The Woman in Black - Chapter 1
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The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, read by Richard Wallet. Christmas Eve. It was 9 30 on Christmas Eve as I crossed the long entrance hall of monks peace on my way from the dining room where we had just enjoy the first of the happy festive meals towards the drawing room and the fire around which my family were now assembled. I paused and then as often as I do in the course of an evening, went to the front door, opened it and stepped outside. I have always liked to take a breath of the evening to smell the air, whether it is sweetly scented and balmy with the flowers of mid summer pungent with the bonfires and leaf mold of autumn or crackling cold from frost and snow. I like to look about me at the sky above my head, whether there are moon and stars or utter blackness and into the darkness ahead of me. I like to listen for the cries of nocturnal creatures in the moaning and rise and fall of the wind with a pattering of rain in the orchard trees. I enjoy the rush of air towards me up the hill from the flat pastures of the river valley tonight, I smelled at once and with a lightning heart that there had been a change in the weather from the windows. The view stretched no further than a yard or two down the garden. It was wretched weather never seeming to come fully light and raw too. There had been no pleasure in walking. The visibility was too poor for any shooting and the dogs were permanently morose and muddy inside the house. The lamps were lit throughout the day and the walls of Lada outhouse and cellar ooz damp and smelled sour. The fire sputtered and smoke burning, dismally low. My spirits have for many years been excessively affected by the waves of the weather and I confess that had it not been for the air of cheerfulness and bustle that prevailed in the rest of the house. I should have been quite cast down in gloom and lethargy unable to enjoy the flavor of life as I like and irritated by my own susceptibility. But Esme is merely stung by inclement weather into a spirited defiance. And so the preparations for our Christmas holiday have this year been more than usually extensive and vigorous. I took a step or two out from under the shadow of the house so that I could see around me in the moonlight. Monk's piece stands at the summit of land that rises gently up for some 400 ft from where the little river traces its winding way in the north, south direction across this fertile and sheltered part of the country below us, our pastures interspersed with small clumps of mixed broadleaf woodland. But at our backs for several square miles, it is a quite different area of rough scrub in heath, a patch of wildness in the midst of well farmed country. We are about two miles from a good size village, seven from the principal market town. Yet there is an air of remoteness and isolation which makes us feel ourselves to be much further from civilization. I first saw Monk's Peace one afternoon in high summer, we're now driving in the trap with Mr Bentley. Mr Bentley was my former employer, but I had lately risen to become a full partner in the firm of lawyers to which I had been article as a young man and with whom indeed, I remain for my entire working life. He was at this time nearing the age where he began to feel inclined to let slip the reins of responsibility little by little from his own hands into mind though he continued to travel up to our chambers in London at least once a week until he died in its 82nd year. But he was becoming more and more of a country dweller. He was no man for shooting and fishing, but instead, he had immersed himself in the roles of country magistrate and church warden, governor of this and that another county and parish board body and committee. I had been both relieved and pleased when he finally took me into full partnership with himself after so many years, while at the same time believing the position to be no more than I do, where I had done my fair share of the donkey work and born a good deal of the burden of responsibility for directing the fortunes of the firm with I felt inadequate reward, at least in terms of position. So it came about that. I was sitting beside Mr Bentley on a Sunday afternoon enjoying the view over the high Hawthorne hedgerows across the green drowsy countryside as he let his pony take the road back at a gentle pace to a somewhat ugly and over imposing manor house. It was rare for me to sit back and do nothing in London. I lived for my work apart for some spare time spent in the study and collecting of watercolors. I was then 35 I had been a widower for the past 12 years. I had no taste at all for social life. And although good general health was prone to occasional nervous illnesses and conditions as a result of the experiences, I will come to relate truth to tell. I was growing old. Well before my time, a somber pale complexion man with a strained expression, a dull dog. I remarked to Mr Bentley on the calm and sweetness of the day and after a sideways glance in my direction, he said, you should think of getting yourself something in this direction. Why not pretty little cottage down there perhaps? And he pointed with his whip to where a tiny Hamlet was tucked snugly into the bed