Picnic at Hanging Rock: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

At four o’clock on the afternoon of the picnic, Mrs. Appleyard awakes from a nap on the drawing-room sofa—she has been dreaming of her late husband. She heads upstairs and enters a classroom to check on Sara Waybourne, the school’s youngest boarder. Sara has been held back from the picnic and made to memorize a poem she failed to recite in class the day before. Mrs. Appleyard tells Sara that if she’s completed her work, she can go out to the garden for some tea and cake. The defiant Sara, however, insists she can’t—and won’t—commit the “silly” poem to memory. Mrs. Appleyard tells her that if she doesn’t have the original piece memorized in half an hour she’ll be sent to bed without supper.

By the time eight o’clock arrives, the night has grown dark. The “unrepentant” Sara has been sent to bed, and Mrs. Appleyard, having eaten a large supper of her own, waits for the sound of the drag coming up the drive. At half past eight, however, Mrs. Appleyard begins to get worried—Mr. Hussey is usually punctual. Mrs. Appleyard rings for Minnie and asks her if Tom is still up. Minnie, disguising the fact that she and Tom have been fooling around on her bed, tells Mrs. Appleyard she’ll look for him.

Near ten o’clock, Mrs. Appleyard goes downstairs to the front door to find Tom waiting on the porch. She asks him if Mr. Hussey’s lateness could be due to a long trek back, but Tom assures her that it would take three and a half hours at most to get back from Hanging Rock—assuming the group left at four, they should be home by now. Mrs. Appleyard becomes worried that the coach has had an accident. Tom tells Mrs. Appleyard to calm down and listen—sure enough, the sound of hooves can be heard.

As the drag pulls up, the girls begin pouring from the back. They are “hatless, disheveled, [and] incoherent.” As Mademoiselle follows them up the steps, Mrs. Appleyard asks what has happened. Mademoiselle responds that she doesn’t know where to start. Mrs. Appleyard asks where Miss McCraw is, and Mademoiselle answers that she’s been left behind at the rock. Mrs. Appleyard demands answers, but Mr. Hussey steps in, noting that Mademoiselle looks faint. Sure enough, Mademoiselle promptly passes out, and Minnie, Miss Lumley, and the cook hurry to revive her and carry her to her room. Mrs. Appleyard brings Mr. Hussey up to her study and asks what has happened. Mr. Hussey tells her the trouble is that no one knows what has happened—Miss McCraw and three girls have gone missing at the rock.

In the novel’s first departure from narrative, the narrator inserts an excerpt of Mr. Hussey’s statement to Constable Bumpher of the Woodend Police the following morning. He describes realizing, early on in the afternoon, that both his and Miss McCraw’s watches had stopped. The group decided to leave in an hour, and Hussey got to work harnessing the horses. He believes that at this time it was nearly half past three. After harnessing them up, he returned to check on the tea and found that Miss McCraw had left the group. Mademoiselle was flustered and upset, having fallen asleep and failed to see where Miss McCraw might have gone. Hussey asked if everyone else was accounted for, and Mademoiselle admitted that four girls had gone off to the rock—Miranda, Irma Leopold, Marion Quade, and Edith Horton. 

Mr. Hussey and Mademoiselle organized the other girls into groups of two and three and sent them around the creek to call for the missing members of their party. After about an hour, Edith came “running out of the scrub […] crying and laughing.” Edith reported that the other girls were up on the rock, but had no idea what direction they’d gone. Mr. Hussey wanted to ask the group he’d seen picnicking across the creek if they’d seen anything, but the group—Colonel Fitzhubert and his family—had already left.

Mr. Hussey reports that the group returned down the mountain and made fires as it got darker out, continuing to call for the missing girls and Miss McCraw. After several hours, though, Hussey and Mademoiselle—noting that the girls were growing more and more hysterical—decided to turn and head home. Mr. Hussey concludes his statement by admitting that he doesn’t know whether leaving was the right thing to do.