University of Virginia Library

10. CHAPTER X.
The Red Domino.

HOWLAND and myself sat on the
back seat, and Cip outside with the
driver. So we moved on.

Saving an occasional hearse,
intersecting our way, the streets
were silent and deserted as usual.
The tall houses, here and there
looming up against the increasing
twilight, were like the ghosts of houses. The
sweet human life in them had fled. Everything
was spectral and unreal, we most of all, with that
slim black box on the front seat. A phantom
carriage, dragged by phantom horses to a graveyard!

We left Agnes in the leafy French cemetery;
and, sending the negro home with the barouche,
followed on leisurely, threading the narrow streets,
arm in arm, as speechless as two statues.

We were in what is termed the French part
of the city, one of the lower municipalities — a
district as distinct from the American precincts as
Paris is. Here, in dangerous times, long ago, a
few brave men laid the foundation of the great
and miserable city. The houses, to all appearances,
were built immediately after the Deluge;
and the streets, crowded with the odd-ends of
architecture, branch off into each other in the
most whimsical fashion.

As we wheeled round the angle of one of these
wrinkled thoroughfares, our ears were saluted by
an exclamation of deep satisfaction, and a merry
peal of girlish laughter; at the same instant we
found ourselves face to face with two persons who
were apparently costumed for a bal masque —
one, with a certain uncouth dignity, in the showy
court-dress of the time of Louis Quatorze, and the

other, seemingly a young and pretty woman,
dressed as a page. The faces of both were concealed
by semi-masks, a short fringed curtain
shielding the lower features.

A door at the right of us was thrown open,
and a flood of light fell glitteringly on these two
personages who occupied the confined sidewalk,
and seemed disposed to dispute our passage.[1]

Howland attempted to push by when the page
laid her small gloved hand on his shoulder.

“By your leave, messieurs,” said the page,
“this is Louis XIV! — is n't it, Charley?”

The man nodded.

“We were instructed by our queen,” continued
the mask, “to fill two vacant seats at her royal
board. She gives a banquet to-night; plates were
set for twenty favorites of the ermine. Eighteen
came, and two didn't — they neglected even to

send their regrets. Impolite in them—was n't
it, Charley?”

“Confoundedly,” said the monarch, curtly.

“But they had some slight excuse; they were
quite dead; and we forgive 'em, don't we,
Charley?”

“We forgive 'em.”

“What does all this mummery mean?” said
Howland, impatiently.

“There! don't be cross. It means that we
crave your presence at the feast. O, you must
come! Or we'll have the whole regal household
buzzing at your ears in a pair of seconds!”

While the girl spoke, a dozen maskers—mandarins,
satyrs, and outlandish figures,—crowded
the doorway, and seemed waiting only for the
word to seize us bodily. There was no chance
for retreat.

“Let us go with these jesters,” said Howland,
in a whisper, “since we cannot help ourselves
without trouble. We are among the Romans.
This is a new edition of the Decamerone.”

“How fortunately we met you,” cried the
girl. “Come!”

Her mask slipped aside, and for an instant I
caught a profile view of a pretty, aquiline nose,
one sunny eye, and a mouth llke a moss-rose.

“Now, Mollie,” said the man, thrusting his
arm through mine. The page took coquettish
possession of Howland.

We were conducted throught a bare, uncarpeted
entry, at the end of which a green-baize door
opened into a saloon. The masqueraders whom
we had seen at the entrance, now seated themselves
at the table, which extended nearly the
entire length of the room.

Our appearance on the threshold was greeted
with a shout of laughter.

A woman in a blood-red domino and scarlet
satin mask, half rose from a fauteuil, as we
entered, waved her hand to us graciously, and
sunk back on the downy cushions with such unassumed
grace and majesty, that I involuntarily

removed my hat. Howland bit his lip, and made
a low bow.

“You are welcome, gentlemen,” said the Red
Domino.

The voice was low, and sweet, and tremulous,
like the sound of a harp-string, lightly touched.

The page proceeded to introduce to us the
motley people, half of whom were women, and all
evidently citizens of Bohemia.

“This,” began the girl, with mock gravity,
“is our light-o'-foot, Zephyr, eating caramels;
that dear creature, there, in blue, who is waiting
for a chance to press Jacques' fingers under the
table, is called Next-to-heaven, but she's only
next to Jacques, which is much the same thing.
The young lady with wings, who looks as if she
were going to fly away, and never does, is
L'Amour. Dear me! some of you have characters,
and some of you have n't. This is Rose
Bonbon, and this, Madam la Marquise with the
snowiest shoulder in Louisiana. You should see
them with their masks off—and be unhappy!”

