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

I would not stay another hour in this pest-stricken city."

"Here we are," was Sir Norman's rather inapposite answer, as they entered Piccadilly, and stopped before a large and handsome house, whose gloomy portal was faintly illuminated by a large lamp. "Here, my man just carry the lady in."

He unlocked the door as he spoke, and led the way across a long hall to a sleeping chamber, elegantly fitter up. The man placed the body on the bed and departed while Sir Norman, seizing a handbell, rang a peal that brought a staid-looking housekeeper to the scene directly. Seeing a lady, young and beautiful, in bride robes, lying apparently dead on her young master's bed at that hour of the night, the discreet matron, over whose virtuous head fifty years and a snow-white cap had passed, started back with a slight scream.

"Gracious me, Sir Norman! What on earth is the meaning of this?"

"My dear Mrs. Preston," began Sir Norman blandly, "this young lady is ill of the plague, and--"

But all further explanation was cut short by a horrified shriek from the old lady, and a precipitate rush from the room. Down stairs she flew, informing the other servants as she went, between her screams, and when Sir Norman, in a violent rage, went in search of her five minutes after, he found not only the kitchen, but the whole house deserted.

"Well," said Ormiston, as Sir Norman strode back, looking fiery hot and savagely angry.

"Well, they have all fled, every man and woman of them, the--" Sir Norman ground out something not quite proper, behind his moustache. "I shall have to go for the doctor, myself. Doctor Forbes is a friend of mine, and lives near; and you," looking at him rather doubtfully, "would you mind staying here, lest she should recover consciousness before I return?"

"To tell you the truth," said Ormiston, with charming frankness, "I should! The lady is extremely beautiful, I must own; but she looks uncomfortably corpse-like at this present moment. I do not wish to die of the plague, either, until I see La Masque once more; and so if it is all the same to you, my dear friend, I will have the greatest pleasure in stepping round with you to the doctor's."

Sir Norman, though he did not much approve of this, could not very well object, and the two sallied forth together. Walking a short distance up Piccadilly, they struck off into a bye street, and soon reached the house they were in search of. Sir Norman knocked loudly at the door, which was opened by the doctor himself. Briefly and rapidly Sir Norman informed him how and where his services were required; and the doctor being always provided with everything necessary for such cases, set out with him immediately. Fifteen minutes after leaving his own house, Sir Norman was back there again, and standing in his own chamber. But a simultaneous exclamation of amazement and consternation broke from him and Ormiston, as on entering the room they found the bed empty, and the lady gone!

A dead pause followed, during which the three looked blankly at the bed, and then at each other. The scene, no doubt, would have been ludicrous enough to a third party; but neither of our trio could saw anything whatever to laugh at. Ormiston was the first to speak.

"What in Heaven's name has happened!" he wonderingly exclaimed.

"Some one has been here," said Sir Norman, turning very pale, "and carried her off while we were gone."

"Let us search the house," said the doctor; "you should have locked your door, Sir Norman; but it may not be too late yet."

Acting on the hint, Sir Norman seized the lamp burning on the table, and started on the search. His two friends followed him, and

"The highest, the lowest, the loveliest spot,
They searched for the lady, and found her not."

No, though there was not the slightest trace of robbers or intruders, neither was there the slightest trace of the beautiful plague-patient. Everything in the house was precisely as it always was, but the silver shining vision was gone.


CHAPTER III. THE COURT PAGE

The search was given over at last in despair, and the doctor took his hat and disappeared. Sir Norman and Ormiston stopped in the lower hall and looked at each other in mute amaze.

"What can it all mean?" asked Ormiston, appealing more to society at large than to his bewildered companion.

"I haven't the faintest idea," said Sir Norman, distractedly; "only I am pretty certain, if I don't find her, I shall do something so desperate that the plague will be a trifle compared to it!"

"It seems almost impossible that she can have been carried off--doesn't it?"

"If she has!" exclaimed Sir Norman, "and I find out the abductor, he won't have a whole bone in his body two minutes after!"

"And yet more impossible that she can have gone off herself," pursued Ormiston with the air of one entering upon an abstruse subject, and taking no heed whatever of his companion's marginal notes.

"Gone off herself! Is the man crazy?" inquired Sir Norman, with a stare. "Fifteen minutes before we left her dead, or in a dead swoon, which is all the same in Greek, and yet he talks of her getting up and going off herself!"

"In fact, the only way to get at the bottom of the mystery," said Ormiston, "is to go in search of her. Sleeping, I suppose, is out of the question."

"Of course it is! I shall never sleep again till I find her!"

