He was at Oxford with Giles.
Ask Maxim whether he would like me to telephone Dick and see if he can do anything to quash the verdict?
Ask Maxim what he thinks of this Communist idea.'
'It's no use,' I said. 'It can't do any good.
Please, Beatrice, don't try and do anything.
It will make it worse, much worse.
Rebecca may have had some motive we don't know anything about.
And I don't think Communists go ramming holes in boats, what would be the use?
Please, Beatrice, leave it alone.'
Oh, thank God she had not been with us today.
Thank God for that at least.
Something was buzzing in the telephone. I heard Beatrice shouting,
'Hullo, hullo, don't cut us off, exchange,' and then there was a click, and silence.
I went back into the library, limp and exhausted.
In a few minutes the telephone began ringing again.
I did not do anything.
I let it ring.
I went and sat down at Maxim's feet.
It went on ringing.
I did not move.
Presently it stopped, as though cut suddenly in exasperation.
The clock on the mantelpiece struck ten o'clock.
Maxim put his arms round me and lifted me against him.
We began to kiss one another, feverishly, desperately, like guilty lovers who have not kissed before.
Chapter twenty-six
When I awoke the next morning, just after six o'clock, and got up and went to the window there was a foggy dew upon the grass like frost, and the trees were shrouded in a white mist.
There was a chill in the air and a little, fresh wind, and the cold, quiet smell of autumn.
As I knelt by the window looking down on to the rose- garden where the flowers themselves drooped upon their stalks, the petals brown and dragging after last night's rain, the happenings of the day before seemed remote and unreal.
Here at Manderley a new day was starting, the things of the garden were not concerned with our troubles.
A blackbird ran across the rose-garden to the lawns in swift, short rushes, stopping now and again to stab at the earth with his yellow beak.
A thrush, too, went about his business, and two stout little wagtails, following one another, and a little cluster of twittering sparrows.
A gull poised himself high in the air, silent and alone, and then spread his wings wide and swooped beyond the lawns to the woods and the Happy Valley.
These things continued, our worries and anxieties had no power to alter them.
Soon the gardeners would be astir, brushing the first leaves from the lawns and the paths, raking the gravel in the drive.
Pails would clank in the courtyard behind the house, the hose would be turned on the car, the little scullery maid would begin to chatter through the open door to the men in the yard.
There would be the crisp, hot smell of bacon.
The housemaids would open up the house, throw wide the windows, draw back the curtains.
The dogs would crawl from their baskets, yawn and stretch themselves, wander out on to the terrace and blink at the first struggles of the pale sun coming through the mist.
Robert would lay the table for breakfast, bring in those piping scones, the clutch of eggs, the glass dishes of honey, jam, and marmalade, the bowl of peaches, the cluster of purple grapes with the bloom upon them still, hot from the greenhouses.
Maids sweeping in the morning-room, the drawing-room, the fresh clean air pouring into the long open windows.
Smoke curling from the chimneys, and little by little the autumn mist fading away and the trees and the banks and the woods taking shape, the glimmer of the sea showing with the sun upon it below the valley, the beacon standing tall and straight upon the headland.
The peace of Manderley.
The quietude and the grace.
Whoever lived within its walls, whatever trouble there was and strife, however much uneasiness and pain, no matter what tears were shed, what sorrows borne, the peace of Manderley could not be broken or the loveliness destroyed.
The flowers that died would bloom again another year, the same birds build their nests, the same trees blossom.
The old quiet moss smell would linger in the air, and bees would come, and crickets, and herons build their nests in the deep dark woods.
The butterflies would dance their merry jig across the lawns, and spiders spin foggy webs, and small startled rabbits who had no business to come trespassing poke their faces through the crowded shrubs.
There would be lilac, and honeysuckle still, and the white magnolia buds unfolding slow and tight beneath the dining-room window.
No one would ever hurt Manderley.
It would lie always in a hollow like an enchanted thing, guarded by the woods, safe, secure, while the sea broke and ran and came again in the little shingle bays below.