The Black Diamond

by Francis Brett Young

Abner had never slept with a child before. It gave him a queer, almost physical sensation of comfort in addition to the protective emotions which Morgan’s helplessness aroused. He had never thought seriously what it would be like to have a child of his own, and even now he did not explain his feelings in that way. He pictured himself, for a moment, in the position of father to a child of Susie Hind’s, and the prospect did not move him. The only way in which he could explain this curious enthralling tenderness was by the fact that Morgan was really part of Mary, that the child had come to him straight from the warmth of her arms, carrying with him an impalpable essence of herself. He wondered vaguely what he would have felt like if the child had been not only Mary’s but his as well, and in the midst of these tender and dangerous reflections he fell asleep himself.

Next morning, before returning to work, he left a message with the doctor at Lesswardine, asking him to call at Wolfpits. All through the day he was restless and unhappy, feeling that his proper place was at Wolfpits lending Mary a hand, supporting her anxieties. He consoled himself with the knowledge that Mrs Mamble was used to domestic troubles and would probably be of more use to Mary than himself, even apart from the fact that their finances would not easily stand the strain of the lost time. He only wondered, all the time, what the doctor’s report would be, and whether their wild night-journey might have added to the child’s injury. He did not mention anything of what had happened to his mates, and the day was therefore long and anxious.

It was after dinner-time when the doctor reached Wolfpits. Escorted by Mrs Mamble, he soon got to business and took down the injured limb, complimenting the Brampton Bryan surgeon on the way in which he had done his job. The dislocated fragments, he said, had been skilfully opposed, and the leg now lay in a good position. Gladys was young, a child’s tissues were full of vitality, and the splint, which he put on again, need not be worn for more than three weeks.

He stayed a little longer than he need have done, for he had finished his round and Mary Malpas was an attractive woman. He was a middle-aged man and not above taking a kind of guarded pleasure in the intimacy with such charming creatures that his profession gave him. He asked her how it had all happened, and Mary told him, without hesitation, of their train journey two nights before, of their difficulty of finding rooms at Redlake, and of all that had led up to the accident. He listened gravely, giving no sign of unusual interest when Abner’s name was mentioned, but when he drove away again he chuckled to himself, being intrigued by this new little sidelight on the frailty of human nature, and taking an interest that was not wholly professional in the idea of this extraordinarily desirable woman finding consolation in the arms of her lodger. For that was how he interpreted the case.

When he got home that evening he told the story to his wife. Little incidents of this kind, which came so often into his professional experience, supplied him with a vicarious sexual stimulus which his marital relations had lacked for some years. Mrs Hendrie, listening, pursed her lips, and smiled. The story was not one for general publication, but she knew that it would be acceptable to the vicar’s wife, who had already taken such a kindly, if profitless, interest in this unfortunate young woman.

In this way the scandal of the Redlake adventure began to be whispered in that most exclusive circle of which the sewing-party at the vicarage was the centre. In this quarter, indeed, Mary had been already judged and damned as a woman who preferred a life of open sin to the privilege of attending to the blameless, physical needs of the Rev. Cyril Malpas. The new intelligence did no more than supply a sorrowful confirmation of what was already suspected. ‘It’s those two sweet children I’m thinking of,’ said the vicar’s wife. ‘Imagine the awful effects of surroundings of that kind in later life!’ The vicar only shook his head. After all, Wolfpits was so very nearly in his neighbour’s parish as to make him scarcely responsible.

It came as a great relief to Abner to find that Gladys was none the worse for her journey in his arms. In the morning they pulled round the long kitchen settle into the sun, and in the evening he carried this out of doors so that the child might enjoy the mellow light with the others. She took a few days to get over the original shock of the accident, but after that she settled down into a placid convalescence, fully aware of her importance and treating, not only Mary and Mrs Mamble, but Abner and Mick Connor, as her slaves. Morgan was vaguely jealous of the attention that they paid her.

‘But I slep’ with Abner,’ he said, ‘and Gladys an’t, has her, mam?’

Mary smiled at him. Now that she knew that Gladys’s injury was not so severe as they had imagined she could afford to smile, sitting there in the summer evening with her friends about her. It was so quiet at Wolfpits. Not even the birds were singing. She sat there and heard the trout rising and plopping in the pool beneath the bridge, a hundred yards away, and then the murmurous wings of a humming-bird-hawk moth, hovering in a nebula of bronze, swooping to plunge its curled trumpet into the cups of flowers. Then beetles droned above them and bats zig-zagged with rapid wings. She told Abner that it was time for him to take the settle into the house. While he did so she held Gladys in her lap and watched the man’s big shoulders as he moved almost without effort under the weight of the settle. It reminded her of another memory of him that she knew she would never forget: a picture of trailing mists and loneliness, and a man walking before her with a child in his arms.

In this state of happiness and innocence neither of them suspected any mischief of tongues. It is true that Abner had found the presence of Badger at the Pentre on the night of the fair a little sinister at first, but the fact that they had chosen to descend into the Wolfpits valley at the level of the sea-crows’ pool and Williams’s farm was the purest accident, and Mary, who only knew the keeper by name, and had never seen him outside a court of law, thought nothing of it, while Mr Williams of the Pentre never entered into their calculations as a source of evil.