She shook herself clear of me, the angry colour flooded her dead white face. 'What do I care for his suffering?' she said, 'he's never cared about mine. How do you think I've liked it, watching you sit in her place, walk in her footsteps, touch the things that were hers? What do you think it's meant to me all these months knowing that you wrote at her desk in the morning-room, using the very pen that she used, speaking down the house telephone, where she used to speak every morning of her life to me, ever since she first came to Manderley? What do you think it meant to me to hear Frith and Robert and the rest of the servants talking about you as "Mrs de Winter"? "Mrs de Winter has gone out for a walk."
"Mrs de Winter wants the car this afternoon at three o'clock."
"Mrs de Winter won't be in to tea till five o'clock." And all the while my Mrs de Winter, my lady with her smile and her lovely face and brave ways, the real Mrs de Winter, lying dead and cold and forgotten in the church crypt. If he suffers then he deserves to suffer, marrying a young girl like you not ten months afterwards. Well, he's paying for it now, isn't he? I've seen his face, I've seen his eyes. He's made his own hell and there's no one but himself to thank for it. He knows she sees him, he knows she comes by night and watches him. And she doesn't come kindly, not she, not my lady. She was never one to stand mute and still and be wronged. "I'll see them in hell, Danny," she'd say, "I'll see them in hell first."
"That's right, my dear," I'd tell her, "no one will put upon you. You were born into this world to take what you could out of it", and she did, she didn't care, she wasn't afraid. She had all the courage and spirit of a boy, had my Mrs de Winter. She ought to have been a boy, I often told her that. I had the care of her as a child. You knew that, didn't you?'
'No!' I said, 'no. Mrs Danvers, what's the use of all this? I don't want to hear any more, I don't want to know. Haven't I got feelings as well as you? Can't you understand what it means to me, to hear her mentioned, to stand here and listen while you tell me about her?'
She did not hear me, she went on raving like a madwoman, a fanatic, her long fingers twisting and tearing the black stuff of her dress.
'She was lovely then,' she said. 'Lovely as a picture; men turning to stare at her when she passed, and she not twelve years old. She knew then, she used to wink at me like the little devil she was. "I'm going to be a beauty, aren't I, Danny?" she said, and "We'll see about that, my love, we'll see about that," I told her. She had all the knowledge then of a grown person; she'd enter into conversation with men and women as clever and full of tricks as someone of eighteen. She twisted her father round her little finger, and she'd have done the same with her mother, had she lived. Spirit, you couldn't beat my lady for spirit. She drove a four-in-hand on her fourteenth birthday, and her cousin, Mr Jack, got up on the box beside her and tried to take the reins from her hands. They fought it out there together, for three minutes, like a couple of wild cats, and the horses galloping to glory. She won though, my lady won. She cracked her whip over his head and down he came, head-over-heels, cursing and laughing. They were a pair, I tell you, she and Mr Jack. They sent him in the Navy, but he wouldn't stand the discipline, and I don't blame him. He had too much spirit to obey orders, like my lady.'
I watched her, fascinated, horrified; a queer ecstatic smile was on her lips, making her older than ever, making her skull's face vivid and real. 'No one got the better of her, never, never,' she said. 'She did what she liked, she lived as she liked. She had the strength of a little lion too. I remember her at sixteen getting up on one of her father's horses, a big brute of an animal too, that the groom said was too hot for her to ride. She stuck to him, all right. I can see her now, with her hair flying out behind her, slashing at him, drawing blood, digging the spurs into his side, and when she got off his back he was trembling all over, full of froth and blood. "That will teach him, won't it, Danny?" she said, and walked off to wash her hands as cool as you please. And that's how she went at life, when she grew up. I saw her, I was with her. She cared for nothing and for no one. And then she was beaten in the end. But it wasn't a man, it wasn't a woman. The sea got her. The sea was too strong for her. The sea got her in the end.'
She broke off, her mouth working strangely, and dragging at the corners. She began to cry noisily, harshly, her mouth open and her eyes dry.
'Mrs Danvers,' I said. 'Mrs Danvers.' I stood before her helplessly, not knowing what to do. I mistrusted her no longer, I was afraid of her no more, but the sight of her sobbing there, dry-eyed, made me shudder, made me ill. 'Mrs Danvers,' I said, 'you're not well, you ought to be in bed. Why don't you go to your room and rest? Why don't you go to bed?'
She turned on me fiercely. 'Leave me alone, can't you?' she said. 'What's it to do with you if I show my grief? I'm not ashamed of it, I don't shut myself up in my room to cry. I don't walk up and down, up and down, in my room like Mr de Winter, with the door locked on me.'
'What do you mean?" I said. 'Mr de Winter does not do that.'
'He did,' she said, 'after she died. Up and down, up and down in the library. I heard him. I watched him too, through the keyhole, more than once. Backwards and forwards, like an animal in a cage.'
'I don't want to hear,' I said. 'I don't want to know.'
'And then you say you made him happy on his honeymoon,' she said; 'made him happy — you, a young ignorant girl, young enough to be his daughter. What do you know about life? What do you know about men? You come here and think you can take Mrs de Winter's place. You. You take my lady's place. Why, even the servants laughed at you when you came to Manderley. Even the little scullery-maid you met in the back passage there on your first morning. I wonder what Mr de Winter thought when he got you back here at Manderley, after his precious honeymoon was over. I wonder what he thought when he saw you sitting at the dining-room table for the first time.'
'You'd better stop this, Mrs Danvers,' I said; 'you'd better go to your room.'
'Go to my room,' she mimicked, 'go to my room. The mistress of the house thinks I had better go to my room. And after that, what then? You'll go running to Mr de Winter and saying, "Mrs Danvers has been unkind to me, Mrs Danvers has been rude." You'll go running to him like you did before when Mr Jack came to see me.'
'I never told him,' I said.
'That's a lie,' she said. 'Who else told him, if you didn't? No one else was here. Frith and Robert were out, and none of the other servants knew. I made up my mind then I'd teach you a lesson, and him too. Let him suffer, I say. What do I care? What's his suffering to me? Why shouldn't I see Mr Jack here at Manderley? He's the only link I have left now with Mrs de Winter. "I'll not have him here," he said. "I'm warning you, it's the last time." He's not forgotten to be jealous, has he?'
I remembered crouching in the gallery when the library door was open. I remembered Maxim's voice raised in anger, using the words that Mrs Danvers had just repeated. Jealous, Maxim jealous…
'He was jealous while she lived, and now he's jealous when she's dead,' said Mrs Danvers. 'He forbids Mr Jack the house now like he did then. That shows you he's not forgotten her, doesn't it? Of course he was jealous. So was I. So was everyone who knew her. She didn't care. She only laughed. "I shall live as I please, Danny," she told me, "and the whole world won't stop me." A man had only to look at her once and be mad about her. I've seen them here, staying in the house, men she'd meet up in London and bring for weekends. She would take them bathing from the boat, she would have a picnic supper at her cottage in the cove. They made love to her of course; who would not? She laughed, she would come back and tell me what they had said, and what they'd done. She did not mind, it was like a game to her. Like a game. Who wouldn't be jealous? They were all jealous, all mad for her. Mr de Winter, Mr Jack, Mr Crawley, everyone who knew her, everyone who came to Manderley.'