Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
Then I heard a step behind me and turning round I saw Mrs. Danvers. I shall never forget the expression on her face. Triumphant, gloating, excited in a strange unhealthy way. I felt very frightened.
"Is anything the matter, Madam?" she said.
I tried to smile at her, and could not. I tried to speak.
"Are you feeling unwell?" she said, coming nearer to me, speaking very softly. I backed away from her. I believe if she had come any closer to me I should have fainted. I felt her breath on my face.
"I'm all right, Mrs. Danvers," I said, after a moment, "I did not expect to see you. The fact is, I was looking up at the windows from the lawn. I noticed one of the shutters was not quite closed. I came up to see if I could fasten it."
"I will fasten it," she said, and she went silently across the room and clamped back the shutter. The daylight had gone. The room looked unreal again in the false yellow light. Unreal and ghastly.
Mrs. Danvers came back and stood beside me. She smiled, and her manner, instead of being still and unbending as it usually was, became startlingly familiar, fawning even.
"Why did you tell me the shutter was open?" she asked. "I closed it before I left the room. You opened it yourself, didn't you, now? You wanted to see the room. Why have you never asked me to show it to you before? I was ready to show it to you every day. You had only to ask me."
I wanted to run away, but I could not move. I went on watching her eyes.
"Now you are here, let me show you everything," she said, her voice ingratiating and sweet as honey, horrible, false. "I know you want to see it all, you've wanted to for a long time, and you were too shy to ask. It's a lovely room, isn't it? The loveliest room you have ever seen."
She took hold of my arm, and walked me towards the bed. I could not resist her, I was like a dumb thing. The touch of her hand made me shudder. And her voice was low and intimate, a voice I hated and feared.
"That was her bed. It's a beautiful bed, isn't it? I keep the golden coverlet on it always, it was her favorite. Here is her nightdress inside the case. You've been touching it, haven't you? This was the nightdress she was wearing for the last time, before she died. Would you like to touch it again?" She took the nightdress from the case and held it before me. "Feel it, hold it," she said, "how soft and light it is, isn't it? I haven't washed it since she wore it for the last time. I put it out like this, and the dressing gown and slippers, just as I put them out for her the night she never came back, the night she was drowned." She folded up the nightgown and put it back in the case. "I did everything for her, you know," she said, taking my arm again, leading me to the dressing gown and slippers. "We tried maid after maid but not one of them suited. 'You maid me better than anyone, Danny,' she used to say, 'I won't have anyone but you.' Look, this is her dressing gown. She was much taller than you, you can see by the length. Put it up against you. It comes down to your ankles. She had a beautiful figure. These are her slippers. 'Throw me my slips, Danny,' she used to say. She had little feet for her height. Put your hands inside the slippers. They are quite small and narrow, aren't they?"
She forced the slippers over my hands, smiling all the while, watching my eyes. "You never would have thought she was so tall, would you?" she said, "these slippers would fit a tiny foot. She was so slim too. You would forget her height, until she stood beside you. She was every bit as tall as me. But lying there in bed she looked quite a slip of a thing, with her mass of dark hair, standing out from her face like a halo."
She put the slippers back on the floor, and laid the dressing gown on the chair. "You've seen her brushes, haven't you?" she said, taking me to the dressing table; "there they are, just as she used them, unwashed and untouched. I used to brush her hair for her every evening. 'Come on, Danny, hair-drill,' she would say, and I'd stand behind her by the stool here, and brush away for twenty minutes at a time. She only wore it short the last few years, you know. It came down below the waist, when she was first married. Mr. de Winter used to brush it for her then. I've come into this room time and time again and seen him, in his shirt sleeves, with the two brushes in his hand. 'Harder, Max, harder,' she would say, laughing up at him, and he would do as she told him. They would be dressing for dinner, you see, and the house filled with guests. 'Here, I shall be late,' he would say, throwing the brushes to me, and laughing back at her. He was always laughing and gay then." She paused, her hand still resting on my arm.
"Everyone was angry with her when she cut her hair," she said, "but she did not care. 'It's nothing to do with anyone but myself,' she would say. And of course short hair was much easier for riding and sailing. She was painted on horseback, you know. A famous artist did it. The picture hung in the Academy. Did you ever see it?"
I shook my head. "No," I said. "No."
"I understood it was the picture of the year," she went on, "but Mr. de Winter did not care for it, and would not have it at Manderley. I don't think he considered it did her justice. You would like to see her clothes, wouldn't you?" She did not wait for my answer. She led me to the little anteroom and opened the wardrobes, one by one.
"I keep her furs in here," she said, "the moths have not got to them yet, and I doubt if they ever will. I'm too careful. Feel that sable wrap. That was a Christmas present from Mr. de Winter. She told me the cost once, but I've forgotten it now. This chinchilla she wore in the evenings mostly. Round her shoulders, very often, when the evenings were cold. This wardrobe here is full of her evening clothes. You opened it, didn't you? The latch is not quite closed. I believe Mr. de Winter liked her to wear silver mostly. But of course she could wear anything, stand any color. She looked beautiful in this velvet. Put it against your face. It's soft, isn't it? You can feel it, can't you? The scent is still fresh, isn't it? You could almost imagine she had only just taken it off. I would always know when she had been before me in a room. There would be a little whiff of her scent in the room. These are her underclothes, in this drawer. This pink set here she had never worn. She was wearing slacks of course and a shirt when she died. They were torn from her body in the water though. There was nothing on the body when it was found, all those weeks afterwards."
