Chapter 6
I think I fell asleep a little after seven. It was broad daylight I remember; there was no longer any pretense that the drawn curtains hid the sun. The light streamed in at the open window and made patterns on the wall. I heard the men below in the rose-garden clearing away the tables and the chairs, and taking down the chain of fairy lights.
Maxim’s bed was still bare and empty. I lay across my bed, my arms over my eyes, a strange, mad position and the least likely to bring sleep, but I drifted to the border-line of the unconscious and slipped over it at last When I awoke it was past eleven, and Clarice must have come in and brought me my tea without my hearing her, for there was a tray by my side, and a stone-cold tea-pot, and my clothes had been tidied, my blue frock put away in the wardrobe. I drank my cold tea, still blurred and stupid from my short heavy sleep, and stared at the blank wall in front of me.
Maxim’s empty bed brought me to realization with a queer shock to my heart and the full anguish of the night before was upon me once again. He had not come to bed at all. His pajamas lay folded on the turned-down sheet untouched. I wondered what Clarice had thought when she came into the room with my tea. Had she noticed?
Would she have gone out and told the other servants, and would they all discuss it over their breakfast? I wondered why I minded that, and why the thought of the servants talking about it in the kitchen should cause me such distress. It must be that I had a small mean mind, a conventional, petty hatred of gossip. That was why I had come down last night in my blue dress and had not stayed hidden in my room.
There was nothing brave or fine about it, it was a wretched tribute to convention. I had not come down for Maxim’s sake, for Beatrice’s sake, for the sake of Manderley. I had come down because I did not want people at the ball to think I had quarreled with Maxim. I didn’t want them to go home and say, “Of course, you know they don’t get on. I hear he’s not at all happy.” I had come for my own sake, my own poor personal pride. As I sipped my cold tea I thought with a tired bitter feeling of despair that I would be content to live in one corner of Manderley and Maxim in the other as long as the outside world should never know.
If he had no more tenderness for me, never kissed me again, did not speak to me except on matters of necessity, I believed I could bear it if I were certain that nobody knew of this but our two selves. If we could bribe servants not to tell, play our parts before relations, before Beatrice, and then when we were alone sit apart in our separate rooms, leading our separate lives. It seemed to me, as I sat there in bed, staring at the wall, at the sunlight coming in at the window, at Maxim’s empty bed, that there was nothing quite so shaming, so degrading, as a marriage that had failed. Failed after three months, as mine had done.
For I had no illusions left now, I no longer made any effort to pretend. Last night had shown me too well. My marriage was a failure. All the things that people would say about it if they knew were true. We did not get on. We were not companions. We were not suited to one another, I was too young for Maxim, too inexperienced, and more important still, and I was not of his world.
The fact that I loved him in a sick, hurt, desperate way, like a child or a dog, did not matter. It was not the sort of love he needed. He wanted something else that I could not give him, something he had had before. I thought of the youthful almost hysterical excitement and conceit with which I had gone into this marriage, imagining I would bring happiness to Maxim, who had known much greater happiness before. Even Mrs. Van Hopper, with her cheap views and common outlook, had known I was making a mistake. “I’m afraid you will regret it,” she said, “I believe you are making a big mistake.”
I would not listen to her, I thought her hard and cruel. But she was right. She was right in everything. That last means thrust thrown at me before she said good-bye, “You don’t flatter yourself he’s in love with you, and do you? He’s lonely, he can’t bear that great empty house,” was the sanest, most truthful statement she had ever made in her life. Maxim was not in love with me, he had never loved me. Our honeymoon in Italy had meant nothing at all to him, nor our living here together.
What I had thought was love for me, for myself as a person, was not love. It was just that he was a man, and I was his wife and was young, and he was lonely. He did not belong to me at all, he belonged to Rebecca. He still thought about Rebecca. He would never love me because of Rebecca. She was in the house still as Mrs. Danvers had said. She was in that room in the west wing, and she was in the library, in the morning-room, in the gallery above the hall.
Evening the little flower-room, where her mackintosh still hung. And in the garden, and in the woods, and down in the stone cottage on the beach. Her footsteps sounded in the corridors, her scent lingered on the stairs. The servants obeyed her orders still; the food we ate was the food she liked. Her favorite flowers filled the rooms. Her clothes were in the wardrobes in her room; her brushes were on the table, her shoes beneath the chair, and her nightdress on her bed.
Rebecca was still mistress offhandedly. Rebecca was still Mrs. de Winter. I had no business here at all. I had come blundering like a poor fool on ground that was preserved. “Where is Rebecca?” Maxim’s grandmother had cried, “I want Rebecca. What have you done with Rebecca?” She did not know me; she did not care about me. Why should she? I was a stranger to her. I did not belong to Maxim or to Manderley.
