Chapter twenty-three 7 page

'The fire in the library is not usually lit until the afternoon, Madam,' he said. 'Mrs de Winter always used the morning-room. There is a good fire in there. Of course if you should wish to have the fire in the library as well I will give orders for it to be lit.'

'Oh, no,' I said, 'I would not dream of it. I will go into the morning-room. Thank you, Frith.'

'You will find writing-paper, and pens, and ink, in there, Madam,' he said. 'Mrs de Winter always did all her correspondence and telephoning in the morning-room, after breakfast. The house telephone is also there, should you wish to speak to Mrs Danvers.'

"Thank you, Frith,' I said.

I turned away into the hall again, humming a little tune to give me an air of confidence. I could not tell him that I had

never seen the morning-room, that Maxim had not shown it to me the night before. I knew he was standing in the entrance to the dining-room, watching me, as I went across the hall, and that I must make some show of knowing my way. There was a door to the left of the great staircase, and I went recklessly towards it, praying in my heart that it would take me to my goal, but when I came to it and opened it I saw that it was a garden room, a place for odds and ends: there was a table where flowers were done, there were basket chairs stacked against the wall, and a couple of mackintoshes too, hanging on a peg. I came out, a little defiantly, glancing across the hall, and saw Frith still standing there. I had not deceived him, though, not for a moment.

'You go through the drawing-room to the morning-room, Madam,' he said, 'through the door there, on your right, this side of the staircase. You go straight through the double drawing-room, and turn to your left.'

'Thank you, Frith,' I said humbly, pretending no longer.

I went through the long drawing-room, as he had directed; a lovely room this, beautifully proportioned, looking out upon the lawns down to the sea. The public would see this room, I supposed, and Frith, if he showed them round, would know the history of the pictures on the wall, and the period of the furniture. It was beautiful of course, I knew that, and those chairs and tables probably without price, but for all that I had no wish to linger there; I could not see myself sitting ever in those chairs, standing before that carved mantelpiece, throwing books down on to the tables. It had all the formality of a room in a museum, where alcoves were roped off, and a guardian, in cloak and hat like the guides in the French chateaux, sat in a chair beside the door. I went through then, and turned to the left, and so on to the little morning-room I had not seen before.

I was glad to see the dogs there, sitting before the fire, and Jasper, the younger, came over to me at once, his tail wagging, and thrust his nose into my hand. The old one lifted her muzzle at my approach, and gazed in my direction with her blind eyes, but when she had sniffed the air a moment, and found I was not the one she sought, she turned her head away with a grunt, and

looked steadily into the fire again. Then Jasper left me, too, and settled himself by the side of his companion, licking his side. This was their routine. They knew, even as Frith had known, that the library fire was not lit until the afternoon. They came to the morning-room from long custom. Somehow I guessed, before going to the window, that the room looked out upon the rhododendrons. Yes, there they were, blood-red and luscious, as I had seen them the evening before, great bushes of them, massed beneath the open window, encroaching on to the sweep of the drive itself. There was a little clearing too, between the bushes, like a miniature lawn, the grass a smooth carpet of moss, and in the centre of this, the tiny statue of a naked faun, his pipes to his lips.

The crimson rhododendrons made his background, and the clearing itself was like a little stage, where he would dance, and play his part. There was no musty smell about this room, as there had been in the library. There were no old well-worn chairs, no tables littered with magazines and papers, seldom if ever read, but left there from long custom, because Maxim's father, or even his grandfather perhaps, had wished it so.

This was a woman's room, graceful, fragile, the room of someone who had chosen every particle of furniture with great care, so that each chair, each vase, each small, infinitesimal thing should be in harmony with one another, and with her own personality. It was as though she who had arranged this room had said: "This I will have, and this, and this,' taking piece by piece from the treasures in Manderley each object that pleased her best, ignoring the second-rate, the mediocre, laying her hand with sure certain instinct only upon the best. There was no intermingling of style, no confusing of period, and the result was perfection in a strange and startling way, not coldly formal like the drawing-room shown to the public, but vividly alive, having something of the same glow and brilliance that the rhododendrons had, massed there, beneath the window. And I noticed then that the rhododendrons, not content with forming their theatre on the little lawn outside the window, had been permitted to the room itself. Their great warm faces looked down upon me from the mantelpiece, they floated in a bowl

upon the table by the sofa, they stood, lean and graceful, on the writing-desk beside the golden candlesticks.

