The Return of the Native

Clym has recovered. Christian arrives, sent by Wildeve, to tell him Thomasin has had a girl. Wildeve wanted a boy. Christian also tells him he saw Clym’s mother the morning she died. She was coming to his house. He also reveals Mrs. Yeobright spoke to a man, Venn. Clym tells Christian to go find Venn. In the meantime, he goes to Blooms-End to reorganize his mother’s house. Suddenly Venn appears, asking if Mrs. Yeobright is at home. He has been away and does not know she is dead. Venn asks the cause of death and then assures Clym his mother was coming to see him and that she didn’t blame Clym at all. Clym tells Venn he wishes he could speak to the dead to know the truth. He spends the night at a neighbor’s house, and then the next day determines to speak to Johnny Nunsuch.

He leaves at daybreak and arrives at Susan’s house before she is awake. Susan’s greeting is hostile, and Clym remembers she is the woman who stabbed Eustacia at the church. Johnny has been ill, and Susan attributes it to Eustacia, the witch. When Johnny comes in, Clym asks the boy if remembers his walk with his mother and if his mother was on his way to his home. The boy says she was coming away. He tells Clym that Mrs. Yeobright sat under the trees and watched a man come into Clym’s house. Clym was already inside. Mrs. Yeobright knocked at the door. A young lady looked out the window. Mrs. Yeobright knocked again, and when no one came, she left. The boy says her face looked queer, and when Clym asks how, he replies, “Like yours is now” (311). Clym now knows it was not he, but rather his wife, who cast off his mother.

Enraged, Clym sets off for Alderworth. Eustacia awakens when he enters the house. He finds her standing in her night dress before a mirror. She sees him in the reflections, his face “ashy, haggard, and terrible” (313), and she knows that he knows. He asks where the man is who was there on August 31. She says she wishes he would kill her. He says he won’t honor her by making her a martyr. She won’t tell the man’s name. He goes to her desk and finds an empty envelope addressed to her by Wildeve. He says he is leaving. She says she will leave instead and go to her grandfather. The quarrel continues. He guesses it was Wildeve. She says she has done nothing wrong, twists the conversation so that she becomes the one harmed, and accuses him of deceiving her. She dresses to leave, and as her “poor little hands quivered so violently” to tie her bonnet (319), he ties it for her. A servant enters and informs them they have a message from Mrs. Wildeve. The name of the baby is Eustacia Clementine. To Clym, it is a mockery of his unhappy marriage.

Eustacia arrives at her grandfather’s house and finds it locked. Charley tells her that her grandfather will return that night. Aware of her distress, he gets a ladder, climbs in an upper window, and opens the door for her. He makes a fire and brings her tea. She says he is kind, and he reminds her she was kind to him by holding his hand when she took his place in the play. She goes into her old bedroom and finds it unchanged. Then she goes into her grandfather’s bedroom and sees his brace of pistols. She goes back downstairs but then returns upstairs, but the pistols are gone. She asks Charley if he took them away. Charley has locked them in the stable, telling her he cares too much for her to give her the pistols. Eustacia says she should be able to die if she wishes. Charley says he wishes the cause of her trouble would die. Her grandfather returns, observes her state, and without asking the cause, has her room prepared for her.

Charley looks out for Eustacia’s every need, in dread that she might leave and return to Alderworth. After a week, Eustacia leaves the house for the first time, sees her grandfather’s telescope, looks through it, and observes a loaded wagon on the high road. Her grandfather tells her the rumor Clym has moved from Alderworth to Bloom’s-End. Another time, she sees two women walking on the road. Charley says Mrs. Wildeve carries her baby, accompanied by the nurse. The date is November 5, the anniversary of Eustacia’s great bonfire. Charley determines to build one again on the same spot. Her grandfather notes that a year ago that day he encountered Venn carrying Thomasin in his van.

Eustacia looks out the window at the fire, goes outside, and tells Charley to put it out. She lingers, then hears a splash in the pond, then a second splash. Wildeve is there. He comments on her misery, and she begins to sob. He says he should have persisted in marrying her and asks what he can do to save her. He has money now. She says they are both married to other people and assistance from him would be wrong. She tells him he can assist her in getting to Budmouth Harbor without her grandfather or husband knowing. They arrange she will signal at 8:00 p.m. on the day she wishes to be picked up.

Clym has moved to Blooms-End and fantasizes about Eustacia’s return to him. She does not come, so on November 5, he decides to visit Thomasin and Wildeve. Thomasin, home alone, tells him she knows nothing about his home situation unless Clym tells her himself. When she hears the story, she says, “Were you too cruel?—or is she really so wicked as she seems?” (332). Thomasin urges him to make up again. If she refuses to come, it will prove Eustacia’s guilt. He notes Wildeve isn’t home and laments that he doesn’t take her with him on his walks. He doesn’t see in Thomasin’s face her suspicion that something remains of the relations between Wildeve and Eustacia.

