LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 275, 29 April 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE OTHER EAR-RING,

From the Argosy. (Continued.) Light flashed upon me as she spoke. As surely as though it were already before me in black and white, I knew what she was about to disclose. ' Lucy, it is the lost ear-ring ! The man staying with you is Eccles.' ' Hush !' she whispered in extreme terror, for a footstep suddenly sounded close to us. Lucy glided behind the trunk of the tree we were passing; which in a degree served to hide her. How timid she was! what cause induced it ? The intruder was a shop-boy with an apron on, carrying a basket|of grocery parcels|to one of the few houses higher up. He turned his head and gave us a good stare, probably taking us for a pair of cooing lovers enjoying a stolen ramble by starlight. Setting up a shrill whistle he passed on. ' I don't know what has come to me lately; my heart seems to beat at nothing,' said poor Mrs Bird, coining from behind the tree with her hand to her side. ' And it was doubly foolish of me to go there; better that I had kept quietly walking on with you, Johnny.' ' What is it that you are afraid of, Lucy ?' ' Only of their seeing me; seeing me with you. Were they to do so, and it were to come out that the ear-ring had been returned, they would know I had done it. They suspected me at the time : at least, Edwards did. For it is the ear-ring I am about to restore to you, Johnny.' She put a little soft white paper packet in my hand, that felt as if it had wool inside it. I hardly knew whether I was awake or asleep. The beautiful ear-ring, that we had given up for good, come back again! And the sound of the drums andj trumpets burst once more upon our ears. ' You will give it to Mrs Todhetley when you get home, Johnny. And I must leave it to your discretion to tell her what you think proper of whence you obtained it. Somewhat of course you must tell her, but how little I leave with you. Only, take care you bring no harm upon me.' ' I am sure, Lucy, that Mrs Todhetley may be trusted.' ' Very well. Both of you must be secret as the grave. For my sake tell her I implore it. Perhaps she will keep the ear-ring by her for a few months, saying nothing, so that this visit of ours into Worcestershire may be quite a thing of the past, and no suspicion, in consequence of it, as connected with the ear-ring, may arise in my husband's mind. After that, when months have elapsed, she must contrive to let it appear that the earring is then, in some plausible way or other returned to her.'

' Rely upon it, we will take care. It will be managed very easily. But how did you get the ear-ring, Lucy ?' ' It has been in my possession ever since the night of the day you lost it; that Sunday afternoon, you know. I have carried it about with me everywhere.' ' Do you mean carried it upon you ?' 'Yes; upon me." ' I wonder you never lost it —a little thing like this !' I said, touching the soft packet that lay in my jacket pocket. ' I could not lose it,' she whispered. 'lt was sewn into my clothes.' * But, Lucy, how did you manage to get it ?'

She gave me the explanation in a few low, rapid words, glancing about her as she did it. Perhaps I had better repeat it in my own way ; and to do that we must go back to the Sunday afternoon. At least, that will render it more intelligible and ship-shape. But I did not learn the one-half of the details then : no, nor for a long time afterwards. And so, we go back again in imagination to the time of that January day, when the snow was lying on the ground, and Farmer Coney's good tires were blazing hospitably. ** # * # * *

Lucy Bird quitted the warm fires and her kind friends, the Coneys, and followed us out: she saw us turn in at our own gate, and then she picked her way through the snow to the station at South Crabb. It was a long walk for her in that inclement Aveather; but she had been away from home (if the poor lodgings they then occupied in Worcester could be called home) three days, and was anxious to get back. During her brief absences from it, she was "t always haunted by the fear of some ill falling on that precious husband of hers, Captain Bird : but he was nothing but an ex-captain, as you know. All the way to the station, she was thinking aboiit the ear-rings, and of my description of Eccles. The description was exactly that of her husband's friend, Edwards, both as to person and dress ; not that she supposed it could be he. When she left Worcester three day before, Edwards had just arrived. She knew him to be an educated man, of superior manners, and full of anecdote, when he chose, about college life. Like her husband, he had by recklessness and ill conduct sunk lower in the world, until he had to depend on " luck " or " chance " for a living. Barely had Lucy reached the station, when the train shot in. She took her seat; and after a short halt, the train moved on again. At that moment there strode into the station that self-same man, Edwards, who began shouting furiously for the train to stop, putting up his hands, running and gesticulating. The train declined to stop ; trains gem • illy do decline to stop for late passengers, however frantically adjured; and Edwards was left behind. His appearance astonished Lucy considerably. Had he, in truth, been passing himself off as a detective officer to Squire Todhetley ? If so, with what motive ? Lucy could not see any inducing motive, and still thought it could not be ; that Edwards must be over here on some business of his own. The matter passed from her mind as she drew near Worcester, and reached their lodgings—which were down Lowesmoor way. Experience had taught Lucy not to ask questions. She was either not answered at all, or the answer would be sure to give her trouble. Captain Bird had grown tolerably earless as to whether his hazardous doings reached, or did not reach, the ears of his wife, but he did not willingly tell her of them. She said not a word of having seen Edwards, or of what she heard ahout the loss of Todhetley's ear-ring, or of the detective's visit to Crabb Cot. Lucy's whole life was one of dread and fear, and she never knew whether any remark of hers might not bear some dangerous subject. But, while getting the tea, she did just enquire after Edwards. ' Sas Edwards left V she asked carelessly,'

