Summer recap

Charity Royall, brought as a child from an impoverished mountain settlement and raised by a widowed lawyer in North Dormer, longs to escape village life. She falls in love with Lucius Harney, a visiting architect from a wealthier world. Their secret relationship deepens after Mr. Royall publicly humiliates her, but Charity learns that Harney is engaged to Annabel Balch and he leaves without securing a future with her. Discovering that she is pregnant, Charity rejects a dangerous abortion and climbs the Mountain to find her birth mother, arriving as the woman is dying in destitution. Royall follows, arranges the burial, and brings Charity away. Faced with abandonment and determined to protect her child, Charity accepts his renewed offer of marriage. She returns to North Dormer as Mrs. Royall, while Harney remains absent and the hopes attached to their summer romance give way to a constrained but survivable future.

Charity Royall lives in North Dormer, a small New England village with few opportunities. Mr. Royall brought her down from the lawless, impoverished Mountain as a child and raised her after his wife's death, but she now feels trapped in his house and in her neglected job at the village library. His personal interest in her has made the household tense, and she is determined not to become his wife. Lucius Harney, a young architect from New York, arrives to study the area's old buildings. Charity is struck by his confidence and sophistication. As she begins helping him find local sites, his attention awakens both romantic hope and a sharper dissatisfaction with everything North Dormer offers. Harney sees the region as material for art and study; Charity knows it as the place that has confined her. Their early excursions draw them together while also revealing how differently they understand the same landscape.

Charity's work as Lucius Harney's local guide gives them increasing time alone. Their attraction develops amid walks, drives, and visits to old houses, and Charity begins to imagine that he might provide the escape from North Dormer she has long desired. A holiday trip to the larger town of Nettleton exposes her to crowds, entertainment, and luxury beyond her experience, but it also shows her the social distance between them. Harney moves easily through this wider world, while Charity is alternately excited and ashamed of her uncertainty. She also catches a disturbing glimpse of Julia Hawes, a local woman whose life outside the village has become precarious. The day strengthens Charity's attachment to Harney, yet it quietly links her dream of freedom with the risks faced by a young woman who has little money, education, or social protection.

Charity and Harney's attachment becomes a secret love affair, even as Mr. Royall grows more suspicious and hostile. During North Dormer's public festivities, Royall drinks and denounces Charity before others, using her origins on the Mountain to shame her. Harney takes her away from the humiliation and comforts her, and their relationship becomes sexual in the shelter of an abandoned house. For Charity, the intimacy confirms a commitment and a possible shared future; Harney remains affectionate but less explicit about what will follow the summer. Charity's friend Ally mentions seeing him with the elegant Annabel Balch, a woman from his own social world. Charity resists the warning, unwilling to fit her private experience of Harney together with the possibility that he has obligations he has not disclosed.

The lovers continue meeting in secret, but the future Charity expected never becomes secure. She learns that Harney is engaged to Annabel Balch. Although his feelings for Charity are real enough to prolong their parting, he leaves North Dormer without establishing a life with her. Charity then discovers she is pregnant. Isolated by secrecy and afraid of Royall's judgment, she travels to Nettleton and seeks help from Dr. Merkle, a woman offering to end the pregnancy. The sordid and dangerous circumstances repel her, and she cannot go through with it. With Harney absent and conventional rescue no longer credible, Charity turns instead toward the past she has tried to disown. She decides to climb the Mountain and find the mother from whom Royall removed her years before.

Pregnant, abandoned by Harney, and unwilling to submit to an unsafe abortion, Charity climbs the Mountain in search of her biological mother. The settlement's deprivation is worse than the stories told in North Dormer. Charity finds her mother gravely ill in a bare dwelling and stays through her death, confronting the origin she had alternately romanticized and rejected. Mr. Royall has followed her. He arranges a burial and leads the exhausted Charity back down. In Nettleton he offers marriage once more, now providing a name and home for her and the unborn child. Charity accepts, and they are married quietly. Royall's conduct afterward is restrained and protective rather than triumphant. Charity sends Harney a final message and returns to North Dormer as Royall's wife. Harney remains with the life and engagement from which he came, while Charity chooses to preserve her child within the security available to her, ending the summer in the same house but with a new and complicated status.

Pregnant and convinced that Lucius Harney will return to his socially suitable fiancée, Annabel Balch, Charity turns away from a dangerous attempted abortion and climbs the Mountain in search of her origins. She finds her mother dying amid extreme poverty and remains with her until death. Mr. Royall follows Charity, sees that the mother is buried, and leads his exhausted ward back toward North Dormer. In Nettleton he again offers marriage, this time as practical shelter rather than a demand, and Charity accepts. They marry quietly before returning home. Royall behaves with unexpected tenderness and does not press his marital rights, while Charity resolves to protect the child she is carrying and build a life from the limited security available to her. Harney does not return to claim her; Charity sends him a farewell and closes the summer by re-entering Royall's house as his wife, carrying another man's child.