They passed out, and Sir Norman this time took the precaution of turning the key, thereby fulfilling the adage of locking the stable-door when the steed was stolen. The night had grown darker and hotter; and as they walked along, the clock of St. Paul's tolled nine.

"And now, where shall we go?" inquired Sir Norman, as they rapidly hurried on.

"I should recommend visiting the house we found her first; if not there, then we can try the pest-house."

Sir Norman shuddered.

"Heaven forefend she should be there! It is the most mysterious thing ever I heard of!"

"What do you think now of La Masque's prediction--dare you doubt still?"

"Ormiston, I don't know what to think. It is the same face I saw, and yet--"

"Well--and yet--"

"I can't tell you--I am fairly bewildered. If we don't find the lady st her own house, I have half a mind to apply to your friend, La Masque, again."

"The wisest thing you could do, my dear fellow. If any one knows your unfortunate beloved's whereabouts, it is La Masque, depend upon it."

"That's settled then; and now, don't talk, for conversation at this smart pace I don't admire."

Ormiston, like the amiable, obedient young man that he was, instantly held his tongue, and they strode along at a breathless pace. There was an unusual concourse of men abroad that night, watching the gloomy face of the sky, and waiting the hour of midnight to kindle the myriad of fires; and as the two tall, dark figures went rapidly by, all supposed it to be a case of life or death. In the eyes of one of the party, perhaps it was; and neither halted till they came once more in sight of the house, whence a short time previously they had carried the death-cold bride. A row of lamps over the door-portals shed a yellow, uncertain light around, while the lights of barges and wherries were sown like stars along the river.

"There is the house," cried Ormiston, and both paused to take breath; "and I am about at the last gasp. I wonder if your pretty mistress would feel grateful if she knew what I have come through to-night for her sweet sake?"

"There are no lights," mad Sir Norman, glancing anxiously up at the darkened front of the house; "even the link before the door is unlit. Surely she cannot be there."

"That remains to be seen, though I'm very doubtful about it myself. Ah I who have we here?"

The door of the house in question opened, as he spoke, and a figure--a man's figure, wearing a slouched hat and long, dark cloak, came slowly out. He stopped before the house and looked at it long and earnestly; and, by the twinkling light of the lamps, the friends saw enough of him to know he was young and distinguished looking.

"I should not wonder in the least it that were the bridegroom," whispered Ormiston, maliciously.

Sir Norman turned pale with jealousy, and laid his hand on his sword, with a quick and natural impulse to make the bride a widow forthwith. But he checked the desire for an instant as the brigandish-looking gentleman, after a prolonged stare at the premises, stepped up to the watchman, who had given them their information an hour or two before, and who was still at his post. The friends could not be seen, but they could hear, and they did so very earnestly indeed.

"Can you tell me, my friend," began the cloaked unknown, "what has become of the people residing in yonder house?"

The watchman, held his lamp up to the face of the interlocutor--a handsome face by the way, what could be seen of it--and indulged himself in a prolonged survey.

"Well!" said the gentleman, impatiently, "have you no tongue, fellow? Where are they, I say?"

"Blessed if I know," said the watchman. "I, wasn't set here to keep guard over them was I? It looks like it, though," said the man in parenthesis; "for this makes twice to-night I've been asked questions about it."

"Ah!" said the gentleman, with a slight start. "Who asked you before, pray?"

"Two young gentlemen; lords, I expect, by their dress. Somebody ran screaming out of the house, and they wanted to know what was wrong."

"Well?" said the stranger, breathlessly, "and then?"

"And then, as I couldn't tell them they went in to see for themselves, and shortly after came out with a body wrapped in a sheet, which they put in a pest-cart going by, and had it buried, I suppose, with the rest in the plague-pit."

The stranger fairly staggered back, and caught at a pillar near for support. For nearly ten minutes, he stood perfectly motionless, and then, without a word, started up and walked rapidly away. The friends looked after him curiously till he was out of eight.

"So she is not there," said Ormiston; "and our mysterious friend in the cloak is as much at a loss as we are ourselves. Where shall we go next--to La Masque or the peat-house?"

"To La Masque--I hate the idea of the pest-house!"

"She may be there, nevertheless; and under present circumstances, it is the beat place for her."

"Don't talk of it!" said Sir Norman, impatiently. "I do not and will not believe she is there! If the sorceress shows her to me in the caldron again, I verily believe I shall jump in head foremost."

"And I verily believe we will not find La Masque at home. She wanders through the streets at all hours, but particularly affects the night."

"We shall try, however. Come along!"

The house of the sorceress was but a short distance from that of Sir Norman's plague-stricken lady-love's; and shod with a sort of seven-league boots,