The Chimes
should attempt such a rash experiment. The third paragraph takes us and the Wind alike “high up in the steeple,” inevitably the most ghostly part of the church. Now that we are in the steeple, we are, of course, ready for the introduction of the Chimes themselves, the description of which comes in the fourth and fifth paragraphs. Along with them, the principal character, Toby Veck, enters the story also quite casually and incidentally.
In paragraphs six to eleven, Toby is described—his character, his occupation, his station in life. Then, in paragraph twelve, the connection between Toby and the Chimes is made more definite, first in the description of the old man’s love for the bells, then in the author’s fanciful elucidation of the “points of resemblance between themselves and him.” In the thirteenth paragraph, we have more of Toby’s love for the Chimes, of how “he invested them with a strange and solemn character.” “For all this, Toby scouted with indignation a certain flying rumour that the Chimes were haunted…” Hereupon the introduction ends; Meg enters with Toby’s dinner; the dramatic method is employed, and the story proper may be said to have begun.
Now what has been accomplished so far? More, I think, than may as yet be apparent. The tone of the story has been determined and the principal character introduced and described. The very first statement of all—idle as it seems and humorously as it is maintained—(“There are not many people … who would care to sleep in a church.”)—has a certain suggestiveness in the way of foreshadowing, while the later insinuation of a
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