Chapter: <CHAPTER>
7--The Night of the Sixth of November


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 conditions 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 Bonaparte--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 quilt 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 sandalstrings 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 workbasket 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.


</CHAPTER>

 Eustacia has decided to make a run for it with Damon. She spends her night preparing and goes for a walk to calm her nerves. Susan Nunsuch sees Eustacia and glares at her. Johnny is sick and Susan thinks that the "witch" Eustacia is to blame. Eustacia sends a signal to Damon and then goes home to wait for the time to leave. Meanwhile a servant drops a letter off from Clym. Grandfather Vye accepts it, but since he thinks Eustacia has gone to bed, he drops the letter off downstairs. Late that night Eustacia sneaks out, but isn't very quiet about it. Her grandfather hears her crying and calls after her, but is unable to find her. To make matters worse, it's a dark and stormy night and he can't see where she's gone. Eustacia doesn't notice the letter on her way outside. Eustacia wanders outside in the rain and is all miserable. She starts to panic about her plan since she has no money and will be totally reliant upon Damon - not the most dependable chap, as we've seen. She's basically one step away from becoming Damon's mistress. Feeling miserable and theatrical, Eustacia delivers a big monologue and asks God and the universe why they made her life so miserable. Meanwhile, Susan is at home practicing some voodoo on her little Eustacia doll.

