I tried to concentrate on the bald newspaper columns, and later to lose myself in the racy plot of the novel in my hands. I did not want to think of yesterday afternoon and Mrs. Danvers. I tried to forget that she was in the house at this moment, perhaps looking down on me from one of the windows. And now and again, when I looked up from my book or glanced across the garden, I had the feeling I was not alone.
There were so many windows in Manderley, so many rooms that were never used by Maxim and myself that were empty now; dust-sheeted, silent, rooms that had been occupied in the old days when his father and his grandfather had been alive, when there had been much entertaining, many servants. It would be easy for Mrs. Danvers to open those doors softly and close them again, and then steal quietly across the shrouded room and look down upon me from behind the drawn curtains.
I should not know. Even if I turned in my chair and looked up at the windows I would not see her. I remembered a game I had played as a child that my friends next door had called “Grandmother’s Steps” and myself “Old Witch.” You had to stand at the end of the garden with your back turned to the rest, and one by one they crept nearer to you, advancing in short furtive fashion. Every few minutes you turned to look at them, and if you saw one of them moving the offender had to retire to the back line and begin again. But there was always one a little bolder than the rest, who came up very close, whose movement was impossible to detect, and as you waited there, your back turned, counting the regulation Ten, you knew, with a fatal terrifying certainty, that before long, before even the Ten was counted, this bold player would pounce upon you from behind, unheralded, unseen, with a scream of triumph. I felt as tense and expectant as I did then. I was playing “Old Witch” with Mrs. Danvers.
Lunch was a welcome break to the long morning. The calm efficiency of Frith, and Robert’s rather foolish face, helped me more than my book and my newspaper had done. And at half past three, punctual to the moment, I heard the sound of Beatrice’s car round the sweep of the drive and pull up at the steps before the house. I ran out to meet her, ready dressed, my gloves in my hand. “Well, my dear, here I am, what a splendid day, isn’t it?” She slammed the door of the car and came up the steps to meet me. She gave me a hard swift kiss, brushing me somewhere near the ear.
“You don’t look well,” she said immediately, looking me up and down, “much too thin in the face and no color. What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” I said humbly, knowing the fault of my face too well. “I’m not a person who ever has much color.”
“Oh, bosh,” she replied, “you looked quite different when I saw you before.”
“I expect the brown of Italy has worn off,” I said, getting into the car.
“H’mph,” she said shortly, “you’re as bad as Maxim. Can’t stand any criticism about your health. Slam the door hard or it doesn’t shut.” We started off down the drive, swerving at the corner, going rather too fast. “You’re not by any chance starting an infant, are you?” she said, turning her hawk-brown eyes upon me.
“No,” I said awkwardly. “No, I don’t think so.”
“No morning sickness or anything like that?”
“No.”
“Oh, well—of course it doesn’t always follow. I never turned a hair when Roger was born. Felt as fit as a fiddle the whole nine months. I played golf the day before he arrived. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about in the facts of nature, you know. If you have any suspicions you had better tell me.”
“No, really, Beatrice,” I said, “there’s nothing to tell.”
“I must say I do hope you will produce a son and heir before long. It would be so terribly good for Maxim. I hope you are doing nothing to prevent it.”
“Of course not,” I said. What an extraordinary conversation.
“Oh, don’t be shocked,” she said, “you must never mind what I say. After all, brides of today are up to everything. It’s a damn nuisance if you want to hunt and you land yourself with an infant your first season. Quite enough to break a marriage up if you are both keen. Wouldn’t matter in your case. Babies needn’t interfere with sketching. How is the sketching, by the way?”
“I’m afraid I don’t seem to do much,” I said.
“Oh, really? Nice weather, too, for sitting out of doors. You only need a camp-stool and a box of pencils, don’t you? Tell me, were you interested in those books I sent you?”