"Mrs. de Winter, please don't think that," he said. "For my part I can't tell you how delighted I am that you have married Maxim. It will make all the difference to his life. I am positive that you will make a great success of it. From my point of view it's--it's very refreshing and charming to find someone like yourself who is not entirely--er--" he blushed, searching for a word "not entirely au fait, shall we say, with ways at Manderley. And if people around here give you the impression that they are criticizing you, it's--well--it's most damnably offensive of them, that's all. I've never heard a word of criticism, and if I did I should take great care that it was never uttered again."
"That's very sweet of you, Frank," I said, "and what you say helps enormously. I dare say I've been very stupid. I'm not good at meeting people, I've never had to do it, and all the time I keep remembering how--how it must have been at Manderley before, when there was someone there who was born and bred to it, did it all naturally and without effort. And I realize, every day, that things I lack, confidence, grace, beauty, intelligence, wit--Oh, all the qualities that mean most in a woman--she possessed. It doesn't help, Frank, it doesn't help."
He said nothing. He went on looking anxious, and distressed. He pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose. "You must not say that," he said.
"Why not? It's true," I said.
"You have qualities that are just as important, far more so, in fact. It's perhaps cheek of me to say so, I don't know you very well. I'm a bachelor, I don't know very much about women, I lead a quiet sort of life down here at Manderley as you know, but I should say that kindness, and sincerity, and--if I may say so--modesty are worth far more to a man, to a husband, than all the wit and beauty in the world."
He looked very agitated, and blew his nose again. I saw that I had upset him far more than I had upset myself, and the realization of this calmed me and gave me a feeling of superiority. I wondered why he was making such a fuss. After all, I had not said very much. I had only confessed my sense of insecurity, following as I did upon Rebecca. And she must have had these qualities that he presented to me as mine. She must have been kind and sincere, with all her friends, her boundless popularity. I was not sure what he meant by modesty. It was a word I had never understood. I always imagined it had something to do with minding meeting people in a passage on the way to the bathroom... Poor Frank. And Beatrice had called him a dull man, with never a word to say for himself.
"Well," I said, rather embarrassed, "well, I don't know about all that. I don't think I'm very kind, or particularly sincere, and as for being modest, I don't think I've ever had much of a chance to be anything else. It was not very modest, of course, being married hurriedly like that, down in Monte Carlo, and being alone there in that hotel, beforehand, but perhaps you don't count that?"
"My dear Mrs. de Winter, you don't think I imagine for one moment that your meeting down there was not entirely aboveboard?" he said in a low voice.
"No, of course not," I said gravely. Dear Frank. I think I had shocked him. What a Frankish expression, too, "aboveboard." It made one think immediately of the sort of things that would happen below board.
"I'm sure," he began, and hesitated, his expression still troubled, "I'm sure that Maxim would be very worried, very distressed, if he knew how you felt. I don't think he can have any idea of it."
"You won't tell him?" I said hastily.
"No, naturally not, what do you take me for? But you see, Mrs. de Winter, I know Maxim pretty well, and I've seen him through many... moods. If he thought you were worrying about--well--about the past, it would distress him more than anything on earth. I can promise you that. He's looking very well, very fit, but Mrs. Lacy was quite right the other day when she said he had been on the verge of a breakdown last year, though it was tactless of her to say so in front of him. That's why you are so good for him. You are fresh and young and--and sensible, you have nothing to do with all that time that has gone. Forget it, Mrs. de Winter, forget it, as he has done, thank heaven, and the rest of us. We none of us want to bring back the past. Maxim least of all. And it's up to you, you know, to lead us away from it. Not to take us back there again."
He was right, of course he was right. Dear good Frank, my friend, my ally. I had been selfish and hypersensitive, a martyr to my own inferiority complex. "I ought to have told you all this before," I said.
"I wish you had," he said. "I might have spared you some worry."
"I feel happier," I said, "much happier. And I've got you for my friend whatever happens, haven't I, Frank?"
"Yes, indeed," he said.
