dug my nails into my hands. I sat there for five minutes staring at the green lawns and the flower tubs on the terrace. I heard the sound of a car starting up in the drive. It must be Captain Searle. He had broken his news to Maxim and had gone. I got up from the terrace and went slowly through the hall to the library. I kept turning over in my pockets the winkles that Ben had given me. I clutched them tight in my hands.
Maxim was standing by the window. His back was turned to me. I waited by the door. Still he did not turn round. I took my hands out of my pockets and went and stood beside him. I reached out for his hand and laid it against my cheek. He did not say anything. He went on standing there.
'I'm so sorry,' I whispered, 'so terribly, terribly sorry.' He did not answer. His hand was icy cold. I kissed the back of it, and then the fingers, one by one. 'I don't want you to bear this alone,' I said. 'I want to share it with you. I've grown up, Maxim, in twenty-four hours. I'll never be a child again.'
He put his arm round me and pulled me to him very close. My reserve was broken, and my shyness too. I stood there with my face against his shoulder. 'You've forgiven me, haven't you?' I said.
He spoke to me at last. 'Forgiven you?' he said. 'What have I got to forgive you for?'
'Last night,' I said; 'you thought I did it on purpose.'
'Ah, that,' he said. 'I'd forgotten. I was angry with you, wasn't I?'
'Yes,' I said.
He did not say any more. He went on holding me close to his shoulder. 'Maxim,' I said, 'can't we start all over again? Can't we begin from today, and face things together? I don't want you to love me, I won't ask impossible things. I'll be your friend and your companion, a sort of boy. I don't ever want more than that.'
He took my face between his hands and looked at me. For the first time I saw how thin his face was, how lined and drawn. And there were great shadows beneath his eyes.
'How much do you love me?' he said.
I could not answer. I could only stare back at him, at his dark tortured eyes, and his pale drawn face.
'It's too late, my darling, too late,' he said. 'We've lost our little chance of happiness.'
'No, Maxim. No,' I said.
'Yes,' he said. 'It's all over now. The thing has happened.'
'What thing?' I said.
'The thing I've always foreseen. The thing I've dreamt about, day after day, night after night. We're not meant for happiness, you and I.' He sat down on the window-seat, and I knelt in front of him, my hands on his shoulders.
'What are you trying to tell me?' I said.
He put his hands over mine and looked into my face. 'Rebecca has won,' he said.
I stared at him, my heart beating strangely, my hands suddenly cold beneath his hands.
'Her shadow between us all the time,' he said. 'Her damned shadow keeping us from one another. How could I hold you like this, my darling, my little love, with the fear always in my heart that this would happen? I remembered her eyes as she looked at me before she died. I remembered that slow treacherous smile. She knew this would happen even then. She knew she would win in the end.'
'Maxim,' I whispered, 'what are you saying, what are you trying to tell me?'
'Her boat,' he said, 'they've found it. The diver found it this afternoon.'
'Yes,' I said. 'I know. Captain Searle came to tell me. You are thinking about the body, aren't you, the body the diver found in the cabin?'
'Yes,' he said.
'It means she was not alone,' I said. 'It means there was somebody sailing with Rebecca at the time. And you have to find out who it was. That's it, isn't it, Maxim?'
'No,' he said. 'No, you don't understand.'
'I want to share this with you, darling,' I said. 'I want to help you.'
'There was no one with Rebecca, she was alone,' he said.
I knelt there watching his face, watching his eyes.
'It's Rebecca's body lying there on the cabin floor,' he said.
'No,' I said. 'No.'
'The woman buried in the crypt is not Rebecca,' he said. 'It's the body of some unknown woman, unclaimed, belonging nowhere. There never was an accident. Rebecca was not drowned at all. I killed her. I shot Rebecca in the cottage in the cove. I carried her body to the cabin, and took the boat out that night and sunk it there, where they found it today. It's Rebecca who's lying dead there on the cabin floor. Will you look into my eyes and tell me that you love me now?'
Chapter twenty
It was very quiet in the library. The only sound was that of Jasper licking his foot. He must have caught a thorn in his pads, for he kept biting and sucking at the skin. Then I heard the watch on Maxim's wrist ticking close to my ear. The little normal sounds of every day. And for no reason the stupid proverb of my schooldays ran through my mind, 'Time and Tide wait for no man.' The words repeated themselves over and over again. 'Time and Tide wait for no man.' These were the only sounds then, the ticking of Maxim's watch and Jasper licking his foot on the floor beside me.
When people suffer a great shock, like death, or the loss of a limb, I believe they don't feel it just at first. If your hand is taken from you you don't know, for a few minutes, that your hand is gone. You go on feeling the fingers. You stretch and beat them on the air, one by one, and all the time there is nothing there, no hand, no fingers. I knelt there by Maxim's side, my body against his body, my hands upon his shoulders, and I was aware of no feeling at all, no pain and no fear, there was no horror in my heart. I thought how I must take the thorn out of Jasper's foot and I wondered if Robert would come in and clear the tea things. It seemed strange to me that I should think of these things, Jasper's foot, Maxim's watch, Robert and the tea things. I was shocked at my lack of emotion and this queer cold absence of distress. Little by little the feeling will come back to me, I said to myself, little by little I shall understand. What he has told me and all that has happened will tumble into place like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle. They will fit themselves into a pattern. At the moment I am nothing, I have no heart, and no mind, and no senses, I am just a wooden thing in Maxim's arms. Then he began to kiss me. He had not kissed me like this before. I put my hands behind his head and shut my eyes.
'I love you so much,' he whispered. 'So much.' This is what I have wanted him to say every day and every night, I thought, and now he is saying it at last. This is what I imagined in Monte Carlo, in Italy, here in Manderley. He is saying it now. I opened my eyes and looked at a little patch of curtain above his head. He went on kissing me, hungry, desperate, murmuring my name. I kept on looking at the patch of curtain, and saw where the sun had faded it, making it lighter than the piece above. 'How calm I am,' I thought. 'How cool. Here I am looking at the piece of curtain, and Maxim is kissing me. For the first time he is telling me he loves me.'
Then he stopped suddenly, he pushed me away from him, and got up from the window-seat. 'You see, I was right,' he said. 'It's too late. You don't love me now. Why should you?' He went and stood over by the mantelpiece. 'We'll forget that,' he said, 'it won't happen again.'
Realisation flooded me at once, and my heart jumped in quick and sudden panic. 'It's not too late,' I said swiftly, getting up from the floor and going to him, putting my arms about him; 'you're not to say that, you don't understand. I love you more than anything in the world. But when you kissed me just now I felt stunned and shaken. I could not feel anything. I could not grasp anything. It was just as though I had no more feeling left in me at all.'
'You don't love me,' he said, 'that's why you did not feel anything. I know. I understand. It's come too late for you, hasn't it?'
'No,' I said.
'This ought to have happened four months ago,' he said. 'I should have known. Women are not like men.'
'I want you to kiss me again,' I said; 'please, Maxim.'
'No,' he said, 'it's no use now.'
