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.
