The Mask of the Red Death - Graham's Magazine, May 1842 — reading text

nervousness and folly, and made whisper- clock ; and thus it happened, perhaps, that more of ing vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of thought crept, with more of time, into the medita- the clock should produce in them no similar emo- tions of the thoughtful among those who revelled. tion; and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes, And thus, again, it happened, perhaps, that before (which embrace three thousand and six hundred the last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk Ce SSO ae seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another into silence, there were many individuals in the chiming of the clock, and then there were the same dis- crowd who had found leisure to become aware of ey RoR concert and tremulousness and meditation as before. the presence of a masked figure which had arrested But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and mag- the attention of no single individual before. And the nificent revel. The tastes of the duke were peculiar. rumor of this new presence having spread itself He had a fine eye for colors and effects. He disre- whisperingly around, there arose at length from the garded the decora of mere fashion. His plans were whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive at bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with bar- first of disapprobation and surprise—then, finally, of baric lustre. There are some who would have terror, of horror, and of disgust. thought him mad. His followers felt that he was In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, not. It was necessary to hear and see and touch it may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance him to be sure that he was not. could have excited such sensation. In truth the He had directed, in great part, the moveable em- masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited; bellishments of the seven chambers, upon occasion but the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, of this great féte, and it was his own guiding taste and gone beyond the bounds of even the prince’s which had given character to the costumes of the indefinite decorum. There are chords in the hearts masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque. There of the most reckless which cannot be touched with- were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phan- out emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom tasm—much of what has been since seen in ‘“Her- life and death are equally jests, there are matters of nani.” There were arabesque figures with unsuited which no jest can be properly made. The whole limbs and appointments. There were delirious fan- company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in cies such as the madman fashions. There was much the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro the grave. The mask which concealed the visage in the sevew chambers there stalked, in fact, a mul- was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of titude of dreams. And these, the dreams—writhed in a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have and about, taking hue from the rooms, and causing had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo this might have been endured, if not approved, by of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony the mad revellers around. But the mummer had clock which stands in the hall of the velvet.. And gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death then, momently, all is still, and all is silent save the His vesture was dabbled in 4lood—and his broad voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as brow, with all the features of the face, was besprin- they stand. But the echoes of the chime die away— kled with the scarlet horror. they have endured but an instant—and a light, half- When the eyes of the Prince Prospero fell upon subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. this spectral image (which with a slow and solemn And now again the music swells, and the dreams movement, as if more fully to sustain its réle, stalked live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than ever, to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be taking hue from the many-tinted windows through vonvulsed, in the first moment, with a strong shudder which stream the rays from the tripods. But to the either of terror or distaste ;but, in the next, his brow chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven reddened with rage. there are now uone of the maskers who venture ; for “Who dares?” he demanded hoarsely of the te oD 668 Oe) Le Os Jee Bet ne Got we i@o  SPRING’S ADVENT. 259 group that stood around him, ‘“‘who dares thus to movement had been made to arrest him. It was make mockery of our woes? Uncase the varlet that then, however, that the Prince Prospero, maddening we may know whom we have to hang to-morrow with rage and the shame of his own momentary at sunrise from the battlements. Will no one stir cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six cham- at my bidding ?—stop him and strip him, I say, of bers—while none followed him on account of a those reddened vestures of sacrilege !”” deadly terror that had seized upon all. He bore It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid stood the Prince Prospero as he uttered these words. impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the re- They rang throughout the seven rooms loudly and treating figure, when the latter, having attained the clearly—for the prince was a bold and robust man, extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and the music had become hushed at the waving of round and confronted his pursuer. There was a his hand. sharp cry—and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the It was in the blue room where stood the prince, sable carpet, upon which instantly afterwards, fell with a group of pale courtiers by his side. At first,prostrate in death the Prince Prospero. Then, sum- as he spoke, there was a slight rushing movement of moning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the this group in the direction of the intruder, who at revellers at.once threw themselves into the black the moment was also near at hand, and now, with’ apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow the speaker. But from a certain nameless awe with of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at which the mad assumptions of the mummer had in- finding the grave-cerements and corpse-like mask spired the whole party, there were found none who which they handled with so violent a rudeness, un- put forth hand to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he tenanted by any tangible form. passed within a yard of the prince’s person; and, And now was acknowledged the presence of the while the vast assembly, as if with one impulse, Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. shrank from the centres of the rooms to the walls, he And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood- made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in thé solemn and measured step which had distinguished despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the him from the first, through the blue chamber to the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the purple—through the purple to the