We were out of the dark wooded drive and into the light again. The rhododendrons were upon us. Their hour would soon be over. Already they looked a little overblown, a little faded. Next month the petals would fall one by one from the great faces, and the gardeners would come and sweep them away. Theirs was a brief beauty. Not lasting very long.
"Frank," I said, "before we put an end to this conversation, forever let's say, will you promise to answer me one thing, quite truthfully?"
He paused, looking at me a little suspiciously. "That's not quite fair," he said, "you might ask me something that I should not be able to answer, something quite impossible."
"No," I said, "it's not that sort of question. It's not intimate or personal, or anything like that."
"Very well, I'll do my best," he said.
We came round the sweep of the drive and Manderley was before us, serene and peaceful in the hollow of the lawns, surprising me as it always did, with its perfect symmetry and grace, its great simplicity.
The sunlight flickered on the mullioned windows, and there was a soft rusted glow about the stone walls where the lichen clung. A thin column of smoke curled from the library chimney. I bit my thumb nail, watching Frank out of the tail of my eye.
"Tell me," I said, my voice casual, not caring a bit, "tell me, was Rebecca very beautiful?"
Frank waited a moment. I could not see his face. He was looking away from me towards the house. "Yes," he said slowly, "yes, I suppose she was the most beautiful creature I ever saw in my life."
We went up the steps then to the hall, and I rang the bell for tea.
12
I did not see much of Mrs. Danvers. She kept very much to herself. She still rang the house telephone to the morning room every day and submitted the menu to me as a matter of form, but that was the limit of our intercourse. She had engaged a maid for me, Clarice, the daughter of somebody on the estate, a nice quiet well-mannered girl, who, thank heaven, had never been in service before and had no alarming standards. I think she was the only person in the house who stood in awe of me. To her I was the mistress: I was Mrs. de Winter. The possible gossip of the others could not affect her. She had been away for sometime, brought up by an aunt fifteen miles away, and in a sense she was as new to Manderley as I was. I felt at ease with her. I did not mind saying "Oh, Clarice, would you mend my stocking?"
The housemaid Alice had been so superior. I used to sneak my chemise and nightgowns out of my drawer and mend them myself rather than ask her to do them. I had seen her once, with one of my chemises over her arm, examining the plain material with its small edging of lace. I shall never forget her expression. She looked almost shocked, as though her own personal pride had received a blow. I had never thought about my underclothes before. As long as they were clean and neat I had not thought the material or the existence of lace mattered. Brides one read about had trousseaux, dozens of sets at a time, and I had never bothered. Alice's face taught me a lesson. I wrote quickly to a shop in London and asked for a catalogue of under-linen. By the time I had made my choice Alice was looking after me no longer and Clarice was installed instead. It seemed such a waste buying new underclothes for Clarice that I put the catalogue away in a drawer and never wrote to the shop after all.
I often wondered whether Alice told the others, and if my underclothes became a topic of conversation in the servants' hall, something rather dreadful, to b
e discussed in low tones when the men were nowhere about. She was too superior for it to be made a joking question. Phrases like "Chemise to you" would never be bandied between her and Frith, for instance.
No, my underclothes were more serious than that. More like a divorce case heard in camera... At any rate I was glad when Alice surrendered me to Clarice. Clarice would never know real lace from false. It was considerate of Mrs. Danvers to have engaged her. She must have thought we would be fit company, one for the other. Now that I knew the reason for Mrs. Danvers' dislike and resentment it made things a little easier. I knew it was not just me personally she hated, but what I represented. She would have felt the same towards anyone who had taken Rebecca's place. At least that was what I understood from Beatrice the day she came to lunch.
"Did not you know?" she had said; "she simply adored Rebecca."
