But her more immediate thoughts concerned the bell. It was too late now to hope to keep everything dark. Was there any way of making the revelation less absurd, less damaging to Imber? Nick had told the story as if the projected miracle were the work of someone within the community; and this would probably be how it would appear: a crackbrained stratagem arising out of some schism in a society of lunatics. Yet it was she, and she only, who was responsible. How could that be made clear? Should she make a statement to the press? How did one make a statement to the press? She turned to the bell for help.
She pressed her palm gently against it as if supplicating. The bell moved very slightly. She steadied it and stood with both her hands upon it. Attending to it, she was struck again by the marvel of its resurrection and she felt reverence for it, almost love. When she thought how she had drawn it out of the lake and lifted it back into its own airy element she was amazed and felt suddenly unworthy. How could the great bell have suffered her to drag it here so unceremoniously and make it begin its new life in an out-house? She should not have tampered with it. She ought by rights to be afraid of it. She was afraid of it. She took her hands off it abruptly.
The hissing of the rain continued all round her, very soft, making an artificial silence more deep than real silence could be. The floor of the barn about her feet was sticky with the water that was still steadily dripping from her garments. Dora stood tense and listening. She put her ear near to the bell as if she half expected to hear it murmur like a shell that holds the echo of the sea. But from all the sound that lay asleep in that great cone not the faintest sigh was audible. The bell was quiet. Fascinated, Dora knelt down on the ground and thrust her arm inside it. It was black inside and alarmingly like an inhabited cave. Very lightly she touched the great clapper, hanging profoundly still in the interior. The feeling of fear had not left her and she withdrew hastily and switched the torch on. The squat figures faced her from the sloping surface of the bronze, solid, simple, beautiful, absurd, full to the brim with something which was to the artist not an object of speculation or imagination. These scenes had been more real to him than his own childhood and more familiar. He had reported them faithfully. They were familiar to Dora too, as in the light of the electric torch she looked at them again.
When she had walked slowly all round the bell she switched the light off. She was ready to drop with tiredness, chilled and stiff with the rain. It was all too difficult; she must go back to bed. But she knew this was impossible. She could not leave things wretchedly like this, unsolved and unmended; she could not leave the bell ambiguously to be the subject of malicious and untrue stories. As if it alone held the solution she could not bring herself to leave it, though tears of exhaustion and helplessness were warming her frozen cheeks. She had communed with it now for too long and was under its spell. She had thought to be its master and make it her plaything, but now it was mastering her and would have its will.
Dora stood beside it in the darkness breathing hard. A thrill of terror and excitement went through her, a premonition of the act before she consciously knew what the act would be. Vaguely there came back to her a memory of something that had been said: the truth-telling voice that must not be silenced. If it was necessary to accuse herself, the means were certainly at hand. But her need was deeper than this. She reached her hand out again towards the bell.
She pushed it a little and it moved. It was not difficult to move it. She felt rather than heard the clapper moving inside the cone, not yet touching the sides. The bell oscillated faintly, still almost motionless. Dora took off her mackintosh. She stood a moment longer in the darkness feeling with her hand how the great thing was shuddering quietly before her. Then suddenly with all her might she hurled herself against it.
The bell gave before her so that she almost fell, and the clapper met the side with a roar which made her cry out, it was so close and so terrible. She sprang back and let the bell return. The clapper touched on the other side, more lightly. Taking the rhythm Dora threw herself again upon the receding surface and then stood clear. A tremendous boom arose as the bell, now freely swinging, gave tongue to its utmost. It returned, its great shape scarcely visible, a huge moving piece of darkness. Dora touched it again. It was only necessary now to keep it swinging. The thunderous noise continued, bellowing out in a voice that had been silent for centuries that some great thing was newly returned to the world. The clamour arose, distinctive, piercing, amazing, audible at the Court, at the Abbey, in the village, and along the road, so the story was told later, for many many miles in either direction.
Dora was so astounded, so almost annihilated at the wonder of it, and by the sheer noise, that she was oblivious of everything except her task of keeping the bell ringing. She did not hear the sound of approaching voices and stood dazed and vacant when some twenty minutes later a large number of people came running into the barn and crowded about her.
CHAPTER 23
BY the time Dora arrived the first part of the ceremony was over and the procession was about to start. It was about twenty minutes past seven. The rain had stopped and the sun shone through a thin curtain of white cloud, diffusing a chilly pale golden light. A white mist curled upon the surface of the lake, concealing the water, the top of the causeway just visible above it.
Dora had slept. Hustled back to the Court by Mrs Mark she had fallen into bed and become instantly unconscious. She woke again about seven and immediately remembered the procession. As she listened she could hear the distant sound of music. Things must have begun already. Paul was not to be seen. She dressed hastily, scarcely knowing why she felt it so very important to be present. Her memories of the night were confused and dreadful, like drunken memories. She recalled being dazzled by the light of torches, and seeing the bell, still swinging, revealed in their beams. A lot of people had surrounded her, pulling her, questioning her. Someone had put a coat over her shoulders. Paul had been there too, but he had said nothing to her, he was too transported at seeing the bell. He had not come back to their bedroom, so she assumed that he was still in the barn. They had divided the night’s vigil between them.
Dora felt stiff and unspeakably hungry and miserable in a blank exhausted way. The air smelt of disaster. She put on her warmest clothes and went out onto the landing from which a window on the front of the house would command a view of the proceedings. An astonishing scene awaited her. Several hundred people, all completely silent, were standing in front of the house. They covered the terrace, crowded on the steps and balcony, and lined several deep the path towards the causeway. They had the expectant silence which falls during a ceremony when singing or speaking has momentarily stopped. They stood there silent in the early morning, giving to the scene that sense of drama which is always present when many people are ceremonially gathered in the open air. They were all looking towards the bell.
The Bishop, dressed in full regalia, with mitre and crook, faced the bell which was still in place on the terrace. Behind him a number of little girls, clutching recorders, were trying to get out of the way of a number of little boys, wearing surplices, who were being hustled forward by Father Bob Joyce. The Bishop stood with evident patience, like a kindly man interrupted, and without turning round while the silent scuffle continued. The Bishop, as it turned out afterwards, knew nothing of the night’s events. With his good ear plunged deep in the pillow he had not been roused by the clangour, nor had anyone chosen to tell him, so early in the morning, so improbable a story.