Читать книгу The Midnight Queen - May Agnes Fleming - Страница 5

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“Well,” said Ormiston, drawing a long bath, “what do you think of that?”

“Think? Don't ask me yet.” said Sir Norman, looking rather bewildered. “I'm in such a state of mystification that I don't rightly know whether I'm standing on my head or feet. For one thing, I have come to the conclusion that your masked ladylove must be enchantingly beautiful.”

“Have I not told you that a thousand times, O thou of little faith? But why have you come to such a conclusion?”

“Because no woman with such a figure, such a voice and such hands could be otherwise.”

“I knew you would own it some day. Do you wonder now that I love her?”

“Oh! as to loving her,” said Sir Norman, coolly, “that's quite another thing. I could no more love her or her hands, voice, and shape, than I could a figure in wood or wax; but I admire her vastly, and think her extremely clever. I will never forget that face in the caldron. It was the most exquisitely beautiful I ever saw.”

“In love with the shadow of a face! Why, you are a thousandfold more absurd than I.”

“No,” said Sir Norman, thoughtfully, “I don't know as I'm in love with it; but if ever I see a living face like it, I certainly shall be. How did La Masque do it, I wonder?”

“You had better ask her,” said Ormiston, bitterly. “She seems to have taken an unusual interest in you at first sight. She would strew your path with roses, forsooth! Nothing earthly, I believe, would make her say anything half so tender to me.”

Sir Norman laughed, and stroked his moustache complacently.

“All a matter of taste, my dear fellow: and these women are noted for their perfection in that line. I begin to admire La Masque more and more, and I think you had better give up the chase, and let me take your place. I don't believe you have the ghost of a chance, Ormiston.”

“I don't believe it myself,” said Ormiston, with a desperate face “but until the plague carries me off I cannot give her up; and the sooner that happens, the better. Ha! what is this?”

It was a piercing shriek—no unusual sound; and as he spoke, the door of an adjoining house was flung open, a woman rushed wildly out, fled down an adjoining street, and disappeared.

Sir Norman and his companion looked at each other, and then at the house.

“What's all this about?” demanded Ormiston.

“That's a question I can't take it upon myself to answer,” said Sir Norman; “and the only way to solve the mystery, is to go in and see.”

“It may be the plague,” said Ormiston, hesitating. “Yet the house is not marked. There is a watchman. I will ask him.”

The man with the halberd in his hand was walking up and down before an adjoining house, bearing the ominous red cross and piteous inscription: “Lord have mercy on us!”

“I don't know, sir,” was his answer to Ormiston. “If any one there has the plague, they must have taken it lately; for I heard this morning there was to be a wedding there to-night.”

“I never heard of any one screaming in that fashion about a wedding,” said Ormiston, doubtfully. “Do you know who lives there?”

“No, sir. I only came here, myself, yesterday, but two or three times to-day I have seen a very beautiful young lady looking out of the window.”

Ormiston thanked the man, and went back to report to his friend.

“A beautiful young lady!” said Sir Norman, with energy. “Then I mean to go directly up and see about it, and you can follow or not, just as you please.”

So saying, Sir Norman entered the open doorway, and found himself in a long hall, flanked by a couple of doors on each side. These he opened in rapid succession, finding nothing but silence and solitude; and Ormiston—who, upon reflection, chose to follow—ran up a wide and sweeping staircase at the end of the hall. Sir Norman followed him, and they came to a hall similar to the one below. A door to the right lay open; and both entered without ceremony, and looked around.

The room was spacious, and richly furnished. Just enough light stole through the oriel window at the further end, draped with crimson satin embroidered with gold, to show it. The floor was of veined wood of many colors, arranged in fanciful mosaics, and strewn with Turkish rugs and Persian mats of gorgeous colors. The walls were carved, the ceiling corniced, and all fretted with gold network and gilded mouldings. On a couch covered with crimson satin, like the window drapery, lay a cithren and some loose sheets of music. Near it was a small marble table, covered with books and drawings, with a decanter of wine and an exquisite little goblet of Bohemian glass. The marble mantel was strewn with ornaments of porcelain and alabaster, and a beautifully-carved vase of Parian marble stood in the centre, filled with brilliant flowers. A great mirror reflected back the room, and beneath it stood a toilet-table, strewn with jewels, laces, perfume-bottles, and an array of costly little feminine trifles such as ladies were as fond of two centuries ago as they are to-day. Evidently it was a lady's chamber; for in a recess near the window stood a great quaint carved bedstead, with curtains and snowy lace, looped back with golden arrows and scarlet ribbons. Some one lay on it, too—at least, Ormiston thought so; and he went cautiously forward, drew the curtain, and looked down.

“Great Heaven! what a beautiful face!” was his cry, as he bent still further down.

“What the plague is the matter?” asked Sir Norman, coming forward.

“You have said it,” said Ormiston, recoiling. “The plague is the matter. There lies one dead of it!”

Curiosity proving stronger than fear, Sir Norman stepped forward to look at the corpse. It was a young girl with a face as lovely as a poet's vision. That face was like snow, now; and, in its calm, cold majesty, looked as exquisitely perfect as some ancient Grecian statue. The low, pearly brow, the sweet, beautiful lips, the delicate oval outline of countenance, were perfect. The eyes were closed, and the long dark lashes rested on the ivory cheeks. A profusion of shining dark hair fell in elaborate curls over her neck and shoulders. Her dress was that of a bride; a robe of white satin brocaded with silver, fairly dazzling in its shining radiance, and as brief in the article of sleeves and neck as that of any modern belle. A circlet of pearls were clasped round her snow-white throat, and bracelets of the same jewels encircled the snowy taper arms. On her head she wore a bridal wreath and veil—the former of jewels, the latter falling round her like a cloud of mist. Everything was perfect, from the wreath and veil to the tiny sandaled feet and lying there in her mute repose she looked more like some exquisite piece of sculpture than anything that had ever lived and moved in this groveling world of ours. But from one shoulder the dress had been pulled down, and there lay a great livid purple plague-spot!

“Come away!” said Ormiston, catching his companion by the arm. “It is death to remain here!”

Sir Norman had been standing like one in a trance, from which this address roused him, and he grasped Ormiston's shoulder almost frantically.

“Look there, Ormiston! There lies the very face that sorceress showed me, fifteen minutes ago, in her infernal caldron! I would know it at the other end of the world!”

“Are you sure?” said Ormiston, glancing again with new curiosity at the marble face. “I never saw anything half so beautiful 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 genie 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, 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