英语短篇小说欣赏：Black Cat（下）
One night as I sat, half stupefied, in a den of more than infamy, myattention 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 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 it at 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 y si 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 rest of the cellar.
I made no doubt that I could readily displace the 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 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 could not every poss be
distinguished from the old, and with this I very carefully went over the new
brick-work. 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 free-man. 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 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
tolling 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!
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