The Bell

CHAPTER 15

BY the time Dora arrived back at Imber she felt considerably more subdued. She had caught a train at once, but it was a slow one. She was vastly hungry again. She was afraid of Paul’s anger. She tried to keep on believing that something good had happened to her; but now it seemed that this good thing had after all nothing whatever to do with her present troubles. It had been a treat and now it was over. At any rate, Dora was tired and couldn’t think any more and felt discouraged, frightened, and resentful. The village taxi took her most of the way down the drive; she would not let it come right up to the house as she wanted the fact of her return to dawn quietly on the brotherhood. She was also afraid that, unless she could first see him alone, Paul would make a public scene. She saw from a distance the lights of the Court and they looked to her hostile and censorious.

It was well after ten o’clock. As Dora approached along the last part of the drive, stepping as quietly as possible on the gravel, she saw that there were lights on in the hall and the common-room. She could not see the window of her and Paul’s room, which faced the other reach of the lake. The Court loomed darkly over her, blotting out the stars; and then she heard a sound of music. She stopped. Quite clearly on the soft and quiet warm night air there came the sharp sound of a piano. Dora listened, puzzled. Surely there was no piano at Imber. Then she thought, of course, a gramophone record, the Bach recital. This was the night for it and the community must all be gathered in the common-room listening. She wondered if Paul would be there. Leaning carefully on the balustrade so as to step more lightly she glided up the steps on to the balcony.

The lights from the hall and from the modern French windows of the common-room made a brightly illuminated area in the space at the top of the steps. Dora could see the flagstones clearly revealed. The music was now very loud and it was plain that no one could have heard her approaching. Dora stood for a moment or two, well out of the beam of light, attending to the music. Yes, that was Bach all right. Dora disliked any music in which she could not participate herself by singing or dancing. Paul had given up taking her to concerts since she could not keep her feet still. She listened now with distaste to the hard patterns of sound which plucked at her emotions without satisfying them and which demanded in an arrogant way to be contemplated. Dora refused to contemplate them.

She slithered round, still well in the darkness, until she reached a place from which she could see into the common-room. She trusted that the sharp contrast of light and dark would curtain her from the observation of those within. She found, with something of a shock, that she could see in quite clearly and that by moving round she could inspect the whole room. The music had seemed to make, like a waterfall, some enormous barrier, and it was strange now to find so many people so close to her. They were, however, people under a spell; and she felt she could survey them as an enchanter surveys his victims.

The community were gathered in a semi-circle and seated in the uncomfortable wooden-armed common-room chairs, except for Mrs Mark who was sitting on the floor cross-legged, her skirt well tucked in under her ankles. She was leaning back against the leg of her husband’s chair. Mark Strafford, his hand arrested in the act of stroking his beard, was turned towards the corner where the gramophone was, and looked like someone acting Michelangelo’s Moses in a charade. Next to him sat Catherine, her hands clasped, the palms moving slightly against each other. Her head was inclined forward, her eyes brooding, the heavy expanse between the lashes and the high curved eyebrows slumberously revealed. Her gipsy hair was thrust carelessly behind her ears. Dora wondered if she was really listening to the music. Toby sat in the centre, opposite to the window, curled gracefully in the chair, one long leg under him, the other hooked over the arm, a hand dangling. He looked absent-minded and rather worried. Next to him was Michael who was leaning his elbows on his knees, his face hidden in his hands, his faded yellow hair spurting through his fingers. Beside him James sat with head thrown back in shameless almost smiling enjoyment of the music. In the corner was Paul, sitting rigid and wearing that somewhat military air which his moustache sometimes gave him and which went so ill with the rest of his personality. He looked tense, concentrated, as if he were about to bark out an order.

Dora was sorry to find Paul at the recital. With any luck he might have been more easily accosted, moping upstairs; as indeed hé ought to be, she reflected resentfully, with the mystery of his wife’s disappearance still unsolved. Dora watched him for a while, nervously, and then returned to scanning the whole group. Seeing them all together like that she felt excluded and aggressive, and Noel’s exhortations came back to her. They had a secure complacent look about them: the spiritual ruling class; and she wished suddenly that she might grow as large and fierce as a gorilla and shake the flimsy doors off their hinges, drowning the repulsive music in a savage carnivorous yell.

