Datasets:

kmfoda

/

booksum

like 44

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/04.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_4_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 1.chapter 4

chapter 4

{"name": "Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter4", "summary": "Adam goes home to a thatched cottage where his mother Lisbeth Bede waits for him. She is tall, vigorous and white-haired. Adam asks for his father and wants to know if he finished the coffin that has to be delivered in the morning. Lisbeth tells him his father went to Treddleston to the tavern and hasn't come home. Adam is angry, for his father is a drunkard. He refuses his supper, saying he will have to stay up all night to finish the coffin. He threatens to run away from home, for he has had to shoulder all the responsibility for the family for the last few years when he would like to save money for a home of his own. Lisbeth begins whining and complaining that they would have to go to the workhouse. When Seth comes home, Lisbeth takes out her feelings on the younger and milder son, for Adam is proud and aloof. Seth reminds his mother that Adam has never let the family down, and he won't leave them. Lisbeth complains that Adam loves Hetty Sorrel when he should marry Mary Burge and then inherit the Burge workshop. Seth offers to help Adam work, but Adam enjoys working; it settles down his anger. He reflects that though he has a heavy burden, he has a strong back to bear it. He understands that life is not about just taking care of oneself. He hears strange knocks on the door in the middle of the night and remembers it is a sign of death. In the morning, when Seth and Adam deliver the finished coffin, they find their father's body in the brook. He drowned on his way home.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 4 The narrator uses the events to explain a larger view of life to the reader, showing how, though people are unaware, characters and events are interconnected. For instance, Adam may be a good man, but he cannot escape the taint of his family. He has to carry his father's sins, as in Greek tragedy; the hero has to work through the family fate. Adam talks about running away, but he knows that will not work. He must see the family fortune through, and he is thankful he is strong. The narrator finds it ironic that family blood both unites and separates, for though Adam is connected to his parents, he has a \"large-hearted intelligence\" that is beyond either of them. Adam is closest to his brother, a dreamer but a kind and generous man. Both parents are a trial to him that he tries to bear as best he can. His mother is peevish and clinging and does not want her sons to marry and displace her. She is a good mother and housewife but has no independent spirit of her own. Adam unfortunately seems to be seeking a similar wife in the pretty but vacant Hetty Sorrel. His mother is no doubt right that it would be a disastrous match, but Seth reminds her that a man can't always help where he loves, as he has just found out himself with Dinah."}

A GREEN valley with a brook running through it, full almost to overflowing with the late rains, overhung by low stooping willows. Across this brook a plank is thrown, and over this plank Adam Bede is passing with his undoubting step, followed close by Gyp with the basket; evidently making his way to the thatched house, with a stack of timber by the side of it, about twenty yards up the opposite slope. The door of the house is open, and an elderly woman is looking out; but she is not placidly contemplating the evening sunshine; she has been watching with dim eyes the gradually enlarging speck which for the last few minutes she has been quite sure is her darling son Adam. Lisbeth Bede loves her son with the love of a woman to whom her first-born has come late in life. She is an anxious, spare, yet vigorous old woman, clean as a snowdrop. Her grey hair is turned neatly back under a pure linen cap with a black band round it; her broad chest is covered with a buff neckerchief, and below this you see a sort of short bedgown made of blue-checkered linen, tied round the waist and descending to the hips, from whence there is a considerable length of linsey-woolsey petticoat. For Lisbeth is tall, and in other points too there is a strong likeness between her and her son Adam. Her dark eyes are somewhat dim now--perhaps from too much crying--but her broadly marked eyebrows are still black, her teeth are sound, and as she stands knitting rapidly and unconsciously with her work-hardened hands, she has as firmly upright an attitude as when she is carrying a pail of water on her head from the spring. There is the same type of frame and the same keen activity of temperament in mother and son, but it was not from her that Adam got his well-filled brow and his expression of large-hearted intelligence. Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement. We hear a voice with the very cadence of our own uttering the thoughts we despise; we see eyes--ah, so like our mother's!--averted from us in cold alienation; and our last darling child startles us with the air and gestures of the sister we parted from in bitterness long years ago. The father to whom we owe our best heritage--the mechanical instinct, the keen sensibility to harmony, the unconscious skill of the modelling hand--galls us and puts us to shame by his daily errors; the long-lost mother, whose face we begin to see in the glass as our own wrinkles come, once fretted our young souls with her anxious humours and irrational persistence. It is such a fond anxious mother's voice that you hear, as Lisbeth says, "Well, my lad, it's gone seven by th' clock. Thee't allays stay till the last child's born. Thee wants thy supper, I'll warrand. Where's Seth? Gone arter some o's chapellin', I reckon?" "Aye, aye, Seth's at no harm, mother, thee mayst be sure. But where's father?" said Adam quickly, as he entered the house and glanced into the room on the left hand, which was used as a workshop. "Hasn't he done the coffin for Tholer? There's the stuff standing just as I left it this morning." "Done the coffin?" said Lisbeth, following him, and knitting uninterruptedly, though she looked at her son very anxiously. "Eh, my lad, he went aff to Treddles'on this forenoon, an's niver come back. I doubt he's got to th' 'Waggin Overthrow' again." A deep flush of anger passed rapidly over Adam's face. He said nothing, but threw off his jacket and began to roll up his shirt-sleeves again. "What art goin' to do, Adam?" said the mother, with a tone and look of alarm. "Thee wouldstna go to work again, wi'out ha'in thy bit o' supper?" Adam, too angry to speak, walked into the workshop. But his mother threw down her knitting, and, hurrying after him, took hold of his arm, and said, in a tone of plaintive remonstrance, "Nay, my lad, my lad, thee munna go wi'out thy supper; there's the taters wi' the gravy in 'em, just as thee lik'st 'em. I saved 'em o' purpose for thee. Come an' ha' thy supper, come." "Let be!" said Adam impetuously, shaking her off and seizing one of the planks that stood against the wall. "It's fine talking about having supper when here's a coffin promised to be ready at Brox'on by seven o'clock to-morrow morning, and ought to ha' been there now, and not a nail struck yet. My throat's too full to swallow victuals." "Why, thee canstna get the coffin ready," said Lisbeth. "Thee't work thyself to death. It 'ud take thee all night to do't." "What signifies how long it takes me? Isn't the coffin promised? Can they bury the man without a coffin? I'd work my right hand off sooner than deceive people with lies i' that way. It makes me mad to think on't. I shall overrun these doings before long. I've stood enough of 'em." Poor Lisbeth did not hear this threat for the first time, and if she had been wise she would have gone away quietly and said nothing for the next hour. But one of the lessons a woman most rarely learns is never to talk to an angry or a drunken man. Lisbeth sat down on the chopping bench and began to cry, and by the time she had cried enough to make her voice very piteous, she burst out into words. "Nay, my lad, my lad, thee wouldstna go away an' break thy mother's heart, an' leave thy feyther to ruin. Thee wouldstna ha' 'em carry me to th' churchyard, an' thee not to follow me. I shanna rest i' my grave if I donna see thee at th' last; an' how's they to let thee know as I'm a-dyin', if thee't gone a-workin' i' distant parts, an' Seth belike gone arter thee, and thy feyther not able to hold a pen for's hand shakin', besides not knowin' where thee art? Thee mun forgie thy feyther--thee munna be so bitter again' him. He war a good feyther to thee afore he took to th' drink. He's a clever workman, an' taught thee thy trade, remember, an's niver gen me a blow nor so much as an ill word--no, not even in 's drink. Thee wouldstna ha' 'm go to the workhus--thy own feyther--an' him as was a fine-growed man an' handy at everythin' amost as thee art thysen, five-an'-twenty 'ear ago, when thee wast a baby at the breast." Lisbeth's voice became louder, and choked with sobs--a sort of wail, the most irritating of all sounds where real sorrows are to be borne and real work to be done. Adam broke in impatiently. "Now, Mother, don't cry and talk so. Haven't I got enough to vex me without that? What's th' use o' telling me things as I only think too much on every day? If I didna think on 'em, why should I do as I do, for the sake o' keeping things together here? But I hate to be talking where it's no use: I like to keep my breath for doing i'stead o' talking." "I know thee dost things as nobody else 'ud do, my lad. But thee't allays so hard upo' thy feyther, Adam. Thee think'st nothing too much to do for Seth: thee snapp'st me up if iver I find faut wi' th' lad. But thee't so angered wi' thy feyther, more nor wi' anybody else." "That's better than speaking soft and letting things go the wrong way, I reckon, isn't it? If I wasn't sharp with him he'd sell every bit o' stuff i' th' yard and spend it on drink. I know there's a duty to be done by my father, but it isn't my duty to encourage him in running headlong to ruin. And what has Seth got to do with it? The lad does no harm as I know of. But leave me alone, Mother, and let me get on with the work." Lisbeth dared not say any more; but she got up and called Gyp, thinking to console herself somewhat for Adam's refusal of the supper she had spread out in the loving expectation of looking at him while he ate it, by feeding Adam's dog with extra liberality. But Gyp was watching his master with wrinkled brow and ears erect, puzzled at this unusual course of things; and though he glanced at Lisbeth when she called him, and moved his fore-paws uneasily, well knowing that she was inviting him to supper, he was in a divided state of mind, and remained seated on his haunches, again fixing his eyes anxiously on his master. Adam noticed Gyp's mental conflict, and though his anger had made him less tender than usual to his mother, it did not prevent him from caring as much as usual for his dog. We are apt to be kinder to the brutes that love us than to the women that love us. Is it because the brutes are dumb? "Go, Gyp; go, lad!" Adam said, in a tone of encouraging command; and Gyp, apparently satisfied that duty and pleasure were one, followed Lisbeth into the house-place. But no sooner had he licked up his supper than he went back to his master, while Lisbeth sat down alone to cry over her knitting. Women who are never bitter and resentful are often the most querulous; and if Solomon was as wise as he is reputed to be, I feel sure that when he compared a contentious woman to a continual dropping on a very rainy day, he had not a vixen in his eye--a fury with long nails, acrid and selfish. Depend upon it, he meant a good creature, who had no joy but in the happiness of the loved ones whom she contributed to make uncomfortable, putting by all the tid-bits for them and spending nothing on herself. Such a woman as Lisbeth, for example--at once patient and complaining, self-renouncing and exacting, brooding the livelong day over what happened yesterday and what is likely to happen to-morrow, and crying very readily both at the good and the evil. But a certain awe mingled itself with her idolatrous love of Adam, and when he said, "Leave me alone," she was always silenced. So the hours passed, to the loud ticking of the old day-clock and the sound of Adam's tools. At last he called for a light and a draught of water (beer was a thing only to be drunk on holidays), and Lisbeth ventured to say as she took it in, "Thy supper stan's ready for thee, when thee lik'st." "Donna thee sit up, mother," said Adam, in a gentle tone. He had worked off his anger now, and whenever he wished to be especially kind to his mother, he fell into his strongest native accent and dialect, with which at other times his speech was less deeply tinged. "I'll see to Father when he comes home; maybe he wonna come at all to-night. I shall be easier if thee't i' bed." "Nay, I'll bide till Seth comes. He wonna be long now, I reckon." It was then past nine by the clock, which was always in advance of the days, and before it had struck ten the latch was lifted and Seth entered. He had heard the sound of the tools as he was approaching. "Why, Mother," he said, "how is it as Father's working so late?" "It's none o' thy feyther as is a-workin'--thee might know that well anoof if thy head warna full o' chapellin'--it's thy brother as does iverything, for there's niver nobody else i' th' way to do nothin'." Lisbeth was going on, for she was not at all afraid of Seth, and usually poured into his ears all the querulousness which was repressed by her awe of Adam. Seth had never in his life spoken a harsh word to his mother, and timid people always wreak their peevishness on the gentle. But Seth, with an anxious look, had passed into the workshop and said, "Addy, how's this? What! Father's forgot the coffin?" "Aye, lad, th' old tale; but I shall get it done," said Adam, looking up and casting one of his bright keen glances at his brother. "Why, what's the matter with thee? Thee't in trouble." Seth's eyes were red, and there was a look of deep depression on his mild face. "Yes, Addy, but it's what must be borne, and can't be helped. Why, thee'st never been to the school, then?" "School? No, that screw can wait," said Adam, hammering away again. "Let me take my turn now, and do thee go to bed," said Seth. "No, lad, I'd rather go on, now I'm in harness. Thee't help me to carry it to Brox'on when it's done. I'll call thee up at sunrise. Go and eat thy supper, and shut the door so as I mayn't hear Mother's talk." Seth knew that Adam always meant what he said, and was not to be persuaded into meaning anything else. So he turned, with rather a heavy heart, into the house-place. "Adam's niver touched a bit o' victual sin' home he's come," said Lisbeth. "I reckon thee'st hed thy supper at some o' thy Methody folks." "Nay, Mother," said Seth, "I've had no supper yet." "Come, then," said Lisbeth, "but donna thee ate the taters, for Adam 'ull happen ate 'em if I leave 'em stannin'. He loves a bit o' taters an' gravy. But he's been so sore an' angered, he wouldn't ate 'em, for all I'd putten 'em by o' purpose for him. An' he's been a-threatenin' to go away again," she went on, whimpering, "an' I'm fast sure he'll go some dawnin' afore I'm up, an' niver let me know aforehand, an' he'll niver come back again when once he's gone. An' I'd better niver ha' had a son, as is like no other body's son for the deftness an' th' handiness, an' so looked on by th' grit folks, an' tall an' upright like a poplar-tree, an' me to be parted from him an' niver see 'm no more." "Come, Mother, donna grieve thyself in vain," said Seth, in a soothing voice. "Thee'st not half so good reason to think as Adam 'ull go away as to think he'll stay with thee. He may say such a thing when he's in wrath--and he's got excuse for being wrathful sometimes--but his heart 'ud never let him go. Think how he's stood by us all when it's been none so easy--paying his savings to free me from going for a soldier, an' turnin' his earnin's into wood for father, when he's got plenty o' uses for his money, and many a young man like him 'ud ha' been married and settled before now. He'll never turn round and knock down his own work, and forsake them as it's been the labour of his life to stand by." "Donna talk to me about's marr'in'," said Lisbeth, crying afresh. "He's set's heart on that Hetty Sorrel, as 'ull niver save a penny, an' 'ull toss up her head at's old mother. An' to think as he might ha' Mary Burge, an' be took partners, an' be a big man wi' workmen under him, like Mester Burge--Dolly's told me so o'er and o'er again--if it warna as he's set's heart on that bit of a wench, as is o' no more use nor the gillyflower on the wall. An' he so wise at bookin' an' figurin', an' not to know no better nor that!" "But, Mother, thee know'st we canna love just where other folks 'ud have us. There's nobody but God can control the heart of man. I could ha' wished myself as Adam could ha' made another choice, but I wouldn't reproach him for what he can't help. And I'm not sure but what he tries to o'ercome it. But it's a matter as he doesn't like to be spoke to about, and I can only pray to the Lord to bless and direct him." "Aye, thee't allays ready enough at prayin', but I donna see as thee gets much wi' thy prayin'. Thee wotna get double earnin's o' this side Yule. Th' Methodies 'll niver make thee half the man thy brother is, for all they're a-makin' a preacher on thee." "It's partly truth thee speak'st there, Mother," said Seth, mildly; "Adam's far before me, an's done more for me than I can ever do for him. God distributes talents to every man according as He sees good. But thee mustna undervally prayer. Prayer mayna bring money, but it brings us what no money can buy--a power to keep from sin and be content with God's will, whatever He may please to send. If thee wouldst pray to God to help thee, and trust in His goodness, thee wouldstna be so uneasy about things." "Unaisy? I'm i' th' right on't to be unaisy. It's well seen on THEE what it is niver to be unaisy. Thee't gi' away all thy earnin's, an' niver be unaisy as thee'st nothin' laid up again' a rainy day. If Adam had been as aisy as thee, he'd niver ha' had no money to pay for thee. Take no thought for the morrow--take no thought--that's what thee't allays sayin'; an' what comes on't? Why, as Adam has to take thought for thee." "Those are the words o' the Bible, Mother," said Seth. "They don't mean as we should be idle. They mean we shouldn't be overanxious and worreting ourselves about what'll happen to-morrow, but do our duty and leave the rest to God's will." "Aye, aye, that's the way wi' thee: thee allays makes a peck o' thy own words out o' a pint o' the Bible's. I donna see how thee't to know as 'take no thought for the morrow' means all that. An' when the Bible's such a big book, an' thee canst read all thro't, an' ha' the pick o' the texes, I canna think why thee dostna pick better words as donna mean so much more nor they say. Adam doesna pick a that'n; I can understan' the tex as he's allays a-sayin', 'God helps them as helps theirsens.'" "Nay, Mother," said Seth, "that's no text o' the Bible. It comes out of a book as Adam picked up at the stall at Treddles'on. It was wrote by a knowing man, but overworldly, I doubt. However, that saying's partly true; for the Bible tells us we must be workers together with God." "Well, how'm I to know? It sounds like a tex. But what's th' matter wi' th' lad? Thee't hardly atin' a bit o' supper. Dostna mean to ha' no more nor that bit o' oat-cake? An' thee lookst as white as a flick o' new bacon. What's th' matter wi' thee?" "Nothing to mind about, Mother; I'm not hungry. I'll just look in at Adam again, and see if he'll let me go on with the coffin." "Ha' a drop o' warm broth?" said Lisbeth, whose motherly feeling now got the better of her "nattering" habit. "I'll set two-three sticks a-light in a minute." "Nay, Mother, thank thee; thee't very good," said Seth, gratefully; and encouraged by this touch of tenderness, he went on: "Let me pray a bit with thee for Father, and Adam, and all of us--it'll comfort thee, happen, more than thee thinkst." "Well, I've nothin' to say again' it." Lisbeth, though disposed always to take the negative side in her conversations with Seth, had a vague sense that there was some comfort and safety in the fact of his piety, and that it somehow relieved her from the trouble of any spiritual transactions on her own behalf. So the mother and son knelt down together, and Seth prayed for the poor wandering father and for those who were sorrowing for him at home. And when he came to the petition that Adam might never be called to set up his tent in a far country, but that his mother might be cheered and comforted by his presence all the days of her pilgrimage, Lisbeth's ready tears flowed again, and she wept aloud. When they rose from their knees, Seth went to Adam again and said, "Wilt only lie down for an hour or two, and let me go on the while?" "No, Seth, no. Make Mother go to bed, and go thyself." Meantime Lisbeth had dried her eyes, and now followed Seth, holding something in her hands. It was the brown-and-yellow platter containing the baked potatoes with the gravy in them and bits of meat which she had cut and mixed among them. Those were dear times, when wheaten bread and fresh meat were delicacies to working people. She set the dish down rather timidly on the bench by Adam's side and said, "Thee canst pick a bit while thee't workin'. I'll bring thee another drop o' water." "Aye, Mother, do," said Adam, kindly; "I'm getting very thirsty." In half an hour all was quiet; no sound was to be heard in the house but the loud ticking of the old day-clock and the ringing of Adam's tools. The night was very still: when Adam opened the door to look out at twelve o'clock, the only motion seemed to be in the glowing, twinkling stars; every blade of grass was asleep. Bodily haste and exertion usually leave our thoughts very much at the mercy of our feelings and imagination; and it was so to-night with Adam. While his muscles were working lustily, his mind seemed as passive as a spectator at a diorama: scenes of the sad past, and probably sad future, floating before him and giving place one to the other in swift succession. He saw how it would be to-morrow morning, when he had carried the coffin to Broxton and was at home again, having his breakfast: his father perhaps would come in ashamed to meet his son's glance--would sit down, looking older and more tottering than he had done the morning before, and hang down his head, examining the floor-quarries; while Lisbeth would ask him how he supposed the coffin had been got ready, that he had slinked off and left undone--for Lisbeth was always the first to utter the word of reproach, although she cried at Adam's severity towards his father. "So it will go on, worsening and worsening," thought Adam; "there's no slipping uphill again, and no standing still when once you 've begun to slip down." And then the day came back to him when he was a little fellow and used to run by his father's side, proud to be taken out to work, and prouder still to hear his father boasting to his fellow-workmen how "the little chap had an uncommon notion o' carpentering." What a fine active fellow his father was then! When people asked Adam whose little lad he was, he had a sense of distinction as he answered, "I'm Thias Bede's lad." He was quite sure everybody knew Thias Bede--didn't he make the wonderful pigeon-house at Broxton parsonage? Those were happy days, especially when Seth, who was three years the younger, began to go out working too, and Adam began to be a teacher as well as a learner. But then came the days of sadness, when Adam was someway on in his teens, and Thias began to loiter at the public-houses, and Lisbeth began to cry at home, and to pour forth her plaints in the hearing of her sons. Adam remembered well the night of shame and anguish when he first saw his father quite wild and foolish, shouting a song out fitfully among his drunken companions at the "Waggon Overthrown." He had run away once when he was only eighteen, making his escape in the morning twilight with a little blue bundle over his shoulder, and his "mensuration book" in his pocket, and saying to himself very decidedly that he could bear the vexations of home no longer--he would go and seek his fortune, setting up his stick at the crossways and bending his steps the way it fell. But by the time he got to Stoniton, the thought of his mother and Seth, left behind to endure everything without him, became too importunate, and his resolution failed him. He came back the next day, but the misery and terror his mother had gone through in those two days had haunted her ever since. "No!" Adam said to himself to-night, "that must never happen again. It 'ud make a poor balance when my doings are cast up at the last, if my poor old mother stood o' the wrong side. My back's broad enough and strong enough; I should be no better than a coward to go away and leave the troubles to be borne by them as aren't half so able. 'They that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of those that are weak, and not to please themselves.' There's a text wants no candle to show't; it shines by its own light. It's plain enough you get into the wrong road i' this life if you run after this and that only for the sake o' making things easy and pleasant to yourself. A pig may poke his nose into the trough and think o' nothing outside it; but if you've got a man's heart and soul in you, you can't be easy a-making your own bed an' leaving the rest to lie on the stones. Nay, nay, I'll never slip my neck out o' the yoke, and leave the load to be drawn by the weak uns. Father's a sore cross to me, an's likely to be for many a long year to come. What then? I've got th' health, and the limbs, and the sperrit to bear it." At this moment a smart rap, as if with a willow wand, was given at the house door, and Gyp, instead of barking, as might have been expected, gave a loud howl. Adam, very much startled, went at once to the door and opened it. Nothing was there; all was still, as when he opened it an hour before; the leaves were motionless, and the light of the stars showed the placid fields on both sides of the brook quite empty of visible life. Adam walked round the house, and still saw nothing except a rat which darted into the woodshed as he passed. He went in again, wondering; the sound was so peculiar that the moment he heard it it called up the image of the willow wand striking the door. He could not help a little shudder, as he remembered how often his mother had told him of just such a sound coming as a sign when some one was dying. Adam was not a man to be gratuitously superstitious, but he had the blood of the peasant in him as well as of the artisan, and a peasant can no more help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help trembling when he sees a camel. Besides, he had that mental combination which is at once humble in the region of mystery and keen in the region of knowledge: it was the depth of his reverence quite as much as his hard common sense which gave him his disinclination to doctrinal religion, and he often checked Seth's argumentative spiritualism by saying, "Eh, it's a big mystery; thee know'st but little about it." And so it happened that Adam was at once penetrating and credulous. If a new building had fallen down and he had been told that this was a divine judgment, he would have said, "May be; but the bearing o' the roof and walls wasn't right, else it wouldn't ha' come down"; yet he believed in dreams and prognostics, and to his dying day he bated his breath a little when he told the story of the stroke with the willow wand. I tell it as he told it, not attempting to reduce it to its natural elements--in our eagerness to explain impressions, we often lose our hold of the sympathy that comprehends them. But he had the best antidote against imaginative dread in the necessity for getting on with the coffin, and for the next ten minutes his hammer was ringing so uninterruptedly, that other sounds, if there were any, might well be overpowered. A pause came, however, when he had to take up his ruler, and now again came the strange rap, and again Gyp howled. Adam was at the door without the loss of a moment; but again all was still, and the starlight showed there was nothing but the dew-laden grass in front of the cottage. Adam for a moment thought uncomfortably about his father; but of late years he had never come home at dark hours from Treddleston, and there was every reason for believing that he was then sleeping off his drunkenness at the "Waggon Overthrown." Besides, to Adam, the conception of the future was so inseparable from the painful image of his father that the fear of any fatal accident to him was excluded by the deeply infixed fear of his continual degradation. The next thought that occurred to him was one that made him slip off his shoes and tread lightly upstairs, to listen at the bedroom doors. But both Seth and his mother were breathing regularly. Adam came down and set to work again, saying to himself, "I won't open the door again. It's no use staring about to catch sight of a sound. Maybe there's a world about us as we can't see, but th' ear's quicker than the eye and catches a sound from't now and then. Some people think they get a sight on't too, but they're mostly folks whose eyes are not much use to 'em at anything else. For my part, I think it's better to see when your perpendicular's true than to see a ghost." Such thoughts as these are apt to grow stronger and stronger as daylight quenches the candles and the birds begin to sing. By the time the red sunlight shone on the brass nails that formed the initials on the lid of the coffin, any lingering foreboding from the sound of the willow wand was merged in satisfaction that the work was done and the promise redeemed. There was no need to call Seth, for he was already moving overhead, and presently came downstairs. "Now, lad," said Adam, as Seth made his appearance, "the coffin's done, and we can take it over to Brox'on, and be back again before half after six. I'll take a mouthful o' oat-cake, and then we'll be off." The coffin was soon propped on the tall shoulders of the two brothers, and they were making their way, followed close by Gyp, out of the little woodyard into the lane at the back of the house. It was but about a mile and a half to Broxton over the opposite slope, and their road wound very pleasantly along lanes and across fields, where the pale woodbines and the dog-roses were scenting the hedgerows, and the birds were twittering and trilling in the tall leafy boughs of oak and elm. It was a strangely mingled picture--the fresh youth of the summer morning, with its Edenlike peace and loveliness, the stalwart strength of the two brothers in their rusty working clothes, and the long coffin on their shoulders. They paused for the last time before a small farmhouse outside the village of Broxton. By six o'clock the task was done, the coffin nailed down, and Adam and Seth were on their way home. They chose a shorter way homewards, which would take them across the fields and the brook in front of the house. Adam had not mentioned to Seth what had happened in the night, but he still retained sufficient impression from it himself to say, "Seth, lad, if Father isn't come home by the time we've had our breakfast, I think it'll be as well for thee to go over to Treddles'on and look after him, and thee canst get me the brass wire I want. Never mind about losing an hour at thy work; we can make that up. What dost say?" "I'm willing," said Seth. "But see what clouds have gathered since we set out. I'm thinking we shall have more rain. It'll be a sore time for th' haymaking if the meadows are flooded again. The brook's fine and full now: another day's rain 'ud cover the plank, and we should have to go round by the road." They were coming across the valley now, and had entered the pasture through which the brook ran. "Why, what's that sticking against the willow?" continued Seth, beginning to walk faster. Adam's heart rose to his mouth: the vague anxiety about his father was changed into a great dread. He made no answer to Seth, but ran forward preceded by Gyp, who began to bark uneasily; and in two moments he was at the bridge. This was what the omen meant, then! And the grey-haired father, of whom he had thought with a sort of hardness a few hours ago, as certain to live to be a thorn in his side was perhaps even then struggling with that watery death! This was the first thought that flashed through Adam's conscience, before he had time to seize the coat and drag out the tall heavy body. Seth was already by his side, helping him, and when they had it on the bank, the two sons in the first moment knelt and looked with mute awe at the glazed eyes, forgetting that there was need for action--forgetting everything but that their father lay dead before them. Adam was the first to speak. "I'll run to Mother," he said, in a loud whisper. "I'll be back to thee in a minute." Poor Lisbeth was busy preparing her sons' breakfast, and their porridge was already steaming on the fire. Her kitchen always looked the pink of cleanliness, but this morning she was more than usually bent on making her hearth and breakfast-table look comfortable and inviting. "The lads 'ull be fine an' hungry," she said, half-aloud, as she stirred the porridge. "It's a good step to Brox'on, an' it's hungry air o'er the hill--wi' that heavy coffin too. Eh! It's heavier now, wi' poor Bob Tholer in't. Howiver, I've made a drap more porridge nor common this mornin'. The feyther 'ull happen come in arter a bit. Not as he'll ate much porridge. He swallers sixpenn'orth o' ale, an' saves a hap'orth o' por-ridge--that's his way o' layin' by money, as I've told him many a time, an' am likely to tell him again afore the day's out. Eh, poor mon, he takes it quiet enough; there's no denyin' that." But now Lisbeth heard the heavy "thud" of a running footstep on the turf, and, turning quickly towards the door, she saw Adam enter, looking so pale and overwhelmed that she screamed aloud and rushed towards him before he had time to speak. "Hush, Mother," Adam said, rather hoarsely, "don't be frightened. Father's tumbled into the water. Belike we may bring him round again. Seth and me are going to carry him in. Get a blanket and make it hot as the fire." In reality Adam was convinced that his father was dead but he knew there was no other way of repressing his mother's impetuous wailing grief than by occupying her with some active task which had hope in it. He ran back to Seth, and the two sons lifted the sad burden in heart-stricken silence. The wide-open glazed eyes were grey, like Seth's, and had once looked with mild pride on the boys before whom Thias had lived to hang his head in shame. Seth's chief feeling was awe and distress at this sudden snatching away of his father's soul; but Adam's mind rushed back over the past in a flood of relenting and pity. When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

Chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter4

Adam goes home to a thatched cottage where his mother Lisbeth Bede waits for him. She is tall, vigorous and white-haired. Adam asks for his father and wants to know if he finished the coffin that has to be delivered in the morning. Lisbeth tells him his father went to Treddleston to the tavern and hasn't come home. Adam is angry, for his father is a drunkard. He refuses his supper, saying he will have to stay up all night to finish the coffin. He threatens to run away from home, for he has had to shoulder all the responsibility for the family for the last few years when he would like to save money for a home of his own. Lisbeth begins whining and complaining that they would have to go to the workhouse. When Seth comes home, Lisbeth takes out her feelings on the younger and milder son, for Adam is proud and aloof. Seth reminds his mother that Adam has never let the family down, and he won't leave them. Lisbeth complains that Adam loves Hetty Sorrel when he should marry Mary Burge and then inherit the Burge workshop. Seth offers to help Adam work, but Adam enjoys working; it settles down his anger. He reflects that though he has a heavy burden, he has a strong back to bear it. He understands that life is not about just taking care of oneself. He hears strange knocks on the door in the middle of the night and remembers it is a sign of death. In the morning, when Seth and Adam deliver the finished coffin, they find their father's body in the brook. He drowned on his way home.

Commentary on Chapter 4 The narrator uses the events to explain a larger view of life to the reader, showing how, though people are unaware, characters and events are interconnected. For instance, Adam may be a good man, but he cannot escape the taint of his family. He has to carry his father's sins, as in Greek tragedy; the hero has to work through the family fate. Adam talks about running away, but he knows that will not work. He must see the family fortune through, and he is thankful he is strong. The narrator finds it ironic that family blood both unites and separates, for though Adam is connected to his parents, he has a "large-hearted intelligence" that is beyond either of them. Adam is closest to his brother, a dreamer but a kind and generous man. Both parents are a trial to him that he tries to bear as best he can. His mother is peevish and clinging and does not want her sons to marry and displace her. She is a good mother and housewife but has no independent spirit of her own. Adam unfortunately seems to be seeking a similar wife in the pretty but vacant Hetty Sorrel. His mother is no doubt right that it would be a disastrous match, but Seth reminds her that a man can't always help where he loves, as he has just found out himself with Dinah.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/05.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_5_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 1.chapter 5

chapter 5

{"name": "Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter5", "summary": "The Rector The scene switches to Broxton Parsonage where Mr. Adolphus Irwine, the Church of England vicar of Broxton, Hayslope, and Blythe, is playing chess with his mother. The furnishings are not the best, and with a mother and two maiden sisters to support it seems Mr. Irwine just makes ends meet. Joshua Rann, the shoemaker and parish clerk in Hayslope, interrupts to tell Mr. Irwine about the trouble with the Methodists and Dinah Morris preaching on the Green. He expects Mr. Irwine to put a stop to it, but Irwine says they must live and let live. Arthur Donnithorne, the young squire, looks in to see his old tutor, Irwine. The two are fond of each other. Joshua Rann mentions the death of Thais Bede to them both, and Irwine says he and Arthur will visit Hall Farm and then the Bedes together. Arthur remembers his childhood friendship with Adam Bede. Adam is a favorite of both Arthur and Irwine, and he taught Arthur carpentry. Arthur says when he is of age, he wants Adam to manage the wood. Irwine's mother speaks to Arthur about his big celebration for his coming of age in July.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 5 Eliot presents Irwine as an enlightened clergyman, tolerant and wise, a fatherly figure in his parish. He, like Adam, has family difficulties that he bears with good will, having to support his mother and two maiden sisters that are of no account socially but dear to him. Anne is an invalid and Kate is middle-aged and plain. Because of them, he will never be able to marry. Mrs. Irwine, his mother, has a very royal bearing and is proud of her handsome godson, Arthur. Her philosophy, however, that one can tell character by external appearance will be contradicted by the action. Arthur looks the part of a gentleman, and seems keen on playing the role of the beloved English squire but admits that he is lazy and bored at home in the summer with no amusement. This is all foreshadowing for his growing but dishonorable interest in Hetty Sorrel. At the moment, Arthur has a clear conscience and is proud of his connection to the most admirable people on his land--Irwine and Adam, and the Poysers at Hall Farm. He hopes to repair the unpopular reputation of his grandfather when he becomes squire. As will be made plain in the chapters to come, the whole valley is looking forward to Arthur's majority and rule. He is like a young prince. Irwine, like Adam Bede, is a moral touchstone for the other characters, and so, for the moment, Arthur enjoys the innocent and well earned love of his godmother, tutor, and old playfellow, Adam. Through the character of Irwine, the narrator presents her philosophy of the Religion of Humanity; that is, the religious emotions should chiefly hallow the relationship with our fellow human beings, leading to sympathy and tolerance."}

BEFORE twelve o'clock there had been some heavy storms of rain, and the water lay in deep gutters on the sides of the gravel walks in the garden of Broxton Parsonage; the great Provence roses had been cruelly tossed by the wind and beaten by the rain, and all the delicate-stemmed border flowers had been dashed down and stained with the wet soil. A melancholy morning--because it was nearly time hay-harvest should begin, and instead of that the meadows were likely to be flooded. But people who have pleasant homes get indoor enjoyments that they would never think of but for the rain. If it had not been a wet morning, Mr. Irwine would not have been in the dining-room playing at chess with his mother, and he loves both his mother and chess quite well enough to pass some cloudy hours very easily by their help. Let me take you into that dining-room and show you the Rev. Adolphus Irwine, Rector of Broxton, Vicar of Hayslope, and Vicar of Blythe, a pluralist at whom the severest Church reformer would have found it difficult to look sour. We will enter very softly and stand still in the open doorway, without awaking the glossy-brown setter who is stretched across the hearth, with her two puppies beside her; or the pug, who is dozing, with his black muzzle aloft, like a sleepy president. The room is a large and lofty one, with an ample mullioned oriel window at one end; the walls, you see, are new, and not yet painted; but the furniture, though originally of an expensive sort, is old and scanty, and there is no drapery about the window. The crimson cloth over the large dining-table is very threadbare, though it contrasts pleasantly enough with the dead hue of the plaster on the walls; but on this cloth there is a massive silver waiter with a decanter of water on it, of the same pattern as two larger ones that are propped up on the sideboard with a coat of arms conspicuous in their centre. You suspect at once that the inhabitants of this room have inherited more blood than wealth, and would not be surprised to find that Mr. Irwine had a finely cut nostril and upper lip; but at present we can only see that he has a broad flat back and an abundance of powdered hair, all thrown backward and tied behind with a black ribbon--a bit of conservatism in costume which tells you that he is not a young man. He will perhaps turn round by and by, and in the meantime we can look at that stately old lady, his mother, a beautiful aged brunette, whose rich-toned complexion is well set off by the complex wrappings of pure white cambric and lace about her head and neck. She is as erect in her comely embonpoint as a statue of Ceres; and her dark face, with its delicate aquiline nose, firm proud mouth, and small, intense, black eye, is so keen and sarcastic in its expression that you instinctively substitute a pack of cards for the chess-men and imagine her telling your fortune. The small brown hand with which she is lifting her queen is laden with pearls, diamonds, and turquoises; and a large black veil is very carefully adjusted over the crown of her cap, and falls in sharp contrast on the white folds about her neck. It must take a long time to dress that old lady in the morning! But it seems a law of nature that she should be dressed so: she is clearly one of those children of royalty who have never doubted their right divine and never met with any one so absurd as to question it. "There, Dauphin, tell me what that is!" says this magnificent old lady, as she deposits her queen very quietly and folds her arms. "I should be sorry to utter a word disagreeable to your feelings." "Ah, you witch-mother, you sorceress! How is a Christian man to win a game off you? I should have sprinkled the board with holy water before we began. You've not won that game by fair means, now, so don't pretend it." "Yes, yes, that's what the beaten have always said of great conquerors. But see, there's the sunshine falling on the board, to show you more clearly what a foolish move you made with that pawn. Come, shall I give you another chance?" "No, Mother, I shall leave you to your own conscience, now it's clearing up. We must go and plash up the mud a little, mus'n't we, Juno?" This was addressed to the brown setter, who had jumped up at the sound of the voices and laid her nose in an insinuating way on her master's leg. "But I must go upstairs first and see Anne. I was called away to Tholer's funeral just when I was going before." "It's of no use, child; she can't speak to you. Kate says she has one of her worst headaches this morning." "Oh, she likes me to go and see her just the same; she's never too ill to care about that." If you know how much of human speech is mere purposeless impulse or habit, you will not wonder when I tell you that this identical objection had been made, and had received the same kind of answer, many hundred times in the course of the fifteen years that Mr. Irwine's sister Anne had been an invalid. Splendid old ladies, who take a long time to dress in the morning, have often slight sympathy with sickly daughters. But while Mr. Irwine was still seated, leaning back in his chair and stroking Juno's head, the servant came to the door and said, "If you please, sir, Joshua Rann wishes to speak with you, if you are at liberty." "Let him be shown in here," said Mrs. Irwine, taking up her knitting. "I always like to hear what Mr. Rann has got to say. His shoes will be dirty, but see that he wipes them Carroll." In two minutes Mr. Rann appeared at the door with very deferential bows, which, however, were far from conciliating Pug, who gave a sharp bark and ran across the room to reconnoitre the stranger's legs; while the two puppies, regarding Mr. Rann's prominent calf and ribbed worsted stockings from a more sensuous point of view, plunged and growled over them in great enjoyment. Meantime, Mr. Irwine turned round his chair and said, "Well, Joshua, anything the matter at Hayslope, that you've come over this damp morning? Sit down, sit down. Never mind the dogs; give them a friendly kick. Here, Pug, you rascal!" It is very pleasant to see some men turn round; pleasant as a sudden rush of warm air in winter, or the flash of firelight in the chill dusk. Mr. Irwine was one of those men. He bore the same sort of resemblance to his mother that our loving memory of a friend's face often bears to the face itself: the lines were all more generous, the smile brighter, the expression heartier. If the outline had been less finely cut, his face might have been called jolly; but that was not the right word for its mixture of bonhomie and distinction. "Thank Your Reverence," answered Mr. Rann, endeavouring to look unconcerned about his legs, but shaking them alternately to keep off the puppies; "I'll stand, if you please, as more becoming. I hope I see you an' Mrs. Irwine well, an' Miss Irwine--an' Miss Anne, I hope's as well as usual." "Yes, Joshua, thank you. You see how blooming my mother looks. She beats us younger people hollow. But what's the matter?" "Why, sir, I had to come to Brox'on to deliver some work, and I thought it but right to call and let you know the goins-on as there's been i' the village, such as I hanna seen i' my time, and I've lived in it man and boy sixty year come St. Thomas, and collected th' Easter dues for Mr. Blick before Your Reverence come into the parish, and been at the ringin' o' every bell, and the diggin' o' every grave, and sung i' the choir long afore Bartle Massey come from nobody knows where, wi' his counter-singin' and fine anthems, as puts everybody out but himself--one takin' it up after another like sheep a-bleatin' i' th' fold. I know what belongs to bein' a parish clerk, and I know as I should be wantin' i' respect to Your Reverence, an' church, an' king, if I was t' allow such goins-on wi'out speakin'. I was took by surprise, an' knowed nothin' on it beforehand, an' I was so flustered, I was clean as if I'd lost my tools. I hanna slep' more nor four hour this night as is past an' gone; an' then it was nothin' but nightmare, as tired me worse nor wakin'." "Why, what in the world is the matter, Joshua? Have the thieves been at the church lead again?" "Thieves! No, sir--an' yet, as I may say, it is thieves, an' a-thievin' the church, too. It's the Methodisses as is like to get th' upper hand i' th' parish, if Your Reverence an' His Honour, Squire Donnithorne, doesna think well to say the word an' forbid it. Not as I'm a-dictatin' to you, sir; I'm not forgettin' myself so far as to be wise above my betters. Howiver, whether I'm wise or no, that's neither here nor there, but what I've got to say I say--as the young Methodis woman as is at Mester Poyser's was a-preachin' an' a-prayin' on the Green last night, as sure as I'm a-stannin' afore Your Reverence now." "Preaching on the Green!" said Mr. Irwine, looking surprised but quite serene. "What, that pale pretty young woman I've seen at Poyser's? I saw she was a Methodist, or Quaker, or something of that sort, by her dress, but I didn't know she was a preacher." "It's a true word as I say, sir," rejoined Mr. Rann, compressing his mouth into a semicircular form and pausing long enough to indicate three notes of exclamation. "She preached on the Green last night; an' she's laid hold of Chad's Bess, as the girl's been i' fits welly iver sin'." "Well, Bessy Cranage is a hearty-looking lass; I daresay she'll come round again, Joshua. Did anybody else go into fits?" "No, sir, I canna say as they did. But there's no knowin' what'll come, if we're t' have such preachin's as that a-goin' on ivery week--there'll be no livin' i' th' village. For them Methodisses make folks believe as if they take a mug o' drink extry, an' make theirselves a bit comfortable, they'll have to go to hell for't as sure as they're born. I'm not a tipplin' man nor a drunkard--nobody can say it on me--but I like a extry quart at Easter or Christmas time, as is nat'ral when we're goin' the rounds a-singin', an' folks offer't you for nothin'; or when I'm a-collectin' the dues; an' I like a pint wi' my pipe, an' a neighbourly chat at Mester Casson's now an' then, for I was brought up i' the Church, thank God, an' ha' been a parish clerk this two-an'-thirty year: I should know what the church religion is." "Well, what's your advice, Joshua? What do you think should be done?" "Well, Your Reverence, I'm not for takin' any measures again' the young woman. She's well enough if she'd let alone preachin'; an' I hear as she's a-goin' away back to her own country soon. She's Mr. Poyser's own niece, an' I donna wish to say what's anyways disrespectful o' th' family at th' Hall Farm, as I've measured for shoes, little an' big, welly iver sin' I've been a shoemaker. But there's that Will Maskery, sir as is the rampageousest Methodis as can be, an' I make no doubt it was him as stirred up th' young woman to preach last night, an' he'll be a-bringin' other folks to preach from Treddles'on, if his comb isn't cut a bit; an' I think as he should be let know as he isna t' have the makin' an' mendin' o' church carts an' implemen's, let alone stayin' i' that house an' yard as is Squire Donnithorne's." "Well, but you say yourself, Joshua, that you never knew any one come to preach on the Green before; why should you think they'll come again? The Methodists don't come to preach in little villages like Hayslope, where there's only a handful of labourers, too tired to listen to them. They might almost as well go and preach on the Binton Hills. Will Maskery is no preacher himself, I think." "Nay, sir, he's no gift at stringin' the words together wi'out book; he'd be stuck fast like a cow i' wet clay. But he's got tongue enough to speak disrespectful about's neebors, for he said as I was a blind Pharisee--a-usin' the Bible i' that way to find nick-names for folks as are his elders an' betters!--and what's worse, he's been heard to say very unbecomin' words about Your Reverence; for I could bring them as 'ud swear as he called you a 'dumb dog,' an' a 'idle shepherd.' You'll forgi'e me for sayin' such things over again." "Better not, better not, Joshua. Let evil words die as soon as they're spoken. Will Maskery might be a great deal worse fellow than he is. He used to be a wild drunken rascal, neglecting his work and beating his wife, they told me; now he's thrifty and decent, and he and his wife look comfortable together. If you can bring me any proof that he interferes with his neighbours and creates any disturbance, I shall think it my duty as a clergyman and a magistrate to interfere. But it wouldn't become wise people like you and me to be making a fuss about trifles, as if we thought the Church was in danger because Will Maskery lets his tongue wag rather foolishly, or a young woman talks in a serious way to a handful of people on the Green. We must 'live and let live,' Joshua, in religion as well as in other things. You go on doing your duty, as parish clerk and sexton, as well as you've always done it, and making those capital thick boots for your neighbours, and things won't go far wrong in Hayslope, depend upon it." "Your Reverence is very good to say so; an' I'm sensable as, you not livin' i' the parish, there's more upo' my shoulders." "To be sure; and you must mind and not lower the Church in people's eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for a little thing, Joshua. I shall trust to your good sense, now to take no notice at all of what Will Maskery says, either about you or me. You and your neighbours can go on taking your pot of beer soberly, when you've done your day's work, like good churchmen; and if Will Maskery doesn't like to join you, but to go to a prayer-meeting at Treddleston instead, let him; that's no business of yours, so long as he doesn't hinder you from doing what you like. And as to people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that, any more than the old church-steeple minds the rooks cawing about it. Will Maskery comes to church every Sunday afternoon, and does his wheelwright's business steadily in the weekdays, and as long as he does that he must be let alone." "Ah, sir, but when he comes to church, he sits an' shakes his head, an' looks as sour an' as coxy when we're a-singin' as I should like to fetch him a rap across the jowl--God forgi'e me--an' Mrs. Irwine, an' Your Reverence too, for speakin' so afore you. An' he said as our Christmas singin' was no better nor the cracklin' o' thorns under a pot." "Well, he's got a bad ear for music, Joshua. When people have wooden heads, you know, it can't be helped. He won't bring the other people in Hayslope round to his opinion, while you go on singing as well as you do." "Yes, sir, but it turns a man's stomach t' hear the Scripture misused i' that way. I know as much o' the words o' the Bible as he does, an' could say the Psalms right through i' my sleep if you was to pinch me; but I know better nor to take 'em to say my own say wi'. I might as well take the Sacriment-cup home and use it at meals." "That's a very sensible remark of yours, Joshua; but, as I said before----" While Mr. Irwine was speaking, the sound of a booted step and the clink of a spur were heard on the stone floor of the entrance-hall, and Joshua Rann moved hastily aside from the doorway to make room for some one who paused there, and said, in a ringing tenor voice, "Godson Arthur--may he come in?" "Come in, come in, godson!" Mrs. Irwine answered, in the deep half-masculine tone which belongs to the vigorous old woman, and there entered a young gentleman in a riding-dress, with his right arm in a sling; whereupon followed that pleasant confusion of laughing interjections, and hand-shakings, and "How are you's?" mingled with joyous short barks and wagging of tails on the part of the canine members of the family, which tells that the visitor is on the best terms with the visited. The young gentleman was Arthur Donnithorne, known in Hayslope, variously, as "the young squire," "the heir," and "the captain." He was only a captain in the Loamshire Militia, but to the Hayslope tenants he was more intensely a captain than all the young gentlemen of the same rank in his Majesty's regulars--he outshone them as the planet Jupiter outshines the Milky Way. If you want to know more particularly how he looked, call to your remembrance some tawny-whiskered, brown-locked, clear-complexioned young Englishman whom you have met with in a foreign town, and been proud of as a fellow-countryman--well-washed, high-bred, white-handed, yet looking as if he could deliver well from 'the left shoulder and floor his man: I will not be so much of a tailor as to trouble your imagination with the difference of costume, and insist on the striped waistcoat, long-tailed coat, and low top-boots. Turning round to take a chair, Captain Donnithorne said, "But don't let me interrupt Joshua's business--he has something to say." "Humbly begging Your Honour's pardon," said Joshua, bowing low, "there was one thing I had to say to His Reverence as other things had drove out o' my head." "Out with it, Joshua, quickly!" said Mr. Irwine. "Belike, sir, you havena heared as Thias Bede's dead--drownded this morning, or more like overnight, i' the Willow Brook, again' the bridge right i' front o' the house." "Ah!" exclaimed both the gentlemen at once, as if they were a good deal interested in the information. "An' Seth Bede's been to me this morning to say he wished me to tell Your Reverence as his brother Adam begged of you particular t' allow his father's grave to be dug by the White Thorn, because his mother's set her heart on it, on account of a dream as she had; an' they'd ha' come theirselves to ask you, but they've so much to see after with the crowner, an' that; an' their mother's took on so, an' wants 'em to make sure o' the spot for fear somebody else should take it. An' if Your Reverence sees well and good, I'll send my boy to tell 'em as soon as I get home; an' that's why I make bold to trouble you wi' it, His Honour being present." "To be sure, Joshua, to be sure, they shall have it. I'll ride round to Adam myself, and see him. Send your boy, however, to say they shall have the grave, lest anything should happen to detain me. And now, good morning, Joshua; go into the kitchen and have some ale." "Poor old Thias!" said Mr. Irwine, when Joshua was gone. "I'm afraid the drink helped the brook to drown him. I should have been glad for the load to have been taken off my friend Adam's shoulders in a less painful way. That fine fellow has been propping up his father from ruin for the last five or six years." "He's a regular trump, is Adam," said Captain Donnithorne. "When I was a little fellow, and Adam was a strapping lad of fifteen, and taught me carpentering, I used to think if ever I was a rich sultan, I would make Adam my grand-vizier. And I believe now he would bear the exaltation as well as any poor wise man in an Eastern story. If ever I live to be a large-acred man instead of a poor devil with a mortgaged allowance of pocket-money, I'll have Adam for my right hand. He shall manage my woods for me, for he seems to have a better notion of those things than any man I ever met with; and I know he would make twice the money of them that my grandfather does, with that miserable old Satchell to manage, who understands no more about timber than an old carp. I've mentioned the subject to my grandfather once or twice, but for some reason or other he has a dislike to Adam, and I can do nothing. But come, Your Reverence, are you for a ride with me? It's splendid out of doors now. We can go to Adam's together, if you like; but I want to call at the Hall Farm on my way, to look at the whelps Poyser is keeping for me." "You must stay and have lunch first, Arthur," said Mrs. Irwine. "It's nearly two. Carroll will bring it in directly." "I want to go to the Hall Farm too," said Mr. Irwine, "to have another look at the little Methodist who is staying there. Joshua tells me she was preaching on the Green last night." "Oh, by Jove!" said Captain Donnithorne, laughing. "Why, she looks as quiet as a mouse. There's something rather striking about her, though. I positively felt quite bashful the first time I saw her--she was sitting stooping over her sewing in the sunshine outside the house, when I rode up and called out, without noticing that she was a stranger, 'Is Martin Poyser at home?' I declare, when she got up and looked at me and just said, 'He's in the house, I believe: I'll go and call him,' I felt quite ashamed of having spoken so abruptly to her. She looked like St. Catherine in a Quaker dress. It's a type of face one rarely sees among our common people." "I should like to see the young woman, Dauphin," said Mrs. Irwine. "Make her come here on some pretext or other." "I don't know how I can manage that, Mother; it will hardly do for me to patronize a Methodist preacher, even if she would consent to be patronized by an idle shepherd, as Will Maskery calls me. You should have come in a little sooner, Arthur, to hear Joshua's denunciation of his neighbour Will Maskery. The old fellow wants me to excommunicate the wheelwright, and then deliver him over to the civil arm--that is to say, to your grandfather--to be turned out of house and yard. If I chose to interfere in this business, now, I might get up as pretty a story of hatred and persecution as the Methodists need desire to publish in the next number of their magazine. It wouldn't take me much trouble to persuade Chad Cranage and half a dozen other bull-headed fellows that they would be doing an acceptable service to the Church by hunting Will Maskery out of the village with rope-ends and pitchforks; and then, when I had furnished them with half a sovereign to get gloriously drunk after their exertions, I should have put the climax to as pretty a farce as any of my brother clergy have set going in their parishes for the last thirty years." "It is really insolent of the man, though, to call you an 'idle shepherd' and a 'dumb dog,'" said Mrs. Irwine. "I should be inclined to check him a little there. You are too easy-tempered, Dauphin." "Why, Mother, you don't think it would be a good way of sustaining my dignity to set about vindicating myself from the aspersions of Will Maskery? Besides, I'm not so sure that they ARE aspersions. I AM a lazy fellow, and get terribly heavy in my saddle; not to mention that I'm always spending more than I can afford in bricks and mortar, so that I get savage at a lame beggar when he asks me for sixpence. Those poor lean cobblers, who think they can help to regenerate mankind by setting out to preach in the morning twilight before they begin their day's work, may well have a poor opinion of me. But come, let us have our luncheon. Isn't Kate coming to lunch?" "Miss Irwine told Bridget to take her lunch upstairs," said Carroll; "she can't leave Miss Anne." "Oh, very well. Tell Bridget to say I'll go up and see Miss Anne presently. You can use your right arm quite well now, Arthur," Mr. Irwine continued, observing that Captain Donnithorne had taken his arm out of the sling. "Yes, pretty well; but Godwin insists on my keeping it up constantly for some time to come. I hope I shall be able to get away to the regiment, though, in the beginning of August. It's a desperately dull business being shut up at the Chase in the summer months, when one can neither hunt nor shoot, so as to make one's self pleasantly sleepy in the evening. However, we are to astonish the echoes on the 30th of July. My grandfather has given me carte blanche for once, and I promise you the entertainment shall be worthy of the occasion. The world will not see the grand epoch of my majority twice. I think I shall have a lofty throne for you, Godmamma, or rather two, one on the lawn and another in the ballroom, that you may sit and look down upon us like an Olympian goddess." "I mean to bring out my best brocade, that I wore at your christening twenty years ago," said Mrs. Irwine. "Ah, I think I shall see your poor mother flitting about in her white dress, which looked to me almost like a shroud that very day; and it WAS her shroud only three months after; and your little cap and christening dress were buried with her too. She had set her heart on that, sweet soul! Thank God you take after your mother's family, Arthur. If you had been a puny, wiry, yellow baby, I wouldn't have stood godmother to you. I should have been sure you would turn out a Donnithorne. But you were such a broad-faced, broad-chested, loud-screaming rascal, I knew you were every inch of you a Tradgett." "But you might have been a little too hasty there, Mother," said Mr. Irwine, smiling. "Don't you remember how it was with Juno's last pups? One of them was the very image of its mother, but it had two or three of its father's tricks notwithstanding. Nature is clever enough to cheat even you, Mother." "Nonsense, child! Nature never makes a ferret in the shape of a mastiff. You'll never persuade me that I can't tell what men are by their outsides. If I don't like a man's looks, depend upon it I shall never like HIM. I don't want to know people that look ugly and disagreeable, any more than I want to taste dishes that look disagreeable. If they make me shudder at the first glance, I say, take them away. An ugly, piggish, or fishy eye, now, makes me feel quite ill; it's like a bad smell." "Talking of eyes," said Captain Donnithorne, "that reminds me that I've got a book I meant to bring you, Godmamma. It came down in a parcel from London the other day. I know you are fond of queer, wizardlike stories. It's a volume of poems, 'Lyrical Ballads.' Most of them seem to be twaddling stuff, but the first is in a different style--'The Ancient Mariner' is the title. I can hardly make head or tail of it as a story, but it's a strange, striking thing. I'll send it over to you; and there are some other books that you may like to see, Irwine--pamphlets about Antinomianism and Evangelicalism, whatever they may be. I can't think what the fellow means by sending such things to me. I've written to him to desire that from henceforth he will send me no book or pamphlet on anything that ends in ISM." "Well, I don't know that I'm very fond of isms myself; but I may as well look at the pamphlets; they let one see what is going on. I've a little matter to attend to, Arthur," continued Mr. Irwine, rising to leave the room, "and then I shall be ready to set out with you." The little matter that Mr. Irwine had to attend to took him up the old stone staircase (part of the house was very old) and made him pause before a door at which he knocked gently. "Come in," said a woman's voice, and he entered a room so darkened by blinds and curtains that Miss Kate, the thin middle-aged lady standing by the bedside, would not have had light enough for any other sort of work than the knitting which lay on the little table near her. But at present she was doing what required only the dimmest light--sponging the aching head that lay on the pillow with fresh vinegar. It was a small face, that of the poor sufferer; perhaps it had once been pretty, but now it was worn and sallow. Miss Kate came towards her brother and whispered, "Don't speak to her; she can't bear to be spoken to to-day." Anne's eyes were closed, and her brow contracted as if from intense pain. Mr. Irwine went to the bedside and took up one of the delicate hands and kissed it, a slight pressure from the small fingers told him that it was worth-while to have come upstairs for the sake of doing that. He lingered a moment, looking at her, and then turned away and left the room, treading very gently--he had taken off his boots and put on slippers before he came upstairs. Whoever remembers how many things he has declined to do even for himself, rather than have the trouble of putting on or taking off his boots, will not think this last detail insignificant. And Mr. Irwine's sisters, as any person of family within ten miles of Broxton could have testified, were such stupid, uninteresting women! It was quite a pity handsome, clever Mrs. Irwine should have had such commonplace daughters. That fine old lady herself was worth driving ten miles to see, any day; her beauty, her well-preserved faculties, and her old-fashioned dignity made her a graceful subject for conversation in turn with the King's health, the sweet new patterns in cotton dresses, the news from Egypt, and Lord Dacey's lawsuit, which was fretting poor Lady Dacey to death. But no one ever thought of mentioning the Miss Irwines, except the poor people in Broxton village, who regarded them as deep in the science of medicine, and spoke of them vaguely as "the gentlefolks." If any one had asked old Job Dummilow who gave him his flannel jacket, he would have answered, "the gentlefolks, last winter"; and widow Steene dwelt much on the virtues of the "stuff" the gentlefolks gave her for her cough. Under this name too, they were used with great effect as a means of taming refractory children, so that at the sight of poor Miss Anne's sallow face, several small urchins had a terrified sense that she was cognizant of all their worst misdemeanours, and knew the precise number of stones with which they had intended to hit Farmer Britton's ducks. But for all who saw them through a less mythical medium, the Miss Irwines were quite superfluous existences--inartistic figures crowding the canvas of life without adequate effect. Miss Anne, indeed, if her chronic headaches could have been accounted for by a pathetic story of disappointed love, might have had some romantic interest attached to her: but no such story had either been known or invented concerning her, and the general impression was quite in accordance with the fact, that both the sisters were old maids for the prosaic reason that they had never received an eligible offer. Nevertheless, to speak paradoxically, the existence of insignificant people has very important consequences in the world. It can be shown to affect the price of bread and the rate of wages, to call forth many evil tempers from the selfish and many heroisms from the sympathetic, and, in other ways, to play no small part in the tragedy of life. And if that handsome, generous-blooded clergyman, the Rev. Adolphus Irwine, had not had these two hopelessly maiden sisters, his lot would have been shaped quite differently: he would very likely have taken a comely wife in his youth, and now, when his hair was getting grey under the powder, would have had tall sons and blooming daughters--such possessions, in short, as men commonly think will repay them for all the labour they take under the sun. As it was--having with all his three livings no more than seven hundred a-year, and seeing no way of keeping his splendid mother and his sickly sister, not to reckon a second sister, who was usually spoken of without any adjective, in such ladylike ease as became their birth and habits, and at the same time providing for a family of his own--he remained, you see, at the age of eight-and-forty, a bachelor, not making any merit of that renunciation, but saying laughingly, if any one alluded to it, that he made it an excuse for many indulgences which a wife would never have allowed him. And perhaps he was the only person in the world who did not think his sisters uninteresting and superfluous; for his was one of those large-hearted, sweet-blooded natures that never know a narrow or a grudging thought; Epicurean, if you will, with no enthusiasm, no self-scourging sense of duty; but yet, as you have seen, of a sufficiently subtle moral fibre to have an unwearying tenderness for obscure and monotonous suffering. It was his large-hearted indulgence that made him ignore his mother's hardness towards her daughters, which was the more striking from its contrast with her doting fondness towards himself; he held it no virtue to frown at irremediable faults. See the difference between the impression a man makes on you when you walk by his side in familiar talk, or look at him in his home, and the figure he makes when seen from a lofty historical level, or even in the eyes of a critical neighbour who thinks of him as an embodied system or opinion rather than as a man. Mr. Roe, the "travelling preacher" stationed at Treddleston, had included Mr. Irwine in a general statement concerning the Church clergy in the surrounding district, whom he described as men given up to the lusts of the flesh and the pride of life; hunting and shooting, and adorning their own houses; asking what shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?--careless of dispensing the bread of life to their flocks, preaching at best but a carnal and soul-benumbing morality, and trafficking in the souls of men by receiving money for discharging the pastoral office in parishes where they did not so much as look on the faces of the people more than once a-year. The ecclesiastical historian, too, looking into parliamentary reports of that period, finds honourable members zealous for the Church, and untainted with any sympathy for the "tribe of canting Methodists," making statements scarcely less melancholy than that of Mr. Roe. And it is impossible for me to say that Mr. Irwine was altogether belied by the generic classification assigned him. He really had no very lofty aims, no theological enthusiasm: if I were closely questioned, I should be obliged to confess that he felt no serious alarms about the souls of his parishioners, and would have thought it a mere loss of time to talk in a doctrinal and awakening manner to old "Feyther Taft," or even to Chad Cranage the blacksmith. If he had been in the habit of speaking theoretically, he would perhaps have said that the only healthy form religion could take in such minds was that of certain dim but strong emotions, suffusing themselves as a hallowing influence over the family affections and neighbourly duties. He thought the custom of baptism more important than its doctrine, and that the religious benefits the peasant drew from the church where his fathers worshipped and the sacred piece of turf where they lay buried were but slightly dependent on a clear understanding of the Liturgy or the sermon. Clearly the rector was not what is called in these days an "earnest" man: he was fonder of church history than of divinity, and had much more insight into men's characters than interest in their opinions; he was neither laborious, nor obviously self-denying, nor very copious in alms-giving, and his theology, you perceive, was lax. His mental palate, indeed, was rather pagan, and found a savouriness in a quotation from Sophocles or Theocritus that was quite absent from any text in Isaiah or Amos. But if you feed your young setter on raw flesh, how can you wonder at its retaining a relish for uncooked partridge in after-life? And Mr. Irwine's recollections of young enthusiasm and ambition were all associated with poetry and ethics that lay aloof from the Bible. On the other hand, I must plead, for I have an affectionate partiality towards the rector's memory, that he was not vindictive--and some philanthropists have been so; that he was not intolerant--and there is a rumour that some zealous theologians have not been altogether free from that blemish; that although he would probably have declined to give his body to be burned in any public cause, and was far from bestowing all his goods to feed the poor, he had that charity which has sometimes been lacking to very illustrious virtue--he was tender to other men's failings, and unwilling to impute evil. He was one of those men, and they are not the commonest, of whom we can know the best only by following them away from the marketplace, the platform, and the pulpit, entering with them into their own homes, hearing the voice with which they speak to the young and aged about their own hearthstone, and witnessing their thoughtful care for the everyday wants of everyday companions, who take all their kindness as a matter of course, and not as a subject for panegyric. Such men, happily, have lived in times when great abuses flourished, and have sometimes even been the living representatives of the abuses. That is a thought which might comfort us a little under the opposite fact--that it is better sometimes NOT to follow great reformers of abuses beyond the threshold of their homes. But whatever you may think of Mr. Irwine now, if you had met him that June afternoon riding on his grey cob, with his dogs running beside him--portly, upright, manly, with a good-natured smile on his finely turned lips as he talked to his dashing young companion on the bay mare, you must have felt that, however ill he harmonized with sound theories of the clerical office, he somehow harmonized extremely well with that peaceful landscape. See them in the bright sunlight, interrupted every now and then by rolling masses of cloud, ascending the slope from the Broxton side, where the tall gables and elms of the rectory predominate over the tiny whitewashed church. They will soon be in the parish of Hayslope; the grey church-tower and village roofs lie before them to the left, and farther on, to the right, they can just see the chimneys of the Hall Farm.

Chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter5

The Rector The scene switches to Broxton Parsonage where Mr. Adolphus Irwine, the Church of England vicar of Broxton, Hayslope, and Blythe, is playing chess with his mother. The furnishings are not the best, and with a mother and two maiden sisters to support it seems Mr. Irwine just makes ends meet. Joshua Rann, the shoemaker and parish clerk in Hayslope, interrupts to tell Mr. Irwine about the trouble with the Methodists and Dinah Morris preaching on the Green. He expects Mr. Irwine to put a stop to it, but Irwine says they must live and let live. Arthur Donnithorne, the young squire, looks in to see his old tutor, Irwine. The two are fond of each other. Joshua Rann mentions the death of Thais Bede to them both, and Irwine says he and Arthur will visit Hall Farm and then the Bedes together. Arthur remembers his childhood friendship with Adam Bede. Adam is a favorite of both Arthur and Irwine, and he taught Arthur carpentry. Arthur says when he is of age, he wants Adam to manage the wood. Irwine's mother speaks to Arthur about his big celebration for his coming of age in July.

Commentary on Chapter 5 Eliot presents Irwine as an enlightened clergyman, tolerant and wise, a fatherly figure in his parish. He, like Adam, has family difficulties that he bears with good will, having to support his mother and two maiden sisters that are of no account socially but dear to him. Anne is an invalid and Kate is middle-aged and plain. Because of them, he will never be able to marry. Mrs. Irwine, his mother, has a very royal bearing and is proud of her handsome godson, Arthur. Her philosophy, however, that one can tell character by external appearance will be contradicted by the action. Arthur looks the part of a gentleman, and seems keen on playing the role of the beloved English squire but admits that he is lazy and bored at home in the summer with no amusement. This is all foreshadowing for his growing but dishonorable interest in Hetty Sorrel. At the moment, Arthur has a clear conscience and is proud of his connection to the most admirable people on his land--Irwine and Adam, and the Poysers at Hall Farm. He hopes to repair the unpopular reputation of his grandfather when he becomes squire. As will be made plain in the chapters to come, the whole valley is looking forward to Arthur's majority and rule. He is like a young prince. Irwine, like Adam Bede, is a moral touchstone for the other characters, and so, for the moment, Arthur enjoys the innocent and well earned love of his godmother, tutor, and old playfellow, Adam. Through the character of Irwine, the narrator presents her philosophy of the Religion of Humanity; that is, the religious emotions should chiefly hallow the relationship with our fellow human beings, leading to sympathy and tolerance.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/06.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_6_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 1.chapter 6

chapter 6

{"name": "Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter6", "summary": "The Hall Farm The Hall Farm where the Poysers live, tenants of old Squire Donnithorne, is run down but immaculately run, a model farm in Loamshire. It is lazy summertime, and the animals and children are roaming around the place, while the workers are busy. Pretty Hetty Sorrel is churning butter in the dairy but looks at herself in the mirror when her aunt is not looking. Mrs. Poyser is a sharp-tongued and good-looking farm wife with three children and her nieces, Hetty and Dinah, staying with her. Mrs. Poyser tells Dinah, while she is mending lace, that she looks like her saintly Aunt Judith, the one who raised Dinah to be a Methodist. Mrs. Poyser, the soul of practicality, cannot persuade the idealistic Dinah to marry or even to stay with them for a while. Dinah will leave in a few days to continue her preaching in Stonyshire. Young Captain Donnithorne and Mr. Irwine come visiting, and Mrs. Poyser cannot help pointing out that the squire needs to make repairs on the farm. While Mr. Irwine speaks to Dinah Morris about her preaching, Arthur admires Mrs. Poyser's dairy, especially Hetty, who is making butter there.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 6 Hall Farm is a chief setting in the story. The Poysers are old and respected tenants who set the tone for the whole valley. Mrs. Poyser's dairy is famous, and Mr. Poyser is respected for his farming knowledge handed down by his old father, still living with them. The grandfather, mother, father, three children, and the two beautiful nieces make a very attractive and idyllic family. Arthur makes a pretense to go there to admire Hetty, the prettiest girl on his estate. At this point, he doesn't know of Adam's interest in Hetty. It is of course not unusual for a young gentleman to be wooing servant girls, but it is thoughtless of him, for he could ruin Hetty's reputation and ability to get a husband. Adam is of her class but Arthur, as a gentleman, could never marry Hetty. Dinah is also beautiful but otherworldly. The aunt worries about Dinah and does not understand her dreamy nature. Although Seth wanted to marry Dinah, Dinah explained to him that she has no trouble with young men wanting to court her or harass her. It is clear from her manner and self-confidence, that no young man would approach her with wrong ideas. Arthur called her St. Catherine. She appears as a nun to others. Hetty seems to be innocently vain of her beauty, and this point is developed in the next chapter. The contrast between Dinah and Hetty is an important one, reminiscent of the pairing of Dorothea Brook and Rosamund Vincy in Eliot's novel, Middlemarch. While both women are beautiful on the outside, inner beauty is far more important to Eliot, a constant motif in work. Among this honest farm family, Hetty sticks out as someone who is out of place."}

EVIDENTLY that gate is never opened, for the long grass and the great hemlocks grow close against it, and if it were opened, it is so rusty that the force necessary to turn it on its hinges would be likely to pull down the square stone-built pillars, to the detriment of the two stone lionesses which grin with a doubtful carnivorous affability above a coat of arms surmounting each of the pillars. It would be easy enough, by the aid of the nicks in the stone pillars, to climb over the brick wall with its smooth stone coping; but by putting our eyes close to the rusty bars of the gate, we can see the house well enough, and all but the very corners of the grassy enclosure. It is a very fine old place, of red brick, softened by a pale powdery lichen, which has dispersed itself with happy irregularity, so as to bring the red brick into terms of friendly companionship with the limestone ornaments surrounding the three gables, the windows, and the door-place. But the windows are patched with wooden panes, and the door, I think, is like the gate--it is never opened. How it would groan and grate against the stone floor if it were! For it is a solid, heavy, handsome door, and must once have been in the habit of shutting with a sonorous bang behind a liveried lackey, who had just seen his master and mistress off the grounds in a carriage and pair. But at present one might fancy the house in the early stage of a chancery suit, and that the fruit from that grand double row of walnut-trees on the right hand of the enclosure would fall and rot among the grass, if it were not that we heard the booming bark of dogs echoing from great buildings at the back. And now the half-weaned calves that have been sheltering themselves in a gorse-built hovel against the left-hand wall come out and set up a silly answer to that terrible bark, doubtless supposing that it has reference to buckets of milk. Yes, the house must be inhabited, and we will see by whom; for imagination is a licensed trespasser: it has no fear of dogs, but may climb over walls and peep in at windows with impunity. Put your face to one of the glass panes in the right-hand window: what do you see? A large open fireplace, with rusty dogs in it, and a bare boarded floor; at the far end, fleeces of wool stacked up; in the middle of the floor, some empty corn-bags. That is the furniture of the dining-room. And what through the left-hand window? Several clothes-horses, a pillion, a spinning-wheel, and an old box wide open and stuffed full of coloured rags. At the edge of this box there lies a great wooden doll, which, so far as mutilation is concerned, bears a strong resemblance to the finest Greek sculpture, and especially in the total loss of its nose. Near it there is a little chair, and the butt end of a boy's leather long-lashed whip. The history of the house is plain now. It was once the residence of a country squire, whose family, probably dwindling down to mere spinsterhood, got merged in the more territorial name of Donnithorne. It was once the Hall; it is now the Hall Farm. Like the life in some coast town that was once a watering-place, and is now a port, where the genteel streets are silent and grass-grown, and the docks and warehouses busy and resonant, the life at the Hall has changed its focus, and no longer radiates from the parlour, but from the kitchen and the farmyard. Plenty of life there, though this is the drowsiest time of the year, just before hay-harvest; and it is the drowsiest time of the day too, for it is close upon three by the sun, and it is half-past three by Mrs. Poyser's handsome eight-day clock. But there is always a stronger sense of life when the sun is brilliant after rain; and now he is pouring down his beams, and making sparkles among the wet straw, and lighting up every patch of vivid green moss on the red tiles of the cow-shed, and turning even the muddy water that is hurrying along the channel to the drain into a mirror for the yellow-billed ducks, who are seizing the opportunity of getting a drink with as much body in it as possible. There is quite a concert of noises; the great bull-dog, chained against the stables, is thrown into furious exasperation by the unwary approach of a cock too near the mouth of his kennel, and sends forth a thundering bark, which is answered by two fox-hounds shut up in the opposite cow-house; the old top-knotted hens, scratching with their chicks among the straw, set up a sympathetic croaking as the discomfited cock joins them; a sow with her brood, all very muddy as to the legs, and curled as to the tail, throws in some deep staccato notes; our friends the calves are bleating from the home croft; and, under all, a fine ear discerns the continuous hum of human voices. For the great barn-doors are thrown wide open, and men are busy there mending the harness, under the superintendence of Mr. Goby, the "whittaw," otherwise saddler, who entertains them with the latest Treddleston gossip. It is certainly rather an unfortunate day that Alick, the shepherd, has chosen for having the whittaws, since the morning turned out so wet; and Mrs. Poyser has spoken her mind pretty strongly as to the dirt which the extra number of men's shoes brought into the house at dinnertime. Indeed, she has not yet recovered her equanimity on the subject, though it is now nearly three hours since dinner, and the house-floor is perfectly clean again; as clean as everything else in that wonderful house-place, where the only chance of collecting a few grains of dust would be to climb on the salt-coffer, and put your finger on the high mantel-shelf on which the glittering brass candlesticks are enjoying their summer sinecure; for at this time of year, of course, every one goes to bed while it is yet light, or at least light enough to discern the outline of objects after you have bruised your shins against them. Surely nowhere else could an oak clock-case and an oak table have got to such a polish by the hand: genuine "elbow polish," as Mrs. Poyser called it, for she thanked God she never had any of your varnished rubbish in her house. Hetty Sorrel often took the opportunity, when her aunt's back was turned, of looking at the pleasing reflection of herself in those polished surfaces, for the oak table was usually turned up like a screen, and was more for ornament than for use; and she could see herself sometimes in the great round pewter dishes that were ranged on the shelves above the long deal dinner-table, or in the hobs of the grate, which always shone like jasper. Everything was looking at its brightest at this moment, for the sun shone right on the pewter dishes, and from their reflecting surfaces pleasant jets of light were thrown on mellow oak and bright brass--and on a still pleasanter object than these, for some of the rays fell on Dinah's finely moulded cheek, and lit up her pale red hair to auburn, as she bent over the heavy household linen which she was mending for her aunt. No scene could have been more peaceful, if Mrs. Poyser, who was ironing a few things that still remained from the Monday's wash, had not been making a frequent clinking with her iron and moving to and fro whenever she wanted it to cool; carrying the keen glance of her blue-grey eye from the kitchen to the dairy, where Hetty was making up the butter, and from the dairy to the back kitchen, where Nancy was taking the pies out of the oven. Do not suppose, however, that Mrs. Poyser was elderly or shrewish in her appearance; she was a good-looking woman, not more than eight-and-thirty, of fair complexion and sandy hair, well-shapen, light-footed. The most conspicuous article in her attire was an ample checkered linen apron, which almost covered her skirt; and nothing could be plainer or less noticeable than her cap and gown, for there was no weakness of which she was less tolerant than feminine vanity, and the preference of ornament to utility. The family likeness between her and her niece Dinah Morris, with the contrast between her keenness and Dinah's seraphic gentleness of expression, might have served a painter as an excellent suggestion for a Martha and Mary. Their eyes were just of the same colour, but a striking test of the difference in their operation was seen in the demeanour of Trip, the black-and-tan terrier, whenever that much-suspected dog unwarily exposed himself to the freezing arctic ray of Mrs. Poyser's glance. Her tongue was not less keen than her eye, and, whenever a damsel came within earshot, seemed to take up an unfinished lecture, as a barrel-organ takes up a tune, precisely at the point where it had left off. The fact that it was churning day was another reason why it was inconvenient to have the whittaws, and why, consequently, Mrs. Poyser should scold Molly the housemaid with unusual severity. To all appearance Molly had got through her after-dinner work in an exemplary manner, had "cleaned herself" with great dispatch, and now came to ask, submissively, if she should sit down to her spinning till milking time. But this blameless conduct, according to Mrs. Poyser, shrouded a secret indulgence of unbecoming wishes, which she now dragged forth and held up to Molly's view with cutting eloquence. "Spinning, indeed! It isn't spinning as you'd be at, I'll be bound, and let you have your own way. I never knew your equals for gallowsness. To think of a gell o' your age wanting to go and sit with half-a-dozen men! I'd ha' been ashamed to let the words pass over my lips if I'd been you. And you, as have been here ever since last Michaelmas, and I hired you at Treddles'on stattits, without a bit o' character--as I say, you might be grateful to be hired in that way to a respectable place; and you knew no more o' what belongs to work when you come here than the mawkin i' the field. As poor a two-fisted thing as ever I saw, you know you was. Who taught you to scrub a floor, I should like to know? Why, you'd leave the dirt in heaps i' the corners--anybody 'ud think you'd never been brought up among Christians. And as for spinning, why, you've wasted as much as your wage i' the flax you've spoiled learning to spin. And you've a right to feel that, and not to go about as gaping and as thoughtless as if you was beholding to nobody. Comb the wool for the whittaws, indeed! That's what you'd like to be doing, is it? That's the way with you--that's the road you'd all like to go, headlongs to ruin. You're never easy till you've got some sweetheart as is as big a fool as yourself: you think you'll be finely off when you're married, I daresay, and have got a three-legged stool to sit on, and never a blanket to cover you, and a bit o' oat-cake for your dinner, as three children are a-snatching at." "I'm sure I donna want t' go wi' the whittaws," said Molly, whimpering, and quite overcome by this Dantean picture of her future, "on'y we allays used to comb the wool for 'n at Mester Ottley's; an' so I just axed ye. I donna want to set eyes on the whittaws again; I wish I may never stir if I do." "Mr. Ottley's, indeed! It's fine talking o' what you did at Mr. Ottley's. Your missis there might like her floors dirted wi' whittaws for what I know. There's no knowing what people WONNA like--such ways as I've heard of! I never had a gell come into my house as seemed to know what cleaning was; I think people live like pigs, for my part. And as to that Betty as was dairymaid at Trent's before she come to me, she'd ha' left the cheeses without turning from week's end to week's end, and the dairy thralls, I might ha' wrote my name on 'em, when I come downstairs after my illness, as the doctor said it was inflammation--it was a mercy I got well of it. And to think o' your knowing no better, Molly, and been here a-going i' nine months, and not for want o' talking to, neither--and what are you stanning there for, like a jack as is run down, instead o' getting your wheel out? You're a rare un for sitting down to your work a little while after it's time to put by." "Munny, my iron's twite told; pease put it down to warm." The small chirruping voice that uttered this request came from a little sunny-haired girl between three and four, who, seated on a high chair at the end of the ironing table, was arduously clutching the handle of a miniature iron with her tiny fat fist, and ironing rags with an assiduity that required her to put her little red tongue out as far as anatomy would allow. "Cold, is it, my darling? Bless your sweet face!" said Mrs. Poyser, who was remarkable for the facility with which she could relapse from her official objurgatory to one of fondness or of friendly converse. "Never mind! Mother's done her ironing now. She's going to put the ironing things away." "Munny, I tould 'ike to do into de barn to Tommy, to see de whittawd." "No, no, no; Totty 'ud get her feet wet," said Mrs. Poyser, carrying away her iron. "Run into the dairy and see cousin Hetty make the butter." "I tould 'ike a bit o' pum-take," rejoined Totty, who seemed to be provided with several relays of requests; at the same time, taking the opportunity of her momentary leisure to put her fingers into a bowl of starch, and drag it down so as to empty the contents with tolerable completeness on to the ironing sheet. "Did ever anybody see the like?" screamed Mrs. Poyser, running towards the table when her eye had fallen on the blue stream. "The child's allays i' mischief if your back's turned a minute. What shall I do to you, you naughty, naughty gell?" Totty, however, had descended from her chair with great swiftness, and was already in retreat towards the dairy with a sort of waddling run, and an amount of fat on the nape of her neck which made her look like the metamorphosis of a white suckling pig. The starch having been wiped up by Molly's help, and the ironing apparatus put by, Mrs. Poyser took up her knitting which always lay ready at hand, and was the work she liked best, because she could carry it on automatically as she walked to and fro. But now she came and sat down opposite Dinah, whom she looked at in a meditative way, as she knitted her grey worsted stocking. "You look th' image o' your Aunt Judith, Dinah, when you sit a-sewing. I could almost fancy it was thirty years back, and I was a little gell at home, looking at Judith as she sat at her work, after she'd done the house up; only it was a little cottage, Father's was, and not a big rambling house as gets dirty i' one corner as fast as you clean it in another--but for all that, I could fancy you was your Aunt Judith, only her hair was a deal darker than yours, and she was stouter and broader i' the shoulders. Judith and me allays hung together, though she had such queer ways, but your mother and her never could agree. Ah, your mother little thought as she'd have a daughter just cut out after the very pattern o' Judith, and leave her an orphan, too, for Judith to take care on, and bring up with a spoon when SHE was in the graveyard at Stoniton. I allays said that o' Judith, as she'd bear a pound weight any day to save anybody else carrying a ounce. And she was just the same from the first o' my remembering her; it made no difference in her, as I could see, when she took to the Methodists, only she talked a bit different and wore a different sort o' cap; but she'd never in her life spent a penny on herself more than keeping herself decent." "She was a blessed woman," said Dinah; "God had given her a loving, self-forgetting nature, and He perfected it by grace. And she was very fond of you too, Aunt Rachel. I often heard her talk of you in the same sort of way. When she had that bad illness, and I was only eleven years old, she used to say, 'You'll have a friend on earth in your Aunt Rachel, if I'm taken from you, for she has a kind heart,' and I'm sure I've found it so." "I don't know how, child; anybody 'ud be cunning to do anything for you, I think; you're like the birds o' th' air, and live nobody knows how. I'd ha' been glad to behave to you like a mother's sister, if you'd come and live i' this country where there's some shelter and victual for man and beast, and folks don't live on the naked hills, like poultry a-scratching on a gravel bank. And then you might get married to some decent man, and there'd be plenty ready to have you, if you'd only leave off that preaching, as is ten times worse than anything your Aunt Judith ever did. And even if you'd marry Seth Bede, as is a poor wool-gathering Methodist and's never like to have a penny beforehand, I know your uncle 'ud help you with a pig, and very like a cow, for he's allays been good-natur'd to my kin, for all they're poor, and made 'em welcome to the house; and 'ud do for you, I'll be bound, as much as ever he'd do for Hetty, though she's his own niece. And there's linen in the house as I could well spare you, for I've got lots o' sheeting and table-clothing, and towelling, as isn't made up. There's a piece o' sheeting I could give you as that squinting Kitty spun--she was a rare girl to spin, for all she squinted, and the children couldn't abide her; and, you know, the spinning's going on constant, and there's new linen wove twice as fast as the old wears out. But where's the use o' talking, if ye wonna be persuaded, and settle down like any other woman in her senses, i'stead o' wearing yourself out with walking and preaching, and giving away every penny you get, so as you've nothing saved against sickness; and all the things you've got i' the world, I verily believe, 'ud go into a bundle no bigger nor a double cheese. And all because you've got notions i' your head about religion more nor what's i' the Catechism and the Prayer-book." "But not more than what's in the Bible, Aunt," said Dinah. "Yes, and the Bible too, for that matter," Mrs. Poyser rejoined, rather sharply; "else why shouldn't them as know best what's in the Bible--the parsons and people as have got nothing to do but learn it--do the same as you do? But, for the matter o' that, if everybody was to do like you, the world must come to a standstill; for if everybody tried to do without house and home, and with poor eating and drinking, and was allays talking as we must despise the things o' the world as you say, I should like to know where the pick o' the stock, and the corn, and the best new-milk cheeses 'ud have to go. Everybody 'ud be wanting bread made o' tail ends and everybody 'ud be running after everybody else to preach to 'em, istead o' bringing up their families, and laying by against a bad harvest. It stands to sense as that can't be the right religion." "Nay, dear aunt, you never heard me say that all people are called to forsake their work and their families. It's quite right the land should be ploughed and sowed, and the precious corn stored, and the things of this life cared for, and right that people should rejoice in their families, and provide for them, so that this is done in the fear of the Lord, and that they are not unmindful of the soul's wants while they are caring for the body. We can all be servants of God wherever our lot is cast, but He gives us different sorts of work, according as He fits us for it and calls us to it. I can no more help spending my life in trying to do what I can for the souls of others, than you could help running if you heard little Totty crying at the other end of the house; the voice would go to your heart, you would think the dear child was in trouble or in danger, and you couldn't rest without running to help her and comfort her." "Ah," said Mrs. Poyser, rising and walking towards the door, "I know it 'ud be just the same if I was to talk to you for hours. You'd make me the same answer, at th' end. I might as well talk to the running brook and tell it to stan' still." The causeway outside the kitchen door was dry enough now for Mrs. Poyser to stand there quite pleasantly and see what was going on in the yard, the grey worsted stocking making a steady progress in her hands all the while. But she had not been standing there more than five minutes before she came in again, and said to Dinah, in rather a flurried, awe-stricken tone, "If there isn't Captain Donnithorne and Mr. Irwine a-coming into the yard! I'll lay my life they're come to speak about your preaching on the Green, Dinah; it's you must answer 'em, for I'm dumb. I've said enough a'ready about your bringing such disgrace upo' your uncle's family. I wouldn't ha' minded if you'd been Mr. Poyser's own niece--folks must put up wi' their own kin, as they put up wi' their own noses--it's their own flesh and blood. But to think of a niece o' mine being cause o' my husband's being turned out of his farm, and me brought him no fortin but my savin's----" "Nay, dear Aunt Rachel," said Dinah gently, "you've no cause for such fears. I've strong assurance that no evil will happen to you and my uncle and the children from anything I've done. I didn't preach without direction." "Direction! I know very well what you mean by direction," said Mrs. Poyser, knitting in a rapid and agitated manner. "When there's a bigger maggot than usual in your head you call it 'direction'; and then nothing can stir you--you look like the statty o' the outside o' Treddles'on church, a-starin' and a-smilin' whether it's fair weather or foul. I hanna common patience with you." By this time the two gentlemen had reached the palings and had got down from their horses: it was plain they meant to come in. Mrs. Poyser advanced to the door to meet them, curtsying low and trembling between anger with Dinah and anxiety to conduct herself with perfect propriety on the occasion. For in those days the keenest of bucolic minds felt a whispering awe at the sight of the gentry, such as of old men felt when they stood on tiptoe to watch the gods passing by in tall human shape. "Well, Mrs. Poyser, how are you after this stormy morning?" said Mr. Irwine, with his stately cordiality. "Our feet are quite dry; we shall not soil your beautiful floor." "Oh, sir, don't mention it," said Mrs. Poyser. "Will you and the captain please to walk into the parlour?" "No, indeed, thank you, Mrs. Poyser," said the captain, looking eagerly round the kitchen, as if his eye were seeking something it could not find. "I delight in your kitchen. I think it is the most charming room I know. I should like every farmer's wife to come and look at it for a pattern." "Oh, you're pleased to say so, sir. Pray take a seat," said Mrs. Poyser, relieved a little by this compliment and the captain's evident good-humour, but still glancing anxiously at Mr. Irwine, who, she saw, was looking at Dinah and advancing towards her. "Poyser is not at home, is he?" said Captain Donnithorne, seating himself where he could see along the short passage to the open dairy-door. "No, sir, he isn't; he's gone to Rosseter to see Mr. West, the factor, about the wool. But there's Father i' the barn, sir, if he'd be of any use." "No, thank you; I'll just look at the whelps and leave a message about them with your shepherd. I must come another day and see your husband; I want to have a consultation with him about horses. Do you know when he's likely to be at liberty?" "Why, sir, you can hardly miss him, except it's o' Treddles'on market-day--that's of a Friday, you know. For if he's anywhere on the farm we can send for him in a minute. If we'd got rid o' the Scantlands, we should have no outlying fields; and I should be glad of it, for if ever anything happens, he's sure to be gone to the Scantlands. Things allays happen so contrairy, if they've a chance; and it's an unnat'ral thing to have one bit o' your farm in one county and all the rest in another." "Ah, the Scantlands would go much better with Choyce's farm, especially as he wants dairyland and you've got plenty. I think yours is the prettiest farm on the estate, though; and do you know, Mrs. Poyser, if I were going to marry and settle, I should be tempted to turn you out, and do up this fine old house, and turn farmer myself." "Oh, sir," said Mrs. Poyser, rather alarmed, "you wouldn't like it at all. As for farming, it's putting money into your pocket wi' your right hand and fetching it out wi' your left. As fur as I can see, it's raising victual for other folks and just getting a mouthful for yourself and your children as you go along. Not as you'd be like a poor man as wants to get his bread--you could afford to lose as much money as you liked i' farming--but it's poor fun losing money, I should think, though I understan' it's what the great folks i' London play at more than anything. For my husband heard at market as Lord Dacey's eldest son had lost thousands upo' thousands to the Prince o' Wales, and they said my lady was going to pawn her jewels to pay for him. But you know more about that than I do, sir. But, as for farming, sir, I canna think as you'd like it; and this house--the draughts in it are enough to cut you through, and it's my opinion the floors upstairs are very rotten, and the rats i' the cellar are beyond anything." "Why, that's a terrible picture, Mrs. Poyser. I think I should be doing you a service to turn you out of such a place. But there's no chance of that. I'm not likely to settle for the next twenty years, till I'm a stout gentleman of forty; and my grandfather would never consent to part with such good tenants as you." "Well, sir, if he thinks so well o' Mr. Poyser for a tenant I wish you could put in a word for him to allow us some new gates for the Five closes, for my husband's been asking and asking till he's tired, and to think o' what he's done for the farm, and's never had a penny allowed him, be the times bad or good. And as I've said to my husband often and often, I'm sure if the captain had anything to do with it, it wouldn't be so. Not as I wish to speak disrespectful o' them as have got the power i' their hands, but it's more than flesh and blood 'ull bear sometimes, to be toiling and striving, and up early and down late, and hardly sleeping a wink when you lie down for thinking as the cheese may swell, or the cows may slip their calf, or the wheat may grow green again i' the sheaf--and after all, at th' end o' the year, it's like as if you'd been cooking a feast and had got the smell of it for your pains." Mrs. Poyser, once launched into conversation, always sailed along without any check from her preliminary awe of the gentry. The confidence she felt in her own powers of exposition was a motive force that overcame all resistance. "I'm afraid I should only do harm instead of good, if I were to speak about the gates, Mrs. Poyser," said the captain, "though I assure you there's no man on the estate I would sooner say a word for than your husband. I know his farm is in better order than any other within ten miles of us; and as for the kitchen," he added, smiling, "I don't believe there's one in the kingdom to beat it. By the by, I've never seen your dairy: I must see your dairy, Mrs. Poyser." "Indeed, sir, it's not fit for you to go in, for Hetty's in the middle o' making the butter, for the churning was thrown late, and I'm quite ashamed." This Mrs. Poyser said blushing, and believing that the captain was really interested in her milk-pans, and would adjust his opinion of her to the appearance of her dairy. "Oh, I've no doubt it's in capital order. Take me in," said the captain, himself leading the way, while Mrs. Poyser followed.

Chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter6

The Hall Farm The Hall Farm where the Poysers live, tenants of old Squire Donnithorne, is run down but immaculately run, a model farm in Loamshire. It is lazy summertime, and the animals and children are roaming around the place, while the workers are busy. Pretty Hetty Sorrel is churning butter in the dairy but looks at herself in the mirror when her aunt is not looking. Mrs. Poyser is a sharp-tongued and good-looking farm wife with three children and her nieces, Hetty and Dinah, staying with her. Mrs. Poyser tells Dinah, while she is mending lace, that she looks like her saintly Aunt Judith, the one who raised Dinah to be a Methodist. Mrs. Poyser, the soul of practicality, cannot persuade the idealistic Dinah to marry or even to stay with them for a while. Dinah will leave in a few days to continue her preaching in Stonyshire. Young Captain Donnithorne and Mr. Irwine come visiting, and Mrs. Poyser cannot help pointing out that the squire needs to make repairs on the farm. While Mr. Irwine speaks to Dinah Morris about her preaching, Arthur admires Mrs. Poyser's dairy, especially Hetty, who is making butter there.

Commentary on Chapter 6 Hall Farm is a chief setting in the story. The Poysers are old and respected tenants who set the tone for the whole valley. Mrs. Poyser's dairy is famous, and Mr. Poyser is respected for his farming knowledge handed down by his old father, still living with them. The grandfather, mother, father, three children, and the two beautiful nieces make a very attractive and idyllic family. Arthur makes a pretense to go there to admire Hetty, the prettiest girl on his estate. At this point, he doesn't know of Adam's interest in Hetty. It is of course not unusual for a young gentleman to be wooing servant girls, but it is thoughtless of him, for he could ruin Hetty's reputation and ability to get a husband. Adam is of her class but Arthur, as a gentleman, could never marry Hetty. Dinah is also beautiful but otherworldly. The aunt worries about Dinah and does not understand her dreamy nature. Although Seth wanted to marry Dinah, Dinah explained to him that she has no trouble with young men wanting to court her or harass her. It is clear from her manner and self-confidence, that no young man would approach her with wrong ideas. Arthur called her St. Catherine. She appears as a nun to others. Hetty seems to be innocently vain of her beauty, and this point is developed in the next chapter. The contrast between Dinah and Hetty is an important one, reminiscent of the pairing of Dorothea Brook and Rosamund Vincy in Eliot's novel, Middlemarch. While both women are beautiful on the outside, inner beauty is far more important to Eliot, a constant motif in work. Among this honest farm family, Hetty sticks out as someone who is out of place.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/07.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_7_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 1.chapter 7

chapter 7

{"name": "Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter7", "summary": "The Dairy The freshness of the dairy favorably sets off Hetty's fresh seventeen-year-old beauty, and Arthur Donnithorne is attracted to her kittenish loveliness. Even Aunt Poyser likes to look at Hetty's beauty, though she is usually scolding her. Arthur mentions his birthday celebration in July and asks Hetty to reserve two dances for him. He invites the whole Poyser family. When the aunt runs off to find her daughter Totty, who is usually into mischief, Arthur invites Hetty to go walking with him in the Chase on his estate sometime. She mentions that she goes on some afternoons to Mrs. Pomfret, the lady's maid, to learn lace-mending and has to walk through the Chase. Arthur gives three-year-old Totty some coins for a present and prepares to find Mr. Irwine, who has been speaking to Dinah Morris.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 7 Both Arthur and Hetty are acting deceptively in this scene, foreshadowing their entanglement to come, although the deception seems like the innocent flirting of the young behind the backs of their elders. Hetty is described as a springtide beauty, like a kitten. Hetty is aware of her disturbing effect, for she stares at herself in the mirror and practices. She knows how every move is affecting Arthur. Her eyes hide \"a soft roguishness\" . There are clues early in the story that Hetty is not an admirable character. She dislikes taking care of Totty or taking part in any family activities. She does not seem attached to the aunt and uncle who are good to her. She is self-absorbed, and does not do any task well, except for making butter. Similarly, here is the first hint that though Arthur wants to be thought the good squire, loved by the people, he is flattering Mrs. Poyser on the one hand, and flirting with her niece behind her back. Although he asks for Hetty to reserve dances for him at his party in front of the aunt, when she leaves, he encourages a clandestine meeting in the Chase, something an honorable gentleman would know is out of bounds. Hetty is not shy about accepting."}

THE dairy was certainly worth looking at: it was a scene to sicken for with a sort of calenture in hot and dusty streets--such coolness, such purity, such fresh fragrance of new-pressed cheese, of firm butter, of wooden vessels perpetually bathed in pure water; such soft colouring of red earthenware and creamy surfaces, brown wood and polished tin, grey limestone and rich orange-red rust on the iron weights and hooks and hinges. But one gets only a confused notion of these details when they surround a distractingly pretty girl of seventeen, standing on little pattens and rounding her dimpled arm to lift a pound of butter out of the scale. Hetty blushed a deep rose-colour when Captain Donnithorne entered the dairy and spoke to her; but it was not at all a distressed blush, for it was inwreathed with smiles and dimples, and with sparkles from under long, curled, dark eyelashes; and while her aunt was discoursing to him about the limited amount of milk that was to be spared for butter and cheese so long as the calves were not all weaned, and a large quantity but inferior quality of milk yielded by the shorthorn, which had been bought on experiment, together with other matters which must be interesting to a young gentleman who would one day be a landlord, Hetty tossed and patted her pound of butter with quite a self-possessed, coquettish air, slyly conscious that no turn of her head was lost. There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles, from the desperate to the sheepish; but there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage in conscious mischief--a beauty with which you can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you. Hetty Sorrel's was that sort of beauty. Her aunt, Mrs. Poyser, who professed to despise all personal attractions and intended to be the severest of mentors, continually gazed at Hetty's charms by the sly, fascinated in spite of herself; and after administering such a scolding as naturally flowed from her anxiety to do well by her husband's niece--who had no mother of her own to scold her, poor thing!--she would often confess to her husband, when they were safe out of hearing, that she firmly believed, "the naughtier the little huzzy behaved, the prettier she looked." It is of little use for me to tell you that Hetty's cheek was like a rose-petal, that dimples played about her pouting lips, that her large dark eyes hid a soft roguishness under their long lashes, and that her curly hair, though all pushed back under her round cap while she was at work, stole back in dark delicate rings on her forehead, and about her white shell-like ears; it is of little use for me to say how lovely was the contour of her pink-and-white neckerchief, tucked into her low plum-coloured stuff bodice, or how the linen butter-making apron, with its bib, seemed a thing to be imitated in silk by duchesses, since it fell in such charming lines, or how her brown stockings and thick-soled buckled shoes lost all that clumsiness which they must certainly have had when empty of her foot and ankle--of little use, unless you have seen a woman who affected you as Hetty affected her beholders, for otherwise, though you might conjure up the image of a lovely woman, she would not in the least resemble that distracting kittenlike maiden. I might mention all the divine charms of a bright spring day, but if you had never in your life utterly forgotten yourself in straining your eyes after the mounting lark, or in wandering through the still lanes when the fresh-opened blossoms fill them with a sacred silent beauty like that of fretted aisles, where would be the use of my descriptive catalogue? I could never make you know what I meant by a bright spring day. Hetty's was a spring-tide beauty; it was the beauty of young frisking things, round-limbed, gambolling, circumventing you by a false air of innocence--the innocence of a young star-browed calf, for example, that, being inclined for a promenade out of bounds, leads you a severe steeplechase over hedge and ditch, and only comes to a stand in the middle of a bog. And they are the prettiest attitudes and movements into which a pretty girl is thrown in making up butter--tossing movements that give a charming curve to the arm, and a sideward inclination of the round white neck; little patting and rolling movements with the palm of the hand, and nice adaptations and finishings which cannot at all be effected without a great play of the pouting mouth and the dark eyes. And then the butter itself seems to communicate a fresh charm--it is so pure, so sweet-scented; it is turned off the mould with such a beautiful firm surface, like marble in a pale yellow light! Moreover, Hetty was particularly clever at making up the butter; it was the one performance of hers that her aunt allowed to pass without severe criticism; so she handled it with all the grace that belongs to mastery. "I hope you will be ready for a great holiday on the thirtieth of July, Mrs. Poyser," said Captain Donnithorne, when he had sufficiently admired the dairy and given several improvised opinions on Swede turnips and shorthorns. "You know what is to happen then, and I shall expect you to be one of the guests who come earliest and leave latest. Will you promise me your hand for two dances, Miss Hetty? If I don't get your promise now, I know I shall hardly have a chance, for all the smart young farmers will take care to secure you." Hetty smiled and blushed, but before she could answer, Mrs. Poyser interposed, scandalized at the mere suggestion that the young squire could be excluded by any meaner partners. "Indeed, sir, you are very kind to take that notice of her. And I'm sure, whenever you're pleased to dance with her, she'll be proud and thankful, if she stood still all the rest o' th' evening." "Oh no, no, that would be too cruel to all the other young fellows who can dance. But you will promise me two dances, won't you?" the captain continued, determined to make Hetty look at him and speak to him. Hetty dropped the prettiest little curtsy, and stole a half-shy, half-coquettish glance at him as she said, "Yes, thank you, sir." "And you must bring all your children, you know, Mrs. Poyser; your little Totty, as well as the boys. I want all the youngest children on the estate to be there--all those who will be fine young men and women when I'm a bald old fellow." "Oh dear, sir, that 'ull be a long time first," said Mrs. Poyser, quite overcome at the young squire's speaking so lightly of himself, and thinking how her husband would be interested in hearing her recount this remarkable specimen of high-born humour. The captain was thought to be "very full of his jokes," and was a great favourite throughout the estate on account of his free manners. Every tenant was quite sure things would be different when the reins got into his hands--there was to be a millennial abundance of new gates, allowances of lime, and returns of ten per cent. "But where is Totty to-day?" he said. "I want to see her." "Where IS the little un, Hetty?" said Mrs. Poyser. "She came in here not long ago." "I don't know. She went into the brewhouse to Nancy, I think." The proud mother, unable to resist the temptation to show her Totty, passed at once into the back kitchen, in search of her, not, however, without misgivings lest something should have happened to render her person and attire unfit for presentation. "And do you carry the butter to market when you've made it?" said the Captain to Hetty, meanwhile. "Oh no, sir; not when it's so heavy. I'm not strong enough to carry it. Alick takes it on horseback." "No, I'm sure your pretty arms were never meant for such heavy weights. But you go out a walk sometimes these pleasant evenings, don't you? Why don't you have a walk in the Chase sometimes, now it's so green and pleasant? I hardly ever see you anywhere except at home and at church." "Aunt doesn't like me to go a-walking only when I'm going somewhere," said Hetty. "But I go through the Chase sometimes." "And don't you ever go to see Mrs. Best, the housekeeper? I think I saw you once in the housekeeper's room." "It isn't Mrs. Best, it's Mrs. Pomfret, the lady's maid, as I go to see. She's teaching me tent-stitch and the lace-mending. I'm going to tea with her to-morrow afternoon." The reason why there had been space for this tete-a-tete can only be known by looking into the back kitchen, where Totty had been discovered rubbing a stray blue-bag against her nose, and in the same moment allowing some liberal indigo drops to fall on her afternoon pinafore. But now she appeared holding her mother's hand--the end of her round nose rather shiny from a recent and hurried application of soap and water. "Here she is!" said the captain, lifting her up and setting her on the low stone shelf. "Here's Totty! By the by, what's her other name? She wasn't christened Totty." "Oh, sir, we call her sadly out of her name. Charlotte's her christened name. It's a name i' Mr. Poyser's family: his grandmother was named Charlotte. But we began with calling her Lotty, and now it's got to Totty. To be sure it's more like a name for a dog than a Christian child." "Totty's a capital name. Why, she looks like a Totty. Has she got a pocket on?" said the captain, feeling in his own waistcoat pockets. Totty immediately with great gravity lifted up her frock, and showed a tiny pink pocket at present in a state of collapse. "It dot notin' in it," she said, as she looked down at it very earnestly. "No! What a pity! Such a pretty pocket. Well, I think I've got some things in mine that will make a pretty jingle in it. Yes! I declare I've got five little round silver things, and hear what a pretty noise they make in Totty's pink pocket." Here he shook the pocket with the five sixpences in it, and Totty showed her teeth and wrinkled her nose in great glee; but, divining that there was nothing more to be got by staying, she jumped off the shelf and ran away to jingle her pocket in the hearing of Nancy, while her mother called after her, "Oh for shame, you naughty gell! Not to thank the captain for what he's given you I'm sure, sir, it's very kind of you; but she's spoiled shameful; her father won't have her said nay in anything, and there's no managing her. It's being the youngest, and th' only gell." "Oh, she's a funny little fatty; I wouldn't have her different. But I must be going now, for I suppose the rector is waiting for me." With a "good-bye," a bright glance, and a bow to Hetty Arthur left the dairy. But he was mistaken in imagining himself waited for. The rector had been so much interested in his conversation with Dinah that he would not have chosen to close it earlier; and you shall hear now what they had been saying to each other.

Chapter 7

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter7

The Dairy The freshness of the dairy favorably sets off Hetty's fresh seventeen-year-old beauty, and Arthur Donnithorne is attracted to her kittenish loveliness. Even Aunt Poyser likes to look at Hetty's beauty, though she is usually scolding her. Arthur mentions his birthday celebration in July and asks Hetty to reserve two dances for him. He invites the whole Poyser family. When the aunt runs off to find her daughter Totty, who is usually into mischief, Arthur invites Hetty to go walking with him in the Chase on his estate sometime. She mentions that she goes on some afternoons to Mrs. Pomfret, the lady's maid, to learn lace-mending and has to walk through the Chase. Arthur gives three-year-old Totty some coins for a present and prepares to find Mr. Irwine, who has been speaking to Dinah Morris.

Commentary on Chapter 7 Both Arthur and Hetty are acting deceptively in this scene, foreshadowing their entanglement to come, although the deception seems like the innocent flirting of the young behind the backs of their elders. Hetty is described as a springtide beauty, like a kitten. Hetty is aware of her disturbing effect, for she stares at herself in the mirror and practices. She knows how every move is affecting Arthur. Her eyes hide "a soft roguishness" . There are clues early in the story that Hetty is not an admirable character. She dislikes taking care of Totty or taking part in any family activities. She does not seem attached to the aunt and uncle who are good to her. She is self-absorbed, and does not do any task well, except for making butter. Similarly, here is the first hint that though Arthur wants to be thought the good squire, loved by the people, he is flattering Mrs. Poyser on the one hand, and flirting with her niece behind her back. Although he asks for Hetty to reserve dances for him at his party in front of the aunt, when she leaves, he encourages a clandestine meeting in the Chase, something an honorable gentleman would know is out of bounds. Hetty is not shy about accepting.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/08.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_8_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 1.chapter 8

chapter 8

{"name": "Chapter 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter8", "summary": "A Vocation Both Dinah Morris and Mr. Irwine have a favorable opinion of one another at first glance, for they are both sincere and generous people. Irwine questions her about her life in the cotton-mill at Snowfield and her preaching She explains that there are women preachers among the Methodists, though it isn't common, and then tells how it was that she began to speak when another preacher was taken ill. The words seem to come divinely out of her with no will of her own. Mr. Irwine sees she is genuine and has no desire to dispute her right to preach, but he does wonder if men do not try to court or hassle her. She says they do not, and she has no time for personal feelings. They then discuss the death of Thais Bede, and Dinah puts away her work, inspired to go to Seth's mother to comfort her. Aunt Poyser admits that even if she is a Methodist, Dinah has a comforting way and people like to have her around in a crisis. When she tells Hetty about Mr. Bede drowning, however, Hetty seems barely interested, lost in her own thoughts about Arthur. Aunt Poyser criticizes her as being \"feather-headed\" .", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 8 With various Protestant movements, such as Methodism, there was a great emphasis on divine and personal inspiration, as opposed to merely getting religious guidance from the church. This \"enthusiasm\" was thought dangerous, for as Irwine explains to Dinah, an individual could mistake a personal idea for a divine thought. If it is allowed that someone could be divinely inspired to speak without being ordained, there is still the issue of being a woman. Traditional Christianity still had a suspicion of women as more sinful than men, or less spiritually inclined. Newer Protestant sects gave more equality to lower classes, women, and people formerly thought to be outcasts. This made Methodists suspicious in the eyes of the upper classes, for it was a religion that gathered converts from the lowest social groups, especially the mill workers. Even Dinah admits that the well-fed farm people are not very attentive to her kind of preaching, for they are comfortable. Many Church of England clergymen, in Mr. Irwine's place, would have seized the opportunity to reject and drive out what to them was heresy--an ignorant, unqualified person roaming the countryside, stirring up people against the established church. Joshua Rann, the parish clerk, had asked Irwine to do something about this rebellion. Irwine takes the responsibility of checking Dinah out, and yet, he addresses her with the same respect he would give a fellow clergyman. He is able to see her honesty and respect it, though it is not his way. Irwine is a force for harmony throughout the parish because of his tolerance and understanding. He does not interfere, yet he takes care of his people."}

DINAH, who had risen when the gentlemen came in, but still kept hold of the sheet she was mending, curtsied respectfully when she saw Mr. Irwine looking at her and advancing towards her. He had never yet spoken to her, or stood face to face with her, and her first thought, as her eyes met his, was, "What a well-favoured countenance! Oh that the good seed might fall on that soil, for it would surely flourish." The agreeable impression must have been mutual, for Mr. Irwine bowed to her with a benignant deference, which would have been equally in place if she had been the most dignified lady of his acquaintance. "You are only a visitor in this neighbourhood, I think?" were his first words, as he seated himself opposite to her. "No, sir, I come from Snowfield, in Stonyshire. But my aunt was very kind, wanting me to have rest from my work there, because I'd been ill, and she invited me to come and stay with her for a while." "Ah, I remember Snowfield very well; I once had occasion to go there. It's a dreary bleak place. They were building a cotton-mill there; but that's many years ago now. I suppose the place is a good deal changed by the employment that mill must have brought." "It IS changed so far as the mill has brought people there, who get a livelihood for themselves by working in it, and make it better for the tradesfolks. I work in it myself, and have reason to be grateful, for thereby I have enough and to spare. But it's still a bleak place, as you say, sir--very different from this country." "You have relations living there, probably, so that you are attached to the place as your home?" "I had an aunt there once; she brought me up, for I was an orphan. But she was taken away seven years ago, and I have no other kindred that I know of, besides my Aunt Poyser, who is very good to me, and would have me come and live in this country, which to be sure is a good land, wherein they eat bread without scarceness. But I'm not free to leave Snowfield, where I was first planted, and have grown deep into it, like the small grass on the hill-top." "Ah, I daresay you have many religious friends and companions there; you are a Methodist--a Wesleyan, I think?" "Yes, my aunt at Snowfield belonged to the Society, and I have cause to be thankful for the privileges I have had thereby from my earliest childhood." "And have you been long in the habit of preaching? For I understand you preached at Hayslope last night." "I first took to the work four years since, when I was twenty-one." "Your Society sanctions women's preaching, then?" "It doesn't forbid them, sir, when they've a clear call to the work, and when their ministry is owned by the conversion of sinners and the strengthening of God's people. Mrs. Fletcher, as you may have heard about, was the first woman to preach in the Society, I believe, before she was married, when she was Miss Bosanquet; and Mr. Wesley approved of her undertaking the work. She had a great gift, and there are many others now living who are precious fellow-helpers in the work of the ministry. I understand there's been voices raised against it in the Society of late, but I cannot but think their counsel will come to nought. It isn't for men to make channels for God's Spirit, as they make channels for the watercourses, and say, 'Flow here, but flow not there.'" "But don't you find some danger among your people--I don't mean to say that it is so with you, far from it--but don't you find sometimes that both men and women fancy themselves channels for God's Spirit, and are quite mistaken, so that they set about a work for which they are unfit and bring holy things into contempt?" "Doubtless it is so sometimes; for there have been evil-doers among us who have sought to deceive the brethren, and some there are who deceive their own selves. But we are not without discipline and correction to put a check upon these things. There's a very strict order kept among us, and the brethren and sisters watch for each other's souls as they that must give account. They don't go every one his own way and say, 'Am I my brother's keeper?'" "But tell me--if I may ask, and I am really interested in knowing it--how you first came to think of preaching?" "Indeed, sir, I didn't think of it at all--I'd been used from the time I was sixteen to talk to the little children, and teach them, and sometimes I had had my heart enlarged to speak in class, and was much drawn out in prayer with the sick. But I had felt no call to preach, for when I'm not greatly wrought upon, I'm too much given to sit still and keep by myself. It seems as if I could sit silent all day long with the thought of God overflowing my soul--as the pebbles lie bathed in the Willow Brook. For thoughts are so great--aren't they, sir? They seem to lie upon us like a deep flood; and it's my besetment to forget where I am and everything about me, and lose myself in thoughts that I could give no account of, for I could neither make a beginning nor ending of them in words. That was my way as long as I can remember; but sometimes it seemed as if speech came to me without any will of my own, and words were given to me that came out as the tears come, because our hearts are full and we can't help it. And those were always times of great blessing, though I had never thought it could be so with me before a congregation of people. But, sir, we are led on, like the little children, by a way that we know not. I was called to preach quite suddenly, and since then I have never been left in doubt about the work that was laid upon me." "But tell me the circumstances--just how it was, the very day you began to preach." "It was one Sunday I walked with brother Marlowe, who was an aged man, one of the local preachers, all the way to Hetton-Deeps--that's a village where the people get their living by working in the lead-mines, and where there's no church nor preacher, but they live like sheep without a shepherd. It's better than twelve miles from Snowfield, so we set out early in the morning, for it was summertime; and I had a wonderful sense of the Divine love as we walked over the hills, where there's no trees, you know, sir, as there is here, to make the sky look smaller, but you see the heavens stretched out like a tent, and you feel the everlasting arms around you. But before we got to Hetton, brother Marlowe was seized with a dizziness that made him afraid of falling, for he overworked himself sadly, at his years, in watching and praying, and walking so many miles to speak the Word, as well as carrying on his trade of linen-weaving. And when we got to the village, the people were expecting him, for he'd appointed the time and the place when he was there before, and such of them as cared to hear the Word of Life were assembled on a spot where the cottages was thickest, so as others might be drawn to come. But he felt as he couldn't stand up to preach, and he was forced to lie down in the first of the cottages we came to. So I went to tell the people, thinking we'd go into one of the houses, and I would read and pray with them. But as I passed along by the cottages and saw the aged and trembling women at the doors, and the hard looks of the men, who seemed to have their eyes no more filled with the sight of the Sabbath morning than if they had been dumb oxen that never looked up to the sky, I felt a great movement in my soul, and I trembled as if I was shaken by a strong spirit entering into my weak body. And I went to where the little flock of people was gathered together, and stepped on the low wall that was built against the green hillside, and I spoke the words that were given to me abundantly. And they all came round me out of all the cottages, and many wept over their sins, and have since been joined to the Lord. That was the beginning of my preaching, sir, and I've preached ever since." Dinah had let her work fall during this narrative, which she uttered in her usual simple way, but with that sincere articulate, thrilling treble by which she always mastered her audience. She stooped now to gather up her sewing, and then went on with it as before. Mr. Irwine was deeply interested. He said to himself, "He must be a miserable prig who would act the pedagogue here: one might as well go and lecture the trees for growing in their own shape." "And you never feel any embarrassment from the sense of your youth--that you are a lovely young woman on whom men's eyes are fixed?" he said aloud. "No, I've no room for such feelings, and I don't believe the people ever take notice about that. I think, sir, when God makes His presence felt through us, we are like the burning bush: Moses never took any heed what sort of bush it was--he only saw the brightness of the Lord. I've preached to as rough ignorant people as can be in the villages about Snowfield--men that looked very hard and wild--but they never said an uncivil word to me, and often thanked me kindly as they made way for me to pass through the midst of them." "THAT I can believe--that I can well believe," said Mr. Irwine, emphatically. "And what did you think of your hearers last night, now? Did you find them quiet and attentive?" "Very quiet, sir, but I saw no signs of any great work upon them, except in a young girl named Bessy Cranage, towards whom my heart yearned greatly, when my eyes first fell on her blooming youth, given up to folly and vanity. I had some private talk and prayer with her afterwards, and I trust her heart is touched. But I've noticed that in these villages where the people lead a quiet life among the green pastures and the still waters, tilling the ground and tending the cattle, there's a strange deadness to the Word, as different as can be from the great towns, like Leeds, where I once went to visit a holy woman who preaches there. It's wonderful how rich is the harvest of souls up those high-walled streets, where you seemed to walk as in a prison-yard, and the ear is deafened with the sounds of worldly toil. I think maybe it is because the promise is sweeter when this life is so dark and weary, and the soul gets more hungry when the body is ill at ease." "Why, yes, our farm-labourers are not easily roused. They take life almost as slowly as the sheep and cows. But we have some intelligent workmen about here. I daresay you know the Bedes; Seth Bede, by the by, is a Methodist." "Yes, I know Seth well, and his brother Adam a little. Seth is a gracious young man--sincere and without offence; and Adam is like the patriarch Joseph, for his great skill and knowledge and the kindness he shows to his brother and his parents." "Perhaps you don't know the trouble that has just happened to them? Their father, Matthias Bede, was drowned in the Willow Brook last night, not far from his own door. I'm going now to see Adam." "Ah, their poor aged mother!" said Dinah, dropping her hands and looking before her with pitying eyes, as if she saw the object of her sympathy. "She will mourn heavily, for Seth has told me she's of an anxious, troubled heart. I must go and see if I can give her any help." As she rose and was beginning to fold up her work, Captain Donnithorne, having exhausted all plausible pretexts for remaining among the milk-pans, came out of the dairy, followed by Mrs. Poyser. Mr. Irwine now rose also, and, advancing towards Dinah, held out his hand, and said, "Good-bye. I hear you are going away soon; but this will not be the last visit you will pay your aunt--so we shall meet again, I hope." His cordiality towards Dinah set all Mrs. Poyser's anxieties at rest, and her face was brighter than usual, as she said, "I've never asked after Mrs. Irwine and the Miss Irwines, sir; I hope they're as well as usual." "Yes, thank you, Mrs. Poyser, except that Miss Anne has one of her bad headaches to-day. By the by, we all liked that nice cream-cheese you sent us--my mother especially." "I'm very glad, indeed, sir. It is but seldom I make one, but I remembered Mrs. Irwine was fond of 'em. Please to give my duty to her, and to Miss Kate and Miss Anne. They've never been to look at my poultry this long while, and I've got some beautiful speckled chickens, black and white, as Miss Kate might like to have some of amongst hers." "Well, I'll tell her; she must come and see them. Good-bye," said the rector, mounting his horse. "Just ride slowly on, Irwine," said Captain Donnithorne, mounting also. "I'll overtake you in three minutes. I'm only going to speak to the shepherd about the whelps. Good-bye, Mrs. Poyser; tell your husband I shall come and have a long talk with him soon." Mrs. Poyser curtsied duly, and watched the two horses until they had disappeared from the yard, amidst great excitement on the part of the pigs and the poultry, and under the furious indignation of the bull-dog, who performed a Pyrrhic dance, that every moment seemed to threaten the breaking of his chain. Mrs. Poyser delighted in this noisy exit; it was a fresh assurance to her that the farm-yard was well guarded, and that no loiterers could enter unobserved; and it was not until the gate had closed behind the captain that she turned into the kitchen again, where Dinah stood with her bonnet in her hand, waiting to speak to her aunt, before she set out for Lisbeth Bede's cottage. Mrs. Poyser, however, though she noticed the bonnet, deferred remarking on it until she had disburdened herself of her surprise at Mr. Irwine's behaviour. "Why, Mr. Irwine wasn't angry, then? What did he say to you, Dinah? Didn't he scold you for preaching?" "No, he was not at all angry; he was very friendly to me. I was quite drawn out to speak to him; I hardly know how, for I had always thought of him as a worldly Sadducee. But his countenance is as pleasant as the morning sunshine." "Pleasant! And what else did y' expect to find him but pleasant?" said Mrs. Poyser impatiently, resuming her knitting. "I should think his countenance is pleasant indeed! And him a gentleman born, and's got a mother like a picter. You may go the country round and not find such another woman turned sixty-six. It's summat-like to see such a man as that i' the desk of a Sunday! As I say to Poyser, it's like looking at a full crop o' wheat, or a pasture with a fine dairy o' cows in it; it makes you think the world's comfortable-like. But as for such creaturs as you Methodisses run after, I'd as soon go to look at a lot o' bare-ribbed runts on a common. Fine folks they are to tell you what's right, as look as if they'd never tasted nothing better than bacon-sword and sour-cake i' their lives. But what did Mr. Irwine say to you about that fool's trick o' preaching on the Green?" "He only said he'd heard of it; he didn't seem to feel any displeasure about it. But, dear aunt, don't think any more about that. He told me something that I'm sure will cause you sorrow, as it does me. Thias Bede was drowned last night in the Willow Brook, and I'm thinking that the aged mother will be greatly in need of comfort. Perhaps I can be of use to her, so I have fetched my bonnet and am going to set out." "Dear heart, dear heart! But you must have a cup o' tea first, child," said Mrs. Poyser, falling at once from the key of B with five sharps to the frank and genial C. "The kettle's boiling--we'll have it ready in a minute; and the young uns 'ull be in and wanting theirs directly. I'm quite willing you should go and see th' old woman, for you're one as is allays welcome in trouble, Methodist or no Methodist; but, for the matter o' that, it's the flesh and blood folks are made on as makes the difference. Some cheeses are made o' skimmed milk and some o' new milk, and it's no matter what you call 'em, you may tell which is which by the look and the smell. But as to Thias Bede, he's better out o' the way nor in--God forgi' me for saying so--for he's done little this ten year but make trouble for them as belonged to him; and I think it 'ud be well for you to take a little bottle o' rum for th' old woman, for I daresay she's got never a drop o' nothing to comfort her inside. Sit down, child, and be easy, for you shan't stir out till you've had a cup o' tea, and so I tell you." During the latter part of this speech, Mrs. Poyser had been reaching down the tea-things from the shelves, and was on her way towards the pantry for the loaf (followed close by Totty, who had made her appearance on the rattling of the tea-cups), when Hetty came out of the dairy relieving her tired arms by lifting them up, and clasping her hands at the back of her head. "Molly," she said, rather languidly, "just run out and get me a bunch of dock-leaves: the butter's ready to pack up now." "D' you hear what's happened, Hetty?" said her aunt. "No; how should I hear anything?" was the answer, in a pettish tone. "Not as you'd care much, I daresay, if you did hear; for you're too feather-headed to mind if everybody was dead, so as you could stay upstairs a-dressing yourself for two hours by the clock. But anybody besides yourself 'ud mind about such things happening to them as think a deal more of you than you deserve. But Adam Bede and all his kin might be drownded for what you'd care--you'd be perking at the glass the next minute." "Adam Bede--drowned?" said Hetty, letting her arms fall and looking rather bewildered, but suspecting that her aunt was as usual exaggerating with a didactic purpose. "No, my dear, no," said Dinah kindly, for Mrs. Poyser had passed on to the pantry without deigning more precise information. "Not Adam. Adam's father, the old man, is drowned. He was drowned last night in the Willow Brook. Mr. Irwine has just told me about it." "Oh, how dreadful!" said Hetty, looking serious, but not deeply affected; and as Molly now entered with the dock-leaves, she took them silently and returned to the dairy without asking further questions.

Chapter 8

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter8

A Vocation Both Dinah Morris and Mr. Irwine have a favorable opinion of one another at first glance, for they are both sincere and generous people. Irwine questions her about her life in the cotton-mill at Snowfield and her preaching She explains that there are women preachers among the Methodists, though it isn't common, and then tells how it was that she began to speak when another preacher was taken ill. The words seem to come divinely out of her with no will of her own. Mr. Irwine sees she is genuine and has no desire to dispute her right to preach, but he does wonder if men do not try to court or hassle her. She says they do not, and she has no time for personal feelings. They then discuss the death of Thais Bede, and Dinah puts away her work, inspired to go to Seth's mother to comfort her. Aunt Poyser admits that even if she is a Methodist, Dinah has a comforting way and people like to have her around in a crisis. When she tells Hetty about Mr. Bede drowning, however, Hetty seems barely interested, lost in her own thoughts about Arthur. Aunt Poyser criticizes her as being "feather-headed" .

Commentary on Chapter 8 With various Protestant movements, such as Methodism, there was a great emphasis on divine and personal inspiration, as opposed to merely getting religious guidance from the church. This "enthusiasm" was thought dangerous, for as Irwine explains to Dinah, an individual could mistake a personal idea for a divine thought. If it is allowed that someone could be divinely inspired to speak without being ordained, there is still the issue of being a woman. Traditional Christianity still had a suspicion of women as more sinful than men, or less spiritually inclined. Newer Protestant sects gave more equality to lower classes, women, and people formerly thought to be outcasts. This made Methodists suspicious in the eyes of the upper classes, for it was a religion that gathered converts from the lowest social groups, especially the mill workers. Even Dinah admits that the well-fed farm people are not very attentive to her kind of preaching, for they are comfortable. Many Church of England clergymen, in Mr. Irwine's place, would have seized the opportunity to reject and drive out what to them was heresy--an ignorant, unqualified person roaming the countryside, stirring up people against the established church. Joshua Rann, the parish clerk, had asked Irwine to do something about this rebellion. Irwine takes the responsibility of checking Dinah out, and yet, he addresses her with the same respect he would give a fellow clergyman. He is able to see her honesty and respect it, though it is not his way. Irwine is a force for harmony throughout the parish because of his tolerance and understanding. He does not interfere, yet he takes care of his people.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/09.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_9_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 1.chapter 9

chapter 9

{"name": "Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter9", "summary": "Hetty's World The narrator decides to go beyond Hetty's pretty exterior to see what kind of a person she is inside. This chapter tracks her thoughts about what is going on around her, but unfortunately, the narrator concludes that Hetty does not have a very large range to her soul. She is mostly concerned with her own material desires. She knows very well that she has suitors. Luke Britton of Broxton comes to church at Hayslope so he can see her. Mr. Craig the gardener at the Chase is wooing her with strawberries, and Adam Bede, who has been invited to Hall Farm for the last three years, is the one favored by her family as having brains. Hetty seems unaware of what she owes her aunt and uncle. She is an orphan, and would have been a servant someplace without their support. Her uncle hopes she will make a good marriage with Adam, who, he knows, will rise by his merits. Hetty only sees Adam as another conquest and enjoys having him in her power. With Arthur's attentions, however, she is already dreaming of greater things. She thinks only of what a man could give her, and she begins to live in a pleasant daydream of how Arthur has looked at her. An uneducated girl, she only thinks of the young squire as a god in her world. She has no sympathy beyond her own situation. On the way to the Bede cottage, Arthur confesses to Irwine how pretty he finds Hetty. Irwine warns him not to flatter her or it will make her unfit for a husband of her own class. Arthur changes the subject.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 9 Arthur is clearly warned by Mr. Irwine in the early stages of his attentions to Hetty that flattering Hetty is wrong, and why it is wrong. The point that she will be made unfit as a wife for someone else goes right by Arthur because it is beyond his sympathy, as Hetty's idea of others is beyond hers. Irwine means that it would make a servant like Hetty less happy with a poor man, but he also could be delicately hinting about her reputation. A future poor husband is just as jealous of a woman's honor as the rich, as Arthur will find out. Even though he has been raised among these farmers and has been taught carpentry by Adam, Arthur comes from a privileged class and has no distinct feeling for the honor of the classes below him, except in terms of chivalry. At his birthday party, for instance, he is capable of making the farmers feel appreciation, but it is a shallow knowledge of their world, their morals, and their feelings. Hetty is a kitten, a plaything, and he is a rich young man used to having his way. Like Hetty, he does not think too far ahead; in fact, he continually fools himself into thinking nothing is going to happen between them. Eliot's omniscient narration allows us into the thoughts of the characters so that we can observe how people delude themselves and misread others. This is a greater danger to unreflecting and selfish people, like Hetty and Arthur, but as we see in this chapter, it is also a danger to a man of integrity and brains like Adam Bede. The reader sees that he is headed for a fall with Hetty, that she is shallow, and her attention is elsewhere. In this way, the suspense builds, with much foreshadowing of the tragedy we watch in the making."}

WHILE she adjusted the broad leaves that set off the pale fragrant butter as the primrose is set off by its nest of green I am afraid Hetty was thinking a great deal more of the looks Captain Donnithorne had cast at her than of Adam and his troubles. Bright, admiring glances from a handsome young gentleman with white hands, a gold chain, occasional regimentals, and wealth and grandeur immeasurable--those were the warm rays that set poor Hetty's heart vibrating and playing its little foolish tunes over and over again. We do not hear that Memnon's statue gave forth its melody at all under the rushing of the mightiest wind, or in response to any other influence divine or human than certain short-lived sunbeams of morning; and we must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range of music, and will not vibrate in the least under a touch that fills others with tremulous rapture or quivering agony. Hetty was quite used to the thought that people liked to look at her. She was not blind to the fact that young Luke Britton of Broxton came to Hayslope Church on a Sunday afternoon on purpose that he might see her; and that he would have made much more decided advances if her uncle Poyser, thinking but lightly of a young man whose father's land was so foul as old Luke Britton's, had not forbidden her aunt to encourage him by any civilities. She was aware, too, that Mr. Craig, the gardener at the Chase, was over head and ears in love with her, and had lately made unmistakable avowals in luscious strawberries and hyperbolical peas. She knew still better, that Adam Bede--tall, upright, clever, brave Adam Bede--who carried such authority with all the people round about, and whom her uncle was always delighted to see of an evening, saying that "Adam knew a fine sight more o' the natur o' things than those as thought themselves his betters"--she knew that this Adam, who was often rather stern to other people and not much given to run after the lasses, could be made to turn pale or red any day by a word or a look from her. Hetty's sphere of comparison was not large, but she couldn't help perceiving that Adam was "something like" a man; always knew what to say about things, could tell her uncle how to prop the hovel, and had mended the churn in no time; knew, with only looking at it, the value of the chestnut-tree that was blown down, and why the damp came in the walls, and what they must do to stop the rats; and wrote a beautiful hand that you could read off, and could do figures in his head--a degree of accomplishment totally unknown among the richest farmers of that countryside. Not at all like that slouching Luke Britton, who, when she once walked with him all the way from Broxton to Hayslope, had only broken silence to remark that the grey goose had begun to lay. And as for Mr. Craig, the gardener, he was a sensible man enough, to be sure, but he was knock-kneed, and had a queer sort of sing-song in his talk; moreover, on the most charitable supposition, he must be far on the way to forty. Hetty was quite certain her uncle wanted her to encourage Adam, and would be pleased for her to marry him. For those were times when there was no rigid demarcation of rank between the farmer and the respectable artisan, and on the home hearth, as well as in the public house, they might be seen taking their jug of ale together; the farmer having a latent sense of capital, and of weight in parish affairs, which sustained him under his conspicuous inferiority in conversation. Martin Poyser was not a frequenter of public houses, but he liked a friendly chat over his own home-brewed; and though it was pleasant to lay down the law to a stupid neighbour who had no notion how to make the best of his farm, it was also an agreeable variety to learn something from a clever fellow like Adam Bede. Accordingly, for the last three years--ever since he had superintended the building of the new barn--Adam had always been made welcome at the Hall Farm, especially of a winter evening, when the whole family, in patriarchal fashion, master and mistress, children and servants, were assembled in that glorious kitchen, at well-graduated distances from the blazing fire. And for the last two years, at least, Hetty had been in the habit of hearing her uncle say, "Adam Bede may be working for wage now, but he'll be a master-man some day, as sure as I sit in this chair. Mester Burge is in the right on't to want him to go partners and marry his daughter, if it's true what they say; the woman as marries him 'ull have a good take, be't Lady day or Michaelmas," a remark which Mrs. Poyser always followed up with her cordial assent. "Ah," she would say, "it's all very fine having a ready-made rich man, but mayhappen he'll be a ready-made fool; and it's no use filling your pocket full o' money if you've got a hole in the corner. It'll do you no good to sit in a spring-cart o' your own, if you've got a soft to drive you: he'll soon turn you over into the ditch. I allays said I'd never marry a man as had got no brains; for where's the use of a woman having brains of her own if she's tackled to a geck as everybody's a-laughing at? She might as well dress herself fine to sit back'ards on a donkey." These expressions, though figurative, sufficiently indicated the bent of Mrs. Poyser's mind with regard to Adam; and though she and her husband might have viewed the subject differently if Hetty had been a daughter of their own, it was clear that they would have welcomed the match with Adam for a penniless niece. For what could Hetty have been but a servant elsewhere, if her uncle had not taken her in and brought her up as a domestic help to her aunt, whose health since the birth of Totty had not been equal to more positive labour than the superintendence of servants and children? But Hetty had never given Adam any steady encouragement. Even in the moments when she was most thoroughly conscious of his superiority to her other admirers, she had never brought herself to think of accepting him. She liked to feel that this strong, skilful, keen-eyed man was in her power, and would have been indignant if he had shown the least sign of slipping from under the yoke of her coquettish tyranny and attaching himself to the gentle Mary Burge, who would have been grateful enough for the most trifling notice from him. "Mary Burge, indeed! Such a sallow-faced girl: if she put on a bit of pink ribbon, she looked as yellow as a crow-flower and her hair was as straight as a hank of cotton." And always when Adam stayed away for several weeks from the Hall Farm, and otherwise made some show of resistance to his passion as a foolish one, Hetty took care to entice him back into the net by little airs of meekness and timidity, as if she were in trouble at his neglect. But as to marrying Adam, that was a very different affair! There was nothing in the world to tempt her to do that. Her cheeks never grew a shade deeper when his name was mentioned; she felt no thrill when she saw him passing along the causeway by the window, or advancing towards her unexpectedly in the footpath across the meadow; she felt nothing, when his eyes rested on her, but the cold triumph of knowing that he loved her and would not care to look at Mary Burge. He could no more stir in her the emotions that make the sweet intoxication of young love than the mere picture of a sun can stir the spring sap in the subtle fibres of the plant. She saw him as he was--a poor man with old parents to keep, who would not be able, for a long while to come, to give her even such luxuries as she shared in her uncle's house. And Hetty's dreams were all of luxuries: to sit in a carpeted parlour, and always wear white stockings; to have some large beautiful ear-rings, such as were all the fashion; to have Nottingham lace round the top of her gown, and something to make her handkerchief smell nice, like Miss Lydia Donnithorne's when she drew it out at church; and not to be obliged to get up early or be scolded by anybody. She thought, if Adam had been rich and could have given her these things, she loved him well enough to marry him. But for the last few weeks a new influence had come over Hetty--vague, atmospheric, shaping itself into no self-confessed hopes or prospects, but producing a pleasant narcotic effect, making her tread the ground and go about her work in a sort of dream, unconscious of weight or effort, and showing her all things through a soft, liquid veil, as if she were living not in this solid world of brick and stone, but in a beatified world, such as the sun lights up for us in the waters. Hetty had become aware that Mr. Arthur Donnithorne would take a good deal of trouble for the chance of seeing her; that he always placed himself at church so as to have the fullest view of her both sitting and standing; that he was constantly finding reason for calling at the Hall Farm, and always would contrive to say something for the sake of making her speak to him and look at him. The poor child no more conceived at present the idea that the young squire could ever be her lover than a baker's pretty daughter in the crowd, whom a young emperor distinguishes by an imperial but admiring smile, conceives that she shall be made empress. But the baker's daughter goes home and dreams of the handsome young emperor, and perhaps weighs the flour amiss while she is thinking what a heavenly lot it must be to have him for a husband. And so, poor Hetty had got a face and a presence haunting her waking and sleeping dreams; bright, soft glances had penetrated her, and suffused her life with a strange, happy languor. The eyes that shed those glances were really not half so fine as Adam's, which sometimes looked at her with a sad, beseeching tenderness, but they had found a ready medium in Hetty's little silly imagination, whereas Adam's could get no entrance through that atmosphere. For three weeks, at least, her inward life had consisted of little else than living through in memory the looks and words Arthur had directed towards her--of little else than recalling the sensations with which she heard his voice outside the house, and saw him enter, and became conscious that his eyes were fixed on her, and then became conscious that a tall figure, looking down on her with eyes that seemed to touch her, was coming nearer in clothes of beautiful texture with an odour like that of a flower-garden borne on the evening breeze. Foolish thoughts! But all this happened, you must remember, nearly sixty years ago, and Hetty was quite uneducated--a simple farmer's girl, to whom a gentleman with a white hand was dazzling as an Olympian god. Until to-day, she had never looked farther into the future than to the next time Captain Donnithorne would come to the Farm, or the next Sunday when she should see him at church; but now she thought, perhaps he would try to meet her when she went to the Chase to-morrow--and if he should speak to her, and walk a little way, when nobody was by! That had never happened yet; and now her imagination, instead of retracing the past, was busy fashioning what would happen to-morrow--whereabout in the Chase she should see him coming towards her, how she should put her new rose-coloured ribbon on, which he had never seen, and what he would say to her to make her return his glance--a glance which she would be living through in her memory, over and over again, all the rest of the day. In this state of mind, how could Hetty give any feeling to Adam's troubles, or think much about poor old Thias being drowned? Young souls, in such pleasant delirium as hers are as unsympathetic as butterflies sipping nectar; they are isolated from all appeals by a barrier of dreams--by invisible looks and impalpable arms. While Hetty's hands were busy packing up the butter, and her head filled with these pictures of the morrow, Arthur Donnithorne, riding by Mr. Irwine's side towards the valley of the Willow Brook, had also certain indistinct anticipations, running as an undercurrent in his mind while he was listening to Mr. Irwine's account of Dinah--indistinct, yet strong enough to make him feel rather conscious when Mr. Irwine suddenly said, "What fascinated you so in Mrs. Poyser's dairy, Arthur? Have you become an amateur of damp quarries and skimming dishes?" Arthur knew the rector too well to suppose that a clever invention would be of any use, so he said, with his accustomed frankness, "No, I went to look at the pretty butter-maker Hetty Sorrel. She's a perfect Hebe; and if I were an artist, I would paint her. It's amazing what pretty girls one sees among the farmers' daughters, when the men are such clowns. That common, round, red face one sees sometimes in the men--all cheek and no features, like Martin Poyser's--comes out in the women of the family as the most charming phiz imaginable." "Well, I have no objection to your contemplating Hetty in an artistic light, but I must not have you feeding her vanity and filling her little noddle with the notion that she's a great beauty, attractive to fine gentlemen, or you will spoil her for a poor man's wife--honest Craig's, for example, whom I have seen bestowing soft glances on her. The little puss seems already to have airs enough to make a husband as miserable as it's a law of nature for a quiet man to be when he marries a beauty. Apropos of marrying, I hope our friend Adam will get settled, now the poor old man's gone. He will only have his mother to keep in future, and I've a notion that there's a kindness between him and that nice modest girl, Mary Burge, from something that fell from old Jonathan one day when I was talking to him. But when I mentioned the subject to Adam he looked uneasy and turned the conversation. I suppose the love-making doesn't run smooth, or perhaps Adam hangs back till he's in a better position. He has independence of spirit enough for two men--rather an excess of pride, if anything." "That would be a capital match for Adam. He would slip into old Burge's shoes and make a fine thing of that building business, I'll answer for him. I should like to see him well settled in this parish; he would be ready then to act as my grand-vizier when I wanted one. We could plan no end of repairs and improvements together. I've never seen the girl, though, I think--at least I've never looked at her." "Look at her next Sunday at church--she sits with her father on the left of the reading-desk. You needn't look quite so much at Hetty Sorrel then. When I've made up my mind that I can't afford to buy a tempting dog, I take no notice of him, because if he took a strong fancy to me and looked lovingly at me, the struggle between arithmetic and inclination might become unpleasantly severe. I pique myself on my wisdom there, Arthur, and as an old fellow to whom wisdom had become cheap, I bestow it upon you." "Thank you. It may stand me in good stead some day though I don't know that I have any present use for it. Bless me! How the brook has overflowed. Suppose we have a canter, now we're at the bottom of the hill." That is the great advantage of dialogue on horseback; it can be merged any minute into a trot or a canter, and one might have escaped from Socrates himself in the saddle. The two friends were free from the necessity of further conversation till they pulled up in the lane behind Adam's cottage.

Chapter 9

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter9

Hetty's World The narrator decides to go beyond Hetty's pretty exterior to see what kind of a person she is inside. This chapter tracks her thoughts about what is going on around her, but unfortunately, the narrator concludes that Hetty does not have a very large range to her soul. She is mostly concerned with her own material desires. She knows very well that she has suitors. Luke Britton of Broxton comes to church at Hayslope so he can see her. Mr. Craig the gardener at the Chase is wooing her with strawberries, and Adam Bede, who has been invited to Hall Farm for the last three years, is the one favored by her family as having brains. Hetty seems unaware of what she owes her aunt and uncle. She is an orphan, and would have been a servant someplace without their support. Her uncle hopes she will make a good marriage with Adam, who, he knows, will rise by his merits. Hetty only sees Adam as another conquest and enjoys having him in her power. With Arthur's attentions, however, she is already dreaming of greater things. She thinks only of what a man could give her, and she begins to live in a pleasant daydream of how Arthur has looked at her. An uneducated girl, she only thinks of the young squire as a god in her world. She has no sympathy beyond her own situation. On the way to the Bede cottage, Arthur confesses to Irwine how pretty he finds Hetty. Irwine warns him not to flatter her or it will make her unfit for a husband of her own class. Arthur changes the subject.

Commentary on Chapter 9 Arthur is clearly warned by Mr. Irwine in the early stages of his attentions to Hetty that flattering Hetty is wrong, and why it is wrong. The point that she will be made unfit as a wife for someone else goes right by Arthur because it is beyond his sympathy, as Hetty's idea of others is beyond hers. Irwine means that it would make a servant like Hetty less happy with a poor man, but he also could be delicately hinting about her reputation. A future poor husband is just as jealous of a woman's honor as the rich, as Arthur will find out. Even though he has been raised among these farmers and has been taught carpentry by Adam, Arthur comes from a privileged class and has no distinct feeling for the honor of the classes below him, except in terms of chivalry. At his birthday party, for instance, he is capable of making the farmers feel appreciation, but it is a shallow knowledge of their world, their morals, and their feelings. Hetty is a kitten, a plaything, and he is a rich young man used to having his way. Like Hetty, he does not think too far ahead; in fact, he continually fools himself into thinking nothing is going to happen between them. Eliot's omniscient narration allows us into the thoughts of the characters so that we can observe how people delude themselves and misread others. This is a greater danger to unreflecting and selfish people, like Hetty and Arthur, but as we see in this chapter, it is also a danger to a man of integrity and brains like Adam Bede. The reader sees that he is headed for a fall with Hetty, that she is shallow, and her attention is elsewhere. In this way, the suspense builds, with much foreshadowing of the tragedy we watch in the making.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/10.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_10_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 1.chapter 10

chapter 10

{"name": "Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter10", "summary": "Dinah Visits Lisbeth Lisbeth is stubborn in refusing help to lay out the corpse of her husband. She locks herself in a room with him and carefully prepares his body with the linen she has laid out for this day, for it is the last service she can do him. Adam is exhausted and falls asleep on a bench in the workshop, dreaming of Hetty, while Seth tries to make tea for his mother. She, however, weeps and whines to Seth and won't be comforted. After the mother and sons visit the corpse and pray over it, Adam goes to bed, and Lisbeth sits rocking and moaning in grief. Dinah enters and at once begins to calm Lisbeth with her practiced way of dealing with the poor and suffering. She says she will be a daughter to Lisbeth in her trouble and begins to make the cottage orderly. Lisbeth looks at her and sees an angel and accepts her help. Dinah's authority and perfect tact, that stem from sympathy, tell her what to say. She offers to stay overnight with Lisbeth. The old woman likes the quotes from the Bible that Dinah tells her, and she feels a vague sense of comfort that there is a divine Providence.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 10 The main point of the chapter is spoken by Dinah when she tells Lisbeth her own life story. It has nothing to do with being a Methodist: \"the heart of man is the same everywhere\" . What could be a point of difference between the traditional, literal minded Lisbeth and the radically spiritual Dinah, is swept away in the sympathy of one soul for another in time of trouble. Dinah becomes her friend in a tactful way, knowing how to share. Lisbeth has a primitive idea of death, thinking that the dead are conscious of how they are wrapped and handled. It is extremely important to her that she has the winding sheet ready and prepares her husband's body with respect. Dinah, however, stirs her imagination to greater heights, to imagine that beyond her own sorrow and loss, there is a rightness in the universe. Dinah doesn't preach doctrine; she brings divine comfort in her own person, and Lisbeth feels an angel is there. This is the sort of \"natural piety\" that Wordsworth depicts in his pastoral poems, the love between human and human, human and nature."}

AT five o'clock Lisbeth came downstairs with a large key in her hand: it was the key of the chamber where her husband lay dead. Throughout the day, except in her occasional outbursts of wailing grief, she had been in incessant movement, performing the initial duties to her dead with the awe and exactitude that belong to religious rites. She had brought out her little store of bleached linen, which she had for long years kept in reserve for this supreme use. It seemed but yesterday--that time so many midsummers ago, when she had told Thias where this linen lay, that he might be sure and reach it out for her when SHE died, for she was the elder of the two. Then there had been the work of cleansing to the strictest purity every object in the sacred chamber, and of removing from it every trace of common daily occupation. The small window, which had hitherto freely let in the frosty moonlight or the warm summer sunrise on the working man's slumber, must now be darkened with a fair white sheet, for this was the sleep which is as sacred under the bare rafters as in ceiled houses. Lisbeth had even mended a long-neglected and unnoticeable rent in the checkered bit of bed-curtain; for the moments were few and precious now in which she would be able to do the smallest office of respect or love for the still corpse, to which in all her thoughts she attributed some consciousness. Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them: they can be injured by us, they can be wounded; they know all our penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the kisses we bestow on the smallest relic of their presence. And the aged peasant woman most of all believes that her dead are conscious. Decent burial was what Lisbeth had been thinking of for herself through years of thrift, with an indistinct expectation that she should know when she was being carried to the churchyard, followed by her husband and her sons; and now she felt as if the greatest work of her life were to be done in seeing that Thias was buried decently before her--under the white thorn, where once, in a dream, she had thought she lay in the coffin, yet all the while saw the sunshine above and smelt the white blossoms that were so thick upon the thorn the Sunday she went to be churched after Adam was born. But now she had done everything that could be done to-day in the chamber of death--had done it all herself, with some aid from her sons in lifting, for she would let no one be fetched to help her from the village, not being fond of female neighbours generally; and her favourite Dolly, the old housekeeper at Mr. Burge's, who had come to condole with her in the morning as soon as she heard of Thias's death, was too dim-sighted to be of much use. She had locked the door, and now held the key in her hand, as she threw herself wearily into a chair that stood out of its place in the middle of the house floor, where in ordinary times she would never have consented to sit. The kitchen had had none of her attention that day; it was soiled with the tread of muddy shoes and untidy with clothes and other objects out of place. But what at another time would have been intolerable to Lisbeth's habits of order and cleanliness seemed to her now just what should be: it was right that things should look strange and disordered and wretched, now the old man had come to his end in that sad way; the kitchen ought not to look as if nothing had happened. Adam, overcome with the agitations and exertions of the day after his night of hard work, had fallen asleep on a bench in the workshop; and Seth was in the back kitchen making a fire of sticks that he might get the kettle to boil, and persuade his mother to have a cup of tea, an indulgence which she rarely allowed herself. There was no one in the kitchen when Lisbeth entered and threw herself into the chair. She looked round with blank eyes at the dirt and confusion on which the bright afternoon's sun shone dismally; it was all of a piece with the sad confusion of her mind--that confusion which belongs to the first hours of a sudden sorrow, when the poor human soul is like one who has been deposited sleeping among the ruins of a vast city, and wakes up in dreary amazement, not knowing whether it is the growing or the dying day--not knowing why and whence came this illimitable scene of desolation, or why he too finds himself desolate in the midst of it. At another time Lisbeth's first thought would have been, "Where is Adam?" but the sudden death of her husband had restored him in these hours to that first place in her affections which he had held six-and-twenty years ago. She had forgotten his faults as we forget the sorrows of our departed childhood, and thought of nothing but the young husband's kindness and the old man's patience. Her eyes continued to wander blankly until Seth came in and began to remove some of the scattered things, and clear the small round deal table that he might set out his mother's tea upon it. "What art goin' to do?" she said, rather peevishly. "I want thee to have a cup of tea, Mother," answered Seth, tenderly. "It'll do thee good; and I'll put two or three of these things away, and make the house look more comfortable." "Comfortable! How canst talk o' ma'in' things comfortable? Let a-be, let a-be. There's no comfort for me no more," she went on, the tears coming when she began to speak, "now thy poor feyther's gone, as I'n washed for and mended, an' got's victual for him for thirty 'ear, an' him allays so pleased wi' iverything I done for him, an' used to be so handy an' do the jobs for me when I war ill an' cumbered wi' th' babby, an' made me the posset an' brought it upstairs as proud as could be, an' carried the lad as war as heavy as two children for five mile an' ne'er grumbled, all the way to Warson Wake, 'cause I wanted to go an' see my sister, as war dead an' gone the very next Christmas as e'er come. An' him to be drownded in the brook as we passed o'er the day we war married an' come home together, an' he'd made them lots o' shelves for me to put my plates an' things on, an' showed 'em me as proud as could be, 'cause he know'd I should be pleased. An' he war to die an' me not to know, but to be a-sleepin' i' my bed, as if I caredna nought about it. Eh! An' me to live to see that! An' us as war young folks once, an' thought we should do rarely when we war married. Let a-be, lad, let a-be! I wonna ha' no tay. I carena if I ne'er ate nor drink no more. When one end o' th' bridge tumbles down, where's th' use o' th' other stannin'? I may's well die, an' foller my old man. There's no knowin' but he'll want me." Here Lisbeth broke from words into moans, swaying herself backwards and forwards on her chair. Seth, always timid in his behaviour towards his mother, from the sense that he had no influence over her, felt it was useless to attempt to persuade or soothe her till this passion was past; so he contented himself with tending the back kitchen fire and folding up his father's clothes, which had been hanging out to dry since morning--afraid to move about in the room where his mother was, lest he should irritate her further. But after Lisbeth had been rocking herself and moaning for some minutes, she suddenly paused and said aloud to herself, "I'll go an' see arter Adam, for I canna think where he's gotten; an' I want him to go upstairs wi' me afore it's dark, for the minutes to look at the corpse is like the meltin' snow." Seth overheard this, and coming into the kitchen again, as his mother rose from her chair, he said, "Adam's asleep in the workshop, mother. Thee'dst better not wake him. He was o'erwrought with work and trouble." "Wake him? Who's a-goin' to wake him? I shanna wake him wi' lookin' at him. I hanna seen the lad this two hour--I'd welly forgot as he'd e'er growed up from a babby when's feyther carried him." Adam was seated on a rough bench, his head supported by his arm, which rested from the shoulder to the elbow on the long planing-table in the middle of the workshop. It seemed as if he had sat down for a few minutes' rest and had fallen asleep without slipping from his first attitude of sad, fatigued thought. His face, unwashed since yesterday, looked pallid and clammy; his hair was tossed shaggily about his forehead, and his closed eyes had the sunken look which follows upon watching and sorrow. His brow was knit, and his whole face had an expression of weariness and pain. Gyp was evidently uneasy, for he sat on his haunches, resting his nose on his master's stretched-out leg, and dividing the time between licking the hand that hung listlessly down and glancing with a listening air towards the door. The poor dog was hungry and restless, but would not leave his master, and was waiting impatiently for some change in the scene. It was owing to this feeling on Gyp's part that, when Lisbeth came into the workshop and advanced towards Adam as noiselessly as she could, her intention not to awaken him was immediately defeated; for Gyp's excitement was too great to find vent in anything short of a sharp bark, and in a moment Adam opened his eyes and saw his mother standing before him. It was not very unlike his dream, for his sleep had been little more than living through again, in a fevered delirious way, all that had happened since daybreak, and his mother with her fretful grief was present to him through it all. The chief difference between the reality and the vision was that in his dream Hetty was continually coming before him in bodily presence--strangely mingling herself as an actor in scenes with which she had nothing to do. She was even by the Willow Brook; she made his mother angry by coming into the house; and he met her with her smart clothes quite wet through, as he walked in the rain to Treddleston, to tell the coroner. But wherever Hetty came, his mother was sure to follow soon; and when he opened his eyes, it was not at all startling to see her standing near him. "Eh, my lad, my lad!" Lisbeth burst out immediately, her wailing impulse returning, for grief in its freshness feels the need of associating its loss and its lament with every change of scene and incident, "thee'st got nobody now but thy old mother to torment thee and be a burden to thee. Thy poor feyther 'ull ne'er anger thee no more; an' thy mother may's well go arter him--the sooner the better--for I'm no good to nobody now. One old coat 'ull do to patch another, but it's good for nought else. Thee'dst like to ha' a wife to mend thy clothes an' get thy victual, better nor thy old mother. An' I shall be nought but cumber, a-sittin' i' th' chimney-corner. (Adam winced and moved uneasily; he dreaded, of all things, to hear his mother speak of Hetty.) But if thy feyther had lived, he'd ne'er ha' wanted me to go to make room for another, for he could no more ha' done wi'out me nor one side o' the scissars can do wi'out th' other. Eh, we should ha' been both flung away together, an' then I shouldna ha' seen this day, an' one buryin' 'ud ha' done for us both." Here Lisbeth paused, but Adam sat in pained silence--he could not speak otherwise than tenderly to his mother to-day, but he could not help being irritated by this plaint. It was not possible for poor Lisbeth to know how it affected Adam any more than it is possible for a wounded dog to know how his moans affect the nerves of his master. Like all complaining women, she complained in the expectation of being soothed, and when Adam said nothing, she was only prompted to complain more bitterly. "I know thee couldst do better wi'out me, for thee couldst go where thee likedst an' marry them as thee likedst. But I donna want to say thee nay, let thee bring home who thee wut; I'd ne'er open my lips to find faut, for when folks is old an' o' no use, they may think theirsens well off to get the bit an' the sup, though they'n to swallow ill words wi't. An' if thee'st set thy heart on a lass as'll bring thee nought and waste all, when thee mightst ha' them as 'ud make a man on thee, I'll say nought, now thy feyther's dead an' drownded, for I'm no better nor an old haft when the blade's gone." Adam, unable to bear this any longer, rose silently from the bench and walked out of the workshop into the kitchen. But Lisbeth followed him. "Thee wutna go upstairs an' see thy feyther then? I'n done everythin' now, an' he'd like thee to go an' look at him, for he war allays so pleased when thee wast mild to him." Adam turned round at once and said, "Yes, mother; let us go upstairs. Come, Seth, let us go together." They went upstairs, and for five minutes all was silence. Then the key was turned again, and there was a sound of footsteps on the stairs. But Adam did not come down again; he was too weary and worn-out to encounter more of his mother's querulous grief, and he went to rest on his bed. Lisbeth no sooner entered the kitchen and sat down than she threw her apron over her head, and began to cry and moan and rock herself as before. Seth thought, "She will be quieter by and by, now we have been upstairs"; and he went into the back kitchen again, to tend his little fire, hoping that he should presently induce her to have some tea. Lisbeth had been rocking herself in this way for more than five minutes, giving a low moan with every forward movement of her body, when she suddenly felt a hand placed gently on hers, and a sweet treble voice said to her, "Dear sister, the Lord has sent me to see if I can be a comfort to you." Lisbeth paused, in a listening attitude, without removing her apron from her face. The voice was strange to her. Could it be her sister's spirit come back to her from the dead after all those years? She trembled and dared not look. Dinah, believing that this pause of wonder was in itself a relief for the sorrowing woman, said no more just yet, but quietly took off her bonnet, and then, motioning silence to Seth, who, on hearing her voice, had come in with a beating heart, laid one hand on the back of Lisbeth's chair and leaned over her, that she might be aware of a friendly presence. Slowly Lisbeth drew down her apron, and timidly she opened her dim dark eyes. She saw nothing at first but a face--a pure, pale face, with loving grey eyes, and it was quite unknown to her. Her wonder increased; perhaps it WAS an angel. But in the same instant Dinah had laid her hand on Lisbeth's again, and the old woman looked down at it. It was a much smaller hand than her own, but it was not white and delicate, for Dinah had never worn a glove in her life, and her hand bore the traces of labour from her childhood upwards. Lisbeth looked earnestly at the hand for a moment, and then, fixing her eyes again on Dinah's face, said, with something of restored courage, but in a tone of surprise, "Why, ye're a workin' woman!" "Yes, I am Dinah Morris, and I work in the cotton-mill when I am at home." "Ah!" said Lisbeth slowly, still wondering; "ye comed in so light, like the shadow on the wall, an' spoke i' my ear, as I thought ye might be a sperrit. Ye've got a'most the face o' one as is a-sittin' on the grave i' Adam's new Bible." "I come from the Hall Farm now. You know Mrs. Poyser--she's my aunt, and she has heard of your great affliction, and is very sorry; and I'm come to see if I can be any help to you in your trouble; for I know your sons Adam and Seth, and I know you have no daughter; and when the clergyman told me how the hand of God was heavy upon you, my heart went out towards you, and I felt a command to come and be to you in the place of a daughter in this grief, if you will let me." "Ah! I know who y' are now; y' are a Methody, like Seth; he's tould me on you," said Lisbeth fretfully, her overpowering sense of pain returning, now her wonder was gone. "Ye'll make it out as trouble's a good thing, like HE allays does. But where's the use o' talkin' to me a-that'n? Ye canna make the smart less wi' talkin'. Ye'll ne'er make me believe as it's better for me not to ha' my old man die in's bed, if he must die, an' ha' the parson to pray by him, an' me to sit by him, an' tell him ne'er to mind th' ill words I've gi'en him sometimes when I war angered, an' to gi' him a bit an' a sup, as long as a bit an' a sup he'd swallow. But eh! To die i' the cold water, an' us close to him, an' ne'er to know; an' me a-sleepin', as if I ne'er belonged to him no more nor if he'd been a journeyman tramp from nobody knows where!" Here Lisbeth began to cry and rock herself again; and Dinah said, "Yes, dear friend, your affliction is great. It would be hardness of heart to say that your trouble was not heavy to bear. God didn't send me to you to make light of your sorrow, but to mourn with you, if you will let me. If you had a table spread for a feast, and was making merry with your friends, you would think it was kind to let me come and sit down and rejoice with you, because you'd think I should like to share those good things; but I should like better to share in your trouble and your labour, and it would seem harder to me if you denied me that. You won't send me away? You're not angry with me for coming?" "Nay, nay; angered! who said I war angered? It war good on you to come. An' Seth, why donna ye get her some tay? Ye war in a hurry to get some for me, as had no need, but ye donna think o' gettin' 't for them as wants it. Sit ye down; sit ye down. I thank you kindly for comin', for it's little wage ye get by walkin' through the wet fields to see an old woman like me....Nay, I'n got no daughter o' my own--ne'er had one--an' I warna sorry, for they're poor queechy things, gells is; I allays wanted to ha' lads, as could fend for theirsens. An' the lads 'ull be marryin'--I shall ha' daughters eno', an' too many. But now, do ye make the tay as ye like it, for I'n got no taste i' my mouth this day--it's all one what I swaller--it's all got the taste o' sorrow wi't." Dinah took care not to betray that she had had her tea, and accepted Lisbeth's invitation very readily, for the sake of persuading the old woman herself to take the food and drink she so much needed after a day of hard work and fasting. Seth was so happy now Dinah was in the house that he could not help thinking her presence was worth purchasing with a life in which grief incessantly followed upon grief; but the next moment he reproached himself--it was almost as if he were rejoicing in his father's sad death. Nevertheless the joy of being with Dinah WOULD triumph--it was like the influence of climate, which no resistance can overcome. And the feeling even suffused itself over his face so as to attract his mother's notice, while she was drinking her tea. "Thee may'st well talk o' trouble bein' a good thing, Seth, for thee thriv'st on't. Thee look'st as if thee know'dst no more o' care an' cumber nor when thee wast a babby a-lyin' awake i' th' cradle. For thee'dst allays lie still wi' thy eyes open, an' Adam ne'er 'ud lie still a minute when he wakened. Thee wast allays like a bag o' meal as can ne'er be bruised--though, for the matter o' that, thy poor feyther war just such another. But ye've got the same look too" (here Lisbeth turned to Dinah). "I reckon it's wi' bein' a Methody. Not as I'm a-findin' faut wi' ye for't, for ye've no call to be frettin', an' somehow ye looken sorry too. Eh! Well, if the Methodies are fond o' trouble, they're like to thrive: it's a pity they canna ha't all, an' take it away from them as donna like it. I could ha' gi'en 'em plenty; for when I'd gotten my old man I war worreted from morn till night; and now he's gone, I'd be glad for the worst o'er again." "Yes," said Dinah, careful not to oppose any feeling of Lisbeth's, for her reliance, in her smallest words and deeds, on a divine guidance, always issued in that finest woman's tact which proceeds from acute and ready sympathy; "yes, I remember too, when my dear aunt died, I longed for the sound of her bad cough in the nights, instead of the silence that came when she was gone. But now, dear friend, drink this other cup of tea and eat a little more." "What!" said Lisbeth, taking the cup and speaking in a less querulous tone, "had ye got no feyther and mother, then, as ye war so sorry about your aunt?" "No, I never knew a father or mother; my aunt brought me up from a baby. She had no children, for she was never married and she brought me up as tenderly as if I'd been her own child." "Eh, she'd fine work wi' ye, I'll warrant, bringin' ye up from a babby, an' her a lone woman--it's ill bringin' up a cade lamb. But I daresay ye warna franzy, for ye look as if ye'd ne'er been angered i' your life. But what did ye do when your aunt died, an' why didna ye come to live in this country, bein' as Mrs. Poyser's your aunt too?" Dinah, seeing that Lisbeth's attention was attracted, told her the story of her early life--how she had been brought up to work hard, and what sort of place Snowfield was, and how many people had a hard life there--all the details that she thought likely to interest Lisbeth. The old woman listened, and forgot to be fretful, unconsciously subject to the soothing influence of Dinah's face and voice. After a while she was persuaded to let the kitchen be made tidy; for Dinah was bent on this, believing that the sense of order and quietude around her would help in disposing Lisbeth to join in the prayer she longed to pour forth at her side. Seth, meanwhile, went out to chop wood, for he surmised that Dinah would like to be left alone with his mother. Lisbeth sat watching her as she moved about in her still quick way, and said at last, "Ye've got a notion o' cleanin' up. I wouldna mind ha'in ye for a daughter, for ye wouldna spend the lad's wage i' fine clothes an' waste. Ye're not like the lasses o' this countryside. I reckon folks is different at Snowfield from what they are here." "They have a different sort of life, many of 'em," said Dinah; "they work at different things--some in the mill, and many in the mines, in the villages round about. But the heart of man is the same everywhere, and there are the children of this world and the children of light there as well as elsewhere. But we've many more Methodists there than in this country." "Well, I didna know as the Methody women war like ye, for there's Will Maskery's wife, as they say's a big Methody, isna pleasant to look at, at all. I'd as lief look at a tooad. An' I'm thinkin' I wouldna mind if ye'd stay an' sleep here, for I should like to see ye i' th' house i' th' mornin'. But mayhappen they'll be lookin for ye at Mester Poyser's." "No," said Dinah, "they don't expect me, and I should like to stay, if you'll let me." "Well, there's room; I'n got my bed laid i' th' little room o'er the back kitchen, an' ye can lie beside me. I'd be glad to ha' ye wi' me to speak to i' th' night, for ye've got a nice way o' talkin'. It puts me i' mind o' the swallows as was under the thack last 'ear when they fust begun to sing low an' soft-like i' th' mornin'. Eh, but my old man war fond o' them birds! An' so war Adam, but they'n ne'er comed again this 'ear. Happen THEY'RE dead too." "There," said Dinah, "now the kitchen looks tidy, and now, dear Mother--for I'm your daughter to-night, you know--I should like you to wash your face and have a clean cap on. Do you remember what David did, when God took away his child from him? While the child was yet alive he fasted and prayed to God to spare it, and he would neither eat nor drink, but lay on the ground all night, beseeching God for the child. But when he knew it was dead, he rose up from the ground and washed and anointed himself, and changed his clothes, and ate and drank; and when they asked him how it was that he seemed to have left off grieving now the child was dead, he said, 'While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me, that the child may live? But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.'" "Eh, that's a true word," said Lisbeth. "Yea, my old man wonna come back to me, but I shall go to him--the sooner the better. Well, ye may do as ye like wi' me: there's a clean cap i' that drawer, an' I'll go i' the back kitchen an' wash my face. An' Seth, thee may'st reach down Adam's new Bible wi' th' picters in, an' she shall read us a chapter. Eh, I like them words--'I shall go to him, but he wonna come back to me.'" Dinah and Seth were both inwardly offering thanks for the greater quietness of spirit that had come over Lisbeth. This was what Dinah had been trying to bring about, through all her still sympathy and absence from exhortation. From her girlhood upwards she had had experience among the sick and the mourning, among minds hardened and shrivelled through poverty and ignorance, and had gained the subtlest perception of the mode in which they could best be touched and softened into willingness to receive words of spiritual consolation or warning. As Dinah expressed it, "she was never left to herself; but it was always given her when to keep silence and when to speak." And do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, we must still say, as Dinah did, that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us. And so there was earnest prayer--there was faith, love, and hope pouring forth that evening in the little kitchen. And poor, aged, fretful Lisbeth, without grasping any distinct idea, without going through any course of religious emotions, felt a vague sense of goodness and love, and of something right lying underneath and beyond all this sorrowing life. She couldn't understand the sorrow; but, for these moments, under the subduing influence of Dinah's spirit, she felt that she must be patient and still.

Chapter 10

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter10

Dinah Visits Lisbeth Lisbeth is stubborn in refusing help to lay out the corpse of her husband. She locks herself in a room with him and carefully prepares his body with the linen she has laid out for this day, for it is the last service she can do him. Adam is exhausted and falls asleep on a bench in the workshop, dreaming of Hetty, while Seth tries to make tea for his mother. She, however, weeps and whines to Seth and won't be comforted. After the mother and sons visit the corpse and pray over it, Adam goes to bed, and Lisbeth sits rocking and moaning in grief. Dinah enters and at once begins to calm Lisbeth with her practiced way of dealing with the poor and suffering. She says she will be a daughter to Lisbeth in her trouble and begins to make the cottage orderly. Lisbeth looks at her and sees an angel and accepts her help. Dinah's authority and perfect tact, that stem from sympathy, tell her what to say. She offers to stay overnight with Lisbeth. The old woman likes the quotes from the Bible that Dinah tells her, and she feels a vague sense of comfort that there is a divine Providence.

Commentary on Chapter 10 The main point of the chapter is spoken by Dinah when she tells Lisbeth her own life story. It has nothing to do with being a Methodist: "the heart of man is the same everywhere" . What could be a point of difference between the traditional, literal minded Lisbeth and the radically spiritual Dinah, is swept away in the sympathy of one soul for another in time of trouble. Dinah becomes her friend in a tactful way, knowing how to share. Lisbeth has a primitive idea of death, thinking that the dead are conscious of how they are wrapped and handled. It is extremely important to her that she has the winding sheet ready and prepares her husband's body with respect. Dinah, however, stirs her imagination to greater heights, to imagine that beyond her own sorrow and loss, there is a rightness in the universe. Dinah doesn't preach doctrine; she brings divine comfort in her own person, and Lisbeth feels an angel is there. This is the sort of "natural piety" that Wordsworth depicts in his pastoral poems, the love between human and human, human and nature.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/11.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_11_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 1.chapter 11

chapter 11

{"name": "Chapter 11", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter11", "summary": "In the Cottage The next morning Dinah rises early in the Bede cottage and cleans the kitchen to prepare the breakfast. Adam hears her and at first imagines Hetty has come, then is surprised to see Dinah there. They introduce themselves and speak of Lisbeth. When Adam stares at Dinah, she is self-conscious as a woman for the first time in her life and blushes. Both Gyp, the dog, and Lisbeth like Dinah, and they are usually hard to please. Lisbeth comes in to see breakfast all prepared and says it is almost as good as hers. She doesn't want Dinah to go. They speak of Dinah's home in Stonyshire and compare it to Loamshire. Adam and Seth get up to make their father's coffin, but Lisbeth insists Adam do it alone. Seth is disappointed because it means he will not get to be near Dinah on her last day in Hayslope; he gives in graciously and goes off to work. Dinah tells Seth his conscience will be clear from having pleased his mother, and she will walk home with him when he comes back. Adam speaks privately to Seth telling him that Dinah is not like other women, and she will probably come around to his wooing. He wonders at how mysterious love is that a man will only be pleased with one woman.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 11 The pleasant breakfast scene brings out the personalities of the characters. Seth is sweet but nonassertive and is easily directed by the desires of others. Dinah speaks of her attachment to her home as she waits on the others. She fits into the family circle effortlessly. Lisbeth approves of Dinah but has to tell her sons that she cannot come up to the mother's mark in cooking or housework, and that they will appreciate their old mother when they marry. Lisbeth is always worried about being displaced and threatens that she should follow her husband now because she is not wanted. Adam does not like his mother's controlling emotional ways. He is a man of action and thinks to himself that even in adversity, he has his work to keep him going. The nature of life doesn't change, and that is a comfort to him. The surprise is the chemistry between Adam and Dinah. She blushes at his gaze, the first time such a thing has happened to her in her twenty-five years. This is significant. Both Adam and Dinah perceive the special qualities of each other, although Adam only thinks of Dinah as Seth's intended. The other thing of note is how Adam and Dinah both speak of their love of the land they are attached to."}

IT was but half-past four the next morning when Dinah, tired of lying awake listening to the birds and watching the growing light through the little window in the garret roof, rose and began to dress herself very quietly, lest she should disturb Lisbeth. But already some one else was astir in the house, and had gone downstairs, preceded by Gyp. The dog's pattering step was a sure sign that it was Adam who went down; but Dinah was not aware of this, and she thought it was more likely to be Seth, for he had told her how Adam had stayed up working the night before. Seth, however, had only just awakened at the sound of the opening door. The exciting influence of the previous day, heightened at last by Dinah's unexpected presence, had not been counteracted by any bodily weariness, for he had not done his ordinary amount of hard work; and so when he went to bed; it was not till he had tired himself with hours of tossing wakefulness that drowsiness came, and led on a heavier morning sleep than was usual with him. But Adam had been refreshed by his long rest, and with his habitual impatience of mere passivity, he was eager to begin the new day and subdue sadness by his strong will and strong arm. The white mist lay in the valley; it was going to be a bright warm day, and he would start to work again when he had had his breakfast. "There's nothing but what's bearable as long as a man can work," he said to himself; "the natur o' things doesn't change, though it seems as if one's own life was nothing but change. The square o' four is sixteen, and you must lengthen your lever in proportion to your weight, is as true when a man's miserable as when he's happy; and the best o' working is, it gives you a grip hold o' things outside your own lot." As he dashed the cold water over his head and face, he felt completely himself again, and with his black eyes as keen as ever and his thick black hair all glistening with the fresh moisture, he went into the workshop to look out the wood for his father's coffin, intending that he and Seth should carry it with them to Jonathan Burge's and have the coffin made by one of the workmen there, so that his mother might not see and hear the sad task going forward at home. He had just gone into the workshop when his quick ear detected a light rapid foot on the stairs--certainly not his mother's. He had been in bed and asleep when Dinah had come in, in the evening, and now he wondered whose step this could be. A foolish thought came, and moved him strangely. As if it could be Hetty! She was the last person likely to be in the house. And yet he felt reluctant to go and look and have the clear proof that it was some one else. He stood leaning on a plank he had taken hold of, listening to sounds which his imagination interpreted for him so pleasantly that the keen strong face became suffused with a timid tenderness. The light footstep moved about the kitchen, followed by the sound of the sweeping brush, hardly making so much noise as the lightest breeze that chases the autumn leaves along the dusty path; and Adam's imagination saw a dimpled face, with dark bright eyes and roguish smiles looking backward at this brush, and a rounded figure just leaning a little to clasp the handle. A very foolish thought--it could not be Hetty; but the only way of dismissing such nonsense from his head was to go and see WHO it was, for his fancy only got nearer and nearer to belief while he stood there listening. He loosed the plank and went to the kitchen door. "How do you do, Adam Bede?" said Dinah, in her calm treble, pausing from her sweeping and fixing her mild grave eyes upon him. "I trust you feel rested and strengthened again to bear the burden and heat of the day." It was like dreaming of the sunshine and awaking in the moonlight. Adam had seen Dinah several times, but always at the Hall Farm, where he was not very vividly conscious of any woman's presence except Hetty's, and he had only in the last day or two begun to suspect that Seth was in love with her, so that his attention had not hitherto been drawn towards her for his brother's sake. But now her slim figure, her plain black gown, and her pale serene face impressed him with all the force that belongs to a reality contrasted with a preoccupying fancy. For the first moment or two he made no answer, but looked at her with the concentrated, examining glance which a man gives to an object in which he has suddenly begun to be interested. Dinah, for the first time in her life, felt a painful self-consciousness; there was something in the dark penetrating glance of this strong man so different from the mildness and timidity of his brother Seth. A faint blush came, which deepened as she wondered at it. This blush recalled Adam from his forgetfulness. "I was quite taken by surprise; it was very good of you to come and see my mother in her trouble," he said, in a gentle grateful tone, for his quick mind told him at once how she came to be there. "I hope my mother was thankful to have you," he added, wondering rather anxiously what had been Dinah's reception. "Yes," said Dinah, resuming her work, "she seemed greatly comforted after a while, and she's had a good deal of rest in the night, by times. She was fast asleep when I left her." "Who was it took the news to the Hall Farm?" said Adam, his thoughts reverting to some one there; he wondered whether SHE had felt anything about it. "It was Mr. Irwine, the clergyman, told me, and my aunt was grieved for your mother when she heard it, and wanted me to come; and so is my uncle, I'm sure, now he's heard it, but he was gone out to Rosseter all yesterday. They'll look for you there as soon as you've got time to go, for there's nobody round that hearth but what's glad to see you." Dinah, with her sympathetic divination, knew quite well that Adam was longing to hear if Hetty had said anything about their trouble; she was too rigorously truthful for benevolent invention, but she had contrived to say something in which Hetty was tacitly included. Love has a way of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while disbelieves. Adam liked what Dinah had said so much that his mind was directly full of the next visit he should pay to the Hall Farm, when Hetty would perhaps behave more kindly to him than she had ever done before. "But you won't be there yourself any longer?" he said to Dinah. "No, I go back to Snowfield on Saturday, and I shall have to set out to Treddleston early, to be in time for the Oakbourne carrier. So I must go back to the farm to-night, that I may have the last day with my aunt and her children. But I can stay here all to-day, if your mother would like me; and her heart seemed inclined towards me last night." "Ah, then, she's sure to want you to-day. If mother takes to people at the beginning, she's sure to get fond of 'em; but she's a strange way of not liking young women. Though, to be sure," Adam went on, smiling, "her not liking other young women is no reason why she shouldn't like you." Hitherto Gyp had been assisting at this conversation in motionless silence, seated on his haunches, and alternately looking up in his master's face to watch its expression and observing Dinah's movements about the kitchen. The kind smile with which Adam uttered the last words was apparently decisive with Gyp of the light in which the stranger was to be regarded, and as she turned round after putting aside her sweeping-brush, he trotted towards her and put up his muzzle against her hand in a friendly way. "You see Gyp bids you welcome," said Adam, "and he's very slow to welcome strangers." "Poor dog!" said Dinah, patting the rough grey coat, "I've a strange feeling about the dumb things as if they wanted to speak, and it was a trouble to 'em because they couldn't. I can't help being sorry for the dogs always, though perhaps there's no need. But they may well have more in them than they know how to make us understand, for we can't say half what we feel, with all our words." Seth came down now, and was pleased to find Adam talking with Dinah; he wanted Adam to know how much better she was than all other women. But after a few words of greeting, Adam drew him into the workshop to consult about the coffin, and Dinah went on with her cleaning. By six o'clock they were all at breakfast with Lisbeth in a kitchen as clean as she could have made it herself. The window and door were open, and the morning air brought with it a mingled scent of southernwood, thyme, and sweet-briar from the patch of garden by the side of the cottage. Dinah did not sit down at first, but moved about, serving the others with the warm porridge and the toasted oat-cake, which she had got ready in the usual way, for she had asked Seth to tell her just what his mother gave them for breakfast. Lisbeth had been unusually silent since she came downstairs, apparently requiring some time to adjust her ideas to a state of things in which she came down like a lady to find all the work done, and sat still to be waited on. Her new sensations seemed to exclude the remembrance of her grief. At last, after tasting the porridge, she broke silence: "Ye might ha' made the parridge worse," she said to Dinah; "I can ate it wi'out its turnin' my stomach. It might ha' been a trifle thicker an' no harm, an' I allays putten a sprig o' mint in mysen; but how's ye t' know that? The lads arena like to get folks as 'll make their parridge as I'n made it for 'em; it's well if they get onybody as 'll make parridge at all. But ye might do, wi' a bit o' showin'; for ye're a stirrin' body in a mornin', an' ye've a light heel, an' ye've cleaned th' house well enough for a ma'shift." "Makeshift, mother?" said Adam. "Why, I think the house looks beautiful. I don't know how it could look better." "Thee dostna know? Nay; how's thee to know? Th' men ne'er know whether the floor's cleaned or cat-licked. But thee'lt know when thee gets thy parridge burnt, as it's like enough to be when I'n gi'en o'er makin' it. Thee'lt think thy mother war good for summat then." "Dinah," said Seth, "do come and sit down now and have your breakfast. We're all served now." "Aye, come an' sit ye down--do," said Lisbeth, "an' ate a morsel; ye'd need, arter bein' upo' your legs this hour an' half a'ready. Come, then," she added, in a tone of complaining affection, as Dinah sat down by her side, "I'll be loath for ye t' go, but ye canna stay much longer, I doubt. I could put up wi' ye i' th' house better nor wi' most folks." "I'll stay till to-night if you're willing," said Dinah. "I'd stay longer, only I'm going back to Snowfield on Saturday, and I must be with my aunt to-morrow." "Eh, I'd ne'er go back to that country. My old man come from that Stonyshire side, but he left it when he war a young un, an' i' the right on't too; for he said as there war no wood there, an' it 'ud ha' been a bad country for a carpenter." "Ah," said Adam, "I remember father telling me when I was a little lad that he made up his mind if ever he moved it should be south'ard. But I'm not so sure about it. Bartle Massey says--and he knows the South--as the northern men are a finer breed than the southern, harder-headed and stronger-bodied, and a deal taller. And then he says in some o' those counties it's as flat as the back o' your hand, and you can see nothing of a distance without climbing up the highest trees. I couldn't abide that. I like to go to work by a road that'll take me up a bit of a hill, and see the fields for miles round me, and a bridge, or a town, or a bit of a steeple here and there. It makes you feel the world's a big place, and there's other men working in it with their heads and hands besides yourself." "I like th' hills best," said Seth, "when the clouds are over your head and you see the sun shining ever so far off, over the Loamford way, as I've often done o' late, on the stormy days. It seems to me as if that was heaven where there's always joy and sunshine, though this life's dark and cloudy." "Oh, I love the Stonyshire side," said Dinah; "I shouldn't like to set my face towards the countries where they're rich in corn and cattle, and the ground so level and easy to tread; and to turn my back on the hills where the poor people have to live such a hard life and the men spend their days in the mines away from the sunlight. It's very blessed on a bleak cold day, when the sky is hanging dark over the hill, to feel the love of God in one's soul, and carry it to the lonely, bare, stone houses, where there's nothing else to give comfort." "Eh!" said Lisbeth, "that's very well for ye to talk, as looks welly like the snowdrop-flowers as ha' lived for days an' days when I'n gethered 'em, wi' nothin' but a drop o' water an' a peep o' daylight; but th' hungry foulks had better leave th' hungry country. It makes less mouths for the scant cake. But," she went on, looking at Adam, "donna thee talk o' goin' south'ard or north'ard, an' leavin' thy feyther and mother i' the churchyard, an' goin' to a country as they know nothin' on. I'll ne'er rest i' my grave if I donna see thee i' the churchyard of a Sunday." "Donna fear, mother," said Adam. "If I hadna made up my mind not to go, I should ha' been gone before now." He had finished his breakfast now, and rose as he was speaking. "What art goin' to do?" asked Lisbeth. "Set about thy feyther's coffin?" "No, mother," said Adam; "we're going to take the wood to the village and have it made there." "Nay, my lad, nay," Lisbeth burst out in an eager, wailing tone; "thee wotna let nobody make thy feyther's coffin but thysen? Who'd make it so well? An' him as know'd what good work war, an's got a son as is the head o' the village an' all Treddles'on too, for cleverness." "Very well, mother, if that's thy wish, I'll make the coffin at home; but I thought thee wouldstna like to hear the work going on." "An' why shouldna I like 't? It's the right thing to be done. An' what's liking got to do wi't? It's choice o' mislikings is all I'n got i' this world. One morsel's as good as another when your mouth's out o' taste. Thee mun set about it now this mornin' fust thing. I wonna ha' nobody to touch the coffin but thee." Adam's eyes met Seth's, which looked from Dinah to him rather wistfully. "No, Mother," he said, "I'll not consent but Seth shall have a hand in it too, if it's to be done at home. I'll go to the village this forenoon, because Mr. Burge 'ull want to see me, and Seth shall stay at home and begin the coffin. I can come back at noon, and then he can go." "Nay, nay," persisted Lisbeth, beginning to cry, "I'n set my heart on't as thee shalt ma' thy feyther's coffin. Thee't so stiff an' masterful, thee't ne'er do as thy mother wants thee. Thee wast often angered wi' thy feyther when he war alive; thee must be the better to him now he's gone. He'd ha' thought nothin' on't for Seth to ma's coffin." "Say no more, Adam, say no more," said Seth, gently, though his voice told that he spoke with some effort; "Mother's in the right. I'll go to work, and do thee stay at home." He passed into the workshop immediately, followed by Adam; while Lisbeth, automatically obeying her old habits, began to put away the breakfast things, as if she did not mean Dinah to take her place any longer. Dinah said nothing, but presently used the opportunity of quietly joining the brothers in the workshop. They had already got on their aprons and paper caps, and Adam was standing with his left hand on Seth's shoulder, while he pointed with the hammer in his right to some boards which they were looking at. Their backs were turned towards the door by which Dinah entered, and she came in so gently that they were not aware of her presence till they heard her voice saying, "Seth Bede!" Seth started, and they both turned round. Dinah looked as if she did not see Adam, and fixed her eyes on Seth's face, saying with calm kindness, "I won't say farewell. I shall see you again when you come from work. So as I'm at the farm before dark, it will be quite soon enough." "Thank you, Dinah; I should like to walk home with you once more. It'll perhaps be the last time." There was a little tremor in Seth's voice. Dinah put out her hand and said, "You'll have sweet peace in your mind to-day, Seth, for your tenderness and long-suffering towards your aged mother." She turned round and left the workshop as quickly and quietly as she had entered it. Adam had been observing her closely all the while, but she had not looked at him. As soon as she was gone, he said, "I don't wonder at thee for loving her, Seth. She's got a face like a lily." Seth's soul rushed to his eyes and lips: he had never yet confessed his secret to Adam, but now he felt a delicious sense of disburdenment, as he answered, "Aye, Addy, I do love her--too much, I doubt. But she doesna love me, lad, only as one child o' God loves another. She'll never love any man as a husband--that's my belief." "Nay, lad, there's no telling; thee mustna lose heart. She's made out o' stuff with a finer grain than most o' the women; I can see that clear enough. But if she's better than they are in other things, I canna think she'll fall short of 'em in loving." No more was said. Seth set out to the village, and Adam began his work on the coffin. "God help the lad, and me too," he thought, as he lifted the board. "We're like enough to find life a tough job--hard work inside and out. It's a strange thing to think of a man as can lift a chair with his teeth and walk fifty mile on end, trembling and turning hot and cold at only a look from one woman out of all the rest i' the world. It's a mystery we can give no account of; but no more we can of the sprouting o' the seed, for that matter."

Chapter 11

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter11

In the Cottage The next morning Dinah rises early in the Bede cottage and cleans the kitchen to prepare the breakfast. Adam hears her and at first imagines Hetty has come, then is surprised to see Dinah there. They introduce themselves and speak of Lisbeth. When Adam stares at Dinah, she is self-conscious as a woman for the first time in her life and blushes. Both Gyp, the dog, and Lisbeth like Dinah, and they are usually hard to please. Lisbeth comes in to see breakfast all prepared and says it is almost as good as hers. She doesn't want Dinah to go. They speak of Dinah's home in Stonyshire and compare it to Loamshire. Adam and Seth get up to make their father's coffin, but Lisbeth insists Adam do it alone. Seth is disappointed because it means he will not get to be near Dinah on her last day in Hayslope; he gives in graciously and goes off to work. Dinah tells Seth his conscience will be clear from having pleased his mother, and she will walk home with him when he comes back. Adam speaks privately to Seth telling him that Dinah is not like other women, and she will probably come around to his wooing. He wonders at how mysterious love is that a man will only be pleased with one woman.

Commentary on Chapter 11 The pleasant breakfast scene brings out the personalities of the characters. Seth is sweet but nonassertive and is easily directed by the desires of others. Dinah speaks of her attachment to her home as she waits on the others. She fits into the family circle effortlessly. Lisbeth approves of Dinah but has to tell her sons that she cannot come up to the mother's mark in cooking or housework, and that they will appreciate their old mother when they marry. Lisbeth is always worried about being displaced and threatens that she should follow her husband now because she is not wanted. Adam does not like his mother's controlling emotional ways. He is a man of action and thinks to himself that even in adversity, he has his work to keep him going. The nature of life doesn't change, and that is a comfort to him. The surprise is the chemistry between Adam and Dinah. She blushes at his gaze, the first time such a thing has happened to her in her twenty-five years. This is significant. Both Adam and Dinah perceive the special qualities of each other, although Adam only thinks of Dinah as Seth's intended. The other thing of note is how Adam and Dinah both speak of their love of the land they are attached to.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/12.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_12_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 1.chapter 12

chapter 12

{"name": "Chapter 12", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter12", "summary": "In the Wood On the same morning, Arthur holds a discussion with himself and decides it is prudent that he should go on a week-long fishing trip to stay out of the way of Hetty. He approves of himself for his noble behavior but when he goes to the stable, he finds his horse has been lamed, and he cannot go. He uses another horse to go to lunch with a friend, thinking he will get back too late to meet Hetty. Somehow, he is back early and realizes he wants to see her. They meet on the path in the fir-tree grove, and are shy with one another at first, for they have never been alone before. Arthur questions her about what time she goes to Mrs. Pomfret's and says she probably has an escort to go home, Mr. Craig, the gardener, for instance. Hetty begins to cry at the mention of Mr. Craig and says she doesn't like him. Arthur's tenderness is aroused and he puts his hand on her arm. Suddenly she drops her sewing basket, and they have to pick up the contents, thus breaking the mood. When she leaves, he is angry with himself for his weakness but then realizes he is falling in love with Hetty. He goes into the Hermitage, a house in the wood, and waits for her to come back.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 12 In this chapter the narrator stays closely with Arthur's mental process as she did with Hetty's before. She shows Arthur's indecisiveness and excuses to himself. He makes noble resolutions to stay away from Hetty but has no discipline. It seems fate is against him when his horse is lamed, but he makes little effort to carry through his plan. He is easily distracted. Eliot makes it plain that virtue does not consist in fine thoughts alone, but in action. Although she defends Arthur as a basically decent person who has never harmed another, she warns that in order to continue not harming others one needs \"self-mastery,\" which we see Arthur does not have . He tells himself he will be back too late to run into Hetty, but then he is surprised to arrive early. This self-deception of saying one thing to oneself and doing another is a lack of co-ordination and honesty. Arthur had called himself lazy, and Eliot shows the consequences to a morally lazy person are just as harsh as if he set out to do harm. The result of wrong action is the same, despite good intentions. Even after meeting Hetty, he fools himself into thinking it will go no further. He wants to see her just one more time to leave her with the right impression. It has begun, and Arthur is not strong enough to avoid entanglement."}

THAT same Thursday morning, as Arthur Donnithorne was moving about in his dressing-room seeing his well-looking British person reflected in the old-fashioned mirrors, and stared at, from a dingy olive-green piece of tapestry, by Pharaoh's daughter and her maidens, who ought to have been minding the infant Moses, he was holding a discussion with himself, which, by the time his valet was tying the black silk sling over his shoulder, had issued in a distinct practical resolution. "I mean to go to Eagledale and fish for a week or so," he said aloud. "I shall take you with me, Pym, and set off this morning; so be ready by half-past eleven." The low whistle, which had assisted him in arriving at this resolution, here broke out into his loudest ringing tenor, and the corridor, as he hurried along it, echoed to his favourite song from the Beggar's Opera, "When the heart of a man is oppressed with care." Not an heroic strain; nevertheless Arthur felt himself very heroic as he strode towards the stables to give his orders about the horses. His own approbation was necessary to him, and it was not an approbation to be enjoyed quite gratuitously; it must be won by a fair amount of merit. He had never yet forfeited that approbation, and he had considerable reliance on his own virtues. No young man could confess his faults more candidly; candour was one of his favourite virtues; and how can a man's candour be seen in all its lustre unless he has a few failings to talk of? But he had an agreeable confidence that his faults were all of a generous kind--impetuous, warm-blooded, leonine; never crawling, crafty, reptilian. It was not possible for Arthur Donnithorne to do anything mean, dastardly, or cruel. "No! I'm a devil of a fellow for getting myself into a hobble, but I always take care the load shall fall on my own shoulders." Unhappily, there is no inherent poetical justice in hobbles, and they will sometimes obstinately refuse to inflict their worst consequences on the prime offender, in spite of his loudly expressed wish. It was entirely owing to this deficiency in the scheme of things that Arthur had ever brought any one into trouble besides himself. He was nothing if not good-natured; and all his pictures of the future, when he should come into the estate, were made up of a prosperous, contented tenantry, adoring their landlord, who would be the model of an English gentleman--mansion in first-rate order, all elegance and high taste--jolly housekeeping, finest stud in Loamshire--purse open to all public objects--in short, everything as different as possible from what was now associated with the name of Donnithorne. And one of the first good actions he would perform in that future should be to increase Irwine's income for the vicarage of Hayslope, so that he might keep a carriage for his mother and sisters. His hearty affection for the rector dated from the age of frocks and trousers. It was an affection partly filial, partly fraternal--fraternal enough to make him like Irwine's company better than that of most younger men, and filial enough to make him shrink strongly from incurring Irwine's disapprobation. You perceive that Arthur Donnithorne was "a good fellow"--all his college friends thought him such. He couldn't bear to see any one uncomfortable; he would have been sorry even in his angriest moods for any harm to happen to his grandfather; and his Aunt Lydia herself had the benefit of that soft-heartedness which he bore towards the whole sex. Whether he would have self-mastery enough to be always as harmless and purely beneficent as his good-nature led him to desire, was a question that no one had yet decided against him; he was but twenty-one, you remember, and we don't inquire too closely into character in the case of a handsome generous young fellow, who will have property enough to support numerous peccadilloes--who, if he should unfortunately break a man's legs in his rash driving, will be able to pension him handsomely; or if he should happen to spoil a woman's existence for her, will make it up to her with expensive bon-bons, packed up and directed by his own hand. It would be ridiculous to be prying and analytic in such cases, as if one were inquiring into the character of a confidential clerk. We use round, general, gentlemanly epithets about a young man of birth and fortune; and ladies, with that fine intuition which is the distinguishing attribute of their sex, see at once that he is "nice." The chances are that he will go through life without scandalizing any one; a seaworthy vessel that no one would refuse to insure. Ships, certainly, are liable to casualties, which sometimes make terribly evident some flaw in their construction that would never have been discoverable in smooth water; and many a "good fellow," through a disastrous combination of circumstances, has undergone a like betrayal. But we have no fair ground for entertaining unfavourable auguries concerning Arthur Donnithorne, who this morning proves himself capable of a prudent resolution founded on conscience. One thing is clear: Nature has taken care that he shall never go far astray with perfect comfort and satisfaction to himself; he will never get beyond that border-land of sin, where he will be perpetually harassed by assaults from the other side of the boundary. He will never be a courtier of Vice, and wear her orders in his button-hole. It was about ten o'clock, and the sun was shining brilliantly; everything was looking lovelier for the yesterday's rain. It is a pleasant thing on such a morning to walk along the well-rolled gravel on one's way to the stables, meditating an excursion. But the scent of the stables, which, in a natural state of things, ought to be among the soothing influences of a man's life, always brought with it some irritation to Arthur. There was no having his own way in the stables; everything was managed in the stingiest fashion. His grandfather persisted in retaining as head groom an old dolt whom no sort of lever could move out of his old habits, and who was allowed to hire a succession of raw Loamshire lads as his subordinates, one of whom had lately tested a new pair of shears by clipping an oblong patch on Arthur's bay mare. This state of things is naturally embittering; one can put up with annoyances in the house, but to have the stable made a scene of vexation and disgust is a point beyond what human flesh and blood can be expected to endure long together without danger of misanthropy. Old John's wooden, deep-wrinkled face was the first object that met Arthur's eyes as he entered the stable-yard, and it quite poisoned for him the bark of the two bloodhounds that kept watch there. He could never speak quite patiently to the old blockhead. "You must have Meg saddled for me and brought to the door at half-past eleven, and I shall want Rattler saddled for Pym at the same time. Do you hear?" "Yes, I hear, I hear, Cap'n," said old John very deliberately, following the young master into the stable. John considered a young master as the natural enemy of an old servant, and young people in general as a poor contrivance for carrying on the world. Arthur went in for the sake of patting Meg, declining as far as possible to see anything in the stables, lest he should lose his temper before breakfast. The pretty creature was in one of the inner stables, and turned her mild head as her master came beside her. Little Trot, a tiny spaniel, her inseparable companion in the stable, was comfortably curled up on her back. "Well, Meg, my pretty girl," said Arthur, patting her neck, "we'll have a glorious canter this morning." "Nay, your honour, I donna see as that can be," said John. "Not be? Why not?" "Why, she's got lamed." "Lamed, confound you! What do you mean?" "Why, th' lad took her too close to Dalton's hosses, an' one on 'em flung out at her, an' she's got her shank bruised o' the near foreleg." The judicious historian abstains from narrating precisely what ensued. You understand that there was a great deal of strong language, mingled with soothing "who-ho's" while the leg was examined; that John stood by with quite as much emotion as if he had been a cunningly carved crab-tree walking-stick, and that Arthur Donnithorne presently repassed the iron gates of the pleasure-ground without singing as he went. He considered himself thoroughly disappointed and annoyed. There was not another mount in the stable for himself and his servant besides Meg and Rattler. It was vexatious; just when he wanted to get out of the way for a week or two. It seemed culpable in Providence to allow such a combination of circumstances. To be shut up at the Chase with a broken arm when every other fellow in his regiment was enjoying himself at Windsor--shut up with his grandfather, who had the same sort of affection for him as for his parchment deeds! And to be disgusted at every turn with the management of the house and the estate! In such circumstances a man necessarily gets in an ill humour, and works off the irritation by some excess or other. "Salkeld would have drunk a bottle of port every day," he muttered to himself, "but I'm not well seasoned enough for that. Well, since I can't go to Eagledale, I'll have a gallop on Rattler to Norburne this morning, and lunch with Gawaine." Behind this explicit resolution there lay an implicit one. If he lunched with Gawaine and lingered chatting, he should not reach the Chase again till nearly five, when Hetty would be safe out of his sight in the housekeeper's room; and when she set out to go home, it would be his lazy time after dinner, so he should keep out of her way altogether. There really would have been no harm in being kind to the little thing, and it was worth dancing with a dozen ballroom belles only to look at Hetty for half an hour. But perhaps he had better not take any more notice of her; it might put notions into her head, as Irwine had hinted; though Arthur, for his part, thought girls were not by any means so soft and easily bruised; indeed, he had generally found them twice as cool and cunning as he was himself. As for any real harm in Hetty's case, it was out of the question: Arthur Donnithorne accepted his own bond for himself with perfect confidence. So the twelve o'clock sun saw him galloping towards Norburne; and by good fortune Halsell Common lay in his road and gave him some fine leaps for Rattler. Nothing like "taking" a few bushes and ditches for exorcising a demon; and it is really astonishing that the Centaurs, with their immense advantages in this way, have left so bad a reputation in history. After this, you will perhaps be surprised to hear that although Gawaine was at home, the hand of the dial in the courtyard had scarcely cleared the last stroke of three when Arthur returned through the entrance-gates, got down from the panting Rattler, and went into the house to take a hasty luncheon. But I believe there have been men since his day who have ridden a long way to avoid a rencontre, and then galloped hastily back lest they should miss it. It is the favourite stratagem of our passions to sham a retreat, and to turn sharp round upon us at the moment we have made up our minds that the day is our own. "The cap'n's been ridin' the devil's own pace," said Dalton the coachman, whose person stood out in high relief as he smoked his pipe against the stable wall, when John brought up Rattler. "An' I wish he'd get the devil to do's grooming for'n," growled John. "Aye; he'd hev a deal haimabler groom nor what he has now," observed Dalton--and the joke appeared to him so good that, being left alone upon the scene, he continued at intervals to take his pipe from his mouth in order to wink at an imaginary audience and shake luxuriously with a silent, ventral laughter, mentally rehearsing the dialogue from the beginning, that he might recite it with effect in the servants' hall. When Arthur went up to his dressing-room again after luncheon, it was inevitable that the debate he had had with himself there earlier in the day should flash across his mind; but it was impossible for him now to dwell on the remembrance--impossible to recall the feelings and reflections which had been decisive with him then, any more than to recall the peculiar scent of the air that had freshened him when he first opened his window. The desire to see Hetty had rushed back like an ill-stemmed current; he was amazed himself at the force with which this trivial fancy seemed to grasp him: he was even rather tremulous as he brushed his hair--pooh! it was riding in that break-neck way. It was because he had made a serious affair of an idle matter, by thinking of it as if it were of any consequence. He would amuse himself by seeing Hetty to-day, and get rid of the whole thing from his mind. It was all Irwine's fault. "If Irwine had said nothing, I shouldn't have thought half so much of Hetty as of Meg's lameness." However, it was just the sort of day for lolling in the Hermitage, and he would go and finish Dr. Moore's Zeluco there before dinner. The Hermitage stood in Fir-tree Grove--the way Hetty was sure to come in walking from the Hall Farm. So nothing could be simpler and more natural: meeting Hetty was a mere circumstance of his walk, not its object. Arthur's shadow flitted rather faster among the sturdy oaks of the Chase than might have been expected from the shadow of a tired man on a warm afternoon, and it was still scarcely four o'clock when he stood before the tall narrow gate leading into the delicious labyrinthine wood which skirted one side of the Chase, and which was called Fir-tree Grove, not because the firs were many, but because they were few. It was a wood of beeches and limes, with here and there a light silver-stemmed birch--just the sort of wood most haunted by the nymphs: you see their white sunlit limbs gleaming athwart the boughs, or peeping from behind the smooth-sweeping outline of a tall lime; you hear their soft liquid laughter--but if you look with a too curious sacrilegious eye, they vanish behind the silvery beeches, they make you believe that their voice was only a running brooklet, perhaps they metamorphose themselves into a tawny squirrel that scampers away and mocks you from the topmost bough. It was not a grove with measured grass or rolled gravel for you to tread upon, but with narrow, hollow-shaped, earthy paths, edged with faint dashes of delicate moss--paths which look as if they were made by the free will of the trees and underwood, moving reverently aside to look at the tall queen of the white-footed nymphs. It was along the broadest of these paths that Arthur Donnithorne passed, under an avenue of limes and beeches. It was a still afternoon--the golden light was lingering languidly among the upper boughs, only glancing down here and there on the purple pathway and its edge of faintly sprinkled moss: an afternoon in which destiny disguises her cold awful face behind a hazy radiant veil, encloses us in warm downy wings, and poisons us with violet-scented breath. Arthur strolled along carelessly, with a book under his arm, but not looking on the ground as meditative men are apt to do; his eyes WOULD fix themselves on the distant bend in the road round which a little figure must surely appear before long. Ah! There she comes. First a bright patch of colour, like a tropic bird among the boughs; then a tripping figure, with a round hat on, and a small basket under her arm; then a deep-blushing, almost frightened, but bright-smiling girl, making her curtsy with a fluttered yet happy glance, as Arthur came up to her. If Arthur had had time to think at all, he would have thought it strange that he should feel fluttered too, be conscious of blushing too--in fact, look and feel as foolish as if he had been taken by surprise instead of meeting just what he expected. Poor things! It was a pity they were not in that golden age of childhood when they would have stood face to face, eyeing each other with timid liking, then given each other a little butterfly kiss, and toddled off to play together. Arthur would have gone home to his silk-curtained cot, and Hetty to her home-spun pillow, and both would have slept without dreams, and to-morrow would have been a life hardly conscious of a yesterday. Arthur turned round and walked by Hetty's side without giving a reason. They were alone together for the first time. What an overpowering presence that first privacy is! He actually dared not look at this little butter-maker for the first minute or two. As for Hetty, her feet rested on a cloud, and she was borne along by warm zephyrs; she had forgotten her rose-coloured ribbons; she was no more conscious of her limbs than if her childish soul had passed into a water-lily, resting on a liquid bed and warmed by the midsummer sun-beams. It may seem a contradiction, but Arthur gathered a certain carelessness and confidence from his timidity: it was an entirely different state of mind from what he had expected in such a meeting with Hetty; and full as he was of vague feeling, there was room, in those moments of silence, for the thought that his previous debates and scruples were needless. "You are quite right to choose this way of coming to the Chase," he said at last, looking down at Hetty; "it is so much prettier as well as shorter than coming by either of the lodges." "Yes, sir," Hetty answered, with a tremulous, almost whispering voice. She didn't know one bit how to speak to a gentleman like Mr. Arthur, and her very vanity made her more coy of speech. "Do you come every week to see Mrs. Pomfret?" "Yes, sir, every Thursday, only when she's got to go out with Miss Donnithorne." "And she's teaching you something, is she?" "Yes, sir, the lace-mending as she learnt abroad, and the stocking-mending--it looks just like the stocking, you can't tell it's been mended; and she teaches me cutting-out too." "What! are YOU going to be a lady's maid?" "I should like to be one very much indeed." Hetty spoke more audibly now, but still rather tremulously; she thought, perhaps she seemed as stupid to Captain Donnithorne as Luke Britton did to her. "I suppose Mrs. Pomfret always expects you at this time?" "She expects me at four o'clock. I'm rather late to-day, because my aunt couldn't spare me; but the regular time is four, because that gives us time before Miss Donnithorne's bell rings." "Ah, then, I must not keep you now, else I should like to show you the Hermitage. Did you ever see it?" "No, sir." "This is the walk where we turn up to it. But we must not go now. I'll show it you some other time, if you'd like to see it." "Yes, please, sir." "Do you always come back this way in the evening, or are you afraid to come so lonely a road?" "Oh no, sir, it's never late; I always set out by eight o'clock, and it's so light now in the evening. My aunt would be angry with me if I didn't get home before nine." "Perhaps Craig, the gardener, comes to take care of you?" A deep blush overspread Hetty's face and neck. "I'm sure he doesn't; I'm sure he never did; I wouldn't let him; I don't like him," she said hastily, and the tears of vexation had come so fast that before she had done speaking a bright drop rolled down her hot cheek. Then she felt ashamed to death that she was crying, and for one long instant her happiness was all gone. But in the next she felt an arm steal round her, and a gentle voice said, "Why, Hetty, what makes you cry? I didn't mean to vex you. I wouldn't vex you for the world, you little blossom. Come, don't cry; look at me, else I shall think you won't forgive me." Arthur had laid his hand on the soft arm that was nearest to him, and was stooping towards Hetty with a look of coaxing entreaty. Hetty lifted her long dewy lashes, and met the eyes that were bent towards her with a sweet, timid, beseeching look. What a space of time those three moments were while their eyes met and his arms touched her! Love is such a simple thing when we have only one-and-twenty summers and a sweet girl of seventeen trembles under our glance, as if she were a bud first opening her heart with wondering rapture to the morning. Such young unfurrowed souls roll to meet each other like two velvet peaches that touch softly and are at rest; they mingle as easily as two brooklets that ask for nothing but to entwine themselves and ripple with ever-interlacing curves in the leafiest hiding-places. While Arthur gazed into Hetty's dark beseeching eyes, it made no difference to him what sort of English she spoke; and even if hoops and powder had been in fashion, he would very likely not have been sensible just then that Hetty wanted those signs of high breeding. But they started asunder with beating hearts: something had fallen on the ground with a rattling noise; it was Hetty's basket; all her little workwoman's matters were scattered on the path, some of them showing a capability of rolling to great lengths. There was much to be done in picking up, and not a word was spoken; but when Arthur hung the basket over her arm again, the poor child felt a strange difference in his look and manner. He just pressed her hand, and said, with a look and tone that were almost chilling to her, "I have been hindering you; I must not keep you any longer now. You will be expected at the house. Good-bye." Without waiting for her to speak, he turned away from her and hurried back towards the road that led to the Hermitage, leaving Hetty to pursue her way in a strange dream that seemed to have begun in bewildering delight and was now passing into contrarieties and sadness. Would he meet her again as she came home? Why had he spoken almost as if he were displeased with her? And then run away so suddenly? She cried, hardly knowing why. Arthur too was very uneasy, but his feelings were lit up for him by a more distinct consciousness. He hurried to the Hermitage, which stood in the heart of the wood, unlocked the door with a hasty wrench, slammed it after him, pitched Zeluco into the most distant corner, and thrusting his right hand into his pocket, first walked four or five times up and down the scanty length of the little room, and then seated himself on the ottoman in an uncomfortable stiff way, as we often do when we wish not to abandon ourselves to feeling. He was getting in love with Hetty--that was quite plain. He was ready to pitch everything else--no matter where--for the sake of surrendering himself to this delicious feeling which had just disclosed itself. It was no use blinking the fact now--they would get too fond of each other, if he went on taking notice of her--and what would come of it? He should have to go away in a few weeks, and the poor little thing would be miserable. He MUST NOT see her alone again; he must keep out of her way. What a fool he was for coming back from Gawaine's! He got up and threw open the windows, to let in the soft breath of the afternoon, and the healthy scent of the firs that made a belt round the Hermitage. The soft air did not help his resolution, as he leaned out and looked into the leafy distance. But he considered his resolution sufficiently fixed: there was no need to debate with himself any longer. He had made up his mind not to meet Hetty again; and now he might give himself up to thinking how immensely agreeable it would be if circumstances were different--how pleasant it would have been to meet her this evening as she came back, and put his arm round her again and look into her sweet face. He wondered if the dear little thing were thinking of him too--twenty to one she was. How beautiful her eyes were with the tear on their lashes! He would like to satisfy his soul for a day with looking at them, and he MUST see her again--he must see her, simply to remove any false impression from her mind about his manner to her just now. He would behave in a quiet, kind way to her--just to prevent her from going home with her head full of wrong fancies. Yes, that would be the best thing to do after all. It was a long while--more than an hour before Arthur had brought his meditations to this point; but once arrived there, he could stay no longer at the Hermitage. The time must be filled up with movement until he should see Hetty again. And it was already late enough to go and dress for dinner, for his grandfather's dinner-hour was six.

Chapter 12

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter12

In the Wood On the same morning, Arthur holds a discussion with himself and decides it is prudent that he should go on a week-long fishing trip to stay out of the way of Hetty. He approves of himself for his noble behavior but when he goes to the stable, he finds his horse has been lamed, and he cannot go. He uses another horse to go to lunch with a friend, thinking he will get back too late to meet Hetty. Somehow, he is back early and realizes he wants to see her. They meet on the path in the fir-tree grove, and are shy with one another at first, for they have never been alone before. Arthur questions her about what time she goes to Mrs. Pomfret's and says she probably has an escort to go home, Mr. Craig, the gardener, for instance. Hetty begins to cry at the mention of Mr. Craig and says she doesn't like him. Arthur's tenderness is aroused and he puts his hand on her arm. Suddenly she drops her sewing basket, and they have to pick up the contents, thus breaking the mood. When she leaves, he is angry with himself for his weakness but then realizes he is falling in love with Hetty. He goes into the Hermitage, a house in the wood, and waits for her to come back.

Commentary on Chapter 12 In this chapter the narrator stays closely with Arthur's mental process as she did with Hetty's before. She shows Arthur's indecisiveness and excuses to himself. He makes noble resolutions to stay away from Hetty but has no discipline. It seems fate is against him when his horse is lamed, but he makes little effort to carry through his plan. He is easily distracted. Eliot makes it plain that virtue does not consist in fine thoughts alone, but in action. Although she defends Arthur as a basically decent person who has never harmed another, she warns that in order to continue not harming others one needs "self-mastery," which we see Arthur does not have . He tells himself he will be back too late to run into Hetty, but then he is surprised to arrive early. This self-deception of saying one thing to oneself and doing another is a lack of co-ordination and honesty. Arthur had called himself lazy, and Eliot shows the consequences to a morally lazy person are just as harsh as if he set out to do harm. The result of wrong action is the same, despite good intentions. Even after meeting Hetty, he fools himself into thinking it will go no further. He wants to see her just one more time to leave her with the right impression. It has begun, and Arthur is not strong enough to avoid entanglement.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/13.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_13_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 1.chapter 13

chapter 13

{"name": "Chapter 13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter13", "summary": "Evening in the Wood Hetty can hardly keep her mind on her needlework in Mrs. Pomfret's room and hurries away after three hours there, hoping to see Arthur on the way home. She walks in the wood looking for him at every turn and just when she thinks he isn't coming, she bursts into tears. He comes around the corner, and his resolutions go to pieces. He had planned on being formal with her to explain that they must not meet any more, but when he sees Hetty crying, he becomes protective and puts his arm around her. She says she is crying because she thought he wasn't coming. They kiss and walk to the end of the wood. Arthur's conscience is beginning to hurt him. He knows it is not the same as flirting with a girl of his own class. This can only harm both of them, since he can't marry her or even be seen with her. He is confused by his own lack of control and decides to confess to Mr. Irwine, who will help him.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 13 Arthur's indecision is not helped by Hetty's behavior. She is not shy and goes to meet her fate with open arms. Unthinking she may be, but her natural emotions are too much for Arthur, who cannot then be stern with her. Neither one of them has any clear idea where they are going with this courting and don't want to. They yield to youth and the moment. Arthur feels emotionally overwhelmed when they kiss, for it is like a romance. Hetty, however, is overcome because of Arthur's station and what he represents in her world. Of the two, Arthur is the more culpable because of his education and station. He alone knows the real situation, that he will never marry Hetty. He knows the social scandal it would cause both of them, but Hetty is oblivious of these facts. He begins to understand this is a real temptation, and that he is not equal to it. He seeks his friend and pastor for help."}

IT happened that Mrs. Pomfret had had a slight quarrel with Mrs. Best, the housekeeper, on this Thursday morning--a fact which had two consequences highly convenient to Hetty. It caused Mrs. Pomfret to have tea sent up to her own room, and it inspired that exemplary lady's maid with so lively a recollection of former passages in Mrs. Best's conduct, and of dialogues in which Mrs. Best had decidedly the inferiority as an interlocutor with Mrs. Pomfret, that Hetty required no more presence of mind than was demanded for using her needle, and throwing in an occasional "yes" or "no." She would have wanted to put on her hat earlier than usual; only she had told Captain Donnithorne that she usually set out about eight o'clock, and if he SHOULD go to the Grove again expecting to see her, and she should be gone! Would he come? Her little butterfly soul fluttered incessantly between memory and dubious expectation. At last the minute-hand of the old-fashioned brazen-faced timepiece was on the last quarter to eight, and there was every reason for its being time to get ready for departure. Even Mrs. Pomfret's preoccupied mind did not prevent her from noticing what looked like a new flush of beauty in the little thing as she tied on her hat before the looking-glass. "That child gets prettier and prettier every day, I do believe," was her inward comment. "The more's the pity. She'll get neither a place nor a husband any the sooner for it. Sober well-to-do men don't like such pretty wives. When I was a girl, I was more admired than if I had been so very pretty. However, she's reason to be grateful to me for teaching her something to get her bread with, better than farm-house work. They always told me I was good-natured--and that's the truth, and to my hurt too, else there's them in this house that wouldn't be here now to lord it over me in the housekeeper's room." Hetty walked hastily across the short space of pleasure-ground which she had to traverse, dreading to meet Mr. Craig, to whom she could hardly have spoken civilly. How relieved she was when she had got safely under the oaks and among the fern of the Chase! Even then she was as ready to be startled as the deer that leaped away at her approach. She thought nothing of the evening light that lay gently in the grassy alleys between the fern, and made the beauty of their living green more visible than it had been in the overpowering flood of noon: she thought of nothing that was present. She only saw something that was possible: Mr. Arthur Donnithorne coming to meet her again along the Fir-tree Grove. That was the foreground of Hetty's picture; behind it lay a bright hazy something--days that were not to be as the other days of her life had been. It was as if she had been wooed by a river-god, who might any time take her to his wondrous halls below a watery heaven. There was no knowing what would come, since this strange entrancing delight had come. If a chest full of lace and satin and jewels had been sent her from some unknown source, how could she but have thought that her whole lot was going to change, and that to-morrow some still more bewildering joy would befall her? Hetty had never read a novel; if she had ever seen one, I think the words would have been too hard for her; how then could she find a shape for her expectations? They were as formless as the sweet languid odours of the garden at the Chase, which had floated past her as she walked by the gate. She is at another gate now--that leading into Fir-tree Grove. She enters the wood, where it is already twilight, and at every step she takes, the fear at her heart becomes colder. If he should not come! Oh, how dreary it was--the thought of going out at the other end of the wood, into the unsheltered road, without having seen him. She reaches the first turning towards the Hermitage, walking slowly--he is not there. She hates the leveret that runs across the path; she hates everything that is not what she longs for. She walks on, happy whenever she is coming to a bend in the road, for perhaps he is behind it. No. She is beginning to cry: her heart has swelled so, the tears stand in her eyes; she gives one great sob, while the corners of her mouth quiver, and the tears roll down. She doesn't know that there is another turning to the Hermitage, that she is close against it, and that Arthur Donnithorne is only a few yards from her, full of one thought, and a thought of which she only is the object. He is going to see Hetty again: that is the longing which has been growing through the last three hours to a feverish thirst. Not, of course, to speak in the caressing way into which he had unguardedly fallen before dinner, but to set things right with her by a kindness which would have the air of friendly civility, and prevent her from running away with wrong notions about their mutual relation. If Hetty had known he was there, she would not have cried; and it would have been better, for then Arthur would perhaps have behaved as wisely as he had intended. As it was, she started when he appeared at the end of the side-alley, and looked up at him with two great drops rolling down her cheeks. What else could he do but speak to her in a soft, soothing tone, as if she were a bright-eyed spaniel with a thorn in her foot? "Has something frightened you, Hetty? Have you seen anything in the wood? Don't be frightened--I'll take care of you now." Hetty was blushing so, she didn't know whether she was happy or miserable. To be crying again--what did gentlemen think of girls who cried in that way? She felt unable even to say "no," but could only look away from him and wipe the tears from her cheek. Not before a great drop had fallen on her rose-coloured strings--she knew that quite well. "Come, be cheerful again. Smile at me, and tell me what's the matter. Come, tell me." Hetty turned her head towards him, whispered, "I thought you wouldn't come," and slowly got courage to lift her eyes to him. That look was too much: he must have had eyes of Egyptian granite not to look too lovingly in return. "You little frightened bird! Little tearful rose! Silly pet! You won't cry again, now I'm with you, will you?" Ah, he doesn't know in the least what he is saying. This is not what he meant to say. His arm is stealing round the waist again; it is tightening its clasp; he is bending his face nearer and nearer to the round cheek; his lips are meeting those pouting child-lips, and for a long moment time has vanished. He may be a shepherd in Arcadia for aught he knows, he may be the first youth kissing the first maiden, he may be Eros himself, sipping the lips of Psyche--it is all one. There was no speaking for minutes after. They walked along with beating hearts till they came within sight of the gate at the end of the wood. Then they looked at each other, not quite as they had looked before, for in their eyes there was the memory of a kiss. But already something bitter had begun to mingle itself with the fountain of sweets: already Arthur was uncomfortable. He took his arm from Hetty's waist, and said, "Here we are, almost at the end of the Grove. I wonder how late it is," he added, pulling out his watch. "Twenty minutes past eight--but my watch is too fast. However, I'd better not go any further now. Trot along quickly with your little feet, and get home safely. Good-bye." He took her hand, and looked at her half-sadly, half with a constrained smile. Hetty's eyes seemed to beseech him not to go away yet; but he patted her cheek and said "Good-bye" again. She was obliged to turn away from him and go on. As for Arthur, he rushed back through the wood, as if he wanted to put a wide space between himself and Hetty. He would not go to the Hermitage again; he remembered how he had debated with himself there before dinner, and it had all come to nothing--worse than nothing. He walked right on into the Chase, glad to get out of the Grove, which surely was haunted by his evil genius. Those beeches and smooth limes--there was something enervating in the very sight of them; but the strong knotted old oaks had no bending languor in them--the sight of them would give a man some energy. Arthur lost himself among the narrow openings in the fern, winding about without seeking any issue, till the twilight deepened almost to night under the great boughs, and the hare looked black as it darted across his path. He was feeling much more strongly than he had done in the morning: it was as if his horse had wheeled round from a leap and dared to dispute his mastery. He was dissatisfied with himself, irritated, mortified. He no sooner fixed his mind on the probable consequences of giving way to the emotions which had stolen over him to-day--of continuing to notice Hetty, of allowing himself any opportunity for such slight caresses as he had been betrayed into already--than he refused to believe such a future possible for himself. To flirt with Hetty was a very different affair from flirting with a pretty girl of his own station: that was understood to be an amusement on both sides, or, if it became serious, there was no obstacle to marriage. But this little thing would be spoken ill of directly, if she happened to be seen walking with him; and then those excellent people, the Poysers, to whom a good name was as precious as if they had the best blood in the land in their veins--he should hate himself if he made a scandal of that sort, on the estate that was to be his own some day, and among tenants by whom he liked, above all, to be respected. He could no more believe that he should so fall in his own esteem than that he should break both his legs and go on crutches all the rest of his life. He couldn't imagine himself in that position; it was too odious, too unlike him. And even if no one knew anything about it, they might get too fond of each other, and then there could be nothing but the misery of parting, after all. No gentleman, out of a ballad, could marry a farmer's niece. There must be an end to the whole thing at once. It was too foolish. And yet he had been so determined this morning, before he went to Gawaine's; and while he was there something had taken hold of him and made him gallop back. It seemed he couldn't quite depend on his own resolution, as he had thought he could; he almost wished his arm would get painful again, and then he should think of nothing but the comfort it would be to get rid of the pain. There was no knowing what impulse might seize him to-morrow, in this confounded place, where there was nothing to occupy him imperiously through the livelong day. What could he do to secure himself from any more of this folly? There was but one resource. He would go and tell Irwine--tell him everything. The mere act of telling it would make it seem trivial; the temptation would vanish, as the charm of fond words vanishes when one repeats them to the indifferent. In every way it would help him to tell Irwine. He would ride to Broxton Rectory the first thing after breakfast to-morrow. Arthur had no sooner come to this determination than he began to think which of the paths would lead him home, and made as short a walk thither as he could. He felt sure he should sleep now: he had had enough to tire him, and there was no more need for him to think.

Chapter 13

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter13

Evening in the Wood Hetty can hardly keep her mind on her needlework in Mrs. Pomfret's room and hurries away after three hours there, hoping to see Arthur on the way home. She walks in the wood looking for him at every turn and just when she thinks he isn't coming, she bursts into tears. He comes around the corner, and his resolutions go to pieces. He had planned on being formal with her to explain that they must not meet any more, but when he sees Hetty crying, he becomes protective and puts his arm around her. She says she is crying because she thought he wasn't coming. They kiss and walk to the end of the wood. Arthur's conscience is beginning to hurt him. He knows it is not the same as flirting with a girl of his own class. This can only harm both of them, since he can't marry her or even be seen with her. He is confused by his own lack of control and decides to confess to Mr. Irwine, who will help him.

Commentary on Chapter 13 Arthur's indecision is not helped by Hetty's behavior. She is not shy and goes to meet her fate with open arms. Unthinking she may be, but her natural emotions are too much for Arthur, who cannot then be stern with her. Neither one of them has any clear idea where they are going with this courting and don't want to. They yield to youth and the moment. Arthur feels emotionally overwhelmed when they kiss, for it is like a romance. Hetty, however, is overcome because of Arthur's station and what he represents in her world. Of the two, Arthur is the more culpable because of his education and station. He alone knows the real situation, that he will never marry Hetty. He knows the social scandal it would cause both of them, but Hetty is oblivious of these facts. He begins to understand this is a real temptation, and that he is not equal to it. He seeks his friend and pastor for help.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/14.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_14_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 1.chapter 14

chapter 14

{"name": "Chapter 14", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter14", "summary": "The Return Home Seth and Dinah leave the Bede cottage for the Hall Farm, so Seth can say goodbye to Dinah. Lisbeth talks to Adam about Dinah, saying she wishes she could have her for a daughter-in-law. Lisbeth sees Dinah doesn't care for Seth, but she suggests that Adam could marry her. Adam defends Seth as worthy of Dinah. Hetty runs into Dinah and Seth as they reach the farmyard gate, and Seth leaves as Hetty approaches. Dinah speaks to Hetty of the Bedes and tries to get her to talk about Adam, but Hetty is too engrossed in thoughts of Arthur. Dinah tries to explain to Hetty how she has visionary experiences about the people around her when she is alone. Her heart is drawn in sympathy to certain people, and she promises to keep Hetty in her awareness when she is in Snowfield. Mr. Poyser is glad to see his two nieces return, for they are late, and Mrs. Poyser has been worried. Totty is sick, and she will not go to her cousin Hetty but goes readily to Dinah. The house is shut up and everyone goes to bed.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 14 The two nieces are again contrasted. Hetty is full of her own secrets, and Dinah is open, sharing the life of others instead of constructing her private world to shut others out. She tries to reach out to Hetty in two ways. First, she tries to create some help for Adam, who is supposed to be Hetty's suitor, thinking Hetty will talk about him. When that fails, Dinah tries to explain how she has a certain sympathy with people around her, and that she actually feels she shares the fate of those people, praying to God on their behalf. She knows Hetty is one of these. Hetty is not listening and does not understand what Dinah is talking about. It is significant that the child Totty will not go to Hetty's arms, for Hetty does not like children and does not like having to care for Totty. The child naturally goes to the motherly Dinah. This chapter also shows us a little of the character of Mr. Poyser. He is a mild affectionate man, except in terms of his fellow farmers. He is very critical of people like Luke Britton who runs a slovenly farm. Luke is one of Hetty's admirers, but Mr. Poyser loudly favors Adam whenever he gets a chance. Hetty, however, is wrapped in her own dreams and thinks of neither Luke nor Adam."}

WHILE that parting in the wood was happening, there was a parting in the cottage too, and Lisbeth had stood with Adam at the door, straining her aged eyes to get the last glimpse of Seth and Dinah, as they mounted the opposite slope. "Eh, I'm loath to see the last on her," she said to Adam, as they turned into the house again. "I'd ha' been willin' t' ha' her about me till I died and went to lie by my old man. She'd make it easier dyin'--she spakes so gentle an' moves about so still. I could be fast sure that pictur' was drawed for her i' thy new Bible--th' angel a-sittin' on the big stone by the grave. Eh, I wouldna mind ha'in a daughter like that; but nobody ne'er marries them as is good for aught." "Well, Mother, I hope thee WILT have her for a daughter; for Seth's got a liking for her, and I hope she'll get a liking for Seth in time." "Where's th' use o' talkin' a-that'n? She caresna for Seth. She's goin' away twenty mile aff. How's she to get a likin' for him, I'd like to know? No more nor the cake 'ull come wi'out the leaven. Thy figurin' books might ha' tould thee better nor that, I should think, else thee mightst as well read the commin print, as Seth allays does." "Nay, Mother," said Adam, laughing, "the figures tell us a fine deal, and we couldn't go far without 'em, but they don't tell us about folks's feelings. It's a nicer job to calculate THEM. But Seth's as good-hearted a lad as ever handled a tool, and plenty o' sense, and good-looking too; and he's got the same way o' thinking as Dinah. He deserves to win her, though there's no denying she's a rare bit o' workmanship. You don't see such women turned off the wheel every day." "Eh, thee't allays stick up for thy brother. Thee'st been just the same, e'er sin' ye war little uns together. Thee wart allays for halving iverything wi' him. But what's Seth got to do with marryin', as is on'y three-an'-twenty? He'd more need to learn an' lay by sixpence. An' as for his desarving her--she's two 'ear older nor Seth: she's pretty near as old as thee. But that's the way; folks mun allays choose by contrairies, as if they must be sorted like the pork--a bit o' good meat wi' a bit o' offal." To the feminine mind in some of its moods, all things that might be receive a temporary charm from comparison with what is; and since Adam did not want to marry Dinah himself, Lisbeth felt rather peevish on that score--as peevish as she would have been if he HAD wanted to marry her, and so shut himself out from Mary Burge and the partnership as effectually as by marrying Hetty. It was more than half-past eight when Adam and his mother were talking in this way, so that when, about ten minutes later, Hetty reached the turning of the lane that led to the farmyard gate, she saw Dinah and Seth approaching it from the opposite direction, and waited for them to come up to her. They, too, like Hetty, had lingered a little in their walk, for Dinah was trying to speak words of comfort and strength to Seth in these parting moments. But when they saw Hetty, they paused and shook hands; Seth turned homewards, and Dinah came on alone. "Seth Bede would have come and spoken to you, my dear," she said, as she reached Hetty, "but he's very full of trouble to-night." Hetty answered with a dimpled smile, as if she did not quite know what had been said; and it made a strange contrast to see that sparkling self-engrossed loveliness looked at by Dinah's calm pitying face, with its open glance which told that her heart lived in no cherished secrets of its own, but in feelings which it longed to share with all the world. Hetty liked Dinah as well as she had ever liked any woman; how was it possible to feel otherwise towards one who always put in a kind word for her when her aunt was finding fault, and who was always ready to take Totty off her hands--little tiresome Totty, that was made such a pet of by every one, and that Hetty could see no interest in at all? Dinah had never said anything disapproving or reproachful to Hetty during her whole visit to the Hall Farm; she had talked to her a great deal in a serious way, but Hetty didn't mind that much, for she never listened: whatever Dinah might say, she almost always stroked Hetty's cheek after it, and wanted to do some mending for her. Dinah was a riddle to her; Hetty looked at her much in the same way as one might imagine a little perching bird that could only flutter from bough to bough, to look at the swoop of the swallow or the mounting of the lark; but she did not care to solve such riddles, any more than she cared to know what was meant by the pictures in the Pilgrim's Progress, or in the old folio Bible that Marty and Tommy always plagued her about on a Sunday. Dinah took her hand now and drew it under her own arm. "You look very happy to-night, dear child," she said. "I shall think of you often when I'm at Snowfield, and see your face before me as it is now. It's a strange thing--sometimes when I'm quite alone, sitting in my room with my eyes closed, or walking over the hills, the people I've seen and known, if it's only been for a few days, are brought before me, and I hear their voices and see them look and move almost plainer than I ever did when they were really with me so as I could touch them. And then my heart is drawn out towards them, and I feel their lot as if it was my own, and I take comfort in spreading it before the Lord and resting in His love, on their behalf as well as my own. And so I feel sure you will come before me." She paused a moment, but Hetty said nothing. "It has been a very precious time to me," Dinah went on, "last night and to-day--seeing two such good sons as Adam and Seth Bede. They are so tender and thoughtful for their aged mother. And she has been telling me what Adam has done, for these many years, to help his father and his brother; it's wonderful what a spirit of wisdom and knowledge he has, and how he's ready to use it all in behalf of them that are feeble. And I'm sure he has a loving spirit too. I've noticed it often among my own people round Snowfield, that the strong, skilful men are often the gentlest to the women and children; and it's pretty to see 'em carrying the little babies as if they were no heavier than little birds. And the babies always seem to like the strong arm best. I feel sure it would be so with Adam Bede. Don't you think so, Hetty?" "Yes," said Hetty abstractedly, for her mind had been all the while in the wood, and she would have found it difficult to say what she was assenting to. Dinah saw she was not inclined to talk, but there would not have been time to say much more, for they were now at the yard-gate. The still twilight, with its dying western red and its few faint struggling stars, rested on the farm-yard, where there was not a sound to be heard but the stamping of the cart-horses in the stable. It was about twenty minutes after sunset. The fowls were all gone to roost, and the bull-dog lay stretched on the straw outside his kennel, with the black-and-tan terrier by his side, when the falling-to of the gate disturbed them and set them barking, like good officials, before they had any distinct knowledge of the reason. The barking had its effect in the house, for, as Dinah and Hetty approached, the doorway was filled by a portly figure, with a ruddy black-eyed face which bore in it the possibility of looking extremely acute, and occasionally contemptuous, on market-days, but had now a predominant after-supper expression of hearty good-nature. It is well known that great scholars who have shown the most pitiless acerbity in their criticism of other men's scholarship have yet been of a relenting and indulgent temper in private life; and I have heard of a learned man meekly rocking the twins in the cradle with his left hand, while with his right he inflicted the most lacerating sarcasms on an opponent who had betrayed a brutal ignorance of Hebrew. Weaknesses and errors must be forgiven--alas! they are not alien to us--but the man who takes the wrong side on the momentous subject of the Hebrew points must be treated as the enemy of his race. There was the same sort of antithetic mixture in Martin Poyser: he was of so excellent a disposition that he had been kinder and more respectful than ever to his old father since he had made a deed of gift of all his property, and no man judged his neighbours more charitably on all personal matters; but for a farmer, like Luke Britton, for example, whose fallows were not well cleaned, who didn't know the rudiments of hedging and ditching, and showed but a small share of judgment in the purchase of winter stock, Martin Poyser was as hard and implacable as the north-east wind. Luke Britton could not make a remark, even on the weather, but Martin Poyser detected in it a taint of that unsoundness and general ignorance which was palpable in all his farming operations. He hated to see the fellow lift the pewter pint to his mouth in the bar of the Royal George on market-day, and the mere sight of him on the other side of the road brought a severe and critical expression into his black eyes, as different as possible from the fatherly glance he bent on his two nieces as they approached the door. Mr. Poyser had smoked his evening pipe, and now held his hands in his pockets, as the only resource of a man who continues to sit up after the day's business is done. "Why, lasses, ye're rather late to-night," he said, when they reached the little gate leading into the causeway. "The mother's begun to fidget about you, an' she's got the little un ill. An' how did you leave the old woman Bede, Dinah? Is she much down about the old man? He'd been but a poor bargain to her this five year." "She's been greatly distressed for the loss of him," said Dinah, "but she's seemed more comforted to-day. Her son Adam's been at home all day, working at his father's coffin, and she loves to have him at home. She's been talking about him to me almost all the day. She has a loving heart, though she's sorely given to fret and be fearful. I wish she had a surer trust to comfort her in her old age." "Adam's sure enough," said Mr. Poyser, misunderstanding Dinah's wish. "There's no fear but he'll yield well i' the threshing. He's not one o' them as is all straw and no grain. I'll be bond for him any day, as he'll be a good son to the last. Did he say he'd be coming to see us soon? But come in, come in," he added, making way for them; "I hadn't need keep y' out any longer." The tall buildings round the yard shut out a good deal of the sky, but the large window let in abundant light to show every corner of the house-place. Mrs. Poyser, seated in the rocking-chair, which had been brought out of the "right-hand parlour," was trying to soothe Totty to sleep. But Totty was not disposed to sleep; and when her cousins entered, she raised herself up and showed a pair of flushed cheeks, which looked fatter than ever now they were defined by the edge of her linen night-cap. In the large wicker-bottomed arm-chair in the left-hand chimney-nook sat old Martin Poyser, a hale but shrunken and bleached image of his portly black-haired son--his head hanging forward a little, and his elbows pushed backwards so as to allow the whole of his forearm to rest on the arm of the chair. His blue handkerchief was spread over his knees, as was usual indoors, when it was not hanging over his head; and he sat watching what went forward with the quiet OUTWARD glance of healthy old age, which, disengaged from any interest in an inward drama, spies out pins upon the floor, follows one's minutest motions with an unexpectant purposeless tenacity, watches the flickering of the flame or the sun-gleams on the wall, counts the quarries on the floor, watches even the hand of the clock, and pleases itself with detecting a rhythm in the tick. "What a time o' night this is to come home, Hetty!" said Mrs. Poyser. "Look at the clock, do; why, it's going on for half-past nine, and I've sent the gells to bed this half-hour, and late enough too; when they've got to get up at half after four, and the mowers' bottles to fill, and the baking; and here's this blessed child wi' the fever for what I know, and as wakeful as if it was dinner-time, and nobody to help me to give her the physic but your uncle, and fine work there's been, and half of it spilt on her night-gown--it's well if she's swallowed more nor 'ull make her worse i'stead o' better. But folks as have no mind to be o' use have allays the luck to be out o' the road when there's anything to be done." "I did set out before eight, aunt," said Hetty, in a pettish tone, with a slight toss of her head. "But this clock's so much before the clock at the Chase, there's no telling what time it'll be when I get here." "What! You'd be wanting the clock set by gentlefolks's time, would you? An' sit up burnin' candle, an' lie a-bed wi' the sun a-bakin' you like a cowcumber i' the frame? The clock hasn't been put forrard for the first time to-day, I reckon." The fact was, Hetty had really forgotten the difference of the clocks when she told Captain Donnithorne that she set out at eight, and this, with her lingering pace, had made her nearly half an hour later than usual. But here her aunt's attention was diverted from this tender subject by Totty, who, perceiving at length that the arrival of her cousins was not likely to bring anything satisfactory to her in particular, began to cry, "Munny, munny," in an explosive manner. "Well, then, my pet, Mother's got her, Mother won't leave her; Totty be a good dilling, and go to sleep now," said Mrs. Poyser, leaning back and rocking the chair, while she tried to make Totty nestle against her. But Totty only cried louder, and said, "Don't yock!" So the mother, with that wondrous patience which love gives to the quickest temperament, sat up again, and pressed her cheek against the linen night-cap and kissed it, and forgot to scold Hetty any longer. "Come, Hetty," said Martin Poyser, in a conciliatory tone, "go and get your supper i' the pantry, as the things are all put away; an' then you can come and take the little un while your aunt undresses herself, for she won't lie down in bed without her mother. An' I reckon YOU could eat a bit, Dinah, for they don't keep much of a house down there." "No, thank you, Uncle," said Dinah; "I ate a good meal before I came away, for Mrs. Bede would make a kettle-cake for me." "I don't want any supper," said Hetty, taking off her hat. "I can hold Totty now, if Aunt wants me." "Why, what nonsense that is to talk!" said Mrs. Poyser. "Do you think you can live wi'out eatin', an' nourish your inside wi' stickin' red ribbons on your head? Go an' get your supper this minute, child; there's a nice bit o' cold pudding i' the safe--just what you're fond of." Hetty complied silently by going towards the pantry, and Mrs. Poyser went on speaking to Dinah. "Sit down, my dear, an' look as if you knowed what it was to make yourself a bit comfortable i' the world. I warrant the old woman was glad to see you, since you stayed so long." "She seemed to like having me there at last; but her sons say she doesn't like young women about her commonly; and I thought just at first she was almost angry with me for going." "Eh, it's a poor look-out when th' ould folks doesna like the young uns," said old Martin, bending his head down lower, and seeming to trace the pattern of the quarries with his eye. "Aye, it's ill livin' in a hen-roost for them as doesn't like fleas," said Mrs. Poyser. "We've all had our turn at bein' young, I reckon, be't good luck or ill." "But she must learn to 'commodate herself to young women," said Mr. Poyser, "for it isn't to be counted on as Adam and Seth 'ull keep bachelors for the next ten year to please their mother. That 'ud be unreasonable. It isn't right for old nor young nayther to make a bargain all o' their own side. What's good for one's good all round i' the long run. I'm no friend to young fellows a-marrying afore they know the difference atween a crab an' a apple; but they may wait o'er long." "To be sure," said Mrs. Poyser; "if you go past your dinner-time, there'll be little relish o' your meat. You turn it o'er an' o'er wi' your fork, an' don't eat it after all. You find faut wi' your meat, an' the faut's all i' your own stomach." Hetty now came back from the pantry and said, "I can take Totty now, Aunt, if you like." "Come, Rachel," said Mr. Poyser, as his wife seemed to hesitate, seeing that Totty was at last nestling quietly, "thee'dst better let Hetty carry her upstairs, while thee tak'st thy things off. Thee't tired. It's time thee wast in bed. Thee't bring on the pain in thy side again." "Well, she may hold her if the child 'ull go to her," said Mrs. Poyser. Hetty went close to the rocking-chair, and stood without her usual smile, and without any attempt to entice Totty, simply waiting for her aunt to give the child into her hands. "Wilt go to Cousin Hetty, my dilling, while mother gets ready to go to bed? Then Totty shall go into Mother's bed, and sleep there all night." Before her mother had done speaking, Totty had given her answer in an unmistakable manner, by knitting her brow, setting her tiny teeth against her underlip, and leaning forward to slap Hetty on the arm with her utmost force. Then, without speaking, she nestled to her mother again. "Hey, hey," said Mr. Poyser, while Hetty stood without moving, "not go to Cousin Hetty? That's like a babby. Totty's a little woman, an' not a babby." "It's no use trying to persuade her," said Mrs. Poyser. "She allays takes against Hetty when she isn't well. Happen she'll go to Dinah." Dinah, having taken off her bonnet and shawl, had hitherto kept quietly seated in the background, not liking to thrust herself between Hetty and what was considered Hetty's proper work. But now she came forward, and, putting out her arms, said, "Come Totty, come and let Dinah carry her upstairs along with Mother: poor, poor Mother! she's so tired--she wants to go to bed." Totty turned her face towards Dinah, and looked at her an instant, then lifted herself up, put out her little arms, and let Dinah lift her from her mother's lap. Hetty turned away without any sign of ill humour, and, taking her hat from the table, stood waiting with an air of indifference, to see if she should be told to do anything else. "You may make the door fast now, Poyser; Alick's been come in this long while," said Mrs. Poyser, rising with an appearance of relief from her low chair. "Get me the matches down, Hetty, for I must have the rushlight burning i' my room. Come, Father." The heavy wooden bolts began to roll in the house doors, and old Martin prepared to move, by gathering up his blue handkerchief, and reaching his bright knobbed walnut-tree stick from the corner. Mrs. Poyser then led the way out of the kitchen, followed by the grandfather, and Dinah with Totty in her arms--all going to bed by twilight, like the birds. Mrs. Poyser, on her way, peeped into the room where her two boys lay; just to see their ruddy round cheeks on the pillow, and to hear for a moment their light regular breathing. "Come, Hetty, get to bed," said Mr. Poyser, in a soothing tone, as he himself turned to go upstairs. "You didna mean to be late, I'll be bound, but your aunt's been worrited to-day. Good-night, my wench, good-night."

Chapter 14

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter14

The Return Home Seth and Dinah leave the Bede cottage for the Hall Farm, so Seth can say goodbye to Dinah. Lisbeth talks to Adam about Dinah, saying she wishes she could have her for a daughter-in-law. Lisbeth sees Dinah doesn't care for Seth, but she suggests that Adam could marry her. Adam defends Seth as worthy of Dinah. Hetty runs into Dinah and Seth as they reach the farmyard gate, and Seth leaves as Hetty approaches. Dinah speaks to Hetty of the Bedes and tries to get her to talk about Adam, but Hetty is too engrossed in thoughts of Arthur. Dinah tries to explain to Hetty how she has visionary experiences about the people around her when she is alone. Her heart is drawn in sympathy to certain people, and she promises to keep Hetty in her awareness when she is in Snowfield. Mr. Poyser is glad to see his two nieces return, for they are late, and Mrs. Poyser has been worried. Totty is sick, and she will not go to her cousin Hetty but goes readily to Dinah. The house is shut up and everyone goes to bed.

Commentary on Chapter 14 The two nieces are again contrasted. Hetty is full of her own secrets, and Dinah is open, sharing the life of others instead of constructing her private world to shut others out. She tries to reach out to Hetty in two ways. First, she tries to create some help for Adam, who is supposed to be Hetty's suitor, thinking Hetty will talk about him. When that fails, Dinah tries to explain how she has a certain sympathy with people around her, and that she actually feels she shares the fate of those people, praying to God on their behalf. She knows Hetty is one of these. Hetty is not listening and does not understand what Dinah is talking about. It is significant that the child Totty will not go to Hetty's arms, for Hetty does not like children and does not like having to care for Totty. The child naturally goes to the motherly Dinah. This chapter also shows us a little of the character of Mr. Poyser. He is a mild affectionate man, except in terms of his fellow farmers. He is very critical of people like Luke Britton who runs a slovenly farm. Luke is one of Hetty's admirers, but Mr. Poyser loudly favors Adam whenever he gets a chance. Hetty, however, is wrapped in her own dreams and thinks of neither Luke nor Adam.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/15.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_15_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 1.chapter 15

chapter 15

{"name": "Chapter 15", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter15", "summary": "The Two Bed-Chambers Hetty and Dinah have rooms next to each other on the second story of the house. Hetty has locked herself in her room and taken out two candles, lighting them so she can see herself in an old blotched mirror. She admires herself more now that Captain Donnithorne is in love with her. Taking out some finery she hides from her aunt, she tries on cheap earrings and a bit of torn lace. She brushes her hair and makes it look like a picture of a lady she has seen. She is certain Arthur will not want her to work but will want to marry her and make a lady of her. She imagines herself in a carriage and what Mary Burge will think. Parading up and down in front of the mirror, she drops her hand mirror with a bang. The narrator skillfully switches from Hetty's fantasies to Adam's. Adam knows that Hetty would make a loving wife and mother. No man believes a pretty woman could be anything but good. Arthur too thinks Hetty an affectionate creature. Surely deep grey eyes harbor a deep soul. Hetty, however, is like a plant with shallow roots. She is not fond of her uncle or cousins. She does not like children. Only another woman could have found out Hetty's cold heart--her Aunt Poyser warns her husband that Hetty is a peacock. Mr. Poyser says she is just unripe grain. Dinah, however, has misgivings. While lost in a prayer of divine love, she hears Hetty's mirror hit the floor, and her imagination sees that Hetty is going to be in trouble and sorrow. She opens her Bible for guidance and then decides to talk to Hetty. Hetty is irritated at being interrupted at her vanities; she still has the earrings in her ears. Dinah tries to warn Hetty that she could have sorrow in her life and tells her she will always be her friend. Hetty is frightened by but rejects Dinah's warning. Dinah goes to her room and prays for Hetty.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 15 This is an important chapter giving a kaleidoscope of the assumptions of several characters. Hetty, Adam, and Arthur are lost in their own overlapping and conflicting illusions. The narrator builds tension and allows only the reader to see the full scope of the impending tragedy. Everyone cannot be right. Some of these bubbles are going to burst. It is interesting that the men are uniformly fooled by Hetty's beauty into thinking it means she is a good and deep person. While Adam is thinking she will make a good mother, the narrator points out she does not like children. She does not even like the uncle who has been as a father to her and defends her to his wife. Only the shrewd Mrs. Poyser sees Hetty's true character and speaks of her hard heart. While Mrs. Poyser uses common sense and observation to come to this conclusion, Dinah sees the same thing from her mystic vision and sympathy. She prophesies Hetty's tragedy and frightens the girl but does not get her attention. Hetty's illusions are fully spelled out: she thinks Arthur means to marry her and make her a lady. She is not in love, but she believes a big change is coming to her life, and it has to do mostly with fine clothes and station. The omniscient narrator shows all the limited points of view clashing and building towards a crisis."}

HETTY and Dinah both slept in the second story, in rooms adjoining each other, meagrely furnished rooms, with no blinds to shut out the light, which was now beginning to gather new strength from the rising of the moon--more than enough strength to enable Hetty to move about and undress with perfect comfort. She could see quite well the pegs in the old painted linen-press on which she hung her hat and gown; she could see the head of every pin on her red cloth pin-cushion; she could see a reflection of herself in the old-fashioned looking-glass, quite as distinct as was needful, considering that she had only to brush her hair and put on her night-cap. A queer old looking-glass! Hetty got into an ill temper with it almost every time she dressed. It had been considered a handsome glass in its day, and had probably been bought into the Poyser family a quarter of a century before, at a sale of genteel household furniture. Even now an auctioneer could say something for it: it had a great deal of tarnished gilding about it; it had a firm mahogany base, well supplied with drawers, which opened with a decided jerk and sent the contents leaping out from the farthest corners, without giving you the trouble of reaching them; above all, it had a brass candle-socket on each side, which would give it an aristocratic air to the very last. But Hetty objected to it because it had numerous dim blotches sprinkled over the mirror, which no rubbing would remove, and because, instead of swinging backwards and forwards, it was fixed in an upright position, so that she could only get one good view of her head and neck, and that was to be had only by sitting down on a low chair before her dressing-table. And the dressing-table was no dressing-table at all, but a small old chest of drawers, the most awkward thing in the world to sit down before, for the big brass handles quite hurt her knees, and she couldn't get near the glass at all comfortably. But devout worshippers never allow inconveniences to prevent them from performing their religious rites, and Hetty this evening was more bent on her peculiar form of worship than usual. Having taken off her gown and white kerchief, she drew a key from the large pocket that hung outside her petticoat, and, unlocking one of the lower drawers in the chest, reached from it two short bits of wax candle--secretly bought at Treddleston--and stuck them in the two brass sockets. Then she drew forth a bundle of matches and lighted the candles; and last of all, a small red-framed shilling looking-glass, without blotches. It was into this small glass that she chose to look first after seating herself. She looked into it, smiling and turning her head on one side, for a minute, then laid it down and took out her brush and comb from an upper drawer. She was going to let down her hair, and make herself look like that picture of a lady in Miss Lydia Donnithorne's dressing-room. It was soon done, and the dark hyacinthine curves fell on her neck. It was not heavy, massive, merely rippling hair, but soft and silken, running at every opportunity into delicate rings. But she pushed it all backward to look like the picture, and form a dark curtain, throwing into relief her round white neck. Then she put down her brush and comb and looked at herself, folding her arms before her, still like the picture. Even the old mottled glass couldn't help sending back a lovely image, none the less lovely because Hetty's stays were not of white satin--such as I feel sure heroines must generally wear--but of a dark greenish cotton texture. Oh yes! She was very pretty. Captain Donnithorne thought so. Prettier than anybody about Hayslope--prettier than any of the ladies she had ever seen visiting at the Chase--indeed it seemed fine ladies were rather old and ugly--and prettier than Miss Bacon, the miller's daughter, who was called the beauty of Treddleston. And Hetty looked at herself to-night with quite a different sensation from what she had ever felt before; there was an invisible spectator whose eye rested on her like morning on the flowers. His soft voice was saying over and over again those pretty things she had heard in the wood; his arm was round her, and the delicate rose-scent of his hair was with her still. The vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her own beauty till she is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return. But Hetty seemed to have made up her mind that something was wanting, for she got up and reached an old black lace scarf out of the linen-press, and a pair of large ear-rings out of the sacred drawer from which she had taken her candles. It was an old old scarf, full of rents, but it would make a becoming border round her shoulders, and set off the whiteness of her upper arm. And she would take out the little ear-rings she had in her ears--oh, how her aunt had scolded her for having her ears bored!--and put in those large ones. They were but coloured glass and gilding, but if you didn't know what they were made of, they looked just as well as what the ladies wore. And so she sat down again, with the large ear-rings in her ears, and the black lace scarf adjusted round her shoulders. She looked down at her arms: no arms could be prettier down to a little way below the elbow--they were white and plump, and dimpled to match her cheeks; but towards the wrist, she thought with vexation that they were coarsened by butter-making and other work that ladies never did. Captain Donnithorne couldn't like her to go on doing work: he would like to see her in nice clothes, and thin shoes, and white stockings, perhaps with silk clocks to them; for he must love her very much--no one else had ever put his arm round her and kissed her in that way. He would want to marry her and make a lady of her; she could hardly dare to shape the thought--yet how else could it be? Marry her quite secretly, as Mr. James, the doctor's assistant, married the doctor's niece, and nobody ever found it out for a long while after, and then it was of no use to be angry. The doctor had told her aunt all about it in Hetty's hearing. She didn't know how it would be, but it was quite plain the old Squire could never be told anything about it, for Hetty was ready to faint with awe and fright if she came across him at the Chase. He might have been earth-born, for what she knew. It had never entered her mind that he had been young like other men; he had always been the old Squire at whom everybody was frightened. Oh, it was impossible to think how it would be! But Captain Donnithorne would know; he was a great gentleman, and could have his way in everything, and could buy everything he liked. And nothing could be as it had been again: perhaps some day she should be a grand lady, and ride in her coach, and dress for dinner in a brocaded silk, with feathers in her hair, and her dress sweeping the ground, like Miss Lydia and Lady Dacey, when she saw them going into the dining-room one evening as she peeped through the little round window in the lobby; only she should not be old and ugly like Miss Lydia, or all the same thickness like Lady Dacey, but very pretty, with her hair done in a great many different ways, and sometimes in a pink dress, and sometimes in a white one--she didn't know which she liked best; and Mary Burge and everybody would perhaps see her going out in her carriage--or rather, they would HEAR of it: it was impossible to imagine these things happening at Hayslope in sight of her aunt. At the thought of all this splendour, Hetty got up from her chair, and in doing so caught the little red-framed glass with the edge of her scarf, so that it fell with a bang on the floor; but she was too eagerly occupied with her vision to care about picking it up; and after a momentary start, began to pace with a pigeon-like stateliness backwards and forwards along her room, in her coloured stays and coloured skirt, and the old black lace scarf round her shoulders, and the great glass ear-rings in her ears. How pretty the little puss looks in that odd dress! It would be the easiest folly in the world to fall in love with her: there is such a sweet babylike roundness about her face and figure; the delicate dark rings of hair lie so charmingly about her ears and neck; her great dark eyes with their long eye-lashes touch one so strangely, as if an imprisoned frisky sprite looked out of them. Ah, what a prize the man gets who wins a sweet bride like Hetty! How the men envy him who come to the wedding breakfast, and see her hanging on his arm in her white lace and orange blossoms. The dear, young, round, soft, flexible thing! Her heart must be just as soft, her temper just as free from angles, her character just as pliant. If anything ever goes wrong, it must be the husband's fault there: he can make her what he likes--that is plain. And the lover himself thinks so too: the little darling is so fond of him, her little vanities are so bewitching, he wouldn't consent to her being a bit wiser; those kittenlike glances and movements are just what one wants to make one's hearth a paradise. Every man under such circumstances is conscious of being a great physiognomist. Nature, he knows, has a language of her own, which she uses with strict veracity, and he considers himself an adept in the language. Nature has written out his bride's character for him in those exquisite lines of cheek and lip and chin, in those eyelids delicate as petals, in those long lashes curled like the stamen of a flower, in the dark liquid depths of those wonderful eyes. How she will dote on her children! She is almost a child herself, and the little pink round things will hang about her like florets round the central flower; and the husband will look on, smiling benignly, able, whenever he chooses, to withdraw into the sanctuary of his wisdom, towards which his sweet wife will look reverently, and never lift the curtain. It is a marriage such as they made in the golden age, when the men were all wise and majestic and the women all lovely and loving. It was very much in this way that our friend Adam Bede thought about Hetty; only he put his thoughts into different words. If ever she behaved with cold vanity towards him, he said to himself it is only because she doesn't love me well enough; and he was sure that her love, whenever she gave it, would be the most precious thing a man could possess on earth. Before you despise Adam as deficient in penetration, pray ask yourself if you were ever predisposed to believe evil of any pretty woman--if you ever COULD, without hard head-breaking demonstration, believe evil of the ONE supremely pretty woman who has bewitched you. No: people who love downy peaches are apt not to think of the stone, and sometimes jar their teeth terribly against it. Arthur Donnithorne, too, had the same sort of notion about Hetty, so far as he had thought of her nature of all. He felt sure she was a dear, affectionate, good little thing. The man who awakes the wondering tremulous passion of a young girl always thinks her affectionate; and if he chances to look forward to future years, probably imagines himself being virtuously tender to her, because the poor thing is so clingingly fond of him. God made these dear women so--and it is a convenient arrangement in case of sickness. After all, I believe the wisest of us must be beguiled in this way sometimes, and must think both better and worse of people than they deserve. Nature has her language, and she is not unveracious; but we don't know all the intricacies of her syntax just yet, and in a hasty reading we may happen to extract the very opposite of her real meaning. Long dark eyelashes, now--what can be more exquisite? I find it impossible not to expect some depth of soul behind a deep grey eye with a long dark eyelash, in spite of an experience which has shown me that they may go along with deceit, peculation, and stupidity. But if, in the reaction of disgust, I have betaken myself to a fishy eye, there has been a surprising similarity of result. One begins to suspect at length that there is no direct correlation between eyelashes and morals; or else, that the eyelashes express the disposition of the fair one's grandmother, which is on the whole less important to us. No eyelashes could be more beautiful than Hetty's; and now, while she walks with her pigeon-like stateliness along the room and looks down on her shoulders bordered by the old black lace, the dark fringe shows to perfection on her pink cheek. They are but dim ill-defined pictures that her narrow bit of an imagination can make of the future; but of every picture she is the central figure in fine clothes; Captain Donnithorne is very close to her, putting his arm round her, perhaps kissing her, and everybody else is admiring and envying her--especially Mary Burge, whose new print dress looks very contemptible by the side of Hetty's resplendent toilette. Does any sweet or sad memory mingle with this dream of the future--any loving thought of her second parents--of the children she had helped to tend--of any youthful companion, any pet animal, any relic of her own childhood even? Not one. There are some plants that have hardly any roots: you may tear them from their native nook of rock or wall, and just lay them over your ornamental flower-pot, and they blossom none the worse. Hetty could have cast all her past life behind her and never cared to be reminded of it again. I think she had no feeling at all towards the old house, and did not like the Jacob's Ladder and the long row of hollyhocks in the garden better than other flowers--perhaps not so well. It was wonderful how little she seemed to care about waiting on her uncle, who had been a good father to her--she hardly ever remembered to reach him his pipe at the right time without being told, unless a visitor happened to be there, who would have a better opportunity of seeing her as she walked across the hearth. Hetty did not understand how anybody could be very fond of middle-aged people. And as for those tiresome children, Marty and Tommy and Totty, they had been the very nuisance of her life--as bad as buzzing insects that will come teasing you on a hot day when you want to be quiet. Marty, the eldest, was a baby when she first came to the farm, for the children born before him had died, and so Hetty had had them all three, one after the other, toddling by her side in the meadow, or playing about her on wet days in the half-empty rooms of the large old house. The boys were out of hand now, but Totty was still a day-long plague, worse than either of the others had been, because there was more fuss made about her. And there was no end to the making and mending of clothes. Hetty would have been glad to hear that she should never see a child again; they were worse than the nasty little lambs that the shepherd was always bringing in to be taken special care of in lambing time; for the lambs WERE got rid of sooner or later. As for the young chickens and turkeys, Hetty would have hated the very word "hatching," if her aunt had not bribed her to attend to the young poultry by promising her the proceeds of one out of every brood. The round downy chicks peeping out from under their mother's wing never touched Hetty with any pleasure; that was not the sort of prettiness she cared about, but she did care about the prettiness of the new things she would buy for herself at Treddleston Fair with the money they fetched. And yet she looked so dimpled, so charming, as she stooped down to put the soaked bread under the hen-coop, that you must have been a very acute personage indeed to suspect her of that hardness. Molly, the housemaid, with a turn-up nose and a protuberant jaw, was really a tender-hearted girl, and, as Mrs. Poyser said, a jewel to look after the poultry; but her stolid face showed nothing of this maternal delight, any more than a brown earthenware pitcher will show the light of the lamp within it. It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the "dear deceit" of beauty, so it is not surprising that Mrs. Poyser, with her keenness and abundant opportunity for observation, should have formed a tolerably fair estimate of what might be expected from Hetty in the way of feeling, and in moments of indignation she had sometimes spoken with great openness on the subject to her husband. "She's no better than a peacock, as 'ud strut about on the wall and spread its tail when the sun shone if all the folks i' the parish was dying: there's nothing seems to give her a turn i' th' inside, not even when we thought Totty had tumbled into the pit. To think o' that dear cherub! And we found her wi' her little shoes stuck i' the mud an' crying fit to break her heart by the far horse-pit. But Hetty never minded it, I could see, though she's been at the nussin' o' the child ever since it was a babby. It's my belief her heart's as hard as a pebble." "Nay, nay," said Mr. Poyser, "thee mustn't judge Hetty too hard. Them young gells are like the unripe grain; they'll make good meal by and by, but they're squashy as yet. Thee't see Hetty 'll be all right when she's got a good husband and children of her own." "I don't want to be hard upo' the gell. She's got cliver fingers of her own, and can be useful enough when she likes and I should miss her wi' the butter, for she's got a cool hand. An' let be what may, I'd strive to do my part by a niece o' yours--an' THAT I've done, for I've taught her everything as belongs to a house, an' I've told her her duty often enough, though, God knows, I've no breath to spare, an' that catchin' pain comes on dreadful by times. Wi' them three gells in the house I'd need have twice the strength to keep 'em up to their work. It's like having roast meat at three fires; as soon as you've basted one, another's burnin'." Hetty stood sufficiently in awe of her aunt to be anxious to conceal from her so much of her vanity as could be hidden without too great a sacrifice. She could not resist spending her money in bits of finery which Mrs. Poyser disapproved; but she would have been ready to die with shame, vexation, and fright if her aunt had this moment opened the door, and seen her with her bits of candle lighted, and strutting about decked in her scarf and ear-rings. To prevent such a surprise, she always bolted her door, and she had not forgotten to do so to-night. It was well: for there now came a light tap, and Hetty, with a leaping heart, rushed to blow out the candles and throw them into the drawer. She dared not stay to take out her ear-rings, but she threw off her scarf, and let it fall on the floor, before the light tap came again. We shall know how it was that the light tap came, if we leave Hetty for a short time and return to Dinah, at the moment when she had delivered Totty to her mother's arms, and was come upstairs to her bedroom, adjoining Hetty's. Dinah delighted in her bedroom window. Being on the second story of that tall house, it gave her a wide view over the fields. The thickness of the wall formed a broad step about a yard below the window, where she could place her chair. And now the first thing she did on entering her room was to seat herself in this chair and look out on the peaceful fields beyond which the large moon was rising, just above the hedgerow elms. She liked the pasture best where the milch cows were lying, and next to that the meadow where the grass was half-mown, and lay in silvered sweeping lines. Her heart was very full, for there was to be only one more night on which she would look out on those fields for a long time to come; but she thought little of leaving the mere scene, for, to her, bleak Snowfield had just as many charms. She thought of all the dear people whom she had learned to care for among these peaceful fields, and who would now have a place in her loving remembrance for ever. She thought of the struggles and the weariness that might lie before them in the rest of their life's journey, when she would be away from them, and know nothing of what was befalling them; and the pressure of this thought soon became too strong for her to enjoy the unresponding stillness of the moonlit fields. She closed her eyes, that she might feel more intensely the presence of a Love and Sympathy deeper and more tender than was breathed from the earth and sky. That was often Dinah's mode of praying in solitude. Simply to close her eyes and to feel herself enclosed by the Divine Presence; then gradually her fears, her yearning anxieties for others, melted away like ice-crystals in a warm ocean. She had sat in this way perfectly still, with her hands crossed on her lap and the pale light resting on her calm face, for at least ten minutes when she was startled by a loud sound, apparently of something falling in Hetty's room. But like all sounds that fall on our ears in a state of abstraction, it had no distinct character, but was simply loud and startling, so that she felt uncertain whether she had interpreted it rightly. She rose and listened, but all was quiet afterwards, and she reflected that Hetty might merely have knocked something down in getting into bed. She began slowly to undress; but now, owing to the suggestions of this sound, her thoughts became concentrated on Hetty--that sweet young thing, with life and all its trials before her--the solemn daily duties of the wife and mother--and her mind so unprepared for them all, bent merely on little foolish, selfish pleasures, like a child hugging its toys in the beginning of a long toilsome journey in which it will have to bear hunger and cold and unsheltered darkness. Dinah felt a double care for Hetty, because she shared Seth's anxious interest in his brother's lot, and she had not come to the conclusion that Hetty did not love Adam well enough to marry him. She saw too clearly the absence of any warm, self-devoting love in Hetty's nature to regard the coldness of her behaviour towards Adam as any indication that he was not the man she would like to have for a husband. And this blank in Hetty's nature, instead of exciting Dinah's dislike, only touched her with a deeper pity: the lovely face and form affected her as beauty always affects a pure and tender mind, free from selfish jealousies. It was an excellent divine gift, that gave a deeper pathos to the need, the sin, the sorrow with which it was mingled, as the canker in a lily-white bud is more grievous to behold than in a common pot-herb. By the time Dinah had undressed and put on her night-gown, this feeling about Hetty had gathered a painful intensity; her imagination had created a thorny thicket of sin and sorrow, in which she saw the poor thing struggling torn and bleeding, looking with tears for rescue and finding none. It was in this way that Dinah's imagination and sympathy acted and reacted habitually, each heightening the other. She felt a deep longing to go now and pour into Hetty's ear all the words of tender warning and appeal that rushed into her mind. But perhaps Hetty was already asleep. Dinah put her ear to the partition and heard still some slight noises, which convinced her that Hetty was not yet in bed. Still she hesitated; she was not quite certain of a divine direction; the voice that told her to go to Hetty seemed no stronger than the other voice which said that Hetty was weary, and that going to her now in an unseasonable moment would only tend to close her heart more obstinately. Dinah was not satisfied without a more unmistakable guidance than those inward voices. There was light enough for her, if she opened her Bible, to discern the text sufficiently to know what it would say to her. She knew the physiognomy of every page, and could tell on what book she opened, sometimes on what chapter, without seeing title or number. It was a small thick Bible, worn quite round at the edges. Dinah laid it sideways on the window ledge, where the light was strongest, and then opened it with her forefinger. The first words she looked at were those at the top of the left-hand page: "And they all wept sore, and fell on Paul's neck and kissed him." That was enough for Dinah; she had opened on that memorable parting at Ephesus, when Paul had felt bound to open his heart in a last exhortation and warning. She hesitated no longer, but, opening her own door gently, went and tapped on Hetty's. We know she had to tap twice, because Hetty had to put out her candles and throw off her black lace scarf; but after the second tap the door was opened immediately. Dinah said, "Will you let me come in, Hetty?" and Hetty, without speaking, for she was confused and vexed, opened the door wider and let her in. What a strange contrast the two figures made, visible enough in that mingled twilight and moonlight! Hetty, her cheeks flushed and her eyes glistening from her imaginary drama, her beautiful neck and arms bare, her hair hanging in a curly tangle down her back, and the baubles in her ears. Dinah, covered with her long white dress, her pale face full of subdued emotion, almost like a lovely corpse into which the soul has returned charged with sublimer secrets and a sublimer love. They were nearly of the same height; Dinah evidently a little the taller as she put her arm round Hetty's waist and kissed her forehead. "I knew you were not in bed, my dear," she said, in her sweet clear voice, which was irritating to Hetty, mingling with her own peevish vexation like music with jangling chains, "for I heard you moving; and I longed to speak to you again to-night, for it is the last but one that I shall be here, and we don't know what may happen to-morrow to keep us apart. Shall I sit down with you while you do up your hair?" "Oh yes," said Hetty, hastily turning round and reaching the second chair in the room, glad that Dinah looked as if she did not notice her ear-rings. Dinah sat down, and Hetty began to brush together her hair before twisting it up, doing it with that air of excessive indifference which belongs to confused self-consciousness. But the expression of Dinah's eyes gradually relieved her; they seemed unobservant of all details. "Dear Hetty," she said, "It has been borne in upon my mind to-night that you may some day be in trouble--trouble is appointed for us all here below, and there comes a time when we need more comfort and help than the things of this life can give. I want to tell you that if ever you are in trouble, and need a friend that will always feel for you and love you, you have got that friend in Dinah Morris at Snowfield, and if you come to her, or send for her, she'll never forget this night and the words she is speaking to you now. Will you remember it, Hetty?" "Yes," said Hetty, rather frightened. "But why should you think I shall be in trouble? Do you know of anything?" Hetty had seated herself as she tied on her cap, and now Dinah leaned forwards and took her hands as she answered, "Because, dear, trouble comes to us all in this life: we set our hearts on things which it isn't God's will for us to have, and then we go sorrowing; the people we love are taken from us, and we can joy in nothing because they are not with us; sickness comes, and we faint under the burden of our feeble bodies; we go astray and do wrong, and bring ourselves into trouble with our fellow-men. There is no man or woman born into this world to whom some of these trials do not fall, and so I feel that some of them must happen to you; and I desire for you, that while you are young you should seek for strength from your Heavenly Father, that you may have a support which will not fail you in the evil day." Dinah paused and released Hetty's hands that she might not hinder her. Hetty sat quite still; she felt no response within herself to Dinah's anxious affection; but Dinah's words uttered with solemn pathetic distinctness, affected her with a chill fear. Her flush had died away almost to paleness; she had the timidity of a luxurious pleasure-seeking nature, which shrinks from the hint of pain. Dinah saw the effect, and her tender anxious pleading became the more earnest, till Hetty, full of a vague fear that something evil was some time to befall her, began to cry. It is our habit to say that while the lower nature can never understand the higher, the higher nature commands a complete view of the lower. But I think the higher nature has to learn this comprehension, as we learn the art of vision, by a good deal of hard experience, often with bruises and gashes incurred in taking things up by the wrong end, and fancying our space wider than it is. Dinah had never seen Hetty affected in this way before, and, with her usual benignant hopefulness, she trusted it was the stirring of a divine impulse. She kissed the sobbing thing, and began to cry with her for grateful joy. But Hetty was simply in that excitable state of mind in which there is no calculating what turn the feelings may take from one moment to another, and for the first time she became irritated under Dinah's caress. She pushed her away impatiently, and said, with a childish sobbing voice, "Don't talk to me so, Dinah. Why do you come to frighten me? I've never done anything to you. Why can't you let me be?" Poor Dinah felt a pang. She was too wise to persist, and only said mildly, "Yes, my dear, you're tired; I won't hinder you any longer. Make haste and get into bed. Good-night." She went out of the room almost as quietly and quickly as if she had been a ghost; but once by the side of her own bed, she threw herself on her knees and poured out in deep silence all the passionate pity that filled her heart. As for Hetty, she was soon in the wood again--her waking dreams being merged in a sleeping life scarcely more fragmentary and confused.

Chapter 15

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter15

The Two Bed-Chambers Hetty and Dinah have rooms next to each other on the second story of the house. Hetty has locked herself in her room and taken out two candles, lighting them so she can see herself in an old blotched mirror. She admires herself more now that Captain Donnithorne is in love with her. Taking out some finery she hides from her aunt, she tries on cheap earrings and a bit of torn lace. She brushes her hair and makes it look like a picture of a lady she has seen. She is certain Arthur will not want her to work but will want to marry her and make a lady of her. She imagines herself in a carriage and what Mary Burge will think. Parading up and down in front of the mirror, she drops her hand mirror with a bang. The narrator skillfully switches from Hetty's fantasies to Adam's. Adam knows that Hetty would make a loving wife and mother. No man believes a pretty woman could be anything but good. Arthur too thinks Hetty an affectionate creature. Surely deep grey eyes harbor a deep soul. Hetty, however, is like a plant with shallow roots. She is not fond of her uncle or cousins. She does not like children. Only another woman could have found out Hetty's cold heart--her Aunt Poyser warns her husband that Hetty is a peacock. Mr. Poyser says she is just unripe grain. Dinah, however, has misgivings. While lost in a prayer of divine love, she hears Hetty's mirror hit the floor, and her imagination sees that Hetty is going to be in trouble and sorrow. She opens her Bible for guidance and then decides to talk to Hetty. Hetty is irritated at being interrupted at her vanities; she still has the earrings in her ears. Dinah tries to warn Hetty that she could have sorrow in her life and tells her she will always be her friend. Hetty is frightened by but rejects Dinah's warning. Dinah goes to her room and prays for Hetty.