The room was filled with them, even the walls took colour from them, becoming rich and glowing in the morning sun. They were the only flowers in the room, and I wondered if there was some purpose in it, whether the room had been arranged originally with this one end in view, for nowhere else in the house did the rhododendrons obtrude. There were flowers in the dining-room, flowers in the library, but orderly and trim, rather in the background, not like this, not in profusion. I went and sat down at the writing-desk, and I thought how strange it was that this room, so lovely and so rich in colour, should be, at the same time, so business-like and purposeful. Somehow I should have expected that a room furnished as this was in such exquisite taste, for all the exaggeration of the flowers, would be a place of decoration only, languorous and intimate.

But this writing-table, beautiful as it was, was no pretty toy where a woman would scribble little notes, nibbling the end of a pen, leaving it, day after day, in carelessness, the blotter a little askew. The pigeon-holes were docketed, 'letters unanswered', 'letters-to-keep', 'household', 'estate', 'menus', 'miscellaneous', 'addresses'; each ticket written in that same scrawling pointed hand that I knew already. And it shocked me, even startled me, to recognize it again, for I had not seen it since I had destroyed the page from the book of poems, and I had not thought to see it again.

I opened a drawer at hazard, and there was the writing once more, this time in an open leather book, whose heading 'Guests at Manderley' showed at once, divided into weeks and months, what visitors had come and gone, the rooms they had used, the food they had eaten. I turned over the pages and saw that the book was a complete record of a year, so that the hostess, glancing back, would know to the day, almost to the hour, what guest had passed what night under her roof, and where he had slept, and what she had given him to eat. There was notepaper also in the drawer, thick white sheets, for rough writing, and the notepaper of the house, with the crest, and the address, and visiting cards, ivory white, in little boxes.

I took one out and looked at it, unwrapped it from its thin tissue of paper. 'Mrs M. de Winter' it said, and in the corner 'Manderley'. I put it back in the box again, and shut the drawer, feeling guilty suddenly, and deceitful, as though I were staying in somebody else's house and my hostess had said to me, 'Yes, of course, write letters at my desk,' and I had unforgivably, in a stealthy manner, peeped at her correspondence. At any moment she might come back into the room and she would see me there, sitting before her open drawer, which I had no right to touch.

And when the telephone rang, suddenly, alarmingly, on the desk in front of me, my heart leapt and I started up in terror, thinking I had been discovered. I took the receiver off with trembling hands, and 'Who is it?' I said, 'who do you want?' There was a strange buzzing at the end of the line, and then a voice came, low and rather harsh, whether that of a woman or a man I could not tell, and 'Mrs de Winter?' it said, 'Mrs de Winter?'

'I'm afraid you have made a mistake,' I said; 'Mrs de Winter has been dead for over a year.' I sat there, waiting, staring stupidly into the mouthpiece, and it was not until the name was repeated again, the voice incredulous, slightly raised, that I became aware, with a rush of colour to my face, that I had blundered irretrievably, and could not take back my words. 'It's Mrs Danvers, Madam,' said the voice. 'I'm speaking to you on the house telephone.' My faux pas was so palpably obvious, so idiotic and unpardonable, that to ignore it would show me to be an even greater fool, if possible, than I was already.

'I'm sorry, Mrs Danvers,' I said, stammering, my words tumbling over one another; 'the telephone startled me, I didn't know what I was saying, I didn't realize the call was for me, and I never noticed I was speaking on the house telephone.'

'I'm sorry to have disturbed you, Madam,' she said; and she knows, I thought, she guesses I have been looking through the desk. 'I only wondered whether you wished to see me, and whether you approved of the menus for today.'

'Oh,' I said. 'Oh, I'm sure I do; that is, I'm sure I approve of

the menus. Just order what you like, Mrs Danvers, you needn't bother to ask me.'

'It would be better, I think, if you read the list,' continued the voice; 'you will find the menu of the day on the blotter, beside you.'

