"And I thought of the tide, how swift it ran and strong into the little cove. The wind blew down from the headland like a funnel. I got the boat out into the bay. I got her out there, beyond the beacon, and I tried to go about, to clear the ridge of rocks. The little jib fluttered. I could not sheet it in. A puff of wind came and the sheet tore out of my hands, went twisting round the mast. The sail thundered and shook. It cracked like a whip above my head. I could not remember what one had to do. I could not remember. I tried to reach that sheet and it blew above me in the air. Another blast of wind came straight ahead. We began to drift sideways, closer to the ridge. It was dark, so damned dark I couldn't see anything on the black, slippery deck. Somehow I blundered down into the cabin. I had a spike with me. If I didn't do it now it would be too late. We were getting so near to the ridge, and in six or seven minutes, drifting like this, we should be out of deep water. I opened the sea-cocks. The water began to come in. I drove the spike into the bottom boards. One of the planks split right across. I took the spike out and began to drive in another plank. The water came up over my feet. I left Rebecca lying on the floor. I fastened both the scuttles. I bolted the door. When I came up on deck I saw we were within twenty yards of the ridge. I threw some of the loose stuff on the deck into the water. There was a lifebuoy, a pair of sweeps, a coil of rope. I climbed into the dinghy. I pulled away, and lay back on the paddles, and watched. The boat was drifting still. She was sinking too. Sinking by the head. The jib was still shaking and cracking like a whip. I thought someone must hear it, someone walking the cliffs late at night, some fisherman from Kerrith away beyond me in the bay, whose boat I could not see. The boat was smaller, like a black shadow on the water. The mast began to shiver, began to crack. Suddenly she heeled right over and as she went the mast broke in two, split right down the center. The lifebuoy and the sweeps floated away from me on the water. The boat was not there anymore. I remember staring at the place where she had been. Then I pulled back to the cove. It started raining."
Maxim waited. He stared in front of him still. Then he looked at me, sitting beside him on the floor.
"That's all," he said, "there's no more to tell. I left the dinghy on the buoy, as she would have done. I went back and looked at the cottage. The floor was wet with the salt water. She might have done it herself. I walked up the path through the woods. I went into the house. Up the stairs to the dressing-room. I remember undressing. It began to blow and rain very hard. I was sitting there, on the bed, when Mrs. Danvers knocked on the door. I went and opened it, in my dressing gown, and spoke to her. She was worried about Rebecca. I told her to go back to bed. I shut the door again. I went back and sat by the window in my dressing gown, watching the rain, listening to the sea as it broke there, in the cove."
We sat there together without saying anything. I went on holding his cold hands. I wondered why Robert did not come to clear the tea.
"She sank too close in," said Maxim. "I meant to take her right out in the bay. They would never have found her there. She was too close in."
"It was the ship," I said; "it would not have happened but for the ship. No one would have known."
"She was too close in," said Maxim.
We were silent again. I began to feel very tired.
"I knew it would happen one day," said Maxim, "even when I went up to Edgecoombe and identified that body as hers. I knew it meant nothing, nothing at all. It was only a question of waiting, of marking time. Rebecca would win in the end. Finding you has not made any difference has it? Loving you does not alter things at all. Rebecca knew she would win in the end. I saw her smile, when she died."
"Rebecca is dead," I said. "That's what we've got to remember. Rebecca is dead. She can't speak, she can't bear witness. She can't harm you anymore."
"There's her body," he said, "the diver has seen it. It's lying there, on the cabin floor."
"We've got to explain it," I said. "We've got to think out a way to explain it. It's got to be the body of someone you don't know. Someone you've never seen before."
"Her things will be there still," he said. "The rings on her fingers. Even if her clothes have rotted in the water there will be something there to tell them. It's not like a body lost at sea, battered against rocks. The cabin is untouched. She must be lying there on the floor as I left her. The boat has been there, all these months. No one has moved anything. There is the boat, lying on the sea-bed where she sank."