of a river below white walls. Basking in the afternoon sunshine, bring yourself out of the town. Some of these Friday afternoons take to walking, fill yourself up for the fresh air and good eggs and cream. The idea had a charm but only a distant one, seemingly unrelated to myself. And so I mainly smiled and breathed in the warm scent of the grasses and field flowers and watched the dust kick off off the lane of the SS and thought no more about it until that is we reached a stretch of the road leading past a long, perfectly proportioned stone house set on a rise above the sweeping view down over the whole river valley and then for miles away to the violet blue lane of hills in the distance. At the moment, I was seized by something I cannot precisely describe and emotion, a desire. No, it was rather more a knowledge, a simple certainty that gripped me and all so clear and striking that I cried out involuntarily for Mr Bentley to stop. And almost before he had time to do so, climbed out of the punk trap into the lane and stood on the grassy knoll gazing first up at the house, so handsome, so utterly right for the position, not occupied a modest house in the of itself. And then looking across the the country beyond, I had no sense of having been there before, but an absolute conviction that I would come here again and the house was already mined, bound to be invisibly to one side of it. A stream ran between the banks towards the meadow. Ya hence it made its meandering way down the river. Mr Bentley is now looking at me curiously from the trap, a fine place he called. I nodded but quite unable to impart him. Any of my extreme emotions, turned my back upon him and walked a few yards up the slope from where I could see the entrance of the old overgrown orchard that lay behind the house and peter out in the long grass and tangled thicket at the far end. Beyond that, I glimpsed the parameter of some rough looking open land. The feeling of conviction I have described was still upon me and I remember that I was alarmed by it for I had never been an imaginative or fanciful man and certainly not one given the visions of the future. Indeed, since those earlier experiences, I had deliberately avoided all contemplation of any remotely non materialistic matters and clung to the prosaic in visible and tangible. Nevertheless, I was quite unable to escape the belief. May I must call it more the certain knowledge that this house was one day to be my own home. But sooner or later, though I had no idea when I would become the owner of it. When I finally accepted and admitted this to myself, I felt that on an instant, a profound sense of peace and contentment settle upon me such as I had not known for many years. And it was with a light heart that I returned to the pony trap where Mr Bentley was awaiting me. More than a little curiously. The overwhelming feeling I had experienced at Monk's peace remained with me, albeit not the forefront of my mind. When I left the country that afternoon to return to London, I had told Mr Bentley that if we were ever to hear that the house was for sale, I should be eager to know of it. Some years later he did. So I contacted the agents that same day and hours later without so much as returning to see it again, I had offered for it and my offer was accepted a few months prior to this, I had met Esme Ley our affection for one another. Had been increasingly steady but cursed as I still was by indecisive nature in all personal and emotional matters. I remain silent as to my intentions for the future. I had enough sense to take the news about Monk's peace as a good omen. However, and a week after I had formally become the owner of the house traveled into the country with Esme and proposed marriage to her among the trees of the old orchard. This offer too was accepted. And very shortly after we were married and moved at once to Monk's peace. On that day, I truly believed that I had last come out from under the long shadow cast by the events of the past and saw from his face and felt the warmth of his handclaps that Mr Bentley believed it too and that a burden had been lifted from his own shoulders. He had always blamed himself at least in part for what had happened to me. It had after all been, he was sent me on the first journey up to cry and Eel marsh house and at the funeral of Mrs Low. But all of that could not have been further from my conscious though at least as I stood taking in the night air at the door of my house on that Christmas Eve for some 14 years. Now, Monk's peace had been the happiest of homes as maze and mine and that of her four Children by her first marriage to Captain Lee. In the last days, I had come here only at weekends and holidays, but London life and began to irk me from the day I bought the place and I was glad indeed to retire permanently into the country at the earliest opportunity. And now it was this happy home that my family had once again prepared for Christmas in a moment. I should open the front door and hear the sound of the voices in the drawing room. Unless I was abruptly summoned by my wife fussing about my catching a chill. Certainly, it was very cold and clear. At last, the sky was pricked over with stars and the full moon rimmed with a halo of frost. The dampness and fogs of the past week