The Woman In Black by Susan Hill Read Free Book Online Page A

therewas still some faint trace on her features, some lingering hint, of a not inconsiderable former beauty, which must make her feel her present condition all the more keenly, as would the victim of a smallpox, or of some dreadful disfigurement of burning.
    Well, I thought, there is one who cares, after all,and who knows how keenly, and surely, such warmth and kindness, such courage and unselfishpurpose, can never go unrewarded and unremarked, if there is any truth at all in the words that we have just heard spoken to us in the church?
    And then I looked away from the woman and back, to where the coffin was being lowered into the ground, and I bent my head and prayed with a sudden upsurge of concern, for the soul of that lonely old woman, and for a blessing upon our drab circle.
    WhenI looked up again, I saw a blackbird on the hollybush a few feet away and heard him open his mouth to pour out a sparkling fountain of song in the November sunlight, and then it was all over, we were moving away from the graveside, I a step behind Mr Jerome, as I intended to wait for the sick-looking woman and offer my arm to escort her. But she was nowhere to be seen.
    While I had been sayingmy prayers and the clergyman had been speaking the final words of the committal, and perhaps not wanting to disturb us, or draw any attention to herself, she must have gone away, just as unobtrusively as she had arrived.
    At the church gate, we stood for a few moments, talking politely, shaking hands, and I had a chance to look around me, and to notice that, on such a clear, bright day, it waspossible to see far beyond the churchand the graveyard, to where the open marshes and the water of the estuary gleamed silver, and shone even brighter, at the line of the horizon, where the sky above was almost white and faintly shimmering.
    Then, glancing back on the other side of the church, something else caught my eye. Lined up along the iron railings that surrounded the small asphalt yardof the school were twenty or so children, one to a gap. They presented a row of pale, solemn faces with great, round eyes, that had watched who knew how much of the mournful proceedings, and their little hands held the railings tight, and they were all of them quite silent, quite motionless. It was an oddly grave and touching sight, they looked so unlike children generally do, animated and carefree.I caught the eye of one and smiled at him gently. He did not smile back.
    I saw that Mr Jerome waited for me politely in the lane, and I went quickly out after him.
    ‘Tell me, that other woman …’ I said as I reached his side, ‘I hope she can find her own way home … she looked so dreadfully unwell. Who was she?’
    He frowned.
    ‘The young woman with the wasted face,’ I urged, ‘at the back of thechurch and then in the graveyard a few yards away from us.’
    Mr Jerome stopped dead. He was staring at me.
    ‘A young woman?’
    ‘Yes, yes, with the skin stretched over her bones, I could scarcely bear to look at her … she was tall, she wore a bonnet type of hat … I suppose to try and conceal as much as she could of her face, poor thing.’
    For a few seconds, in that quiet, empty lane, in the sunshine,there was such a silence as must have fallen again now inside the church, a silence so deep that I heard the pulsation of the blood in the channels of my own ears. Mr Jerome looked frozen, pale, his throat moving as if he were unable to utter.
    ‘Is there anything the matter?’ I asked him quickly. ‘You look unwell.’
    At last he managed to shake his head – I almost would say, that he shook himself,as though making an extreme effort to pull himself together after suffering a momentous shock, though the colour did not return to his face and the corners of his lips seemed tinged with blue.
    At last he said in a low voice, ‘I did not see a young woman.’
    ‘But, surely …’ And I looked over my shoulder, back to the churchyard, and there she was again, I caught a