Captain Searle shook his head. "I can't tell any more than you," he said. "All we know is that the body is there, and it has got to be reported. There'll be publicity, I'm afraid, Mrs. de Winter. I don't know how we're going to avoid it. It's very hard on you and Mr. de Winter. Here you are, settled down quietly, wanting to be happy, and this has to happen."
I knew now the reason for my sense of foreboding. It was not the stranded ship that was sinister, nor the crying gulls, nor the thin black funnel pointing to the shore. It was the stillness of the black water, and the unknown things that lay beneath. It was the diver going down into those cool quiet depths and stumbling upon Rebecca's boat, and Rebecca's dead companion. He had touched the boat, had looked into the cabin, and all the while I sat on the cliffs and had not known.
"If only we did not have to tell him," I said. "If only we could keep the whole thing from him."
"You know I would if it were possible, Mrs. de Winter," said the harbormaster, "but my personal feelings have to go, in a matter like this. I've got to do my duty. I've got to report that body." He broke off short as the door opened, and Maxim came into the room.
"Hullo," he said, "what's happening? I didn't know you were here, Captain Searle? Is anything the matter?"
I could not stand it any longer. I went out of the room like the coward I was and shut the door behind me. I had not even glanced at Maxim's face. I had the vague impression that he looked tired, untidy, hatless.
I went and stood in the hall by the front door. Jasper was drinking noisily from his bowl. He wagged his tail when he saw me and went on drinking. Then he loped towards me, and stood up, pawing at my dress. I kissed the top of his head and went and sat on the terrace. The moment of crisis had come, and I must face it. My old fears, my diffidence, my shyness, my hopeless sense of inferiority, must be conquered now and thrust aside. If I failed now I should fail forever. There would never be another chance. I prayed for courage in a blind despairing way, and dug my nails into my hands. I sat there for five minutes staring at the green lawns and the flower tubs on the terrace. I heard the sound of a car starting up in the drive. It must be Captain Searle. He had broken his news to Maxim and had gone. I got up from the terrace and went slowly through the hall to the library. I kept turning over in my pockets the winkles that Ben had given me. I clutched them tight in my hands.
Maxim was standing by the window. His back was turned to me. I waited by the door. Still he did not turn round. I took my hands out of my pockets and went and stood beside him. I reached out for his hand and laid it against my cheek. He did not say anything. He went on standing there.
"I'm so sorry," I whispered, "so terribly, terribly sorry." He did not answer. His hand was icy cold. I kissed the back of it, and then the fingers, one by one. "I don't want you to bear this alone," I said. "I want to share it with you. I've grown up, Maxim, in twenty-four hours. I'll never be a child again."
He put his arm round me and pulled me to him very close. My reserve was broken, and my shyness too. I stood there with my face against his shoulder. "You've forgiven me, haven't you?" I said.
He spoke to me at last. "Forgiven you?" he said. "What have I got to forgive you for?"
"Last night," I said; "you thought I did it on purpose."
"Ah, that," he said. "I'd forgotten. I was angry with you, wasn't I?"
"Yes," I said.
He did not say any more. He went on holding me close to his shoulder. "Maxim," I said, "can't we start all over again? Can't we begin from today, and face things together? I don't want you to love me, I won't ask impossible things. I'll be your friend and your companion, a sort of boy. I don't ever want more than that."
He took my face between his hands and looked at me. For the first time I saw how thin his face was, how lined and drawn. And there were great shadows beneath his eyes.
"How much do you love me?" he said.
I could not answer. I could only stare back at him, at his dark tortured eyes, and his pale drawn face.
"It's too late, my darling, too late," he said. "We've lost our little chance of happiness."
"No, Maxim. No," I said.
"Yes," he said. "It's all over now. The thing has happened."
"What thing?" I said.
"The thing I've always foreseen. The thing I've dreamed about, day after day, night after night. We're not meant for happiness, you and I." He sat down on the window seat, and I knelt in front of him, my hands on his shoulders.
"What are you trying to tell me?" I said.
He put his hands over mine and looked into my face. "Rebecca has won," he said.
