The Return of the Native

The next day, Thomasin visits Clym and Eustacia and brings his share of the money. Mrs. Yeobright came to her house after the encounter with Eustacia, and the confusion about the money was cleared. Clym asks Thomasin if she knows about the quarrel with his mother, and she says she does but suggests they may eventually make peace. Then Clym awakens one morning with a strange sensation in his eyes and, after several meetings with the surgeon, determines he cannot continue his studies. Frustrated, but unaffected by how the “face of mishaps” (242) might affect his social standing, he encounters Humphrey, who tells him he could share his low-class work of furze cutter without strain to his eyes. Clym, taken by the idea, borrows clothes and tools from Humphrey and undertakes his new work. He enjoys its monotony. Eustacia encounters him, a social failure, at work one afternoon in the heath. He is singing. They quarrel. Although she says she still has some tenderness for him, her words ring false to him: “And so love dies with good-fortune” (247).

Clym attempts to cheer Eustacia, who is forlorn, apathetic, and pitiable. He is aware that when he met her he had been “wrapped in a sort of golden halo” (248). She laments his low station in life, a furze cutter. He is a man who speaks French and knows the classics. She states her intent to attend a village picnic alone. Clym leaves for his work, admitting his jealousy. Eustacia dresses carefully and goes to the village where the band plays. The young men and women dance together while Eustacia looks in vain for the woman who invited her. Out of place socially, she walks on to a cottage for refreshment, then returns to the dancing. She hears her name called. Wildeve stands behind her and asks her to dance. She says it would seem strange, but he says they are related and, if she wishes, she can pull down her veil.

Wildeve and Eustacia dance, and people begin to ask who they are. Wildeve is ecstatic to have another man’s woman, and the old fires awaken. They pause after three dances and begin to discuss Clym—his illness, his furze cutting, and his staying in Egdon rather than taking her to Paris. He offers to walk with her, as far as Throope Corner. When they are almost there, two men appear, Clym and Venn. Clym, with his bad eyesight, does not see a man leave Eustacia’s side, but Venn does. Venn takes a shortcut through the heath to reach the Quiet Woman before Wildeve. He goes in, orders ale, and asks for Wildeve. Thomasin comes out when she hears his voice, saying Wildeve isn’t home yet. He has gone to East Egdon to buy a horse. Venn asks if he was wearing a white hat. When she replies “yes,” he tells her he saw him leading one home, “a beauty with a white face and a mane as black as night” (257). Venn leaves, Wildeve returns, and Thomasin asks about the horse. When he hears what Venn told her, Wildeve says he was mistaken but knows Venn has found him out.

Venn knows Wildeve neglects Thomasin and resolves to intervene. Wildeve has been going to Eustacia’s house at night, just looking, then walking back. Venn watches him and prepares a trap along Wildeve’s route by tying two tufts of heath together. Wildeve trips and falls, retrieves the string, and upon returning home observes Venn. He goes again to Eustacia’s house. Clym enters the room. Eustacia, flush with excitement tells him she is going out for some air. Just then, a loud knock is heard. Clym answers the door, and no one is there. A man with a gun comes up behind Wildeve, knocks at the door, and vanishes. It is Venn again.

Wildeve leaves. When he is halfway down the hill, he hears gunshots. Perturbed, he stops at the cottage of the constable, but he isn’t home. Wildeve waits for a while, then rethinking the situation, leaves. Since Venn has stopped his nighttime visits, Wildeve determines to go by day. Venn meanwhile goes to Mrs. Yeobright, tells her about her son’s loss of sight and new vocation, and urges her to visit him. At the same time, Clym has resolved to go to his mother to make amends. Eustacia will not stop him but will not join him. She tells him it would have been a blessing if he never returned. It has altered destinies—Clym thinks for three people, but Eustacia knows for five.

