|
f52c6a6
|
He can't get rid of me, he can't shake himself clear. It has happened all my life, this business of clinging to people, of getting too fond of them.
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
4ee50ad
|
It was a mistake to separate us. We should have stayed together. Once a family breaks up and splits, it never comes together again. Not in the old way. If there had been a settled home to which we could have gone, it would have been different. Children need a settled home, a place that smells familiar. A life that goes on, with the same toys, the same walks, the same faces day after day. Where, wet or fine, existence can be a pattern, a rou..
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
1fd0ab1
|
Mary wondered how many years Aunt Patience had kept that knowledge to herself in an agony of silence. No one would ever know how greatly she had suffered. Wherever she should go in the future, the pain of that knowledge would go with her. It could never leave her alone.
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
f247544
|
Men and women were like the animals on the farm at Helford, she supposed; there was a common law of attraction for all living things, some similarity of skin or touch, and they would go to one another. This was no choice made with the mind.
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
81ba2cb
|
Mary had no illusions about romance. Falling in love was a pretty name for it, that was all.
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
213dce6
|
Her face was not "done," as Maria would have said. It was just her face. The skin was soft and smooth, and there were little lines at the corner of her eyes that did not show as a rule, and at the corners of her mouth. He wondered why it was that she should seem so much prettier when she looked like this, so much kinder. Not a person to be afraid of anymore. She was suddenly not like a grown-up person. She was young, like himself, like Mari..
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
255f4b8
|
We never knew the ordinary placid routine of child life, the settled home, the humdrum day by day. For if yesterday we were in London, tomorrow would be Paris, and the after-tomorrow, Rome.
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
aaff7e0
|
Grown-up people... How suddenly would it happen, the final plunge into their world? Did it really come about overnight, as Pappy said, between sleeping and waking? A day would come, a day like any other day, and looking over your shoulder you would see the shadow of the child that was, receding; and there would be no going back, no possibility of recapturing the shadow. You had to go on; you had to step forward into the future, however much..
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
7cb1211
|
Never dance again?" said Niall. "But what would happen? What would everybody do?" "Nothing would happen," she said. "The theater is a funny world, you know. They forget one very soon."
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
f180c29
|
Once more she knew the humility of being born a woman, when the breaking down of strength and spirit was taken as natural and unquestioned. Were she a man, now, she would receive rough treatment, or indifference at the best, and be requested to ride at once perhaps to Bodmin or to Launceston to bear witness, with an understanding that she should find her own lodging and betake herself to the world's end if she wished when all questions had ..
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
07edacf
|
The wild shouting, the laughter, and the singing with which they had fortified themselves for the journey would have been a relief, however loathsome; but this deadly quietude was sinister.
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
891576e
|
That dusty, musty theater smell, how it still haunts each one of us in turn, and Maria at least will never shake it free. That swing door with the bar across it, the cold passage, those hollow-sounding stairs and the descent to the abyss. Those notices upon the walls that no one ever reads, that prowling cat with tail erect which mews and vanishes, the rusty fire-bucket into which someone throws the stub of a cigarette. The first sight of i..
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
b8f6c14
|
It wasn't like that for us," said Niall, "all bright, and clean, and purged and commonplace. Plastic toys. Things that go in and out." "Perhaps it was," said Maria; "perhaps we don't remember." "I do remember," said Niall. "I remember everything. That's the trouble. I remember much too much"
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
27e8594
|
You forget, those things were easy for me. I belonged to both of them." Niall pushed his cup back on the tray. "What a bloody thing to say," he said, and he got up and lit another cigarette."
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
174ece2
|
She had the cold, angry face that spelled trouble, the face that sent servants flying, stage managers running for their lives, and ourselves to whatever distant room we might possess.
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
6d4962b
|
There was no yesterday and no tomorrow; fear had been slung aside, and shame forgotten. We were all together--Pappy and Mama; Maria and Niall and Celia--we were all happy, with so many people looking at us, we were all enjoying ourselves. It was a game that we played, a game that we understood. We were the Delaneys. And we were giving a party
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
dd9070d
|
Soon we won't be children anymore. We shall be like Them.
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
a324383
|
The fall was followed by a wail of anguish, penetrating to the dressing room behind. "See to baby, Truda," Mama must have said, cool and composed, knowing that if the child had been crushed beneath the great chandelier of the theater it would only mean one less to take around,"
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
5e59bdb
|
And she passed through the stage door and was inside the theater. Her heart was still beating fast, and her hands were burning, but she felt steadier suddenly, the feeling of panic had gone from her. It was because she was inside the theater
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
247c1c2
|
It's queer," she said, "but I don't feel this is happening to me at all. This is some other person going through my day. It's a dreadful feeling. I can't explain it"
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
92c617f
|
He had no answer to that, or to any of her thoughts, and the smile that hovered a moment at the corner of her mouth and went as swiftly--it happened now, in her pretence of sleep--had no connection with him, or with his feelings, or with their life together. It was remote, the smile of someone he had never known.
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
71ff36c
|
Did you think that?" said Maria. "So did I. Oh, Niall... if I ever marry and have a baby, will you have it for me?" "It would be one way of getting famous, anyway," said Niall."
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
ec2104d
|
Her uncle had ridden away on the moors somewhere, and a sense of freedom possessed her whenever he was gone.
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
addedbe
|
H'mph," growled the squire, "that's a damned nuisance. I wanted a word or two with Mr. Joss Merlyn. Now look here, my good woman, your precious husband may have bought Jamaica Inn behind my back, in his blackguardly fashion, and we'll not go into that again now, but one thing I won't stand for, and that's having all my land hereabouts made a byword for everything that's damnable and dishonest round the countryside."
