A Ring of Rubies

by L. T. Meade

I went home that day feeling uncommonly weak and small. My excitement had run its course—the re-action had set in; I felt dead tired and languid. I had a slight headache too, which I knew would get worse by and by. In short, I was more or less in a state of collapse, and I felt that tears were not far from my eyes.

It seemed to me that I had just been going through a very severe fight, and that I was in danger of being beaten. I knew this by the fact that in my collapsed condition I did not much care whether I was beaten or not.

I arrived home to find matters a little more dismal even than usual. My mother’s cough was so bad that the doctor had been sent for. He had prescribed (in those comfortable, unfaltering words which doctors are so fond of using) the Riviera as the sovereign remedy. My mother must leave the harsh east winds of our English spring, and go into the land of balmy breezes and colour and flowers.

“You must go without delay, Mrs Lindley,” the doctor said, and then he shook hands with her, and pocketed his fee, and went away.

His visit was over when I reached home, and my mother was seated, wrapped up in a white fleecy shawl, by the little fire in the drawing-room. That shawl became her wonderfully. Her beautiful face looked like the rarest old porcelain above it; her clear complexion, the faint winter roses on her cheeks, the soft light in her eyes, the sweetness of her lips, and the fine whiteness of her hair gave her as great a beauty as the loveliness of youth. In some way my mother’s picturesque loveliness exceeded that of the innocent freshness of childhood, for all the story, and all the sorrow, and all the love, the courage, the resignation which life rightly used can bring, was reflected on her beloved features.

I bent forward and kissed her, and the tears which were so near welled up in my own eyes.

“Well, Rose, I can’t go,” she said; “but I’ll tell you what we’ll do, we’ll bring the Riviera here. With a few flowers, and a nice book, and a little more fire in the grate, we can get these pleasant things around us; and I have no doubt, notwithstanding gloomy Dr Hudson, that I shall soon lose my cough, and be as well as ever.”

“Oh, yes, you will soon lose your cough, mother,” I said. I sat down at her feet, and took her thin hand and pressed it passionately to my lips. Over and over again I kissed it, and each moment a voice kept whispering to me:

“The battle is going against you—you know it—you know it well!”

We were very poor at our home; but I will say this for us, we did not make money the staple subject of conversation. When we met at meals we each of us pushed our penury away under a decent sort of cloak, and although we constantly fought and argued and disagreed, we did not mention our fears with regard to the possibility of meeting the next quarter’s rent, and paying the water rates, and filling the coal cellar with fuel.