Rebecca

by Daphne du Maurier

Nature had come into her own again and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers.

And Jasper, dear Jasper, with his soulful eyes and great, sagging jowl, would be stretched upon the floor, his tail a-thump when he heard his master’s footsteps.

We would not talk of Manderley, I would not tell my dream. For Manderley was ours no longer. Manderley was no more.

believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, and that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire.

We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end.

Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.

“There were never any complaints when Mrs. de Winter was alive.”

“She is comparing me to Rebecca”; and sharp as a sword the shadow came between us…

“It’s Max de Winter,” she said, “the man who owns Manderley. You’ve heard of it, of course. He looks ill, doesn’t he? They say he can’t get over his wife’s death…”

A somber eye, a high-bridged nose, a scornful upper lip.

“You have a very lovely and unusual name.”

The sea, like a crinkled chart, spread to the horizon, and lapped the sharp outline of the coast, while the houses were white shells in a rounded grotto, pricked here and there by a great orange sun.

“An appalling tragedy,” she was saying, “the papers were full of it of course. They say he never talks about it, never mentions her name. She was drowned you know, in the bay near Manderley…”

I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say.

“If only there could be an invention,” I said impulsively, “that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.”

Damn your puritanical little tight-lipped speech to me. Damn your idea of my kindness and my charity. I ask you to come with me because I want you and your company, and if you don’t believe me you can leave the car now and find your own way home.

“Do you mean you want a secretary or something?” “No, I’m asking you to marry me, you little fool.”

This sudden talk of marriage bewildered me, even shocked me I think. It was as though the King asked one. It did not ring true. And he went on eating his marmalade as though everything were natural. In books men knelt to women, and it would be moonlight. Not at breakfast, not like this.

opened a door at hazard, and found a room in total darkness, no chink of light coming through the closed shutters, while I could see dimly, in the center of the room, the outline of furniture swathed in white dust-sheets.

It might be too that the curtain had not been drawn from the window since some preceding summer, and if one crossed there now and pulled them aside, opening the creaking shutters, a dead moth who had been imprisoned behind them for many months would fall to the carpet and lie there, beside a forgotten pin, and a dried leaf blown there before the windows were closed for the last time.

The air was full of their scent, sweet and heady, and it seemed to me as though their very essence had mingled with the running waters of the stream, and become one with the falling rain and the dank rich moss beneath our feet.

The enchantment was no more, the spell was broken. We were mortal again, two people playing on a beach.