has stolen away like thieves into the night. The paths and the stone walls of the house gleamed palely and my breath smoked on the air upstairs in the attic rooms. Isabelle's three young sons. S M A's grandsons slept with stockings tied to their bed post. There would be no snow for them on tomorrow, but Christmas Day would at least wear a bright and cheerful countenance. There was something in the air that night, something I suppose remembered from my own childhood together with the affection caught from the little boys that excited me old as I was that my peace of mind was about to be disturbed and memories awakened that I thought forever dead. I had naturally no idea that I should ever again renew my close acquaintance, if only in the course of vivid recollections and dreams with moral dread and terror of spirit would have seemed at the moment impossible. I took one last look at the frosty darkness, sighed, contentedly, called to the dogs and went in anticipating no more than a pipe and a glass of wood malt whiskey beside the crackling fire in the happy company of my family. As I crossed the hall and entered the drawing room, I felt a rush of well being of the kind I have experienced regularly during my life at Monk's peace. A sensation that leads on naturally to another of heartfelt thankfulness. And indeed, I did give thanks at the side of my family ensconced around the huge fire which Oliver was at the moment building to a per height and a fierce blaze with the addition of a further great branch of applewood from the old tree we had fell in the orchard from the previous autumn. Oliver is the eldest of Esme sons and then is now a close resemble both to his sister, Isabel, seated beside her husband, the bearded Aubrey Pierce and to his brother. Next in age will all three of them have good plain open English faces inclined to roundness and with hair and eyebrows and lashes of a light chestnut brown, the color of their mother's hair before it became threaded with gray. At that time, Isabel was only 24 years old, but already the mother of three young sons and set fair to produce more. She had the plum settled air of a matron and the inclination to mother and no, her husband and brothers as well as her own Children. She had been the most sensible responsible of daughters she was affectionate and charming and she seemed to have found in the calm and level headed Aubrey Pierce, an idol partner. Yet at times I caught Esme looking at her wistfully and she had more than once voiced, though gently to me alone, longing for Isabelle to be less. Stayed a little more spirited, even frivolous. In all honesty, I could have not wished it so I would not have wished for anything to ruffle the surface of that calm, untroubled sea Oliver Ainley at the time, 19 and his brother will only 14 months younger, were similarly serious, sober young men at heart. But for the time being, they still enjoyed all the exuberance of young puppies. And indeed, it seemed to me that all of us showed rather too few signs of maturity for a young man in the first year at Cambridge and destined. If my advice prevailed with him for a career with the bar, Will Lee on his stomach before the fire, his face, a glow chin propped upon his hands. All of us sat nearby and from time to time, a scuffle of their long legs would break out a kicking and shoving accompanied by a sudden for all the world. They were 10 years old all over again. The youngest of the Ali Edmund sat a little pot separating himself as was his won't a little distance from every other person, not out of any unfriendliness or sullen temper, but because of an innate fastidiousness and reserve the desire to be somewhat private, which had always singled him out from the rest of Smes family just as he was also unlike the others in looks, being pale skinned and long nosed with hair of an extraordinary blackness and blue eyes. Edmund was then 15. I knew him the least, well understood him, scarcely at all felt uneasy in his presence and yet perhaps in a strange way, loved him more deeply than any. The drawing room at Monk's piece is long and low with tall windows at either end, closed curtain now. But by day letting in a great deal of light from both the north and the south. Tonight, festoons and swags of fresh greenery gathered that afternoon by Esme and Ismael hung over the stone fireplace and intertwined with the leaves with berries and ribbons of scarlet and gold. At the far end of the room stood the tree candle it and be decked and beneath it were piled, the presents. There were flowers too, vases of white chrysanthemums and in the center of the room on a round table, a pyramid of gilded fruit and a bowl of oranges stuck all about with clothes. The spicy scent filling the air and mingled with that of the branches of wood smoke. To be the very aroma of Christmas. I sat down in my own armchair, drew it back a little from the full blaze of the fire began the protracted and soothing business of lighting a pipe as I did. So I became aware that I interrupted the others in the midst of a lively conversation and that Oliver and will at least were restless to continue. Well, I said through the first conscious puffs at my tobacco and what's all this? There was a further pause and Esme shook her head, smiling over her embroidery