The Bride of the Tomb and Queenie's Part 57

"You'll have to help me git the coffin out," said Perkins. "It will be no easy job in this darkness and the pouring rain."

It was no easy job, as he had said, but their united efforts, with the usual appliances for such work, at length enabled them to raise it out of the grave and set it on the ground beside them. Even as they did so, a dreadful sound mingled with the sob of the wind and the putter of the rain. It was a low and smothered moan from within the coffin!

"Great G.o.d, Perkins, wrench the lid off!" exclaimed the other, excitedly. "She revives!"

Again and again the low moan echoed within the coffin, having a horrible sound from within that prison-house of death, and fevering the blood of the waiting man who swore audibly at Perkins, whose swiftest efforts seemed like the progress of a snail to his impatient mood.

"Now, sir," said Perkins, at last, as panting, and perspiring, he threw off the lid of the elegant casket, "now, sir, there's your game!"

The man flashed the lantern light forward. It shone on a beautiful white face, fixed in unconsciousness, now, the dews of horror standing thick and wet on the brow, the lips bleeding where the pearly teeth had bitten them in anguish, the small, dimpled white hands clenched in the lace upon her breast that was frayed and torn with her frantic struggles at finding herself in that awful prison. But blessed unconsciousness had supervened, and she looked death-like indeed to the eyes that beheld her.

"Looks like she might be gone, sure enough, this time sir," said Perkins, uneasily.

"If she _is_, I'll kill _you_, d--n you!" cried the man. "I'll not be balked of my revenge like that. I'll glut it on somebody!"

Even while speaking he bent down and laid his hand upon her heart.

"No, she lives; I feel her heart beat faintly," he said. "Quick, Perkins, the cloak! It rains on her."

"The rain will revive her," said Perkins, as he unfolded a long, dark waterproof cloak and handed it to his companion.

The man lifted Queenie's slight form, and wrapped the long cloak over the bridal robe in which she had been buried.

"Now, then," he said, putting a thick roll of bank-notes into the man's hand, "cover up the grave, and remove every trace of this night's work.

And--_remember_, one word of _this_ to a living soul, and I'll send your black soul to the devil!"

"Mum's the word, sir!" answered the man, beginning to lower the empty coffin back into the grave.

His employer turned without another word and pa.s.sed swiftly away through the rain and the darkness to the carriage that waited for him near the gates, bearing the unconscious girl in his arms.

He entered the carriage, deposited the still unconscious Queenie on a seat in a rec.u.mbent att.i.tude, and holding her head in his arms, was whirled rapidly away through the murky night. For an hour or more he rode thus, and the carriage stopped at length before a cottage embowered in trees on the banks of a broad, dark river. He lifted his burden, stepped through the gate, and the carriage whirled away.

Hurrying up the steps, he paused on the low, ornate piazza that ran around the house, and rang the bell.

The door was opened by a neat-looking woman of middle age, who held a lamp above her head.

"Ah! it is you," was all she said.

"Yes, it is I; and I have brought back your mistress, Mrs. Bowers, as I said I would, though you _did_ have the impudence to insinuate that I had made way with her," he answered, in a tone of rough pleasantry.

"You are none too good to have done it," she answered, with a certain cool and familiar impertinence.

"Confound your impudence--lead the way to her room," he said, carelessly. "She is ill and needs attention."

Mrs. Bowers went up the stairway and opened the door into a large, airy room, exquisitely furnished and draped with hangings of white lace over rose-colored silk. Costly pictures and statuettes adorned the walls, and all the appointments were of elegant design, and evidently selected regardless of expense.

Mrs. Bowers held back the sweeping lace canopy of the low French bed, and the man laid his fair burden down upon it, after removing the dark cloak.

"What ails her?" asked the woman, starting as a low moan broke from the lips of the only half-conscious girl.

"I told you she was ill," he said, curtly. "She has been in a swoon. Get restoratives."

Mrs. Bowers obeyed him, and was soon bathing the pale face and limp, nerveless hands, with refreshing perfume.

Directly Queenie started up, pa.s.sed her hand across her brow and looked about her. An expression of loathing swept across her face.

"Are you glad to find yourself in your old quarters, my dear?" asked the man, sardonically, from the window to which he had retreated.

She started as if someone had struck her a terrible blow, and looked across the room. Fear, horror, despair, were all blended in the look she cast upon his handsome, satanically smiling face.

CHAPTER XI.

Mrs. Bowers, seeing that her mistress had revived, lighted a brilliant jet of gas and went out. Queenie did not even notice her departure so intently was her gaze fixed on the man at the window, who stood there calm, _nonchalant_, even smiling, standing the scathing fire of her beautiful eyes like a soldier.

"So," she said, at last, and there was surprise and regret both commingled in her tone, "so you are not _dead_!"

"No thanks to you, little tigress," he answered, with a fierce, yellow light flaring into his black eyes. "You did your best to further that end."

"I might have forseen how vain was the endeavor," she retorted, in pa.s.sionate anger, and quoted an old saying: "They cannot be drowned who are born to be _hung_."

He laughed in mockery at the bitter insinuation, but years after, when the light of Heaven shone on him through the grated bars of a prison cell, and he heard outside the horrible sound of the hammers driving the nails into his scaffold, he remembered the words with wonder, and thought she must have been gifted with "second-sight," as the Scotch called the gift of prophecy.

"Now I know it was you that sent me the flowers," she said. "Why did you do it? They were poisoned!"

"No, only drugged! It was a subtle drug I bought in the east long ago--a drug warranted to produce a long and sudden sleep perfectly resembling death."

"Again I ask you, why did you do it?" she said, and her voice was full of wonder.

"I wanted to get you into my power once more. That was the safest plan to effect it. I let them bury you, and then I resurrected you."

"What did you want of me? You wearied of me before. Why not have let me go in peace?"

She tried to speak calmly, but her voice trembled with some inward resentment, and there was a pa.s.sion of hatred in her dusky eyes that might have killed him where he stood. A rage as deadly as hers leaped up in his eyes in answer.

"Because I _hate_ you!" he said, wickedly.

"We always hate those whom we have wronged," she replied, and her whole form trembled with her pa.s.sionate indignation.

"I hate you because of that cowardly blow in the dark," he said angrily.

"But for that I might have let you go free, though I pitied Captain Ernscliffe for being deceived by you."

"Villain!" she exclaimed, "I have not deceived him!"

"You have not?" he sneered. "Did you not withhold from him the story of that year which he supposed you to have spent in Europe? Did you not allow him to think you an innocent woman?"