The Midnight Queen, May Agnes Fleming [phonics books .txt] 📗

in all my life; but you see she is dead of the plague."

"Dead? she cannot be! Nothing so perfect could die!"

"Look there," said Ormiston pointing to the plague-spot. "There is the fatal token! For Heaven's sake let us get out of this, or we will share the same fate before morning!"

But Sir Norman did not move--could not move; he stood there rooted to the spot by the spell of that lovely, lifeless face.

Usually the plague left its victims hideous, ghastly, discolored, and covered with blotches; but in this case then was nothing to mar the perfect beauty of the satin-smooth skin, but that one dreadful mark.

There Sir Norman stood in his trance, as motionless as if some genii out of the "Arabian Nights" had suddenly turned him into stone (a trick they were much addicted to), and destined him to remain there an ornamental fixture for ever. Ormiston looked at him distractedly, uncertain whether to try moral suasion or to take him by the collar and drag him headlong down the stairs, when a providential but rather dismal circumstance came to his relief. A cart came rattling along the street, a bell was loudly rang, and a hoarse voice arose with it: "Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!"

Ormiston rushed down stair to intercept the dead-cart, already almost full on it way to the plague-pit. The driver stopped at his call, and instantly followed him up stairs, and into the room. Glancing at the body with the utmost sang-froid, he touched the dress, and indifferently remarked:

"A bride, I should say; and an uncommonly handsome one too. We'll just take her along as she is, and strip these nice things off the body when we get it to the plague-pit."

So saying, he wrapped her in the sheet, and directing Ormiston to take hold of the two lower ends, took the upper corners himself, with the air of a man quite used to that sort of thing. Ormiston recoiled from touching it; and Sir Norman seeing what they were about to do, and knowing there was no help for it, made up his mind, like a sensible young man as he was, to conceal his feelings, and caught hold of the sheet himself. In this fashion the dead bride was carried down stairs, and laid upon a shutter on the top of a pile of bodies in the dead-cart.

It was now almost dark, and as the cart started, the great clock of St. Paul's struck eight. St. Michael's, St Alban's, and the others took up the sound; and the two young men paused to listen. For many weeks the sky had been clear, brilliant, and blue; but on this night dark clouds were scudding in wild unrest across it, and the air was oppressingly close and sultry.

"Where are you going now?" said Ormiston. "Are you for Whitehall's to night?"

"No!" said Sir Norman, rather dejectedly, turning to follow the pest-cart. "I am for the plague-pit in Finsbury fields!"

"Nonsense, man!" exclaimed Ormiston, energetically, "what will take you there? You surely are not mad enough to follow the body of that dead girl?"

"I shall follow it! You can come or not, just as you please." "Oh! if you are determined, I will go with you, of course; but it is the craziest freak I ever heard of. After this, you need never laugh at me."

"I never will," said Sir Norman, moodily; "for if you love a face you have never seen, I love one I have only looked on when dead. Does it not seem sacrilege to throw any one so like an angel into that horrible plague-pit?"

"I never saw an angel," said Ormiston, as he and his friend started to go after the dead-cart. "And I dare say there have been scores as beautiful as that poor girl thrown into the plague-pit before now. I wonder why the house has been deserted, and if she was really a bride. The bridegroom could not have loved her much, I fancy, or not even the pestilence could have scared him away."

"But, Ormiston, what an extraordinary thing it is that it should be precisely the same face that the fortune-teller showed me. There she was alive, and here she is dead; so I've lost all faith in La Masque for ever."

Ormiston looked doubtful.

"Are you quite sure it is the same, Kingsley?"

"Quite sure?" said Sir Norman, indignantly. "Of course I am! Do you think I could be mistaken is such a case? I tell you I would know that face at Kamschatka or, the North Pole; for I don't believe there ever was such another created."

"So be it, then! Your object, of course, in following that cart is, to take a last look at her?"

"Precisely so. Don't talk; I feel in no mood for it just at present."

Ormiston smiled to himself, and did not talk, accordingly; and in silence the two friends followed the gloomy dead-cart. A faint young moon, pale and sickly, was struggling dimly through drifts of dark clouds, and lighted the lonesome, dreary streets with a wan, watery glimmer. For weeks, the weather had been brilliantly fine--the days all sunshine, the nights all moonlight; but now Ormiston, looking up at the troubled face of the sky, concluded mentally that the Lord Mayor had selected an unpropitious night for the grand illumination. Sir Norman, with his eyes on the pest-cart, and the long white figure therein, took no heed of anything in the heaven above or in the earth beneath, and strode along in dismal silence till they reached, at last, their journey's end.