Commentary on Chapter 15 This is an important chapter giving a kaleidoscope of the assumptions of several characters. Hetty, Adam, and Arthur are lost in their own overlapping and conflicting illusions. The narrator builds tension and allows only the reader to see the full scope of the impending tragedy. Everyone cannot be right. Some of these bubbles are going to burst. It is interesting that the men are uniformly fooled by Hetty's beauty into thinking it means she is a good and deep person. While Adam is thinking she will make a good mother, the narrator points out she does not like children. She does not even like the uncle who has been as a father to her and defends her to his wife. Only the shrewd Mrs. Poyser sees Hetty's true character and speaks of her hard heart. While Mrs. Poyser uses common sense and observation to come to this conclusion, Dinah sees the same thing from her mystic vision and sympathy. She prophesies Hetty's tragedy and frightens the girl but does not get her attention. Hetty's illusions are fully spelled out: she thinks Arthur means to marry her and make her a lady. She is not in love, but she believes a big change is coming to her life, and it has to do mostly with fine clothes and station. The omniscient narrator shows all the limited points of view clashing and building towards a crisis.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/16.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_16_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 1.chapter 16

chapter 16

{"name": "Chapter 16", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter16", "summary": "Links Arthur Donnithorne rides out early to have breakfast with Mr. Irwine, thinking it will be easier to tell him about Hetty over breakfast. On the way there he sees Adam Bede and chats with him about his ambitions. Adam says he would like to manage timber and building, but he doesn't want to be partners with Mr. Burge. Adam feels reverence for Arthur because he knew him as a boy and because he is the future squire. Arthur shakes hands with Adam and offers to invest money to help him start a business in the future. He brings up the point that Adam probably is so strong he would never do anything he thought wrong. Adam says that he could never enjoy something that would weigh down his conscience. Arthur doesn't want to let Irwine know why he has come and so he chats with him in a roundabout way, speaking of how he wants to be a model landlord. He enjoys being liked by his tenants. Arthur says he could never live in a place where he was not respected, and Irwine answers that he must then make the right choice of wife. Mrs. Irwine has predicted that she will be able to tell Arthur's future by the woman he chooses. Irwine adds that he has bet on Arthur's success and so he musn't let his old tutor down. This immediately makes Arthur reluctant to tell his secret, for he relies on the opinions of others. The rector and young squire discuss what it takes for a man to make the right moral decision. Irwine suspects Arthur is trying to tell him something, but when he asks him directly, Arthur is scared off. He thinks he will handle his dilemma himself, and once more determines to leave on a trip.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 16 This is an important chapter that concludes the first book, for it holds Arthur's fate in the balance and shows him weighing his choices. He seeks advice indirectly from the two strongest men he knows--Adam Bede and Mr. Irwine--though he doesn't confess what is on his mind. In this way, Eliot hints that Arthur's unconscious mind has already sabotaged the man. He asks for advice but doesn't really want it; he wants his anxiety to be soothed. He knows what both men would tell him if he confessed that he desired Hetty, so he merely hints about some decision he must make, in a general way. Both men advise him to avoid doing something he won't be able to live with. Arthur tries to convince Irwine that circumstances may be against making the right choice, but Irwine, who has just been reading Greek tragedy, announces a theory of character as fate: a character carries the seeds of his fate within his own nature. Arthur's wishy-washy and lazy nature is made clear to the reader by this time. He does not have the iron will of Adam, and he does not really hear Irwine's lecture on the fact that \"consequences are unpitying\" . Arthur seems to think he is a good person merely because he is feeling uncomfortable about Hetty, that he will get credit if he struggles before giving in to his desire, but he is amply warned by both men that intentions alone do not constitute moral action. Arthur does not tell Irwine what is troubling him because he wants to be well thought of more than he wants to do the right thing. He has not yet learned that he has to earn the respect of others. When Arthur sympathizes with Adam that he has had a hard life, Adam replies that life is not a Treddleston Fair. This is a key point Arthur doesn't get; he wants life to be pleasant and easy; he doesn't want to look it in the face. Like Hetty, he thinks it will just somehow come out all right in his favor. Book First has set up the characters with their conflicting desires, the temptation, and the momentum. There has been ample foreshadowing, especially in this chapter, that the worst will happen."}

ARTHUR DONNITHORNE, you remember, is under an engagement with himself to go and see Mr. Irwine this Friday morning, and he is awake and dressing so early that he determines to go before breakfast, instead of after. The rector, he knows, breakfasts alone at half-past nine, the ladies of the family having a different breakfast-hour; Arthur will have an early ride over the hill and breakfast with him. One can say everything best over a meal. The progress of civilization has made a breakfast or a dinner an easy and cheerful substitute for more troublesome and disagreeable ceremonies. We take a less gloomy view of our errors now our father confessor listens to us over his egg and coffee. We are more distinctly conscious that rude penances are out of the question for gentlemen in an enlightened age, and that mortal sin is not incompatible with an appetite for muffins. An assault on our pockets, which in more barbarous times would have been made in the brusque form of a pistol-shot, is quite a well-bred and smiling procedure now it has become a request for a loan thrown in as an easy parenthesis between the second and third glasses of claret. Still, there was this advantage in the old rigid forms, that they committed you to the fulfilment of a resolution by some outward deed: when you have put your mouth to one end of a hole in a stone wall and are aware that there is an expectant ear at the other end, you are more likely to say what you came out with the intention of saying than if you were seated with your legs in an easy attitude under the mahogany with a companion who will have no reason to be surprised if you have nothing particular to say. However, Arthur Donnithorne, as he winds among the pleasant lanes on horseback in the morning sunshine, has a sincere determination to open his heart to the rector, and the swirling sound of the scythe as he passes by the meadow is all the pleasanter to him because of this honest purpose. He is glad to see the promise of settled weather now, for getting in the hay, about which the farmers have been fearful; and there is something so healthful in the sharing of a joy that is general and not merely personal, that this thought about the hay-harvest reacts on his state of mind and makes his resolution seem an easier matter. A man about town might perhaps consider that these influences were not to be felt out of a child's story-book; but when you are among the fields and hedgerows, it is impossible to maintain a consistent superiority to simple natural pleasures. Arthur had passed the village of Hayslope and was approaching the Broxton side of the hill, when, at a turning in the road, he saw a figure about a hundred yards before him which it was impossible to mistake for any one else than Adam Bede, even if there had been no grey, tailless shepherd-dog at his heels. He was striding along at his usual rapid pace, and Arthur pushed on his horse to overtake him, for he retained too much of his boyish feeling for Adam to miss an opportunity of chatting with him. I will not say that his love for that good fellow did not owe some of its force to the love of patronage: our friend Arthur liked to do everything that was handsome, and to have his handsome deeds recognized. Adam looked round as he heard the quickening clatter of the horse's heels, and waited for the horseman, lifting his paper cap from his head with a bright smile of recognition. Next to his own brother Seth, Adam would have done more for Arthur Donnithorne than for any other young man in the world. There was hardly anything he would not rather have lost than the two-feet ruler which he always carried in his pocket; it was Arthur's present, bought with his pocket-money when he was a fair-haired lad of eleven, and when he had profited so well by Adam's lessons in carpentering and turning as to embarrass every female in the house with gifts of superfluous thread-reels and round boxes. Adam had quite a pride in the little squire in those early days, and the feeling had only become slightly modified as the fair-haired lad had grown into the whiskered young man. Adam, I confess, was very susceptible to the influence of rank, and quite ready to give an extra amount of respect to every one who had more advantages than himself, not being a philosopher or a proletaire with democratic ideas, but simply a stout-limbed clever carpenter with a large fund of reverence in his nature, which inclined him to admit all established claims unless he saw very clear grounds for questioning them. He had no theories about setting the world to rights, but he saw there was a great deal of damage done by building with ill-seasoned timber--by ignorant men in fine clothes making plans for outhouses and workshops and the like without knowing the bearings of things--by slovenly joiners' work, and by hasty contracts that could never be fulfilled without ruining somebody; and he resolved, for his part, to set his face against such doings. On these points he would have maintained his opinion against the largest landed proprietor in Loamshire or Stonyshire either; but he felt that beyond these it would be better for him to defer to people who were more knowing than himself. He saw as plainly as possible how ill the woods on the estate were managed, and the shameful state of the farm-buildings; and if old Squire Donnithorne had asked him the effect of this mismanagement, he would have spoken his opinion without flinching, but the impulse to a respectful demeanour towards a "gentleman" would have been strong within him all the while. The word "gentleman" had a spell for Adam, and, as he often said, he "couldn't abide a fellow who thought he made himself fine by being coxy to's betters." I must remind you again that Adam had the blood of the peasant in his veins, and that since he was in his prime half a century ago, you must expect some of his characteristics to be obsolete. Towards the young squire this instinctive reverence of Adam's was assisted by boyish memories and personal regard so you may imagine that he thought far more of Arthur's good qualities, and attached far more value to very slight actions of his, than if they had been the qualities and actions of a common workman like himself. He felt sure it would be a fine day for everybody about Hayslope when the young squire came into the estate--such a generous open-hearted disposition as he had, and an "uncommon" notion about improvements and repairs, considering he was only just coming of age. Thus there was both respect and affection in the smile with which he raised his paper cap as Arthur Donnithorne rode up. "Well, Adam, how are you?" said Arthur, holding out his hand. He never shook hands with any of the farmers, and Adam felt the honour keenly. "I could swear to your back a long way off. It's just the same back, only broader, as when you used to carry me on it. Do you remember?" "Aye, sir, I remember. It 'ud be a poor look-out if folks didn't remember what they did and said when they were lads. We should think no more about old friends than we do about new uns, then." "You're going to Broxton, I suppose?" said Arthur, putting his horse on at a slow pace while Adam walked by his side. "Are you going to the rectory?" "No, sir, I'm going to see about Bradwell's barn. They're afraid of the roof pushing the walls out, and I'm going to see what can be done with it before we send the stuff and the workmen." "Why, Burge trusts almost everything to you now, Adam, doesn't he? I should think he will make you his partner soon. He will, if he's wise." "Nay, sir, I don't see as he'd be much the better off for that. A foreman, if he's got a conscience and delights in his work, will do his business as well as if he was a partner. I wouldn't give a penny for a man as 'ud drive a nail in slack because he didn't get extra pay for it." "I know that, Adam; I know you work for him as well as if you were working for yourself. But you would have more power than you have now, and could turn the business to better account perhaps. The old man must give up his business sometime, and he has no son; I suppose he'll want a son-in-law who can take to it. But he has rather grasping fingers of his own, I fancy. I daresay he wants a man who can put some money into the business. If I were not as poor as a rat, I would gladly invest some money in that way, for the sake of having you settled on the estate. I'm sure I should profit by it in the end. And perhaps I shall be better off in a year or two. I shall have a larger allowance now I'm of age; and when I've paid off a debt or two, I shall be able to look about me." "You're very good to say so, sir, and I'm not unthankful. But"--Adam continued, in a decided tone--"I shouldn't like to make any offers to Mr. Burge, or t' have any made for me. I see no clear road to a partnership. If he should ever want to dispose of the business, that 'ud be a different matter. I should be glad of some money at a fair interest then, for I feel sure I could pay it off in time." "Very well, Adam," said Arthur, remembering what Mr. Irwine had said about a probable hitch in the love-making between Adam and Mary Burge, "we'll say no more about it at present. When is your father to be buried?" "On Sunday, sir; Mr. Irwine's coming earlier on purpose. I shall be glad when it's over, for I think my mother 'ull perhaps get easier then. It cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people; they've no way o' working it off, and the new spring brings no new shoots out on the withered tree." "Ah, you've had a good deal of trouble and vexation in your life, Adam. I don't think you've ever been hare-brained and light-hearted, like other youngsters. You've always had some care on your mind." "Why, yes, sir; but that's nothing to make a fuss about. If we're men and have men's feelings, I reckon we must have men's troubles. We can't be like the birds, as fly from their nest as soon as they've got their wings, and never know their kin when they see 'em, and get a fresh lot every year. I've had enough to be thankful for: I've allays had health and strength and brains to give me a delight in my work; and I count it a great thing as I've had Bartle Massey's night-school to go to. He's helped me to knowledge I could never ha' got by myself." "What a rare fellow you are, Adam!" said Arthur, after a pause, in which he had looked musingly at the big fellow walking by his side. "I could hit out better than most men at Oxford, and yet I believe you would knock me into next week if I were to have a battle with you." "God forbid I should ever do that, sir," said Adam, looking round at Arthur and smiling. "I used to fight for fun, but I've never done that since I was the cause o' poor Gil Tranter being laid up for a fortnight. I'll never fight any man again, only when he behaves like a scoundrel. If you get hold of a chap that's got no shame nor conscience to stop him, you must try what you can do by bunging his eyes up." Arthur did not laugh, for he was preoccupied with some thought that made him say presently, "I should think now, Adam, you never have any struggles within yourself. I fancy you would master a wish that you had made up your mind it was not quite right to indulge, as easily as you would knock down a drunken fellow who was quarrelsome with you. I mean, you are never shilly-shally, first making up your mind that you won't do a thing, and then doing it after all?" "Well," said Adam, slowly, after a moment's hesitation, "no. I don't remember ever being see-saw in that way, when I'd made my mind up, as you say, that a thing was wrong. It takes the taste out o' my mouth for things, when I know I should have a heavy conscience after 'em. I've seen pretty clear, ever since I could cast up a sum, as you can never do what's wrong without breeding sin and trouble more than you can ever see. It's like a bit o' bad workmanship--you never see th' end o' the mischief it'll do. And it's a poor look-out to come into the world to make your fellow-creatures worse off instead o' better. But there's a difference between the things folks call wrong. I'm not for making a sin of every little fool's trick, or bit o' nonsense anybody may be let into, like some o' them dissenters. And a man may have two minds whether it isn't worthwhile to get a bruise or two for the sake of a bit o' fun. But it isn't my way to be see-saw about anything: I think my fault lies th' other way. When I've said a thing, if it's only to myself, it's hard for me to go back." "Yes, that's just what I expected of you," said Arthur. "You've got an iron will, as well as an iron arm. But however strong a man's resolution may be, it costs him something to carry it out, now and then. We may determine not to gather any cherries and keep our hands sturdily in our pockets, but we can't prevent our mouths from watering." "That's true, sir, but there's nothing like settling with ourselves as there's a deal we must do without i' this life. It's no use looking on life as if it was Treddles'on Fair, where folks only go to see shows and get fairings. If we do, we shall find it different. But where's the use o' me talking to you, sir? You know better than I do." "I'm not so sure of that, Adam. You've had four or five years of experience more than I've had, and I think your life has been a better school to you than college has been to me." "Why, sir, you seem to think o' college something like what Bartle Massey does. He says college mostly makes people like bladders--just good for nothing but t' hold the stuff as is poured into 'em. But he's got a tongue like a sharp blade, Bartle has--it never touches anything but it cuts. Here's the turning, sir. I must bid you good-morning, as you're going to the rectory." "Good-bye, Adam, good-bye." Arthur gave his horse to the groom at the rectory gate, and walked along the gravel towards the door which opened on the garden. He knew that the rector always breakfasted in his study, and the study lay on the left hand of this door, opposite the dining-room. It was a small low room, belonging to the old part of the house--dark with the sombre covers of the books that lined the walls; yet it looked very cheery this morning as Arthur reached the open window. For the morning sun fell aslant on the great glass globe with gold fish in it, which stood on a scagliola pillar in front of the ready-spread bachelor breakfast-table, and by the side of this breakfast-table was a group which would have made any room enticing. In the crimson damask easy-chair sat Mr. Irwine, with that radiant freshness which he always had when he came from his morning toilet; his finely formed plump white hand was playing along Juno's brown curly back; and close to Juno's tail, which was wagging with calm matronly pleasure, the two brown pups were rolling over each other in an ecstatic duet of worrying noises. On a cushion a little removed sat Pug, with the air of a maiden lady, who looked on these familiarities as animal weaknesses, which she made as little show as possible of observing. On the table, at Mr. Irwine's elbow, lay the first volume of the Foulis AEschylus, which Arthur knew well by sight; and the silver coffee-pot, which Carroll was bringing in, sent forth a fragrant steam which completed the delights of a bachelor breakfast. "Hallo, Arthur, that's a good fellow! You're just in time," said Mr. Irwine, as Arthur paused and stepped in over the low window-sill. "Carroll, we shall want more coffee and eggs, and haven't you got some cold fowl for us to eat with that ham? Why, this is like old days, Arthur; you haven't been to breakfast with me these five years." "It was a tempting morning for a ride before breakfast," said Arthur; "and I used to like breakfasting with you so when I was reading with you. My grandfather is always a few degrees colder at breakfast than at any other hour in the day. I think his morning bath doesn't agree with him." Arthur was anxious not to imply that he came with any special purpose. He had no sooner found himself in Mr. Irwine's presence than the confidence which he had thought quite easy before, suddenly appeared the most difficult thing in the world to him, and at the very moment of shaking hands he saw his purpose in quite a new light. How could he make Irwine understand his position unless he told him those little scenes in the wood; and how could he tell them without looking like a fool? And then his weakness in coming back from Gawaine's, and doing the very opposite of what he intended! Irwine would think him a shilly-shally fellow ever after. However, it must come out in an unpremeditated way; the conversation might lead up to it. "I like breakfast-time better than any other moment in the day," said Mr. Irwine. "No dust has settled on one's mind then, and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things. I always have a favourite book by me at breakfast, and I enjoy the bits I pick up then so much, that regularly every morning it seems to me as if I should certainly become studious again. But presently Dent brings up a poor fellow who has killed a hare, and when I've got through my 'justicing,' as Carroll calls it, I'm inclined for a ride round the glebe, and on my way back I meet with the master of the workhouse, who has got a long story of a mutinous pauper to tell me; and so the day goes on, and I'm always the same lazy fellow before evening sets in. Besides, one wants the stimulus of sympathy, and I have never had that since poor D'Oyley left Treddleston. If you had stuck to your books well, you rascal, I should have had a pleasanter prospect before me. But scholarship doesn't run in your family blood." "No indeed. It's well if I can remember a little inapplicable Latin to adorn my maiden speech in Parliament six or seven years hence. 'Cras ingens iterabimus aequor,' and a few shreds of that sort, will perhaps stick to me, and I shall arrange my opinions so as to introduce them. But I don't think a knowledge of the classics is a pressing want to a country gentleman; as far as I can see, he'd much better have a knowledge of manures. I've been reading your friend Arthur Young's books lately, and there's nothing I should like better than to carry out some of his ideas in putting the farmers on a better management of their land; and, as he says, making what was a wild country, all of the same dark hue, bright and variegated with corn and cattle. My grandfather will never let me have any power while he lives, but there's nothing I should like better than to undertake the Stonyshire side of the estate--it's in a dismal condition--and set improvements on foot, and gallop about from one place to another and overlook them. I should like to know all the labourers, and see them touching their hats to me with a look of goodwill." "Bravo, Arthur! A man who has no feeling for the classics couldn't make a better apology for coming into the world than by increasing the quantity of food to maintain scholars--and rectors who appreciate scholars. And whenever you enter on your career of model landlord may I be there to see. You'll want a portly rector to complete the picture, and take his tithe of all the respect and honour you get by your hard work. Only don't set your heart too strongly on the goodwill you are to get in consequence. I'm not sure that men are the fondest of those who try to be useful to them. You know Gawaine has got the curses of the whole neighbourhood upon him about that enclosure. You must make it quite clear to your mind which you are most bent upon, old boy--popularity or usefulness--else you may happen to miss both." "Oh! Gawaine is harsh in his manners; he doesn't make himself personally agreeable to his tenants. I don't believe there's anything you can't prevail on people to do with kindness. For my part, I couldn't live in a neighbourhood where I was not respected and beloved. And it's very pleasant to go among the tenants here--they seem all so well inclined to me I suppose it seems only the other day to them since I was a little lad, riding on a pony about as big as a sheep. And if fair allowances were made to them, and their buildings attended to, one could persuade them to farm on a better plan, stupid as they are." "Then mind you fall in love in the right place, and don't get a wife who will drain your purse and make you niggardly in spite of yourself. My mother and I have a little discussion about you sometimes: she says, 'I'll never risk a single prophecy on Arthur until I see the woman he falls in love with.' She thinks your lady-love will rule you as the moon rules the tides. But I feel bound to stand up for you, as my pupil you know, and I maintain that you're not of that watery quality. So mind you don't disgrace my judgment." Arthur winced under this speech, for keen old Mrs. Irwine's opinion about him had the disagreeable effect of a sinister omen. This, to be sure, was only another reason for persevering in his intention, and getting an additional security against himself. Nevertheless, at this point in the conversation, he was conscious of increased disinclination to tell his story about Hetty. He was of an impressible nature, and lived a great deal in other people's opinions and feelings concerning himself; and the mere fact that he was in the presence of an intimate friend, who had not the slightest notion that he had had any such serious internal struggle as he came to confide, rather shook his own belief in the seriousness of the struggle. It was not, after all, a thing to make a fuss about; and what could Irwine do for him that he could not do for himself? He would go to Eagledale in spite of Meg's lameness--go on Rattler, and let Pym follow as well as he could on the old hack. That was his thought as he sugared his coffee; but the next minute, as he was lifting the cup to his lips, he remembered how thoroughly he had made up his mind last night to tell Irwine. No! He would not be vacillating again--he WOULD do what he had meant to do, this time. So it would be well not to let the personal tone of the conversation altogether drop. If they went to quite indifferent topics, his difficulty would be heightened. It had required no noticeable pause for this rush and rebound of feeling, before he answered, "But I think it is hardly an argument against a man's general strength of character that he should be apt to be mastered by love. A fine constitution doesn't insure one against smallpox or any other of those inevitable diseases. A man may be very firm in other matters and yet be under a sort of witchery from a woman." "Yes; but there's this difference between love and smallpox, or bewitchment either--that if you detect the disease at an early stage and try change of air, there is every chance of complete escape without any further development of symptoms. And there are certain alternative doses which a man may administer to himself by keeping unpleasant consequences before his mind: this gives you a sort of smoked glass through which you may look at the resplendent fair one and discern her true outline; though I'm afraid, by the by, the smoked glass is apt to be missing just at the moment it is most wanted. I daresay, now, even a man fortified with a knowledge of the classics might be lured into an imprudent marriage, in spite of the warning given him by the chorus in the Prometheus." The smile that flitted across Arthur's face was a faint one, and instead of following Mr. Irwine's playful lead, he said, quite seriously--"Yes, that's the worst of it. It's a desperately vexatious thing, that after all one's reflections and quiet determinations, we should be ruled by moods that one can't calculate on beforehand. I don't think a man ought to be blamed so much if he is betrayed into doing things in that way, in spite of his resolutions." "Ah, but the moods lie in his nature, my boy, just as much as his reflections did, and more. A man can never do anything at variance with his own nature. He carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom." "Well, but one may be betrayed into doing things by a combination of circumstances, which one might never have done otherwise." "Why, yes, a man can't very well steal a bank-note unless the bank-note lies within convenient reach; but he won't make us think him an honest man because he begins to howl at the bank-note for falling in his way." "But surely you don't think a man who struggles against a temptation into which he falls at last as bad as the man who never struggles at all?" "No, certainly; I pity him in proportion to his struggles, for they foreshadow the inward suffering which is the worst form of Nemesis. Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences, quite apart from any fluctuations that went before--consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves. And it is best to fix our minds on that certainty, instead of considering what may be the elements of excuse for us. But I never knew you so inclined for moral discussion, Arthur? Is it some danger of your own that you are considering in this philosophical, general way?" In asking this question, Mr. Irwine pushed his plate away, threw himself back in his chair, and looked straight at Arthur. He really suspected that Arthur wanted to tell him something, and thought of smoothing the way for him by this direct question. But he was mistaken. Brought suddenly and involuntarily to the brink of confession, Arthur shrank back and felt less disposed towards it than ever. The conversation had taken a more serious tone than he had intended--it would quite mislead Irwine--he would imagine there was a deep passion for Hetty, while there was no such thing. He was conscious of colouring, and was annoyed at his boyishness. "Oh no, no danger," he said as indifferently as he could. "I don't know that I am more liable to irresolution than other people; only there are little incidents now and then that set one speculating on what might happen in the future." Was there a motive at work under this strange reluctance of Arthur's which had a sort of backstairs influence, not admitted to himself? Our mental business is carried on much in the same way as the business of the State: a great deal of hard work is done by agents who are not acknowledged. In a piece of machinery, too, I believe there is often a small unnoticeable wheel which has a great deal to do with the motion of the large obvious ones. Possibly there was some such unrecognized agent secretly busy in Arthur's mind at this moment--possibly it was the fear lest he might hereafter find the fact of having made a confession to the rector a serious annoyance, in case he should NOT be able quite to carry out his good resolutions? I dare not assert that it was not so. The human soul is a very complex thing. The idea of Hetty had just crossed Mr. Irwine's mind as he looked inquiringly at Arthur, but his disclaiming indifferent answer confirmed the thought which had quickly followed--that there could be nothing serious in that direction. There was no probability that Arthur ever saw her except at church, and at her own home under the eye of Mrs. Poyser; and the hint he had given Arthur about her the other day had no more serious meaning than to prevent him from noticing her so as to rouse the little chit's vanity, and in this way perturb the rustic drama of her life. Arthur would soon join his regiment, and be far away: no, there could be no danger in that quarter, even if Arthur's character had not been a strong security against it. His honest, patronizing pride in the good-will and respect of everybody about him was a safeguard even against foolish romance, still more against a lower kind of folly. If there had been anything special on Arthur's mind in the previous conversation, it was clear he was not inclined to enter into details, and Mr. Irwine was too delicate to imply even a friendly curiosity. He perceived a change of subject would be welcome, and said, "By the way, Arthur, at your colonel's birthday fete there were some transparencies that made a great effect in honour of Britannia, and Pitt, and the Loamshire Militia, and, above all, the 'generous youth,' the hero of the day. Don't you think you should get up something of the same sort to astonish our weak minds?" The opportunity was gone. While Arthur was hesitating, the rope to which he might have clung had drifted away--he must trust now to his own swimming. In ten minutes from that time, Mr. Irwine was called for on business, and Arthur, bidding him good-bye, mounted his horse again with a sense of dissatisfaction, which he tried to quell by determining to set off for Eagledale without an hour's delay. Book Two

Chapter 16

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter16

Links Arthur Donnithorne rides out early to have breakfast with Mr. Irwine, thinking it will be easier to tell him about Hetty over breakfast. On the way there he sees Adam Bede and chats with him about his ambitions. Adam says he would like to manage timber and building, but he doesn't want to be partners with Mr. Burge. Adam feels reverence for Arthur because he knew him as a boy and because he is the future squire. Arthur shakes hands with Adam and offers to invest money to help him start a business in the future. He brings up the point that Adam probably is so strong he would never do anything he thought wrong. Adam says that he could never enjoy something that would weigh down his conscience. Arthur doesn't want to let Irwine know why he has come and so he chats with him in a roundabout way, speaking of how he wants to be a model landlord. He enjoys being liked by his tenants. Arthur says he could never live in a place where he was not respected, and Irwine answers that he must then make the right choice of wife. Mrs. Irwine has predicted that she will be able to tell Arthur's future by the woman he chooses. Irwine adds that he has bet on Arthur's success and so he musn't let his old tutor down. This immediately makes Arthur reluctant to tell his secret, for he relies on the opinions of others. The rector and young squire discuss what it takes for a man to make the right moral decision. Irwine suspects Arthur is trying to tell him something, but when he asks him directly, Arthur is scared off. He thinks he will handle his dilemma himself, and once more determines to leave on a trip.

Commentary on Chapter 16 This is an important chapter that concludes the first book, for it holds Arthur's fate in the balance and shows him weighing his choices. He seeks advice indirectly from the two strongest men he knows--Adam Bede and Mr. Irwine--though he doesn't confess what is on his mind. In this way, Eliot hints that Arthur's unconscious mind has already sabotaged the man. He asks for advice but doesn't really want it; he wants his anxiety to be soothed. He knows what both men would tell him if he confessed that he desired Hetty, so he merely hints about some decision he must make, in a general way. Both men advise him to avoid doing something he won't be able to live with. Arthur tries to convince Irwine that circumstances may be against making the right choice, but Irwine, who has just been reading Greek tragedy, announces a theory of character as fate: a character carries the seeds of his fate within his own nature. Arthur's wishy-washy and lazy nature is made clear to the reader by this time. He does not have the iron will of Adam, and he does not really hear Irwine's lecture on the fact that "consequences are unpitying" . Arthur seems to think he is a good person merely because he is feeling uncomfortable about Hetty, that he will get credit if he struggles before giving in to his desire, but he is amply warned by both men that intentions alone do not constitute moral action. Arthur does not tell Irwine what is troubling him because he wants to be well thought of more than he wants to do the right thing. He has not yet learned that he has to earn the respect of others. When Arthur sympathizes with Adam that he has had a hard life, Adam replies that life is not a Treddleston Fair. This is a key point Arthur doesn't get; he wants life to be pleasant and easy; he doesn't want to look it in the face. Like Hetty, he thinks it will just somehow come out all right in his favor. Book First has set up the characters with their conflicting desires, the temptation, and the momentum. There has been ample foreshadowing, especially in this chapter, that the worst will happen.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/17.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_17_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 2.chapter 17

chapter 17

{"name": "Chapter 17", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter17", "summary": "Book Second Chapter 17: In Which the Story Pauses a Little This chapter is a time out from the plot as Eliot steps in as the author to explain her style of storytelling. She defends the realism of it and eschews being sentimental or using ideal character types. She is writing from \"nature\" and \"fact\" , as if she were in a courtroom. She cannot lie or whitewash the details. She reminds us that we must accept the flawed human beings around us, \"the real breathing men and women\" , for these are the only ones who can be helped and encouraged. She compares her storytelling to Dutch painting, known for its homely and realistic detail. Instead of the beautiful gentry as her subjects, she would rather write about the village wedding with old people, peasants with large noses and vulgar ways. There is family love among them, and beauty of outward form is not as important as the beauty of human sympathy. An example of this kind of beauty is found in Mr. Irwine who did not preach informative sermons on doctrine but was good to his parishioners. She reminds the reader that the events of the story happened sixty years ago, before pastors were overzealous. Mr. Ryde, who succeeded Mr. Irwine, was better known for preaching doctrine, but he was not loved as Mr. Irwine was. She has asked the old Adam Bede about these things, and he has told her that religion is not notions, but the emotion that helps people do the right thing. The author concludes that human nature is lovable as it is; love and heroism as we picture them don't exist as depicted in romances.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 17 Eliot does what modern novelists do not usually do: she interrupts her story to write an essay on her own literary style. Authors who want to comment on their storytelling frequently put the words in the mouth of a character or use some other indirect means. Direct addresses to the reader were more common in nineteenth-century fiction, and in fact, Victorian novelists enjoyed a forum on the novel within their fiction, because they were conscious of shaping their art. Fiction was moving, as Eliot says, away from being an ideal romance with upper or middle class heroes towards greater realism, and Eliot herself was a big contributor to this trend. The lower classes in fiction had usually provided comic relief or were servants in the background of the story rather than in the foreground as main characters. Eliot breaks down the class barriers in fictional subject matter, as Wordsworth had done in poetry a half century before. Eliot is objecting to the mid-century Victorian fiction that was sentimentalized, reinforcing strict moral codes by relying on stereotyped good and bad characters. Eliot introduced a greater concern for the subtle psychological motivation of characters into the novel and in this way, avoided stereotypes. Her characters are like all people who have mixed strengths and weaknesses. A fallen woman like Hetty would not have received much sympathy or understanding in a usual Victorian story. Eliot is interested in tracking the thinking of the servant girl, however, to see how she could have arrived at doing what she did. The shift to the inner life of the characters teaches us about human behavior, which Eliot finds lovable even with the big noses and ignorant ideas. She preaches tolerance, and for this theme, she utilizes a realistic style so readers must face and understand the lives of real people. Real people include not only the lady and gentleman, but farmers, servants, mill workers, old people with rheumatism, people who speak in dialect, the kind of folks that Arthur Donnithorne, for instance, sees as too insignificant to cause him problems. We must include such people in our religion and philosophy, or else it is false."}

"THIS Rector of Broxton is little better than a pagan!" I hear one of my readers exclaim. "How much more edifying it would have been if you had made him give Arthur some truly spiritual advice! You might have put into his mouth the most beautiful things--quite as good as reading a sermon." Certainly I could, if I held it the highest vocation of the novelist to represent things as they never have been and never will be. Then, of course, I might refashion life and character entirely after my own liking; I might select the most unexceptionable type of clergyman and put my own admirable opinions into his mouth on all occasions. But it happens, on the contrary, that my strongest effort is to avoid any such arbitrary picture, and to give a faithful account of men and things as they have mirrored themselves in my mind. The mirror is doubtless defective, the outlines will sometimes be disturbed, the reflection faint or confused; but I feel as much bound to tell you as precisely as I can what that reflection is, as if I were in the witness-box, narrating my experience on oath. Sixty years ago--it is a long time, so no wonder things have changed--all clergymen were not zealous; indeed, there is reason to believe that the number of zealous clergymen was small, and it is probable that if one among the small minority had owned the livings of Broxton and Hayslope in the year 1799, you would have liked him no better than you like Mr. Irwine. Ten to one, you would have thought him a tasteless, indiscreet, methodistical man. It is so very rarely that facts hit that nice medium required by our own enlightened opinions and refined taste! Perhaps you will say, "Do improve the facts a little, then; make them more accordant with those correct views which it is our privilege to possess. The world is not just what we like; do touch it up with a tasteful pencil, and make believe it is not quite such a mixed entangled affair. Let all people who hold unexceptionable opinions act unexceptionably. Let your most faulty characters always be on the wrong side, and your virtuous ones on the right. Then we shall see at a glance whom we are to condemn and whom we are to approve. Then we shall be able to admire, without the slightest disturbance of our prepossessions: we shall hate and despise with that true ruminant relish which belongs to undoubting confidence." But, my good friend, what will you do then with your fellow-parishioner who opposes your husband in the vestry? With your newly appointed vicar, whose style of preaching you find painfully below that of his regretted predecessor? With the honest servant who worries your soul with her one failing? With your neighbour, Mrs. Green, who was really kind to you in your last illness, but has said several ill-natured things about you since your convalescence? Nay, with your excellent husband himself, who has other irritating habits besides that of not wiping his shoes? These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people--amongst whom your life is passed--that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire--for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience. And I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so much better than this, in which we get up in the morning to do our daily work, that you would be likely to turn a harder, colder eye on the dusty streets and the common green fields--on the real breathing men and women, who can be chilled by your indifference or injured by your prejudice; who can be cheered and helped onward by your fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your outspoken, brave justice. So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity, which, in spite of one's best efforts, there is reason to dread. Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a delightful facility in drawing a griffin--the longer the claws, and the larger the wings, the better; but that marvellous facility which we mistook for genius is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings--much harder than to say something fine about them which is NOT the exact truth. It is for this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that I delight in many Dutch paintings, which lofty-minded people despise. I find a source of delicious sympathy in these faithful pictures of a monotonous homely existence, which has been the fate of so many more among my fellow-mortals than a life of pomp or of absolute indigence, of tragic suffering or of world-stirring actions. I turn, without shrinking, from cloud-borne angels, from prophets, sibyls, and heroic warriors, to an old woman bending over her flower-pot, or eating her solitary dinner, while the noonday light, softened perhaps by a screen of leaves, falls on her mob-cap, and just touches the rim of her spinning-wheel, and her stone jug, and all those cheap common things which are the precious necessaries of life to her--or I turn to that village wedding, kept between four brown walls, where an awkward bridegroom opens the dance with a high-shouldered, broad-faced bride, while elderly and middle-aged friends look on, with very irregular noses and lips, and probably with quart-pots in their hands, but with an expression of unmistakable contentment and goodwill. "Foh!" says my idealistic friend, "what vulgar details! What good is there in taking all these pains to give an exact likeness of old women and clowns? What a low phase of life! What clumsy, ugly people!" But bless us, things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome, I hope? I am not at all sure that the majority of the human race have not been ugly, and even among those "lords of their kind," the British, squat figures, ill-shapen nostrils, and dingy complexions are not startling exceptions. Yet there is a great deal of family love amongst us. I have a friend or two whose class of features is such that the Apollo curl on the summit of their brows would be decidedly trying; yet to my certain knowledge tender hearts have beaten for them, and their miniatures--flattering, but still not lovely--are kissed in secret by motherly lips. I have seen many an excellent matron, who could have never in her best days have been handsome, and yet she had a packet of yellow love-letters in a private drawer, and sweet children showered kisses on her sallow cheeks. And I believe there have been plenty of young heroes, of middle stature and feeble beards, who have felt quite sure they could never love anything more insignificant than a Diana, and yet have found themselves in middle life happily settled with a wife who waddles. Yes! Thank God; human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty--it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it. All honour and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women, and children--in our gardens and in our houses. But let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret of proportion, but in the secret of deep human sympathy. Paint us an angel, if you can, with a floating violet robe, and a face paled by the celestial light; paint us yet oftener a Madonna, turning her mild face upward and opening her arms to welcome the divine glory; but do not impose on us any aesthetic rules which shall banish from the region of Art those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn hands, those heavy clowns taking holiday in a dingy pot-house, those rounded backs and stupid weather-beaten faces that have bent over the spade and done the rough work of the world--those homes with their tin pans, their brown pitchers, their rough curs, and their clusters of onions. In this world there are so many of these common coarse people, who have no picturesque sentimental wretchedness! It is so needful we should remember their existence, else we may happen to leave them quite out of our religion and philosophy and frame lofty theories which only fit a world of extremes. Therefore, let Art always remind us of them; therefore let us always have men ready to give the loving pains of a life to the faithful representing of commonplace things--men who see beauty in these commonplace things, and delight in showing how kindly the light of heaven falls on them. There are few prophets in the world; few sublimely beautiful women; few heroes. I can't afford to give all my love and reverence to such rarities: I want a great deal of those feelings for my every-day fellow-men, especially for the few in the foreground of the great multitude, whose faces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy. Neither are picturesque lazzaroni or romantic criminals half so frequent as your common labourer, who gets his own bread and eats it vulgarly but creditably with his own pocket-knife. It is more needful that I should have a fibre of sympathy connecting me with that vulgar citizen who weighs out my sugar in a vilely assorted cravat and waistcoat, than with the handsomest rascal in red scarf and green feathers--more needful that my heart should swell with loving admiration at some trait of gentle goodness in the faulty people who sit at the same hearth with me, or in the clergyman of my own parish, who is perhaps rather too corpulent and in other respects is not an Oberlin or a Tillotson, than at the deeds of heroes whom I shall never know except by hearsay, or at the sublimest abstract of all clerical graces that was ever conceived by an able novelist. And so I come back to Mr. Irwine, with whom I desire you to be in perfect charity, far as he may be from satisfying your demands on the clerical character. Perhaps you think he was not--as he ought to have been--a living demonstration of the benefits attached to a national church? But I am not sure of that; at least I know that the people in Broxton and Hayslope would have been very sorry to part with their clergyman, and that most faces brightened at his approach; and until it can be proved that hatred is a better thing for the soul than love, I must believe that Mr. Irwine's influence in his parish was a more wholesome one than that of the zealous Mr. Ryde, who came there twenty years afterwards, when Mr. Irwine had been gathered to his fathers. It is true, Mr. Ryde insisted strongly on the doctrines of the Reformation, visited his flock a great deal in their own homes, and was severe in rebuking the aberrations of the flesh--put a stop, indeed, to the Christmas rounds of the church singers, as promoting drunkenness and too light a handling of sacred things. But I gathered from Adam Bede, to whom I talked of these matters in his old age, that few clergymen could be less successful in winning the hearts of their parishioners than Mr. Ryde. They learned a great many notions about doctrine from him, so that almost every church-goer under fifty began to distinguish as well between the genuine gospel and what did not come precisely up to that standard, as if he had been born and bred a Dissenter; and for some time after his arrival there seemed to be quite a religious movement in that quiet rural district. "But," said Adam, "I've seen pretty clear, ever since I was a young un, as religion's something else besides notions. It isn't notions sets people doing the right thing--it's feelings. It's the same with the notions in religion as it is with math'matics--a man may be able to work problems straight off in's head as he sits by the fire and smokes his pipe, but if he has to make a machine or a building, he must have a will and a resolution and love something else better than his own ease. Somehow, the congregation began to fall off, and people began to speak light o' Mr. Ryde. I believe he meant right at bottom; but, you see, he was sourish-tempered, and was for beating down prices with the people as worked for him; and his preaching wouldn't go down well with that sauce. And he wanted to be like my lord judge i' the parish, punishing folks for doing wrong; and he scolded 'em from the pulpit as if he'd been a Ranter, and yet he couldn't abide the Dissenters, and was a deal more set against 'em than Mr. Irwine was. And then he didn't keep within his income, for he seemed to think at first go-off that six hundred a-year was to make him as big a man as Mr. Donnithorne. That's a sore mischief I've often seen with the poor curates jumping into a bit of a living all of a sudden. Mr. Ryde was a deal thought on at a distance, I believe, and he wrote books, but as for math'matics and the natur o' things, he was as ignorant as a woman. He was very knowing about doctrines, and used to call 'em the bulwarks of the Reformation; but I've always mistrusted that sort o' learning as leaves folks foolish and unreasonable about business. Now Mester Irwine was as different as could be: as quick!--he understood what you meant in a minute, and he knew all about building, and could see when you'd made a good job. And he behaved as much like a gentleman to the farmers, and th' old women, and the labourers, as he did to the gentry. You never saw HIM interfering and scolding, and trying to play th' emperor. Ah, he was a fine man as ever you set eyes on; and so kind to's mother and sisters. That poor sickly Miss Anne--he seemed to think more of her than of anybody else in the world. There wasn't a soul in the parish had a word to say against him; and his servants stayed with him till they were so old and pottering, he had to hire other folks to do their work." "Well," I said, "that was an excellent way of preaching in the weekdays; but I daresay, if your old friend Mr. Irwine were to come to life again, and get into the pulpit next Sunday, you would be rather ashamed that he didn't preach better after all your praise of him." "Nay, nay," said Adam, broadening his chest and throwing himself back in his chair, as if he were ready to meet all inferences, "nobody has ever heard me say Mr. Irwine was much of a preacher. He didn't go into deep speritial experience; and I know there s a deal in a man's inward life as you can't measure by the square, and say, 'Do this and that 'll follow,' and, 'Do that and this 'll follow.' There's things go on in the soul, and times when feelings come into you like a rushing mighty wind, as the Scripture says, and part your life in two a'most, so you look back on yourself as if you was somebody else. Those are things as you can't bottle up in a 'do this' and 'do that'; and I'll go so far with the strongest Methodist ever you'll find. That shows me there's deep speritial things in religion. You can't make much out wi' talking about it, but you feel it. Mr. Irwine didn't go into those things--he preached short moral sermons, and that was all. But then he acted pretty much up to what he said; he didn't set up for being so different from other folks one day, and then be as like 'em as two peas the next. And he made folks love him and respect him, and that was better nor stirring up their gall wi' being overbusy. Mrs. Poyser used to say--you know she would have her word about everything--she said, Mr. Irwine was like a good meal o' victual, you were the better for him without thinking on it, and Mr. Ryde was like a dose o' physic, he gripped you and worreted you, and after all he left you much the same." "But didn't Mr. Ryde preach a great deal more about that spiritual part of religion that you talk of, Adam? Couldn't you get more out of his sermons than out of Mr. Irwine's?" "Eh, I knowna. He preached a deal about doctrines. But I've seen pretty clear, ever since I was a young un, as religion's something else besides doctrines and notions. I look at it as if the doctrines was like finding names for your feelings, so as you can talk of 'em when you've never known 'em, just as a man may talk o' tools when he knows their names, though he's never so much as seen 'em, still less handled 'em. I've heard a deal o' doctrine i' my time, for I used to go after the Dissenting preachers along wi' Seth, when I was a lad o' seventeen, and got puzzling myself a deal about th' Arminians and the Calvinists. The Wesleyans, you know, are strong Arminians; and Seth, who could never abide anything harsh and was always for hoping the best, held fast by the Wesleyans from the very first; but I thought I could pick a hole or two in their notions, and I got disputing wi' one o' the class leaders down at Treddles'on, and harassed him so, first o' this side and then o' that, till at last he said, 'Young man, it's the devil making use o' your pride and conceit as a weapon to war against the simplicity o' the truth.' I couldn't help laughing then, but as I was going home, I thought the man wasn't far wrong. I began to see as all this weighing and sifting what this text means and that text means, and whether folks are saved all by God's grace, or whether there goes an ounce o' their own will to't, was no part o' real religion at all. You may talk o' these things for hours on end, and you'll only be all the more coxy and conceited for't. So I took to going nowhere but to church, and hearing nobody but Mr. Irwine, for he said nothing but what was good and what you'd be the wiser for remembering. And I found it better for my soul to be humble before the mysteries o' God's dealings, and not be making a clatter about what I could never understand. And they're poor foolish questions after all; for what have we got either inside or outside of us but what comes from God? If we've got a resolution to do right, He gave it us, I reckon, first or last; but I see plain enough we shall never do it without a resolution, and that's enough for me." Adam, you perceive, was a warm admirer, perhaps a partial judge, of Mr. Irwine, as, happily, some of us still are of the people we have known familiarly. Doubtless it will be despised as a weakness by that lofty order of minds who pant after the ideal, and are oppressed by a general sense that their emotions are of too exquisite a character to find fit objects among their everyday fellowmen. I have often been favoured with the confidence of these select natures, and find them to concur in the experience that great men are overestimated and small men are insupportable; that if you would love a woman without ever looking back on your love as a folly, she must die while you are courting her; and if you would maintain the slightest belief in human heroism, you must never make a pilgrimage to see the hero. I confess I have often meanly shrunk from confessing to these accomplished and acute gentlemen what my own experience has been. I am afraid I have often smiled with hypocritical assent, and gratified them with an epigram on the fleeting nature of our illusions, which any one moderately acquainted with French literature can command at a moment's notice. Human converse, I think some wise man has remarked, is not rigidly sincere. But I herewith discharge my conscience, and declare that I have had quite enthusiastic movements of admiration towards old gentlemen who spoke the worst English, who were occasionally fretful in their temper, and who had never moved in a higher sphere of influence than that of parish overseer; and that the way in which I have come to the conclusion that human nature is lovable--the way I have learnt something of its deep pathos, its sublime mysteries--has been by living a great deal among people more or less commonplace and vulgar, of whom you would perhaps hear nothing very surprising if you were to inquire about them in the neighbourhoods where they dwelt. Ten to one most of the small shopkeepers in their vicinity saw nothing at all in them. For I have observed this remarkable coincidence, that the select natures who pant after the ideal, and find nothing in pantaloons or petticoats great enough to command their reverence and love, are curiously in unison with the narrowest and pettiest. For example, I have often heard Mr. Gedge, the landlord of the Royal Oak, who used to turn a bloodshot eye on his neighbours in the village of Shepperton, sum up his opinion of the people in his own parish--and they were all the people he knew--in these emphatic words: "Aye, sir, I've said it often, and I'll say it again, they're a poor lot i' this parish--a poor lot, sir, big and little." I think he had a dim idea that if he could migrate to a distant parish, he might find neighbours worthy of him; and indeed he did subsequently transfer himself to the Saracen's Head, which was doing a thriving business in the back street of a neighbouring market-town. But, oddly enough, he has found the people up that back street of precisely the same stamp as the inhabitants of Shepperton--"a poor lot, sir, big and little, and them as comes for a go o' gin are no better than them as comes for a pint o' twopenny--a poor lot."

Chapter 17

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter17

Book Second Chapter 17: In Which the Story Pauses a Little This chapter is a time out from the plot as Eliot steps in as the author to explain her style of storytelling. She defends the realism of it and eschews being sentimental or using ideal character types. She is writing from "nature" and "fact" , as if she were in a courtroom. She cannot lie or whitewash the details. She reminds us that we must accept the flawed human beings around us, "the real breathing men and women" , for these are the only ones who can be helped and encouraged. She compares her storytelling to Dutch painting, known for its homely and realistic detail. Instead of the beautiful gentry as her subjects, she would rather write about the village wedding with old people, peasants with large noses and vulgar ways. There is family love among them, and beauty of outward form is not as important as the beauty of human sympathy. An example of this kind of beauty is found in Mr. Irwine who did not preach informative sermons on doctrine but was good to his parishioners. She reminds the reader that the events of the story happened sixty years ago, before pastors were overzealous. Mr. Ryde, who succeeded Mr. Irwine, was better known for preaching doctrine, but he was not loved as Mr. Irwine was. She has asked the old Adam Bede about these things, and he has told her that religion is not notions, but the emotion that helps people do the right thing. The author concludes that human nature is lovable as it is; love and heroism as we picture them don't exist as depicted in romances.

Commentary on Chapter 17 Eliot does what modern novelists do not usually do: she interrupts her story to write an essay on her own literary style. Authors who want to comment on their storytelling frequently put the words in the mouth of a character or use some other indirect means. Direct addresses to the reader were more common in nineteenth-century fiction, and in fact, Victorian novelists enjoyed a forum on the novel within their fiction, because they were conscious of shaping their art. Fiction was moving, as Eliot says, away from being an ideal romance with upper or middle class heroes towards greater realism, and Eliot herself was a big contributor to this trend. The lower classes in fiction had usually provided comic relief or were servants in the background of the story rather than in the foreground as main characters. Eliot breaks down the class barriers in fictional subject matter, as Wordsworth had done in poetry a half century before. Eliot is objecting to the mid-century Victorian fiction that was sentimentalized, reinforcing strict moral codes by relying on stereotyped good and bad characters. Eliot introduced a greater concern for the subtle psychological motivation of characters into the novel and in this way, avoided stereotypes. Her characters are like all people who have mixed strengths and weaknesses. A fallen woman like Hetty would not have received much sympathy or understanding in a usual Victorian story. Eliot is interested in tracking the thinking of the servant girl, however, to see how she could have arrived at doing what she did. The shift to the inner life of the characters teaches us about human behavior, which Eliot finds lovable even with the big noses and ignorant ideas. She preaches tolerance, and for this theme, she utilizes a realistic style so readers must face and understand the lives of real people. Real people include not only the lady and gentleman, but farmers, servants, mill workers, old people with rheumatism, people who speak in dialect, the kind of folks that Arthur Donnithorne, for instance, sees as too insignificant to cause him problems. We must include such people in our religion and philosophy, or else it is false.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/18.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_18_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 2.chapter 18

chapter 18

{"name": "Chapter 18", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter18", "summary": "Church The Poyser family prepares for church on Sunday and walk as a family across the fields to Hayslope. The husband and wife gossip about the neighbors on the way, and Mr. Poyser itches to be working, since the day is fine. His wife lectures him about keeping the Sabbath. The children lag behind, playing in the fields, and Hetty is sent to fetch them. She is expecting to see Arthur in church. At the church, people stand gossiping in groups while Mr. Irwine holds burial service for Thais Bede under the white thorn tree. Afterwards, the congregation moves inside for the service. Hetty is so disappointed that Arthur does not show up, she has to hide her tears. Mr. Craig the gardener is staring at her, and she suddenly hates Arthur for not coming. She is not thinking of the service at all, but Adam, who is also watching Hetty, manages to combine his love of her into the spirit of the service. He thinks of how hard he was on his father and regrets his pride that makes him impatient with the weakness of others. He wishes he could forgive more easily. After the service the Poysers offer condolences to the Bedes, and Mr. Poyser invites Adam to the farm sometime to look at a spinning wheel. Mr. Craig explains to the group that Arthur has gone off on a fishing trip, so Hetty knows that Arthur could have come to church but chose not to. The Poysers invite Mr. Craig to come home with them, and the Bedes go their own way.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 18 This chapter serves to give us the Dutch painting of Hayslope that Eliot spoke of in the last chapter. There is much dialogue on farm and church matters that have little to do with the main action, but a feeling of the community is important to the action to come. It is a close knit group of people, with their relatives having resided there for generations. In such a rural scene, every action of every character is calculated minutely, and the smallest action shakes the whole fabric of the valley. It is a slow moving place with rigid thinking, though the people are good-hearted and usually generous to one another. In church, we see Hetty's thinking contrasted to Adam's. She is not aware of anything beyond her own drama of disappointment. Church to her is a trysting place with Arthur. When he doesn't come, her feelings toward him turn to hatred and revenge. This is not a story of true love. Adam, on the other hand, likes to weave his love for Hetty into the religious service, and it makes him repentant towards his father. He is able to see his own faults and weaknesses and wants to improve. This is foreshadowing, for his inability to forgive the mistakes of weaker people will be his challenge."}

"HETTY, Hetty, don't you know church begins at two, and it's gone half after one a'ready? Have you got nothing better to think on this good Sunday as poor old Thias Bede's to be put into the ground, and him drownded i' th' dead o' the night, as it's enough to make one's back run cold, but you must be 'dizening yourself as if there was a wedding i'stid of a funeral?" "Well, Aunt," said Hetty, "I can't be ready so soon as everybody else, when I've got Totty's things to put on. And I'd ever such work to make her stand still." Hetty was coming downstairs, and Mrs. Poyser, in her plain bonnet and shawl, was standing below. If ever a girl looked as if she had been made of roses, that girl was Hetty in her Sunday hat and frock. For her hat was trimmed with pink, and her frock had pink spots, sprinkled on a white ground. There was nothing but pink and white about her, except in her dark hair and eyes and her little buckled shoes. Mrs. Poyser was provoked at herself, for she could hardly keep from smiling, as any mortal is inclined to do at the sight of pretty round things. So she turned without speaking, and joined the group outside the house door, followed by Hetty, whose heart was fluttering so at the thought of some one she expected to see at church that she hardly felt the ground she trod on. And now the little procession set off. Mr. Poyser was in his Sunday suit of drab, with a red-and-green waistcoat and a green watch-ribbon having a large cornelian seal attached, pendant like a plumb-line from that promontory where his watch-pocket was situated; a silk handkerchief of a yellow tone round his neck; and excellent grey ribbed stockings, knitted by Mrs. Poyser's own hand, setting off the proportions of his leg. Mr. Poyser had no reason to be ashamed of his leg, and suspected that the growing abuse of top-boots and other fashions tending to disguise the nether limbs had their origin in a pitiable degeneracy of the human calf. Still less had he reason to be ashamed of his round jolly face, which was good humour itself as he said, "Come, Hetty--come, little uns!" and giving his arm to his wife, led the way through the causeway gate into the yard. The "little uns" addressed were Marty and Tommy, boys of nine and seven, in little fustian tailed coats and knee-breeches, relieved by rosy cheeks and black eyes, looking as much like their father as a very small elephant is like a very large one. Hetty walked between them, and behind came patient Molly, whose task it was to carry Totty through the yard and over all the wet places on the road; for Totty, having speedily recovered from her threatened fever, had insisted on going to church to-day, and especially on wearing her red-and-black necklace outside her tippet. And there were many wet places for her to be carried over this afternoon, for there had been heavy showers in the morning, though now the clouds had rolled off and lay in towering silvery masses on the horizon. You might have known it was Sunday if you had only waked up in the farmyard. The cocks and hens seemed to know it, and made only crooning subdued noises; the very bull-dog looked less savage, as if he would have been satisfied with a smaller bite than usual. The sunshine seemed to call all things to rest and not to labour. It was asleep itself on the moss-grown cow-shed; on the group of white ducks nestling together with their bills tucked under their wings; on the old black sow stretched languidly on the straw, while her largest young one found an excellent spring-bed on his mother's fat ribs; on Alick, the shepherd, in his new smock-frock, taking an uneasy siesta, half-sitting, half-standing on the granary steps. Alick was of opinion that church, like other luxuries, was not to be indulged in often by a foreman who had the weather and the ewes on his mind. "Church! Nay--I'n gotten summat else to think on," was an answer which he often uttered in a tone of bitter significance that silenced further question. I feel sure Alick meant no irreverence; indeed, I know that his mind was not of a speculative, negative cast, and he would on no account have missed going to church on Christmas Day, Easter Sunday, and "Whissuntide." But he had a general impression that public worship and religious ceremonies, like other non-productive employments, were intended for people who had leisure. "There's Father a-standing at the yard-gate," said Martin Poyser. "I reckon he wants to watch us down the field. It's wonderful what sight he has, and him turned seventy-five." "Ah, I often think it's wi' th' old folks as it is wi' the babbies," said Mrs. Poyser; "they're satisfied wi' looking, no matter what they're looking at. It's God A'mighty's way o' quietening 'em, I reckon, afore they go to sleep." Old Martin opened the gate as he saw the family procession approaching, and held it wide open, leaning on his stick--pleased to do this bit of work; for, like all old men whose life has been spent in labour, he liked to feel that he was still useful--that there was a better crop of onions in the garden because he was by at the sowing--and that the cows would be milked the better if he stayed at home on a Sunday afternoon to look on. He always went to church on Sacrament Sundays, but not very regularly at other times; on wet Sundays, or whenever he had a touch of rheumatism, he used to read the three first chapters of Genesis instead. "They'll ha' putten Thias Bede i' the ground afore ye get to the churchyard," he said, as his son came up. "It 'ud ha' been better luck if they'd ha' buried him i' the forenoon when the rain was fallin'; there's no likelihoods of a drop now; an' the moon lies like a boat there, dost see? That's a sure sign o' fair weather--there's a many as is false but that's sure." "Aye, aye," said the son, "I'm in hopes it'll hold up now." "Mind what the parson says, mind what the parson says, my lads," said Grandfather to the black-eyed youngsters in knee-breeches, conscious of a marble or two in their pockets which they looked forward to handling, a little, secretly, during the sermon. "Dood-bye, Dandad," said Totty. "Me doin' to church. Me dot my neklace on. Dive me a peppermint." Grandad, shaking with laughter at this "deep little wench," slowly transferred his stick to his left hand, which held the gate open, and slowly thrust his finger into the waistcoat pocket on which Totty had fixed her eyes with a confident look of expectation. And when they were all gone, the old man leaned on the gate again, watching them across the lane along the Home Close, and through the far gate, till they disappeared behind a bend in the hedge. For the hedgerows in those days shut out one's view, even on the better-managed farms; and this afternoon, the dog-roses were tossing out their pink wreaths, the nightshade was in its yellow and purple glory, the pale honeysuckle grew out of reach, peeping high up out of a holly bush, and over all an ash or a sycamore every now and then threw its shadow across the path. There were acquaintances at other gates who had to move aside and let them pass: at the gate of the Home Close there was half the dairy of cows standing one behind the other, extremely slow to understand that their large bodies might be in the way; at the far gate there was the mare holding her head over the bars, and beside her the liver-coloured foal with its head towards its mother's flank, apparently still much embarrassed by its own straddling existence. The way lay entirely through Mr. Poyser's own fields till they reached the main road leading to the village, and he turned a keen eye on the stock and the crops as they went along, while Mrs. Poyser was ready to supply a running commentary on them all. The woman who manages a dairy has a large share in making the rent, so she may well be allowed to have her opinion on stock and their "keep"--an exercise which strengthens her understanding so much that she finds herself able to give her husband advice on most other subjects. "There's that shorthorned Sally," she said, as they entered the Home Close, and she caught sight of the meek beast that lay chewing the cud and looking at her with a sleepy eye. "I begin to hate the sight o' the cow; and I say now what I said three weeks ago, the sooner we get rid of her the better, for there's that little yallow cow as doesn't give half the milk, and yet I've twice as much butter from her." "Why, thee't not like the women in general," said Mr. Poyser; "they like the shorthorns, as give such a lot o' milk. There's Chowne's wife wants him to buy no other sort." "What's it sinnify what Chowne's wife likes? A poor soft thing, wi' no more head-piece nor a sparrow. She'd take a big cullender to strain her lard wi', and then wonder as the scratchin's run through. I've seen enough of her to know as I'll niver take a servant from her house again--all hugger-mugger--and you'd niver know, when you went in, whether it was Monday or Friday, the wash draggin' on to th' end o' the week; and as for her cheese, I know well enough it rose like a loaf in a tin last year. And then she talks o' the weather bein' i' fault, as there's folks 'ud stand on their heads and then say the fault was i' their boots." "Well, Chowne's been wanting to buy Sally, so we can get rid of her if thee lik'st," said Mr. Poyser, secretly proud of his wife's superior power of putting two and two together; indeed, on recent market-days he had more than once boasted of her discernment in this very matter of shorthorns. "Aye, them as choose a soft for a wife may's well buy up the shorthorns, for if you get your head stuck in a bog, your legs may's well go after it. Eh! Talk o' legs, there's legs for you," Mrs. Poyser continued, as Totty, who had been set down now the road was dry, toddled on in front of her father and mother. "There's shapes! An' she's got such a long foot, she'll be her father's own child." "Aye, she'll be welly such a one as Hetty i' ten years' time, on'y she's got THY coloured eyes. I niver remember a blue eye i' my family; my mother had eyes as black as sloes, just like Hetty's." "The child 'ull be none the worse for having summat as isn't like Hetty. An' I'm none for having her so overpretty. Though for the matter o' that, there's people wi' light hair an' blue eyes as pretty as them wi' black. If Dinah had got a bit o' colour in her cheeks, an' didn't stick that Methodist cap on her head, enough to frighten the cows, folks 'ud think her as pretty as Hetty." "Nay, nay," said Mr. Poyser, with rather a contemptuous emphasis, "thee dostna know the pints of a woman. The men 'ud niver run after Dinah as they would after Hetty." "What care I what the men 'ud run after? It's well seen what choice the most of 'em know how to make, by the poor draggle-tails o' wives you see, like bits o' gauze ribbin, good for nothing when the colour's gone." "Well, well, thee canstna say but what I knowed how to make a choice when I married thee," said Mr. Poyser, who usually settled little conjugal disputes by a compliment of this sort; "and thee wast twice as buxom as Dinah ten year ago." "I niver said as a woman had need to be ugly to make a good missis of a house. There's Chowne's wife ugly enough to turn the milk an' save the rennet, but she'll niver save nothing any other way. But as for Dinah, poor child, she's niver likely to be buxom as long as she'll make her dinner o' cake and water, for the sake o' giving to them as want. She provoked me past bearing sometimes; and, as I told her, she went clean again' the Scriptur', for that says, 'Love your neighbour as yourself'; 'but,' I said, 'if you loved your neighbour no better nor you do yourself, Dinah, it's little enough you'd do for him. You'd be thinking he might do well enough on a half-empty stomach.' Eh, I wonder where she is this blessed Sunday! Sitting by that sick woman, I daresay, as she'd set her heart on going to all of a sudden." "Ah, it was a pity she should take such megrims into her head, when she might ha' stayed wi' us all summer, and eaten twice as much as she wanted, and it 'ud niver ha' been missed. She made no odds in th' house at all, for she sat as still at her sewing as a bird on the nest, and was uncommon nimble at running to fetch anything. If Hetty gets married, theed'st like to ha' Dinah wi' thee constant." "It's no use thinking o' that," said Mrs. Poyser. "You might as well beckon to the flying swallow as ask Dinah to come an' live here comfortable, like other folks. If anything could turn her, I should ha' turned her, for I've talked to her for a hour on end, and scolded her too; for she's my own sister's child, and it behoves me to do what I can for her. But eh, poor thing, as soon as she'd said us 'good-bye' an' got into the cart, an' looked back at me with her pale face, as is welly like her Aunt Judith come back from heaven, I begun to be frightened to think o' the set-downs I'd given her; for it comes over you sometimes as if she'd a way o' knowing the rights o' things more nor other folks have. But I'll niver give in as that's 'cause she's a Methodist, no more nor a white calf's white 'cause it eats out o' the same bucket wi' a black un." "Nay," said Mr. Poyser, with as near an approach to a snarl as his good-nature would allow; "I'm no opinion o' the Methodists. It's on'y tradesfolks as turn Methodists; you nuver knew a farmer bitten wi' them maggots. There's maybe a workman now an' then, as isn't overclever at's work, takes to preachin' an' that, like Seth Bede. But you see Adam, as has got one o' the best head-pieces hereabout, knows better; he's a good Churchman, else I'd never encourage him for a sweetheart for Hetty." "Why, goodness me," said Mrs. Poyser, who had looked back while her husband was speaking, "look where Molly is with them lads! They're the field's length behind us. How COULD you let 'em do so, Hetty? Anybody might as well set a pictur' to watch the children as you. Run back and tell 'em to come on." Mr. and Mrs. Poyser were now at the end of the second field, so they set Totty on the top of one of the large stones forming the true Loamshire stile, and awaited the loiterers Totty observing with complacency, "Dey naughty, naughty boys--me dood." The fact was that this Sunday walk through the fields was fraught with great excitement to Marty and Tommy, who saw a perpetual drama going on in the hedgerows, and could no more refrain from stopping and peeping than if they had been a couple of spaniels or terriers. Marty was quite sure he saw a yellow-hammer on the boughs of the great ash, and while he was peeping, he missed the sight of a white-throated stoat, which had run across the path and was described with much fervour by the junior Tommy. Then there was a little greenfinch, just fledged, fluttering along the ground, and it seemed quite possible to catch it, till it managed to flutter under the blackberry bush. Hetty could not be got to give any heed to these things, so Molly was called on for her ready sympathy, and peeped with open mouth wherever she was told, and said "Lawks!" whenever she was expected to wonder. Molly hastened on with some alarm when Hetty had come back and called to them that her aunt was angry; but Marty ran on first, shouting, "We've found the speckled turkey's nest, Mother!" with the instinctive confidence that people who bring good news are never in fault. "Ah," said Mrs. Poyser, really forgetting all discipline in this pleasant surprise, "that's a good lad; why, where is it?" "Down in ever such a hole, under the hedge. I saw it first, looking after the greenfinch, and she sat on th' nest." "You didn't frighten her, I hope," said the mother, "else she'll forsake it." "No, I went away as still as still, and whispered to Molly--didn't I, Molly?" "Well, well, now come on," said Mrs. Poyser, "and walk before Father and Mother, and take your little sister by the hand. We must go straight on now. Good boys don't look after the birds of a Sunday." "But, Mother," said Marty, "you said you'd give half-a-crown to find the speckled turkey's nest. Mayn't I have the half-crown put into my money-box?" "We'll see about that, my lad, if you walk along now, like a good boy." The father and mother exchanged a significant glance of amusement at their eldest-born's acuteness; but on Tommy's round face there was a cloud. "Mother," he said, half-crying, "Marty's got ever so much more money in his box nor I've got in mine." "Munny, me want half-a-toun in my bots," said Totty. "Hush, hush, hush," said Mrs. Poyser, "did ever anybody hear such naughty children? Nobody shall ever see their money-boxes any more, if they don't make haste and go on to church." This dreadful threat had the desired effect, and through the two remaining fields the three pair of small legs trotted on without any serious interruption, notwithstanding a small pond full of tadpoles, alias "bullheads," which the lads looked at wistfully. The damp hay that must be scattered and turned afresh to-morrow was not a cheering sight to Mr. Poyser, who during hay and corn harvest had often some mental struggles as to the benefits of a day of rest; but no temptation would have induced him to carry on any field-work, however early in the morning, on a Sunday; for had not Michael Holdsworth had a pair of oxen "sweltered" while he was ploughing on Good Friday? That was a demonstration that work on sacred days was a wicked thing; and with wickedness of any sort Martin Poyser was quite clear that he would have nothing to do, since money got by such means would never prosper. "It a'most makes your fingers itch to be at the hay now the sun shines so," he observed, as they passed through the "Big Meadow." "But it's poor foolishness to think o' saving by going against your conscience. There's that Jim Wakefield, as they used to call 'Gentleman Wakefield,' used to do the same of a Sunday as o' weekdays, and took no heed to right or wrong, as if there was nayther God nor devil. An' what's he come to? Why, I saw him myself last market-day a-carrying a basket wi' oranges in't." "Ah, to be sure," said Mrs. Poyser, emphatically, "you make but a poor trap to catch luck if you go and bait it wi' wickedness. The money as is got so's like to burn holes i' your pocket. I'd niver wish us to leave our lads a sixpence but what was got i' the rightful way. And as for the weather, there's One above makes it, and we must put up wi't: it's nothing of a plague to what the wenches are." Notwithstanding the interruption in their walk, the excellent habit which Mrs. Poyser's clock had of taking time by the forelock had secured their arrival at the village while it was still a quarter to two, though almost every one who meant to go to church was already within the churchyard gates. Those who stayed at home were chiefly mothers, like Timothy's Bess, who stood at her own door nursing her baby and feeling as women feel in that position--that nothing else can be expected of them. It was not entirely to see Thias Bede's funeral that the people were standing about the churchyard so long before service began; that was their common practice. The women, indeed, usually entered the church at once, and the farmers' wives talked in an undertone to each other, over the tall pews, about their illnesses and the total failure of doctor's stuff, recommending dandelion-tea, and other home-made specifics, as far preferable--about the servants, and their growing exorbitance as to wages, whereas the quality of their services declined from year to year, and there was no girl nowadays to be trusted any further than you could see her--about the bad price Mr. Dingall, the Treddleston grocer, was giving for butter, and the reasonable doubts that might be held as to his solvency, notwithstanding that Mrs. Dingall was a sensible woman, and they were all sorry for HER, for she had very good kin. Meantime the men lingered outside, and hardly any of them except the singers, who had a humming and fragmentary rehearsal to go through, entered the church until Mr. Irwine was in the desk. They saw no reason for that premature entrance--what could they do in church if they were there before service began?--and they did not conceive that any power in the universe could take it ill of them if they stayed out and talked a little about "bus'ness." Chad Cranage looks like quite a new acquaintance to-day, for he has got his clean Sunday face, which always makes his little granddaughter cry at him as a stranger. But an experienced eye would have fixed on him at once as the village blacksmith, after seeing the humble deference with which the big saucy fellow took off his hat and stroked his hair to the farmers; for Chad was accustomed to say that a working-man must hold a candle to a personage understood to be as black as he was himself on weekdays; by which evil-sounding rule of conduct he meant what was, after all, rather virtuous than otherwise, namely, that men who had horses to be shod must be treated with respect. Chad and the rougher sort of workmen kept aloof from the grave under the white thorn, where the burial was going forward; but Sandy Jim, and several of the farm-labourers, made a group round it, and stood with their hats off, as fellow-mourners with the mother and sons. Others held a midway position, sometimes watching the group at the grave, sometimes listening to the conversation of the farmers, who stood in a knot near the church door, and were now joined by Martin Poyser, while his family passed into the church. On the outside of this knot stood Mr. Casson, the landlord of the Donnithorne Arms, in his most striking attitude--that is to say, with the forefinger of his right hand thrust between the buttons of his waistcoat, his left hand in his breeches pocket, and his head very much on one side; looking, on the whole, like an actor who has only a mono-syllabic part entrusted to him, but feels sure that the audience discern his fitness for the leading business; curiously in contrast with old Jonathan Burge, who held his hands behind him and leaned forward, coughing asthmatically, with an inward scorn of all knowingness that could not be turned into cash. The talk was in rather a lower tone than usual to-day, hushed a little by the sound of Mr. Irwine's voice reading the final prayers of the burial-service. They had all had their word of pity for poor Thias, but now they had got upon the nearer subject of their own grievances against Satchell, the Squire's bailiff, who played the part of steward so far as it was not performed by old Mr. Donnithorne himself, for that gentleman had the meanness to receive his own rents and make bargains about his own timber. This subject of conversation was an additional reason for not being loud, since Satchell himself might presently be walking up the paved road to the church door. And soon they became suddenly silent; for Mr. Irwine's voice had ceased, and the group round the white thorn was dispersing itself towards the church. They all moved aside, and stood with their hats off, while Mr. Irwine passed. Adam and Seth were coming next, with their mother between them; for Joshua Rann officiated as head sexton as well as clerk, and was not yet ready to follow the rector into the vestry. But there was a pause before the three mourners came on: Lisbeth had turned round to look again towards the grave! Ah! There was nothing now but the brown earth under the white thorn. Yet she cried less to-day than she had done any day since her husband's death. Along with all her grief there was mixed an unusual sense of her own importance in having a "burial," and in Mr. Irwine's reading a special service for her husband; and besides, she knew the funeral psalm was going to be sung for him. She felt this counter-excitement to her sorrow still more strongly as she walked with her sons towards the church door, and saw the friendly sympathetic nods of their fellow-parishioners. The mother and sons passed into the church, and one by one the loiterers followed, though some still lingered without; the sight of Mr. Donnithorne's carriage, which was winding slowly up the hill, perhaps helping to make them feel that there was no need for haste. But presently the sound of the bassoon and the key-bugles burst forth; the evening hymn, which always opened the service, had begun, and every one must now enter and take his place. I cannot say that the interior of Hayslope Church was remarkable for anything except for the grey age of its oaken pews--great square pews mostly, ranged on each side of a narrow aisle. It was free, indeed, from the modern blemish of galleries. The choir had two narrow pews to themselves in the middle of the right-hand row, so that it was a short process for Joshua Rann to take his place among them as principal bass, and return to his desk after the singing was over. The pulpit and desk, grey and old as the pews, stood on one side of the arch leading into the chancel, which also had its grey square pews for Mr. Donnithorne's family and servants. Yet I assure you these grey pews, with the buff-washed walls, gave a very pleasing tone to this shabby interior, and agreed extremely well with the ruddy faces and bright waistcoats. And there were liberal touches of crimson toward the chancel, for the pulpit and Mr. Donnithorne's own pew had handsome crimson cloth cushions; and, to close the vista, there was a crimson altar-cloth, embroidered with golden rays by Miss Lydia's own hand. But even without the crimson cloth, the effect must have been warm and cheering when Mr. Irwine was in the desk, looking benignly round on that simple congregation--on the hardy old men, with bent knees and shoulders, perhaps, but with vigour left for much hedge-clipping and thatching; on the tall stalwart frames and roughly cut bronzed faces of the stone-cutters and carpenters; on the half-dozen well-to-do farmers, with their apple-cheeked families; and on the clean old women, mostly farm-labourers' wives, with their bit of snow-white cap-border under their black bonnets, and with their withered arms, bare from the elbow, folded passively over their chests. For none of the old people held books--why should they? Not one of them could read. But they knew a few "good words" by heart, and their withered lips now and then moved silently, following the service without any very clear comprehension indeed, but with a simple faith in its efficacy to ward off harm and bring blessing. And now all faces were visible, for all were standing up--the little children on the seats peeping over the edge of the grey pews, while good Bishop Ken's evening hymn was being sung to one of those lively psalm-tunes which died out with the last generation of rectors and choral parish clerks. Melodies die out, like the pipe of Pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them. Adam was not in his usual place among the singers to-day, for he sat with his mother and Seth, and he noticed with surprise that Bartle Massey was absent too--all the more agreeable for Mr. Joshua Rann, who gave out his bass notes with unusual complacency and threw an extra ray of severity into the glances he sent over his spectacles at the recusant Will Maskery. I beseech you to imagine Mr. Irwine looking round on this scene, in his ample white surplice that became him so well, with his powdered hair thrown back, his rich brown complexion, and his finely cut nostril and upper lip; for there was a certain virtue in that benignant yet keen countenance as there is in all human faces from which a generous soul beams out. And over all streamed the delicious June sunshine through the old windows, with their desultory patches of yellow, red, and blue, that threw pleasant touches of colour on the opposite wall. I think, as Mr. Irwine looked round to-day, his eyes rested an instant longer than usual on the square pew occupied by Martin Poyser and his family. And there was another pair of dark eyes that found it impossible not to wander thither, and rest on that round pink-and-white figure. But Hetty was at that moment quite careless of any glances--she was absorbed in the thought that Arthur Donnithorne would soon be coming into church, for the carriage must surely be at the church-gate by this time. She had never seen him since she parted with him in the wood on Thursday evening, and oh, how long the time had seemed! Things had gone on just the same as ever since that evening; the wonders that had happened then had brought no changes after them; they were already like a dream. When she heard the church door swinging, her heart beat so, she dared not look up. She felt that her aunt was curtsying; she curtsied herself. That must be old Mr. Donnithorne--he always came first, the wrinkled small old man, peering round with short-sighted glances at the bowing and curtsying congregation; then she knew Miss Lydia was passing, and though Hetty liked so much to look at her fashionable little coal-scuttle bonnet, with the wreath of small roses round it, she didn't mind it to-day. But there were no more curtsies--no, he was not come; she felt sure there was nothing else passing the pew door but the house-keeper's black bonnet and the lady's maid's beautiful straw hat that had once been Miss Lydia's, and then the powdered heads of the butler and footman. No, he was not there; yet she would look now--she might be mistaken--for, after all, she had not looked. So she lifted up her eyelids and glanced timidly at the cushioned pew in the chancel--there was no one but old Mr. Donnithorne rubbing his spectacles with his white handkerchief, and Miss Lydia opening the large gilt-edged prayer-book. The chill disappointment was too hard to bear. She felt herself turning pale, her lips trembling; she was ready to cry. Oh, what SHOULD she do? Everybody would know the reason; they would know she was crying because Arthur was not there. And Mr. Craig, with the wonderful hothouse plant in his button-hole, was staring at her, she knew. It was dreadfully long before the General Confession began, so that she could kneel down. Two great drops WOULD fall then, but no one saw them except good-natured Molly, for her aunt and uncle knelt with their backs towards her. Molly, unable to imagine any cause for tears in church except faintness, of which she had a vague traditional knowledge, drew out of her pocket a queer little flat blue smelling-bottle, and after much labour in pulling the cork out, thrust the narrow neck against Hetty's nostrils. "It donna smell," she whispered, thinking this was a great advantage which old salts had over fresh ones: they did you good without biting your nose. Hetty pushed it away peevishly; but this little flash of temper did what the salts could not have done--it roused her to wipe away the traces of her tears, and try with all her might not to shed any more. Hetty had a certain strength in her vain little nature: she would have borne anything rather than be laughed at, or pointed at with any other feeling than admiration; she would have pressed her own nails into her tender flesh rather than people should know a secret she did not want them to know. What fluctuations there were in her busy thoughts and feelings, while Mr. Irwine was pronouncing the solemn "Absolution" in her deaf ears, and through all the tones of petition that followed! Anger lay very close to disappointment, and soon won the victory over the conjectures her small ingenuity could devise to account for Arthur's absence on the supposition that he really wanted to come, really wanted to see her again. And by the time she rose from her knees mechanically, because all the rest were rising, the colour had returned to her cheeks even with a heightened glow, for she was framing little indignant speeches to herself, saying she hated Arthur for giving her this pain--she would like him to suffer too. Yet while this selfish tumult was going on in her soul, her eyes were bent down on her prayer-book, and the eyelids with their dark fringe looked as lovely as ever. Adam Bede thought so, as he glanced at her for a moment on rising from his knees. But Adam's thoughts of Hetty did not deafen him to the service; they rather blended with all the other deep feelings for which the church service was a channel to him this afternoon, as a certain consciousness of our entire past and our imagined future blends itself with all our moments of keen sensibility. And to Adam the church service was the best channel he could have found for his mingled regret, yearning, and resignation; its interchange of beseeching cries for help with outbursts of faith and praise, its recurrent responses and the familiar rhythm of its collects, seemed to speak for him as no other form of worship could have done; as, to those early Christians who had worshipped from their childhood upwards in catacombs, the torch-light and shadows must have seemed nearer the Divine presence than the heathenish daylight of the streets. The secret of our emotions never lies in the bare object, but in its subtle relations to our own past: no wonder the secret escapes the unsympathizing observer, who might as well put on his spectacles to discern odours. But there was one reason why even a chance comer would have found the service in Hayslope Church more impressive than in most other village nooks in the kingdom--a reason of which I am sure you have not the slightest suspicion. It was the reading of our friend Joshua Rann. Where that good shoemaker got his notion of reading from remained a mystery even to his most intimate acquaintances. I believe, after all, he got it chiefly from Nature, who had poured some of her music into this honest conceited soul, as she had been known to do into other narrow souls before his. She had given him, at least, a fine bass voice and a musical ear; but I cannot positively say whether these alone had sufficed to inspire him with the rich chant in which he delivered the responses. The way he rolled from a rich deep forte into a melancholy cadence, subsiding, at the end of the last word, into a sort of faint resonance, like the lingering vibrations of a fine violoncello, I can compare to nothing for its strong calm melancholy but the rush and cadence of the wind among the autumn boughs. This may seem a strange mode of speaking about the reading of a parish clerk--a man in rusty spectacles, with stubbly hair, a large occiput, and a prominent crown. But that is Nature's way: she will allow a gentleman of splendid physiognomy and poetic aspirations to sing woefully out of tune, and not give him the slightest hint of it; and takes care that some narrow-browed fellow, trolling a ballad in the corner of a pot-house, shall be as true to his intervals as a bird. Joshua himself was less proud of his reading than of his singing, and it was always with a sense of heightened importance that he passed from the desk to the choir. Still more to-day: it was a special occasion, for an old man, familiar to all the parish, had died a sad death--not in his bed, a circumstance the most painful to the mind of the peasant--and now the funeral psalm was to be sung in memory of his sudden departure. Moreover, Bartle Massey was not at church, and Joshua's importance in the choir suffered no eclipse. It was a solemn minor strain they sang. The old psalm-tunes have many a wail among them, and the words-- Thou sweep'st us off as with a flood; We vanish hence like dreams-- seemed to have a closer application than usual in the death of poor Thias. The mother and sons listened, each with peculiar feelings. Lisbeth had a vague belief that the psalm was doing her husband good; it was part of that decent burial which she would have thought it a greater wrong to withhold from him than to have caused him many unhappy days while he was living. The more there was said about her husband, the more there was done for him, surely the safer he would be. It was poor Lisbeth's blind way of feeling that human love and pity are a ground of faith in some other love. Seth, who was easily touched, shed tears, and tried to recall, as he had done continually since his father's death, all that he had heard of the possibility that a single moment of consciousness at the last might be a moment of pardon and reconcilement; for was it not written in the very psalm they were singing that the Divine dealings were not measured and circumscribed by time? Adam had never been unable to join in a psalm before. He had known plenty of trouble and vexation since he had been a lad, but this was the first sorrow that had hemmed in his voice, and strangely enough it was sorrow because the chief source of his past trouble and vexation was for ever gone out of his reach. He had not been able to press his father's hand before their parting, and say, "Father, you know it was all right between us; I never forgot what I owed you when I was a lad; you forgive me if I have been too hot and hasty now and then!" Adam thought but little to-day of the hard work and the earnings he had spent on his father: his thoughts ran constantly on what the old man's feelings had been in moments of humiliation, when he had held down his head before the rebukes of his son. When our indignation is borne in submissive silence, we are apt to feel twinges of doubt afterwards as to our own generosity, if not justice; how much more when the object of our anger has gone into everlasting silence, and we have seen his face for the last time in the meekness of death! "Ah! I was always too hard," Adam said to himself. "It's a sore fault in me as I'm so hot and out o' patience with people when they do wrong, and my heart gets shut up against 'em, so as I can't bring myself to forgive 'em. I see clear enough there's more pride nor love in my soul, for I could sooner make a thousand strokes with th' hammer for my father than bring myself to say a kind word to him. And there went plenty o' pride and temper to the strokes, as the devil WILL be having his finger in what we call our duties as well as our sins. Mayhap the best thing I ever did in my life was only doing what was easiest for myself. It's allays been easier for me to work nor to sit still, but the real tough job for me 'ud be to master my own will and temper and go right against my own pride. It seems to me now, if I was to find Father at home to-night, I should behave different; but there's no knowing--perhaps nothing 'ud be a lesson to us if it didn't come too late. It's well we should feel as life's a reckoning we can't make twice over; there's no real making amends in this world, any more nor you can mend a wrong subtraction by doing your addition right." This was the key-note to which Adam's thoughts had perpetually returned since his father's death, and the solemn wail of the funeral psalm was only an influence that brought back the old thoughts with stronger emphasis. So was the sermon, which Mr. Irwine had chosen with reference to Thias's funeral. It spoke briefly and simply of the words, "In the midst of life we are in death"--how the present moment is all we can call our own for works of mercy, of righteous dealing, and of family tenderness. All very old truths--but what we thought the oldest truth becomes the most startling to us in the week when we have looked on the dead face of one who has made a part of our own lives. For when men want to impress us with the effect of a new and wonderfully vivid light, do they not let it fall on the most familiar objects, that we may measure its intensity by remembering the former dimness? Then came the moment of the final blessing, when the forever sublime words, "The peace of God, which passeth all understanding," seemed to blend with the calm afternoon sunshine that fell on the bowed heads of the congregation; and then the quiet rising, the mothers tying on the bonnets of the little maidens who had slept through the sermon, the fathers collecting the prayer-books, until all streamed out through the old archway into the green churchyard and began their neighbourly talk, their simple civilities, and their invitations to tea; for on a Sunday every one was ready to receive a guest--it was the day when all must be in their best clothes and their best humour. Mr. and Mrs. Poyser paused a minute at the church gate: they were waiting for Adam to come up, not being contented to go away without saying a kind word to the widow and her sons. "Well, Mrs. Bede," said Mrs. Poyser, as they walked on together, "you must keep up your heart; husbands and wives must be content when they've lived to rear their children and see one another's hair grey." "Aye, aye," said Mr. Poyser; "they wonna have long to wait for one another then, anyhow. And ye've got two o' the strapping'st sons i' th' country; and well you may, for I remember poor Thias as fine a broad-shouldered fellow as need to be; and as for you, Mrs. Bede, why you're straighter i' the back nor half the young women now." "Eh," said Lisbeth, "it's poor luck for the platter to wear well when it's broke i' two. The sooner I'm laid under the thorn the better. I'm no good to nobody now." Adam never took notice of his mother's little unjust plaints; but Seth said, "Nay, Mother, thee mustna say so. Thy sons 'ull never get another mother." "That's true, lad, that's true," said Mr. Poyser; "and it's wrong on us to give way to grief, Mrs. Bede; for it's like the children cryin' when the fathers and mothers take things from 'em. There's One above knows better nor us." "Ah," said Mrs. Poyser, "an' it's poor work allays settin' the dead above the livin'. We shall all on us be dead some time, I reckon--it 'ud be better if folks 'ud make much on us beforehand, i'stid o' beginnin' when we're gone. It's but little good you'll do a-watering the last year's crop." "Well, Adam," said Mr. Poyser, feeling that his wife's words were, as usual, rather incisive than soothing, and that it would be well to change the subject, "you'll come and see us again now, I hope. I hanna had a talk with you this long while, and the missis here wants you to see what can be done with her best spinning-wheel, for it's got broke, and it'll be a nice job to mend it--there'll want a bit o' turning. You'll come as soon as you can now, will you?" Mr. Poyser paused and looked round while he was speaking, as if to see where Hetty was; for the children were running on before. Hetty was not without a companion, and she had, besides, more pink and white about her than ever, for she held in her hand the wonderful pink-and-white hot-house plant, with a very long name--a Scotch name, she supposed, since people said Mr. Craig the gardener was Scotch. Adam took the opportunity of looking round too; and I am sure you will not require of him that he should feel any vexation in observing a pouting expression on Hetty's face as she listened to the gardener's small talk. Yet in her secret heart she was glad to have him by her side, for she would perhaps learn from him how it was Arthur had not come to church. Not that she cared to ask him the question, but she hoped the information would be given spontaneously; for Mr. Craig, like a superior man, was very fond of giving information. Mr. Craig was never aware that his conversation and advances were received coldly, for to shift one's point of view beyond certain limits is impossible to the most liberal and expansive mind; we are none of us aware of the impression we produce on Brazilian monkeys of feeble understanding--it is possible they see hardly anything in us. Moreover, Mr. Craig was a man of sober passions, and was already in his tenth year of hesitation as to the relative advantages of matrimony and bachelorhood. It is true that, now and then, when he had been a little heated by an extra glass of grog, he had been heard to say of Hetty that the "lass was well enough," and that "a man might do worse"; but on convivial occasions men are apt to express themselves strongly. Martin Poyser held Mr. Craig in honour, as a man who "knew his business" and who had great lights concerning soils and compost; but he was less of a favourite with Mrs. Poyser, who had more than once said in confidence to her husband, "You're mighty fond o' Craig, but for my part, I think he's welly like a cock as thinks the sun's rose o' purpose to hear him crow." For the rest, Mr. Craig was an estimable gardener, and was not without reasons for having a high opinion of himself. He had also high shoulders and high cheek-bones and hung his head forward a little, as he walked along with his hands in his breeches pockets. I think it was his pedigree only that had the advantage of being Scotch, and not his "bringing up"; for except that he had a stronger burr in his accent, his speech differed little from that of the Loamshire people about him. But a gardener is Scotch, as a French teacher is Parisian. "Well, Mr. Poyser," he said, before the good slow farmer had time to speak, "ye'll not be carrying your hay to-morrow, I'm thinking. The glass sticks at 'change,' and ye may rely upo' my word as we'll ha' more downfall afore twenty-four hours is past. Ye see that darkish-blue cloud there upo' the 'rizon--ye know what I mean by the 'rizon, where the land and sky seems to meet?" "Aye, aye, I see the cloud," said Mr. Poyser, "'rizon or no 'rizon. It's right o'er Mike Holdsworth's fallow, and a foul fallow it is." "Well, you mark my words, as that cloud 'ull spread o'er the sky pretty nigh as quick as you'd spread a tarpaulin over one o' your hay-ricks. It's a great thing to ha' studied the look o' the clouds. Lord bless you! Th' met'orological almanecks can learn me nothing, but there's a pretty sight o' things I could let THEM up to, if they'd just come to me. And how are you, Mrs. Poyser?--thinking o' getherin' the red currants soon, I reckon. You'd a deal better gether 'em afore they're o'erripe, wi' such weather as we've got to look forward to. How do ye do, Mistress Bede?" Mr. Craig continued, without a pause, nodding by the way to Adam and Seth. "I hope y' enjoyed them spinach and gooseberries as I sent Chester with th' other day. If ye want vegetables while ye're in trouble, ye know where to come to. It's well known I'm not giving other folks' things away, for when I've supplied the house, the garden's my own spekilation, and it isna every man th' old squire could get as 'ud be equil to the undertaking, let alone asking whether he'd be willing I've got to run my calkilation fine, I can tell you, to make sure o' getting back the money as I pay the squire. I should like to see some o' them fellows as make the almanecks looking as far before their noses as I've got to do every year as comes." "They look pretty fur, though," said Mr. Poyser, turning his head on one side and speaking in rather a subdued reverential tone. "Why, what could come truer nor that pictur o' the cock wi' the big spurs, as has got its head knocked down wi' th' anchor, an' th' firin', an' the ships behind? Why, that pictur was made afore Christmas, and yit it's come as true as th' Bible. Why, th' cock's France, an' th' anchor's Nelson--an' they told us that beforehand." "Pee--ee-eh!" said Mr. Craig. "A man doesna want to see fur to know as th' English 'ull beat the French. Why, I know upo' good authority as it's a big Frenchman as reaches five foot high, an' they live upo' spoon-meat mostly. I knew a man as his father had a particular knowledge o' the French. I should like to know what them grasshoppers are to do against such fine fellows as our young Captain Arthur. Why, it 'ud astonish a Frenchman only to look at him; his arm's thicker nor a Frenchman's body, I'll be bound, for they pinch theirsells in wi' stays; and it's easy enough, for they've got nothing i' their insides." "Where IS the captain, as he wasna at church to-day?" said Adam. "I was talking to him o' Friday, and he said nothing about his going away." "Oh, he's only gone to Eagledale for a bit o' fishing; I reckon he'll be back again afore many days are o'er, for he's to be at all th' arranging and preparing o' things for the comin' o' age o' the 30th o' July. But he's fond o' getting away for a bit, now and then. Him and th' old squire fit one another like frost and flowers." Mr. Craig smiled and winked slowly as he made this last observation, but the subject was not developed farther, for now they had reached the turning in the road where Adam and his companions must say "good-bye." The gardener, too, would have had to turn off in the same direction if he had not accepted Mr. Poyser's invitation to tea. Mrs. Poyser duly seconded the invitation, for she would have held it a deep disgrace not to make her neighbours welcome to her house: personal likes and dislikes must not interfere with that sacred custom. Moreover, Mr. Craig had always been full of civilities to the family at the Hall Farm, and Mrs. Poyser was scrupulous in declaring that she had "nothing to say again' him, on'y it was a pity he couldna be hatched o'er again, an' hatched different." So Adam and Seth, with their mother between them, wound their way down to the valley and up again to the old house, where a saddened memory had taken the place of a long, long anxiety--where Adam would never have to ask again as he entered, "Where's Father?" And the other family party, with Mr. Craig for company, went back to the pleasant bright house-place at the Hall Farm--all with quiet minds, except Hetty, who knew now where Arthur was gone, but was only the more puzzled and uneasy. For it appeared that his absence was quite voluntary; he need not have gone--he would not have gone if he had wanted to see her. She had a sickening sense that no lot could ever be pleasant to her again if her Thursday night's vision was not to be fulfilled; and in this moment of chill, bare, wintry disappointment and doubt, she looked towards the possibility of being with Arthur again, of meeting his loving glance, and hearing his soft words with that eager yearning which one may call the "growing pain" of passion.

Chapter 18

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter18

Church The Poyser family prepares for church on Sunday and walk as a family across the fields to Hayslope. The husband and wife gossip about the neighbors on the way, and Mr. Poyser itches to be working, since the day is fine. His wife lectures him about keeping the Sabbath. The children lag behind, playing in the fields, and Hetty is sent to fetch them. She is expecting to see Arthur in church. At the church, people stand gossiping in groups while Mr. Irwine holds burial service for Thais Bede under the white thorn tree. Afterwards, the congregation moves inside for the service. Hetty is so disappointed that Arthur does not show up, she has to hide her tears. Mr. Craig the gardener is staring at her, and she suddenly hates Arthur for not coming. She is not thinking of the service at all, but Adam, who is also watching Hetty, manages to combine his love of her into the spirit of the service. He thinks of how hard he was on his father and regrets his pride that makes him impatient with the weakness of others. He wishes he could forgive more easily. After the service the Poysers offer condolences to the Bedes, and Mr. Poyser invites Adam to the farm sometime to look at a spinning wheel. Mr. Craig explains to the group that Arthur has gone off on a fishing trip, so Hetty knows that Arthur could have come to church but chose not to. The Poysers invite Mr. Craig to come home with them, and the Bedes go their own way.

Commentary on Chapter 18 This chapter serves to give us the Dutch painting of Hayslope that Eliot spoke of in the last chapter. There is much dialogue on farm and church matters that have little to do with the main action, but a feeling of the community is important to the action to come. It is a close knit group of people, with their relatives having resided there for generations. In such a rural scene, every action of every character is calculated minutely, and the smallest action shakes the whole fabric of the valley. It is a slow moving place with rigid thinking, though the people are good-hearted and usually generous to one another. In church, we see Hetty's thinking contrasted to Adam's. She is not aware of anything beyond her own drama of disappointment. Church to her is a trysting place with Arthur. When he doesn't come, her feelings toward him turn to hatred and revenge. This is not a story of true love. Adam, on the other hand, likes to weave his love for Hetty into the religious service, and it makes him repentant towards his father. He is able to see his own faults and weaknesses and wants to improve. This is foreshadowing, for his inability to forgive the mistakes of weaker people will be his challenge.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/19.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_19_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 2.chapter 19

chapter 19

{"name": "Chapter 19", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter19", "summary": "Adam on a Working Day Adam walks the next day to a job three miles away and thinks about his future. It looks more hopeful with his father gone. He thinks about Hetty and how he will be able to marry in another year or so by saving his money. He is strong and confident about himself but doesn't know if Hetty loves him. He decides to visit the Hall Farm to see her. He knows that his mother will continue to be a problem if he marries Hetty, but he decides he has to assert his will to her. He does not want a partnership with Jonathan Burge, for that involves the assumption he will marry Mary Burge. He thinks of going into a business of furniture making with his brother to earn extra money. At work, Adam is strong and happily whistling, for he loves his work and loves to do a good job. He has gone out of his way to study at night school with Bartle Massey the teacher, for Adam is not an average man.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 19 Again Eliot brings up the strengths of the working classes, pointing out their virtues. Most of the rural people are shown to be healthy and clean, hard-working, thrifty, and generous to their neighbors. The Donnithornes and Irwines are the only upper class characters in the story. Though Mr. Irwine is described as fresh and beneficent, the other upper class characters are generally not healthy except for Arthur who gets outdoor exercise. The maiden ladies, Lydia Donnithorne and Anne Irwine, for instance, are thin and sickly, and Squire Donnithorne is shriveled. The farm poor are also contrasted to the industrial poor at Snowfield. Eliot may be showing a realistic picture of the country as she remembered from her girlhood but she also romanticizes what was the last remnant of rural society before the industrial age. The peasant stock who lived in harmony with the land had a strength and self-sufficiency that mill workers did not."}

NOTWITHSTANDING Mr. Craig's prophecy, the dark-blue cloud dispersed itself without having produced the threatened consequences. "The weather"--as he observed the next morning--"the weather, you see, 's a ticklish thing, an' a fool 'ull hit on't sometimes when a wise man misses; that's why the almanecks get so much credit. It's one o' them chancy things as fools thrive on." This unreasonable behaviour of the weather, however, could displease no one else in Hayslope besides Mr. Craig. All hands were to be out in the meadows this morning as soon as the dew had risen; the wives and daughters did double work in every farmhouse, that the maids might give their help in tossing the hay; and when Adam was marching along the lanes, with his basket of tools over his shoulder, he caught the sound of jocose talk and ringing laughter from behind the hedges. The jocose talk of hay-makers is best at a distance; like those clumsy bells round the cows' necks, it has rather a coarse sound when it comes close, and may even grate on your ears painfully; but heard from far off, it mingles very prettily with the other joyous sounds of nature. Men's muscles move better when their souls are making merry music, though their merriment is of a poor blundering sort, not at all like the merriment of birds. And perhaps there is no time in a summer's day more cheering than when the warmth of the sun is just beginning to triumph over the freshness of the morning--when there is just a lingering hint of early coolness to keep off languor under the delicious influence of warmth. The reason Adam was walking along the lanes at this time was because his work for the rest of the day lay at a country-house about three miles off, which was being put in repair for the son of a neighbouring squire; and he had been busy since early morning with the packing of panels, doors, and chimney-pieces, in a waggon which was now gone on before him, while Jonathan Burge himself had ridden to the spot on horseback, to await its arrival and direct the workmen. This little walk was a rest to Adam, and he was unconsciously under the charm of the moment. It was summer morning in his heart, and he saw Hetty in the sunshine--a sunshine without glare, with slanting rays that tremble between the delicate shadows of the leaves. He thought, yesterday when he put out his hand to her as they came out of church, that there was a touch of melancholy kindness in her face, such as he had not seen before, and he took it as a sign that she had some sympathy with his family trouble. Poor fellow! That touch of melancholy came from quite another source, but how was he to know? We look at the one little woman's face we love as we look at the face of our mother earth, and see all sorts of answers to our own yearnings. It was impossible for Adam not to feel that what had happened in the last week had brought the prospect of marriage nearer to him. Hitherto he had felt keenly the danger that some other man might step in and get possession of Hetty's heart and hand, while he himself was still in a position that made him shrink from asking her to accept him. Even if he had had a strong hope that she was fond of him--and his hope was far from being strong--he had been too heavily burdened with other claims to provide a home for himself and Hetty--a home such as he could expect her to be content with after the comfort and plenty of the Farm. Like all strong natures, Adam had confidence in his ability to achieve something in the future; he felt sure he should some day, if he lived, be able to maintain a family and make a good broad path for himself; but he had too cool a head not to estimate to the full the obstacles that were to be overcome. And the time would be so long! And there was Hetty, like a bright-cheeked apple hanging over the orchard wall, within sight of everybody, and everybody must long for her! To be sure, if she loved him very much, she would be content to wait for him: but DID she love him? His hopes had never risen so high that he had dared to ask her. He was clear-sighted enough to be aware that her uncle and aunt would have looked kindly on his suit, and indeed, without this encouragement he would never have persevered in going to the Farm; but it was impossible to come to any but fluctuating conclusions about Hetty's feelings. She was like a kitten, and had the same distractingly pretty looks, that meant nothing, for everybody that came near her. But now he could not help saying to himself that the heaviest part of his burden was removed, and that even before the end of another year his circumstances might be brought into a shape that would allow him to think of marrying. It would always be a hard struggle with his mother, he knew: she would be jealous of any wife he might choose, and she had set her mind especially against Hetty--perhaps for no other reason than that she suspected Hetty to be the woman he HAD chosen. It would never do, he feared, for his mother to live in the same house with him when he was married; and yet how hard she would think it if he asked her to leave him! Yes, there was a great deal of pain to be gone through with his mother, but it was a case in which he must make her feel that his will was strong--it would be better for her in the end. For himself, he would have liked that they should all live together till Seth was married, and they might have built a bit themselves to the old house, and made more room. He did not like "to part wi' th' lad": they had hardly ever been separated for more than a day since they were born. But Adam had no sooner caught his imagination leaping forward in this way--making arrangements for an uncertain future--than he checked himself. "A pretty building I'm making, without either bricks or timber. I'm up i' the garret a'ready, and haven't so much as dug the foundation." Whenever Adam was strongly convinced of any proposition, it took the form of a principle in his mind: it was knowledge to be acted on, as much as the knowledge that damp will cause rust. Perhaps here lay the secret of the hardness he had accused himself of: he had too little fellow-feeling with the weakness that errs in spite of foreseen consequences. Without this fellow-feeling, how are we to get enough patience and charity towards our stumbling, falling companions in the long and changeful journey? And there is but one way in which a strong determined soul can learn it--by getting his heart-strings bound round the weak and erring, so that he must share not only the outward consequence of their error, but their inward suffering. That is a long and hard lesson, and Adam had at present only learned the alphabet of it in his father's sudden death, which, by annihilating in an instant all that had stimulated his indignation, had sent a sudden rush of thought and memory over what had claimed his pity and tenderness. But it was Adam's strength, not its correlative hardness, that influenced his meditations this morning. He had long made up his mind that it would be wrong as well as foolish for him to marry a blooming young girl, so long as he had no other prospect than that of growing poverty with a growing family. And his savings had been so constantly drawn upon (besides the terrible sweep of paying for Seth's substitute in the militia) that he had not enough money beforehand to furnish even a small cottage, and keep something in reserve against a rainy day. He had good hope that he should be "firmer on his legs" by and by; but he could not be satisfied with a vague confidence in his arm and brain; he must have definite plans, and set about them at once. The partnership with Jonathan Burge was not to be thought of at present--there were things implicitly tacked to it that he could not accept; but Adam thought that he and Seth might carry on a little business for themselves in addition to their journeyman's work, by buying a small stock of superior wood and making articles of household furniture, for which Adam had no end of contrivances. Seth might gain more by working at separate jobs under Adam's direction than by his journeyman's work, and Adam, in his overhours, could do all the "nice" work that required peculiar skill. The money gained in this way, with the good wages he received as foreman, would soon enable them to get beforehand with the world, so sparingly as they would all live now. No sooner had this little plan shaped itself in his mind than he began to be busy with exact calculations about the wood to be bought and the particular article of furniture that should be undertaken first--a kitchen cupboard of his own contrivance, with such an ingenious arrangement of sliding-doors and bolts, such convenient nooks for stowing household provender, and such a symmetrical result to the eye, that every good housewife would be in raptures with it, and fall through all the gradations of melancholy longing till her husband promised to buy it for her. Adam pictured to himself Mrs. Poyser examining it with her keen eye and trying in vain to find out a deficiency; and, of course, close to Mrs. Poyser stood Hetty, and Adam was again beguiled from calculations and contrivances into dreams and hopes. Yes, he would go and see her this evening--it was so long since he had been at the Hall Farm. He would have liked to go to the night-school, to see why Bartle Massey had not been at church yesterday, for he feared his old friend was ill; but, unless he could manage both visits, this last must be put off till to-morrow--the desire to be near Hetty and to speak to her again was too strong. As he made up his mind to this, he was coming very near to the end of his walk, within the sound of the hammers at work on the refitting of the old house. The sound of tools to a clever workman who loves his work is like the tentative sounds of the orchestra to the violinist who has to bear his part in the overture: the strong fibres begin their accustomed thrill, and what was a moment before joy, vexation, or ambition, begins its change into energy. All passion becomes strength when it has an outlet from the narrow limits of our personal lot in the labour of our right arm, the cunning of our right hand, or the still, creative activity of our thought. Look at Adam through the rest of the day, as he stands on the scaffolding with the two-feet ruler in his hand, whistling low while he considers how a difficulty about a floor-joist or a window-frame is to be overcome; or as he pushes one of the younger workmen aside and takes his place in upheaving a weight of timber, saying, "Let alone, lad! Thee'st got too much gristle i' thy bones yet"; or as he fixes his keen black eyes on the motions of a workman on the other side of the room and warns him that his distances are not right. Look at this broad-shouldered man with the bare muscular arms, and the thick, firm, black hair tossed about like trodden meadow-grass whenever he takes off his paper cap, and with the strong barytone voice bursting every now and then into loud and solemn psalm-tunes, as if seeking an outlet for superfluous strength, yet presently checking himself, apparently crossed by some thought which jars with the singing. Perhaps, if you had not been already in the secret, you might not have guessed what sad memories what warm affection, what tender fluttering hopes, had their home in this athletic body with the broken finger-nails--in this rough man, who knew no better lyrics than he could find in the Old and New Version and an occasional hymn; who knew the smallest possible amount of profane history; and for whom the motion and shape of the earth, the course of the sun, and the changes of the seasons lay in the region of mystery just made visible by fragmentary knowledge. It had cost Adam a great deal of trouble and work in overhours to know what he knew over and above the secrets of his handicraft, and that acquaintance with mechanics and figures, and the nature of the materials he worked with, which was made easy to him by inborn inherited faculty--to get the mastery of his pen, and write a plain hand, to spell without any other mistakes than must in fairness be attributed to the unreasonable character of orthography rather than to any deficiency in the speller, and, moreover, to learn his musical notes and part-singing. Besides all this, he had read his Bible, including the apocryphal books; Poor Richard's Almanac, Taylor's Holy Living and Dying, The Pilgrim's Progress, with Bunyan's Life and Holy War, a great deal of Bailey's Dictionary, Valentine and Orson, and part of a History of Babylon, which Bartle Massey had lent him. He might have had many more books from Bartle Massey, but he had no time for reading "the commin print," as Lisbeth called it, so busy as he was with figures in all the leisure moments which he did not fill up with extra carpentry. Adam, you perceive, was by no means a marvellous man, nor, properly speaking, a genius, yet I will not pretend that his was an ordinary character among workmen; and it would not be at all a safe conclusion that the next best man you may happen to see with a basket of tools over his shoulder and a paper cap on his head has the strong conscience and the strong sense, the blended susceptibility and self-command, of our friend Adam. He was not an average man. Yet such men as he are reared here and there in every generation of our peasant artisans--with an inheritance of affections nurtured by a simple family life of common need and common industry, and an inheritance of faculties trained in skilful courageous labour: they make their way upwards, rarely as geniuses, most commonly as painstaking honest men, with the skill and conscience to do well the tasks that lie before them. Their lives have no discernible echo beyond the neighbourhood where they dwelt, but you are almost sure to find there some good piece of road, some building, some application of mineral produce, some improvement in farming practice, some reform of parish abuses, with which their names are associated by one or two generations after them. Their employers were the richer for them, the work of their hands has worn well, and the work of their brains has guided well the hands of other men. They went about in their youth in flannel or paper caps, in coats black with coal-dust or streaked with lime and red paint; in old age their white hairs are seen in a place of honour at church and at market, and they tell their well-dressed sons and daughters, seated round the bright hearth on winter evenings, how pleased they were when they first earned their twopence a-day. Others there are who die poor and never put off the workman's coat on weekdays. They have not had the art of getting rich, but they are men of trust, and when they die before the work is all out of them, it is as if some main screw had got loose in a machine; the master who employed them says, "Where shall I find their like?"

Chapter 19

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter19

Adam on a Working Day Adam walks the next day to a job three miles away and thinks about his future. It looks more hopeful with his father gone. He thinks about Hetty and how he will be able to marry in another year or so by saving his money. He is strong and confident about himself but doesn't know if Hetty loves him. He decides to visit the Hall Farm to see her. He knows that his mother will continue to be a problem if he marries Hetty, but he decides he has to assert his will to her. He does not want a partnership with Jonathan Burge, for that involves the assumption he will marry Mary Burge. He thinks of going into a business of furniture making with his brother to earn extra money. At work, Adam is strong and happily whistling, for he loves his work and loves to do a good job. He has gone out of his way to study at night school with Bartle Massey the teacher, for Adam is not an average man.

Commentary on Chapter 19 Again Eliot brings up the strengths of the working classes, pointing out their virtues. Most of the rural people are shown to be healthy and clean, hard-working, thrifty, and generous to their neighbors. The Donnithornes and Irwines are the only upper class characters in the story. Though Mr. Irwine is described as fresh and beneficent, the other upper class characters are generally not healthy except for Arthur who gets outdoor exercise. The maiden ladies, Lydia Donnithorne and Anne Irwine, for instance, are thin and sickly, and Squire Donnithorne is shriveled. The farm poor are also contrasted to the industrial poor at Snowfield. Eliot may be showing a realistic picture of the country as she remembered from her girlhood but she also romanticizes what was the last remnant of rural society before the industrial age. The peasant stock who lived in harmony with the land had a strength and self-sufficiency that mill workers did not.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/20.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_20_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 2.chapter 20

chapter 20

{"name": "Chapter 20", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter20", "summary": "Adam Visits the Hall Farm Lisbeth complains when her son puts on his best clothes to visit the Poysers. He asks his mother to be more resigned to his doing what he thinks best for himself. Lisbeth worries to herself that one day Hetty will be the mistress over her. Adam goes to the Hall Farm and meets Mrs. Poyser who says Hetty is out gathering red currants with Totty. She asks Adam to send in Totty but first gives him a drink of fresh whey. Adam says he prefers whey to beer. Adam goes into the garden and sends Totty in and stays to talk to Hetty. He surprises her, and when she blushes, Adam takes encouragement, not realizing that she was thinking of Arthur. He begins to speak of his own prospects so Hetty will see he has a future, mentioning that Arthur will one day be running the estate and how he has offered to lend him money to start a business. She asks Adam if he has been to Eagledale where Arthur is fishing, and Adam describes it to her and speculates Arthur will be back soon. When Adam gives Hetty a rose, she puts it in her hair, and he mentions he doesn't like women to have ornaments. He likes Dinah's plainness best. They go in and Mrs. Poyser sends the maid to fetch beer for the men. Molly drops and breaks the mugs. Angry, Mrs. Poyser goes to fetch the beer herself with her good crockery. Meanwhile, Hetty dresses in black and puts on one of Dinah's caps to pretend to be Quakerish like Dinah in order to punish Adam for his rebuke to her. As she comes into the room, she scares Mrs. Poyser who drops the ale again. Mrs. Poyser considers this a bad omen. She was frightened because Hetty looked like a ghost. Adam tells the Poysers about his idea for starting a business with his brother, and after he leaves they tell Hetty that Adam would make a good husband.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 20 The scene in the garden between Adam and Hetty shows the miscommunication between them. Each is wrapped in a different fantasy, not aware of what the other means. Adam assumes all Hetty's blushes and looks are for him, when in reality, she is thinking of Arthur. When he brings up Arthur in terms of his own future, Hetty diverts the talk to details of Eagledale and when Arthur will be back. The garden scene is reminiscent of Milton's Paradise Lost when Adam admonishes Eve for her rebellious nature just before she is tempted by Satan. Milton's Eve liked to look at herself the way Hetty does and had voluptuous looks. Like the original Adam, Adam Bede is overly fond of the woman he loves, and this moment of blossoming hope in the garden is a moment he will remember all his life. It is clear to the reader how mismatched the pair is when Hetty puts the rose in her hair and Adam says it reminds him of painted women. He prefers Dinah's plain beauty. He tries to take back his insult to her after she plays the joke of dressing like Dinah, saying there are different kinds of beauty. Adam, however, did not notice Dinah in the beginning because she looked pale next to Hetty. His dislike now of the coquettishness of Hetty's putting the rose in her hair is a foreshadowing of his disillusionment, as is Hetty's appearance in the twilight as a ghost to her aunt."}

ADAM came back from his work in the empty waggon--that was why he had changed his clothes--and was ready to set out to the Hall Farm when it still wanted a quarter to seven. "What's thee got thy Sunday cloose on for?" said Lisbeth complainingly, as he came downstairs. "Thee artna goin' to th' school i' thy best coat?" "No, Mother," said Adam, quietly. "I'm going to the Hall Farm, but mayhap I may go to the school after, so thee mustna wonder if I'm a bit late. Seth 'ull be at home in half an hour--he's only gone to the village; so thee wutna mind." "Eh, an' what's thee got thy best cloose on for to go to th' Hall Farm? The Poyser folks see'd thee in 'em yesterday, I warrand. What dost mean by turnin' worki'day into Sunday a-that'n? It's poor keepin' company wi' folks as donna like to see thee i' thy workin' jacket." "Good-bye, mother, I can't stay," said Adam, putting on his hat and going out. But he had no sooner gone a few paces beyond the door than Lisbeth became uneasy at the thought that she had vexed him. Of course, the secret of her objection to the best clothes was her suspicion that they were put on for Hetty's sake; but deeper than all her peevishness lay the need that her son should love her. She hurried after him, and laid hold of his arm before he had got half-way down to the brook, and said, "Nay, my lad, thee wutna go away angered wi' thy mother, an' her got nought to do but to sit by hersen an' think on thee?" "Nay, nay, Mother," said Adam, gravely, and standing still while he put his arm on her shoulder, "I'm not angered. But I wish, for thy own sake, thee'dst be more contented to let me do what I've made up my mind to do. I'll never be no other than a good son to thee as long as we live. But a man has other feelings besides what he owes to's father and mother, and thee oughtna to want to rule over me body and soul. And thee must make up thy mind as I'll not give way to thee where I've a right to do what I like. So let us have no more words about it." "Eh," said Lisbeth, not willing to show that she felt the real bearing of Adam's words, "and' who likes to see thee i' thy best cloose better nor thy mother? An' when thee'st got thy face washed as clean as the smooth white pibble, an' thy hair combed so nice, and thy eyes a-sparklin'--what else is there as thy old mother should like to look at half so well? An' thee sha't put on thy Sunday cloose when thee lik'st for me--I'll ne'er plague thee no moor about'n." "Well, well; good-bye, mother," said Adam, kissing her and hurrying away. He saw there was no other means of putting an end to the dialogue. Lisbeth stood still on the spot, shading her eyes and looking after him till he was quite out of sight. She felt to the full all the meaning that had lain in Adam's words, and, as she lost sight of him and turned back slowly into the house, she said aloud to herself--for it was her way to speak her thoughts aloud in the long days when her husband and sons were at their work--"Eh, he'll be tellin' me as he's goin' to bring her home one o' these days; an' she'll be missis o'er me, and I mun look on, belike, while she uses the blue-edged platters, and breaks 'em, mayhap, though there's ne'er been one broke sin' my old man an' me bought 'em at the fair twenty 'ear come next Whissuntide. Eh!" she went on, still louder, as she caught up her knitting from the table, "but she'll ne'er knit the lad's stockin's, nor foot 'em nayther, while I live; an' when I'm gone, he'll bethink him as nobody 'ull ne'er fit's leg an' foot as his old mother did. She'll know nothin' o' narrowin' an' heelin', I warrand, an' she'll make a long toe as he canna get's boot on. That's what comes o' marr'in' young wenches. I war gone thirty, an' th' feyther too, afore we war married; an' young enough too. She'll be a poor dratchell by then SHE'S thirty, a-marr'in' a-that'n, afore her teeth's all come." Adam walked so fast that he was at the yard-gate before seven. Martin Poyser and the grandfather were not yet come in from the meadow: every one was in the meadow, even to the black-and-tan terrier--no one kept watch in the yard but the bull-dog; and when Adam reached the house-door, which stood wide open, he saw there was no one in the bright clean house-place. But he guessed where Mrs. Poyser and some one else would be, quite within hearing; so he knocked on the door and said in his strong voice, "Mrs. Poyser within?" "Come in, Mr. Bede, come in," Mrs. Poyser called out from the dairy. She always gave Adam this title when she received him in her own house. "You may come into the dairy if you will, for I canna justly leave the cheese." Adam walked into the dairy, where Mrs. Poyser and Nancy were crushing the first evening cheese. "Why, you might think you war come to a dead-house," said Mrs. Poyser, as he stood in the open doorway; "they're all i' the meadow; but Martin's sure to be in afore long, for they're leaving the hay cocked to-night, ready for carrying first thing to-morrow. I've been forced t' have Nancy in, upo' 'count as Hetty must gether the red currants to-night; the fruit allays ripens so contrairy, just when every hand's wanted. An' there's no trustin' the children to gether it, for they put more into their own mouths nor into the basket; you might as well set the wasps to gether the fruit." Adam longed to say he would go into the garden till Mr. Poyser came in, but he was not quite courageous enough, so he said, "I could be looking at your spinning-wheel, then, and see what wants doing to it. Perhaps it stands in the house, where I can find it?" "No, I've put it away in the right-hand parlour; but let it be till I can fetch it and show it you. I'd be glad now if you'd go into the garden and tell Hetty to send Totty in. The child 'ull run in if she's told, an' I know Hetty's lettin' her eat too many currants. I'll be much obliged to you, Mr. Bede, if you'll go and send her in; an' there's the York and Lankester roses beautiful in the garden now--you'll like to see 'em. But you'd like a drink o' whey first, p'r'aps; I know you're fond o' whey, as most folks is when they hanna got to crush it out." "Thank you, Mrs. Poyser," said Adam; "a drink o' whey's allays a treat to me. I'd rather have it than beer any day." "Aye, aye," said Mrs. Poyser, reaching a small white basin that stood on the shelf, and dipping it into the whey-tub, "the smell o' bread's sweet t' everybody but the baker. The Miss Irwines allays say, 'Oh, Mrs. Poyser, I envy you your dairy; and I envy you your chickens; and what a beautiful thing a farm-house is, to be sure!' An' I say, 'Yes; a farm-house is a fine thing for them as look on, an' don't know the liftin', an' the stannin', an' the worritin' o' th' inside as belongs to't.'" "Why, Mrs. Poyser, you wouldn't like to live anywhere else but in a farm-house, so well as you manage it," said Adam, taking the basin; "and there can be nothing to look at pleasanter nor a fine milch cow, standing up to'ts knees in pasture, and the new milk frothing in the pail, and the fresh butter ready for market, and the calves, and the poultry. Here's to your health, and may you allays have strength to look after your own dairy, and set a pattern t' all the farmers' wives in the country." Mrs. Poyser was not to be caught in the weakness of smiling at a compliment, but a quiet complacency over-spread her face like a stealing sunbeam, and gave a milder glance than usual to her blue-grey eyes, as she looked at Adam drinking the whey. Ah! I think I taste that whey now--with a flavour so delicate that one can hardly distinguish it from an odour, and with that soft gliding warmth that fills one's imagination with a still, happy dreaminess. And the light music of the dropping whey is in my ears, mingling with the twittering of a bird outside the wire network window--the window overlooking the garden, and shaded by tall Guelder roses. "Have a little more, Mr. Bede?" said Mrs. Poyser, as Adam set down the basin. "No, thank you; I'll go into the garden now, and send in the little lass." "Aye, do; and tell her to come to her mother in the dairy." Adam walked round by the rick-yard, at present empty of ricks, to the little wooden gate leading into the garden--once the well-tended kitchen-garden of a manor-house; now, but for the handsome brick wall with stone coping that ran along one side of it, a true farmhouse garden, with hardy perennial flowers, unpruned fruit-trees, and kitchen vegetables growing together in careless, half-neglected abundance. In that leafy, flowery, bushy time, to look for any one in this garden was like playing at "hide-and-seek." There were the tall hollyhocks beginning to flower and dazzle the eye with their pink, white, and yellow; there were the syringas and Guelder roses, all large and disorderly for want of trimming; there were leafy walls of scarlet beans and late peas; there was a row of bushy filberts in one direction, and in another a huge apple-tree making a barren circle under its low-spreading boughs. But what signified a barren patch or two? The garden was so large. There was always a superfluity of broad beans--it took nine or ten of Adam's strides to get to the end of the uncut grass walk that ran by the side of them; and as for other vegetables, there was so much more room than was necessary for them that in the rotation of crops a large flourishing bed of groundsel was of yearly occurrence on one spot or other. The very rose-trees at which Adam stopped to pluck one looked as if they grew wild; they were all huddled together in bushy masses, now flaunting with wide-open petals, almost all of them of the streaked pink-and-white kind, which doubtless dated from the union of the houses of York and Lancaster. Adam was wise enough to choose a compact Provence rose that peeped out half-smothered by its flaunting scentless neighbours, and held it in his hand--he thought he should be more at ease holding something in his hand--as he walked on to the far end of the garden, where he remembered there was the largest row of currant-trees, not far off from the great yew-tree arbour. But he had not gone many steps beyond the roses, when he heard the shaking of a bough, and a boy's voice saying, "Now, then, Totty, hold out your pinny--there's a duck." The voice came from the boughs of a tall cherry-tree, where Adam had no difficulty in discerning a small blue-pinafored figure perched in a commodious position where the fruit was thickest. Doubtless Totty was below, behind the screen of peas. Yes--with her bonnet hanging down her back, and her fat face, dreadfully smeared with red juice, turned up towards the cherry-tree, while she held her little round hole of a mouth and her red-stained pinafore to receive the promised downfall. I am sorry to say, more than half the cherries that fell were hard and yellow instead of juicy and red; but Totty spent no time in useless regrets, and she was already sucking the third juiciest when Adam said, "There now, Totty, you've got your cherries. Run into the house with 'em to Mother--she wants you--she's in the dairy. Run in this minute--there's a good little girl." He lifted her up in his strong arms and kissed her as he spoke, a ceremony which Totty regarded as a tiresome interruption to cherry-eating; and when he set her down she trotted off quite silently towards the house, sucking her cherries as she went along. "Tommy, my lad, take care you're not shot for a little thieving bird," said Adam, as he walked on towards the currant-trees. He could see there was a large basket at the end of the row: Hetty would not be far off, and Adam already felt as if she were looking at him. Yet when he turned the corner she was standing with her back towards him, and stooping to gather the low-hanging fruit. Strange that she had not heard him coming! Perhaps it was because she was making the leaves rustle. She started when she became conscious that some one was near--started so violently that she dropped the basin with the currants in it, and then, when she saw it was Adam, she turned from pale to deep red. That blush made his heart beat with a new happiness. Hetty had never blushed at seeing him before. "I frightened you," he said, with a delicious sense that it didn't signify what he said, since Hetty seemed to feel as much as he did; "let ME pick the currants up." That was soon done, for they had only fallen in a tangled mass on the grass-plot, and Adam, as he rose and gave her the basin again, looked straight into her eyes with the subdued tenderness that belongs to the first moments of hopeful love. Hetty did not turn away her eyes; her blush had subsided, and she met his glance with a quiet sadness, which contented Adam because it was so unlike anything he had seen in her before. "There's not many more currants to get," she said; "I shall soon ha' done now." "I'll help you," said Adam; and he fetched the large basket, which was nearly full of currants, and set it close to them. Not a word more was spoken as they gathered the currants. Adam's heart was too full to speak, and he thought Hetty knew all that was in it. She was not indifferent to his presence after all; she had blushed when she saw him, and then there was that touch of sadness about her which must surely mean love, since it was the opposite of her usual manner, which had often impressed him as indifference. And he could glance at her continually as she bent over the fruit, while the level evening sunbeams stole through the thick apple-tree boughs, and rested on her round cheek and neck as if they too were in love with her. It was to Adam the time that a man can least forget in after-life, the time when he believes that the first woman he has ever loved betrays by a slight something--a word, a tone, a glance, the quivering of a lip or an eyelid--that she is at least beginning to love him in return. The sign is so slight, it is scarcely perceptible to the ear or eye--he could describe it to no one--it is a mere feather-touch, yet it seems to have changed his whole being, to have merged an uneasy yearning into a delicious unconsciousness of everything but the present moment. So much of our early gladness vanishes utterly from our memory: we can never recall the joy with which we laid our heads on our mother's bosom or rode on our father's back in childhood. Doubtless that joy is wrought up into our nature, as the sunlight of long-past mornings is wrought up in the soft mellowness of the apricot, but it is gone for ever from our imagination, and we can only BELIEVE in the joy of childhood. But the first glad moment in our first love is a vision which returns to us to the last, and brings with it a thrill of feeling intense and special as the recurrent sensation of a sweet odour breathed in a far-off hour of happiness. It is a memory that gives a more exquisite touch to tenderness, that feeds the madness of jealousy and adds the last keenness to the agony of despair. Hetty bending over the red bunches, the level rays piercing the screen of apple-tree boughs, the length of bushy garden beyond, his own emotion as he looked at her and believed that she was thinking of him, and that there was no need for them to talk--Adam remembered it all to the last moment of his life. And Hetty? You know quite well that Adam was mistaken about her. Like many other men, he thought the signs of love for another were signs of love towards himself. When Adam was approaching unseen by her, she was absorbed as usual in thinking and wondering about Arthur's possible return. The sound of any man's footstep would have affected her just in the same way--she would have FELT it might be Arthur before she had time to see, and the blood that forsook her cheek in the agitation of that momentary feeling would have rushed back again at the sight of any one else just as much as at the sight of Adam. He was not wrong in thinking that a change had come over Hetty: the anxieties and fears of a first passion, with which she was trembling, had become stronger than vanity, had given her for the first time that sense of helpless dependence on another's feeling which awakens the clinging deprecating womanhood even in the shallowest girl that can ever experience it, and creates in her a sensibility to kindness which found her quite hard before. For the first time Hetty felt that there was something soothing to her in Adam's timid yet manly tenderness. She wanted to be treated lovingly--oh, it was very hard to bear this blank of absence, silence, apparent indifference, after those moments of glowing love! She was not afraid that Adam would tease her with love-making and flattering speeches like her other admirers; he had always been so reserved to her; she could enjoy without any fear the sense that this strong brave man loved her and was near her. It never entered into her mind that Adam was pitiable too--that Adam too must suffer one day. Hetty, we know, was not the first woman that had behaved more gently to the man who loved her in vain because she had herself begun to love another. It was a very old story, but Adam knew nothing about it, so he drank in the sweet delusion. "That'll do," said Hetty, after a little while. "Aunt wants me to leave some on the trees. I'll take 'em in now." "It's very well I came to carry the basket," said Adam "for it 'ud ha' been too heavy for your little arms." "No; I could ha' carried it with both hands." "Oh, I daresay," said Adam, smiling, "and been as long getting into the house as a little ant carrying a caterpillar. Have you ever seen those tiny fellows carrying things four times as big as themselves?" "No," said Hetty, indifferently, not caring to know the difficulties of ant life. "Oh, I used to watch 'em often when I was a lad. But now, you see, I can carry the basket with one arm, as if it was an empty nutshell, and give you th' other arm to lean on. Won't you? Such big arms as mine were made for little arms like yours to lean on." Hetty smiled faintly and put her arm within his. Adam looked down at her, but her eyes were turned dreamily towards another corner of the garden. "Have you ever been to Eagledale?" she said, as they walked slowly along. "Yes," said Adam, pleased to have her ask a question about himself. "Ten years ago, when I was a lad, I went with father to see about some work there. It's a wonderful sight--rocks and caves such as you never saw in your life. I never had a right notion o' rocks till I went there." "How long did it take to get there?" "Why, it took us the best part o' two days' walking. But it's nothing of a day's journey for anybody as has got a first-rate nag. The captain 'ud get there in nine or ten hours, I'll be bound, he's such a rider. And I shouldn't wonder if he's back again to-morrow; he's too active to rest long in that lonely place, all by himself, for there's nothing but a bit of a inn i' that part where he's gone to fish. I wish he'd got th' estate in his hands; that 'ud be the right thing for him, for it 'ud give him plenty to do, and he'd do't well too, for all he's so young; he's got better notions o' things than many a man twice his age. He spoke very handsome to me th' other day about lending me money to set up i' business; and if things came round that way, I'd rather be beholding to him nor to any man i' the world." Poor Adam was led on to speak about Arthur because he thought Hetty would be pleased to know that the young squire was so ready to befriend him; the fact entered into his future prospects, which he would like to seem promising in her eyes. And it was true that Hetty listened with an interest which brought a new light into her eyes and a half-smile upon her lips. "How pretty the roses are now!" Adam continued, pausing to look at them. "See! I stole the prettiest, but I didna mean to keep it myself. I think these as are all pink, and have got a finer sort o' green leaves, are prettier than the striped uns, don't you?" He set down the basket and took the rose from his button-hole. "It smells very sweet," he said; "those striped uns have no smell. Stick it in your frock, and then you can put it in water after. It 'ud be a pity to let it fade." Hetty took the rose, smiling as she did so at the pleasant thought that Arthur could so soon get back if he liked. There was a flash of hope and happiness in her mind, and with a sudden impulse of gaiety she did what she had very often done before--stuck the rose in her hair a little above the left ear. The tender admiration in Adam's face was slightly shadowed by reluctant disapproval. Hetty's love of finery was just the thing that would most provoke his mother, and he himself disliked it as much as it was possible for him to dislike anything that belonged to her. "Ah," he said, "that's like the ladies in the pictures at the Chase; they've mostly got flowers or feathers or gold things i' their hair, but somehow I don't like to see 'em; they allays put me i' mind o' the painted women outside the shows at Treddles'on Fair. What can a woman have to set her off better than her own hair, when it curls so, like yours? If a woman's young and pretty, I think you can see her good looks all the better for her being plain dressed. Why, Dinah Morris looks very nice, for all she wears such a plain cap and gown. It seems to me as a woman's face doesna want flowers; it's almost like a flower itself. I'm sure yours is." "Oh, very well," said Hetty, with a little playful pout, taking the rose out of her hair. "I'll put one o' Dinah's caps on when we go in, and you'll see if I look better in it. She left one behind, so I can take the pattern." "Nay, nay, I don't want you to wear a Methodist cap like Dinah's. I daresay it's a very ugly cap, and I used to think when I saw her here as it was nonsense for her to dress different t' other people; but I never rightly noticed her till she came to see mother last week, and then I thought the cap seemed to fit her face somehow as th 'acorn-cup fits th' acorn, and I shouldn't like to see her so well without it. But you've got another sort o' face; I'd have you just as you are now, without anything t' interfere with your own looks. It's like when a man's singing a good tune--you don't want t' hear bells tinkling and interfering wi' the sound." He took her arm and put it within his again, looking down on her fondly. He was afraid she should think he had lectured her, imagining, as we are apt to do, that she had perceived all the thoughts he had only half-expressed. And the thing he dreaded most was lest any cloud should come over this evening's happiness. For the world he would not have spoken of his love to Hetty yet, till this commencing kindness towards him should have grown into unmistakable love. In his imagination he saw long years of his future life stretching before him, blest with the right to call Hetty his own: he could be content with very little at present. So he took up the basket of currants once more, and they went on towards the house. The scene had quite changed in the half-hour that Adam had been in the garden. The yard was full of life now: Marty was letting the screaming geese through the gate, and wickedly provoking the gander by hissing at him; the granary-door was groaning on its hinges as Alick shut it, after dealing out the corn; the horses were being led out to watering, amidst much barking of all the three dogs and many "whups" from Tim the ploughman, as if the heavy animals who held down their meek, intelligent heads, and lifted their shaggy feet so deliberately, were likely to rush wildly in every direction but the right. Everybody was come back from the meadow; and when Hetty and Adam entered the house-place, Mr. Poyser was seated in the three-cornered chair, and the grandfather in the large arm-chair opposite, looking on with pleasant expectation while the supper was being laid on the oak table. Mrs. Poyser had laid the cloth herself--a cloth made of homespun linen, with a shining checkered pattern on it, and of an agreeable whitey-brown hue, such as all sensible housewives like to see--none of your bleached "shop-rag" that would wear into holes in no time, but good homespun that would last for two generations. The cold veal, the fresh lettuces, and the stuffed chine might well look tempting to hungry men who had dined at half-past twelve o'clock. On the large deal table against the wall there were bright pewter plates and spoons and cans, ready for Alick and his companions; for the master and servants ate their supper not far off each other; which was all the pleasanter, because if a remark about to-morrow morning's work occurred to Mr. Poyser, Alick was at hand to hear it. "Well, Adam, I'm glad to see ye," said Mr. Poyser. "What! ye've been helping Hetty to gether the curran's, eh? Come, sit ye down, sit ye down. Why, it's pretty near a three-week since y' had your supper with us; and the missis has got one of her rare stuffed chines. I'm glad ye're come." "Hetty," said Mrs. Poyser, as she looked into the basket of currants to see if the fruit was fine, "run upstairs and send Molly down. She's putting Totty to bed, and I want her to draw th' ale, for Nancy's busy yet i' the dairy. You can see to the child. But whativer did you let her run away from you along wi' Tommy for, and stuff herself wi' fruit as she can't eat a bit o' good victual?" This was said in a lower tone than usual, while her husband was talking to Adam; for Mrs. Poyser was strict in adherence to her own rules of propriety, and she considered that a young girl was not to be treated sharply in the presence of a respectable man who was courting her. That would not be fair-play: every woman was young in her turn, and had her chances of matrimony, which it was a point of honour for other women not to spoil--just as one market-woman who has sold her own eggs must not try to balk another of a customer. Hetty made haste to run away upstairs, not easily finding an answer to her aunt's question, and Mrs. Poyser went out to see after Marty and Tommy and bring them in to supper. Soon they were all seated--the two rosy lads, one on each side, by the pale mother, a place being left for Hetty between Adam and her uncle. Alick too was come in, and was seated in his far corner, eating cold broad beans out of a large dish with his pocket-knife, and finding a flavour in them which he would not have exchanged for the finest pineapple. "What a time that gell is drawing th' ale, to be sure!" said Mrs. Poyser, when she was dispensing her slices of stuffed chine. "I think she sets the jug under and forgets to turn the tap, as there's nothing you can't believe o' them wenches: they'll set the empty kettle o' the fire, and then come an hour after to see if the water boils." "She's drawin' for the men too," said Mr. Poyser. "Thee shouldst ha' told her to bring our jug up first." "Told her?" said Mrs. Poyser. "Yes, I might spend all the wind i' my body, an' take the bellows too, if I was to tell them gells everything as their own sharpness wonna tell 'em. Mr. Bede, will you take some vinegar with your lettuce? Aye you're i' the right not. It spoils the flavour o' the chine, to my thinking. It's poor eating where the flavour o' the meat lies i' the cruets. There's folks as make bad butter and trusten to the salt t' hide it." Mrs. Poyser's attention was here diverted by the appearance of Molly, carrying a large jug, two small mugs, and four drinking-cans, all full of ale or small beer--an interesting example of the prehensile power possessed by the human hand. Poor Molly's mouth was rather wider open than usual, as she walked along with her eyes fixed on the double cluster of vessels in her hands, quite innocent of the expression in her mistress's eye. "Molly, I niver knew your equils--to think o' your poor mother as is a widow, an' I took you wi' as good as no character, an' the times an' times I've told you...." Molly had not seen the lightning, and the thunder shook her nerves the more for the want of that preparation. With a vague alarmed sense that she must somehow comport herself differently, she hastened her step a little towards the far deal table, where she might set down her cans--caught her foot in her apron, which had become untied, and fell with a crash and a splash into a pool of beer; whereupon a tittering explosion from Marty and Tommy, and a serious "Ello!" from Mr. Poyser, who saw his draught of ale unpleasantly deferred. "There you go!" resumed Mrs. Poyser, in a cutting tone, as she rose and went towards the cupboard while Molly began dolefully to pick up the fragments of pottery. "It's what I told you 'ud come, over and over again; and there's your month's wage gone, and more, to pay for that jug as I've had i' the house this ten year, and nothing ever happened to't before; but the crockery you've broke sin' here in th' house you've been 'ud make a parson swear--God forgi' me for saying so--an' if it had been boiling wort out o' the copper, it 'ud ha' been the same, and you'd ha' been scalded and very like lamed for life, as there's no knowing but what you will be some day if you go on; for anybody 'ud think you'd got the St. Vitus's Dance, to see the things you've throwed down. It's a pity but what the bits was stacked up for you to see, though it's neither seeing nor hearing as 'ull make much odds to you--anybody 'ud think you war case-hardened." Poor Molly's tears were dropping fast by this time, and in her desperation at the lively movement of the beer-stream towards Alick's legs, she was converting her apron into a mop, while Mrs. Poyser, opening the cupboard, turned a blighting eye upon her. "Ah," she went on, "you'll do no good wi' crying an' making more wet to wipe up. It's all your own wilfulness, as I tell you, for there's nobody no call to break anything if they'll only go the right way to work. But wooden folks had need ha' wooden things t' handle. And here must I take the brown-and-white jug, as it's niver been used three times this year, and go down i' the cellar myself, and belike catch my death, and be laid up wi' inflammation...." Mrs. Poyser had turned round from the cupboard with the brown-and-white jug in her hand, when she caught sight of something at the other end of the kitchen; perhaps it was because she was already trembling and nervous that the apparition had so strong an effect on her; perhaps jug-breaking, like other crimes, has a contagious influence. However it was, she stared and started like a ghost-seer, and the precious brown-and-white jug fell to the ground, parting for ever with its spout and handle. "Did ever anybody see the like?" she said, with a suddenly lowered tone, after a moment's bewildered glance round the room. "The jugs are bewitched, I think. It's them nasty glazed handles--they slip o'er the finger like a snail." "Why, thee'st let thy own whip fly i' thy face," said her husband, who had now joined in the laugh of the young ones. "It's all very fine to look on and grin," rejoined Mrs. Poyser; "but there's times when the crockery seems alive an' flies out o' your hand like a bird. It's like the glass, sometimes, 'ull crack as it stands. What is to be broke WILL be broke, for I never dropped a thing i' my life for want o' holding it, else I should never ha' kept the crockery all these 'ears as I bought at my own wedding. And Hetty, are you mad? Whativer do you mean by coming down i' that way, and making one think as there's a ghost a-walking i' th' house?" A new outbreak of laughter, while Mrs. Poyser was speaking, was caused, less by her sudden conversion to a fatalistic view of jug-breaking than by that strange appearance of Hetty, which had startled her aunt. The little minx had found a black gown of her aunt's, and pinned it close round her neck to look like Dinah's, had made her hair as flat as she could, and had tied on one of Dinah's high-crowned borderless net caps. The thought of Dinah's pale grave face and mild grey eyes, which the sight of the gown and cap brought with it, made it a laughable surprise enough to see them replaced by Hetty's round rosy cheeks and coquettish dark eyes. The boys got off their chairs and jumped round her, clapping their hands, and even Alick gave a low ventral laugh as he looked up from his beans. Under cover of the noise, Mrs. Poyser went into the back kitchen to send Nancy into the cellar with the great pewter measure, which had some chance of being free from bewitchment. "Why, Hetty, lass, are ye turned Methodist?" said Mr. Poyser, with that comfortable slow enjoyment of a laugh which one only sees in stout people. "You must pull your face a deal longer before you'll do for one; mustna she, Adam? How come you put them things on, eh?" "Adam said he liked Dinah's cap and gown better nor my clothes," said Hetty, sitting down demurely. "He says folks looks better in ugly clothes." "Nay, nay," said Adam, looking at her admiringly; "I only said they seemed to suit Dinah. But if I'd said you'd look pretty in 'em, I should ha' said nothing but what was true." "Why, thee thought'st Hetty war a ghost, didstna?" said Mr. Poyser to his wife, who now came back and took her seat again. "Thee look'dst as scared as scared." "It little sinnifies how I looked," said Mrs. Poyser; "looks 'ull mend no jugs, nor laughing neither, as I see. Mr. Bede, I'm sorry you've to wait so long for your ale, but it's coming in a minute. Make yourself at home wi' th' cold potatoes: I know you like 'em. Tommy, I'll send you to bed this minute, if you don't give over laughing. What is there to laugh at, I should like to know? I'd sooner cry nor laugh at the sight o' that poor thing's cap; and there's them as 'ud be better if they could make theirselves like her i' more ways nor putting on her cap. It little becomes anybody i' this house to make fun o' my sister's child, an' her just gone away from us, as it went to my heart to part wi' her. An' I know one thing, as if trouble was to come, an' I was to be laid up i' my bed, an' the children was to die--as there's no knowing but what they will--an' the murrain was to come among the cattle again, an' everything went to rack an' ruin, I say we might be glad to get sight o' Dinah's cap again, wi' her own face under it, border or no border. For she's one o' them things as looks the brightest on a rainy day, and loves you the best when you're most i' need on't." Mrs. Poyser, you perceive, was aware that nothing would be so likely to expel the comic as the terrible. Tommy, who was of a susceptible disposition, and very fond of his mother, and who had, besides, eaten so many cherries as to have his feelings less under command than usual, was so affected by the dreadful picture she had made of the possible future that he began to cry; and the good-natured father, indulgent to all weaknesses but those of negligent farmers, said to Hetty, "You'd better take the things off again, my lass; it hurts your aunt to see 'em." Hetty went upstairs again, and the arrival of the ale made an agreeable diversion; for Adam had to give his opinion of the new tap, which could not be otherwise than complimentary to Mrs. Poyser; and then followed a discussion on the secrets of good brewing, the folly of stinginess in "hopping," and the doubtful economy of a farmer's making his own malt. Mrs. Poyser had so many opportunities of expressing herself with weight on these subjects that by the time supper was ended, the ale-jug refilled, and Mr. Poyser's pipe alight she was once more in high good humour, and ready, at Adam's request, to fetch the broken spinning-wheel for his inspection. "Ah," said Adam, looking at it carefully, "here's a nice bit o' turning wanted. It's a pretty wheel. I must have it up at the turning-shop in the village and do it there, for I've no convenence for turning at home. If you'll send it to Mr. Burge's shop i' the morning, I'll get it done for you by Wednesday. I've been turning it over in my mind," he continued, looking at Mr. Poyser, "to make a bit more convenence at home for nice jobs o' cabinet-making. I've always done a deal at such little things in odd hours, and they're profitable, for there's more workmanship nor material in 'em. I look for me and Seth to get a little business for ourselves i' that way, for I know a man at Rosseter as 'ull take as many things as we should make, besides what we could get orders for round about." Mr. Poyser entered with interest into a project which seemed a step towards Adam's becoming a "master-man," and Mrs. Poyser gave her approbation to the scheme of the movable kitchen cupboard, which was to be capable of containing grocery, pickles, crockery, and house-linen in the utmost compactness without confusion. Hetty, once more in her own dress, with her neckerchief pushed a little backwards on this warm evening, was seated picking currants near the window, where Adam could see her quite well. And so the time passed pleasantly till Adam got up to go. He was pressed to come again soon, but not to stay longer, for at this busy time sensible people would not run the risk of being sleepy at five o'clock in the morning. "I shall take a step farther," said Adam, "and go on to see Mester Massey, for he wasn't at church yesterday, and I've not seen him for a week past. I've never hardly known him to miss church before." "Aye," said Mr. Poyser, "we've heared nothing about him, for it's the boys' hollodays now, so we can give you no account." "But you'll niver think o' going there at this hour o' the night?" said Mrs. Poyser, folding up her knitting. "Oh, Mester Massey sits up late," said Adam. "An' the night-school's not over yet. Some o' the men don't come till late--they've got so far to walk. And Bartle himself's never in bed till it's gone eleven." "I wouldna have him to live wi' me, then," said Mrs. Poyser, "a-dropping candle-grease about, as you're like to tumble down o' the floor the first thing i' the morning." "Aye, eleven o'clock's late--it's late," said old Martin. "I ne'er sot up so i' MY life, not to say as it warna a marr'in', or a christenin', or a wake, or th' harvest supper. Eleven o'clock's late." "Why, I sit up till after twelve often," said Adam, laughing, "but it isn't t' eat and drink extry, it's to work extry. Good-night, Mrs. Poyser; good-night, Hetty." Hetty could only smile and not shake hands, for hers were dyed and damp with currant-juice; but all the rest gave a hearty shake to the large palm that was held out to them, and said, "Come again, come again!" "Aye, think o' that now," said Mr. Poyser, when Adam was out of on the causeway. "Sitting up till past twelve to do extry work! Ye'll not find many men o' six-an' twenty as 'ull do to put i' the shafts wi' him. If you can catch Adam for a husband, Hetty, you'll ride i' your own spring-cart some day, I'll be your warrant." Hetty was moving across the kitchen with the currants, so her uncle did not see the little toss of the head with which she answered him. To ride in a spring-cart seemed a very miserable lot indeed to her now.

Chapter 20

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter20

Adam Visits the Hall Farm Lisbeth complains when her son puts on his best clothes to visit the Poysers. He asks his mother to be more resigned to his doing what he thinks best for himself. Lisbeth worries to herself that one day Hetty will be the mistress over her. Adam goes to the Hall Farm and meets Mrs. Poyser who says Hetty is out gathering red currants with Totty. She asks Adam to send in Totty but first gives him a drink of fresh whey. Adam says he prefers whey to beer. Adam goes into the garden and sends Totty in and stays to talk to Hetty. He surprises her, and when she blushes, Adam takes encouragement, not realizing that she was thinking of Arthur. He begins to speak of his own prospects so Hetty will see he has a future, mentioning that Arthur will one day be running the estate and how he has offered to lend him money to start a business. She asks Adam if he has been to Eagledale where Arthur is fishing, and Adam describes it to her and speculates Arthur will be back soon. When Adam gives Hetty a rose, she puts it in her hair, and he mentions he doesn't like women to have ornaments. He likes Dinah's plainness best. They go in and Mrs. Poyser sends the maid to fetch beer for the men. Molly drops and breaks the mugs. Angry, Mrs. Poyser goes to fetch the beer herself with her good crockery. Meanwhile, Hetty dresses in black and puts on one of Dinah's caps to pretend to be Quakerish like Dinah in order to punish Adam for his rebuke to her. As she comes into the room, she scares Mrs. Poyser who drops the ale again. Mrs. Poyser considers this a bad omen. She was frightened because Hetty looked like a ghost. Adam tells the Poysers about his idea for starting a business with his brother, and after he leaves they tell Hetty that Adam would make a good husband.

Commentary on Chapter 20 The scene in the garden between Adam and Hetty shows the miscommunication between them. Each is wrapped in a different fantasy, not aware of what the other means. Adam assumes all Hetty's blushes and looks are for him, when in reality, she is thinking of Arthur. When he brings up Arthur in terms of his own future, Hetty diverts the talk to details of Eagledale and when Arthur will be back. The garden scene is reminiscent of Milton's Paradise Lost when Adam admonishes Eve for her rebellious nature just before she is tempted by Satan. Milton's Eve liked to look at herself the way Hetty does and had voluptuous looks. Like the original Adam, Adam Bede is overly fond of the woman he loves, and this moment of blossoming hope in the garden is a moment he will remember all his life. It is clear to the reader how mismatched the pair is when Hetty puts the rose in her hair and Adam says it reminds him of painted women. He prefers Dinah's plain beauty. He tries to take back his insult to her after she plays the joke of dressing like Dinah, saying there are different kinds of beauty. Adam, however, did not notice Dinah in the beginning because she looked pale next to Hetty. His dislike now of the coquettishness of Hetty's putting the rose in her hair is a foreshadowing of his disillusionment, as is Hetty's appearance in the twilight as a ghost to her aunt.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/21.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_21_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 2.chapter 21

chapter 21

{"name": "Chapter 21", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter21", "summary": "The Night-School and the Schoolmaster Bartle Massey is the old schoolteacher whose house is on the edge of the common. He is teaching reading to some adult learners who are not very bright. Adam watches, remembering the years he has been here. Bartle is gentle and patient with the men, who are learning to read to help them advance in their work or to read the Bible. Bartle is both gentle and stern, insisting that the men do their homework, for he wants no slackers in his school. Bartle has one leg shorter than the other and is a sharp-tongued man who lives alone except for his dog, Vixen, and her puppies. He complains about Vixen's becoming a mother, as a symbol of all women; they can't be trusted. Bartle tells Adam some good news. The squire's steward Satchell is sick, and he intends on putting in a good word for Adam to get the job of managing the woods on the Donnithorne estate. Adam says it is no use, for he had a run-in with the squire two years earlier. Bartle warns Adam against being proud, and Adam agrees to be open to the possibility.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 21 Bartle is a father-figure to Adam, as Mr. Irwine is to Arthur. He has helped to educate Adam and is proud of the young man. He tries to help him advance by recommending him for the job of managing the woods. Adam tells him about the argument he had with the old squire who wouldn't pay him what he asked for a screen he made for his daughter. The squire acted as though Adam were overpricing the screen. Adam refused payment, telling the squire that he only charged what was fair and then walked away. The squire sent the correct payment to Adam later. Adam explains that he won't let a man insult his honor. He will not work for a man who doesn't understand honor and what's in his own interest. He would work for Arthur but not the squire. Bartle's warning that he needs to \"deal with the odd and even in life\" and not to \"set your teeth against folks that don't square to your notions\" is good advice that Adam needs to hear. On the other hand, Bartle advises Adam against women. His dog's name bears his opinion of women and the poor dog bears the brunt of his ill-feeling against having a woman in the house. Adam doesn't accept his opinion of women but he does respect his advice, and accepts the old man's sharp tongue because of his other excellent qualities. This chapter ends the second book, with the inevitable conflict looming for the romantic triangle of Adam, Hetty, and Arthur. We have been told about Arthur's upcoming birthday celebration and this promises to bring all the characters together."}

Bartle Massey's was one of a few scattered houses on the edge of a common, which was divided by the road to Treddleston. Adam reached it in a quarter of an hour after leaving the Hall Farm; and when he had his hand on the door-latch, he could see, through the curtainless window, that there were eight or nine heads bending over the desks, lighted by thin dips. When he entered, a reading lesson was going forward and Bartle Massey merely nodded, leaving him to take his place where he pleased. He had not come for the sake of a lesson to-night, and his mind was too full of personal matters, too full of the last two hours he had passed in Hetty's presence, for him to amuse himself with a book till school was over; so he sat down in a corner and looked on with an absent mind. It was a sort of scene which Adam had beheld almost weekly for years; he knew by heart every arabesque flourish in the framed specimen of Bartle Massey's handwriting which hung over the schoolmaster's head, by way of keeping a lofty ideal before the minds of his pupils; he knew the backs of all the books on the shelf running along the whitewashed wall above the pegs for the slates; he knew exactly how many grains were gone out of the ear of Indian corn that hung from one of the rafters; he had long ago exhausted the resources of his imagination in trying to think how the bunch of leathery seaweed had looked and grown in its native element; and from the place where he sat, he could make nothing of the old map of England that hung against the opposite wall, for age had turned it of a fine yellow brown, something like that of a well-seasoned meerschaum. The drama that was going on was almost as familiar as the scene, nevertheless habit had not made him indifferent to it, and even in his present self-absorbed mood, Adam felt a momentary stirring of the old fellow-feeling, as he looked at the rough men painfully holding pen or pencil with their cramped hands, or humbly labouring through their reading lesson. The reading class now seated on the form in front of the schoolmaster's desk consisted of the three most backward pupils. Adam would have known it only by seeing Bartle Massey's face as he looked over his spectacles, which he had shifted to the ridge of his nose, not requiring them for present purposes. The face wore its mildest expression: the grizzled bushy eyebrows had taken their more acute angle of compassionate kindness, and the mouth, habitually compressed with a pout of the lower lip, was relaxed so as to be ready to speak a helpful word or syllable in a moment. This gentle expression was the more interesting because the schoolmaster's nose, an irregular aquiline twisted a little on one side, had rather a formidable character; and his brow, moreover, had that peculiar tension which always impresses one as a sign of a keen impatient temperament: the blue veins stood out like cords under the transparent yellow skin, and this intimidating brow was softened by no tendency to baldness, for the grey bristly hair, cut down to about an inch in length, stood round it in as close ranks as ever. "Nay, Bill, nay," Bartle was saying in a kind tone, as he nodded to Adam, "begin that again, and then perhaps, it'll come to you what d-r-y spells. It's the same lesson you read last week, you know." "Bill" was a sturdy fellow, aged four-and-twenty, an excellent stone-sawyer, who could get as good wages as any man in the trade of his years; but he found a reading lesson in words of one syllable a harder matter to deal with than the hardest stone he had ever had to saw. The letters, he complained, were so "uncommon alike, there was no tellin' 'em one from another," the sawyer's business not being concerned with minute differences such as exist between a letter with its tail turned up and a letter with its tail turned down. But Bill had a firm determination that he would learn to read, founded chiefly on two reasons: first, that Tom Hazelow, his cousin, could read anything "right off," whether it was print or writing, and Tom had sent him a letter from twenty miles off, saying how he was prospering in the world and had got an overlooker's place; secondly, that Sam Phillips, who sawed with him, had learned to read when he was turned twenty, and what could be done by a little fellow like Sam Phillips, Bill considered, could be done by himself, seeing that he could pound Sam into wet clay if circumstances required it. So here he was, pointing his big finger towards three words at once, and turning his head on one side that he might keep better hold with his eye of the one word which was to be discriminated out of the group. The amount of knowledge Bartle Massey must possess was something so dim and vast that Bill's imagination recoiled before it: he would hardly have ventured to deny that the schoolmaster might have something to do in bringing about the regular return of daylight and the changes in the weather. The man seated next to Bill was of a very different type: he was a Methodist brickmaker who, after spending thirty years of his life in perfect satisfaction with his ignorance, had lately "got religion," and along with it the desire to read the Bible. But with him, too, learning was a heavy business, and on his way out to-night he had offered as usual a special prayer for help, seeing that he had undertaken this hard task with a single eye to the nourishment of his soul--that he might have a greater abundance of texts and hymns wherewith to banish evil memories and the temptations of old habit--or, in brief language, the devil. For the brickmaker had been a notorious poacher, and was suspected, though there was no good evidence against him, of being the man who had shot a neighbouring gamekeeper in the leg. However that might be, it is certain that shortly after the accident referred to, which was coincident with the arrival of an awakening Methodist preacher at Treddleston, a great change had been observed in the brickmaker; and though he was still known in the neighbourhood by his old sobriquet of "Brimstone," there was nothing he held in so much horror as any further transactions with that evil-smelling element. He was a broad-chested fellow with a fervid temperament, which helped him better in imbibing religious ideas than in the dry process of acquiring the mere human knowledge of the alphabet. Indeed, he had been already a little shaken in his resolution by a brother Methodist, who assured him that the letter was a mere obstruction to the Spirit, and expressed a fear that Brimstone was too eager for the knowledge that puffeth up. The third beginner was a much more promising pupil. He was a tall but thin and wiry man, nearly as old as Brimstone, with a very pale face and hands stained a deep blue. He was a dyer, who in the course of dipping homespun wool and old women's petticoats had got fired with the ambition to learn a great deal more about the strange secrets of colour. He had already a high reputation in the district for his dyes, and he was bent on discovering some method by which he could reduce the expense of crimsons and scarlets. The druggist at Treddleston had given him a notion that he might save himself a great deal of labour and expense if he could learn to read, and so he had begun to give his spare hours to the night-school, resolving that his "little chap" should lose no time in coming to Mr. Massey's day-school as soon as he was old enough. It was touching to see these three big men, with the marks of their hard labour about them, anxiously bending over the worn books and painfully making out, "The grass is green," "The sticks are dry," "The corn is ripe"--a very hard lesson to pass to after columns of single words all alike except in the first letter. It was almost as if three rough animals were making humble efforts to learn how they might become human. And it touched the tenderest fibre in Bartle Massey's nature, for such full-grown children as these were the only pupils for whom he had no severe epithets and no impatient tones. He was not gifted with an imperturbable temper, and on music-nights it was apparent that patience could never be an easy virtue to him; but this evening, as he glances over his spectacles at Bill Downes, the sawyer, who is turning his head on one side with a desperate sense of blankness before the letters d-r-y, his eyes shed their mildest and most encouraging light. After the reading class, two youths between sixteen and nineteen came up with the imaginary bills of parcels, which they had been writing out on their slates and were now required to calculate "off-hand"--a test which they stood with such imperfect success that Bartle Massey, whose eyes had been glaring at them ominously through his spectacles for some minutes, at length burst out in a bitter, high-pitched tone, pausing between every sentence to rap the floor with a knobbed stick which rested between his legs. "Now, you see, you don't do this thing a bit better than you did a fortnight ago, and I'll tell you what's the reason. You want to learn accounts--that's well and good. But you think all you need do to learn accounts is to come to me and do sums for an hour or so, two or three times a-week; and no sooner do you get your caps on and turn out of doors again than you sweep the whole thing clean out of your mind. You go whistling about, and take no more care what you're thinking of than if your heads were gutters for any rubbish to swill through that happened to be in the way; and if you get a good notion in 'em, it's pretty soon washed out again. You think knowledge is to be got cheap--you'll come and pay Bartle Massey sixpence a-week, and he'll make you clever at figures without your taking any trouble. But knowledge isn't to be got with paying sixpence, let me tell you. If you're to know figures, you must turn 'em over in your heads and keep your thoughts fixed on 'em. There's nothing you can't turn into a sum, for there's nothing but what's got number in it--even a fool. You may say to yourselves, 'I'm one fool, and Jack's another; if my fool's head weighed four pound, and Jack's three pound three ounces and three quarters, how many pennyweights heavier would my head be than Jack's?' A man that had got his heart in learning figures would make sums for himself and work 'em in his head. When he sat at his shoemaking, he'd count his stitches by fives, and then put a price on his stitches, say half a farthing, and then see how much money he could get in an hour; and then ask himself how much money he'd get in a day at that rate; and then how much ten workmen would get working three, or twenty, or a hundred years at that rate--and all the while his needle would be going just as fast as if he left his head empty for the devil to dance in. But the long and the short of it is--I'll have nobody in my night-school that doesn't strive to learn what he comes to learn, as hard as if he was striving to get out of a dark hole into broad daylight. I'll send no man away because he's stupid: if Billy Taft, the idiot, wanted to learn anything, I'd not refuse to teach him. But I'll not throw away good knowledge on people who think they can get it by the sixpenn'orth, and carry it away with 'em as they would an ounce of snuff. So never come to me again, if you can't show that you've been working with your own heads, instead of thinking that you can pay for mine to work for you. That's the last word I've got to say to you." With this final sentence, Bartle Massey gave a sharper rap than ever with his knobbed stick, and the discomfited lads got up to go with a sulky look. The other pupils had happily only their writing-books to show, in various stages of progress from pot-hooks to round text; and mere pen-strokes, however perverse, were less exasperating to Bartle than false arithmetic. He was a little more severe than usual on Jacob Storey's Z's, of which poor Jacob had written a pageful, all with their tops turned the wrong way, with a puzzled sense that they were not right "somehow." But he observed in apology, that it was a letter you never wanted hardly, and he thought it had only been there "to finish off th' alphabet, like, though ampusand (&) would ha' done as well, for what he could see." At last the pupils had all taken their hats and said their "Good-nights," and Adam, knowing his old master's habits, rose and said, "Shall I put the candles out, Mr. Massey?" "Yes, my boy, yes, all but this, which I'll carry into the house; and just lock the outer door, now you're near it," said Bartle, getting his stick in the fitting angle to help him in descending from his stool. He was no sooner on the ground than it became obvious why the stick was necessary--the left leg was much shorter than the right. But the school-master was so active with his lameness that it was hardly thought of as a misfortune; and if you had seen him make his way along the schoolroom floor, and up the step into his kitchen, you would perhaps have understood why the naughty boys sometimes felt that his pace might be indefinitely quickened and that he and his stick might overtake them even in their swiftest run. The moment he appeared at the kitchen door with the candle in his hand, a faint whimpering began in the chimney-corner, and a brown-and-tan-coloured bitch, of that wise-looking breed with short legs and long body, known to an unmechanical generation as turnspits, came creeping along the floor, wagging her tail, and hesitating at every other step, as if her affections were painfully divided between the hamper in the chimney-corner and the master, whom she could not leave without a greeting. "Well, Vixen, well then, how are the babbies?" said the schoolmaster, making haste towards the chimney-corner and holding the candle over the low hamper, where two extremely blind puppies lifted up their heads towards the light from a nest of flannel and wool. Vixen could not even see her master look at them without painful excitement: she got into the hamper and got out again the next moment, and behaved with true feminine folly, though looking all the while as wise as a dwarf with a large old-fashioned head and body on the most abbreviated legs. "Why, you've got a family, I see, Mr. Massey?" said Adam, smiling, as he came into the kitchen. "How's that? I thought it was against the law here." "Law? What's the use o' law when a man's once such a fool as to let a woman into his house?" said Bartle, turning away from the hamper with some bitterness. He always called Vixen a woman, and seemed to have lost all consciousness that he was using a figure of speech. "If I'd known Vixen was a woman, I'd never have held the boys from drowning her; but when I'd got her into my hand, I was forced to take to her. And now you see what she's brought me to--the sly, hypocritical wench"--Bartle spoke these last words in a rasping tone of reproach, and looked at Vixen, who poked down her head and turned up her eyes towards him with a keen sense of opprobrium--"and contrived to be brought to bed on a Sunday at church-time. I've wished again and again I'd been a bloody minded man, that I could have strangled the mother and the brats with one cord." "I'm glad it was no worse a cause kept you from church," said Adam. "I was afraid you must be ill for the first time i' your life. And I was particularly sorry not to have you at church yesterday." "Ah, my boy, I know why, I know why," said Bartle kindly, going up to Adam and raising his hand up to the shoulder that was almost on a level with his own head. "You've had a rough bit o' road to get over since I saw you--a rough bit o' road. But I'm in hopes there are better times coming for you. I've got some news to tell you. But I must get my supper first, for I'm hungry, I'm hungry. Sit down, sit down." Bartel went into his little pantry, and brought out an excellent home-baked loaf; for it was his one extravagance in these dear times to eat bread once a-day instead of oat-cake; and he justified it by observing, that what a schoolmaster wanted was brains, and oat-cake ran too much to bone instead of brains. Then came a piece of cheese and a quart jug with a crown of foam upon it. He placed them all on the round deal table which stood against his large arm-chair in the chimney-corner, with Vixen's hamper on one side of it and a window-shelf with a few books piled up in it on the other. The table was as clean as if Vixen had been an excellent housewife in a checkered apron; so was the quarry floor; and the old carved oaken press, table, and chairs, which in these days would be bought at a high price in aristocratic houses, though, in that period of spider-legs and inlaid cupids, Bartle had got them for an old song, where as free from dust as things could be at the end of a summer's day. "Now, then, my boy, draw up, draw up. We'll not talk about business till we've had our supper. No man can be wise on an empty stomach. But," said Bartle, rising from his chair again, "I must give Vixen her supper too, confound her! Though she'll do nothing with it but nourish those unnecessary babbies. That's the way with these women--they've got no head-pieces to nourish, and so their food all runs either to fat or to brats." He brought out of the pantry a dish of scraps, which Vixen at once fixed her eyes on, and jumped out of her hamper to lick up with the utmost dispatch. "I've had my supper, Mr. Massey," said Adam, "so I'll look on while you eat yours. I've been at the Hall Farm, and they always have their supper betimes, you know: they don't keep your late hours." "I know little about their hours," said Bartle dryly, cutting his bread and not shrinking from the crust. "It's a house I seldom go into, though I'm fond of the boys, and Martin Poyser's a good fellow. There's too many women in the house for me: I hate the sound of women's voices; they're always either a-buzz or a-squeak--always either a-buzz or a-squeak. Mrs. Poyser keeps at the top o' the talk like a fife; and as for the young lasses, I'd as soon look at water-grubs. I know what they'll turn to--stinging gnats, stinging gnats. Here, take some ale, my boy: it's been drawn for you--it's been drawn for you." "Nay, Mr. Massey," said Adam, who took his old friend's whim more seriously than usual to-night, "don't be so hard on the creaturs God has made to be companions for us. A working-man 'ud be badly off without a wife to see to th' house and the victual, and make things clean and comfortable." "Nonsense! It's the silliest lie a sensible man like you ever believed, to say a woman makes a house comfortable. It's a story got up because the women are there and something must be found for 'em to do. I tell you there isn't a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it's bearing children, and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better ha' been left to the men--it had better ha' been left to the men. I tell you, a woman 'ull bake you a pie every week of her life and never come to see that the hotter th' oven the shorter the time. I tell you, a woman 'ull make your porridge every day for twenty years and never think of measuring the proportion between the meal and the milk--a little more or less, she'll think, doesn't signify. The porridge WILL be awk'ard now and then: if it's wrong, it's summat in the meal, or it's summat in the milk, or it's summat in the water. Look at me! I make my own bread, and there's no difference between one batch and another from year's end to year's end; but if I'd got any other woman besides Vixen in the house, I must pray to the Lord every baking to give me patience if the bread turned out heavy. And as for cleanliness, my house is cleaner than any other house on the Common, though the half of 'em swarm with women. Will Baker's lad comes to help me in a morning, and we get as much cleaning done in one hour, without any fuss, as a woman 'ud get done in three, and all the while be sending buckets o' water after your ankles, and let the fender and the fire-irons stand in the middle o' the floor half the day for you to break your shins against 'em. Don't tell me about God having made such creatures to be companions for us! I don't say but He might make Eve to be a companion to Adam in Paradise--there was no cooking to be spoilt there, and no other woman to cackle with and make mischief, though you see what mischief she did as soon as she'd an opportunity. But it's an impious, unscriptural opinion to say a woman's a blessing to a man now; you might as well say adders and wasps, and foxes and wild beasts are a blessing, when they're only the evils that belong to this state o' probation, which it's lawful for a man to keep as clear of as he can in this life, hoping to get quit of 'em for ever in another--hoping to get quit of 'em for ever in another." Bartle had become so excited and angry in the course of his invective that he had forgotten his supper, and only used the knife for the purpose of rapping the table with the haft. But towards the close, the raps became so sharp and frequent, and his voice so quarrelsome, that Vixen felt it incumbent on her to jump out of the hamper and bark vaguely. "Quiet, Vixen!" snarled Bartle, turning round upon her. "You're like the rest o' the women--always putting in your word before you know why." Vixen returned to her hamper again in humiliation, and her master continued his supper in a silence which Adam did not choose to interrupt; he knew the old man would be in a better humour when he had had his supper and lighted his pipe. Adam was used to hear him talk in this way, but had never learned so much of Bartle's past life as to know whether his view of married comfort was founded on experience. On that point Bartle was mute, and it was even a secret where he had lived previous to the twenty years in which happily for the peasants and artisans of this neighbourhood he had been settled among them as their only schoolmaster. If anything like a question was ventured on this subject, Bartle always replied, "Oh, I've seen many places--I've been a deal in the south," and the Loamshire men would as soon have thought of asking for a particular town or village in Africa as in "the south." "Now then, my boy," said Bartle, at last, when he had poured out his second mug of ale and lighted his pipe, "now then, we'll have a little talk. But tell me first, have you heard any particular news to-day?" "No," said Adam, "not as I remember." "Ah, they'll keep it close, they'll keep it close, I daresay. But I found it out by chance; and it's news that may concern you, Adam, else I'm a man that don't know a superficial square foot from a solid." Here Bartle gave a series of fierce and rapid puffs, looking earnestly the while at Adam. Your impatient loquacious man has never any notion of keeping his pipe alight by gentle measured puffs; he is always letting it go nearly out, and then punishing it for that negligence. At last he said, "Satchell's got a paralytic stroke. I found it out from the lad they sent to Treddleston for the doctor, before seven o'clock this morning. He's a good way beyond sixty, you know; it's much if he gets over it." "Well," said Adam, "I daresay there'd be more rejoicing than sorrow in the parish at his being laid up. He's been a selfish, tale-bearing, mischievous fellow; but, after all, there's nobody he's done so much harm to as to th' old squire. Though it's the squire himself as is to blame--making a stupid fellow like that a sort o' man-of-all-work, just to save th' expense of having a proper steward to look after th' estate. And he's lost more by ill management o' the woods, I'll be bound, than 'ud pay for two stewards. If he's laid on the shelf, it's to be hoped he'll make way for a better man, but I don't see how it's like to make any difference to me." "But I see it, but I see it," said Bartle, "and others besides me. The captain's coming of age now--you know that as well as I do--and it's to be expected he'll have a little more voice in things. And I know, and you know too, what 'ud be the captain's wish about the woods, if there was a fair opportunity for making a change. He's said in plenty of people's hearing that he'd make you manager of the woods to-morrow, if he'd the power. Why, Carroll, Mr. Irwine's butler, heard him say so to the parson not many days ago. Carroll looked in when we were smoking our pipes o' Saturday night at Casson's, and he told us about it; and whenever anybody says a good word for you, the parson's ready to back it, that I'll answer for. It was pretty well talked over, I can tell you, at Casson's, and one and another had their fling at you; for if donkeys set to work to sing, you're pretty sure what the tune'll be." "Why, did they talk it over before Mr. Burge?" said Adam; "or wasn't he there o' Saturday?" "Oh, he went away before Carroll came; and Casson--he's always for setting other folks right, you know--would have it Burge was the man to have the management of the woods. 'A substantial man,' says he, 'with pretty near sixty years' experience o' timber: it 'ud be all very well for Adam Bede to act under him, but it isn't to be supposed the squire 'ud appoint a young fellow like Adam, when there's his elders and betters at hand!' But I said, 'That's a pretty notion o' yours, Casson. Why, Burge is the man to buy timber; would you put the woods into his hands and let him make his own bargains? I think you don't leave your customers to score their own drink, do you? And as for age, what that's worth depends on the quality o' the liquor. It's pretty well known who's the backbone of Jonathan Burge's business.'" "I thank you for your good word, Mr. Massey," said Adam. "But, for all that, Casson was partly i' the right for once. There's not much likelihood that th' old squire 'ud ever consent t' employ me. I offended him about two years ago, and he's never forgiven me." "Why, how was that? You never told me about it," said Bartle. "Oh, it was a bit o' nonsense. I'd made a frame for a screen for Miss Lyddy--she's allays making something with her worsted-work, you know--and she'd given me particular orders about this screen, and there was as much talking and measuring as if we'd been planning a house. However, it was a nice bit o' work, and I liked doing it for her. But, you know, those little friggling things take a deal o' time. I only worked at it in overhours--often late at night--and I had to go to Treddleston over an' over again about little bits o' brass nails and such gear; and I turned the little knobs and the legs, and carved th' open work, after a pattern, as nice as could be. And I was uncommon pleased with it when it was done. And when I took it home, Miss Lyddy sent for me to bring it into her drawing-room, so as she might give me directions about fastening on the work--very fine needlework, Jacob and Rachel a-kissing one another among the sheep, like a picture--and th' old squire was sitting there, for he mostly sits with her. Well, she was mighty pleased with the screen, and then she wanted to know what pay she was to give me. I didn't speak at random--you know it's not my way; I'd calculated pretty close, though I hadn't made out a bill, and I said, 'One pound thirteen.' That was paying for the mater'als and paying me, but none too much, for my work. Th' old squire looked up at this, and peered in his way at the screen, and said, 'One pound thirteen for a gimcrack like that! Lydia, my dear, if you must spend money on these things, why don't you get them at Rosseter, instead of paying double price for clumsy work here? Such things are not work for a carpenter like Adam. Give him a guinea, and no more.' Well, Miss Lyddy, I reckon, believed what he told her, and she's not overfond o' parting with the money herself--she's not a bad woman at bottom, but she's been brought up under his thumb; so she began fidgeting with her purse, and turned as red as her ribbon. But I made a bow, and said, 'No, thank you, madam; I'll make you a present o' the screen, if you please. I've charged the regular price for my work, and I know it's done well; and I know, begging His Honour's pardon, that you couldn't get such a screen at Rosseter under two guineas. I'm willing to give you my work--it's been done in my own time, and nobody's got anything to do with it but me; but if I'm paid, I can't take a smaller price than I asked, because that 'ud be like saying I'd asked more than was just. With your leave, madam, I'll bid you good-morning.' I made my bow and went out before she'd time to say any more, for she stood with the purse in her hand, looking almost foolish. I didn't mean to be disrespectful, and I spoke as polite as I could; but I can give in to no man, if he wants to make it out as I'm trying to overreach him. And in the evening the footman brought me the one pound thirteen wrapped in paper. But since then I've seen pretty clear as th' old squire can't abide me." "That's likely enough, that's likely enough," said Bartle meditatively. "The only way to bring him round would be to show him what was for his own interest, and that the captain may do--that the captain may do." "Nay, I don't know," said Adam; "the squire's 'cute enough but it takes something else besides 'cuteness to make folks see what'll be their interest in the long run. It takes some conscience and belief in right and wrong, I see that pretty clear. You'd hardly ever bring round th' old squire to believe he'd gain as much in a straightfor'ard way as by tricks and turns. And, besides, I've not much mind to work under him: I don't want to quarrel with any gentleman, more particular an old gentleman turned eighty, and I know we couldn't agree long. If the captain was master o' th' estate, it 'ud be different: he's got a conscience and a will to do right, and I'd sooner work for him nor for any man living." "Well, well, my boy, if good luck knocks at your door, don't you put your head out at window and tell it to be gone about its business, that's all. You must learn to deal with odd and even in life, as well as in figures. I tell you now, as I told you ten years ago, when you pommelled young Mike Holdsworth for wanting to pass a bad shilling before you knew whether he was in jest or earnest--you're overhasty and proud, and apt to set your teeth against folks that don't square to your notions. It's no harm for me to be a bit fiery and stiff-backed--I'm an old schoolmaster, and shall never want to get on to a higher perch. But where's the use of all the time I've spent in teaching you writing and mapping and mensuration, if you're not to get for'ard in the world and show folks there's some advantage in having a head on your shoulders, instead of a turnip? Do you mean to go on turning up your nose at every opportunity because it's got a bit of a smell about it that nobody finds out but yourself? It's as foolish as that notion o' yours that a wife is to make a working-man comfortable. Stuff and nonsense! Stuff and nonsense! Leave that to fools that never got beyond a sum in simple addition. Simple addition enough! Add one fool to another fool, and in six years' time six fools more--they're all of the same denomination, big and little's nothing to do with the sum!" During this rather heated exhortation to coolness and discretion the pipe had gone out, and Bartle gave the climax to his speech by striking a light furiously, after which he puffed with fierce resolution, fixing his eye still on Adam, who was trying not to laugh. "There's a good deal o' sense in what you say, Mr. Massey," Adam began, as soon as he felt quite serious, "as there always is. But you'll give in that it's no business o' mine to be building on chances that may never happen. What I've got to do is to work as well as I can with the tools and mater'als I've got in my hands. If a good chance comes to me, I'll think o' what you've been saying; but till then, I've got nothing to do but to trust to my own hands and my own head-piece. I'm turning over a little plan for Seth and me to go into the cabinet-making a bit by ourselves, and win a extra pound or two in that way. But it's getting late now--it'll be pretty near eleven before I'm at home, and Mother may happen to lie awake; she's more fidgety nor usual now. So I'll bid you good-night." "Well, well, we'll go to the gate with you--it's a fine night," said Bartle, taking up his stick. Vixen was at once on her legs, and without further words the three walked out into the starlight, by the side of Bartle's potato-beds, to the little gate. "Come to the music o' Friday night, if you can, my boy," said the old man, as he closed the gate after Adam and leaned against it. "Aye, aye," said Adam, striding along towards the streak of pale road. He was the only object moving on the wide common. The two grey donkeys, just visible in front of the gorse bushes, stood as still as limestone images--as still as the grey-thatched roof of the mud cottage a little farther on. Bartle kept his eye on the moving figure till it passed into the darkness, while Vixen, in a state of divided affection, had twice run back to the house to bestow a parenthetic lick on her puppies. "Aye, aye," muttered the schoolmaster, as Adam disappeared, "there you go, stalking along--stalking along; but you wouldn't have been what you are if you hadn't had a bit of old lame Bartle inside you. The strongest calf must have something to suck at. There's plenty of these big, lumbering fellows 'ud never have known their A B C if it hadn't been for Bartle Massey. Well, well, Vixen, you foolish wench, what is it, what is it? I must go in, must I? Aye, aye, I'm never to have a will o' my own any more. And those pups--what do you think I'm to do with 'em, when they're twice as big as you? For I'm pretty sure the father was that hulking bull-terrier of Will Baker's--wasn't he now, eh, you sly hussy?" (Here Vixen tucked her tail between her legs and ran forward into the house. Subjects are sometimes broached which a well-bred female will ignore.) "But where's the use of talking to a woman with babbies?" continued Bartle. "She's got no conscience--no conscience; it's all run to milk." Book Three

Chapter 21

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter21

The Night-School and the Schoolmaster Bartle Massey is the old schoolteacher whose house is on the edge of the common. He is teaching reading to some adult learners who are not very bright. Adam watches, remembering the years he has been here. Bartle is gentle and patient with the men, who are learning to read to help them advance in their work or to read the Bible. Bartle is both gentle and stern, insisting that the men do their homework, for he wants no slackers in his school. Bartle has one leg shorter than the other and is a sharp-tongued man who lives alone except for his dog, Vixen, and her puppies. He complains about Vixen's becoming a mother, as a symbol of all women; they can't be trusted. Bartle tells Adam some good news. The squire's steward Satchell is sick, and he intends on putting in a good word for Adam to get the job of managing the woods on the Donnithorne estate. Adam says it is no use, for he had a run-in with the squire two years earlier. Bartle warns Adam against being proud, and Adam agrees to be open to the possibility.

Commentary on Chapter 21 Bartle is a father-figure to Adam, as Mr. Irwine is to Arthur. He has helped to educate Adam and is proud of the young man. He tries to help him advance by recommending him for the job of managing the woods. Adam tells him about the argument he had with the old squire who wouldn't pay him what he asked for a screen he made for his daughter. The squire acted as though Adam were overpricing the screen. Adam refused payment, telling the squire that he only charged what was fair and then walked away. The squire sent the correct payment to Adam later. Adam explains that he won't let a man insult his honor. He will not work for a man who doesn't understand honor and what's in his own interest. He would work for Arthur but not the squire. Bartle's warning that he needs to "deal with the odd and even in life" and not to "set your teeth against folks that don't square to your notions" is good advice that Adam needs to hear. On the other hand, Bartle advises Adam against women. His dog's name bears his opinion of women and the poor dog bears the brunt of his ill-feeling against having a woman in the house. Adam doesn't accept his opinion of women but he does respect his advice, and accepts the old man's sharp tongue because of his other excellent qualities. This chapter ends the second book, with the inevitable conflict looming for the romantic triangle of Adam, Hetty, and Arthur. We have been told about Arthur's upcoming birthday celebration and this promises to bring all the characters together.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/22.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_22_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 3.chapter 22

chapter 22

{"name": "Chapter 22", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter22", "summary": "Going to the Birthday Feast In the hot pause of July when nature is lazy, the great cask of ale brewed on Arthur Donnithorne's birth is opened for his coming of age. All the people from Hayslope and Broxton are gathering at the Chase for dinner and games and a dance. Hetty has bought a few bits of finery for the occasion, but secretly tries on the pearl and garnet earrings Arthur recently gave her. She has to keep them hidden. She does put on the locket he gave her with strands of their hair intertwined inside. It cannot be seen under her dress. The whole Poyser family departs in a cart and arrives at the Donnithorne house, built on to the remnant of an abbey. Arthur roams around greeting people with Mr. Irwine, informing him that his grandfather has given in to hiring Adam to manage the woods. Arthur wants to announce it at the dinner. Irwine teases him about wanting the announcement to make him look good with the tenants, and Arthur blushes.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 22 The focus is on the vanity of both Hetty and Arthur. Hetty is more in love with the earrings than with Arthur, the narrator tells us. She also continues to sound warnings about Hetty's coming tragedy. Hetty is not only vain; she is jealous as well, imagining Mary Burge as a rival. Mary will have all new clothes, and Hetty has to wear some old things. But she imagines the clothes she will have as Arthur's wife. Arthur similarly is indulging in his dream of being the great landowner in the future and begins by planning the announcement of Adam as manager of the Chase woods. This, he believes, will make him popular with the people and make them look forward to his becoming the squire."}

THE thirtieth of July was come, and it was one of those half-dozen warm days which sometimes occur in the middle of a rainy English summer. No rain had fallen for the last three or four days, and the weather was perfect for that time of the year: there was less dust than usual on the dark-green hedge-rows and on the wild camomile that starred the roadside, yet the grass was dry enough for the little children to roll on it, and there was no cloud but a long dash of light, downy ripple, high, high up in the far-off blue sky. Perfect weather for an outdoor July merry-making, yet surely not the best time of year to be born in. Nature seems to make a hot pause just then: all the loveliest flowers are gone; the sweet time of early growth and vague hopes is past; and yet the time of harvest and ingathering is not come, and we tremble at the possible storms that may ruin the precious fruit in the moment of its ripeness. The woods are all one dark monotonous green; the waggon-loads of hay no longer creep along the lanes, scattering their sweet-smelling fragments on the blackberry branches; the pastures are often a little tanned, yet the corn has not got its last splendour of red and gold; the lambs and calves have lost all traces of their innocent frisky prettiness, and have become stupid young sheep and cows. But it is a time of leisure on the farm--that pause between hay-and corn-harvest, and so the farmers and labourers in Hayslope and Broxton thought the captain did well to come of age just then, when they could give their undivided minds to the flavour of the great cask of ale which had been brewed the autumn after "the heir" was born, and was to be tapped on his twenty-first birthday. The air had been merry with the ringing of church-bells very early this morning, and every one had made haste to get through the needful work before twelve, when it would be time to think of getting ready to go to the Chase. The midday sun was streaming into Hetty's bedchamber, and there was no blind to temper the heat with which it fell on her head as she looked at herself in the old specked glass. Still, that was the only glass she had in which she could see her neck and arms, for the small hanging glass she had fetched out of the next room--the room that had been Dinah's--would show her nothing below her little chin; and that beautiful bit of neck where the roundness of her cheek melted into another roundness shadowed by dark delicate curls. And to-day she thought more than usual about her neck and arms; for at the dance this evening she was not to wear any neckerchief, and she had been busy yesterday with her spotted pink-and-white frock, that she might make the sleeves either long or short at will. She was dressed now just as she was to be in the evening, with a tucker made of "real" lace, which her aunt had lent her for this unparalleled occasion, but with no ornaments besides; she had even taken out her small round ear-rings which she wore every day. But there was something more to be done, apparently, before she put on her neckerchief and long sleeves, which she was to wear in the day-time, for now she unlocked the drawer that held her private treasures. It is more than a month since we saw her unlock that drawer before, and now it holds new treasures, so much more precious than the old ones that these are thrust into the corner. Hetty would not care to put the large coloured glass ear-rings into her ears now; for see! she has got a beautiful pair of gold and pearls and garnet, lying snugly in a pretty little box lined with white satin. Oh, the delight of taking out that little box and looking at the ear-rings! Do not reason about it, my philosphical reader, and say that Hetty, being very pretty, must have known that it did not signify whether she had on any ornaments or not; and that, moreover, to look at ear-rings which she could not possibly wear out of her bedroom could hardly be a satisfaction, the essence of vanity being a reference to the impressions produced on others; you will never understand women's natures if you are so excessively rational. Try rather to divest yourself of all your rational prejudices, as much as if you were studying the psychology of a canary bird, and only watch the movements of this pretty round creature as she turns her head on one side with an unconscious smile at the ear-rings nestled in the little box. Ah, you think, it is for the sake of the person who has given them to her, and her thoughts are gone back now to the moment when they were put into her hands. No; else why should she have cared to have ear-rings rather than anything else? And I know that she had longed for ear-rings from among all the ornaments she could imagine. "Little, little ears!" Arthur had said, pretending to pinch them one evening, as Hetty sat beside him on the grass without her hat. "I wish I had some pretty ear-rings!" she said in a moment, almost before she knew what she was saying--the wish lay so close to her lips, it WOULD flutter past them at the slightest breath. And the next day--it was only last week--Arthur had ridden over to Rosseter on purpose to buy them. That little wish so naively uttered seemed to him the prettiest bit of childishness; he had never heard anything like it before; and he had wrapped the box up in a great many covers, that he might see Hetty unwrapping it with growing curiosity, till at last her eyes flashed back their new delight into his. No, she was not thinking most of the giver when she smiled at the ear-rings, for now she is taking them out of the box, not to press them to her lips, but to fasten them in her ears--only for one moment, to see how pretty they look, as she peeps at them in the glass against the wall, with first one position of the head and then another, like a listening bird. It is impossible to be wise on the subject of ear-rings as one looks at her; what should those delicate pearls and crystals be made for, if not for such ears? One cannot even find fault with the tiny round hole which they leave when they are taken out; perhaps water-nixies, and such lovely things without souls, have these little round holes in their ears by nature, ready to hang jewels in. And Hetty must be one of them: it is too painful to think that she is a woman, with a woman's destiny before her--a woman spinning in young ignorance a light web of folly and vain hopes which may one day close round her and press upon her, a rancorous poisoned garment, changing all at once her fluttering, trivial butterfly sensations into a life of deep human anguish. But she cannot keep in the ear-rings long, else she may make her uncle and aunt wait. She puts them quickly into the box again and shuts them up. Some day she will be able to wear any ear-rings she likes, and already she lives in an invisible world of brilliant costumes, shimmering gauze, soft satin, and velvet, such as the lady's maid at the Chase has shown her in Miss Lydia's wardrobe. She feels the bracelets on her arms, and treads on a soft carpet in front of a tall mirror. But she has one thing in the drawer which she can venture to wear to-day, because she can hang it on the chain of dark-brown berries which she has been used to wear on grand days, with a tiny flat scent-bottle at the end of it tucked inside her frock; and she must put on her brown berries--her neck would look so unfinished without it. Hetty was not quite as fond of the locket as of the ear-rings, though it was a handsome large locket, with enamelled flowers at the back and a beautiful gold border round the glass, which showed a light-brown slightly waving lock, forming a background for two little dark rings. She must keep it under her clothes, and no one would see it. But Hetty had another passion, only a little less strong than her love of finery, and that other passion made her like to wear the locket even hidden in her bosom. She would always have worn it, if she had dared to encounter her aunt's questions about a ribbon round her neck. So now she slipped it on along her chain of dark-brown berries, and snapped the chain round her neck. It was not a very long chain, only allowing the locket to hang a little way below the edge of her frock. And now she had nothing to do but to put on her long sleeves, her new white gauze neckerchief, and her straw hat trimmed with white to-day instead of the pink, which had become rather faded under the July sun. That hat made the drop of bitterness in Hetty's cup to-day, for it was not quite new--everybody would see that it was a little tanned against the white ribbon--and Mary Burge, she felt sure, would have a new hat or bonnet on. She looked for consolation at her fine white cotton stockings: they really were very nice indeed, and she had given almost all her spare money for them. Hetty's dream of the future could not make her insensible to triumph in the present. To be sure, Captain Donnithorne loved her so that he would never care about looking at other people, but then those other people didn't know how he loved her, and she was not satisfied to appear shabby and insignificant in their eyes even for a short space. The whole party was assembled in the house-place when Hetty went down, all of course in their Sunday clothes; and the bells had been ringing so this morning in honour of the captain's twenty-first birthday, and the work had all been got done so early, that Marty and Tommy were not quite easy in their minds until their mother had assured them that going to church was not part of the day's festivities. Mr. Poyser had once suggested that the house should be shut up and left to take care of itself; "for," said he, "there's no danger of anybody's breaking in--everybody'll be at the Chase, thieves an' all. If we lock th' house up, all the men can go: it's a day they wonna see twice i' their lives." But Mrs. Poyser answered with great decision: "I never left the house to take care of itself since I was a missis, and I never will. There's been ill-looking tramps enoo' about the place this last week, to carry off every ham an' every spoon we'n got; and they all collogue together, them tramps, as it's a mercy they hanna come and poisoned the dogs and murdered us all in our beds afore we knowed, some Friday night when we'n got the money in th' house to pay the men. And it's like enough the tramps know where we're going as well as we do oursens; for if Old Harry wants any work done, you may be sure he'll find the means." "Nonsense about murdering us in our beds," said Mr. Poyser; "I've got a gun i' our room, hanna I? and thee'st got ears as 'ud find it out if a mouse was gnawing the bacon. Howiver, if thee wouldstna be easy, Alick can stay at home i' the forepart o' the day, and Tim can come back tow'rds five o'clock, and let Alick have his turn. They may let Growler loose if anybody offers to do mischief, and there's Alick's dog too, ready enough to set his tooth in a tramp if Alick gives him a wink." Mrs. Poyser accepted this compromise, but thought it advisable to bar and bolt to the utmost; and now, at the last moment before starting, Nancy, the dairy-maid, was closing the shutters of the house-place, although the window, lying under the immediate observation of Alick and the dogs, might have been supposed the least likely to be selected for a burglarious attempt. The covered cart, without springs, was standing ready to carry the whole family except the men-servants. Mr. Poyser and the grandfather sat on the seat in front, and within there was room for all the women and children; the fuller the cart the better, because then the jolting would not hurt so much, and Nancy's broad person and thick arms were an excellent cushion to be pitched on. But Mr. Poyser drove at no more than a walking pace, that there might be as little risk of jolting as possible on this warm day, and there was time to exchange greetings and remarks with the foot-passengers who were going the same way, specking the paths between the green meadows and the golden cornfields with bits of movable bright colour--a scarlet waistcoat to match the poppies that nodded a little too thickly among the corn, or a dark-blue neckerchief with ends flaunting across a brand-new white smock-frock. All Broxton and all Hayslope were to be at the Chase, and make merry there in honour of "th' heir"; and the old men and women, who had never been so far down this side of the hill for the last twenty years, were being brought from Broxton and Hayslope in one of the farmer's waggons, at Mr. Irwine's suggestion. The church-bells had struck up again now--a last tune, before the ringers came down the hill to have their share in the festival; and before the bells had finished, other music was heard approaching, so that even Old Brown, the sober horse that was drawing Mr. Poyser's cart, began to prick up his ears. It was the band of the Benefit Club, which had mustered in all its glory--that is to say, in bright-blue scarfs and blue favours, and carrying its banner with the motto, "Let brotherly love continue," encircling a picture of a stone-pit. The carts, of course, were not to enter the Chase. Every one must get down at the lodges, and the vehicles must be sent back. "Why, the Chase is like a fair a'ready," said Mrs. Poyser, as she got down from the cart, and saw the groups scattered under the great oaks, and the boys running about in the hot sunshine to survey the tall poles surmounted by the fluttering garments that were to be the prize of the successful climbers. "I should ha' thought there wasna so many people i' the two parishes. Mercy on us! How hot it is out o' the shade! Come here, Totty, else your little face 'ull be burnt to a scratchin'! They might ha' cooked the dinners i' that open space an' saved the fires. I shall go to Mrs. Best's room an' sit down." "Stop a bit, stop a bit," said Mr. Poyser. "There's th' waggin coming wi' th' old folks in't; it'll be such a sight as wonna come o'er again, to see 'em get down an' walk along all together. You remember some on 'em i' their prime, eh, Father?" "Aye, aye," said old Martin, walking slowly under the shade of the lodge porch, from which he could see the aged party descend. "I remember Jacob Taft walking fifty mile after the Scotch raybels, when they turned back from Stoniton." He felt himself quite a youngster, with a long life before him, as he saw the Hayslope patriarch, old Feyther Taft, descend from the waggon and walk towards him, in his brown nightcap, and leaning on his two sticks. "Well, Mester Taft," shouted old Martin, at the utmost stretch of his voice--for though he knew the old man was stone deaf, he could not omit the propriety of a greeting--"you're hearty yet. You can enjoy yoursen to-day, for-all you're ninety an' better." "Your sarvant, mesters, your sarvant," said Feyther Taft in a treble tone, perceiving that he was in company. The aged group, under care of sons or daughters, themselves worn and grey, passed on along the least-winding carriage-road towards the house, where a special table was prepared for them; while the Poyser party wisely struck across the grass under the shade of the great trees, but not out of view of the house-front, with its sloping lawn and flower-beds, or of the pretty striped marquee at the edge of the lawn, standing at right angles with two larger marquees on each side of the open green space where the games were to be played. The house would have been nothing but a plain square mansion of Queen Anne's time, but for the remnant of an old abbey to which it was united at one end, in much the same way as one may sometimes see a new farmhouse rising high and prim at the end of older and lower farm-offices. The fine old remnant stood a little backward and under the shadow of tall beeches, but the sun was now on the taller and more advanced front, the blinds were all down, and the house seemed asleep in the hot midday. It made Hetty quite sad to look at it: Arthur must be somewhere in the back rooms, with the grand company, where he could not possibly know that she was come, and she should not see him for a long, long while--not till after dinner, when they said he was to come up and make a speech. But Hetty was wrong in part of her conjecture. No grand company was come except the Irwines, for whom the carriage had been sent early, and Arthur was at that moment not in a back room, but walking with the rector into the broad stone cloisters of the old abbey, where the long tables were laid for all the cottage tenants and the farm-servants. A very handsome young Briton he looked to-day, in high spirits and a bright-blue frock-coat, the highest mode--his arm no longer in a sling. So open-looking and candid, too; but candid people have their secrets, and secrets leave no lines in young faces. "Upon my word," he said, as they entered the cool cloisters, "I think the cottagers have the best of it: these cloisters make a delightful dining-room on a hot day. That was capital advice of yours, Irwine, about the dinners--to let them be as orderly and comfortable as possible, and only for the tenants: especially as I had only a limited sum after all; for though my grandfather talked of a carte blanche, he couldn't make up his mind to trust me, when it came to the point." "Never mind, you'll give more pleasure in this quiet way," said Mr. Irwine. "In this sort of thing people are constantly confounding liberality with riot and disorder. It sounds very grand to say that so many sheep and oxen were roasted whole, and everybody ate who liked to come; but in the end it generally happens that no one has had an enjoyable meal. If the people get a good dinner and a moderate quantity of ale in the middle of the day, they'll be able to enjoy the games as the day cools. You can't hinder some of them from getting too much towards evening, but drunkenness and darkness go better together than drunkenness and daylight." "Well, I hope there won't be much of it. I've kept the Treddleston people away by having a feast for them in the town; and I've got Casson and Adam Bede and some other good fellows to look to the giving out of ale in the booths, and to take care things don't go too far. Come, let us go up above now and see the dinner-tables for the large tenants." They went up the stone staircase leading simply to the long gallery above the cloisters, a gallery where all the dusty worthless old pictures had been banished for the last three generations--mouldy portraits of Queen Elizabeth and her ladies, General Monk with his eye knocked out, Daniel very much in the dark among the lions, and Julius Caesar on horseback, with a high nose and laurel crown, holding his Commentaries in his hand. "What a capital thing it is that they saved this piece of the old abbey!" said Arthur. "If I'm ever master here, I shall do up the gallery in first-rate style. We've got no room in the house a third as large as this. That second table is for the farmers' wives and children: Mrs. Best said it would be more comfortable for the mothers and children to be by themselves. I was determined to have the children, and make a regular family thing of it. I shall be 'the old squire' to those little lads and lasses some day, and they'll tell their children what a much finer young fellow I was than my own son. There's a table for the women and children below as well. But you will see them all--you will come up with me after dinner, I hope?" "Yes, to be sure," said Mr. Irwine. "I wouldn't miss your maiden speech to the tenantry." "And there will be something else you'll like to hear," said Arthur. "Let us go into the library and I'll tell you all about it while my grandfather is in the drawing-room with the ladies. Something that will surprise you," he continued, as they sat down. "My grandfather has come round after all." "What, about Adam?" "Yes; I should have ridden over to tell you about it, only I was so busy. You know I told you I had quite given up arguing the matter with him--I thought it was hopeless--but yesterday morning he asked me to come in here to him before I went out, and astonished me by saying that he had decided on all the new arrangements he should make in consequence of old Satchell being obliged to lay by work, and that he intended to employ Adam in superintending the woods at a salary of a guinea a-week, and the use of a pony to be kept here. I believe the secret of it is, he saw from the first it would be a profitable plan, but he had some particular dislike of Adam to get over--and besides, the fact that I propose a thing is generally a reason with him for rejecting it. There's the most curious contradiction in my grandfather: I know he means to leave me all the money he has saved, and he is likely enough to have cut off poor Aunt Lydia, who has been a slave to him all her life, with only five hundred a-year, for the sake of giving me all the more; and yet I sometimes think he positively hates me because I'm his heir. I believe if I were to break my neck, he would feel it the greatest misfortune that could befall him, and yet it seems a pleasure to him to make my life a series of petty annoyances." "Ah, my boy, it is not only woman's love that is [two greek words omitted] as old AEschylus calls it. There's plenty of 'unloving love' in the world of a masculine kind. But tell me about Adam. Has he accepted the post? I don't see that it can be much more profitable than his present work, though, to be sure, it will leave him a good deal of time on his own hands. "Well, I felt some doubt about it when I spoke to him and he seemed to hesitate at first. His objection was that he thought he should not be able to satisfy my grandfather. But I begged him as a personal favour to me not to let any reason prevent him from accepting the place, if he really liked the employment and would not be giving up anything that was more profitable to him. And he assured me he should like it of all things--it would be a great step forward for him in business, and it would enable him to do what he had long wished to do, to give up working for Burge. He says he shall have plenty of time to superintend a little business of his own, which he and Seth will carry on, and will perhaps be able to enlarge by degrees. So he has agreed at last, and I have arranged that he shall dine with the large tenants to-day; and I mean to announce the appointment to them, and ask them to drink Adam's health. It's a little drama I've got up in honour of my friend Adam. He's a fine fellow, and I like the opportunity of letting people know that I think so." "A drama in which friend Arthur piques himself on having a pretty part to play," said Mr. Irwine, smiling. But when he saw Arthur colour, he went on relentingly, "My part, you know, is always that of the old fogy who sees nothing to admire in the young folks. I don't like to admit that I'm proud of my pupil when he does graceful things. But I must play the amiable old gentleman for once, and second your toast in honour of Adam. Has your grandfather yielded on the other point too, and agreed to have a respectable man as steward?" "Oh no," said Arthur, rising from his chair with an air of impatience and walking along the room with his hands in his pockets. "He's got some project or other about letting the Chase Farm and bargaining for a supply of milk and butter for the house. But I ask no questions about it--it makes me too angry. I believe he means to do all the business himself, and have nothing in the shape of a steward. It's amazing what energy he has, though." "Well, we'll go to the ladies now," said Mr. Irwine, rising too. "I want to tell my mother what a splendid throne you've prepared for her under the marquee." "Yes, and we must be going to luncheon too," said Arthur. "It must be two o'clock, for there is the gong beginning to sound for the tenants' dinners."

Chapter 22

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter22

Going to the Birthday Feast In the hot pause of July when nature is lazy, the great cask of ale brewed on Arthur Donnithorne's birth is opened for his coming of age. All the people from Hayslope and Broxton are gathering at the Chase for dinner and games and a dance. Hetty has bought a few bits of finery for the occasion, but secretly tries on the pearl and garnet earrings Arthur recently gave her. She has to keep them hidden. She does put on the locket he gave her with strands of their hair intertwined inside. It cannot be seen under her dress. The whole Poyser family departs in a cart and arrives at the Donnithorne house, built on to the remnant of an abbey. Arthur roams around greeting people with Mr. Irwine, informing him that his grandfather has given in to hiring Adam to manage the woods. Arthur wants to announce it at the dinner. Irwine teases him about wanting the announcement to make him look good with the tenants, and Arthur blushes.

Commentary on Chapter 22 The focus is on the vanity of both Hetty and Arthur. Hetty is more in love with the earrings than with Arthur, the narrator tells us. She also continues to sound warnings about Hetty's coming tragedy. Hetty is not only vain; she is jealous as well, imagining Mary Burge as a rival. Mary will have all new clothes, and Hetty has to wear some old things. But she imagines the clothes she will have as Arthur's wife. Arthur similarly is indulging in his dream of being the great landowner in the future and begins by planning the announcement of Adam as manager of the Chase woods. This, he believes, will make him popular with the people and make them look forward to his becoming the squire.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/23.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_23_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 3.chapter 23

chapter 23

{"name": "Chapter 23", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter23", "summary": "Dinner-Time Adam is told he is to sit upstairs in the cloisters at the table with the large tenants rather than with the workmen, and he apologizes to Seth and his mother. Seth says his honor is theirs. Adam has not yet given notice to Jonathan Burge, and he hopes they will not announce his new post before he has a chance to tell Burge. The tenants welcome Adam but argue among themselves who is to sit at the head of the table and give the toast. Bartle Massey settles it, and Mr. Poyser is selected. Hetty sees Mary Burge at the table and purposely flirts with Adam to make Mary jealous. Adam is happy that Hetty smiles at him.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 23 The argument over who is to give the speech is a comic bit, for this is a momentous day for the folk on the Donnithorne estate, and everyone wants to have a share in the glory. Old man Poyser is the oldest, but he is as good natured as his son and always defers everything to the \"young uns'\" . Mr. Casson, as a former butler, thinks he should do the toast as he knows about these things, but Martin Poyser wins out, as he is considered the best tenant on the estate. Adam is uncomfortable with sitting at the head table and does not want the announcement to take place. He is thinking of the feelings of others rather than his own fame. Arthur admits that Adam had to be talked into taking the post. Hetty, on the other hand, is cross with little Totty for messing up her dress and frowns. Her only concern is how she looks. Adam is charmed with whatever Hetty does and her frowns seem adorable. Hetty wants to display her power to Mary Burge, her supposed rival for Adam, by purposely flirting with Adam. The narrator goes into Mary's mind to see her reaction. Mary assumes that Adam can see right through Hetty. She believes that he will prefer a good woman."}

WHEN Adam heard that he was to dine upstairs with the large tenants, he felt rather uncomfortable at the idea of being exalted in this way above his mother and Seth, who were to dine in the cloisters below. But Mr. Mills, the butler, assured him that Captain Donnithorne had given particular orders about it, and would be very angry if Adam was not there. Adam nodded and went up to Seth, who was standing a few yards off. "Seth, lad," he said, "the captain has sent to say I'm to dine upstairs--he wishes it particular, Mr. Mills says, so I suppose it 'ud be behaving ill for me not to go. But I don't like sitting up above thee and mother, as if I was better than my own flesh and blood. Thee't not take it unkind, I hope?" "Nay, nay, lad," said Seth, "thy honour's our honour; and if thee get'st respect, thee'st won it by thy own deserts. The further I see thee above me, the better, so long as thee feel'st like a brother to me. It's because o' thy being appointed over the woods, and it's nothing but what's right. That's a place o' trust, and thee't above a common workman now." "Aye," said Adam, "but nobody knows a word about it yet. I haven't given notice to Mr. Burge about leaving him, and I don't like to tell anybody else about it before he knows, for he'll be a good bit hurt, I doubt. People 'ull be wondering to see me there, and they'll like enough be guessing the reason and asking questions, for there's been so much talk up and down about my having the place, this last three weeks." "Well, thee canst say thee wast ordered to come without being told the reason. That's the truth. And mother 'ull be fine and joyful about it. Let's go and tell her." Adam was not the only guest invited to come upstairs on other grounds than the amount he contributed to the rent-roll. There were other people in the two parishes who derived dignity from their functions rather than from their pocket, and of these Bartle Massey was one. His lame walk was rather slower than usual on this warm day, so Adam lingered behind when the bell rang for dinner, that he might walk up with his old friend; for he was a little too shy to join the Poyser party on this public occasion. Opportunities of getting to Hetty's side would be sure to turn up in the course of the day, and Adam contented himself with that for he disliked any risk of being "joked" about Hetty--the big, outspoken, fearless man was very shy and diffident as to his love-making. "Well, Mester Massey," said Adam, as Bartle came up "I'm going to dine upstairs with you to-day: the captain's sent me orders." "Ah!" said Bartle, pausing, with one hand on his back. "Then there's something in the wind--there's something in the wind. Have you heard anything about what the old squire means to do?" "Why, yes," said Adam; "I'll tell you what I know, because I believe you can keep a still tongue in your head if you like, and I hope you'll not let drop a word till it's common talk, for I've particular reasons against its being known." "Trust to me, my boy, trust to me. I've got no wife to worm it out of me and then run out and cackle it in everybody's hearing. If you trust a man, let him be a bachelor--let him be a bachelor." "Well, then, it was so far settled yesterday that I'm to take the management o' the woods. The captain sent for me t' offer it me, when I was seeing to the poles and things here and I've agreed to't. But if anybody asks any questions upstairs, just you take no notice, and turn the talk to something else, and I'll be obliged to you. Now, let us go on, for we're pretty nigh the last, I think." "I know what to do, never fear," said Bartle, moving on. "The news will be good sauce to my dinner. Aye, aye, my boy, you'll get on. I'll back you for an eye at measuring and a head-piece for figures, against any man in this county and you've had good teaching--you've had good teaching." When they got upstairs, the question which Arthur had left unsettled, as to who was to be president, and who vice, was still under discussion, so that Adam's entrance passed without remark. "It stands to sense," Mr. Casson was saying, "as old Mr. Poyser, as is th' oldest man i' the room, should sit at top o' the table. I wasn't butler fifteen year without learning the rights and the wrongs about dinner." "Nay, nay," said old Martin, "I'n gi'en up to my son; I'm no tenant now: let my son take my place. Th' ould foulks ha' had their turn: they mun make way for the young uns." "I should ha' thought the biggest tenant had the best right, more nor th' oldest," said Luke Britton, who was not fond of the critical Mr. Poyser; "there's Mester Holdsworth has more land nor anybody else on th' estate." "Well," said Mr. Poyser, "suppose we say the man wi' the foulest land shall sit at top; then whoever gets th' honour, there'll be no envying on him." "Eh, here's Mester Massey," said Mr. Craig, who, being a neutral in the dispute, had no interest but in conciliation; "the schoolmaster ought to be able to tell you what's right. Who's to sit at top o' the table, Mr. Massey?" "Why, the broadest man," said Bartle; "and then he won't take up other folks' room; and the next broadest must sit at bottom." This happy mode of settling the dispute produced much laughter--a smaller joke would have sufficed for that Mr. Casson, however, did not feel it compatible with his dignity and superior knowledge to join in the laugh, until it turned out that he was fixed on as the second broadest man. Martin Poyser the younger, as the broadest, was to be president, and Mr. Casson, as next broadest, was to be vice. Owing to this arrangement, Adam, being, of course, at the bottom of the table, fell under the immediate observation of Mr. Casson, who, too much occupied with the question of precedence, had not hitherto noticed his entrance. Mr. Casson, we have seen, considered Adam "rather lifted up and peppery-like": he thought the gentry made more fuss about this young carpenter than was necessary; they made no fuss about Mr. Casson, although he had been an excellent butler for fifteen years. "Well, Mr. Bede, you're one o' them as mounts hup'ards apace," he said, when Adam sat down. "You've niver dined here before, as I remember." "No, Mr. Casson," said Adam, in his strong voice, that could be heard along the table; "I've never dined here before, but I come by Captain Donnithorne's wish, and I hope it's not disagreeable to anybody here." "Nay, nay," said several voices at once, "we're glad ye're come. Who's got anything to say again' it?" "And ye'll sing us 'Over the hills and far away,' after dinner, wonna ye?" said Mr. Chowne. "That's a song I'm uncommon fond on." "Peeh!" said Mr. Craig; "it's not to be named by side o' the Scotch tunes. I've never cared about singing myself; I've had something better to do. A man that's got the names and the natur o' plants in's head isna likely to keep a hollow place t' hold tunes in. But a second cousin o' mine, a drovier, was a rare hand at remembering the Scotch tunes. He'd got nothing else to think on." "The Scotch tunes!" said Bartle Massey, contemptuously; "I've heard enough o' the Scotch tunes to last me while I live. They're fit for nothing but to frighten the birds with--that's to say, the English birds, for the Scotch birds may sing Scotch for what I know. Give the lads a bagpipe instead of a rattle, and I'll answer for it the corn 'll be safe." "Yes, there's folks as find a pleasure in undervallying what they know but little about," said Mr. Craig. "Why, the Scotch tunes are just like a scolding, nagging woman," Bartle went on, without deigning to notice Mr. Craig's remark. "They go on with the same thing over and over again, and never come to a reasonable end. Anybody 'ud think the Scotch tunes had always been asking a question of somebody as deaf as old Taft, and had never got an answer yet." Adam minded the less about sitting by Mr. Casson, because this position enabled him to see Hetty, who was not far off him at the next table. Hetty, however, had not even noticed his presence yet, for she was giving angry attention to Totty, who insisted on drawing up her feet on to the bench in antique fashion, and thereby threatened to make dusty marks on Hetty's pink-and-white frock. No sooner were the little fat legs pushed down than up they came again, for Totty's eyes were too busy in staring at the large dishes to see where the plum pudding was for her to retain any consciousness of her legs. Hetty got quite out of patience, and at last, with a frown and pout, and gathering tears, she said, "Oh dear, Aunt, I wish you'd speak to Totty; she keeps putting her legs up so, and messing my frock." "What's the matter wi' the child? She can niver please you," said the mother. "Let her come by the side o' me, then. I can put up wi' her." Adam was looking at Hetty, and saw the frown, and pout, and the dark eyes seeming to grow larger with pettish half-gathered tears. Quiet Mary Burge, who sat near enough to see that Hetty was cross and that Adam's eyes were fixed on her, thought that so sensible a man as Adam must be reflecting on the small value of beauty in a woman whose temper was bad. Mary was a good girl, not given to indulge in evil feelings, but she said to herself, that, since Hetty had a bad temper, it was better Adam should know it. And it was quite true that if Hetty had been plain, she would have looked very ugly and unamiable at that moment, and no one's moral judgment upon her would have been in the least beguiled. But really there was something quite charming in her pettishness: it looked so much more like innocent distress than ill humour; and the severe Adam felt no movement of disapprobation; he only felt a sort of amused pity, as if he had seen a kitten setting up its back, or a little bird with its feathers ruffled. He could not gather what was vexing her, but it was impossible to him to feel otherwise than that she was the prettiest thing in the world, and that if he could have his way, nothing should ever vex her any more. And presently, when Totty was gone, she caught his eye, and her face broke into one of its brightest smiles, as she nodded to him. It was a bit of flirtation--she knew Mary Burge was looking at them. But the smile was like wine to Adam.

Chapter 23

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter23

Dinner-Time Adam is told he is to sit upstairs in the cloisters at the table with the large tenants rather than with the workmen, and he apologizes to Seth and his mother. Seth says his honor is theirs. Adam has not yet given notice to Jonathan Burge, and he hopes they will not announce his new post before he has a chance to tell Burge. The tenants welcome Adam but argue among themselves who is to sit at the head of the table and give the toast. Bartle Massey settles it, and Mr. Poyser is selected. Hetty sees Mary Burge at the table and purposely flirts with Adam to make Mary jealous. Adam is happy that Hetty smiles at him.

Commentary on Chapter 23 The argument over who is to give the speech is a comic bit, for this is a momentous day for the folk on the Donnithorne estate, and everyone wants to have a share in the glory. Old man Poyser is the oldest, but he is as good natured as his son and always defers everything to the "young uns'" . Mr. Casson, as a former butler, thinks he should do the toast as he knows about these things, but Martin Poyser wins out, as he is considered the best tenant on the estate. Adam is uncomfortable with sitting at the head table and does not want the announcement to take place. He is thinking of the feelings of others rather than his own fame. Arthur admits that Adam had to be talked into taking the post. Hetty, on the other hand, is cross with little Totty for messing up her dress and frowns. Her only concern is how she looks. Adam is charmed with whatever Hetty does and her frowns seem adorable. Hetty wants to display her power to Mary Burge, her supposed rival for Adam, by purposely flirting with Adam. The narrator goes into Mary's mind to see her reaction. Mary assumes that Adam can see right through Hetty. She believes that he will prefer a good woman.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/24.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_24_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 3.chapter 24

chapter 24

{"name": "Chapter 24", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter24", "summary": "The Health-Drinking Arthur and Mr. Irwine enter the cloister dining hall, and all the tenants stand up. Mr. Poyser makes his speech, saying that everyone is of one opinion about Arthur: \"You speak fair an' y'act fair\" . Arthur feels a slight twinge, but thinks he deserves the praise as being basically a good person. He knows that nothing bad will happen with Hetty, for next time he will tell her it's over. Arthur pledges in return to be a good landlord and then announces the appointment of Adam Bede and introduces Mr. Irwine. Mr. Irwine drinks to Arthur saying that \"I share your high hopes concerning him\" and then goes on to praise Adam Bede as an important person, though he is not of high rank. All drink to Adam, who replies that a man does his duty, and he believes Arthur to be one of those who leaves the world a better place than he found it. Mr. Irwine asks Mrs. Poyser if she liked her husband's speech, and she replies that he did well enough, but she finds men are \"tongue-tied\" like \"the dumb creatures\" . She, on the other hand, thanks God, that she has no trouble with words.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 24 There are important thoughts in this chapter, as well as comic and tragic wit. The tragic irony of Arthur getting the praise he has always wanted without deserving it is taken in by the reader, but no one else. Arthur may feel a bit of conscience, but Eliot shows how the person who takes a wrong turn begins to become more and more deaf to his own conscience, as we see happening with Arthur. At first he took days agonizing over every encounter with Hetty. He left on a fishing trip to forget her, and yet, as soon as he got back, he bought her the earrings and locket. Now, he is able to play the hypocrite in front of her uncle with hardly a twinge. The three most honorable men in his world, Mr. Irwine, Mr. Poyser, and Adam, have praised him for his honesty and friendship to the community. A few months earlier he would have been embarrassed, but though he continues to do wrong, he continues to have the intention to do right in the future, and somehow thinks that is good enough. It is noteworthy that Irwine, however, merely praises Arthur's potential, while he praises Adam's achievement. He is more eloquent about Adam, for Irwine is not blind to Arthur's faults. Adam's comment about a man's duty being to use the spirit and gifts given to him for the benefit of all is one of the important ethics Eliot wants to teach. Irwine also makes a speech in this chapter and the next on behalf of the common man. He says that a man like Adam is not noticed like a man in high station, but the quality of his life and work is just as important. In this stroke, Irwine essentially levels the playing field and contradicts Arthur's notions of his own importance. Together Irwine's speech and Adam's speech represent the duty of every human being to improve life for the good of all. They remind Arthur once more of his sacred trust as a squire and as a man. Mrs. Poyser as usual gets the last word. Eliot has a Shakespearian touch with her country comic wits, and Mrs. Poyser is a gem. Her epigrams sum up the plain truth of every character and situation. Though the men have spoken fine words, she calls them tongue-tied, for they are not direct enough to her taste. Mrs. Poyser sees though everyone, but she has not yet seen through Arthur because he has been doing everything behind people's backs. Finally, Arthur's party is a cross-section of the local life with its class distinctions. Each group eats separately, and later, they have their own ballrooms for separate dances. The gentry will have a party with their own kind on the following day, but even with the lower classes there are distinctions between the large farm families and the workers and cottagers."}

WHEN the dinner was over, and the first draughts from the great cask of birthday ale were brought up, room was made for the broad Mr. Poyser at the side of the table, and two chairs were placed at the head. It had been settled very definitely what Mr. Poyser was to do when the young squire should appear, and for the last five minutes he had been in a state of abstraction, with his eyes fixed on the dark picture opposite, and his hands busy with the loose cash and other articles in his breeches pockets. When the young squire entered, with Mr. Irwine by his side, every one stood up, and this moment of homage was very agreeable to Arthur. He liked to feel his own importance, and besides that, he cared a great deal for the good-will of these people: he was fond of thinking that they had a hearty, special regard for him. The pleasure he felt was in his face as he said, "My grandfather and I hope all our friends here have enjoyed their dinner, and find my birthday ale good. Mr. Irwine and I are come to taste it with you, and I am sure we shall all like anything the better that the rector shares with us." All eyes were now turned on Mr. Poyser, who, with his hands still busy in his pockets, began with the deliberateness of a slow-striking clock. "Captain, my neighbours have put it upo' me to speak for 'em to-day, for where folks think pretty much alike, one spokesman's as good as a score. And though we've mayhappen got contrairy ways o' thinking about a many things--one man lays down his land one way an' another another--an' I'll not take it upon me to speak to no man's farming, but my own--this I'll say, as we're all o' one mind about our young squire. We've pretty nigh all on us known you when you war a little un, an' we've niver known anything on you but what was good an' honorable. You speak fair an' y' act fair, an' we're joyful when we look forrard to your being our landlord, for we b'lieve you mean to do right by everybody, an' 'ull make no man's bread bitter to him if you can help it. That's what I mean, an' that's what we all mean; and when a man's said what he means, he'd better stop, for th' ale 'ull be none the better for stannin'. An' I'll not say how we like th' ale yet, for we couldna well taste it till we'd drunk your health in it; but the dinner was good, an' if there's anybody hasna enjoyed it, it must be the fault of his own inside. An' as for the rector's company, it's well known as that's welcome t' all the parish wherever he may be; an' I hope, an' we all hope, as he'll live to see us old folks, an' our children grown to men an' women an' Your Honour a family man. I've no more to say as concerns the present time, an' so we'll drink our young squire's health--three times three." Hereupon a glorious shouting, a rapping, a jingling, a clattering, and a shouting, with plentiful da capo, pleasanter than a strain of sublimest music in the ears that receive such a tribute for the first time. Arthur had felt a twinge of conscience during Mr. Poyser's speech, but it was too feeble to nullify the pleasure he felt in being praised. Did he not deserve what was said of him on the whole? If there was something in his conduct that Poyser wouldn't have liked if he had known it, why, no man's conduct will bear too close an inspection; and Poyser was not likely to know it; and, after all, what had he done? Gone a little too far, perhaps, in flirtation, but another man in his place would have acted much worse; and no harm would come--no harm should come, for the next time he was alone with Hetty, he would explain to her that she must not think seriously of him or of what had passed. It was necessary to Arthur, you perceive, to be satisfied with himself. Uncomfortable thoughts must be got rid of by good intentions for the future, which can be formed so rapidly that he had time to be uncomfortable and to become easy again before Mr. Poyser's slow speech was finished, and when it was time for him to speak he was quite light-hearted. "I thank you all, my good friends and neighbours," Arthur said, "for the good opinion of me, and the kind feelings towards me which Mr. Poyser has been expressing on your behalf and on his own, and it will always be my heartiest wish to deserve them. In the course of things we may expect that, if I live, I shall one day or other be your landlord; indeed, it is on the ground of that expectation that my grandfather has wished me to celebrate this day and to come among you now; and I look forward to this position, not merely as one of power and pleasure for myself, but as a means of benefiting my neighbours. It hardly becomes so young a man as I am to talk much about farming to you, who are most of you so much older, and are men of experience; still, I have interested myself a good deal in such matters, and learned as much about them as my opportunities have allowed; and when the course of events shall place the estate in my hands, it will be my first desire to afford my tenants all the encouragement a landlord can give them, in improving their land and trying to bring about a better practice of husbandry. It will be my wish to be looked on by all my deserving tenants as their best friend, and nothing would make me so happy as to be able to respect every man on the estate, and to be respected by him in return. It is not my place at present to enter into particulars; I only meet your good hopes concerning me by telling you that my own hopes correspond to them--that what you expect from me I desire to fulfil; and I am quite of Mr. Poyser's opinion, that when a man has said what he means, he had better stop. But the pleasure I feel in having my own health drunk by you would not be perfect if we did not drink the health of my grandfather, who has filled the place of both parents to me. I will say no more, until you have joined me in drinking his health on a day when he has wished me to appear among you as the future representative of his name and family." Perhaps there was no one present except Mr. Irwine who thoroughly understood and approved Arthur's graceful mode of proposing his grandfather's health. The farmers thought the young squire knew well enough that they hated the old squire, and Mrs. Poyser said, "he'd better not ha' stirred a kettle o' sour broth." The bucolic mind does not readily apprehend the refinements of good taste. But the toast could not be rejected and when it had been drunk, Arthur said, "I thank you, both for my grandfather and myself; and now there is one more thing I wish to tell you, that you may share my pleasure about it, as I hope and believe you will. I think there can be no man here who has not a respect, and some of you, I am sure, have a very high regard, for my friend Adam Bede. It is well known to every one in this neighbourhood that there is no man whose word can be more depended on than his; that whatever he undertakes to do, he does well, and is as careful for the interests of those who employ him as for his own. I'm proud to say that I was very fond of Adam when I was a little boy, and I have never lost my old feeling for him--I think that shows that I know a good fellow when I find him. It has long been my wish that he should have the management of the woods on the estate, which happen to be very valuable, not only because I think so highly of his character, but because he has the knowledge and the skill which fit him for the place. And I am happy to tell you that it is my grandfather's wish too, and it is now settled that Adam shall manage the woods--a change which I am sure will be very much for the advantage of the estate; and I hope you will by and by join me in drinking his health, and in wishing him all the prosperity in life that he deserves. But there is a still older friend of mine than Adam Bede present, and I need not tell you that it is Mr. Irwine. I'm sure you will agree with me that we must drink no other person's health until we have drunk his. I know you have all reason to love him, but no one of his parishioners has so much reason as I. Come, charge your glasses, and let us drink to our excellent rector--three times three!" This toast was drunk with all the enthusiasm that was wanting to the last, and it certainly was the most picturesque moment in the scene when Mr. Irwine got up to speak, and all the faces in the room were turned towards him. The superior refinement of his face was much more striking than that of Arthur's when seen in comparison with the people round them. Arthur's was a much commoner British face, and the splendour of his new-fashioned clothes was more akin to the young farmer's taste in costume than Mr. Irwine's powder and the well-brushed but well-worn black, which seemed to be his chosen suit for great occasions; for he had the mysterious secret of never wearing a new-looking coat. "This is not the first time, by a great many," he said, "that I have had to thank my parishioners for giving me tokens of their goodwill, but neighbourly kindness is among those things that are the more precious the older they get. Indeed, our pleasant meeting to-day is a proof that when what is good comes of age and is likely to live, there is reason for rejoicing, and the relation between us as clergyman and parishioners came of age two years ago, for it is three-and-twenty years since I first came among you, and I see some tall fine-looking young men here, as well as some blooming young women, that were far from looking as pleasantly at me when I christened them as I am happy to see them looking now. But I'm sure you will not wonder when I say that among all those young men, the one in whom I have the strongest interest is my friend Mr. Arthur Donnithorne, for whom you have just expressed your regard. I had the pleasure of being his tutor for several years, and have naturally had opportunities of knowing him intimately which cannot have occurred to any one else who is present; and I have some pride as well as pleasure in assuring you that I share your high hopes concerning him, and your confidence in his possession of those qualities which will make him an excellent landlord when the time shall come for him to take that important position among you. We feel alike on most matters on which a man who is getting towards fifty can feel in common with a young man of one-and-twenty, and he has just been expressing a feeling which I share very heartily, and I would not willingly omit the opportunity of saying so. That feeling is his value and respect for Adam Bede. People in a high station are of course more thought of and talked about and have their virtues more praised, than those whose lives are passed in humble everyday work; but every sensible man knows how necessary that humble everyday work is, and how important it is to us that it should be done well. And I agree with my friend Mr. Arthur Donnithorne in feeling that when a man whose duty lies in that sort of work shows a character which would make him an example in any station, his merit should be acknowledged. He is one of those to whom honour is due, and his friends should delight to honour him. I know Adam Bede well--I know what he is as a workman, and what he has been as a son and brother--and I am saying the simplest truth when I say that I respect him as much as I respect any man living. But I am not speaking to you about a stranger; some of you are his intimate friends, and I believe there is not one here who does not know enough of him to join heartily in drinking his health." As Mr. Irwine paused, Arthur jumped up and, filling his glass, said, "A bumper to Adam Bede, and may he live to have sons as faithful and clever as himself!" No hearer, not even Bartle Massey, was so delighted with this toast as Mr. Poyser. "Tough work" as his first speech had been, he would have started up to make another if he had not known the extreme irregularity of such a course. As it was, he found an outlet for his feeling in drinking his ale unusually fast, and setting down his glass with a swing of his arm and a determined rap. If Jonathan Burge and a few others felt less comfortable on the occasion, they tried their best to look contented, and so the toast was drunk with a goodwill apparently unanimous. Adam was rather paler than usual when he got up to thank his friends. He was a good deal moved by this public tribute--very naturally, for he was in the presence of all his little world, and it was uniting to do him honour. But he felt no shyness about speaking, not being troubled with small vanity or lack of words; he looked neither awkward nor embarrassed, but stood in his usual firm upright attitude, with his head thrown a little backward and his hands perfectly still, in that rough dignity which is peculiar to intelligent, honest, well-built workmen, who are never wondering what is their business in the world. "I'm quite taken by surprise," he said. "I didn't expect anything o' this sort, for it's a good deal more than my wages. But I've the more reason to be grateful to you, Captain, and to you, Mr. Irwine, and to all my friends here, who've drunk my health and wished me well. It 'ud be nonsense for me to be saying, I don't at all deserve th' opinion you have of me; that 'ud be poor thanks to you, to say that you've known me all these years and yet haven't sense enough to find out a great deal o' the truth about me. You think, if I undertake to do a bit o' work, I'll do it well, be my pay big or little--and that's true. I'd be ashamed to stand before you here if it wasna true. But it seems to me that's a man's plain duty, and nothing to be conceited about, and it's pretty clear to me as I've never done more than my duty; for let us do what we will, it's only making use o' the sperrit and the powers that ha' been given to us. And so this kindness o' yours, I'm sure, is no debt you owe me, but a free gift, and as such I accept it and am thankful. And as to this new employment I've taken in hand, I'll only say that I took it at Captain Donnithorne's desire, and that I'll try to fulfil his expectations. I'd wish for no better lot than to work under him, and to know that while I was getting my own bread I was taking care of his int'rests. For I believe he's one o those gentlemen as wishes to do the right thing, and to leave the world a bit better than he found it, which it's my belief every man may do, whether he's gentle or simple, whether he sets a good bit o' work going and finds the money, or whether he does the work with his own hands. There's no occasion for me to say any more about what I feel towards him: I hope to show it through the rest o' my life in my actions." There were various opinions about Adam's speech: some of the women whispered that he didn't show himself thankful enough, and seemed to speak as proud as could be; but most of the men were of opinion that nobody could speak more straightfor'ard, and that Adam was as fine a chap as need to be. While such observations were being buzzed about, mingled with wonderings as to what the old squire meant to do for a bailiff, and whether he was going to have a steward, the two gentlemen had risen, and were walking round to the table where the wives and children sat. There was none of the strong ale here, of course, but wine and dessert--sparkling gooseberry for the young ones, and some good sherry for the mothers. Mrs. Poyser was at the head of this table, and Totty was now seated in her lap, bending her small nose deep down into a wine-glass in search of the nuts floating there. "How do you do, Mrs. Poyser?" said Arthur. "Weren't you pleased to hear your husband make such a good speech to-day?" "Oh, sir, the men are mostly so tongue-tied--you're forced partly to guess what they mean, as you do wi' the dumb creaturs." "What! you think you could have made it better for him?" said Mr. Irwine, laughing. "Well, sir, when I want to say anything, I can mostly find words to say it in, thank God. Not as I'm a-finding faut wi' my husband, for if he's a man o' few words, what he says he'll stand to." "I'm sure I never saw a prettier party than this," Arthur said, looking round at the apple-cheeked children. "My aunt and the Miss Irwines will come up and see you presently. They were afraid of the noise of the toasts, but it would be a shame for them not to see you at table." He walked on, speaking to the mothers and patting the children, while Mr. Irwine satisfied himself with standing still and nodding at a distance, that no one's attention might be disturbed from the young squire, the hero of the day. Arthur did not venture to stop near Hetty, but merely bowed to her as he passed along the opposite side. The foolish child felt her heart swelling with discontent; for what woman was ever satisfied with apparent neglect, even when she knows it to be the mask of love? Hetty thought this was going to be the most miserable day she had had for a long while, a moment of chill daylight and reality came across her dream: Arthur, who had seemed so near to her only a few hours before, was separated from her, as the hero of a great procession is separated from a small outsider in the crowd.

Chapter 24

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter24

The Health-Drinking Arthur and Mr. Irwine enter the cloister dining hall, and all the tenants stand up. Mr. Poyser makes his speech, saying that everyone is of one opinion about Arthur: "You speak fair an' y'act fair" . Arthur feels a slight twinge, but thinks he deserves the praise as being basically a good person. He knows that nothing bad will happen with Hetty, for next time he will tell her it's over. Arthur pledges in return to be a good landlord and then announces the appointment of Adam Bede and introduces Mr. Irwine. Mr. Irwine drinks to Arthur saying that "I share your high hopes concerning him" and then goes on to praise Adam Bede as an important person, though he is not of high rank. All drink to Adam, who replies that a man does his duty, and he believes Arthur to be one of those who leaves the world a better place than he found it. Mr. Irwine asks Mrs. Poyser if she liked her husband's speech, and she replies that he did well enough, but she finds men are "tongue-tied" like "the dumb creatures" . She, on the other hand, thanks God, that she has no trouble with words.

Commentary on Chapter 24 There are important thoughts in this chapter, as well as comic and tragic wit. The tragic irony of Arthur getting the praise he has always wanted without deserving it is taken in by the reader, but no one else. Arthur may feel a bit of conscience, but Eliot shows how the person who takes a wrong turn begins to become more and more deaf to his own conscience, as we see happening with Arthur. At first he took days agonizing over every encounter with Hetty. He left on a fishing trip to forget her, and yet, as soon as he got back, he bought her the earrings and locket. Now, he is able to play the hypocrite in front of her uncle with hardly a twinge. The three most honorable men in his world, Mr. Irwine, Mr. Poyser, and Adam, have praised him for his honesty and friendship to the community. A few months earlier he would have been embarrassed, but though he continues to do wrong, he continues to have the intention to do right in the future, and somehow thinks that is good enough. It is noteworthy that Irwine, however, merely praises Arthur's potential, while he praises Adam's achievement. He is more eloquent about Adam, for Irwine is not blind to Arthur's faults. Adam's comment about a man's duty being to use the spirit and gifts given to him for the benefit of all is one of the important ethics Eliot wants to teach. Irwine also makes a speech in this chapter and the next on behalf of the common man. He says that a man like Adam is not noticed like a man in high station, but the quality of his life and work is just as important. In this stroke, Irwine essentially levels the playing field and contradicts Arthur's notions of his own importance. Together Irwine's speech and Adam's speech represent the duty of every human being to improve life for the good of all. They remind Arthur once more of his sacred trust as a squire and as a man. Mrs. Poyser as usual gets the last word. Eliot has a Shakespearian touch with her country comic wits, and Mrs. Poyser is a gem. Her epigrams sum up the plain truth of every character and situation. Though the men have spoken fine words, she calls them tongue-tied, for they are not direct enough to her taste. Mrs. Poyser sees though everyone, but she has not yet seen through Arthur because he has been doing everything behind people's backs. Finally, Arthur's party is a cross-section of the local life with its class distinctions. Each group eats separately, and later, they have their own ballrooms for separate dances. The gentry will have a party with their own kind on the following day, but even with the lower classes there are distinctions between the large farm families and the workers and cottagers.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/25.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_25_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 3.chapter 25

chapter 25

{"name": "Chapter 25", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter25", "summary": "The Games The games and races begin on the lawn at four o'clock, and Mrs. Irwine is to give out the prizes, sitting on a raised seat like a queen. Mrs. Irwine tells Arthur he must take a charming bride or she will be disappointed. She insists this bride be pretty and not silly. She surveys the crowd along with her son, and the Donnithornes. When she sees Hetty, she wants to know who she is, then says it is a waste to give beauty to the lower classes when the upper class needs it most. Beauty, she says, is thrown away on the working class husband. Arthur is listening, and is more attracted to Hetty than ever while they speak of her. Mr. Irwine contradicts his mother: \"The common people are not quite so stupid as you imagine\" . He tells them about Dinah Morris as an example. Just then, Bessy Cranage wins a game and comes to collect her prize. Miss Lydia had bought an ugly dress and piece of flannel for a young woman, not wanting to encourage vanity. Bessy, who likes finery as much as Hetty does, is so disappointed she cries and gives the material away to her cousin to make clothes with. Arthur vows secretly to give her some money so she can buy something for herself. Wiry Ben Cranage then dances a comic hornpipe while Joshua Rann plays the fiddle.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 25 This chapter contrasts the point of view of the classes in English society. Because readers have already seen so much of the action and inner life of the lower class characters, they know the farmers and workers as real people. Mrs. Irwine is a proud and queenly gentlewoman who looks down on the lower classes. She voices her prejudice about them and is corrected by her son the rector, who knows them all quite well. He has just praised Adam as one of the more significant people in the area, and now he praises Dinah Morris as an example of beauty and intelligence and refinement. Miss Lydia buys coarse cloth for a female prize, not thinking the peasants have any business with finery, while she herself likes her bit of lace. These gentry do not see any common humanity with those beneath them. The time of the action is 1799, the height of the Romantic Age when class difference was beginning to break down, after the French Revolution and the beginning rise of industrialism. Romantic literature is full of noble peasants and natives who are more honorable than the upper classes, under the notion that the person living closest to nature imbibes a natural morality and wisdom. Irwine does not sentimentalize about the poor being better, for he knows, as well as Mrs. Poyser, who among them is a fool and who is not. He, however, defends a democratic idea ahead of its time, that one class is not more stupid or less human than another, as his mother and the Donnithornes think."}

THE great dance was not to begin until eight o'clock, but for any lads and lasses who liked to dance on the shady grass before then, there was music always at hand--for was not the band of the Benefit Club capable of playing excellent jigs, reels, and hornpipes? And, besides this, there was a grand band hired from Rosseter, who, with their wonderful wind-instruments and puffed-out cheeks, were themselves a delightful show to the small boys and girls. To say nothing of Joshua Rann's fiddle, which, by an act of generous forethought, he had provided himself with, in case any one should be of sufficiently pure taste to prefer dancing to a solo on that instrument. Meantime, when the sun had moved off the great open space in front of the house, the games began. There were, of course, well-soaped poles to be climbed by the boys and youths, races to be run by the old women, races to be run in sacks, heavy weights to be lifted by the strong men, and a long list of challenges to such ambitious attempts as that of walking as many yards possible on one leg--feats in which it was generally remarked that Wiry Ben, being "the lissom'st, springest fellow i' the country," was sure to be pre-eminent. To crown all, there was to be a donkey-race--that sublimest of all races, conducted on the grand socialistic idea of everybody encouraging everybody else's donkey, and the sorriest donkey winning. And soon after four o'clock, splendid old Mrs. Irwine, in her damask satin and jewels and black lace, was led out by Arthur, followed by the whole family party, to her raised seat under the striped marquee, where she was to give out the prizes to the victors. Staid, formal Miss Lydia had requested to resign that queenly office to the royal old lady, and Arthur was pleased with this opportunity of gratifying his godmother's taste for stateliness. Old Mr. Donnithorne, the delicately clean, finely scented, withered old man, led out Miss Irwine, with his air of punctilious, acid politeness; Mr. Gawaine brought Miss Lydia, looking neutral and stiff in an elegant peach-blossom silk; and Mr. Irwine came last with his pale sister Anne. No other friend of the family, besides Mr. Gawaine, was invited to-day; there was to be a grand dinner for the neighbouring gentry on the morrow, but to-day all the forces were required for the entertainment of the tenants. There was a sunk fence in front of the marquee, dividing the lawn from the park, but a temporary bridge had been made for the passage of the victors, and the groups of people standing, or seated here and there on benches, stretched on each side of the open space from the white marquees up to the sunk fence. "Upon my word it's a pretty sight," said the old lady, in her deep voice, when she was seated, and looked round on the bright scene with its dark-green background; "and it's the last fete-day I'm likely to see, unless you make haste and get married, Arthur. But take care you get a charming bride, else I would rather die without seeing her." "You're so terribly fastidious, Godmother," said Arthur, "I'm afraid I should never satisfy you with my choice." "Well, I won't forgive you if she's not handsome. I can't be put off with amiability, which is always the excuse people are making for the existence of plain people. And she must not be silly; that will never do, because you'll want managing, and a silly woman can't manage you. Who is that tall young man, Dauphin, with the mild face? There, standing without his hat, and taking such care of that tall old woman by the side of him--his mother, of course. I like to see that." "What, don't you know him, Mother?" said Mr. Irwine. "That is Seth Bede, Adam's brother--a Methodist, but a very good fellow. Poor Seth has looked rather down-hearted of late; I thought it was because of his father's dying in that sad way, but Joshua Rann tells me he wanted to marry that sweet little Methodist preacher who was here about a month ago, and I suppose she refused him." "Ah, I remember hearing about her. But there are no end of people here that I don't know, for they're grown up and altered so since I used to go about." "What excellent sight you have!" said old Mr. Donnithorne, who was holding a double glass up to his eyes, "to see the expression of that young man's face so far off. His face is nothing but a pale blurred spot to me. But I fancy I have the advantage of you when we come to look close. I can read small print without spectacles." "Ah, my dear sir, you began with being very near-sighted, and those near-sighted eyes always wear the best. I want very strong spectacles to read with, but then I think my eyes get better and better for things at a distance. I suppose if I could live another fifty years, I should be blind to everything that wasn't out of other people's sight, like a man who stands in a well and sees nothing but the stars." "See," said Arthur, "the old women are ready to set out on their race now. Which do you bet on, Gawaine?" "The long-legged one, unless they're going to have several heats, and then the little wiry one may win." "There are the Poysers, Mother, not far off on the right hand," said Miss Irwine. "Mrs. Poyser is looking at you. Do take notice of her." "To be sure I will," said the old lady, giving a gracious bow to Mrs. Poyser. "A woman who sends me such excellent cream-cheese is not to be neglected. Bless me! What a fat child that is she is holding on her knee! But who is that pretty girl with dark eyes?" "That is Hetty Sorrel," said Miss Lydia Donnithorne, "Martin Poyser's niece--a very likely young person, and well-looking too. My maid has taught her fine needlework, and she has mended some lace of mine very respectably indeed--very respectably." "Why, she has lived with the Poysers six or seven years, Mother; you must have seen her," said Miss Irwine. "No, I've never seen her, child--at least not as she is now," said Mrs. Irwine, continuing to look at Hetty. "Well-looking, indeed! She's a perfect beauty! I've never seen anything so pretty since my young days. What a pity such beauty as that should be thrown away among the farmers, when it's wanted so terribly among the good families without fortune! I daresay, now, she'll marry a man who would have thought her just as pretty if she had had round eyes and red hair." Arthur dared not turn his eyes towards Hetty while Mrs. Irwine was speaking of her. He feigned not to hear, and to be occupied with something on the opposite side. But he saw her plainly enough without looking; saw her in heightened beauty, because he heard her beauty praised--for other men's opinion, you know, was like a native climate to Arthur's feelings: it was the air on which they thrived the best, and grew strong. Yes! She was enough to turn any man's head: any man in his place would have done and felt the same. And to give her up after all, as he was determined to do, would be an act that he should always look back upon with pride. "No, Mother," and Mr. Irwine, replying to her last words; "I can't agree with you there. The common people are not quite so stupid as you imagine. The commonest man, who has his ounce of sense and feeling, is conscious of the difference between a lovely, delicate woman and a coarse one. Even a dog feels a difference in their presence. The man may be no better able than the dog to explain the influence the more refined beauty has on him, but he feels it." "Bless me, Dauphin, what does an old bachelor like you know about it?" "Oh, that is one of the matters in which old bachelors are wiser than married men, because they have time for more general contemplation. Your fine critic of woman must never shackle his judgment by calling one woman his own. But, as an example of what I was saying, that pretty Methodist preacher I mentioned just now told me that she had preached to the roughest miners and had never been treated with anything but the utmost respect and kindness by them. The reason is--though she doesn't know it--that there's so much tenderness, refinement, and purity about her. Such a woman as that brings with her 'airs from heaven' that the coarsest fellow is not insensible to." "Here's a delicate bit of womanhood, or girlhood, coming to receive a prize, I suppose," said Mr. Gawaine. "She must be one of the racers in the sacks, who had set off before we came." The "bit of womanhood" was our old acquaintance Bessy Cranage, otherwise Chad's Bess, whose large red cheeks and blowsy person had undergone an exaggeration of colour, which, if she had happened to be a heavenly body, would have made her sublime. Bessy, I am sorry to say, had taken to her ear-rings again since Dinah's departure, and was otherwise decked out in such small finery as she could muster. Any one who could have looked into poor Bessy's heart would have seen a striking resemblance between her little hopes and anxieties and Hetty's. The advantage, perhaps, would have been on Bessy's side in the matter of feeling. But then, you see, they were so very different outside! You would have been inclined to box Bessy's ears, and you would have longed to kiss Hetty. Bessy had been tempted to run the arduous race, partly from mere hedonish gaiety, partly because of the prize. Some one had said there were to be cloaks and other nice clothes for prizes, and she approached the marquee, fanning herself with her handkerchief, but with exultation sparkling in her round eyes. "Here is the prize for the first sack-race," said Miss Lydia, taking a large parcel from the table where the prizes were laid and giving it to Mrs. Irwine before Bessy came up, "an excellent grogram gown and a piece of flannel." "You didn't think the winner was to be so young, I suppose, Aunt?" said Arthur. "Couldn't you find something else for this girl, and save that grim-looking gown for one of the older women?" "I have bought nothing but what is useful and substantial," said Miss Lydia, adjusting her own lace; "I should not think of encouraging a love of finery in young women of that class. I have a scarlet cloak, but that is for the old woman who wins." This speech of Miss Lydia's produced rather a mocking expression in Mrs. Irwine's face as she looked at Arthur, while Bessy came up and dropped a series of curtsies. "This is Bessy Cranage, mother," said Mr. Irwine, kindly, "Chad Cranage's daughter. You remember Chad Cranage, the blacksmith?" "Yes, to be sure," said Mrs. Irwine. "Well, Bessy, here is your prize--excellent warm things for winter. I'm sure you have had hard work to win them this warm day." Bessy's lip fell as she saw the ugly, heavy gown--which felt so hot and disagreeable too, on this July day, and was such a great ugly thing to carry. She dropped her curtsies again, without looking up, and with a growing tremulousness about the corners of her mouth, and then turned away. "Poor girl," said Arthur; "I think she's disappointed. I wish it had been something more to her taste." "She's a bold-looking young person," observed Miss Lydia. "Not at all one I should like to encourage." Arthur silently resolved that he would make Bessy a present of money before the day was over, that she might buy something more to her mind; but she, not aware of the consolation in store for her, turned out of the open space, where she was visible from the marquee, and throwing down the odious bundle under a tree, began to cry--very much tittered at the while by the small boys. In this situation she was descried by her discreet matronly cousin, who lost no time in coming up, having just given the baby into her husband's charge. "What's the matter wi' ye?" said Bess the matron, taking up the bundle and examining it. "Ye'n sweltered yoursen, I reckon, running that fool's race. An' here, they'n gi'en you lots o' good grogram and flannel, as should ha' been gi'en by good rights to them as had the sense to keep away from such foolery. Ye might spare me a bit o' this grogram to make clothes for the lad--ye war ne'er ill-natured, Bess; I ne'er said that on ye." "Ye may take it all, for what I care," said Bess the maiden, with a pettish movement, beginning to wipe away her tears and recover herself. "Well, I could do wi't, if so be ye want to get rid on't," said the disinterested cousin, walking quickly away with the bundle, lest Chad's Bess should change her mind. But that bonny-cheeked lass was blessed with an elasticity of spirits that secured her from any rankling grief; and by the time the grand climax of the donkey-race came on, her disappointment was entirely lost in the delightful excitement of attempting to stimulate the last donkey by hisses, while the boys applied the argument of sticks. But the strength of the donkey mind lies in adopting a course inversely as the arguments urged, which, well considered, requires as great a mental force as the direct sequence; and the present donkey proved the first-rate order of his intelligence by coming to a dead standstill just when the blows were thickest. Great was the shouting of the crowd, radiant the grinning of Bill Downes the stone-sawyer and the fortunate rider of this superior beast, which stood calm and stiff-legged in the midst of its triumph. Arthur himself had provided the prizes for the men, and Bill was made happy with a splendid pocket-knife, supplied with blades and gimlets enough to make a man at home on a desert island. He had hardly returned from the marquee with the prize in his hand, when it began to be understood that Wiry Ben proposed to amuse the company, before the gentry went to dinner, with an impromptu and gratuitous performance--namely, a hornpipe, the main idea of which was doubtless borrowed; but this was to be developed by the dancer in so peculiar and complex a manner that no one could deny him the praise of originality. Wiry Ben's pride in his dancing--an accomplishment productive of great effect at the yearly Wake--had needed only slightly elevating by an extra quantity of good ale to convince him that the gentry would be very much struck with his performance of his hornpipe; and he had been decidedly encouraged in this idea by Joshua Rann, who observed that it was nothing but right to do something to please the young squire, in return for what he had done for them. You will be the less surprised at this opinion in so grave a personage when you learn that Ben had requested Mr. Rann to accompany him on the fiddle, and Joshua felt quite sure that though there might not be much in the dancing, the music would make up for it. Adam Bede, who was present in one of the large marquees, where the plan was being discussed, told Ben he had better not make a fool of himself--a remark which at once fixed Ben's determination: he was not going to let anything alone because Adam Bede turned up his nose at it. "What's this, what's this?" said old Mr. Donnithorne. "Is it something you've arranged, Arthur? Here's the clerk coming with his fiddle, and a smart fellow with a nosegay in his button-hole." "No," said Arthur; "I know nothing about it. By Jove, he's going to dance! It's one of the carpenters--I forget his name at this moment." "It's Ben Cranage--Wiry Ben, they call him," said Mr. Irwine; "rather a loose fish, I think. Anne, my dear, I see that fiddle-scraping is too much for you: you're getting tired. Let me take you in now, that you may rest till dinner." Miss Anne rose assentingly, and the good brother took her away, while Joshua's preliminary scrapings burst into the "White Cockade," from which he intended to pass to a variety of tunes, by a series of transitions which his good ear really taught him to execute with some skill. It would have been an exasperating fact to him, if he had known it, that the general attention was too thoroughly absorbed by Ben's dancing for any one to give much heed to the music. Have you ever seen a real English rustic perform a solo dance? Perhaps you have only seen a ballet rustic, smiling like a merry countryman in crockery, with graceful turns of the haunch and insinuating movements of the head. That is as much like the real thing as the "Bird Waltz" is like the song of birds. Wiry Ben never smiled: he looked as serious as a dancing monkey--as serious as if he had been an experimental philosopher ascertaining in his own person the amount of shaking and the varieties of angularity that could be given to the human limbs. To make amends for the abundant laughter in the striped marquee, Arthur clapped his hands continually and cried "Bravo!" But Ben had one admirer whose eyes followed his movements with a fervid gravity that equalled his own. It was Martin Poyser, who was seated on a bench, with Tommy between his legs. "What dost think o' that?" he said to his wife. "He goes as pat to the music as if he was made o' clockwork. I used to be a pretty good un at dancing myself when I was lighter, but I could niver ha' hit it just to th' hair like that." "It's little matter what his limbs are, to my thinking," re-turned Mrs. Poyser. "He's empty enough i' the upper story, or he'd niver come jigging an' stamping i' that way, like a mad grasshopper, for the gentry to look at him. They're fit to die wi' laughing, I can see." "Well, well, so much the better, it amuses 'em," said Mr. Poyser, who did not easily take an irritable view of things. "But they're going away now, t' have their dinner, I reckon. Well move about a bit, shall we, and see what Adam Bede's doing. He's got to look after the drinking and things: I doubt he hasna had much fun."

Chapter 25

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter25

The Games The games and races begin on the lawn at four o'clock, and Mrs. Irwine is to give out the prizes, sitting on a raised seat like a queen. Mrs. Irwine tells Arthur he must take a charming bride or she will be disappointed. She insists this bride be pretty and not silly. She surveys the crowd along with her son, and the Donnithornes. When she sees Hetty, she wants to know who she is, then says it is a waste to give beauty to the lower classes when the upper class needs it most. Beauty, she says, is thrown away on the working class husband. Arthur is listening, and is more attracted to Hetty than ever while they speak of her. Mr. Irwine contradicts his mother: "The common people are not quite so stupid as you imagine" . He tells them about Dinah Morris as an example. Just then, Bessy Cranage wins a game and comes to collect her prize. Miss Lydia had bought an ugly dress and piece of flannel for a young woman, not wanting to encourage vanity. Bessy, who likes finery as much as Hetty does, is so disappointed she cries and gives the material away to her cousin to make clothes with. Arthur vows secretly to give her some money so she can buy something for herself. Wiry Ben Cranage then dances a comic hornpipe while Joshua Rann plays the fiddle.

Commentary on Chapter 25 This chapter contrasts the point of view of the classes in English society. Because readers have already seen so much of the action and inner life of the lower class characters, they know the farmers and workers as real people. Mrs. Irwine is a proud and queenly gentlewoman who looks down on the lower classes. She voices her prejudice about them and is corrected by her son the rector, who knows them all quite well. He has just praised Adam as one of the more significant people in the area, and now he praises Dinah Morris as an example of beauty and intelligence and refinement. Miss Lydia buys coarse cloth for a female prize, not thinking the peasants have any business with finery, while she herself likes her bit of lace. These gentry do not see any common humanity with those beneath them. The time of the action is 1799, the height of the Romantic Age when class difference was beginning to break down, after the French Revolution and the beginning rise of industrialism. Romantic literature is full of noble peasants and natives who are more honorable than the upper classes, under the notion that the person living closest to nature imbibes a natural morality and wisdom. Irwine does not sentimentalize about the poor being better, for he knows, as well as Mrs. Poyser, who among them is a fool and who is not. He, however, defends a democratic idea ahead of its time, that one class is not more stupid or less human than another, as his mother and the Donnithornes think.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/26.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_26_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 3.chapter 26

chapter 26

{"name": "Chapter 26", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter26", "summary": "The Dance The dance for the tenants is held in the entry hall of the house, with paper lanterns hung on green boughs. Lisbeth is jealous that Adam is staying for the dancing, whining that she is losing him, but he says it would be rude for him to leave. Hetty says she will leave the fourth dance for Adam. For the first dance, Arthur leads with Mrs. Poyser, and Miss Lydia leads with Mr. Poyser. Adam dances with Mary Burge, and Hetty dances with Luke Britton. The squire, Miss Anne, and Mrs. Irwine watch the dance from a raised dais. Mr. Irwine goes to preside at the dance for the cottagers in the abbey gallery. When Hetty dances with Arthur she has a pale look that frightens Arthur, for he thinks it means she really loves him and will be hurt when he tells her they must part. Adam waits for his turn with Hetty. Hetty is obliged to hold Totty for a moment, and when Adam tries to take Totty to relieve her, Totty grabs Hetty's necklace and breaks it. The beads and hidden locket fall to the ground. Adam bends down to get the locket and sees the strands of hair in it. Suddenly, he realizes that Hetty may have another lover. She puts the locket in her pocket, and they have an awkward dance together. Disillusioned, Adam leaves the dance. Walking home through the woods, he begins to make excuses for Hetty. Perhaps she bought the locket herself. Meanwhile, back at the dance, Hetty dances with Arthur again, and he whispers to her where and when they should meet in the wood. He is thinking to himself it will be the last time.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 26 Adam finally gets the hint that he doesn't know everything about Hetty. He is shocked and leaves, but unwilling to think the worst, he hopes that she was embarrassed about having bought finery for herself since she knows he doesn't approve. He gives her the benefit of the doubt. The tension is running higher for the three in this triangle--Arthur, Hetty, and Adam. It is obvious Hetty and Arthur cannot keep their secret much longer, but Arthur also fears that it might get complicated parting from Hetty. For one thing, if she is attached to him and is badly hurt, it could get messy. But for another thing, he really wants her, and he thinks to himself that he would give three years of his life if he could enjoy his passion with her. Book 3 advances the fact that Arthur's flirtation with Hetty has become a more serious affair. He has not done anything to back away, but on the contrary, he is giving her expensive presents. How far the affair has gone we can only guess. The locket with the mingled strands of hair was generally a love token, symbolizing intimacy. Later it will become clear that this has been a time of physical intimacy between the lovers. The entanglement is deep enough, as Arthur recognizes, to cause him trouble whatever he does, whether he continues or breaks it off. The irony is that at the moment of Arthur's greatest honor at his coming of age party, he is clearly acting dishonorably, leading Hetty on, though she is helping him. Adam avoids knowing more because he cannot think Hetty would have a secret lover, yet he is putting his head in the sand. Hetty acts embarrassed and fearful of discovery, a dead give-away. Adam cannot bear that his moment of advancement on this happy occasion is coupled with such a betrayal, so he forgets about the incident. The birthday party serves to demonstrate the unity of this small and tight-knit community on one level, and the rising and secret tension ready to break it apart, on another. The very man who is supposed to lead them all forward to a better life has already sabotaged that promise. Book 3 concludes on this suspenseful note."}

ARTHUR had chosen the entrance-hall for the ballroom: very wisely, for no other room could have been so airy, or would have had the advantage of the wide doors opening into the garden, as well as a ready entrance into the other rooms. To be sure, a stone floor was not the pleasantest to dance on, but then, most of the dancers had known what it was to enjoy a Christmas dance on kitchen quarries. It was one of those entrance-halls which make the surrounding rooms look like closets--with stucco angels, trumpets, and flower-wreaths on the lofty ceiling, and great medallions of miscellaneous heroes on the walls, alternating with statues in niches. Just the sort of place to be ornamented well with green boughs, and Mr. Craig had been proud to show his taste and his hothouse plants on the occasion. The broad steps of the stone staircase were covered with cushions to serve as seats for the children, who were to stay till half-past nine with the servant-maids to see the dancing, and as this dance was confined to the chief tenants, there was abundant room for every one. The lights were charmingly disposed in coloured-paper lamps, high up among green boughs, and the farmers' wives and daughters, as they peeped in, believed no scene could be more splendid; they knew now quite well in what sort of rooms the king and queen lived, and their thoughts glanced with some pity towards cousins and acquaintances who had not this fine opportunity of knowing how things went on in the great world. The lamps were already lit, though the sun had not long set, and there was that calm light out of doors in which we seem to see all objects more distinctly than in the broad day. It was a pretty scene outside the house: the farmers and their families were moving about the lawn, among the flowers and shrubs, or along the broad straight road leading from the east front, where a carpet of mossy grass spread on each side, studded here and there with a dark flat-boughed cedar, or a grand pyramidal fir sweeping the ground with its branches, all tipped with a fringe of paler green. The groups of cottagers in the park were gradually diminishing, the young ones being attracted towards the lights that were beginning to gleam from the windows of the gallery in the abbey, which was to be their dancing-room, and some of the sober elder ones thinking it time to go home quietly. One of these was Lisbeth Bede, and Seth went with her--not from filial attention only, for his conscience would not let him join in dancing. It had been rather a melancholy day to Seth: Dinah had never been more constantly present with him than in this scene, where everything was so unlike her. He saw her all the more vividly after looking at the thoughtless faces and gay-coloured dresses of the young women--just as one feels the beauty and the greatness of a pictured Madonna the more when it has been for a moment screened from us by a vulgar head in a bonnet. But this presence of Dinah in his mind only helped him to bear the better with his mother's mood, which had been becoming more and more querulous for the last hour. Poor Lisbeth was suffering from a strange conflict of feelings. Her joy and pride in the honour paid to her darling son Adam was beginning to be worsted in the conflict with the jealousy and fretfulness which had revived when Adam came to tell her that Captain Donnithorne desired him to join the dancers in the hall. Adam was getting more and more out of her reach; she wished all the old troubles back again, for then it mattered more to Adam what his mother said and did. "Eh, it's fine talkin' o' dancin'," she said, "an' thy father not a five week in's grave. An' I wish I war there too, i'stid o' bein' left to take up merrier folks's room above ground." "Nay, don't look at it i' that way, Mother," said Adam, who was determined to be gentle to her to-day. "I don't mean to dance--I shall only look on. And since the captain wishes me to be there, it 'ud look as if I thought I knew better than him to say as I'd rather not stay. And thee know'st how he's behaved to me to-day." "Eh, thee't do as thee lik'st, for thy old mother's got no right t' hinder thee. She's nought but th' old husk, and thee'st slipped away from her, like the ripe nut." "Well, Mother," said Adam, "I'll go and tell the captain as it hurts thy feelings for me to stay, and I'd rather go home upo' that account: he won't take it ill then, I daresay, and I'm willing." He said this with some effort, for he really longed to be near Hetty this evening. "Nay, nay, I wonna ha' thee do that--the young squire 'ull be angered. Go an' do what thee't ordered to do, an' me and Seth 'ull go whome. I know it's a grit honour for thee to be so looked on--an' who's to be prouder on it nor thy mother? Hadna she the cumber o' rearin' thee an' doin' for thee all these 'ears?" "Well, good-bye, then, Mother--good-bye, lad--remember Gyp when you get home," said Adam, turning away towards the gate of the pleasure-grounds, where he hoped he might be able to join the Poysers, for he had been so occupied throughout the afternoon that he had had no time to speak to Hetty. His eye soon detected a distant group, which he knew to be the right one, returning to the house along the broad gravel road, and he hastened on to meet them. "Why, Adam, I'm glad to get sight on y' again," said Mr. Poyser, who was carrying Totty on his arm. "You're going t' have a bit o' fun, I hope, now your work's all done. And here's Hetty has promised no end o' partners, an' I've just been askin' her if she'd agreed to dance wi' you, an' she says no." "Well, I didn't think o' dancing to-night," said Adam, already tempted to change his mind, as he looked at Hetty. "Nonsense!" said Mr. Poyser. "Why, everybody's goin' to dance to-night, all but th' old squire and Mrs. Irwine. Mrs. Best's been tellin' us as Miss Lyddy and Miss Irwine 'ull dance, an' the young squire 'ull pick my wife for his first partner, t' open the ball: so she'll be forced to dance, though she's laid by ever sin' the Christmas afore the little un was born. You canna for shame stand still, Adam, an' you a fine young fellow and can dance as well as anybody." "Nay, nay," said Mrs. Poyser, "it 'ud be unbecomin'. I know the dancin's nonsense, but if you stick at everything because it's nonsense, you wonna go far i' this life. When your broth's ready-made for you, you mun swallow the thickenin', or else let the broth alone." "Then if Hetty 'ull dance with me," said Adam, yielding either to Mrs. Poyser's argument or to something else, "I'll dance whichever dance she's free." "I've got no partner for the fourth dance," said Hetty; "I'll dance that with you, if you like." "Ah," said Mr. Poyser, "but you mun dance the first dance, Adam, else it'll look partic'ler. There's plenty o' nice partners to pick an' choose from, an' it's hard for the gells when the men stan' by and don't ask 'em." Adam felt the justice of Mr. Poyser's observation: it would not do for him to dance with no one besides Hetty; and remembering that Jonathan Burge had some reason to feel hurt to-day, he resolved to ask Miss Mary to dance with him the first dance, if she had no other partner. "There's the big clock strikin' eight," said Mr. Poyser; "we must make haste in now, else the squire and the ladies 'ull be in afore us, an' that wouldna look well." When they had entered the hall, and the three children under Molly's charge had been seated on the stairs, the folding-doors of the drawing-room were thrown open, and Arthur entered in his regimentals, leading Mrs. Irwine to a carpet-covered dais ornamented with hot-house plants, where she and Miss Anne were to be seated with old Mr. Donnithorne, that they might look on at the dancing, like the kings and queens in the plays. Arthur had put on his uniform to please the tenants, he said, who thought as much of his militia dignity as if it had been an elevation to the premiership. He had not the least objection to gratify them in that way: his uniform was very advantageous to his figure. The old squire, before sitting down, walked round the hall to greet the tenants and make polite speeches to the wives: he was always polite; but the farmers had found out, after long puzzling, that this polish was one of the signs of hardness. It was observed that he gave his most elaborate civility to Mrs. Poyser to-night, inquiring particularly about her health, recommending her to strengthen herself with cold water as he did, and avoid all drugs. Mrs. Poyser curtsied and thanked him with great self-command, but when he had passed on, she whispered to her husband, "I'll lay my life he's brewin' some nasty turn against us. Old Harry doesna wag his tail so for nothin'." Mr. Poyser had no time to answer, for now Arthur came up and said, "Mrs. Poyser, I'm come to request the favour of your hand for the first dance; and, Mr. Poyser, you must let me take you to my aunt, for she claims you as her partner." The wife's pale cheek flushed with a nervous sense of unwonted honour as Arthur led her to the top of the room; but Mr. Poyser, to whom an extra glass had restored his youthful confidence in his good looks and good dancing, walked along with them quite proudly, secretly flattering himself that Miss Lydia had never had a partner in HER life who could lift her off the ground as he would. In order to balance the honours given to the two parishes, Miss Irwine danced with Luke Britton, the largest Broxton farmer, and Mr. Gawaine led out Mrs. Britton. Mr. Irwine, after seating his sister Anne, had gone to the abbey gallery, as he had agreed with Arthur beforehand, to see how the merriment of the cottagers was prospering. Meanwhile, all the less distinguished couples had taken their places: Hetty was led out by the inevitable Mr. Craig, and Mary Burge by Adam; and now the music struck up, and the glorious country-dance, best of all dances, began. Pity it was not a boarded floor! Then the rhythmic stamping of the thick shoes would have been better than any drums. That merry stamping, that gracious nodding of the head, that waving bestowal of the hand--where can we see them now? That simple dancing of well-covered matrons, laying aside for an hour the cares of house and dairy, remembering but not affecting youth, not jealous but proud of the young maidens by their side--that holiday sprightliness of portly husbands paying little compliments to their wives, as if their courting days were come again--those lads and lasses a little confused and awkward with their partners, having nothing to say--it would be a pleasant variety to see all that sometimes, instead of low dresses and large skirts, and scanning glances exploring costumes, and languid men in lacquered boots smiling with double meaning. There was but one thing to mar Martin Poyser's pleasure in this dance: it was that he was always in close contact with Luke Britton, that slovenly farmer. He thought of throwing a little glazed coldness into his eye in the crossing of hands; but then, as Miss Irwine was opposite to him instead of the offensive Luke, he might freeze the wrong person. So he gave his face up to hilarity, unchilled by moral judgments. How Hetty's heart beat as Arthur approached her! He had hardly looked at her to-day: now he must take her hand. Would he press it? Would he look at her? She thought she would cry if he gave her no sign of feeling. Now he was there--he had taken her hand--yes, he was pressing it. Hetty turned pale as she looked up at him for an instant and met his eyes, before the dance carried him away. That pale look came upon Arthur like the beginning of a dull pain, which clung to him, though he must dance and smile and joke all the same. Hetty would look so, when he told her what he had to tell her; and he should never be able to bear it--he should be a fool and give way again. Hetty's look did not really mean so much as he thought: it was only the sign of a struggle between the desire for him to notice her and the dread lest she should betray the desire to others. But Hetty's face had a language that transcended her feelings. There are faces which nature charges with a meaning and pathos not belonging to the single human soul that flutters beneath them, but speaking the joys and sorrows of foregone generations--eyes that tell of deep love which doubtless has been and is somewhere, but not paired with these eyes--perhaps paired with pale eyes that can say nothing; just as a national language may be instinct with poetry unfelt by the lips that use it. That look of Hetty's oppressed Arthur with a dread which yet had something of a terrible unconfessed delight in it, that she loved him too well. There was a hard task before him, for at that moment he felt he would have given up three years of his youth for the happiness of abandoning himself without remorse to his passion for Hetty. These were the incongruous thoughts in his mind as he led Mrs. Poyser, who was panting with fatigue, and secretly resolving that neither judge nor jury should force her to dance another dance, to take a quiet rest in the dining-room, where supper was laid out for the guests to come and take it as they chose. "I've desired Hetty to remember as she's got to dance wi' you, sir," said the good innocent woman; "for she's so thoughtless, she'd be like enough to go an' engage herself for ivery dance. So I told her not to promise too many." "Thank you, Mrs. Poyser," said Arthur, not without a twinge. "Now, sit down in this comfortable chair, and here is Mills ready to give you what you would like best." He hurried away to seek another matronly partner, for due honour must be paid to the married women before he asked any of the young ones; and the country-dances, and the stamping, and the gracious nodding, and the waving of the hands, went on joyously. At last the time had come for the fourth dance--longed for by the strong, grave Adam, as if he had been a delicate-handed youth of eighteen; for we are all very much alike when we are in our first love; and Adam had hardly ever touched Hetty's hand for more than a transient greeting--had never danced with her but once before. His eyes had followed her eagerly to-night in spite of himself, and had taken in deeper draughts of love. He thought she behaved so prettily, so quietly; she did not seem to be flirting at all she smiled less than usual; there was almost a sweet sadness about her. "God bless her!" he said inwardly; "I'd make her life a happy 'un, if a strong arm to work for her, and a heart to love her, could do it." And then there stole over him delicious thoughts of coming home from work, and drawing Hetty to his side, and feeling her cheek softly pressed against his, till he forgot where he was, and the music and the tread of feet might have been the falling of rain and the roaring of the wind, for what he knew. But now the third dance was ended, and he might go up to her and claim her hand. She was at the far end of the hall near the staircase, whispering with Molly, who had just given the sleeping Totty into her arms before running to fetch shawls and bonnets from the landing. Mrs. Poyser had taken the two boys away into the dining-room to give them some cake before they went home in the cart with Grandfather and Molly was to follow as fast as possible. "Let me hold her," said Adam, as Molly turned upstairs; "the children are so heavy when they're asleep." Hetty was glad of the relief, for to hold Totty in her arms, standing, was not at all a pleasant variety to her. But this second transfer had the unfortunate effect of rousing Totty, who was not behind any child of her age in peevishness at an unseasonable awaking. While Hetty was in the act of placing her in Adam's arms, and had not yet withdrawn her own, Totty opened her eyes, and forthwith fought out with her left fist at Adam's arm, and with her right caught at the string of brown beads round Hetty's neck. The locket leaped out from her frock, and the next moment the string was broken, and Hetty, helpless, saw beads and locket scattered wide on the floor. "My locket, my locket!" she said, in a loud frightened whisper to Adam; "never mind the beads." Adam had already seen where the locket fell, for it had attracted his glance as it leaped out of her frock. It had fallen on the raised wooden dais where the band sat, not on the stone floor; and as Adam picked it up, he saw the glass with the dark and light locks of hair under it. It had fallen that side upwards, so the glass was not broken. He turned it over on his hand, and saw the enamelled gold back. "It isn't hurt," he said, as he held it towards Hetty, who was unable to take it because both her hands were occupied with Totty. "Oh, it doesn't matter, I don't mind about it," said Hetty, who had been pale and was now red. "Not matter?" said Adam, gravely. "You seemed very frightened about it. I'll hold it till you're ready to take it," he added, quietly closing his hand over it, that she might not think he wanted to look at it again. By this time Molly had come with bonnet and shawl, and as soon as she had taken Totty, Adam placed the locket in Hetty's hand. She took it with an air of indifference and put it in her pocket, in her heart vexed and angry with Adam because he had seen it, but determined now that she would show no more signs of agitation. "See," she said, "they're taking their places to dance; let us go." Adam assented silently. A puzzled alarm had taken possession of him. Had Hetty a lover he didn't know of? For none of her relations, he was sure, would give her a locket like that; and none of her admirers, with whom he was acquainted, was in the position of an accepted lover, as the giver of that locket must be. Adam was lost in the utter impossibility of finding any person for his fears to alight on. He could only feel with a terrible pang that there was something in Hetty's life unknown to him; that while he had been rocking himself in the hope that she would come to love him, she was already loving another. The pleasure of the dance with Hetty was gone; his eyes, when they rested on her, had an uneasy questioning expression in them; he could think of nothing to say to her; and she too was out of temper and disinclined to speak. They were both glad when the dance was ended. Adam was determined to stay no longer; no one wanted him, and no one would notice if he slipped away. As soon as he got out of doors, he began to walk at his habitual rapid pace, hurrying along without knowing why, busy with the painful thought that the memory of this day, so full of honour and promise to him, was poisoned for ever. Suddenly, when he was far on through the Chase, he stopped, startled by a flash of reviving hope. After all, he might be a fool, making a great misery out of a trifle. Hetty, fond of finery as she was, might have bought the thing herself. It looked too expensive for that--it looked like the things on white satin in the great jeweller's shop at Rosseter. But Adam had very imperfect notions of the value of such things, and he thought it could certainly not cost more than a guinea. Perhaps Hetty had had as much as that in Christmas boxes, and there was no knowing but she might have been childish enough to spend it in that way; she was such a young thing, and she couldn't help loving finery! But then, why had she been so frightened about it at first, and changed colour so, and afterwards pretended not to care? Oh, that was because she was ashamed of his seeing that she had such a smart thing--she was conscious that it was wrong for her to spend her money on it, and she knew that Adam disapproved of finery. It was a proof she cared about what he liked and disliked. She must have thought from his silence and gravity afterwards that he was very much displeased with her, that he was inclined to be harsh and severe towards her foibles. And as he walked on more quietly, chewing the cud of this new hope, his only uneasiness was that he had behaved in a way which might chill Hetty's feeling towards him. For this last view of the matter must be the true one. How could Hetty have an accepted lover, quite unknown to him? She was never away from her uncle's house for more than a day; she could have no acquaintances that did not come there, and no intimacies unknown to her uncle and aunt. It would be folly to believe that the locket was given to her by a lover. The little ring of dark hair he felt sure was her own; he could form no guess about the light hair under it, for he had not seen it very distinctly. It might be a bit of her father's or mother's, who had died when she was a child, and she would naturally put a bit of her own along with it. And so Adam went to bed comforted, having woven for himself an ingenious web of probabilities--the surest screen a wise man can place between himself and the truth. His last waking thoughts melted into a dream that he was with Hetty again at the Hall Farm, and that he was asking her to forgive him for being so cold and silent. And while he was dreaming this, Arthur was leading Hetty to the dance and saying to her in low hurried tones, "I shall be in the wood the day after to-morrow at seven; come as early as you can." And Hetty's foolish joys and hopes, which had flown away for a little space, scared by a mere nothing, now all came fluttering back, unconscious of the real peril. She was happy for the first time this long day, and wished that dance would last for hours. Arthur wished it too; it was the last weakness he meant to indulge in; and a man never lies with more delicious languor under the influence of a passion than when he has persuaded himself that he shall subdue it to-morrow. But Mrs. Poyser's wishes were quite the reverse of this, for her mind was filled with dreary forebodings as to the retardation of to-morrow morning's cheese in consequence of these late hours. Now that Hetty had done her duty and danced one dance with the young squire, Mr. Poyser must go out and see if the cart was come back to fetch them, for it was half-past ten o'clock, and notwithstanding a mild suggestion on his part that it would be bad manners for them to be the first to go, Mrs. Poyser was resolute on the point, "manners or no manners." "What! Going already, Mrs. Poyser?" said old Mr. Donnithorne, as she came to curtsy and take leave; "I thought we should not part with any of our guests till eleven. Mrs. Irwine and I, who are elderly people, think of sitting out the dance till then." "Oh, Your Honour, it's all right and proper for gentlefolks to stay up by candlelight--they've got no cheese on their minds. We're late enough as it is, an' there's no lettin' the cows know as they mustn't want to be milked so early to-morrow mornin'. So, if you'll please t' excuse us, we'll take our leave." "Eh!" she said to her husband, as they set off in the cart, "I'd sooner ha' brewin' day and washin' day together than one o' these pleasurin' days. There's no work so tirin' as danglin' about an' starin' an' not rightly knowin' what you're goin' to do next; and keepin' your face i' smilin' order like a grocer o' market-day for fear people shouldna think you civil enough. An' you've nothing to show for't when it's done, if it isn't a yallow face wi' eatin' things as disagree." "Nay, nay," said Mr. Poyser, who was in his merriest mood, and felt that he had had a great day, "a bit o' pleasuring's good for thee sometimes. An' thee danc'st as well as any of 'em, for I'll back thee against all the wives i' the parish for a light foot an' ankle. An' it was a great honour for the young squire to ask thee first--I reckon it was because I sat at th' head o' the table an' made the speech. An' Hetty too--she never had such a partner before--a fine young gentleman in reg'mentals. It'll serve you to talk on, Hetty, when you're an old woman--how you danced wi' th' young squire the day he come o' age." Book Four

Chapter 26

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter26

The Dance The dance for the tenants is held in the entry hall of the house, with paper lanterns hung on green boughs. Lisbeth is jealous that Adam is staying for the dancing, whining that she is losing him, but he says it would be rude for him to leave. Hetty says she will leave the fourth dance for Adam. For the first dance, Arthur leads with Mrs. Poyser, and Miss Lydia leads with Mr. Poyser. Adam dances with Mary Burge, and Hetty dances with Luke Britton. The squire, Miss Anne, and Mrs. Irwine watch the dance from a raised dais. Mr. Irwine goes to preside at the dance for the cottagers in the abbey gallery. When Hetty dances with Arthur she has a pale look that frightens Arthur, for he thinks it means she really loves him and will be hurt when he tells her they must part. Adam waits for his turn with Hetty. Hetty is obliged to hold Totty for a moment, and when Adam tries to take Totty to relieve her, Totty grabs Hetty's necklace and breaks it. The beads and hidden locket fall to the ground. Adam bends down to get the locket and sees the strands of hair in it. Suddenly, he realizes that Hetty may have another lover. She puts the locket in her pocket, and they have an awkward dance together. Disillusioned, Adam leaves the dance. Walking home through the woods, he begins to make excuses for Hetty. Perhaps she bought the locket herself. Meanwhile, back at the dance, Hetty dances with Arthur again, and he whispers to her where and when they should meet in the wood. He is thinking to himself it will be the last time.

Commentary on Chapter 26 Adam finally gets the hint that he doesn't know everything about Hetty. He is shocked and leaves, but unwilling to think the worst, he hopes that she was embarrassed about having bought finery for herself since she knows he doesn't approve. He gives her the benefit of the doubt. The tension is running higher for the three in this triangle--Arthur, Hetty, and Adam. It is obvious Hetty and Arthur cannot keep their secret much longer, but Arthur also fears that it might get complicated parting from Hetty. For one thing, if she is attached to him and is badly hurt, it could get messy. But for another thing, he really wants her, and he thinks to himself that he would give three years of his life if he could enjoy his passion with her. Book 3 advances the fact that Arthur's flirtation with Hetty has become a more serious affair. He has not done anything to back away, but on the contrary, he is giving her expensive presents. How far the affair has gone we can only guess. The locket with the mingled strands of hair was generally a love token, symbolizing intimacy. Later it will become clear that this has been a time of physical intimacy between the lovers. The entanglement is deep enough, as Arthur recognizes, to cause him trouble whatever he does, whether he continues or breaks it off. The irony is that at the moment of Arthur's greatest honor at his coming of age party, he is clearly acting dishonorably, leading Hetty on, though she is helping him. Adam avoids knowing more because he cannot think Hetty would have a secret lover, yet he is putting his head in the sand. Hetty acts embarrassed and fearful of discovery, a dead give-away. Adam cannot bear that his moment of advancement on this happy occasion is coupled with such a betrayal, so he forgets about the incident. The birthday party serves to demonstrate the unity of this small and tight-knit community on one level, and the rising and secret tension ready to break it apart, on another. The very man who is supposed to lead them all forward to a better life has already sabotaged that promise. Book 3 concludes on this suspenseful note.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/27.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_27_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 27

chapter 27

{"name": "Chapter 27", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter27", "summary": "Book Fourth Chapter 27: A Crisis Three weeks after Arthur's party, just before harvest, as the apples are falling in the orchards, the crisis that has been building erupts. Adam's hopes have been buoyed again, and he is working double, for the squire and Jonathan Burge. Hetty seems more serious and mature to Adam these days. She is still getting her sewing lessons, and on the night she is coming home through the wood, Adam is taking a short cut through there after having done repairs on the Chase Farm. He hears that Arthur is leaving in two days to join his regiment. Just as the sun is setting he sees two figures in the wood, and he freezes. They are kissing and saying goodbye. Gyp barks, and the figures break apart. One figure rushes out the gate to the fields, while the other comes towards Adam in the wood. It is Arthur, slightly drunk, swaggering and trying to bluff with Adam about the incident. He thinks Adam is the best person to have caught him and Hetty together, for he can be trusted not to tell anyone. He mentions casually that he just gave Hetty a kiss after walking with her, and he tries to pass by Adam, as if no harm had been done. It was just a bit of flirting, he says. Adam tells him to wait, and accuses him of being two-faced, for Hetty could have loved him if Arthur, whom he thought his friend, hadn't ruined it. Arthur is shocked that Adam loves Hetty, and begins to see the whole affair as much more serious than he imagined. Adam's blood is up, and he taunts Arthur until he fights. The two begin a furious fist fight until Adam knocks Arthur down, and he does not get up. Adam is terrified of his own strength, afraid that he has killed Arthur.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 27 After much buildup and suspense, the secret bursts out, and it is fatal for Arthur that it is Adam who sees him with Hetty, though at first he thinks Adam will understand and cover for him. This misunderstanding shows the difference between Adam and Arthur both in character and in class expectations. Arthur's class of gentlemen takes it as nothing unusual to have affairs with servant girls. If worst comes to worst with such a fling, a rich man can always pay his way out of the trouble, for he would never be expected by his peers to marry or be made uncomfortable by any complications. Arthur expects Adam to have such a cavalier attitude as well. He passes the incident off as not serious. His casual manner incenses Adam in two ways; first, because Hetty is the woman he loves; second, even if she weren't, Arthur puts a blot on Hetty's reputation and life, and that is not a mere trifle for the servant girl. Adam's working class on the whole expects courting to end in marriage, so if one does not have that intention, then one is acting dishonorably. Adam's illusions crash because he has believed in the superiority of rank and has believed in Arthur personally. Arthur's bubble is burst too: he is suddenly shocked by feeling the first hatred he has ever encountered in his life, and from one of the people whose opinion mattered to him. He realizes from the way Adam talks, however, that he believes it is a flirtation and nothing more. He sticks to this lie, then, as his only way out of the mess. Fiction in 1859 did not discuss explicit sexual encounters, but these hints by the characters and narrator are enough to confirm in a round-about way that Hetty and Arthur are definitely having a sexual affair, though Adam has bought Arthur's lie that it is only a flirtation. Even a servant found kissing a gentleman could be turned away from employment, and certainly would have a difficult time marrying, for the worst would be assumed. In a small town like Hayslope, one mistake like this can ruin a person's life. Adam knows Hetty will be destroyed if it is found out, but he himself is too good a man to think that the affair is that far along, that either Hetty or Arthur could have stooped so low. He is a bit naive about the weaknesses of others, and Arthur takes advantage of this. Adam's strength is also his weakness. He holds himself back by sheer will power in the beginning, knowing he is a strong man and that violence is wrong. It has been mentioned that he stopped fighting when he injured a man a few years ago, and he cautions himself not to do it now. If Arthur had humbled himself or spoken truthfully, there might have been some other way to work out their differences, but since Arthur takes a casual and cocky attitude, Adam's anger is thoroughly aroused at the \"scoundrel\" . When Arthur does not get up, Adam realizes his mistake. He solved nothing, and he might have killed a man. This chapter functions as the moment of the fall does in Paradise Lost. Before this scene, the idyllic world of the valley was established in the rising action. All the characters had hopes and plans for a bright future. After this climax, that innocent green world is shattered, and all the tragic consequences of the actions are played out. The lives of the main characters change forever. As Adam observed of his father's tragic end: \"There's no slipping up hill again, and no standing still when once you've begun to slip down\" . The reader expects to watch the tumbling down now."}

IT was beyond the middle of August--nearly three weeks after the birthday feast. The reaping of the wheat had begun in our north midland county of Loamshire, but the harvest was likely still to be retarded by the heavy rains, which were causing inundations and much damage throughout the country. From this last trouble the Broxton and Hayslope farmers, on their pleasant uplands and in their brook-watered valleys, had not suffered, and as I cannot pretend that they were such exceptional farmers as to love the general good better than their own, you will infer that they were not in very low spirits about the rapid rise in the price of bread, so long as there was hope of gathering in their own corn undamaged; and occasional days of sunshine and drying winds flattered this hope. The eighteenth of August was one of these days when the sunshine looked brighter in all eyes for the gloom that went before. Grand masses of cloud were hurried across the blue, and the great round hills behind the Chase seemed alive with their flying shadows; the sun was hidden for a moment, and then shone out warm again like a recovered joy; the leaves, still green, were tossed off the hedgerow trees by the wind; around the farmhouses there was a sound of clapping doors; the apples fell in the orchards; and the stray horses on the green sides of the lanes and on the common had their manes blown about their faces. And yet the wind seemed only part of the general gladness because the sun was shining. A merry day for the children, who ran and shouted to see if they could top the wind with their voices; and the grown-up people too were in good spirits, inclined to believe in yet finer days, when the wind had fallen. If only the corn were not ripe enough to be blown out of the husk and scattered as untimely seed! And yet a day on which a blighting sorrow may fall upon a man. For if it be true that Nature at certain moments seems charged with a presentiment of one individual lot must it not also be true that she seems unmindful unconscious of another? For there is no hour that has not its births of gladness and despair, no morning brightness that does not bring new sickness to desolation as well as new forces to genius and love. There are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that Nature's mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of our lives? We are children of a large family, and must learn, as such children do, not to expect that our hurts will be made much of--to be content with little nurture and caressing, and help each other the more. It was a busy day with Adam, who of late had done almost double work, for he was continuing to act as foreman for Jonathan Burge, until some satisfactory person could be found to supply his place, and Jonathan was slow to find that person. But he had done the extra work cheerfully, for his hopes were buoyant again about Hetty. Every time she had seen him since the birthday, she had seemed to make an effort to behave all the more kindly to him, that she might make him understand she had forgiven his silence and coldness during the dance. He had never mentioned the locket to her again; too happy that she smiled at him--still happier because he observed in her a more subdued air, something that he interpreted as the growth of womanly tenderness and seriousness. "Ah!" he thought, again and again, "she's only seventeen; she'll be thoughtful enough after a while. And her aunt allays says how clever she is at the work. She'll make a wife as Mother'll have no occasion to grumble at, after all." To be sure, he had only seen her at home twice since the birthday; for one Sunday, when he was intending to go from church to the Hall Farm, Hetty had joined the party of upper servants from the Chase and had gone home with them--almost as if she were inclined to encourage Mr. Craig. "She's takin' too much likin' to them folks i' the house keeper's room," Mrs. Poyser remarked. "For my part, I was never overfond o' gentlefolks's servants--they're mostly like the fine ladies' fat dogs, nayther good for barking nor butcher's meat, but on'y for show." And another evening she was gone to Treddleston to buy some things; though, to his great surprise, as he was returning home, he saw her at a distance getting over a stile quite out of the Treddleston road. But, when he hastened to her, she was very kind, and asked him to go in again when he had taken her to the yard gate. She had gone a little farther into the fields after coming from Treddleston because she didn't want to go in, she said: it was so nice to be out of doors, and her aunt always made such a fuss about it if she wanted to go out. "Oh, do come in with me!" she said, as he was going to shake hands with her at the gate, and he could not resist that. So he went in, and Mrs. Poyser was contented with only a slight remark on Hetty's being later than was expected; while Hetty, who had looked out of spirits when he met her, smiled and talked and waited on them all with unusual promptitude. That was the last time he had seen her; but he meant to make leisure for going to the Farm to-morrow. To-day, he knew, was her day for going to the Chase to sew with the lady's maid, so he would get as much work done as possible this evening, that the next might be clear. One piece of work that Adam was superintending was some slight repairs at the Chase Farm, which had been hitherto occupied by Satchell, as bailiff, but which it was now rumoured that the old squire was going to let to a smart man in top-boots, who had been seen to ride over it one day. Nothing but the desire to get a tenant could account for the squire's undertaking repairs, though the Saturday-evening party at Mr. Casson's agreed over their pipes that no man in his senses would take the Chase Farm unless there was a bit more ploughland laid to it. However that might be, the repairs were ordered to be executed with all dispatch, and Adam, acting for Mr. Burge, was carrying out the order with his usual energy. But to-day, having been occupied elsewhere, he had not been able to arrive at the Chase Farm till late in the afternoon, and he then discovered that some old roofing, which he had calculated on preserving, had given way. There was clearly no good to be done with this part of the building without pulling it all down, and Adam immediately saw in his mind a plan for building it up again, so as to make the most convenient of cow-sheds and calf-pens, with a hovel for implements; and all without any great expense for materials. So, when the workmen were gone, he sat down, took out his pocket-book, and busied himself with sketching a plan, and making a specification of the expenses that he might show it to Burge the next morning, and set him on persuading the squire to consent. To "make a good job" of anything, however small, was always a pleasure to Adam, and he sat on a block, with his book resting on a planing-table, whistling low every now and then and turning his head on one side with a just perceptible smile of gratification--of pride, too, for if Adam loved a bit of good work, he loved also to think, "I did it!" And I believe the only people who are free from that weakness are those who have no work to call their own. It was nearly seven before he had finished and put on his jacket again; and on giving a last look round, he observed that Seth, who had been working here to-day, had left his basket of tools behind him. "Why, th' lad's forgot his tools," thought Adam, "and he's got to work up at the shop to-morrow. There never was such a chap for wool-gathering; he'd leave his head behind him, if it was loose. However, it's lucky I've seen 'em; I'll carry 'em home." The buildings of the Chase Farm lay at one extremity of the Chase, at about ten minutes' walking distance from the Abbey. Adam had come thither on his pony, intending to ride to the stables and put up his nag on his way home. At the stables he encountered Mr. Craig, who had come to look at the captain's new horse, on which he was to ride away the day after to-morrow; and Mr. Craig detained him to tell how all the servants were to collect at the gate of the courtyard to wish the young squire luck as he rode out; so that by the time Adam had got into the Chase, and was striding along with the basket of tools over his shoulder, the sun was on the point of setting, and was sending level crimson rays among the great trunks of the old oaks, and touching every bare patch of ground with a transient glory that made it look like a jewel dropt upon the grass. The wind had fallen now, and there was only enough breeze to stir the delicate-stemmed leaves. Any one who had been sitting in the house all day would have been glad to walk now; but Adam had been quite enough in the open air to wish to shorten his way home, and he bethought himself that he might do so by striking across the Chase and going through the Grove, where he had never been for years. He hurried on across the Chase, stalking along the narrow paths between the fern, with Gyp at his heels, not lingering to watch the magnificent changes of the light--hardly once thinking of it--yet feeling its presence in a certain calm happy awe which mingled itself with his busy working-day thoughts. How could he help feeling it? The very deer felt it, and were more timid. Presently Adam's thoughts recurred to what Mr. Craig had said about Arthur Donnithorne, and pictured his going away, and the changes that might take place before he came back; then they travelled back affectionately over the old scenes of boyish companionship, and dwelt on Arthur's good qualities, which Adam had a pride in, as we all have in the virtues of the superior who honours us. A nature like Adam's, with a great need of love and reverence in it, depends for so much of its happiness on what it can believe and feel about others! And he had no ideal world of dead heroes; he knew little of the life of men in the past; he must find the beings to whom he could cling with loving admiration among those who came within speech of him. These pleasant thoughts about Arthur brought a milder expression than usual into his keen rough face: perhaps they were the reason why, when he opened the old green gate leading into the Grove, he paused to pat Gyp and say a kind word to him. After that pause, he strode on again along the broad winding path through the Grove. What grand beeches! Adam delighted in a fine tree of all things; as the fisherman's sight is keenest on the sea, so Adam's perceptions were more at home with trees than with other objects. He kept them in his memory, as a painter does, with all the flecks and knots in their bark, all the curves and angles of their boughs, and had often calculated the height and contents of a trunk to a nicety, as he stood looking at it. No wonder that, not-withstanding his desire to get on, he could not help pausing to look at a curious large beech which he had seen standing before him at a turning in the road, and convince himself that it was not two trees wedded together, but only one. For the rest of his life he remembered that moment when he was calmly examining the beech, as a man remembers his last glimpse of the home where his youth was passed, before the road turned, and he saw it no more. The beech stood at the last turning before the Grove ended in an archway of boughs that let in the eastern light; and as Adam stepped away from the tree to continue his walk, his eyes fell on two figures about twenty yards before him. He remained as motionless as a statue, and turned almost as pale. The two figures were standing opposite to each other, with clasped hands about to part; and while they were bending to kiss, Gyp, who had been running among the brushwood, came out, caught sight of them, and gave a sharp bark. They separated with a start--one hurried through the gate out of the Grove, and the other, turning round, walked slowly, with a sort of saunter, towards Adam who still stood transfixed and pale, clutching tighter the stick with which he held the basket of tools over his shoulder, and looking at the approaching figure with eyes in which amazement was fast turning to fierceness. Arthur Donnithorne looked flushed and excited; he had tried to make unpleasant feelings more bearable by drinking a little more wine than usual at dinner to-day, and was still enough under its flattering influence to think more lightly of this unwished-for rencontre with Adam than he would otherwise have done. After all, Adam was the best person who could have happened to see him and Hetty together--he was a sensible fellow, and would not babble about it to other people. Arthur felt confident that he could laugh the thing off and explain it away. And so he sauntered forward with elaborate carelessness--his flushed face, his evening dress of fine cloth and fine linen, his hands half-thrust into his waistcoat pockets, all shone upon by the strange evening light which the light clouds had caught up even to the zenith, and were now shedding down between the topmost branches above him. Adam was still motionless, looking at him as he came up. He understood it all now--the locket and everything else that had been doubtful to him: a terrible scorching light showed him the hidden letters that changed the meaning of the past. If he had moved a muscle, he must inevitably have sprung upon Arthur like a tiger; and in the conflicting emotions that filled those long moments, he had told himself that he would not give loose to passion, he would only speak the right thing. He stood as if petrified by an unseen force, but the force was his own strong will. "Well, Adam," said Arthur, "you've been looking at the fine old beeches, eh? They're not to be come near by the hatchet, though; this is a sacred grove. I overtook pretty little Hetty Sorrel as I was coming to my den--the Hermitage, there. She ought not to come home this way so late. So I took care of her to the gate, and asked for a kiss for my pains. But I must get back now, for this road is confoundedly damp. Good-night, Adam. I shall see you to-morrow--to say good-bye, you know." Arthur was too much preoccupied with the part he was playing himself to be thoroughly aware of the expression in Adam's face. He did not look directly at Adam, but glanced carelessly round at the trees and then lifted up one foot to look at the sole of his boot. He cared to say no more--he had thrown quite dust enough into honest Adam's eyes--and as he spoke the last words, he walked on. "Stop a bit, sir," said Adam, in a hard peremptory voice, without turning round. "I've got a word to say to you." Arthur paused in surprise. Susceptible persons are more affected by a change of tone than by unexpected words, and Arthur had the susceptibility of a nature at once affectionate and vain. He was still more surprised when he saw that Adam had not moved, but stood with his back to him, as if summoning him to return. What did he mean? He was going to make a serious business of this affair. Arthur felt his temper rising. A patronising disposition always has its meaner side, and in the confusion of his irritation and alarm there entered the feeling that a man to whom he had shown so much favour as to Adam was not in a position to criticize his conduct. And yet he was dominated, as one who feels himself in the wrong always is, by the man whose good opinion he cares for. In spite of pride and temper, there was as much deprecation as anger in his voice when he said, "What do you mean, Adam?" "I mean, sir"--answered Adam, in the same harsh voice, still without turning round--"I mean, sir, that you don't deceive me by your light words. This is not the first time you've met Hetty Sorrel in this grove, and this is not the first time you've kissed her." Arthur felt a startled uncertainty how far Adam was speaking from knowledge, and how far from mere inference. And this uncertainty, which prevented him from contriving a prudent answer, heightened his irritation. He said, in a high sharp tone, "Well, sir, what then?" "Why, then, instead of acting like th' upright, honourable man we've all believed you to be, you've been acting the part of a selfish light-minded scoundrel. You know as well as I do what it's to lead to when a gentleman like you kisses and makes love to a young woman like Hetty, and gives her presents as she's frightened for other folks to see. And I say it again, you're acting the part of a selfish light-minded scoundrel though it cuts me to th' heart to say so, and I'd rather ha' lost my right hand." "Let me tell you, Adam," said Arthur, bridling his growing anger and trying to recur to his careless tone, "you're not only devilishly impertinent, but you're talking nonsense. Every pretty girl is not such a fool as you, to suppose that when a gentleman admires her beauty and pays her a little attention, he must mean something particular. Every man likes to flirt with a pretty girl, and every pretty girl likes to be flirted with. The wider the distance between them, the less harm there is, for then she's not likely to deceive herself." "I don't know what you mean by flirting," said Adam, "but if you mean behaving to a woman as if you loved her, and yet not loving her all the while, I say that's not th' action of an honest man, and what isn't honest does come t' harm. I'm not a fool, and you're not a fool, and you know better than what you're saying. You know it couldn't be made public as you've behaved to Hetty as y' have done without her losing her character and bringing shame and trouble on her and her relations. What if you meant nothing by your kissing and your presents? Other folks won't believe as you've meant nothing; and don't tell me about her not deceiving herself. I tell you as you've filled her mind so with the thought of you as it'll mayhap poison her life, and she'll never love another man as 'ud make her a good husband." Arthur had felt a sudden relief while Adam was speaking; he perceived that Adam had no positive knowledge of the past, and that there was no irrevocable damage done by this evening's unfortunate rencontre. Adam could still be deceived. The candid Arthur had brought himself into a position in which successful lying was his only hope. The hope allayed his anger a little. "Well, Adam," he said, in a tone of friendly concession, "you're perhaps right. Perhaps I've gone a little too far in taking notice of the pretty little thing and stealing a kiss now and then. You're such a grave, steady fellow, you don't understand the temptation to such trifling. I'm sure I wouldn't bring any trouble or annoyance on her and the good Poysers on any account if I could help it. But I think you look a little too seriously at it. You know I'm going away immediately, so I shan't make any more mistakes of the kind. But let us say good-night"--Arthur here turned round to walk on--"and talk no more about the matter. The whole thing will soon be forgotten." "No, by God!" Adam burst out with rage that could be controlled no longer, throwing down the basket of tools and striding forward till he was right in front of Arthur. All his jealousy and sense of personal injury, which he had been hitherto trying to keep under, had leaped up and mastered him. What man of us, in the first moments of a sharp agony, could ever feel that the fellow-man who has been the medium of inflicting it did not mean to hurt us? In our instinctive rebellion against pain, we are children again, and demand an active will to wreak our vengeance on. Adam at this moment could only feel that he had been robbed of Hetty--robbed treacherously by the man in whom he had trusted--and he stood close in front of Arthur, with fierce eyes glaring at him, with pale lips and clenched hands, the hard tones in which he had hitherto been constraining himself to express no more than a just indignation giving way to a deep agitated voice that seemed to shake him as he spoke. "No, it'll not be soon forgot, as you've come in between her and me, when she might ha' loved me--it'll not soon be forgot as you've robbed me o' my happiness, while I thought you was my best friend, and a noble-minded man, as I was proud to work for. And you've been kissing her, and meaning nothing, have you? And I never kissed her i' my life--but I'd ha' worked hard for years for the right to kiss her. And you make light of it. You think little o' doing what may damage other folks, so as you get your bit o' trifling, as means nothing. I throw back your favours, for you're not the man I took you for. I'll never count you my friend any more. I'd rather you'd act as my enemy, and fight me where I stand--it's all th' amends you can make me." Poor Adam, possessed by rage that could find no other vent, began to throw off his coat and his cap, too blind with passion to notice the change that had taken place in Arthur while he was speaking. Arthur's lips were now as pale as Adam's; his heart was beating violently. The discovery that Adam loved Hetty was a shock which made him for the moment see himself in the light of Adam's indignation, and regard Adam's suffering as not merely a consequence, but an element of his error. The words of hatred and contempt--the first he had ever heard in his life--seemed like scorching missiles that were making ineffaceable scars on him. All screening self-excuse, which rarely falls quite away while others respect us, forsook him for an instant, and he stood face to face with the first great irrevocable evil he had ever committed. He was only twenty-one, and three months ago--nay, much later--he had thought proudly that no man should ever be able to reproach him justly. His first impulse, if there had been time for it, would perhaps have been to utter words of propitiation; but Adam had no sooner thrown off his coat and cap than he became aware that Arthur was standing pale and motionless, with his hands still thrust in his waistcoat pockets. "What!" he said, "won't you fight me like a man? You know I won't strike you while you stand so." "Go away, Adam," said Arthur, "I don't want to fight you." "No," said Adam, bitterly; "you don't want to fight me--you think I'm a common man, as you can injure without answering for it." "I never meant to injure you," said Arthur, with returning anger. "I didn't know you loved her." "But you've made her love you," said Adam. "You're a double-faced man--I'll never believe a word you say again." "Go away, I tell you," said Arthur, angrily, "or we shall both repent." "No," said Adam, with a convulsed voice, "I swear I won't go away without fighting you. Do you want provoking any more? I tell you you're a coward and a scoundrel, and I despise you." The colour had all rushed back to Arthur's face; in a moment his right hand was clenched, and dealt a blow like lightning, which sent Adam staggering backward. His blood was as thoroughly up as Adam's now, and the two men, forgetting the emotions that had gone before, fought with the instinctive fierceness of panthers in the deepening twilight darkened by the trees. The delicate-handed gentleman was a match for the workman in everything but strength, and Arthur's skill enabled him to protract the struggle for some long moments. But between unarmed men the battle is to the strong, where the strong is no blunderer, and Arthur must sink under a well-planted blow of Adam's as a steel rod is broken by an iron bar. The blow soon came, and Arthur fell, his head lying concealed in a tuft of fern, so that Adam could only discern his darkly clad body. He stood still in the dim light waiting for Arthur to rise. The blow had been given now, towards which he had been straining all the force of nerve and muscle--and what was the good of it? What had he done by fighting? Only satisfied his own passion, only wreaked his own vengeance. He had not rescued Hetty, nor changed the past--there it was, just as it had been, and he sickened at the vanity of his own rage. But why did not Arthur rise? He was perfectly motionless, and the time seemed long to Adam. Good God! had the blow been too much for him? Adam shuddered at the thought of his own strength, as with the oncoming of this dread he knelt down by Arthur's side and lifted his head from among the fern. There was no sign of life: the eyes and teeth were set. The horror that rushed over Adam completely mastered him, and forced upon him its own belief. He could feel nothing but that death was in Arthur's face, and that he was helpless before it. He made not a single movement, but knelt like an image of despair gazing at an image of death.

