My Cousin Rachel Quotes
"They used to hang men at Four Turnings in the old days."
"He swung between earth and sky upon his gibbet."
"There you are, Philip, it’s what we all come to in the end."
"The point is, life has to be endured, and lived."
"I had no sense of foreboding, when we sat talking together that last evening."
"I think what shamed me most was the delight of his friends."
"What a change there will be now, Mr. Ashley."
"Have you made any plans for the future, Philip?"
"I remember nothing of the return drive to Florence except that the sun had set."
"It was almost as if his eyes still followed me from behind his shuttered windows."
"And so I swing back again to Tom Jenkyn, hanging in his chains."
"I have wondered lately if, when he died, his mind clouded and tortured by doubt and fear."
"I have become so like him that I might be his ghost."
"I still have the house to cherish, which Ambrose would have me do."
"But a lonely man is an unnatural man, and soon comes to perplexity."
"Perhaps, when all is said and done, I shall have no wish to be free."
"My bitterness went too. Ambrose was with me once again and he was not tortured, he no longer suffered."
"We’ve missed you, sir. We’re glad you’re home."
"I’m glad to be home. Mr. Ashley’s death has been a great sadness to me, and to you too, but now we all have to carry on as he would have wished us to do."
"I believe that when I had this realization, standing there before the library fire, I knew a moment of happiness that I have never had in life, before or since."
"It can’t hurt Philip, he always said, and will teach him caution."
"You have grown up ignorant of women, and if you ever marry it will be hard on your wife."
"I have never seen anything so self-destroying, and no emotion quite so despicable, as jealousy."
"His home was his passion, therefore I made it mine."
"Finding religion does not always improve a person, waking to the world did not help Ambrose. His nature changed."
"I felt a queer sort of shock in my heart, like the shock that comes to you as a child when you suddenly learn of death, or of evil, or of cruelty."
"Finding me was ecstasy to him for one brief moment, and then catastrophe."
"A woman’s jealousy is adult, which is very different."
"I’m not tired, I could go on longer, much longer. That is to say, not speaking perhaps myself, but listening to you."
"I love the stillness of a room, after a party. The chairs are moved, the cushions disarranged, everything is there to show that people enjoyed themselves; and one comes back to the empty room happy that it’s over."
"Why do you ask that? You know I want to stay."
"Warmth and comfort from stone walls, at twenty-four. Oh, Philip!"
"You don’t understand, Philip, this is all so new after the very different society in Florence. I have always wondered about life in England, in the country. Now I am beginning to know. And I love every minute of it."
"It was like walking back into the past."
"What shall we do with them?" she said, and the voice that had been hard was lower now, subdued.
"It was almost as though we had opened up his coffin and looked upon him dead."
"It’s just as bad for you as it is for me. You loved him so…"
"A man can do these things. It’s not easy for a woman."
"Never be afraid to wear it. I shan’t mind, I shall be glad."
"I don’t know how it happened. I think it must have been because standing there, with my arms about her, she had been so much smaller than myself."
"He was so generous, those first months."
"I could have walked all night. I could have talked till dawn."
"I had no idea the collection was so fine."
"I am glad that my name went back even farther into the past than his had done."
"You are like a child, running to me with empty hands."
"I had gone back in time some twenty years."
"I wanted you to wear them because you knew that had I been married here, and not in Florence, Ambrose would have given them to me on our wedding day."
"It was not yearning for home, nor sickness of the blood, nor fever of the brain—but for this, that Ambrose died."
"I am five-and-twenty years, all but three blasted months."
"I do not recollect my father being thus."
"Philip, my boy, the only being in the world whom I can trust, tell me what it means, and if you can, come out to me."
"One thought possesses me, leaving me no peace. Are they trying to poison me? AMBROSE."
"I do not tear the letter. I dug a hole for it, beneath the slab of granite. I put it inside my pocketbook, and buried the pocketbook, deep in the dark earth."
"As I climbed again, up the back way to the house, I heard the laughter and the chatter of the men as they went home from work."
"‘You promised you would stay,’ I answered her."
"I had my dinner, but Rachel would eat nothing. Shortly before midnight he died."
"‘Fifteen long years,’ she said, ‘the little boy of ten, who opened his birthday pie. I kept remembering the story, as he lay there with his head in my lap.’"
"‘All wishes should be granted,’ she answered, ‘or so my mother used to say, when I was young. What will you wish for, Philip?’"
"‘It does not matter,’ I answered; ‘you shall know, in three weeks’ time.’"
"‘I never knew,’ she said; ‘we did not speak of it again. But I think when he realized that I could not, after all, have children, he lost belief in me.’"
"‘I shall not know,’ I said, ‘until the day comes.’"
"‘It is only through error,’ I said, ‘that those jewels are not yours today.’"
"‘I have stayed too long,’ she answered."
"‘How different?’ She gestured with her hands. ‘How can I explain to you?’ she said."
"‘If I possessed the world, you should have it also.’"
"‘Birthday or not,’ she said, ‘it is customary to knock upon a door before you enter. Have you got crabs hidden there, or lobsters?’"
"‘I have looked for you since eleven,’ I said. ‘Where in the world have you been?’"
"What does the future hold now for either of you?"
"There is nothing like a wineglass of marsala to restore the blood."
"It was my plan, which you have spoiled by lunching with the Kendalls."
"You have misunderstood her motives from the first."
"I have not been generous, it was your due."
"I supposed, if I wished, I could continue to feel ill. Complain of pain, and make excuse of sickness."
"If," she sighed, "you would only be less bitter and less cruel, these last days could be happy."
"That night I dreamed I climbed to the granite stone and read the letter once again, buried beneath it."
"As the months passed," wrote Ambrose, "I noticed more and more how she turned to this man I have mentioned before in my letters..."
"What a woman had done once without detection, she can do twice. And rid herself of yet another burden."
"You are very silent. Are you well?" she said. "Yes," I answered, "I am well."
"She has done for me at last, Rachel my torment."
"I saw her as someone not responsible for what she did, besmirched by evil."
"I can charm more than warts," laughed Rachel. "Call in at their cottages, and ask them."
Life and death," I said, "do not wait for legal action.
"Let’s leave this room, and go down into the drawing room. I wish now we had not meddled with her things."
"Because it is Sunday," I said, "and everyone is out, or sleeping, or scattered somewhere; and I may need help."
"What have you done?" she said; and apprehension came upon her, conviction too.
"I went on holding her hands until she died."
"They used to hang men at Four Turnings in the old days. Not anymore, though."