I did not answer. “It’s so different from the ordinary young couple,” she said. “The daughter of a friend of mine got married the other day, and of course they were started off in the usual way, with linen, and coffee sets, and dining room chairs, and all that. I gave rather a nice standard lamp. Cost me a fiver at Harrods. If you do go up to London to buy clothes mind you go to my woman, Madame Carroux. She has damn good taste, and she doesn’t rook you.”
She got up from the dressing table, and pulled at her skirt.
“Do you suppose you will have a lot of people down?” she said.
“I don’t know. Maxim hasn’t said.”
“Funny old boy, one never quite knows with him. At one time one could not get a bed in the house, the place would be chock-a-block. I can’t somehow see you…” she stopped abruptly, and patted my arm. “Oh, well,” she said, “we’ll see. It’s a pity you don’t ride or shoot, you miss such a lot. You don’t sail by any chance, do you?”
“No,” I said.
“Thank God for that,” she said.
She went to the door, and I followed her down the corridor.
“Come and see us if you feel like it,” she said. “I always expect people to ask themselves. Life is too short to send out invitations.”
“Thank you very much,” I said.
We came to the head of the stairs looking down upon the hall. The men were standing on the steps outside. “Come on, Bee,” shouted Giles. “I felt a spot of rain, so we’ve put on the cover. Maxim says the glass is falling.”
Beatrice took my hand, and bending down gave me a swift peck on my cheek. “Goodbye,” she said; “forgive me if I’ve asked you a lot of rude questions, my dear, and said all sorts of things I shouldn’t. Tact never was my strong point, as Maxim will tell you. And, as I told you before, you’re not a bit what I expected.” She looked at me direct, her lips pursed in a whistle, and then took a cigarette from her bag, and flashed her lighter.
“You see,” she said, snapping the top, and walking down the stairs, “you are so very different from Rebecca.”
And we came out onto the steps and found the sun had gone behind a bank of cloud, a little thin rain was falling, and Robert was hurrying across the lawn to bring in the chairs.
10
We watched the car disappear round the sweep of the drive, and then Maxim took my arm and said, “Thank God that’s that. Get a coat quickly, and come out. Damn the rain, I want a walk. I can’t stand this sitting about.” He looked white and strained, and I wondered why the entertaining of Beatrice and Giles, his own sister and brother-in-law, should have tired him so.
“Wait while I run upstairs for my coat,” I said.
“There’s a heap of mackintoshes in the flower room, get one of them,” he said impatiently, “women are always half an hour when they go to their bedrooms. Robert, fetch a coat from the flower room, will you, for Mrs. de Winter? There must be half a dozen raincoats hanging there left by people at one time or another.” He was already standing in the drive, and calling to Jasper, “Come on, you lazy little beggar, and take some of that fat off.” Jasper ran round in circles, barking hysterically at the prospect of his walk. “Shut up, you idiot,” said Maxim. “What on earth is Robert doing?”
Robert came running out of the hall carrying a raincoat, and I struggled into it hurriedly, fumbling with the collar. It was too big, of course, and too long, but there was no time to change it, and we set off together across the lawn to the woods, Jasper running in front.
“I find a little of my family goes a very long way,” said Maxim. “Beatrice is one of the best people in the world, but she invariably puts her foot in it.”
I was not sure where Beatrice had blundered, and thought it better not to ask. Perhaps he still resented the chat about his health before lunch.
“What did you think of her?” he went on.
“I liked her very much,” I said; “she was very nice to me.”
“What did she talk to you about out here, after lunch?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I think I did most of the talking. I was telling her about Mrs. Van Hopper, and how you and I met, and all that. She said I was quite different from what she expected.”
“What the devil did she expect?”
“Someone much smarter, more sophisticated, I imagine. A social butterfly, she said.”
Maxim did not answer for a moment; he bent down, and threw a stick for Jasper. “Beatrice can sometimes be infernally unintelligent,” he said.