Rebecca (Daphne Du Maurier) - 「レベッカ」- 229冊目

ジャンル: 小説 (ミステリー)
英語難易度: ★★☆
オススメ度: ★★★☆☆

一言で言うと、少女の恋愛妄想暴走小説。とにかく果てしなく妄想する新妻。
そんな感じです。
ヒッチコックの映画でも有名なお話です。

あらすじを少し。主人公である「私」(年の頃なら二十歳少し超えの妙齢の女性。彼女の具体的な名前はこの小説内では一切出てきません。)は、モンテカルロの高級ホテルでバカンスを過ごす金持ちで少し粗野なアメリカ人奥様の小間使い(「コンパニオン」との肩書きですが)として雇われる。ボンビーガールで他に選択肢のない「私」は嫌々ながらもお金のために奥様の雑用をこなす毎日だった。そんなある日、いかにも裕福な年配の紳士マキシムとこの高級ホテルで出会う。みるみるうちに打ち解けた二人は一緒にドライブに行くまでの親密な仲に。そして奥様がホテルを立つことになったその日、涙ながらにマキシムに別れを告げに行った「私」。ところがなんと彼から逆にプロポーズされることに。彼はイギリスの名門貴族マキシム・デ・ウインター。マンダレーにある彼の邸宅とは、「私」が幼い頃に持っていた絵葉書の写真にあった憧れの城だった事が分かる。ボンビーガールから名門貴族のデ・ウインター夫人となった彼女の妄想が炸裂する。

新妻となった「私」は舞い上がりつつ、新居の邸宅に来たものの、すぐに歓迎されていない雰囲気に気づく。一年前にボートの遭難で不慮の事故死をとげた前妻のレベッカは絶世の美女でファッションセンスも素晴らしく非の打ち所がない女性だった。レベッカの幼い頃からの付き人で、邸宅の家事の一切を取り仕切る痩せた鶏ガラ幽霊のような家政婦のデンバース夫人は、後妻で人見知りの「私」に冷たく当たる。慇懃無礼な召使いたちもどこか小馬鹿にしているよう。旦那もあまり真面目に「私」の悩みに取り合ってくれない。邸宅のあちこちには亡きレベッカがまだ暮らしているかの様に整えられている。
「ああ、やっぱり旦那様はまだレベッカのことを愛しているんだ。彼女には勝てるわけがない。デ・ウインター夫人は未だにレベッカなんだ」とノイローゼ気味になり、ついには自死までも考え始める「私」。
そしてウインター家を取り巻くこの不穏な人間関係には実は驚きの秘密が隠されていた…
(1938年発刊)

メモポイント
● 上にも書きましたが、この話の見どころは何と言っても、「私」の豊かな脳内妄想の表現でしょう。結構、このシーンは気に入ってます。
恋心を抱いたマキシムに涙ながらに別れを告げる前の妄想シーン。いかに彼が「私」のことをいとも簡単に忘れるだろうと、自虐的にはこれでもかこれでもかと書き連ねます。

He would go back to Manderley, of course, in a few weeks; I felt certain of that. There would be a great pile of letters waiting for him in the hall, and mine amongst them, scribbled on the boat. A forced letter, trying to amuse, describing my fellow passengers. It would lie about inside his blotter, and he would answer it weeks later, one Sunday morning in a hurry, before lunch, having come across it when he paid some bills. And then no more. Nothing until the final degradation of the Christmas card. Manderley itself perhaps, against a frosted background. The message printed, saying ‘A happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year from Maximilian de Winter.’ Gold lettering. But to be kind he would have run his pen through the printed name and written in ink underneath ‘from Maxim’, as a sort of sop, and if there was space, a message, ‘I hope you are enjoying New York.’ A lick of the envelope, a stamp, and tossed in a pile of a hundred others.

