The Masque of the Red Death
THE "Red Death" had long
devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood
was its Avatar and its seal --the redness and the horror of blood. There were
sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with
dissolution. The scarlet 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 sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure,
progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.
But the Prince Prospero was happy and
dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned
to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the
knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of
one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure,
the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty
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 sudden impulses of despair or of
frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the
courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care
of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had
provided all the appliances 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 "Red Death."
It was toward the close of the fifth or
sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously
abroad, that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked
ball of the most unusual magnificence.
It was a voluptuous scene,
that masquerade. But first let me tell of the rooms in which it was
held. There were seven --an imperial suite. In many palaces, however, such
suites form a long and straight vista, while the folding doors slide back
nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view of the whole extent is
scarcely impeded. Here the case was very different; as might have been expected
from the duke's love of the bizarre. The apartments were so irregularly
disposed that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time. There was
a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect.
To the right and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic
window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the windings of the
suite. These windows were of stained glass whose color varied in accordance
with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opened.
That at the eastern extremity was hung, for example, in blue --and vividly blue
were its windows. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and
tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The third was green throughout, and
so were the casements. The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange --the
fifth with white --the sixth with violet. The seventh apartment was closely
shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the
walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But
in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the
decorations. The panes here were scarlet --a deep blood color. Now in no one of
the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of
golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro or depended from the roof. There
was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of
chambers. But in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite
to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire that protected its rays
through the tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room. And thus were
produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or
black chamber the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings
through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so
wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of
the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all.
It was in this apartment, also, that
there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum
swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand
made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from
the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and
exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse
of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause,
momentarily, in their performance, to hearken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a
brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock
yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and
sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused reverie or
meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once
pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at
their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other,
that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion;
and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and
six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another chiming of
the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation
as before.
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 and effects. He disregarded the decora
of mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with
barbaric lustre. There are some 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 was not.
He had directed, in great part, the
moveable embellishments of the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great
fete; and it was his own guiding taste which had given character to the
masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare and glitter
and piquancy and phantasm --much of what has been since seen in "Hernani." There were arabesque figures with unsuited
limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman
fashions. There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the
bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have
excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a
multitude of dreams. And these --the dreams --writhed in and
about, taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra
to seem as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony
clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is
still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are
stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the chime die away --they have
endured but an instant --and a light, half-subdued laughter floats after them
as they depart. And now again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe
to and fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many-tinted windows
through which stream the rays from the tripods. But to the chamber which lies
most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of
the maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and there flows a
ruddier light through the blood-colored panes; and the blackness of the sable
drapery appals; and to him whose foot falls upon the
sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more
solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulge in the more
remote gaieties of the other apartments.
But these other apartments were densely
crowded, and in them beat feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there commenced the sounding
of
In an assembly of phantasms such as I
have painted, it may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have
excited such sensation. In truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly
unlimited; but the figure in question had out-Heroded
Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the prince's indefinite decorum.
There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched
without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally
jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.
The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing
of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and
gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask
which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a
stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in
detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved,
by the mad revellers around. But the mummer had gone
so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled 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 (which with 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, in the 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 near him --"who dares insult us with
this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him --that
we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise, from the battlements!"
It was in the eastern or blue chamber in
which stood the Prince Prospero as he uttered these words. They rang throughout
the seven rooms loudly and clearly --for the prince was a bold and robust man,
and the music had become hushed at the waving of his hand.
It was in the blue room where stood the
prince, with a group of pale courtiers by his side. At first, as he spoke,
there was a slight rushing movement of this group in the direction of the
intruder, who at the moment was also near at hand, and now, with deliberate and
stately step, made closer approach to the speaker. But from a certain nameless
awe with which the mad assumptions of the mummer had inspired the whole party,
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, while the vast assembly, as
if with one impulse, shrank from the centres of the
rooms to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn
and measured step which had distinguished him from the first, through the blue
chamber to the purple --through the purple to the green --through the green to the
orange --through this again to the white --and even thence to the violet, ere a
decided movement had been made to arrest him. It was then, however, that the
Prince Prospero, maddening with rage and the shame of his own momentary
cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him
on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a drawn
dagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet
of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of the
velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp
cry --and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which,
instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero. Then,
summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers
at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer,
whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony
clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave-cerements and
corpse-like mask which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by
any tangible form.
And now was acknowledged the presence of
the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped
the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their
revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the
ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the
tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable
dominion over all.