"A body rots in water, doesn't it?" I whispered; "even if it's lying there, undisturbed, the water rots it, doesn't it?"
"I don't know," he said. "I don't know."
"How will you find out? how will you know?" I said.
"The diver is going down again at five-thirty tomorrow morning," said Maxim. "Searle has made all the arrangements. They are going to try to raise the boat. No one will be about. I'm going with them. He's sending his boat to pick me up in the cove. Five-thirty tomorrow morning."
"And then?" I said, "if they get it up, what then?"
"Searle's going to have his big lighter anchored there, just out in the deep water. If the boat's wood has not rotted, if it still holds together, his crane will be able to lift it onto the lighter. They'll go back to Kerrith then. Searle says he will moor the lighter at the head of that disused creek halfway up Kerrith harbor. It drives out very easily. It's mud there at low water and the trippers can't row up there. We shall have the place to ourselves. He says we'll have to let the water drain out of the boat, leaving the cabin bare. He's going to get hold of a doctor."
"What will he do?" I said. "What will the doctor do?"
"I don't know," he said.
"If they find out it's Rebecca you must say the other body was a mistake," I said. "You must say that the body in the crypt was a mistake, a ghastly mistake. You must say that when you went to Edgecoombe you were ill, you did not know what you were doing. You were not sure, even then. You could not tell. It was a mistake, just a mistake. You will say that, won't you?"
"Yes," he said. "Yes."
"They can't prove anything against you," I said. "Nobody saw you that night. You had gone to bed. They can't prove anything. No one knows but you and I. No one at all. Not even Frank. We are the only two people in the world to know, Maxim. You and I."
"Yes," he said. "Yes."
"They will think the boat capsized and sank when she was in the cabin," I said; "they will think she went below for a rope, for something, and while she was there the wind came from the headland, and the boat heeled over, and Rebecca was trapped. They'll think that, won't they?"
"I don't know," he said. "I don't know."
Suddenly the telephone began ringing in the little room behind the library.
21
Maxim went into the little room and shut the door. Robert came in a few minutes afterwards to clear away the tea. I stood up, my back turned to him so that he should not see my face. I wondered when they would begin to know, on the estate, in the servants' hall, in Kerrith itself. I wondered how long it took for news to trickle through.
I could hear the murmur of Maxim's voice in the little room beyond. I had a sick expectant feeling at the pit of my stomach. The sound of the telephone ringing seemed to have woken every nerve in my body. I had sat there on the floor beside Maxim in a sort of dream, his hand in mine, my face against his shoulder. I had listened to his story, and part of me went with him like a shadow in his tracks. I too had killed Rebecca, I too had sunk the boat there in the bay. I had listened beside him to the wind and water. I had waited for Mrs. Danvers' knocking on the door. All this I had suffered with him, all this and more beside. But the rest of me sat there on the carpet, unmoved and detached, thinking and caring for one thing only, repeating a phrase over and over again, "He did not love Rebecca, he did not love Rebecca." Now, at the ringing of the telephone, these two selves merged and became one again. I was the self that I had always been, I was not changed. But something new had come upon me that had not been before. My heart, for al
l its anxiety and doubt, was light and free. I knew then that I was no longer afraid of Rebecca. I did not hate her anymore. Now that I knew her to have been evil and vicious and rotten I did not hate her anymore. She could not hurt me. I could go to the morning room and sit down at her desk and touch her pen and look at her writing on the pigeonholes, and I should not mind. I could go to her room in the west wing, stand by the window even as I had done this morning, and I should not be afraid. Rebecca's power had dissolved into the air, like the mist had done. She would never haunt me again. She would never stand behind me on the stairs, sit beside me in the dining room, lean down from the gallery and watch me standing in the hall. Maxim had never loved her. I did not hate her anymore. Her body had come back, her boat had been found with its queer prophetic name, Je Reviens, but I was free of her forever.
