Dora was beginning to lose interest. It was all too abstract. She had come to the little service out of curiosity and placed herself at the back where she could see all the congregation. Paul was sitting beside her, which was. unfortunate. She would have liked to be able to survey him too. He kept glancing at her, and at one point drew his foot up to hers till she could feel his highly polished shoe touching her instep through the sandal. She saw from the corner of her eye the soft blur of his moustaches, the bird-like movements of his head. She kept her gaze resolutely forward.
Dora felt restless and dejected. In spite of certain moments of satisfaction, when the warmth of the weather and the beauty of the scene lifted her above her anxieties, she had not been able to settle down at Imber. She still felt nervous and shy and as if she were acting a part. It was not that she disliked anyone, though she did find Michael and James, especially James, a bit alarming. Everyone was nice to her, she had an easy time, she didn’t even have to get up at what James called “shriekers”, which she discovered to mean crack, or shriek, of dawn. She ambled down a minute before breakfast. Sometimes she missed breakfast and scrounged a bite later on from the larder. She did nothing all day quite agreeably, without anyone looking askance. Even Mrs Mark seemed to have forgotten about her, and was quite surprised when Dora offered to help with this or that. Her only regular duty, besides doing her room, was washing up, and she could do this quite serenely in a dream. What nagged her however was a certain new sense of her inferiority; that, and the prospect of going home with Paul when all this, unnerving as it was, was over. Dora was not unused to feeling inferior. A vague sense of social inferiority, an uneasy lack of savoir faire, was normal to her. But what she felt at Imber bit deeper, in a way which she at times resented. Often it seemed to her that the community were easily, casually even, judging her, placing her. The fact that so little was expected of her was itself significant. This was distressing. The sense that the judgement occurred without their thinking about it, that it happened automatically, simply as it were by juxtaposition, was still more distressing.
On the other hand, the prospects of escape were not rosy either. Dora missed London. She was surprised to find that she felt no urge to smoke or drink at Imber. She had slunk down to the White Lion once or twice in the first days; but it was a long way and the weather was forbiddingly hot. She had drunk a little of her whisky from the tooth mug in her bedroom. But these little celebrations had a surreptitious and dreary quality which had her soon discouraged. She did not like drinking alone. She noted with pleasure, and it was her only solid consolation, that as a result of this abstention and because of the sobriety of her diet she was becoming a little thinner. The trouble was that the return to London would be so far from gay. Paul was within sight of the end of his work. He was speaking of going home; and he glowed with a palpable determination to take his wife back with him and instal her as one does an art treasure, clearing the scene, locking the door. His will arched over Dora like a canopy. It was not that she had any thought of not returning with Paul. After all, she had come back to him, and although their reunion was far from successful the calculations that had led to it remained solid. It was just that she could make no vision of herself back in London with Paul. She saw the flat in Knightsbridge, meticulous, exquisite, glowing with stripy wallpaper and toile de Jouy and old mahogany andobjets d”art, utterly alien and utterly dreary. She could not see herself in it. It was not that she intended anything at all. She simply did not believe in that future.
At this moment, however, Dora was not obsessed with thoughts such as these. She was studying the male members of the congregation to decide which were the most handsome. It was James, certainly, who bore the closest resemblance to a film star, so big, so curly-headed, and with that open powerful face. Toby had the best features and the most grace. Mark Strafford was rather striking, but men with beards had an unfair advantage. Michael had a very sweet face, like a worried dog, but was not dignified enough to be handsome. In the end, she concluded Paul was the best-looking of them alclass="underline" distinguished, dignified, noble. His face lacked serenity, however, it lacked radiance. It often looked distinctly bad-tempered. But then, as she sadly reflected, her husband was not a happy man.
Dora turned her attention to the women and got as far as Catherine. Catherine was sitting at the side near the front, easy to survey. She wore a neat grey Sunday frock, rather smart it occurred to Dora. The sort of frock that might be worn with an expensive hat at a luncheon party. Only here, somehow, it just looked simple. She had combed her hair, which made a spectacular difference to her appearance. The bun was worn low, firmly knotted, and the hair, pulled smoothly behind the ears, was glossy, undulating, refusing to look demure. Catherine was looking down and drooping her eyelids in a customary pose which seemed at times modest and at times secretive. Dora could see the bulge of the brow, the high arch of the cheek, the gentle yet somehow strong upward tilt of the nose. The natural pallor of the skin looked today more ivory than sallow. Dora looked at her with an admiration and a pleasure which were not un-tempered by the knowledge that this splendid piece was so soon to be withdrawn definitively from circulation.
The unconscious part of Dora’s mind which was still listening to James advised her that this bit was getting interesting again. She began to attend. “I cannot agree with Milton,” James was saying, “when he refuses to praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue. Virtue, innocence, should be valued whatever its history. It has a radiance which enlightens and purifies and which is not to be dimmed by foolish talk about the worth of experience. How false it is to tell our young people to seek experience! They should rather be told to value and to retain their innocence: that is enough of a task, enough of an adventure! And if we can keep our innocence for long enough, the gift of knowledge will be added to it, a deeper and more precise knowledge than any which is won by the tawdry methods of ‘experience’. Innocence in ourselves and others is to be prized, and woe to him who destroys it, as our Lord Himself has said. Matthew eighteen six.
“And what are the marks of innocence? Candour – a beautiful word – truthfulness, simplicity, a quite involuntary bearing of witness. The image that occurs to me here is a topical one, the image of a bell. A bell is made to speak out. What would be the value of a bell which was never rung? It rings out clearly, it bears witness, it cannot speak without seeming like a call, a summons. A great bell is not to be silenced. Consider too its simplicity. There is no hidden mechanism. All that it is is plain and open; and if it is moved it must ring.