“What the devil do you mean?” he said, staring at me, laying down his spoon.
I watched a fly settle on the marmalade, and he brushed it away impatiently.
“I’m not sure,” I said slowly. “I don’t think I know how to explain. I don’t belong to your sort of world for one thing.”
“What is my world?”
“Well—Manderley. You know what I mean.”
He picked up his spoon again and helped himself to marmalade.
“You are almost as ignorant as Mrs. Van Hopper, and just as unintelligent. What do you know of Manderley? I’m the person to judge that, whether you would belong there or not. You think I ask you this on the spur of the moment, don’t you? Because you say you don’t want to go to New York. You think I ask you to marry me for the same reason you believed I drove you about in the car, yes, and gave you dinner that first evening. To be kind. Don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“One day,” he went on, spreading his toast thick, “you may realize that philanthropy is not my strongest quality. At the moment I don’t think you realize anything at all. You haven’t answered my question. Are you going to marry me?”
I don’t believe, even in my fiercest moments, I had considered this possibility. I had once, when driving with him and we had been silent for many miles, started a rambling story in my head about him being very ill, delirious I think, and sending for me and I having to nurse him. I had reached the point in my story where I was putting eau-de-Cologne on his head when we arrived at the hotel, and so it finished there. And another time I had imagined living in a lodge in the grounds of Manderley, and how he would visit me sometimes, and sit in front of the fire. This sudden talk of marriage bewildered me, even shocked me I think. It was as though the King asked one. It did not ring true. And he went on eating his marmalade as though everything were natural. In books men knelt to women, and it would be moonlight. Not at breakfast, not like this.
“My suggestion doesn’t seem to have gone too well,” he said. “I’m sorry. I rather thought you loved me. A fine blow to my conceit.”
“I do love you,” I said. “I love you dreadfully. You’ve made me very unhappy and I’ve been crying all night because I thought I should never see you again.”
When I said this I remember he laughed, and stretched his hand to me across the breakfast table. “Bless you for that,” he said; “one day, when you reach that exalted age of thirty-six which you told me was your ambition, I’ll remind you of this moment. And you won’t believe me. It’s a pity you have to grow up.”
I was ashamed already, and angry with him for laughing. So women did not make those confessions to men. I had a lot to learn.
“So that’s settled, isn’t it?” he said, going on with his toast and marmalade; “instead of being companion to Mrs. Van Hopper you become mine, and your duties will be almost exactly the same. I also like new library books, and flowers in the drawing room, and bezique after dinner. And someone to pour out my tea. The only difference is that I don’t take Taxol, I prefer Eno’s, and you must never let me run out of my particular brand of toothpaste.”
I drummed with my fingers on the table, uncertain of myself and of him. Was he still laughing at me, was it all a joke? He looked up, and saw the anxiety on my face. “I’m being rather a brute to you, aren’t I?” he said; “this isn’t your idea of a proposal. We ought to be in a conservatory, you in a white frock with a rose in your hand, and a violin playing a waltz in the distance. And I should make violent love to you behind a palm tree. You would feel then you were getting your money’s worth. Poor darling, what a shame. Never mind, I’ll take you to Venice for our honeymoon and we’ll hold hands in the gondola. But we won’t stay too long, because I want to show you Manderley.”
He wanted to show me Manderley… And suddenly I realized that it would all happen; I would be his wife, we would walk in the garden together, we would stroll down that path in the valley to the shingle beach. I knew how I would stand on the steps after breakfast, looking at the day, throwing crumbs to the birds, and later wander out in a shady hat with long scissors in my hand, and cut flowers for the house. I knew now why I had bought that picture postcard as a child; it was a premonition, a blank step into the future.
He wanted to show me Manderley… My mind ran riot then, figures came before me and picture after picture—and all the while he ate his tangerine, giving me a piece now and then, and watching me. We would be in a crowd of people, and he would say, “I don’t think you have met my wife.” Mrs. de Winter. I would be Mrs. de Winter. I considered my name, and the signature on checks, to tradesmen, and in letters asking people to dinner. I heard myself talking on the telephone: “Why not come down to Manderley next weekend?” People, always a throng of people. “Oh, but she’s simply charming, you must meet her—” This about me, a whisper on the fringe of a crowd, and I would turn away, pretending I had not heard.