Chapter 27

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter27

Book Fourth Chapter 27: A Crisis Three weeks after Arthur's party, just before harvest, as the apples are falling in the orchards, the crisis that has been building erupts. Adam's hopes have been buoyed again, and he is working double, for the squire and Jonathan Burge. Hetty seems more serious and mature to Adam these days. She is still getting her sewing lessons, and on the night she is coming home through the wood, Adam is taking a short cut through there after having done repairs on the Chase Farm. He hears that Arthur is leaving in two days to join his regiment. Just as the sun is setting he sees two figures in the wood, and he freezes. They are kissing and saying goodbye. Gyp barks, and the figures break apart. One figure rushes out the gate to the fields, while the other comes towards Adam in the wood. It is Arthur, slightly drunk, swaggering and trying to bluff with Adam about the incident. He thinks Adam is the best person to have caught him and Hetty together, for he can be trusted not to tell anyone. He mentions casually that he just gave Hetty a kiss after walking with her, and he tries to pass by Adam, as if no harm had been done. It was just a bit of flirting, he says. Adam tells him to wait, and accuses him of being two-faced, for Hetty could have loved him if Arthur, whom he thought his friend, hadn't ruined it. Arthur is shocked that Adam loves Hetty, and begins to see the whole affair as much more serious than he imagined. Adam's blood is up, and he taunts Arthur until he fights. The two begin a furious fist fight until Adam knocks Arthur down, and he does not get up. Adam is terrified of his own strength, afraid that he has killed Arthur.

Commentary on Chapter 27 After much buildup and suspense, the secret bursts out, and it is fatal for Arthur that it is Adam who sees him with Hetty, though at first he thinks Adam will understand and cover for him. This misunderstanding shows the difference between Adam and Arthur both in character and in class expectations. Arthur's class of gentlemen takes it as nothing unusual to have affairs with servant girls. If worst comes to worst with such a fling, a rich man can always pay his way out of the trouble, for he would never be expected by his peers to marry or be made uncomfortable by any complications. Arthur expects Adam to have such a cavalier attitude as well. He passes the incident off as not serious. His casual manner incenses Adam in two ways; first, because Hetty is the woman he loves; second, even if she weren't, Arthur puts a blot on Hetty's reputation and life, and that is not a mere trifle for the servant girl. Adam's working class on the whole expects courting to end in marriage, so if one does not have that intention, then one is acting dishonorably. Adam's illusions crash because he has believed in the superiority of rank and has believed in Arthur personally. Arthur's bubble is burst too: he is suddenly shocked by feeling the first hatred he has ever encountered in his life, and from one of the people whose opinion mattered to him. He realizes from the way Adam talks, however, that he believes it is a flirtation and nothing more. He sticks to this lie, then, as his only way out of the mess. Fiction in 1859 did not discuss explicit sexual encounters, but these hints by the characters and narrator are enough to confirm in a round-about way that Hetty and Arthur are definitely having a sexual affair, though Adam has bought Arthur's lie that it is only a flirtation. Even a servant found kissing a gentleman could be turned away from employment, and certainly would have a difficult time marrying, for the worst would be assumed. In a small town like Hayslope, one mistake like this can ruin a person's life. Adam knows Hetty will be destroyed if it is found out, but he himself is too good a man to think that the affair is that far along, that either Hetty or Arthur could have stooped so low. He is a bit naive about the weaknesses of others, and Arthur takes advantage of this. Adam's strength is also his weakness. He holds himself back by sheer will power in the beginning, knowing he is a strong man and that violence is wrong. It has been mentioned that he stopped fighting when he injured a man a few years ago, and he cautions himself not to do it now. If Arthur had humbled himself or spoken truthfully, there might have been some other way to work out their differences, but since Arthur takes a casual and cocky attitude, Adam's anger is thoroughly aroused at the "scoundrel" . When Arthur does not get up, Adam realizes his mistake. He solved nothing, and he might have killed a man. This chapter functions as the moment of the fall does in Paradise Lost. Before this scene, the idyllic world of the valley was established in the rising action. All the characters had hopes and plans for a bright future. After this climax, that innocent green world is shattered, and all the tragic consequences of the actions are played out. The lives of the main characters change forever. As Adam observed of his father's tragic end: "There's no slipping up hill again, and no standing still when once you've begun to slip down" . The reader expects to watch the tumbling down now.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/28.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_28_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 28

chapter 28

{"name": "Chapter 28", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter28", "summary": "A Dilemma Arthur regains consciousness and asks for water. Adam is sorry about the fight and tries to help Arthur get home, but he is weak, and asks for Adam's help in walking to the Hermitage, the house in the woods. Adam has never known that this place was furnished; Arthur has been using it for a personal retreat. He asks Adam to go to his servant Pym and get some brandy. While Adam is gone, Arthur removes a woman's handkerchief. Adam returns with the brandy. Arthur is too confused to say anything, but he wishes he could confess and make it all right with Adam. Adam apologizes for hurting him and being hasty. He knows Arthur was ignorant of his love for Hetty, and he says the only joy he can have now is to think the best of Arthur. Arthur tries to make some apology saying he was wrong, and he is going away so there will be no more mistake. Adam insists that Arthur write Hetty a letter admitting he was wrong and that it is over, so that Hetty will not be waiting for him and her life ruined with false hope. Arthur is irritated by Adam telling him what to do, but Adam insists, saying that he has to know where he stands with Hetty, and \"in this thing we're man and man, and I can't give up\" . Arthur promises to write the letter, and Adam will pick it up and deliver it to Hetty.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 28 Adam takes action, as is his nature. He does not want the thing to drag on, and he still hopes Hetty could love him if she knows Arthur is not serious. He makes Arthur see that rank has no privilege here. They are two men courting the same woman, and if Arthur doesn't want her, he has to play fair, and give him and Hetty a chance. Adam may be rash, and he is not playing his hand with full knowledge, but he is thinking of Hetty's life as well as his own. He says he is the only one who can care for Hetty. He equates Hetty's honor with his own. This is assuming a lot on his part to take responsibility for her. Adam is rash to think that he can solve the situation, but his attempt is a natural one and more noble than Arthur's cowardice. Eliot does not say directly that it is too late for Adam and Hetty, but the handkerchief lying carelessly in the Hermitage is proof that it has been the trysting place, and that Arthur and Hetty have no doubt had many meetings there. The chance that Adam could step in at this point if Arthur simply writes a letter is again naive, but it is the only thing he can think of. Arthur's giving in to the request indicates that he is trying to get out of a tight spot, for if he had done nothing very wrong, he would probably refuse."}

IT was only a few minutes measured by the clock--though Adam always thought it had been a long while--before he perceived a gleam of consciousness in Arthur's face and a slight shiver through his frame. The intense joy that flooded his soul brought back some of the old affection with it. "Do you feel any pain, sir?" he said, tenderly, loosening Arthur's cravat. Arthur turned his eyes on Adam with a vague stare which gave way to a slightly startled motion as if from the shock of returning memory. But he only shivered again and said nothing. "Do you feel any hurt, sir?" Adam said again, with a trembling in his voice. Arthur put his hand up to his waistcoat buttons, and when Adam had unbuttoned it, he took a longer breath. "Lay my head down," he said, faintly, "and get me some water if you can." Adam laid the head down gently on the fern again, and emptying the tools out of the flag-basket, hurried through the trees to the edge of the Grove bordering on the Chase, where a brook ran below the bank. When he returned with his basket leaking, but still half-full, Arthur looked at him with a more thoroughly reawakened consciousness. "Can you drink a drop out o' your hand, sir?" said Adam, kneeling down again to lift up Arthur's head. "No," said Arthur, "dip my cravat in and souse it on my head." The water seemed to do him some good, for he presently raised himself a little higher, resting on Adam's arm. "Do you feel any hurt inside sir?" Adam asked again "No--no hurt," said Arthur, still faintly, "but rather done up." After a while he said, "I suppose I fainted away when you knocked me down." "Yes, sir, thank God," said Adam. "I thought it was worse." "What! You thought you'd done for me, eh? Come help me on my legs." "I feel terribly shaky and dizzy," Arthur said, as he stood leaning on Adam's arm; "that blow of yours must have come against me like a battering-ram. I don't believe I can walk alone." "Lean on me, sir; I'll get you along," said Adam. "Or, will you sit down a bit longer, on my coat here, and I'll prop y' up. You'll perhaps be better in a minute or two." "No," said Arthur. "I'll go to the Hermitage--I think I've got some brandy there. There's a short road to it a little farther on, near the gate. If you'll just help me on." They walked slowly, with frequent pauses, but without speaking again. In both of them, the concentration in the present which had attended the first moments of Arthur's revival had now given way to a vivid recollection of the previous scene. It was nearly dark in the narrow path among the trees, but within the circle of fir-trees round the Hermitage there was room for the growing moonlight to enter in at the windows. Their steps were noiseless on the thick carpet of fir-needles, and the outward stillness seemed to heighten their inward consciousness, as Arthur took the key out of his pocket and placed it in Adam's hand, for him to open the door. Adam had not known before that Arthur had furnished the old Hermitage and made it a retreat for himself, and it was a surprise to him when he opened the door to see a snug room with all the signs of frequent habitation. Arthur loosed Adam's arm and threw himself on the ottoman. "You'll see my hunting-bottle somewhere," he said. "A leather case with a bottle and glass in." Adam was not long in finding the case. "There's very little brandy in it, sir," he said, turning it downwards over the glass, as he held it before the window; "hardly this little glassful." "Well, give me that," said Arthur, with the peevishness of physical depression. When he had taken some sips, Adam said, "Hadn't I better run to th' house, sir, and get some more brandy? I can be there and back pretty soon. It'll be a stiff walk home for you, if you don't have something to revive you." "Yes--go. But don't say I'm ill. Ask for my man Pym, and tell him to get it from Mills, and not to say I'm at the Hermitage. Get some water too." Adam was relieved to have an active task--both of them were relieved to be apart from each other for a short time. But Adam's swift pace could not still the eager pain of thinking--of living again with concentrated suffering through the last wretched hour, and looking out from it over all the new sad future. Arthur lay still for some minutes after Adam was gone, but presently he rose feebly from the ottoman and peered about slowly in the broken moonlight, seeking something. It was a short bit of wax candle that stood amongst a confusion of writing and drawing materials. There was more searching for the means of lighting the candle, and when that was done, he went cautiously round the room, as if wishing to assure himself of the presence or absence of something. At last he had found a slight thing, which he put first in his pocket, and then, on a second thought, took out again and thrust deep down into a waste-paper basket. It was a woman's little, pink, silk neckerchief. He set the candle on the table, and threw himself down on the ottoman again, exhausted with the effort. When Adam came back with his supplies, his entrance awoke Arthur from a doze. "That's right," Arthur said; "I'm tremendously in want of some brandy-vigour." "I'm glad to see you've got a light, sir," said Adam. "I've been thinking I'd better have asked for a lanthorn." "No, no; the candle will last long enough--I shall soon be up to walking home now." "I can't go before I've seen you safe home, sir," said Adam, hesitatingly. "No: it will be better for you to stay--sit down." Adam sat down, and they remained opposite to each other in uneasy silence, while Arthur slowly drank brandy-and-water, with visibly renovating effect. He began to lie in a more voluntary position, and looked as if he were less overpowered by bodily sensations. Adam was keenly alive to these indications, and as his anxiety about Arthur's condition began to be allayed, he felt more of that impatience which every one knows who has had his just indignation suspended by the physical state of the culprit. Yet there was one thing on his mind to be done before he could recur to remonstrance: it was to confess what had been unjust in his own words. Perhaps he longed all the more to make this confession, that his indignation might be free again; and as he saw the signs of returning ease in Arthur, the words again and again came to his lips and went back, checked by the thought that it would be better to leave everything till to-morrow. As long as they were silent they did not look at each other, and a foreboding came across Adam that if they began to speak as though they remembered the past--if they looked at each other with full recognition--they must take fire again. So they sat in silence till the bit of wax candle flickered low in the socket, the silence all the while becoming more irksome to Adam. Arthur had just poured out some more brandy-and-water, and he threw one arm behind his head and drew up one leg in an attitude of recovered ease, which was an irresistible temptation to Adam to speak what was on his mind. "You begin to feel more yourself again, sir," he said, as the candle went out and they were half-hidden from each other in the faint moonlight. "Yes: I don't feel good for much--very lazy, and not inclined to move; but I'll go home when I've taken this dose." There was a slight pause before Adam said, "My temper got the better of me, and I said things as wasn't true. I'd no right to speak as if you'd known you was doing me an injury: you'd no grounds for knowing it; I've always kept what I felt for her as secret as I could." He paused again before he went on. "And perhaps I judged you too harsh--I'm apt to be harsh--and you may have acted out o' thoughtlessness more than I should ha' believed was possible for a man with a heart and a conscience. We're not all put together alike, and we may misjudge one another. God knows, it's all the joy I could have now, to think the best of you." Arthur wanted to go home without saying any more--he was too painfully embarrassed in mind, as well as too weak in body, to wish for any further explanation to-night. And yet it was a relief to him that Adam reopened the subject in a way the least difficult for him to answer. Arthur was in the wretched position of an open, generous man who has committed an error which makes deception seem a necessity. The native impulse to give truth in return for truth, to meet trust with frank confession, must be suppressed, and duty was becoming a question of tactics. His deed was reacting upon him--was already governing him tyrannously and forcing him into a course that jarred with his habitual feelings. The only aim that seemed admissible to him now was to deceive Adam to the utmost: to make Adam think better of him than he deserved. And when he heard the words of honest retractation--when he heard the sad appeal with which Adam ended--he was obliged to rejoice in the remains of ignorant confidence it implied. He did not answer immediately, for he had to be judicious and not truthful. "Say no more about our anger, Adam," he said, at last, very languidly, for the labour of speech was unwelcome to him; "I forgive your momentary injustice--it was quite natural, with the exaggerated notions you had in your mind. We shall be none the worse friends in future, I hope, because we've fought. You had the best of it, and that was as it should be, for I believe I've been most in the wrong of the two. Come, let us shake hands." Arthur held out his hand, but Adam sat still. "I don't like to say 'No' to that, sir," he said, "but I can't shake hands till it's clear what we mean by't. I was wrong when I spoke as if you'd done me an injury knowingly, but I wasn't wrong in what I said before, about your behaviour t' Hetty, and I can't shake hands with you as if I held you my friend the same as ever till you've cleared that up better." Arthur swallowed his pride and resentment as he drew back his hand. He was silent for some moments, and then said, as indifferently as he could, "I don't know what you mean by clearing up, Adam. I've told you already that you think too seriously of a little flirtation. But if you are right in supposing there is any danger in it--I'm going away on Saturday, and there will be an end of it. As for the pain it has given you, I'm heartily sorry for it. I can say no more." Adam said nothing, but rose from his chair and stood with his face towards one of the windows, as if looking at the blackness of the moonlit fir-trees; but he was in reality conscious of nothing but the conflict within him. It was of no use now--his resolution not to speak till to-morrow. He must speak there and then. But it was several minutes before he turned round and stepped nearer to Arthur, standing and looking down on him as he lay. "It'll be better for me to speak plain," he said, with evident effort, "though it's hard work. You see, sir, this isn't a trifle to me, whatever it may be to you. I'm none o' them men as can go making love first to one woman and then t' another, and don't think it much odds which of 'em I take. What I feel for Hetty's a different sort o' love, such as I believe nobody can know much about but them as feel it and God as has given it to 'em. She's more nor everything else to me, all but my conscience and my good name. And if it's true what you've been saying all along--and if it's only been trifling and flirting as you call it, as 'll be put an end to by your going away--why, then, I'd wait, and hope her heart 'ud turn to me after all. I'm loath to think you'd speak false to me, and I'll believe your word, however things may look." "You would be wronging Hetty more than me not to believe it," said Arthur, almost violently, starting up from the ottoman and moving away. But he threw himself into a chair again directly, saying, more feebly, "You seem to forget that, in suspecting me, you are casting imputations upon her." "Nay, sir," Adam said, in a calmer voice, as if he were half-relieved--for he was too straightforward to make a distinction between a direct falsehood and an indirect one--"Nay, sir, things don't lie level between Hetty and you. You're acting with your eyes open, whatever you may do; but how do you know what's been in her mind? She's all but a child--as any man with a conscience in him ought to feel bound to take care on. And whatever you may think, I know you've disturbed her mind. I know she's been fixing her heart on you, for there's a many things clear to me now as I didn't understand before. But you seem to make light o' what she may feel--you don't think o' that." "Good God, Adam, let me alone!" Arthur burst out impetuously; "I feel it enough without your worrying me." He was aware of his indiscretion as soon as the words had escaped him. "Well, then, if you feel it," Adam rejoined, eagerly; "if you feel as you may ha' put false notions into her mind, and made her believe as you loved her, when all the while you meant nothing, I've this demand to make of you--I'm not speaking for myself, but for her. I ask you t' undeceive her before you go away. Y'aren't going away for ever, and if you leave her behind with a notion in her head o' your feeling about her the same as she feels about you, she'll be hankering after you, and the mischief may get worse. It may be a smart to her now, but it'll save her pain i' th' end. I ask you to write a letter--you may trust to my seeing as she gets it. Tell her the truth, and take blame to yourself for behaving as you'd no right to do to a young woman as isn't your equal. I speak plain, sir, but I can't speak any other way. There's nobody can take care o' Hetty in this thing but me." "I can do what I think needful in the matter," said Arthur, more and more irritated by mingled distress and perplexity, "without giving promises to you. I shall take what measures I think proper." "No," said Adam, in an abrupt decided tone, "that won't do. I must know what ground I'm treading on. I must be safe as you've put an end to what ought never to ha' been begun. I don't forget what's owing to you as a gentleman, but in this thing we're man and man, and I can't give up." There was no answer for some moments. Then Arthur said, "I'll see you to-morrow. I can bear no more now; I'm ill." He rose as he spoke, and reached his cap, as if intending to go. "You won't see her again!" Adam exclaimed, with a flash of recurring anger and suspicion, moving towards the door and placing his back against it. "Either tell me she can never be my wife--tell me you've been lying--or else promise me what I've said." Adam, uttering this alternative, stood like a terrible fate before Arthur, who had moved forward a step or two, and now stopped, faint, shaken, sick in mind and body. It seemed long to both of them--that inward struggle of Arthur's--before he said, feebly, "I promise; let me go." Adam moved away from the door and opened it, but when Arthur reached the step, he stopped again and leaned against the door-post. "You're not well enough to walk alone, sir," said Adam. "Take my arm again." Arthur made no answer, and presently walked on, Adam following. But, after a few steps, he stood still again, and said, coldly, "I believe I must trouble you. It's getting late now, and there may be an alarm set up about me at home." Adam gave his arm, and they walked on without uttering a word, till they came where the basket and the tools lay. "I must pick up the tools, sir," Adam said. "They're my brother's. I doubt they'll be rusted. If you'll please to wait a minute." Arthur stood still without speaking, and no other word passed between them till they were at the side entrance, where he hoped to get in without being seen by any one. He said then, "Thank you; I needn't trouble you any further." "What time will it be conven'ent for me to see you to-morrow, sir?" said Adam. "You may send me word that you're here at five o'clock," said Arthur; "not before." "Good-night, sir," said Adam. But he heard no reply; Arthur had turned into the house.

Chapter 28

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter28

A Dilemma Arthur regains consciousness and asks for water. Adam is sorry about the fight and tries to help Arthur get home, but he is weak, and asks for Adam's help in walking to the Hermitage, the house in the woods. Adam has never known that this place was furnished; Arthur has been using it for a personal retreat. He asks Adam to go to his servant Pym and get some brandy. While Adam is gone, Arthur removes a woman's handkerchief. Adam returns with the brandy. Arthur is too confused to say anything, but he wishes he could confess and make it all right with Adam. Adam apologizes for hurting him and being hasty. He knows Arthur was ignorant of his love for Hetty, and he says the only joy he can have now is to think the best of Arthur. Arthur tries to make some apology saying he was wrong, and he is going away so there will be no more mistake. Adam insists that Arthur write Hetty a letter admitting he was wrong and that it is over, so that Hetty will not be waiting for him and her life ruined with false hope. Arthur is irritated by Adam telling him what to do, but Adam insists, saying that he has to know where he stands with Hetty, and "in this thing we're man and man, and I can't give up" . Arthur promises to write the letter, and Adam will pick it up and deliver it to Hetty.

Commentary on Chapter 28 Adam takes action, as is his nature. He does not want the thing to drag on, and he still hopes Hetty could love him if she knows Arthur is not serious. He makes Arthur see that rank has no privilege here. They are two men courting the same woman, and if Arthur doesn't want her, he has to play fair, and give him and Hetty a chance. Adam may be rash, and he is not playing his hand with full knowledge, but he is thinking of Hetty's life as well as his own. He says he is the only one who can care for Hetty. He equates Hetty's honor with his own. This is assuming a lot on his part to take responsibility for her. Adam is rash to think that he can solve the situation, but his attempt is a natural one and more noble than Arthur's cowardice. Eliot does not say directly that it is too late for Adam and Hetty, but the handkerchief lying carelessly in the Hermitage is proof that it has been the trysting place, and that Arthur and Hetty have no doubt had many meetings there. The chance that Adam could step in at this point if Arthur simply writes a letter is again naive, but it is the only thing he can think of. Arthur's giving in to the request indicates that he is trying to get out of a tight spot, for if he had done nothing very wrong, he would probably refuse.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/29.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_29_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 29

chapter 29

{"name": "Chapter 29", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter29", "summary": "The Next Morning This chapter centers on the thoughts of Arthur on his last day before leaving. He gets up early and goes for a ride on his horse. He is upset about the loss of Adam's good opinion. He thinks that if he had done any other injury, he would have made it up to Adam with some gift, for he has a kind heart and likes to make people happy. His realization that he cannot make this up to Adam is the first understanding of \"the irrevocableness of his own wrong-doing\" . He remembers that he did not tell Hetty on their last meeting that it was over between them. Adam had been right about Hetty's delusions, for she asked Arthur to take her with him and marry her. He had been too cowardly to tell her the truth. The narrator notes that Arthur has slowly changed over the last few months from a fresh and honest person to a deceiver. But because he needs his own self-respect, he cannot admit his wrong. He believes the letter is the only answer, for it will satisfy Adam and cure Hetty of her dreams. For one moment, Arthur thinks about the other terrible possible outcomes of his deeds, but he puts them out of his mind. He writes the letter and leaves it with his man Pym, saying he is too busy to see Adam. Adam takes the letter and thinks it better they don't see each other, for they are no longer friends.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 29 Eliot uses a favorite technique here of going deeply into a character's thoughts, and then commenting on them like a psychologist. She uses the mental processes of all the characters to show typical human maneuvers for both good and bad. In this way, she can contrast the selfish person with the unselfish person. In her philosophy, the unselfish person not only adds to the good of the world but is also the only successful person in the long run. Selfish people only get short-term gains. Both Arthur and Hetty are irresponsible and like to live in their illusions within the moment. A few weeks of passion will ruin their lives forever. For a brief moment Arthur worries that Hetty could harm herself, perhaps kill herself over the disappointment. Then another nameless fear surfaces, and the reader knows what is left unsaid--she could get pregnant. The other important thing Eliot reveals in her analysis is how a good person can go wrong. Arthur is a loving person by nature, but also weak and self-indulgent. By making wrong choices and then covering up and lying, Arthur is slowly making himself more coarse. Each time he lies, he makes excuses. The result is that he becomes dull and loses his discrimination. Like Hetty, he is unresponsive to the clues from outside because he is so self-involved in his own drama. One can see how he will eventually become hard, like his grandfather, the very fate he wanted to avoid."}

ARTHUR did not pass a sleepless night; he slept long and well. For sleep comes to the perplexed--if the perplexed are only weary enough. But at seven he rang his bell and astonished Pym by declaring he was going to get up, and must have breakfast brought to him at eight. "And see that my mare is saddled at half-past eight, and tell my grandfather when he's down that I'm better this morning and am gone for a ride." He had been awake an hour, and could rest in bed no longer. In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past--sensations which assert themselves against tyrannous memories. And if there were such a thing as taking averages of feeling, it would certainly be found that in the hunting and shooting seasons regret, self-reproach, and mortified pride weigh lighter on country gentlemen than in late spring and summer. Arthur felt that he should be more of a man on horseback. Even the presence of Pym, waiting on him with the usual deference, was a reassurance to him after the scenes of yesterday. For, with Arthur's sensitiveness to opinion, the loss of Adam's respect was a shock to his self-contentment which suffused his imagination with the sense that he had sunk in all eyes--as a sudden shock of fear from some real peril makes a nervous woman afraid even to step, because all her perceptions are suffused with a sense of danger. Arthur's, as you know, was a loving nature. Deeds of kindness were as easy to him as a bad habit: they were the common issue of his weaknesses and good qualities, of his egoism and his sympathy. He didn't like to witness pain, and he liked to have grateful eyes beaming on him as the giver of pleasure. When he was a lad of seven, he one day kicked down an old gardener's pitcher of broth, from no motive but a kicking impulse, not reflecting that it was the old man's dinner; but on learning that sad fact, he took his favourite pencil-case and a silver-hafted knife out of his pocket and offered them as compensation. He had been the same Arthur ever since, trying to make all offences forgotten in benefits. If there were any bitterness in his nature, it could only show itself against the man who refused to be conciliated by him. And perhaps the time was come for some of that bitterness to rise. At the first moment, Arthur had felt pure distress and self-reproach at discovering that Adam's happiness was involved in his relation to Hetty. If there had been a possibility of making Adam tenfold amends--if deeds of gift, or any other deeds, could have restored Adam's contentment and regard for him as a benefactor, Arthur would not only have executed them without hesitation, but would have felt bound all the more closely to Adam, and would never have been weary of making retribution. But Adam could receive no amends; his suffering could not be cancelled; his respect and affection could not be recovered by any prompt deeds of atonement. He stood like an immovable obstacle against which no pressure could avail; an embodiment of what Arthur most shrank from believing in--the irrevocableness of his own wrongdoing. The words of scorn, the refusal to shake hands, the mastery asserted over him in their last conversation in the Hermitage--above all, the sense of having been knocked down, to which a man does not very well reconcile himself, even under the most heroic circumstances--pressed on him with a galling pain which was stronger than compunction. Arthur would so gladly have persuaded himself that he had done no harm! And if no one had told him the contrary, he could have persuaded himself so much better. Nemesis can seldom forge a sword for herself out of our consciences--out of the suffering we feel in the suffering we may have caused: there is rarely metal enough there to make an effective weapon. Our moral sense learns the manners of good society and smiles when others smile, but when some rude person gives rough names to our actions, she is apt to take part against us. And so it was with Arthur: Adam's judgment of him, Adam's grating words, disturbed his self-soothing arguments. Not that Arthur had been at ease before Adam's discovery. Struggles and resolves had transformed themselves into compunction and anxiety. He was distressed for Hetty's sake, and distressed for his own, that he must leave her behind. He had always, both in making and breaking resolutions, looked beyond his passion and seen that it must speedily end in separation; but his nature was too ardent and tender for him not to suffer at this parting; and on Hetty's account he was filled with uneasiness. He had found out the dream in which she was living--that she was to be a lady in silks and satins--and when he had first talked to her about his going away, she had asked him tremblingly to let her go with him and be married. It was his painful knowledge of this which had given the most exasperating sting to Adam's reproaches. He had said no word with the purpose of deceiving her--her vision was all spun by her own childish fancy--but he was obliged to confess to himself that it was spun half out of his own actions. And to increase the mischief, on this last evening he had not dared to hint the truth to Hetty; he had been obliged to soothe her with tender, hopeful words, lest he should throw her into violent distress. He felt the situation acutely, felt the sorrow of the dear thing in the present, and thought with a darker anxiety of the tenacity which her feelings might have in the future. That was the one sharp point which pressed against him; every other he could evade by hopeful self-persuasion. The whole thing had been secret; the Poysers had not the shadow of a suspicion. No one, except Adam, knew anything of what had passed--no one else was likely to know; for Arthur had impressed on Hetty that it would be fatal to betray, by word or look, that there had been the least intimacy between them; and Adam, who knew half their secret, would rather help them to keep it than betray it. It was an unfortunate business altogether, but there was no use in making it worse than it was by imaginary exaggerations and forebodings of evil that might never come. The temporary sadness for Hetty was the worst consequence; he resolutely turned away his eyes from any bad consequence that was not demonstrably inevitable. But--but Hetty might have had the trouble in some other way if not in this. And perhaps hereafter he might be able to do a great deal for her and make up to her for all the tears she would shed about him. She would owe the advantage of his care for her in future years to the sorrow she had incurred now. So good comes out of evil. Such is the beautiful arrangement of things! Are you inclined to ask whether this can be the same Arthur who, two months ago, had that freshness of feeling, that delicate honour which shrinks from wounding even a sentiment, and does not contemplate any more positive offence as possible for it?--who thought that his own self-respect was a higher tribunal than any external opinion? The same, I assure you, only under different conditions. Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds, and until we know what has been or will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts, which constitutes a man's critical actions, it will be better not to think ourselves wise about his character. There is a terrible coercion in our deeds, which may first turn the honest man into a deceiver and then reconcile him to the change, for this reason--that the second wrong presents itself to him in the guise of the only practicable right. The action which before commission has been seen with that blended common sense and fresh untarnished feeling which is the healthy eye of the soul, is looked at afterwards with the lens of apologetic ingenuity, through which all things that men call beautiful and ugly are seen to be made up of textures very much alike. Europe adjusts itself to a _fait accompli_, and so does an individual character--until the placid adjustment is disturbed by a convulsive retribution. No man can escape this vitiating effect of an offence against his own sentiment of right, and the effect was the stronger in Arthur because of that very need of self-respect which, while his conscience was still at ease, was one of his best safeguards. Self-accusation was too painful to him--he could not face it. He must persuade himself that he had not been very much to blame; he began even to pity himself for the necessity he was under of deceiving Adam--it was a course so opposed to the honesty of his own nature. But then, it was the only right thing to do. Well, whatever had been amiss in him, he was miserable enough in consequence: miserable about Hetty; miserable about this letter that he had promised to write, and that seemed at one moment to be a gross barbarity, at another perhaps the greatest kindness he could do to her. And across all this reflection would dart every now and then a sudden impulse of passionate defiance towards all consequences. He would carry Hetty away, and all other considerations might go to.... In this state of mind the four walls of his room made an intolerable prison to him; they seemed to hem in and press down upon him all the crowd of contradictory thoughts and conflicting feelings, some of which would fly away in the open air. He had only an hour or two to make up his mind in, and he must get clear and calm. Once on Meg's back, in the fresh air of that fine morning, he should be more master of the situation. The pretty creature arched her bay neck in the sunshine, and pawed the gravel, and trembled with pleasure when her master stroked her nose, and patted her, and talked to her even in a more caressing tone than usual. He loved her the better because she knew nothing of his secrets. But Meg was quite as well acquainted with her master's mental state as many others of her sex with the mental condition of the nice young gentlemen towards whom their hearts are in a state of fluttering expectation. Arthur cantered for five miles beyond the Chase, till he was at the foot of a hill where there were no hedges or trees to hem in the road. Then he threw the bridle on Meg's neck and prepared to make up his mind. Hetty knew that their meeting yesterday must be the last before Arthur went away--there was no possibility of their contriving another without exciting suspicion--and she was like a frightened child, unable to think of anything, only able to cry at the mention of parting, and then put her face up to have the tears kissed away. He could do nothing but comfort her, and lull her into dreaming on. A letter would be a dreadfully abrupt way of awakening her! Yet there was truth in what Adam said--that it would save her from a lengthened delusion, which might be worse than a sharp immediate pain. And it was the only way of satisfying Adam, who must be satisfied, for more reasons than one. If he could have seen her again! But that was impossible; there was such a thorny hedge of hindrances between them, and an imprudence would be fatal. And yet, if he COULD see her again, what good would it do? Only cause him to suffer more from the sight of her distress and the remembrance of it. Away from him she was surrounded by all the motives to self-control. A sudden dread here fell like a shadow across his imagination--the dread lest she should do something violent in her grief; and close upon that dread came another, which deepened the shadow. But he shook them off with the force of youth and hope. What was the ground for painting the future in that dark way? It was just as likely to be the reverse. Arthur told himself he did not deserve that things should turn out badly. He had never meant beforehand to do anything his conscience disapproved; he had been led on by circumstances. There was a sort of implicit confidence in him that he was really such a good fellow at bottom, Providence would not treat him harshly. At all events, he couldn't help what would come now: all he could do was to take what seemed the best course at the present moment. And he persuaded himself that that course was to make the way open between Adam and Hetty. Her heart might really turn to Adam, as he said, after a while; and in that case there would have been no great harm done, since it was still Adam's ardent wish to make her his wife. To be sure, Adam was deceived--deceived in a way that Arthur would have resented as a deep wrong if it had been practised on himself. That was a reflection that marred the consoling prospect. Arthur's cheeks even burned in mingled shame and irritation at the thought. But what could a man do in such a dilemma? He was bound in honour to say no word that could injure Hetty: his first duty was to guard her. He would never have told or acted a lie on his own account. Good God! What a miserable fool he was to have brought himself into such a dilemma; and yet, if ever a man had excuses, he had. (Pity that consequences are determined not by excuses but by actions!) Well, the letter must be written; it was the only means that promised a solution of the difficulty. The tears came into Arthur's eyes as he thought of Hetty reading it; but it would be almost as hard for him to write it; he was not doing anything easy to himself; and this last thought helped him to arrive at a conclusion. He could never deliberately have taken a step which inflicted pain on another and left himself at ease. Even a movement of jealousy at the thought of giving up Hetty to Adam went to convince him that he was making a sacrifice. When once he had come to this conclusion, he turned Meg round and set off home again in a canter. The letter should be written the first thing, and the rest of the day would be filled up with other business: he should have no time to look behind him. Happily, Irwine and Gawaine were coming to dinner, and by twelve o'clock the next day he should have left the Chase miles behind him. There was some security in this constant occupation against an uncontrollable impulse seizing him to rush to Hetty and thrust into her hand some mad proposition that would undo everything. Faster and faster went the sensitive Meg, at every slight sign from her rider, till the canter had passed into a swift gallop. "I thought they said th' young mester war took ill last night," said sour old John, the groom, at dinner-time in the servants' hall. "He's been ridin' fit to split the mare i' two this forenoon." "That's happen one o' the symptims, John," said the facetious coachman. "Then I wish he war let blood for 't, that's all," said John, grimly. Adam had been early at the Chase to know how Arthur was, and had been relieved from all anxiety about the effects of his blow by learning that he was gone out for a ride. At five o'clock he was punctually there again, and sent up word of his arrival. In a few minutes Pym came down with a letter in his hand and gave it to Adam, saying that the captain was too busy to see him, and had written everything he had to say. The letter was directed to Adam, but he went out of doors again before opening it. It contained a sealed enclosure directed to Hetty. On the inside of the cover Adam read: "In the enclosed letter I have written everything you wish. I leave it to you to decide whether you will be doing best to deliver it to Hetty or to return it to me. Ask yourself once more whether you are not taking a measure which may pain her more than mere silence. "There is no need for our seeing each other again now. We shall meet with better feelings some months hence. "A.D." "Perhaps he's i' th' right on 't not to see me," thought Adam. "It's no use meeting to say more hard words, and it's no use meeting to shake hands and say we're friends again. We're not friends, an' it's better not to pretend it. I know forgiveness is a man's duty, but, to my thinking, that can only mean as you're to give up all thoughts o' taking revenge: it can never mean as you're t' have your old feelings back again, for that's not possible. He's not the same man to me, and I can't feel the same towards him. God help me! I don't know whether I feel the same towards anybody: I seem as if I'd been measuring my work from a false line, and had got it all to measure over again." But the question about delivering the letter to Hetty soon absorbed Adam's thoughts. Arthur had procured some relief to himself by throwing the decision on Adam with a warning; and Adam, who was not given to hesitation, hesitated here. He determined to feel his way--to ascertain as well as he could what was Hetty's state of mind before he decided on delivering the letter.

Chapter 29

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter29

The Next Morning This chapter centers on the thoughts of Arthur on his last day before leaving. He gets up early and goes for a ride on his horse. He is upset about the loss of Adam's good opinion. He thinks that if he had done any other injury, he would have made it up to Adam with some gift, for he has a kind heart and likes to make people happy. His realization that he cannot make this up to Adam is the first understanding of "the irrevocableness of his own wrong-doing" . He remembers that he did not tell Hetty on their last meeting that it was over between them. Adam had been right about Hetty's delusions, for she asked Arthur to take her with him and marry her. He had been too cowardly to tell her the truth. The narrator notes that Arthur has slowly changed over the last few months from a fresh and honest person to a deceiver. But because he needs his own self-respect, he cannot admit his wrong. He believes the letter is the only answer, for it will satisfy Adam and cure Hetty of her dreams. For one moment, Arthur thinks about the other terrible possible outcomes of his deeds, but he puts them out of his mind. He writes the letter and leaves it with his man Pym, saying he is too busy to see Adam. Adam takes the letter and thinks it better they don't see each other, for they are no longer friends.

Commentary on Chapter 29 Eliot uses a favorite technique here of going deeply into a character's thoughts, and then commenting on them like a psychologist. She uses the mental processes of all the characters to show typical human maneuvers for both good and bad. In this way, she can contrast the selfish person with the unselfish person. In her philosophy, the unselfish person not only adds to the good of the world but is also the only successful person in the long run. Selfish people only get short-term gains. Both Arthur and Hetty are irresponsible and like to live in their illusions within the moment. A few weeks of passion will ruin their lives forever. For a brief moment Arthur worries that Hetty could harm herself, perhaps kill herself over the disappointment. Then another nameless fear surfaces, and the reader knows what is left unsaid--she could get pregnant. The other important thing Eliot reveals in her analysis is how a good person can go wrong. Arthur is a loving person by nature, but also weak and self-indulgent. By making wrong choices and then covering up and lying, Arthur is slowly making himself more coarse. Each time he lies, he makes excuses. The result is that he becomes dull and loses his discrimination. Like Hetty, he is unresponsive to the clues from outside because he is so self-involved in his own drama. One can see how he will eventually become hard, like his grandfather, the very fate he wanted to avoid.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/30.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_30_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 30

chapter 30

{"name": "Chapter 30", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter30", "summary": "The Delivery of the Letter Adam joins the Poysers on their walk home after church because he wants to talk to Hetty. She is afraid he means to tell on her, but Hetty is confident she can manipulate Adam to her own purposes. Hetty believes that Arthur will miss her and will come home at Christmas, as he said he might do. Adam is direct and says that he is trying to help Hetty because she does not know the ways of the world. Arthur does not love her and will not marry her. Hetty is shocked and does not believe Adam. She knows more than Adam does about how serious their relationship is. She realizes Adam does not know the worst. He keeps repeating that Arthur does not mean to marry her, and finally he produces the letter. He says that he will be like a brother to her in this crisis, and tries to get her to see how dangerous the situation is for her. Hetty believes the letter will be a love letter and puts it in her pocket. They spend the evening with her aunt and uncle and Adam is very kind, trying to cover for her and be entertaining, so her pale look will not be noticed. Adam's tenderness is aroused, and at home, he is kind to Seth, asking him about Dinah. Seth says there is no hope she will change her mind, but gives him a letter from Dinah to read that has consolation and wisdom in it for Adam's situation. Dinah speaks of sorrow being a part of love and that love bears it and does not throw it off. Adam thinks Dinah has the power to make everything seem right. He tells Seth a woman sometimes takes time to love by degrees, hoping this is true of Hetty.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 30 Hetty, like Arthur, has a smaller moral view than Adam does and she, like Arthur, thinks she can manage Adam. They both count on his love and loyalty, but they do not realize that Adam is a man of principle above all else. Because he believes Hetty innocent, he tries to put aside his own feeling of jealousy and thinks of her, trying to be like a brother to save her. He cannot hope for any return to his love until he can get her safely past this danger. He does not ask for any immediate thanks because he sees her simply as a person in trouble. As he says of Dinah, he hopes Hetty may yet learn to love a man who is good to her and sticks by her. The only person who can speak words of comfort to Adam at this time is Dinah, through the letter, for her perspective is large enough to comprehend what he is going through. Adam tells Arthur his love own for Hetty is different; for him she is not a plaything, and he cannot explain it, for the love was given to him by God . Divine love, Dinah explains in her letter, is able to take up sorrow and purify it through sympathy. True love does not consist in pleasure alone. Arthur and Hetty believe in their own desire being satisfied. Adam, like Dinah, experiences a love that reaches out to share sorrow and disappointment but stands firm. Adam knows, \"I'm not th'only man that's got to do without much happiness in' this life. There's many a good bit o' work done with a sad heart\" . He does not believe the universe exists for his personal pleasure. Dinah and Adam are purified and made humble by love, because they know love means sacrifice. Hetty and Arthur are egoists; their attraction can hardly be called love. Adam is angry at Arthur for spoiling Hetty's chances for true love in her life: \"I know you've disturbed her mind. I know she's been fixing her heart on you\" ."}

THE next Sunday Adam joined the Poysers on their way out of church, hoping for an invitation to go home with them. He had the letter in his pocket, and was anxious to have an opportunity of talking to Hetty alone. He could not see her face at church, for she had changed her seat, and when he came up to her to shake hands, her manner was doubtful and constrained. He expected this, for it was the first time she had met him since she had been aware that he had seen her with Arthur in the Grove. "Come, you'll go on with us, Adam," Mr. Poyser said when they reached the turning; and as soon as they were in the fields Adam ventured to offer his arm to Hetty. The children soon gave them an opportunity of lingering behind a little, and then Adam said: "Will you contrive for me to walk out in the garden a bit with you this evening, if it keeps fine, Hetty? I've something partic'lar to talk to you about." Hetty said, "Very well." She was really as anxious as Adam was that she should have some private talk with him. She wondered what he thought of her and Arthur. He must have seen them kissing, she knew, but she had no conception of the scene that had taken place between Arthur and Adam. Her first feeling had been that Adam would be very angry with her, and perhaps would tell her aunt and uncle, but it never entered her mind that he would dare to say anything to Captain Donnithorne. It was a relief to her that he behaved so kindly to her to-day, and wanted to speak to her alone, for she had trembled when she found he was going home with them lest he should mean "to tell." But, now he wanted to talk to her by herself, she should learn what he thought and what he meant to do. She felt a certain confidence that she could persuade him not to do anything she did not want him to do; she could perhaps even make him believe that she didn't care for Arthur; and as long as Adam thought there was any hope of her having him, he would do just what she liked, she knew. Besides, she MUST go on seeming to encourage Adam, lest her uncle and aunt should be angry and suspect her of having some secret lover. Hetty's little brain was busy with this combination as she hung on Adam's arm and said "yes" or "no" to some slight observations of his about the many hawthorn-berries there would be for the birds this next winter, and the low-hanging clouds that would hardly hold up till morning. And when they rejoined her aunt and uncle, she could pursue her thoughts without interruption, for Mr. Poyser held that though a young man might like to have the woman he was courting on his arm, he would nevertheless be glad of a little reasonable talk about business the while; and, for his own part, he was curious to hear the most recent news about the Chase Farm. So, through the rest of the walk, he claimed Adam's conversation for himself, and Hetty laid her small plots and imagined her little scenes of cunning blandishment, as she walked along by the hedgerows on honest Adam's arm, quite as well as if she had been an elegantly clad coquette alone in her boudoir. For if a country beauty in clumsy shoes be only shallow-hearted enough, it is astonishing how closely her mental processes may resemble those of a lady in society and crinoline, who applies her refined intellect to the problem of committing indiscretions without compromising herself. Perhaps the resemblance was not much the less because Hetty felt very unhappy all the while. The parting with Arthur was a double pain to her--mingling with the tumult of passion and vanity there was a dim undefined fear that the future might shape itself in some way quite unlike her dream. She clung to the comforting hopeful words Arthur had uttered in their last meeting--"I shall come again at Christmas, and then we will see what can be done." She clung to the belief that he was so fond of her, he would never be happy without her; and she still hugged her secret--that a great gentleman loved her--with gratified pride, as a superiority over all the girls she knew. But the uncertainty of the future, the possibilities to which she could give no shape, began to press upon her like the invisible weight of air; she was alone on her little island of dreams, and all around her was the dark unknown water where Arthur was gone. She could gather no elation of spirits now by looking forward, but only by looking backward to build confidence on past words and caresses. But occasionally, since Thursday evening, her dim anxieties had been almost lost behind the more definite fear that Adam might betray what he knew to her uncle and aunt, and his sudden proposition to talk with her alone had set her thoughts to work in a new way. She was eager not to lose this evening's opportunity; and after tea, when the boys were going into the garden and Totty begged to go with them, Hetty said, with an alacrity that surprised Mrs. Poyser, "I'll go with her, Aunt." It did not seem at all surprising that Adam said he would go too, and soon he and Hetty were left alone together on the walk by the filbert-trees, while the boys were busy elsewhere gathering the large unripe nuts to play at "cob-nut" with, and Totty was watching them with a puppylike air of contemplation. It was but a short time--hardly two months--since Adam had had his mind filled with delicious hopes as he stood by Hetty's side in this garden. The remembrance of that scene had often been with him since Thursday evening: the sunlight through the apple-tree boughs, the red bunches, Hetty's sweet blush. It came importunately now, on this sad evening, with the low-hanging clouds, but he tried to suppress it, lest some emotion should impel him to say more than was needful for Hetty's sake. "After what I saw on Thursday night, Hetty," he began, "you won't think me making too free in what I'm going to say. If you was being courted by any man as 'ud make you his wife, and I'd known you was fond of him and meant to have him, I should have no right to speak a word to you about it; but when I see you're being made love to by a gentleman as can never marry you, and doesna think o' marrying you, I feel bound t' interfere for you. I can't speak about it to them as are i' the place o' your parents, for that might bring worse trouble than's needful." Adam's words relieved one of Hetty's fears, but they also carried a meaning which sickened her with a strengthened foreboding. She was pale and trembling, and yet she would have angrily contradicted Adam, if she had dared to betray her feelings. But she was silent. "You're so young, you know, Hetty," he went on, almost tenderly, "and y' haven't seen much o' what goes on in the world. It's right for me to do what I can to save you from getting into trouble for want o' your knowing where you're being led to. If anybody besides me knew what I know about your meeting a gentleman and having fine presents from him, they'd speak light on you, and you'd lose your character. And besides that, you'll have to suffer in your feelings, wi' giving your love to a man as can never marry you, so as he might take care of you all your life." Adam paused and looked at Hetty, who was plucking the leaves from the filbert-trees and tearing them up in her hand. Her little plans and preconcerted speeches had all forsaken her, like an ill-learnt lesson, under the terrible agitation produced by Adam's words. There was a cruel force in their calm certainty which threatened to grapple and crush her flimsy hopes and fancies. She wanted to resist them--she wanted to throw them off with angry contradiction--but the determination to conceal what she felt still governed her. It was nothing more than a blind prompting now, for she was unable to calculate the effect of her words. "You've no right to say as I love him," she said, faintly, but impetuously, plucking another rough leaf and tearing it up. She was very beautiful in her paleness and agitation, with her dark childish eyes dilated and her breath shorter than usual. Adam's heart yearned over her as he looked at her. Ah, if he could but comfort her, and soothe her, and save her from this pain; if he had but some sort of strength that would enable him to rescue her poor troubled mind, as he would have rescued her body in the face of all danger! "I doubt it must be so, Hetty," he said, tenderly; "for I canna believe you'd let any man kiss you by yourselves, and give you a gold box with his hair, and go a-walking i' the Grove to meet him, if you didna love him. I'm not blaming you, for I know it 'ud begin by little and little, till at last you'd not be able to throw it off. It's him I blame for stealing your love i' that way, when he knew he could never make you the right amends. He's been trifling with you, and making a plaything of you, and caring nothing about you as a man ought to care." "Yes, he does care for me; I know better nor you," Hetty burst out. Everything was forgotten but the pain and anger she felt at Adam's words. "Nay, Hetty," said Adam, "if he'd cared for you rightly, he'd never ha' behaved so. He told me himself he meant nothing by his kissing and presents, and he wanted to make me believe as you thought light of 'em too. But I know better nor that. I can't help thinking as you've been trusting to his loving you well enough to marry you, for all he's a gentleman. And that's why I must speak to you about it, Hetty, for fear you should be deceiving yourself. It's never entered his head the thought o' marrying you." "How do you know? How durst you say so?" said Hetty, pausing in her walk and trembling. The terrible decision of Adam's tone shook her with fear. She had no presence of mind left for the reflection that Arthur would have his reasons for not telling the truth to Adam. Her words and look were enough to determine Adam: he must give her the letter. "Perhaps you can't believe me, Hetty, because you think too well of him--because you think he loves you better than he does. But I've got a letter i' my pocket, as he wrote himself for me to give you. I've not read the letter, but he says he's told you the truth in it. But before I give you the letter, consider, Hetty, and don't let it take too much hold on you. It wouldna ha' been good for you if he'd wanted to do such a mad thing as marry you: it 'ud ha' led to no happiness i' th' end." Hetty said nothing; she felt a revival of hope at the mention of a letter which Adam had not read. There would be something quite different in it from what he thought. Adam took out the letter, but he held it in his hand still, while he said, in a tone of tender entreaty, "Don't you bear me ill will, Hetty, because I'm the means o' bringing you this pain. God knows I'd ha' borne a good deal worse for the sake o' sparing it you. And think--there's nobody but me knows about this, and I'll take care of you as if I was your brother. You're the same as ever to me, for I don't believe you've done any wrong knowingly." Hetty had laid her hand on the letter, but Adam did not loose it till he had done speaking. She took no notice of what he said--she had not listened; but when he loosed the letter, she put it into her pocket, without opening it, and then began to walk more quickly, as if she wanted to go in. "You're in the right not to read it just yet," said Adam. "Read it when you're by yourself. But stay out a little bit longer, and let us call the children: you look so white and ill, your aunt may take notice of it." Hetty heard the warning. It recalled to her the necessity of rallying her native powers of concealment, which had half given way under the shock of Adam's words. And she had the letter in her pocket: she was sure there was comfort in that letter in spite of Adam. She ran to find Totty, and soon reappeared with recovered colour, leading Totty, who was making a sour face because she had been obliged to throw away an unripe apple that she had set her small teeth in. "Hegh, Totty," said Adam, "come and ride on my shoulder--ever so high--you'll touch the tops o' the trees." What little child ever refused to be comforted by that glorious sense of being seized strongly and swung upward? I don't believe Ganymede cried when the eagle carried him away, and perhaps deposited him on Jove's shoulder at the end. Totty smiled down complacently from her secure height, and pleasant was the sight to the mother's eyes, as she stood at the house door and saw Adam coming with his small burden. "Bless your sweet face, my pet," she said, the mother's strong love filling her keen eyes with mildness, as Totty leaned forward and put out her arms. She had no eyes for Hetty at that moment, and only said, without looking at her, "You go and draw some ale, Hetty; the gells are both at the cheese." After the ale had been drawn and her uncle's pipe lighted, there was Totty to be taken to bed, and brought down again in her night-gown because she would cry instead of going to sleep. Then there was supper to be got ready, and Hetty must be continually in the way to give help. Adam stayed till he knew Mrs. Poyser expected him to go, engaging her and her husband in talk as constantly as he could, for the sake of leaving Hetty more at ease. He lingered, because he wanted to see her safely through that evening, and he was delighted to find how much self-command she showed. He knew she had not had time to read the letter, but he did not know she was buoyed up by a secret hope that the letter would contradict everything he had said. It was hard work for him to leave her--hard to think that he should not know for days how she was bearing her trouble. But he must go at last, and all he could do was to press her hand gently as he said "Good-bye," and hope she would take that as a sign that if his love could ever be a refuge for her, it was there the same as ever. How busy his thoughts were, as he walked home, in devising pitying excuses for her folly, in referring all her weakness to the sweet lovingness of her nature, in blaming Arthur, with less and less inclination to admit that his conduct might be extenuated too! His exasperation at Hetty's suffering--and also at the sense that she was possibly thrust for ever out of his own reach--deafened him to any plea for the miscalled friend who had wrought this misery. Adam was a clear-sighted, fair-minded man--a fine fellow, indeed, morally as well as physically. But if Aristides the Just was ever in love and jealous, he was at that moment not perfectly magnanimous. And I cannot pretend that Adam, in these painful days, felt nothing but righteous indignation and loving pity. He was bitterly jealous, and in proportion as his love made him indulgent in his judgment of Hetty, the bitterness found a vent in his feeling towards Arthur. "Her head was allays likely to be turned," he thought, "when a gentleman, with his fine manners, and fine clothes, and his white hands, and that way o' talking gentlefolks have, came about her, making up to her in a bold way, as a man couldn't do that was only her equal; and it's much if she'll ever like a common man now." He could not help drawing his own hands out of his pocket and looking at them--at the hard palms and the broken finger-nails. "I'm a roughish fellow, altogether; I don't know, now I come to think on't, what there is much for a woman to like about me; and yet I might ha' got another wife easy enough, if I hadn't set my heart on her. But it's little matter what other women think about me, if she can't love me. She might ha' loved me, perhaps, as likely as any other man--there's nobody hereabouts as I'm afraid of, if he hadn't come between us; but now I shall belike be hateful to her because I'm so different to him. And yet there's no telling--she may turn round the other way, when she finds he's made light of her all the while. She may come to feel the vally of a man as 'ud be thankful to be bound to her all his life. But I must put up with it whichever way it is--I've only to be thankful it's been no worse. I am not th' only man that's got to do without much happiness i' this life. There's many a good bit o' work done with a bad heart. It's God's will, and that's enough for us: we shouldn't know better how things ought to be than He does, I reckon, if we was to spend our lives i' puzzling. But it 'ud ha' gone near to spoil my work for me, if I'd seen her brought to sorrow and shame, and through the man as I've always been proud to think on. Since I've been spared that, I've no right to grumble. When a man's got his limbs whole, he can bear a smart cut or two." As Adam was getting over a stile at this point in his reflections, he perceived a man walking along the field before him. He knew it was Seth, returning from an evening preaching, and made haste to overtake him. "I thought thee'dst be at home before me," he said, as Seth turned round to wait for him, "for I'm later than usual to-night." "Well, I'm later too, for I got into talk, after meeting, with John Barnes, who has lately professed himself in a state of perfection, and I'd a question to ask him about his experience. It's one o' them subjects that lead you further than y' expect--they don't lie along the straight road." They walked along together in silence two or three minutes. Adam was not inclined to enter into the subtleties of religious experience, but he was inclined to interchange a word or two of brotherly affection and confidence with Seth. That was a rare impulse in him, much as the brothers loved each other. They hardly ever spoke of personal matters, or uttered more than an allusion to their family troubles. Adam was by nature reserved in all matters of feeling, and Seth felt a certain timidity towards his more practical brother. "Seth, lad," Adam said, putting his arm on his brother's shoulder, "hast heard anything from Dinah Morris since she went away?" "Yes," said Seth. "She told me I might write her word after a while, how we went on, and how mother bore up under her trouble. So I wrote to her a fortnight ago, and told her about thee having a new employment, and how Mother was more contented; and last Wednesday, when I called at the post at Treddles'on, I found a letter from her. I think thee'dst perhaps like to read it, but I didna say anything about it because thee'st seemed so full of other things. It's quite easy t' read--she writes wonderful for a woman." Seth had drawn the letter from his pocket and held it out to Adam, who said, as he took it, "Aye, lad, I've got a tough load to carry just now--thee mustna take it ill if I'm a bit silenter and crustier nor usual. Trouble doesna make me care the less for thee. I know we shall stick together to the last." "I take nought ill o' thee, Adam. I know well enough what it means if thee't a bit short wi' me now and then." "There's Mother opening the door to look out for us," said Adam, as they mounted the slope. "She's been sitting i' the dark as usual. Well, Gyp, well, art glad to see me?" Lisbeth went in again quickly and lighted a candle, for she had heard the welcome rustling of footsteps on the grass, before Gyp's joyful bark. "Eh, my lads! Th' hours war ne'er so long sin' I war born as they'n been this blessed Sunday night. What can ye both ha' been doin' till this time?" "Thee shouldstna sit i' the dark, Mother," said Adam; "that makes the time seem longer." "Eh, what am I to do wi' burnin' candle of a Sunday, when there's on'y me an' it's sin to do a bit o' knittin'? The daylight's long enough for me to stare i' the booke as I canna read. It 'ud be a fine way o' shortenin' the time, to make it waste the good candle. But which on you's for ha'in' supper? Ye mun ayther be clemmed or full, I should think, seein' what time o' night it is." "I'm hungry, Mother," said Seth, seating himself at the little table, which had been spread ever since it was light. "I've had my supper," said Adam. "Here, Gyp," he added, taking some cold potato from the table and rubbing the rough grey head that looked up towards him. "Thee needstna be gi'in' th' dog," said Lisbeth; "I'n fed him well a'ready. I'm not like to forget him, I reckon, when he's all o' thee I can get sight on." "Come, then, Gyp," said Adam, "we'll go to bed. Good-night, Mother; I'm very tired." "What ails him, dost know?" Lisbeth said to Seth, when Adam was gone upstairs. "He's like as if he was struck for death this day or two--he's so cast down. I found him i' the shop this forenoon, arter thee wast gone, a-sittin' an' doin' nothin'--not so much as a booke afore him." "He's a deal o' work upon him just now, Mother," said Seth, "and I think he's a bit troubled in his mind. Don't you take notice of it, because it hurts him when you do. Be as kind to him as you can, Mother, and don't say anything to vex him." "Eh, what dost talk o' my vexin' him? An' what am I like to be but kind? I'll ma' him a kettle-cake for breakfast i' the mornin'." Adam, meanwhile, was reading Dinah's letter by the light of his dip candle. DEAR BROTHER SETH--Your letter lay three days beyond my knowing of it at the post, for I had not money enough by me to pay the carriage, this being a time of great need and sickness here, with the rains that have fallen, as if the windows of heaven were opened again; and to lay by money, from day to day, in such a time, when there are so many in present need of all things, would be a want of trust like the laying up of the manna. I speak of this, because I would not have you think me slow to answer, or that I had small joy in your rejoicing at the worldly good that has befallen your brother Adam. The honour and love you bear him is nothing but meet, for God has given him great gifts, and he uses them as the patriarch Joseph did, who, when he was exalted to a place of power and trust, yet yearned with tenderness towards his parent and his younger brother. "My heart is knit to your aged mother since it was granted me to be near her in the day of trouble. Speak to her of me, and tell her I often bear her in my thoughts at evening time, when I am sitting in the dim light as I did with her, and we held one another's hands, and I spoke the words of comfort that were given to me. Ah, that is a blessed time, isn't it, Seth, when the outward light is fading, and the body is a little wearied with its work and its labour. Then the inward light shines the brighter, and we have a deeper sense of resting on the Divine strength. I sit on my chair in the dark room and close my eyes, and it is as if I was out of the body and could feel no want for evermore. For then, the very hardship, and the sorrow, and the blindness, and the sin I have beheld and been ready to weep over--yea, all the anguish of the children of men, which sometimes wraps me round like sudden darkness--I can bear with a willing pain, as if I was sharing the Redeemer's cross. For I feel it, I feel it--infinite love is suffering too--yea, in the fulness of knowledge it suffers, it yearns, it mourns; and that is a blind self-seeking which wants to be freed from the sorrow wherewith the whole creation groaneth and travaileth. Surely it is not true blessedness to be free from sorrow, while there is sorrow and sin in the world: sorrow is then a part of love, and love does not seek to throw it off. It is not the spirit only that tells me this--I see it in the whole work and word of the Gospel. Is there not pleading in heaven? Is not the Man of Sorrows there in that crucified body wherewith he ascended? And is He not one with the Infinite Love itself--as our love is one with our sorrow? "These thoughts have been much borne in on me of late, and I have seen with new clearness the meaning of those words, 'If any man love me, let him take up my cross.' I have heard this enlarged on as if it meant the troubles and persecutions we bring on ourselves by confessing Jesus. But surely that is a narrow thought. The true cross of the Redeemer was the sin and sorrow of this world--that was what lay heavy on his heart--and that is the cross we shall share with him, that is the cup we must drink of with him, if we would have any part in that Divine Love which is one with his sorrow. "In my outward lot, which you ask about, I have all things and abound. I have had constant work in the mill, though some of the other hands have been turned off for a time, and my body is greatly strengthened, so that I feel little weariness after long walking and speaking. What you say about staying in your own country with your mother and brother shows me that you have a true guidance; your lot is appointed there by a clear showing, and to seek a greater blessing elsewhere would be like laying a false offering on the altar and expecting the fire from heaven to kindle it. My work and my joy are here among the hills, and I sometimes think I cling too much to my life among the people here, and should be rebellious if I was called away. "I was thankful for your tidings about the dear friends at the Hall Farm, for though I sent them a letter, by my aunt's desire, after I came back from my sojourn among them, I have had no word from them. My aunt has not the pen of a ready writer, and the work of the house is sufficient for the day, for she is weak in body. My heart cleaves to her and her children as the nearest of all to me in the flesh--yea, and to all in that house. I am carried away to them continually in my sleep, and often in the midst of work, and even of speech, the thought of them is borne in on me as if they were in need and trouble, which yet is dark to me. There may be some leading here; but I wait to be taught. You say they are all well. "We shall see each other again in the body, I trust, though, it may be, not for a long while; for the brethren and sisters at Leeds are desirous to have me for a short space among them, when I have a door opened me again to leave Snowfield. "Farewell, dear brother--and yet not farewell. For those children of God whom it has been granted to see each other face to face, and to hold communion together, and to feel the same spirit working in both can never more be sundered though the hills may lie between. For their souls are enlarged for evermore by that union, and they bear one another about in their thoughts continually as it were a new strength.--Your faithful Sister and fellow-worker in Christ, "DINAH MORRIS." "I have not skill to write the words so small as you do and my pen moves slow. And so I am straitened, and say but little of what is in my mind. Greet your mother for me with a kiss. She asked me to kiss her twice when we parted." Adam had refolded the letter, and was sitting meditatively with his head resting on his arm at the head of the bed, when Seth came upstairs. "Hast read the letter?" said Seth. "Yes," said Adam. "I don't know what I should ha' thought of her and her letter if I'd never seen her: I daresay I should ha' thought a preaching woman hateful. But she's one as makes everything seem right she says and does, and I seemed to see her and hear her speaking when I read the letter. It's wonderful how I remember her looks and her voice. She'd make thee rare and happy, Seth; she's just the woman for thee." "It's no use thinking o' that," said Seth, despondingly. "She spoke so firm, and she's not the woman to say one thing and mean another." "Nay, but her feelings may grow different. A woman may get to love by degrees--the best fire dosna flare up the soonest. I'd have thee go and see her by and by: I'd make it convenient for thee to be away three or four days, and it 'ud be no walk for thee--only between twenty and thirty mile." "I should like to see her again, whether or no, if she wouldna be displeased with me for going," said Seth. "She'll be none displeased," said Adam emphatically, getting up and throwing off his coat. "It might be a great happiness to us all if she'd have thee, for mother took to her so wonderful and seemed so contented to be with her." "Aye," said Seth, rather timidly, "and Dinah's fond o' Hetty too; she thinks a deal about her." Adam made no reply to that, and no other word but "good-night" passed between them.

Chapter 30

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter30

The Delivery of the Letter Adam joins the Poysers on their walk home after church because he wants to talk to Hetty. She is afraid he means to tell on her, but Hetty is confident she can manipulate Adam to her own purposes. Hetty believes that Arthur will miss her and will come home at Christmas, as he said he might do. Adam is direct and says that he is trying to help Hetty because she does not know the ways of the world. Arthur does not love her and will not marry her. Hetty is shocked and does not believe Adam. She knows more than Adam does about how serious their relationship is. She realizes Adam does not know the worst. He keeps repeating that Arthur does not mean to marry her, and finally he produces the letter. He says that he will be like a brother to her in this crisis, and tries to get her to see how dangerous the situation is for her. Hetty believes the letter will be a love letter and puts it in her pocket. They spend the evening with her aunt and uncle and Adam is very kind, trying to cover for her and be entertaining, so her pale look will not be noticed. Adam's tenderness is aroused, and at home, he is kind to Seth, asking him about Dinah. Seth says there is no hope she will change her mind, but gives him a letter from Dinah to read that has consolation and wisdom in it for Adam's situation. Dinah speaks of sorrow being a part of love and that love bears it and does not throw it off. Adam thinks Dinah has the power to make everything seem right. He tells Seth a woman sometimes takes time to love by degrees, hoping this is true of Hetty.

Commentary on Chapter 30 Hetty, like Arthur, has a smaller moral view than Adam does and she, like Arthur, thinks she can manage Adam. They both count on his love and loyalty, but they do not realize that Adam is a man of principle above all else. Because he believes Hetty innocent, he tries to put aside his own feeling of jealousy and thinks of her, trying to be like a brother to save her. He cannot hope for any return to his love until he can get her safely past this danger. He does not ask for any immediate thanks because he sees her simply as a person in trouble. As he says of Dinah, he hopes Hetty may yet learn to love a man who is good to her and sticks by her. The only person who can speak words of comfort to Adam at this time is Dinah, through the letter, for her perspective is large enough to comprehend what he is going through. Adam tells Arthur his love own for Hetty is different; for him she is not a plaything, and he cannot explain it, for the love was given to him by God . Divine love, Dinah explains in her letter, is able to take up sorrow and purify it through sympathy. True love does not consist in pleasure alone. Arthur and Hetty believe in their own desire being satisfied. Adam, like Dinah, experiences a love that reaches out to share sorrow and disappointment but stands firm. Adam knows, "I'm not th'only man that's got to do without much happiness in' this life. There's many a good bit o' work done with a sad heart" . He does not believe the universe exists for his personal pleasure. Dinah and Adam are purified and made humble by love, because they know love means sacrifice. Hetty and Arthur are egoists; their attraction can hardly be called love. Adam is angry at Arthur for spoiling Hetty's chances for true love in her life: "I know you've disturbed her mind. I know she's been fixing her heart on you" .

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/31.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_31_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 31

chapter 31

{"name": "Chapter 31", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter31", "summary": "In Hetty's Bed-Chamber Hetty waits until bedtime to read Arthur's letter. He says that it is hard on him, but he must say goodbye to her. They cannot be married because they live in different worlds, so they must part for good. If however, any trouble comes, he will do everything to help her. She can write to the address he encloses. Hetty is taken by surprise, and is devastated. She cries herself to sleep, and the next day she only thinks how she can get away from Hall Farm. She asks her uncle if she can go for a lady's maid. He says no; he wants to see her well married. Mrs. Poyser thinks the idea of being a lady's maid came from learning lace-mending and decides to put a stop to it. Hetty begins to think about marrying Adam as an alternative plan; what difference doe it make as long as she can get away?", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 31 Hetty's bubble is burst, and she begins to hate Arthur for it. She wants change if she cannot have what she wants. Hetty is not able to evaluate what Arthur has said in the letter about class differences, nor does she wonder if he loves her or worry that she will miss him. She had imagined a different life, and now it is taken away. She doesn't seem to care who she marries as long as she can have what she wants. She decides Adam will do as well as any. The narrator and the reader are the only ones who know at this point how \"trivial\" Hetty's soul is . She is clever enough to hide herself from her family and from Adam, who believes her to be as good as she looks. Arthur's letter, however, contains some foreshadowing. He alludes to the fact of future trouble and says that he will help her, if it should come. He gives her an address. This is, at least, responsible on Arthur's part. His letter sounds affectionate and caring, even if he is backing out of the relationship at a late point, and only because he was forced into it. He does seem to care what happens to Hetty, though not enough, and always belatedly. He does not have the foresight of Adam or Mr. Irwine, though he is far from cruel. Eliot's point with Arthur seems to be to illustrate how anyone can commit evil, even if basically good. Readers generally identify with good characters. Eliot can make readers uncomfortable by having to identify with the ordinary characters who slip because they are lazy. Who has not looked for an easy way out, or merely got by because everyone else did? She calls her characters and readers to account, for the laws of cause and effect do not excuse anyone."}

IT was no longer light enough to go to bed without a candle, even in Mrs. Poyser's early household, and Hetty carried one with her as she went up at last to her bedroom soon after Adam was gone, and bolted the door behind her. Now she would read her letter. It must--it must have comfort in it. How was Adam to know the truth? It was always likely he should say what he did say. She set down the candle and took out the letter. It had a faint scent of roses, which made her feel as if Arthur were close to her. She put it to her lips, and a rush of remembered sensations for a moment or two swept away all fear. But her heart began to flutter strangely, and her hands to tremble as she broke the seal. She read slowly; it was not easy for her to read a gentleman's handwriting, though Arthur had taken pains to write plainly. "DEAREST HETTY--I have spoken truly when I have said that I loved you, and I shall never forget our love. I shall be your true friend as long as life lasts, and I hope to prove this to you in many ways. If I say anything to pain you in this letter, do not believe it is for want of love and tenderness towards you, for there is nothing I would not do for you, if I knew it to be really for your happiness. I cannot bear to think of my little Hetty shedding tears when I am not there to kiss them away; and if I followed only my own inclinations, I should be with her at this moment instead of writing. It is very hard for me to part from her--harder still for me to write words which may seem unkind, though they spring from the truest kindness. "Dear, dear Hetty, sweet as our love has been to me, sweet as it would be to me for you to love me always, I feel that it would have been better for us both if we had never had that happiness, and that it is my duty to ask you to love me and care for me as little as you can. The fault has all been mine, for though I have been unable to resist the longing to be near you, I have felt all the while that your affection for me might cause you grief. I ought to have resisted my feelings. I should have done so, if I had been a better fellow than I am; but now, since the past cannot be altered, I am bound to save you from any evil that I have power to prevent. And I feel it would be a great evil for you if your affections continued so fixed on me that you could think of no other man who might be able to make you happier by his love than I ever can, and if you continued to look towards something in the future which cannot possibly happen. For, dear Hetty, if I were to do what you one day spoke of, and make you my wife, I should do what you yourself would come to feel was for your misery instead of your welfare. I know you can never be happy except by marrying a man in your own station; and if I were to marry you now, I should only be adding to any wrong I have done, besides offending against my duty in the other relations of life. You know nothing, dear Hetty, of the world in which I must always live, and you would soon begin to dislike me, because there would be so little in which we should be alike. "And since I cannot marry you, we must part--we must try not to feel like lovers any more. I am miserable while I say this, but nothing else can be. Be angry with me, my sweet one, I deserve it; but do not believe that I shall not always care for you--always be grateful to you--always remember my Hetty; and if any trouble should come that we do not now foresee, trust in me to do everything that lies in my power. "I have told you where you are to direct a letter to, if you want to write, but I put it down below lest you should have forgotten. Do not write unless there is something I can really do for you; for, dear Hetty, we must try to think of each other as little as we can. Forgive me, and try to forget everything about me, except that I shall be, as long as I live, your affectionate friend, "ARTHUR DONNITHORNE." Slowly Hetty had read this letter; and when she looked up from it there was the reflection of a blanched face in the old dim glass--a white marble face with rounded childish forms, but with something sadder than a child's pain in it. Hetty did not see the face--she saw nothing--she only felt that she was cold and sick and trembling. The letter shook and rustled in her hand. She laid it down. It was a horrible sensation--this cold and trembling. It swept away the very ideas that produced it, and Hetty got up to reach a warm cloak from her clothes-press, wrapped it round her, and sat as if she were thinking of nothing but getting warm. Presently she took up the letter with a firmer hand, and began to read it through again. The tears came this time--great rushing tears that blinded her and blotched the paper. She felt nothing but that Arthur was cruel--cruel to write so, cruel not to marry her. Reasons why he could not marry her had no existence for her mind; how could she believe in any misery that could come to her from the fulfilment of all she had been longing for and dreaming of? She had not the ideas that could make up the notion of that misery. As she threw down the letter again, she caught sight of her face in the glass; it was reddened now, and wet with tears; it was almost like a companion that she might complain to--that would pity her. She leaned forward on her elbows, and looked into those dark overflooding eyes and at the quivering mouth, and saw how the tears came thicker and thicker, and how the mouth became convulsed with sobs. The shattering of all her little dream-world, the crushing blow on her new-born passion, afflicted her pleasure-craving nature with an overpowering pain that annihilated all impulse to resistance, and suspended her anger. She sat sobbing till the candle went out, and then, wearied, aching, stupefied with crying, threw herself on the bed without undressing and went to sleep. There was a feeble dawn in the room when Hetty awoke, a little after four o'clock, with a sense of dull misery, the cause of which broke upon her gradually as she began to discern the objects round her in the dim light. And then came the frightening thought that she had to conceal her misery as well as to bear it, in this dreary daylight that was coming. She could lie no longer. She got up and went towards the table: there lay the letter. She opened her treasure-drawer: there lay the ear-rings and the locket--the signs of all her short happiness--the signs of the lifelong dreariness that was to follow it. Looking at the little trinkets which she had once eyed and fingered so fondly as the earnest of her future paradise of finery, she lived back in the moments when they had been given to her with such tender caresses, such strangely pretty words, such glowing looks, which filled her with a bewildering delicious surprise--they were so much sweeter than she had thought anything could be. And the Arthur who had spoken to her and looked at her in this way, who was present with her now--whose arm she felt round her, his cheek against hers, his very breath upon her--was the cruel, cruel Arthur who had written that letter, that letter which she snatched and crushed and then opened again, that she might read it once more. The half-benumbed mental condition which was the effect of the last night's violent crying made it necessary to her to look again and see if her wretched thoughts were actually true--if the letter was really so cruel. She had to hold it close to the window, else she could not have read it by the faint light. Yes! It was worse--it was more cruel. She crushed it up again in anger. She hated the writer of that letter--hated him for the very reason that she hung upon him with all her love--all the girlish passion and vanity that made up her love. She had no tears this morning. She had wept them all away last night, and now she felt that dry-eyed morning misery, which is worse than the first shock because it has the future in it as well as the present. Every morning to come, as far as her imagination could stretch, she would have to get up and feel that the day would have no joy for her. For there is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered hope. As Hetty began languidly to take off the clothes she had worn all the night, that she might wash herself and brush her hair, she had a sickening sense that her life would go on in this way. She should always be doing things she had no pleasure in, getting up to the old tasks of work, seeing people she cared nothing about, going to church, and to Treddleston, and to tea with Mrs. Best, and carrying no happy thought with her. For her short poisonous delights had spoiled for ever all the little joys that had once made the sweetness of her life--the new frock ready for Treddleston Fair, the party at Mr. Britton's at Broxton wake, the beaux that she would say "No" to for a long while, and the prospect of the wedding that was to come at last when she would have a silk gown and a great many clothes all at once. These things were all flat and dreary to her now; everything would be a weariness, and she would carry about for ever a hopeless thirst and longing. She paused in the midst of her languid undressing and leaned against the dark old clothes-press. Her neck and arms were bare, her hair hung down in delicate rings--and they were just as beautiful as they were that night two months ago, when she walked up and down this bed-chamber glowing with vanity and hope. She was not thinking of her neck and arms now; even her own beauty was indifferent to her. Her eyes wandered sadly over the dull old chamber, and then looked out vacantly towards the growing dawn. Did a remembrance of Dinah come across her mind? Of her foreboding words, which had made her angry? Of Dinah's affectionate entreaty to think of her as a friend in trouble? No, the impression had been too slight to recur. Any affection or comfort Dinah could have given her would have been as indifferent to Hetty this morning as everything else was except her bruised passion. She was only thinking she could never stay here and go on with the old life--she could better bear something quite new than sinking back into the old everyday round. She would like to run away that very morning, and never see any of the old faces again. But Hetty's was not a nature to face difficulties--to dare to loose her hold on the familiar and rush blindly on some unknown condition. Hers was a luxurious and vain nature--not a passionate one--and if she were ever to take any violent measure, she must be urged to it by the desperation of terror. There was not much room for her thoughts to travel in the narrow circle of her imagination, and she soon fixed on the one thing she would do to get away from her old life: she would ask her uncle to let her go to be a lady's maid. Miss Lydia's maid would help her to get a situation, if she knew Hetty had her uncle's leave. When she had thought of this, she fastened up her hair and began to wash: it seemed more possible to her to go downstairs and try to behave as usual. She would ask her uncle this very day. On Hetty's blooming health it would take a great deal of such mental suffering as hers to leave any deep impress; and when she was dressed as neatly as usual in her working-dress, with her hair tucked up under her little cap, an indifferent observer would have been more struck with the young roundness of her cheek and neck and the darkness of her eyes and eyelashes than with any signs of sadness about her. But when she took up the crushed letter and put it in her drawer, that she might lock it out of sight, hard smarting tears, having no relief in them as the great drops had that fell last night, forced their way into her eyes. She wiped them away quickly: she must not cry in the day-time. Nobody should find out how miserable she was, nobody should know she was disappointed about anything; and the thought that the eyes of her aunt and uncle would be upon her gave her the self-command which often accompanies a great dread. For Hetty looked out from her secret misery towards the possibility of their ever knowing what had happened, as the sick and weary prisoner might think of the possible pillory. They would think her conduct shameful, and shame was torture. That was poor little Hetty's conscience. So she locked up her drawer and went away to her early work. In the evening, when Mr. Poyser was smoking his pipe, and his good-nature was therefore at its superlative moment, Hetty seized the opportunity of her aunt's absence to say, "Uncle, I wish you'd let me go for a lady's maid." Mr. Poyser took the pipe from his mouth and looked at Hetty in mild surprise for some moments. She was sewing, and went on with her work industriously. "Why, what's put that into your head, my wench?" he said at last, after he had given one conservative puff. "I should like it--I should like it better than farm-work." "Nay, nay; you fancy so because you donna know it, my wench. It wouldn't be half so good for your health, nor for your luck i' life. I'd like you to stay wi' us till you've got a good husband: you're my own niece, and I wouldn't have you go to service, though it was a gentleman's house, as long as I've got a home for you." Mr. Poyser paused, and puffed away at his pipe. "I like the needlework," said Hetty, "and I should get good wages." "Has your aunt been a bit sharp wi' you?" said Mr. Poyser, not noticing Hetty's further argument. "You mustna mind that, my wench--she does it for your good. She wishes you well; an' there isn't many aunts as are no kin to you 'ud ha' done by you as she has." "No, it isn't my aunt," said Hetty, "but I should like the work better." "It was all very well for you to learn the work a bit--an' I gev my consent to that fast enough, sin' Mrs. Pomfret was willing to teach you. For if anything was t' happen, it's well to know how to turn your hand to different sorts o' things. But I niver meant you to go to service, my wench; my family's ate their own bread and cheese as fur back as anybody knows, hanna they, Father? You wouldna like your grand-child to take wage?" "Na-a-y," said old Martin, with an elongation of the word, meant to make it bitter as well as negative, while he leaned forward and looked down on the floor. "But the wench takes arter her mother. I'd hard work t' hould HER in, an' she married i' spite o' me--a feller wi' on'y two head o' stock when there should ha' been ten on's farm--she might well die o' th' inflammation afore she war thirty." It was seldom the old man made so long a speech, but his son's question had fallen like a bit of dry fuel on the embers of a long unextinguished resentment, which had always made the grandfather more indifferent to Hetty than to his son's children. Her mother's fortune had been spent by that good-for-nought Sorrel, and Hetty had Sorrel's blood in her veins. "Poor thing, poor thing!" said Martin the younger, who was sorry to have provoked this retrospective harshness. "She'd but bad luck. But Hetty's got as good a chance o' getting a solid, sober husband as any gell i' this country." After throwing out this pregnant hint, Mr. Poyser recurred to his pipe and his silence, looking at Hetty to see if she did not give some sign of having renounced her ill-advised wish. But instead of that, Hetty, in spite of herself, began to cry, half out of ill temper at the denial, half out of the day's repressed sadness. "Hegh, hegh!" said Mr. Poyser, meaning to check her playfully, "don't let's have any crying. Crying's for them as ha' got no home, not for them as want to get rid o' one. What dost think?" he continued to his wife, who now came back into the house-place, knitting with fierce rapidity, as if that movement were a necessary function, like the twittering of a crab's antennae. "Think? Why, I think we shall have the fowl stole before we are much older, wi' that gell forgetting to lock the pens up o' nights. What's the matter now, Hetty? What are you crying at?" "Why, she's been wanting to go for a lady's maid," said Mr. Poyser. "I tell her we can do better for her nor that." "I thought she'd got some maggot in her head, she's gone about wi' her mouth buttoned up so all day. It's all wi' going so among them servants at the Chase, as we war fools for letting her. She thinks it 'ud be a finer life than being wi' them as are akin to her and ha' brought her up sin' she war no bigger nor Marty. She thinks there's nothing belongs to being a lady's maid but wearing finer clothes nor she was born to, I'll be bound. It's what rag she can get to stick on her as she's thinking on from morning till night, as I often ask her if she wouldn't like to be the mawkin i' the field, for then she'd be made o' rags inside and out. I'll never gi' my consent to her going for a lady's maid, while she's got good friends to take care on her till she's married to somebody better nor one o' them valets, as is neither a common man nor a gentleman, an' must live on the fat o' the land, an's like enough to stick his hands under his coat-tails and expect his wife to work for him." "Aye, aye," said Mr. Poyser, "we must have a better husband for her nor that, and there's better at hand. Come, my wench, give over crying and get to bed. I'll do better for you nor letting you go for a lady's maid. Let's hear no more on't." When Hetty was gone upstairs he said, "I canna make it out as she should want to go away, for I thought she'd got a mind t' Adam Bede. She's looked like it o' late." "Eh, there's no knowing what she's got a liking to, for things take no more hold on her than if she was a dried pea. I believe that gell, Molly--as is aggravatin' enough, for the matter o' that--but I believe she'd care more about leaving us and the children, for all she's been here but a year come Michaelmas, nor Hetty would. But she's got this notion o' being a lady's maid wi' going among them servants--we might ha' known what it 'ud lead to when we let her go to learn the fine work. But I'll put a stop to it pretty quick." "Thee'dst be sorry to part wi' her, if it wasn't for her good," said Mr. Poyser. "She's useful to thee i' the work." "Sorry? Yes, I'm fonder on her nor she deserves--a little hard-hearted hussy, wanting to leave us i' that way. I can't ha' had her about me these seven year, I reckon, and done for her, and taught her everything wi'out caring about her. An' here I'm having linen spun, an' thinking all the while it'll make sheeting and table-clothing for her when she's married, an' she'll live i' the parish wi' us, and never go out of our sights--like a fool as I am for thinking aught about her, as is no better nor a cherry wi' a hard stone inside it." "Nay, nay, thee mustna make much of a trifle," said Mr. Poyser, soothingly. "She's fond on us, I'll be bound; but she's young, an' gets things in her head as she can't rightly give account on. Them young fillies 'ull run away often wi'-ou knowing why." Her uncle's answers, however, had had another effect on Hetty besides that of disappointing her and making her cry. She knew quite well whom he had in his mind in his allusions to marriage, and to a sober, solid husband; and when she was in her bedroom again, the possibility of her marrying Adam presented itself to her in a new light. In a mind where no strong sympathies are at work, where there is no supreme sense of right to which the agitated nature can cling and steady itself to quiet endurance, one of the first results of sorrow is a desperate vague clutching after any deed that will change the actual condition. Poor Hetty's vision of consequences, at no time more than a narrow fantastic calculation of her own probable pleasures and pains, was now quite shut out by reckless irritation under present suffering, and she was ready for one of those convulsive, motiveless actions by which wretched men and women leap from a temporary sorrow into a lifelong misery. Why should she not marry Adam? She did not care what she did, so that it made some change in her life. She felt confident that he would still want to marry her, and any further thought about Adam's happiness in the matter had never yet visited her. "Strange!" perhaps you will say, "this rush of impulse to-wards a course that might have seemed the most repugnant to her present state of mind, and in only the second night of her sadness!" Yes, the actions of a little trivial soul like Hetty's, struggling amidst the serious sad destinies of a human being, are strange. So are the motions of a little vessel without ballast tossed about on a stormy sea. How pretty it looked with its parti-coloured sail in the sunlight, moored in the quiet bay! "Let that man bear the loss who loosed it from its moorings." But that will not save the vessel--the pretty thing that might have been a lasting joy.

Chapter 31

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter31

In Hetty's Bed-Chamber Hetty waits until bedtime to read Arthur's letter. He says that it is hard on him, but he must say goodbye to her. They cannot be married because they live in different worlds, so they must part for good. If however, any trouble comes, he will do everything to help her. She can write to the address he encloses. Hetty is taken by surprise, and is devastated. She cries herself to sleep, and the next day she only thinks how she can get away from Hall Farm. She asks her uncle if she can go for a lady's maid. He says no; he wants to see her well married. Mrs. Poyser thinks the idea of being a lady's maid came from learning lace-mending and decides to put a stop to it. Hetty begins to think about marrying Adam as an alternative plan; what difference doe it make as long as she can get away?

Commentary on Chapter 31 Hetty's bubble is burst, and she begins to hate Arthur for it. She wants change if she cannot have what she wants. Hetty is not able to evaluate what Arthur has said in the letter about class differences, nor does she wonder if he loves her or worry that she will miss him. She had imagined a different life, and now it is taken away. She doesn't seem to care who she marries as long as she can have what she wants. She decides Adam will do as well as any. The narrator and the reader are the only ones who know at this point how "trivial" Hetty's soul is . She is clever enough to hide herself from her family and from Adam, who believes her to be as good as she looks. Arthur's letter, however, contains some foreshadowing. He alludes to the fact of future trouble and says that he will help her, if it should come. He gives her an address. This is, at least, responsible on Arthur's part. His letter sounds affectionate and caring, even if he is backing out of the relationship at a late point, and only because he was forced into it. He does seem to care what happens to Hetty, though not enough, and always belatedly. He does not have the foresight of Adam or Mr. Irwine, though he is far from cruel. Eliot's point with Arthur seems to be to illustrate how anyone can commit evil, even if basically good. Readers generally identify with good characters. Eliot can make readers uncomfortable by having to identify with the ordinary characters who slip because they are lazy. Who has not looked for an easy way out, or merely got by because everyone else did? She calls her characters and readers to account, for the laws of cause and effect do not excuse anyone.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/32.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_32_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 32

chapter 32

{"name": "Chapter 32", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter32", "summary": "Mrs. Poyser 'Has Her Say Out' The next day Squire Donnithorne visits the Poysers to make a deal with them. He has a possible tenant for the Chase Farm but the man wants more plough land. If the Poysers would give up some plough land, they could have more dairy land and then Mrs. Poyser could make more money with her dairy. The Poysers see through this plan to cheat them of their land. Next, the squire threatens them that if they want their lease renewed, they should comply with his wishes. This is too much for Mrs. Poyser who tells off the squire on behalf of all the tenants for his cheap and miserly ways, for not keeping up the property, and for taking all the profits for himself. He rides off, and Mr. Poyser, though pleased at his wife's action, is worried that they will be evicted.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 32 This is a comic scene where Mrs. Poyser's wit is on display. She mentions that it is worth any price to have had her say, for \"There's no pleasure in living if you're to be corked up for iver\" . When the squire threatens to evict them, she answers that it won't be so easy to find another tenant to take their place because \"a maggot must be born in the rotten cheese to like it, I reckon\" . The Poysers worry that they will be evicted on Michaelmas, twelvemonth. This means they have a year from Michael's Mass on Sept. 29, the date when farming contracts were made. Mrs. Poyser says ironically that there is no telling what could have happened by then. This is another bit of foreshadowing."}

THE next Saturday evening there was much excited discussion at the Donnithorne Arms concerning an incident which had occurred that very day--no less than a second appearance of the smart man in top-boots said by some to be a mere farmer in treaty for the Chase Farm, by others to be the future steward, but by Mr. Casson himself, the personal witness to the stranger's visit, pronounced contemptuously to be nothing better than a bailiff, such as Satchell had been before him. No one had thought of denying Mr. Casson's testimony to the fact that he had seen the stranger; nevertheless, he proffered various corroborating circumstances. "I see him myself," he said; "I see him coming along by the Crab-tree Meadow on a bald-faced hoss. I'd just been t' hev a pint--it was half after ten i' the fore-noon, when I hev my pint as reg'lar as the clock--and I says to Knowles, as druv up with his waggon, 'You'll get a bit o' barley to-day, Knowles,' I says, 'if you look about you'; and then I went round by the rick-yard, and towart the Treddles'on road, and just as I come up by the big ash-tree, I see the man i' top-boots coming along on a bald-faced hoss--I wish I may never stir if I didn't. And I stood still till he come up, and I says, 'Good morning, sir,' I says, for I wanted to hear the turn of his tongue, as I might know whether he was a this-country man; so I says, 'Good morning, sir: it 'll 'old hup for the barley this morning, I think. There'll be a bit got hin, if we've good luck.' And he says, 'Eh, ye may be raight, there's noo tallin',' he says, and I knowed by that"--here Mr. Casson gave a wink--"as he didn't come from a hundred mile off. I daresay he'd think me a hodd talker, as you Loamshire folks allays does hany one as talks the right language." "The right language!" said Bartle Massey, contemptuously. "You're about as near the right language as a pig's squeaking is like a tune played on a key-bugle." "Well, I don't know," answered Mr. Casson, with an angry smile. "I should think a man as has lived among the gentry from a by, is likely to know what's the right language pretty nigh as well as a schoolmaster." "Aye, aye, man," said Bartle, with a tone of sarcastic consolation, "you talk the right language for you. When Mike Holdsworth's goat says ba-a-a, it's all right--it 'ud be unnatural for it to make any other noise." The rest of the party being Loamshire men, Mr. Casson had the laugh strongly against him, and wisely fell back on the previous question, which, far from being exhausted in a single evening, was renewed in the churchyard, before service, the next day, with the fresh interest conferred on all news when there is a fresh person to hear it; and that fresh hearer was Martin Poyser, who, as his wife said, "never went boozin' with that set at Casson's, a-sittin' soakin' in drink, and looking as wise as a lot o' cod-fish wi' red faces." It was probably owing to the conversation she had had with her husband on their way from church concerning this problematic stranger that Mrs. Poyser's thoughts immediately reverted to him when, a day or two afterwards, as she was standing at the house-door with her knitting, in that eager leisure which came to her when the afternoon cleaning was done, she saw the old squire enter the yard on his black pony, followed by John the groom. She always cited it afterwards as a case of prevision, which really had something more in it than her own remarkable penetration, that the moment she set eyes on the squire she said to herself, "I shouldna wonder if he's come about that man as is a-going to take the Chase Farm, wanting Poyser to do something for him without pay. But Poyser's a fool if he does." Something unwonted must clearly be in the wind, for the old squire's visits to his tenantry were rare; and though Mrs. Poyser had during the last twelvemonth recited many imaginary speeches, meaning even more than met the ear, which she was quite determined to make to him the next time he appeared within the gates of the Hall Farm, the speeches had always remained imaginary. "Good-day, Mrs. Poyser," said the old squire, peering at her with his short-sighted eyes--a mode of looking at her which, as Mrs. Poyser observed, "allays aggravated me: it was as if you was a insect, and he was going to dab his finger-nail on you." However, she said, "Your servant, sir," and curtsied with an air of perfect deference as she advanced towards him: she was not the woman to misbehave towards her betters, and fly in the face of the catechism, without severe provocation. "Is your husband at home, Mrs. Poyser?" "Yes, sir; he's only i' the rick-yard. I'll send for him in a minute, if you'll please to get down and step in." "Thank you; I will do so. I want to consult him about a little matter; but you are quite as much concerned in it, if not more. I must have your opinion too." "Hetty, run and tell your uncle to come in," said Mrs. Poyser, as they entered the house, and the old gentleman bowed low in answer to Hetty's curtsy; while Totty, conscious of a pinafore stained with gooseberry jam, stood hiding her face against the clock and peeping round furtively. "What a fine old kitchen this is!" said Mr. Donnithorne, looking round admiringly. He always spoke in the same deliberate, well-chiselled, polite way, whether his words were sugary or venomous. "And you keep it so exquisitely clean, Mrs. Poyser. I like these premises, do you know, beyond any on the estate." "Well, sir, since you're fond of 'em, I should be glad if you'd let a bit o' repairs be done to 'em, for the boarding's i' that state as we're like to be eaten up wi' rats and mice; and the cellar, you may stan' up to your knees i' water in't, if you like to go down; but perhaps you'd rather believe my words. Won't you please to sit down, sir?" "Not yet; I must see your dairy. I have not seen it for years, and I hear on all hands about your fine cheese and butter," said the squire, looking politely unconscious that there could be any question on which he and Mrs. Poyser might happen to disagree. "I think I see the door open, there. You must not be surprised if I cast a covetous eye on your cream and butter. I don't expect that Mrs. Satchell's cream and butter will bear comparison with yours." "I can't say, sir, I'm sure. It's seldom I see other folks's butter, though there's some on it as one's no need to see--the smell's enough." "Ah, now this I like," said Mr. Donnithorne, looking round at the damp temple of cleanliness, but keeping near the door. "I'm sure I should like my breakfast better if I knew the butter and cream came from this dairy. Thank you, that really is a pleasant sight. Unfortunately, my slight tendency to rheumatism makes me afraid of damp: I'll sit down in your comfortable kitchen. Ah, Poyser, how do you do? In the midst of business, I see, as usual. I've been looking at your wife's beautiful dairy--the best manager in the parish, is she not?" Mr. Poyser had just entered in shirt-sleeves and open waistcoat, with a face a shade redder than usual, from the exertion of "pitching." As he stood, red, rotund, and radiant, before the small, wiry, cool old gentleman, he looked like a prize apple by the side of a withered crab. "Will you please to take this chair, sir?" he said, lifting his father's arm-chair forward a little: "you'll find it easy." "No, thank you, I never sit in easy-chairs," said the old gentleman, seating himself on a small chair near the door. "Do you know, Mrs. Poyser--sit down, pray, both of you--I've been far from contented, for some time, with Mrs. Satchell's dairy management. I think she has not a good method, as you have." "Indeed, sir, I can't speak to that," said Mrs. Poyser in a hard voice, rolling and unrolling her knitting and looking icily out of the window, as she continued to stand opposite the squire. Poyser might sit down if he liked, she thought; she wasn't going to sit down, as if she'd give in to any such smooth-tongued palaver. Mr. Poyser, who looked and felt the reverse of icy, did sit down in his three-cornered chair. "And now, Poyser, as Satchell is laid up, I am intending to let the Chase Farm to a respectable tenant. I'm tired of having a farm on my own hands--nothing is made the best of in such cases, as you know. A satisfactory bailiff is hard to find; and I think you and I, Poyser, and your excellent wife here, can enter into a little arrangement in consequence, which will be to our mutual advantage." "Oh," said Mr. Poyser, with a good-natured blankness of imagination as to the nature of the arrangement. "If I'm called upon to speak, sir," said Mrs. Poyser, after glancing at her husband with pity at his softness, "you know better than me; but I don't see what the Chase Farm is t' us--we've cumber enough wi' our own farm. Not but what I'm glad to hear o' anybody respectable coming into the parish; there's some as ha' been brought in as hasn't been looked on i' that character." "You're likely to find Mr. Thurle an excellent neighbour, I assure you--such a one as you will feel glad to have accommodated by the little plan I'm going to mention, especially as I hope you will find it as much to your own advantage as his." "Indeed, sir, if it's anything t' our advantage, it'll be the first offer o' the sort I've heared on. It's them as take advantage that get advantage i' this world, I think. Folks have to wait long enough afore it's brought to 'em." "The fact is, Poyser," said the squire, ignoring Mrs. Poyser's theory of worldly prosperity, "there is too much dairy land, and too little plough land, on the Chase Farm to suit Thurle's purpose--indeed, he will only take the farm on condition of some change in it: his wife, it appears, is not a clever dairy-woman, like yours. Now, the plan I'm thinking of is to effect a little exchange. If you were to have the Hollow Pastures, you might increase your dairy, which must be so profitable under your wife's management; and I should request you, Mrs. Poyser, to supply my house with milk, cream, and butter at the market prices. On the other hand, Poyser, you might let Thurle have the Lower and Upper Ridges, which really, with our wet seasons, would be a good riddance for you. There is much less risk in dairy land than corn land." Mr. Poyser was leaning forward, with his elbows on his knees, his head on one side, and his mouth screwed up--apparently absorbed in making the tips of his fingers meet so as to represent with perfect accuracy the ribs of a ship. He was much too acute a man not to see through the whole business, and to foresee perfectly what would be his wife's view of the subject; but he disliked giving unpleasant answers. Unless it was on a point of farming practice, he would rather give up than have a quarrel, any day; and, after all, it mattered more to his wife than to him. So, after a few moments' silence, he looked up at her and said mildly, "What dost say?" Mrs. Poyser had had her eyes fixed on her husband with cold severity during his silence, but now she turned away her head with a toss, looked icily at the opposite roof of the cow-shed, and spearing her knitting together with the loose pin, held it firmly between her clasped hands. "Say? Why, I say you may do as you like about giving up any o' your corn-land afore your lease is up, which it won't be for a year come next Michaelmas, but I'll not consent to take more dairy work into my hands, either for love or money; and there's nayther love nor money here, as I can see, on'y other folks's love o' theirselves, and the money as is to go into other folks's pockets. I know there's them as is born t' own the land, and them as is born to sweat on't"--here Mrs. Poyser paused to gasp a little--"and I know it's christened folks's duty to submit to their betters as fur as flesh and blood 'ull bear it; but I'll not make a martyr o' myself, and wear myself to skin and bone, and worret myself as if I was a churn wi' butter a-coming in't, for no landlord in England, not if he was King George himself." "No, no, my dear Mrs. Poyser, certainly not," said the squire, still confident in his own powers of persuasion, "you must not overwork yourself; but don't you think your work will rather be lessened than increased in this way? There is so much milk required at the Abbey that you will have little increase of cheese and butter making from the addition to your dairy; and I believe selling the milk is the most profitable way of disposing of dairy produce, is it not?" "Aye, that's true," said Mr. Poyser, unable to repress an opinion on a question of farming profits, and forgetting that it was not in this case a purely abstract question. "I daresay," said Mrs. Poyser bitterly, turning her head half-way towards her husband and looking at the vacant arm-chair--"I daresay it's true for men as sit i' th' chimney-corner and make believe as everything's cut wi' ins an' outs to fit int' everything else. If you could make a pudding wi' thinking o' the batter, it 'ud be easy getting dinner. How do I know whether the milk 'ull be wanted constant? What's to make me sure as the house won't be put o' board wage afore we're many months older, and then I may have to lie awake o' nights wi' twenty gallons o' milk on my mind--and Dingall 'ull take no more butter, let alone paying for it; and we must fat pigs till we're obliged to beg the butcher on our knees to buy 'em, and lose half of 'em wi' the measles. And there's the fetching and carrying, as 'ud be welly half a day's work for a man an' hoss--that's to be took out o' the profits, I reckon? But there's folks 'ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water." "That difficulty--about the fetching and carrying--you will not have, Mrs. Poyser," said the squire, who thought that this entrance into particulars indicated a distant inclination to compromise on Mrs. Poyser's part. "Bethell will do that regularly with the cart and pony." "Oh, sir, begging your pardon, I've never been used t' having gentlefolks's servants coming about my back places, a-making love to both the gells at once and keeping 'em with their hands on their hips listening to all manner o' gossip when they should be down on their knees a-scouring. If we're to go to ruin, it shanna be wi' having our back kitchen turned into a public." "Well, Poyser," said the squire, shifting his tactics and looking as if he thought Mrs. Poyser had suddenly withdrawn from the proceedings and left the room, "you can turn the Hollows into feeding-land. I can easily make another arrangement about supplying my house. And I shall not forget your readiness to accommodate your landlord as well as a neighbour. I know you will be glad to have your lease renewed for three years, when the present one expires; otherwise, I daresay Thurle, who is a man of some capital, would be glad to take both the farms, as they could be worked so well together. But I don't want to part with an old tenant like you." To be thrust out of the discussion in this way would have been enough to complete Mrs. Poyser's exasperation, even without the final threat. Her husband, really alarmed at the possibility of their leaving the old place where he had been bred and born--for he believed the old squire had small spite enough for anything--was beginning a mild remonstrance explanatory of the inconvenience he should find in having to buy and sell more stock, with, "Well, sir, I think as it's rether hard..." when Mrs. Poyser burst in with the desperate determination to have her say out this once, though it were to rain notices to quit and the only shelter were the work-house. "Then, sir, if I may speak--as, for all I'm a woman, and there's folks as thinks a woman's fool enough to stan' by an' look on while the men sign her soul away, I've a right to speak, for I make one quarter o' the rent, and save another quarter--I say, if Mr. Thurle's so ready to take farms under you, it's a pity but what he should take this, and see if he likes to live in a house wi' all the plagues o' Egypt in't--wi' the cellar full o' water, and frogs and toads hoppin' up the steps by dozens--and the floors rotten, and the rats and mice gnawing every bit o' cheese, and runnin' over our heads as we lie i' bed till we expect 'em to eat us up alive--as it's a mercy they hanna eat the children long ago. I should like to see if there's another tenant besides Poyser as 'ud put up wi' never having a bit o' repairs done till a place tumbles down--and not then, on'y wi' begging and praying and having to pay half--and being strung up wi' the rent as it's much if he gets enough out o' the land to pay, for all he's put his own money into the ground beforehand. See if you'll get a stranger to lead such a life here as that: a maggot must be born i' the rotten cheese to like it, I reckon. You may run away from my words, sir," continued Mrs. Poyser, following the old squire beyond the door--for after the first moments of stunned surprise he had got up, and, waving his hand towards her with a smile, had walked out towards his pony. But it was impossible for him to get away immediately, for John was walking the pony up and down the yard, and was some distance from the causeway when his master beckoned. "You may run away from my words, sir, and you may go spinnin' underhand ways o' doing us a mischief, for you've got Old Harry to your friend, though nobody else is, but I tell you for once as we're not dumb creatures to be abused and made money on by them as ha' got the lash i' their hands, for want o' knowing how t' undo the tackle. An' if I'm th' only one as speaks my mind, there's plenty o' the same way o' thinking i' this parish and the next to 't, for your name's no better than a brimstone match in everybody's nose--if it isna two-three old folks as you think o' saving your soul by giving 'em a bit o' flannel and a drop o' porridge. An' you may be right i' thinking it'll take but little to save your soul, for it'll be the smallest savin' y' iver made, wi' all your scrapin'." There are occasions on which two servant-girls and a waggoner may be a formidable audience, and as the squire rode away on his black pony, even the gift of short-sightedness did not prevent him from being aware that Molly and Nancy and Tim were grinning not far from him. Perhaps he suspected that sour old John was grinning behind him--which was also the fact. Meanwhile the bull-dog, the black-and-tan terrier, Alick's sheep-dog, and the gander hissing at a safe distance from the pony's heels carried out the idea of Mrs. Poyser's solo in an impressive quartet. Mrs. Poyser, however, had no sooner seen the pony move off than she turned round, gave the two hilarious damsels a look which drove them into the back kitchen, and unspearing her knitting, began to knit again with her usual rapidity as she re-entered the house. "Thee'st done it now," said Mr. Poyser, a little alarmed and uneasy, but not without some triumphant amusement at his wife's outbreak. "Yes, I know I've done it," said Mrs. Poyser; "but I've had my say out, and I shall be th' easier for't all my life. There's no pleasure i' living if you're to be corked up for ever, and only dribble your mind out by the sly, like a leaky barrel. I shan't repent saying what I think, if I live to be as old as th' old squire; and there's little likelihood--for it seems as if them as aren't wanted here are th' only folks as aren't wanted i' th' other world." "But thee wutna like moving from th' old place, this Michaelmas twelvemonth," said Mr. Poyser, "and going into a strange parish, where thee know'st nobody. It'll be hard upon us both, and upo' Father too." "Eh, it's no use worreting; there's plenty o' things may happen between this and Michaelmas twelvemonth. The captain may be master afore them, for what we know," said Mrs. Poyser, inclined to take an unusually hopeful view of an embarrassment which had been brought about by her own merit and not by other people's fault. "I'm none for worreting," said Mr. Poyser, rising from his three-cornered chair and walking slowly towards the door; "but I should be loath to leave th' old place, and the parish where I was bred and born, and Father afore me. We should leave our roots behind us, I doubt, and niver thrive again."

Chapter 32

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter32

Mrs. Poyser 'Has Her Say Out' The next day Squire Donnithorne visits the Poysers to make a deal with them. He has a possible tenant for the Chase Farm but the man wants more plough land. If the Poysers would give up some plough land, they could have more dairy land and then Mrs. Poyser could make more money with her dairy. The Poysers see through this plan to cheat them of their land. Next, the squire threatens them that if they want their lease renewed, they should comply with his wishes. This is too much for Mrs. Poyser who tells off the squire on behalf of all the tenants for his cheap and miserly ways, for not keeping up the property, and for taking all the profits for himself. He rides off, and Mr. Poyser, though pleased at his wife's action, is worried that they will be evicted.

Commentary on Chapter 32 This is a comic scene where Mrs. Poyser's wit is on display. She mentions that it is worth any price to have had her say, for "There's no pleasure in living if you're to be corked up for iver" . When the squire threatens to evict them, she answers that it won't be so easy to find another tenant to take their place because "a maggot must be born in the rotten cheese to like it, I reckon" . The Poysers worry that they will be evicted on Michaelmas, twelvemonth. This means they have a year from Michael's Mass on Sept. 29, the date when farming contracts were made. Mrs. Poyser says ironically that there is no telling what could have happened by then. This is another bit of foreshadowing.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/33.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_33_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 33

chapter 33

{"name": "Chapter 33", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter33", "summary": "More Links It is harvest time, and Mrs. Poyser is the heroine of the valley for speaking her mind to the old squire. Mr. Irwine and his mother admire Mrs. Poyser for her backbone but doubt the old squire will be around much longer. Both Mrs. Poyser and Adam notice changes in Hetty after she receives the letter. She is quieter, more cooperative and less vain. She does her work without scolding and does not want to go anywhere. Adam takes it as a sign she is getting over Arthur. He feels hopeful. The narrator comments on Adam's love for Hetty. On the one hand, he falls in love with her because of the way she looks; he has no idea who she is. But, the narrator thinks Adam's love comes from his strength not his weakness, for love is like a mysterious music set off by beauty, and Hetty touches all the deep places in Adam. His work is prospering, and he can think of marriage. Jonathan Burge offers him a partnership, and so with his two jobs, he can afford to buy a house.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 33 Readers will understand more than Adam does about Hetty's changes. She seems to be hiding away, not wanting to call attention to herself. She has a harder, more mature look. She tries to be agreeable to Adam. She may already suspect that she is pregnant. In any case, she has been abandoned by Arthur and now plays up to Adam, dressing as he likes and acting demure. She is no trouble to her aunt. She depends on others now and must hide what she has done. The narrator tries to speculate on Adam's illusions about Hetty. Are they foolish or noble? They proceed from a noble mind who attributes its own nobility to another, but the love Adam feels is deep nonetheless. If it is an error, it is the error of a good person, one who does not know the minds of women. Eliot, however, by showing us the depth of each character, brings out the contradictions, complexity, and mystery of the human being. We assume we know others, but even people we are close to may not know us. The Poysers have raised Hetty and still they have no idea of the misery she is able to plunge all them into in just a few months."}

THE barley was all carried at last, and the harvest suppers went by without waiting for the dismal black crop of beans. The apples and nuts were gathered and stored; the scent of whey departed from the farm-houses, and the scent of brewing came in its stead. The woods behind the Chase, and all the hedgerow trees, took on a solemn splendour under the dark low-hanging skies. Michaelmas was come, with its fragrant basketfuls of purple damsons, and its paler purple daisies, and its lads and lasses leaving or seeking service and winding along between the yellow hedges, with their bundles under their arms. But though Michaelmas was come, Mr. Thurle, that desirable tenant, did not come to the Chase Farm, and the old squire, after all, had been obliged to put in a new bailiff. It was known throughout the two parishes that the squire's plan had been frustrated because the Poysers had refused to be "put upon," and Mrs. Poyser's outbreak was discussed in all the farm-houses with a zest which was only heightened by frequent repetition. The news that "Bony" was come back from Egypt was comparatively insipid, and the repulse of the French in Italy was nothing to Mrs. Poyser's repulse of the old squire. Mr. Irwine had heard a version of it in every parishioner's house, with the one exception of the Chase. But since he had always, with marvellous skill, avoided any quarrel with Mr. Donnithorne, he could not allow himself the pleasure of laughing at the old gentleman's discomfiture with any one besides his mother, who declared that if she were rich she should like to allow Mrs. Poyser a pension for life, and wanted to invite her to the parsonage that she might hear an account of the scene from Mrs. Poyser's own lips. "No, no, Mother," said Mr. Irwine; "it was a little bit of irregular justice on Mrs. Poyser's part, but a magistrate like me must not countenance irregular justice. There must be no report spread that I have taken notice of the quarrel, else I shall lose the little good influence I have over the old man." "Well, I like that woman even better than her cream-cheeses," said Mrs. Irwine. "She has the spirit of three men, with that pale face of hers. And she says such sharp things too." "Sharp! Yes, her tongue is like a new-set razor. She's quite original in her talk too; one of those untaught wits that help to stock a country with proverbs. I told you that capital thing I heard her say about Craig--that he was like a cock, who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow. Now that's an AEsop's fable in a sentence." "But it will be a bad business if the old gentleman turns them out of the farm next Michaelmas, eh?" said Mrs. Irwine. "Oh, that must not be; and Poyser is such a good tenant that Donnithorne is likely to think twice, and digest his spleen rather than turn them out. But if he should give them notice at Lady Day, Arthur and I must move heaven and earth to mollify him. Such old parishioners as they are must not go." "Ah, there's no knowing what may happen before Lady day," said Mrs. Irwine. "It struck me on Arthur's birthday that the old man was a little shaken: he's eighty-three, you know. It's really an unconscionable age. It's only women who have a right to live as long as that." "When they've got old-bachelor sons who would be forlorn without them," said Mr. Irwine, laughing, and kissing his mother's hand. Mrs. Poyser, too, met her husband's occasional forebodings of a notice to quit with "There's no knowing what may happen before Lady day"--one of those undeniable general propositions which are usually intended to convey a particular meaning very far from undeniable. But it is really too hard upon human nature that it should be held a criminal offence to imagine the death even of the king when he is turned eighty-three. It is not to be believed that any but the dullest Britons can be good subjects under that hard condition. Apart from this foreboding, things went on much as usual in the Poyser household. Mrs. Poyser thought she noticed a surprising improvement in Hetty. To be sure, the girl got "closer tempered, and sometimes she seemed as if there'd be no drawing a word from her with cart-ropes," but she thought much less about her dress, and went after the work quite eagerly, without any telling. And it was wonderful how she never wanted to go out now--indeed, could hardly be persuaded to go; and she bore her aunt's putting a stop to her weekly lesson in fine-work at the Chase without the least grumbling or pouting. It must be, after all, that she had set her heart on Adam at last, and her sudden freak of wanting to be a lady's maid must have been caused by some little pique or misunderstanding between them, which had passed by. For whenever Adam came to the Hall Farm, Hetty seemed to be in better spirits and to talk more than at other times, though she was almost sullen when Mr. Craig or any other admirer happened to pay a visit there. Adam himself watched her at first with trembling anxiety, which gave way to surprise and delicious hope. Five days after delivering Arthur's letter, he had ventured to go to the Hall Farm again--not without dread lest the sight of him might be painful to her. She was not in the house-place when he entered, and he sat talking to Mr. and Mrs. Poyser for a few minutes with a heavy fear on his heart that they might presently tell him Hetty was ill. But by and by there came a light step that he knew, and when Mrs. Poyser said, "Come, Hetty, where have you been?" Adam was obliged to turn round, though he was afraid to see the changed look there must be in her face. He almost started when he saw her smiling as if she were pleased to see him--looking the same as ever at a first glance, only that she had her cap on, which he had never seen her in before when he came of an evening. Still, when he looked at her again and again as she moved about or sat at her work, there was a change: the cheeks were as pink as ever, and she smiled as much as she had ever done of late, but there was something different in her eyes, in the expression of her face, in all her movements, Adam thought--something harder, older, less child-like. "Poor thing!" he said to himself, "that's allays likely. It's because she's had her first heartache. But she's got a spirit to bear up under it. Thank God for that." As the weeks went by, and he saw her always looking pleased to see him--turning up her lovely face towards him as if she meant him to understand that she was glad for him to come--and going about her work in the same equable way, making no sign of sorrow, he began to believe that her feeling towards Arthur must have been much slighter than he had imagined in his first indignation and alarm, and that she had been able to think of her girlish fancy that Arthur was in love with her and would marry her as a folly of which she was timely cured. And it perhaps was, as he had sometimes in his more cheerful moments hoped it would be--her heart was really turning with all the more warmth towards the man she knew to have a serious love for her. Possibly you think that Adam was not at all sagacious in his interpretations, and that it was altogether extremely unbecoming in a sensible man to behave as he did--falling in love with a girl who really had nothing more than her beauty to recommend her, attributing imaginary virtues to her, and even condescending to cleave to her after she had fallen in love with another man, waiting for her kind looks as a patient trembling dog waits for his master's eye to be turned upon him. But in so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider, it is hard to find rules without exceptions. Of course, I know that, as a rule, sensible men fall in love with the most sensible women of their acquaintance, see through all the pretty deceits of coquettish beauty, never imagine themselves loved when they are not loved, cease loving on all proper occasions, and marry the woman most fitted for them in every respect--indeed, so as to compel the approbation of all the maiden ladies in their neighbourhood. But even to this rule an exception will occur now and then in the lapse of centuries, and my friend Adam was one. For my own part, however, I respect him none the less--nay, I think the deep love he had for that sweet, rounded, blossom-like, dark-eyed Hetty, of whose inward self he was really very ignorant, came out of the very strength of his nature and not out of any inconsistent weakness. Is it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on by exquisite music? To feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your soul, the delicate fibres of life where no memory can penetrate, and binding together your whole being past and present in one unspeakable vibration, melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love that has been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learnt lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with past sorrow and your present sorrow with all your past joy? If not, then neither is it a weakness to be so wrought upon by the exquisite curves of a woman's cheek and neck and arms, by the liquid depths of her beseeching eyes, or the sweet childish pout of her lips. For the beauty of a lovely woman is like music: what can one say more? Beauty has an expression beyond and far above the one woman's soul that it clothes, as the words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them. It is more than a woman's love that moves us in a woman's eyes--it seems to be a far-off mighty love that has come near to us, and made speech for itself there; the rounded neck, the dimpled arm, move us by something more than their prettiness--by their close kinship with all we have known of tenderness and peace. The noblest nature sees the most of this impersonal expression in beauty (it is needless to say that there are gentlemen with whiskers dyed and undyed who see none of it whatever), and for this reason, the noblest nature is often the most blinded to the character of the one woman's soul that the beauty clothes. Whence, I fear, the tragedy of human life is likely to continue for a long time to come, in spite of mental philosophers who are ready with the best receipts for avoiding all mistakes of the kind. Our good Adam had no fine words into which he could put his feeling for Hetty: he could not disguise mystery in this way with the appearance of knowledge; he called his love frankly a mystery, as you have heard him. He only knew that the sight and memory of her moved him deeply, touching the spring of all love and tenderness, all faith and courage within him. How could he imagine narrowness, selfishness, hardness in her? He created the mind he believed in out of his own, which was large, unselfish, tender. The hopes he felt about Hetty softened a little his feeling towards Arthur. Surely his attentions to Hetty must have been of a slight kind; they were altogether wrong, and such as no man in Arthur's position ought to have allowed himself, but they must have had an air of playfulness about them, which had probably blinded him to their danger and had prevented them from laying any strong hold on Hetty's heart. As the new promise of happiness rose for Adam, his indignation and jealousy began to die out. Hetty was not made unhappy; he almost believed that she liked him best; and the thought sometimes crossed his mind that the friendship which had once seemed dead for ever might revive in the days to come, and he would not have to say "good-bye" to the grand old woods, but would like them better because they were Arthur's. For this new promise of happiness following so quickly on the shock of pain had an intoxicating effect on the sober Adam, who had all his life been used to much hardship and moderate hope. Was he really going to have an easy lot after all? It seemed so, for at the beginning of November, Jonathan Burge, finding it impossible to replace Adam, had at last made up his mind to offer him a share in the business, without further condition than that he should continue to give his energies to it and renounce all thought of having a separate business of his own. Son-in-law or no son-in-law, Adam had made himself too necessary to be parted with, and his headwork was so much more important to Burge than his skill in handicraft that his having the management of the woods made little difference in the value of his services; and as to the bargains about the squire's timber, it would be easy to call in a third person. Adam saw here an opening into a broadening path of prosperous work such as he had thought of with ambitious longing ever since he was a lad: he might come to build a bridge, or a town hall, or a factory, for he had always said to himself that Jonathan Burge's building business was like an acorn, which might be the mother of a great tree. So he gave his hand to Burge on that bargain, and went home with his mind full of happy visions, in which (my refined reader will perhaps be shocked when I say it) the image of Hetty hovered, and smiled over plans for seasoning timber at a trifling expense, calculations as to the cheapening of bricks per thousand by water-carriage, and a favourite scheme for the strengthening of roofs and walls with a peculiar form of iron girder. What then? Adam's enthusiasm lay in these things; and our love is inwrought in our enthusiasm as electricity is inwrought in the air, exalting its power by a subtle presence. Adam would be able to take a separate house now, and provide for his mother in the old one; his prospects would justify his marrying very soon, and if Dinah consented to have Seth, their mother would perhaps be more contented to live apart from Adam. But he told himself that he would not be hasty--he would not try Hetty's feeling for him until it had had time to grow strong and firm. However, tomorrow, after church, he would go to the Hall Farm and tell them the news. Mr. Poyser, he knew, would like it better than a five-pound note, and he should see if Hetty's eyes brightened at it. The months would be short with all he had to fill his mind, and this foolish eagerness which had come over him of late must not hurry him into any premature words. Yet when he got home and told his mother the good news, and ate his supper, while she sat by almost crying for joy and wanting him to eat twice as much as usual because of this good-luck, he could not help preparing her gently for the coming change by talking of the old house being too small for them all to go on living in it always.

Chapter 33

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter33

More Links It is harvest time, and Mrs. Poyser is the heroine of the valley for speaking her mind to the old squire. Mr. Irwine and his mother admire Mrs. Poyser for her backbone but doubt the old squire will be around much longer. Both Mrs. Poyser and Adam notice changes in Hetty after she receives the letter. She is quieter, more cooperative and less vain. She does her work without scolding and does not want to go anywhere. Adam takes it as a sign she is getting over Arthur. He feels hopeful. The narrator comments on Adam's love for Hetty. On the one hand, he falls in love with her because of the way she looks; he has no idea who she is. But, the narrator thinks Adam's love comes from his strength not his weakness, for love is like a mysterious music set off by beauty, and Hetty touches all the deep places in Adam. His work is prospering, and he can think of marriage. Jonathan Burge offers him a partnership, and so with his two jobs, he can afford to buy a house.

Commentary on Chapter 33 Readers will understand more than Adam does about Hetty's changes. She seems to be hiding away, not wanting to call attention to herself. She has a harder, more mature look. She tries to be agreeable to Adam. She may already suspect that she is pregnant. In any case, she has been abandoned by Arthur and now plays up to Adam, dressing as he likes and acting demure. She is no trouble to her aunt. She depends on others now and must hide what she has done. The narrator tries to speculate on Adam's illusions about Hetty. Are they foolish or noble? They proceed from a noble mind who attributes its own nobility to another, but the love Adam feels is deep nonetheless. If it is an error, it is the error of a good person, one who does not know the minds of women. Eliot, however, by showing us the depth of each character, brings out the contradictions, complexity, and mystery of the human being. We assume we know others, but even people we are close to may not know us. The Poysers have raised Hetty and still they have no idea of the misery she is able to plunge all them into in just a few months.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/34.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_34_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 34

chapter 34

{"name": "Chapter 34", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter34", "summary": "The Betrothal Adam walks Hetty home after church one Sunday in November. He asks her to take his arm. He is more impatient about her now and is waiting for a sign from Hetty to declare his love. He tells her his good news about becoming a partner with Jonathan Burge. Suddenly, she is alarmed, for she remembers that the partnership was supposed to be coupled with an engagement to Mary Burge. Just when she was counting on Adam, he seems to slip away. She cries, and Adam guesses it is because of Mary Burge. He believes Hetty has come to love him and proposes marriage. She accepts. They rush home to tell the Poysers, who are overjoyed. It is what they had wished. They set the marriage date for the spring so they will have time to get ready. Mr. Poyser tells Hetty to kiss Adam, and she turns away. Then he tells Adam he should kiss his fiancee. Adam gives Hetty a kiss on the lips. Hetty feels nothing for Adam, but she is content to be loved and taken care of. It's not Arthur or what she expected, but it will do.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 34 Readers will know why Hetty has \"more luxuriant womanliness\" than before, but Adam does not guess the possible reason. Adam does not seem to take it ill that Hetty does not come forth with a kiss on her own. Perhaps he thinks her shy. It is obvious she is looking for security, for she no longer has youthful hopes of love. The reader certainly guesses Hetty is pregnant and wonders if she knows. Although a woman today would certainly know by this time she was going to have a baby, Hetty is probably ignorant of such things and has no one to ask. Eliot never says outright that Hetty is pregnant, but it becomes plain in the next chapter. Knowing what we know about Hetty, there is no way this marriage could be happy. Even if disaster were not waiting, Adam would surely be disappointed to find Hetty did not love him. Her pretense could not hold up for long. For the moment, he is deliriously happy; his life has purpose and direction now."}

IT was a dry Sunday, and really a pleasant day for the 2d of November. There was no sunshine, but the clouds were high, and the wind was so still that the yellow leaves which fluttered down from the hedgerow elms must have fallen from pure decay. Nevertheless, Mrs. Poyser did not go to church, for she had taken a cold too serious to be neglected; only two winters ago she had been laid up for weeks with a cold; and since his wife did not go to church, Mr. Poyser considered that on the whole it would be as well for him to stay away too and "keep her company." He could perhaps have given no precise form to the reasons that determined this conclusion, but it is well known to all experienced minds that our firmest convictions are often dependent on subtle impressions for which words are quite too coarse a medium. However it was, no one from the Poyser family went to church that afternoon except Hetty and the boys; yet Adam was bold enough to join them after church, and say that he would walk home with them, though all the way through the village he appeared to be chiefly occupied with Marty and Tommy, telling them about the squirrels in Binton Coppice, and promising to take them there some day. But when they came to the fields he said to the boys, "Now, then, which is the stoutest walker? Him as gets to th' home-gate first shall be the first to go with me to Binton Coppice on the donkey. But Tommy must have the start up to the next stile, because he's the smallest." Adam had never behaved so much like a determined lover before. As soon as the boys had both set off, he looked down at Hetty and said, "Won't you hang on my arm, Hetty?" in a pleading tone, as if he had already asked her and she had refused. Hetty looked up at him smilingly and put her round arm through his in a moment. It was nothing to her, putting her arm through Adam's, but she knew he cared a great deal about having her arm through his, and she wished him to care. Her heart beat no faster, and she looked at the half-bare hedgerows and the ploughed field with the same sense of oppressive dulness as before. But Adam scarcely felt that he was walking. He thought Hetty must know that he was pressing her arm a little--a very little. Words rushed to his lips that he dared not utter--that he had made up his mind not to utter yet--and so he was silent for the length of that field. The calm patience with which he had once waited for Hetty's love, content only with her presence and the thought of the future, had forsaken him since that terrible shock nearly three months ago. The agitations of jealousy had given a new restlessness to his passion--had made fear and uncertainty too hard almost to bear. But though he might not speak to Hetty of his love, he would tell her about his new prospects and see if she would be pleased. So when he was enough master of himself to talk, he said, "I'm going to tell your uncle some news that'll surprise him, Hetty; and I think he'll be glad to hear it too." "What's that?" Hetty said indifferently. "Why, Mr. Burge has offered me a share in his business, and I'm going to take it." There was a change in Hetty's face, certainly not produced by any agreeable impression from this news. In fact she felt a momentary annoyance and alarm, for she had so often heard it hinted by her uncle that Adam might have Mary Burge and a share in the business any day, if he liked, that she associated the two objects now, and the thought immediately occurred that perhaps Adam had given her up because of what had happened lately, and had turned towards Mary Burge. With that thought, and before she had time to remember any reasons why it could not be true, came a new sense of forsakenness and disappointment. The one thing--the one person--her mind had rested on in its dull weariness, had slipped away from her, and peevish misery filled her eyes with tears. She was looking on the ground, but Adam saw her face, saw the tears, and before he had finished saying, "Hetty, dear Hetty, what are you crying for?" his eager rapid thought had flown through all the causes conceivable to him, and had at last alighted on half the true one. Hetty thought he was going to marry Mary Burge--she didn't like him to marry--perhaps she didn't like him to marry any one but herself? All caution was swept away--all reason for it was gone, and Adam could feel nothing but trembling joy. He leaned towards her and took her hand, as he said: "I could afford to be married now, Hetty--I could make a wife comfortable; but I shall never want to be married if you won't have me." Hetty looked up at him and smiled through her tears, as she had done to Arthur that first evening in the wood, when she had thought he was not coming, and yet he came. It was a feebler relief, a feebler triumph she felt now, but the great dark eyes and the sweet lips were as beautiful as ever, perhaps more beautiful, for there was a more luxuriant womanliness about Hetty of late. Adam could hardly believe in the happiness of that moment. His right hand held her left, and he pressed her arm close against his heart as he leaned down towards her. "Do you really love me, Hetty? Will you be my own wife, to love and take care of as long as I live?" Hetty did not speak, but Adam's face was very close to hers, and she put up her round cheek against his, like a kitten. She wanted to be caressed--she wanted to feel as if Arthur were with her again. Adam cared for no words after that, and they hardly spoke through the rest of the walk. He only said, "I may tell your uncle and aunt, mayn't I, Hetty?" and she said, "Yes." The red fire-light on the hearth at the Hall Farm shone on joyful faces that evening, when Hetty was gone upstairs and Adam took the opportunity of telling Mr. and Mrs. Poyser and the grandfather that he saw his way to maintaining a wife now, and that Hetty had consented to have him. "I hope you have no objections against me for her husband," said Adam; "I'm a poor man as yet, but she shall want nothing as I can work for." "Objections?" said Mr. Poyser, while the grandfather leaned forward and brought out his long "Nay, nay." "What objections can we ha' to you, lad? Never mind your being poorish as yet; there's money in your head-piece as there's money i' the sown field, but it must ha' time. You'n got enough to begin on, and we can do a deal tow'rt the bit o' furniture you'll want. Thee'st got feathers and linen to spare--plenty, eh?" This question was of course addressed to Mrs. Poyser, who was wrapped up in a warm shawl and was too hoarse to speak with her usual facility. At first she only nodded emphatically, but she was presently unable to resist the temptation to be more explicit. "It ud be a poor tale if I hadna feathers and linen," she said, hoarsely, "when I never sell a fowl but what's plucked, and the wheel's a-going every day o' the week." "Come, my wench," said Mr. Poyser, when Hetty came down, "come and kiss us, and let us wish you luck." Hetty went very quietly and kissed the big good-natured man. "There!" he said, patting her on the back, "go and kiss your aunt and your grandfather. I'm as wishful t' have you settled well as if you was my own daughter; and so's your aunt, I'll be bound, for she's done by you this seven 'ear, Hetty, as if you'd been her own. Come, come, now," he went on, becoming jocose, as soon as Hetty had kissed her aunt and the old man, "Adam wants a kiss too, I'll warrant, and he's a right to one now." Hetty turned away, smiling, towards her empty chair. "Come, Adam, then, take one," persisted Mr. Poyser, "else y' arena half a man." Adam got up, blushing like a small maiden--great strong fellow as he was--and, putting his arm round Hetty stooped down and gently kissed her lips. It was a pretty scene in the red fire-light; for there were no candles--why should there be, when the fire was so bright and was reflected from all the pewter and the polished oak? No one wanted to work on a Sunday evening. Even Hetty felt something like contentment in the midst of all this love. Adam's attachment to her, Adam's caress, stirred no passion in her, were no longer enough to satisfy her vanity, but they were the best her life offered her now--they promised her some change. There was a great deal of discussion before Adam went away, about the possibility of his finding a house that would do for him to settle in. No house was empty except the one next to Will Maskery's in the village, and that was too small for Adam now. Mr. Poyser insisted that the best plan would be for Seth and his mother to move and leave Adam in the old home, which might be enlarged after a while, for there was plenty of space in the woodyard and garden; but Adam objected to turning his mother out. "Well, well," said Mr. Poyser at last, "we needna fix everything to-night. We must take time to consider. You canna think o' getting married afore Easter. I'm not for long courtships, but there must be a bit o' time to make things comfortable." "Aye, to be sure," said Mrs. Poyser, in a hoarse whisper; "Christian folks can't be married like cuckoos, I reckon." "I'm a bit daunted, though," said Mr. Poyser, "when I think as we may have notice to quit, and belike be forced to take a farm twenty mile off." "Eh," said the old man, staring at the floor and lifting his hands up and down, while his arms rested on the elbows of his chair, "it's a poor tale if I mun leave th' ould spot an be buried in a strange parish. An' you'll happen ha' double rates to pay," he added, looking up at his son. "Well, thee mustna fret beforehand, father," said Martin the younger. "Happen the captain 'ull come home and make our peace wi' th' old squire. I build upo' that, for I know the captain 'll see folks righted if he can."

Chapter 34

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter34

The Betrothal Adam walks Hetty home after church one Sunday in November. He asks her to take his arm. He is more impatient about her now and is waiting for a sign from Hetty to declare his love. He tells her his good news about becoming a partner with Jonathan Burge. Suddenly, she is alarmed, for she remembers that the partnership was supposed to be coupled with an engagement to Mary Burge. Just when she was counting on Adam, he seems to slip away. She cries, and Adam guesses it is because of Mary Burge. He believes Hetty has come to love him and proposes marriage. She accepts. They rush home to tell the Poysers, who are overjoyed. It is what they had wished. They set the marriage date for the spring so they will have time to get ready. Mr. Poyser tells Hetty to kiss Adam, and she turns away. Then he tells Adam he should kiss his fiancee. Adam gives Hetty a kiss on the lips. Hetty feels nothing for Adam, but she is content to be loved and taken care of. It's not Arthur or what she expected, but it will do.

Commentary on Chapter 34 Readers will know why Hetty has "more luxuriant womanliness" than before, but Adam does not guess the possible reason. Adam does not seem to take it ill that Hetty does not come forth with a kiss on her own. Perhaps he thinks her shy. It is obvious she is looking for security, for she no longer has youthful hopes of love. The reader certainly guesses Hetty is pregnant and wonders if she knows. Although a woman today would certainly know by this time she was going to have a baby, Hetty is probably ignorant of such things and has no one to ask. Eliot never says outright that Hetty is pregnant, but it becomes plain in the next chapter. Knowing what we know about Hetty, there is no way this marriage could be happy. Even if disaster were not waiting, Adam would surely be disappointed to find Hetty did not love him. Her pretense could not hold up for long. For the moment, he is deliriously happy; his life has purpose and direction now.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/35.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_35_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 35

chapter 35

{"name": "Chapter 35", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter35", "summary": "The Hidden Dread Adam doesn't see much of Hetty during the winter between November and February because he is working two jobs and getting ready for the wedding in March. Two rooms are prepared for Hetty and Adam in the Bede home, so that Seth and Lisbeth can stay in the house. Adam does not know why Hetty seems depressed sometimes and thinks it's because of his mother living with them. Mrs. Poyser is surprised at Hetty's ability to take on extra housework at Hall Farm and assumes she is learning how to be a housewife. In February Hetty goes to Treddleston to get some things for her wedding. She wears her red cloak and bonnet and wanders about in a daze, feeling lost. When she looks at a pond and wonders if she could drown herself in it, it is understood that she is pregnant. The narrator finally answers the reader's questions about Hetty's condition, but indirectly, since she cannot discuss it openly with a Victorian audience. She calls the pregnancy \"the hidden dread\" and says Hetty only found out after her engagement to Adam. The narrator gives pride as a reason Hetty does not tell anyone. She thinks Arthur cannot do anything for her because her one dread is discovery, and he cannot save her from that. Now, she thinks she must run away. The only thought is that she has to hide, so that no one will ever know what happened to her. Telling her aunt she is going to see Dinah Morris for a while, she leaves by coach, silently crying tears at parting from Adam, who had given her love and protection. They will not miss her for at least two weeks. She plans to go to Arthur at Windsor, for surely he will take care of her. She knows she will never see home again.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 35 This is the last chapter of the fourth book, the book where the consequences of the love affair between Hetty and Arthur come out. It opened with the crisis of Adam seeing them kiss, and it ends with Hetty running away, approximately eight months pregnant, trying to escape discovery. The next book will reveal the full tragedy. The narrator tries to explain Hetty's puzzling behavior. She doesn't really understand she is pregnant for a long time, apparently, a detail hard for a modern reader to swallow. Her character has been explained, however, as not wanting to face unpleasant facts. And, most women at this time were ignorant of anatomy and sex, having to learn things from other women. Hetty, like Arthur, depends on the opinions others have of her. She seems to have little moral integrity of her own. For instance, she never seems to give one thought to the baby or what she could do for it. She waits so long to admit the problem and to do anything, because like Arthur, she thinks something will happen to save her from this fate, a miscarriage perhaps. Equally hard to understand is how she could hide it, but with aprons and cloaks, it might be possible. One also wonders why she waits to contact Arthur as he told her to do if there was any trouble. The narrator explains that Hetty does not think that Arthur could cover up for her. He can take care of her and give her money, but he cannot save her reputation. This reminds us again of the small town atmosphere. If she goes to anyone she knows for help--Arthur and Dinah are the two who might do something--they would have to let her family and friends know. In her pride, she believes herself alone in her suffering, and the best solution for her is to disappear, so at least her reputation will be saved. Hetty's reasoning is not that of an adult, and by shifting to Hetty's childish and fearful point of view in this chapter and in the fifth book, Eliot does something surprising no doubt for a Victorian audience. She does not try to excuse Hetty as a fallen woman, but she makes her plight sympathetic and understandable. We must have human pity for her. Her grief and fear make her close to insane in her thinking and actions. Arthur had thought to himself that even in the worst case, he could help Hetty, make it up to her, and make her glad that she had been with him. The evil consequences are more than he could have imagined and cannot be fixed with money. Anyone would be sorely tested by this trial, but Hetty does not have the inner resources or faith, like Dinah would, to survive such an experience and to make courageous choices."}

IT was a busy time for Adam--the time between the beginning of November and the beginning of February, and he could see little of Hetty, except on Sundays. But a happy time, nevertheless, for it was taking him nearer and nearer to March, when they were to be married, and all the little preparations for their new housekeeping marked the progress towards the longed-for day. Two new rooms had been "run up" to the old house, for his mother and Seth were to live with them after all. Lisbeth had cried so piteously at the thought of leaving Adam that he had gone to Hetty and asked her if, for the love of him, she would put up with his mother's ways and consent to live with her. To his great delight, Hetty said, "Yes; I'd as soon she lived with us as not." Hetty's mind was oppressed at that moment with a worse difficulty than poor Lisbeth's ways; she could not care about them. So Adam was consoled for the disappointment he had felt when Seth had come back from his visit to Snowfield and said "it was no use--Dinah's heart wasna turned towards marrying." For when he told his mother that Hetty was willing they should all live together and there was no more need of them to think of parting, she said, in a more contented tone than he had heard her speak in since it had been settled that he was to be married, "Eh, my lad, I'll be as still as th' ould tabby, an' ne'er want to do aught but th' offal work, as she wonna like t' do. An' then we needna part the platters an' things, as ha' stood on the shelf together sin' afore thee wast born." There was only one cloud that now and then came across Adam's sunshine: Hetty seemed unhappy sometimes. But to all his anxious, tender questions, she replied with an assurance that she was quite contented and wished nothing different; and the next time he saw her she was more lively than usual. It might be that she was a little overdone with work and anxiety now, for soon after Christmas Mrs. Poyser had taken another cold, which had brought on inflammation, and this illness had confined her to her room all through January. Hetty had to manage everything downstairs, and half-supply Molly's place too, while that good damsel waited on her mistress, and she seemed to throw herself so entirely into her new functions, working with a grave steadiness which was new in her, that Mr. Poyser often told Adam she was wanting to show him what a good housekeeper he would have; but he "doubted the lass was o'erdoing it--she must have a bit o' rest when her aunt could come downstairs." This desirable event of Mrs. Poyser's coming downstairs happened in the early part of February, when some mild weather thawed the last patch of snow on the Binton Hills. On one of these days, soon after her aunt came down, Hetty went to Treddleston to buy some of the wedding things which were wanting, and which Mrs. Poyser had scolded her for neglecting, observing that she supposed "it was because they were not for th' outside, else she'd ha' bought 'em fast enough." It was about ten o'clock when Hetty set off, and the slight hoar-frost that had whitened the hedges in the early morning had disappeared as the sun mounted the cloudless sky. Bright February days have a stronger charm of hope about them than any other days in the year. One likes to pause in the mild rays of the sun, and look over the gates at the patient plough-horses turning at the end of the furrow, and think that the beautiful year is all before one. The birds seem to feel just the same: their notes are as clear as the clear air. There are no leaves on the trees and hedgerows, but how green all the grassy fields are! And the dark purplish brown of the ploughed earth and of the bare branches is beautiful too. What a glad world this looks like, as one drives or rides along the valleys and over the hills! I have often thought so when, in foreign countries, where the fields and woods have looked to me like our English Loamshire--the rich land tilled with just as much care, the woods rolling down the gentle slopes to the green meadows--I have come on something by the roadside which has reminded me that I am not in Loamshire: an image of a great agony--the agony of the Cross. It has stood perhaps by the clustering apple-blossoms, or in the broad sunshine by the cornfield, or at a turning by the wood where a clear brook was gurgling below; and surely, if there came a traveller to this world who knew nothing of the story of man's life upon it, this image of agony would seem to him strangely out of place in the midst of this joyous nature. He would not know that hidden behind the apple-blossoms, or among the golden corn, or under the shrouding boughs of the wood, there might be a human heart beating heavily with anguish--perhaps a young blooming girl, not knowing where to turn for refuge from swift-advancing shame, understanding no more of this life of ours than a foolish lost lamb wandering farther and farther in the nightfall on the lonely heath, yet tasting the bitterest of life's bitterness. Such things are sometimes hidden among the sunny fields and behind the blossoming orchards; and the sound of the gurgling brook, if you came close to one spot behind a small bush, would be mingled for your ear with a despairing human sob. No wonder man's religion has much sorrow in it: no wonder he needs a suffering God. Hetty, in her red cloak and warm bonnet, with her basket in her hand, is turning towards a gate by the side of the Treddleston road, but not that she may have a more lingering enjoyment of the sunshine and think with hope of the long unfolding year. She hardly knows that the sun is shining; and for weeks, now, when she has hoped at all, it has been for something at which she herself trembles and shudders. She only wants to be out of the high-road, that she may walk slowly and not care how her face looks, as she dwells on wretched thoughts; and through this gate she can get into a field-path behind the wide thick hedgerows. Her great dark eyes wander blankly over the fields like the eyes of one who is desolate, homeless, unloved, not the promised bride of a brave tender man. But there are no tears in them: her tears were all wept away in the weary night, before she went to sleep. At the next stile the pathway branches off: there are two roads before her--one along by the hedgerow, which will by and by lead her into the road again, the other across the fields, which will take her much farther out of the way into the Scantlands, low shrouded pastures where she will see nobody. She chooses this and begins to walk a little faster, as if she had suddenly thought of an object towards which it was worth while to hasten. Soon she is in the Scantlands, where the grassy land slopes gradually downwards, and she leaves the level ground to follow the slope. Farther on there is a clump of trees on the low ground, and she is making her way towards it. No, it is not a clump of trees, but a dark shrouded pool, so full with the wintry rains that the under boughs of the elder-bushes lie low beneath the water. She sits down on the grassy bank, against the stooping stem of the great oak that hangs over the dark pool. She has thought of this pool often in the nights of the month that has just gone by, and now at last she is come to see it. She clasps her hands round her knees, and leans forward, and looks earnestly at it, as if trying to guess what sort of bed it would make for her young round limbs. No, she has not courage to jump into that cold watery bed, and if she had, they might find her--they might find out why she had drowned herself. There is but one thing left to her: she must go away, go where they can't find her. After the first on-coming of her great dread, some weeks after her betrothal to Adam, she had waited and waited, in the blind vague hope that something would happen to set her free from her terror; but she could wait no longer. All the force of her nature had been concentrated on the one effort of concealment, and she had shrunk with irresistible dread from every course that could tend towards a betrayal of her miserable secret. Whenever the thought of writing to Arthur had occurred to her, she had rejected it. He could do nothing for her that would shelter her from discovery and scorn among the relatives and neighbours who once more made all her world, now her airy dream had vanished. Her imagination no longer saw happiness with Arthur, for he could do nothing that would satisfy or soothe her pride. No, something else would happen--something must happen--to set her free from this dread. In young, childish, ignorant souls there is constantly this blind trust in some unshapen chance: it is as hard to a boy or girl to believe that a great wretchedness will actually befall them as to believe that they will die. But now necessity was pressing hard upon her--now the time of her marriage was close at hand--she could no longer rest in this blind trust. She must run away; she must hide herself where no familiar eyes could detect her; and then the terror of wandering out into the world, of which she knew nothing, made the possibility of going to Arthur a thought which brought some comfort with it. She felt so helpless now, so unable to fashion the future for herself, that the prospect of throwing herself on him had a relief in it which was stronger than her pride. As she sat by the pool and shuddered at the dark cold water, the hope that he would receive her tenderly--that he would care for her and think for her--was like a sense of lulling warmth, that made her for the moment indifferent to everything else; and she began now to think of nothing but the scheme by which she should get away. She had had a letter from Dinah lately, full of kind words about the coming marriage, which she had heard of from Seth; and when Hetty had read this letter aloud to her uncle, he had said, "I wish Dinah 'ud come again now, for she'd be a comfort to your aunt when you're gone. What do you think, my wench, o' going to see her as soon as you can be spared and persuading her to come back wi' you? You might happen persuade her wi' telling her as her aunt wants her, for all she writes o' not being able to come." Hetty had not liked the thought of going to Snowfield, and felt no longing to see Dinah, so she only said, "It's so far off, Uncle." But now she thought this proposed visit would serve as a pretext for going away. She would tell her aunt when she got home again that she should like the change of going to Snowfield for a week or ten days. And then, when she got to Stoniton, where nobody knew her, she would ask for the coach that would take her on the way to Windsor. Arthur was at Windsor, and she would go to him. As soon as Hetty had determined on this scheme, she rose from the grassy bank of the pool, took up her basket, and went on her way to Treddleston, for she must buy the wedding things she had come out for, though she would never want them. She must be careful not to raise any suspicion that she was going to run away. Mrs. Poyser was quite agreeably surprised that Hetty wished to go and see Dinah and try to bring her back to stay over the wedding. The sooner she went the better, since the weather was pleasant now; and Adam, when he came in the evening, said, if Hetty could set off to-morrow, he would make time to go with her to Treddleston and see her safe into the Stoniton coach. "I wish I could go with you and take care of you, Hetty," he said, the next morning, leaning in at the coach door; "but you won't stay much beyond a week--the time 'ull seem long." He was looking at her fondly, and his strong hand held hers in its grasp. Hetty felt a sense of protection in his presence--she was used to it now: if she could have had the past undone and known no other love than her quiet liking for Adam! The tears rose as she gave him the last look. "God bless her for loving me," said Adam, as he went on his way to work again, with Gyp at his heels. But Hetty's tears were not for Adam--not for the anguish that would come upon him when he found she was gone from him for ever. They were for the misery of her own lot, which took her away from this brave tender man who offered up his whole life to her, and threw her, a poor helpless suppliant, on the man who would think it a misfortune that she was obliged to cling to him. At three o'clock that day, when Hetty was on the coach that was to take her, they said, to Leicester--part of the long, long way to Windsor--she felt dimly that she might be travelling all this weary journey towards the beginning of new misery. Yet Arthur was at Windsor; he would surely not be angry with her. If he did not mind about her as he used to do, he had promised to be good to her. Book Five

Chapter 35

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter35

The Hidden Dread Adam doesn't see much of Hetty during the winter between November and February because he is working two jobs and getting ready for the wedding in March. Two rooms are prepared for Hetty and Adam in the Bede home, so that Seth and Lisbeth can stay in the house. Adam does not know why Hetty seems depressed sometimes and thinks it's because of his mother living with them. Mrs. Poyser is surprised at Hetty's ability to take on extra housework at Hall Farm and assumes she is learning how to be a housewife. In February Hetty goes to Treddleston to get some things for her wedding. She wears her red cloak and bonnet and wanders about in a daze, feeling lost. When she looks at a pond and wonders if she could drown herself in it, it is understood that she is pregnant. The narrator finally answers the reader's questions about Hetty's condition, but indirectly, since she cannot discuss it openly with a Victorian audience. She calls the pregnancy "the hidden dread" and says Hetty only found out after her engagement to Adam. The narrator gives pride as a reason Hetty does not tell anyone. She thinks Arthur cannot do anything for her because her one dread is discovery, and he cannot save her from that. Now, she thinks she must run away. The only thought is that she has to hide, so that no one will ever know what happened to her. Telling her aunt she is going to see Dinah Morris for a while, she leaves by coach, silently crying tears at parting from Adam, who had given her love and protection. They will not miss her for at least two weeks. She plans to go to Arthur at Windsor, for surely he will take care of her. She knows she will never see home again.

Commentary on Chapter 35 This is the last chapter of the fourth book, the book where the consequences of the love affair between Hetty and Arthur come out. It opened with the crisis of Adam seeing them kiss, and it ends with Hetty running away, approximately eight months pregnant, trying to escape discovery. The next book will reveal the full tragedy. The narrator tries to explain Hetty's puzzling behavior. She doesn't really understand she is pregnant for a long time, apparently, a detail hard for a modern reader to swallow. Her character has been explained, however, as not wanting to face unpleasant facts. And, most women at this time were ignorant of anatomy and sex, having to learn things from other women. Hetty, like Arthur, depends on the opinions others have of her. She seems to have little moral integrity of her own. For instance, she never seems to give one thought to the baby or what she could do for it. She waits so long to admit the problem and to do anything, because like Arthur, she thinks something will happen to save her from this fate, a miscarriage perhaps. Equally hard to understand is how she could hide it, but with aprons and cloaks, it might be possible. One also wonders why she waits to contact Arthur as he told her to do if there was any trouble. The narrator explains that Hetty does not think that Arthur could cover up for her. He can take care of her and give her money, but he cannot save her reputation. This reminds us again of the small town atmosphere. If she goes to anyone she knows for help--Arthur and Dinah are the two who might do something--they would have to let her family and friends know. In her pride, she believes herself alone in her suffering, and the best solution for her is to disappear, so at least her reputation will be saved. Hetty's reasoning is not that of an adult, and by shifting to Hetty's childish and fearful point of view in this chapter and in the fifth book, Eliot does something surprising no doubt for a Victorian audience. She does not try to excuse Hetty as a fallen woman, but she makes her plight sympathetic and understandable. We must have human pity for her. Her grief and fear make her close to insane in her thinking and actions. Arthur had thought to himself that even in the worst case, he could help Hetty, make it up to her, and make her glad that she had been with him. The evil consequences are more than he could have imagined and cannot be fixed with money. Anyone would be sorely tested by this trial, but Hetty does not have the inner resources or faith, like Dinah would, to survive such an experience and to make courageous choices.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/36.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_36_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 36

chapter 36

{"name": "Chapter 36", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter36", "summary": "Book Fifth Chapter 36: The Journey in Hope Hetty sets out with her little saved money, with no idea where Windsor is or how long it takes to get there. The coachman tells her Windsor is near London. She despairs and decides to take carriers' carts and farmer's wagons because the coach costs too much. On her own now with no knowledge of the big world, she realizes that her whole life has been managed for her, and she remembers her kind uncle and home. Now she can only have a hidden life because of the shame. She thinks Arthur perhaps can shelter her from this. She is proud and afraid of poverty and begging. She walks until tired and then begins to sob. Catching a ride on a cart, she makes it to the next town and gets a room. The clerk at the coach office writes down the stops she has to go through to get to Windsor. She is still a hundred miles away. On the seventh day she reaches Windsor with no money left and is fainting from hunger at the door of the Green Man inn where Arthur is supposed to be. The landlord takes her in and gives her a meal, telling her that Arthur is no longer there, for his regiment left for Ireland. Hetty collapses, and the landlady, seeing she is pregnant but a respectable looking girl, puts her to bed.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 36 Hetty longs to be with someone familiar who will take care of her, for she has been taken care of all her life, and she is frightened and not physically strong. She gets help from strangers because she is pretty and looks in trouble, though she is proud. While suffering makes Adam and Dinah more sympathetic to others, it has the opposite effect on Hetty. She can think of no one's suffering but her own. She does not think of the baby or Adam or the sorrow of the family she leaves behind. Yet she notices things keenly like a starving person, such as the friendly little spaniel on the road. When her one hope of Arthur is gone, she collapses and has nothing to hold her up. She goes farther and farther away from hope and from a solution, like the slippery slope that Adam mentions in his father's case: \"there's no slipping up hill\" when once you begin the downward path. Hetty is close to the bottom."}

A LONG, lonely journey, with sadness in the heart; away from the familiar to the strange: that is a hard and dreary thing even to the rich, the strong, the instructed; a hard thing, even when we are called by duty, not urged by dread. What was it then to Hetty? With her poor narrow thoughts, no longer melting into vague hopes, but pressed upon by the chill of definite fear, repeating again and again the same small round of memories--shaping again and again the same childish, doubtful images of what was to come--seeing nothing in this wide world but the little history of her own pleasures and pains; with so little money in her pocket, and the way so long and difficult. Unless she could afford always to go in the coaches--and she felt sure she could not, for the journey to Stoniton was more expensive than she had expected--it was plain that she must trust to carriers' carts or slow waggons; and what a time it would be before she could get to the end of her journey! The burly old coachman from Oakbourne, seeing such a pretty young woman among the outside passengers, had invited her to come and sit beside him; and feeling that it became him as a man and a coachman to open the dialogue with a joke, he applied himself as soon as they were off the stones to the elaboration of one suitable in all respects. After many cuts with his whip and glances at Hetty out of the corner of his eye, he lifted his lips above the edge of his wrapper and said, "He's pretty nigh six foot, I'll be bound, isna he, now?" "Who?" said Hetty, rather startled. "Why, the sweetheart as you've left behind, or else him as you're goin' arter--which is it?" Hetty felt her face flushing and then turning pale. She thought this coachman must know something about her. He must know Adam, and might tell him where she was gone, for it is difficult to country people to believe that those who make a figure in their own parish are not known everywhere else, and it was equally difficult to Hetty to understand that chance words could happen to apply closely to her circumstances. She was too frightened to speak. "Hegh, hegh!" said the coachman, seeing that his joke was not so gratifying as he had expected, "you munna take it too ser'ous; if he's behaved ill, get another. Such a pretty lass as you can get a sweetheart any day." Hetty's fear was allayed by and by, when she found that the coachman made no further allusion to her personal concerns; but it still had the effect of preventing her from asking him what were the places on the road to Windsor. She told him she was only going a little way out of Stoniton, and when she got down at the inn where the coach stopped, she hastened away with her basket to another part of the town. When she had formed her plan of going to Windsor, she had not foreseen any difficulties except that of getting away, and after she had overcome this by proposing the visit to Dinah, her thoughts flew to the meeting with Arthur and the question how he would behave to her--not resting on any probable incidents of the journey. She was too entirely ignorant of traveling to imagine any of its details, and with all her store of money--her three guineas--in her pocket, she thought herself amply provided. It was not until she found how much it cost her to get to Stoniton that she began to be alarmed about the journey, and then, for the first time, she felt her ignorance as to the places that must be passed on her way. Oppressed with this new alarm, she walked along the grim Stoniton streets, and at last turned into a shabby little inn, where she hoped to get a cheap lodging for the night. Here she asked the landlord if he could tell her what places she must go to, to get to Windsor. "Well, I can't rightly say. Windsor must be pretty nigh London, for it's where the king lives," was the answer. "Anyhow, you'd best go t' Ashby next--that's south'ard. But there's as many places from here to London as there's houses in Stoniton, by what I can make out. I've never been no traveller myself. But how comes a lone young woman like you to be thinking o' taking such a journey as that?" "I'm going to my brother--he's a soldier at Windsor," said Hetty, frightened at the landlord's questioning look. "I can't afford to go by the coach; do you think there's a cart goes toward Ashby in the morning?" "Yes, there may be carts if anybody knowed where they started from; but you might run over the town before you found out. You'd best set off and walk, and trust to summat overtaking you." Every word sank like lead on Hetty's spirits; she saw the journey stretch bit by bit before her now. Even to get to Ashby seemed a hard thing: it might take the day, for what she knew, and that was nothing to the rest of the journey. But it must be done--she must get to Arthur. Oh, how she yearned to be again with somebody who would care for her! She who had never got up in the morning without the certainty of seeing familiar faces, people on whom she had an acknowledged claim; whose farthest journey had been to Rosseter on the pillion with her uncle; whose thoughts had always been taking holiday in dreams of pleasure, because all the business of her life was managed for her--this kittenlike Hetty, who till a few months ago had never felt any other grief than that of envying Mary Burge a new ribbon, or being girded at by her aunt for neglecting Totty, must now make her toilsome way in loneliness, her peaceful home left behind for ever, and nothing but a tremulous hope of distant refuge before her. Now for the first time, as she lay down to-night in the strange hard bed, she felt that her home had been a happy one, that her uncle had been very good to her, that her quiet lot at Hayslope among the things and people she knew, with her little pride in her one best gown and bonnet, and nothing to hide from any one, was what she would like to wake up to as a reality, and find that all the feverish life she had known besides was a short nightmare. She thought of all she had left behind with yearning regret for her own sake. Her own misery filled her heart--there was no room in it for other people's sorrow. And yet, before the cruel letter, Arthur had been so tender and loving. The memory of that had still a charm for her, though it was no more than a soothing draught that just made pain bearable. For Hetty could conceive no other existence for herself in future than a hidden one, and a hidden life, even with love, would have had no delights for her; still less a life mingled with shame. She knew no romances, and had only a feeble share in the feelings which are the source of romance, so that well-read ladies may find it difficult to understand her state of mind. She was too ignorant of everything beyond the simple notions and habits in which she had been brought up to have any more definite idea of her probable future than that Arthur would take care of her somehow, and shelter her from anger and scorn. He would not marry her and make her a lady; and apart from that she could think of nothing he could give towards which she looked with longing and ambition. The next morning she rose early, and taking only some milk and bread for her breakfast, set out to walk on the road towards Ashby, under a leaden-coloured sky, with a narrowing streak of yellow, like a departing hope, on the edge of the horizon. Now in her faintness of heart at the length and difficulty of her journey, she was most of all afraid of spending her money, and becoming so destitute that she would have to ask people's charity; for Hettv had the pride not only of a proud nature but of a proud class--the class that pays the most poor-rates, and most shudders at the idea of profiting by a poor-rate. It had not yet occurred to her that she might get money for her locket and earrings which she carried with her, and she applied all her small arithmetic and knowledge of prices to calculating how many meals and how many rides were contained in her two guineas, and the odd shillings, which had a melancholy look, as if they were the pale ashes of the other bright-flaming coin. For the first few miles out of Stoniton, she walked on bravely, always fixing on some tree or gate or projecting bush at the most distant visible point in the road as a goal, and feeling a faint joy when she had reached it. But when she came to the fourth milestone, the first she had happened to notice among the long grass by the roadside, and read that she was still only four miles beyond Stoniton, her courage sank. She had come only this little way, and yet felt tired, and almost hungry again in the keen morning air; for though Hetty was accustomed to much movement and exertion indoors, she was not used to long walks which produced quite a different sort of fatigue from that of household activity. As she was looking at the milestone she felt some drops falling on her face--it was beginning to rain. Here was a new trouble which had not entered into her sad thoughts before, and quite weighed down by this sudden addition to her burden, she sat down on the step of a stile and began to sob hysterically. The beginning of hardship is like the first taste of bitter food--it seems for a moment unbearable; yet, if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another bite and find it possible to go on. When Hetty recovered from her burst of weeping, she rallied her fainting courage: it was raining, and she must try to get on to a village where she might find rest and shelter. Presently, as she walked on wearily, she heard the rumbling of heavy wheels behind her; a covered waggon was coming, creeping slowly along with a slouching driver cracking his whip beside the horses. She waited for it, thinking that if the waggoner were not a very sour-looking man, she would ask him to take her up. As the waggon approached her, the driver had fallen behind, but there was something in the front of the big vehicle which encouraged her. At any previous moment in her life she would not have noticed it, but now, the new susceptibility that suffering had awakened in her caused this object to impress her strongly. It was only a small white-and-liver-coloured spaniel which sat on the front ledge of the waggon, with large timid eyes, and an incessant trembling in the body, such as you may have seen in some of these small creatures. Hetty cared little for animals, as you know, but at this moment she felt as if the helpless timid creature had some fellowship with her, and without being quite aware of the reason, she was less doubtful about speaking to the driver, who now came forward--a large ruddy man, with a sack over his shoulders, by way of scarf or mantle. "Could you take me up in your waggon, if you're going towards Ashby?" said Hetty. "I'll pay you for it." "Aw," said the big fellow, with that slowly dawning smile which belongs to heavy faces, "I can take y' up fawst enough wi'out bein' paid for't if you dooant mind lyin' a bit closish a-top o' the wool-packs. Where do you coom from? And what do you want at Ashby?" "I come from Stoniton. I'm going a long way--to Windsor." "What! Arter some service, or what?" "Going to my brother--he's a soldier there." "Well, I'm going no furder nor Leicester--and fur enough too--but I'll take you, if you dooant mind being a bit long on the road. Th' hosses wooant feel YOUR weight no more nor they feel the little doog there, as I puck up on the road a fortni't agoo. He war lost, I b'lieve, an's been all of a tremble iver sin'. Come, gi' us your basket an' come behind and let me put y' in." To lie on the wool-packs, with a cranny left between the curtains of the awning to let in the air, was luxury to Hetty now, and she half-slept away the hours till the driver came to ask her if she wanted to get down and have "some victual"; he himself was going to eat his dinner at this "public." Late at night they reached Leicester, and so this second day of Hetty's journey was past. She had spent no money except what she had paid for her food, but she felt that this slow journeying would be intolerable for her another day, and in the morning she found her way to a coach-office to ask about the road to Windsor, and see if it would cost her too much to go part of the distance by coach again. Yes! The distance was too great--the coaches were too dear--she must give them up; but the elderly clerk at the office, touched by her pretty anxious face, wrote down for her the names of the chief places she must pass through. This was the only comfort she got in Leicester, for the men stared at her as she went along the street, and for the first time in her life Hetty wished no one would look at her. She set out walking again; but this day she was fortunate, for she was soon overtaken by a carrier's cart which carried her to Hinckley, and by the help of a return chaise, with a drunken postilion--who frightened her by driving like Jehu the son of Nimshi, and shouting hilarious remarks at her, twisting himself backwards on his saddle--she was before night in the heart of woody Warwickshire: but still almost a hundred miles from Windsor, they told her. Oh what a large world it was, and what hard work for her to find her way in it! She went by mistake to Stratford-on-Avon, finding Stratford set down in her list of places, and then she was told she had come a long way out of the right road. It was not till the fifth day that she got to Stony Stratford. That seems but a slight journey as you look at the map, or remember your own pleasant travels to and from the meadowy banks of the Avon. But how wearily long it was to Hetty! It seemed to her as if this country of flat fields, and hedgerows, and dotted houses, and villages, and market-towns--all so much alike to her indifferent eyes--must have no end, and she must go on wandering among them for ever, waiting tired at toll-gates for some cart to come, and then finding the cart went only a little way--a very little way--to the miller's a mile off perhaps; and she hated going into the public houses, where she must go to get food and ask questions, because there were always men lounging there, who stared at her and joked her rudely. Her body was very weary too with these days of new fatigue and anxiety; they had made her look more pale and worn than all the time of hidden dread she had gone through at home. When at last she reached Stony Stratford, her impatience and weariness had become too strong for her economical caution; she determined to take the coach for the rest of the way, though it should cost her all her remaining money. She would need nothing at Windsor but to find Arthur. When she had paid the fare for the last coach, she had only a shilling; and as she got down at the sign of the Green Man in Windsor at twelve o'clock in the middle of the seventh day, hungry and faint, the coachman came up, and begged her to "remember him." She put her hand in her pocket and took out the shilling, but the tears came with the sense of exhaustion and the thought that she was giving away her last means of getting food, which she really required before she could go in search of Arthur. As she held out the shilling, she lifted up her dark tear-filled eyes to the coachman's face and said, "Can you give me back sixpence?" "No, no," he said, gruffly, "never mind--put the shilling up again." The landlord of the Green Man had stood near enough to witness this scene, and he was a man whose abundant feeding served to keep his good nature, as well as his person, in high condition. And that lovely tearful face of Hetty's would have found out the sensitive fibre in most men. "Come, young woman, come in," he said, "and have adrop o' something; you're pretty well knocked up, I can see that." He took her into the bar and said to his wife, "Here, missis, take this young woman into the parlour; she's a little overcome"--for Hetty's tears were falling fast. They were merely hysterical tears: she thought she had no reason for weeping now, and was vexed that she was too weak and tired to help it. She was at Windsor at last, not far from Arthur. She looked with eager, hungry eyes at the bread and meat and beer that the landlady brought her, and for some minutes she forgot everything else in the delicious sensations of satisfying hunger and recovering from exhaustion. The landlady sat opposite to her as she ate, and looked at her earnestly. No wonder: Hetty had thrown off her bonnet, and her curls had fallen down. Her face was all the more touching in its youth and beauty because of its weary look, and the good woman's eyes presently wandered to her figure, which in her hurried dressing on her journey she had taken no pains to conceal; moreover, the stranger's eye detects what the familiar unsuspecting eye leaves unnoticed. "Why, you're not very fit for travelling," she said, glancing while she spoke at Hetty's ringless hand. "Have you come far?" "Yes," said Hetty, roused by this question to exert more self-command, and feeling the better for the food she had taken. "I've come a good long way, and it's very tiring. But I'm better now. Could you tell me which way to go to this place?" Here Hetty took from her pocket a bit of paper: it was the end of Arthur's letter on which he had written his address. While she was speaking, the landlord had come in and had begun to look at her as earnestly as his wife had done. He took up the piece of paper which Hetty handed across the table, and read the address. "Why, what do you want at this house?" he said. It is in the nature of innkeepers and all men who have no pressing business of their own to ask as many questions as possible before giving any information. "I want to see a gentleman as is there," said Hetty. "But there's no gentleman there," returned the landlord. "It's shut up--been shut up this fortnight. What gentleman is it you want? Perhaps I can let you know where to find him." "It's Captain Donnithorne," said Hetty tremulously, her heart beginning to beat painfully at this disappointment of her hope that she should find Arthur at once. "Captain Donnithorne? Stop a bit," said the landlord, slowly. "Was he in the Loamshire Militia? A tall young officer with a fairish skin and reddish whiskers--and had a servant by the name o' Pym?" "Oh yes," said Hetty; "you know him--where is he?" "A fine sight o' miles away from here. The Loamshire Militia's gone to Ireland; it's been gone this fortnight." "Look there! She's fainting," said the landlady, hastening to support Hetty, who had lost her miserable consciousness and looked like a beautiful corpse. They carried her to the sofa and loosened her dress. "Here's a bad business, I suspect," said the landlord, as he brought in some water. "Ah, it's plain enough what sort of business it is," said the wife. "She's not a common flaunting dratchell, I can see that. She looks like a respectable country girl, and she comes from a good way off, to judge by her tongue. She talks something like that ostler we had that come from the north. He was as honest a fellow as we ever had about the house--they're all honest folks in the north." "I never saw a prettier young woman in my life," said the husband. "She's like a pictur in a shop-winder. It goes to one's 'eart to look at her." "It 'ud have been a good deal better for her if she'd been uglier and had more conduct," said the landlady, who on any charitable construction must have been supposed to have more "conduct" than beauty. "But she's coming to again. Fetch a drop more water."

Chapter 36

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter36

Book Fifth Chapter 36: The Journey in Hope Hetty sets out with her little saved money, with no idea where Windsor is or how long it takes to get there. The coachman tells her Windsor is near London. She despairs and decides to take carriers' carts and farmer's wagons because the coach costs too much. On her own now with no knowledge of the big world, she realizes that her whole life has been managed for her, and she remembers her kind uncle and home. Now she can only have a hidden life because of the shame. She thinks Arthur perhaps can shelter her from this. She is proud and afraid of poverty and begging. She walks until tired and then begins to sob. Catching a ride on a cart, she makes it to the next town and gets a room. The clerk at the coach office writes down the stops she has to go through to get to Windsor. She is still a hundred miles away. On the seventh day she reaches Windsor with no money left and is fainting from hunger at the door of the Green Man inn where Arthur is supposed to be. The landlord takes her in and gives her a meal, telling her that Arthur is no longer there, for his regiment left for Ireland. Hetty collapses, and the landlady, seeing she is pregnant but a respectable looking girl, puts her to bed.

Commentary on Chapter 36 Hetty longs to be with someone familiar who will take care of her, for she has been taken care of all her life, and she is frightened and not physically strong. She gets help from strangers because she is pretty and looks in trouble, though she is proud. While suffering makes Adam and Dinah more sympathetic to others, it has the opposite effect on Hetty. She can think of no one's suffering but her own. She does not think of the baby or Adam or the sorrow of the family she leaves behind. Yet she notices things keenly like a starving person, such as the friendly little spaniel on the road. When her one hope of Arthur is gone, she collapses and has nothing to hold her up. She goes farther and farther away from hope and from a solution, like the slippery slope that Adam mentions in his father's case: "there's no slipping up hill" when once you begin the downward path. Hetty is close to the bottom.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/37.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_37_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 37

chapter 37

{"name": "Chapter 37", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter37", "summary": "The Journey in Despair Hetty is in bed the rest of the day, too ill to think. She has no hope left. The next day she tries to think of a plan. She cannot get any work in her condition. Remembering a starving unwed mother and child at Hayslope who had been sent to the parish workhouse, a fate to be feared, she longs to be back home safe. No one will welcome a runaway in her condition. Above all, she does not want her family to find out what has happened to her. She decides to sell the presents Arthur gave her, and if she is not strong enough to commit suicide, she will find Dinah. Hetty gets money from the landlord for her earrings and locket and sets out back north again. She goes on and on, without a clear plan, until she gets to Stratford-on-Avon. She walks into the surrounding fields looking for a pool to drown herself. She finds a pool, but not able to throw herself in, she falls asleep there. In the cold and dark she awakens in fear. Remembering a shepherd's hovel nearby, she gropes until she finds it, and sleeps there on a bed of straw. In the morning, a gruff shepherd tells her to get back to the road because she looks like a \"wild woman\" . She continues her journey north towards Dinah in Snowfield.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 37 Hetty finds she cannot commit suicide because she has, the narrator tells us, \"the luxurious nature of a round, soft-coated pet animal\" . She is torn between thoughts of suicide, begging, the workhouse, and throwing herself on the mercy of her aunt and uncle. She wants to go on living as long as possible, but she has no hope that she can be delivered from the evil she is in. She does not think she can even tell Dinah. When she thinks of death, she does not know about an afterlife, for she is not a religious person. She begins to have a hard look, like a wild animal, like the wild woman the shepherd sees in her. The narrator says she has a \"Medusa face\" . Medusa was a monster with the face of a woman and hair of snakes whose look could turn someone to stone. This is a strange image for Hetty whom we have been led to believe was more like a soft and helpless animal, a little dog that drew the affection of others. Eliot prepares us here for the major transformation Hetty is undergoing. Without any help or spiritual life to sustain her, she is coming close to the madness that destroys the moral sense in a person, never a strong point with Hetty anyway. We will not be surprised at what she might do in her desperation. At this point she seems scarcely aware of the child she is carrying except as baggage and shame. When Hetty wakes up in the shepherd's hut, she is so glad to be alive that she passionately kisses her own arms. After repeating that Hetty has no sorrow except for herself, the narrator confesses to be sorry for her: \"My heart bleeds for her as I see her toiling along on her weary feet\" . Though the narrator says some harsh things of Hetty, she wants the reader to pity her fate by understanding step by step, how she arrived there."}

HETTY was too ill through the rest of that day for any questions to be addressed to her--too ill even to think with any distinctness of the evils that were to come. She only felt that all her hope was crushed, and that instead of having found a refuge she had only reached the borders of a new wilderness where no goal lay before her. The sensations of bodily sickness, in a comfortable bed, and with the tendance of the good-natured landlady, made a sort of respite for her; such a respite as there is in the faint weariness which obliges a man to throw himself on the sand instead of toiling onward under the scorching sun. But when sleep and rest had brought back the strength necessary for the keenness of mental suffering--when she lay the next morning looking at the growing light which was like a cruel task-master returning to urge from her a fresh round of hated hopeless labour--she began to think what course she must take, to remember that all her money was gone, to look at the prospect of further wandering among strangers with the new clearness shed on it by the experience of her journey to Windsor. But which way could she turn? It was impossible for her to enter into any service, even if she could obtain it. There was nothing but immediate beggary before her. She thought of a young woman who had been found against the church wall at Hayslope one Sunday, nearly dead with cold and hunger--a tiny infant in her arms. The woman was rescued and taken to the parish. "The parish!" You can perhaps hardly understand the effect of that word on a mind like Hetty's, brought up among people who were somewhat hard in their feelings even towards poverty, who lived among the fields, and had little pity for want and rags as a cruel inevitable fate such as they sometimes seem in cities, but held them a mark of idleness and vice--and it was idleness and vice that brought burdens on the parish. To Hetty the "parish" was next to the prison in obloquy, and to ask anything of strangers--to beg--lay in the same far-off hideous region of intolerable shame that Hetty had all her life thought it impossible she could ever come near. But now the remembrance of that wretched woman whom she had seen herself, on her way from church, being carried into Joshua Rann's, came back upon her with the new terrible sense that there was very little now to divide HER from the same lot. And the dread of bodily hardship mingled with the dread of shame; for Hetty had the luxurious nature of a round soft-coated pet animal. How she yearned to be back in her safe home again, cherished and cared for as she had always been! Her aunt's scolding about trifles would have been music to her ears now; she longed for it; she used to hear it in a time when she had only trifles to hide. Could she be the same Hetty that used to make up the butter in the dairy with the Guelder roses peeping in at the window--she, a runaway whom her friends would not open their doors to again, lying in this strange bed, with the knowledge that she had no money to pay for what she received, and must offer those strangers some of the clothes in her basket? It was then she thought of her locket and ear-rings, and seeing her pocket lie near, she reached it and spread the contents on the bed before her. There were the locket and ear-rings in the little velvet-lined boxes, and with them there was a beautiful silver thimble which Adam had bought her, the words "Remember me" making the ornament of the border; a steel purse, with her one shilling in it; and a small red-leather case, fastening with a strap. Those beautiful little ear-rings, with their delicate pearls and garnet, that she had tried in her ears with such longing in the bright sunshine on the 30th of July! She had no longing to put them in her ears now: her head with its dark rings of hair lay back languidly on the pillow, and the sadness that rested about her brow and eyes was something too hard for regretful memory. Yet she put her hands up to her ears: it was because there were some thin gold rings in them, which were also worth a little money. Yes, she could surely get some money for her ornaments: those Arthur had given her must have cost a great deal of money. The landlord and landlady had been good to her; perhaps they would help her to get the money for these things. But this money would not keep her long. What should she do when it was gone? Where should she go? The horrible thought of want and beggary drove her once to think she would go back to her uncle and aunt and ask them to forgive her and have pity on her. But she shrank from that idea again, as she might have shrunk from scorching metal. She could never endure that shame before her uncle and aunt, before Mary Burge, and the servants at the Chase, and the people at Broxton, and everybody who knew her. They should never know what had happened to her. What could she do? She would go away from Windsor--travel again as she had done the last week, and get among the flat green fields with the high hedges round them, where nobody could see her or know her; and there, perhaps, when there was nothing else she could do, she should get courage to drown herself in some pond like that in the Scantlands. Yes, she would get away from Windsor as soon as possible: she didn't like these people at the inn to know about her, to know that she had come to look for Captain Donnithorne. She must think of some reason to tell them why she had asked for him. With this thought she began to put the things back into her pocket, meaning to get up and dress before the landlady came to her. She had her hand on the red-leather case, when it occurred to her that there might be something in this case which she had forgotten--something worth selling; for without knowing what she should do with her life, she craved the means of living as long as possible; and when we desire eagerly to find something, we are apt to search for it in hopeless places. No, there was nothing but common needles and pins, and dried tulip-petals between the paper leaves where she had written down her little money-accounts. But on one of these leaves there was a name, which, often as she had seen it before, now flashed on Hetty's mind like a newly discovered message. The name was--Dinah Morris, Snowfield. There was a text above it, written, as well as the name, by Dinah's own hand with a little pencil, one evening that they were sitting together and Hetty happened to have the red case lying open before her. Hetty did not read the text now: she was only arrested by the name. Now, for the first time, she remembered without indifference the affectionate kindness Dinah had shown her, and those words of Dinah in the bed-chamber--that Hetty must think of her as a friend in trouble. Suppose she were to go to Dinah, and ask her to help her? Dinah did not think about things as other people did. She was a mystery to Hetty, but Hetty knew she was always kind. She couldn't imagine Dinah's face turning away from her in dark reproof or scorn, Dinah's voice willingly speaking ill of her, or rejoicing in her misery as a punishment. Dinah did not seem to belong to that world of Hetty's, whose glance she dreaded like scorching fire. But even to her Hetty shrank from beseeching and confession. She could not prevail on herself to say, "I will go to Dinah": she only thought of that as a possible alternative, if she had not courage for death. The good landlady was amazed when she saw Hetty come downstairs soon after herself, neatly dressed, and looking resolutely self-possessed. Hetty told her she was quite well this morning. She had only been very tired and overcome with her journey, for she had come a long way to ask about her brother, who had run away, and they thought he was gone for a soldier, and Captain Donnithorne might know, for he had been very kind to her brother once. It was a lame story, and the landlady looked doubtfully at Hetty as she told it; but there was a resolute air of self-reliance about her this morning, so different from the helpless prostration of yesterday, that the landlady hardly knew how to make a remark that might seem like prying into other people's affairs. She only invited her to sit down to breakfast with them, and in the course of it Hetty brought out her ear-rings and locket, and asked the landlord if he could help her to get money for them. Her journey, she said, had cost her much more than she expected, and now she had no money to get back to her friends, which she wanted to do at once. It was not the first time the landlady had seen the ornaments, for she had examined the contents of Hetty's pocket yesterday, and she and her husband had discussed the fact of a country girl having these beautiful things, with a stronger conviction than ever that Hetty had been miserably deluded by the fine young officer. "Well," said the landlord, when Hetty had spread the precious trifles before him, "we might take 'em to the jeweller's shop, for there's one not far off; but Lord bless you, they wouldn't give you a quarter o' what the things are worth. And you wouldn't like to part with 'em?" he added, looking at her inquiringly. "Oh, I don't mind," said Hetty, hastily, "so as I can get money to go back." "And they might think the things were stolen, as you wanted to sell 'em," he went on, "for it isn't usual for a young woman like you to have fine jew'llery like that." The blood rushed to Hetty's face with anger. "I belong to respectable folks," she said; "I'm not a thief." "No, that you aren't, I'll be bound," said the landlady; "and you'd no call to say that," looking indignantly at her husband. "The things were gev to her: that's plain enough to be seen." "I didn't mean as I thought so," said the husband, apologetically, "but I said it was what the jeweller might think, and so he wouldn't be offering much money for 'em." "Well," said the wife, "suppose you were to advance some money on the things yourself, and then if she liked to redeem 'em when she got home, she could. But if we heard nothing from her after two months, we might do as we liked with 'em." I will not say that in this accommodating proposition the landlady had no regard whatever to the possible reward of her good nature in the ultimate possession of the locket and ear-rings: indeed, the effect they would have in that case on the mind of the grocer's wife had presented itself with remarkable vividness to her rapid imagination. The landlord took up the ornaments and pushed out his lips in a meditative manner. He wished Hetty well, doubtless; but pray, how many of your well-wishers would decline to make a little gain out of you? Your landlady is sincerely affected at parting with you, respects you highly, and will really rejoice if any one else is generous to you; but at the same time she hands you a bill by which she gains as high a percentage as possible. "How much money do you want to get home with, young woman?" said the well-wisher, at length. "Three guineas," answered Hetty, fixing on the sum she set out with, for want of any other standard, and afraid of asking too much. "Well, I've no objections to advance you three guineas," said the landlord; "and if you like to send it me back and get the jewellery again, you can, you know. The Green Man isn't going to run away." "Oh yes, I'll be very glad if you'll give me that," said Hetty, relieved at the thought that she would not have to go to the jeweller's and be stared at and questioned. "But if you want the things again, you'll write before long," said the landlady, "because when two months are up, we shall make up our minds as you don't want 'em." "Yes," said Hetty indifferently. The husband and wife were equally content with this arrangement. The husband thought, if the ornaments were not redeemed, he could make a good thing of it by taking them to London and selling them. The wife thought she would coax the good man into letting her keep them. And they were accommodating Hetty, poor thing--a pretty, respectable-looking young woman, apparently in a sad case. They declined to take anything for her food and bed: she was quite welcome. And at eleven o'clock Hetty said "Good-bye" to them with the same quiet, resolute air she had worn all the morning, mounting the coach that was to take her twenty miles back along the way she had come. There is a strength of self-possession which is the sign that the last hope has departed. Despair no more leans on others than perfect contentment, and in despair pride ceases to be counteracted by the sense of dependence. Hetty felt that no one could deliver her from the evils that would make life hateful to her; and no one, she said to herself, should ever know her misery and humiliation. No; she would not confess even to Dinah. She would wander out of sight, and drown herself where her body would never be found, and no one should know what had become of her. When she got off this coach, she began to walk again, and take cheap rides in carts, and get cheap meals, going on and on without distinct purpose, yet strangely, by some fascination, taking the way she had come, though she was determined not to go back to her own country. Perhaps it was because she had fixed her mind on the grassy Warwickshire fields, with the bushy tree-studded hedgerows that made a hiding-place even in this leafless season. She went more slowly than she came, often getting over the stiles and sitting for hours under the hedgerows, looking before her with blank, beautiful eyes; fancying herself at the edge of a hidden pool, low down, like that in the Scantlands; wondering if it were very painful to be drowned, and if there would be anything worse after death than what she dreaded in life. Religious doctrines had taken no hold on Hetty's mind. She was one of those numerous people who have had godfathers and godmothers, learned their catechism, been confirmed, and gone to church every Sunday, and yet, for any practical result of strength in life, or trust in death, have never appropriated a single Christian idea or Christian feeling. You would misunderstand her thoughts during these wretched days, if you imagined that they were influenced either by religious fears or religious hopes. She chose to go to Stratford-on-Avon again, where she had gone before by mistake, for she remembered some grassy fields on her former way towards it--fields among which she thought she might find just the sort of pool she had in her mind. Yet she took care of her money still; she carried her basket; death seemed still a long way off, and life was so strong in her. She craved food and rest--she hastened towards them at the very moment she was picturing to herself the bank from which she would leap towards death. It was already five days since she had left Windsor, for she had wandered about, always avoiding speech or questioning looks, and recovering her air of proud self-dependence whenever she was under observation, choosing her decent lodging at night, and dressing herself neatly in the morning, and setting off on her way steadily, or remaining under shelter if it rained, as if she had a happy life to cherish. And yet, even in her most self-conscious moments, the face was sadly different from that which had smiled at itself in the old specked glass, or smiled at others when they glanced at it admiringly. A hard and even fierce look had come in the eyes, though their lashes were as long as ever, and they had all their dark brightness. And the cheek was never dimpled with smiles now. It was the same rounded, pouting, childish prettiness, but with all love and belief in love departed from it--the sadder for its beauty, like that wondrous Medusa-face, with the passionate, passionless lips. At last she was among the fields she had been dreaming of, on a long narrow pathway leading towards a wood. If there should be a pool in that wood! It would be better hidden than one in the fields. No, it was not a wood, only a wild brake, where there had once been gravel-pits, leaving mounds and hollows studded with brushwood and small trees. She roamed up and down, thinking there was perhaps a pool in every hollow before she came to it, till her limbs were weary, and she sat down to rest. The afternoon was far advanced, and the leaden sky was darkening, as if the sun were setting behind it. After a little while Hetty started up again, feeling that darkness would soon come on; and she must put off finding the pool till to-morrow, and make her way to some shelter for the night. She had quite lost her way in the fields, and might as well go in one direction as another, for aught she knew. She walked through field after field, and no village, no house was in sight; but there, at the corner of this pasture, there was a break in the hedges; the land seemed to dip down a little, and two trees leaned towards each other across the opening. Hetty's heart gave a great beat as she thought there must be a pool there. She walked towards it heavily over the tufted grass, with pale lips and a sense of trembling. It was as if the thing were come in spite of herself, instead of being the object of her search. There it was, black under the darkening sky: no motion, no sound near. She set down her basket, and then sank down herself on the grass, trembling. The pool had its wintry depth now: by the time it got shallow, as she remembered the pools did at Hayslope, in the summer, no one could find out that it was her body. But then there was her basket--she must hide that too. She must throw it into the water--make it heavy with stones first, and then throw it in. She got up to look about for stones, and soon brought five or six, which she laid down beside her basket, and then sat down again. There was no need to hurry--there was all the night to drown herself in. She sat leaning her elbow on the basket. She was weary, hungry. There were some buns in her basket--three, which she had supplied herself with at the place where she ate her dinner. She took them out now and ate them eagerly, and then sat still again, looking at the pool. The soothed sensation that came over her from the satisfaction of her hunger, and this fixed dreamy attitude, brought on drowsiness, and presently her head sank down on her knees. She was fast asleep. When she awoke it was deep night, and she felt chill. She was frightened at this darkness--frightened at the long night before her. If she could but throw herself into the water! No, not yet. She began to walk about that she might get warm again, as if she would have more resolution then. Oh how long the time was in that darkness! The bright hearth and the warmth and the voices of home, the secure uprising and lying down, the familiar fields, the familiar people, the Sundays and holidays with their simple joys of dress and feasting--all the sweets of her young life rushed before her now, and she seemed to be stretching her arms towards them across a great gulf. She set her teeth when she thought of Arthur. She cursed him, without knowing what her cursing would do. She wished he too might know desolation, and cold, and a life of shame that he dared not end by death. The horror of this cold, and darkness, and solitude--out of all human reach--became greater every long minute. It was almost as if she were dead already, and knew that she was dead, and longed to get back to life again. But no: she was alive still; she had not taken the dreadful leap. She felt a strange contradictory wretchedness and exultation: wretchedness, that she did not dare to face death; exultation, that she was still in life--that she might yet know light and warmth again. She walked backwards and forwards to warm herself, beginning to discern something of the objects around her, as her eyes became accustomed to the night--the darker line of the hedge, the rapid motion of some living creature--perhaps a field-mouse--rushing across the grass. She no longer felt as if the darkness hedged her in. She thought she could walk back across the field, and get over the stile; and then, in the very next field, she thought she remembered there was a hovel of furze near a sheepfold. If she could get into that hovel, she would be warmer. She could pass the night there, for that was what Alick did at Hayslope in lambing-time. The thought of this hovel brought the energy of a new hope. She took up her basket and walked across the field, but it was some time before she got in the right direction for the stile. The exercise and the occupation of finding the stile were a stimulus to her, however, and lightened the horror of the darkness and solitude. There were sheep in the next field, and she startled a group as she set down her basket and got over the stile; and the sound of their movement comforted her, for it assured her that her impression was right--this was the field where she had seen the hovel, for it was the field where the sheep were. Right on along the path, and she would get to it. She reached the opposite gate, and felt her way along its rails and the rails of the sheep-fold, till her hand encountered the pricking of the gorsy wall. Delicious sensation! She had found the shelter. She groped her way, touching the prickly gorse, to the door, and pushed it open. It was an ill-smelling close place, but warm, and there was straw on the ground. Hetty sank down on the straw with a sense of escape. Tears came--she had never shed tears before since she left Windsor--tears and sobs of hysterical joy that she had still hold of life, that she was still on the familiar earth, with the sheep near her. The very consciousness of her own limbs was a delight to her: she turned up her sleeves, and kissed her arms with the passionate love of life. Soon warmth and weariness lulled her in the midst of her sobs, and she fell continually into dozing, fancying herself at the brink of the pool again--fancying that she had jumped into the water, and then awaking with a start, and wondering where she was. But at last deep dreamless sleep came; her head, guarded by her bonnet, found a pillow against the gorsy wall, and the poor soul, driven to and fro between two equal terrors, found the one relief that was possible to it--the relief of unconsciousness. Alas! That relief seems to end the moment it has begun. It seemed to Hetty as if those dozen dreams had only passed into another dream--that she was in the hovel, and her aunt was standing over her with a candle in her hand. She trembled under her aunt's glance, and opened her eyes. There was no candle, but there was light in the hovel--the light of early morning through the open door. And there was a face looking down on her; but it was an unknown face, belonging to an elderly man in a smock-frock. "Why, what do you do here, young woman?" the man said roughly. Hetty trembled still worse under this real fear and shame than she had done in her momentary dream under her aunt's glance. She felt that she was like a beggar already--found sleeping in that place. But in spite of her trembling, she was so eager to account to the man for her presence here, that she found words at once. "I lost my way," she said. "I'm travelling--north'ard, and I got away from the road into the fields, and was overtaken by the dark. Will you tell me the way to the nearest village?" She got up as she was speaking, and put her hands to her bonnet to adjust it, and then laid hold of her basket. The man looked at her with a slow bovine gaze, without giving her any answer, for some seconds. Then he turned away and walked towards the door of the hovel, but it was not till he got there that he stood still, and, turning his shoulder half-round towards her, said, "Aw, I can show you the way to Norton, if you like. But what do you do gettin' out o' the highroad?" he added, with a tone of gruff reproof. "Y'ull be gettin' into mischief, if you dooant mind." "Yes," said Hetty, "I won't do it again. I'll keep in the road, if you'll be so good as show me how to get to it." "Why dooant you keep where there's a finger-poasses an' folks to ax the way on?" the man said, still more gruffly. "Anybody 'ud think you was a wild woman, an' look at yer." Hetty was frightened at this gruff old man, and still more at this last suggestion that she looked like a wild woman. As she followed him out of the hovel she thought she would give him a sixpence for telling her the way, and then he would not suppose she was wild. As he stopped to point out the road to her, she put her hand in her pocket to get the six-pence ready, and when he was turning away, without saying good-morning, she held it out to him and said, "Thank you; will you please to take something for your trouble?" He looked slowly at the sixpence, and then said, "I want none o' your money. You'd better take care on't, else you'll get it stool from yer, if you go trapesin' about the fields like a mad woman a-thatway." The man left her without further speech, and Hetty held on her way. Another day had risen, and she must wander on. It was no use to think of drowning herself--she could not do it, at least while she had money left to buy food and strength to journey on. But the incident on her waking this morning heightened her dread of that time when her money would be all gone; she would have to sell her basket and clothes then, and she would really look like a beggar or a wild woman, as the man had said. The passionate joy in life she had felt in the night, after escaping from the brink of the black cold death in the pool, was gone now. Life now, by the morning light, with the impression of that man's hard wondering look at her, was as full of dread as death--it was worse; it was a dread to which she felt chained, from which she shrank and shrank as she did from the black pool, and yet could find no refuge from it. She took out her money from her purse, and looked at it. She had still two-and-twenty shillings; it would serve her for many days more, or it would help her to get on faster to Stonyshire, within reach of Dinah. The thought of Dinah urged itself more strongly now, since the experience of the night had driven her shuddering imagination away from the pool. If it had been only going to Dinah--if nobody besides Dinah would ever know--Hetty could have made up her mind to go to her. The soft voice, the pitying eyes, would have drawn her. But afterwards the other people must know, and she could no more rush on that shame than she could rush on death. She must wander on and on, and wait for a lower depth of despair to give her courage. Perhaps death would come to her, for she was getting less and less able to bear the day's weariness. And yet--such is the strange action of our souls, drawing us by a lurking desire towards the very ends we dread--Hetty, when she set out again from Norton, asked the straightest road northwards towards Stonyshire, and kept it all that day. Poor wandering Hetty, with the rounded childish face and the hard, unloving, despairing soul looking out of it--with the narrow heart and narrow thoughts, no room in them for any sorrows but her own, and tasting that sorrow with the more intense bitterness! My heart bleeds for her as I see her toiling along on her weary feet, or seated in a cart, with her eyes fixed vacantly on the road before her, never thinking or caring whither it tends, till hunger comes and makes her desire that a village may be near. What will be the end, the end of her objectless wandering, apart from all love, caring for human beings only through her pride, clinging to life only as the hunted wounded brute clings to it? God preserve you and me from being the beginners of such misery!

Chapter 37

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter37

The Journey in Despair Hetty is in bed the rest of the day, too ill to think. She has no hope left. The next day she tries to think of a plan. She cannot get any work in her condition. Remembering a starving unwed mother and child at Hayslope who had been sent to the parish workhouse, a fate to be feared, she longs to be back home safe. No one will welcome a runaway in her condition. Above all, she does not want her family to find out what has happened to her. She decides to sell the presents Arthur gave her, and if she is not strong enough to commit suicide, she will find Dinah. Hetty gets money from the landlord for her earrings and locket and sets out back north again. She goes on and on, without a clear plan, until she gets to Stratford-on-Avon. She walks into the surrounding fields looking for a pool to drown herself. She finds a pool, but not able to throw herself in, she falls asleep there. In the cold and dark she awakens in fear. Remembering a shepherd's hovel nearby, she gropes until she finds it, and sleeps there on a bed of straw. In the morning, a gruff shepherd tells her to get back to the road because she looks like a "wild woman" . She continues her journey north towards Dinah in Snowfield.

Commentary on Chapter 37 Hetty finds she cannot commit suicide because she has, the narrator tells us, "the luxurious nature of a round, soft-coated pet animal" . She is torn between thoughts of suicide, begging, the workhouse, and throwing herself on the mercy of her aunt and uncle. She wants to go on living as long as possible, but she has no hope that she can be delivered from the evil she is in. She does not think she can even tell Dinah. When she thinks of death, she does not know about an afterlife, for she is not a religious person. She begins to have a hard look, like a wild animal, like the wild woman the shepherd sees in her. The narrator says she has a "Medusa face" . Medusa was a monster with the face of a woman and hair of snakes whose look could turn someone to stone. This is a strange image for Hetty whom we have been led to believe was more like a soft and helpless animal, a little dog that drew the affection of others. Eliot prepares us here for the major transformation Hetty is undergoing. Without any help or spiritual life to sustain her, she is coming close to the madness that destroys the moral sense in a person, never a strong point with Hetty anyway. We will not be surprised at what she might do in her desperation. At this point she seems scarcely aware of the child she is carrying except as baggage and shame. When Hetty wakes up in the shepherd's hut, she is so glad to be alive that she passionately kisses her own arms. After repeating that Hetty has no sorrow except for herself, the narrator confesses to be sorry for her: "My heart bleeds for her as I see her toiling along on her weary feet" . Though the narrator says some harsh things of Hetty, she wants the reader to pity her fate by understanding step by step, how she arrived there.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/38.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_38_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 38

chapter 38

{"name": "Chapter 38", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter38", "summary": "The Quest The narrative switches to Adam's point of view. After Hetty has been gone for two weeks, the family begins to worry, and Adam decides to go to Snowfield to get her. Mrs. Poyser tells him to invite Dinah to come back too for the wedding. Adam starts his journey in hope for he has never been happier in his life. When he reaches Dinah's cottage, he asks to see her, but the old woman there says Dinah has gone to Leeds to preach. He then asks to see the other woman, Hetty, but the woman says she has never been there. Now Adam is worried. He wonders if Hetty is with Dinah at Leeds, but the old woman does not have an address for her. Adam next inquires at the coach stop, but she was never on the coach for Snowfield. The innkeeper takes him to Oakbourne in his cart, one of the stops of the Treddleston coach in which she departed. Adam vacillates between fear of an accident and fear that she has run off with Arthur. Adam knows Arthur is in Ireland. The innkeeper in Oakbourne knows Hetty did not take the coach that goes to Snowfield, but he does not know where she went. From here Adam goes to Stoniton, knowing that Hetty must have gone here at first. The coachman remembers her, but not what happened after she left the coach. Adam can trace her no farther and returns home. He tells everything to his brother Seth but not his mother. Seth is surprised when Adam falls on his neck weeping, for he has never seen his brother break down. Next, Adam delivers the news to Mr. Poyser, but he does not tell him his suspicions about Arthur. Mr. Poyser is shocked and apologizes to Adam. Mr. Poyser thinks she did not want to be married and went to become a lady's maid. Adam asks Mr. Poyser to be easy with Hetty if she should decide to come home. They decide to keep everything quiet for now until they find her. Next Adam decides to go to Ireland to find Arthur, where he thinks Hetty has gone. He wants to go secretly and wills everything to Seth, if he should not return. He decides he must also inform Mr. Irwine.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 38 Eliot skillfully builds suspense as a film would do by inter-cutting scenes, returning to the people Hetty has left behind as they realize she is gone. Adam has a piece of the puzzle that the others do not, concerning her involvement with Arthur. Readers know more than Adam does, but we too are waiting to find out what happens to her. Adam's grief is so intense that his old jealousy is aroused, and Seth is worried for him. He hints that he hopes Adam won't do anything rash. He supposedly means suicide, but the reader wonders about his anger and revenge towards Arthur. For the moment, Adam is crushed to realize that Hetty does not want to marry him, that she has run away. Yet, it is significant that he always begs for leniency towards her. He decides that he must tell Mr. Irwine about Hetty and Arthur because \"I can't stand alone in this way any longer\" . He knows now it is too late to protect their secret."}

THE first ten days after Hetty's departure passed as quietly as any other days with the family at the Hall Farm, and with Adam at his daily work. They had expected Hetty to stay away a week or ten days at least, perhaps a little longer if Dinah came back with her, because there might then be something to detain them at Snowfield. But when a fortnight had passed they began to feel a little surprise that Hetty did not return; she must surely have found it pleasanter to be with Dinah than any one could have supposed. Adam, for his part, was getting very impatient to see her, and he resolved that, if she did not appear the next day (Saturday), he would set out on Sunday morning to fetch her. There was no coach on a Sunday, but by setting out before it was light, and perhaps getting a lift in a cart by the way, he would arrive pretty early at Snowfield, and bring back Hetty the next day--Dinah too, if she were coming. It was quite time Hetty came home, and he would afford to lose his Monday for the sake of bringing her. His project was quite approved at the Farm when he went there on Saturday evening. Mrs. Poyser desired him emphatically not to come back without Hetty, for she had been quite too long away, considering the things she had to get ready by the middle of March, and a week was surely enough for any one to go out for their health. As for Dinah, Mrs. Poyser had small hope of their bringing her, unless they could make her believe the folks at Hayslope were twice as miserable as the folks at Snowfield. "Though," said Mrs. Poyser, by way of conclusion, "you might tell her she's got but one aunt left, and SHE'S wasted pretty nigh to a shadder; and we shall p'rhaps all be gone twenty mile farther off her next Michaelmas, and shall die o' broken hearts among strange folks, and leave the children fatherless and motherless." "Nay, nay," said Mr. Poyser, who certainly had the air of a man perfectly heart-whole, "it isna so bad as that. Thee't looking rarely now, and getting flesh every day. But I'd be glad for Dinah t' come, for she'd help thee wi' the little uns: they took t' her wonderful." So at daybreak, on Sunday, Adam set off. Seth went with him the first mile or two, for the thought of Snowfield and the possibility that Dinah might come again made him restless, and the walk with Adam in the cold morning air, both in their best clothes, helped to give him a sense of Sunday calm. It was the last morning in February, with a low grey sky, and a slight hoar-frost on the green border of the road and on the black hedges. They heard the gurgling of the full brooklet hurrying down the hill, and the faint twittering of the early birds. For they walked in silence, though with a pleased sense of companionship. "Good-bye, lad," said Adam, laying his hand on Seth's shoulder and looking at him affectionately as they were about to part. "I wish thee wast going all the way wi' me, and as happy as I am." "I'm content, Addy, I'm content," said Seth cheerfully. "I'll be an old bachelor, belike, and make a fuss wi' thy children." They turned away from each other, and Seth walked leisurely homeward, mentally repeating one of his favourite hymns--he was very fond of hymns: Dark and cheerless is the morn Unaccompanied by thee: Joyless is the day's return Till thy mercy's beams I see: Till thou inward light impart, Glad my eyes and warm my heart. Visit, then, this soul of mine, Pierce the gloom of sin and grief-- Fill me, Radiancy Divine, Scatter all my unbelief. More and more thyself display, Shining to the perfect day. Adam walked much faster, and any one coming along the Oakbourne road at sunrise that morning must have had a pleasant sight in this tall broad-chested man, striding along with a carriage as upright and firm as any soldier's, glancing with keen glad eyes at the dark-blue hills as they began to show themselves on his way. Seldom in Adam's life had his face been so free from any cloud of anxiety as it was this morning; and this freedom from care, as is usual with constructive practical minds like his, made him all the more observant of the objects round him and all the more ready to gather suggestions from them towards his own favourite plans and ingenious contrivances. His happy love--the knowledge that his steps were carrying him nearer and nearer to Hetty, who was so soon to be his--was to his thoughts what the sweet morning air was to his sensations: it gave him a consciousness of well-being that made activity delightful. Every now and then there was a rush of more intense feeling towards her, which chased away other images than Hetty; and along with that would come a wondering thankfulness that all this happiness was given to him--that this life of ours had such sweetness in it. For Adam had a devout mind, though he was perhaps rather impatient of devout words, and his tenderness lay very close to his reverence, so that the one could hardly be stirred without the other. But after feeling had welled up and poured itself out in this way, busy thought would come back with the greater vigour; and this morning it was intent on schemes by which the roads might be improved that were so imperfect all through the country, and on picturing all the benefits that might come from the exertions of a single country gentleman, if he would set himself to getting the roads made good in his own district. It seemed a very short walk, the ten miles to Oakbourne, that pretty town within sight of the blue hills, where he break-fasted. After this, the country grew barer and barer: no more rolling woods, no more wide-branching trees near frequent homesteads, no more bushy hedgerows, but greystone walls intersecting the meagre pastures, and dismal wide-scattered greystone houses on broken lands where mines had been and were no longer. "A hungry land," said Adam to himself. "I'd rather go south'ard, where they say it's as flat as a table, than come to live here; though if Dinah likes to live in a country where she can be the most comfort to folks, she's i' the right to live o' this side; for she must look as if she'd come straight from heaven, like th' angels in the desert, to strengthen them as ha' got nothing t' eat." And when at last he came in sight of Snowfield, he thought it looked like a town that was "fellow to the country," though the stream through the valley where the great mill stood gave a pleasant greenness to the lower fields. The town lay, grim, stony, and unsheltered, up the side of a steep hill, and Adam did not go forward to it at present, for Seth had told him where to find Dinah. It was at a thatched cottage outside the town, a little way from the mill--an old cottage, standing sideways towards the road, with a little bit of potato-ground before it. Here Dinah lodged with an elderly couple; and if she and Hetty happened to be out, Adam could learn where they were gone, or when they would be at home again. Dinah might be out on some preaching errand, and perhaps she would have left Hetty at home. Adam could not help hoping this, and as he recognized the cottage by the roadside before him, there shone out in his face that involuntary smile which belongs to the expectation of a near joy. He hurried his step along the narrow causeway, and rapped at the door. It was opened by a very clean old woman, with a slow palsied shake of the head. "Is Dinah Morris at home?" said Adam. "Eh?...no," said the old woman, looking up at this tall stranger with a wonder that made her slower of speech than usual. "Will you please to come in?" she added, retiring from the door, as if recollecting herself. "Why, ye're brother to the young man as come afore, arena ye?" "Yes," said Adam, entering. "That was Seth Bede. I'm his brother Adam. He told me to give his respects to you and your good master." "Aye, the same t' him. He was a gracious young man. An' ye feature him, on'y ye're darker. Sit ye down i' th' arm-chair. My man isna come home from meeting." Adam sat down patiently, not liking to hurry the shaking old woman with questions, but looking eagerly towards the narrow twisting stairs in one corner, for he thought it was possible Hetty might have heard his voice and would come down them. "So you're come to see Dinah Morris?" said the old woman, standing opposite to him. "An' you didn' know she was away from home, then?" "No," said Adam, "but I thought it likely she might be away, seeing as it's Sunday. But the other young woman--is she at home, or gone along with Dinah?" The old woman looked at Adam with a bewildered air. "Gone along wi' her?" she said. "Eh, Dinah's gone to Leeds, a big town ye may ha' heared on, where there's a many o' the Lord's people. She's been gone sin' Friday was a fortnight: they sent her the money for her journey. You may see her room here," she went on, opening a door and not noticing the effect of her words on Adam. He rose and followed her, and darted an eager glance into the little room with its narrow bed, the portrait of Wesley on the wall, and the few books lying on the large Bible. He had had an irrational hope that Hetty might be there. He could not speak in the first moment after seeing that the room was empty; an undefined fear had seized him--something had happened to Hetty on the journey. Still the old woman was so slow of speech and apprehension, that Hetty might be at Snowfield after all. "It's a pity ye didna know," she said. "Have ye come from your own country o' purpose to see her?" "But Hetty--Hetty Sorrel," said Adam, abruptly; "Where is she?" "I know nobody by that name," said the old woman, wonderingly. "Is it anybody ye've heared on at Snowfield?" "Did there come no young woman here--very young and pretty--Friday was a fortnight, to see Dinah Morris?" "Nay; I'n seen no young woman." "Think; are you quite sure? A girl, eighteen years old, with dark eyes and dark curly hair, and a red cloak on, and a basket on her arm? You couldn't forget her if you saw her." "Nay; Friday was a fortnight--it was the day as Dinah went away--there come nobody. There's ne'er been nobody asking for her till you come, for the folks about know as she's gone. Eh dear, eh dear, is there summat the matter?" The old woman had seen the ghastly look of fear in Adam's face. But he was not stunned or confounded: he was thinking eagerly where he could inquire about Hetty. "Yes; a young woman started from our country to see Dinah, Friday was a fortnight. I came to fetch her back. I'm afraid something has happened to her. I can't stop. Good-bye." He hastened out of the cottage, and the old woman followed him to the gate, watching him sadly with her shaking head as he almost ran towards the town. He was going to inquire at the place where the Oakbourne coach stopped. No! No young woman like Hetty had been seen there. Had any accident happened to the coach a fortnight ago? No. And there was no coach to take him back to Oakbourne that day. Well, he would walk: he couldn't stay here, in wretched inaction. But the innkeeper, seeing that Adam was in great anxiety, and entering into this new incident with the eagerness of a man who passes a great deal of time with his hands in his pockets looking into an obstinately monotonous street, offered to take him back to Oakbourne in his own "taxed cart" this very evening. It was not five o'clock; there was plenty of time for Adam to take a meal and yet to get to Oakbourne before ten o'clock. The innkeeper declared that he really wanted to go to Oakbourne, and might as well go to-night; he should have all Monday before him then. Adam, after making an ineffectual attempt to eat, put the food in his pocket, and, drinking a draught of ale, declared himself ready to set off. As they approached the cottage, it occurred to him that he would do well to learn from the old woman where Dinah was to be found in Leeds: if there was trouble at the Hall Farm--he only half-admitted the foreboding that there would be--the Poysers might like to send for Dinah. But Dinah had not left any address, and the old woman, whose memory for names was infirm, could not recall the name of the "blessed woman" who was Dinah's chief friend in the Society at Leeds. During that long, long journey in the taxed cart, there was time for all the conjectures of importunate fear and struggling hope. In the very first shock of discovering that Hetty had not been to Snowfield, the thought of Arthur had darted through Adam like a sharp pang, but he tried for some time to ward off its return by busying himself with modes of accounting for the alarming fact, quite apart from that intolerable thought. Some accident had happened. Hetty had, by some strange chance, got into a wrong vehicle from Oakbourne: she had been taken ill, and did not want to frighten them by letting them know. But this frail fence of vague improbabilities was soon hurled down by a rush of distinct agonizing fears. Hetty had been deceiving herself in thinking that she could love and marry him: she had been loving Arthur all the while; and now, in her desperation at the nearness of their marriage, she had run away. And she was gone to him. The old indignation and jealousy rose again, and prompted the suspicion that Arthur had been dealing falsely--had written to Hetty--had tempted her to come to him--being unwilling, after all, that she should belong to another man besides himself. Perhaps the whole thing had been contrived by him, and he had given her directions how to follow him to Ireland--for Adam knew that Arthur had been gone thither three weeks ago, having recently learnt it at the Chase. Every sad look of Hetty's, since she had been engaged to Adam, returned upon him now with all the exaggeration of painful retrospect. He had been foolishly sanguine and confident. The poor thing hadn't perhaps known her own mind for a long while; had thought that she could forget Arthur; had been momentarily drawn towards the man who offered her a protecting, faithful love. He couldn't bear to blame her: she never meant to cause him this dreadful pain. The blame lay with that man who had selfishly played with her heart--had perhaps even deliberately lured her away. At Oakbourne, the ostler at the Royal Oak remembered such a young woman as Adam described getting out of the Treddleston coach more than a fortnight ago--wasn't likely to forget such a pretty lass as that in a hurry--was sure she had not gone on by the Buxton coach that went through Snowfield, but had lost sight of her while he went away with the horses and had never set eyes on her again. Adam then went straight to the house from which the Stonition coach started: Stoniton was the most obvious place for Hetty to go to first, whatever might be her destination, for she would hardly venture on any but the chief coach-roads. She had been noticed here too, and was remembered to have sat on the box by the coachman; but the coachman could not be seen, for another man had been driving on that road in his stead the last three or four days. He could probably be seen at Stoniton, through inquiry at the inn where the coach put up. So the anxious heart-stricken Adam must of necessity wait and try to rest till morning--nay, till eleven o'clock, when the coach started. At Stoniton another delay occurred, for the old coachman who had driven Hetty would not be in the town again till night. When he did come he remembered Hetty well, and remembered his own joke addressed to her, quoting it many times to Adam, and observing with equal frequency that he thought there was something more than common, because Hetty had not laughed when he joked her. But he declared, as the people had done at the inn, that he had lost sight of Hetty directly she got down. Part of the next morning was consumed in inquiries at every house in the town from which a coach started--(all in vain, for you know Hetty did not start from Stonition by coach, but on foot in the grey morning)--and then in walking out to the first toll-gates on the different lines of road, in the forlorn hope of finding some recollection of her there. No, she was not to be traced any farther; and the next hard task for Adam was to go home and carry the wretched tidings to the Hall Farm. As to what he should do beyond that, he had come to two distinct resolutions amidst the tumult of thought and feeling which was going on within him while he went to and fro. He would not mention what he knew of Arthur Donnithorne's behaviour to Hetty till there was a clear necessity for it: it was still possible Hetty might come back, and the disclosure might be an injury or an offence to her. And as soon as he had been home and done what was necessary there to prepare for his further absence, he would start off to Ireland: if he found no trace of Hetty on the road, he would go straight to Arthur Donnithorne and make himself certain how far he was acquainted with her movements. Several times the thought occurred to him that he would consult Mr. Irwine, but that would be useless unless he told him all, and so betrayed the secret about Arthur. It seems strange that Adam, in the incessant occupation of his mind about Hetty, should never have alighted on the probability that she had gone to Windsor, ignorant that Arthur was no longer there. Perhaps the reason was that he could not conceive Hetty's throwing herself on Arthur uncalled; he imagined no cause that could have driven her to such a step, after that letter written in August. There were but two alternatives in his mind: either Arthur had written to her again and enticed her away, or she had simply fled from her approaching marriage with himself because she found, after all, she could not love him well enough, and yet was afraid of her friends' anger if she retracted. With this last determination on his mind, of going straight to Arthur, the thought that he had spent two days in inquiries which had proved to be almost useless, was torturing to Adam; and yet, since he would not tell the Poysers his conviction as to where Hetty was gone, or his intention to follow her thither, he must be able to say to them that he had traced her as far as possible. It was after twelve o'clock on Tuesday night when Adam reached Treddleston; and, unwilling to disturb his mother and Seth, and also to encounter their questions at that hour, he threw himself without undressing on a bed at the "Waggon Overthrown," and slept hard from pure weariness. Not more than four hours, however, for before five o'clock he set out on his way home in the faint morning twilight. He always kept a key of the workshop door in his pocket, so that he could let himself in; and he wished to enter without awaking his mother, for he was anxious to avoid telling her the new trouble himself by seeing Seth first, and asking him to tell her when it should be necessary. He walked gently along the yard, and turned the key gently in the door; but, as he expected, Gyp, who lay in the workshop, gave a sharp bark. It subsided when he saw Adam, holding up his finger at him to impose silence, and in his dumb, tailless joy he must content himself with rubbing his body against his master's legs. Adam was too heart-sick to take notice of Gyp's fondling. He threw himself on the bench and stared dully at the wood and the signs of work around him, wondering if he should ever come to feel pleasure in them again, while Gyp, dimly aware that there was something wrong with his master, laid his rough grey head on Adam's knee and wrinkled his brows to look up at him. Hitherto, since Sunday afternoon, Adam had been constantly among strange people and in strange places, having no associations with the details of his daily life, and now that by the light of this new morning he was come back to his home and surrounded by the familiar objects that seemed for ever robbed of their charm, the reality--the hard, inevitable reality of his troubles pressed upon him with a new weight. Right before him was an unfinished chest of drawers, which he had been making in spare moments for Hetty's use, when his home should be hers. Seth had not heard Adam's entrance, but he had been roused by Gyp's bark, and Adam heard him moving about in the room above, dressing himself. Seth's first thoughts were about his brother: he would come home to-day, surely, for the business would be wanting him sadly by to-morrow, but it was pleasant to think he had had a longer holiday than he had expected. And would Dinah come too? Seth felt that that was the greatest happiness he could look forward to for himself, though he had no hope left that she would ever love him well enough to marry him; but he had often said to himself, it was better to be Dinah's friend and brother than any other woman's husband. If he could but be always near her, instead of living so far off! He came downstairs and opened the inner door leading from the kitchen into the workshop, intending to let out Gyp; but he stood still in the doorway, smitten with a sudden shock at the sight of Adam seated listlessly on the bench, pale, unwashed, with sunken blank eyes, almost like a drunkard in the morning. But Seth felt in an instant what the marks meant--not drunkenness, but some great calamity. Adam looked up at him without speaking, and Seth moved forward towards the bench, himself trembling so that speech did not come readily. "God have mercy on us, Addy," he said, in a low voice, sitting down on the bench beside Adam, "what is it?" Adam was unable to speak. The strong man, accustomed to suppress the signs of sorrow, had felt his heart swell like a child's at this first approach of sympathy. He fell on Seth's neck and sobbed. Seth was prepared for the worst now, for, even in his recollections of their boyhood, Adam had never sobbed before. "Is it death, Adam? Is she dead?" he asked, in a low tone, when Adam raised his head and was recovering himself. "No, lad; but she's gone--gone away from us. She's never been to Snowfield. Dinah's been gone to Leeds ever since last Friday was a fortnight, the very day Hetty set out. I can't find out where she went after she got to Stoniton." Seth was silent from utter astonishment: he knew nothing that could suggest to him a reason for Hetty's going away. "Hast any notion what she's done it for?" he said, at last. "She can't ha' loved me. She didn't like our marriage when it came nigh--that must be it," said Adam. He had determined to mention no further reason. "I hear Mother stirring," said Seth. "Must we tell her?" "No, not yet," said Adam, rising from the bench and pushing the hair from his face, as if he wanted to rouse himself. "I can't have her told yet; and I must set out on another journey directly, after I've been to the village and th' Hall Farm. I can't tell thee where I'm going, and thee must say to her I'm gone on business as nobody is to know anything about. I'll go and wash myself now." Adam moved towards the door of the workshop, but after a step or two he turned round, and, meeting Seth's eyes with a calm sad glance, he said, "I must take all the money out o' the tin box, lad; but if anything happens to me, all the rest 'll be thine, to take care o' Mother with." Seth was pale and trembling: he felt there was some terrible secret under all this. "Brother," he said, faintly--he never called Adam "Brother" except in solemn moments--"I don't believe you'll do anything as you can't ask God's blessing on." "Nay, lad," said Adam, "don't be afraid. I'm for doing nought but what's a man's duty." The thought that if he betrayed his trouble to his mother, she would only distress him by words, half of blundering affection, half of irrepressible triumph that Hetty proved as unfit to be his wife as she had always foreseen, brought back some of his habitual firmness and self-command. He had felt ill on his journey home--he told her when she came down--had stayed all night at Tredddleston for that reason; and a bad headache, that still hung about him this morning, accounted for his paleness and heavy eyes. He determined to go to the village, in the first place, attend to his business for an hour, and give notice to Burge of his being obliged to go on a journey, which he must beg him not to mention to any one; for he wished to avoid going to the Hall Farm near breakfast-time, when the children and servants would be in the house-place, and there must be exclamations in their hearing about his having returned without Hetty. He waited until the clock struck nine before he left the work-yard at the village, and set off, through the fields, towards the Farm. It was an immense relief to him, as he came near the Home Close, to see Mr. Poyser advancing towards him, for this would spare him the pain of going to the house. Mr. Poyser was walking briskly this March morning, with a sense of spring business on his mind: he was going to cast the master's eye on the shoeing of a new cart-horse, carrying his spud as a useful companion by the way. His surprise was great when he caught sight of Adam, but he was not a man given to presentiments of evil. "Why, Adam, lad, is't you? Have ye been all this time away and not brought the lasses back, after all? Where are they?" "No, I've not brought 'em," said Adam, turning round, to indicate that he wished to walk back with Mr. Poyser. "Why," said Martin, looking with sharper attention at Adam, "ye look bad. Is there anything happened?" "Yes," said Adam, heavily. "A sad thing's happened. I didna find Hetty at Snowfield." Mr. Poyser's good-natured face showed signs of troubled astonishment. "Not find her? What's happened to her?" he said, his thoughts flying at once to bodily accident. "That I can't tell, whether anything's happened to her. She never went to Snowfield--she took the coach to Stoniton, but I can't learn nothing of her after she got down from the Stoniton coach." "Why, you donna mean she's run away?" said Martin, standing still, so puzzled and bewildered that the fact did not yet make itself felt as a trouble by him. "She must ha' done," said Adam. "She didn't like our marriage when it came to the point--that must be it. She'd mistook her feelings." Martin was silent for a minute or two, looking on the ground and rooting up the grass with his spud, without knowing what he was doing. His usual slowness was always trebled when the subject of speech was painful. At last he looked up, right in Adam's face, saying, "Then she didna deserve t' ha' ye, my lad. An' I feel i' fault myself, for she was my niece, and I was allays hot for her marr'ing ye. There's no amends I can make ye, lad--the more's the pity: it's a sad cut-up for ye, I doubt." Adam could say nothing; and Mr. Poyser, after pursuing his walk for a little while, went on, "I'll be bound she's gone after trying to get a lady's maid's place, for she'd got that in her head half a year ago, and wanted me to gi' my consent. But I'd thought better on her"--he added, shaking his head slowly and sadly--"I'd thought better on her, nor to look for this, after she'd gi'en y' her word, an' everything been got ready." Adam had the strongest motives for encouraging this supposition in Mr. Poyser, and he even tried to believe that it might possibly be true. He had no warrant for the certainty that she was gone to Arthur. "It was better it should be so," he said, as quietly as he could, "if she felt she couldn't like me for a husband. Better run away before than repent after. I hope you won't look harshly on her if she comes back, as she may do if she finds it hard to get on away from home." "I canna look on her as I've done before," said Martin decisively. "She's acted bad by you, and by all of us. But I'll not turn my back on her: she's but a young un, and it's the first harm I've knowed on her. It'll be a hard job for me to tell her aunt. Why didna Dinah come back wi' ye? She'd ha' helped to pacify her aunt a bit." "Dinah wasn't at Snowfield. She's been gone to Leeds this fortnight, and I couldn't learn from th' old woman any direction where she is at Leeds, else I should ha' brought it you." "She'd a deal better be staying wi' her own kin," said Mr. Poyser, indignantly, "than going preaching among strange folks a-that'n." "I must leave you now, Mr. Poyser," said Adam, "for I've a deal to see to." "Aye, you'd best be after your business, and I must tell the missis when I go home. It's a hard job." "But," said Adam, "I beg particular, you'll keep what's happened quiet for a week or two. I've not told my mother yet, and there's no knowing how things may turn out." "Aye, aye; least said, soonest mended. We'n no need to say why the match is broke off, an' we may hear of her after a bit. Shake hands wi' me, lad: I wish I could make thee amends." There was something in Martin Poyser's throat at that moment which caused him to bring out those scanty words in rather a broken fashion. Yet Adam knew what they meant all the better, and the two honest men grasped each other's hard hands in mutual understanding. There was nothing now to hinder Adam from setting off. He had told Seth to go to the Chase and leave a message for the squire, saying that Adam Bede had been obliged to start off suddenly on a journey--and to say as much, and no more, to any one else who made inquiries about him. If the Poysers learned that he was gone away again, Adam knew they would infer that he was gone in search of Hetty. He had intended to go right on his way from the Hall Farm, but now the impulse which had frequently visited him before--to go to Mr. Irwine, and make a confidant of him--recurred with the new force which belongs to a last opportunity. He was about to start on a long journey--a difficult one--by sea--and no soul would know where he was gone. If anything happened to him? Or, if he absolutely needed help in any matter concerning Hetty? Mr. Irwine was to be trusted; and the feeling which made Adam shrink from telling anything which was her secret must give way before the need there was that she should have some one else besides himself who would be prepared to defend her in the worst extremity. Towards Arthur, even though he might have incurred no new guilt, Adam felt that he was not bound to keep silence when Hetty's interest called on him to speak. "I must do it," said Adam, when these thoughts, which had spread themselves through hours of his sad journeying, now rushed upon him in an instant, like a wave that had been slowly gathering; "it's the right thing. I can't stand alone in this way any longer."

Chapter 38

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter38

The Quest The narrative switches to Adam's point of view. After Hetty has been gone for two weeks, the family begins to worry, and Adam decides to go to Snowfield to get her. Mrs. Poyser tells him to invite Dinah to come back too for the wedding. Adam starts his journey in hope for he has never been happier in his life. When he reaches Dinah's cottage, he asks to see her, but the old woman there says Dinah has gone to Leeds to preach. He then asks to see the other woman, Hetty, but the woman says she has never been there. Now Adam is worried. He wonders if Hetty is with Dinah at Leeds, but the old woman does not have an address for her. Adam next inquires at the coach stop, but she was never on the coach for Snowfield. The innkeeper takes him to Oakbourne in his cart, one of the stops of the Treddleston coach in which she departed. Adam vacillates between fear of an accident and fear that she has run off with Arthur. Adam knows Arthur is in Ireland. The innkeeper in Oakbourne knows Hetty did not take the coach that goes to Snowfield, but he does not know where she went. From here Adam goes to Stoniton, knowing that Hetty must have gone here at first. The coachman remembers her, but not what happened after she left the coach. Adam can trace her no farther and returns home. He tells everything to his brother Seth but not his mother. Seth is surprised when Adam falls on his neck weeping, for he has never seen his brother break down. Next, Adam delivers the news to Mr. Poyser, but he does not tell him his suspicions about Arthur. Mr. Poyser is shocked and apologizes to Adam. Mr. Poyser thinks she did not want to be married and went to become a lady's maid. Adam asks Mr. Poyser to be easy with Hetty if she should decide to come home. They decide to keep everything quiet for now until they find her. Next Adam decides to go to Ireland to find Arthur, where he thinks Hetty has gone. He wants to go secretly and wills everything to Seth, if he should not return. He decides he must also inform Mr. Irwine.

Commentary on Chapter 38 Eliot skillfully builds suspense as a film would do by inter-cutting scenes, returning to the people Hetty has left behind as they realize she is gone. Adam has a piece of the puzzle that the others do not, concerning her involvement with Arthur. Readers know more than Adam does, but we too are waiting to find out what happens to her. Adam's grief is so intense that his old jealousy is aroused, and Seth is worried for him. He hints that he hopes Adam won't do anything rash. He supposedly means suicide, but the reader wonders about his anger and revenge towards Arthur. For the moment, Adam is crushed to realize that Hetty does not want to marry him, that she has run away. Yet, it is significant that he always begs for leniency towards her. He decides that he must tell Mr. Irwine about Hetty and Arthur because "I can't stand alone in this way any longer" . He knows now it is too late to protect their secret.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/39.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_39_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 39

chapter 39

{"name": "Chapter 39", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter39", "summary": "The Tidings When Arthur arrives at the parsonage, he is kept waiting as Mr. Irwine talks to a strange man . When Adam is admitted, he tells Mr. Irwine that he has come to him for help because he looks up to him the most and must tell him some painful news. Mr. Irwine is looking at Adam strangely and has his hand on a letter. Adam tells him Hetty has run away and that he is going to look for her. Mr. Irwine asks if Adam knows why she ran away. Adam says there is someone else involved. Mr. Irwine looks relieved. Adam then tells him the other person is Arthur, and Mr. Irwine is shocked and full of grief as Adam tells about the secret meetings and how he made Arthur write the letter to Hetty. Mr. Irwine then tells Adam to prepare himself for a heavy blow. He can at least thank God he is not the guilty one. He shows Adam the letter from a magistrate in Stoniton with news of Hetty. She has been arrested for killing her baby. Adam is stricken, saying Hetty never had a child. The letter mentions that she denies having a baby, but there is evidence. Mr. Irwine says they can only hope she didn't do it. The trial is coming soon. Adam says he forgives Hetty, but he will bring Arthur back to see Hetty's misery; it is all his fault. Arthur, however, is on his way home already because his grandfather has sent for him. Mr. Irwine switches Adam's attention to Hetty and advises him to go to Stoniton with him to identify Hetty. He tells Adam there are others to think of in this crisis.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 39 Eliot shocks the characters and readers at the same time by skillfully postponing the outcome of Hetty's tortured journey until we hear this official report reach her family and friends. Eliot further delays telling the details and final scenes of Hetty's story until the trial. Adam's blow is hard to witness, for he has tried so hard and was so close, he thought, to happiness: \"O God, it's too hard to lay upon me--it's too to hard to think she is wicked\" . Mr. Irwine comes into his own as the moral leader in this crisis. It is clear that he first thought Adam was the father of the baby. Relieved at first when Adam says it was someone else, he is doubly hurt to find the man is Arthur. He remembers Arthur trying to confess something to him. Though crushed himself for his protege and surrogate son, Mr. Irwine thinks of others and how to soften the blow so that the right things can be done. Adam claims that Arthur is to blame and should suffer the consequences, not Hetty. He continues to load all the guilt on Arthur. Mr. Irwine counsels Adam wisely against revenge, and tells him that Arthur's suffering will be worse, since he caused the tragedy. He must put his attention on giving help. Knowing everyone's nature, Mr. Irwine begins skillfully to orchestrate the community response, fulfilling his office of spiritual counselor admirably. He gives Adam some action to do--come with him to Stoniton Prison."}

ADAM turned his face towards Broxton and walked with his swiftest stride, looking at his watch with the fear that Mr. Irwine might be gone out--hunting, perhaps. The fear and haste together produced a state of strong excitement before he reached the rectory gate, and outside it he saw the deep marks of a recent hoof on the gravel. But the hoofs were turned towards the gate, not away from it, and though there was a horse against the stable door, it was not Mr. Irwine's: it had evidently had a journey this morning, and must belong to some one who had come on business. Mr. Irwine was at home, then; but Adam could hardly find breath and calmness to tell Carroll that he wanted to speak to the rector. The double suffering of certain and uncertain sorrow had begun to shake the strong man. The butler looked at him wonderingly, as he threw himself on a bench in the passage and stared absently at the clock on the opposite wall. The master had somebody with him, he said, but he heard the study door open--the stranger seemed to be coming out, and as Adam was in a hurry, he would let the master know at once. Adam sat looking at the clock: the minute-hand was hurrying along the last five minutes to ten with a loud, hard, indifferent tick, and Adam watched the movement and listened to the sound as if he had had some reason for doing so. In our times of bitter suffering there are almost always these pauses, when our consciousness is benumbed to everything but some trivial perception or sensation. It is as if semi-idiocy came to give us rest from the memory and the dread which refuse to leave us in our sleep. Carroll, coming back, recalled Adam to the sense of his burden. He was to go into the study immediately. "I can't think what that strange person's come about," the butler added, from mere incontinence of remark, as he preceded Adam to the door, "he's gone i' the dining-room. And master looks unaccountable--as if he was frightened." Adam took no notice of the words: he could not care about other people's business. But when he entered the study and looked in Mr. Irwine's face, he felt in an instant that there was a new expression in it, strangely different from the warm friendliness it had always worn for him before. A letter lay open on the table, and Mr. Irwine's hand was on it, but the changed glance he cast on Adam could not be owing entirely to preoccupation with some disagreeable business, for he was looking eagerly towards the door, as if Adam's entrance were a matter of poignant anxiety to him. "You want to speak to me, Adam," he said, in that low constrainedly quiet tone which a man uses when he is determined to suppress agitation. "Sit down here." He pointed to a chair just opposite to him, at no more than a yard's distance from his own, and Adam sat down with a sense that this cold manner of Mr. Irwine's gave an additional unexpected difficulty to his disclosure. But when Adam had made up his mind to a measure, he was not the man to renounce it for any but imperative reasons. "I come to you, sir," he said, "as the gentleman I look up to most of anybody. I've something very painful to tell you--something as it'll pain you to hear as well as me to tell. But if I speak o' the wrong other people have done, you'll see I didn't speak till I'd good reason." Mr. Irwine nodded slowly, and Adam went on rather tremulously, "You was t' ha' married me and Hetty Sorrel, you know, sir, o' the fifteenth o' this month. I thought she loved me, and I was th' happiest man i' the parish. But a dreadful blow's come upon me." Mr. Irwine started up from his chair, as if involuntarily, but then, determined to control himself, walked to the window and looked out. "She's gone away, sir, and we don't know where. She said she was going to Snowfield o' Friday was a fortnight, and I went last Sunday to fetch her back; but she'd never been there, and she took the coach to Stoniton, and beyond that I can't trace her. But now I'm going a long journey to look for her, and I can't trust t' anybody but you where I'm going." Mr. Irwine came back from the window and sat down. "Have you no idea of the reason why she went away?" he said. "It's plain enough she didn't want to marry me, sir," said Adam. "She didn't like it when it came so near. But that isn't all, I doubt. There's something else I must tell you, sir. There's somebody else concerned besides me." A gleam of something--it was almost like relief or joy--came across the eager anxiety of Mr. Irwine's face at that moment. Adam was looking on the ground, and paused a little: the next words were hard to speak. But when he went on, he lifted up his head and looked straight at Mr. Irwine. He would do the thing he had resolved to do, without flinching. "You know who's the man I've reckoned my greatest friend," he said, "and used to be proud to think as I should pass my life i' working for him, and had felt so ever since we were lads...." Mr. Irwine, as if all self-control had forsaken him, grasped Adam's arm, which lay on the table, and, clutching it tightly like a man in pain, said, with pale lips and a low hurried voice, "No, Adam, no--don't say it, for God's sake!" Adam, surprised at the violence of Mr. Irwine's feeling, repented of the words that had passed his lips and sat in distressed silence. The grasp on his arm gradually relaxed, and Mr. Irwine threw himself back in his chair, saying, "Go on--I must know it." "That man played with Hetty's feelings, and behaved to her as he'd no right to do to a girl in her station o' life--made her presents and used to go and meet her out a-walking. I found it out only two days before he went away--found him a-kissing her as they were parting in the Grove. There'd been nothing said between me and Hetty then, though I'd loved her for a long while, and she knew it. But I reproached him with his wrong actions, and words and blows passed between us; and he said solemnly to me, after that, as it had been all nonsense and no more than a bit o' flirting. But I made him write a letter to tell Hetty he'd meant nothing, for I saw clear enough, sir, by several things as I hadn't understood at the time, as he'd got hold of her heart, and I thought she'd belike go on thinking of him and never come to love another man as wanted to marry her. And I gave her the letter, and she seemed to bear it all after a while better than I'd expected...and she behaved kinder and kinder to me...I daresay she didn't know her own feelings then, poor thing, and they came back upon her when it was too late...I don't want to blame her...I can't think as she meant to deceive me. But I was encouraged to think she loved me, and--you know the rest, sir. But it's on my mind as he's been false to me, and 'ticed her away, and she's gone to him--and I'm going now to see, for I can never go to work again till I know what's become of her." During Adam's narrative, Mr. Irwine had had time to recover his self-mastery in spite of the painful thoughts that crowded upon him. It was a bitter remembrance to him now--that morning when Arthur breakfasted with him and seemed as if he were on the verge of a confession. It was plain enough now what he had wanted to confess. And if their words had taken another turn...if he himself had been less fastidious about intruding on another man's secrets...it was cruel to think how thin a film had shut out rescue from all this guilt and misery. He saw the whole history now by that terrible illumination which the present sheds back upon the past. But every other feeling as it rushed upon his was thrown into abeyance by pity, deep respectful pity, for the man who sat before him--already so bruised, going forth with sad blind resignedness to an unreal sorrow, while a real one was close upon him, too far beyond the range of common trial for him ever to have feared it. His own agitation was quelled by a certain awe that comes over us in the presence of a great anguish, for the anguish he must inflict on Adam was already present to him. Again he put his hand on the arm that lay on the table, but very gently this time, as he said solemnly: "Adam, my dear friend, you have had some hard trials in your life. You can bear sorrow manfully, as well as act manfully. God requires both tasks at our hands. And there is a heavier sorrow coming upon you than any you have yet known. But you are not guilty--you have not the worst of all sorrows. God help him who has!" The two pale faces looked at each other; in Adam's there was trembling suspense, in Mr. Irwine's hesitating, shrinking pity. But he went on. "I have had news of Hetty this morning. She is not gone to him. She is in Stonyshire--at Stoniton." Adam started up from his chair, as if he thought he could have leaped to her that moment. But Mr. Irwine laid hold of his arm again and said, persuasively, "Wait, Adam, wait." So he sat down. "She is in a very unhappy position--one which will make it worse for you to find her, my poor friend, than to have lost her for ever." Adam's lips moved tremulously, but no sound came. They moved again, and he whispered, "Tell me." "She has been arrested...she is in prison." It was as if an insulting blow had brought back the spirit of resistance into Adam. The blood rushed to his face, and he said, loudly and sharply, "For what?" "For a great crime--the murder of her child." "It CAN'T BE!" Adam almost shouted, starting up from his chair and making a stride towards the door; but he turned round again, setting his back against the bookcase, and looking fiercely at Mr. Irwine. "It isn't possible. She never had a child. She can't be guilty. WHO says it?" "God grant she may be innocent, Adam. We can still hope she is." "But who says she is guilty?" said Adam violently. "Tell me everything." "Here is a letter from the magistrate before whom she was taken, and the constable who arrested her is in the dining-room. She will not confess her name or where she comes from; but I fear, I fear, there can be no doubt it is Hetty. The description of her person corresponds, only that she is said to look very pale and ill. She had a small red-leather pocket-book in her pocket with two names written in it--one at the beginning, 'Hetty Sorrel, Hayslope,' and the other near the end, 'Dinah Morris, Snowfield.' She will not say which is her own name--she denies everything, and will answer no questions, and application has been made to me, as a magistrate, that I may take measures for identifying her, for it was thought probable that the name which stands first is her own name." "But what proof have they got against her, if it IS Hetty?" said Adam, still violently, with an effort that seemed to shake his whole frame. "I'll not believe it. It couldn't ha' been, and none of us know it." "Terrible proof that she was under the temptation to commit the crime; but we have room to hope that she did not really commit it. Try and read that letter, Adam." Adam took the letter between his shaking hands and tried to fix his eyes steadily on it. Mr. Irwine meanwhile went out to give some orders. When he came back, Adam's eyes were still on the first page--he couldn't read--he could not put the words together and make out what they meant. He threw it down at last and clenched his fist. "It's HIS doing," he said; "if there's been any crime, it's at his door, not at hers. HE taught her to deceive--HE deceived me first. Let 'em put HIM on his trial--let him stand in court beside her, and I'll tell 'em how he got hold of her heart, and 'ticed her t' evil, and then lied to me. Is HE to go free, while they lay all the punishment on her...so weak and young?" The image called up by these last words gave a new direction to poor Adam's maddened feelings. He was silent, looking at the corner of the room as if he saw something there. Then he burst out again, in a tone of appealing anguish, "I can't bear it...O God, it's too hard to lay upon me--it's too hard to think she's wicked." Mr. Irwine had sat down again in silence. He was too wise to utter soothing words at present, and indeed, the sight of Adam before him, with that look of sudden age which sometimes comes over a young face in moments of terrible emotion--the hard bloodless look of the skin, the deep lines about the quivering mouth, the furrows in the brow--the sight of this strong firm man shattered by the invisible stroke of sorrow, moved him so deeply that speech was not easy. Adam stood motionless, with his eyes vacantly fixed in this way for a minute or two; in that short space he was living through all his love again. "She can't ha' done it," he said, still without moving his eyes, as if he were only talking to himself: "it was fear made her hide it...I forgive her for deceiving me...I forgive thee, Hetty...thee wast deceived too...it's gone hard wi' thee, my poor Hetty...but they'll never make me believe it." He was silent again for a few moments, and then he said, with fierce abruptness, "I'll go to him--I'll bring him back--I'll make him go and look at her in her misery--he shall look at her till he can't forget it--it shall follow him night and day--as long as he lives it shall follow him--he shan't escape wi' lies this time--I'll fetch him, I'll drag him myself." In the act of going towards the door, Adam paused automatically and looked about for his hat, quite unconscious where he was or who was present with him. Mr. Irwine had followed him, and now took him by the arm, saying, in a quiet but decided tone, "No, Adam, no; I'm sure you will wish to stay and see what good can be done for her, instead of going on a useless errand of vengeance. The punishment will surely fall without your aid. Besides, he is no longer in Ireland. He must be on his way home--or would be, long before you arrived, for his grandfather, I know, wrote for him to come at least ten days ago. I want you now to go with me to Stoniton. I have ordered a horse for you to ride with us, as soon as you can compose yourself." While Mr. Irwine was speaking, Adam recovered his consciousness of the actual scene. He rubbed his hair off his forehead and listened. "Remember," Mr. Irwine went on, "there are others to think of, and act for, besides yourself, Adam: there are Hetty's friends, the good Poysers, on whom this stroke will fall more heavily than I can bear to think. I expect it from your strength of mind, Adam--from your sense of duty to God and man--that you will try to act as long as action can be of any use." In reality, Mr. Irwine proposed this journey to Stoniton for Adam's own sake. Movement, with some object before him, was the best means of counteracting the violence of suffering in these first hours. "You will go with me to Stoniton, Adam?" he said again, after a moment's pause. "We have to see if it is really Hetty who is there, you know." "Yes, sir," said Adam, "I'll do what you think right. But the folks at th' Hall Farm?" "I wish them not to know till I return to tell them myself. I shall have ascertained things then which I am uncertain about now, and I shall return as soon as possible. Come now, the horses are ready."

Chapter 39

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter39

The Tidings When Arthur arrives at the parsonage, he is kept waiting as Mr. Irwine talks to a strange man . When Adam is admitted, he tells Mr. Irwine that he has come to him for help because he looks up to him the most and must tell him some painful news. Mr. Irwine is looking at Adam strangely and has his hand on a letter. Adam tells him Hetty has run away and that he is going to look for her. Mr. Irwine asks if Adam knows why she ran away. Adam says there is someone else involved. Mr. Irwine looks relieved. Adam then tells him the other person is Arthur, and Mr. Irwine is shocked and full of grief as Adam tells about the secret meetings and how he made Arthur write the letter to Hetty. Mr. Irwine then tells Adam to prepare himself for a heavy blow. He can at least thank God he is not the guilty one. He shows Adam the letter from a magistrate in Stoniton with news of Hetty. She has been arrested for killing her baby. Adam is stricken, saying Hetty never had a child. The letter mentions that she denies having a baby, but there is evidence. Mr. Irwine says they can only hope she didn't do it. The trial is coming soon. Adam says he forgives Hetty, but he will bring Arthur back to see Hetty's misery; it is all his fault. Arthur, however, is on his way home already because his grandfather has sent for him. Mr. Irwine switches Adam's attention to Hetty and advises him to go to Stoniton with him to identify Hetty. He tells Adam there are others to think of in this crisis.

Commentary on Chapter 39 Eliot shocks the characters and readers at the same time by skillfully postponing the outcome of Hetty's tortured journey until we hear this official report reach her family and friends. Eliot further delays telling the details and final scenes of Hetty's story until the trial. Adam's blow is hard to witness, for he has tried so hard and was so close, he thought, to happiness: "O God, it's too hard to lay upon me--it's too to hard to think she is wicked" . Mr. Irwine comes into his own as the moral leader in this crisis. It is clear that he first thought Adam was the father of the baby. Relieved at first when Adam says it was someone else, he is doubly hurt to find the man is Arthur. He remembers Arthur trying to confess something to him. Though crushed himself for his protege and surrogate son, Mr. Irwine thinks of others and how to soften the blow so that the right things can be done. Adam claims that Arthur is to blame and should suffer the consequences, not Hetty. He continues to load all the guilt on Arthur. Mr. Irwine counsels Adam wisely against revenge, and tells him that Arthur's suffering will be worse, since he caused the tragedy. He must put his attention on giving help. Knowing everyone's nature, Mr. Irwine begins skillfully to orchestrate the community response, fulfilling his office of spiritual counselor admirably. He gives Adam some action to do--come with him to Stoniton Prison.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/40.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_40_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 40

chapter 40

{"name": "Chapter 40", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter40", "summary": "The Bitter Waters Spread When Mr. Irwine returns from Stoniton, his mother tells him Squire Donnithorne is dead. She does not know about the tragedy and rejoices that now her godson Arthur will be the new squire. Mr. Irwine does not send a letter to Arthur about the events because he will be home soon for his grandfather's funeral. He gets some sleep and then prepares to break the news to Hall Farm and to the Bedes. Adam has stayed in Stoniton to be near Hetty though he can't bear to see her. He continues to believe Hetty innocent, though Mr. Irwine knows she is not. He decides to let Adam hope, for he is crushed enough. Irwine thinks at least there could be a pardon. Adam also continues to denounce Arthur as the sole perpetrator of any crime. Irwine finds it hard to hear so much against Arthur to whom he has been a father. The Poysers take the news hard. The trial is to be held the next week, and Martin Poyser will probably be called to testify, but he is so upset by the disgrace to the family, he swears never to see Hetty again. Both old Poyser and Martin are hard against Hetty, but Mrs. Poyser is less severe on her. Martin believes they will have to leave the country now. Mrs. Poyser thinks they should send for Dinah. Lisbeth Bede also wants to send for Dinah in their trouble. Seth offers to go to Leeds to look for her, but Lisbeth won't let him go. Instead, a letter is sent. Mr. Irwine tells Jonathan Burge why Adam will be away from work for a while, and soon all Hayslope and Broxton know the news. A few neighbors go to the Poysers to comfort them, and one of them is Bartle Massey, the school teacher. Then Bartle Massey goes to Mr. Irwine and asks him how Adam is doing. Irwine tells him Adam is taking it hard and still believes in Hetty's innocence. He himself saw Hetty at Stoniton and could not believe the change in her: \"she shrank up like a frightened animal\" . Irwine is afraid Adam could lose control and seek revenge against Arthur. Massey offers to go to Stoniton and stay with Adam until the trial is over. He can keep an eye on him.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 40 The impact of Hetty's crime on the small town is like a bombshell. The Poysers feel betrayed and vow they will have to leave the area for they are ruined forever. Their children will be marked out as having a murderess for a cousin. Mrs. Poyser is surprisingly more understanding and forgiving of Hetty than her husband. Lisbeth and Seth feel sorrow for Adam. Bartle Massey feels his worst opinion of women has been confirmed, but he wants to stick by his friend Adam. Thus, the best and worst of small town life are revealed. Gossip travels fast, and censure as well, but there are friends to stand by each other. Bartle marvels that Mr. Irwine is \"everybody's friend in this business\" . Though he has personal feelings, he puts them aside to help everyone else. He is impartial and therefore, the best kind of help. It is telling that the two people most wanted in the crisis are Dinah and Mr. Irwine, the ones with the largest understanding and skill in healing the hearts of others. Both have religious callings, but the important point for Eliot is their humane point of view. They are able to see a larger picture than the other characters. They are able to hold the community together and comfort those in trouble. These are the kind of human beings a society needs, implies Eliot. They are the exemplars of Eliot's moral standard that goes beyond religious doctrine to the unselfish values of unity and sympathy. In this way, Eliot traces in her story the action that causes healing as well as the action that causes tragedy."}

MR. IRWINE returned from Stoniton in a post-chaise that night, and the first words Carroll said to him, as he entered the house, were, that Squire Donnithorne was dead--found dead in his bed at ten o'clock that morning--and that Mrs. Irwine desired him to say she should be awake when Mr. Irwine came home, and she begged him not to go to bed without seeing her. "Well, Dauphin," Mrs. Irwine said, as her son entered her room, "you're come at last. So the old gentleman's fidgetiness and low spirits, which made him send for Arthur in that sudden way, really meant something. I suppose Carroll has told you that Donnithorne was found dead in his bed this morning. You will believe my prognostications another time, though I daresay I shan't live to prognosticate anything but my own death." "What have they done about Arthur?" said Mr. Irwine. "Sent a messenger to await him at Liverpool?" "Yes, Ralph was gone before the news was brought to us. Dear Arthur, I shall live now to see him master at the Chase, and making good times on the estate, like a generous-hearted fellow as he is. He'll be as happy as a king now." Mr. Irwine could not help giving a slight groan: he was worn with anxiety and exertion, and his mother's light words were almost intolerable. "What are you so dismal about, Dauphin? Is there any bad news? Or are you thinking of the danger for Arthur in crossing that frightful Irish Channel at this time of year?" "No, Mother, I'm not thinking of that; but I'm not prepared to rejoice just now." "You've been worried by this law business that you've been to Stoniton about. What in the world is it, that you can't tell me?" "You will know by and by, mother. It would not be right for me to tell you at present. Good-night: you'll sleep now you have no longer anything to listen for." Mr. Irwine gave up his intention of sending a letter to meet Arthur, since it would not now hasten his return: the news of his grandfather's death would bring him as soon as he could possibly come. He could go to bed now and get some needful rest, before the time came for the morning's heavy duty of carrying his sickening news to the Hall Farm and to Adam's home. Adam himself was not come back from Stoniton, for though he shrank from seeing Hetty, he could not bear to go to a distance from her again. "It's no use, sir," he said to the rector, "it's no use for me to go back. I can't go to work again while she's here, and I couldn't bear the sight o' the things and folks round home. I'll take a bit of a room here, where I can see the prison walls, and perhaps I shall get, in time, to bear seeing her." Adam had not been shaken in his belief that Hetty was innocent of the crime she was charged with, for Mr. Irwine, feeling that the belief in her guilt would be a crushing addition to Adam's load, had kept from him the facts which left no hope in his own mind. There was not any reason for thrusting the whole burden on Adam at once, and Mr. Irwine, at parting, only said, "If the evidence should tell too strongly against her, Adam, we may still hope for a pardon. Her youth and other circumstances will be a plea for her." "Ah, and it's right people should know how she was tempted into the wrong way," said Adam, with bitter earnestness. "It's right they should know it was a fine gentleman made love to her, and turned her head wi' notions. You'll remember, sir, you've promised to tell my mother, and Seth, and the people at the farm, who it was as led her wrong, else they'll think harder of her than she deserves. You'll be doing her a hurt by sparing him, and I hold him the guiltiest before God, let her ha' done what she may. If you spare him, I'll expose him!" "I think your demand is just, Adam," said Mr. Irwine, "but when you are calmer, you will judge Arthur more mercifully. I say nothing now, only that his punishment is in other hands than ours." Mr. Irwine felt it hard upon him that he should have to tell of Arthur's sad part in the story of sin and sorrow--he who cared for Arthur with fatherly affection, who had cared for him with fatherly pride. But he saw clearly that the secret must be known before long, even apart from Adam's determination, since it was scarcely to be supposed that Hetty would persist to the end in her obstinate silence. He made up his mind to withhold nothing from the Poysers, but to tell them the worst at once, for there was no time to rob the tidings of their suddenness. Hetty's trial must come on at the Lent assizes, and they were to be held at Stoniton the next week. It was scarcely to be hoped that Martin Poyser could escape the pain of being called as a witness, and it was better he should know everything as long beforehand as possible. Before ten o'clock on Thursday morning the home at the Hall Farm was a house of mourning for a misfortune felt to be worse than death. The sense of family dishonour was too keen even in the kind-hearted Martin Poyser the younger to leave room for any compassion towards Hetty. He and his father were simple-minded farmers, proud of their untarnished character, proud that they came of a family which had held up its head and paid its way as far back as its name was in the parish register; and Hetty had brought disgrace on them all--disgrace that could never be wiped out. That was the all-conquering feeling in the mind both of father and son--the scorching sense of disgrace, which neutralised all other sensibility--and Mr. Irwine was struck with surprise to observe that Mrs. Poyser was less severe than her husband. We are often startled by the severity of mild people on exceptional occasions; the reason is, that mild people are most liable to be under the yoke of traditional impressions. "I'm willing to pay any money as is wanted towards trying to bring her off," said Martin the younger when Mr. Irwine was gone, while the old grandfather was crying in the opposite chair, "but I'll not go nigh her, nor ever see her again, by my own will. She's made our bread bitter to us for all our lives to come, an' we shall ne'er hold up our heads i' this parish nor i' any other. The parson talks o' folks pitying us: it's poor amends pity 'ull make us." "Pity?" said the grandfather, sharply. "I ne'er wanted folks's pity i' MY life afore...an' I mun begin to be looked down on now, an' me turned seventy-two last St. Thomas's, an' all th' underbearers and pall-bearers as I'n picked for my funeral are i' this parish and the next to 't....It's o' no use now...I mun be ta'en to the grave by strangers." "Don't fret so, father," said Mrs. Poyser, who had spoken very little, being almost overawed by her husband's unusual hardness and decision. "You'll have your children wi' you; an' there's the lads and the little un 'ull grow up in a new parish as well as i' th' old un." "Ah, there's no staying i' this country for us now," said Mr. Poyser, and the hard tears trickled slowly down his round cheeks. "We thought it 'ud be bad luck if the old squire gave us notice this Lady day, but I must gi' notice myself now, an' see if there can anybody be got to come an' take to the crops as I'n put i' the ground; for I wonna stay upo' that man's land a day longer nor I'm forced to't. An' me, as thought him such a good upright young man, as I should be glad when he come to be our landlord. I'll ne'er lift my hat to him again, nor sit i' the same church wi' him...a man as has brought shame on respectable folks...an' pretended to be such a friend t' everybody....Poor Adam there...a fine friend he's been t' Adam, making speeches an' talking so fine, an' all the while poisoning the lad's life, as it's much if he can stay i' this country any more nor we can." "An' you t' ha' to go into court, and own you're akin t' her," said the old man. "Why, they'll cast it up to the little un, as isn't four 'ear old, some day--they'll cast it up t' her as she'd a cousin tried at the 'sizes for murder." "It'll be their own wickedness, then," said Mrs. Poyser, with a sob in her voice. "But there's One above 'ull take care o' the innicent child, else it's but little truth they tell us at church. It'll be harder nor ever to die an' leave the little uns, an' nobody to be a mother to 'em." "We'd better ha' sent for Dinah, if we'd known where she is," said Mr. Poyser; "but Adam said she'd left no direction where she'd be at Leeds." "Why, she'd be wi' that woman as was a friend t' her Aunt Judith," said Mrs. Poyser, comforted a little by this suggestion of her husband. "I've often heard Dinah talk of her, but I can't remember what name she called her by. But there's Seth Bede; he's like enough to know, for she's a preaching woman as the Methodists think a deal on." "I'll send to Seth," said Mr. Poyser. "I'll send Alick to tell him to come, or else to send up word o' the woman's name, an' thee canst write a letter ready to send off to Treddles'on as soon as we can make out a direction." "It's poor work writing letters when you want folks to come to you i' trouble," said Mrs. Poyser. "Happen it'll be ever so long on the road, an' never reach her at last." Before Alick arrived with the message, Lisbeth's thoughts too had already flown to Dinah, and she had said to Seth, "Eh, there's no comfort for us i' this world any more, wi'out thee couldst get Dinah Morris to come to us, as she did when my old man died. I'd like her to come in an' take me by th' hand again, an' talk to me. She'd tell me the rights on't, belike--she'd happen know some good i' all this trouble an' heart-break comin' upo' that poor lad, as ne'er done a bit o' wrong in's life, but war better nor anybody else's son, pick the country round. Eh, my lad...Adam, my poor lad!" "Thee wouldstna like me to leave thee, to go and fetch Dinah?" said Seth, as his mother sobbed and rocked herself to and fro. "Fetch her?" said Lisbeth, looking up and pausing from her grief, like a crying child who hears some promise of consolation. "Why, what place is't she's at, do they say?" "It's a good way off, mother--Leeds, a big town. But I could be back in three days, if thee couldst spare me." "Nay, nay, I canna spare thee. Thee must go an' see thy brother, an' bring me word what he's a-doin'. Mester Irwine said he'd come an' tell me, but I canna make out so well what it means when he tells me. Thee must go thysen, sin' Adam wonna let me go to him. Write a letter to Dinah canstna? Thee't fond enough o' writin' when nobody wants thee." "I'm not sure where she'd be i' that big town," said Seth. "If I'd gone myself, I could ha' found out by asking the members o' the Society. But perhaps if I put Sarah Williamson, Methodist preacher, Leeds, o' th' outside, it might get to her; for most like she'd be wi' Sarah Williamson." Alick came now with the message, and Seth, finding that Mrs. Poyser was writing to Dinah, gave up the intention of writing himself; but he went to the Hall Farm to tell them all he could suggest about the address of the letter, and warn them that there might be some delay in the delivery, from his not knowing an exact direction. On leaving Lisbeth, Mr. Irwine had gone to Jonathan Burge, who had also a claim to be acquainted with what was likely to keep Adam away from business for some time; and before six o'clock that evening there were few people in Broxton and Hayslope who had not heard the sad news. Mr. Irwine had not mentioned Arthur's name to Burge, and yet the story of his conduct towards Hetty, with all the dark shadows cast upon it by its terrible consequences, was presently as well known as that his grandfather was dead, and that he was come into the estate. For Martin Poyser felt no motive to keep silence towards the one or two neighbours who ventured to come and shake him sorrowfully by the hand on the first day of his trouble; and Carroll, who kept his ears open to all that passed at the rectory, had framed an inferential version of the story, and found early opportunities of communicating it. One of those neighbours who came to Martin Poyser and shook him by the hand without speaking for some minutes was Bartle Massey. He had shut up his school, and was on his way to the rectory, where he arrived about half-past seven in the evening, and, sending his duty to Mr. Irwine, begged pardon for troubling him at that hour, but had something particular on his mind. He was shown into the study, where Mr. Irwine soon joined him. "Well, Bartle?" said Mr. Irwine, putting out his hand. That was not his usual way of saluting the schoolmaster, but trouble makes us treat all who feel with us very much alike. "Sit down." "You know what I'm come about as well as I do, sir, I daresay," said Bartle. "You wish to know the truth about the sad news that has reached you...about Hetty Sorrel?" "Nay, sir, what I wish to know is about Adam Bede. I understand you left him at Stoniton, and I beg the favour of you to tell me what's the state of the poor lad's mind, and what he means to do. For as for that bit o' pink-and-white they've taken the trouble to put in jail, I don't value her a rotten nut--not a rotten nut--only for the harm or good that may come out of her to an honest man--a lad I've set such store by--trusted to, that he'd make my bit o' knowledge go a good way in the world....Why, sir, he's the only scholar I've had in this stupid country that ever had the will or the head-piece for mathematics. If he hadn't had so much hard work to do, poor fellow, he might have gone into the higher branches, and then this might never have happened--might never have happened." Bartle was heated by the exertion of walking fast in an agitated frame of mind, and was not able to check himself on this first occasion of venting his feelings. But he paused now to rub his moist forehead, and probably his moist eyes also. "You'll excuse me, sir," he said, when this pause had given him time to reflect, "for running on in this way about my own feelings, like that foolish dog of mine howling in a storm, when there's nobody wants to listen to me. I came to hear you speak, not to talk myself--if you'll take the trouble to tell me what the poor lad's doing." "Don't put yourself under any restraint, Bartle," said Mr. Irwine. "The fact is, I'm very much in the same condition as you just now; I've a great deal that's painful on my mind, and I find it hard work to be quite silent about my own feelings and only attend to others. I share your concern for Adam, though he is not the only one whose sufferings I care for in this affair. He intends to remain at Stoniton till after the trial: it will come on probably a week to-morrow. He has taken a room there, and I encouraged him to do so, because I think it better he should be away from his own home at present; and, poor fellow, he still believes Hetty is innocent--he wants to summon up courage to see her if he can; he is unwilling to leave the spot where she is." "Do you think the creatur's guilty, then?" said Bartle. "Do you think they'll hang her?" "I'm afraid it will go hard with her. The evidence is very strong. And one bad symptom is that she denies everything--denies that she has had a child in the face of the most positive evidence. I saw her myself, and she was obstinately silent to me; she shrank up like a frightened animal when she saw me. I was never so shocked in my life as at the change in her. But I trust that, in the worst case, we may obtain a pardon for the sake of the innocent who are involved." "Stuff and nonsense!" said Bartle, forgetting in his irritation to whom he was speaking. "I beg your pardon, sir, I mean it's stuff and nonsense for the innocent to care about her being hanged. For my own part, I think the sooner such women are put out o' the world the better; and the men that help 'em to do mischief had better go along with 'em for that matter. What good will you do by keeping such vermin alive, eating the victual that 'ud feed rational beings? But if Adam's fool enough to care about it, I don't want him to suffer more than's needful....Is he very much cut up, poor fellow?" Bartle added, taking out his spectacles and putting them on, as if they would assist his imagination. "Yes, I'm afraid the grief cuts very deep," said Mr. Irwine. "He looks terribly shattered, and a certain violence came over him now and then yesterday, which made me wish I could have remained near him. But I shall go to Stoniton again to-morrow, and I have confidence enough in the strength of Adam's principle to trust that he will be able to endure the worst without being driven to anything rash." Mr. Irwine, who was involuntarily uttering his own thoughts rather than addressing Bartle Massey in the last sentence, had in his mind the possibility that the spirit of vengeance to-wards Arthur, which was the form Adam's anguish was continually taking, might make him seek an encounter that was likely to end more fatally than the one in the Grove. This possibility heightened the anxiety with which he looked forward to Arthur's arrival. But Bartle thought Mr. Irwine was referring to suicide, and his face wore a new alarm. "I'll tell you what I have in my head, sir," he said, "and I hope you'll approve of it. I'm going to shut up my school--if the scholars come, they must go back again, that's all--and I shall go to Stoniton and look after Adam till this business is over. I'll pretend I'm come to look on at the assizes; he can't object to that. What do you think about it, sir?" "Well," said Mr. Irwine, rather hesitatingly, "there would be some real advantages in that...and I honour you for your friendship towards him, Bartle. But...you must be careful what you say to him, you know. I'm afraid you have too little fellow-feeling in what you consider his weakness about Hetty." "Trust to me, sir--trust to me. I know what you mean. I've been a fool myself in my time, but that's between you and me. I shan't thrust myself on him only keep my eye on him, and see that he gets some good food, and put in a word here and there." "Then," said Mr. Irwine, reassured a little as to Bartle's discretion, "I think you'll be doing a good deed; and it will be well for you to let Adam's mother and brother know that you're going." "Yes, sir, yes," said Bartle, rising, and taking off his spectacles, "I'll do that, I'll do that; though the mother's a whimpering thing--I don't like to come within earshot of her; however, she's a straight-backed, clean woman, none of your slatterns. I wish you good-bye, sir, and thank you for the time you've spared me. You're everybody's friend in this business--everybody's friend. It's a heavy weight you've got on your shoulders." "Good-bye, Bartle, till we meet at Stoniton, as I daresay we shall." Bartle hurried away from the rectory, evading Carroll's conversational advances, and saying in an exasperated tone to Vixen, whose short legs pattered beside him on the gravel, "Now, I shall be obliged to take you with me, you good-for-nothing woman. You'd go fretting yourself to death if I left you--you know you would, and perhaps get snapped up by some tramp. And you'll be running into bad company, I expect, putting your nose in every hole and corner where you've no business! But if you do anything disgraceful, I'll disown you--mind that, madam, mind that!"

Chapter 40

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter40

The Bitter Waters Spread When Mr. Irwine returns from Stoniton, his mother tells him Squire Donnithorne is dead. She does not know about the tragedy and rejoices that now her godson Arthur will be the new squire. Mr. Irwine does not send a letter to Arthur about the events because he will be home soon for his grandfather's funeral. He gets some sleep and then prepares to break the news to Hall Farm and to the Bedes. Adam has stayed in Stoniton to be near Hetty though he can't bear to see her. He continues to believe Hetty innocent, though Mr. Irwine knows she is not. He decides to let Adam hope, for he is crushed enough. Irwine thinks at least there could be a pardon. Adam also continues to denounce Arthur as the sole perpetrator of any crime. Irwine finds it hard to hear so much against Arthur to whom he has been a father. The Poysers take the news hard. The trial is to be held the next week, and Martin Poyser will probably be called to testify, but he is so upset by the disgrace to the family, he swears never to see Hetty again. Both old Poyser and Martin are hard against Hetty, but Mrs. Poyser is less severe on her. Martin believes they will have to leave the country now. Mrs. Poyser thinks they should send for Dinah. Lisbeth Bede also wants to send for Dinah in their trouble. Seth offers to go to Leeds to look for her, but Lisbeth won't let him go. Instead, a letter is sent. Mr. Irwine tells Jonathan Burge why Adam will be away from work for a while, and soon all Hayslope and Broxton know the news. A few neighbors go to the Poysers to comfort them, and one of them is Bartle Massey, the school teacher. Then Bartle Massey goes to Mr. Irwine and asks him how Adam is doing. Irwine tells him Adam is taking it hard and still believes in Hetty's innocence. He himself saw Hetty at Stoniton and could not believe the change in her: "she shrank up like a frightened animal" . Irwine is afraid Adam could lose control and seek revenge against Arthur. Massey offers to go to Stoniton and stay with Adam until the trial is over. He can keep an eye on him.

Commentary on Chapter 40 The impact of Hetty's crime on the small town is like a bombshell. The Poysers feel betrayed and vow they will have to leave the area for they are ruined forever. Their children will be marked out as having a murderess for a cousin. Mrs. Poyser is surprisingly more understanding and forgiving of Hetty than her husband. Lisbeth and Seth feel sorrow for Adam. Bartle Massey feels his worst opinion of women has been confirmed, but he wants to stick by his friend Adam. Thus, the best and worst of small town life are revealed. Gossip travels fast, and censure as well, but there are friends to stand by each other. Bartle marvels that Mr. Irwine is "everybody's friend in this business" . Though he has personal feelings, he puts them aside to help everyone else. He is impartial and therefore, the best kind of help. It is telling that the two people most wanted in the crisis are Dinah and Mr. Irwine, the ones with the largest understanding and skill in healing the hearts of others. Both have religious callings, but the important point for Eliot is their humane point of view. They are able to see a larger picture than the other characters. They are able to hold the community together and comfort those in trouble. These are the kind of human beings a society needs, implies Eliot. They are the exemplars of Eliot's moral standard that goes beyond religious doctrine to the unselfish values of unity and sympathy. In this way, Eliot traces in her story the action that causes healing as well as the action that causes tragedy.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/41.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_41_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 41

chapter 41

{"name": "Chapter 41", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter41", "summary": "The Eve of the Trial In a rented room in Stoniton, Bartle Massey and Adam await the arrival of Mr. Irwine. Bartle pretends to read, but he is watching Adam who sits haggard and listless. Mr. Irwine comes from the prison where he and the chaplain were talking to Hetty. Adam has requested to see her before the trial, but she is not seeing anyone. She won't even see her family. Mr. Irwine mentions how changed she is and that such a meeting now would be suffering for Adam. Adam asks if Arthur is back. He becomes angry, saying he wants justice done to him. Mr. Irwine says he has left a letter for Arthur as soon as he arrives. He assures Adam that Arthur will suffer and defends him as a weak but not a cruel person. He repeats that vengeance will not help Hetty. Mr. Irwine tries to explain that passion is not justice and Arthur cannot bear all the blame. People are interconnected and evil spreads like a disease. In fact, Adam himself is in danger of committing a wrong. Mr. Poyser is in town for the trial, but Irwine won't let him meet with Adam in his present state because Martin is upset enough. Both Adam and Mr. Irwine express the wish that Dinah were present.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 41 Irwine presents one of Eliot's favorite ideas of the interconnectedness of everyone. Adam wants to pinpoint blame, but evil is like a disease that spreads. Who can say where it starts and stops? Adam himself is taking infection in his desire to do something violent to Arthur. Irwine tries to break the idea to Adam that Hetty could be guilty of a crime that came from what she and Arthur did together. Adam voices another of Eliot's favorite ideas, that evil cannot be undone. The law of cause and effect is scientifically observable and therefore, the moral law requiring unselfish behavior is also practical if one wants to avoid suffering for oneself and others. Irwine assures Adam that Arthur will carry this burden his whole life; therefore, there is no need to punish him. He is punished by a force larger than Adam. Irwine also mentions the fact of Hetty's hardness of heart to Adam. This will be an important point in the trial. Her aunt had called her hard-hearted many times, but this has escalated to bring her to total isolation. Irwine says, \"a fatal influence seems to have shut up her heart against her fellow-creatures\" . This is the worst sort of suffering, for no healing or transformation can take place. Hetty believes there is no help for her, and in her pride, she will not confess or reach out."}

AN upper room in a dull Stoniton street, with two beds in it--one laid on the floor. It is ten o'clock on Thursday night, and the dark wall opposite the window shuts out the moonlight that might have struggled with the light of the one dip candle by which Bartle Massey is pretending to read, while he is really looking over his spectacles at Adam Bede, seated near the dark window. You would hardly have known it was Adam without being told. His face has got thinner this last week: he has the sunken eyes, the neglected beard of a man just risen from a sick-bed. His heavy black hair hangs over his forehead, and there is no active impulse in him which inclines him to push it off, that he may be more awake to what is around him. He has one arm over the back of the chair, and he seems to be looking down at his clasped hands. He is roused by a knock at the door. "There he is," said Bartle Massey, rising hastily and unfastening the door. It was Mr. Irwine. Adam rose from his chair with instinctive respect, as Mr. Irwine approached him and took his hand. "I'm late, Adam," he said, sitting down on the chair which Bartle placed for him, "but I was later in setting off from Broxton than I intended to be, and I have been incessantly occupied since I arrived. I have done everything now, however--everything that can be done to-night, at least. Let us all sit down." Adam took his chair again mechanically, and Bartle, for whom there was no chair remaining, sat on the bed in the background. "Have you seen her, sir?" said Adam tremulously. "Yes, Adam; I and the chaplain have both been with her this evening." "Did you ask her, sir...did you say anything about me?" "Yes," said Mr. Irwine, with some hesitation, "I spoke of you. I said you wished to see her before the trial, if she consented." As Mr. Irwine paused, Adam looked at him with eager, questioning eyes. "You know she shrinks from seeing any one, Adam. It is not only you--some fatal influence seems to have shut up her heart against her fellow-creatures. She has scarcely said anything more than 'No' either to me or the chaplain. Three or four days ago, before you were mentioned to her, when I asked her if there was any one of her family whom she would like to see--to whom she could open her mind--she said, with a violent shudder, 'Tell them not to come near me--I won't see any of them.'" Adam's head was hanging down again, and he did not speak. There was silence for a few minutes, and then Mr. Irwine said, "I don't like to advise you against your own feelings, Adam, if they now urge you strongly to go and see her to-morrow morning, even without her consent. It is just possible, notwithstanding appearances to the contrary, that the interview might affect her favourably. But I grieve to say I have scarcely any hope of that. She didn't seem agitated when I mentioned your name; she only said 'No,' in the same cold, obstinate way as usual. And if the meeting had no good effect on her, it would be pure, useless suffering to you--severe suffering, I fear. She is very much changed..." Adam started up from his chair and seized his hat, which lay on the table. But he stood still then, and looked at Mr. Irwine, as if he had a question to ask which it was yet difficult to utter. Bartle Massey rose quietly, turned the key in the door, and put it in his pocket. "Is he come back?" said Adam at last. "No, he is not," said Mr. Irwine, quietly. "Lay down your hat, Adam, unless you like to walk out with me for a little fresh air. I fear you have not been out again to-day." "You needn't deceive me, sir," said Adam, looking hard at Mr. Irwine and speaking in a tone of angry suspicion. "You needn't be afraid of me. I only want justice. I want him to feel what she feels. It's his work...she was a child as it 'ud ha' gone t' anybody's heart to look at...I don't care what she's done...it was him brought her to it. And he shall know it...he shall feel it...if there's a just God, he shall feel what it is t' ha' brought a child like her to sin and misery." "I'm not deceiving you, Adam," said Mr. Irwine. "Arthur Donnithorne is not come back--was not come back when I left. I have left a letter for him: he will know all as soon as he arrives." "But you don't mind about it," said Adam indignantly. "You think it doesn't matter as she lies there in shame and misery, and he knows nothing about it--he suffers nothing." "Adam, he WILL know--he WILL suffer, long and bitterly. He has a heart and a conscience: I can't be entirely deceived in his character. I am convinced--I am sure he didn't fall under temptation without a struggle. He may be weak, but he is not callous, not coldly selfish. I am persuaded that this will be a shock of which he will feel the effects all his life. Why do you crave vengeance in this way? No amount of torture that you could inflict on him could benefit her." "No--O God, no," Adam groaned out, sinking on his chair again; "but then, that's the deepest curse of all...that's what makes the blackness of it...IT CAN NEVER BE UNDONE. My poor Hetty...she can never be my sweet Hetty again...the prettiest thing God had made--smiling up at me...I thought she loved me...and was good..." Adam's voice had been gradually sinking into a hoarse undertone, as if he were only talking to himself; but now he said abruptly, looking at Mr. Irwine, "But she isn't as guilty as they say? You don't think she is, sir? She can't ha' done it." "That perhaps can never be known with certainty, Adam," Mr. Irwine answered gently. "In these cases we sometimes form our judgment on what seems to us strong evidence, and yet, for want of knowing some small fact, our judgment is wrong. But suppose the worst: you have no right to say that the guilt of her crime lies with him, and that he ought to bear the punishment. It is not for us men to apportion the shares of moral guilt and retribution. We find it impossible to avoid mistakes even in determining who has committed a single criminal act, and the problem how far a man is to be held responsible for the unforeseen consequences of his own deed is one that might well make us tremble to look into it. The evil consequences that may lie folded in a single act of selfish indulgence is a thought so awful that it ought surely to awaken some feeling less presumptuous than a rash desire to punish. You have a mind that can understand this fully, Adam, when you are calm. Don't suppose I can't enter into the anguish that drives you into this state of revengeful hatred. But think of this: if you were to obey your passion--for it IS passion, and you deceive yourself in calling it justice--it might be with you precisely as it has been with Arthur; nay, worse; your passion might lead you yourself into a horrible crime." "No--not worse," said Adam, bitterly; "I don't believe it's worse--I'd sooner do it--I'd sooner do a wickedness as I could suffer for by myself than ha' brought HER to do wickedness and then stand by and see 'em punish her while they let me alone; and all for a bit o' pleasure, as, if he'd had a man's heart in him, he'd ha' cut his hand off sooner than he'd ha' taken it. What if he didn't foresee what's happened? He foresaw enough; he'd no right to expect anything but harm and shame to her. And then he wanted to smooth it off wi' lies. No--there's plenty o' things folks are hanged for not half so hateful as that. Let a man do what he will, if he knows he's to bear the punishment himself, he isn't half so bad as a mean selfish coward as makes things easy t' himself and knows all the while the punishment 'll fall on somebody else." "There again you partly deceive yourself, Adam. There is no sort of wrong deed of which a man can bear the punishment alone; you can't isolate yourself and say that the evil which is in you shall not spread. Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe: evil spreads as necessarily as disease. I know, I feel the terrible extent of suffering this sin of Arthur's has caused to others; but so does every sin cause suffering to others besides those who commit it. An act of vengeance on your part against Arthur would simply be another evil added to those we are suffering under: you could not bear the punishment alone; you would entail the worst sorrows on every one who loves you. You would have committed an act of blind fury that would leave all the present evils just as they were and add worse evils to them. You may tell me that you meditate no fatal act of vengeance, but the feeling in your mind is what gives birth to such actions, and as long as you indulge it, as long as you do not see that to fix your mind on Arthur's punishment is revenge, and not justice, you are in danger of being led on to the commission of some great wrong. Remember what you told me about your feelings after you had given that blow to Arthur in the Grove." Adam was silent: the last words had called up a vivid image of the past, and Mr. Irwine left him to his thoughts, while he spoke to Bartle Massey about old Mr. Donnithorne's funeral and other matters of an indifferent kind. But at length Adam turned round and said, in a more subdued tone, "I've not asked about 'em at th' Hall Farm, sir. Is Mr. Poyser coming?" "He is come; he is in Stoniton to-night. But I could not advise him to see you, Adam. His own mind is in a very perturbed state, and it is best he should not see you till you are calmer." "Is Dinah Morris come to 'em, sir? Seth said they'd sent for her." "No. Mr. Poyser tells me she was not come when he left. They're afraid the letter has not reached her. It seems they had no exact address." Adam sat ruminating a little while, and then said, "I wonder if Dinah 'ud ha' gone to see her. But perhaps the Poysers would ha' been sorely against it, since they won't come nigh her themselves. But I think she would, for the Methodists are great folks for going into the prisons; and Seth said he thought she would. She'd a very tender way with her, Dinah had; I wonder if she could ha' done any good. You never saw her, sir, did you?" "Yes, I did. I had a conversation with her--she pleased me a good deal. And now you mention it, I wish she would come, for it is possible that a gentle mild woman like her might move Hetty to open her heart. The jail chaplain is rather harsh in his manner." "But it's o' no use if she doesn't come," said Adam sadly. "If I'd thought of it earlier, I would have taken some measures for finding her out," said Mr. Irwine, "but it's too late now, I fear...Well, Adam, I must go now. Try to get some rest to-night. God bless you. I'll see you early to-morrow morning."

Chapter 41

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter41

The Eve of the Trial In a rented room in Stoniton, Bartle Massey and Adam await the arrival of Mr. Irwine. Bartle pretends to read, but he is watching Adam who sits haggard and listless. Mr. Irwine comes from the prison where he and the chaplain were talking to Hetty. Adam has requested to see her before the trial, but she is not seeing anyone. She won't even see her family. Mr. Irwine mentions how changed she is and that such a meeting now would be suffering for Adam. Adam asks if Arthur is back. He becomes angry, saying he wants justice done to him. Mr. Irwine says he has left a letter for Arthur as soon as he arrives. He assures Adam that Arthur will suffer and defends him as a weak but not a cruel person. He repeats that vengeance will not help Hetty. Mr. Irwine tries to explain that passion is not justice and Arthur cannot bear all the blame. People are interconnected and evil spreads like a disease. In fact, Adam himself is in danger of committing a wrong. Mr. Poyser is in town for the trial, but Irwine won't let him meet with Adam in his present state because Martin is upset enough. Both Adam and Mr. Irwine express the wish that Dinah were present.

