THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH.
THE ”Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had everbeen so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal--theredness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and suddendizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. Thescarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim,were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathyof his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination ofthe disease, were the incidents of half an hour.
But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When hisdominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousandhale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames ofhis court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of hiscastellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, thecreation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong andlofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers,having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts.They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the suddenimpulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amplyprovisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance tocontagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantimeit was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all theappliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori,there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty,there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the ”RedDeath.”
It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion,and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the PrinceProspero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the mostunusual magnificence.
It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of therooms in which it was held. There were seven--an imperial suite. In manypalaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while thefolding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, so thatthe view of the whole extent is scarcely impeded. Here the case wasvery different; as might have been expected from the duke's love of thebizarre. The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the visionembraced but little more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn atevery twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect. To theright and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothicwindow looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the windings ofthe suite. These windows were of stained glass whose color varied inaccordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamberinto which it opened. That at the eastern extremity was hung, forexample, in blue--and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamberwas purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes werepurple. The third was green throughout, and so were the casements. Thefourth was furnished and lighted with orange--the fifth with white--thesixth with violet. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in blackvelvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls,falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. Butin this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond withthe decorations. The panes here were scarlet--a deep blood color. Now inno one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amidthe profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro ordepended from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating fromlamp or candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridorsthat followed the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavytripod, bearing a brazier of fire that projected its rays through thetinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room. And thus were produceda multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western orblack chamber the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the darkhangings through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, andproduced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered,that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within itsprecincts at all.
It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the westernwall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with adull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuitof the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from thebrazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep andexceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, ateach lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrainedto pause, momentarily, in their performance, to hearken to the sound;and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was abrief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of theclock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and themore aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if inconfused reverie or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased,a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked ateach other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly, and madewhispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the clockshould produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after the lapse ofsixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds ofthe Time that flies,) there came yet another chiming of the clock,and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation asbefore.
But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel.The tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye for colors andeffects. He disregarded the decora of mere fashion. His plans were boldand fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. There aresome who would have thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not.It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be sure that he wasnot.
He had directed, in great part, the moveable embellishments of the sevenchambers, upon occasion of this great fete; and it was his own guidingtaste which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure theywere grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy andphantasm--much of what has been since seen in ”Hernani.” There werearabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There weredelirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There was much of thebeautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of theterrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude ofdreams. And these--the dreams--writhed in and about, taking hue from therooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echoof their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands inthe hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all issilent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as theystand. But the echoes of the chime die away--they have endured but aninstant--and a light, half-subdued laughter floats after them as theydepart. And now again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writheto and fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many-tintedwindows through which stream the rays from the tripods. But to thechamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now none ofthe maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and there flows aruddier light through the blood-colored panes; and the blackness of thesable drapery appals; and to him whose foot falls upon the sable carpet,there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnlyemphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulge in the moreremote gaieties of the other apartments.
But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beatfeverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until atlength there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock. And thenthe music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions of the waltzerswere quieted; and there was an uneasy cessation of all things as before.But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of theclock; and thus it happened, perhaps, that more of thought crept, withmore of time, into the meditations of the thoughtful among those whorevelled. And thus, too, it happened, perhaps, that before the lastechoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were manyindividuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of thepresence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of nosingle individual before. And the rumor of this new presence havingspread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from thewhole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of disapprobation andsurprise--then, finally, of terror, of horror, and of disgust.
In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well besupposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation.In truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited; butthe figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the boundsof even the prince's indefinite decorum. There are chords in the heartsof the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even withthe utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there arematters of which no jest can be made. The whole company, indeed, seemednow deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the strangerneither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, andshrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. Themask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble thecountenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must havehad difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have beenendured, if not approved, by the mad revellers around. But the mummerhad gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture wasdabbled in blood--and his broad brow, with all the features of the face,was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.
When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral image (whichwith a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its role,stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be convulsed, inthe first moment with a strong shudder either of terror or distaste;but, in the next, his brow reddened with rage.
”Who dares?” he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood nearhim--”who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him andunmask him--that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise, from thebattlements!”
It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood the Prince Prosperoas he uttered these words. They rang throughout the seven rooms loudlyand clearly--for the prince was a bold and robust man, and the music hadbecome hushed at the waving of his hand.
It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of palecourtiers by his side. At first, as he spoke, there was a slight rushingmovement of this group in the direction of the intruder, who at themoment was also near at hand, and now, with deliberate and stately step,made closer approach to the speaker. But from a certain nameless awewith which the mad assumptions of the mummer had inspired the wholeparty, there were found none who put forth hand to seize him; so that,unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the prince's person; and, whilethe vast assembly, as if with one impulse, shrank from the centres ofthe rooms to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with thesame solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from thefirst, through the blue chamber to the purple--through the purple tothe green--through the green to the orange--through this again to thewhite--and even thence to the violet, ere a decided movement had beenmade to arrest him. It was then, however, that the Prince Prospero,maddening with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushedhurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him on accountof a deadly terror that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a drawndagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three orfour feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained theextremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted hispursuer. There was a sharp cry--and the dagger dropped gleaming upon thesable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in deaththe Prince Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage of despair,a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the blackapartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect andmotionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterablehorror at finding the grave-cerements and corpse-like mask which theyhandled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.
And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had comelike a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in theblood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairingposture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out withthat of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. AndDarkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.