Alone again – almost
This chapter is something of a delaying stretch. Hans is left to himself at the farm, and begins to understand how much he has changed in two days. He makes up his mind to go back home and see for himself the truth, for he has begun to doubt his memory. He lies to Mother Groening to comfort him, and in this we can see how he has softened from the coal-biter brat he was with his own Mother. (Or maybe Bardelys has begun to shift back to the conception of Hans as a stay-at-home rather than a true coal-biter.)
He starts back, but is accompanied by Otto, the dubious farmhand. And he can’t shake him, and his physical weakness, the sprained ankle, betrays him. In the end he is forced to accept the farmhand's company on the rest of the way back.
Overhanging all this is something of a mystery. Bertie Groening set out the day before to visit the Foresters’ house and let them know Hans was well. He should have been back last night, or this forenoon at the earliest, it seems. Mother Groening seems worried over him. This small bit of darkness, which Bardelys doesn't dwell on enough, I think, casts a bit of a pall over the future.
We already know that Hans is right when he feels that ‘all the bad was true, and all his hopes were false.’ Or at least we hope that is so, because we want the magic and the danger to arise to give us an entertaining tale. Bertie’s failure to return seems to bolster our hopes in the evil that will greet Hans when he finds his home again.
And yet, for the little of moment that happens in this chapter, it runs on awfully long. Bardelys has let his feet drag in the mire again.
(Composed on keyboard Thursday, November 13, 2008)
