The Midnight Queen by May Agnes Fleming (best books under 200 pages txt) 📖

like this rat, to trample to death under my feet!"

Not knowing very well what reply to make to this strong and heartfelt speech, which rather shocked his notions of female propriety, Sir Norman stood silent, and looked reflectively after the rat, which, when she permitted it at last to go free, limped away with an ineffably sneaking and crest-fallen expression on his hitherto animated features. She watched it, too, with a gloomy eye, and when it crawled into the darkness and was gone, she looked up with a face so dark and moody that it was almost sullen.

"Yes, I hate him!" she repeated, with a fierce moodiness that was quite dreadful, "yes, I hate him! and I would kill him, like that rat, if I could! He has been the curse of my whole life; he has made life cursed to me; and his heart's blood shall be shed for it some day yet, I swear!"

With all her beauty there was something so horrible in the look she wore, that Sir Norman involuntarily recoiled from her. Her sharp eyes noticed it, and both grew red and fiery as two devouring flames.

"Ah! you, too, shrink from me, would you? You, too, recoil in horror! Ingrate! And I have come to save your life!"

"Madame, I recoil not from you, but from that which is tempting you to utter words like these. I have no reason to love him of whom you speak--you, perhaps, have even less; but I would not have his blood, shed in murder, on my head, for ten thousand worlds! Pardon me, but you do not mean what you say."

"Do I not? That remains to be seen! I would not call it murder plunging a knife into the heart of a demon incarnate like that, and I would have done it long ago and he knows it, too, if I had the chance!"

"What has he done to you to make you do bitter against him?"

"Bitter! Oh, that word is poor and pitiful to express what I feel when his name is mentioned. Loathing and hatred come a little nearer the mark, but even they are weak to express the utter--the--" She stopped in a sort of white passion that choked her very words.

"They told me he was your husband," insinuated Sir Norman, unutterably repelled.

"Did they?" she said, with a cold sneer, "he is, too--at least as far as church and state can make him; but I am no more his wife at heart than I am Satan's. Truly of the two I should prefer the latter, for then I should be wedded to something grand--a fallen angel; as it is, I have the honor to be wife to a devil who never was an angel?"

At this shocking statement Sir Norman looked helplessly round, as if for relief; and Miranda, after a moment's silence, broke into another mirthless laugh.

"Of all the pictures of ugliness you ever saw or heard of, Sir Norman Kingsley, do tell me if there ever was one of them half so repulsive or disgusting as that thing?"

"Really," said Sir Norman, in a subdued tone, "he is not the most prepossessing little man in the world; but, madame, you do look and speak in a manner quite dreadful. Do let me prevail on you to calm yourself, and tell me your story, as you promised."

"Calm myself!" repeated the gentle lady, in a tone half snappish, half harsh, "do you think I am made of iron, to tell you my story and be calm? I hate him! I hate him! I would kill him if I could: and if you, Sir Norman, are half the man I take you to be, you will rid the world of the horrible monster before morning dawns!"

"My dear lady, you seem to forget that the case is reversed, and that he is going to rid the world of me,", said Sir Norman, with a sigh.

"No, not if you do as I tell you; and when I have told you how much cause I have to abhor him, you will agree with me that killing him will be no murder! Oh, if there is One above who rules this world, and will judge us all, why, why does He permit such monsters to live?"

"Because He is more merciful than his creatures," replied Sir Norman, with calm reverence,--"though His avenging hand is heavy on this doomed city. But, madame, time is on the wing, and the headsman will be here before your story is told."

