'No,' I said, 'don't bother, I'd rather you went, and Clarice..."

  'Yes, Madam?'

  'Don't - don't say anything about what's just happened.'

  'No, Madam.' She burst into another torrent of weeping.

  'Don't let the others see you like that,' I said. 'Go to your bedroom and do something to your face. There's nothing to cry about, nothing at all.' Somebody knocked on the door. Clarice threw me a quick frightened glance.

  'Who is it?' I said. The door opened and Beatrice came into the room.

  She came to me at once, a strange, rather ludicrous figure in her Eastern drapery, the bangles jangling on her wrists.

  'My dear,' she said, 'my dear,' and held out her hands to me.

  Clarice slipped out of the room. I felt tired suddenly, and unable to cope. I went and sat down on the bed. I put my hand up to my head and took off the curled wig. Beatrice stood watching me.

  'Are you all right?' she said. 'You look very white.'

  'It's the light,' I said. 'It never gives one any colour.'

  'Sit down for a few minutes and you'll be all right,' she said; 'wait, I'll get a glass of water.'

  She went into the bathroom, her bangles jangling with her every movement, and then she came back, the glass of water in her hands.

  I drank some to please her, not wanting it a bit. It tasted warm from the tap; she had not let it run.

  'Of course I knew at once it was just a terrible mistake,' she said. 'You could not possibly have known, why should you?'

  'Known what?' I said.

  'Why, the dress, you poor dear, the picture you copied of the girl in the gallery. It was what Rebecca did at the last fancy dress ball at Manderley. Identical. The same picture, the same dress. You stood there on the stairs, and for one ghastly moment I thought..."

  She did not go on with her sentence, she patted me on the shoulder.

  'You poor child, how wretchedly unfortunate, how were you to know?'

  'I ought to have known,' I said stupidly, staring at her, too stunned to understand. 'I ought to have known.'

  'Nonsense, how could you know? It was not the sort of thing that could possibly enter any of our heads. Only it was such a shock, you see. We none of us expected it, and Maxim ...'

  'Yes, Maxim?' I said.

  'He thinks, you see, it was deliberate on your part. You had some bet that you would startle him, didn't you? Some foolish joke. And of course, he doesn't understand. It was such a frightful shock for him. I told him at once you could not have

  done such a thing, and that it was sheer appalling luck that you had chosen that particular picture.'

  'I ought to have known,' I repeated again. 'It's all my fault, I ought to have seen. I ought to have known.'

  'No, no. Don't worry, you'll be able to explain the whole thing to him quietly. Everything will be quite all right. The first lot of people were arriving just as I came upstairs to you. They are having drinks.

  Everything's all right. I've told Frank and Giles to make up a story about your dress not fitting, and you are very disappointed.'

  I did not say anything. I went on sitting on the bed with my hands in my lap.

  'What can you wear instead?' said Beatrice, going to my wardrobe and flinging open the doors. 'Here. What's this blue? It looks charming. Put this on. Nobody will mind. Quick. I'll help you.'

  'No,' I said. "No, I'm not coming down.'

  Beatrice stared at me in great distress, my blue frock over her arm.

  'But, my dear, you must,' she said in dismay. 'You can't possibly not appear.'

  'No, Beatrice, I'm not coming down. I can't face them, not after what's happened.'

  'But nobody will know about the dress,' she said. 'Frank and Giles will never breathe a word. We've got the story all arranged. The shop sent the wrong dress, and it did not fit, so you are wearing an ordinary evening dress instead. Everyone will think it perfectly natural. It won't make any difference to the evening.'

  'You don't understand,' I said. 'I don't care about the dress. It's not that at all. It's what has happened, what I did. I can't come down now, Beatrice, I can't.'

  'But, my dear, Giles and Frank understand perfectly. They are full of sympathy. And Maxim too. It was just the first shock ... I'll try and get him alone a minute, I'll explain the whole thing.'

  'No!' I said. 'No!'

  She put my blue frock down beside me on the bed. 'Everyone will be arriving,' she said, very worried, very upset.

