The Plague, Pestilence & Apocalypse MEGAPACK™

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?”

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  “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—

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  “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?

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  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,

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  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!”

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  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 .

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  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

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  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,

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  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

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  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