As the cart stopped the two young men approached the edge of the plague-pit, and looked in with a shudder. Truly it was a horrible sight, that heaving, putrid sea of corruption; for the bodies of the miserable victims were thrown in in cartfuls, and only covered with a handful of earth and quicklime. Here and there, through the cracking and sinking surface, could be seen protruding a fair white arm, or a baby face, mingled with the long, dark tresses of maidens, the golden curls of children, and the white hairs of old age. The pestilential effluvia arising from the dreadful mass was so overpowering that both shrank back, faint and sick, after a moment's survey. It was indeed as Sir Norman had, said, a horrible grave wherein to lie.

Meantime the driver, with an eye to business, and no time for such nonsense as melancholy moralizing, had laid the body of the young girl on the ground, and briskly turned his cart and dumped the remainder of his load into the pit. Then, having flung a few handfuls of clay over it, he unwound the sheet, and kneeling beside the body, prepared to remove the jewels. The rays of the moon and his dark lantern fell on the lovely, snow-white face together, and Sir Norman groaned despairingly as he saw its death-cold rigidity. The man had stripped the rings off the fingers, the bracelets off the arms; but as he was about to perform the same operation toward the necklace, he was stopped by a startling interruption enough. In his haste, the clasp entered the beautiful neck, inflicting a deep scratch, from which the blood spouted; and at the same instant the dead girl opened her eyes with a shrill cry. Uttering a yell of terror, as well he might, the man sprang back and gazed at her with horror, believing that his sacrilegious robbery had brought the dead to life. Even the two young men-albeit, neither of them given to nervousness nor cowardice--recoiled for an instant, and stared aghast. Then, as the whole truth struck them, that the girl had been in a deep swoon and not dead, both simultaneously darted forward, and forgetting all fear of infection, knelt by her side. A pair of great, lustrous black eyes were staring wildly around, and fixed themselves first on one face and then on the other.

"Where am I?" she exclaimed, with a terrified look, as she strove to raise herself on her elbow, and fell instantaneously back with a cry of agony, as she felt for the first time the throbbing anguish of the wound.

"You are with friends, dear lady!" said Sir Norman, in a voice quite tremulous between astonishment and delight. "Fear nothing, for you shall be saved."

The great black eyes turned wildly upon him, while a fierce spasm convulsed the beautiful face.

"O, my God, I remember! I have the plague!" And, with a prolonged shriek of anguish, that thrilled even to the hardened heart of the dead-cart driver, the girl fell back senseless again. Sir Norman Kingsley sprang to his feet, and with more the air of a frantic lunatic than a responsible young English knight, caught the cold form in his arms, laid it in the dead-cart, and was about springing into the driver's seat, when that individual indignantly interposed.

"Come, now; none of that! If you were the king himself, you shouldn't run away with my cart in that fashion; so you just get out of my place as fast as you can!"

"My dear Kingsley, what are you about to do?" asked Ormiston, catching his excited friend by the arm.

"Do!" exclaimed Sir Norman, in a high key. "Can't you see that for yourself! And I'm going to have that girl cured of the plague, if there is such a thing as a doctor to be had for love or money in London."

"You had better have her taken to the pest house at once, then; there are chirurgeons and nurses enough there."

"To the pest-house! Why man, I might as well have her thrown into the plague-pit there, at once! Not I! I shall have her taken to my own house, and there properly cared for, and this good fellow will drive her there instantly."

Sir Norman backed this insinuation by putting a broad gold-piece into the driver's hand, which instantly produced a magical effect on his rather surly countenance.

"Certainly, sir," he began, springing into his seat with alacrity. "Where shall I drive the young lady to?"

"Follow me," said Sir Norman. "Come along, Ormiston." And seizing his friend by the arm, he hurried along with a velocity rather uncomfortable, considering they both wore cloaks, and the night was excessively sultry. The gloomy vehicle and its fainting burden followed close behind.

"What do you mean to do with her?" asked Ormiston, as soon as he found breath enough to speak.

"Haven't I told you?" said Sir Norman, impatiently. "Take her home, of course."

"And after that?"

"Go for a doctor."

"And after that?"

"Take care of her till she gets well."

"And after that?"

"Why--find out her history, and all about her."

"And after that?"

"After that! After that! How do I know what after that!" exclaimed Sir Norman, rather fiercely. "Ormiston, what do you mean?"

Ormiston laughed.

"And after that you'll marry her, I suppose!"

"Perhaps I may, if she will have me. And what if I do?"

"Oh, nothing! Only it struck me you may be saving another man's wife."

"That's true!" said Sir Norman, in a subdued tone, "and if such should unhappily be the case, nothing will remain but to live in hopes that he may be carried off by the plague."

"Pray Heaven that we may not be carried off by it ourselves!" said Ormiston, with a slight shudder. "I shall dream of nothing but that horrible plague-pit for a week. If it were not for La Masque,