The Bell - Iris Murdoch [29]
'I have no troubles which I care to discuss,' said Dora. She was rigid with hostility, shuddering at these phrases. She'd see the place in hell before she'd let a nun meddle with her mind and heart. They retreated into the corridor.
'Think it over anyway,' said Mrs Mark. 'Perhaps it's the sort of idea that takes some getting used to. Now we'll call on Paul. He works down there in the last parlour.'
Mrs Mark knocked and opened the door revealing a room similar to the first one, only furnished with a large table at which Paul was working. The gauze screen was closed.
Paul and Dora were glad to see each other. Paul looked up from the table and fixed a beaming smile upon his wife. His delight whenever she found him at his studies had always struck Dora as childish and touching. She was pleased now to see him so importantly at work, and immediately felt proud of him, regaining her vision of him as a distinguished man, how obviously superior, she felt, to Mark Strafford and those other drearies. Dora's capacity to forget and to live in the moment, while it more frequently landed her in grave trouble, made her also responsive without calculation to the returning glow of kindness. That she had no memory made her generous.
She was unrevengeful and did not brood; and in the instant as she crossed the room it was as if there had never been any trouble between them.
'These are some of the manuscripts I'm working on,' Paul was saying in a low voice. 'They're very precious and I'm not allowed to take them away.' He was leaning over the table and opening several large leather-bound volumes with thick and brightly illuminated pages for Dora to see. 'Here are the early chronicles of the nunnery. They're unique of their kind. This is called a "chartulary", which contains copies of charters and legal documents. And here is the famous Imber Psalter. See these fantastic initial letters, and the animals running up the side of the page? And this is a picture of the Abbey as it was in 1400.'
Dora saw a complex of white castellated buildings against a background of very leafy green trees and blue sky. 'I suppose it wasn't really so white,' she said. 'It looks more like Italy. However does all that gold stuff stay on? Why, there's the old tower!'
'Sssh!' said Paul. 'Yes, that's the tower that still exists. It's a very formalized picture of course. And here's the Bishop who founded the place holding a model of the Abbey in his hand. You get a better idea of the lay-out from that. The modern Abbey follows the ground-plan of the old one, though of course they haven't attempted to reproduce the medieval buildings. That section still survives as well as the tower. In this old Book of Evidences you can see—'
'We mustn't keep you too long,' said Mrs Mark. 'And I must show Dora the chapel and buzz her round the market garden and get back to my own jobs.'
Paul was disappointed. 'I'll show you more tomorrow,' he said, and squeezed Dora's arm as she turned away.
Dora, who would like to have stayed, gave him a rueful smile behind Mrs Mark's retreating back. She was already determining how she would mock that lady when she was once more alone with Paul. Mockery did not come easily to Dora, and had to be thought out beforehand. Her jests at other people's expense were often a trifle laboured. She followed Mrs Mark now, smiling to herself, and cheered too by the ease of her complicity with Paul.
Mrs Mark took the last few steps along the corridor and entered a little vestibule with two doors, one opening into the garden and the other into the chapel. She opened the inner door and propelled Dora through it into an almost complete blackness. As she strained her eyes to see, Dora was conscious of Mrs Mark vigorously genuflecting beside her. Then she began to be aware that she was in a small box-like room with a highly polished parquet floor, some religious prints on the walls,