come. Then Oliver got to his feet and began to go about the room rapidly switching off every lamp, saved the lights upon the Christmas tree at the far end. So that when he returned to his seat, we only had the immediate firelight by which to see one another and Esme was obliged to lay down her sewing. Not without a murmur of protest. May as well do the job properly. Oliver said with some satisfaction. How are you boys now? Come on. Well, it's your turn, isn't it? No. Edmunds. Aha said the youngest of the Ainley brothers in an odd deep voice. I couldn't if I would asked, we have the lights out. Isabelle spoke as if too much to the smaller boys. Yes. Yes, we must. That's if you want to get the authentic atmosphere, but I'm not sure that I do. Oliver gave a low moan. Get it on. Then someone Esme leaned over towards me. They're telling ghost stories. Yes. Said will with his voice unsteady with both excitement and laughter. Just the thing for Christmas Eve. It's an ancient tradition, the lonely country house, the guests huddled around the fire side in the darkened room. The wind howled at the casement. Oliver moan again. But then came Aubrey's solid good huma toes. Better get on with it then. And so they did Oliver Edmund and Will vying with one another to tell the horrid most spine chilling tale with such dramatic effect and mocked, terrified shrieking. They all did one another in the far extremes of inventiveness, piling agony upon agony. They told of dripping stone walls and uninhibited castles of an ivy clad monastery ruined by moonlight of locked in rooms and secret dungeons, dank channel houses and overgrown graveyards of footsteps creaking upon staircases and fingers tapping at the casements of howlings and shrieking groanings and scuttling the clanging of chains of hooded monks and headless horsemen, swirling mists and sudden winds, insubstantial specters and sheeted creatures, vampires and bloodhounds, bats and rats and spiders of men. Founded dawn and women turned white haired and raving lunatic of vanished corpses and curse us upon heirs. The stories grew more and more lurid wilder and sillier and soon the gasps and cries merged into fits of choking laughter as each one even gentle Isabel contributed more ghastly detail. At first, I was amused indulgent and as I sat on listening in the firelight, I began to feel set apart from them all an outsider to the circle. I was trying to suppress my mounting unease to hold back, the rising flood of memory. This was a sport, a high spirited and harmless game among young people for the festive season. And an ancient tradition too, as will had rightly said, there was nothing to torment and trouble me. Nothing of which I could possibly disapprove. I did not want to see him kill joy, old and stodgy and unimaginative. I longed to enter into what was nothing more nor less than good fun. I fought a bitter battle with inside myself. My head turned away from the firelight so that none of them should chance to see my expression, which I knew began to show signs of my discomfiture. And then to accompany a final band she held from Edmund, the log that had been blazing on the earth collapsed suddenly and after sending up a light spatter of sparks and ash died down so that there was near darkness and then silence in the room. I shuddered. I wanted to get up and go around putting on every light again, seeing the spark and glitter and color of the Christmas decorations having a fire blazing again cheerfully. I wanted to banish the chill that had settled upon me and the sensation of fear in my breast. Yet I could not move. It had for the moment paralyzed me just it had, had always done. It was a long forgotten once too familiar sensation. And Edmund said, now, come on, stepfather, your turn. And at once the others took up the cry. The silence was broken by their urgings with which even Esme joined. No, no, I tried to speak jocularly. Nothing for me. Oh, Arthur. You must know at least one ghost story. Stepfather. Everyone knows one. Ah, yes. Yes, indeed. All the time I had been listening to the ghoulish lurid inventions and they're howling and groans. One thought that had been in my mind and the only thing I could have said was no, no, you have none of you any idea. This is all nonsense fantasy. It is not like this. Nothing so blood curdling and be creeping and crude, not so so laughable. The truth is quite other, altogether, more terrible. Come on, stepfather. Oh, don't be an old spoiled sport, Arthur, do your stuff. Stepfather. Surely you're not going to let us down. I stood up unable to bear it any longer. I am sorry to disappoint you. I said, but I have no story to tell and went quickly from the room and from the house. Some 15 minutes later, I came to my senses and found myself on the scrubland beyond the orchard. My heart pounding, my breathing is short. I had walked about in a frenzy of agitation and now realizing that I must make an effort to calm myself. I sat down on a piece of old moss covered stone and began to take deliberate steady breaths in on account of 10 and out again until I felt the tension within myself began to slack in and my pulse become a little steadier. My head clearer. After a short while longer, I was able to realize my surroundings once again to note the clearness of the sky and the