  'It will look so extraordinary if you don't come down. I can't say you've suddenly got a headache.'

  'Why not?' I said wearily. 'What does it matter? Make anything up. Nobody will mind, they don't any of them know me.'

  'Come now, my dear,' she said, patting my hand, 'try and make the effort.

  Put on this charming blue. Think of Maxim. You must come down for his sake.'

  'I'm thinking about Maxim all the time,' I said.

  'Well, then, surely ... ?'

  'No,' I said, tearing at my nails, rocking backwards and forwards on the bed. 'I can't, I can't.'

  Somebody else knocked on the door. 'Oh, dear, who on earth is that?' said Beatrice, walking to the door. 'What is it?'

  She opened the door. Giles was standing just outside. 'Everyone has turned up. Maxim sent me up to find out what's happening,' he said.

  'She says she won't come down,' said Beatrice. 'What on earth are we going to say?'

  I caught sight of Giles peering at me through the open door.

  'Oh, Lord, what a frightful mix-up,' he whispered. He turned away embarrassed when he noticed that I had seen him.

  'What shall I say to Maxim?' he asked Beatrice. 'It's five past eight now.'

  'Say she's feeling rather faint, but will try and come down later. Tell them not to wait dinner. I'll be down directly, I'll make it all right.'

  'Yes, right you are.' He half glanced in my direction again, sympathetic but rather curious, wondering why I sat there on the bed, and his voice was low, as it might be after an accident, when people are waiting for the doctor.

  'Is there anything else I can do?' he said.

  'No,' said Beatrice, 'go down now, I'll follow in a minute.'

  He obeyed her, shuffling away in his Arabian robes. This is the sort of moment, I thought, that I shall laugh at years afterwards, that I shall say 'Do you remember how Giles was dressed as an Arab, and Beatrice had a veil over her face, and jangling bangles on her wrist?' And time will mellow it, make it a moment for laughter. But now it was not funny, now I did

  not laugh. It was not the future, it was the present. It was too vivid and too real. I sat on the bed, plucking at the eiderdown, pulling a little feather out of a slit in one corner.

  *

  Would you like some brandy?' said Beatrice, making a last effort. 'I know it's only Dutch courage, but it sometimes works wonders.'

  'No,' I said. 'No, I don't want anything.'

  'I shall have to go down. Giles says they are waiting dinner. Are you sure it's all right for me to leave you?'

  'Yes. And thank you, Beatrice.'

  'Oh, my dear, don't thank me. I wish I could do something.' She stopped swiftly to my looking-glass and dabbed her face with powder. 'God, what a sight I look,' she said, 'this damn ! veil is crooked I know. However it can't be helped.' She rustled out of the room, closing the door behind her. I felt I had forfeited her sympathy by my refusal to go down. I had shown the white feather. She had not understood. She belonged to another breed of men and women, another race than I. They had guts, the women of her race. They were not like me. If it had been Beatrice who had done this thing instead of me she would have put on her other dress and gone down again to welcome her guests. She would have stood by Giles's side, and shaken hands with people, a smile on her face. I could not do that.

  I had not the pride, I had not the guts. I was badly bred.

  I kept seeing Maxim's eyes blazing in his white face, and behind him Giles, and Beatrice and Frank standing like dummies, staring at me.

  I got up from my bed and went and looked out of the window. The gardeners were going round to the lights in the rose-garden, testing them to see if they all worked. The sky was pale, with a few salmon clouds of evening streaking to the west. When it was dusk the lamps would all be lit. There were tables and chairs in the rose-garden, for the couples who wanted to sit out. I could smell the roses from my window. The men were talking to one another and laughing. "There's one here gone,' I heard a voice call out; 'can you get me another small bulb? One of the blue ones, Bill.'

  He fixed the light into position. He whistled a popular tune of the moment with easy confidence, and I thought how tonight perhaps the band would play the same tune in the minstrels' gallery above the hall. 'That's got it,' said the man, switching the light on and off, 'they're all right here. No others gone. We'd better have a look at those on the terrace.'