"Ah, that story! How am I to tell it, I wonder, two words will comprise it all--sin and misery--misery and sin! For, buried alive here, as I am--buried alive, as I've always been--I know what both words mean; they have been branded on heart and brain in letters of fire. And that horrible monstrosity is the cause of all--that loathsome, misshapen, hideous abortion has banned and cursed my whole life! He is my first recollection. As far back as I can look through the dim eye of childhood's years, that horrible face, that gnarled and twisted trunk, those devilish eyes glare at me like the eyes and face of a wild beast. As memory grows stronger and more vivid, I can see that same face still--the dwarf! the dwarf! the dwarf!--Satan's true representative on earth, darkening and blighting ever passing year. I do not know where we lived, but I imagine it to have been one of the vilest and lowest dens in London, though the rooms I occupied were, for that matter, decent and orderly enough. Those rooms the daylight never entered, the windows were boarded up within, and fastened by shutters without, so that of the world beyond I was as ignorant as a child of two hours old. I saw but two human faces, his"--she seemed to hate him too much even to pronounce his name--"and his housekeeper's, a creature almost as vile as himself, and who is now a servant here; and with this precious pair to guard me I grew up to be fifteen years old. My outer life consisted of eating, sleeping, reading--for the wretch taught me to read--playing with my dogs and birds, and listening to old Margery's stories. But there was an inward life, fierce and strong, as it was rank and morbid, lived and brooded over alone, when Margery and her master fancied me sleeping in idiotic content. How were they to know that the creature they had reared and made ever had a thought of her own--ever wondered who she was, where she came from, what she was destined to be, and what lay in the great world beyond? The crooked little monster made a great mistake in teaching me to read, he should have known that books sow seed that grow up and flourish tall and green, till they become giants in strength. I knew enough to be certain there was a bright and glad world without, from which they shut me in and debarred me; and I knew enough to hate them both for it, with a strong and heartfelt hatred, only second to what I feel now."

She stopped for a moment, and fixed her dark, gloomy eyes on the swarming floor, and shook off, with out a shudder, the hideous things that crawled over her rich dress. She had scarcely looked at Sir Norman since she began to speak, but he had done enough looking for them both, never once taking his eyes from the handsome darkening face. He thought how strangely like her story was to Leoline's--both shut in and isolated from the outer world. Verily, destiny seemed to have woven the woof and warp of their fates wonderfully together, for their lives were as much the same as their faces. Miranda, having shook off her crawling acquaintances, watched them glancing along the foul floor in the darkness, and went moodily on.

"It was three years ago when I was fifteen years old, as I told you, that a change took place in my life. Up to that time, that miserable dwarf was what people would call my guardian, and did not trouble me much with his heavenly company. He was a great deal from our house, sometimes absent for weeks together; and I remember I used to envy the freedom with which he came and went, far more than I ever wondered where he spent his precious time. I did not know then that he belonged to the honorable profession of highwaymen, with variations of coining when travelers were few and money scarce. He was then, and is still, at the head of a formidable gang, over whom he wields most desperate authority--as perhaps you have noticed during the brief and pleasant period of your acquaintance."

"Really, madam, it struck me that your authority over them was much more despotic than his," said Sir Norman, in all sincerity, feeling called upon to give the--well, I'd rather not repeat the word, which is generally spelled with a d and a dash--his due.

"No thanks to him for that! He would make me a slave now, as he did then, if he dared, but he has found that, poor, trodden worm as I was, I had life enough left to turn and sting."

"Which you do with a vengeance! Oh I you're a Tartar!" remarked Sir Norman to himself. "The saints forefend that Leoline should be like you in temper, as she is in history and face; for if she is, my life promises to be a pleasant one."

"This rascally crew of cut-throats, whom his villainous highness headed," said Miranda, "were an almost immense number then, being divided in three bodies--London cut-purses, Hounslow Heath highwaymen, and assistant-coiners, but all owning him for their lord and master. He told me all this himself, one day when, in an after-dinner and most gracious mood, he made a boasting display of his wealth and greatness; told me I was growing up very pretty indeed, and that I was shortly to be raised to the honor and dignity, and bliss of being his wife.

"I fancy I must have had a very vague idea of what that one small word meant, and was besides in an unusually contented and peaceful state of mind, or I should, undoubtedly, have raised one of his cut-glass decanters and smashed in his head with it. I know how I should receive such an assertion from him now, but I think I took it then with a resignation, he must have found mighty edifying; and when he went on to tell me that all this richness and greatness were to be shared by me when that celestial time came, I think I rather liked the idea than otherwise. The horrible creature seemed to have woke up that day, for the first time, and all of a sudden, to a conviction that I was in a fair way to become a woman, and rather a handsome one, and that he had better make sure of me before any accident interfered to take me from him. Full of this laudable notion, he became a daily visitor of mine from thenceforth, and made the discovery, simultaneously with myself, that the oftener he came the less favor he found in my sight. I had, before, tacitly disliked him, and shrank with a natural repulsion from his dreadful ugliness ness; but now, from negative dislike, I grew to positive hate. The utter loathing and abhorrence I have had for him ever since, began then--I grew dimly and intuitively conscious of what he would make me, and shrank from my fate with a vague horror not to be told in words. I became strong in my fearful