Commentary on Chapter 41 Irwine presents one of Eliot's favorite ideas of the interconnectedness of everyone. Adam wants to pinpoint blame, but evil is like a disease that spreads. Who can say where it starts and stops? Adam himself is taking infection in his desire to do something violent to Arthur. Irwine tries to break the idea to Adam that Hetty could be guilty of a crime that came from what she and Arthur did together. Adam voices another of Eliot's favorite ideas, that evil cannot be undone. The law of cause and effect is scientifically observable and therefore, the moral law requiring unselfish behavior is also practical if one wants to avoid suffering for oneself and others. Irwine assures Adam that Arthur will carry this burden his whole life; therefore, there is no need to punish him. He is punished by a force larger than Adam. Irwine also mentions the fact of Hetty's hardness of heart to Adam. This will be an important point in the trial. Her aunt had called her hard-hearted many times, but this has escalated to bring her to total isolation. Irwine says, "a fatal influence seems to have shut up her heart against her fellow-creatures" . This is the worst sort of suffering, for no healing or transformation can take place. Hetty believes there is no help for her, and in her pride, she will not confess or reach out.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/42.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_42_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 42

chapter 42

{"name": "Chapter 42", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter42", "summary": "The Morning of the Trial Adam does not go to the trial in the morning but waits till Bartle comes to him at lunchtime to hear about it. He has thought of seeing Hetty because it might melt her hardness if someone forgave her, but still he is afraid to see her in her changed state. The narrator says that the kind of unbearable suffering Adam experiences can be a baptism into a new state of life. He feels as if he is just waking up. He goes through a fire baptism into a new pity. Bartle tells him about the court scene as he tries to get Adam to eat bread and drink wine. The court is filled with spectators. The doctor has testified as to whether she had borne a child, and Martin Poyser testified. It was so hard on Martin that Bartle tells Adam he must be a friend to Poyser now. They made Poyser look at his niece, and she trembled and hid her face in her hands. Mr. Irwine took care of Martin in the courtroom. Irwine will also be a witness on Hetty's behalf. Adam keeps asking about the other evidence, and Bartle says he cannot hide the fact that the doctor's evidence has been hard on her, though she still denies having a child. Adam asks if there is anyone to stand by her in the court? Bartle says only the chaplain. Adam says one man should be there, but since he is not, Adam says he will go. \"I'll stand by her--I'll own her\". Adam admits that he used to be hard, but he will never be hard again. Suddenly, he looks like his old self.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 42 This chapter is important for showing Adam's conversion to a new sense of humanity. He was always a good man, but the narrator says that suffering can be an awakening to a new unselfishness and pity. This baptism of Adam's once again reminds one of Paradise Lost where Adam and Eve have to learn how to be good in a fallen state, how to feel love and compassion for one another, instead of blame. It is to be contrasted, however, with Hetty's response of hardness. Adam's suffering makes him reach out; hers shuts her down. She cannot admit she did anything wrong, and so therefore, no forgiveness and growth can take place. Adam grows to maturity here by putting aside his old moral harshness and deciding to stand by Hetty, even if she committed the crime. He will own her, not be ashamed of her, like her uncle. This is true Christian behavior and more like what Dinah Morris would do. Even his look changes after he softens. He is now closer to the ethic that Bartle announces in this chapter as he praises Mr. Irwine for helping Martin Poyser: \"It's a great thing in a man's life to be able to stand by his neighbor\" ."}

AT one o'clock the next day, Adam was alone in his dull upper room; his watch lay before him on the table, as if he were counting the long minutes. He had no knowledge of what was likely to be said by the witnesses on the trial, for he had shrunk from all the particulars connected with Hetty's arrest and accusation. This brave active man, who would have hastened towards any danger or toil to rescue Hetty from an apprehended wrong or misfortune, felt himself powerless to contemplate irremediable evil and suffering. The susceptibility which would have been an impelling force where there was any possibility of action became helpless anguish when he was obliged to be passive, or else sought an active outlet in the thought of inflicting justice on Arthur. Energetic natures, strong for all strenuous deeds, will often rush away from a hopeless sufferer, as if they were hard-hearted. It is the overmastering sense of pain that drives them. They shrink by an ungovernable instinct, as they would shrink from laceration. Adam had brought himself to think of seeing Hetty, if she would consent to see him, because he thought the meeting might possibly be a good to her--might help to melt away this terrible hardness they told him of. If she saw he bore her no ill will for what she had done to him, she might open her heart to him. But this resolution had been an immense effort--he trembled at the thought of seeing her changed face, as a timid woman trembles at the thought of the surgeon's knife, and he chose now to bear the long hours of suspense rather than encounter what seemed to him the more intolerable agony of witnessing her trial. Deep unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state. The yearning memories, the bitter regret, the agonized sympathy, the struggling appeals to the Invisible Right--all the intense emotions which had filled the days and nights of the past week, and were compressing themselves again like an eager crowd into the hours of this single morning, made Adam look back on all the previous years as if they had been a dim sleepy existence, and he had only now awaked to full consciousness. It seemed to him as if he had always before thought it a light thing that men should suffer, as if all that he had himself endured and called sorrow before was only a moment's stroke that had never left a bruise. Doubtless a great anguish may do the work of years, and we may come out from that baptism of fire with a soul full of new awe and new pity. "O God," Adam groaned, as he leaned on the table and looked blankly at the face of the watch, "and men have suffered like this before...and poor helpless young things have suffered like her....Such a little while ago looking so happy and so pretty...kissing 'em all, her grandfather and all of 'em, and they wishing her luck....O my poor, poor Hetty...dost think on it now?" Adam started and looked round towards the door. Vixen had begun to whimper, and there was a sound of a stick and a lame walk on the stairs. It was Bartle Massey come back. Could it be all over? Bartle entered quietly, and, going up to Adam, grasped his hand and said, "I'm just come to look at you, my boy, for the folks are gone out of court for a bit." Adam's heart beat so violently he was unable to speak--he could only return the pressure of his friend's hand--and Bartle, drawing up the other chair, came and sat in front of him, taking off his hat and his spectacles. "That's a thing never happened to me before," he observed, "to go out o' the door with my spectacles on. I clean forgot to take 'em off." The old man made this trivial remark, thinking it better not to respond at all to Adam's agitation: he would gather, in an indirect way, that there was nothing decisive to communicate at present. "And now," he said, rising again, "I must see to your having a bit of the loaf, and some of that wine Mr. Irwine sent this morning. He'll be angry with me if you don't have it. Come, now," he went on, bringing forward the bottle and the loaf and pouring some wine into a cup, "I must have a bit and a sup myself. Drink a drop with me, my lad--drink with me." Adam pushed the cup gently away and said, entreatingly, "Tell me about it, Mr. Massey--tell me all about it. Was she there? Have they begun?" "Yes, my boy, yes--it's taken all the time since I first went; but they're slow, they're slow; and there's the counsel they've got for her puts a spoke in the wheel whenever he can, and makes a deal to do with cross-examining the witnesses and quarrelling with the other lawyers. That's all he can do for the money they give him; and it's a big sum--it's a big sum. But he's a 'cute fellow, with an eye that 'ud pick the needles out of the hay in no time. If a man had got no feelings, it 'ud be as good as a demonstration to listen to what goes on in court; but a tender heart makes one stupid. I'd have given up figures for ever only to have had some good news to bring to you, my poor lad." "But does it seem to be going against her?" said Adam. "Tell me what they've said. I must know it now--I must know what they have to bring against her." "Why, the chief evidence yet has been the doctors; all but Martin Poyser--poor Martin. Everybody in court felt for him--it was like one sob, the sound they made when he came down again. The worst was when they told him to look at the prisoner at the bar. It was hard work, poor fellow--it was hard work. Adam, my boy, the blow falls heavily on him as well as you; you must help poor Martin; you must show courage. Drink some wine now, and show me you mean to bear it like a man." Bartle had made the right sort of appeal. Adam, with an air of quiet obedience, took up the cup and drank a little. "Tell me how SHE looked," he said presently. "Frightened, very frightened, when they first brought her in; it was the first sight of the crowd and the judge, poor creatur. And there's a lot o' foolish women in fine clothes, with gewgaws all up their arms and feathers on their heads, sitting near the judge: they've dressed themselves out in that way, one 'ud think, to be scarecrows and warnings against any man ever meddling with a woman again. They put up their glasses, and stared and whispered. But after that she stood like a white image, staring down at her hands and seeming neither to hear nor see anything. And she's as white as a sheet. She didn't speak when they asked her if she'd plead 'guilty' or 'not guilty,' and they pleaded 'not guilty' for her. But when she heard her uncle's name, there seemed to go a shiver right through her; and when they told him to look at her, she hung her head down, and cowered, and hid her face in her hands. He'd much ado to speak poor man, his voice trembled so. And the counsellors--who look as hard as nails mostly--I saw, spared him as much as they could. Mr. Irwine put himself near him and went with him out o' court. Ah, it's a great thing in a man's life to be able to stand by a neighbour and uphold him in such trouble as that." "God bless him, and you too, Mr. Massey," said Adam, in a low voice, laying his hand on Bartle's arm. "Aye, aye, he's good metal; he gives the right ring when you try him, our parson does. A man o' sense--says no more than's needful. He's not one of those that think they can comfort you with chattering, as if folks who stand by and look on knew a deal better what the trouble was than those who have to bear it. I've had to do with such folks in my time--in the south, when I was in trouble myself. Mr. Irwine is to be a witness himself, by and by, on her side, you know, to speak to her character and bringing up." "But the other evidence...does it go hard against her!" said Adam. "What do you think, Mr. Massey? Tell me the truth." "Yes, my lad, yes. The truth is the best thing to tell. It must come at last. The doctors' evidence is heavy on her--is heavy. But she's gone on denying she's had a child from first to last. These poor silly women-things--they've not the sense to know it's no use denying what's proved. It'll make against her with the jury, I doubt, her being so obstinate: they may be less for recommending her to mercy, if the verdict's against her. But Mr. Irwine 'ull leave no stone unturned with the judge--you may rely upon that, Adam." "Is there nobody to stand by her and seem to care for her in the court?" said Adam. "There's the chaplain o' the jail sits near her, but he's a sharp ferrety-faced man--another sort o' flesh and blood to Mr. Irwine. They say the jail chaplains are mostly the fag-end o' the clergy." "There's one man as ought to be there," said Adam bitterly. Presently he drew himself up and looked fixedly out of the window, apparently turning over some new idea in his mind. "Mr. Massey," he said at last, pushing the hair off his forehead, "I'll go back with you. I'll go into court. It's cowardly of me to keep away. I'll stand by her--I'll own her--for all she's been deceitful. They oughtn't to cast her off--her own flesh and blood. We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves. I used to be hard sometimes: I'll never be hard again. I'll go, Mr. Massey--I'll go with you." There was a decision in Adam's manner which would have prevented Bartle from opposing him, even if he had wished to do so. He only said, "Take a bit, then, and another sup, Adam, for the love of me. See, I must stop and eat a morsel. Now, you take some." Nerved by an active resolution, Adam took a morsel of bread and drank some wine. He was haggard and unshaven, as he had been yesterday, but he stood upright again, and looked more like the Adam Bede of former days.

Chapter 42

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter42

The Morning of the Trial Adam does not go to the trial in the morning but waits till Bartle comes to him at lunchtime to hear about it. He has thought of seeing Hetty because it might melt her hardness if someone forgave her, but still he is afraid to see her in her changed state. The narrator says that the kind of unbearable suffering Adam experiences can be a baptism into a new state of life. He feels as if he is just waking up. He goes through a fire baptism into a new pity. Bartle tells him about the court scene as he tries to get Adam to eat bread and drink wine. The court is filled with spectators. The doctor has testified as to whether she had borne a child, and Martin Poyser testified. It was so hard on Martin that Bartle tells Adam he must be a friend to Poyser now. They made Poyser look at his niece, and she trembled and hid her face in her hands. Mr. Irwine took care of Martin in the courtroom. Irwine will also be a witness on Hetty's behalf. Adam keeps asking about the other evidence, and Bartle says he cannot hide the fact that the doctor's evidence has been hard on her, though she still denies having a child. Adam asks if there is anyone to stand by her in the court? Bartle says only the chaplain. Adam says one man should be there, but since he is not, Adam says he will go. "I'll stand by her--I'll own her". Adam admits that he used to be hard, but he will never be hard again. Suddenly, he looks like his old self.

Commentary on Chapter 42 This chapter is important for showing Adam's conversion to a new sense of humanity. He was always a good man, but the narrator says that suffering can be an awakening to a new unselfishness and pity. This baptism of Adam's once again reminds one of Paradise Lost where Adam and Eve have to learn how to be good in a fallen state, how to feel love and compassion for one another, instead of blame. It is to be contrasted, however, with Hetty's response of hardness. Adam's suffering makes him reach out; hers shuts her down. She cannot admit she did anything wrong, and so therefore, no forgiveness and growth can take place. Adam grows to maturity here by putting aside his old moral harshness and deciding to stand by Hetty, even if she committed the crime. He will own her, not be ashamed of her, like her uncle. This is true Christian behavior and more like what Dinah Morris would do. Even his look changes after he softens. He is now closer to the ethic that Bartle announces in this chapter as he praises Mr. Irwine for helping Martin Poyser: "It's a great thing in a man's life to be able to stand by his neighbor" .

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/43.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_43_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 43

chapter 43

{"name": "Chapter 43", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter43", "summary": "The Verdict Adam Bede's tall figure entering the courtroom is striking. Even Mr. Irwine is surprised by the signs of suffering and grief about him. He goes to sit by Hetty's side, but she does not see him, for she stands with her head down, looking at her hands. Adam is looking to see whether she is different, but she is not to him. She still is the pretty sweet girl he fell in love with. The first witness is Sarah Stone, a widowed shopkeeper in Stoniton. She tells how Hetty came to her door one night and out of pity, she took her in. That night, the baby was born, and she herself dressed it in clothes she had made. She took care of the baby and mother and offered to send for Hetty's friends, but Hetty refused. When the woman went out for a while, Hetty ran away with the baby. At this point, Adam is moved and thinks that Hetty couldn't have killed her baby. She must have loved it, but the next witness is the man who found the baby, John Olding, an old peasant man. He was crossing the fields and saw Hetty there. She looked frightened when he came towards her and walked on. He thought she looked crazy. In the field he kept hearing cries but thinking it some animal, he ignored it until it stopped. An hour later he went to where the cries were and found a baby's body. It was cold. He took it to his wife who said it was dead. Then they sent for the constable and began looking for Hetty. They found her the next day, sitting near the place where she had left the baby, apparently in shock, for she did not move until they took her away. Adam's agony is supreme when he realizes what Hetty has done, and he hides his face on his arm and calls to God for help. The jury quickly finds her guilty, but there is no recommendation for mercy, and when the judge hands out the death sentence, Adam reaches out to her, but Hetty screams and faints.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 43 The narrator tells us that Hetty did not receive the mercy of the court, despite all the testimony to her virtuous upbringing by relatives and Mr. Irwine, because of her coldness and hardness. She does not respond, confess, or seem repentant or sorry. It appears to be cold-blooded murder, but from the testimony one gathers Hetty was not completely sane and that furthermore, she was not able to leave the scene, even to save her own life, because of shock or guilt. Though we have been told more details during the court case, there is still the mystery of what happened to make Hetty do this. We have not yet heard her side of it, though the facts seem to warrant the verdict. Eliot's story was timely for her readers because though it was set in an earlier period, infanticide was a common crime in Victorian England and reached crisis proportions by the 1860s. The newspapers were full of cases, and one of the more famous remarks on such a newspaper account was made by writer Matthew Arnold . He was disturbed by the cold impersonality and indifference of the press stories. The facts were given and then the phrase that Arnold found inhumane: \"Wragg is in custody.\" Arnold felt that English society needed to come up with some response a bit more insightful to infanticide other than \"Wragg is in custody,\" as though that solved the problem. Why was Wragg in custody? Who was she? Why was she forced into doing this? What about all the other Wraggs? Eliot takes the bare facts of such a case and takes us inside the heads of the characters to show us how such a heinous crime can be committed by people who are no better or worse than the general population. Eliot chooses the psychological investigation of such an act, but a sociological analysis would show such a high rate of infanticide resulted from the severe pressures and restrictions on women for sexual misconduct, especially of the lower and middle classes, and for having a baby out of wedlock. Hetty goes through the alternatives in her mind. She had few options, unless there were some sympathetic relative. Dinah is a possibility, but Hetty could not hide her shame there or live a normal life afterwards. Hetty knows her uncle's family will not take her back because she dishonors them. Arthur is too far away. Most women had no money of their own or means to get it. Abortion was illegal, difficult, and very dangerous, often killing or maiming the woman. With an illegitimate child, a woman could not get work, a place to live, or get married. She was an outcast and would not be received by decent people. A pregnant servant was thrown into the street or sent to the poorhouse, a place little more than a jail. Prostitution was one avenue chosen by poor women with unwanted infants. A woman in poverty might kill her child to save it from suffering starvation. Infants were regularly abandoned or given to baby farms that, for a fee, would starve the unwanted babies. Upper class women had more choices; with money, they could go to the country, have the child and give it away. These conditions are hard to imagine in the world today where there are many single working mothers and little censure for having a child out of wedlock. Adam's remark that the man should be guilty too and made to pay was especially relevant for a Victorian audience, since the amended Poor Law of 1834 cast all the guilt on the woman alone for support of a bastard child. A man was not legally responsible. Many orphanages refused illegitimate children."}

THE place fitted up that day as a court of justice was a grand old hall, now destroyed by fire. The midday light that fell on the close pavement of human heads was shed through a line of high pointed windows, variegated with the mellow tints of old painted glass. Grim dusty armour hung in high relief in front of the dark oaken gallery at the farther end, and under the broad arch of the great mullioned window opposite was spread a curtain of old tapestry, covered with dim melancholy figures, like a dozing indistinct dream of the past. It was a place that through the rest of the year was haunted with the shadowy memories of old kings and queens, unhappy, discrowned, imprisoned; but to-day all those shadows had fled, and not a soul in the vast hall felt the presence of any but a living sorrow, which was quivering in warm hearts. But that sorrow seemed to have made it itself feebly felt hitherto, now when Adam Bede's tall figure was suddenly seen being ushered to the side of the prisoner's dock. In the broad sunlight of the great hall, among the sleek shaven faces of other men, the marks of suffering in his face were startling even to Mr. Irwine, who had last seen him in the dim light of his small room; and the neighbours from Hayslope who were present, and who told Hetty Sorrel's story by their firesides in their old age, never forgot to say how it moved them when Adam Bede, poor fellow, taller by the head than most of the people round him, came into court and took his place by her side. But Hetty did not see him. She was standing in the same position Bartle Massey had described, her hands crossed over each other and her eyes fixed on them. Adam had not dared to look at her in the first moments, but at last, when the attention of the court was withdrawn by the proceedings he turned his face towards her with a resolution not to shrink. Why did they say she was so changed? In the corpse we love, it is the likeness we see--it is the likeness, which makes itself felt the more keenly because something else was and is not. There they were--the sweet face and neck, with the dark tendrils of hair, the long dark lashes, the rounded cheek and the pouting lips--pale and thin, yes, but like Hetty, and only Hetty. Others thought she looked as if some demon had cast a blighting glance upon her, withered up the woman's soul in her, and left only a hard despairing obstinacy. But the mother's yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man; and to Adam, this pale, hard-looking culprit was the Hetty who had smiled at him in the garden under the apple-tree boughs--she was that Hetty's corpse, which he had trembled to look at the first time, and then was unwilling to turn away his eyes from. But presently he heard something that compelled him to listen, and made the sense of sight less absorbing. A woman was in the witness-box, a middle-aged woman, who spoke in a firm distinct voice. She said, "My name is Sarah Stone. I am a widow, and keep a small shop licensed to sell tobacco, snuff, and tea in Church Lane, Stoniton. The prisoner at the bar is the same young woman who came, looking ill and tired, with a basket on her arm, and asked for a lodging at my house on Saturday evening, the 27th of February. She had taken the house for a public, because there was a figure against the door. And when I said I didn't take in lodgers, the prisoner began to cry, and said she was too tired to go anywhere else, and she only wanted a bed for one night. And her prettiness, and her condition, and something respectable about her clothes and looks, and the trouble she seemed to be in made me as I couldn't find in my heart to send her away at once. I asked her to sit down, and gave her some tea, and asked her where she was going, and where her friends were. She said she was going home to her friends: they were farming folks a good way off, and she'd had a long journey that had cost her more money than she expected, so as she'd hardly any money left in her pocket, and was afraid of going where it would cost her much. She had been obliged to sell most of the things out of her basket, but she'd thankfully give a shilling for a bed. I saw no reason why I shouldn't take the young woman in for the night. I had only one room, but there were two beds in it, and I told her she might stay with me. I thought she'd been led wrong, and got into trouble, but if she was going to her friends, it would be a good work to keep her out of further harm." The witness then stated that in the night a child was born, and she identified the baby-clothes then shown to her as those in which she had herself dressed the child. "Those are the clothes. I made them myself, and had kept them by me ever since my last child was born. I took a deal of trouble both for the child and the mother. I couldn't help taking to the little thing and being anxious about it. I didn't send for a doctor, for there seemed no need. I told the mother in the day-time she must tell me the name of her friends, and where they lived, and let me write to them. She said, by and by she would write herself, but not to-day. She would have no nay, but she would get up and be dressed, in spite of everything I could say. She said she felt quite strong enough; and it was wonderful what spirit she showed. But I wasn't quite easy what I should do about her, and towards evening I made up my mind I'd go, after Meeting was over, and speak to our minister about it. I left the house about half-past eight o'clock. I didn't go out at the shop door, but at the back door, which opens into a narrow alley. I've only got the ground-floor of the house, and the kitchen and bedroom both look into the alley. I left the prisoner sitting up by the fire in the kitchen with the baby on her lap. She hadn't cried or seemed low at all, as she did the night before. I thought she had a strange look with her eyes, and she got a bit flushed towards evening. I was afraid of the fever, and I thought I'd call and ask an acquaintance of mine, an experienced woman, to come back with me when I went out. It was a very dark night. I didn't fasten the door behind me; there was no lock; it was a latch with a bolt inside, and when there was nobody in the house I always went out at the shop door. But I thought there was no danger in leaving it unfastened that little while. I was longer than I meant to be, for I had to wait for the woman that came back with me. It was an hour and a half before we got back, and when we went in, the candle was standing burning just as I left it, but the prisoner and the baby were both gone. She'd taken her cloak and bonnet, but she'd left the basket and the things in it....I was dreadful frightened, and angry with her for going. I didn't go to give information, because I'd no thought she meant to do any harm, and I knew she had money in her pocket to buy her food and lodging. I didn't like to set the constable after her, for she'd a right to go from me if she liked." The effect of this evidence on Adam was electrical; it gave him new force. Hetty could not be guilty of the crime--her heart must have clung to her baby--else why should she have taken it with her? She might have left it behind. The little creature had died naturally, and then she had hidden it. Babies were so liable to death--and there might be the strongest suspicions without any proof of guilt. His mind was so occupied with imaginary arguments against such suspicions, that he could not listen to the cross-examination by Hetty's counsel, who tried, without result, to elicit evidence that the prisoner had shown some movements of maternal affection towards the child. The whole time this witness was being examined, Hetty had stood as motionless as before: no word seemed to arrest her ear. But the sound of the next witness's voice touched a chord that was still sensitive, she gave a start and a frightened look towards him, but immediately turned away her head and looked down at her hands as before. This witness was a man, a rough peasant. He said: "My name is John Olding. I am a labourer, and live at Tedd's Hole, two miles out of Stoniton. A week last Monday, towards one o'clock in the afternoon, I was going towards Hetton Coppice, and about a quarter of a mile from the coppice I saw the prisoner, in a red cloak, sitting under a bit of a haystack not far off the stile. She got up when she saw me, and seemed as if she'd be walking on the other way. It was a regular road through the fields, and nothing very uncommon to see a young woman there, but I took notice of her because she looked white and scared. I should have thought she was a beggar-woman, only for her good clothes. I thought she looked a bit crazy, but it was no business of mine. I stood and looked back after her, but she went right on while she was in sight. I had to go to the other side of the coppice to look after some stakes. There's a road right through it, and bits of openings here and there, where the trees have been cut down, and some of 'em not carried away. I didn't go straight along the road, but turned off towards the middle, and took a shorter way towards the spot I wanted to get to. I hadn't got far out of the road into one of the open places before I heard a strange cry. I thought it didn't come from any animal I knew, but I wasn't for stopping to look about just then. But it went on, and seemed so strange to me in that place, I couldn't help stopping to look. I began to think I might make some money of it, if it was a new thing. But I had hard work to tell which way it came from, and for a good while I kept looking up at the boughs. And then I thought it came from the ground; and there was a lot of timber-choppings lying about, and loose pieces of turf, and a trunk or two. And I looked about among them, but could find nothing, and at last the cry stopped. So I was for giving it up, and I went on about my business. But when I came back the same way pretty nigh an hour after, I couldn't help laying down my stakes to have another look. And just as I was stooping and laying down the stakes, I saw something odd and round and whitish lying on the ground under a nut-bush by the side of me. And I stooped down on hands and knees to pick it up. And I saw it was a little baby's hand." At these words a thrill ran through the court. Hetty was visibly trembling; now, for the first time, she seemed to be listening to what a witness said. "There was a lot of timber-choppings put together just where the ground went hollow, like, under the bush, and the hand came out from among them. But there was a hole left in one place and I could see down it and see the child's head; and I made haste and did away the turf and the choppings, and took out the child. It had got comfortable clothes on, but its body was cold, and I thought it must be dead. I made haste back with it out of the wood, and took it home to my wife. She said it was dead, and I'd better take it to the parish and tell the constable. And I said, 'I'll lay my life it's that young woman's child as I met going to the coppice.' But she seemed to be gone clean out of sight. And I took the child on to Hetton parish and told the constable, and we went on to Justice Hardy. And then we went looking after the young woman till dark at night, and we went and gave information at Stoniton, as they might stop her. And the next morning, another constable came to me, to go with him to the spot where I found the child. And when we got there, there was the prisoner a-sitting against the bush where I found the child; and she cried out when she saw us, but she never offered to move. She'd got a big piece of bread on her lap." Adam had given a faint groan of despair while this witness was speaking. He had hidden his face on his arm, which rested on the boarding in front of him. It was the supreme moment of his suffering: Hetty was guilty; and he was silently calling to God for help. He heard no more of the evidence, and was unconscious when the case for the prosecution had closed--unconscious that Mr. Irwine was in the witness-box, telling of Hetty's unblemished character in her own parish and of the virtuous habits in which she had been brought up. This testimony could have no influence on the verdict, but it was given as part of that plea for mercy which her own counsel would have made if he had been allowed to speak for her--a favour not granted to criminals in those stern times. At last Adam lifted up his head, for there was a general movement round him. The judge had addressed the jury, and they were retiring. The decisive moment was not far off. Adam felt a shuddering horror that would not let him look at Hetty, but she had long relapsed into her blank hard indifference. All eyes were strained to look at her, but she stood like a statue of dull despair. There was a mingled rustling, whispering, and low buzzing throughout the court during this interval. The desire to listen was suspended, and every one had some feeling or opinion to express in undertones. Adam sat looking blankly before him, but he did not see the objects that were right in front of his eyes--the counsel and attorneys talking with an air of cool business, and Mr. Irwine in low earnest conversation with the judge--did not see Mr. Irwine sit down again in agitation and shake his head mournfully when somebody whispered to him. The inward action was too intense for Adam to take in outward objects until some strong sensation roused him. It was not very long, hardly more than a quarter of an hour, before the knock which told that the jury had come to their decision fell as a signal for silence on every ear. It is sublime--that sudden pause of a great multitude which tells that one soul moves in them all. Deeper and deeper the silence seemed to become, like the deepening night, while the jurymen's names were called over, and the prisoner was made to hold up her hand, and the jury were asked for their verdict. "Guilty." It was the verdict every one expected, but there was a sigh of disappointment from some hearts that it was followed by no recommendation to mercy. Still the sympathy of the court was not with the prisoner. The unnaturalness of her crime stood out the more harshly by the side of her hard immovability and obstinate silence. Even the verdict, to distant eyes, had not appeared to move her, but those who were near saw her trembling. The stillness was less intense until the judge put on his black cap, and the chaplain in his canonicals was observed behind him. Then it deepened again, before the crier had had time to command silence. If any sound were heard, it must have been the sound of beating hearts. The judge spoke, "Hester Sorrel...." The blood rushed to Hetty's face, and then fled back again as she looked up at the judge and kept her wide-open eyes fixed on him, as if fascinated by fear. Adam had not yet turned towards her, there was a deep horror, like a great gulf, between them. But at the words "and then to be hanged by the neck till you be dead," a piercing shriek rang through the hall. It was Hetty's shriek. Adam started to his feet and stretched out his arms towards her. But the arms could not reach her: she had fallen down in a fainting-fit, and was carried out of court.

Chapter 43

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter43

The Verdict Adam Bede's tall figure entering the courtroom is striking. Even Mr. Irwine is surprised by the signs of suffering and grief about him. He goes to sit by Hetty's side, but she does not see him, for she stands with her head down, looking at her hands. Adam is looking to see whether she is different, but she is not to him. She still is the pretty sweet girl he fell in love with. The first witness is Sarah Stone, a widowed shopkeeper in Stoniton. She tells how Hetty came to her door one night and out of pity, she took her in. That night, the baby was born, and she herself dressed it in clothes she had made. She took care of the baby and mother and offered to send for Hetty's friends, but Hetty refused. When the woman went out for a while, Hetty ran away with the baby. At this point, Adam is moved and thinks that Hetty couldn't have killed her baby. She must have loved it, but the next witness is the man who found the baby, John Olding, an old peasant man. He was crossing the fields and saw Hetty there. She looked frightened when he came towards her and walked on. He thought she looked crazy. In the field he kept hearing cries but thinking it some animal, he ignored it until it stopped. An hour later he went to where the cries were and found a baby's body. It was cold. He took it to his wife who said it was dead. Then they sent for the constable and began looking for Hetty. They found her the next day, sitting near the place where she had left the baby, apparently in shock, for she did not move until they took her away. Adam's agony is supreme when he realizes what Hetty has done, and he hides his face on his arm and calls to God for help. The jury quickly finds her guilty, but there is no recommendation for mercy, and when the judge hands out the death sentence, Adam reaches out to her, but Hetty screams and faints.

Commentary on Chapter 43 The narrator tells us that Hetty did not receive the mercy of the court, despite all the testimony to her virtuous upbringing by relatives and Mr. Irwine, because of her coldness and hardness. She does not respond, confess, or seem repentant or sorry. It appears to be cold-blooded murder, but from the testimony one gathers Hetty was not completely sane and that furthermore, she was not able to leave the scene, even to save her own life, because of shock or guilt. Though we have been told more details during the court case, there is still the mystery of what happened to make Hetty do this. We have not yet heard her side of it, though the facts seem to warrant the verdict. Eliot's story was timely for her readers because though it was set in an earlier period, infanticide was a common crime in Victorian England and reached crisis proportions by the 1860s. The newspapers were full of cases, and one of the more famous remarks on such a newspaper account was made by writer Matthew Arnold . He was disturbed by the cold impersonality and indifference of the press stories. The facts were given and then the phrase that Arnold found inhumane: "Wragg is in custody." Arnold felt that English society needed to come up with some response a bit more insightful to infanticide other than "Wragg is in custody," as though that solved the problem. Why was Wragg in custody? Who was she? Why was she forced into doing this? What about all the other Wraggs? Eliot takes the bare facts of such a case and takes us inside the heads of the characters to show us how such a heinous crime can be committed by people who are no better or worse than the general population. Eliot chooses the psychological investigation of such an act, but a sociological analysis would show such a high rate of infanticide resulted from the severe pressures and restrictions on women for sexual misconduct, especially of the lower and middle classes, and for having a baby out of wedlock. Hetty goes through the alternatives in her mind. She had few options, unless there were some sympathetic relative. Dinah is a possibility, but Hetty could not hide her shame there or live a normal life afterwards. Hetty knows her uncle's family will not take her back because she dishonors them. Arthur is too far away. Most women had no money of their own or means to get it. Abortion was illegal, difficult, and very dangerous, often killing or maiming the woman. With an illegitimate child, a woman could not get work, a place to live, or get married. She was an outcast and would not be received by decent people. A pregnant servant was thrown into the street or sent to the poorhouse, a place little more than a jail. Prostitution was one avenue chosen by poor women with unwanted infants. A woman in poverty might kill her child to save it from suffering starvation. Infants were regularly abandoned or given to baby farms that, for a fee, would starve the unwanted babies. Upper class women had more choices; with money, they could go to the country, have the child and give it away. These conditions are hard to imagine in the world today where there are many single working mothers and little censure for having a child out of wedlock. Adam's remark that the man should be guilty too and made to pay was especially relevant for a Victorian audience, since the amended Poor Law of 1834 cast all the guilt on the woman alone for support of a bastard child. A man was not legally responsible. Many orphanages refused illegitimate children.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/44.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_44_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 44

chapter 44

{"name": "Chapter 44", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter44", "summary": "Arthur's Return Arthur's thoughts on returning to England are all about his grandfather whom he pities and thinks of kindly, and his new position. He is happy and on top of the world thinking that now he has come into his own. He thinks on all the benevolent acts he will accomplish, starting with the Irwines and the Bedes. He has no worry about Hetty, for he had heard she was engaged to Adam. He wants to do something handsome for the couple and is glad he has left behind the mistakes of last summer. Although he is not in love with Hetty, she still causes his heart to beat faster when he thinks of her. When he returns home, the servants are all silent and downcast, but he thinks it is for his grandfather. Mr. Irwine's letter is waiting for him, and he reads it first. It says that Hetty is being tried for child murder in Stoniton. He rushes out of the house, gets his horse and gallops to Stoniton.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 44 As Arthur returns home, he seems to be stuck in the same mode as before. He thinks he just scraped by in the affair with Hetty, and he won't do it again. He vows to be better in the future. The fact that he rushes out of the house to Stoniton as soon as he hears the news confirms Mr. Irwine's better thoughts of Arthur's character. He does not slink away or try to reason himself out of culpability. He rushes to help. Like Adam, Arthur will be baptized anew by Hetty's suffering."}

When Arthur Donnithorne landed at Liverpool and read the letter from his Aunt Lydia, briefly announcing his grand-father's death, his first feeling was, "Poor Grandfather! I wish I could have got to him to be with him when he died. He might have felt or wished something at the last that I shall never know now. It was a lonely death." It is impossible to say that his grief was deeper than that. Pity and softened memory took place of the old antagonism, and in his busy thoughts about the future, as the chaise carried him rapidly along towards the home where he was now to be master, there was a continually recurring effort to remember anything by which he could show a regard for his grandfather's wishes, without counteracting his own cherished aims for the good of the tenants and the estate. But it is not in human nature--only in human pretence--for a young man like Arthur, with a fine constitution and fine spirits, thinking well of himself, believing that others think well of him, and having a very ardent intention to give them more and more reason for that good opinion--it is not possible for such a young man, just coming into a splendid estate through the death of a very old man whom he was not fond of, to feel anything very different from exultant joy. Now his real life was beginning; now he would have room and opportunity for action, and he would use them. He would show the Loamshire people what a fine country gentleman was; he would not exchange that career for any other under the sun. He felt himself riding over the hills in the breezy autumn days, looking after favourite plans of drainage and enclosure; then admired on sombre mornings as the best rider on the best horse in the hunt; spoken well of on market-days as a first-rate landlord; by and by making speeches at election dinners, and showing a wonderful knowledge of agriculture; the patron of new ploughs and drills, the severe upbraider of negligent landowners, and withal a jolly fellow that everybody must like--happy faces greeting him everywhere on his own estate, and the neighbouring families on the best terms with him. The Irwines should dine with him every week, and have their own carriage to come in, for in some very delicate way that Arthur would devise, the lay-impropriator of the Hayslope tithes would insist on paying a couple of hundreds more to the vicar; and his aunt should be as comfortable as possible, and go on living at the Chase, if she liked, in spite of her old-maidish ways--at least until he was married, and that event lay in the indistinct background, for Arthur had not yet seen the woman who would play the lady-wife to the first-rate country gentleman. These were Arthur's chief thoughts, so far as a man's thoughts through hours of travelling can be compressed into a few sentences, which are only like the list of names telling you what are the scenes in a long long panorama full of colour, of detail, and of life. The happy faces Arthur saw greeting him were not pale abstractions, but real ruddy faces, long familiar to him: Martin Poyser was there--the whole Poyser family. What--Hetty? Yes; for Arthur was at ease about Hetty--not quite at ease about the past, for a certain burning of the ears would come whenever he thought of the scenes with Adam last August, but at ease about her present lot. Mr. Irwine, who had been a regular correspondent, telling him all the news about the old places and people, had sent him word nearly three months ago that Adam Bede was not to marry Mary Burge, as he had thought, but pretty Hetty Sorrel. Martin Poyser and Adam himself had both told Mr. Irwine all about it--that Adam had been deeply in love with Hetty these two years, and that now it was agreed they were to be married in March. That stalwart rogue Adam was more susceptible than the rector had thought; it was really quite an idyllic love affair; and if it had not been too long to tell in a letter, he would have liked to describe to Arthur the blushing looks and the simple strong words with which the fine honest fellow told his secret. He knew Arthur would like to hear that Adam had this sort of happiness in prospect. Yes, indeed! Arthur felt there was not air enough in the room to satisfy his renovated life, when he had read that passage in the letter. He threw up the windows, he rushed out of doors into the December air, and greeted every one who spoke to him with an eager gaiety, as if there had been news of a fresh Nelson victory. For the first time that day since he had come to Windsor, he was in true boyish spirits. The load that had been pressing upon him was gone, the haunting fear had vanished. He thought he could conquer his bitterness towards Adam now--could offer him his hand, and ask to be his friend again, in spite of that painful memory which would still make his ears burn. He had been knocked down, and he had been forced to tell a lie: such things make a scar, do what we will. But if Adam were the same again as in the old days, Arthur wished to be the same too, and to have Adam mixed up with his business and his future, as he had always desired before the accursed meeting in August. Nay, he would do a great deal more for Adam than he should otherwise have done, when he came into the estate; Hetty's husband had a special claim on him--Hetty herself should feel that any pain she had suffered through Arthur in the past was compensated to her a hundredfold. For really she could not have felt much, since she had so soon made up her mind to marry Adam. You perceive clearly what sort of picture Adam and Hetty made in the panorama of Arthur's thoughts on his journey homeward. It was March now; they were soon to be married: perhaps they were already married. And now it was actually in his power to do a great deal for them. Sweet--sweet little Hetty! The little puss hadn't cared for him half as much as he cared for her; for he was a great fool about her still--was almost afraid of seeing her--indeed, had not cared much to look at any other woman since he parted from her. That little figure coming towards him in the Grove, those dark-fringed childish eyes, the lovely lips put up to kiss him--that picture had got no fainter with the lapse of months. And she would look just the same. It was impossible to think how he could meet her: he should certainly tremble. Strange, how long this sort of influence lasts, for he was certainly not in love with Hetty now. He had been earnestly desiring, for months, that she should marry Adam, and there was nothing that contributed more to his happiness in these moments than the thought of their marriage. It was the exaggerating effect of imagination that made his heart still beat a little more quickly at the thought of her. When he saw the little thing again as she really was, as Adam's wife, at work quite prosaically in her new home, he should perhaps wonder at the possibility of his past feelings. Thank heaven it had turned out so well! He should have plenty of affairs and interests to fill his life now, and not be in danger of playing the fool again. Pleasant the crack of the post-boy's whip! Pleasant the sense of being hurried along in swift ease through English scenes, so like those round his own home, only not quite so charming. Here was a market-town--very much like Treddleston--where the arms of the neighbouring lord of the manor were borne on the sign of the principal inn; then mere fields and hedges, their vicinity to a market-town carrying an agreeable suggestion of high rent, till the land began to assume a trimmer look, the woods were more frequent, and at length a white or red mansion looked down from a moderate eminence, or allowed him to be aware of its parapet and chimneys among the dense-looking masses of oaks and elms--masses reddened now with early buds. And close at hand came the village: the small church, with its red-tiled roof, looking humble even among the faded half-timbered houses; the old green gravestones with nettles round them; nothing fresh and bright but the children, opening round eyes at the swift post-chaise; nothing noisy and busy but the gaping curs of mysterious pedigree. What a much prettier village Hayslope was! And it should not be neglected like this place: vigorous repairs should go on everywhere among farm-buildings and cottages, and travellers in post-chaises, coming along the Rosseter road, should do nothing but admire as they went. And Adam Bede should superintend all the repairs, for he had a share in Burge's business now, and, if he liked, Arthur would put some money into the concern and buy the old man out in another year or two. That was an ugly fault in Arthur's life, that affair last summer, but the future should make amends. Many men would have retained a feeling of vindictiveness towards Adam, but he would not--he would resolutely overcome all littleness of that kind, for he had certainly been very much in the wrong; and though Adam had been harsh and violent, and had thrust on him a painful dilemma, the poor fellow was in love, and had real provocation. No, Arthur had not an evil feeling in his mind towards any human being: he was happy, and would make every one else happy that came within his reach. And here was dear old Hayslope at last, sleeping, on the hill, like a quiet old place as it was, in the late afternoon sunlight, and opposite to it the great shoulders of the Binton Hills, below them the purplish blackness of the hanging woods, and at last the pale front of the Abbey, looking out from among the oaks of the Chase, as if anxious for the heir's return. "Poor Grandfather! And he lies dead there. He was a young fellow once, coming into the estate and making his plans. So the world goes round! Aunt Lydia must feel very desolate, poor thing; but she shall be indulged as much as she indulges her fat Fido." The wheels of Arthur's chaise had been anxiously listened for at the Chase, for to-day was Friday, and the funeral had already been deferred two days. Before it drew up on the gravel of the courtyard, all the servants in the house were assembled to receive him with a grave, decent welcome, befitting a house of death. A month ago, perhaps, it would have been difficult for them to have maintained a suitable sadness in their faces, when Mr. Arthur was come to take possession; but the hearts of the head-servants were heavy that day for another cause than the death of the old squire, and more than one of them was longing to be twenty miles away, as Mr. Craig was, knowing what was to become of Hetty Sorrel--pretty Hetty Sorrel--whom they used to see every week. They had the partisanship of household servants who like their places, and were not inclined to go the full length of the severe indignation felt against him by the farming tenants, but rather to make excuses for him; nevertheless, the upper servants, who had been on terms of neighbourly intercourse with the Poysers for many years, could not help feeling that the longed-for event of the young squire's coming into the estate had been robbed of all its pleasantness. To Arthur it was nothing surprising that the servants looked grave and sad: he himself was very much touched on seeing them all again, and feeling that he was in a new relation to them. It was that sort of pathetic emotion which has more pleasure than pain in it--which is perhaps one of the most delicious of all states to a good-natured man, conscious of the power to satisfy his good nature. His heart swelled agreeably as he said, "Well, Mills, how is my aunt?" But now Mr. Bygate, the lawyer, who had been in the house ever since the death, came forward to give deferential greetings and answer all questions, and Arthur walked with him towards the library, where his Aunt Lydia was expecting him. Aunt Lydia was the only person in the house who knew nothing about Hetty. Her sorrow as a maiden daughter was unmixed with any other thoughts than those of anxiety about funeral arrangements and her own future lot; and, after the manner of women, she mourned for the father who had made her life important, all the more because she had a secret sense that there was little mourning for him in other hearts. But Arthur kissed her tearful face more tenderly than he had ever done in his life before. "Dear Aunt," he said affectionately, as he held her hand, "YOUR loss is the greatest of all, but you must tell me how to try and make it up to you all the rest of your life." "It was so sudden and so dreadful, Arthur," poor Miss Lydia began, pouring out her little plaints, and Arthur sat down to listen with impatient patience. When a pause came, he said: "Now, Aunt, I'll leave you for a quarter of an hour just to go to my own room, and then I shall come and give full attention to everything." "My room is all ready for me, I suppose, Mills?" he said to the butler, who seemed to be lingering uneasily about the entrance-hall. "Yes, sir, and there are letters for you; they are all laid on the writing-table in your dressing-room." On entering the small anteroom which was called a dressing-room, but which Arthur really used only to lounge and write in, he just cast his eyes on the writing-table, and saw that there were several letters and packets lying there; but he was in the uncomfortable dusty condition of a man who has had a long hurried journey, and he must really refresh himself by attending to his toilette a little, before he read his letters. Pym was there, making everything ready for him, and soon, with a delightful freshness about him, as if he were prepared to begin a new day, he went back into his dressing-room to open his letters. The level rays of the low afternoon sun entered directly at the window, and as Arthur seated himself in his velvet chair with their pleasant warmth upon him, he was conscious of that quiet well-being which perhaps you and I have felt on a sunny afternoon when, in our brightest youth and health, life has opened a new vista for us, and long to-morrows of activity have stretched before us like a lovely plain which there was no need for hurrying to look at, because it was all our own. The top letter was placed with its address upwards: it was in Mr. Irwine's handwriting, Arthur saw at once; and below the address was written, "To be delivered as soon as he arrives." Nothing could have been less surprising to him than a letter from Mr. Irwine at that moment: of course, there was something he wished Arthur to know earlier than it was possible for them to see each other. At such a time as that it was quite natural that Irwine should have something pressing to say. Arthur broke the seal with an agreeable anticipation of soon seeing the writer. "I send this letter to meet you on your arrival, Arthur, because I may then be at Stoniton, whither I am called by the most painful duty it has ever been given me to perform, and it is right that you should know what I have to tell you without delay. "I will not attempt to add by one word of reproach to the retribution that is now falling on you: any other words that I could write at this moment must be weak and unmeaning by the side of those in which I must tell you the simple fact. "Hetty Sorrel is in prison, and will be tried on Friday for the crime of child-murder."... Arthur read no more. He started up from his chair and stood for a single minute with a sense of violent convulsion in his whole frame, as if the life were going out of him with horrible throbs; but the next minute he had rushed out of the room, still clutching the letter--he was hurrying along the corridor, and down the stairs into the hall. Mills was still there, but Arthur did not see him, as he passed like a hunted man across the hall and out along the gravel. The butler hurried out after him as fast as his elderly limbs could run: he guessed, he knew, where the young squire was going. When Mills got to the stables, a horse was being saddled, and Arthur was forcing himself to read the remaining words of the letter. He thrust it into his pocket as the horse was led up to him, and at that moment caught sight of Mills' anxious face in front of him. "Tell them I'm gone--gone to Stoniton," he said in a muffled tone of agitation--sprang into the saddle, and set off at a gallop.

Chapter 44

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter44

Arthur's Return Arthur's thoughts on returning to England are all about his grandfather whom he pities and thinks of kindly, and his new position. He is happy and on top of the world thinking that now he has come into his own. He thinks on all the benevolent acts he will accomplish, starting with the Irwines and the Bedes. He has no worry about Hetty, for he had heard she was engaged to Adam. He wants to do something handsome for the couple and is glad he has left behind the mistakes of last summer. Although he is not in love with Hetty, she still causes his heart to beat faster when he thinks of her. When he returns home, the servants are all silent and downcast, but he thinks it is for his grandfather. Mr. Irwine's letter is waiting for him, and he reads it first. It says that Hetty is being tried for child murder in Stoniton. He rushes out of the house, gets his horse and gallops to Stoniton.

Commentary on Chapter 44 As Arthur returns home, he seems to be stuck in the same mode as before. He thinks he just scraped by in the affair with Hetty, and he won't do it again. He vows to be better in the future. The fact that he rushes out of the house to Stoniton as soon as he hears the news confirms Mr. Irwine's better thoughts of Arthur's character. He does not slink away or try to reason himself out of culpability. He rushes to help. Like Adam, Arthur will be baptized anew by Hetty's suffering.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/45.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_45_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 45

chapter 45

{"name": "Chapter 45", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter45", "summary": "In the Prison Dinah Morris speaks to an older gentleman outside the prison. He is Colonel Townley, the gentleman on horseback who heard Dinah speak on Hayslope Green. He is a magistrate and gets Dinah in to Hetty's cell. She wants to stay with Hetty till the end. Colonel Townley thinks she is brave to stay in a jail cell all night without any light, but Dinah is calm. Townley tells her where Adam is staying. Hetty at first is sullen and withdrawn but finally responds to Dinah's love and is enfolded in her arms. She clings to Dinah, who gently leads her to a full confession of the crime. She tells Hetty that she cannot be forgiven by God until she lets go of her sin, so Hetty tells how she half buried the baby in the wood, hoping someone would find it. She didn't kill it directly. She could only think that if the baby was gone, she could go home. She didn't feel anything for the baby, though its crying went all through her, and that is why she couldn't leave it. She could always hear it crying even after she went away. Then she went back, and it was gone. She sat and waited till they took her. She asks Dinah if now she has confessed, God will make the crying go away. Dinah tells her to kneel down and pray.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 45 Dinah's sure and skillful handling of Hetty, her compassion and lack of fear, gain the reader's admiration. She does not talk down to Hetty, but she tries to put religious precepts into thoughts Hetty can understand. She makes God a friend who will be there at the moment Hetty has to meet death. Dinah makes Hetty understand she is suffering because of her hard heart that shuts out God and human sympathy. She emphasizes God's love and forgiveness, rather than sin and punishment. Once Hetty tells the truth, there is a release and a softening. She accepts Dinah's love, and through that love, she is able to conceive of a divine love. In some ways it is hard to believe that Eliot had given up her Christian faith, because she can so convincingly portray a saint like Dinah. Eliot had immense love and compassion for others, but she herself had ceased to cloak these feelings in religion. What she loved was the humanity of religion, its higher values. She gives her best characters a spiritual and universal outlook. In earlier chapters Hetty and Dinah were contrasted, but here, sympathy has melted all differences. Dinah does not pretend to be superior to Hetty; she just stays with her and gives her comfort."}

NEAR sunset that evening an elderly gentleman was standing with his back against the smaller entrance-door of Stoniton jail, saying a few last words to the departing chaplain. The chaplain walked away, but the elderly gentleman stood still, looking down on the pavement and stroking his chin with a ruminating air, when he was roused by a sweet clear woman's voice, saying, "Can I get into the prison, if you please?" He turned his head and looked fixedly at the speaker for a few moments without answering. "I have seen you before," he said at last. "Do you remember preaching on the village green at Hayslope in Loamshire?" "Yes, sir, surely. Are you the gentleman that stayed to listen on horseback?" "Yes. Why do you want to go into the prison?" "I want to go to Hetty Sorrel, the young woman who has been condemned to death--and to stay with her, if I may be permitted. Have you power in the prison, sir?" "Yes; I am a magistrate, and can get admittance for you. But did you know this criminal, Hetty Sorrel?" "Yes, we are kin. My own aunt married her uncle, Martin Poyser. But I was away at Leeds, and didn't know of this great trouble in time to get here before to-day. I entreat you, sir, for the love of our heavenly Father, to let me go to her and stay with her." "How did you know she was condemned to death, if you are only just come from Leeds?" "I have seen my uncle since the trial, sir. He is gone back to his home now, and the poor sinner is forsaken of all. I beseech you to get leave for me to be with her." "What! Have you courage to stay all night in the prison? She is very sullen, and will scarcely make answer when she is spoken to." "Oh, sir, it may please God to open her heart still. Don't let us delay." "Come, then," said the elderly gentleman, ringing and gaining admission, "I know you have a key to unlock hearts." Dinah mechanically took off her bonnet and shawl as soon as they were within the prison court, from the habit she had of throwing them off when she preached or prayed, or visited the sick; and when they entered the jailer's room, she laid them down on a chair unthinkingly. There was no agitation visible in her, but a deep concentrated calmness, as if, even when she was speaking, her soul was in prayer reposing on an unseen support. After speaking to the jailer, the magistrate turned to her and said, "The turnkey will take you to the prisoner's cell and leave you there for the night, if you desire it, but you can't have a light during the night--it is contrary to rules. My name is Colonel Townley: if I can help you in anything, ask the jailer for my address and come to me. I take some interest in this Hetty Sorrel, for the sake of that fine fellow, Adam Bede. I happened to see him at Hayslope the same evening I heard you preach, and recognized him in court to-day, ill as he looked." "Ah, sir, can you tell me anything about him? Can you tell me where he lodges? For my poor uncle was too much weighed down with trouble to remember." "Close by here. I inquired all about him of Mr. Irwine. He lodges over a tinman's shop, in the street on the right hand as you entered the prison. There is an old school-master with him. Now, good-bye: I wish you success." "Farewell, sir. I am grateful to you." As Dinah crossed the prison court with the turnkey, the solemn evening light seemed to make the walls higher than they were by day, and the sweet pale face in the cap was more than ever like a white flower on this background of gloom. The turnkey looked askance at her all the while, but never spoke. He somehow felt that the sound of his own rude voice would be grating just then. He struck a light as they entered the dark corridor leading to the condemned cell, and then said in his most civil tone, "It'll be pretty nigh dark in the cell a'ready, but I can stop with my light a bit, if you like." "Nay, friend, thank you," said Dinah. "I wish to go in alone." "As you like," said the jailer, turning the harsh key in the lock and opening the door wide enough to admit Dinah. A jet of light from his lantern fell on the opposite corner of the cell, where Hetty was sitting on her straw pallet with her face buried in her knees. It seemed as if she were asleep, and yet the grating of the lock would have been likely to waken her. The door closed again, and the only light in the cell was that of the evening sky, through the small high grating--enough to discern human faces by. Dinah stood still for a minute, hesitating to speak because Hetty might be asleep, and looking at the motionless heap with a yearning heart. Then she said, softly, "Hetty!" There was a slight movement perceptible in Hetty's frame--a start such as might have been produced by a feeble electrical shock--but she did not look up. Dinah spoke again, in a tone made stronger by irrepressible emotion, "Hetty...it's Dinah." Again there was a slight startled movement through Hetty's frame, and without uncovering her face, she raised her head a little, as if listening. "Hetty...Dinah is come to you." After a moment's pause, Hetty lifted her head slowly and timidly from her knees and raised her eyes. The two pale faces were looking at each other: one with a wild hard despair in it, the other full of sad yearning love. Dinah unconsciously opened her arms and stretched them out. "Don't you know me, Hetty? Don't you remember Dinah? Did you think I wouldn't come to you in trouble?" Hetty kept her eyes fixed on Dinah's face--at first like an animal that gazes, and gazes, and keeps aloof. "I'm come to be with you, Hetty--not to leave you--to stay with you--to be your sister to the last." Slowly, while Dinah was speaking, Hetty rose, took a step forward, and was clasped in Dinah's arms. They stood so a long while, for neither of them felt the impulse to move apart again. Hetty, without any distinct thought of it, hung on this something that was come to clasp her now, while she was sinking helpless in a dark gulf; and Dinah felt a deep joy in the first sign that her love was welcomed by the wretched lost one. The light got fainter as they stood, and when at last they sat down on the straw pallet together, their faces had become indistinct. Not a word was spoken. Dinah waited, hoping for a spontaneous word from Hetty, but she sat in the same dull despair, only clutching the hand that held hers and leaning her cheek against Dinah's. It was the human contact she clung to, but she was not the less sinking into the dark gulf. Dinah began to doubt whether Hetty was conscious who it was that sat beside her. She thought suffering and fear might have driven the poor sinner out of her mind. But it was borne in upon her, as she afterwards said, that she must not hurry God's work: we are overhasty to speak--as if God did not manifest himself by our silent feeling, and make his love felt through ours. She did not know how long they sat in that way, but it got darker and darker, till there was only a pale patch of light on the opposite wall: all the rest was darkness. But she felt the Divine presence more and more--nay, as if she herself were a part of it, and it was the Divine pity that was beating in her heart and was willing the rescue of this helpless one. At last she was prompted to speak and find out how far Hetty was conscious of the present. "Hetty," she said gently, "do you know who it is that sits by your side?" "Yes," Hetty answered slowly, "it's Dinah." "And do you remember the time when we were at the Hall Farm together, and that night when I told you to be sure and think of me as a friend in trouble?" "Yes," said Hetty. Then, after a pause, she added, "But you can do nothing for me. You can't make 'em do anything. They'll hang me o' Monday--it's Friday now." As Hetty said the last words, she clung closer to Dinah, shuddering. "No, Hetty, I can't save you from that death. But isn't the suffering less hard when you have somebody with you, that feels for you--that you can speak to, and say what's in your heart?...Yes, Hetty: you lean on me: you are glad to have me with you." "You won't leave me, Dinah? You'll keep close to me?" "No, Hetty, I won't leave you. I'll stay with you to the last....But, Hetty, there is some one else in this cell besides me, some one close to you." Hetty said, in a frightened whisper, "Who?" "Some one who has been with you through all your hours of sin and trouble--who has known every thought you have had--has seen where you went, where you lay down and rose up again, and all the deeds you have tried to hide in darkness. And on Monday, when I can't follow you--when my arms can't reach you--when death has parted us--He who is with us now, and knows all, will be with you then. It makes no difference--whether we live or die, we are in the presence of God." "Oh, Dinah, won't nobody do anything for me? Will they hang me for certain?...I wouldn't mind if they'd let me live." "My poor Hetty, death is very dreadful to you. I know it's dreadful. But if you had a friend to take care of you after death--in that other world--some one whose love is greater than mine--who can do everything?...If God our Father was your friend, and was willing to save you from sin and suffering, so as you should neither know wicked feelings nor pain again? If you could believe he loved you and would help you, as you believe I love you and will help you, it wouldn't be so hard to die on Monday, would it?" "But I can't know anything about it," Hetty said, with sullen sadness. "Because, Hetty, you are shutting up your soul against him, by trying to hide the truth. God's love and mercy can overcome all things--our ignorance, and weakness, and all the burden of our past wickedness--all things but our wilful sin, sin that we cling to, and will not give up. You believe in my love and pity for you, Hetty, but if you had not let me come near you, if you wouldn't have looked at me or spoken to me, you'd have shut me out from helping you. I couldn't have made you feel my love; I couldn't have told you what I felt for you. Don't shut God's love out in that way, by clinging to sin....He can't bless you while you have one falsehood in your soul; his pardoning mercy can't reach you until you open your heart to him, and say, 'I have done this great wickedness; O God, save me, make me pure from sin.' While you cling to one sin and will not part with it, it must drag you down to misery after death, as it has dragged you to misery here in this world, my poor, poor Hetty. It is sin that brings dread, and darkness, and despair: there is light and blessedness for us as soon as we cast it off. God enters our souls then, and teaches us, and brings us strength and peace. Cast it off now, Hetty--now: confess the wickedness you have done--the sin you have been guilty of against your Heavenly Father. Let us kneel down together, for we are in the presence of God." Hetty obeyed Dinah's movement, and sank on her knees. They still held each other's hands, and there was long silence. Then Dinah said, "Hetty, we are before God. He is waiting for you to tell the truth." Still there was silence. At last Hetty spoke, in a tone of beseeching-- "Dinah...help me...I can't feel anything like you...my heart is hard." Dinah held the clinging hand, and all her soul went forth in her voice: "Jesus, thou present Saviour! Thou hast known the depths of all sorrow: thou hast entered that black darkness where God is not, and hast uttered the cry of the forsaken. Come Lord, and gather of the fruits of thy travail and thy pleading. Stretch forth thy hand, thou who art mighty to save to the uttermost, and rescue this lost one. She is clothed round with thick darkness. The fetters of her sin are upon her, and she cannot stir to come to thee. She can only feel her heart is hard, and she is helpless. She cries to me, thy weak creature....Saviour! It is a blind cry to thee. Hear it! Pierce the darkness! Look upon her with thy face of love and sorrow that thou didst turn on him who denied thee, and melt her hard heart. "See, Lord, I bring her, as they of old brought the sick and helpless, and thou didst heal them. I bear her on my arms and carry her before thee. Fear and trembling have taken hold on her, but she trembles only at the pain and death of the body. Breathe upon her thy life-giving Spirit, and put a new fear within her--the fear of her sin. Make her dread to keep the accursed thing within her soul. Make her feel the presence of the living God, who beholds all the past, to whom the darkness is as noonday; who is waiting now, at the eleventh hour, for her to turn to him, and confess her sin, and cry for mercy--now, before the night of death comes, and the moment of pardon is for ever fled, like yesterday that returneth not. "Saviour! It is yet time--time to snatch this poor soul from everlasting darkness. I believe--I believe in thy infinite love. What is my love or my pleading? It is quenched in thine. I can only clasp her in my weak arms and urge her with my weak pity. Thou--thou wilt breathe on the dead soul, and it shall arise from the unanswering sleep of death. "Yea, Lord, I see thee, coming through the darkness coming, like the morning, with healing on thy wings. The marks of thy agony are upon thee--I see, I see thou art able and willing to save--thou wilt not let her perish for ever. Come, mighty Saviour! Let the dead hear thy voice. Let the eyes of the blind be opened. Let her see that God encompasses her. Let her tremble at nothing but at the sin that cuts her off from him. Melt the hard heart. Unseal the closed lips: make her cry with her whole soul, 'Father, I have sinned.'..." "Dinah," Hetty sobbed out, throwing her arms round Dinah's neck, "I will speak...I will tell...I won't hide it any more." But the tears and sobs were too violent. Dinah raised her gently from her knees and seated her on the pallet again, sitting down by her side. It was a long time before the convulsed throat was quiet, and even then they sat some time in stillness and darkness, holding each other's hands. At last Hetty whispered, "I did do it, Dinah...I buried it in the wood...the little baby...and it cried...I heard it cry...ever such a way off...all night...and I went back because it cried." She paused, and then spoke hurriedly in a louder, pleading tone. "But I thought perhaps it wouldn't die--there might somebody find it. I didn't kill it--I didn't kill it myself. I put it down there and covered it up, and when I came back it was gone....It was because I was so very miserable, Dinah...I didn't know where to go...and I tried to kill myself before, and I couldn't. Oh, I tried so to drown myself in the pool, and I couldn't. I went to Windsor--I ran away--did you know? I went to find him, as he might take care of me; and he was gone; and then I didn't know what to do. I daredn't go back home again--I couldn't bear it. I couldn't have bore to look at anybody, for they'd have scorned me. I thought o' you sometimes, and thought I'd come to you, for I didn't think you'd be cross with me, and cry shame on me. I thought I could tell you. But then the other folks 'ud come to know it at last, and I couldn't bear that. It was partly thinking o' you made me come toward Stoniton; and, besides, I was so frightened at going wandering about till I was a beggar-woman, and had nothing; and sometimes it seemed as if I must go back to the farm sooner than that. Oh, it was so dreadful, Dinah...I was so miserable...I wished I'd never been born into this world. I should never like to go into the green fields again--I hated 'em so in my misery." Hetty paused again, as if the sense of the past were too strong upon her for words. "And then I got to Stoniton, and I began to feel frightened that night, because I was so near home. And then the little baby was born, when I didn't expect it; and the thought came into my mind that I might get rid of it and go home again. The thought came all of a sudden, as I was lying in the bed, and it got stronger and stronger...I longed so to go back again...I couldn't bear being so lonely and coming to beg for want. And it gave me strength and resolution to get up and dress myself. I felt I must do it...I didn't know how...I thought I'd find a pool, if I could, like that other, in the corner of the field, in the dark. And when the woman went out, I felt as if I was strong enough to do anything...I thought I should get rid of all my misery, and go back home, and never let 'em know why I ran away. I put on my bonnet and shawl, and went out into the dark street, with the baby under my cloak; and I walked fast till I got into a street a good way off, and there was a public, and I got some warm stuff to drink and some bread. And I walked on and on, and I hardly felt the ground I trod on; and it got lighter, for there came the moon--oh, Dinah, it frightened me when it first looked at me out o' the clouds--it never looked so before; and I turned out of the road into the fields, for I was afraid o' meeting anybody with the moon shining on me. And I came to a haystack, where I thought I could lie down and keep myself warm all night. There was a place cut into it, where I could make me a bed, and I lay comfortable, and the baby was warm against me; and I must have gone to sleep for a good while, for when I woke it was morning, but not very light, and the baby was crying. And I saw a wood a little way off...I thought there'd perhaps be a ditch or a pond there...and it was so early I thought I could hide the child there, and get a long way off before folks was up. And then I thought I'd go home--I'd get rides in carts and go home and tell 'em I'd been to try and see for a place, and couldn't get one. I longed so for it, Dinah, I longed so to be safe at home. I don't know how I felt about the baby. I seemed to hate it--it was like a heavy weight hanging round my neck; and yet its crying went through me, and I daredn't look at its little hands and face. But I went on to the wood, and I walked about, but there was no water...." Hetty shuddered. She was silent for some moments, and when she began again, it was in a whisper. "I came to a place where there was lots of chips and turf, and I sat down on the trunk of a tree to think what I should do. And all of a sudden I saw a hole under the nut-tree, like a little grave. And it darted into me like lightning--I'd lay the baby there and cover it with the grass and the chips. I couldn't kill it any other way. And I'd done it in a minute; and, oh, it cried so, Dinah--I couldn't cover it quite up--I thought perhaps somebody 'ud come and take care of it, and then it wouldn't die. And I made haste out of the wood, but I could hear it crying all the while; and when I got out into the fields, it was as if I was held fast--I couldn't go away, for all I wanted so to go. And I sat against the haystack to watch if anybody 'ud come. I was very hungry, and I'd only a bit of bread left, but I couldn't go away. And after ever such a while--hours and hours--the man came--him in a smock-frock, and he looked at me so, I was frightened, and I made haste and went on. I thought he was going to the wood and would perhaps find the baby. And I went right on, till I came to a village, a long way off from the wood, and I was very sick, and faint, and hungry. I got something to eat there, and bought a loaf. But I was frightened to stay. I heard the baby crying, and thought the other folks heard it too--and I went on. But I was so tired, and it was getting towards dark. And at last, by the roadside there was a barn--ever such a way off any house--like the barn in Abbot's Close, and I thought I could go in there and hide myself among the hay and straw, and nobody 'ud be likely to come. I went in, and it was half full o' trusses of straw, and there was some hay too. And I made myself a bed, ever so far behind, where nobody could find me; and I was so tired and weak, I went to sleep....But oh, the baby's crying kept waking me, and I thought that man as looked at me so was come and laying hold of me. But I must have slept a long while at last, though I didn't know, for when I got up and went out of the barn, I didn't know whether it was night or morning. But it was morning, for it kept getting lighter, and I turned back the way I'd come. I couldn't help it, Dinah; it was the baby's crying made me go--and yet I was frightened to death. I thought that man in the smock-frock 'ud see me and know I put the baby there. But I went on, for all that. I'd left off thinking about going home--it had gone out o' my mind. I saw nothing but that place in the wood where I'd buried the baby...I see it now. Oh Dinah! shall I allays see it?" Hetty clung round Dinah and shuddered again. The silence seemed long before she went on. "I met nobody, for it was very early, and I got into the wood....I knew the way to the place...the place against the nut-tree; and I could hear it crying at every step....I thought it was alive....I don't know whether I was frightened or glad...I don't know what I felt. I only know I was in the wood and heard the cry. I don't know what I felt till I saw the baby was gone. And when I'd put it there, I thought I should like somebody to find it and save it from dying; but when I saw it was gone, I was struck like a stone, with fear. I never thought o' stirring, I felt so weak. I knew I couldn't run away, and everybody as saw me 'ud know about the baby. My heart went like a stone. I couldn't wish or try for anything; it seemed like as if I should stay there for ever, and nothing 'ud ever change. But they came and took me away." Hetty was silent, but she shuddered again, as if there was still something behind; and Dinah waited, for her heart was so full that tears must come before words. At last Hetty burst out, with a sob, "Dinah, do you think God will take away that crying and the place in the wood, now I've told everything?" "Let us pray, poor sinner. Let us fall on our knees again, and pray to the God of all mercy."

Chapter 45

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter45

In the Prison Dinah Morris speaks to an older gentleman outside the prison. He is Colonel Townley, the gentleman on horseback who heard Dinah speak on Hayslope Green. He is a magistrate and gets Dinah in to Hetty's cell. She wants to stay with Hetty till the end. Colonel Townley thinks she is brave to stay in a jail cell all night without any light, but Dinah is calm. Townley tells her where Adam is staying. Hetty at first is sullen and withdrawn but finally responds to Dinah's love and is enfolded in her arms. She clings to Dinah, who gently leads her to a full confession of the crime. She tells Hetty that she cannot be forgiven by God until she lets go of her sin, so Hetty tells how she half buried the baby in the wood, hoping someone would find it. She didn't kill it directly. She could only think that if the baby was gone, she could go home. She didn't feel anything for the baby, though its crying went all through her, and that is why she couldn't leave it. She could always hear it crying even after she went away. Then she went back, and it was gone. She sat and waited till they took her. She asks Dinah if now she has confessed, God will make the crying go away. Dinah tells her to kneel down and pray.

Commentary on Chapter 45 Dinah's sure and skillful handling of Hetty, her compassion and lack of fear, gain the reader's admiration. She does not talk down to Hetty, but she tries to put religious precepts into thoughts Hetty can understand. She makes God a friend who will be there at the moment Hetty has to meet death. Dinah makes Hetty understand she is suffering because of her hard heart that shuts out God and human sympathy. She emphasizes God's love and forgiveness, rather than sin and punishment. Once Hetty tells the truth, there is a release and a softening. She accepts Dinah's love, and through that love, she is able to conceive of a divine love. In some ways it is hard to believe that Eliot had given up her Christian faith, because she can so convincingly portray a saint like Dinah. Eliot had immense love and compassion for others, but she herself had ceased to cloak these feelings in religion. What she loved was the humanity of religion, its higher values. She gives her best characters a spiritual and universal outlook. In earlier chapters Hetty and Dinah were contrasted, but here, sympathy has melted all differences. Dinah does not pretend to be superior to Hetty; she just stays with her and gives her comfort.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/46.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_46_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 46

chapter 46

{"name": "Chapter 46", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter46", "summary": "The Hours of Suspense Bartle Massey announces a visitor to Adam in his Stoniton room where he awaits Hetty's execution. Dinah Morris comes to tell him that Hetty has repented and wants to see Adam, to ask his forgiveness before she dies. Adam, very haggard, says he cannot believe she has to die like that; he believes a pardon will come. He will wait till the last minute before seeing her. He sends his forgiveness through Dinah and says he will come. Bartle, though disliking women, pronounces Dinah to be one woman he approves of. Adam cannot sleep the night before the execution. He bursts out in sorrow, thinking of what Hetty could have been if not for Arthur. Bartle reminds him that Hetty could not have gotten so hard in just a few months. It was in her nature. He says that perhaps some good will come of it all. Adam does not like this philosophy that good can come of evil; her life is ruined, and she is being hanged on the day they would have been married. In the morning, he goes to the prison to talk to Hetty. He cannot bear to see Hetty's eyes; they are so sad, and they are the eyes of the woman he loves. Dinah holds Hetty up as she asks forgiveness. Adam says he forgave her long ago. He feels a release and begins crying. Hetty is shocked by the signs of Adam's suffering and moves towards him, asking if he will kiss her good by. Adam gives her a kiss and will never see her again. Hetty asks Adam to tell Arthur she forgives him, so that God will forgive her.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 46 This is a very emotional chapter, handled with a touching beauty that is one of Eliot's finest storytelling gifts. She is able to understand very subtle and refined human feeling and portray it convincingly. Even Hetty melts a little and is able to contemplate the suffering of another. She is sympathetic in her last hour, able to admit error and to reach out. The reader also believes in the nobility of Adam's love. In the beginning, he seemed to love his idea of Hetty, her beauty and youth. Now, his love is mature and real. He loves Hetty despite what she has done. He is able to forgive and give comfort."}

ON Sunday morning, when the church bells in Stoniton were ringing for morning service, Bartle Massey re-entered Adam's room, after a short absence, and said, "Adam, here's a visitor wants to see you." Adam was seated with his back towards the door, but he started up and turned round instantly, with a flushed face and an eager look. His face was even thinner and more worn than we have seen it before, but he was washed and shaven this Sunday morning. "Is it any news?" he said. "Keep yourself quiet, my lad," said Bartle; "keep quiet. It's not what you're thinking of. It's the young Methodist woman come from the prison. She's at the bottom o' the stairs, and wants to know if you think well to see her, for she has something to say to you about that poor castaway; but she wouldn't come in without your leave, she said. She thought you'd perhaps like to go out and speak to her. These preaching women are not so back'ard commonly," Bartle muttered to himself. "Ask her to come in," said Adam. He was standing with his face towards the door, and as Dinah entered, lifting up her mild grey eyes towards him, she saw at once the great change that had come since the day when she had looked up at the tall man in the cottage. There was a trembling in her clear voice as she put her hand into his and said, "Be comforted, Adam Bede, the Lord has not forsaken her." "Bless you for coming to her," Adam said. "Mr. Massey brought me word yesterday as you was come." They could neither of them say any more just yet, but stood before each other in silence; and Bartle Massey, too, who had put on his spectacles, seemed transfixed, examining Dinah's face. But he recovered himself first, and said, "Sit down, young woman, sit down," placing the chair for her and retiring to his old seat on the bed. "Thank you, friend; I won't sit down," said Dinah, "for I must hasten back. She entreated me not to stay long away. What I came for, Adam Bede, was to pray you to go and see the poor sinner and bid her farewell. She desires to ask your forgiveness, and it is meet you should see her to-day, rather than in the early morning, when the time will be short." Adam stood trembling, and at last sank down on his chair again. "It won't be," he said, "it'll be put off--there'll perhaps come a pardon. Mr. Irwine said there was hope. He said, I needn't quite give it up." "That's a blessed thought to me," said Dinah, her eyes filling with tears. "It's a fearful thing hurrying her soul away so fast." "But let what will be," she added presently. "You will surely come, and let her speak the words that are in her heart. Although her poor soul is very dark and discerns little beyond the things of the flesh, she is no longer hard. She is contrite, she has confessed all to me. The pride of her heart has given way, and she leans on me for help and desires to be taught. This fills me with trust, for I cannot but think that the brethren sometimes err in measuring the Divine love by the sinner's knowledge. She is going to write a letter to the friends at the Hall Farm for me to give them when she is gone, and when I told her you were here, she said, 'I should like to say good-bye to Adam and ask him to forgive me.' You will come, Adam? Perhaps you will even now come back with me." "I can't," Adam said. "I can't say good-bye while there's any hope. I'm listening, and listening--I can't think o' nothing but that. It can't be as she'll die that shameful death--I can't bring my mind to it." He got up from his chair again and looked away out of the window, while Dinah stood with compassionate patience. In a minute or two he turned round and said, "I will come, Dinah...to-morrow morning...if it must be. I may have more strength to bear it, if I know it must be. Tell her, I forgive her; tell her I will come--at the very last." "I will not urge you against the voice of your own heart," said Dinah. "I must hasten back to her, for it is wonderful how she clings now, and was not willing to let me out of her sight. She used never to make any return to my affection before, but now tribulation has opened her heart. Farewell, Adam. Our heavenly Father comfort you and strengthen you to bear all things." Dinah put out her hand, and Adam pressed it in silence. Bartle Massey was getting up to lift the stiff latch of the door for her, but before he could reach it, she had said gently, "Farewell, friend," and was gone, with her light step down the stairs. "Well," said Bartle, taking off his spectacles and putting them into his pocket, "if there must be women to make trouble in the world, it's but fair there should be women to be comforters under it; and she's one--she's one. It's a pity she's a Methodist; but there's no getting a woman without some foolishness or other." Adam never went to bed that night. The excitement of suspense, heightening with every hour that brought him nearer the fatal moment, was too great, and in spite of his entreaties, in spite of his promises that he would be perfectly quiet, the schoolmaster watched too. "What does it matter to me, lad?" Bartle said: "a night's sleep more or less? I shall sleep long enough, by and by, underground. Let me keep thee company in trouble while I can." It was a long and dreary night in that small chamber. Adam would sometimes get up and tread backwards and forwards along the short space from wall to wall; then he would sit down and hide his face, and no sound would be heard but the ticking of the watch on the table, or the falling of a cinder from the fire which the schoolmaster carefully tended. Sometimes he would burst out into vehement speech, "If I could ha' done anything to save her--if my bearing anything would ha' done any good...but t' have to sit still, and know it, and do nothing...it's hard for a man to bear...and to think o' what might ha' been now, if it hadn't been for HIM....O God, it's the very day we should ha' been married." "Aye, my lad," said Bartle tenderly, "it's heavy--it's heavy. But you must remember this: when you thought of marrying her, you'd a notion she'd got another sort of a nature inside her. You didn't think she could have got hardened in that little while to do what she's done." "I know--I know that," said Adam. "I thought she was loving and tender-hearted, and wouldn't tell a lie, or act deceitful. How could I think any other way? And if he'd never come near her, and I'd married her, and been loving to her, and took care of her, she might never ha' done anything bad. What would it ha' signified--my having a bit o' trouble with her? It 'ud ha' been nothing to this." "There's no knowing, my lad--there's no knowing what might have come. The smart's bad for you to bear now: you must have time--you must have time. But I've that opinion of you, that you'll rise above it all and be a man again, and there may good come out of this that we don't see." "Good come out of it!" said Adam passionately. "That doesn't alter th' evil: HER ruin can't be undone. I hate that talk o' people, as if there was a way o' making amends for everything. They'd more need be brought to see as the wrong they do can never be altered. When a man's spoiled his fellow-creatur's life, he's no right to comfort himself with thinking good may come out of it. Somebody else's good doesn't alter her shame and misery." "Well, lad, well," said Bartle, in a gentle tone, strangely in contrast with his usual peremptoriness and impatience of contradiction, "it's likely enough I talk foolishness. I'm an old fellow, and it's a good many years since I was in trouble myself. It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient." "Mr. Massey," said Adam penitently, "I'm very hot and hasty. I owe you something different; but you mustn't take it ill of me." "Not I, lad--not I." So the night wore on in agitation till the chill dawn and the growing light brought the tremulous quiet that comes on the brink of despair. There would soon be no more suspense. "Let us go to the prison now, Mr. Massey," said Adam, when he saw the hand of his watch at six. "If there's any news come, we shall hear about it." The people were astir already, moving rapidly, in one direction, through the streets. Adam tried not to think where they were going, as they hurried past him in that short space between his lodging and the prison gates. He was thankful when the gates shut him in from seeing those eager people. No; there was no news come--no pardon--no reprieve. Adam lingered in the court half an hour before he could bring himself to send word to Dinah that he was come. But a voice caught his ear: he could not shut out the words. "The cart is to set off at half-past seven." It must be said--the last good-bye: there was no help. In ten minutes from that time, Adam was at the door of the cell. Dinah had sent him word that she could not come to him; she could not leave Hetty one moment; but Hetty was prepared for the meeting. He could not see her when he entered, for agitation deadened his senses, and the dim cell was almost dark to him. He stood a moment after the door closed behind him, trembling and stupefied. But he began to see through the dimness--to see the dark eyes lifted up to him once more, but with no smile in them. O God, how sad they looked! The last time they had met his was when he parted from her with his heart full of joyous hopeful love, and they looked out with a tearful smile from a pink, dimpled, childish face. The face was marble now; the sweet lips were pallid and half-open and quivering; the dimples were all gone--all but one, that never went; and the eyes--O, the worst of all was the likeness they had to Hetty's. They were Hetty's eyes looking at him with that mournful gaze, as if she had come back to him from the dead to tell him of her misery. She was clinging close to Dinah; her cheek was against Dinah's. It seemed as if her last faint strength and hope lay in that contact, and the pitying love that shone out from Dinah's face looked like a visible pledge of the Invisible Mercy. When the sad eyes met--when Hetty and Adam looked at each other--she felt the change in him too, and it seemed to strike her with fresh fear. It was the first time she had seen any being whose face seemed to reflect the change in herself: Adam was a new image of the dreadful past and the dreadful present. She trembled more as she looked at him. "Speak to him, Hetty," Dinah said; "tell him what is in your heart." Hetty obeyed her, like a little child. "Adam...I'm very sorry...I behaved very wrong to you...will you forgive me...before I die?" Adam answered with a half-sob, "Yes, I forgive thee Hetty. I forgave thee long ago." It had seemed to Adam as if his brain would burst with the anguish of meeting Hetty's eyes in the first moments, but the sound of her voice uttering these penitent words touched a chord which had been less strained. There was a sense of relief from what was becoming unbearable, and the rare tears came--they had never come before, since he had hung on Seth's neck in the beginning of his sorrow. Hetty made an involuntary movement towards him, some of the love that she had once lived in the midst of was come near her again. She kept hold of Dinah's hand, but she went up to Adam and said timidly, "Will you kiss me again, Adam, for all I've been so wicked?" Adam took the blanched wasted hand she put out to him, and they gave each other the solemn unspeakable kiss of a lifelong parting. "And tell him," Hetty said, in rather a stronger voice, "tell him...for there's nobody else to tell him...as I went after him and couldn't find him...and I hated him and cursed him once...but Dinah says I should forgive him...and I try...for else God won't forgive me." There was a noise at the door of the cell now--the key was being turned in the lock, and when the door opened, Adam saw indistinctly that there were several faces there. He was too agitated to see more--even to see that Mr. Irwine's face was one of them. He felt that the last preparations were beginning, and he could stay no longer. Room was silently made for him to depart, and he went to his chamber in loneliness, leaving Bartle Massey to watch and see the end.

Chapter 46

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter46

The Hours of Suspense Bartle Massey announces a visitor to Adam in his Stoniton room where he awaits Hetty's execution. Dinah Morris comes to tell him that Hetty has repented and wants to see Adam, to ask his forgiveness before she dies. Adam, very haggard, says he cannot believe she has to die like that; he believes a pardon will come. He will wait till the last minute before seeing her. He sends his forgiveness through Dinah and says he will come. Bartle, though disliking women, pronounces Dinah to be one woman he approves of. Adam cannot sleep the night before the execution. He bursts out in sorrow, thinking of what Hetty could have been if not for Arthur. Bartle reminds him that Hetty could not have gotten so hard in just a few months. It was in her nature. He says that perhaps some good will come of it all. Adam does not like this philosophy that good can come of evil; her life is ruined, and she is being hanged on the day they would have been married. In the morning, he goes to the prison to talk to Hetty. He cannot bear to see Hetty's eyes; they are so sad, and they are the eyes of the woman he loves. Dinah holds Hetty up as she asks forgiveness. Adam says he forgave her long ago. He feels a release and begins crying. Hetty is shocked by the signs of Adam's suffering and moves towards him, asking if he will kiss her good by. Adam gives her a kiss and will never see her again. Hetty asks Adam to tell Arthur she forgives him, so that God will forgive her.

Commentary on Chapter 46 This is a very emotional chapter, handled with a touching beauty that is one of Eliot's finest storytelling gifts. She is able to understand very subtle and refined human feeling and portray it convincingly. Even Hetty melts a little and is able to contemplate the suffering of another. She is sympathetic in her last hour, able to admit error and to reach out. The reader also believes in the nobility of Adam's love. In the beginning, he seemed to love his idea of Hetty, her beauty and youth. Now, his love is mature and real. He loves Hetty despite what she has done. He is able to forgive and give comfort.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/47.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_47_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 47

chapter 47

{"name": "Chapter 47", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter47", "summary": "The Last Moment There is a crowd on the street waiting to see the hanging. They are there to watch the now legendary Dinah Morris, the young Methodist woman who made Hetty confess, as much as to see the criminal. Dinah stands beside Hetty in the cart as it moves through the streets to the gallows. Dinah tells Hetty to close her eyes, and she begins to pray aloud to keep her thoughts on God and not on the crowd. Suddenly there is a shout. A horseman gallops up with a paper in his hand. It is Arthur Donnithorne with a stay of execution.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 47 Most readers will not mind this sentimental last-minute reprieve with the romantic image of Arthur riding in on his horse to save the day. Equally romantic is the picture of Dinah and Hetty in the cart on the way to the gallows. The crowd is hushed with awe watching them. It is like an old ballad."}

IT was a sight that some people remembered better even than their own sorrows--the sight in that grey clear morning, when the fatal cart with the two young women in it was descried by the waiting watching multitude, cleaving its way towards the hideous symbol of a deliberately inflicted sudden death. All Stoniton had heard of Dinah Morris, the young Methodist woman who had brought the obstinate criminal to confess, and there was as much eagerness to see her as to see the wretched Hetty. But Dinah was hardly conscious of the multitude. When Hetty had caught sight of the vast crowd in the distance, she had clutched Dinah convulsively. "Close your eyes, Hetty," Dinah said, "and let us pray without ceasing to God." And in a low voice, as the cart went slowly along through the midst of the gazing crowd, she poured forth her soul with the wrestling intensity of a last pleading, for the trembling creature that clung to her and clutched her as the only visible sign of love and pity. Dinah did not know that the crowd was silent, gazing at her with a sort of awe--she did not even know how near they were to the fatal spot, when the cart stopped, and she shrank appalled at a loud shout hideous to her ear, like a vast yell of demons. Hetty's shriek mingled with the sound, and they clasped each other in mutual horror. But it was not a shout of execration--not a yell of exultant cruelty. It was a shout of sudden excitement at the appearance of a horseman cleaving the crowd at full gallop. The horse is hot and distressed, but answers to the desperate spurring; the rider looks as if his eyes were glazed by madness, and he saw nothing but what was unseen by others. See, he has something in his hand--he is holding it up as if it were a signal. The Sheriff knows him: it is Arthur Donnithorne, carrying in his hand a hard-won release from death.

Chapter 47

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter47

The Last Moment There is a crowd on the street waiting to see the hanging. They are there to watch the now legendary Dinah Morris, the young Methodist woman who made Hetty confess, as much as to see the criminal. Dinah stands beside Hetty in the cart as it moves through the streets to the gallows. Dinah tells Hetty to close her eyes, and she begins to pray aloud to keep her thoughts on God and not on the crowd. Suddenly there is a shout. A horseman gallops up with a paper in his hand. It is Arthur Donnithorne with a stay of execution.

Commentary on Chapter 47 Most readers will not mind this sentimental last-minute reprieve with the romantic image of Arthur riding in on his horse to save the day. Equally romantic is the picture of Dinah and Hetty in the cart on the way to the gallows. The crowd is hushed with awe watching them. It is like an old ballad.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/48.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_48_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 48

chapter 48

{"name": "Chapter 48", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter48", "summary": "Another Meeting in the Wood This is an important chapter winding up the consequences of the love triangle of Arthur, Adam, and Hetty. It is the day after Hetty escapes hanging. Adam has just been to see the Poysers to tell them all that they don't know about the case. He agrees to leave Hayslope with the Poysers and to live near them. Arthur and Adam both walk that evening in the Grove, each thinking of the events that took place there. They meet and see each other's suffering. Arthur asks to speak with Adam, and they go to the Hermitage. Arthur says he is doing what is most painful to him--leaving his home and cherished plans and going to the army. He is leaving the estate in Mr. Irwine's hands, and he begs that Adam will persuade the Poysers to stay. He will not be there, so their honor will not be stained, for he won't be their landlord. Adam says there is pride to consider, but Arthur says he wants to lessen the evil by helping them to stay on the land they have been on for generations. Adam agrees to stay and continue managing the woods. Arthur tells Adam it is worse for him because he caused the tragedy. If he had known Adam loved Hetty, he would have stayed away. He explains that he loved Hetty too, and he will always remember the pain of speaking with her yesterday in prison, and how he wishes he could have gotten her off completely. As it is she will be transported as a criminal and may die an early death. He mentions that he had told Hetty in the letter he would help her, and he would give his life to undo the misery. Adam says he has no right to be hard on someone who is repentant, and he offers to shake Arthur's hand. They feel affection for one another as they had when boys. Arthur says the only consolation he has is that Dinah Morris stayed with Hetty, and for that, he wants to give her his watch and chain as a token of thanks. Adam will give it to her.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 48 This is another moving chapter as the men who loved Hetty make up and shake hands. They will both bear the mark of the tragedy all their lives, but both have been changed and softened into better men. Adam says he will stay \"to do my work well and make the world a bit better place\" . In the end, Adam realizes this is a better ending than revenge: \"sorrow was more bearable now hatred was gone\" . Hetty's fate, however, is not so pretty. Transportation to Australia or some other English colony for hard labor was a sentence to a short and miserable life. Hetty, as we know, is not used to hardship, but on the other hand, she has longer to live, to make use of the time for repentance, if she can continue to seek forgiveness. Eliot demonstrates two principles in this reconciliation. First, the theme is repeated that things cannot be undone. Even Arthur's pardon was only partial, and Hetty's life is shattered. On the other hand, Bartle had announced the idea that good can come out of evil. He is shown to be right in the sense that if all the parties, as in this case, come together to make the best emerge out of the wreck, then some growth and progress are possible. Eliot believed in the hallowing of the human heart through sorrow. Bearing some suffering could make one understand the common kinship of all people and bring humility and unselfishness. Even Lisbeth Bede loses her peevishness and surrenders to the greatness of the trouble and to Adam's wishes. The Bedes, the Poysers, the Irwines, Bartle, Dinah, and even Arthur have all done what they could to ensure the smoothest continuance of life for all. This chapter ends the fifth book and the tragic story of Hetty, but the next book brings news of what happened afterwards."}

THE next day, at evening, two men were walking from opposite points towards the same scene, drawn thither by a common memory. The scene was the Grove by Donnithorne Chase: you know who the men were. The old squire's funeral had taken place that morning, the will had been read, and now in the first breathing-space, Arthur Donnithorne had come out for a lonely walk, that he might look fixedly at the new future before him and confirm himself in a sad resolution. He thought he could do that best in the Grove. Adam too had come from Stontion on Monday evening, and to-day he had not left home, except to go to the family at the Hall Farm and tell them everything that Mr. Irwine had left untold. He had agreed with the Poysers that he would follow them to their new neighbourhood, wherever that might be, for he meant to give up the management of the woods, and, as soon as it was practicable, he would wind up his business with Jonathan Burge and settle with his mother and Seth in a home within reach of the friends to whom he felt bound by a mutual sorrow. "Seth and me are sure to find work," he said. "A man that's got our trade at his finger-ends is at home everywhere; and we must make a new start. My mother won't stand in the way, for she's told me, since I came home, she'd made up her mind to being buried in another parish, if I wished it, and if I'd be more comfortable elsewhere. It's wonderful how quiet she's been ever since I came back. It seems as if the very greatness o' the trouble had quieted and calmed her. We shall all be better in a new country, though there's some I shall be loath to leave behind. But I won't part from you and yours, if I can help it, Mr. Poyser. Trouble's made us kin." "Aye, lad," said Martin. "We'll go out o' hearing o' that man's name. But I doubt we shall ne'er go far enough for folks not to find out as we've got them belonging to us as are transported o'er the seas, and were like to be hanged. We shall have that flyin' up in our faces, and our children's after us." That was a long visit to the Hall Farm, and drew too strongly on Adam's energies for him to think of seeing others, or re-entering on his old occupations till the morrow. "But to-morrow," he said to himself, "I'll go to work again. I shall learn to like it again some time, maybe; and it's right whether I like it or not." This evening was the last he would allow to be absorbed by sorrow: suspense was gone now, and he must bear the unalterable. He was resolved not to see Arthur Donnithorne again, if it were possible to avoid him. He had no message to deliver from Hetty now, for Hetty had seen Arthur. And Adam distrusted himself--he had learned to dread the violence of his own feeling. That word of Mr. Irwine's--that he must remember what he had felt after giving the last blow to Arthur in the Grove--had remained with him. These thoughts about Arthur, like all thoughts that are charged with strong feeling, were continually recurring, and they always called up the image of the Grove--of that spot under the overarching boughs where he had caught sight of the two bending figures, and had been possessed by sudden rage. "I'll go and see it again to-night for the last time," he said; "it'll do me good; it'll make me feel over again what I felt when I'd knocked him down. I felt what poor empty work it was, as soon as I'd done it, before I began to think he might be dead." In this way it happened that Arthur and Adam were walking towards the same spot at the same time. Adam had on his working-dress again, now, for he had thrown off the other with a sense of relief as soon as he came home; and if he had had the basket of tools over his shoulder, he might have been taken, with his pale wasted face, for the spectre of the Adam Bede who entered the Grove on that August evening eight months ago. But he had no basket of tools, and he was not walking with the old erectness, looking keenly round him; his hands were thrust in his side pockets, and his eyes rested chiefly on the ground. He had not long entered the Grove, and now he paused before a beech. He knew that tree well; it was the boundary mark of his youth--the sign, to him, of the time when some of his earliest, strongest feelings had left him. He felt sure they would never return. And yet, at this moment, there was a stirring of affection at the remembrance of that Arthur Donnithorne whom he had believed in before he had come up to this beech eight months ago. It was affection for the dead: THAT Arthur existed no longer. He was disturbed by the sound of approaching footsteps, but the beech stood at a turning in the road, and he could not see who was coming until the tall slim figure in deep mourning suddenly stood before him at only two yards' distance. They both started, and looked at each other in silence. Often, in the last fortnight, Adam had imagined himself as close to Arthur as this, assailing him with words that should be as harrowing as the voice of remorse, forcing upon him a just share in the misery he had caused; and often, too, he had told himself that such a meeting had better not be. But in imagining the meeting he had always seen Arthur, as he had met him on that evening in the Grove, florid, careless, light of speech; and the figure before him touched him with the signs of suffering. Adam knew what suffering was--he could not lay a cruel finger on a bruised man. He felt no impulse that he needed to resist. Silence was more just than reproach. Arthur was the first to speak. "Adam," he said, quietly, "it may be a good thing that we have met here, for I wished to see you. I should have asked to see you to-morrow." He paused, but Adam said nothing. "I know it is painful to you to meet me," Arthur went on, "but it is not likely to happen again for years to come." "No, sir," said Adam, coldly, "that was what I meant to write to you to-morrow, as it would be better all dealings should be at an end between us, and somebody else put in my place." Arthur felt the answer keenly, and it was not without an effort that he spoke again. "It was partly on that subject I wished to speak to you. I don't want to lessen your indignation against me, or ask you to do anything for my sake. I only wish to ask you if you will help me to lessen the evil consequences of the past, which is unchangeable. I don't mean consequences to myself, but to others. It is but little I can do, I know. I know the worst consequences will remain; but something may be done, and you can help me. Will you listen to me patiently?" "Yes, sir," said Adam, after some hesitation; "I'll hear what it is. If I can help to mend anything, I will. Anger 'ull mend nothing, I know. We've had enough o' that." "I was going to the Hermitage," said Arthur. "Will you go there with me and sit down? We can talk better there." The Hermitage had never been entered since they left it together, for Arthur had locked up the key in his desk. And now, when he opened the door, there was the candle burnt out in the socket; there was the chair in the same place where Adam remembered sitting; there was the waste-paper basket full of scraps, and deep down in it, Arthur felt in an instant, there was the little pink silk handkerchief. It would have been painful to enter this place if their previous thoughts had been less painful. They sat down opposite each other in the old places, and Arthur said, "I'm going away, Adam; I'm going into the army." Poor Arthur felt that Adam ought to be affected by this announcement--ought to have a movement of sympathy towards him. But Adam's lips remained firmly closed, and the expression of his face unchanged. "What I want to say to you," Arthur continued, "is this: one of my reasons for going away is that no one else may leave Hayslope--may leave their home on my account. I would do anything, there is no sacrifice I would not make, to prevent any further injury to others through my--through what has happened." Arthur's words had precisely the opposite effect to that he had anticipated. Adam thought he perceived in them that notion of compensation for irretrievable wrong, that self-soothing attempt to make evil bear the same fruits as good, which most of all roused his indignation. He was as strongly impelled to look painful facts right in the face as Arthur was to turn away his eyes from them. Moreover, he had the wakeful suspicious pride of a poor man in the presence of a rich man. He felt his old severity returning as he said, "The time's past for that, sir. A man should make sacrifices to keep clear of doing a wrong; sacrifices won't undo it when it's done. When people's feelings have got a deadly wound, they can't be cured with favours." "Favours!" said Arthur, passionately; "no; how can you suppose I meant that? But the Poysers--Mr. Irwine tells me the Poysers mean to leave the place where they have lived so many years--for generations. Don't you see, as Mr. Irwine does, that if they could be persuaded to overcome the feeling that drives them away, it would be much better for them in the end to remain on the old spot, among the friends and neighbours who know them?" "That's true," said Adam coldly. "But then, sir, folks's feelings are not so easily overcome. It'll be hard for Martin Poyser to go to a strange place, among strange faces, when he's been bred up on the Hall Farm, and his father before him; but then it 'ud be harder for a man with his feelings to stay. I don't see how the thing's to be made any other than hard. There's a sort o' damage, sir, that can't be made up for." Arthur was silent some moments. In spite of other feelings dominant in him this evening, his pride winced under Adam's mode of treating him. Wasn't he himself suffering? Was not he too obliged to renounce his most cherished hopes? It was now as it had been eight months ago--Adam was forcing Arthur to feel more intensely the irrevocableness of his own wrong-doing. He was presenting the sort of resistance that was the most irritating to Arthur's eager ardent nature. But his anger was subdued by the same influence that had subdued Adam's when they first confronted each other--by the marks of suffering in a long familiar face. The momentary struggle ended in the feeling that he could bear a great deal from Adam, to whom he had been the occasion of bearing so much; but there was a touch of pleading, boyish vexation in his tone as he said, "But people may make injuries worse by unreasonable conduct--by giving way to anger and satisfying that for the moment, instead of thinking what will be the effect in the future. "If I were going to stay here and act as landlord," he added presently, with still more eagerness--"if I were careless about what I've done--what I've been the cause of, you would have some excuse, Adam, for going away and encouraging others to go. You would have some excuse then for trying to make the evil worse. But when I tell you I'm going away for years--when you know what that means for me, how it cuts off every plan of happiness I've ever formed--it is impossible for a sensible man like you to believe that there is any real ground for the Poysers refusing to remain. I know their feeling about disgrace--Mr. Irwine has told me all; but he is of opinion that they might be persuaded out of this idea that they are disgraced in the eyes of their neighbours, and that they can't remain on my estate, if you would join him in his efforts--if you would stay yourself and go on managing the old woods." Arthur paused a moment and then added, pleadingly, "You know that's a good work to do for the sake of other people, besides the owner. And you don't know but that they may have a better owner soon, whom you will like to work for. If I die, my cousin Tradgett will have the estate and take my name. He is a good fellow." Adam could not help being moved: it was impossible for him not to feel that this was the voice of the honest warm-hearted Arthur whom he had loved and been proud of in old days; but nearer memories would not be thrust away. He was silent; yet Arthur saw an answer in his face that induced him to go on, with growing earnestness. "And then, if you would talk to the Poysers--if you would talk the matter over with Mr. Irwine--he means to see you to-morrow--and then if you would join your arguments to his to prevail on them not to go....I know, of course, that they would not accept any favour from me--I mean nothing of that kind--but I'm sure they would suffer less in the end. Irwine thinks so too. And Mr. Irwine is to have the chief authority on the estate--he has consented to undertake that. They will really be under no man but one whom they respect and like. It would be the same with you, Adam, and it could be nothing but a desire to give me worse pain that could incline you to go." Arthur was silent again for a little while, and then said, with some agitation in his voice, "I wouldn't act so towards you, I know. If you were in my place and I in yours, I should try to help you to do the best." Adam made a hasty movement on his chair and looked on the ground. Arthur went on, "Perhaps you've never done anything you've had bitterly to repent of in your life, Adam; if you had, you would be more generous. You would know then that it's worse for me than for you." Arthur rose from his seat with the last words, and went to one of the windows, looking out and turning his back on Adam, as he continued, passionately, "Haven't I loved her too? Didn't I see her yesterday? Shan't I carry the thought of her about with me as much as you will? And don't you think you would suffer more if you'd been in fault?" There was silence for several minutes, for the struggle in Adam's mind was not easily decided. Facile natures, whose emotions have little permanence, can hardly understand how much inward resistance he overcame before he rose from his seat and turned towards Arthur. Arthur heard the movement, and turning round, met the sad but softened look with which Adam said, "It's true what you say, sir. I'm hard--it's in my nature. I was too hard with my father, for doing wrong. I've been a bit hard t' everybody but her. I felt as if nobody pitied her enough--her suffering cut into me so; and when I thought the folks at the farm were too hard with her, I said I'd never be hard to anybody myself again. But feeling overmuch about her has perhaps made me unfair to you. I've known what it is in my life to repent and feel it's too late. I felt I'd been too harsh to my father when he was gone from me--I feel it now, when I think of him. I've no right to be hard towards them as have done wrong and repent." Adam spoke these words with the firm distinctness of a man who is resolved to leave nothing unsaid that he is bound to say; but he went on with more hesitation. "I wouldn't shake hands with you once, sir, when you asked me--but if you're willing to do it now, for all I refused then..." Arthur's white hand was in Adam's large grasp in an instant, and with that action there was a strong rush, on both sides, of the old, boyish affection. "Adam," Arthur said, impelled to full confession now, "it would never have happened if I'd known you loved her. That would have helped to save me from it. And I did struggle. I never meant to injure her. I deceived you afterwards--and that led on to worse; but I thought it was forced upon me, I thought it was the best thing I could do. And in that letter I told her to let me know if she were in any trouble: don't think I would not have done everything I could. But I was all wrong from the very first, and horrible wrong has come of it. God knows, I'd give my life if I could undo it." They sat down again opposite each other, and Adam said, tremulously, "How did she seem when you left her, sir?" "Don't ask me, Adam," Arthur said; "I feel sometimes as if I should go mad with thinking of her looks and what she said to me, and then, that I couldn't get a full pardon--that I couldn't save her from that wretched fate of being transported--that I can do nothing for her all those years; and she may die under it, and never know comfort any more." "Ah, sir," said Adam, for the first time feeling his own pain merged in sympathy for Arthur, "you and me'll often be thinking o' the same thing, when we're a long way off one another. I'll pray God to help you, as I pray him to help me." "But there's that sweet woman--that Dinah Morris," Arthur said, pursuing his own thoughts and not knowing what had been the sense of Adam's words, "she says she shall stay with her to the very last moment--till she goes; and the poor thing clings to her as if she found some comfort in her. I could worship that woman; I don't know what I should do if she were not there. Adam, you will see her when she comes back. I could say nothing to her yesterday--nothing of what I felt towards her. Tell her," Arthur went on hurriedly, as if he wanted to hide the emotion with which he spoke, while he took off his chain and watch, "tell her I asked you to give her this in remembrance of me--of the man to whom she is the one source of comfort, when he thinks of...I know she doesn't care about such things--or anything else I can give her for its own sake. But she will use the watch--I shall like to think of her using it." "I'll give it to her, sir," Adam said, "and tell her your words. She told me she should come back to the people at the Hall Farm." "And you will persuade the Poysers to stay, Adam?" said Arthur, reminded of the subject which both of them had forgotten in the first interchange of revived friendship. "You will stay yourself, and help Mr. Irwine to carry out the repairs and improvements on the estate?" "There's one thing, sir, that perhaps you don't take account of," said Adam, with hesitating gentleness, "and that was what made me hang back longer. You see, it's the same with both me and the Poysers: if we stay, it's for our own worldly interest, and it looks as if we'd put up with anything for the sake o' that. I know that's what they'll feel, and I can't help feeling a little of it myself. When folks have got an honourable independent spirit, they don't like to do anything that might make 'em seem base-minded." "But no one who knows you will think that, Adam. That is not a reason strong enough against a course that is really more generous, more unselfish than the other. And it will be known--it shall be made known, that both you and the Poysers stayed at my entreaty. Adam, don't try to make things worse for me; I'm punished enough without that." "No, sir, no," Adam said, looking at Arthur with mournful affection. "God forbid I should make things worse for you. I used to wish I could do it, in my passion--but that was when I thought you didn't feel enough. I'll stay, sir, I'll do the best I can. It's all I've got to think of now--to do my work well and make the world a bit better place for them as can enjoy it." "Then we'll part now, Adam. You will see Mr. Irwine to-morrow, and consult with him about everything." "Are you going soon, sir?" said Adam. "As soon as possible--after I've made the necessary arrangements. Good-bye, Adam. I shall think of you going about the old place." "Good-bye, sir. God bless you." The hands were clasped once more, and Adam left the Hermitage, feeling that sorrow was more bearable now hatred was gone. As soon as the door was closed behind him, Arthur went to the waste-paper basket and took out the little pink silk handkerchief. Book Six

Chapter 48

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter48

Another Meeting in the Wood This is an important chapter winding up the consequences of the love triangle of Arthur, Adam, and Hetty. It is the day after Hetty escapes hanging. Adam has just been to see the Poysers to tell them all that they don't know about the case. He agrees to leave Hayslope with the Poysers and to live near them. Arthur and Adam both walk that evening in the Grove, each thinking of the events that took place there. They meet and see each other's suffering. Arthur asks to speak with Adam, and they go to the Hermitage. Arthur says he is doing what is most painful to him--leaving his home and cherished plans and going to the army. He is leaving the estate in Mr. Irwine's hands, and he begs that Adam will persuade the Poysers to stay. He will not be there, so their honor will not be stained, for he won't be their landlord. Adam says there is pride to consider, but Arthur says he wants to lessen the evil by helping them to stay on the land they have been on for generations. Adam agrees to stay and continue managing the woods. Arthur tells Adam it is worse for him because he caused the tragedy. If he had known Adam loved Hetty, he would have stayed away. He explains that he loved Hetty too, and he will always remember the pain of speaking with her yesterday in prison, and how he wishes he could have gotten her off completely. As it is she will be transported as a criminal and may die an early death. He mentions that he had told Hetty in the letter he would help her, and he would give his life to undo the misery. Adam says he has no right to be hard on someone who is repentant, and he offers to shake Arthur's hand. They feel affection for one another as they had when boys. Arthur says the only consolation he has is that Dinah Morris stayed with Hetty, and for that, he wants to give her his watch and chain as a token of thanks. Adam will give it to her.

Commentary on Chapter 48 This is another moving chapter as the men who loved Hetty make up and shake hands. They will both bear the mark of the tragedy all their lives, but both have been changed and softened into better men. Adam says he will stay "to do my work well and make the world a bit better place" . In the end, Adam realizes this is a better ending than revenge: "sorrow was more bearable now hatred was gone" . Hetty's fate, however, is not so pretty. Transportation to Australia or some other English colony for hard labor was a sentence to a short and miserable life. Hetty, as we know, is not used to hardship, but on the other hand, she has longer to live, to make use of the time for repentance, if she can continue to seek forgiveness. Eliot demonstrates two principles in this reconciliation. First, the theme is repeated that things cannot be undone. Even Arthur's pardon was only partial, and Hetty's life is shattered. On the other hand, Bartle had announced the idea that good can come out of evil. He is shown to be right in the sense that if all the parties, as in this case, come together to make the best emerge out of the wreck, then some growth and progress are possible. Eliot believed in the hallowing of the human heart through sorrow. Bearing some suffering could make one understand the common kinship of all people and bring humility and unselfishness. Even Lisbeth Bede loses her peevishness and surrenders to the greatness of the trouble and to Adam's wishes. The Bedes, the Poysers, the Irwines, Bartle, Dinah, and even Arthur have all done what they could to ensure the smoothest continuance of life for all. This chapter ends the fifth book and the tragic story of Hetty, but the next book brings news of what happened afterwards.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/49.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_49_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 6.chapter 49

chapter 49

{"name": "Chapter 49", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter49", "summary": "At the Hall Farm Eighteen months later, Mrs. Poyser is trying to talk Dinah out of leaving for Snowfield. She has been staying with the Poysers to help them through the tragedy. Mrs. Poyser tries to convince her she can minister to the poor in Hayslope; there are many people who depend on her. Dinah says she must avoid the temptation of luxury and go back to the mill where she is needed more. Dinah reminds her aunt that she has stayed to see them all back on their feet, and they are well and prosperous. It is mentioned that old Mr. Poyser died the previous year, the reason for Mrs. Poyser wearing black. When Adam Bede comes to the farm, Dinah blushes. Adam has come to fetch her for his mother, who is ailing. He explains his mother is working too hard but will not let him hire a girl to help her. Mrs. Poyser announces to the family at tea that Dinah is leaving, and she looks disturbed and rushes from the room crying. Everyone had counted on Dinah staying, even Mr. Irwine who treats her like a lady. Adam speaks of his great success with the woods and new building. Mr. Poyser mentions that Burge will no doubt want Adam to take more part in the business, and Adam says he would like to buy the business for himself so he can do as he likes. He gets along with the new Donnithorne steward and Mr. Irwine's management but prefers to be on his own.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 49 The argument between Dinah and her aunt fill the reader in with what has happened since the trial. Dinah has been a peacemaker, helping the Poysers re-integrate with the community. Dinah mentions their friends and neighbors being supportive, something that the Poysers had feared would never happen. They are not the outcasts they had imagined themselves but once more installed in their old position. Dinah seems a bit mysterious about why she has to leave. She is blushing and crying. Adam has never seen her look upset before, but he cannot read her behavior. She seems to be running away to Snowfield and covering up something. All this is highly uncharacteristic of Dinah. If readers remember how she blushed in Adam's presence before, they may surmise she is in love with him."}

THE first autumnal afternoon sunshine of 1801--more than eighteen months after that parting of Adam and Arthur in the Hermitage--was on the yard at the Hall Farm; and the bull-dog was in one of his most excited moments, for it was that hour of the day when the cows were being driven into the yard for their afternoon milking. No wonder the patient beasts ran confusedly into the wrong places, for the alarming din of the bull-dog was mingled with more distant sounds which the timid feminine creatures, with pardonable superstition, imagined also to have some relation to their own movements--with the tremendous crack of the waggoner's whip, the roar of his voice, and the booming thunder of the waggon, as it left the rick-yard empty of its golden load. The milking of the cows was a sight Mrs. Poyser loved, and at this hour on mild days she was usually standing at the house door, with her knitting in her hands, in quiet contemplation, only heightened to a keener interest when the vicious yellow cow, who had once kicked over a pailful of precious milk, was about to undergo the preventive punishment of having her hinder-legs strapped. To-day, however, Mrs. Poyser gave but a divided attention to the arrival of the cows, for she was in eager discussion with Dinah, who was stitching Mr. Poyser's shirt-collars, and had borne patiently to have her thread broken three times by Totty pulling at her arm with a sudden insistence that she should look at "Baby," that is, at a large wooden doll with no legs and a long skirt, whose bald head Totty, seated in her small chair at Dinah's side, was caressing and pressing to her fat cheek with much fervour. Totty is larger by more than two years' growth than when you first saw her, and she has on a black frock under her pinafore. Mrs. Poyser too has on a black gown, which seems to heighten the family likeness between her and Dinah. In other respects there is little outward change now discernible in our old friends, or in the pleasant house-place, bright with polished oak and pewter. "I never saw the like to you, Dinah," Mrs. Poyser was saying, "when you've once took anything into your head: there's no more moving you than the rooted tree. You may say what you like, but I don't believe that's religion; for what's the Sermon on the Mount about, as you're so fond o' reading to the boys, but doing what other folks 'ud have you do? But if it was anything unreasonable they wanted you to do, like taking your cloak off and giving it to 'em, or letting 'em slap you i' the face, I daresay you'd be ready enough. It's only when one 'ud have you do what's plain common sense and good for yourself, as you're obstinate th' other way." "Nay, dear Aunt," said Dinah, smiling slightly as she went on with her work, "I'm sure your wish 'ud be a reason for me to do anything that I didn't feel it was wrong to do." "Wrong! You drive me past bearing. What is there wrong, I should like to know, i' staying along wi' your own friends, as are th' happier for having you with 'em an' are willing to provide for you, even if your work didn't more nor pay 'em for the bit o' sparrow's victual y' eat and the bit o' rag you put on? An' who is it, I should like to know, as you're bound t' help and comfort i' the world more nor your own flesh and blood--an' me th' only aunt you've got above-ground, an' am brought to the brink o' the grave welly every winter as comes, an' there's the child as sits beside you 'ull break her little heart when you go, an' the grandfather not been dead a twelvemonth, an' your uncle 'ull miss you so as never was--a-lighting his pipe an' waiting on him, an' now I can trust you wi' the butter, an' have had all the trouble o' teaching you, and there's all the sewing to be done, an' I must have a strange gell out o' Treddles'on to do it--an' all because you must go back to that bare heap o' stones as the very crows fly over an' won't stop at." "Dear Aunt Rachel," said Dinah, looking up in Mrs. Poyser's face, "it's your kindness makes you say I'm useful to you. You don't really want me now, for Nancy and Molly are clever at their work, and you're in good health now, by the blessing of God, and my uncle is of a cheerful countenance again, and you have neighbours and friends not a few--some of them come to sit with my uncle almost daily. Indeed, you will not miss me; and at Snowfield there are brethren and sisters in great need, who have none of those comforts you have around you. I feel that I am called back to those amongst whom my lot was first cast. I feel drawn again towards the hills where I used to be blessed in carrying the word of life to the sinful and desolate." "You feel! Yes," said Mrs. Poyser, returning from a parenthetic glance at the cows, "that's allays the reason I'm to sit down wi', when you've a mind to do anything contrairy. What do you want to be preaching for more than you're preaching now? Don't you go off, the Lord knows where, every Sunday a-preaching and praying? An' haven't you got Methodists enow at Treddles'on to go and look at, if church-folks's faces are too handsome to please you? An' isn't there them i' this parish as you've got under hand, and they're like enough to make friends wi' Old Harry again as soon as your back's turned? There's that Bessy Cranage--she'll be flaunting i' new finery three weeks after you're gone, I'll be bound. She'll no more go on in her new ways without you than a dog 'ull stand on its hind-legs when there's nobody looking. But I suppose it doesna matter so much about folks's souls i' this country, else you'd be for staying with your own aunt, for she's none so good but what you might help her to be better." There was a certain something in Mrs. Poyser's voice just then, which she did not wish to be noticed, so she turned round hastily to look at the clock, and said: "See there! It's tea-time; an' if Martin's i' the rick-yard, he'll like a cup. Here, Totty, my chicken, let mother put your bonnet on, and then you go out into the rick-yard and see if Father's there, and tell him he mustn't go away again without coming t' have a cup o' tea; and tell your brothers to come in too." Totty trotted off in her flapping bonnet, while Mrs. Poyser set out the bright oak table and reached down the tea-cups. "You talk o' them gells Nancy and Molly being clever i' their work," she began again; "it's fine talking. They're all the same, clever or stupid--one can't trust 'em out o' one's sight a minute. They want somebody's eye on 'em constant if they're to be kept to their work. An' suppose I'm ill again this winter, as I was the winter before last? Who's to look after 'em then, if you're gone? An' there's that blessed child--something's sure t' happen to her--they'll let her tumble into the fire, or get at the kettle wi' the boiling lard in't, or some mischief as 'ull lame her for life; an' it'll be all your fault, Dinah." "Aunt," said Dinah, "I promise to come back to you in the winter if you're ill. Don't think I will ever stay away from you if you're in real want of me. But, indeed, it is needful for my own soul that I should go away from this life of ease and luxury in which I have all things too richly to enjoy--at least that I should go away for a short space. No one can know but myself what are my inward needs, and the besetments I am most in danger from. Your wish for me to stay is not a call of duty which I refuse to hearken to because it is against my own desires; it is a temptation that I must resist, lest the love of the creature should become like a mist in my soul shutting out the heavenly light." "It passes my cunning to know what you mean by ease and luxury," said Mrs. Poyser, as she cut the bread and butter. "It's true there's good victual enough about you, as nobody shall ever say I don't provide enough and to spare, but if there's ever a bit o' odds an' ends as nobody else 'ud eat, you're sure to pick it out...but look there! There's Adam Bede a-carrying the little un in. I wonder how it is he's come so early." Mrs. Poyser hastened to the door for the pleasure of looking at her darling in a new position, with love in her eyes but reproof on her tongue. "Oh for shame, Totty! Little gells o' five year old should be ashamed to be carried. Why, Adam, she'll break your arm, such a big gell as that; set her down--for shame!" "Nay, nay," said Adam, "I can lift her with my hand--I've no need to take my arm to it." Totty, looking as serenely unconscious of remark as a fat white puppy, was set down at the door-place, and the mother enforced her reproof with a shower of kisses. "You're surprised to see me at this hour o' the day," said Adam. "Yes, but come in," said Mrs. Poyser, making way for him; "there's no bad news, I hope?" "No, nothing bad," Adam answered, as he went up to Dinah and put out his hand to her. She had laid down her work and stood up, instinctively, as he approached her. A faint blush died away from her pale cheek as she put her hand in his and looked up at him timidly. "It's an errand to you brought me, Dinah," said Adam, apparently unconscious that he was holding her hand all the while; "mother's a bit ailing, and she's set her heart on your coming to stay the night with her, if you'll be so kind. I told her I'd call and ask you as I came from the village. She overworks herself, and I can't persuade her to have a little girl t' help her. I don't know what's to be done." Adam released Dinah's hand as he ceased speaking, and was expecting an answer, but before she had opened her lips Mrs. Poyser said, "Look there now! I told you there was folks enow t' help i' this parish, wi'out going further off. There's Mrs. Bede getting as old and cas'alty as can be, and she won't let anybody but you go a-nigh her hardly. The folks at Snowfield have learnt by this time to do better wi'out you nor she can." "I'll put my bonnet on and set off directly, if you don't want anything done first, Aunt," said Dinah, folding up her work. "Yes, I do want something done. I want you t' have your tea, child; it's all ready--and you'll have a cup, Adam, if y' arena in too big a hurry." "Yes, I'll have a cup, please; and then I'll walk with Dinah. I'm going straight home, for I've got a lot o' timber valuations to write out." "Why, Adam, lad, are you here?" said Mr. Poyser, entering warm and coatless, with the two black-eyed boys behind him, still looking as much like him as two small elephants are like a large one. "How is it we've got sight o' you so long before foddering-time?" "I came on an errand for Mother," said Adam. "She's got a touch of her old complaint, and she wants Dinah to go and stay with her a bit." "Well, we'll spare her for your mother a little while," said Mr. Poyser. "But we wonna spare her for anybody else, on'y her husband." "Husband!" said Marty, who was at the most prosaic and literal period of the boyish mind. "Why, Dinah hasn't got a husband." "Spare her?" said Mrs. Poyser, placing a seed-cake on the table and then seating herself to pour out the tea. "But we must spare her, it seems, and not for a husband neither, but for her own megrims. Tommy, what are you doing to your little sister's doll? Making the child naughty, when she'd be good if you'd let her. You shanna have a morsel o' cake if you behave so." Tommy, with true brotherly sympathy, was amusing himself by turning Dolly's skirt over her bald head and exhibiting her truncated body to the general scorn--an indignity which cut Totty to the heart. "What do you think Dinah's been a-telling me since dinner-time?" Mrs. Poyser continued, looking at her husband. "Eh! I'm a poor un at guessing," said Mr. Poyser. "Why, she means to go back to Snowfield again, and work i' the mill, and starve herself, as she used to do, like a creatur as has got no friends." Mr. Poyser did not readily find words to express his unpleasant astonishment; he only looked from his wife to Dinah, who had now seated herself beside Totty, as a bulwark against brotherly playfulness, and was busying herself with the children's tea. If he had been given to making general reflections, it would have occurred to him that there was certainly a change come over Dinah, for she never used to change colour; but, as it was, he merely observed that her face was flushed at that moment. Mr. Poyser thought she looked the prettier for it: it was a flush no deeper than the petal of a monthly rose. Perhaps it came because her uncle was looking at her so fixedly; but there is no knowing, for just then Adam was saying, with quiet surprise, "Why, I hoped Dinah was settled among us for life. I thought she'd given up the notion o' going back to her old country." "Thought! Yes," said Mrs. Poyser, "and so would anybody else ha' thought, as had got their right end up'ards. But I suppose you must be a Methodist to know what a Methodist 'ull do. It's ill guessing what the bats are flying after." "Why, what have we done to you. Dinah, as you must go away from us?" said Mr. Poyser, still pausing over his tea-cup. "It's like breaking your word, welly, for your aunt never had no thought but you'd make this your home." "Nay, Uncle," said Dinah, trying to be quite calm. "When I first came, I said it was only for a time, as long as I could be of any comfort to my aunt." "Well, an' who said you'd ever left off being a comfort to me?" said Mrs. Poyser. "If you didna mean to stay wi' me, you'd better never ha' come. Them as ha' never had a cushion don't miss it." "Nay, nay," said Mr. Poyser, who objected to exaggerated views. "Thee mustna say so; we should ha' been ill off wi'out her, Lady day was a twelvemont'. We mun be thankful for that, whether she stays or no. But I canna think what she mun leave a good home for, to go back int' a country where the land, most on't, isna worth ten shillings an acre, rent and profits." "Why, that's just the reason she wants to go, as fur as she can give a reason," said Mrs. Poyser. "She says this country's too comfortable, an' there's too much t' eat, an' folks arena miserable enough. And she's going next week. I canna turn her, say what I will. It's allays the way wi' them meek-faced people; you may's well pelt a bag o' feathers as talk to 'em. But I say it isna religion, to be so obstinate--is it now, Adam?" Adam saw that Dinah was more disturbed than he had ever seen her by any matter relating to herself, and, anxious to relieve her, if possible, he said, looking at her affectionately, "Nay, I can't find fault with anything Dinah does. I believe her thoughts are better than our guesses, let 'em be what they may. I should ha' been thankful for her to stay among us, but if she thinks well to go, I wouldn't cross her, or make it hard to her by objecting. We owe her something different to that." As it often happens, the words intended to relieve her were just too much for Dinah's susceptible feelings at this moment. The tears came into the grey eyes too fast to be hidden and she got up hurriedly, meaning it to be understood that she was going to put on her bonnet. "Mother, what's Dinah crying for?" said Totty. "She isn't a naughty dell." "Thee'st gone a bit too fur," said Mr. Poyser. "We've no right t' interfere with her doing as she likes. An' thee'dst be as angry as could be wi' me, if I said a word against anything she did." "Because you'd very like be finding fault wi'out reason," said Mrs. Poyser. "But there's reason i' what I say, else I shouldna say it. It's easy talking for them as can't love her so well as her own aunt does. An' me got so used to her! I shall feel as uneasy as a new sheared sheep when she's gone from me. An' to think of her leaving a parish where she's so looked on. There's Mr. Irwine makes as much of her as if she was a lady, for all her being a Methodist, an' wi' that maggot o' preaching in her head--God forgi'e me if I'm i' the wrong to call it so." "Aye," said Mr. Poyser, looking jocose; "but thee dostna tell Adam what he said to thee about it one day. The missis was saying, Adam, as the preaching was the only fault to be found wi' Dinah, and Mr. Irwine says, 'But you mustn't find fault with her for that, Mrs. Poyser; you forget she's got no husband to preach to. I'll answer for it, you give Poyser many a good sermon.' The parson had thee there," Mr. Poyser added, laughing unctuously. "I told Bartle Massey on it, an' he laughed too." "Yes, it's a small joke sets men laughing when they sit a-staring at one another with a pipe i' their mouths," said Mrs. Poyser. "Give Bartle Massey his way and he'd have all the sharpness to himself. If the chaff-cutter had the making of us, we should all be straw, I reckon. Totty, my chicken, go upstairs to cousin Dinah, and see what she's doing, and give her a pretty kiss." This errand was devised for Totty as a means of checking certain threatening symptoms about the corners of the mouth; for Tommy, no longer expectant of cake, was lifting up his eyelids with his forefingers and turning his eyeballs towards Totty in a way that she felt to be disagreeably personal. "You're rare and busy now--eh, Adam?" said Mr. Poyser. "Burge's getting so bad wi' his asthmy, it's well if he'll ever do much riding about again." "Yes, we've got a pretty bit o' building on hand now," said Adam, "what with the repairs on th' estate, and the new houses at Treddles'on." "I'll bet a penny that new house Burge is building on his own bit o' land is for him and Mary to go to," said Mr. Poyser. "He'll be for laying by business soon, I'll warrant, and be wanting you to take to it all and pay him so much by th' 'ear. We shall see you living on th' hill before another twelvemont's over." "Well," said Adam, "I should like t' have the business in my own hands. It isn't as I mind much about getting any more money. We've enough and to spare now, with only our two selves and mother; but I should like t' have my own way about things--I could try plans then, as I can't do now." "You get on pretty well wi' the new steward, I reckon?" said Mr. Poyser. "Yes, yes; he's a sensible man enough; understands farming--he's carrying on the draining, and all that, capital. You must go some day towards the Stonyshire side and see what alterations they're making. But he's got no notion about buildings. You can so seldom get hold of a man as can turn his brains to more nor one thing; it's just as if they wore blinkers like th' horses and could see nothing o' one side of 'em. Now, there's Mr. Irwine has got notions o' building more nor most architects; for as for th' architects, they set up to be fine fellows, but the most of 'em don't know where to set a chimney so as it shan't be quarrelling with a door. My notion is, a practical builder that's got a bit o' taste makes the best architect for common things; and I've ten times the pleasure i' seeing after the work when I've made the plan myself." Mr. Poyser listened with an admiring interest to Adam's discourse on building, but perhaps it suggested to him that the building of his corn-rick had been proceeding a little too long without the control of the master's eye, for when Adam had done speaking, he got up and said, "Well, lad, I'll bid you good-bye now, for I'm off to the rick-yard again." Adam rose too, for he saw Dinah entering, with her bonnet on and a little basket in her hand, preceded by Totty. "You're ready, I see, Dinah," Adam said; "so we'll set off, for the sooner I'm at home the better." "Mother," said Totty, with her treble pipe, "Dinah was saying her prayers and crying ever so." "Hush, hush," said the mother, "little gells mustn't chatter." Whereupon the father, shaking with silent laughter, set Totty on the white deal table and desired her to kiss him. Mr. and Mrs. Poyser, you perceive, had no correct principles of education. "Come back to-morrow if Mrs. Bede doesn't want you, Dinah," said Mrs. Poyser: "but you can stay, you know, if she's ill." So, when the good-byes had been said, Dinah and Adam left the Hall Farm together.

Chapter 49

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter49

At the Hall Farm Eighteen months later, Mrs. Poyser is trying to talk Dinah out of leaving for Snowfield. She has been staying with the Poysers to help them through the tragedy. Mrs. Poyser tries to convince her she can minister to the poor in Hayslope; there are many people who depend on her. Dinah says she must avoid the temptation of luxury and go back to the mill where she is needed more. Dinah reminds her aunt that she has stayed to see them all back on their feet, and they are well and prosperous. It is mentioned that old Mr. Poyser died the previous year, the reason for Mrs. Poyser wearing black. When Adam Bede comes to the farm, Dinah blushes. Adam has come to fetch her for his mother, who is ailing. He explains his mother is working too hard but will not let him hire a girl to help her. Mrs. Poyser announces to the family at tea that Dinah is leaving, and she looks disturbed and rushes from the room crying. Everyone had counted on Dinah staying, even Mr. Irwine who treats her like a lady. Adam speaks of his great success with the woods and new building. Mr. Poyser mentions that Burge will no doubt want Adam to take more part in the business, and Adam says he would like to buy the business for himself so he can do as he likes. He gets along with the new Donnithorne steward and Mr. Irwine's management but prefers to be on his own.

Commentary on Chapter 49 The argument between Dinah and her aunt fill the reader in with what has happened since the trial. Dinah has been a peacemaker, helping the Poysers re-integrate with the community. Dinah mentions their friends and neighbors being supportive, something that the Poysers had feared would never happen. They are not the outcasts they had imagined themselves but once more installed in their old position. Dinah seems a bit mysterious about why she has to leave. She is blushing and crying. Adam has never seen her look upset before, but he cannot read her behavior. She seems to be running away to Snowfield and covering up something. All this is highly uncharacteristic of Dinah. If readers remember how she blushed in Adam's presence before, they may surmise she is in love with him.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/50.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_50_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 6.chapter 50

chapter 50

{"name": "Chapter 50", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter50", "summary": "In the Cottage Dinah and Adam walk together to the Bede cottage, and Adam tells her the Poysers will miss her. She answers that the Poysers' sorrow is healed, and she is called back to her old work. Adam says he puts her above all his other friends and regards her as a sister. He does not understand her agitation at his words. They change topics and speak of Arthur, \"the poor young man,\" as Dinah calls him . Arthur is off fighting Napoleon and the French. The war will soon be over, but Arthur does not feel ready to come home. Dinah mentions his warm-hearted nature, and how our trial is to see good in the midst of evil. At the cottage, Seth sees Dinah's tears that Adam does not see. Lisbeth also sees Dinah's upset and asks her what is wrong. The two women spend the evening together, and Dinah tells her she is leaving. The narrator switches to Adam, mentioning that his great sorrow was still with him but it was quietly transforming him to a greater love and sympathy for others. He is more tolerant of Seth and his mother. His work has also been part of his religion, his way of doing good in the world. His work is his life now, and he does not see that romance will ever touch him again. He is surprised Dinah does not love Seth, who seems cut out for her. Dinah is up early and cleaning the house. Adam surprises her and tries to joke with her, but she is embarrassed. Adam asks her if she is displeased with him and says he doesn't like parting with her. The narrator breaks in to tell us that this is courting, the way two souls gently approach one another by degrees.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 50 The narrator is quite joyful in describing the growing love between Adam and Dinah in the closing chapters, waxing rhapsodic in places. The relationship has been foreshadowed in earlier chapters. Adam is the only man that has made Dinah feel like a woman rather than a saint. Some critics feel that Dinah's attraction to Adam seems out of character, but she has always seen him as noble and unlike other men. He is not a Methodist, but he is sincerely religious and lives his religion. He is generous and not restrictive to Dinah's wishes. She is the only woman he has ever looked up to or thought better than himself. Like Mr. Irwine, he respects her and shows it in regarding her as an equal. In this part of the novel, Eliot wants to show how someone could rebound from tragedy, how the mind knits itself back together in the mystery of love. It is not always possible to predict where love will put people together, as Adam has said before. Neither he nor Arthur could resist Hetty, and Dinah prefers Adam to Seth, the one who seems made for her. Adam's and Dinah's is not a violent love, but a gentle, healing love that grows out of the tragedy they both witnessed. They have found strength in each other. Adam is taking some time to get over his sorrow and so cannot ever imagine being in love again, though he admits Dinah is his best friend. She already knows that she feels love, but as will become apparent, she is afraid the earthly love conflicts with her divine duty. Both have to grow from the events they have been through in order to be together. Adam himself will realize that he was not ready for Dinah until he went through the agony with Hetty and purified himself. Eliot mentions that it is natural for lovers to delicately approach one another for a while. Love is subtle like music. Readers might see the last book as a bit sentimental compared to the rest of the story, but for Eliot, it is as important to see the principles of healing as it is to observe the principles of suffering. She thus wraps up the story in stages, with little mini-essays on love and healing. This part of the novel contrasts with the tragedy of the main action. Once again, we get idyllic pastoral scenes as in the beginning of the story, along with humor, and local color. Each character finds his or her own place, so that society can begin anew in Hayslope."}

ADAM did not ask Dinah to take his arm when they got out into the lane. He had never yet done so, often as they had walked together, for he had observed that she never walked arm-in-arm with Seth, and he thought, perhaps, that kind of support was not agreeable to her. So they walked apart, though side by side, and the close poke of her little black bonnet hid her face from him. "You can't be happy, then, to make the Hall Farm your home, Dinah?" Adam said, with the quiet interest of a brother, who has no anxiety for himself in the matter. "It's a pity, seeing they're so fond of you." "You know, Adam, my heart is as their heart, so far as love for them and care for their welfare goes, but they are in no present need. Their sorrows are healed, and I feel that I am called back to my old work, in which I found a blessing that I have missed of late in the midst of too abundant worldly good. I know it is a vain thought to flee from the work that God appoints us, for the sake of finding a greater blessing to our own souls, as if we could choose for ourselves where we shall find the fulness of the Divine Presence, instead of seeking it where alone it is to be found, in loving obedience. But now, I believe, I have a clear showing that my work lies elsewhere--at least for a time. In the years to come, if my aunt's health should fail, or she should otherwise need me, I shall return." "You know best, Dinah," said Adam. "I don't believe you'd go against the wishes of them that love you, and are akin to you, without a good and sufficient reason in your own conscience. I've no right to say anything about my being sorry: you know well enough what cause I have to put you above every other friend I've got; and if it had been ordered so that you could ha' been my sister, and lived with us all our lives, I should ha' counted it the greatest blessing as could happen to us now. But Seth tells me there's no hope o' that: your feelings are different, and perhaps I'm taking too much upon me to speak about it." Dinah made no answer, and they walked on in silence for some yards, till they came to the stone stile, where, as Adam had passed through first and turned round to give her his hand while she mounted the unusually high step, she could not prevent him from seeing her face. It struck him with surprise, for the grey eyes, usually so mild and grave, had the bright uneasy glance which accompanies suppressed agitation, and the slight flush in her cheeks, with which she had come downstairs, was heightened to a deep rose-colour. She looked as if she were only sister to Dinah. Adam was silent with surprise and conjecture for some moments, and then he said, "I hope I've not hurt or displeased you by what I've said, Dinah. Perhaps I was making too free. I've no wish different from what you see to be best, and I'm satisfied for you to live thirty mile off, if you think it right. I shall think of you just as much as I do now, for you're bound up with what I can no more help remembering than I can help my heart beating." Poor Adam! Thus do men blunder. Dinah made no answer, but she presently said, "Have you heard any news from that poor young man, since we last spoke of him?" Dinah always called Arthur so; she had never lost the image of him as she had seen him in the prison. "Yes," said Adam. "Mr. Irwine read me part of a letter from him yesterday. It's pretty certain, they say, that there'll be a peace soon, though nobody believes it'll last long; but he says he doesn't mean to come home. He's no heart for it yet, and it's better for others that he should keep away. Mr. Irwine thinks he's in the right not to come. It's a sorrowful letter. He asks about you and the Poysers, as he always does. There's one thing in the letter cut me a good deal: 'You can't think what an old fellow I feel,' he says; 'I make no schemes now. I'm the best when I've a good day's march or fighting before me.'" "He's of a rash, warm-hearted nature, like Esau, for whom I have always felt great pity," said Dinah. "That meeting between the brothers, where Esau is so loving and generous, and Jacob so timid and distrustful, notwithstanding his sense of the Divine favour, has always touched me greatly. Truly, I have been tempted sometimes to say that Jacob was of a mean spirit. But that is our trial: we must learn to see the good in the midst of much that is unlovely." "Ah," said Adam, "I like to read about Moses best, in th' Old Testament. He carried a hard business well through, and died when other folks were going to reap the fruits. A man must have courage to look at his life so, and think what'll come of it after he's dead and gone. A good solid bit o' work lasts: if it's only laying a floor down, somebody's the better for it being done well, besides the man as does it." They were both glad to talk of subjects that were not personal, and in this way they went on till they passed the bridge across the Willow Brook, when Adam turned round and said, "Ah, here's Seth. I thought he'd be home soon. Does he know of you're going, Dinah?" "Yes, I told him last Sabbath." Adam remembered now that Seth had come home much depressed on Sunday evening, a circumstance which had been very unusual with him of late, for the happiness he had in seeing Dinah every week seemed long to have outweighed the pain of knowing she would never marry him. This evening he had his habitual air of dreamy benignant contentment, until he came quite close to Dinah and saw the traces of tears on her delicate eyelids and eyelashes. He gave one rapid glance at his brother, but Adam was evidently quite outside the current of emotion that had shaken Dinah: he wore his everyday look of unexpectant calm. Seth tried not to let Dinah see that he had noticed her face, and only said, "I'm thankful you're come, Dinah, for Mother's been hungering after the sight of you all day. She began to talk of you the first thing in the morning." When they entered the cottage, Lisbeth was seated in her arm-chair, too tired with setting out the evening meal, a task she always performed a long time beforehand, to go and meet them at the door as usual, when she heard the approaching footsteps. "Coom, child, thee't coom at last," she said, when Dinah went towards her. "What dost mane by lavin' me a week an' ne'er coomin' a-nigh me?" "Dear friend," said Dinah, taking her hand, "you're not well. If I'd known it sooner, I'd have come." "An' how's thee t' know if thee dostna coom? Th' lads on'y know what I tell 'em. As long as ye can stir hand and foot the men think ye're hearty. But I'm none so bad, on'y a bit of a cold sets me achin'. An' th' lads tease me so t' ha' somebody wi' me t' do the work--they make me ache worse wi' talkin'. If thee'dst come and stay wi' me, they'd let me alone. The Poysers canna want thee so bad as I do. But take thy bonnet off, an' let me look at thee." Dinah was moving away, but Lisbeth held her fast, while she was taking off her bonnet, and looked at her face as one looks into a newly gathered snowdrop, to renew the old impressions of purity and gentleness. "What's the matter wi' thee?" said Lisbeth, in astonishment; "thee'st been a-cryin'." "It's only a grief that'll pass away," said Dinah, who did not wish just now to call forth Lisbeth's remonstrances by disclosing her intention to leave Hayslope. "You shall know about it shortly--we'll talk of it to-night. I shall stay with you to-night." Lisbeth was pacified by this prospect. And she had the whole evening to talk with Dinah alone; for there was a new room in the cottage, you remember, built nearly two years ago, in the expectation of a new inmate; and here Adam always sat when he had writing to do or plans to make. Seth sat there too this evening, for he knew his mother would like to have Dinah all to herself. There were two pretty pictures on the two sides of the wall in the cottage. On one side there was the broad-shouldered, large-featured, hardy old woman, in her blue jacket and buff kerchief, with her dim-eyed anxious looks turned continually on the lily face and the slight form in the black dress that were either moving lightly about in helpful activity, or seated close by the old woman's arm-chair, holding her withered hand, with eyes lifted up towards her to speak a language which Lisbeth understood far better than the Bible or the hymn-book. She would scarcely listen to reading at all to-night. "Nay, nay, shut the book," she said. "We mun talk. I want t' know what thee was cryin' about. Hast got troubles o' thy own, like other folks?" On the other side of the wall there were the two brothers so like each other in the midst of their unlikeness: Adam with knit brows, shaggy hair, and dark vigorous colour, absorbed in his "figuring"; Seth, with large rugged features, the close copy of his brother's, but with thin, wavy, brown hair and blue dreamy eyes, as often as not looking vaguely out of the window instead of at his book, although it was a newly bought book--Wesley's abridgment of Madame Guyon's life, which was full of wonder and interest for him. Seth had said to Adam, "Can I help thee with anything in here to-night? I don't want to make a noise in the shop." "No, lad," Adam answered, "there's nothing but what I must do myself. Thee'st got thy new book to read." And often, when Seth was quite unconscious, Adam, as he paused after drawing a line with his ruler, looked at his brother with a kind smile dawning in his eyes. He knew "th' lad liked to sit full o' thoughts he could give no account of; they'd never come t' anything, but they made him happy," and in the last year or so, Adam had been getting more and more indulgent to Seth. It was part of that growing tenderness which came from the sorrow at work within him. For Adam, though you see him quite master of himself, working hard and delighting in his work after his inborn inalienable nature, had not outlived his sorrow--had not felt it slip from him as a temporary burden, and leave him the same man again. Do any of us? God forbid. It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it--if we could return to the same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of that Unknown towards which we have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness. Let us rather be thankful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible force, only changing its form, as forces do, and passing from pain into sympathy--the one poor word which includes all our best insight and our best love. Not that this transformation of pain into sympathy had completely taken place in Adam yet. There was still a great remnant of pain, and this he felt would subsist as long as her pain was not a memory, but an existing thing, which he must think of as renewed with the light of every new morning. But we get accustomed to mental as well as bodily pain, without, for all that, losing our sensibility to it. It becomes a habit of our lives, and we cease to imagine a condition of perfect ease as possible for us. Desire is chastened into submission, and we are contented with our day when we have been able to bear our grief in silence and act as if we were not suffering. For it is at such periods that the sense of our lives having visible and invisible relations, beyond any of which either our present or prospective self is the centre, grows like a muscle that we are obliged to lean on and exert. That was Adam's state of mind in this second autumn of his sorrow. His work, as you know, had always been part of his religion, and from very early days he saw clearly that good carpentry was God's will--was that form of God's will that most immediately concerned him. But now there was no margin of dreams for him beyond this daylight reality, no holiday-time in the working-day world, no moment in the distance when duty would take off her iron glove and breast-plate and clasp him gently into rest. He conceived no picture of the future but one made up of hard-working days such as he lived through, with growing contentment and intensity of interest, every fresh week. Love, he thought, could never be anything to him but a living memory--a limb lopped off, but not gone from consciousness. He did not know that the power of loving was all the while gaining new force within him; that the new sensibilities bought by a deep experience were so many new fibres by which it was possible, nay, necessary to him, that his nature should intertwine with another. Yet he was aware that common affection and friendship were more precious to him than they used to be--that he clung more to his mother and Seth, and had an unspeakable satisfaction in the sight or imagination of any small addition to their happiness. The Poysers, too--hardly three or four days passed but he felt the need of seeing them and interchanging words and looks of friendliness with them. He would have felt this, probably, even if Dinah had not been with them, but he had only said the simplest truth in telling Dinah that he put her above all other friends in the world. Could anything be more natural? For in the darkest moments of memory the thought of her always came as the first ray of returning comfort. The early days of gloom at the Hall Farm had been gradually turned into soft moonlight by her presence; and in the cottage, too, for she had come at every spare moment to soothe and cheer poor Lisbeth, who had been stricken with a fear that subdued even her querulousness at the sight of her darling Adam's grief-worn face. He had become used to watching her light quiet movements, her pretty loving ways to the children, when he went to the Hall Farm; to listen for her voice as for a recurrent music; to think everything she said and did was just right, and could not have been better. In spite of his wisdom, he could not find fault with her for her overindulgence of the children, who had managed to convert Dinah the preacher, before whom a circle of rough men had often trembled a little, into a convenient household slave--though Dinah herself was rather ashamed of this weakness, and had some inward conflict as to her departure from the precepts of Solomon. Yes, there was one thing that might have been better; she might have loved Seth and consented to marry him. He felt a little vexed, for his brother's sake, and he could not help thinking regretfully how Dinah, as Seth's wife, would have made their home as happy as it could be for them all--how she was the one being that would have soothed their mother's last days into peacefulness and rest. "It's wonderful she doesn't love th' lad," Adam had said sometimes to himself, "for anybody 'ud think he was just cut out for her. But her heart's so taken up with other things. She's one o' those women that feel no drawing towards having a husband and children o' their own. She thinks she should be filled up with her own life then, and she's been used so to living in other folks's cares, she can't bear the thought of her heart being shut up from 'em. I see how it is, well enough. She's cut out o' different stuff from most women: I saw that long ago. She's never easy but when she's helping somebody, and marriage 'ud interfere with her ways--that's true. I've no right to be contriving and thinking it 'ud be better if she'd have Seth, as if I was wiser than she is--or than God either, for He made her what she is, and that's one o' the greatest blessings I've ever had from His hands, and others besides me." This self-reproof had recurred strongly to Adam's mind when he gathered from Dinah's face that he had wounded her by referring to his wish that she had accepted Seth, and so he had endeavoured to put into the strongest words his confidence in her decision as right--his resignation even to her going away from them and ceasing to make part of their life otherwise than by living in their thoughts, if that separation were chosen by herself. He felt sure she knew quite well enough how much he cared to see her continually--to talk to her with the silent consciousness of a mutual great remembrance. It was not possible she should hear anything but self-renouncing affection and respect in his assurance that he was contented for her to go away; and yet there remained an uneasy feeling in his mind that he had not said quite the right thing--that, somehow, Dinah had not understood him. Dinah must have risen a little before the sun the next morning, for she was downstairs about five o'clock. So was Seth, for, through Lisbeth's obstinate refusal to have any woman-helper in the house, he had learned to make himself, as Adam said, "very handy in the housework," that he might save his mother from too great weariness; on which ground I hope you will not think him unmanly, any more than you can have thought the gallant Colonel Bath unmanly when he made the gruel for his invalid sister. Adam, who had sat up late at his writing, was still asleep, and was not likely, Seth said, to be down till breakfast-time. Often as Dinah had visited Lisbeth during the last eighteen months, she had never slept in the cottage since that night after Thias's death, when, you remember, Lisbeth praised her deft movements and even gave a modified approval to her porridge. But in that long interval Dinah had made great advances in household cleverness, and this morning, since Seth was there to help, she was bent on bringing everything to a pitch of cleanliness and order that would have satisfied her Aunt Poyser. The cottage was far from that standard at present, for Lisbeth's rheumatism had forced her to give up her old habits of dilettante scouring and polishing. When the kitchen was to her mind, Dinah went into the new room, where Adam had been writing the night before, to see what sweeping and dusting were needed there. She opened the window and let in the fresh morning air, and the smell of the sweet-brier, and the bright low-slanting rays of the early sun, which made a glory about her pale face and pale auburn hair as she held the long brush, and swept, singing to herself in a very low tone--like a sweet summer murmur that you have to listen for very closely--one of Charles Wesley's hymns: Eternal Beam of Light Divine, Fountain of unexhausted love, In whom the Father's glories shine, Through earth beneath and heaven above; Jesus! the weary wanderer's rest, Give me thy easy yoke to bear; With steadfast patience arm my breast, With spotless love and holy fear. Speak to my warring passions, "Peace!" Say to my trembling heart, "Be still!" Thy power my strength and fortress is, For all things serve thy sovereign will. She laid by the brush and took up the duster; and if you had ever lived in Mrs. Poyser's household, you would know how the duster behaved in Dinah's hand--how it went into every small corner, and on every ledge in and out of sight--how it went again and again round every bar of the chairs, and every leg, and under and over everything that lay on the table, till it came to Adam's papers and rulers and the open desk near them. Dinah dusted up to the very edge of these and then hesitated, looking at them with a longing but timid eye. It was painful to see how much dust there was among them. As she was looking in this way, she heard Seth's step just outside the open door, towards which her back was turned, and said, raising her clear treble, "Seth, is your brother wrathful when his papers are stirred?" "Yes, very, when they are not put back in the right places," said a deep strong voice, not Seth's. It was as if Dinah had put her hands unawares on a vibrating chord. She was shaken with an intense thrill, and for the instant felt nothing else; then she knew her cheeks were glowing, and dared not look round, but stood still, distressed because she could not say good-morning in a friendly way. Adam, finding that she did not look round so as to see the smile on his face, was afraid she had thought him serious about his wrathfulness, and went up to her, so that she was obliged to look at him. "What! You think I'm a cross fellow at home, Dinah?" he said, smilingly. "Nay," said Dinah, looking up with timid eyes, "not so. But you might be put about by finding things meddled with; and even the man Moses, the meekest of men, was wrathful sometimes." "Come, then," said Adam, looking at her affectionately, "I'll help you move the things, and put 'em back again, and then they can't get wrong. You're getting to be your aunt's own niece, I see, for particularness." They began their little task together, but Dinah had not recovered herself sufficiently to think of any remark, and Adam looked at her uneasily. Dinah, he thought, had seemed to disapprove him somehow lately; she had not been so kind and open to him as she used to be. He wanted her to look at him, and be as pleased as he was himself with doing this bit of playful work. But Dinah did not look at him--it was easy for her to avoid looking at the tall man--and when at last there was no more dusting to be done and no further excuse for him to linger near her, he could bear it no longer, and said, in rather a pleading tone, "Dinah, you're not displeased with me for anything, are you? I've not said or done anything to make you think ill of me?" The question surprised her, and relieved her by giving a new course to her feeling. She looked up at him now, quite earnestly, almost with the tears coming, and said, "Oh, no, Adam! how could you think so?" "I couldn't bear you not to feel as much a friend to me as I do to you," said Adam. "And you don't know the value I set on the very thought of you, Dinah. That was what I meant yesterday, when I said I'd be content for you to go, if you thought right. I meant, the thought of you was worth so much to me, I should feel I ought to be thankful, and not grumble, if you see right to go away. You know I do mind parting with you, Dinah?" "Yes, dear friend," said Dinah, trembling, but trying to speak calmly, "I know you have a brother's heart towards me, and we shall often be with one another in spirit; but at this season I am in heaviness through manifold temptations. You must not mark me. I feel called to leave my kindred for a while; but it is a trial--the flesh is weak." Adam saw that it pained her to be obliged to answer. "I hurt you by talking about it, Dinah," he said. "I'll say no more. Let's see if Seth's ready with breakfast now." That is a simple scene, reader. But it is almost certain that you, too, have been in love--perhaps, even, more than once, though you may not choose to say so to all your feminine friends. If so, you will no more think the slight words, the timid looks, the tremulous touches, by which two human souls approach each other gradually, like two little quivering rain-streams, before they mingle into one--you will no more think these things trivial than you will think the first-detected signs of coming spring trivial, though they be but a faint indescribable something in the air and in the song of the birds, and the tiniest perceptible budding on the hedge-row branches. Those slight words and looks and touches are part of the soul's language; and the finest language, I believe, is chiefly made up of unimposing words, such as "light," "sound," "stars," "music"--words really not worth looking at, or hearing, in themselves, any more than "chips" or "sawdust." It is only that they happen to be the signs of something unspeakably great and beautiful. I am of opinion that love is a great and beautiful thing too, and if you agree with me, the smallest signs of it will not be chips and sawdust to you: they will rather be like those little words, "light" and "music," stirring the long-winding fibres of your memory and enriching your present with your most precious past.

Chapter 50

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter50

In the Cottage Dinah and Adam walk together to the Bede cottage, and Adam tells her the Poysers will miss her. She answers that the Poysers' sorrow is healed, and she is called back to her old work. Adam says he puts her above all his other friends and regards her as a sister. He does not understand her agitation at his words. They change topics and speak of Arthur, "the poor young man," as Dinah calls him . Arthur is off fighting Napoleon and the French. The war will soon be over, but Arthur does not feel ready to come home. Dinah mentions his warm-hearted nature, and how our trial is to see good in the midst of evil. At the cottage, Seth sees Dinah's tears that Adam does not see. Lisbeth also sees Dinah's upset and asks her what is wrong. The two women spend the evening together, and Dinah tells her she is leaving. The narrator switches to Adam, mentioning that his great sorrow was still with him but it was quietly transforming him to a greater love and sympathy for others. He is more tolerant of Seth and his mother. His work has also been part of his religion, his way of doing good in the world. His work is his life now, and he does not see that romance will ever touch him again. He is surprised Dinah does not love Seth, who seems cut out for her. Dinah is up early and cleaning the house. Adam surprises her and tries to joke with her, but she is embarrassed. Adam asks her if she is displeased with him and says he doesn't like parting with her. The narrator breaks in to tell us that this is courting, the way two souls gently approach one another by degrees.

Commentary on Chapter 50 The narrator is quite joyful in describing the growing love between Adam and Dinah in the closing chapters, waxing rhapsodic in places. The relationship has been foreshadowed in earlier chapters. Adam is the only man that has made Dinah feel like a woman rather than a saint. Some critics feel that Dinah's attraction to Adam seems out of character, but she has always seen him as noble and unlike other men. He is not a Methodist, but he is sincerely religious and lives his religion. He is generous and not restrictive to Dinah's wishes. She is the only woman he has ever looked up to or thought better than himself. Like Mr. Irwine, he respects her and shows it in regarding her as an equal. In this part of the novel, Eliot wants to show how someone could rebound from tragedy, how the mind knits itself back together in the mystery of love. It is not always possible to predict where love will put people together, as Adam has said before. Neither he nor Arthur could resist Hetty, and Dinah prefers Adam to Seth, the one who seems made for her. Adam's and Dinah's is not a violent love, but a gentle, healing love that grows out of the tragedy they both witnessed. They have found strength in each other. Adam is taking some time to get over his sorrow and so cannot ever imagine being in love again, though he admits Dinah is his best friend. She already knows that she feels love, but as will become apparent, she is afraid the earthly love conflicts with her divine duty. Both have to grow from the events they have been through in order to be together. Adam himself will realize that he was not ready for Dinah until he went through the agony with Hetty and purified himself. Eliot mentions that it is natural for lovers to delicately approach one another for a while. Love is subtle like music. Readers might see the last book as a bit sentimental compared to the rest of the story, but for Eliot, it is as important to see the principles of healing as it is to observe the principles of suffering. She thus wraps up the story in stages, with little mini-essays on love and healing. This part of the novel contrasts with the tragedy of the main action. Once again, we get idyllic pastoral scenes as in the beginning of the story, along with humor, and local color. Each character finds his or her own place, so that society can begin anew in Hayslope.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/51.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_51_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 6.chapter 51

chapter 51

{"name": "Chapter 51", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter51", "summary": "Sunday Morning Dinah is questioned by Lisbeth about her leaving. Lisbeth complains that she hasn't long to live and will never see Dinah again. Then she launches into a topic embarrassing to Dinah: a husband. Lisbeth admits Seth is not the right husband, but asks her what she thinks of Adam? He would be a proper husband. Dinah escapes as soon as she can for the Hall Farm. When Seth comes in, Lisbeth says to him that Dinah would stay if Adam would marry her. Seth is surprised and asks Lisbeth if Dinah has said so. Lisbeth says it is written all over her. Sunday mornings are the happiest for Lisbeth, because Adam stays home and reads his Bible in the same room with her. She makes up her mind to speak to Adam about Dinah, but doesn't know how to begin. When she sees in Adam's Bible the picture of the angel on Christ's tomb, she blurts out, \"That's her--that's Dinah\" . Lisbeth uses this to start the conversation where she tells Adam he should marry Dinah; they were meant for each other, and Dinah loves him. He is struck by this idea and feels \"a resurrection of his dead joy\" . He decides to talk to Seth about it since he was the one who wanted to marry Dinah. Seth is unselfish and says he will not stand in the way, but he is sure Dinah doesn't want to marry because of her calling.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 51 Lisbeth has been a secondary character, but here she takes a part in shaping the outcome of the story. Though she is afraid of displeasing Adam, she sees right through Dinah's feelings, and she decides to take a chance to tell Adam about it. She, like Mrs. Poyser, does not want to part with Dinah, and has always dreamed of having her for a daughter-in-law. She is very particular whom she will let in the house, not even allowing a hired servant. Dinah is Lisbeth's own best insurance for a happy old age, but more than that, finally she has grown to the point where she wants happiness for her son. Opposed to her sons' marriage in the beginning, she knows she hasn't long to live, and wants to see Adam settled with a good wife. The narrator mentions that the tragedy had affected her too, that it had quieted down her selfish demands. For once, Adam listens to his mother because she is wise in this matter. His sudden conversion from being blind to love to completely open to the suggestion may strain the belief of some, but it is not uncommon in grief to be unable to imagine loving again. He was so used to Dinah as a sister that the other suggestion never directly entered his mind. Adam is a man of action, however, and does not waste time as soon as he gets the point. Seth may seem too good to be true as the completely unselfish brother without the slightest trace of jealousy, but it is in keeping with his character and religion. He has made it plain he would like to be around Dinah in any way possible."}

LISBETH'S touch of rheumatism could not be made to appear serious enough to detain Dinah another night from the Hall Farm, now she had made up her mind to leave her aunt so soon, and at evening the friends must part. "For a long while," Dinah had said, for she had told Lisbeth of her resolve. "Then it'll be for all my life, an' I shall ne'er see thee again," said Lisbeth. "Long while! I'n got no long while t' live. An' I shall be took bad an' die, an' thee canst ne'er come a-nigh me, an' I shall die a-longing for thee." That had been the key-note of her wailing talk all day; for Adam was not in the house, and so she put no restraint on her complaining. She had tried poor Dinah by returning again and again to the question, why she must go away; and refusing to accept reasons, which seemed to her nothing but whim and "contrairiness"; and still more, by regretting that she "couldna' ha' one o' the lads" and be her daughter. "Thee couldstna put up wi' Seth," she said. "He isna cliver enough for thee, happen, but he'd ha' been very good t' thee--he's as handy as can be at doin' things for me when I'm bad, an' he's as fond o' the Bible an' chappellin' as thee art thysen. But happen, thee'dst like a husband better as isna just the cut o' thysen: the runnin' brook isna athirst for th' rain. Adam 'ud ha' done for thee--I know he would--an' he might come t' like thee well enough, if thee'dst stop. But he's as stubborn as th' iron bar--there's no bending him no way but's own. But he'd be a fine husband for anybody, be they who they will, so looked-on an' so cliver as he is. And he'd be rare an' lovin': it does me good on'y a look o' the lad's eye when he means kind tow'rt me." Dinah tried to escape from Lisbeth's closest looks and questions by finding little tasks of housework that kept her moving about, and as soon as Seth came home in the evening she put on her bonnet to go. It touched Dinah keenly to say the last good-bye, and still more to look round on her way across the fields and see the old woman still standing at the door, gazing after her till she must have been the faintest speck in the dim aged eyes. "The God of love and peace be with them," Dinah prayed, as she looked back from the last stile. "Make them glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted them, and the years wherein they have seen evil. It is thy will that I should part from them; let me have no will but thine." Lisbeth turned into the house at last and sat down in the workshop near Seth, who was busying himself there with fitting some bits of turned wood he had brought from the village into a small work-box, which he meant to give to Dinah before she went away. "Thee't see her again o' Sunday afore she goes," were her first words. "If thee wast good for anything, thee'dst make her come in again o' Sunday night wi' thee, and see me once more." "Nay, Mother," said Seth. "Dinah 'ud be sure to come again if she saw right to come. I should have no need to persuade her. She only thinks it 'ud be troubling thee for nought, just to come in to say good-bye over again." "She'd ne'er go away, I know, if Adam 'ud be fond on her an' marry her, but everything's so contrairy," said Lisbeth, with a burst of vexation. Seth paused a moment and looked up, with a slight blush, at his mother's face. "What! Has she said anything o' that sort to thee, Mother?" he said, in a lower tone. "Said? Nay, she'll say nothin'. It's on'y the men as have to wait till folks say things afore they find 'em out." "Well, but what makes thee think so, Mother? What's put it into thy head?" "It's no matter what's put it into my head. My head's none so hollow as it must get in, an' nought to put it there. I know she's fond on him, as I know th' wind's comin' in at the door, an' that's anoof. An' he might be willin' to marry her if he know'd she's fond on him, but he'll ne'er think on't if somebody doesna put it into's head." His mother's suggestion about Dinah's feeling towards Adam was not quite a new thought to Seth, but her last words alarmed him, lest she should herself undertake to open Adam's eyes. He was not sure about Dinah's feeling, and he thought he was sure about Adam's. "Nay, Mother, nay," he said, earnestly, "thee mustna think o' speaking o' such things to Adam. Thee'st no right to say what Dinah's feelings are if she hasna told thee, and it 'ud do nothing but mischief to say such things to Adam. He feels very grateful and affectionate toward Dinah, but he's no thoughts towards her that 'ud incline him to make her his wife, and I don't believe Dinah 'ud marry him either. I don't think she'll marry at all." "Eh," said Lisbeth, impatiently. "Thee think'st so 'cause she wouldna ha' thee. She'll ne'er marry thee; thee mightst as well like her t' ha' thy brother." Seth was hurt. "Mother," he said, in a remonstrating tone, "don't think that of me. I should be as thankful t' have her for a sister as thee wouldst t' have her for a daughter. I've no more thoughts about myself in that thing, and I shall take it hard if ever thee say'st it again." "Well, well, then thee shouldstna cross me wi' sayin' things arena as I say they are." "But, Mother," said Seth, "thee'dst be doing Dinah a wrong by telling Adam what thee think'st about her. It 'ud do nothing but mischief, for it 'ud make Adam uneasy if he doesna feel the same to her. And I'm pretty sure he feels nothing o' the sort." "Eh, donna tell me what thee't sure on; thee know'st nought about it. What's he allays goin' to the Poysers' for, if he didna want t' see her? He goes twice where he used t' go once. Happen he knowsna as he wants t' see her; he knowsna as I put salt in's broth, but he'd miss it pretty quick if it warna there. He'll ne'er think o' marrying if it isna put into's head, an' if thee'dst any love for thy mother, thee'dst put him up to't an' not let her go away out o' my sight, when I might ha' her to make a bit o' comfort for me afore I go to bed to my old man under the white thorn." "Nay, Mother," said Seth, "thee mustna think me unkind, but I should be going against my conscience if I took upon me to say what Dinah's feelings are. And besides that, I think I should give offence to Adam by speaking to him at all about marrying; and I counsel thee not to do't. Thee may'st be quite deceived about Dinah. Nay, I'm pretty sure, by words she said to me last Sabbath, as she's no mind to marry." "Eh, thee't as contrairy as the rest on 'em. If it war summat I didna want, it 'ud be done fast enough." Lisbeth rose from the bench at this, and went out of the workshop, leaving Seth in much anxiety lest she should disturb Adam's mind about Dinah. He consoled himself after a time with reflecting that, since Adam's trouble, Lisbeth had been very timid about speaking to him on matters of feeling, and that she would hardly dare to approach this tenderest of all subjects. Even if she did, he hoped Adam would not take much notice of what she said. Seth was right in believing that Lisbeth would be held in restraint by timidity, and during the next three days, the intervals in which she had an opportunity of speaking to Adam were too rare and short to cause her any strong temptation. But in her long solitary hours she brooded over her regretful thoughts about Dinah, till they had grown very near that point of unmanageable strength when thoughts are apt to take wing out of their secret nest in a startling manner. And on Sunday morning, when Seth went away to chapel at Treddleston, the dangerous opportunity came. Sunday morning was the happiest time in all the week to Lisbeth, for as there was no service at Hayslope church till the afternoon, Adam was always at home, doing nothing but reading, an occupation in which she could venture to interrupt him. Moreover, she had always a better dinner than usual to prepare for her sons--very frequently for Adam and herself alone, Seth being often away the entire day--and the smell of the roast meat before the clear fire in the clean kitchen, the clock ticking in a peaceful Sunday manner, her darling Adam seated near her in his best clothes, doing nothing very important, so that she could go and stroke her hand across his hair if she liked, and see him look up at her and smile, while Gyp, rather jealous, poked his muzzle up between them--all these things made poor Lisbeth's earthly paradise. The book Adam most often read on a Sunday morning was his large pictured Bible, and this morning it lay open before him on the round white deal table in the kitchen; for he sat there in spite of the fire, because he knew his mother liked to have him with her, and it was the only day in the week when he could indulge her in that way. You would have liked to see Adam reading his Bible. He never opened it on a weekday, and so he came to it as a holiday book, serving him for history, biography, and poetry. He held one hand thrust between his waistcoat buttons, and the other ready to turn the pages, and in the course of the morning you would have seen many changes in his face. Sometimes his lips moved in semi-articulation--it was when he came to a speech that he could fancy himself uttering, such as Samuel's dying speech to the people; then his eyebrows would be raised, and the corners of his mouth would quiver a little with sad sympathy--something, perhaps old Isaac's meeting with his son, touched him closely; at other times, over the New Testament, a very solemn look would come upon his face, and he would every now and then shake his head in serious assent, or just lift up his hand and let it fall again. And on some mornings, when he read in the Apocrypha, of which he was very fond, the son of Sirach's keen-edged words would bring a delighted smile, though he also enjoyed the freedom of occasionally differing from an Apocryphal writer. For Adam knew the Articles quite well, as became a good churchman. Lisbeth, in the pauses of attending to her dinner, always sat opposite to him and watched him, till she could rest no longer without going up to him and giving him a caress, to call his attention to her. This morning he was reading the Gospel according to St. Matthew, and Lisbeth had been standing close by him for some minutes, stroking his hair, which was smoother than usual this morning, and looking down at the large page with silent wonderment at the mystery of letters. She was encouraged to continue this caress, because when she first went up to him, he had thrown himself back in his chair to look at her affectionately and say, "Why, Mother, thee look'st rare and hearty this morning. Eh, Gyp wants me t' look at him. He can't abide to think I love thee the best." Lisbeth said nothing, because she wanted to say so many things. And now there was a new leaf to be turned over, and it was a picture--that of the angel seated on the great stone that has been rolled away from the sepulchre. This picture had one strong association in Lisbeth's memory, for she had been reminded of it when she first saw Dinah, and Adam had no sooner turned the page, and lifted the book sideways that they might look at the angel, than she said, "That's her--that's Dinah." Adam smiled, and, looking more intently at the angel's face, said, "It is a bit like her; but Dinah's prettier, I think." "Well, then, if thee think'st her so pretty, why arn't fond on her?" Adam looked up in surprise. "Why, Mother, dost think I don't set store by Dinah?" "Nay," said Lisbeth, frightened at her own courage, yet feeling that she had broken the ice, and the waters must flow, whatever mischief they might do. "What's th' use o' settin' store by things as are thirty mile off? If thee wast fond enough on her, thee wouldstna let her go away." "But I've no right t' hinder her, if she thinks well," said Adam, looking at his book as if he wanted to go on reading. He foresaw a series of complaints tending to nothing. Lisbeth sat down again in the chair opposite to him, as she said: "But she wouldna think well if thee wastna so contrairy." Lisbeth dared not venture beyond a vague phrase yet. "Contrairy, mother?" Adam said, looking up again in some anxiety. "What have I done? What dost mean?" "Why, thee't never look at nothin', nor think o' nothin', but thy figurin, an' thy work," said Lisbeth, half-crying. "An' dost think thee canst go on so all thy life, as if thee wast a man cut out o' timber? An' what wut do when thy mother's gone, an' nobody to take care on thee as thee gett'st a bit o' victual comfortable i' the mornin'?" "What hast got i' thy mind, Mother?" said Adam, vexed at this whimpering. "I canna see what thee't driving at. Is there anything I could do for thee as I don't do?" "Aye, an' that there is. Thee might'st do as I should ha' somebody wi' me to comfort me a bit, an' wait on me when I'm bad, an' be good to me." "Well, Mother, whose fault is it there isna some tidy body i' th' house t' help thee? It isna by my wish as thee hast a stroke o' work to do. We can afford it--I've told thee often enough. It 'ud be a deal better for us." "Eh, what's the use o' talking o' tidy bodies, when thee mean'st one o' th' wenches out o' th' village, or somebody from Treddles'on as I ne'er set eyes on i' my life? I'd sooner make a shift an' get into my own coffin afore I die, nor ha' them folks to put me in." Adam was silent, and tried to go on reading. That was the utmost severity he could show towards his mother on a Sunday morning. But Lisbeth had gone too far now to check herself, and after scarcely a minute's quietness she began again. "Thee mightst know well enough who 'tis I'd like t' ha' wi' me. It isna many folks I send for t' come an' see me. I reckon. An' thee'st had the fetchin' on her times enow." "Thee mean'st Dinah, Mother, I know," said Adam. "But it's no use setting thy mind on what can't be. If Dinah 'ud be willing to stay at Hayslope, it isn't likely she can come away from her aunt's house, where they hold her like a daughter, and where she's more bound than she is to us. If it had been so that she could ha' married Seth, that 'ud ha' been a great blessing to us, but we can't have things just as we like in this life. Thee must try and make up thy mind to do without her." "Nay, but I canna ma' up my mind, when she's just cut out for thee; an' nought shall ma' me believe as God didna make her an' send her there o' purpose for thee. What's it sinnify about her bein' a Methody! It 'ud happen wear out on her wi' marryin'." Adam threw himself back in his chair and looked at his mother. He understood now what she had been aiming at from the beginning of the conversation. It was as unreasonable, impracticable a wish as she had ever urged, but he could not help being moved by so entirely new an idea. The chief point, however, was to chase away the notion from his mother's mind as quickly as possible. "Mother," he said, gravely, "thee't talking wild. Don't let me hear thee say such things again. It's no good talking o' what can never be. Dinah's not for marrying; she's fixed her heart on a different sort o' life." "Very like," said Lisbeth, impatiently, "very like she's none for marr'ing, when them as she'd be willin' t' marry wonna ax her. I shouldna ha' been for marr'ing thy feyther if he'd ne'er axed me; an' she's as fond o' thee as e'er I war o' Thias, poor fellow." The blood rushed to Adam's face, and for a few moments he was not quite conscious where he was. His mother and the kitchen had vanished for him, and he saw nothing but Dinah's face turned up towards his. It seemed as if there were a resurrection of his dead joy. But he woke up very speedily from that dream (the waking was chill and sad), for it would have been very foolish in him to believe his mother's words--she could have no ground for them. He was prompted to express his disbelief very strongly--perhaps that he might call forth the proofs, if there were any to be offered. "What dost say such things for, Mother, when thee'st got no foundation for 'em? Thee know'st nothing as gives thee a right to say that." "Then I knowna nought as gi'es me a right to say as the year's turned, for all I feel it fust thing when I get up i' th' morning. She isna fond o' Seth, I reckon, is she? She doesna want to marry HIM? But I can see as she doesna behave tow'rt thee as she daes tow'rt Seth. She makes no more o' Seth's coming a-nigh her nor if he war Gyp, but she's all of a tremble when thee't a-sittin' down by her at breakfast an' a-looking at her. Thee think'st thy mother knows nought, but she war alive afore thee wast born." "But thee canstna be sure as the trembling means love?" said Adam anxiously. "Eh, what else should it mane? It isna hate, I reckon. An' what should she do but love thee? Thee't made to be loved--for where's there a straighter cliverer man? An' what's it sinnify her bein' a Methody? It's on'y the marigold i' th' parridge." Adam had thrust his hands in his pockets, and was looking down at the book on the table, without seeing any of the letters. He was trembling like a gold-seeker who sees the strong promise of gold but sees in the same moment a sickening vision of disappointment. He could not trust his mother's insight; she had seen what she wished to see. And yet--and yet, now the suggestion had been made to him, he remembered so many things, very slight things, like the stirring of the water by an imperceptible breeze, which seemed to him some confirmation of his mother's words. Lisbeth noticed that he was moved. She went on, "An' thee't find out as thee't poorly aff when she's gone. Thee't fonder on her nor thee know'st. Thy eyes follow her about, welly as Gyp's follow thee." Adam could sit still no longer. He rose, took down his hat, and went out into the fields. The sunshine was on them: that early autumn sunshine which we should know was not summer's, even if there were not the touches of yellow on the lime and chestnut; the Sunday sunshine too, which has more than autumnal calmness for the working man; the morning sunshine, which still leaves the dew-crystals on the fine gossamer webs in the shadow of the bushy hedgerows. Adam needed the calm influence; he was amazed at the way in which this new thought of Dinah's love had taken possession of him, with an overmastering power that made all other feelings give way before the impetuous desire to know that the thought was true. Strange, that till that moment the possibility of their ever being lovers had never crossed his mind, and yet now, all his longing suddenly went out towards that possibility. He had no more doubt or hesitation as to his own wishes than the bird that flies towards the opening through which the daylight gleams and the breath of heaven enters. The autumnal Sunday sunshine soothed him, but not by preparing him with resignation to the disappointment if his mother--if he himself--proved to be mistaken about Dinah. It soothed him by gentle encouragement of his hopes. Her love was so like that calm sunshine that they seemed to make one presence to him, and he believed in them both alike. And Dinah was so bound up with the sad memories of his first passion that he was not forsaking them, but rather giving them a new sacredness by loving her. Nay, his love for her had grown out of that past: it was the noon of that morning. But Seth? Would the lad be hurt? Hardly; for he had seemed quite contented of late, and there was no selfish jealousy in him; he had never been jealous of his mother's fondness for Adam. But had he seen anything of what their mother talked about? Adam longed to know this, for he thought he could trust Seth's observation better than his mother's. He must talk to Seth before he went to see Dinah, and, with this intention in his mind, he walked back to the cottage and said to his mother, "Did Seth say anything to thee about when he was coming home? Will he be back to dinner?" "Aye, lad, he'll be back for a wonder. He isna gone to Treddles'on. He's gone somewhere else a-preachin' and a-prayin'." "Hast any notion which way he's gone?" said Adam. "Nay, but he aften goes to th' Common. Thee know'st more o's goings nor I do." Adam wanted to go and meet Seth, but he must content himself with walking about the near fields and getting sight of him as soon as possible. That would not be for more than an hour to come, for Seth would scarcely be at home much before their dinner-time, which was twelve o'clock. But Adam could not sit down to his reading again, and he sauntered along by the brook and stood leaning against the stiles, with eager intense eyes, which looked as if they saw something very vividly; but it was not the brook or the willows, not the fields or the sky. Again and again his vision was interrupted by wonder at the strength of his own feeling, at the strength and sweetness of this new love--almost like the wonder a man feels at the added power he finds in himself for an art which he had laid aside for a space. How is it that the poets have said so many fine things about our first love, so few about our later love? Are their first poems their best? Or are not those the best which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their deeper-rooted affections? The boy's flutelike voice has its own spring charm; but the man should yield a richer deeper music. At last, there was Seth, visible at the farthest stile, and Adam hastened to meet him. Seth was surprised, and thought something unusual must have happened, but when Adam came up, his face said plainly enough that it was nothing alarming. "Where hast been?" said Adam, when they were side by side. "I've been to the Common," said Seth. "Dinah's been speaking the Word to a little company of hearers at Brimstone's, as they call him. They're folks as never go to church hardly--them on the Common--but they'll go and hear Dinah a bit. She's been speaking with power this forenoon from the words, 'I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.' And there was a little thing happened as was pretty to see. The women mostly bring their children with 'em, but to-day there was one stout curly headed fellow about three or four year old, that I never saw there before. He was as naughty as could be at the beginning while I was praying, and while we was singing, but when we all sat down and Dinah began to speak, th' young un stood stock still all at once, and began to look at her with's mouth open, and presently he ran away from's mother and went to Dinah, and pulled at her, like a little dog, for her to take notice of him. So Dinah lifted him up and held th' lad on her lap, while she went on speaking; and he was as good as could be till he went to sleep--and the mother cried to see him." "It's a pity she shouldna be a mother herself," said Adam, "so fond as the children are of her. Dost think she's quite fixed against marrying, Seth? Dost think nothing 'ud turn her?" There was something peculiar in his brother's tone, which made Seth steal a glance at his face before he answered. "It 'ud be wrong of me to say nothing 'ud turn her," he answered. "But if thee mean'st it about myself, I've given up all thoughts as she can ever be my wife. She calls me her brother, and that's enough." "But dost think she might ever get fond enough of anybody else to be willing to marry 'em?" said Adam rather shyly. "Well," said Seth, after some hesitation, "it's crossed my mind sometimes o' late as she might; but Dinah 'ud let no fondness for the creature draw her out o' the path as she believed God had marked out for her. If she thought the leading was not from Him, she's not one to be brought under the power of it. And she's allays seemed clear about that--as her work was to minister t' others, and make no home for herself i' this world." "But suppose," said Adam, earnestly, "suppose there was a man as 'ud let her do just the same and not interfere with her--she might do a good deal o' what she does now, just as well when she was married as when she was single. Other women of her sort have married--that's to say, not just like her, but women as preached and attended on the sick and needy. There's Mrs. Fletcher as she talks of." A new light had broken in on Seth. He turned round, and laying his hand on Adam's shoulder, said, "Why, wouldst like her to marry THEE, Brother?" Adam looked doubtfully at Seth's inquiring eyes and said, "Wouldst be hurt if she was to be fonder o' me than o' thee?" "Nay," said Seth warmly, "how canst think it? Have I felt thy trouble so little that I shouldna feel thy joy?" There was silence a few moments as they walked on, and then Seth said, "I'd no notion as thee'dst ever think of her for a wife." "But is it o' any use to think of her?" said Adam. "What dost say? Mother's made me as I hardly know where I am, with what she's been saying to me this forenoon. She says she's sure Dinah feels for me more than common, and 'ud be willing t' have me. But I'm afraid she speaks without book. I want to know if thee'st seen anything." "It's a nice point to speak about," said Seth, "and I'm afraid o' being wrong; besides, we've no right t' intermeddle with people's feelings when they wouldn't tell 'em themselves." Seth paused. "But thee mightst ask her," he said presently. "She took no offence at me for asking, and thee'st more right than I had, only thee't not in the Society. But Dinah doesn't hold wi' them as are for keeping the Society so strict to themselves. She doesn't mind about making folks enter the Society, so as they're fit t' enter the kingdom o' God. Some o' the brethren at Treddles'on are displeased with her for that." "Where will she be the rest o' the day?" said Adam. "She said she shouldn't leave the farm again to-day," said Seth, "because it's her last Sabbath there, and she's going t' read out o' the big Bible wi' the children." Adam thought--but did not say--"Then I'll go this afternoon; for if I go to church, my thoughts 'ull be with her all the while. They must sing th' anthem without me to-day."

Chapter 51

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter51

Sunday Morning Dinah is questioned by Lisbeth about her leaving. Lisbeth complains that she hasn't long to live and will never see Dinah again. Then she launches into a topic embarrassing to Dinah: a husband. Lisbeth admits Seth is not the right husband, but asks her what she thinks of Adam? He would be a proper husband. Dinah escapes as soon as she can for the Hall Farm. When Seth comes in, Lisbeth says to him that Dinah would stay if Adam would marry her. Seth is surprised and asks Lisbeth if Dinah has said so. Lisbeth says it is written all over her. Sunday mornings are the happiest for Lisbeth, because Adam stays home and reads his Bible in the same room with her. She makes up her mind to speak to Adam about Dinah, but doesn't know how to begin. When she sees in Adam's Bible the picture of the angel on Christ's tomb, she blurts out, "That's her--that's Dinah" . Lisbeth uses this to start the conversation where she tells Adam he should marry Dinah; they were meant for each other, and Dinah loves him. He is struck by this idea and feels "a resurrection of his dead joy" . He decides to talk to Seth about it since he was the one who wanted to marry Dinah. Seth is unselfish and says he will not stand in the way, but he is sure Dinah doesn't want to marry because of her calling.

Commentary on Chapter 51 Lisbeth has been a secondary character, but here she takes a part in shaping the outcome of the story. Though she is afraid of displeasing Adam, she sees right through Dinah's feelings, and she decides to take a chance to tell Adam about it. She, like Mrs. Poyser, does not want to part with Dinah, and has always dreamed of having her for a daughter-in-law. She is very particular whom she will let in the house, not even allowing a hired servant. Dinah is Lisbeth's own best insurance for a happy old age, but more than that, finally she has grown to the point where she wants happiness for her son. Opposed to her sons' marriage in the beginning, she knows she hasn't long to live, and wants to see Adam settled with a good wife. The narrator mentions that the tragedy had affected her too, that it had quieted down her selfish demands. For once, Adam listens to his mother because she is wise in this matter. His sudden conversion from being blind to love to completely open to the suggestion may strain the belief of some, but it is not uncommon in grief to be unable to imagine loving again. He was so used to Dinah as a sister that the other suggestion never directly entered his mind. Adam is a man of action, however, and does not waste time as soon as he gets the point. Seth may seem too good to be true as the completely unselfish brother without the slightest trace of jealousy, but it is in keeping with his character and religion. He has made it plain he would like to be around Dinah in any way possible.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/52.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_52_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 6.chapter 52

chapter 52

{"name": "Chapter 52", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter52", "summary": "Adam and Dinah Adam walks to Hall Farm while the family is at church. He does not go to church so he can speak to Dinah alone. Dinah blushes as usual when Adam enters. They are both awkward with each other, but finally Adam blurts out that he loves her. She trembles with joy, crying, and returns his love but explains she has to submit to God's will to do his work. She is going away to resist temptation. She has known the perfect joy of having no personal life of her own, and she is afraid she will lose this blessedness of helping others and living in the divine will. If she has doubts about it, their love will not be a blessing. Adam says he will not urge her against her conscience and will resign himself if he has to. She says she would like to test it out by going to Snowfield for a while to see if it is true she is called back. He agrees to the test. They walk out to meet the Poysers coming back from church. The Poysers are surprised to see the couple walking together and wonder if they are courting. The narrator ends the chapter with a long reminiscent essay on how beautiful and slow country life was in the days of Adam Bede.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 52 This courting scene contrasts with the clandestine and violent nature of Arthur's and Hetty's affair. Adam and Dinah are honest about their feelings for one another. Dinah raises the difficulty for her of her faith and work. For Adam, their love is part of God's doing and will, but for Dinah who has known the happiness of a nun's devotion to God, it is a temptation. She has married God, and now she does not know what to do when she is in love with a man. Adam does not fight her doubt but wisely agrees to the test. He could push, but he respects Dinah too much, and it would be the surest way to lose her. She has to wait for a clear conscience. Eliot shows an ideal relationship where a couple work things out together and meet on the soul level, rather than the level of pride and ego. They both want what is best and most unselfish."}

IT was about three o'clock when Adam entered the farmyard and roused Alick and the dogs from their Sunday dozing. Alick said everybody was gone to church "but th' young missis"--so he called Dinah--but this did not disappoint Adam, although the "everybody" was so liberal as to include Nancy the dairymaid, whose works of necessity were not unfrequently incompatible with church-going. There was perfect stillness about the house. The doors were all closed, and the very stones and tubs seemed quieter than usual. Adam heard the water gently dripping from the pump--that was the only sound--and he knocked at the house door rather softly, as was suitable in that stillness. The door opened, and Dinah stood before him, colouring deeply with the great surprise of seeing Adam at this hour, when she knew it was his regular practice to be at church. Yesterday he would have said to her without any difficulty, "I came to see you, Dinah: I knew the rest were not at home." But to-day something prevented him from saying that, and he put out his hand to her in silence. Neither of them spoke, and yet both wished they could speak, as Adam entered, and they sat down. Dinah took the chair she had just left; it was at the corner of the table near the window, and there was a book lying on the table, but it was not open. She had been sitting perfectly still, looking at the small bit of clear fire in the bright grate. Adam sat down opposite her, in Mr. Poyser's three-cornered chair. "Your mother is not ill again, I hope, Adam?" Dinah said, recovering herself. "Seth said she was well this morning." "No, she's very hearty to-day," said Adam, happy in the signs of Dinah's feeling at the sight of him, but shy. "There's nobody at home, you see," Dinah said; "but you'll wait. You've been hindered from going to church to-day, doubtless." "Yes," Adam said, and then paused, before he added, "I was thinking about you: that was the reason." This confession was very awkward and sudden, Adam felt, for he thought Dinah must understand all he meant. But the frankness of the words caused her immediately to interpret them into a renewal of his brotherly regrets that she was going away, and she answered calmly, "Do not be careful and troubled for me, Adam. I have all things and abound at Snowfield. And my mind is at rest, for I am not seeking my own will in going." "But if things were different, Dinah," said Adam, hesitatingly. "If you knew things that perhaps you don't know now...." Dinah looked at him inquiringly, but instead of going on, he reached a chair and brought it near the corner of the table where she was sitting. She wondered, and was afraid--and the next moment her thoughts flew to the past: was it something about those distant unhappy ones that she didn't know? Adam looked at her. It was so sweet to look at her eyes, which had now a self-forgetful questioning in them--for a moment he forgot that he wanted to say anything, or that it was necessary to tell her what he meant. "Dinah," he said suddenly, taking both her hands between his, "I love you with my whole heart and soul. I love you next to God who made me." Dinah's lips became pale, like her cheeks, and she trembled violently under the shock of painful joy. Her hands were cold as death between Adam's. She could not draw them away, because he held them fast. "Don't tell me you can't love me, Dinah. Don't tell me we must part and pass our lives away from one another." The tears were trembling in Dinah's eyes, and they fell before she could answer. But she spoke in a quiet low voice. "Yes, dear Adam, we must submit to another Will. We must part." "Not if you love me, Dinah--not if you love me," Adam said passionately. "Tell me--tell me if you can love me better than a brother?" Dinah was too entirely reliant on the Supreme guidance to attempt to achieve any end by a deceptive concealment. She was recovering now from the first shock of emotion, and she looked at Adam with simple sincere eyes as she said, "Yes, Adam, my heart is drawn strongly towards you; and of my own will, if I had no clear showing to the contrary, I could find my happiness in being near you and ministering to you continually. I fear I should forget to rejoice and weep with others; nay, I fear I should forget the Divine presence, and seek no love but yours." Adam did not speak immediately. They sat looking at each other in delicious silence--for the first sense of mutual love excludes other feelings; it will have the soul all to itself. "Then, Dinah," Adam said at last, "how can there be anything contrary to what's right in our belonging to one another and spending our lives together? Who put this great love into our hearts? Can anything be holier than that? For we can help one another in everything as is good. I'd never think o' putting myself between you and God, and saying you oughtn't to do this and you oughtn't to do that. You'd follow your conscience as much as you do now." "Yes, Adam," Dinah said, "I know marriage is a holy state for those who are truly called to it, and have no other drawing; but from my childhood upwards I have been led towards another path; all my peace and my joy have come from having no life of my own, no wants, no wishes for myself, and living only in God and those of his creatures whose sorrows and joys he has given me to know. Those have been very blessed years to me, and I feel that if I was to listen to any voice that would draw me aside from that path, I should be turning my back on the light that has shone upon me, and darkness and doubt would take hold of me. We could not bless each other, Adam, if there were doubts in my soul, and if I yearned, when it was too late, after that better part which had once been given me and I had put away from me." "But if a new feeling has come into your mind, Dinah, and if you love me so as to be willing to be nearer to me than to other people, isn't that a sign that it's right for you to change your life? Doesn't the love make it right when nothing else would?" "Adam, my mind is full of questionings about that; for now, since you tell me of your strong love towards me, what was clear to me has become dark again. I felt before that my heart was too strongly drawn towards you, and that your heart was not as mine; and the thought of you had taken hold of me, so that my soul had lost its freedom, and was becoming enslaved to an earthly affection, which made me anxious and careful about what should befall myself. For in all other affection I had been content with any small return, or with none; but my heart was beginning to hunger after an equal love from you. And I had no doubt that I must wrestle against that as a great temptation, and the command was clear that I must go away." "But now, dear, dear Dinah, now you know I love you better than you love me...it's all different now. You won't think o' going. You'll stay, and be my dear wife, and I shall thank God for giving me my life as I never thanked him before." "Adam, it's hard to me to turn a deaf ear...you know it's hard; but a great fear is upon me. It seems to me as if you were stretching out your arms to me, and beckoning me to come and take my ease and live for my own delight, and Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, was standing looking towards me, and pointing to the sinful, and suffering, and afflicted. I have seen that again and again when I have been sitting in stillness and darkness, and a great terror has come upon me lest I should become hard, and a lover of self, and no more bear willingly the Redeemer's cross." Dinah had closed her eyes, and a faint shudder went through her. "Adam," she went on, "you wouldn't desire that we should seek a good through any unfaithfulness to the light that is in us; you wouldn't believe that could be a good. We are of one mind in that." "Yes, Dinah," said Adam sadly, "I'll never be the man t' urge you against your conscience. But I can't give up the hope that you may come to see different. I don't believe your loving me could shut up your heart--it's only adding to what you've been before, not taking away from it. For it seems to me it's the same with love and happiness as with sorrow--the more we know of it the better we can feel what other people's lives are or might be, and so we shall only be more tender to 'em, and wishful to help 'em. The more knowledge a man has, the better he'll do's work; and feeling's a sort o' knowledge." Dinah was silent; her eyes were fixed in contemplation of something visible only to herself. Adam went on presently with his pleading, "And you can do almost as much as you do now. I won't ask you to go to church with me of a Sunday. You shall go where you like among the people, and teach 'em; for though I like church best, I don't put my soul above yours, as if my words was better for you to follow than your own conscience. And you can help the sick just as much, and you'll have more means o' making 'em a bit comfortable; and you'll be among all your own friends as love you, and can help 'em and be a blessing to 'em till their dying day. Surely, Dinah, you'd be as near to God as if you was living lonely and away from me." Dinah made no answer for some time. Adam was still holding her hands and looking at her with almost trembling anxiety, when she turned her grave loving eyes on his and said, in rather a sad voice, "Adam there is truth in what you say, and there's many of the brethren and sisters who have greater strength than I have, and find their hearts enlarged by the cares of husband and kindred. But I have not faith that it would be so with me, for since my affections have been set above measure on you, I have had less peace and joy in God. I have felt as it were a division in my heart. And think how it is with me, Adam. That life I have led is like a land I have trodden in blessedness since my childhood; and if I long for a moment to follow the voice which calls me to another land that I know not, I cannot but fear that my soul might hereafter yearn for that early blessedness which I had forsaken; and where doubt enters there is not perfect love. I must wait for clearer guidance. I must go from you, and we must submit ourselves entirely to the Divine Will. We are sometimes required to lay our natural lawful affections on the altar." Adam dared not plead again, for Dinah's was not the voice of caprice or insincerity. But it was very hard for him; his eyes got dim as he looked at her. "But you may come to feel satisfied...to feel that you may come to me again, and we may never part, Dinah?" "We must submit ourselves, Adam. With time, our duty will be made clear. It may be when I have entered on my former life, I shall find all these new thoughts and wishes vanish, and become as things that were not. Then I shall know that my calling is not towards marriage. But we must wait." "Dinah," said Adam mournfully, "you can't love me so well as I love you, else you'd have no doubts. But it's natural you shouldn't, for I'm not so good as you. I can't doubt it's right for me to love the best thing God's ever given me to know." "Nay, Adam. It seems to me that my love for you is not weak, for my heart waits on your words and looks, almost as a little child waits on the help and tenderness of the strong on whom it depends. If the thought of you took slight hold of me, I should not fear that it would be an idol in the temple. But you will strengthen me--you will not hinder me in seeking to obey to the uttermost." "Let us go out into the sunshine, Dinah, and walk together. I'll speak no word to disturb you." They went out and walked towards the fields, where they would meet the family coming from church. Adam said, "Take my arm, Dinah," and she took it. That was the only change in their manner to each other since they were last walking together. But no sadness in the prospect of her going away--in the uncertainty of the issue--could rob the sweetness from Adam's sense that Dinah loved him. He thought he would stay at the Hall Farm all that evening. He would be near her as long as he could. "Hey-day! There's Adam along wi' Dinah," said Mr. Poyser, as he opened the far gate into the Home Close. "I couldna think how he happened away from church. Why," added good Martin, after a moment's pause, "what dost think has just jumped into my head?" "Summat as hadna far to jump, for it's just under our nose. You mean as Adam's fond o' Dinah." "Aye! hast ever had any notion of it before?" "To be sure I have," said Mrs. Poyser, who always declined, if possible, to be taken by surprise. "I'm not one o' those as can see the cat i' the dairy an' wonder what she's come after." "Thee never saidst a word to me about it." "Well, I aren't like a bird-clapper, forced to make a rattle when the wind blows on me. I can keep my own counsel when there's no good i' speaking." "But Dinah 'll ha' none o' him. Dost think she will?" "Nay," said Mrs. Poyser, not sufficiently on her guard against a possible surprise, "she'll never marry anybody, if he isn't a Methodist and a cripple." "It 'ud ha' been a pretty thing though for 'em t' marry," said Martin, turning his head on one side, as if in pleased contemplation of his new idea. "Thee'dst ha' liked it too, wouldstna?" "Ah! I should. I should ha' been sure of her then, as she wouldn't go away from me to Snowfield, welly thirty mile off, and me not got a creatur to look to, only neighbours, as are no kin to me, an' most of 'em women as I'd be ashamed to show my face, if my dairy things war like their'n. There may well be streaky butter i' the market. An' I should be glad to see the poor thing settled like a Christian woman, with a house of her own over her head; and we'd stock her well wi' linen and feathers, for I love her next to my own children. An' she makes one feel safer when she's i' the house, for she's like the driven snow: anybody might sin for two as had her at their elbow." "Dinah," said Tommy, running forward to meet her, "mother says you'll never marry anybody but a Methodist cripple. What a silly you must be!" a comment which Tommy followed up by seizing Dinah with both arms, and dancing along by her side with incommodious fondness. "Why, Adam, we missed you i' the singing to-day," said Mr. Poyser. "How was it?" "I wanted to see Dinah--she's going away so soon," said Adam. "Ah, lad! Can you persuade her to stop somehow? Find her a good husband somewhere i' the parish. If you'll do that, we'll forgive you for missing church. But, anyway, she isna going before the harvest supper o' Wednesday, and you must come then. There's Bartle Massey comin', an' happen Craig. You'll be sure an' come, now, at seven? The missis wunna have it a bit later." "Aye," said Adam, "I'll come if I can. But I can't often say what I'll do beforehand, for the work often holds me longer than I expect. You'll stay till the end o' the week, Dinah?" "Yes, yes!" said Mr. Poyser. "We'll have no nay." "She's no call to be in a hurry," observed Mrs. Poyser. "Scarceness o' victual 'ull keep: there's no need to be hasty wi' the cooking. An' scarceness is what there's the biggest stock of i' that country." Dinah smiled, but gave no promise to stay, and they talked of other things through the rest of the walk, lingering in the sunshine to look at the great flock of geese grazing, at the new corn-ricks, and at the surprising abundance of fruit on the old pear-tree; Nancy and Molly having already hastened home, side by side, each holding, carefully wrapped in her pocket-handkerchief, a prayer-book, in which she could read little beyond the large letters and the Amens. Surely all other leisure is hurry compared with a sunny walk through the fields from "afternoon church"--as such walks used to be in those old leisurely times, when the boat, gliding sleepily along the canal, was the newest locomotive wonder; when Sunday books had most of them old brown-leather covers, and opened with remarkable precision always in one place. Leisure is gone--gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow waggons, and the pedlars, who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons. Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them: it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in. Even idleness is eager now--eager for amusement; prone to excursion-trains, art museums, periodical literature, and exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing and cursory peeps through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a different personage. He only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was free from that periodicity of sensations which we call post-time. He was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion; of quiet perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis; happy in his inability to know the causes of things, preferring the things themselves. He lived chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, and was fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree wall and scenting the apricots when they were warmed by the morning sunshine, or of sheltering himself under the orchard boughs at noon, when the summer pears were falling. He knew nothing of weekday services, and thought none the worse of the Sunday sermon if it allowed him to sleep from the text to the blessing; liking the afternoon service best, because the prayers were the shortest, and not ashamed to say so; for he had an easy, jolly conscience, broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal of beer or port-wine, not being made squeamish by doubts and qualms and lofty aspirations. Life was not a task to him, but a sinecure. He fingered the guineas in his pocket, and ate his dinners, and slept the sleep of the irresponsible, for had he not kept up his character by going to church on the Sunday afternoons? Fine old Leisure! Do not be severe upon him, and judge him by our modern standard. He never went to Exeter Hall, or heard a popular preacher, or read Tracts for the Times or Sartor Resartus.

Chapter 52

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter52

Adam and Dinah Adam walks to Hall Farm while the family is at church. He does not go to church so he can speak to Dinah alone. Dinah blushes as usual when Adam enters. They are both awkward with each other, but finally Adam blurts out that he loves her. She trembles with joy, crying, and returns his love but explains she has to submit to God's will to do his work. She is going away to resist temptation. She has known the perfect joy of having no personal life of her own, and she is afraid she will lose this blessedness of helping others and living in the divine will. If she has doubts about it, their love will not be a blessing. Adam says he will not urge her against her conscience and will resign himself if he has to. She says she would like to test it out by going to Snowfield for a while to see if it is true she is called back. He agrees to the test. They walk out to meet the Poysers coming back from church. The Poysers are surprised to see the couple walking together and wonder if they are courting. The narrator ends the chapter with a long reminiscent essay on how beautiful and slow country life was in the days of Adam Bede.

Commentary on Chapter 52 This courting scene contrasts with the clandestine and violent nature of Arthur's and Hetty's affair. Adam and Dinah are honest about their feelings for one another. Dinah raises the difficulty for her of her faith and work. For Adam, their love is part of God's doing and will, but for Dinah who has known the happiness of a nun's devotion to God, it is a temptation. She has married God, and now she does not know what to do when she is in love with a man. Adam does not fight her doubt but wisely agrees to the test. He could push, but he respects Dinah too much, and it would be the surest way to lose her. She has to wait for a clear conscience. Eliot shows an ideal relationship where a couple work things out together and meet on the soul level, rather than the level of pride and ego. They both want what is best and most unselfish.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/53.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_53_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 6.chapter 53

chapter 53

{"name": "Chapter 53", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter53", "summary": "The Harvest Supper It is the time of country harvest, with the barley rolling by on the loaded wagons. The beauty of the country strikes Adam \"like a funeral-bell\" for \"there's a parting at the root of all our joys\" . It is the time of thanksgiving, though, and he realizes that out of the sorrow of Hetty came the joy of Dinah, an even greater love. He goes to the harvest supper at the Hall Farm, hoping Dinah has not yet left. He does not see her there but does not learn until later that she is already gone to Snowfield. Meanwhile, the ritual of the feast is presided over by Martin Poyser, who is proud to serve the beer and roast beef to family, friends, and farm hands. There is singing and toasting, as the reader is introduced to various colorful farm workers. A comic political discussion about Bonaparte and the French illustrates the ignorance of the country folk about the greater world affairs. The comic highlight, however, is an exchange of wit between Bartle Massey and Mrs. Poyser on the difference between men and women, Bartle denouncing women, and Mrs. Poyser denouncing men. Finally Adam and Bartle Massey walk home together, and Adam says that even though Mrs. Poyser has a sharp tongue, she is a woman better than her word, who is there in time of need and trouble.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 53 This is a bit of comedy and local color to round out the novel, serving to bring us back to the pastoral mood of the setting. It was spring in the country in the beginning of the story, a kind of golden world of innocence where there was as yet no hint of tragedy. The bulk of the novel tells the disruption of that ideal life by one event that touches everyone. The novel ends in the autumn, a reaping of fruits, both good and bad. There has been sorrow, but new beginnings as well. The peace and harmony are being re-established, even though there has been a cost, and Adam is now reminded of the funeral bell underneath all joy. For the admirable characters, however, all life is transmuted by experience and suffering into something better, and these are the fruits they now enjoy together. The political talk of the Napoleonic war, a major event in English history, is felt as the faintest echo in Hayslope. The ignorant opinions bandied about over beer show how untouched this remote district is from larger world disturbances. The tragedy of Hetty has been the local event of importance and \"Bony\" is as real to the farmers as Old Harry that Mrs. Poyser keeps referring to . Arthur Donnithorne is the only character in their world to take part in events on both the local level and the national level, for he leaves Hayslope for the war. Eliot's tone towards the Hayslope community is elegiac, looking back to a landscape and a time that is gone forever. It contains her own childhood memories of country life and characters."}

As Adam was going homeward, on Wednesday evening, in the six o'clock sunlight, he saw in the distance the last load of barley winding its way towards the yard-gate of the Hall Farm, and heard the chant of "Harvest Home!" rising and sinking like a wave. Fainter and fainter, and more musical through the growing distance, the falling dying sound still reached him, as he neared the Willow Brook. The low westering sun shone right on the shoulders of the old Binton Hills, turning the unconscious sheep into bright spots of light; shone on the windows of the cottage too, and made them a-flame with a glory beyond that of amber or amethyst. It was enough to make Adam feel that he was in a great temple, and that the distant chant was a sacred song. "It's wonderful," he thought, "how that sound goes to one's heart almost like a funeral bell, for all it tells one o' the joyfullest time o' the year, and the time when men are mostly the thankfullest. I suppose it's a bit hard to us to think anything's over and gone in our lives; and there's a parting at the root of all our joys. It's like what I feel about Dinah. I should never ha' come to know that her love 'ud be the greatest o' blessings to me, if what I counted a blessing hadn't been wrenched and torn away from me, and left me with a greater need, so as I could crave and hunger for a greater and a better comfort." He expected to see Dinah again this evening, and get leave to accompany her as far as Oakbourne; and then he would ask her to fix some time when he might go to Snowfield, and learn whether the last best hope that had been born to him must be resigned like the rest. The work he had to do at home, besides putting on his best clothes, made it seven before he was on his way again to the Hall Farm, and it was questionable whether, with his longest and quickest strides, he should be there in time even for the roast beef, which came after the plum pudding, for Mrs. Poyser's supper would be punctual. Great was the clatter of knives and pewter plates and tin cans when Adam entered the house, but there was no hum of voices to this accompaniment: the eating of excellent roast beef, provided free of expense, was too serious a business to those good farm-labourers to be performed with a divided attention, even if they had had anything to say to each other--which they had not. And Mr. Poyser, at the head of the table, was too busy with his carving to listen to Bartle Massey's or Mr. Craig's ready talk. "Here, Adam," said Mrs. Poyser, who was standing and looking on to see that Molly and Nancy did their duty as waiters, "here's a place kept for you between Mr. Massey and the boys. It's a poor tale you couldn't come to see the pudding when it was whole." Adam looked anxiously round for a fourth woman's figure, but Dinah was not there. He was almost afraid of asking about her; besides, his attention was claimed by greetings, and there remained the hope that Dinah was in the house, though perhaps disinclined to festivities on the eve of her departure. It was a goodly sight--that table, with Martin Poyser's round good-humoured face and large person at the head of it helping his servants to the fragrant roast beef and pleased when the empty plates came again. Martin, though usually blest with a good appetite, really forgot to finish his own beef to-night--it was so pleasant to him to look on in the intervals of carving and see how the others enjoyed their supper; for were they not men who, on all the days of the year except Christmas Day and Sundays, ate their cold dinner, in a makeshift manner, under the hedgerows, and drank their beer out of wooden bottles--with relish certainly, but with their mouths towards the zenith, after a fashion more endurable to ducks than to human bipeds. Martin Poyser had some faint conception of the flavour such men must find in hot roast beef and fresh-drawn ale. He held his head on one side and screwed up his mouth, as he nudged Bartle Massey, and watched half-witted Tom Tholer, otherwise known as "Tom Saft," receiving his second plateful of beef. A grin of delight broke over Tom's face as the plate was set down before him, between his knife and fork, which he held erect, as if they had been sacred tapers. But the delight was too strong to continue smouldering in a grin--it burst out the next instant in a long-drawn "haw, haw!" followed by a sudden collapse into utter gravity, as the knife and fork darted down on the prey. Martin Poyser's large person shook with his silent unctuous laugh. He turned towards Mrs. Poyser to see if she too had been observant of Tom, and the eyes of husband and wife met in a glance of good-natured amusement. "Tom Saft" was a great favourite on the farm, where he played the part of the old jester, and made up for his practical deficiencies by his success in repartee. His hits, I imagine, were those of the flail, which falls quite at random, but nevertheless smashes an insect now and then. They were much quoted at sheep-shearing and haymaking times, but I refrain from recording them here, lest Tom's wit should prove to be like that of many other bygone jesters eminent in their day--rather of a temporary nature, not dealing with the deeper and more lasting relations of things. Tom excepted, Martin Poyser had some pride in his servants and labourers, thinking with satisfaction that they were the best worth their pay of any set on the estate. There was Kester Bale, for example (Beale, probably, if the truth were known, but he was called Bale, and was not conscious of any claim to a fifth letter), the old man with the close leather cap and the network of wrinkles on his sun-browned face. Was there any man in Loamshire who knew better the "natur" of all farming work? He was one of those invaluable labourers who can not only turn their hand to everything, but excel in everything they turn their hand to. It is true Kester's knees were much bent outward by this time, and he walked with a perpetual curtsy, as if he were among the most reverent of men. And so he was; but I am obliged to admit that the object of his reverence was his own skill, towards which he performed some rather affecting acts of worship. He always thatched the ricks--for if anything were his forte more than another, it was thatching--and when the last touch had been put to the last beehive rick, Kester, whose home lay at some distance from the farm, would take a walk to the rick-yard in his best clothes on a Sunday morning and stand in the lane, at a due distance, to contemplate his own thatching, walking about to get each rick from the proper point of view. As he curtsied along, with his eyes upturned to the straw knobs imitative of golden globes at the summits of the beehive ricks, which indeed were gold of the best sort, you might have imagined him to be engaged in some pagan act of adoration. Kester was an old bachelor and reputed to have stockings full of coin, concerning which his master cracked a joke with him every pay-night: not a new unseasoned joke, but a good old one, that had been tried many times before and had worn well. "Th' young measter's a merry mon," Kester frequently remarked; for having begun his career by frightening away the crows under the last Martin Poyser but one, he could never cease to account the reigning Martin a young master. I am not ashamed of commemorating old Kester. You and I are indebted to the hard hands of such men--hands that have long ago mingled with the soil they tilled so faithfully, thriftily making the best they could of the earth's fruits, and receiving the smallest share as their own wages. Then, at the end of the table, opposite his master, there was Alick, the shepherd and head-man, with the ruddy face and broad shoulders, not on the best terms with old Kester; indeed, their intercourse was confined to an occasional snarl, for though they probably differed little concerning hedging and ditching and the treatment of ewes, there was a profound difference of opinion between them as to their own respective merits. When Tityrus and Meliboeus happen to be on the same farm, they are not sentimentally polite to each other. Alick, indeed, was not by any means a honeyed man. His speech had usually something of a snarl in it, and his broad-shouldered aspect something of the bull-dog expression--"Don't you meddle with me, and I won't meddle with you." But he was honest even to the splitting of an oat-grain rather than he would take beyond his acknowledged share, and as "close-fisted" with his master's property as if it had been his own--throwing very small handfuls of damaged barley to the chickens, because a large handful affected his imagination painfully with a sense of profusion. Good-tempered Tim, the waggoner, who loved his horses, had his grudge against Alick in the matter of corn. They rarely spoke to each other, and never looked at each other, even over their dish of cold potatoes; but then, as this was their usual mode of behaviour towards all mankind, it would be an unsafe conclusion that they had more than transient fits of unfriendliness. The bucolic character at Hayslope, you perceive, was not of that entirely genial, merry, broad-grinning sort, apparently observed in most districts visited by artists. The mild radiance of a smile was a rare sight on a field-labourer's face, and there was seldom any gradation between bovine gravity and a laugh. Nor was every labourer so honest as our friend Alick. At this very table, among Mr. Poyser's men, there is that big Ben Tholoway, a very powerful thresher, but detected more than once in carrying away his master's corn in his pockets--an action which, as Ben was not a philosopher, could hardly be ascribed to absence of mind. However, his master had forgiven him, and continued to employ him, for the Tholoways had lived on the Common time out of mind, and had always worked for the Poysers. And on the whole, I daresay, society was not much the worse because Ben had not six months of it at the treadmill, for his views of depredation were narrow, and the House of Correction might have enlarged them. As it was, Ben ate his roast beef to-night with a serene sense of having stolen nothing more than a few peas and beans as seed for his garden since the last harvest supper, and felt warranted in thinking that Alick's suspicious eye, for ever upon him, was an injury to his innocence. But NOW the roast beef was finished and the cloth was drawn, leaving a fair large deal table for the bright drinking-cans, and the foaming brown jugs, and the bright brass candlesticks, pleasant to behold. NOW, the great ceremony of the evening was to begin--the harvest-song, in which every man must join. He might be in tune, if he liked to be singular, but he must not sit with closed lips. The movement was obliged to be in triple time; the rest was ad libitum. As to the origin of this song--whether it came in its actual state from the brain of a single rhapsodist, or was gradually perfected by a school or succession of rhapsodists, I am ignorant. There is a stamp of unity, of individual genius upon it, which inclines me to the former hypothesis, though I am not blind to the consideration that this unity may rather have arisen from that consensus of many minds which was a condition of primitive thought, foreign to our modern consciousness. Some will perhaps think that they detect in the first quatrain an indication of a lost line, which later rhapsodists, failing in imaginative vigour, have supplied by the feeble device of iteration. Others, however, may rather maintain that this very iteration is an original felicity, to which none but the most prosaic minds can be insensible. The ceremony connected with the song was a drinking ceremony. (That is perhaps a painful fact, but then, you know, we cannot reform our forefathers.) During the first and second quatrain, sung decidedly forte, no can was filled. Here's a health unto our master, The founder of the feast; Here's a health unto our master And to our mistress! And may his doings prosper, Whate'er he takes in hand, For we are all his servants, And are at his command. But now, immediately before the third quatrain or chorus, sung fortissimo, with emphatic raps of the table, which gave the effect of cymbals and drum together, Alick's can was filled, and he was bound to empty it before the chorus ceased. Then drink, boys, drink! And see ye do not spill, For if ye do, ye shall drink two, For 'tis our master's will. When Alick had gone successfully through this test of steady-handed manliness, it was the turn of old Kester, at his right hand--and so on, till every man had drunk his initiatory pint under the stimulus of the chorus. Tom Saft--the rogue--took care to spill a little by accident; but Mrs. Poyser (too officiously, Tom thought) interfered to prevent the exaction of the penalty. To any listener outside the door it would have been the reverse of obvious why the "Drink, boys, drink!" should have such an immediate and often-repeated encore; but once entered, he would have seen that all faces were at present sober, and most of them serious--it was the regular and respectable thing for those excellent farm-labourers to do, as much as for elegant ladies and gentlemen to smirk and bow over their wine-glasses. Bartle Massey, whose ears were rather sensitive, had gone out to see what sort of evening it was at an early stage in the ceremony, and had not finished his contemplation until a silence of five minutes declared that "Drink, boys, drink!" was not likely to begin again for the next twelvemonth. Much to the regret of the boys and Totty: on them the stillness fell rather flat, after that glorious thumping of the table, towards which Totty, seated on her father's knee, contributed with her small might and small fist. When Bartle re-entered, however, there appeared to be a general desire for solo music after the choral. Nancy declared that Tim the waggoner knew a song and was "allays singing like a lark i' the stable," whereupon Mr. Poyser said encouragingly, "Come, Tim, lad, let's hear it." Tim looked sheepish, tucked down his head, and said he couldn't sing, but this encouraging invitation of the master's was echoed all round the table. It was a conversational opportunity: everybody could say, "Come, Tim," except Alick, who never relaxed into the frivolity of unnecessary speech. At last, Tim's next neighbour, Ben Tholoway, began to give emphasis to his speech by nudges, at which Tim, growing rather savage, said, "Let me alooan, will ye? Else I'll ma' ye sing a toon ye wonna like." A good-tempered waggoner's patience has limits, and Tim was not to be urged further. "Well, then, David, ye're the lad to sing," said Ben, willing to show that he was not discomfited by this check. "Sing 'My loove's a roos wi'out a thorn.'" The amatory David was a young man of an unconscious abstracted expression, which was due probably to a squint of superior intensity rather than to any mental characteristic; for he was not indifferent to Ben's invitation, but blushed and laughed and rubbed his sleeve over his mouth in a way that was regarded as a symptom of yielding. And for some time the company appeared to be much in earnest about the desire to hear David's song. But in vain. The lyricism of the evening was in the cellar at present, and was not to be drawn from that retreat just yet. Meanwhile the conversation at the head of the table had taken a political turn. Mr. Craig was not above talking politics occasionally, though he piqued himself rather on a wise insight than on specific information. He saw so far beyond the mere facts of a case that really it was superfluous to know them. "I'm no reader o' the paper myself," he observed to-night, as he filled his pipe, "though I might read it fast enough if I liked, for there's Miss Lyddy has 'em and 's done with 'em i' no time. But there's Mills, now, sits i' the chimney-corner and reads the paper pretty nigh from morning to night, and when he's got to th' end on't he's more addle-headed than he was at the beginning. He's full o' this peace now, as they talk on; he's been reading and reading, and thinks he's got to the bottom on't. 'Why, Lor' bless you, Mills,' says I, 'you see no more into this thing nor you can see into the middle of a potato. I'll tell you what it is: you think it'll be a fine thing for the country. And I'm not again' it--mark my words--I'm not again' it. But it's my opinion as there's them at the head o' this country as are worse enemies to us nor Bony and all the mounseers he's got at 's back; for as for the mounseers, you may skewer half-a-dozen of 'em at once as if they war frogs.'" "Aye, aye," said Martin Poyser, listening with an air of much intelligence and edification, "they ne'er ate a bit o' beef i' their lives. Mostly sallet, I reckon." "And says I to Mills," continued Mr. Craig, "'Will you try to make me believe as furriners like them can do us half th' harm them ministers do with their bad government? If King George 'ud turn 'em all away and govern by himself, he'd see everything righted. He might take on Billy Pitt again if he liked; but I don't see myself what we want wi' anybody besides King and Parliament. It's that nest o' ministers does the mischief, I tell you.'" "Ah, it's fine talking," observed Mrs. Poyser, who was now seated near her husband, with Totty on her lap--"it's fine talking. It's hard work to tell which is Old Harry when everybody's got boots on." "As for this peace," said Mr. Poyser, turning his head on one side in a dubitative manner and giving a precautionary puff to his pipe between each sentence, "I don't know. Th' war's a fine thing for the country, an' how'll you keep up prices wi'out it? An' them French are a wicked sort o' folks, by what I can make out. What can you do better nor fight 'em?" "Ye're partly right there, Poyser," said Mr. Craig, "but I'm not again' the peace--to make a holiday for a bit. We can break it when we like, an' I'm in no fear o' Bony, for all they talk so much o' his cliverness. That's what I says to Mills this morning. Lor' bless you, he sees no more through Bony!...why, I put him up to more in three minutes than he gets from's paper all the year round. Says I, 'Am I a gardener as knows his business, or arn't I, Mills? Answer me that.' 'To be sure y' are, Craig,' says he--he's not a bad fellow, Mills isn't, for a butler, but weak i' the head. 'Well,' says I, 'you talk o' Bony's cliverness; would it be any use my being a first-rate gardener if I'd got nought but a quagmire to work on?' 'No,' says he. 'Well,' I says, 'that's just what it is wi' Bony. I'll not deny but he may be a bit cliver--he's no Frenchman born, as I understand--but what's he got at's back but mounseers?'" Mr. Craig paused a moment with an emphatic stare after this triumphant specimen of Socratic argument, and then added, thumping the table rather fiercely, "Why, it's a sure thing--and there's them 'ull bear witness to't--as i' one regiment where there was one man a-missing, they put the regimentals on a big monkey, and they fit him as the shell fits the walnut, and you couldn't tell the monkey from the mounseers!" "Ah! Think o' that, now!" said Mr. Poyser, impressed at once with the political bearings of the fact and with its striking interest as an anecdote in natural history. "Come, Craig," said Adam, "that's a little too strong. You don't believe that. It's all nonsense about the French being such poor sticks. Mr. Irwine's seen 'em in their own country, and he says they've plenty o' fine fellows among 'em. And as for knowledge, and contrivances, and manufactures, there's a many things as we're a fine sight behind 'em in. It's poor foolishness to run down your enemies. Why, Nelson and the rest of 'em 'ud have no merit i' beating 'em, if they were such offal as folks pretend." Mr. Poyser looked doubtfully at Mr. Craig, puzzled by this opposition of authorities. Mr. Irwine's testimony was not to be disputed; but, on the other hand, Craig was a knowing fellow, and his view was less startling. Martin had never "heard tell" of the French being good for much. Mr. Craig had found no answer but such as was implied in taking a long draught of ale and then looking down fixedly at the proportions of his own leg, which he turned a little outward for that purpose, when Bartle Massey returned from the fireplace, where he had been smoking his first pipe in quiet, and broke the silence by saying, as he thrust his forefinger into the canister, "Why, Adam, how happened you not to be at church on Sunday? Answer me that, you rascal. The anthem went limping without you. Are you going to disgrace your schoolmaster in his old age?" "No, Mr. Massey," said Adam. "Mr. and Mrs. Poyser can tell you where I was. I was in no bad company." "She's gone, Adam--gone to Snowfield," said Mr. Poyser, reminded of Dinah for the first time this evening. "I thought you'd ha' persuaded her better. Nought 'ud hold her, but she must go yesterday forenoon. The missis has hardly got over it. I thought she'd ha' no sperrit for th' harvest supper." Mrs. Poyser had thought of Dinah several times since Adam had come in, but she had had "no heart" to mention the bad news. "What!" said Bartle, with an air of disgust. "Was there a woman concerned? Then I give you up, Adam." "But it's a woman you'n spoke well on, Bartle," said Mr. Poyser. "Come now, you canna draw back; you said once as women wouldna ha' been a bad invention if they'd all been like Dinah." "I meant her voice, man--I meant her voice, that was all," said Bartle. "I can bear to hear her speak without wanting to put wool in my ears. As for other things, I daresay she's like the rest o' the women--thinks two and two 'll come to make five, if she cries and bothers enough about it." "Aye, aye!" said Mrs. Poyser; "one 'ud think, an' hear some folks talk, as the men war 'cute enough to count the corns in a bag o' wheat wi' only smelling at it. They can see through a barn-door, they can. Perhaps that's the reason THEY can see so little o' this side on't." Martin Poyser shook with delighted laughter and winked at Adam, as much as to say the schoolmaster was in for it now. "Ah!" said Bartle sneeringly, "the women are quick enough--they're quick enough. They know the rights of a story before they hear it, and can tell a man what his thoughts are before he knows 'em himself." "Like enough," said Mrs. Poyser, "for the men are mostly so slow, their thoughts overrun 'em, an' they can only catch 'em by the tail. I can count a stocking-top while a man's getting's tongue ready an' when he outs wi' his speech at last, there's little broth to be made on't. It's your dead chicks take the longest hatchin'. Howiver, I'm not denyin' the women are foolish: God Almighty made 'em to match the men." "Match!" said Bartle. "Aye, as vinegar matches one's teeth. If a man says a word, his wife 'll match it with a contradiction; if he's a mind for hot meat, his wife 'll match it with cold bacon; if he laughs, she'll match him with whimpering. She's such a match as the horse-fly is to th' horse: she's got the right venom to sting him with--the right venom to sting him with." "Yes," said Mrs. Poyser, "I know what the men like--a poor soft, as 'ud simper at 'em like the picture o' the sun, whether they did right or wrong, an' say thank you for a kick, an' pretend she didna know which end she stood uppermost, till her husband told her. That's what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure o' one fool as 'ull tell him he's wise. But there's some men can do wi'out that--they think so much o' themselves a'ready. An' that's how it is there's old bachelors." "Come, Craig," said Mr. Poyser jocosely, "you mun get married pretty quick, else you'll be set down for an old bachelor; an' you see what the women 'ull think on you." "Well," said Mr. Craig, willing to conciliate Mrs. Poyser and setting a high value on his own compliments, "I like a cleverish woman--a woman o' sperrit--a managing woman." "You're out there, Craig," said Bartle, dryly; "you're out there. You judge o' your garden-stuff on a better plan than that. You pick the things for what they can excel in--for what they can excel in. You don't value your peas for their roots, or your carrots for their flowers. Now, that's the way you should choose women. Their cleverness 'll never come to much--never come to much--but they make excellent simpletons, ripe and strong-flavoured." "What dost say to that?" said Mr. Poyser, throwing himself back and looking merrily at his wife. "Say!" answered Mrs. Poyser, with dangerous fire kindling in her eye. "Why, I say as some folks' tongues are like the clocks as run on strikin', not to tell you the time o' the day, but because there's summat wrong i' their own inside..." Mrs. Poyser would probably have brought her rejoinder to a further climax, if every one's attention had not at this moment been called to the other end of the table, where the lyricism, which had at first only manifested itself by David's sotto voce performance of "My love's a rose without a thorn," had gradually assumed a rather deafening and complex character. Tim, thinking slightly of David's vocalization, was impelled to supersede that feeble buzz by a spirited commencement of "Three Merry Mowers," but David was not to be put down so easily, and showed himself capable of a copious crescendo, which was rendering it doubtful whether the rose would not predominate over the mowers, when old Kester, with an entirely unmoved and immovable aspect, suddenly set up a quavering treble--as if he had been an alarum, and the time was come for him to go off. The company at Alick's end of the table took this form of vocal entertainment very much as a matter of course, being free from musical prejudices; but Bartle Massey laid down his pipe and put his fingers in his ears; and Adam, who had been longing to go ever since he had heard Dinah was not in the house, rose and said he must bid good-night. "I'll go with you, lad," said Bartle; "I'll go with you before my ears are split." "I'll go round by the Common and see you home, if you like, Mr. Massey," said Adam. "Aye, aye!" said Bartle; "then we can have a bit o' talk together. I never get hold of you now." "Eh! It's a pity but you'd sit it out," said Martin Poyser. "They'll all go soon, for th' missis niver lets 'em stay past ten." But Adam was resolute, so the good-nights were said, and the two friends turned out on their starlight walk together. "There's that poor fool, Vixen, whimpering for me at home," said Bartle. "I can never bring her here with me for fear she should be struck with Mrs. Poyser's eye, and the poor bitch might go limping for ever after." "I've never any need to drive Gyp back," said Adam, laughing. "He always turns back of his own head when he finds out I'm coming here." "Aye, aye," said Bartle. "A terrible woman!--made of needles, made of needles. But I stick to Martin--I shall always stick to Martin. And he likes the needles, God help him! He's a cushion made on purpose for 'em." "But she's a downright good-natur'd woman, for all that," said Adam, "and as true as the daylight. She's a bit cross wi' the dogs when they offer to come in th' house, but if they depended on her, she'd take care and have 'em well fed. If her tongue's keen, her heart's tender: I've seen that in times o' trouble. She's one o' those women as are better than their word." "Well, well," said Bartle, "I don't say th' apple isn't sound at the core; but it sets my teeth on edge--it sets my teeth on edge."

Chapter 53

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter53

The Harvest Supper It is the time of country harvest, with the barley rolling by on the loaded wagons. The beauty of the country strikes Adam "like a funeral-bell" for "there's a parting at the root of all our joys" . It is the time of thanksgiving, though, and he realizes that out of the sorrow of Hetty came the joy of Dinah, an even greater love. He goes to the harvest supper at the Hall Farm, hoping Dinah has not yet left. He does not see her there but does not learn until later that she is already gone to Snowfield. Meanwhile, the ritual of the feast is presided over by Martin Poyser, who is proud to serve the beer and roast beef to family, friends, and farm hands. There is singing and toasting, as the reader is introduced to various colorful farm workers. A comic political discussion about Bonaparte and the French illustrates the ignorance of the country folk about the greater world affairs. The comic highlight, however, is an exchange of wit between Bartle Massey and Mrs. Poyser on the difference between men and women, Bartle denouncing women, and Mrs. Poyser denouncing men. Finally Adam and Bartle Massey walk home together, and Adam says that even though Mrs. Poyser has a sharp tongue, she is a woman better than her word, who is there in time of need and trouble.

Commentary on Chapter 53 This is a bit of comedy and local color to round out the novel, serving to bring us back to the pastoral mood of the setting. It was spring in the country in the beginning of the story, a kind of golden world of innocence where there was as yet no hint of tragedy. The bulk of the novel tells the disruption of that ideal life by one event that touches everyone. The novel ends in the autumn, a reaping of fruits, both good and bad. There has been sorrow, but new beginnings as well. The peace and harmony are being re-established, even though there has been a cost, and Adam is now reminded of the funeral bell underneath all joy. For the admirable characters, however, all life is transmuted by experience and suffering into something better, and these are the fruits they now enjoy together. The political talk of the Napoleonic war, a major event in English history, is felt as the faintest echo in Hayslope. The ignorant opinions bandied about over beer show how untouched this remote district is from larger world disturbances. The tragedy of Hetty has been the local event of importance and "Bony" is as real to the farmers as Old Harry that Mrs. Poyser keeps referring to . Arthur Donnithorne is the only character in their world to take part in events on both the local level and the national level, for he leaves Hayslope for the war. Eliot's tone towards the Hayslope community is elegiac, looking back to a landscape and a time that is gone forever. It contains her own childhood memories of country life and characters.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/54.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_54_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 6.chapter 54

chapter 54

{"name": "Chapter 54", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter54", "summary": "The Meeting on the Hill Adam is patient with Dinah's absence and silence for six weeks; after that, he feels he must go to Snowfield to get her answer. He borrows Jonathan Burge's horse so he can get there faster. As he travels there, he remembers the sad journey in search of Hetty, but his sorrow and experience have enlarged his perspective and make him appreciate in all humility the love for Dinah. He finds that Dinah is preaching in a small village a few miles off and goes there to wait for her. He chooses a spot on top of a nearby hill where she will pass on the way home so that he may speak to her in private. He waits an hour and then sees her figure winding up the hill. As Adam rises up to greet her, she turns to look at the village she has just left. He calls her name from behind. She does not answer at first, feeling it could be an inward voice, for she believes she is alone. He repeats her name, and she turns around. They move into each other's arms. She cries as they walk in silence. Finally, she tells Adam that she is living a divided life without him. She believes God wants her to be with him, and he says they will never part.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 54 This is an idyllic scene, set in nature, with the lovers harmonizing with the countryside as they declare their love. Earthly love and heavenly love are integrated, and it is done very naturally and peacefully. Their union completes the main action of the story by carrying out the healing of the individuals and their community. The narrator shows that both characters have grown spiritually and thus, deserve this happiness. Sorrow can bring \"enlarged being\" . Adam's love for Dinah springs out of the love for Hetty but is greater and more precious. He feels that Dinah is \"better than I am\" and will look up to her for her wisdom . With such a love he will be more fearlessly free to be himself, because there is someone else to trust. If Adam looks up to Dinah as a heavenly being, Dinah has to learn to come down to earth. She knows with Adam's love and strength she will be able to follow God's will more easily. There is no divided love, only the same love in both hearts."}

ADAM understood Dinah's haste to go away, and drew hope rather than discouragement from it. She was fearful lest the strength of her feeling towards him should hinder her from waiting and listening faithfully for the ultimate guiding voice from within. "I wish I'd asked her to write to me, though," he thought. "And yet even that might disturb her a bit, perhaps. She wants to be quite quiet in her old way for a while. And I've no right to be impatient and interrupting her with my wishes. She's told me what her mind is, and she's not a woman to say one thing and mean another. I'll wait patiently." That was Adam's wise resolution, and it throve excellently for the first two or three weeks on the nourishment it got from the remembrance of Dinah's confession that Sunday afternoon. There is a wonderful amount of sustenance in the first few words of love. But towards the middle of October the resolution began to dwindle perceptibly, and showed dangerous symptoms of exhaustion. The weeks were unusually long: Dinah must surely have had more than enough time to make up her mind. Let a woman say what she will after she has once told a man that she loves him, he is a little too flushed and exalted with that first draught she offers him to care much about the taste of the second. He treads the earth with a very elastic step as he walks away from her, and makes light of all difficulties. But that sort of glow dies out: memory gets sadly diluted with time, and is not strong enough to revive us. Adam was no longer so confident as he had been. He began to fear that perhaps Dinah's old life would have too strong a grasp upon her for any new feeling to triumph. If she had not felt this, she would surely have written to him to give him some comfort; but it appeared that she held it right to discourage him. As Adam's confidence waned, his patience waned with it, and he thought he must write himself. He must ask Dinah not to leave him in painful doubt longer than was needful. He sat up late one night to write her a letter, but the next morning he burnt it, afraid of its effect. It would be worse to have a discouraging answer by letter than from her own lips, for her presence reconciled him to her will. You perceive how it was: Adam was hungering for the sight of Dinah, and when that sort of hunger reaches a certain stage, a lover is likely to still it though he may have to put his future in pawn. But what harm could he do by going to Snowfield? Dinah could not be displeased with him for it. She had not forbidden him to go. She must surely expect that he would go before long. By the second Sunday in October this view of the case had become so clear to Adam that he was already on his way to Snowfield, on horseback this time, for his hours were precious now, and he had borrowed Jonathan Burge's good nag for the journey. What keen memories went along the road with him! He had often been to Oakbourne and back since that first journey to Snowfield, but beyond Oakbourne the greystone walls, the broken country, the meagre trees, seemed to be telling him afresh the story of that painful past which he knew so well by heart. But no story is the same to us after a lapse of time--or rather, we who read it are no longer the same interpreters--and Adam this morning brought with him new thoughts through that grey country, thoughts which gave an altered significance to its story of the past. That is a base and selfish, even a blasphemous, spirit which rejoices and is thankful over the past evil that has blighted or crushed another, because it has been made a source of unforeseen good to ourselves. Adam could never cease to mourn over that mystery of human sorrow which had been brought so close to him; he could never thank God for another's misery. And if I were capable of that narrow-sighted joy in Adam's behalf, I should still know he was not the man to feel it for himself. He would have shaken his head at such a sentiment and said, "Evil's evil, and sorrow's sorrow, and you can't alter it's natur by wrapping it up in other words. Other folks were not created for my sake, that I should think all square when things turn out well for me." But it is not ignoble to feel that the fuller life which a sad experience has brought us is worth our own personal share of pain. Surely it is not possible to feel otherwise, any more than it would be possible for a man with cataract to regret the painful process by which his dim blurred sight of men as trees walking had been exchanged for clear outline and effulgent day. The growth of higher feeling within us is like the growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of added strength. We can no more wish to return to a narrower sympathy than a painter or a musician can wish to return to his cruder manner, or a philosopher to his less complete formula. Something like this sense of enlarged being was in Adam's mind this Sunday morning, as he rode along in vivid recollection of the past. His feeling towards Dinah, the hope of passing his life with her, had been the distant unseen point towards which that hard journey from Snowfield eighteen months ago had been leading him. Tender and deep as his love for Hetty had been--so deep that the roots of it would never be torn away--his love for Dinah was better and more precious to him, for it was the outgrowth of that fuller life which had come to him from his acquaintance with deep sorrow. "It's like as if it was a new strength to me," he said to himself, "to love her and know as she loves me. I shall look t' her to help me to see things right. For she's better than I am--there's less o' self in her, and pride. And it's a feeling as gives you a sort o' liberty, as if you could walk more fearless, when you've more trust in another than y' have in yourself. I've always been thinking I knew better than them as belonged to me, and that's a poor sort o' life, when you can't look to them nearest to you t' help you with a bit better thought than what you've got inside you a'ready." It was more than two o'clock in the afternoon when Adam came in sight of the grey town on the hill-side and looked searchingly towards the green valley below, for the first glimpse of the old thatched roof near the ugly red mill. The scene looked less harsh in the soft October sunshine than it had in the eager time of early spring, and the one grand charm it possessed in common with all wide-stretching woodless regions--that it filled you with a new consciousness of the overarching sky--had a milder, more soothing influence than usual, on this almost cloudless day. Adam's doubts and fears melted under this influence as the delicate weblike clouds had gradually melted away into the clear blue above him. He seemed to see Dinah's gentle face assuring him, with its looks alone, of all he longed to know. He did not expect Dinah to be at home at this hour, but he got down from his horse and tied it at the little gate, that he might ask where she was gone to-day. He had set his mind on following her and bringing her home. She was gone to Sloman's End, a hamlet about three miles off, over the hill, the old woman told him--had set off directly after morning chapel, to preach in a cottage there, as her habit was. Anybody at the town would tell him the way to Sloman's End. So Adam got on his horse again and rode to the town, putting up at the old inn and taking a hasty dinner there in the company of the too chatty landlord, from whose friendly questions and reminiscences he was glad to escape as soon as possible and set out towards Sloman's End. With all his haste it was nearly four o'clock before he could set off, and he thought that as Dinah had gone so early, she would perhaps already be near returning. The little, grey, desolate-looking hamlet, unscreened by sheltering trees, lay in sight long before he reached it, and as he came near he could hear the sound of voices singing a hymn. "Perhaps that's the last hymn before they come away," Adam thought. "I'll walk back a bit and turn again to meet her, farther off the village." He walked back till he got nearly to the top of the hill again, and seated himself on a loose stone, against the low wall, to watch till he should see the little black figure leaving the hamlet and winding up the hill. He chose this spot, almost at the top of the hill, because it was away from all eyes--no house, no cattle, not even a nibbling sheep near--no presence but the still lights and shadows and the great embracing sky. She was much longer coming than he expected. He waited an hour at least watching for her and thinking of her, while the afternoon shadows lengthened and the light grew softer. At last he saw the little black figure coming from between the grey houses and gradually approaching the foot of the hill. Slowly, Adam thought, but Dinah was really walking at her usual pace, with a light quiet step. Now she was beginning to wind along the path up the hill, but Adam would not move yet; he would not meet her too soon; he had set his heart on meeting her in this assured loneliness. And now he began to fear lest he should startle her too much. "Yet," he thought, "she's not one to be overstartled; she's always so calm and quiet, as if she was prepared for anything." What was she thinking of as she wound up the hill? Perhaps she had found complete repose without him, and had ceased to feel any need of his love. On the verge of a decision we all tremble: hope pauses with fluttering wings. But now at last she was very near, and Adam rose from the stone wall. It happened that just as he walked forward, Dinah had paused and turned round to look back at the village--who does not pause and look back in mounting a hill? Adam was glad, for, with the fine instinct of a lover, he felt that it would be best for her to hear his voice before she saw him. He came within three paces of her and then said, "Dinah!" She started without looking round, as if she connected the sound with no place. "Dinah!" Adam said again. He knew quite well what was in her mind. She was so accustomed to think of impressions as purely spiritual monitions that she looked for no material visible accompaniment of the voice. But this second time she looked round. What a look of yearning love it was that the mild grey eyes turned on the strong dark-eyed man! She did not start again at the sight of him; she said nothing, but moved towards him so that his arm could clasp her round. And they walked on so in silence, while the warm tears fell. Adam was content, and said nothing. It was Dinah who spoke first. "Adam," she said, "it is the Divine Will. My soul is so knit to yours that it is but a divided life I live without you. And this moment, now you are with me, and I feel that our hearts are filled with the same love. I have a fulness of strength to bear and do our heavenly Father's Will that I had lost before." Adam paused and looked into her sincere eyes. "Then we'll never part any more, Dinah, till death parts us." And they kissed each other with a deep joy. What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?

Chapter 54

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter54

The Meeting on the Hill Adam is patient with Dinah's absence and silence for six weeks; after that, he feels he must go to Snowfield to get her answer. He borrows Jonathan Burge's horse so he can get there faster. As he travels there, he remembers the sad journey in search of Hetty, but his sorrow and experience have enlarged his perspective and make him appreciate in all humility the love for Dinah. He finds that Dinah is preaching in a small village a few miles off and goes there to wait for her. He chooses a spot on top of a nearby hill where she will pass on the way home so that he may speak to her in private. He waits an hour and then sees her figure winding up the hill. As Adam rises up to greet her, she turns to look at the village she has just left. He calls her name from behind. She does not answer at first, feeling it could be an inward voice, for she believes she is alone. He repeats her name, and she turns around. They move into each other's arms. She cries as they walk in silence. Finally, she tells Adam that she is living a divided life without him. She believes God wants her to be with him, and he says they will never part.

Commentary on Chapter 54 This is an idyllic scene, set in nature, with the lovers harmonizing with the countryside as they declare their love. Earthly love and heavenly love are integrated, and it is done very naturally and peacefully. Their union completes the main action of the story by carrying out the healing of the individuals and their community. The narrator shows that both characters have grown spiritually and thus, deserve this happiness. Sorrow can bring "enlarged being" . Adam's love for Dinah springs out of the love for Hetty but is greater and more precious. He feels that Dinah is "better than I am" and will look up to her for her wisdom . With such a love he will be more fearlessly free to be himself, because there is someone else to trust. If Adam looks up to Dinah as a heavenly being, Dinah has to learn to come down to earth. She knows with Adam's love and strength she will be able to follow God's will more easily. There is no divided love, only the same love in both hearts.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/55.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_55_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 6.chapter 55

chapter 55

{"name": "Chapter 55", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter55", "summary": "Marriage Bells One month later, Adam and Dinah are married. Mr. Burge's workers are given a holiday; Mrs. Irwine and her daughters are in a carriage to shake hands with bride and groom after Mr. Irwine marries them. From the Donnithorne household come Mrs. Best, Mr. Mills, and Mr. Craig. The Poysers are there and Bartle Massey. Mrs. Poyser makes Dinah take off her black dress and gives her a grey Quaker dress. Adam feels a slight sadness underneath his joy, and Dinah understands. In the bridal party are Mary Burge as the bridesmaid, and Seth with Mrs. Poyser; Bartle Massey takes Lisbeth's arm. Mr. Irwine sets off to write the good news to Arthur.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 54 Although some readers do not believe the happy ending makes sense, it is in keeping with what Eliot is trying to show: some good can be harvested from suffering by the wise. It does not mean that Eliot is overly optimistic, for she paints a picture of life as a mixed bag of positive and negative, not always in the control of the individual. Selfless characters, however, do better in the long run by causing as little harm as possible, and by actively turning everything to good account. Adam is a case in point. He does not just ride off into the sunset with another woman, after the catastrophe. The narrator points out that both Adam and Arthur have been scarred for life. Even on Adam's wedding day, he has some sadness, for he won't forget Hetty, and Dinah does not expect him to. Because they shared the time of trouble, Adam feels that Dinah does not rival the first love but completes it. She was the one who stuck by Hetty; she knows how Adam feels and what he suffered. She was the friend who brought him out of his grief. Is Dinah too idealistic a figure to believe in? She was based on Eliot's own fond memories of her preaching Methodist aunt. Dinah also bears many of Eliot's own personality traits, according to contemporary accounts. She is certainly saintly, and perhaps that is why she needs to be brought down to earth as a woman, wife, and mother at the end of the story. Dinah is one of Eliot's many saintly women characters, who strive for a higher life by being selfless in everyday concerns. of Epilogue On a June evening of 1807, Adam Bede's workshop, that used to be Jonathan Burge's, has just closed. It is nine years since the beginning of the story. Dinah appears outside the Bede cottage with her two children. She is more matronly now, and she is waiting for Adam to come home. Uncle Seth has the four year old daughter who looks like Dinah, with pale auburn hair, and the little two year old boy with black hair, who looks like Adam. His greatest happiness is being an uncle. Dinah takes Arthur's watch from her pocket to mark the time."}

IN little more than a month after that meeting on the hill--on a rimy morning in departing November--Adam and Dinah were married. It was an event much thought of in the village. All Mr. Burge's men had a holiday, and all Mr. Poyser's, and most of those who had a holiday appeared in their best clothes at the wedding. I think there was hardly an inhabitant of Hayslope specially mentioned in this history and still resident in the parish on this November morning who was not either in church to see Adam and Dinah married, or near the church door to greet them as they came forth. Mrs. Irwine and her daughters were waiting at the churchyard gates in their carriage (for they had a carriage now) to shake hands with the bride and bridegroom and wish them well; and in the absence of Miss Lydia Donnithorne at Bath, Mrs. Best, Mr. Mills, and Mr. Craig had felt it incumbent on them to represent "the family" at the Chase on the occasion. The churchyard walk was quite lined with familiar faces, many of them faces that had first looked at Dinah when she preached on the Green. And no wonder they showed this eager interest on her marriage morning, for nothing like Dinah and the history which had brought her and Adam Bede together had been known at Hayslope within the memory of man. Bessy Cranage, in her neatest cap and frock, was crying, though she did not exactly know why; for, as her cousin Wiry Ben, who stood near her, judiciously suggested, Dinah was not going away, and if Bessy was in low spirits, the best thing for her to do was to follow Dinah's example and marry an honest fellow who was ready to have her. Next to Bessy, just within the church door, there were the Poyser children, peeping round the corner of the pews to get a sight of the mysterious ceremony; Totty's face wearing an unusual air of anxiety at the idea of seeing cousin Dinah come back looking rather old, for in Totty's experience no married people were young. I envy them all the sight they had when the marriage was fairly ended and Adam led Dinah out of church. She was not in black this morning, for her Aunt Poyser would by no means allow such a risk of incurring bad luck, and had herself made a present of the wedding dress, made all of grey, though in the usual Quaker form, for on this point Dinah could not give way. So the lily face looked out with sweet gravity from under a grey Quaker bonnet, neither smiling nor blushing, but with lips trembling a little under the weight of solemn feelings. Adam, as he pressed her arm to his side, walked with his old erectness and his head thrown rather backward as if to face all the world better. But it was not because he was particularly proud this morning, as is the wont of bridegrooms, for his happiness was of a kind that had little reference to men's opinion of it. There was a tinge of sadness in his deep joy; Dinah knew it, and did not feel aggrieved. There were three other couples, following the bride and bridegroom: first, Martin Poyser, looking as cheery as a bright fire on this rimy morning, led quiet Mary Burge, the bridesmaid; then came Seth serenely happy, with Mrs. Poyser on his arm; and last of all Bartle Massey, with Lisbeth--Lisbeth in a new gown and bonnet, too busy with her pride in her son and her delight in possessing the one daughter she had desired to devise a single pretext for complaint. Bartle Massey had consented to attend the wedding at Adam's earnest request, under protest against marriage in general and the marriage of a sensible man in particular. Nevertheless, Mr. Poyser had a joke against him after the wedding dinner, to the effect that in the vestry he had given the bride one more kiss than was necessary. Behind this last couple came Mr. Irwine, glad at heart over this good morning's work of joining Adam and Dinah. For he had seen Adam in the worst moments of his sorrow; and what better harvest from that painful seed-time could there be than this? The love that had brought hope and comfort in the hour of despair, the love that had found its way to the dark prison cell and to poor Hetty's darker soul--this strong gentle love was to be Adam's companion and helper till death. There was much shaking of hands mingled with "God bless you's" and other good wishes to the four couples, at the churchyard gate, Mr. Poyser answering for the rest with unwonted vivacity of tongue, for he had all the appropriate wedding-day jokes at his command. And the women, he observed, could never do anything but put finger in eye at a wedding. Even Mrs. Poyser could not trust herself to speak as the neighbours shook hands with her, and Lisbeth began to cry in the face of the very first person who told her she was getting young again. Mr. Joshua Rann, having a slight touch of rheumatism, did not join in the ringing of the bells this morning, and, looking on with some contempt at these informal greetings which required no official co-operation from the clerk, began to hum in his musical bass, "Oh what a joyful thing it is," by way of preluding a little to the effect he intended to produce in the wedding psalm next Sunday. "That's a bit of good news to cheer Arthur," said Mr. Irwine to his mother, as they drove off. "I shall write to him the first thing when we get home."

Chapter 55

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter55

Marriage Bells One month later, Adam and Dinah are married. Mr. Burge's workers are given a holiday; Mrs. Irwine and her daughters are in a carriage to shake hands with bride and groom after Mr. Irwine marries them. From the Donnithorne household come Mrs. Best, Mr. Mills, and Mr. Craig. The Poysers are there and Bartle Massey. Mrs. Poyser makes Dinah take off her black dress and gives her a grey Quaker dress. Adam feels a slight sadness underneath his joy, and Dinah understands. In the bridal party are Mary Burge as the bridesmaid, and Seth with Mrs. Poyser; Bartle Massey takes Lisbeth's arm. Mr. Irwine sets off to write the good news to Arthur.

Commentary on Chapter 54 Although some readers do not believe the happy ending makes sense, it is in keeping with what Eliot is trying to show: some good can be harvested from suffering by the wise. It does not mean that Eliot is overly optimistic, for she paints a picture of life as a mixed bag of positive and negative, not always in the control of the individual. Selfless characters, however, do better in the long run by causing as little harm as possible, and by actively turning everything to good account. Adam is a case in point. He does not just ride off into the sunset with another woman, after the catastrophe. The narrator points out that both Adam and Arthur have been scarred for life. Even on Adam's wedding day, he has some sadness, for he won't forget Hetty, and Dinah does not expect him to. Because they shared the time of trouble, Adam feels that Dinah does not rival the first love but completes it. She was the one who stuck by Hetty; she knows how Adam feels and what he suffered. She was the friend who brought him out of his grief. Is Dinah too idealistic a figure to believe in? She was based on Eliot's own fond memories of her preaching Methodist aunt. Dinah also bears many of Eliot's own personality traits, according to contemporary accounts. She is certainly saintly, and perhaps that is why she needs to be brought down to earth as a woman, wife, and mother at the end of the story. Dinah is one of Eliot's many saintly women characters, who strive for a higher life by being selfless in everyday concerns. of Epilogue On a June evening of 1807, Adam Bede's workshop, that used to be Jonathan Burge's, has just closed. It is nine years since the beginning of the story. Dinah appears outside the Bede cottage with her two children. She is more matronly now, and she is waiting for Adam to come home. Uncle Seth has the four year old daughter who looks like Dinah, with pale auburn hair, and the little two year old boy with black hair, who looks like Adam. His greatest happiness is being an uncle. Dinah takes Arthur's watch from her pocket to mark the time.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/chapters_1_to_2.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_0_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapters 1-2

chapters 1-2

{"name": "Chapters I-II", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapters-i-ii", "summary": "Mr. Sherlock Holmes Watson walks into Holmes's breakfast-room, where Sherlock Holmes is having breakfast. Watson examines a walking stick which a visitor, James Mortimer, had left behind the night before, after finding nobody there to receive him. Mortimer's name is engraved into the stick. Though his back is turned to Watson, Holmes sees his friend through the reflection in his coffee-pot. He surprises Watson by addressing him, and then asks him to deduce the character of James Mortimer from his stick. Based on the stick, Watson believes that Dr. Mortimer is an elderly, well-respected doctor who lives in the country. He further deduces that Mortimer has received this stick as a gift from a hunting club. Holmes initially compliments Watson's detective skills, but then clarifies that he is only complimenting the way that Watson has stimulated his own thought process. Holmes examines the stick himself, and concludes that Mortimer received the stick as a gift from a hospital, rather than from a hunting club. He deduces that Mortimer was a student at this hospital, not a physician, and that he must therefore be young, not old. Further, he believes that Mortimer has withdrawn from a town hospital to begin his own practice in the country. He adds that Mortimer must be absent-minded, amiable, unambitious and a dog owner. Astonished, Watson looks in his Medical Dictionary for public information about Mortimer. The book confirms that Mortimer is a young man who studied as Charing Cross Hospital. Holmes begins to explain how he deduced that Mortimer owned a dog, but sees a dog from his window and realizes that Dr. Mortimer has now returned to pay them a visit. Dr. Mortimer enters, and Watson describes him as a tall, thin man with bad posture, and dressed in a messy manner. Relieved that he left the stick there and did not lose it, Dr. Mortimer reveals that he received it not on the occasion of leaving Charing Cross, but for his wedding. First, Dr. Mortimer notes that he had heard of Holmes through his reputation for solving difficult problems. Strangely, Dr. Mortimer then compliments the shape of Holmes's skull, and tells him that it would be an \"ornament to any anthropological museum\" . He explains that he studies skull shapes. Holmes asks why Dr. Mortimer has called on him, and Mortimer tells him that he has a most serious and extraordinary problem. Chapter II: The Curse of the Baskervilles Dr. Mortimer explains that he has brought a manuscript, but Holmes has already observed it in his pocket, and surmises aloud that it is from the early eighteenth century. Confirming that observation, Dr. Mortimer explains that the manuscript was given to him by Sir Charles Baskerville, a close friend who had died three months earlier. Dr. Mortimer lives in Devonshire, which is out in the moor of England, and near the Baskerville estate. To best explain his purpose, Dr. Mortimer first reads the document, which details a legend about the Baskerville family. The writer of the story identifies himself as a Baskerville, and explains that this legend has been passed down in his family over several generations. During the Great Rebellion , the Baskerville estate was owned by Hugo Baskerville, a \"wild, profane, and godless man\" . When one young woman refused to return his advances, he trapped her an upper chamber of his house. She escaped one night while Hugo was entertaining friends, and Hugo declared that he would give his body and soul to \"the Powers of Evil\" if he could find her . One man suggested that they set the hounds after her, and Hugo took his advice before chasing her out into the moor on his black mare. Thirteen men followed Hugo, who was ahead of them. They encountered a shepherd who was \"crazed with fear\" - he had seen the maiden, but had also seen a \"hound of hell\" in fast pursuit of Hugo . Eventually, the men encountered Hugo's mare, alone and frothing at the mouth. Frightened, they persevered until they came across a trench, next to which the hounds were whimpering. In the trench, three of the men found the maiden, dead \"of fear and of fatigue\", and Hugo, dwarfed by a \"great, black beast, shaped like a hound\" . The giant hound tore Baskerville's throat out, at which point the men fled. One of the men died that night, while the other two remained \"broken men\" for the rest of their days . The writer concludes his story by insisting that the hound has plagued the Baskerville family even since, and warns his sons to never cross the moor at night. After finishing the letter, Dr. Mortimer is surprised to see Holmes yawn; he thinks the tale is only interesting to a \"collector of fairytales\" . Dr. Mortimer then gives Holmes a newspaper clipping detailing Sir Charles Baskerville's recent death. The newspaper story first describes Sir Charles Baskerville. At the time a probable candidate for the upcoming election, Baskerville had earned his fortune from South African speculation, and lived childless in the countryside, where he was involved in much philanthropy. The story then explains the circumstances of his death. When Sir Charles did not return from his usual nightly walk down an alley of trees behind Baskerville Hall, his servant Barrymore investigated to find his body. The mystery was increased because there were no signs of violence on his body, and because his footprints suggested he had been walking on his tip-toes. One witness, a gypsy horse-dealer named Murphy, had heard cries but admitted he was drunk. Authorities concluded that Sir Charles had died from cardiac exhaustion, ruling out any suggestions of mystical stories. Finally, the article identifies his next of kin as his nephew, Mr. Henry Baskerville, who is supposedly in America. More interested now, Holmes asks Dr. Mortimer for details not included in the article. Though he considers himself a man of science, Dr. Mortimer admits he has some strange suspicions. He considered Sir Charles a close friend, since they were two of the few intellectuals living out on the moor. The only other men of note are Stapleton and Mr. Frankland. In the days before the man's death, Dr. Mortimer noticed that Sir Charles was growing anxious over the legends of the hound. One night, after seeing a black shape cross their paths, Sir Charles admitted his fears, and Dr. Mortimer convinced him to escape to London. He died the night before he planned to leave. Finally, Dr. Mortimer adds that upon investigating the scene of Sir Charles's death, he found the footprints of a gigantic hound. He did not reveal this information to the press.", "analysis": "Readers of this time would have been quite familiar with the Holmes and Watson dynamic - Holmes is always able to outdo Watson with his genius, though the latter constantly works to impress his mentor. Therefore, the novel's opening would be immediately enjoyable for Doyle's readers. In the first chapter, Holmes seems to be testing Watson. There are several reasons why this is important. First, Watson is a smart, medical man capable of sound reasoning, an admirable thinker. The fact that his abilities are nevertheless dwarfed by Holmes's method is confirmation that Holmes possesses a unique, unmatchable genius. And yet Watson is a crucial part of the dynamic, since he is the storyteller. It is notable that nearly all of Sherlock Holmes's tales are told by Watson, not just in Hound but in Doyle's ouvre overall. Watson's first-person addresses are useful for several reasons. First, they allow him to parcel out the information, so that the reader can try to piece together evidence himself, to get ahead of the case. Because Watson is usually behind Holmes, he is able to replicate that experience for the reader. So when Holmes reveals his own line of reasoning, usually after Watson's attempts, the reader gets to enjoy the solution more personally. And yet Holmes's line of reasoning usually employs details that Watson does not record. The implication is clear: detective work is performed first and foremost by looking. Holmes's approach touches on an underlying belief of the work: that humans leave traces and evidence, wherever they go. The object in the first chapter, the walking stick, tells a story because the human who owns it has left traces on it. History is always able to be pieced together from physical evidence. Again, the detective succeeds not because he knows something we do not, but because he knows how to look. Further, from a storytelling perspective, Holmes's narration would undoubtedly be too tedious to record. Because he is capable of holding many possibilities in his head at once, many of which he considers only in order to disprove, his storytelling would lack the narrative thrust of Watson's. Therefore, Watson serves an economic function in the narrative: he observes just enough detail for the reader to understand the intricacies of a case, but he does not observe everything that Holmes does. In this case, Holmes is shown to be fallible when he cannot deduce every detail about Dr. Mortimer's life from his walking stick. For example, he is surprised to hear that Mortimer received the stick as a gift for his wedding. Such fallibility in the first chapter is important towards making Holmes's powers believable. In other words, he does not have a telepathic gift. This is important because the world depicted in the detective story is always able to be explained through the intellect, rather than through divine or supernatural causes. There is no need for religious belief, a fact which plays directly into the Baskerville case. Much about the case is intriguing for the reader, though, because it does imply a supernatural quality. Even though the characters have not yet traveled to the moor, it is painted in evocative strokes here, as it often was in English literature, as a dark, gloomy place where spirits might wander. There is an immediate atmosphere established, which is part of what makes this novel so popular amongst the Holmes stories. For Holmes, such atmosphere is irrelevant, however, compared to the evidence. What is initially puzzling is that the evidence - the manuscript, a newspaper clipping, and Mortimer's own observations - together suggests an occult mystery because the clues do not connect to any rational explanation. The legend has even managed to convince a man of science, Dr. Mortimer, that an evil hound might be lurking the moor. Therefore, there is a contrast between science and occult beliefs. While men of intelligence want to believe in science, they understandably turn to superstition when they cannot explain something. So before he even gets involved in the case's particulars, Holmes faces a bigger question: is science capable of explaining even that which appears to defy explanation?"}

Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before. It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a "Penang lawyer." Just under the head was a broad silver band nearly an inch across. "To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.," was engraved upon it, with the date "1884." It was just such a stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry--dignified, solid, and reassuring. "Well, Watson, what do you make of it?" Holmes was sitting with his back to me, and I had given him no sign of my occupation. "How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back of your head." "I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me," said he. "But, tell me, Watson, what do you make of our visitor's stick? Since we have been so unfortunate as to miss him and have no notion of his errand, this accidental souvenir becomes of importance. Let me hear you reconstruct the man by an examination of it." "I think," said I, following as far as I could the methods of my companion, "that Dr. Mortimer is a successful, elderly medical man, well-esteemed since those who know him give him this mark of their appreciation." "Good!" said Holmes. "Excellent!" "I think also that the probability is in favour of his being a country practitioner who does a great deal of his visiting on foot." "Why so?" "Because this stick, though originally a very handsome one has been so knocked about that I can hardly imagine a town practitioner carrying it. The thick-iron ferrule is worn down, so it is evident that he has done a great amount of walking with it." "Perfectly sound!" said Holmes. "And then again, there is the 'friends of the C.C.H.' I should guess that to be the Something Hunt, the local hunt to whose members he has possibly given some surgical assistance, and which has made him a small presentation in return." "Really, Watson, you excel yourself," said Holmes, pushing back his chair and lighting a cigarette. "I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt." He had never said as much before, and I must admit that his words gave me keen pleasure, for I had often been piqued by his indifference to my admiration and to the attempts which I had made to give publicity to his methods. I was proud, too, to think that I had so far mastered his system as to apply it in a way which earned his approval. He now took the stick from my hands and examined it for a few minutes with his naked eyes. Then with an expression of interest he laid down his cigarette, and carrying the cane to the window, he looked over it again with a convex lens. "Interesting, though elementary," said he as he returned to his favourite corner of the settee. "There are certainly one or two indications upon the stick. It gives us the basis for several deductions." "Has anything escaped me?" I asked with some self-importance. "I trust that there is nothing of consequence which I have overlooked?" "I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were erroneous. When I said that you stimulated me I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth. Not that you are entirely wrong in this instance. The man is certainly a country practitioner. And he walks a good deal." "Then I was right." "To that extent." "But that was all." "No, no, my dear Watson, not all--by no means all. I would suggest, for example, that a presentation to a doctor is more likely to come from a hospital than from a hunt, and that when the initials 'C.C.' are placed before that hospital the words 'Charing Cross' very naturally suggest themselves." "You may be right." "The probability lies in that direction. And if we take this as a working hypothesis we have a fresh basis from which to start our construction of this unknown visitor." "Well, then, supposing that 'C.C.H.' does stand for 'Charing Cross Hospital,' what further inferences may we draw?" "Do none suggest themselves? You know my methods. Apply them!" "I can only think of the obvious conclusion that the man has practised in town before going to the country." "I think that we might venture a little farther than this. Look at it in this light. On what occasion would it be most probable that such a presentation would be made? When would his friends unite to give him a pledge of their good will? Obviously at the moment when Dr. Mortimer withdrew from the service of the hospital in order to start a practice for himself. We know there has been a presentation. We believe there has been a change from a town hospital to a country practice. Is it, then, stretching our inference too far to say that the presentation was on the occasion of the change?" "It certainly seems probable." "Now, you will observe that he could not have been on the staff of the hospital, since only a man well-established in a London practice could hold such a position, and such a one would not drift into the country. What was he, then? If he was in the hospital and yet not on the staff he could only have been a house-surgeon or a house-physician--little more than a senior student. And he left five years ago--the date is on the stick. So your grave, middle-aged family practitioner vanishes into thin air, my dear Watson, and there emerges a young fellow under thirty, amiable, unambitious, absent-minded, and the possessor of a favourite dog, which I should describe roughly as being larger than a terrier and smaller than a mastiff." I laughed incredulously as Sherlock Holmes leaned back in his settee and blew little wavering rings of smoke up to the ceiling. "As to the latter part, I have no means of checking you," said I, "but at least it is not difficult to find out a few particulars about the man's age and professional career." From my small medical shelf I took down the Medical Directory and turned up the name. There were several Mortimers, but only one who could be our visitor. I read his record aloud. "Mortimer, James, M.R.C.S., 1882, Grimpen, Dartmoor, Devon. House-surgeon, from 1882 to 1884, at Charing Cross Hospital. Winner of the Jackson prize for Comparative Pathology, with essay entitled 'Is Disease a Reversion?' Corresponding member of the Swedish Pathological Society. Author of 'Some Freaks of Atavism' (Lancet 1882). 'Do We Progress?' (Journal of Psychology, March, 1883). Medical Officer for the parishes of Grimpen, Thorsley, and High Barrow." "No mention of that local hunt, Watson," said Holmes with a mischievous smile, "but a country doctor, as you very astutely observed. I think that I am fairly justified in my inferences. As to the adjectives, I said, if I remember right, amiable, unambitious, and absent-minded. It is my experience that it is only an amiable man in this world who receives testimonials, only an unambitious one who abandons a London career for the country, and only an absent-minded one who leaves his stick and not his visiting-card after waiting an hour in your room." "And the dog?" "Has been in the habit of carrying this stick behind his master. Being a heavy stick the dog has held it tightly by the middle, and the marks of his teeth are very plainly visible. The dog's jaw, as shown in the space between these marks, is too broad in my opinion for a terrier and not broad enough for a mastiff. It may have been--yes, by Jove, it is a curly-haired spaniel." He had risen and paced the room as he spoke. Now he halted in the recess of the window. There was such a ring of conviction in his voice that I glanced up in surprise. "My dear fellow, how can you possibly be so sure of that?" "For the very simple reason that I see the dog himself on our very door-step, and there is the ring of its owner. Don't move, I beg you, Watson. He is a professional brother of yours, and your presence may be of assistance to me. Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill. What does Dr. James Mortimer, the man of science, ask of Sherlock Holmes, the specialist in crime? Come in!" The appearance of our visitor was a surprise to me, since I had expected a typical country practitioner. He was a very tall, thin man, with a long nose like a beak, which jutted out between two keen, gray eyes, set closely together and sparkling brightly from behind a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. He was clad in a professional but rather slovenly fashion, for his frock-coat was dingy and his trousers frayed. Though young, his long back was already bowed, and he walked with a forward thrust of his head and a general air of peering benevolence. As he entered his eyes fell upon the stick in Holmes's hand, and he ran towards it with an exclamation of joy. "I am so very glad," said he. "I was not sure whether I had left it here or in the Shipping Office. I would not lose that stick for the world." "A presentation, I see," said Holmes. "Yes, sir." "From Charing Cross Hospital?" "From one or two friends there on the occasion of my marriage." "Dear, dear, that's bad!" said Holmes, shaking his head. Dr. Mortimer blinked through his glasses in mild astonishment. "Why was it bad?" "Only that you have disarranged our little deductions. Your marriage, you say?" "Yes, sir. I married, and so left the hospital, and with it all hopes of a consulting practice. It was necessary to make a home of my own." "Come, come, we are not so far wrong, after all," said Holmes. "And now, Dr. James Mortimer--" "Mister, sir, Mister--a humble M.R.C.S." "And a man of precise mind, evidently." "A dabbler in science, Mr. Holmes, a picker up of shells on the shores of the great unknown ocean. I presume that it is Mr. Sherlock Holmes whom I am addressing and not--" "No, this is my friend Dr. Watson." "Glad to meet you, sir. I have heard your name mentioned in connection with that of your friend. You interest me very much, Mr. Holmes. I had hardly expected so dolichocephalic a skull or such well-marked supra-orbital development. Would you have any objection to my running my finger along your parietal fissure? A cast of your skull, sir, until the original is available, would be an ornament to any anthropological museum. It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull." Sherlock Holmes waved our strange visitor into a chair. "You are an enthusiast in your line of thought, I perceive, sir, as I am in mine," said he. "I observe from your forefinger that you make your own cigarettes. Have no hesitation in lighting one." The man drew out paper and tobacco and twirled the one up in the other with surprising dexterity. He had long, quivering fingers as agile and restless as the antennae of an insect. Holmes was silent, but his little darting glances showed me the interest which he took in our curious companion. "I presume, sir," said he at last, "that it was not merely for the purpose of examining my skull that you have done me the honour to call here last night and again today?" "No, sir, no; though I am happy to have had the opportunity of doing that as well. I came to you, Mr. Holmes, because I recognized that I am myself an unpractical man and because I am suddenly confronted with a most serious and extraordinary problem. Recognizing, as I do, that you are the second highest expert in Europe--" "Indeed, sir! May I inquire who has the honour to be the first?" asked Holmes with some asperity. "To the man of precisely scientific mind the work of Monsieur Bertillon must always appeal strongly." "Then had you not better consult him?" "I said, sir, to the precisely scientific mind. But as a practical man of affairs it is acknowledged that you stand alone. I trust, sir, that I have not inadvertently--" "Just a little," said Holmes. "I think, Dr. Mortimer, you would do wisely if without more ado you would kindly tell me plainly what the exact nature of the problem is in which you demand my assistance." "I have in my pocket a manuscript," said Dr. James Mortimer. "I observed it as you entered the room," said Holmes. "It is an old manuscript." "Early eighteenth century, unless it is a forgery." "How can you say that, sir?" "You have presented an inch or two of it to my examination all the time that you have been talking. It would be a poor expert who could not give the date of a document within a decade or so. You may possibly have read my little monograph upon the subject. I put that at 1730." "The exact date is 1742." Dr. Mortimer drew it from his breast-pocket. "This family paper was committed to my care by Sir Charles Baskerville, whose sudden and tragic death some three months ago created so much excitement in Devonshire. I may say that I was his personal friend as well as his medical attendant. He was a strong-minded man, sir, shrewd, practical, and as unimaginative as I am myself. Yet he took this document very seriously, and his mind was prepared for just such an end as did eventually overtake him." Holmes stretched out his hand for the manuscript and flattened it upon his knee. "You will observe, Watson, the alternative use of the long s and the short. It is one of several indications which enabled me to fix the date." I looked over his shoulder at the yellow paper and the faded script. At the head was written: "Baskerville Hall," and below in large, scrawling figures: "1742." "It appears to be a statement of some sort." "Yes, it is a statement of a certain legend which runs in the Baskerville family." "But I understand that it is something more modern and practical upon which you wish to consult me?" "Most modern. A most practical, pressing matter, which must be decided within twenty-four hours. But the manuscript is short and is intimately connected with the affair. With your permission I will read it to you." Holmes leaned back in his chair, placed his finger-tips together, and closed his eyes, with an air of resignation. Dr. Mortimer turned the manuscript to the light and read in a high, cracking voice the following curious, old-world narrative: "Of the origin of the Hound of the Baskervilles there have been many statements, yet as I come in a direct line from Hugo Baskerville, and as I had the story from my father, who also had it from his, I have set it down with all belief that it occurred even as is here set forth. And I would have you believe, my sons, that the same Justice which punishes sin may also most graciously forgive it, and that no ban is so heavy but that by prayer and repentance it may be removed. Learn then from this story not to fear the fruits of the past, but rather to be circumspect in the future, that those foul passions whereby our family has suffered so grievously may not again be loosed to our undoing. "Know then that in the time of the Great Rebellion (the history of which by the learned Lord Clarendon I most earnestly commend to your attention) this Manor of Baskerville was held by Hugo of that name, nor can it be gainsaid that he was a most wild, profane, and godless man. This, in truth, his neighbours might have pardoned, seeing that saints have never flourished in those parts, but there was in him a certain wanton and cruel humour which made his name a by-word through the West. It chanced that this Hugo came to love (if, indeed, so dark a passion may be known under so bright a name) the daughter of a yeoman who held lands near the Baskerville estate. But the young maiden, being discreet and of good repute, would ever avoid him, for she feared his evil name. So it came to pass that one Michaelmas this Hugo, with five or six of his idle and wicked companions, stole down upon the farm and carried off the maiden, her father and brothers being from home, as he well knew. When they had brought her to the Hall the maiden was placed in an upper chamber, while Hugo and his friends sat down to a long carouse, as was their nightly custom. Now, the poor lass upstairs was like to have her wits turned at the singing and shouting and terrible oaths which came up to her from below, for they say that the words used by Hugo Baskerville, when he was in wine, were such as might blast the man who said them. At last in the stress of her fear she did that which might have daunted the bravest or most active man, for by the aid of the growth of ivy which covered (and still covers) the south wall she came down from under the eaves, and so homeward across the moor, there being three leagues betwixt the Hall and her father's farm. "It chanced that some little time later Hugo left his guests to carry food and drink--with other worse things, perchance--to his captive, and so found the cage empty and the bird escaped. Then, as it would seem, he became as one that hath a devil, for, rushing down the stairs into the dining-hall, he sprang upon the great table, flagons and trenchers flying before him, and he cried aloud before all the company that he would that very night render his body and soul to the Powers of Evil if he might but overtake the wench. And while the revellers stood aghast at the fury of the man, one more wicked or, it may be, more drunken than the rest, cried out that they should put the hounds upon her. Whereat Hugo ran from the house, crying to his grooms that they should saddle his mare and unkennel the pack, and giving the hounds a kerchief of the maid's, he swung them to the line, and so off full cry in the moonlight over the moor. "Now, for some space the revellers stood agape, unable to understand all that had been done in such haste. But anon their bemused wits awoke to the nature of the deed which was like to be done upon the moorlands. Everything was now in an uproar, some calling for their pistols, some for their horses, and some for another flask of wine. But at length some sense came back to their crazed minds, and the whole of them, thirteen in number, took horse and started in pursuit. The moon shone clear above them, and they rode swiftly abreast, taking that course which the maid must needs have taken if she were to reach her own home. "They had gone a mile or two when they passed one of the night shepherds upon the moorlands, and they cried to him to know if he had seen the hunt. And the man, as the story goes, was so crazed with fear that he could scarce speak, but at last he said that he had indeed seen the unhappy maiden, with the hounds upon her track. 'But I have seen more than that,' said he, 'for Hugo Baskerville passed me upon his black mare, and there ran mute behind him such a hound of hell as God forbid should ever be at my heels.' So the drunken squires cursed the shepherd and rode onward. But soon their skins turned cold, for there came a galloping across the moor, and the black mare, dabbled with white froth, went past with trailing bridle and empty saddle. Then the revellers rode close together, for a great fear was on them, but they still followed over the moor, though each, had he been alone, would have been right glad to have turned his horse's head. Riding slowly in this fashion they came at last upon the hounds. These, though known for their valour and their breed, were whimpering in a cluster at the head of a deep dip or goyal, as we call it, upon the moor, some slinking away and some, with starting hackles and staring eyes, gazing down the narrow valley before them. "The company had come to a halt, more sober men, as you may guess, than when they started. The most of them would by no means advance, but three of them, the boldest, or it may be the most drunken, rode forward down the goyal. Now, it opened into a broad space in which stood two of those great stones, still to be seen there, which were set by certain forgotten peoples in the days of old. The moon was shining bright upon the clearing, and there in the centre lay the unhappy maid where she had fallen, dead of fear and of fatigue. But it was not the sight of her body, nor yet was it that of the body of Hugo Baskerville lying near her, which raised the hair upon the heads of these three dare-devil roysterers, but it was that, standing over Hugo, and plucking at his throat, there stood a foul thing, a great, black beast, shaped like a hound, yet larger than any hound that ever mortal eye has rested upon. And even as they looked the thing tore the throat out of Hugo Baskerville, on which, as it turned its blazing eyes and dripping jaws upon them, the three shrieked with fear and rode for dear life, still screaming, across the moor. One, it is said, died that very night of what he had seen, and the other twain were but broken men for the rest of their days. "Such is the tale, my sons, of the coming of the hound which is said to have plagued the family so sorely ever since. If I have set it down it is because that which is clearly known hath less terror than that which is but hinted at and guessed. Nor can it be denied that many of the family have been unhappy in their deaths, which have been sudden, bloody, and mysterious. Yet may we shelter ourselves in the infinite goodness of Providence, which would not forever punish the innocent beyond that third or fourth generation which is threatened in Holy Writ. To that Providence, my sons, I hereby commend you, and I counsel you by way of caution to forbear from crossing the moor in those dark hours when the powers of evil are exalted. "[This from Hugo Baskerville to his sons Rodger and John, with instructions that they say nothing thereof to their sister Elizabeth.]" When Dr. Mortimer had finished reading this singular narrative he pushed his spectacles up on his forehead and stared across at Mr. Sherlock Holmes. The latter yawned and tossed the end of his cigarette into the fire. "Well?" said he. "Do you not find it interesting?" "To a collector of fairy tales." Dr. Mortimer drew a folded newspaper out of his pocket. "Now, Mr. Holmes, we will give you something a little more recent. This is the Devon County Chronicle of May 14th of this year. It is a short account of the facts elicited at the death of Sir Charles Baskerville which occurred a few days before that date." My friend leaned a little forward and his expression became intent. Our visitor readjusted his glasses and began: "The recent sudden death of Sir Charles Baskerville, whose name has been mentioned as the probable Liberal candidate for Mid-Devon at the next election, has cast a gloom over the county. Though Sir Charles had resided at Baskerville Hall for a comparatively short period his amiability of character and extreme generosity had won the affection and respect of all who had been brought into contact with him. In these days of nouveaux riches it is refreshing to find a case where the scion of an old county family which has fallen upon evil days is able to make his own fortune and to bring it back with him to restore the fallen grandeur of his line. Sir Charles, as is well known, made large sums of money in South African speculation. More wise than those who go on until the wheel turns against them, he realized his gains and returned to England with them. It is only two years since he took up his residence at Baskerville Hall, and it is common talk how large were those schemes of reconstruction and improvement which have been interrupted by his death. Being himself childless, it was his openly expressed desire that the whole countryside should, within his own lifetime, profit by his good fortune, and many will have personal reasons for bewailing his untimely end. His generous donations to local and county charities have been frequently chronicled in these columns. "The circumstances connected with the death of Sir Charles cannot be said to have been entirely cleared up by the inquest, but at least enough has been done to dispose of those rumours to which local superstition has given rise. There is no reason whatever to suspect foul play, or to imagine that death could be from any but natural causes. Sir Charles was a widower, and a man who may be said to have been in some ways of an eccentric habit of mind. In spite of his considerable wealth he was simple in his personal tastes, and his indoor servants at Baskerville Hall consisted of a married couple named Barrymore, the husband acting as butler and the wife as housekeeper. Their evidence, corroborated by that of several friends, tends to show that Sir Charles's health has for some time been impaired, and points especially to some affection of the heart, manifesting itself in changes of colour, breathlessness, and acute attacks of nervous depression. Dr. James Mortimer, the friend and medical attendant of the deceased, has given evidence to the same effect. "The facts of the case are simple. Sir Charles Baskerville was in the habit every night before going to bed of walking down the famous yew alley of Baskerville Hall. The evidence of the Barrymores shows that this had been his custom. On the fourth of May Sir Charles had declared his intention of starting next day for London, and had ordered Barrymore to prepare his luggage. That night he went out as usual for his nocturnal walk, in the course of which he was in the habit of smoking a cigar. He never returned. At twelve o'clock Barrymore, finding the hall door still open, became alarmed, and, lighting a lantern, went in search of his master. The day had been wet, and Sir Charles's footmarks were easily traced down the alley. Halfway down this walk there is a gate which leads out on to the moor. There were indications that Sir Charles had stood for some little time here. He then proceeded down the alley, and it was at the far end of it that his body was discovered. One fact which has not been explained is the statement of Barrymore that his master's footprints altered their character from the time that he passed the moor-gate, and that he appeared from thence onward to have been walking upon his toes. One Murphy, a gipsy horse-dealer, was on the moor at no great distance at the time, but he appears by his own confession to have been the worse for drink. He declares that he heard cries but is unable to state from what direction they came. No signs of violence were to be discovered upon Sir Charles's person, and though the doctor's evidence pointed to an almost incredible facial distortion--so great that Dr. Mortimer refused at first to believe that it was indeed his friend and patient who lay before him--it was explained that that is a symptom which is not unusual in cases of dyspnoea and death from cardiac exhaustion. This explanation was borne out by the post-mortem examination, which showed long-standing organic disease, and the coroner's jury returned a verdict in accordance with the medical evidence. It is well that this is so, for it is obviously of the utmost importance that Sir Charles's heir should settle at the Hall and continue the good work which has been so sadly interrupted. Had the prosaic finding of the coroner not finally put an end to the romantic stories which have been whispered in connection with the affair, it might have been difficult to find a tenant for Baskerville Hall. It is understood that the next of kin is Mr. Henry Baskerville, if he be still alive, the son of Sir Charles Baskerville's younger brother. The young man when last heard of was in America, and inquiries are being instituted with a view to informing him of his good fortune." Dr. Mortimer refolded his paper and replaced it in his pocket. "Those are the public facts, Mr. Holmes, in connection with the death of Sir Charles Baskerville." "I must thank you," said Sherlock Holmes, "for calling my attention to a case which certainly presents some features of interest. I had observed some newspaper comment at the time, but I was exceedingly preoccupied by that little affair of the Vatican cameos, and in my anxiety to oblige the Pope I lost touch with several interesting English cases. This article, you say, contains all the public facts?" "It does." "Then let me have the private ones." He leaned back, put his finger-tips together, and assumed his most impassive and judicial expression. "In doing so," said Dr. Mortimer, who had begun to show signs of some strong emotion, "I am telling that which I have not confided to anyone. My motive for withholding it from the coroner's inquiry is that a man of science shrinks from placing himself in the public position of seeming to indorse a popular superstition. I had the further motive that Baskerville Hall, as the paper says, would certainly remain untenanted if anything were done to increase its already rather grim reputation. For both these reasons I thought that I was justified in telling rather less than I knew, since no practical good could result from it, but with you there is no reason why I should not be perfectly frank. "The moor is very sparsely inhabited, and those who live near each other are thrown very much together. For this reason I saw a good deal of Sir Charles Baskerville. With the exception of Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, and Mr. Stapleton, the naturalist, there are no other men of education within many miles. Sir Charles was a retiring man, but the chance of his illness brought us together, and a community of interests in science kept us so. He had brought back much scientific information from South Africa, and many a charming evening we have spent together discussing the comparative anatomy of the Bushman and the Hottentot. "Within the last few months it became increasingly plain to me that Sir Charles's nervous system was strained to the breaking point. He had taken this legend which I have read you exceedingly to heart--so much so that, although he would walk in his own grounds, nothing would induce him to go out upon the moor at night. Incredible as it may appear to you, Mr. Holmes, he was honestly convinced that a dreadful fate overhung his family, and certainly the records which he was able to give of his ancestors were not encouraging. The idea of some ghastly presence constantly haunted him, and on more than one occasion he has asked me whether I had on my medical journeys at night ever seen any strange creature or heard the baying of a hound. The latter question he put to me several times, and always with a voice which vibrated with excitement. "I can well remember driving up to his house in the evening some three weeks before the fatal event. He chanced to be at his hall door. I had descended from my gig and was standing in front of him, when I saw his eyes fix themselves over my shoulder and stare past me with an expression of the most dreadful horror. I whisked round and had just time to catch a glimpse of something which I took to be a large black calf passing at the head of the drive. So excited and alarmed was he that I was compelled to go down to the spot where the animal had been and look around for it. It was gone, however, and the incident appeared to make the worst impression upon his mind. I stayed with him all the evening, and it was on that occasion, to explain the emotion which he had shown, that he confided to my keeping that narrative which I read to you when first I came. I mention this small episode because it assumes some importance in view of the tragedy which followed, but I was convinced at the time that the matter was entirely trivial and that his excitement had no justification. "It was at my advice that Sir Charles was about to go to London. His heart was, I knew, affected, and the constant anxiety in which he lived, however chimerical the cause of it might be, was evidently having a serious effect upon his health. I thought that a few months among the distractions of town would send him back a new man. Mr. Stapleton, a mutual friend who was much concerned at his state of health, was of the same opinion. At the last instant came this terrible catastrophe. "On the night of Sir Charles's death Barrymore the butler, who made the discovery, sent Perkins the groom on horseback to me, and as I was sitting up late I was able to reach Baskerville Hall within an hour of the event. I checked and corroborated all the facts which were mentioned at the inquest. I followed the footsteps down the yew alley, I saw the spot at the moor-gate where he seemed to have waited, I remarked the change in the shape of the prints after that point, I noted that there were no other footsteps save those of Barrymore on the soft gravel, and finally I carefully examined the body, which had not been touched until my arrival. Sir Charles lay on his face, his arms out, his fingers dug into the ground, and his features convulsed with some strong emotion to such an extent that I could hardly have sworn to his identity. There was certainly no physical injury of any kind. But one false statement was made by Barrymore at the inquest. He said that there were no traces upon the ground round the body. He did not observe any. But I did--some little distance off, but fresh and clear." "Footprints?" "Footprints." "A man's or a woman's?" Dr. Mortimer looked strangely at us for an instant, and his voice sank almost to a whisper as he answered. "Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!"

Chapters I-II

https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapters-i-ii

Mr. Sherlock Holmes Watson walks into Holmes's breakfast-room, where Sherlock Holmes is having breakfast. Watson examines a walking stick which a visitor, James Mortimer, had left behind the night before, after finding nobody there to receive him. Mortimer's name is engraved into the stick. Though his back is turned to Watson, Holmes sees his friend through the reflection in his coffee-pot. He surprises Watson by addressing him, and then asks him to deduce the character of James Mortimer from his stick. Based on the stick, Watson believes that Dr. Mortimer is an elderly, well-respected doctor who lives in the country. He further deduces that Mortimer has received this stick as a gift from a hunting club. Holmes initially compliments Watson's detective skills, but then clarifies that he is only complimenting the way that Watson has stimulated his own thought process. Holmes examines the stick himself, and concludes that Mortimer received the stick as a gift from a hospital, rather than from a hunting club. He deduces that Mortimer was a student at this hospital, not a physician, and that he must therefore be young, not old. Further, he believes that Mortimer has withdrawn from a town hospital to begin his own practice in the country. He adds that Mortimer must be absent-minded, amiable, unambitious and a dog owner. Astonished, Watson looks in his Medical Dictionary for public information about Mortimer. The book confirms that Mortimer is a young man who studied as Charing Cross Hospital. Holmes begins to explain how he deduced that Mortimer owned a dog, but sees a dog from his window and realizes that Dr. Mortimer has now returned to pay them a visit. Dr. Mortimer enters, and Watson describes him as a tall, thin man with bad posture, and dressed in a messy manner. Relieved that he left the stick there and did not lose it, Dr. Mortimer reveals that he received it not on the occasion of leaving Charing Cross, but for his wedding. First, Dr. Mortimer notes that he had heard of Holmes through his reputation for solving difficult problems. Strangely, Dr. Mortimer then compliments the shape of Holmes's skull, and tells him that it would be an "ornament to any anthropological museum" . He explains that he studies skull shapes. Holmes asks why Dr. Mortimer has called on him, and Mortimer tells him that he has a most serious and extraordinary problem. Chapter II: The Curse of the Baskervilles Dr. Mortimer explains that he has brought a manuscript, but Holmes has already observed it in his pocket, and surmises aloud that it is from the early eighteenth century. Confirming that observation, Dr. Mortimer explains that the manuscript was given to him by Sir Charles Baskerville, a close friend who had died three months earlier. Dr. Mortimer lives in Devonshire, which is out in the moor of England, and near the Baskerville estate. To best explain his purpose, Dr. Mortimer first reads the document, which details a legend about the Baskerville family. The writer of the story identifies himself as a Baskerville, and explains that this legend has been passed down in his family over several generations. During the Great Rebellion , the Baskerville estate was owned by Hugo Baskerville, a "wild, profane, and godless man" . When one young woman refused to return his advances, he trapped her an upper chamber of his house. She escaped one night while Hugo was entertaining friends, and Hugo declared that he would give his body and soul to "the Powers of Evil" if he could find her . One man suggested that they set the hounds after her, and Hugo took his advice before chasing her out into the moor on his black mare. Thirteen men followed Hugo, who was ahead of them. They encountered a shepherd who was "crazed with fear" - he had seen the maiden, but had also seen a "hound of hell" in fast pursuit of Hugo . Eventually, the men encountered Hugo's mare, alone and frothing at the mouth. Frightened, they persevered until they came across a trench, next to which the hounds were whimpering. In the trench, three of the men found the maiden, dead "of fear and of fatigue", and Hugo, dwarfed by a "great, black beast, shaped like a hound" . The giant hound tore Baskerville's throat out, at which point the men fled. One of the men died that night, while the other two remained "broken men" for the rest of their days . The writer concludes his story by insisting that the hound has plagued the Baskerville family even since, and warns his sons to never cross the moor at night. After finishing the letter, Dr. Mortimer is surprised to see Holmes yawn; he thinks the tale is only interesting to a "collector of fairytales" . Dr. Mortimer then gives Holmes a newspaper clipping detailing Sir Charles Baskerville's recent death. The newspaper story first describes Sir Charles Baskerville. At the time a probable candidate for the upcoming election, Baskerville had earned his fortune from South African speculation, and lived childless in the countryside, where he was involved in much philanthropy. The story then explains the circumstances of his death. When Sir Charles did not return from his usual nightly walk down an alley of trees behind Baskerville Hall, his servant Barrymore investigated to find his body. The mystery was increased because there were no signs of violence on his body, and because his footprints suggested he had been walking on his tip-toes. One witness, a gypsy horse-dealer named Murphy, had heard cries but admitted he was drunk. Authorities concluded that Sir Charles had died from cardiac exhaustion, ruling out any suggestions of mystical stories. Finally, the article identifies his next of kin as his nephew, Mr. Henry Baskerville, who is supposedly in America. More interested now, Holmes asks Dr. Mortimer for details not included in the article. Though he considers himself a man of science, Dr. Mortimer admits he has some strange suspicions. He considered Sir Charles a close friend, since they were two of the few intellectuals living out on the moor. The only other men of note are Stapleton and Mr. Frankland. In the days before the man's death, Dr. Mortimer noticed that Sir Charles was growing anxious over the legends of the hound. One night, after seeing a black shape cross their paths, Sir Charles admitted his fears, and Dr. Mortimer convinced him to escape to London. He died the night before he planned to leave. Finally, Dr. Mortimer adds that upon investigating the scene of Sir Charles's death, he found the footprints of a gigantic hound. He did not reveal this information to the press.

