The Night of the Sixth of November
Having resolved on flight Eustacia at times seemed anxious that something should happen to thwart1 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 momentary2 throb3 of hope that he would again present himself before her. But calmly considered it was not likely that such a severance4 as now existed would ever close up--she would have to live on as a painful object, isolated5, 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 bellied6 downwards7 from the sky like vast hammocks slung8 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 desultory9 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 ailing10, was now seriously unwell. Susan dropped the spoon, shook her fist at the vanished figure, and then proceeded with her work in a musing11, 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 premises12 to learn if the coast was clear, went to the furze-rick, and pulled thence a long-stemmed bough13 of that fuel. This she carried to the corner of the bank, and, glancing behind to see if the shutters14 were all closed, she struck a light, and kindled15 the furze. When it was thoroughly16 ablaze17 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 strictly18 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 retired19 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 sipping20 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 lining21 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 decided22 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 descending23 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 halfpast 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 streak24 of phosphorus drawn25 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 gnaw26 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 descended27 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 dwelling28 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 meridians29 radiating from the pole. Perplexed30 what to do, he looked into the parlour, and was vexed31 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 funereal32; all nature seemed clothed in crape. The spiky33 points of the fir trees behind the house rose into the sky like the turrets34 and pinnacles35 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 oozing36 lumps of fleshy fungi37, which at this season lay scattered38 about the heath like the rotten liver and lungs of some colossal39 animal. The moon and stars were closed up by cloud and rain to the degree of extinction40. It was a night which led the traveller's thoughts instinctively41 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 chaos42 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 undertaking43 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 erect44, gradually crouching45 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 efface46 herself from the country means were required. To ask Wildeve for pecuniary47 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 humiliation48.
Anyone who had stood by now would have pitied her, not so much on account of her exposure to weather, and isolation49 from all of humanity except the mouldered50 remains51 inside the tumulus; but for that other form of misery52 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 mantle53, 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 promising54 way of getting to Budmouth, entering a steamer, and sailing to some opposite port, she would have been but little more buoyant, so fearfully malignant55 were other things. She uttered words aloud. When a woman in such a situation, neither old, deaf, crazed, nor whimsical, takes upon herself to sob57 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 vow58 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 frenzy59 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 blighted60 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 cursorily61 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 exclamation62, "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 counteract63 the malign56 spell which she imagined poor Eustacia to be working, the boy's mother busied herself with a ghastly invention of superstition64, calculated to bring powerlessness, atrophy65, 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 utensils66, 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 vessel67 in the hot ashes of the fireplace. As soon as the wax had softened68 to the plasticity of dough69 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 incipient70 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 contemplated71 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 apparently72 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 upwards73 through the soles of the feet, till the figure was completely permeated74 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 shovel75 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 tongs76 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 murmur77 of words.
It was a strange jargon--the Lord's Prayer repeated backwards--the incantation usual in proceedings78 for obtaining unhallowed assistance against an enemy. Susan uttered the lugubrious79 discourse80 three times slowly, and when it was completed the image had considerably81 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.
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thwart
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| v.阻挠，妨碍，反对；adj.横(断的) | |
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momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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throb
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| v.震颤，颤动；(急速强烈地)跳动，搏动 | |
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severance
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| n.离职金；切断 | |
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isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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bellied
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| adj.有腹的，大肚子的 | |
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downwards
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| adj./adv.向下的（地），下行的（地） | |
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slung
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| 抛( sling的过去式和过去分词 )； 吊挂； 遣送； 押往 | |
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desultory
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| adj.散漫的，无方法的 | |
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ailing
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| v.生病 | |
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musing
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| n. 沉思，冥想 adj. 沉思的, 冥想的 动词muse的现在分词形式 | |
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premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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bough
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| n.大树枝，主枝 | |
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shutters
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| 百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门 | |
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kindled
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| （使某物）燃烧，着火( kindle的过去式和过去分词 )； 激起（感情等）； 发亮，放光 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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ablaze
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| adj.着火的，燃烧的；闪耀的，灯火辉煌的 | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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sipping
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| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的现在分词 ) | |
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lining
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| n.衬里，衬料 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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streak
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| n.条理，斑纹，倾向，少许，痕迹；v.加条纹，变成条纹，奔驰，快速移动 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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gnaw
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| v.不断地啃、咬；使苦恼，折磨 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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meridians
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| n.子午圈( meridian的名词复数 )；子午线；顶点；（权力，成就等的）全盛时期 | |
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perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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funereal
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| adj.悲哀的；送葬的 | |
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spiky
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| adj.长而尖的，大钉似的 | |
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turrets
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| （六角）转台( turret的名词复数 )； （战舰和坦克等上的）转动炮塔； （摄影机等上的）镜头转台； （旧时攻城用的）塔车 | |
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pinnacles
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| 顶峰( pinnacle的名词复数 )； 顶点； 尖顶； 小尖塔 | |
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oozing
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| v.（浓液等）慢慢地冒出，渗出( ooze的现在分词 )；使（液体）缓缓流出；（浓液）渗出，慢慢流出 | |
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fungi
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| n.真菌，霉菌 | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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colossal
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| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
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extinction
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| n.熄灭，消亡，消灭，灭绝，绝种 | |
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instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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undertaking
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| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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45
crouching
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的现在分词 ) | |
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efface
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| v.擦掉，抹去 | |
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47
pecuniary
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| adj.金钱的；金钱上的 | |
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48
humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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49
isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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50
mouldered
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| v.腐朽( moulder的过去式和过去分词 )；腐烂，崩塌 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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53
mantle
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| n.斗篷，覆罩之物，罩子；v.罩住，覆盖，脸红 | |
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54
promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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malignant
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| adj.恶性的，致命的；恶意的，恶毒的 | |
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malign
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| adj.有害的；恶性的；恶意的；v.诽谤，诬蔑 | |
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sob
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| n.空间轨道的轰炸机；呜咽，哭泣 | |
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vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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frenzy
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| n.疯狂，狂热，极度的激动 | |
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blighted
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| adj.枯萎的，摧毁的 | |
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cursorily
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| adv.粗糙地，疏忽地，马虎地 | |
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62
exclamation
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| n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词 | |
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63
counteract
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| vt.对…起反作用，对抗，抵消 | |
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superstition
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| n.迷信，迷信行为 | |
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atrophy
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| n./v.萎缩，虚脱，衰退 | |
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utensils
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| 器具，用具，器皿( utensil的名词复数 )； 器物 | |
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vessel
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| n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管 | |
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softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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69
dough
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| n.生面团；钱，现款 | |
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70
incipient
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| adj.起初的，发端的，初期的 | |
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71
contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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72
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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73
upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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74
permeated
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| 弥漫( permeate的过去式和过去分词 )； 遍布； 渗入； 渗透 | |
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75
shovel
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| n.铁锨，铲子，一铲之量；v.铲，铲出 | |
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76
tongs
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| n.钳；夹子 | |
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77
murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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lugubrious
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| adj.悲哀的，忧郁的 | |
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80
discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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81
considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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