Haven't we as much right to be happy as anyone else?'
'Mr de Winter is not happy,' she said, turning to look at me at last; 'any fool can see that.
You have only to look at his eyes.
He's still in hell, and he's looked like that ever since she died.'
'It's not true,' I said.
'It's not true.
He was happy when we were in France together; he was younger, much younger, and laughing and gay.'
'Well, he's a man, isn't he?' she said.
'No man denies himself on a honeymoon, does he?
Mr de Winter's not forty-six yet.'
She laughed contemptuously, and shrugged her shoulders.
'How dare you speak to me like that?
How dare you?' I said.
I was not afraid of her any more.
I went up to her, shook her by the arm.
'You made me wear that dress last night,' I said,
'I should never have thought of it but for you.
You did it because you wanted to hurt Mr de Winter, you wanted to make him suffer.
Hasn't he suffered enough without your playing that vile hideous joke upon him?
Do you think his agony and pain will bring Mrs de Winter back again?'
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.