The Black Diamond

by Francis Brett Young

With these, for some years, she was content. The walls of her bedroom at the Dyke showed evidences of culture in as many strata as can be found in the coloured ribbon along the edge of a geological map of England. They ranged from the primary Rossettis of her Cheltenham period to reproductions of late impressionist pictures. Among books she groped her way determinedly. In Ludlow she found a branch of one of the London circulating libraries. Every week she would drive there in her pony trap and bring back the books that she had ordered, to the amazement of the stationer who kept the shop. Her father laughed at her tastes. Among his friends she gained the reputation of a bluestocking, which was enough to make any young man think twice before he spoke to her. And the years went by.

They were dull years, and for very boredom she tried to identify herself with the work of the farm. She threw herself violently into these new interests to the amazement of her father. Although he was still more than a little afraid of her, he could not help respecting her capability. During the lifetime of her mother he had been so infused with the spirit of this active woman that he had appeared to be a man of some determination. Her death annihilated him: he had relapsed into nonentity, caring nothing, as it seemed, for his crops or his herds, driving in regularly every week to Ludlow market like an automaton, driving back in the evening, morose and fuddled, with no clear idea of what he had been about. On these occasions he would talk piteously of his motherless girls, and his large, sentimental eyes would fill with tears. He confided to his friends that he himself was not long for this world, though, physically, he was as strong as a horse.

Marion’s determination changed all that. Subtly, without his knowledge, she pulled him together and made a man of him again, and, never having known the subjection with which her mother had entered the estate of marriage, she did what she liked with him, sometimes wounding his pride with her rather brutal frankness. Yet, even when he was wounded, he submitted to her; for she flattered him by pretending that he was the real head of the household. At root he was a lazy man, and dared not quarrel with his comforts. He realised, too, that the knowledge of practical farming, that was as deeply rooted in him as an instinct, was more essential to the success of their partnership than Marion’s acute and active mind.

He prospered, and in moments of exaltation would tell himself that she was only a girl after all and that he was the man who counted. He made a startling recovery of his self-possession and talked no more of death; but his greatest happiness he still found in the society of his younger daughter Ethel, a child whose nature was nearer to his own. Some day, he decided, Ethel should marry a solid husband of his choosing, some big man with many lowland acres, and when the grandchildren began to come along, he would pass a quiet old age among them. Marion should have The Dyke. Even if she were not the elder she had earned it. It seemed unlikely that she would ever marry, being so hard to please.

Now, at the age of twenty-eight, Marion found herself lonely. The farm work had become so intimate a part of her life that it served no longer to distract her. Life was slipping away from her. Ten years had passed almost without her knowing it. In another ten she would be nearly forty. A hidden fear possessed her that by separating herself from her own class and kind she had sacrificed the chance of living. Life was the thing that mattered, and she had exchanged her heritage for a few pitiful shreds of culture. The motherly cares that she lavished on Ethel were a poor substitute for veritable maternity, and she knew it. She began to see that by refusing all commerce with the men of her own class in the hope of realising a problematical grand passion she had sacrificed all opportunity of passion whatever.

For some years after leaving Cheltenham she had exchanged letters with a number of her college friends, but little by little this correspondence had grown more slender and at length it had ceased. In her growing apprehension she made an attempt to revive several of these ancient friendships. The result filled her with despair and vague envies. Most of her girl friends were married: many of them sent her photographs of their husbands and children. She alone, it seemed, of all their company was left alone. It was her own fault. She knew it was her own fault, for her mirror told her that she did not show her age and that she was still desirable. All things seemed to conspire in fostering her unrest. The sights and sounds of the great farm around her were full of insistence on the cycle of birth, fruitfulness, and decay. Her books helped her no more. Her old æsthetic idols had long since been broken, and her latest passion, Whitman, whom she had discovered through the anthologies, swamped her mind with an endless adoration of the body’s pride, the splendour of the flower no less than that of the fruiting.

In this distressful and desirous state, two incidents moved her deeply. The first was the dismissal of one of the farm girls who had been seduced by a clogger and had gone into the workhouse to have her baby. She was a puny, undesirable creature, with neither beauty nor health, yet she had found a lover. The second was the scandal of Mary Malpas, her old school friend, and the young lodger at Wolfpits, rehearsed with many winks by Mr Williams, whom her father had brought in for a glass of whisky on a Sunday evening.

‘A well set-up chap, that Fellows!’ said Williams to her father. ‘It’s no great wonder she’s took a fancy to him.’

‘Well, well, ’tis the way of the world!’ said Mr Prosser comfortably. ‘Fill Mr Williams’s glass, Marion!’

She did so, and then, furiously blushing, left the room.