Get out of the way.' He began to mop the cloth, while the waiter, seeing the disturbance, came swiftly to the rescue.
'I don't mind,' I said, 'it doesn't matter a bit.
I'm all alone.'
He said nothing, and then the waiter arrived and whipped away the vase and the sprawling flowers.
'Leave that,' he said suddenly, 'and lay another place at my table.
Mademoiselle will have luncheon with me.'
I looked up in confusion.
'Oh, no,' I said,
'I couldn't possibly.'
'Why not?' he said.
I tried to think of an excuse.
I knew he did not want to lunch with me.
It was his form of courtesy.
I should ruin his meal.
I determined to be bold and speak the truth.
'Please,' I begged, 'don't be polite.
It's very kind of you but I shall be quite all right if the waiter just wipes the cloth.'
'But I'm not being polite,' he insisted.
'I would like you to have luncheon with me.
Even if you had not knocked over that vase so clumsily I should have asked you.'
I suppose my face told him my doubt, for he smiled.
'You don't believe me,' he said; 'never mind, come and sit down. We needn't talk to each other unless we feel like it.'
We sat down, and he gave me the menu, leaving me to choose, and went on with his hors d'oeuvre as though nothing had happened.
His quality of detachment was peculiar to himself, and I knew that we might continue thus, without speaking, throughout the meal and it would not matter. There would be no sense of strain.
He would not ask me questions on history.
'What's happened to your friend?' he said.
I told him about the influenza.
'I'm so sorry,' he said, and then, after pausing a moment, 'you got my note, I suppose.
I felt very much ashamed of myself.
My manners were atrocious.
The only excuse I can make is that I've become boorish through living alone.
That's why it's so kind of you to lunch with me today.'
'You weren't rude,' I said, 'at least, not the sort of rudeness she would understand.
That curiosity of hers — she does not mean to be offensive, but she does it to everyone.
That is, everyone of importance.'
'I ought to be flattered then,' he said; 'why should she consider me of any importance?'
I hesitated a moment before replying.
'I think because of Manderley,' I said.
He did not answer, and I was aware again of that feeling of discomfort, as though I had trespassed on forbidden ground.
I wondered why it was that this home of his, known to so many people by hearsay, even to me, should so inevitably silence him, making as it were a barrier between him and others.
We ate for a while without talking, and I thought of a picture postcard I had bought once at a village shop, when on holiday as a child in the west country.
It was the painting of a house, crudely done of course and highly coloured, but even those faults could not destroy the symmetry of the building, the wide stone steps before the terrace, the green lawns stretching to the sea.
I paid twopence for the painting — half my weekly pocket money — and then asked the wrinkled shop woman what it was meant to be.
She looked astonished at my ignorance.
'That's Manderley,' she said, and I remember coming out of the shop feeling rebuffed, yet hardly wiser than before.
Perhaps it was the memory of this postcard, lost long ago in some forgotten book, that made me sympathise with his defensive attitude.
He resented Mrs Van Hopper and her like with their intruding questions.
Maybe there was something inviolate about Manderley that made it a place apart; it would not bear discussion.
I could imagine her tramping through the rooms, perhaps paying sixpence for admission, ripping the quietude with her sharp, staccato laugh.
Our minds must have run in the same channel, for he began to talk about her.