On the simmering hot day of August 31, Mrs. Yeobright starts across the heath to Clym’s house for reconciliation. She carries an umbrella, stopping occasionally to rest. She sees a laborer and asks the way to her son’s house. He points to a furze cutter going up the path and tells her to follow him. He is going to the same place. She observes the dress of the furze cutter and then notices he walks like her late husband. The reality of Clym’s new vocation hits her, and she begins plotting a rescue. Feeling unwell, she stops to rest in Devil’s Bellow, under some fir trees broken and ravaged by fierce weather. She can see the cottage from where she sits and notices a man approaching the gate, casing the house before he enters the yard. At first, she thought she wanted to encounter Clym and Eustacia alone, but on second thought, she decides it might be less awkward with another party there. She comes down the hill and looks at the garden drooping from the heat. Clym’s furze hook and faggots are by the door.

Wildeve knocks at the door, and Eustacia answers, hardly the same woman who danced so passionately with him the week before. Clym is sound asleep on the floor and does not hear them. Wildeve, dressed in a summer suit and hat, presents a sharp contrast with Clym’s furze cutting apparel. Wildeve asks why he does it, and she says he doesn’t like to be idle. Wildeve laments that fate has been so unkind to her, and she says that her desire for life in “the great arteries of the world” is denied to her “by accident” (272). He speaks of their past, and she says she regrets he still loves her because she isn’t that unhappy in her marriage. They hear a click at the gate. Eustacia goes to the window and sees Mrs. Yeobright. Eustacia thinks Clym heard the knock at the door when she hears him say “mother.” Wildeve leaves through the back. Eustacia goes into the garden to wait for Clym to look for her. When he doesn’t come in a few minutes, she returns to the front entrance and sees him asleep as before.

Mrs. Yeobright leaves, thinking her son was at home and didn’t open the door. She encounters Johnny Nunsuch who walks beside her for a while. Mrs. Yeobright tells him she saw a woman looking at her through the window. She sits down to rest, short of breath, and sends Johnny to bring her water from the pond. Johnny wants to leave and asks what he should tell his mother. Mrs. Yeobright replies, “Tell her you have seen a broken-hearted woman cast off by her son” (277). Johnny departs, Mrs. Yeobright walks on, and two-thirds of the way home, sits down on a patch of shepherd’s thyme to rest. She sees a heron fly above her and wishes “that she could arise uncrushed” from the earth (278).

Clym awakens and says he had a dream about his mother. He is determined to visit her that night. Eustacia asks him not to go. She fears what his mother might say and promises she will go herself tomorrow. Clym, having heard such things before, decides to go by himself. He comes upon a knoll covered by shepherd’s thyme and hears a moan. He discovers a woman, his mother, too ill to speak. He picks her up and carries her. He reaches the cottages of the locals—Sam, Fairway, Humphrey, Susan, the Cantles—and carries her into an empty shed. Sam brings brandy, and she becomes conscious enough to notice something wrong with her foot. She has been stung by an adder. Sam says they must rub the wound with the fat of the same kind of snake. Clym builds a fire and sends Susan for a frying pan. Sam catches three adders, one of them live, with an eye “like a villainous sort of black currant” (285), which they liken to the serpent in God’s garden. Susan arrives with the frying pan and fries the adder. Clym dips his handkerchief into the rendered fat and anoints the wound.

Eustacia, distressed to be alone in the evening, decides to walk toward Blooms-End. Her grandfather drives up in his car unexpectedly and tells her Wildeve has inherited 11,000 pounds. He regrets Eustacia let him go for her blind husband and asks if she needs assistance. She says they are not in want. She realizes Wildeve knew about his fortune when he visited that day, and he refrained from speaking about it “in deference to my misfortunes” (289). She realizes Wildeve wishes he had her now so he could fulfill her desires. She sits down on a stone, and a man comes up behind her. It is Wildeve. She congratulates him and tells him she may have gotten into trouble when he was there that day. He tells her he thinks her husband is a richer man than he for having her. He shares his plans, which include spending a year in travel around the world, ending in Paris.

He says he will walk with Eustacia toward Blooms-End. They come upon the shed where Clym brought his mother. She looks in, sees them, and asks Wildeve to go forward to discover what has happened. The doctor says Mrs. Yeobright suffers as much from exhaustion as the adder bite. Thomasin has also come. Mrs. Yeobright dies. Johnny Nunsuch comes into the shed and repeats to his mother what he was told, that she was “a broken-hearted woman and cast off by her son” (293). Eustacia hears Clym sobbing and admits to Wildeve that she is to blame for Mrs. Yeobright’s death and evil is in store for her.