Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe

by Volume 01-05 (lit)

  object thereupon. I approached it, and touched it with my hand. It

  was a black cat - a very large one - fully as large as Pluto, and

  closely resembling him in every respect but one. Pluto had not a

  white hair upon any portion of his body; but this cat had a large,

  although indefinite splotch of white, covering nearly the whole

  region of the breast. Upon my touching him, he immediately arose,

  purred loudly, rubbed against my hand, and appeared delighted with my

  notice. This, then, was the very creature of which I was in search. I

  at once offered to purchase it of the landlord; but this person made

  no claim to it - knew nothing of it - had never seen it before.

  I continued my caresses, and, when I prepared to go home, the

  animal evinced a disposition to accompany me. I permitted it to do

  so; occasionally stooping and patting it as I proceeded. When it

  reached the house it domesticated itself at once, and became

  immediately a great favorite with my wife.

  For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me.

  This was just the reverse of what I had anticipated; but - I know not

  how or why it was - its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted

  and annoyed. By slow degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance

  rose into the bitterness of hatred. I avoided the creature; a certain

  sense of shame, and the remembrance of my former deed of cruelty,

  preventing me from physically abusing it. I did not, for some weeks,

  strike, or otherwise violently ill use it; but gradually - very

  gradually - I came to look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to

  flee silently from its odious presence, as from the breath of a

  pestilence.

  What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the discovery,

  on the morning after I brought it home, that, like Pluto, it also had

  been deprived of one of its eyes. This circumstance, however, only

  endeared it to my wife, who, as I have already said, possessed, in a

  high degree, that humanity of feeling which had once been my

  distinguishing trait, and the source of many of my simplest and

  purest pleasures.

  With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself

  seemed to increase. It followed my footsteps with a pertinacity which

  it would be difficult to make the reader comprehend. Whenever I sat,

  it would crouch beneath my chair, or spring upon my knees, covering

  me with its loathsome caresses. If I arose to walk it would get

  between my feet and thus nearly throw me down, or, fastening its long

  and sharp claws in my dress, clamber, in this manner, to my breast.

  At such times, although I longed to destroy it with a blow, I was yet

  withheld from so doing, partly by a memory of my former crime, but

  chiefly - let me confess it at once - by absolute dread of the beast.

  This dread was not exactly a dread of physical evil - and yet I

  should be at a loss how otherwise to define it. I am almost ashamed

  to own - yes, even in this felon's cell, I am almost ashamed to own -

  that the terror and horror with which the animal inspired me, had

  been heightened by one of the merest chimaeras it would be possible

  to conceive. My wife had called my attention, more than once, to the

  character of the mark of white hair, of which I have spoken, and

  which constituted the sole visible difference between the strange

  beast and the one I had destroyed. The reader will remember that this

  mark, although large, had been originally very indefinite; but, by

  slow degrees - degrees nearly imperceptible, and which for a long

  time my Reason struggled to reject as fanciful - it had, at length,

  assumed a rigorous distinctness of outline. It was now the

  representation of an object that I shudder to name - and for this,

  above all, I loathed, and dreaded, and would have rid myself of the

  monster _had I dared_ - it was now, I say, the image of a hideous -

  of a ghastly thing - of the GALLOWS ! - oh, mournful and terrible

  engine of Horror and of Crime - of Agony and of Death !

  And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere

  Humanity. And _a brute beast _- whose fellow I had contemptuously

  destroyed - _a brute beast_ to work out for _me_ - for me a man,

  fashioned in the image of the High God - so much of insufferable wo!

  Alas! neither by day nor by night knew I the blessing of Rest any

  more! During the former the creature left me no moment alone; and, in

  the latter, I started, hourly, from dreams of unutterable fear, to

  find the hot breath of _the thing_ upon my face, and its vast weight

  - an incarnate Night-Mare that I had no power to shake off -

  incumbent eternally upon my _heart !_

  Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble

  remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole

  intimates - the darkest and most evil of thoughts. The moodiness of

  my usual temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind;

  while, from the sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a

  fury to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife,

  alas! was the most usual and the most patient of sufferers.

  One day she accompanied me, upon some household errand, into the

  cellar of the old building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit.

  The cat followed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing me

  headlong, exasperated me to madness. Uplifting an axe, and

  forgetting, in my wrath, the childish dread which had hitherto stayed

  my hand, I aimed a blow at the animal which, of course, would have

  proved instantly fatal had it descended as I wished. But this blow

  was arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded, by the interference,

  into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp

  and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without

  a groan.

  This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forthwith, and

  with entire deliberation, to the task of concealing the body. I knew

  that I could not remove it from the house, either by day or by night,

  without the risk of being observed by the neighbors. Many projects

  entered my mind. At one period I thought of cutting the corpse into

  minute fragments, and destroying them by fire. At another, I resolved

  to dig a grave for it in the floor of the cellar. Again, I

  deliberated about casting it in the well in the yard - about packing

  it in a box, as if merchandize, with the usual arrangements, and so

  getting a porter to take it from the house. Finally I hit upon what I

  considered a far better expedient than either of these. I determined

  to wall it up in the cellar - as the monks of the middle ages are

  recorded to have walled up their victims.

