The Return of the Native
Page 53
At half-past eleven, finding that the house was silent, Eustacia hadlighted her candle, put on some warm outer wrappings, taken her bag inher 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 comeon heavily. But having committed herself to this line of action therewas no retreating for bad weather. Even the receipt of Clym's letterwould not have stopped her now. The gloom of the night was funereal;all nature seemed clothed in crape. The spiky points of the fir treesbehind the house rose into the sky like the turrets and pinnacles ofan abbey. Nothing below the horizon was visible save a light whichwas still burning in the cottage of Susan Nunsuch.
Eustacia opened her umbrella and went out from the enclosure bythe steps over the bank, after which she was beyond all danger ofbeing perceived. Skirting the pool, she followed the path towardsRainbarrow, occasionally stumbling over twisted furze-roots, tuftsof rushes, or oozing lumps of fleshy fungi, which at this season layscattered about the heath like the rotten liver and lungs of somecolossal animal. The moon and stars were closed up by cloud and rainto the degree of extinction. It was a night which led the traveller'sthoughts instinctively to dwell on nocturnal scenes of disaster in thechronicles of the world, on all that is terrible and dark in historyand legend--the last plague of Egypt, the destruction of Sennacherib'shost, 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 mindand the chaos of the world without. A sudden recollection had flashedon her this moment: she had not money enough for undertaking a longjourney. Amid the fluctuating sentiments of the day her unpracticalmind had not dwelt on the necessity of being well-provided, and nowthat she thoroughly realized the condition she sighed bitterly andceased to stand erect, gradually crouching down under the umbrella asif she were drawn into the Barrow by a hand from beneath. Could itbe that she was to remain a captive still? Money: she had never feltits value before. Even to efface herself from the country means wererequired. To ask Wildeve for pecuniary aid without allowing him toaccompany her was impossible to a woman with a shadow of pride left inher; to fly as his mistress--and she knew that he loved her--was ofthe nature of humiliation.
Anyone who had stood by now would have pitied her, not so much onaccount of her exposure to weather, and isolation from all of humanityexcept the mouldered remains inside the tumulus; but for that otherform of misery which was denoted by the slightly rocking movementthat her feelings imparted to her person. Extreme unhappiness weighedvisibly upon her. Between the drippings of the rain from her umbrellato her mantle, from her mantle to the heather, from the heather tothe 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 allabout her; and even had she seen herself in a promising way of gettingto Budmouth, entering a steamer, and sailing to some opposite port,she would have been but little more buoyant, so fearfully malignantwere other things. She uttered words aloud. When a woman in sucha situation, neither old, deaf, crazed, nor whimsical, takes uponherself to sob and soliloquize aloud there is something grievous thematter.
"Can I go, can I go?" she moaned. "He's not GREAT enough for me togive myself to--he does not suffice for my desire!... If he had beena Saul or a Buonaparte--ah! But to break my marriage vow for him--itis too poor a luxury!... And I have no money to go alone! And ifI could, what comfort to me? I must drag on next year, as I havedragged on this year, and the year after that as before. How I havetried and tried to be a splendid woman, and how destiny has beenagainst me!... I do not deserve my lot!" she cried in a frenzy ofbitter revolt. "O, the cruelty of putting me into this ill-conceivedworld! I was capable of much; but I have been injured and blightedand crushed by things beyond my control! O, how hard it is of Heavento devise such tortures for me, who have done no harm to Heaven atall!"