They had been alone now for nearly a fortnight. Peter was the last to go; and even his departure was to Michael a relief. As for the others, his relations with them had become irrevocably wrenched and painful. Mark treated him with a clumsy kindness, but could not help being both curious and patronizing. While James followed him about with a look of such desperate compassion that he was quite glad for James’s own sake when the latter departed to London. Although neither James nor Mark knew the details of Michael’s history their imagination had been set in motion, and he had been unable to conceal from them his violent excesses of grief during the days following Nick’s death. Their strange looks showed that they had drawn some conclusions of their own, and by the time they left their presence at Imber had become a torture to Michael. Dora’s being there, on the other hand, did not trouble him at all. She was useful, she knew nothing, she guessed nothing, and she did not judge.
Dora, once she had made up her mind to stay, created her own role with energy; though even then there were one or two minor escapades. The beginning of October brought a spell of hot weather, and Dora announced that she proposed to learn to swim. By the time that anyone got around to telling her not to, since no one had time to supervise her and she must not go out alone, she had practically taught herself. She turned out, when put to it, to be a natural swimmer, buoyant and fearless in the water. Peter, and later Michael, went along occasionally to view her efforts and give some advice, and before the warm weather ended she had mastered the art quite adequately.
On Margaret’s departure, Mark Strafford had taken over the cooking. Dora soon ousted him, however, and made up in zeal for what she lacked in talent. Her efforts were appreciated and she obviously enjoyed what she was doing. But the halcyon days for Dora came after the others had all gone, when she reigned undisputed over Imber. She took especial pleasure in Michael’s domestic helplessness, and told him that she was delighted to cook for a man who didn’t think he could cook better than she could. She kept the house reasonably clean and the office orderly and searched the gardens to find, in forgotten and uncultivated corners, autumn flowers that had been left there growing wild, and filled the hall and common-room with great bunches of dewy michaelmas daisies and aromatic chrysanthemums which brought back to Michael memories of childhood holidays spent at Imber.
Gradually the place was stripped. The market-garden was sold as it stood to a neighbouring farmer, and a good deal of the produce was lifted and removed at once. Bit by bit the furniture disappeared from the house, some of it returned by removal van to people who had lent it, some of it trundled vigorously away by Sister Ursula on a handcart to be taken into the Abbey. The causeway had been mended. The new bell had been lifted by crane out of the lake and unceremoniously bundled into the enclosure. It had by now been erected in the old tower, and announced its elevation in clear tones which reached Michael and Dora one morning as they were sitting at breakfast.
A curious dream-like peace descended on Imber. The distinction of days was unclear. Meals were served at odd times and often sat over lengthily. When the sun shone the doors were opened and the heavy table pulled out onto the gravel. The mornings were hazy, the afternoons damp and mellow, and the garden, with its dark lines of upturned earth, was oppressively silent. At night it was cold and the sky was clear and wintry with premonitions of frost. The owls hooted closer to the house. The sedge warblers were gone. And returning late from the chapel Michael would see the light blazing on the balcony and hear across the water the music of Mozart, played upon the gramophone by Dora who was showing a sudden new enthusiasm for classical music.
During this time a curious relationship grew up between Michael and Dora, something undefined and wistful which had for Michael a certain ease and douceur. Perhaps this was possible only because they both knew that the time was short. Amid many subjects of reflection Michael managed to wonder about Dora’s future; and after a little time had passed he raised with her the subject of whether she oughtn’t to go back to London.
Dora, when questioned, showed herself but too eager to discuss the whole matter with him, and so they discussed it. She told him that she had decided that there was no point in her returning to Paul, at any rate at present. She would only run away again. It was inevitable that Paul should bully her and that she should vacillate between submitting through fear and resisting through resentment. She was plain that things were mostly her fault and that she should never have married Paul at all. As things were, she felt that she would never manage to live with Paul until she could treat with him, in some sense, as an equal; and she had no taste for trying to improve her status by becoming precipitately and in her present state of mind the mother of his children. She felt intensely the need and somehow now the capacity to live and work on her own and become, what she had never been, an independent grown-up person. These views she uttered to Michael rather anxiously and apologetically, clearly expecting him to tell her that she ought to go back to her husband.
Occupying his mind as best he could with the problem of Dora, Michael felt no inclination to recall her sharply to her duties as a wife. He realized that his present views were perhaps heterodox, his vision distorted and his powers of judgement diseased. But he reflected again, and the picture seemed the same. When Dora said to him, her voice shaking with emotion, that“everything to do with Paul was just the kiss of death”, Michael saw with a dreary clarity what things would be like if she did return. Paul was much to be pitied, but he was a violent and bullying man, and although it was true that Dora ought never to have married him it was equally true that he ought never to have married Dora. Michael confined himself to pointing out to Dora that she did, after all, in some sense love Paul, and that her being married to him was a very important fact. It was also important that Paul loved her and needed her. Whatever plans she made for the immediate future she should keep alive the hope that she might return to Paul later if he should still wish it. Running away was worthless unless she could find herself a way of life which had dignity and independence, and in which she could win the strength needed to make her able to treat with Paul equally and stop being afraid of him.
What that way of life could be they discussed in the most practical terms. Dora had told Michael in a half amused way about her mystical experience in the National Gallery. Michael suggested that she should return to her painting; and Dora agreed, while insisting, as Michael indeed suspected, that she had a very meagre talent. Perhaps she could find a teaching job which would leave her time to go to an art school? Perhaps she could get back the scholarship which she had relinquished when she married Paul. The problem of where and how she could live arose too. Michael advised her to leave London. Dora at first declared that life out of London was impossible, but later saw the point of the idea and even found it rather exciting. When the discussion had reached this stage a providential letter arrived from Dora’s friend Sally, to say that Sally had got a good job as an art teacher at a school in Bath, and had got her hands on quite a decent flat, and did Dora know anyone in Bath who might help her to find someone to share the flat? It then became obvious that Dora must go to Bath, and Michael conducted some correspondence for her to see if she could get a grant to help her to complete her studies in that city. A very small grant was forthcoming, together with some suggestions about primary school-teaching. This suited Dora excellently and ecstatic telephone calls passed between her and Sally.