Readers of this time would have been quite familiar with the Holmes and Watson dynamic - Holmes is always able to outdo Watson with his genius, though the latter constantly works to impress his mentor. Therefore, the novel's opening would be immediately enjoyable for Doyle's readers. In the first chapter, Holmes seems to be testing Watson. There are several reasons why this is important. First, Watson is a smart, medical man capable of sound reasoning, an admirable thinker. The fact that his abilities are nevertheless dwarfed by Holmes's method is confirmation that Holmes possesses a unique, unmatchable genius. And yet Watson is a crucial part of the dynamic, since he is the storyteller. It is notable that nearly all of Sherlock Holmes's tales are told by Watson, not just in Hound but in Doyle's ouvre overall. Watson's first-person addresses are useful for several reasons. First, they allow him to parcel out the information, so that the reader can try to piece together evidence himself, to get ahead of the case. Because Watson is usually behind Holmes, he is able to replicate that experience for the reader. So when Holmes reveals his own line of reasoning, usually after Watson's attempts, the reader gets to enjoy the solution more personally. And yet Holmes's line of reasoning usually employs details that Watson does not record. The implication is clear: detective work is performed first and foremost by looking. Holmes's approach touches on an underlying belief of the work: that humans leave traces and evidence, wherever they go. The object in the first chapter, the walking stick, tells a story because the human who owns it has left traces on it. History is always able to be pieced together from physical evidence. Again, the detective succeeds not because he knows something we do not, but because he knows how to look. Further, from a storytelling perspective, Holmes's narration would undoubtedly be too tedious to record. Because he is capable of holding many possibilities in his head at once, many of which he considers only in order to disprove, his storytelling would lack the narrative thrust of Watson's. Therefore, Watson serves an economic function in the narrative: he observes just enough detail for the reader to understand the intricacies of a case, but he does not observe everything that Holmes does. In this case, Holmes is shown to be fallible when he cannot deduce every detail about Dr. Mortimer's life from his walking stick. For example, he is surprised to hear that Mortimer received the stick as a gift for his wedding. Such fallibility in the first chapter is important towards making Holmes's powers believable. In other words, he does not have a telepathic gift. This is important because the world depicted in the detective story is always able to be explained through the intellect, rather than through divine or supernatural causes. There is no need for religious belief, a fact which plays directly into the Baskerville case. Much about the case is intriguing for the reader, though, because it does imply a supernatural quality. Even though the characters have not yet traveled to the moor, it is painted in evocative strokes here, as it often was in English literature, as a dark, gloomy place where spirits might wander. There is an immediate atmosphere established, which is part of what makes this novel so popular amongst the Holmes stories. For Holmes, such atmosphere is irrelevant, however, compared to the evidence. What is initially puzzling is that the evidence - the manuscript, a newspaper clipping, and Mortimer's own observations - together suggests an occult mystery because the clues do not connect to any rational explanation. The legend has even managed to convince a man of science, Dr. Mortimer, that an evil hound might be lurking the moor. Therefore, there is a contrast between science and occult beliefs. While men of intelligence want to believe in science, they understandably turn to superstition when they cannot explain something. So before he even gets involved in the case's particulars, Holmes faces a bigger question: is science capable of explaining even that which appears to defy explanation?

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/chapters_3_to_4.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_1_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapters 3-4

chapter 3-4

{"name": "Chapter III-IV", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapter-iii-iv", "summary": "The Problem Chapter III: The Problem Dr. Mortimer explains that the footprints were found 20 yards from the body, and that he would likely have overlooked them had it not been for the legend. Holmes then questions him, asking for details about the alley where Sir Charles died. As Dr. Mortimer explains, it consists of a gravel path surrounded by tall hedges on two sides. One part of the alley leads to a summer house; the other end leads to the main house. One hedge is interrupted by a wicket-gate, which opens out onto the moor. Hence, there are three entrances to the alley overall. Finally, he notes that the main alley path is separated from the hedges by strips of grass. Holmes is upset that Mortimer did not call him immediately, since clues have obviously been erased in the interim. Mortimer counters that the case might be beyond Holmes's abilities, since it features supernatural elements. According to reports, several people had seen an unnatural creature on the moor, even before Sir Charles died. No such reports have been filed since the death. Holmes then questions why Mortimer would include him at all, and Mortimer explains that Sir Charles's nephew and the next heir, Sir Henry Baskerville, is to arrive in London, and Dr. Mortimer is worried for his safety. He believes that it is important for the moor community to keep a resident in Baskerville Hall, one who can continue Sir Charles's philanthropy, or he would otherwise simply warn Sir Henry away. Holmes advises Dr. Mortimer to meet Sir Henry at Waterloo as they had planned, and to mention nothing about the hound. He further instructs Mortimer to bring Sir Henry to him on the next morning, by which point Holmes will have determined the proper course of action. After Dr. Mortimer leaves, Watson leaves Holmes alone to think. When Watson returns later, he finds the room filled with tobacco smoke. With little effort, Holmes perceives that Watson has spent all day at his club. He then shows Watson a map which he has obtained of the moor, and points out the various locations mentioned by both Dr. Mortimer and the manuscript author. Holmes proposes that there are two questions before them: first, has any crime been committed at all? And second, what is the crime and how was it committed? Watson finds the case bewildering; Holmes agrees that it has a \"character of its own\" . He believes the tip-toe footprints are signs that Sir Charles was running, though he does not know what the man was fleeing. The fact that he ran away from the house rather than towards it suggests he was terrified out of his wits. Holmes also believes that Sir Charles must have been waiting outside for someone, which would explain the cigar ash that Dr. Mortimer described. Chapter IV: Sir Henry Baskerville The next morning, Dr. Mortimer and Sir Henry arrive, with a brand new mystery. Someone has sent a letter to his hotel, constructed of printed words cut from somewhere and then pasted. It reads: \"As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor\" . Only the word \"moor\" has been hand-written. The mystery is all the more disconcerting since nobody knew which hotel Sir Henry planned to stay at. From the typescript, Holmes quickly discerns not only which newspaper the words were taken from, but also from which article, and in fact determines that the words were cut with nail scissors. He further deduces that the person who composed this letter was educated, but wished to pose as an uneducated man. He suspects the culprit worried that Sir Henry would either recognize his handwriting or soon enough encounter it. Finally, he notes that the letter's composer was in a hurry, likely because he feared an interruption. Holmes asks Sir Henry if anything else of interest has happened to him. Though shocked at this turn of events, the man explains that one of his brand new boots is missing after he left them in the hotel hallway to be polished. Sir Henry demands to know what is happening, so Dr. Mortimer tells his story. Intrigued, Sir Henry admits he has heard the legend but never taken it seriously. When Holmes follows with his belief that there is some danger at Baskerville Hall, Sir Henry angrily declares that there is \"no man upon earth who can prevent me from going to the home of my own people\" . However, he invites Holmes to lunch later that day, at which point he will have though the matter through. As soon as Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer leave, Holmes jumps to action. He and Watson follow the men, and notice another man following them from a cab. Watson notes that this man has a bushy black beard and a pair of piercing eyes. When the cab suddenly rushes off, Holmes attempts to hail his own cab, but fails. Cursing his bad luck, Holmes admires the culprit's cleverness, but is glad he was able to note the cab number before it left. Holmes asks Watson to summon a boy named Cartwright, whom Holmes then orders to check the waste baskets of all the nearby hotels, in search of the newspaper that was used to construct the note. Once Cartwright leaves, Holmes plans to send an inquiry after whomever the cab driver was. Chapter IV is notable too because it shows Holmes transitioning from a man of thought to a man of action. While he is able to deduce much from the past, he does not know where his future action will lead. And yet he is equally excited to follow the trail. This reveals another of his methods: he must facilitate the creation of clues, and not simply wait until they come to him. The mystery is very much alive, and he wishes to act as catalyst towards its unfolding.", "analysis": "In Chapter III, Dr. Mortimer presents his own interpretation of the facts, thereby leaving Holmes to begin his investigation. For most readers - of Doyle's day and today - this is where the fun begins. And yet, significantly, the gap between Holmes's thought process and what the reader hears is quite large. We do not know what theories Holmes may be entertaining about the case: does he believe in the existence of the dog? Does he think that someone murdered Sir Charles, even though the medical evidence suggests a natural death? Does he believe that someone will murder Sir Henry too? We are only left to understand that Holmes must undergo a long process of solitary reasoning before he shares anything with Watson . The question then becomes: what does the reader know about Holmes' method of \"deduction\"? Is it really scientific? Can we really believe in Holmes's genius? As we work to determine our own theories based on Dr. Mortimer's facts, we also anticipate what alternate approach Holmes will eventually use. One indication of Holmes's process that is present in Chapter III is his attention to details. What Holmes sees is how various clues are connected to each other. In particular, he is intrigued by the clues which cannot be accounted for. As example, he is most taken by the existence of the \"tip-toe\" footprints . Already, this is his entry point into the case. However, it is important to note that Holmes is not simply interested in the unexplainable. In other words, he is not intrigued by the suggestion of myth, which would explain the mystery through occult means. Because he refuses to consider that the footprints have a supernatural element, he is able to deduce that Sir Charles was not tip-toeing, but was instead fleeing something. Because he assumes that everything has a rational explanation, he is able to transcend the more simplistic, occult explanations that Dr. Mortimer seems to take for granted. Holmes's treatment of clues is even more poignant in Chapter IV. His process here indicates his basic approach: he uses an understanding of types - a classification system - to explain the meaning of a particular clue. First, we see his familiarity with typescripts: he can identify to what medium a particular clipping belongs based off of its type. He then follows the trail to deduce the type of person who would read this kind of newspaper. His next step is to ask Sir Henry if anything else strange has happened. Naturally, Sir Henry did not think enough of the boot to mention it on his own; such small events happen to us all the time. However, Holmes knows that the devil is in the details, that the answer is often in the places we otherwise think meaningless. Instead of judging the boot incident as trivial , Holmes wishes to methodically compare the ordinary to the unusual. In other words, the usual type is compared to a specific instance , to determine the reality of the situation. Put another way, Holmes's method involves using general types to analyze specific incidents. This approach mirrors the scientific theories of Doyle's day, which classified various animal and plant species according to their types. In this way, understanding the class to which something belongs can help Holmes understand more about a particular entity. At the same time, understanding how something differs from its general class allows the observer to determine what specifics comprise clues worthy of consideration. From this perspective, decisions are extremely important, as they affect how the mystery unfolds. It is notable that Holmes criticizes himself as having approached the situation incorrectly. He regrets that his over-eagerness apprises the bearded man of their suspicions. The active trail must be treated with care if it is to lead to more evidence, meaning that Holmes's brilliance must extend not only to analysis, but to decision-making. Finally, it is interesting that Holmes acknowledges his adversary's cleverness. For the story to be interesting, the pursued person must be a match for Holmes. Such a match of intellect is crucial not only for the reader - who wants an interesting story - but also for Holmes himself - who would likely be bored if he did not confront a mystery worthy of his genius."}

I confess at these words a shudder passed through me. There was a thrill in the doctor's voice which showed that he was himself deeply moved by that which he told us. Holmes leaned forward in his excitement and his eyes had the hard, dry glitter which shot from them when he was keenly interested. "You saw this?" "As clearly as I see you." "And you said nothing?" "What was the use?" "How was it that no one else saw it?" "The marks were some twenty yards from the body and no one gave them a thought. I don't suppose I should have done so had I not known this legend." "There are many sheep-dogs on the moor?" "No doubt, but this was no sheep-dog." "You say it was large?" "Enormous." "But it had not approached the body?" "No." "What sort of night was it?' "Damp and raw." "But not actually raining?" "No." "What is the alley like?" "There are two lines of old yew hedge, twelve feet high and impenetrable. The walk in the centre is about eight feet across." "Is there anything between the hedges and the walk?" "Yes, there is a strip of grass about six feet broad on either side." "I understand that the yew hedge is penetrated at one point by a gate?" "Yes, the wicket-gate which leads on to the moor." "Is there any other opening?" "None." "So that to reach the yew alley one either has to come down it from the house or else to enter it by the moor-gate?" "There is an exit through a summer-house at the far end." "Had Sir Charles reached this?" "No; he lay about fifty yards from it." "Now, tell me, Dr. Mortimer--and this is important--the marks which you saw were on the path and not on the grass?" "No marks could show on the grass." "Were they on the same side of the path as the moor-gate?" "Yes; they were on the edge of the path on the same side as the moor-gate." "You interest me exceedingly. Another point. Was the wicket-gate closed?" "Closed and padlocked." "How high was it?" "About four feet high." "Then anyone could have got over it?" "Yes." "And what marks did you see by the wicket-gate?" "None in particular." "Good heaven! Did no one examine?" "Yes, I examined, myself." "And found nothing?" "It was all very confused. Sir Charles had evidently stood there for five or ten minutes." "How do you know that?" "Because the ash had twice dropped from his cigar." "Excellent! This is a colleague, Watson, after our own heart. But the marks?" "He had left his own marks all over that small patch of gravel. I could discern no others." Sherlock Holmes struck his hand against his knee with an impatient gesture. "If I had only been there!" he cried. "It is evidently a case of extraordinary interest, and one which presented immense opportunities to the scientific expert. That gravel page upon which I might have read so much has been long ere this smudged by the rain and defaced by the clogs of curious peasants. Oh, Dr. Mortimer, Dr. Mortimer, to think that you should not have called me in! You have indeed much to answer for." "I could not call you in, Mr. Holmes, without disclosing these facts to the world, and I have already given my reasons for not wishing to do so. Besides, besides--" "Why do you hesitate?" "There is a realm in which the most acute and most experienced of detectives is helpless." "You mean that the thing is supernatural?" "I did not positively say so." "No, but you evidently think it." "Since the tragedy, Mr. Holmes, there have come to my ears several incidents which are hard to reconcile with the settled order of Nature." "For example?" "I find that before the terrible event occurred several people had seen a creature upon the moor which corresponds with this Baskerville demon, and which could not possibly be any animal known to science. They all agreed that it was a huge creature, luminous, ghastly, and spectral. I have cross-examined these men, one of them a hard-headed countryman, one a farrier, and one a moorland farmer, who all tell the same story of this dreadful apparition, exactly corresponding to the hell-hound of the legend. I assure you that there is a reign of terror in the district, and that it is a hardy man who will cross the moor at night." "And you, a trained man of science, believe it to be supernatural?" "I do not know what to believe." Holmes shrugged his shoulders. "I have hitherto confined my investigations to this world," said he. "In a modest way I have combated evil, but to take on the Father of Evil himself would, perhaps, be too ambitious a task. Yet you must admit that the footmark is material." "The original hound was material enough to tug a man's throat out, and yet he was diabolical as well." "I see that you have quite gone over to the supernaturalists. But now, Dr. Mortimer, tell me this. If you hold these views, why have you come to consult me at all? You tell me in the same breath that it is useless to investigate Sir Charles's death, and that you desire me to do it." "I did not say that I desired you to do it." "Then, how can I assist you?" "By advising me as to what I should do with Sir Henry Baskerville, who arrives at Waterloo Station"--Dr. Mortimer looked at his watch--"in exactly one hour and a quarter." "He being the heir?" "Yes. On the death of Sir Charles we inquired for this young gentleman and found that he had been farming in Canada. From the accounts which have reached us he is an excellent fellow in every way. I speak now not as a medical man but as a trustee and executor of Sir Charles's will." "There is no other claimant, I presume?" "None. The only other kinsman whom we have been able to trace was Rodger Baskerville, the youngest of three brothers of whom poor Sir Charles was the elder. The second brother, who died young, is the father of this lad Henry. The third, Rodger, was the black sheep of the family. He came of the old masterful Baskerville strain and was the very image, they tell me, of the family picture of old Hugo. He made England too hot to hold him, fled to Central America, and died there in 1876 of yellow fever. Henry is the last of the Baskervilles. In one hour and five minutes I meet him at Waterloo Station. I have had a wire that he arrived at Southampton this morning. Now, Mr. Holmes, what would you advise me to do with him?" "Why should he not go to the home of his fathers?" "It seems natural, does it not? And yet, consider that every Baskerville who goes there meets with an evil fate. I feel sure that if Sir Charles could have spoken with me before his death he would have warned me against bringing this, the last of the old race, and the heir to great wealth, to that deadly place. And yet it cannot be denied that the prosperity of the whole poor, bleak countryside depends upon his presence. All the good work which has been done by Sir Charles will crash to the ground if there is no tenant of the Hall. I fear lest I should be swayed too much by my own obvious interest in the matter, and that is why I bring the case before you and ask for your advice." Holmes considered for a little time. "Put into plain words, the matter is this," said he. "In your opinion there is a diabolical agency which makes Dartmoor an unsafe abode for a Baskerville--that is your opinion?" "At least I might go the length of saying that there is some evidence that this may be so." "Exactly. But surely, if your supernatural theory be correct, it could work the young man evil in London as easily as in Devonshire. A devil with merely local powers like a parish vestry would be too inconceivable a thing." "You put the matter more flippantly, Mr. Holmes, than you would probably do if you were brought into personal contact with these things. Your advice, then, as I understand it, is that the young man will be as safe in Devonshire as in London. He comes in fifty minutes. What would you recommend?" "I recommend, sir, that you take a cab, call off your spaniel who is scratching at my front door, and proceed to Waterloo to meet Sir Henry Baskerville." "And then?" "And then you will say nothing to him at all until I have made up my mind about the matter." "How long will it take you to make up your mind?" "Twenty-four hours. At ten o'clock tomorrow, Dr. Mortimer, I will be much obliged to you if you will call upon me here, and it will be of help to me in my plans for the future if you will bring Sir Henry Baskerville with you." "I will do so, Mr. Holmes." He scribbled the appointment on his shirt-cuff and hurried off in his strange, peering, absent-minded fashion. Holmes stopped him at the head of the stair. "Only one more question, Dr. Mortimer. You say that before Sir Charles Baskerville's death several people saw this apparition upon the moor?" "Three people did." "Did any see it after?" "I have not heard of any." "Thank you. Good-morning." Holmes returned to his seat with that quiet look of inward satisfaction which meant that he had a congenial task before him. "Going out, Watson?" "Unless I can help you." "No, my dear fellow, it is at the hour of action that I turn to you for aid. But this is splendid, really unique from some points of view. When you pass Bradley's, would you ask him to send up a pound of the strongest shag tobacco? Thank you. It would be as well if you could make it convenient not to return before evening. Then I should be very glad to compare impressions as to this most interesting problem which has been submitted to us this morning." I knew that seclusion and solitude were very necessary for my friend in those hours of intense mental concentration during which he weighed every particle of evidence, constructed alternative theories, balanced one against the other, and made up his mind as to which points were essential and which immaterial. I therefore spent the day at my club and did not return to Baker Street until evening. It was nearly nine o'clock when I found myself in the sitting-room once more. My first impression as I opened the door was that a fire had broken out, for the room was so filled with smoke that the light of the lamp upon the table was blurred by it. As I entered, however, my fears were set at rest, for it was the acrid fumes of strong coarse tobacco which took me by the throat and set me coughing. Through the haze I had a vague vision of Holmes in his dressing-gown coiled up in an armchair with his black clay pipe between his lips. Several rolls of paper lay around him. "Caught cold, Watson?" said he. "No, it's this poisonous atmosphere." "I suppose it is pretty thick, now that you mention it." "Thick! It is intolerable." "Open the window, then! You have been at your club all day, I perceive." "My dear Holmes!" "Am I right?" "Certainly, but how?" He laughed at my bewildered expression. "There is a delightful freshness about you, Watson, which makes it a pleasure to exercise any small powers which I possess at your expense. A gentleman goes forth on a showery and miry day. He returns immaculate in the evening with the gloss still on his hat and his boots. He has been a fixture therefore all day. He is not a man with intimate friends. Where, then, could he have been? Is it not obvious?" "Well, it is rather obvious." "The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes. Where do you think that I have been?" "A fixture also." "On the contrary, I have been to Devonshire." "In spirit?" "Exactly. My body has remained in this armchair and has, I regret to observe, consumed in my absence two large pots of coffee and an incredible amount of tobacco. After you left I sent down to Stamford's for the Ordnance map of this portion of the moor, and my spirit has hovered over it all day. I flatter myself that I could find my way about." "A large-scale map, I presume?" "Very large." He unrolled one section and held it over his knee. "Here you have the particular district which concerns us. That is Baskerville Hall in the middle." "With a wood round it?" "Exactly. I fancy the yew alley, though not marked under that name, must stretch along this line, with the moor, as you perceive, upon the right of it. This small clump of buildings here is the hamlet of Grimpen, where our friend Dr. Mortimer has his headquarters. Within a radius of five miles there are, as you see, only a very few scattered dwellings. Here is Lafter Hall, which was mentioned in the narrative. There is a house indicated here which may be the residence of the naturalist--Stapleton, if I remember right, was his name. Here are two moorland farmhouses, High Tor and Foulmire. Then fourteen miles away the great convict prison of Princetown. Between and around these scattered points extends the desolate, lifeless moor. This, then, is the stage upon which tragedy has been played, and upon which we may help to play it again." "It must be a wild place." "Yes, the setting is a worthy one. If the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of men--" "Then you are yourself inclining to the supernatural explanation." "The devil's agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not? There are two questions waiting for us at the outset. The one is whether any crime has been committed at all; the second is, what is the crime and how was it committed? Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct, and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one. I think we'll shut that window again, if you don't mind. It is a singular thing, but I find that a concentrated atmosphere helps a concentration of thought. I have not pushed it to the length of getting into a box to think, but that is the logical outcome of my convictions. Have you turned the case over in your mind?" "Yes, I have thought a good deal of it in the course of the day." "What do you make of it?" "It is very bewildering." "It has certainly a character of its own. There are points of distinction about it. That change in the footprints, for example. What do you make of that?" "Mortimer said that the man had walked on tiptoe down that portion of the alley." "He only repeated what some fool had said at the inquest. Why should a man walk on tiptoe down the alley?" "What then?" "He was running, Watson--running desperately, running for his life, running until he burst his heart--and fell dead upon his face." "Running from what?" "There lies our problem. There are indications that the man was crazed with fear before ever he began to run." "How can you say that?" "I am presuming that the cause of his fears came to him across the moor. If that were so, and it seems most probable, only a man who had lost his wits would have run from the house instead of towards it. If the gipsy's evidence may be taken as true, he ran with cries for help in the direction where help was least likely to be. Then, again, whom was he waiting for that night, and why was he waiting for him in the yew alley rather than in his own house?" "You think that he was waiting for someone?" "The man was elderly and infirm. We can understand his taking an evening stroll, but the ground was damp and the night inclement. Is it natural that he should stand for five or ten minutes, as Dr. Mortimer, with more practical sense than I should have given him credit for, deduced from the cigar ash?" "But he went out every evening." "I think it unlikely that he waited at the moor-gate every evening. On the contrary, the evidence is that he avoided the moor. That night he waited there. It was the night before he made his departure for London. The thing takes shape, Watson. It becomes coherent. Might I ask you to hand me my violin, and we will postpone all further thought upon this business until we have had the advantage of meeting Dr. Mortimer and Sir Henry Baskerville in the morning." Our breakfast table was cleared early, and Holmes waited in his dressing-gown for the promised interview. Our clients were punctual to their appointment, for the clock had just struck ten when Dr. Mortimer was shown up, followed by the young baronet. The latter was a small, alert, dark-eyed man about thirty years of age, very sturdily built, with thick black eyebrows and a strong, pugnacious face. He wore a ruddy-tinted tweed suit and had the weather-beaten appearance of one who has spent most of his time in the open air, and yet there was something in his steady eye and the quiet assurance of his bearing which indicated the gentleman. "This is Sir Henry Baskerville," said Dr. Mortimer. "Why, yes," said he, "and the strange thing is, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, that if my friend here had not proposed coming round to you this morning I should have come on my own account. I understand that you think out little puzzles, and I've had one this morning which wants more thinking out than I am able to give it." "Pray take a seat, Sir Henry. Do I understand you to say that you have yourself had some remarkable experience since you arrived in London?" "Nothing of much importance, Mr. Holmes. Only a joke, as like as not. It was this letter, if you can call it a letter, which reached me this morning." He laid an envelope upon the table, and we all bent over it. It was of common quality, grayish in colour. The address, "Sir Henry Baskerville, Northumberland Hotel," was printed in rough characters; the post-mark "Charing Cross," and the date of posting the preceding evening. "Who knew that you were going to the Northumberland Hotel?" asked Holmes, glancing keenly across at our visitor. "No one could have known. We only decided after I met Dr. Mortimer." "But Dr. Mortimer was no doubt already stopping there?" "No, I had been staying with a friend," said the doctor. "There was no possible indication that we intended to go to this hotel." "Hum! Someone seems to be very deeply interested in your movements." Out of the envelope he took a half-sheet of foolscap paper folded into four. This he opened and spread flat upon the table. Across the middle of it a single sentence had been formed by the expedient of pasting printed words upon it. It ran: As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor. The word "moor" only was printed in ink. "Now," said Sir Henry Baskerville, "perhaps you will tell me, Mr. Holmes, what in thunder is the meaning of that, and who it is that takes so much interest in my affairs?" "What do you make of it, Dr. Mortimer? You must allow that there is nothing supernatural about this, at any rate?" "No, sir, but it might very well come from someone who was convinced that the business is supernatural." "What business?" asked Sir Henry sharply. "It seems to me that all you gentlemen know a great deal more than I do about my own affairs." "You shall share our knowledge before you leave this room, Sir Henry. I promise you that," said Sherlock Holmes. "We will confine ourselves for the present with your permission to this very interesting document, which must have been put together and posted yesterday evening. Have you yesterday's Times, Watson?" "It is here in the corner." "Might I trouble you for it--the inside page, please, with the leading articles?" He glanced swiftly over it, running his eyes up and down the columns. "Capital article this on free trade. Permit me to give you an extract from it. 'You may be cajoled into imagining that your own special trade or your own industry will be encouraged by a protective tariff, but it stands to reason that such legislation must in the long run keep away wealth from the country, diminish the value of our imports, and lower the general conditions of life in this island.' "What do you think of that, Watson?" cried Holmes in high glee, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction. "Don't you think that is an admirable sentiment?" Dr. Mortimer looked at Holmes with an air of professional interest, and Sir Henry Baskerville turned a pair of puzzled dark eyes upon me. "I don't know much about the tariff and things of that kind," said he, "but it seems to me we've got a bit off the trail so far as that note is concerned." "On the contrary, I think we are particularly hot upon the trail, Sir Henry. Watson here knows more about my methods than you do, but I fear that even he has not quite grasped the significance of this sentence." "No, I confess that I see no connection." "And yet, my dear Watson, there is so very close a connection that the one is extracted out of the other. 'You,' 'your,' 'your,' 'life,' 'reason,' 'value,' 'keep away,' 'from the.' Don't you see now whence these words have been taken?" "By thunder, you're right! Well, if that isn't smart!" cried Sir Henry. "If any possible doubt remained it is settled by the fact that 'keep away' and 'from the' are cut out in one piece." "Well, now--so it is!" "Really, Mr. Holmes, this exceeds anything which I could have imagined," said Dr. Mortimer, gazing at my friend in amazement. "I could understand anyone saying that the words were from a newspaper; but that you should name which, and add that it came from the leading article, is really one of the most remarkable things which I have ever known. How did you do it?" "I presume, Doctor, that you could tell the skull of a negro from that of an Esquimau?" "Most certainly." "But how?" "Because that is my special hobby. The differences are obvious. The supra-orbital crest, the facial angle, the maxillary curve, the--" "But this is my special hobby, and the differences are equally obvious. There is as much difference to my eyes between the leaded bourgeois type of a Times article and the slovenly print of an evening half-penny paper as there could be between your negro and your Esquimau. The detection of types is one of the most elementary branches of knowledge to the special expert in crime, though I confess that once when I was very young I confused the Leeds Mercury with the Western Morning News. But a Times leader is entirely distinctive, and these words could have been taken from nothing else. As it was done yesterday the strong probability was that we should find the words in yesterday's issue." "So far as I can follow you, then, Mr. Holmes," said Sir Henry Baskerville, "someone cut out this message with a scissors--" "Nail-scissors," said Holmes. "You can see that it was a very short-bladed scissors, since the cutter had to take two snips over 'keep away.'" "That is so. Someone, then, cut out the message with a pair of short-bladed scissors, pasted it with paste--" "Gum," said Holmes. "With gum on to the paper. But I want to know why the word 'moor' should have been written?" "Because he could not find it in print. The other words were all simple and might be found in any issue, but 'moor' would be less common." "Why, of course, that would explain it. Have you read anything else in this message, Mr. Holmes?" "There are one or two indications, and yet the utmost pains have been taken to remove all clues. The address, you observe is printed in rough characters. But the Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated. We may take it, therefore, that the letter was composed by an educated man who wished to pose as an uneducated one, and his effort to conceal his own writing suggests that that writing might be known, or come to be known, by you. Again, you will observe that the words are not gummed on in an accurate line, but that some are much higher than others. 'Life,' for example is quite out of its proper place. That may point to carelessness or it may point to agitation and hurry upon the part of the cutter. On the whole I incline to the latter view, since the matter was evidently important, and it is unlikely that the composer of such a letter would be careless. If he were in a hurry it opens up the interesting question why he should be in a hurry, since any letter posted up to early morning would reach Sir Henry before he would leave his hotel. Did the composer fear an interruption--and from whom?" "We are coming now rather into the region of guesswork," said Dr. Mortimer. "Say, rather, into the region where we balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination, but we have always some material basis on which to start our speculation. Now, you would call it a guess, no doubt, but I am almost certain that this address has been written in a hotel." "How in the world can you say that?" "If you examine it carefully you will see that both the pen and the ink have given the writer trouble. The pen has spluttered twice in a single word and has run dry three times in a short address, showing that there was very little ink in the bottle. Now, a private pen or ink-bottle is seldom allowed to be in such a state, and the combination of the two must be quite rare. But you know the hotel ink and the hotel pen, where it is rare to get anything else. Yes, I have very little hesitation in saying that could we examine the waste-paper baskets of the hotels around Charing Cross until we found the remains of the mutilated Times leader we could lay our hands straight upon the person who sent this singular message. Halloa! Halloa! What's this?" He was carefully examining the foolscap, upon which the words were pasted, holding it only an inch or two from his eyes. "Well?" "Nothing," said he, throwing it down. "It is a blank half-sheet of paper, without even a water-mark upon it. I think we have drawn as much as we can from this curious letter; and now, Sir Henry, has anything else of interest happened to you since you have been in London?" "Why, no, Mr. Holmes. I think not." "You have not observed anyone follow or watch you?" "I seem to have walked right into the thick of a dime novel," said our visitor. "Why in thunder should anyone follow or watch me?" "We are coming to that. You have nothing else to report to us before we go into this matter?" "Well, it depends upon what you think worth reporting." "I think anything out of the ordinary routine of life well worth reporting." Sir Henry smiled. "I don't know much of British life yet, for I have spent nearly all my time in the States and in Canada. But I hope that to lose one of your boots is not part of the ordinary routine of life over here." "You have lost one of your boots?" "My dear sir," cried Dr. Mortimer, "it is only mislaid. You will find it when you return to the hotel. What is the use of troubling Mr. Holmes with trifles of this kind?" "Well, he asked me for anything outside the ordinary routine." "Exactly," said Holmes, "however foolish the incident may seem. You have lost one of your boots, you say?" "Well, mislaid it, anyhow. I put them both outside my door last night, and there was only one in the morning. I could get no sense out of the chap who cleans them. The worst of it is that I only bought the pair last night in the Strand, and I have never had them on." "If you have never worn them, why did you put them out to be cleaned?" "They were tan boots and had never been varnished. That was why I put them out." "Then I understand that on your arrival in London yesterday you went out at once and bought a pair of boots?" "I did a good deal of shopping. Dr. Mortimer here went round with me. You see, if I am to be squire down there I must dress the part, and it may be that I have got a little careless in my ways out West. Among other things I bought these brown boots--gave six dollars for them--and had one stolen before ever I had them on my feet." "It seems a singularly useless thing to steal," said Sherlock Holmes. "I confess that I share Dr. Mortimer's belief that it will not be long before the missing boot is found." "And, now, gentlemen," said the baronet with decision, "it seems to me that I have spoken quite enough about the little that I know. It is time that you kept your promise and gave me a full account of what we are all driving at." "Your request is a very reasonable one," Holmes answered. "Dr. Mortimer, I think you could not do better than to tell your story as you told it to us." Thus encouraged, our scientific friend drew his papers from his pocket and presented the whole case as he had done upon the morning before. Sir Henry Baskerville listened with the deepest attention and with an occasional exclamation of surprise. "Well, I seem to have come into an inheritance with a vengeance," said he when the long narrative was finished. "Of course, I've heard of the hound ever since I was in the nursery. It's the pet story of the family, though I never thought of taking it seriously before. But as to my uncle's death--well, it all seems boiling up in my head, and I can't get it clear yet. You don't seem quite to have made up your mind whether it's a case for a policeman or a clergyman." "Precisely." "And now there's this affair of the letter to me at the hotel. I suppose that fits into its place." "It seems to show that someone knows more than we do about what goes on upon the moor," said Dr. Mortimer. "And also," said Holmes, "that someone is not ill-disposed towards you, since they warn you of danger." "Or it may be that they wish, for their own purposes, to scare me away." "Well, of course, that is possible also. I am very much indebted to you, Dr. Mortimer, for introducing me to a problem which presents several interesting alternatives. But the practical point which we now have to decide, Sir Henry, is whether it is or is not advisable for you to go to Baskerville Hall." "Why should I not go?" "There seems to be danger." "Do you mean danger from this family fiend or do you mean danger from human beings?" "Well, that is what we have to find out." "Whichever it is, my answer is fixed. There is no devil in hell, Mr. Holmes, and there is no man upon earth who can prevent me from going to the home of my own people, and you may take that to be my final answer." His dark brows knitted and his face flushed to a dusky red as he spoke. It was evident that the fiery temper of the Baskervilles was not extinct in this their last representative. "Meanwhile," said he, "I have hardly had time to think over all that you have told me. It's a big thing for a man to have to understand and to decide at one sitting. I should like to have a quiet hour by myself to make up my mind. Now, look here, Mr. Holmes, it's half-past eleven now and I am going back right away to my hotel. Suppose you and your friend, Dr. Watson, come round and lunch with us at two. I'll be able to tell you more clearly then how this thing strikes me." "Is that convenient to you, Watson?" "Perfectly." "Then you may expect us. Shall I have a cab called?" "I'd prefer to walk, for this affair has flurried me rather." "I'll join you in a walk, with pleasure," said his companion. "Then we meet again at two o'clock. Au revoir, and good-morning!" We heard the steps of our visitors descend the stair and the bang of the front door. In an instant Holmes had changed from the languid dreamer to the man of action. "Your hat and boots, Watson, quick! Not a moment to lose!" He rushed into his room in his dressing-gown and was back again in a few seconds in a frock-coat. We hurried together down the stairs and into the street. Dr. Mortimer and Baskerville were still visible about two hundred yards ahead of us in the direction of Oxford Street. "Shall I run on and stop them?" "Not for the world, my dear Watson. I am perfectly satisfied with your company if you will tolerate mine. Our friends are wise, for it is certainly a very fine morning for a walk." He quickened his pace until we had decreased the distance which divided us by about half. Then, still keeping a hundred yards behind, we followed into Oxford Street and so down Regent Street. Once our friends stopped and stared into a shop window, upon which Holmes did the same. An instant afterwards he gave a little cry of satisfaction, and, following the direction of his eager eyes, I saw that a hansom cab with a man inside which had halted on the other side of the street was now proceeding slowly onward again. "There's our man, Watson! Come along! We'll have a good look at him, if we can do no more." At that instant I was aware of a bushy black beard and a pair of piercing eyes turned upon us through the side window of the cab. Instantly the trapdoor at the top flew up, something was screamed to the driver, and the cab flew madly off down Regent Street. Holmes looked eagerly round for another, but no empty one was in sight. Then he dashed in wild pursuit amid the stream of the traffic, but the start was too great, and already the cab was out of sight. "There now!" said Holmes bitterly as he emerged panting and white with vexation from the tide of vehicles. "Was ever such bad luck and such bad management, too? Watson, Watson, if you are an honest man you will record this also and set it against my successes!" "Who was the man?" "I have not an idea." "A spy?" "Well, it was evident from what we have heard that Baskerville has been very closely shadowed by someone since he has been in town. How else could it be known so quickly that it was the Northumberland Hotel which he had chosen? If they had followed him the first day I argued that they would follow him also the second. You may have observed that I twice strolled over to the window while Dr. Mortimer was reading his legend." "Yes, I remember." "I was looking out for loiterers in the street, but I saw none. We are dealing with a clever man, Watson. This matter cuts very deep, and though I have not finally made up my mind whether it is a benevolent or a malevolent agency which is in touch with us, I am conscious always of power and design. When our friends left I at once followed them in the hopes of marking down their invisible attendant. So wily was he that he had not trusted himself upon foot, but he had availed himself of a cab so that he could loiter behind or dash past them and so escape their notice. His method had the additional advantage that if they were to take a cab he was all ready to follow them. It has, however, one obvious disadvantage." "It puts him in the power of the cabman." "Exactly." "What a pity we did not get the number!" "My dear Watson, clumsy as I have been, you surely do not seriously imagine that I neglected to get the number? No. 2704 is our man. But that is no use to us for the moment." "I fail to see how you could have done more." "On observing the cab I should have instantly turned and walked in the other direction. I should then at my leisure have hired a second cab and followed the first at a respectful distance, or, better still, have driven to the Northumberland Hotel and waited there. When our unknown had followed Baskerville home we should have had the opportunity of playing his own game upon himself and seeing where he made for. As it is, by an indiscreet eagerness, which was taken advantage of with extraordinary quickness and energy by our opponent, we have betrayed ourselves and lost our man." We had been sauntering slowly down Regent Street during this conversation, and Dr. Mortimer, with his companion, had long vanished in front of us. "There is no object in our following them," said Holmes. "The shadow has departed and will not return. We must see what further cards we have in our hands and play them with decision. Could you swear to that man's face within the cab?" "I could swear only to the beard." "And so could I--from which I gather that in all probability it was a false one. A clever man upon so delicate an errand has no use for a beard save to conceal his features. Come in here, Watson!" He turned into one of the district messenger offices, where he was warmly greeted by the manager. "Ah, Wilson, I see you have not forgotten the little case in which I had the good fortune to help you?" "No, sir, indeed I have not. You saved my good name, and perhaps my life." "My dear fellow, you exaggerate. I have some recollection, Wilson, that you had among your boys a lad named Cartwright, who showed some ability during the investigation." "Yes, sir, he is still with us." "Could you ring him up?--thank you! And I should be glad to have change of this five-pound note." A lad of fourteen, with a bright, keen face, had obeyed the summons of the manager. He stood now gazing with great reverence at the famous detective. "Let me have the Hotel Directory," said Holmes. "Thank you! Now, Cartwright, there are the names of twenty-three hotels here, all in the immediate neighbourhood of Charing Cross. Do you see?" "Yes, sir." "You will visit each of these in turn." "Yes, sir." "You will begin in each case by giving the outside porter one shilling. Here are twenty-three shillings." "Yes, sir." "You will tell him that you want to see the waste-paper of yesterday. You will say that an important telegram has miscarried and that you are looking for it. You understand?" "Yes, sir." "But what you are really looking for is the centre page of the Times with some holes cut in it with scissors. Here is a copy of the Times. It is this page. You could easily recognize it, could you not?" "Yes, sir." "In each case the outside porter will send for the hall porter, to whom also you will give a shilling. Here are twenty-three shillings. You will then learn in possibly twenty cases out of the twenty-three that the waste of the day before has been burned or removed. In the three other cases you will be shown a heap of paper and you will look for this page of the Times among it. The odds are enormously against your finding it. There are ten shillings over in case of emergencies. Let me have a report by wire at Baker Street before evening. And now, Watson, it only remains for us to find out by wire the identity of the cabman, No. 2704, and then we will drop into one of the Bond Street picture galleries and fill in the time until we are due at the hotel."

Chapter III-IV

https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapter-iii-iv

The Problem Chapter III: The Problem Dr. Mortimer explains that the footprints were found 20 yards from the body, and that he would likely have overlooked them had it not been for the legend. Holmes then questions him, asking for details about the alley where Sir Charles died. As Dr. Mortimer explains, it consists of a gravel path surrounded by tall hedges on two sides. One part of the alley leads to a summer house; the other end leads to the main house. One hedge is interrupted by a wicket-gate, which opens out onto the moor. Hence, there are three entrances to the alley overall. Finally, he notes that the main alley path is separated from the hedges by strips of grass. Holmes is upset that Mortimer did not call him immediately, since clues have obviously been erased in the interim. Mortimer counters that the case might be beyond Holmes's abilities, since it features supernatural elements. According to reports, several people had seen an unnatural creature on the moor, even before Sir Charles died. No such reports have been filed since the death. Holmes then questions why Mortimer would include him at all, and Mortimer explains that Sir Charles's nephew and the next heir, Sir Henry Baskerville, is to arrive in London, and Dr. Mortimer is worried for his safety. He believes that it is important for the moor community to keep a resident in Baskerville Hall, one who can continue Sir Charles's philanthropy, or he would otherwise simply warn Sir Henry away. Holmes advises Dr. Mortimer to meet Sir Henry at Waterloo as they had planned, and to mention nothing about the hound. He further instructs Mortimer to bring Sir Henry to him on the next morning, by which point Holmes will have determined the proper course of action. After Dr. Mortimer leaves, Watson leaves Holmes alone to think. When Watson returns later, he finds the room filled with tobacco smoke. With little effort, Holmes perceives that Watson has spent all day at his club. He then shows Watson a map which he has obtained of the moor, and points out the various locations mentioned by both Dr. Mortimer and the manuscript author. Holmes proposes that there are two questions before them: first, has any crime been committed at all? And second, what is the crime and how was it committed? Watson finds the case bewildering; Holmes agrees that it has a "character of its own" . He believes the tip-toe footprints are signs that Sir Charles was running, though he does not know what the man was fleeing. The fact that he ran away from the house rather than towards it suggests he was terrified out of his wits. Holmes also believes that Sir Charles must have been waiting outside for someone, which would explain the cigar ash that Dr. Mortimer described. Chapter IV: Sir Henry Baskerville The next morning, Dr. Mortimer and Sir Henry arrive, with a brand new mystery. Someone has sent a letter to his hotel, constructed of printed words cut from somewhere and then pasted. It reads: "As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor" . Only the word "moor" has been hand-written. The mystery is all the more disconcerting since nobody knew which hotel Sir Henry planned to stay at. From the typescript, Holmes quickly discerns not only which newspaper the words were taken from, but also from which article, and in fact determines that the words were cut with nail scissors. He further deduces that the person who composed this letter was educated, but wished to pose as an uneducated man. He suspects the culprit worried that Sir Henry would either recognize his handwriting or soon enough encounter it. Finally, he notes that the letter's composer was in a hurry, likely because he feared an interruption. Holmes asks Sir Henry if anything else of interest has happened to him. Though shocked at this turn of events, the man explains that one of his brand new boots is missing after he left them in the hotel hallway to be polished. Sir Henry demands to know what is happening, so Dr. Mortimer tells his story. Intrigued, Sir Henry admits he has heard the legend but never taken it seriously. When Holmes follows with his belief that there is some danger at Baskerville Hall, Sir Henry angrily declares that there is "no man upon earth who can prevent me from going to the home of my own people" . However, he invites Holmes to lunch later that day, at which point he will have though the matter through. As soon as Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer leave, Holmes jumps to action. He and Watson follow the men, and notice another man following them from a cab. Watson notes that this man has a bushy black beard and a pair of piercing eyes. When the cab suddenly rushes off, Holmes attempts to hail his own cab, but fails. Cursing his bad luck, Holmes admires the culprit's cleverness, but is glad he was able to note the cab number before it left. Holmes asks Watson to summon a boy named Cartwright, whom Holmes then orders to check the waste baskets of all the nearby hotels, in search of the newspaper that was used to construct the note. Once Cartwright leaves, Holmes plans to send an inquiry after whomever the cab driver was. Chapter IV is notable too because it shows Holmes transitioning from a man of thought to a man of action. While he is able to deduce much from the past, he does not know where his future action will lead. And yet he is equally excited to follow the trail. This reveals another of his methods: he must facilitate the creation of clues, and not simply wait until they come to him. The mystery is very much alive, and he wishes to act as catalyst towards its unfolding.

In Chapter III, Dr. Mortimer presents his own interpretation of the facts, thereby leaving Holmes to begin his investigation. For most readers - of Doyle's day and today - this is where the fun begins. And yet, significantly, the gap between Holmes's thought process and what the reader hears is quite large. We do not know what theories Holmes may be entertaining about the case: does he believe in the existence of the dog? Does he think that someone murdered Sir Charles, even though the medical evidence suggests a natural death? Does he believe that someone will murder Sir Henry too? We are only left to understand that Holmes must undergo a long process of solitary reasoning before he shares anything with Watson . The question then becomes: what does the reader know about Holmes' method of "deduction"? Is it really scientific? Can we really believe in Holmes's genius? As we work to determine our own theories based on Dr. Mortimer's facts, we also anticipate what alternate approach Holmes will eventually use. One indication of Holmes's process that is present in Chapter III is his attention to details. What Holmes sees is how various clues are connected to each other. In particular, he is intrigued by the clues which cannot be accounted for. As example, he is most taken by the existence of the "tip-toe" footprints . Already, this is his entry point into the case. However, it is important to note that Holmes is not simply interested in the unexplainable. In other words, he is not intrigued by the suggestion of myth, which would explain the mystery through occult means. Because he refuses to consider that the footprints have a supernatural element, he is able to deduce that Sir Charles was not tip-toeing, but was instead fleeing something. Because he assumes that everything has a rational explanation, he is able to transcend the more simplistic, occult explanations that Dr. Mortimer seems to take for granted. Holmes's treatment of clues is even more poignant in Chapter IV. His process here indicates his basic approach: he uses an understanding of types - a classification system - to explain the meaning of a particular clue. First, we see his familiarity with typescripts: he can identify to what medium a particular clipping belongs based off of its type. He then follows the trail to deduce the type of person who would read this kind of newspaper. His next step is to ask Sir Henry if anything else strange has happened. Naturally, Sir Henry did not think enough of the boot to mention it on his own; such small events happen to us all the time. However, Holmes knows that the devil is in the details, that the answer is often in the places we otherwise think meaningless. Instead of judging the boot incident as trivial , Holmes wishes to methodically compare the ordinary to the unusual. In other words, the usual type is compared to a specific instance , to determine the reality of the situation. Put another way, Holmes's method involves using general types to analyze specific incidents. This approach mirrors the scientific theories of Doyle's day, which classified various animal and plant species according to their types. In this way, understanding the class to which something belongs can help Holmes understand more about a particular entity. At the same time, understanding how something differs from its general class allows the observer to determine what specifics comprise clues worthy of consideration. From this perspective, decisions are extremely important, as they affect how the mystery unfolds. It is notable that Holmes criticizes himself as having approached the situation incorrectly. He regrets that his over-eagerness apprises the bearded man of their suspicions. The active trail must be treated with care if it is to lead to more evidence, meaning that Holmes's brilliance must extend not only to analysis, but to decision-making. Finally, it is interesting that Holmes acknowledges his adversary's cleverness. For the story to be interesting, the pursued person must be a match for Holmes. Such a match of intellect is crucial not only for the reader - who wants an interesting story - but also for Holmes himself - who would likely be bored if he did not confront a mystery worthy of his genius.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/05.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_2_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter v

chapter v

{"name": "Chapter V", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapter-v", "summary": "Three Broken Threads After two hours in a museum - Watson remarks on Holmes's unique ability to divert his attention when necessary - they visit the Northumberland Hotel, where Sir Henry Baskerville is staying. Examining the register, Holmes pretends to know two of the hotel's visitors, and fools the clerk into revealing information about them. As they are walking upstairs, they run into Sir Henry, who is angry because another of his boots is missing. He has no explanation for the disappearance. Later, after lunch in the hotel room, Holmes approves of Sir Henry's decision to inhabit Baskerville Hall, since it will allow Holmes to flush out the culprit more easily than he can in crowded London. From Dr. Mortimer, Holmes and Watson learn that the only moor resident with a black beard is Barrymore, Baskerville Hall's butler. Intrigued, Holmes orders a telegram sent to Devonshire, to determine whether Barrymore is there. Mortimer then discusses the contents of Sir Charles's will, in the hopes of sussing out a murder motive. Barrymore and his wife inherited money from Sir Charles's will, and they were aware of that intention. However, Dr. Mortimer adds that several people - himself included - were bequeathed money by the will. Sir Henry was naturally left the most money, and because he has no direct heir, that fortune and the estate would fall to some distant cousins, the Desmonds, if were to die. Holmes then proposes that Watson accompany Sir Henry to Baskerville Hall, as protection. Holmes will join them that Saturday, after completing some business on another case in London. Before the men leave, Sir Henry finds one of his brown boot under a cabinet, which is confusing since Mortimer had thoroughly searched the room before lunch. They surmise a waiter had found and placed it there, but the waiter knows nothing of it when he is called and questioned. That evening, Watson and Holmes receive two telegrams. The first is a return telegram from Barrymore, suggesting that he is indeed at Baskerville Hall. The second reports that Cartwright has been unable to find the cut sheet of the newspaper. At that moment, the cab driver, whom Holmes had sent for earlier, appears at the door. He tells Holmes that the bearded man had claimed to be a detective, and had told him to say nothing to anyone. Strangest of all, the man had claimed to be named \"Mr. Sherlock Holmes\" . Holmes is surprised and amused. He pays the cab driver for details of the day's journey, and then sends the driver away. Noting that \"our third thread\" has snapped, Holmes admires his adversary as \"worthy of our steel\" . He then wishes Watson luck in Devonshire, noting that this case is proving to be an ugly business.", "analysis": "In this section, three \"threads\" lead to dead-ends. On the one hand, this presents obstacles that challenge our detective. However, it is crucial to realize that even dead-ends provide central questions and clues for one as perceptive as Holmes. For instance: Who would steal a boot, then return it? How did this person get into the hotel unbeknownst to Holmes, Watson, Dr. Mortimer, and Sir Henry? Who could be so clever as to pose as Holmes? Does the mystery man in the cab already know who Sherlock Holmes is? The criminal here proves to be as cunning as the detective, as Holmes himself declares that he has been \"checkmated\" . In other words, the wits of the detective and criminal are matched here. This is important for two reasons. The first is that it keeps the story interesting; the story gains momentum only because the adversary can think like the hero, and hence complicate the latter's pursuit of his objective. However, it is also important in context, considering that this was one of the later Holmes novels. Audiences would have been familiar with Holmes's genius by this point, and hence would themselves grow bored if the mystery were not beyond even the hero. And yet the criminal's genius is important for Holmes as well. Notice his response to having been fooled; he laughs. It is a central part of Holmes's character - one that later writers have capitalized on even more than Doyle did - that Holmes is motivated by the game, and not by empathy. In other words, he does not want to solve the case to help someone - if he did, an easy victory would be preferable. Instead, he wants to be tested so that he can triumph. The criminal's trickery complicates his mission, and hence makes his eventual victory all the more satisfying. Another character insight is provided by the museum visit at the top of this chapter. Though only a short paragraph, the incident touches on the elusive nature of genius. Holmes is able to divert his attention when there is no path to follow, again suggesting that he is not at all affected by the human element of his story. He is not worried about people, but only about the case. When the case is momentarily cold, he chooses to spend his time elsewhere. However, the idea that he would study paintings also provides some insight into Doyle's depiction of the mind, which employs both subconscious and conscious faculties to reach its potential. Certainly, there are times when Holmes confronts a problem through deliberate thought, but there are then others when he does not think explicitly on the case, leaving his mind to work in the background while he focuses on something else. Some insight is given into the nature of Watson and Holmes's relationship in this chapter as well. Watson is surprised to hear that Holmes has volunteered him to accompany Sir Henry. What is implied here - and in the first chapter, when Holmes has Watson attempt to interpret Dr. Mortimer's walking stick - is a level of condescension that Holmes employs towards his friend. Watson is so immediately pleased to be of use that we are led to realize that he is not frequently of much use, at least not in a way that Holmes acknowledges. This inconsideration is made more explicit later, when Watson finds that Holmes is merely using him as a pawn in his greater game."}

Sherlock Holmes had, in a very remarkable degree, the power of detaching his mind at will. For two hours the strange business in which we had been involved appeared to be forgotten, and he was entirely absorbed in the pictures of the modern Belgian masters. He would talk of nothing but art, of which he had the crudest ideas, from our leaving the gallery until we found ourselves at the Northumberland Hotel. "Sir Henry Baskerville is upstairs expecting you," said the clerk. "He asked me to show you up at once when you came." "Have you any objection to my looking at your register?" said Holmes. "Not in the least." The book showed that two names had been added after that of Baskerville. One was Theophilus Johnson and family, of Newcastle; the other Mrs. Oldmore and maid, of High Lodge, Alton. "Surely that must be the same Johnson whom I used to know," said Holmes to the porter. "A lawyer, is he not, gray-headed, and walks with a limp?" "No, sir, this is Mr. Johnson, the coal-owner, a very active gentleman, not older than yourself." "Surely you are mistaken about his trade?" "No, sir! he has used this hotel for many years, and he is very well known to us." "Ah, that settles it. Mrs. Oldmore, too; I seem to remember the name. Excuse my curiosity, but often in calling upon one friend one finds another." "She is an invalid lady, sir. Her husband was once mayor of Gloucester. She always comes to us when she is in town." "Thank you; I am afraid I cannot claim her acquaintance. We have established a most important fact by these questions, Watson," he continued in a low voice as we went upstairs together. "We know now that the people who are so interested in our friend have not settled down in his own hotel. That means that while they are, as we have seen, very anxious to watch him, they are equally anxious that he should not see them. Now, this is a most suggestive fact." "What does it suggest?" "It suggests--halloa, my dear fellow, what on earth is the matter?" As we came round the top of the stairs we had run up against Sir Henry Baskerville himself. His face was flushed with anger, and he held an old and dusty boot in one of his hands. So furious was he that he was hardly articulate, and when he did speak it was in a much broader and more Western dialect than any which we had heard from him in the morning. "Seems to me they are playing me for a sucker in this hotel," he cried. "They'll find they've started in to monkey with the wrong man unless they are careful. By thunder, if that chap can't find my missing boot there will be trouble. I can take a joke with the best, Mr. Holmes, but they've got a bit over the mark this time." "Still looking for your boot?" "Yes, sir, and mean to find it." "But, surely, you said that it was a new brown boot?" "So it was, sir. And now it's an old black one." "What! you don't mean to say--?" "That's just what I do mean to say. I only had three pairs in the world--the new brown, the old black, and the patent leathers, which I am wearing. Last night they took one of my brown ones, and today they have sneaked one of the black. Well, have you got it? Speak out, man, and don't stand staring!" An agitated German waiter had appeared upon the scene. "No, sir; I have made inquiry all over the hotel, but I can hear no word of it." "Well, either that boot comes back before sundown or I'll see the manager and tell him that I go right straight out of this hotel." "It shall be found, sir--I promise you that if you will have a little patience it will be found." "Mind it is, for it's the last thing of mine that I'll lose in this den of thieves. Well, well, Mr. Holmes, you'll excuse my troubling you about such a trifle--" "I think it's well worth troubling about." "Why, you look very serious over it." "How do you explain it?" "I just don't attempt to explain it. It seems the very maddest, queerest thing that ever happened to me." "The queerest perhaps--" said Holmes thoughtfully. "What do you make of it yourself?" "Well, I don't profess to understand it yet. This case of yours is very complex, Sir Henry. When taken in conjunction with your uncle's death I am not sure that of all the five hundred cases of capital importance which I have handled there is one which cuts so deep. But we hold several threads in our hands, and the odds are that one or other of them guides us to the truth. We may waste time in following the wrong one, but sooner or later we must come upon the right." We had a pleasant luncheon in which little was said of the business which had brought us together. It was in the private sitting-room to which we afterwards repaired that Holmes asked Baskerville what were his intentions. "To go to Baskerville Hall." "And when?" "At the end of the week." "On the whole," said Holmes, "I think that your decision is a wise one. I have ample evidence that you are being dogged in London, and amid the millions of this great city it is difficult to discover who these people are or what their object can be. If their intentions are evil they might do you a mischief, and we should be powerless to prevent it. You did not know, Dr. Mortimer, that you were followed this morning from my house?" Dr. Mortimer started violently. "Followed! By whom?" "That, unfortunately, is what I cannot tell you. Have you among your neighbours or acquaintances on Dartmoor any man with a black, full beard?" "No--or, let me see--why, yes. Barrymore, Sir Charles's butler, is a man with a full, black beard." "Ha! Where is Barrymore?" "He is in charge of the Hall." "We had best ascertain if he is really there, or if by any possibility he might be in London." "How can you do that?" "Give me a telegraph form. 'Is all ready for Sir Henry?' That will do. Address to Mr. Barrymore, Baskerville Hall. What is the nearest telegraph-office? Grimpen. Very good, we will send a second wire to the postmaster, Grimpen: 'Telegram to Mr. Barrymore to be delivered into his own hand. If absent, please return wire to Sir Henry Baskerville, Northumberland Hotel.' That should let us know before evening whether Barrymore is at his post in Devonshire or not." "That's so," said Baskerville. "By the way, Dr. Mortimer, who is this Barrymore, anyhow?" "He is the son of the old caretaker, who is dead. They have looked after the Hall for four generations now. So far as I know, he and his wife are as respectable a couple as any in the county." "At the same time," said Baskerville, "it's clear enough that so long as there are none of the family at the Hall these people have a mighty fine home and nothing to do." "That is true." "Did Barrymore profit at all by Sir Charles's will?" asked Holmes. "He and his wife had five hundred pounds each." "Ha! Did they know that they would receive this?" "Yes; Sir Charles was very fond of talking about the provisions of his will." "That is very interesting." "I hope," said Dr. Mortimer, "that you do not look with suspicious eyes upon everyone who received a legacy from Sir Charles, for I also had a thousand pounds left to me." "Indeed! And anyone else?" "There were many insignificant sums to individuals, and a large number of public charities. The residue all went to Sir Henry." "And how much was the residue?" "Seven hundred and forty thousand pounds." Holmes raised his eyebrows in surprise. "I had no idea that so gigantic a sum was involved," said he. "Sir Charles had the reputation of being rich, but we did not know how very rich he was until we came to examine his securities. The total value of the estate was close on to a million." "Dear me! It is a stake for which a man might well play a desperate game. And one more question, Dr. Mortimer. Supposing that anything happened to our young friend here--you will forgive the unpleasant hypothesis!--who would inherit the estate?" "Since Rodger Baskerville, Sir Charles's younger brother died unmarried, the estate would descend to the Desmonds, who are distant cousins. James Desmond is an elderly clergyman in Westmoreland." "Thank you. These details are all of great interest. Have you met Mr. James Desmond?" "Yes; he once came down to visit Sir Charles. He is a man of venerable appearance and of saintly life. I remember that he refused to accept any settlement from Sir Charles, though he pressed it upon him." "And this man of simple tastes would be the heir to Sir Charles's thousands." "He would be the heir to the estate because that is entailed. He would also be the heir to the money unless it were willed otherwise by the present owner, who can, of course, do what he likes with it." "And have you made your will, Sir Henry?" "No, Mr. Holmes, I have not. I've had no time, for it was only yesterday that I learned how matters stood. But in any case I feel that the money should go with the title and estate. That was my poor uncle's idea. How is the owner going to restore the glories of the Baskervilles if he has not money enough to keep up the property? House, land, and dollars must go together." "Quite so. Well, Sir Henry, I am of one mind with you as to the advisability of your going down to Devonshire without delay. There is only one provision which I must make. You certainly must not go alone." "Dr. Mortimer returns with me." "But Dr. Mortimer has his practice to attend to, and his house is miles away from yours. With all the goodwill in the world he may be unable to help you. No, Sir Henry, you must take with you someone, a trusty man, who will be always by your side." "Is it possible that you could come yourself, Mr. Holmes?" "If matters came to a crisis I should endeavour to be present in person; but you can understand that, with my extensive consulting practice and with the constant appeals which reach me from many quarters, it is impossible for me to be absent from London for an indefinite time. At the present instant one of the most revered names in England is being besmirched by a blackmailer, and only I can stop a disastrous scandal. You will see how impossible it is for me to go to Dartmoor." "Whom would you recommend, then?" Holmes laid his hand upon my arm. "If my friend would undertake it there is no man who is better worth having at your side when you are in a tight place. No one can say so more confidently than I." The proposition took me completely by surprise, but before I had time to answer, Baskerville seized me by the hand and wrung it heartily. "Well, now, that is real kind of you, Dr. Watson," said he. "You see how it is with me, and you know just as much about the matter as I do. If you will come down to Baskerville Hall and see me through I'll never forget it." The promise of adventure had always a fascination for me, and I was complimented by the words of Holmes and by the eagerness with which the baronet hailed me as a companion. "I will come, with pleasure," said I. "I do not know how I could employ my time better." "And you will report very carefully to me," said Holmes. "When a crisis comes, as it will do, I will direct how you shall act. I suppose that by Saturday all might be ready?" "Would that suit Dr. Watson?" "Perfectly." "Then on Saturday, unless you hear to the contrary, we shall meet at the ten-thirty train from Paddington." We had risen to depart when Baskerville gave a cry, of triumph, and diving into one of the corners of the room he drew a brown boot from under a cabinet. "My missing boot!" he cried. "May all our difficulties vanish as easily!" said Sherlock Holmes. "But it is a very singular thing," Dr. Mortimer remarked. "I searched this room carefully before lunch." "And so did I," said Baskerville. "Every inch of it." "There was certainly no boot in it then." "In that case the waiter must have placed it there while we were lunching." The German was sent for but professed to know nothing of the matter, nor could any inquiry clear it up. Another item had been added to that constant and apparently purposeless series of small mysteries which had succeeded each other so rapidly. Setting aside the whole grim story of Sir Charles's death, we had a line of inexplicable incidents all within the limits of two days, which included the receipt of the printed letter, the black-bearded spy in the hansom, the loss of the new brown boot, the loss of the old black boot, and now the return of the new brown boot. Holmes sat in silence in the cab as we drove back to Baker Street, and I knew from his drawn brows and keen face that his mind, like my own, was busy in endeavouring to frame some scheme into which all these strange and apparently disconnected episodes could be fitted. All afternoon and late into the evening he sat lost in tobacco and thought. Just before dinner two telegrams were handed in. The first ran: Have just heard that Barrymore is at the Hall. BASKERVILLE. The second: Visited twenty-three hotels as directed, but sorry, to report unable to trace cut sheet of Times. CARTWRIGHT. "There go two of my threads, Watson. There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you. We must cast round for another scent." "We have still the cabman who drove the spy." "Exactly. I have wired to get his name and address from the Official Registry. I should not be surprised if this were an answer to my question." The ring at the bell proved to be something even more satisfactory than an answer, however, for the door opened and a rough-looking fellow entered who was evidently the man himself. "I got a message from the head office that a gent at this address had been inquiring for No. 2704," said he. "I've driven my cab this seven years and never a word of complaint. I came here straight from the Yard to ask you to your face what you had against me." "I have nothing in the world against you, my good man," said Holmes. "On the contrary, I have half a sovereign for you if you will give me a clear answer to my questions." "Well, I've had a good day and no mistake," said the cabman with a grin. "What was it you wanted to ask, sir?" "First of all your name and address, in case I want you again." "John Clayton, 3 Turpey Street, the Borough. My cab is out of Shipley's Yard, near Waterloo Station." Sherlock Holmes made a note of it. "Now, Clayton, tell me all about the fare who came and watched this house at ten o'clock this morning and afterwards followed the two gentlemen down Regent Street." The man looked surprised and a little embarrassed. "Why, there's no good my telling you things, for you seem to know as much as I do already," said he. "The truth is that the gentleman told me that he was a detective and that I was to say nothing about him to anyone." "My good fellow; this is a very serious business, and you may find yourself in a pretty bad position if you try to hide anything from me. You say that your fare told you that he was a detective?" "Yes, he did." "When did he say this?" "When he left me." "Did he say anything more?" "He mentioned his name." Holmes cast a swift glance of triumph at me. "Oh, he mentioned his name, did he? That was imprudent. What was the name that he mentioned?" "His name," said the cabman, "was Mr. Sherlock Holmes." Never have I seen my friend more completely taken aback than by the cabman's reply. For an instant he sat in silent amazement. Then he burst into a hearty laugh. "A touch, Watson--an undeniable touch!" said he. "I feel a foil as quick and supple as my own. He got home upon me very prettily that time. So his name was Sherlock Holmes, was it?" "Yes, sir, that was the gentleman's name." "Excellent! Tell me where you picked him up and all that occurred." "He hailed me at half-past nine in Trafalgar Square. He said that he was a detective, and he offered me two guineas if I would do exactly what he wanted all day and ask no questions. I was glad enough to agree. First we drove down to the Northumberland Hotel and waited there until two gentlemen came out and took a cab from the rank. We followed their cab until it pulled up somewhere near here." "This very door," said Holmes. "Well, I couldn't be sure of that, but I dare say my fare knew all about it. We pulled up halfway down the street and waited an hour and a half. Then the two gentlemen passed us, walking, and we followed down Baker Street and along--" "I know," said Holmes. "Until we got three-quarters down Regent Street. Then my gentleman threw up the trap, and he cried that I should drive right away to Waterloo Station as hard as I could go. I whipped up the mare and we were there under the ten minutes. Then he paid up his two guineas, like a good one, and away he went into the station. Only just as he was leaving he turned round and he said: 'It might interest you to know that you have been driving Mr. Sherlock Holmes.' That's how I come to know the name." "I see. And you saw no more of him?" "Not after he went into the station." "And how would you describe Mr. Sherlock Holmes?" The cabman scratched his head. "Well, he wasn't altogether such an easy gentleman to describe. I'd put him at forty years of age, and he was of a middle height, two or three inches shorter than you, sir. He was dressed like a toff, and he had a black beard, cut square at the end, and a pale face. I don't know as I could say more than that." "Colour of his eyes?" "No, I can't say that." "Nothing more that you can remember?" "No, sir; nothing." "Well, then, here is your half-sovereign. There's another one waiting for you if you can bring any more information. Good-night!" "Good-night, sir, and thank you!" John Clayton departed chuckling, and Holmes turned to me with a shrug of his shoulders and a rueful smile. "Snap goes our third thread, and we end where we began," said he. "The cunning rascal! He knew our number, knew that Sir Henry Baskerville had consulted me, spotted who I was in Regent Street, conjectured that I had got the number of the cab and would lay my hands on the driver, and so sent back this audacious message. I tell you, Watson, this time we have got a foeman who is worthy of our steel. I've been checkmated in London. I can only wish you better luck in Devonshire. But I'm not easy in my mind about it." "About what?" "About sending you. It's an ugly business, Watson, an ugly dangerous business, and the more I see of it the less I like it. Yes, my dear fellow, you may laugh, but I give you my word that I shall be very glad to have you back safe and sound in Baker Street once more."

Chapter V

https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapter-v

Three Broken Threads After two hours in a museum - Watson remarks on Holmes's unique ability to divert his attention when necessary - they visit the Northumberland Hotel, where Sir Henry Baskerville is staying. Examining the register, Holmes pretends to know two of the hotel's visitors, and fools the clerk into revealing information about them. As they are walking upstairs, they run into Sir Henry, who is angry because another of his boots is missing. He has no explanation for the disappearance. Later, after lunch in the hotel room, Holmes approves of Sir Henry's decision to inhabit Baskerville Hall, since it will allow Holmes to flush out the culprit more easily than he can in crowded London. From Dr. Mortimer, Holmes and Watson learn that the only moor resident with a black beard is Barrymore, Baskerville Hall's butler. Intrigued, Holmes orders a telegram sent to Devonshire, to determine whether Barrymore is there. Mortimer then discusses the contents of Sir Charles's will, in the hopes of sussing out a murder motive. Barrymore and his wife inherited money from Sir Charles's will, and they were aware of that intention. However, Dr. Mortimer adds that several people - himself included - were bequeathed money by the will. Sir Henry was naturally left the most money, and because he has no direct heir, that fortune and the estate would fall to some distant cousins, the Desmonds, if were to die. Holmes then proposes that Watson accompany Sir Henry to Baskerville Hall, as protection. Holmes will join them that Saturday, after completing some business on another case in London. Before the men leave, Sir Henry finds one of his brown boot under a cabinet, which is confusing since Mortimer had thoroughly searched the room before lunch. They surmise a waiter had found and placed it there, but the waiter knows nothing of it when he is called and questioned. That evening, Watson and Holmes receive two telegrams. The first is a return telegram from Barrymore, suggesting that he is indeed at Baskerville Hall. The second reports that Cartwright has been unable to find the cut sheet of the newspaper. At that moment, the cab driver, whom Holmes had sent for earlier, appears at the door. He tells Holmes that the bearded man had claimed to be a detective, and had told him to say nothing to anyone. Strangest of all, the man had claimed to be named "Mr. Sherlock Holmes" . Holmes is surprised and amused. He pays the cab driver for details of the day's journey, and then sends the driver away. Noting that "our third thread" has snapped, Holmes admires his adversary as "worthy of our steel" . He then wishes Watson luck in Devonshire, noting that this case is proving to be an ugly business.

In this section, three "threads" lead to dead-ends. On the one hand, this presents obstacles that challenge our detective. However, it is crucial to realize that even dead-ends provide central questions and clues for one as perceptive as Holmes. For instance: Who would steal a boot, then return it? How did this person get into the hotel unbeknownst to Holmes, Watson, Dr. Mortimer, and Sir Henry? Who could be so clever as to pose as Holmes? Does the mystery man in the cab already know who Sherlock Holmes is? The criminal here proves to be as cunning as the detective, as Holmes himself declares that he has been "checkmated" . In other words, the wits of the detective and criminal are matched here. This is important for two reasons. The first is that it keeps the story interesting; the story gains momentum only because the adversary can think like the hero, and hence complicate the latter's pursuit of his objective. However, it is also important in context, considering that this was one of the later Holmes novels. Audiences would have been familiar with Holmes's genius by this point, and hence would themselves grow bored if the mystery were not beyond even the hero. And yet the criminal's genius is important for Holmes as well. Notice his response to having been fooled; he laughs. It is a central part of Holmes's character - one that later writers have capitalized on even more than Doyle did - that Holmes is motivated by the game, and not by empathy. In other words, he does not want to solve the case to help someone - if he did, an easy victory would be preferable. Instead, he wants to be tested so that he can triumph. The criminal's trickery complicates his mission, and hence makes his eventual victory all the more satisfying. Another character insight is provided by the museum visit at the top of this chapter. Though only a short paragraph, the incident touches on the elusive nature of genius. Holmes is able to divert his attention when there is no path to follow, again suggesting that he is not at all affected by the human element of his story. He is not worried about people, but only about the case. When the case is momentarily cold, he chooses to spend his time elsewhere. However, the idea that he would study paintings also provides some insight into Doyle's depiction of the mind, which employs both subconscious and conscious faculties to reach its potential. Certainly, there are times when Holmes confronts a problem through deliberate thought, but there are then others when he does not think explicitly on the case, leaving his mind to work in the background while he focuses on something else. Some insight is given into the nature of Watson and Holmes's relationship in this chapter as well. Watson is surprised to hear that Holmes has volunteered him to accompany Sir Henry. What is implied here - and in the first chapter, when Holmes has Watson attempt to interpret Dr. Mortimer's walking stick - is a level of condescension that Holmes employs towards his friend. Watson is so immediately pleased to be of use that we are led to realize that he is not frequently of much use, at least not in a way that Holmes acknowledges. This inconsideration is made more explicit later, when Watson finds that Holmes is merely using him as a pawn in his greater game.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/06.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_3_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter vi

chapter vi

{"name": "Chapter VI", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapter-vi", "summary": "Baskerville Hall On the day of Watson, Dr. Mortimer and Sir Henry's departure, Holmes drives Watson to the station. En route, he instructs Watson to report only the facts to him, leaving his theories out of the letters. He also shares his own theories. He does not believes that the Desmond man - who would inherit Sir Henry's estate - is involved, but he believes that Barrymore and his wife are viable suspects. His other suspects include: a groom at the Hall, two farmers on the moor, Dr. Mortimer himself, Mortimer's wife, Stapleton the naturalist, and Mr. Frankland. Watson has brought his gun, in case he needs it. When they arrive in Devonshire, Sir Henry is impressed by the surroundings, never having seen the moor before. Watson imagines what it must be like for him to see the land where the men of his blood have made their mark. On their way to Baskerville Hall, they meet a man guarding part of the moor. Apparently, a convict had escaped three days earlier from the prison at nearby Princetown. This convict's name is Selden, and he is known as the Notting Hill murderer. Watson recalls Sherlock's interest in that case because of the criminal's brutality, and imagines Selden hiding out on the moor. At Baskerville Hall, Dr. Mortimer shows Sir Henry the yew alley where Sir Charles died, and then departs. Barrymore then tours them around the estate, admitting in the process that he and his wife plan to leave once Sir Henry has hired more staff. Having spent their lives there, they would like to travel with the money Sir Charles bequeathed them. Watson describes the bedrooms as seeming newer the rest of the house, and the dining room as having a somber atmosphere. Feeling the same way, Sir Henry comments that he understands why Sir Charles grew so anxious in such a place. That night, Watson does not sleep well. In the dead of night, he hears a woman's sob, and listens carefully for more. However, no more noise comes.", "analysis": "The chapter begins with Holmes's instructions to Watson to \"report the facts\" . Most immediately, Holmes's instructions touch on why he trusts Watson as a good \"conductor of light\" . Watson inspires Holmes's genius not by collaborating on his interpretations, but rather on relating facts that Holmes can then use to deduce hidden truths. As a doctor, Watson is well-acquainted with the importance of detail, an approach Holmes takes to a singular level. However, these instructions also pose a crucial question: what does a bare fact look like? Can we describe facts without already having some explanation as to how that fact came to be? Put another way, can a fact ever be disclosed without containing some trace of interpretation? For example, in Chapter II, Sir Charles's footprints of Sir Charles are described as \"tiptoe\" footprints . The description contained within it an assumption. Whereas most readers would take this interpretation as fact, Holmes took a step back to consider that the indentations might indicate the opposite: running instead of tip-toeing. By describing something, we naturally put an interpretation on it. In other words, so-called \"facts\" already come pre-interpreted . Holmes's instructions then, are most notable for what he instructs Watson not to do: to theorize. What makes Holmes's approach so unique is that he considers a detail from several possible angles at once, eliminating impossible options to determine the most likely option. His instructions are not only to Watson, but to us: to correctly deduce meaning, one must first see the detail in itself, not with any pre-conceived notion. Watson's description of the house both conforms to and works against those instructions. He makes judgments - the rooms seems newer than the rest of the house - and in fact focuses on atmosphere. His failure to simply 'describe' the rooms are entirely forgivable, especially since they help to relate the atmosphere that would have made Sir Charles so anxious. Watson's description also serve Doyle's purpose of crafting an engaging and spooky tale. One of the novel's most intriguing contrasts - between the supernatural and the rational - is at work here. Clearly, Doyle wants us to view this location as haunted and possessed. The moor was often used as an atmospheric locale in the work of British writers, and Doyle takes great advantage of its natural allure. In fact, he furthers the atmosphere through the incident of the woman's screams. Read out of context, the second half of this chapter could work in a Gothic novel, or even in a children's scary story. The contrast with the rational will be most clearly made through Holmes's interference, but is already present through Sir Henry. His first instinct at noting the house's gloominess is to brighten it with electric lamps. He represents the technological mindset of America, from which he has traveled. He is more like Holmes than he is like Dr. Mortimer; instead of considering the house's haunted potential, he considers how the products of man's rationality might counteract such gloominess. Whether he will remain so aloof to its spooky atmosphere now becomes one of the novel's dramatic questions."}

Sir Henry Baskerville and Dr. Mortimer were ready upon the appointed day, and we started as arranged for Devonshire. Mr. Sherlock Holmes drove with me to the station and gave me his last parting injunctions and advice. "I will not bias your mind by suggesting theories or suspicions, Watson," said he; "I wish you simply to report facts in the fullest possible manner to me, and you can leave me to do the theorizing." "What sort of facts?" I asked. "Anything which may seem to have a bearing however indirect upon the case, and especially the relations between young Baskerville and his neighbours or any fresh particulars concerning the death of Sir Charles. I have made some inquiries myself in the last few days, but the results have, I fear, been negative. One thing only appears to be certain, and that is that Mr. James Desmond, who is the next heir, is an elderly gentleman of a very amiable disposition, so that this persecution does not arise from him. I really think that we may eliminate him entirely from our calculations. There remain the people who will actually surround Sir Henry Baskerville upon the moor." "Would it not be well in the first place to get rid of this Barrymore couple?" "By no means. You could not make a greater mistake. If they are innocent it would be a cruel injustice, and if they are guilty we should be giving up all chance of bringing it home to them. No, no, we will preserve them upon our list of suspects. Then there is a groom at the Hall, if I remember right. There are two moorland farmers. There is our friend Dr. Mortimer, whom I believe to be entirely honest, and there is his wife, of whom we know nothing. There is this naturalist, Stapleton, and there is his sister, who is said to be a young lady of attractions. There is Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, who is also an unknown factor, and there are one or two other neighbours. These are the folk who must be your very special study." "I will do my best." "You have arms, I suppose?" "Yes, I thought it as well to take them." "Most certainly. Keep your revolver near you night and day, and never relax your precautions." Our friends had already secured a first-class carriage and were waiting for us upon the platform. "No, we have no news of any kind," said Dr. Mortimer in answer to my friend's questions. "I can swear to one thing, and that is that we have not been shadowed during the last two days. We have never gone out without keeping a sharp watch, and no one could have escaped our notice." "You have always kept together, I presume?" "Except yesterday afternoon. I usually give up one day to pure amusement when I come to town, so I spent it at the Museum of the College of Surgeons." "And I went to look at the folk in the park," said Baskerville. "But we had no trouble of any kind." "It was imprudent, all the same," said Holmes, shaking his head and looking very grave. "I beg, Sir Henry, that you will not go about alone. Some great misfortune will befall you if you do. Did you get your other boot?" "No, sir, it is gone forever." "Indeed. That is very interesting. Well, good-bye," he added as the train began to glide down the platform. "Bear in mind, Sir Henry, one of the phrases in that queer old legend which Dr. Mortimer has read to us, and avoid the moor in those hours of darkness when the powers of evil are exalted." I looked back at the platform when we had left it far behind and saw the tall, austere figure of Holmes standing motionless and gazing after us. The journey was a swift and pleasant one, and I spent it in making the more intimate acquaintance of my two companions and in playing with Dr. Mortimer's spaniel. In a very few hours the brown earth had become ruddy, the brick had changed to granite, and red cows grazed in well-hedged fields where the lush grasses and more luxuriant vegetation spoke of a richer, if a damper, climate. Young Baskerville stared eagerly out of the window and cried aloud with delight as he recognized the familiar features of the Devon scenery. "I've been over a good part of the world since I left it, Dr. Watson," said he; "but I have never seen a place to compare with it." "I never saw a Devonshire man who did not swear by his county," I remarked. "It depends upon the breed of men quite as much as on the county," said Dr. Mortimer. "A glance at our friend here reveals the rounded head of the Celt, which carries inside it the Celtic enthusiasm and power of attachment. Poor Sir Charles's head was of a very rare type, half Gaelic, half Ivernian in its characteristics. But you were very young when you last saw Baskerville Hall, were you not?" "I was a boy in my teens at the time of my father's death and had never seen the Hall, for he lived in a little cottage on the South Coast. Thence I went straight to a friend in America. I tell you it is all as new to me as it is to Dr. Watson, and I'm as keen as possible to see the moor." "Are you? Then your wish is easily granted, for there is your first sight of the moor," said Dr. Mortimer, pointing out of the carriage window. Over the green squares of the fields and the low curve of a wood there rose in the distance a gray, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance, like some fantastic landscape in a dream. Baskerville sat for a long time, his eyes fixed upon it, and I read upon his eager face how much it meant to him, this first sight of that strange spot where the men of his blood had held sway so long and left their mark so deep. There he sat, with his tweed suit and his American accent, in the corner of a prosaic railway-carriage, and yet as I looked at his dark and expressive face I felt more than ever how true a descendant he was of that long line of high-blooded, fiery, and masterful men. There were pride, valour, and strength in his thick brows, his sensitive nostrils, and his large hazel eyes. If on that forbidding moor a difficult and dangerous quest should lie before us, this was at least a comrade for whom one might venture to take a risk with the certainty that he would bravely share it. The train pulled up at a small wayside station and we all descended. Outside, beyond the low, white fence, a wagonette with a pair of cobs was waiting. Our coming was evidently a great event, for station-master and porters clustered round us to carry out our luggage. It was a sweet, simple country spot, but I was surprised to observe that by the gate there stood two soldierly men in dark uniforms who leaned upon their short rifles and glanced keenly at us as we passed. The coachman, a hard-faced, gnarled little fellow, saluted Sir Henry Baskerville, and in a few minutes we were flying swiftly down the broad, white road. Rolling pasture lands curved upward on either side of us, and old gabled houses peeped out from amid the thick green foliage, but behind the peaceful and sunlit countryside there rose ever, dark against the evening sky, the long, gloomy curve of the moor, broken by the jagged and sinister hills. The wagonette swung round into a side road, and we curved upward through deep lanes worn by centuries of wheels, high banks on either side, heavy with dripping moss and fleshy hart's-tongue ferns. Bronzing bracken and mottled bramble gleamed in the light of the sinking sun. Still steadily rising, we passed over a narrow granite bridge and skirted a noisy stream which gushed swiftly down, foaming and roaring amid the gray boulders. Both road and stream wound up through a valley dense with scrub oak and fir. At every turn Baskerville gave an exclamation of delight, looking eagerly about him and asking countless questions. To his eyes all seemed beautiful, but to me a tinge of melancholy lay upon the countryside, which bore so clearly the mark of the waning year. Yellow leaves carpeted the lanes and fluttered down upon us as we passed. The rattle of our wheels died away as we drove through drifts of rotting vegetation--sad gifts, as it seemed to me, for Nature to throw before the carriage of the returning heir of the Baskervilles. "Halloa!" cried Dr. Mortimer, "what is this?" A steep curve of heath-clad land, an outlying spur of the moor, lay in front of us. On the summit, hard and clear like an equestrian statue upon its pedestal, was a mounted soldier, dark and stern, his rifle poised ready over his forearm. He was watching the road along which we travelled. "What is this, Perkins?" asked Dr. Mortimer. Our driver half turned in his seat. "There's a convict escaped from Princetown, sir. He's been out three days now, and the warders watch every road and every station, but they've had no sight of him yet. The farmers about here don't like it, sir, and that's a fact." "Well, I understand that they get five pounds if they can give information." "Yes, sir, but the chance of five pounds is but a poor thing compared to the chance of having your throat cut. You see, it isn't like any ordinary convict. This is a man that would stick at nothing." "Who is he, then?" "It is Selden, the Notting Hill murderer." I remembered the case well, for it was one in which Holmes had taken an interest on account of the peculiar ferocity of the crime and the wanton brutality which had marked all the actions of the assassin. The commutation of his death sentence had been due to some doubts as to his complete sanity, so atrocious was his conduct. Our wagonette had topped a rise and in front of us rose the huge expanse of the moor, mottled with gnarled and craggy cairns and tors. A cold wind swept down from it and set us shivering. Somewhere there, on that desolate plain, was lurking this fiendish man, hiding in a burrow like a wild beast, his heart full of malignancy against the whole race which had cast him out. It needed but this to complete the grim suggestiveness of the barren waste, the chilling wind, and the darkling sky. Even Baskerville fell silent and pulled his overcoat more closely around him. We had left the fertile country behind and beneath us. We looked back on it now, the slanting rays of a low sun turning the streams to threads of gold and glowing on the red earth new turned by the plough and the broad tangle of the woodlands. The road in front of us grew bleaker and wilder over huge russet and olive slopes, sprinkled with giant boulders. Now and then we passed a moorland cottage, walled and roofed with stone, with no creeper to break its harsh outline. Suddenly we looked down into a cuplike depression, patched with stunted oaks and firs which had been twisted and bent by the fury of years of storm. Two high, narrow towers rose over the trees. The driver pointed with his whip. "Baskerville Hall," said he. Its master had risen and was staring with flushed cheeks and shining eyes. A few minutes later we had reached the lodge-gates, a maze of fantastic tracery in wrought iron, with weather-bitten pillars on either side, blotched with lichens, and surmounted by the boars' heads of the Baskervilles. The lodge was a ruin of black granite and bared ribs of rafters, but facing it was a new building, half constructed, the first fruit of Sir Charles's South African gold. Through the gateway we passed into the avenue, where the wheels were again hushed amid the leaves, and the old trees shot their branches in a sombre tunnel over our heads. Baskerville shuddered as he looked up the long, dark drive to where the house glimmered like a ghost at the farther end. "Was it here?" he asked in a low voice. "No, no, the yew alley is on the other side." The young heir glanced round with a gloomy face. "It's no wonder my uncle felt as if trouble were coming on him in such a place as this," said he. "It's enough to scare any man. I'll have a row of electric lamps up here inside of six months, and you won't know it again, with a thousand candle-power Swan and Edison right here in front of the hall door." The avenue opened into a broad expanse of turf, and the house lay before us. In the fading light I could see that the centre was a heavy block of building from which a porch projected. The whole front was draped in ivy, with a patch clipped bare here and there where a window or a coat of arms broke through the dark veil. From this central block rose the twin towers, ancient, crenelated, and pierced with many loopholes. To right and left of the turrets were more modern wings of black granite. A dull light shone through heavy mullioned windows, and from the high chimneys which rose from the steep, high-angled roof there sprang a single black column of smoke. "Welcome, Sir Henry! Welcome to Baskerville Hall!" A tall man had stepped from the shadow of the porch to open the door of the wagonette. The figure of a woman was silhouetted against the yellow light of the hall. She came out and helped the man to hand down our bags. "You don't mind my driving straight home, Sir Henry?" said Dr. Mortimer. "My wife is expecting me." "Surely you will stay and have some dinner?" "No, I must go. I shall probably find some work awaiting me. I would stay to show you over the house, but Barrymore will be a better guide than I. Good-bye, and never hesitate night or day to send for me if I can be of service." The wheels died away down the drive while Sir Henry and I turned into the hall, and the door clanged heavily behind us. It was a fine apartment in which we found ourselves, large, lofty, and heavily raftered with huge baulks of age-blackened oak. In the great old-fashioned fireplace behind the high iron dogs a log-fire crackled and snapped. Sir Henry and I held out our hands to it, for we were numb from our long drive. Then we gazed round us at the high, thin window of old stained glass, the oak panelling, the stags' heads, the coats of arms upon the walls, all dim and sombre in the subdued light of the central lamp. "It's just as I imagined it," said Sir Henry. "Is it not the very picture of an old family home? To think that this should be the same hall in which for five hundred years my people have lived. It strikes me solemn to think of it." I saw his dark face lit up with a boyish enthusiasm as he gazed about him. The light beat upon him where he stood, but long shadows trailed down the walls and hung like a black canopy above him. Barrymore had returned from taking our luggage to our rooms. He stood in front of us now with the subdued manner of a well-trained servant. He was a remarkable-looking man, tall, handsome, with a square black beard and pale, distinguished features. "Would you wish dinner to be served at once, sir?" "Is it ready?" "In a very few minutes, sir. You will find hot water in your rooms. My wife and I will be happy, Sir Henry, to stay with you until you have made your fresh arrangements, but you will understand that under the new conditions this house will require a considerable staff." "What new conditions?" "I only meant, sir, that Sir Charles led a very retired life, and we were able to look after his wants. You would, naturally, wish to have more company, and so you will need changes in your household." "Do you mean that your wife and you wish to leave?" "Only when it is quite convenient to you, sir." "But your family have been with us for several generations, have they not? I should be sorry to begin my life here by breaking an old family connection." I seemed to discern some signs of emotion upon the butler's white face. "I feel that also, sir, and so does my wife. But to tell the truth, sir, we were both very much attached to Sir Charles, and his death gave us a shock and made these surroundings very painful to us. I fear that we shall never again be easy in our minds at Baskerville Hall." "But what do you intend to do?" "I have no doubt, sir, that we shall succeed in establishing ourselves in some business. Sir Charles's generosity has given us the means to do so. And now, sir, perhaps I had best show you to your rooms." A square balustraded gallery ran round the top of the old hall, approached by a double stair. From this central point two long corridors extended the whole length of the building, from which all the bedrooms opened. My own was in the same wing as Baskerville's and almost next door to it. These rooms appeared to be much more modern than the central part of the house, and the bright paper and numerous candles did something to remove the sombre impression which our arrival had left upon my mind. But the dining-room which opened out of the hall was a place of shadow and gloom. It was a long chamber with a step separating the dais where the family sat from the lower portion reserved for their dependents. At one end a minstrel's gallery overlooked it. Black beams shot across above our heads, with a smoke-darkened ceiling beyond them. With rows of flaring torches to light it up, and the colour and rude hilarity of an old-time banquet, it might have softened; but now, when two black-clothed gentlemen sat in the little circle of light thrown by a shaded lamp, one's voice became hushed and one's spirit subdued. A dim line of ancestors, in every variety of dress, from the Elizabethan knight to the buck of the Regency, stared down upon us and daunted us by their silent company. We talked little, and I for one was glad when the meal was over and we were able to retire into the modern billiard-room and smoke a cigarette. "My word, it isn't a very cheerful place," said Sir Henry. "I suppose one can tone down to it, but I feel a bit out of the picture at present. I don't wonder that my uncle got a little jumpy if he lived all alone in such a house as this. However, if it suits you, we will retire early tonight, and perhaps things may seem more cheerful in the morning." I drew aside my curtains before I went to bed and looked out from my window. It opened upon the grassy space which lay in front of the hall door. Beyond, two copses of trees moaned and swung in a rising wind. A half moon broke through the rifts of racing clouds. In its cold light I saw beyond the trees a broken fringe of rocks, and the long, low curve of the melancholy moor. I closed the curtain, feeling that my last impression was in keeping with the rest. And yet it was not quite the last. I found myself weary and yet wakeful, tossing restlessly from side to side, seeking for the sleep which would not come. Far away a chiming clock struck out the quarters of the hours, but otherwise a deathly silence lay upon the old house. And then suddenly, in the very dead of the night, there came a sound to my ears, clear, resonant, and unmistakable. It was the sob of a woman, the muffled, strangling gasp of one who is torn by an uncontrollable sorrow. I sat up in bed and listened intently. The noise could not have been far away and was certainly in the house. For half an hour I waited with every nerve on the alert, but there came no other sound save the chiming clock and the rustle of the ivy on the wall.

Chapter VI

https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapter-vi

Baskerville Hall On the day of Watson, Dr. Mortimer and Sir Henry's departure, Holmes drives Watson to the station. En route, he instructs Watson to report only the facts to him, leaving his theories out of the letters. He also shares his own theories. He does not believes that the Desmond man - who would inherit Sir Henry's estate - is involved, but he believes that Barrymore and his wife are viable suspects. His other suspects include: a groom at the Hall, two farmers on the moor, Dr. Mortimer himself, Mortimer's wife, Stapleton the naturalist, and Mr. Frankland. Watson has brought his gun, in case he needs it. When they arrive in Devonshire, Sir Henry is impressed by the surroundings, never having seen the moor before. Watson imagines what it must be like for him to see the land where the men of his blood have made their mark. On their way to Baskerville Hall, they meet a man guarding part of the moor. Apparently, a convict had escaped three days earlier from the prison at nearby Princetown. This convict's name is Selden, and he is known as the Notting Hill murderer. Watson recalls Sherlock's interest in that case because of the criminal's brutality, and imagines Selden hiding out on the moor. At Baskerville Hall, Dr. Mortimer shows Sir Henry the yew alley where Sir Charles died, and then departs. Barrymore then tours them around the estate, admitting in the process that he and his wife plan to leave once Sir Henry has hired more staff. Having spent their lives there, they would like to travel with the money Sir Charles bequeathed them. Watson describes the bedrooms as seeming newer the rest of the house, and the dining room as having a somber atmosphere. Feeling the same way, Sir Henry comments that he understands why Sir Charles grew so anxious in such a place. That night, Watson does not sleep well. In the dead of night, he hears a woman's sob, and listens carefully for more. However, no more noise comes.

The chapter begins with Holmes's instructions to Watson to "report the facts" . Most immediately, Holmes's instructions touch on why he trusts Watson as a good "conductor of light" . Watson inspires Holmes's genius not by collaborating on his interpretations, but rather on relating facts that Holmes can then use to deduce hidden truths. As a doctor, Watson is well-acquainted with the importance of detail, an approach Holmes takes to a singular level. However, these instructions also pose a crucial question: what does a bare fact look like? Can we describe facts without already having some explanation as to how that fact came to be? Put another way, can a fact ever be disclosed without containing some trace of interpretation? For example, in Chapter II, Sir Charles's footprints of Sir Charles are described as "tiptoe" footprints . The description contained within it an assumption. Whereas most readers would take this interpretation as fact, Holmes took a step back to consider that the indentations might indicate the opposite: running instead of tip-toeing. By describing something, we naturally put an interpretation on it. In other words, so-called "facts" already come pre-interpreted . Holmes's instructions then, are most notable for what he instructs Watson not to do: to theorize. What makes Holmes's approach so unique is that he considers a detail from several possible angles at once, eliminating impossible options to determine the most likely option. His instructions are not only to Watson, but to us: to correctly deduce meaning, one must first see the detail in itself, not with any pre-conceived notion. Watson's description of the house both conforms to and works against those instructions. He makes judgments - the rooms seems newer than the rest of the house - and in fact focuses on atmosphere. His failure to simply 'describe' the rooms are entirely forgivable, especially since they help to relate the atmosphere that would have made Sir Charles so anxious. Watson's description also serve Doyle's purpose of crafting an engaging and spooky tale. One of the novel's most intriguing contrasts - between the supernatural and the rational - is at work here. Clearly, Doyle wants us to view this location as haunted and possessed. The moor was often used as an atmospheric locale in the work of British writers, and Doyle takes great advantage of its natural allure. In fact, he furthers the atmosphere through the incident of the woman's screams. Read out of context, the second half of this chapter could work in a Gothic novel, or even in a children's scary story. The contrast with the rational will be most clearly made through Holmes's interference, but is already present through Sir Henry. His first instinct at noting the house's gloominess is to brighten it with electric lamps. He represents the technological mindset of America, from which he has traveled. He is more like Holmes than he is like Dr. Mortimer; instead of considering the house's haunted potential, he considers how the products of man's rationality might counteract such gloominess. Whether he will remain so aloof to its spooky atmosphere now becomes one of the novel's dramatic questions.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/chapters_7_to_9.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_4_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapters 7-9

chapter 7-9

{"name": "Chapter VII-IX", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapter-vii-ix", "summary": "The Stapletons of Merripit House The house seems more cheerful in the fresh light of the next day, so Sir Henry speculates that the gloom was merely in their imaginations. When Watson mentions the woman's cry, Sir Henry recalls the sound but had dismissed it as a dream. They question Barrymore to learn that there are only two women in the house; he is certain that Mrs. Barrymore was not the screamer. However, when Watson meets Mrs. Barrymore, he notices signs that she had been crying the night before, and assumes that Mr. Barrymore has lied to them. Watson therefore decides to investigate whether Barrymore was actually at Baskerville, as his telegram had indicated. He visits the postmaster at nearby Grimpen, who had insisted that he placed the initial telegram directly into Barrymore's hands. Upon interrogation, however, he admits that he actually delivered the telegram to Mrs. Barrymore, who promised to pass it along to her husband. Assuming Barrymore was the bearded man, Watson's only theory is that Barrymore was attempting to scare Sir Henry away from London so that he and Mrs. Barrymore could have the manor to themselves, but he admits that theory is inadequate. As Watson is walking back to Baskerville, Stapleton \"the naturalist\" overtakes him . Having learned about Watson from Dr. Mortimer, Stapleton shares his own theory about Sir Charles's death: the man's anxieties had grown so great that the appearance of a random dog led to his death. Stapleton also surprises Watson by asking about Holmes's opinions on the matter; he insists that the detective is well-known even on the moor. Watson hesitates when Stapleton invites him home to meet his sister Miss Stapleton, but then decides to go. As they walk there, Stapleton indicates the Grimpen Mire, a place where men or animals can disappear into the quicksand-like ground if they are not careful. Bragging that he has discovered the two safe paths through the mire, Stapleton describes the peaceful natural scenery on the other side. When Watson professes an interest in seeing it, Stapleton insists that one should not brave the danger without knowing the landmarks as he does. Suddenly, Watson hears a dull murmur which swells into a deep roar. Though Stapleton admits that locals believe this is the sound of the dreaded hound, he dismisses such conjecture, claiming the sound must have a perfectly natural cause. When they arrive near Merripit House, Watson sees Miss Stapleton outside, and notices that she is beautiful, almost the opposite of her brother. Immediately, Stapleton spies an insect and rushes to collect it. Away from her brother's notice, before even introducing herself, Miss Stapleton commands Watson to return to London. He barely has time to question her before Stapleton returns and introduces them formally, at which point she is surprised to learn he is not Sir Henry, as she had thought. They walk towards the house, and Stapleton reveals that he had once managed a school, but lost it when an epidemic took the lives of three students. He had lost most of his money in the venture, and Miss Stapleton is now unhappy to live so far away from civilization. After asking for permission to visit Sir Henry, Stapleton invites Watson to view his insect collection. However, Watson insists he should return, and sets off for Baskerville Hall. He is not far from Merripit when Miss Stapleton intercepts him and asks him to ignore her warning. Watson offers to convey the warning to Sir Henry if she will explain it, but she offers nothing other than a reiteration of her fear. She also asks him to keep this secret from her brother, since he believes it necessary that someone live in Baskerville Hall, since the moor locals rely on the Baskerville philanthropy. Chapter VIII: First Report of Dr. Watson This is the first of two chapters that are comprised of Watson's letters to Holmes. He notes, however, that one page is missing from the letter. This first letter is dated October 13th, written from Baskerville Hall. Watson begins by describing the effects the moor has on the soul: he feels about though he is amongst prehistoric man, rather than in modern England. Watson explains that the locals believe Selden has left the area, since it has been two weeks since his escape. He also confesses his worry for the Stapletons, who live far removed from their closest neighbor. He then notes that Sir Henry seems to be romantically interested in Beryl Stapleton. However, he worries that Stapleton himself - who had recently shown Watson the place of Hugo Baskerville's fabled death - would not approve of a match between them. Watson then describes his interactions with others. Dr. Mortimer had recently toured him through the yew alley where Sir Charles died. Meanwhile, Watson has visited Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, whom Watson explains is well known and frequently distrusted for his litigious nature. He is slowly spending his fortune on lawsuits, many of which are arbitrary and rooted in outdated laws. Frankland is also an amateur astronomer; he owns a telescope. In the last section of the letter, Watson describes what he considers the most essential element of his visit thus far: the continuing mystery of the Barrymores. Sir Henry asked Barrymore directly whether he had received the telegram, and the man, surprised, confirmed that Mrs. Barrymore had given it to him. Watson continues to note the signs of crying on Mrs. Barrymore, and worries that her husband is abusive. The night before writing this letter, Watson had awoken at 2:00 a.m. and saw a man who looked like Barrymore crossing the moor towards the house, and then entering an unoccupied part of the house. Watson snuck after him, and saw the man peering out of the window. After a while, Barrymore groaned and then left for his room. Later that night, Watson heard a key turn in a lock. Chapter IX: The Second Report of Dr. Watson: The Light upon the Moor This letter is dated October 15th. Two days after seeing Barrymore in the room, Watson examined it to find it has \"the nearest outlook on the moor\" . Hence, he believes Mr. Barrymore was looking for something on the moor. Initially, he believed the man was meeting a lover, but then disregarded that notion as unfounded. Sir Henry was not surprised to hear Watson's report on that night's events, and they decided to follow the man out onto the moor one night. After agreeing on the plan, Sir Henry prepared to set out, and refused Watson permission to accompany him as protection. Watson followed him anyway, to find he was meeting Miss Stapleton. From afar, Watson observed them in a heated argument. When Sir Henry attempted to kiss her, Stapleton himself suddenly appeared and entered the argument. After the Stapletons departed, Watson approached Sir Henry, and apologized for snooping, explaining that he was only keeping his promise to Holmes. Though initially annoyed, Sir Henry laughed off the transgression, and then confessed his belief that Stapleton was crazy. This had been his first time alone with Miss Stapleton, who was begging him to leave the moor. When Sir Henry promised to leave if she would accompany him, Stapleton had interrupted them. The man is confused why the brother would so strongly oppose such an advantageous match for his sister. Watson is equally confused by the behavior. Later that afternoon, Stapleton visited Baskerville Hall to apologize. He promised to approve the match if Sir Henry will wait three months before proposing. Watson then changes the topic to another \"thread\" of the mystery . One night, he and Sir Henry followed Barrymore to the room. Sir Henry confronted the butler, who initially claimed he was only fastening the window. When pressed, the butler then admitted he was holding a candle to the window for someone's benefit, but refused to reveal any more. Watson then noticed another candle light across the moor. When Sir Henry threatened to fire the man, Mrs. Barrymore appeared and admitted the truth: the convict Selden is her brother, and they were leaving food nightly for him. She explained that he had always been spoiled as a child, and that she feels responsible for him. Sir Henry withdraws his threat to Barrymore, and then he and Watson set out to capture Selden. It begins to rain as they are out on the moor, and they then hear that strange cry Watson had heard earlier. Sir Henry was visibly frightened, especially when Watson admitted that locals believed this to be the cry of the Hound of the Baskervilles. When the men reached the light across the moor, they initially found no one there. Watson suddenly spotted the criminal fleeing, and they set out in pursuit. However, Selden hurled a large rock and them, and then outran them. In the distance, Watson noticed a figure silhouetted by the lightning. He indicated the figure to Sir Henry, but it disappeared before the latter saw it. Sir Henry speculated that this was a guard looking for the convict, but Watson was clearly not entirely convinced.", "analysis": "In these chapters, Sir Henry and Watson begin to fall prey to superstition because of the gloomy atmosphere of both the house and the moor. They are no longer protected by bustling, urban life, which tends to support a more rational outlook. One reason that superstition is less associated with urban life is the plethora of witnesses: there are always many people who see an event, and hence is there less room for occult mythology to grow. In the country, there is a lot more space, and there are fewer people who witness events. When they do see these events, they see them from far away. All of this makes it easier for legends like that of the hound to perpetuate. For instance, the sound that Watson hears is easily attributed to the mythical hound since it is occurring far away from any witness who can testify to its true cause. The moor symbolizes the seemingly occult and mysterious ways of nature, which may seem not always act according to explainable, natural law. Several factors - the townspeople whom Watson sees as primitive, the figure in the distance, and of course the sound of the hound - all feed this strange atmosphere. Associated with this theme of the supernatural is the theme of evil. Evil seems to pervade the moor, and the legend of Henry Baskerville paints the picture of an unequivocally evil man, almost more a metaphor than a human. Similarly, Selden is a figure known to be vicious and dangerous. The unknown figure in the distance carries just as much potential for evil, considering the rainy atmosphere in which he is first scene, and that ever-present threat of the hound. All of these figures are most frightening because Watson knows nothing about them. Like Henry Baskerville does, they seem to represent a darkness, an evil. However, evil is itself an expression of superstition and irrationalism. Therefore, the stakes for Watson - who is attempting to combat his growing superstition with his intellectual will - are larger than simply remaining untouched with country legends. He also must resist the temptation to see the world in terms of moral evil, rather than in terms of human psychology and motive, the realm that Holmes operates in. This conflict - between inherent evil and nuanced rationality - is also explored through Doyle's attitude towards criminality. It is notable that Dr. Watson describes Selden as a \"crafty and savage animal,\" and mentions that he has an \"evil yellow face\" . This description is symptomatic of a larger belief in the unchangeable and savage nature of the criminal, popular during that time period. Even Mrs. Barrymore does not seem to believe that her brother is able to be reformed into a civilized person. However, she does explain the circumstances by which he became a criminal. Thus, Doyle is attempting to comment on such strict beliefs, offering a more modernized attitude to criminality, as caused less by inherent evil than by circumstance. Though the novel does not explicitly address questions of reform, it does apply Holmes's more nuanced understanding - that generalized types are only the first step towards understand individuals - to a pressing social question. The difficulty of observing pure facts continues to resonate in these chapters. For instance, Watson does not notice much about Stapleton, and attempts to refrain from noting the man's strangeness . However, it is somewhat clear to the reader that Stapleton is a suspicious character. His over-eagerness, his almost arrogantly delivered knowledge of the moor and of Holmes's celebrity, and his fixation on his sister are all signs of his strangeness. It is unclear whether Watson misses these signs, or simply does not want to taint his reports to Holmes with subjective impressions, but the way he relates the man to the reader offers us some clues. On a side note, Stapleton's professed knowledge - of the moors and of Holmes - conforms the novel's greater theme of knowledge as power. Because of what he knows, he is able to control others and shape impressions. In the same way that Holmes uses information as a key, Stapleton uses knowledge as a tool, in ways that become clearer as the story progresses. It is notable that Chapters VIII and IX are related as letters. There is an earlier novelistic form known as the epistolary novel, a story told entirely through letters sent between characters. Doyle is not simply staging an homage to this tradition, however. Instead, the use of the letters - and later of Watson's diaries - conform to the greater themes of observation and subjectivity. Whereas most of the novel is framed as Watson's story told from hindsight to readers, these letters are written at the time of the event, to Holmes himself. Therefore, they reflect his viewpoint, his attempt to make sense of the facts he observes. Later, we realize how inadequate his interpretations are, but Doyle's intent is not to mock Watson, but rather to illustrate how the art of deduction begins with the art of proper observation. Finally, the use of these varied formats adds an air of verisimilitude to the story, helping it feel true and accurate, obviously an important effect for a story so concerned with themes of rationality. Also, Watson's voyeuristic nature is made explicit in the letters. We tend to associate Watson with the impartial observer: he is not the active hero of the story, but rather the third party. What this also means is that we know very little of Watson's private life. Earlier, Holmes noted that Watson spends so much time at his club because he lacks many personal friends. This character approach reveals a distinction between the detective story and other, more traditional novels. These more traditional novels tend to give us privileged access to private spaces: the minds of others, bedrooms, and other interior, private spaces. In other words, most novels and stories are primarily concerned with the psychology of their heroes. Watson, on the other hand, serves a plot function in many ways. Though he does attempt to self-correct his snooping observations of Sir Henry, apologizing for his behavior, he is clearly a man driven to watch from a hidden vantage, as evidenced on the night that he trails Barrymore. If he was not this kind of person, then the story's progress would be significantly hampered. Finally, the reader at this point may wonder why Holmes has not yet appeared to investigate the crime scene. These chapters mostly feature Dr. Watson in action. Though he is able to disentangle one thread of the mystery, he is clearly making slow progress. Further, he shows independence, disobeying Holmes's instructions by allowing Sir Henry to head out onto the moor at night. And yet he is well aware that his progress is limited, confessing in Chapter IX that they need Holmes. Clearly, Doyle is well aware of what his readers would want at this point, and moves quickly to remedy his hero's absence."}

The fresh beauty of the following morning did something to efface from our minds the grim and gray impression which had been left upon both of us by our first experience of Baskerville Hall. As Sir Henry and I sat at breakfast the sunlight flooded in through the high mullioned windows, throwing watery patches of colour from the coats of arms which covered them. The dark panelling glowed like bronze in the golden rays, and it was hard to realize that this was indeed the chamber which had struck such a gloom into our souls upon the evening before. "I guess it is ourselves and not the house that we have to blame!" said the baronet. "We were tired with our journey and chilled by our drive, so we took a gray view of the place. Now we are fresh and well, so it is all cheerful once more." "And yet it was not entirely a question of imagination," I answered. "Did you, for example, happen to hear someone, a woman I think, sobbing in the night?" "That is curious, for I did when I was half asleep fancy that I heard something of the sort. I waited quite a time, but there was no more of it, so I concluded that it was all a dream." "I heard it distinctly, and I am sure that it was really the sob of a woman." "We must ask about this right away." He rang the bell and asked Barrymore whether he could account for our experience. It seemed to me that the pallid features of the butler turned a shade paler still as he listened to his master's question. "There are only two women in the house, Sir Henry," he answered. "One is the scullery-maid, who sleeps in the other wing. The other is my wife, and I can answer for it that the sound could not have come from her." And yet he lied as he said it, for it chanced that after breakfast I met Mrs. Barrymore in the long corridor with the sun full upon her face. She was a large, impassive, heavy-featured woman with a stern set expression of mouth. But her telltale eyes were red and glanced at me from between swollen lids. It was she, then, who wept in the night, and if she did so her husband must know it. Yet he had taken the obvious risk of discovery in declaring that it was not so. Why had he done this? And why did she weep so bitterly? Already round this pale-faced, handsome, black-bearded man there was gathering an atmosphere of mystery and of gloom. It was he who had been the first to discover the body of Sir Charles, and we had only his word for all the circumstances which led up to the old man's death. Was it possible that it was Barrymore, after all, whom we had seen in the cab in Regent Street? The beard might well have been the same. The cabman had described a somewhat shorter man, but such an impression might easily have been erroneous. How could I settle the point forever? Obviously the first thing to do was to see the Grimpen postmaster and find whether the test telegram had really been placed in Barrymore's own hands. Be the answer what it might, I should at least have something to report to Sherlock Holmes. Sir Henry had numerous papers to examine after breakfast, so that the time was propitious for my excursion. It was a pleasant walk of four miles along the edge of the moor, leading me at last to a small gray hamlet, in which two larger buildings, which proved to be the inn and the house of Dr. Mortimer, stood high above the rest. The postmaster, who was also the village grocer, had a clear recollection of the telegram. "Certainly, sir," said he, "I had the telegram delivered to Mr. Barrymore exactly as directed." "Who delivered it?" "My boy here. James, you delivered that telegram to Mr. Barrymore at the Hall last week, did you not?" "Yes, father, I delivered it." "Into his own hands?" I asked. "Well, he was up in the loft at the time, so that I could not put it into his own hands, but I gave it into Mrs. Barrymore's hands, and she promised to deliver it at once." "Did you see Mr. Barrymore?" "No, sir; I tell you he was in the loft." "If you didn't see him, how do you know he was in the loft?" "Well, surely his own wife ought to know where he is," said the postmaster testily. "Didn't he get the telegram? If there is any mistake it is for Mr. Barrymore himself to complain." It seemed hopeless to pursue the inquiry any farther, but it was clear that in spite of Holmes's ruse we had no proof that Barrymore had not been in London all the time. Suppose that it were so--suppose that the same man had been the last who had seen Sir Charles alive, and the first to dog the new heir when he returned to England. What then? Was he the agent of others or had he some sinister design of his own? What interest could he have in persecuting the Baskerville family? I thought of the strange warning clipped out of the leading article of the Times. Was that his work or was it possibly the doing of someone who was bent upon counteracting his schemes? The only conceivable motive was that which had been suggested by Sir Henry, that if the family could be scared away a comfortable and permanent home would be secured for the Barrymores. But surely such an explanation as that would be quite inadequate to account for the deep and subtle scheming which seemed to be weaving an invisible net round the young baronet. Holmes himself had said that no more complex case had come to him in all the long series of his sensational investigations. I prayed, as I walked back along the gray, lonely road, that my friend might soon be freed from his preoccupations and able to come down to take this heavy burden of responsibility from my shoulders. Suddenly my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of running feet behind me and by a voice which called me by name. I turned, expecting to see Dr. Mortimer, but to my surprise it was a stranger who was pursuing me. He was a small, slim, clean-shaven, prim-faced man, flaxen-haired and leanjawed, between thirty and forty years of age, dressed in a gray suit and wearing a straw hat. A tin box for botanical specimens hung over his shoulder and he carried a green butterfly-net in one of his hands. "You will, I am sure, excuse my presumption, Dr. Watson," said he as he came panting up to where I stood. "Here on the moor we are homely folk and do not wait for formal introductions. You may possibly have heard my name from our mutual friend, Mortimer. I am Stapleton, of Merripit House." "Your net and box would have told me as much," said I, "for I knew that Mr. Stapleton was a naturalist. But how did you know me?" "I have been calling on Mortimer, and he pointed you out to me from the window of his surgery as you passed. As our road lay the same way I thought that I would overtake you and introduce myself. I trust that Sir Henry is none the worse for his journey?" "He is very well, thank you." "We were all rather afraid that after the sad death of Sir Charles the new baronet might refuse to live here. It is asking much of a wealthy man to come down and bury himself in a place of this kind, but I need not tell you that it means a very great deal to the countryside. Sir Henry has, I suppose, no superstitious fears in the matter?" "I do not think that it is likely." "Of course you know the legend of the fiend dog which haunts the family?" "I have heard it." "It is extraordinary how credulous the peasants are about here! Any number of them are ready to swear that they have seen such a creature upon the moor." He spoke with a smile, but I seemed to read in his eyes that he took the matter more seriously. "The story took a great hold upon the imagination of Sir Charles, and I have no doubt that it led to his tragic end." "But how?" "His nerves were so worked up that the appearance of any dog might have had a fatal effect upon his diseased heart. I fancy that he really did see something of the kind upon that last night in the yew alley. I feared that some disaster might occur, for I was very fond of the old man, and I knew that his heart was weak." "How did you know that?" "My friend Mortimer told me." "You think, then, that some dog pursued Sir Charles, and that he died of fright in consequence?" "Have you any better explanation?" "I have not come to any conclusion." "Has Mr. Sherlock Holmes?" The words took away my breath for an instant but a glance at the placid face and steadfast eyes of my companion showed that no surprise was intended. "It is useless for us to pretend that we do not know you, Dr. Watson," said he. "The records of your detective have reached us here, and you could not celebrate him without being known yourself. When Mortimer told me your name he could not deny your identity. If you are here, then it follows that Mr. Sherlock Holmes is interesting himself in the matter, and I am naturally curious to know what view he may take." "I am afraid that I cannot answer that question." "May I ask if he is going to honour us with a visit himself?" "He cannot leave town at present. He has other cases which engage his attention." "What a pity! He might throw some light on that which is so dark to us. But as to your own researches, if there is any possible way in which I can be of service to you I trust that you will command me. If I had any indication of the nature of your suspicions or how you propose to investigate the case, I might perhaps even now give you some aid or advice." "I assure you that I am simply here upon a visit to my friend, Sir Henry, and that I need no help of any kind." "Excellent!" said Stapleton. "You are perfectly right to be wary and discreet. I am justly reproved for what I feel was an unjustifiable intrusion, and I promise you that I will not mention the matter again." We had come to a point where a narrow grassy path struck off from the road and wound away across the moor. A steep, boulder-sprinkled hill lay upon the right which had in bygone days been cut into a granite quarry. The face which was turned towards us formed a dark cliff, with ferns and brambles growing in its niches. From over a distant rise there floated a gray plume of smoke. "A moderate walk along this moor-path brings us to Merripit House," said he. "Perhaps you will spare an hour that I may have the pleasure of introducing you to my sister." My first thought was that I should be by Sir Henry's side. But then I remembered the pile of papers and bills with which his study table was littered. It was certain that I could not help with those. And Holmes had expressly said that I should study the neighbours upon the moor. I accepted Stapleton's invitation, and we turned together down the path. "It is a wonderful place, the moor," said he, looking round over the undulating downs, long green rollers, with crests of jagged granite foaming up into fantastic surges. "You never tire of the moor. You cannot think the wonderful secrets which it contains. It is so vast, and so barren, and so mysterious." "You know it well, then?" "I have only been here two years. The residents would call me a newcomer. We came shortly after Sir Charles settled. But my tastes led me to explore every part of the country round, and I should think that there are few men who know it better than I do." "Is it hard to know?" "Very hard. You see, for example, this great plain to the north here with the queer hills breaking out of it. Do you observe anything remarkable about that?" "It would be a rare place for a gallop." "You would naturally think so and the thought has cost several their lives before now. You notice those bright green spots scattered thickly over it?" "Yes, they seem more fertile than the rest." Stapleton laughed. "That is the great Grimpen Mire," said he. "A false step yonder means death to man or beast. Only yesterday I saw one of the moor ponies wander into it. He never came out. I saw his head for quite a long time craning out of the bog-hole, but it sucked him down at last. Even in dry seasons it is a danger to cross it, but after these autumn rains it is an awful place. And yet I can find my way to the very heart of it and return alive. By George, there is another of those miserable ponies!" Something brown was rolling and tossing among the green sedges. Then a long, agonized, writhing neck shot upward and a dreadful cry echoed over the moor. It turned me cold with horror, but my companion's nerves seemed to be stronger than mine. "It's gone!" said he. "The mire has him. Two in two days, and many more, perhaps, for they get in the way of going there in the dry weather and never know the difference until the mire has them in its clutches. It's a bad place, the great Grimpen Mire." "And you say you can penetrate it?" "Yes, there are one or two paths which a very active man can take. I have found them out." "But why should you wish to go into so horrible a place?" "Well, you see the hills beyond? They are really islands cut off on all sides by the impassable mire, which has crawled round them in the course of years. That is where the rare plants and the butterflies are, if you have the wit to reach them." "I shall try my luck some day." He looked at me with a surprised face. "For God's sake put such an idea out of your mind," said he. "Your blood would be upon my head. I assure you that there would not be the least chance of your coming back alive. It is only by remembering certain complex landmarks that I am able to do it." "Halloa!" I cried. "What is that?" A long, low moan, indescribably sad, swept over the moor. It filled the whole air, and yet it was impossible to say whence it came. From a dull murmur it swelled into a deep roar, and then sank back into a melancholy, throbbing murmur once again. Stapleton looked at me with a curious expression in his face. "Queer place, the moor!" said he. "But what is it?" "The peasants say it is the Hound of the Baskervilles calling for its prey. I've heard it once or twice before, but never quite so loud." I looked round, with a chill of fear in my heart, at the huge swelling plain, mottled with the green patches of rushes. Nothing stirred over the vast expanse save a pair of ravens, which croaked loudly from a tor behind us. "You are an educated man. You don't believe such nonsense as that?" said I. "What do you think is the cause of so strange a sound?" "Bogs make queer noises sometimes. It's the mud settling, or the water rising, or something." "No, no, that was a living voice." "Well, perhaps it was. Did you ever hear a bittern booming?" "No, I never did." "It's a very rare bird--practically extinct--in England now, but all things are possible upon the moor. Yes, I should not be surprised to learn that what we have heard is the cry of the last of the bitterns." "It's the weirdest, strangest thing that ever I heard in my life." "Yes, it's rather an uncanny place altogether. Look at the hillside yonder. What do you make of those?" The whole steep slope was covered with gray circular rings of stone, a score of them at least. "What are they? Sheep-pens?" "No, they are the homes of our worthy ancestors. Prehistoric man lived thickly on the moor, and as no one in particular has lived there since, we find all his little arrangements exactly as he left them. These are his wigwams with the roofs off. You can even see his hearth and his couch if you have the curiosity to go inside. "But it is quite a town. When was it inhabited?" "Neolithic man--no date." "What did he do?" "He grazed his cattle on these slopes, and he learned to dig for tin when the bronze sword began to supersede the stone axe. Look at the great trench in the opposite hill. That is his mark. Yes, you will find some very singular points about the moor, Dr. Watson. Oh, excuse me an instant! It is surely Cyclopides." A small fly or moth had fluttered across our path, and in an instant Stapleton was rushing with extraordinary energy and speed in pursuit of it. To my dismay the creature flew straight for the great mire, and my acquaintance never paused for an instant, bounding from tuft to tuft behind it, his green net waving in the air. His gray clothes and jerky, zigzag, irregular progress made him not unlike some huge moth himself. I was standing watching his pursuit with a mixture of admiration for his extraordinary activity and fear lest he should lose his footing in the treacherous mire, when I heard the sound of steps and, turning round, found a woman near me upon the path. She had come from the direction in which the plume of smoke indicated the position of Merripit House, but the dip of the moor had hid her until she was quite close. I could not doubt that this was the Miss Stapleton of whom I had been told, since ladies of any sort must be few upon the moor, and I remembered that I had heard someone describe her as being a beauty. The woman who approached me was certainly that, and of a most uncommon type. There could not have been a greater contrast between brother and sister, for Stapleton was neutral tinted, with light hair and gray eyes, while she was darker than any brunette whom I have seen in England--slim, elegant, and tall. She had a proud, finely cut face, so regular that it might have seemed impassive were it not for the sensitive mouth and the beautiful dark, eager eyes. With her perfect figure and elegant dress she was, indeed, a strange apparition upon a lonely moorland path. Her eyes were on her brother as I turned, and then she quickened her pace towards me. I had raised my hat and was about to make some explanatory remark when her own words turned all my thoughts into a new channel. "Go back!" she said. "Go straight back to London, instantly." I could only stare at her in stupid surprise. Her eyes blazed at me, and she tapped the ground impatiently with her foot. "Why should I go back?" I asked. "I cannot explain." She spoke in a low, eager voice, with a curious lisp in her utterance. "But for God's sake do what I ask you. Go back and never set foot upon the moor again." "But I have only just come." "Man, man!" she cried. "Can you not tell when a warning is for your own good? Go back to London! Start tonight! Get away from this place at all costs! Hush, my brother is coming! Not a word of what I have said. Would you mind getting that orchid for me among the mare's-tails yonder? We are very rich in orchids on the moor, though, of course, you are rather late to see the beauties of the place." Stapleton had abandoned the chase and came back to us breathing hard and flushed with his exertions. "Halloa, Beryl!" said he, and it seemed to me that the tone of his greeting was not altogether a cordial one. "Well, Jack, you are very hot." "Yes, I was chasing a Cyclopides. He is very rare and seldom found in the late autumn. What a pity that I should have missed him!" He spoke unconcernedly, but his small light eyes glanced incessantly from the girl to me. "You have introduced yourselves, I can see." "Yes. I was telling Sir Henry that it was rather late for him to see the true beauties of the moor." "Why, who do you think this is?" "I imagine that it must be Sir Henry Baskerville." "No, no," said I. "Only a humble commoner, but his friend. My name is Dr. Watson." A flush of vexation passed over her expressive face. "We have been talking at cross purposes," said she. "Why, you had not very much time for talk," her brother remarked with the same questioning eyes. "I talked as if Dr. Watson were a resident instead of being merely a visitor," said she. "It cannot much matter to him whether it is early or late for the orchids. But you will come on, will you not, and see Merripit House?" A short walk brought us to it, a bleak moorland house, once the farm of some grazier in the old prosperous days, but now put into repair and turned into a modern dwelling. An orchard surrounded it, but the trees, as is usual upon the moor, were stunted and nipped, and the effect of the whole place was mean and melancholy. We were admitted by a strange, wizened, rusty-coated old manservant, who seemed in keeping with the house. Inside, however, there were large rooms furnished with an elegance in which I seemed to recognize the taste of the lady. As I looked from their windows at the interminable granite-flecked moor rolling unbroken to the farthest horizon I could not but marvel at what could have brought this highly educated man and this beautiful woman to live in such a place. "Queer spot to choose, is it not?" said he as if in answer to my thought. "And yet we manage to make ourselves fairly happy, do we not, Beryl?" "Quite happy," said she, but there was no ring of conviction in her words. "I had a school," said Stapleton. "It was in the north country. The work to a man of my temperament was mechanical and uninteresting, but the privilege of living with youth, of helping to mould those young minds, and of impressing them with one's own character and ideals was very dear to me. However, the fates were against us. A serious epidemic broke out in the school and three of the boys died. It never recovered from the blow, and much of my capital was irretrievably swallowed up. And yet, if it were not for the loss of the charming companionship of the boys, I could rejoice over my own misfortune, for, with my strong tastes for botany and zoology, I find an unlimited field of work here, and my sister is as devoted to Nature as I am. All this, Dr. Watson, has been brought upon your head by your expression as you surveyed the moor out of our window." "It certainly did cross my mind that it might be a little dull--less for you, perhaps, than for your sister." "No, no, I am never dull," said she quickly. "We have books, we have our studies, and we have interesting neighbours. Dr. Mortimer is a most learned man in his own line. Poor Sir Charles was also an admirable companion. We knew him well and miss him more than I can tell. Do you think that I should intrude if I were to call this afternoon and make the acquaintance of Sir Henry?" "I am sure that he would be delighted." "Then perhaps you would mention that I propose to do so. We may in our humble way do something to make things more easy for him until he becomes accustomed to his new surroundings. Will you come upstairs, Dr. Watson, and inspect my collection of Lepidoptera? I think it is the most complete one in the south-west of England. By the time that you have looked through them lunch will be almost ready." But I was eager to get back to my charge. The melancholy of the moor, the death of the unfortunate pony, the weird sound which had been associated with the grim legend of the Baskervilles, all these things tinged my thoughts with sadness. Then on the top of these more or less vague impressions there had come the definite and distinct warning of Miss Stapleton, delivered with such intense earnestness that I could not doubt that some grave and deep reason lay behind it. I resisted all pressure to stay for lunch, and I set off at once upon my return journey, taking the grass-grown path by which we had come. It seems, however, that there must have been some short cut for those who knew it, for before I had reached the road I was astounded to see Miss Stapleton sitting upon a rock by the side of the track. Her face was beautifully flushed with her exertions and she held her hand to her side. "I have run all the way in order to cut you off, Dr. Watson," said she. "I had not even time to put on my hat. I must not stop, or my brother may miss me. I wanted to say to you how sorry I am about the stupid mistake I made in thinking that you were Sir Henry. Please forget the words I said, which have no application whatever to you." "But I can't forget them, Miss Stapleton," said I. "I am Sir Henry's friend, and his welfare is a very close concern of mine. Tell me why it was that you were so eager that Sir Henry should return to London." "A woman's whim, Dr. Watson. When you know me better you will understand that I cannot always give reasons for what I say or do." "No, no. I remember the thrill in your voice. I remember the look in your eyes. Please, please, be frank with me, Miss Stapleton, for ever since I have been here I have been conscious of shadows all round me. Life has become like that great Grimpen Mire, with little green patches everywhere into which one may sink and with no guide to point the track. Tell me then what it was that you meant, and I will promise to convey your warning to Sir Henry." An expression of irresolution passed for an instant over her face, but her eyes had hardened again when she answered me. "You make too much of it, Dr. Watson," said she. "My brother and I were very much shocked by the death of Sir Charles. We knew him very intimately, for his favourite walk was over the moor to our house. He was deeply impressed with the curse which hung over the family, and when this tragedy came I naturally felt that there must be some grounds for the fears which he had expressed. I was distressed therefore when another member of the family came down to live here, and I felt that he should be warned of the danger which he will run. That was all which I intended to convey. "But what is the danger?" "You know the story of the hound?" "I do not believe in such nonsense." "But I do. If you have any influence with Sir Henry, take him away from a place which has always been fatal to his family. The world is wide. Why should he wish to live at the place of danger?" "Because it is the place of danger. That is Sir Henry's nature. I fear that unless you can give me some more definite information than this it would be impossible to get him to move." "I cannot say anything definite, for I do not know anything definite." "I would ask you one more question, Miss Stapleton. If you meant no more than this when you first spoke to me, why should you not wish your brother to overhear what you said? There is nothing to which he, or anyone else, could object." "My brother is very anxious to have the Hall inhabited, for he thinks it is for the good of the poor folk upon the moor. He would be very angry if he knew that I have said anything which might induce Sir Henry to go away. But I have done my duty now and I will say no more. I must go back, or he will miss me and suspect that I have seen you. Good-bye!" She turned and had disappeared in a few minutes among the scattered boulders, while I, with my soul full of vague fears, pursued my way to Baskerville Hall. From this point onward I will follow the course of events by transcribing my own letters to Mr. Sherlock Holmes which lie before me on the table. One page is missing, but otherwise they are exactly as written and show my feelings and suspicions of the moment more accurately than my memory, clear as it is upon these tragic events, can possibly do. Baskerville Hall, October 13th. MY DEAR HOLMES: My previous letters and telegrams have kept you pretty well up to date as to all that has occurred in this most God-forsaken corner of the world. The longer one stays here the more does the spirit of the moor sink into one's soul, its vastness, and also its grim charm. When you are once out upon its bosom you have left all traces of modern England behind you, but, on the other hand, you are conscious everywhere of the homes and the work of the prehistoric people. On all sides of you as you walk are the houses of these forgotten folk, with their graves and the huge monoliths which are supposed to have marked their temples. As you look at their gray stone huts against the scarred hillsides you leave your own age behind you, and if you were to see a skin-clad, hairy man crawl out from the low door fitting a flint-tipped arrow on to the string of his bow, you would feel that his presence there was more natural than your own. The strange thing is that they should have lived so thickly on what must always have been most unfruitful soil. I am no antiquarian, but I could imagine that they were some unwarlike and harried race who were forced to accept that which none other would occupy. All this, however, is foreign to the mission on which you sent me and will probably be very uninteresting to your severely practical mind. I can still remember your complete indifference as to whether the sun moved round the earth or the earth round the sun. Let me, therefore, return to the facts concerning Sir Henry Baskerville. If you have not had any report within the last few days it is because up to today there was nothing of importance to relate. Then a very surprising circumstance occurred, which I shall tell you in due course. But, first of all, I must keep you in touch with some of the other factors in the situation. One of these, concerning which I have said little, is the escaped convict upon the moor. There is strong reason now to believe that he has got right away, which is a considerable relief to the lonely householders of this district. A fortnight has passed since his flight, during which he has not been seen and nothing has been heard of him. It is surely inconceivable that he could have held out upon the moor during all that time. Of course, so far as his concealment goes there is no difficulty at all. Any one of these stone huts would give him a hiding-place. But there is nothing to eat unless he were to catch and slaughter one of the moor sheep. We think, therefore, that he has gone, and the outlying farmers sleep the better in consequence. We are four able-bodied men in this household, so that we could take good care of ourselves, but I confess that I have had uneasy moments when I have thought of the Stapletons. They live miles from any help. There are one maid, an old manservant, the sister, and the brother, the latter not a very strong man. They would be helpless in the hands of a desperate fellow like this Notting Hill criminal if he could once effect an entrance. Both Sir Henry and I were concerned at their situation, and it was suggested that Perkins the groom should go over to sleep there, but Stapleton would not hear of it. The fact is that our friend, the baronet, begins to display a considerable interest in our fair neighbour. It is not to be wondered at, for time hangs heavily in this lonely spot to an active man like him, and she is a very fascinating and beautiful woman. There is something tropical and exotic about her which forms a singular contrast to her cool and unemotional brother. Yet he also gives the idea of hidden fires. He has certainly a very marked influence over her, for I have seen her continually glance at him as she talked as if seeking approbation for what she said. I trust that he is kind to her. There is a dry glitter in his eyes and a firm set of his thin lips, which goes with a positive and possibly a harsh nature. You would find him an interesting study. He came over to call upon Baskerville on that first day, and the very next morning he took us both to show us the spot where the legend of the wicked Hugo is supposed to have had its origin. It was an excursion of some miles across the moor to a place which is so dismal that it might have suggested the story. We found a short valley between rugged tors which led to an open, grassy space flecked over with the white cotton grass. In the middle of it rose two great stones, worn and sharpened at the upper end until they looked like the huge corroding fangs of some monstrous beast. In every way it corresponded with the scene of the old tragedy. Sir Henry was much interested and asked Stapleton more than once whether he did really believe in the possibility of the interference of the supernatural in the affairs of men. He spoke lightly, but it was evident that he was very much in earnest. Stapleton was guarded in his replies, but it was easy to see that he said less than he might, and that he would not express his whole opinion out of consideration for the feelings of the baronet. He told us of similar cases, where families had suffered from some evil influence, and he left us with the impression that he shared the popular view upon the matter. On our way back we stayed for lunch at Merripit House, and it was there that Sir Henry made the acquaintance of Miss Stapleton. From the first moment that he saw her he appeared to be strongly attracted by her, and I am much mistaken if the feeling was not mutual. He referred to her again and again on our walk home, and since then hardly a day has passed that we have not seen something of the brother and sister. They dine here tonight, and there is some talk of our going to them next week. One would imagine that such a match would be very welcome to Stapleton, and yet I have more than once caught a look of the strongest disapprobation in his face when Sir Henry has been paying some attention to his sister. He is much attached to her, no doubt, and would lead a lonely life without her, but it would seem the height of selfishness if he were to stand in the way of her making so brilliant a marriage. Yet I am certain that he does not wish their intimacy to ripen into love, and I have several times observed that he has taken pains to prevent them from being tete-a-tete. By the way, your instructions to me never to allow Sir Henry to go out alone will become very much more onerous if a love affair were to be added to our other difficulties. My popularity would soon suffer if I were to carry out your orders to the letter. The other day--Thursday, to be more exact--Dr. Mortimer lunched with us. He has been excavating a barrow at Long Down and has got a prehistoric skull which fills him with great joy. Never was there such a single-minded enthusiast as he! The Stapletons came in afterwards, and the good doctor took us all to the yew alley at Sir Henry's request to show us exactly how everything occurred upon that fatal night. It is a long, dismal walk, the yew alley, between two high walls of clipped hedge, with a narrow band of grass upon either side. At the far end is an old tumble-down summer-house. Halfway down is the moor-gate, where the old gentleman left his cigar-ash. It is a white wooden gate with a latch. Beyond it lies the wide moor. I remembered your theory of the affair and tried to picture all that had occurred. As the old man stood there he saw something coming across the moor, something which terrified him so that he lost his wits and ran and ran until he died of sheer horror and exhaustion. There was the long, gloomy tunnel down which he fled. And from what? A sheep-dog of the moor? Or a spectral hound, black, silent, and monstrous? Was there a human agency in the matter? Did the pale, watchful Barrymore know more than he cared to say? It was all dim and vague, but always there is the dark shadow of crime behind it. One other neighbour I have met since I wrote last. This is Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, who lives some four miles to the south of us. He is an elderly man, red-faced, white-haired, and choleric. His passion is for the British law, and he has spent a large fortune in litigation. He fights for the mere pleasure of fighting and is equally ready to take up either side of a question, so that it is no wonder that he has found it a costly amusement. Sometimes he will shut up a right of way and defy the parish to make him open it. At others he will with his own hands tear down some other man's gate and declare that a path has existed there from time immemorial, defying the owner to prosecute him for trespass. He is learned in old manorial and communal rights, and he applies his knowledge sometimes in favour of the villagers of Fernworthy and sometimes against them, so that he is periodically either carried in triumph down the village street or else burned in effigy, according to his latest exploit. He is said to have about seven lawsuits upon his hands at present, which will probably swallow up the remainder of his fortune and so draw his sting and leave him harmless for the future. Apart from the law he seems a kindly, good-natured person, and I only mention him because you were particular that I should send some description of the people who surround us. He is curiously employed at present, for, being an amateur astronomer, he has an excellent telescope, with which he lies upon the roof of his own house and sweeps the moor all day in the hope of catching a glimpse of the escaped convict. If he would confine his energies to this all would be well, but there are rumours that he intends to prosecute Dr. Mortimer for opening a grave without the consent of the next of kin because he dug up the Neolithic skull in the barrow on Long Down. He helps to keep our lives from being monotonous and gives a little comic relief where it is badly needed. And now, having brought you up to date in the escaped convict, the Stapletons, Dr. Mortimer, and Frankland, of Lafter Hall, let me end on that which is most important and tell you more about the Barrymores, and especially about the surprising development of last night. First of all about the test telegram, which you sent from London in order to make sure that Barrymore was really here. I have already explained that the testimony of the postmaster shows that the test was worthless and that we have no proof one way or the other. I told Sir Henry how the matter stood, and he at once, in his downright fashion, had Barrymore up and asked him whether he had received the telegram himself. Barrymore said that he had. "Did the boy deliver it into your own hands?" asked Sir Henry. Barrymore looked surprised, and considered for a little time. "No," said he, "I was in the box-room at the time, and my wife brought it up to me." "Did you answer it yourself?" "No; I told my wife what to answer and she went down to write it." In the evening he recurred to the subject of his own accord. "I could not quite understand the object of your questions this morning, Sir Henry," said he. "I trust that they do not mean that I have done anything to forfeit your confidence?" Sir Henry had to assure him that it was not so and pacify him by giving him a considerable part of his old wardrobe, the London outfit having now all arrived. Mrs. Barrymore is of interest to me. She is a heavy, solid person, very limited, intensely respectable, and inclined to be puritanical. You could hardly conceive a less emotional subject. Yet I have told you how, on the first night here, I heard her sobbing bitterly, and since then I have more than once observed traces of tears upon her face. Some deep sorrow gnaws ever at her heart. Sometimes I wonder if she has a guilty memory which haunts her, and sometimes I suspect Barrymore of being a domestic tyrant. I have always felt that there was something singular and questionable in this man's character, but the adventure of last night brings all my suspicions to a head. And yet it may seem a small matter in itself. You are aware that I am not a very sound sleeper, and since I have been on guard in this house my slumbers have been lighter than ever. Last night, about two in the morning, I was aroused by a stealthy step passing my room. I rose, opened my door, and peeped out. A long black shadow was trailing down the corridor. It was thrown by a man who walked softly down the passage with a candle held in his hand. He was in shirt and trousers, with no covering to his feet. I could merely see the outline, but his height told me that it was Barrymore. He walked very slowly and circumspectly, and there was something indescribably guilty and furtive in his whole appearance. I have told you that the corridor is broken by the balcony which runs round the hall, but that it is resumed upon the farther side. I waited until he had passed out of sight and then I followed him. When I came round the balcony he had reached the end of the farther corridor, and I could see from the glimmer of light through an open door that he had entered one of the rooms. Now, all these rooms are unfurnished and unoccupied so that his expedition became more mysterious than ever. The light shone steadily as if he were standing motionless. I crept down the passage as noiselessly as I could and peeped round the corner of the door. Barrymore was crouching at the window with the candle held against the glass. His profile was half turned towards me, and his face seemed to be rigid with expectation as he stared out into the blackness of the moor. For some minutes he stood watching intently. Then he gave a deep groan and with an impatient gesture he put out the light. Instantly I made my way back to my room, and very shortly came the stealthy steps passing once more upon their return journey. Long afterwards when I had fallen into a light sleep I heard a key turn somewhere in a lock, but I could not tell whence the sound came. What it all means I cannot guess, but there is some secret business going on in this house of gloom which sooner or later we shall get to the bottom of. I do not trouble you with my theories, for you asked me to furnish you only with facts. I have had a long talk with Sir Henry this morning, and we have made a plan of campaign founded upon my observations of last night. I will not speak about it just now, but it should make my next report interesting reading. Baskerville Hall, Oct. 15th. MY DEAR HOLMES: If I was compelled to leave you without much news during the early days of my mission you must acknowledge that I am making up for lost time, and that events are now crowding thick and fast upon us. In my last report I ended upon my top note with Barrymore at the window, and now I have quite a budget already which will, unless I am much mistaken, considerably surprise you. Things have taken a turn which I could not have anticipated. In some ways they have within the last forty-eight hours become much clearer and in some ways they have become more complicated. But I will tell you all and you shall judge for yourself. Before breakfast on the morning following my adventure I went down the corridor and examined the room in which Barrymore had been on the night before. The western window through which he had stared so intently has, I noticed, one peculiarity above all other windows in the house--it commands the nearest outlook on to the moor. There is an opening between two trees which enables one from this point of view to look right down upon it, while from all the other windows it is only a distant glimpse which can be obtained. It follows, therefore, that Barrymore, since only this window would serve the purpose, must have been looking out for something or somebody upon the moor. The night was very dark, so that I can hardly imagine how he could have hoped to see anyone. It had struck me that it was possible that some love intrigue was on foot. That would have accounted for his stealthy movements and also for the uneasiness of his wife. The man is a striking-looking fellow, very well equipped to steal the heart of a country girl, so that this theory seemed to have something to support it. That opening of the door which I had heard after I had returned to my room might mean that he had gone out to keep some clandestine appointment. So I reasoned with myself in the morning, and I tell you the direction of my suspicions, however much the result may have shown that they were unfounded. But whatever the true explanation of Barrymore's movements might be, I felt that the responsibility of keeping them to myself until I could explain them was more than I could bear. I had an interview with the baronet in his study after breakfast, and I told him all that I had seen. He was less surprised than I had expected. "I knew that Barrymore walked about nights, and I had a mind to speak to him about it," said he. "Two or three times I have heard his steps in the passage, coming and going, just about the hour you name." "Perhaps then he pays a visit every night to that particular window," I suggested. "Perhaps he does. If so, we should be able to shadow him and see what it is that he is after. I wonder what your friend Holmes would do if he were here." "I believe that he would do exactly what you now suggest," said I. "He would follow Barrymore and see what he did." "Then we shall do it together." "But surely he would hear us." "The man is rather deaf, and in any case we must take our chance of that. We'll sit up in my room tonight and wait until he passes." Sir Henry rubbed his hands with pleasure, and it was evident that he hailed the adventure as a relief to his somewhat quiet life upon the moor. The baronet has been in communication with the architect who prepared the plans for Sir Charles, and with a contractor from London, so that we may expect great changes to begin here soon. There have been decorators and furnishers up from Plymouth, and it is evident that our friend has large ideas and means to spare no pains or expense to restore the grandeur of his family. When the house is renovated and refurnished, all that he will need will be a wife to make it complete. Between ourselves there are pretty clear signs that this will not be wanting if the lady is willing, for I have seldom seen a man more infatuated with a woman than he is with our beautiful neighbour, Miss Stapleton. And yet the course of true love does not run quite as smoothly as one would under the circumstances expect. Today, for example, its surface was broken by a very unexpected ripple, which has caused our friend considerable perplexity and annoyance. After the conversation which I have quoted about Barrymore, Sir Henry put on his hat and prepared to go out. As a matter of course I did the same. "What, are you coming, Watson?" he asked, looking at me in a curious way. "That depends on whether you are going on the moor," said I. "Yes, I am." "Well, you know what my instructions are. I am sorry to intrude, but you heard how earnestly Holmes insisted that I should not leave you, and especially that you should not go alone upon the moor." Sir Henry put his hand upon my shoulder with a pleasant smile. "My dear fellow," said he, "Holmes, with all his wisdom, did not foresee some things which have happened since I have been on the moor. You understand me? I am sure that you are the last man in the world who would wish to be a spoil-sport. I must go out alone." It put me in a most awkward position. I was at a loss what to say or what to do, and before I had made up my mind he picked up his cane and was gone. But when I came to think the matter over my conscience reproached me bitterly for having on any pretext allowed him to go out of my sight. I imagined what my feelings would be if I had to return to you and to confess that some misfortune had occurred through my disregard for your instructions. I assure you my cheeks flushed at the very thought. It might not even now be too late to overtake him, so I set off at once in the direction of Merripit House. I hurried along the road at the top of my speed without seeing anything of Sir Henry, until I came to the point where the moor path branches off. There, fearing that perhaps I had come in the wrong direction after all, I mounted a hill from which I could command a view--the same hill which is cut into the dark quarry. Thence I saw him at once. He was on the moor path about a quarter of a mile off, and a lady was by his side who could only be Miss Stapleton. It was clear that there was already an understanding between them and that they had met by appointment. They were walking slowly along in deep conversation, and I saw her making quick little movements of her hands as if she were very earnest in what she was saying, while he listened intently, and once or twice shook his head in strong dissent. I stood among the rocks watching them, very much puzzled as to what I should do next. To follow them and break into their intimate conversation seemed to be an outrage, and yet my clear duty was never for an instant to let him out of my sight. To act the spy upon a friend was a hateful task. Still, I could see no better course than to observe him from the hill, and to clear my conscience by confessing to him afterwards what I had done. It is true that if any sudden danger had threatened him I was too far away to be of use, and yet I am sure that you will agree with me that the position was very difficult, and that there was nothing more which I could do. Our friend, Sir Henry, and the lady had halted on the path and were standing deeply absorbed in their conversation, when I was suddenly aware that I was not the only witness of their interview. A wisp of green floating in the air caught my eye, and another glance showed me that it was carried on a stick by a man who was moving among the broken ground. It was Stapleton with his butterfly-net. He was very much closer to the pair than I was, and he appeared to be moving in their direction. At this instant Sir Henry suddenly drew Miss Stapleton to his side. His arm was round her, but it seemed to me that she was straining away from him with her face averted. He stooped his head to hers, and she raised one hand as if in protest. Next moment I saw them spring apart and turn hurriedly round. Stapleton was the cause of the interruption. He was running wildly towards them, his absurd net dangling behind him. He gesticulated and almost danced with excitement in front of the lovers. What the scene meant I could not imagine, but it seemed to me that Stapleton was abusing Sir Henry, who offered explanations, which became more angry as the other refused to accept them. The lady stood by in haughty silence. Finally Stapleton turned upon his heel and beckoned in a peremptory way to his sister, who, after an irresolute glance at Sir Henry, walked off by the side of her brother. The naturalist's angry gestures showed that the lady was included in his displeasure. The baronet stood for a minute looking after them, and then he walked slowly back the way that he had come, his head hanging, the very picture of dejection. What all this meant I could not imagine, but I was deeply ashamed to have witnessed so intimate a scene without my friend's knowledge. I ran down the hill therefore and met the baronet at the bottom. His face was flushed with anger and his brows were wrinkled, like one who is at his wit's ends what to do. "Halloa, Watson! Where have you dropped from?" said he. "You don't mean to say that you came after me in spite of all?" I explained everything to him: how I had found it impossible to remain behind, how I had followed him, and how I had witnessed all that had occurred. For an instant his eyes blazed at me, but my frankness disarmed his anger, and he broke at last into a rather rueful laugh. "You would have thought the middle of that prairie a fairly safe place for a man to be private," said he, "but, by thunder, the whole countryside seems to have been out to see me do my wooing--and a mighty poor wooing at that! Where had you engaged a seat?" "I was on that hill." "Quite in the back row, eh? But her brother was well up to the front. Did you see him come out on us?" "Yes, I did." "Did he ever strike you as being crazy--this brother of hers?" "I can't say that he ever did." "I dare say not. I always thought him sane enough until today, but you can take it from me that either he or I ought to be in a straitjacket. What's the matter with me, anyhow? You've lived near me for some weeks, Watson. Tell me straight, now! Is there anything that would prevent me from making a good husband to a woman that I loved?" "I should say not." "He can't object to my worldly position, so it must be myself that he has this down on. What has he against me? I never hurt man or woman in my life that I know of. And yet he would not so much as let me touch the tips of her fingers." "Did he say so?" "That, and a deal more. I tell you, Watson, I've only known her these few weeks, but from the first I just felt that she was made for me, and she, too--she was happy when she was with me, and that I'll swear. There's a light in a woman's eyes that speaks louder than words. But he has never let us get together and it was only today for the first time that I saw a chance of having a few words with her alone. She was glad to meet me, but when she did it was not love that she would talk about, and she wouldn't have let me talk about it either if she could have stopped it. She kept coming back to it that this was a place of danger, and that she would never be happy until I had left it. I told her that since I had seen her I was in no hurry to leave it, and that if she really wanted me to go, the only way to work it was for her to arrange to go with me. With that I offered in as many words to marry her, but before she could answer, down came this brother of hers, running at us with a face on him like a madman. He was just white with rage, and those light eyes of his were blazing with fury. What was I doing with the lady? How dared I offer her attentions which were distasteful to her? Did I think that because I was a baronet I could do what I liked? If he had not been her brother I should have known better how to answer him. As it was I told him that my feelings towards his sister were such as I was not ashamed of, and that I hoped that she might honour me by becoming my wife. That seemed to make the matter no better, so then I lost my temper too, and I answered him rather more hotly than I should perhaps, considering that she was standing by. So it ended by his going off with her, as you saw, and here am I as badly puzzled a man as any in this county. Just tell me what it all means, Watson, and I'll owe you more than ever I can hope to pay." I tried one or two explanations, but, indeed, I was completely puzzled myself. Our friend's title, his fortune, his age, his character, and his appearance are all in his favour, and I know nothing against him unless it be this dark fate which runs in his family. That his advances should be rejected so brusquely without any reference to the lady's own wishes and that the lady should accept the situation without protest is very amazing. However, our conjectures were set at rest by a visit from Stapleton himself that very afternoon. He had come to offer apologies for his rudeness of the morning, and after a long private interview with Sir Henry in his study the upshot of their conversation was that the breach is quite healed, and that we are to dine at Merripit House next Friday as a sign of it. "I don't say now that he isn't a crazy man," said Sir Henry; "I can't forget the look in his eyes when he ran at me this morning, but I must allow that no man could make a more handsome apology than he has done." "Did he give any explanation of his conduct?" "His sister is everything in his life, he says. That is natural enough, and I am glad that he should understand her value. They have always been together, and according to his account he has been a very lonely man with only her as a companion, so that the thought of losing her was really terrible to him. He had not understood, he said, that I was becoming attached to her, but when he saw with his own eyes that it was really so, and that she might be taken away from him, it gave him such a shock that for a time he was not responsible for what he said or did. He was very sorry for all that had passed, and he recognized how foolish and how selfish it was that he should imagine that he could hold a beautiful woman like his sister to himself for her whole life. If she had to leave him he had rather it was to a neighbour like myself than to anyone else. But in any case it was a blow to him and it would take him some time before he could prepare himself to meet it. He would withdraw all opposition upon his part if I would promise for three months to let the matter rest and to be content with cultivating the lady's friendship during that time without claiming her love. This I promised, and so the matter rests." So there is one of our small mysteries cleared up. It is something to have touched bottom anywhere in this bog in which we are floundering. We know now why Stapleton looked with disfavour upon his sister's suitor--even when that suitor was so eligible a one as Sir Henry. And now I pass on to another thread which I have extricated out of the tangled skein, the mystery of the sobs in the night, of the tear-stained face of Mrs. Barrymore, of the secret journey of the butler to the western lattice window. Congratulate me, my dear Holmes, and tell me that I have not disappointed you as an agent--that you do not regret the confidence which you showed in me when you sent me down. All these things have by one night's work been thoroughly cleared. I have said "by one night's work," but, in truth, it was by two nights' work, for on the first we drew entirely blank. I sat up with Sir Henry in his rooms until nearly three o'clock in the morning, but no sound of any sort did we hear except the chiming clock upon the stairs. It was a most melancholy vigil and ended by each of us falling asleep in our chairs. Fortunately we were not discouraged, and we determined to try again. The next night we lowered the lamp and sat smoking cigarettes without making the least sound. It was incredible how slowly the hours crawled by, and yet we were helped through it by the same sort of patient interest which the hunter must feel as he watches the trap into which he hopes the game may wander. One struck, and two, and we had almost for the second time given it up in despair when in an instant we both sat bolt upright in our chairs with all our weary senses keenly on the alert once more. We had heard the creak of a step in the passage. Very stealthily we heard it pass along until it died away in the distance. Then the baronet gently opened his door and we set out in pursuit. Already our man had gone round the gallery and the corridor was all in darkness. Softly we stole along until we had come into the other wing. We were just in time to catch a glimpse of the tall, black-bearded figure, his shoulders rounded as he tiptoed down the passage. Then he passed through the same door as before, and the light of the candle framed it in the darkness and shot one single yellow beam across the gloom of the corridor. We shuffled cautiously towards it, trying every plank before we dared to put our whole weight upon it. We had taken the precaution of leaving our boots behind us, but, even so, the old boards snapped and creaked beneath our tread. Sometimes it seemed impossible that he should fail to hear our approach. However, the man is fortunately rather deaf, and he was entirely preoccupied in that which he was doing. When at last we reached the door and peeped through we found him crouching at the window, candle in hand, his white, intent face pressed against the pane, exactly as I had seen him two nights before. We had arranged no plan of campaign, but the baronet is a man to whom the most direct way is always the most natural. He walked into the room, and as he did so Barrymore sprang up from the window with a sharp hiss of his breath and stood, livid and trembling, before us. His dark eyes, glaring out of the white mask of his face, were full of horror and astonishment as he gazed from Sir Henry to me. "What are you doing here, Barrymore?" "Nothing, sir." His agitation was so great that he could hardly speak, and the shadows sprang up and down from the shaking of his candle. "It was the window, sir. I go round at night to see that they are fastened." "On the second floor?" "Yes, sir, all the windows." "Look here, Barrymore," said Sir Henry sternly, "we have made up our minds to have the truth out of you, so it will save you trouble to tell it sooner rather than later. Come, now! No lies! What were you doing at that window?" The fellow looked at us in a helpless way, and he wrung his hands together like one who is in the last extremity of doubt and misery. "I was doing no harm, sir. I was holding a candle to the window." "And why were you holding a candle to the window?" "Don't ask me, Sir Henry--don't ask me! I give you my word, sir, that it is not my secret, and that I cannot tell it. If it concerned no one but myself I would not try to keep it from you." A sudden idea occurred to me, and I took the candle from the trembling hand of the butler. "He must have been holding it as a signal," said I. "Let us see if there is any answer." I held it as he had done, and stared out into the darkness of the night. Vaguely I could discern the black bank of the trees and the lighter expanse of the moor, for the moon was behind the clouds. And then I gave a cry of exultation, for a tiny pinpoint of yellow light had suddenly transfixed the dark veil, and glowed steadily in the centre of the black square framed by the window. "There it is!" I cried. "No, no, sir, it is nothing--nothing at all!" the butler broke in; "I assure you, sir--" "Move your light across the window, Watson!" cried the baronet. "See, the other moves also! Now, you rascal, do you deny that it is a signal? Come, speak up! Who is your confederate out yonder, and what is this conspiracy that is going on?" The man's face became openly defiant. "It is my business, and not yours. I will not tell." "Then you leave my employment right away." "Very good, sir. If I must I must." "And you go in disgrace. By thunder, you may well be ashamed of yourself. Your family has lived with mine for over a hundred years under this roof, and here I find you deep in some dark plot against me." "No, no, sir; no, not against you!" It was a woman's voice, and Mrs. Barrymore, paler and more horror-struck than her husband, was standing at the door. Her bulky figure in a shawl and skirt might have been comic were it not for the intensity of feeling upon her face. "We have to go, Eliza. This is the end of it. You can pack our things," said the butler. "Oh, John, John, have I brought you to this? It is my doing, Sir Henry--all mine. He has done nothing except for my sake and because I asked him." "Speak out, then! What does it mean?" "My unhappy brother is starving on the moor. We cannot let him perish at our very gates. The light is a signal to him that food is ready for him, and his light out yonder is to show the spot to which to bring it." "Then your brother is--" "The escaped convict, sir--Selden, the criminal." "That's the truth, sir," said Barrymore. "I said that it was not my secret and that I could not tell it to you. But now you have heard it, and you will see that if there was a plot it was not against you." This, then, was the explanation of the stealthy expeditions at night and the light at the window. Sir Henry and I both stared at the woman in amazement. Was it possible that this stolidly respectable person was of the same blood as one of the most notorious criminals in the country? "Yes, sir, my name was Selden, and he is my younger brother. We humoured him too much when he was a lad and gave him his own way in everything until he came to think that the world was made for his pleasure, and that he could do what he liked in it. Then as he grew older he met wicked companions, and the devil entered into him until he broke my mother's heart and dragged our name in the dirt. From crime to crime he sank lower and lower until it is only the mercy of God which has snatched him from the scaffold; but to me, sir, he was always the little curly-headed boy that I had nursed and played with as an elder sister would. That was why he broke prison, sir. He knew that I was here and that we could not refuse to help him. When he dragged himself here one night, weary and starving, with the warders hard at his heels, what could we do? We took him in and fed him and cared for him. Then you returned, sir, and my brother thought he would be safer on the moor than anywhere else until the hue and cry was over, so he lay in hiding there. But every second night we made sure if he was still there by putting a light in the window, and if there was an answer my husband took out some bread and meat to him. Every day we hoped that he was gone, but as long as he was there we could not desert him. That is the whole truth, as I am an honest Christian woman and you will see that if there is blame in the matter it does not lie with my husband but with me, for whose sake he has done all that he has." The woman's words came with an intense earnestness which carried conviction with them. "Is this true, Barrymore?" "Yes, Sir Henry. Every word of it." "Well, I cannot blame you for standing by your own wife. Forget what I have said. Go to your room, you two, and we shall talk further about this matter in the morning." When they were gone we looked out of the window again. Sir Henry had flung it open, and the cold night wind beat in upon our faces. Far away in the black distance there still glowed that one tiny point of yellow light. "I wonder he dares," said Sir Henry. "It may be so placed as to be only visible from here." "Very likely. How far do you think it is?" "Out by the Cleft Tor, I think." "Not more than a mile or two off." "Hardly that." "Well, it cannot be far if Barrymore had to carry out the food to it. And he is waiting, this villain, beside that candle. By thunder, Watson, I am going out to take that man!" The same thought had crossed my own mind. It was not as if the Barrymores had taken us into their confidence. Their secret had been forced from them. The man was a danger to the community, an unmitigated scoundrel for whom there was neither pity nor excuse. We were only doing our duty in taking this chance of putting him back where he could do no harm. With his brutal and violent nature, others would have to pay the price if we held our hands. Any night, for example, our neighbours the Stapletons might be attacked by him, and it may have been the thought of this which made Sir Henry so keen upon the adventure. "I will come," said I. "Then get your revolver and put on your boots. The sooner we start the better, as the fellow may put out his light and be off." In five minutes we were outside the door, starting upon our expedition. We hurried through the dark shrubbery, amid the dull moaning of the autumn wind and the rustle of the falling leaves. The night air was heavy with the smell of damp and decay. Now and again the moon peeped out for an instant, but clouds were driving over the face of the sky, and just as we came out on the moor a thin rain began to fall. The light still burned steadily in front. "Are you armed?" I asked. "I have a hunting-crop." "We must close in on him rapidly, for he is said to be a desperate fellow. We shall take him by surprise and have him at our mercy before he can resist." "I say, Watson," said the baronet, "what would Holmes say to this? How about that hour of darkness in which the power of evil is exalted?" As if in answer to his words there rose suddenly out of the vast gloom of the moor that strange cry which I had already heard upon the borders of the great Grimpen Mire. It came with the wind through the silence of the night, a long, deep mutter, then a rising howl, and then the sad moan in which it died away. Again and again it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident, wild, and menacing. The baronet caught my sleeve and his face glimmered white through the darkness. "My God, what's that, Watson?" "I don't know. It's a sound they have on the moor. I heard it once before." It died away, and an absolute silence closed in upon us. We stood straining our ears, but nothing came. "Watson," said the baronet, "it was the cry of a hound." My blood ran cold in my veins, for there was a break in his voice which told of the sudden horror which had seized him. "What do they call this sound?" he asked. "Who?" "The folk on the countryside." "Oh, they are ignorant people. Why should you mind what they call it?" "Tell me, Watson. What do they say of it?" I hesitated but could not escape the question. "They say it is the cry of the Hound of the Baskervilles." He groaned and was silent for a few moments. "A hound it was," he said at last, "but it seemed to come from miles away, over yonder, I think." "It was hard to say whence it came." "It rose and fell with the wind. Isn't that the direction of the great Grimpen Mire?" "Yes, it is." "Well, it was up there. Come now, Watson, didn't you think yourself that it was the cry of a hound? I am not a child. You need not fear to speak the truth." "Stapleton was with me when I heard it last. He said that it might be the calling of a strange bird." "No, no, it was a hound. My God, can there be some truth in all these stories? Is it possible that I am really in danger from so dark a cause? You don't believe it, do you, Watson?" "No, no." "And yet it was one thing to laugh about it in London, and it is another to stand out here in the darkness of the moor and to hear such a cry as that. And my uncle! There was the footprint of the hound beside him as he lay. It all fits together. I don't think that I am a coward, Watson, but that sound seemed to freeze my very blood. Feel my hand!" It was as cold as a block of marble. "You'll be all right tomorrow." "I don't think I'll get that cry out of my head. What do you advise that we do now?" "Shall we turn back?" "No, by thunder; we have come out to get our man, and we will do it. We after the convict, and a hell-hound, as likely as not, after us. Come on! We'll see it through if all the fiends of the pit were loose upon the moor." We stumbled slowly along in the darkness, with the black loom of the craggy hills around us, and the yellow speck of light burning steadily in front. There is nothing so deceptive as the distance of a light upon a pitch-dark night, and sometimes the glimmer seemed to be far away upon the horizon and sometimes it might have been within a few yards of us. But at last we could see whence it came, and then we knew that we were indeed very close. A guttering candle was stuck in a crevice of the rocks which flanked it on each side so as to keep the wind from it and also to prevent it from being visible, save in the direction of Baskerville Hall. A boulder of granite concealed our approach, and crouching behind it we gazed over it at the signal light. It was strange to see this single candle burning there in the middle of the moor, with no sign of life near it--just the one straight yellow flame and the gleam of the rock on each side of it. "What shall we do now?" whispered Sir Henry. "Wait here. He must be near his light. Let us see if we can get a glimpse of him." The words were hardly out of my mouth when we both saw him. Over the rocks, in the crevice of which the candle burned, there was thrust out an evil yellow face, a terrible animal face, all seamed and scored with vile passions. Foul with mire, with a bristling beard, and hung with matted hair, it might well have belonged to one of those old savages who dwelt in the burrows on the hillsides. The light beneath him was reflected in his small, cunning eyes which peered fiercely to right and left through the darkness like a crafty and savage animal who has heard the steps of the hunters. Something had evidently aroused his suspicions. It may have been that Barrymore had some private signal which we had neglected to give, or the fellow may have had some other reason for thinking that all was not well, but I could read his fears upon his wicked face. Any instant he might dash out the light and vanish in the darkness. I sprang forward therefore, and Sir Henry did the same. At the same moment the convict screamed out a curse at us and hurled a rock which splintered up against the boulder which had sheltered us. I caught one glimpse of his short, squat, strongly built figure as he sprang to his feet and turned to run. At the same moment by a lucky chance the moon broke through the clouds. We rushed over the brow of the hill, and there was our man running with great speed down the other side, springing over the stones in his way with the activity of a mountain goat. A lucky long shot of my revolver might have crippled him, but I had brought it only to defend myself if attacked and not to shoot an unarmed man who was running away. We were both swift runners and in fairly good training, but we soon found that we had no chance of overtaking him. We saw him for a long time in the moonlight until he was only a small speck moving swiftly among the boulders upon the side of a distant hill. We ran and ran until we were completely blown, but the space between us grew ever wider. Finally we stopped and sat panting on two rocks, while we watched him disappearing in the distance. And it was at this moment that there occurred a most strange and unexpected thing. We had risen from our rocks and were turning to go home, having abandoned the hopeless chase. The moon was low upon the right, and the jagged pinnacle of a granite tor stood up against the lower curve of its silver disc. There, outlined as black as an ebony statue on that shining background, I saw the figure of a man upon the tor. Do not think that it was a delusion, Holmes. I assure you that I have never in my life seen anything more clearly. As far as I could judge, the figure was that of a tall, thin man. He stood with his legs a little separated, his arms folded, his head bowed, as if he were brooding over that enormous wilderness of peat and granite which lay before him. He might have been the very spirit of that terrible place. It was not the convict. This man was far from the place where the latter had disappeared. Besides, he was a much taller man. With a cry of surprise I pointed him out to the baronet, but in the instant during which I had turned to grasp his arm the man was gone. There was the sharp pinnacle of granite still cutting the lower edge of the moon, but its peak bore no trace of that silent and motionless figure. I wished to go in that direction and to search the tor, but it was some distance away. The baronet's nerves were still quivering from that cry, which recalled the dark story of his family, and he was not in the mood for fresh adventures. He had not seen this lonely man upon the tor and could not feel the thrill which his strange presence and his commanding attitude had given to me. "A warder, no doubt," said he. "The moor has been thick with them since this fellow escaped." Well, perhaps his explanation may be the right one, but I should like to have some further proof of it. Today we mean to communicate to the Princetown people where they should look for their missing man, but it is hard lines that we have not actually had the triumph of bringing him back as our own prisoner. Such are the adventures of last night, and you must acknowledge, my dear Holmes, that I have done you very well in the matter of a report. Much of what I tell you is no doubt quite irrelevant, but still I feel that it is best that I should let you have all the facts and leave you to select for yourself those which will be of most service to you in helping you to your conclusions. We are certainly making some progress. So far as the Barrymores go we have found the motive of their actions, and that has cleared up the situation very much. But the moor with its mysteries and its strange inhabitants remains as inscrutable as ever. Perhaps in my next I may be able to throw some light upon this also. Best of all would it be if you could come down to us. In any case you will hear from me again in the course of the next few days.

Chapter VII-IX

https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapter-vii-ix

The Stapletons of Merripit House The house seems more cheerful in the fresh light of the next day, so Sir Henry speculates that the gloom was merely in their imaginations. When Watson mentions the woman's cry, Sir Henry recalls the sound but had dismissed it as a dream. They question Barrymore to learn that there are only two women in the house; he is certain that Mrs. Barrymore was not the screamer. However, when Watson meets Mrs. Barrymore, he notices signs that she had been crying the night before, and assumes that Mr. Barrymore has lied to them. Watson therefore decides to investigate whether Barrymore was actually at Baskerville, as his telegram had indicated. He visits the postmaster at nearby Grimpen, who had insisted that he placed the initial telegram directly into Barrymore's hands. Upon interrogation, however, he admits that he actually delivered the telegram to Mrs. Barrymore, who promised to pass it along to her husband. Assuming Barrymore was the bearded man, Watson's only theory is that Barrymore was attempting to scare Sir Henry away from London so that he and Mrs. Barrymore could have the manor to themselves, but he admits that theory is inadequate. As Watson is walking back to Baskerville, Stapleton "the naturalist" overtakes him . Having learned about Watson from Dr. Mortimer, Stapleton shares his own theory about Sir Charles's death: the man's anxieties had grown so great that the appearance of a random dog led to his death. Stapleton also surprises Watson by asking about Holmes's opinions on the matter; he insists that the detective is well-known even on the moor. Watson hesitates when Stapleton invites him home to meet his sister Miss Stapleton, but then decides to go. As they walk there, Stapleton indicates the Grimpen Mire, a place where men or animals can disappear into the quicksand-like ground if they are not careful. Bragging that he has discovered the two safe paths through the mire, Stapleton describes the peaceful natural scenery on the other side. When Watson professes an interest in seeing it, Stapleton insists that one should not brave the danger without knowing the landmarks as he does. Suddenly, Watson hears a dull murmur which swells into a deep roar. Though Stapleton admits that locals believe this is the sound of the dreaded hound, he dismisses such conjecture, claiming the sound must have a perfectly natural cause. When they arrive near Merripit House, Watson sees Miss Stapleton outside, and notices that she is beautiful, almost the opposite of her brother. Immediately, Stapleton spies an insect and rushes to collect it. Away from her brother's notice, before even introducing herself, Miss Stapleton commands Watson to return to London. He barely has time to question her before Stapleton returns and introduces them formally, at which point she is surprised to learn he is not Sir Henry, as she had thought. They walk towards the house, and Stapleton reveals that he had once managed a school, but lost it when an epidemic took the lives of three students. He had lost most of his money in the venture, and Miss Stapleton is now unhappy to live so far away from civilization. After asking for permission to visit Sir Henry, Stapleton invites Watson to view his insect collection. However, Watson insists he should return, and sets off for Baskerville Hall. He is not far from Merripit when Miss Stapleton intercepts him and asks him to ignore her warning. Watson offers to convey the warning to Sir Henry if she will explain it, but she offers nothing other than a reiteration of her fear. She also asks him to keep this secret from her brother, since he believes it necessary that someone live in Baskerville Hall, since the moor locals rely on the Baskerville philanthropy. Chapter VIII: First Report of Dr. Watson This is the first of two chapters that are comprised of Watson's letters to Holmes. He notes, however, that one page is missing from the letter. This first letter is dated October 13th, written from Baskerville Hall. Watson begins by describing the effects the moor has on the soul: he feels about though he is amongst prehistoric man, rather than in modern England. Watson explains that the locals believe Selden has left the area, since it has been two weeks since his escape. He also confesses his worry for the Stapletons, who live far removed from their closest neighbor. He then notes that Sir Henry seems to be romantically interested in Beryl Stapleton. However, he worries that Stapleton himself - who had recently shown Watson the place of Hugo Baskerville's fabled death - would not approve of a match between them. Watson then describes his interactions with others. Dr. Mortimer had recently toured him through the yew alley where Sir Charles died. Meanwhile, Watson has visited Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, whom Watson explains is well known and frequently distrusted for his litigious nature. He is slowly spending his fortune on lawsuits, many of which are arbitrary and rooted in outdated laws. Frankland is also an amateur astronomer; he owns a telescope. In the last section of the letter, Watson describes what he considers the most essential element of his visit thus far: the continuing mystery of the Barrymores. Sir Henry asked Barrymore directly whether he had received the telegram, and the man, surprised, confirmed that Mrs. Barrymore had given it to him. Watson continues to note the signs of crying on Mrs. Barrymore, and worries that her husband is abusive. The night before writing this letter, Watson had awoken at 2:00 a.m. and saw a man who looked like Barrymore crossing the moor towards the house, and then entering an unoccupied part of the house. Watson snuck after him, and saw the man peering out of the window. After a while, Barrymore groaned and then left for his room. Later that night, Watson heard a key turn in a lock. Chapter IX: The Second Report of Dr. Watson: The Light upon the Moor This letter is dated October 15th. Two days after seeing Barrymore in the room, Watson examined it to find it has "the nearest outlook on the moor" . Hence, he believes Mr. Barrymore was looking for something on the moor. Initially, he believed the man was meeting a lover, but then disregarded that notion as unfounded. Sir Henry was not surprised to hear Watson's report on that night's events, and they decided to follow the man out onto the moor one night. After agreeing on the plan, Sir Henry prepared to set out, and refused Watson permission to accompany him as protection. Watson followed him anyway, to find he was meeting Miss Stapleton. From afar, Watson observed them in a heated argument. When Sir Henry attempted to kiss her, Stapleton himself suddenly appeared and entered the argument. After the Stapletons departed, Watson approached Sir Henry, and apologized for snooping, explaining that he was only keeping his promise to Holmes. Though initially annoyed, Sir Henry laughed off the transgression, and then confessed his belief that Stapleton was crazy. This had been his first time alone with Miss Stapleton, who was begging him to leave the moor. When Sir Henry promised to leave if she would accompany him, Stapleton had interrupted them. The man is confused why the brother would so strongly oppose such an advantageous match for his sister. Watson is equally confused by the behavior. Later that afternoon, Stapleton visited Baskerville Hall to apologize. He promised to approve the match if Sir Henry will wait three months before proposing. Watson then changes the topic to another "thread" of the mystery . One night, he and Sir Henry followed Barrymore to the room. Sir Henry confronted the butler, who initially claimed he was only fastening the window. When pressed, the butler then admitted he was holding a candle to the window for someone's benefit, but refused to reveal any more. Watson then noticed another candle light across the moor. When Sir Henry threatened to fire the man, Mrs. Barrymore appeared and admitted the truth: the convict Selden is her brother, and they were leaving food nightly for him. She explained that he had always been spoiled as a child, and that she feels responsible for him. Sir Henry withdraws his threat to Barrymore, and then he and Watson set out to capture Selden. It begins to rain as they are out on the moor, and they then hear that strange cry Watson had heard earlier. Sir Henry was visibly frightened, especially when Watson admitted that locals believed this to be the cry of the Hound of the Baskervilles. When the men reached the light across the moor, they initially found no one there. Watson suddenly spotted the criminal fleeing, and they set out in pursuit. However, Selden hurled a large rock and them, and then outran them. In the distance, Watson noticed a figure silhouetted by the lightning. He indicated the figure to Sir Henry, but it disappeared before the latter saw it. Sir Henry speculated that this was a guard looking for the convict, but Watson was clearly not entirely convinced.

In these chapters, Sir Henry and Watson begin to fall prey to superstition because of the gloomy atmosphere of both the house and the moor. They are no longer protected by bustling, urban life, which tends to support a more rational outlook. One reason that superstition is less associated with urban life is the plethora of witnesses: there are always many people who see an event, and hence is there less room for occult mythology to grow. In the country, there is a lot more space, and there are fewer people who witness events. When they do see these events, they see them from far away. All of this makes it easier for legends like that of the hound to perpetuate. For instance, the sound that Watson hears is easily attributed to the mythical hound since it is occurring far away from any witness who can testify to its true cause. The moor symbolizes the seemingly occult and mysterious ways of nature, which may seem not always act according to explainable, natural law. Several factors - the townspeople whom Watson sees as primitive, the figure in the distance, and of course the sound of the hound - all feed this strange atmosphere. Associated with this theme of the supernatural is the theme of evil. Evil seems to pervade the moor, and the legend of Henry Baskerville paints the picture of an unequivocally evil man, almost more a metaphor than a human. Similarly, Selden is a figure known to be vicious and dangerous. The unknown figure in the distance carries just as much potential for evil, considering the rainy atmosphere in which he is first scene, and that ever-present threat of the hound. All of these figures are most frightening because Watson knows nothing about them. Like Henry Baskerville does, they seem to represent a darkness, an evil. However, evil is itself an expression of superstition and irrationalism. Therefore, the stakes for Watson - who is attempting to combat his growing superstition with his intellectual will - are larger than simply remaining untouched with country legends. He also must resist the temptation to see the world in terms of moral evil, rather than in terms of human psychology and motive, the realm that Holmes operates in. This conflict - between inherent evil and nuanced rationality - is also explored through Doyle's attitude towards criminality. It is notable that Dr. Watson describes Selden as a "crafty and savage animal," and mentions that he has an "evil yellow face" . This description is symptomatic of a larger belief in the unchangeable and savage nature of the criminal, popular during that time period. Even Mrs. Barrymore does not seem to believe that her brother is able to be reformed into a civilized person. However, she does explain the circumstances by which he became a criminal. Thus, Doyle is attempting to comment on such strict beliefs, offering a more modernized attitude to criminality, as caused less by inherent evil than by circumstance. Though the novel does not explicitly address questions of reform, it does apply Holmes's more nuanced understanding - that generalized types are only the first step towards understand individuals - to a pressing social question. The difficulty of observing pure facts continues to resonate in these chapters. For instance, Watson does not notice much about Stapleton, and attempts to refrain from noting the man's strangeness . However, it is somewhat clear to the reader that Stapleton is a suspicious character. His over-eagerness, his almost arrogantly delivered knowledge of the moor and of Holmes's celebrity, and his fixation on his sister are all signs of his strangeness. It is unclear whether Watson misses these signs, or simply does not want to taint his reports to Holmes with subjective impressions, but the way he relates the man to the reader offers us some clues. On a side note, Stapleton's professed knowledge - of the moors and of Holmes - conforms the novel's greater theme of knowledge as power. Because of what he knows, he is able to control others and shape impressions. In the same way that Holmes uses information as a key, Stapleton uses knowledge as a tool, in ways that become clearer as the story progresses. It is notable that Chapters VIII and IX are related as letters. There is an earlier novelistic form known as the epistolary novel, a story told entirely through letters sent between characters. Doyle is not simply staging an homage to this tradition, however. Instead, the use of the letters - and later of Watson's diaries - conform to the greater themes of observation and subjectivity. Whereas most of the novel is framed as Watson's story told from hindsight to readers, these letters are written at the time of the event, to Holmes himself. Therefore, they reflect his viewpoint, his attempt to make sense of the facts he observes. Later, we realize how inadequate his interpretations are, but Doyle's intent is not to mock Watson, but rather to illustrate how the art of deduction begins with the art of proper observation. Finally, the use of these varied formats adds an air of verisimilitude to the story, helping it feel true and accurate, obviously an important effect for a story so concerned with themes of rationality. Also, Watson's voyeuristic nature is made explicit in the letters. We tend to associate Watson with the impartial observer: he is not the active hero of the story, but rather the third party. What this also means is that we know very little of Watson's private life. Earlier, Holmes noted that Watson spends so much time at his club because he lacks many personal friends. This character approach reveals a distinction between the detective story and other, more traditional novels. These more traditional novels tend to give us privileged access to private spaces: the minds of others, bedrooms, and other interior, private spaces. In other words, most novels and stories are primarily concerned with the psychology of their heroes. Watson, on the other hand, serves a plot function in many ways. Though he does attempt to self-correct his snooping observations of Sir Henry, apologizing for his behavior, he is clearly a man driven to watch from a hidden vantage, as evidenced on the night that he trails Barrymore. If he was not this kind of person, then the story's progress would be significantly hampered. Finally, the reader at this point may wonder why Holmes has not yet appeared to investigate the crime scene. These chapters mostly feature Dr. Watson in action. Though he is able to disentangle one thread of the mystery, he is clearly making slow progress. Further, he shows independence, disobeying Holmes's instructions by allowing Sir Henry to head out onto the moor at night. And yet he is well aware that his progress is limited, confessing in Chapter IX that they need Holmes. Clearly, Doyle is well aware of what his readers would want at this point, and moves quickly to remedy his hero's absence.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/chapters_10_to_11.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_5_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapters 10-11

chapter 10-11

{"name": "Chapter X-XI", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapter-x-xi", "summary": "Extract from the Diary of Dr. Watson This chapter is taken directly from Watson's diary, which he insists is the best way to tell this part of the story. The first entry is dated October 16th, the day after Watson and Sir Henry pursued Selden on the moor. Owing to the ominous mood of his surroundings and the frightening sounds he had twice heard, Watson almost believed in the hound. Though the diary acknowledges that such a belief strains his rationality, he also admits the \"facts\" of the howling, and acknowledge the difficulties posed even if there were an actual hound . For instance, the hound would need to be fed. Watson then considers the mystery of the bearded man in London, noting that he has seen no one resembling that figure out on the moor. He decided to concentrate on this problem, hoping it would open doors to some of the other mysteries. That morning, Barrymore was upset that Watson and Sir Henry had attempted to capture Selden. He promised them that the convict would soon escape to South America, and cause no more trouble for them. They then agreed not to pursue Selden any further. Grateful, Barrymore then revealed a secret about Sir Charles: he was planning to meet a woman in the yew alley on the night that he died. However, Barrymore knows only the woman's initials - L.L. - and that she had sent Sir Charles a letter from Coombe Tracey, the nearby town, on the day of his death. Mrs. Barrymore had found the remnants of this letter, half-burned in Sir Charles's study. Barrymore explained that he concealed this information for fear it would damage his master's reputation. Watson then immediately wrote to Holmes with this new information, hoping that his friend would soon complete his other work in London and join them on the moor. The next diary entry is dated the next day, October 17th. Watson traveled back to the spot from which he had seen the mysterious figure, but found nothing. On his way back, Dr. Mortimer intercepted him. The man was driving a dog-cart and looking for his missing spaniel. Watson mentioned the initials L.L. to the doctor, who recognized them as belonging to Laura Lyons, the daughter of Frankland. She had married an artist who deserted her, and her father had practically disowned her. She now lived in Coombe Tracey. Though grateful, Watson did not explain the relevance of the initials. Later that day, Barrymore told Watson that Selden had seemingly left the moor, and that the convict had also seen the mysterious figure. Selden believed the figure to be that of a gentleman who received his food from Coombe Tracey, and knew that the man was living in one of the old deserted houses on the moor. Chapter XI: The Man on the Tor This chapter returns to Watson's direct narration. Watson and Sir Henry discuss the new information about Laura Lyons, and decide Watson should visit her alone, in hopes of obtaining more information that way. In his visit, Watson notices her beauty right away. He first introduces himself as a friend of Frankland, but she quickly dismisses any interest in the man. Watson then admits he is inquiring about Sir Charles, and hoping to avoid a public scandal. Growing nervous then angry, she initially denies asking him to meet her but backtracks when Watson quotes the portion of the letter that Mrs. Barrymore had found. She swears that she never kept her appointment because of another circumstance she does not wish to discuss. When Watson threatens to involve the police, she confesses the contents of the letter: her husband was pressuring her to move back with him, and she was borrowing money from Sir Charles to ensure her freedom. She did not keep the appointment because she received the money from somewhere else. Believing her story plausible, Watson resolves to investigate whether she had actually filed divorce proceedings. However, he remains troubled by her manner in telling the story: she had turned pale, and had to be coaxed into admitting most of the details. Watson's next plan is to hunt for the mysterious figure he had seen on the Black Tor, believing this might be the bearded man from London. However, he does not know how to begin, since there are many old houses and transient residents out on the moor. Good luck comes when he visits Old Frankland, who tells Watson about the several legal cases he is involved in. Watson pretends to be indifferent, knowing that any outward sign of interest will silence Frankland's gossip. Frankland eventually discusses the figure, believing it to be of the convict. Through his telescope, he has seen a child leaving food for the man. Watson uses the telescope to pinpoint the spot, and then swears he will keep Frankland's secret. Watson then travels to the stone huts in that area, and recognizes signs of habitation near one of them. He carefully sneaks in, but finds only a sheet of paper in the hut, announcing his own visit to Coombe Tracey. Watson immediately realizes that he is the object of pursuit, rather than Sir Henry. With his gun ready, he resolves to wait for the man's return. When he hears the man arrive, he cocks his pistol. However, the figure who enters the hut is none other than Sherlock Holmes himself.", "analysis": "The section begins with Watson's own doubts: he wants to believe himself a man of pure reason, but the facts simply do not suggest a rational explanation. He therefore considers the possibility of a supernatural hound, even though that offends his rationality. Watson's process here is one that Holmes would likely applaud: the attempt to pursue a rational explanation even when our instincts drive us towards occult explanations. Deep down, we should continue to pursue scientific explanations, even when one is not immediately apparent. Ultimately, this process is what draws Holmes towards difficult cases rather than simple ones. In attempting this process, Watson - rather than Holmes - becomes our detective. His process is quite commendable: instead of trying to solve the entire mystery at once, he focuses on a single thread, hoping that it might yield clues to keep the investigation alive. In trying to determine who the mystery man is, Watson ends up following a wandering path that does yield several clues, including: the details of L.L. and some evidence about the mysterious figure. What this process indicates is that an explanation of one aspect of reality may surprisingly help explain another. The implicit suggestion is that we turn to occult explanations because we are overwhelmed by too many questions at once, whereas we might discover more scientific rationales if we attempt to answer one question at a time. During this investigation, Watson feels as though he is caught in a large \"net\" . This image is a symbol of the power yielded by those who have knowledge. This is a common theme throughout the novel: knowledge brings power. The detective almost necessarily starts behind the criminal . Hence, the chase is about gaining knowledge so as to limit the criminal of his singular power. This is another reason why one should pursue one detail at a time, rather than attempt to solve the mystery in one fell swoop. While the latter process obscures crucial clues, the former involves a process of collecting knowledge one step at a time. Note an interesting bit of phrasing that develops this metaphor of the next. When Watson is approaching the huts where he believes the mysterious figure lives, he \"walk as warily as Stapleton would do when with poised net he drew near the settled butterfly\" . The net here implies in the basic sense that Watson is approaching knowledge. However, it also foreshadows the fact that Stapleton is the one controlling the net, the one who knows more than anyone else. Because of this knowledge, he is manipulating events even as Watson and Holmes close the gap. Again, even with the villain, the novel suggests that man's ultimate power comes not from his strength but from his mind. And of course, Watson gains a rather startling bit of information because of his investigation: the mystery figure is actually Sherlock Holmes himself! As the detective will explain in the following chapters, there is a perfectly logical reason for his subterfuge, but it raises a variety of questions that the reader himself can enjoy considering. Holmes is ahead of both Watson and us as readers, which poses us with the challenge of filling in the gaps."}

So far I have been able to quote from the reports which I have forwarded during these early days to Sherlock Holmes. Now, however, I have arrived at a point in my narrative where I am compelled to abandon this method and to trust once more to my recollections, aided by the diary which I kept at the time. A few extracts from the latter will carry me on to those scenes which are indelibly fixed in every detail upon my memory. I proceed, then, from the morning which followed our abortive chase of the convict and our other strange experiences upon the moor. October 16th. A dull and foggy day with a drizzle of rain. The house is banked in with rolling clouds, which rise now and then to show the dreary curves of the moor, with thin, silver veins upon the sides of the hills, and the distant boulders gleaming where the light strikes upon their wet faces. It is melancholy outside and in. The baronet is in a black reaction after the excitements of the night. I am conscious myself of a weight at my heart and a feeling of impending danger--ever present danger, which is the more terrible because I am unable to define it. And have I not cause for such a feeling? Consider the long sequence of incidents which have all pointed to some sinister influence which is at work around us. There is the death of the last occupant of the Hall, fulfilling so exactly the conditions of the family legend, and there are the repeated reports from peasants of the appearance of a strange creature upon the moor. Twice I have with my own ears heard the sound which resembled the distant baying of a hound. It is incredible, impossible, that it should really be outside the ordinary laws of nature. A spectral hound which leaves material footmarks and fills the air with its howling is surely not to be thought of. Stapleton may fall in with such a superstition, and Mortimer also, but if I have one quality upon earth it is common sense, and nothing will persuade me to believe in such a thing. To do so would be to descend to the level of these poor peasants, who are not content with a mere fiend dog but must needs describe him with hell-fire shooting from his mouth and eyes. Holmes would not listen to such fancies, and I am his agent. But facts are facts, and I have twice heard this crying upon the moor. Suppose that there were really some huge hound loose upon it; that would go far to explain everything. But where could such a hound lie concealed, where did it get its food, where did it come from, how was it that no one saw it by day? It must be confessed that the natural explanation offers almost as many difficulties as the other. And always, apart from the hound, there is the fact of the human agency in London, the man in the cab, and the letter which warned Sir Henry against the moor. This at least was real, but it might have been the work of a protecting friend as easily as of an enemy. Where is that friend or enemy now? Has he remained in London, or has he followed us down here? Could he--could he be the stranger whom I saw upon the tor? It is true that I have had only the one glance at him, and yet there are some things to which I am ready to swear. He is no one whom I have seen down here, and I have now met all the neighbours. The figure was far taller than that of Stapleton, far thinner than that of Frankland. Barrymore it might possibly have been, but we had left him behind us, and I am certain that he could not have followed us. A stranger then is still dogging us, just as a stranger dogged us in London. We have never shaken him off. If I could lay my hands upon that man, then at last we might find ourselves at the end of all our difficulties. To this one purpose I must now devote all my energies. My first impulse was to tell Sir Henry all my plans. My second and wisest one is to play my own game and speak as little as possible to anyone. He is silent and distrait. His nerves have been strangely shaken by that sound upon the moor. I will say nothing to add to his anxieties, but I will take my own steps to attain my own end. We had a small scene this morning after breakfast. Barrymore asked leave to speak with Sir Henry, and they were closeted in his study some little time. Sitting in the billiard-room I more than once heard the sound of voices raised, and I had a pretty good idea what the point was which was under discussion. After a time the baronet opened his door and called for me. "Barrymore considers that he has a grievance," he said. "He thinks that it was unfair on our part to hunt his brother-in-law down when he, of his own free will, had told us the secret." The butler was standing very pale but very collected before us. "I may have spoken too warmly, sir," said he, "and if I have, I am sure that I beg your pardon. At the same time, I was very much surprised when I heard you two gentlemen come back this morning and learned that you had been chasing Selden. The poor fellow has enough to fight against without my putting more upon his track." "If you had told us of your own free will it would have been a different thing," said the baronet, "you only told us, or rather your wife only told us, when it was forced from you and you could not help yourself." "I didn't think you would have taken advantage of it, Sir Henry--indeed I didn't." "The man is a public danger. There are lonely houses scattered over the moor, and he is a fellow who would stick at nothing. You only want to get a glimpse of his face to see that. Look at Mr. Stapleton's house, for example, with no one but himself to defend it. There's no safety for anyone until he is under lock and key." "He'll break into no house, sir. I give you my solemn word upon that. But he will never trouble anyone in this country again. I assure you, Sir Henry, that in a very few days the necessary arrangements will have been made and he will be on his way to South America. For God's sake, sir, I beg of you not to let the police know that he is still on the moor. They have given up the chase there, and he can lie quiet until the ship is ready for him. You can't tell on him without getting my wife and me into trouble. I beg you, sir, to say nothing to the police." "What do you say, Watson?" I shrugged my shoulders. "If he were safely out of the country it would relieve the tax-payer of a burden." "But how about the chance of his holding someone up before he goes?" "He would not do anything so mad, sir. We have provided him with all that he can want. To commit a crime would be to show where he was hiding." "That is true," said Sir Henry. "Well, Barrymore--" "God bless you, sir, and thank you from my heart! It would have killed my poor wife had he been taken again." "I guess we are aiding and abetting a felony, Watson? But, after what we have heard I don't feel as if I could give the man up, so there is an end of it. All right, Barrymore, you can go." With a few broken words of gratitude the man turned, but he hesitated and then came back. "You've been so kind to us, sir, that I should like to do the best I can for you in return. I know something, Sir Henry, and perhaps I should have said it before, but it was long after the inquest that I found it out. I've never breathed a word about it yet to mortal man. It's about poor Sir Charles's death." The baronet and I were both upon our feet. "Do you know how he died?" "No, sir, I don't know that." "What then?" "I know why he was at the gate at that hour. It was to meet a woman." "To meet a woman! He?" "Yes, sir." "And the woman's name?" "I can't give you the name, sir, but I can give you the initials. Her initials were L. L." "How do you know this, Barrymore?" "Well, Sir Henry, your uncle had a letter that morning. He had usually a great many letters, for he was a public man and well known for his kind heart, so that everyone who was in trouble was glad to turn to him. But that morning, as it chanced, there was only this one letter, so I took the more notice of it. It was from Coombe Tracey, and it was addressed in a woman's hand." "Well?" "Well, sir, I thought no more of the matter, and never would have done had it not been for my wife. Only a few weeks ago she was cleaning out Sir Charles's study--it had never been touched since his death--and she found the ashes of a burned letter in the back of the grate. The greater part of it was charred to pieces, but one little slip, the end of a page, hung together, and the writing could still be read, though it was gray on a black ground. It seemed to us to be a postscript at the end of the letter and it said: 'Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate by ten o clock. Beneath it were signed the initials L. L." "Have you got that slip?" "No, sir, it crumbled all to bits after we moved it." "Had Sir Charles received any other letters in the same writing?" "Well, sir, I took no particular notice of his letters. I should not have noticed this one, only it happened to come alone." "And you have no idea who L. L. is?" "No, sir. No more than you have. But I expect if we could lay our hands upon that lady we should know more about Sir Charles's death." "I cannot understand, Barrymore, how you came to conceal this important information." "Well, sir, it was immediately after that our own trouble came to us. And then again, sir, we were both of us very fond of Sir Charles, as we well might be considering all that he has done for us. To rake this up couldn't help our poor master, and it's well to go carefully when there's a lady in the case. Even the best of us--" "You thought it might injure his reputation?" "Well, sir, I thought no good could come of it. But now you have been kind to us, and I feel as if it would be treating you unfairly not to tell you all that I know about the matter." "Very good, Barrymore; you can go." When the butler had left us Sir Henry turned to me. "Well, Watson, what do you think of this new light?" "It seems to leave the darkness rather blacker than before." "So I think. But if we can only trace L. L. it should clear up the whole business. We have gained that much. We know that there is someone who has the facts if we can only find her. What do you think we should do?" "Let Holmes know all about it at once. It will give him the clue for which he has been seeking. I am much mistaken if it does not bring him down." I went at once to my room and drew up my report of the morning's conversation for Holmes. It was evident to me that he had been very busy of late, for the notes which I had from Baker Street were few and short, with no comments upon the information which I had supplied and hardly any reference to my mission. No doubt his blackmailing case is absorbing all his faculties. And yet this new factor must surely arrest his attention and renew his interest. I wish that he were here. October 17th. All day today the rain poured down, rustling on the ivy and dripping from the eaves. I thought of the convict out upon the bleak, cold, shelterless moor. Poor devil! Whatever his crimes, he has suffered something to atone for them. And then I thought of that other one--the face in the cab, the figure against the moon. Was he also out in that deluged--the unseen watcher, the man of darkness? In the evening I put on my waterproof and I walked far upon the sodden moor, full of dark imaginings, the rain beating upon my face and the wind whistling about my ears. God help those who wander into the great mire now, for even the firm uplands are becoming a morass. I found the black tor upon which I had seen the solitary watcher, and from its craggy summit I looked out myself across the melancholy downs. Rain squalls drifted across their russet face, and the heavy, slate-coloured clouds hung low over the landscape, trailing in gray wreaths down the sides of the fantastic hills. In the distant hollow on the left, half hidden by the mist, the two thin towers of Baskerville Hall rose above the trees. They were the only signs of human life which I could see, save only those prehistoric huts which lay thickly upon the slopes of the hills. Nowhere was there any trace of that lonely man whom I had seen on the same spot two nights before. As I walked back I was overtaken by Dr. Mortimer driving in his dog-cart over a rough moorland track which led from the outlying farmhouse of Foulmire. He has been very attentive to us, and hardly a day has passed that he has not called at the Hall to see how we were getting on. He insisted upon my climbing into his dog-cart, and he gave me a lift homeward. I found him much troubled over the disappearance of his little spaniel. It had wandered on to the moor and had never come back. I gave him such consolation as I might, but I thought of the pony on the Grimpen Mire, and I do not fancy that he will see his little dog again. "By the way, Mortimer," said I as we jolted along the rough road, "I suppose there are few people living within driving distance of this whom you do not know?" "Hardly any, I think." "Can you, then, tell me the name of any woman whose initials are L. L.?" He thought for a few minutes. "No," said he. "There are a few gipsies and labouring folk for whom I can't answer, but among the farmers or gentry there is no one whose initials are those. Wait a bit though," he added after a pause. "There is Laura Lyons--her initials are L. L.--but she lives in Coombe Tracey." "Who is she?" I asked. "She is Frankland's daughter." "What! Old Frankland the crank?" "Exactly. She married an artist named Lyons, who came sketching on the moor. He proved to be a blackguard and deserted her. The fault from what I hear may not have been entirely on one side. Her father refused to have anything to do with her because she had married without his consent and perhaps for one or two other reasons as well. So, between the old sinner and the young one the girl has had a pretty bad time." "How does she live?" "I fancy old Frankland allows her a pittance, but it cannot be more, for his own affairs are considerably involved. Whatever she may have deserved one could not allow her to go hopelessly to the bad. Her story got about, and several of the people here did something to enable her to earn an honest living. Stapleton did for one, and Sir Charles for another. I gave a trifle myself. It was to set her up in a typewriting business." He wanted to know the object of my inquiries, but I managed to satisfy his curiosity without telling him too much, for there is no reason why we should take anyone into our confidence. Tomorrow morning I shall find my way to Coombe Tracey, and if I can see this Mrs. Laura Lyons, of equivocal reputation, a long step will have been made towards clearing one incident in this chain of mysteries. I am certainly developing the wisdom of the serpent, for when Mortimer pressed his questions to an inconvenient extent I asked him casually to what type Frankland's skull belonged, and so heard nothing but craniology for the rest of our drive. I have not lived for years with Sherlock Holmes for nothing. I have only one other incident to record upon this tempestuous and melancholy day. This was my conversation with Barrymore just now, which gives me one more strong card which I can play in due time. Mortimer had stayed to dinner, and he and the baronet played ecarte afterwards. The butler brought me my coffee into the library, and I took the chance to ask him a few questions. "Well," said I, "has this precious relation of yours departed, or is he still lurking out yonder?" "I don't know, sir. I hope to heaven that he has gone, for he has brought nothing but trouble here! I've not heard of him since I left out food for him last, and that was three days ago." "Did you see him then?" "No, sir, but the food was gone when next I went that way." "Then he was certainly there?" "So you would think, sir, unless it was the other man who took it." I sat with my coffee-cup halfway to my lips and stared at Barrymore. "You know that there is another man then?" "Yes, sir; there is another man upon the moor." "Have you seen him?" "No, sir." "How do you know of him then?" "Selden told me of him, sir, a week ago or more. He's in hiding, too, but he's not a convict as far as I can make out. I don't like it, Dr. Watson--I tell you straight, sir, that I don't like it." He spoke with a sudden passion of earnestness. "Now, listen to me, Barrymore! I have no interest in this matter but that of your master. I have come here with no object except to help him. Tell me, frankly, what it is that you don't like." Barrymore hesitated for a moment, as if he regretted his outburst or found it difficult to express his own feelings in words. "It's all these goings-on, sir," he cried at last, waving his hand towards the rain-lashed window which faced the moor. "There's foul play somewhere, and there's black villainy brewing, to that I'll swear! Very glad I should be, sir, to see Sir Henry on his way back to London again!" "But what is it that alarms you?" "Look at Sir Charles's death! That was bad enough, for all that the coroner said. Look at the noises on the moor at night. There's not a man would cross it after sundown if he was paid for it. Look at this stranger hiding out yonder, and watching and waiting! What's he waiting for? What does it mean? It means no good to anyone of the name of Baskerville, and very glad I shall be to be quit of it all on the day that Sir Henry's new servants are ready to take over the Hall." "But about this stranger," said I. "Can you tell me anything about him? What did Selden say? Did he find out where he hid, or what he was doing?" "He saw him once or twice, but he is a deep one and gives nothing away. At first he thought that he was the police, but soon he found that he had some lay of his own. A kind of gentleman he was, as far as he could see, but what he was doing he could not make out." "And where did he say that he lived?" "Among the old houses on the hillside--the stone huts where the old folk used to live." "But how about his food?" "Selden found out that he has got a lad who works for him and brings all he needs. I dare say he goes to Coombe Tracey for what he wants." "Very good, Barrymore. We may talk further of this some other time." When the butler had gone I walked over to the black window, and I looked through a blurred pane at the driving clouds and at the tossing outline of the wind-swept trees. It is a wild night indoors, and what must it be in a stone hut upon the moor. What passion of hatred can it be which leads a man to lurk in such a place at such a time! And what deep and earnest purpose can he have which calls for such a trial! There, in that hut upon the moor, seems to lie the very centre of that problem which has vexed me so sorely. I swear that another day shall not have passed before I have done all that man can do to reach the heart of the mystery. The extract from my private diary which forms the last chapter has brought my narrative up to the eighteenth of October, a time when these strange events began to move swiftly towards their terrible conclusion. The incidents of the next few days are indelibly graven upon my recollection, and I can tell them without reference to the notes made at the time. I start them from the day which succeeded that upon which I had established two facts of great importance, the one that Mrs. Laura Lyons of Coombe Tracey had written to Sir Charles Baskerville and made an appointment with him at the very place and hour that he met his death, the other that the lurking man upon the moor was to be found among the stone huts upon the hillside. With these two facts in my possession I felt that either my intelligence or my courage must be deficient if I could not throw some further light upon these dark places. I had no opportunity to tell the baronet what I had learned about Mrs. Lyons upon the evening before, for Dr. Mortimer remained with him at cards until it was very late. At breakfast, however, I informed him about my discovery and asked him whether he would care to accompany me to Coombe Tracey. At first he was very eager to come, but on second thoughts it seemed to both of us that if I went alone the results might be better. The more formal we made the visit the less information we might obtain. I left Sir Henry behind, therefore, not without some prickings of conscience, and drove off upon my new quest. When I reached Coombe Tracey I told Perkins to put up the horses, and I made inquiries for the lady whom I had come to interrogate. I had no difficulty in finding her rooms, which were central and well appointed. A maid showed me in without ceremony, and as I entered the sitting-room a lady, who was sitting before a Remington typewriter, sprang up with a pleasant smile of welcome. Her face fell, however, when she saw that I was a stranger, and she sat down again and asked me the object of my visit. The first impression left by Mrs. Lyons was one of extreme beauty. Her eyes and hair were of the same rich hazel colour, and her cheeks, though considerably freckled, were flushed with the exquisite bloom of the brunette, the dainty pink which lurks at the heart of the sulphur rose. Admiration was, I repeat, the first impression. But the second was criticism. There was something subtly wrong with the face, some coarseness of expression, some hardness, perhaps, of eye, some looseness of lip which marred its perfect beauty. But these, of course, are afterthoughts. At the moment I was simply conscious that I was in the presence of a very handsome woman, and that she was asking me the reasons for my visit. I had not quite understood until that instant how delicate my mission was. "I have the pleasure," said I, "of knowing your father." It was a clumsy introduction, and the lady made me feel it. "There is nothing in common between my father and me," she said. "I owe him nothing, and his friends are not mine. If it were not for the late Sir Charles Baskerville and some other kind hearts I might have starved for all that my father cared." "It was about the late Sir Charles Baskerville that I have come here to see you." The freckles started out on the lady's face. "What can I tell you about him?" she asked, and her fingers played nervously over the stops of her typewriter. "You knew him, did you not?" "I have already said that I owe a great deal to his kindness. If I am able to support myself it is largely due to the interest which he took in my unhappy situation." "Did you correspond with him?" The lady looked quickly up with an angry gleam in her hazel eyes. "What is the object of these questions?" she asked sharply. "The object is to avoid a public scandal. It is better that I should ask them here than that the matter should pass outside our control." She was silent and her face was still very pale. At last she looked up with something reckless and defiant in her manner. "Well, I'll answer," she said. "What are your questions?" "Did you correspond with Sir Charles?" "I certainly wrote to him once or twice to acknowledge his delicacy and his generosity." "Have you the dates of those letters?" "No." "Have you ever met him?" "Yes, once or twice, when he came into Coombe Tracey. He was a very retiring man, and he preferred to do good by stealth." "But if you saw him so seldom and wrote so seldom, how did he know enough about your affairs to be able to help you, as you say that he has done?" She met my difficulty with the utmost readiness. "There were several gentlemen who knew my sad history and united to help me. One was Mr. Stapleton, a neighbour and intimate friend of Sir Charles's. He was exceedingly kind, and it was through him that Sir Charles learned about my affairs." I knew already that Sir Charles Baskerville had made Stapleton his almoner upon several occasions, so the lady's statement bore the impress of truth upon it. "Did you ever write to Sir Charles asking him to meet you?" I continued. Mrs. Lyons flushed with anger again. "Really, sir, this is a very extraordinary question." "I am sorry, madam, but I must repeat it." "Then I answer, certainly not." "Not on the very day of Sir Charles's death?" The flush had faded in an instant, and a deathly face was before me. Her dry lips could not speak the "No" which I saw rather than heard. "Surely your memory deceives you," said I. "I could even quote a passage of your letter. It ran 'Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate by ten o'clock.'" I thought that she had fainted, but she recovered herself by a supreme effort. "Is there no such thing as a gentleman?" she gasped. "You do Sir Charles an injustice. He did burn the letter. But sometimes a letter may be legible even when burned. You acknowledge now that you wrote it?" "Yes, I did write it," she cried, pouring out her soul in a torrent of words. "I did write it. Why should I deny it? I have no reason to be ashamed of it. I wished him to help me. I believed that if I had an interview I could gain his help, so I asked him to meet me." "But why at such an hour?" "Because I had only just learned that he was going to London next day and might be away for months. There were reasons why I could not get there earlier." "But why a rendezvous in the garden instead of a visit to the house?" "Do you think a woman could go alone at that hour to a bachelor's house?" "Well, what happened when you did get there?" "I never went." "Mrs. Lyons!" "No, I swear it to you on all I hold sacred. I never went. Something intervened to prevent my going." "What was that?" "That is a private matter. I cannot tell it." "You acknowledge then that you made an appointment with Sir Charles at the very hour and place at which he met his death, but you deny that you kept the appointment." "That is the truth." Again and again I cross-questioned her, but I could never get past that point. "Mrs. Lyons," said I as I rose from this long and inconclusive interview, "you are taking a very great responsibility and putting yourself in a very false position by not making an absolutely clean breast of all that you know. If I have to call in the aid of the police you will find how seriously you are compromised. If your position is innocent, why did you in the first instance deny having written to Sir Charles upon that date?" "Because I feared that some false conclusion might be drawn from it and that I might find myself involved in a scandal." "And why were you so pressing that Sir Charles should destroy your letter?" "If you have read the letter you will know." "I did not say that I had read all the letter." "You quoted some of it." "I quoted the postscript. The letter had, as I said, been burned and it was not all legible. I ask you once again why it was that you were so pressing that Sir Charles should destroy this letter which he received on the day of his death." "The matter is a very private one." "The more reason why you should avoid a public investigation." "I will tell you, then. If you have heard anything of my unhappy history you will know that I made a rash marriage and had reason to regret it." "I have heard so much." "My life has been one incessant persecution from a husband whom I abhor. The law is upon his side, and every day I am faced by the possibility that he may force me to live with him. At the time that I wrote this letter to Sir Charles I had learned that there was a prospect of my regaining my freedom if certain expenses could be met. It meant everything to me--peace of mind, happiness, self-respect--everything. I knew Sir Charles's generosity, and I thought that if he heard the story from my own lips he would help me." "Then how is it that you did not go?" "Because I received help in the interval from another source." "Why then, did you not write to Sir Charles and explain this?" "So I should have done had I not seen his death in the paper next morning." The woman's story hung coherently together, and all my questions were unable to shake it. I could only check it by finding if she had, indeed, instituted divorce proceedings against her husband at or about the time of the tragedy. It was unlikely that she would dare to say that she had not been to Baskerville Hall if she really had been, for a trap would be necessary to take her there, and could not have returned to Coombe Tracey until the early hours of the morning. Such an excursion could not be kept secret. The probability was, therefore, that she was telling the truth, or, at least, a part of the truth. I came away baffled and disheartened. Once again I had reached that dead wall which seemed to be built across every path by which I tried to get at the object of my mission. And yet the more I thought of the lady's face and of her manner the more I felt that something was being held back from me. Why should she turn so pale? Why should she fight against every admission until it was forced from her? Why should she have been so reticent at the time of the tragedy? Surely the explanation of all this could not be as innocent as she would have me believe. For the moment I could proceed no farther in that direction, but must turn back to that other clue which was to be sought for among the stone huts upon the moor. And that was a most vague direction. I realized it as I drove back and noted how hill after hill showed traces of the ancient people. Barrymore's only indication had been that the stranger lived in one of these abandoned huts, and many hundreds of them are scattered throughout the length and breadth of the moor. But I had my own experience for a guide since it had shown me the man himself standing upon the summit of the Black Tor. That, then, should be the centre of my search. From there I should explore every hut upon the moor until I lighted upon the right one. If this man were inside it I should find out from his own lips, at the point of my revolver if necessary, who he was and why he had dogged us so long. He might slip away from us in the crowd of Regent Street, but it would puzzle him to do so upon the lonely moor. On the other hand, if I should find the hut and its tenant should not be within it I must remain there, however long the vigil, until he returned. Holmes had missed him in London. It would indeed be a triumph for me if I could run him to earth where my master had failed. Luck had been against us again and again in this inquiry, but now at last it came to my aid. And the messenger of good fortune was none other than Mr. Frankland, who was standing, gray-whiskered and red-faced, outside the gate of his garden, which opened on to the highroad along which I travelled. "Good-day, Dr. Watson," cried he with unwonted good humour, "you must really give your horses a rest and come in to have a glass of wine and to congratulate me." My feelings towards him were very far from being friendly after what I had heard of his treatment of his daughter, but I was anxious to send Perkins and the wagonette home, and the opportunity was a good one. I alighted and sent a message to Sir Henry that I should walk over in time for dinner. Then I followed Frankland into his dining-room. "It is a great day for me, sir--one of the red-letter days of my life," he cried with many chuckles. "I have brought off a double event. I mean to teach them in these parts that law is law, and that there is a man here who does not fear to invoke it. I have established a right of way through the centre of old Middleton's park, slap across it, sir, within a hundred yards of his own front door. What do you think of that? We'll teach these magnates that they cannot ride roughshod over the rights of the commoners, confound them! And I've closed the wood where the Fernworthy folk used to picnic. These infernal people seem to think that there are no rights of property, and that they can swarm where they like with their papers and their bottles. Both cases decided, Dr. Watson, and both in my favour. I haven't had such a day since I had Sir John Morland for trespass because he shot in his own warren." "How on earth did you do that?" "Look it up in the books, sir. It will repay reading--Frankland v. Morland, Court of Queen's Bench. It cost me 200 pounds, but I got my verdict." "Did it do you any good?" "None, sir, none. I am proud to say that I had no interest in the matter. I act entirely from a sense of public duty. I have no doubt, for example, that the Fernworthy people will burn me in effigy tonight. I told the police last time they did it that they should stop these disgraceful exhibitions. The County Constabulary is in a scandalous state, sir, and it has not afforded me the protection to which I am entitled. The case of Frankland v. Regina will bring the matter before the attention of the public. I told them that they would have occasion to regret their treatment of me, and already my words have come true." "How so?" I asked. The old man put on a very knowing expression. "Because I could tell them what they are dying to know; but nothing would induce me to help the rascals in any way." I had been casting round for some excuse by which I could get away from his gossip, but now I began to wish to hear more of it. I had seen enough of the contrary nature of the old sinner to understand that any strong sign of interest would be the surest way to stop his confidences. "Some poaching case, no doubt?" said I with an indifferent manner. "Ha, ha, my boy, a very much more important matter than that! What about the convict on the moor?" I stared. "You don't mean that you know where he is?" said I. "I may not know exactly where he is, but I am quite sure that I could help the police to lay their hands on him. Has it never struck you that the way to catch that man was to find out where he got his food and so trace it to him?" He certainly seemed to be getting uncomfortably near the truth. "No doubt," said I; "but how do you know that he is anywhere upon the moor?" "I know it because I have seen with my own eyes the messenger who takes him his food." My heart sank for Barrymore. It was a serious thing to be in the power of this spiteful old busybody. But his next remark took a weight from my mind. "You'll be surprised to hear that his food is taken to him by a child. I see him every day through my telescope upon the roof. He passes along the same path at the same hour, and to whom should he be going except to the convict?" Here was luck indeed! And yet I suppressed all appearance of interest. A child! Barrymore had said that our unknown was supplied by a boy. It was on his track, and not upon the convict's, that Frankland had stumbled. If I could get his knowledge it might save me a long and weary hunt. But incredulity and indifference were evidently my strongest cards. "I should say that it was much more likely that it was the son of one of the moorland shepherds taking out his father's dinner." The least appearance of opposition struck fire out of the old autocrat. His eyes looked malignantly at me, and his gray whiskers bristled like those of an angry cat. "Indeed, sir!" said he, pointing out over the wide-stretching moor. "Do you see that Black Tor over yonder? Well, do you see the low hill beyond with the thornbush upon it? It is the stoniest part of the whole moor. Is that a place where a shepherd would be likely to take his station? Your suggestion, sir, is a most absurd one." I meekly answered that I had spoken without knowing all the facts. My submission pleased him and led him to further confidences. "You may be sure, sir, that I have very good grounds before I come to an opinion. I have seen the boy again and again with his bundle. Every day, and sometimes twice a day, I have been able--but wait a moment, Dr. Watson. Do my eyes deceive me, or is there at the present moment something moving upon that hillside?" It was several miles off, but I could distinctly see a small dark dot against the dull green and gray. "Come, sir, come!" cried Frankland, rushing upstairs. "You will see with your own eyes and judge for yourself." The telescope, a formidable instrument mounted upon a tripod, stood upon the flat leads of the house. Frankland clapped his eye to it and gave a cry of satisfaction. "Quick, Dr. Watson, quick, before he passes over the hill!" There he was, sure enough, a small urchin with a little bundle upon his shoulder, toiling slowly up the hill. When he reached the crest I saw the ragged uncouth figure outlined for an instant against the cold blue sky. He looked round him with a furtive and stealthy air, as one who dreads pursuit. Then he vanished over the hill. "Well! Am I right?" "Certainly, there is a boy who seems to have some secret errand." "And what the errand is even a county constable could guess. But not one word shall they have from me, and I bind you to secrecy also, Dr. Watson. Not a word! You understand!" "Just as you wish." "They have treated me shamefully--shamefully. When the facts come out in Frankland v. Regina I venture to think that a thrill of indignation will run through the country. Nothing would induce me to help the police in any way. For all they cared it might have been me, instead of my effigy, which these rascals burned at the stake. Surely you are not going! You will help me to empty the decanter in honour of this great occasion!" But I resisted all his solicitations and succeeded in dissuading him from his announced intention of walking home with me. I kept the road as long as his eye was on me, and then I struck off across the moor and made for the stony hill over which the boy had disappeared. Everything was working in my favour, and I swore that it should not be through lack of energy or perseverance that I should miss the chance which fortune had thrown in my way. The sun was already sinking when I reached the summit of the hill, and the long slopes beneath me were all golden-green on one side and gray shadow on the other. A haze lay low upon the farthest sky-line, out of which jutted the fantastic shapes of Belliver and Vixen Tor. Over the wide expanse there was no sound and no movement. One great gray bird, a gull or curlew, soared aloft in the blue heaven. He and I seemed to be the only living things between the huge arch of the sky and the desert beneath it. The barren scene, the sense of loneliness, and the mystery and urgency of my task all struck a chill into my heart. The boy was nowhere to be seen. But down beneath me in a cleft of the hills there was a circle of the old stone huts, and in the middle of them there was one which retained sufficient roof to act as a screen against the weather. My heart leaped within me as I saw it. This must be the burrow where the stranger lurked. At last my foot was on the threshold of his hiding place--his secret was within my grasp. As I approached the hut, walking as warily as Stapleton would do when with poised net he drew near the settled butterfly, I satisfied myself that the place had indeed been used as a habitation. A vague pathway among the boulders led to the dilapidated opening which served as a door. All was silent within. The unknown might be lurking there, or he might be prowling on the moor. My nerves tingled with the sense of adventure. Throwing aside my cigarette, I closed my hand upon the butt of my revolver and, walking swiftly up to the door, I looked in. The place was empty. But there were ample signs that I had not come upon a false scent. This was certainly where the man lived. Some blankets rolled in a waterproof lay upon that very stone slab upon which Neolithic man had once slumbered. The ashes of a fire were heaped in a rude grate. Beside it lay some cooking utensils and a bucket half-full of water. A litter of empty tins showed that the place had been occupied for some time, and I saw, as my eyes became accustomed to the checkered light, a pannikin and a half-full bottle of spirits standing in the corner. In the middle of the hut a flat stone served the purpose of a table, and upon this stood a small cloth bundle--the same, no doubt, which I had seen through the telescope upon the shoulder of the boy. It contained a loaf of bread, a tinned tongue, and two tins of preserved peaches. As I set it down again, after having examined it, my heart leaped to see that beneath it there lay a sheet of paper with writing upon it. I raised it, and this was what I read, roughly scrawled in pencil: "Dr. Watson has gone to Coombe Tracey." For a minute I stood there with the paper in my hands thinking out the meaning of this curt message. It was I, then, and not Sir Henry, who was being dogged by this secret man. He had not followed me himself, but he had set an agent--the boy, perhaps--upon my track, and this was his report. Possibly I had taken no step since I had been upon the moor which had not been observed and reported. Always there was this feeling of an unseen force, a fine net drawn round us with infinite skill and delicacy, holding us so lightly that it was only at some supreme moment that one realized that one was indeed entangled in its meshes. If there was one report there might be others, so I looked round the hut in search of them. There was no trace, however, of anything of the kind, nor could I discover any sign which might indicate the character or intentions of the man who lived in this singular place, save that he must be of Spartan habits and cared little for the comforts of life. When I thought of the heavy rains and looked at the gaping roof I understood how strong and immutable must be the purpose which had kept him in that inhospitable abode. Was he our malignant enemy, or was he by chance our guardian angel? I swore that I would not leave the hut until I knew. Outside the sun was sinking low and the west was blazing with scarlet and gold. Its reflection was shot back in ruddy patches by the distant pools which lay amid the great Grimpen Mire. There were the two towers of Baskerville Hall, and there a distant blur of smoke which marked the village of Grimpen. Between the two, behind the hill, was the house of the Stapletons. All was sweet and mellow and peaceful in the golden evening light, and yet as I looked at them my soul shared none of the peace of Nature but quivered at the vagueness and the terror of that interview which every instant was bringing nearer. With tingling nerves but a fixed purpose, I sat in the dark recess of the hut and waited with sombre patience for the coming of its tenant. And then at last I heard him. Far away came the sharp clink of a boot striking upon a stone. Then another and yet another, coming nearer and nearer. I shrank back into the darkest corner and cocked the pistol in my pocket, determined not to discover myself until I had an opportunity of seeing something of the stranger. There was a long pause which showed that he had stopped. Then once more the footsteps approached and a shadow fell across the opening of the hut. "It is a lovely evening, my dear Watson," said a well-known voice. "I really think that you will be more comfortable outside than in."

Chapter X-XI

https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapter-x-xi

Extract from the Diary of Dr. Watson This chapter is taken directly from Watson's diary, which he insists is the best way to tell this part of the story. The first entry is dated October 16th, the day after Watson and Sir Henry pursued Selden on the moor. Owing to the ominous mood of his surroundings and the frightening sounds he had twice heard, Watson almost believed in the hound. Though the diary acknowledges that such a belief strains his rationality, he also admits the "facts" of the howling, and acknowledge the difficulties posed even if there were an actual hound . For instance, the hound would need to be fed. Watson then considers the mystery of the bearded man in London, noting that he has seen no one resembling that figure out on the moor. He decided to concentrate on this problem, hoping it would open doors to some of the other mysteries. That morning, Barrymore was upset that Watson and Sir Henry had attempted to capture Selden. He promised them that the convict would soon escape to South America, and cause no more trouble for them. They then agreed not to pursue Selden any further. Grateful, Barrymore then revealed a secret about Sir Charles: he was planning to meet a woman in the yew alley on the night that he died. However, Barrymore knows only the woman's initials - L.L. - and that she had sent Sir Charles a letter from Coombe Tracey, the nearby town, on the day of his death. Mrs. Barrymore had found the remnants of this letter, half-burned in Sir Charles's study. Barrymore explained that he concealed this information for fear it would damage his master's reputation. Watson then immediately wrote to Holmes with this new information, hoping that his friend would soon complete his other work in London and join them on the moor. The next diary entry is dated the next day, October 17th. Watson traveled back to the spot from which he had seen the mysterious figure, but found nothing. On his way back, Dr. Mortimer intercepted him. The man was driving a dog-cart and looking for his missing spaniel. Watson mentioned the initials L.L. to the doctor, who recognized them as belonging to Laura Lyons, the daughter of Frankland. She had married an artist who deserted her, and her father had practically disowned her. She now lived in Coombe Tracey. Though grateful, Watson did not explain the relevance of the initials. Later that day, Barrymore told Watson that Selden had seemingly left the moor, and that the convict had also seen the mysterious figure. Selden believed the figure to be that of a gentleman who received his food from Coombe Tracey, and knew that the man was living in one of the old deserted houses on the moor. Chapter XI: The Man on the Tor This chapter returns to Watson's direct narration. Watson and Sir Henry discuss the new information about Laura Lyons, and decide Watson should visit her alone, in hopes of obtaining more information that way. In his visit, Watson notices her beauty right away. He first introduces himself as a friend of Frankland, but she quickly dismisses any interest in the man. Watson then admits he is inquiring about Sir Charles, and hoping to avoid a public scandal. Growing nervous then angry, she initially denies asking him to meet her but backtracks when Watson quotes the portion of the letter that Mrs. Barrymore had found. She swears that she never kept her appointment because of another circumstance she does not wish to discuss. When Watson threatens to involve the police, she confesses the contents of the letter: her husband was pressuring her to move back with him, and she was borrowing money from Sir Charles to ensure her freedom. She did not keep the appointment because she received the money from somewhere else. Believing her story plausible, Watson resolves to investigate whether she had actually filed divorce proceedings. However, he remains troubled by her manner in telling the story: she had turned pale, and had to be coaxed into admitting most of the details. Watson's next plan is to hunt for the mysterious figure he had seen on the Black Tor, believing this might be the bearded man from London. However, he does not know how to begin, since there are many old houses and transient residents out on the moor. Good luck comes when he visits Old Frankland, who tells Watson about the several legal cases he is involved in. Watson pretends to be indifferent, knowing that any outward sign of interest will silence Frankland's gossip. Frankland eventually discusses the figure, believing it to be of the convict. Through his telescope, he has seen a child leaving food for the man. Watson uses the telescope to pinpoint the spot, and then swears he will keep Frankland's secret. Watson then travels to the stone huts in that area, and recognizes signs of habitation near one of them. He carefully sneaks in, but finds only a sheet of paper in the hut, announcing his own visit to Coombe Tracey. Watson immediately realizes that he is the object of pursuit, rather than Sir Henry. With his gun ready, he resolves to wait for the man's return. When he hears the man arrive, he cocks his pistol. However, the figure who enters the hut is none other than Sherlock Holmes himself.

The section begins with Watson's own doubts: he wants to believe himself a man of pure reason, but the facts simply do not suggest a rational explanation. He therefore considers the possibility of a supernatural hound, even though that offends his rationality. Watson's process here is one that Holmes would likely applaud: the attempt to pursue a rational explanation even when our instincts drive us towards occult explanations. Deep down, we should continue to pursue scientific explanations, even when one is not immediately apparent. Ultimately, this process is what draws Holmes towards difficult cases rather than simple ones. In attempting this process, Watson - rather than Holmes - becomes our detective. His process is quite commendable: instead of trying to solve the entire mystery at once, he focuses on a single thread, hoping that it might yield clues to keep the investigation alive. In trying to determine who the mystery man is, Watson ends up following a wandering path that does yield several clues, including: the details of L.L. and some evidence about the mysterious figure. What this process indicates is that an explanation of one aspect of reality may surprisingly help explain another. The implicit suggestion is that we turn to occult explanations because we are overwhelmed by too many questions at once, whereas we might discover more scientific rationales if we attempt to answer one question at a time. During this investigation, Watson feels as though he is caught in a large "net" . This image is a symbol of the power yielded by those who have knowledge. This is a common theme throughout the novel: knowledge brings power. The detective almost necessarily starts behind the criminal . Hence, the chase is about gaining knowledge so as to limit the criminal of his singular power. This is another reason why one should pursue one detail at a time, rather than attempt to solve the mystery in one fell swoop. While the latter process obscures crucial clues, the former involves a process of collecting knowledge one step at a time. Note an interesting bit of phrasing that develops this metaphor of the next. When Watson is approaching the huts where he believes the mysterious figure lives, he "walk as warily as Stapleton would do when with poised net he drew near the settled butterfly" . The net here implies in the basic sense that Watson is approaching knowledge. However, it also foreshadows the fact that Stapleton is the one controlling the net, the one who knows more than anyone else. Because of this knowledge, he is manipulating events even as Watson and Holmes close the gap. Again, even with the villain, the novel suggests that man's ultimate power comes not from his strength but from his mind. And of course, Watson gains a rather startling bit of information because of his investigation: the mystery figure is actually Sherlock Holmes himself! As the detective will explain in the following chapters, there is a perfectly logical reason for his subterfuge, but it raises a variety of questions that the reader himself can enjoy considering. Holmes is ahead of both Watson and us as readers, which poses us with the challenge of filling in the gaps.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/chapters_12_to_13.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_6_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapters 12-13

chapter 12-13

{"name": "Chapter XII-XIII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapter-xii-xiii", "summary": "Death on the Moor Watson is naturally astounded, and more than a little offended, to find Holmes there. Having been kept out of the loop, he believes his reports have been wasted, and that Holmes has used him as a pawn. However, Holmes insists that Watson's reports - which were stopped at Combe Tracey and brought to Holmes by Cartwright, whom accompanied Holmes from London - have proven extremely useful. Holmes deduces how Watson found him and then asks for what new information he learned in his visit to Laura Lyons. After Watson shares his information, Holmes shares his own: there is record of a relationship between Stapleton and Laura, leading Holmes to believe Stapleton the culprit. Holmes has uncovered that Miss Stapleton is actually Stapleton's wife, not his sister. This is why Stapleton so vehemently opposed any union between her and Sir Henry. Through research, Holmes has learned that Stapleton was indeed a schoolmaster who lost his job, but that he had operated under a different name and then disappeared without a trace. Holmes has deduced that not only was Stapleton the bearded man in London, but that his wife must have been the person who tried to warn them. Clearly, Stapleton believes he can gain some benefit from lying about his wife's identity. Right as Holmes admits that Stapleton's plan must be murder, the men hear the hound's cries out on the moor. They rush out towards the direction of the sound, Holmes lamenting that Stapleton has struck before Holmes could ensnare him. As they arrive near the source of the sound, they hear a human moan and then see a body fall from a great height. They recognize Sir Henry's clothes on the figure, and realize their charge is dead. They both blame themselves - Watson for leaving Sir Henry alone, Holmes for having delayed his action - and then climb onto the rocks to try and spot the hound. Instead, they spot the Stapleton house and briefly plan how to ensnare the culprit. Suddenly, Holmes realizes that the corpse has a beard - it is not Sir Henry, but Selden! Watson realizes that Barrymore must have given Sir Henry's extra clothes to the man. They then wonder two things: why Selden would have been so frightened of the sound, and why Stapleton would have thought to release the hound on this night. Before they can answer either, Selden strolls up, surprised to see them. His surprise is even greater, though, to discover the convict's body. He claims he heard the sound as well, and then quickly identifies Holmes. The men talk vaguely as Holmes sizes him up, and then decide they must leave the body with something over its face until the next day. Chapter XIII: Fixing the Nets As they walk across the moor, Holmes explains to Watson that they lack sufficient evidence to secure Stapleton's arrest. They have neither determined a motive nor actually seen the hound. Holmes plans to tell Laura Lyons about Stapleton's marriage, in hopes that she will then work with them against him. Before they arrive at Baskerville Hall, Holmes warns Watson not to say anything of the hound. Pleased to see Holmes has arrived, Sir Henry joins the men at dinner. Before they eat, Watson breaks the news of Selden to Barrymore and his wife, who are quite saddened. As they dine, Sir Henry tells them that Stapleton had invited him to dinner that night, but that he did not want to break his promise to stay away from the moor at night. Holmes then drily remarks that the convict had been wearing Sir Henry's clothes when he died. In response to Sir Henry's surprise, Holmes begins to lay out a plan, but his attention is struck by the line of portraits on the opposite wall. He observes that Hugo Baskerville looks quite meek in his portrait, and Sir Henry adds that the canvas is dated 1647. After dinner, Holmes brings Watson to the portrait and leads the latter to recognize that the picture resembles Stapleton, if one ignores the hair and focuses solely on the facial shape. They have finally discovered the missing link of their mystery: Stapleton is a Baskerville! The next morning, Holmes instructs Sir Henry to dine that night with the Stapletons, and to travel there alone. He further tells him that he and Watson intend to return to London, on urgent business. Though upset at being abandoned, Sir Henry agrees to follow Holmes's instructions. Watson and Holmes head to the train station, to perpetuate the ruse. There, Holmes directs Cartwright to take the train and to send a telegram from London to Sir Henry Baskerville. Cartwright also delivers a telegram that had arrived for Holmes, from Inspector Lestrade, a London police officer. The message informs Holmes that Lestrade will arrive later that day with an unsigned warrant. Watson and Holmes then visit Laura Lyons. Holmes is very straightforward with her: he accuses her of withholding information that pertains to Sir Charles's death, and informs her that he believes she is implicated alongside Stapleton and his wife for it. Though shocked, she is eventually convinced that the man is indeed married. She then cooperates, explaining that Stapleton had offered to marry her if she could get divorced, but then had convinced her to break her appointment with Sir Charles, promising he could obtain the money himself. Finally, he had frightened her into remaining silent, suggesting she would be found guilty for his death. Holmes tells her she is lucky to remain alive. After they leave, Holmes declares that they will be able to construct a cohesive narrative of the mystery by the end of that night. They then fetch Lestrade from the train station and head into Dartmoor, where Baskerville Manor is located.", "analysis": "Holmes' investigation finally begins to yield results, as the metaphoric 'net' is transferred into his court. Significantly, we discover that his game of detection is a game of wits: Holmes must figure out how to trick Stapleton into believing he is really uninterested in the case. First, this approach parallels Stapleton's own. Both men lead others to assume things about them, rather than forcing those impressions on others. Further, both men have certain personal habits in common. Consider the esoteric behavior attributed to Homes in the early chapters. His daily life and habits are quite disorderly, and he lacks a certain social intelligence. The meticulousness of his method is at great odds with his daily habits. This suggests Doyle's belief that a life purely of the mind has little room for the trappings of a 'normal' life. Secondly, this game of wits is complicated by the necessity of proving his deductions before the law. Though in many ways a pawn in the plot, Lestrade is also a crucial component; if he does not witness the crime, then Holmes's brilliance can yield no dividends. His own interpretation cannot reach the level of truth until it can create conviction in two senses: readerly conviction and legal conviction. Holmes must endanger characters in the novel because his interpretation may not otherwise fulfill both of these requirements. When he laments the death of Sir Henry he is lamenting this shortcoming, the fact that he had to risk the man's life in order to secure both convictions of the culprit. In other words, this necessity for legal status parallels Doyle's requirements to make this story an \"interesting\" case . It is notable that the detective story usually consists of a crime that is committed in the past, and investigated in the present. However, the investigation might sometime seems dull if it did not itself involve crime and action. Here then we have that crime coming alive. History is here repeating itself. The conflict between Holmes and Watson reaches its apex in Chapter XII, when Watson accuses Holmes of using him. Later, Holmes calls Watson a man of \"action,\" contrasting that with his own intellectual nature. In many ways, Holmes does use Watson as he uses anyone else. Knowing his friend's active nature, he had to keep Watson in the dark in order to best use that personality trait. That Holmes cannot empathize with Watson's sense of betrayal is just one of the sacrifices he makes to follow his own singular path. Action is important, but must always be subsumed to the intellect, which alone holds the power. For Doyle and Holmes, this is true both in ourselves and in the symbolic representation of Holmes and Watson. Finally, it is notable that women are not presented in a very flattering way in this novel. Holmes never really had love interests, and the novel's only deep relationship is the friendship between Holmes and Watson. Here, despite her good intentions, Miss Stapleton is used mostly as a foil, to both the villain and Sir Henry. Laura Lyons, moreover, is motivated solely by finding the proper husband, and is easily manipulated by Stapleton and then by Holmes. Overall, women tend not to be as clever as men in Doyle's work, and they are often too fearful for their own lives to be of much help. Clearly, gender was not a primary theme in Doyle's mind, but his representation of women leaves much to be desired for a modern reader."}

For a moment or two I sat breathless, hardly able to believe my ears. Then my senses and my voice came back to me, while a crushing weight of responsibility seemed in an instant to be lifted from my soul. That cold, incisive, ironical voice could belong to but one man in all the world. "Holmes!" I cried--"Holmes!" "Come out," said he, "and please be careful with the revolver." I stooped under the rude lintel, and there he sat upon a stone outside, his gray eyes dancing with amusement as they fell upon my astonished features. He was thin and worn, but clear and alert, his keen face bronzed by the sun and roughened by the wind. In his tweed suit and cloth cap he looked like any other tourist upon the moor, and he had contrived, with that catlike love of personal cleanliness which was one of his characteristics, that his chin should be as smooth and his linen as perfect as if he were in Baker Street. "I never was more glad to see anyone in my life," said I as I wrung him by the hand. "Or more astonished, eh?" "Well, I must confess to it." "The surprise was not all on one side, I assure you. I had no idea that you had found my occasional retreat, still less that you were inside it, until I was within twenty paces of the door." "My footprint, I presume?" "No, Watson, I fear that I could not undertake to recognize your footprint amid all the footprints of the world. If you seriously desire to deceive me you must change your tobacconist; for when I see the stub of a cigarette marked Bradley, Oxford Street, I know that my friend Watson is in the neighbourhood. You will see it there beside the path. You threw it down, no doubt, at that supreme moment when you charged into the empty hut." "Exactly." "I thought as much--and knowing your admirable tenacity I was convinced that you were sitting in ambush, a weapon within reach, waiting for the tenant to return. So you actually thought that I was the criminal?" "I did not know who you were, but I was determined to find out." "Excellent, Watson! And how did you localize me? You saw me, perhaps, on the night of the convict hunt, when I was so imprudent as to allow the moon to rise behind me?" "Yes, I saw you then." "And have no doubt searched all the huts until you came to this one?" "No, your boy had been observed, and that gave me a guide where to look." "The old gentleman with the telescope, no doubt. I could not make it out when first I saw the light flashing upon the lens." He rose and peeped into the hut. "Ha, I see that Cartwright has brought up some supplies. What's this paper? So you have been to Coombe Tracey, have you?" "Yes." "To see Mrs. Laura Lyons?" "Exactly." "Well done! Our researches have evidently been running on parallel lines, and when we unite our results I expect we shall have a fairly full knowledge of the case." "Well, I am glad from my heart that you are here, for indeed the responsibility and the mystery were both becoming too much for my nerves. But how in the name of wonder did you come here, and what have you been doing? I thought that you were in Baker Street working out that case of blackmailing." "That was what I wished you to think." "Then you use me, and yet do not trust me!" I cried with some bitterness. "I think that I have deserved better at your hands, Holmes." "My dear fellow, you have been invaluable to me in this as in many other cases, and I beg that you will forgive me if I have seemed to play a trick upon you. In truth, it was partly for your own sake that I did it, and it was my appreciation of the danger which you ran which led me to come down and examine the matter for myself. Had I been with Sir Henry and you it is confident that my point of view would have been the same as yours, and my presence would have warned our very formidable opponents to be on their guard. As it is, I have been able to get about as I could not possibly have done had I been living in the Hall, and I remain an unknown factor in the business, ready to throw in all my weight at a critical moment." "But why keep me in the dark?" "For you to know could not have helped us and might possibly have led to my discovery. You would have wished to tell me something, or in your kindness you would have brought me out some comfort or other, and so an unnecessary risk would be run. I brought Cartwright down with me--you remember the little chap at the express office--and he has seen after my simple wants: a loaf of bread and a clean collar. What does man want more? He has given me an extra pair of eyes upon a very active pair of feet, and both have been invaluable." "Then my reports have all been wasted!"--My voice trembled as I recalled the pains and the pride with which I had composed them. Holmes took a bundle of papers from his pocket. "Here are your reports, my dear fellow, and very well thumbed, I assure you. I made excellent arrangements, and they are only delayed one day upon their way. I must compliment you exceedingly upon the zeal and the intelligence which you have shown over an extraordinarily difficult case." I was still rather raw over the deception which had been practised upon me, but the warmth of Holmes's praise drove my anger from my mind. I felt also in my heart that he was right in what he said and that it was really best for our purpose that I should not have known that he was upon the moor. "That's better," said he, seeing the shadow rise from my face. "And now tell me the result of your visit to Mrs. Laura Lyons--it was not difficult for me to guess that it was to see her that you had gone, for I am already aware that she is the one person in Coombe Tracey who might be of service to us in the matter. In fact, if you had not gone today it is exceedingly probable that I should have gone tomorrow." The sun had set and dusk was settling over the moor. The air had turned chill and we withdrew into the hut for warmth. There, sitting together in the twilight, I told Holmes of my conversation with the lady. So interested was he that I had to repeat some of it twice before he was satisfied. "This is most important," said he when I had concluded. "It fills up a gap which I had been unable to bridge in this most complex affair. You are aware, perhaps, that a close intimacy exists between this lady and the man Stapleton?" "I did not know of a close intimacy." "There can be no doubt about the matter. They meet, they write, there is a complete understanding between them. Now, this puts a very powerful weapon into our hands. If I could only use it to detach his wife--" "His wife?" "I am giving you some information now, in return for all that you have given me. The lady who has passed here as Miss Stapleton is in reality his wife." "Good heavens, Holmes! Are you sure of what you say? How could he have permitted Sir Henry to fall in love with her?" "Sir Henry's falling in love could do no harm to anyone except Sir Henry. He took particular care that Sir Henry did not make love to her, as you have yourself observed. I repeat that the lady is his wife and not his sister." "But why this elaborate deception?" "Because he foresaw that she would be very much more useful to him in the character of a free woman." All my unspoken instincts, my vague suspicions, suddenly took shape and centred upon the naturalist. In that impassive colourless man, with his straw hat and his butterfly-net, I seemed to see something terrible--a creature of infinite patience and craft, with a smiling face and a murderous heart. "It is he, then, who is our enemy--it is he who dogged us in London?" "So I read the riddle." "And the warning--it must have come from her!" "Exactly." The shape of some monstrous villainy, half seen, half guessed, loomed through the darkness which had girt me so long. "But are you sure of this, Holmes? How do you know that the woman is his wife?" "Because he so far forgot himself as to tell you a true piece of autobiography upon the occasion when he first met you, and I dare say he has many a time regretted it since. He was once a schoolmaster in the north of England. Now, there is no one more easy to trace than a schoolmaster. There are scholastic agencies by which one may identify any man who has been in the profession. A little investigation showed me that a school had come to grief under atrocious circumstances, and that the man who had owned it--the name was different--had disappeared with his wife. The descriptions agreed. When I learned that the missing man was devoted to entomology the identification was complete." The darkness was rising, but much was still hidden by the shadows. "If this woman is in truth his wife, where does Mrs. Laura Lyons come in?" I asked. "That is one of the points upon which your own researches have shed a light. Your interview with the lady has cleared the situation very much. I did not know about a projected divorce between herself and her husband. In that case, regarding Stapleton as an unmarried man, she counted no doubt upon becoming his wife." "And when she is undeceived?" "Why, then we may find the lady of service. It must be our first duty to see her--both of us--tomorrow. Don't you think, Watson, that you are away from your charge rather long? Your place should be at Baskerville Hall." The last red streaks had faded away in the west and night had settled upon the moor. A few faint stars were gleaming in a violet sky. "One last question, Holmes," I said as I rose. "Surely there is no need of secrecy between you and me. What is the meaning of it all? What is he after?" Holmes's voice sank as he answered: "It is murder, Watson--refined, cold-blooded, deliberate murder. Do not ask me for particulars. My nets are closing upon him, even as his are upon Sir Henry, and with your help he is already almost at my mercy. There is but one danger which can threaten us. It is that he should strike before we are ready to do so. Another day--two at the most--and I have my case complete, but until then guard your charge as closely as ever a fond mother watched her ailing child. Your mission today has justified itself, and yet I could almost wish that you had not left his side. Hark!" A terrible scream--a prolonged yell of horror and anguish--burst out of the silence of the moor. That frightful cry turned the blood to ice in my veins. "Oh, my God!" I gasped. "What is it? What does it mean?" Holmes had sprung to his feet, and I saw his dark, athletic outline at the door of the hut, his shoulders stooping, his head thrust forward, his face peering into the darkness. "Hush!" he whispered. "Hush!" The cry had been loud on account of its vehemence, but it had pealed out from somewhere far off on the shadowy plain. Now it burst upon our ears, nearer, louder, more urgent than before. "Where is it?" Holmes whispered; and I knew from the thrill of his voice that he, the man of iron, was shaken to the soul. "Where is it, Watson?" "There, I think." I pointed into the darkness. "No, there!" Again the agonized cry swept through the silent night, louder and much nearer than ever. And a new sound mingled with it, a deep, muttered rumble, musical and yet menacing, rising and falling like the low, constant murmur of the sea. "The hound!" cried Holmes. "Come, Watson, come! Great heavens, if we are too late!" He had started running swiftly over the moor, and I had followed at his heels. But now from somewhere among the broken ground immediately in front of us there came one last despairing yell, and then a dull, heavy thud. We halted and listened. Not another sound broke the heavy silence of the windless night. I saw Holmes put his hand to his forehead like a man distracted. He stamped his feet upon the ground. "He has beaten us, Watson. We are too late." "No, no, surely not!" "Fool that I was to hold my hand. And you, Watson, see what comes of abandoning your charge! But, by Heaven, if the worst has happened we'll avenge him!" Blindly we ran through the gloom, blundering against boulders, forcing our way through gorse bushes, panting up hills and rushing down slopes, heading always in the direction whence those dreadful sounds had come. At every rise Holmes looked eagerly round him, but the shadows were thick upon the moor, and nothing moved upon its dreary face. "Can you see anything?" "Nothing." "But, hark, what is that?" A low moan had fallen upon our ears. There it was again upon our left! On that side a ridge of rocks ended in a sheer cliff which overlooked a stone-strewn slope. On its jagged face was spread-eagled some dark, irregular object. As we ran towards it the vague outline hardened into a definite shape. It was a prostrate man face downward upon the ground, the head doubled under him at a horrible angle, the shoulders rounded and the body hunched together as if in the act of throwing a somersault. So grotesque was the attitude that I could not for the instant realize that that moan had been the passing of his soul. Not a whisper, not a rustle, rose now from the dark figure over which we stooped. Holmes laid his hand upon him and held it up again with an exclamation of horror. The gleam of the match which he struck shone upon his clotted fingers and upon the ghastly pool which widened slowly from the crushed skull of the victim. And it shone upon something else which turned our hearts sick and faint within us--the body of Sir Henry Baskerville! There was no chance of either of us forgetting that peculiar ruddy tweed suit--the very one which he had worn on the first morning that we had seen him in Baker Street. We caught the one clear glimpse of it, and then the match flickered and went out, even as the hope had gone out of our souls. Holmes groaned, and his face glimmered white through the darkness. "The brute! The brute!" I cried with clenched hands. "Oh Holmes, I shall never forgive myself for having left him to his fate." "I am more to blame than you, Watson. In order to have my case well rounded and complete, I have thrown away the life of my client. It is the greatest blow which has befallen me in my career. But how could I know--how could I know--that he would risk his life alone upon the moor in the face of all my warnings?" "That we should have heard his screams--my God, those screams!--and yet have been unable to save him! Where is this brute of a hound which drove him to his death? It may be lurking among these rocks at this instant. And Stapleton, where is he? He shall answer for this deed." "He shall. I will see to that. Uncle and nephew have been murdered--the one frightened to death by the very sight of a beast which he thought to be supernatural, the other driven to his end in his wild flight to escape from it. But now we have to prove the connection between the man and the beast. Save from what we heard, we cannot even swear to the existence of the latter, since Sir Henry has evidently died from the fall. But, by heavens, cunning as he is, the fellow shall be in my power before another day is past!" We stood with bitter hearts on either side of the mangled body, overwhelmed by this sudden and irrevocable disaster which had brought all our long and weary labours to so piteous an end. Then as the moon rose we climbed to the top of the rocks over which our poor friend had fallen, and from the summit we gazed out over the shadowy moor, half silver and half gloom. Far away, miles off, in the direction of Grimpen, a single steady yellow light was shining. It could only come from the lonely abode of the Stapletons. With a bitter curse I shook my fist at it as I gazed. "Why should we not seize him at once?" "Our case is not complete. The fellow is wary and cunning to the last degree. It is not what we know, but what we can prove. If we make one false move the villain may escape us yet." "What can we do?" "There will be plenty for us to do tomorrow. Tonight we can only perform the last offices to our poor friend." Together we made our way down the precipitous slope and approached the body, black and clear against the silvered stones. The agony of those contorted limbs struck me with a spasm of pain and blurred my eyes with tears. "We must send for help, Holmes! We cannot carry him all the way to the Hall. Good heavens, are you mad?" He had uttered a cry and bent over the body. Now he was dancing and laughing and wringing my hand. Could this be my stern, self-contained friend? These were hidden fires, indeed! "A beard! A beard! The man has a beard!" "A beard?" "It is not the baronet--it is--why, it is my neighbour, the convict!" With feverish haste we had turned the body over, and that dripping beard was pointing up to the cold, clear moon. There could be no doubt about the beetling forehead, the sunken animal eyes. It was indeed the same face which had glared upon me in the light of the candle from over the rock--the face of Selden, the criminal. Then in an instant it was all clear to me. I remembered how the baronet had told me that he had handed his old wardrobe to Barrymore. Barrymore had passed it on in order to help Selden in his escape. Boots, shirt, cap--it was all Sir Henry's. The tragedy was still black enough, but this man had at least deserved death by the laws of his country. I told Holmes how the matter stood, my heart bubbling over with thankfulness and joy. "Then the clothes have been the poor devil's death," said he. "It is clear enough that the hound has been laid on from some article of Sir Henry's--the boot which was abstracted in the hotel, in all probability--and so ran this man down. There is one very singular thing, however: How came Selden, in the darkness, to know that the hound was on his trail?" "He heard him." "To hear a hound upon the moor would not work a hard man like this convict into such a paroxysm of terror that he would risk recapture by screaming wildly for help. By his cries he must have run a long way after he knew the animal was on his track. How did he know?" "A greater mystery to me is why this hound, presuming that all our conjectures are correct--" "I presume nothing." "Well, then, why this hound should be loose tonight. I suppose that it does not always run loose upon the moor. Stapleton would not let it go unless he had reason to think that Sir Henry would be there." "My difficulty is the more formidable of the two, for I think that we shall very shortly get an explanation of yours, while mine may remain forever a mystery. The question now is, what shall we do with this poor wretch's body? We cannot leave it here to the foxes and the ravens." "I suggest that we put it in one of the huts until we can communicate with the police." "Exactly. I have no doubt that you and I could carry it so far. Halloa, Watson, what's this? It's the man himself, by all that's wonderful and audacious! Not a word to show your suspicions--not a word, or my plans crumble to the ground." A figure was approaching us over the moor, and I saw the dull red glow of a cigar. The moon shone upon him, and I could distinguish the dapper shape and jaunty walk of the naturalist. He stopped when he saw us, and then came on again. "Why, Dr. Watson, that's not you, is it? You are the last man that I should have expected to see out on the moor at this time of night. But, dear me, what's this? Somebody hurt? Not--don't tell me that it is our friend Sir Henry!" He hurried past me and stooped over the dead man. I heard a sharp intake of his breath and the cigar fell from his fingers. "Who--who's this?" he stammered. "It is Selden, the man who escaped from Princetown." Stapleton turned a ghastly face upon us, but by a supreme effort he had overcome his amazement and his disappointment. He looked sharply from Holmes to me. "Dear me! What a very shocking affair! How did he die?" "He appears to have broken his neck by falling over these rocks. My friend and I were strolling on the moor when we heard a cry." "I heard a cry also. That was what brought me out. I was uneasy about Sir Henry." "Why about Sir Henry in particular?" I could not help asking. "Because I had suggested that he should come over. When he did not come I was surprised, and I naturally became alarmed for his safety when I heard cries upon the moor. By the way"--his eyes darted again from my face to Holmes's--"did you hear anything else besides a cry?" "No," said Holmes; "did you?" "No." "What do you mean, then?" "Oh, you know the stories that the peasants tell about a phantom hound, and so on. It is said to be heard at night upon the moor. I was wondering if there were any evidence of such a sound tonight." "We heard nothing of the kind," said I. "And what is your theory of this poor fellow's death?" "I have no doubt that anxiety and exposure have driven him off his head. He has rushed about the moor in a crazy state and eventually fallen over here and broken his neck." "That seems the most reasonable theory," said Stapleton, and he gave a sigh which I took to indicate his relief. "What do you think about it, Mr. Sherlock Holmes?" My friend bowed his compliments. "You are quick at identification," said he. "We have been expecting you in these parts since Dr. Watson came down. You are in time to see a tragedy." "Yes, indeed. I have no doubt that my friend's explanation will cover the facts. I will take an unpleasant remembrance back to London with me tomorrow." "Oh, you return tomorrow?" "That is my intention." "I hope your visit has cast some light upon those occurrences which have puzzled us?" Holmes shrugged his shoulders. "One cannot always have the success for which one hopes. An investigator needs facts and not legends or rumours. It has not been a satisfactory case." My friend spoke in his frankest and most unconcerned manner. Stapleton still looked hard at him. Then he turned to me. "I would suggest carrying this poor fellow to my house, but it would give my sister such a fright that I do not feel justified in doing it. I think that if we put something over his face he will be safe until morning." And so it was arranged. Resisting Stapleton's offer of hospitality, Holmes and I set off to Baskerville Hall, leaving the naturalist to return alone. Looking back we saw the figure moving slowly away over the broad moor, and behind him that one black smudge on the silvered slope which showed where the man was lying who had come so horribly to his end. "We're at close grips at last," said Holmes as we walked together across the moor. "What a nerve the fellow has! How he pulled himself together in the face of what must have been a paralyzing shock when he found that the wrong man had fallen a victim to his plot. I told you in London, Watson, and I tell you now again, that we have never had a foeman more worthy of our steel." "I am sorry that he has seen you." "And so was I at first. But there was no getting out of it." "What effect do you think it will have upon his plans now that he knows you are here?" "It may cause him to be more cautious, or it may drive him to desperate measures at once. Like most clever criminals, he may be too confident in his own cleverness and imagine that he has completely deceived us." "Why should we not arrest him at once?" "My dear Watson, you were born to be a man of action. Your instinct is always to do something energetic. But supposing, for argument's sake, that we had him arrested tonight, what on earth the better off should we be for that? We could prove nothing against him. There's the devilish cunning of it! If he were acting through a human agent we could get some evidence, but if we were to drag this great dog to the light of day it would not help us in putting a rope round the neck of its master." "Surely we have a case." "Not a shadow of one--only surmise and conjecture. We should be laughed out of court if we came with such a story and such evidence." "There is Sir Charles's death." "Found dead without a mark upon him. You and I know that he died of sheer fright, and we know also what frightened him, but how are we to get twelve stolid jurymen to know it? What signs are there of a hound? Where are the marks of its fangs? Of course we know that a hound does not bite a dead body and that Sir Charles was dead before ever the brute overtook him. But we have to prove all this, and we are not in a position to do it." "Well, then, tonight?" "We are not much better off tonight. Again, there was no direct connection between the hound and the man's death. We never saw the hound. We heard it, but we could not prove that it was running upon this man's trail. There is a complete absence of motive. No, my dear fellow; we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that we have no case at present, and that it is worth our while to run any risk in order to establish one." "And how do you propose to do so?" "I have great hopes of what Mrs. Laura Lyons may do for us when the position of affairs is made clear to her. And I have my own plan as well. Sufficient for tomorrow is the evil thereof; but I hope before the day is past to have the upper hand at last." I could draw nothing further from him, and he walked, lost in thought, as far as the Baskerville gates. "Are you coming up?" "Yes; I see no reason for further concealment. But one last word, Watson. Say nothing of the hound to Sir Henry. Let him think that Selden's death was as Stapleton would have us believe. He will have a better nerve for the ordeal which he will have to undergo tomorrow, when he is engaged, if I remember your report aright, to dine with these people." "And so am I." "Then you must excuse yourself and he must go alone. That will be easily arranged. And now, if we are too late for dinner, I think that we are both ready for our suppers." Sir Henry was more pleased than surprised to see Sherlock Holmes, for he had for some days been expecting that recent events would bring him down from London. He did raise his eyebrows, however, when he found that my friend had neither any luggage nor any explanations for its absence. Between us we soon supplied his wants, and then over a belated supper we explained to the baronet as much of our experience as it seemed desirable that he should know. But first I had the unpleasant duty of breaking the news to Barrymore and his wife. To him it may have been an unmitigated relief, but she wept bitterly in her apron. To all the world he was the man of violence, half animal and half demon; but to her he always remained the little wilful boy of her own girlhood, the child who had clung to her hand. Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him. "I've been moping in the house all day since Watson went off in the morning," said the baronet. "I guess I should have some credit, for I have kept my promise. If I hadn't sworn not to go about alone I might have had a more lively evening, for I had a message from Stapleton asking me over there." "I have no doubt that you would have had a more lively evening," said Holmes drily. "By the way, I don't suppose you appreciate that we have been mourning over you as having broken your neck?" Sir Henry opened his eyes. "How was that?" "This poor wretch was dressed in your clothes. I fear your servant who gave them to him may get into trouble with the police." "That is unlikely. There was no mark on any of them, as far as I know." "That's lucky for him--in fact, it's lucky for all of you, since you are all on the wrong side of the law in this matter. I am not sure that as a conscientious detective my first duty is not to arrest the whole household. Watson's reports are most incriminating documents." "But how about the case?" asked the baronet. "Have you made anything out of the tangle? I don't know that Watson and I are much the wiser since we came down." "I think that I shall be in a position to make the situation rather more clear to you before long. It has been an exceedingly difficult and most complicated business. There are several points upon which we still want light--but it is coming all the same." "We've had one experience, as Watson has no doubt told you. We heard the hound on the moor, so I can swear that it is not all empty superstition. I had something to do with dogs when I was out West, and I know one when I hear one. If you can muzzle that one and put him on a chain I'll be ready to swear you are the greatest detective of all time." "I think I will muzzle him and chain him all right if you will give me your help." "Whatever you tell me to do I will do." "Very good; and I will ask you also to do it blindly, without always asking the reason." "Just as you like." "If you will do this I think the chances are that our little problem will soon be solved. I have no doubt--" He stopped suddenly and stared fixedly up over my head into the air. The lamp beat upon his face, and so intent was it and so still that it might have been that of a clear-cut classical statue, a personification of alertness and expectation. "What is it?" we both cried. I could see as he looked down that he was repressing some internal emotion. His features were still composed, but his eyes shone with amused exultation. "Excuse the admiration of a connoisseur," said he as he waved his hand towards the line of portraits which covered the opposite wall. "Watson won't allow that I know anything of art but that is mere jealousy because our views upon the subject differ. Now, these are a really very fine series of portraits." "Well, I'm glad to hear you say so," said Sir Henry, glancing with some surprise at my friend. "I don't pretend to know much about these things, and I'd be a better judge of a horse or a steer than of a picture. I didn't know that you found time for such things." "I know what is good when I see it, and I see it now. That's a Kneller, I'll swear, that lady in the blue silk over yonder, and the stout gentleman with the wig ought to be a Reynolds. They are all family portraits, I presume?" "Every one." "Do you know the names?" "Barrymore has been coaching me in them, and I think I can say my lessons fairly well." "Who is the gentleman with the telescope?" "That is Rear-Admiral Baskerville, who served under Rodney in the West Indies. The man with the blue coat and the roll of paper is Sir William Baskerville, who was Chairman of Committees of the House of Commons under Pitt." "And this Cavalier opposite to me--the one with the black velvet and the lace?" "Ah, you have a right to know about him. That is the cause of all the mischief, the wicked Hugo, who started the Hound of the Baskervilles. We're not likely to forget him." I gazed with interest and some surprise upon the portrait. "Dear me!" said Holmes, "he seems a quiet, meek-mannered man enough, but I dare say that there was a lurking devil in his eyes. I had pictured him as a more robust and ruffianly person." "There's no doubt about the authenticity, for the name and the date, 1647, are on the back of the canvas." Holmes said little more, but the picture of the old roysterer seemed to have a fascination for him, and his eyes were continually fixed upon it during supper. It was not until later, when Sir Henry had gone to his room, that I was able to follow the trend of his thoughts. He led me back into the banqueting-hall, his bedroom candle in his hand, and he held it up against the time-stained portrait on the wall. "Do you see anything there?" I looked at the broad plumed hat, the curling love-locks, the white lace collar, and the straight, severe face which was framed between them. It was not a brutal countenance, but it was prim, hard, and stern, with a firm-set, thin-lipped mouth, and a coldly intolerant eye. "Is it like anyone you know?" "There is something of Sir Henry about the jaw." "Just a suggestion, perhaps. But wait an instant!" He stood upon a chair, and, holding up the light in his left hand, he curved his right arm over the broad hat and round the long ringlets. "Good heavens!" I cried in amazement. The face of Stapleton had sprung out of the canvas. "Ha, you see it now. My eyes have been trained to examine faces and not their trimmings. It is the first quality of a criminal investigator that he should see through a disguise." "But this is marvellous. It might be his portrait." "Yes, it is an interesting instance of a throwback, which appears to be both physical and spiritual. A study of family portraits is enough to convert a man to the doctrine of reincarnation. The fellow is a Baskerville--that is evident." "With designs upon the succession." "Exactly. This chance of the picture has supplied us with one of our most obvious missing links. We have him, Watson, we have him, and I dare swear that before tomorrow night he will be fluttering in our net as helpless as one of his own butterflies. A pin, a cork, and a card, and we add him to the Baker Street collection!" He burst into one of his rare fits of laughter as he turned away from the picture. I have not heard him laugh often, and it has always boded ill to somebody. I was up betimes in the morning, but Holmes was afoot earlier still, for I saw him as I dressed, coming up the drive. "Yes, we should have a full day today," he remarked, and he rubbed his hands with the joy of action. "The nets are all in place, and the drag is about to begin. We'll know before the day is out whether we have caught our big, leanjawed pike, or whether he has got through the meshes." "Have you been on the moor already?" "I have sent a report from Grimpen to Princetown as to the death of Selden. I think I can promise that none of you will be troubled in the matter. And I have also communicated with my faithful Cartwright, who would certainly have pined away at the door of my hut, as a dog does at his master's grave, if I had not set his mind at rest about my safety." "What is the next move?" "To see Sir Henry. Ah, here he is!" "Good-morning, Holmes," said the baronet. "You look like a general who is planning a battle with his chief of the staff." "That is the exact situation. Watson was asking for orders." "And so do I." "Very good. You are engaged, as I understand, to dine with our friends the Stapletons tonight." "I hope that you will come also. They are very hospitable people, and I am sure that they would be very glad to see you." "I fear that Watson and I must go to London." "To London?" "Yes, I think that we should be more useful there at the present juncture." The baronet's face perceptibly lengthened. "I hoped that you were going to see me through this business. The Hall and the moor are not very pleasant places when one is alone." "My dear fellow, you must trust me implicitly and do exactly what I tell you. You can tell your friends that we should have been happy to have come with you, but that urgent business required us to be in town. We hope very soon to return to Devonshire. Will you remember to give them that message?" "If you insist upon it." "There is no alternative, I assure you." I saw by the baronet's clouded brow that he was deeply hurt by what he regarded as our desertion. "When do you desire to go?" he asked coldly. "Immediately after breakfast. We will drive in to Coombe Tracey, but Watson will leave his things as a pledge that he will come back to you. Watson, you will send a note to Stapleton to tell him that you regret that you cannot come." "I have a good mind to go to London with you," said the baronet. "Why should I stay here alone?" "Because it is your post of duty. Because you gave me your word that you would do as you were told, and I tell you to stay." "All right, then, I'll stay." "One more direction! I wish you to drive to Merripit House. Send back your trap, however, and let them know that you intend to walk home." "To walk across the moor?" "Yes." "But that is the very thing which you have so often cautioned me not to do." "This time you may do it with safety. If I had not every confidence in your nerve and courage I would not suggest it, but it is essential that you should do it." "Then I will do it." "And as you value your life do not go across the moor in any direction save along the straight path which leads from Merripit House to the Grimpen Road, and is your natural way home." "I will do just what you say." "Very good. I should be glad to get away as soon after breakfast as possible, so as to reach London in the afternoon." I was much astounded by this programme, though I remembered that Holmes had said to Stapleton on the night before that his visit would terminate next day. It had not crossed my mind however, that he would wish me to go with him, nor could I understand how we could both be absent at a moment which he himself declared to be critical. There was nothing for it, however, but implicit obedience; so we bade good-bye to our rueful friend, and a couple of hours afterwards we were at the station of Coombe Tracey and had dispatched the trap upon its return journey. A small boy was waiting upon the platform. "Any orders, sir?" "You will take this train to town, Cartwright. The moment you arrive you will send a wire to Sir Henry Baskerville, in my name, to say that if he finds the pocketbook which I have dropped he is to send it by registered post to Baker Street." "Yes, sir." "And ask at the station office if there is a message for me." The boy returned with a telegram, which Holmes handed to me. It ran: Wire received. Coming down with unsigned warrant. Arrive five-forty. Lestrade. "That is in answer to mine of this morning. He is the best of the professionals, I think, and we may need his assistance. Now, Watson, I think that we cannot employ our time better than by calling upon your acquaintance, Mrs. Laura Lyons." His plan of campaign was beginning to be evident. He would use the baronet in order to convince the Stapletons that we were really gone, while we should actually return at the instant when we were likely to be needed. That telegram from London, if mentioned by Sir Henry to the Stapletons, must remove the last suspicions from their minds. Already I seemed to see our nets drawing closer around that leanjawed pike. Mrs. Laura Lyons was in her office, and Sherlock Holmes opened his interview with a frankness and directness which considerably amazed her. "I am investigating the circumstances which attended the death of the late Sir Charles Baskerville," said he. "My friend here, Dr. Watson, has informed me of what you have communicated, and also of what you have withheld in connection with that matter." "What have I withheld?" she asked defiantly. "You have confessed that you asked Sir Charles to be at the gate at ten o'clock. We know that that was the place and hour of his death. You have withheld what the connection is between these events." "There is no connection." "In that case the coincidence must indeed be an extraordinary one. But I think that we shall succeed in establishing a connection, after all. I wish to be perfectly frank with you, Mrs. Lyons. We regard this case as one of murder, and the evidence may implicate not only your friend Mr. Stapleton but his wife as well." The lady sprang from her chair. "His wife!" she cried. "The fact is no longer a secret. The person who has passed for his sister is really his wife." Mrs. Lyons had resumed her seat. Her hands were grasping the arms of her chair, and I saw that the pink nails had turned white with the pressure of her grip. "His wife!" she said again. "His wife! He is not a married man." Sherlock Holmes shrugged his shoulders. "Prove it to me! Prove it to me! And if you can do so--!" The fierce flash of her eyes said more than any words. "I have come prepared to do so," said Holmes, drawing several papers from his pocket. "Here is a photograph of the couple taken in York four years ago. It is indorsed 'Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur,' but you will have no difficulty in recognizing him, and her also, if you know her by sight. Here are three written descriptions by trustworthy witnesses of Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur, who at that time kept St. Oliver's private school. Read them and see if you can doubt the identity of these people." She glanced at them, and then looked up at us with the set, rigid face of a desperate woman. "Mr. Holmes," she said, "this man had offered me marriage on condition that I could get a divorce from my husband. He has lied to me, the villain, in every conceivable way. Not one word of truth has he ever told me. And why--why? I imagined that all was for my own sake. But now I see that I was never anything but a tool in his hands. Why should I preserve faith with him who never kept any with me? Why should I try to shield him from the consequences of his own wicked acts? Ask me what you like, and there is nothing which I shall hold back. One thing I swear to you, and that is that when I wrote the letter I never dreamed of any harm to the old gentleman, who had been my kindest friend." "I entirely believe you, madam," said Sherlock Holmes. "The recital of these events must be very painful to you, and perhaps it will make it easier if I tell you what occurred, and you can check me if I make any material mistake. The sending of this letter was suggested to you by Stapleton?" "He dictated it." "I presume that the reason he gave was that you would receive help from Sir Charles for the legal expenses connected with your divorce?" "Exactly." "And then after you had sent the letter he dissuaded you from keeping the appointment?" "He told me that it would hurt his self-respect that any other man should find the money for such an object, and that though he was a poor man himself he would devote his last penny to removing the obstacles which divided us." "He appears to be a very consistent character. And then you heard nothing until you read the reports of the death in the paper?" "No." "And he made you swear to say nothing about your appointment with Sir Charles?" "He did. He said that the death was a very mysterious one, and that I should certainly be suspected if the facts came out. He frightened me into remaining silent." "Quite so. But you had your suspicions?" She hesitated and looked down. "I knew him," she said. "But if he had kept faith with me I should always have done so with him." "I think that on the whole you have had a fortunate escape," said Sherlock Holmes. "You have had him in your power and he knew it, and yet you are alive. You have been walking for some months very near to the edge of a precipice. We must wish you good-morning now, Mrs. Lyons, and it is probable that you will very shortly hear from us again." "Our case becomes rounded off, and difficulty after difficulty thins away in front of us," said Holmes as we stood waiting for the arrival of the express from town. "I shall soon be in the position of being able to put into a single connected narrative one of the most singular and sensational crimes of modern times. Students of criminology will remember the analogous incidents in Godno, in Little Russia, in the year '66, and of course there are the Anderson murders in North Carolina, but this case possesses some features which are entirely its own. Even now we have no clear case against this very wily man. But I shall be very much surprised if it is not clear enough before we go to bed this night." The London express came roaring into the station, and a small, wiry bulldog of a man had sprung from a first-class carriage. We all three shook hands, and I saw at once from the reverential way in which Lestrade gazed at my companion that he had learned a good deal since the days when they had first worked together. I could well remember the scorn which the theories of the reasoner used then to excite in the practical man. "Anything good?" he asked. "The biggest thing for years," said Holmes. "We have two hours before we need think of starting. I think we might employ it in getting some dinner and then, Lestrade, we will take the London fog out of your throat by giving you a breath of the pure night air of Dartmoor. Never been there? Ah, well, I don't suppose you will forget your first visit."

Chapter XII-XIII

https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapter-xii-xiii

Death on the Moor Watson is naturally astounded, and more than a little offended, to find Holmes there. Having been kept out of the loop, he believes his reports have been wasted, and that Holmes has used him as a pawn. However, Holmes insists that Watson's reports - which were stopped at Combe Tracey and brought to Holmes by Cartwright, whom accompanied Holmes from London - have proven extremely useful. Holmes deduces how Watson found him and then asks for what new information he learned in his visit to Laura Lyons. After Watson shares his information, Holmes shares his own: there is record of a relationship between Stapleton and Laura, leading Holmes to believe Stapleton the culprit. Holmes has uncovered that Miss Stapleton is actually Stapleton's wife, not his sister. This is why Stapleton so vehemently opposed any union between her and Sir Henry. Through research, Holmes has learned that Stapleton was indeed a schoolmaster who lost his job, but that he had operated under a different name and then disappeared without a trace. Holmes has deduced that not only was Stapleton the bearded man in London, but that his wife must have been the person who tried to warn them. Clearly, Stapleton believes he can gain some benefit from lying about his wife's identity. Right as Holmes admits that Stapleton's plan must be murder, the men hear the hound's cries out on the moor. They rush out towards the direction of the sound, Holmes lamenting that Stapleton has struck before Holmes could ensnare him. As they arrive near the source of the sound, they hear a human moan and then see a body fall from a great height. They recognize Sir Henry's clothes on the figure, and realize their charge is dead. They both blame themselves - Watson for leaving Sir Henry alone, Holmes for having delayed his action - and then climb onto the rocks to try and spot the hound. Instead, they spot the Stapleton house and briefly plan how to ensnare the culprit. Suddenly, Holmes realizes that the corpse has a beard - it is not Sir Henry, but Selden! Watson realizes that Barrymore must have given Sir Henry's extra clothes to the man. They then wonder two things: why Selden would have been so frightened of the sound, and why Stapleton would have thought to release the hound on this night. Before they can answer either, Selden strolls up, surprised to see them. His surprise is even greater, though, to discover the convict's body. He claims he heard the sound as well, and then quickly identifies Holmes. The men talk vaguely as Holmes sizes him up, and then decide they must leave the body with something over its face until the next day. Chapter XIII: Fixing the Nets As they walk across the moor, Holmes explains to Watson that they lack sufficient evidence to secure Stapleton's arrest. They have neither determined a motive nor actually seen the hound. Holmes plans to tell Laura Lyons about Stapleton's marriage, in hopes that she will then work with them against him. Before they arrive at Baskerville Hall, Holmes warns Watson not to say anything of the hound. Pleased to see Holmes has arrived, Sir Henry joins the men at dinner. Before they eat, Watson breaks the news of Selden to Barrymore and his wife, who are quite saddened. As they dine, Sir Henry tells them that Stapleton had invited him to dinner that night, but that he did not want to break his promise to stay away from the moor at night. Holmes then drily remarks that the convict had been wearing Sir Henry's clothes when he died. In response to Sir Henry's surprise, Holmes begins to lay out a plan, but his attention is struck by the line of portraits on the opposite wall. He observes that Hugo Baskerville looks quite meek in his portrait, and Sir Henry adds that the canvas is dated 1647. After dinner, Holmes brings Watson to the portrait and leads the latter to recognize that the picture resembles Stapleton, if one ignores the hair and focuses solely on the facial shape. They have finally discovered the missing link of their mystery: Stapleton is a Baskerville! The next morning, Holmes instructs Sir Henry to dine that night with the Stapletons, and to travel there alone. He further tells him that he and Watson intend to return to London, on urgent business. Though upset at being abandoned, Sir Henry agrees to follow Holmes's instructions. Watson and Holmes head to the train station, to perpetuate the ruse. There, Holmes directs Cartwright to take the train and to send a telegram from London to Sir Henry Baskerville. Cartwright also delivers a telegram that had arrived for Holmes, from Inspector Lestrade, a London police officer. The message informs Holmes that Lestrade will arrive later that day with an unsigned warrant. Watson and Holmes then visit Laura Lyons. Holmes is very straightforward with her: he accuses her of withholding information that pertains to Sir Charles's death, and informs her that he believes she is implicated alongside Stapleton and his wife for it. Though shocked, she is eventually convinced that the man is indeed married. She then cooperates, explaining that Stapleton had offered to marry her if she could get divorced, but then had convinced her to break her appointment with Sir Charles, promising he could obtain the money himself. Finally, he had frightened her into remaining silent, suggesting she would be found guilty for his death. Holmes tells her she is lucky to remain alive. After they leave, Holmes declares that they will be able to construct a cohesive narrative of the mystery by the end of that night. They then fetch Lestrade from the train station and head into Dartmoor, where Baskerville Manor is located.

