The Black Diamond

by Francis Brett Young

During their three months of hardship their relations had undergone a curious change. Mary’s outburst of jealous anger when she learned the true cause of his dismissal from The Dyke, had swept through her like a storm, stripping her heart of its hidden grudges and reservations. It passed, leaving her weak, bewildered, and yet happy. It was as if this sudden tempest, while almost destroying her, had snapped the last threads that bound her to her old life. All the past was broken. It rolled away from her in a tumult of spent cloud, and in the serene silence that followed she came to herself, realising that she was alone in the world with Abner and her children. It was like the bewildered calm that comes after an escape from death; the hushed birth of a new world; a strange, unearthly quiet.

In this new state she found herself most eager to atone for the endless, wordless contest that she had waged against him. She knew that she could never repay him a hundredth part of what he had given her and suffered at her hands. The money was nothing. What he had sacrificed for her was his freedom, a hard denial for a man in the prime of youth. And so, thinking gratefully of his goodness toward her and of his unfathomed patience, she began to dwell tenderly on other aspects of the man: his splendid, supple strength, his honest eyes, the straightness and simplicity of his whole nature, and to compare them, instinctively, with what she knew of her husband: his superficial charm, his persuasive manners, and his callous heart: all those qualities that she had been taught by bitterest experience to hate and to mistrust. It was in this light that Abner seemed to her most wonderful. And she had used him like a shrew! Every natural impulse of kindness in him she had checked and thwarted! Pride had made her thankless; prudishness had hardened her. She was detestable, and if he hated her she had only herself to thank for it.

But did he hate her? She hoped, fervently, that he did not. She could not bear that he should hate her. It pained her even to think that she owed his kindness to the fact that he had given some promise to George, and in the simplicity of his nature felt that he must redeem it. She knew that he was fond of the children and could not bear to see them suffer; but that was not enough for her. Her new being craved for a personal devotion. If that were not forthcoming she felt that she would have little left in the world, that her life must be finally bitter and useless. And she knew that she was far too young for any such finality. She hated the pride that had brought her to this, and resolved to proclaim her new humility by every means in her power.

Abner himself was sensible of the change in her attitude toward him. During the time of his work at the Pentre, he became aware of it. Little by little, for she was far too cautious to make the change a sudden one, she was demolishing the barrier that she had built so carefully between them, and he, reluctantly, had accepted. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, they were nearing once more the point which they had reached in a moment of stress and abandonment on the night of the white mist six months before, the moment when he had seen her transfigured, or rather revealed, as the one woman in the world whom he wanted, body and soul.

In all those hard days not a single chilling word passed her lips, not a single intolerable silence drove him away from her. Her kindness made her beautiful, but the nearness of her beauty frightened him and he withdrew himself, having once cruelly burnt his fingers at that flame. He was happy, but could not trust his happiness, not because any scruples of honour pricked him, but because he feared a new rebuff.

Even though he dared not believe in her submission he could not escape the influence of her tenderness. The lean days were the best he had ever known at Wolfpits: even if he had had money to spend he would not have gone elsewhere, and every moment that brought him nearer to the inevitable parting on which he had decided, made the idea of it more painful and more difficult. It now seemed to him monstrously unreasonable that when such complete happiness was in his grasp he should wilfully renounce it. And yet, what else could he do? A sense of the futility of her kindness made him shrink from it.

She saw what was happening, knew that she deserved it, and in order that she might justify herself she now tried to play on his affection for the children, to create an atmosphere of interdependence among the four of them, to bind him closer to her with a web of many strands each so slender that he need not be aware of the process. But he felt the light pressure of the net in which he was being entangled; he struggled to free himself. And she saw the convulsions of his struggle and feared to lose him. The thrill of this new, half-hidden conflict held her.

On the Saturday night before his last week at the Pentre, he kept back five shillings of his earnings. By working from dawn till sunset each day he had managed to put in many hours of overtime, so that he was able to give her half a sovereign clear. It seemed to him a good opportunity for breaking the news of his plan to her. Sooner or later the word must be spoken. She held the gold coin in her hand and looked at him inquiringly.

‘You’ll be two bob short this week,’ he said, ‘but if any one knows how to manage, you do. After that I reckon things’ll begin to look up a bit.’

She flushed with a sudden pleasure.