I was free now to be with Maxim, to touch him, and hold him, and love him. I would never be a child again. It would not be I, I, I any longer; it would be we, it would be us. We would be together. We would face this trouble together, he and I. Captain Searle, and the diver, and Frank, and Mrs. Danvers, and Beatrice, and the men and women of Kerrith reading their newspapers, could not break us now. Our happiness had not come too late. I was not young anymore. I was not shy. I was not afraid. I would fight for Maxim. I would lie and perjure and swear, I would blaspheme and pray. Rebecca had not won. Rebecca had lost.
Robert had taken away the tea and Maxim came back into the room.
"It was Colonel Julyan," he said; "he's just been talking to Searle. He's coming out with us to the boat tomorrow. Searle has told him."
"Why Colonel Julyan, why?" I said.
"He's the magistrate for Kerrith. He has to be present."
"What did he say?"
"He asked me if I had any idea whose body it could be."
"What did you say?"
"I said I did not know. I said we believed Rebecca to be alone. I said I did not know of any friend."
"Did he say anything after that?"
"Yes."
"What did he say?"
"He asked me if I thought it possible that I made a mistake when I went up to Edgecoombe?"
"He said that? He said that already?"
"Yes."
"And you?"
"I said it might be possible. I did not know."
"He'll be with you then tomorrow when you look at the boat? He, and Captain Searle, and a doctor."
"Inspector Welch too."
"Inspector Welch?"
"Yes."
"Why? Why Inspector Welch?"
"It's the custom, when a body has been found."
I did not say anything. We stared at one another. I felt the little pain come again at the pit of my stomach.
"They may not be able to raise the boat," I said.
"No." he said.
"They couldn't do anything then about the body, could they?" I said.
"I don't know," he said.
He glanced out of the window. The sky was white and overcast as it had been when I came away from the cliffs. There was no wind though. It was still and quiet.
"I thought it might blow from the southwest about an hour ago but the wind has died away again," he said.
"Yes," I said.
"It will be a flat calm tomorrow for the diver," he said.
The telephone began ringing again from the little room. There was something sickening about the shrill urgent summons of the bell. Maxim and I looked at one another. Then he went into the room to answer it, shutting the door behind him as he had done before. The queer nagging pain had not left me yet. It returned again in greater force with the ringing of the bell. The feel of it took me back across the years to my childhood. This was the pain I had known when I was very small and the maroons had sounded in the streets of London, and I had sat, shivering, not understanding, under a little cupboard beneath the stairs. It was the same feeling, the same pain.
Maxim came back into the library. "It's begun," he said slowly.
"What do you mean? What's happened?" I said, grown suddenly cold.
"It was a reporter," he said, "the fellow from the County Chronicle. Was it true, he said, that the boat belonging to the late Mrs. de Winter had been found."
"What did you say?"
"I said yes, a boat had been found, but that was all we know. It might not be her boat at all."
"Was that all he said?"
"No. He asked if I could confirm the rumor that a body had been found in the cabin."
"No!"
"Yes. Someone must have been talking. Not Searle, I know that. The diver, one of his friends. You can't stop these people. The whole story will be all over Kerrith by breakfast time tomorrow."
"What did you say, about the body?"
"I said I did not know. I had no statement to make. And I should be obliged if he did not ring me up again."
"You will irritate them. You will have them against you."
"I can't help that. I don't make statements to newspapers. I won't have those fellows ringing up and asking questions."
"We might want them on our side," I said.
"If it comes to fighting, I'll fight alone," he said. "I don't want a newspaper behind me."
"The reporter will ring up someone else," I said. "He will get onto Colonel Julyan or Captain Searle."
"He won't get much change out of them," said Maxim.
"If only we could do something," I said, "all these hours ahead of us, and we sit here, idle, waiting for tomorrow morning."
"There's nothing we can do," said Maxim.
