“Yes,” I said.
“Well, it’s hardly to be wondered at in this fog, Madam. That’s what I said to Robert just now. It’s difficult to find your way on the road, let alone on the water.”
“Yes,” I said.
“If you want to catch Mr. de Winter he went straight across the lawn only two minutes ago,” said Frith.
“Thank you, Frith,” I said.
I went out on the terrace. I could see the trees taking shape beyond the lawns. The fog was lifting, it was rising in little clouds to the sky above. It whirled above my head in wreaths of smoke. I looked up at the windows above my head. They were tightly closed, and the shutters were fastened. They looked as though they would never open, never be thrown wide.
It was by the large window in the center that I had stood five minutes before. How high it seemed above my head, how lofty and remote. The stones were hard and solid under my feet. I looked down at my feet and then up again to the shuttered window, and as I did so I became aware suddenly that my head was swimming and I felt hot. A little trickle of perspiration ran down the back of my neck. Black dots jumped about in the air in front of me. I went into the hall again and sat down on a chair. My hands were quite wet. I sat very still, holding my knees.
“Frith,” I called, “Frith, are you in the dining room?”
“Yes, Madam?” He came out at once, and crossed the hall towards me.
“Don’t think me very odd, Frith, but I rather think I’d like a small glass of brandy.”
“Certainly, Madam.”
I went on holding my knees and sitting very still. He came back with a liqueur glass on a silver salver.
“Do you feel a trifle unwell, Madam?” said Frith. “Would you like me to call Clarice?”
“No, I’ll be all right, Frith,” I said. “I felt a bit hot, that’s all.”
“It’s a very warm morning, Madam. Very warm indeed. Oppressive, one might almost say.”
“Yes, Frith. Very oppressive.”
I drank the brandy and put the glass back on the silver salver.
“Perhaps the sound of those rockets alarmed you,” said Frith; “they went off so very sudden.”
“Yes, they did,” I said.
“And what with the hot morning and standing about all last night, you are not perhaps feeling quite like yourself, Madam,” said Frith.
“No, perhaps not,” I said.
“Will you lie down for half an hour? It’s quite cool in the library.”
“No. No, I think I’ll go out in a moment or two. Don’t bother, Frith.”
“No. Very good, Madam.”
He went away and left me alone in the hall. It was quiet sitting there, quiet and cool. All trace of the party had been cleared away. It might never have happened. The hall was as it had always been, gray and silent and austere, with the portraits and the weapons on the wall. I could scarcely believe that last night I had stood there in my blue dress at the bottom of the stairs, shaking hands with five hundred people. I could not believe that there had been music-stands in the minstrel’s gallery, and a band playing there, a man with a fiddle, a man with a drum. I got up and went out onto the terrace again.
The fog was rising, lifting to the tops of the trees. I could see the woods at the end of the lawns. Above my head a pale sun tried to penetrate the heavy sky. It was hotter than ever. Oppressive, as Frith had said. A bee hummed by me in search of scent, bumbling, noisy, and then creeping inside a flower was suddenly silent. On the grass banks above the lawns the gardener started his mowing machine. A startled linnet fled from the whirring blades towards the rose garden. The gardener bent to the handles of the machine and walked slowly along the bank scattering the short-tipped grass and the pinpoint daisy-heads. The smell of the sweet warm grass came towards me on the air, and the sun shone down upon me full and strong from out of the white mist. I whistled for Jasper but he did not come. Perhaps he had followed Maxim when he went down to the beach. I glanced at my watch. It was after half past twelve, nearly twenty to one. This time yesterday Maxim and I were standing with Frank in the little garden in front of his house, waiting for his housekeeper to serve lunch.
Twenty-four hours ago. They were teasing me, baiting me about my dress. “You’ll both get the surprise of your lives,” I had said.
I felt sick with shame at the memory of my words. And then I realized for the first time that Maxim had not gone away as I had feared. The voice I had heard on the terrace was calm and practical. The voice I knew. Not the voice of last night when I stood at the head of the stairs. Maxim had not gone away. He was down there in the cove somewhere. He was himself, normal and sane. He had just been for a walk, as Frank had said. He had been on the headland, he had seen the ship closing in towards the shore. All my fears were without foundation. Maxim was safe. Maxim was all right. I had just experienced something that was degrading and horrible and mad, something that I did not fully understand even now, that I had no wish to remember, that I wanted to bury forevermore, deep in the shadows of my mind with old forgotten terrors of childhood; but even this did not matter as long as Maxim was all right.