The Midnight Queen - Page 14/177

"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.