“Of course,” she said, “you know why he is marrying you, don’t you? You haven’t flattered yourself he’s in love with you? The fact is that empty house got on his nerves to such an extent he nearly went off his head. He admitted as much before you came into the room. He just can’t go on living there alone…”
7
We came to Manderley in early May, arriving, so Maxim said, with the first swallows and the bluebells. It would be the best moment, before the full flush of summer, and in the valley the azaleas would be prodigal of scent, and the bloodred rhododendrons in bloom. We motored, I remember, leaving London in the morning in a heavy shower of rain, coming to Manderley about five o’clock, in time for tea. I can see myself now, unsuitably dressed as usual, although a bride of seven weeks, in a tan-colored stockinette frock, a small fur known as a stone marten round my neck, and over all a shapeless mackintosh, far too big for me and dragging to my ankles. It was, I thought, a gesture to the weather, and the length added inches to my height. I clutched a pair of gauntlet gloves in my hands, and carried a large leather handbag.
“This is London rain,” said Maxim when we left, “you wait, the sun will be shining for you when we come to Manderley”; and he was right, for the clouds left us at Exeter, they rolled away behind us, leaving a great blue sky above our heads and a white road in front of us.
I was glad to see the sun, for in superstitious fashion I looked upon rain as an omen of ill-will, and the leaden skies of London had made me silent.
“Feeling better?” said Maxim, and I smiled at him, taking his hand, thinking how easy it was for him, going to his own home, wandering into the hall, picking up letters, ringing a bell for tea, and I wondered how much he guessed of my nervousness, and whether his question “Feeling better?” meant that he understood. “Never mind, we’ll soon be there. I expect you want your tea,” he said, and he let go my hand because we had reached a bend in the road, and must slow down.
I knew then that he had mistaken my silence for fatigue, and it had not occurred to him I dreaded this arrival at Manderley as much as I had longed for it in theory. Now the moment was upon me I wished it delayed. I wanted to draw up at some wayside inn and stay there, in a coffee room, by an impersonal fire. I wanted to be a traveler on the road, a bride in love with her husband. Not myself coming to Manderley for the first time, the wife of Maxim de Winter. We passed many friendly villages where the cottage windows had a kindly air. A woman, holding a baby in her arms, smiled at me from a doorway, while a man clanked across a road to a well, carrying a pail.
I wished we could have been one with them, perhaps their neighbors, and that Maxim could lean over a cottage gate in the evenings, smoking a pipe, proud of a very tall hollyhock he had grown himself, while I bustled in my kitchen, clean as a pin, laying the table for supper. There would be an alarm clock on the dresser ticking loudly, and a row of shining plates, while after supper Maxim would read his paper, boots on the fender, and I reach for a great pile of mending in the dresser drawer. Surely it would be peaceful and steady, that way of living, and easier, too, demanding no set standard?
“Only two miles further,” said Maxim; “you see that great belt of trees on the brow of the hill there, sloping to the valley, with a scrap of sea beyond? That’s Manderley, in there. Those are the woods.”
I forced a smile, and did not answer him, aware now of a stab of panic, an uneasy sickness that could not be controlled. Gone was my glad excitement, vanished my happy pride. I was like a child brought to her first school, or a little untrained maid who has never left home before, seeking a situation. Any measure of self-possession I had gained hitherto during the brief seven weeks of marriage, was like a rag now, fluttering before the wind; it seemed to me that even the most elementary knowledge of behavior was unknown to me now, I should not know my right hand from my left, whether to stand or sit, what spoons and forks to use at dinner.
“I should shed that mackintosh,” he said, glancing down at me, “it has not rained down here at all, and put your funny little fur straight. Poor lamb, I’ve bustled you down here like this, and you probably ought to have bought a lot of clothes in London.”
“It doesn’t matter to me, as long as you don’t mind,” I said.
“Most women think of nothing but clothes,” he said absently, and turning a corner we came to a crossroad, and the beginning of a high wall.
“Here we are,” he said, a new note of excitement in his voice, and I gripped the leather seat of the car with my two hands.