The Black Diamond

by Francis Brett Young

When daylight returned the snow had ceased, but the night’s fall had obliterated the track of their returning feet. Wolfpits had become a black island in the surrounding whiteness. From the drift upon the doorstep the snow lay smooth to the tops of the hills which dawn illumined with a rosy light. Never had the mountains seemed so near to the house, so beautiful, and so little threatening.

Abner woke early and looked out on this transfigured world. In all the house no one was astir. Even old Drew, who worked in all weathers, had not yet emerged from his snowbound door. George and Mary still slept. It was very cold, and Abner threw his coat over his bedclothes. It was no good getting up, for he knew that with so deep a fall there could be no work on the pipe-track that day. He lay in bed, smoking, watching the clustered chimneys of Wolfpits against the sky. The rosy hue faded from the mountains. The sky cleared to a thin, dazzling blue. A thread of smoke issued from old Drew’s chimney, rising, straight as a larch, into the clear air. In the room beneath him, where George and Mary slept, he heard voices. No doubt George Malpas was telling his wife what had happened. Sometimes the talk was rapid; sometimes there were long silences. Abner was thankful that the sad business of telling Mary had not been left to him. He heard the children’s voices on the stair. The time had come when he would have to face them all.

They were all in the kitchen when he came downstairs. He could see from Mary’s eyes that she had been crying; she scarcely dared to look at him lest she should cry again. George was pretending to be cheerful. He was playing with the children, telling them how they must make a snow man in the drive. He said good-morning to Abner as though nothing had happened overnight, and Abner’s heart went out to him for his courage. Mary did not speak to him, but it seemed to him that her red eyes were reproachful. He felt that she probably considered him responsible for the tragedy, was conscious of his indirect share of guilt, and wished there were some way in which he could atone for it. He admired the manly way in which George took his trouble. Indeed he never felt so wholly friendly to George in his life.

The elders breakfasted in silence, but the children talked incessantly, being excited by the snow. An overwhelming impulse to put himself right with Mary made Abner stop her when she was carrying the breakfast things into the scullery.

‘George has told you?’ he said.

‘Yes, he’s told me. I suppose there’s nothing to be done?’

‘Naught that I know on,’ he replied. And she left him quickly, for she did not want him to see her crying again.

George lit his pipe at the fire. ‘Funny to hear them kids,’ he said, with a half smile. ‘I mind it just the same once before. It was at Mary’s father’s funeral when his sister, her Aunt Rachel, brought her youngsters over from Bromyard.’

They were spared more of these harrowing contrasts, for the air was warm, and the children, carefully wrapped up by Mary, ran out to play in the glistening stuff. Mary did not reappear, and the two men sat on over the fire. Only George spoke from time to time.

‘It’s all of a piece with my luck,’ he said. ‘I reckon I was born unlucky. One thing and another. . . I don’t mind as long as it don’t come out what I was after in Lesswardine. She’s a decent woman and I wouldn’t have her damaged by it. I wish to God I’d stayed like she wanted me.’