Quote 41
I decided that he was a man who had made, or come into, money late and unexpectedly, and was happy for the world to know it. (3.13)
For such a young guy, Arthur Kipps makes some pretty snap judgments about people. Good thing Mr. Daily doesn't write him off in the same manner.
Quote 42
He might have been anywhere between thirty-five and fifty-seven years of age, with a blandness… (4.28)
Mr. Jerome is hard to read from the beginning, and he doesn't get any more helpful when he's pressed for info about the mysterious mistress of the night. (Also, seriously? Why not fifty-eight? That seems awfully random.)
Quote 43
She was dressed in deepest black, in the style of full mourning that had rather gone out of fashion... (4.40)
The fact that she's in old-timey clothes is the first hint that she might be from another era, a.k.a. a ghostly being.
Quote 44
I did not stare, even the swift glance I took of the woman showed me enough to recognize that she was suffering from some terrible wasting disease, for not only was she extremely pale… only the thinnest layer of flesh was tautly stretched and strained across her bones… (4.40)
Not hot: when your skin looks like it's straining over your bones and you have a wasting disease. Eat a sandwich and put on some makeup, girl!
Quote 45
Her hands that rested on the pew before her were in a similar state, as though she had been a victim of starvation. (4.40)
Even her hands look ghastly. The woman in black certainly isn't winning any admirers, but she's certainly becoming more and more unsettling to Arthur (and the readers).
Quote 46
In the grayness of the fading light, it had the sheen and pallor not of flesh so much as of bone itself… (5.24)
Here's another good hint that she might not be exactly an earthy being: her flesh looks more like bone than actual skin.
Quote 47
I had not noticed any particular expression on her ravaged face… (5.24)
When Arthur gets a closer look, he finds that the lady in black doesn't look like a poor suffering victim of disease, after all. In fact, she looks—or feels—downright mean. And possibly crazy.
Quote 48
…The flesh shrank from her bones, the color was drained from her, she looked like a walking skeleton—a living specter. (11.115)
Even in life Jennet Humfrye looks like the living dead. She takes that look with her into the afterlife, where it probably goes over a lot better—at least until she comes back and starts her haunting.
Quote 49
Like an old wound, it gave off a faint twinge now and again, but less and less often, less and less painfully… Of late, it had been like the outermost ripple of a pool, merely the faint memory of a memory. (1.62)
The thing about memories is that they never go away completely. Well, except for a convenient bout of amnesia. Wonder if Arthur could acquire one?
Quote 50
Could I not be free of it at least for that blessed time, was there no way of keeping the memory, and the effects it had upon me, at bay… (1.64)
Arthur wants to never think back on that memory again, but it keeps resurfacing. Like an especially stubborn rubber ducky in the bathtub of life.
Quote 51
I was the one who, to judge by my agitation of this evening, was still affected by it deeply, it was from me alone that the ghost must be driven. (1.65)
Even after all these years, Arthur still feels the need to exorcise his demons. He can't quite get over what happened to him. (And we can't really blame him. Seriously, the guy watched his wife and child die.)
Quote 52
But what is perhaps remarkable is how well I can remember the minutest detail of that day; for all that nothing untoward had yet happened, and my nerves were steady. (2.7)
Young Arthur has no idea what's about to happen to him. They say hindsight is 20/20 and we suppose it's true in this case.
Quote 53
Had I known that my untroubled night of good sleep was to be the last such that I was to enjoy for so many terrifying, racked and weary nights to come, perhaps I should not have jumped out of bed with such alacrity… (4.21)
More reasons to stay in bed for an extra few minutes: so you don't have to get up and face a day that involves scary angry ghost women. Good enough for us.
Quote 54
…and because the cry of that child would never, I was sure, leave me for the rest of my life. (8.31)
It's hard to ignore the call of a child who appears to be dying in anguish, and we're betting that a ghost child is even harder to ignore. That's something Arthur and the woman in black have in common.
Quote 55
The sound that I had been hearing was the sound that I remembered from far back, from a time before I could clearly remember anything else. (9.58)
How's that for creepy? Arthur remembers the sound of a rocking chair from when he was just a little baby, and that's the same sound he's hearing now in this supposedly empty room. Talk about the past and present coming together.
Quote 56
All that was behind me, it might have happened, I thought, to another person. The doctor had told me to put the whole thing from my mind, and I resolved to try and do so. (12.1)
Arthur wants desperately to escape the things he's seen at Eel Marsh House, but it's not so easy to leave the past behind. And maybe that's not even the best way to deal with trauma—maybe we have to tell our stories if we want to get over them.
Quote 57
Oh, pray God it may not—that the chain is broken—that her power is at an end—that she has gone—and I was the last ever to see her. (12.11)
Talk about leaving us hanging. Is Jennet satisfied? Is she off to whatever afterlife is waiting for her? Or is she still lurking around, waiting for the next innocent life to ruin?
Quote 58
My story is almost done. There is only the last thing left to tell. And that I can scarcely bring myself to write about. (12.16)
Oh yeah, just one more tiny thing—the brutal death of his wife and child. No biggie. Hardly even worth telling, right?
Quote 59
she would have been branded as a witch and local legends and tales were still abroad and some extravagant folklore still half-believed in. (4.19)
Arthur dismisses the villagers as steeped in silly folklore, but who's the one believing in ghosts by the end?
Quote 60
Who she was—or what—and how she had vanished, such questions I did not ask myself. (5.28)
On the one hand, okay, we're not sure we'd want to know the answers to those questions either. On the other hand—come on, show a little curiosity, Arthur!