneath. Could it
be that she was to remain a captive still? Money: she had never felt
its value before. Even to efface herself from the country means were
required. To ask Wildeve for pecuniary aid without allowing him to
accompany her was impossible to a woman with a shadow of pride left in
her; to fly as his mistress--and she knew that he loved her--was of
the nature of humiliation.
Anyone who had stood by now would have pitied her, not so much on
account of her exposure to weather, and isolation from all of humanity
except the mouldered remains inside the tumulus; but for that other
form of misery which was denoted by the slightly rocking movement
that her feelings imparted to her person. Extreme unhappiness weighed
visibly upon her. Between the drippings of the rain from her umbrella
to her mantle, from her mantle to the heather, from the heather to
the earth, very similar sounds could be heard coming from her lips;
and the tearfulness of the outer scene was repeated upon her face.
The wings of her soul were broken by the cruel obstructiveness of all
about her; and even had she seen herself in a promising way of getting
to Budmouth, entering a steamer, and sailing to some opposite port,
she would have been but little more buoyant, so fearfully malignant
were other things. She uttered words aloud. When a woman in such
a situation, neither old, deaf, crazed, nor whimsical, takes upon
herself to sob and soliloquize aloud there is something grievous the
matter.
"Can I go, can I go?" she moaned. "He's not GREAT enough for me to
give myself to--he does not suffice for my desire!... If he had been
a Saul or a Buonaparte--ah! But to break my marriage vow for him--it
is too poor a luxury!... And I have no money to go alone! And if
I could, what comfort to me? I must drag on next year, as I have
dragged on this year, and the year after that as before. How I have
tried and tried to be a splendid woman, and how destiny has been
against me!... I do not deserve my lot!" she cried in a frenzy of
bitter revolt. "O, the cruelty of putting me into this ill-conceived
world! I was capable of much; but I have been injured and blighted
and crushed by things beyond my control! O, how hard it is of Heaven
to devise such tortures for me, who have done no harm to Heaven at
all!"
The distant light which Eustacia had cursorily observed in leaving
the house came, as she had divined, from the cottage window of Susan
Nunsuch. What Eustacia did not divine was the occupation of the woman
within at that moment. Susan's sight of her passing figure earlier
in the evening, not five minutes after the sick boy's exclamation,
"Mother, I do feel so bad!" persuaded the matron that an evil
influence was certainly exercised by Eustacia's propinquity.
On this account Susan did not go to bed as soon as the evening's work
was over, as she would have done at ordinary times. To counteract
the malign spell which she imagined poor Eustacia to be working, the
boy's mother busied herself with a ghastly invention of superstition,
calculated to bring powerlessness, atrophy, and annihilation on any
human being against whom it was directed. It was a practice well
known on Egdon at that date, and one that is not quite extinct at the
present day.
She passed with her candle into an inner room, where, among other
utensils, were two large brown pans, containing together perhaps a
hundredweight of liquid honey, the produce of the bees during the
foregoing summer. On a shelf over the pans was a smooth and solid
yellow mass of a hemispherical form, consisting of beeswax from the
same take of honey. Susan took down the lump, and cutting off several
thin slices, heaped them in an iron ladle, with which she returned
to the living-room, and placed the vessel in the hot ashes of the
fireplace. As soon as the wax had softened to the plasticity of dough
she kneaded the pieces together. And now her face became more intent.
She began moulding the wax; and it was evident from her manner of
manipulation that she was endeavouring to give it some preconceived
form. The form was human.
By warming and kneading, cutting and twisting, dismembering and
re-joining the incipient image she had in about a quarter of an hour
produced a shape which tolerably well resembled a woman, and was
about six inches high. She laid it on the table to get cold and hard.
Meanwhile she took the candle and went upstairs to where the little
boy was lying.
"Did you notice, my dear, what Mrs. Eustacia wore this afternoon
besides the dark dress?"
"A red ribbon round her neck."
"Anything else?"
"No--except sandal-shoes."
"A red ribbon and sandal-shoes," she said to herself.
Mrs. Nunsuch went and searched till she found a fragment of the
narrowest red ribbon, which she took downstairs and tied round the
neck of the image. Then fetching ink and a quill from the rickety
bureau by the window, she blackened the feet of the image to the
extent presumably covered by shoes; and on the instep of each foot
marked cross-lines in the shape taken by the sandal-strings of those
days. Finally she tied a bit of black thread round the upper part of
the head, in faint resemblance to a snood worn for confining the hair.
Susan held the object at arm's length and contemplated it with a
satisfaction in which there was no smile. To anybody acquainted with
the inhabitants of Egdon Heath the image would have suggested Eustacia
Yeobright.
From her work-basket in the window-seat the woman took a paper of
pins, of the old long and yellow sort whose heads were disposed
to come off at their first usage. These she began to thrust into
the image in all directions, with apparently excruciating energy.
Probably as many as fifty were thus inserted, some into the head of
the wax model, some into the shoulders, some into the trunk, some
upwards through the soles of the feet, till the figure was completely
permeated with pins.
She turned to the fire. It had been of turf; and though the high heap
of ashes which turf fires produce was somewhat dark and dead on the
outside, upon raking it abroad with the shovel the inside of the mass
showed a glow of red heat. She took a few pieces of fresh turf from
the chimney-corner and built them together over the glow, upon which
the fire brightened. Seizing with the tongs the image that she had
made of Eustacia, she held it in the heat, and watched it as it began
to waste slowly away. And while she stood thus engaged there came
from between her lips a murmur of words.
It was a strange jargon--the Lord's Prayer repeated backwards--the
incantation usual in proceedings for obtaining unhallowed assistance
against an enemy. Susan uttered the lugubrious discourse three
times slowly, and when it was completed the image had considerably
diminished. As the wax dropped into the fire a long flame arose from
the spot, and curling its tongue round the figure ate still further
into its substance. A pin occasionally dropped with the wax, and the
embers heated it red as it lay.