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
906edf6
|
The waiters were getting tired, and very bored. The Head Waiter came again and pushed the bill on a plate, neatly folded, under Pappy's eyes. "What's this?" said Pappy. "Somebody want my autograph? Who's got a pencil? Anyone got a pencil so that I can sign my autograph?" The waiter coughed. He avoided Celia's eyes. "It's the bill, Pappy," whispered Celia. "The waiter wants you to pay the bill."
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
9bebb4c
|
his warm eyes that made her heart feel daft like a bleating sheep.
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
201205e
|
I do lie about," she said, "from time to time. The trouble is I go off everyone so quickly. I soon get bored." "Bored with the things they say? Or with the things they do?" "With the things they do. I never listen to the things they say"
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
5b2b1fb
|
Mary Rose that did it. Mary Rose was a country girl. Always hiding up apple trees, and then disappearing on the island. She was a ghost, and Charles fell in love with the ghost." "What did you fall in love with?" asked Niall. "As I was being Mary Rose, I fell in love with Simon," said Maria. "And Charles was my idea of Simon. Quiet, dependable, devoted. Besides, at that particular time there was no one much around. And all those flowers."
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
75b2b59
|
There was something strangely peaceful about the house, something very rare and difficult to define. It was like a house in an old tale, discovered by the hero one evening in midsummer; there should be a barrier of thorns about it through which he must cut his way with a knife, and then a galaxy of flowers growing in profusion, with monstrous blooms untended by human hand.
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
2b96ea5
|
he stood on the balcony because the sounds and the smells of Paris came to his ears and his nostrils and lost themselves inside his head and came out again as tunes
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
933921b
|
They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word. Today, wrapped in the complacent armor of approaching middle age, the infinitesimal pricks of day by day brush one lightly and are soon forgotten, but then - how a careless word would linger, becoming a fiery stigma, and how a look, a g..
|
|
wisdom
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
19f0bd5
|
He was like a schoolmaster after all. It was just as she had feared. He was now going to make a fuss about her drawings, and write to Pappy, and worry Pappy, and say that time must be set aside for her to work, and everything would become a performance, and a ritual, and be difficult. Drawing would become a burden instead of an escape
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
0889eea
|
A ce moment-la, Maxim me regarda enfin. Il me regarda pour la premiere fois de la soiree et, dans ses yeux, je lus un message d'adieu. C'etait comme s'il se penchait au bastingage d'un navire, et que je me tenais en contrebas sur le quai. Il y avait d'autres gens qui touchaient son epaule et qui touchaient la mienne, mais nous ne les remarquions pas. Nous ne nous parlions pas et ne nous helions pas, car le vent et la distance emportaient le..
|
|
quote
français
daphne-du-maurier
rebecca
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
8ae92d5
|
Charles said, "I haven't looked at the Acrostic. A word of nine letters in the crossword caught my attention." "Oh, what was that?" "An invertebrate animal preying upon the body of another animal." Niall struck the first chord on the piano. "A parasite," he said."
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
ef70519
|
You have never lived anywhere else," he said, "and you are not an individual at all, you're just a hotch-potch of every character you've ever acted. Your mood and your personality change with each new part that comes along. There is no such woman as Maria, there never has been. Even your children know it. And that's why they are fascinated by you, for two days only, and then go running up to the nursery to Polly, because Polly is real, and ..
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
2d0efc6
|
But the people enjoy watching the dog," he said swiftly, trying to divert Charles. "That's why they go to the circus, for distraction. Maria supplies the same drug in the theater, and I give it in large doses to all the errand-boys who whistle my songs. I think you've got hold of the wrong word. We're pedlars, hawking our wares--not parasites."
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
c603dd7
|
It was Charles who called us the parasites. The way he said it was surprising, and sudden; he was one of those quiet reserved sort of men, not given to talking much or stating his opinion, unless upon the most ordinary facts of day by day, so that his outburst--coming, as it did, towards the end of the long, wet Sunday afternoon, when we had none of us done anything but read the papers and yawn and stretch before the fire--had the force of ..
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
4ff625f
|
It was some personal friend of the landlord's, who had no wish to meddle in his evening's business, and would not show himself even to the landlord's wife.
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
a951f02
|
I know I must seem unsympathetic and cold, but this is the nineteenth century, you know, and men don't murder one another without reason. I believe I have as much right to drive you on the King's highway as your uncle himself. Having gone so far, don't you think you had better let me hear the rest of your story? What is your name, and how long have you been living at Jamaica Inn?
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
17a9d2c
|
I looked at him over my glass of citronade. It was not easy to explain my father and usually I never talked about him. He was my secret property. Preserved for me alone, much as Manderley was preserved for my neighbour. I had no wish to introduce him casually over a table in a Monte Carlo restaurant. There was a strange air of unreality about that luncheon, and looking back upon it now it is invested for me with a curious glamour. There wa..
|
|
sharing
intimacy
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
1856260
|
Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind. Of course we have our moments of depression; but there are other moments too, when time, unmeasured by the clock, runs on into eternity and, catching his smile, I know we are together, we march in unison, no clash of thought or of opinion makes a barrier between us.
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
da2c460
|
We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still too close to us. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us would stir again,
|
|
the-past
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
1e774b7
|
Bitterness goes with people when they die.
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
fa6ca04
|
He was always talking nowadays, thought Celia, of the things he might have done. The houses they should have lived in, the countries they could have visited. It was a pity, he had said only that morning, that he had never taken up swimming really seriously. With his physique, he told Celia, he could easily have swum the Channel. He should have chucked singing directly Mama died, and gone in for long-distance swimming. He could have beaten a..
|
|
|
Daphne du Maurier |