'Dear Mrs Van Hopper,' I began.
And as I wrote, in halting, laboured fashion, saying I hoped the voyage had been good, that she had found her daughter better, that the weather in New York was fine and warm, I noticed for the first time how cramped and unformed was my own handwriting; without individuality, without style, uneducated even, the writing of an indifferent pupil taught in a second-rate school.
Chapter nine
When I heard the sound of the car in the drive I got up in sudden panic, glancing at the clock, for I knew that it meant Beatrice and her husband had arrived.
It was only just gone twelve; they were much earlier than I expected.
And Maxim was not yet back.
I wondered if it would be possible to hide, to get out of the window, into the garden so that Frith, bringing them to the morning-room, would say,
'Madam must have gone out,' and it would seem quite natural, they would take it as a matter of course.
The dogs looked up inquiringly as I ran to the window, and Jasper followed me, wagging his tail.
The window opened out on to the terrace and the little grass clearing beyond, but as I prepared to brush past the rhododendrons the sound of voices came close, and I backed again into the room.
They were coming to the house by way of the garden, Frith having told them doubtless that I was in the morning-room.
I went quickly into the big drawing-room, and made for a door near me on the left.
It led into a long stone passage, and I ran along it, fully aware of my stupidity, despising myself for this sudden attack of nerves, but I knew I could not face these people, not for a moment anyway.
The passage seemed to be taking me to the back regions, and as I turned a corner, coming upon another staircase, I met a servant I had not seen before, a scullery-maid perhaps; she carried a mop and pail in her hands.
She stared at me in wonder, as though I were a vision, unexpected in this part of the house, and
'Good morning,' I said, in great confusion, making for the stairway, and
'Good morning, Madam,' she returned, her mouth open, her round eyes inquisitive as I climbed the stairs.
They would lead me, I supposed, to the bedrooms, and I could find my suite in the east wing, and sit up there a little while, until I judged it nearly time for lunch, when good manners would compel me to come down again.
I must have lost my bearings, for passing through a door at the head of the stairs I came to a long corridor that I had not seen before, similar in some ways to the one in the east wing, but broader and darker — dark owing to the panelling of the walls.
I hesitated, then turned left, coming upon a broad landing and another staircase.
It was very quiet and dark.
No one was about.
If there had been housemaids here, during the morning, they had finished their work by now and gone downstairs.
There was no trace of their presence, no lingering dust smell of carpets lately swept, and I thought, as I stood there, wondering which way to turn, that the silence was unusual, holding something of the same oppression as an empty house does, when the owners have gone away.
I opened a door at hazard, and found a room in total darkness, no chink of light coming through the closed shutters, while I could see dimly, in the centre of the room, the outline of furniture swathed in white dust-sheets.
The room smelt close and stale, the smell of a room seldom if ever used, whose ornaments are herded together in the centre of a bed and left there, covered with a sheet.
It might be too that the curtain had not been drawn from the window since some preceding summer, and if one crossed there now and pulled them aside, opening the creaking shutters, a dead moth who had been imprisoned behind them for many months would fall to the carpet and lie there, beside a forgotten pin, and a dried leaf blown there before the windows were closed for the last time.
I shut the door softly, and went uncertainly along the corridor, flanked on either side by doors, all of them closed, until I came to a little alcove, set in an outside wall, where a broad window gave me light at last.
I looked out, and I saw below me the smooth grass lawns stretching to the sea, and the sea itself, bright green with white-tipped crests, whipped by a westerly wind and scudding from the shore.
It was closer than I had thought, much closer; it ran, surely, beneath that little knot of trees below the lawns, barely five minutes away, and if I listened now, my ear to the window, I could hear the surf breaking on the shores of some little bay I could not see.
I knew then I had made the circuit of the house, and was standing in the corridor of the west wing.
Yes, Mrs Danvers was right. You could hear the sea from here.
You might imagine, in the winter, it would creep up on to those green lawns and threaten the house itself, for even now, because of the high wind, there was a mist upon the window-glass, as though someone had breathed upon it.
A mist salt-laden, borne upwards from the sea.
A hurrying cloud hid the sun for a moment as I watched, and the sea changed colour instantly, becoming black, and the white crests with them very pitiless suddenly, and cruel, not the gay sparkling sea I had looked on first.
Somehow I was glad my rooms were in the east wing.
I preferred the rose-garden, after all, to the sound of the sea.
I went back to the landing then, at the head of the stairs, and as I prepared to go down, one hand upon the bannister, I heard the door behind me open, and it was Mrs Danvers.
We stared at one another for a moment without speaking, and I could not be certain whether it was anger I read in her eyes or curiosity, for her face became a mask directly she saw me.
Although she said nothing I felt guilty and ashamed, as though I had been caught trespassing, and I felt the tell-tale colour come up into my face.
'I lost my way,' I said,
'I was trying to find my room.'
'You have come to the opposite side of the house,' she said; 'this is the west wing.'
'Yes, I know,' I said.
'Did you go into any of the rooms?' she asked me.
'No,' I said.
'No, I just opened a door, I did not go in.
Everything was dark, covered up in dust-sheets.
I'm sorry.
I did not mean to disturb anything.