MDDM Ch. 41 Summary

[jbor]

A playful exchange between John and Elizabeth ("Zab") LeSpark leads us into
a recount of the "the infamous Lepton Ridotto".

As a young businessman John Wade LeSpark had travelled around the
countryside meeting with customers and suppliers. These trips often brought
him to the "Iron-Plantation of Lord and Lady Lepton", a great steel-mill,
the efficiency and productivity of which impressed him greatly. A notation
from Wicks's journal intercepts John's reverie and then, after another pause
in the text, the focus on Mason and Dixon resumes.

Cha. and Jere arrive at what appears to be an abandoned cabin. They enter,
and find it much larger inside than out, and ablaze in artificial light. The
painted ceiling depicts the "Denizens of Hell" in garish colours.

The night is moonless, and Mason assures Dixon they must stay in this creepy
abode. Strange orchestral music plays, and they seek out its source. As they
pass through a "grand Archway", topped by a scene of orgy and bestiality
sculpted in pink marble, they are formally announced. It is a masked ball.

Unnerved and self-conscious, though in typically slapstick mode, they are
advised by Captain Dasp, an "ominous Shadow", to "impersonate" what the
other guests "assume you to be", or else be devoured.

Lady Lepton introduces herself to the pair, and Dixon unwisely mentions that
he had seen her once before, at Raby Castle in his youth. Unexpectedly, Lady
Lepton admits to remembering Dixon and being intrigued by him, and Jere is
entranced again as he was back then.

The music is played by a "Slave Orchestra" - harpsichord, viol, pipes.

Dixon had spied on the young Lady Lepton at Raby. She had gone on to marry
the "multiply-bepoxed Lord Lepton", however, and after he had lost and
regained his fortune, had returned with him to America, to live in gaudy
opulence and what seems a state of "permanent disappointment".

They meet Lord Lepton, who is an eccentric fool, and various discourses,
cryptic and otherwise, on the word "chain" are advanced, followed by
speculations on what might be concealed beneath a woman's skirts. Dixon has
a moment with one of the servant girls, and then Lord Lepton tells him about
"the Widows of Christ", an order of heretic nuns who train young girls in
the arts of "all Sins". Mason and Dixon confer, and Cha. asks Captain Dasp
whether the girls "get fat" - all that Gluttony. (Mason will later avow that
he knew Dasp was a renegade French spy at just that instant. There is a
brief interlude exemplifying the sort of conversation heard in Catholic
households in Maryland when such a fugitive seeks shelter.)

Finally distant gongs sound and the guests retire to another room set
beneath an enormous hemispherical dome made (by Jesuits) of glass. It is the
Gaming Room - "a Paradise of Chance".

best