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

specific against the plague."

Mine host drained the bumper, and wiped his mouth, with another hollow groan.

"If I thought that, sir, I'd not be sober from one week's end to t'other; but I know well enough I will be in a plague-pit in less than a week. O Lord! have mercy on us!"

"Amen!" said Sir Norman, impatiently. "If fear has not taken away your wits, my good sir, will you tell me what old ruin that is I saw a little above here as I rode up?"

The man started from his trance of terror, and glanced, first at the fiery eyes in the corner, and then at Sir Norman, in evident trepidation of the question.

"That ruin, sir? You must be a stranger in this place, surely, or you would not need to ask that question."

"Well, suppose I am a stranger? What then?"

"Nothing, sir; only I thought everybody knew everything about that ruin."

"But I do not, you see? So fill your glass again, and while you are drinking it, just tell me what that everything comprises."

Again the landlord glanced fearfully st the fiery eyes in the corner, and again hesitated.

"Well!" exclaimed Sir Norman, at once surprised and impatient at his taciturnity, "Can't you speak man? I want you to tell me all about it."

"There is nothing to tell, sir," replied the host, goaded to desperation. "It is an old, deserted ruin that's been here ever since I remember; and that's all I know about it."

While, he spoke, the crouching shape in the corner reared itself upright, and keeping his fiery eyes still glaring upon Sir Norman, advanced into the light. Our young knight was in the act of raising his glass to his lips; but as the apparition approached, he laid it down again, untasted, and stared at it in the wildest surprise and intensest curiosity. Truly, it was a singular-looking creature, not to say a rather startling one. A dwarf of some four feet high, and at least five feet broad across the shoulders, with immense arms and head--a giant in everything but height. His immense skull was set on such a trifle of a neck as to be scarcely worth mentioning, and was garnished by a violent mat of coarse, black hair, which also overran the territory of his cheeks and chin, leaving no neutral ground but his two fiery eyes and a broken nose all twisted awry. On a pair of short, stout legs he wore immense jack-boots, his Herculean shoulders and chest were adorned with a leathern doublet, and in the belt round his waist were conspicuously stuck a pair of pistols and a dagger. Altogether, a more ugly or sinister gentleman of his inches it would have been hard to find in all broad England. Stopping deliberately before Sir Norman, he placed a hand on each hip, and in a deep, guttural voice, addressed him:

"So, sir knight--for such I perceive you are--you are anxious to know something of that old ruin yonder?"

"Well," said Sir Norman, so far recovering from his surprise as to be able to speak, "suppose I am? Have you anything to say against it, my little friend?"

"Oh, not in the least!" said the dwarf, with a hoarse chuckle. "Only, instead of wasting your breath asking this good man, who professes such utter ignorance, you had better apply to me for information."

Again Sir Norman surveyed the little Hercules from head to foot for a moment, in silence, as one, nowadays, would an intelligent gorilla.

"You think so--do you? And what may you happen to know about it, my pretty little friend?"

"O Lord!" exclaimed the landlord, to himself, with a frightened face, while the dwarf "grinned horribly a ghastly smile" from ear to ear.

"So much, my good sir, that I would strongly advise you not to go near it, unless you wish to catch something worse than the plague. There have been others--our worthy host, there, whose teeth, you may perceive, are chattering in his head, can tell you about those that have tried the trick, and--"

"Well?" said Sir Norman, curiously.

"And have never returned to tell what they found!" concluded the little monster, with a diabolical leer. And as the landlord fell, gray and gasping, back in his seat, he broke out into a loud and hyena-like laugh.

"My dear little friend," said Sir Norman, staring at him in displeased wonder, "don't laugh, if you can help it. You are unprepossessing enough at best, but when you laugh, you look like the very (a downward gesture) himself!"

Unheeding this advice, the dwarf broke again into an unearthly cachinnation, that frightened the landlord nearly into fits, and seriously discomposed the nervous system even of Sir Norman himself. Then, grinning like a baboon, and still transfixing our puissant young knight with the same tiger-like and unpleasant glare, he nodded a farewell; and in this fashion, grinning, and nodding, and backing, he got to the door, and concluding the interesting performance with a third hoarse and hideous laugh, disappeared in the darkness.

For fully ten minutes after he was gone, the young man kept his eyes blankly fixed on the door, with a vague impression that he was suffering from an attack of nightmare; for it seemed impossible that anything so preposterously ugly as that dwarf could exist out of one. A deep groan from the landlord, however, convinced him that it was no disagreeable midnight vision, but a brawny reality; and turning to that individual, he found him gasping, in the last degree of terror, behind the counter.

"Now, who in the name of all the demons oat of Hades may that ugly abortion be?" inquired Sir Norman.

