Chapter 10
We went and stood by the car. No one said anything for a few minutes. Favell looked grey, rather shaken. I noticed his hands were trembling as he held the match. The man with the barrel-organ ceased playing for a moment and hobbled towards us, his cap in his hand. Maxim gave him two shillings.
Then he went back to the barrel-organ and started another tune. The church clock struck six o’clock. Favell began to speak. His voice was diffident, careless, but his face was still grey. He did not look at any of us; he kept glancing down at his cigarette and turning it over in his fingers.
“This cancer business,” he said, “does anybody know if it’s contagious?” No one answered him. Colonel Julyan shrugged his shoulders. “I never had the remotest idea,” said Favell jerkily, “She kept it a secret from everyone, even Danny. What a God-damned appalling thing, eh? Not the sort of thing one would ever connect with Rebecca. Do you fellows feel like a drink? I’m all-out over this, and I don’t mind admitting it. Cancer! Oh, my God!” He leant up against the side of the car and shaded his eyes with his hands.
“Tell that bloody fellow with the barrel-organ to clear out,” he said, “I can’t stand that damned row.”
“Wouldn’t it be simpler if we went ourselves?” said Maxim, “Can you manage your own car or do you want Julyan to drive it for you?”
“Give me a minute,” muttered Favell, “I’ll be all right. You don’t understand. This thing has been a damned unholy shock to me.”
“Pull yourself together, man, for heaven’s sake,” said Colonel Julyan, “If you want a drink go back to the house and ask Baker. He knows how to treat for shock, I daresay. Don’t make an exhibition of yourself in the street.”
“Oh, you’re all right, you’re fine,” said Favell, standing straight and looking at Colonel Julyan and Maxim, “You’ve got nothing to worry about any more. Max is on a good wicket now, isn’t he? You’ve got your motive, and Baker will supply it in black and white free of cost, whenever you send the word. You can dine at Manderley once a week on the strength of it and feel proud of yourself. No doubt Max will ask you to be godfather to his first child.”
“Shall we get into the car and go?” said Colonel Julyan to Maxim, “We can make our plans going along.” Maxim held open the door of the car and Colonel Julyan climbed in. I sat down in my seat in the front. Favell still leant against the car and did not move.
“I should advise you to get straight back to your flat and go to bed,” said Colonel Julyan shortly, “and drive slowly, or you will find yourself in gaol for manslaughter. I may as well warn you now, as I shall not be seeing you again, that as a magistrate I have certain powers that will prove effective if you ever turn up in Kerrith or the district.”
“Blackmail is not much of a profession, Mr. Favell. And we know how to deal with it in our part of the world, strange though it may seem to you.” Favell was watching Maxim. He had lost the grey colour now, and the old unpleasant smile was forming on his lips. “Yes, it’s been a stroke of luck for you, Max, hasn’t it?” he said slowly, “you think you’ve won, don’t you? The law can get you yet, and so can I, in a different way.” Maxim switched on the engine. “Have you anything else you want to say?” he said, “Because if you have you had better say it now.”
“No,” said Favell, “No, I won’t keep you. You can go.” He stepped back on to the pavement, the smile still on his lips. The car slid forward. As we turned the corner I looked back and saw him standing there, watching us, and he waved his hand and he was laughing. We drove on for a while in silence. Then Colonel Julyan spoke. “He can’t do anything,” he said, “That smile and that wave was part of his bluff. They’re all alike, those fellows. He hasn’t a thread of a case to bring now. Baker’s evidence would squash it.”
Maxim did not answer. He was staring in front of him at nothing.
“Your lobster will be cold,” I said, “eat it, darling. It will do you good, you want something inside you. You’re tired.” I was using the words he had used to me. I felt better and stronger. It was I now who was taking care of him. He was tired, pale. I had got over my weakness and fatigue and now he was the one to suffer from reaction. It was just because he was empty, because he was tired.
There was nothing to worry about at all. Mrs. Danvers had gone. We should praise God for that, too. Everything had been made so easy for us, so very easy. “Eat up your fish,” I said. It was going to be very different in the future. I was not going to be nervous and shy of the servants any more. With Mrs. Danvers gone I should learn bit by bit to control the house. I would go and interview the cook in the kitchen.
They would like me, respect me. Soon it would be as though Mrs. Danvers had never had command. I would learn more about the estate, too. I should ask Frank to explain things to me. I was sure Frank liked me. I liked him, too. I would go into things, and learn how they were managed.
