Sometimes I saw Jasper chasing butterflies across the lawns; sometimes I saw Doctor Baker's Scotch terrier scratching his ear beside a deck-chair. There was the postman who had pointed out the house to us today, and there was Clarice's mother wiping a chair for me in the back parlour. Ben smiled at me, holding winkles in his hands, and the bishop's wife asked me if I would stay to tea. I could feel the cold comfort of my sheets in my own bed, and the gritty shingle in the cove. I could smell the bracken in the woods, the wet moss, and the dead azalea petals. I fell into a strange broken sleep, waking now and again to the reality of my narrow cramped position and the sight of Maxim's back in front of me. The dusk had turned to darkness. There were the lights of passing cars upon the road. There were villages with drawn curtains and little lights behind them. And I would move, and turn upon my back, and sleep again.
I saw the staircase at Manderley, and Mrs Danvers standing at the top in her black dress, waiting for me to go to her. As I climbed the stairs she backed under the archway and disappeared. I looked for her and I could not find her. Then her face looked at me through a hollow door and I cried out and she had gone again.
'What's the time?' I called. 'What's the time?'
Maxim turned round to me, his face pale and ghostly in the darkness of the car. 'It's half past eleven,' he said. We re over half-way already. Try and sleep again.'
'I'm thirsty,' I said.
He stopped at the next town. The man at the garage said his wife had not gone to bed and she would make us some tea. We got out of the car and stood inside the garage. I stamped up and down to bring the blood back to my hands and feet. Maxim smoked a cigarette. It was cold. A bitter wind blew in through the open garage door, and rattled the corrugated roof. I shivered, and buttoned up my coat.
'Yes, it's nippy tonight,' said the garage man, as he wound the petrol pump. "The weather seemed to break this afternoon. It's the last of the heat waves for this summer. We shall be thinking of fires soon.'
'It was hot in London,' I said.
'Was it?' he said. 'Well, they always have the extremes up there, don't they? We get the first of the bad weather down here. It will blow hard on the coast before morning.'
His wife brought us the tea. It tasted of bitter wood, but it was hot. I drank it greedily, thankfully. Already Maxim was glancing at his watch.
'We ought to be going,' he said. 'It's ten minutes to twelve.' I left the shelter of the garage reluctantly. The cold wind blew in my face. The stars raced across the sky. There were threads of cloud too. 'Yes,' said the garage man, 'summer's over for this year.'
We climbed back into the car. I settled myself once more under the rug. The car went on. I shut my eyes. There was the man with the wooden leg winding his barrel-organ, and the tune of 'Roses in Picardy' hummed in my head against the jolting of the car. Frith and Robert carried the tea into the library. The woman at the lodge nodded to me abruptly, and called her child into the house. I saw the model boats in the cottage in the cove. and the feathery dust. I saw the cobwebs stretching from the little masts. I heard the rain upon the roof and the sound of the sea. I wanted to get to the Happy Valley and it was not there. There were woods about me, there was no Happy Valley. Only the dark trees and the young bracken. The owls hooted. The Moon was shining in the windows of Manderley. There were nettles in the garden, ten foot, twenty foot high.
'Maxim!' I cried. 'Maxim!'
'Yes,' he said. 'It's all right, I'm here.'
'I had a dream,' I said. 'A dream.'
'What was it?' he said.
'I don't know. I don't know.'
Back again into the moving unquiet depths. I was writing letters in the morning-room. I was sending out invitations. I wrote them all myself with a thick black pen. But when I looked down to see what I had written it was not my small square handwriting at all, it was long, and slanting, with curious pointed strokes. I pushed the cards away from the blotter and hid them. I got up and went to the looking-glass. A face stared back at me that was not my own. It was very pale, very lovely, framed in a cloud of dark hair. The eyes narrowed and smiled. The lips parted. The face in the glass stared back at me and laughed. And I saw then that she was sitting on a chair before the dressing-table in her bedroom, and Maxim was brushing her hair. He held her hair in his hands, and as he brushed it he wound it slowly into a thick rope. It twisted like a snake, and he took hold of it with both hands and smiled at Rebecca and put it round his neck.
'No,' I screamed. 'No, no. We must go to Switzerland. Colonel Julyan said we must go to Switzerland.'
I felt Maxim's hand upon my face. 'What is it?' he said. 'What's the matter?'
I sat up and pushed my hair away from my face.
'I can't sleep,' I said. 'It's no use.'
'You've been sleeping,' he said. 'You've slept for two hours. It's quarter past two. We're four miles the other side of Lanyon.'
It was even colder than before. I shuddered in the darkness of the car.
'I'll come beside you,' I said. 'We shall be back by three.'
I climbed over and sat beside him, staring in front of me through the wind-screen. I put my hand on his knee. My teeth were chattering.
'You're cold,' he said.
'Yes,' I said.
The hills rose in front of us, and dipped, and rose again. It was quite dark. The stars had gone.
'What time did you say it was?' I asked.
'Twenty past two,' he said.
'It's funny,' I said. 'It looks almost as though the dawn was breaking over there, beyond those hills. It can't be though, it's too early.'
'It's the wrong direction,' he said, 'you're looking west.'
'I know,' I said. 'It's funny, isn't it?'
He did not answer and I went on watching the sky. It seemed to get lighter even as I stared. Like the first red streak of sunrise. Little by little it spread across the sky.
'It's in winter you see the northern lights, isn't it?' I said. 'Not in summer?'
"That's not the northern lights,' he said. "That's Manderley.'
I glanced at him and saw his face. I saw his eyes.
'Maxim,' I said. 'Maxim, what is it?'
He drove faster, much faster. We topped the hill before us and saw Lanyon lying in a hollow at our feet. There to the left of us was the silver streak of the river, widening to the estuary at Kerrith six miles away. The road to Manderley lay ahead. There was no moon. The sky above our heads was inky black. But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.