● そして実際にホテルの部屋に赴いて別れの挨拶を告げた時にマキシムは…

‘Come in,’ he shouted, and I opened the door, repenting already, my nerve failing me; for perhaps he had only just woken up, having been late last night, and would be still in bed, tousled in the head and irritable.
He was shaving by the open window, a camel-hair jacket over his pyjamas, and I in my flannel suit and heavy shoes felt clumsy and over dressed. I was merely foolish, when I had felt myself dramatic.
‘What do you want?’ he said. ‘Is something the matter?’
‘I’ve come to say good-bye,’ I said, ‘we’re going this morning.’
He stared at me, then put his razor down on the washstand.
‘Shut the door,’ he said. I closed it behind me, and stood there, rather self-conscious, my hands hanging by my side.
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ he asked. ‘It’s true, we’re leaving today. We were going by the later train, and now she wants to catch the earlier one, and I was afraid I shouldn’t see you again. I felt I must see you before I left, to thank you.’
They tumbled out, the idiotic words, just as I had imagined them. I was stiff and awkward; in a moment I should say he had been ripping.

(中略)

‘So Mrs Van Hopper has had enough of Monte Carlo,’ he said, ‘and now she wants to go home. So do I. She to New York and I to Manderley. Which would you prefer? You can take your choice.’
‘Don’t make a joke about it; it’s unfair,’ I said; ‘and I think I had better see about those tickets, and say good-bye now.’
‘If you think I’m one of the people who try to be funny at breakfast you’re wrong,’ he said. ‘I’m invariably ill-tempered in the early morning. I repeat to you, the choice is open to you. Either you go to America with Mrs Van Hopper or you come home to Manderley with me.’
‘Do you mean you want a secretary or something?’
‘No, I’m asking you to marry me, you little fool.’

● マキシムのプロポーズを受けて、デ・ウインター夫人への道が開かれた「私」。その瞬間から、幼いやんちゃな息子たちに囲まれて豪邸で暮らす幸せな家庭の妄想が始まります。

We should grow old here together, we should sit like this to our tea as old people, Maxim and I, with other dogs, the successors of these, and the library would wear the same ancient musty smell that it did now. It would know a period of glorious shabbiness and wear when the boys were young–our boys–for I saw them sprawling on the sofa with muddy boots, bringing with them always a litter of rods, and cricket bats, great clasp-knives, bows-and-arrows.
On the table there, polished now and plain, an ugly case would stand containing butterflies and moths, and another one with birds’ eggs, wrapped in cotton wool. ‘Not all this junk in here,’ I would say, ‘take them to the schoolroom, darlings,’ and they would run off, shouting, calling to one another, but the little one staying behind, pottering on his own, quieter than the others.

● 今度はある事件がキッカケで、マキシムから嫌われていると思い込む「私」。妄想がネガティブに振れたときもすごい。
マンダリーに嫁いで来て一生懸命に上流階級に合わせようとする「私」だが、空回りする描写は痛々しい。期待に胸を膨らませてきたが、実態は自分には務まりそうもないと分かってきてからの焦りや絶望感。

I had not come down for Maxim’s sake, for Beatrice’s, for the sake of Manderley. I had come down because I did not want the people at the ball to think I had quarrelled with Maxim. I didn’t want them to go home and say, ‘Of course you know they don’t get on. I hear he’s not at all happy.’ I had come for my own sake, my own poor personal pride. As I sipped my cold tea I thought with a tired bitter feeling of despair that I would be content to live in one corner of Manderley and Maxim in the other so long as the outside world should never know. If he had no more tenderness for me, never kissed me again, did not speak to me except on matters of necessity, I believed I could bear it if I were certain that nobody knew of this but our two selves. If we could bribe servants not to tell, play our part before relations, before Beatrice, and then when we were alone sit apart in our separate rooms, leading our separate lives.

ネタバレになるので未読の方はここでストップ。

上に書いたマキシム激怒の事件とは、マンダレーの屋敷で行われた結婚お披露目パーティーでの一幕。亡きレベッカに心酔していた家政婦のデンバース夫人に騙されて、在りし日のレベッカと同じドレスを着てサプライズパーティーに挑んだ「私」(もちろん、「私」はこのドレスがレベッカがかつて選んだものとは知りません)。
喜んでくれると期待に胸膨らませていたところから、マキシムの逆鱗に触れて一気に奈落の底に。パーティーを台無しにできないので健気に振る舞うも悲しみに涙が止まらない。このシーンは不憫すぎて本が手放せない。がぜん面白くなってきます。

前妻レベッカの隠された秘密姿がこの事件の後にだんだんと解き明かされていきます。この辺り、かなり面白いので未読の方は実際に手にして読んでみてはいかがでしょう。そうですね、イメージでは映画「イヴの総て」に重なる感じです。