by Robert Reed
me lose myself in thee .”
The shadow had passed, and then in her anxiety Daphne became
cold and still .
Thoth roused himself and looked . Then he uttered a great cry—
“Too late; all is over!”
“Art thou certain?”
THOTH, by Joseph Shield Nicholson | 653
“Every one by this time is dead beyond recall . Thus ends the
greatest scheme ever planned by man .”
CHAPTER XX
THE RETURN TO ATHENS
Although Thoth assured Daphne in the most explicit manner that
the whole assembly of the royal race must have perished, she in-
sisted upon instant flight.
The danger had been so great and the culminating events so ap-
palling, that she desired above everything to be hundreds of leagues
from the scene .
Thoth became silent and gloomy, and most reluctantly agreed to
obey her requests . Daphne attempted to soothe him, and to make his
deed appear great and noble, but without effect .
“Surely thou dost not repent?” she said .
He replied as if he had not heard her question—
“Canst thou not remain with me a few months in this city until I
arrange some kind of order? There are none left now but the people
thou hast seen, as harmless as sheep, and, without a ruler, as help-
less . My brothers were weaker than I, but every one played some
necessary part . If I leave the city without a guiding mind, a disaster
is possible . Why art thou in such haste to be gone? Thine enemies
are irrevocably dead .”
“I fear even the dead,” she answered . “I cannot stay in this place .”
“Not even with me—in the first glow of our love?”
“Restore me to Greece,” she said, “and then, if thou wilt, return
hither and put in order the affairs of thy giants and pigmies .”
“And this,” he said bitterly, “is thy love, when for thee I have
sacrificed everything.”
“Restore me to Greece,” she said; “I can stay no longer in this
dreadful place .”
He yielded, and in silence conducted her to the car . Then he said
to her with gentle, affectionate persuasion—
THOTH, by Joseph Shield Nicholson | 654
“Drink again of the nepenthe, and thou shalt awake in Athens .”
She hesitated, as if with distrust, and he said with a tone of re-
proach—
“Nay, if I intended harm to thee, there are still a thousand ways in
which I could show my power .”
She drank as he bade her, and again felt the strange soothing
effect of the drug .
* * * *
She was awakened by the words of Thoth .
“Thou art at the rocks from which we departed, and the dawn
is near at hand . Here is abundance of gold and jewels . Meet me at
daybreak in the same place in ten days .”
He kissed her hand and said—
“I return to my people to set the city in order .”
And without further farewell he entered the car and disappeared .
* * * *
Some peasants found Daphne and took her into the city .
The plague had vanished, and she found that many friends and
companions had survived . When questioned as to her journey, she
said simply that the vessel had been wrecked, and that she alone had
been saved, and after much toil and suffering she had been restored
to Athens by a man of Grecian birth, who wished to take her to wife .
She showed the treasures in token of the truth of her words .
* * * *
Every day, as the old familiar life was renewed, the recollection
of Thoth and his city became more odious to her .
On all sides she saw vestiges of the plague, and she could not
efface from her mind the thought that he and his companions had
first implanted it in Greece. How could she love a man who had
done such a deed?
THOTH, by Joseph Shield Nicholson | 655
She began to dread his return . She knew not what to do . She
feared if she let him depart from her in anger that he might renew
the work of destruction .
She feared to disclose the secret to the people and those in
authority . She doubted if, against his will, they could overpower
him,—and in her heart she wished him no harm—least of all, death
by her devices .
She could not forget the fate from which he had rescued her, and
the sacrifice which he had made.
The appointed day arrived, and still her mind was divided by
doubt .
Before daybreak she was at the meeting-place—alone . The scene
of her former departure rose before her, and she wondered if again
she could trust herself with this man .
* * * *
The first light of day appeared, and she saw no one. The light
became stronger and larger, and she saw, as it were, a large bird in
the distance, advancing rapidly towards her over the sea . She knew
that Thoth would soon be beside her .
Nearer and nearer he came, and she pictured to herself his face
aflame with eagerness and love.