What they did at the farm. How the work in the grounds was planned. I might take to gardening myself, and in time have one or two things altered. That little square lawn outside the morning-room window with the statue of the satyr. I did not like it. We would give the satyr away. There were heaps of things that I could do, little by little. People would come and stay and I should not mind.
There would be the interest of seeing to their rooms, having flowers and books put, arranging the food. We would have children. Surely we would have children. “Have you finished?” said Maxim suddenly, “I don’t think I want any more. Only coffee. Black, very strong, please, and the bill,” he added to the matire d’hotel. I wondered why we must go so soon.
It was comfortable in the restaurant, and there was nothing to take us away. I liked sitting there, with my head against the sofa back, planning the future idly in a hazy pleasant way. I could have gone on sitting there for a long while.
I followed Maxim out of the restaurant, stumbling a little, and yawning. “Listen,” he said, when we were on the pavement, “Do you think you could sleep in the car if I wrapped you up with the rug, and tucked you down in the back? There’s the cushion there, and my coat as well.”
“I thought we were going to put up somewhere for the night?” I said blankly, “One of those hotels one passes on the road.”
“I know,” he said, “but I have this feeling I must get down to-night. Can’t you possibly sleep in the back of the car?”
“Yes,” I said doubtfully, “Yes, I suppose so.”
“If we start now, it’s a quarter-to-eight, we ought to be there by half-past two,” he said, “There won’t be much traffic on the road.”
“You’ll be so tired,” I said, “So terribly tired.”
“No,” he shook his head. “I shall be all right. I want to get home. Something’s wrong. I know it is. I want to get home.” His face was anxious, strange. He pulled open the door and began arranging the rug and the cushion at the back of the car. “What can be wrong?” I said, “It seems so odd to worry now, when everything’s over. I can’t understand you.” He did not answer. I climbed into the back of the car and lay down with my legs tucked under me. He covered me with the rug. It was very comfortable. Much better than I imagined. I settled the pillow under my head. “Are you all right?” he said, “Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“No,” I said smiling. “I’m all right. I shall sleep. I don’t want to stay anywhere on the road. It’s much better to do this and get home. We’ll be at Manderley long before sunrise.” He got in front and switched on the engine. I shut my eyes.
The car drew away and I felt the slight jolting of the springs under my body. I pressed my face against the cushion. The motion of the car was rhythmic, steady, and the pulse of my mind beat with it. A hundred images came to me when I closed my eyes, things seen, things known, and things forgotten. They were jumbled together in a senseless pattern.
The quill of Mrs. Van Hopper’s hat, the hard straight-backed chairs in Frank’s dining-room, the wide window in the west wing at Manderley, the salmon-colored frock of the smiling lady at the fancy dress ball, a peasant-girl in a road near Monte Carlo. Sometimes I saw Jasper chasing butterflies across the lawns; sometimes I saw Doctor Baker’s Scotch terrier scratching his ear beside a deck-chair.
There was the postman who had pointed out the house to us to-day, and there was Clarice’s mother wiping a chair for me in the back parlor. Ben smiled at me, holding winkles in his hands, and the bishop’s wife asked me if I would stay to tea. I could feel the cold comfort of my sheets in my own bed, and the gritty shingle in the cove. I could smell the bracken in the woods, the wet moss, and the dead azalea petals.
I fell into a strange broken sleep, waking now and again to the reality of my narrow cramped position and the sight of Maxim’s back in front of me. The dusk had turned to darkness. There were the lights of passing cars upon the road.
There were villages and drawn curtains and little lights behind them. And I would move, and turn upon my back, and sleep again. I saw the staircase at Manderley, and Mrs. Danvers standing at the top in her black dress, waiting for me to go to her. As I climbed the stairs she backed under the archway and disappeared. I looked for her and I could not find her. Then her face looked at me through a hollow door and I cried out and she had gone again. “What’s the time?” I called, “What’s the time?” Maxim turned round to me, his face pale and ghostly in the darkness of the car. “It’s half-past eleven,” he said, “We’re over half-way already. Try and sleep again.”
“I’m thirsty,” I said. He stopped at the next town. The man at the garage said his wife had not gone to bed and she would make us some tea. We got out of the car and stood inside the garage. I stamped up and down to bring the blood back to my hands and feet. Maxim smoked a cigarette. It was cold. A bitter wind blew in through the open garage door, and rattled the corrugated roof. I shivered, and buttoned up my coat.