  They went off round the corner of the house, still whistling the song.

  I wished I could be the man. Later in the evening he would stand with his friend in the drive and watch the cars drive up to the house, his hands in his pockets, his cap on the back of his head. He would stand in a crowd with other people from the estate, and then drink cider at the long table arranged for them in one corner of the terrace. 'Like the old days, isn't it?' he would say. But his friend would shake his head, puffing at his pipe. 'This new one's not like our Mrs de Winter, she's different altogether.' And a woman next them in the crowd would agree, other people too, all saying "That's right,' and nodding their heads.

  'Where is she tonight? She's not been on the terrace once.'

  'I can't say, I'm sure. I've not seen her.'

  'Mrs de Winter used to be here, there, and everywhere.'

  'Aye, that's right.'

  And the woman would turn to her neighbours nodding mysteriously.

  "They say she's not appearing tonight at all.'

  'Go on.'

  "That's right. One of the servants from the house told me Mrs de Winter hasn't come down from her room all evening.'

  'What's wrong with the maid, is she bad?'

  'No, sulky I reckon. They say her dress didn't please her.'

  A squeal of laughter and a murmur from the little crowd.

  'Did you ever hear of such a thing? It's a shame for Mr de Winter.'

  'I wouldn't stand for it, not from a chit like her.'

  'Maybe it's not true at all.'

  'It's true all right. They're full of it up at the house.' One to the other. This one to the next. A smile, a wink, a shrug of the shoulder.

  One group, and then another group. And then spreading to the guests who walked on the terrace and strolled across the lawns. The couple who in three hours' time would sit in those chairs beneath me in the rose-garden.

  'Do you suppose it's true what I heard?'

  'What did you hear?'

  'Why, that there's nothing wrong with her at all, they've had a colossal row, and she won't appear!'

  'I say!' A lift of the eyebrows, a long whistle.

  'I know. Well, it does look rather odd, don' t you think? What I mean is, people don't suddenly for no reason have violent headaches. I call the whole thing jolly fishy.'

  'I thought he looked a bit grim,'

  'So did I.'

  'Of course I have heard before the marriage is not a wild success.'

  'Oh, really?'

  'H'm. Several people have said so. They say he's beginning to realize he's made a big mistake. She's nothing to look at, you know.'

  'No, I've heard there's nothing much to her. Who was she?'

  'Oh, no one at all. Some pick-up in the south of France, a nursery gov., or something.'

  'Good Lord!'

  'I know. And when you think of Rebecca ..."

  I went on staring at the empty chairs. The salmon sky had turned to grey.

  Above my head was the evening star. In the woods beyond the rose-garden the birds were making their last little rustling noises before nightfall.

  A lone gull flew across the sky. I went away from the window, back to the bed again. I picked up the white dress I had left on the floor and put it back in the box with the tissue paper. I put the wig back in its box too. Then I looked in one of my cupboards for the little portable iron I used to have in Monte Carlo for Mrs Van Hopper's dresses. It was lying at the back of a shelf with some woollen jumpers I had not worn for a long time. The iron was (The of those universal kinds that go on any voltage and I fitted it to the plug in the wall. I began to iron the blue dress that Beatrice had taken from the wardrobe, slowly, methodically, as I used to iron Mrs Van Hopper's dresses in Monte Carlo.

  When I had finished I laid the dress ready on the bed. Then I cleaned the make-up off my face that I had put on for the fancy dress. I combed my hair, and washed my hands. I put on the blue dress and the shoes that went with it. I might have been my

  old self again, going down to the lounge of the hotel with Mrs Van Hopper.

  I opened the door of my room and went along the corridor. Everything was still and silent. There might not have been a party at all. I tiptoed to the end of the passage and turned the corner. The door to the west wing was closed. There was no sound of anything at all. When I came to the archway by the gallery and the staircase I heard the murmur and hum of conversation coming from the dining-room. They were still having dinner.

  The great hall was deserted. There was nobody in the gallery either. The band must be having their dinner too. I did not know what arrangements had been made for them. Frank had done it - Frank or Mrs Danvers.

