Rebecca

by Daphne du Maurier

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

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

I remember coming out of the shop feeling rebuffed, yet hardly wiser than before.

“I did not know one could buy companionship,” he said; “it sounds a primitive idea.

Too early yet for bluebells, their heads were still hidden beneath last year’s leaves, but when they came, dwarfing the more humble violet, they choked the very bracken in the woods, and with their color made a challenge to the sky.

The primrose did not mind it quite so much; although a creature of the wilds it had a leaning towards civilization, and preened and smiled in a jam-jar in some cottage window without resentment, living quite a week if given water. No wildflowers came in the house at Manderley.

“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.”

What degradation lay in being young, I thought,

The glamour of it had gone with my happy mood, and at the thought of it my frozen face quivered into feeling, my adult pride was lost, and those despicable tears rejoicing at their conquest welled into my eyes and strayed upon my cheeks.

I noticed for the first time how cramped and unformed was my own handwriting; without individuality, without style, uneducated even, the writing of an indifferent pupil taught in a second-rate school.

I thought about being placid, how quiet and comfortable it sounded, someone with knitting on her lap, with calm unruffled brow. Someone who was never anxious, never tortured by doubt and indecision, someone who never stood as I did, hopeful, eager, frightened, tearing at bitten nails, uncertain which way to go, what star to follow.

“I’m being like Jasper now, leaning against him. He pats me now and again, when he remembers, and I’m pleased, I get closer to him for a moment. He likes me in the way I like Jasper.”

I find a little of my family goes a very long way,”

Somewhere, at the back of my mind, there was a frightened furtive seed of curiosity that grew slowly and stealthily, for all my denial of it, and I knew all the doubt and anxiety of the child who has been told, “these things are not discussed, they are forbidden.”

I did not want to see any of them again. They only came to call at Manderley because they were curious and prying. They liked to criticize my looks, my manners, my figure, they liked to watch how Maxim and I behaved to each other, whether we seemed fond of one another, so that they could go back afterwards and discuss us,

I’m not good at meeting people, I’ve never had to do it, and all the time I keep remembering how—how it must have been at Manderley before, when there was someone there who was born and bred to it, did it all naturally and without effort. And I realize, every day, that things I lack, confidence, grace, beauty, intelligence, wit—Oh,

I should say that kindness, and sincerity, and—if I may say so—modesty are worth far more to a man, to a husband, than all the wit and beauty in the world.”

I had been selfish and hypersensitive, a martyr to my own inferiority complex.

I could not help it if I felt like a guest in Manderley, my home, walking where she had trodden, resting where she had lain. I was like a guest, biding my time, waiting for the return of the hostess.

I was aware of a sense of freedom, as though I had no responsibilities at all. It was rather like a Saturday when one was a child. No

It was very peaceful and quiet. I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone.

“Now you are here, let me show you everything,” she said, her voice ingratiating and sweet as honey, horrible, false.

Her manner was fawning again, intimate and unpleasant. The smile on her face was a false, unnatural thing.

“Do you think she can see us, talking to one another now?” she said slowly. “Do you think the dead come back and watch the living?”

I could not take my eyes away from hers. How dark and somber they were in the white skull’s face of hers, how malevolent, how full of hatred.

I went and sat down with a book and The Times and my knitting in the rose garden, domestic as a matron, yawning in the warm sun while the bees hummed among the flowers.

I felt rather exhausted, and wondered, rather shocked at my callous thought, why old people were sometimes such a strain. Worse than young children or puppies because one had to be polite.

I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe. I was a child yesterday. I had not forgotten. But Maxim’s grandmother, sitting there in her shawl with her poor blind eyes, what did she feel, what was she thinking? Did she know that Beatrice was yawning and glancing at her watch? Did she guess that we had come to visit her because we felt it right, it was a duty, so that when she got home afterwards Beatrice would be able to say, “Well, that clears my conscience for three months”?

said Norah in a special voice, bright and cheerful like the nurse. I wondered if Maxim’s grandmother realized that people spoke to her in this way. I wondered when they had done so for the first time, and if she had noticed then. Perhaps she had said to herself, “They think I’m getting old, how very ridiculous,” and then little by little she had become accustomed to it, and now it was as though they had always done so, it was part of her background.

I wished he would not always treat me as a child, rather spoiled, rather irresponsible, someone to be petted from time to time when the mood came upon him but more often forgotten, more often patted on the shoulder and told to run away and play. I wished something would happen to make me look wiser, more mature.

Would we never be together, he a man and I a woman, standing shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, with no gulf between us? I did not want to be a child. I wanted to be his wife,

It was Mrs. Danvers. I shall never forget the expression on her face, loathsome, triumphant. The face of an exulting devil. She stood there, smiling at me.

We were like two performers in a play, but we were divided, we were not acting with one another. We had to endure it alone, we had to put up this show, this miserable, sham performance, for the sake of all these people I did not know and did not want to see again.

It seemed to me, as I sat there in bed, staring at the wall, at the sunlight coming in at the window, at Maxim’s empty bed, that there was nothing quite so shaming, so degrading as a marriage that had failed.

I could fight the living but I could not fight the dead.

We would stand on common ground. I should not be afraid. Anger and jealousy were things that could be conquered. One day the woman would grow old or tired or different, and Maxim would not love her anymore. But Rebecca would never grow old. Rebecca would always be the same. And her I could not fight. She was too strong for me.

I felt empty but not hungry.

“Time and Tide wait for no man.”

She was vicious, damnable, rotten through and through. We never loved each other, never had one moment of happiness together. Rebecca was incapable of love, of tenderness, of decency.

I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth.

Our happiness had not come too late. I was not young anymore. I was not shy. I was not afraid. I would fight for Maxim. I would lie and perjure and swear, I would blaspheme and pray. Rebecca had not won. Rebecca had lost.

It’s funny, I thought, how the routine of life goes on, whatever happens, we do the same things, go through the little performance of eating, sleeping, washing. No crisis can break through the crust of habit.

the things of the garden were not concerned with our troubles. A blackbird ran across the rose garden to the lawns in swift, short rushes, stopping now and again to stab at the earth with his yellow beak. A thrush, too, went about his business, and two stout little wagtails, following one another, and a little cluster of twittering sparrows. A gull poised himself high in the air, silent and alone, and then spread his wings wide and swooped beyond the lawns to the woods and the Happy Valley. These things continued, our worries and anxieties had no power to alter them.

Every moment was a precious thing, having in it the essence of finality.