“This,” proceeded the speaker, turning to a
slim harlequin, who resembled the small blade of
a penknife, “is a sentimental gentleman who
writes verses to eyebrows—he makes six copies
of each sonetto, and so kills half a dozen birds
with one stone. This is Robert le—what's-his
name. This is Hamlet, you know him by his
inky cloak: this is Petruchio, the woman-tamer
tamed by a woman, (Mrs. P. lectures him!) and
here is Friar Lawrence, who will confess you for
a picayune, provided, always, you are young,
handsome, and feminine—but you must be the
last, he's so pious!”

“And you,” said Howland, smiling in spite of
himself, “you are—”

“Nobody in particular, very much at your
service!”

And the girl walked archly away on the points
of her toes, like a ballet-dancer.

While this outré introduction was being concluded,
I glanced around the salon. A globed
lamp, suspended by a silver chain, hung like a

full moon over the centre of the table. Projecting
from the frescoed walls on either side were
Chinese lanterns, covered with flat landscapes and
hieroglyphics. Ancient, mediæval and modern
furniture was piled about the room in grotesque
confusion. It was like an antiquary's collection.
No two pieces matching. One window was hung
with blue brocade, alive with an Etruscan vine-work
of gold thread; a second, unpleasantly green
with a Venitian blind. The floor was muffled in
a Turkish carpet, wrought so naturally with
azaleas and ipomeas, that their perfumes seemed
to fill the chamber.

But the lounges, the drapery, and the inlaid
chairs, as I looked at them more closely, proved
to be only clever imitations of the real thing—
the painted and gilded paraphernalia of the stage.
This room, I have since thought, was probably
the green-room of the Italian Opera House, fitted
up for the occasion, from “the properties.”

We took our places at the table, and the wine
went round; jests flew from lip to lip, like

mocking-birds, and “short swallow-flights of
song” from the mouths of mysterious women;
while a band of unseen musicians, somewhere
behind a screen, now and then broke into a
delirious waltz.

All this was so bizarre, so like an ingenious
dream, that I expected every moment to wake up,
and find myself sitting on our verandah, at home,
a burnt-out segar at my feet, and the fountain
laughing in the garden.

Howland alone was silent and distrait, emptying
glass after glass with the mechanical air of an
automaton.

Opposite him sat a bleak, attenuated man clad
in black silk tights, the breast and hips of which
were trimmed with strips of white cloth, in painful
imitation of a skeleton. His hands were long and
bony, and needed no artifice to make them seem
as if they belonged to the pasteboard death's-head
that screened his features.

After some minutes, I became aware that this
singular person regulated his motions by those of

Howland, resting his head on one hand, and
draining his glass at the same time Mark drank.
I wondered if Howland noticed him.

“A toast!” cried the Harlequin, springing up
in his chair, and resting one parti-colored foot on
the edge of the table.

We all stood, excepting the Red Domino, with
fresh glasses. I did not hear what the toast was,
for clink! went a glass; and the sharp splinters
sparkled on the cloth.

“The queen has dropt her goblet,” said Rose
Bonbon.

“Then she must sing us a song to take the
sound out of our ears,” cried the Friar.

“A penalty, a penalty!”

“A song!” shrieked a dozen voices.

The Red Domino rose slowly from the fauteuil,
and the voice which I had longed to hear again,
issued tremulously from beneath the chin-curtain
of the mask. I watched her eyes as she sang:

Here the skeleton-man leaned heavily against
the table, and Howland smiled — but such a bitter
smile. He had won the drinking match!

Two maskers carried the mime, who had merely
fainted, to an adjoining room.

“That was the cantatrice's husband,” said the
Blue Lady to me, in a whisper,

“Her husband? Good heavens! see how
coolly she takes it!”

“Yes. La Reine does n't worship him.”

“No?”

“The Cholera,” said the Harlequin.

“The dark Death,” said Hamlet, “ `a little
more than kin and less than kind!' ”

“The song, give us the song!” cried a man,
covered from head to feet with spangles, looking
as if he had just been dipt into a bath of quicksilver.

“The song, the song!” shrieked the voices.

The Red Domino had not changed her position

during this scene, but stood there like a statue
carved out of a boulder of red chalk-stone.

Howland, with his face deathly pale, bent
forward to listen.

Again that sweet voice, lower and more tremulous
than before, stole into the air.

It was not fancy this time, her eyes burned
through the mask at Mark:

Howland rose wildly from his chair, and staggering
toward the Red Domino, sunk down at her feet.

“I am dying,” said Howland, “but I know
that voice! My heart is breaking with it!”

With an air of love and remorse, she stooped
over Mark, and folded him in her arms.

“Your face!” said Howland. “Your face,
quick! Let me look on your face!”

Then Celeste tore off the mask and rested her
head on his bosom. Then she sobbed and
moaned — the soul that was within her.

So she comes to me out of the gray mists and
shadows of the Past — the woman who found her
heart when it was somewhat late.

This was years ago. But every Mardi Gras, it
is said, a sorrowful queenly lady, robed from foot
to forehead in deep crimson, glides in among the
gayer maskers, and whenever she appears, the
laugh dies on the lip.