Her fingers tightened on my arm. She bent down to me, her skull's face close, her dark eyes searching mine. "The rocks had battered her to bits, you know," she whispered, "her beautiful face unrecognizable, and both arms gone. Mr. de Winter identified her. He went up to Edgecoombe to do it. He went quite alone. He was very ill at the time but he would go. No one could stop him. Not even Mr. Crawley."
She paused, her eyes never leaving my face. "I shall always blame myself for the accident," she said, "it was my fault for being out that evening. I had gone into Kerrith for the afternoon and stayed there late, as Mrs. de Winter was up in London and not expected back until much later. That's why I did not hurry back. When I came in, about half past nine, I heard she had returned just before seven, had her dinner, and then went out again. Down to the beach of course. I felt worried then. It was blowing from the southwest. She would never have gone if I'd been in. She always listened to me. "I wouldn't go out this evening, it's not fit," I should have said, and she would have answered me "All right, Danny, you old fusspot." And we would have sat up here talking no doubt, she telling me all she had done in London, like she always did."
My arm was bruised and numb from the pressure of her fingers. I could see how tightly the skin was stretched across her face, showing the cheekbones. There were little patches of yellow beneath her ears.
"Mr. de Winter had been dining with Mr. Crawley down at his house," she went on. "I don't know what time he got back, I dare say it was after eleven. But it began to blow quite hard just before midnight, and she had not come back. I went downstairs, but there were no lights under the library door. I came upstairs again and knocked on the dressing-room door. Mr. de Winter answered at once, 'Who is it, what do you want?' he said. I told him I was worried about Mrs. de Winter not being back. He waited a moment, and then he came and op
She paused again. I did not want to hear any more. I wanted to get away from her, away from the room.
"I sat on my bed until half past five," she said, "then I couldn't wait there any longer. I got up and put on my coat and went down through the woods to the beach. It was getting light, but there was still a misty sort of rain falling, although the wind had dropped. When I got to the beach I saw the buoy there in the water and the dinghy, but the boat had gone..." It seemed to me that I could see the cove in the gray morning light, feel the thin drizzle on my face, and peering through the mist could make out, shadowy and indistinct, the low dark outline of the buoy.
Mrs. Danvers loosened the pressure on my arm. Her hand fell back again to her side. Her voice lost all expression, became the hard mechanical voice of every day.
"One of the life-buoys was washed up at Kerrith in the afternoon," she said, "and another was found the next day by some crabbers on the rocks below the headland. Bits and pieces of rigging too would come in with the tide." She turned away from me, and closed the chest of drawers. She straightened one of the pictures on the wall. She picked up a piece of fluff from the carpet. I stood watching her, not knowing what to do.
"You know now," she said, "why Mr. de Winter does not use these rooms anymore. Listen to the sea."
Even with the windows closed and the shutters fastened I could hear it; a low sullen murmur as the waves broke on the white shingle in the cove. The tide would be coming in fast now and running up the beach nearly to the stone cottage.
"He has not used these rooms since the night she was drowned," she said. "He had his things moved out from the dressing-room. We made up one of the rooms at the end of the corridor. I don't think he slept much even there. He used to sit in the armchair. There would be cigarette ash all round it in the morning. And in the daytime Frith would hear him in the library pacing up and down. Up and down, up and down."
I too could see the ash on the floor beside the chair. I too could hear his footsteps; one, two, one, two, backwards and forwards across the library... Mrs. Danvers closed the door softly between the bedroom and the anteroom where we were standing, and put out the light. I could not see the bed anymore, nor the nightdress case upon the pillow, nor the dressing table, nor the slippers by the chair. She crossed the anteroom and put her hand on the knob of the door and stood waiting for me to follow her.
"I come to the rooms and dust them myself every day," she said. "If you want to come again you have only to tell me. Ring me on the house telephone. I shall understand. I don't allow the maids up here. No one ever comes but me."
Her manner was fawning again, intimate and unpleasant. The smile on her face was a false, unnatural thing. "Sometimes when Mr. de Winter is away, and you feel lonely, you might like to come up to these rooms and sit here. You have only to tell me. They are such beautiful rooms. You would not think she had gone now for so long, would you, not by the way the rooms are kept? You would think she had just gone out for a little while and would be back in the evening."
I forced a smile. I could not speak. My throat felt dry and tight.
"It's not only this room," she said. "It's in many rooms in the house. In the morning room, in the hall, even in the little flower room. I feel her everywhere. You do too, don't you?"