The words had shocked me at the time. Somehow I had not expected them. But when I thought it over I began to lose my first fear of Mrs. Danvers. I began to be sorry for her. I could imagine what she must feel. It must hurt her every time she heard me called "Mrs. de Winter." Every morning when she took up the house telephone and spoke to me, and I answered "Yes, Mrs. Danvers," she must be thinking of another voice. When she passed through the rooms and saw traces of me about the place, a beret on a window seat, a bag of knitting on a chair, she must think of another one, who had done these things before. Even as I did. I, who had never known Rebecca. Mrs. Danvers knew how she walked and how she spoke. Mrs. Danvers knew the color of her eyes, her smile, the texture of her hair. I knew none of these things, I had never asked about them, but sometimes I felt Rebecca was as real to me as she was to Mrs. Danvers.
Frank had told me to forget the past, and I wanted to forget it. But Frank did not have to sit in the morning room as I did, every day, and touch the pen she had held between her fingers. He did not have to rest his hands on the blotter, and stare in front of him at her writing on the pigeonholes. He did not have to look at the candlesticks on the mantelpiece, the clock, the vase in which the flowers stood, the pictures on the walls and remember, every day, that they belonged to her, she had chosen them, they were not mine at all. Frank did not have to sit at her place in the dining room, hold the knife and fork that she had held, drink from her glass. He did not throw a coat over his shoulders which had been hers, nor find her handkerchief in the pocket. He did not notice, every day, as I did, the blind gaze of the old dog in its basket in the library, who lifted its head when it heard my footstep, the footstep of a woman, and sniffing the air drooped its head again, because I was not the one she sought.
Little things, meaningless and stupid in themselves, but they were there for me to see, for me to hear, for me to feel. Dear God, I did not want to think about Rebecca. I wanted to be happy, to make Maxim happy, and I wanted us to be together. There was no other wish in my heart but that. I could not help it if she came to me in thoughts, in dreams. I could not help it if I felt like a guest in Manderley, my home, walking where she had trodden, resting where she had lain. I was like a guest, biding my time, waiting for the return of the hostess. Little sentences, little reproofs reminding me every hour, every day.
"Frith," I said, coming into the library on a summer morning, my arms full of lilac, "Frith, where can I find a tall vase for these? They are all too small in the flower room."
"The white alabaster vase in the drawing room was always used for the lilac, Madam."
"Oh, wouldn't it be spoiled? It might get broken."
"Mrs. de Winter always used the alabaster vase, Madam."
"Oh, oh, I see."
Then the alabaster vase was brought for me, already filled with water, and as I put the sweet lilac in the vase and arranged the sprigs, one by one, the mauve warm scent filling the room, mingling with the smell of the new-mown lawn outside coming from the open window, I thought: "Rebecca did this. She took the lilac, as I am doing, and put the sprigs one by one in the white vase. I'm not the first to do it. This is Rebecca's vase, this is Rebecca's lilac." She must have wandered out into the garden as I did, in that floppy garden hat that I had seen once at the back of the cupboard in the flower room, hidden under some old cushions, and crossed the lawn to the lilac bushes, whistling perhaps, humming a tune, calling to the dogs to follow her, carrying in her hands the scissors that I carried now.
"Frith, could you move that book-stand from the table in the window, and I will put the lilac there?"
"Mrs. de Winter always had the alabaster vase on the table behind the sofa, Madam."
"Oh, well..." I hesitated, the vase in my hands, Frith's face impassive. He would obey me of course if I said I preferred to put the vase on the smaller table by the window. He would move the book-stand at once.
"All right," I said, "perhaps it would look better on the larger table." And the alabaster vase stood, as it had always done, on the table behind the sofa...
Beatrice remembered her promise of a wedding present. A large parcel arrived one morning, almost too large for Robert to carry. I was sitting in the morning room, having just read the menu for the day. I have always had a childish love of parcels. I snipped the string excitedly, and tore off the dark brown paper. It looked like books. I was right. It was books. Four big volumes. A History of Painting. And a sheet of notepaper in the first volume saying "I hope this is the sort of thing you like," and signed "Love from Beatrice." I could see her going into the shop in Wigmore Street and buying them. Looking about her in her abrupt, rather masculine way. "I want a set of books for someone who is keen on Art," she would say, and the attendant would answer, "Yes, Madam, will you come this way." She would finger the volumes a little suspiciously. "Yes, that's about the price. It's for a wedding present. I want them to look good. Are these all about Art?" "Yes, this is the standard work on the subject," the assistant would say. And then Beatrice must have written her note, and paid her check, and given the address "Mrs. de Winter, Manderley."
