The Black Diamond

by Francis Brett Young

‘Oh, don’t thank me!’ she said, with a laugh.

He was going, but she called him back to the kitchen door.

‘Don’t you find the walk to Wolfpits rather tiring?’ she asked.

‘It’s a fair step,’ he said. ‘But I don’t take much count of it.’

‘Why don’t you stay up here till harvest’s over?’ she said. ‘You could make up some sort of a bed in the loft.’

He thanked her, but refused. ‘I find a good bit to do when I get home nights,’ he said. ‘They can’t get on in the house without me.’

‘They?’ she said, with a laugh. ‘Ah, well, it won’t be for long.’

While they were speaking together at the door Harris passed them with his basket slung over his stooping shoulders. He touched his cap to Marion, and gave Abner a wry smile as he passed. Marion returned to the kitchen without another word, and Abner, on his way back to the field began to puzzle his head as to what she had meant by her sudden change of front when he had excused himself from sleeping at The Dyke. The scorn that she had put into her repetition of the word ‘they’ made him think that perhaps there was more justification than he had imagined in Mary’s feeling of resentment against Marion Prosser. But if she felt sore with Mary for any reason, there was no need for her to practise on him. He wasn’t going to be lugged in to any petty feminine quarrel, they might be sure of that! He had quite enough to do on his own keeping even with that leering devil Harris. Mr Harris was going to cop it one of these days, and no mistake!

He dismissed Marion Prosser from his mind. And yet, all through the hot harvest season the two of them were meeting and passing with a sense of something desired but unspoken on the part of Marion; and whenever they met there came into Abner’s mind a grudging recognition of her physical presence. He decided that he did not like this strong, dark, almost boyish creature who, without even speaking, could so thrust herself upon his consciousness. She was too secret for him. He wished that she would speak out what she had to say so that they might know where they were and be finished with it, and since she would not do so he avoided her.

Meanwhile the harvest season was drawing to a close. The later crops were marred by the long-awaited rain. From every corner of the uplands came the same story: straw so weak as to be worthless and wheat sprouting in the ear. Prosser, who could well stand these losses and many more, picked up an infection of grumbling at the Ludlow market ordinary. Not only were the standing crops ruined but the extra hands were eating their heads off. Harris echoed his lamentations, and Abner, together with the two other outsiders who had been engaged for the harvest, would have been paid off but for the intervention of Marion.