Dora had now watched for so long that she felt herself invisible. She moved slightly, about to withdraw, and as she did so she saw that Toby was looking straight out of the window towards her. She wasn’t sure for a moment whether he had seen her and she stood quite still. Then a change in his expression, a widening and focussing of his eyes, a slight tensing of his body told her that she had been observed. Dora waited, wondering what Toby would do. To her surprise he did nothing. He sat for a moment giving her a look of intense concentration; and then he dropped his eyes again. Dora slid quietly back into the darkness. No one else in the room had noticed anything.

She stood at the far corner of the balcony dejected, apprehensive, wondering what to do. She supposed she ought to go up to their bedroom and wait for Paul; but the prospect of this gloomy vigil was so appalling that she could not bring herself to mount the stairs. She wandered down again to the terrace and began to walk slowly along the path that led to the causeway. The moon was just rising and there was enough light to see where she was going. The silhouette of the Abbey trees and the tower could be seen, as on her first night at Imber. She reached the lake which seemed to glimmer blackly, not yet fully struck by the rays of the moon.

As she looked back towards the house she was alarmed to see that there was a dark figure following her down the path. She felt sure it must be Paul, and her old deep fear of him suddenly made the whole night scene terrifying. She was ready to run; but she stood still, her hand at her breast, as if to take a physical shock. The figure came nearer, hurrying soundlessly along the grassy track. When it was quite near she saw it was Toby.

“Oh, Toby,” said Dora with relief. “Hello. You came out of the music.”

“Yes,” said Toby. He seemed breathless. “I came out before the last movement.”

“Do you like that music?” said Dora.

“Not terribly, actually,” said Toby. “I was going to come out anyway. Then I saw you through the window.”

“Did you say I was back?” said Dora.

“No, I thought I’d better not talk between the movements. I just slipped out. They’re good for another three-quarters of an hour in there,” he added.

“Ah well,” said Dora. “It’s a nice night.”

“Let’s walk along a bit,” said Toby.

He seemed pleased to see her. Thank heaven somebody was. They walked along the path beside the lake opposite the Abbey walls. The moon, risen further, was spreading a golden fan across the surface of the water. Dora looked at Toby and found that he was looking at her. Dora was glad to be with Toby. She felt a natural complicity with him which convinced her of the abiding strength and wholeness of her youth. Here was one who was not concerned to enclose or judge her. The rest of them, however, she gloomily reflected, Paul in one way and the brotherhood in another, would make her play their role. A few hours ago she had felt free and she had come back to Imber of her own free will, performing a real action. Yet they would make of it the guilty enforced return of an escaped prisoner. Contemplating the inevitability, whose nature she scarcely understood, of their superiority over her, and the impossibility of ever getting even with them, Dora was beginning to regret that she had come back.

They walked on, exchanging a word or two about the moonlight, until the path entered the wood. The cavern of darkened foliage covered them, illuminated here and there by glimpses of the gilded water. Toby plunged on confidently and Dora followed, finding silence easy in his company. She had decided to let the three-quarters of an hour which Toby had said they were “good for”elapse, and then a little more time, to allow the company to disperse to their rooms; then she could be sure of finding Paul alone.

“Why, here we are!” said Toby.

“Where?” said Dora. She came up beside him. The trees stood back from the water and the moonlight clearly showed a grassy space and a sloping stone ramp leading down into the lake.

“Oh, just a place I know,” said Toby. “I swam here once or twice. No one comes here but me.”

“It’s nice,” said Dora. She sat down on the stones at the top of the ramp. The lake seemed quite still and yet made strange liquid noises in the silence that followed. The Abbey wall with its battlement of trees could be seen on the other side, some distance away to the left. But opposite there was only the dark wood, the continuation across the water of the wood that lay behind. It seemed to Dora that the wide moonlit circle at the edge of which she sat was apprehensive, inhabited. An owl called. She looked up at Toby. She was glad she was not there alone.

Toby was standing quite near at the head of the ramp, looking down at her. Dora forgot what she was going to say. The darkness, the silence, and their proximity made her quite suddenly physically aware of Toby’s presence. She felt a line of force between his body and hers. She wondered if at this moment he felt it too. She remembered how she had seen him naked, and she smiled. The moon revealed her smile and Toby smiled back.

“Tell me something, Toby,” said Dora.

Toby, seeming a little startled, came down the ramp and squatted beside her. The cool weedy smell of the water was in their nostrils. “What?” he said.