I stared at him, my heart beating strangely, my hands suddenly cold beneath his hands.
"Her shadow between us all the time," he said. "Her damned shadow keeping us from one another. How could I hold you like this, my darling, my little love, with the fear always in my heart that this would happen? I remembered her eyes as she looked at me before she died. I remembered that slow treacherous smile. She knew this would happen even then. She knew she would win in the end."
"Maxim," I whispered, "what are you saying, what are you trying to tell me?"
"Her boat," he said, "they've found it. The diver found it this afternoon."
"Yes," I said. "I know. Captain Searle came to tell me. You are thinking about the body, aren't you, the body the diver found in the cabin?"
"Yes," he said.
"It means she was not alone," I said. "It means there was somebody sailing with Rebecca at the time. And you have to find out who it was. That's it, isn't it, Maxim?"
"No," he said. "No, you don't understand."
"I want to share this with you, darling," I said. "I want to help you."
"There was no one with Rebecca, she was alone," he said.
I knelt there watching his face, watching his eyes.
"It's Rebecca's body lying there on the cabin floor," he said.
"No," I said. "No."
"The woman buried in the crypt is not Rebecca," he said. "It's the body of some unknown woman, unclaimed, belonging nowhere. There never was an accident. Rebecca was not drowned at all. I killed her. I shot Rebecca in the cottage in the cove. I carried her body to the cabin, and took the boat out that night and sunk it there, where they found it today. It's Rebecca who's lying dead there on the cabin floor. Will you look into my eyes and tell me that you love me now?"
20
It was very quiet in the library. The only sound was that of Jasper licking his foot. He must have caught a thorn in his pads, for he kept biting and sucking at the skin. Then I heard the watch on Maxim's wrist ticking close to my ear. The little normal sounds of every day. And for no reason the stupid proverb of my schooldays ran through my mind, "Time and Tide wait for no man." The words repeated themselves over and over again. "Time and Tide wait for no man." These were the only sounds then, the ticking of Maxim's watch and Jasper licking his foot on the floor beside me.
When people suffer a great shock, like death, or the loss of a limb, I believe they don't feel it just at first. If your hand is taken from you you don't know, for a few minutes, that your hand is gone. You go on feeling the fingers. You stretch and beat them on the air, one by one, and all the time there is nothing there, no hand, no fingers. I knelt there by Maxim's side, my body against his body, my hands upon his shoulders, and I was aware of no feeling at all, no pain and no fear, there was no horror in my heart. I thought how I must take the thorn out of Jasper's foot and I wondered if Robert would come in and clear the tea things. It seemed strange to me that I should think of these things, Jasper's foot, Maxim's watch, Robert and the tea things. I was shocked at my lack of emotion and this queer cold absence of distress. Little by little the feeling will come back to me, I said to myself, little by little I shall understand. What he has told me and all that has happened will tumble into place like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. They will fit themselves into a pattern. At the moment I am nothing, I have no heart, and no mind, and no senses, I am just a
wooden thing in Maxim's arms. Then he began to kiss me. He had not kissed me like this before. I put my hands behind his head and shut my eyes.
"I love you so much," he whispered. "So much."
This is what I have wanted him to say every day and every night, I thought, and now he is saying it at last. This is what I imagined in Monte Carlo, in Italy, here in Manderley. He is saying it now. I opened my eyes and looked at a little patch of curtain above his head. He went on kissing me, hungry, desperate, murmuring my name. I kept on looking at the patch of curtain, and saw where the sun had faded it, making it lighter than the piece above. "How calm I am," I thought. "How cool. Here I am looking at the piece of curtain, and Maxim is kissing me. For the first time he is telling me he loves me."
Then he stopped suddenly, he pushed me away from him, and got up from the window seat. "You see, I was right," he said. "It's too late. You don't love me now. Why should you?" He went and stood over by the mantelpiece. "We'll forget that," he said, "it won't happen again."
