The walls of the suite were thick, I could hear no hum of voices. I wondered what he was saying to her, how he phrased his words. Perhaps he said, I fell in love with her, you know, the very first time we met. We’ve been seeing one another every day.” And she in answer, “Why, Mr. de Winter, it’s quite the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.” Romantic, that was the word I had tried to remember coming up in the lift. Yes, of course. Romantic. That was what people would say. It was all very sudden and romantic. They suddenly decided to get married and there it was. Such an adventure. I smiled to myself as I hugged my knees on the window seat, thinking how wonderful it was, how happy I was going to be. I was to marry the man I loved. I was to be Mrs. de Winter. It was foolish to go on having that pain in the pit of my stomach when I was so happy. Nerves of course. Waiting like this; the doctor’s anteroom. It would have been better, after all, more natural surely to have gone into the sitting room hand in hand, laughing, smiling at one another and for him to say “We’re going to be married, we’re very much in love.”
In love. He had not said anything yet about being in love. No time perhaps. It was all so hurried at the breakfast table. Marmalade, and coffee, and that tangerine. No time. The tangerine was very bitter. No, he had not said anything about being in love. Just that we would be married. Short and definite, very original. Original proposals were much better. More genuine. Not like other people. Not like younger men who talked nonsense probably, not meaning half they said. Not like younger men being very incoherent, very passionate, swearing impossibilities. Not like him the first time, asking Rebecca… I must not think of that. Put it away. A thought forbidden, prompted by demons. Get thee behind me, Satan. I must never think about that, never, never, never. He loves me, he wants to show me Manderley. Would they ever have done with their talking, would they ever call me into the room?
There was the book of poems lying beside my bed. He had forgotten he had ever lent them to me. They could not mean much to him then. “Go on,” whispered the demon, “open the title page; that’s what you want to do, isn’t it? Open the title page.” Nonsense, I said, I’m only going to put the book with the rest of the things. I yawned. I wandered to the table beside the bed. I picked up the book. I caught my foot in the flex of the bedside lamp, and stumbled, the book falling from my hands onto the floor. It fell open, at the title page. “Max from Rebecca.” She was dead, and one must not have thoughts about the dead. They slept in peace, the grass blew over their graves. How alive was her writing though, how full of force. Those curious, sloping letters. The blob of ink. Done yesterday. It was just as if it had been written yesterday. I took my nail scissors from the dressing-case and cut the page, looking over my shoulder like a criminal.
I cut the page right out of the book. I left no jagged edges, and the book looked white and clean when the page was gone. A new book, that had not been touched. I tore the page up in many little fragments and threw them into the wastepaper basket. Then I went and sat on the window seat again. But I kept thinking of the torn scraps in the basket, and after a moment I had to get up and look in the basket once more. Even now the ink stood up on the fragments thick and black, the writing was not destroyed. I took a box of matches and set fire to the fragments. The flame had a lovely light, staining the paper, curling the edges, making the slanting writing impossible to distinguish. The fragments fluttered to gray ashes. The letter R was the last to go, it twisted in the flame, it curled outwards for a moment, becoming larger than ever. Then it crumpled too; the flame destroyed it. It was not ashes even, it was feathery dust… I went and washed my hands in the basin. I felt better, much better. I had the clean new feeling that one has when the calendar is hung on the wall at the beginning of the year. January the 1st. I was aware of the same freshness, the same gay confidence. The door opened and he came into the room.
“All’s well,” he said; “shock made her speechless at first, but she’s beginning to recover, so I’m going downstairs to the office, to make certain she will catch the first train. For a moment she wavered; I think she had hopes of acting witness at the wedding, but I was very firm. Go and talk to her.”
He said nothing about being glad, about being happy. He did not take my arm and go into the sitting room with me. He smiled, and waved his hand, and went off down the corridor alone. I went to Mrs. Van Hopper, uncertain, rather self-conscious, like a maid who has handed in her notice through a friend.