It was nice of Beatrice. There was something rather sincere and pathetic about her going off to a shop in London and buying me these books because she knew I was fond of painting. She imagined me, I expect, sitting down on a wet day and looking solemnly at the illustrations, and perhaps getting a sheet of drawing-paper and a paint-box and copying one of the pictures. Dear Beatrice. I had a sudden, stupid desire to cry. I gathered up the heavy volumes and looked round the morning room for somewhere to put them. They were out of place in that fragile delicate room. Never mind, it was my room now, after all. I arranged them in a row on the top of the desk. They swayed dangerously, leaning one against the other. I stood back a bit, to watch the effect. Perhaps I moved too quickly, and it disturbed them. At any rate the foremost one fell, and the others slid after him. They upset a little china cupid who had hitherto stood alone on the desk except for the candlesticks. He fell to the ground, hitting the wastepaper basket as he did so, and broke into fragments. I glanced hurriedly at the door, like a guilty child. I knelt on the floor and swept up the pieces into my hand. I found an envelope to put them in. I hid the envelope at the back of one of the drawers in the desk. Then I took the books off to the library and found room for them on the shelves.
Maxim laughed when I showed them to him with pride.
"Dear old Bee," he said, "you must have had a success with her. She never opens a book if she can help it."
"Did she say anything about--well--what she thought of me?" I asked.
"The day she came to lunch? No, I don't think so."
"I thought she might have written or something."
"Beatrice and I don't correspond unless there's a major event in the family. Writing letters is a waste of time," said Maxim.
I supposed I was not a major event. Yet if I had been Beatrice, and had a brother, and the brother married, surely one would have said something, expressed an opinion, written two words? Unless of course one had taken a dislike to the wife, or thought her unsuitable. Then of course it would be different. Still, Beatrice had taken th
e trouble to go up to London and to buy the books for me. She would not have done that if she disliked me.
It was the following day I remember, when Frith, who had brought in the coffee after lunch to the library, waited a moment, hovering behind Maxim, and said, "Could I speak to you, sir?" Maxim glanced up from his paper.
"Yes, Frith, what is it?" he said, rather surprised. Frith wore a stiff solemn expression, his lips pursed. I thought at once his wife had died.
"It's about Robert, sir. There has been a slight unpleasantness between him and Mrs. Danvers. Robert is very upset."
"Oh, Lord," said Maxim, making a face at me. I bent down to fondle Jasper, my unfailing habit in moments of embarrassment.
"Yes, sir. It appears Mrs. Danvers has accused Robert of secreting a valuable ornament from the morning room. It is Robert's business to bring in the fresh flowers to the morning room and place the vases. Mrs. Danvers went in this morning after the flowers had been done, and noticed one of the ornaments was missing. It was there yesterday, she said. She accused Robert of either taking the ornament or breaking it and concealing the breakage. Robert denied both accusations most emphatically, and came to me nearly in tears, sir. You may have noticed he was not himself at lunch."
"I wondered why he handed me the cutlets without giving me a plate," murmured Maxim. "I did not know Robert was so sensitive. Well, I suppose someone else did it. One of the maids."
"No, sir. Mrs. Danvers went into the room before the girl had done the room. Nobody had been there since Madam yesterday, and Robert first thing with the flowers. It makes it very unpleasant for Robert and myself, sir."
"Yes, of course it does. Well you had better ask Mrs. Danvers to come here and we'll get to the bottom of it. What ornament was it, anyway?"
"The china cupid, sir, that stands on the writing-table."
"Oh! Oh, Lord. That's one of our treasures, isn't it? It will have to be found. Get hold of Mrs. Danvers at once."
"Very good, sir."
Frith left the room and we were alone again. "What a confounded nuisance," said Maxim; "that cupid is worth a hell of a lot. How I loathe servants' rows too. I wonder why they come to me about it. That's your job, sweetheart."