I searched feverishly about me on the desk, and found at last a sheet of paper I had not noticed before. I glanced hurriedly through it: curried prawns, roast veal, asparagus, cold chocolate mousse - was this lunch or dinner? I could not see; lunch, I suppose.

'Yes, Mrs Danvers,' I said, 'very suitable, very nice indeed.'

'If you wish anything changed please say so,' she answered, 'and I will give orders at once. You will notice I have left a blank space beside the sauce, for you to mark your preference. I was not sure what sauce you are used to having served with the roast veal. Mrs de Winter was most particular about her sauces, and I always had to refer to her.'

'Oh,' I said. 'Oh, well... let me see, Mrs Danvers, I hardly know; I think we had better have what you usually have, whatever you think Mrs de Winter would have ordered.'

'You have no preference, Madam?'

'No,' I said. 'No, really, Mrs Danvers.'

'I rather think Mrs de Winter would have ordered a wine sauce, Madam.'

'We will have the same then, of course,' I said.

'I'm very sorry I disturbed you while you were writing, Madam.'

'You didn't disturb me at all,' I said; 'please don't apologize.'

"The post leaves at midday, and Robert will come for your letters, and stamp them himself,' she said; 'all you have to do is ring through to him, on the telephone, if you have anything urgent to be sent, and he will give orders for them to be taken in to the post-office immediately.'

"Thank you, Mrs Danvers,' I said. I listened for a moment, but she said no more, and then I heard a little click at the end of the telephone, which meant she had replaced the receiver. I did the same. Then I looked down again at the desk, and the notepaper, ready for use, upon the blotter. In front of me stared

the ticketed pigeon-holes, and the words upon them 'letters unanswered', 'estate', 'miscellaneous', were like a reproach to me for my idleness. She who sat here before me had not wasted her time, as I was doing. She had reached out for the house telephone and given her orders for the day, swiftly, efficiently, and run her pencil perhaps through an item in the menu that had not pleased her. She had not said 'Yes, Mrs Danvers,' and 'Of course, Mrs Danvers,' as I had done. And then, when she had finished, she began her letters, five, six, seven perhaps to be answered, all written in that same curious, slanting hand I knew so well. She would tear off sheet after sheet of that smooth white paper, using it extravagantly, because of the long strokes she made when she wrote, and at the end of each of her personal letters she put her signature, 'Rebecca', that tall sloping R dwarfing its fellows.

I drummed with my fingers on the desk. The pigeon-holes were empty now. There were no 'letters unanswered' waiting to be dealt with, no bills to pay that I knew anything about. If I had anything urgent, Mrs Danvers said, I must telephone through to Robert and he would give orders for it to be taken to the post. I wondered how many urgent letters Rebecca used to write, and who they were written to. Dressmakers perhaps - 'I must have the white satin on Tuesday, without fail,' or to her hairdresser - 'I shall be coming up next Friday, and want an appointment at three o'clock with Monsieur Antoine himself. Shampoo, massage, set, and manicure.' No, letters of that type would be a waste of time. She would have a call put through to London. Frith would do it. Frith would say 'I am speaking for Mrs de Winter.' I went on drumming with my fingers on the desk. I could think of nobody to write to. Only Mrs Van Hopper. And there was something foolish, rather ironical, in the realization that here I was sitting at my own desk in my own home with nothing better to do than to write a letter to Mrs Van Hopper, a woman I disliked, whom I should never see again. I pulled a sheet of notepaper towards me. I took up the narrow, slender pen, with the bright pointed nib. 'Dear Mrs Van Hopper,' I began. And as I wrote, in halting, laboured fashion, saying I hoped the voyage had been good, that she had found

her daughter better, that the weather in New York was fine and warm, I noticed for the first time how cramped and unformed was my own handwriting; without individuality, without style, uneducated even, the writing of an indifferent pupil taught in a second-rate school.

Chapter nine

When I heard the sound of the car in the drive I got up in sudden panic, glancing at the clock, for I knew that it meant Beatrice and her husband had arrived. It was only just gone twelve; they were much earlier than I expected. And Maxim was not yet back. I wondered if it would be possible to hide, to get out of the window, into the garden so that Frith, bringing them to the morning-room, would say, 'Madam must have gone out,' and it would seem quite natural, they would take it as a matter of course. The dogs looked up inquiringly as I ran to the window, and Jasper followed me, wagging his tail.

