The Black Diamond

by Francis Brett Young

He let her rave on in the dark. It was late, and now unlikely that any one else would call in at the bar. His head nodded, while she went on fuming, half to him and half to herself. She persuaded herself that her morality had been offended, though it was really the spiteful satisfaction of Williams rather than his news that had wounded her, for she could not think any worse of Abner and Mary than she did already. When the heat of her irritation against the farmer subsided, its place was taken by another and more subtle flame. She realised that she had found something to explain her former unreasonable hatred. Williams, in trying to shame her, had put a new weapon into her hands, one with which she might positively injure Abner and Mary together in George’s eyes. It had been the hardest part of her dealings with him at the time of the trial to see the way in which his loyalty to Mary, however little that might mean, returned. Now that her chance had come, George couldn’t keep up this sentimental pretence of a belief in Mary’s goodness any longer. Williams had justified her at last.

She helped the old man up to bed, blew out his candle, and left him in the dark. Then she went downstairs, carried the lamp from the bar into the parlour, took out a sheet of lined paper, and a penholder carved out of olive wood from the garden of Gethsemane, and—began a letter to George. She wrote without haste, in the firm pointed characters that she had learnt as a young girl, carefully, methodically, with a perfect and cold precision. From first to last not the least quaver of indecision stayed her pen; but when she held the paper to the light to read what she had written, her hands trembled and the words ran like fire across her brain.

‘My dear Son,’—she had written, ‘I hope this finds you in perfect health as it leaves me, thank God, and your father. I am sorry to say that I have sad news to tell you which, I am afraid, is all too true. Your wife and the young man Fellows have been away together, living in sin at the Harley Arms, Redlake. It was madness of you, as I tried to tell you before, but you would not listen to your mother, to have trusted them, but you only laughed me to scorn. Now it is an open scandal and hard for your poor father to bear. You can do nothing to mend it where you are, but be patient, dear George, and remember the word of Hebrews xii. 6: “Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.” I wish I had not to write this, George, but I have always told you that she was a light and wicked woman. Still it is just as well, and God moves in a mysterious way, for when you come back you can take the children away from her, though do not think that you will have the Buffalo, even if God should take your dear father, for the justices would never give it to one who had been in jail, even for no fault of their own. In this way you are saved from temptation. This is the Lord’s doing, dear George, and it is marvellous in our eyes. Why did you not send for me last month, my son? I will tell you more, please God, when we meet, I remain, with fond kisses,

Your loving mother,
‘Arabella Malpas.’

She sighed, sealed the envelope, and addressed it to:—

‘George Malpas,
‘No. 157. County Jail,
‘Shrewsbury.’

Then she folded her spectacles, blew out the light, and went upstairs in the dark to the room where her husband was already snoring. She crept into bed beside him and soon fell asleep in the blessed consciousness of innocence.

Williams, blabbing to old Mrs Malpas in the childish hope of irritating her, was not the only person who found an interest in spreading the story. Badger, pulled into the mist out of the stink of his preservatives and walking sullenly up the slope toward the sea-crows’ pool, had slowly realised that here was an opportunity of discrediting Abner in the eyes of Susie Hind once and for all. Although the lovers’ meetings had of late been fewer and secret, while Susie, reminded from time to time of the keeper’s jealousy, had been clever enough to laugh him off and to make him feel ridiculous, Badger had not forgotten his suspicions. It was true that he never now saw Abner at the Pound House, and never heard his name mentioned outside the tirades of Mr Hind, who was still anxious for his licence, but the rearing of his young pheasants was now keeping Badger busy, and since he had no time to waste in watching, he could never be quite sure that Abner was not profiting by his forced neglect. Sometimes he would threaten Susie as he had done before, pretending that he knew more than he did; but experience had taught her how to deal with this crude creature; she treated his violence as though it amused her, and he always ended by accepting what she said with certain dark reservations that only troubled him beneath the threshold of consciousness, and set him strangely wondering at night.

In the middle of one of these doubting moods Williams had come knocking at his door with Abner beside him, asking for his help in the search for Mary, and next day he and his neighbour had talked together, Williams delighted as a child in his discovery of such frailty in old Mrs Malpas’s daughter-in-law. Badger cared nothing one way or the other for Mary’s chastity, he had no particular grudge against Mrs Malpas or her son, but he quickly saw that in Williams’s discovery he had hit on a rare touchstone for Susie’s feelings toward Abner. He saw that he must make use of it before the tale became common talk, so he cornered Susie at the first opportunity that he found, and told her, as bluntly as was his custom, what had happened.

‘He’s brazen-faced enough, that chap Fellows,’ he said, ‘seeing that he told Mr Williams right out that he and George Malpas’s wife had slept at the Harley Arms, over Redlake way. Took the two children with ’em and all! That was the rum part of it!’