Holmes' investigation finally begins to yield results, as the metaphoric 'net' is transferred into his court. Significantly, we discover that his game of detection is a game of wits: Holmes must figure out how to trick Stapleton into believing he is really uninterested in the case. First, this approach parallels Stapleton's own. Both men lead others to assume things about them, rather than forcing those impressions on others. Further, both men have certain personal habits in common. Consider the esoteric behavior attributed to Homes in the early chapters. His daily life and habits are quite disorderly, and he lacks a certain social intelligence. The meticulousness of his method is at great odds with his daily habits. This suggests Doyle's belief that a life purely of the mind has little room for the trappings of a 'normal' life. Secondly, this game of wits is complicated by the necessity of proving his deductions before the law. Though in many ways a pawn in the plot, Lestrade is also a crucial component; if he does not witness the crime, then Holmes's brilliance can yield no dividends. His own interpretation cannot reach the level of truth until it can create conviction in two senses: readerly conviction and legal conviction. Holmes must endanger characters in the novel because his interpretation may not otherwise fulfill both of these requirements. When he laments the death of Sir Henry he is lamenting this shortcoming, the fact that he had to risk the man's life in order to secure both convictions of the culprit. In other words, this necessity for legal status parallels Doyle's requirements to make this story an "interesting" case . It is notable that the detective story usually consists of a crime that is committed in the past, and investigated in the present. However, the investigation might sometime seems dull if it did not itself involve crime and action. Here then we have that crime coming alive. History is here repeating itself. The conflict between Holmes and Watson reaches its apex in Chapter XII, when Watson accuses Holmes of using him. Later, Holmes calls Watson a man of "action," contrasting that with his own intellectual nature. In many ways, Holmes does use Watson as he uses anyone else. Knowing his friend's active nature, he had to keep Watson in the dark in order to best use that personality trait. That Holmes cannot empathize with Watson's sense of betrayal is just one of the sacrifices he makes to follow his own singular path. Action is important, but must always be subsumed to the intellect, which alone holds the power. For Doyle and Holmes, this is true both in ourselves and in the symbolic representation of Holmes and Watson. Finally, it is notable that women are not presented in a very flattering way in this novel. Holmes never really had love interests, and the novel's only deep relationship is the friendship between Holmes and Watson. Here, despite her good intentions, Miss Stapleton is used mostly as a foil, to both the villain and Sir Henry. Laura Lyons, moreover, is motivated solely by finding the proper husband, and is easily manipulated by Stapleton and then by Holmes. Overall, women tend not to be as clever as men in Doyle's work, and they are often too fearful for their own lives to be of much help. Clearly, gender was not a primary theme in Doyle's mind, but his representation of women leaves much to be desired for a modern reader.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/chapters_14_to_15.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_7_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapters 14-15

chapter 14-15

{"name": "Chapter XIV-XV", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapter-xiv-xv", "summary": "The Hound of the Baskervilles The men - Watson, Holmes, and Lestrade - take up position about 200 yards from Merripit House, each armed with a pistol. Filled with anticipation, Watson sneaks closer to the house, and sees Sir Henry and Stapleton drinking inside. Miss Stapleton is nowhere to be seen. After a few minutes, Stapleton leaves the house and enters a nearby out-house. While he is inside, Watson hears some sounds from within. After Stapleton returns to the main house, Watson reports back to the others. Meanwhile, a fog begins to roll in, upsetting Holmes since it will compromise their visibility. They retreat a bit, to find some higher ground. From that vantage, they soon see Sir Henry anxiously pass. A moment later, Holmes cries out that the hound is coming. As quickly as he registers Holmes's terror, Watson sees an enormous hound, which does not look mortal at all. Fire bursts from its mouth and its body sparkles in the night. All three men are paralyzed by the savage sight. Regaining their composure, Holmes and Watson shoot at the beast. Though the shots do not stop it, it does cry out in pain. Holmes chases after the beast, and finds it prepared to tear out Sir Henry's throat. Holmes shoots the animal five times, killing it. Sir Henry is unwounded, but paralyzed in fear. They examine the hound's corpse, to discover that it is cross-breed of mastiff and bloodhound. Phosphorus has been placed around its muzzle, which explains why it seemed to spew fire, and its fur was covered with a glittery substance. Holmes then leads the others towards Stapleton, whom he fears has fled after hearing gunshots. The culprit's house is empty, though they find there that Miss Stapleton has been tied up and gagged in a locked room full of collected butterflies and moths. Her first inquiry after being released is for Sir Henry. Crying, she claims she would have suffered Stapleton's abuse had he actually loved her, but she now knows she was only his pawn. She also tells them that he probably fled to an old tin mine on an island in the heart of Grimpen Mire. This was the place where he kept the hound locked away. They decide not to pursue Stapleton that night, since there are too many dangerous pitfalls in Grimpen Mire. Miss Stapleton adds that even Stapleton himself will have faced dangers attempting the perilous path at night. The next morning, Sir Henry falls into a delirious fever. Watson tells the reader that the man does not recover until after a year of world travels, taken with Dr. Mortimer as companion. Miss Stapleton leads Holmes and Watson out into the mire, where they find nothing but Stapleton's boot, and therefore assume that he was lost in the bog while trying to escape. They also find traces of Mortimer's dog, as well as gnawed bones which suggest that Stapleton fed the hound in this place. Lastly, Holmes finds some paste in a tin, which he believes holds a trace of the phosphorus used. The main story ends as Holmes admits that Stapleton is the most dangerous man he has ever tracked. Chapter XV: A Retrospection In this final chapter, Watson recounts everything Holmes later told him about the case. At the end of November, about a month after the events near Baskerville, Watson feels comfortable asking for more information, since Holmes has since solved two other cases. Holmes declares that the case was only difficult because they did not know Stapleton's motive, but that he has learned much from two long conversations with Miss Stapleton. Stapleton - as Holmes continues to call him - was the son of Rodger Baskerville, Sir Charles's younger brother. When he died in South America, Rodger left behind one son, also named Rodger. This boy, who would later be known as Stapleton, stole money and fled to England, where he set up a school and changed his name to Vandeleur. When the school failed, he made inquiries into the Baskerville estate, and then moved to Devonshire. Though he had not yet formed an exact plan, he cultivated a friendship with Sir Charles and passed Beryl off as his sister. It was there that he learned about the legend of the hound, as well as about Sir Charles's weak heart and innate fear of the legend. It was then that he concocted his plan: he bought a large dog in London, devised the artificial means of making the creature seem so fearsome, and intended to use his wife to lure Sir Charles out into the moor at night. However, when she refused, he struck up a relationship with Laura Lyons to accomplish that purpose. Laura lured Sir Charles out that night by appealing to his mercy; he was going to give her money to secure her divorce. Stapleton convinced her not to go, and set the hound out, which terrified poor Sir Charles to death. The hound then retreated, leaving the pawprint that Dr. Mortimer would later see. Both women at that point suspected Stapleton of the murder, but were too much under his influence to take any action. When Sir Henry was set to arrive to England, Stapleton took his wife with him to London, as he distrusted her. From that place, she sent the note of warning that Sir Henry received. Stapleton stole one of Sir Henry's boots from the hotel, in order to acquaint the hound with his scent. But when Stapleton discovered that the first boot was too new to carry any personal scent, he had to steal an older one. It was the robbery of this second boot that initially convinced Holmes that they were indeed dealing with a real hound. Partially because of how cleverly Stapleton eluded him while in London, Holmes believes that the man's criminal past was greater than they know. He cites four unsolved burglaries in the area around the moor, in one of which a page lost his life after surprising the burglar. Holmes suspects that Stapleton returned to Devonshire only after realizing that Holmes was on the case in London. Watson then inquires as to how Stapleton took care of the hound while he was away. Holmes speculates that an old manservant took care of it. This man, named Anthony, has since disappeared from Merripit House, and Holmes believes that this man was actually a South American named Antonio. Holmes then adds that he could smell white jessamine on the warning note that was sent to Sir Henry. From that detail, he immediately suspected the Stapletons, since Dr. Mortimer had not mentioned many other females who lived out on the moor. Knowing he needed to watch Stapleton, but that the culprit would be too cautious if Holmes were out on the moor, Holmes engineered the ruse of sending Watson alone. However, even from his hidden position, Holmes discovered that he could not collect enough evidence to convict Stapleton unless he caught the man red-handed. Finally, they discuss Miss Stapleton. Both men believe that Sir Henry's turmoil after the incident is due in large part to a broken heart; he actually did love Miss Stapleton. However, his world trip with Dr. Mortimer is proving an excellent salve to his pain. Though he has no proof of her true feelings for Sir Henry, Holmes does know that Miss Stapleton attempted to stop her husband on the night of the murder, which is why he tied her up. Watson asks two follow-up questions. First, how could Stapleton have known that the hound would kill Sir Henry, especially since the man had no known health problems? Holmes replies that the animal had been starved, and that its savage appearance would certainly have incapacitated Sir Henry's resistance, even if it did not immediately terrify him to death. Secondly, how was Stapleton going to explain that he was actually a Baskerville after Sir Henry's death, without raising suspicion? To this question, Holmes admits that he does not know the answer: \"The past and the present are within the field of my inquiry, but what a man may do in the future is a hard question to answer\" . He speculates that Stapleton might have returned to South America to establish his claim from there, or that he might have taken a disguise in London. Finally, he considers that Stapleton might have used someone else to claim the estate. Holmes then invites Watson to join him for dinner and a show.", "analysis": "In the last chapter, we receive all the details of the case which were not accounted for through the adventure. This is notable because it reveals one responsibility of the detective story: it must tie up all loose ends and clues. Many Holmes scholars have tried to re-interpret some of his cases, to prove Sherlock Holmes wrong. Wanting to prevent this and ensure narrative conviction for all his readers, Doyle ensures that the details of his construction are firmly established, along with the final caveat that Holmes cannot tell the future. This final chapter also frames the detective story as something of a historical genre as well. It functions by revisiting past events, and re-interpreting the details that readers might have missed. Several small details - like the existence and death of a Rodger Baskerville, or Dr. Mortimer's missing dog - are later shown to be important, while others - like the smell on the warning letter - were even outside of Watson's observation. This quality is important because it inspires the reader to never assume he or she has observed everything. Sometimes, a past event will only reveal its meaning in the light of future events. Of course, what makes Hound of the Baskervilles so unique amongst Holmes stories is the quality of its adventure. Chapter XIV serves as an exciting climax, in many ways. First is the way that it brings the central conflict - of rationality versus superstition - to a head. It is fascinating that even Holmes is shocked into paralysis when the hound first appears. No matter the strength of our intellect, we have a tendency to believe our senses, and Holmes is struck dumb by the appearance of a supernatural being. However, it is more than just the savage appearance - of flames and glitter - and the gothic atmosphere - the overwhelming fog - that make the hound terrifying. It is also the mythology, which all the characters have internalized even if they doubt its veracity. In other words, Doyle does not simply write off the power of fear as subservient to the intellect, but rather gives it its due. One of other element of fearful uncertainty is that Stapleton's body is never found - it is entirely possible that he remains alive. In the end, Doyle obviously comes down on the side of rationality. Even this horrific beast can be rationally understood, its most savage qualities explained. But the idea - that everything has a scientific explanation if one knows how to look - is all the more powerful because it follows such an exciting climax, one that exploits all the atmosphere, gloom and terror of the novel's earlier chapters to engineer a deadly chase. Knowledge is most certainly power, as the novel has made clear, but one has to sometimes transcend one's instinctual fears and superstitions to obtain this knowledge. Finally, the reader might have some moral qualms about the end of the tale. The criminal has died, and Sir Henry is so traumatized that he must take a year long vacation. A modern reader might find Stapleton's inexorable evil a bit off-putting, since we tend to think any criminal can be reformed. However, as mentioned previously, attitudes on crime in Doyle's day tended to see depravity as an inherent, unfixable problem. Therefore, a criminal must be caught in the act, as Holmes does. The idea of acting proactively - whether through social programs or personal psychology - was simply not something Holmes or Doyle would have explicitly considered."}

One of Sherlock Holmes's defects--if, indeed, one may call it a defect--was that he was exceedingly loath to communicate his full plans to any other person until the instant of their fulfilment. Partly it came no doubt from his own masterful nature, which loved to dominate and surprise those who were around him. Partly also from his professional caution, which urged him never to take any chances. The result, however, was very trying for those who were acting as his agents and assistants. I had often suffered under it, but never more so than during that long drive in the darkness. The great ordeal was in front of us; at last we were about to make our final effort, and yet Holmes had said nothing, and I could only surmise what his course of action would be. My nerves thrilled with anticipation when at last the cold wind upon our faces and the dark, void spaces on either side of the narrow road told me that we were back upon the moor once again. Every stride of the horses and every turn of the wheels was taking us nearer to our supreme adventure. Our conversation was hampered by the presence of the driver of the hired wagonette, so that we were forced to talk of trivial matters when our nerves were tense with emotion and anticipation. It was a relief to me, after that unnatural restraint, when we at last passed Frankland's house and knew that we were drawing near to the Hall and to the scene of action. We did not drive up to the door but got down near the gate of the avenue. The wagonette was paid off and ordered to return to Coombe Tracey forthwith, while we started to walk to Merripit House. "Are you armed, Lestrade?" The little detective smiled. "As long as I have my trousers I have a hip-pocket, and as long as I have my hip-pocket I have something in it." "Good! My friend and I are also ready for emergencies." "You're mighty close about this affair, Mr. Holmes. What's the game now?" "A waiting game." "My word, it does not seem a very cheerful place," said the detective with a shiver, glancing round him at the gloomy slopes of the hill and at the huge lake of fog which lay over the Grimpen Mire. "I see the lights of a house ahead of us." "That is Merripit House and the end of our journey. I must request you to walk on tiptoe and not to talk above a whisper." We moved cautiously along the track as if we were bound for the house, but Holmes halted us when we were about two hundred yards from it. "This will do," said he. "These rocks upon the right make an admirable screen." "We are to wait here?" "Yes, we shall make our little ambush here. Get into this hollow, Lestrade. You have been inside the house, have you not, Watson? Can you tell the position of the rooms? What are those latticed windows at this end?" "I think they are the kitchen windows." "And the one beyond, which shines so brightly?" "That is certainly the dining-room." "The blinds are up. You know the lie of the land best. Creep forward quietly and see what they are doing--but for heaven's sake don't let them know that they are watched!" I tiptoed down the path and stooped behind the low wall which surrounded the stunted orchard. Creeping in its shadow I reached a point whence I could look straight through the uncurtained window. There were only two men in the room, Sir Henry and Stapleton. They sat with their profiles towards me on either side of the round table. Both of them were smoking cigars, and coffee and wine were in front of them. Stapleton was talking with animation, but the baronet looked pale and distrait. Perhaps the thought of that lonely walk across the ill-omened moor was weighing heavily upon his mind. As I watched them Stapleton rose and left the room, while Sir Henry filled his glass again and leaned back in his chair, puffing at his cigar. I heard the creak of a door and the crisp sound of boots upon gravel. The steps passed along the path on the other side of the wall under which I crouched. Looking over, I saw the naturalist pause at the door of an out-house in the corner of the orchard. A key turned in a lock, and as he passed in there was a curious scuffling noise from within. He was only a minute or so inside, and then I heard the key turn once more and he passed me and reentered the house. I saw him rejoin his guest, and I crept quietly back to where my companions were waiting to tell them what I had seen. "You say, Watson, that the lady is not there?" Holmes asked when I had finished my report. "No." "Where can she be, then, since there is no light in any other room except the kitchen?" "I cannot think where she is." I have said that over the great Grimpen Mire there hung a dense, white fog. It was drifting slowly in our direction and banked itself up like a wall on that side of us, low but thick and well defined. The moon shone on it, and it looked like a great shimmering ice-field, with the heads of the distant tors as rocks borne upon its surface. Holmes's face was turned towards it, and he muttered impatiently as he watched its sluggish drift. "It's moving towards us, Watson." "Is that serious?" "Very serious, indeed--the one thing upon earth which could have disarranged my plans. He can't be very long, now. It is already ten o'clock. Our success and even his life may depend upon his coming out before the fog is over the path." The night was clear and fine above us. The stars shone cold and bright, while a half-moon bathed the whole scene in a soft, uncertain light. Before us lay the dark bulk of the house, its serrated roof and bristling chimneys hard outlined against the silver-spangled sky. Broad bars of golden light from the lower windows stretched across the orchard and the moor. One of them was suddenly shut off. The servants had left the kitchen. There only remained the lamp in the dining-room where the two men, the murderous host and the unconscious guest, still chatted over their cigars. Every minute that white woolly plain which covered one-half of the moor was drifting closer and closer to the house. Already the first thin wisps of it were curling across the golden square of the lighted window. The farther wall of the orchard was already invisible, and the trees were standing out of a swirl of white vapour. As we watched it the fog-wreaths came crawling round both corners of the house and rolled slowly into one dense bank on which the upper floor and the roof floated like a strange ship upon a shadowy sea. Holmes struck his hand passionately upon the rock in front of us and stamped his feet in his impatience. "If he isn't out in a quarter of an hour the path will be covered. In half an hour we won't be able to see our hands in front of us." "Shall we move farther back upon higher ground?" "Yes, I think it would be as well." So as the fog-bank flowed onward we fell back before it until we were half a mile from the house, and still that dense white sea, with the moon silvering its upper edge, swept slowly and inexorably on. "We are going too far," said Holmes. "We dare not take the chance of his being overtaken before he can reach us. At all costs we must hold our ground where we are." He dropped on his knees and clapped his ear to the ground. "Thank God, I think that I hear him coming." A sound of quick steps broke the silence of the moor. Crouching among the stones we stared intently at the silver-tipped bank in front of us. The steps grew louder, and through the fog, as through a curtain, there stepped the man whom we were awaiting. He looked round him in surprise as he emerged into the clear, starlit night. Then he came swiftly along the path, passed close to where we lay, and went on up the long slope behind us. As he walked he glanced continually over either shoulder, like a man who is ill at ease. "Hist!" cried Holmes, and I heard the sharp click of a cocking pistol. "Look out! It's coming!" There was a thin, crisp, continuous patter from somewhere in the heart of that crawling bank. The cloud was within fifty yards of where we lay, and we glared at it, all three, uncertain what horror was about to break from the heart of it. I was at Holmes's elbow, and I glanced for an instant at his face. It was pale and exultant, his eyes shining brightly in the moonlight. But suddenly they started forward in a rigid, fixed stare, and his lips parted in amazement. At the same instant Lestrade gave a yell of terror and threw himself face downward upon the ground. I sprang to my feet, my inert hand grasping my pistol, my mind paralyzed by the dreadful shape which had sprung out upon us from the shadows of the fog. A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog. With long bounds the huge black creature was leaping down the track, following hard upon the footsteps of our friend. So paralyzed were we by the apparition that we allowed him to pass before we had recovered our nerve. Then Holmes and I both fired together, and the creature gave a hideous howl, which showed that one at least had hit him. He did not pause, however, but bounded onward. Far away on the path we saw Sir Henry looking back, his face white in the moonlight, his hands raised in horror, glaring helplessly at the frightful thing which was hunting him down. But that cry of pain from the hound had blown all our fears to the winds. If he was vulnerable he was mortal, and if we could wound him we could kill him. Never have I seen a man run as Holmes ran that night. I am reckoned fleet of foot, but he outpaced me as much as I outpaced the little professional. In front of us as we flew up the track we heard scream after scream from Sir Henry and the deep roar of the hound. I was in time to see the beast spring upon its victim, hurl him to the ground, and worry at his throat. But the next instant Holmes had emptied five barrels of his revolver into the creature's flank. With a last howl of agony and a vicious snap in the air, it rolled upon its back, four feet pawing furiously, and then fell limp upon its side. I stooped, panting, and pressed my pistol to the dreadful, shimmering head, but it was useless to press the trigger. The giant hound was dead. Sir Henry lay insensible where he had fallen. We tore away his collar, and Holmes breathed a prayer of gratitude when we saw that there was no sign of a wound and that the rescue had been in time. Already our friend's eyelids shivered and he made a feeble effort to move. Lestrade thrust his brandy-flask between the baronet's teeth, and two frightened eyes were looking up at us. "My God!" he whispered. "What was it? What, in heaven's name, was it?" "It's dead, whatever it is," said Holmes. "We've laid the family ghost once and forever." In mere size and strength it was a terrible creature which was lying stretched before us. It was not a pure bloodhound and it was not a pure mastiff; but it appeared to be a combination of the two--gaunt, savage, and as large as a small lioness. Even now in the stillness of death, the huge jaws seemed to be dripping with a bluish flame and the small, deep-set, cruel eyes were ringed with fire. I placed my hand upon the glowing muzzle, and as I held them up my own fingers smouldered and gleamed in the darkness. "Phosphorus," I said. "A cunning preparation of it," said Holmes, sniffing at the dead animal. "There is no smell which might have interfered with his power of scent. We owe you a deep apology, Sir Henry, for having exposed you to this fright. I was prepared for a hound, but not for such a creature as this. And the fog gave us little time to receive him." "You have saved my life." "Having first endangered it. Are you strong enough to stand?" "Give me another mouthful of that brandy and I shall be ready for anything. So! Now, if you will help me up. What do you propose to do?" "To leave you here. You are not fit for further adventures tonight. If you will wait, one or other of us will go back with you to the Hall." He tried to stagger to his feet; but he was still ghastly pale and trembling in every limb. We helped him to a rock, where he sat shivering with his face buried in his hands. "We must leave you now," said Holmes. "The rest of our work must be done, and every moment is of importance. We have our case, and now we only want our man. "It's a thousand to one against our finding him at the house," he continued as we retraced our steps swiftly down the path. "Those shots must have told him that the game was up." "We were some distance off, and this fog may have deadened them." "He followed the hound to call him off--of that you may be certain. No, no, he's gone by this time! But we'll search the house and make sure." The front door was open, so we rushed in and hurried from room to room to the amazement of a doddering old manservant, who met us in the passage. There was no light save in the dining-room, but Holmes caught up the lamp and left no corner of the house unexplored. No sign could we see of the man whom we were chasing. On the upper floor, however, one of the bedroom doors was locked. "There's someone in here," cried Lestrade. "I can hear a movement. Open this door!" A faint moaning and rustling came from within. Holmes struck the door just over the lock with the flat of his foot and it flew open. Pistol in hand, we all three rushed into the room. But there was no sign within it of that desperate and defiant villain whom we expected to see. Instead we were faced by an object so strange and so unexpected that we stood for a moment staring at it in amazement. The room had been fashioned into a small museum, and the walls were lined by a number of glass-topped cases full of that collection of butterflies and moths the formation of which had been the relaxation of this complex and dangerous man. In the centre of this room there was an upright beam, which had been placed at some period as a support for the old worm-eaten baulk of timber which spanned the roof. To this post a figure was tied, so swathed and muffled in the sheets which had been used to secure it that one could not for the moment tell whether it was that of a man or a woman. One towel passed round the throat and was secured at the back of the pillar. Another covered the lower part of the face, and over it two dark eyes--eyes full of grief and shame and a dreadful questioning--stared back at us. In a minute we had torn off the gag, unswathed the bonds, and Mrs. Stapleton sank upon the floor in front of us. As her beautiful head fell upon her chest I saw the clear red weal of a whiplash across her neck. "The brute!" cried Holmes. "Here, Lestrade, your brandy-bottle! Put her in the chair! She has fainted from ill-usage and exhaustion." She opened her eyes again. "Is he safe?" she asked. "Has he escaped?" "He cannot escape us, madam." "No, no, I did not mean my husband. Sir Henry? Is he safe?" "Yes." "And the hound?" "It is dead." She gave a long sigh of satisfaction. "Thank God! Thank God! Oh, this villain! See how he has treated me!" She shot her arms out from her sleeves, and we saw with horror that they were all mottled with bruises. "But this is nothing--nothing! It is my mind and soul that he has tortured and defiled. I could endure it all, ill-usage, solitude, a life of deception, everything, as long as I could still cling to the hope that I had his love, but now I know that in this also I have been his dupe and his tool." She broke into passionate sobbing as she spoke. "You bear him no good will, madam," said Holmes. "Tell us then where we shall find him. If you have ever aided him in evil, help us now and so atone." "There is but one place where he can have fled," she answered. "There is an old tin mine on an island in the heart of the mire. It was there that he kept his hound and there also he had made preparations so that he might have a refuge. That is where he would fly." The fog-bank lay like white wool against the window. Holmes held the lamp towards it. "See," said he. "No one could find his way into the Grimpen Mire tonight." She laughed and clapped her hands. Her eyes and teeth gleamed with fierce merriment. "He may find his way in, but never out," she cried. "How can he see the guiding wands tonight? We planted them together, he and I, to mark the pathway through the mire. Oh, if I could only have plucked them out today. Then indeed you would have had him at your mercy!" It was evident to us that all pursuit was in vain until the fog had lifted. Meanwhile we left Lestrade in possession of the house while Holmes and I went back with the baronet to Baskerville Hall. The story of the Stapletons could no longer be withheld from him, but he took the blow bravely when he learned the truth about the woman whom he had loved. But the shock of the night's adventures had shattered his nerves, and before morning he lay delirious in a high fever under the care of Dr. Mortimer. The two of them were destined to travel together round the world before Sir Henry had become once more the hale, hearty man that he had been before he became master of that ill-omened estate. And now I come rapidly to the conclusion of this singular narrative, in which I have tried to make the reader share those dark fears and vague surmises which clouded our lives so long and ended in so tragic a manner. On the morning after the death of the hound the fog had lifted and we were guided by Mrs. Stapleton to the point where they had found a pathway through the bog. It helped us to realize the horror of this woman's life when we saw the eagerness and joy with which she laid us on her husband's track. We left her standing upon the thin peninsula of firm, peaty soil which tapered out into the widespread bog. From the end of it a small wand planted here and there showed where the path zigzagged from tuft to tuft of rushes among those green-scummed pits and foul quagmires which barred the way to the stranger. Rank reeds and lush, slimy water-plants sent an odour of decay and a heavy miasmatic vapour onto our faces, while a false step plunged us more than once thigh-deep into the dark, quivering mire, which shook for yards in soft undulations around our feet. Its tenacious grip plucked at our heels as we walked, and when we sank into it it was as if some malignant hand was tugging us down into those obscene depths, so grim and purposeful was the clutch in which it held us. Once only we saw a trace that someone had passed that perilous way before us. From amid a tuft of cotton grass which bore it up out of the slime some dark thing was projecting. Holmes sank to his waist as he stepped from the path to seize it, and had we not been there to drag him out he could never have set his foot upon firm land again. He held an old black boot in the air. "Meyers, Toronto," was printed on the leather inside. "It is worth a mud bath," said he. "It is our friend Sir Henry's missing boot." "Thrown there by Stapleton in his flight." "Exactly. He retained it in his hand after using it to set the hound upon the track. He fled when he knew the game was up, still clutching it. And he hurled it away at this point of his flight. We know at least that he came so far in safety." But more than that we were never destined to know, though there was much which we might surmise. There was no chance of finding footsteps in the mire, for the rising mud oozed swiftly in upon them, but as we at last reached firmer ground beyond the morass we all looked eagerly for them. But no slightest sign of them ever met our eyes. If the earth told a true story, then Stapleton never reached that island of refuge towards which he struggled through the fog upon that last night. Somewhere in the heart of the great Grimpen Mire, down in the foul slime of the huge morass which had sucked him in, this cold and cruel-hearted man is forever buried. Many traces we found of him in the bog-girt island where he had hid his savage ally. A huge driving-wheel and a shaft half-filled with rubbish showed the position of an abandoned mine. Beside it were the crumbling remains of the cottages of the miners, driven away no doubt by the foul reek of the surrounding swamp. In one of these a staple and chain with a quantity of gnawed bones showed where the animal had been confined. A skeleton with a tangle of brown hair adhering to it lay among the debris. "A dog!" said Holmes. "By Jove, a curly-haired spaniel. Poor Mortimer will never see his pet again. Well, I do not know that this place contains any secret which we have not already fathomed. He could hide his hound, but he could not hush its voice, and hence came those cries which even in daylight were not pleasant to hear. On an emergency he could keep the hound in the out-house at Merripit, but it was always a risk, and it was only on the supreme day, which he regarded as the end of all his efforts, that he dared do it. This paste in the tin is no doubt the luminous mixture with which the creature was daubed. It was suggested, of course, by the story of the family hell-hound, and by the desire to frighten old Sir Charles to death. No wonder the poor devil of a convict ran and screamed, even as our friend did, and as we ourselves might have done, when he saw such a creature bounding through the darkness of the moor upon his track. It was a cunning device, for, apart from the chance of driving your victim to his death, what peasant would venture to inquire too closely into such a creature should he get sight of it, as many have done, upon the moor? I said it in London, Watson, and I say it again now, that never yet have we helped to hunt down a more dangerous man than he who is lying yonder"--he swept his long arm towards the huge mottled expanse of green-splotched bog which stretched away until it merged into the russet slopes of the moor. It was the end of November, and Holmes and I sat, upon a raw and foggy night, on either side of a blazing fire in our sitting-room in Baker Street. Since the tragic upshot of our visit to Devonshire he had been engaged in two affairs of the utmost importance, in the first of which he had exposed the atrocious conduct of Colonel Upwood in connection with the famous card scandal of the Nonpareil Club, while in the second he had defended the unfortunate Mme. Montpensier from the charge of murder which hung over her in connection with the death of her step-daughter, Mlle. Carere, the young lady who, as it will be remembered, was found six months later alive and married in New York. My friend was in excellent spirits over the success which had attended a succession of difficult and important cases, so that I was able to induce him to discuss the details of the Baskerville mystery. I had waited patiently for the opportunity for I was aware that he would never permit cases to overlap, and that his clear and logical mind would not be drawn from its present work to dwell upon memories of the past. Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer were, however, in London, on their way to that long voyage which had been recommended for the restoration of his shattered nerves. They had called upon us that very afternoon, so that it was natural that the subject should come up for discussion. "The whole course of events," said Holmes, "from the point of view of the man who called himself Stapleton was simple and direct, although to us, who had no means in the beginning of knowing the motives of his actions and could only learn part of the facts, it all appeared exceedingly complex. I have had the advantage of two conversations with Mrs. Stapleton, and the case has now been so entirely cleared up that I am not aware that there is anything which has remained a secret to us. You will find a few notes upon the matter under the heading B in my indexed list of cases." "Perhaps you would kindly give me a sketch of the course of events from memory." "Certainly, though I cannot guarantee that I carry all the facts in my mind. Intense mental concentration has a curious way of blotting out what has passed. The barrister who has his case at his fingers' ends and is able to argue with an expert upon his own subject finds that a week or two of the courts will drive it all out of his head once more. So each of my cases displaces the last, and Mlle. Carere has blurred my recollection of Baskerville Hall. Tomorrow some other little problem may be submitted to my notice which will in turn dispossess the fair French lady and the infamous Upwood. So far as the case of the hound goes, however, I will give you the course of events as nearly as I can, and you will suggest anything which I may have forgotten. "My inquiries show beyond all question that the family portrait did not lie, and that this fellow was indeed a Baskerville. He was a son of that Rodger Baskerville, the younger brother of Sir Charles, who fled with a sinister reputation to South America, where he was said to have died unmarried. He did, as a matter of fact, marry, and had one child, this fellow, whose real name is the same as his father's. He married Beryl Garcia, one of the beauties of Costa Rica, and, having purloined a considerable sum of public money, he changed his name to Vandeleur and fled to England, where he established a school in the east of Yorkshire. His reason for attempting this special line of business was that he had struck up an acquaintance with a consumptive tutor upon the voyage home, and that he had used this man's ability to make the undertaking a success. Fraser, the tutor, died however, and the school which had begun well sank from disrepute into infamy. The Vandeleurs found it convenient to change their name to Stapleton, and he brought the remains of his fortune, his schemes for the future, and his taste for entomology to the south of England. I learned at the British Museum that he was a recognized authority upon the subject, and that the name of Vandeleur has been permanently attached to a certain moth which he had, in his Yorkshire days, been the first to describe. "We now come to that portion of his life which has proved to be of such intense interest to us. The fellow had evidently made inquiry and found that only two lives intervened between him and a valuable estate. When he went to Devonshire his plans were, I believe, exceedingly hazy, but that he meant mischief from the first is evident from the way in which he took his wife with him in the character of his sister. The idea of using her as a decoy was clearly already in his mind, though he may not have been certain how the details of his plot were to be arranged. He meant in the end to have the estate, and he was ready to use any tool or run any risk for that end. His first act was to establish himself as near to his ancestral home as he could, and his second was to cultivate a friendship with Sir Charles Baskerville and with the neighbours. "The baronet himself told him about the family hound, and so prepared the way for his own death. Stapleton, as I will continue to call him, knew that the old man's heart was weak and that a shock would kill him. So much he had learned from Dr. Mortimer. He had heard also that Sir Charles was superstitious and had taken this grim legend very seriously. His ingenious mind instantly suggested a way by which the baronet could be done to death, and yet it would be hardly possible to bring home the guilt to the real murderer. "Having conceived the idea he proceeded to carry it out with considerable finesse. An ordinary schemer would have been content to work with a savage hound. The use of artificial means to make the creature diabolical was a flash of genius upon his part. The dog he bought in London from Ross and Mangles, the dealers in Fulham Road. It was the strongest and most savage in their possession. He brought it down by the North Devon line and walked a great distance over the moor so as to get it home without exciting any remarks. He had already on his insect hunts learned to penetrate the Grimpen Mire, and so had found a safe hiding-place for the creature. Here he kennelled it and waited his chance. "But it was some time coming. The old gentleman could not be decoyed outside of his grounds at night. Several times Stapleton lurked about with his hound, but without avail. It was during these fruitless quests that he, or rather his ally, was seen by peasants, and that the legend of the demon dog received a new confirmation. He had hoped that his wife might lure Sir Charles to his ruin, but here she proved unexpectedly independent. She would not endeavour to entangle the old gentleman in a sentimental attachment which might deliver him over to his enemy. Threats and even, I am sorry to say, blows refused to move her. She would have nothing to do with it, and for a time Stapleton was at a deadlock. "He found a way out of his difficulties through the chance that Sir Charles, who had conceived a friendship for him, made him the minister of his charity in the case of this unfortunate woman, Mrs. Laura Lyons. By representing himself as a single man he acquired complete influence over her, and he gave her to understand that in the event of her obtaining a divorce from her husband he would marry her. His plans were suddenly brought to a head by his knowledge that Sir Charles was about to leave the Hall on the advice of Dr. Mortimer, with whose opinion he himself pretended to coincide. He must act at once, or his victim might get beyond his power. He therefore put pressure upon Mrs. Lyons to write this letter, imploring the old man to give her an interview on the evening before his departure for London. He then, by a specious argument, prevented her from going, and so had the chance for which he had waited. "Driving back in the evening from Coombe Tracey he was in time to get his hound, to treat it with his infernal paint, and to bring the beast round to the gate at which he had reason to expect that he would find the old gentleman waiting. The dog, incited by its master, sprang over the wicket-gate and pursued the unfortunate baronet, who fled screaming down the yew alley. In that gloomy tunnel it must indeed have been a dreadful sight to see that huge black creature, with its flaming jaws and blazing eyes, bounding after its victim. He fell dead at the end of the alley from heart disease and terror. The hound had kept upon the grassy border while the baronet had run down the path, so that no track but the man's was visible. On seeing him lying still the creature had probably approached to sniff at him, but finding him dead had turned away again. It was then that it left the print which was actually observed by Dr. Mortimer. The hound was called off and hurried away to its lair in the Grimpen Mire, and a mystery was left which puzzled the authorities, alarmed the countryside, and finally brought the case within the scope of our observation. "So much for the death of Sir Charles Baskerville. You perceive the devilish cunning of it, for really it would be almost impossible to make a case against the real murderer. His only accomplice was one who could never give him away, and the grotesque, inconceivable nature of the device only served to make it more effective. Both of the women concerned in the case, Mrs. Stapleton and Mrs. Laura Lyons, were left with a strong suspicion against Stapleton. Mrs. Stapleton knew that he had designs upon the old man, and also of the existence of the hound. Mrs. Lyons knew neither of these things, but had been impressed by the death occurring at the time of an uncancelled appointment which was only known to him. However, both of them were under his influence, and he had nothing to fear from them. The first half of his task was successfully accomplished but the more difficult still remained. "It is possible that Stapleton did not know of the existence of an heir in Canada. In any case he would very soon learn it from his friend Dr. Mortimer, and he was told by the latter all details about the arrival of Henry Baskerville. Stapleton's first idea was that this young stranger from Canada might possibly be done to death in London without coming down to Devonshire at all. He distrusted his wife ever since she had refused to help him in laying a trap for the old man, and he dared not leave her long out of his sight for fear he should lose his influence over her. It was for this reason that he took her to London with him. They lodged, I find, at the Mexborough Private Hotel, in Craven Street, which was actually one of those called upon by my agent in search of evidence. Here he kept his wife imprisoned in her room while he, disguised in a beard, followed Dr. Mortimer to Baker Street and afterwards to the station and to the Northumberland Hotel. His wife had some inkling of his plans; but she had such a fear of her husband--a fear founded upon brutal ill-treatment--that she dare not write to warn the man whom she knew to be in danger. If the letter should fall into Stapleton's hands her own life would not be safe. Eventually, as we know, she adopted the expedient of cutting out the words which would form the message, and addressing the letter in a disguised hand. It reached the baronet, and gave him the first warning of his danger. "It was very essential for Stapleton to get some article of Sir Henry's attire so that, in case he was driven to use the dog, he might always have the means of setting him upon his track. With characteristic promptness and audacity he set about this at once, and we cannot doubt that the boots or chamber-maid of the hotel was well bribed to help him in his design. By chance, however, the first boot which was procured for him was a new one and, therefore, useless for his purpose. He then had it returned and obtained another--a most instructive incident, since it proved conclusively to my mind that we were dealing with a real hound, as no other supposition could explain this anxiety to obtain an old boot and this indifference to a new one. The more outre and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined, and the very point which appears to complicate a case is, when duly considered and scientifically handled, the one which is most likely to elucidate it. "Then we had the visit from our friends next morning, shadowed always by Stapleton in the cab. From his knowledge of our rooms and of my appearance, as well as from his general conduct, I am inclined to think that Stapleton's career of crime has been by no means limited to this single Baskerville affair. It is suggestive that during the last three years there have been four considerable burglaries in the west country, for none of which was any criminal ever arrested. The last of these, at Folkestone Court, in May, was remarkable for the cold-blooded pistolling of the page, who surprised the masked and solitary burglar. I cannot doubt that Stapleton recruited his waning resources in this fashion, and that for years he has been a desperate and dangerous man. "We had an example of his readiness of resource that morning when he got away from us so successfully, and also of his audacity in sending back my own name to me through the cabman. From that moment he understood that I had taken over the case in London, and that therefore there was no chance for him there. He returned to Dartmoor and awaited the arrival of the baronet." "One moment!" said I. "You have, no doubt, described the sequence of events correctly, but there is one point which you have left unexplained. What became of the hound when its master was in London?" "I have given some attention to this matter and it is undoubtedly of importance. There can be no question that Stapleton had a confidant, though it is unlikely that he ever placed himself in his power by sharing all his plans with him. There was an old manservant at Merripit House, whose name was Anthony. His connection with the Stapletons can be traced for several years, as far back as the school-mastering days, so that he must have been aware that his master and mistress were really husband and wife. This man has disappeared and has escaped from the country. It is suggestive that Anthony is not a common name in England, while Antonio is so in all Spanish or Spanish-American countries. The man, like Mrs. Stapleton herself, spoke good English, but with a curious lisping accent. I have myself seen this old man cross the Grimpen Mire by the path which Stapleton had marked out. It is very probable, therefore, that in the absence of his master it was he who cared for the hound, though he may never have known the purpose for which the beast was used. "The Stapletons then went down to Devonshire, whither they were soon followed by Sir Henry and you. One word now as to how I stood myself at that time. It may possibly recur to your memory that when I examined the paper upon which the printed words were fastened I made a close inspection for the water-mark. In doing so I held it within a few inches of my eyes, and was conscious of a faint smell of the scent known as white jessamine. There are seventy-five perfumes, which it is very necessary that a criminal expert should be able to distinguish from each other, and cases have more than once within my own experience depended upon their prompt recognition. The scent suggested the presence of a lady, and already my thoughts began to turn towards the Stapletons. Thus I had made certain of the hound, and had guessed at the criminal before ever we went to the west country. "It was my game to watch Stapleton. It was evident, however, that I could not do this if I were with you, since he would be keenly on his guard. I deceived everybody, therefore, yourself included, and I came down secretly when I was supposed to be in London. My hardships were not so great as you imagined, though such trifling details must never interfere with the investigation of a case. I stayed for the most part at Coombe Tracey, and only used the hut upon the moor when it was necessary to be near the scene of action. Cartwright had come down with me, and in his disguise as a country boy he was of great assistance to me. I was dependent upon him for food and clean linen. When I was watching Stapleton, Cartwright was frequently watching you, so that I was able to keep my hand upon all the strings. "I have already told you that your reports reached me rapidly, being forwarded instantly from Baker Street to Coombe Tracey. They were of great service to me, and especially that one incidentally truthful piece of biography of Stapleton's. I was able to establish the identity of the man and the woman and knew at last exactly how I stood. The case had been considerably complicated through the incident of the escaped convict and the relations between him and the Barrymores. This also you cleared up in a very effective way, though I had already come to the same conclusions from my own observations. "By the time that you discovered me upon the moor I had a complete knowledge of the whole business, but I had not a case which could go to a jury. Even Stapleton's attempt upon Sir Henry that night which ended in the death of the unfortunate convict did not help us much in proving murder against our man. There seemed to be no alternative but to catch him red-handed, and to do so we had to use Sir Henry, alone and apparently unprotected, as a bait. We did so, and at the cost of a severe shock to our client we succeeded in completing our case and driving Stapleton to his destruction. That Sir Henry should have been exposed to this is, I must confess, a reproach to my management of the case, but we had no means of foreseeing the terrible and paralyzing spectacle which the beast presented, nor could we predict the fog which enabled him to burst upon us at such short notice. We succeeded in our object at a cost which both the specialist and Dr. Mortimer assure me will be a temporary one. A long journey may enable our friend to recover not only from his shattered nerves but also from his wounded feelings. His love for the lady was deep and sincere, and to him the saddest part of all this black business was that he should have been deceived by her. "It only remains to indicate the part which she had played throughout. There can be no doubt that Stapleton exercised an influence over her which may have been love or may have been fear, or very possibly both, since they are by no means incompatible emotions. It was, at least, absolutely effective. At his command she consented to pass as his sister, though he found the limits of his power over her when he endeavoured to make her the direct accessory to murder. She was ready to warn Sir Henry so far as she could without implicating her husband, and again and again she tried to do so. Stapleton himself seems to have been capable of jealousy, and when he saw the baronet paying court to the lady, even though it was part of his own plan, still he could not help interrupting with a passionate outburst which revealed the fiery soul which his self-contained manner so cleverly concealed. By encouraging the intimacy he made it certain that Sir Henry would frequently come to Merripit House and that he would sooner or later get the opportunity which he desired. On the day of the crisis, however, his wife turned suddenly against him. She had learned something of the death of the convict, and she knew that the hound was being kept in the outhouse on the evening that Sir Henry was coming to dinner. She taxed her husband with his intended crime, and a furious scene followed in which he showed her for the first time that she had a rival in his love. Her fidelity turned in an instant to bitter hatred, and he saw that she would betray him. He tied her up, therefore, that she might have no chance of warning Sir Henry, and he hoped, no doubt, that when the whole countryside put down the baronet's death to the curse of his family, as they certainly would do, he could win his wife back to accept an accomplished fact and to keep silent upon what she knew. In this I fancy that in any case he made a miscalculation, and that, if we had not been there, his doom would none the less have been sealed. A woman of Spanish blood does not condone such an injury so lightly. And now, my dear Watson, without referring to my notes, I cannot give you a more detailed account of this curious case. I do not know that anything essential has been left unexplained." "He could not hope to frighten Sir Henry to death as he had done the old uncle with his bogie hound." "The beast was savage and half-starved. If its appearance did not frighten its victim to death, at least it would paralyze the resistance which might be offered." "No doubt. There only remains one difficulty. If Stapleton came into the succession, how could he explain the fact that he, the heir, had been living unannounced under another name so close to the property? How could he claim it without causing suspicion and inquiry?" "It is a formidable difficulty, and I fear that you ask too much when you expect me to solve it. The past and the present are within the field of my inquiry, but what a man may do in the future is a hard question to answer. Mrs. Stapleton has heard her husband discuss the problem on several occasions. There were three possible courses. He might claim the property from South America, establish his identity before the British authorities there and so obtain the fortune without ever coming to England at all, or he might adopt an elaborate disguise during the short time that he need be in London; or, again, he might furnish an accomplice with the proofs and papers, putting him in as heir, and retaining a claim upon some proportion of his income. We cannot doubt from what we know of him that he would have found some way out of the difficulty. And now, my dear Watson, we have had some weeks of severe work, and for one evening, I think, we may turn our thoughts into more pleasant channels. I have a box for 'Les Huguenots.' Have you heard the De Reszkes? Might I trouble you then to be ready in half an hour, and we can stop at Marcini's for a little dinner on the way?"

Chapter XIV-XV

https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapter-xiv-xv

The Hound of the Baskervilles The men - Watson, Holmes, and Lestrade - take up position about 200 yards from Merripit House, each armed with a pistol. Filled with anticipation, Watson sneaks closer to the house, and sees Sir Henry and Stapleton drinking inside. Miss Stapleton is nowhere to be seen. After a few minutes, Stapleton leaves the house and enters a nearby out-house. While he is inside, Watson hears some sounds from within. After Stapleton returns to the main house, Watson reports back to the others. Meanwhile, a fog begins to roll in, upsetting Holmes since it will compromise their visibility. They retreat a bit, to find some higher ground. From that vantage, they soon see Sir Henry anxiously pass. A moment later, Holmes cries out that the hound is coming. As quickly as he registers Holmes's terror, Watson sees an enormous hound, which does not look mortal at all. Fire bursts from its mouth and its body sparkles in the night. All three men are paralyzed by the savage sight. Regaining their composure, Holmes and Watson shoot at the beast. Though the shots do not stop it, it does cry out in pain. Holmes chases after the beast, and finds it prepared to tear out Sir Henry's throat. Holmes shoots the animal five times, killing it. Sir Henry is unwounded, but paralyzed in fear. They examine the hound's corpse, to discover that it is cross-breed of mastiff and bloodhound. Phosphorus has been placed around its muzzle, which explains why it seemed to spew fire, and its fur was covered with a glittery substance. Holmes then leads the others towards Stapleton, whom he fears has fled after hearing gunshots. The culprit's house is empty, though they find there that Miss Stapleton has been tied up and gagged in a locked room full of collected butterflies and moths. Her first inquiry after being released is for Sir Henry. Crying, she claims she would have suffered Stapleton's abuse had he actually loved her, but she now knows she was only his pawn. She also tells them that he probably fled to an old tin mine on an island in the heart of Grimpen Mire. This was the place where he kept the hound locked away. They decide not to pursue Stapleton that night, since there are too many dangerous pitfalls in Grimpen Mire. Miss Stapleton adds that even Stapleton himself will have faced dangers attempting the perilous path at night. The next morning, Sir Henry falls into a delirious fever. Watson tells the reader that the man does not recover until after a year of world travels, taken with Dr. Mortimer as companion. Miss Stapleton leads Holmes and Watson out into the mire, where they find nothing but Stapleton's boot, and therefore assume that he was lost in the bog while trying to escape. They also find traces of Mortimer's dog, as well as gnawed bones which suggest that Stapleton fed the hound in this place. Lastly, Holmes finds some paste in a tin, which he believes holds a trace of the phosphorus used. The main story ends as Holmes admits that Stapleton is the most dangerous man he has ever tracked. Chapter XV: A Retrospection In this final chapter, Watson recounts everything Holmes later told him about the case. At the end of November, about a month after the events near Baskerville, Watson feels comfortable asking for more information, since Holmes has since solved two other cases. Holmes declares that the case was only difficult because they did not know Stapleton's motive, but that he has learned much from two long conversations with Miss Stapleton. Stapleton - as Holmes continues to call him - was the son of Rodger Baskerville, Sir Charles's younger brother. When he died in South America, Rodger left behind one son, also named Rodger. This boy, who would later be known as Stapleton, stole money and fled to England, where he set up a school and changed his name to Vandeleur. When the school failed, he made inquiries into the Baskerville estate, and then moved to Devonshire. Though he had not yet formed an exact plan, he cultivated a friendship with Sir Charles and passed Beryl off as his sister. It was there that he learned about the legend of the hound, as well as about Sir Charles's weak heart and innate fear of the legend. It was then that he concocted his plan: he bought a large dog in London, devised the artificial means of making the creature seem so fearsome, and intended to use his wife to lure Sir Charles out into the moor at night. However, when she refused, he struck up a relationship with Laura Lyons to accomplish that purpose. Laura lured Sir Charles out that night by appealing to his mercy; he was going to give her money to secure her divorce. Stapleton convinced her not to go, and set the hound out, which terrified poor Sir Charles to death. The hound then retreated, leaving the pawprint that Dr. Mortimer would later see. Both women at that point suspected Stapleton of the murder, but were too much under his influence to take any action. When Sir Henry was set to arrive to England, Stapleton took his wife with him to London, as he distrusted her. From that place, she sent the note of warning that Sir Henry received. Stapleton stole one of Sir Henry's boots from the hotel, in order to acquaint the hound with his scent. But when Stapleton discovered that the first boot was too new to carry any personal scent, he had to steal an older one. It was the robbery of this second boot that initially convinced Holmes that they were indeed dealing with a real hound. Partially because of how cleverly Stapleton eluded him while in London, Holmes believes that the man's criminal past was greater than they know. He cites four unsolved burglaries in the area around the moor, in one of which a page lost his life after surprising the burglar. Holmes suspects that Stapleton returned to Devonshire only after realizing that Holmes was on the case in London. Watson then inquires as to how Stapleton took care of the hound while he was away. Holmes speculates that an old manservant took care of it. This man, named Anthony, has since disappeared from Merripit House, and Holmes believes that this man was actually a South American named Antonio. Holmes then adds that he could smell white jessamine on the warning note that was sent to Sir Henry. From that detail, he immediately suspected the Stapletons, since Dr. Mortimer had not mentioned many other females who lived out on the moor. Knowing he needed to watch Stapleton, but that the culprit would be too cautious if Holmes were out on the moor, Holmes engineered the ruse of sending Watson alone. However, even from his hidden position, Holmes discovered that he could not collect enough evidence to convict Stapleton unless he caught the man red-handed. Finally, they discuss Miss Stapleton. Both men believe that Sir Henry's turmoil after the incident is due in large part to a broken heart; he actually did love Miss Stapleton. However, his world trip with Dr. Mortimer is proving an excellent salve to his pain. Though he has no proof of her true feelings for Sir Henry, Holmes does know that Miss Stapleton attempted to stop her husband on the night of the murder, which is why he tied her up. Watson asks two follow-up questions. First, how could Stapleton have known that the hound would kill Sir Henry, especially since the man had no known health problems? Holmes replies that the animal had been starved, and that its savage appearance would certainly have incapacitated Sir Henry's resistance, even if it did not immediately terrify him to death. Secondly, how was Stapleton going to explain that he was actually a Baskerville after Sir Henry's death, without raising suspicion? To this question, Holmes admits that he does not know the answer: "The past and the present are within the field of my inquiry, but what a man may do in the future is a hard question to answer" . He speculates that Stapleton might have returned to South America to establish his claim from there, or that he might have taken a disguise in London. Finally, he considers that Stapleton might have used someone else to claim the estate. Holmes then invites Watson to join him for dinner and a show.

In the last chapter, we receive all the details of the case which were not accounted for through the adventure. This is notable because it reveals one responsibility of the detective story: it must tie up all loose ends and clues. Many Holmes scholars have tried to re-interpret some of his cases, to prove Sherlock Holmes wrong. Wanting to prevent this and ensure narrative conviction for all his readers, Doyle ensures that the details of his construction are firmly established, along with the final caveat that Holmes cannot tell the future. This final chapter also frames the detective story as something of a historical genre as well. It functions by revisiting past events, and re-interpreting the details that readers might have missed. Several small details - like the existence and death of a Rodger Baskerville, or Dr. Mortimer's missing dog - are later shown to be important, while others - like the smell on the warning letter - were even outside of Watson's observation. This quality is important because it inspires the reader to never assume he or she has observed everything. Sometimes, a past event will only reveal its meaning in the light of future events. Of course, what makes Hound of the Baskervilles so unique amongst Holmes stories is the quality of its adventure. Chapter XIV serves as an exciting climax, in many ways. First is the way that it brings the central conflict - of rationality versus superstition - to a head. It is fascinating that even Holmes is shocked into paralysis when the hound first appears. No matter the strength of our intellect, we have a tendency to believe our senses, and Holmes is struck dumb by the appearance of a supernatural being. However, it is more than just the savage appearance - of flames and glitter - and the gothic atmosphere - the overwhelming fog - that make the hound terrifying. It is also the mythology, which all the characters have internalized even if they doubt its veracity. In other words, Doyle does not simply write off the power of fear as subservient to the intellect, but rather gives it its due. One of other element of fearful uncertainty is that Stapleton's body is never found - it is entirely possible that he remains alive. In the end, Doyle obviously comes down on the side of rationality. Even this horrific beast can be rationally understood, its most savage qualities explained. But the idea - that everything has a scientific explanation if one knows how to look - is all the more powerful because it follows such an exciting climax, one that exploits all the atmosphere, gloom and terror of the novel's earlier chapters to engineer a deadly chase. Knowledge is most certainly power, as the novel has made clear, but one has to sometimes transcend one's instinctual fears and superstitions to obtain this knowledge. Finally, the reader might have some moral qualms about the end of the tale. The criminal has died, and Sir Henry is so traumatized that he must take a year long vacation. A modern reader might find Stapleton's inexorable evil a bit off-putting, since we tend to think any criminal can be reformed. However, as mentioned previously, attitudes on crime in Doyle's day tended to see depravity as an inherent, unfixable problem. Therefore, a criminal must be caught in the act, as Holmes does. The idea of acting proactively - whether through social programs or personal psychology - was simply not something Holmes or Doyle would have explicitly considered.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/01.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_0_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 1

chapter 1

{"name": "Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-1", "summary": "An unknown visitor has come by the house that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson share, but they weren't home to meet him. Watson inspects a walking stick that the visitor mistakenly left behind. Watson notices that it's made of nice wood and it has a band of silver under the handle dedicated \"To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.,\" dated 1884 . Watson guesses that the stick belongs to an older country doctor, and that it was a present from the local hunting organization. Holmes breaks the news to Watson: he's mostly wrong. But his dumb ideas have helped Holmes to get the right idea. Yeah, James Mortimer is a doctor , and he does live in the countryside. But the \"H\" in \"C.C.H.\" probably means hospital rather than hunt. Holmes concludes that Mortimer must be a young man who did his medical residency at the Charing Cross Hospital before moving out to the countryside to start his own practice. Also, Holmes guesses from tooth marks on the stick that Dr. Mortimer owns a smallish dog. According to Holmes' records, there is a Dr. James Mortimer living in Dartmoor, in a town called Grimpen. Just then, Dr. Mortimer appears at their door, and it's all as Holmes says. He's young, he has a smallish dog, he left Charing Cross Hospital some time ago to set up his practice in the countryside . Dr. Mortimer is here because he has a most extraordinary problem .", "analysis": ""}

Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before. It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a "Penang lawyer." Just under the head was a broad silver band nearly an inch across. "To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.," was engraved upon it, with the date "1884." It was just such a stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry--dignified, solid, and reassuring. "Well, Watson, what do you make of it?" Holmes was sitting with his back to me, and I had given him no sign of my occupation. "How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back of your head." "I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me," said he. "But, tell me, Watson, what do you make of our visitor's stick? Since we have been so unfortunate as to miss him and have no notion of his errand, this accidental souvenir becomes of importance. Let me hear you reconstruct the man by an examination of it." "I think," said I, following as far as I could the methods of my companion, "that Dr. Mortimer is a successful, elderly medical man, well-esteemed since those who know him give him this mark of their appreciation." "Good!" said Holmes. "Excellent!" "I think also that the probability is in favour of his being a country practitioner who does a great deal of his visiting on foot." "Why so?" "Because this stick, though originally a very handsome one has been so knocked about that I can hardly imagine a town practitioner carrying it. The thick-iron ferrule is worn down, so it is evident that he has done a great amount of walking with it." "Perfectly sound!" said Holmes. "And then again, there is the 'friends of the C.C.H.' I should guess that to be the Something Hunt, the local hunt to whose members he has possibly given some surgical assistance, and which has made him a small presentation in return." "Really, Watson, you excel yourself," said Holmes, pushing back his chair and lighting a cigarette. "I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt." He had never said as much before, and I must admit that his words gave me keen pleasure, for I had often been piqued by his indifference to my admiration and to the attempts which I had made to give publicity to his methods. I was proud, too, to think that I had so far mastered his system as to apply it in a way which earned his approval. He now took the stick from my hands and examined it for a few minutes with his naked eyes. Then with an expression of interest he laid down his cigarette, and carrying the cane to the window, he looked over it again with a convex lens. "Interesting, though elementary," said he as he returned to his favourite corner of the settee. "There are certainly one or two indications upon the stick. It gives us the basis for several deductions." "Has anything escaped me?" I asked with some self-importance. "I trust that there is nothing of consequence which I have overlooked?" "I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were erroneous. When I said that you stimulated me I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth. Not that you are entirely wrong in this instance. The man is certainly a country practitioner. And he walks a good deal." "Then I was right." "To that extent." "But that was all." "No, no, my dear Watson, not all--by no means all. I would suggest, for example, that a presentation to a doctor is more likely to come from a hospital than from a hunt, and that when the initials 'C.C.' are placed before that hospital the words 'Charing Cross' very naturally suggest themselves." "You may be right." "The probability lies in that direction. And if we take this as a working hypothesis we have a fresh basis from which to start our construction of this unknown visitor." "Well, then, supposing that 'C.C.H.' does stand for 'Charing Cross Hospital,' what further inferences may we draw?" "Do none suggest themselves? You know my methods. Apply them!" "I can only think of the obvious conclusion that the man has practised in town before going to the country." "I think that we might venture a little farther than this. Look at it in this light. On what occasion would it be most probable that such a presentation would be made? When would his friends unite to give him a pledge of their good will? Obviously at the moment when Dr. Mortimer withdrew from the service of the hospital in order to start a practice for himself. We know there has been a presentation. We believe there has been a change from a town hospital to a country practice. Is it, then, stretching our inference too far to say that the presentation was on the occasion of the change?" "It certainly seems probable." "Now, you will observe that he could not have been on the staff of the hospital, since only a man well-established in a London practice could hold such a position, and such a one would not drift into the country. What was he, then? If he was in the hospital and yet not on the staff he could only have been a house-surgeon or a house-physician--little more than a senior student. And he left five years ago--the date is on the stick. So your grave, middle-aged family practitioner vanishes into thin air, my dear Watson, and there emerges a young fellow under thirty, amiable, unambitious, absent-minded, and the possessor of a favourite dog, which I should describe roughly as being larger than a terrier and smaller than a mastiff." I laughed incredulously as Sherlock Holmes leaned back in his settee and blew little wavering rings of smoke up to the ceiling. "As to the latter part, I have no means of checking you," said I, "but at least it is not difficult to find out a few particulars about the man's age and professional career." From my small medical shelf I took down the Medical Directory and turned up the name. There were several Mortimers, but only one who could be our visitor. I read his record aloud. "Mortimer, James, M.R.C.S., 1882, Grimpen, Dartmoor, Devon. House-surgeon, from 1882 to 1884, at Charing Cross Hospital. Winner of the Jackson prize for Comparative Pathology, with essay entitled 'Is Disease a Reversion?' Corresponding member of the Swedish Pathological Society. Author of 'Some Freaks of Atavism' (Lancet 1882). 'Do We Progress?' (Journal of Psychology, March, 1883). Medical Officer for the parishes of Grimpen, Thorsley, and High Barrow." "No mention of that local hunt, Watson," said Holmes with a mischievous smile, "but a country doctor, as you very astutely observed. I think that I am fairly justified in my inferences. As to the adjectives, I said, if I remember right, amiable, unambitious, and absent-minded. It is my experience that it is only an amiable man in this world who receives testimonials, only an unambitious one who abandons a London career for the country, and only an absent-minded one who leaves his stick and not his visiting-card after waiting an hour in your room." "And the dog?" "Has been in the habit of carrying this stick behind his master. Being a heavy stick the dog has held it tightly by the middle, and the marks of his teeth are very plainly visible. The dog's jaw, as shown in the space between these marks, is too broad in my opinion for a terrier and not broad enough for a mastiff. It may have been--yes, by Jove, it is a curly-haired spaniel." He had risen and paced the room as he spoke. Now he halted in the recess of the window. There was such a ring of conviction in his voice that I glanced up in surprise. "My dear fellow, how can you possibly be so sure of that?" "For the very simple reason that I see the dog himself on our very door-step, and there is the ring of its owner. Don't move, I beg you, Watson. He is a professional brother of yours, and your presence may be of assistance to me. Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill. What does Dr. James Mortimer, the man of science, ask of Sherlock Holmes, the specialist in crime? Come in!" The appearance of our visitor was a surprise to me, since I had expected a typical country practitioner. He was a very tall, thin man, with a long nose like a beak, which jutted out between two keen, gray eyes, set closely together and sparkling brightly from behind a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. He was clad in a professional but rather slovenly fashion, for his frock-coat was dingy and his trousers frayed. Though young, his long back was already bowed, and he walked with a forward thrust of his head and a general air of peering benevolence. As he entered his eyes fell upon the stick in Holmes's hand, and he ran towards it with an exclamation of joy. "I am so very glad," said he. "I was not sure whether I had left it here or in the Shipping Office. I would not lose that stick for the world." "A presentation, I see," said Holmes. "Yes, sir." "From Charing Cross Hospital?" "From one or two friends there on the occasion of my marriage." "Dear, dear, that's bad!" said Holmes, shaking his head. Dr. Mortimer blinked through his glasses in mild astonishment. "Why was it bad?" "Only that you have disarranged our little deductions. Your marriage, you say?" "Yes, sir. I married, and so left the hospital, and with it all hopes of a consulting practice. It was necessary to make a home of my own." "Come, come, we are not so far wrong, after all," said Holmes. "And now, Dr. James Mortimer--" "Mister, sir, Mister--a humble M.R.C.S." "And a man of precise mind, evidently." "A dabbler in science, Mr. Holmes, a picker up of shells on the shores of the great unknown ocean. I presume that it is Mr. Sherlock Holmes whom I am addressing and not--" "No, this is my friend Dr. Watson." "Glad to meet you, sir. I have heard your name mentioned in connection with that of your friend. You interest me very much, Mr. Holmes. I had hardly expected so dolichocephalic a skull or such well-marked supra-orbital development. Would you have any objection to my running my finger along your parietal fissure? A cast of your skull, sir, until the original is available, would be an ornament to any anthropological museum. It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull." Sherlock Holmes waved our strange visitor into a chair. "You are an enthusiast in your line of thought, I perceive, sir, as I am in mine," said he. "I observe from your forefinger that you make your own cigarettes. Have no hesitation in lighting one." The man drew out paper and tobacco and twirled the one up in the other with surprising dexterity. He had long, quivering fingers as agile and restless as the antennae of an insect. Holmes was silent, but his little darting glances showed me the interest which he took in our curious companion. "I presume, sir," said he at last, "that it was not merely for the purpose of examining my skull that you have done me the honour to call here last night and again today?" "No, sir, no; though I am happy to have had the opportunity of doing that as well. I came to you, Mr. Holmes, because I recognized that I am myself an unpractical man and because I am suddenly confronted with a most serious and extraordinary problem. Recognizing, as I do, that you are the second highest expert in Europe--" "Indeed, sir! May I inquire who has the honour to be the first?" asked Holmes with some asperity. "To the man of precisely scientific mind the work of Monsieur Bertillon must always appeal strongly." "Then had you not better consult him?" "I said, sir, to the precisely scientific mind. But as a practical man of affairs it is acknowledged that you stand alone. I trust, sir, that I have not inadvertently--" "Just a little," said Holmes. "I think, Dr. Mortimer, you would do wisely if without more ado you would kindly tell me plainly what the exact nature of the problem is in which you demand my assistance."

Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-1

An unknown visitor has come by the house that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson share, but they weren't home to meet him. Watson inspects a walking stick that the visitor mistakenly left behind. Watson notices that it's made of nice wood and it has a band of silver under the handle dedicated "To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.," dated 1884 . Watson guesses that the stick belongs to an older country doctor, and that it was a present from the local hunting organization. Holmes breaks the news to Watson: he's mostly wrong. But his dumb ideas have helped Holmes to get the right idea. Yeah, James Mortimer is a doctor , and he does live in the countryside. But the "H" in "C.C.H." probably means hospital rather than hunt. Holmes concludes that Mortimer must be a young man who did his medical residency at the Charing Cross Hospital before moving out to the countryside to start his own practice. Also, Holmes guesses from tooth marks on the stick that Dr. Mortimer owns a smallish dog. According to Holmes' records, there is a Dr. James Mortimer living in Dartmoor, in a town called Grimpen. Just then, Dr. Mortimer appears at their door, and it's all as Holmes says. He's young, he has a smallish dog, he left Charing Cross Hospital some time ago to set up his practice in the countryside . Dr. Mortimer is here because he has a most extraordinary problem .

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/02.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_1_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 2

chapter 2

{"name": "Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-2", "summary": "Dr. Mortimer hands a manuscript to Holmes. It's old--it dates back to 1742, at least a hundred fifty years before the events of Hound of the Baskervilles. Dr. Mortimer got the manuscript from his friend, Sir Charles Baskerville. And even though the manuscript deals with an old family legend, Dr. Mortimer is here on very contemporary business. The manuscript tells the story of Hugo Baskerville and the family curse This Hugo Baskerville, gets into some bad trouble around the time of the \"Great Rebellion\" . He likes to drink, curse, and rough people up. One night, he kidnaps a neighboring woman with five or six of his friends and locks her up in his mansion while he parties with his buddies. She manages to climb down some ivy to escape his evil clutches. Hugo Baskerville swears that he will sell his soul for the power to catch her. Hugo Baskerville then has the bright idea of riding out after her with his pack of hounds. The drunken partygoers finally realize, hey, if Hugo Baskerville succeeds in catching her, something terrible is going to happen. Really? So they ride out after Hugo Baskerville and his pack of hounds. They find his lifeless body on the ground near the girl's. The girl has died of fear and exhaustion after running from Hugo Baskerville. But Hugo Baskerville's death is much more gruesome: the former partygoers watch a huge, ghostly-looking black hound tear his throat out. Holmes doesn't think much of this whole story--it's just a fairy tale. So Dr. Mortimer continues his story. Sir Charles Baskerville, the descendant of this nasty Hugo, has just died mysteriously. He had heart trouble, so it's not impossible that he died of natural causes. But his body was found lying at the end of his own driveway with such a grotesque expression that Dr. Mortimer had trouble recognizing him. Apparently, Sir Charles had become very afraid of this story of the black dog and Hugo Baskerville. And here's the kicker: near Sir Charles' body, Dr. Mortimer found footprints--the footprints of a giant dog.", "analysis": ""}

"I have in my pocket a manuscript," said Dr. James Mortimer. "I observed it as you entered the room," said Holmes. "It is an old manuscript." "Early eighteenth century, unless it is a forgery." "How can you say that, sir?" "You have presented an inch or two of it to my examination all the time that you have been talking. It would be a poor expert who could not give the date of a document within a decade or so. You may possibly have read my little monograph upon the subject. I put that at 1730." "The exact date is 1742." Dr. Mortimer drew it from his breast-pocket. "This family paper was committed to my care by Sir Charles Baskerville, whose sudden and tragic death some three months ago created so much excitement in Devonshire. I may say that I was his personal friend as well as his medical attendant. He was a strong-minded man, sir, shrewd, practical, and as unimaginative as I am myself. Yet he took this document very seriously, and his mind was prepared for just such an end as did eventually overtake him." Holmes stretched out his hand for the manuscript and flattened it upon his knee. "You will observe, Watson, the alternative use of the long s and the short. It is one of several indications which enabled me to fix the date." I looked over his shoulder at the yellow paper and the faded script. At the head was written: "Baskerville Hall," and below in large, scrawling figures: "1742." "It appears to be a statement of some sort." "Yes, it is a statement of a certain legend which runs in the Baskerville family." "But I understand that it is something more modern and practical upon which you wish to consult me?" "Most modern. A most practical, pressing matter, which must be decided within twenty-four hours. But the manuscript is short and is intimately connected with the affair. With your permission I will read it to you." Holmes leaned back in his chair, placed his finger-tips together, and closed his eyes, with an air of resignation. Dr. Mortimer turned the manuscript to the light and read in a high, cracking voice the following curious, old-world narrative: "Of the origin of the Hound of the Baskervilles there have been many statements, yet as I come in a direct line from Hugo Baskerville, and as I had the story from my father, who also had it from his, I have set it down with all belief that it occurred even as is here set forth. And I would have you believe, my sons, that the same Justice which punishes sin may also most graciously forgive it, and that no ban is so heavy but that by prayer and repentance it may be removed. Learn then from this story not to fear the fruits of the past, but rather to be circumspect in the future, that those foul passions whereby our family has suffered so grievously may not again be loosed to our undoing. "Know then that in the time of the Great Rebellion (the history of which by the learned Lord Clarendon I most earnestly commend to your attention) this Manor of Baskerville was held by Hugo of that name, nor can it be gainsaid that he was a most wild, profane, and godless man. This, in truth, his neighbours might have pardoned, seeing that saints have never flourished in those parts, but there was in him a certain wanton and cruel humour which made his name a by-word through the West. It chanced that this Hugo came to love (if, indeed, so dark a passion may be known under so bright a name) the daughter of a yeoman who held lands near the Baskerville estate. But the young maiden, being discreet and of good repute, would ever avoid him, for she feared his evil name. So it came to pass that one Michaelmas this Hugo, with five or six of his idle and wicked companions, stole down upon the farm and carried off the maiden, her father and brothers being from home, as he well knew. When they had brought her to the Hall the maiden was placed in an upper chamber, while Hugo and his friends sat down to a long carouse, as was their nightly custom. Now, the poor lass upstairs was like to have her wits turned at the singing and shouting and terrible oaths which came up to her from below, for they say that the words used by Hugo Baskerville, when he was in wine, were such as might blast the man who said them. At last in the stress of her fear she did that which might have daunted the bravest or most active man, for by the aid of the growth of ivy which covered (and still covers) the south wall she came down from under the eaves, and so homeward across the moor, there being three leagues betwixt the Hall and her father's farm. "It chanced that some little time later Hugo left his guests to carry food and drink--with other worse things, perchance--to his captive, and so found the cage empty and the bird escaped. Then, as it would seem, he became as one that hath a devil, for, rushing down the stairs into the dining-hall, he sprang upon the great table, flagons and trenchers flying before him, and he cried aloud before all the company that he would that very night render his body and soul to the Powers of Evil if he might but overtake the wench. And while the revellers stood aghast at the fury of the man, one more wicked or, it may be, more drunken than the rest, cried out that they should put the hounds upon her. Whereat Hugo ran from the house, crying to his grooms that they should saddle his mare and unkennel the pack, and giving the hounds a kerchief of the maid's, he swung them to the line, and so off full cry in the moonlight over the moor. "Now, for some space the revellers stood agape, unable to understand all that had been done in such haste. But anon their bemused wits awoke to the nature of the deed which was like to be done upon the moorlands. Everything was now in an uproar, some calling for their pistols, some for their horses, and some for another flask of wine. But at length some sense came back to their crazed minds, and the whole of them, thirteen in number, took horse and started in pursuit. The moon shone clear above them, and they rode swiftly abreast, taking that course which the maid must needs have taken if she were to reach her own home. "They had gone a mile or two when they passed one of the night shepherds upon the moorlands, and they cried to him to know if he had seen the hunt. And the man, as the story goes, was so crazed with fear that he could scarce speak, but at last he said that he had indeed seen the unhappy maiden, with the hounds upon her track. 'But I have seen more than that,' said he, 'for Hugo Baskerville passed me upon his black mare, and there ran mute behind him such a hound of hell as God forbid should ever be at my heels.' So the drunken squires cursed the shepherd and rode onward. But soon their skins turned cold, for there came a galloping across the moor, and the black mare, dabbled with white froth, went past with trailing bridle and empty saddle. Then the revellers rode close together, for a great fear was on them, but they still followed over the moor, though each, had he been alone, would have been right glad to have turned his horse's head. Riding slowly in this fashion they came at last upon the hounds. These, though known for their valour and their breed, were whimpering in a cluster at the head of a deep dip or goyal, as we call it, upon the moor, some slinking away and some, with starting hackles and staring eyes, gazing down the narrow valley before them. "The company had come to a halt, more sober men, as you may guess, than when they started. The most of them would by no means advance, but three of them, the boldest, or it may be the most drunken, rode forward down the goyal. Now, it opened into a broad space in which stood two of those great stones, still to be seen there, which were set by certain forgotten peoples in the days of old. The moon was shining bright upon the clearing, and there in the centre lay the unhappy maid where she had fallen, dead of fear and of fatigue. But it was not the sight of her body, nor yet was it that of the body of Hugo Baskerville lying near her, which raised the hair upon the heads of these three dare-devil roysterers, but it was that, standing over Hugo, and plucking at his throat, there stood a foul thing, a great, black beast, shaped like a hound, yet larger than any hound that ever mortal eye has rested upon. And even as they looked the thing tore the throat out of Hugo Baskerville, on which, as it turned its blazing eyes and dripping jaws upon them, the three shrieked with fear and rode for dear life, still screaming, across the moor. One, it is said, died that very night of what he had seen, and the other twain were but broken men for the rest of their days. "Such is the tale, my sons, of the coming of the hound which is said to have plagued the family so sorely ever since. If I have set it down it is because that which is clearly known hath less terror than that which is but hinted at and guessed. Nor can it be denied that many of the family have been unhappy in their deaths, which have been sudden, bloody, and mysterious. Yet may we shelter ourselves in the infinite goodness of Providence, which would not forever punish the innocent beyond that third or fourth generation which is threatened in Holy Writ. To that Providence, my sons, I hereby commend you, and I counsel you by way of caution to forbear from crossing the moor in those dark hours when the powers of evil are exalted. "[This from Hugo Baskerville to his sons Rodger and John, with instructions that they say nothing thereof to their sister Elizabeth.]" When Dr. Mortimer had finished reading this singular narrative he pushed his spectacles up on his forehead and stared across at Mr. Sherlock Holmes. The latter yawned and tossed the end of his cigarette into the fire. "Well?" said he. "Do you not find it interesting?" "To a collector of fairy tales." Dr. Mortimer drew a folded newspaper out of his pocket. "Now, Mr. Holmes, we will give you something a little more recent. This is the Devon County Chronicle of May 14th of this year. It is a short account of the facts elicited at the death of Sir Charles Baskerville which occurred a few days before that date." My friend leaned a little forward and his expression became intent. Our visitor readjusted his glasses and began: "The recent sudden death of Sir Charles Baskerville, whose name has been mentioned as the probable Liberal candidate for Mid-Devon at the next election, has cast a gloom over the county. Though Sir Charles had resided at Baskerville Hall for a comparatively short period his amiability of character and extreme generosity had won the affection and respect of all who had been brought into contact with him. In these days of nouveaux riches it is refreshing to find a case where the scion of an old county family which has fallen upon evil days is able to make his own fortune and to bring it back with him to restore the fallen grandeur of his line. Sir Charles, as is well known, made large sums of money in South African speculation. More wise than those who go on until the wheel turns against them, he realized his gains and returned to England with them. It is only two years since he took up his residence at Baskerville Hall, and it is common talk how large were those schemes of reconstruction and improvement which have been interrupted by his death. Being himself childless, it was his openly expressed desire that the whole countryside should, within his own lifetime, profit by his good fortune, and many will have personal reasons for bewailing his untimely end. His generous donations to local and county charities have been frequently chronicled in these columns. "The circumstances connected with the death of Sir Charles cannot be said to have been entirely cleared up by the inquest, but at least enough has been done to dispose of those rumours to which local superstition has given rise. There is no reason whatever to suspect foul play, or to imagine that death could be from any but natural causes. Sir Charles was a widower, and a man who may be said to have been in some ways of an eccentric habit of mind. In spite of his considerable wealth he was simple in his personal tastes, and his indoor servants at Baskerville Hall consisted of a married couple named Barrymore, the husband acting as butler and the wife as housekeeper. Their evidence, corroborated by that of several friends, tends to show that Sir Charles's health has for some time been impaired, and points especially to some affection of the heart, manifesting itself in changes of colour, breathlessness, and acute attacks of nervous depression. Dr. James Mortimer, the friend and medical attendant of the deceased, has given evidence to the same effect. "The facts of the case are simple. Sir Charles Baskerville was in the habit every night before going to bed of walking down the famous yew alley of Baskerville Hall. The evidence of the Barrymores shows that this had been his custom. On the fourth of May Sir Charles had declared his intention of starting next day for London, and had ordered Barrymore to prepare his luggage. That night he went out as usual for his nocturnal walk, in the course of which he was in the habit of smoking a cigar. He never returned. At twelve o'clock Barrymore, finding the hall door still open, became alarmed, and, lighting a lantern, went in search of his master. The day had been wet, and Sir Charles's footmarks were easily traced down the alley. Halfway down this walk there is a gate which leads out on to the moor. There were indications that Sir Charles had stood for some little time here. He then proceeded down the alley, and it was at the far end of it that his body was discovered. One fact which has not been explained is the statement of Barrymore that his master's footprints altered their character from the time that he passed the moor-gate, and that he appeared from thence onward to have been walking upon his toes. One Murphy, a gipsy horse-dealer, was on the moor at no great distance at the time, but he appears by his own confession to have been the worse for drink. He declares that he heard cries but is unable to state from what direction they came. No signs of violence were to be discovered upon Sir Charles's person, and though the doctor's evidence pointed to an almost incredible facial distortion--so great that Dr. Mortimer refused at first to believe that it was indeed his friend and patient who lay before him--it was explained that that is a symptom which is not unusual in cases of dyspnoea and death from cardiac exhaustion. This explanation was borne out by the post-mortem examination, which showed long-standing organic disease, and the coroner's jury returned a verdict in accordance with the medical evidence. It is well that this is so, for it is obviously of the utmost importance that Sir Charles's heir should settle at the Hall and continue the good work which has been so sadly interrupted. Had the prosaic finding of the coroner not finally put an end to the romantic stories which have been whispered in connection with the affair, it might have been difficult to find a tenant for Baskerville Hall. It is understood that the next of kin is Mr. Henry Baskerville, if he be still alive, the son of Sir Charles Baskerville's younger brother. The young man when last heard of was in America, and inquiries are being instituted with a view to informing him of his good fortune." Dr. Mortimer refolded his paper and replaced it in his pocket. "Those are the public facts, Mr. Holmes, in connection with the death of Sir Charles Baskerville." "I must thank you," said Sherlock Holmes, "for calling my attention to a case which certainly presents some features of interest. I had observed some newspaper comment at the time, but I was exceedingly preoccupied by that little affair of the Vatican cameos, and in my anxiety to oblige the Pope I lost touch with several interesting English cases. This article, you say, contains all the public facts?" "It does." "Then let me have the private ones." He leaned back, put his finger-tips together, and assumed his most impassive and judicial expression. "In doing so," said Dr. Mortimer, who had begun to show signs of some strong emotion, "I am telling that which I have not confided to anyone. My motive for withholding it from the coroner's inquiry is that a man of science shrinks from placing himself in the public position of seeming to indorse a popular superstition. I had the further motive that Baskerville Hall, as the paper says, would certainly remain untenanted if anything were done to increase its already rather grim reputation. For both these reasons I thought that I was justified in telling rather less than I knew, since no practical good could result from it, but with you there is no reason why I should not be perfectly frank. "The moor is very sparsely inhabited, and those who live near each other are thrown very much together. For this reason I saw a good deal of Sir Charles Baskerville. With the exception of Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, and Mr. Stapleton, the naturalist, there are no other men of education within many miles. Sir Charles was a retiring man, but the chance of his illness brought us together, and a community of interests in science kept us so. He had brought back much scientific information from South Africa, and many a charming evening we have spent together discussing the comparative anatomy of the Bushman and the Hottentot. "Within the last few months it became increasingly plain to me that Sir Charles's nervous system was strained to the breaking point. He had taken this legend which I have read you exceedingly to heart--so much so that, although he would walk in his own grounds, nothing would induce him to go out upon the moor at night. Incredible as it may appear to you, Mr. Holmes, he was honestly convinced that a dreadful fate overhung his family, and certainly the records which he was able to give of his ancestors were not encouraging. The idea of some ghastly presence constantly haunted him, and on more than one occasion he has asked me whether I had on my medical journeys at night ever seen any strange creature or heard the baying of a hound. The latter question he put to me several times, and always with a voice which vibrated with excitement. "I can well remember driving up to his house in the evening some three weeks before the fatal event. He chanced to be at his hall door. I had descended from my gig and was standing in front of him, when I saw his eyes fix themselves over my shoulder and stare past me with an expression of the most dreadful horror. I whisked round and had just time to catch a glimpse of something which I took to be a large black calf passing at the head of the drive. So excited and alarmed was he that I was compelled to go down to the spot where the animal had been and look around for it. It was gone, however, and the incident appeared to make the worst impression upon his mind. I stayed with him all the evening, and it was on that occasion, to explain the emotion which he had shown, that he confided to my keeping that narrative which I read to you when first I came. I mention this small episode because it assumes some importance in view of the tragedy which followed, but I was convinced at the time that the matter was entirely trivial and that his excitement had no justification. "It was at my advice that Sir Charles was about to go to London. His heart was, I knew, affected, and the constant anxiety in which he lived, however chimerical the cause of it might be, was evidently having a serious effect upon his health. I thought that a few months among the distractions of town would send him back a new man. Mr. Stapleton, a mutual friend who was much concerned at his state of health, was of the same opinion. At the last instant came this terrible catastrophe. "On the night of Sir Charles's death Barrymore the butler, who made the discovery, sent Perkins the groom on horseback to me, and as I was sitting up late I was able to reach Baskerville Hall within an hour of the event. I checked and corroborated all the facts which were mentioned at the inquest. I followed the footsteps down the yew alley, I saw the spot at the moor-gate where he seemed to have waited, I remarked the change in the shape of the prints after that point, I noted that there were no other footsteps save those of Barrymore on the soft gravel, and finally I carefully examined the body, which had not been touched until my arrival. Sir Charles lay on his face, his arms out, his fingers dug into the ground, and his features convulsed with some strong emotion to such an extent that I could hardly have sworn to his identity. There was certainly no physical injury of any kind. But one false statement was made by Barrymore at the inquest. He said that there were no traces upon the ground round the body. He did not observe any. But I did--some little distance off, but fresh and clear." "Footprints?" "Footprints." "A man's or a woman's?" Dr. Mortimer looked strangely at us for an instant, and his voice sank almost to a whisper as he answered. "Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!"

Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-2

Dr. Mortimer hands a manuscript to Holmes. It's old--it dates back to 1742, at least a hundred fifty years before the events of Hound of the Baskervilles. Dr. Mortimer got the manuscript from his friend, Sir Charles Baskerville. And even though the manuscript deals with an old family legend, Dr. Mortimer is here on very contemporary business. The manuscript tells the story of Hugo Baskerville and the family curse This Hugo Baskerville, gets into some bad trouble around the time of the "Great Rebellion" . He likes to drink, curse, and rough people up. One night, he kidnaps a neighboring woman with five or six of his friends and locks her up in his mansion while he parties with his buddies. She manages to climb down some ivy to escape his evil clutches. Hugo Baskerville swears that he will sell his soul for the power to catch her. Hugo Baskerville then has the bright idea of riding out after her with his pack of hounds. The drunken partygoers finally realize, hey, if Hugo Baskerville succeeds in catching her, something terrible is going to happen. Really? So they ride out after Hugo Baskerville and his pack of hounds. They find his lifeless body on the ground near the girl's. The girl has died of fear and exhaustion after running from Hugo Baskerville. But Hugo Baskerville's death is much more gruesome: the former partygoers watch a huge, ghostly-looking black hound tear his throat out. Holmes doesn't think much of this whole story--it's just a fairy tale. So Dr. Mortimer continues his story. Sir Charles Baskerville, the descendant of this nasty Hugo, has just died mysteriously. He had heart trouble, so it's not impossible that he died of natural causes. But his body was found lying at the end of his own driveway with such a grotesque expression that Dr. Mortimer had trouble recognizing him. Apparently, Sir Charles had become very afraid of this story of the black dog and Hugo Baskerville. And here's the kicker: near Sir Charles' body, Dr. Mortimer found footprints--the footprints of a giant dog.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/03.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_2_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 3

chapter 3

{"name": "Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-3", "summary": "Dr. Mortimer insists that this strange black dog is no wild or local dog. The ash from Sir Charles' cigar shows that he was standing at the end of the driveway for five or ten minutes before tiptoeing out in the direction of the moor. Holmes is annoyed that he hasn't gotten a look at the scene of the death yet--why didn't Dr. Mortimer call him in earlier?! Dr. Mortimer hems and haws a little, but it's clear what he thinks: can a detective really help in what Mortimer is convinced are supernatural matters? After all, the local people have been spotting a giant, glow-in-the-dark dog on the moors. Holmes is justifiably confused. If Dr. Mortimer doesn't think a detective will be able to track down the Hound of Hell who killed Sir Charles, why has he even come to visit Holmes? Dr. Mortimer says he wants advice from Holmes about Sir Henry Baskerville, the new heir to the estate. Sir Henry Baskerville has been living in Canada but has returned to claim has estate. He has no idea about Hugo Baskerville's horrible crimes three centuries before or about the curse of the demon dog that Hugo unleashed on his descendants. Should Dr. Mortimer tell him that there is \"a diabolical agency\" --a.k.a. a devilish force--making Dartmoor unsafe for Baskervilles? Holmes tells Dr. Mortimer to bring Sir Henry Baskerville back to Baskerville Hall. If the devil's after him, it's not like staying in London will keep him safe. But in the meantime, no one should say anything to Sir Henry about the Hound until Holmes says it's okay. Holmes is a bit of a control freak. Holmes asks Dr. Mortimer to bring Sir Henry around at 10AM the following morning. Watson wants to give Holmes space to think over this new puzzle so he stays at his club the entire day while Holmes sits smoking like a chimney and drinking tons of coffee. When Watson gets back, Holmes shows him a detailed map of the area around Baskerville Hall. It does indeed look grim and bare--there's even a prison nearby. Holmes laughs about Dr. Mortimer's explanation that Sir Charles was tiptoeing home before he keeled over. No, sir, Sir Charles was running flat out--running like his life depended on it. Holmes reasons that Sir Charles saw something that frightened him so badly that he began to run away from his house before his heart gave out. But they still need to figure out what he was waiting for outside, especially since he usually avoided the moors.", "analysis": ""}

I confess at these words a shudder passed through me. There was a thrill in the doctor's voice which showed that he was himself deeply moved by that which he told us. Holmes leaned forward in his excitement and his eyes had the hard, dry glitter which shot from them when he was keenly interested. "You saw this?" "As clearly as I see you." "And you said nothing?" "What was the use?" "How was it that no one else saw it?" "The marks were some twenty yards from the body and no one gave them a thought. I don't suppose I should have done so had I not known this legend." "There are many sheep-dogs on the moor?" "No doubt, but this was no sheep-dog." "You say it was large?" "Enormous." "But it had not approached the body?" "No." "What sort of night was it?' "Damp and raw." "But not actually raining?" "No." "What is the alley like?" "There are two lines of old yew hedge, twelve feet high and impenetrable. The walk in the centre is about eight feet across." "Is there anything between the hedges and the walk?" "Yes, there is a strip of grass about six feet broad on either side." "I understand that the yew hedge is penetrated at one point by a gate?" "Yes, the wicket-gate which leads on to the moor." "Is there any other opening?" "None." "So that to reach the yew alley one either has to come down it from the house or else to enter it by the moor-gate?" "There is an exit through a summer-house at the far end." "Had Sir Charles reached this?" "No; he lay about fifty yards from it." "Now, tell me, Dr. Mortimer--and this is important--the marks which you saw were on the path and not on the grass?" "No marks could show on the grass." "Were they on the same side of the path as the moor-gate?" "Yes; they were on the edge of the path on the same side as the moor-gate." "You interest me exceedingly. Another point. Was the wicket-gate closed?" "Closed and padlocked." "How high was it?" "About four feet high." "Then anyone could have got over it?" "Yes." "And what marks did you see by the wicket-gate?" "None in particular." "Good heaven! Did no one examine?" "Yes, I examined, myself." "And found nothing?" "It was all very confused. Sir Charles had evidently stood there for five or ten minutes." "How do you know that?" "Because the ash had twice dropped from his cigar." "Excellent! This is a colleague, Watson, after our own heart. But the marks?" "He had left his own marks all over that small patch of gravel. I could discern no others." Sherlock Holmes struck his hand against his knee with an impatient gesture. "If I had only been there!" he cried. "It is evidently a case of extraordinary interest, and one which presented immense opportunities to the scientific expert. That gravel page upon which I might have read so much has been long ere this smudged by the rain and defaced by the clogs of curious peasants. Oh, Dr. Mortimer, Dr. Mortimer, to think that you should not have called me in! You have indeed much to answer for." "I could not call you in, Mr. Holmes, without disclosing these facts to the world, and I have already given my reasons for not wishing to do so. Besides, besides--" "Why do you hesitate?" "There is a realm in which the most acute and most experienced of detectives is helpless." "You mean that the thing is supernatural?" "I did not positively say so." "No, but you evidently think it." "Since the tragedy, Mr. Holmes, there have come to my ears several incidents which are hard to reconcile with the settled order of Nature." "For example?" "I find that before the terrible event occurred several people had seen a creature upon the moor which corresponds with this Baskerville demon, and which could not possibly be any animal known to science. They all agreed that it was a huge creature, luminous, ghastly, and spectral. I have cross-examined these men, one of them a hard-headed countryman, one a farrier, and one a moorland farmer, who all tell the same story of this dreadful apparition, exactly corresponding to the hell-hound of the legend. I assure you that there is a reign of terror in the district, and that it is a hardy man who will cross the moor at night." "And you, a trained man of science, believe it to be supernatural?" "I do not know what to believe." Holmes shrugged his shoulders. "I have hitherto confined my investigations to this world," said he. "In a modest way I have combated evil, but to take on the Father of Evil himself would, perhaps, be too ambitious a task. Yet you must admit that the footmark is material." "The original hound was material enough to tug a man's throat out, and yet he was diabolical as well." "I see that you have quite gone over to the supernaturalists. But now, Dr. Mortimer, tell me this. If you hold these views, why have you come to consult me at all? You tell me in the same breath that it is useless to investigate Sir Charles's death, and that you desire me to do it." "I did not say that I desired you to do it." "Then, how can I assist you?" "By advising me as to what I should do with Sir Henry Baskerville, who arrives at Waterloo Station"--Dr. Mortimer looked at his watch--"in exactly one hour and a quarter." "He being the heir?" "Yes. On the death of Sir Charles we inquired for this young gentleman and found that he had been farming in Canada. From the accounts which have reached us he is an excellent fellow in every way. I speak now not as a medical man but as a trustee and executor of Sir Charles's will." "There is no other claimant, I presume?" "None. The only other kinsman whom we have been able to trace was Rodger Baskerville, the youngest of three brothers of whom poor Sir Charles was the elder. The second brother, who died young, is the father of this lad Henry. The third, Rodger, was the black sheep of the family. He came of the old masterful Baskerville strain and was the very image, they tell me, of the family picture of old Hugo. He made England too hot to hold him, fled to Central America, and died there in 1876 of yellow fever. Henry is the last of the Baskervilles. In one hour and five minutes I meet him at Waterloo Station. I have had a wire that he arrived at Southampton this morning. Now, Mr. Holmes, what would you advise me to do with him?" "Why should he not go to the home of his fathers?" "It seems natural, does it not? And yet, consider that every Baskerville who goes there meets with an evil fate. I feel sure that if Sir Charles could have spoken with me before his death he would have warned me against bringing this, the last of the old race, and the heir to great wealth, to that deadly place. And yet it cannot be denied that the prosperity of the whole poor, bleak countryside depends upon his presence. All the good work which has been done by Sir Charles will crash to the ground if there is no tenant of the Hall. I fear lest I should be swayed too much by my own obvious interest in the matter, and that is why I bring the case before you and ask for your advice." Holmes considered for a little time. "Put into plain words, the matter is this," said he. "In your opinion there is a diabolical agency which makes Dartmoor an unsafe abode for a Baskerville--that is your opinion?" "At least I might go the length of saying that there is some evidence that this may be so." "Exactly. But surely, if your supernatural theory be correct, it could work the young man evil in London as easily as in Devonshire. A devil with merely local powers like a parish vestry would be too inconceivable a thing." "You put the matter more flippantly, Mr. Holmes, than you would probably do if you were brought into personal contact with these things. Your advice, then, as I understand it, is that the young man will be as safe in Devonshire as in London. He comes in fifty minutes. What would you recommend?" "I recommend, sir, that you take a cab, call off your spaniel who is scratching at my front door, and proceed to Waterloo to meet Sir Henry Baskerville." "And then?" "And then you will say nothing to him at all until I have made up my mind about the matter." "How long will it take you to make up your mind?" "Twenty-four hours. At ten o'clock tomorrow, Dr. Mortimer, I will be much obliged to you if you will call upon me here, and it will be of help to me in my plans for the future if you will bring Sir Henry Baskerville with you." "I will do so, Mr. Holmes." He scribbled the appointment on his shirt-cuff and hurried off in his strange, peering, absent-minded fashion. Holmes stopped him at the head of the stair. "Only one more question, Dr. Mortimer. You say that before Sir Charles Baskerville's death several people saw this apparition upon the moor?" "Three people did." "Did any see it after?" "I have not heard of any." "Thank you. Good-morning." Holmes returned to his seat with that quiet look of inward satisfaction which meant that he had a congenial task before him. "Going out, Watson?" "Unless I can help you." "No, my dear fellow, it is at the hour of action that I turn to you for aid. But this is splendid, really unique from some points of view. When you pass Bradley's, would you ask him to send up a pound of the strongest shag tobacco? Thank you. It would be as well if you could make it convenient not to return before evening. Then I should be very glad to compare impressions as to this most interesting problem which has been submitted to us this morning." I knew that seclusion and solitude were very necessary for my friend in those hours of intense mental concentration during which he weighed every particle of evidence, constructed alternative theories, balanced one against the other, and made up his mind as to which points were essential and which immaterial. I therefore spent the day at my club and did not return to Baker Street until evening. It was nearly nine o'clock when I found myself in the sitting-room once more. My first impression as I opened the door was that a fire had broken out, for the room was so filled with smoke that the light of the lamp upon the table was blurred by it. As I entered, however, my fears were set at rest, for it was the acrid fumes of strong coarse tobacco which took me by the throat and set me coughing. Through the haze I had a vague vision of Holmes in his dressing-gown coiled up in an armchair with his black clay pipe between his lips. Several rolls of paper lay around him. "Caught cold, Watson?" said he. "No, it's this poisonous atmosphere." "I suppose it is pretty thick, now that you mention it." "Thick! It is intolerable." "Open the window, then! You have been at your club all day, I perceive." "My dear Holmes!" "Am I right?" "Certainly, but how?" He laughed at my bewildered expression. "There is a delightful freshness about you, Watson, which makes it a pleasure to exercise any small powers which I possess at your expense. A gentleman goes forth on a showery and miry day. He returns immaculate in the evening with the gloss still on his hat and his boots. He has been a fixture therefore all day. He is not a man with intimate friends. Where, then, could he have been? Is it not obvious?" "Well, it is rather obvious." "The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes. Where do you think that I have been?" "A fixture also." "On the contrary, I have been to Devonshire." "In spirit?" "Exactly. My body has remained in this armchair and has, I regret to observe, consumed in my absence two large pots of coffee and an incredible amount of tobacco. After you left I sent down to Stamford's for the Ordnance map of this portion of the moor, and my spirit has hovered over it all day. I flatter myself that I could find my way about." "A large-scale map, I presume?" "Very large." He unrolled one section and held it over his knee. "Here you have the particular district which concerns us. That is Baskerville Hall in the middle." "With a wood round it?" "Exactly. I fancy the yew alley, though not marked under that name, must stretch along this line, with the moor, as you perceive, upon the right of it. This small clump of buildings here is the hamlet of Grimpen, where our friend Dr. Mortimer has his headquarters. Within a radius of five miles there are, as you see, only a very few scattered dwellings. Here is Lafter Hall, which was mentioned in the narrative. There is a house indicated here which may be the residence of the naturalist--Stapleton, if I remember right, was his name. Here are two moorland farmhouses, High Tor and Foulmire. Then fourteen miles away the great convict prison of Princetown. Between and around these scattered points extends the desolate, lifeless moor. This, then, is the stage upon which tragedy has been played, and upon which we may help to play it again." "It must be a wild place." "Yes, the setting is a worthy one. If the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of men--" "Then you are yourself inclining to the supernatural explanation." "The devil's agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not? There are two questions waiting for us at the outset. The one is whether any crime has been committed at all; the second is, what is the crime and how was it committed? Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct, and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one. I think we'll shut that window again, if you don't mind. It is a singular thing, but I find that a concentrated atmosphere helps a concentration of thought. I have not pushed it to the length of getting into a box to think, but that is the logical outcome of my convictions. Have you turned the case over in your mind?" "Yes, I have thought a good deal of it in the course of the day." "What do you make of it?" "It is very bewildering." "It has certainly a character of its own. There are points of distinction about it. That change in the footprints, for example. What do you make of that?" "Mortimer said that the man had walked on tiptoe down that portion of the alley." "He only repeated what some fool had said at the inquest. Why should a man walk on tiptoe down the alley?" "What then?" "He was running, Watson--running desperately, running for his life, running until he burst his heart--and fell dead upon his face." "Running from what?" "There lies our problem. There are indications that the man was crazed with fear before ever he began to run." "How can you say that?" "I am presuming that the cause of his fears came to him across the moor. If that were so, and it seems most probable, only a man who had lost his wits would have run from the house instead of towards it. If the gipsy's evidence may be taken as true, he ran with cries for help in the direction where help was least likely to be. Then, again, whom was he waiting for that night, and why was he waiting for him in the yew alley rather than in his own house?" "You think that he was waiting for someone?" "The man was elderly and infirm. We can understand his taking an evening stroll, but the ground was damp and the night inclement. Is it natural that he should stand for five or ten minutes, as Dr. Mortimer, with more practical sense than I should have given him credit for, deduced from the cigar ash?" "But he went out every evening." "I think it unlikely that he waited at the moor-gate every evening. On the contrary, the evidence is that he avoided the moor. That night he waited there. It was the night before he made his departure for London. The thing takes shape, Watson. It becomes coherent. Might I ask you to hand me my violin, and we will postpone all further thought upon this business until we have had the advantage of meeting Dr. Mortimer and Sir Henry Baskerville in the morning."

Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-3

Dr. Mortimer insists that this strange black dog is no wild or local dog. The ash from Sir Charles' cigar shows that he was standing at the end of the driveway for five or ten minutes before tiptoeing out in the direction of the moor. Holmes is annoyed that he hasn't gotten a look at the scene of the death yet--why didn't Dr. Mortimer call him in earlier?! Dr. Mortimer hems and haws a little, but it's clear what he thinks: can a detective really help in what Mortimer is convinced are supernatural matters? After all, the local people have been spotting a giant, glow-in-the-dark dog on the moors. Holmes is justifiably confused. If Dr. Mortimer doesn't think a detective will be able to track down the Hound of Hell who killed Sir Charles, why has he even come to visit Holmes? Dr. Mortimer says he wants advice from Holmes about Sir Henry Baskerville, the new heir to the estate. Sir Henry Baskerville has been living in Canada but has returned to claim has estate. He has no idea about Hugo Baskerville's horrible crimes three centuries before or about the curse of the demon dog that Hugo unleashed on his descendants. Should Dr. Mortimer tell him that there is "a diabolical agency" --a.k.a. a devilish force--making Dartmoor unsafe for Baskervilles? Holmes tells Dr. Mortimer to bring Sir Henry Baskerville back to Baskerville Hall. If the devil's after him, it's not like staying in London will keep him safe. But in the meantime, no one should say anything to Sir Henry about the Hound until Holmes says it's okay. Holmes is a bit of a control freak. Holmes asks Dr. Mortimer to bring Sir Henry around at 10AM the following morning. Watson wants to give Holmes space to think over this new puzzle so he stays at his club the entire day while Holmes sits smoking like a chimney and drinking tons of coffee. When Watson gets back, Holmes shows him a detailed map of the area around Baskerville Hall. It does indeed look grim and bare--there's even a prison nearby. Holmes laughs about Dr. Mortimer's explanation that Sir Charles was tiptoeing home before he keeled over. No, sir, Sir Charles was running flat out--running like his life depended on it. Holmes reasons that Sir Charles saw something that frightened him so badly that he began to run away from his house before his heart gave out. But they still need to figure out what he was waiting for outside, especially since he usually avoided the moors.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/04.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_3_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 4

chapter 4

{"name": "Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-4", "summary": "At exactly ten the next morning, Dr. Mortimer shows up with Sir Henry Baskerville. Sir Henry is a smart-looking guy of around thirty. He's glad to meet Holmes because he's had a weird experience he wants to discuss. Even though it's not public knowledge where he's staying in London, he received an anonymous note at his hotel that morning. The note says, \"As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor\" . Holmes figures out that the words from the note were cut out of the Times . Holmes also deduces that the person who left the note is an educated person who wanted to appear working-class, and who was in a huge hurry. Sir Henry has one other weird incident to report: one of his shoes has gone missing. He bought a pair of new brown boots yesterday, and one of them has disappeared. Holmes can't think why anyone would steal one brown boot, so he assumes the boot will turn up again. Holmes tells Sir Henry all about the Hound and Sir Charles' sudden and mysterious death. Sir Henry's heard the story of the Hound since he was a kid, but he doesn't buy it. He's not going to let some dog keep him away from the property that is rightfully his. Still, Sir Henry wants some time to think over what Holmes has told him. So he invites Holmes and Watson over to his hotel for lunch. Until then, he's going to wander around and think things over with Dr. Mortimer. Holmes watches Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer leave the apartment. Then, he grabs Watson and rushes out the door. As Holmes and Watson follow Sir Henry at a distance, they spot another man tailing him in a cab. The man has a thick beard and piercing eyes. But as soon as Holmes sees the man, the man yells at the cabdriver to drive on. Holmes is impressed at the smarts of their opponent. He's also annoyed with himself for making it so obvious that he was following Sir Henry. So Holmes tries a new Clever Plan: he pays a local messenger boy to visit all the major hotels in London. He wants the kid to go through the trash to try to find copy of yesterday's Times with words cut out of the lead article. Holmes and Watson go off to spend a few hours at art galleries before meeting Sir Henry.", "analysis": ""}

Our breakfast table was cleared early, and Holmes waited in his dressing-gown for the promised interview. Our clients were punctual to their appointment, for the clock had just struck ten when Dr. Mortimer was shown up, followed by the young baronet. The latter was a small, alert, dark-eyed man about thirty years of age, very sturdily built, with thick black eyebrows and a strong, pugnacious face. He wore a ruddy-tinted tweed suit and had the weather-beaten appearance of one who has spent most of his time in the open air, and yet there was something in his steady eye and the quiet assurance of his bearing which indicated the gentleman. "This is Sir Henry Baskerville," said Dr. Mortimer. "Why, yes," said he, "and the strange thing is, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, that if my friend here had not proposed coming round to you this morning I should have come on my own account. I understand that you think out little puzzles, and I've had one this morning which wants more thinking out than I am able to give it." "Pray take a seat, Sir Henry. Do I understand you to say that you have yourself had some remarkable experience since you arrived in London?" "Nothing of much importance, Mr. Holmes. Only a joke, as like as not. It was this letter, if you can call it a letter, which reached me this morning." He laid an envelope upon the table, and we all bent over it. It was of common quality, grayish in colour. The address, "Sir Henry Baskerville, Northumberland Hotel," was printed in rough characters; the post-mark "Charing Cross," and the date of posting the preceding evening. "Who knew that you were going to the Northumberland Hotel?" asked Holmes, glancing keenly across at our visitor. "No one could have known. We only decided after I met Dr. Mortimer." "But Dr. Mortimer was no doubt already stopping there?" "No, I had been staying with a friend," said the doctor. "There was no possible indication that we intended to go to this hotel." "Hum! Someone seems to be very deeply interested in your movements." Out of the envelope he took a half-sheet of foolscap paper folded into four. This he opened and spread flat upon the table. Across the middle of it a single sentence had been formed by the expedient of pasting printed words upon it. It ran: As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor. The word "moor" only was printed in ink. "Now," said Sir Henry Baskerville, "perhaps you will tell me, Mr. Holmes, what in thunder is the meaning of that, and who it is that takes so much interest in my affairs?" "What do you make of it, Dr. Mortimer? You must allow that there is nothing supernatural about this, at any rate?" "No, sir, but it might very well come from someone who was convinced that the business is supernatural." "What business?" asked Sir Henry sharply. "It seems to me that all you gentlemen know a great deal more than I do about my own affairs." "You shall share our knowledge before you leave this room, Sir Henry. I promise you that," said Sherlock Holmes. "We will confine ourselves for the present with your permission to this very interesting document, which must have been put together and posted yesterday evening. Have you yesterday's Times, Watson?" "It is here in the corner." "Might I trouble you for it--the inside page, please, with the leading articles?" He glanced swiftly over it, running his eyes up and down the columns. "Capital article this on free trade. Permit me to give you an extract from it. 'You may be cajoled into imagining that your own special trade or your own industry will be encouraged by a protective tariff, but it stands to reason that such legislation must in the long run keep away wealth from the country, diminish the value of our imports, and lower the general conditions of life in this island.' "What do you think of that, Watson?" cried Holmes in high glee, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction. "Don't you think that is an admirable sentiment?" Dr. Mortimer looked at Holmes with an air of professional interest, and Sir Henry Baskerville turned a pair of puzzled dark eyes upon me. "I don't know much about the tariff and things of that kind," said he, "but it seems to me we've got a bit off the trail so far as that note is concerned." "On the contrary, I think we are particularly hot upon the trail, Sir Henry. Watson here knows more about my methods than you do, but I fear that even he has not quite grasped the significance of this sentence." "No, I confess that I see no connection." "And yet, my dear Watson, there is so very close a connection that the one is extracted out of the other. 'You,' 'your,' 'your,' 'life,' 'reason,' 'value,' 'keep away,' 'from the.' Don't you see now whence these words have been taken?" "By thunder, you're right! Well, if that isn't smart!" cried Sir Henry. "If any possible doubt remained it is settled by the fact that 'keep away' and 'from the' are cut out in one piece." "Well, now--so it is!" "Really, Mr. Holmes, this exceeds anything which I could have imagined," said Dr. Mortimer, gazing at my friend in amazement. "I could understand anyone saying that the words were from a newspaper; but that you should name which, and add that it came from the leading article, is really one of the most remarkable things which I have ever known. How did you do it?" "I presume, Doctor, that you could tell the skull of a negro from that of an Esquimau?" "Most certainly." "But how?" "Because that is my special hobby. The differences are obvious. The supra-orbital crest, the facial angle, the maxillary curve, the--" "But this is my special hobby, and the differences are equally obvious. There is as much difference to my eyes between the leaded bourgeois type of a Times article and the slovenly print of an evening half-penny paper as there could be between your negro and your Esquimau. The detection of types is one of the most elementary branches of knowledge to the special expert in crime, though I confess that once when I was very young I confused the Leeds Mercury with the Western Morning News. But a Times leader is entirely distinctive, and these words could have been taken from nothing else. As it was done yesterday the strong probability was that we should find the words in yesterday's issue." "So far as I can follow you, then, Mr. Holmes," said Sir Henry Baskerville, "someone cut out this message with a scissors--" "Nail-scissors," said Holmes. "You can see that it was a very short-bladed scissors, since the cutter had to take two snips over 'keep away.'" "That is so. Someone, then, cut out the message with a pair of short-bladed scissors, pasted it with paste--" "Gum," said Holmes. "With gum on to the paper. But I want to know why the word 'moor' should have been written?" "Because he could not find it in print. The other words were all simple and might be found in any issue, but 'moor' would be less common." "Why, of course, that would explain it. Have you read anything else in this message, Mr. Holmes?" "There are one or two indications, and yet the utmost pains have been taken to remove all clues. The address, you observe is printed in rough characters. But the Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated. We may take it, therefore, that the letter was composed by an educated man who wished to pose as an uneducated one, and his effort to conceal his own writing suggests that that writing might be known, or come to be known, by you. Again, you will observe that the words are not gummed on in an accurate line, but that some are much higher than others. 'Life,' for example is quite out of its proper place. That may point to carelessness or it may point to agitation and hurry upon the part of the cutter. On the whole I incline to the latter view, since the matter was evidently important, and it is unlikely that the composer of such a letter would be careless. If he were in a hurry it opens up the interesting question why he should be in a hurry, since any letter posted up to early morning would reach Sir Henry before he would leave his hotel. Did the composer fear an interruption--and from whom?" "We are coming now rather into the region of guesswork," said Dr. Mortimer. "Say, rather, into the region where we balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination, but we have always some material basis on which to start our speculation. Now, you would call it a guess, no doubt, but I am almost certain that this address has been written in a hotel." "How in the world can you say that?" "If you examine it carefully you will see that both the pen and the ink have given the writer trouble. The pen has spluttered twice in a single word and has run dry three times in a short address, showing that there was very little ink in the bottle. Now, a private pen or ink-bottle is seldom allowed to be in such a state, and the combination of the two must be quite rare. But you know the hotel ink and the hotel pen, where it is rare to get anything else. Yes, I have very little hesitation in saying that could we examine the waste-paper baskets of the hotels around Charing Cross until we found the remains of the mutilated Times leader we could lay our hands straight upon the person who sent this singular message. Halloa! Halloa! What's this?" He was carefully examining the foolscap, upon which the words were pasted, holding it only an inch or two from his eyes. "Well?" "Nothing," said he, throwing it down. "It is a blank half-sheet of paper, without even a water-mark upon it. I think we have drawn as much as we can from this curious letter; and now, Sir Henry, has anything else of interest happened to you since you have been in London?" "Why, no, Mr. Holmes. I think not." "You have not observed anyone follow or watch you?" "I seem to have walked right into the thick of a dime novel," said our visitor. "Why in thunder should anyone follow or watch me?" "We are coming to that. You have nothing else to report to us before we go into this matter?" "Well, it depends upon what you think worth reporting." "I think anything out of the ordinary routine of life well worth reporting." Sir Henry smiled. "I don't know much of British life yet, for I have spent nearly all my time in the States and in Canada. But I hope that to lose one of your boots is not part of the ordinary routine of life over here." "You have lost one of your boots?" "My dear sir," cried Dr. Mortimer, "it is only mislaid. You will find it when you return to the hotel. What is the use of troubling Mr. Holmes with trifles of this kind?" "Well, he asked me for anything outside the ordinary routine." "Exactly," said Holmes, "however foolish the incident may seem. You have lost one of your boots, you say?" "Well, mislaid it, anyhow. I put them both outside my door last night, and there was only one in the morning. I could get no sense out of the chap who cleans them. The worst of it is that I only bought the pair last night in the Strand, and I have never had them on." "If you have never worn them, why did you put them out to be cleaned?" "They were tan boots and had never been varnished. That was why I put them out." "Then I understand that on your arrival in London yesterday you went out at once and bought a pair of boots?" "I did a good deal of shopping. Dr. Mortimer here went round with me. You see, if I am to be squire down there I must dress the part, and it may be that I have got a little careless in my ways out West. Among other things I bought these brown boots--gave six dollars for them--and had one stolen before ever I had them on my feet." "It seems a singularly useless thing to steal," said Sherlock Holmes. "I confess that I share Dr. Mortimer's belief that it will not be long before the missing boot is found." "And, now, gentlemen," said the baronet with decision, "it seems to me that I have spoken quite enough about the little that I know. It is time that you kept your promise and gave me a full account of what we are all driving at." "Your request is a very reasonable one," Holmes answered. "Dr. Mortimer, I think you could not do better than to tell your story as you told it to us." Thus encouraged, our scientific friend drew his papers from his pocket and presented the whole case as he had done upon the morning before. Sir Henry Baskerville listened with the deepest attention and with an occasional exclamation of surprise. "Well, I seem to have come into an inheritance with a vengeance," said he when the long narrative was finished. "Of course, I've heard of the hound ever since I was in the nursery. It's the pet story of the family, though I never thought of taking it seriously before. But as to my uncle's death--well, it all seems boiling up in my head, and I can't get it clear yet. You don't seem quite to have made up your mind whether it's a case for a policeman or a clergyman." "Precisely." "And now there's this affair of the letter to me at the hotel. I suppose that fits into its place." "It seems to show that someone knows more than we do about what goes on upon the moor," said Dr. Mortimer. "And also," said Holmes, "that someone is not ill-disposed towards you, since they warn you of danger." "Or it may be that they wish, for their own purposes, to scare me away." "Well, of course, that is possible also. I am very much indebted to you, Dr. Mortimer, for introducing me to a problem which presents several interesting alternatives. But the practical point which we now have to decide, Sir Henry, is whether it is or is not advisable for you to go to Baskerville Hall." "Why should I not go?" "There seems to be danger." "Do you mean danger from this family fiend or do you mean danger from human beings?" "Well, that is what we have to find out." "Whichever it is, my answer is fixed. There is no devil in hell, Mr. Holmes, and there is no man upon earth who can prevent me from going to the home of my own people, and you may take that to be my final answer." His dark brows knitted and his face flushed to a dusky red as he spoke. It was evident that the fiery temper of the Baskervilles was not extinct in this their last representative. "Meanwhile," said he, "I have hardly had time to think over all that you have told me. It's a big thing for a man to have to understand and to decide at one sitting. I should like to have a quiet hour by myself to make up my mind. Now, look here, Mr. Holmes, it's half-past eleven now and I am going back right away to my hotel. Suppose you and your friend, Dr. Watson, come round and lunch with us at two. I'll be able to tell you more clearly then how this thing strikes me." "Is that convenient to you, Watson?" "Perfectly." "Then you may expect us. Shall I have a cab called?" "I'd prefer to walk, for this affair has flurried me rather." "I'll join you in a walk, with pleasure," said his companion. "Then we meet again at two o'clock. Au revoir, and good-morning!" We heard the steps of our visitors descend the stair and the bang of the front door. In an instant Holmes had changed from the languid dreamer to the man of action. "Your hat and boots, Watson, quick! Not a moment to lose!" He rushed into his room in his dressing-gown and was back again in a few seconds in a frock-coat. We hurried together down the stairs and into the street. Dr. Mortimer and Baskerville were still visible about two hundred yards ahead of us in the direction of Oxford Street. "Shall I run on and stop them?" "Not for the world, my dear Watson. I am perfectly satisfied with your company if you will tolerate mine. Our friends are wise, for it is certainly a very fine morning for a walk." He quickened his pace until we had decreased the distance which divided us by about half. Then, still keeping a hundred yards behind, we followed into Oxford Street and so down Regent Street. Once our friends stopped and stared into a shop window, upon which Holmes did the same. An instant afterwards he gave a little cry of satisfaction, and, following the direction of his eager eyes, I saw that a hansom cab with a man inside which had halted on the other side of the street was now proceeding slowly onward again. "There's our man, Watson! Come along! We'll have a good look at him, if we can do no more." At that instant I was aware of a bushy black beard and a pair of piercing eyes turned upon us through the side window of the cab. Instantly the trapdoor at the top flew up, something was screamed to the driver, and the cab flew madly off down Regent Street. Holmes looked eagerly round for another, but no empty one was in sight. Then he dashed in wild pursuit amid the stream of the traffic, but the start was too great, and already the cab was out of sight. "There now!" said Holmes bitterly as he emerged panting and white with vexation from the tide of vehicles. "Was ever such bad luck and such bad management, too? Watson, Watson, if you are an honest man you will record this also and set it against my successes!" "Who was the man?" "I have not an idea." "A spy?" "Well, it was evident from what we have heard that Baskerville has been very closely shadowed by someone since he has been in town. How else could it be known so quickly that it was the Northumberland Hotel which he had chosen? If they had followed him the first day I argued that they would follow him also the second. You may have observed that I twice strolled over to the window while Dr. Mortimer was reading his legend." "Yes, I remember." "I was looking out for loiterers in the street, but I saw none. We are dealing with a clever man, Watson. This matter cuts very deep, and though I have not finally made up my mind whether it is a benevolent or a malevolent agency which is in touch with us, I am conscious always of power and design. When our friends left I at once followed them in the hopes of marking down their invisible attendant. So wily was he that he had not trusted himself upon foot, but he had availed himself of a cab so that he could loiter behind or dash past them and so escape their notice. His method had the additional advantage that if they were to take a cab he was all ready to follow them. It has, however, one obvious disadvantage." "It puts him in the power of the cabman." "Exactly." "What a pity we did not get the number!" "My dear Watson, clumsy as I have been, you surely do not seriously imagine that I neglected to get the number? No. 2704 is our man. But that is no use to us for the moment." "I fail to see how you could have done more." "On observing the cab I should have instantly turned and walked in the other direction. I should then at my leisure have hired a second cab and followed the first at a respectful distance, or, better still, have driven to the Northumberland Hotel and waited there. When our unknown had followed Baskerville home we should have had the opportunity of playing his own game upon himself and seeing where he made for. As it is, by an indiscreet eagerness, which was taken advantage of with extraordinary quickness and energy by our opponent, we have betrayed ourselves and lost our man." We had been sauntering slowly down Regent Street during this conversation, and Dr. Mortimer, with his companion, had long vanished in front of us. "There is no object in our following them," said Holmes. "The shadow has departed and will not return. We must see what further cards we have in our hands and play them with decision. Could you swear to that man's face within the cab?" "I could swear only to the beard." "And so could I--from which I gather that in all probability it was a false one. A clever man upon so delicate an errand has no use for a beard save to conceal his features. Come in here, Watson!" He turned into one of the district messenger offices, where he was warmly greeted by the manager. "Ah, Wilson, I see you have not forgotten the little case in which I had the good fortune to help you?" "No, sir, indeed I have not. You saved my good name, and perhaps my life." "My dear fellow, you exaggerate. I have some recollection, Wilson, that you had among your boys a lad named Cartwright, who showed some ability during the investigation." "Yes, sir, he is still with us." "Could you ring him up?--thank you! And I should be glad to have change of this five-pound note." A lad of fourteen, with a bright, keen face, had obeyed the summons of the manager. He stood now gazing with great reverence at the famous detective. "Let me have the Hotel Directory," said Holmes. "Thank you! Now, Cartwright, there are the names of twenty-three hotels here, all in the immediate neighbourhood of Charing Cross. Do you see?" "Yes, sir." "You will visit each of these in turn." "Yes, sir." "You will begin in each case by giving the outside porter one shilling. Here are twenty-three shillings." "Yes, sir." "You will tell him that you want to see the waste-paper of yesterday. You will say that an important telegram has miscarried and that you are looking for it. You understand?" "Yes, sir." "But what you are really looking for is the centre page of the Times with some holes cut in it with scissors. Here is a copy of the Times. It is this page. You could easily recognize it, could you not?" "Yes, sir." "In each case the outside porter will send for the hall porter, to whom also you will give a shilling. Here are twenty-three shillings. You will then learn in possibly twenty cases out of the twenty-three that the waste of the day before has been burned or removed. In the three other cases you will be shown a heap of paper and you will look for this page of the Times among it. The odds are enormously against your finding it. There are ten shillings over in case of emergencies. Let me have a report by wire at Baker Street before evening. And now, Watson, it only remains for us to find out by wire the identity of the cabman, No. 2704, and then we will drop into one of the Bond Street picture galleries and fill in the time until we are due at the hotel."

Chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-4

At exactly ten the next morning, Dr. Mortimer shows up with Sir Henry Baskerville. Sir Henry is a smart-looking guy of around thirty. He's glad to meet Holmes because he's had a weird experience he wants to discuss. Even though it's not public knowledge where he's staying in London, he received an anonymous note at his hotel that morning. The note says, "As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor" . Holmes figures out that the words from the note were cut out of the Times . Holmes also deduces that the person who left the note is an educated person who wanted to appear working-class, and who was in a huge hurry. Sir Henry has one other weird incident to report: one of his shoes has gone missing. He bought a pair of new brown boots yesterday, and one of them has disappeared. Holmes can't think why anyone would steal one brown boot, so he assumes the boot will turn up again. Holmes tells Sir Henry all about the Hound and Sir Charles' sudden and mysterious death. Sir Henry's heard the story of the Hound since he was a kid, but he doesn't buy it. He's not going to let some dog keep him away from the property that is rightfully his. Still, Sir Henry wants some time to think over what Holmes has told him. So he invites Holmes and Watson over to his hotel for lunch. Until then, he's going to wander around and think things over with Dr. Mortimer. Holmes watches Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer leave the apartment. Then, he grabs Watson and rushes out the door. As Holmes and Watson follow Sir Henry at a distance, they spot another man tailing him in a cab. The man has a thick beard and piercing eyes. But as soon as Holmes sees the man, the man yells at the cabdriver to drive on. Holmes is impressed at the smarts of their opponent. He's also annoyed with himself for making it so obvious that he was following Sir Henry. So Holmes tries a new Clever Plan: he pays a local messenger boy to visit all the major hotels in London. He wants the kid to go through the trash to try to find copy of yesterday's Times with words cut out of the lead article. Holmes and Watson go off to spend a few hours at art galleries before meeting Sir Henry.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/05.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_4_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 5

chapter 5

{"name": "Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-5", "summary": "Holmes and Watson arrive at Sir Henry's hotel. Holmes says that the other people staying at the hotel cannot be connected to the person watching Sir Henry, because that person is keeping his distance. When they arrive at Sir Henry's room, they find out that he is furious. Someone's stolen an old black boot, leaving him a mismatched pair of one brown and one black. Sir Henry apologizes for making such a fuss over such a small thing as two stolen boots. But Holmes looks Very Serious--clearly, this Mystery of the Stolen Boots means a lot more to Holmes than it does to us. Holmes asks if Sir Henry knows anyone with a thick black beard. Yep--apparently Barrymore, the butler at Baskerville Hall, fits that description. It turns out that both Barrymore and his wife received money in Sir Charles' will. Perhaps they could be the culprits! Dr. Mortimer admits that he also received some cash from Sir Charles' will. But the rest of his estate all went to Sir Henry: 740,000 pounds, to be exact. . The real Holmes gives John Clayton some money and then laughs with Watson. He realizes that the spy must have recognized Holmes when he started following Sir Henry.", "analysis": ""}

Sherlock Holmes had, in a very remarkable degree, the power of detaching his mind at will. For two hours the strange business in which we had been involved appeared to be forgotten, and he was entirely absorbed in the pictures of the modern Belgian masters. He would talk of nothing but art, of which he had the crudest ideas, from our leaving the gallery until we found ourselves at the Northumberland Hotel. "Sir Henry Baskerville is upstairs expecting you," said the clerk. "He asked me to show you up at once when you came." "Have you any objection to my looking at your register?" said Holmes. "Not in the least." The book showed that two names had been added after that of Baskerville. One was Theophilus Johnson and family, of Newcastle; the other Mrs. Oldmore and maid, of High Lodge, Alton. "Surely that must be the same Johnson whom I used to know," said Holmes to the porter. "A lawyer, is he not, gray-headed, and walks with a limp?" "No, sir, this is Mr. Johnson, the coal-owner, a very active gentleman, not older than yourself." "Surely you are mistaken about his trade?" "No, sir! he has used this hotel for many years, and he is very well known to us." "Ah, that settles it. Mrs. Oldmore, too; I seem to remember the name. Excuse my curiosity, but often in calling upon one friend one finds another." "She is an invalid lady, sir. Her husband was once mayor of Gloucester. She always comes to us when she is in town." "Thank you; I am afraid I cannot claim her acquaintance. We have established a most important fact by these questions, Watson," he continued in a low voice as we went upstairs together. "We know now that the people who are so interested in our friend have not settled down in his own hotel. That means that while they are, as we have seen, very anxious to watch him, they are equally anxious that he should not see them. Now, this is a most suggestive fact." "What does it suggest?" "It suggests--halloa, my dear fellow, what on earth is the matter?" As we came round the top of the stairs we had run up against Sir Henry Baskerville himself. His face was flushed with anger, and he held an old and dusty boot in one of his hands. So furious was he that he was hardly articulate, and when he did speak it was in a much broader and more Western dialect than any which we had heard from him in the morning. "Seems to me they are playing me for a sucker in this hotel," he cried. "They'll find they've started in to monkey with the wrong man unless they are careful. By thunder, if that chap can't find my missing boot there will be trouble. I can take a joke with the best, Mr. Holmes, but they've got a bit over the mark this time." "Still looking for your boot?" "Yes, sir, and mean to find it." "But, surely, you said that it was a new brown boot?" "So it was, sir. And now it's an old black one." "What! you don't mean to say--?" "That's just what I do mean to say. I only had three pairs in the world--the new brown, the old black, and the patent leathers, which I am wearing. Last night they took one of my brown ones, and today they have sneaked one of the black. Well, have you got it? Speak out, man, and don't stand staring!" An agitated German waiter had appeared upon the scene. "No, sir; I have made inquiry all over the hotel, but I can hear no word of it." "Well, either that boot comes back before sundown or I'll see the manager and tell him that I go right straight out of this hotel." "It shall be found, sir--I promise you that if you will have a little patience it will be found." "Mind it is, for it's the last thing of mine that I'll lose in this den of thieves. Well, well, Mr. Holmes, you'll excuse my troubling you about such a trifle--" "I think it's well worth troubling about." "Why, you look very serious over it." "How do you explain it?" "I just don't attempt to explain it. It seems the very maddest, queerest thing that ever happened to me." "The queerest perhaps--" said Holmes thoughtfully. "What do you make of it yourself?" "Well, I don't profess to understand it yet. This case of yours is very complex, Sir Henry. When taken in conjunction with your uncle's death I am not sure that of all the five hundred cases of capital importance which I have handled there is one which cuts so deep. But we hold several threads in our hands, and the odds are that one or other of them guides us to the truth. We may waste time in following the wrong one, but sooner or later we must come upon the right." We had a pleasant luncheon in which little was said of the business which had brought us together. It was in the private sitting-room to which we afterwards repaired that Holmes asked Baskerville what were his intentions. "To go to Baskerville Hall." "And when?" "At the end of the week." "On the whole," said Holmes, "I think that your decision is a wise one. I have ample evidence that you are being dogged in London, and amid the millions of this great city it is difficult to discover who these people are or what their object can be. If their intentions are evil they might do you a mischief, and we should be powerless to prevent it. You did not know, Dr. Mortimer, that you were followed this morning from my house?" Dr. Mortimer started violently. "Followed! By whom?" "That, unfortunately, is what I cannot tell you. Have you among your neighbours or acquaintances on Dartmoor any man with a black, full beard?" "No--or, let me see--why, yes. Barrymore, Sir Charles's butler, is a man with a full, black beard." "Ha! Where is Barrymore?" "He is in charge of the Hall." "We had best ascertain if he is really there, or if by any possibility he might be in London." "How can you do that?" "Give me a telegraph form. 'Is all ready for Sir Henry?' That will do. Address to Mr. Barrymore, Baskerville Hall. What is the nearest telegraph-office? Grimpen. Very good, we will send a second wire to the postmaster, Grimpen: 'Telegram to Mr. Barrymore to be delivered into his own hand. If absent, please return wire to Sir Henry Baskerville, Northumberland Hotel.' That should let us know before evening whether Barrymore is at his post in Devonshire or not." "That's so," said Baskerville. "By the way, Dr. Mortimer, who is this Barrymore, anyhow?" "He is the son of the old caretaker, who is dead. They have looked after the Hall for four generations now. So far as I know, he and his wife are as respectable a couple as any in the county." "At the same time," said Baskerville, "it's clear enough that so long as there are none of the family at the Hall these people have a mighty fine home and nothing to do." "That is true." "Did Barrymore profit at all by Sir Charles's will?" asked Holmes. "He and his wife had five hundred pounds each." "Ha! Did they know that they would receive this?" "Yes; Sir Charles was very fond of talking about the provisions of his will." "That is very interesting." "I hope," said Dr. Mortimer, "that you do not look with suspicious eyes upon everyone who received a legacy from Sir Charles, for I also had a thousand pounds left to me." "Indeed! And anyone else?" "There were many insignificant sums to individuals, and a large number of public charities. The residue all went to Sir Henry." "And how much was the residue?" "Seven hundred and forty thousand pounds." Holmes raised his eyebrows in surprise. "I had no idea that so gigantic a sum was involved," said he. "Sir Charles had the reputation of being rich, but we did not know how very rich he was until we came to examine his securities. The total value of the estate was close on to a million." "Dear me! It is a stake for which a man might well play a desperate game. And one more question, Dr. Mortimer. Supposing that anything happened to our young friend here--you will forgive the unpleasant hypothesis!--who would inherit the estate?" "Since Rodger Baskerville, Sir Charles's younger brother died unmarried, the estate would descend to the Desmonds, who are distant cousins. James Desmond is an elderly clergyman in Westmoreland." "Thank you. These details are all of great interest. Have you met Mr. James Desmond?" "Yes; he once came down to visit Sir Charles. He is a man of venerable appearance and of saintly life. I remember that he refused to accept any settlement from Sir Charles, though he pressed it upon him." "And this man of simple tastes would be the heir to Sir Charles's thousands." "He would be the heir to the estate because that is entailed. He would also be the heir to the money unless it were willed otherwise by the present owner, who can, of course, do what he likes with it." "And have you made your will, Sir Henry?" "No, Mr. Holmes, I have not. I've had no time, for it was only yesterday that I learned how matters stood. But in any case I feel that the money should go with the title and estate. That was my poor uncle's idea. How is the owner going to restore the glories of the Baskervilles if he has not money enough to keep up the property? House, land, and dollars must go together." "Quite so. Well, Sir Henry, I am of one mind with you as to the advisability of your going down to Devonshire without delay. There is only one provision which I must make. You certainly must not go alone." "Dr. Mortimer returns with me." "But Dr. Mortimer has his practice to attend to, and his house is miles away from yours. With all the goodwill in the world he may be unable to help you. No, Sir Henry, you must take with you someone, a trusty man, who will be always by your side." "Is it possible that you could come yourself, Mr. Holmes?" "If matters came to a crisis I should endeavour to be present in person; but you can understand that, with my extensive consulting practice and with the constant appeals which reach me from many quarters, it is impossible for me to be absent from London for an indefinite time. At the present instant one of the most revered names in England is being besmirched by a blackmailer, and only I can stop a disastrous scandal. You will see how impossible it is for me to go to Dartmoor." "Whom would you recommend, then?" Holmes laid his hand upon my arm. "If my friend would undertake it there is no man who is better worth having at your side when you are in a tight place. No one can say so more confidently than I." The proposition took me completely by surprise, but before I had time to answer, Baskerville seized me by the hand and wrung it heartily. "Well, now, that is real kind of you, Dr. Watson," said he. "You see how it is with me, and you know just as much about the matter as I do. If you will come down to Baskerville Hall and see me through I'll never forget it." The promise of adventure had always a fascination for me, and I was complimented by the words of Holmes and by the eagerness with which the baronet hailed me as a companion. "I will come, with pleasure," said I. "I do not know how I could employ my time better." "And you will report very carefully to me," said Holmes. "When a crisis comes, as it will do, I will direct how you shall act. I suppose that by Saturday all might be ready?" "Would that suit Dr. Watson?" "Perfectly." "Then on Saturday, unless you hear to the contrary, we shall meet at the ten-thirty train from Paddington." We had risen to depart when Baskerville gave a cry, of triumph, and diving into one of the corners of the room he drew a brown boot from under a cabinet. "My missing boot!" he cried. "May all our difficulties vanish as easily!" said Sherlock Holmes. "But it is a very singular thing," Dr. Mortimer remarked. "I searched this room carefully before lunch." "And so did I," said Baskerville. "Every inch of it." "There was certainly no boot in it then." "In that case the waiter must have placed it there while we were lunching." The German was sent for but professed to know nothing of the matter, nor could any inquiry clear it up. Another item had been added to that constant and apparently purposeless series of small mysteries which had succeeded each other so rapidly. Setting aside the whole grim story of Sir Charles's death, we had a line of inexplicable incidents all within the limits of two days, which included the receipt of the printed letter, the black-bearded spy in the hansom, the loss of the new brown boot, the loss of the old black boot, and now the return of the new brown boot. Holmes sat in silence in the cab as we drove back to Baker Street, and I knew from his drawn brows and keen face that his mind, like my own, was busy in endeavouring to frame some scheme into which all these strange and apparently disconnected episodes could be fitted. All afternoon and late into the evening he sat lost in tobacco and thought. Just before dinner two telegrams were handed in. The first ran: Have just heard that Barrymore is at the Hall. BASKERVILLE. The second: Visited twenty-three hotels as directed, but sorry, to report unable to trace cut sheet of Times. CARTWRIGHT. "There go two of my threads, Watson. There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you. We must cast round for another scent." "We have still the cabman who drove the spy." "Exactly. I have wired to get his name and address from the Official Registry. I should not be surprised if this were an answer to my question." The ring at the bell proved to be something even more satisfactory than an answer, however, for the door opened and a rough-looking fellow entered who was evidently the man himself. "I got a message from the head office that a gent at this address had been inquiring for No. 2704," said he. "I've driven my cab this seven years and never a word of complaint. I came here straight from the Yard to ask you to your face what you had against me." "I have nothing in the world against you, my good man," said Holmes. "On the contrary, I have half a sovereign for you if you will give me a clear answer to my questions." "Well, I've had a good day and no mistake," said the cabman with a grin. "What was it you wanted to ask, sir?" "First of all your name and address, in case I want you again." "John Clayton, 3 Turpey Street, the Borough. My cab is out of Shipley's Yard, near Waterloo Station." Sherlock Holmes made a note of it. "Now, Clayton, tell me all about the fare who came and watched this house at ten o'clock this morning and afterwards followed the two gentlemen down Regent Street." The man looked surprised and a little embarrassed. "Why, there's no good my telling you things, for you seem to know as much as I do already," said he. "The truth is that the gentleman told me that he was a detective and that I was to say nothing about him to anyone." "My good fellow; this is a very serious business, and you may find yourself in a pretty bad position if you try to hide anything from me. You say that your fare told you that he was a detective?" "Yes, he did." "When did he say this?" "When he left me." "Did he say anything more?" "He mentioned his name." Holmes cast a swift glance of triumph at me. "Oh, he mentioned his name, did he? That was imprudent. What was the name that he mentioned?" "His name," said the cabman, "was Mr. Sherlock Holmes." Never have I seen my friend more completely taken aback than by the cabman's reply. For an instant he sat in silent amazement. Then he burst into a hearty laugh. "A touch, Watson--an undeniable touch!" said he. "I feel a foil as quick and supple as my own. He got home upon me very prettily that time. So his name was Sherlock Holmes, was it?" "Yes, sir, that was the gentleman's name." "Excellent! Tell me where you picked him up and all that occurred." "He hailed me at half-past nine in Trafalgar Square. He said that he was a detective, and he offered me two guineas if I would do exactly what he wanted all day and ask no questions. I was glad enough to agree. First we drove down to the Northumberland Hotel and waited there until two gentlemen came out and took a cab from the rank. We followed their cab until it pulled up somewhere near here." "This very door," said Holmes. "Well, I couldn't be sure of that, but I dare say my fare knew all about it. We pulled up halfway down the street and waited an hour and a half. Then the two gentlemen passed us, walking, and we followed down Baker Street and along--" "I know," said Holmes. "Until we got three-quarters down Regent Street. Then my gentleman threw up the trap, and he cried that I should drive right away to Waterloo Station as hard as I could go. I whipped up the mare and we were there under the ten minutes. Then he paid up his two guineas, like a good one, and away he went into the station. Only just as he was leaving he turned round and he said: 'It might interest you to know that you have been driving Mr. Sherlock Holmes.' That's how I come to know the name." "I see. And you saw no more of him?" "Not after he went into the station." "And how would you describe Mr. Sherlock Holmes?" The cabman scratched his head. "Well, he wasn't altogether such an easy gentleman to describe. I'd put him at forty years of age, and he was of a middle height, two or three inches shorter than you, sir. He was dressed like a toff, and he had a black beard, cut square at the end, and a pale face. I don't know as I could say more than that." "Colour of his eyes?" "No, I can't say that." "Nothing more that you can remember?" "No, sir; nothing." "Well, then, here is your half-sovereign. There's another one waiting for you if you can bring any more information. Good-night!" "Good-night, sir, and thank you!" John Clayton departed chuckling, and Holmes turned to me with a shrug of his shoulders and a rueful smile. "Snap goes our third thread, and we end where we began," said he. "The cunning rascal! He knew our number, knew that Sir Henry Baskerville had consulted me, spotted who I was in Regent Street, conjectured that I had got the number of the cab and would lay my hands on the driver, and so sent back this audacious message. I tell you, Watson, this time we have got a foeman who is worthy of our steel. I've been checkmated in London. I can only wish you better luck in Devonshire. But I'm not easy in my mind about it." "About what?" "About sending you. It's an ugly business, Watson, an ugly dangerous business, and the more I see of it the less I like it. Yes, my dear fellow, you may laugh, but I give you my word that I shall be very glad to have you back safe and sound in Baker Street once more."

Chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-5

Holmes and Watson arrive at Sir Henry's hotel. Holmes says that the other people staying at the hotel cannot be connected to the person watching Sir Henry, because that person is keeping his distance. When they arrive at Sir Henry's room, they find out that he is furious. Someone's stolen an old black boot, leaving him a mismatched pair of one brown and one black. Sir Henry apologizes for making such a fuss over such a small thing as two stolen boots. But Holmes looks Very Serious--clearly, this Mystery of the Stolen Boots means a lot more to Holmes than it does to us. Holmes asks if Sir Henry knows anyone with a thick black beard. Yep--apparently Barrymore, the butler at Baskerville Hall, fits that description. It turns out that both Barrymore and his wife received money in Sir Charles' will. Perhaps they could be the culprits! Dr. Mortimer admits that he also received some cash from Sir Charles' will. But the rest of his estate all went to Sir Henry: 740,000 pounds, to be exact. . The real Holmes gives John Clayton some money and then laughs with Watson. He realizes that the spy must have recognized Holmes when he started following Sir Henry.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/06.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_5_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 6

chapter 6

{"name": "Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-6", "summary": "That Saturday, Holmes takes Watson to the train station to go to Baskerville Hall. Holmes asks Watson to send him information about Sir Henry's neighbors. Holmes gives Watson a quick list of people in the area:Mr. and Mrs. Barrymore ;Dr. Mortimer ;Mrs. Mortimer ;Stapleton ;Stapleton's sister ; and Mr. Frankland . Mr. and Mrs. Barrymore ; Dr. Mortimer ; Mrs. Mortimer ; Stapleton ; Stapleton's sister ; and Mr. Frankland . When Dr. Mortimer and Sir Henry arrive at the train station, Holmes warns Sir Henry that it's not safe for him to go off on his own. Not. Safe. Watson, Dr. Mortimer, and Sir Henry take the train to Devonshire. Watson notices that the landscape is a bleak and a little sad. Plus, there are soldiers watching the road to Sir Henry's property. The driver explains that a prisoner has escaped onto the moors. And he's not just any prisoner--he's an insane murderer named Selden. When they arrive at Baskerville Hall, they see that it's a pretty gloomy place. Barrymore welcomes Sir Henry to his family home. He also suggests that Sir Henry start hiring a full staff of servants to keep the old place up. Sir Henry wonders: is Barrymore planning on quitting? His family has worked for Baskerville Hall for generations. In fact, Barrymore does want to leave: he and his wife were so weirded out by Sir Charles' death that they don't feel comfortable at the Hall any longer. In the middle of the night, Watson hears the sound of a woman sobbing.", "analysis": ""}

Sir Henry Baskerville and Dr. Mortimer were ready upon the appointed day, and we started as arranged for Devonshire. Mr. Sherlock Holmes drove with me to the station and gave me his last parting injunctions and advice. "I will not bias your mind by suggesting theories or suspicions, Watson," said he; "I wish you simply to report facts in the fullest possible manner to me, and you can leave me to do the theorizing." "What sort of facts?" I asked. "Anything which may seem to have a bearing however indirect upon the case, and especially the relations between young Baskerville and his neighbours or any fresh particulars concerning the death of Sir Charles. I have made some inquiries myself in the last few days, but the results have, I fear, been negative. One thing only appears to be certain, and that is that Mr. James Desmond, who is the next heir, is an elderly gentleman of a very amiable disposition, so that this persecution does not arise from him. I really think that we may eliminate him entirely from our calculations. There remain the people who will actually surround Sir Henry Baskerville upon the moor." "Would it not be well in the first place to get rid of this Barrymore couple?" "By no means. You could not make a greater mistake. If they are innocent it would be a cruel injustice, and if they are guilty we should be giving up all chance of bringing it home to them. No, no, we will preserve them upon our list of suspects. Then there is a groom at the Hall, if I remember right. There are two moorland farmers. There is our friend Dr. Mortimer, whom I believe to be entirely honest, and there is his wife, of whom we know nothing. There is this naturalist, Stapleton, and there is his sister, who is said to be a young lady of attractions. There is Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, who is also an unknown factor, and there are one or two other neighbours. These are the folk who must be your very special study." "I will do my best." "You have arms, I suppose?" "Yes, I thought it as well to take them." "Most certainly. Keep your revolver near you night and day, and never relax your precautions." Our friends had already secured a first-class carriage and were waiting for us upon the platform. "No, we have no news of any kind," said Dr. Mortimer in answer to my friend's questions. "I can swear to one thing, and that is that we have not been shadowed during the last two days. We have never gone out without keeping a sharp watch, and no one could have escaped our notice." "You have always kept together, I presume?" "Except yesterday afternoon. I usually give up one day to pure amusement when I come to town, so I spent it at the Museum of the College of Surgeons." "And I went to look at the folk in the park," said Baskerville. "But we had no trouble of any kind." "It was imprudent, all the same," said Holmes, shaking his head and looking very grave. "I beg, Sir Henry, that you will not go about alone. Some great misfortune will befall you if you do. Did you get your other boot?" "No, sir, it is gone forever." "Indeed. That is very interesting. Well, good-bye," he added as the train began to glide down the platform. "Bear in mind, Sir Henry, one of the phrases in that queer old legend which Dr. Mortimer has read to us, and avoid the moor in those hours of darkness when the powers of evil are exalted." I looked back at the platform when we had left it far behind and saw the tall, austere figure of Holmes standing motionless and gazing after us. The journey was a swift and pleasant one, and I spent it in making the more intimate acquaintance of my two companions and in playing with Dr. Mortimer's spaniel. In a very few hours the brown earth had become ruddy, the brick had changed to granite, and red cows grazed in well-hedged fields where the lush grasses and more luxuriant vegetation spoke of a richer, if a damper, climate. Young Baskerville stared eagerly out of the window and cried aloud with delight as he recognized the familiar features of the Devon scenery. "I've been over a good part of the world since I left it, Dr. Watson," said he; "but I have never seen a place to compare with it." "I never saw a Devonshire man who did not swear by his county," I remarked. "It depends upon the breed of men quite as much as on the county," said Dr. Mortimer. "A glance at our friend here reveals the rounded head of the Celt, which carries inside it the Celtic enthusiasm and power of attachment. Poor Sir Charles's head was of a very rare type, half Gaelic, half Ivernian in its characteristics. But you were very young when you last saw Baskerville Hall, were you not?" "I was a boy in my teens at the time of my father's death and had never seen the Hall, for he lived in a little cottage on the South Coast. Thence I went straight to a friend in America. I tell you it is all as new to me as it is to Dr. Watson, and I'm as keen as possible to see the moor." "Are you? Then your wish is easily granted, for there is your first sight of the moor," said Dr. Mortimer, pointing out of the carriage window. Over the green squares of the fields and the low curve of a wood there rose in the distance a gray, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance, like some fantastic landscape in a dream. Baskerville sat for a long time, his eyes fixed upon it, and I read upon his eager face how much it meant to him, this first sight of that strange spot where the men of his blood had held sway so long and left their mark so deep. There he sat, with his tweed suit and his American accent, in the corner of a prosaic railway-carriage, and yet as I looked at his dark and expressive face I felt more than ever how true a descendant he was of that long line of high-blooded, fiery, and masterful men. There were pride, valour, and strength in his thick brows, his sensitive nostrils, and his large hazel eyes. If on that forbidding moor a difficult and dangerous quest should lie before us, this was at least a comrade for whom one might venture to take a risk with the certainty that he would bravely share it. The train pulled up at a small wayside station and we all descended. Outside, beyond the low, white fence, a wagonette with a pair of cobs was waiting. Our coming was evidently a great event, for station-master and porters clustered round us to carry out our luggage. It was a sweet, simple country spot, but I was surprised to observe that by the gate there stood two soldierly men in dark uniforms who leaned upon their short rifles and glanced keenly at us as we passed. The coachman, a hard-faced, gnarled little fellow, saluted Sir Henry Baskerville, and in a few minutes we were flying swiftly down the broad, white road. Rolling pasture lands curved upward on either side of us, and old gabled houses peeped out from amid the thick green foliage, but behind the peaceful and sunlit countryside there rose ever, dark against the evening sky, the long, gloomy curve of the moor, broken by the jagged and sinister hills. The wagonette swung round into a side road, and we curved upward through deep lanes worn by centuries of wheels, high banks on either side, heavy with dripping moss and fleshy hart's-tongue ferns. Bronzing bracken and mottled bramble gleamed in the light of the sinking sun. Still steadily rising, we passed over a narrow granite bridge and skirted a noisy stream which gushed swiftly down, foaming and roaring amid the gray boulders. Both road and stream wound up through a valley dense with scrub oak and fir. At every turn Baskerville gave an exclamation of delight, looking eagerly about him and asking countless questions. To his eyes all seemed beautiful, but to me a tinge of melancholy lay upon the countryside, which bore so clearly the mark of the waning year. Yellow leaves carpeted the lanes and fluttered down upon us as we passed. The rattle of our wheels died away as we drove through drifts of rotting vegetation--sad gifts, as it seemed to me, for Nature to throw before the carriage of the returning heir of the Baskervilles. "Halloa!" cried Dr. Mortimer, "what is this?" A steep curve of heath-clad land, an outlying spur of the moor, lay in front of us. On the summit, hard and clear like an equestrian statue upon its pedestal, was a mounted soldier, dark and stern, his rifle poised ready over his forearm. He was watching the road along which we travelled. "What is this, Perkins?" asked Dr. Mortimer. Our driver half turned in his seat. "There's a convict escaped from Princetown, sir. He's been out three days now, and the warders watch every road and every station, but they've had no sight of him yet. The farmers about here don't like it, sir, and that's a fact." "Well, I understand that they get five pounds if they can give information." "Yes, sir, but the chance of five pounds is but a poor thing compared to the chance of having your throat cut. You see, it isn't like any ordinary convict. This is a man that would stick at nothing." "Who is he, then?" "It is Selden, the Notting Hill murderer." I remembered the case well, for it was one in which Holmes had taken an interest on account of the peculiar ferocity of the crime and the wanton brutality which had marked all the actions of the assassin. The commutation of his death sentence had been due to some doubts as to his complete sanity, so atrocious was his conduct. Our wagonette had topped a rise and in front of us rose the huge expanse of the moor, mottled with gnarled and craggy cairns and tors. A cold wind swept down from it and set us shivering. Somewhere there, on that desolate plain, was lurking this fiendish man, hiding in a burrow like a wild beast, his heart full of malignancy against the whole race which had cast him out. It needed but this to complete the grim suggestiveness of the barren waste, the chilling wind, and the darkling sky. Even Baskerville fell silent and pulled his overcoat more closely around him. We had left the fertile country behind and beneath us. We looked back on it now, the slanting rays of a low sun turning the streams to threads of gold and glowing on the red earth new turned by the plough and the broad tangle of the woodlands. The road in front of us grew bleaker and wilder over huge russet and olive slopes, sprinkled with giant boulders. Now and then we passed a moorland cottage, walled and roofed with stone, with no creeper to break its harsh outline. Suddenly we looked down into a cuplike depression, patched with stunted oaks and firs which had been twisted and bent by the fury of years of storm. Two high, narrow towers rose over the trees. The driver pointed with his whip. "Baskerville Hall," said he. Its master had risen and was staring with flushed cheeks and shining eyes. A few minutes later we had reached the lodge-gates, a maze of fantastic tracery in wrought iron, with weather-bitten pillars on either side, blotched with lichens, and surmounted by the boars' heads of the Baskervilles. The lodge was a ruin of black granite and bared ribs of rafters, but facing it was a new building, half constructed, the first fruit of Sir Charles's South African gold. Through the gateway we passed into the avenue, where the wheels were again hushed amid the leaves, and the old trees shot their branches in a sombre tunnel over our heads. Baskerville shuddered as he looked up the long, dark drive to where the house glimmered like a ghost at the farther end. "Was it here?" he asked in a low voice. "No, no, the yew alley is on the other side." The young heir glanced round with a gloomy face. "It's no wonder my uncle felt as if trouble were coming on him in such a place as this," said he. "It's enough to scare any man. I'll have a row of electric lamps up here inside of six months, and you won't know it again, with a thousand candle-power Swan and Edison right here in front of the hall door." The avenue opened into a broad expanse of turf, and the house lay before us. In the fading light I could see that the centre was a heavy block of building from which a porch projected. The whole front was draped in ivy, with a patch clipped bare here and there where a window or a coat of arms broke through the dark veil. From this central block rose the twin towers, ancient, crenelated, and pierced with many loopholes. To right and left of the turrets were more modern wings of black granite. A dull light shone through heavy mullioned windows, and from the high chimneys which rose from the steep, high-angled roof there sprang a single black column of smoke. "Welcome, Sir Henry! Welcome to Baskerville Hall!" A tall man had stepped from the shadow of the porch to open the door of the wagonette. The figure of a woman was silhouetted against the yellow light of the hall. She came out and helped the man to hand down our bags. "You don't mind my driving straight home, Sir Henry?" said Dr. Mortimer. "My wife is expecting me." "Surely you will stay and have some dinner?" "No, I must go. I shall probably find some work awaiting me. I would stay to show you over the house, but Barrymore will be a better guide than I. Good-bye, and never hesitate night or day to send for me if I can be of service." The wheels died away down the drive while Sir Henry and I turned into the hall, and the door clanged heavily behind us. It was a fine apartment in which we found ourselves, large, lofty, and heavily raftered with huge baulks of age-blackened oak. In the great old-fashioned fireplace behind the high iron dogs a log-fire crackled and snapped. Sir Henry and I held out our hands to it, for we were numb from our long drive. Then we gazed round us at the high, thin window of old stained glass, the oak panelling, the stags' heads, the coats of arms upon the walls, all dim and sombre in the subdued light of the central lamp. "It's just as I imagined it," said Sir Henry. "Is it not the very picture of an old family home? To think that this should be the same hall in which for five hundred years my people have lived. It strikes me solemn to think of it." I saw his dark face lit up with a boyish enthusiasm as he gazed about him. The light beat upon him where he stood, but long shadows trailed down the walls and hung like a black canopy above him. Barrymore had returned from taking our luggage to our rooms. He stood in front of us now with the subdued manner of a well-trained servant. He was a remarkable-looking man, tall, handsome, with a square black beard and pale, distinguished features. "Would you wish dinner to be served at once, sir?" "Is it ready?" "In a very few minutes, sir. You will find hot water in your rooms. My wife and I will be happy, Sir Henry, to stay with you until you have made your fresh arrangements, but you will understand that under the new conditions this house will require a considerable staff." "What new conditions?" "I only meant, sir, that Sir Charles led a very retired life, and we were able to look after his wants. You would, naturally, wish to have more company, and so you will need changes in your household." "Do you mean that your wife and you wish to leave?" "Only when it is quite convenient to you, sir." "But your family have been with us for several generations, have they not? I should be sorry to begin my life here by breaking an old family connection." I seemed to discern some signs of emotion upon the butler's white face. "I feel that also, sir, and so does my wife. But to tell the truth, sir, we were both very much attached to Sir Charles, and his death gave us a shock and made these surroundings very painful to us. I fear that we shall never again be easy in our minds at Baskerville Hall." "But what do you intend to do?" "I have no doubt, sir, that we shall succeed in establishing ourselves in some business. Sir Charles's generosity has given us the means to do so. And now, sir, perhaps I had best show you to your rooms." A square balustraded gallery ran round the top of the old hall, approached by a double stair. From this central point two long corridors extended the whole length of the building, from which all the bedrooms opened. My own was in the same wing as Baskerville's and almost next door to it. These rooms appeared to be much more modern than the central part of the house, and the bright paper and numerous candles did something to remove the sombre impression which our arrival had left upon my mind. But the dining-room which opened out of the hall was a place of shadow and gloom. It was a long chamber with a step separating the dais where the family sat from the lower portion reserved for their dependents. At one end a minstrel's gallery overlooked it. Black beams shot across above our heads, with a smoke-darkened ceiling beyond them. With rows of flaring torches to light it up, and the colour and rude hilarity of an old-time banquet, it might have softened; but now, when two black-clothed gentlemen sat in the little circle of light thrown by a shaded lamp, one's voice became hushed and one's spirit subdued. A dim line of ancestors, in every variety of dress, from the Elizabethan knight to the buck of the Regency, stared down upon us and daunted us by their silent company. We talked little, and I for one was glad when the meal was over and we were able to retire into the modern billiard-room and smoke a cigarette. "My word, it isn't a very cheerful place," said Sir Henry. "I suppose one can tone down to it, but I feel a bit out of the picture at present. I don't wonder that my uncle got a little jumpy if he lived all alone in such a house as this. However, if it suits you, we will retire early tonight, and perhaps things may seem more cheerful in the morning." I drew aside my curtains before I went to bed and looked out from my window. It opened upon the grassy space which lay in front of the hall door. Beyond, two copses of trees moaned and swung in a rising wind. A half moon broke through the rifts of racing clouds. In its cold light I saw beyond the trees a broken fringe of rocks, and the long, low curve of the melancholy moor. I closed the curtain, feeling that my last impression was in keeping with the rest. And yet it was not quite the last. I found myself weary and yet wakeful, tossing restlessly from side to side, seeking for the sleep which would not come. Far away a chiming clock struck out the quarters of the hours, but otherwise a deathly silence lay upon the old house. And then suddenly, in the very dead of the night, there came a sound to my ears, clear, resonant, and unmistakable. It was the sob of a woman, the muffled, strangling gasp of one who is torn by an uncontrollable sorrow. I sat up in bed and listened intently. The noise could not have been far away and was certainly in the house. For half an hour I waited with every nerve on the alert, but there came no other sound save the chiming clock and the rustle of the ivy on the wall.

Chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-6

That Saturday, Holmes takes Watson to the train station to go to Baskerville Hall. Holmes asks Watson to send him information about Sir Henry's neighbors. Holmes gives Watson a quick list of people in the area:Mr. and Mrs. Barrymore ;Dr. Mortimer ;Mrs. Mortimer ;Stapleton ;Stapleton's sister ; and Mr. Frankland . Mr. and Mrs. Barrymore ; Dr. Mortimer ; Mrs. Mortimer ; Stapleton ; Stapleton's sister ; and Mr. Frankland . When Dr. Mortimer and Sir Henry arrive at the train station, Holmes warns Sir Henry that it's not safe for him to go off on his own. Not. Safe. Watson, Dr. Mortimer, and Sir Henry take the train to Devonshire. Watson notices that the landscape is a bleak and a little sad. Plus, there are soldiers watching the road to Sir Henry's property. The driver explains that a prisoner has escaped onto the moors. And he's not just any prisoner--he's an insane murderer named Selden. When they arrive at Baskerville Hall, they see that it's a pretty gloomy place. Barrymore welcomes Sir Henry to his family home. He also suggests that Sir Henry start hiring a full staff of servants to keep the old place up. Sir Henry wonders: is Barrymore planning on quitting? His family has worked for Baskerville Hall for generations. In fact, Barrymore does want to leave: he and his wife were so weirded out by Sir Charles' death that they don't feel comfortable at the Hall any longer. In the middle of the night, Watson hears the sound of a woman sobbing.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/07.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_6_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 7

chapter 7

{"name": "Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-7", "summary": "The next morning, the sun is shining and the house seems less, well, cursed. Even so, both Watson and Sir Henry agree that they heard a woman crying the night before. Watson suspects that the crying woman is Mrs. Barrymore, and that Barrymore's responsible. Watson's suspicions about Barrymore's character only increase when he walks into town and finds out that it wasn't Barrymore, but Barrymore's wife who received the telegram Holmes sent to check out his alibi while Sir Henry was in town. Could Barrymore have been in London spying on Sir Henry after all? A man runs up to Watson in the village and introduces himself: it's Stapleton, from nearby Merripit House. He's carrying a butterfly net. He announces that he is a \"naturalist\" . Stapleton asks if Sherlock Holmes has any theories behind the Hound of the Baskervilles to explain Sir Charles' death. Watson is like, whuh? Holmes? How did you know--? Stapleton promises him that everyone in the neighborhood knows why Watson is here. Stapleton invites Watson to Merripit House to meet his sister. As they walk through the moors, Stapleton tells Watson that the ground in this area is not stable: there are bogs and marshes all over the place. Stapleton warns that, if Watson went into the Mire on his own, he would probably drown in the swamp. The two men hear a long, low howl over the moor. Apparently, the local people believe that this howl belongs to the Hound of the Baskervilles. Stapleton thinks it's a bittern--a kind of bird that's nearly extinct in England. They walk past the remains of a prehistoric town. Stapleton suddenly spots a butterfly and goes running off into the Mire. Watson watches him anxiously, worried that he'll lose his footing and sink. As Watson stares after Stapleton, a woman suddenly approaches him. Watson assumes that she is Stapleton's sister, even though she doesn't look very much like him. She quickly warns him, \"Go straight back to London, instantly\" . When Stapleton returns to the path, she suddenly changes the subject and starts talking about the flowers on the moor. Stapleton addresses her as \"Beryl\" Beryl mentions that she has already introduced herself to \"Sir Henry.\" Watson is like, ummm, no, I'm just Dr. Watson. Beryl blushes in embarrassment. When Watson walks off in the direction of Baskerville Hall, Beryl rushes over to speak to him. She apologizes for confusing him with Sir Henry but refuses to explain why it's so important for Sir Henry to leave.", "analysis": ""}

The fresh beauty of the following morning did something to efface from our minds the grim and gray impression which had been left upon both of us by our first experience of Baskerville Hall. As Sir Henry and I sat at breakfast the sunlight flooded in through the high mullioned windows, throwing watery patches of colour from the coats of arms which covered them. The dark panelling glowed like bronze in the golden rays, and it was hard to realize that this was indeed the chamber which had struck such a gloom into our souls upon the evening before. "I guess it is ourselves and not the house that we have to blame!" said the baronet. "We were tired with our journey and chilled by our drive, so we took a gray view of the place. Now we are fresh and well, so it is all cheerful once more." "And yet it was not entirely a question of imagination," I answered. "Did you, for example, happen to hear someone, a woman I think, sobbing in the night?" "That is curious, for I did when I was half asleep fancy that I heard something of the sort. I waited quite a time, but there was no more of it, so I concluded that it was all a dream." "I heard it distinctly, and I am sure that it was really the sob of a woman." "We must ask about this right away." He rang the bell and asked Barrymore whether he could account for our experience. It seemed to me that the pallid features of the butler turned a shade paler still as he listened to his master's question. "There are only two women in the house, Sir Henry," he answered. "One is the scullery-maid, who sleeps in the other wing. The other is my wife, and I can answer for it that the sound could not have come from her." And yet he lied as he said it, for it chanced that after breakfast I met Mrs. Barrymore in the long corridor with the sun full upon her face. She was a large, impassive, heavy-featured woman with a stern set expression of mouth. But her telltale eyes were red and glanced at me from between swollen lids. It was she, then, who wept in the night, and if she did so her husband must know it. Yet he had taken the obvious risk of discovery in declaring that it was not so. Why had he done this? And why did she weep so bitterly? Already round this pale-faced, handsome, black-bearded man there was gathering an atmosphere of mystery and of gloom. It was he who had been the first to discover the body of Sir Charles, and we had only his word for all the circumstances which led up to the old man's death. Was it possible that it was Barrymore, after all, whom we had seen in the cab in Regent Street? The beard might well have been the same. The cabman had described a somewhat shorter man, but such an impression might easily have been erroneous. How could I settle the point forever? Obviously the first thing to do was to see the Grimpen postmaster and find whether the test telegram had really been placed in Barrymore's own hands. Be the answer what it might, I should at least have something to report to Sherlock Holmes. Sir Henry had numerous papers to examine after breakfast, so that the time was propitious for my excursion. It was a pleasant walk of four miles along the edge of the moor, leading me at last to a small gray hamlet, in which two larger buildings, which proved to be the inn and the house of Dr. Mortimer, stood high above the rest. The postmaster, who was also the village grocer, had a clear recollection of the telegram. "Certainly, sir," said he, "I had the telegram delivered to Mr. Barrymore exactly as directed." "Who delivered it?" "My boy here. James, you delivered that telegram to Mr. Barrymore at the Hall last week, did you not?" "Yes, father, I delivered it." "Into his own hands?" I asked. "Well, he was up in the loft at the time, so that I could not put it into his own hands, but I gave it into Mrs. Barrymore's hands, and she promised to deliver it at once." "Did you see Mr. Barrymore?" "No, sir; I tell you he was in the loft." "If you didn't see him, how do you know he was in the loft?" "Well, surely his own wife ought to know where he is," said the postmaster testily. "Didn't he get the telegram? If there is any mistake it is for Mr. Barrymore himself to complain." It seemed hopeless to pursue the inquiry any farther, but it was clear that in spite of Holmes's ruse we had no proof that Barrymore had not been in London all the time. Suppose that it were so--suppose that the same man had been the last who had seen Sir Charles alive, and the first to dog the new heir when he returned to England. What then? Was he the agent of others or had he some sinister design of his own? What interest could he have in persecuting the Baskerville family? I thought of the strange warning clipped out of the leading article of the Times. Was that his work or was it possibly the doing of someone who was bent upon counteracting his schemes? The only conceivable motive was that which had been suggested by Sir Henry, that if the family could be scared away a comfortable and permanent home would be secured for the Barrymores. But surely such an explanation as that would be quite inadequate to account for the deep and subtle scheming which seemed to be weaving an invisible net round the young baronet. Holmes himself had said that no more complex case had come to him in all the long series of his sensational investigations. I prayed, as I walked back along the gray, lonely road, that my friend might soon be freed from his preoccupations and able to come down to take this heavy burden of responsibility from my shoulders. Suddenly my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of running feet behind me and by a voice which called me by name. I turned, expecting to see Dr. Mortimer, but to my surprise it was a stranger who was pursuing me. He was a small, slim, clean-shaven, prim-faced man, flaxen-haired and leanjawed, between thirty and forty years of age, dressed in a gray suit and wearing a straw hat. A tin box for botanical specimens hung over his shoulder and he carried a green butterfly-net in one of his hands. "You will, I am sure, excuse my presumption, Dr. Watson," said he as he came panting up to where I stood. "Here on the moor we are homely folk and do not wait for formal introductions. You may possibly have heard my name from our mutual friend, Mortimer. I am Stapleton, of Merripit House." "Your net and box would have told me as much," said I, "for I knew that Mr. Stapleton was a naturalist. But how did you know me?" "I have been calling on Mortimer, and he pointed you out to me from the window of his surgery as you passed. As our road lay the same way I thought that I would overtake you and introduce myself. I trust that Sir Henry is none the worse for his journey?" "He is very well, thank you." "We were all rather afraid that after the sad death of Sir Charles the new baronet might refuse to live here. It is asking much of a wealthy man to come down and bury himself in a place of this kind, but I need not tell you that it means a very great deal to the countryside. Sir Henry has, I suppose, no superstitious fears in the matter?" "I do not think that it is likely." "Of course you know the legend of the fiend dog which haunts the family?" "I have heard it." "It is extraordinary how credulous the peasants are about here! Any number of them are ready to swear that they have seen such a creature upon the moor." He spoke with a smile, but I seemed to read in his eyes that he took the matter more seriously. "The story took a great hold upon the imagination of Sir Charles, and I have no doubt that it led to his tragic end." "But how?" "His nerves were so worked up that the appearance of any dog might have had a fatal effect upon his diseased heart. I fancy that he really did see something of the kind upon that last night in the yew alley. I feared that some disaster might occur, for I was very fond of the old man, and I knew that his heart was weak." "How did you know that?" "My friend Mortimer told me." "You think, then, that some dog pursued Sir Charles, and that he died of fright in consequence?" "Have you any better explanation?" "I have not come to any conclusion." "Has Mr. Sherlock Holmes?" The words took away my breath for an instant but a glance at the placid face and steadfast eyes of my companion showed that no surprise was intended. "It is useless for us to pretend that we do not know you, Dr. Watson," said he. "The records of your detective have reached us here, and you could not celebrate him without being known yourself. When Mortimer told me your name he could not deny your identity. If you are here, then it follows that Mr. Sherlock Holmes is interesting himself in the matter, and I am naturally curious to know what view he may take." "I am afraid that I cannot answer that question." "May I ask if he is going to honour us with a visit himself?" "He cannot leave town at present. He has other cases which engage his attention." "What a pity! He might throw some light on that which is so dark to us. But as to your own researches, if there is any possible way in which I can be of service to you I trust that you will command me. If I had any indication of the nature of your suspicions or how you propose to investigate the case, I might perhaps even now give you some aid or advice." "I assure you that I am simply here upon a visit to my friend, Sir Henry, and that I need no help of any kind." "Excellent!" said Stapleton. "You are perfectly right to be wary and discreet. I am justly reproved for what I feel was an unjustifiable intrusion, and I promise you that I will not mention the matter again." We had come to a point where a narrow grassy path struck off from the road and wound away across the moor. A steep, boulder-sprinkled hill lay upon the right which had in bygone days been cut into a granite quarry. The face which was turned towards us formed a dark cliff, with ferns and brambles growing in its niches. From over a distant rise there floated a gray plume of smoke. "A moderate walk along this moor-path brings us to Merripit House," said he. "Perhaps you will spare an hour that I may have the pleasure of introducing you to my sister." My first thought was that I should be by Sir Henry's side. But then I remembered the pile of papers and bills with which his study table was littered. It was certain that I could not help with those. And Holmes had expressly said that I should study the neighbours upon the moor. I accepted Stapleton's invitation, and we turned together down the path. "It is a wonderful place, the moor," said he, looking round over the undulating downs, long green rollers, with crests of jagged granite foaming up into fantastic surges. "You never tire of the moor. You cannot think the wonderful secrets which it contains. It is so vast, and so barren, and so mysterious." "You know it well, then?" "I have only been here two years. The residents would call me a newcomer. We came shortly after Sir Charles settled. But my tastes led me to explore every part of the country round, and I should think that there are few men who know it better than I do." "Is it hard to know?" "Very hard. You see, for example, this great plain to the north here with the queer hills breaking out of it. Do you observe anything remarkable about that?" "It would be a rare place for a gallop." "You would naturally think so and the thought has cost several their lives before now. You notice those bright green spots scattered thickly over it?" "Yes, they seem more fertile than the rest." Stapleton laughed. "That is the great Grimpen Mire," said he. "A false step yonder means death to man or beast. Only yesterday I saw one of the moor ponies wander into it. He never came out. I saw his head for quite a long time craning out of the bog-hole, but it sucked him down at last. Even in dry seasons it is a danger to cross it, but after these autumn rains it is an awful place. And yet I can find my way to the very heart of it and return alive. By George, there is another of those miserable ponies!" Something brown was rolling and tossing among the green sedges. Then a long, agonized, writhing neck shot upward and a dreadful cry echoed over the moor. It turned me cold with horror, but my companion's nerves seemed to be stronger than mine. "It's gone!" said he. "The mire has him. Two in two days, and many more, perhaps, for they get in the way of going there in the dry weather and never know the difference until the mire has them in its clutches. It's a bad place, the great Grimpen Mire." "And you say you can penetrate it?" "Yes, there are one or two paths which a very active man can take. I have found them out." "But why should you wish to go into so horrible a place?" "Well, you see the hills beyond? They are really islands cut off on all sides by the impassable mire, which has crawled round them in the course of years. That is where the rare plants and the butterflies are, if you have the wit to reach them." "I shall try my luck some day." He looked at me with a surprised face. "For God's sake put such an idea out of your mind," said he. "Your blood would be upon my head. I assure you that there would not be the least chance of your coming back alive. It is only by remembering certain complex landmarks that I am able to do it." "Halloa!" I cried. "What is that?" A long, low moan, indescribably sad, swept over the moor. It filled the whole air, and yet it was impossible to say whence it came. From a dull murmur it swelled into a deep roar, and then sank back into a melancholy, throbbing murmur once again. Stapleton looked at me with a curious expression in his face. "Queer place, the moor!" said he. "But what is it?" "The peasants say it is the Hound of the Baskervilles calling for its prey. I've heard it once or twice before, but never quite so loud." I looked round, with a chill of fear in my heart, at the huge swelling plain, mottled with the green patches of rushes. Nothing stirred over the vast expanse save a pair of ravens, which croaked loudly from a tor behind us. "You are an educated man. You don't believe such nonsense as that?" said I. "What do you think is the cause of so strange a sound?" "Bogs make queer noises sometimes. It's the mud settling, or the water rising, or something." "No, no, that was a living voice." "Well, perhaps it was. Did you ever hear a bittern booming?" "No, I never did." "It's a very rare bird--practically extinct--in England now, but all things are possible upon the moor. Yes, I should not be surprised to learn that what we have heard is the cry of the last of the bitterns." "It's the weirdest, strangest thing that ever I heard in my life." "Yes, it's rather an uncanny place altogether. Look at the hillside yonder. What do you make of those?" The whole steep slope was covered with gray circular rings of stone, a score of them at least. "What are they? Sheep-pens?" "No, they are the homes of our worthy ancestors. Prehistoric man lived thickly on the moor, and as no one in particular has lived there since, we find all his little arrangements exactly as he left them. These are his wigwams with the roofs off. You can even see his hearth and his couch if you have the curiosity to go inside. "But it is quite a town. When was it inhabited?" "Neolithic man--no date." "What did he do?" "He grazed his cattle on these slopes, and he learned to dig for tin when the bronze sword began to supersede the stone axe. Look at the great trench in the opposite hill. That is his mark. Yes, you will find some very singular points about the moor, Dr. Watson. Oh, excuse me an instant! It is surely Cyclopides." A small fly or moth had fluttered across our path, and in an instant Stapleton was rushing with extraordinary energy and speed in pursuit of it. To my dismay the creature flew straight for the great mire, and my acquaintance never paused for an instant, bounding from tuft to tuft behind it, his green net waving in the air. His gray clothes and jerky, zigzag, irregular progress made him not unlike some huge moth himself. I was standing watching his pursuit with a mixture of admiration for his extraordinary activity and fear lest he should lose his footing in the treacherous mire, when I heard the sound of steps and, turning round, found a woman near me upon the path. She had come from the direction in which the plume of smoke indicated the position of Merripit House, but the dip of the moor had hid her until she was quite close. I could not doubt that this was the Miss Stapleton of whom I had been told, since ladies of any sort must be few upon the moor, and I remembered that I had heard someone describe her as being a beauty. The woman who approached me was certainly that, and of a most uncommon type. There could not have been a greater contrast between brother and sister, for Stapleton was neutral tinted, with light hair and gray eyes, while she was darker than any brunette whom I have seen in England--slim, elegant, and tall. She had a proud, finely cut face, so regular that it might have seemed impassive were it not for the sensitive mouth and the beautiful dark, eager eyes. With her perfect figure and elegant dress she was, indeed, a strange apparition upon a lonely moorland path. Her eyes were on her brother as I turned, and then she quickened her pace towards me. I had raised my hat and was about to make some explanatory remark when her own words turned all my thoughts into a new channel. "Go back!" she said. "Go straight back to London, instantly." I could only stare at her in stupid surprise. Her eyes blazed at me, and she tapped the ground impatiently with her foot. "Why should I go back?" I asked. "I cannot explain." She spoke in a low, eager voice, with a curious lisp in her utterance. "But for God's sake do what I ask you. Go back and never set foot upon the moor again." "But I have only just come." "Man, man!" she cried. "Can you not tell when a warning is for your own good? Go back to London! Start tonight! Get away from this place at all costs! Hush, my brother is coming! Not a word of what I have said. Would you mind getting that orchid for me among the mare's-tails yonder? We are very rich in orchids on the moor, though, of course, you are rather late to see the beauties of the place." Stapleton had abandoned the chase and came back to us breathing hard and flushed with his exertions. "Halloa, Beryl!" said he, and it seemed to me that the tone of his greeting was not altogether a cordial one. "Well, Jack, you are very hot." "Yes, I was chasing a Cyclopides. He is very rare and seldom found in the late autumn. What a pity that I should have missed him!" He spoke unconcernedly, but his small light eyes glanced incessantly from the girl to me. "You have introduced yourselves, I can see." "Yes. I was telling Sir Henry that it was rather late for him to see the true beauties of the moor." "Why, who do you think this is?" "I imagine that it must be Sir Henry Baskerville." "No, no," said I. "Only a humble commoner, but his friend. My name is Dr. Watson." A flush of vexation passed over her expressive face. "We have been talking at cross purposes," said she. "Why, you had not very much time for talk," her brother remarked with the same questioning eyes. "I talked as if Dr. Watson were a resident instead of being merely a visitor," said she. "It cannot much matter to him whether it is early or late for the orchids. But you will come on, will you not, and see Merripit House?" A short walk brought us to it, a bleak moorland house, once the farm of some grazier in the old prosperous days, but now put into repair and turned into a modern dwelling. An orchard surrounded it, but the trees, as is usual upon the moor, were stunted and nipped, and the effect of the whole place was mean and melancholy. We were admitted by a strange, wizened, rusty-coated old manservant, who seemed in keeping with the house. Inside, however, there were large rooms furnished with an elegance in which I seemed to recognize the taste of the lady. As I looked from their windows at the interminable granite-flecked moor rolling unbroken to the farthest horizon I could not but marvel at what could have brought this highly educated man and this beautiful woman to live in such a place. "Queer spot to choose, is it not?" said he as if in answer to my thought. "And yet we manage to make ourselves fairly happy, do we not, Beryl?" "Quite happy," said she, but there was no ring of conviction in her words. "I had a school," said Stapleton. "It was in the north country. The work to a man of my temperament was mechanical and uninteresting, but the privilege of living with youth, of helping to mould those young minds, and of impressing them with one's own character and ideals was very dear to me. However, the fates were against us. A serious epidemic broke out in the school and three of the boys died. It never recovered from the blow, and much of my capital was irretrievably swallowed up. And yet, if it were not for the loss of the charming companionship of the boys, I could rejoice over my own misfortune, for, with my strong tastes for botany and zoology, I find an unlimited field of work here, and my sister is as devoted to Nature as I am. All this, Dr. Watson, has been brought upon your head by your expression as you surveyed the moor out of our window." "It certainly did cross my mind that it might be a little dull--less for you, perhaps, than for your sister." "No, no, I am never dull," said she quickly. "We have books, we have our studies, and we have interesting neighbours. Dr. Mortimer is a most learned man in his own line. Poor Sir Charles was also an admirable companion. We knew him well and miss him more than I can tell. Do you think that I should intrude if I were to call this afternoon and make the acquaintance of Sir Henry?" "I am sure that he would be delighted." "Then perhaps you would mention that I propose to do so. We may in our humble way do something to make things more easy for him until he becomes accustomed to his new surroundings. Will you come upstairs, Dr. Watson, and inspect my collection of Lepidoptera? I think it is the most complete one in the south-west of England. By the time that you have looked through them lunch will be almost ready." But I was eager to get back to my charge. The melancholy of the moor, the death of the unfortunate pony, the weird sound which had been associated with the grim legend of the Baskervilles, all these things tinged my thoughts with sadness. Then on the top of these more or less vague impressions there had come the definite and distinct warning of Miss Stapleton, delivered with such intense earnestness that I could not doubt that some grave and deep reason lay behind it. I resisted all pressure to stay for lunch, and I set off at once upon my return journey, taking the grass-grown path by which we had come. It seems, however, that there must have been some short cut for those who knew it, for before I had reached the road I was astounded to see Miss Stapleton sitting upon a rock by the side of the track. Her face was beautifully flushed with her exertions and she held her hand to her side. "I have run all the way in order to cut you off, Dr. Watson," said she. "I had not even time to put on my hat. I must not stop, or my brother may miss me. I wanted to say to you how sorry I am about the stupid mistake I made in thinking that you were Sir Henry. Please forget the words I said, which have no application whatever to you." "But I can't forget them, Miss Stapleton," said I. "I am Sir Henry's friend, and his welfare is a very close concern of mine. Tell me why it was that you were so eager that Sir Henry should return to London." "A woman's whim, Dr. Watson. When you know me better you will understand that I cannot always give reasons for what I say or do." "No, no. I remember the thrill in your voice. I remember the look in your eyes. Please, please, be frank with me, Miss Stapleton, for ever since I have been here I have been conscious of shadows all round me. Life has become like that great Grimpen Mire, with little green patches everywhere into which one may sink and with no guide to point the track. Tell me then what it was that you meant, and I will promise to convey your warning to Sir Henry." An expression of irresolution passed for an instant over her face, but her eyes had hardened again when she answered me. "You make too much of it, Dr. Watson," said she. "My brother and I were very much shocked by the death of Sir Charles. We knew him very intimately, for his favourite walk was over the moor to our house. He was deeply impressed with the curse which hung over the family, and when this tragedy came I naturally felt that there must be some grounds for the fears which he had expressed. I was distressed therefore when another member of the family came down to live here, and I felt that he should be warned of the danger which he will run. That was all which I intended to convey. "But what is the danger?" "You know the story of the hound?" "I do not believe in such nonsense." "But I do. If you have any influence with Sir Henry, take him away from a place which has always been fatal to his family. The world is wide. Why should he wish to live at the place of danger?" "Because it is the place of danger. That is Sir Henry's nature. I fear that unless you can give me some more definite information than this it would be impossible to get him to move." "I cannot say anything definite, for I do not know anything definite." "I would ask you one more question, Miss Stapleton. If you meant no more than this when you first spoke to me, why should you not wish your brother to overhear what you said? There is nothing to which he, or anyone else, could object." "My brother is very anxious to have the Hall inhabited, for he thinks it is for the good of the poor folk upon the moor. He would be very angry if he knew that I have said anything which might induce Sir Henry to go away. But I have done my duty now and I will say no more. I must go back, or he will miss me and suspect that I have seen you. Good-bye!" She turned and had disappeared in a few minutes among the scattered boulders, while I, with my soul full of vague fears, pursued my way to Baskerville Hall.

Chapter 7

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-7

The next morning, the sun is shining and the house seems less, well, cursed. Even so, both Watson and Sir Henry agree that they heard a woman crying the night before. Watson suspects that the crying woman is Mrs. Barrymore, and that Barrymore's responsible. Watson's suspicions about Barrymore's character only increase when he walks into town and finds out that it wasn't Barrymore, but Barrymore's wife who received the telegram Holmes sent to check out his alibi while Sir Henry was in town. Could Barrymore have been in London spying on Sir Henry after all? A man runs up to Watson in the village and introduces himself: it's Stapleton, from nearby Merripit House. He's carrying a butterfly net. He announces that he is a "naturalist" . Stapleton asks if Sherlock Holmes has any theories behind the Hound of the Baskervilles to explain Sir Charles' death. Watson is like, whuh? Holmes? How did you know--? Stapleton promises him that everyone in the neighborhood knows why Watson is here. Stapleton invites Watson to Merripit House to meet his sister. As they walk through the moors, Stapleton tells Watson that the ground in this area is not stable: there are bogs and marshes all over the place. Stapleton warns that, if Watson went into the Mire on his own, he would probably drown in the swamp. The two men hear a long, low howl over the moor. Apparently, the local people believe that this howl belongs to the Hound of the Baskervilles. Stapleton thinks it's a bittern--a kind of bird that's nearly extinct in England. They walk past the remains of a prehistoric town. Stapleton suddenly spots a butterfly and goes running off into the Mire. Watson watches him anxiously, worried that he'll lose his footing and sink. As Watson stares after Stapleton, a woman suddenly approaches him. Watson assumes that she is Stapleton's sister, even though she doesn't look very much like him. She quickly warns him, "Go straight back to London, instantly" . When Stapleton returns to the path, she suddenly changes the subject and starts talking about the flowers on the moor. Stapleton addresses her as "Beryl" Beryl mentions that she has already introduced herself to "Sir Henry." Watson is like, ummm, no, I'm just Dr. Watson. Beryl blushes in embarrassment. When Watson walks off in the direction of Baskerville Hall, Beryl rushes over to speak to him. She apologizes for confusing him with Sir Henry but refuses to explain why it's so important for Sir Henry to leave.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/08.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_7_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 8

chapter 8

{"name": "Chapter 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-8", "summary": "As the narrator of this story, Watson then describes the telegrams he's sent to Holmes so far. The first telegram reports that it looks like Selden has left the area. Anyway, no one's seen him, which is a big relief. Watson has also noticed signs that Sir Henry is totally falling for Beryl Stapleton. Weird, though--you'd think Stapleton would be happy to have his sister marry the local rich guy. But in fact, Stapleton seems to be trying to find ways to keep Beryl and Sir Henry apart. Watson also mentions another neighbor: Mr. Frankland of Lafter Hall. He's a litigious old man interested in astronomy who has a telescope on his roof. These days, Mr. Frankland spends a fair amount of his time scanning the moors with his telescope looking for Selden the murderer. And now, for the last bit of news: weird stuff has been happening with the Barrymores. Watson told Sir Henry that Barrymore may not have received the telegram Holmes sent from London himself. So Sir Henry asks Barrymore if he read the telegram and replied to it himself. He answers that, since he was busy, he let his wife answer. Later on in the day, Barrymore asks if Sir Henry suspects him of something. Sir Henry says no, and offers Barrymore some of his used clothes to prove his faith in him. Sir Henry's lost 75 lbs. on Jenny Craig, and anyway now that he's a baronet, he needs classier clothes. Watson can't forget that first night when he heard Mrs. Barrymore sobbing. He's seen signs of crying on her face several times since then. Watson's suspicions of Barrymore have only gotten worse since a strange incident the night before. At around two in the morning, Watson heard someone sneaking around outside his room. He woke up and looked out to see Barrymore creeping along the hallway to an empty room. Watson watched Barrymore standing in front of a window with a lamp in his hand. Barrymore stared out onto the moor for several minutes before groaning and putting out the light. Something is going on with that guy.", "analysis": ""}

From this point onward I will follow the course of events by transcribing my own letters to Mr. Sherlock Holmes which lie before me on the table. One page is missing, but otherwise they are exactly as written and show my feelings and suspicions of the moment more accurately than my memory, clear as it is upon these tragic events, can possibly do. Baskerville Hall, October 13th. MY DEAR HOLMES: My previous letters and telegrams have kept you pretty well up to date as to all that has occurred in this most God-forsaken corner of the world. The longer one stays here the more does the spirit of the moor sink into one's soul, its vastness, and also its grim charm. When you are once out upon its bosom you have left all traces of modern England behind you, but, on the other hand, you are conscious everywhere of the homes and the work of the prehistoric people. On all sides of you as you walk are the houses of these forgotten folk, with their graves and the huge monoliths which are supposed to have marked their temples. As you look at their gray stone huts against the scarred hillsides you leave your own age behind you, and if you were to see a skin-clad, hairy man crawl out from the low door fitting a flint-tipped arrow on to the string of his bow, you would feel that his presence there was more natural than your own. The strange thing is that they should have lived so thickly on what must always have been most unfruitful soil. I am no antiquarian, but I could imagine that they were some unwarlike and harried race who were forced to accept that which none other would occupy. All this, however, is foreign to the mission on which you sent me and will probably be very uninteresting to your severely practical mind. I can still remember your complete indifference as to whether the sun moved round the earth or the earth round the sun. Let me, therefore, return to the facts concerning Sir Henry Baskerville. If you have not had any report within the last few days it is because up to today there was nothing of importance to relate. Then a very surprising circumstance occurred, which I shall tell you in due course. But, first of all, I must keep you in touch with some of the other factors in the situation. One of these, concerning which I have said little, is the escaped convict upon the moor. There is strong reason now to believe that he has got right away, which is a considerable relief to the lonely householders of this district. A fortnight has passed since his flight, during which he has not been seen and nothing has been heard of him. It is surely inconceivable that he could have held out upon the moor during all that time. Of course, so far as his concealment goes there is no difficulty at all. Any one of these stone huts would give him a hiding-place. But there is nothing to eat unless he were to catch and slaughter one of the moor sheep. We think, therefore, that he has gone, and the outlying farmers sleep the better in consequence. We are four able-bodied men in this household, so that we could take good care of ourselves, but I confess that I have had uneasy moments when I have thought of the Stapletons. They live miles from any help. There are one maid, an old manservant, the sister, and the brother, the latter not a very strong man. They would be helpless in the hands of a desperate fellow like this Notting Hill criminal if he could once effect an entrance. Both Sir Henry and I were concerned at their situation, and it was suggested that Perkins the groom should go over to sleep there, but Stapleton would not hear of it. The fact is that our friend, the baronet, begins to display a considerable interest in our fair neighbour. It is not to be wondered at, for time hangs heavily in this lonely spot to an active man like him, and she is a very fascinating and beautiful woman. There is something tropical and exotic about her which forms a singular contrast to her cool and unemotional brother. Yet he also gives the idea of hidden fires. He has certainly a very marked influence over her, for I have seen her continually glance at him as she talked as if seeking approbation for what she said. I trust that he is kind to her. There is a dry glitter in his eyes and a firm set of his thin lips, which goes with a positive and possibly a harsh nature. You would find him an interesting study. He came over to call upon Baskerville on that first day, and the very next morning he took us both to show us the spot where the legend of the wicked Hugo is supposed to have had its origin. It was an excursion of some miles across the moor to a place which is so dismal that it might have suggested the story. We found a short valley between rugged tors which led to an open, grassy space flecked over with the white cotton grass. In the middle of it rose two great stones, worn and sharpened at the upper end until they looked like the huge corroding fangs of some monstrous beast. In every way it corresponded with the scene of the old tragedy. Sir Henry was much interested and asked Stapleton more than once whether he did really believe in the possibility of the interference of the supernatural in the affairs of men. He spoke lightly, but it was evident that he was very much in earnest. Stapleton was guarded in his replies, but it was easy to see that he said less than he might, and that he would not express his whole opinion out of consideration for the feelings of the baronet. He told us of similar cases, where families had suffered from some evil influence, and he left us with the impression that he shared the popular view upon the matter. On our way back we stayed for lunch at Merripit House, and it was there that Sir Henry made the acquaintance of Miss Stapleton. From the first moment that he saw her he appeared to be strongly attracted by her, and I am much mistaken if the feeling was not mutual. He referred to her again and again on our walk home, and since then hardly a day has passed that we have not seen something of the brother and sister. They dine here tonight, and there is some talk of our going to them next week. One would imagine that such a match would be very welcome to Stapleton, and yet I have more than once caught a look of the strongest disapprobation in his face when Sir Henry has been paying some attention to his sister. He is much attached to her, no doubt, and would lead a lonely life without her, but it would seem the height of selfishness if he were to stand in the way of her making so brilliant a marriage. Yet I am certain that he does not wish their intimacy to ripen into love, and I have several times observed that he has taken pains to prevent them from being tete-a-tete. By the way, your instructions to me never to allow Sir Henry to go out alone will become very much more onerous if a love affair were to be added to our other difficulties. My popularity would soon suffer if I were to carry out your orders to the letter. The other day--Thursday, to be more exact--Dr. Mortimer lunched with us. He has been excavating a barrow at Long Down and has got a prehistoric skull which fills him with great joy. Never was there such a single-minded enthusiast as he! The Stapletons came in afterwards, and the good doctor took us all to the yew alley at Sir Henry's request to show us exactly how everything occurred upon that fatal night. It is a long, dismal walk, the yew alley, between two high walls of clipped hedge, with a narrow band of grass upon either side. At the far end is an old tumble-down summer-house. Halfway down is the moor-gate, where the old gentleman left his cigar-ash. It is a white wooden gate with a latch. Beyond it lies the wide moor. I remembered your theory of the affair and tried to picture all that had occurred. As the old man stood there he saw something coming across the moor, something which terrified him so that he lost his wits and ran and ran until he died of sheer horror and exhaustion. There was the long, gloomy tunnel down which he fled. And from what? A sheep-dog of the moor? Or a spectral hound, black, silent, and monstrous? Was there a human agency in the matter? Did the pale, watchful Barrymore know more than he cared to say? It was all dim and vague, but always there is the dark shadow of crime behind it. One other neighbour I have met since I wrote last. This is Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, who lives some four miles to the south of us. He is an elderly man, red-faced, white-haired, and choleric. His passion is for the British law, and he has spent a large fortune in litigation. He fights for the mere pleasure of fighting and is equally ready to take up either side of a question, so that it is no wonder that he has found it a costly amusement. Sometimes he will shut up a right of way and defy the parish to make him open it. At others he will with his own hands tear down some other man's gate and declare that a path has existed there from time immemorial, defying the owner to prosecute him for trespass. He is learned in old manorial and communal rights, and he applies his knowledge sometimes in favour of the villagers of Fernworthy and sometimes against them, so that he is periodically either carried in triumph down the village street or else burned in effigy, according to his latest exploit. He is said to have about seven lawsuits upon his hands at present, which will probably swallow up the remainder of his fortune and so draw his sting and leave him harmless for the future. Apart from the law he seems a kindly, good-natured person, and I only mention him because you were particular that I should send some description of the people who surround us. He is curiously employed at present, for, being an amateur astronomer, he has an excellent telescope, with which he lies upon the roof of his own house and sweeps the moor all day in the hope of catching a glimpse of the escaped convict. If he would confine his energies to this all would be well, but there are rumours that he intends to prosecute Dr. Mortimer for opening a grave without the consent of the next of kin because he dug up the Neolithic skull in the barrow on Long Down. He helps to keep our lives from being monotonous and gives a little comic relief where it is badly needed. And now, having brought you up to date in the escaped convict, the Stapletons, Dr. Mortimer, and Frankland, of Lafter Hall, let me end on that which is most important and tell you more about the Barrymores, and especially about the surprising development of last night. First of all about the test telegram, which you sent from London in order to make sure that Barrymore was really here. I have already explained that the testimony of the postmaster shows that the test was worthless and that we have no proof one way or the other. I told Sir Henry how the matter stood, and he at once, in his downright fashion, had Barrymore up and asked him whether he had received the telegram himself. Barrymore said that he had. "Did the boy deliver it into your own hands?" asked Sir Henry. Barrymore looked surprised, and considered for a little time. "No," said he, "I was in the box-room at the time, and my wife brought it up to me." "Did you answer it yourself?" "No; I told my wife what to answer and she went down to write it." In the evening he recurred to the subject of his own accord. "I could not quite understand the object of your questions this morning, Sir Henry," said he. "I trust that they do not mean that I have done anything to forfeit your confidence?" Sir Henry had to assure him that it was not so and pacify him by giving him a considerable part of his old wardrobe, the London outfit having now all arrived. Mrs. Barrymore is of interest to me. She is a heavy, solid person, very limited, intensely respectable, and inclined to be puritanical. You could hardly conceive a less emotional subject. Yet I have told you how, on the first night here, I heard her sobbing bitterly, and since then I have more than once observed traces of tears upon her face. Some deep sorrow gnaws ever at her heart. Sometimes I wonder if she has a guilty memory which haunts her, and sometimes I suspect Barrymore of being a domestic tyrant. I have always felt that there was something singular and questionable in this man's character, but the adventure of last night brings all my suspicions to a head. And yet it may seem a small matter in itself. You are aware that I am not a very sound sleeper, and since I have been on guard in this house my slumbers have been lighter than ever. Last night, about two in the morning, I was aroused by a stealthy step passing my room. I rose, opened my door, and peeped out. A long black shadow was trailing down the corridor. It was thrown by a man who walked softly down the passage with a candle held in his hand. He was in shirt and trousers, with no covering to his feet. I could merely see the outline, but his height told me that it was Barrymore. He walked very slowly and circumspectly, and there was something indescribably guilty and furtive in his whole appearance. I have told you that the corridor is broken by the balcony which runs round the hall, but that it is resumed upon the farther side. I waited until he had passed out of sight and then I followed him. When I came round the balcony he had reached the end of the farther corridor, and I could see from the glimmer of light through an open door that he had entered one of the rooms. Now, all these rooms are unfurnished and unoccupied so that his expedition became more mysterious than ever. The light shone steadily as if he were standing motionless. I crept down the passage as noiselessly as I could and peeped round the corner of the door. Barrymore was crouching at the window with the candle held against the glass. His profile was half turned towards me, and his face seemed to be rigid with expectation as he stared out into the blackness of the moor. For some minutes he stood watching intently. Then he gave a deep groan and with an impatient gesture he put out the light. Instantly I made my way back to my room, and very shortly came the stealthy steps passing once more upon their return journey. Long afterwards when I had fallen into a light sleep I heard a key turn somewhere in a lock, but I could not tell whence the sound came. What it all means I cannot guess, but there is some secret business going on in this house of gloom which sooner or later we shall get to the bottom of. I do not trouble you with my theories, for you asked me to furnish you only with facts. I have had a long talk with Sir Henry this morning, and we have made a plan of campaign founded upon my observations of last night. I will not speak about it just now, but it should make my next report interesting reading.

Chapter 8

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-8

As the narrator of this story, Watson then describes the telegrams he's sent to Holmes so far. The first telegram reports that it looks like Selden has left the area. Anyway, no one's seen him, which is a big relief. Watson has also noticed signs that Sir Henry is totally falling for Beryl Stapleton. Weird, though--you'd think Stapleton would be happy to have his sister marry the local rich guy. But in fact, Stapleton seems to be trying to find ways to keep Beryl and Sir Henry apart. Watson also mentions another neighbor: Mr. Frankland of Lafter Hall. He's a litigious old man interested in astronomy who has a telescope on his roof. These days, Mr. Frankland spends a fair amount of his time scanning the moors with his telescope looking for Selden the murderer. And now, for the last bit of news: weird stuff has been happening with the Barrymores. Watson told Sir Henry that Barrymore may not have received the telegram Holmes sent from London himself. So Sir Henry asks Barrymore if he read the telegram and replied to it himself. He answers that, since he was busy, he let his wife answer. Later on in the day, Barrymore asks if Sir Henry suspects him of something. Sir Henry says no, and offers Barrymore some of his used clothes to prove his faith in him. Sir Henry's lost 75 lbs. on Jenny Craig, and anyway now that he's a baronet, he needs classier clothes. Watson can't forget that first night when he heard Mrs. Barrymore sobbing. He's seen signs of crying on her face several times since then. Watson's suspicions of Barrymore have only gotten worse since a strange incident the night before. At around two in the morning, Watson heard someone sneaking around outside his room. He woke up and looked out to see Barrymore creeping along the hallway to an empty room. Watson watched Barrymore standing in front of a window with a lamp in his hand. Barrymore stared out onto the moor for several minutes before groaning and putting out the light. Something is going on with that guy.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/09.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_8_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 9

chapter 9

{"name": "Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-9", "summary": "The next morning, Watson looks out Barrymore's secret window. He sees that this window gives the best view of the moor. Watson mentions Barrymore's late night activities to Sir Henry, who isn't surprised. In fact, Sir Henry has also heard Barrymore going around late at night. They decide to stay up that night and follow Barrymore. Sir Henry prepares to go out for a walk on the moor, and Watson gets ready to go with him. Sir Henry's like, three's company, man. Don't crowd me, I've got business on the moor. Watson is embarrassed to be a third wheel, since it's clear that Sir Henry's trying to go on a date. But Holmes did insist that Watson shouldn't let Sir Henry leave the house on his own. So Watson follows secretly, some distance behind him. He sees Sir Henry meeting with Beryl Stapleton. As Watson keeps a lookout, he sees the two lovebirds jump apart. He watches as Stapleton comes running up, enraged.. Stapleton gets all up in Sir Henry's face and then drags Beryl away. Watson appears from his hiding place on top of a nearby hill. Sir Henry's annoyed at Watson's spying. But he's more shocked at Stapleton's bizarre behavior. Why would Stapleton go nuts about Sir Henry proposing to Beryl? That afternoon, Stapleton comes to Baskerville Hall to apologize for his behavior. He invites Sir Henry and Watson to dinner at Merripit House to make up for it. Stapleton explains why he flipped out at the idea of Beryl and Sir Henry getting together. Apparently, he's just a lonely guy who's come to depend on his sister's company to keep him from getting too isolated. He hadn't noticed that Beryl and Sir Henry were growing close, and he was taken by surprise to hear of their potential engagement. He has no real objection, but he asks Sir Henry to give him three months to get used to the idea. Sir Henry agrees, and so he and Beryl are now engaged... to be engaged. Sir Henry and Watson now turn their attention back to Barrymore. Two nights later, they catch him again standing at the window with his lamp. Barrymore claims that it isn't his place to say why he's holding a candle to the window. As Barrymore speaks, they spot another light out on the moors. When Barrymore moves his candle, the other light also moves. A signal. Sir Henry fires Barrymore on the spot and accuses him of plotting against him. Suddenly, Mrs. Barrymore appears: she swears that they are not planning to harm Sir Henry. Barrymore tries to calm her, but she insists on explaining: the signal is for her brother. Mrs. Barrymore's brother is none other than--Selden, the insane escaped prisoner. Mrs. Barrymore explains that, even after everything that Selden's done, when he turned up at their doorstep shivering and alone, she couldn't leave him to die out on the moors. Sir Henry forgives Barrymore for standing by his wife, and rehires him as butler. He sends the Barrymores off to bed, and promises they'll talk over things in the morning. After the Barrymores leave, Watson and Sir Henry look out the window. They can still see Selden's candle burning out on the moor. Watson guesses that he's hiding about a mile or two away. Sir Henry and Watson decide to go out and capture Selden, since a psychotic murderer could be a danger to the community. Ya think? Watson brings his gun, and they set off in the direction of the light. Suddenly, they hear that low, moaning howl that Watson heard on the moor that afternoon with Stapleton. Sir Henry sounds frightened when he asks Watson what the local people say about that sound. Watson tries to play it off as no big deal, but finally he has to admit: it's the howl of the Hound of the Baskervilles. Sir Henry starts to sound very superstitious about this Hound business. They spot Selden just as he seems to realize that he's been found. He takes off across the moor. Sir Henry and Watson chase after him, but he's had too much of a head start. As they're standing on the moor, Watson sees a tall figure of another man outlined against the moon. A split second later, the man is gone.", "analysis": ""}

Baskerville Hall, Oct. 15th. MY DEAR HOLMES: If I was compelled to leave you without much news during the early days of my mission you must acknowledge that I am making up for lost time, and that events are now crowding thick and fast upon us. In my last report I ended upon my top note with Barrymore at the window, and now I have quite a budget already which will, unless I am much mistaken, considerably surprise you. Things have taken a turn which I could not have anticipated. In some ways they have within the last forty-eight hours become much clearer and in some ways they have become more complicated. But I will tell you all and you shall judge for yourself. Before breakfast on the morning following my adventure I went down the corridor and examined the room in which Barrymore had been on the night before. The western window through which he had stared so intently has, I noticed, one peculiarity above all other windows in the house--it commands the nearest outlook on to the moor. There is an opening between two trees which enables one from this point of view to look right down upon it, while from all the other windows it is only a distant glimpse which can be obtained. It follows, therefore, that Barrymore, since only this window would serve the purpose, must have been looking out for something or somebody upon the moor. The night was very dark, so that I can hardly imagine how he could have hoped to see anyone. It had struck me that it was possible that some love intrigue was on foot. That would have accounted for his stealthy movements and also for the uneasiness of his wife. The man is a striking-looking fellow, very well equipped to steal the heart of a country girl, so that this theory seemed to have something to support it. That opening of the door which I had heard after I had returned to my room might mean that he had gone out to keep some clandestine appointment. So I reasoned with myself in the morning, and I tell you the direction of my suspicions, however much the result may have shown that they were unfounded. But whatever the true explanation of Barrymore's movements might be, I felt that the responsibility of keeping them to myself until I could explain them was more than I could bear. I had an interview with the baronet in his study after breakfast, and I told him all that I had seen. He was less surprised than I had expected. "I knew that Barrymore walked about nights, and I had a mind to speak to him about it," said he. "Two or three times I have heard his steps in the passage, coming and going, just about the hour you name." "Perhaps then he pays a visit every night to that particular window," I suggested. "Perhaps he does. If so, we should be able to shadow him and see what it is that he is after. I wonder what your friend Holmes would do if he were here." "I believe that he would do exactly what you now suggest," said I. "He would follow Barrymore and see what he did." "Then we shall do it together." "But surely he would hear us." "The man is rather deaf, and in any case we must take our chance of that. We'll sit up in my room tonight and wait until he passes." Sir Henry rubbed his hands with pleasure, and it was evident that he hailed the adventure as a relief to his somewhat quiet life upon the moor. The baronet has been in communication with the architect who prepared the plans for Sir Charles, and with a contractor from London, so that we may expect great changes to begin here soon. There have been decorators and furnishers up from Plymouth, and it is evident that our friend has large ideas and means to spare no pains or expense to restore the grandeur of his family. When the house is renovated and refurnished, all that he will need will be a wife to make it complete. Between ourselves there are pretty clear signs that this will not be wanting if the lady is willing, for I have seldom seen a man more infatuated with a woman than he is with our beautiful neighbour, Miss Stapleton. And yet the course of true love does not run quite as smoothly as one would under the circumstances expect. Today, for example, its surface was broken by a very unexpected ripple, which has caused our friend considerable perplexity and annoyance. After the conversation which I have quoted about Barrymore, Sir Henry put on his hat and prepared to go out. As a matter of course I did the same. "What, are you coming, Watson?" he asked, looking at me in a curious way. "That depends on whether you are going on the moor," said I. "Yes, I am." "Well, you know what my instructions are. I am sorry to intrude, but you heard how earnestly Holmes insisted that I should not leave you, and especially that you should not go alone upon the moor." Sir Henry put his hand upon my shoulder with a pleasant smile. "My dear fellow," said he, "Holmes, with all his wisdom, did not foresee some things which have happened since I have been on the moor. You understand me? I am sure that you are the last man in the world who would wish to be a spoil-sport. I must go out alone." It put me in a most awkward position. I was at a loss what to say or what to do, and before I had made up my mind he picked up his cane and was gone. But when I came to think the matter over my conscience reproached me bitterly for having on any pretext allowed him to go out of my sight. I imagined what my feelings would be if I had to return to you and to confess that some misfortune had occurred through my disregard for your instructions. I assure you my cheeks flushed at the very thought. It might not even now be too late to overtake him, so I set off at once in the direction of Merripit House. I hurried along the road at the top of my speed without seeing anything of Sir Henry, until I came to the point where the moor path branches off. There, fearing that perhaps I had come in the wrong direction after all, I mounted a hill from which I could command a view--the same hill which is cut into the dark quarry. Thence I saw him at once. He was on the moor path about a quarter of a mile off, and a lady was by his side who could only be Miss Stapleton. It was clear that there was already an understanding between them and that they had met by appointment. They were walking slowly along in deep conversation, and I saw her making quick little movements of her hands as if she were very earnest in what she was saying, while he listened intently, and once or twice shook his head in strong dissent. I stood among the rocks watching them, very much puzzled as to what I should do next. To follow them and break into their intimate conversation seemed to be an outrage, and yet my clear duty was never for an instant to let him out of my sight. To act the spy upon a friend was a hateful task. Still, I could see no better course than to observe him from the hill, and to clear my conscience by confessing to him afterwards what I had done. It is true that if any sudden danger had threatened him I was too far away to be of use, and yet I am sure that you will agree with me that the position was very difficult, and that there was nothing more which I could do. Our friend, Sir Henry, and the lady had halted on the path and were standing deeply absorbed in their conversation, when I was suddenly aware that I was not the only witness of their interview. A wisp of green floating in the air caught my eye, and another glance showed me that it was carried on a stick by a man who was moving among the broken ground. It was Stapleton with his butterfly-net. He was very much closer to the pair than I was, and he appeared to be moving in their direction. At this instant Sir Henry suddenly drew Miss Stapleton to his side. His arm was round her, but it seemed to me that she was straining away from him with her face averted. He stooped his head to hers, and she raised one hand as if in protest. Next moment I saw them spring apart and turn hurriedly round. Stapleton was the cause of the interruption. He was running wildly towards them, his absurd net dangling behind him. He gesticulated and almost danced with excitement in front of the lovers. What the scene meant I could not imagine, but it seemed to me that Stapleton was abusing Sir Henry, who offered explanations, which became more angry as the other refused to accept them. The lady stood by in haughty silence. Finally Stapleton turned upon his heel and beckoned in a peremptory way to his sister, who, after an irresolute glance at Sir Henry, walked off by the side of her brother. The naturalist's angry gestures showed that the lady was included in his displeasure. The baronet stood for a minute looking after them, and then he walked slowly back the way that he had come, his head hanging, the very picture of dejection. What all this meant I could not imagine, but I was deeply ashamed to have witnessed so intimate a scene without my friend's knowledge. I ran down the hill therefore and met the baronet at the bottom. His face was flushed with anger and his brows were wrinkled, like one who is at his wit's ends what to do. "Halloa, Watson! Where have you dropped from?" said he. "You don't mean to say that you came after me in spite of all?" I explained everything to him: how I had found it impossible to remain behind, how I had followed him, and how I had witnessed all that had occurred. For an instant his eyes blazed at me, but my frankness disarmed his anger, and he broke at last into a rather rueful laugh. "You would have thought the middle of that prairie a fairly safe place for a man to be private," said he, "but, by thunder, the whole countryside seems to have been out to see me do my wooing--and a mighty poor wooing at that! Where had you engaged a seat?" "I was on that hill." "Quite in the back row, eh? But her brother was well up to the front. Did you see him come out on us?" "Yes, I did." "Did he ever strike you as being crazy--this brother of hers?" "I can't say that he ever did." "I dare say not. I always thought him sane enough until today, but you can take it from me that either he or I ought to be in a straitjacket. What's the matter with me, anyhow? You've lived near me for some weeks, Watson. Tell me straight, now! Is there anything that would prevent me from making a good husband to a woman that I loved?" "I should say not." "He can't object to my worldly position, so it must be myself that he has this down on. What has he against me? I never hurt man or woman in my life that I know of. And yet he would not so much as let me touch the tips of her fingers." "Did he say so?" "That, and a deal more. I tell you, Watson, I've only known her these few weeks, but from the first I just felt that she was made for me, and she, too--she was happy when she was with me, and that I'll swear. There's a light in a woman's eyes that speaks louder than words. But he has never let us get together and it was only today for the first time that I saw a chance of having a few words with her alone. She was glad to meet me, but when she did it was not love that she would talk about, and she wouldn't have let me talk about it either if she could have stopped it. She kept coming back to it that this was a place of danger, and that she would never be happy until I had left it. I told her that since I had seen her I was in no hurry to leave it, and that if she really wanted me to go, the only way to work it was for her to arrange to go with me. With that I offered in as many words to marry her, but before she could answer, down came this brother of hers, running at us with a face on him like a madman. He was just white with rage, and those light eyes of his were blazing with fury. What was I doing with the lady? How dared I offer her attentions which were distasteful to her? Did I think that because I was a baronet I could do what I liked? If he had not been her brother I should have known better how to answer him. As it was I told him that my feelings towards his sister were such as I was not ashamed of, and that I hoped that she might honour me by becoming my wife. That seemed to make the matter no better, so then I lost my temper too, and I answered him rather more hotly than I should perhaps, considering that she was standing by. So it ended by his going off with her, as you saw, and here am I as badly puzzled a man as any in this county. Just tell me what it all means, Watson, and I'll owe you more than ever I can hope to pay." I tried one or two explanations, but, indeed, I was completely puzzled myself. Our friend's title, his fortune, his age, his character, and his appearance are all in his favour, and I know nothing against him unless it be this dark fate which runs in his family. That his advances should be rejected so brusquely without any reference to the lady's own wishes and that the lady should accept the situation without protest is very amazing. However, our conjectures were set at rest by a visit from Stapleton himself that very afternoon. He had come to offer apologies for his rudeness of the morning, and after a long private interview with Sir Henry in his study the upshot of their conversation was that the breach is quite healed, and that we are to dine at Merripit House next Friday as a sign of it. "I don't say now that he isn't a crazy man," said Sir Henry; "I can't forget the look in his eyes when he ran at me this morning, but I must allow that no man could make a more handsome apology than he has done." "Did he give any explanation of his conduct?" "His sister is everything in his life, he says. That is natural enough, and I am glad that he should understand her value. They have always been together, and according to his account he has been a very lonely man with only her as a companion, so that the thought of losing her was really terrible to him. He had not understood, he said, that I was becoming attached to her, but when he saw with his own eyes that it was really so, and that she might be taken away from him, it gave him such a shock that for a time he was not responsible for what he said or did. He was very sorry for all that had passed, and he recognized how foolish and how selfish it was that he should imagine that he could hold a beautiful woman like his sister to himself for her whole life. If she had to leave him he had rather it was to a neighbour like myself than to anyone else. But in any case it was a blow to him and it would take him some time before he could prepare himself to meet it. He would withdraw all opposition upon his part if I would promise for three months to let the matter rest and to be content with cultivating the lady's friendship during that time without claiming her love. This I promised, and so the matter rests." So there is one of our small mysteries cleared up. It is something to have touched bottom anywhere in this bog in which we are floundering. We know now why Stapleton looked with disfavour upon his sister's suitor--even when that suitor was so eligible a one as Sir Henry. And now I pass on to another thread which I have extricated out of the tangled skein, the mystery of the sobs in the night, of the tear-stained face of Mrs. Barrymore, of the secret journey of the butler to the western lattice window. Congratulate me, my dear Holmes, and tell me that I have not disappointed you as an agent--that you do not regret the confidence which you showed in me when you sent me down. All these things have by one night's work been thoroughly cleared. I have said "by one night's work," but, in truth, it was by two nights' work, for on the first we drew entirely blank. I sat up with Sir Henry in his rooms until nearly three o'clock in the morning, but no sound of any sort did we hear except the chiming clock upon the stairs. It was a most melancholy vigil and ended by each of us falling asleep in our chairs. Fortunately we were not discouraged, and we determined to try again. The next night we lowered the lamp and sat smoking cigarettes without making the least sound. It was incredible how slowly the hours crawled by, and yet we were helped through it by the same sort of patient interest which the hunter must feel as he watches the trap into which he hopes the game may wander. One struck, and two, and we had almost for the second time given it up in despair when in an instant we both sat bolt upright in our chairs with all our weary senses keenly on the alert once more. We had heard the creak of a step in the passage. Very stealthily we heard it pass along until it died away in the distance. Then the baronet gently opened his door and we set out in pursuit. Already our man had gone round the gallery and the corridor was all in darkness. Softly we stole along until we had come into the other wing. We were just in time to catch a glimpse of the tall, black-bearded figure, his shoulders rounded as he tiptoed down the passage. Then he passed through the same door as before, and the light of the candle framed it in the darkness and shot one single yellow beam across the gloom of the corridor. We shuffled cautiously towards it, trying every plank before we dared to put our whole weight upon it. We had taken the precaution of leaving our boots behind us, but, even so, the old boards snapped and creaked beneath our tread. Sometimes it seemed impossible that he should fail to hear our approach. However, the man is fortunately rather deaf, and he was entirely preoccupied in that which he was doing. When at last we reached the door and peeped through we found him crouching at the window, candle in hand, his white, intent face pressed against the pane, exactly as I had seen him two nights before. We had arranged no plan of campaign, but the baronet is a man to whom the most direct way is always the most natural. He walked into the room, and as he did so Barrymore sprang up from the window with a sharp hiss of his breath and stood, livid and trembling, before us. His dark eyes, glaring out of the white mask of his face, were full of horror and astonishment as he gazed from Sir Henry to me. "What are you doing here, Barrymore?" "Nothing, sir." His agitation was so great that he could hardly speak, and the shadows sprang up and down from the shaking of his candle. "It was the window, sir. I go round at night to see that they are fastened." "On the second floor?" "Yes, sir, all the windows." "Look here, Barrymore," said Sir Henry sternly, "we have made up our minds to have the truth out of you, so it will save you trouble to tell it sooner rather than later. Come, now! No lies! What were you doing at that window?" The fellow looked at us in a helpless way, and he wrung his hands together like one who is in the last extremity of doubt and misery. "I was doing no harm, sir. I was holding a candle to the window." "And why were you holding a candle to the window?" "Don't ask me, Sir Henry--don't ask me! I give you my word, sir, that it is not my secret, and that I cannot tell it. If it concerned no one but myself I would not try to keep it from you." A sudden idea occurred to me, and I took the candle from the trembling hand of the butler. "He must have been holding it as a signal," said I. "Let us see if there is any answer." I held it as he had done, and stared out into the darkness of the night. Vaguely I could discern the black bank of the trees and the lighter expanse of the moor, for the moon was behind the clouds. And then I gave a cry of exultation, for a tiny pinpoint of yellow light had suddenly transfixed the dark veil, and glowed steadily in the centre of the black square framed by the window. "There it is!" I cried. "No, no, sir, it is nothing--nothing at all!" the butler broke in; "I assure you, sir--" "Move your light across the window, Watson!" cried the baronet. "See, the other moves also! Now, you rascal, do you deny that it is a signal? Come, speak up! Who is your confederate out yonder, and what is this conspiracy that is going on?" The man's face became openly defiant. "It is my business, and not yours. I will not tell." "Then you leave my employment right away." "Very good, sir. If I must I must." "And you go in disgrace. By thunder, you may well be ashamed of yourself. Your family has lived with mine for over a hundred years under this roof, and here I find you deep in some dark plot against me." "No, no, sir; no, not against you!" It was a woman's voice, and Mrs. Barrymore, paler and more horror-struck than her husband, was standing at the door. Her bulky figure in a shawl and skirt might have been comic were it not for the intensity of feeling upon her face. "We have to go, Eliza. This is the end of it. You can pack our things," said the butler. "Oh, John, John, have I brought you to this? It is my doing, Sir Henry--all mine. He has done nothing except for my sake and because I asked him." "Speak out, then! What does it mean?" "My unhappy brother is starving on the moor. We cannot let him perish at our very gates. The light is a signal to him that food is ready for him, and his light out yonder is to show the spot to which to bring it." "Then your brother is--" "The escaped convict, sir--Selden, the criminal." "That's the truth, sir," said Barrymore. "I said that it was not my secret and that I could not tell it to you. But now you have heard it, and you will see that if there was a plot it was not against you." This, then, was the explanation of the stealthy expeditions at night and the light at the window. Sir Henry and I both stared at the woman in amazement. Was it possible that this stolidly respectable person was of the same blood as one of the most notorious criminals in the country? "Yes, sir, my name was Selden, and he is my younger brother. We humoured him too much when he was a lad and gave him his own way in everything until he came to think that the world was made for his pleasure, and that he could do what he liked in it. Then as he grew older he met wicked companions, and the devil entered into him until he broke my mother's heart and dragged our name in the dirt. From crime to crime he sank lower and lower until it is only the mercy of God which has snatched him from the scaffold; but to me, sir, he was always the little curly-headed boy that I had nursed and played with as an elder sister would. That was why he broke prison, sir. He knew that I was here and that we could not refuse to help him. When he dragged himself here one night, weary and starving, with the warders hard at his heels, what could we do? We took him in and fed him and cared for him. Then you returned, sir, and my brother thought he would be safer on the moor than anywhere else until the hue and cry was over, so he lay in hiding there. But every second night we made sure if he was still there by putting a light in the window, and if there was an answer my husband took out some bread and meat to him. Every day we hoped that he was gone, but as long as he was there we could not desert him. That is the whole truth, as I am an honest Christian woman and you will see that if there is blame in the matter it does not lie with my husband but with me, for whose sake he has done all that he has." The woman's words came with an intense earnestness which carried conviction with them. "Is this true, Barrymore?" "Yes, Sir Henry. Every word of it." "Well, I cannot blame you for standing by your own wife. Forget what I have said. Go to your room, you two, and we shall talk further about this matter in the morning." When they were gone we looked out of the window again. Sir Henry had flung it open, and the cold night wind beat in upon our faces. Far away in the black distance there still glowed that one tiny point of yellow light. "I wonder he dares," said Sir Henry. "It may be so placed as to be only visible from here." "Very likely. How far do you think it is?" "Out by the Cleft Tor, I think." "Not more than a mile or two off." "Hardly that." "Well, it cannot be far if Barrymore had to carry out the food to it. And he is waiting, this villain, beside that candle. By thunder, Watson, I am going out to take that man!" The same thought had crossed my own mind. It was not as if the Barrymores had taken us into their confidence. Their secret had been forced from them. The man was a danger to the community, an unmitigated scoundrel for whom there was neither pity nor excuse. We were only doing our duty in taking this chance of putting him back where he could do no harm. With his brutal and violent nature, others would have to pay the price if we held our hands. Any night, for example, our neighbours the Stapletons might be attacked by him, and it may have been the thought of this which made Sir Henry so keen upon the adventure. "I will come," said I. "Then get your revolver and put on your boots. The sooner we start the better, as the fellow may put out his light and be off." In five minutes we were outside the door, starting upon our expedition. We hurried through the dark shrubbery, amid the dull moaning of the autumn wind and the rustle of the falling leaves. The night air was heavy with the smell of damp and decay. Now and again the moon peeped out for an instant, but clouds were driving over the face of the sky, and just as we came out on the moor a thin rain began to fall. The light still burned steadily in front. "Are you armed?" I asked. "I have a hunting-crop." "We must close in on him rapidly, for he is said to be a desperate fellow. We shall take him by surprise and have him at our mercy before he can resist." "I say, Watson," said the baronet, "what would Holmes say to this? How about that hour of darkness in which the power of evil is exalted?" As if in answer to his words there rose suddenly out of the vast gloom of the moor that strange cry which I had already heard upon the borders of the great Grimpen Mire. It came with the wind through the silence of the night, a long, deep mutter, then a rising howl, and then the sad moan in which it died away. Again and again it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident, wild, and menacing. The baronet caught my sleeve and his face glimmered white through the darkness. "My God, what's that, Watson?" "I don't know. It's a sound they have on the moor. I heard it once before." It died away, and an absolute silence closed in upon us. We stood straining our ears, but nothing came. "Watson," said the baronet, "it was the cry of a hound." My blood ran cold in my veins, for there was a break in his voice which told of the sudden horror which had seized him. "What do they call this sound?" he asked. "Who?" "The folk on the countryside." "Oh, they are ignorant people. Why should you mind what they call it?" "Tell me, Watson. What do they say of it?" I hesitated but could not escape the question. "They say it is the cry of the Hound of the Baskervilles." He groaned and was silent for a few moments. "A hound it was," he said at last, "but it seemed to come from miles away, over yonder, I think." "It was hard to say whence it came." "It rose and fell with the wind. Isn't that the direction of the great Grimpen Mire?" "Yes, it is." "Well, it was up there. Come now, Watson, didn't you think yourself that it was the cry of a hound? I am not a child. You need not fear to speak the truth." "Stapleton was with me when I heard it last. He said that it might be the calling of a strange bird." "No, no, it was a hound. My God, can there be some truth in all these stories? Is it possible that I am really in danger from so dark a cause? You don't believe it, do you, Watson?" "No, no." "And yet it was one thing to laugh about it in London, and it is another to stand out here in the darkness of the moor and to hear such a cry as that. And my uncle! There was the footprint of the hound beside him as he lay. It all fits together. I don't think that I am a coward, Watson, but that sound seemed to freeze my very blood. Feel my hand!" It was as cold as a block of marble. "You'll be all right tomorrow." "I don't think I'll get that cry out of my head. What do you advise that we do now?" "Shall we turn back?" "No, by thunder; we have come out to get our man, and we will do it. We after the convict, and a hell-hound, as likely as not, after us. Come on! We'll see it through if all the fiends of the pit were loose upon the moor." We stumbled slowly along in the darkness, with the black loom of the craggy hills around us, and the yellow speck of light burning steadily in front. There is nothing so deceptive as the distance of a light upon a pitch-dark night, and sometimes the glimmer seemed to be far away upon the horizon and sometimes it might have been within a few yards of us. But at last we could see whence it came, and then we knew that we were indeed very close. A guttering candle was stuck in a crevice of the rocks which flanked it on each side so as to keep the wind from it and also to prevent it from being visible, save in the direction of Baskerville Hall. A boulder of granite concealed our approach, and crouching behind it we gazed over it at the signal light. It was strange to see this single candle burning there in the middle of the moor, with no sign of life near it--just the one straight yellow flame and the gleam of the rock on each side of it. "What shall we do now?" whispered Sir Henry. "Wait here. He must be near his light. Let us see if we can get a glimpse of him." The words were hardly out of my mouth when we both saw him. Over the rocks, in the crevice of which the candle burned, there was thrust out an evil yellow face, a terrible animal face, all seamed and scored with vile passions. Foul with mire, with a bristling beard, and hung with matted hair, it might well have belonged to one of those old savages who dwelt in the burrows on the hillsides. The light beneath him was reflected in his small, cunning eyes which peered fiercely to right and left through the darkness like a crafty and savage animal who has heard the steps of the hunters. Something had evidently aroused his suspicions. It may have been that Barrymore had some private signal which we had neglected to give, or the fellow may have had some other reason for thinking that all was not well, but I could read his fears upon his wicked face. Any instant he might dash out the light and vanish in the darkness. I sprang forward therefore, and Sir Henry did the same. At the same moment the convict screamed out a curse at us and hurled a rock which splintered up against the boulder which had sheltered us. I caught one glimpse of his short, squat, strongly built figure as he sprang to his feet and turned to run. At the same moment by a lucky chance the moon broke through the clouds. We rushed over the brow of the hill, and there was our man running with great speed down the other side, springing over the stones in his way with the activity of a mountain goat. A lucky long shot of my revolver might have crippled him, but I had brought it only to defend myself if attacked and not to shoot an unarmed man who was running away. We were both swift runners and in fairly good training, but we soon found that we had no chance of overtaking him. We saw him for a long time in the moonlight until he was only a small speck moving swiftly among the boulders upon the side of a distant hill. We ran and ran until we were completely blown, but the space between us grew ever wider. Finally we stopped and sat panting on two rocks, while we watched him disappearing in the distance. And it was at this moment that there occurred a most strange and unexpected thing. We had risen from our rocks and were turning to go home, having abandoned the hopeless chase. The moon was low upon the right, and the jagged pinnacle of a granite tor stood up against the lower curve of its silver disc. There, outlined as black as an ebony statue on that shining background, I saw the figure of a man upon the tor. Do not think that it was a delusion, Holmes. I assure you that I have never in my life seen anything more clearly. As far as I could judge, the figure was that of a tall, thin man. He stood with his legs a little separated, his arms folded, his head bowed, as if he were brooding over that enormous wilderness of peat and granite which lay before him. He might have been the very spirit of that terrible place. It was not the convict. This man was far from the place where the latter had disappeared. Besides, he was a much taller man. With a cry of surprise I pointed him out to the baronet, but in the instant during which I had turned to grasp his arm the man was gone. There was the sharp pinnacle of granite still cutting the lower edge of the moon, but its peak bore no trace of that silent and motionless figure. I wished to go in that direction and to search the tor, but it was some distance away. The baronet's nerves were still quivering from that cry, which recalled the dark story of his family, and he was not in the mood for fresh adventures. He had not seen this lonely man upon the tor and could not feel the thrill which his strange presence and his commanding attitude had given to me. "A warder, no doubt," said he. "The moor has been thick with them since this fellow escaped." Well, perhaps his explanation may be the right one, but I should like to have some further proof of it. Today we mean to communicate to the Princetown people where they should look for their missing man, but it is hard lines that we have not actually had the triumph of bringing him back as our own prisoner. Such are the adventures of last night, and you must acknowledge, my dear Holmes, that I have done you very well in the matter of a report. Much of what I tell you is no doubt quite irrelevant, but still I feel that it is best that I should let you have all the facts and leave you to select for yourself those which will be of most service to you in helping you to your conclusions. We are certainly making some progress. So far as the Barrymores go we have found the motive of their actions, and that has cleared up the situation very much. But the moor with its mysteries and its strange inhabitants remains as inscrutable as ever. Perhaps in my next I may be able to throw some light upon this also. Best of all would it be if you could come down to us. In any case you will hear from me again in the course of the next few days.

Chapter 9

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-9

The next morning, Watson looks out Barrymore's secret window. He sees that this window gives the best view of the moor. Watson mentions Barrymore's late night activities to Sir Henry, who isn't surprised. In fact, Sir Henry has also heard Barrymore going around late at night. They decide to stay up that night and follow Barrymore. Sir Henry prepares to go out for a walk on the moor, and Watson gets ready to go with him. Sir Henry's like, three's company, man. Don't crowd me, I've got business on the moor. Watson is embarrassed to be a third wheel, since it's clear that Sir Henry's trying to go on a date. But Holmes did insist that Watson shouldn't let Sir Henry leave the house on his own. So Watson follows secretly, some distance behind him. He sees Sir Henry meeting with Beryl Stapleton. As Watson keeps a lookout, he sees the two lovebirds jump apart. He watches as Stapleton comes running up, enraged.. Stapleton gets all up in Sir Henry's face and then drags Beryl away. Watson appears from his hiding place on top of a nearby hill. Sir Henry's annoyed at Watson's spying. But he's more shocked at Stapleton's bizarre behavior. Why would Stapleton go nuts about Sir Henry proposing to Beryl? That afternoon, Stapleton comes to Baskerville Hall to apologize for his behavior. He invites Sir Henry and Watson to dinner at Merripit House to make up for it. Stapleton explains why he flipped out at the idea of Beryl and Sir Henry getting together. Apparently, he's just a lonely guy who's come to depend on his sister's company to keep him from getting too isolated. He hadn't noticed that Beryl and Sir Henry were growing close, and he was taken by surprise to hear of their potential engagement. He has no real objection, but he asks Sir Henry to give him three months to get used to the idea. Sir Henry agrees, and so he and Beryl are now engaged... to be engaged. Sir Henry and Watson now turn their attention back to Barrymore. Two nights later, they catch him again standing at the window with his lamp. Barrymore claims that it isn't his place to say why he's holding a candle to the window. As Barrymore speaks, they spot another light out on the moors. When Barrymore moves his candle, the other light also moves. A signal. Sir Henry fires Barrymore on the spot and accuses him of plotting against him. Suddenly, Mrs. Barrymore appears: she swears that they are not planning to harm Sir Henry. Barrymore tries to calm her, but she insists on explaining: the signal is for her brother. Mrs. Barrymore's brother is none other than--Selden, the insane escaped prisoner. Mrs. Barrymore explains that, even after everything that Selden's done, when he turned up at their doorstep shivering and alone, she couldn't leave him to die out on the moors. Sir Henry forgives Barrymore for standing by his wife, and rehires him as butler. He sends the Barrymores off to bed, and promises they'll talk over things in the morning. After the Barrymores leave, Watson and Sir Henry look out the window. They can still see Selden's candle burning out on the moor. Watson guesses that he's hiding about a mile or two away. Sir Henry and Watson decide to go out and capture Selden, since a psychotic murderer could be a danger to the community. Ya think? Watson brings his gun, and they set off in the direction of the light. Suddenly, they hear that low, moaning howl that Watson heard on the moor that afternoon with Stapleton. Sir Henry sounds frightened when he asks Watson what the local people say about that sound. Watson tries to play it off as no big deal, but finally he has to admit: it's the howl of the Hound of the Baskervilles. Sir Henry starts to sound very superstitious about this Hound business. They spot Selden just as he seems to realize that he's been found. He takes off across the moor. Sir Henry and Watson chase after him, but he's had too much of a head start. As they're standing on the moor, Watson sees a tall figure of another man outlined against the moon. A split second later, the man is gone.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/10.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_9_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 10

chapter 10

{"name": "Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-10", "summary": "As the chapter title promises us, this is--wait for it--a section of Watson's diary from his time at Baskerville Hall. Shocking, we know. Barrymore and Sir Henry get into it the next morning. Turns out Barrymore's angry that Watson and Sir Henry went to hunt down Selden. Barrymore begs the two men to let Selden go until they can get him on a boat to South America. Watson and Sir Henry agree to leave Selden alone. Barrymore's so grateful that he wants to do something for Sir Henry in return. There's something about Sir Charles' death that Barrymore's been keeping secret. The morning of Sir Charles' death, Barrymore happened to notice him receiving a letter from a nearby town called Coombe Tracey. The letter was written in a woman's handwriting. A few weeks ago, long after Sir Charles' mysterious death, Barrymore was cleaning out the ashes of the fireplace in Sir Charles' study. He found the charred pieces of that letter. He could still read the final lines: \"Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate at ten o'clock\" . The letter was signed \"L.L.\" Barrymore hasn't wanted to reveal this because he wanted to protect Sir Charles' rep. But now that Sir Henry has been so kind, Barrymore wants to help him in return. The next day, Watson goes out walking on the moors. As he's heading back to Baskerville Hall, Dr. Mortimer drives past him in a cart. Dr. Mortimer tells Watson that there is a woman with the initials \"L.L.\" living in Coombe Tracey: Laura Lyons, the disgraced, disowned daughter of Mr. Frankland. Apparently, she eloped against her father's will with an artist named Lyons, who then left her. After dinner that evening, Watson asks Barrymore if Selden's still around. Barrymore says he last left out food for him three days ago, but hasn't seen him since. Barrymore also mentions that there's someone else out on the moor. Selden has mentioned this other man to Barrymore--the man doesn't seem to be a convict. Selden told Barrymore that this other man is living in the prehistoric ruins, and that a kid from the village brings him food regularly. The moors seem to be just the thing if you need to hide but need to be close enough to a take-out place that delivers.", "analysis": ""}

So far I have been able to quote from the reports which I have forwarded during these early days to Sherlock Holmes. Now, however, I have arrived at a point in my narrative where I am compelled to abandon this method and to trust once more to my recollections, aided by the diary which I kept at the time. A few extracts from the latter will carry me on to those scenes which are indelibly fixed in every detail upon my memory. I proceed, then, from the morning which followed our abortive chase of the convict and our other strange experiences upon the moor. October 16th. A dull and foggy day with a drizzle of rain. The house is banked in with rolling clouds, which rise now and then to show the dreary curves of the moor, with thin, silver veins upon the sides of the hills, and the distant boulders gleaming where the light strikes upon their wet faces. It is melancholy outside and in. The baronet is in a black reaction after the excitements of the night. I am conscious myself of a weight at my heart and a feeling of impending danger--ever present danger, which is the more terrible because I am unable to define it. And have I not cause for such a feeling? Consider the long sequence of incidents which have all pointed to some sinister influence which is at work around us. There is the death of the last occupant of the Hall, fulfilling so exactly the conditions of the family legend, and there are the repeated reports from peasants of the appearance of a strange creature upon the moor. Twice I have with my own ears heard the sound which resembled the distant baying of a hound. It is incredible, impossible, that it should really be outside the ordinary laws of nature. A spectral hound which leaves material footmarks and fills the air with its howling is surely not to be thought of. Stapleton may fall in with such a superstition, and Mortimer also, but if I have one quality upon earth it is common sense, and nothing will persuade me to believe in such a thing. To do so would be to descend to the level of these poor peasants, who are not content with a mere fiend dog but must needs describe him with hell-fire shooting from his mouth and eyes. Holmes would not listen to such fancies, and I am his agent. But facts are facts, and I have twice heard this crying upon the moor. Suppose that there were really some huge hound loose upon it; that would go far to explain everything. But where could such a hound lie concealed, where did it get its food, where did it come from, how was it that no one saw it by day? It must be confessed that the natural explanation offers almost as many difficulties as the other. And always, apart from the hound, there is the fact of the human agency in London, the man in the cab, and the letter which warned Sir Henry against the moor. This at least was real, but it might have been the work of a protecting friend as easily as of an enemy. Where is that friend or enemy now? Has he remained in London, or has he followed us down here? Could he--could he be the stranger whom I saw upon the tor? It is true that I have had only the one glance at him, and yet there are some things to which I am ready to swear. He is no one whom I have seen down here, and I have now met all the neighbours. The figure was far taller than that of Stapleton, far thinner than that of Frankland. Barrymore it might possibly have been, but we had left him behind us, and I am certain that he could not have followed us. A stranger then is still dogging us, just as a stranger dogged us in London. We have never shaken him off. If I could lay my hands upon that man, then at last we might find ourselves at the end of all our difficulties. To this one purpose I must now devote all my energies. My first impulse was to tell Sir Henry all my plans. My second and wisest one is to play my own game and speak as little as possible to anyone. He is silent and distrait. His nerves have been strangely shaken by that sound upon the moor. I will say nothing to add to his anxieties, but I will take my own steps to attain my own end. We had a small scene this morning after breakfast. Barrymore asked leave to speak with Sir Henry, and they were closeted in his study some little time. Sitting in the billiard-room I more than once heard the sound of voices raised, and I had a pretty good idea what the point was which was under discussion. After a time the baronet opened his door and called for me. "Barrymore considers that he has a grievance," he said. "He thinks that it was unfair on our part to hunt his brother-in-law down when he, of his own free will, had told us the secret." The butler was standing very pale but very collected before us. "I may have spoken too warmly, sir," said he, "and if I have, I am sure that I beg your pardon. At the same time, I was very much surprised when I heard you two gentlemen come back this morning and learned that you had been chasing Selden. The poor fellow has enough to fight against without my putting more upon his track." "If you had told us of your own free will it would have been a different thing," said the baronet, "you only told us, or rather your wife only told us, when it was forced from you and you could not help yourself." "I didn't think you would have taken advantage of it, Sir Henry--indeed I didn't." "The man is a public danger. There are lonely houses scattered over the moor, and he is a fellow who would stick at nothing. You only want to get a glimpse of his face to see that. Look at Mr. Stapleton's house, for example, with no one but himself to defend it. There's no safety for anyone until he is under lock and key." "He'll break into no house, sir. I give you my solemn word upon that. But he will never trouble anyone in this country again. I assure you, Sir Henry, that in a very few days the necessary arrangements will have been made and he will be on his way to South America. For God's sake, sir, I beg of you not to let the police know that he is still on the moor. They have given up the chase there, and he can lie quiet until the ship is ready for him. You can't tell on him without getting my wife and me into trouble. I beg you, sir, to say nothing to the police." "What do you say, Watson?" I shrugged my shoulders. "If he were safely out of the country it would relieve the tax-payer of a burden." "But how about the chance of his holding someone up before he goes?" "He would not do anything so mad, sir. We have provided him with all that he can want. To commit a crime would be to show where he was hiding." "That is true," said Sir Henry. "Well, Barrymore--" "God bless you, sir, and thank you from my heart! It would have killed my poor wife had he been taken again." "I guess we are aiding and abetting a felony, Watson? But, after what we have heard I don't feel as if I could give the man up, so there is an end of it. All right, Barrymore, you can go." With a few broken words of gratitude the man turned, but he hesitated and then came back. "You've been so kind to us, sir, that I should like to do the best I can for you in return. I know something, Sir Henry, and perhaps I should have said it before, but it was long after the inquest that I found it out. I've never breathed a word about it yet to mortal man. It's about poor Sir Charles's death." The baronet and I were both upon our feet. "Do you know how he died?" "No, sir, I don't know that." "What then?" "I know why he was at the gate at that hour. It was to meet a woman." "To meet a woman! He?" "Yes, sir." "And the woman's name?" "I can't give you the name, sir, but I can give you the initials. Her initials were L. L." "How do you know this, Barrymore?" "Well, Sir Henry, your uncle had a letter that morning. He had usually a great many letters, for he was a public man and well known for his kind heart, so that everyone who was in trouble was glad to turn to him. But that morning, as it chanced, there was only this one letter, so I took the more notice of it. It was from Coombe Tracey, and it was addressed in a woman's hand." "Well?" "Well, sir, I thought no more of the matter, and never would have done had it not been for my wife. Only a few weeks ago she was cleaning out Sir Charles's study--it had never been touched since his death--and she found the ashes of a burned letter in the back of the grate. The greater part of it was charred to pieces, but one little slip, the end of a page, hung together, and the writing could still be read, though it was gray on a black ground. It seemed to us to be a postscript at the end of the letter and it said: 'Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate by ten o clock. Beneath it were signed the initials L. L." "Have you got that slip?" "No, sir, it crumbled all to bits after we moved it." "Had Sir Charles received any other letters in the same writing?" "Well, sir, I took no particular notice of his letters. I should not have noticed this one, only it happened to come alone." "And you have no idea who L. L. is?" "No, sir. No more than you have. But I expect if we could lay our hands upon that lady we should know more about Sir Charles's death." "I cannot understand, Barrymore, how you came to conceal this important information." "Well, sir, it was immediately after that our own trouble came to us. And then again, sir, we were both of us very fond of Sir Charles, as we well might be considering all that he has done for us. To rake this up couldn't help our poor master, and it's well to go carefully when there's a lady in the case. Even the best of us--" "You thought it might injure his reputation?" "Well, sir, I thought no good could come of it. But now you have been kind to us, and I feel as if it would be treating you unfairly not to tell you all that I know about the matter." "Very good, Barrymore; you can go." When the butler had left us Sir Henry turned to me. "Well, Watson, what do you think of this new light?" "It seems to leave the darkness rather blacker than before." "So I think. But if we can only trace L. L. it should clear up the whole business. We have gained that much. We know that there is someone who has the facts if we can only find her. What do you think we should do?" "Let Holmes know all about it at once. It will give him the clue for which he has been seeking. I am much mistaken if it does not bring him down." I went at once to my room and drew up my report of the morning's conversation for Holmes. It was evident to me that he had been very busy of late, for the notes which I had from Baker Street were few and short, with no comments upon the information which I had supplied and hardly any reference to my mission. No doubt his blackmailing case is absorbing all his faculties. And yet this new factor must surely arrest his attention and renew his interest. I wish that he were here. October 17th. All day today the rain poured down, rustling on the ivy and dripping from the eaves. I thought of the convict out upon the bleak, cold, shelterless moor. Poor devil! Whatever his crimes, he has suffered something to atone for them. And then I thought of that other one--the face in the cab, the figure against the moon. Was he also out in that deluged--the unseen watcher, the man of darkness? In the evening I put on my waterproof and I walked far upon the sodden moor, full of dark imaginings, the rain beating upon my face and the wind whistling about my ears. God help those who wander into the great mire now, for even the firm uplands are becoming a morass. I found the black tor upon which I had seen the solitary watcher, and from its craggy summit I looked out myself across the melancholy downs. Rain squalls drifted across their russet face, and the heavy, slate-coloured clouds hung low over the landscape, trailing in gray wreaths down the sides of the fantastic hills. In the distant hollow on the left, half hidden by the mist, the two thin towers of Baskerville Hall rose above the trees. They were the only signs of human life which I could see, save only those prehistoric huts which lay thickly upon the slopes of the hills. Nowhere was there any trace of that lonely man whom I had seen on the same spot two nights before. As I walked back I was overtaken by Dr. Mortimer driving in his dog-cart over a rough moorland track which led from the outlying farmhouse of Foulmire. He has been very attentive to us, and hardly a day has passed that he has not called at the Hall to see how we were getting on. He insisted upon my climbing into his dog-cart, and he gave me a lift homeward. I found him much troubled over the disappearance of his little spaniel. It had wandered on to the moor and had never come back. I gave him such consolation as I might, but I thought of the pony on the Grimpen Mire, and I do not fancy that he will see his little dog again. "By the way, Mortimer," said I as we jolted along the rough road, "I suppose there are few people living within driving distance of this whom you do not know?" "Hardly any, I think." "Can you, then, tell me the name of any woman whose initials are L. L.?" He thought for a few minutes. "No," said he. "There are a few gipsies and labouring folk for whom I can't answer, but among the farmers or gentry there is no one whose initials are those. Wait a bit though," he added after a pause. "There is Laura Lyons--her initials are L. L.--but she lives in Coombe Tracey." "Who is she?" I asked. "She is Frankland's daughter." "What! Old Frankland the crank?" "Exactly. She married an artist named Lyons, who came sketching on the moor. He proved to be a blackguard and deserted her. The fault from what I hear may not have been entirely on one side. Her father refused to have anything to do with her because she had married without his consent and perhaps for one or two other reasons as well. So, between the old sinner and the young one the girl has had a pretty bad time." "How does she live?" "I fancy old Frankland allows her a pittance, but it cannot be more, for his own affairs are considerably involved. Whatever she may have deserved one could not allow her to go hopelessly to the bad. Her story got about, and several of the people here did something to enable her to earn an honest living. Stapleton did for one, and Sir Charles for another. I gave a trifle myself. It was to set her up in a typewriting business." He wanted to know the object of my inquiries, but I managed to satisfy his curiosity without telling him too much, for there is no reason why we should take anyone into our confidence. Tomorrow morning I shall find my way to Coombe Tracey, and if I can see this Mrs. Laura Lyons, of equivocal reputation, a long step will have been made towards clearing one incident in this chain of mysteries. I am certainly developing the wisdom of the serpent, for when Mortimer pressed his questions to an inconvenient extent I asked him casually to what type Frankland's skull belonged, and so heard nothing but craniology for the rest of our drive. I have not lived for years with Sherlock Holmes for nothing. I have only one other incident to record upon this tempestuous and melancholy day. This was my conversation with Barrymore just now, which gives me one more strong card which I can play in due time. Mortimer had stayed to dinner, and he and the baronet played ecarte afterwards. The butler brought me my coffee into the library, and I took the chance to ask him a few questions. "Well," said I, "has this precious relation of yours departed, or is he still lurking out yonder?" "I don't know, sir. I hope to heaven that he has gone, for he has brought nothing but trouble here! I've not heard of him since I left out food for him last, and that was three days ago." "Did you see him then?" "No, sir, but the food was gone when next I went that way." "Then he was certainly there?" "So you would think, sir, unless it was the other man who took it." I sat with my coffee-cup halfway to my lips and stared at Barrymore. "You know that there is another man then?" "Yes, sir; there is another man upon the moor." "Have you seen him?" "No, sir." "How do you know of him then?" "Selden told me of him, sir, a week ago or more. He's in hiding, too, but he's not a convict as far as I can make out. I don't like it, Dr. Watson--I tell you straight, sir, that I don't like it." He spoke with a sudden passion of earnestness. "Now, listen to me, Barrymore! I have no interest in this matter but that of your master. I have come here with no object except to help him. Tell me, frankly, what it is that you don't like." Barrymore hesitated for a moment, as if he regretted his outburst or found it difficult to express his own feelings in words. "It's all these goings-on, sir," he cried at last, waving his hand towards the rain-lashed window which faced the moor. "There's foul play somewhere, and there's black villainy brewing, to that I'll swear! Very glad I should be, sir, to see Sir Henry on his way back to London again!" "But what is it that alarms you?" "Look at Sir Charles's death! That was bad enough, for all that the coroner said. Look at the noises on the moor at night. There's not a man would cross it after sundown if he was paid for it. Look at this stranger hiding out yonder, and watching and waiting! What's he waiting for? What does it mean? It means no good to anyone of the name of Baskerville, and very glad I shall be to be quit of it all on the day that Sir Henry's new servants are ready to take over the Hall." "But about this stranger," said I. "Can you tell me anything about him? What did Selden say? Did he find out where he hid, or what he was doing?" "He saw him once or twice, but he is a deep one and gives nothing away. At first he thought that he was the police, but soon he found that he had some lay of his own. A kind of gentleman he was, as far as he could see, but what he was doing he could not make out." "And where did he say that he lived?" "Among the old houses on the hillside--the stone huts where the old folk used to live." "But how about his food?" "Selden found out that he has got a lad who works for him and brings all he needs. I dare say he goes to Coombe Tracey for what he wants." "Very good, Barrymore. We may talk further of this some other time." When the butler had gone I walked over to the black window, and I looked through a blurred pane at the driving clouds and at the tossing outline of the wind-swept trees. It is a wild night indoors, and what must it be in a stone hut upon the moor. What passion of hatred can it be which leads a man to lurk in such a place at such a time! And what deep and earnest purpose can he have which calls for such a trial! There, in that hut upon the moor, seems to lie the very centre of that problem which has vexed me so sorely. I swear that another day shall not have passed before I have done all that man can do to reach the heart of the mystery.

Chapter 10

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-10

As the chapter title promises us, this is--wait for it--a section of Watson's diary from his time at Baskerville Hall. Shocking, we know. Barrymore and Sir Henry get into it the next morning. Turns out Barrymore's angry that Watson and Sir Henry went to hunt down Selden. Barrymore begs the two men to let Selden go until they can get him on a boat to South America. Watson and Sir Henry agree to leave Selden alone. Barrymore's so grateful that he wants to do something for Sir Henry in return. There's something about Sir Charles' death that Barrymore's been keeping secret. The morning of Sir Charles' death, Barrymore happened to notice him receiving a letter from a nearby town called Coombe Tracey. The letter was written in a woman's handwriting. A few weeks ago, long after Sir Charles' mysterious death, Barrymore was cleaning out the ashes of the fireplace in Sir Charles' study. He found the charred pieces of that letter. He could still read the final lines: "Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate at ten o'clock" . The letter was signed "L.L." Barrymore hasn't wanted to reveal this because he wanted to protect Sir Charles' rep. But now that Sir Henry has been so kind, Barrymore wants to help him in return. The next day, Watson goes out walking on the moors. As he's heading back to Baskerville Hall, Dr. Mortimer drives past him in a cart. Dr. Mortimer tells Watson that there is a woman with the initials "L.L." living in Coombe Tracey: Laura Lyons, the disgraced, disowned daughter of Mr. Frankland. Apparently, she eloped against her father's will with an artist named Lyons, who then left her. After dinner that evening, Watson asks Barrymore if Selden's still around. Barrymore says he last left out food for him three days ago, but hasn't seen him since. Barrymore also mentions that there's someone else out on the moor. Selden has mentioned this other man to Barrymore--the man doesn't seem to be a convict. Selden told Barrymore that this other man is living in the prehistoric ruins, and that a kid from the village brings him food regularly. The moors seem to be just the thing if you need to hide but need to be close enough to a take-out place that delivers.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/11.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_10_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 11

chapter 11

{"name": "Chapter 11", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-11", "summary": "Watson travels into Coombe Tracey to see if he can track down Laura Lyons. She's actually pretty easy to find . Watson asks her straight out if she knew Sir Charles. She reluctantly admits that she has received financial assistance from him. Laura goes on to say that a friend of hers, Stapleton, used to speak to Sir Charles on her behalf. She denies that she ever wrote asking to meet him, though. That is, she denies it until Watson quotes her own letter back to her. Oops. She finally admits that she wrote to Sir Charles asking to meet him. She explains why she kept it secret: hello, it's rural England in 1901, a married woman can't just visit an unmarried guy at night without it being a huge scandal. The one thing she won't explain is why she never went to the meeting. She just swears that she made the appointment, but she never went to Baskerville Hall. She says she received the help she needed from \"another source\" . Watson is sure there's more to the story than Laura will tell him, but she never changes her answers. He realizes she must have been asking for money for a divorce, but why so urgently right now? Watson goes back to Baskerville Hall. Mr. Frankland sees him passing by in his carriage and calls him over for a drink. Mr. Frankland starts bragging because he knows something the cops don't know--and he won't tell them. Apparently, there's a boy that has been carrying food to a man hidden near a large hill called Black Tor. Mr. Frankland has been keeping watch with his telescope because he thinks the man is the murderous Selden. Even as they're talking about it, the boy appears on his twice daily errand of sneaking over the moors with food for the mysterious man. Watson ditches Mr. Frankland and goes out onto the moors to follow the boy's tracks. He finds a circle of old stone huts, and he discovers one that's clearly being lived in. Inside the hut, there's a note: \"Dr. Watson has gone to Coombe Tracey\" . Watson realizes that the mystery man has been following him. But he can't find any other signs of the man's identity. Watson sits and waits nervously for the man to return. Finally, he hears the sound of someone approaching. And he hears a familiar voice inviting him to come outside, where it's more comfortable.", "analysis": ""}

The extract from my private diary which forms the last chapter has brought my narrative up to the eighteenth of October, a time when these strange events began to move swiftly towards their terrible conclusion. The incidents of the next few days are indelibly graven upon my recollection, and I can tell them without reference to the notes made at the time. I start them from the day which succeeded that upon which I had established two facts of great importance, the one that Mrs. Laura Lyons of Coombe Tracey had written to Sir Charles Baskerville and made an appointment with him at the very place and hour that he met his death, the other that the lurking man upon the moor was to be found among the stone huts upon the hillside. With these two facts in my possession I felt that either my intelligence or my courage must be deficient if I could not throw some further light upon these dark places. I had no opportunity to tell the baronet what I had learned about Mrs. Lyons upon the evening before, for Dr. Mortimer remained with him at cards until it was very late. At breakfast, however, I informed him about my discovery and asked him whether he would care to accompany me to Coombe Tracey. At first he was very eager to come, but on second thoughts it seemed to both of us that if I went alone the results might be better. The more formal we made the visit the less information we might obtain. I left Sir Henry behind, therefore, not without some prickings of conscience, and drove off upon my new quest. When I reached Coombe Tracey I told Perkins to put up the horses, and I made inquiries for the lady whom I had come to interrogate. I had no difficulty in finding her rooms, which were central and well appointed. A maid showed me in without ceremony, and as I entered the sitting-room a lady, who was sitting before a Remington typewriter, sprang up with a pleasant smile of welcome. Her face fell, however, when she saw that I was a stranger, and she sat down again and asked me the object of my visit. The first impression left by Mrs. Lyons was one of extreme beauty. Her eyes and hair were of the same rich hazel colour, and her cheeks, though considerably freckled, were flushed with the exquisite bloom of the brunette, the dainty pink which lurks at the heart of the sulphur rose. Admiration was, I repeat, the first impression. But the second was criticism. There was something subtly wrong with the face, some coarseness of expression, some hardness, perhaps, of eye, some looseness of lip which marred its perfect beauty. But these, of course, are afterthoughts. At the moment I was simply conscious that I was in the presence of a very handsome woman, and that she was asking me the reasons for my visit. I had not quite understood until that instant how delicate my mission was. "I have the pleasure," said I, "of knowing your father." It was a clumsy introduction, and the lady made me feel it. "There is nothing in common between my father and me," she said. "I owe him nothing, and his friends are not mine. If it were not for the late Sir Charles Baskerville and some other kind hearts I might have starved for all that my father cared." "It was about the late Sir Charles Baskerville that I have come here to see you." The freckles started out on the lady's face. "What can I tell you about him?" she asked, and her fingers played nervously over the stops of her typewriter. "You knew him, did you not?" "I have already said that I owe a great deal to his kindness. If I am able to support myself it is largely due to the interest which he took in my unhappy situation." "Did you correspond with him?" The lady looked quickly up with an angry gleam in her hazel eyes. "What is the object of these questions?" she asked sharply. "The object is to avoid a public scandal. It is better that I should ask them here than that the matter should pass outside our control." She was silent and her face was still very pale. At last she looked up with something reckless and defiant in her manner. "Well, I'll answer," she said. "What are your questions?" "Did you correspond with Sir Charles?" "I certainly wrote to him once or twice to acknowledge his delicacy and his generosity." "Have you the dates of those letters?" "No." "Have you ever met him?" "Yes, once or twice, when he came into Coombe Tracey. He was a very retiring man, and he preferred to do good by stealth." "But if you saw him so seldom and wrote so seldom, how did he know enough about your affairs to be able to help you, as you say that he has done?" She met my difficulty with the utmost readiness. "There were several gentlemen who knew my sad history and united to help me. One was Mr. Stapleton, a neighbour and intimate friend of Sir Charles's. He was exceedingly kind, and it was through him that Sir Charles learned about my affairs." I knew already that Sir Charles Baskerville had made Stapleton his almoner upon several occasions, so the lady's statement bore the impress of truth upon it. "Did you ever write to Sir Charles asking him to meet you?" I continued. Mrs. Lyons flushed with anger again. "Really, sir, this is a very extraordinary question." "I am sorry, madam, but I must repeat it." "Then I answer, certainly not." "Not on the very day of Sir Charles's death?" The flush had faded in an instant, and a deathly face was before me. Her dry lips could not speak the "No" which I saw rather than heard. "Surely your memory deceives you," said I. "I could even quote a passage of your letter. It ran 'Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate by ten o'clock.'" I thought that she had fainted, but she recovered herself by a supreme effort. "Is there no such thing as a gentleman?" she gasped. "You do Sir Charles an injustice. He did burn the letter. But sometimes a letter may be legible even when burned. You acknowledge now that you wrote it?" "Yes, I did write it," she cried, pouring out her soul in a torrent of words. "I did write it. Why should I deny it? I have no reason to be ashamed of it. I wished him to help me. I believed that if I had an interview I could gain his help, so I asked him to meet me." "But why at such an hour?" "Because I had only just learned that he was going to London next day and might be away for months. There were reasons why I could not get there earlier." "But why a rendezvous in the garden instead of a visit to the house?" "Do you think a woman could go alone at that hour to a bachelor's house?" "Well, what happened when you did get there?" "I never went." "Mrs. Lyons!" "No, I swear it to you on all I hold sacred. I never went. Something intervened to prevent my going." "What was that?" "That is a private matter. I cannot tell it." "You acknowledge then that you made an appointment with Sir Charles at the very hour and place at which he met his death, but you deny that you kept the appointment." "That is the truth." Again and again I cross-questioned her, but I could never get past that point. "Mrs. Lyons," said I as I rose from this long and inconclusive interview, "you are taking a very great responsibility and putting yourself in a very false position by not making an absolutely clean breast of all that you know. If I have to call in the aid of the police you will find how seriously you are compromised. If your position is innocent, why did you in the first instance deny having written to Sir Charles upon that date?" "Because I feared that some false conclusion might be drawn from it and that I might find myself involved in a scandal." "And why were you so pressing that Sir Charles should destroy your letter?" "If you have read the letter you will know." "I did not say that I had read all the letter." "You quoted some of it." "I quoted the postscript. The letter had, as I said, been burned and it was not all legible. I ask you once again why it was that you were so pressing that Sir Charles should destroy this letter which he received on the day of his death." "The matter is a very private one." "The more reason why you should avoid a public investigation." "I will tell you, then. If you have heard anything of my unhappy history you will know that I made a rash marriage and had reason to regret it." "I have heard so much." "My life has been one incessant persecution from a husband whom I abhor. The law is upon his side, and every day I am faced by the possibility that he may force me to live with him. At the time that I wrote this letter to Sir Charles I had learned that there was a prospect of my regaining my freedom if certain expenses could be met. It meant everything to me--peace of mind, happiness, self-respect--everything. I knew Sir Charles's generosity, and I thought that if he heard the story from my own lips he would help me." "Then how is it that you did not go?" "Because I received help in the interval from another source." "Why then, did you not write to Sir Charles and explain this?" "So I should have done had I not seen his death in the paper next morning." The woman's story hung coherently together, and all my questions were unable to shake it. I could only check it by finding if she had, indeed, instituted divorce proceedings against her husband at or about the time of the tragedy. It was unlikely that she would dare to say that she had not been to Baskerville Hall if she really had been, for a trap would be necessary to take her there, and could not have returned to Coombe Tracey until the early hours of the morning. Such an excursion could not be kept secret. The probability was, therefore, that she was telling the truth, or, at least, a part of the truth. I came away baffled and disheartened. Once again I had reached that dead wall which seemed to be built across every path by which I tried to get at the object of my mission. And yet the more I thought of the lady's face and of her manner the more I felt that something was being held back from me. Why should she turn so pale? Why should she fight against every admission until it was forced from her? Why should she have been so reticent at the time of the tragedy? Surely the explanation of all this could not be as innocent as she would have me believe. For the moment I could proceed no farther in that direction, but must turn back to that other clue which was to be sought for among the stone huts upon the moor. And that was a most vague direction. I realized it as I drove back and noted how hill after hill showed traces of the ancient people. Barrymore's only indication had been that the stranger lived in one of these abandoned huts, and many hundreds of them are scattered throughout the length and breadth of the moor. But I had my own experience for a guide since it had shown me the man himself standing upon the summit of the Black Tor. That, then, should be the centre of my search. From there I should explore every hut upon the moor until I lighted upon the right one. If this man were inside it I should find out from his own lips, at the point of my revolver if necessary, who he was and why he had dogged us so long. He might slip away from us in the crowd of Regent Street, but it would puzzle him to do so upon the lonely moor. On the other hand, if I should find the hut and its tenant should not be within it I must remain there, however long the vigil, until he returned. Holmes had missed him in London. It would indeed be a triumph for me if I could run him to earth where my master had failed. Luck had been against us again and again in this inquiry, but now at last it came to my aid. And the messenger of good fortune was none other than Mr. Frankland, who was standing, gray-whiskered and red-faced, outside the gate of his garden, which opened on to the highroad along which I travelled. "Good-day, Dr. Watson," cried he with unwonted good humour, "you must really give your horses a rest and come in to have a glass of wine and to congratulate me." My feelings towards him were very far from being friendly after what I had heard of his treatment of his daughter, but I was anxious to send Perkins and the wagonette home, and the opportunity was a good one. I alighted and sent a message to Sir Henry that I should walk over in time for dinner. Then I followed Frankland into his dining-room. "It is a great day for me, sir--one of the red-letter days of my life," he cried with many chuckles. "I have brought off a double event. I mean to teach them in these parts that law is law, and that there is a man here who does not fear to invoke it. I have established a right of way through the centre of old Middleton's park, slap across it, sir, within a hundred yards of his own front door. What do you think of that? We'll teach these magnates that they cannot ride roughshod over the rights of the commoners, confound them! And I've closed the wood where the Fernworthy folk used to picnic. These infernal people seem to think that there are no rights of property, and that they can swarm where they like with their papers and their bottles. Both cases decided, Dr. Watson, and both in my favour. I haven't had such a day since I had Sir John Morland for trespass because he shot in his own warren." "How on earth did you do that?" "Look it up in the books, sir. It will repay reading--Frankland v. Morland, Court of Queen's Bench. It cost me 200 pounds, but I got my verdict." "Did it do you any good?" "None, sir, none. I am proud to say that I had no interest in the matter. I act entirely from a sense of public duty. I have no doubt, for example, that the Fernworthy people will burn me in effigy tonight. I told the police last time they did it that they should stop these disgraceful exhibitions. The County Constabulary is in a scandalous state, sir, and it has not afforded me the protection to which I am entitled. The case of Frankland v. Regina will bring the matter before the attention of the public. I told them that they would have occasion to regret their treatment of me, and already my words have come true." "How so?" I asked. The old man put on a very knowing expression. "Because I could tell them what they are dying to know; but nothing would induce me to help the rascals in any way." I had been casting round for some excuse by which I could get away from his gossip, but now I began to wish to hear more of it. I had seen enough of the contrary nature of the old sinner to understand that any strong sign of interest would be the surest way to stop his confidences. "Some poaching case, no doubt?" said I with an indifferent manner. "Ha, ha, my boy, a very much more important matter than that! What about the convict on the moor?" I stared. "You don't mean that you know where he is?" said I. "I may not know exactly where he is, but I am quite sure that I could help the police to lay their hands on him. Has it never struck you that the way to catch that man was to find out where he got his food and so trace it to him?" He certainly seemed to be getting uncomfortably near the truth. "No doubt," said I; "but how do you know that he is anywhere upon the moor?" "I know it because I have seen with my own eyes the messenger who takes him his food." My heart sank for Barrymore. It was a serious thing to be in the power of this spiteful old busybody. But his next remark took a weight from my mind. "You'll be surprised to hear that his food is taken to him by a child. I see him every day through my telescope upon the roof. He passes along the same path at the same hour, and to whom should he be going except to the convict?" Here was luck indeed! And yet I suppressed all appearance of interest. A child! Barrymore had said that our unknown was supplied by a boy. It was on his track, and not upon the convict's, that Frankland had stumbled. If I could get his knowledge it might save me a long and weary hunt. But incredulity and indifference were evidently my strongest cards. "I should say that it was much more likely that it was the son of one of the moorland shepherds taking out his father's dinner." The least appearance of opposition struck fire out of the old autocrat. His eyes looked malignantly at me, and his gray whiskers bristled like those of an angry cat. "Indeed, sir!" said he, pointing out over the wide-stretching moor. "Do you see that Black Tor over yonder? Well, do you see the low hill beyond with the thornbush upon it? It is the stoniest part of the whole moor. Is that a place where a shepherd would be likely to take his station? Your suggestion, sir, is a most absurd one." I meekly answered that I had spoken without knowing all the facts. My submission pleased him and led him to further confidences. "You may be sure, sir, that I have very good grounds before I come to an opinion. I have seen the boy again and again with his bundle. Every day, and sometimes twice a day, I have been able--but wait a moment, Dr. Watson. Do my eyes deceive me, or is there at the present moment something moving upon that hillside?" It was several miles off, but I could distinctly see a small dark dot against the dull green and gray. "Come, sir, come!" cried Frankland, rushing upstairs. "You will see with your own eyes and judge for yourself." The telescope, a formidable instrument mounted upon a tripod, stood upon the flat leads of the house. Frankland clapped his eye to it and gave a cry of satisfaction. "Quick, Dr. Watson, quick, before he passes over the hill!" There he was, sure enough, a small urchin with a little bundle upon his shoulder, toiling slowly up the hill. When he reached the crest I saw the ragged uncouth figure outlined for an instant against the cold blue sky. He looked round him with a furtive and stealthy air, as one who dreads pursuit. Then he vanished over the hill. "Well! Am I right?" "Certainly, there is a boy who seems to have some secret errand." "And what the errand is even a county constable could guess. But not one word shall they have from me, and I bind you to secrecy also, Dr. Watson. Not a word! You understand!" "Just as you wish." "They have treated me shamefully--shamefully. When the facts come out in Frankland v. Regina I venture to think that a thrill of indignation will run through the country. Nothing would induce me to help the police in any way. For all they cared it might have been me, instead of my effigy, which these rascals burned at the stake. Surely you are not going! You will help me to empty the decanter in honour of this great occasion!" But I resisted all his solicitations and succeeded in dissuading him from his announced intention of walking home with me. I kept the road as long as his eye was on me, and then I struck off across the moor and made for the stony hill over which the boy had disappeared. Everything was working in my favour, and I swore that it should not be through lack of energy or perseverance that I should miss the chance which fortune had thrown in my way. The sun was already sinking when I reached the summit of the hill, and the long slopes beneath me were all golden-green on one side and gray shadow on the other. A haze lay low upon the farthest sky-line, out of which jutted the fantastic shapes of Belliver and Vixen Tor. Over the wide expanse there was no sound and no movement. One great gray bird, a gull or curlew, soared aloft in the blue heaven. He and I seemed to be the only living things between the huge arch of the sky and the desert beneath it. The barren scene, the sense of loneliness, and the mystery and urgency of my task all struck a chill into my heart. The boy was nowhere to be seen. But down beneath me in a cleft of the hills there was a circle of the old stone huts, and in the middle of them there was one which retained sufficient roof to act as a screen against the weather. My heart leaped within me as I saw it. This must be the burrow where the stranger lurked. At last my foot was on the threshold of his hiding place--his secret was within my grasp. As I approached the hut, walking as warily as Stapleton would do when with poised net he drew near the settled butterfly, I satisfied myself that the place had indeed been used as a habitation. A vague pathway among the boulders led to the dilapidated opening which served as a door. All was silent within. The unknown might be lurking there, or he might be prowling on the moor. My nerves tingled with the sense of adventure. Throwing aside my cigarette, I closed my hand upon the butt of my revolver and, walking swiftly up to the door, I looked in. The place was empty. But there were ample signs that I had not come upon a false scent. This was certainly where the man lived. Some blankets rolled in a waterproof lay upon that very stone slab upon which Neolithic man had once slumbered. The ashes of a fire were heaped in a rude grate. Beside it lay some cooking utensils and a bucket half-full of water. A litter of empty tins showed that the place had been occupied for some time, and I saw, as my eyes became accustomed to the checkered light, a pannikin and a half-full bottle of spirits standing in the corner. In the middle of the hut a flat stone served the purpose of a table, and upon this stood a small cloth bundle--the same, no doubt, which I had seen through the telescope upon the shoulder of the boy. It contained a loaf of bread, a tinned tongue, and two tins of preserved peaches. As I set it down again, after having examined it, my heart leaped to see that beneath it there lay a sheet of paper with writing upon it. I raised it, and this was what I read, roughly scrawled in pencil: "Dr. Watson has gone to Coombe Tracey." For a minute I stood there with the paper in my hands thinking out the meaning of this curt message. It was I, then, and not Sir Henry, who was being dogged by this secret man. He had not followed me himself, but he had set an agent--the boy, perhaps--upon my track, and this was his report. Possibly I had taken no step since I had been upon the moor which had not been observed and reported. Always there was this feeling of an unseen force, a fine net drawn round us with infinite skill and delicacy, holding us so lightly that it was only at some supreme moment that one realized that one was indeed entangled in its meshes. If there was one report there might be others, so I looked round the hut in search of them. There was no trace, however, of anything of the kind, nor could I discover any sign which might indicate the character or intentions of the man who lived in this singular place, save that he must be of Spartan habits and cared little for the comforts of life. When I thought of the heavy rains and looked at the gaping roof I understood how strong and immutable must be the purpose which had kept him in that inhospitable abode. Was he our malignant enemy, or was he by chance our guardian angel? I swore that I would not leave the hut until I knew. Outside the sun was sinking low and the west was blazing with scarlet and gold. Its reflection was shot back in ruddy patches by the distant pools which lay amid the great Grimpen Mire. There were the two towers of Baskerville Hall, and there a distant blur of smoke which marked the village of Grimpen. Between the two, behind the hill, was the house of the Stapletons. All was sweet and mellow and peaceful in the golden evening light, and yet as I looked at them my soul shared none of the peace of Nature but quivered at the vagueness and the terror of that interview which every instant was bringing nearer. With tingling nerves but a fixed purpose, I sat in the dark recess of the hut and waited with sombre patience for the coming of its tenant. And then at last I heard him. Far away came the sharp clink of a boot striking upon a stone. Then another and yet another, coming nearer and nearer. I shrank back into the darkest corner and cocked the pistol in my pocket, determined not to discover myself until I had an opportunity of seeing something of the stranger. There was a long pause which showed that he had stopped. Then once more the footsteps approached and a shadow fell across the opening of the hut. "It is a lovely evening, my dear Watson," said a well-known voice. "I really think that you will be more comfortable outside than in."

Chapter 11

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-11

Watson travels into Coombe Tracey to see if he can track down Laura Lyons. She's actually pretty easy to find . Watson asks her straight out if she knew Sir Charles. She reluctantly admits that she has received financial assistance from him. Laura goes on to say that a friend of hers, Stapleton, used to speak to Sir Charles on her behalf. She denies that she ever wrote asking to meet him, though. That is, she denies it until Watson quotes her own letter back to her. Oops. She finally admits that she wrote to Sir Charles asking to meet him. She explains why she kept it secret: hello, it's rural England in 1901, a married woman can't just visit an unmarried guy at night without it being a huge scandal. The one thing she won't explain is why she never went to the meeting. She just swears that she made the appointment, but she never went to Baskerville Hall. She says she received the help she needed from "another source" . Watson is sure there's more to the story than Laura will tell him, but she never changes her answers. He realizes she must have been asking for money for a divorce, but why so urgently right now? Watson goes back to Baskerville Hall. Mr. Frankland sees him passing by in his carriage and calls him over for a drink. Mr. Frankland starts bragging because he knows something the cops don't know--and he won't tell them. Apparently, there's a boy that has been carrying food to a man hidden near a large hill called Black Tor. Mr. Frankland has been keeping watch with his telescope because he thinks the man is the murderous Selden. Even as they're talking about it, the boy appears on his twice daily errand of sneaking over the moors with food for the mysterious man. Watson ditches Mr. Frankland and goes out onto the moors to follow the boy's tracks. He finds a circle of old stone huts, and he discovers one that's clearly being lived in. Inside the hut, there's a note: "Dr. Watson has gone to Coombe Tracey" . Watson realizes that the mystery man has been following him. But he can't find any other signs of the man's identity. Watson sits and waits nervously for the man to return. Finally, he hears the sound of someone approaching. And he hears a familiar voice inviting him to come outside, where it's more comfortable.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/12.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_11_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 12

chapter 12

{"name": "Chapter 12", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-12", "summary": "Surprise! The mysterious man on the hill is none other than Holmes. Watson gets upset when he realizes that Holmes has been deliberately keeping him in the dark. And what about all those reports, which he so carefully wrote up and sent off to London? Holmes tries to make nice. He says he trusts Watson completely. But he also worried that Watson wouldn't have been able to resist making contact with Holmes on the moors. And Holmes has been getting the reports--he arranged to have them delivered back to him on the moors from London. Holmes is fascinated by Watson's account of his conversation with Laura Lyons. Holmes knows that Stapleton and Laura Lyons have been hooking up. Holmes drops another bombshell: Beryl is actually Mrs. Stapleton. She's his wife, not his sister! Stapleton is the one who followed Sir Henry in London, and Beryl's the one who sent that warning to Sir Henry at his hotel. Holmes knows that Stapleton's pose as an unmarried man helped him enlist Laura in his plotting. And Laura's desperate for divorce money now because she believes that she can marry him. Holmes is almost ready to charge Stapleton with murder. But he needs Watson to wait at Baskerville Hall with Sir Henry for at least another day or two. Just as Holmes says this, they hear a horrible scream over the moors, followed by the growling of a dog. Holmes fears that they may be too late. At the side of a cliff, they find a body with a crushed skull. It's Sir Henry Baskerville. Besides feeling guilty that they were on the moors and still failed to save Sir Henry, Holmes is deeply frustrated. Even though Holmes and Watson are both sure that Stapleton is involved with the Hound murders, there's no definite proof linking him to the Baskerville deaths. Holmes goes over to the body to carry it to the hall. But suddenly, he starts dancing around and shaking Watson's hand. It's not Sir Henry at all! The body has a beard! In fact, the body belongs to Selden. Watson remembers that Sir Henry gave some of his old clothes to Barrymore; Barrymore probably passed them on to Selden. Stapleton's dog has obviously been trained to react to Sir Henry's smell, which lead him to attack Selden in Sir Henry's clothes. They see someone smoking and strolling towards them: it's Stapleton. Stapleton turns pale when he sees the body, since he realizes that it's not Sir Henry. Stapleton claims he invited Sir Henry to walk over to Merripit House and then got worried when he never turned up. Stapleton asks suspiciously if anybody heard the sounds of a dog, since the moors are supposed to be haunted. Neither Holmes nor Watson gives any sign that they might know why Stapleton's so interested in this mysterious dog. Watson claims to believe that Selden died from madness and stress, which drove him over a cliff. Holmes also pretends that he plans to go back to London the next day, since this has \"not been a satisfactory case\" .", "analysis": ""}

For a moment or two I sat breathless, hardly able to believe my ears. Then my senses and my voice came back to me, while a crushing weight of responsibility seemed in an instant to be lifted from my soul. That cold, incisive, ironical voice could belong to but one man in all the world. "Holmes!" I cried--"Holmes!" "Come out," said he, "and please be careful with the revolver." I stooped under the rude lintel, and there he sat upon a stone outside, his gray eyes dancing with amusement as they fell upon my astonished features. He was thin and worn, but clear and alert, his keen face bronzed by the sun and roughened by the wind. In his tweed suit and cloth cap he looked like any other tourist upon the moor, and he had contrived, with that catlike love of personal cleanliness which was one of his characteristics, that his chin should be as smooth and his linen as perfect as if he were in Baker Street. "I never was more glad to see anyone in my life," said I as I wrung him by the hand. "Or more astonished, eh?" "Well, I must confess to it." "The surprise was not all on one side, I assure you. I had no idea that you had found my occasional retreat, still less that you were inside it, until I was within twenty paces of the door." "My footprint, I presume?" "No, Watson, I fear that I could not undertake to recognize your footprint amid all the footprints of the world. If you seriously desire to deceive me you must change your tobacconist; for when I see the stub of a cigarette marked Bradley, Oxford Street, I know that my friend Watson is in the neighbourhood. You will see it there beside the path. You threw it down, no doubt, at that supreme moment when you charged into the empty hut." "Exactly." "I thought as much--and knowing your admirable tenacity I was convinced that you were sitting in ambush, a weapon within reach, waiting for the tenant to return. So you actually thought that I was the criminal?" "I did not know who you were, but I was determined to find out." "Excellent, Watson! And how did you localize me? You saw me, perhaps, on the night of the convict hunt, when I was so imprudent as to allow the moon to rise behind me?" "Yes, I saw you then." "And have no doubt searched all the huts until you came to this one?" "No, your boy had been observed, and that gave me a guide where to look." "The old gentleman with the telescope, no doubt. I could not make it out when first I saw the light flashing upon the lens." He rose and peeped into the hut. "Ha, I see that Cartwright has brought up some supplies. What's this paper? So you have been to Coombe Tracey, have you?" "Yes." "To see Mrs. Laura Lyons?" "Exactly." "Well done! Our researches have evidently been running on parallel lines, and when we unite our results I expect we shall have a fairly full knowledge of the case." "Well, I am glad from my heart that you are here, for indeed the responsibility and the mystery were both becoming too much for my nerves. But how in the name of wonder did you come here, and what have you been doing? I thought that you were in Baker Street working out that case of blackmailing." "That was what I wished you to think." "Then you use me, and yet do not trust me!" I cried with some bitterness. "I think that I have deserved better at your hands, Holmes." "My dear fellow, you have been invaluable to me in this as in many other cases, and I beg that you will forgive me if I have seemed to play a trick upon you. In truth, it was partly for your own sake that I did it, and it was my appreciation of the danger which you ran which led me to come down and examine the matter for myself. Had I been with Sir Henry and you it is confident that my point of view would have been the same as yours, and my presence would have warned our very formidable opponents to be on their guard. As it is, I have been able to get about as I could not possibly have done had I been living in the Hall, and I remain an unknown factor in the business, ready to throw in all my weight at a critical moment." "But why keep me in the dark?" "For you to know could not have helped us and might possibly have led to my discovery. You would have wished to tell me something, or in your kindness you would have brought me out some comfort or other, and so an unnecessary risk would be run. I brought Cartwright down with me--you remember the little chap at the express office--and he has seen after my simple wants: a loaf of bread and a clean collar. What does man want more? He has given me an extra pair of eyes upon a very active pair of feet, and both have been invaluable." "Then my reports have all been wasted!"--My voice trembled as I recalled the pains and the pride with which I had composed them. Holmes took a bundle of papers from his pocket. "Here are your reports, my dear fellow, and very well thumbed, I assure you. I made excellent arrangements, and they are only delayed one day upon their way. I must compliment you exceedingly upon the zeal and the intelligence which you have shown over an extraordinarily difficult case." I was still rather raw over the deception which had been practised upon me, but the warmth of Holmes's praise drove my anger from my mind. I felt also in my heart that he was right in what he said and that it was really best for our purpose that I should not have known that he was upon the moor. "That's better," said he, seeing the shadow rise from my face. "And now tell me the result of your visit to Mrs. Laura Lyons--it was not difficult for me to guess that it was to see her that you had gone, for I am already aware that she is the one person in Coombe Tracey who might be of service to us in the matter. In fact, if you had not gone today it is exceedingly probable that I should have gone tomorrow." The sun had set and dusk was settling over the moor. The air had turned chill and we withdrew into the hut for warmth. There, sitting together in the twilight, I told Holmes of my conversation with the lady. So interested was he that I had to repeat some of it twice before he was satisfied. "This is most important," said he when I had concluded. "It fills up a gap which I had been unable to bridge in this most complex affair. You are aware, perhaps, that a close intimacy exists between this lady and the man Stapleton?" "I did not know of a close intimacy." "There can be no doubt about the matter. They meet, they write, there is a complete understanding between them. Now, this puts a very powerful weapon into our hands. If I could only use it to detach his wife--" "His wife?" "I am giving you some information now, in return for all that you have given me. The lady who has passed here as Miss Stapleton is in reality his wife." "Good heavens, Holmes! Are you sure of what you say? How could he have permitted Sir Henry to fall in love with her?" "Sir Henry's falling in love could do no harm to anyone except Sir Henry. He took particular care that Sir Henry did not make love to her, as you have yourself observed. I repeat that the lady is his wife and not his sister." "But why this elaborate deception?" "Because he foresaw that she would be very much more useful to him in the character of a free woman." All my unspoken instincts, my vague suspicions, suddenly took shape and centred upon the naturalist. In that impassive colourless man, with his straw hat and his butterfly-net, I seemed to see something terrible--a creature of infinite patience and craft, with a smiling face and a murderous heart. "It is he, then, who is our enemy--it is he who dogged us in London?" "So I read the riddle." "And the warning--it must have come from her!" "Exactly." The shape of some monstrous villainy, half seen, half guessed, loomed through the darkness which had girt me so long. "But are you sure of this, Holmes? How do you know that the woman is his wife?" "Because he so far forgot himself as to tell you a true piece of autobiography upon the occasion when he first met you, and I dare say he has many a time regretted it since. He was once a schoolmaster in the north of England. Now, there is no one more easy to trace than a schoolmaster. There are scholastic agencies by which one may identify any man who has been in the profession. A little investigation showed me that a school had come to grief under atrocious circumstances, and that the man who had owned it--the name was different--had disappeared with his wife. The descriptions agreed. When I learned that the missing man was devoted to entomology the identification was complete." The darkness was rising, but much was still hidden by the shadows. "If this woman is in truth his wife, where does Mrs. Laura Lyons come in?" I asked. "That is one of the points upon which your own researches have shed a light. Your interview with the lady has cleared the situation very much. I did not know about a projected divorce between herself and her husband. In that case, regarding Stapleton as an unmarried man, she counted no doubt upon becoming his wife." "And when she is undeceived?" "Why, then we may find the lady of service. It must be our first duty to see her--both of us--tomorrow. Don't you think, Watson, that you are away from your charge rather long? Your place should be at Baskerville Hall." The last red streaks had faded away in the west and night had settled upon the moor. A few faint stars were gleaming in a violet sky. "One last question, Holmes," I said as I rose. "Surely there is no need of secrecy between you and me. What is the meaning of it all? What is he after?" Holmes's voice sank as he answered: "It is murder, Watson--refined, cold-blooded, deliberate murder. Do not ask me for particulars. My nets are closing upon him, even as his are upon Sir Henry, and with your help he is already almost at my mercy. There is but one danger which can threaten us. It is that he should strike before we are ready to do so. Another day--two at the most--and I have my case complete, but until then guard your charge as closely as ever a fond mother watched her ailing child. Your mission today has justified itself, and yet I could almost wish that you had not left his side. Hark!" A terrible scream--a prolonged yell of horror and anguish--burst out of the silence of the moor. That frightful cry turned the blood to ice in my veins. "Oh, my God!" I gasped. "What is it? What does it mean?" Holmes had sprung to his feet, and I saw his dark, athletic outline at the door of the hut, his shoulders stooping, his head thrust forward, his face peering into the darkness. "Hush!" he whispered. "Hush!" The cry had been loud on account of its vehemence, but it had pealed out from somewhere far off on the shadowy plain. Now it burst upon our ears, nearer, louder, more urgent than before. "Where is it?" Holmes whispered; and I knew from the thrill of his voice that he, the man of iron, was shaken to the soul. "Where is it, Watson?" "There, I think." I pointed into the darkness. "No, there!" Again the agonized cry swept through the silent night, louder and much nearer than ever. And a new sound mingled with it, a deep, muttered rumble, musical and yet menacing, rising and falling like the low, constant murmur of the sea. "The hound!" cried Holmes. "Come, Watson, come! Great heavens, if we are too late!" He had started running swiftly over the moor, and I had followed at his heels. But now from somewhere among the broken ground immediately in front of us there came one last despairing yell, and then a dull, heavy thud. We halted and listened. Not another sound broke the heavy silence of the windless night. I saw Holmes put his hand to his forehead like a man distracted. He stamped his feet upon the ground. "He has beaten us, Watson. We are too late." "No, no, surely not!" "Fool that I was to hold my hand. And you, Watson, see what comes of abandoning your charge! But, by Heaven, if the worst has happened we'll avenge him!" Blindly we ran through the gloom, blundering against boulders, forcing our way through gorse bushes, panting up hills and rushing down slopes, heading always in the direction whence those dreadful sounds had come. At every rise Holmes looked eagerly round him, but the shadows were thick upon the moor, and nothing moved upon its dreary face. "Can you see anything?" "Nothing." "But, hark, what is that?" A low moan had fallen upon our ears. There it was again upon our left! On that side a ridge of rocks ended in a sheer cliff which overlooked a stone-strewn slope. On its jagged face was spread-eagled some dark, irregular object. As we ran towards it the vague outline hardened into a definite shape. It was a prostrate man face downward upon the ground, the head doubled under him at a horrible angle, the shoulders rounded and the body hunched together as if in the act of throwing a somersault. So grotesque was the attitude that I could not for the instant realize that that moan had been the passing of his soul. Not a whisper, not a rustle, rose now from the dark figure over which we stooped. Holmes laid his hand upon him and held it up again with an exclamation of horror. The gleam of the match which he struck shone upon his clotted fingers and upon the ghastly pool which widened slowly from the crushed skull of the victim. And it shone upon something else which turned our hearts sick and faint within us--the body of Sir Henry Baskerville! There was no chance of either of us forgetting that peculiar ruddy tweed suit--the very one which he had worn on the first morning that we had seen him in Baker Street. We caught the one clear glimpse of it, and then the match flickered and went out, even as the hope had gone out of our souls. Holmes groaned, and his face glimmered white through the darkness. "The brute! The brute!" I cried with clenched hands. "Oh Holmes, I shall never forgive myself for having left him to his fate." "I am more to blame than you, Watson. In order to have my case well rounded and complete, I have thrown away the life of my client. It is the greatest blow which has befallen me in my career. But how could I know--how could I know--that he would risk his life alone upon the moor in the face of all my warnings?" "That we should have heard his screams--my God, those screams!--and yet have been unable to save him! Where is this brute of a hound which drove him to his death? It may be lurking among these rocks at this instant. And Stapleton, where is he? He shall answer for this deed." "He shall. I will see to that. Uncle and nephew have been murdered--the one frightened to death by the very sight of a beast which he thought to be supernatural, the other driven to his end in his wild flight to escape from it. But now we have to prove the connection between the man and the beast. Save from what we heard, we cannot even swear to the existence of the latter, since Sir Henry has evidently died from the fall. But, by heavens, cunning as he is, the fellow shall be in my power before another day is past!" We stood with bitter hearts on either side of the mangled body, overwhelmed by this sudden and irrevocable disaster which had brought all our long and weary labours to so piteous an end. Then as the moon rose we climbed to the top of the rocks over which our poor friend had fallen, and from the summit we gazed out over the shadowy moor, half silver and half gloom. Far away, miles off, in the direction of Grimpen, a single steady yellow light was shining. It could only come from the lonely abode of the Stapletons. With a bitter curse I shook my fist at it as I gazed. "Why should we not seize him at once?" "Our case is not complete. The fellow is wary and cunning to the last degree. It is not what we know, but what we can prove. If we make one false move the villain may escape us yet." "What can we do?" "There will be plenty for us to do tomorrow. Tonight we can only perform the last offices to our poor friend." Together we made our way down the precipitous slope and approached the body, black and clear against the silvered stones. The agony of those contorted limbs struck me with a spasm of pain and blurred my eyes with tears. "We must send for help, Holmes! We cannot carry him all the way to the Hall. Good heavens, are you mad?" He had uttered a cry and bent over the body. Now he was dancing and laughing and wringing my hand. Could this be my stern, self-contained friend? These were hidden fires, indeed! "A beard! A beard! The man has a beard!" "A beard?" "It is not the baronet--it is--why, it is my neighbour, the convict!" With feverish haste we had turned the body over, and that dripping beard was pointing up to the cold, clear moon. There could be no doubt about the beetling forehead, the sunken animal eyes. It was indeed the same face which had glared upon me in the light of the candle from over the rock--the face of Selden, the criminal. Then in an instant it was all clear to me. I remembered how the baronet had told me that he had handed his old wardrobe to Barrymore. Barrymore had passed it on in order to help Selden in his escape. Boots, shirt, cap--it was all Sir Henry's. The tragedy was still black enough, but this man had at least deserved death by the laws of his country. I told Holmes how the matter stood, my heart bubbling over with thankfulness and joy. "Then the clothes have been the poor devil's death," said he. "It is clear enough that the hound has been laid on from some article of Sir Henry's--the boot which was abstracted in the hotel, in all probability--and so ran this man down. There is one very singular thing, however: How came Selden, in the darkness, to know that the hound was on his trail?" "He heard him." "To hear a hound upon the moor would not work a hard man like this convict into such a paroxysm of terror that he would risk recapture by screaming wildly for help. By his cries he must have run a long way after he knew the animal was on his track. How did he know?" "A greater mystery to me is why this hound, presuming that all our conjectures are correct--" "I presume nothing." "Well, then, why this hound should be loose tonight. I suppose that it does not always run loose upon the moor. Stapleton would not let it go unless he had reason to think that Sir Henry would be there." "My difficulty is the more formidable of the two, for I think that we shall very shortly get an explanation of yours, while mine may remain forever a mystery. The question now is, what shall we do with this poor wretch's body? We cannot leave it here to the foxes and the ravens." "I suggest that we put it in one of the huts until we can communicate with the police." "Exactly. I have no doubt that you and I could carry it so far. Halloa, Watson, what's this? It's the man himself, by all that's wonderful and audacious! Not a word to show your suspicions--not a word, or my plans crumble to the ground." A figure was approaching us over the moor, and I saw the dull red glow of a cigar. The moon shone upon him, and I could distinguish the dapper shape and jaunty walk of the naturalist. He stopped when he saw us, and then came on again. "Why, Dr. Watson, that's not you, is it? You are the last man that I should have expected to see out on the moor at this time of night. But, dear me, what's this? Somebody hurt? Not--don't tell me that it is our friend Sir Henry!" He hurried past me and stooped over the dead man. I heard a sharp intake of his breath and the cigar fell from his fingers. "Who--who's this?" he stammered. "It is Selden, the man who escaped from Princetown." Stapleton turned a ghastly face upon us, but by a supreme effort he had overcome his amazement and his disappointment. He looked sharply from Holmes to me. "Dear me! What a very shocking affair! How did he die?" "He appears to have broken his neck by falling over these rocks. My friend and I were strolling on the moor when we heard a cry." "I heard a cry also. That was what brought me out. I was uneasy about Sir Henry." "Why about Sir Henry in particular?" I could not help asking. "Because I had suggested that he should come over. When he did not come I was surprised, and I naturally became alarmed for his safety when I heard cries upon the moor. By the way"--his eyes darted again from my face to Holmes's--"did you hear anything else besides a cry?" "No," said Holmes; "did you?" "No." "What do you mean, then?" "Oh, you know the stories that the peasants tell about a phantom hound, and so on. It is said to be heard at night upon the moor. I was wondering if there were any evidence of such a sound tonight." "We heard nothing of the kind," said I. "And what is your theory of this poor fellow's death?" "I have no doubt that anxiety and exposure have driven him off his head. He has rushed about the moor in a crazy state and eventually fallen over here and broken his neck." "That seems the most reasonable theory," said Stapleton, and he gave a sigh which I took to indicate his relief. "What do you think about it, Mr. Sherlock Holmes?" My friend bowed his compliments. "You are quick at identification," said he. "We have been expecting you in these parts since Dr. Watson came down. You are in time to see a tragedy." "Yes, indeed. I have no doubt that my friend's explanation will cover the facts. I will take an unpleasant remembrance back to London with me tomorrow." "Oh, you return tomorrow?" "That is my intention." "I hope your visit has cast some light upon those occurrences which have puzzled us?" Holmes shrugged his shoulders. "One cannot always have the success for which one hopes. An investigator needs facts and not legends or rumours. It has not been a satisfactory case." My friend spoke in his frankest and most unconcerned manner. Stapleton still looked hard at him. Then he turned to me. "I would suggest carrying this poor fellow to my house, but it would give my sister such a fright that I do not feel justified in doing it. I think that if we put something over his face he will be safe until morning." And so it was arranged. Resisting Stapleton's offer of hospitality, Holmes and I set off to Baskerville Hall, leaving the naturalist to return alone. Looking back we saw the figure moving slowly away over the broad moor, and behind him that one black smudge on the silvered slope which showed where the man was lying who had come so horribly to his end.