The window opened out on to the terrace and the little grass clearing beyond, but as I prepared to brush past the rhododendrons the sound of voices came close, and I backed again into the room. They were coming to the house by way of the garden, Frith having told them doubtless that I was in the morning-room. I went quickly into the big drawing-room, and made for a door near me on the left. It led into a long stone passage, and I ran along it, fully aware of my stupidity, despising myself for this sudden attack of nerves, but I knew I could not face these people, not for a moment anyway. The passage seemed to be taking me to the back regions, and as I turned a corner, coming upon another staircase, I met a servant I had not seen before, a scullery-maid perhaps; she carried a mop and pail in her hands. She stared at me in wonder, as though I were a vision,

unexpected in this part of the house, and 'Good morning,' I said, in great confusion, making for the stairway, and 'Good morning, Madam,' she returned, her mouth open, her round eyes inquisitive as I climbed the stairs.

They would lead me, I supposed, to the bedrooms, and I could find my suite in the east wing, and sit up there a little while, until I judged it nearly time for lunch, when good manners would compel me to come down again.

I must have lost my bearings, for passing through a door at the head of the stairs I came to a long corridor that I had not seen before, similar in some ways to the one in the east wing, but broader and darker - dark owing to the panelling of the walls.

I hesitated, then turned left, coming upon a broad landing and another staircase. It was very quiet and dark. No one was about. If there had been housemaids here, during the morning, they had finished their work by now and gone downstairs. There was no trace of their presence, no lingering dust smell of carpets lately swept, and I thought, as I stood there, wondering which way to turn, that the silence was unusual, holding something of the same oppression as an empty house does, when the owners have gone away.

I opened a door at hazard, and found a room in total darkness, no chink of light coming through the closed shutters, while I could see dimly, in the centre of the room, the outline of furniture swathed in white dust-sheets. The room smelt close and stale, the smell of a room seldom if ever used, whose ornaments are herded together in the centre of a bed and left there, covered with a sheet. It might be too that the curtain had not been drawn from the window since some preceding summer, and if one crossed there now and pulled them aside, opening the creaking shutters, a dead moth who had been imprisoned behind them for many months would fall to the carpet and lie there, beside a forgotten pin, and a dried leaf blown there before the windows were closed for the last time. I shut the door softly, and went uncertainly along the corridor, flanked on either side by doors, all of them closed, until I came to a little alcove, set in an outside wall, where a broad window gave me light at last. I looked out, and I saw below me the

smooth grass lawns stretching to the sea, and the sea itself, bright green with white-tipped crests, whipped by a westerly wind and scudding from the shore.

It was closer than I had thought, much closer; it ran, surely, beneath that little knot of trees below the lawns, barely five minutes away, and if I listened now, my ear to the window, I could hear the surf breaking on the shores of some little bay I could not see. I knew then I had made the circuit of the house, and was standing in the corridor of the west wing. Yes, Mrs Danvers was right. You could hear the sea from here. You might imagine, in the winter, it would creep up on to those green lawns and threaten the house itself, for even now, because of the high wind, there was a mist upon the window-glass, as though someone had breathed upon it. A mist salt-laden, borne upwards from the sea. A hurrying cloud hid the sun for a moment as I watched, and the sea changed colour instantly, becoming black, and the white crests with them very pitiless suddenly, and cruel, not the gay sparkling sea I had looked on first.

Somehow I was glad my rooms were in the east wing. I preferred the rose-garden, after all, to the sound of the sea. I went back to the landing then, at the head of the stairs, and as I prepared to go down, one hand upon the banister, I heard the door behind me open, and it was Mrs Danvers. We stared at one another for a moment without speaking, and I could not be certain whether it was anger I read in her eyes or curiosity, for her face became a mask directly she saw me. Although she said nothing I felt guilty and ashamed, as though I had been caught trespassing, and I felt the tell-tale colour come up into my face.

'I lost my way,' I said, 'I was trying to find my room.'

'You have come to the opposite side of the house,' she said; 'this is the west wing.'

