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.