  From where I stood I could see the picture of Caroline de Winter facing me in the gallery. I could see the curls framing her face, and I could see the smile on her lips. I remembered the bishop's wife who had said to me that day I called, 'I shall never forget her, dressed all in white, with that cloud of dark hair.' I ought to have remembered that, I ought to have known. How queer the instruments looked in the gallery, the little stands for the music, the big drum. One of the men had left his handkerchief on a chair. I leant over the rail and looked down at the hall below. Soon it would be filled with people, like the bishop's wife had said, and Maxim would stand at the bottom of the stairs shaking hands with them as they came into the hall. The sound of their voices would echo to the ceiling, and then the band would play from the gallery where I was leaning now, the man with the violin smiling, swaying to the music.

  It would not be quiet like this any more. A board creaked in the gallery.

  I swung round, looking at the gallery behind me. There was nobody there.

  The gallery was empty, just as it had been before. A current of air blew in my face though, somebody must have left a window open in one of the passages. The hum of voices continued in the dining-room. I wondered why the board creaked when I had not moved at all. The warmth of the night perhaps, a swelling somewhere in the old wood. The draught still blew in my face though. A piece of music on one of the stands fluttered to the floor. I looked towards the archway above the stairs. The draught was coming from there. I went beneath the arch again, and when I came out

  on to the long corridor I saw that the door to the west wing had blown open and swung back against the wall. It was dark in the west passage, none of the lights had been turned on. I could feel the wind blowing on my face from an open window. I fumbled for a switch on the wall and could not find one. I could see the window in an angle of the passage, the curtain blowing softly, backwards and forwards. The grey evening light cast queer shadows on the floor. The sound of the sea came to me through the open window, the soft hissing sound of the ebb-tide leaving the shingle.

  I did not go and shut the window. I stood there shivering a moment in my thin dress, listening to the sea as it sighed and left the shore. Then I turned quickly and shut the door of the west wing behind me, and came out again through the archway by the stairs.

  The murmur of voices had swollen now and was louder than before. The door of the dining-room was open. They were coming out of dinner. I could see Robert standing by the open door, and there was a scraping of chairs, a babble of conversation, and laughter.

  I walked slowly down the stairs to meet them.

  When I look back at my first party at Manderley, my first and my last, I can remember little isolated things standing alone out of the vast blank canvas of the evening. The background was hazy, a sea of dim faces none of whom I knew, and there was the slow drone of the band harping out a waltz that never finished, that went on and on. The same couples swung by in rotation, with the same fixed smiles, and to me, standing with Maxim at the bottom of the stairs to welcome the late-comers, these dancing couples seemed like marionettes twisting and turning on a piece of string, held by some invisible hand.

  There was a woman, I never knew her name, never saw her again, but she wore a salmon-coloured gown hooped in crinoline form, a vague gesture to some past century but whether seventeenth, eighteenth, or nineteenth I could not tell, and every time she passed me it coincided with a sweeping bar of the waltz to which she dipped and swayed, smiling as she did so in my direction. It happened again and again until it became automatic, a matter of routine, like those promenades on board ship when we meet the same people bent on exercise like ourselves, and know with deadly certainty that we will pass them by the bridge.

  I can see her now, the prominent teeth, the gay spot of rouge placed high upon her cheek-bones, and her smile, vacant, happy, enjoying her evening.

  Later I saw her by the supper table, her keen eyes searching the food, and she heaped a plate high with salmon and lobster mayonnaise and went off into a corner. There was Lady Crowan too, monstrous in purple, disguised as I know not what romantic figure of the past, it might have been Marie Antoinette or Nell Gwynne for all I knew, or a strange erotic combination of the two, and she kept exclaiming in excited high-pitch tones, a little higher than usual because of the champagne she had consumed,

  'You all have me to thank for this, not the de Winters at all.'

  I remember Robert dropping a tray of ices, and the expression of Frith's face when he saw Robert was the culprit and not one of the minions hired for the occasion. I wanted to go to Robert and stand beside him and say