Answer the questions.

1)What was the weather like when Maxim and his young wife arrived at Manderley?

2) How did Daphne feel when they were coming to Manderley?

3) Who met them at Manderley?

4) Mrs. Danvers's hand was heavy and deathly cold, wasn't it?

5) What was Daphne thinking about while Maxim was looking through his letters?

6) Did Daphne feel comfortable in Mrs. Danvers's presence?

7) What caused changes in Mrs. Danvers's manner during her conversation with Mrs. de Winter?

8) What did she try to stress speaking about the bedroom?

9) Did Daphne understand the reason of Mrs. Dan­vers's unfriendliness?

10) Who did Daphne think about when she was sit­ting in the library near Maxim?

tz Discussion Tasks

1 Describe the first meeting of Daphne and Mrs. Dan-vers.

2 Act out a dialogue between the heroine andMrs. Dan-vers beginning with the words "I suppose you have been at Manderley for many years" up to the words "Thatbig room... was Mrs. de Winter's bedroom."

CHAPTER 6

I had never realized, of course, that life at Mander­ley would be so orderly and planned. I remember now, looking back, how on that first morning Maxim was up and dressed and writing letters, even before breakfast, and when I got downstairs, after nine o'clock, I found he had nearly finished.

He looked up at me and smiled. "You mustn't mind," he said; "this is something you will have to get used to. Running a place like Manderley, is a full-time job."

I remember well how impressed I was; impressed by the magnificence of the breakfast offered to us. There was tea, in a great tea-pot, and coffee too, and dishes of boiled and fried eggs, of bacon, and another of fish. There was por­ridge in a silver bowl, and toasts, and various pots of jam, marmalade, and honey, while dessert dishes, piled high with fruit, stood at the end of the table.

It seemed strange to me that Maxim, who in Italy and France had eaten a croissant and fruit only, should sit down to this breakfast at home, enough for a dozen people, seeing nothing ridiculous about it.

I noticed he had eaten a small piece of fish. I took a boiled egg and I wondered what happened to the rest — allthose eggs, bacon, the porridge, the remains of the fish. Were there servants waiting behind kitchen doors for the gift of our breakfast? Or was it all thrown away? I would never dare to ask, of course.

"Thank God, I haven't a great crowd of relatives tointroduce to you," said Maxim, "a sister I very rarely see, and a grandmother who is nearly blind. Beatrice, by the way, asks a permission to come to lunch. I suppose she wants to have a look at you."

"Today?" I said with a falling heart.

"Yes, but she won't stay long. You'll like her, I think. She's very direct; if she doesn't like you she'll tell you so, to your face." I found this hardly comforting and asked myself if sometimes it was better to be not too sincere.

Maxim got up from his chair and lit a cigarette. "I'd like to take you round the garden, but I must see Craw-ley, my agent. He'll be in for lunch, too, by the way. You don't mind, do you?"

"Of course not," I said. "It's quite all right."

Then he picked up his letters and went out of the room, and I remember thinking that was not how I im­agined my first morning. I sat long over the breakfast, and it was only when I saw Frith come in and look at me, that I realized it was after ten o'clock. I sprang to my feet at once, feeling guilty and apologized for sit­ting there so late, and he bowed, saying nothing, but I caught surprise in his eyes. Perhaps I should not have apologized. I wished I knew what to say, what to

do, but these were the things to be acquired, painfully, perhaps, and slowly, costing me many bitter moments.

I went upstairs to my bedroom, but when I opened the door I found the housemaids there, doing the room. They looked at me in surprise. It was not right, then, for me to go to my room at that hour in the morning. I crept downstairs once more, silently, and went into the library, which was cool, as the fire was not lit there yet.

I looked round for a box of matches but could not find one. I decided then to fetch the matches from the sideboard in the dining-room. I tiptoed outinto the hall and listened. All was quiet, so I went across the hall and into the dining-room once more. I crossed the room quickly and picked up the matches, and as I did so Frith came back into the room. I tried to hide the box into my pocket, but I saw him glance at my hand in surprise.

"Do you want anything, Madam?" he said.

"Oh, Frith," I said awkwardly, "I could not find any matches. I felt rather cool in the library and I thought perhaps I would put a match to the fire."

"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 wish to have the fire in the library as well, I will give orders for it to be lit."

"Oh, no," I said, "I will go into the morning-room. Thank you, Frith."

I turned away into the hall again trying to look con­fident. I could not tell Frith 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. I could not deceive him.

"You go straight through the double drawing-room, Madam," he said, "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 it was, with pictures on the wall and those tables andchairs probably without price. But I hadno wish to stay there. It looked more like a museum than like a living room. I went through it, and turned to the left, and so on to the little morning-room I had not seen before.

I went to the window that looked out upon the rho­dodendrons. There were great blood-red bushes of them beneath the open window, and in the centre of a little clearing between them there was a tiny statue of a na­ked faun holding his pipe near his lips.

This was a woman's room, elegant, cozy, the room of someone who had chosen every piece of furniture with great care, so that each chair, each vase, each small thing should be in harmony with one another, and with her own personality.

And there were rhododendrons everywhere. The room was filled with them, even the walls took colour from them, becoming rich and glowing in the morning sun.

I went and sat at the writing-desk. The pigeon-holes were marked "letters unanswered", "letters to keep", "household", "menus", "miscellaneous"; each label writ­ten in that pointed hand-writing that I knew already. And it shocked me to recognize it again, for I had not seen it since I had cut out the page from the book of poems.

I opened the drawer and there was an open leather book, whose heading "Guests at Manderley", showed at once what visitors had come and gone, the rooms they had used, the food they had eaten. There were also visit­ing cards in little boxes. I took one out and looked at it. "Mrs. de Winter" it said, and in the corner "Manderley". I put it back in the box again, feeling suddenly guilty, 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 in a stealthy manner peeped at her correspondence. At any moment she could 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, 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?" A voice came low and rather harsh, I could not tell whether that was of a woman or a man. "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." It was not until the name was repeated again that I had understood with a rush of colour on my face what a silly thing I had said. "It's Mrs. Danvers, Madam," said the voice. "I'm speaking to you on the house telephone."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Danvers," I said, stammering, "the telephone startled me, I didn't know what I was saying."

"I'm sorry to have disturbed you, Madam," she said, "I only wondered whether you wished to see me, and wheth­er you approved of the menus for today."

"Oh," I said, "I'm sure I do. Just order what you like, Mrs. Danvers, *you needn't ask me."

"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."

"Thank you, Mrs. Danvers," I said. I listened 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. The words on the pigeon-holes were like a reproach to me for my idleness. She, who sat there before me, had not wasted her time, as I was doing. She gave her orders for the day and ran her pencil perhaps through an item in the menu that had not pleased her. And then she wrote her letters, five, six, seven perhaps in that curious, slanting hand I knew so well.

I drummed 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 a woman I disliked, whom I should never see again. I pulled a sheet of notepaper towards me and took up a narrow thin pen. "Dear Mrs. Van Hopper," I began. And as I wrote I noticed for the first time how bad and unformed was my own hand-writing; without individual­ity, without style, uneducated even, the writing of a pu­pil taught in a second-rate school.

Activities

Pre-reading Task

Practise the pronunciation of the following words:

bowl, high, heart, guilty, acquire, blood, faun, mis­cellaneous, stealthy, touch, approve, idleness.

[bsul] [hai] [hcut] ['gilti] [a'kwaia] [bUd] [fo:n] ['misa'lemas] ['stelGi] [tAtJ] [s'piuv] ['aidlnss]

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 1839