“Yes, it’s nippy to-night,” said the garage man, as he wound the petrol pump, “The weather seemed to break this afternoon. It’s the last of the heat-waves for this summer. We shall be thinking of fires soon.”
“It was hot in London,” I said. “Was it?” he said, “Well, they always have the extremes up there, don’t they? We get the first of the bad weather down here. It will blow hard on the coast before morning.” His wife brought us the tea. It tasted of bitter wood, but it was hot I drank it greedily, thankfully. Already Maxim was glancing at his watch. “We ought to be going,” he said, “It’s ten minutes to twelve.” I left the shelter of the garage reluctantly. The cold wind blew in my face. The stars raced across the sky.
There were threads of cloud too. “Yes,” said the garage man, “summers over for this year.” We climbed back into the car. I settled myself once more under the rug. The car went on. I shut my eyes. There was the man with the wooden leg winding his barrel-organ, and the tune of Roses in Picardy hummed in my head against the jolting of the car. Frith and Robert carried the tea into the library.
The woman at the lodge nodded to me abruptly, and called her child into the house. I saw the model boats in the cottage in the cove, and the feathery dust. I heard the rain upon the roof and the sound of the sea. I wanted to get to the Happy Valley and it was not there. There were woods about me, there was no Happy Valley. Only the dark trees and the young bracken. The owls hooted. The moon was shining in the windows of Manderley. There were nettles in the garden, ten feet, twenty feet high, “Maxim!” I cried, “Maxim!”
“Yes,” he said, “It’s all right. I’m here.”
“I had a dream,” I said. “A dream.”
“What was it?” he said, “I don’t know. I don’t know.” Back again into the moving unquiet depths. I was writing letters in the morning-room. I was sending out invitations. I wrote them all myself with a thick black pen. But when I looked down to see what I had written it was not my small square hand-writing at all, it was long, and slanting, with curious pointed strokes. I pushed the cards away from the blotter and hid them. I got up and went to the looking-glass. A face stared back at me that was not my own.
It was very pale, very lovely, framed in a cloud of dark hair. The eyes narrowed and smiled. The lips parted. The face in the glass stared back at me and laughed. And I saw then that she was sitting on a chair in her bedroom, and Maxim was brushing her hair. He held her hair in his hands, and as he brushed it he wound it slowly into a thick long rope. It twisted like a snake, and he took hold of it with both hands and smiled at Rebecca and put it round his neck. “No,” I screamed, “No, no. We must go to Switzerland. Colonel Julyan said we must go to Switzerland.” I felt Maxim’s hand upon my face. “What is it?” he said, “What’s the matter?” I sat up and pushed my hair away from my face. “I can’t sleep,” I said, “It’s no use.”
“You’ve been sleeping,” he said, “You’ve slept for two hours. It’s a quarter-past two. We’re four miles the other side of Lanyon.”
It was even colder than before. I shuddered in the darkness of the car. “I’ll come beside you,” I said, “We shall be back by three.” I climbed over and sat beside him, staring in front of me through the wind-screen. I put my hand on his knee. My teeth were chattering. “You’re cold,” he said. “Yes,” I said. The hills rose in front of us, and dipped, and rose again. It was quite dark. The stars had gone. “What time did you say it was?” I asked. “Twenty past two,” he said. “It’s funny,” I said. “It looks almost as though the dawn was breaking over there, beyond those hills. It can’t be though, it’s too early.”
“It’s the wrong direction,” he said, “you’re looking west.”
“I know,” I said, “It’s funny, isn’t it?” He did not answer and I went on watching the sky. It seemed to get lighter even as Stared. Like the first red streaks of sunrise. Little by little it spread across the sky. “It’s in winter you see the northern lights, isn’t it?” I said, “Not in summer.”
“That’s not the northern lights,” he said, “that are Manderley.”
I glanced at him and saw his face. I saw his eyes. “Maxim,” I said, “Maxim, what is it?” He drove faster, much faster.
We topped the hill before us and saw someone lying in a hollow at our feet. There to the left of us was the silver streak of the river, widening to the estuary at Kerrith six miles away. The road to Manderley lay ahead. The sky above our heads was inky black. But the sky on the horizon wasn’t dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.
❒