Clym writes a letter to Eustacia asking her to return and decides if she doesn’t come back by the next night, he will send it to her. Wildeve returns home. When Thomasin says she was frightened and dislikes being in the house alone. He asks if she likes Egdon Heath. She says she dislikes his walks without her and admits that when he left that night, she followed him, watched him looking at the bonfires, and heard him say, “Damn it, I’ll go!” (335). He wonders if she has followed him before. She tells him about the rumors that he went to Alderworth and that he is still fond of Eustacia. He says there is nothing new in that. Thomasin does not tell him of Clym’s visit.

Eustacia has a lingering hope that Clym will reappear and thwart her intention to escape, but she begins to pack. She goes for a walk and passes Susan Nunsuch’s cottage. Johnny is very ill. The door is ajar, and the fire lights up Eustacia. Susan shakes her fist at her. At eight o’clock, Eustacia sends her signal and then returns home to wait for midnight. The grandfather is home that evening, and at 10 o’clock, Fairway knocks on the door to deliver a letter he had forgotten until he was going to bed. The grandfather carries it up to Eustacia’s dark room and decides not to disturb her. He retires to bed, then sees a flash of light on a pole outside. It comes from Eustacia’s window. He thinks about slipping the letter under her door, then hears her garments brush against the wall. He thinks she has gone for a book. After a few minutes, he goes to look for her. She is gone, and the letter remains in the parlor.

Eustacia leaves the house in the rain for Blackbarrow. Meanwhile, a light shines from Susan’s cottage. Susan attributes Johnny’s worsened illness to Eustacia’s evil influence. She molds beeswax into an effigy of her. She asks Johnny if he remembers how she was dressed, and he mentions a red ribbon and sandals. Susan ties a red ribbon around the neck, draws sandal shoes on the feet, ties a black thread to confine the hair, thrusts the image full of pins, places it in the fire, and recites an incantation, the Lord’s prayer repeated backward three times. The wax melts into the flames.

The same night, Clym hears a knock at his door. Hoping it is either Eustacia or a reply carried by Fairway, he opens it to reveal Thomasin and the baby. Thomasin has come to him because she thinks Wildeve is running away with Eustacia. She knows he went to her the night before, and this night Wildeve told her he needs to go on a journey and gathered bank notes to take with him. She asks Clym to go to her home to confront Wildeve. Then the grandfather knocks on the door at Blooms-End to inquire if Eustacia is there. Clym says no, but he is on his way to Wildeve’s. He leaves behind the grandfather who is too weary to accompany him.

After Clym has been gone a while, Thomasin decides to return to the inn. She carries the baby and heads out across the heath. She comes upon Venn’s van. He helps her and the baby get to the inn, not knowing her exact trouble. He thinks she passed by earlier because he heard a brush of women’s clothes, looked out with a lantern, and saw a woman. Thomasin says it must be someone else. She asks Venn not to hurt the baby, and he replies, “As if I could hurt anything belonging to you!” (351). They see a light, and Thomasin tells Venn to go toward it.

Wildeve prepares to meet Eustacia at midnight, thinking if he supplies her with money he can “act honestly towards his gentle wife, and chivalrously towards another woman” (353). As he waits for her, the only sound he hears is the roar from Shadwater Weir. He notes the time, a quarter past midnight, and hears footsteps. Rather than Eustacia, Clym appears. When Clym sees the waiting horse and wagon, he thinks it may have to do with his wife’s flight. They both hear a body fall into the water. They see Eustacia’s body, and Wildeve jumps in. Clym goes to put the lamp by a post but is caught up and carried into the water as well. Venn sees the light by the post, sends Thomasin and the baby home, and tells her to have the stable boy send for the men of the village. Someone has fallen into the weir.

Venn enters the water with a lantern. A bonnet floats by. Venn finds the bodies of two men. He has difficulty dragging out the first one because the second man has his arm around his leg. Clym was hanging on to the submerged Wildeve. Venn tells the men who arrive that they must search for a woman. They pull up Eustacia. Thomasin applies smelling salts to the three bodies. Only Clym is alive. Venn returns to his van but cannot rest. He changes his clothes and returns to the inn. Wildeve and Eustacia are dead, Clym barely escaped, and Thomasin is a widow. The nurse comes to the fire to dry the bank notes in Wildeve’s pocket. Charley comes from Captain Drew’s for word of his granddaughter, is told of Eustacia’s drowning, and asks to see her once more. Clym, Venn, and Charley view the bodies of Eustacia and Wildeve. Clym tells Venn he has killed two women this year, his mother and Eustacia. He wishes God had put an end to him.