“Oh, nothing in particular,” said Dora. “Just tell me something, anything.”

Toby sat back on the stones. After a pause he said,“I’ll tell you something very strange.”

“Go on,” said Dora.

“There’s a huge bell down there in the water.”

“What?” said Dora. She half rose, amazed, scarcely understanding him.

“Yes,” said Toby, pleased with the effect he had produced. “Isn’t it odd? I found it when I was swimming underwater. I wasn’t sure at first, but I came back a second time. I’m certain it’s a bell.”

“You saw it, touched it?”

“I touched it, I felt it all over. It’s only half buried in the mud. It’s too dark to see.”

“Had it carvings on it?” said Dora.

“Carvings?” said Toby. “Well, it was sort of fretted and worked on the outside. But that might have been anything. Why do you ask?”

“Good God!” said Dora. She stood up. Her hand covered her mouth.

Toby got up too. He was quite alarmed. “Why, what is it?”

“Have you told anyone else?” said Dora.

“No. I don’t know why, but I thought I’d keep it a secret till I’d visited it once again.”

“Well, look,” said Dora, “don’t tell anyone. Let it be our secret now, will you?” Dora, who felt no doubts either about Toby’s story or about the identity of the object, was suddenly filled with the uneasy elation of one to whom great power has been given which he does not yet know how to use. She clutched her discovery as an Arab boy might clutch a papyrus. What it was she did not know, but she was determined to sell it dear.

“All right,” said Toby, rather gratified. “I won’t utter a word. I suppose it is very odd, isn’t it? I don’t know why I wasn’t more thrilled about it. At first I wasn’t sure – and, well, a lot of other things distracted me since. Anyway, Imight be wrong. But you seem so specially excited about it.”

“I’m sure you’re not wrong,” said Dora. Then she told him the legend which Paul had told her, and which had so much seized upon her imagination, of the erring nun and the bishop’s curse.

By the end of the tale Toby was as agitated as she was. “But something like that couldn’t be true,” he said.

“Well, no,” said Dora, “but Paul said there’s usually some truth in those old stories. The bell probably did get into the lake somehow, and there it is.” She pointed at the smooth surface of the water. “If it is the medieval bell it’s very important for art and history and so on. Could we pull it out?”

“We, you mean you and me?” said Toby amazed. “We couldn’t possibly. It’s a huge thing, it must weigh an immense amount. And anyway, it’s sunk in the mud.”

“You said only half sunk,” said Dora. “You’re an engineer. Couldn’t we do it with a pulley or something?”

“We might rig up a pulley,” said Toby, “but we haven’t any power. At least, I suppose we might use the tractor. But what do you want to do?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Dora. Her face was cupped in her hands, her eyes shining. “Surprise everybody. Make a miracle. James said the age of miracles wasn’t over.”

Toby looked dubious. “If it’s important,” he said,“oughtn’t we just to tell the others?”

“They’ll know soon enough,” said Dora. “We won’t do any harm. But it would be such a marvellous surprise. Suppose – oh, well, I wonder – suppose, suppose we were to substitute the old bell for the new bell somehow, you know, when the new bell arrives next week? They’re going to have the bell veiled, and unveil it at the Abbey gate. Think of the sensation when they find the medieval bell underneath the veil! Why, it would be wonderful, it would be like a real miracle, the sort of thing that makes people go on pilgrimages!”

“But it would be just a trick,” said Toby. “And besides, the bell may be all broken and damaged. And anyway it’s too difficult.”

“Nothing is too difficult,” said Dora. “I feel this was meant for us. I should like to shake everybody up a bit. They’d get a colossal surprise – and then they’d be so pleased at having the bell, it would be like an unexpected present. Don’t you think?”

“Wouldn’t it be – somehow in bad taste?” said Toby.

“When something’s fantastic enough and marvellous enough it can’t be in bad taste,” said Dora. “In the end, it would give everyone a lift. It would certainly give me a lift! Are you game?”

Toby began to laugh. He said, “It’s a most extraordinary idea. But I’m sure we couldn’t manage it.”

“With an engineer to help me,” said Dora, “I can do anything.” And indeed as she stood there in the moonlight, looking at the quiet water, she felt as if by the sheer force of her will she could make the great bell rise. After all, and after her own fashion, she would fight. In this holy community she would play the witch.