The Bell

The boom of the bell awakens Michael, and he decides to go out and investigate. In the darkness, he soon sees another person moving about and comes across Paul, who is frantically looking for Dora. Paul tells Michael that he has heard the bell as well and that there is a legend about a ghostly bell portending death. Following Paul, Michael goes to the Lodge, both men wanting to see whether Toby is in his room.

At the Lodge, they find Nick alone, drinking. Paul rushes off to search Toby’s room and, finding it empty, leaves the building. Michael and Nick face each other, and after a moment of tense silence, Nick tells him that Toby is in the woods making love to Dora. Michael leaves, saying, “[I]t’s no business of mine” (227).

The following morning Michael relates last night’s events to James, saying that Paul went back to the house and found Dora in their room. They are awaiting the arrival of the bell and, later in the day, the Bishop, who is to stay the night for the next day’s ceremony. James calls Dora an emotionally immature “bitch” and Paul “a dreadful alarmist and a chronically jealous man” (229). As he muses whether Mrs. Mark could talk sense into Dora, Mrs. Strafford rushes in with an invitation from the Abbess for Michael to visit her immediately.

As Michael heads to the convent, he sees the huge lorry arriving, but the idea of the new bell leaves him cold because he dreads the conversation with the Abbess, Mother Clare. The nun tells him they are all excited about the bell and the ceremony and checks the progress of an appeal for financial help from Friends of the Convent. She also tells Michael she worries about him and about his “young friend at the Lodge” (233). Frightened, Michael at first believes she knows about Toby but then realizes she is talking about Nick, and he vows to attempt to help him. The Abbess invites Michael to tell her about Nick, but he feels he cannot. She tells him that “The way is always forward, never back” and leaves (235), while Michael remains, pondering.

After a sleepless night, Dora is helping Mrs. Mark decorate the newly arrived bell while waiting for the Bishop. She is preoccupied with her plan, feeling like a “priestess, dedicated now to a rite which made mere personal relations unimportant” (237). Paul, however, has spent the whole day trailing her, so she has not been able to communicate to Toby when they should next meet—she has written him a note to meet at two o’clock, but she has not been able to deliver it.

The women dress the bell in white cloth that resembles a nightgown or a wedding dress, but the high wind makes it almost impossible to fix all the trimmings to it. As Mrs. Mark begins to admonish Dora for her worldly behavior, a car arrives, but instead of the Bishop, it is Noel Spens, who has come to cover the story of the new bell and see Dora. She begs him to leave, but he refuses to bend to her will, telling her that where Paul is concerned, “You must either knuckle under completely or else fight him” (244).

Desperate, Dora runs to find Michael to help her deal with Paul; she finds him in his room with Toby sitting at his feet, their hands almost touching. The boy quickly leaves, and Dora and Michael head out to find Paul. Dora finds him first and tells him about Noel, causing an outburst of anger. At the same moment, Michael approaches them, and the Bishop arrives in a Rolls Royce.

All the community gathers to greet the Bishop except for Michael and Paul, who are still talking and only approach as the Bishop prepares to baptize the new bell, Michael and Catherine serving as godparents. During the ceremony, Dora finds herself between Paul and Noel. Paul grabs her hand, and as she tries to free herself, she begins to laugh hysterically. She reaches for a handkerchief with her other hand and her note to Toby falls out, only for Noel to pick it up. The rain begins to fall.

Toby regrets having involved himself in Dora’s plan, but he wishes to be of service to her. He longs to see her yet avoids her. He also has started to feel sorry for Michael while worrying about Michael’s opinion of him. He decides to go see Michael, and as he enters his room, Michael greets him with joy. As if in trance, Toby sits by Michel’s feet and takes his hand, which is when Dora interrupts them.

Toby spends the rest of the day mostly on his own, gathering courage to find Dora and tell her he cannot go through with the plan. Drenched with rain, he goes to the Lodge to change, where Nick accosts him and forces him to listen to his “sermon” on how one must embrace their sins and live with them. He reveals that he knows everything about Toby and Michael and Dora, including the plan about the bell, and he tells Toby that if he does not confess his mistakes to James at once, he will do it himself tomorrow. Toby runs off into the night.

At 2:30 a.m., Dora is waiting by the bell, hoping Toby will arrive even though she has failed to leave him word. She has spent some time cleaning the bell but has given up against centuries of muck. She ponders that since Noel has found her note, he must believe it was meant for him and might be waiting for her at the Lodge. She runs to the Lodge and, shocked, witnesses Nick and Noel drinking together and talking about the attempt by two “anonymous” individuals to substitute the old bell for the new one. As Noel calls Imber a “crackpot community” and confirms he will report on the events, Dora realizes for the first time what consequences her actions and plans could have and understands that to the outsider her ideas will seem “ludicrous or sinister” (265). She runs back to the barn, thinking that she has underestimated the power of the bell and that she should fear it rather than use it as an elaborate practical joke. In a moment of strange clarity—almost a trance—she hurls herself against the bell and starts it ringing. She moves with the bell, and the sound of booming fills the air for miles around.