"O Lord I be merciful! sir, it's Caliban; and the only wonder is, he did not leave you a bleeding corpse at his feet!"

"I should like to see him try it. Perhaps he would have found that is a game two can play at! Where does he come from and who is he!"

The landlord leaned over the counter, and placed a very pale and startled face close to Sir Norman's.

"That's just what I wanted to tell you, sir, but I was afraid to speak before him. I think he lives up in that same old ruin you were inquiring about--at least, he is often seen hanging around there; but people are too much afraid of him to ask him any questions. Ah, sir, it's a strange place, that ruin, and there be strange stories afloat about it," said the man, with a portentious shake of the head.

"What are they?" inquired Sir Norman. "I should particularly like to know."

"Well, sir, for one thing, some folks say it is haunted, on account of the queer lights and noises abort it, sometimes; but, again, there be other folks, sir, that say the ghosts are alive, and that he"--nodding toward the door--"is a sort of ringleader among them."

"And who are they that out up such cantrips in the old place, pray?"

"Lord only knows, sir. I'm sure I don't. I never go near it myself; but there are others who have, and some of them tell of the most beautiful lady, all in white, with long, black hair, who walks on the battlements moonlight nights."

"A beautiful lady, all in white, with long, black hair! Why, that description applies to Leoline exactly."

And Sir Norman gave a violent start, and arose to proceed to the place directly.

"Don't you go near it, sir!" said the host, warningly. "Others have gone, as he told you, and never come back; for these be dreadful times, and men do as they please. Between the plague and their wickedness, the Lord only known what will become of us!"

"If I should return here for my horse in an hour or two, I suppose I can get him?" sad Sir Norman, as he turned toward the door.

"It's likely you can, sir, if I'm not dead by that time," said the landlord, as he sank down again, groaning dismally, with his chin between his hands.

The night was now profoundly dark; but Sir Norman knew the road and ruin well, and, drawing his sword, walked resolutely on. The distance between it and the ruin was trifling, and in less than ten minutes it loomed up before him, a mass of deeper black in the blackness. No white vision floated on the broken battlements this night, as Sir Norman looked wistfully up at them; but neither was there any ungainly dwarf, with two-edged sword, guarding the ruined entrance; and Sir Norman passed unmolested in. He sought the spiral staircase which La Masque had spoken of, and, passing carefully from one ancient chamber to another, stumbling over piles of rubbish and stones as he went, he reached it at last. Descending gingerly its tortuous steepness, he found himself in the mouldering vaults, and, as he trod them, his ear was greeted by the sound of faint and far-off music. Proceeding farther, he heard distinctly, mingled with it, a murmur of voices and laughter, and, through the chinks in the broken flags, he perceived a few faint rays of light. Remembering the directions of La Masque, and feeling intensely curious, he cautiously knelt down, and examined the loose flagstones until he found one he could raise; he pushed it partly aside, and, lying flat on the stones, with his face to the aperture, Sir Norman beheld a most wonderful sight.


CHAPTER VI. LA MASQUE

"Love is like a dizziness," says the old song. Love is something else--it is the most selfish feeling in existence. Of course, I don't allude to the fraternal or the friendly, or any other such nonsensical old-fashioned trash that artless people still believe in, but to the real genuine article that Adam felt for Eve when he first saw her, and which all who read this--above the innocent and unsusceptible age of twelve--have experienced. And the fancy and the reality are so much alike, that they amount to about the same thing. The former perhaps, may be a little short-lived; but it is just as disagreeable a sensation while it lasts as its more enduring sister. Love is said to be blind, and it also has a very injurious effect on the eyesight of its victims--an effect that neither spectacles nor oculists can aid in the slightest degree, making them see whether sleeping or waking, but one object, and that alone.

I don't know whether these were Mr. Malcolm or Ormiston's thoughts, as he leaned against the door-way, and folded his arms across his chest to await the shining of his day-star. In fact, I am pretty sure they were not: young gentlemen, as a general thing, not being any more given to profound moralizing in the reign of His Most Gracious Majesty, Charles II., than they are at the present day; but I do know, that no sooner was his bosom friend and crony, Sir Norman Kingsley, out of eight, than he forgot him as teetotally an if he had never known that distinguished individual. His many and deep afflictions, his love, his anguish, and his provocations; his beautiful, tantalizing, and mysterious lady-love; his errand and its probable consequences, all were forgotten; and Ormiston thought of nothing or nobody in the world but himself and La Masque. La Masque! La Masque! that was the theme on which his thoughts rang, with wild variations of alternate hope and fear, like every other lover since the world began, and love was first an institution. "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be," truly, truly it is