• No,' replied Captain Bird, who was stretched out before the fire in his slippers, smoking a long pipe, and drinking spirits. He is out on the loose, though, somewhere to day.' It was late at night when Edwards entered. He was in a rage. Trains did not run frequently Jon Sundays, and he had been kept all that while at South Crabb junction, waiting for one. Lucy went upstairs to bed leaving Edwards and her husband toping away at brandy and water. Both of them had had quite enough already. The matter of the ear-rings and the doubt whether Mr Edwards had been playing at amateur detectiveship would have ended there, but for the accident of Lucy's having come down stairs again, to get the small travelling bag in which she had carried her combs and brushes. She had put it just inside the little back parlour, where a bed on chairs had been extemporised for Edwards, their lodgings not being very extensive. Lucy was taking up the bag in the dark, when some words in the sitting-room caught her ears ; the door between the two rooms being partly open. Before a minute elapsed she had heard too much. Edwards, in a loud, gleeful, boasting tone, was telling how he had been acting the detective, and done the old Squire and his wife out of the other ear-ring. Lucy, looking in through the opening, saw him holding it up ; she saw the colours of the long pink topaz drop, and of the diamonds gleaming in the candlelight. ' I thought I could relieve them of it,' he said. ' When I read that advertisement in the paper, it struck me thtrj might be a field open to do a little stroke of business ; and I've done it.'

'You art | a fool for your pains,'growled Captain Bird. ' There's sure to be a row.'

' The row won't touch me. ' I'm off to London to-morrow morning, and the earring with me. I wonder what the thing will turn us in? Twenty pounds? There, put it in the box, Bird, and get out the dice.' The dice on a Sunday night. Lucy felt quite sick as she went back upstairs. What would be the end of all this ? Not of this one transaction in particular, but of all the other disgraceful transactions with which her husband was connected ? It might come to some public exposure, some criminal taril at the bar of justice ; and of that she had a horrible dread ever haunting her like a nightmare. She undressed, and went to bed. One hour passed, two hours passed, three hours passed. Lucy turned and turned on her uneasy pillow, feeling fit to die. Besides her own anguish arising from their share in it, she was dwelling on the shameful wrong it did their kind friends at Crabb Cot.

The fourth hour was passing. Captain Bird had not up, and Lucy grew uneasy on that score. Once, when he had taken too much (but as a general rule the ex-captain's delinquencies did not lie in that direction), he had set his shirt-sleeve on fire, and burnt his hand badly in putting it out. Slipping out of bed Lucy put on her slippers and the large old shawl, and crept down to see after him. Opening the sitting-room door very softly she looked in. The candles were alight still, but had burnt down very nearly to the socket, the dice and cards were scattered on the table. Edwards lay at full length on the old red stuff sofa ; Captain Bird had thrown himself outside the bed in the other room, the door of which was now wide open, neither of them having undressed. That both were wholly or partially intoxicated, Lucy felt not a doubt of. Well, she could only leave them as they were. They would come to no harm asleep. Neither would the candles ; which must soon burn themselves out. Lucy was about to shut the door again, when her eye fell on the little pasteboard box that contained the earring. Without a moment's reflection, acting on the spur of impulse, she softly stepped to the table, lifted the lid, and took the earring out. ' I will remedy the wrong they have done Mrs Todhetley,' she said to herself. 'They will never suspect me.' Up in her room again, she lighted her candle and looked about for some place to conceal the ear-ring, and just as the idea to secure it had come unbidden to her, so did that of a safe place of concealment. With feverish hands she undid a bit of the quilting of her petticoat, one that she had but just made for herself out of an old merino gown, slipped the ear-ring in amid the wadding, and sewed it up again. It could neither be seen nor suspected there; no, nor even felt, let the skirt be examined as it might. That done, poor Lucy got into bed again and at length fell asleep. She was awoke by a commotion. It was broad daylight, and her husband (not yet as sober as he might be), was shaking her by the arm. Edwards was standing outside the door, calling out to know whether Mrß Bird had 'got it.' ' What is the matter, Gearge ?' she cried, starting up in a fright, and for the moment completely forgetting where she was, for she had been aroused from a vivid dream of Timberdale. ' Have you been bringing anything up here from the sitting-room, Lucy?' asked Captain Bird. ' No, nothing,' she replied promptly, and he saw that she spoke with truth. For Lucy's recollection had not come to her ; she remembered nothing yet about the earring. ' There's something missing, said Captain Bird, speaking thickly. 'lt has disappeared mysteriously off the sitting-room table. You are sure you have not been down and collared it, Lucy ?' ' The ear-ring and the theft—flashed into her memory together. Oh if she could but avert suspicion from herself! And she strove to call up no end of surprise in her voice. ' Why, how could I have been down, George|? Did you not see that I was fast asleep? What have you missed? Some money ?' ' Money, no. It was —something of Edwards's. Had it close by him on the table when he went to sleep, he says —he lay on the sofa last night and I had his bed—and this morning it was gone. I thought the house was on fire by the fierce way he came and shook me.' ' I'll look for it when I come down, if you tell me what it is,' said poor Lucy. 'How late I have slept! It must have been the cold journey." ' She has not got it,' said Captain Bird, retreating to his friend outside, and closing the door on Lucy. ' Knows nothing about it. Was asleep till I awoke her. 'J {Tobe continued.")