Maxim went and leaned out of the window. “I love the rose garden,” he said; “one of the first things I remember is walking after my mother, on very small, unsteady legs, while she picked off the dead heads of the roses. There’s something peaceful and happy about this room, and it’s quiet too. You could never tell you were within five minutes of the sea, from this room.”
“That’s what Mrs. Danvers said,” I told him.
He came away from the window, he prowled about the room, touching things, looking at the pictures, opening wardrobes, fingering my clothes, already unpacked.
“How did you get on with old Danvers?” he said abruptly.
I turned away, and began combing my hair again before the looking glass. “She seems just a little bit stiff,” I said, after a moment or two; “perhaps she thought I was going to interfere with the running of the house.”
“I don’t think she would mind your doing that,” he said. I looked up and saw him watching my reflection in the looking glass, and then he turned away and went over to the window again, whistling quietly, under his breath, rocking backwards and forwards on his heels.
“Don’t mind her,” he said; “she’s an extraordinary character in many ways, and possibly not very easy for another woman to get on with. You mustn’t worry about it. If she really makes herself a nuisance we’ll get rid of her. But she’s efficient, you know, and will take all housekeeping worries off your hands. I dare say she’s a bit of a bully to the staff. She doesn’t dare bully me though. I’d have given her the sack long ago if she had tried.”
“I expect we shall get on very well when she knows me better,” I said quickly; “after all, it’s natural enough that she should resent me a bit at first.”
“Resent you? Why resent you? What the devil do you mean?” he said.
He turned from the window, frowning, an odd, half angry expression on his face. I wondered why he should mind, and wished I had said something else.
“I mean, it must be much easier for a housekeeper to look after a man alone,” I said. “I dare say she had got into the way of doing it, and perhaps she was afraid I should be very overbearing.”
“Overbearing, my God…” he began, “if you think…” and then he stopped, and came across to me, and kissed me on the top of my head.
“Let’s forget about Mrs. Danvers,” he said; “she doesn’t interest me very much, I’m afraid. Come along, and let me show you something of Manderley.”
I did not see Mrs. Danvers again that evening, and we did not talk about her anymore. I felt happier when I had dismissed her from my thoughts, less of an interloper, and as we wandered about the rooms downstairs, and looked at the pictures, and Maxim put his arm around my shoulder, I began to feel more like the self I wanted to become, the self I had pictured in my dreams, who made Manderley her home.
My footsteps no longer sounded foolish on the stone flags of the hall, for Maxim’s nailed shoes made far more noise than mine, and the pattering feet of the two dogs was a comfortable, pleasing note.
I was glad, too, because it was the first evening and we had only been back a little while and the showing of the pictures had taken time, when Maxim, looking at the clock, said it was too late to change for dinner, so that I was spared the embarrassment of Alice, the maid, asking what I should wear, and of her helping me to dress, and myself walking down that long flight of stairs to the hall, cold, with bare shoulders, in a dress that Mrs. Van Hopper had given me because it did not suit her daughter. I had dreaded the formality of dinner in that austere dining room, and now, because of the little fact that we had not changed, it was quite all right, quite easy, just the same as when we had dined together in restaurants. I was comfortable in my stockinette dress, I laughed and talked about things we had seen in Italy and France, we even had the snapshots on the table, and Frith and the footman were impersonal people, as the waiters had been; they did not stare at me as Mrs. Danvers had done.
We sat in the library after dinner, and presently the curtains were drawn, and more logs thrown on the fire; it was cool for May, I was thankful for the warmth that came from the steady burning logs.
It was new for us to sit together like this, after dinner, for in Italy we had wandered about, walked or driven, gone into little cafés, leaned over bridges. Maxim made instinctively now for the chair on the left of the open fireplace, and stretched out his hand for the papers. He settled one of the broad cushions behind his head, and lit a cigarette. “This is his routine,” I thought, “this is what he always does: this has been his custom now for years.”