Daphne du Maurier - Rebecca

And we came out on to the steps and found the sun had gone behind a bank of cloud, a little thin rain was falling, and Robert was hurrying across the lawn to bring in the chairs.

We watched the car disappear round the sweep of the drive, and then Maxim took my arm and said, "Thank God that's that. Get a coat quickly, and come out. Damn the rain, I want a walk. I can't stand this sitting about.' He looked white and strained, and I wondered why the entertaining of Beatrice and Giles, his own sister and brother-in-law, should have tired him so.

'Wait while I run upstairs for my coat,' I said.

"There's a heap of mackintoshes in the flower-room, get one of them,' he said impatiently, 'women are always half an hour when they go to their bedrooms. Robert, fetch a coat from the flower-room, will you, for Mrs de Winter? There must be half a dozen raincoats hanging there left by people at one time or another.' He was already standing in the drive, and calling to Jasper, 'Come on, you lazy little beggar, and take some of that fat off.' Jasper ran round in circles, barking hysterically at the prospect of his walk. 'Shut up, you idiot,' said Maxim. 'What on earth is Robert doing?'

Robert came running out of the hall carrying a raincoat, and I struggled into it hurriedly, fumbling with the collar. It was too big, of course, and too long, but there was no time to change it, and we set off together across the lawn to the woods, Jasper running in front.

'I find a little of my family goes a very long way,' said Maxim. 'Beatrice is one of the best people in the world, but she invariably puts her foot in it.'

I was not sure where Beatrice had blundered, and thought it better not to ask. Perhaps he still resented the chat about his health before lunch.

'What did you think of her?' he went on.

'I liked her very much,' I said; 'she was very nice to me.'

'What did she talk to you about out here, after lunch?'

'Oh, I don't know. I think I did most of the talking. I was telling her about Mrs Van Hopper, and how you and I met, and all that. She said I was quite different from what she expected.'

'What the devil did she expect?'

'Someone much smarter, more sophisticated, I imagine. A social butterfly, she said.'

Maxim did not answer for a moment; he bent down, and threw a stick for Jasper. 'Beatrice can sometimes be infernally unintelligent,' he said.

We climbed the grass bank above the lawns, and plunged into the woods. The trees grew very close together, and it was dark. We trod upon broken twigs, and last year's leaves, and here and there the fresh green stubble of the young bracken, and the shoots of the bluebells soon to blossom. Jasper was silent now, his nose to the ground. I took Maxim's arm.

'Do you like my hair?' I said.

He stared down at me in astonishment. 'Your hair?' he said.

'Why on earth do you ask? Of course I like it. What's the matter with it?'

'Oh, nothing,' I said, 'I just wondered.'

'How funny you are,' he said.

We came to a clearing in the woods, and there were two paths, going in opposite directions. Jasper took the right-hand path without hesitation.

'Not that way,' called Maxim; 'come on, old chap.'

The dog looked back at us and stood there, wagging his tail, but did not return. 'Why does he want to go that way?' I asked.

'I suppose he's used to it,' said Maxim briefly; 'it leads to a small cove, where we used to keep a boat. Come on, Jasper, old man.'

We turned into the left-hand path, not saying anything, and presently I looked over my shoulder and saw that Jasper was following us.

'This brings us to the valley I told you about,' said Maxim, 'and you shall smell the azaleas. Never mind the rain, it will bring out the scent.'

He seemed all right again now, happy and cheerful, the Maxim I knew and loved, and he began talking about Frank Crawley and what a good fellow he was, so thorough and reliable, and devoted to Manderley.

'This is better,' I thought; 'this is like it was in Italy', and I smiled up at him, squeezing his arm, relieved that the odd strained look on his face had passed away, and while I said 'Yes,' and 'Really?' and 'Fancy, darling,' my thoughts wandered back to Beatrice, wondering why her presence should have disturbed him, what she had done; and I thought too of all she had said about his temper, how he lost it, she told me, about once or twice a year.

She must know him, of course; she was his sister. But it was not what I had thought; it was not my idea of Maxim. I could see him moody, difficult, irritable perhaps, but not angry as she had inferred, not passionate. Perhaps she had exaggerated; people very often were wrong about their relatives. 'There,' said Maxim suddenly, 'take a look at that.' We stood on a slope of a wooded hill, and the path wound away before us to a valley, by the side of a running stream.

There were no dark trees here, no tangled undergrowth, but on either side of the narrow path stood azaleas and rhododendrons, not blood-coloured like the giants in the drive, but salmon, white, and gold, things of beauty and of grace, drooping their lovely, delicate heads in the soft summer rain.

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. There was no sound here but the tumbling of the little stream, and the quiet rain. When Maxim spoke, his voice was hushed too, gentle and low, as if he had no wish to break upon the silence.

'We call it the Happy Valley,' he said.

We stood quite still, not speaking, looking down upon the clear white faces of the flowers closest to us, and Maxim stooped, and picked up a fallen petal and gave it to me. It was crushed and bruised, and turning brown at the curled edge, but as I rubbed it across my hand the scent rose to me, sweet and strong, vivid as the living tree from which it came.

Then the birds began. First a blackbird, his note clear and cool above the running stream, and after a moment he had answer from his fellow hidden in the woods behind us, and soon the still air about us was made turbulent with song, pursuing us as we wandered down into the valley, and the fragrance of the white petals followed us too. It was disturbing, like an enchanted place. I had not thought it could be as beautiful as this.

The sky, now overcast and sullen, so changed from the early afternoon, and the steady insistent rain could not disturb the soft quietude of the valley; the rain and the rivulet mingled with one another, and the liquid note of the blackbird fell upon the damp air in harmony with them both. I brushed the dripping heads of azaleas as I passed, so close they grew together, bordering the path. Little drops of water fell on to my hands from the soaked petals. There were petals at my feet too, brown and sodden, bearing their scent upon them still, and a richer, older scent as well, the smell of deep moss and bitter earth, the stems of bracken, and the twisted buried roots of trees. I held Maxim's hand and I had not spoken. The spell of the Happy Valley was upon me. This at last was the core of Manderley, the Manderley I would know and learn to love. The first drive was forgotten, the black, herded woods, the glaring rhododendrons, luscious and overproud. And the vast house too, the silence of that echoing hall, the uneasy stillness of the west wing, wrapped in dust-sheets. There I was an interloper, wandering in rooms that did not know me, sitting at a desk and in a chair that were not mine. Here it was different. The Happy Valley knew no trespassers. We came to the end of the path, and the flowers formed an archway above our heads. We bent down, passing underneath, and when I stood straight again, brushing the raindrops from my hair, I saw that the valley was behind us, and the azaleas, and the trees, and, as Maxim had described to me that afternoon many weeks ago in Monte Carlo, we were standing in a little narrow cove, the shingle hard and white under our feet, and the sea was breaking on the shore beyond us.