The Midnight Queen

"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 dread of it. I told him I

detested, abhorred, loathed, hated him; that he might keep his riches,

greatness, and ungainly self for those who wanted him; they were

temptations too weak to move me.

"Of course, there was raving, and storming, threatening, terrible looks

and denunciations, and I quailed and shrank like a coward, but was

obstinate still. Then as a dernier resort, he tried another bribe--the

glorious one of liberty, the one he knew would conquer me, and it did.

He promised me freedom--if I married him, I might go out into the

great unknown world, fetterless and free; and I, O! fool that I was!

consented. Not that my object was to stay with him one instant longer

her my prison doors were opened; no, I was not quite so besotted as

that--once out, and the little demon might look for me with last year's

partridges. Of course, those demoniac eyes read my heart like an

open book; and when I pronounced the fatal 'yes,' he laughed in that

delightful way of his own, which will probably be the last thing you

will hear when you lay your head under the axe.

"I don't know who the clergyman who married us was; but he was a

clergyman: there can be no doubt about that. It was three days after,

and for the first time in my fifteen years of life, I stood in sunshine,

and daylight, and open air. We drove to the cathedral--for it was in St.

Paul's the sacrilege was committed. I never could have walked there,

I was so stunned, and giddy, and bewildered. I never thought of the

marriage--I could think of nothing but the bright, crashing, sun-shiny

world without, till I was led up before the clergyman, with much the

air, I suppose, of one walking in her sleep. He was a very young man, I

remember, and looked from the dwarf to me, and from me to the dwarf,

in a great state of fear and uncertainty, but evidently not daring to

refuse. Margery and one of his gang were our only attendants, and there,

in God's temple, the deed was done, and I was made the miserable thing I

am to-day."