The Ruby Earrings.

Bruce Herald, Volume XVII, Issue 1753, 28 May 1886, Page 6

The Ruby Earrings.

While I was still a student of theology I fell in love with Helen Hunter. She was the prettiest and sweetest girl, to my thinking, that I had ever seen, and she returned my love with equal tenderness. I had not known her many months when I put my engagement ring upon her finger, and she promised to marry me as soon as I was settled over a church of my own. More fortunate than most young clergyman in this respect, I had not long to wait; and the day that I became pastor of the church at Maplethorpe, I urged her to set the day for our nuptials, and we were married within a month. Never shall I forget the day on which I brought her home, or the delight she expressed at the sight of our picturesque garden, with its great bordering elms, and the old disused well, picturesque sun dial, and the great ivy vines which overran the sides of the house and the low brick wall that surrounded the enclosure. Nothing should be disturbed, she said. A few bright flowers should glow in the garden beds, but otherwise the old garden should remain intact. _S"o geometrical beds, no rows of plants with long names, could ever be so sweet and romantic. We had been married a week when we went out into the garden about twilight to plant the seeds she had brought from her far-away home. Here the sweet-pea should bloom There larkspur and lady skipper and mignonette. She knelt down beside the boxedged borders and turned up the dark mould with a dainty little trowel I had given her for the purpose. I remember her dress. It was a rich dark silk, with a gleam of garnet through its prevailing shadow, and at her threat and in her ears she wore a set of rubies that were an heirloom in her family. The costume accorded well with her dark beauty, her velvet eyes, and crimson cheeks. No one could have looked more charming. I held the seeds in a little dish ; we crouched close together on the gravel path. I remember that my arm wae about, her waist, and that I felt we must look like a pair of silly children to the grim old servant who came to call me just then. Come she did, however, something to our confusion, with the announcement that " Donald Black was very bad indeed and wanted me." Donald Black was an octogenarian member of my church, who was always sending for his minister for the last time, and always getting about again in a few days. lam afraid I obeyed the summons less haonily than I ought, whispering some words of regret in my wife's ear I left hrr. " I shall wait tea for you, if you are ever bo late, Edward." she said as she kissed me. " Good-bye, darling." Then I went away, turning once to look at her before I entered the house, and seeing her fair face smiling at me over her shoulder. Donald kept me well employed for three hours. However, he was by no meanß dangeronsly ill, and I left him quite comfortably eating a custard. As I hurried home I recalled with pleasure the sight of his old wife bending over him, and thought how love lived on through care and change, and how this aged woman had once been a girlish bride and Donald a gay bridegroom, and how it was plain to Bee that he could never be to her the uninteresting old creature he was to others, just because of the love between them. And then it came to me, so happily, so Bweetly, that if Buch hearts were so true, that of one like my Helen could be truer still ; and that ail life's ills would fall harmlessly upon me if I were to be loved as she loved me now, throughout my life. I had dreaded old age a little, but if we were spared to each other, what was there to fear ? She would always be beautiful to me, I always young to her. The golden glasses of love would throw a glory over everything, and hallow life for us. With these thoughts I passed my threshold and looked into the parlour. The tea-table was spread there. The fire flashed and sparkled in the grate, and flung red gleams upon the wall, and turned the small window panes to diamonds. Her chair and mine faced each other as usual, but both were empty. There was no one in the room. I waited a moment standing before the fire, which, in this cool spring weather, was acceptable; and then, surprised that my wife did not come to meet me, went up stairs in search of her. She was not in her room nor in any other. Perhaps ehe was still in the garden. I hurried down stairs again, and passed out at the back door. " Helen !" I called ; " Helen !" No voice replied. Was I foolish enough to feel alarmed ? It seemed so. I laughed at myself, and call.d again, still louder : " Helen ! Helen 1 Helen ! " And now I began to hope that she was hiding from me in a joke ; though such jests were not usual with her. " I know where you are, Helen," I cried. " Come out of your comer — come, Helen." Still there was no answer. " She is in the kitchen," I said to She is improvising Home nice dish. I'll find her there."