She stared at me curiously. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Sometimes, when I walk along the corridor here, I fancy I hear her just behind me. That quick, light footstep. I could not mistake it anywhere. And in the minstrels' gallery above the hall. I've seen her leaning there, in the evenings in the old days, looking down at the hall below and calling to the dogs. I can fancy her there now from time to time. It's almost as though I catch the sound of her dress sweeping the stairs as she comes down to dinner." She paused. She went on looking at me, watching my eyes. "Do you think she can see us, talking to one another now?" she said slowly. "Do you think the dead come back and watch the living?"
I swallowed. I dug my nails into my hands.
"I don't know," I said. "I don't know." My voice sounded high-pitched and unnatural. Not my voice at all.
"Sometimes I wonder," she whispered. "Sometimes I wonder if she comes back here to Manderley and watches you and Mr. de Winter together."
We stood there by the door, staring at one another. I could not take my eyes away from hers. How dark and somber they were in the white skull's face of hers, how malevolent, how full of hatred. Then she opened the door into the corridor. "Robert is back now," she said. "He came back a quarter of an hour ago. He has orders to take your tea out under the chestnut tree."
She stepped aside for me to pass. I stumbled out onto the corridor, not looking where I was going. I did not speak to her, I went down the stairs blindly, and turned the corner and pushed through the door that led to my own rooms in the east wing. I shut the door of my room and turned the key, and put the key in my pocket.
Then I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes. I felt deadly sick.
15
Maxim rang up the next morning to say he would be back about seven. Frith took the message. Maxim did not ask to speak to me himself. I heard the telephone ring while I was at breakfast and I thought perhaps Frith would come into the dining room and say "Mr. de Winter on the telephone, Madam." I had put down my napkin and had risen to my feet. And then Frith came back into the dining room and gave me the message.
He saw me push back my chair and go to the door. "Mr. de Winter has rung off, Madam," he said, "there was no message. Just that he would be back about seven."
I sat down in my chair again and picked up my napkin. Frith must have thought me eager and stupid rushing across the dining room.
"All right, Frith. Thank you," I said.
I went on eating my eggs and bacon, Jasper at my feet, the old dog in her basket in the corner. I wondered what I should do with my day. I had slept badly; perhaps because I was alone in the room. I had been restless, waking up often, and when I glanced at my clock I saw the hands had scarcely moved. When I did fall asleep I had varied, wandering dreams. We were walking through woods, Maxim and I, and he was always just a little ahead of me. I could not keep up with him. Nor could I see his face. Just his figure, striding away in front of me all the time. I must have cried while I slept, for when I woke in the morning the pillow was damp. My eyes were heavy too, when I looked in the glass. I looked plain, unattractive. I rubbed a little rouge on my cheeks in a wretched attempt to give myself color. But it made me worse. It gave me a false clown look. Perhaps I did not know the best way to put it on. I noticed Robert staring at me as I crossed the hall and went in to breakfast.
About ten o'clock as I was crumbling some pieces for the birds on the terrace the telephone rang again. This time it was for me. Frith came and said Mrs. Lacy wanted to speak to me.
"Good morning, Beatrice," I said.
"Well, my dear, how are you?" she said, her telephone voice typical of herself, brisk, rather masculine, standing no nonsense, and then not waiting for my answer. "I thought of motoring over this afternoon and looking up Gran. I'm lunching with people about twenty miles from you. Shall I come and pick you up and we'll go together? It's time you met the old lady, you know."
"I'd like to very much, Beatrice," I said.
"Splendid. Very well, then. I'll come along for you about half past three. Giles saw Maxim at the dinner. Poor food, he said, but excellent wine. All right, my dear, see you later."
The click of the receiver, and she was gone. I wandered back in
I tried to concentrate on the bald newspaper columns, and later to lose myself in the racy plot of the novel in my hands. I did not want to think of yesterday afternoon and Mrs. Danvers. I tried to forget that she was in the house at this moment, perhaps looking down on me from one of the windows. And now and again, when I looked up from my book or glanced across the garden, I had the feeling I was not alone.
There were so many windows in Manderley, so many rooms that were never used by Maxim and myself that were empty now; dust-sheeted, silent, rooms that had been occupied in the old days when his father and his grandfather had been alive, when there had been much entertaining, many servants. It would be easy for Mrs. Danvers to open those doors softly and close them again, and then steal quietly across the shrouded room and look down upon me from behind the drawn curtains.
I should not know. Even if I turned in my chair and looked up at the windows I would not see her. I remembered a game I had played as a child that my friends next door had called "Grandmother's Steps" and myself "Old Witch." You had to stand at the end of the garden with your back turned to the rest, and one by one they crept nearer to you, advancing in short furtive fashion. Every few minutes you turned to look at them, and if you saw one of them moving the offender had to retire to the back line and begin again. But there was always one a little bolder than the rest, who came up very close, whose movement was impossible to detect, and as you waited there, your back turned, counting the regulation Ten, you knew, with a fatal terrifying certainty, that before long, before even the Ten was counted, this bold player would pounce upon you from behind, unheralded, unseen, with a scream of triumph. I felt as tense and expectant as I did then. I was playing "Old Witch" with Mrs. Danvers.