The Tell-Tale Heart - The Pioneer, January 1843 — reading text

, like hers, ‘and fly away from us, but raven atrice and Alsemero. aa the troubled fountain runs dry! The shafts of destiny never rend through buckler and Beat. Ihave within mine eyes all my desires: breast-plate, but reach our hearts with an awful Requests, that holy prayers ascend heaven for, and deadly certainty, through any chink in our And bring them down to furnish our defects, Come not more sweet to our necessities armor which has been left unbraced by our own Than thou unto my wishes. sin or recklessness. Beatrice would make us Als. Weare so like believe that she has a natural antipathy to De Tn our expressions, lady, that unless I borrow Flores. But antipathies are only so many The same words,I I shall never find their equals. proofs of something wanting in ourselves, Beat. How happy were this meeting, this embrace, whereby we are hindered of that perfect sym- If it were free from envy! this poor kiss, pathy with all things, for which we were crea- It has an enemy, a hateful one, ted, and without which that life, which should That wishes poison to it: how well were I now, be as harmonious as the soft concent of love, If there were none such name known as Piracquo, Nor no such tie as the command of parents! becomes harsh and jarring. ‘The thought of I should be too much blessed. De Flores is to Beatrice what the air-drawn dagger was to Macbeth; she foresees in her Als. One good service Would strike off both your fears, and I’ll go near it own heart the crime yet uncommitted, and too, trembles at the weapon even while she stretches Since you are so distressed ; remove the cause, her quivering hand to grasp it. <A terrible fas- The command ceases ; so there’ s two fears blown out cination seems to draw us on to the doing of ill With one and the same blast. deeds, the foreconsciousness whereof, graciously implanted iin our natures by God as a safeguard, * We need only refer to the masterly illustration of we misconstrue into the promptings of our evil this thought in Mr. Dana’s “ Paul Felton,” a tale of wonderful depth and power. The spiritual meaning demon. We brood over the gloomy thought of the witches in Macbeth is doubtless this tampering in an agony of fierce enjoyment. Infidels to our of a soul with its warnings against, which it mistakes own holy impulses, we blaspheme the eternal for ominous suggestions to, evil. —Se —~--. 36 THE PIONEER. Beat. os me find you sir: De Flores is led on gradually to the desired What might that service be, so strangely happy ? end, and when he has sworn to devote himself Als. The honorablest piece about man, valor: to whatever service she may lay upon him, she I’ll send a challenge to Piracquo instantly. exclaims, not daring to hear the name of ‘‘ her With what exquisite naturalness is this murdered man,’’ on her lips, till emboldened - drawn! The heart of Beatrice, afraid of itself, by slow degrees, ti ) would fain cheat itself into the belief that Alse- Then take him to thy fury ! mero gave it that dark hint which its own guilty | De F'. I thirst for him! wishes had already forestalled. To return — Beat. Alonzo de Piracquo! Beat. How? call you that extinguishing of fear, ee ee When ’t is the only way to keep it flaming ? De Flores murders Piracquo, and brings one Are not you ventured in the action, of his fingers with a ring upon it, as a token of That ’s all my joys and comforts ? pray, no more, sir: the deed, to Beatrice. She is startled at sight =Piet Though she seemingly rejects the offer, yet of him. ts Paes “ are aa = she goes on weighing the risk in her own mind. Beat. De Flores! De F’. Lady? oe eS et ——_ a Say ~~ prevailed, you ’re danger’s and not mine then ; The law would claim you from me, or obscurity ee ee Pe Be made the grave to bury you alive. She will not trust her tongue with anything I’m ape these thoughts come forth; oh keep not one more than an allusion to what she so eagerly Of this condition, sir! here was a course longed for. ee SS Found to poe sorrow on her way to death; The — would ne‘er have dried till dust had choked Beat. Thy looks promise cheerfully. them. Blood-guiltiness becomes a fouler visage ; — De F. All things are answerable, time, circum stance, Thus she works herself up to a pitch of hor- Your wishes, and my service. ror at the fancied guilt of Alsemero, and with Beat. Is 17 done then? half-conscious cunning renders her own plot, De F’. Piracquo is no more. (which she now for the first time acknowledges Beat. My joys start at mine eyes; our sweet'st to herself,) less full of loathsomeness. She delights continues, (aszde.) Are evermore born weeping’. De F’. I’ve a token for you. And now I think on one: I was to blame, I’ve marred so good a market with my scorn ; Beat. Forme? It had been done, questionless : the ugliest creature De F’. But it was sent somewhat unwillingly : Creation framed for some use ; yet to see I could not get the ring without the finger. I could not mark so much where it should be! Beat. Bless me, what hast thou done ! How full of doubt and trembling hesitation is Exclaims the horror-stricken Beatrice, the wo- the broken structure of the verse, too, and how man reviving again in her. She had hardened true to nature the lie in the last line anda herself to the abstract idea of murder, but re- half, which she will persist in telling herself! volts at this dreadful material token of it. ° Als. Lady — De F’. Why is that more Than killing the whole man? I cut his heart-strings. But she does not hear him ; she is too fearfully intent with watching a murder even now adoing How finely is the contemptuous coolness of De in her own heart. Flores, the villain by calculation, set off by the shrinking dread of Rosie. whose guilt is the Beat. (aside.) Why, men of art make much of poison, child of a ravished intercourse between her Keep one to expel another ;where was my art ? passions and her affections. The sight of the ring carries her and us back to the sweet days The scene which follows, between Beatrice of her innocency, and the picture is complete. and De Flores, is a very powerful one. Not powerful in the same degree with Lear and 'T is the first token my father made me send him. Othello, but yet in the same kind, for as much She sighs, remembering the calm purity from power is needful to the making of a violet as of which she has fallen, and yet, at the same time, an oak. It is too long for us to copy the whole with the true cunning of a guiltiness which only of it. She strives to persuade herself that half repents, strives to palliate the sin of whose De Flores is not so hideous to her after all, like terrible consciousness she must evermore be the a child talking aloud in the dark to relieve its cringing bondslave, by thinking of her father’s terrors. tyranny. The horror which a murderer feels When we are used of the physical fact of murder, and the dread To a hard face it is not so unpleasing; which creeps over him from the cold corpse of It mends still in opinion, hourly mends, his victim, exemplified by Beatrice in the above I see it by experience. ihe Hardness becomes the visage of a man well ; quotation, seem, at first thought, strange phe- It argues service, resolution, manhood, nomena in nature. But are they not in truth If cause were of employment. unwitting recognitions of the immortality of the  THE PLAYS OF THOMAS MIDDLETON. soul, as if the wrong done were wholly to the You must forget your parentage to me ; body and had no terrors for the spiritual part of You are the deed’s creature: by that name You lost your first condition, and I e you, our being? This feeling may be well called As peace and innocency have turned you out, bodily remorse, being clearly of a grosser and And made you one with me. more outward nature than that strong agony Beat. With thee, foul villain ! which shakes us inwardly when we have done De F. Yes, my fair murderess, do you