APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/authors/poe/blackcat/BLACKCAT

Text File | 1996-07-21 | 21.4 KB | 362 lines

                         The Black Cat


For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I
neither expect nor solicit belief.  Mad indeed would I be to expect it,
in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence.  Yet, mad am I
not--and very surely do I not dream.  But to-morrow I die, and to-day I
would unburden my soul.  My immediate purpose is to place before the
world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere
household events.  In their consequences, these events have
terrified--have tortured--have destroyed me.  Yet I will not attempt to
expound them.  To me, they have presented little but horror--to many
they will seem less terrible than baroques.  Hereafter, perhaps, some
intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the
commonplace--some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less
excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I
detail with <p 564 awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very
natural causes and effects.

From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my
disposition.  My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make
me the jest of my companions.  I was especially fond of animals, and was
indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets.  With these I spent
most of my time, and never was so happy as when feeding and caressing
them.  This peculiarity of character grew with my growth, and, in my
manhood, I derived from it one of my principal sources of pleasure.  To
those who have cherished an affection for a faithful and sagacious dog,
I need hardly be at the trouble of explaining the nature of the
intensity of the gratification thus derivable.  There is something in
the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly
to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry
friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.

I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not
uncongenial with my own.  Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she
lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable kind.  We
had birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat.

This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black,
and sagacious to an astonishing degree.  In speaking of his
intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with
superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion,
which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise.  Not that she was
ever serious upon this point--and I mention the matter at all for no
better reason than that it happens, just now, to be remembered.

Pluto--this was the cat's name--was my favourite pet and playmate.  I
alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house.  It
was even with difficulty that I could prevent him from following me
through the streets.

Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during which
my general temperament and character--through the instrumentality of the
fiend Intemperance--had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical
alteration for the worse.  I grew, day by day, more moody, more
irritable, more regardless of the feel-<p 565ings of others.  I suffered
myself to use intemperate language to my wife.  At length, I even
offered her personal violence.  My pets, of course, were made to feel
the change in my disposition.  I not only neglected, but ill-used them.
For Pluto, however, I still retained sufficient regard to restrain me
from maltreating him, as I made no scruple of maltreating the rabbits,
the monkey, or even the dog, when by accident, or through affection,
they came in my way.  But my disease grew upon me--for what disease is
like alcohol?--and at length even Pluto, who was now becoming old, and
consequently somewhat peevish--even Pluto began to experience the
effects of my ill-temper.

One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about
town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence.  I seized him; when,
in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand
with his teeth.  The fury of a demon instantly possessed me.  I knew
myself no longer.  My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight
from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured,
thrilled every fibre of my frame.  I took from my waistcoat pocket a
pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and
deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket!  I blush, I burn, I
shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity.

When reason returned with the morning--when I had slept off the fumes of
the night's debauch--I experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of
remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty; but it was, at best,
a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched.  I
again plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all memory of the
deed.

In the meantime the cat slowly recovered.  The socket of the lost eye
presented, it is true, a frightful appearance, but he no longer appeared
to suffer any pain.  He went about the house as usual, but, as might be
expected, fled in extreme terror at my approach.  I had so much of my
old heart left, as to be at first grieved by this evident dislike on the
part of a creature which had once so loved me.  But this feeling soon
gave place to irritation.  And then came, as if to my final and
irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS.  Of this spirit
philosophy takes no account.  Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives,
than I am that perverseness is one <p 566 of the primitive impulses of
the human heart--one of the indivisible primary faculties, or
sentiments, which give direction to the character of man.  Who has not,
a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for
no other reason than because he knows he should not?  Have we not a
perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate
that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?  This
spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow.  It was this
unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself--to offer violence to its
own nature--to do wrong for the wrong's sake only--that urged me to
continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the
unoffending brute.  One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about
its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree--hung it with the tears
streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart--hung
it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given
me no reason of offence--hung it because I knew that in so doing I was
committing a sin--a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul
as to place it--if such a thing were possible--even beyond the reach of
the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God.

On the night of the day on which this cruel deed was done, I was aroused
from sleep by the cry of 'Fire!'  The curtains of my bed were in flames.
The whole house was blazing.  It was with great difficulty that my wife,
a servant, and myself, made our escape from the conflagration.  The
destruction was complete.  My entire worldly wealth was swallowed up,
and I resigned myself thenceforward to despair.

I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and
effect between the disaster and the atrocity.  But I am detailing a
chain of facts, and wish not to leave even a possible link imperfect.
On the day succeeding the fire, I visited the ruins.  The walls, with
one exception, had fallen in.  This exception was found in a compartment
wall, not very thick, which stood about the middle of the house, and
against which had rested the head of my bed.  The plastering had here,
in great measure, resisted the action of the fire--a fact which I
attributed to its having been recently spread.  About this wall a dense
crowd were collected, and many persons seemed to be examining a
particular portion of it with <p 567 very minute and eager attention.
The words 'strange!' 'singular!' and other similar expressions, excited
my curiosity.  I approached and saw, as if graven in bas-relief upon the
white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat.  The impression was given
with an accuracy truly marvellous.  There was a rope about the animal's
neck.

When I first beheld this apparition--for I could scarcely regard it as
less--my wonder and my terror were extreme.  But at length reflection
came to my aid.  The cat, I remembered, had been hung in a garden
adjacent to the house.  Upon the alarm of fire, this garden had been
immediately filled by the crowd--by some one of whom the animal must
have been cut from the tree and thrown, through an open window, into my
chamber.  This had probably been done with the view of arousing me from
sleep.  The falling of other walls had compressed the victim of my
cruelty into the substance of the freshly-spread plaster; the lime of
which, with the flames and the ammonia from the carcass, had then
accomplished the portraiture as I saw it.

Although I thus readily accounted to my reason, if not altogether to my
conscience, for the startling fact just detailed, it did not the less
fail to make a deep impression upon my fancy.  For months I could not
rid myself of the phantasm of the cat; and, during this period, there
came back into my spirit a half-sentiment that seemed, but was not,
remorse.  I went so far as to regret the loss of the animal, and to look
about me, among the vile haunts which I now habitually frequented, for
another pet of the same species, and of somewhat similar appearance,
with which to supply its place.

One night as I sat, half-stupefied, in a den of more than infamy, my
attention was suddenly drawn to some black object, reposing upon the
head of one of the immense hogsheads of gin, or of rum, which
constituted the chief furniture of the apartment.  I had been looking
steadily at the top of this hogshead for some minutes, and what now
caused me surprise was the fact that I had not sooner perceived the
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 <p 568 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
favourite 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
me.  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 <p 569 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 chimeras 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, resumed 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 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 woe!  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 nightmare 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 <p 570 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 neighbours.  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 into the well in the yard--about packing it in a box, as if
merchandise, 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 fire-place, that had been filled up and made to
resemble the rest of the cellar.  I made 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 anything suspicious.

And in this calculation I was not deceived.  By means of a crowbar I
easily dislodged the bricks, and having carefully <p 571 deposited the
body against the inner wall, I propped it in that position, while, with
little trouble, I relaid 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 labour 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 forbore 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 free man.  The monster, in terror, had fled
the premises for ever!  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 <p 572 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-by, 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 frenzy of
bravado, I rapped heavily, with a cane which I held in my hand, upon
that very portion of the brickwork behind which stood the corpse of the
wife of my bosom.

But may God shield and deliver me from the fangs on 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, half of horror and half of
triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell, conjointly from the
throats of the damned 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!