The Bell - Iris Murdoch [19]
'Come, Dora,' said Paul again:
'Yes,' said Dora. She switched the light out and marched towards his bed.
CHAPTER 4
The moon was rising. Toby Gashe stood with his feet almost in the water looking across the lake at the wall of the Abbey. Behind him various lights had gone on in the big house. He was waiting to be conducted to the place where he was to sleep. It was with some disappointment that he discovered that he was not to live in Imber Court itself, but in the Lodge cottage, with another member of the community whom he had not yet met. He would have liked to stay in the beautiful house and be with the others. He felt shy at the thought of another encounter, and a little alarmed at the idea of being cloistered with one person.
Toby, whose parents lived in north London, had been at a day school, which gave him a slight sense of inferiority together with a thoroughly romantic conception of community hf e. When James Tayper Pace, who was friendly with one of his masters, had come to give an address in the school chapel and had spoken of Imber, Toby had conceived a passionate desire to go there. He had been, ever since his fairly recent confirmation, a keen practising Christian, and filled with an as yet undirected desire to dedicate his life. He was greatly attracted by the idea of living and working, for a while at least, with a group of holy people who had given up the world. The Imber community, which had not existed for very long and was still in an experimental stage, worked on the land, running the small market garden which supplied the needs of the Abbey and left some produce over for sale. Something clean, simple, and vigorous about the whole conception moved Toby very much. His ecclesiastical experience had been narrow, and he was fired by the dramatic idea, new upon his horizon, of the monastic life. He was also impressed by the personality of James Tayper Pace, with his combination of masculine vitality and Christian candour.
Toby petitioned to be allowed to visit Imber. To his great joy he had been told that he might come and work there for a month during his final summer holiday before Oxford, where he was due to go in October as an engineering student. His imagination had been busy beforehand, conjuring up some exceedingly close-knit complex of human brotherhood into which he would snugly fit, humble and industrious, edified and strengthened for his life ahead by the company and example of unworldly persons. He was therefore a little dashed to find that he was after all to live apart; but quickly resolved to conquer his disappointment with an ardent cheerfulness. It was not difficult. Gaiety and energy and hope filled him, at this moment in his life, to overflowing.
In a minute or two he would go in again. Michael Meade had asked him to wait for a while until someone was free to take him down to the Lodge. He looked about him in the moonlight, getting his bearings. Over there behind the house must be the market garden. Toby was a town boy, and everything to do with the countryside had for him a profound, almost spiritual significance. Of sun and wind and hard physical work and human companionship he felt he could never have too much. Given a spade and told to dig up an entire field he would think himself in heaven. He stretched out both his arms above his head, extending his body to test its elasticity. He remembered being told that one never sufficiently realizes at the time the wonder of being young. This was not true in his case. He was privileged to be aware of his youth and to enjoy it in a series of present moments crammed full with intense experience.
He looked in the other direction across the lake. His eyes followed the Abbey wall away to the right where it seemed to end or perhaps turned backward into the trees. To his left he could