Urged by Paul she got up just in time for breakfast at seven-thirty. The refectory of the community was the big room on the ground floor between the two stone staircases, with its doors opening on to the gravel terrace. Meals were taken in silence at Imber. At lunch and high tea one of the community read aloud during the meal, but this was not the custom at breakfast. Dora was pleased with the silence, which excused her from effort, except for such as was involved in the gesturing, pointing, and smiling, a certain amount of which went on, initiated especially by Mrs Mark and James. She consumed a good deal of tea and toast, looking out across the already baking terrace to where the lake could be seen fiercely glinting in the sun.
After breakfast Mrs Mark told Dora that she would find time during the morning to show her round the house and the estate. She would fetch Dora from her room soon after ten. Paul, who had meanwhile been at the telephone, came back with the good news that the suitcase had been found and was being returned to the railway station. Someone in the carriage had observed Dora’s forgetfulness. The sun hat, however, was not to be traced. Dora promised that she would go to the station before lunch and fetch the case. This seemed to Paul an appropriate arrangement, and he disappeared in the direction of the Abbey to get on with his work. Mrs Mark would be sure to bring Dora to see him, he said, in the course of her tour. Paul was gentle this morning, and Dora became more positively aware that he was very glad indeed that she had come back. Quite simply and immediately she was pleased to have pleased him, and that and the sunshine and some indomitable vitality in her made her feel almost gay. She picked a few wild flowers in the grass near the lake and went back up to her room to wait for Mrs Mark.
As Dora looked round the room it occurred to her how nice it was to live once more in a confined space which one was free to organize, with small resources, as one pleased. The bare room brought back to her nostalgic memories of the various digs she had lived in in London before she met Paul, shabby bed-sitting rooms in Bayswater and Pimlico and Notting Hill, which it had given her so much pleasure to embellish with posters and more or less crazy items of interior decoration created at small cost by herself or her friends. Paul’s flat in Knightsbridge, which at first had so much dazzled her, seemed later by contrast as lifeless as a museum. But on this room at Imber, Paul had made no mark. He had informed Dora that all rooms were to be swept daily and he now delegated this function to her. She had already discovered the place on the landing where the brushes were kept and had swept the room meticulously. She made the beds and tidied Paul’s things, with caution, into neat piles. She arranged the wild flowers into a careful bouquet and put them into a tooth mug which she had filched from the bathroom. They looked charming. She wondered what else she could do to make the room look nice.
There was a knock on the door and Mrs Mark came in. Dora jumped, having forgotten all about her.
“So sorry to have kept you waiting,” said Mrs Mark.“Ready for our little tour?”
“Oh yes, thank you!” said Dora, seizing her jacket which she threw loosely round her shoulders.
“I hope you don’t mind my saying so,” said Mrs Mark,“but we never have flowers in the house.” She looked censoriously at Dora’s nosegay. “We keep everything here as plain as possible. It’s a little austerity we practise.”
“Oh dear!” said Dora, blushing. “I’ll throw them out. I didn’t know.”
“Don’t do that,” said Mrs Mark magnanimously. “Keep those ones. I thought I should tell you, though, for next time. I feel sure you’d rather be treated like one of us, wouldn’t you, and keep the rules of the house? It’s not like a hotel and we do expect our guests to fit in – and I think that’s what they like best too.”
“Of course,” said Dora, still extremely confused,“I’m so sorry!”
“You see, we don’t normally allow any son of personal decoration in the rooms,” said Mrs Mark. “We try to imitate the monastic life in certain ways as closely as we can. We believe it’s a sound discipline to give up that particular sort of self-expression. It’s a small sacrifice, after all, isn’t it?”
“Yes, indeed!” said Dora.
“You’ll soon get used to our little ways,” said Mrs Mark. “I do hope you’ll enjoy it here. Paul has fitted in so well-we all quite love him. Shall we go along? I’m afraid I haven’t a great deal of time.”
She led the way out of the door. “I expect you know the geography of the house roughly by now,” said Mrs Mark. “The members of the community sleep right at the top of the house in this wing, in what used to be servants’ bedrooms. The main rooms on your floor are all kept as guest bedrooms. We act, you know, as a sort of unofficial guest house for the Abbey. We hope to develop that side of our activities very much in the future. At present there are still a lot of rooms which we haven’t even been able to furnish. The other wing is completely empty. Directly below us on the ground floor are the kitchen quarters at the back of the house, and the big ground-floor room on the corner in the front of the house is the general estate office. Then in the middle, as you know, there’s the refectory underneath the balcony, and two little rooms up above, set back behind the portico, which act as offices for James and Michael. And at the back there’s the historic Long Room, a great feature of the house, which is two stories high. We’ve made that into our chapel.”
As she talked Mrs Mark led Dora along a corridor, past the dark well of a back stairway, into a larger corridor and threw open a large door. They entered the chapel, this time from the end opposite the altar. In the bright daylight the room looked, Dora thought, even more derelict, like an aftermath of amateur theatricals. Though scrupulously clean, it appeared dusty and as if the walls were dissolving into powder. The hessian cloth reminded Dora of school.
“It’s not a proper chapel, of course,” said Mrs Mark, not lowering her voice. “That is, it’s not consecrated. But we have our own little regular services here. We go over to the Abbey chapel for Mass, and those who wish to can attend at certain other hours as well. And we have a special Sunday morning service here at which an address is given by a member of the community.”
They went out by the other door and emerged a moment later into the stone-flagged entrance hall. Mrs Mark threw open the door of the common-room. Modern upholstered chairs with arms of light-varnished wood stood in a neat circle, incongruous against the dark panelling.
“This is the only room we’ve really furnished,” said Mrs Mark.”We come here in our recreation time and we like to be comfy. The oak panelling isn’t original, of course. It was put in in the late nineteenth century when this was the smoking-room.
They emerged on to the balcony and began to descend the right-hand stone staircase.
“There’s the general office,” said Mrs Mark, indicating the windows of the large corner room. “You’ll see my husband working inside.”
They approached one of the windows and looked into the light room, which was furnished with trestle tables and unpainted deal cupboards, and seemed to be full of papers, all neatly stacked. Behind one of the tables sat Mark Straf-ford, his head bowed.
“He does the accounts,” said Mrs Mark. She watched him for a moment with a sort of curiosity which struck Dora as being devoid of tenderness. She did not tap on the window, but turned away. “Now we’ll cross to the Abbey”, she said, “and call on Paul.”
Seeing Mrs Mark watching her husband, and seeing her now a little stout and perspiring in her faded girlish summer dress, Dora felt a first flicker of liking and interest, and asked,“What did you and your husband do before you came here?” Dora, when she thought of it, never minded asking questions.
“You’ll think me an awful wet blanket,” said Mrs Mark, “but, do you know, we never discuss our past lives here. That’s another little religious rule that we try to follow. No gossip. And when you come to think of it, when people ask each other questions about their lives, their motives are rarely pure, are they? I’m sure mine never are! Curiosity that is idle soon degenerates into malice. I do hope you understand. Mind the steps here, they’re a bit overgrown.”