The Black Diamond

by Francis Brett Young

He began his quest for a new job hopefully, undeterred by the foreman’s warning or the still gloomier prophecies of old man Drew. He knew that work was scarce at that season; but it could not well be scarcer than it had been when he found continued employment at The Dyke. Abner felt that luck would come to him in much the same unexpected way.

His first attempts seemed full of promise. At the time when he had set out canvassing before, he had always been received with a kind of negative pessimism that he learned to consider as the normal attitude toward life of the border farmer. Now, he noticed that the farm-people, and particularly the women, listened to his applications with more interest, remembered his name, asked him questions about himself, and even appeared to regard his person with curiosity. He took this as a good sign; but though he was encouraged his hopes came no nearer to realisation. One after another the local farmers or their wives heard his story, had a good look at him, and turned him down.

The reason for their interest was not far to seek. In spite of Mr Prosser’s anxiety to keep dark the true cause of Abner’s dismissal and the scandal that it implied, Harris, the ploughman, had not been able to resist the temptation of making public his enemy’s discomfiture, and though nobody dared to whisper to the principal actors in the comedy that they knew what had happened, the whole story of Marion Prosser’s infatuation for her father’s cowman went the rounds of the neighbourhood. At Ludlow market it passed for a good tale against Prosser, who was envied for his possessions, and Marion, whose aloofness had made her unpopular.

In the most frequent version of the story Abner had been caught out with Marion in the byre at a time when that astute young woman had arranged for her father to stay the night at Craven Arms for his health’s sake. Marion, it was said, had refused, for the most pressing of reasons, to give her cowman up; but Prosser’s family pride—a well-known quantity—had been so deeply wounded that he had threatened to shoot the fellow on the spot and let his daughter’s name go hang. The men enjoyed the joke against Prosser; the women were agreed that proud creatures such as Marion usually found their own level by some such violent means. The principal question of interest that remained was where Marion would go to hide her shameful condition.

In every stratum of local society from that of Lesswardine Court to that of the newly-married Mrs Badger at the Pentre, the incident was discussed; but nobody in the district heard it with more triumph and satisfaction than old Mrs Malpas of the Buffalo. By this time the whole village was so used to her vilifications of Mary that they were scarcely taken seriously, for village opinion, even when it is censorious in expression, is, as a rule, charitable in deed. Now that she found herself armed with a new enormity to reinforce the old, she set herself steadily to the task of making it impossible for Abner to find work. She determined to drive him out of the district, for in this way she knew that Mary and her children must undergo the suffering that they deserved and that Abner’s devotion had spared them.

With incredible patience she made it her business to interview every farmer within five miles of Lesswardine and to beg him, or failing him his wife, to refuse employment to such a scandalous character. The Wesleyan minister at Chapel Green, who regarded Mrs Malpas as one of the principal pillars of his church, helped her in this, and only the laziness of the vicar of Mainstone prevented his wife from making him a party to the same plan. Abner, in his ignorance, was faced by a deliberate boycott. The men who spoke him fairly, when he asked them for work were prepared to see him and the family that he supported starve before they gave it to him.

For a whole month this heart-breaking business went on. When first Abner began to look for work Mary had greeted him every evening with enquiring eyes, Now she no longer dared ask him what had happened during the day. The monotony of unfulfilled promises told on him. He began to avoid her society and to shrink from that of the children, trying to exhaust his strength with long walks afield and cutting wood for Mrs Mamble and old Drew as well as for their own household. She pitied him with all her heart, but dared not show him pity lest it should tax his courage too heavily. Money was running short. She starved herself in order that he and the children might not lack, and thus found herself dragged into a vicious circle, for her sacrifice lessened her own resistance and made her temper uneven and liable to be irritated by Abner’s moroseness. They did not speak of their troubles, but neither of them could see what the end would be.

Wolfpits, in its utter isolation, was the last place in the district that rumour ever reached. It was five weeks after Abner had left The Dyke when Mrs Mamble heard the cause of Abner’s dismissal and whispered it to Mary. In a normal state she might have borne it, but her exhaustion made her an easy prey to jealousy. One evening Abner found her unusually pale and speechless, and asked her what was the matter with her.

‘I’ve only just heard the truth,’ she said, scarcely controlling her passion.

‘What about?’ he asked innocently.