The Black Diamond

by Francis Brett Young

Two more traps arrived, the first containing the Hinds, the second Badger, alone, and last, the small, energetic figure of George’s mother. All these people, whom a chance blow had precipitated into the same grim business, stood waiting for the train singly or in isolated groups of two. A straining of wires was heard, and the fogged, red eye of the signal changed to green. The stationmaster threw up the shutter of the booking office with a rattle. Abner found himself wedged in front of the window between Badger and Mr Hind. Mrs Malpas, fidgeting with her purse, stood waiting in the background. As Abner rejoined Mary, a sound of distant panting was heard, and a minute later the front of the engine loomed enormous through the fog. They entered a third-class smoker at the end of the train. The milk-cans were rolled over the echoing platform into the van, and the train moved off with a clank of couplings and a hiss of white steam. Down through the valleys, mile on mile they wound. The train rocked on the gradients until it seemed that the carriages must touch the black edge of the woods. The mist turned white and dazzling. The sun had risen.

The Sixteenth Chapter

After nightfall on the same evening that train of old-fashioned coaches came blundering back along the curves of the Llandwlas line. The snorting of its engine was the only sound, as its yellow windows and fire-belching funnel were the only light, in all those miles of woodland and valley. The train ran late as usual, stuttering up the gradients as though the weight it carried were too much for the power of its groaning pistons.

Scattered through the various compartments of its three short coaches sat all the witnesses of George’s condemnation. The jury, having no alternative, had found him guilty of manslaughter, and the judge, who saw in front of him a programme of cases more important than this flicker of violence in a remote agricultural district, wasted no time on his sentence. If Bastard had not been a policeman, and therefore a humble symbol of the code which his lordship administered, if the witness Badger had not been a gamekeeper, which was much the same thing, George might easily have escaped with a few months’ imprisonment, or half a year’s at most. The barrister whom Mrs Malpas had employed for the defence realised this. The fact that he was most eager to establish seemed to be that George was not, and had never been, a poacher, and that he was not on bad terms with the man he had killed. Mrs Malpas, sitting in the public gallery on the bench in front of Mary, listened eagerly. Her heart sank as she listened to the evidence, the words that she had heard before in the police-court at Lesswardine, for she had expected that the little man in the gray wig who had shaken hands with her an hour before in consideration of the thirty pounds that she had scraped together to pay him, would throw some new and startling light upon the case, reducing Badger to tears and confounding the Lesswardine police. She had expected thunders and passionate appeals to the mercy of the jury. Instead of this he spoke in a low voice, with a Jewish lisp, and even cracked a joke, at which the jury smiled, with one of the witnesses for the prosecution. The old woman felt that she had been betrayed. Seeking ideal justice she had found something trivial and cynical. The whole business was nearly over before she realised that it had begun. The judge summed up lazily, only pitching his voice when he dwelt upon the necessity of such men as Bastard to the public safety and the very existence of property. The jury retired for less than two minutes. The judge gave sentence of eighteen months’ hard labour, and the white face of George, who had stood like a statue throughout the trial, disappeared from the dock. When she looked again she saw that another man, who looked like a tramp, had entered it. People around her began to talk, for this was a case of real murder, and this mean-looking creature was to fight for his life. Only then did the old woman realise that George’s case was over. She passed Mary in the door of the gallery and hurried downstairs, where the counsel whom she had briefed congratulated her on the issue of the case. While she was engaged with him and with Harley, the solicitor, Mary passed her and joined Abner on the steps of the court. Mrs Malpas, in the middle of her conversation, gave them a queer sidelong glance that filled Mary with uneasiness.

‘I don’t think we had better go home together,’ she whispered.

‘Come on and get a spot of tea,’ he said. ‘I reckon you must be clammed, and there’s near an hour before the train goes.’

It made her flurried and impatient to think that Abner had not understood her.

‘I don’t want you to be with me,’ she said. ‘She’s watching us. Don’t you see?’

‘Let her watch!’ said Abner, looking round in a way that made Mrs Malpas sure that they had been speaking of her. ‘Come on . . .’

But she slipped away from him in the crowd outside the steps so quickly that he could not very well follow her with dignity. At the same moment Connor and Atwell appeared and solved his perplexity by dragging him off into a public-house. Mick gave the ball a kick, as he called it, with a round of Irish whisky. None of them had tasted any food since they left their homes before dawn, and the spirit soon went into Abner’s head. They sat in a corner of the bar, laughing uproariously at Mick’s ridiculous stories, and making outrageous plans for getting their own back on Badger. Indeed, if the clock in the bar had not struck to warn them of the time, they would have missed their train. They had to hurry down the steep hill to Shrewsbury station. Lights were gleaming in the muddy streets and in the windows of tall, half-timbered houses. Above them hung the threatening mass of the castle.