Realization flooded me at once, and my heart jumped in quick and sudden panic. "It's not too late," I said swiftly, getting up from the floor and going to him, putting my arms about him; "you're not to say that, you don't understand. I love you more than anything in the world. But when you kissed me just now I felt stunned and shaken. I could not feel anything. I could not grasp anything. It was just as though I had no more feeling left in me at all."
"You don't love me," he said, "that's why you did not feel anything. I know. I understand. It's come too late for you, hasn't it?"
"No," I said.
"This ought to have happened four months ago," he said. "I should have known. Women are not like men."
"I want you to kiss me again," I said; "please, Maxim."
"No," he said, "it's no use now."
"We can't lose each other now," I said. "We've got to be together always, with no secrets, no shadows. Please, darling, please."
"There's no time," he said. "We may only have a few hours, a few days. How can we be together now that this has happened? I've told you they've found the boat. They've found Rebecca."
I stared at him stupidly, not understanding. "What will they do?" I said.
"They'll identify her body," he said, "there's everything to tell them, there in the cabin. The clothes she had, the shoes, the rings on her fingers. They'll identify her body; and then they will remember the other one, the woman buried up there, in the crypt."
"What are you going to do?" I whispered.
"I don't know," he said. "I don't know."
The feeling was coming back to me, little by little, as I knew it would. My hands were cold no longer. They were clammy, warm. I felt a wave of color come into my face, my throat. My cheeks were burning hot. I thought of Captain Searle, the diver, the Lloyd's agent, all those men on the stranded ship leaning against the side, staring down into the water. I thought of the shopkeepers in Kerrith, of errand boys whistling in the street, of the vicar walking out of church, of Lady Crowan cutting roses in her garden, of the woman in the pink dress and her little boy on the cliffs. Soon they would know. In a few hours. By breakfast time tomorrow. "They've found Mrs. de Winter's boat, and they say there is a body in the cabin." A body in the cabin. Rebecca was lying there on the cabin floor. She was not in the crypt at all. Some other woman was lying in the crypt. Maxim had killed Rebecca. Rebecca had not been drowned at all. Maxim had killed her. He had shot her in the cottage in the woods. He had carried her body to the boat, and sunk the boat there in the bay. That gray, silent cottage, with the rain pattering on the roof. The jigsaw pieces came tumbling thick and fast upon me. Disjointed pictures flashed one by one through my bewildered mind. Maxim sitting in the car beside me in the south of France. "Something happened nearly a year ago that altered my whole life. I had to begin living all over again..." Maxim's silence, Maxim's moods. The way he never talked about Rebecca. The way he never mentioned her name. Maxim's dislike of the cove, the stone cottage. "If you had my memories you would not go there either." The way he climbed the path through the woods not looking behind him. Maxim pacing up and down the library after Rebecca died. Up and down. Up and down. "I came away in rather a hurry," he said to Mrs. Van Hopper, a line, thin as gossamer, between his brows. "They say he can't get over his wife's death." The fancy dress dance last night, and I coming down to the head of the stairs, in Rebecca's dress. "I killed Rebecca," Maxim had said. "I shot Rebecca in the cottage in the woods." and the diver had found her lying there, on the cabin floor...
"What are we going to do?" I said. "What are we going to say?"
Maxim did not answer. He stood there by the mantelpiece, his eyes wide and staring, looking in front of him, not seeing anything.
"Does anyone know?" I said, "anyone at all?"
He shook his head. "No," he said.
"No one but you and me?" I asked.
"No one but you and me," he said.
"Frank," I said suddenly, "are you sure Frank does not know?"
"How could he?" said Maxim. "There was nobody there but myself. It was dark..." He stopped. He sat down on a chair, he put his hand up to his forehead. I went and knelt beside him. He sat very still a moment. I took his hands away from his face and looked into his eyes. "I love you," I whispered, "I love you. Will you believe me now?" He kissed my face and my hands. He held my hands very tightly like a child who would gain confidence.