  For a purpose such as this the cellar was well adapted. Its walls

  were loosely constructed, and had lately been plastered throughout

  with a rough plaster, which the dampness of the atmosphere had

  prevented from hardening. Moreover, in one of the walls was a

  projection, caused by a false chimney, or fireplace, that had been

  filled up, and made to resemble the red of the cellar. I m
ade no

  doubt that I could readily displace the bricks at this point, insert

  the corpse, and wall the whole up as before, so that no eye could

  detect any thing suspicious. And in this calculation I was not

  deceived. By means of a crow-bar I easily dislodged the bricks, and,

  having carefully deposited the body against the inner wall, I propped

  it in that position, while, with little trouble, I re-laid the whole

  structure as it originally stood. Having procured mortar, sand, and

  hair, with every possible precaution, I prepared a plaster which

  could not be distinguished from the old, and with this I very

  carefully went over the new brickwork. When I had finished, I felt

  satisfied that all was right. The wall did not present the slightest

  appearance of having been disturbed. The rubbish on the floor was

  picked up with the minutest care. I looked around triumphantly, and

  said to myself - "Here at least, then, my labor has not been in

  vain."

  My next step was to look for the beast which had been the cause

  of so much wretchedness; for I had, at length, firmly resolved to put

  it to death. Had I been able to meet with it, at the moment, there

  could have been no doubt of its fate; but it appeared that the crafty

  animal had been alarmed at the violence of my previous anger, and

  forebore to present itself in my present mood. It is impossible to

  describe, or to imagine, the deep, the blissful sense of relief which

  the absence of the detested creature occasioned in my bosom. It did

  not make its appearance during the night - and thus for one night at

  least, since its introduction into the house, I soundly and

  tranquilly slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder upon my

  soul!

  The second and the third day passed, and still my tormentor came

  not. Once again I breathed as a freeman. The monster, in terror, had

  fled the premises forever! I should behold it no more! My happiness

  was supreme! The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little. Some

  few inquiries had been made, but these had been readily answered.

  Even a search had been instituted - but of course nothing was to be

  discovered. I looked upon my future felicity as secured.

  Upon the fourth day of the assassination, a party of the police

  came, very unexpectedly, into the house, and proceeded again to make

  rigorous investigation of the premises. Secure, however, in the

  inscrutability of my place of concealment, I felt no embarrassment

  whatever. The officers bade me accompany them in their search. They

  left no nook or corner unexplored. At length, for the third or fourth

  time, they descended into the cellar. I quivered not in a muscle. My

  heart beat calmly as that of one who slumbers in innocence. I walked

  the cellar from end to end. I folded my arms upon my bosom, and

  roamed easily to and fro. The police were thoroughly satisfied and

  prepared to depart. The glee at my heart was too strong to be

  restrained. I burned to say if but one word, by way of triumph, and

  to render doubly sure their assurance of my guiltlessness.

  "Gentlemen," I said at last, as the party ascended the steps, "I

  delight to have allayed your suspicions. I wish you all health, and a

  little more courtesy. By the bye, gentlemen, this - this is a very

  well constructed house." [In the rabid desire to say something

  easily, I scarcely knew what I uttered at all.] - "I may say an

  _excellently_ well constructed house. These walls are you going,

  gentlemen? - these walls are solidly put together;" and here, through

  the mere phrenzy of bravado, I rapped heavily, with a cane which I

  held in my hand, upon that very portion of the brick-work behind

  which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom.

  But may God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the

  Arch-Fiend ! No sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into

  silence, than I was answered by a voice from within the tomb! - by a

  cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and

  then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream,

  utterly anomalous and inhuman - a howl - a wailing shriek, half of

  horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of

  hell, conjointly from the throats of the dammed in their agony and of

  the demons that exult in the damnation.

  Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I staggered to

  the opposite wall. For one instant the party upon the stairs remained

  motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next, a

  dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The

  corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect

  before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended

  mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had

  seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to

  the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb!

  ~~~ End of Text ~~~

  ======

  THE FALL

  OF

  THE HOUSE OF USHER

  Son cœur est un luth suspendu ;

  Sitôt qu'on le touche il rèsonne..

  _ De Béranger_ .

  DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn

  of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I

  had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary

  tract of country ; and at length found myself, as the shades of the

  evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I

  know not how it was - but, with the first glimpse of the building, a

  sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable ;

  for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable,

  because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even

  the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked

  upon the scene before me - upon the mere house, and the simple

  landscape features of the domain - upon the bleak walls - upon the

  vacant eye-like windows - upon a few rank sedges - and upon a few

  white trunks of decayed trees - with an utter depression of soul

  which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the

  after-dream of the reveller upon opium - the bitter lapse into

  everyday life - the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an

  iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart - an unredeemed