Suddenly, about fifty paces from the shore, without warning, the
car fell, like a wounded bird, into the sea . Daphne waited in breath-
less expectation, and in a few moments Thoth rose to the surface,
and, swimming with great difficulty, made his way to the shore.
She ran down to meet him, and when he reached the land, she
observed that he was pallid with suffering .
The water at the place was deep, and the rocks rough and cruel .
She bent down and assisted him to land, and as he felt her touch, a
look of pleasure crossed his suffering face .
“Art thou hurt?” she said .
“My bodily hurt,” he said, “is nothing, but I fear to tell thee the
whole of my evil fortune . My city, with all its people and wealth and
power, is buried in the sands of the desert—not a trace is left . There,
THOTH, by Joseph Shield Nicholson | 656
in the depth of the sea, lies the last remnant of our skill . I stand
before thee a nameless, powerless . Yet if thou wilt only love me, I
regret nothing,” and he looked with longing into her eyes .
“Tell me but one thing,” she said; “assure me that thou thyself
didst not bring hither the pestilence that destroyed my race .”
His face darkened, and he said—
“That is long since past, and I have become a different being .”
She shrank back, and said—
“At least, say that it was thy companions—that thine own hands
are guiltless .”
“Surely thou didst know before that I alone did it,” he said .
Horror seized her, and she cried—
“How can I forget? How can I dwell with thee or love thee?”
But he said with passionate entreaty—
“Now I am altogether different . Since I knew thee, it is as if I had
been born again .”
But she looked at him with dismay and undisguised terror .
“Alas! these are empty words, and the dreadful deed cannot be
undone . How can a man be born again?”
Thoth looked at her, and for a moment seemed to wait for some
sign of relenting, and then he said, hopeles
sly—
“Then there is but one course left .”
He seized her hand passionately, and she tried to escape .
“Nay,” he said, “fear no violence . I have always treated thee with
honour and respect .”
She left her hand quietly in his, and he raised it to his lips and
kissed it .
“Farewell,” he said; “but hereafter, when thou thinkest of me,
remember that my last words were true, and that the man who loved
thee was not the man who did this wrong .”
Then he turned, and, without a word, plunged into the sea .
In a moment bitter repentance seized on Daphne’s mind . Her
memory was filled with recollections of the kindness of the man.
“Come back! come back!” she cried . “I believe thee! I love thee!”
THOTH, by Joseph Shield Nicholson | 657
But there was no answer, save the lapping of the waves on the
shore .
EPILOGUE.
I, Xenophilos, physician and philosopher, having wandered forth
to meditate by the sea, found Daphne in a swoon . For many years
she lived affected by what appeared to be a curious madness, but
before her death she seemed to recover somewhat, and out of her
narrative I have, with difficulty, pieced together this history.
I will only add that the body of a man, like one of the Egyptian
merchants, was afterwards washed ashore . Near the spot, and many
years after, some divers found the remains of a curious, unintel-
ligible mechanical contrivance, partly destroyed by the sea .
THOTH, by Joseph Shield Nicholson | 658
THE MASQUE OF THE RED
DEATH, by Edgar Allan Poe
Originally published in 1842.
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 nor 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 ex-
ternal 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
THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, by Edgar Allan Poe | 659
was wine . All these and security were within . Without was the “Red
Death” .
It was towards the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclu-
sion, 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 . These 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 ei-
ther 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 colour 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 or-
naments 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 colour of the windows failed to cor-
respond with the decorations . The panes here were scarlet—a deep
blood colour . 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,
THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, by Edgar Allan Poe | 660
opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire,
that projected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly il-
lumined 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 em-
phasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra
were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to
harken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evo-
lutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company;
and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that th
e
giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands
over their brows as if in confused revery or meditation . But when
the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the as-
sembly; 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 colours
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
THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, by Edgar Allan Poe | 661
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 movable embellishments of
the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fête; and it was
his own guiding taste which had given character to the masquerad-
ers . 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 were 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 cham-
bers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams . And these—the
dreams—writhed in and about taking hue from the rooms, and caus-
ing 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