I took one out and looked at it, unwrapped it from its thin tissue of paper. “Mrs. M. de Winter” it said, and in the corner “Manderley.” I put it back in the box again, and shut the drawer, feeling guilty suddenly, and deceitful, as though I were staying in somebody else’s house and my hostess had said to me, “Yes, of course, write letters at my desk,” and I had unforgivably, in a stealthy manner, peeped at her correspondence. At any moment she might come back into the room and she would see me there, sitting before her open drawer, which I had no right to touch.
And when the telephone rang, suddenly, alarmingly, on the desk in front of me, my heart leapt and I started up in terror, thinking I had been discovered. I took the receiver off with trembling hands, and “Who is it?” I said, “who do you want?” There was a strange buzzing at the end of the line, and then a voice came, low and rather harsh, whether that of a woman or a man I could not tell, and “Mrs. de Winter?” it said, “Mrs. de Winter?”
“I’m afraid you have made a mistake,” I said; “Mrs. de Winter has been dead for over a year.” I sat there, waiting, staring stupidly into the mouthpiece, and it was not until the name was repeated again, the voice incredulous, slightly raised, that I became aware, with a rush of color to my face, that I had blundered irretrievably, and could not take back my words. “It’s Mrs. Danvers, Madam,” said the voice. “I’m speaking to you on the house telephone.” My faux pas was so palpably obvious, so idiotic and unpardonable, that to ignore it would show me to be an even greater fool, if possible, than I was already.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Danvers,” I said, stammering, my words tumbling over one another; “the telephone startled me, I didn’t know what I was saying, I didn’t realize the call was for me, and I never noticed I was speaking on the house telephone.”
“I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Madam,” she said; and she knows, I thought, she guesses I have been looking through the desk. “I only wondered whether you wished to see me, and whether you approved of the menus for today.”
“Oh,” I said. “Oh, I’m sure I do; that is, I’m sure I approve of the menus. Just order what you like, Mrs. Danvers, you needn’t bother to ask me.”
“It would be better, I think, if you read the list,” continued the voice; “you will find the menu of the day on the blotter, beside you.”
I searched feverishly about me on the desk, and found at last a sheet of paper I had not noticed before. I glanced hurriedly through it: curried prawns, roast veal, asparagus, cold chocolate mousse—was this lunch or dinner? I could not see; lunch, I suppose.
“Yes, Mrs. Danvers,” I said, “very suitable, very nice indeed.”
“If you wish anything changed please say so,” she answered, “and I will give orders at once. You will notice I have left a blank space beside the sauce, for you to mark your preference. I was not sure what sauce you are used to having served with the roast veal. Mrs. de Winter was most particular about her sauces, and I always had to refer to her.”
“Oh,” I said. “Oh, well… let me see, Mrs. Danvers, I hardly know; I think we had better have what you usually have, whatever you think Mrs. de Winter would have ordered.”
“You have no preference, Madam?”
“No,” I said. “No, really, Mrs. Danvers.”
“I rather think Mrs. de Winter would have ordered a wine sauce, Madam.”
“We will have the same then, of course,” I said.
“I’m very sorry I disturbed you while you were writing, Madam.”
“You didn’t disturb me at all,” I said; “please don’t apologize.”
“The post leaves at midday, and Robert will come for your letters, and stamp them himself,” she said; “all you have to do is ring through to him, on the telephone, if you have anything urgent to be sent, and he will give orders for them to be taken in to the post office immediately.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Danvers,” I said. I listened for a moment, but she said no more, and then I heard a little click at the end of the telephone, which meant she had replaced the receiver. I did the same. Then I looked down again at the desk, and the notepaper, ready for use, upon the blotter. In front of me stared the ticketed pigeonholes, and the words upon them “letters unanswered,” “estate,” “miscellaneous,” were like a reproach to me for my idleness. She who sat here before me had not wasted her time, as I was doing. She had reached out for the house telephone and given her orders for the day, swiftly, efficiently, and run her pencil perhaps through an item in the menu that had not pleased her. She had not said “Yes, Mrs. Danvers,” and “Of course, Mrs. Danvers,” as I had done. And then, when she had finished, she began her letters, five, six, seven perhaps to be answered, all written in that same curious, slanting hand I knew so well. She would tear off sheet after sheet of that smooth white paper, using it extravagantly, because of the long strokes she made when she wrote, and at the end of each of her personal letters she put her signature, “Rebecca,” that tall sloping R dwarfing its fellows.