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.