The birds were hushed in the trees. It was still very dark.
“I wish you did not have to go out again,” I said.
He did not answer. He looked tired, so deathly tired.
“We’ll talk over things this evening when I get back,” he said presently. “We’ve got so much to do together, haven’t we? We’ve got to begin all over again. I’ve been the worst sort of husband for you.”
“No!” I said. “No!”
“We’ll start again, once this thing is behind us. We can do it, you and I. It’s not like being alone. The past can’t hurt us if we are together. You’ll have children too.” After a while he glanced at his watch. “It’s ten past six,” he said, “I shall have to be going. It won’t take long, not more than half an hour. We’ve got to go down to the crypt.”
I held his hand. “I’ll come with you. I shan’t mind. Let me come with you.”
“No,” he said. “No, I don’t want you to come.”
Then he went out of the room. I heard the sound of the car starting up in the drive. Presently the sound died away, and I knew he had gone.
Robert came to clear away the tea. It was like any other day. The routine was unchanged. I wondered if it would have been so had Maxim not come back from Lanyon. I wondered if Robert would have stood there, that wooden expression on his young sheep’s face, brushing the crumbs from the snow-white cloth, picking up the table, carrying it from the room.
It seemed very quiet in the library when he had gone. I began to think of them down at the church, going through that door and down the flight of stairs to the crypt. I had never been there. I had only seen the door. I wondered what a crypt was like, if there were coffins standing there. Maxim’s father and mother. I wondered what would happen to the coffin of that other woman who had been put there by mistake. I wondered who she was, poor unclaimed soul, washed up by the wind and tide. Now another coffin would stand there. Rebecca would lie there in the crypt as well. Was the vicar reading the burial service there, with Maxim, and Frank, and Colonel Julyan standing by his side? Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. It seemed to me that Rebecca had no reality anymore. She had crumbled away when they had found her on the cabin floor. It was not Rebecca who was lying in the crypt, it was dust. Only dust.
Just after seven the rain began to fall. Gently at first, a light pattering in the trees, and so thin I could not see it. Then louder and faster, a driving torrent falling slantways from the slate sky, like water from a sluice. I left the windows open wide. I stood in front of them and breathed the cold clean air. The rain splashed into my face and on my hands. I could not see beyond the lawns, the falling rain came thick and fast. I heard it sputtering in the gutter-pipes above the window, and splashing on the stones of the terrace. There was no more thunder. The rain smelt of moss and earth and of the black bark of trees.
I did not hear Frith come in at the door. I was standing by the window, watching the rain. I did not see him until he was beside me.
“Excuse me, Madam,” he said, “do you know if Mr. de Winter will be long?”
“No,” I said, “not very long.”
“There’s a gentleman to see him, Madam,” said Frith after a moment’s hesitation. “I’m not quite sure what I ought to say. He’s very insistent about seeing Mr. de Winter.”
“Who is it?” I said. “Is it anyone you know?”
Frith looked uncomfortable. “Yes, Madam,” he said, “it’s a gentleman who used to come here frequently at one time, when Mrs. de Winter was alive. A gentleman called Mr. Favell.”
I knelt on the window seat and shut the window. The rain was coming in on the cushions. Then I turned round and looked at Frith.
“I think perhaps I had better see Mr. Favell,” I said.
“Very good, Madam.”
I went and stood over on the rug beside the empty fireplace. It was just possible that I should be able to get rid of Favell before Maxim came back. I did not know what I was going to say to him, but I was not frightened.
In a few moments Frith returned and showed Favell into the library. He looked much the same as before but a little rougher if possible, a little more untidy. He was the sort of man who invariably went hatless, his hair was bleached from the sun of the last days and his skin was deeply tanned. His eyes were rather bloodshot. I wondered if he had been drinking.
“I’m afraid Maxim is not here,” I said. “I don’t know when he will be back. Wouldn’t it be better if you made an appointment to see him at the office in the morning?”