'Yes, I know,' I said.

'Did you go into any of the rooms?' she asked me.

'No,' I said. 'No, I just opened a door, I did not go in. Everything was dark, covered up in dust-sheets. I'm sorry. I did not mean to disturb anything. I expect you like to keep all this shut up.'

'If you wish to open up the rooms I will have it done,' she

said; 'you have only to tell me. The rooms are all furnished, and can be used.'

'Oh, no,' I said. 'No. I did not mean you to think that.'

'Perhaps you would like me to show you all over the west wing?' she said.

I shook my head. 'No, I'd rather not,' I said. 'No, I must go downstairs.' I began to walk down the stairs, and she came with me, by my side, as though she were a warder, and I in custody.

'Any time, when you have nothing to do, you have only to ask me, and I will show you the rooms in the west wing,' she persisted, making me vaguely uncomfortable. I knew not why. Her insistence struck a chord in my memory, reminding me of a visit to a friend's house, as a child, when the daughter of the house, older than me, took my arm and whispered in my ear, 'I know where there is a book, locked in a cupboard, in my mother's bedroom. Shall we go and look at it?' I remembered her white, excited face, and her small, beady eyes, and the way she kept pinching my arm.

'I will have the dust-sheets removed, and then you can see the rooms as they looked when they were used,' said Mrs Danvers. 'I would have shown you this morning, but I believed you to be writing letters in the morning-room. You have only to telephone through to my room, you know, when you want me. It would only take a short while to have the rooms in readiness.'

We had come down the short flight of stairs, and she opened another door, standing aside for me to pass through, her dark eyes questing my face.

'It's very kind of you, Mrs Danvers,' I said. 'I will let you know some time.'

We passed out together on to the landing beyond, and I saw we were at the head of the main staircase now, behind the minstrel's gallery.

'I wonder how you came to miss your way?' she said, 'the door through the west wing is very different to this.'

'I did not come this way,' I said.

'Then you must have come up the back way, from the stone passage?' she said.

'Yes,' I said, not meeting her eyes. 'Yes, I came through a stone passage.'

She went on looking at me, as though she expected me to tell her why I left the morning-room in sudden panic, going through the back regions, and I felt suddenly that she knew, that she must have watched me, that she had seen me wandering perhaps in that west wing from the first, her eye to a crack in the door. 'Mrs Lacy, and Major Lacy, have been here some time,' she said. 'I heard their car drive up shortly after twelve.'

'Oh!' I said. 'I had not realized that.' 'Frith will have taken them to the morning-room,' she said: 'it must be getting on for half past twelve. You know your way now, don't you?'

'Yes, Mrs Danvers,' I said. And I went down the big stairway into the hall, knowing she was standing there above me, her eyes watching me.

I knew I must go back now, to the morning-room, and meet Maxim's sister and her husband. I could not hide in my bedroom now. As I went into the drawing-room I glanced back, over my shoulder, and I saw Mrs Danvers still standing there at the head of the stairs, like a black sentinel.

I stood for a moment outside the morning-room, with my hand on the door, listening to the hum of voices. Maxim had returned, then, while I had been upstairs, bringing his agent with him I supposed, for it sounded to me as if the room was full of people. I was aware of the same feeling of sick uncertainty I had experienced so often as a child, when summoned to shake hands with visitors, and turning the handle of the door I blundered in, to be met at once, it seemed, with a sea of faces and a general silence.

'Here she is at last,' said Maxim. 'Where have you been hiding? We were thinking of sending out a search party. Here is Beatrice, and this is Giles, and this is Frank Crawley. Look out, you nearly trod on the dog.'

Beatrice was tall, broad-shouldered, very handsome, very much like Maxim about the eyes and jaw, but not as smart as I had expected, much tweedier; the sort of person who would nurse dogs through distemper, know about horses, shoot well. She did not kiss me. She shook hands very firmly, looking me straight in the eyes, and then turned to Maxim. 'Quite different

from what I expected. Doesn't answer to your description at all.'

Everyone laughed, and I joined in, not quite certain if the laugh was against me or not, wondering secretly what it was she had expected, and what had been Maxim's description.

