Rebecca

by Daphne du Maurier

I 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.

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

We both appreciate simplicity, and we are sometimes bored - well, boredom is a pleasing antidote to fear.

I suppose my face told him my doubt, for he smiled. ‘You don’t believe me,’ he said; ‘never mind, come and sit down. We needn’t talk to each other unless we feel like it.’

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. They are not brave, the days when we are

‘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.’

‘I’m sorry. I rather thought you loved me. A fine blow to my conceit.’ ‘I do love you,’ I said. ‘I love you dreadfully. You’ve made me very unhappy and I’ve been crying all night because I thought I should never see you again.’ When I said this I remember he laughed, and stretched his hand to me across the breakfast table. ‘Bless you for that,’ he said; ‘one day, when you reach that exalted age of thirty-six which you told me was your ambition, I’ll remind you of this moment. And you won’t believe me. It’s a pity you have to grow up.’

must not think of that. Put it away. A thought forbidden, prompted by demons. Get thee behind me, Satan. I must never think about that, never, never, never.

I had the clean new feeling that one has when the calendar is hung on the wall at the beginning of the year. January the 1st. I was aware of the same freshness, the same gay confidence.

and I wondered if brothers and sisters always sparred like this, making it uncomfortable for those who listened.

Maxim is entirely different. Very quiet, very reserved. You never know what’s going on in that funny mind of his. I lose my temper on the slightest provocation, flare up, and then it’s all over. Maxim loses his temper once or twice in a year, and when he does - my God - he does lose it. I don’t suppose he ever will with you, I should think you are a placid little thing.’

I wanted to go on sitting there, not talking, not listening to the others, keeping the moment precious for all time, because we were peaceful, all of us, we were content and drowsy even as the bee who droned above our heads. In a little while it would be different, there would come tomorrow, and the next day, and another year. And we would be changed perhaps, never sitting quite like this again. Some of us would go away, or suffer, or die; the future stretched away in front of us, unknown, unseen, not perhaps what we wanted, not what we planned. This moment was safe though, this could not be touched.

Here we sat together, Maxim and I, hand-in-hand, and the past and the future mattered not at all. This was secure, this funny fragment of time he would never remember, never think about again. He would not hold it sacred; he was talking about cutting away some of the undergrowth in the drive, and Beatrice agreed, interrupting with some suggestion of her own, and throwing a piece of grass at Giles at the same time. For them it was just after lunch, quarter past three on a haphazard afternoon, like any hour, like any day. They did not want to hold it close, imprisoned and secure, as I did. They were not afraid.

“There would be no need for you to do anything,’ he said, ‘you would just be your self and look decorative.’

I started, the colour flooding my face, for in that brief moment, sixty seconds in time perhaps, I had so identified myself with Rebecca that my own dull self did not exist, had never come to Manderley. I had gone back in thought and in person to the days that were gone.

Men are simpler than you imagine, my sweet child. But what goes on in the twisted tortuous minds of women would baffle anyone.

‘I don’t want you to look like you did just now. You had a twist to your mouth and a flash of knowledge in your eyes. Not the right sort of knowledge.’

‘Well, then. A husband is not so very different from a father after all. There is a certain type of knowledge I prefer you not to have. It’s better kept under lock and key. So that’s that. And now eat up your peaches, and don’t ask me any more questions, or I shall put you in the corner.’

But Rebecca would never grow old. Rebecca would always be the same. And her I could not fight. She was too strong for me.

“That’s right, my dear,” I’d tell her, “no one will put upon you. You were born into this world to take what you could out of it”, and she did, she didn’t care, she wasn’t afraid. She had all the courage and spirit of a boy, had my Mrs de Winter. She ought to have been a boy, I often told her that.

She cared for nothing and for no one.

But you. I can’t forget what it has done to you. I was looking at you, thinking of nothing else all through lunch. It’s gone for ever, that funny, young, lost look that I loved. It won’t come back again. I killed that too, when I told you about Rebecca... It’s gone, in twenty-four hours. You are so much older ...’

A lovely woman isn’t like a motor tyre, she doesn’t wear out. The more you use her the better she goes.