55 pages • 1 hour read
A Fall of Marigolds
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Chapters 31-34Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 31 Summary
Clara returns home to Pennsylvania and realizes how much she “had missed being surrounded by people who loved [her]” (287). Her mother states at one point that she wishes Clara had never gone to New York. Clara understands her mother’s sentiments but believes that her “life [is] more fully layered because of the choices [she] had made, both consciously and in ignorance” (288). However, Clara wants to be free of New York’s “dark hold on [her]” and decides to burn Lily’s letter and give away the scarf (289). She also avoids Ethan upon returning to the island, believing that she “needed to keep a safe distance from those who were tied to the life [she] was leaving behind: Edward Brim, Andrew Gwynn, Ethan Randall” (289). Dolly believes Clara is being silly, but Clara seems to feel she needs space to finish the healing process.
Unfortunately, Clara is thrust back into Andrew’s life when a private investigator hired by Lily’s husband, Angus, comes to the island. He accuses Andrew of murdering Lily for “a necklace worth fifty thousand pounds that has been in the Ravenhouse family for a century” (294). Clara denies knowing Andrew well or where he had gone after being discharged, but the private investigator, Chester Hartwell, realizes Clara knows more than she is saying and threatens her, claiming both that Andrew will harm Clara and that Clara will be considered an accessory for helping him.
Clara manages to convince Hartwell that she will try to help him after realizing that Lily must have taken the necklace, and furthermore, that Lily had planned to abandon her luggage when she left Andrew, and so “wouldn’t have put a necklace worth fifty thousand pounds in a trunk that she planned to leave with Andrew when she disappeared […]” (295). She realizes at once that Lily must have sent the necklace on ahead of her, and that is probably what the key sewn into the necklace was for. She decides she must warn Andrew and visit the address etched into the key.
Chapter 32 Summary
Clara considers giving Lily’s letter to Hartwell but realizes that he will still seek out Andrew, and Andrew will then learn the truth about Lily’s deception. She asks Ethan to help her by delaying Hartwell long enough that Clara can leave the island unnoticed. Ethan resists at first, telling Clara it has nothing to do with her, and that she should not feel guilty for what Andrew may experience. However, Clara manages to convince him to help as Ethan finally understands that Clara “needed to do for Andrew what no one has been able to do for [her]: rescue something precious from the clutches of deception” (301). Ethan advises Clara to go to the newspaper office and get help in finding Andrew’s brother’s tailor shop in Greenwich Village, and Clara promises to return that night even if she cannot find the shop. However, when Clara gets to the mainland, she instead goes directly to the address on the key.
Chapter 33 Summary
Clara ends up at a boardinghouse and tells the owner that she is Lily’s cousin, here to collect her trunk. The woman is angry that no one contacted her but allows Clara to go to what would have been Lily’s room. Clara finds the trunk, as well as several letters from jewelry stores in New York. In the bottom of the trunk is the necklace, “a shimmering circle of rubies and sapphires, dazzlingly bright and without a doubt costly beyond words” (307). Clara leaves the boardinghouse for the tailor’s shop. She wonders whether Lily stole the necklace, recalling her claim that “Ravenhouse had made off with Lily’s inheritance” but realizes that she cannot “single-handedly right all the world’s wrongs” (308). She consoles herself that at least Andrew will find out the truth from someone who cares about him. She arrives at the tailor shop where she sees Andrew and believes “[f]or a shimmering second […] it had all been a dream” that she “had only just arrived in Manhattan, and nothing bad had happened to any of us” (309). The illusion is quickly shattered as she realizes that the man is not Andrew but his brother Nigel, who tells Clara that Andrew is out. Just as Clara is about to explain what has happened, Hartwell arrives.
Chapter 34 Summary
Hartwell declares he will wait for Andrew, telling Nigel that Andrew is a crook who knowingly committed bigamy and theft. However, Clara takes charge of the situation, surprising both Hartwell and herself. She explains to Hartwell what really happened, showing him the letter from Lily and the document for annulment. She tells Nigel about her own losses and that Andrew “still believes in the sacred beauty of love” and that “[o]f all the things [Clara has] trifled with, [she] very much do[es] not what to trifle with that” (316). She tells Hartwell she will tell him where the necklace is if he agrees to leave Andrew alone. When he agrees, she reveals that she was wearing the necklace under the scarf. Nigel has Hartwell sign a receipt for the necklace, and Clara convinces Nigel not to tell Andrew the truth about Lily unless absolutely necessary; she wants Andrew to have both hope and love. After she leaves the shop, she sees Andrew from the window of the carriage taking her back to the ferry. She waves to him, knowing this will be the final time she will ever see him. Part of Clara wants to “rescue him and keep him close,” but she knows that she could never “love a man completely to whom [she] could not bare her soul” (318).
Chapters 31-34 Analysis
Although Clara is clearly recovering, her desire to be totally rid of her past—by burning the letter, giving away the scarf, and avoiding Ethan—is not a healthy one. However, when she is pulled back into Andrew’s story by the frightening Hartwell, Clara can move on in a way previously unavailable to her. She is convinced that she did the right thing by not telling Andrew about Lily, but she does not insist that his brother burn the letter, acknowledging that one day Andrew might need to read it.
Clara leaves unspoken the truth that though finding out about Edward was painful, it was nonetheless the spur she needed to move out of the in-between place she had occupied for so long. Thus, Clara has Nigel save the letter in case Andrew too becomes consumed by his grief, as she was once herself. Nigel agrees with Clara, noting that he too “see[s] hope in [Andrew’s] eyes […]. Every day a little more” (319). Nigel’s sentiment leaves the reader with the feeling that Andrew will never see that letter and know the truth. Clara’s solution to the problem of the necklace symbolizes how far she has come. She realizes that not everything can be pure and just, but this does not mean those things do not exist. This connects to her love for Edward, as she finally seems to recognize that even if he did not love her, that does not have anything to do with her love for him or her grief at his death.
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By Susan Meissner
