The Black Diamond

by Francis Brett Young

‘This afternoon.’

A new anxiety seized him. ‘What’s for dinner, mam?’ he said.

‘A nice brown egg, my love, what Mr Drew brought you,’ said Mrs Mamble, coming to the rescue. ‘You come along now, and you shall have dear Robert’s watch to play with.’

To the last temptation Morgan succumbed. This watch was the principal curiosity of Mrs Mamble’s bedroom. It hung there in the smell of rotting wood, a silver monster, like a toy warming-pan, suspended in a celluloid case above the old woman’s bed. Mrs Mamble whipped them away, and Abner set out with Mary.

Snow still covered the ground, but by this time, in lane and road, the trampled ways were clear and the bordering drifts marked with the treading of birds, squirrels, and other woodland creatures. Abner was so unused to walking with a woman that he set a pace that Mary could not equal. Breathless, she begged him to walk more slowly. The exertion and the cold air flushed her cheeks and reddened her lips to the hue of holly and spindle-berries in the hedge. Her body glowed, and her hair was bright as the fronds of bracken in the sun. In spite of their tragic mission her lips smiled. No spiritual anxiety could check the exhilaration of the blood that this crisp winter morning gave her walking under the open sky. But when they drew near to Lesswardine the houses closed in on them like the walls of a prison; the fine snow was swept and sullied, the light faded from the sky.

A special court had been summoned to deal with George’s case. The squire, Sir George Delahay, was driving down to take the chair, and before Abner and Mary arrived the court-room was nearly full of Lesswardine villagers who could always spare a morning if anything sensational was passing. Abner, as one of the principal witnesses, was soon separated from his companion. He was herded together with the others into a small block of chairs on the right-hand side of the bench and opposite to the dock. From this point he could see the court, a mass of white faces from which arose a rumour like the buzzing of flies. In the midst of them he saw Mary, pale and innocent. It was in her agony that these buzzing tormentors would find delight. Almost on a level with her at the other end of the bench he saw old Mrs Malpas. She had come to the court as she would have come to chapel, in the same dour, determined spirit, in the same tight black dress. They sat abreast of one another, these two women to whom George Malpas belonged, and not a glance passed between them.

A new witness arrived, a fair young woman, clothed in black and veiled, who walked in hurriedly with lowered eyes and tried to conceal herself, as it seemed, behind the chairs of the men. The flies buzzed as loudly as when they are driven from a heap of filth. Abner guessed that this was George’s Lesswardine woman. Mrs Malpas darted one eager glance in the new-comer’s direction, but Mary did not raise her eyes. At the last moment Mr Hind entered with Susie. She smiled, and the sight of her made Abner’s blood leap, for she was no longer the white-faced impersonal being that she had seemed at the inquest. She met his eyes full, and smiled again. Mary also was looking at him now. Abner went hot under their two glances. Why did Mary look at him? The other was the woman that he wanted!

In a sudden silence George was brought forward. He seemed none the worse for his night in the cells. He walked straight to the dock with a policeman on either side of him, looking neither at his mother, whose hands went to her heart, nor at Mary, who did not move. His eyes found Abner on the opposite side of the court, and he smiled, but the smile suddenly vanished and he went pale, for beyond Abner he had seen the face of the woman from Lesswardine. He went pale with anger that they should have dragged her into this; but there was no one on whom his anger could fall. His hands, that had quickly clutched at the edge of the dock, fell to his sides. He stood there with his fine, pale face and black hair, and on him were centred the emotions of those three women who would not look at each other. The court buzzed again, going suddenly silent as Badger’s master entered and took his seat on the bench above the head of the clerk.

The proceedings were formal, being no more than another step in George’s journey to Salop. The only new witness was the young woman whom the police had unearthed to establish the sequence of George’s movements on the night of Bastard’s death. She gave her evidence in a subdued voice and never raised her eyes. She said that George had never taken liquor in her house; that he had often come to see her; that he was her friend. No more.

When she had left the box George gave a sigh of relief. Abner wondered why he should have preferred this shrinking creature to Mary or to Susie Hind. The sitting ended in the obvious way, George being committed to take his trial at the county assizes. Nothing else could have been expected.