The road curved, and before us, on the left, were two high iron gates beside a lodge, open wide to the long drive beyond. As we drove through I saw faces peering through the dark window of the lodge, and a child ran round from the back, staring curiously. I shrank back against the seat, my heart beating quickly, knowing why the faces were at the window, and why the child stared.
They wanted to see what I was like. I could imagine them now, talking excitedly, laughing in the little kitchen. “Only caught sight of the top of her hat,” they would say, “she wouldn’t show her face. Oh, well, we’ll know by tomorrow. Word will come from the house.” Perhaps he guessed something of my shyness at last, for he took my hand, and kissed it, and laughed a little, even as he spoke.
“You mustn’t mind if there’s a certain amount of curiosity,” he said; “everyone will want to know what you are like. They have probably talked of nothing else for weeks. You’ve only got to be yourself and they will all adore you. And you don’t have to worry about the house, Mrs. Danvers does everything. Just leave it all to her. She’ll be stiff with you at first, I dare say, she’s an extraordinary character, but you mustn’t let it worry you. It’s just her manner. See those shrubs? It’s like a blue wall along here when the hydrangeas are in bloom.”
I did not answer him, for I was thinking of that self who long ago bought a picture postcard in a village shop, and came out into the bright sunlight twisting it in her hands, pleased with her purchase, thinking “This will do for my album. ‘Manderley,’ what a lovely name.” And now I belonged here, this was my home. I would write letters to people saying, “We shall be down at Manderley all the summer, you must come and see us,” and I would walk along this drive, strange and unfamiliar to me now, with perfect knowledge, conscious of every twist and turn, marking and approving where the gardeners had worked, here a cutting back of the shrubs, there a lopping of a branch, calling at the lodge by the iron gates on some friendly errand, saying, “Well, how’s the leg today?” while the old woman, curious no longer, bade me welcome to her kitchen. I envied Maxim, careless and at ease, and the little smile on his lips which meant he was happy to be coming home.
It seemed remote to me, and far too distant, the time when I too should smile and be at ease, and I wished it could come quickly; that I could be old even, with gray hair and slow of step, having lived here many years—anything but the timid, foolish creature I felt myself to be.
The gates had shut to with a crash behind us, the dusty highroad was out of sight, and I became aware that this was not the drive I had imagined would be Manderley’s, this was not a broad and spacious thing of gravel, flanked with neat turf at either side, kept smooth with rake and brush.
This drive twisted and turned as a serpent, scarce wider in places than a path, and above our heads was a great colonnade of trees, whose branches nodded and intermingled with one another, making an archway for us, like the roof of a church. Even the midday sun would not penetrate the interlacing of those green leaves, they were too thickly entwined, one with another, and only little flickering patches of warm light would come in intermittent waves to dapple the drive with gold. It was very silent, very still. On the high road there had been a gay west wind blowing in my face, making the grass on the hedges dance in unison, but here there was no wind. Even the engine of the car had taken a new note, throbbing low, quieter than before. As the drive descended to the valley so the trees came in upon us, great beeches with lovely smooth white stems, lifting their myriad branches to one another, and other trees, trees I could not name, coming close, so close that I could touch them with my hands. On we went, over a little bridge that spanned a narrow stream, and still this drive that was no drive twisted and turned like an enchanted ribbon through the dark and silent woods, penetrating even deeper to the very heart surely of the forest itself, and still there was no clearing, no space to hold a house.
The length of it began to nag at my nerves; it must be this turn, I thought, or round that further bend; but as I leaned forward in my seat I was forever disappointed, there was no house, no field, no broad and friendly garden, nothing but the silence and deep woods. The lodge gates were a memory, and the high road something belonging to another time, another world.
Suddenly I saw a clearing in the dark drive ahead, and a patch of sky, and in a moment the dark trees had thinned, the nameless shrubs had disappeared, and on either side of us was a wall of color, bloodred, reaching far above our heads. We were among the rhododendrons. There was something bewildering, even shocking, about the suddenness of their discovery. The woods had not prepared me for them. They startled me with their crimson faces, massed one upon the other in incredible profusion, showing no leaf, no twig, nothing but the slaughterous red, luscious and fantastic, unlike any rhododendron plant I had seen before.