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.
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 lead-work 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.