Chapter 12

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-12

Surprise! The mysterious man on the hill is none other than Holmes. Watson gets upset when he realizes that Holmes has been deliberately keeping him in the dark. And what about all those reports, which he so carefully wrote up and sent off to London? Holmes tries to make nice. He says he trusts Watson completely. But he also worried that Watson wouldn't have been able to resist making contact with Holmes on the moors. And Holmes has been getting the reports--he arranged to have them delivered back to him on the moors from London. Holmes is fascinated by Watson's account of his conversation with Laura Lyons. Holmes knows that Stapleton and Laura Lyons have been hooking up. Holmes drops another bombshell: Beryl is actually Mrs. Stapleton. She's his wife, not his sister! Stapleton is the one who followed Sir Henry in London, and Beryl's the one who sent that warning to Sir Henry at his hotel. Holmes knows that Stapleton's pose as an unmarried man helped him enlist Laura in his plotting. And Laura's desperate for divorce money now because she believes that she can marry him. Holmes is almost ready to charge Stapleton with murder. But he needs Watson to wait at Baskerville Hall with Sir Henry for at least another day or two. Just as Holmes says this, they hear a horrible scream over the moors, followed by the growling of a dog. Holmes fears that they may be too late. At the side of a cliff, they find a body with a crushed skull. It's Sir Henry Baskerville. Besides feeling guilty that they were on the moors and still failed to save Sir Henry, Holmes is deeply frustrated. Even though Holmes and Watson are both sure that Stapleton is involved with the Hound murders, there's no definite proof linking him to the Baskerville deaths. Holmes goes over to the body to carry it to the hall. But suddenly, he starts dancing around and shaking Watson's hand. It's not Sir Henry at all! The body has a beard! In fact, the body belongs to Selden. Watson remembers that Sir Henry gave some of his old clothes to Barrymore; Barrymore probably passed them on to Selden. Stapleton's dog has obviously been trained to react to Sir Henry's smell, which lead him to attack Selden in Sir Henry's clothes. They see someone smoking and strolling towards them: it's Stapleton. Stapleton turns pale when he sees the body, since he realizes that it's not Sir Henry. Stapleton claims he invited Sir Henry to walk over to Merripit House and then got worried when he never turned up. Stapleton asks suspiciously if anybody heard the sounds of a dog, since the moors are supposed to be haunted. Neither Holmes nor Watson gives any sign that they might know why Stapleton's so interested in this mysterious dog. Watson claims to believe that Selden died from madness and stress, which drove him over a cliff. Holmes also pretends that he plans to go back to London the next day, since this has "not been a satisfactory case" .

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/13.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_12_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 13

chapter 13

{"name": "Chapter 13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-13", "summary": "Holmes is impressed at how Stapleton's so cool under pressure. Yeah, he's cool--it's not like Holmes can prove any of his ideas in a court of law yet. Holmes believes that Laura Lyons will be the key to this stage of the case. Watson brings Holmes to Baskerville Hall, and Sir Henry welcomes him. Watson breaks the news to the Barrymores that Selden's dead. Holmes tells Sir Henry that he'll soon have the answer to his mystery, as long as Sir Henry does exactly what Holmes says without asking why. More control-freak stuff. Holmes suddenly jumps up to look at one of the portraits on Sir Henry's wall. When Holmes points to the portrait of a man in black velvet and lace, Sir Henry identifies him as than Hugo Baskerville--the original victim of the Hound. After dinner, Holmes leads Watson back over to the portrait. When Holmes covers Hugo's ridiculous hair, Watson can finally spot what Holmes noticed so long before: that the face of Hugo Baskerville hugely resembles Stapleton's. In other words, Stapleton must be a member of the Baskerville family. Sir Henry comes in, and Holmes tells him that he and Watson are planning to go back to London. Sir Henry's disappointed , but Holmes reassures him that they'll be back soon. They were all supposed to go over to dinner at Stapleton's house together, but now Sir Henry will just have to go alone. Holmes tells Sir Henry to drive over to Merripit House, but then to have the groom bring the carriage home. Sir Henry should then tell his host, Stapleton, that he plans to walk home that night. At the train station in Coombe Tracey, Holmes and Watson meet the boy, Cartwright, who was bringing Holmes' food to the moors over those many days. Holmes orders Cartwright to take the train into London. From London, Cartwright should send a telegram to Sir Henry asking about a pocketbook Holmes might have forgotten at Baskerville Hall. Cartwright agrees, and he also gives Holmes a telegram. It's from \"Lestrade,\" who's coming down to Devonshire on the 5:40 train with a warrant. Holmes explains that Lestrade's a policeman, and they may need his help tonight. Holmes and Watson head over to Laura Lyons' house. Holmes tells Laura Lyons that he is involved in a case which implicates Stapleton and \"his wife\" in murder. Holmes shows her pictures of the people now calling themselves Jack and Beryl Stapleton. The pictures were taken several years ago in York, where they were called Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur . Laura Lyons is shocked that Stapleton has lied to her about his wife. First time in history that's ever happened. She admits that Stapleton told her what to write in the letter to Sir Charles. She also says that, after she sent the letter, Stapleton appeared to change his mind about her borrowing money from Sir Charles. After she agreed not to meet with Sir Charles, she didn't hear anything more about him until she read about his death in the newspaper. Stapleton then frightened Laura into promising not to say anything about the scheduled appointment with Sir Charles, since his death was so mysterious. Holmes and Watson go to the train station to meet Lestrade. Holmes promises that this case is the \"biggest thing for years\" .", "analysis": ""}

"We're at close grips at last," said Holmes as we walked together across the moor. "What a nerve the fellow has! How he pulled himself together in the face of what must have been a paralyzing shock when he found that the wrong man had fallen a victim to his plot. I told you in London, Watson, and I tell you now again, that we have never had a foeman more worthy of our steel." "I am sorry that he has seen you." "And so was I at first. But there was no getting out of it." "What effect do you think it will have upon his plans now that he knows you are here?" "It may cause him to be more cautious, or it may drive him to desperate measures at once. Like most clever criminals, he may be too confident in his own cleverness and imagine that he has completely deceived us." "Why should we not arrest him at once?" "My dear Watson, you were born to be a man of action. Your instinct is always to do something energetic. But supposing, for argument's sake, that we had him arrested tonight, what on earth the better off should we be for that? We could prove nothing against him. There's the devilish cunning of it! If he were acting through a human agent we could get some evidence, but if we were to drag this great dog to the light of day it would not help us in putting a rope round the neck of its master." "Surely we have a case." "Not a shadow of one--only surmise and conjecture. We should be laughed out of court if we came with such a story and such evidence." "There is Sir Charles's death." "Found dead without a mark upon him. You and I know that he died of sheer fright, and we know also what frightened him, but how are we to get twelve stolid jurymen to know it? What signs are there of a hound? Where are the marks of its fangs? Of course we know that a hound does not bite a dead body and that Sir Charles was dead before ever the brute overtook him. But we have to prove all this, and we are not in a position to do it." "Well, then, tonight?" "We are not much better off tonight. Again, there was no direct connection between the hound and the man's death. We never saw the hound. We heard it, but we could not prove that it was running upon this man's trail. There is a complete absence of motive. No, my dear fellow; we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that we have no case at present, and that it is worth our while to run any risk in order to establish one." "And how do you propose to do so?" "I have great hopes of what Mrs. Laura Lyons may do for us when the position of affairs is made clear to her. And I have my own plan as well. Sufficient for tomorrow is the evil thereof; but I hope before the day is past to have the upper hand at last." I could draw nothing further from him, and he walked, lost in thought, as far as the Baskerville gates. "Are you coming up?" "Yes; I see no reason for further concealment. But one last word, Watson. Say nothing of the hound to Sir Henry. Let him think that Selden's death was as Stapleton would have us believe. He will have a better nerve for the ordeal which he will have to undergo tomorrow, when he is engaged, if I remember your report aright, to dine with these people." "And so am I." "Then you must excuse yourself and he must go alone. That will be easily arranged. And now, if we are too late for dinner, I think that we are both ready for our suppers." Sir Henry was more pleased than surprised to see Sherlock Holmes, for he had for some days been expecting that recent events would bring him down from London. He did raise his eyebrows, however, when he found that my friend had neither any luggage nor any explanations for its absence. Between us we soon supplied his wants, and then over a belated supper we explained to the baronet as much of our experience as it seemed desirable that he should know. But first I had the unpleasant duty of breaking the news to Barrymore and his wife. To him it may have been an unmitigated relief, but she wept bitterly in her apron. To all the world he was the man of violence, half animal and half demon; but to her he always remained the little wilful boy of her own girlhood, the child who had clung to her hand. Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him. "I've been moping in the house all day since Watson went off in the morning," said the baronet. "I guess I should have some credit, for I have kept my promise. If I hadn't sworn not to go about alone I might have had a more lively evening, for I had a message from Stapleton asking me over there." "I have no doubt that you would have had a more lively evening," said Holmes drily. "By the way, I don't suppose you appreciate that we have been mourning over you as having broken your neck?" Sir Henry opened his eyes. "How was that?" "This poor wretch was dressed in your clothes. I fear your servant who gave them to him may get into trouble with the police." "That is unlikely. There was no mark on any of them, as far as I know." "That's lucky for him--in fact, it's lucky for all of you, since you are all on the wrong side of the law in this matter. I am not sure that as a conscientious detective my first duty is not to arrest the whole household. Watson's reports are most incriminating documents." "But how about the case?" asked the baronet. "Have you made anything out of the tangle? I don't know that Watson and I are much the wiser since we came down." "I think that I shall be in a position to make the situation rather more clear to you before long. It has been an exceedingly difficult and most complicated business. There are several points upon which we still want light--but it is coming all the same." "We've had one experience, as Watson has no doubt told you. We heard the hound on the moor, so I can swear that it is not all empty superstition. I had something to do with dogs when I was out West, and I know one when I hear one. If you can muzzle that one and put him on a chain I'll be ready to swear you are the greatest detective of all time." "I think I will muzzle him and chain him all right if you will give me your help." "Whatever you tell me to do I will do." "Very good; and I will ask you also to do it blindly, without always asking the reason." "Just as you like." "If you will do this I think the chances are that our little problem will soon be solved. I have no doubt--" He stopped suddenly and stared fixedly up over my head into the air. The lamp beat upon his face, and so intent was it and so still that it might have been that of a clear-cut classical statue, a personification of alertness and expectation. "What is it?" we both cried. I could see as he looked down that he was repressing some internal emotion. His features were still composed, but his eyes shone with amused exultation. "Excuse the admiration of a connoisseur," said he as he waved his hand towards the line of portraits which covered the opposite wall. "Watson won't allow that I know anything of art but that is mere jealousy because our views upon the subject differ. Now, these are a really very fine series of portraits." "Well, I'm glad to hear you say so," said Sir Henry, glancing with some surprise at my friend. "I don't pretend to know much about these things, and I'd be a better judge of a horse or a steer than of a picture. I didn't know that you found time for such things." "I know what is good when I see it, and I see it now. That's a Kneller, I'll swear, that lady in the blue silk over yonder, and the stout gentleman with the wig ought to be a Reynolds. They are all family portraits, I presume?" "Every one." "Do you know the names?" "Barrymore has been coaching me in them, and I think I can say my lessons fairly well." "Who is the gentleman with the telescope?" "That is Rear-Admiral Baskerville, who served under Rodney in the West Indies. The man with the blue coat and the roll of paper is Sir William Baskerville, who was Chairman of Committees of the House of Commons under Pitt." "And this Cavalier opposite to me--the one with the black velvet and the lace?" "Ah, you have a right to know about him. That is the cause of all the mischief, the wicked Hugo, who started the Hound of the Baskervilles. We're not likely to forget him." I gazed with interest and some surprise upon the portrait. "Dear me!" said Holmes, "he seems a quiet, meek-mannered man enough, but I dare say that there was a lurking devil in his eyes. I had pictured him as a more robust and ruffianly person." "There's no doubt about the authenticity, for the name and the date, 1647, are on the back of the canvas." Holmes said little more, but the picture of the old roysterer seemed to have a fascination for him, and his eyes were continually fixed upon it during supper. It was not until later, when Sir Henry had gone to his room, that I was able to follow the trend of his thoughts. He led me back into the banqueting-hall, his bedroom candle in his hand, and he held it up against the time-stained portrait on the wall. "Do you see anything there?" I looked at the broad plumed hat, the curling love-locks, the white lace collar, and the straight, severe face which was framed between them. It was not a brutal countenance, but it was prim, hard, and stern, with a firm-set, thin-lipped mouth, and a coldly intolerant eye. "Is it like anyone you know?" "There is something of Sir Henry about the jaw." "Just a suggestion, perhaps. But wait an instant!" He stood upon a chair, and, holding up the light in his left hand, he curved his right arm over the broad hat and round the long ringlets. "Good heavens!" I cried in amazement. The face of Stapleton had sprung out of the canvas. "Ha, you see it now. My eyes have been trained to examine faces and not their trimmings. It is the first quality of a criminal investigator that he should see through a disguise." "But this is marvellous. It might be his portrait." "Yes, it is an interesting instance of a throwback, which appears to be both physical and spiritual. A study of family portraits is enough to convert a man to the doctrine of reincarnation. The fellow is a Baskerville--that is evident." "With designs upon the succession." "Exactly. This chance of the picture has supplied us with one of our most obvious missing links. We have him, Watson, we have him, and I dare swear that before tomorrow night he will be fluttering in our net as helpless as one of his own butterflies. A pin, a cork, and a card, and we add him to the Baker Street collection!" He burst into one of his rare fits of laughter as he turned away from the picture. I have not heard him laugh often, and it has always boded ill to somebody. I was up betimes in the morning, but Holmes was afoot earlier still, for I saw him as I dressed, coming up the drive. "Yes, we should have a full day today," he remarked, and he rubbed his hands with the joy of action. "The nets are all in place, and the drag is about to begin. We'll know before the day is out whether we have caught our big, leanjawed pike, or whether he has got through the meshes." "Have you been on the moor already?" "I have sent a report from Grimpen to Princetown as to the death of Selden. I think I can promise that none of you will be troubled in the matter. And I have also communicated with my faithful Cartwright, who would certainly have pined away at the door of my hut, as a dog does at his master's grave, if I had not set his mind at rest about my safety." "What is the next move?" "To see Sir Henry. Ah, here he is!" "Good-morning, Holmes," said the baronet. "You look like a general who is planning a battle with his chief of the staff." "That is the exact situation. Watson was asking for orders." "And so do I." "Very good. You are engaged, as I understand, to dine with our friends the Stapletons tonight." "I hope that you will come also. They are very hospitable people, and I am sure that they would be very glad to see you." "I fear that Watson and I must go to London." "To London?" "Yes, I think that we should be more useful there at the present juncture." The baronet's face perceptibly lengthened. "I hoped that you were going to see me through this business. The Hall and the moor are not very pleasant places when one is alone." "My dear fellow, you must trust me implicitly and do exactly what I tell you. You can tell your friends that we should have been happy to have come with you, but that urgent business required us to be in town. We hope very soon to return to Devonshire. Will you remember to give them that message?" "If you insist upon it." "There is no alternative, I assure you." I saw by the baronet's clouded brow that he was deeply hurt by what he regarded as our desertion. "When do you desire to go?" he asked coldly. "Immediately after breakfast. We will drive in to Coombe Tracey, but Watson will leave his things as a pledge that he will come back to you. Watson, you will send a note to Stapleton to tell him that you regret that you cannot come." "I have a good mind to go to London with you," said the baronet. "Why should I stay here alone?" "Because it is your post of duty. Because you gave me your word that you would do as you were told, and I tell you to stay." "All right, then, I'll stay." "One more direction! I wish you to drive to Merripit House. Send back your trap, however, and let them know that you intend to walk home." "To walk across the moor?" "Yes." "But that is the very thing which you have so often cautioned me not to do." "This time you may do it with safety. If I had not every confidence in your nerve and courage I would not suggest it, but it is essential that you should do it." "Then I will do it." "And as you value your life do not go across the moor in any direction save along the straight path which leads from Merripit House to the Grimpen Road, and is your natural way home." "I will do just what you say." "Very good. I should be glad to get away as soon after breakfast as possible, so as to reach London in the afternoon." I was much astounded by this programme, though I remembered that Holmes had said to Stapleton on the night before that his visit would terminate next day. It had not crossed my mind however, that he would wish me to go with him, nor could I understand how we could both be absent at a moment which he himself declared to be critical. There was nothing for it, however, but implicit obedience; so we bade good-bye to our rueful friend, and a couple of hours afterwards we were at the station of Coombe Tracey and had dispatched the trap upon its return journey. A small boy was waiting upon the platform. "Any orders, sir?" "You will take this train to town, Cartwright. The moment you arrive you will send a wire to Sir Henry Baskerville, in my name, to say that if he finds the pocketbook which I have dropped he is to send it by registered post to Baker Street." "Yes, sir." "And ask at the station office if there is a message for me." The boy returned with a telegram, which Holmes handed to me. It ran: Wire received. Coming down with unsigned warrant. Arrive five-forty. Lestrade. "That is in answer to mine of this morning. He is the best of the professionals, I think, and we may need his assistance. Now, Watson, I think that we cannot employ our time better than by calling upon your acquaintance, Mrs. Laura Lyons." His plan of campaign was beginning to be evident. He would use the baronet in order to convince the Stapletons that we were really gone, while we should actually return at the instant when we were likely to be needed. That telegram from London, if mentioned by Sir Henry to the Stapletons, must remove the last suspicions from their minds. Already I seemed to see our nets drawing closer around that leanjawed pike. Mrs. Laura Lyons was in her office, and Sherlock Holmes opened his interview with a frankness and directness which considerably amazed her. "I am investigating the circumstances which attended the death of the late Sir Charles Baskerville," said he. "My friend here, Dr. Watson, has informed me of what you have communicated, and also of what you have withheld in connection with that matter." "What have I withheld?" she asked defiantly. "You have confessed that you asked Sir Charles to be at the gate at ten o'clock. We know that that was the place and hour of his death. You have withheld what the connection is between these events." "There is no connection." "In that case the coincidence must indeed be an extraordinary one. But I think that we shall succeed in establishing a connection, after all. I wish to be perfectly frank with you, Mrs. Lyons. We regard this case as one of murder, and the evidence may implicate not only your friend Mr. Stapleton but his wife as well." The lady sprang from her chair. "His wife!" she cried. "The fact is no longer a secret. The person who has passed for his sister is really his wife." Mrs. Lyons had resumed her seat. Her hands were grasping the arms of her chair, and I saw that the pink nails had turned white with the pressure of her grip. "His wife!" she said again. "His wife! He is not a married man." Sherlock Holmes shrugged his shoulders. "Prove it to me! Prove it to me! And if you can do so--!" The fierce flash of her eyes said more than any words. "I have come prepared to do so," said Holmes, drawing several papers from his pocket. "Here is a photograph of the couple taken in York four years ago. It is indorsed 'Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur,' but you will have no difficulty in recognizing him, and her also, if you know her by sight. Here are three written descriptions by trustworthy witnesses of Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur, who at that time kept St. Oliver's private school. Read them and see if you can doubt the identity of these people." She glanced at them, and then looked up at us with the set, rigid face of a desperate woman. "Mr. Holmes," she said, "this man had offered me marriage on condition that I could get a divorce from my husband. He has lied to me, the villain, in every conceivable way. Not one word of truth has he ever told me. And why--why? I imagined that all was for my own sake. But now I see that I was never anything but a tool in his hands. Why should I preserve faith with him who never kept any with me? Why should I try to shield him from the consequences of his own wicked acts? Ask me what you like, and there is nothing which I shall hold back. One thing I swear to you, and that is that when I wrote the letter I never dreamed of any harm to the old gentleman, who had been my kindest friend." "I entirely believe you, madam," said Sherlock Holmes. "The recital of these events must be very painful to you, and perhaps it will make it easier if I tell you what occurred, and you can check me if I make any material mistake. The sending of this letter was suggested to you by Stapleton?" "He dictated it." "I presume that the reason he gave was that you would receive help from Sir Charles for the legal expenses connected with your divorce?" "Exactly." "And then after you had sent the letter he dissuaded you from keeping the appointment?" "He told me that it would hurt his self-respect that any other man should find the money for such an object, and that though he was a poor man himself he would devote his last penny to removing the obstacles which divided us." "He appears to be a very consistent character. And then you heard nothing until you read the reports of the death in the paper?" "No." "And he made you swear to say nothing about your appointment with Sir Charles?" "He did. He said that the death was a very mysterious one, and that I should certainly be suspected if the facts came out. He frightened me into remaining silent." "Quite so. But you had your suspicions?" She hesitated and looked down. "I knew him," she said. "But if he had kept faith with me I should always have done so with him." "I think that on the whole you have had a fortunate escape," said Sherlock Holmes. "You have had him in your power and he knew it, and yet you are alive. You have been walking for some months very near to the edge of a precipice. We must wish you good-morning now, Mrs. Lyons, and it is probable that you will very shortly hear from us again." "Our case becomes rounded off, and difficulty after difficulty thins away in front of us," said Holmes as we stood waiting for the arrival of the express from town. "I shall soon be in the position of being able to put into a single connected narrative one of the most singular and sensational crimes of modern times. Students of criminology will remember the analogous incidents in Godno, in Little Russia, in the year '66, and of course there are the Anderson murders in North Carolina, but this case possesses some features which are entirely its own. Even now we have no clear case against this very wily man. But I shall be very much surprised if it is not clear enough before we go to bed this night." The London express came roaring into the station, and a small, wiry bulldog of a man had sprung from a first-class carriage. We all three shook hands, and I saw at once from the reverential way in which Lestrade gazed at my companion that he had learned a good deal since the days when they had first worked together. I could well remember the scorn which the theories of the reasoner used then to excite in the practical man. "Anything good?" he asked. "The biggest thing for years," said Holmes. "We have two hours before we need think of starting. I think we might employ it in getting some dinner and then, Lestrade, we will take the London fog out of your throat by giving you a breath of the pure night air of Dartmoor. Never been there? Ah, well, I don't suppose you will forget your first visit."

Chapter 13

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-13

Holmes is impressed at how Stapleton's so cool under pressure. Yeah, he's cool--it's not like Holmes can prove any of his ideas in a court of law yet. Holmes believes that Laura Lyons will be the key to this stage of the case. Watson brings Holmes to Baskerville Hall, and Sir Henry welcomes him. Watson breaks the news to the Barrymores that Selden's dead. Holmes tells Sir Henry that he'll soon have the answer to his mystery, as long as Sir Henry does exactly what Holmes says without asking why. More control-freak stuff. Holmes suddenly jumps up to look at one of the portraits on Sir Henry's wall. When Holmes points to the portrait of a man in black velvet and lace, Sir Henry identifies him as than Hugo Baskerville--the original victim of the Hound. After dinner, Holmes leads Watson back over to the portrait. When Holmes covers Hugo's ridiculous hair, Watson can finally spot what Holmes noticed so long before: that the face of Hugo Baskerville hugely resembles Stapleton's. In other words, Stapleton must be a member of the Baskerville family. Sir Henry comes in, and Holmes tells him that he and Watson are planning to go back to London. Sir Henry's disappointed , but Holmes reassures him that they'll be back soon. They were all supposed to go over to dinner at Stapleton's house together, but now Sir Henry will just have to go alone. Holmes tells Sir Henry to drive over to Merripit House, but then to have the groom bring the carriage home. Sir Henry should then tell his host, Stapleton, that he plans to walk home that night. At the train station in Coombe Tracey, Holmes and Watson meet the boy, Cartwright, who was bringing Holmes' food to the moors over those many days. Holmes orders Cartwright to take the train into London. From London, Cartwright should send a telegram to Sir Henry asking about a pocketbook Holmes might have forgotten at Baskerville Hall. Cartwright agrees, and he also gives Holmes a telegram. It's from "Lestrade," who's coming down to Devonshire on the 5:40 train with a warrant. Holmes explains that Lestrade's a policeman, and they may need his help tonight. Holmes and Watson head over to Laura Lyons' house. Holmes tells Laura Lyons that he is involved in a case which implicates Stapleton and "his wife" in murder. Holmes shows her pictures of the people now calling themselves Jack and Beryl Stapleton. The pictures were taken several years ago in York, where they were called Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur . Laura Lyons is shocked that Stapleton has lied to her about his wife. First time in history that's ever happened. She admits that Stapleton told her what to write in the letter to Sir Charles. She also says that, after she sent the letter, Stapleton appeared to change his mind about her borrowing money from Sir Charles. After she agreed not to meet with Sir Charles, she didn't hear anything more about him until she read about his death in the newspaper. Stapleton then frightened Laura into promising not to say anything about the scheduled appointment with Sir Charles, since his death was so mysterious. Holmes and Watson go to the train station to meet Lestrade. Holmes promises that this case is the "biggest thing for years" .

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/14.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_13_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 14

chapter 14

{"name": "Chapter 14", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-14", "summary": "As Holmes, Watson, and Lestrade drive over to Merripit House, the suspense is killing Watson. Holmes and Lestrade hide about two hundred yards away from the house. Holmes sends Watson to spy through the dining-room window. Sir Henry and Stapleton are sitting together and smoking. Beryl's nowhere to be seen. The Grimpen Mire is covered with fog, which is a bummer for Holmes--fog is the one thing that could really endanger Sir Henry's life. They hear the sounds of Sir Henry leaving the house. And then, Holmes hushes Watson--there's another sound of pattering feet coming. It's a black hound covered in flickering flame, with fire coming out of its mouth. Oh no, it's running toward Sir Henry. Holmes and Watson shoot the dog, which howls but keeps running. Sir Henry is looking behind him at the dog--and he looks terrified. Duh. The dog leaps at Sir Henry and starts biting him. Bad dog! But Holmes catches up and empties his gun into the dog. The dog falls dead. Sir Henry faints, but he's still alive. When Sir Henry comes to, he, Holmes, and Watson inspect the body of the dog. It's an enormous beast with huge jaws, and it's been covered in some kind of weird glow-in-the-dark stuff. Watson touches the stuff on the dog's fur and realizes that it's phosphorus . Holmes apologizes for putting Sir Henry in so much danger--he didn't expect either the fog or the dog. Sir Henry's so freaked out that Holmes and Watson leave him sitting on a rock while they go off after Stapleton. Back at Merripit House, there's a locked bedroom door. Holmes breaks down the door. They find a woman bound and gagged: Beryl Stapleton. She's furious and heartbroken that Stapleton has been abusing her and using her as his tool in his schemes against Sir Henry. Beryl says that Stapleton has a hiding place in the middle of the Grimpen Mire. The fog is so dense that he won't be able to leave his hiding place that night. The next morning, Beryl leads Holmes, Watson, and Lestrade through the dangerous bog. As the three men walk deep into the Grimpen Mire, Holmes spots something: Sir Henry's black boot. Stapleton must have been using the boot to teach the hound to track Sir Henry's smell. But they don't find any other sign of Stapleton. Watson believes that Stapleton probably got lost in the fog that night and fell into the Mire, never to emerge. On the island in the Mire, they find traces of the dog: this must be where Stapleton kept it. Sadly, they also find the skeleton of Dr. Mortimer's little spaniel. There's a pot full of the glowing stuff that Stapleton had been using to create the fire-breathing \"Hound of the Baskervilles,\" which frightened Selden into running over a cliff and scared Sir Charles to death.", "analysis": ""}

One of Sherlock Holmes's defects--if, indeed, one may call it a defect--was that he was exceedingly loath to communicate his full plans to any other person until the instant of their fulfilment. Partly it came no doubt from his own masterful nature, which loved to dominate and surprise those who were around him. Partly also from his professional caution, which urged him never to take any chances. The result, however, was very trying for those who were acting as his agents and assistants. I had often suffered under it, but never more so than during that long drive in the darkness. The great ordeal was in front of us; at last we were about to make our final effort, and yet Holmes had said nothing, and I could only surmise what his course of action would be. My nerves thrilled with anticipation when at last the cold wind upon our faces and the dark, void spaces on either side of the narrow road told me that we were back upon the moor once again. Every stride of the horses and every turn of the wheels was taking us nearer to our supreme adventure. Our conversation was hampered by the presence of the driver of the hired wagonette, so that we were forced to talk of trivial matters when our nerves were tense with emotion and anticipation. It was a relief to me, after that unnatural restraint, when we at last passed Frankland's house and knew that we were drawing near to the Hall and to the scene of action. We did not drive up to the door but got down near the gate of the avenue. The wagonette was paid off and ordered to return to Coombe Tracey forthwith, while we started to walk to Merripit House. "Are you armed, Lestrade?" The little detective smiled. "As long as I have my trousers I have a hip-pocket, and as long as I have my hip-pocket I have something in it." "Good! My friend and I are also ready for emergencies." "You're mighty close about this affair, Mr. Holmes. What's the game now?" "A waiting game." "My word, it does not seem a very cheerful place," said the detective with a shiver, glancing round him at the gloomy slopes of the hill and at the huge lake of fog which lay over the Grimpen Mire. "I see the lights of a house ahead of us." "That is Merripit House and the end of our journey. I must request you to walk on tiptoe and not to talk above a whisper." We moved cautiously along the track as if we were bound for the house, but Holmes halted us when we were about two hundred yards from it. "This will do," said he. "These rocks upon the right make an admirable screen." "We are to wait here?" "Yes, we shall make our little ambush here. Get into this hollow, Lestrade. You have been inside the house, have you not, Watson? Can you tell the position of the rooms? What are those latticed windows at this end?" "I think they are the kitchen windows." "And the one beyond, which shines so brightly?" "That is certainly the dining-room." "The blinds are up. You know the lie of the land best. Creep forward quietly and see what they are doing--but for heaven's sake don't let them know that they are watched!" I tiptoed down the path and stooped behind the low wall which surrounded the stunted orchard. Creeping in its shadow I reached a point whence I could look straight through the uncurtained window. There were only two men in the room, Sir Henry and Stapleton. They sat with their profiles towards me on either side of the round table. Both of them were smoking cigars, and coffee and wine were in front of them. Stapleton was talking with animation, but the baronet looked pale and distrait. Perhaps the thought of that lonely walk across the ill-omened moor was weighing heavily upon his mind. As I watched them Stapleton rose and left the room, while Sir Henry filled his glass again and leaned back in his chair, puffing at his cigar. I heard the creak of a door and the crisp sound of boots upon gravel. The steps passed along the path on the other side of the wall under which I crouched. Looking over, I saw the naturalist pause at the door of an out-house in the corner of the orchard. A key turned in a lock, and as he passed in there was a curious scuffling noise from within. He was only a minute or so inside, and then I heard the key turn once more and he passed me and reentered the house. I saw him rejoin his guest, and I crept quietly back to where my companions were waiting to tell them what I had seen. "You say, Watson, that the lady is not there?" Holmes asked when I had finished my report. "No." "Where can she be, then, since there is no light in any other room except the kitchen?" "I cannot think where she is." I have said that over the great Grimpen Mire there hung a dense, white fog. It was drifting slowly in our direction and banked itself up like a wall on that side of us, low but thick and well defined. The moon shone on it, and it looked like a great shimmering ice-field, with the heads of the distant tors as rocks borne upon its surface. Holmes's face was turned towards it, and he muttered impatiently as he watched its sluggish drift. "It's moving towards us, Watson." "Is that serious?" "Very serious, indeed--the one thing upon earth which could have disarranged my plans. He can't be very long, now. It is already ten o'clock. Our success and even his life may depend upon his coming out before the fog is over the path." The night was clear and fine above us. The stars shone cold and bright, while a half-moon bathed the whole scene in a soft, uncertain light. Before us lay the dark bulk of the house, its serrated roof and bristling chimneys hard outlined against the silver-spangled sky. Broad bars of golden light from the lower windows stretched across the orchard and the moor. One of them was suddenly shut off. The servants had left the kitchen. There only remained the lamp in the dining-room where the two men, the murderous host and the unconscious guest, still chatted over their cigars. Every minute that white woolly plain which covered one-half of the moor was drifting closer and closer to the house. Already the first thin wisps of it were curling across the golden square of the lighted window. The farther wall of the orchard was already invisible, and the trees were standing out of a swirl of white vapour. As we watched it the fog-wreaths came crawling round both corners of the house and rolled slowly into one dense bank on which the upper floor and the roof floated like a strange ship upon a shadowy sea. Holmes struck his hand passionately upon the rock in front of us and stamped his feet in his impatience. "If he isn't out in a quarter of an hour the path will be covered. In half an hour we won't be able to see our hands in front of us." "Shall we move farther back upon higher ground?" "Yes, I think it would be as well." So as the fog-bank flowed onward we fell back before it until we were half a mile from the house, and still that dense white sea, with the moon silvering its upper edge, swept slowly and inexorably on. "We are going too far," said Holmes. "We dare not take the chance of his being overtaken before he can reach us. At all costs we must hold our ground where we are." He dropped on his knees and clapped his ear to the ground. "Thank God, I think that I hear him coming." A sound of quick steps broke the silence of the moor. Crouching among the stones we stared intently at the silver-tipped bank in front of us. The steps grew louder, and through the fog, as through a curtain, there stepped the man whom we were awaiting. He looked round him in surprise as he emerged into the clear, starlit night. Then he came swiftly along the path, passed close to where we lay, and went on up the long slope behind us. As he walked he glanced continually over either shoulder, like a man who is ill at ease. "Hist!" cried Holmes, and I heard the sharp click of a cocking pistol. "Look out! It's coming!" There was a thin, crisp, continuous patter from somewhere in the heart of that crawling bank. The cloud was within fifty yards of where we lay, and we glared at it, all three, uncertain what horror was about to break from the heart of it. I was at Holmes's elbow, and I glanced for an instant at his face. It was pale and exultant, his eyes shining brightly in the moonlight. But suddenly they started forward in a rigid, fixed stare, and his lips parted in amazement. At the same instant Lestrade gave a yell of terror and threw himself face downward upon the ground. I sprang to my feet, my inert hand grasping my pistol, my mind paralyzed by the dreadful shape which had sprung out upon us from the shadows of the fog. A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog. With long bounds the huge black creature was leaping down the track, following hard upon the footsteps of our friend. So paralyzed were we by the apparition that we allowed him to pass before we had recovered our nerve. Then Holmes and I both fired together, and the creature gave a hideous howl, which showed that one at least had hit him. He did not pause, however, but bounded onward. Far away on the path we saw Sir Henry looking back, his face white in the moonlight, his hands raised in horror, glaring helplessly at the frightful thing which was hunting him down. But that cry of pain from the hound had blown all our fears to the winds. If he was vulnerable he was mortal, and if we could wound him we could kill him. Never have I seen a man run as Holmes ran that night. I am reckoned fleet of foot, but he outpaced me as much as I outpaced the little professional. In front of us as we flew up the track we heard scream after scream from Sir Henry and the deep roar of the hound. I was in time to see the beast spring upon its victim, hurl him to the ground, and worry at his throat. But the next instant Holmes had emptied five barrels of his revolver into the creature's flank. With a last howl of agony and a vicious snap in the air, it rolled upon its back, four feet pawing furiously, and then fell limp upon its side. I stooped, panting, and pressed my pistol to the dreadful, shimmering head, but it was useless to press the trigger. The giant hound was dead. Sir Henry lay insensible where he had fallen. We tore away his collar, and Holmes breathed a prayer of gratitude when we saw that there was no sign of a wound and that the rescue had been in time. Already our friend's eyelids shivered and he made a feeble effort to move. Lestrade thrust his brandy-flask between the baronet's teeth, and two frightened eyes were looking up at us. "My God!" he whispered. "What was it? What, in heaven's name, was it?" "It's dead, whatever it is," said Holmes. "We've laid the family ghost once and forever." In mere size and strength it was a terrible creature which was lying stretched before us. It was not a pure bloodhound and it was not a pure mastiff; but it appeared to be a combination of the two--gaunt, savage, and as large as a small lioness. Even now in the stillness of death, the huge jaws seemed to be dripping with a bluish flame and the small, deep-set, cruel eyes were ringed with fire. I placed my hand upon the glowing muzzle, and as I held them up my own fingers smouldered and gleamed in the darkness. "Phosphorus," I said. "A cunning preparation of it," said Holmes, sniffing at the dead animal. "There is no smell which might have interfered with his power of scent. We owe you a deep apology, Sir Henry, for having exposed you to this fright. I was prepared for a hound, but not for such a creature as this. And the fog gave us little time to receive him." "You have saved my life." "Having first endangered it. Are you strong enough to stand?" "Give me another mouthful of that brandy and I shall be ready for anything. So! Now, if you will help me up. What do you propose to do?" "To leave you here. You are not fit for further adventures tonight. If you will wait, one or other of us will go back with you to the Hall." He tried to stagger to his feet; but he was still ghastly pale and trembling in every limb. We helped him to a rock, where he sat shivering with his face buried in his hands. "We must leave you now," said Holmes. "The rest of our work must be done, and every moment is of importance. We have our case, and now we only want our man. "It's a thousand to one against our finding him at the house," he continued as we retraced our steps swiftly down the path. "Those shots must have told him that the game was up." "We were some distance off, and this fog may have deadened them." "He followed the hound to call him off--of that you may be certain. No, no, he's gone by this time! But we'll search the house and make sure." The front door was open, so we rushed in and hurried from room to room to the amazement of a doddering old manservant, who met us in the passage. There was no light save in the dining-room, but Holmes caught up the lamp and left no corner of the house unexplored. No sign could we see of the man whom we were chasing. On the upper floor, however, one of the bedroom doors was locked. "There's someone in here," cried Lestrade. "I can hear a movement. Open this door!" A faint moaning and rustling came from within. Holmes struck the door just over the lock with the flat of his foot and it flew open. Pistol in hand, we all three rushed into the room. But there was no sign within it of that desperate and defiant villain whom we expected to see. Instead we were faced by an object so strange and so unexpected that we stood for a moment staring at it in amazement. The room had been fashioned into a small museum, and the walls were lined by a number of glass-topped cases full of that collection of butterflies and moths the formation of which had been the relaxation of this complex and dangerous man. In the centre of this room there was an upright beam, which had been placed at some period as a support for the old worm-eaten baulk of timber which spanned the roof. To this post a figure was tied, so swathed and muffled in the sheets which had been used to secure it that one could not for the moment tell whether it was that of a man or a woman. One towel passed round the throat and was secured at the back of the pillar. Another covered the lower part of the face, and over it two dark eyes--eyes full of grief and shame and a dreadful questioning--stared back at us. In a minute we had torn off the gag, unswathed the bonds, and Mrs. Stapleton sank upon the floor in front of us. As her beautiful head fell upon her chest I saw the clear red weal of a whiplash across her neck. "The brute!" cried Holmes. "Here, Lestrade, your brandy-bottle! Put her in the chair! She has fainted from ill-usage and exhaustion." She opened her eyes again. "Is he safe?" she asked. "Has he escaped?" "He cannot escape us, madam." "No, no, I did not mean my husband. Sir Henry? Is he safe?" "Yes." "And the hound?" "It is dead." She gave a long sigh of satisfaction. "Thank God! Thank God! Oh, this villain! See how he has treated me!" She shot her arms out from her sleeves, and we saw with horror that they were all mottled with bruises. "But this is nothing--nothing! It is my mind and soul that he has tortured and defiled. I could endure it all, ill-usage, solitude, a life of deception, everything, as long as I could still cling to the hope that I had his love, but now I know that in this also I have been his dupe and his tool." She broke into passionate sobbing as she spoke. "You bear him no good will, madam," said Holmes. "Tell us then where we shall find him. If you have ever aided him in evil, help us now and so atone." "There is but one place where he can have fled," she answered. "There is an old tin mine on an island in the heart of the mire. It was there that he kept his hound and there also he had made preparations so that he might have a refuge. That is where he would fly." The fog-bank lay like white wool against the window. Holmes held the lamp towards it. "See," said he. "No one could find his way into the Grimpen Mire tonight." She laughed and clapped her hands. Her eyes and teeth gleamed with fierce merriment. "He may find his way in, but never out," she cried. "How can he see the guiding wands tonight? We planted them together, he and I, to mark the pathway through the mire. Oh, if I could only have plucked them out today. Then indeed you would have had him at your mercy!" It was evident to us that all pursuit was in vain until the fog had lifted. Meanwhile we left Lestrade in possession of the house while Holmes and I went back with the baronet to Baskerville Hall. The story of the Stapletons could no longer be withheld from him, but he took the blow bravely when he learned the truth about the woman whom he had loved. But the shock of the night's adventures had shattered his nerves, and before morning he lay delirious in a high fever under the care of Dr. Mortimer. The two of them were destined to travel together round the world before Sir Henry had become once more the hale, hearty man that he had been before he became master of that ill-omened estate. And now I come rapidly to the conclusion of this singular narrative, in which I have tried to make the reader share those dark fears and vague surmises which clouded our lives so long and ended in so tragic a manner. On the morning after the death of the hound the fog had lifted and we were guided by Mrs. Stapleton to the point where they had found a pathway through the bog. It helped us to realize the horror of this woman's life when we saw the eagerness and joy with which she laid us on her husband's track. We left her standing upon the thin peninsula of firm, peaty soil which tapered out into the widespread bog. From the end of it a small wand planted here and there showed where the path zigzagged from tuft to tuft of rushes among those green-scummed pits and foul quagmires which barred the way to the stranger. Rank reeds and lush, slimy water-plants sent an odour of decay and a heavy miasmatic vapour onto our faces, while a false step plunged us more than once thigh-deep into the dark, quivering mire, which shook for yards in soft undulations around our feet. Its tenacious grip plucked at our heels as we walked, and when we sank into it it was as if some malignant hand was tugging us down into those obscene depths, so grim and purposeful was the clutch in which it held us. Once only we saw a trace that someone had passed that perilous way before us. From amid a tuft of cotton grass which bore it up out of the slime some dark thing was projecting. Holmes sank to his waist as he stepped from the path to seize it, and had we not been there to drag him out he could never have set his foot upon firm land again. He held an old black boot in the air. "Meyers, Toronto," was printed on the leather inside. "It is worth a mud bath," said he. "It is our friend Sir Henry's missing boot." "Thrown there by Stapleton in his flight." "Exactly. He retained it in his hand after using it to set the hound upon the track. He fled when he knew the game was up, still clutching it. And he hurled it away at this point of his flight. We know at least that he came so far in safety." But more than that we were never destined to know, though there was much which we might surmise. There was no chance of finding footsteps in the mire, for the rising mud oozed swiftly in upon them, but as we at last reached firmer ground beyond the morass we all looked eagerly for them. But no slightest sign of them ever met our eyes. If the earth told a true story, then Stapleton never reached that island of refuge towards which he struggled through the fog upon that last night. Somewhere in the heart of the great Grimpen Mire, down in the foul slime of the huge morass which had sucked him in, this cold and cruel-hearted man is forever buried. Many traces we found of him in the bog-girt island where he had hid his savage ally. A huge driving-wheel and a shaft half-filled with rubbish showed the position of an abandoned mine. Beside it were the crumbling remains of the cottages of the miners, driven away no doubt by the foul reek of the surrounding swamp. In one of these a staple and chain with a quantity of gnawed bones showed where the animal had been confined. A skeleton with a tangle of brown hair adhering to it lay among the debris. "A dog!" said Holmes. "By Jove, a curly-haired spaniel. Poor Mortimer will never see his pet again. Well, I do not know that this place contains any secret which we have not already fathomed. He could hide his hound, but he could not hush its voice, and hence came those cries which even in daylight were not pleasant to hear. On an emergency he could keep the hound in the out-house at Merripit, but it was always a risk, and it was only on the supreme day, which he regarded as the end of all his efforts, that he dared do it. This paste in the tin is no doubt the luminous mixture with which the creature was daubed. It was suggested, of course, by the story of the family hell-hound, and by the desire to frighten old Sir Charles to death. No wonder the poor devil of a convict ran and screamed, even as our friend did, and as we ourselves might have done, when he saw such a creature bounding through the darkness of the moor upon his track. It was a cunning device, for, apart from the chance of driving your victim to his death, what peasant would venture to inquire too closely into such a creature should he get sight of it, as many have done, upon the moor? I said it in London, Watson, and I say it again now, that never yet have we helped to hunt down a more dangerous man than he who is lying yonder"--he swept his long arm towards the huge mottled expanse of green-splotched bog which stretched away until it merged into the russet slopes of the moor.

Chapter 14

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-14

As Holmes, Watson, and Lestrade drive over to Merripit House, the suspense is killing Watson. Holmes and Lestrade hide about two hundred yards away from the house. Holmes sends Watson to spy through the dining-room window. Sir Henry and Stapleton are sitting together and smoking. Beryl's nowhere to be seen. The Grimpen Mire is covered with fog, which is a bummer for Holmes--fog is the one thing that could really endanger Sir Henry's life. They hear the sounds of Sir Henry leaving the house. And then, Holmes hushes Watson--there's another sound of pattering feet coming. It's a black hound covered in flickering flame, with fire coming out of its mouth. Oh no, it's running toward Sir Henry. Holmes and Watson shoot the dog, which howls but keeps running. Sir Henry is looking behind him at the dog--and he looks terrified. Duh. The dog leaps at Sir Henry and starts biting him. Bad dog! But Holmes catches up and empties his gun into the dog. The dog falls dead. Sir Henry faints, but he's still alive. When Sir Henry comes to, he, Holmes, and Watson inspect the body of the dog. It's an enormous beast with huge jaws, and it's been covered in some kind of weird glow-in-the-dark stuff. Watson touches the stuff on the dog's fur and realizes that it's phosphorus . Holmes apologizes for putting Sir Henry in so much danger--he didn't expect either the fog or the dog. Sir Henry's so freaked out that Holmes and Watson leave him sitting on a rock while they go off after Stapleton. Back at Merripit House, there's a locked bedroom door. Holmes breaks down the door. They find a woman bound and gagged: Beryl Stapleton. She's furious and heartbroken that Stapleton has been abusing her and using her as his tool in his schemes against Sir Henry. Beryl says that Stapleton has a hiding place in the middle of the Grimpen Mire. The fog is so dense that he won't be able to leave his hiding place that night. The next morning, Beryl leads Holmes, Watson, and Lestrade through the dangerous bog. As the three men walk deep into the Grimpen Mire, Holmes spots something: Sir Henry's black boot. Stapleton must have been using the boot to teach the hound to track Sir Henry's smell. But they don't find any other sign of Stapleton. Watson believes that Stapleton probably got lost in the fog that night and fell into the Mire, never to emerge. On the island in the Mire, they find traces of the dog: this must be where Stapleton kept it. Sadly, they also find the skeleton of Dr. Mortimer's little spaniel. There's a pot full of the glowing stuff that Stapleton had been using to create the fire-breathing "Hound of the Baskervilles," which frightened Selden into running over a cliff and scared Sir Charles to death.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/15.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_14_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 15

chapter 15

{"name": "Chapter 15", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-15", "summary": "About a month later, Holmes and Watson are sitting by the fire in their apartment in London. They've had a visit from Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer, who are about to go on a relaxing trip around the world to help improve Sir Henry's \"shattered nerves\" . No kidding. Since the case of the Baskervilles is on Watson's mind, he presses Holmes to tell him more about the background of the case. Apparently, Mrs. Stapleton has confirmed Holmes' guess that Stapleton was a Baskerville. He was the son of Rodger Baskerville, Sir Charles' younger brother, who moved to South America to escape some nasty rumors about him. Stapleton's real name was Rodger Baskerville , and he married a South American woman named Beryl Garcia. He and Beryl came to England under the fake name of Vandelay--wait, we meant Vandeleur--after running away with some embezzled money. They opened a school, which eventually failed. So the Vandeleurs changed their names to Stapleton and moved to the south of England. Stapleton discovered that he was pretty close to being the heir to the Baskerville fortune. And--luckily for him, because he was a creep--the current holder of that fortune was easily frightened and had a heart problem. So Stapleton bought a giant dog, mixed up some phosphorus, plunked the dog down in the middle of the Grimpen Mire, and waited for his chance. Stapleton had planned at first to live with Beryl as his sister rather than his wife just in case he could use her to attract Sir Charles. But she absolutely refused to help Stapleton in this way. Stapleton lucked out when he met Laura Lyons, whom he manipulated into writing to Sir Charles for help in getting a divorce. On the night of Sir Charles' death, Stapleton brought the dog to the driveway where Sir Charles was waiting for Laura. Stapleton released the dog on Sir Charles, who ran away screaming until he collapsed from his weak heart. That's why there was a paw print near Sir Charles' body. Both Beryl and Laura Lyons suspected Stapleton of planning Sir Charles' death, but neither would turn on him while they were still in love with him. And then, along came Sir Henry. Stapleton traveled to London to see if he could figure out some way of stopping Sir Henry from coming down to Baskerville Hall at all. At this point, Stapleton had stopped trusting Beryl, so he dragged her along on the trip and kept her prisoner in the hotel while he spied on Sir Henry. She still managed to send Sir Henry her secret message cut out of the Times, though. The disappearing boots were also a clue: the first one was too new to smell like Sir Henry, which is why Stapleton returned it. The older black boot was better for training his giant dog to chase the scent. When Stapleton spotted Holmes in the company of Sir Henry, he realized that there was no point in continuing to hunt Sir Henry in London. Stapleton went back to Merripit House with his wife to try his luck in Dartmoor. Even before Holmes went down to the moors, he already suspected Stapleton. The problem was catching him, with enough proof to make a legal case against him. That's why Holmes set up poor Sir Henry as bait to catch Stapleton red-handed. As for Beryl, she started out helping Stapleton because she really loved him . But as time went on, Beryl's loyalties shifted to Sir Henry and she began to hate Stapleton. Finally, on the night of the attack, Beryl tried to stop Stapleton from setting up Sir Henry for death-by-dog, and he tied her up to keep her out of the way. So that's that. Elementary. There's nothing more that Holmes can say with any certainty. So he and Watson go off to the opera for the evening--a happy ending .", "analysis": ""}

It was the end of November, and Holmes and I sat, upon a raw and foggy night, on either side of a blazing fire in our sitting-room in Baker Street. Since the tragic upshot of our visit to Devonshire he had been engaged in two affairs of the utmost importance, in the first of which he had exposed the atrocious conduct of Colonel Upwood in connection with the famous card scandal of the Nonpareil Club, while in the second he had defended the unfortunate Mme. Montpensier from the charge of murder which hung over her in connection with the death of her step-daughter, Mlle. Carere, the young lady who, as it will be remembered, was found six months later alive and married in New York. My friend was in excellent spirits over the success which had attended a succession of difficult and important cases, so that I was able to induce him to discuss the details of the Baskerville mystery. I had waited patiently for the opportunity for I was aware that he would never permit cases to overlap, and that his clear and logical mind would not be drawn from its present work to dwell upon memories of the past. Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer were, however, in London, on their way to that long voyage which had been recommended for the restoration of his shattered nerves. They had called upon us that very afternoon, so that it was natural that the subject should come up for discussion. "The whole course of events," said Holmes, "from the point of view of the man who called himself Stapleton was simple and direct, although to us, who had no means in the beginning of knowing the motives of his actions and could only learn part of the facts, it all appeared exceedingly complex. I have had the advantage of two conversations with Mrs. Stapleton, and the case has now been so entirely cleared up that I am not aware that there is anything which has remained a secret to us. You will find a few notes upon the matter under the heading B in my indexed list of cases." "Perhaps you would kindly give me a sketch of the course of events from memory." "Certainly, though I cannot guarantee that I carry all the facts in my mind. Intense mental concentration has a curious way of blotting out what has passed. The barrister who has his case at his fingers' ends and is able to argue with an expert upon his own subject finds that a week or two of the courts will drive it all out of his head once more. So each of my cases displaces the last, and Mlle. Carere has blurred my recollection of Baskerville Hall. Tomorrow some other little problem may be submitted to my notice which will in turn dispossess the fair French lady and the infamous Upwood. So far as the case of the hound goes, however, I will give you the course of events as nearly as I can, and you will suggest anything which I may have forgotten. "My inquiries show beyond all question that the family portrait did not lie, and that this fellow was indeed a Baskerville. He was a son of that Rodger Baskerville, the younger brother of Sir Charles, who fled with a sinister reputation to South America, where he was said to have died unmarried. He did, as a matter of fact, marry, and had one child, this fellow, whose real name is the same as his father's. He married Beryl Garcia, one of the beauties of Costa Rica, and, having purloined a considerable sum of public money, he changed his name to Vandeleur and fled to England, where he established a school in the east of Yorkshire. His reason for attempting this special line of business was that he had struck up an acquaintance with a consumptive tutor upon the voyage home, and that he had used this man's ability to make the undertaking a success. Fraser, the tutor, died however, and the school which had begun well sank from disrepute into infamy. The Vandeleurs found it convenient to change their name to Stapleton, and he brought the remains of his fortune, his schemes for the future, and his taste for entomology to the south of England. I learned at the British Museum that he was a recognized authority upon the subject, and that the name of Vandeleur has been permanently attached to a certain moth which he had, in his Yorkshire days, been the first to describe. "We now come to that portion of his life which has proved to be of such intense interest to us. The fellow had evidently made inquiry and found that only two lives intervened between him and a valuable estate. When he went to Devonshire his plans were, I believe, exceedingly hazy, but that he meant mischief from the first is evident from the way in which he took his wife with him in the character of his sister. The idea of using her as a decoy was clearly already in his mind, though he may not have been certain how the details of his plot were to be arranged. He meant in the end to have the estate, and he was ready to use any tool or run any risk for that end. His first act was to establish himself as near to his ancestral home as he could, and his second was to cultivate a friendship with Sir Charles Baskerville and with the neighbours. "The baronet himself told him about the family hound, and so prepared the way for his own death. Stapleton, as I will continue to call him, knew that the old man's heart was weak and that a shock would kill him. So much he had learned from Dr. Mortimer. He had heard also that Sir Charles was superstitious and had taken this grim legend very seriously. His ingenious mind instantly suggested a way by which the baronet could be done to death, and yet it would be hardly possible to bring home the guilt to the real murderer. "Having conceived the idea he proceeded to carry it out with considerable finesse. An ordinary schemer would have been content to work with a savage hound. The use of artificial means to make the creature diabolical was a flash of genius upon his part. The dog he bought in London from Ross and Mangles, the dealers in Fulham Road. It was the strongest and most savage in their possession. He brought it down by the North Devon line and walked a great distance over the moor so as to get it home without exciting any remarks. He had already on his insect hunts learned to penetrate the Grimpen Mire, and so had found a safe hiding-place for the creature. Here he kennelled it and waited his chance. "But it was some time coming. The old gentleman could not be decoyed outside of his grounds at night. Several times Stapleton lurked about with his hound, but without avail. It was during these fruitless quests that he, or rather his ally, was seen by peasants, and that the legend of the demon dog received a new confirmation. He had hoped that his wife might lure Sir Charles to his ruin, but here she proved unexpectedly independent. She would not endeavour to entangle the old gentleman in a sentimental attachment which might deliver him over to his enemy. Threats and even, I am sorry to say, blows refused to move her. She would have nothing to do with it, and for a time Stapleton was at a deadlock. "He found a way out of his difficulties through the chance that Sir Charles, who had conceived a friendship for him, made him the minister of his charity in the case of this unfortunate woman, Mrs. Laura Lyons. By representing himself as a single man he acquired complete influence over her, and he gave her to understand that in the event of her obtaining a divorce from her husband he would marry her. His plans were suddenly brought to a head by his knowledge that Sir Charles was about to leave the Hall on the advice of Dr. Mortimer, with whose opinion he himself pretended to coincide. He must act at once, or his victim might get beyond his power. He therefore put pressure upon Mrs. Lyons to write this letter, imploring the old man to give her an interview on the evening before his departure for London. He then, by a specious argument, prevented her from going, and so had the chance for which he had waited. "Driving back in the evening from Coombe Tracey he was in time to get his hound, to treat it with his infernal paint, and to bring the beast round to the gate at which he had reason to expect that he would find the old gentleman waiting. The dog, incited by its master, sprang over the wicket-gate and pursued the unfortunate baronet, who fled screaming down the yew alley. In that gloomy tunnel it must indeed have been a dreadful sight to see that huge black creature, with its flaming jaws and blazing eyes, bounding after its victim. He fell dead at the end of the alley from heart disease and terror. The hound had kept upon the grassy border while the baronet had run down the path, so that no track but the man's was visible. On seeing him lying still the creature had probably approached to sniff at him, but finding him dead had turned away again. It was then that it left the print which was actually observed by Dr. Mortimer. The hound was called off and hurried away to its lair in the Grimpen Mire, and a mystery was left which puzzled the authorities, alarmed the countryside, and finally brought the case within the scope of our observation. "So much for the death of Sir Charles Baskerville. You perceive the devilish cunning of it, for really it would be almost impossible to make a case against the real murderer. His only accomplice was one who could never give him away, and the grotesque, inconceivable nature of the device only served to make it more effective. Both of the women concerned in the case, Mrs. Stapleton and Mrs. Laura Lyons, were left with a strong suspicion against Stapleton. Mrs. Stapleton knew that he had designs upon the old man, and also of the existence of the hound. Mrs. Lyons knew neither of these things, but had been impressed by the death occurring at the time of an uncancelled appointment which was only known to him. However, both of them were under his influence, and he had nothing to fear from them. The first half of his task was successfully accomplished but the more difficult still remained. "It is possible that Stapleton did not know of the existence of an heir in Canada. In any case he would very soon learn it from his friend Dr. Mortimer, and he was told by the latter all details about the arrival of Henry Baskerville. Stapleton's first idea was that this young stranger from Canada might possibly be done to death in London without coming down to Devonshire at all. He distrusted his wife ever since she had refused to help him in laying a trap for the old man, and he dared not leave her long out of his sight for fear he should lose his influence over her. It was for this reason that he took her to London with him. They lodged, I find, at the Mexborough Private Hotel, in Craven Street, which was actually one of those called upon by my agent in search of evidence. Here he kept his wife imprisoned in her room while he, disguised in a beard, followed Dr. Mortimer to Baker Street and afterwards to the station and to the Northumberland Hotel. His wife had some inkling of his plans; but she had such a fear of her husband--a fear founded upon brutal ill-treatment--that she dare not write to warn the man whom she knew to be in danger. If the letter should fall into Stapleton's hands her own life would not be safe. Eventually, as we know, she adopted the expedient of cutting out the words which would form the message, and addressing the letter in a disguised hand. It reached the baronet, and gave him the first warning of his danger. "It was very essential for Stapleton to get some article of Sir Henry's attire so that, in case he was driven to use the dog, he might always have the means of setting him upon his track. With characteristic promptness and audacity he set about this at once, and we cannot doubt that the boots or chamber-maid of the hotel was well bribed to help him in his design. By chance, however, the first boot which was procured for him was a new one and, therefore, useless for his purpose. He then had it returned and obtained another--a most instructive incident, since it proved conclusively to my mind that we were dealing with a real hound, as no other supposition could explain this anxiety to obtain an old boot and this indifference to a new one. The more outre and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined, and the very point which appears to complicate a case is, when duly considered and scientifically handled, the one which is most likely to elucidate it. "Then we had the visit from our friends next morning, shadowed always by Stapleton in the cab. From his knowledge of our rooms and of my appearance, as well as from his general conduct, I am inclined to think that Stapleton's career of crime has been by no means limited to this single Baskerville affair. It is suggestive that during the last three years there have been four considerable burglaries in the west country, for none of which was any criminal ever arrested. The last of these, at Folkestone Court, in May, was remarkable for the cold-blooded pistolling of the page, who surprised the masked and solitary burglar. I cannot doubt that Stapleton recruited his waning resources in this fashion, and that for years he has been a desperate and dangerous man. "We had an example of his readiness of resource that morning when he got away from us so successfully, and also of his audacity in sending back my own name to me through the cabman. From that moment he understood that I had taken over the case in London, and that therefore there was no chance for him there. He returned to Dartmoor and awaited the arrival of the baronet." "One moment!" said I. "You have, no doubt, described the sequence of events correctly, but there is one point which you have left unexplained. What became of the hound when its master was in London?" "I have given some attention to this matter and it is undoubtedly of importance. There can be no question that Stapleton had a confidant, though it is unlikely that he ever placed himself in his power by sharing all his plans with him. There was an old manservant at Merripit House, whose name was Anthony. His connection with the Stapletons can be traced for several years, as far back as the school-mastering days, so that he must have been aware that his master and mistress were really husband and wife. This man has disappeared and has escaped from the country. It is suggestive that Anthony is not a common name in England, while Antonio is so in all Spanish or Spanish-American countries. The man, like Mrs. Stapleton herself, spoke good English, but with a curious lisping accent. I have myself seen this old man cross the Grimpen Mire by the path which Stapleton had marked out. It is very probable, therefore, that in the absence of his master it was he who cared for the hound, though he may never have known the purpose for which the beast was used. "The Stapletons then went down to Devonshire, whither they were soon followed by Sir Henry and you. One word now as to how I stood myself at that time. It may possibly recur to your memory that when I examined the paper upon which the printed words were fastened I made a close inspection for the water-mark. In doing so I held it within a few inches of my eyes, and was conscious of a faint smell of the scent known as white jessamine. There are seventy-five perfumes, which it is very necessary that a criminal expert should be able to distinguish from each other, and cases have more than once within my own experience depended upon their prompt recognition. The scent suggested the presence of a lady, and already my thoughts began to turn towards the Stapletons. Thus I had made certain of the hound, and had guessed at the criminal before ever we went to the west country. "It was my game to watch Stapleton. It was evident, however, that I could not do this if I were with you, since he would be keenly on his guard. I deceived everybody, therefore, yourself included, and I came down secretly when I was supposed to be in London. My hardships were not so great as you imagined, though such trifling details must never interfere with the investigation of a case. I stayed for the most part at Coombe Tracey, and only used the hut upon the moor when it was necessary to be near the scene of action. Cartwright had come down with me, and in his disguise as a country boy he was of great assistance to me. I was dependent upon him for food and clean linen. When I was watching Stapleton, Cartwright was frequently watching you, so that I was able to keep my hand upon all the strings. "I have already told you that your reports reached me rapidly, being forwarded instantly from Baker Street to Coombe Tracey. They were of great service to me, and especially that one incidentally truthful piece of biography of Stapleton's. I was able to establish the identity of the man and the woman and knew at last exactly how I stood. The case had been considerably complicated through the incident of the escaped convict and the relations between him and the Barrymores. This also you cleared up in a very effective way, though I had already come to the same conclusions from my own observations. "By the time that you discovered me upon the moor I had a complete knowledge of the whole business, but I had not a case which could go to a jury. Even Stapleton's attempt upon Sir Henry that night which ended in the death of the unfortunate convict did not help us much in proving murder against our man. There seemed to be no alternative but to catch him red-handed, and to do so we had to use Sir Henry, alone and apparently unprotected, as a bait. We did so, and at the cost of a severe shock to our client we succeeded in completing our case and driving Stapleton to his destruction. That Sir Henry should have been exposed to this is, I must confess, a reproach to my management of the case, but we had no means of foreseeing the terrible and paralyzing spectacle which the beast presented, nor could we predict the fog which enabled him to burst upon us at such short notice. We succeeded in our object at a cost which both the specialist and Dr. Mortimer assure me will be a temporary one. A long journey may enable our friend to recover not only from his shattered nerves but also from his wounded feelings. His love for the lady was deep and sincere, and to him the saddest part of all this black business was that he should have been deceived by her. "It only remains to indicate the part which she had played throughout. There can be no doubt that Stapleton exercised an influence over her which may have been love or may have been fear, or very possibly both, since they are by no means incompatible emotions. It was, at least, absolutely effective. At his command she consented to pass as his sister, though he found the limits of his power over her when he endeavoured to make her the direct accessory to murder. She was ready to warn Sir Henry so far as she could without implicating her husband, and again and again she tried to do so. Stapleton himself seems to have been capable of jealousy, and when he saw the baronet paying court to the lady, even though it was part of his own plan, still he could not help interrupting with a passionate outburst which revealed the fiery soul which his self-contained manner so cleverly concealed. By encouraging the intimacy he made it certain that Sir Henry would frequently come to Merripit House and that he would sooner or later get the opportunity which he desired. On the day of the crisis, however, his wife turned suddenly against him. She had learned something of the death of the convict, and she knew that the hound was being kept in the outhouse on the evening that Sir Henry was coming to dinner. She taxed her husband with his intended crime, and a furious scene followed in which he showed her for the first time that she had a rival in his love. Her fidelity turned in an instant to bitter hatred, and he saw that she would betray him. He tied her up, therefore, that she might have no chance of warning Sir Henry, and he hoped, no doubt, that when the whole countryside put down the baronet's death to the curse of his family, as they certainly would do, he could win his wife back to accept an accomplished fact and to keep silent upon what she knew. In this I fancy that in any case he made a miscalculation, and that, if we had not been there, his doom would none the less have been sealed. A woman of Spanish blood does not condone such an injury so lightly. And now, my dear Watson, without referring to my notes, I cannot give you a more detailed account of this curious case. I do not know that anything essential has been left unexplained." "He could not hope to frighten Sir Henry to death as he had done the old uncle with his bogie hound." "The beast was savage and half-starved. If its appearance did not frighten its victim to death, at least it would paralyze the resistance which might be offered." "No doubt. There only remains one difficulty. If Stapleton came into the succession, how could he explain the fact that he, the heir, had been living unannounced under another name so close to the property? How could he claim it without causing suspicion and inquiry?" "It is a formidable difficulty, and I fear that you ask too much when you expect me to solve it. The past and the present are within the field of my inquiry, but what a man may do in the future is a hard question to answer. Mrs. Stapleton has heard her husband discuss the problem on several occasions. There were three possible courses. He might claim the property from South America, establish his identity before the British authorities there and so obtain the fortune without ever coming to England at all, or he might adopt an elaborate disguise during the short time that he need be in London; or, again, he might furnish an accomplice with the proofs and papers, putting him in as heir, and retaining a claim upon some proportion of his income. We cannot doubt from what we know of him that he would have found some way out of the difficulty. And now, my dear Watson, we have had some weeks of severe work, and for one evening, I think, we may turn our thoughts into more pleasant channels. I have a box for 'Les Huguenots.' Have you heard the De Reszkes? Might I trouble you then to be ready in half an hour, and we can stop at Marcini's for a little dinner on the way?"

Chapter 15

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-15

About a month later, Holmes and Watson are sitting by the fire in their apartment in London. They've had a visit from Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer, who are about to go on a relaxing trip around the world to help improve Sir Henry's "shattered nerves" . No kidding. Since the case of the Baskervilles is on Watson's mind, he presses Holmes to tell him more about the background of the case. Apparently, Mrs. Stapleton has confirmed Holmes' guess that Stapleton was a Baskerville. He was the son of Rodger Baskerville, Sir Charles' younger brother, who moved to South America to escape some nasty rumors about him. Stapleton's real name was Rodger Baskerville , and he married a South American woman named Beryl Garcia. He and Beryl came to England under the fake name of Vandelay--wait, we meant Vandeleur--after running away with some embezzled money. They opened a school, which eventually failed. So the Vandeleurs changed their names to Stapleton and moved to the south of England. Stapleton discovered that he was pretty close to being the heir to the Baskerville fortune. And--luckily for him, because he was a creep--the current holder of that fortune was easily frightened and had a heart problem. So Stapleton bought a giant dog, mixed up some phosphorus, plunked the dog down in the middle of the Grimpen Mire, and waited for his chance. Stapleton had planned at first to live with Beryl as his sister rather than his wife just in case he could use her to attract Sir Charles. But she absolutely refused to help Stapleton in this way. Stapleton lucked out when he met Laura Lyons, whom he manipulated into writing to Sir Charles for help in getting a divorce. On the night of Sir Charles' death, Stapleton brought the dog to the driveway where Sir Charles was waiting for Laura. Stapleton released the dog on Sir Charles, who ran away screaming until he collapsed from his weak heart. That's why there was a paw print near Sir Charles' body. Both Beryl and Laura Lyons suspected Stapleton of planning Sir Charles' death, but neither would turn on him while they were still in love with him. And then, along came Sir Henry. Stapleton traveled to London to see if he could figure out some way of stopping Sir Henry from coming down to Baskerville Hall at all. At this point, Stapleton had stopped trusting Beryl, so he dragged her along on the trip and kept her prisoner in the hotel while he spied on Sir Henry. She still managed to send Sir Henry her secret message cut out of the Times, though. The disappearing boots were also a clue: the first one was too new to smell like Sir Henry, which is why Stapleton returned it. The older black boot was better for training his giant dog to chase the scent. When Stapleton spotted Holmes in the company of Sir Henry, he realized that there was no point in continuing to hunt Sir Henry in London. Stapleton went back to Merripit House with his wife to try his luck in Dartmoor. Even before Holmes went down to the moors, he already suspected Stapleton. The problem was catching him, with enough proof to make a legal case against him. That's why Holmes set up poor Sir Henry as bait to catch Stapleton red-handed. As for Beryl, she started out helping Stapleton because she really loved him . But as time went on, Beryl's loyalties shifted to Sir Henry and she began to hate Stapleton. Finally, on the night of the attack, Beryl tried to stop Stapleton from setting up Sir Henry for death-by-dog, and he tied her up to keep her out of the way. So that's that. Elementary. There's nothing more that Holmes can say with any certainty. So he and Watson go off to the opera for the evening--a happy ending .

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/01.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_0_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 1

part 1, chapter 1

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-1", "summary": "A nameless first-person narrator recounts the day young Charles Bovary appeared at school. Charles is an embarrassed, rusticated, slow, and bewildered rural fellow. Also, he's a total fashion victim. Charles has some difficulty managing his tragically ugly hat; the teacher and the other boys all mock him. The class gets even rowdier, and the teacher assigns some lines to punish them. Things quiet down, though Charles is attacked with surreptitious spitballs. The other boys observe the newcomer carefully. He's not terribly bright, but he's a hard worker. Next, we get some background on the Bovary family: Charles's dad is a boastful but unsuccessful businessman who pretty much fails to support his family. His poor mom, whose money sustained her husband through his attempts at finding a career, is embittered, peevish, and obsessed with her son. Charles received a half-hearted education, but spent most of his childhood left to his own devices, running barefoot around the village and chasing turkeys . Despite his lackluster upbringing, Charles's parents hope that he'll make a name for himself. After a pretty average, unmemorable time at school, they enroll him in medical school, where he begins to appreciate the finer things in life: the stereotypical temptations of wine, women, and song. After failing his exams once, then cramming like crazy and passing a second time, Charles manages to get certified as an officier de sante . This is kind of like a junior doctor; it's a guy who's not a real doctor, but is allowed to practice medicine. Mama Bovary is happy. She sets Charles up in a nearby town, Tostes, then marries him off to a wealthy, needy widow. You've got to feel bad for the guy.", "analysis": ""}

We were in class when the head-master came in, followed by a "new fellow," not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a large desk. Those who had been asleep woke up, and every one rose as if just surprised at his work. The head-master made a sign to us to sit down. Then, turning to the class-master, he said to him in a low voice-- "Monsieur Roger, here is a pupil whom I recommend to your care; he'll be in the second. If his work and conduct are satisfactory, he will go into one of the upper classes, as becomes his age." The "new fellow," standing in the corner behind the door so that he could hardly be seen, was a country lad of about fifteen, and taller than any of us. His hair was cut square on his forehead like a village chorister's; he looked reliable, but very ill at ease. Although he was not broad-shouldered, his short school jacket of green cloth with black buttons must have been tight about the arm-holes, and showed at the opening of the cuffs red wrists accustomed to being bare. His legs, in blue stockings, looked out from beneath yellow trousers, drawn tight by braces, He wore stout, ill-cleaned, hob-nailed boots. We began repeating the lesson. He listened with all his ears, as attentive as if at a sermon, not daring even to cross his legs or lean on his elbow; and when at two o'clock the bell rang, the master was obliged to tell him to fall into line with the rest of us. When we came back to work, we were in the habit of throwing our caps on the ground so as to have our hands more free; we used from the door to toss them under the form, so that they hit against the wall and made a lot of dust: it was "the thing." But, whether he had not noticed the trick, or did not dare to attempt it, the "new fellow," was still holding his cap on his knees even after prayers were over. It was one of those head-gears of composite order, in which we can find traces of the bearskin, shako, billycock hat, sealskin cap, and cotton night-cap; one of those poor things, in fine, whose dumb ugliness has depths of expression, like an imbecile's face. Oval, stiffened with whalebone, it began with three round knobs; then came in succession lozenges of velvet and rabbit-skin separated by a red band; after that a sort of bag that ended in a cardboard polygon covered with complicated braiding, from which hung, at the end of a long thin cord, small twisted gold threads in the manner of a tassel. The cap was new; its peak shone. "Rise," said the master. He stood up; his cap fell. The whole class began to laugh. He stooped to pick it up. A neighbor knocked it down again with his elbow; he picked it up once more. "Get rid of your helmet," said the master, who was a bit of a wag. There was a burst of laughter from the boys, which so thoroughly put the poor lad out of countenance that he did not know whether to keep his cap in his hand, leave it on the ground, or put it on his head. He sat down again and placed it on his knee. "Rise," repeated the master, "and tell me your name." The new boy articulated in a stammering voice an unintelligible name. "Again!" The same sputtering of syllables was heard, drowned by the tittering of the class. "Louder!" cried the master; "louder!" The "new fellow" then took a supreme resolution, opened an inordinately large mouth, and shouted at the top of his voice as if calling someone in the word "Charbovari." A hubbub broke out, rose in crescendo with bursts of shrill voices (they yelled, barked, stamped, repeated "Charbovari! Charbovari"), then died away into single notes, growing quieter only with great difficulty, and now and again suddenly recommencing along the line of a form whence rose here and there, like a damp cracker going off, a stifled laugh. However, amid a rain of impositions, order was gradually re-established in the class; and the master having succeeded in catching the name of "Charles Bovary," having had it dictated to him, spelt out, and re-read, at once ordered the poor devil to go and sit down on the punishment form at the foot of the master's desk. He got up, but before going hesitated. "What are you looking for?" asked the master. "My c-a-p," timidly said the "new fellow," casting troubled looks round him. "Five hundred lines for all the class!" shouted in a furious voice stopped, like the Quos ego*, a fresh outburst. "Silence!" continued the master indignantly, wiping his brow with his handkerchief, which he had just taken from his cap. "As to you, 'new boy,' you will conjugate 'ridiculus sum'** twenty times." Then, in a gentler tone, "Come, you'll find your cap again; it hasn't been stolen." *A quotation from the Aeneid signifying a threat. **I am ridiculous. Quiet was restored. Heads bent over desks, and the "new fellow" remained for two hours in an exemplary attitude, although from time to time some paper pellet flipped from the tip of a pen came bang in his face. But he wiped his face with one hand and continued motionless, his eyes lowered. In the evening, at preparation, he pulled out his pens from his desk, arranged his small belongings, and carefully ruled his paper. We saw him working conscientiously, looking up every word in the dictionary, and taking the greatest pains. Thanks, no doubt, to the willingness he showed, he had not to go down to the class below. But though he knew his rules passably, he had little finish in composition. It was the cure of his village who had taught him his first Latin; his parents, from motives of economy, having sent him to school as late as possible. His father, Monsieur Charles Denis Bartolome Bovary, retired assistant-surgeon-major, compromised about 1812 in certain conscription scandals, and forced at this time to leave the service, had taken advantage of his fine figure to get hold of a dowry of sixty thousand francs that offered in the person of a hosier's daughter who had fallen in love with his good looks. A fine man, a great talker, making his spurs ring as he walked, wearing whiskers that ran into his moustache, his fingers always garnished with rings and dressed in loud colours, he had the dash of a military man with the easy go of a commercial traveller. Once married, he lived for three or four years on his wife's fortune, dining well, rising late, smoking long porcelain pipes, not coming in at night till after the theatre, and haunting cafes. The father-in-law died, leaving little; he was indignant at this, "went in for the business," lost some money in it, then retired to the country, where he thought he would make money. But, as he knew no more about farming than calico, as he rode his horses instead of sending them to plough, drank his cider in bottle instead of selling it in cask, ate the finest poultry in his farmyard, and greased his hunting-boots with the fat of his pigs, he was not long in finding out that he would do better to give up all speculation. For two hundred francs a year he managed to live on the border of the provinces of Caux and Picardy, in a kind of place half farm, half private house; and here, soured, eaten up with regrets, cursing his luck, jealous of everyone, he shut himself up at the age of forty-five, sick of men, he said, and determined to live at peace. His wife had adored him once on a time; she had bored him with a thousand servilities that had only estranged him the more. Lively once, expansive and affectionate, in growing older she had become (after the fashion of wine that, exposed to air, turns to vinegar) ill-tempered, grumbling, irritable. She had suffered so much without complaint at first, until she had seem him going after all the village drabs, and until a score of bad houses sent him back to her at night, weary, stinking drunk. Then her pride revolted. After that she was silent, burying her anger in a dumb stoicism that she maintained till her death. She was constantly going about looking after business matters. She called on the lawyers, the president, remembered when bills fell due, got them renewed, and at home ironed, sewed, washed, looked after the workmen, paid the accounts, while he, troubling himself about nothing, eternally besotted in sleepy sulkiness, whence he only roused himself to say disagreeable things to her, sat smoking by the fire and spitting into the cinders. When she had a child, it had to be sent out to nurse. When he came home, the lad was spoilt as if he were a prince. His mother stuffed him with jam; his father let him run about barefoot, and, playing the philosopher, even said he might as well go about quite naked like the young of animals. As opposed to the maternal ideas, he had a certain virile idea of childhood on which he sought to mould his son, wishing him to be brought up hardily, like a Spartan, to give him a strong constitution. He sent him to bed without any fire, taught him to drink off large draughts of rum and to jeer at religious processions. But, peaceable by nature, the lad answered only poorly to his notions. His mother always kept him near her; she cut out cardboard for him, told him tales, entertained him with endless monologues full of melancholy gaiety and charming nonsense. In her life's isolation she centered on the child's head all her shattered, broken little vanities. She dreamed of high station; she already saw him, tall, handsome, clever, settled as an engineer or in the law. She taught him to read, and even, on an old piano, she had taught him two or three little songs. But to all this Monsieur Bovary, caring little for letters, said, "It was not worth while. Would they ever have the means to send him to a public school, to buy him a practice, or start him in business? Besides, with cheek a man always gets on in the world." Madame Bovary bit her lips, and the child knocked about the village. He went after the labourers, drove away with clods of earth the ravens that were flying about. He ate blackberries along the hedges, minded the geese with a long switch, went haymaking during harvest, ran about in the woods, played hop-scotch under the church porch on rainy days, and at great fetes begged the beadle to let him toll the bells, that he might hang all his weight on the long rope and feel himself borne upward by it in its swing. Meanwhile he grew like an oak; he was strong on hand, fresh of colour. When he was twelve years old his mother had her own way; he began lessons. The cure took him in hand; but the lessons were so short and irregular that they could not be of much use. They were given at spare moments in the sacristy, standing up, hurriedly, between a baptism and a burial; or else the cure, if he had not to go out, sent for his pupil after the Angelus*. They went up to his room and settled down; the flies and moths fluttered round the candle. It was close, the child fell asleep, and the good man, beginning to doze with his hands on his stomach, was soon snoring with his mouth wide open. On other occasions, when Monsieur le Cure, on his way back after administering the viaticum to some sick person in the neighbourhood, caught sight of Charles playing about the fields, he called him, lectured him for a quarter of an hour and took advantage of the occasion to make him conjugate his verb at the foot of a tree. The rain interrupted them or an acquaintance passed. All the same he was always pleased with him, and even said the "young man" had a very good memory. *A devotion said at morning, noon, and evening, at the sound of a bell. Here, the evening prayer. Charles could not go on like this. Madame Bovary took strong steps. Ashamed, or rather tired out, Monsieur Bovary gave in without a struggle, and they waited one year longer, so that the lad should take his first communion. Six months more passed, and the year after Charles was finally sent to school at Rouen, where his father took him towards the end of October, at the time of the St. Romain fair. It would now be impossible for any of us to remember anything about him. He was a youth of even temperament, who played in playtime, worked in school-hours, was attentive in class, slept well in the dormitory, and ate well in the refectory. He had in loco parentis* a wholesale ironmonger in the Rue Ganterie, who took him out once a month on Sundays after his shop was shut, sent him for a walk on the quay to look at the boats, and then brought him back to college at seven o'clock before supper. Every Thursday evening he wrote a long letter to his mother with red ink and three wafers; then he went over his history note-books, or read an old volume of "Anarchasis" that was knocking about the study. When he went for walks he talked to the servant, who, like himself, came from the country. *In place of a parent. By dint of hard work he kept always about the middle of the class; once even he got a certificate in natural history. But at the end of his third year his parents withdrew him from the school to make him study medicine, convinced that he could even take his degree by himself. His mother chose a room for him on the fourth floor of a dyer's she knew, overlooking the Eau-de-Robec. She made arrangements for his board, got him furniture, table and two chairs, sent home for an old cherry-tree bedstead, and bought besides a small cast-iron stove with the supply of wood that was to warm the poor child. Then at the end of a week she departed, after a thousand injunctions to be good now that he was going to be left to himself. The syllabus that he read on the notice-board stunned him; lectures on anatomy, lectures on pathology, lectures on physiology, lectures on pharmacy, lectures on botany and clinical medicine, and therapeutics, without counting hygiene and materia medica--all names of whose etymologies he was ignorant, and that were to him as so many doors to sanctuaries filled with magnificent darkness. He understood nothing of it all; it was all very well to listen--he did not follow. Still he worked; he had bound note-books, he attended all the courses, never missed a single lecture. He did his little daily task like a mill-horse, who goes round and round with his eyes bandaged, not knowing what work he is doing. To spare him expense his mother sent him every week by the carrier a piece of veal baked in the oven, with which he lunched when he came back from the hospital, while he sat kicking his feet against the wall. After this he had to run off to lectures, to the operation-room, to the hospital, and return to his home at the other end of the town. In the evening, after the poor dinner of his landlord, he went back to his room and set to work again in his wet clothes, which smoked as he sat in front of the hot stove. On the fine summer evenings, at the time when the close streets are empty, when the servants are playing shuttle-cock at the doors, he opened his window and leaned out. The river, that makes of this quarter of Rouen a wretched little Venice, flowed beneath him, between the bridges and the railings, yellow, violet, or blue. Working men, kneeling on the banks, washed their bare arms in the water. On poles projecting from the attics, skeins of cotton were drying in the air. Opposite, beyond the roots spread the pure heaven with the red sun setting. How pleasant it must be at home! How fresh under the beech-tree! And he expanded his nostrils to breathe in the sweet odours of the country which did not reach him. He grew thin, his figure became taller, his face took a saddened look that made it nearly interesting. Naturally, through indifference, he abandoned all the resolutions he had made. Once he missed a lecture; the next day all the lectures; and, enjoying his idleness, little by little, he gave up work altogether. He got into the habit of going to the public-house, and had a passion for dominoes. To shut himself up every evening in the dirty public room, to push about on marble tables the small sheep bones with black dots, seemed to him a fine proof of his freedom, which raised him in his own esteem. It was beginning to see life, the sweetness of stolen pleasures; and when he entered, he put his hand on the door-handle with a joy almost sensual. Then many things hidden within him came out; he learnt couplets by heart and sang them to his boon companions, became enthusiastic about Beranger, learnt how to make punch, and, finally, how to make love. Thanks to these preparatory labours, he failed completely in his examination for an ordinary degree. He was expected home the same night to celebrate his success. He started on foot, stopped at the beginning of the village, sent for his mother, and told her all. She excused him, threw the blame of his failure on the injustice of the examiners, encouraged him a little, and took upon herself to set matters straight. It was only five years later that Monsieur Bovary knew the truth; it was old then, and he accepted it. Moreover, he could not believe that a man born of him could be a fool. So Charles set to work again and crammed for his examination, ceaselessly learning all the old questions by heart. He passed pretty well. What a happy day for his mother! They gave a grand dinner. Where should he go to practice? To Tostes, where there was only one old doctor. For a long time Madame Bovary had been on the look-out for his death, and the old fellow had barely been packed off when Charles was installed, opposite his place, as his successor. But it was not everything to have brought up a son, to have had him taught medicine, and discovered Tostes, where he could practice it; he must have a wife. She found him one--the widow of a bailiff at Dieppe--who was forty-five and had an income of twelve hundred francs. Though she was ugly, as dry as a bone, her face with as many pimples as the spring has buds, Madame Dubuc had no lack of suitors. To attain her ends Madame Bovary had to oust them all, and she even succeeded in very cleverly baffling the intrigues of a port-butcher backed up by the priests. Charles had seen in marriage the advent of an easier life, thinking he would be more free to do as he liked with himself and his money. But his wife was master; he had to say this and not say that in company, to fast every Friday, dress as she liked, harass at her bidding those patients who did not pay. She opened his letter, watched his comings and goings, and listened at the partition-wall when women came to consult him in his surgery. She must have her chocolate every morning, attentions without end. She constantly complained of her nerves, her chest, her liver. The noise of footsteps made her ill; when people left her, solitude became odious to her; if they came back, it was doubtless to see her die. When Charles returned in the evening, she stretched forth two long thin arms from beneath the sheets, put them round his neck, and having made him sit down on the edge of the bed, began to talk to him of her troubles: he was neglecting her, he loved another. She had been warned she would be unhappy; and she ended by asking him for a dose of medicine and a little more love.

Part 1, Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-1

A nameless first-person narrator recounts the day young Charles Bovary appeared at school. Charles is an embarrassed, rusticated, slow, and bewildered rural fellow. Also, he's a total fashion victim. Charles has some difficulty managing his tragically ugly hat; the teacher and the other boys all mock him. The class gets even rowdier, and the teacher assigns some lines to punish them. Things quiet down, though Charles is attacked with surreptitious spitballs. The other boys observe the newcomer carefully. He's not terribly bright, but he's a hard worker. Next, we get some background on the Bovary family: Charles's dad is a boastful but unsuccessful businessman who pretty much fails to support his family. His poor mom, whose money sustained her husband through his attempts at finding a career, is embittered, peevish, and obsessed with her son. Charles received a half-hearted education, but spent most of his childhood left to his own devices, running barefoot around the village and chasing turkeys . Despite his lackluster upbringing, Charles's parents hope that he'll make a name for himself. After a pretty average, unmemorable time at school, they enroll him in medical school, where he begins to appreciate the finer things in life: the stereotypical temptations of wine, women, and song. After failing his exams once, then cramming like crazy and passing a second time, Charles manages to get certified as an officier de sante . This is kind of like a junior doctor; it's a guy who's not a real doctor, but is allowed to practice medicine. Mama Bovary is happy. She sets Charles up in a nearby town, Tostes, then marries him off to a wealthy, needy widow. You've got to feel bad for the guy.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/02.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_1_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 2

part 1, chapter 2

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-2", "summary": "The young \"doctor\" is awakened in the night by a call from a patient; someone at a farm called Les Bertaux outside the town has a broken leg that needs to be set. It's agreed that Charles will head out to take care of the patient at moonrise. Until then, Charles lies awake, dreading the medical debacle about to unfold. We've already figured out that he's not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, and he doesn't feel too confident about his healing powers. We have to admit, we're nervous for him and his patient, too...seriously, would you want this guy operating on your broken leg? Les Bertaux turns out to be a nice piece of real estate. Monsieur Rouault, the farmer/patient, is obviously pretty well off. A widower, he takes care of the family farm with the help of his young daughter. Said daughter lets Charles in and takes him up to the patient. Monsieur Rouault is a good-natured man, and his fracture also proves to be somewhat good-natured; it's a totally clean break, and Charles starts to feel confident again. He cheers up his patient, and competently takes care of the injury. In the meanwhile, the daughter, Emma, attempts to make herself useful by sewing some padding, but she turns out to be a bad seamstress. Her ineptitude doesn't matter, though - Charles is quite taken by her dainty appearance . As the three of them go downstairs to have a bite to eat, the young doctor takes a better look at the young daughter. Charles get to know Emma a little better. She hates country living, and doesn't seem quite content with her life. We're not sure if Charles notices this. What he does notice is that she is really beautiful. She's got gorgeous brown eyes, full lips, carefully arranged black hair, and rosy cheeks. Someone's got a crush... Charles keeps visiting Les Bertaux, supposedly to check in with his patient, but really to see Emma. His irritable/irritating wife finds out that Emma is something of a fine young lady, having received a fancy education at a convent, and is upset by the idea that Charles is in love with the girl. She makes Charles promise not to visit Les Bertaux anymore. Charles's first wife is not long in this world. Some bad financial news emerges , and the distraught woman actually collapses and dies. Charles is now free, although he does feel a little sad, since she loved him.", "analysis": ""}

One night towards eleven o'clock they were awakened by the noise of a horse pulling up outside their door. The servant opened the garret-window and parleyed for some time with a man in the street below. He came for the doctor, had a letter for him. Natasie came downstairs shivering and undid the bars and bolts one after the other. The man left his horse, and, following the servant, suddenly came in behind her. He pulled out from his wool cap with grey top-knots a letter wrapped up in a rag and presented it gingerly to Charles, who rested on his elbow on the pillow to read it. Natasie, standing near the bed, held the light. Madame in modesty had turned to the wall and showed only her back. This letter, sealed with a small seal in blue wax, begged Monsieur Bovary to come immediately to the farm of the Bertaux to set a broken leg. Now from Tostes to the Bertaux was a good eighteen miles across country by way of Longueville and Saint-Victor. It was a dark night; Madame Bovary junior was afraid of accidents for her husband. So it was decided the stable-boy should go on first; Charles would start three hours later when the moon rose. A boy was to be sent to meet him, and show him the way to the farm, and open the gates for him. Towards four o'clock in the morning, Charles, well wrapped up in his cloak, set out for the Bertaux. Still sleepy from the warmth of his bed, he let himself be lulled by the quiet trot of his horse. When it stopped of its own accord in front of those holes surrounded with thorns that are dug on the margin of furrows, Charles awoke with a start, suddenly remembered the broken leg, and tried to call to mind all the fractures he knew. The rain had stopped, day was breaking, and on the branches of the leafless trees birds roosted motionless, their little feathers bristling in the cold morning wind. The flat country stretched as far as eye could see, and the tufts of trees round the farms at long intervals seemed like dark violet stains on the cast grey surface, that on the horizon faded into the gloom of the sky. Charles from time to time opened his eyes, his mind grew weary, and, sleep coming upon him, he soon fell into a doze wherein, his recent sensations blending with memories, he became conscious of a double self, at once student and married man, lying in his bed as but now, and crossing the operation theatre as of old. The warm smell of poultices mingled in his brain with the fresh odour of dew; he heard the iron rings rattling along the curtain-rods of the bed and saw his wife sleeping. As he passed Vassonville he came upon a boy sitting on the grass at the edge of a ditch. "Are you the doctor?" asked the child. And on Charles's answer he took his wooden shoes in his hands and ran on in front of him. The general practitioner, riding along, gathered from his guide's talk that Monsieur Rouault must be one of the well-to-do farmers. He had broken his leg the evening before on his way home from a Twelfth-night feast at a neighbour's. His wife had been dead for two years. There was with him only his daughter, who helped him to keep house. The ruts were becoming deeper; they were approaching the Bertaux. The little lad, slipping through a hole in the hedge, disappeared; then he came back to the end of a courtyard to open the gate. The horse slipped on the wet grass; Charles had to stoop to pass under the branches. The watchdogs in their kennels barked, dragging at their chains. As he entered the Bertaux, the horse took fright and stumbled. It was a substantial-looking farm. In the stables, over the top of the open doors, one could see great cart-horses quietly feeding from new racks. Right along the outbuildings extended a large dunghill, from which manure liquid oozed, while amidst fowls and turkeys, five or six peacocks, a luxury in Chauchois farmyards, were foraging on the top of it. The sheepfold was long, the barn high, with walls smooth as your hand. Under the cart-shed were two large carts and four ploughs, with their whips, shafts and harnesses complete, whose fleeces of blue wool were getting soiled by the fine dust that fell from the granaries. The courtyard sloped upwards, planted with trees set out symmetrically, and the chattering noise of a flock of geese was heard near the pond. A young woman in a blue merino dress with three flounces came to the threshold of the door to receive Monsieur Bovary, whom she led to the kitchen, where a large fire was blazing. The servant's breakfast was boiling beside it in small pots of all sizes. Some damp clothes were drying inside the chimney-corner. The shovel, tongs, and the nozzle of the bellows, all of colossal size, shone like polished steel, while along the walls hung many pots and pans in which the clear flame of the hearth, mingling with the first rays of the sun coming in through the window, was mirrored fitfully. Charles went up the first floor to see the patient. He found him in his bed, sweating under his bed-clothes, having thrown his cotton nightcap right away from him. He was a fat little man of fifty, with white skin and blue eyes, the forepart of his head bald, and he wore earrings. By his side on a chair stood a large decanter of brandy, whence he poured himself a little from time to time to keep up his spirits; but as soon as he caught sight of the doctor his elation subsided, and instead of swearing, as he had been doing for the last twelve hours, began to groan freely. The fracture was a simple one, without any kind of complication. Charles could not have hoped for an easier case. Then calling to mind the devices of his masters at the bedsides of patients, he comforted the sufferer with all sorts of kindly remarks, those caresses of the surgeon that are like the oil they put on bistouries. In order to make some splints a bundle of laths was brought up from the cart-house. Charles selected one, cut it into two pieces and planed it with a fragment of windowpane, while the servant tore up sheets to make bandages, and Mademoiselle Emma tried to sew some pads. As she was a long time before she found her work-case, her father grew impatient; she did not answer, but as she sewed she pricked her fingers, which she then put to her mouth to suck them. Charles was surprised at the whiteness of her nails. They were shiny, delicate at the tips, more polished than the ivory of Dieppe, and almond-shaped. Yet her hand was not beautiful, perhaps not white enough, and a little hard at the knuckles; besides, it was too long, with no soft inflections in the outlines. Her real beauty was in her eyes. Although brown, they seemed black because of the lashes, and her look came at you frankly, with a candid boldness. The bandaging over, the doctor was invited by Monsieur Rouault himself to "pick a bit" before he left. Charles went down into the room on the ground floor. Knives and forks and silver goblets were laid for two on a little table at the foot of a huge bed that had a canopy of printed cotton with figures representing Turks. There was an odour of iris-root and damp sheets that escaped from a large oak chest opposite the window. On the floor in corners were sacks of flour stuck upright in rows. These were the overflow from the neighbouring granary, to which three stone steps led. By way of decoration for the apartment, hanging to a nail in the middle of the wall, whose green paint scaled off from the effects of the saltpetre, was a crayon head of Minerva in gold frame, underneath which was written in Gothic letters "To dear Papa." First they spoke of the patient, then of the weather, of the great cold, of the wolves that infested the fields at night. Mademoiselle Rouault did not at all like the country, especially now that she had to look after the farm almost alone. As the room was chilly, she shivered as she ate. This showed something of her full lips, that she had a habit of biting when silent. Her neck stood out from a white turned-down collar. Her hair, whose two black folds seemed each of a single piece, so smooth were they, was parted in the middle by a delicate line that curved slightly with the curve of the head; and, just showing the tip of the ear, it was joined behind in a thick chignon, with a wavy movement at the temples that the country doctor saw now for the first time in his life. The upper part of her cheek was rose-coloured. She had, like a man, thrust in between two buttons of her bodice a tortoise-shell eyeglass. When Charles, after bidding farewell to old Rouault, returned to the room before leaving, he found her standing, her forehead against the window, looking into the garden, where the bean props had been knocked down by the wind. She turned round. "Are you looking for anything?" she asked. "My whip, if you please," he answered. He began rummaging on the bed, behind the doors, under the chairs. It had fallen to the floor, between the sacks and the wall. Mademoiselle Emma saw it, and bent over the flour sacks. Charles out of politeness made a dash also, and as he stretched out his arm, at the same moment felt his breast brush against the back of the young girl bending beneath him. She drew herself up, scarlet, and looked at him over her shoulder as she handed him his whip. Instead of returning to the Bertaux in three days as he had promised, he went back the very next day, then regularly twice a week, without counting the visits he paid now and then as if by accident. Everything, moreover, went well; the patient progressed favourably; and when, at the end of forty-six days, old Rouault was seen trying to walk alone in his "den," Monsieur Bovary began to be looked upon as a man of great capacity. Old Rouault said that he could not have been cured better by the first doctor of Yvetot, or even of Rouen. As to Charles, he did not stop to ask himself why it was a pleasure to him to go to the Bertaux. Had he done so, he would, no doubt, have attributed his zeal to the importance of the case, or perhaps to the money he hoped to make by it. Was it for this, however, that his visits to the farm formed a delightful exception to the meagre occupations of his life? On these days he rose early, set off at a gallop, urging on his horse, then got down to wipe his boots in the grass and put on black gloves before entering. He liked going into the courtyard, and noticing the gate turn against his shoulder, the cock crow on the wall, the lads run to meet him. He liked the granary and the stables; he liked old Rouault, who pressed his hand and called him his saviour; he liked the small wooden shoes of Mademoiselle Emma on the scoured flags of the kitchen--her high heels made her a little taller; and when she walked in front of him, the wooden soles springing up quickly struck with a sharp sound against the leather of her boots. She always accompanied him to the first step of the stairs. When his horse had not yet been brought round she stayed there. They had said "Good-bye"; there was no more talking. The open air wrapped her round, playing with the soft down on the back of her neck, or blew to and fro on her hips the apron-strings, that fluttered like streamers. Once, during a thaw the bark of the trees in the yard was oozing, the snow on the roofs of the outbuildings was melting; she stood on the threshold, and went to fetch her sunshade and opened it. The sunshade of silk of the colour of pigeons' breasts, through which the sun shone, lighted up with shifting hues the white skin of her face. She smiled under the tender warmth, and drops of water could be heard falling one by one on the stretched silk. During the first period of Charles's visits to the Bertaux, Madame Bovary junior never failed to inquire after the invalid, and she had even chosen in the book that she kept on a system of double entry a clean blank page for Monsieur Rouault. But when she heard he had a daughter, she began to make inquiries, and she learnt the Mademoiselle Rouault, brought up at the Ursuline Convent, had received what is called "a good education"; and so knew dancing, geography, drawing, how to embroider and play the piano. That was the last straw. "So it is for this," she said to herself, "that his face beams when he goes to see her, and that he puts on his new waistcoat at the risk of spoiling it with the rain. Ah! that woman! That woman!" And she detested her instinctively. At first she solaced herself by allusions that Charles did not understand, then by casual observations that he let pass for fear of a storm, finally by open apostrophes to which he knew not what to answer. "Why did he go back to the Bertaux now that Monsieur Rouault was cured and that these folks hadn't paid yet? Ah! it was because a young lady was there, some one who know how to talk, to embroider, to be witty. That was what he cared about; he wanted town misses." And she went on-- "The daughter of old Rouault a town miss! Get out! Their grandfather was a shepherd, and they have a cousin who was almost had up at the assizes for a nasty blow in a quarrel. It is not worth while making such a fuss, or showing herself at church on Sundays in a silk gown like a countess. Besides, the poor old chap, if it hadn't been for the colza last year, would have had much ado to pay up his arrears." For very weariness Charles left off going to the Bertaux. Heloise made him swear, his hand on the prayer-book, that he would go there no more after much sobbing and many kisses, in a great outburst of love. He obeyed then, but the strength of his desire protested against the servility of his conduct; and he thought, with a kind of naive hypocrisy, that his interdict to see her gave him a sort of right to love her. And then the widow was thin; she had long teeth; wore in all weathers a little black shawl, the edge of which hung down between her shoulder-blades; her bony figure was sheathed in her clothes as if they were a scabbard; they were too short, and displayed her ankles with the laces of her large boots crossed over grey stockings. Charles's mother came to see them from time to time, but after a few days the daughter-in-law seemed to put her own edge on her, and then, like two knives, they scarified him with their reflections and observations. It was wrong of him to eat so much. Why did he always offer a glass of something to everyone who came? What obstinacy not to wear flannels! In the spring it came about that a notary at Ingouville, the holder of the widow Dubuc's property, one fine day went off, taking with him all the money in his office. Heloise, it is true, still possessed, besides a share in a boat valued at six thousand francs, her house in the Rue St. Francois; and yet, with all this fortune that had been so trumpeted abroad, nothing, excepting perhaps a little furniture and a few clothes, had appeared in the household. The matter had to be gone into. The house at Dieppe was found to be eaten up with mortgages to its foundations; what she had placed with the notary God only knew, and her share in the boat did not exceed one thousand crowns. She had lied, the good lady! In his exasperation, Monsieur Bovary the elder, smashing a chair on the flags, accused his wife of having caused misfortune to the son by harnessing him to such a harridan, whose harness wasn't worth her hide. They came to Tostes. Explanations followed. There were scenes. Heloise in tears, throwing her arms about her husband, implored him to defend her from his parents. Charles tried to speak up for her. They grew angry and left the house. But "the blow had struck home." A week after, as she was hanging up some washing in her yard, she was seized with a spitting of blood, and the next day, while Charles had his back turned to her drawing the window-curtain, she said, "O God!" gave a sigh and fainted. She was dead! What a surprise! When all was over at the cemetery Charles went home. He found no one downstairs; he went up to the first floor to their room; saw her dress still hanging at the foot of the alcove; then, leaning against the writing-table, he stayed until the evening, buried in a sorrowful reverie. She had loved him after all!

Part 1, Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-2

The young "doctor" is awakened in the night by a call from a patient; someone at a farm called Les Bertaux outside the town has a broken leg that needs to be set. It's agreed that Charles will head out to take care of the patient at moonrise. Until then, Charles lies awake, dreading the medical debacle about to unfold. We've already figured out that he's not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, and he doesn't feel too confident about his healing powers. We have to admit, we're nervous for him and his patient, too...seriously, would you want this guy operating on your broken leg? Les Bertaux turns out to be a nice piece of real estate. Monsieur Rouault, the farmer/patient, is obviously pretty well off. A widower, he takes care of the family farm with the help of his young daughter. Said daughter lets Charles in and takes him up to the patient. Monsieur Rouault is a good-natured man, and his fracture also proves to be somewhat good-natured; it's a totally clean break, and Charles starts to feel confident again. He cheers up his patient, and competently takes care of the injury. In the meanwhile, the daughter, Emma, attempts to make herself useful by sewing some padding, but she turns out to be a bad seamstress. Her ineptitude doesn't matter, though - Charles is quite taken by her dainty appearance . As the three of them go downstairs to have a bite to eat, the young doctor takes a better look at the young daughter. Charles get to know Emma a little better. She hates country living, and doesn't seem quite content with her life. We're not sure if Charles notices this. What he does notice is that she is really beautiful. She's got gorgeous brown eyes, full lips, carefully arranged black hair, and rosy cheeks. Someone's got a crush... Charles keeps visiting Les Bertaux, supposedly to check in with his patient, but really to see Emma. His irritable/irritating wife finds out that Emma is something of a fine young lady, having received a fancy education at a convent, and is upset by the idea that Charles is in love with the girl. She makes Charles promise not to visit Les Bertaux anymore. Charles's first wife is not long in this world. Some bad financial news emerges , and the distraught woman actually collapses and dies. Charles is now free, although he does feel a little sad, since she loved him.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/03.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_2_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 3

part 1, chapter 3

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-3", "summary": "Charles's half-hearted mourning doesn't last too long. Monsieur Rouault shows up the day after the funeral to deliver his payment for the medical treatment, and also to give his condolences. He encourages Charles to visit Les Bertaux again, which he does, happily. Monsieur Rouault cheers Charles up, and he quickly begins to forget about his dead wife. In the weeks that follow, things start to look up for Charles. He discovers that he likes living without his wife - he can decide when and what he wants to eat, and doesn't have to explain himself to anyone. Furthermore, her death was actually good for business, since all the townspeople feel bad for him. Charles keeps up his visits to Les Bertaux. One day, he encounters Emma alone. She convinces him to have a drink by saying that she'll have one, too. She pours herself a few drops of liqueur, but in order to taste it, she throws back her head and licks the bottom of the shot glass. Emma and Charles have their first real conversation - that is, Emma talks, and Charles listens. They even go to her room to look at mementos of her days as a schoolgirl at the convent. She complains about the hired help, complains about not living in the city, and generally talks a lot about herself. Charles is charmed. On his way home, Charles mulls over the pros and cons of starting something with Emma. He begins to wonder if another marriage might be a good idea... Monsieur Rouault, we discover, is not averse to this idea. He loves Emma, but he's come to terms with the fact that she is simply useless on the farm. He himself isn't a big fan of farming, and really doesn't enjoy his profession. When he notices Charles's interest in Emma, he decides to give his blessing. After a while, Charles finally builds up the courage ask Monsieur Rouault for Emma's hand in marriage. In typical fashion, Charles can't even get the words out - fortunately, his future father-in-law figures out what's going on and says it's all cool with him. The marriage ball is rolling. Notably, we don't know what Emma thinks about any of this... The winter passes, and Emma busily prepares her trousseau . Emma reveals herself to be something of a romantic ninny; she would like to be married by torchlight in the dead of night. However, her more practical fiance and father decide that this is probably not the best idea. A traditional wedding is planned.", "analysis": ""}

One morning old Rouault brought Charles the money for setting his leg--seventy-five francs in forty-sou pieces, and a turkey. He had heard of his loss, and consoled him as well as he could. "I know what it is," said he, clapping him on the shoulder; "I've been through it. When I lost my dear departed, I went into the fields to be quite alone. I fell at the foot of a tree; I cried; I called on God; I talked nonsense to Him. I wanted to be like the moles that I saw on the branches, their insides swarming with worms, dead, and an end of it. And when I thought that there were others at that very moment with their nice little wives holding them in their embrace, I struck great blows on the earth with my stick. I was pretty well mad with not eating; the very idea of going to a cafe disgusted me--you wouldn't believe it. Well, quite softly, one day following another, a spring on a winter, and an autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece by piece, crumb by crumb; it passed away, it is gone, I should say it has sunk; for something always remains at the bottom as one would say--a weight here, at one's heart. But since it is the lot of all of us, one must not give way altogether, and, because others have died, want to die too. You must pull yourself together, Monsieur Bovary. It will pass away. Come to see us; my daughter thinks of you now and again, d'ye know, and she says you are forgetting her. Spring will soon be here. We'll have some rabbit-shooting in the warrens to amuse you a bit." Charles followed his advice. He went back to the Bertaux. He found all as he had left it, that is to say, as it was five months ago. The pear trees were already in blossom, and Farmer Rouault, on his legs again, came and went, making the farm more full of life. Thinking it his duty to heap the greatest attention upon the doctor because of his sad position, he begged him not to take his hat off, spoke to him in an undertone as if he had been ill, and even pretended to be angry because nothing rather lighter had been prepared for him than for the others, such as a little clotted cream or stewed pears. He told stories. Charles found himself laughing, but the remembrance of his wife suddenly coming back to him depressed him. Coffee was brought in; he thought no more about her. He thought less of her as he grew accustomed to living alone. The new delight of independence soon made his loneliness bearable. He could now change his meal-times, go in or out without explanation, and when he was very tired stretch himself at full length on his bed. So he nursed and coddled himself and accepted the consolations that were offered him. On the other hand, the death of his wife had not served him ill in his business, since for a month people had been saying, "The poor young man! what a loss!" His name had been talked about, his practice had increased; and moreover, he could go to the Bertaux just as he liked. He had an aimless hope, and was vaguely happy; he thought himself better looking as he brushed his whiskers before the looking-glass. One day he got there about three o'clock. Everybody was in the fields. He went into the kitchen, but did not at once catch sight of Emma; the outside shutters were closed. Through the chinks of the wood the sun sent across the flooring long fine rays that were broken at the corners of the furniture and trembled along the ceiling. Some flies on the table were crawling up the glasses that had been used, and buzzing as they drowned themselves in the dregs of the cider. The daylight that came in by the chimney made velvet of the soot at the back of the fireplace, and touched with blue the cold cinders. Between the window and the hearth Emma was sewing; she wore no fichu; he could see small drops of perspiration on her bare shoulders. After the fashion of country folks she asked him to have something to drink. He said no; she insisted, and at last laughingly offered to have a glass of liqueur with him. So she went to fetch a bottle of curacao from the cupboard, reached down two small glasses, filled one to the brim, poured scarcely anything into the other, and, after having clinked glasses, carried hers to her mouth. As it was almost empty she bent back to drink, her head thrown back, her lips pouting, her neck on the strain. She laughed at getting none of it, while with the tip of her tongue passing between her small teeth she licked drop by drop the bottom of her glass. She sat down again and took up her work, a white cotton stocking she was darning. She worked with her head bent down; she did not speak, nor did Charles. The air coming in under the door blew a little dust over the flags; he watched it drift along, and heard nothing but the throbbing in his head and the faint clucking of a hen that had laid an egg in the yard. Emma from time to time cooled her cheeks with the palms of her hands, and cooled these again on the knobs of the huge fire-dogs. She complained of suffering since the beginning of the season from giddiness; she asked if sea-baths would do her any good; she began talking of her convent, Charles of his school; words came to them. They went up into her bedroom. She showed him her old music-books, the little prizes she had won, and the oak-leaf crowns, left at the bottom of a cupboard. She spoke to him, too, of her mother, of the country, and even showed him the bed in the garden where, on the first Friday of every month, she gathered flowers to put on her mother's tomb. But the gardener they had never knew anything about it; servants are so stupid! She would have dearly liked, if only for the winter, to live in town, although the length of the fine days made the country perhaps even more wearisome in the summer. And, according to what she was saying, her voice was clear, sharp, or, on a sudden all languor, drawn out in modulations that ended almost in murmurs as she spoke to herself, now joyous, opening big naive eyes, then with her eyelids half closed, her look full of boredom, her thoughts wandering. Going home at night, Charles went over her words one by one, trying to recall them, to fill out their sense, that he might piece out the life she had lived before he knew her. But he never saw her in his thoughts other than he had seen her the first time, or as he had just left her. Then he asked himself what would become of her--if she would be married, and to whom! Alas! Old Rouault was rich, and she!--so beautiful! But Emma's face always rose before his eyes, and a monotone, like the humming of a top, sounded in his ears, "If you should marry after all! If you should marry!" At night he could not sleep; his throat was parched; he was athirst. He got up to drink from the water-bottle and opened the window. The night was covered with stars, a warm wind blowing in the distance; the dogs were barking. He turned his head towards the Bertaux. Thinking that, after all, he should lose nothing, Charles promised himself to ask her in marriage as soon as occasion offered, but each time such occasion did offer the fear of not finding the right words sealed his lips. Old Rouault would not have been sorry to be rid of his daughter, who was of no use to him in the house. In his heart he excused her, thinking her too clever for farming, a calling under the ban of Heaven, since one never saw a millionaire in it. Far from having made a fortune by it, the good man was losing every year; for if he was good in bargaining, in which he enjoyed the dodges of the trade, on the other hand, agriculture properly so called, and the internal management of the farm, suited him less than most people. He did not willingly take his hands out of his pockets, and did not spare expense in all that concerned himself, liking to eat well, to have good fires, and to sleep well. He liked old cider, underdone legs of mutton, glorias* well beaten up. He took his meals in the kitchen alone, opposite the fire, on a little table brought to him all ready laid as on the stage. *A mixture of coffee and spirits. When, therefore, he perceived that Charles's cheeks grew red if near his daughter, which meant that he would propose for her one of these days, he chewed the cud of the matter beforehand. He certainly thought him a little meagre, and not quite the son-in-law he would have liked, but he was said to be well brought-up, economical, very learned, and no doubt would not make too many difficulties about the dowry. Now, as old Rouault would soon be forced to sell twenty-two acres of "his property," as he owed a good deal to the mason, to the harness-maker, and as the shaft of the cider-press wanted renewing, "If he asks for her," he said to himself, "I'll give her to him." At Michaelmas Charles went to spend three days at the Bertaux. The last had passed like the others in procrastinating from hour to hour. Old Rouault was seeing him off; they were walking along the road full of ruts; they were about to part. This was the time. Charles gave himself as far as to the corner of the hedge, and at last, when past it-- "Monsieur Rouault," he murmured, "I should like to say something to you." They stopped. Charles was silent. "Well, tell me your story. Don't I know all about it?" said old Rouault, laughing softly. "Monsieur Rouault--Monsieur Rouault," stammered Charles. "I ask nothing better", the farmer went on. "Although, no doubt, the little one is of my mind, still we must ask her opinion. So you get off--I'll go back home. If it is 'yes', you needn't return because of all the people about, and besides it would upset her too much. But so that you mayn't be eating your heart, I'll open wide the outer shutter of the window against the wall; you can see it from the back by leaning over the hedge." And he went off. Charles fastened his horse to a tree; he ran into the road and waited. Half an hour passed, then he counted nineteen minutes by his watch. Suddenly a noise was heard against the wall; the shutter had been thrown back; the hook was still swinging. The next day by nine o'clock he was at the farm. Emma blushed as he entered, and she gave a little forced laugh to keep herself in countenance. Old Rouault embraced his future son-in-law. The discussion of money matters was put off; moreover, there was plenty of time before them, as the marriage could not decently take place till Charles was out of mourning, that is to say, about the spring of the next year. The winter passed waiting for this. Mademoiselle Rouault was busy with her trousseau. Part of it was ordered at Rouen, and she made herself chemises and nightcaps after fashion-plates that she borrowed. When Charles visited the farmer, the preparations for the wedding were talked over; they wondered in what room they should have dinner; they dreamed of the number of dishes that would be wanted, and what should be entrees. Emma would, on the contrary, have preferred to have a midnight wedding with torches, but old Rouault could not understand such an idea. So there was a wedding at which forty-three persons were present, at which they remained sixteen hours at table, began again the next day, and to some extent on the days following.

Part 1, Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-3

Charles's half-hearted mourning doesn't last too long. Monsieur Rouault shows up the day after the funeral to deliver his payment for the medical treatment, and also to give his condolences. He encourages Charles to visit Les Bertaux again, which he does, happily. Monsieur Rouault cheers Charles up, and he quickly begins to forget about his dead wife. In the weeks that follow, things start to look up for Charles. He discovers that he likes living without his wife - he can decide when and what he wants to eat, and doesn't have to explain himself to anyone. Furthermore, her death was actually good for business, since all the townspeople feel bad for him. Charles keeps up his visits to Les Bertaux. One day, he encounters Emma alone. She convinces him to have a drink by saying that she'll have one, too. She pours herself a few drops of liqueur, but in order to taste it, she throws back her head and licks the bottom of the shot glass. Emma and Charles have their first real conversation - that is, Emma talks, and Charles listens. They even go to her room to look at mementos of her days as a schoolgirl at the convent. She complains about the hired help, complains about not living in the city, and generally talks a lot about herself. Charles is charmed. On his way home, Charles mulls over the pros and cons of starting something with Emma. He begins to wonder if another marriage might be a good idea... Monsieur Rouault, we discover, is not averse to this idea. He loves Emma, but he's come to terms with the fact that she is simply useless on the farm. He himself isn't a big fan of farming, and really doesn't enjoy his profession. When he notices Charles's interest in Emma, he decides to give his blessing. After a while, Charles finally builds up the courage ask Monsieur Rouault for Emma's hand in marriage. In typical fashion, Charles can't even get the words out - fortunately, his future father-in-law figures out what's going on and says it's all cool with him. The marriage ball is rolling. Notably, we don't know what Emma thinks about any of this... The winter passes, and Emma busily prepares her trousseau . Emma reveals herself to be something of a romantic ninny; she would like to be married by torchlight in the dead of night. However, her more practical fiance and father decide that this is probably not the best idea. A traditional wedding is planned.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/04.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_3_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 4

part 1, chapter 4

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-4", "summary": "It's the big day, and various friends and family members arrive in a bustle of horses, carriages, and passengers. Flaubert treats us to a rather ridiculous description of country folks; we are reminded again that this is not the sophisticated big city event that Emma longs for; rather, it is a procession of people awkwardly dressed up in their unfashionable best for a small-town wedding. We don't get to see the ceremony, but the wedding feast that comes afterwards is mouth-watering. The guests are treated to be huge table overflowing with roast beef, mutton, chickens, a suckling pig, many alcohols, and a dizzyingly fancy wedding cake. The guests gorge themselves until nightfall, when they pile back into their vehicles and raucously drive back home. As everyone settles in for the night, a group of whiny wedding guests complain about how unsatisfactory the event was, cursing Monsieur Rouault behind his back . The Bovary family members are characteristically unimpressive during all of these goings-on. Charles's mother holds her tongue for once , while his father stays up partying and drinking all night with the guests. Charles himself is, as usual, fairly dull on the day of the wedding - but after the wedding night, he's a changed man. He's clearly very, very in love with Emma. The bride, on the other hand, is pretty casual about the whole thing. After the couple leaves to start their married life, Monsieur Rouault reflects upon his own life and his dear, departed wife. He remembers happier times and, overcome by sadness, heads home alone. Charles and Emma return to his house in Tostes; the neighbors show up to check out the new arrival.", "analysis": ""}

The guests arrived early in carriages, in one-horse chaises, two-wheeled cars, old open gigs, waggonettes with leather hoods, and the young people from the nearer villages in carts, in which they stood up in rows, holding on to the sides so as not to fall, going at a trot and well shaken up. Some came from a distance of thirty miles, from Goderville, from Normanville, and from Cany. All the relatives of both families had been invited, quarrels between friends arranged, acquaintances long since lost sight of written to. From time to time one heard the crack of a whip behind the hedge; then the gates opened, a chaise entered. Galloping up to the foot of the steps, it stopped short and emptied its load. They got down from all sides, rubbing knees and stretching arms. The ladies, wearing bonnets, had on dresses in the town fashion, gold watch chains, pelerines with the ends tucked into belts, or little coloured fichus fastened down behind with a pin, and that left the back of the neck bare. The lads, dressed like their papas, seemed uncomfortable in their new clothes (many that day hand-sewed their first pair of boots), and by their sides, speaking never a work, wearing the white dress of their first communion lengthened for the occasion were some big girls of fourteen or sixteen, cousins or elder sisters no doubt, rubicund, bewildered, their hair greasy with rose pomade, and very much afraid of dirtying their gloves. As there were not enough stable-boys to unharness all the carriages, the gentlemen turned up their sleeves and set about it themselves. According to their different social positions they wore tail-coats, overcoats, shooting jackets, cutaway-coats; fine tail-coats, redolent of family respectability, that only came out of the wardrobe on state occasions; overcoats with long tails flapping in the wind and round capes and pockets like sacks; shooting jackets of coarse cloth, generally worn with a cap with a brass-bound peak; very short cutaway-coats with two small buttons in the back, close together like a pair of eyes, and the tails of which seemed cut out of one piece by a carpenter's hatchet. Some, too (but these, you may be sure, would sit at the bottom of the table), wore their best blouses--that is to say, with collars turned down to the shoulders, the back gathered into small plaits and the waist fastened very low down with a worked belt. And the shirts stood out from the chests like cuirasses! Everyone had just had his hair cut; ears stood out from the heads; they had been close-shaved; a few, even, who had had to get up before daybreak, and not been able to see to shave, had diagonal gashes under their noses or cuts the size of a three-franc piece along the jaws, which the fresh air en route had enflamed, so that the great white beaming faces were mottled here and there with red dabs. The mairie was a mile and a half from the farm, and they went thither on foot, returning in the same way after the ceremony in the church. The procession, first united like one long coloured scarf that undulated across the fields, along the narrow path winding amid the green corn, soon lengthened out, and broke up into different groups that loitered to talk. The fiddler walked in front with his violin, gay with ribbons at its pegs. Then came the married pair, the relations, the friends, all following pell-mell; the children stayed behind amusing themselves plucking the bell-flowers from oat-ears, or playing amongst themselves unseen. Emma's dress, too long, trailed a little on the ground; from time to time she stopped to pull it up, and then delicately, with her gloved hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the thistledowns, while Charles, empty handed, waited till she had finished. Old Rouault, with a new silk hat and the cuffs of his black coat covering his hands up to the nails, gave his arm to Madame Bovary senior. As to Monsieur Bovary senior, who, heartily despising all these folk, had come simply in a frock-coat of military cut with one row of buttons--he was passing compliments of the bar to a fair young peasant. She bowed, blushed, and did not know what to say. The other wedding guests talked of their business or played tricks behind each other's backs, egging one another on in advance to be jolly. Those who listened could always catch the squeaking of the fiddler, who went on playing across the fields. When he saw that the rest were far behind he stopped to take breath, slowly rosined his bow, so that the strings should sound more shrilly, then set off again, by turns lowering and raising his neck, the better to mark time for himself. The noise of the instrument drove away the little birds from afar. The table was laid under the cart-shed. On it were four sirloins, six chicken fricassees, stewed veal, three legs of mutton, and in the middle a fine roast suckling pig, flanked by four chitterlings with sorrel. At the corners were decanters of brandy. Sweet bottled-cider frothed round the corks, and all the glasses had been filled to the brim with wine beforehand. Large dishes of yellow cream, that trembled with the least shake of the table, had designed on their smooth surface the initials of the newly wedded pair in nonpareil arabesques. A confectioner of Yvetot had been intrusted with the tarts and sweets. As he had only just set up on the place, he had taken a lot of trouble, and at dessert he himself brought in a set dish that evoked loud cries of wonderment. To begin with, at its base there was a square of blue cardboard, representing a temple with porticoes, colonnades, and stucco statuettes all round, and in the niches constellations of gilt paper stars; then on the second stage was a dungeon of Savoy cake, surrounded by many fortifications in candied angelica, almonds, raisins, and quarters of oranges; and finally, on the upper platform a green field with rocks set in lakes of jam, nutshell boats, and a small Cupid balancing himself in a chocolate swing whose two uprights ended in real roses for balls at the top. Until night they ate. When any of them were too tired of sitting, they went out for a stroll in the yard, or for a game with corks in the granary, and then returned to table. Some towards the finish went to sleep and snored. But with the coffee everyone woke up. Then they began songs, showed off tricks, raised heavy weights, performed feats with their fingers, then tried lifting carts on their shoulders, made broad jokes, kissed the women. At night when they left, the horses, stuffed up to the nostrils with oats, could hardly be got into the shafts; they kicked, reared, the harness broke, their masters laughed or swore; and all night in the light of the moon along country roads there were runaway carts at full gallop plunging into the ditches, jumping over yard after yard of stones, clambering up the hills, with women leaning out from the tilt to catch hold of the reins. Those who stayed at the Bertaux spent the night drinking in the kitchen. The children had fallen asleep under the seats. The bride had begged her father to be spared the usual marriage pleasantries. However, a fishmonger, one of their cousins (who had even brought a pair of soles for his wedding present), began to squirt water from his mouth through the keyhole, when old Rouault came up just in time to stop him, and explain to him that the distinguished position of his son-in-law would not allow of such liberties. The cousin all the same did not give in to these reasons readily. In his heart he accused old Rouault of being proud, and he joined four or five other guests in a corner, who having, through mere chance, been several times running served with the worst helps of meat, also were of opinion they had been badly used, and were whispering about their host, and with covered hints hoping he would ruin himself. Madame Bovary, senior, had not opened her mouth all day. She had been consulted neither as to the dress of her daughter-in-law nor as to the arrangement of the feast; she went to bed early. Her husband, instead of following her, sent to Saint-Victor for some cigars, and smoked till daybreak, drinking kirsch-punch, a mixture unknown to the company. This added greatly to the consideration in which he was held. Charles, who was not of a facetious turn, did not shine at the wedding. He answered feebly to the puns, doubles entendres*, compliments, and chaff that it was felt a duty to let off at him as soon as the soup appeared. *Double meanings. The next day, on the other hand, he seemed another man. It was he who might rather have been taken for the virgin of the evening before, whilst the bride gave no sign that revealed anything. The shrewdest did not know what to make of it, and they looked at her when she passed near them with an unbounded concentration of mind. But Charles concealed nothing. He called her "my wife", tutoyed* her, asked for her of everyone, looked for her everywhere, and often he dragged her into the yards, where he could be seen from far between the trees, putting his arm around her waist, and walking half-bending over her, ruffling the chemisette of her bodice with his head. *Used the familiar form of address. Two days after the wedding the married pair left. Charles, on account of his patients, could not be away longer. Old Rouault had them driven back in his cart, and himself accompanied them as far as Vassonville. Here he embraced his daughter for the last time, got down, and went his way. When he had gone about a hundred paces he stopped, and as he saw the cart disappearing, its wheels turning in the dust, he gave a deep sigh. Then he remembered his wedding, the old times, the first pregnancy of his wife; he, too, had been very happy the day when he had taken her from her father to his home, and had carried her off on a pillion, trotting through the snow, for it was near Christmas-time, and the country was all white. She held him by one arm, her basket hanging from the other; the wind blew the long lace of her Cauchois headdress so that it sometimes flapped across his mouth, and when he turned his head he saw near him, on his shoulder, her little rosy face, smiling silently under the gold bands of her cap. To warm her hands she put them from time to time in his breast. How long ago it all was! Their son would have been thirty by now. Then he looked back and saw nothing on the road. He felt dreary as an empty house; and tender memories mingling with the sad thoughts in his brain, addled by the fumes of the feast, he felt inclined for a moment to take a turn towards the church. As he was afraid, however, that this sight would make him yet more sad, he went right away home. Monsieur and Madame Charles arrived at Tostes about six o'clock. The neighbors came to the windows to see their doctor's new wife. The old servant presented herself, curtsied to her, apologised for not having dinner ready, and suggested that madame, in the meantime, should look over her house.

Part 1, Chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-4

It's the big day, and various friends and family members arrive in a bustle of horses, carriages, and passengers. Flaubert treats us to a rather ridiculous description of country folks; we are reminded again that this is not the sophisticated big city event that Emma longs for; rather, it is a procession of people awkwardly dressed up in their unfashionable best for a small-town wedding. We don't get to see the ceremony, but the wedding feast that comes afterwards is mouth-watering. The guests are treated to be huge table overflowing with roast beef, mutton, chickens, a suckling pig, many alcohols, and a dizzyingly fancy wedding cake. The guests gorge themselves until nightfall, when they pile back into their vehicles and raucously drive back home. As everyone settles in for the night, a group of whiny wedding guests complain about how unsatisfactory the event was, cursing Monsieur Rouault behind his back . The Bovary family members are characteristically unimpressive during all of these goings-on. Charles's mother holds her tongue for once , while his father stays up partying and drinking all night with the guests. Charles himself is, as usual, fairly dull on the day of the wedding - but after the wedding night, he's a changed man. He's clearly very, very in love with Emma. The bride, on the other hand, is pretty casual about the whole thing. After the couple leaves to start their married life, Monsieur Rouault reflects upon his own life and his dear, departed wife. He remembers happier times and, overcome by sadness, heads home alone. Charles and Emma return to his house in Tostes; the neighbors show up to check out the new arrival.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/05.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_4_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 5

part 1, chapter 5

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-5", "summary": "Next, we get a brief tour of Charles and Emma's house. It sounds pretty decent - nothing impressive, but a nice enough home for a country doctor and his wife. There's a little garden, an office for Charles , and generally everything a typical village housewife might need. Emma, however, is not your typical village housewife. First of all, she notices the former Madame Bovary's bridal bouquet preserved in the bedroom - this totally doesn't fly. This relic of wife #1 is relegated to exile in the attic. After this change, Emma goes on a total renovation rampage, making changes to every aspect of the little house's decor. Charles is in heaven. He gives in to all of Emma's whims, and buys everything she wants. He's totally head over heels in love with her, and is infatuated by her beauty. Everything is perfect, as far as he's concerned, and he can't remember ever being happier. The whole world is wrapped up in Emma. Emma, however, isn't sure that she's so happy. She had thought herself in love before the marriage, but now conjugal life doesn't seem so blissful. She wonders if the words she's read about in books - passion, rapture, bliss - can apply to her life.", "analysis": ""}

The brick front was just in a line with the street, or rather the road. Behind the door hung a cloak with a small collar, a bridle, and a black leather cap, and on the floor, in a corner, were a pair of leggings, still covered with dry mud. On the right was the one apartment, that was both dining and sitting room. A canary yellow paper, relieved at the top by a garland of pale flowers, was puckered everywhere over the badly stretched canvas; white calico curtains with a red border hung crossways at the length of the window; and on the narrow mantelpiece a clock with a head of Hippocrates shone resplendent between two plate candlesticks under oval shades. On the other side of the passage was Charles's consulting room, a little room about six paces wide, with a table, three chairs, and an office chair. Volumes of the "Dictionary of Medical Science," uncut, but the binding rather the worse for the successive sales through which they had gone, occupied almost along the six shelves of a deal bookcase. The smell of melted butter penetrated through the walls when he saw patients, just as in the kitchen one could hear the people coughing in the consulting room and recounting their histories. Then, opening on the yard, where the stable was, came a large dilapidated room with a stove, now used as a wood-house, cellar, and pantry, full of old rubbish, of empty casks, agricultural implements past service, and a mass of dusty things whose use it was impossible to guess. The garden, longer than wide, ran between two mud walls with espaliered apricots, to a hawthorn hedge that separated it from the field. In the middle was a slate sundial on a brick pedestal; four flower beds with eglantines surrounded symmetrically the more useful kitchen garden bed. Right at the bottom, under the spruce bushes, was a cure in plaster reading his breviary. Emma went upstairs. The first room was not furnished, but in the second, which was their bedroom, was a mahogany bedstead in an alcove with red drapery. A shell box adorned the chest of drawers, and on the secretary near the window a bouquet of orange blossoms tied with white satin ribbons stood in a bottle. It was a bride's bouquet; it was the other one's. She looked at it. Charles noticed it; he took it and carried it up to the attic, while Emma seated in an arm-chair (they were putting her things down around her) thought of her bridal flowers packed up in a bandbox, and wondered, dreaming, what would be done with them if she were to die. During the first days she occupied herself in thinking about changes in the house. She took the shades off the candlesticks, had new wallpaper put up, the staircase repainted, and seats made in the garden round the sundial; she even inquired how she could get a basin with a jet fountain and fishes. Finally her husband, knowing that she liked to drive out, picked up a second-hand dogcart, which, with new lamps and splashboard in striped leather, looked almost like a tilbury. He was happy then, and without a care in the world. A meal together, a walk in the evening on the highroad, a gesture of her hands over her hair, the sight of her straw hat hanging from the window-fastener, and many another thing in which Charles had never dreamed of pleasure, now made up the endless round of his happiness. In bed, in the morning, by her side, on the pillow, he watched the sunlight sinking into the down on her fair cheek, half hidden by the lappets of her night-cap. Seen thus closely, her eyes looked to him enlarged, especially when, on waking up, she opened and shut them rapidly many times. Black in the shade, dark blue in broad daylight, they had, as it were, depths of different colours, that, darker in the centre, grew paler towards the surface of the eye. His own eyes lost themselves in these depths; he saw himself in miniature down to the shoulders, with his handkerchief round his head and the top of his shirt open. He rose. She came to the window to see him off, and stayed leaning on the sill between two pots of geranium, clad in her dressing gown hanging loosely about her. Charles, in the street buckled his spurs, his foot on the mounting stone, while she talked to him from above, picking with her mouth some scrap of flower or leaf that she blew out at him. Then this, eddying, floating, described semicircles in the air like a bird, and was caught before it reached the ground in the ill-groomed mane of the old white mare standing motionless at the door. Charles from horseback threw her a kiss; she answered with a nod; she shut the window, and he set off. And then along the highroad, spreading out its long ribbon of dust, along the deep lanes that the trees bent over as in arbours, along paths where the corn reached to the knees, with the sun on his back and the morning air in his nostrils, his heart full of the joys of the past night, his mind at rest, his flesh at ease, he went on, re-chewing his happiness, like those who after dinner taste again the truffles which they are digesting. Until now what good had he had of his life? His time at school, when he remained shut up within the high walls, alone, in the midst of companions richer than he or cleverer at their work, who laughed at his accent, who jeered at his clothes, and whose mothers came to the school with cakes in their muffs? Later on, when he studied medicine, and never had his purse full enough to treat some little work-girl who would have become his mistress? Afterwards, he had lived fourteen months with the widow, whose feet in bed were cold as icicles. But now he had for life this beautiful woman whom he adored. For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat, and he reproached himself with not loving her. He wanted to see her again; he turned back quickly, ran up the stairs with a beating heart. Emma, in her room, was dressing; he came up on tiptoe, kissed her back; she gave a cry. He could not keep from constantly touching her comb, her ring, her fichu; sometimes he gave her great sounding kisses with all his mouth on her cheeks, or else little kisses in a row all along her bare arm from the tip of her fingers up to her shoulder, and she put him away half-smiling, half-vexed, as you do a child who hangs about you. Before marriage she thought herself in love; but the happiness that should have followed this love not having come, she must, she thought, have been mistaken. And Emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in life by the words felicity, passion, rapture, that had seemed to her so beautiful in books.

Part 1, Chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-5

Next, we get a brief tour of Charles and Emma's house. It sounds pretty decent - nothing impressive, but a nice enough home for a country doctor and his wife. There's a little garden, an office for Charles , and generally everything a typical village housewife might need. Emma, however, is not your typical village housewife. First of all, she notices the former Madame Bovary's bridal bouquet preserved in the bedroom - this totally doesn't fly. This relic of wife #1 is relegated to exile in the attic. After this change, Emma goes on a total renovation rampage, making changes to every aspect of the little house's decor. Charles is in heaven. He gives in to all of Emma's whims, and buys everything she wants. He's totally head over heels in love with her, and is infatuated by her beauty. Everything is perfect, as far as he's concerned, and he can't remember ever being happier. The whole world is wrapped up in Emma. Emma, however, isn't sure that she's so happy. She had thought herself in love before the marriage, but now conjugal life doesn't seem so blissful. She wonders if the words she's read about in books - passion, rapture, bliss - can apply to her life.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/06.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_5_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 6

part 1, chapter 6

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-6", "summary": "Now that we've had a tour of the Bovary household, it's time for a tour of Emma's inner landscape. Fade out to a flashback... Emma is a dreamy, romantic child, and is perhaps too heavily influenced by Paul and Virginia, a popular and super-utopian novel about two siblings stranded on a desert island. At age thirteen, Emma is sent to a convent school, where she quickly falls in love with the mystical, aesthetic atmosphere of the religious life; she devotes herself to the ceremonies and artistic poses of convent life. We can see where this is heading. The things Emma likes best about religion aren't what you'd hope or expect - you know, stuff like God or faith. Instead, she is really into the romantic aspects of it; metaphors for the nun's relationship with God like \"betrothed\" and \"heavenly lover\" really get her going. At the convent, Emma meets an old lady with an aristocratic background . She introduces Emma to novels - and thus to a whole new world of swoony romantic dreams. As she does her work, the girls listen to her stories and read the romance novels she carries around in her apron pocket. Soon enough, Emma's attentions turn from religious ecstasy to dreams of historical romance. She wishes she could live the life she read about in her books. Emma's mother dies while Emma is away at school; the girl is dramatically sad for a little while, but is kind of secretly pleased at herself for being so sensitive. The nuns worry that they've lost Emma - they'd assumed that she would join the sisterhood. She rebells against their attempts to draw her back in, and ends up leaving the convent. As Flaubert states pointedly, \"no one was sorry to see her go\" . Back home, Emma enjoys playing lady of the manor and ordering the servants around for a while. However, she gets sick of it soon enough and - surprise, surprise - misses the convent. By the time Charles appears on the scene, she feels cynical and experienced . She actually believes that she's in love with Charles - but we get the feeling that she would have felt the same way about any guy who happened to wander into her life at that time. Unsurprisingly, now that they're married, she's unsettled and discontented.", "analysis": ""}

She had read "Paul and Virginia," and she had dreamed of the little bamboo-house, the nigger Domingo, the dog Fidele, but above all of the sweet friendship of some dear little brother, who seeks red fruit for you on trees taller than steeples, or who runs barefoot over the sand, bringing you a bird's nest. When she was thirteen, her father himself took her to town to place her in the convent. They stopped at an inn in the St. Gervais quarter, where, at their supper, they used painted plates that set forth the story of Mademoiselle de la Valliere. The explanatory legends, chipped here and there by the scratching of knives, all glorified religion, the tendernesses of the heart, and the pomps of court. Far from being bored at first at the convent, she took pleasure in the society of the good sisters, who, to amuse her, took her to the chapel, which one entered from the refectory by a long corridor. She played very little during recreation hours, knew her catechism well, and it was she who always answered Monsieur le Vicaire's difficult questions. Living thus, without ever leaving the warm atmosphere of the classrooms, and amid these pale-faced women wearing rosaries with brass crosses, she was softly lulled by the mystic languor exhaled in the perfumes of the altar, the freshness of the holy water, and the lights of the tapers. Instead of attending to mass, she looked at the pious vignettes with their azure borders in her book, and she loved the sick lamb, the sacred heart pierced with sharp arrows, or the poor Jesus sinking beneath the cross he carries. She tried, by way of mortification, to eat nothing a whole day. She puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfil. When she went to confession, she invented little sins in order that she might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow, her hands joined, her face against the grating beneath the whispering of the priest. The comparisons of betrothed, husband, celestial lover, and eternal marriage, that recur in sermons, stirred within her soul depths of unexpected sweetness. In the evening, before prayers, there was some religious reading in the study. On week-nights it was some abstract of sacred history or the Lectures of the Abbe Frayssinous, and on Sundays passages from the "Genie du Christianisme," as a recreation. How she listened at first to the sonorous lamentations of its romantic melancholies reechoing through the world and eternity! If her childhood had been spent in the shop-parlour of some business quarter, she might perhaps have opened her heart to those lyrical invasions of Nature, which usually come to us only through translation in books. But she knew the country too well; she knew the lowing of cattle, the milking, the ploughs. Accustomed to calm aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary, to those of excitement. She loved the sea only for the sake of its storms, and the green fields only when broken up by ruins. She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes. At the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an ancient family of noblemen ruined by the Revolution, she dined in the refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit of chat with them before going back to her work. The girls often slipped out from the study to go and see her. She knew by heart the love songs of the last century, and sang them in a low voice as she stitched away. She told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town, and on the sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always carried in the pockets of her apron, and of which the good lady herself swallowed long chapters in the intervals of her work. They were all love, lovers, sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, sombre forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, "gentlemen" brave as lions, gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and weeping like fountains. For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries. Through Walter Scott, later on, she fell in love with historical events, dreamed of old chests, guard-rooms and minstrels. She would have liked to live in some old manor-house, like those long-waisted chatelaines who, in the shade of pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the stone, chin in hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on his black horse from the distant fields. At this time she had a cult for Mary Stuart and enthusiastic veneration for illustrious or unhappy women. Joan of Arc, Heloise, Agnes Sorel, the beautiful Ferroniere, and Clemence Isaure stood out to her like comets in the dark immensity of heaven, where also were seen, lost in shadow, and all unconnected, St. Louis with his oak, the dying Bayard, some cruelties of Louis XI, a little of St. Bartholomew's Day, the plume of the Bearnais, and always the remembrance of the plates painted in honour of Louis XIV. In the music class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes, gondoliers;-mild compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria of sentimental realities. Some of her companions brought "keepsakes" given them as new year's gifts to the convent. These had to be hidden; it was quite an undertaking; they were read in the dormitory. Delicately handling the beautiful satin bindings, Emma looked with dazzled eyes at the names of the unknown authors, who had signed their verses for the most part as counts or viscounts. She trembled as she blew back the tissue paper over the engraving and saw it folded in two and fall gently against the page. Here behind the balustrade of a balcony was a young man in a short cloak, holding in his arms a young girl in a white dress wearing an alms-bag at her belt; or there were nameless portraits of English ladies with fair curls, who looked at you from under their round straw hats with their large clear eyes. Some there were lounging in their carriages, gliding through parks, a greyhound bounding along in front of the equipage driven at a trot by two midget postilions in white breeches. Others, dreaming on sofas with an open letter, gazed at the moon through a slightly open window half draped by a black curtain. The naive ones, a tear on their cheeks, were kissing doves through the bars of a Gothic cage, or, smiling, their heads on one side, were plucking the leaves of a marguerite with their taper fingers, that curved at the tips like peaked shoes. And you, too, were there, Sultans with long pipes reclining beneath arbours in the arms of Bayaderes; Djiaours, Turkish sabres, Greek caps; and you especially, pale landscapes of dithyrambic lands, that often show us at once palm trees and firs, tigers on the right, a lion to the left, Tartar minarets on the horizon; the whole framed by a very neat virgin forest, and with a great perpendicular sunbeam trembling in the water, where, standing out in relief like white excoriations on a steel-grey ground, swans are swimming about. And the shade of the argand lamp fastened to the wall above Emma's head lighted up all these pictures of the world, that passed before her one by one in the silence of the dormitory, and to the distant noise of some belated carriage rolling over the Boulevards. When her mother died she cried much the first few days. She had a funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased, and, in a letter sent to the Bertaux full of sad reflections on life, she asked to be buried later on in the same grave. The goodman thought she must be ill, and came to see her. Emma was secretly pleased that she had reached at a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre hearts. She let herself glide along with Lamartine meanderings, listened to harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice of the Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She wearied of it, would not confess it, continued from habit, and at last was surprised to feel herself soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than wrinkles on her brow. The good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation, perceived with great astonishment that Mademoiselle Rouault seemed to be slipping from them. They had indeed been so lavish to her of prayers, retreats, novenas, and sermons, they had so often preached the respect due to saints and martyrs, and given so much good advice as to the modesty of the body and the salvation of her soul, that she did as tightly reined horses; she pulled up short and the bit slipped from her teeth. This nature, positive in the midst of its enthusiasms, that had loved the church for the sake of the flowers, and music for the words of the songs, and literature for its passional stimulus, rebelled against the mysteries of faith as it grew irritated by discipline, a thing antipathetic to her constitution. When her father took her from school, no one was sorry to see her go. The Lady Superior even thought that she had latterly been somewhat irreverent to the community. Emma, at home once more, first took pleasure in looking after the servants, then grew disgusted with the country and missed her convent. When Charles came to the Bertaux for the first time, she thought herself quite disillusioned, with nothing more to learn, and nothing more to feel. But the uneasiness of her new position, or perhaps the disturbance caused by the presence of this man, had sufficed to make her believe that she at last felt that wondrous passion which, till then, like a great bird with rose-coloured wings, hung in the splendour of the skies of poesy; and now she could not think that the calm in which she lived was the happiness she had dreamed.

Part 1, Chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-6

Now that we've had a tour of the Bovary household, it's time for a tour of Emma's inner landscape. Fade out to a flashback... Emma is a dreamy, romantic child, and is perhaps too heavily influenced by Paul and Virginia, a popular and super-utopian novel about two siblings stranded on a desert island. At age thirteen, Emma is sent to a convent school, where she quickly falls in love with the mystical, aesthetic atmosphere of the religious life; she devotes herself to the ceremonies and artistic poses of convent life. We can see where this is heading. The things Emma likes best about religion aren't what you'd hope or expect - you know, stuff like God or faith. Instead, she is really into the romantic aspects of it; metaphors for the nun's relationship with God like "betrothed" and "heavenly lover" really get her going. At the convent, Emma meets an old lady with an aristocratic background . She introduces Emma to novels - and thus to a whole new world of swoony romantic dreams. As she does her work, the girls listen to her stories and read the romance novels she carries around in her apron pocket. Soon enough, Emma's attentions turn from religious ecstasy to dreams of historical romance. She wishes she could live the life she read about in her books. Emma's mother dies while Emma is away at school; the girl is dramatically sad for a little while, but is kind of secretly pleased at herself for being so sensitive. The nuns worry that they've lost Emma - they'd assumed that she would join the sisterhood. She rebells against their attempts to draw her back in, and ends up leaving the convent. As Flaubert states pointedly, "no one was sorry to see her go" . Back home, Emma enjoys playing lady of the manor and ordering the servants around for a while. However, she gets sick of it soon enough and - surprise, surprise - misses the convent. By the time Charles appears on the scene, she feels cynical and experienced . She actually believes that she's in love with Charles - but we get the feeling that she would have felt the same way about any guy who happened to wander into her life at that time. Unsurprisingly, now that they're married, she's unsettled and discontented.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/07.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_6_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 7

part 1, chapter 7

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-7", "summary": "Emma wonders if these \"honeymoon days\" are really the best days of her life. She starts to feel cheated, as though Charles has deprived her of the cliched, romantic fantasies she cooks up. She's sure that she would be happier if only she was somewhere else...preferably with someone else... Emma wants to reveal these feelings of discontent to somebody, and wishes Charles could be a little more sensitive. Day by day he just grows less and less interesting to her, and she is consistently disappointed in the man she married. She believes that men should know everything and be able to do anything - Charles, however, is just an average guy. Emma attempts to express her turbulent feelings through drawing and music; Charles loves to watch her, and the people of the village are impressed by her accomplishments. Speaking of which, Emma turns out to actually be a pretty capable wife when she tries. She knows how to take care of the house and of Charles's business, and this makes the village respect the doctor and his young wife even more. Charles is also extremely impressed himself for having such a terrific wife. In his view, everything is just peachy keen. As far as we can tell, he's a really simple creature, with very few desires and no ambition at all. He's stingy and kind of oafish, but is generally still the same old predictable Charles - the kind of nice guy that finishes last. Charles's mom approves of her son's ways wholeheartedly, but she's skeptical of her daughter-in-law. She's worried that Emma wastes too much money, and every time she visits , the two women harass each other relentlessly. This springs largely from Mom's anxieties about Charles's love for Emma - she's no longer the favorite, now that Wife #2 is in the picture. Charles is caught in the crossfire between the two loves of his life. He can't believe that his mother could ever be wrong, but he also can't believe that Emma ever makes any mistakes. It's a confusing time for him; mostly, he just bumbles about, which doesn't help. Emma decides to at least attempt to \"experience love\" . She sings songs and recites poetry to Charles, but it doesn't accomplish anything. That's it. Emma is certain she doesn't love Charles, and furthermore, that she's incapable of loving him. She's way, way bored with her life on the whole. One of the great constants in life is the fact that Puppies Are Awesome. Emma receives a little greyhound pup as a gift from one of Charles's patients, and for a while, the awesomeness of the puppy actually makes her feel a wee bit better. She names the dog Djali and tells her about the troubles of married life. You may not have realized it, but dog is woman's best friend, too. Emma is certain she could have married someone different - and better - given the chance. She wonders about her former classmates from the convent school, and is sure that they have better husbands than she does. Her former life seems painfully far away. Just when it seems like nothing will ever happen for Emma, an invitation arrives: she and Charles are invited to a party at the home of a local big-shot, the Marquis d'Andervilliers. The Marquis, a former patient of Charles's, was impressed by Emma's elegance. The chapter ends as the couple arrives at the Marquis' chateau.", "analysis": ""}

She thought, sometimes, that, after all, this was the happiest time of her life--the honeymoon, as people called it. To taste the full sweetness of it, it would have been necessary doubtless to fly to those lands with sonorous names where the days after marriage are full of laziness most suave. In post chaises behind blue silken curtains to ride slowly up steep road, listening to the song of the postilion re-echoed by the mountains, along with the bells of goats and the muffled sound of a waterfall; at sunset on the shores of gulfs to breathe in the perfume of lemon trees; then in the evening on the villa-terraces above, hand in hand to look at the stars, making plans for the future. It seemed to her that certain places on earth must bring happiness, as a plant peculiar to the soil, and that cannot thrive elsewhere. Why could not she lean over balconies in Swiss chalets, or enshrine her melancholy in a Scotch cottage, with a husband dressed in a black velvet coat with long tails, and thin shoes, a pointed hat and frills? Perhaps she would have liked to confide all these things to someone. But how tell an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? Words failed her--the opportunity, the courage. If Charles had but wished it, if he had guessed it, if his look had but once met her thought, it seemed to her that a sudden plenty would have gone out from her heart, as the fruit falls from a tree when shaken by a hand. But as the intimacy of their life became deeper, the greater became the gulf that separated her from him. Charles's conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and everyone's ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without exciting emotion, laughter, or thought. He had never had the curiosity, he said, while he lived at Rouen, to go to the theatre to see the actors from Paris. He could neither swim, nor fence, nor shoot, and one day he could not explain some term of horsemanship to her that she had come across in a novel. A man, on the contrary, should he not know everything, excel in manifold activities, initiate you into the energies of passion, the refinements of life, all mysteries? But this one taught nothing, knew nothing, wished nothing. He thought her happy; and she resented this easy calm, this serene heaviness, the very happiness she gave him. Sometimes she would draw; and it was great amusement to Charles to stand there bolt upright and watch her bend over her cardboard, with eyes half-closed the better to see her work, or rolling, between her fingers, little bread-pellets. As to the piano, the more quickly her fingers glided over it the more he wondered. She struck the notes with aplomb, and ran from top to bottom of the keyboard without a break. Thus shaken up, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard at the other end of the village when the window was open, and often the bailiff's clerk, passing along the highroad bare-headed and in list slippers, stopped to listen, his sheet of paper in his hand. Emma, on the other hand, knew how to look after her house. She sent the patients' accounts in well-phrased letters that had no suggestion of a bill. When they had a neighbour to dinner on Sundays, she managed to have some tasty dish--piled up pyramids of greengages on vine leaves, served up preserves turned out into plates--and even spoke of buying finger-glasses for dessert. From all this much consideration was extended to Bovary. Charles finished by rising in his own esteem for possessing such a wife. He showed with pride in the sitting room two small pencil sketches by her that he had had framed in very large frames, and hung up against the wallpaper by long green cords. People returning from mass saw him at his door in his wool-work slippers. He came home late--at ten o'clock, at midnight sometimes. Then he asked for something to eat, and as the servant had gone to bed, Emma waited on him. He took off his coat to dine more at his ease. He told her, one after the other, the people he had met, the villages where he had been, the prescriptions he had written, and, well pleased with himself, he finished the remainder of the boiled beef and onions, picked pieces off the cheese, munched an apple, emptied his water-bottle, and then went to bed, and lay on his back and snored. As he had been for a time accustomed to wear nightcaps, his handkerchief would not keep down over his ears, so that his hair in the morning was all tumbled pell-mell about his face and whitened with the feathers of the pillow, whose strings came untied during the night. He always wore thick boots that had two long creases over the instep running obliquely towards the ankle, while the rest of the upper continued in a straight line as if stretched on a wooden foot. He said that "was quite good enough for the country." His mother approved of his economy, for she came to see him as formerly when there had been some violent row at her place; and yet Madame Bovary senior seemed prejudiced against her daughter-in-law. She thought "her ways too fine for their position"; the wood, the sugar, and the candles disappeared as "at a grand establishment," and the amount of firing in the kitchen would have been enough for twenty-five courses. She put her linen in order for her in the presses, and taught her to keep an eye on the butcher when he brought the meat. Emma put up with these lessons. Madame Bovary was lavish of them; and the words "daughter" and "mother" were exchanged all day long, accompanied by little quiverings of the lips, each one uttering gentle words in a voice trembling with anger. In Madame Dubuc's time the old woman felt that she was still the favorite; but now the love of Charles for Emma seemed to her a desertion from her tenderness, an encroachment upon what was hers, and she watched her son's happiness in sad silence, as a ruined man looks through the windows at people dining in his old house. She recalled to him as remembrances her troubles and her sacrifices, and, comparing these with Emma's negligence, came to the conclusion that it was not reasonable to adore her so exclusively. Charles knew not what to answer: he respected his mother, and he loved his wife infinitely; he considered the judgment of the one infallible, and yet he thought the conduct of the other irreproachable. When Madam Bovary had gone, he tried timidly and in the same terms to hazard one or two of the more anodyne observations he had heard from his mamma. Emma proved to him with a word that he was mistaken, and sent him off to his patients. And yet, in accord with theories she believed right, she wanted to make herself in love with him. By moonlight in the garden she recited all the passionate rhymes she knew by heart, and, sighing, sang to him many melancholy adagios; but she found herself as calm after as before, and Charles seemed no more amorous and no more moved. When she had thus for a while struck the flint on her heart without getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding what she did not experience as of believing anything that did not present itself in conventional forms, she persuaded herself without difficulty that Charles's passion was nothing very exorbitant. His outbursts became regular; he embraced her at certain fixed times. It was one habit among other habits, and, like a dessert, looked forward to after the monotony of dinner. A gamekeeper, cured by the doctor of inflammation of the lungs, had given madame a little Italian greyhound; she took her out walking, for she went out sometimes in order to be alone for a moment, and not to see before her eyes the eternal garden and the dusty road. She went as far as the beeches of Banneville, near the deserted pavilion which forms an angle of the wall on the side of the country. Amidst the vegetation of the ditch there are long reeds with leaves that cut you. She began by looking round her to see if nothing had changed since last she had been there. She found again in the same places the foxgloves and wallflowers, the beds of nettles growing round the big stones, and the patches of lichen along the three windows, whose shutters, always closed, were rotting away on their rusty iron bars. Her thoughts, aimless at first, wandered at random, like her greyhound, who ran round and round in the fields, yelping after the yellow butterflies, chasing the shrew-mice, or nibbling the poppies on the edge of a cornfield. Then gradually her ideas took definite shape, and, sitting on the grass that she dug up with little prods of her sunshade, Emma repeated to herself, "Good heavens! Why did I marry?" She asked herself if by some other chance combination it would have not been possible to meet another man; and she tried to imagine what would have been these unrealised events, this different life, this unknown husband. All, surely, could not be like this one. He might have been handsome, witty, distinguished, attractive, such as, no doubt, her old companions of the convent had married. What were they doing now? In town, with the noise of the streets, the buzz of the theatres and the lights of the ballroom, they were living lives where the heart expands, the senses bourgeon out. But she--her life was cold as a garret whose dormer window looks on the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart. She recalled the prize days, when she mounted the platform to receive her little crowns, with her hair in long plaits. In her white frock and open prunella shoes she had a pretty way, and when she went back to her seat, the gentlemen bent over her to congratulate her; the courtyard was full of carriages; farewells were called to her through their windows; the music master with his violin case bowed in passing by. How far all of this! How far away! She called Djali, took her between her knees, and smoothed the long delicate head, saying, "Come, kiss mistress; you have no troubles." Then noting the melancholy face of the graceful animal, who yawned slowly, she softened, and comparing her to herself, spoke to her aloud as to somebody in trouble whom one is consoling. Occasionally there came gusts of winds, breezes from the sea rolling in one sweep over the whole plateau of the Caux country, which brought even to these fields a salt freshness. The rushes, close to the ground, whistled; the branches trembled in a swift rustling, while their summits, ceaselessly swaying, kept up a deep murmur. Emma drew her shawl round her shoulders and rose. In the avenue a green light dimmed by the leaves lit up the short moss that crackled softly beneath her feet. The sun was setting; the sky showed red between the branches, and the trunks of the trees, uniform, and planted in a straight line, seemed a brown colonnade standing out against a background of gold. A fear took hold of her; she called Djali, and hurriedly returned to Tostes by the high road, threw herself into an armchair, and for the rest of the evening did not speak. But towards the end of September something extraordinary fell upon her life; she was invited by the Marquis d'Andervilliers to Vaubyessard. Secretary of State under the Restoration, the Marquis, anxious to re-enter political life, set about preparing for his candidature to the Chamber of Deputies long beforehand. In the winter he distributed a great deal of wood, and in the Conseil General always enthusiastically demanded new roads for his arrondissement. During the dog-days he had suffered from an abscess, which Charles had cured as if by miracle by giving a timely little touch with the lancet. The steward sent to Tostes to pay for the operation reported in the evening that he had seen some superb cherries in the doctor's little garden. Now cherry trees did not thrive at Vaubyessard; the Marquis asked Bovary for some slips; made it his business to thank his personally; saw Emma; thought she had a pretty figure, and that she did not bow like a peasant; so that he did not think he was going beyond the bounds of condescension, nor, on the other hand, making a mistake, in inviting the young couple. On Wednesday at three o'clock, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, seated in their dog-cart, set out for Vaubyessard, with a great trunk strapped on behind and a bonnet-box in front of the apron. Besides these Charles held a bandbox between his knees. They arrived at nightfall, just as the lamps in the park were being lit to show the way for the carriages.

Part 1, Chapter 7

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-7

Emma wonders if these "honeymoon days" are really the best days of her life. She starts to feel cheated, as though Charles has deprived her of the cliched, romantic fantasies she cooks up. She's sure that she would be happier if only she was somewhere else...preferably with someone else... Emma wants to reveal these feelings of discontent to somebody, and wishes Charles could be a little more sensitive. Day by day he just grows less and less interesting to her, and she is consistently disappointed in the man she married. She believes that men should know everything and be able to do anything - Charles, however, is just an average guy. Emma attempts to express her turbulent feelings through drawing and music; Charles loves to watch her, and the people of the village are impressed by her accomplishments. Speaking of which, Emma turns out to actually be a pretty capable wife when she tries. She knows how to take care of the house and of Charles's business, and this makes the village respect the doctor and his young wife even more. Charles is also extremely impressed himself for having such a terrific wife. In his view, everything is just peachy keen. As far as we can tell, he's a really simple creature, with very few desires and no ambition at all. He's stingy and kind of oafish, but is generally still the same old predictable Charles - the kind of nice guy that finishes last. Charles's mom approves of her son's ways wholeheartedly, but she's skeptical of her daughter-in-law. She's worried that Emma wastes too much money, and every time she visits , the two women harass each other relentlessly. This springs largely from Mom's anxieties about Charles's love for Emma - she's no longer the favorite, now that Wife #2 is in the picture. Charles is caught in the crossfire between the two loves of his life. He can't believe that his mother could ever be wrong, but he also can't believe that Emma ever makes any mistakes. It's a confusing time for him; mostly, he just bumbles about, which doesn't help. Emma decides to at least attempt to "experience love" . She sings songs and recites poetry to Charles, but it doesn't accomplish anything. That's it. Emma is certain she doesn't love Charles, and furthermore, that she's incapable of loving him. She's way, way bored with her life on the whole. One of the great constants in life is the fact that Puppies Are Awesome. Emma receives a little greyhound pup as a gift from one of Charles's patients, and for a while, the awesomeness of the puppy actually makes her feel a wee bit better. She names the dog Djali and tells her about the troubles of married life. You may not have realized it, but dog is woman's best friend, too. Emma is certain she could have married someone different - and better - given the chance. She wonders about her former classmates from the convent school, and is sure that they have better husbands than she does. Her former life seems painfully far away. Just when it seems like nothing will ever happen for Emma, an invitation arrives: she and Charles are invited to a party at the home of a local big-shot, the Marquis d'Andervilliers. The Marquis, a former patient of Charles's, was impressed by Emma's elegance. The chapter ends as the couple arrives at the Marquis' chateau.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/08.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_7_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 8

part 1, chapter 8

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-8", "summary": "The chateau is everything Emma could have dreamt of. It's gorgeous and extravagantly beautiful. Emma is profoundly impressed by the whole thing and notices every detail. At dinner, Emma sees that many of the ladies take wine at dinner . Emma is fascinated by an old, unattractive man, the Duc de Laverdiere; rumor has it that he had been Marie Antoinette's lover. Emma gets her first taste of champagne, pomegranates, and pineapple. Everything here seems better than it is at home. We get the feeling that she finally feels she's getting what she deserves. Getting dressed for the ball, Emma and Charles have a little spat. Charles wants to dance, but Emma claims it's ridiculous, saying that people will laugh at him. On this night, Emma looks better than ever. Charles, taken with her beauty, attempts to kiss her, but she just shoos him away. The ball is like one of Emma's romantic daydreams. It's filled with beautiful women in gorgeous dresses and jewels, and - to Emma's excitement - with beautiful men, too. Everything about these gorgeous guys radiates wealth, from their clear, white complexions to their well-cut clothes. Emma and Charles are clearly in a brand new world. Emma sees some peasants looking in through the windows, and is reminded of her former life on the farm at Les Bertaux. These new visions of luxury and beauty totally sweep her off her feet, and she begins to wonder if she ever really was a simple country girl. Emma witnesses a lady and gentleman exchange a secret love note. Hours into the ball, a second gourmet meal is served. After this, people start to leave. By 3am, it's time for the last dance, a waltz. Emma dances with a man Flaubert simply calls the Viscount, despite the fact that she doesn't really know how to waltz. She stumbles, then watches the Viscount resume the dance with another lady. Charles, who's been watching a game of whist at the card table all night, takes Emma up to bed, complaining all the way about his tired legs. Emma stays up late, looking out the window and hoping to prolong her stay in this fantastical other world. Eventually she lets herself fall asleep. In the morning, the remaining guests eat a quick breakfast, then walk around the chateau's extensive grounds. Charles and Emma pack up their buggy, say their thank yous, and head back to Tostes. During the drive home, they encounter a party of riders on horseback. One of them, Emma thinks, is the Viscount. Shortly thereafter, Charles has to fix something on the buggy. While he's outside, he finds a green silk cigar case. Home again, Emma is really in a foul mood. She fires the maid, Nastasie, because dinner isn't ready on time. The word that comes to mind is \"irrational.\" Charles, on the other hand, is happy to be home. He's a little sad to see Nastasie go, since she's gone through a lot with him, but doesn't want to argue with his wife. After dinner, Charles tries to act like an aristocratic man by smoking one of the cigars he found in the silk case. Embarrassingly, he makes himself rather ill. Emma is disgusted. In the following days, Emma rehashes the ball over and over again in her mind. She tries to remember everything about it.", "analysis": ""}

The chateau, a modern building in Italian style, with two projecting wings and three flights of steps, lay at the foot of an immense green-sward, on which some cows were grazing among groups of large trees set out at regular intervals, while large beds of arbutus, rhododendron, syringas, and guelder roses bulged out their irregular clusters of green along the curve of the gravel path. A river flowed under a bridge; through the mist one could distinguish buildings with thatched roofs scattered over the field bordered by two gently sloping, well timbered hillocks, and in the background amid the trees rose in two parallel lines the coach houses and stables, all that was left of the ruined old chateau. Charles's dog-cart pulled up before the middle flight of steps; servants appeared; the Marquis came forward, and, offering his arm to the doctor's wife, conducted her to the vestibule. It was paved with marble slabs, was very lofty, and the sound of footsteps and that of voices re-echoed through it as in a church. Opposite rose a straight staircase, and on the left a gallery overlooking the garden led to the billiard room, through whose door one could hear the click of the ivory balls. As she crossed it to go to the drawing room, Emma saw standing round the table men with grave faces, their chins resting on high cravats. They all wore orders, and smiled silently as they made their strokes. On the dark wainscoting of the walls large gold frames bore at the bottom names written in black letters. She read: "Jean-Antoine d'Andervilliers d'Yvervonbille, Count de la Vaubyessard and Baron de la Fresnay, killed at the battle of Coutras on the 20th of October, 1587." And on another: "Jean-Antoine-Henry-Guy d'Andervilliers de la Vaubyessard, Admiral of France and Chevalier of the Order of St. Michael, wounded at the battle of the Hougue-Saint-Vaast on the 29th of May, 1692; died at Vaubyessard on the 23rd of January 1693." One could hardly make out those that followed, for the light of the lamps lowered over the green cloth threw a dim shadow round the room. Burnishing the horizontal pictures, it broke up against these in delicate lines where there were cracks in the varnish, and from all these great black squares framed in with gold stood out here and there some lighter portion of the painting--a pale brow, two eyes that looked at you, perukes flowing over and powdering red-coated shoulders, or the buckle of a garter above a well-rounded calf. The Marquis opened the drawing room door; one of the ladies (the Marchioness herself) came to meet Emma. She made her sit down by her on an ottoman, and began talking to her as amicably as if she had known her a long time. She was a woman of about forty, with fine shoulders, a hook nose, a drawling voice, and on this evening she wore over her brown hair a simple guipure fichu that fell in a point at the back. A fair young woman sat in a high-backed chair in a corner; and gentlemen with flowers in their buttonholes were talking to ladies round the fire. At seven dinner was served. The men, who were in the majority, sat down at the first table in the vestibule; the ladies at the second in the dining room with the Marquis and Marchioness. Emma, on entering, felt herself wrapped round by the warm air, a blending of the perfume of flowers and of the fine linen, of the fumes of the viands, and the odour of the truffles. The silver dish covers reflected the lighted wax candles in the candelabra, the cut crystal covered with light steam reflected from one to the other pale rays; bouquets were placed in a row the whole length of the table; and in the large-bordered plates each napkin, arranged after the fashion of a bishop's mitre, held between its two gaping folds a small oval shaped roll. The red claws of lobsters hung over the dishes; rich fruit in open baskets was piled up on moss; there were quails in their plumage; smoke was rising; and in silk stockings, knee-breeches, white cravat, and frilled shirt, the steward, grave as a judge, offering ready carved dishes between the shoulders of the guests, with a touch of the spoon gave you the piece chosen. On the large stove of porcelain inlaid with copper baguettes the statue of a woman, draped to the chin, gazed motionless on the room full of life. Madame Bovary noticed that many ladies had not put their gloves in their glasses. But at the upper end of the table, alone amongst all these women, bent over his full plate, and his napkin tied round his neck like a child, an old man sat eating, letting drops of gravy drip from his mouth. His eyes were bloodshot, and he wore a little queue tied with black ribbon. He was the Marquis's father-in-law, the old Duke de Laverdiere, once on a time favourite of the Count d'Artois, in the days of the Vaudreuil hunting-parties at the Marquis de Conflans', and had been, it was said, the lover of Queen Marie Antoinette, between Monsieur de Coigny and Monsieur de Lauzun. He had lived a life of noisy debauch, full of duels, bets, elopements; he had squandered his fortune and frightened all his family. A servant behind his chair named aloud to him in his ear the dishes that he pointed to stammering, and constantly Emma's eyes turned involuntarily to this old man with hanging lips, as to something extraordinary. He had lived at court and slept in the bed of queens! Iced champagne was poured out. Emma shivered all over as she felt it cold in her mouth. She had never seen pomegranates nor tasted pineapples. The powdered sugar even seemed to her whiter and finer than elsewhere. The ladies afterwards went to their rooms to prepare for the ball. Emma made her toilet with the fastidious care of an actress on her debut. She did her hair according to the directions of the hairdresser, and put on the barege dress spread out upon the bed. Charles's trousers were tight across the belly. "My trouser-straps will be rather awkward for dancing," he said. "Dancing?" repeated Emma. "Yes!" "Why, you must be mad! They would make fun of you; keep your place. Besides, it is more becoming for a doctor," she added. Charles was silent. He walked up and down waiting for Emma to finish dressing. He saw her from behind in the glass between two lights. Her black eyes seemed blacker than ever. Her hair, undulating towards the ears, shone with a blue lustre; a rose in her chignon trembled on its mobile stalk, with artificial dewdrops on the tip of the leaves. She wore a gown of pale saffron trimmed with three bouquets of pompon roses mixed with green. Charles came and kissed her on her shoulder. "Let me alone!" she said; "you are tumbling me." One could hear the flourish of the violin and the notes of a horn. She went downstairs restraining herself from running. Dancing had begun. Guests were arriving. There was some crushing. She sat down on a form near the door. The quadrille over, the floor was occupied by groups of men standing up and talking and servants in livery bearing large trays. Along the line of seated women painted fans were fluttering, bouquets half hid smiling faces, and gold stoppered scent-bottles were turned in partly-closed hands, whose white gloves outlined the nails and tightened on the flesh at the wrists. Lace trimmings, diamond brooches, medallion bracelets trembled on bodices, gleamed on breasts, clinked on bare arms. The hair, well-smoothed over the temples and knotted at the nape, bore crowns, or bunches, or sprays of mytosotis, jasmine, pomegranate blossoms, ears of corn, and corn-flowers. Calmly seated in their places, mothers with forbidding countenances were wearing red turbans. Emma's heart beat rather faster when, her partner holding her by the tips of the fingers, she took her place in a line with the dancers, and waited for the first note to start. But her emotion soon vanished, and, swaying to the rhythm of the orchestra, she glided forward with slight movements of the neck. A smile rose to her lips at certain delicate phrases of the violin, that sometimes played alone while the other instruments were silent; one could hear the clear clink of the louis d'or that were being thrown down upon the card tables in the next room; then all struck again, the cornet-a-piston uttered its sonorous note, feet marked time, skirts swelled and rustled, hands touched and parted; the same eyes falling before you met yours again. A few men (some fifteen or so), of twenty-five to forty, scattered here and there among the dancers or talking at the doorways, distinguished themselves from the crowd by a certain air of breeding, whatever their differences in age, dress, or face. Their clothes, better made, seemed of finer cloth, and their hair, brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy with more delicate pomades. They had the complexion of wealth--that clear complexion that is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the veneer of old furniture, and that an ordered regimen of exquisite nurture maintains at its best. Their necks moved easily in their low cravats, their long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars, they wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs with embroidered initials that gave forth a subtle perfume. Those who were beginning to grow old had an air of youth, while there was something mature in the faces of the young. In their unconcerned looks was the calm of passions daily satiated, and through all their gentleness of manner pierced that peculiar brutality, the result of a command of half-easy things, in which force is exercised and vanity amused--the management of thoroughbred horses and the society of loose women. A few steps from Emma a gentleman in a blue coat was talking of Italy with a pale young woman wearing a parure of pearls. They were praising the breadth of the columns of St. Peter's, Tivoly, Vesuvius, Castellamare, and Cassines, the roses of Genoa, the Coliseum by moonlight. With her other ear Emma was listening to a conversation full of words she did not understand. A circle gathered round a very young man who the week before had beaten "Miss Arabella" and "Romolus," and won two thousand louis jumping a ditch in England. One complained that his racehorses were growing fat; another of the printers' errors that had disfigured the name of his horse. The atmosphere of the ball was heavy; the lamps were growing dim. Guests were flocking to the billiard room. A servant got upon a chair and broke the window-panes. At the crash of the glass Madame Bovary turned her head and saw in the garden the faces of peasants pressed against the window looking in at them. Then the memory of the Bertaux came back to her. She saw the farm again, the muddy pond, her father in a blouse under the apple trees, and she saw herself again as formerly, skimming with her finger the cream off the milk-pans in the dairy. But in the refulgence of the present hour her past life, so distinct until then, faded away completely, and she almost doubted having lived it. She was there; beyond the ball was only shadow overspreading all the rest. She was just eating a maraschino ice that she held with her left hand in a silver-gilt cup, her eyes half-closed, and the spoon between her teeth. A lady near her dropped her fan. A gentlemen was passing. "Would you be so good," said the lady, "as to pick up my fan that has fallen behind the sofa?" The gentleman bowed, and as he moved to stretch out his arm, Emma saw the hand of a young woman throw something white, folded in a triangle, into his hat. The gentleman, picking up the fan, offered it to the lady respectfully; she thanked him with an inclination of the head, and began smelling her bouquet. After supper, where were plenty of Spanish and Rhine wines, soups a la bisque and au lait d'amandes*, puddings a la Trafalgar, and all sorts of cold meats with jellies that trembled in the dishes, the carriages one after the other began to drive off. Raising the corners of the muslin curtain, one could see the light of their lanterns glimmering through the darkness. The seats began to empty, some card-players were still left; the musicians were cooling the tips of their fingers on their tongues. Charles was half asleep, his back propped against a door. *With almond milk At three o'clock the cotillion began. Emma did not know how to waltz. Everyone was waltzing, Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers herself and the Marquis; only the guests staying at the castle were still there, about a dozen persons. One of the waltzers, however, who was familiarly called Viscount, and whose low cut waistcoat seemed moulded to his chest, came a second time to ask Madame Bovary to dance, assuring her that he would guide her, and that she would get through it very well. They began slowly, then went more rapidly. They turned; all around them was turning--the lamps, the furniture, the wainscoting, the floor, like a disc on a pivot. On passing near the doors the bottom of Emma's dress caught against his trousers. Their legs commingled; he looked down at her; she raised her eyes to his. A torpor seized her; she stopped. They started again, and with a more rapid movement; the Viscount, dragging her along disappeared with her to the end of the gallery, where panting, she almost fell, and for a moment rested her head upon his breast. And then, still turning, but more slowly, he guided her back to her seat. She leaned back against the wall and covered her eyes with her hands. When she opened them again, in the middle of the drawing room three waltzers were kneeling before a lady sitting on a stool. She chose the Viscount, and the violin struck up once more. Everyone looked at them. They passed and re-passed, she with rigid body, her chin bent down, and he always in the same pose, his figure curved, his elbow rounded, his chin thrown forward. That woman knew how to waltz! They kept up a long time, and tired out all the others. Then they talked a few moments longer, and after the goodnights, or rather good mornings, the guests of the chateau retired to bed. Charles dragged himself up by the balusters. His "knees were going up into his body." He had spent five consecutive hours standing bolt upright at the card tables, watching them play whist, without understanding anything about it, and it was with a deep sigh of relief that he pulled off his boots. Emma threw a shawl over her shoulders, opened the window, and leant out. The night was dark; some drops of rain were falling. She breathed in the damp wind that refreshed her eyelids. The music of the ball was still murmuring in her ears. And she tried to keep herself awake in order to prolong the illusion of this luxurious life that she would soon have to give up. Day began to break. She looked long at the windows of the chateau, trying to guess which were the rooms of all those she had noticed the evening before. She would fain have known their lives, have penetrated, blended with them. But she was shivering with cold. She undressed, and cowered down between the sheets against Charles, who was asleep. There were a great many people to luncheon. The repast lasted ten minutes; no liqueurs were served, which astonished the doctor. Next, Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers collected some pieces of roll in a small basket to take them to the swans on the ornamental waters, and they went to walk in the hot-houses, where strange plants, bristling with hairs, rose in pyramids under hanging vases, whence, as from over-filled nests of serpents, fell long green cords interlacing. The orangery, which was at the other end, led by a covered way to the outhouses of the chateau. The Marquis, to amuse the young woman, took her to see the stables. Above the basket-shaped racks porcelain slabs bore the names of the horses in black letters. Each animal in its stall whisked its tail when anyone went near and said "Tchk! tchk!" The boards of the harness room shone like the flooring of a drawing room. The carriage harness was piled up in the middle against two twisted columns, and the bits, the whips, the spurs, the curbs, were ranged in a line all along the wall. Charles, meanwhile, went to ask a groom to put his horse to. The dog-cart was brought to the foot of the steps, and, all the parcels being crammed in, the Bovarys paid their respects to the Marquis and Marchioness and set out again for Tostes. Emma watched the turning wheels in silence. Charles, on the extreme edge of the seat, held the reins with his two arms wide apart, and the little horse ambled along in the shafts that were too big for him. The loose reins hanging over his crupper were wet with foam, and the box fastened on behind the chaise gave great regular bumps against it. They were on the heights of Thibourville when suddenly some horsemen with cigars between their lips passed laughing. Emma thought she recognized the Viscount, turned back, and caught on the horizon only the movement of the heads rising or falling with the unequal cadence of the trot or gallop. A mile farther on they had to stop to mend with some string the traces that had broken. But Charles, giving a last look to the harness, saw something on the ground between his horse's legs, and he picked up a cigar-case with a green silk border and beblazoned in the centre like the door of a carriage. "There are even two cigars in it," said he; "they'll do for this evening after dinner." "Why, do you smoke?" she asked. "Sometimes, when I get a chance." He put his find in his pocket and whipped up the nag. When they reached home the dinner was not ready. Madame lost her temper. Nastasie answered rudely. "Leave the room!" said Emma. "You are forgetting yourself. I give you warning." For dinner there was onion soup and a piece of veal with sorrel. Charles, seated opposite Emma, rubbed his hands gleefully. "How good it is to be at home again!" Nastasie could be heard crying. He was rather fond of the poor girl. She had formerly, during the wearisome time of his widowhood, kept him company many an evening. She had been his first patient, his oldest acquaintance in the place. "Have you given her warning for good?" he asked at last. "Yes. Who is to prevent me?" she replied. Then they warmed themselves in the kitchen while their room was being made ready. Charles began to smoke. He smoked with lips protruding, spitting every moment, recoiling at every puff. "You'll make yourself ill," she said scornfully. He put down his cigar and ran to swallow a glass of cold water at the pump. Emma seizing hold of the cigar case threw it quickly to the back of the cupboard. The next day was a long one. She walked about her little garden, up and down the same walks, stopping before the beds, before the espalier, before the plaster curate, looking with amazement at all these things of once-on-a-time that she knew so well. How far off the ball seemed already! What was it that thus set so far asunder the morning of the day before yesterday and the evening of to-day? Her journey to Vaubyessard had made a hole in her life, like one of those great crevices that a storm will sometimes make in one night in mountains. Still she was resigned. She devoutly put away in her drawers her beautiful dress, down to the satin shoes whose soles were yellowed with the slippery wax of the dancing floor. Her heart was like these. In its friction against wealth something had come over it that could not be effaced. The memory of this ball, then, became an occupation for Emma. Whenever the Wednesday came round she said to herself as she awoke, "Ah! I was there a week--a fortnight--three weeks ago." And little by little the faces grew confused in her remembrance. She forgot the tune of the quadrilles; she no longer saw the liveries and appointments so distinctly; some details escaped her, but the regret remained with her.

Part 1, Chapter 8

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-8

The chateau is everything Emma could have dreamt of. It's gorgeous and extravagantly beautiful. Emma is profoundly impressed by the whole thing and notices every detail. At dinner, Emma sees that many of the ladies take wine at dinner . Emma is fascinated by an old, unattractive man, the Duc de Laverdiere; rumor has it that he had been Marie Antoinette's lover. Emma gets her first taste of champagne, pomegranates, and pineapple. Everything here seems better than it is at home. We get the feeling that she finally feels she's getting what she deserves. Getting dressed for the ball, Emma and Charles have a little spat. Charles wants to dance, but Emma claims it's ridiculous, saying that people will laugh at him. On this night, Emma looks better than ever. Charles, taken with her beauty, attempts to kiss her, but she just shoos him away. The ball is like one of Emma's romantic daydreams. It's filled with beautiful women in gorgeous dresses and jewels, and - to Emma's excitement - with beautiful men, too. Everything about these gorgeous guys radiates wealth, from their clear, white complexions to their well-cut clothes. Emma and Charles are clearly in a brand new world. Emma sees some peasants looking in through the windows, and is reminded of her former life on the farm at Les Bertaux. These new visions of luxury and beauty totally sweep her off her feet, and she begins to wonder if she ever really was a simple country girl. Emma witnesses a lady and gentleman exchange a secret love note. Hours into the ball, a second gourmet meal is served. After this, people start to leave. By 3am, it's time for the last dance, a waltz. Emma dances with a man Flaubert simply calls the Viscount, despite the fact that she doesn't really know how to waltz. She stumbles, then watches the Viscount resume the dance with another lady. Charles, who's been watching a game of whist at the card table all night, takes Emma up to bed, complaining all the way about his tired legs. Emma stays up late, looking out the window and hoping to prolong her stay in this fantastical other world. Eventually she lets herself fall asleep. In the morning, the remaining guests eat a quick breakfast, then walk around the chateau's extensive grounds. Charles and Emma pack up their buggy, say their thank yous, and head back to Tostes. During the drive home, they encounter a party of riders on horseback. One of them, Emma thinks, is the Viscount. Shortly thereafter, Charles has to fix something on the buggy. While he's outside, he finds a green silk cigar case. Home again, Emma is really in a foul mood. She fires the maid, Nastasie, because dinner isn't ready on time. The word that comes to mind is "irrational." Charles, on the other hand, is happy to be home. He's a little sad to see Nastasie go, since she's gone through a lot with him, but doesn't want to argue with his wife. After dinner, Charles tries to act like an aristocratic man by smoking one of the cigars he found in the silk case. Embarrassingly, he makes himself rather ill. Emma is disgusted. In the following days, Emma rehashes the ball over and over again in her mind. She tries to remember everything about it.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/09.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_8_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 9

part 1, chapter 9

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-9", "summary": "When Charles is out, Emma lovingly looks at the green silk cigar case and invents stories about its origins. She imagines that an adoring mistress gave it to the Viscount - she even imagines herself in the role of the mistress. Paris becomes a new obsession for Emma. She jealously looks at the fishmongers' carts on their way through the village, thinking about their journey to the capital city. She buys herself a map of Paris, and studies it endlessly, imagining herself there. In her passion for the metropolis, Emma attempts to cultivate herself by reading magazines about arts and culture. She learns all the details of fine Parisian life, and reads the novels of Honore de Balzac and George Sand . In these books, she finds more and more similarities between the Viscount of her imagination and the characters. To Emma, everything seems possible in Paris, a city of languid, beautifully-dressed women and extravagant, thrilling men. Everything else fades around her, and Emma lives completely in the fantastical world she constructs. Emma longs for luxurious boudoirs, lingering embraces, moonlit rendezvous. Instead, what she has is a number of awkward peasant servants in tattered clothes. To replace Nastasie, she hires a young girl, Felicite, who seems to be sweet but rusticated. With nothing else to do, Emma wanders around the house languidly, wearing a fancy dressing gown. Bored, lonely, and utterly discontented, she halfheartedly wishes both to die and to escape to Paris. Charles goes about his business, totally unaware of his wife's unhappiness. He's still his usual, dull self, perfectly happy and blissfully ignorant. He's just so pleased with everything Emma does, and by her city-like airs. She attempts to create some kind of false happiness through buying things; Charles goes along with it gamely. Everything looks great for Charles. His reputation as a doctor established, he generally does pretty well...that is, he doesn't kill anyone. He prescribes the same course of treatment to almost everyone: sedatives, the occasional emetic, footbath, or leeches, and on special occasions, he bleeds people or pulls teeth. He attempts to keep current with the latest medical news by subscribing to a professional journal, but it doesn't inspire him to any thrilling feats. Emma is fed up with all this. She wishes Charles had more ambition and intellectual oomph. She is more and more irritated by him with every passing day. Even when she straightens his clothes in an attempt to make him look more presentable, it's for her sake, not his. She continues to talk to Charles, however - her reasoning being that if she has to resort to talking to the dog, she might as well talk to her husband. Emma waits and waits, and grows more and more impatient with her unchanging life. She imagines a ship of dreams that will come and carry her away; unsurprisingly, it never does. Every day feels the same, and she's sure that God has doomed her to a monotonous fate. Disgruntled, Emma gives up on all of her pastimes - she stops playing the piano, abandons her sketchbook, and ignores her embroidery. She falls into a deep depression, and feels profoundly alone. She even wishes she could chat with Felicite, but her pride stops her. It's not just Emma's life that's dull and unchanging; she observes the townspeople doing the same boring things day after day. We get the feeling that Emma's not the only person who's unenthused about provincial life. A wandering peddler of some kind comes around on occasions, bringing with him a hurdy-gurdy . Emma listens to the waltzes and thinks of her brush with greatness at the ball. Meals are the worst. Emma feels as though she can't bear it any longer, as she regards the gross-sounding meals and watches her bovine husband slowly chew his cud. By the springtime, Emma has given up on everything, including taking care of the house. She doesn't even make the effort to maintain her personal appearance. Her mother-in-law arrives for a visit before Easter, and is shocked by the change; she's taken aback, and can't even muster up a critical comment. Emma actually succeeds in cowing the old Madame Bovary. Emma starts to exhibit some kooky behavior. She goes on weird diets, has violent mood swings, and is totally unpredictable. At the end of February, Monsieur Rouault comes for a visit and brings a huge turkey to Emma and Charles at Tostes to celebrate the anniversary of his broken leg . Emma spends most of the visit with him, and is surprisingly glad to see him go. He reminds her of her hick background, something for which she has a great amount of contempt. Actually, she's contemptuous of pretty much everyone and everything at this point, so much so that Charles is shocked by her behavior. All of this takes a toll on Emma's health, and Charles gets worried about her frailty. He prescribes some rather useless cures, and it makes her seem worse than ever. She demonstrates what we might call manic-depressive symptoms around this time. Emma complains and complains about Tostes, and Charles realizes that something about the town is making her unhappy. He ponders moving the little family elsewhere. Oddly, Emma starts drinking vinegar to lose weight . One of Charles's old teachers diagnoses her with a so-called \"nervous malady\" , and it's decided that they'll move away. Charles finds a slightly larger town called Yonville-l'Abbaye that needs a doctor, and decides to move by spring if Emma stays ill. While preparing for the big move, Emma discovers her bridal bouquet in a drawer. While this might be a sentimental moment for some other women, she is disgusted, and throws it on the fire. What else could Emma and Charles possibly need in their complicated lives? You got it: a baby. By the time they move away in March, Emma is definitely pregnant. You can bet her mood swings aren't getting any better.", "analysis": ""}

Often when Charles was out she took from the cupboard, between the folds of the linen where she had left it, the green silk cigar case. She looked at it, opened it, and even smelt the odour of the lining--a mixture of verbena and tobacco. Whose was it? The Viscount's? Perhaps it was a present from his mistress. It had been embroidered on some rosewood frame, a pretty little thing, hidden from all eyes, that had occupied many hours, and over which had fallen the soft curls of the pensive worker. A breath of love had passed over the stitches on the canvas; each prick of the needle had fixed there a hope or a memory, and all those interwoven threads of silk were but the continuity of the same silent passion. And then one morning the Viscount had taken it away with him. Of what had they spoken when it lay upon the wide-mantelled chimneys between flower-vases and Pompadour clocks? She was at Tostes; he was at Paris now, far away! What was this Paris like? What a vague name! She repeated it in a low voice, for the mere pleasure of it; it rang in her ears like a great cathedral bell; it shone before her eyes, even on the labels of her pomade-pots. At night, when the carriers passed under her windows in their carts singing the "Marjolaine," she awoke, and listened to the noise of the iron-bound wheels, which, as they gained the country road, was soon deadened by the soil. "They will be there to-morrow!" she said to herself. And she followed them in thought up and down the hills, traversing villages, gliding along the highroads by the light of the stars. At the end of some indefinite distance there was always a confused spot, into which her dream died. She bought a plan of Paris, and with the tip of her finger on the map she walked about the capital. She went up the boulevards, stopping at every turning, between the lines of the streets, in front of the white squares that represented the houses. At last she would close the lids of her weary eyes, and see in the darkness the gas jets flaring in the wind and the steps of carriages lowered with much noise before the peristyles of theatres. She took in "La Corbeille," a lady's journal, and the "Sylphe des Salons." She devoured, without skipping a word, all the accounts of first nights, races, and soirees, took interest in the debut of a singer, in the opening of a new shop. She knew the latest fashions, the addresses of the best tailors, the days of the Bois and the Opera. In Eugene Sue she studied descriptions of furniture; she read Balzac and George Sand, seeking in them imaginary satisfaction for her own desires. Even at table she had her book by her, and turned over the pages while Charles ate and talked to her. The memory of the Viscount always returned as she read. Between him and the imaginary personages she made comparisons. But the circle of which he was the centre gradually widened round him, and the aureole that he bore, fading from his form, broadened out beyond, lighting up her other dreams. Paris, more vague than the ocean, glimmered before Emma's eyes in an atmosphere of vermilion. The many lives that stirred amid this tumult were, however, divided into parts, classed as distinct pictures. Emma perceived only two or three that hid from her all the rest, and in themselves represented all humanity. The world of ambassadors moved over polished floors in drawing rooms lined with mirrors, round oval tables covered with velvet and gold-fringed cloths. There were dresses with trains, deep mysteries, anguish hidden beneath smiles. Then came the society of the duchesses; all were pale; all got up at four o'clock; the women, poor angels, wore English point on their petticoats; and the men, unappreciated geniuses under a frivolous outward seeming, rode horses to death at pleasure parties, spent the summer season at Baden, and towards the forties married heiresses. In the private rooms of restaurants, where one sups after midnight by the light of wax candles, laughed the motley crowd of men of letters and actresses. They were prodigal as kings, full of ideal, ambitious, fantastic frenzy. This was an existence outside that of all others, between heaven and earth, in the midst of storms, having something of the sublime. For the rest of the world it was lost, with no particular place and as if non-existent. The nearer things were, moreover, the more her thoughts turned away from them. All her immediate surroundings, the wearisome country, the middle-class imbeciles, the mediocrity of existence, seemed to her exceptional, a peculiar chance that had caught hold of her, while beyond stretched, as far as eye could see, an immense land of joys and passions. She confused in her desire the sensualities of luxury with the delights of the heart, elegance of manners with delicacy of sentiment. Did not love, like Indian plants, need a special soil, a particular temperature? Signs by moonlight, long embraces, tears flowing over yielded hands, all the fevers of the flesh and the languors of tenderness could not be separated from the balconies of great castles full of indolence, from boudoirs with silken curtains and thick carpets, well-filled flower-stands, a bed on a raised dias, nor from the flashing of precious stones and the shoulder-knots of liveries. The lad from the posting house who came to groom the mare every morning passed through the passage with his heavy wooden shoes; there were holes in his blouse; his feet were bare in list slippers. And this was the groom in knee-britches with whom she had to be content! His work done, he did not come back again all day, for Charles on his return put up his horse himself, unsaddled him and put on the halter, while the servant-girl brought a bundle of straw and threw it as best she could into the manger. To replace Nastasie (who left Tostes shedding torrents of tears) Emma took into her service a young girl of fourteen, an orphan with a sweet face. She forbade her wearing cotton caps, taught her to address her in the third person, to bring a glass of water on a plate, to knock before coming into a room, to iron, starch, and to dress her--wanted to make a lady's-maid of her. The new servant obeyed without a murmur, so as not to be sent away; and as madame usually left the key in the sideboard, Felicite every evening took a small supply of sugar that she ate alone in her bed after she had said her prayers. Sometimes in the afternoon she went to chat with the postilions. Madame was in her room upstairs. She wore an open dressing gown that showed between the shawl facings of her bodice a pleated chamisette with three gold buttons. Her belt was a corded girdle with great tassels, and her small garnet coloured slippers had a large knot of ribbon that fell over her instep. She had bought herself a blotting book, writing case, pen-holder, and envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she dusted her what-not, looked at herself in the glass, picked up a book, and then, dreaming between the lines, let it drop on her knees. She longed to travel or to go back to her convent. She wished at the same time to die and to live in Paris. Charles in snow and rain trotted across country. He ate omelettes on farmhouse tables, poked his arm into damp beds, received the tepid spurt of blood-lettings in his face, listened to death-rattles, examined basins, turned over a good deal of dirty linen; but every evening he found a blazing fire, his dinner ready, easy-chairs, and a well-dressed woman, charming with an odour of freshness, though no one could say whence the perfume came, or if it were not her skin that made odorous her chemise. She charmed him by numerous attentions; now it was some new way of arranging paper sconces for the candles, a flounce that she altered on her gown, or an extraordinary name for some very simple dish that the servant had spoilt, but that Charles swallowed with pleasure to the last mouthful. At Rouen she saw some ladies who wore a bunch of charms on the watch-chains; she bought some charms. She wanted for her mantelpiece two large blue glass vases, and some time after an ivory necessaire with a silver-gilt thimble. The less Charles understood these refinements the more they seduced him. They added something to the pleasure of the senses and to the comfort of his fireside. It was like a golden dust sanding all along the narrow path of his life. He was well, looked well; his reputation was firmly established. The country-folk loved him because he was not proud. He petted the children, never went to the public house, and, moreover, his morals inspired confidence. He was specially successful with catarrhs and chest complaints. Being much afraid of killing his patients, Charles, in fact only prescribed sedatives, from time to time and emetic, a footbath, or leeches. It was not that he was afraid of surgery; he bled people copiously like horses, and for the taking out of teeth he had the "devil's own wrist." Finally, to keep up with the times, he took in "La Ruche Medicale," a new journal whose prospectus had been sent him. He read it a little after dinner, but in about five minutes the warmth of the room added to the effect of his dinner sent him to sleep; and he sat there, his chin on his two hands and his hair spreading like a mane to the foot of the lamp. Emma looked at him and shrugged her shoulders. Why, at least, was not her husband one of those men of taciturn passions who work at their books all night, and at last, when about sixty, the age of rheumatism sets in, wear a string of orders on their ill-fitting black coat? She could have wished this name of Bovary, which was hers, had been illustrious, to see it displayed at the booksellers', repeated in the newspapers, known to all France. But Charles had no ambition. An Yvetot doctor whom he had lately met in consultation had somewhat humiliated him at the very bedside of the patient, before the assembled relatives. When, in the evening, Charles told her this anecdote, Emma inveighed loudly against his colleague. Charles was much touched. He kissed her forehead with a tear in his eyes. But she was angered with shame; she felt a wild desire to strike him; she went to open the window in the passage and breathed in the fresh air to calm herself. "What a man! What a man!" she said in a low voice, biting her lips. Besides, she was becoming more irritated with him. As he grew older his manner grew heavier; at dessert he cut the corks of the empty bottles; after eating he cleaned his teeth with his tongue; in taking soup he made a gurgling noise with every spoonful; and, as he was getting fatter, the puffed-out cheeks seemed to push the eyes, always small, up to the temples. Sometimes Emma tucked the red borders of his under-vest unto his waistcoat, rearranged his cravat, and threw away the dirty gloves he was going to put on; and this was not, as he fancied, for himself; it was for herself, by a diffusion of egotism, of nervous irritation. Sometimes, too, she told him of what she had read, such as a passage in a novel, of a new play, or an anecdote of the "upper ten" that she had seen in a feuilleton; for, after all, Charles was something, an ever-open ear, and ever-ready approbation. She confided many a thing to her greyhound. She would have done so to the logs in the fireplace or to the pendulum of the clock. At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow. Spring came round. With the first warm weather, when the pear trees began to blossom, she suffered from dyspnoea. From the beginning of July she counted how many weeks there were to October, thinking that perhaps the Marquis d'Andervilliers would give another ball at Vaubyessard. But all September passed without letters or visits. After the ennui of this disappointment her heart once more remained empty, and then the same series of days recommenced. So now they would thus follow one another, always the same, immovable, and bringing nothing. Other lives, however flat, had at least the chance of some event. One adventure sometimes brought with it infinite consequences and the scene changed. But nothing happened to her; God had willed it so! The future was a dark corridor, with its door at the end shut fast. She gave up music. What was the good of playing? Who would hear her? Since she could never, in a velvet gown with short sleeves, striking with her light fingers the ivory keys of an Erard at a concert, feel the murmur of ecstasy envelop her like a breeze, it was not worth while boring herself with practicing. Her drawing cardboard and her embroidery she left in the cupboard. What was the good? What was the good? Sewing irritated her. "I have read everything," she said to herself. And she sat there making the tongs red-hot, or looked at the rain falling. How sad she was on Sundays when vespers sounded! She listened with dull attention to each stroke of the cracked bell. A cat slowly walking over some roof put up his back in the pale rays of the sun. The wind on the highroad blew up clouds of dust. Afar off a dog sometimes howled; and the bell, keeping time, continued its monotonous ringing that died away over the fields. But the people came out from church. The women in waxed clogs, the peasants in new blouses, the little bare-headed children skipping along in front of them, all were going home. And till nightfall, five or six men, always the same, stayed playing at corks in front of the large door of the inn. The winter was severe. The windows every morning were covered with rime, and the light shining through them, dim as through ground-glass, sometimes did not change the whole day long. At four o'clock the lamp had to be lighted. On fine days she went down into the garden. The dew had left on the cabbages a silver lace with long transparent threads spreading from one to the other. No birds were to be heard; everything seemed asleep, the espalier covered with straw, and the vine, like a great sick serpent under the coping of the wall, along which, on drawing near, one saw the many-footed woodlice crawling. Under the spruce by the hedgerow, the curie in the three-cornered hat reading his breviary had lost his right foot, and the very plaster, scaling off with the frost, had left white scabs on his face. Then she went up again, shut her door, put on coals, and fainting with the heat of the hearth, felt her boredom weigh more heavily than ever. She would have liked to go down and talk to the servant, but a sense of shame restrained her. Every day at the same time the schoolmaster in a black skullcap opened the shutters of his house, and the rural policeman, wearing his sabre over his blouse, passed by. Night and morning the post-horses, three by three, crossed the street to water at the pond. From time to time the bell of a public house door rang, and when it was windy one could hear the little brass basins that served as signs for the hairdresser's shop creaking on their two rods. This shop had as decoration an old engraving of a fashion-plate stuck against a windowpane and the wax bust of a woman with yellow hair. He, too, the hairdresser, lamented his wasted calling, his hopeless future, and dreaming of some shop in a big town--at Rouen, for example, overlooking the harbour, near the theatre--he walked up and down all day from the mairie to the church, sombre and waiting for customers. When Madame Bovary looked up, she always saw him there, like a sentinel on duty, with his skullcap over his ears and his vest of lasting. Sometimes in the afternoon outside the window of her room, the head of a man appeared, a swarthy head with black whiskers, smiling slowly, with a broad, gentle smile that showed his white teeth. A waltz immediately began and on the organ, in a little drawing room, dancers the size of a finger, women in pink turbans, Tyrolians in jackets, monkeys in frock coats, gentlemen in knee-breeches, turned and turned between the sofas, the consoles, multiplied in the bits of looking glass held together at their corners by a piece of gold paper. The man turned his handle, looking to the right and left, and up at the windows. Now and again, while he shot out a long squirt of brown saliva against the milestone, with his knee raised his instrument, whose hard straps tired his shoulder; and now, doleful and drawling, or gay and hurried, the music escaped from the box, droning through a curtain of pink taffeta under a brass claw in arabesque. They were airs played in other places at the theatres, sung in drawing rooms, danced to at night under lighted lustres, echoes of the world that reached even to Emma. Endless sarabands ran through her head, and, like an Indian dancing girl on the flowers of a carpet, her thoughts leapt with the notes, swung from dream to dream, from sadness to sadness. When the man had caught some coppers in his cap, he drew down an old cover of blue cloth, hitched his organ on to his back, and went off with a heavy tread. She watched him going. But it was above all the meal-times that were unbearable to her, in this small room on the ground floor, with its smoking stove, its creaking door, the walls that sweated, the damp flags; all the bitterness in life seemed served up on her plate, and with smoke of the boiled beef there rose from her secret soul whiffs of sickliness. Charles was a slow eater; she played with a few nuts, or, leaning on her elbow, amused herself with drawing lines along the oilcloth table cover with the point of her knife. She now let everything in her household take care of itself, and Madame Bovary senior, when she came to spend part of Lent at Tostes, was much surprised at the change. She who was formerly so careful, so dainty, now passed whole days without dressing, wore grey cotton stockings, and burnt tallow candles. She kept saying they must be economical since they were not rich, adding that she was very contented, very happy, that Tostes pleased her very much, with other speeches that closed the mouth of her mother-in-law. Besides, Emma no longer seemed inclined to follow her advice; once even, Madame Bovary having thought fit to maintain that mistresses ought to keep an eye on the religion of their servants, she had answered with so angry a look and so cold a smile that the good woman did not interfere again. Emma was growing difficult, capricious. She ordered dishes for herself, then she did not touch them; one day drank only pure milk, the next cups of tea by the dozen. Often she persisted in not going out, then, stifling, threw open the windows and put on light dresses. After she had well scolded her servant she gave her presents or sent her out to see neighbours, just as she sometimes threw beggars all the silver in her purse, although she was by no means tender-hearted or easily accessible to the feelings of others, like most country-bred people, who always retain in their souls something of the horny hardness of the paternal hands. Towards the end of February old Rouault, in memory of his cure, himself brought his son-in-law a superb turkey, and stayed three days at Tostes. Charles being with his patients, Emma kept him company. He smoked in the room, spat on the firedogs, talked farming, calves, cows, poultry, and municipal council, so that when he left she closed the door on him with a feeling of satisfaction that surprised even herself. Moreover she no longer concealed her contempt for anything or anybody, and at times she set herself to express singular opinions, finding fault with that which others approved, and approving things perverse and immoral, all of which made her husband open his eyes widely. Would this misery last for ever? Would she never issue from it? Yet she was as good as all the women who were living happily. She had seen duchesses at Vaubyessard with clumsier waists and commoner ways, and she execrated the injustice of God. She leant her head against the walls to weep; she envied lives of stir; longed for masked balls, for violent pleasures, with all the wildness that she did not know, but that these must surely yield. She grew pale and suffered from palpitations of the heart. Charles prescribed valerian and camphor baths. Everything that was tried only seemed to irritate her the more. On certain days she chatted with feverish rapidity, and this over-excitement was suddenly followed by a state of torpor, in which she remained without speaking, without moving. What then revived her was pouring a bottle of eau-de-cologne over her arms. As she was constantly complaining about Tostes, Charles fancied that her illness was no doubt due to some local cause, and fixing on this idea, began to think seriously of setting up elsewhere. From that moment she drank vinegar, contracted a sharp little cough, and completely lost her appetite. It cost Charles much to give up Tostes after living there four years and "when he was beginning to get on there." Yet if it must be! He took her to Rouen to see his old master. It was a nervous complaint: change of air was needed. After looking about him on this side and on that, Charles learnt that in the Neufchatel arrondissement there was a considerable market town called Yonville-l'Abbaye, whose doctor, a Polish refugee, had decamped a week before. Then he wrote to the chemist of the place to ask the number of the population, the distance from the nearest doctor, what his predecessor had made a year, and so forth; and the answer being satisfactory, he made up his mind to move towards the spring, if Emma's health did not improve. One day when, in view of her departure, she was tidying a drawer, something pricked her finger. It was a wire of her wedding bouquet. The orange blossoms were yellow with dust and the silver bordered satin ribbons frayed at the edges. She threw it into the fire. It flared up more quickly than dry straw. Then it was, like a red bush in the cinders, slowly devoured. She watched it burn. The little pasteboard berries burst, the wire twisted, the gold lace melted; and the shriveled paper corollas, fluttering like black butterflies at the back of the stove, at last flew up the chimney. When they left Tostes at the month of March, Madame Bovary was pregnant. Part II

Part 1, Chapter 9

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-9

When Charles is out, Emma lovingly looks at the green silk cigar case and invents stories about its origins. She imagines that an adoring mistress gave it to the Viscount - she even imagines herself in the role of the mistress. Paris becomes a new obsession for Emma. She jealously looks at the fishmongers' carts on their way through the village, thinking about their journey to the capital city. She buys herself a map of Paris, and studies it endlessly, imagining herself there. In her passion for the metropolis, Emma attempts to cultivate herself by reading magazines about arts and culture. She learns all the details of fine Parisian life, and reads the novels of Honore de Balzac and George Sand . In these books, she finds more and more similarities between the Viscount of her imagination and the characters. To Emma, everything seems possible in Paris, a city of languid, beautifully-dressed women and extravagant, thrilling men. Everything else fades around her, and Emma lives completely in the fantastical world she constructs. Emma longs for luxurious boudoirs, lingering embraces, moonlit rendezvous. Instead, what she has is a number of awkward peasant servants in tattered clothes. To replace Nastasie, she hires a young girl, Felicite, who seems to be sweet but rusticated. With nothing else to do, Emma wanders around the house languidly, wearing a fancy dressing gown. Bored, lonely, and utterly discontented, she halfheartedly wishes both to die and to escape to Paris. Charles goes about his business, totally unaware of his wife's unhappiness. He's still his usual, dull self, perfectly happy and blissfully ignorant. He's just so pleased with everything Emma does, and by her city-like airs. She attempts to create some kind of false happiness through buying things; Charles goes along with it gamely. Everything looks great for Charles. His reputation as a doctor established, he generally does pretty well...that is, he doesn't kill anyone. He prescribes the same course of treatment to almost everyone: sedatives, the occasional emetic, footbath, or leeches, and on special occasions, he bleeds people or pulls teeth. He attempts to keep current with the latest medical news by subscribing to a professional journal, but it doesn't inspire him to any thrilling feats. Emma is fed up with all this. She wishes Charles had more ambition and intellectual oomph. She is more and more irritated by him with every passing day. Even when she straightens his clothes in an attempt to make him look more presentable, it's for her sake, not his. She continues to talk to Charles, however - her reasoning being that if she has to resort to talking to the dog, she might as well talk to her husband. Emma waits and waits, and grows more and more impatient with her unchanging life. She imagines a ship of dreams that will come and carry her away; unsurprisingly, it never does. Every day feels the same, and she's sure that God has doomed her to a monotonous fate. Disgruntled, Emma gives up on all of her pastimes - she stops playing the piano, abandons her sketchbook, and ignores her embroidery. She falls into a deep depression, and feels profoundly alone. She even wishes she could chat with Felicite, but her pride stops her. It's not just Emma's life that's dull and unchanging; she observes the townspeople doing the same boring things day after day. We get the feeling that Emma's not the only person who's unenthused about provincial life. A wandering peddler of some kind comes around on occasions, bringing with him a hurdy-gurdy . Emma listens to the waltzes and thinks of her brush with greatness at the ball. Meals are the worst. Emma feels as though she can't bear it any longer, as she regards the gross-sounding meals and watches her bovine husband slowly chew his cud. By the springtime, Emma has given up on everything, including taking care of the house. She doesn't even make the effort to maintain her personal appearance. Her mother-in-law arrives for a visit before Easter, and is shocked by the change; she's taken aback, and can't even muster up a critical comment. Emma actually succeeds in cowing the old Madame Bovary. Emma starts to exhibit some kooky behavior. She goes on weird diets, has violent mood swings, and is totally unpredictable. At the end of February, Monsieur Rouault comes for a visit and brings a huge turkey to Emma and Charles at Tostes to celebrate the anniversary of his broken leg . Emma spends most of the visit with him, and is surprisingly glad to see him go. He reminds her of her hick background, something for which she has a great amount of contempt. Actually, she's contemptuous of pretty much everyone and everything at this point, so much so that Charles is shocked by her behavior. All of this takes a toll on Emma's health, and Charles gets worried about her frailty. He prescribes some rather useless cures, and it makes her seem worse than ever. She demonstrates what we might call manic-depressive symptoms around this time. Emma complains and complains about Tostes, and Charles realizes that something about the town is making her unhappy. He ponders moving the little family elsewhere. Oddly, Emma starts drinking vinegar to lose weight . One of Charles's old teachers diagnoses her with a so-called "nervous malady" , and it's decided that they'll move away. Charles finds a slightly larger town called Yonville-l'Abbaye that needs a doctor, and decides to move by spring if Emma stays ill. While preparing for the big move, Emma discovers her bridal bouquet in a drawer. While this might be a sentimental moment for some other women, she is disgusted, and throws it on the fire. What else could Emma and Charles possibly need in their complicated lives? You got it: a baby. By the time they move away in March, Emma is definitely pregnant. You can bet her mood swings aren't getting any better.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/10.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_9_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 1

part 2, chapter 1

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-1", "summary": "Welcome to Emma and Charles's new home! Yonville-l'Abbaye, their new town, is a small step up from Tostes. It's a market town in the Neufchatel region of France, not too far from Rouen . The town is bordered by farmland, and it actually sounds fairly attractive. Flaubert, ever the party pooper, describes it as \"characterless,\" and claims that it makes the worst Neufchatel cheese in the whole district . Despite new improvements in roads and trade routes, Yonville is still really slow and old-fashioned. We can already tell that this doesn't bode well for Emma. The actual town is pretty simple; it has a nice house or two, a church and graveyard, some brandy distilleries and cider presses, and an inn. Most notably, it's also home to a very peculiar building: Monsieur Homais' Pharmacy. It sounds like a pretty exciting place, covered in signs advertising the pharmacist's products. Apparently that's all there is to see in Yonville. Our sense of dread increases. Emma is so not going to like this... The church's caretaker , Lestiboudois, is in the practice of planting crops right up to the cemetery, a rather sketchy thing, if you ask us. The priest claims half-jokingly that he's \"feeding on the dead\" - creepy! All in all, we get the picture - nothing ever changes in Yonville. It's not exactly the booming metropolis Emma dreams of. On the day of the Bovary's arrival, the innkeeper, Madame Lefrancois, is busy preparing everything for the coming week. She's all in a tizzy because she's got a lot of food to prepare, both for her regular boarders, and for Charles and Emma. As she's in the midst of preparations, Monsieur Homais pays her a little visit. He immediately appears to be quite an arrogant guy. Monsieur Homais and Madame Lefrancois have a somewhat aggressive conversation. They chat about town affairs, including a rival bar, and about the inn's boarders. Among them are an oddly dull man named Binet and some young man called Leon. Binet enters on cue, ready for his dinner. He seems like a normal guy, but is really, really boring. Monsieur Homais obviously isn't a huge fan. The town priest stops by to pick up his umbrella. He and Monsieur Homais clearly have some kind of antagonistic relationship , since Homais bursts out in a big anti-clerical rant after he leaves. Homais clearly regards himself as quite an intellectual. He's immoderately proud of himself. Finally, the Hirondelle pulls up with the Bovarys inside. The driver, Hivert, is immediately besieged by questions from the townspeople . Hivert explains the Hirondelle's tardiness: Emma's beloved greyhound, Djali, ran away and they had to stop to look for her. She was nowhere to be found. A local merchant, Monsieur Lheureux, who was along for the ride, attempts to console Emma by telling her that Djali will find her way home.", "analysis": ""}

Yonville-l'Abbaye (so called from an old Capuchin abbey of which not even the ruins remain) is a market-town twenty-four miles from Rouen, between the Abbeville and Beauvais roads, at the foot of a valley watered by the Rieule, a little river that runs into the Andelle after turning three water-mills near its mouth, where there are a few trout that the lads amuse themselves by fishing for on Sundays. We leave the highroad at La Boissiere and keep straight on to the top of the Leux hill, whence the valley is seen. The river that runs through it makes of it, as it were, two regions with distinct physiognomies--all on the left is pasture land, all of the right arable. The meadow stretches under a bulge of low hills to join at the back with the pasture land of the Bray country, while on the eastern side, the plain, gently rising, broadens out, showing as far as eye can follow its blond cornfields. The water, flowing by the grass, divides with a white line the colour of the roads and of the plains, and the country is like a great unfolded mantle with a green velvet cape bordered with a fringe of silver. Before us, on the verge of the horizon, lie the oaks of the forest of Argueil, with the steeps of the Saint-Jean hills scarred from top to bottom with red irregular lines; they are rain tracks, and these brick-tones standing out in narrow streaks against the grey colour of the mountain are due to the quantity of iron springs that flow beyond in the neighboring country. Here we are on the confines of Normandy, Picardy, and the Ile-de-France, a bastard land whose language is without accent and its landscape is without character. It is there that they make the worst Neufchatel cheeses of all the arrondissement; and, on the other hand, farming is costly because so much manure is needed to enrich this friable soil full of sand and flints. Up to 1835 there was no practicable road for getting to Yonville, but about this time a cross-road was made which joins that of Abbeville to that of Amiens, and is occasionally used by the Rouen wagoners on their way to Flanders. Yonville-l'Abbaye has remained stationary in spite of its "new outlet." Instead of improving the soil, they persist in keeping up the pasture lands, however depreciated they may be in value, and the lazy borough, growing away from the plain, has naturally spread riverwards. It is seem from afar sprawling along the banks like a cowherd taking a siesta by the water-side. At the foot of the hill beyond the bridge begins a roadway, planted with young aspens, that leads in a straight line to the first houses in the place. These, fenced in by hedges, are in the middle of courtyards full of straggling buildings, wine-presses, cart-sheds and distilleries scattered under thick trees, with ladders, poles, or scythes hung on to the branches. The thatched roofs, like fur caps drawn over eyes, reach down over about a third of the low windows, whose coarse convex glasses have knots in the middle like the bottoms of bottles. Against the plaster wall diagonally crossed by black joists, a meagre pear-tree sometimes leans and the ground-floors have at their door a small swing-gate to keep out the chicks that come pilfering crumbs of bread steeped in cider on the threshold. But the courtyards grow narrower, the houses closer together, and the fences disappear; a bundle of ferns swings under a window from the end of a broomstick; there is a blacksmith's forge and then a wheelwright's, with two or three new carts outside that partly block the way. Then across an open space appears a white house beyond a grass mound ornamented by a Cupid, his finger on his lips; two brass vases are at each end of a flight of steps; scutcheons* blaze upon the door. It is the notary's house, and the finest in the place. *The panonceaux that have to be hung over the doors of notaries. The Church is on the other side of the street, twenty paces farther down, at the entrance of the square. The little cemetery that surrounds it, closed in by a wall breast high, is so full of graves that the old stones, level with the ground, form a continuous pavement, on which the grass of itself has marked out regular green squares. The church was rebuilt during the last years of the reign of Charles X. The wooden roof is beginning to rot from the top, and here and there has black hollows in its blue colour. Over the door, where the organ should be, is a loft for the men, with a spiral staircase that reverberates under their wooden shoes. The daylight coming through the plain glass windows falls obliquely upon the pews ranged along the walls, which are adorned here and there with a straw mat bearing beneath it the words in large letters, "Mr. So-and-so's pew." Farther on, at a spot where the building narrows, the confessional forms a pendant to a statuette of the Virgin, clothed in a satin robe, coifed with a tulle veil sprinkled with silver stars, and with red cheeks, like an idol of the Sandwich Islands; and, finally, a copy of the "Holy Family, presented by the Minister of the Interior," overlooking the high altar, between four candlesticks, closes in the perspective. The choir stalls, of deal wood, have been left unpainted. The market, that is to say, a tiled roof supported by some twenty posts, occupies of itself about half the public square of Yonville. The town hall, constructed "from the designs of a Paris architect," is a sort of Greek temple that forms the corner next to the chemist's shop. On the ground-floor are three Ionic columns and on the first floor a semicircular gallery, while the dome that crowns it is occupied by a Gallic cock, resting one foot upon the "Charte" and holding in the other the scales of Justice. But that which most attracts the eye is opposite the Lion d'Or inn, the chemist's shop of Monsieur Homais. In the evening especially its argand lamp is lit up and the red and green jars that embellish his shop-front throw far across the street their two streams of colour; then across them as if in Bengal lights is seen the shadow of the chemist leaning over his desk. His house from top to bottom is placarded with inscriptions written in large hand, round hand, printed hand: "Vichy, Seltzer, Barege waters, blood purifiers, Raspail patent medicine, Arabian racahout, Darcet lozenges, Regnault paste, trusses, baths, hygienic chocolate," etc. And the signboard, which takes up all the breadth of the shop, bears in gold letters, "Homais, Chemist." Then at the back of the shop, behind the great scales fixed to the counter, the word "Laboratory" appears on a scroll above a glass door, which about half-way up once more repeats "Homais" in gold letters on a black ground. Beyond this there is nothing to see at Yonville. The street (the only one) a gunshot in length and flanked by a few shops on either side stops short at the turn of the highroad. If it is left on the right hand and the foot of the Saint-Jean hills followed the cemetery is soon reached. At the time of the cholera, in order to enlarge this, a piece of wall was pulled down, and three acres of land by its side purchased; but all the new portion is almost tenantless; the tombs, as heretofore, continue to crowd together towards the gate. The keeper, who is at once gravedigger and church beadle (thus making a double profit out of the parish corpses), has taken advantage of the unused plot of ground to plant potatoes there. From year to year, however, his small field grows smaller, and when there is an epidemic, he does not know whether to rejoice at the deaths or regret the burials. "You live on the dead, Lestiboudois!" the curie at last said to him one day. This grim remark made him reflect; it checked him for some time; but to this day he carries on the cultivation of his little tubers, and even maintains stoutly that they grow naturally. Since the events about to be narrated, nothing in fact has changed at Yonville. The tin tricolour flag still swings at the top of the church-steeple; the two chintz streamers still flutter in the wind from the linen-draper's; the chemist's fetuses, like lumps of white amadou, rot more and more in their turbid alcohol, and above the big door of the inn the old golden lion, faded by rain, still shows passers-by its poodle mane. On the evening when the Bovarys were to arrive at Yonville, Widow Lefrancois, the landlady of this inn, was so very busy that she sweated great drops as she moved her saucepans. To-morrow was market-day. The meat had to be cut beforehand, the fowls drawn, the soup and coffee made. Moreover, she had the boarders' meal to see to, and that of the doctor, his wife, and their servant; the billiard-room was echoing with bursts of laughter; three millers in a small parlour were calling for brandy; the wood was blazing, the brazen pan was hissing, and on the long kitchen table, amid the quarters of raw mutton, rose piles of plates that rattled with the shaking of the block on which spinach was being chopped. From the poultry-yard was heard the screaming of the fowls whom the servant was chasing in order to wring their necks. A man slightly marked with small-pox, in green leather slippers, and wearing a velvet cap with a gold tassel, was warming his back at the chimney. His face expressed nothing but self-satisfaction, and he appeared to take life as calmly as the goldfinch suspended over his head in its wicker cage: this was the chemist. "Artemise!" shouted the landlady, "chop some wood, fill the water bottles, bring some brandy, look sharp! If only I knew what dessert to offer the guests you are expecting! Good heavens! Those furniture-movers are beginning their racket in the billiard-room again; and their van has been left before the front door! The 'Hirondelle' might run into it when it draws up. Call Polyte and tell him to put it up. Only think, Monsieur Homais, that since morning they have had about fifteen games, and drunk eight jars of cider! Why, they'll tear my cloth for me," she went on, looking at them from a distance, her strainer in her hand. "That wouldn't be much of a loss," replied Monsieur Homais. "You would buy another." "Another billiard-table!" exclaimed the widow. "Since that one is coming to pieces, Madame Lefrancois. I tell you again you are doing yourself harm, much harm! And besides, players now want narrow pockets and heavy cues. Hazards aren't played now; everything is changed! One must keep pace with the times! Just look at Tellier!" The hostess reddened with vexation. The chemist went on-- "You may say what you like; his table is better than yours; and if one were to think, for example, of getting up a patriotic pool for Poland or the sufferers from the Lyons floods--" "It isn't beggars like him that'll frighten us," interrupted the landlady, shrugging her fat shoulders. "Come, come, Monsieur Homais; as long as the 'Lion d'Or' exists people will come to it. We've feathered our nest; while one of these days you'll find the 'Cafe Francais' closed with a big placard on the shutters. Change my billiard-table!" she went on, speaking to herself, "the table that comes in so handy for folding the washing, and on which, in the hunting season, I have slept six visitors! But that dawdler, Hivert, doesn't come!" "Are you waiting for him for your gentlemen's dinner?" "Wait for him! And what about Monsieur Binet? As the clock strikes six you'll see him come in, for he hasn't his equal under the sun for punctuality. He must always have his seat in the small parlour. He'd rather die than dine anywhere else. And so squeamish as he is, and so particular about the cider! Not like Monsieur Leon; he sometimes comes at seven, or even half-past, and he doesn't so much as look at what he eats. Such a nice young man! Never speaks a rough word!" "Well, you see, there's a great difference between an educated man and an old carabineer who is now a tax-collector." Six o'clock struck. Binet came in. He wore a blue frock-coat falling in a straight line round his thin body, and his leather cap, with its lappets knotted over the top of his head with string, showed under the turned-up peak a bald forehead, flattened by the constant wearing of a helmet. He wore a black cloth waistcoat, a hair collar, grey trousers, and, all the year round, well-blacked boots, that had two parallel swellings due to the sticking out of his big-toes. Not a hair stood out from the regular line of fair whiskers, which, encircling his jaws, framed, after the fashion of a garden border, his long, wan face, whose eyes were small and the nose hooked. Clever at all games of cards, a good hunter, and writing a fine hand, he had at home a lathe, and amused himself by turning napkin rings, with which he filled up his house, with the jealousy of an artist and the egotism of a bourgeois. He went to the small parlour, but the three millers had to be got out first, and during the whole time necessary for laying the cloth, Binet remained silent in his place near the stove. Then he shut the door and took off his cap in his usual way. "It isn't with saying civil things that he'll wear out his tongue," said the chemist, as soon as he was along with the landlady. "He never talks more," she replied. "Last week two travelers in the cloth line were here--such clever chaps who told such jokes in the evening, that I fairly cried with laughing; and he stood there like a dab fish and never said a word." "Yes," observed the chemist; "no imagination, no sallies, nothing that makes the society-man." "Yet they say he has parts," objected the landlady. "Parts!" replied Monsieur Homais; "he, parts! In his own line it is possible," he added in a calmer tone. And he went on-- "Ah! That a merchant, who has large connections, a jurisconsult, a doctor, a chemist, should be thus absent-minded, that they should become whimsical or even peevish, I can understand; such cases are cited in history. But at least it is because they are thinking of something. Myself, for example, how often has it happened to me to look on the bureau for my pen to write a label, and to find, after all, that I had put it behind my ear!" Madame Lefrancois just then went to the door to see if the "Hirondelle" were not coming. She started. A man dressed in black suddenly came into the kitchen. By the last gleam of the twilight one could see that his face was rubicund and his form athletic. "What can I do for you, Monsieur le Curie?" asked the landlady, as she reached down from the chimney one of the copper candlesticks placed with their candles in a row. "Will you take something? A thimbleful of Cassis*? A glass of wine?" *Black currant liqueur. The priest declined very politely. He had come for his umbrella, that he had forgotten the other day at the Ernemont convent, and after asking Madame Lefrancois to have it sent to him at the presbytery in the evening, he left for the church, from which the Angelus was ringing. When the chemist no longer heard the noise of his boots along the square, he thought the priest's behaviour just now very unbecoming. This refusal to take any refreshment seemed to him the most odious hypocrisy; all priests tippled on the sly, and were trying to bring back the days of the tithe. The landlady took up the defence of her curie. "Besides, he could double up four men like you over his knee. Last year he helped our people to bring in the straw; he carried as many as six trusses at once, he is so strong." "Bravo!" said the chemist. "Now just send your daughters to confess to fellows which such a temperament! I, if I were the Government, I'd have the priests bled once a month. Yes, Madame Lefrancois, every month--a good phlebotomy, in the interests of the police and morals." "Be quiet, Monsieur Homais. You are an infidel; you've no religion." The chemist answered: "I have a religion, my religion, and I even have more than all these others with their mummeries and their juggling. I adore God, on the contrary. I believe in the Supreme Being, in a Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don't need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one can know Him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the eternal vault like the ancients. My God! Mine is the God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, and of Beranger! I am for the profession of faith of the 'Savoyard Vicar,' and the immortal principles of '89! And I can't admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws, which prove to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in turpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them." He ceased, looking round for an audience, for in his bubbling over the chemist had for a moment fancied himself in the midst of the town council. But the landlady no longer heeded him; she was listening to a distant rolling. One could distinguish the noise of a carriage mingled with the clattering of loose horseshoes that beat against the ground, and at last the "Hirondelle" stopped at the door. It was a yellow box on two large wheels, that, reaching to the tilt, prevented travelers from seeing the road and dirtied their shoulders. The small panes of the narrow windows rattled in their sashes when the coach was closed, and retained here and there patches of mud amid the old layers of dust, that not even storms of rain had altogether washed away. It was drawn by three horses, the first a leader, and when it came down-hill its bottom jolted against the ground. Some of the inhabitants of Yonville came out into the square; they all spoke at once, asking for news, for explanations, for hampers. Hivert did not know whom to answer. It was he who did the errands of the place in town. He went to the shops and brought back rolls of leather for the shoemaker, old iron for the farrier, a barrel of herrings for his mistress, caps from the milliner's, locks from the hair-dresser's and all along the road on his return journey he distributed his parcels, which he threw, standing upright on his seat and shouting at the top of his voice, over the enclosures of the yards. An accident had delayed him. Madame Bovary's greyhound had run across the field. They had whistled for him a quarter of an hour; Hivert had even gone back a mile and a half expecting every moment to catch sight of her; but it had been necessary to go on. Emma had wept, grown angry; she had accused Charles of this misfortune. Monsieur Lheureux, a draper, who happened to be in the coach with her, had tried to console her by a number of examples of lost dogs recognizing their masters at the end of long years. One, he said had been told of, who had come back to Paris from Constantinople. Another had gone one hundred and fifty miles in a straight line, and swum four rivers; and his own father had possessed a poodle, which, after twelve years of absence, had all of a sudden jumped on his back in the street as he was going to dine in town.

Part 2, Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-1

Welcome to Emma and Charles's new home! Yonville-l'Abbaye, their new town, is a small step up from Tostes. It's a market town in the Neufchatel region of France, not too far from Rouen . The town is bordered by farmland, and it actually sounds fairly attractive. Flaubert, ever the party pooper, describes it as "characterless," and claims that it makes the worst Neufchatel cheese in the whole district . Despite new improvements in roads and trade routes, Yonville is still really slow and old-fashioned. We can already tell that this doesn't bode well for Emma. The actual town is pretty simple; it has a nice house or two, a church and graveyard, some brandy distilleries and cider presses, and an inn. Most notably, it's also home to a very peculiar building: Monsieur Homais' Pharmacy. It sounds like a pretty exciting place, covered in signs advertising the pharmacist's products. Apparently that's all there is to see in Yonville. Our sense of dread increases. Emma is so not going to like this... The church's caretaker , Lestiboudois, is in the practice of planting crops right up to the cemetery, a rather sketchy thing, if you ask us. The priest claims half-jokingly that he's "feeding on the dead" - creepy! All in all, we get the picture - nothing ever changes in Yonville. It's not exactly the booming metropolis Emma dreams of. On the day of the Bovary's arrival, the innkeeper, Madame Lefrancois, is busy preparing everything for the coming week. She's all in a tizzy because she's got a lot of food to prepare, both for her regular boarders, and for Charles and Emma. As she's in the midst of preparations, Monsieur Homais pays her a little visit. He immediately appears to be quite an arrogant guy. Monsieur Homais and Madame Lefrancois have a somewhat aggressive conversation. They chat about town affairs, including a rival bar, and about the inn's boarders. Among them are an oddly dull man named Binet and some young man called Leon. Binet enters on cue, ready for his dinner. He seems like a normal guy, but is really, really boring. Monsieur Homais obviously isn't a huge fan. The town priest stops by to pick up his umbrella. He and Monsieur Homais clearly have some kind of antagonistic relationship , since Homais bursts out in a big anti-clerical rant after he leaves. Homais clearly regards himself as quite an intellectual. He's immoderately proud of himself. Finally, the Hirondelle pulls up with the Bovarys inside. The driver, Hivert, is immediately besieged by questions from the townspeople . Hivert explains the Hirondelle's tardiness: Emma's beloved greyhound, Djali, ran away and they had to stop to look for her. She was nowhere to be found. A local merchant, Monsieur Lheureux, who was along for the ride, attempts to console Emma by telling her that Djali will find her way home.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/11.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_10_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 2

part 2, chapter 2

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-2", "summary": "Emma, Charles, Felicite, and Monsieur Lheureux get out of the Hirondelle for the Bovarys' first glimpse of Yonville. Monsieur Homais is on hand to introduce himself. Emma checks out the inn. Meanwhile, a blond young man checks her out. Who is this guy, you may ask? Flaubert tells us. It turns out that this is the Monsieur Leon mentioned earlier. He's a clerk who works for the notary in town. He, like Emma, is a bored young person trapped in a town full of aging, dull people. The dinner party, comprised of Emma, Charles, Homais, and Leon, make polite chitter chatter about their trip, and about the town. Homais goes off on a long spiel about Yonville. We realize that his primary mode of communication is probably by long spiel. Leon and Emma are clearly on the same wavelength - one that nobody else is on. They seem to have similar ideas and interests. It turns out that Leon is an amateur musician, like Emma. Monsieur Homais, with whom the young clerk lives, claims that Leon is a beautiful singer. Emma is intrigued. Emma and Leon have a little moment, in which he reveals that he loves German music, \"the kind that makes you dream\" - what an Emma-like thing to say! He also tells her he's going away to Paris to study to be lawyer. Homais and Charles have obviously been conversing on their own. Homais attempts to include everyone in the conversation; Emma and Leon aren't interested, and soon get caught up in their private conversation again. Like Emma, Leon is a big reader, and it seems like they have pretty similar thoughts about literature, as well. Homais tries to break into their conversation again, offering the use of his personal library to Emma. Emma and Leon are sitting so close that he has his feet on one of the rungs of her chair. After dinner, the guests all go their separate ways. Emma and Charles go into their new house for the first time. It doesn't sound too thrilling. We are unsurprised. Emma philosophically muses that, since her life so far hasn't been too hot, it has to get better.", "analysis": ""}

Emma got out first, then Felicite, Monsieur Lheureux, and a nurse, and they had to wake up Charles in his corner, where he had slept soundly since night set in. Homais introduced himself; he offered his homages to madame and his respects to monsieur; said he was charmed to have been able to render them some slight service, and added with a cordial air that he had ventured to invite himself, his wife being away. When Madame Bovary was in the kitchen she went up to the chimney. With the tips of her fingers she caught her dress at the knee, and having thus pulled it up to her ankle, held out her foot in its black boot to the fire above the revolving leg of mutton. The flame lit up the whole of her, penetrating with a crude light the woof of her gowns, the fine pores of her fair skin, and even her eyelids, which she blinked now and again. A great red glow passed over her with the blowing of the wind through the half-open door. On the other side of the chimney a young man with fair hair watched her silently. As he was a good deal bored at Yonville, where he was a clerk at the notary's, Monsieur Guillaumin, Monsieur Leon Dupuis (it was he who was the second habitue of the "Lion d'Or") frequently put back his dinner-hour in hope that some traveler might come to the inn, with whom he could chat in the evening. On the days when his work was done early, he had, for want of something else to do, to come punctually, and endure from soup to cheese a tete-a-tete with Binet. It was therefore with delight that he accepted the landlady's suggestion that he should dine in company with the newcomers, and they passed into the large parlour where Madame Lefrancois, for the purpose of showing off, had had the table laid for four. Homais asked to be allowed to keep on his skull-cap, for fear of coryza; then, turning to his neighbour-- "Madame is no doubt a little fatigued; one gets jolted so abominably in our 'Hirondelle.'" "That is true," replied Emma; "but moving about always amuses me. I like change of place." "It is so tedious," sighed the clerk, "to be always riveted to the same places." "If you were like me," said Charles, "constantly obliged to be in the saddle"-- "But," Leon went on, addressing himself to Madame Bovary, "nothing, it seems to me, is more pleasant--when one can," he added. "Moreover," said the druggist, "the practice of medicine is not very hard work in our part of the world, for the state of our roads allows us the use of gigs, and generally, as the farmers are prosperous, they pay pretty well. We have, medically speaking, besides the ordinary cases of enteritis, bronchitis, bilious affections, etc., now and then a few intermittent fevers at harvest-time; but on the whole, little of a serious nature, nothing special to note, unless it be a great deal of scrofula, due, no doubt, to the deplorable hygienic conditions of our peasant dwellings. Ah! you will find many prejudices to combat, Monsieur Bovary, much obstinacy of routine, with which all the efforts of your science will daily come into collision; for people still have recourse to novenas, to relics, to the priest, rather than come straight to the doctor or the chemist. The climate, however, is not, truth to tell, bad, and we even have a few nonagenarians in our parish. The thermometer (I have made some observations) falls in winter to 4 degrees Centigrade at the outside, which gives us 24 degrees Reaumur as the maximum, or otherwise 54 degrees Fahrenheit (English scale), not more. And, as a matter of fact, we are sheltered from the north winds by the forest of Argueil on the one side, from the west winds by the St. Jean range on the other; and this heat, moreover, which, on account of the aqueous vapours given off by the river and the considerable number of cattle in the fields, which, as you know, exhale much ammonia, that is to say, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen (no, nitrogen and hydrogen alone), and which sucking up into itself the humus from the ground, mixing together all those different emanations, unites them into a stack, so to say, and combining with the electricity diffused through the atmosphere, when there is any, might in the long run, as in tropical countries, engender insalubrious miasmata--this heat, I say, finds itself perfectly tempered on the side whence it comes, or rather whence it should come--that is to say, the southern side--by the south-eastern winds, which, having cooled themselves passing over the Seine, reach us sometimes all at once like breezes from Russia." "At any rate, you have some walks in the neighbourhood?" continued Madame Bovary, speaking to the young man. "Oh, very few," he answered. "There is a place they call La Pature, on the top of the hill, on the edge of the forest. Sometimes, on Sundays, I go and stay there with a book, watching the sunset." "I think there is nothing so admirable as sunsets," she resumed; "but especially by the side of the sea." "Oh, I adore the sea!" said Monsieur Leon. "And then, does it not seem to you," continued Madame Bovary, "that the mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite, the ideal?" "It is the same with mountainous landscapes," continued Leon. "A cousin of mine who travelled in Switzerland last year told me that one could not picture to oneself the poetry of the lakes, the charm of the waterfalls, the gigantic effect of the glaciers. One sees pines of incredible size across torrents, cottages suspended over precipices, and, a thousand feet below one, whole valleys when the clouds open. Such spectacles must stir to enthusiasm, incline to prayer, to ecstasy; and I no longer marvel at that celebrated musician who, the better to inspire his imagination, was in the habit of playing the piano before some imposing site." "You play?" she asked. "No, but I am very fond of music," he replied. "Ah! don't you listen to him, Madame Bovary," interrupted Homais, bending over his plate. "That's sheer modesty. Why, my dear fellow, the other day in your room you were singing 'L'Ange Gardien' ravishingly. I heard you from the laboratory. You gave it like an actor." Leon, in fact, lodged at the chemist's where he had a small room on the second floor, overlooking the Place. He blushed at the compliment of his landlord, who had already turned to the doctor, and was enumerating to him, one after the other, all the principal inhabitants of Yonville. He was telling anecdotes, giving information; the fortune of the notary was not known exactly, and "there was the Tuvache household," who made a good deal of show. Emma continued, "And what music do you prefer?" "Oh, German music; that which makes you dream." "Have you been to the opera?" "Not yet; but I shall go next year, when I am living at Paris to finish reading for the bar." "As I had the honour of putting it to your husband," said the chemist, "with regard to this poor Yanoda who has run away, you will find yourself, thanks to his extravagance, in the possession of one of the most comfortable houses of Yonville. Its greatest convenience for a doctor is a door giving on the Walk, where one can go in and out unseen. Moreover, it contains everything that is agreeable in a household--a laundry, kitchen with offices, sitting-room, fruit-room, and so on. He was a gay dog, who didn't care what he spent. At the end of the garden, by the side of the water, he had an arbour built just for the purpose of drinking beer in summer; and if madame is fond of gardening she will be able--" "My wife doesn't care about it," said Charles; "although she has been advised to take exercise, she prefers always sitting in her room reading." "Like me," replied Leon. "And indeed, what is better than to sit by one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the window and the lamp is burning?" "What, indeed?" she said, fixing her large black eyes wide open upon him. "One thinks of nothing," he continued; "the hours slip by. Motionless we traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blending with the fiction, playing with the details, follows the outline of the adventures. It mingles with the characters, and it seems as if it were yourself palpitating beneath their costumes." "That is true! That is true?" she said. "Has it ever happened to you," Leon went on, "to come across some vague idea of one's own in a book, some dim image that comes back to you from afar, and as the completest expression of your own slightest sentiment?" "I have experienced it," she replied. "That is why," he said, "I especially love the poets. I think verse more tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily to tears." "Still in the long run it is tiring," continued Emma. "Now I, on the contrary, adore stories that rush breathlessly along, that frighten one. I detest commonplace heroes and moderate sentiments, such as there are in nature." "In fact," observed the clerk, "these works, not touching the heart, miss, it seems to me, the true end of art. It is so sweet, amid all the disenchantments of life, to be able to dwell in thought upon noble characters, pure affections, and pictures of happiness. For myself, living here far from the world, this is my one distraction; but Yonville affords so few resources." "Like Tostes, no doubt," replied Emma; "and so I always subscribed to a lending library." "If madame will do me the honour of making use of it", said the chemist, who had just caught the last words, "I have at her disposal a library composed of the best authors, Voltaire, Rousseau, Delille, Walter Scott, the 'Echo des Feuilletons'; and in addition I receive various periodicals, among them the 'Fanal de Rouen' daily, having the advantage to be its correspondent for the districts of Buchy, Forges, Neufchatel, Yonville, and vicinity." For two hours and a half they had been at table; for the servant Artemis, carelessly dragging her old list slippers over the flags, brought one plate after the other, forgot everything, and constantly left the door of the billiard-room half open, so that it beat against the wall with its hooks. Unconsciously, Leon, while talking, had placed his foot on one of the bars of the chair on which Madame Bovary was sitting. She wore a small blue silk necktie, that kept up like a ruff a gauffered cambric collar, and with the movements of her head the lower part of her face gently sunk into the linen or came out from it. Thus side by side, while Charles and the chemist chatted, they entered into one of those vague conversations where the hazard of all that is said brings you back to the fixed centre of a common sympathy. The Paris theatres, titles of novels, new quadrilles, and the world they did not know; Tostes, where she had lived, and Yonville, where they were; they examined all, talked of everything till to the end of dinner. When coffee was served Felicite went away to get ready the room in the new house, and the guests soon raised the siege. Madame Lefrancois was asleep near the cinders, while the stable-boy, lantern in hand, was waiting to show Monsieur and Madame Bovary the way home. Bits of straw stuck in his red hair, and he limped with his left leg. When he had taken in his other hand the cure's umbrella, they started. The town was asleep; the pillars of the market threw great shadows; the earth was all grey as on a summer's night. But as the doctor's house was only some fifty paces from the inn, they had to say good-night almost immediately, and the company dispersed. As soon as she entered the passage, Emma felt the cold of the plaster fall about her shoulders like damp linen. The walls were new and the wooden stairs creaked. In their bedroom, on the first floor, a whitish light passed through the curtainless windows. She could catch glimpses of tree tops, and beyond, the fields, half-drowned in the fog that lay reeking in the moonlight along the course of the river. In the middle of the room, pell-mell, were scattered drawers, bottles, curtain-rods, gilt poles, with mattresses on the chairs and basins on the ground--the two men who had brought the furniture had left everything about carelessly. This was the fourth time that she had slept in a strange place. The first was the day of her going to the convent; the second, of her arrival at Tostes; the third, at Vaubyessard; and this was the fourth. And each one had marked, as it were, the inauguration of a new phase in her life. She did not believe that things could present themselves in the same way in different places, and since the portion of her life lived had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be better.

Part 2, Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-2

Emma, Charles, Felicite, and Monsieur Lheureux get out of the Hirondelle for the Bovarys' first glimpse of Yonville. Monsieur Homais is on hand to introduce himself. Emma checks out the inn. Meanwhile, a blond young man checks her out. Who is this guy, you may ask? Flaubert tells us. It turns out that this is the Monsieur Leon mentioned earlier. He's a clerk who works for the notary in town. He, like Emma, is a bored young person trapped in a town full of aging, dull people. The dinner party, comprised of Emma, Charles, Homais, and Leon, make polite chitter chatter about their trip, and about the town. Homais goes off on a long spiel about Yonville. We realize that his primary mode of communication is probably by long spiel. Leon and Emma are clearly on the same wavelength - one that nobody else is on. They seem to have similar ideas and interests. It turns out that Leon is an amateur musician, like Emma. Monsieur Homais, with whom the young clerk lives, claims that Leon is a beautiful singer. Emma is intrigued. Emma and Leon have a little moment, in which he reveals that he loves German music, "the kind that makes you dream" - what an Emma-like thing to say! He also tells her he's going away to Paris to study to be lawyer. Homais and Charles have obviously been conversing on their own. Homais attempts to include everyone in the conversation; Emma and Leon aren't interested, and soon get caught up in their private conversation again. Like Emma, Leon is a big reader, and it seems like they have pretty similar thoughts about literature, as well. Homais tries to break into their conversation again, offering the use of his personal library to Emma. Emma and Leon are sitting so close that he has his feet on one of the rungs of her chair. After dinner, the guests all go their separate ways. Emma and Charles go into their new house for the first time. It doesn't sound too thrilling. We are unsurprised. Emma philosophically muses that, since her life so far hasn't been too hot, it has to get better.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/12.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_11_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 3

part 2, chapter 3

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-3", "summary": "The next morning, Emma sees Leon through her bedroom window; they bow to each other. Leon, hopeful that the Bovarys will turn up for dinner at the inn again, can't wait for six o'clock. However, dinnertime rolls around, and Emma is nowhere to be found. He's deeply disappointed. Apparently, Leon isn't exactly a lady's man. His conversation with Emma the previous night was the most intimate situation he's ever been in with a \"lady.\" Everyone in the town likes him for his many fine qualities, but he felt a different kind of connection with Emma. Homais turns out to be a very, very attentive neighbor. He gives Emma all kinds of assistance with the house, and is oh-so-friendly. However, he's not exactly Ned Flanders. It seems that his kindly guy-next-door act is a front; he'd been accused previously of illegally practicing medicine without any certification, and was threatened with legal action. A lot of townspeople, including the mayor, are out to get him, so he's careful to keep Charles on his side. Speaking of Charles, the poor guy isn't so happy. He doesn't have any patients yet, and spends most of his time hanging about the house. He's worried about money - the move from Tostes was expensive, and all the money that Emma brought with her to the marriage is gone. The only thing that cheers Charles up is the thought of Emma's pregnancy. He feels that his whole life is complete now that a baby is on the horizon. Emma, on the other hand, traversed a whole range of emotions, from astonished to bitter, before settling on indifferent. She decides that if she must have a baby, it should be a boy, so it can have the power to escape the rules that govern women. Instead, it's a girl. Emma passes out, presumably from disappointment, as well as the rigors of childbirth. Madame Homais and Madame Lefrancois rush in to see how things are going. Everyone is excited except Emma. Emma can't even think up a name for the poor kid. She has all kinds of romantic ideas about what she'd like to call the daughter . Homais has all kinds of crazy ideas, naturally, having named his children all kinds of crazy things. Emma eventually settles haphazardly on \"Berthe.\" Little Berthe is baptized. Her godfather is Homais, since Emma's dad couldn't make it for the birth, and her godmother is old Madame Bovary, who's visiting with her husband. Charles's father gets along pretty well with Emma, who's interested in his stories of travel in the army. Charles's mom is worried that her husband will be a bad influence upon Emma, and they peace out pretty quickly. One day, as Emma is going to visit the baby , she runs into Leon. She invites him to come with her, which causes quite the scandal among the gossips of the town. The wetnurse lives in an unsavory little cottage. Leon is thrown off by the image before him, of the beautiful lady in a fancy dress surrounded by squalor. The baby makes a spectacular entrance by promptly spitting up on Emma. The visitors head out. As they're leaving, Madame Rollet comes up and wheedles the promise of some brandy out of Emma. Emma and Leon head back to Yonville. They obviously have an intense connection already. When they get back to town, Emma heads home, while Leon keeps wandering, pondering his boredom and the dullness of the other people he knows in town. He has quite the crush on our young Madame Bovary.", "analysis": ""}

The next day, as she was getting up, she saw the clerk on the Place. She had on a dressing-gown. He looked up and bowed. She nodded quickly and reclosed the window. Leon waited all day for six o'clock in the evening to come, but on going to the inn, he found no one but Monsieur Binet, already at table. The dinner of the evening before had been a considerable event for him; he had never till then talked for two hours consecutively to a "lady." How then had he been able to explain, and in such language, the number of things that he could not have said so well before? He was usually shy, and maintained that reserve which partakes at once of modesty and dissimulation. At Yonville he was considered "well-bred." He listened to the arguments of the older people, and did not seem hot about politics--a remarkable thing for a young man. Then he had some accomplishments; he painted in water-colours, could read the key of G, and readily talked literature after dinner when he did not play cards. Monsieur Homais respected him for his education; Madame Homais liked him for his good-nature, for he often took the little Homais into the garden--little brats who were always dirty, very much spoilt, and somewhat lymphatic, like their mother. Besides the servant to look after them, they had Justin, the chemist's apprentice, a second cousin of Monsieur Homais, who had been taken into the house from charity, and who was useful at the same time as a servant. The druggist proved the best of neighbours. He gave Madame Bovary information as to the trades-people, sent expressly for his own cider merchant, tasted the drink himself, and saw that the casks were properly placed in the cellar; he explained how to set about getting in a supply of butter cheap, and made an arrangement with Lestiboudois, the sacristan, who, besides his sacerdotal and funeral functions, looked after the principal gardens at Yonville by the hour or the year, according to the taste of the customers. The need of looking after others was not the only thing that urged the chemist to such obsequious cordiality; there was a plan underneath it all. He had infringed the law of the 19th Ventose, year xi., article I, which forbade all persons not having a diploma to practise medicine; so that, after certain anonymous denunciations, Homais had been summoned to Rouen to see the procurer of the king in his own private room; the magistrate receiving him standing up, ermine on shoulder and cap on head. It was in the morning, before the court opened. In the corridors one heard the heavy boots of the gendarmes walking past, and like a far-off noise great locks that were shut. The druggist's ears tingled as if he were about to have an apoplectic stroke; he saw the depths of dungeons, his family in tears, his shop sold, all the jars dispersed; and he was obliged to enter a cafe and take a glass of rum and seltzer to recover his spirits. Little by little the memory of this reprimand grew fainter, and he continued, as heretofore, to give anodyne consultations in his back-parlour. But the mayor resented it, his colleagues were jealous, everything was to be feared; gaining over Monsieur Bovary by his attentions was to earn his gratitude, and prevent his speaking out later on, should he notice anything. So every morning Homais brought him "the paper," and often in the afternoon left his shop for a few moments to have a chat with the Doctor. Charles was dull: patients did not come. He remained seated for hours without speaking, went into his consulting room to sleep, or watched his wife sewing. Then for diversion he employed himself at home as a workman; he even tried to do up the attic with some paint which had been left behind by the painters. But money matters worried him. He had spent so much for repairs at Tostes, for madame's toilette, and for the moving, that the whole dowry, over three thousand crowns, had slipped away in two years. Then how many things had been spoilt or lost during their carriage from Tostes to Yonville, without counting the plaster cure, who falling out of the coach at an over-severe jolt, had been dashed into a thousand fragments on the pavements of Quincampoix! A pleasanter trouble came to distract him, namely, the pregnancy of his wife. As the time of her confinement approached he cherished her the more. It was another bond of the flesh establishing itself, and, as it were, a continued sentiment of a more complex union. When from afar he saw her languid walk, and her figure without stays turning softly on her hips; when opposite one another he looked at her at his ease, while she took tired poses in her armchair, then his happiness knew no bounds; he got up, embraced her, passed his hands over her face, called her little mamma, wanted to make her dance, and half-laughing, half-crying, uttered all kinds of caressing pleasantries that came into his head. The idea of having begotten a child delighted him. Now he wanted nothing. He knew human life from end to end, and he sat down to it with serenity. Emma at first felt a great astonishment; then was anxious to be delivered that she might know what it was to be a mother. But not being able to spend as much as she would have liked, to have a swing-bassinette with rose silk curtains, and embroidered caps, in a fit of bitterness she gave up looking after the trousseau, and ordered the whole of it from a village needlewoman, without choosing or discussing anything. Thus she did not amuse herself with those preparations that stimulate the tenderness of mothers, and so her affection was from the very outset, perhaps, to some extent attenuated. As Charles, however, spoke of the boy at every meal, she soon began to think of him more consecutively. She hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she would call him George; and this idea of having a male child was like an expected revenge for all her impotence in the past. A man, at least, is free; he may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste of the most far-away pleasures. But a woman is always hampered. At once inert and flexible, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and legal dependence. Her will, like the veil of her bonnet, held by a string, flutters in every wind; there is always some desire that draws her, some conventionality that restrains. She was confined on a Sunday at about six o'clock, as the sun was rising. "It is a girl!" said Charles. She turned her head away and fainted. Madame Homais, as well as Madame Lefrancois of the Lion d'Or, almost immediately came running in to embrace her. The chemist, as man of discretion, only offered a few provincial felicitations through the half-opened door. He wished to see the child and thought it well made. Whilst she was getting well she occupied herself much in seeking a name for her daughter. First she went over all those that have Italian endings, such as Clara, Louisa, Amanda, Atala; she liked Galsuinde pretty well, and Yseult or Leocadie still better. Charles wanted the child to be called after her mother; Emma opposed this. They ran over the calendar from end to end, and then consulted outsiders. "Monsieur Leon," said the chemist, "with whom I was talking about it the other day, wonders you do not chose Madeleine. It is very much in fashion just now." But Madame Bovary, senior, cried out loudly against this name of a sinner. As to Monsieur Homais, he had a preference for all those that recalled some great man, an illustrious fact, or a generous idea, and it was on this system that he had baptized his four children. Thus Napoleon represented glory and Franklin liberty; Irma was perhaps a concession to romanticism, but Athalie was a homage to the greatest masterpiece of the French stage. For his philosophical convictions did not interfere with his artistic tastes; in him the thinker did not stifle the man of sentiment; he could make distinctions, make allowances for imagination and fanaticism. In this tragedy, for example, he found fault with the ideas, but admired the style; he detested the conception, but applauded all the details, and loathed the characters while he grew enthusiastic over their dialogue. When he read the fine passages he was transported, but when he thought that mummers would get something out of them for their show, he was disconsolate; and in this confusion of sentiments in which he was involved he would have liked at once to crown Racine with both his hands and discuss with him for a good quarter of an hour. At last Emma remembered that at the chateau of Vaubyessard she had heard the Marchioness call a young lady Berthe; from that moment this name was chosen; and as old Rouault could not come, Monsieur Homais was requested to stand godfather. His gifts were all products from his establishment, to wit: six boxes of jujubes, a whole jar of racahout, three cakes of marshmallow paste, and six sticks of sugar-candy into the bargain that he had come across in a cupboard. On the evening of the ceremony there was a grand dinner; the cure was present; there was much excitement. Monsieur Homais towards liqueur-time began singing "Le Dieu des bonnes gens." Monsieur Leon sang a barcarolle, and Madame Bovary, senior, who was godmother, a romance of the time of the Empire; finally, M. Bovary, senior, insisted on having the child brought down, and began baptizing it with a glass of champagne that he poured over its head. This mockery of the first of the sacraments made the Abbe Bournisien angry; old Bovary replied by a quotation from "La Guerre des Dieux"; the cure wanted to leave; the ladies implored, Homais interfered; and they succeeded in making the priest sit down again, and he quietly went on with the half-finished coffee in his saucer. Monsieur Bovary, senior, stayed at Yonville a month, dazzling the natives by a superb policeman's cap with silver tassels that he wore in the morning when he smoked his pipe in the square. Being also in the habit of drinking a good deal of brandy, he often sent the servant to the Lion d'Or to buy him a bottle, which was put down to his son's account, and to perfume his handkerchiefs he used up his daughter-in-law's whole supply of eau-de-cologne. The latter did not at all dislike his company. He had knocked about the world, he talked about Berlin, Vienna, and Strasbourg, of his soldier times, of the mistresses he had had, the grand luncheons of which he had partaken; then he was amiable, and sometimes even, either on the stairs, or in the garden, would seize hold of her waist, crying, "Charles, look out for yourself." Then Madame Bovary, senior, became alarmed for her son's happiness, and fearing that her husband might in the long-run have an immoral influence upon the ideas of the young woman, took care to hurry their departure. Perhaps she had more serious reasons for uneasiness. Monsieur Bovary was not the man to respect anything. One day Emma was suddenly seized with the desire to see her little girl, who had been put to nurse with the carpenter's wife, and, without looking at the calendar to see whether the six weeks of the Virgin were yet passed, she set out for the Rollets' house, situated at the extreme end of the village, between the highroad and the fields. It was mid-day, the shutters of the houses were closed and the slate roofs that glittered beneath the fierce light of the blue sky seemed to strike sparks from the crest of the gables. A heavy wind was blowing; Emma felt weak as she walked; the stones of the pavement hurt her; she was doubtful whether she would not go home again, or go in somewhere to rest. At this moment Monsieur Leon came out from a neighbouring door with a bundle of papers under his arm. He came to greet her, and stood in the shade in front of the Lheureux's shop under the projecting grey awning. Madame Bovary said she was going to see her baby, but that she was beginning to grow tired. "If--" said Leon, not daring to go on. "Have you any business to attend to?" she asked. And on the clerk's answer, she begged him to accompany her. That same evening this was known in Yonville, and Madame Tuvache, the mayor's wife, declared in the presence of her servant that "Madame Bovary was compromising herself." To get to the nurse's it was necessary to turn to the left on leaving the street, as if making for the cemetery, and to follow between little houses and yards a small path bordered with privet hedges. They were in bloom, and so were the speedwells, eglantines, thistles, and the sweetbriar that sprang up from the thickets. Through openings in the hedges one could see into the huts, some pigs on a dung-heap, or tethered cows rubbing their horns against the trunk of trees. The two, side by side walked slowly, she leaning upon him, and he restraining his pace, which he regulated by hers; in front of them a swarm of midges fluttered, buzzing in the warm air. They recognized the house by an old walnut-tree which shaded it. Low and covered with brown tiles, there hung outside it, beneath the dormer-window of the garret, a string of onions. Faggots upright against a thorn fence surrounded a bed of lettuce, a few square feet of lavender, and sweet peas strung on sticks. Dirty water was running here and there on the grass, and all round were several indefinite rags, knitted stockings, a red calico jacket, and a large sheet of coarse linen spread over the hedge. At the noise of the gate the nurse appeared with a baby she was suckling on one arm. With her other hand she was pulling along a poor puny little fellow, his face covered with scrofula, the son of a Rouen hosier, whom his parents, too taken up with their business, left in the country. "Go in," she said; "your little one is there asleep." The room on the ground-floor, the only one in the dwelling, had at its farther end, against the wall, a large bed without curtains, while a kneading-trough took up the side by the window, one pane of which was mended with a piece of blue paper. In the corner behind the door, shining hob-nailed shoes stood in a row under the slab of the washstand, near a bottle of oil with a feather stuck in its mouth; a Matthieu Laensberg lay on the dusty mantelpiece amid gunflints, candle-ends, and bits of amadou. Finally, the last luxury in the apartment was a "Fame" blowing her trumpets, a picture cut out, no doubt, from some perfumer's prospectus and nailed to the wall with six wooden shoe-pegs. Emma's child was asleep in a wicker-cradle. She took it up in the wrapping that enveloped it and began singing softly as she rocked herself to and fro. Leon walked up and down the room; it seemed strange to him to see this beautiful woman in her nankeen dress in the midst of all this poverty. Madam Bovary reddened; he turned away, thinking perhaps there had been an impertinent look in his eyes. Then she put back the little girl, who had just been sick over her collar. The nurse at once came to dry her, protesting that it wouldn't show. "She gives me other doses," she said: "I am always a-washing of her. If you would have the goodness to order Camus, the grocer, to let me have a little soap, it would really be more convenient for you, as I needn't trouble you then." "Very well! very well!" said Emma. "Good morning, Madame Rollet," and she went out, wiping her shoes at the door. The good woman accompanied her to the end of the garden, talking all the time of the trouble she had getting up of nights. "I'm that worn out sometimes as I drop asleep on my chair. I'm sure you might at least give me just a pound of ground coffee; that'd last me a month, and I'd take it of a morning with some milk." After having submitted to her thanks, Madam Bovary left. She had gone a little way down the path when, at the sound of wooden shoes, she turned round. It was the nurse. "What is it?" Then the peasant woman, taking her aside behind an elm tree, began talking to her of her husband, who with his trade and six francs a year that the captain-- "Oh, be quick!" said Emma. "Well," the nurse went on, heaving sighs between each word, "I'm afraid he'll be put out seeing me have coffee alone, you know men--" "But you are to have some," Emma repeated; "I will give you some. You bother me!" "Oh, dear! my poor, dear lady! you see in consequence of his wounds he has terrible cramps in the chest. He even says that cider weakens him." "Do make haste, Mere Rollet!" "Well," the latter continued, making a curtsey, "if it weren't asking too much," and she curtsied once more, "if you would"--and her eyes begged--"a jar of brandy," she said at last, "and I'd rub your little one's feet with it; they're as tender as one's tongue." Once rid of the nurse, Emma again took Monsieur Leon's arm. She walked fast for some time, then more slowly, and looking straight in front of her, her eyes rested on the shoulder of the young man, whose frock-coat had a black-velvety collar. His brown hair fell over it, straight and carefully arranged. She noticed his nails which were longer than one wore them at Yonville. It was one of the clerk's chief occupations to trim them, and for this purpose he kept a special knife in his writing desk. They returned to Yonville by the water-side. In the warm season the bank, wider than at other times, showed to their foot the garden walls whence a few steps led to the river. It flowed noiselessly, swift, and cold to the eye; long, thin grasses huddled together in it as the current drove them, and spread themselves upon the limpid water like streaming hair; sometimes at the tip of the reeds or on the leaf of a water-lily an insect with fine legs crawled or rested. The sun pierced with a ray the small blue bubbles of the waves that, breaking, followed each other; branchless old willows mirrored their grey backs in the water; beyond, all around, the meadows seemed empty. It was the dinner-hour at the farms, and the young woman and her companion heard nothing as they walked but the fall of their steps on the earth of the path, the words they spoke, and the sound of Emma's dress rustling round her. The walls of the gardens with pieces of bottle on their coping were hot as the glass windows of a conservatory. Wallflowers had sprung up between the bricks, and with the tip of her open sunshade Madame Bovary, as she passed, made some of their faded flowers crumble into a yellow dust, or a spray of overhanging honeysuckle and clematis caught in its fringe and dangled for a moment over the silk. They were talking of a troupe of Spanish dancers who were expected shortly at the Rouen theatre. "Are you going?" she asked. "If I can," he answered. Had they nothing else to say to one another? Yet their eyes were full of more serious speech, and while they forced themselves to find trivial phrases, they felt the same languor stealing over them both. It was the whisper of the soul, deep, continuous, dominating that of their voices. Surprised with wonder at this strange sweetness, they did not think of speaking of the sensation or of seeking its cause. Coming joys, like tropical shores, throw over the immensity before them their inborn softness, an odorous wind, and we are lulled by this intoxication without a thought of the horizon that we do not even know. In one place the ground had been trodden down by the cattle; they had to step on large green stones put here and there in the mud. She often stopped a moment to look where to place her foot, and tottering on a stone that shook, her arms outspread, her form bent forward with a look of indecision, she would laugh, afraid of falling into the puddles of water. When they arrived in front of her garden, Madame Bovary opened the little gate, ran up the steps and disappeared. Leon returned to his office. His chief was away; he just glanced at the briefs, then cut himself a pen, and at last took up his hat and went out. He went to La Pature at the top of the Argueil hills at the beginning of the forest; he threw himself upon the ground under the pines and watched the sky through his fingers. "How bored I am!" he said to himself, "how bored I am!" He thought he was to be pitied for living in this village, with Homais for a friend and Monsieru Guillaumin for master. The latter, entirely absorbed by his business, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles and red whiskers over a white cravat, understood nothing of mental refinements, although he affected a stiff English manner, which in the beginning had impressed the clerk. As to the chemist's spouse, she was the best wife in Normandy, gentle as a sheep, loving her children, her father, her mother, her cousins, weeping for other's woes, letting everything go in her household, and detesting corsets; but so slow of movement, such a bore to listen to, so common in appearance, and of such restricted conversation, that although she was thirty, he only twenty, although they slept in rooms next each other and he spoke to her daily, he never thought that she might be a woman for another, or that she possessed anything else of her sex than the gown. And what else was there? Binet, a few shopkeepers, two or three publicans, the cure, and finally, Monsieur Tuvache, the mayor, with his two sons, rich, crabbed, obtuse persons, who farmed their own lands and had feasts among themselves, bigoted to boot, and quite unbearable companions. But from the general background of all these human faces Emma's stood out isolated and yet farthest off; for between her and him he seemed to see a vague abyss. In the beginning he had called on her several times along with the druggist. Charles had not appeared particularly anxious to see him again, and Leon did not know what to do between his fear of being indiscreet and the desire for an intimacy that seemed almost impossible.

Part 2, Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-3

The next morning, Emma sees Leon through her bedroom window; they bow to each other. Leon, hopeful that the Bovarys will turn up for dinner at the inn again, can't wait for six o'clock. However, dinnertime rolls around, and Emma is nowhere to be found. He's deeply disappointed. Apparently, Leon isn't exactly a lady's man. His conversation with Emma the previous night was the most intimate situation he's ever been in with a "lady." Everyone in the town likes him for his many fine qualities, but he felt a different kind of connection with Emma. Homais turns out to be a very, very attentive neighbor. He gives Emma all kinds of assistance with the house, and is oh-so-friendly. However, he's not exactly Ned Flanders. It seems that his kindly guy-next-door act is a front; he'd been accused previously of illegally practicing medicine without any certification, and was threatened with legal action. A lot of townspeople, including the mayor, are out to get him, so he's careful to keep Charles on his side. Speaking of Charles, the poor guy isn't so happy. He doesn't have any patients yet, and spends most of his time hanging about the house. He's worried about money - the move from Tostes was expensive, and all the money that Emma brought with her to the marriage is gone. The only thing that cheers Charles up is the thought of Emma's pregnancy. He feels that his whole life is complete now that a baby is on the horizon. Emma, on the other hand, traversed a whole range of emotions, from astonished to bitter, before settling on indifferent. She decides that if she must have a baby, it should be a boy, so it can have the power to escape the rules that govern women. Instead, it's a girl. Emma passes out, presumably from disappointment, as well as the rigors of childbirth. Madame Homais and Madame Lefrancois rush in to see how things are going. Everyone is excited except Emma. Emma can't even think up a name for the poor kid. She has all kinds of romantic ideas about what she'd like to call the daughter . Homais has all kinds of crazy ideas, naturally, having named his children all kinds of crazy things. Emma eventually settles haphazardly on "Berthe." Little Berthe is baptized. Her godfather is Homais, since Emma's dad couldn't make it for the birth, and her godmother is old Madame Bovary, who's visiting with her husband. Charles's father gets along pretty well with Emma, who's interested in his stories of travel in the army. Charles's mom is worried that her husband will be a bad influence upon Emma, and they peace out pretty quickly. One day, as Emma is going to visit the baby , she runs into Leon. She invites him to come with her, which causes quite the scandal among the gossips of the town. The wetnurse lives in an unsavory little cottage. Leon is thrown off by the image before him, of the beautiful lady in a fancy dress surrounded by squalor. The baby makes a spectacular entrance by promptly spitting up on Emma. The visitors head out. As they're leaving, Madame Rollet comes up and wheedles the promise of some brandy out of Emma. Emma and Leon head back to Yonville. They obviously have an intense connection already. When they get back to town, Emma heads home, while Leon keeps wandering, pondering his boredom and the dullness of the other people he knows in town. He has quite the crush on our young Madame Bovary.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/13.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_12_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 4

part 2, chapter 4

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-4", "summary": "Once the winter arrives, Emma moves into the parlor from her room. She sits and people-watches all day. Twice a day, she sees Leon go back and forth to and from his office. Monsieur Homais continues to be an attentive neighbor; he stops by every day around dinner time to discuss the daily news with Charles and to give Emma household tips. After this evening chat, Justin comes in to fetch his master. Homais pokes fun at the boy for having a crush on Felicite. The pharmacist also scolds Justin for eavesdropping all the time. On Sundays, the Homais household entertains the few townspeople Monsieur Homais hasn't alienated. Leon and the Bovarys always come. On these occasions, Leon is always by Emma's side, talking to her, coaching her at card games, and looking at magazines with her. Something is obviously going on between Emma and Leon. Charles, unsuspecting as ever, has no idea. At this point, Emma herself doesn't fully realize it. Leon is careful to include Charles in his thoughts, as to avoid suspicions. He gives the officier de sante a splendid phrenological head model for his birthday . Leon is always willing to get things for Emma, from the latest books to a bushel of cacti. Emma and Leon each have little gardens outside their windows, from which they look at each other while tending the plants. To show her gratitude, Emma has a gorgeous velvet bedspread sent over to Leon...it seems like something of an extravagant present. Everyone else is sure that the pair are lovers. Leon idiotically reinforces this idea by talking about Emma 24/7. Even poor Binet gets so sick of him that he snaps at the boy one day. Ah, l'amour! Leon is tortured by his love for Emma, and tries to figure out how to possibly tell her. He can't bring himself to do it. Emma, on the other hand, doesn't get all worked up; she doesn't even try and see if she is or isn't in love with him. Flaubert ominously ends the chapter, though, with the suggestion that one day she'll crack and her love will be out of control.", "analysis": ""}

When the first cold days set in Emma left her bedroom for the sitting-room, a long apartment with a low ceiling, in which there was on the mantelpiece a large bunch of coral spread out against the looking-glass. Seated in her arm chair near the window, she could see the villagers pass along the pavement. Twice a day Leon went from his office to the Lion d'Or. Emma could hear him coming from afar; she leant forward listening, and the young man glided past the curtain, always dressed in the same way, and without turning his head. But in the twilight, when, her chin resting on her left hand, she let the embroidery she had begun fall on her knees, she often shuddered at the apparition of this shadow suddenly gliding past. She would get up and order the table to be laid. Monsieur Homais called at dinner-time. Skull-cap in hand, he came in on tiptoe, in order to disturb no one, always repeating the same phrase, "Good evening, everybody." Then, when he had taken his seat at the table between the pair, he asked the doctor about his patients, and the latter consulted his as to the probability of their payment. Next they talked of "what was in the paper." Homais by this hour knew it almost by heart, and he repeated it from end to end, with the reflections of the penny-a-liners, and all the stories of individual catastrophes that had occurred in France or abroad. But the subject becoming exhausted, he was not slow in throwing out some remarks on the dishes before him. Sometimes even, half-rising, he delicately pointed out to madame the tenderest morsel, or turning to the servant, gave her some advice on the manipulation of stews and the hygiene of seasoning. He talked aroma, osmazome, juices, and gelatine in a bewildering manner. Moreover, Homais, with his head fuller of recipes than his shop of jars, excelled in making all kinds of preserves, vinegars, and sweet liqueurs; he knew also all the latest inventions in economic stoves, together with the art of preserving cheese and of curing sick wines. At eight o'clock Justin came to fetch him to shut up the shop. Then Monsieur Homais gave him a sly look, especially if Felicite was there, for he half noticed that his apprentice was fond of the doctor's house. "The young dog," he said, "is beginning to have ideas, and the devil take me if I don't believe he's in love with your servant!" But a more serious fault with which he reproached Justin was his constantly listening to conversation. On Sunday, for example, one could not get him out of the drawing-room, whither Madame Homais had called him to fetch the children, who were falling asleep in the arm-chairs, and dragging down with their backs calico chair-covers that were too large. Not many people came to these soirees at the chemist's, his scandal-mongering and political opinions having successfully alienated various respectable persons from him. The clerk never failed to be there. As soon as he heard the bell he ran to meet Madame Bovary, took her shawl, and put away under the shop-counter the thick list shoes that she wore over her boots when there was snow. First they played some hands at trente-et-un; next Monsieur Homais played ecarte with Emma; Leon behind her gave her advice. Standing up with his hands on the back of her chair he saw the teeth of her comb that bit into her chignon. With every movement that she made to throw her cards the right side of her dress was drawn up. From her turned-up hair a dark colour fell over her back, and growing gradually paler, lost itself little by little in the shade. Then her dress fell on both sides of her chair, puffing out full of folds, and reached the ground. When Leon occasionally felt the sole of his boot resting on it, he drew back as if he had trodden upon some one. When the game of cards was over, the druggist and the Doctor played dominoes, and Emma, changing her place, leant her elbow on the table, turning over the leaves of "L'Illustration". She had brought her ladies' journal with her. Leon sat down near her; they looked at the engravings together, and waited for one another at the bottom of the pages. She often begged him to read her the verses; Leon declaimed them in a languid voice, to which he carefully gave a dying fall in the love passages. But the noise of the dominoes annoyed him. Monsieur Homais was strong at the game; he could beat Charles and give him a double-six. Then the three hundred finished, they both stretched themselves out in front of the fire, and were soon asleep. The fire was dying out in the cinders; the teapot was empty, Leon was still reading. Emma listened to him, mechanically turning around the lampshade, on the gauze of which were painted clowns in carriages, and tight-rope dances with their balancing-poles. Leon stopped, pointing with a gesture to his sleeping audience; then they talked in low tones, and their conversation seemed the more sweet to them because it was unheard. Thus a kind of bond was established between them, a constant commerce of books and of romances. Monsieur Bovary, little given to jealousy, did not trouble himself about it. On his birthday he received a beautiful phrenological head, all marked with figures to the thorax and painted blue. This was an attention of the clerk's. He showed him many others, even to doing errands for him at Rouen; and the book of a novelist having made the mania for cactuses fashionable, Leon bought some for Madame Bovary, bringing them back on his knees in the "Hirondelle," pricking his fingers on their hard hairs. She had a board with a balustrade fixed against her window to hold the pots. The clerk, too, had his small hanging garden; they saw each other tending their flowers at their windows. Of the windows of the village there was one yet more often occupied; for on Sundays from morning to night, and every morning when the weather was bright, one could see at the dormer-window of the garret the profile of Monsieur Binet bending over his lathe, whose monotonous humming could be heard at the Lion d'Or. One evening on coming home Leon found in his room a rug in velvet and wool with leaves on a pale ground. He called Madame Homais, Monsieur Homais, Justin, the children, the cook; he spoke of it to his chief; every one wanted to see this rug. Why did the doctor's wife give the clerk presents? It looked queer. They decided that she must be his lover. He made this seem likely, so ceaselessly did he talk of her charms and of her wit; so much so, that Binet once roughly answered him-- "What does it matter to me since I'm not in her set?" He tortured himself to find out how he could make his declaration to her, and always halting between the fear of displeasing her and the shame of being such a coward, he wept with discouragement and desire. Then he took energetic resolutions, wrote letters that he tore up, put it off to times that he again deferred. Often he set out with the determination to dare all; but this resolution soon deserted him in Emma's presence, and when Charles, dropping in, invited him to jump into his chaise to go with him to see some patient in the neighbourhood, he at once accepted, bowed to madame, and went out. Her husband, was he not something belonging to her? As to Emma, she did not ask herself whether she loved. Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings--a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss. She did not know that on the terrace of houses it makes lakes when the pipes are choked, and she would thus have remained in her security when she suddenly discovered a rent in the wall of it.

Part 2, Chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-4

Once the winter arrives, Emma moves into the parlor from her room. She sits and people-watches all day. Twice a day, she sees Leon go back and forth to and from his office. Monsieur Homais continues to be an attentive neighbor; he stops by every day around dinner time to discuss the daily news with Charles and to give Emma household tips. After this evening chat, Justin comes in to fetch his master. Homais pokes fun at the boy for having a crush on Felicite. The pharmacist also scolds Justin for eavesdropping all the time. On Sundays, the Homais household entertains the few townspeople Monsieur Homais hasn't alienated. Leon and the Bovarys always come. On these occasions, Leon is always by Emma's side, talking to her, coaching her at card games, and looking at magazines with her. Something is obviously going on between Emma and Leon. Charles, unsuspecting as ever, has no idea. At this point, Emma herself doesn't fully realize it. Leon is careful to include Charles in his thoughts, as to avoid suspicions. He gives the officier de sante a splendid phrenological head model for his birthday . Leon is always willing to get things for Emma, from the latest books to a bushel of cacti. Emma and Leon each have little gardens outside their windows, from which they look at each other while tending the plants. To show her gratitude, Emma has a gorgeous velvet bedspread sent over to Leon...it seems like something of an extravagant present. Everyone else is sure that the pair are lovers. Leon idiotically reinforces this idea by talking about Emma 24/7. Even poor Binet gets so sick of him that he snaps at the boy one day. Ah, l'amour! Leon is tortured by his love for Emma, and tries to figure out how to possibly tell her. He can't bring himself to do it. Emma, on the other hand, doesn't get all worked up; she doesn't even try and see if she is or isn't in love with him. Flaubert ominously ends the chapter, though, with the suggestion that one day she'll crack and her love will be out of control.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/14.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_13_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 5

part 2, chapter 5

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-5", "summary": "The usual quartet is out on an odd and incredibly boring field trip. They're visiting a new spinning mill just outside town, along with two of Homais' unfortunately named children, Athalie and Napoleon. The main attraction is generally unattractive. Homais, as usual, chats up a storm. Everyone else is somewhat pensive. Emma reflects suddenly upon how irritating Charles is, even when he's doing nothing. Leon, on the other hand, looks particularly lovely to her. She begins to realize that something is happening between them. Napoleon ruins the moment by generally being bratty. He's painted his shoes white with a pile of lime that's lying around the mill. Charles and Justin attempt to get rid of it. That evening, Emma thinks about the day - and about Leon. She can't stop envisioning his face, his mannerisms, the sound of his voice. Finally, an epiphany: Leon loves her! Once she admits this to herself, Emma goes into full-out dramatic Love Overdrive. She laments fate, lolls around the house swooning left and right, and drifts about in a blissful haze. Generally, she does everything she's read about in books. The next day, Monsieur Lheureux, the dry-goods merchant stops by for a visit. He is quite clever and sounds, from Flaubert's description, like a pretty shady character. Nobody knows what he was up to before he came to Yonville. The merchant knows exactly what buttons to press with Emma. He talks up her elegance and refinement, then offers her a selection of dainty items to choose from. She sticks by her guns and says she doesn't need anything, but the seed has been planted - Emma, naturally, wants pretty things. Lheureux also slyly tells Emma that if she needs money, she can always borrow it from him...which doesn't sound like such a great idea, if you ask us. Emma congratulates herself on being so frugal, but she still can't stop thinking of Monsieur Lheureux's pretty wares. Leon shows up, nervous and on edge. He wants to say something to her about his feelings, but chickens out yet again. Awkwardness ensues. In the wake of the realization that she and Leon are in love, Emma attempts briefly to reform herself - she goes all serious and tries to clean up her act. Emma's good girl facade fools everyone, even Leon. He begins to wonder how he'd even hoped to get close to her. In his mind, she becomes even more spectacular and flawless. Everyone admires Emma for her elegance and character. Now that she's playing the good housewife, she floats along easily in Yonville society. However, on the inside, she conceals passionate feelings. We're talking serious angst, here. When she's alone, she can only think of Leon - actually, these fantasies are more enjoyable than his presence, which leaves her unsatisfied. Emma wishes Leon would notice that she's in love with him, but she's either too lazy or too scared to make anything happen herself. She consoles herself by striking dramatic poses in the mirror and prides herself on her \"virtue.\" All of Emma's secret troubles build up to the boiling point, and she strikes out, complaining about the littlest things, like a door left open or a dish she doesn't enjoy. She is also incredibly irritated by Charles's dopey lack of awareness; he's still sure that he's making her perfectly happy. She feels underappreciated, and makes Charles the focus of all her aggression. Emma's depression returns from time to time. Felicite tries to comfort her, telling her that she once knew another girl who suffered from a similar problem - it was cured by marriage. Unfortunately for Emma, her sadness was brought on by her marriage to Charles.", "analysis": ""}

It was a Sunday in February, an afternoon when the snow was falling. They had all, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, Homais, and Monsieur Leon, gone to see a yarn-mill that was being built in the valley a mile and a half from Yonville. The druggist had taken Napoleon and Athalie to give them some exercise, and Justin accompanied them, carrying the umbrellas on his shoulder. Nothing, however, could be less curious than this curiosity. A great piece of waste ground, on which pell-mell, amid a mass of sand and stones, were a few break-wheels, already rusty, surrounded by a quadrangular building pierced by a number of little windows. The building was unfinished; the sky could be seen through the joists of the roofing. Attached to the stop-plank of the gable a bunch of straw mixed with corn-ears fluttered its tricoloured ribbons in the wind. Homais was talking. He explained to the company the future importance of this establishment, computed the strength of the floorings, the thickness of the walls, and regretted extremely not having a yard-stick such as Monsieur Binet possessed for his own special use. Emma, who had taken his arm, bent lightly against his shoulder, and she looked at the sun's disc shedding afar through the mist his pale splendour. She turned. Charles was there. His cap was drawn down over his eyebrows, and his two thick lips were trembling, which added a look of stupidity to his face; his very back, his calm back, was irritating to behold, and she saw written upon his coat all the platitude of the bearer. While she was considering him thus, tasting in her irritation a sort of depraved pleasure, Leon made a step forward. The cold that made him pale seemed to add a more gentle languor to his face; between his cravat and his neck the somewhat loose collar of his shirt showed the skin; the lobe of his ear looked out from beneath a lock of hair, and his large blue eyes, raised to the clouds, seemed to Emma more limpid and more beautiful than those mountain-lakes where the heavens are mirrored. "Wretched boy!" suddenly cried the chemist. And he ran to his son, who had just precipitated himself into a heap of lime in order to whiten his boots. At the reproaches with which he was being overwhelmed Napoleon began to roar, while Justin dried his shoes with a wisp of straw. But a knife was wanted; Charles offered his. "Ah!" she said to herself, "he carried a knife in his pocket like a peasant." The hoar-frost was falling, and they turned back to Yonville. In the evening Madame Bovary did not go to her neighbour's, and when Charles had left and she felt herself alone, the comparison re-began with the clearness of a sensation almost actual, and with that lengthening of perspective which memory gives to things. Looking from her bed at the clean fire that was burning, she still saw, as she had down there, Leon standing up with one hand behind his cane, and with the other holding Athalie, who was quietly sucking a piece of ice. She thought him charming; she could not tear herself away from him; she recalled his other attitudes on other days, the words he had spoken, the sound of his voice, his whole person; and she repeated, pouting out her lips as if for a kiss-- "Yes, charming! charming! Is he not in love?" she asked herself; "but with whom? With me?" All the proofs arose before her at once; her heart leapt. The flame of the fire threw a joyous light upon the ceiling; she turned on her back, stretching out her arms. Then began the eternal lamentation: "Oh, if Heaven had not willed it! And why not? What prevented it?" When Charles came home at midnight, she seemed to have just awakened, and as he made a noise undressing, she complained of a headache, then asked carelessly what had happened that evening. "Monsieur Leon," he said, "went to his room early." She could not help smiling, and she fell asleep, her soul filled with a new delight. The next day, at dusk, she received a visit from Monsieur Lherueux, the draper. He was a man of ability, was this shopkeeper. Born a Gascon but bred a Norman, he grafted upon his southern volubility the cunning of the Cauchois. His fat, flabby, beardless face seemed dyed by a decoction of liquorice, and his white hair made even more vivid the keen brilliance of his small black eyes. No one knew what he had been formerly; a pedlar said some, a banker at Routot according to others. What was certain was that he made complex calculations in his head that would have frightened Binet himself. Polite to obsequiousness, he always held himself with his back bent in the position of one who bows or who invites. After leaving at the door his hat surrounded with crape, he put down a green bandbox on the table, and began by complaining to madame, with many civilities, that he should have remained till that day without gaining her confidence. A poor shop like his was not made to attract a "fashionable lady"; he emphasized the words; yet she had only to command, and he would undertake to provide her with anything she might wish, either in haberdashery or linen, millinery or fancy goods, for he went to town regularly four times a month. He was connected with the best houses. You could speak of him at the "Trois Freres," at the "Barbe d'Or," or at the "Grand Sauvage"; all these gentlemen knew him as well as the insides of their pockets. To-day, then he had come to show madame, in passing, various articles he happened to have, thanks to the most rare opportunity. And he pulled out half-a-dozen embroidered collars from the box. Madame Bovary examined them. "I do not require anything," she said. Then Monsieur Lheureux delicately exhibited three Algerian scarves, several packets of English needles, a pair of straw slippers, and finally, four eggcups in cocoanut wood, carved in open work by convicts. Then, with both hands on the table, his neck stretched out, his figure bent forward, open-mouthed, he watched Emma's look, who was walking up and down undecided amid these goods. From time to time, as if to remove some dust, he filliped with his nail the silk of the scarves spread out at full length, and they rustled with a little noise, making in the green twilight the gold spangles of their tissue scintillate like little stars. "How much are they?" "A mere nothing," he replied, "a mere nothing. But there's no hurry; whenever it's convenient. We are not Jews." She reflected for a few moments, and ended by again declining Monsieur Lheureux's offer. He replied quite unconcernedly-- "Very well. We shall understand one another by and by. I have always got on with ladies--if I didn't with my own!" Emma smiled. "I wanted to tell you," he went on good-naturedly, after his joke, "that it isn't the money I should trouble about. Why, I could give you some, if need be." She made a gesture of surprise. "Ah!" said he quickly and in a low voice, "I shouldn't have to go far to find you some, rely on that." And he began asking after Pere Tellier, the proprietor of the "Cafe Francais," whom Monsieur Bovary was then attending. "What's the matter with Pere Tellier? He coughs so that he shakes his whole house, and I'm afraid he'll soon want a deal covering rather than a flannel vest. He was such a rake as a young man! Those sort of people, madame, have not the least regularity; he's burnt up with brandy. Still it's sad, all the same, to see an acquaintance go off." And while he fastened up his box he discoursed about the doctor's patients. "It's the weather, no doubt," he said, looking frowningly at the floor, "that causes these illnesses. I, too, don't feel the thing. One of these days I shall even have to consult the doctor for a pain I have in my back. Well, good-bye, Madame Bovary. At your service; your very humble servant." And he closed the door gently. Emma had her dinner served in her bedroom on a tray by the fireside; she was a long time over it; everything was well with her. "How good I was!" she said to herself, thinking of the scarves. She heard some steps on the stairs. It was Leon. She got up and took from the chest of drawers the first pile of dusters to be hemmed. When he came in she seemed very busy. The conversation languished; Madame Bovary gave it up every few minutes, whilst he himself seemed quite embarrassed. Seated on a low chair near the fire, he turned round in his fingers the ivory thimble-case. She stitched on, or from time to time turned down the hem of the cloth with her nail. She did not speak; he was silent, captivated by her silence, as he would have been by her speech. "Poor fellow!" she thought. "How have I displeased her?" he asked himself. At last, however, Leon said that he should have, one of these days, to go to Rouen on some office business. "Your music subscription is out; am I to renew it?" "No," she replied. "Why?" "Because--" And pursing her lips she slowly drew a long stitch of grey thread. This work irritated Leon. It seemed to roughen the ends of her fingers. A gallant phrase came into his head, but he did not risk it. "Then you are giving it up?" he went on. "What?" she asked hurriedly. "Music? Ah! yes! Have I not my house to look after, my husband to attend to, a thousand things, in fact, many duties that must be considered first?" She looked at the clock. Charles was late. Then, she affected anxiety. Two or three times she even repeated, "He is so good!" The clerk was fond of Monsieur Bovary. But this tenderness on his behalf astonished him unpleasantly; nevertheless he took up on his praises, which he said everyone was singing, especially the chemist. "Ah! he is a good fellow," continued Emma. "Certainly," replied the clerk. And he began talking of Madame Homais, whose very untidy appearance generally made them laugh. "What does it matter?" interrupted Emma. "A good housewife does not trouble about her appearance." Then she relapsed into silence. It was the same on the following days; her talks, her manners, everything changed. She took interest in the housework, went to church regularly, and looked after her servant with more severity. She took Berthe from nurse. When visitors called, Felicite brought her in, and Madame Bovary undressed her to show off her limbs. She declared she adored children; this was her consolation, her joy, her passion, and she accompanied her caresses with lyrical outburst which would have reminded anyone but the Yonville people of Sachette in "Notre Dame de Paris." When Charles came home he found his slippers put to warm near the fire. His waistcoat now never wanted lining, nor his shirt buttons, and it was quite a pleasure to see in the cupboard the night-caps arranged in piles of the same height. She no longer grumbled as formerly at taking a turn in the garden; what he proposed was always done, although she did not understand the wishes to which she submitted without a murmur; and when Leon saw him by his fireside after dinner, his two hands on his stomach, his two feet on the fender, his two cheeks red with feeding, his eyes moist with happiness, the child crawling along the carpet, and this woman with the slender waist who came behind his arm-chair to kiss his forehead: "What madness!" he said to himself. "And how to reach her!" And thus she seemed so virtuous and inaccessible to him that he lost all hope, even the faintest. But by this renunciation he placed her on an extraordinary pinnacle. To him she stood outside those fleshly attributes from which he had nothing to obtain, and in his heart she rose ever, and became farther removed from him after the magnificent manner of an apotheosis that is taking wing. It was one of those pure feelings that do not interfere with life, that are cultivated because they are rare, and whose loss would afflict more than their passion rejoices. Emma grew thinner, her cheeks paler, her face longer. With her black hair, her large eyes, her aquiline nose, her birdlike walk, and always silent now, did she not seem to be passing through life scarcely touching it, and to bear on her brow the vague impress of some divine destiny? She was so sad and so calm, at once so gentle and so reserved, that near her one felt oneself seized by an icy charm, as we shudder in churches at the perfume of the flowers mingling with the cold of the marble. The others even did not escape from this seduction. The chemist said-- "She is a woman of great parts, who wouldn't be misplaced in a sub-prefecture." The housewives admired her economy, the patients her politeness, the poor her charity. But she was eaten up with desires, with rage, with hate. That dress with the narrow folds hid a distracted fear, of whose torment those chaste lips said nothing. She was in love with Leon, and sought solitude that she might with the more ease delight in his image. The sight of his form troubled the voluptuousness of this mediation. Emma thrilled at the sound of his step; then in his presence the emotion subsided, and afterwards there remained to her only an immense astonishment that ended in sorrow. Leon did not know that when he left her in despair she rose after he had gone to see him in the street. She concerned herself about his comings and goings; she watched his face; she invented quite a history to find an excuse for going to his room. The chemist's wife seemed happy to her to sleep under the same roof, and her thoughts constantly centered upon this house, like the "Lion d'Or" pigeons, who came there to dip their red feet and white wings in its gutters. But the more Emma recognised her love, the more she crushed it down, that it might not be evident, that she might make it less. She would have liked Leon to guess it, and she imagined chances, catastrophes that should facilitate this. What restrained her was, no doubt, idleness and fear, and a sense of shame also. She thought she had repulsed him too much, that the time was past, that all was lost. Then, pride, and joy of being able to say to herself, "I am virtuous," and to look at herself in the glass taking resigned poses, consoled her a little for the sacrifice she believed she was making. Then the lusts of the flesh, the longing for money, and the melancholy of passion all blended themselves into one suffering, and instead of turning her thoughts from it, she clave to it the more, urging herself to pain, and seeking everywhere occasion for it. She was irritated by an ill-served dish or by a half-open door; bewailed the velvets she had not, the happiness she had missed, her too exalted dreams, her narrow home. What exasperated her was that Charles did not seem to notice her anguish. His conviction that he was making her happy seemed to her an imbecile insult, and his sureness on this point ingratitude. For whose sake, then was she virtuous? Was it not for him, the obstacle to all felicity, the cause of all misery, and, as it were, the sharp clasp of that complex strap that bucked her in on all sides. On him alone, then, she concentrated all the various hatreds that resulted from her boredom, and every effort to diminish only augmented it; for this useless trouble was added to the other reasons for despair, and contributed still more to the separation between them. Her own gentleness to herself made her rebel against him. Domestic mediocrity drove her to lewd fancies, marriage tenderness to adulterous desires. She would have liked Charles to beat her, that she might have a better right to hate him, to revenge herself upon him. She was surprised sometimes at the atrocious conjectures that came into her thoughts, and she had to go on smiling, to hear repeated to her at all hours that she was happy, to pretend to be happy, to let it be believed. Yet she had loathing of this hypocrisy. She was seized with the temptation to flee somewhere with Leon to try a new life; but at once a vague chasm full of darkness opened within her soul. "Besides, he no longer loves me," she thought. "What is to become of me? What help is to be hoped for, what consolation, what solace?" She was left broken, breathless, inert, sobbing in a low voice, with flowing tears. "Why don't you tell master?" the servant asked her when she came in during these crises. "It is the nerves," said Emma. "Do not speak to him of it; it would worry him." "Ah! yes," Felicite went on, "you are just like La Guerine, Pere Guerin's daughter, the fisherman at Pollet, that I used to know at Dieppe before I came to you. She was so sad, so sad, to see her standing upright on the threshold of her house, she seemed to you like a winding-sheet spread out before the door. Her illness, it appears, was a kind of fog that she had in her head, and the doctors could not do anything, nor the priest either. When she was taken too bad she went off quite alone to the sea-shore, so that the customs officer, going his rounds, often found her lying flat on her face, crying on the shingle. Then, after her marriage, it went off, they say." "But with me," replied Emma, "it was after marriage that it began."

