Chapter 7 of 23

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 unburthen 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 barroques. Hereafter, perhaps,

some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the

common-place—some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less

excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances

I detail with 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 or 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 favorite 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

feelings 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 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 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 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

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

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 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 fireplace,

that had been filled up, and made to resemble the red 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 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 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!