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Black Plumes QUOTES

Black Plumes QUOTES

1 " It was a little skirmish across a century. "

― Margery Allingham , Black Plumes

2 " A great deal has been written about the forthrightness of the moderns shocking the Victorians, but there is no shock like the one which the forthrightness of the Victorians can give a modern. "

― Margery Allingham , Black Plumes

3 " as an almost legendary figure. To his child she had always been presented as the beloved beauty of a golden age, a link with the great Victorians, a creature larger than life in power and importance, so that all through these last perturbing weeks Frances had comforted herself with the recollection that if the worse came to the worst, even though Meyrick himself was half across the world, there was always Gabrielle up at Hampstead. It was hard to realise now that the moment of appeal had come, that she was "

― Margery Allingham , Black Plumes

4 " which had drawn a world of rank and fashion still in stocks and beavers, 39 Sallet Square had been The Gallery and so it was still, with a history of wealth and prestige behind it unequalled in Europe. “Well?” The old woman was persistent. “How is he behaving?” Frances hesitated. “He and Phillida are staying with me at 38, you know,” she began cautiously. “It was Meyrick’s idea. He wanted Robert to be near.” Mrs. Ivory’s narrow lips curled. The mention of the house next door to The Gallery, where she had reigned throughout her career from its heyday in the seventies right up to the fin de siecle, always stirred her. “So Phillida’s at 38, is she?” she said. “Meyrick didn’t tell me that. You’re finding it difficult to live with her, I suppose? I don’t blame you. I could never abide a fool in the house even when it was a man. A silly woman is quite insufferable. What has she done now?” “No, it’s not Phillida,” said Frances slowly. “No, darling, I only wish it were.” She turned away and glanced out across the room to the barren trees far over the heath. There was a great deal more to worry "

― Margery Allingham , Black Plumes

5 " The October wind, which had promised rain all day, hesitated in its reckless flight down the moist pavements to hurl a handful of fine drops at the windows of the drawing room in the big Hampstead house. The sound was sharp and spiteful, so that the silence between the two women within became momentarily shocked, as if it had received some gratuitous, if trivial, insult. "

― Margery Allingham , Black Plumes

6 " fact, but that’s nothing to do with it. He came back a hero and he’s in the firm now. I don’t like him. Since Daddy’s been away I’ve liked him less. He was always a bit of a smart aleck but just lately he’s surpassed himself, cocky little beast. Still, it really isn’t snobbery that’s made me go on turning him down. I wouldn’t care what he was if I liked him. I just don’t, that’s all.” She was speaking defensively, repeating the argument she had used to Robert at that astonishing interview just before lunch, and she stood squarely on the leopard rug, looking surprisingly brave and modern in the big room which was so cluttered with forgotten elegancies. Gabrielle sat up. Marriage was a subject which her generation had entirely understood, and her bright eyes were hard. “Did this person have the impudence to ask you to marry him?” she enquired. Frances writhed. The démodé snobbery embarrassed her. It was so like great age to get the whole thing out of perspective and to pounce upon a single aspect. “There was nothing impudent about it, darling,” she protested. “It was only that when Robert began to badger me to take the horrid little brute "

― Margery Allingham , Black Plumes

7 " girl standing on the rug before her was barely twenty. In her severe dark suit and Paris sailor, with her foxes dangling from her hand, she looked even younger, yet there was a very definite likeness between them. The eldest and the youngest of the Ivorys both had the family’s beauty, the fine bones and that expression which was sometimes called “straightforward” and sometimes “arrogant.” “Well?” said Gabrielle. “I’m an old woman, my dear, nearly ninety. It’s not much use coming to me. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?” Her voice was unexpectedly clear in spite of its thinness and there was "

― Margery Allingham , Black Plumes