I hurried up the path. My foot struck something. I stopped. It was the little saucer that had held the seeds. Farther on was the trowel she had been using when I left her. It was contrary to Helens habits to leave anything lying untidily scattered about, and a vague alarm possessed me as I entered the kitchen. " Tour mistress ? " I began. Ann, the old woman, and her daughter, Jane, looked up at me in a startled way. "She went with you, didn't ghe, sir ? " asked Ann. " With me ? No !" I said. " That's curious," said Jane. "We thought she must," said Ann. Then I saw the girl's eyes distend with a look of terror. And " God bave mercy on us all ! " , said the old woman. " Amen," I said ; " but why do you say that now ? What do you fear ? My wife must be about the place. Nothing can have happened. Nothing " Then I faltered, paused, and staggered against the wall. 1 Old Jane brought me a glass of water. It revived me. But I no ' longer effected any calmness. I knew , some accident had befallen my wife, and ail that I could hope was that it was not a fatal one. Followed by my servants I went through house and garden with 1 lanterns, candles, and lamps. We looked^every room and every closet, under every bush and tree, where the ivy shadows fell, where tall shrubs grew wild. We went to the old well amidst tbe trees, but the great stone lay across its brink. ■ "If she could have fallen in she could not have put the stone back," said Jane. And I saw the absurdity of the ' dread that had crossed my mind. ' Once I thought I saw her form 1 lying across the path, and ran forward with a cry to raise It. It was only a black shadow thrown from a great tree trunk by the rising moon ■■ which my fancy had transfigured. In 1 a word, our search was fruitless at home, in the neighbourhood, in the | village, and in the surrounding country. - Many came to my aid. All was s done that could be done. She was 5 gone ; vanished, as it seemed, from 1 the face of the earth. The only clue } we had was the assertion of the young- • er servant that she had heard a cry - from the garden that had frightened | her. She had told her mother but the ' old woman's hearing was duller, and she had heard nothing. It was cruel, as I knew to suspect 1 these women of having injured Helen, ' or of knowing anything of her dis- [ appearance ; but they were suspected ( by others — not by me — examined and - acquitted. Then, faintly and darkly, suspicion fell upon even me. I knew it was ' said I had wearied of my wife, and rid • myself of her. This passed at last, and the story ' accepted by the vulgar herd was that > my wife had left me for another lover. ' I knew her pure as any angel, but I could not blame strangers for not knowing ber as well. What did it 1 matter to me what was thought ? My 1 life was emptied of its joy ■ my home was desolate, i I continued my vain search. I advertised ; I employed detectives ; » and this went on for years without bringing me even the sad relief of i knowing some terrible truth. I grew to be an old man very early ; 1 my hair lay white upon my temples 1 before I was forty. I kept in my 1 little church, for if Helen was living i she would find me there better than elsewhere. If she were dead it seemed to me that some token of her fate | muft come to me at last. Twenty years had passed, and still there was no answer to my prayer for » tidings of her. There was a prison some five miles ; away from Maplethorpe — a grey and • gloomy place, with fewer tenants than i. such buildings generally have, for the ) most part. f But here, one day, a man was to he ■ executed for a foul murder. He waa a hardened wretch, but ' there was all the more need for spirit- , ual aid ; and the prison chaplain being s very ill, I was requested to visit him. , I went, of course. It was, strange to r say, the anniversary of Helen's disi appearance. The same spring weather . — warm at noon, cool at night — and i the grass was springing in the garden, , fresh and green ; and the buds were i on the trees and on the lilac bushes, ; just as on the day when I looked back , and saw my wife smiling at me over I her shoulder, aB she knelt beside the [ garden beds, scattering the flower seeds. I thought of this even as I entered i the prison gates and the cell of the doomed man. i I found him, now that death was near, more penitent than I had hoped. His guilt was established, and he made i no effort to deny it. And when I had 1 talked to him some time he wept, I sobbing heavily, as such men do when grief overcomes them. " This was a fight, and with a man," i he said, when he regained his composure. "The God you talk of may forgive that. It's nothing worse than thousands do. But prayers can't save me, parson. I've done one thing in my life that can't be got over. That would drag me down .if aU the angels tried to save me ! "I killed a woman once* It's a long while ago, but I've seen her face

ever since. It rises up in the dark before me. Njw, if I was to look over my shoulder I'd see her there. Some think that confessing does one good. I'll tell you anyway. It can't hurt, and I'll die easier. •• I was tempted by her jewels, parson, and she was alone in a garden, ia a quiet place over yonder. I jumped, the fence and grabbled 'em. She screamed and struggled, and I out with my knife and stabbed her. " Then when I had the jewels — ruby earrings they W9re, and a pin — I took a great stone off an old well and dropped the body in. I can hear the water splash now as it did when I dropped her in, and the sound of a girl singing in the kitchen of the house. I can see the blood on my hands, and hear the gravel under my feet as I ran away. I got some money by the job bufc I took no comfort in it. I've never taken any since. A woman, and young and pretty, and doing no harm to me. No, you see, parson, God can't forgive that. " What jis the matter ! Help ! Help ! Great Heaven, how you look I I heard him cry thiß out as I lost consciousness. The truth had come to me at last. I knew.it had, before he told the tale to others, and owned that the scene of his terrible story was the parsonage of Maplethorpe — before they lifted the stone from the old well, and found in the mire at its bottom the broad wedding-ring which proved that what else lay there was all that was left of my beloved Helen,