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.
8 - Rain, Darkness, and Anxious Wanderers While the effigy of Eustacia was melting to nothing, and the fair woman herself was standing on Rainbarrow, her soul in an abyss of desolation seldom plumbed by one so young, Yeobright sat lonely at Blooms-End.He had fulfilled his word to Thomasin by sending off Fairway with the letter to his wife, and now waited with increased impatience for some sound or signal of her return.
Were Eustacia still at Mistover the very least he expected was that she would send him back a reply tonight by the same hand; though, to leave all to her inclination, he had cautioned Fairway not to ask for an answer.
If one were handed to him he was to bring it immediately;if not, he was to go straight home without troubling to come round to Blooms-End again that night.
But secretly Clym had a more pleasing hope.Eustacia might possibly decline to use her pen--it was rather her way to work silently--and surprise him by appearing at his door.
How fully her mind was made up to do otherwise he did not know.
To Clym's regret it began to rain and blow hard as the evening advanced.The wind rasped and scraped at the corners of the house, and filliped the eavesdroppings like peas against the panes.He walked restlessly about the untenanted rooms, stopping strange noises in windows and doors by jamming splinters of wood into the casements and crevices, and pressing together the leadwork of the quarries where it had become loosened from the glass.
It was one of those nights when cracks in the walls of old churches widen, when ancient stains on the ceilings of decayed manor houses are renewed and enlarged from the size of a man's hand to an area of many feet.
The little gate in the palings before his dwelling continually opened and clicked together again, but when he looked out eagerly nobody was there; it was as if invisible shapes of the dead were passing in on their way to visit him.
Between ten and eleven o'clock, finding that neither Fairway nor anybody else came to him, he retired to rest, and despite his anxieties soon fell asleep.
His sleep, however, was not very sound, by reason of the expectancy he had given way to, and he was easily awakened by a knocking which began at the door about an hour after.Clym arose and looked out of the window.
Rain was still falling heavily, the whole expanse of heath before him emitting a subdued hiss under the downpour.
It was too dark to see anything at all.
"Who's there?" he cried.
Light footsteps shifted their position in the porch, and he could just distinguish in a plaintive female voice the words, "O Clym, come down and let me in!"He flushed hot with agitation."Surely it is Eustacia!"he murmured.If so, she had indeed come to him unawares.
He hastily got a light, dressed himself, and went down.
On his flinging open the door the rays of the candle fell upon a woman closely wrapped up, who at once came forward.
"Thomasin!" he exclaimed in an indescribable tone of disappointment."It is Thomasin, and on such a night as this! O, where is Eustacia?"Thomasin it was, wet, frightened, and panting.