"I thought I should go mad," he said, "sitting here, day after day, waiting for something to happen. Sitting down at the desk there, answering those terrible letters of sympathy. The notices in the papers, the interviews, all the little aftermath of death. Eating and drinking, trying to be normal, trying to be sane. Frith, the servants, Mrs. Danvers. Mrs. Danvers, who I had not the courage to turn away, because with her knowledge of Rebecca she might have suspected, she might have guessed... Frank, always by my side, discreet, sympathetic. 'Why don't you get away?' he used to say, 'I can manage here. You ought to get away.' And Giles, and Bee, poor dear tactless Bee. 'You're looking frightfully ill, can't you go and see a doctor?' I had to face them all, these people, knowing every word I uttered was a lie."
I went on holding his hands very tight. I leaned close to him, quite close. "I nearly told you, once," he said, "that day Jasper ran to the cove, and you went to the cottage for some string. We were sitting here, like this, and then Frith and Robert came in with the tea."
"Yes," I said. "I remember. Why didn't you tell me? The time we've wasted when we might have been together. All these weeks and days."
"You were so aloof," he said, "always wandering into the garden with Jasper, going off on your own. You never came to me like this."
"Why didn't you tell me?" I whispered. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I thought you were unhappy, bored," he said. "I'm so much older than you. You seemed to have more to say to Frank than you ever had to me. You were funny with me, awkward, shy."
"How could I come to you when I knew you were thinking about Rebecca?" I said. "How could I ask you to love me when I knew you loved Rebecca still?"
He pulled me close to him and searched my eyes.
"What are you talking about? What do you mean?" he said.
I knelt up straight beside him. "Whenever you touched me I thought you were comparing me to Rebecca," I said. "Whenever you spoke to me or looked at me, walked with me in the garden, sat down to dinner, I felt you were saying to yourself, 'This I did with Rebecca, and this, and this.' " He stared at me bewildered as though he did not understand.
"It was true, wasn't it?" I said.
"Oh, my God," he said. He pushed me away, he got up and began walking up and down the room, clasping his hands.
"What is it? What's the matter?" I said.
He whipped round and looked at me as I sat there huddled on the floor. "You thought I loved Rebecca?" he said. "You thought I killed her, loving her? I hated her, I tell you. Our marriage was a farce from the very first. She was vicious, damnable, rotten t
hrough and through. We never loved each other, never had one moment of happiness together. Rebecca was incapable of love, of tenderness, of decency. She was not even normal."
I sat on the floor, clasping my knees, staring at him.
"She was clever of course," he said. "Damnably clever. No one would guess meeting her that she was not the kindest, most generous, most gifted person in the world. She knew exactly what to say to different people, how to match her mood to theirs. Had she met you, she would have walked off into the garden with you, arm-in-arm, calling to Jasper, chatting about flowers, music, painting, whatever she knew to be your particular hobby; and you would have been taken in, like the rest. You would have sat at her feet and worshipped her."
Up and down he walked, up and down across the library floor.
"When I married her I was told I was the luckiest man in the world," he said. "She was so lovely, so accomplished, so amusing. Even Gran, the most difficult person to please in those days, adored her from the first. 'She's got the three things that matter in a wife,' she told me: 'breeding, brains, and beauty.' And I believed her, or forced myself to believe her. But all the time I had a seed of doubt at the back of my mind. There was something about her eyes..."
The jigsaw pieces came together piece by piece, the real Rebecca took shape and form before me, stepping from her shadow world like a living figure from a picture frame. Rebecca slashing at her horse; Rebecca seizing life with her two hands; Rebecca, triumphant, leaning down from the minstrel's gallery with a smile on her lips.
Once more I saw myself standing on the beach beside poor startled Ben. "You're kind," he said, "not like the other one. You won't put me to the asylum, will you?" There was someone who walked through the woods by night, someone tall and slim. She gave you the feeling of a snake...
Maxim was talking though. Maxim was walking up and down the library floor. "I found her out at once," he was saying, "five days after we were married. You remember that time I drove you in the car, to the hills above Monte Carlo? I wanted to stand there again, to remember. She sat there, laughing, her black hair blowing in the wind; she told me about herself, told me things I shall never repeat to a living soul. I knew then what I had done, what I had married. Beauty, brains, and breeding. Oh, my God!"