And Beatrice at our first meeting, looking me up and down, frank, direct, said, “You’re so very different from Rebecca.” Frank, reserved, embarrassed when I spoke of her, hating those questions I had poured upon him, even as I had hated them myself, and then answering that final one as we came towards the house, his voice grave and quiet, “Yes, she was the most beautiful creature I have ever seen.” Rebecca, always Rebecca, Wherever I walked in Manderley, wherever I sat, even in my thoughts and in my dreams, I met Rebecca. I knew her figure now, the long slim legs, the small and narrow feet. Her shoulders, broader than mine, the capable clever hands. Hands that could steer a boat could hold a horse.
Hands that arranged flowers, made the models of ships, and wrote ‘Max from Rebecca’ on the fly-leaf of a book. I knew her face too, small and oval, the clear white skin, the cloud of dark hair. I knew the scent she wore; I could guess her laughter and her smile. If I heard it, even among a thousand others, I should recognize her voice. Rebecca, always Rebecca. I should never be rid of Rebecca.
Perhaps I haunted her as she haunted me; she looked down on me from the gallery as Mrs. Danvers had said, she sat beside me when I wrote my letters at her desk. That mackintosh I wore that handkerchief I used. They were hers. Perhaps she knew and had seen me take them. Jasper had been her dog, and he ran at my heels now.
The roses were hers and I cut them. Did she resent me and fear me as I resented her? Did she want Maxim alone in the house again? I could fight the living but I could not fight the dead. If there was some woman in London that Maxim loved, someone he wrote to, visited, dined with, slept with, I could fight with her. We would stand on common ground. I should not be afraid. Anger and jealousy were things that could be conquered.
One day the woman would grow old or tired or different, and Maxim would not love her any more. But Rebecca would never grow old. Rebecca would always be the same. And she and I could not fight. She was too strong for me.
I got out of bed and pulled the curtains. The sun streamed into the room. The men had cleared the mess away from the rose-garden. I wondered if people were talking about the ball in the way they do the day after a party. “Did you think it was quite up to their usual standard?”
“Oh, I think so.”
“The band dragged a bit I thought.”
“The supper was damn good.”
“Fireworks weren’t bad.”
“Bee Lacy is beginning to look old.”
“Who wouldn’t in that get-up?”
“I thought he looked rather ill.”
“He always does.”
“What did you think of the bride?”
“Not much. Rather dull.”
“I wonder if it’s a success.”
“Yes,” I wonder. “Then I noticed for the first time there was a note under my door. I went and picked it up. I recognized the square hand of Beatrice. She had scribbled it in pencil after breakfast.” I knocked at your door but had no answer so gather you’ve taken my advice and are sleeping off last night. Giles is anxious to get back early as they have rung up from home to say he’s wanted to take somebody’s place in a cricket match and it starts at two.
How he is going to see the ball after all the champagne he put away last night heaven only knows! I’m feeling a bit weak in the legs, but slept like atop. Frith says Maxim was down to an early breakfast, and there’s now no sign of him! So please give him our love and many thanks to you both for our evening, which we thoroughly enjoyed. Don’t think any more about the dress. (This last was heavily underlined.) Yours affectionately, Bee” and a postscript, “You must both come over and see us soon.” She had scribbled nine-thirty a.m. at the top of the paper, and it was now nearly half-past eleven.
They had been gone about two hours. They would be home by now, Beatrice with her suit-case unpacked, going out into her garden and taking up her ordinary routine, and Giles preparing for his match, renewing the whipping on his bat.
In the afternoon Beatrice would change into a cool frock and a shady hat and watch Giles play cricket They would have tea afterwards in a tent, Giles very hot and red in the face, Beatrice laughing and talking to her friends. “Yes, we went over for the dance at Manderley, it was great fun. I wonder Giles was able to run a yard.” Smiling at Giles, patting him on the back.
They were both middle-aged and unromantic. They had been married for twenty years and had a grown-up son who was going to Oxford. They were very happy. Their marriage was a success. It had not failed after three months as mine had done. I could not go on sitting in my bedroom any longer. The maids would want to come and do the room.
Perhaps Clarice would not have noticed about Maxim’s bed after all. I rumpled it, to make it look as though he had slept there. I did not want the housemaids to know, if Clarice had not told them. I had a bath and dressed, and went downstairs. The men had taken up the floor already in the hall and the flowers had been carried away. The music stands were gone from the gallery.
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