Part 2, Chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-5

The usual quartet is out on an odd and incredibly boring field trip. They're visiting a new spinning mill just outside town, along with two of Homais' unfortunately named children, Athalie and Napoleon. The main attraction is generally unattractive. Homais, as usual, chats up a storm. Everyone else is somewhat pensive. Emma reflects suddenly upon how irritating Charles is, even when he's doing nothing. Leon, on the other hand, looks particularly lovely to her. She begins to realize that something is happening between them. Napoleon ruins the moment by generally being bratty. He's painted his shoes white with a pile of lime that's lying around the mill. Charles and Justin attempt to get rid of it. That evening, Emma thinks about the day - and about Leon. She can't stop envisioning his face, his mannerisms, the sound of his voice. Finally, an epiphany: Leon loves her! Once she admits this to herself, Emma goes into full-out dramatic Love Overdrive. She laments fate, lolls around the house swooning left and right, and drifts about in a blissful haze. Generally, she does everything she's read about in books. The next day, Monsieur Lheureux, the dry-goods merchant stops by for a visit. He is quite clever and sounds, from Flaubert's description, like a pretty shady character. Nobody knows what he was up to before he came to Yonville. The merchant knows exactly what buttons to press with Emma. He talks up her elegance and refinement, then offers her a selection of dainty items to choose from. She sticks by her guns and says she doesn't need anything, but the seed has been planted - Emma, naturally, wants pretty things. Lheureux also slyly tells Emma that if she needs money, she can always borrow it from him...which doesn't sound like such a great idea, if you ask us. Emma congratulates herself on being so frugal, but she still can't stop thinking of Monsieur Lheureux's pretty wares. Leon shows up, nervous and on edge. He wants to say something to her about his feelings, but chickens out yet again. Awkwardness ensues. In the wake of the realization that she and Leon are in love, Emma attempts briefly to reform herself - she goes all serious and tries to clean up her act. Emma's good girl facade fools everyone, even Leon. He begins to wonder how he'd even hoped to get close to her. In his mind, she becomes even more spectacular and flawless. Everyone admires Emma for her elegance and character. Now that she's playing the good housewife, she floats along easily in Yonville society. However, on the inside, she conceals passionate feelings. We're talking serious angst, here. When she's alone, she can only think of Leon - actually, these fantasies are more enjoyable than his presence, which leaves her unsatisfied. Emma wishes Leon would notice that she's in love with him, but she's either too lazy or too scared to make anything happen herself. She consoles herself by striking dramatic poses in the mirror and prides herself on her "virtue." All of Emma's secret troubles build up to the boiling point, and she strikes out, complaining about the littlest things, like a door left open or a dish she doesn't enjoy. She is also incredibly irritated by Charles's dopey lack of awareness; he's still sure that he's making her perfectly happy. She feels underappreciated, and makes Charles the focus of all her aggression. Emma's depression returns from time to time. Felicite tries to comfort her, telling her that she once knew another girl who suffered from a similar problem - it was cured by marriage. Unfortunately for Emma, her sadness was brought on by her marriage to Charles.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/15.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_14_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 6

part 2, chapter 6

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-6", "summary": "Poor Emma. It's springtime, and she finally attempts to do something to change her life. Remembering how much she loved the convent school, she goes to church to talk to Father Bournisien. She finds the priest much preoccupied by the schoolboys he's in charge of. He's something of an irritable and unpleasant man. Emma flat-out tells the priest that she's suffering. He assumes that her suffering is physical, and asks if Charles has prescribed anything for it. When Emma attempts to explain her situation, he gets distracted by the boys again, and breaks off the conversation to yell at them. This is hopeless. The priest obviously has nothing to offer Emma - they talk for a while longer, their conversation punctuated by the children. Father Bournisien eventually just dismisses Emma, telling her to go home and have a cup of tea. She leaves, disgruntled. When she gets home, the stillness of the house seems to mock her. Berthe tries to come over and hug her mother. Emma , angrily pushes the little girl away. Pushing a baby? Come on, Emma. This is a new low. Poor Berthe falls and hits her head on the dresser. She starts to bleed, and Emma freaks out. She feels terrible. Charles comes home, and Emma tells him that the baby fell over while she was playing. He takes care of the injury and tells Emma not to worry. Emma feels bad for a while, but her anxiety eventually wears off. She looks at Berthe dispassionately, thinking about how ugly the child is. Charles, in the meanwhile, has been visiting the Homais family. Mr. and Mrs. Homais. try to cheer him up in a truly warped way, by talking about the various dangers that children face in their everyday lives. The Homais kids live in a totally child-safe household without sharp knives and with bars on the windows. Leon is also around. Charles pulls him aside - the clerk worries that the doctor suspects his feelings for Emma. Luckily for Leon, Charles is still the same old well-intentioned buffoon he always was. He actually wants Leon to go into Rouen for him and make some inquiries about getting a portrait of Charles made. It turns out that Leon goes into the city every week - nobody knows why. Homais suspects that the young man has a secret lover there . Nobody can figure out what Leon's deal is. Madame Lefrancois notices that he's started leaving food on his plate at dinner. Binet suggests that Leon should take up carpentry to improve his disposition . Leon's boredom with Yonville and angst about his love for Emma are at a breaking point. However, he's also afraid of moving away. In the end, though, he decides to leave right away for Paris, to start his studies in the big city. Soon enough it's time to go. The Homais give Leon a tearful seeing-off, but before he leaves, he goes to bid Charles and Emma farewell. Charles isn't at home, so he and Emma have a tense parting moment. He kisses baby Berthe goodbye, then he and Emma are left alone. They shake hands awkwardly - the tension is palpable. Leon leaves Yonville, accompanied by the notary, Monsieur Guillaumin. After he's gone, Emma mopes around, wondering where he is. Monsieur Homais comes over to visit as usual, and they discuss Leon's fate in Paris. Homais and Charles are worried that Leon will be corrupted by the city, or else catch some horrible disease. Emma is distressed. Soon enough, though, Homais acts as though nothing has happened. He heads back home merrily.", "analysis": ""}

One evening when the window was open, and she, sitting by it, had been watching Lestiboudois, the beadle, trimming the box, she suddenly heard the Angelus ringing. It was the beginning of April, when the primroses are in bloom, and a warm wind blows over the flower-beds newly turned, and the gardens, like women, seem to be getting ready for the summer fetes. Through the bars of the arbour and away beyond the river seen in the fields, meandering through the grass in wandering curves. The evening vapours rose between the leafless poplars, touching their outlines with a violet tint, paler and more transparent than a subtle gauze caught athwart their branches. In the distance cattle moved about; neither their steps nor their lowing could be heard; and the bell, still ringing through the air, kept up its peaceful lamentation. With this repeated tinkling the thoughts of the young woman lost themselves in old memories of her youth and school-days. She remembered the great candlesticks that rose above the vases full of flowers on the altar, and the tabernacle with its small columns. She would have liked to be once more lost in the long line of white veils, marked off here and there by the stuff black hoods of the good sisters bending over their prie-Dieu. At mass on Sundays, when she looked up, she saw the gentle face of the Virgin amid the blue smoke of the rising incense. Then she was moved; she felt herself weak and quite deserted, like the down of a bird whirled by the tempest, and it was unconsciously that she went towards the church, included to no matter what devotions, so that her soul was absorbed and all existence lost in it. On the Place she met Lestivoudois on his way back, for, in order not to shorten his day's labour, he preferred interrupting his work, then beginning it again, so that he rang the Angelus to suit his own convenience. Besides, the ringing over a little earlier warned the lads of catechism hour. Already a few who had arrived were playing marbles on the stones of the cemetery. Others, astride the wall, swung their legs, kicking with their clogs the large nettles growing between the little enclosure and the newest graves. This was the only green spot. All the rest was but stones, always covered with a fine powder, despite the vestry-broom. The children in list shoes ran about there as if it were an enclosure made for them. The shouts of their voices could be heard through the humming of the bell. This grew less and less with the swinging of the great rope that, hanging from the top of the belfry, dragged its end on the ground. Swallows flitted to and fro uttering little cries, cut the air with the edge of their wings, and swiftly returned to their yellow nests under the tiles of the coping. At the end of the church a lamp was burning, the wick of a night-light in a glass hung up. Its light from a distance looked like a white stain trembling in the oil. A long ray of the sun fell across the nave and seemed to darken the lower sides and the corners. "Where is the cure?" asked Madame Bovary of one of the lads, who was amusing himself by shaking a swivel in a hole too large for it. "He is just coming," he answered. And in fact the door of the presbytery grated; Abbe Bournisien appeared; the children, pell-mell, fled into the church. "These young scamps!" murmured the priest, "always the same!" Then, picking up a catechism all in rags that he had struck with is foot, "They respect nothing!" But as soon as he caught sight of Madame Bovary, "Excuse me," he said; "I did not recognise you." He thrust the catechism into his pocket, and stopped short, balancing the heavy vestry key between his two fingers. The light of the setting sun that fell full upon his face paled the lasting of his cassock, shiny at the elbows, unravelled at the hem. Grease and tobacco stains followed along his broad chest the lines of the buttons, and grew more numerous the farther they were from his neckcloth, in which the massive folds of his red chin rested; this was dotted with yellow spots, that disappeared beneath the coarse hair of his greyish beard. He had just dined and was breathing noisily. "How are you?" he added. "Not well," replied Emma; "I am ill." "Well, and so am I," answered the priest. "These first warm days weaken one most remarkably, don't they? But, after all, we are born to suffer, as St. Paul says. But what does Monsieur Bovary think of it?" "He!" she said with a gesture of contempt. "What!" replied the good fellow, quite astonished, "doesn't he prescribe something for you?" "Ah!" said Emma, "it is no earthly remedy I need." But the cure from time to time looked into the church, where the kneeling boys were shouldering one another, and tumbling over like packs of cards. "I should like to know--" she went on. "You look out, Riboudet," cried the priest in an angry voice; "I'll warm your ears, you imp!" Then turning to Emma, "He's Boudet the carpenter's son; his parents are well off, and let him do just as he pleases. Yet he could learn quickly if he would, for he is very sharp. And so sometimes for a joke I call him Riboudet (like the road one takes to go to Maromme) and I even say 'Mon Riboudet.' Ha! Ha! 'Mont Riboudet.' The other day I repeated that just to Monsignor, and he laughed at it; he condescended to laugh at it. And how is Monsieur Bovary?" She seemed not to hear him. And he went on-- "Always very busy, no doubt; for he and I are certainly the busiest people in the parish. But he is doctor of the body," he added with a thick laugh, "and I of the soul." She fixed her pleading eyes upon the priest. "Yes," she said, "you solace all sorrows." "Ah! don't talk to me of it, Madame Bovary. This morning I had to go to Bas-Diauville for a cow that was ill; they thought it was under a spell. All their cows, I don't know how it is--But pardon me! Longuemarre and Boudet! Bless me! Will you leave off?" And with a bound he ran into the church. The boys were just then clustering round the large desk, climbing over the precentor's footstool, opening the missal; and others on tiptoe were just about to venture into the confessional. But the priest suddenly distributed a shower of cuffs among them. Seizing them by the collars of their coats, he lifted them from the ground, and deposited them on their knees on the stones of the choir, firmly, as if he meant planting them there. "Yes," said he, when he returned to Emma, unfolding his large cotton handkerchief, one corner of which he put between his teeth, "farmers are much to be pitied." "Others, too," she replied. "Assuredly. Town-labourers, for example." "It is not they--" "Pardon! I've there known poor mothers of families, virtuous women, I assure you, real saints, who wanted even bread." "But those," replied Emma, and the corners of her mouth twitched as she spoke, "those, Monsieur le Cure, who have bread and have no--" "Fire in the winter," said the priest. "Oh, what does that matter?" "What! What does it matter? It seems to me that when one has firing and food--for, after all--" "My God! my God!" she sighed. "It is indigestion, no doubt? You must get home, Madame Bovary; drink a little tea, that will strengthen you, or else a glass of fresh water with a little moist sugar." "Why?" And she looked like one awaking from a dream. "Well, you see, you were putting your hand to your forehead. I thought you felt faint." Then, bethinking himself, "But you were asking me something? What was it? I really don't remember." "I? Nothing! nothing!" repeated Emma. And the glance she cast round her slowly fell upon the old man in the cassock. They looked at one another face to face without speaking. "Then, Madame Bovary," he said at last, "excuse me, but duty first, you know; I must look after my good-for-nothings. The first communion will soon be upon us, and I fear we shall be behind after all. So after Ascension Day I keep them recta* an extra hour every Wednesday. Poor children! One cannot lead them too soon into the path of the Lord, as, moreover, he has himself recommended us to do by the mouth of his Divine Son. Good health to you, madame; my respects to your husband." *On the straight and narrow path. And he went into the church making a genuflexion as soon as he reached the door. Emma saw him disappear between the double row of forms, walking with a heavy tread, his head a little bent over his shoulder, and with his two hands half-open behind him. Then she turned on her heel all of one piece, like a statue on a pivot, and went homewards. But the loud voice of the priest, the clear voices of the boys still reached her ears, and went on behind her. "Are you a Christian?" "Yes, I am a Christian." "What is a Christian?" "He who, being baptized-baptized-baptized--" She went up the steps of the staircase holding on to the banisters, and when she was in her room threw herself into an arm-chair. The whitish light of the window-panes fell with soft undulations. The furniture in its place seemed to have become more immobile, and to lose itself in the shadow as in an ocean of darkness. The fire was out, the clock went on ticking, and Emma vaguely marvelled at this calm of all things while within herself was such tumult. But little Berthe was there, between the window and the work-table, tottering on her knitted shoes, and trying to come to her mother to catch hold of the ends of her apron-strings. "Leave me alone," said the latter, putting her from her with her hand. The little girl soon came up closer against her knees, and leaning on them with her arms, she looked up with her large blue eyes, while a small thread of pure saliva dribbled from her lips on to the silk apron. "Leave me alone," repeated the young woman quite irritably. Her face frightened the child, who began to scream. "Will you leave me alone?" she said, pushing her with her elbow. Berthe fell at the foot of the drawers against the brass handle, cutting her cheek, which began to bleed, against it. Madame Bovary sprang to lift her up, broke the bell-rope, called for the servant with all her might, and she was just going to curse herself when Charles appeared. It was the dinner-hour; he had come home. "Look, dear!" said Emma, in a calm voice, "the little one fell down while she was playing, and has hurt herself." Charles reassured her; the case was not a serious one, and he went for some sticking plaster. Madame Bovary did not go downstairs to the dining-room; she wished to remain alone to look after the child. Then watching her sleep, the little anxiety she felt gradually wore off, and she seemed very stupid to herself, and very good to have been so worried just now at so little. Berthe, in fact, no longer sobbed. Her breathing now imperceptibly raised the cotton covering. Big tears lay in the corner of the half-closed eyelids, through whose lashes one could see two pale sunken pupils; the plaster stuck on her cheek drew the skin obliquely. "It is very strange," thought Emma, "how ugly this child is!" When at eleven o'clock Charles came back from the chemist's shop, whither he had gone after dinner to return the remainder of the sticking-plaster, he found his wife standing by the cradle. "I assure you it's nothing." he said, kissing her on the forehead. "Don't worry, my poor darling; you will make yourself ill." He had stayed a long time at the chemist's. Although he had not seemed much moved, Homais, nevertheless, had exerted himself to buoy him up, to "keep up his spirits." Then they had talked of the various dangers that threaten childhood, of the carelessness of servants. Madame Homais knew something of it, having still upon her chest the marks left by a basin full of soup that a cook had formerly dropped on her pinafore, and her good parents took no end of trouble for her. The knives were not sharpened, nor the floors waxed; there were iron gratings to the windows and strong bars across the fireplace; the little Homais, in spite of their spirit, could not stir without someone watching them; at the slightest cold their father stuffed them with pectorals; and until they were turned four they all, without pity, had to wear wadded head-protectors. This, it is true, was a fancy of Madame Homais'; her husband was inwardly afflicted at it. Fearing the possible consequences of such compression to the intellectual organs. He even went so far as to say to her, "Do you want to make Caribs or Botocudos of them?" Charles, however, had several times tried to interrupt the conversation. "I should like to speak to you," he had whispered in the clerk's ear, who went upstairs in front of him. "Can he suspect anything?" Leon asked himself. His heart beat, and he racked his brain with surmises. At last, Charles, having shut the door, asked him to see himself what would be the price at Rouen of a fine daguerreotypes. It was a sentimental surprise he intended for his wife, a delicate attention--his portrait in a frock-coat. But he wanted first to know "how much it would be." The inquiries would not put Monsieur Leon out, since he went to town almost every week. Why? Monsieur Homais suspected some "young man's affair" at the bottom of it, an intrigue. But he was mistaken. Leon was after no love-making. He was sadder than ever, as Madame Lefrancois saw from the amount of food he left on his plate. To find out more about it she questioned the tax-collector. Binet answered roughly that he "wasn't paid by the police." All the same, his companion seemed very strange to him, for Leon often threw himself back in his chair, and stretching out his arms, complained vaguely of life. "It's because you don't take enough recreation," said the collector. "What recreation?" "If I were you I'd have a lathe." "But I don't know how to turn," answered the clerk. "Ah! that's true," said the other, rubbing his chin with an air of mingled contempt and satisfaction. Leon was weary of loving without any result; moreover he was beginning to feel that depression caused by the repetition of the same kind of life, when no interest inspires and no hope sustains it. He was so bored with Yonville and its inhabitants, that the sight of certain persons, of certain houses, irritated him beyond endurance; and the chemist, good fellow though he was, was becoming absolutely unbearable to him. Yet the prospect of a new condition of life frightened as much as it seduced him. This apprehension soon changed into impatience, and then Paris from afar sounded its fanfare of masked balls with the laugh of grisettes. As he was to finish reading there, why not set out at once? What prevented him? And he began making home-preparations; he arranged his occupations beforehand. He furnished in his head an apartment. He would lead an artist's life there! He would take lessons on the guitar! He would have a dressing-gown, a Basque cap, blue velvet slippers! He even already was admiring two crossed foils over his chimney-piece, with a death's head on the guitar above them. The difficulty was the consent of his mother; nothing, however, seemed more reasonable. Even his employer advised him to go to some other chambers where he could advance more rapidly. Taking a middle course, then, Leon looked for some place as second clerk at Rouen; found none, and at last wrote his mother a long letter full of details, in which he set forth the reasons for going to live at Paris immediately. She consented. He did not hurry. Every day for a month Hivert carried boxes, valises, parcels for him from Yonville to Rouen and from Rouen to Yonville; and when Leon had packed up his wardrobe, had his three arm-chairs restuffed, bought a stock of neckties, in a word, had made more preparations than for a voyage around the world, he put it off from week to week, until he received a second letter from his mother urging him to leave, since he wanted to pass his examination before the vacation. When the moment for the farewells had come, Madame Homais wept, Justin sobbed; Homais, as a man of nerve, concealed his emotion; he wished to carry his friend's overcoat himself as far as the gate of the notary, who was taking Leon to Rouen in his carriage. The latter had just time to bid farewell to Monsieur Bovary. When he reached the head of the stairs, he stopped, he was so out of breath. As he came in, Madame Bovary arose hurriedly. "It is I again!" said Leon. "I was sure of it!" She bit her lips, and a rush of blood flowing under her skin made her red from the roots of her hair to the top of her collar. She remained standing, leaning with her shoulder against the wainscot. "The doctor is not here?" he went on. "He is out." She repeated, "He is out." Then there was silence. They looked at one another and their thoughts, confounded in the same agony, clung close together like two throbbing breasts. "I should like to kiss Berthe," said Leon. Emma went down a few steps and called Felicite. He threw one long look around him that took in the walls, the decorations, the fireplace, as if to penetrate everything, carry away everything. But she returned, and the servant brought Berthe, who was swinging a windmill roof downwards at the end of a string. Leon kissed her several times on the neck. "Good-bye, poor child! good-bye, dear little one! good-bye!" And he gave her back to her mother. "Take her away," she said. They remained alone--Madame Bovary, her back turned, her face pressed against a window-pane; Leon held his cap in his hand, knocking it softly against his thigh. "It is going to rain," said Emma. "I have a cloak," he answered. "Ah!" She turned around, her chin lowered, her forehead bent forward. The light fell on it as on a piece of marble, to the curve of the eyebrows, without one's being able to guess what Emma was seeing on the horizon or what she was thinking within herself. "Well, good-bye," he sighed. She raised her head with a quick movement. "Yes, good-bye--go!" They advanced towards each other; he held out his hand; she hesitated. "In the English fashion, then," she said, giving her own hand wholly to him, and forcing a laugh. Leon felt it between his fingers, and the very essence of all his being seemed to pass down into that moist palm. Then he opened his hand; their eyes met again, and he disappeared. When he reached the market-place, he stopped and hid behind a pillar to look for the last time at this white house with the four green blinds. He thought he saw a shadow behind the window in the room; but the curtain, sliding along the pole as though no one were touching it, slowly opened its long oblique folds that spread out with a single movement, and thus hung straight and motionless as a plaster wall. Leon set off running. From afar he saw his employer's gig in the road, and by it a man in a coarse apron holding the horse. Homais and Monsieur Guillaumin were talking. They were waiting for him. "Embrace me," said the druggist with tears in his eyes. "Here is your coat, my good friend. Mind the cold; take care of yourself; look after yourself." "Come, Leon, jump in," said the notary. Homais bent over the splash-board, and in a voice broken by sobs uttered these three sad words-- "A pleasant journey!" "Good-night," said Monsieur Guillaumin. "Give him his head." They set out, and Homais went back. Madame Bovary had opened her window overlooking the garden and watched the clouds. They gathered around the sunset on the side of Rouen and then swiftly rolled back their black columns, behind which the great rays of the sun looked out like the golden arrows of a suspended trophy, while the rest of the empty heavens was white as porcelain. But a gust of wind bowed the poplars, and suddenly the rain fell; it pattered against the green leaves. Then the sun reappeared, the hens clucked, sparrows shook their wings in the damp thickets, and the pools of water on the gravel as they flowed away carried off the pink flowers of an acacia. "Ah! how far off he must be already!" she thought. Monsieur Homais, as usual, came at half-past six during dinner. "Well," said he, "so we've sent off our young friend!" "So it seems," replied the doctor. Then turning on his chair; "Any news at home?" "Nothing much. Only my wife was a little moved this afternoon. You know women--a nothing upsets them, especially my wife. And we should be wrong to object to that, since their nervous organization is much more malleable than ours." "Poor Leon!" said Charles. "How will he live at Paris? Will he get used to it?" Madame Bovary sighed. "Get along!" said the chemist, smacking his lips. "The outings at restaurants, the masked balls, the champagne--all that'll be jolly enough, I assure you." "I don't think he'll go wrong," objected Bovary. "Nor do I," said Monsieur Homais quickly; "although he'll have to do like the rest for fear of passing for a Jesuit. And you don't know what a life those dogs lead in the Latin quarter with actresses. Besides, students are thought a great deal of in Paris. Provided they have a few accomplishments, they are received in the best society; there are even ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain who fall in love with them, which subsequently furnishes them opportunities for making very good matches." "But," said the doctor, "I fear for him that down there--" "You are right," interrupted the chemist; "that is the reverse of the medal. And one is constantly obliged to keep one's hand in one's pocket there. Thus, we will suppose you are in a public garden. An individual presents himself, well dressed, even wearing an order, and whom one would take for a diplomatist. He approaches you, he insinuates himself; offers you a pinch of snuff, or picks up your hat. Then you become more intimate; he takes you to a cafe, invites you to his country-house, introduces you, between two drinks, to all sorts of people; and three-fourths of the time it's only to plunder your watch or lead you into some pernicious step. "That is true," said Charles; "but I was thinking especially of illnesses--of typhoid fever, for example, that attacks students from the provinces." Emma shuddered. "Because of the change of regimen," continued the chemist, "and of the perturbation that results therefrom in the whole system. And then the water at Paris, don't you know! The dishes at restaurants, all the spiced food, end by heating the blood, and are not worth, whatever people may say of them, a good soup. For my own part, I have always preferred plain living; it is more healthy. So when I was studying pharmacy at Rouen, I boarded in a boarding house; I dined with the professors." And thus he went on, expounding his opinions generally and his personal likings, until Justin came to fetch him for a mulled egg that was wanted. "Not a moment's peace!" he cried; "always at it! I can't go out for a minute! Like a plough-horse, I have always to be moiling and toiling. What drudgery!" Then, when he was at the door, "By the way, do you know the news?" "What news?" "That it is very likely," Homais went on, raising his eyebrows and assuming one of his most serious expression, "that the agricultural meeting of the Seine-Inferieure will be held this year at Yonville-l'Abbaye. The rumour, at all events, is going the round. This morning the paper alluded to it. It would be of the utmost importance for our district. But we'll talk it over later on. I can see, thank you; Justin has the lantern."

Part 2, Chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-6

Poor Emma. It's springtime, and she finally attempts to do something to change her life. Remembering how much she loved the convent school, she goes to church to talk to Father Bournisien. She finds the priest much preoccupied by the schoolboys he's in charge of. He's something of an irritable and unpleasant man. Emma flat-out tells the priest that she's suffering. He assumes that her suffering is physical, and asks if Charles has prescribed anything for it. When Emma attempts to explain her situation, he gets distracted by the boys again, and breaks off the conversation to yell at them. This is hopeless. The priest obviously has nothing to offer Emma - they talk for a while longer, their conversation punctuated by the children. Father Bournisien eventually just dismisses Emma, telling her to go home and have a cup of tea. She leaves, disgruntled. When she gets home, the stillness of the house seems to mock her. Berthe tries to come over and hug her mother. Emma , angrily pushes the little girl away. Pushing a baby? Come on, Emma. This is a new low. Poor Berthe falls and hits her head on the dresser. She starts to bleed, and Emma freaks out. She feels terrible. Charles comes home, and Emma tells him that the baby fell over while she was playing. He takes care of the injury and tells Emma not to worry. Emma feels bad for a while, but her anxiety eventually wears off. She looks at Berthe dispassionately, thinking about how ugly the child is. Charles, in the meanwhile, has been visiting the Homais family. Mr. and Mrs. Homais. try to cheer him up in a truly warped way, by talking about the various dangers that children face in their everyday lives. The Homais kids live in a totally child-safe household without sharp knives and with bars on the windows. Leon is also around. Charles pulls him aside - the clerk worries that the doctor suspects his feelings for Emma. Luckily for Leon, Charles is still the same old well-intentioned buffoon he always was. He actually wants Leon to go into Rouen for him and make some inquiries about getting a portrait of Charles made. It turns out that Leon goes into the city every week - nobody knows why. Homais suspects that the young man has a secret lover there . Nobody can figure out what Leon's deal is. Madame Lefrancois notices that he's started leaving food on his plate at dinner. Binet suggests that Leon should take up carpentry to improve his disposition . Leon's boredom with Yonville and angst about his love for Emma are at a breaking point. However, he's also afraid of moving away. In the end, though, he decides to leave right away for Paris, to start his studies in the big city. Soon enough it's time to go. The Homais give Leon a tearful seeing-off, but before he leaves, he goes to bid Charles and Emma farewell. Charles isn't at home, so he and Emma have a tense parting moment. He kisses baby Berthe goodbye, then he and Emma are left alone. They shake hands awkwardly - the tension is palpable. Leon leaves Yonville, accompanied by the notary, Monsieur Guillaumin. After he's gone, Emma mopes around, wondering where he is. Monsieur Homais comes over to visit as usual, and they discuss Leon's fate in Paris. Homais and Charles are worried that Leon will be corrupted by the city, or else catch some horrible disease. Emma is distressed. Soon enough, though, Homais acts as though nothing has happened. He heads back home merrily.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/16.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_15_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 7

part 2, chapter 7

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-7", "summary": "Emma sinks back into depression. Now that Leon is gone, she has nothing but her romantic fantasies left. It's just like it was after the ball at La Vaubyessard - nothing seems good enough for her. Leon becomes the center of Emma's fantasy life - not the real Leon, mind you, but her own construction of him. Now that he's gone, she curses herself for never giving into her love and...how shall we put this delicately...er, offering herself to him. The memory of Leon becomes the center of Emma's life; Flaubert compares this memory to a campfire burning in the middle of a desolate, snow-covered plain. Emma clings to it desperately for a while, but soon enough it dies down. Eventually, the flame of Emma's love for Leon dies completely, and she's left in the dark. Her depression is again as intense as it was in Tostes. Emma melodramatically feels that her life will never be better now that she's experienced something she thinks is real grief. This time around, Emma attempts to console herself with material things. She goes on a shopping spree, purchasing a special prie-dieu , new clothes, and a variety of other pricey things. She also half-heartedly picks up some new hobbies, like learning Italian and reading \"serious\" books instead of novels, but quickly abandons them. She also acts with an astounding unpredictability - one day she even downs a whole glass of brandy, much to Charles's dismay. Emma is flighty and unpredictable, but she never seems to swing over to \"happy.\" Her looks reflect her inner unhappiness, and she starts to complain about aging. Her health is on the decline on the whole - one day she even spits up some blood. Charles is understandably worried, but Emma waves him off. She seems not to care whether she lives or dies. Charles cares, though. This incident reduces him to tears, and the only thing he can think to do is write to his mother. The elder Madame Bovary suggests rather vehemently that it's Emma's novels and lack of religion that make her ill - so Charles decides to keep Emma from reading them. He's afraid to tell this to Emma himself, so his mother comes to take care of the matter. She cancels Emma's library card herself. Emma and her mother-in-law are not happy to see each other - Madame Bovary Senior leaves after three weeks of uncomfortable silence. Mama Bovary leaves on a market-day and, after she's gone, Emma hangs out her window, watching the merchants assembled sell their wares. In the crowd, she notices a real live gentleman in a fancy velvet coat. Shockingly, he's headed towards the Bovary house. The gentleman asks Justin and Felicite if Charles is available - apparently his servant isn't feeling well and wants to be bled. Charles gets Justin to help with the operation by holding a basin to catch the blood. The sight of blood is too much for both the servant and for Justin - both of them pass out cold. Emma has to come and assist with the remainder of the business. Emma is undisturbed by the blood. She competently helps Charles and attempts to revive Justin. As she helps her husband, she looks particularly beautiful, even amidst all the mess. Homais comes over, just as all of this is happening. He yells at Justin for hanging about the Bovary household instead of working in the pharmacy where he belongs; the boy heads back home. The remaining party briefly discusses fainting - Emma has never done it. Monsieur Boulanger comments that it's very rare that a lady should have such a strong constitution, but notes that some men are also really easily disturbed by blood. Monsieur Boulanger sends his servant back home, but lingers to pay...and get a better look at Emma. He's shocked by how beautiful and graceful Emma is, and can't believe that she's married to Charles. We get the idea that Rodolphe Boulanger is bad, bad news. He's handsome, brutish, and intelligent - a dangerous combination. Furthermore, he's a real womanizer. Emma is out of her league with this guy. Rodolphe decides to seduce Emma. He's incredibly arrogant about it - he thinks he has her all figured out. Unfortunately, he's right.", "analysis": ""}

The next day was a dreary one for Emma. Everything seemed to her enveloped in a black atmosphere floating confusedly over the exterior of things, and sorrow was engulfed within her soul with soft shrieks such as the winter wind makes in ruined castles. It was that reverie which we give to things that will not return, the lassitude that seizes you after everything was done; that pain, in fine, that the interruption of every wonted movement, the sudden cessation of any prolonged vibration, brings on. As on the return from Vaubyessard, when the quadrilles were running in her head, she was full of a gloomy melancholy, of a numb despair. Leon reappeared, taller, handsomer, more charming, more vague. Though separated from her, he had not left her; he was there, and the walls of the house seemed to hold his shadow. She could not detach her eyes from the carpet where he had walked, from those empty chairs where he had sat. The river still flowed on, and slowly drove its ripples along the slippery banks. They had often walked there to the murmur of the waves over the moss-covered pebbles. How bright the sun had been! What happy afternoons they had seen alone in the shade at the end of the garden! He read aloud, bareheaded, sitting on a footstool of dry sticks; the fresh wind of the meadow set trembling the leaves of the book and the nasturtiums of the arbour. Ah! he was gone, the only charm of her life, the only possible hope of joy. Why had she not seized this happiness when it came to her? Why not have kept hold of it with both hands, with both knees, when it was about to flee from her? And she cursed herself for not having loved Leon. She thirsted for his lips. The wish took possession of her to run after and rejoin him, throw herself into his arms and say to him, "It is I; I am yours." But Emma recoiled beforehand at the difficulties of the enterprise, and her desires, increased by regret, became only the more acute. Henceforth the memory of Leon was the centre of her boredom; it burnt there more brightly than the fire travellers have left on the snow of a Russian steppe. She sprang towards him, she pressed against him, she stirred carefully the dying embers, sought all around her anything that could revive it; and the most distant reminiscences, like the most immediate occasions, what she experienced as well as what she imagined, her voluptuous desires that were unsatisfied, her projects of happiness that crackled in the wind like dead boughs, her sterile virtue, her lost hopes, the domestic tete-a-tete--she gathered it all up, took everything, and made it all serve as fuel for her melancholy. The flames, however, subsided, either because the supply had exhausted itself, or because it had been piled up too much. Love, little by little, was quelled by absence; regret stifled beneath habit; and this incendiary light that had empurpled her pale sky was overspread and faded by degrees. In the supineness of her conscience she even took her repugnance towards her husband for aspirations towards her lover, the burning of hate for the warmth of tenderness; but as the tempest still raged, and as passion burnt itself down to the very cinders, and no help came, no sun rose, there was night on all sides, and she was lost in the terrible cold that pierced her. Then the evil days of Tostes began again. She thought herself now far more unhappy; for she had the experience of grief, with the certainty that it would not end. A woman who had laid on herself such sacrifices could well allow herself certain whims. She bought a Gothic prie-dieu, and in a month spent fourteen francs on lemons for polishing her nails; she wrote to Rouen for a blue cashmere gown; she chose one of Lheureux's finest scarves, and wore it knotted around her waist over her dressing-gown; and, with closed blinds and a book in her hand, she lay stretched out on a couch in this garb. She often changed her coiffure; she did her hair a la Chinoise, in flowing curls, in plaited coils; she parted in on one side and rolled it under like a man's. She wanted to learn Italian; she bought dictionaries, a grammar, and a supply of white paper. She tried serious reading, history, and philosophy. Sometimes in the night Charles woke up with a start, thinking he was being called to a patient. "I'm coming," he stammered; and it was the noise of a match Emma had struck to relight the lamp. But her reading fared like her piece of embroidery, all of which, only just begun, filled her cupboard; she took it up, left it, passed on to other books. She had attacks in which she could easily have been driven to commit any folly. She maintained one day, in opposition to her husband, that she could drink off a large glass of brandy, and, as Charles was stupid enough to dare her to, she swallowed the brandy to the last drop. In spite of her vapourish airs (as the housewives of Yonville called them), Emma, all the same, never seemed gay, and usually she had at the corners of her mouth that immobile contraction that puckers the faces of old maids, and those of men whose ambition has failed. She was pale all over, white as a sheet; the skin of her nose was drawn at the nostrils, her eyes looked at you vaguely. After discovering three grey hairs on her temples, she talked much of her old age. She often fainted. One day she even spat blood, and, as Charles fussed around her showing his anxiety-- "Bah!" she answered, "what does it matter?" Charles fled to his study and wept there, both his elbows on the table, sitting in an arm-chair at his bureau under the phrenological head. Then he wrote to his mother begging her to come, and they had many long consultations together on the subject of Emma. What should they decide? What was to be done since she rejected all medical treatment? "Do you know what your wife wants?" replied Madame Bovary senior. "She wants to be forced to occupy herself with some manual work. If she were obliged, like so many others, to earn her living, she wouldn't have these vapours, that come to her from a lot of ideas she stuffs into her head, and from the idleness in which she lives." "Yet she is always busy," said Charles. "Ah! always busy at what? Reading novels, bad books, works against religion, and in which they mock at priests in speeches taken from Voltaire. But all that leads you far astray, my poor child. Anyone who has no religion always ends by turning out badly." So it was decided to stop Emma reading novels. The enterprise did not seem easy. The good lady undertook it. She was, when she passed through Rouen, to go herself to the lending-library and represent that Emma had discontinued her subscription. Would they not have a right to apply to the police if the librarian persisted all the same in his poisonous trade? The farewells of mother and daughter-in-law were cold. During the three weeks that they had been together they had not exchanged half-a-dozen words apart from the inquiries and phrases when they met at table and in the evening before going to bed. Madame Bovary left on a Wednesday, the market-day at Yonville. The Place since morning had been blocked by a row of carts, which, on end and their shafts in the air, spread all along the line of houses from the church to the inn. On the other side there were canvas booths, where cotton checks, blankets, and woollen stockings were sold, together with harness for horses, and packets of blue ribbon, whose ends fluttered in the wind. The coarse hardware was spread out on the ground between pyramids of eggs and hampers of cheeses, from which sticky straw stuck out. Near the corn-machines clucking hens passed their necks through the bars of flat cages. The people, crowding in the same place and unwilling to move thence, sometimes threatened to smash the shop front of the chemist. On Wednesdays his shop was never empty, and the people pushed in less to buy drugs than for consultations. So great was Homais' reputation in the neighbouring villages. His robust aplomb had fascinated the rustics. They considered him a greater doctor than all the doctors. Emma was leaning out at the window; she was often there. The window in the provinces replaces the theatre and the promenade, she was amusing herself with watching the crowd of boors when she saw a gentleman in a green velvet coat. He had on yellow gloves, although he wore heavy gaiters; he was coming towards the doctor's house, followed by a peasant walking with a bent head and quite a thoughtful air. "Can I see the doctor?" he asked Justin, who was talking on the doorsteps with Felicite, and, taking him for a servant of the house--"Tell him that Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger of La Huchette is here." It was not from territorial vanity that the new arrival added "of La Huchette" to his name, but to make himself the better known. La Huchette, in fact, was an estate near Yonville, where he had just bought the chateau and two farms that he cultivated himself, without, however, troubling very much about them. He lived as a bachelor, and was supposed to have "at least fifteen thousand francs a year." Charles came into the room. Monsieur Boulanger introduced his man, who wanted to be bled because he felt "a tingling all over." "That'll purge me," he urged as an objection to all reasoning. So Bovary ordered a bandage and a basin, and asked Justin to hold it. Then addressing the peasant, who was already pale-- "Don't be afraid, my lad." "No, no, sir," said the other; "get on." And with an air of bravado he held out his great arm. At the prick of the lancet the blood spurted out, splashing against the looking-glass. "Hold the basin nearer," exclaimed Charles. "Lor!" said the peasant, "one would swear it was a little fountain flowing. How red my blood is! That's a good sign, isn't it?" "Sometimes," answered the doctor, "one feels nothing at first, and then syncope sets in, and more especially with people of strong constitution like this man." At these words the rustic let go the lancet-case he was twisting between his fingers. A shudder of his shoulders made the chair-back creak. His hat fell off. "I thought as much," said Bovary, pressing his finger on the vein. The basin was beginning to tremble in Justin's hands; his knees shook, he turned pale. "Emma! Emma!" called Charles. With one bound she came down the staircase. "Some vinegar," he cried. "O dear! two at once!" And in his emotion he could hardly put on the compress. "It is nothing," said Monsieur Boulanger quietly, taking Justin in his arms. He seated him on the table with his back resting against the wall. Madame Bovary began taking off his cravat. The strings of his shirt had got into a knot, and she was for some minutes moving her light fingers about the young fellow's neck. Then she poured some vinegar on her cambric handkerchief; she moistened his temples with little dabs, and then blew upon them softly. The ploughman revived, but Justin's syncope still lasted, and his eyeballs disappeared in the pale sclerotics like blue flowers in milk. "We must hide this from him," said Charles. Madame Bovary took the basin to put it under the table. With the movement she made in bending down, her dress (it was a summer dress with four flounces, yellow, long in the waist and wide in the skirt) spread out around her on the flags of the room; and as Emma stooping, staggered a little as she stretched out her arms. The stuff here and there gave with the inflections of her bust. Then she went to fetch a bottle of water, and she was melting some pieces of sugar when the chemist arrived. The servant had been to fetch him in the tumult. Seeing his pupil's eyes staring he drew a long breath; then going around him he looked at him from head to foot. "Fool!" he said, "really a little fool! A fool in four letters! A phlebotomy's a big affair, isn't it! And a fellow who isn't afraid of anything; a kind of squirrel, just as he is who climbs to vertiginous heights to shake down nuts. Oh, yes! you just talk to me, boast about yourself! Here's a fine fitness for practising pharmacy later on; for under serious circumstances you may be called before the tribunals in order to enlighten the minds of the magistrates, and you would have to keep your head then, to reason, show yourself a man, or else pass for an imbecile." Justin did not answer. The chemist went on-- "Who asked you to come? You are always pestering the doctor and madame. On Wednesday, moreover, your presence is indispensable to me. There are now twenty people in the shop. I left everything because of the interest I take in you. Come, get along! Sharp! Wait for me, and keep an eye on the jars." When Justin, who was rearranging his dress, had gone, they talked for a little while about fainting-fits. Madame Bovary had never fainted. "That is extraordinary for a lady," said Monsieur Boulanger; "but some people are very susceptible. Thus in a duel, I have seen a second lose consciousness at the mere sound of the loading of pistols." "For my part," said the chemist, "the sight of other people's blood doesn't affect me at all, but the mere thought of my own flowing would make me faint if I reflected upon it too much." Monsieur Boulanger, however, dismissed his servant, advising him to calm himself, since his fancy was over. "It procured me the advantage of making your acquaintance," he added, and he looked at Emma as he said this. Then he put three francs on the corner of the table, bowed negligently, and went out. He was soon on the other side of the river (this was his way back to La Huchette), and Emma saw him in the meadow, walking under the poplars, slackening his pace now and then as one who reflects. "She is very pretty," he said to himself; "she is very pretty, this doctor's wife. Fine teeth, black eyes, a dainty foot, a figure like a Parisienne's. Where the devil does she come from? Wherever did that fat fellow pick her up?" Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger was thirty-four; he was of brutal temperament and intelligent perspicacity, having, moreover, had much to do with women, and knowing them well. This one had seemed pretty to him; so he was thinking about her and her husband. "I think he is very stupid. She is tired of him, no doubt. He has dirty nails, and hasn't shaved for three days. While he is trotting after his patients, she sits there botching socks. And she gets bored! She would like to live in town and dance polkas every evening. Poor little woman! She is gaping after love like a carp after water on a kitchen-table. With three words of gallantry she'd adore one, I'm sure of it. She'd be tender, charming. Yes; but how to get rid of her afterwards?" Then the difficulties of love-making seen in the distance made him by contrast think of his mistress. She was an actress at Rouen, whom he kept; and when he had pondered over this image, with which, even in remembrance, he was satiated-- "Ah! Madame Bovary," he thought, "is much prettier, especially fresher. Virginie is decidedly beginning to grow fat. She is so finiky about her pleasures; and, besides, she has a mania for prawns." The fields were empty, and around him Rodolphe only heard the regular beating of the grass striking against his boots, with a cry of the grasshopper hidden at a distance among the oats. He again saw Emma in her room, dressed as he had seen her, and he undressed her. "Oh, I will have her," he cried, striking a blow with his stick at a clod in front of him. And he at once began to consider the political part of the enterprise. He asked himself-- "Where shall we meet? By what means? We shall always be having the brat on our hands, and the servant, the neighbours, and husband, all sorts of worries. Pshaw! one would lose too much time over it." Then he resumed, "She really has eyes that pierce one's heart like a gimlet. And that pale complexion! I adore pale women!" When he reached the top of the Arguiel hills he had made up his mind. "It's only finding the opportunities. Well, I will call in now and then. I'll send them venison, poultry; I'll have myself bled, if need be. We shall become friends; I'll invite them to my place. By Jove!" added he, "there's the agricultural show coming on. She'll be there. I shall see her. We'll begin boldly, for that's the surest way."

Part 2, Chapter 7

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-7

Emma sinks back into depression. Now that Leon is gone, she has nothing but her romantic fantasies left. It's just like it was after the ball at La Vaubyessard - nothing seems good enough for her. Leon becomes the center of Emma's fantasy life - not the real Leon, mind you, but her own construction of him. Now that he's gone, she curses herself for never giving into her love and...how shall we put this delicately...er, offering herself to him. The memory of Leon becomes the center of Emma's life; Flaubert compares this memory to a campfire burning in the middle of a desolate, snow-covered plain. Emma clings to it desperately for a while, but soon enough it dies down. Eventually, the flame of Emma's love for Leon dies completely, and she's left in the dark. Her depression is again as intense as it was in Tostes. Emma melodramatically feels that her life will never be better now that she's experienced something she thinks is real grief. This time around, Emma attempts to console herself with material things. She goes on a shopping spree, purchasing a special prie-dieu , new clothes, and a variety of other pricey things. She also half-heartedly picks up some new hobbies, like learning Italian and reading "serious" books instead of novels, but quickly abandons them. She also acts with an astounding unpredictability - one day she even downs a whole glass of brandy, much to Charles's dismay. Emma is flighty and unpredictable, but she never seems to swing over to "happy." Her looks reflect her inner unhappiness, and she starts to complain about aging. Her health is on the decline on the whole - one day she even spits up some blood. Charles is understandably worried, but Emma waves him off. She seems not to care whether she lives or dies. Charles cares, though. This incident reduces him to tears, and the only thing he can think to do is write to his mother. The elder Madame Bovary suggests rather vehemently that it's Emma's novels and lack of religion that make her ill - so Charles decides to keep Emma from reading them. He's afraid to tell this to Emma himself, so his mother comes to take care of the matter. She cancels Emma's library card herself. Emma and her mother-in-law are not happy to see each other - Madame Bovary Senior leaves after three weeks of uncomfortable silence. Mama Bovary leaves on a market-day and, after she's gone, Emma hangs out her window, watching the merchants assembled sell their wares. In the crowd, she notices a real live gentleman in a fancy velvet coat. Shockingly, he's headed towards the Bovary house. The gentleman asks Justin and Felicite if Charles is available - apparently his servant isn't feeling well and wants to be bled. Charles gets Justin to help with the operation by holding a basin to catch the blood. The sight of blood is too much for both the servant and for Justin - both of them pass out cold. Emma has to come and assist with the remainder of the business. Emma is undisturbed by the blood. She competently helps Charles and attempts to revive Justin. As she helps her husband, she looks particularly beautiful, even amidst all the mess. Homais comes over, just as all of this is happening. He yells at Justin for hanging about the Bovary household instead of working in the pharmacy where he belongs; the boy heads back home. The remaining party briefly discusses fainting - Emma has never done it. Monsieur Boulanger comments that it's very rare that a lady should have such a strong constitution, but notes that some men are also really easily disturbed by blood. Monsieur Boulanger sends his servant back home, but lingers to pay...and get a better look at Emma. He's shocked by how beautiful and graceful Emma is, and can't believe that she's married to Charles. We get the idea that Rodolphe Boulanger is bad, bad news. He's handsome, brutish, and intelligent - a dangerous combination. Furthermore, he's a real womanizer. Emma is out of her league with this guy. Rodolphe decides to seduce Emma. He's incredibly arrogant about it - he thinks he has her all figured out. Unfortunately, he's right.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/17.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_16_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 8

part 2, chapter 8

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-8", "summary": "It's a big day for little Yonville - the town fair. Everyone in the town is up early to set up for it. Binet, who doubles as the captain of the fire brigade, is all gussied up. The whole town is looking its best. The only person who's not too thrilled about all of this is Madame Lefrancois. Homais stops to chat with her, and she cheers up a little when she finds out that he's on the fair advisory committee . Homais keeps talking, but his audience is not listening. We follow Madame Lefrancois' gaze and see what has put her in such a foul mood - the town's other tavern, her rival, is full of singing people. These good days won't last too long, though; she tells Homais that she heard that Tellier, the barkeep, was in such great debt to Monsieur Lheureux that the tavern was going to be shut down the following week. From the perspective of these gossiping neighbors, we see Emma and Rodolphe a little ways off, talking to Monsieur Lheureux. Rodolphe is obviously planning on making his move already - unlike Leon, he's a pretty smooth operator. Homais goes over to say hello, but Rodolphe manages to avoid him. He regards Emma as they walk along - he's pleased with what he sees. Monsieur Lheureux attempts to follow them and maintain their conversation, but they get rid of him quickly. Rodolphe immediately launches his attack and starts flirting openly with Emma once they're alone. The townspeople are assembled for various agricultural competitions. Rodolphe is supposed to participate in the judging, but he has other things on his mind. He turns all his attention to Emma, who responds eagerly to him. He knows exactly what buttons to push - they talk about the frustrations of provincial life, the loneliness of existence...basically, all of Emma's favorite subjects. Their conversation is interrupted by the entrance of the fire brigade and the start of the awards ceremony. A government official, Monsieur Lieuvain, arrives to dole out the prizes; he gives a long, long, loooong speech about the government, the country. While this is going on, Emma and Rodolphe continue their intimate conversation. Rodolphe claims that the only true duty is to enjoy what's beautiful about life, and reject the conventions of society. Emma feebly tries to argue that society's moral standards are important, but Rodolphe shoots her down promptly. He's the clear winner here; Emma is toast. Monsieur Lieuvain, in the meanwhile, just keeps talking and talking. He's full of governmental rhetoric, but he's basically not talking about anything. Despite this fact, the whole town is enraptured by him. Rodolphe quickly wins Emma over. All of her feelings about Leon, the Viscount at the ball, and her loneliness come rushing back, and re-focus on Rodolphe. She's smitten. Finally, Monsieur Lieuvain wraps up his speech. Another speech begins, and Rodolphe continues to woo Emma all the while. Agricultural prizes are given for things as diverse as pigs, liquid manure , and drainage. Simultaneously , Rodolphe declares his love for Emma. The prizes, and the wooing, conclude with the awarding of a prize for long service, which is awarded to a confused little old woman. Flaubert describes this woman, Catherine Leroux, with rather excruciating detail; she's obviously been broken down by years of hard work. She says that she will give her prize money to the priest, which offends Homais. Following this ludicrous ceremony, a big feast begins. The townspeople, in a frenzy of communal gluttony, all stuff themselves. Rodolphe isn't interested in the food - he's thinking of Emma and of the pleasure he'll get from her in the future. Emma is off with Charles and the Homais family. The grand finale of the festival is a display of fireworks - unfortunately, they're too damp, and they barely go off. The evening ends rather anti-climactically, and everyone drifts back home. Homais proceeds to write an enthusiastic, over-the-top article about the fiesta, and publish it in a Rouen paper.", "analysis": ""}

At last it came, the famous agricultural show. On the morning of the solemnity all the inhabitants at their doors were chatting over the preparations. The pediment of the town hall had been hung with garlands of ivy; a tent had been erected in a meadow for the banquet; and in the middle of the Place, in front of the church, a kind of bombarde was to announce the arrival of the prefect and the names of the successful farmers who had obtained prizes. The National Guard of Buchy (there was none at Yonville) had come to join the corps of firemen, of whom Binet was captain. On that day he wore a collar even higher than usual; and, tightly buttoned in his tunic, his figure was so stiff and motionless that the whole vital portion of his person seemed to have descended into his legs, which rose in a cadence of set steps with a single movement. As there was some rivalry between the tax-collector and the colonel, both, to show off their talents, drilled their men separately. One saw the red epaulettes and the black breastplates pass and re-pass alternately; there was no end to it, and it constantly began again. There had never been such a display of pomp. Several citizens had scoured their houses the evening before; tri-coloured flags hung from half-open windows; all the public-houses were full; and in the lovely weather the starched caps, the golden crosses, and the coloured neckerchiefs seemed whiter than snow, shone in the sun, and relieved with the motley colours the sombre monotony of the frock-coats and blue smocks. The neighbouring farmers' wives, when they got off their horses, pulled out the long pins that fastened around them their dresses, turned up for fear of mud; and the husbands, for their part, in order to save their hats, kept their handkerchiefs around them, holding one corner between their teeth. The crowd came into the main street from both ends of the village. People poured in from the lanes, the alleys, the houses; and from time to time one heard knockers banging against doors closing behind women with their gloves, who were going out to see the fete. What was most admired were two long lamp-stands covered with lanterns, that flanked a platform on which the authorities were to sit. Besides this there were against the four columns of the town hall four kinds of poles, each bearing a small standard of greenish cloth, embellished with inscriptions in gold letters. On one was written, "To Commerce"; on the other, "To Agriculture"; on the third, "To Industry"; and on the fourth, "To the Fine Arts." But the jubilation that brightened all faces seemed to darken that of Madame Lefrancois, the innkeeper. Standing on her kitchen-steps she muttered to herself, "What rubbish! what rubbish! With their canvas booth! Do they think the prefect will be glad to dine down there under a tent like a gipsy? They call all this fussing doing good to the place! Then it wasn't worth while sending to Neufchatel for the keeper of a cookshop! And for whom? For cowherds! tatterdemalions!" The druggist was passing. He had on a frock-coat, nankeen trousers, beaver shoes, and, for a wonder, a hat with a low crown. "Your servant! Excuse me, I am in a hurry." And as the fat widow asked where he was going-- "It seems odd to you, doesn't it, I who am always more cooped up in my laboratory than the man's rat in his cheese." "What cheese?" asked the landlady. "Oh, nothing! nothing!" Homais continued. "I merely wished to convey to you, Madame Lefrancois, that I usually live at home like a recluse. To-day, however, considering the circumstances, it is necessary--" "Oh, you're going down there!" she said contemptuously. "Yes, I am going," replied the druggist, astonished. "Am I not a member of the consulting commission?" Mere Lefrancois looked at him for a few moments, and ended by saying with a smile-- "That's another pair of shoes! But what does agriculture matter to you? Do you understand anything about it?" "Certainly I understand it, since I am a druggist--that is to say, a chemist. And the object of chemistry, Madame Lefrancois, being the knowledge of the reciprocal and molecular action of all natural bodies, it follows that agriculture is comprised within its domain. And, in fact, the composition of the manure, the fermentation of liquids, the analyses of gases, and the influence of miasmata, what, I ask you, is all this, if it isn't chemistry, pure and simple?" The landlady did not answer. Homais went on-- "Do you think that to be an agriculturist it is necessary to have tilled the earth or fattened fowls oneself? It is necessary rather to know the composition of the substances in question--the geological strata, the atmospheric actions, the quality of the soil, the minerals, the waters, the density of the different bodies, their capillarity, and what not. And one must be master of all the principles of hygiene in order to direct, criticize the construction of buildings, the feeding of animals, the diet of domestics. And, moreover, Madame Lefrancois, one must know botany, be able to distinguish between plants, you understand, which are the wholesome and those that are deleterious, which are unproductive and which nutritive, if it is well to pull them up here and re-sow them there, to propagate some, destroy others; in brief, one must keep pace with science by means of pamphlets and public papers, be always on the alert to find out improvements." The landlady never took her eyes off the "Cafe Francois" and the chemist went on-- "Would to God our agriculturists were chemists, or that at least they would pay more attention to the counsels of science. Thus lately I myself wrote a considerable tract, a memoir of over seventy-two pages, entitled, 'Cider, its Manufacture and its Effects, together with some New Reflections on the Subject,' that I sent to the Agricultural Society of Rouen, and which even procured me the honour of being received among its members--Section, Agriculture; Class, Pomological. Well, if my work had been given to the public--" But the druggist stopped, Madame Lefrancois seemed so preoccupied. "Just look at them!" she said. "It's past comprehension! Such a cookshop as that!" And with a shrug of the shoulders that stretched out over her breast the stitches of her knitted bodice, she pointed with both hands at her rival's inn, whence songs were heard issuing. "Well, it won't last long," she added. "It'll be over before a week." Homais drew back with stupefaction. She came down three steps and whispered in his ear-- "What! you didn't know it? There is to be an execution in next week. It's Lheureux who is selling him out; he has killed him with bills." "What a terrible catastrophe!" cried the druggist, who always found expressions in harmony with all imaginable circumstances. Then the landlady began telling him the story that she had heard from Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin's servant, and although she detested Tellier, she blamed Lheureux. He was "a wheedler, a sneak." "There!" she said. "Look at him! he is in the market; he is bowing to Madame Bovary, who's got on a green bonnet. Why, she's taking Monsieur Boulanger's arm." "Madame Bovary!" exclaimed Homais. "I must go at once and pay her my respects. Perhaps she'll be very glad to have a seat in the enclosure under the peristyle." And, without heeding Madame Lefrancois, who was calling him back to tell him more about it, the druggist walked off rapidly with a smile on his lips, with straight knees, bowing copiously to right and left, and taking up much room with the large tails of his frock-coat that fluttered behind him in the wind. Rodolphe, having caught sight of him from afar, hurried on, but Madame Bovary lost her breath; so he walked more slowly, and, smiling at her, said in a rough tone-- "It's only to get away from that fat fellow, you know, the druggist." She pressed his elbow. "What's the meaning of that?" he asked himself. And he looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. Her profile was so calm that one could guess nothing from it. It stood out in the light from the oval of her bonnet, with pale ribbons on it like the leaves of weeds. Her eyes with their long curved lashes looked straight before her, and though wide open, they seemed slightly puckered by the cheek-bones, because of the blood pulsing gently under the delicate skin. A pink line ran along the partition between her nostrils. Her head was bent upon her shoulder, and the pearl tips of her white teeth were seen between her lips. "Is she making fun of me?" thought Rodolphe. Emma's gesture, however, had only been meant for a warning; for Monsieur Lheureux was accompanying them, and spoke now and again as if to enter into the conversation. "What a superb day! Everybody is out! The wind is east!" And neither Madame Bovary nor Rodolphe answered him, whilst at the slightest movement made by them he drew near, saying, "I beg your pardon!" and raised his hat. When they reached the farrier's house, instead of following the road up to the fence, Rodolphe suddenly turned down a path, drawing with him Madame Bovary. He called out-- "Good evening, Monsieur Lheureux! See you again presently." "How you got rid of him!" she said, laughing. "Why," he went on, "allow oneself to be intruded upon by others? And as to-day I have the happiness of being with you--" Emma blushed. He did not finish his sentence. Then he talked of the fine weather and of the pleasure of walking on the grass. A few daisies had sprung up again. "Here are some pretty Easter daisies," he said, "and enough of them to furnish oracles to all the amorous maids in the place." He added, "Shall I pick some? What do you think?" "Are you in love?" she asked, coughing a little. "H'm, h'm! who knows?" answered Rodolphe. The meadow began to fill, and the housewives hustled you with their great umbrellas, their baskets, and their babies. One had often to get out of the way of a long file of country folk, servant-maids with blue stockings, flat shoes, silver rings, and who smelt of milk, when one passed close to them. They walked along holding one another by the hand, and thus they spread over the whole field from the row of open trees to the banquet tent. But this was the examination time, and the farmers one after the other entered a kind of enclosure formed by a long cord supported on sticks. The beasts were there, their noses towards the cord, and making a confused line with their unequal rumps. Drowsy pigs were burrowing in the earth with their snouts, calves were bleating, lambs baaing; the cows, on knees folded in, were stretching their bellies on the grass, slowly chewing the cud, and blinking their heavy eyelids at the gnats that buzzed round them. Plough-men with bare arms were holding by the halter prancing stallions that neighed with dilated nostrils looking towards the mares. These stood quietly, stretching out their heads and flowing manes, while their foals rested in their shadow, or now and then came and sucked them. And above the long undulation of these crowded animals one saw some white mane rising in the wind like a wave, or some sharp horns sticking out, and the heads of men running about. Apart, outside the enclosure, a hundred paces off, was a large black bull, muzzled, with an iron ring in its nostrils, and who moved no more than if he had been in bronze. A child in rags was holding him by a rope. Between the two lines the committee-men were walking with heavy steps, examining each animal, then consulting one another in a low voice. One who seemed of more importance now and then took notes in a book as he walked along. This was the president of the jury, Monsieur Derozerays de la Panville. As soon as he recognised Rodolphe he came forward quickly, and smiling amiably, said-- "What! Monsieur Boulanger, you are deserting us?" Rodolphe protested that he was just coming. But when the president had disappeared-- "Ma foi!*" said he, "I shall not go. Your company is better than his." *Upon my word! And while poking fun at the show, Rodolphe, to move about more easily, showed the gendarme his blue card, and even stopped now and then in front of some fine beast, which Madame Bovary did not at all admire. He noticed this, and began jeering at the Yonville ladies and their dresses; then he apologised for the negligence of his own. He had that incongruity of common and elegant in which the habitually vulgar think they see the revelation of an eccentric existence, of the perturbations of sentiment, the tyrannies of art, and always a certain contempt for social conventions, that seduces or exasperates them. Thus his cambric shirt with plaited cuffs was blown out by the wind in the opening of his waistcoat of grey ticking, and his broad-striped trousers disclosed at the ankle nankeen boots with patent leather gaiters. These were so polished that they reflected the grass. He trampled on horses's dung with them, one hand in the pocket of his jacket and his straw hat on one side. "Besides," added he, "when one lives in the country--" "It's waste of time," said Emma. "That is true," replied Rodolphe. "To think that not one of these people is capable of understanding even the cut of a coat!" Then they talked about provincial mediocrity, of the lives it crushed, the illusions lost there. "And I too," said Rodolphe, "am drifting into depression." "You!" she said in astonishment; "I thought you very light-hearted." "Ah! yes. I seem so, because in the midst of the world I know how to wear the mask of a scoffer upon my face; and yet, how many a time at the sight of a cemetery by moonlight have I not asked myself whether it were not better to join those sleeping there!" "Oh! and your friends?" she said. "You do not think of them." "My friends! What friends? Have I any? Who cares for me?" And he accompanied the last words with a kind of whistling of the lips. But they were obliged to separate from each other because of a great pile of chairs that a man was carrying behind them. He was so overladen with them that one could only see the tips of his wooden shoes and the ends of his two outstretched arms. It was Lestiboudois, the gravedigger, who was carrying the church chairs about amongst the people. Alive to all that concerned his interests, he had hit upon this means of turning the show to account; and his idea was succeeding, for he no longer knew which way to turn. In fact, the villagers, who were hot, quarreled for these seats, whose straw smelt of incense, and they leant against the thick backs, stained with the wax of candles, with a certain veneration. Madame Bovary again took Rodolphe's arm; he went on as if speaking to himself-- "Yes, I have missed so many things. Always alone! Ah! if I had some aim in life, if I had met some love, if I had found someone! Oh, how I would have spent all the energy of which I am capable, surmounted everything, overcome everything!" "Yet it seems to me," said Emma, "that you are not to be pitied." "Ah! you think so?" said Rodolphe. "For, after all," she went on, "you are free--" she hesitated, "rich--" "Do not mock me," he replied. And she protested that she was not mocking him, when the report of a cannon resounded. Immediately all began hustling one another pell-mell towards the village. It was a false alarm. The prefect seemed not to be coming, and the members of the jury felt much embarrassed, not knowing if they ought to begin the meeting or still wait. At last at the end of the Place a large hired landau appeared, drawn by two thin horses, which a coachman in a white hat was whipping lustily. Binet had only just time to shout, "Present arms!" and the colonel to imitate him. All ran towards the enclosure; everyone pushed forward. A few even forgot their collars; but the equipage of the prefect seemed to anticipate the crowd, and the two yoked jades, trapesing in their harness, came up at a little trot in front of the peristyle of the town hall at the very moment when the National Guard and firemen deployed, beating drums and marking time. "Present!" shouted Binet. "Halt!" shouted the colonel. "Left about, march." And after presenting arms, during which the clang of the band, letting loose, rang out like a brass kettle rolling downstairs, all the guns were lowered. Then was seen stepping down from the carriage a gentleman in a short coat with silver braiding, with bald brow, and wearing a tuft of hair at the back of his head, of a sallow complexion and the most benign appearance. His eyes, very large and covered by heavy lids, were half-closed to look at the crowd, while at the same time he raised his sharp nose, and forced a smile upon his sunken mouth. He recognised the mayor by his scarf, and explained to him that the prefect was not able to come. He himself was a councillor at the prefecture; then he added a few apologies. Monsieur Tuvache answered them with compliments; the other confessed himself nervous; and they remained thus, face to face, their foreheads almost touching, with the members of the jury all round, the municipal council, the notable personages, the National Guard and the crowd. The councillor pressing his little cocked hat to his breast repeated his bows, while Tuvache, bent like a bow, also smiled, stammered, tried to say something, protested his devotion to the monarchy and the honour that was being done to Yonville. Hippolyte, the groom from the inn, took the head of the horses from the coachman, and, limping along with his club-foot, led them to the door of the "Lion d'Or", where a number of peasants collected to look at the carriage. The drum beat, the howitzer thundered, and the gentlemen one by one mounted the platform, where they sat down in red utrecht velvet arm-chairs that had been lent by Madame Tuvache. All these people looked alike. Their fair flabby faces, somewhat tanned by the sun, were the colour of sweet cider, and their puffy whiskers emerged from stiff collars, kept up by white cravats with broad bows. All the waist-coats were of velvet, double-breasted; all the watches had, at the end of a long ribbon, an oval cornelian seal; everyone rested his two hands on his thighs, carefully stretching the stride of their trousers, whose unsponged glossy cloth shone more brilliantly than the leather of their heavy boots. The ladies of the company stood at the back under the vestibule between the pillars while the common herd was opposite, standing up or sitting on chairs. As a matter of fact, Lestiboudois had brought thither all those that he had moved from the field, and he even kept running back every minute to fetch others from the church. He caused such confusion with this piece of business that one had great difficulty in getting to the small steps of the platform. "I think," said Monsieur Lheureux to the chemist, who was passing to his place, "that they ought to have put up two Venetian masts with something rather severe and rich for ornaments; it would have been a very pretty effect." "To be sure," replied Homais; "but what can you expect? The mayor took everything on his own shoulders. He hasn't much taste. Poor Tuvache! and he is even completely destitute of what is called the genius of art." Rodolphe, meanwhile, with Madame Bovary, had gone up to the first floor of the town hall, to the "council-room," and, as it was empty, he declared that they could enjoy the sight there more comfortably. He fetched three stools from the round table under the bust of the monarch, and having carried them to one of the windows, they sat down by each other. There was commotion on the platform, long whisperings, much parleying. At last the councillor got up. They knew now that his name was Lieuvain, and in the crowd the name was passed from one to the other. After he had collated a few pages, and bent over them to see better, he began-- "Gentlemen! May I be permitted first of all (before addressing you on the object of our meeting to-day, and this sentiment will, I am sure, be shared by you all), may I be permitted, I say, to pay a tribute to the higher administration, to the government to the monarch, gentle men, our sovereign, to that beloved king, to whom no branch of public or private prosperity is a matter of indifference, and who directs with a hand at once so firm and wise the chariot of the state amid the incessant perils of a stormy sea, knowing, moreover, how to make peace respected as well as war, industry, commerce, agriculture, and the fine arts?" "I ought," said Rodolphe, "to get back a little further." "Why?" said Emma. But at this moment the voice of the councillor rose to an extraordinary pitch. He declaimed-- "This is no longer the time, gentlemen, when civil discord ensanguined our public places, when the landlord, the business-man, the working-man himself, falling asleep at night, lying down to peaceful sleep, trembled lest he should be awakened suddenly by the noise of incendiary tocsins, when the most subversive doctrines audaciously sapped foundations." "Well, someone down there might see me," Rodolphe resumed, "then I should have to invent excuses for a fortnight; and with my bad reputation--" "Oh, you are slandering yourself," said Emma. "No! It is dreadful, I assure you." "But, gentlemen," continued the councillor, "if, banishing from my memory the remembrance of these sad pictures, I carry my eyes back to the actual situation of our dear country, what do I see there? Everywhere commerce and the arts are flourishing; everywhere new means of communication, like so many new arteries in the body of the state, establish within it new relations. Our great industrial centres have recovered all their activity; religion, more consolidated, smiles in all hearts; our ports are full, confidence is born again, and France breathes once more!" "Besides," added Rodolphe, "perhaps from the world's point of view they are right." "How so?" she asked. "What!" said he. "Do you not know that there are souls constantly tormented? They need by turns to dream and to act, the purest passions and the most turbulent joys, and thus they fling themselves into all sorts of fantasies, of follies." Then she looked at him as one looks at a traveller who has voyaged over strange lands, and went on-- "We have not even this distraction, we poor women!" "A sad distraction, for happiness isn't found in it." "But is it ever found?" she asked. "Yes; one day it comes," he answered. "And this is what you have understood," said the councillor. "You, farmers, agricultural labourers! you pacific pioneers of a work that belongs wholly to civilization! you, men of progress and morality, you have understood, I say, that political storms are even more redoubtable than atmospheric disturbances!" "It comes one day," repeated Rodolphe, "one day suddenly, and when one is despairing of it. Then the horizon expands; it is as if a voice cried, 'It is here!' You feel the need of confiding the whole of your life, of giving everything, sacrificing everything to this being. There is no need for explanations; they understand one another. They have seen each other in dreams!" (And he looked at her.) "In fine, here it is, this treasure so sought after, here before you. It glitters, it flashes; yet one still doubts, one does not believe it; one remains dazzled, as if one went out from darkness into light." And as he ended Rodolphe suited the action to the word. He passed his hand over his face, like a man seized with giddiness. Then he let it fall on Emma's. She took hers away. "And who would be surprised at it, gentlemen? He only who is so blind, so plunged (I do not fear to say it), so plunged in the prejudices of another age as still to misunderstand the spirit of agricultural populations. Where, indeed, is to be found more patriotism than in the country, greater devotion to the public welfare, more intelligence, in a word? And, gentlemen, I do not mean that superficial intelligence, vain ornament of idle minds, but rather that profound and balanced intelligence that applies itself above all else to useful objects, thus contributing to the good of all, to the common amelioration and to the support of the state, born of respect for law and the practice of duty--" "Ah! again!" said Rodolphe. "Always 'duty.' I am sick of the word. They are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of old women with foot-warmers and rosaries who constantly drone into our ears 'Duty, duty!' Ah! by Jove! one's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us." "Yet--yet--" objected Madame Bovary. "No, no! Why cry out against the passions? Are they not the one beautiful thing on the earth, the source of heroism, of enthusiasm, of poetry, music, the arts, of everything, in a word?" "But one must," said Emma, "to some extent bow to the opinion of the world and accept its moral code." "Ah! but there are two," he replied. "The small, the conventional, that of men, that which constantly changes, that brays out so loudly, that makes such a commotion here below, of the earth earthly, like the mass of imbeciles you see down there. But the other, the eternal, that is about us and above, like the landscape that surrounds us, and the blue heavens that give us light." Monsieur Lieuvain had just wiped his mouth with a pocket-handkerchief. He continued-- "And what should I do here gentlemen, pointing out to you the uses of agriculture? Who supplies our wants? Who provides our means of subsistence? Is it not the agriculturist? The agriculturist, gentlemen, who, sowing with laborious hand the fertile furrows of the country, brings forth the corn, which, being ground, is made into a powder by means of ingenious machinery, comes out thence under the name of flour, and from there, transported to our cities, is soon delivered at the baker's, who makes it into food for poor and rich alike. Again, is it not the agriculturist who fattens, for our clothes, his abundant flocks in the pastures? For how should we clothe ourselves, how nourish ourselves, without the agriculturist? And, gentlemen, is it even necessary to go so far for examples? Who has not frequently reflected on all the momentous things that we get out of that modest animal, the ornament of poultry-yards, that provides us at once with a soft pillow for our bed, with succulent flesh for our tables, and eggs? But I should never end if I were to enumerate one after the other all the different products which the earth, well cultivated, like a generous mother, lavishes upon her children. Here it is the vine, elsewhere the apple tree for cider, there colza, farther on cheeses and flax. Gentlemen, let us not forget flax, which has made such great strides of late years, and to which I will more particularly call your attention." He had no need to call it, for all the mouths of the multitude were wide open, as if to drink in his words. Tuvache by his side listened to him with staring eyes. Monsieur Derozerays from time to time softly closed his eyelids, and farther on the chemist, with his son Napoleon between his knees, put his hand behind his ear in order not to lose a syllable. The chins of the other members of the jury went slowly up and down in their waistcoats in sign of approval. The firemen at the foot of the platform rested on their bayonets; and Binet, motionless, stood with out-turned elbows, the point of his sabre in the air. Perhaps he could hear, but certainly he could see nothing, because of the visor of his helmet, that fell down on his nose. His lieutenant, the youngest son of Monsieur Tuvache, had a bigger one, for his was enormous, and shook on his head, and from it an end of his cotton scarf peeped out. He smiled beneath it with a perfectly infantine sweetness, and his pale little face, whence drops were running, wore an expression of enjoyment and sleepiness. The square as far as the houses was crowded with people. One saw folk leaning on their elbows at all the windows, others standing at doors, and Justin, in front of the chemist's shop, seemed quite transfixed by the sight of what he was looking at. In spite of the silence Monsieur Lieuvain's voice was lost in the air. It reached you in fragments of phrases, and interrupted here and there by the creaking of chairs in the crowd; then you suddenly heard the long bellowing of an ox, or else the bleating of the lambs, who answered one another at street corners. In fact, the cowherds and shepherds had driven their beasts thus far, and these lowed from time to time, while with their tongues they tore down some scrap of foliage that hung above their mouths. Rodolphe had drawn nearer to Emma, and said to her in a low voice, speaking rapidly-- "Does not this conspiracy of the world revolt you? Is there a single sentiment it does not condemn? The noblest instincts, the purest sympathies are persecuted, slandered; and if at length two poor souls do meet, all is so organised that they cannot blend together. Yet they will make the attempt; they will flutter their wings; they will call upon each other. Oh! no matter. Sooner or later, in six months, ten years, they will come together, will love; for fate has decreed it, and they are born one for the other." His arms were folded across his knees, and thus lifting his face towards Emma, close by her, he looked fixedly at her. She noticed in his eyes small golden lines radiating from black pupils; she even smelt the perfume of the pomade that made his hair glossy. Then a faintness came over her; she recalled the Viscount who had waltzed with her at Vaubyessard, and his beard exhaled like this air an odour of vanilla and citron, and mechanically she half-closed her eyes the better to breathe it in. But in making this movement, as she leant back in her chair, she saw in the distance, right on the line of the horizon, the old diligence, the "Hirondelle," that was slowly descending the hill of Leux, dragging after it a long trail of dust. It was in this yellow carriage that Leon had so often come back to her, and by this route down there that he had gone for ever. She fancied she saw him opposite at his windows; then all grew confused; clouds gathered; it seemed to her that she was again turning in the waltz under the light of the lustres on the arm of the Viscount, and that Leon was not far away, that he was coming; and yet all the time she was conscious of the scent of Rodolphe's head by her side. This sweetness of sensation pierced through her old desires, and these, like grains of sand under a gust of wind, eddied to and fro in the subtle breath of the perfume which suffused her soul. She opened wide her nostrils several times to drink in the freshness of the ivy round the capitals. She took off her gloves, she wiped her hands, then fanned her face with her handkerchief, while athwart the throbbing of her temples she heard the murmur of the crowd and the voice of the councillor intoning his phrases. He said--"Continue, persevere; listen neither to the suggestions of routine, nor to the over-hasty councils of a rash empiricism. "Apply yourselves, above all, to the amelioration of the soil, to good manures, to the development of the equine, bovine, ovine, and porcine races. Let these shows be to you pacific arenas, where the victor in leaving it will hold forth a hand to the vanquished, and will fraternise with him in the hope of better success. And you, aged servants, humble domestics, whose hard labour no Government up to this day has taken into consideration, come hither to receive the reward of your silent virtues, and be assured that the state henceforward has its eye upon you; that it encourages you, protects you; that it will accede to your just demands, and alleviate as much as in it lies the burden of your painful sacrifices." Monsieur Lieuvain then sat down; Monsieur Derozerays got up, beginning another speech. His was not perhaps so florid as that of the councillor, but it recommended itself by a more direct style, that is to say, by more special knowledge and more elevated considerations. Thus the praise of the Government took up less space in it; religion and agriculture more. He showed in it the relations of these two, and how they had always contributed to civilisation. Rodolphe with Madame Bovary was talking dreams, presentiments, magnetism. Going back to the cradle of society, the orator painted those fierce times when men lived on acorns in the heart of woods. Then they had left off the skins of beasts, had put on cloth, tilled the soil, planted the vine. Was this a good, and in this discovery was there not more of injury than of gain? Monsieur Derozerays set himself this problem. From magnetism little by little Rodolphe had come to affinities, and while the president was citing Cincinnatus and his plough, Diocletian, planting his cabbages, and the Emperors of China inaugurating the year by the sowing of seed, the young man was explaining to the young woman that these irresistible attractions find their cause in some previous state of existence. "Thus we," he said, "why did we come to know one another? What chance willed it? It was because across the infinite, like two streams that flow but to unite; our special bents of mind had driven us towards each other." And he seized her hand; she did not withdraw it. "For good farming generally!" cried the president. "Just now, for example, when I went to your house." "To Monsieur Bizat of Quincampoix." "Did I know I should accompany you?" "Seventy francs." "A hundred times I wished to go; and I followed you--I remained." "Manures!" "And I shall remain to-night, to-morrow, all other days, all my life!" "To Monsieur Caron of Argueil, a gold medal!" "For I have never in the society of any other person found so complete a charm." "To Monsieur Bain of Givry-Saint-Martin." "And I shall carry away with me the remembrance of you." "For a merino ram!" "But you will forget me; I shall pass away like a shadow." "To Monsieur Belot of Notre-Dame." "Oh, no! I shall be something in your thought, in your life, shall I not?" "Porcine race; prizes--equal, to Messrs. Leherisse and Cullembourg, sixty francs!" Rodolphe was pressing her hand, and he felt it all warm and quivering like a captive dove that wants to fly away; but, whether she was trying to take it away or whether she was answering his pressure; she made a movement with her fingers. He exclaimed-- "Oh, I thank you! You do not repulse me! You are good! You understand that I am yours! Let me look at you; let me contemplate you!" A gust of wind that blew in at the window ruffled the cloth on the table, and in the square below all the great caps of the peasant women were uplifted by it like the wings of white butterflies fluttering. "Use of oil-cakes," continued the president. He was hurrying on: "Flemish manure-flax-growing-drainage-long leases-domestic service." Rodolphe was no longer speaking. They looked at one another. A supreme desire made their dry lips tremble, and wearily, without an effort, their fingers intertwined. "Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux, of Sassetot-la-Guerriere, for fifty-four years of service at the same farm, a silver medal--value, twenty-five francs!" "Where is Catherine Leroux?" repeated the councillor. She did not present herself, and one could hear voices whispering-- "Go up!" "Don't be afraid!" "Oh, how stupid she is!" "Well, is she there?" cried Tuvache. "Yes; here she is." "Then let her come up!" Then there came forward on the platform a little old woman with timid bearing, who seemed to shrink within her poor clothes. On her feet she wore heavy wooden clogs, and from her hips hung a large blue apron. Her pale face framed in a borderless cap was more wrinkled than a withered russet apple. And from the sleeves of her red jacket looked out two large hands with knotty joints, the dust of barns, the potash of washing the grease of wools had so encrusted, roughened, hardened these that they seemed dirty, although they had been rinsed in clear water; and by dint of long service they remained half open, as if to bear humble witness for themselves of so much suffering endured. Something of monastic rigidity dignified her face. Nothing of sadness or of emotion weakened that pale look. In her constant living with animals she had caught their dumbness and their calm. It was the first time that she found herself in the midst of so large a company, and inwardly scared by the flags, the drums, the gentlemen in frock-coats, and the order of the councillor, she stood motionless, not knowing whether to advance or run away, nor why the crowd was pushing her and the jury were smiling at her. Thus stood before these radiant bourgeois this half-century of servitude. "Approach, venerable Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux!" said the councillor, who had taken the list of prize-winners from the president; and, looking at the piece of paper and the old woman by turns, he repeated in a fatherly tone--"Approach! approach!" "Are you deaf?" said Tuvache, fidgeting in his armchair; and he began shouting in her ear, "Fifty-four years of service. A silver medal! Twenty-five francs! For you!" Then, when she had her medal, she looked at it, and a smile of beatitude spread over her face; and as she walked away they could hear her muttering "I'll give it to our cure up home, to say some masses for me!" "What fanaticism!" exclaimed the chemist, leaning across to the notary. The meeting was over, the crowd dispersed, and now that the speeches had been read, each one fell back into his place again, and everything into the old grooves; the masters bullied the servants, and these struck the animals, indolent victors, going back to the stalls, a green-crown on their horns. The National Guards, however, had gone up to the first floor of the town hall with buns spitted on their bayonets, and the drummer of the battalion carried a basket with bottles. Madame Bovary took Rodolphe's arm; he saw her home; they separated at her door; then he walked about alone in the meadow while he waited for the time of the banquet. The feast was long, noisy, ill served; the guests were so crowded that they could hardly move their elbows; and the narrow planks used for forms almost broke down under their weight. They ate hugely. Each one stuffed himself on his own account. Sweat stood on every brow, and a whitish steam, like the vapour of a stream on an autumn morning, floated above the table between the hanging lamps. Rodolphe, leaning against the calico of the tent was thinking so earnestly of Emma that he heard nothing. Behind him on the grass the servants were piling up the dirty plates, his neighbours were talking; he did not answer them; they filled his glass, and there was silence in his thoughts in spite of the growing noise. He was dreaming of what she had said, of the line of her lips; her face, as in a magic mirror, shone on the plates of the shakos, the folds of her gown fell along the walls, and days of love unrolled to all infinity before him in the vistas of the future. He saw her again in the evening during the fireworks, but she was with her husband, Madame Homais, and the druggist, who was worrying about the danger of stray rockets, and every moment he left the company to go and give some advice to Binet. The pyrotechnic pieces sent to Monsieur Tuvache had, through an excess of caution, been shut up in his cellar, and so the damp powder would not light, and the principal set piece, that was to represent a dragon biting his tail, failed completely. Now and then a meagre Roman-candle went off; then the gaping crowd sent up a shout that mingled with the cry of the women, whose waists were being squeezed in the darkness. Emma silently nestled against Charles's shoulder; then, raising her chin, she watched the luminous rays of the rockets against the dark sky. Rodolphe gazed at her in the light of the burning lanterns. They went out one by one. The stars shone out. A few crops of rain began to fall. She knotted her fichu round her bare head. At this moment the councillor's carriage came out from the inn. His coachman, who was drunk, suddenly dozed off, and one could see from the distance, above the hood, between the two lanterns, the mass of his body, that swayed from right to left with the giving of the traces. "Truly," said the druggist, "one ought to proceed most rigorously against drunkenness! I should like to see written up weekly at the door of the town hall on a board ad hoc* the names of all those who during the week got intoxicated on alcohol. Besides, with regard to statistics, one would thus have, as it were, public records that one could refer to in case of need. But excuse me!" *Specifically for that. And he once more ran off to the captain. The latter was going back to see his lathe again. "Perhaps you would not do ill," Homais said to him, "to send one of your men, or to go yourself--" "Leave me alone!" answered the tax-collector. "It's all right!" "Do not be uneasy," said the druggist, when he returned to his friends. "Monsieur Binet has assured me that all precautions have been taken. No sparks have fallen; the pumps are full. Let us go to rest." "Ma foi! I want it," said Madame Homais, yawning at large. "But never mind; we've had a beautiful day for our fete." Rodolphe repeated in a low voice, and with a tender look, "Oh, yes! very beautiful!" And having bowed to one another, they separated. Two days later, in the "Final de Rouen," there was a long article on the show. Homais had composed it with verve the very next morning. "Why these festoons, these flowers, these garlands? Whither hurries this crowd like the waves of a furious sea under the torrents of a tropical sun pouring its heat upon our heads?" Then he spoke of the condition of the peasants. Certainly the Government was doing much, but not enough. "Courage!" he cried to it; "a thousand reforms are indispensable; let us accomplish them!" Then touching on the entry of the councillor, he did not forget "the martial air of our militia;" nor "our most merry village maidens;" nor the "bald-headed old men like patriarchs who were there, and of whom some, the remnants of our phalanxes, still felt their hearts beat at the manly sound of the drums." He cited himself among the first of the members of the jury, and he even called attention in a note to the fact that Monsieur Homais, chemist, had sent a memoir on cider to the agricultural society. When he came to the distribution of the prizes, he painted the joy of the prize-winners in dithyrambic strophes. "The father embraced the son, the brother the brother, the husband his consort. More than one showed his humble medal with pride; and no doubt when he got home to his good housewife, he hung it up weeping on the modest walls of his cot. "About six o'clock a banquet prepared in the meadow of Monsieur Leigeard brought together the principal personages of the fete. The greatest cordiality reigned here. Divers toasts were proposed: Monsieur Lieuvain, the King; Monsieur Tuvache, the Prefect; Monsieur Derozerays, Agriculture; Monsieur Homais, Industry and the Fine Arts, those twin sisters; Monsieur Leplichey, Progress. In the evening some brilliant fireworks on a sudden illumined the air. One would have called it a veritable kaleidoscope, a real operatic scene; and for a moment our little locality might have thought itself transported into the midst of a dream of the 'Thousand and One Nights.' Let us state that no untoward event disturbed this family meeting." And he added "Only the absence of the clergy was remarked. No doubt the priests understand progress in another fashion. Just as you please, messieurs the followers of Loyola!"

Part 2, Chapter 8

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-8

It's a big day for little Yonville - the town fair. Everyone in the town is up early to set up for it. Binet, who doubles as the captain of the fire brigade, is all gussied up. The whole town is looking its best. The only person who's not too thrilled about all of this is Madame Lefrancois. Homais stops to chat with her, and she cheers up a little when she finds out that he's on the fair advisory committee . Homais keeps talking, but his audience is not listening. We follow Madame Lefrancois' gaze and see what has put her in such a foul mood - the town's other tavern, her rival, is full of singing people. These good days won't last too long, though; she tells Homais that she heard that Tellier, the barkeep, was in such great debt to Monsieur Lheureux that the tavern was going to be shut down the following week. From the perspective of these gossiping neighbors, we see Emma and Rodolphe a little ways off, talking to Monsieur Lheureux. Rodolphe is obviously planning on making his move already - unlike Leon, he's a pretty smooth operator. Homais goes over to say hello, but Rodolphe manages to avoid him. He regards Emma as they walk along - he's pleased with what he sees. Monsieur Lheureux attempts to follow them and maintain their conversation, but they get rid of him quickly. Rodolphe immediately launches his attack and starts flirting openly with Emma once they're alone. The townspeople are assembled for various agricultural competitions. Rodolphe is supposed to participate in the judging, but he has other things on his mind. He turns all his attention to Emma, who responds eagerly to him. He knows exactly what buttons to push - they talk about the frustrations of provincial life, the loneliness of existence...basically, all of Emma's favorite subjects. Their conversation is interrupted by the entrance of the fire brigade and the start of the awards ceremony. A government official, Monsieur Lieuvain, arrives to dole out the prizes; he gives a long, long, loooong speech about the government, the country. While this is going on, Emma and Rodolphe continue their intimate conversation. Rodolphe claims that the only true duty is to enjoy what's beautiful about life, and reject the conventions of society. Emma feebly tries to argue that society's moral standards are important, but Rodolphe shoots her down promptly. He's the clear winner here; Emma is toast. Monsieur Lieuvain, in the meanwhile, just keeps talking and talking. He's full of governmental rhetoric, but he's basically not talking about anything. Despite this fact, the whole town is enraptured by him. Rodolphe quickly wins Emma over. All of her feelings about Leon, the Viscount at the ball, and her loneliness come rushing back, and re-focus on Rodolphe. She's smitten. Finally, Monsieur Lieuvain wraps up his speech. Another speech begins, and Rodolphe continues to woo Emma all the while. Agricultural prizes are given for things as diverse as pigs, liquid manure , and drainage. Simultaneously , Rodolphe declares his love for Emma. The prizes, and the wooing, conclude with the awarding of a prize for long service, which is awarded to a confused little old woman. Flaubert describes this woman, Catherine Leroux, with rather excruciating detail; she's obviously been broken down by years of hard work. She says that she will give her prize money to the priest, which offends Homais. Following this ludicrous ceremony, a big feast begins. The townspeople, in a frenzy of communal gluttony, all stuff themselves. Rodolphe isn't interested in the food - he's thinking of Emma and of the pleasure he'll get from her in the future. Emma is off with Charles and the Homais family. The grand finale of the festival is a display of fireworks - unfortunately, they're too damp, and they barely go off. The evening ends rather anti-climactically, and everyone drifts back home. Homais proceeds to write an enthusiastic, over-the-top article about the fiesta, and publish it in a Rouen paper.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/18.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_17_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 9

part 2, chapter 9

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-9", "summary": "Six weeks have passed since the fair. Rodolphe hasn't seen Emma again; at first, he just didn't want to show up to see her right away, and decided to go on a hunting trip. However, this trip lasted a lot longer than he'd planned and, now that he's back, he's worried that he missed his window of opportunity. He decides to give it a shot anyway and visit Emma, hoping that absence has indeed made the heart grow fonder. Again, he's right. He can immediately tell that Emma's still totally into him. He plays his absence up melodramatically, claiming that he had to tear himself away from her. Rodolphe is a total drama king , and he theatrically wins Emma over with highfalutin' words and extravagant declarations of passion. Emma is totally swept off her feet by Rodolphe's calculated attack. She allows herself to bask in the glow of his romantic words. However, as he continues to ham it up, they hear Charles arrive at the house. The two lovers immediately switch back into polite neighbor mode. Rodolphe, ever the resourceful one, asks Charles if it might do Emma some good to take up horseback riding to improve her health. Of course, he will accompany her himself. Charles thinks this is a splendid idea, and he and Rodolphe make all the arrangements. Emma, in a contrary mood, resists - however, Charles convinces her by saying that she can order a new riding outfit. The next day, Rodolphe shows up promptly at noon on horseback, with a second horse in tow for Emma. After a brief warning about safety from Monsieur Homais, they're off. The pair ride off into the countryside. They get a good view of the village from up higher - to Emma, Yonville has never looked so small and miserable. They venture deeper and deeper into the forest. They dismount and Rodolphe ties up the horses so they can walk into the woods unhampered. As they go, he keeps his eyes on the sliver of white stocking that show between her skirt and boots - to him, it seems like naked skin. Rodolphe and Emma reach a clearing and, once they're settled down, he starts to woo her once more...this time more seriously. Emma puts up some resistance - but not too much. She gives in to his advances and, as Flaubert says, \"abandons\" herself to him. We all know what that means. After the deed is done, Rodolphe and Emma head back to Yonville slowly. Everything seems different to her now. Rodolphe is legitimately charmed by her - after all, she's quite lovely. Emma feels as though everyone is looking at her as they ride through town. At dinner, Charles tells her that he's purchased a horse of her very own. Little does he know what's really going on... Emma escapes from dinner early and goes upstairs to think over her situation in privacy. She even thinks she looks different - and she feels as though her real life is finally starting. From the next day on, Emma and Rodolphe are committed to each other . They do the stereotypical things people having affairs do - exchange notes, have secret rendezvous, etc. Emma is blissfully happy. She even runs out in the early morning and races over to La Huchette to see her lover. After this risky business goes on for a while, Rodolphe protests that she's getting too careless. Is he really concerned, or can it be that he's getting sick of her? Hmm...", "analysis": ""}

Six weeks passed. Rodolphe did not come again. At last one evening he appeared. The day after the show he had said to himself--"We mustn't go back too soon; that would be a mistake." And at the end of a week he had gone off hunting. After the hunting he had thought it was too late, and then he reasoned thus-- "If from the first day she loved me, she must from impatience to see me again love me more. Let's go on with it!" And he knew that his calculation had been right when, on entering the room, he saw Emma turn pale. She was alone. The day was drawing in. The small muslin curtain along the windows deepened the twilight, and the gilding of the barometer, on which the rays of the sun fell, shone in the looking-glass between the meshes of the coral. Rodolphe remained standing, and Emma hardly answered his first conventional phrases. "I," he said, "have been busy. I have been ill." "Seriously?" she cried. "Well," said Rodolphe, sitting down at her side on a footstool, "no; it was because I did not want to come back." "Why?" "Can you not guess?" He looked at her again, but so hard that she lowered her head, blushing. He went on-- "Emma!" "Sir," she said, drawing back a little. "Ah! you see," replied he in a melancholy voice, "that I was right not to come back; for this name, this name that fills my whole soul, and that escaped me, you forbid me to use! Madame Bovary! why all the world calls you thus! Besides, it is not your name; it is the name of another!" He repeated, "of another!" And he hid his face in his hands. "Yes, I think of you constantly. The memory of you drives me to despair. Ah! forgive me! I will leave you! Farewell! I will go far away, so far that you will never hear of me again; and yet--to-day--I know not what force impelled me towards you. For one does not struggle against Heaven; one cannot resist the smile of angels; one is carried away by that which is beautiful, charming, adorable." It was the first time that Emma had heard such words spoken to herself, and her pride, like one who reposes bathed in warmth, expanded softly and fully at this glowing language. "But if I did not come," he continued, "if I could not see you, at least I have gazed long on all that surrounds you. At night-every night-I arose; I came hither; I watched your house, its glimmering in the moon, the trees in the garden swaying before your window, and the little lamp, a gleam shining through the window-panes in the darkness. Ah! you never knew that there, so near you, so far from you, was a poor wretch!" She turned towards him with a sob. "Oh, you are good!" she said. "No, I love you, that is all! You do not doubt that! Tell me--one word--only one word!" And Rodolphe imperceptibly glided from the footstool to the ground; but a sound of wooden shoes was heard in the kitchen, and he noticed the door of the room was not closed. "How kind it would be of you," he went on, rising, "if you would humour a whim of mine." It was to go over her house; he wanted to know it; and Madame Bovary seeing no objection to this, they both rose, when Charles came in. "Good morning, doctor," Rodolphe said to him. The doctor, flattered at this unexpected title, launched out into obsequious phrases. Of this the other took advantage to pull himself together a little. "Madame was speaking to me," he then said, "about her health." Charles interrupted him; he had indeed a thousand anxieties; his wife's palpitations of the heart were beginning again. Then Rodolphe asked if riding would not be good. "Certainly! excellent! just the thing! There's an idea! You ought to follow it up." And as she objected that she had no horse, Monsieur Rodolphe offered one. She refused his offer; he did not insist. Then to explain his visit he said that his ploughman, the man of the blood-letting, still suffered from giddiness. "I'll call around," said Bovary. "No, no! I'll send him to you; we'll come; that will be more convenient for you." "Ah! very good! I thank you." And as soon as they were alone, "Why don't you accept Monsieur Boulanger's kind offer?" She assumed a sulky air, invented a thousand excuses, and finally declared that perhaps it would look odd. "Well, what the deuce do I care for that?" said Charles, making a pirouette. "Health before everything! You are wrong." "And how do you think I can ride when I haven't got a habit?" "You must order one," he answered. The riding-habit decided her. When the habit was ready, Charles wrote to Monsieur Boulanger that his wife was at his command, and that they counted on his good-nature. The next day at noon Rodolphe appeared at Charles's door with two saddle-horses. One had pink rosettes at his ears and a deerskin side-saddle. Rodolphe had put on high soft boots, saying to himself that no doubt she had never seen anything like them. In fact, Emma was charmed with his appearance as he stood on the landing in his great velvet coat and white corduroy breeches. She was ready; she was waiting for him. Justin escaped from the chemist's to see her start, and the chemist also came out. He was giving Monsieur Boulanger a little good advice. "An accident happens so easily. Be careful! Your horses perhaps are mettlesome." She heard a noise above her; it was Felicite drumming on the windowpanes to amuse little Berthe. The child blew her a kiss; her mother answered with a wave of her whip. "A pleasant ride!" cried Monsieur Homais. "Prudence! above all, prudence!" And he flourished his newspaper as he saw them disappear. As soon as he felt the ground, Emma's horse set off at a gallop. Rodolphe galloped by her side. Now and then they exchanged a word. Her figure slightly bent, her hand well up, and her right arm stretched out, she gave herself up to the cadence of the movement that rocked her in her saddle. At the bottom of the hill Rodolphe gave his horse its head; they started together at a bound, then at the top suddenly the horses stopped, and her large blue veil fell about her. It was early in October. There was fog over the land. Hazy clouds hovered on the horizon between the outlines of the hills; others, rent asunder, floated up and disappeared. Sometimes through a rift in the clouds, beneath a ray of sunshine, gleamed from afar the roots of Yonville, with the gardens at the water's edge, the yards, the walls and the church steeple. Emma half closed her eyes to pick out her house, and never had this poor village where she lived appeared so small. From the height on which they were the whole valley seemed an immense pale lake sending off its vapour into the air. Clumps of trees here and there stood out like black rocks, and the tall lines of the poplars that rose above the mist were like a beach stirred by the wind. By the side, on the turf between the pines, a brown light shimmered in the warm atmosphere. The earth, ruddy like the powder of tobacco, deadened the noise of their steps, and with the edge of their shoes the horses as they walked kicked the fallen fir cones in front of them. Rodolphe and Emma thus went along the skirt of the wood. She turned away from time to time to avoid his look, and then she saw only the pine trunks in lines, whose monotonous succession made her a little giddy. The horses were panting; the leather of the saddles creaked. Just as they were entering the forest the sun shone out. "God protects us!" said Rodolphe. "Do you think so?" she said. "Forward! forward!" he continued. He "tchk'd" with his tongue. The two beasts set off at a trot. Long ferns by the roadside caught in Emma's stirrup. Rodolphe leant forward and removed them as they rode along. At other times, to turn aside the branches, he passed close to her, and Emma felt his knee brushing against her leg. The sky was now blue, the leaves no longer stirred. There were spaces full of heather in flower, and plots of violets alternated with the confused patches of the trees that were grey, fawn, or golden coloured, according to the nature of their leaves. Often in the thicket was heard the fluttering of wings, or else the hoarse, soft cry of the ravens flying off amidst the oaks. They dismounted. Rodolphe fastened up the horses. She walked on in front on the moss between the paths. But her long habit got in her way, although she held it up by the skirt; and Rodolphe, walking behind her, saw between the black cloth and the black shoe the fineness of her white stocking, that seemed to him as if it were a part of her nakedness. She stopped. "I am tired," she said. "Come, try again," he went on. "Courage!" Then some hundred paces farther on she again stopped, and through her veil, that fell sideways from her man's hat over her hips, her face appeared in a bluish transparency as if she were floating under azure waves. "But where are we going?" He did not answer. She was breathing irregularly. Rodolphe looked round him biting his moustache. They came to a larger space where the coppice had been cut. They sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and Rodolphe began speaking to her of his love. He did not begin by frightening her with compliments. He was calm, serious, melancholy. Emma listened to him with bowed head, and stirred the bits of wood on the ground with the tip of her foot. But at the words, "Are not our destinies now one?" "Oh, no!" she replied. "You know that well. It is impossible!" She rose to go. He seized her by the wrist. She stopped. Then, having gazed at him for a few moments with an amorous and humid look, she said hurriedly-- "Ah! do not speak of it again! Where are the horses? Let us go back." He made a gesture of anger and annoyance. She repeated: "Where are the horses? Where are the horses?" Then smiling a strange smile, his pupil fixed, his teeth set, he advanced with outstretched arms. She recoiled trembling. She stammered: "Oh, you frighten me! You hurt me! Let me go!" "If it must be," he went on, his face changing; and he again became respectful, caressing, timid. She gave him her arm. They went back. He said-- "What was the matter with you? Why? I do not understand. You were mistaken, no doubt. In my soul you are as a Madonna on a pedestal, in a place lofty, secure, immaculate. But I need you to live! I must have your eyes, your voice, your thought! Be my friend, my sister, my angel!" And he put out his arm round her waist. She feebly tried to disengage herself. He supported her thus as they walked along. But they heard the two horses browsing on the leaves. "Oh! one moment!" said Rodolphe. "Do not let us go! Stay!" He drew her farther on to a small pool where duckweeds made a greenness on the water. Faded water lilies lay motionless between the reeds. At the noise of their steps in the grass, frogs jumped away to hide themselves. "I am wrong! I am wrong!" she said. "I am mad to listen to you!" "Why? Emma! Emma!" "Oh, Rodolphe!" said the young woman slowly, leaning on his shoulder. The cloth of her habit caught against the velvet of his coat. She threw back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and faltering, in tears, with a long shudder and hiding her face, she gave herself up to him-- The shades of night were falling; the horizontal sun passing between the branches dazzled the eyes. Here and there around her, in the leaves or on the ground, trembled luminous patches, as it hummingbirds flying about had scattered their feathers. Silence was everywhere; something sweet seemed to come forth from the trees; she felt her heart, whose beating had begun again, and the blood coursing through her flesh like a stream of milk. Then far away, beyond the wood, on the other hills, she heard a vague prolonged cry, a voice which lingered, and in silence she heard it mingling like music with the last pulsations of her throbbing nerves. Rodolphe, a cigar between his lips, was mending with his penknife one of the two broken bridles. They returned to Yonville by the same road. On the mud they saw again the traces of their horses side by side, the same thickets, the same stones to the grass; nothing around them seemed changed; and yet for her something had happened more stupendous than if the mountains had moved in their places. Rodolphe now and again bent forward and took her hand to kiss it. She was charming on horseback--upright, with her slender waist, her knee bent on the mane of her horse, her face somewhat flushed by the fresh air in the red of the evening. On entering Yonville she made her horse prance in the road. People looked at her from the windows. At dinner her husband thought she looked well, but she pretended not to hear him when he inquired about her ride, and she remained sitting there with her elbow at the side of her plate between the two lighted candles. "Emma!" he said. "What?" "Well, I spent the afternoon at Monsieur Alexandre's. He has an old cob, still very fine, only a little broken-kneed, and that could be bought; I am sure, for a hundred crowns." He added, "And thinking it might please you, I have bespoken it--bought it. Have I done right? Do tell me?" She nodded her head in assent; then a quarter of an hour later-- "Are you going out to-night?" she asked. "Yes. Why?" "Oh, nothing, nothing, my dear!" And as soon as she had got rid of Charles she went and shut herself up in her room. At first she felt stunned; she saw the trees, the paths, the ditches, Rodolphe, and she again felt the pressure of his arm, while the leaves rustled and the reeds whistled. But when she saw herself in the glass she wondered at her face. Never had her eyes been so large, so black, of so profound a depth. Something subtle about her being transfigured her. She repeated, "I have a lover! a lover!" delighting at the idea as if a second puberty had come to her. So at last she was to know those joys of love, that fever of happiness of which she had despaired! She was entering upon marvels where all would be passion, ecstasy, delirium. An azure infinity encompassed her, the heights of sentiment sparkled under her thought, and ordinary existence appeared only afar off, down below in the shade, through the interspaces of these heights. Then she recalled the heroines of the books that she had read, and the lyric legion of these adulterous women began to sing in her memory with the voice of sisters that charmed her. She became herself, as it were, an actual part of these imaginings, and realised the love-dream of her youth as she saw herself in this type of amorous women whom she had so envied. Besides, Emma felt a satisfaction of revenge. Had she not suffered enough? But now she triumphed, and the love so long pent up burst forth in full joyous bubblings. She tasted it without remorse, without anxiety, without trouble. The day following passed with a new sweetness. They made vows to one another She told him of her sorrows. Rodolphe interrupted her with kisses; and she looking at him through half-closed eyes, asked him to call her again by her name--to say that he loved her They were in the forest, as yesterday, in the shed of some woodenshoe maker. The walls were of straw, and the roof so low they had to stoop. They were seated side by side on a bed of dry leaves. From that day forth they wrote to one another regularly every evening. Emma placed her letter at the end of the garden, by the river, in a fissure of the wall. Rodolphe came to fetch it, and put another there, that she always found fault with as too short. One morning, when Charles had gone out before day break, she was seized with the fancy to see Rodolphe at once. She would go quickly to La Huchette, stay there an hour, and be back again at Yonville while everyone was still asleep. This idea made her pant with desire, and she soon found herself in the middle of the field, walking with rapid steps, without looking behind her. Day was just breaking. Emma from afar recognised her lover's house. Its two dove-tailed weathercocks stood out black against the pale dawn. Beyond the farmyard there was a detached building that she thought must be the chateau She entered--it was if the doors at her approach had opened wide of their own accord. A large straight staircase led up to the corridor. Emma raised the latch of a door, and suddenly at the end of the room she saw a man sleeping. It was Rodolphe. She uttered a cry. "You here? You here?" he repeated. "How did you manage to come? Ah! your dress is damp." "I love you," she answered, throwing her arms about his neck. This first piece of daring successful, now every time Charles went out early Emma dressed quickly and slipped on tiptoe down the steps that led to the waterside. But when the plank for the cows was taken up, she had to go by the walls alongside of the river; the bank was slippery; in order not to fall she caught hold of the tufts of faded wallflowers. Then she went across ploughed fields, in which she sank, stumbling; and clogging her thin shoes. Her scarf, knotted round her head, fluttered to the wind in the meadows. She was afraid of the oxen; she began to run; she arrived out of breath, with rosy cheeks, and breathing out from her whole person a fresh perfume of sap, of verdure, of the open air. At this hour Rodolphe still slept. It was like a spring morning coming into his room. The yellow curtains along the windows let a heavy, whitish light enter softly. Emma felt about, opening and closing her eyes, while the drops of dew hanging from her hair formed, as it were, a topaz aureole around her face. Rodolphe, laughing, drew her to him, and pressed her to his breast. Then she examined the apartment, opened the drawers of the tables, combed her hair with his comb, and looked at herself in his shaving-glass. Often she even put between her teeth the big pipe that lay on the table by the bed, amongst lemons and pieces of sugar near a bottle of water. It took them a good quarter of an hour to say goodbye. Then Emma cried. She would have wished never to leave Rodolphe. Something stronger than herself forced her to him; so much so, that one day, seeing her come unexpectedly, he frowned as one put out. "What is the matter with you?" she said. "Are you ill? Tell me!" At last he declared with a serious air that her visits were becoming imprudent--that she was compromising herself.

Part 2, Chapter 9

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-9

Six weeks have passed since the fair. Rodolphe hasn't seen Emma again; at first, he just didn't want to show up to see her right away, and decided to go on a hunting trip. However, this trip lasted a lot longer than he'd planned and, now that he's back, he's worried that he missed his window of opportunity. He decides to give it a shot anyway and visit Emma, hoping that absence has indeed made the heart grow fonder. Again, he's right. He can immediately tell that Emma's still totally into him. He plays his absence up melodramatically, claiming that he had to tear himself away from her. Rodolphe is a total drama king , and he theatrically wins Emma over with highfalutin' words and extravagant declarations of passion. Emma is totally swept off her feet by Rodolphe's calculated attack. She allows herself to bask in the glow of his romantic words. However, as he continues to ham it up, they hear Charles arrive at the house. The two lovers immediately switch back into polite neighbor mode. Rodolphe, ever the resourceful one, asks Charles if it might do Emma some good to take up horseback riding to improve her health. Of course, he will accompany her himself. Charles thinks this is a splendid idea, and he and Rodolphe make all the arrangements. Emma, in a contrary mood, resists - however, Charles convinces her by saying that she can order a new riding outfit. The next day, Rodolphe shows up promptly at noon on horseback, with a second horse in tow for Emma. After a brief warning about safety from Monsieur Homais, they're off. The pair ride off into the countryside. They get a good view of the village from up higher - to Emma, Yonville has never looked so small and miserable. They venture deeper and deeper into the forest. They dismount and Rodolphe ties up the horses so they can walk into the woods unhampered. As they go, he keeps his eyes on the sliver of white stocking that show between her skirt and boots - to him, it seems like naked skin. Rodolphe and Emma reach a clearing and, once they're settled down, he starts to woo her once more...this time more seriously. Emma puts up some resistance - but not too much. She gives in to his advances and, as Flaubert says, "abandons" herself to him. We all know what that means. After the deed is done, Rodolphe and Emma head back to Yonville slowly. Everything seems different to her now. Rodolphe is legitimately charmed by her - after all, she's quite lovely. Emma feels as though everyone is looking at her as they ride through town. At dinner, Charles tells her that he's purchased a horse of her very own. Little does he know what's really going on... Emma escapes from dinner early and goes upstairs to think over her situation in privacy. She even thinks she looks different - and she feels as though her real life is finally starting. From the next day on, Emma and Rodolphe are committed to each other . They do the stereotypical things people having affairs do - exchange notes, have secret rendezvous, etc. Emma is blissfully happy. She even runs out in the early morning and races over to La Huchette to see her lover. After this risky business goes on for a while, Rodolphe protests that she's getting too careless. Is he really concerned, or can it be that he's getting sick of her? Hmm...

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/19.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_18_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 10

part 2, chapter 10

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-10", "summary": "This warning from Rodolphe begins to worry Emma - and one day, she encounters Binet illegally duck hunting. He has his own worries, since he's breaking the law, but Emma begins to fear that he will tell everyone he saw her gadding about in the wee hours of the morning. She stresses out about this all day. In the evening, Charles insists that they go get something to perk herself up from Monsieur Homais. While they're at the pharmacist's, they happen to run into Binet, who makes a knowing comment about the humid weather, referencing their encounter that morning in the mist. This alarms Emma. She's relieved when Binet leaves. The Binet incident makes Emma and Rodolphe rethink their meeting strategy. They decide that Rodolphe will look for a safe place to meet. In the meanwhile, they meet late at night in the back garden of the Bovarys' house, after Charles has gone to sleep . Leon is all but forgotten by this time. One night, Emma hears someone coming, and worries that it's Charles. She asks Rodolphe if he has pistols with which to defend himself against her husband. Rodolphe finds this concern absurd and in poor taste. In fact, he's beginning to find many of Emma's demands and goings-on rather vulgar. Emma's ridiculously romantic fantasies run wild with Rodolphe. She makes him exchange little tokens of love and locks of hair, and demands that they get a real wedding ring as a symbol of their devotion. All of this irritates Rodolphe, but he's still drawn to her - he can't believe how pretty and charming she can be. However, he stops putting forth as much effort soon enough, and their affair loses its initial quality of excitement and oomph. By the time spring rolls around, the affair has cooled to a markedly un-steamy temperature. The two of them are like a married couple. Monsieur Rouault sends his customary anniversary turkey to celebrate the healing of his broken leg. With it comes a letter - reading it reminds Emma of the days of her childhood in the country. Looking back, those days seem idyllic to her now. She wonders what has made her adult life so difficult. For a brief moment, looking at her innocent young daughter, Emma actually loves little Berthe. Rodolphe is definitely sick of Emma by now. They treat each other indifferently - Emma in an attempt to win him back and Rodolphe because he genuinely feels like their affair is over. Rejected and dejected, Emma repents for her adulterous actions - she even goes so far as to wish she could love Charles. In addition, Homais happens to give Charles the opportunity to become a more interesting man at this fortuitous time...", "analysis": ""}

Gradually Rodolphe's fears took possession of her. At first, love had intoxicated her; and she had thought of nothing beyond. But now that he was indispensable to her life, she feared to lose anything of this, or even that it should be disturbed. When she came back from his house she looked all about her, anxiously watching every form that passed in the horizon, and every village window from which she could be seen. She listened for steps, cries, the noise of the ploughs, and she stopped short, white, and trembling more than the aspen leaves swaying overhead. One morning as she was thus returning, she suddenly thought she saw the long barrel of a carbine that seemed to be aimed at her. It stuck out sideways from the end of a small tub half-buried in the grass on the edge of a ditch. Emma, half-fainting with terror, nevertheless walked on, and a man stepped out of the tub like a Jack-in-the-box. He had gaiters buckled up to the knees, his cap pulled down over his eyes, trembling lips, and a red nose. It was Captain Binet lying in ambush for wild ducks. "You ought to have called out long ago!" he exclaimed; "When one sees a gun, one should always give warning." The tax-collector was thus trying to hide the fright he had had, for a prefectorial order having prohibited duckhunting except in boats, Monsieur Binet, despite his respect for the laws, was infringing them, and so he every moment expected to see the rural guard turn up. But this anxiety whetted his pleasure, and, all alone in his tub, he congratulated himself on his luck and on his cuteness. At sight of Emma he seemed relieved from a great weight, and at once entered upon a conversation. "It isn't warm; it's nipping." Emma answered nothing. He went on-- "And you're out so early?" "Yes," she said stammering; "I am just coming from the nurse where my child is." "Ah! very good! very good! For myself, I am here, just as you see me, since break of day; but the weather is so muggy, that unless one had the bird at the mouth of the gun--" "Good evening, Monsieur Binet," she interrupted him, turning on her heel. "Your servant, madame," he replied drily; and he went back into his tub. Emma regretted having left the tax-collector so abruptly. No doubt he would form unfavourable conjectures. The story about the nurse was the worst possible excuse, everyone at Yonville knowing that the little Bovary had been at home with her parents for a year. Besides, no one was living in this direction; this path led only to La Huchette. Binet, then, would guess whence she came, and he would not keep silence; he would talk, that was certain. She remained until evening racking her brain with every conceivable lying project, and had constantly before her eyes that imbecile with the game-bag. Charles after dinner, seeing her gloomy, proposed, by way of distraction, to take her to the chemist's, and the first person she caught sight of in the shop was the taxcollector again. He was standing in front of the counter, lit up by the gleams of the red bottle, and was saying-- "Please give me half an ounce of vitriol." "Justin," cried the druggist, "bring us the sulphuric acid." Then to Emma, who was going up to Madame Homais' room, "No, stay here; it isn't worth while going up; she is just coming down. Warm yourself at the stove in the meantime. Excuse me. Good-day, doctor," (for the chemist much enjoyed pronouncing the word "doctor," as if addressing another by it reflected on himself some of the grandeur that he found in it). "Now, take care not to upset the mortars! You'd better fetch some chairs from the little room; you know very well that the arm-chairs are not to be taken out of the drawing-room." And to put his arm-chair back in its place he was darting away from the counter, when Binet asked him for half an ounce of sugar acid. "Sugar acid!" said the chemist contemptuously, "don't know it; I'm ignorant of it! But perhaps you want oxalic acid. It is oxalic acid, isn't it?" Binet explained that he wanted a corrosive to make himself some copperwater with which to remove rust from his hunting things. Emma shuddered. The chemist began saying-- "Indeed the weather is not propitious on account of the damp." "Nevertheless," replied the tax-collector, with a sly look, "there are people who like it." She was stifling. "And give me--" "Will he never go?" thought she. "Half an ounce of resin and turpentine, four ounces of yellow wax, and three half ounces of animal charcoal, if you please, to clean the varnished leather of my togs." The druggist was beginning to cut the wax when Madame Homais appeared, Irma in her arms, Napoleon by her side, and Athalie following. She sat down on the velvet seat by the window, and the lad squatted down on a footstool, while his eldest sister hovered round the jujube box near her papa. The latter was filling funnels and corking phials, sticking on labels, making up parcels. Around him all were silent; only from time to time, were heard the weights jingling in the balance, and a few low words from the chemist giving directions to his pupil. "And how's the little woman?" suddenly asked Madame Homais. "Silence!" exclaimed her husband, who was writing down some figures in his waste-book. "Why didn't you bring her?" she went on in a low voice. "Hush! hush!" said Emma, pointing with her finger to the druggist. But Binet, quite absorbed in looking over his bill, had probably heard nothing. At last he went out. Then Emma, relieved, uttered a deep sigh. "How hard you are breathing!" said Madame Homais. "Well, you see, it's rather warm," she replied. So the next day they talked over how to arrange their rendezvous. Emma wanted to bribe her servant with a present, but it would be better to find some safe house at Yonville. Rodolphe promised to look for one. All through the winter, three or four times a week, in the dead of night he came to the garden. Emma had on purpose taken away the key of the gate, which Charles thought lost. To call her, Rodolphe threw a sprinkle of sand at the shutters. She jumped up with a start; but sometimes he had to wait, for Charles had a mania for chatting by the fireside, and he would not stop. She was wild with impatience; if her eyes could have done it, she would have hurled him out at the window. At last she would begin to undress, then take up a book, and go on reading very quietly as if the book amused her. But Charles, who was in bed, called to her to come too. "Come, now, Emma," he said, "it is time." "Yes, I am coming," she answered. Then, as the candles dazzled him; he turned to the wall and fell asleep. She escaped, smiling, palpitating, undressed. Rodolphe had a large cloak; he wrapped her in it, and putting his arm round her waist, he drew her without a word to the end of the garden. It was in the arbour, on the same seat of old sticks where formerly Leon had looked at her so amorously on the summer evenings. She never thought of him now. The stars shone through the leafless jasmine branches. Behind them they heard the river flowing, and now and again on the bank the rustling of the dry reeds. Masses of shadow here and there loomed out in the darkness, and sometimes, vibrating with one movement, they rose up and swayed like immense black waves pressing forward to engulf them. The cold of the nights made them clasp closer; the sighs of their lips seemed to them deeper; their eyes that they could hardly see, larger; and in the midst of the silence low words were spoken that fell on their souls sonorous, crystalline, and that reverberated in multiplied vibrations. When the night was rainy, they took refuge in the consulting-room between the cart-shed and the stable. She lighted one of the kitchen candles that she had hidden behind the books. Rodolphe settled down there as if at home. The sight of the library, of the bureau, of the whole apartment, in fine, excited his merriment, and he could not refrain from making jokes about Charles, which rather embarrassed Emma. She would have liked to see him more serious, and even on occasions more dramatic; as, for example, when she thought she heard a noise of approaching steps in the alley. "Someone is coming!" she said. He blew out the light. "Have you your pistols?" "Why?" "Why, to defend yourself," replied Emma. "From your husband? Oh, poor devil!" And Rodolphe finished his sentence with a gesture that said, "I could crush him with a flip of my finger." She was wonder-stricken at his bravery, although she felt in it a sort of indecency and a naive coarseness that scandalised her. Rodolphe reflected a good deal on the affair of the pistols. If she had spoken seriously, it was very ridiculous, he thought, even odious; for he had no reason to hate the good Charles, not being what is called devoured by jealousy; and on this subject Emma had taken a great vow that he did not think in the best of taste. Besides, she was growing very sentimental. She had insisted on exchanging miniatures; they had cut off handfuls of hair, and now she was asking for a ring--a real wedding-ring, in sign of an eternal union. She often spoke to him of the evening chimes, of the voices of nature. Then she talked to him of her mother--hers! and of his mother--his! Rodolphe had lost his twenty years ago. Emma none the less consoled him with caressing words as one would have done a lost child, and she sometimes even said to him, gazing at the moon-- "I am sure that above there together they approve of our love." But she was so pretty. He had possessed so few women of such ingenuousness. This love without debauchery was a new experience for him, and, drawing him out of his lazy habits, caressed at once his pride and his sensuality. Emma's enthusiasm, which his bourgeois good sense disdained, seemed to him in his heart of hearts charming, since it was lavished on him. Then, sure of being loved, he no longer kept up appearances, and insensibly his ways changed. He had no longer, as formerly, words so gentle that they made her cry, nor passionate caresses that made her mad, so that their great love, which engrossed her life, seemed to lessen beneath her like the water of a stream absorbed into its channel, and she could see the bed of it. She would not believe it; she redoubled in tenderness, and Rodolphe concealed his indifference less and less. She did not know if she regretted having yielded to him, or whether she did not wish, on the contrary, to enjoy him the more. The humiliation of feeling herself weak was turning to rancour, tempered by their voluptuous pleasures. It was not affection; it was like a continual seduction. He subjugated her; she almost feared him. Appearances, nevertheless, were calmer than ever, Rodolphe having succeeded in carrying out the adultery after his own fancy; and at the end of six months, when the spring-time came, they were to one another like a married couple, tranquilly keeping up a domestic flame. It was the time of year when old Rouault sent his turkey in remembrance of the setting of his leg. The present always arrived with a letter. Emma cut the string that tied it to the basket, and read the following lines:-- "My Dear Children--I hope this will find you well, and that this one will be as good as the others. For it seems to me a little more tender, if I may venture to say so, and heavier. But next time, for a change, I'll give you a turkeycock, unless you have a preference for some dabs; and send me back the hamper, if you please, with the two old ones. I have had an accident with my cart-sheds, whose covering flew off one windy night among the trees. The harvest has not been overgood either. Finally, I don't know when I shall come to see you. It is so difficult now to leave the house since I am alone, my poor Emma." Here there was a break in the lines, as if the old fellow had dropped his pen to dream a little while. "For myself, I am very well, except for a cold I caught the other day at the fair at Yvetot, where I had gone to hire a shepherd, having turned away mine because he was too dainty. How we are to be pitied with such a lot of thieves! Besides, he was also rude. I heard from a pedlar, who, travelling through your part of the country this winter, had a tooth drawn, that Bovary was as usual working hard. That doesn't surprise me; and he showed me his tooth; we had some coffee together. I asked him if he had seen you, and he said not, but that he had seen two horses in the stables, from which I conclude that business is looking up. So much the better, my dear children, and may God send you every imaginable happiness! It grieves me not yet to have seen my dear little grand-daughter, Berthe Bovary. I have planted an Orleans plum-tree for her in the garden under your room, and I won't have it touched unless it is to have jam made for her by and bye, that I will keep in the cupboard for her when she comes. "Good-bye, my dear children. I kiss you, my girl, you too, my son-in-law, and the little one on both cheeks. I am, with best compliments, your loving father. "Theodore Rouault." She held the coarse paper in her fingers for some minutes. The spelling mistakes were interwoven one with the other, and Emma followed the kindly thought that cackled right through it like a hen half hidden in the hedge of thorns. The writing had been dried with ashes from the hearth, for a little grey powder slipped from the letter on to her dress, and she almost thought she saw her father bending over the hearth to take up the tongs. How long since she had been with him, sitting on the footstool in the chimney-corner, where she used to burn the end of a bit of wood in the great flame of the sea-sedges! She remembered the summer evenings all full of sunshine. The colts neighed when anyone passed by, and galloped, galloped. Under her window there was a beehive, and sometimes the bees wheeling round in the light struck against her window like rebounding balls of gold. What happiness there had been at that time, what freedom, what hope! What an abundance of illusions! Nothing was left of them now. She had got rid of them all in her soul's life, in all her successive conditions of life, maidenhood, her marriage, and her love--thus constantly losing them all her life through, like a traveller who leaves something of his wealth at every inn along his road. But what then, made her so unhappy? What was the extraordinary catastrophe that had transformed her? And she raised her head, looking round as if to seek the cause of that which made her suffer. An April ray was dancing on the china of the whatnot; the fire burned; beneath her slippers she felt the softness of the carpet; the day was bright, the air warm, and she heard her child shouting with laughter. In fact, the little girl was just then rolling on the lawn in the midst of the grass that was being turned. She was lying flat on her stomach at the top of a rick. The servant was holding her by her skirt. Lestiboudois was raking by her side, and every time he came near she lent forward, beating the air with both her arms. "Bring her to me," said her mother, rushing to embrace her. "How I love you, my poor child! How I love you!" Then noticing that the tips of her ears were rather dirty, she rang at once for warm water, and washed her, changed her linen, her stockings, her shoes, asked a thousand questions about her health, as if on the return from a long journey, and finally, kissing her again and crying a little, she gave her back to the servant, who stood quite thunderstricken at this excess of tenderness. That evening Rodolphe found her more serious than usual. "That will pass over," he concluded; "it's a whim:" And he missed three rendezvous running. When he did come, she showed herself cold and almost contemptuous. "Ah! you're losing your time, my lady!" And he pretended not to notice her melancholy sighs, nor the handkerchief she took out. Then Emma repented. She even asked herself why she detested Charles; if it had not been better to have been able to love him? But he gave her no opportunities for such a revival of sentiment, so that she was much embarrassed by her desire for sacrifice, when the druggist came just in time to provide her with an opportunity.

Part 2, Chapter 10

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-10

This warning from Rodolphe begins to worry Emma - and one day, she encounters Binet illegally duck hunting. He has his own worries, since he's breaking the law, but Emma begins to fear that he will tell everyone he saw her gadding about in the wee hours of the morning. She stresses out about this all day. In the evening, Charles insists that they go get something to perk herself up from Monsieur Homais. While they're at the pharmacist's, they happen to run into Binet, who makes a knowing comment about the humid weather, referencing their encounter that morning in the mist. This alarms Emma. She's relieved when Binet leaves. The Binet incident makes Emma and Rodolphe rethink their meeting strategy. They decide that Rodolphe will look for a safe place to meet. In the meanwhile, they meet late at night in the back garden of the Bovarys' house, after Charles has gone to sleep . Leon is all but forgotten by this time. One night, Emma hears someone coming, and worries that it's Charles. She asks Rodolphe if he has pistols with which to defend himself against her husband. Rodolphe finds this concern absurd and in poor taste. In fact, he's beginning to find many of Emma's demands and goings-on rather vulgar. Emma's ridiculously romantic fantasies run wild with Rodolphe. She makes him exchange little tokens of love and locks of hair, and demands that they get a real wedding ring as a symbol of their devotion. All of this irritates Rodolphe, but he's still drawn to her - he can't believe how pretty and charming she can be. However, he stops putting forth as much effort soon enough, and their affair loses its initial quality of excitement and oomph. By the time spring rolls around, the affair has cooled to a markedly un-steamy temperature. The two of them are like a married couple. Monsieur Rouault sends his customary anniversary turkey to celebrate the healing of his broken leg. With it comes a letter - reading it reminds Emma of the days of her childhood in the country. Looking back, those days seem idyllic to her now. She wonders what has made her adult life so difficult. For a brief moment, looking at her innocent young daughter, Emma actually loves little Berthe. Rodolphe is definitely sick of Emma by now. They treat each other indifferently - Emma in an attempt to win him back and Rodolphe because he genuinely feels like their affair is over. Rejected and dejected, Emma repents for her adulterous actions - she even goes so far as to wish she could love Charles. In addition, Homais happens to give Charles the opportunity to become a more interesting man at this fortuitous time...

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/20.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_19_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 11

part 2, chapter 11

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 11", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-11", "summary": "It turns out that Homais is all excited about some article on curing clubfeet. He's convinced that Charles should attempt to fix the clubfoot of Hippolyte, a servant at Madame Lefrancois's inn. Emma is easily convinced. She hopes that the operation will earn Charles some respect and extra cash. This helps a lot with her resolution to stay with him. Charles, despite his profound lack of medical talent, agrees to do it. He prepares for the operation by reading and attempting to understand it, while Homais works on getting Hippolyte himself to agree. Hippolyte gives in to the pharmacist's goading , and accepts the operation. Charles, in the meanwhile, is having a heck of a time figuring out how to fix Hippolyte's disfigured leg. He's clearly confused and concerned, but goes ahead gamely anyway. He ends up cutting poor Hippolyte's Achilles tendon, thinking that it's the right thing to do. Ugh, just thinking of it gives us the chills. After the operation, which appears at first to be a success, Emma actually voluntarily embraces Charles. The two of them are happier together than we've ever seen them. She is finally able to muster up a little bit of affection for poor Charles, who she now views as an up-and-coming surgeon in the making. Homais busily writes up the operation for the Rouen paper, claiming that it's a complete success. However, this honeymoon period doesn't last. Five days after the operation, Madame Lefrancois bursts in, claiming that Hippolyte is dying. Charles and Homais rush off to see what's wrong. Gaah! What isn't wrong would be a better question. Hippolyte's foot is a disgusting mass of infection, trapped within the bizarre torture device Charles strapped it into. Ignoring Hippolyte's claims of incredible pain, they put him back in the apparatus. Three days later, though, the infection is way, way worse - it's so disgusting we don't even want to tell you about it here. Seriously. GROSS. Everyone tries to make Hippolyte feel better, except for the peasants who come to the inn to play billiards. They just make him feel worse, and tell him that he smells bad. Actually, that's not just a taunt - it's true. The gangrenous leg reeks up a storm. Hippolyte is in total despair, but Charles, who has no clue how to fix it, just tells him to eat more lightly . To make matters even worse, Father Bournisien comes over to harass the crippled man about his lack of religion. We're sure it didn't exactly make Hippolyte feel any better. Finally, Madame Lefrancois, worried about the lack of improvement, send for Monsieur Canivet, a real M.D. from Neufchatel. Canivet, who is, unlike Charles, an actual doctor, laughs contemptuously when he sees Hippolyte's condition, and says what everyone should have known by now - the leg must be amputated. He complains to Homais about practitioners who make use of ridiculous procedures without a thought about the patients...or victims, rather. Homais feels bad, but chooses not to defend Charles - after all, Monsieur Canivet is an important man. The amputation is a big event for the village. Everyone is quite excited, except, presumably, for Hippolyte. Poor guy. Canivet struts into the town, confident in his own abilities. He derides officiers de sante like Charles, claiming that they ruin the reputation of doctors everywhere. Speaking of our old friend, Charles stays at home, miserable, embarrassed, and guilty for the part he's played in Hippolyte's disaster. Emma sits by him, humiliated and angry. She's mad at herself for even hoping that Charles could be anything but mediocre. This is the last straw for Emma. She can't believe she ever felt bad for cheating on Charles. The angry tension of the Bovary household is broken by a horrifying shriek that echoes through the village. The amputation is underway. Charles and Emma stare at each other through the sounds of Hippolyte's screams - and to Emma, everything about her husband disgusts her. Her feelings for Rodolphe come rushing back, and it's as though Charles is permanently alienated from her life from this point on. The operation is apparently over - they see Canivet and Homais leave the inn and return to the pharmacy. Despairing, Charles asks Emma to kiss him. She refuses him violently, and flees the room. Charles has no clue what's going on. That night, Emma and Rodolphe are reunited in the garden - they kiss passionately, their affair back in full bloom.", "analysis": ""}

He had recently read a eulogy on a new method for curing club-foot, and as he was a partisan of progress, he conceived the patriotic idea that Yonville, in order to keep to the fore, ought to have some operations for strephopody or club-foot. "For," said he to Emma, "what risk is there? See--" (and he enumerated on his fingers the advantages of the attempt), "success, almost certain relief and beautifying of the patient, celebrity acquired by the operator. Why, for example, should not your husband relieve poor Hippolyte of the 'Lion d'Or'? Note that he would not fail to tell about his cure to all the travellers, and then" (Homais lowered his voice and looked round him) "who is to prevent me from sending a short paragraph on the subject to the paper? Eh! goodness me! an article gets about; it is talked of; it ends by making a snowball! And who knows? who knows?" In fact, Bovary might succeed. Nothing proved to Emma that he was not clever; and what a satisfaction for her to have urged him to a step by which his reputation and fortune would be increased! She only wished to lean on something more solid than love. Charles, urged by the druggist and by her, allowed himself to be persuaded. He sent to Rouen for Dr. Duval's volume, and every evening, holding his head between both hands, plunged into the reading of it. While he was studying equinus, varus, and valgus, that is to say, katastrephopody, endostrephopody, and exostrephopody (or better, the various turnings of the foot downwards, inwards, and outwards, with the hypostrephopody and anastrephopody), otherwise torsion downwards and upwards, Monsier Homais, with all sorts of arguments, was exhorting the lad at the inn to submit to the operation. "You will scarcely feel, probably, a slight pain; it is a simple prick, like a little blood-letting, less than the extraction of certain corns." Hippolyte, reflecting, rolled his stupid eyes. "However," continued the chemist, "it doesn't concern me. It's for your sake, for pure humanity! I should like to see you, my friend, rid of your hideous caudication, together with that waddling of the lumbar regions which, whatever you say, must considerably interfere with you in the exercise of your calling." Then Homais represented to him how much jollier and brisker he would feel afterwards, and even gave him to understand that he would be more likely to please the women; and the stable-boy began to smile heavily. Then he attacked him through his vanity: "Aren't you a man? Hang it! what would you have done if you had had to go into the army, to go and fight beneath the standard? Ah! Hippolyte!" And Homais retired, declaring that he could not understand this obstinacy, this blindness in refusing the benefactions of science. The poor fellow gave way, for it was like a conspiracy. Binet, who never interfered with other people's business, Madame Lefrancois, Artemise, the neighbours, even the mayor, Monsieur Tuvache--everyone persuaded him, lectured him, shamed him; but what finally decided him was that it would cost him nothing. Bovary even undertook to provide the machine for the operation. This generosity was an idea of Emma's, and Charles consented to it, thinking in his heart of hearts that his wife was an angel. So by the advice of the chemist, and after three fresh starts, he had a kind of box made by the carpenter, with the aid of the locksmith, that weighed about eight pounds, and in which iron, wood, sheer-iron, leather, screws, and nuts had not been spared. But to know which of Hippolyte's tendons to cut, it was necessary first of all to find out what kind of club-foot he had. He had a foot forming almost a straight line with the leg, which, however, did not prevent it from being turned in, so that it was an equinus together with something of a varus, or else a slight varus with a strong tendency to equinus. But with this equinus, wide in foot like a horse's hoof, with rugose skin, dry tendons, and large toes, on which the black nails looked as if made of iron, the clubfoot ran about like a deer from morn till night. He was constantly to be seen on the Place, jumping round the carts, thrusting his limping foot forwards. He seemed even stronger on that leg than the other. By dint of hard service it had acquired, as it were, moral qualities of patience and energy; and when he was given some heavy work, he stood on it in preference to its fellow. Now, as it was an equinus, it was necessary to cut the tendon of Achilles, and, if need were, the anterior tibial muscle could be seen to afterwards for getting rid of the varus; for the doctor did not dare to risk both operations at once; he was even trembling already for fear of injuring some important region that he did not know. Neither Ambrose Pare, applying for the first time since Celsus, after an interval of fifteen centuries, a ligature to an artery, nor Dupuytren, about to open an abscess in the brain, nor Gensoul when he first took away the superior maxilla, had hearts that trembled, hands that shook, minds so strained as Monsieur Bovary when he approached Hippolyte, his tenotome between his fingers. And as at hospitals, near by on a table lay a heap of lint, with waxed thread, many bandages--a pyramid of bandages--every bandage to be found at the druggist's. It was Monsieur Homais who since morning had been organising all these preparations, as much to dazzle the multitude as to keep up his illusions. Charles pierced the skin; a dry crackling was heard. The tendon was cut, the operation over. Hippolyte could not get over his surprise, but bent over Bovary's hands to cover them with kisses. "Come, be calm," said the druggist; "later on you will show your gratitude to your benefactor." And he went down to tell the result to five or six inquirers who were waiting in the yard, and who fancied that Hippolyte would reappear walking properly. Then Charles, having buckled his patient into the machine, went home, where Emma, all anxiety, awaited him at the door. She threw herself on his neck; they sat down to table; he ate much, and at dessert he even wanted to take a cup of coffee, a luxury he only permitted himself on Sundays when there was company. The evening was charming, full of prattle, of dreams together. They talked about their future fortune, of the improvements to be made in their house; he saw people's estimation of him growing, his comforts increasing, his wife always loving him; and she was happy to refresh herself with a new sentiment, healthier, better, to feel at last some tenderness for this poor fellow who adored her. The thought of Rodolphe for one moment passed through her mind, but her eyes turned again to Charles; she even noticed with surprise that he had not bad teeth. They were in bed when Monsieur Homais, in spite of the servant, suddenly entered the room, holding in his hand a sheet of paper just written. It was the paragraph he intended for the "Fanal de Rouen." He brought it for them to read. "Read it yourself," said Bovary. He read-- "'Despite the prejudices that still invest a part of the face of Europe like a net, the light nevertheless begins to penetrate our country places. Thus on Tuesday our little town of Yonville found itself the scene of a surgical operation which is at the same time an act of loftiest philanthropy. Monsieur Bovary, one of our most distinguished practitioners--'" "Oh, that is too much! too much!" said Charles, choking with emotion. "No, no! not at all! What next!" "'--Performed an operation on a club-footed man.' I have not used the scientific term, because you know in a newspaper everyone would not perhaps understand. The masses must--'" "No doubt," said Bovary; "go on!" "I proceed," said the chemist. "'Monsieur Bovary, one of our most distinguished practitioners, performed an operation on a club-footed man called Hippolyte Tautain, stableman for the last twenty-five years at the hotel of the "Lion d'Or," kept by Widow Lefrancois, at the Place d'Armes. The novelty of the attempt, and the interest incident to the subject, had attracted such a concourse of persons that there was a veritable obstruction on the threshold of the establishment. The operation, moreover, was performed as if by magic, and barely a few drops of blood appeared on the skin, as though to say that the rebellious tendon had at last given way beneath the efforts of art. The patient, strangely enough--we affirm it as an eye-witness--complained of no pain. His condition up to the present time leaves nothing to be desired. Everything tends to show that his convelescence will be brief; and who knows even if at our next village festivity we shall not see our good Hippolyte figuring in the bacchic dance in the midst of a chorus of joyous boon-companions, and thus proving to all eyes by his verve and his capers his complete cure? Honour, then, to the generous savants! Honour to those indefatigable spirits who consecrate their vigils to the amelioration or to the alleviation of their kind! Honour, thrice honour! Is it not time to cry that the blind shall see, the deaf hear, the lame walk? But that which fanaticism formerly promised to its elect, science now accomplishes for all men. We shall keep our readers informed as to the successive phases of this remarkable cure.'" This did not prevent Mere Lefrancois, from coming five days after, scared, and crying out-- "Help! he is dying! I am going crazy!" Charles rushed to the "Lion d'Or," and the chemist, who caught sight of him passing along the Place hatless, abandoned his shop. He appeared himself breathless, red, anxious, and asking everyone who was going up the stairs-- "Why, what's the matter with our interesting strephopode?" The strephopode was writhing in hideous convulsions, so that the machine in which his leg was enclosed was knocked against the wall enough to break it. With many precautions, in order not to disturb the position of the limb, the box was removed, and an awful sight presented itself. The outlines of the foot disappeared in such a swelling that the entire skin seemed about to burst, and it was covered with ecchymosis, caused by the famous machine. Hippolyte had already complained of suffering from it. No attention had been paid to him; they had to acknowledge that he had not been altogether wrong, and he was freed for a few hours. But, hardly had the oedema gone down to some extent, than the two savants thought fit to put back the limb in the apparatus, strapping it tighter to hasten matters. At last, three days after, Hippolyte being unable to endure it any longer, they once more removed the machine, and were much surprised at the result they saw. The livid tumefaction spread over the leg, with blisters here and there, whence there oozed a black liquid. Matters were taking a serious turn. Hippolyte began to worry himself, and Mere Lefrancois, had him installed in the little room near the kitchen, so that he might at least have some distraction. But the tax-collector, who dined there every day, complained bitterly of such companionship. Then Hippolyte was removed to the billiard-room. He lay there moaning under his heavy coverings, pale with long beard, sunken eyes, and from time to time turning his perspiring head on the dirty pillow, where the flies alighted. Madame Bovary went to see him. She brought him linen for his poultices; she comforted, and encouraged him. Besides, he did not want for company, especially on market-days, when the peasants were knocking about the billiard-balls round him, fenced with the cues, smoked, drank, sang, and brawled. "How are you?" they said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Ah! you're not up to much, it seems, but it's your own fault. You should do this! do that!" And then they told him stories of people who had all been cured by other remedies than his. Then by way of consolation they added-- "You give way too much! Get up! You coddle yourself like a king! All the same, old chap, you don't smell nice!" Gangrene, in fact, was spreading more and more. Bovary himself turned sick at it. He came every hour, every moment. Hippolyte looked at him with eyes full of terror, sobbing-- "When shall I get well? Oh, save me! How unfortunate I am! How unfortunate I am!" And the doctor left, always recommending him to diet himself. "Don't listen to him, my lad," said Mere Lefrancois, "Haven't they tortured you enough already? You'll grow still weaker. Here! swallow this." And she gave him some good beef-tea, a slice of mutton, a piece of bacon, and sometimes small glasses of brandy, that he had not the strength to put to his lips. Abbe Bournisien, hearing that he was growing worse, asked to see him. He began by pitying his sufferings, declaring at the same time that he ought to rejoice at them since it was the will of the Lord, and take advantage of the occasion to reconcile himself to Heaven. "For," said the ecclesiastic in a paternal tone, "you rather neglected your duties; you were rarely seen at divine worship. How many years is it since you approached the holy table? I understand that your work, that the whirl of the world may have kept you from care for your salvation. But now is the time to reflect. Yet don't despair. I have known great sinners, who, about to appear before God (you are not yet at this point I know), had implored His mercy, and who certainly died in the best frame of mind. Let us hope that, like them, you will set us a good example. Thus, as a precaution, what is to prevent you from saying morning and evening a 'Hail Mary, full of grace,' and 'Our Father which art in heaven'? Yes, do that, for my sake, to oblige me. That won't cost you anything. Will you promise me?" The poor devil promised. The cure came back day after day. He chatted with the landlady; and even told anecdotes interspersed with jokes and puns that Hippolyte did not understand. Then, as soon as he could, he fell back upon matters of religion, putting on an appropriate expression of face. His zeal seemed successful, for the club-foot soon manifested a desire to go on a pilgrimage to Bon-Secours if he were cured; to which Monsieur Bournisien replied that he saw no objection; two precautions were better than one; it was no risk anyhow. The druggist was indignant at what he called the manoeuvres of the priest; they were prejudicial, he said, to Hippolyte's convalescence, and he kept repeating to Madame Lefrancois, "Leave him alone! leave him alone! You perturb his morals with your mysticism." But the good woman would no longer listen to him; he was the cause of it all. From a spirit of contradiction she hung up near the bedside of the patient a basin filled with holy-water and a branch of box. Religion, however, seemed no more able to succour him than surgery, and the invincible gangrene still spread from the extremities towards the stomach. It was all very well to vary the potions and change the poultices; the muscles each day rotted more and more; and at last Charles replied by an affirmative nod of the head when Mere Lefrancois, asked him if she could not, as a forlorn hope, send for Monsieur Canivet of Neufchatel, who was a celebrity. A doctor of medicine, fifty years of age, enjoying a good position and self-possessed, Charles's colleague did not refrain from laughing disdainfully when he had uncovered the leg, mortified to the knee. Then having flatly declared that it must be amputated, he went off to the chemist's to rail at the asses who could have reduced a poor man to such a state. Shaking Monsieur Homais by the button of his coat, he shouted out in the shop-- "These are the inventions of Paris! These are the ideas of those gentry of the capital! It is like strabismus, chloroform, lithotrity, a heap of monstrosities that the Government ought to prohibit. But they want to do the clever, and they cram you with remedies without, troubling about the consequences. We are not so clever, not we! We are not savants, coxcombs, fops! We are practitioners; we cure people, and we should not dream of operating on anyone who is in perfect health. Straighten club-feet! As if one could straighten club-feet! It is as if one wished, for example, to make a hunchback straight!" Homais suffered as he listened to this discourse, and he concealed his discomfort beneath a courtier's smile; for he needed to humour Monsier Canivet, whose prescriptions sometimes came as far as Yonville. So he did not take up the defence of Bovary; he did not even make a single remark, and, renouncing his principles, he sacrificed his dignity to the more serious interests of his business. This amputation of the thigh by Doctor Canivet was a great event in the village. On that day all the inhabitants got up earlier, and the Grande Rue, although full of people, had something lugubrious about it, as if an execution had been expected. At the grocer's they discussed Hippolyte's illness; the shops did no business, and Madame Tuvache, the mayor's wife, did not stir from her window, such was her impatience to see the operator arrive. He came in his gig, which he drove himself. But the springs of the right side having at length given way beneath the weight of his corpulence, it happened that the carriage as it rolled along leaned over a little, and on the other cushion near him could be seen a large box covered in red sheep-leather, whose three brass clasps shone grandly. After he had entered like a whirlwind the porch of the "Lion d'Or," the doctor, shouting very loud, ordered them to unharness his horse. Then he went into the stable to see that she was eating her oats all right; for on arriving at a patient's he first of all looked after his mare and his gig. People even said about this-- "Ah! Monsieur Canivet's a character!" And he was the more esteemed for this imperturbable coolness. The universe to the last man might have died, and he would not have missed the smallest of his habits. Homais presented himself. "I count on you," said the doctor. "Are we ready? Come along!" But the druggist, turning red, confessed that he was too sensitive to assist at such an operation. "When one is a simple spectator," he said, "the imagination, you know, is impressed. And then I have such a nervous system!" "Pshaw!" interrupted Canivet; "on the contrary, you seem to me inclined to apoplexy. Besides, that doesn't astonish me, for you chemist fellows are always poking about your kitchens, which must end by spoiling your constitutions. Now just look at me. I get up every day at four o'clock; I shave with cold water (and am never cold). I don't wear flannels, and I never catch cold; my carcass is good enough! I live now in one way, now in another, like a philosopher, taking pot-luck; that is why I am not squeamish like you, and it is as indifferent to me to carve a Christian as the first fowl that turns up. Then, perhaps, you will say, habit! habit!" Then, without any consideration for Hippolyte, who was sweating with agony between his sheets, these gentlemen entered into a conversation, in which the druggist compared the coolness of a surgeon to that of a general; and this comparison was pleasing to Canivet, who launched out on the exigencies of his art. He looked upon, it as a sacred office, although the ordinary practitioners dishonoured it. At last, coming back to the patient, he examined the bandages brought by Homais, the same that had appeared for the club-foot, and asked for someone to hold the limb for him. Lestiboudois was sent for, and Monsieur Canivet having turned up his sleeves, passed into the billiard-room, while the druggist stayed with Artemise and the landlady, both whiter than their aprons, and with ears strained towards the door. Bovary during this time did not dare to stir from his house. He kept downstairs in the sitting-room by the side of the fireless chimney, his chin on his breast, his hands clasped, his eyes staring. "What a mishap!" he thought, "what a mishap!" Perhaps, after all, he had made some slip. He thought it over, but could hit upon nothing. But the most famous surgeons also made mistakes; and that is what no one would ever believe! People, on the contrary, would laugh, jeer! It would spread as far as Forges, as Neufchatel, as Rouen, everywhere! Who could say if his colleagues would not write against him. Polemics would ensue; he would have to answer in the papers. Hippolyte might even prosecute him. He saw himself dishonoured, ruined, lost; and his imagination, assailed by a world of hypotheses, tossed amongst them like an empty cask borne by the sea and floating upon the waves. Emma, opposite, watched him; she did not share his humiliation; she felt another--that of having supposed such a man was worth anything. As if twenty times already she had not sufficiently perceived his mediocrity. Charles was walking up and down the room; his boots creaked on the floor. "Sit down," she said; "you fidget me." He sat down again. How was it that she--she, who was so intelligent--could have allowed herself to be deceived again? and through what deplorable madness had she thus ruined her life by continual sacrifices? She recalled all her instincts of luxury, all the privations of her soul, the sordidness of marriage, of the household, her dream sinking into the mire like wounded swallows; all that she had longed for, all that she had denied herself, all that she might have had! And for what? for what? In the midst of the silence that hung over the village a heart-rending cry rose on the air. Bovary turned white to fainting. She knit her brows with a nervous gesture, then went on. And it was for him, for this creature, for this man, who understood nothing, who felt nothing! For he was there quite quiet, not even suspecting that the ridicule of his name would henceforth sully hers as well as his. She had made efforts to love him, and she had repented with tears for having yielded to another! "But it was perhaps a valgus!" suddenly exclaimed Bovary, who was meditating. At the unexpected shock of this phrase falling on her thought like a leaden bullet on a silver plate, Emma, shuddering, raised her head in order to find out what he meant to say; and they looked at the other in silence, almost amazed to see each other, so far sundered were they by their inner thoughts. Charles gazed at her with the dull look of a drunken man, while he listened motionless to the last cries of the sufferer, that followed each other in long-drawn modulations, broken by sharp spasms like the far-off howling of some beast being slaughtered. Emma bit her wan lips, and rolling between her fingers a piece of coral that she had broken, fixed on Charles the burning glance of her eyes like two arrows of fire about to dart forth. Everything in him irritated her now; his face, his dress, what he did not say, his whole person, his existence, in fine. She repented of her past virtue as of a crime, and what still remained of it rumbled away beneath the furious blows of her pride. She revelled in all the evil ironies of triumphant adultery. The memory of her lover came back to her with dazzling attractions; she threw her whole soul into it, borne away towards this image with a fresh enthusiasm; and Charles seemed to her as much removed from her life, as absent forever, as impossible and annihilated, as if he had been about to die and were passing under her eyes. There was a sound of steps on the pavement. Charles looked up, and through the lowered blinds he saw at the corner of the market in the broad sunshine Dr. Canivet, who was wiping his brow with his handkerchief. Homais, behind him, was carrying a large red box in his hand, and both were going towards the chemist's. Then with a feeling of sudden tenderness and discouragement Charles turned to his wife saying to her-- "Oh, kiss me, my own!" "Leave me!" she said, red with anger. "What is the matter?" he asked, stupefied. "Be calm; compose yourself. You know well enough that I love you. Come!" "Enough!" she cried with a terrible look. And escaping from the room, Emma closed the door so violently that the barometer fell from the wall and smashed on the floor. Charles sank back into his arm-chair overwhelmed, trying to discover what could be wrong with her, fancying some nervous illness, weeping, and vaguely feeling something fatal and incomprehensible whirling round him. When Rodolphe came to the garden that evening, he found his mistress waiting for him at the foot of the steps on the lowest stair. They threw their arms round one another, and all their rancour melted like snow beneath the warmth of that kiss.

Part 2, Chapter 11

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-11

It turns out that Homais is all excited about some article on curing clubfeet. He's convinced that Charles should attempt to fix the clubfoot of Hippolyte, a servant at Madame Lefrancois's inn. Emma is easily convinced. She hopes that the operation will earn Charles some respect and extra cash. This helps a lot with her resolution to stay with him. Charles, despite his profound lack of medical talent, agrees to do it. He prepares for the operation by reading and attempting to understand it, while Homais works on getting Hippolyte himself to agree. Hippolyte gives in to the pharmacist's goading , and accepts the operation. Charles, in the meanwhile, is having a heck of a time figuring out how to fix Hippolyte's disfigured leg. He's clearly confused and concerned, but goes ahead gamely anyway. He ends up cutting poor Hippolyte's Achilles tendon, thinking that it's the right thing to do. Ugh, just thinking of it gives us the chills. After the operation, which appears at first to be a success, Emma actually voluntarily embraces Charles. The two of them are happier together than we've ever seen them. She is finally able to muster up a little bit of affection for poor Charles, who she now views as an up-and-coming surgeon in the making. Homais busily writes up the operation for the Rouen paper, claiming that it's a complete success. However, this honeymoon period doesn't last. Five days after the operation, Madame Lefrancois bursts in, claiming that Hippolyte is dying. Charles and Homais rush off to see what's wrong. Gaah! What isn't wrong would be a better question. Hippolyte's foot is a disgusting mass of infection, trapped within the bizarre torture device Charles strapped it into. Ignoring Hippolyte's claims of incredible pain, they put him back in the apparatus. Three days later, though, the infection is way, way worse - it's so disgusting we don't even want to tell you about it here. Seriously. GROSS. Everyone tries to make Hippolyte feel better, except for the peasants who come to the inn to play billiards. They just make him feel worse, and tell him that he smells bad. Actually, that's not just a taunt - it's true. The gangrenous leg reeks up a storm. Hippolyte is in total despair, but Charles, who has no clue how to fix it, just tells him to eat more lightly . To make matters even worse, Father Bournisien comes over to harass the crippled man about his lack of religion. We're sure it didn't exactly make Hippolyte feel any better. Finally, Madame Lefrancois, worried about the lack of improvement, send for Monsieur Canivet, a real M.D. from Neufchatel. Canivet, who is, unlike Charles, an actual doctor, laughs contemptuously when he sees Hippolyte's condition, and says what everyone should have known by now - the leg must be amputated. He complains to Homais about practitioners who make use of ridiculous procedures without a thought about the patients...or victims, rather. Homais feels bad, but chooses not to defend Charles - after all, Monsieur Canivet is an important man. The amputation is a big event for the village. Everyone is quite excited, except, presumably, for Hippolyte. Poor guy. Canivet struts into the town, confident in his own abilities. He derides officiers de sante like Charles, claiming that they ruin the reputation of doctors everywhere. Speaking of our old friend, Charles stays at home, miserable, embarrassed, and guilty for the part he's played in Hippolyte's disaster. Emma sits by him, humiliated and angry. She's mad at herself for even hoping that Charles could be anything but mediocre. This is the last straw for Emma. She can't believe she ever felt bad for cheating on Charles. The angry tension of the Bovary household is broken by a horrifying shriek that echoes through the village. The amputation is underway. Charles and Emma stare at each other through the sounds of Hippolyte's screams - and to Emma, everything about her husband disgusts her. Her feelings for Rodolphe come rushing back, and it's as though Charles is permanently alienated from her life from this point on. The operation is apparently over - they see Canivet and Homais leave the inn and return to the pharmacy. Despairing, Charles asks Emma to kiss him. She refuses him violently, and flees the room. Charles has no clue what's going on. That night, Emma and Rodolphe are reunited in the garden - they kiss passionately, their affair back in full bloom.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/21.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_20_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 12

part 2, chapter 12

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 12", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-12", "summary": "Emma and Rodolphe's relationship is passionate again. Sometimes Emma misses Rodolphe so badly that she sends Justin to fetch him in the middle of the day. On one such day, she suggests that the two of them run off and live somewhere else. Rodolphe doesn't understand why she's so serious over something as trivial as a love affair. Emma really is serious, though. The more she loves Rodolphe, the more she hates Charles - in comparison to her lover, her husband seems impossibly dull, crude, and generally icky. Emma's vanity really emerges here; to keep herself looking good for Rodolphe, she spends all her time thinking about her appearance and making her room ready for his visits. Felicite is busy all day washing lingerie for Emma. While she does the laundry, she chats to Justin, who's always hanging around. He's fascinated by the assortment of mysterious feminine garments. Emma's spending is clearly getting out of control. Her closets are full of shoes, which she frequently throws away and replaces. Charles doesn't make a peep about any of this. He also doesn't complain about the purchase of a beautiful, super-fancy prosthetic leg that Emma insists they get for Hippolyte. He's awed by the glory of this leg, and they get him plainer one for everyday wear. Hippolyte quickly goes back to work, and Charles feels guilty every time he hears the stableboy tap-tapping his ways along the street on his false leg. Monsieur Lheureux is Emma's new constant companion. He talks to her endlessly about the fads in Paris, and she gives in, ordering item after item. For a while, she feels safe like this - he never asks for money. One day, however, after Emma purchases a beautiful riding crop for Rodolphe, Lheureux suddenly shows up with a giant bill. Emma's not sure what to do - she doesn't have any money. In fact, there's no money in the whole house. She manages to put him off for a little while, but the merchant soon loses patience. Desperately, Emma tells him to take back the things she's bought for him. Craftily, he tells her that he only really needs the riding crop back - and he offers to ask Charles to return it. Based on her panicked reaction, he figures out the truth: she's having an affair. Fortunately, a big payment comes in just in time from one of Charles's patients. When Lheureux returns for his money, ready to strike some kind of devilish deal, he's shocked to see Emma offer him payment in full. Unfortunately, this means that the household is short on money. Emma puts this little fact out of her mind for the time being. Rodolphe continues to receive extravagant gifts from his mistress, which is actually really ridiculous, since he's the wealthy one. In addition to the riding crop, she gives him a ring, a scarf, and an embroidered cigar case like the one Charles found on the road. Rodolphe is embarrassed by the lavish presents, but accepts them anyway. Emma keeps making her same old foolishly romantic demands - and again, Rodolphe starts to get a little sick of it. They fight and make up over and over again; Emma lavishes praise on him, and pledges her unending devotion. Rodolphe, who's much more of a cynic than she is, gets fed up her melodramatic declarations. Rodolphe starts to cultivate new pleasures in his relationship with Emma - he seems to enjoy corrupting her and forcing her to be compliant to him. She wallows in her infatuation for him, giving in to his desires. Emma kind of loses it under Rodolphe's influence. She stops caring about what people think, and starts acting like what one might call a \"loose woman,\" to use a rather outdated phrase. She starts smoking in public and wearing daringly \"mannish\" clothes. The worst of it comes when Charles's mother visits. The two women, whose relationship is already in the dumps, get into a huge fight over Felicite, of all people. Old Madame Bovary discovered Felicite with a man in the house in the dead of night, and accuses Emma of being immoral. Emma takes this as a class issue, claiming that her mother-in-law is just an unsophisticated, narrow-minded peasant. She tells the older woman to get out of the house. Poor Charles is caught in the crossfire between the two domineering women in his life once more. He helplessly tries to make things better. Emma gives in and apologizes to her mother-in-law - but she certainly doesn't mean it. She puts up an emergency signal for Rodolphe; he comes to see what's the matter, and she launches into the whole story and begs him to take her away. He doesn't exactly say yes or no. For the next few days, Emma acts like a new woman. She's completely docile, and even asks her mother-in-law for a recipe. Is it possible that this new behavior is for the benefit of Charles and his mom, or that it's to convince herself more fully of the repressive demands of her everyday life? No - the truth is that she's so swept up in the fantasy of running away with Rodolphe that she simply doesn't even notice anything around her. Emma keeps bringing up the idea of escape with Rodolphe, imagining scene after scene of their flight from Yonville. Emma is more beautiful than ever. Poor Charles is even more in love with her than ever. Charles indulges for the first time in his own flights of fancy. His dreams are centered around Emma and Berthe. He imagines an impossible future in which everyone lives happily ever after; he envisions Berthe growing as beautiful as her mother, and can almost see the two of them together, almost like sisters rather than mother and daughter. In the meanwhile, on the other side of the bed, Emma sees herself escaping with Rodolphe, fleeing to a new country full of fantastical, almost mythological landscapes. She doesn't imagine anything specific. In fact, her vision of the future seems almost as consistent as her monotonous present, with one significant difference: in this future, she'll be blissfully happy. In preparation for her supposed elopement with Rodolphe, Emma orders a long cloak and traveling trunk from Monsieur Lheureux. He figures she's had a fight with Charles. Emma gives her watch to Lheureux to sell in exchange for these goods. Rodolphe and Emma actually set a date - they will leave the next month. She plans to make like she's going to Rouen to do some shopping, but will instead meet Rodolphe, who will have made all the travel arrangements for them to flee to Italy. Everything looks like it's actually falling into place. There's no mention of what will happen to little Berthe - Rodolphe hopes that Emma will just forget about her. Weeks pass - Rodolphe delays the trip for various reasons. All of August passes, and they decide that they will absolutely, positively leave on Monday, September 4. The Saturday before the trip, Rodolphe stops by. He's looking sad and particularly tender. They swear that they love each other once more. Rodolphe suggests that there's still time to change her mind, but Emma is sure: she is ready to leave Yonville behind. Rodolphe takes his leave of Emma. On his way home, he stops, filled with emotion. We discover - surprise, surprise - that he intends to desert her. He's tempted to go through with the plan - but no, he won't. Rodolphe is no fool, and he doesn't intend to become one.", "analysis": ""}

They began to love one another again. Often, even in the middle of the day, Emma suddenly wrote to him, then from the window made a sign to Justin, who, taking his apron off, quickly ran to La Huchette. Rodolphe would come; she had sent for him to tell him that she was bored, that her husband was odious, her life frightful. "But what can I do?" he cried one day impatiently. "Ah! if you would--" She was sitting on the floor between his knees, her hair loose, her look lost. "Why, what?" said Rodolphe. She sighed. "We would go and live elsewhere--somewhere!" "You are really mad!" he said laughing. "How could that be possible?" She returned to the subject; he pretended not to understand, and turned the conversation. What he did not understand was all this worry about so simple an affair as love. She had a motive, a reason, and, as it were, a pendant to her affection. Her tenderness, in fact, grew each day with her repulsion to her husband. The more she gave up herself to the one, the more she loathed the other. Never had Charles seemed to her so disagreeable, to have such stodgy fingers, such vulgar ways, to be so dull as when they found themselves together after her meeting with Rodolphe. Then, while playing the spouse and virtue, she was burning at the thought of that head whose black hair fell in a curl over the sunburnt brow, of that form at once so strong and elegant, of that man, in a word, who had such experience in his reasoning, such passion in his desires. It was for him that she filed her nails with the care of a chaser, and that there was never enough cold-cream for her skin, nor of patchouli for her handkerchiefs. She loaded herself with bracelets, rings, and necklaces. When he was coming she filled the two large blue glass vases with roses, and prepared her room and her person like a courtesan expecting a prince. The servant had to be constantly washing linen, and all day Felicite did not stir from the kitchen, where little Justin, who often kept her company, watched her at work. With his elbows on the long board on which she was ironing, he greedily watched all these women's clothes spread about him, the dimity petticoats, the fichus, the collars, and the drawers with running strings, wide at the hips and growing narrower below. "What is that for?" asked the young fellow, passing his hand over the crinoline or the hooks and eyes. "Why, haven't you ever seen anything?" Felicite answered laughing. "As if your mistress, Madame Homais, didn't wear the same." "Oh, I daresay! Madame Homais!" And he added with a meditative air, "As if she were a lady like madame!" But Felicite grew impatient of seeing him hanging round her. She was six years older than he, and Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin's servant, was beginning to pay court to her. "Let me alone," she said, moving her pot of starch. "You'd better be off and pound almonds; you are always dangling about women. Before you meddle with such things, bad boy, wait till you've got a beard to your chin." "Oh, don't be cross! I'll go and clean her boots." And he at once took down from the shelf Emma's boots, all coated with mud, the mud of the rendezvous, that crumbled into powder beneath his fingers, and that he watched as it gently rose in a ray of sunlight. "How afraid you are of spoiling them!" said the servant, who wasn't so particular when she cleaned them herself, because as soon as the stuff of the boots was no longer fresh madame handed them over to her. Emma had a number in her cupboard that she squandered one after the other, without Charles allowing himself the slightest observation. So also he disbursed three hundred francs for a wooden leg that she thought proper to make a present of to Hippolyte. Its top was covered with cork, and it had spring joints, a complicated mechanism, covered over by black trousers ending in a patent-leather boot. But Hippolyte, not daring to use such a handsome leg every day, begged Madame Bovary to get him another more convenient one. The doctor, of course, had again to defray the expense of this purchase. So little by little the stable-man took up his work again. One saw him running about the village as before, and when Charles heard from afar the sharp noise of the wooden leg, he at once went in another direction. It was Monsieur Lheureux, the shopkeeper, who had undertaken the order; this provided him with an excuse for visiting Emma. He chatted with her about the new goods from Paris, about a thousand feminine trifles, made himself very obliging, and never asked for his money. Emma yielded to this lazy mode of satisfying all her caprices. Thus she wanted to have a very handsome ridding-whip that was at an umbrella-maker's at Rouen to give to Rodolphe. The week after Monsieur Lheureux placed it on her table. But the next day he called on her with a bill for two hundred and seventy francs, not counting the centimes. Emma was much embarrassed; all the drawers of the writing-table were empty; they owed over a fortnight's wages to Lestiboudois, two quarters to the servant, for any quantity of other things, and Bovary was impatiently expecting Monsieur Derozeray's account, which he was in the habit of paying every year about Midsummer. She succeeded at first in putting off Lheureux. At last he lost patience; he was being sued; his capital was out, and unless he got some in he should be forced to take back all the goods she had received. "Oh, very well, take them!" said Emma. "I was only joking," he replied; "the only thing I regret is the whip. My word! I'll ask monsieur to return it to me." "No, no!" she said. "Ah! I've got you!" thought Lheureux. And, certain of his discovery, he went out repeating to himself in an undertone, and with his usual low whistle-- "Good! we shall see! we shall see!" She was thinking how to get out of this when the servant coming in put on the mantelpiece a small roll of blue paper "from Monsieur Derozeray's." Emma pounced upon and opened it. It contained fifteen napoleons; it was the account. She heard Charles on the stairs; threw the gold to the back of her drawer, and took out the key. Three days after Lheureux reappeared. "I have an arrangement to suggest to you," he said. "If, instead of the sum agreed on, you would take--" "Here it is," she said placing fourteen napoleons in his hand. The tradesman was dumfounded. Then, to conceal his disappointment, he was profuse in apologies and proffers of service, all of which Emma declined; then she remained a few moments fingering in the pocket of her apron the two five-franc pieces that he had given her in change. She promised herself she would economise in order to pay back later on. "Pshaw!" she thought, "he won't think about it again." Besides the riding-whip with its silver-gilt handle, Rodolphe had received a seal with the motto Amor nel cor* furthermore, a scarf for a muffler, and, finally, a cigar-case exactly like the Viscount's, that Charles had formerly picked up in the road, and that Emma had kept. These presents, however, humiliated him; he refused several; she insisted, and he ended by obeying, thinking her tyrannical and overexacting. *A loving heart. Then she had strange ideas. "When midnight strikes," she said, "you must think of me." And if he confessed that he had not thought of her, there were floods of reproaches that always ended with the eternal question-- "Do you love me?" "Why, of course I love you," he answered. "A great deal?" "Certainly!" "You haven't loved any others?" "Did you think you'd got a virgin?" he exclaimed laughing. Emma cried, and he tried to console her, adorning his protestations with puns. "Oh," she went on, "I love you! I love you so that I could not live without you, do you see? There are times when I long to see you again, when I am torn by all the anger of love. I ask myself, Where is he? Perhaps he is talking to other women. They smile upon him; he approaches. Oh no; no one else pleases you. There are some more beautiful, but I love you best. I know how to love best. I am your servant, your concubine! You are my king, my idol! You are good, you are beautiful, you are clever, you are strong!" He had so often heard these things said that they did not strike him as original. Emma was like all his mistresses; and the charm of novelty, gradually falling away like a garment, laid bare the eternal monotony of passion, that has always the same forms and the same language. He did not distinguish, this man of so much experience, the difference of sentiment beneath the sameness of expression. Because lips libertine and venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little in the candour of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be discounted; as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars. But with that superior critical judgment that belongs to him who, in no matter what circumstance, holds back, Rodolphe saw other delights to be got out of this love. He thought all modesty in the way. He treated her quite sans facon.* He made of her something supple and corrupt. Hers was an idiotic sort of attachment, full of admiration for him, of voluptuousness for her, a beatitude that benumbed her; her soul sank into this drunkenness, shrivelled up, drowned in it, like Clarence in his butt of Malmsey. *Off-handedly. By the mere effect of her love Madame Bovary's manners changed. Her looks grew bolder, her speech more free; she even committed the impropriety of walking out with Monsieur Rodolphe, a cigarette in her mouth, "as if to defy the people." At last, those who still doubted doubted no longer when one day they saw her getting out of the "Hirondelle," her waist squeezed into a waistcoat like a man; and Madame Bovary senior, who, after a fearful scene with her husband, had taken refuge at her son's, was not the least scandalised of the women-folk. Many other things displeased her. First, Charles had not attended to her advice about the forbidding of novels; then the "ways of the house" annoyed her; she allowed herself to make some remarks, and there were quarrels, especially one on account of Felicite. Madame Bovary senior, the evening before, passing along the passage, had surprised her in company of a man--a man with a brown collar, about forty years old, who, at the sound of her step, had quickly escaped through the kitchen. Then Emma began to laugh, but the good lady grew angry, declaring that unless morals were to be laughed at one ought to look after those of one's servants. "Where were you brought up?" asked the daughter-in-law, with so impertinent a look that Madame Bovary asked her if she were not perhaps defending her own case. "Leave the room!" said the young woman, springing up with a bound. "Emma! Mamma!" cried Charles, trying to reconcile them. But both had fled in their exasperation. Emma was stamping her feet as she repeated-- "Oh! what manners! What a peasant!" He ran to his mother; she was beside herself. She stammered "She is an insolent, giddy-headed thing, or perhaps worse!" And she was for leaving at once if the other did not apologise. So Charles went back again to his wife and implored her to give way; he knelt to her; she ended by saying-- "Very well! I'll go to her." And in fact she held out her hand to her mother-in-law with the dignity of a marchioness as she said-- "Excuse me, madame." Then, having gone up again to her room, she threw herself flat on her bed and cried there like a child, her face buried in the pillow. She and Rodolphe had agreed that in the event of anything extraordinary occurring, she should fasten a small piece of white paper to the blind, so that if by chance he happened to be in Yonville, he could hurry to the lane behind the house. Emma made the signal; she had been waiting three-quarters of an hour when she suddenly caught sight of Rodolphe at the corner of the market. She felt tempted to open the window and call him, but he had already disappeared. She fell back in despair. Soon, however, it seemed to her that someone was walking on the pavement. It was he, no doubt. She went downstairs, crossed the yard. He was there outside. She threw herself into his arms. "Do take care!" he said. "Ah! if you knew!" she replied. And she began telling him everything, hurriedly, disjointedly, exaggerating the facts, inventing many, and so prodigal of parentheses that he understood nothing of it. "Come, my poor angel, courage! Be comforted! be patient!" "But I have been patient; I have suffered for four years. A love like ours ought to show itself in the face of heaven. They torture me! I can bear it no longer! Save me!" She clung to Rodolphe. Her eyes, full of tears, flashed like flames beneath a wave; her breast heaved; he had never loved her so much, so that he lost his head and said "What is, it? What do you wish?" "Take me away," she cried, "carry me off! Oh, I pray you!" And she threw herself upon his mouth, as if to seize there the unexpected consent if breathed forth in a kiss. "But--" Rodolphe resumed. "What?" "Your little girl!" She reflected a few moments, then replied-- "We will take her! It can't be helped!" "What a woman!" he said to himself, watching her as she went. For she had run into the garden. Someone was calling her. On the following days Madame Bovary senior was much surprised at the change in her daughter-in-law. Emma, in fact, was showing herself more docile, and even carried her deference so far as to ask for a recipe for pickling gherkins. Was it the better to deceive them both? Or did she wish by a sort of voluptuous stoicism to feel the more profoundly the bitterness of the things she was about to leave? But she paid no heed to them; on the contrary, she lived as lost in the anticipated delight of her coming happiness. It was an eternal subject for conversation with Rodolphe. She leant on his shoulder murmuring-- "Ah! when we are in the mail-coach! Do you think about it? Can it be? It seems to me that the moment I feel the carriage start, it will be as if we were rising in a balloon, as if we were setting out for the clouds. Do you know that I count the hours? And you?" Never had Madame Bovary been so beautiful as at this period; she had that indefinable beauty that results from joy, from enthusiasm, from success, and that is only the harmony of temperament with circumstances. Her desires, her sorrows, the experience of pleasure, and her ever-young illusions, that had, as soil and rain and winds and the sun make flowers grow, gradually developed her, and she at length blossomed forth in all the plenitude of her nature. Her eyelids seemed chiselled expressly for her long amorous looks in which the pupil disappeared, while a strong inspiration expanded her delicate nostrils and raised the fleshy corner of her lips, shaded in the light by a little black down. One would have thought that an artist apt in conception had arranged the curls of hair upon her neck; they fell in a thick mass, negligently, and with the changing chances of their adultery, that unbound them every day. Her voice now took more mellow infections, her figure also; something subtle and penetrating escaped even from the folds of her gown and from the line of her foot. Charles, as when they were first married, thought her delicious and quite irresistible. When he came home in the middle of the night, he did not dare to wake her. The porcelain night-light threw a round trembling gleam upon the ceiling, and the drawn curtains of the little cot formed as it were a white hut standing out in the shade, and by the bedside Charles looked at them. He seemed to hear the light breathing of his child. She would grow big now; every season would bring rapid progress. He already saw her coming from school as the day drew in, laughing, with ink-stains on her jacket, and carrying her basket on her arm. Then she would have to be sent to the boarding-school; that would cost much; how was it to be done? Then he reflected. He thought of hiring a small farm in the neighbourhood, that he would superintend every morning on his way to his patients. He would save up what he brought in; he would put it in the savings-bank. Then he would buy shares somewhere, no matter where; besides, his practice would increase; he counted upon that, for he wanted Berthe to be well-educated, to be accomplished, to learn to play the piano. Ah! how pretty she would be later on when she was fifteen, when, resembling her mother, she would, like her, wear large straw hats in the summer-time; from a distance they would be taken for two sisters. He pictured her to himself working in the evening by their side beneath the light of the lamp; she would embroider him slippers; she would look after the house; she would fill all the home with her charm and her gaiety. At last, they would think of her marriage; they would find her some good young fellow with a steady business; he would make her happy; this would last for ever. Emma was not asleep; she pretended to be; and while he dozed off by her side she awakened to other dreams. To the gallop of four horses she was carried away for a week towards a new land, whence they would return no more. They went on and on, their arms entwined, without a word. Often from the top of a mountain there suddenly glimpsed some splendid city with domes, and bridges, and ships, forests of citron trees, and cathedrals of white marble, on whose pointed steeples were storks' nests. They went at a walking-pace because of the great flag-stones, and on the ground there were bouquets of flowers, offered you by women dressed in red bodices. They heard the chiming of bells, the neighing of mules, together with the murmur of guitars and the noise of fountains, whose rising spray refreshed heaps of fruit arranged like a pyramid at the foot of pale statues that smiled beneath playing waters. And then, one night they came to a fishing village, where brown nets were drying in the wind along the cliffs and in front of the huts. It was there that they would stay; they would live in a low, flat-roofed house, shaded by a palm-tree, in the heart of a gulf, by the sea. They would row in gondolas, swing in hammocks, and their existence would be easy and large as their silk gowns, warm and star-spangled as the nights they would contemplate. However, in the immensity of this future that she conjured up, nothing special stood forth; the days, all magnificent, resembled each other like waves; and it swayed in the horizon, infinite, harmonised, azure, and bathed in sunshine. But the child began to cough in her cot or Bovary snored more loudly, and Emma did not fall asleep till morning, when the dawn whitened the windows, and when little Justin was already in the square taking down the shutters of the chemist's shop. She had sent for Monsieur Lheureux, and had said to him-- "I want a cloak--a large lined cloak with a deep collar." "You are going on a journey?" he asked. "No; but--never mind. I may count on you, may I not, and quickly?" He bowed. "Besides, I shall want," she went on, "a trunk--not too heavy--handy." "Yes, yes, I understand. About three feet by a foot and a half, as they are being made just now." "And a travelling bag." "Decidedly," thought Lheureux, "there's a row on here." "And," said Madame Bovary, taking her watch from her belt, "take this; you can pay yourself out of it." But the tradesman cried out that she was wrong; they knew one another; did he doubt her? What childishness! She insisted, however, on his taking at least the chain, and Lheureux had already put it in his pocket and was going, when she called him back. "You will leave everything at your place. As to the cloak"--she seemed to be reflecting--"do not bring it either; you can give me the maker's address, and tell him to have it ready for me." It was the next month that they were to run away. She was to leave Yonville as if she was going on some business to Rouen. Rodolphe would have booked the seats, procured the passports, and even have written to Paris in order to have the whole mail-coach reserved for them as far as Marseilles, where they would buy a carriage, and go on thence without stopping to Genoa. She would take care to send her luggage to Lheureux whence it would be taken direct to the "Hirondelle," so that no one would have any suspicion. And in all this there never was any allusion to the child. Rodolphe avoided speaking of her; perhaps he no longer thought about it. He wished to have two more weeks before him to arrange some affairs; then at the end of a week he wanted two more; then he said he was ill; next he went on a journey. The month of August passed, and, after all these delays, they decided that it was to be irrevocably fixed for the 4th September--a Monday. At length the Saturday before arrived. Rodolphe came in the evening earlier than usual. "Everything is ready?" she asked him. "Yes." Then they walked round a garden-bed, and went to sit down near the terrace on the kerb-stone of the wall. "You are sad," said Emma. "No; why?" And yet he looked at her strangely in a tender fashion. "It is because you are going away?" she went on; "because you are leaving what is dear to you--your life? Ah! I understand. I have nothing in the world! you are all to me; so shall I be to you. I will be your people, your country; I will tend, I will love you!" "How sweet you are!" he said, seizing her in his arms. "Really!" she said with a voluptuous laugh. "Do you love me? Swear it then!" "Do I love you--love you? I adore you, my love." The moon, full and purple-coloured, was rising right out of the earth at the end of the meadow. She rose quickly between the branches of the poplars, that hid her here and there like a black curtain pierced with holes. Then she appeared dazzling with whiteness in the empty heavens that she lit up, and now sailing more slowly along, let fall upon the river a great stain that broke up into an infinity of stars; and the silver sheen seemed to writhe through the very depths like a heedless serpent covered with luminous scales; it also resembled some monster candelabra all along which sparkled drops of diamonds running together. The soft night was about them; masses of shadow filled the branches. Emma, her eyes half closed, breathed in with deep sighs the fresh wind that was blowing. They did not speak, lost as they were in the rush of their reverie. The tenderness of the old days came back to their hearts, full and silent as the flowing river, with the softness of the perfume of the syringas, and threw across their memories shadows more immense and more sombre than those of the still willows that lengthened out over the grass. Often some night-animal, hedgehog or weasel, setting out on the hunt, disturbed the lovers, or sometimes they heard a ripe peach falling all alone from the espalier. "Ah! what a lovely night!" said Rodolphe. "We shall have others," replied Emma; and, as if speaking to herself: "Yet, it will be good to travel. And yet, why should my heart be so heavy? Is it dread of the unknown? The effect of habits left? Or rather--? No; it is the excess of happiness. How weak I am, am I not? Forgive me!" "There is still time!" he cried. "Reflect! perhaps you may repent!" "Never!" she cried impetuously. And coming closer to him: "What ill could come to me? There is no desert, no precipice, no ocean I would not traverse with you. The longer we live together the more it will be like an embrace, every day closer, more heart to heart. There will be nothing to trouble us, no cares, no obstacle. We shall be alone, all to ourselves eternally. Oh, speak! Answer me!" At regular intervals he answered, "Yes--Yes--" She had passed her hands through his hair, and she repeated in a childlike voice, despite the big tears which were falling, "Rodolphe! Rodolphe! Ah! Rodolphe! dear little Rodolphe!" Midnight struck. "Midnight!" said she. "Come, it is to-morrow. One day more!" He rose to go; and as if the movement he made had been the signal for their flight, Emma said, suddenly assuming a gay air-- "You have the passports?" "Yes." "You are forgetting nothing?" "No." "Are you sure?" "Certainly." "It is at the Hotel de Provence, is it not, that you will wait for me at midday?" He nodded. "Till to-morrow then!" said Emma in a last caress; and she watched him go. He did not turn round. She ran after him, and, leaning over the water's edge between the bulrushes-- "To-morrow!" she cried. He was already on the other side of the river and walking fast across the meadow. After a few moments Rodolphe stopped; and when he saw her with her white gown gradually fade away in the shade like a ghost, he was seized with such a beating of the heart that he leant against a tree lest he should fall. "What an imbecile I am!" he said with a fearful oath. "No matter! She was a pretty mistress!" And immediately Emma's beauty, with all the pleasures of their love, came back to him. For a moment he softened; then he rebelled against her. "For, after all," he exclaimed, gesticulating, "I can't exile myself--have a child on my hands." He was saying these things to give himself firmness. "And besides, the worry, the expense! Ah! no, no, no, no! a thousand times no! That would be too stupid."

Part 2, Chapter 12

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-12

Emma and Rodolphe's relationship is passionate again. Sometimes Emma misses Rodolphe so badly that she sends Justin to fetch him in the middle of the day. On one such day, she suggests that the two of them run off and live somewhere else. Rodolphe doesn't understand why she's so serious over something as trivial as a love affair. Emma really is serious, though. The more she loves Rodolphe, the more she hates Charles - in comparison to her lover, her husband seems impossibly dull, crude, and generally icky. Emma's vanity really emerges here; to keep herself looking good for Rodolphe, she spends all her time thinking about her appearance and making her room ready for his visits. Felicite is busy all day washing lingerie for Emma. While she does the laundry, she chats to Justin, who's always hanging around. He's fascinated by the assortment of mysterious feminine garments. Emma's spending is clearly getting out of control. Her closets are full of shoes, which she frequently throws away and replaces. Charles doesn't make a peep about any of this. He also doesn't complain about the purchase of a beautiful, super-fancy prosthetic leg that Emma insists they get for Hippolyte. He's awed by the glory of this leg, and they get him plainer one for everyday wear. Hippolyte quickly goes back to work, and Charles feels guilty every time he hears the stableboy tap-tapping his ways along the street on his false leg. Monsieur Lheureux is Emma's new constant companion. He talks to her endlessly about the fads in Paris, and she gives in, ordering item after item. For a while, she feels safe like this - he never asks for money. One day, however, after Emma purchases a beautiful riding crop for Rodolphe, Lheureux suddenly shows up with a giant bill. Emma's not sure what to do - she doesn't have any money. In fact, there's no money in the whole house. She manages to put him off for a little while, but the merchant soon loses patience. Desperately, Emma tells him to take back the things she's bought for him. Craftily, he tells her that he only really needs the riding crop back - and he offers to ask Charles to return it. Based on her panicked reaction, he figures out the truth: she's having an affair. Fortunately, a big payment comes in just in time from one of Charles's patients. When Lheureux returns for his money, ready to strike some kind of devilish deal, he's shocked to see Emma offer him payment in full. Unfortunately, this means that the household is short on money. Emma puts this little fact out of her mind for the time being. Rodolphe continues to receive extravagant gifts from his mistress, which is actually really ridiculous, since he's the wealthy one. In addition to the riding crop, she gives him a ring, a scarf, and an embroidered cigar case like the one Charles found on the road. Rodolphe is embarrassed by the lavish presents, but accepts them anyway. Emma keeps making her same old foolishly romantic demands - and again, Rodolphe starts to get a little sick of it. They fight and make up over and over again; Emma lavishes praise on him, and pledges her unending devotion. Rodolphe, who's much more of a cynic than she is, gets fed up her melodramatic declarations. Rodolphe starts to cultivate new pleasures in his relationship with Emma - he seems to enjoy corrupting her and forcing her to be compliant to him. She wallows in her infatuation for him, giving in to his desires. Emma kind of loses it under Rodolphe's influence. She stops caring about what people think, and starts acting like what one might call a "loose woman," to use a rather outdated phrase. She starts smoking in public and wearing daringly "mannish" clothes. The worst of it comes when Charles's mother visits. The two women, whose relationship is already in the dumps, get into a huge fight over Felicite, of all people. Old Madame Bovary discovered Felicite with a man in the house in the dead of night, and accuses Emma of being immoral. Emma takes this as a class issue, claiming that her mother-in-law is just an unsophisticated, narrow-minded peasant. She tells the older woman to get out of the house. Poor Charles is caught in the crossfire between the two domineering women in his life once more. He helplessly tries to make things better. Emma gives in and apologizes to her mother-in-law - but she certainly doesn't mean it. She puts up an emergency signal for Rodolphe; he comes to see what's the matter, and she launches into the whole story and begs him to take her away. He doesn't exactly say yes or no. For the next few days, Emma acts like a new woman. She's completely docile, and even asks her mother-in-law for a recipe. Is it possible that this new behavior is for the benefit of Charles and his mom, or that it's to convince herself more fully of the repressive demands of her everyday life? No - the truth is that she's so swept up in the fantasy of running away with Rodolphe that she simply doesn't even notice anything around her. Emma keeps bringing up the idea of escape with Rodolphe, imagining scene after scene of their flight from Yonville. Emma is more beautiful than ever. Poor Charles is even more in love with her than ever. Charles indulges for the first time in his own flights of fancy. His dreams are centered around Emma and Berthe. He imagines an impossible future in which everyone lives happily ever after; he envisions Berthe growing as beautiful as her mother, and can almost see the two of them together, almost like sisters rather than mother and daughter. In the meanwhile, on the other side of the bed, Emma sees herself escaping with Rodolphe, fleeing to a new country full of fantastical, almost mythological landscapes. She doesn't imagine anything specific. In fact, her vision of the future seems almost as consistent as her monotonous present, with one significant difference: in this future, she'll be blissfully happy. In preparation for her supposed elopement with Rodolphe, Emma orders a long cloak and traveling trunk from Monsieur Lheureux. He figures she's had a fight with Charles. Emma gives her watch to Lheureux to sell in exchange for these goods. Rodolphe and Emma actually set a date - they will leave the next month. She plans to make like she's going to Rouen to do some shopping, but will instead meet Rodolphe, who will have made all the travel arrangements for them to flee to Italy. Everything looks like it's actually falling into place. There's no mention of what will happen to little Berthe - Rodolphe hopes that Emma will just forget about her. Weeks pass - Rodolphe delays the trip for various reasons. All of August passes, and they decide that they will absolutely, positively leave on Monday, September 4. The Saturday before the trip, Rodolphe stops by. He's looking sad and particularly tender. They swear that they love each other once more. Rodolphe suggests that there's still time to change her mind, but Emma is sure: she is ready to leave Yonville behind. Rodolphe takes his leave of Emma. On his way home, he stops, filled with emotion. We discover - surprise, surprise - that he intends to desert her. He's tempted to go through with the plan - but no, he won't. Rodolphe is no fool, and he doesn't intend to become one.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/22.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_21_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 13

part 2, chapter 13

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-13", "summary": "His mind made up, Rodolphe returns home to La Huchette and sits down to write a farewell letter to Emma. He sifts through the various tokens of love affairs past that he's accumulated through many years of being a ladies' man. All of the women he's had in the past blur together in his mind - now Emma is just one of them. Rodolphe gets down to business. He writes a truly melodramatic, ostentatiously noble letter to Emma, telling her that he can't allow himself to ruin her life, blah blah blah. Suddenly the \"fate\" that supposedly brought them together before is now responsible for tearing them apart. To avoid having to face her again, he writes that he's going on a long trip. The letter finished, Rodolphe is quite proud of himself. He even puts some false tearstains on the paper. This guy is just too much. The next day, Rodolphe wakes up late, and has Girard, one of his servants, take the letter to Emma, concealed in the bottom of a basket of apricots. Upon receiving basket, Emma is overcome with emotion - she finds the letter, immediately understands what its purpose is, and rushes to her room to read it. Charles is there, so she flees madly, running to the attic. There, she forces herself to finish the horrible letter. Her feelings are all over the place - she feels desperately as though she might as well hurl herself out the window onto the pavement below. Fortunately, Charles calls her from downstairs. She returns to herself, shocked that she narrowly avoided death. It's dinnertime. Felicite comes to fetch her mistress; Emma is forced to go downstairs and go through with the farce of eating. It's torture. To make matters worse, Charles even brings up Rodolphe, mentioning that he'd heard from Girard that the gentleman is going on a trip. Then, just when Emma doesn't think that things can possibly be more horrible, Felicite brings in the basket of apricots. Charles eats one, and tries to force Emma to, as well. This is too much to handle - Emma almost swoons. Charles tries to calm her, but then she sees Rodolphe's carriage pass by the window. She passes out. Monsieur Homais runs over when he hears chaos break out in the Bovary house. He brings some vinegar back to revive the unconscious woman. Emma comes back from her faint briefly - Charles, freaking out, tries to get her to hold Berthe. Emma promptly passes out again. Charles puts Emma to bed. He and Homais try and determine what could have possibly brought on this attack. Homais puts it down to the scent of the apricots. Emma stays sick for a really long time. Charles stays by her side for forty-three days in a row - like we said, a really long time. He calls in backup; Dr. Canivet is called, as well as Charles's old teacher, Dr. Lariviere. Emma doesn't say anything or give any indication of what's causing all of this. By the middle of October, Emma feels well enough to sit up in bed - she starts to eat a little bit, and even gets out of bed for a few hours of the day. She recovers slowly, then relapses. Charles worries that she may have cancer. To make it even worse, there's no money.", "analysis": ""}

No sooner was Rodolphe at home than he sat down quickly at his bureau under the stag's head that hung as a trophy on the wall. But when he had the pen between his fingers, he could think of nothing, so that, resting on his elbows, he began to reflect. Emma seemed to him to have receded into a far-off past, as if the resolution he had taken had suddenly placed a distance between them. To get back something of her, he fetched from the cupboard at the bedside an old Rheims biscuit-box, in which he usually kept his letters from women, and from it came an odour of dry dust and withered roses. First he saw a handkerchief with pale little spots. It was a handkerchief of hers. Once when they were walking her nose had bled; he had forgotten it. Near it, chipped at all the corners, was a miniature given him by Emma: her toilette seemed to him pretentious, and her languishing look in the worst possible taste. Then, from looking at this image and recalling the memory of its original, Emma's features little by little grew confused in his remembrance, as if the living and the painted face, rubbing one against the other, had effaced each other. Finally, he read some of her letters; they were full of explanations relating to their journey, short, technical, and urgent, like business notes. He wanted to see the long ones again, those of old times. In order to find them at the bottom of the box, Rodolphe disturbed all the others, and mechanically began rummaging amidst this mass of papers and things, finding pell-mell bouquets, garters, a black mask, pins, and hair--hair! dark and fair, some even, catching in the hinges of the box, broke when it was opened. Thus dallying with his souvenirs, he examined the writing and the style of the letters, as varied as their orthography. They were tender or jovial, facetious, melancholy; there were some that asked for love, others that asked for money. A word recalled faces to him, certain gestures, the sound of a voice; sometimes, however, he remembered nothing at all. In fact, these women, rushing at once into his thoughts, cramped each other and lessened, as reduced to a uniform level of love that equalised them all. So taking handfuls of the mixed-up letters, he amused himself for some moments with letting them fall in cascades from his right into his left hand. At last, bored and weary, Rodolphe took back the box to the cupboard, saying to himself, "What a lot of rubbish!" Which summed up his opinion; for pleasures, like schoolboys in a school courtyard, had so trampled upon his heart that no green thing grew there, and that which passed through it, more heedless than children, did not even, like them, leave a name carved upon the wall. "Come," said he, "let's begin." He wrote-- "Courage, Emma! courage! I would not bring misery into your life." "After all, that's true," thought Rodolphe. "I am acting in her interest; I am honest." "Have you carefully weighed your resolution? Do you know to what an abyss I was dragging you, poor angel? No, you do not, do you? You were coming confident and fearless, believing in happiness in the future. Ah! unhappy that we are--insensate!" Rodolphe stopped here to think of some good excuse. "If I told her all my fortune is lost? No! Besides, that would stop nothing. It would all have to be begun over again later on. As if one could make women like that listen to reason!" He reflected, then went on-- "I shall not forget you, oh believe it; and I shall ever have a profound devotion for you; but some day, sooner or later, this ardour (such is the fate of human things) would have grown less, no doubt. Lassitude would have come to us, and who knows if I should not even have had the atrocious pain of witnessing your remorse, of sharing it myself, since I should have been its cause? The mere idea of the grief that would come to you tortures me, Emma. Forget me! Why did I ever know you? Why were you so beautiful? Is it my fault? O my God! No, no! Accuse only fate." "That's a word that always tells," he said to himself. "Ah, if you had been one of those frivolous women that one sees, certainly I might, through egotism, have tried an experiment, in that case without danger for you. But that delicious exaltation, at once your charm and your torment, has prevented you from understanding, adorable woman that you are, the falseness of our future position. Nor had I reflected upon this at first, and I rested in the shade of that ideal happiness as beneath that of the manchineel tree, without foreseeing the consequences." "Perhaps she'll think I'm giving it up from avarice. Ah, well! so much the worse; it must be stopped!" "The world is cruel, Emma. Wherever we might have gone, it would have persecuted us. You would have had to put up with indiscreet questions, calumny, contempt, insult perhaps. Insult to you! Oh! And I, who would place you on a throne! I who bear with me your memory as a talisman! For I am going to punish myself by exile for all the ill I have done you. I am going away. Whither I know not. I am mad. Adieu! Be good always. Preserve the memory of the unfortunate who has lost you. Teach my name to your child; let her repeat it in her prayers." The wicks of the candles flickered. Rodolphe got up to, shut the window, and when he had sat down again-- "I think it's all right. Ah! and this for fear she should come and hunt me up." "I shall be far away when you read these sad lines, for I have wished to flee as quickly as possible to shun the temptation of seeing you again. No weakness! I shall return, and perhaps later on we shall talk together very coldly of our old love. Adieu!" And there was a last "adieu" divided into two words! "A Dieu!" which he thought in very excellent taste. "Now how am I to sign?" he said to himself. "'Yours devotedly?' No! 'Your friend?' Yes, that's it." "Your friend." He re-read his letter. He considered it very good. "Poor little woman!" he thought with emotion. "She'll think me harder than a rock. There ought to have been some tears on this; but I can't cry; it isn't my fault." Then, having emptied some water into a glass, Rodolphe dipped his finger into it, and let a big drop fall on the paper, that made a pale stain on the ink. Then looking for a seal, he came upon the one "Amor nel cor." "That doesn't at all fit in with the circumstances. Pshaw! never mind!" After which he smoked three pipes and went to bed. The next day when he was up (at about two o'clock--he had slept late), Rodolphe had a basket of apricots picked. He put his letter at the bottom under some vine leaves, and at once ordered Girard, his ploughman, to take it with care to Madame Bovary. He made use of this means for corresponding with her, sending according to the season fruits or game. "If she asks after me," he said, "you will tell her that I have gone on a journey. You must give the basket to her herself, into her own hands. Get along and take care!" Girard put on his new blouse, knotted his handkerchief round the apricots, and walking with great heavy steps in his thick iron-bound galoshes, made his way to Yonville. Madame Bovary, when he got to her house, was arranging a bundle of linen on the kitchen-table with Felicite. "Here," said the ploughboy, "is something for you--from the master." She was seized with apprehension, and as she sought in her pocket for some coppers, she looked at the peasant with haggard eyes, while he himself looked at her with amazement, not understanding how such a present could so move anyone. At last he went out. Felicite remained. She could bear it no longer; she ran into the sitting room as if to take the apricots there, overturned the basket, tore away the leaves, found the letter, opened it, and, as if some fearful fire were behind her, Emma flew to her room terrified. Charles was there; she saw him; he spoke to her; she heard nothing, and she went on quickly up the stairs, breathless, distraught, dumb, and ever holding this horrible piece of paper, that crackled between her fingers like a plate of sheet-iron. On the second floor she stopped before the attic door, which was closed. Then she tried to calm herself; she recalled the letter; she must finish it; she did not dare to. And where? How? She would be seen! "Ah, no! here," she thought, "I shall be all right." Emma pushed open the door and went in. The slates threw straight down a heavy heat that gripped her temples, stifled her; she dragged herself to the closed garret-window. She drew back the bolt, and the dazzling light burst in with a leap. Opposite, beyond the roofs, stretched the open country till it was lost to sight. Down below, underneath her, the village square was empty; the stones of the pavement glittered, the weathercocks on the houses were motionless. At the corner of the street, from a lower storey, rose a kind of humming with strident modulations. It was Binet turning. She leant against the embrasure of the window, and reread the letter with angry sneers. But the more she fixed her attention upon it, the more confused were her ideas. She saw him again, heard him, encircled him with her arms, and throbs of her heart, that beat against her breast like blows of a sledge-hammer, grew faster and faster, with uneven intervals. She looked about her with the wish that the earth might crumble into pieces. Why not end it all? What restrained her? She was free. She advanced, looking at the paving-stones, saying to herself, "Come! come!" The luminous ray that came straight up from below drew the weight of her body towards the abyss. It seemed to her that the ground of the oscillating square went up the walls and that the floor dipped on end like a tossing boat. She was right at the edge, almost hanging, surrounded by vast space. The blue of the heavens suffused her, the air was whirling in her hollow head; she had but to yield, to let herself be taken; and the humming of the lathe never ceased, like an angry voice calling her. "Emma! Emma!" cried Charles. She stopped. "Wherever are you? Come!" The thought that she had just escaped from death almost made her faint with terror. She closed her eyes; then she shivered at the touch of a hand on her sleeve; it was Felicite. "Master is waiting for you, madame; the soup is on the table." And she had to go down to sit at table. She tried to eat. The food choked her. Then she unfolded her napkin as if to examine the darns, and she really thought of applying herself to this work, counting the threads in the linen. Suddenly the remembrance of the letter returned to her. How had she lost it? Where could she find it? But she felt such weariness of spirit that she could not even invent a pretext for leaving the table. Then she became a coward; she was afraid of Charles; he knew all, that was certain! Indeed he pronounced these words in a strange manner: "We are not likely to see Monsieur Rodolphe soon again, it seems." "Who told you?" she said, shuddering. "Who told me!" he replied, rather astonished at her abrupt tone. "Why, Girard, whom I met just now at the door of the Cafe Francais. He has gone on a journey, or is to go." She gave a sob. "What surprises you in that? He absents himself like that from time to time for a change, and, ma foi, I think he's right, when one has a fortune and is a bachelor. Besides, he has jolly times, has our friend. He's a bit of a rake. Monsieur Langlois told me--" He stopped for propriety's sake because the servant came in. She put back into the basket the apricots scattered on the sideboard. Charles, without noticing his wife's colour, had them brought to him, took one, and bit into it. "Ah! perfect!" said he; "just taste!" And he handed her the basket, which she put away from her gently. "Do just smell! What an odour!" he remarked, passing it under her nose several times. "I am choking," she cried, leaping up. But by an effort of will the spasm passed; then-- "It is nothing," she said, "it is nothing! It is nervousness. Sit down and go on eating." For she dreaded lest he should begin questioning her, attending to her, that she should not be left alone. Charles, to obey her, sat down again, and he spat the stones of the apricots into his hands, afterwards putting them on his plate. Suddenly a blue tilbury passed across the square at a rapid trot. Emma uttered a cry and fell back rigid to the ground. In fact, Rodolphe, after many reflections, had decided to set out for Rouen. Now, as from La Huchette to Buchy there is no other way than by Yonville, he had to go through the village, and Emma had recognised him by the rays of the lanterns, which like lightning flashed through the twilight. The chemist, at the tumult which broke out in the house ran thither. The table with all the plates was upset; sauce, meat, knives, the salt, and cruet-stand were strewn over the room; Charles was calling for help; Berthe, scared, was crying; and Felicite, whose hands trembled, was unlacing her mistress, whose whole body shivered convulsively. "I'll run to my laboratory for some aromatic vinegar," said the druggist. Then as she opened her eyes on smelling the bottle-- "I was sure of it," he remarked; "that would wake any dead person for you!" "Speak to us," said Charles; "collect yourself; it is your Charles, who loves you. Do you know me? See! here is your little girl! Oh, kiss her!" The child stretched out her arms to her mother to cling to her neck. But turning away her head, Emma said in a broken voice "No, no! no one!" She fainted again. They carried her to her bed. She lay there stretched at full length, her lips apart, her eyelids closed, her hands open, motionless, and white as a waxen image. Two streams of tears flowed from her eyes and fell slowly upon the pillow. Charles, standing up, was at the back of the alcove, and the chemist, near him, maintained that meditative silence that is becoming on the serious occasions of life. "Do not be uneasy," he said, touching his elbow; "I think the paroxysm is past." "Yes, she is resting a little now," answered Charles, watching her sleep. "Poor girl! poor girl! She had gone off now!" Then Homais asked how the accident had come about. Charles answered that she had been taken ill suddenly while she was eating some apricots. "Extraordinary!" continued the chemist. "But it might be that the apricots had brought on the syncope. Some natures are so sensitive to certain smells; and it would even be a very fine question to study both in its pathological and physiological relation. The priests know the importance of it, they who have introduced aromatics into all their ceremonies. It is to stupefy the senses and to bring on ecstasies--a thing, moreover, very easy in persons of the weaker sex, who are more delicate than the other. Some are cited who faint at the smell of burnt hartshorn, of new bread--" "Take care; you'll wake her!" said Bovary in a low voice. "And not only," the druggist went on, "are human beings subject to such anomalies, but animals also. Thus you are not ignorant of the singularly aphrodisiac effect produced by the Nepeta cataria, vulgarly called catmint, on the feline race; and, on the other hand, to quote an example whose authenticity I can answer for. Bridaux (one of my old comrades, at present established in the Rue Malpalu) possesses a dog that falls into convulsions as soon as you hold out a snuff-box to him. He often even makes the experiment before his friends at his summer-house at Guillaume Wood. Would anyone believe that a simple sternutation could produce such ravages on a quadrupedal organism? It is extremely curious, is it not?" "Yes," said Charles, who was not listening to him. "This shows us," went on the other, smiling with benign self-sufficiency, "the innumerable irregularities of the nervous system. With regard to madame, she has always seemed to me, I confess, very susceptible. And so I should by no means recommend to you, my dear friend, any of those so-called remedies that, under the pretence of attacking the symptoms, attack the constitution. No; no useless physicking! Diet, that is all; sedatives, emollients, dulcification. Then, don't you think that perhaps her imagination should be worked upon?" "In what way? How?" said Bovary. "Ah! that is it. Such is indeed the question. 'That is the question,' as I lately read in a newspaper." But Emma, awaking, cried out-- "The letter! the letter!" They thought she was delirious; and she was by midnight. Brain-fever had set in. For forty-three days Charles did not leave her. He gave up all his patients; he no longer went to bed; he was constantly feeling her pulse, putting on sinapisms and cold-water compresses. He sent Justin as far as Neufchatel for ice; the ice melted on the way; he sent him back again. He called Monsieur Canivet into consultation; he sent for Dr. Lariviere, his old master, from Rouen; he was in despair. What alarmed him most was Emma's prostration, for she did not speak, did not listen, did not even seem to suffer, as if her body and soul were both resting together after all their troubles. About the middle of October she could sit up in bed supported by pillows. Charles wept when he saw her eat her first bread-and-jelly. Her strength returned to her; she got up for a few hours of an afternoon, and one day, when she felt better, he tried to take her, leaning on his arm, for a walk round the garden. The sand of the paths was disappearing beneath the dead leaves; she walked slowly, dragging along her slippers, and leaning against Charles's shoulder. She smiled all the time. They went thus to the bottom of the garden near the terrace. She drew herself up slowly, shading her eyes with her hand to look. She looked far off, as far as she could, but on the horizon were only great bonfires of grass smoking on the hills. "You will tire yourself, my darling!" said Bovary. And, pushing her gently to make her go into the arbour, "Sit down on this seat; you'll be comfortable." "Oh! no; not there!" she said in a faltering voice. She was seized with giddiness, and from that evening her illness recommenced, with a more uncertain character, it is true, and more complex symptoms. Now she suffered in her heart, then in the chest, the head, the limbs; she had vomitings, in which Charles thought he saw the first signs of cancer. And besides this, the poor fellow was worried about money matters.

Part 2, Chapter 13

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-13

His mind made up, Rodolphe returns home to La Huchette and sits down to write a farewell letter to Emma. He sifts through the various tokens of love affairs past that he's accumulated through many years of being a ladies' man. All of the women he's had in the past blur together in his mind - now Emma is just one of them. Rodolphe gets down to business. He writes a truly melodramatic, ostentatiously noble letter to Emma, telling her that he can't allow himself to ruin her life, blah blah blah. Suddenly the "fate" that supposedly brought them together before is now responsible for tearing them apart. To avoid having to face her again, he writes that he's going on a long trip. The letter finished, Rodolphe is quite proud of himself. He even puts some false tearstains on the paper. This guy is just too much. The next day, Rodolphe wakes up late, and has Girard, one of his servants, take the letter to Emma, concealed in the bottom of a basket of apricots. Upon receiving basket, Emma is overcome with emotion - she finds the letter, immediately understands what its purpose is, and rushes to her room to read it. Charles is there, so she flees madly, running to the attic. There, she forces herself to finish the horrible letter. Her feelings are all over the place - she feels desperately as though she might as well hurl herself out the window onto the pavement below. Fortunately, Charles calls her from downstairs. She returns to herself, shocked that she narrowly avoided death. It's dinnertime. Felicite comes to fetch her mistress; Emma is forced to go downstairs and go through with the farce of eating. It's torture. To make matters worse, Charles even brings up Rodolphe, mentioning that he'd heard from Girard that the gentleman is going on a trip. Then, just when Emma doesn't think that things can possibly be more horrible, Felicite brings in the basket of apricots. Charles eats one, and tries to force Emma to, as well. This is too much to handle - Emma almost swoons. Charles tries to calm her, but then she sees Rodolphe's carriage pass by the window. She passes out. Monsieur Homais runs over when he hears chaos break out in the Bovary house. He brings some vinegar back to revive the unconscious woman. Emma comes back from her faint briefly - Charles, freaking out, tries to get her to hold Berthe. Emma promptly passes out again. Charles puts Emma to bed. He and Homais try and determine what could have possibly brought on this attack. Homais puts it down to the scent of the apricots. Emma stays sick for a really long time. Charles stays by her side for forty-three days in a row - like we said, a really long time. He calls in backup; Dr. Canivet is called, as well as Charles's old teacher, Dr. Lariviere. Emma doesn't say anything or give any indication of what's causing all of this. By the middle of October, Emma feels well enough to sit up in bed - she starts to eat a little bit, and even gets out of bed for a few hours of the day. She recovers slowly, then relapses. Charles worries that she may have cancer. To make it even worse, there's no money.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/23.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_22_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 14

part 2, chapter 14

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 14", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-14", "summary": "You have to feel bad for Charles. Life is not being particularly kind to him. First of all, he has to pay all kinds of bills, he owes his friend Homais for all the drugs he's taken from the pharmacy for Emma. To top it all off, Monsieur Lheureux is on his case now. The merchant tries to pull a fast one over on the poor doctor, claiming that Emma ordered two trunks instead of one, and demanding payment for everything. Lheureux threatens to sue if Charles doesn't pay up. The solution is not a solution after all: Lheureux agrees to accept a promissory note to be paid up six months later. Charles then has what he thinks is a brilliant idea - uh oh. He asks to borrow a thousand francs from Lheureux, which he will pay plus interest after a year. Lheureux, of course, agrees. Lheureux stands to make quite a profit from Charles's predicament. He hopes the doctor won't be able to pay up, so he can get in even deeper debt. We are starting to worry...a lot. Everything is looking up for the shady Monsieur Lheureux. He's feeling pretty good about himself. Charles, on the other hand, is feeling pretty darn bad, understandably. He doesn't know how he'll ever manage to pay back the merchant. The poor guy also feels guilty about worrying about money when he should be worrying about Emma full time. Emma slowly recovers from her shock. Winter arrives - it's a particularly harsh year. As spring approaches, her days fall into a dull, monotonous pattern. Father Bournisien starts to visit Emma, thinking that it's probably a good time for her to start praying. In her desperation, Emma takes great comfort in the priest's visits. At the peak of her illness, she asks for Holy Communion; when she receives the Communion wafer, she imagines an over-the-top, super-romanticized vision of heaven, which she then clings to. This is fascinatingly similar to the way in which she clung to the memory of Leon when he left - clearly she's using religion to fill the void left by romance. She resolves to become a saint. Father Bournisien is impressed by her zeal, albeit a little freaked out by it . He has a variety of religious books sent to Yonville for Emma's edification. Emma attempts to read this odd collection of texts ; she doesn't really buy into all of them, but keeps gamely at them, believing herself to be the best Catholic ever. She puts her love for Rodolphe aside, and replaces it with an obsessive love of God, whom she addresses in the same way she used to address her lover. That seriously can't be right. Emma is in full religious overdrive for the moment. She devotes her time to charity, and is so docile that even her acerbic mother-in-law can't find a flaw in her. For the first time, she's actually kind and gentle with Berthe. In general, Emma seems like she and the world are getting along fairly well for the first time. Even the other housewives of the town accept her again and come and visit. The Homais children and Justin are also frequent visitors. Justin, we learn, is nurturing an intense crush on Emma. Emma grows gradually more and more introspective. She stops receiving visitors, and even stops going to church. Father Bournisien keeps visiting, but he mostly just hangs out with Charles and Binet , drinking cider and chatting. Homais, of course, has a suggestion. He tells Charles to take Emma to the opera in Rouen, where a famous tenor is performing. The pharmacist is pleasantly surprised to see that the priest doesn't object; however, they quickly get into a fight about whether music is more or less moral than literature. Homais tries to involve Charles, who wants nothing to do with the argument. After the priest leaves, Homais again encourages Charles to take Emma to the opera. He brings it up with her, and insists that they go. The very next morning, the couple boards the Hirondelle and heads into Rouen. As usual, Homais bids them farewell, telling Emma she'll be a hit in Rouen in her pretty dress. Upon arrival in Rouen, Charles rushes off to get tickets , while Emma does some shopping. Before they know it, it's time for the show to start.", "analysis": ""}

To begin with, he did not know how he could pay Monsieur Homais for all the physic supplied by him, and though, as a medical man, he was not obliged to pay for it, he nevertheless blushed a little at such an obligation. Then the expenses of the household, now that the servant was mistress, became terrible. Bills rained in upon the house; the tradesmen grumbled; Monsieur Lheureux especially harassed him. In fact, at the height of Emma's illness, the latter, taking advantage of the circumstances to make his bill larger, had hurriedly brought the cloak, the travelling-bag, two trunks instead of one, and a number of other things. It was very well for Charles to say he did not want them. The tradesman answered arrogantly that these articles had been ordered, and that he would not take them back; besides, it would vex madame in her convalescence; the doctor had better think it over; in short, he was resolved to sue him rather than give up his rights and take back his goods. Charles subsequently ordered them to be sent back to the shop. Felicite forgot; he had other things to attend to; then thought no more about them. Monsieur Lheureux returned to the charge, and, by turns threatening and whining, so managed that Bovary ended by signing a bill at six months. But hardly had he signed this bill than a bold idea occurred to him: it was to borrow a thousand francs from Lheureux. So, with an embarrassed air, he asked if it were possible to get them, adding that it would be for a year, at any interest he wished. Lheureux ran off to his shop, brought back the money, and dictated another bill, by which Bovary undertook to pay to his order on the 1st of September next the sum of one thousand and seventy francs, which, with the hundred and eighty already agreed to, made just twelve hundred and fifty, thus lending at six per cent in addition to one-fourth for commission: and the things bringing him in a good third at the least, this ought in twelve months to give him a profit of a hundred and thirty francs. He hoped that the business would not stop there; that the bills would not be paid; that they would be renewed; and that his poor little money, having thriven at the doctor's as at a hospital, would come back to him one day considerably more plump, and fat enough to burst his bag. Everything, moreover, succeeded with him. He was adjudicator for a supply of cider to the hospital at Neufchatel; Monsieur Guillaumin promised him some shares in the turf-pits of Gaumesnil, and he dreamt of establishing a new diligence service between Arcueil and Rouen, which no doubt would not be long in ruining the ramshackle van of the "Lion d'Or," and that, travelling faster, at a cheaper rate, and carrying more luggage, would thus put into his hands the whole commerce of Yonville. Charles several times asked himself by what means he should next year be able to pay back so much money. He reflected, imagined expedients, such as applying to his father or selling something. But his father would be deaf, and he--he had nothing to sell. Then he foresaw such worries that he quickly dismissed so disagreeable a subject of meditation from his mind. He reproached himself with forgetting Emma, as if, all his thoughts belonging to this woman, it was robbing her of something not to be constantly thinking of her. The winter was severe, Madame Bovary's convalescence slow. When it was fine they wheeled her arm-chair to the window that overlooked the square, for she now had an antipathy to the garden, and the blinds on that side were always down. She wished the horse to be sold; what she formerly liked now displeased her. All her ideas seemed to be limited to the care of herself. She stayed in bed taking little meals, rang for the servant to inquire about her gruel or to chat with her. The snow on the market-roof threw a white, still light into the room; then the rain began to fall; and Emma waited daily with a mind full of eagerness for the inevitable return of some trifling events which nevertheless had no relation to her. The most important was the arrival of the "Hirondelle" in the evening. Then the landlady shouted out, and other voices answered, while Hippolyte's lantern, as he fetched the boxes from the boot, was like a star in the darkness. At mid-day Charles came in; then he went out again; next she took some beef-tea, and towards five o'clock, as the day drew in, the children coming back from school, dragging their wooden shoes along the pavement, knocked the clapper of the shutters with their rulers one after the other. It was at this hour that Monsieur Bournisien came to see her. He inquired after her health, gave her news, exhorted her to religion, in a coaxing little prattle that was not without its charm. The mere thought of his cassock comforted her. One day, when at the height of her illness, she had thought herself dying, and had asked for the communion; and, while they were making the preparations in her room for the sacrament, while they were turning the night table covered with syrups into an altar, and while Felicite was strewing dahlia flowers on the floor, Emma felt some power passing over her that freed her from her pains, from all perception, from all feeling. Her body, relieved, no longer thought; another life was beginning; it seemed to her that her being, mounting toward God, would be annihilated in that love like a burning incense that melts into vapour. The bed-clothes were sprinkled with holy water, the priest drew from the holy pyx the white wafer; and it was fainting with a celestial joy that she put out her lips to accept the body of the Saviour presented to her. The curtains of the alcove floated gently round her like clouds, and the rays of the two tapers burning on the night-table seemed to shine like dazzling halos. Then she let her head fall back, fancying she heard in space the music of seraphic harps, and perceived in an azure sky, on a golden throne in the midst of saints holding green palms, God the Father, resplendent with majesty, who with a sign sent to earth angels with wings of fire to carry her away in their arms. This splendid vision dwelt in her memory as the most beautiful thing that it was possible to dream, so that now she strove to recall her sensation. That still lasted, however, but in a less exclusive fashion and with a deeper sweetness. Her soul, tortured by pride, at length found rest in Christian humility, and, tasting the joy of weakness, she saw within herself the destruction of her will, that must have left a wide entrance for the inroads of heavenly grace. There existed, then, in the place of happiness, still greater joys--another love beyond all loves, without pause and without end, one that would grow eternally! She saw amid the illusions of her hope a state of purity floating above the earth mingling with heaven, to which she aspired. She wanted to become a saint. She bought chaplets and wore amulets; she wished to have in her room, by the side of her bed, a reliquary set in emeralds that she might kiss it every evening. The cure marvelled at this humour, although Emma's religion, he thought, might, from its fervour, end by touching on heresy, extravagance. But not being much versed in these matters, as soon as they went beyond a certain limit he wrote to Monsieur Boulard, bookseller to Monsignor, to send him "something good for a lady who was very clever." The bookseller, with as much indifference as if he had been sending off hardware to niggers, packed up, pellmell, everything that was then the fashion in the pious book trade. There were little manuals in questions and answers, pamphlets of aggressive tone after the manner of Monsieur de Maistre, and certain novels in rose-coloured bindings and with a honied style, manufactured by troubadour seminarists or penitent blue-stockings. There were the "Think of it; the Man of the World at Mary's Feet, by Monsieur de ***, decorated with many Orders"; "The Errors of Voltaire, for the Use of the Young," etc. Madame Bovary's mind was not yet sufficiently clear to apply herself seriously to anything; moreover, she began this reading in too much hurry. She grew provoked at the doctrines of religion; the arrogance of the polemic writings displeased her by their inveteracy in attacking people she did not know; and the secular stories, relieved with religion, seemed to her written in such ignorance of the world, that they insensibly estranged her from the truths for whose proof she was looking. Nevertheless, she persevered; and when the volume slipped from her hands, she fancied herself seized with the finest Catholic melancholy that an ethereal soul could conceive. As for the memory of Rodolphe, she had thrust it back to the bottom of her heart, and it remained there more solemn and more motionless than a king's mummy in a catacomb. An exhalation escaped from this embalmed love, that, penetrating through everything, perfumed with tenderness the immaculate atmosphere in which she longed to live. When she knelt on her Gothic prie-Dieu, she addressed to the Lord the same suave words that she had murmured formerly to her lover in the outpourings of adultery. It was to make faith come; but no delights descended from the heavens, and she arose with tired limbs and with a vague feeling of a gigantic dupery. This searching after faith, she thought, was only one merit the more, and in the pride of her devoutness Emma compared herself to those grand ladies of long ago whose glory she had dreamed of over a portrait of La Valliere, and who, trailing with so much majesty the lace-trimmed trains of their long gowns, retired into solitudes to shed at the feet of Christ all the tears of hearts that life had wounded. Then she gave herself up to excessive charity. She sewed clothes for the poor, she sent wood to women in childbed; and Charles one day, on coming home, found three good-for-nothings in the kitchen seated at the table eating soup. She had her little girl, whom during her illness her husband had sent back to the nurse, brought home. She wanted to teach her to read; even when Berthe cried, she was not vexed. She had made up her mind to resignation, to universal indulgence. Her language about everything was full of ideal expressions. She said to her child, "Is your stomach-ache better, my angel?" Madame Bovary senior found nothing to censure except perhaps this mania of knitting jackets for orphans instead of mending her own house-linen; but, harassed with domestic quarrels, the good woman took pleasure in this quiet house, and she even stayed there till after Easter, to escape the sarcasms of old Bovary, who never failed on Good Friday to order chitterlings. Besides the companionship of her mother-in-law, who strengthened her a little by the rectitude of her judgment and her grave ways, Emma almost every day had other visitors. These were Madame Langlois, Madame Caron, Madame Dubreuil, Madame Tuvache, and regularly from two to five o'clock the excellent Madame Homais, who, for her part, had never believed any of the tittle-tattle about her neighbour. The little Homais also came to see her; Justin accompanied them. He went up with them to her bedroom, and remained standing near the door, motionless and mute. Often even Madame Bovary; taking no heed of him, began her toilette. She began by taking out her comb, shaking her head with a quick movement, and when he for the first time saw all this mass of hair that fell to her knees unrolling in black ringlets, it was to him, poor child! like a sudden entrance into something new and strange, whose splendour terrified him. Emma, no doubt, did not notice his silent attentions or his timidity. She had no suspicion that the love vanished from her life was there, palpitating by her side, beneath that coarse holland shirt, in that youthful heart open to the emanations of her beauty. Besides, she now enveloped all things with such indifference, she had words so affectionate with looks so haughty, such contradictory ways, that one could no longer distinguish egotism from charity, or corruption from virtue. One evening, for example, she was angry with the servant, who had asked to go out, and stammered as she tried to find some pretext. Then suddenly-- "So you love him?" she said. And without waiting for any answer from Felicite, who was blushing, she added, "There! run along; enjoy yourself!" In the beginning of spring she had the garden turned up from end to end, despite Bovary's remonstrances. However, he was glad to see her at last manifest a wish of any kind. As she grew stronger she displayed more wilfulness. First, she found occasion to expel Mere Rollet, the nurse, who during her convalescence had contracted the habit of coming too often to the kitchen with her two nurslings and her boarder, better off for teeth than a cannibal. Then she got rid of the Homais family, successively dismissed all the other visitors, and even frequented church less assiduously, to the great approval of the druggist, who said to her in a friendly way-- "You were going in a bit for the cassock!" As formerly, Monsieur Bournisien dropped in every day when he came out after catechism class. He preferred staying out of doors to taking the air "in the grove," as he called the arbour. This was the time when Charles came home. They were hot; some sweet cider was brought out, and they drank together to madame's complete restoration. Binet was there; that is to say, a little lower down against the terrace wall, fishing for crayfish. Bovary invited him to have a drink, and he thoroughly understood the uncorking of the stone bottles. "You must," he said, throwing a satisfied glance all round him, even to the very extremity of the landscape, "hold the bottle perpendicularly on the table, and after the strings are cut, press up the cork with little thrusts, gently, gently, as indeed they do seltzer-water at restaurants." But during his demonstration the cider often spurted right into their faces, and then the ecclesiastic, with a thick laugh, never missed this joke-- "Its goodness strikes the eye!" He was, in fact, a good fellow and one day he was not even scandalised at the chemist, who advised Charles to give madame some distraction by taking her to the theatre at Rouen to hear the illustrious tenor, Lagardy. Homais, surprised at this silence, wanted to know his opinion, and the priest declared that he considered music less dangerous for morals than literature. But the chemist took up the defence of letters. The theatre, he contended, served for railing at prejudices, and, beneath a mask of pleasure, taught virtue. "'Castigat ridendo mores,'* Monsieur Bournisien! Thus consider the greater part of Voltaire's tragedies; they are cleverly strewn with philosophical reflections, that made them a vast school of morals and diplomacy for the people." *It corrects customs through laughter. "I," said Binet, "once saw a piece called the 'Gamin de Paris,' in which there was the character of an old general that is really hit off to a T. He sets down a young swell who had seduced a working girl, who at the ending--" "Certainly," continued Homais, "there is bad literature as there is bad pharmacy, but to condemn in a lump the most important of the fine arts seems to me a stupidity, a Gothic idea, worthy of the abominable times that imprisoned Galileo." "I know very well," objected the cure, "that there are good works, good authors. However, if it were only those persons of different sexes united in a bewitching apartment, decorated rouge, those lights, those effeminate voices, all this must, in the long-run, engender a certain mental libertinage, give rise to immodest thoughts and impure temptations. Such, at any rate, is the opinion of all the Fathers. Finally," he added, suddenly assuming a mystic tone of voice while he rolled a pinch of snuff between his fingers, "if the Church has condemned the theatre, she must be right; we must submit to her decrees." "Why," asked the druggist, "should she excommunicate actors? For formerly they openly took part in religious ceremonies. Yes, in the middle of the chancel they acted; they performed a kind of farce called 'Mysteries,' which often offended against the laws of decency." The ecclesiastic contented himself with uttering a groan, and the chemist went on-- "It's like it is in the Bible; there there are, you know, more than one piquant detail, matters really libidinous!" And on a gesture of irritation from Monsieur Bournisien-- "Ah! you'll admit that it is not a book to place in the hands of a young girl, and I should be sorry if Athalie--" "But it is the Protestants, and not we," cried the other impatiently, "who recommend the Bible." "No matter," said Homais. "I am surprised that in our days, in this century of enlightenment, anyone should still persist in proscribing an intellectual relaxation that is inoffensive, moralising, and sometimes even hygienic; is it not, doctor?" "No doubt," replied the doctor carelessly, either because, sharing the same ideas, he wished to offend no one, or else because he had not any ideas. The conversation seemed at an end when the chemist thought fit to shoot a Parthian arrow. "I've known priests who put on ordinary clothes to go and see dancers kicking about." "Come, come!" said the cure. "Ah! I've known some!" And separating the words of his sentence, Homais repeated, "I--have--known--some!" "Well, they were wrong," said Bournisien, resigned to anything. "By Jove! they go in for more than that," exclaimed the druggist. "Sir!" replied the ecclesiastic, with such angry eyes that the druggist was intimidated by them. "I only mean to say," he replied in less brutal a tone, "that toleration is the surest way to draw people to religion." "That is true! that is true!" agreed the good fellow, sitting down again on his chair. But he stayed only a few moments. Then, as soon as he had gone, Monsieur Homais said to the doctor-- "That's what I call a cock-fight. I beat him, did you see, in a way!--Now take my advice. Take madame to the theatre, if it were only for once in your life, to enrage one of these ravens, hang it! If anyone could take my place, I would accompany you myself. Be quick about it. Lagardy is only going to give one performance; he's engaged to go to England at a high salary. From what I hear, he's a regular dog; he's rolling in money; he's taking three mistresses and a cook along with him. All these great artists burn the candle at both ends; they require a dissolute life, that suits the imagination to some extent. But they die at the hospital, because they haven't the sense when young to lay by. Well, a pleasant dinner! Goodbye till to-morrow." The idea of the theatre quickly germinated in Bovary's head, for he at once communicated it to his wife, who at first refused, alleging the fatigue, the worry, the expense; but, for a wonder, Charles did not give in, so sure was he that this recreation would be good for her. He saw nothing to prevent it: his mother had sent them three hundred francs which he had no longer expected; the current debts were not very large, and the falling in of Lheureux's bills was still so far off that there was no need to think about them. Besides, imagining that she was refusing from delicacy, he insisted the more; so that by dint of worrying her she at last made up her mind, and the next day at eight o'clock they set out in the "Hirondelle." The druggist, whom nothing whatever kept at Yonville, but who thought himself bound not to budge from it, sighed as he saw them go. "Well, a pleasant journey!" he said to them; "happy mortals that you are!" Then addressing himself to Emma, who was wearing a blue silk gown with four flounces-- "You are as lovely as a Venus. You'll cut a figure at Rouen." The diligence stopped at the "Croix-Rouge" in the Place Beauvoisine. It was the inn that is in every provincial faubourg, with large stables and small bedrooms, where one sees in the middle of the court chickens pilfering the oats under the muddy gigs of the commercial travellers--a good old house, with worm-eaten balconies that creak in the wind on winter nights, always full of people, noise, and feeding, whose black tables are sticky with coffee and brandy, the thick windows made yellow by the flies, the damp napkins stained with cheap wine, and that always smells of the village, like ploughboys dressed in Sundayclothes, has a cafe on the street, and towards the countryside a kitchen-garden. Charles at once set out. He muddled up the stage-boxes with the gallery, the pit with the boxes; asked for explanations, did not understand them; was sent from the box-office to the acting-manager; came back to the inn, returned to the theatre, and thus several times traversed the whole length of the town from the theatre to the boulevard. Madame Bovary bought a bonnet, gloves, and a bouquet. The doctor was much afraid of missing the beginning, and, without having had time to swallow a plate of soup, they presented themselves at the doors of the theatre, which were still closed.

Part 2, Chapter 14

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-14

You have to feel bad for Charles. Life is not being particularly kind to him. First of all, he has to pay all kinds of bills, he owes his friend Homais for all the drugs he's taken from the pharmacy for Emma. To top it all off, Monsieur Lheureux is on his case now. The merchant tries to pull a fast one over on the poor doctor, claiming that Emma ordered two trunks instead of one, and demanding payment for everything. Lheureux threatens to sue if Charles doesn't pay up. The solution is not a solution after all: Lheureux agrees to accept a promissory note to be paid up six months later. Charles then has what he thinks is a brilliant idea - uh oh. He asks to borrow a thousand francs from Lheureux, which he will pay plus interest after a year. Lheureux, of course, agrees. Lheureux stands to make quite a profit from Charles's predicament. He hopes the doctor won't be able to pay up, so he can get in even deeper debt. We are starting to worry...a lot. Everything is looking up for the shady Monsieur Lheureux. He's feeling pretty good about himself. Charles, on the other hand, is feeling pretty darn bad, understandably. He doesn't know how he'll ever manage to pay back the merchant. The poor guy also feels guilty about worrying about money when he should be worrying about Emma full time. Emma slowly recovers from her shock. Winter arrives - it's a particularly harsh year. As spring approaches, her days fall into a dull, monotonous pattern. Father Bournisien starts to visit Emma, thinking that it's probably a good time for her to start praying. In her desperation, Emma takes great comfort in the priest's visits. At the peak of her illness, she asks for Holy Communion; when she receives the Communion wafer, she imagines an over-the-top, super-romanticized vision of heaven, which she then clings to. This is fascinatingly similar to the way in which she clung to the memory of Leon when he left - clearly she's using religion to fill the void left by romance. She resolves to become a saint. Father Bournisien is impressed by her zeal, albeit a little freaked out by it . He has a variety of religious books sent to Yonville for Emma's edification. Emma attempts to read this odd collection of texts ; she doesn't really buy into all of them, but keeps gamely at them, believing herself to be the best Catholic ever. She puts her love for Rodolphe aside, and replaces it with an obsessive love of God, whom she addresses in the same way she used to address her lover. That seriously can't be right. Emma is in full religious overdrive for the moment. She devotes her time to charity, and is so docile that even her acerbic mother-in-law can't find a flaw in her. For the first time, she's actually kind and gentle with Berthe. In general, Emma seems like she and the world are getting along fairly well for the first time. Even the other housewives of the town accept her again and come and visit. The Homais children and Justin are also frequent visitors. Justin, we learn, is nurturing an intense crush on Emma. Emma grows gradually more and more introspective. She stops receiving visitors, and even stops going to church. Father Bournisien keeps visiting, but he mostly just hangs out with Charles and Binet , drinking cider and chatting. Homais, of course, has a suggestion. He tells Charles to take Emma to the opera in Rouen, where a famous tenor is performing. The pharmacist is pleasantly surprised to see that the priest doesn't object; however, they quickly get into a fight about whether music is more or less moral than literature. Homais tries to involve Charles, who wants nothing to do with the argument. After the priest leaves, Homais again encourages Charles to take Emma to the opera. He brings it up with her, and insists that they go. The very next morning, the couple boards the Hirondelle and heads into Rouen. As usual, Homais bids them farewell, telling Emma she'll be a hit in Rouen in her pretty dress. Upon arrival in Rouen, Charles rushes off to get tickets , while Emma does some shopping. Before they know it, it's time for the show to start.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/24.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_23_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 15

part 2, chapter 15

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 15", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-15", "summary": "The opera is Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, a tragedy in which an unfortunate heroine is driven mad because she's forced to marry the wrong man. Perhaps not the best choice for Emma... Emma and Charles take a stroll before the opera, and when they finally settle down in their seats, Emma feels satisfied for the first time in a long while. Waiting for the show to start, she admires her fellow audience-members. The opera immediately transports Emma back to the romantic novels of Sir Walter Scott she enjoyed as a girl . She feels the music reverberate in her soul - it sounds like the old Emma is back. The famous tenor recommended by Homais, Edgar Lagardy, makes a dramatic entrance onstage. Emma is struck by his appearance, and the whole audience falls for him. Emma sees her own story in the narrative that unfolds before her. She thinks that nobody has ever loved her the way that the hero and heroine love each other. Charles doesn't really get what's going on, and he keeps bugging Emma with questions. She's not amused. A wedding scene unfolds on stage, and Emma thinks of her own wedding - she wishes that she, like the opera's heroine, had resisted and not married Charles. As things get more and more dramatic onstage, they also get more and more dramatic in Emma's mind. She imagines what it would be like to be the lover of Lagardy, the tenor. She is swept up in the fantasy of running away with the singer across Europe when the curtain falls; it's intermission. Charles runs off clumsily to get Emma something to drink. On his way back, he manages to spill the drink on a very upset lady, but makes it back to Emma somehow. Charles has big news. While he was away, he saw someone we haven't encountered for a while: Leon Dupuis. Before Charles even finishes telling Emma about his encounter, Leon himself shows up in their box. He and Emma shake hands and start catching up; just then, Act III of the opera begins. Emma is no longer interested in the drama onstage, now that there's some drama sitting right next to her. All of her pre-Rodolphe feelings start to return. Leon obviously feels something, too - he suggests that they leave the theatre and go elsewhere to talk. Charles, who's actually kind of into the opera now, doesn't want to go, but Emma insists. At a cafe, they eat ice cream and make small talk. Leon attempts to show off by discussing music - he claims that Lagardy isn't all he's cracked up to be. Charles, who's still bummed about missing the end of the performance, suggests that perhaps Emma might like to stay in Rouen by herself for a couple of days and see the opera again. Leon, of course, encourages this. Emma demurely makes no promises - she smiles oddly, knowing that something's up with Leon. She and Charles will decide overnight what she should do. The old friends part ways, with the clerk promising to visit Yonville soon.", "analysis": ""}

The crowd was waiting against the wall, symmetrically enclosed between the balustrades. At the corner of the neighbouring streets huge bills repeated in quaint letters "Lucie de Lammermoor-Lagardy-Opera-etc." The weather was fine, the people were hot, perspiration trickled amid the curls, and handkerchiefs taken from pockets were mopping red foreheads; and now and then a warm wind that blew from the river gently stirred the border of the tick awnings hanging from the doors of the public-houses. A little lower down, however, one was refreshed by a current of icy air that smelt of tallow, leather, and oil. This was an exhalation from the Rue des Charrettes, full of large black warehouses where they made casks. For fear of seeming ridiculous, Emma before going in wished to have a little stroll in the harbour, and Bovary prudently kept his tickets in his hand, in the pocket of his trousers, which he pressed against his stomach. Her heart began to beat as soon as she reached the vestibule. She involuntarily smiled with vanity on seeing the crowd rushing to the right by the other corridor while she went up the staircase to the reserved seats. She was as pleased as a child to push with her finger the large tapestried door. She breathed in with all her might the dusty smell of the lobbies, and when she was seated in her box she bent forward with the air of a duchess. The theatre was beginning to fill; opera-glasses were taken from their cases, and the subscribers, catching sight of one another, were bowing. They came to seek relaxation in the fine arts after the anxieties of business; but "business" was not forgotten; they still talked cottons, spirits of wine, or indigo. The heads of old men were to be seen, inexpressive and peaceful, with their hair and complexions looking like silver medals tarnished by steam of lead. The young beaux were strutting about in the pit, showing in the opening of their waistcoats their pink or applegreen cravats, and Madame Bovary from above admired them leaning on their canes with golden knobs in the open palm of their yellow gloves. Now the lights of the orchestra were lit, the lustre, let down from the ceiling, throwing by the glimmering of its facets a sudden gaiety over the theatre; then the musicians came in one after the other; and first there was the protracted hubbub of the basses grumbling, violins squeaking, cornets trumpeting, flutes and flageolets fifing. But three knocks were heard on the stage, a rolling of drums began, the brass instruments played some chords, and the curtain rising, discovered a country-scene. It was the cross-roads of a wood, with a fountain shaded by an oak to the left. Peasants and lords with plaids on their shoulders were singing a hunting-song together; then a captain suddenly came on, who evoked the spirit of evil by lifting both his arms to heaven. Another appeared; they went away, and the hunters started afresh. She felt herself transported to the reading of her youth, into the midst of Walter Scott. She seemed to hear through the mist the sound of the Scotch bagpipes re-echoing over the heather. Then her remembrance of the novel helping her to understand the libretto, she followed the story phrase by phrase, while vague thoughts that came back to her dispersed at once again with the bursts of music. She gave herself up to the lullaby of the melodies, and felt all her being vibrate as if the violin bows were drawn over her nerves. She had not eyes enough to look at the costumes, the scenery, the actors, the painted trees that shook when anyone walked, and the velvet caps, cloaks, swords--all those imaginary things that floated amid the harmony as in the atmosphere of another world. But a young woman stepped forward, throwing a purse to a squire in green. She was left alone, and the flute was heard like the murmur of a fountain or the warbling of birds. Lucie attacked her cavatina in G major bravely. She plained of love; she longed for wings. Emma, too, fleeing from life, would have liked to fly away in an embrace. Suddenly Edgar-Lagardy appeared. He had that splendid pallor that gives something of the majesty of marble to the ardent races of the South. His vigorous form was tightly clad in a brown-coloured doublet; a small chiselled poniard hung against his left thigh, and he cast round laughing looks showing his white teeth. They said that a Polish princess having heard him sing one night on the beach at Biarritz, where he mended boats, had fallen in love with him. She had ruined herself for him. He had deserted her for other women, and this sentimental celebrity did not fail to enhance his artistic reputation. The diplomatic mummer took care always to slip into his advertisements some poetic phrase on the fascination of his person and the susceptibility of his soul. A fine organ, imperturbable coolness, more temperament than intelligence, more power of emphasis than of real singing, made up the charm of this admirable charlatan nature, in which there was something of the hairdresser and the toreador. From the first scene he evoked enthusiasm. He pressed Lucy in his arms, he left her, he came back, he seemed desperate; he had outbursts of rage, then elegiac gurglings of infinite sweetness, and the notes escaped from his bare neck full of sobs and kisses. Emma leant forward to see him, clutching the velvet of the box with her nails. She was filling her heart with these melodious lamentations that were drawn out to the accompaniment of the double-basses, like the cries of the drowning in the tumult of a tempest. She recognised all the intoxication and the anguish that had almost killed her. The voice of a prima donna seemed to her to be but echoes of her conscience, and this illusion that charmed her as some very thing of her own life. But no one on earth had loved her with such love. He had not wept like Edgar that last moonlit night when they said, "To-morrow! to-morrow!" The theatre rang with cheers; they recommenced the entire movement; the lovers spoke of the flowers on their tomb, of vows, exile, fate, hopes; and when they uttered the final adieu, Emma gave a sharp cry that mingled with the vibrations of the last chords. "But why," asked Bovary, "does that gentleman persecute her?" "No, no!" she answered; "he is her lover!" "Yet he vows vengeance on her family, while the other one who came on before said, 'I love Lucie and she loves me!' Besides, he went off with her father arm in arm. For he certainly is her father, isn't he--the ugly little man with a cock's feather in his hat?" Despite Emma's explanations, as soon as the recitative duet began in which Gilbert lays bare his abominable machinations to his master Ashton, Charles, seeing the false troth-ring that is to deceive Lucie, thought it was a love-gift sent by Edgar. He confessed, moreover, that he did not understand the story because of the music, which interfered very much with the words. "What does it matter?" said Emma. "Do be quiet!" "Yes, but you know," he went on, leaning against her shoulder, "I like to understand things." "Be quiet! be quiet!" she cried impatiently. Lucie advanced, half supported by her women, a wreath of orange blossoms in her hair, and paler than the white satin of her gown. Emma dreamed of her marriage day; she saw herself at home again amid the corn in the little path as they walked to the church. Oh, why had not she, like this woman, resisted, implored? She, on the contrary, had been joyous, without seeing the abyss into which she was throwing herself. Ah! if in the freshness of her beauty, before the soiling of marriage and the disillusions of adultery, she could have anchored her life upon some great, strong heart, then virtue, tenderness, voluptuousness, and duty blending, she would never have fallen from so high a happiness. But that happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire. She now knew the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated. So, striving to divert her thoughts, Emma determined now to see in this reproduction of her sorrows only a plastic fantasy, well enough to please the eye, and she even smiled internally with disdainful pity when at the back of the stage under the velvet hangings a man appeared in a black cloak. His large Spanish hat fell at a gesture he made, and immediately the instruments and the singers began the sextet. Edgar, flashing with fury, dominated all the others with his clearer voice; Ashton hurled homicidal provocations at him in deep notes; Lucie uttered her shrill plaint, Arthur at one side, his modulated tones in the middle register, and the bass of the minister pealed forth like an organ, while the voices of the women repeating his words took them up in chorus delightfully. They were all in a row gesticulating, and anger, vengeance, jealousy, terror, and stupefaction breathed forth at once from their half-opened mouths. The outraged lover brandished his naked sword; his guipure ruffle rose with jerks to the movements of his chest, and he walked from right to left with long strides, clanking against the boards the silver-gilt spurs of his soft boots, widening out at the ankles. He, she thought must have an inexhaustible love to lavish it upon the crowd with such effusion. All her small fault-findings faded before the poetry of the part that absorbed her; and, drawn towards this man by the illusion of the character, she tried to imagine to herself his life--that life resonant, extraordinary, splendid, and that might have been hers if fate had willed it. They would have known one another, loved one another. With him, through all the kingdoms of Europe she would have travelled from capital to capital, sharing his fatigues and his pride, picking up the flowers thrown to him, herself embroidering his costumes. Then each evening, at the back of a box, behind the golden trellis-work she would have drunk in eagerly the expansions of this soul that would have sung for her alone; from the stage, even as he acted, he would have looked at her. But the mad idea seized her that he was looking at her; it was certain. She longed to run to his arms, to take refuge in his strength, as in the incarnation of love itself, and to say to him, to cry out, "Take me away! carry me with you! let us go! Thine, thine! all my ardour and all my dreams!" The curtain fell. The smell of the gas mingled with that of the breaths, the waving of the fans, made the air more suffocating. Emma wanted to go out; the crowd filled the corridors, and she fell back in her arm-chair with palpitations that choked her. Charles, fearing that she would faint, ran to the refreshment-room to get a glass of barley-water. He had great difficulty in getting back to his seat, for his elbows were jerked at every step because of the glass he held in his hands, and he even spilt three-fourths on the shoulders of a Rouen lady in short sleeves, who feeling the cold liquid running down to her loins, uttered cries like a peacock, as if she were being assassinated. Her husband, who was a millowner, railed at the clumsy fellow, and while she was with her handkerchief wiping up the stains from her handsome cherry-coloured taffeta gown, he angrily muttered about indemnity, costs, reimbursement. At last Charles reached his wife, saying to her, quite out of breath-- "Ma foi! I thought I should have had to stay there. There is such a crowd--SUCH a crowd!" He added-- "Just guess whom I met up there! Monsieur Leon!" "Leon?" "Himself! He's coming along to pay his respects." And as he finished these words the ex-clerk of Yonville entered the box. He held out his hand with the ease of a gentleman; and Madame Bovary extended hers, without doubt obeying the attraction of a stronger will. She had not felt it since that spring evening when the rain fell upon the green leaves, and they had said good-bye standing at the window. But soon recalling herself to the necessities of the situation, with an effort she shook off the torpor of her memories, and began stammering a few hurried words. "Ah, good-day! What! you here?" "Silence!" cried a voice from the pit, for the third act was beginning. "So you are at Rouen?" "Yes." "And since when?" "Turn them out! turn them out!" People were looking at them. They were silent. But from that moment she listened no more; and the chorus of the guests, the scene between Ashton and his servant, the grand duet in D major, all were for her as far off as if the instruments had grown less sonorous and the characters more remote. She remembered the games at cards at the druggist's, and the walk to the nurse's, the reading in the arbour, the tete-a-tete by the fireside--all that poor love, so calm and so protracted, so discreet, so tender, and that she had nevertheless forgotten. And why had he come back? What combination of circumstances had brought him back into her life? He was standing behind her, leaning with his shoulder against the wall of the box; now and again she felt herself shuddering beneath the hot breath from his nostrils falling upon her hair. "Does this amuse you?" said he, bending over her so closely that the end of his moustache brushed her cheek. She replied carelessly-- "Oh, dear me, no, not much." Then he proposed that they should leave the theatre and go and take an ice somewhere. "Oh, not yet; let us stay," said Bovary. "Her hair's undone; this is going to be tragic." But the mad scene did not at all interest Emma, and the acting of the singer seemed to her exaggerated. "She screams too loud," said she, turning to Charles, who was listening. "Yes--a little," he replied, undecided between the frankness of his pleasure and his respect for his wife's opinion. Then with a sigh Leon said-- "The heat is--" "Unbearable! Yes!" "Do you feel unwell?" asked Bovary. "Yes, I am stifling; let us go." Monsieur Leon put her long lace shawl carefully about her shoulders, and all three went off to sit down in the harbour, in the open air, outside the windows of a cafe. First they spoke of her illness, although Emma interrupted Charles from time to time, for fear, she said, of boring Monsieur Leon; and the latter told them that he had come to spend two years at Rouen in a large office, in order to get practice in his profession, which was different in Normandy and Paris. Then he inquired after Berthe, the Homais, Mere Lefrancois, and as they had, in the husband's presence, nothing more to say to one another, the conversation soon came to an end. People coming out of the theatre passed along the pavement, humming or shouting at the top of their voices, "O bel ange, ma Lucie!*" Then Leon, playing the dilettante, began to talk music. He had seen Tambourini, Rubini, Persiani, Grisi, and, compared with them, Lagardy, despite his grand outbursts, was nowhere. *Oh beautiful angel, my Lucie. "Yet," interrupted Charles, who was slowly sipping his rum-sherbet, "they say that he is quite admirable in the last act. I regret leaving before the end, because it was beginning to amuse me." "Why," said the clerk, "he will soon give another performance." But Charles replied that they were going back next day. "Unless," he added, turning to his wife, "you would like to stay alone, kitten?" And changing his tactics at this unexpected opportunity that presented itself to his hopes, the young man sang the praises of Lagardy in the last number. It was really superb, sublime. Then Charles insisted-- "You would get back on Sunday. Come, make up your mind. You are wrong if you feel that this is doing you the least good." The tables round them, however, were emptying; a waiter came and stood discreetly near them. Charles, who understood, took out his purse; the clerk held back his arm, and did not forget to leave two more pieces of silver that he made chink on the marble. "I am really sorry," said Bovary, "about the money which you are--" The other made a careless gesture full of cordiality, and taking his hat said-- "It is settled, isn't it? To-morrow at six o'clock?" Charles explained once more that he could not absent himself longer, but that nothing prevented Emma-- "But," she stammered, with a strange smile, "I am not sure--" "Well, you must think it over. We'll see. Night brings counsel." Then to Leon, who was walking along with them, "Now that you are in our part of the world, I hope you'll come and ask us for some dinner now and then." The clerk declared he would not fail to do so, being obliged, moreover, to go to Yonville on some business for his office. And they parted before the Saint-Herbland Passage just as the clock in the cathedral struck half-past eleven. Part III

Part 2, Chapter 15

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-15

The opera is Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, a tragedy in which an unfortunate heroine is driven mad because she's forced to marry the wrong man. Perhaps not the best choice for Emma... Emma and Charles take a stroll before the opera, and when they finally settle down in their seats, Emma feels satisfied for the first time in a long while. Waiting for the show to start, she admires her fellow audience-members. The opera immediately transports Emma back to the romantic novels of Sir Walter Scott she enjoyed as a girl . She feels the music reverberate in her soul - it sounds like the old Emma is back. The famous tenor recommended by Homais, Edgar Lagardy, makes a dramatic entrance onstage. Emma is struck by his appearance, and the whole audience falls for him. Emma sees her own story in the narrative that unfolds before her. She thinks that nobody has ever loved her the way that the hero and heroine love each other. Charles doesn't really get what's going on, and he keeps bugging Emma with questions. She's not amused. A wedding scene unfolds on stage, and Emma thinks of her own wedding - she wishes that she, like the opera's heroine, had resisted and not married Charles. As things get more and more dramatic onstage, they also get more and more dramatic in Emma's mind. She imagines what it would be like to be the lover of Lagardy, the tenor. She is swept up in the fantasy of running away with the singer across Europe when the curtain falls; it's intermission. Charles runs off clumsily to get Emma something to drink. On his way back, he manages to spill the drink on a very upset lady, but makes it back to Emma somehow. Charles has big news. While he was away, he saw someone we haven't encountered for a while: Leon Dupuis. Before Charles even finishes telling Emma about his encounter, Leon himself shows up in their box. He and Emma shake hands and start catching up; just then, Act III of the opera begins. Emma is no longer interested in the drama onstage, now that there's some drama sitting right next to her. All of her pre-Rodolphe feelings start to return. Leon obviously feels something, too - he suggests that they leave the theatre and go elsewhere to talk. Charles, who's actually kind of into the opera now, doesn't want to go, but Emma insists. At a cafe, they eat ice cream and make small talk. Leon attempts to show off by discussing music - he claims that Lagardy isn't all he's cracked up to be. Charles, who's still bummed about missing the end of the performance, suggests that perhaps Emma might like to stay in Rouen by herself for a couple of days and see the opera again. Leon, of course, encourages this. Emma demurely makes no promises - she smiles oddly, knowing that something's up with Leon. She and Charles will decide overnight what she should do. The old friends part ways, with the clerk promising to visit Yonville soon.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/25.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_24_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 3.chapter 1

part 3, chapter 1

{"name": "Part 3, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-1", "summary": "A lot of things happened to Leon in Paris. First of all, he studied law. Secondly, he studied women. He's no longer the same shy boy he was before. All along, he held on to a vague hope that someday he and Emma might actually get together, even while he had new experiences with other women. This new Leon is resolved to \"possess\" Emma. He's determined and much craftier than he used to be. He follows Emma and Charles to their inn, then returns the next morning to scout out the situation. He discovers Emma in the hotel room...alone. Leon has become something of a sweet-talker over the past few years. Perhaps he's not at the same level as Rodolphe, but he's getting up there. He and Emma talk and talk about the various sorrows of their lives. Sigh. Same old, same old. Noticeably, Emma doesn't say anything about loving another man, and Leon doesn't say anything about kind of forgetting Emma. Both of them make dramatic claims, each saying that life is miserable without the other. Basically, this love scene is just one big string of complaints - there's nothing romantic about that. Finally, Leon gives in and says out loud that he was in love with her. All of a sudden the tension is broken, and old feelings come rushing out, created anew by their current proximity. Emma is startled by how much she remembers - she feels old and experienced. They talk until night falls. Leon suggests that they could start over again, but Emma, attempting to be noble, says that she's too old and he's too young . It's late - they've even missed the opera. Leon gets up to leave, but convinces Emma to meet him one more time. She makes their meeting point the famous Rouen cathedral. That night, Emma writes a farewell letter of her own, explaining to Leon why they can't be together. However, she can't send it, since she doesn't have his address. She decides to give it to him in person. Before the rendezvous, Leon primps nervously. He even buys Emma flowers, and goes to meet her at the cathedral. There, he's met not by Emma, but by a cathedral guide, who attempts to give Leon a tour. Emma's late, and Leon grows more anxious. Finally, she arrives. She starts to give him the letter, but is seized by the desire to pray. Leon is both charmed and irritated. As they're about to leave, the guide comes up and offers to give them a tour again. Emma, concerned for her virtue, desperately says yes. They follow the guide, not listening, through the cathedral and back to where they started. Before they get to the tower, Leon basically hurls a coin at the poor guide and pulls Emma away with him. The guide doesn't get the picture - he just keeps coming back. The couple flees the cathedral rather comically. Outside, Leon sends a little street kid to find a cab for them. Awkwardly, they wait alone - there's a kind of aggressive tension between them. The cab arrives. They get in as the cathedral guy yells at them from the church door, and Leon tells the driver to go wherever he wants. The following is one of the most famous scenes of the novel. We see the cab rushing through Rouen aimlessly; we can't see inside it, but we can, however, guess what's going on...Leon keeps yelling up to the driver to keep going; he and Emma stay concealed in the cab. The poor cab driver is tired and certainly weirded out. His horses are exhausted, and everyone's demoralized. The passengers, however, give no sign. Around mid-afternoon, a hand is seen throwing scraps of paper out the window; we assume it's Emma bidding farewell to the well-intentioned farewell letter. Finally, in the early evening, the cab stops. Emma calmly steps out of it and walks away.", "analysis": ""}

Monsieur Leon, while studying law, had gone pretty often to the dancing-rooms, where he was even a great success amongst the grisettes, who thought he had a distinguished air. He was the best-mannered of the students; he wore his hair neither too long nor too short, didn't spend all his quarter's money on the first day of the month, and kept on good terms with his professors. As for excesses, he had always abstained from them, as much from cowardice as from refinement. Often when he stayed in his room to read, or else when sitting of an evening under the lime-trees of the Luxembourg, he let his Code fall to the ground, and the memory of Emma came back to him. But gradually this feeling grew weaker, and other desires gathered over it, although it still persisted through them all. For Leon did not lose all hope; there was for him, as it were, a vague promise floating in the future, like a golden fruit suspended from some fantastic tree. Then, seeing her again after three years of absence his passion reawakened. He must, he thought, at last make up his mind to possess her. Moreover, his timidity had worn off by contact with his gay companions, and he returned to the provinces despising everyone who had not with varnished shoes trodden the asphalt of the boulevards. By the side of a Parisienne in her laces, in the drawing-room of some illustrious physician, a person driving his carriage and wearing many orders, the poor clerk would no doubt have trembled like a child; but here, at Rouen, on the harbour, with the wife of this small doctor he felt at his ease, sure beforehand he would shine. Self-possession depends on its environment. We don't speak on the first floor as on the fourth; and the wealthy woman seems to have, about her, to guard her virtue, all her banknotes, like a cuirass in the lining of her corset. On leaving the Bovarys the night before, Leon had followed them through the streets at a distance; then having seen them stop at the "Croix-Rouge," he turned on his heel, and spent the night meditating a plan. So the next day about five o'clock he walked into the kitchen of the inn, with a choking sensation in his throat, pale cheeks, and that resolution of cowards that stops at nothing. "The gentleman isn't in," answered a servant. This seemed to him a good omen. He went upstairs. She was not disturbed at his approach; on the contrary, she apologised for having neglected to tell him where they were staying. "Oh, I divined it!" said Leon. He pretended he had been guided towards her by chance, by, instinct. She began to smile; and at once, to repair his folly, Leon told her that he had spent his morning in looking for her in all the hotels in the town one after the other. "So you have made up your mind to stay?" he added. "Yes," she said, "and I am wrong. One ought not to accustom oneself to impossible pleasures when there are a thousand demands upon one." "Oh, I can imagine!" "Ah! no; for you, you are a man!" But men too had had their trials, and the conversation went off into certain philosophical reflections. Emma expatiated much on the misery of earthly affections, and the eternal isolation in which the heart remains entombed. To show off, or from a naive imitation of this melancholy which called forth his, the young man declared that he had been awfully bored during the whole course of his studies. The law irritated him, other vocations attracted him, and his mother never ceased worrying him in every one of her letters. As they talked they explained more and more fully the motives of their sadness, working themselves up in their progressive confidence. But they sometimes stopped short of the complete exposition of their thought, and then sought to invent a phrase that might express it all the same. She did not confess her passion for another; he did not say that he had forgotten her. Perhaps he no longer remembered his suppers with girls after masked balls; and no doubt she did not recollect the rendezvous of old when she ran across the fields in the morning to her lover's house. The noises of the town hardly reached them, and the room seemed small, as if on purpose to hem in their solitude more closely. Emma, in a dimity dressing-gown, leant her head against the back of the old arm-chair; the yellow wall-paper formed, as it were, a golden background behind her, and her bare head was mirrored in the glass with the white parting in the middle, and the tip of her ears peeping out from the folds of her hair. "But pardon me!" she said. "It is wrong of me. I weary you with my eternal complaints." "No, never, never!" "If you knew," she went on, raising to the ceiling her beautiful eyes, in which a tear was trembling, "all that I had dreamed!" "And I! Oh, I too have suffered! Often I went out; I went away. I dragged myself along the quays, seeking distraction amid the din of the crowd without being able to banish the heaviness that weighed upon me. In an engraver's shop on the boulevard there is an Italian print of one of the Muses. She is draped in a tunic, and she is looking at the moon, with forget-me-nots in her flowing hair. Something drove me there continually; I stayed there hours together." Then in a trembling voice, "She resembled you a little." Madame Bovary turned away her head that he might not see the irrepressible smile she felt rising to her lips. "Often," he went on, "I wrote you letters that I tore up." She did not answer. He continued-- "I sometimes fancied that some chance would bring you. I thought I recognised you at street-corners, and I ran after all the carriages through whose windows I saw a shawl fluttering, a veil like yours." She seemed resolved to let him go on speaking without interruption. Crossing her arms and bending down her face, she looked at the rosettes on her slippers, and at intervals made little movements inside the satin of them with her toes. At last she sighed. "But the most wretched thing, is it not--is to drag out, as I do, a useless existence. If our pains were only of some use to someone, we should find consolation in the thought of the sacrifice." He started off in praise of virtue, duty, and silent immolation, having himself an incredible longing for self-sacrifice that he could not satisfy. "I should much like," she said, "to be a nurse at a hospital." "Alas! men have none of these holy missions, and I see nowhere any calling--unless perhaps that of a doctor." With a slight shrug of her shoulders, Emma interrupted him to speak of her illness, which had almost killed her. What a pity! She should not be suffering now! Leon at once envied the calm of the tomb, and one evening he had even made his will, asking to be buried in that beautiful rug with velvet stripes he had received from her. For this was how they would have wished to be, each setting up an ideal to which they were now adapting their past life. Besides, speech is a rolling-mill that always thins out the sentiment. But at this invention of the rug she asked, "But why?" "Why?" He hesitated. "Because I loved you so!" And congratulating himself at having surmounted the difficulty, Leon watched her face out of the corner of his eyes. It was like the sky when a gust of wind drives the clouds across. The mass of sad thoughts that darkened them seemed to be lifted from her blue eyes; her whole face shone. He waited. At last she replied-- "I always suspected it." Then they went over all the trifling events of that far-off existence, whose joys and sorrows they had just summed up in one word. They recalled the arbour with clematis, the dresses she had worn, the furniture of her room, the whole of her house. "And our poor cactuses, where are they?" "The cold killed them this winter." "Ah! how I have thought of them, do you know? I often saw them again as of yore, when on the summer mornings the sun beat down upon your blinds, and I saw your two bare arms passing out amongst the flowers." "Poor friend!" she said, holding out her hand to him. Leon swiftly pressed his lips to it. Then, when he had taken a deep breath-- "At that time you were to me I know not what incomprehensible force that took captive my life. Once, for instance, I went to see you; but you, no doubt, do not remember it." "I do," she said; "go on." "You were downstairs in the ante-room, ready to go out, standing on the last stair; you were wearing a bonnet with small blue flowers; and without any invitation from you, in spite of myself, I went with you. Every moment, however, I grew more and more conscious of my folly, and I went on walking by you, not daring to follow you completely, and unwilling to leave you. When you went into a shop, I waited in the street, and I watched you through the window taking off your gloves and counting the change on the counter. Then you rang at Madame Tuvache's; you were let in, and I stood like an idiot in front of the great heavy door that had closed after you." Madame Bovary, as she listened to him, wondered that she was so old. All these things reappearing before her seemed to widen out her life; it was like some sentimental immensity to which she returned; and from time to time she said in a low voice, her eyes half closed-- "Yes, it is true--true--true!" They heard eight strike on the different clocks of the Beauvoisine quarter, which is full of schools, churches, and large empty hotels. They no longer spoke, but they felt as they looked upon each other a buzzing in their heads, as if something sonorous had escaped from the fixed eyes of each of them. They were hand in hand now, and the past, the future, reminiscences and dreams, all were confounded in the sweetness of this ecstasy. Night was darkening over the walls, on which still shone, half hidden in the shade, the coarse colours of four bills representing four scenes from the "Tour de Nesle," with a motto in Spanish and French at the bottom. Through the sash-window a patch of dark sky was seen between the pointed roofs. She rose to light two wax-candles on the drawers, then she sat down again. "Well!" said Leon. "Well!" she replied. He was thinking how to resume the interrupted conversation, when she said to him-- "How is it that no one until now has ever expressed such sentiments to me?" The clerk said that ideal natures were difficult to understand. He from the first moment had loved her, and he despaired when he thought of the happiness that would have been theirs, if thanks to fortune, meeting her earlier, they had been indissolubly bound to one another. "I have sometimes thought of it," she went on. "What a dream!" murmured Leon. And fingering gently the blue binding of her long white sash, he added, "And who prevents us from beginning now?" "No, my friend," she replied; "I am too old; you are too young. Forget me! Others will love you; you will love them." "Not as you!" he cried. "What a child you are! Come, let us be sensible. I wish it." She showed him the impossibility of their love, and that they must remain, as formerly, on the simple terms of a fraternal friendship. Was she speaking thus seriously? No doubt Emma did not herself know, quite absorbed as she was by the charm of the seduction, and the necessity of defending herself from it; and contemplating the young man with a moved look, she gently repulsed the timid caresses that his trembling hands attempted. "Ah! forgive me!" he cried, drawing back. Emma was seized with a vague fear at this shyness, more dangerous to her than the boldness of Rodolphe when he advanced to her open-armed. No man had ever seemed to her so beautiful. An exquisite candour emanated from his being. He lowered his long fine eyelashes, that curled upwards. His cheek, with the soft skin reddened, she thought, with desire of her person, and Emma felt an invincible longing to press her lips to it. Then, leaning towards the clock as if to see the time-- "Ah! how late it is!" she said; "how we do chatter!" He understood the hint and took up his hat. "It has even made me forget the theatre. And poor Bovary has left me here especially for that. Monsieur Lormeaux, of the Rue Grand-Pont, was to take me and his wife." And the opportunity was lost, as she was to leave the next day. "Really!" said Leon. "Yes." "But I must see you again," he went on. "I wanted to tell you--" "What?" "Something--important--serious. Oh, no! Besides, you will not go; it is impossible. If you should--listen to me. Then you have not understood me; you have not guessed--" "Yet you speak plainly," said Emma. "Ah! you can jest. Enough! enough! Oh, for pity's sake, let me see you once--only once!" "Well--" She stopped; then, as if thinking better of it, "Oh, not here!" "Where you will." "Will you--" She seemed to reflect; then abruptly, "To-morrow at eleven o'clock in the cathedral." "I shall be there," he cried, seizing her hands, which she disengaged. And as they were both standing up, he behind her, and Emma with her head bent, he stooped over her and pressed long kisses on her neck. "You are mad! Ah! you are mad!" she said, with sounding little laughs, while the kisses multiplied. Then bending his head over her shoulder, he seemed to beg the consent of her eyes. They fell upon him full of an icy dignity. Leon stepped back to go out. He stopped on the threshold; then he whispered with a trembling voice, "Tomorrow!" She answered with a nod, and disappeared like a bird into the next room. In the evening Emma wrote the clerk an interminable letter, in which she cancelled the rendezvous; all was over; they must not, for the sake of their happiness, meet again. But when the letter was finished, as she did not know Leon's address, she was puzzled. "I'll give it to him myself," she said; "he will come." The next morning, at the open window, and humming on his balcony, Leon himself varnished his pumps with several coatings. He put on white trousers, fine socks, a green coat, emptied all the scent he had into his handkerchief, then having had his hair curled, he uncurled it again, in order to give it a more natural elegance. "It is still too early," he thought, looking at the hairdresser's cuckoo-clock, that pointed to the hour of nine. He read an old fashion journal, went out, smoked a cigar, walked up three streets, thought it was time, and went slowly towards the porch of Notre Dame. It was a beautiful summer morning. Silver plate sparkled in the jeweller's windows, and the light falling obliquely on the cathedral made mirrors of the corners of the grey stones; a flock of birds fluttered in the grey sky round the trefoil bell-turrets; the square, resounding with cries, was fragrant with the flowers that bordered its pavement, roses, jasmines, pinks, narcissi, and tube-roses, unevenly spaced out between moist grasses, catmint, and chickweed for the birds; the fountains gurgled in the centre, and under large umbrellas, amidst melons, piled up in heaps, flower-women, bare-headed, were twisting paper round bunches of violets. The young man took one. It was the first time that he had bought flowers for a woman, and his breast, as he smelt them, swelled with pride, as if this homage that he meant for another had recoiled upon himself. But he was afraid of being seen; he resolutely entered the church. The beadle, who was just then standing on the threshold in the middle of the left doorway, under the "Dancing Marianne," with feather cap, and rapier dangling against his calves, came in, more majestic than a cardinal, and as shining as a saint on a holy pyx. He came towards Leon, and, with that smile of wheedling benignity assumed by ecclesiastics when they question children-- "The gentleman, no doubt, does not belong to these parts? The gentleman would like to see the curiosities of the church?" "No!" said the other. And he first went round the lower aisles. Then he went out to look at the Place. Emma was not coming yet. He went up again to the choir. The nave was reflected in the full fonts with the beginning of the arches and some portions of the glass windows. But the reflections of the paintings, broken by the marble rim, were continued farther on upon the flag-stones, like a many-coloured carpet. The broad daylight from without streamed into the church in three enormous rays from the three opened portals. From time to time at the upper end a sacristan passed, making the oblique genuflexion of devout persons in a hurry. The crystal lustres hung motionless. In the choir a silver lamp was burning, and from the side chapels and dark places of the church sometimes rose sounds like sighs, with the clang of a closing grating, its echo reverberating under the lofty vault. Leon with solemn steps walked along by the walls. Life had never seemed so good to him. She would come directly, charming, agitated, looking back at the glances that followed her, and with her flounced dress, her gold eyeglass, her thin shoes, with all sorts of elegant trifles that he had never enjoyed, and with the ineffable seduction of yielding virtue. The church like a huge boudoir spread around her; the arches bent down to gather in the shade the confession of her love; the windows shone resplendent to illumine her face, and the censers would burn that she might appear like an angel amid the fumes of the sweet-smelling odours. But she did not come. He sat down on a chair, and his eyes fell upon a blue stained window representing boatmen carrying baskets. He looked at it long, attentively, and he counted the scales of the fishes and the button-holes of the doublets, while his thoughts wandered off towards Emma. The beadle, standing aloof, was inwardly angry at this individual who took the liberty of admiring the cathedral by himself. He seemed to him to be conducting himself in a monstrous fashion, to be robbing him in a sort, and almost committing sacrilege. But a rustle of silk on the flags, the tip of a bonnet, a lined cloak--it was she! Leon rose and ran to meet her. Emma was pale. She walked fast. "Read!" she said, holding out a paper to him. "Oh, no!" And she abruptly withdrew her hand to enter the chapel of the Virgin, where, kneeling on a chair, she began to pray. The young man was irritated at this bigot fancy; then he nevertheless experienced a certain charm in seeing her, in the middle of a rendezvous, thus lost in her devotions, like an Andalusian marchioness; then he grew bored, for she seemed never coming to an end. Emma prayed, or rather strove to pray, hoping that some sudden resolution might descend to her from heaven; and to draw down divine aid she filled full her eyes with the splendours of the tabernacle. She breathed in the perfumes of the full-blown flowers in the large vases, and listened to the stillness of the church, that only heightened the tumult of her heart. She rose, and they were about to leave, when the beadle came forward, hurriedly saying-- "Madame, no doubt, does not belong to these parts? Madame would like to see the curiosities of the church?" "Oh, no!" cried the clerk. "Why not?" said she. For she clung with her expiring virtue to the Virgin, the sculptures, the tombs--anything. Then, in order to proceed "by rule," the beadle conducted them right to the entrance near the square, where, pointing out with his cane a large circle of block-stones without inscription or carving-- "This," he said majestically, "is the circumference of the beautiful bell of Ambroise. It weighed forty thousand pounds. There was not its equal in all Europe. The workman who cast it died of the joy--" "Let us go on," said Leon. The old fellow started off again; then, having got back to the chapel of the Virgin, he stretched forth his arm with an all-embracing gesture of demonstration, and, prouder than a country squire showing you his espaliers, went on-- "This simple stone covers Pierre de Breze, lord of Varenne and of Brissac, grand marshal of Poitou, and governor of Normandy, who died at the battle of Montlhery on the 16th of July, 1465." Leon bit his lips, fuming. "And on the right, this gentleman all encased in iron, on the prancing horse, is his grandson, Louis de Breze, lord of Breval and of Montchauvet, Count de Maulevrier, Baron de Mauny, chamberlain to the king, Knight of the Order, and also governor of Normandy; died on the 23rd of July, 1531--a Sunday, as the inscription specifies; and below, this figure, about to descend into the tomb, portrays the same person. It is not possible, is it, to see a more perfect representation of annihilation?" Madame Bovary put up her eyeglasses. Leon, motionless, looked at her, no longer even attempting to speak a single word, to make a gesture, so discouraged was he at this two-fold obstinacy of gossip and indifference. The everlasting guide went on-- "Near him, this kneeling woman who weeps is his spouse, Diane de Poitiers, Countess de Breze, Duchess de Valentinois, born in 1499, died in 1566, and to the left, the one with the child is the Holy Virgin. Now turn to this side; here are the tombs of the Ambroise. They were both cardinals and archbishops of Rouen. That one was minister under Louis thousand gold crowns for the poor." And without stopping, still talking, he pushed them into a chapel full of balustrades, some put away, and disclosed a kind of block that certainly might once have been an ill-made statue. "Truly," he said with a groan, "it adorned the tomb of Richard Coeur de Lion, King of England and Duke of Normandy. It was the Calvinists, sir, who reduced it to this condition. They had buried it for spite in the earth, under the episcopal seat of Monsignor. See! this is the door by which Monsignor passes to his house. Let us pass on quickly to see the gargoyle windows." But Leon hastily took some silver from his pocket and seized Emma's arm. The beadle stood dumfounded, not able to understand this untimely munificence when there were still so many things for the stranger to see. So calling him back, he cried-- "Sir! sir! The steeple! the steeple!" "No, thank you!" said Leon. "You are wrong, sir! It is four hundred and forty feet high, nine less than the great pyramid of Egypt. It is all cast; it--" Leon was fleeing, for it seemed to him that his love, that for nearly two hours now had become petrified in the church like the stones, would vanish like a vapour through that sort of truncated funnel, of oblong cage, of open chimney that rises so grotesquely from the cathedral like the extravagant attempt of some fantastic brazier. "But where are we going?" she said. Making no answer, he walked on with a rapid step; and Madame Bovary was already, dipping her finger in the holy water when behind them they heard a panting breath interrupted by the regular sound of a cane. Leon turned back. "Sir!" "What is it?" And he recognised the beadle, holding under his arms and balancing against his stomach some twenty large sewn volumes. They were works "which treated of the cathedral." "Idiot!" growled Leon, rushing out of the church. A lad was playing about the close. "Go and get me a cab!" The child bounded off like a ball by the Rue Quatre-Vents; then they were alone a few minutes, face to face, and a little embarrassed. "Ah! Leon! Really--I don't know--if I ought," she whispered. Then with a more serious air, "Do you know, it is very improper--" "How so?" replied the clerk. "It is done at Paris." And that, as an irresistible argument, decided her. Still the cab did not come. Leon was afraid she might go back into the church. At last the cab appeared. "At all events, go out by the north porch," cried the beadle, who was left alone on the threshold, "so as to see the Resurrection, the Last Judgment, Paradise, King David, and the Condemned in Hell-flames." "Where to, sir?" asked the coachman. "Where you like," said Leon, forcing Emma into the cab. And the lumbering machine set out. It went down the Rue Grand-Pont, crossed the Place des Arts, the Quai Napoleon, the Pont Neuf, and stopped short before the statue of Pierre Corneille. "Go on," cried a voice that came from within. The cab went on again, and as soon as it reached the Carrefour Lafayette, set off down-hill, and entered the station at a gallop. "No, straight on!" cried the same voice. The cab came out by the gate, and soon having reached the Cours, trotted quietly beneath the elm-trees. The coachman wiped his brow, put his leather hat between his knees, and drove his carriage beyond the side alley by the meadow to the margin of the waters. It went along by the river, along the towing-path paved with sharp pebbles, and for a long while in the direction of Oyssel, beyond the isles. But suddenly it turned with a dash across Quatremares, Sotteville, La Grande-Chaussee, the Rue d'Elbeuf, and made its third halt in front of the Jardin des Plantes. "Get on, will you?" cried the voice more furiously. And at once resuming its course, it passed by Saint-Sever, by the Quai'des Curandiers, the Quai aux Meules, once more over the bridge, by the Place du Champ de Mars, and behind the hospital gardens, where old men in black coats were walking in the sun along the terrace all green with ivy. It went up the Boulevard Bouvreuil, along the Boulevard Cauchoise, then the whole of Mont-Riboudet to the Deville hills. It came back; and then, without any fixed plan or direction, wandered about at hazard. The cab was seen at Saint-Pol, at Lescure, at Mont Gargan, at La Rougue-Marc and Place du Gaillardbois; in the Rue Maladrerie, Rue Dinanderie, before Saint-Romain, Saint-Vivien, Saint-Maclou, Saint-Nicaise--in front of the Customs, at the "Vieille Tour," the "Trois Pipes," and the Monumental Cemetery. From time to time the coachman, on his box cast despairing eyes at the public-houses. He could not understand what furious desire for locomotion urged these individuals never to wish to stop. He tried to now and then, and at once exclamations of anger burst forth behind him. Then he lashed his perspiring jades afresh, but indifferent to their jolting, running up against things here and there, not caring if he did, demoralised, and almost weeping with thirst, fatigue, and depression. And on the harbour, in the midst of the drays and casks, and in the streets, at the corners, the good folk opened large wonder-stricken eyes at this sight, so extraordinary in the provinces, a cab with blinds drawn, and which appeared thus constantly shut more closely than a tomb, and tossing about like a vessel. Once in the middle of the day, in the open country, just as the sun beat most fiercely against the old plated lanterns, a bared hand passed beneath the small blinds of yellow canvas, and threw out some scraps of paper that scattered in the wind, and farther off lighted like white butterflies on a field of red clover all in bloom. At about six o'clock the carriage stopped in a back street of the Beauvoisine Quarter, and a woman got out, who walked with her veil down, and without turning her head.

Part 3, Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-1

A lot of things happened to Leon in Paris. First of all, he studied law. Secondly, he studied women. He's no longer the same shy boy he was before. All along, he held on to a vague hope that someday he and Emma might actually get together, even while he had new experiences with other women. This new Leon is resolved to "possess" Emma. He's determined and much craftier than he used to be. He follows Emma and Charles to their inn, then returns the next morning to scout out the situation. He discovers Emma in the hotel room...alone. Leon has become something of a sweet-talker over the past few years. Perhaps he's not at the same level as Rodolphe, but he's getting up there. He and Emma talk and talk about the various sorrows of their lives. Sigh. Same old, same old. Noticeably, Emma doesn't say anything about loving another man, and Leon doesn't say anything about kind of forgetting Emma. Both of them make dramatic claims, each saying that life is miserable without the other. Basically, this love scene is just one big string of complaints - there's nothing romantic about that. Finally, Leon gives in and says out loud that he was in love with her. All of a sudden the tension is broken, and old feelings come rushing out, created anew by their current proximity. Emma is startled by how much she remembers - she feels old and experienced. They talk until night falls. Leon suggests that they could start over again, but Emma, attempting to be noble, says that she's too old and he's too young . It's late - they've even missed the opera. Leon gets up to leave, but convinces Emma to meet him one more time. She makes their meeting point the famous Rouen cathedral. That night, Emma writes a farewell letter of her own, explaining to Leon why they can't be together. However, she can't send it, since she doesn't have his address. She decides to give it to him in person. Before the rendezvous, Leon primps nervously. He even buys Emma flowers, and goes to meet her at the cathedral. There, he's met not by Emma, but by a cathedral guide, who attempts to give Leon a tour. Emma's late, and Leon grows more anxious. Finally, she arrives. She starts to give him the letter, but is seized by the desire to pray. Leon is both charmed and irritated. As they're about to leave, the guide comes up and offers to give them a tour again. Emma, concerned for her virtue, desperately says yes. They follow the guide, not listening, through the cathedral and back to where they started. Before they get to the tower, Leon basically hurls a coin at the poor guide and pulls Emma away with him. The guide doesn't get the picture - he just keeps coming back. The couple flees the cathedral rather comically. Outside, Leon sends a little street kid to find a cab for them. Awkwardly, they wait alone - there's a kind of aggressive tension between them. The cab arrives. They get in as the cathedral guy yells at them from the church door, and Leon tells the driver to go wherever he wants. The following is one of the most famous scenes of the novel. We see the cab rushing through Rouen aimlessly; we can't see inside it, but we can, however, guess what's going on...Leon keeps yelling up to the driver to keep going; he and Emma stay concealed in the cab. The poor cab driver is tired and certainly weirded out. His horses are exhausted, and everyone's demoralized. The passengers, however, give no sign. Around mid-afternoon, a hand is seen throwing scraps of paper out the window; we assume it's Emma bidding farewell to the well-intentioned farewell letter. Finally, in the early evening, the cab stops. Emma calmly steps out of it and walks away.