We went on sitting in the library. Maxim picked up a book but I know he did not read. Now and again I saw him lift his head and listen, as though he heard the telephone again. But it did not ring again. No one disturbed us. We dressed for dinner as usual. It seemed incredible to me that this time last night I had been putting on my white dress, sitting before the mirror at my dressing table, arranging the curled wig. It was like an old forgotten nightmare, something remembered months afterwards with doubt and disbelief. We had dinner. Frith served us, returned from his afternoon. His face was solemn, expressionless. I wondered if he had been in Kerrith, if he had heard anything.
After dinner we went back again to the library. We did not talk much. I sat on the floor at Maxim's feet, my head against his knees. He ran his fingers through my hair. Different from his old abstracted way. It was not like stroking Jasper anymore. I felt his finger tips on the scalp of my head. Sometimes he kissed me. Sometimes he said things to me. There were no shadows between us anymore, and when we were silent it was because the silence came to us of our own asking. I wondered how it was I could be so happy when our little world about us was so black. It was a strange sort of happiness. Not what I had dreamed about or expected. It was not the sort of happiness I had imagined in the lonely hours. There was nothing feverish or urgent about this. It was a quiet, still happiness. The library windows were open wide, and when we did not talk or touch one another we looked out at the dark dull sky.
It must have rained in the night, for when I woke the next morning, just after seven, and got up, and looked out of the window, I saw the roses in the garden below were folded and drooping, and the grass banks leading to the woods were wet and silver. There was a little smell in the air of mist and damp, the smell that comes with the first fall of the leaf. I wondered if autumn would come upon us two months before her time. Maxim had not woken me when he got up at five. He must have crept from his bed and gone through the bathroom to his dressing-room without a sound. He would be down there now, in the bay, with Colonel Julyan, and Captain Searle, and the men from the lighter. The lighter would be there, the crane and the chain, and Rebecca's boat coming to the surface. I thought about it calmly, coolly, without feeling. I pictured them all down there in the bay, and the little dark hull of the boat rising slowly to the surface, sodden, dripping, the grass-green seaweed and shells clinging to her sides. When they lifted her onto the lighter the water would stream fr
om her sides, back into the sea again. The wood of the little boat would look soft and gray, pulpy in places. She would smell of mud and rust, and that dark weed that grows deep beneath the sea beside rocks that are never uncovered. Perhaps the name-board still hung upon her stern. Je Reviens. The lettering green and faded. The nails rusted through. And Rebecca herself was there, lying on the cabin floor.
I got up and had my bath and dressed, and went down to breakfast at nine o'clock as usual. There were a lot of letters on my plate. Letters from people thanking us for the dance. I skimmed through them, I did not read them all. Frith wanted to know whether to keep the breakfast hot for Maxim. I told him I did not know when he would be back. He had to go out very early, I said. Frith did not say anything. He looked very solemn, very grave. I wondered again if he knew.
After breakfast I took my letters along to the morning room. The room smelt fusty, the windows had not been opened. I flung them wide, letting in the cool fresh air. The flowers on the mantelpiece were drooping, many of them dead. The petals lay on the floor. I rang the bell, and Maud, the under-housemaid, came into the room.
"This room has not been touched this morning," I said, "even the windows were shut. And the flowers are dead. Will you please take them away?"
She looked nervous and apologetic. "I'm very sorry, Madam," she said. She went to the mantelpiece and took the vases.
"Don't let it happen again," I said.
"No, Madam," she said. She went out of the room, taking the flowers with her. I had not thought it would be so easy to be severe. I wondered why it had seemed hard for me before. The menu for the day lay on the writing desk. Cold salmon and mayonnaise, cutlets in aspic, galantine of chicken, souffle. I recognized them all from the buffet-supper of the night of the ball. We were evidently still living on the remains. This must be the cold lunch that was put out in the dining room yesterday and I had not eaten. The staff were taking things easily, it seemed. I put a pencil through the list and rang for Robert. "Tell Mrs. Danvers to order something hot," I said. "If there's still a lot of cold stuff to finish we don't want it in the dining room."