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 midnight upon the clock. And then the music ceased,
as I have told; and the evolutions of the waltzers were 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 the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps, that
more of thought crept, with more of time, into the meditations of the
thoughtful among those who revelled. And thus, too, it happened, perhaps, that
before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there
were many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the
presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single
individual before. And the rumor of this new presence having spread itself
whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or
murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise --then, finally, of terror,
of horror, and of disgust.
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.
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