brightness of the stars, the air's coldness and the crispness of the frost stiffened grass beneath my feet behind me in the house. I knew that I must have left my family in a state of consternation and bewilderment for. They knew me normally as an even tempered man of predictable emotions. Why they had aroused my apparent disapproval with the telling of a few silly tales and prompted such Kirk behavior. The whole family would be quite at a loss to understand and very soon I must return to them, make them in, send in to brush off the incident, renew some air of joy. What I would not be able to do was explain. No, I would be cheerful and I would be more steady again if only my dear wife seeks but not no more. They are chided in me with being a spoiled sport trying to encourage me to tell the one ghost story. I must surely like any other man have it in me to tell and they were right. Yes, I had a story, a true story, a story of haunting and evil, fear and confusion, horror and tragedy, but it was not a story to be told for casual entertainment. Around the fire side up on Christmas Eve. I had always known in my heart that the experience would never leave me. But it was now woven into my very fibers, an intrest part of my past. But I had hoped never to have to recollect it consciously and in full, ever again, like an old wound. It gave off a faint twinge now and again, less and less often, less and less painfully as the years went on and my happiness, sanity and equilibrium were assured of late. It had been like the utmost riddle on a pool. Merely the faint memory of a memory. Now tonight, it again filled my mind of the exclusion of all else. I knew that I should have no rest from it that I should lie awake in a chill of sweat going over that time, those events, those places. So it had been night after night for years, I got up and began to walk about again. Tomorrow was Christmas Day. Could I not be free of it? At least for that lesser time was there no way of keeping the memory and the effects that it had upon me at bay Jesica bomb would stave off the pain of a wound at least temporarily. And then standing among the trunks of the fruit trees, silver gray in the moonlight. I recalled that the way to banish an old ghost that continues its hauntings is to exercise it well, then mind should be exercised. I should tell my tale, not allowed by the fire side, not as a diversion for idle listeners. It was too solemn and too real for that. But I should set it down on paper with every care and in every detail, I would write my own ghost story they had perhaps I should finally be free of it for whatever life remained for me to enjoy. I decided at once that it should be at least during my lifetime, a story from my eyes only I was the one who had been haunted in the word suffered. Not the only one. No, but surely I thought the only one left alive. I was the one who to judge by my agitation of the evening was still affected by it deeply. It is from me alone that the ghost must be driven. I glanced up at the moon and at the bright and bright Pole Star Christmas Eve. And then I prayed a heartfelt simple prayer for peace of mind and for strength and steadfastness to endure. Well, I completed what would be the most agonizing task. And I prayed for a blessing upon my family and for quiet rest to us all that night. Although I was in control of my emotions. Now, I dreaded the hours of darkness that lay ahead for answer to my prayer. I received immediately the memory of some lines of poetry lines I had once known but long forgotten later. I spoke to them aloud to ask me and she identified the source for me at once. Some say that ever against the season comes, we're in a birth is celebrated. This bird of donning singe all night long. And then they say, no spirit dare stir abroad. The knights are wholesome. The no planet strike. No fairy takes nor which have power to charm so hallowed and so gracious is that time as I recited them aloud, a great peace came upon me. I was holy myself again, yet stiffened by my resolution after this holiday when the family had all departed and Esme and I were alone, I would begin to write my story. When I returned to the house, Isabelle and Aubrey had gone upstairs to share the delight of creeping about with the bulging stockings for the young sons. Edmund was reading Oliver and Will were in the old playroom at the far end of the house where there was a battered bill table and Esme was tidying the drawing room preparatory to going to bed about that evening's incident. Nothing whatsoever was said though she wore an anxious expression and I had to invent a bad bout of acuteness, indigestion to account for my abrupt behavior I saw to the fire dabbing down the flames and knocked out my pipe on the side of the hearth. Feeling quiet and serene again and no longer agitated. What lonely terror I might have to endure whether sleep or awake during the small hours of the coming night, tomorrow was Christmas Day and I looked forward to it eagerly and with gladness, it would be a time of family, joy and merry making love and friendship, fun and laughter. When it was over, I would have much work to do.
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Characters, Storyteller, Aged, Calming, Creepy, Engaging, Thoughtful, Emotional, British (General)