And 'This is Giles,' said Maxim, prodding my arm, and Giles stretched out an enormous paw and wrung my hand, squeezing the fingers limp, genial eyes smiling from behind horn-rimmed glasses.

'Frank Crawley,' said Maxim, and I turned to the agent, a colourless, rather thin man with a prominent Adam's apple, in whose eyes I read relief as he looked upon me. I wondered why, but I had no time to think of that, because Frith had come in, and was offering me sherry, and Beatrice was talking to me again. 'Maxim tells me you only got back last night. I had not realized that, or of course we would never have thrust ourselves upon you so soon. Well, what do you think of Manderley?'

'I've scarcely seen anything of it yet,' I answered; 'it's beautiful, of course.'

She was looking me up and down, as I had expected, but in a direct, straightforward fashion, not maliciously like Mrs Danvers, not with unfriendliness. She had a right to judge me, she was Maxim's sister, and Maxim himself came to my side now, putting his arm through mine, giving me confidence.

'You're looking better, old man,' she said to him, her head on one side, considering him; 'you've lost that fine-drawn look, thank goodness. I suppose we've got you to thank for that?' nodding at me.

'I'm always very fit,' said Maxim shortly, 'never had anything wrong with me in my life. You imagine everyone ill who doesn't look as fat as Giles.'

'Bosh,' said Beatrice; 'you know perfectly well you were a perfect wreck six months ago. Gave me the fright of my life when I came and saw you. I thought you were in for a breakdown. Giles, bear me out. Didn't Maxim look perfectly ghastly last time we came over, and didn't I say he was heading for a breakdown?'

'Well, I must say, old chap, you're looking a different

person,' said Giles. 'Very good thing you went away. Doesn't he look well, Crawley?'

I could tell by the tightening of Maxim's muscles under my arm that he was trying to keep his temper. For some reason this talk about his health was not welcome to him, angered him even, and I thought it tactless of Beatrice to harp upon it in this way, making so big a point of it.

'Maxim's very sunburnt,' I said shyly; 'it hides a multitude of sins. You should have seen him in Venice having breakfast on the balcony, trying to get brown on purpose. He thinks it makes him better-looking.'

Everyone laughed, and Mr Crawley said, 'It must have been wonderful in Venice, Mrs de Winter, this time of year,' and 'Yes,' I said, 'we had really wonderful weather. Only one bad day, wasn't it, Maxim?' the conversation drawing away happily from his health, and so to Italy, safest of subjects, and the blessed topic of fine weather. Conversation was easy now, no longer an effort. Maxim and Giles and Beatrice were discussing the running of Maxim's car, and Mr Crawley was asking if it were true that there were no more gondolas in the canals now, only motor-boats. I don't think he would have cared at all had there been steamers at anchor in the Grand Canal, he was saying this to help me, it was his contribution to the little effort of steering the talk away from Maxim's health, and I was grateful to him, feeling him an ally, for all his dull appearance.

'Jasper wants exercise,' said Beatrice, stirring the dog with her foot; 'he's getting much too fat, and he's barely two years old. What do you feed him on, Maxim?'

'My dear Beatrice, he has exactly the same routine as your dogs,' said Maxim. 'Don't show off and make out you know more about animals than I do.'

'Dear old boy, how can you pretend to know what Jasper has been fed on when you've been away for a couple of months? Don't tell me Frith walks to the lodge gates with him twice a day. This dog hasn't had a run for weeks. I can tell by the condition of his coat.'

'I'd rather he looked colossal than half-starved like that halfwit dog of yours,' said Maxim.

'Not a very intelligent remark when Lion won two firsts at Cruft's last February,' said Beatrice.

The atmosphere was becoming rather strained again, I could tell by the narrow lines of Maxim's mouth, and I wondered if brothers and sisters always sparred like this, making it uncomfortable for those who listened. I wished that Frith would come in and announce lunch. Or would we be summoned by a booming gong? I did not know what happened at Manderley.

'How far away from us are you?' I asked, sitting down by Beatrice; 'did you have to make a very early start?'

'We're fifty miles away, my dear, in the next county, the other side of Trowchester. The hunting is so much better with us. You must come over and stay, when Maxim can spare you. Giles will mount you.'

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 616