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

urge me ? a murder upon the soul of our brother, and have been marked on our foreheads as spiritual Cains, Yes, there are no bounds of caste, no grades by ingratitude, hypocrisy, mistrust, want of of rank, in sin. If we may be born again in faith, or any other lie against God.* virtue, so also may we be in sin, and we bear The remainder of this scene between De some trace of the hideous features of our second Flores and Beatrice is all of it striking, but we mother to our graves. have not room to quote it all. De Flores tells A very striking and forcible line is put into her the loathsome price at which she has bought the mouth of De Flores when he first meets Piracquo’s death and she exclaims, Tomaso, Piracquo’s brother, after the murder. Why, ’t is impossible thou canst be so wicked, I’d fain get off, this man’s not for my company, Or shelter such a cunning cruelty, IT smell his brother’s blood when I come near him. To make his death the murderer of my honor ! Thy language is so bold and vicious, Tom. Come hither, kind and true one; I remember, I cannot see which way I can forgive it My brother loved thee well. With any modesty. De F’. O, purely, dear sir! Methinks I’m now again a killing him, No guilt can ever sear out of a woman’s soul He brings it so fresh to me. (aside.) the essential tenderness and purity of its nature. Desecrated as its dwelling may be by infamy In another scene between Beatrice and De and shame, with meek and silent forgiveness it Flores, she is made to say something which is comes home again to its ruined cell, and gently full of touching pathos. She suspects her maid effaces, as far as it can, the ruthless traces of of having betrayed her to her husband. De the destroyer. Alas! where the celestial Flores asks, whiteness of woman’s nature is most bedimmed, Who would trust a waiting-woman ? she stands most in need of the uplifting sympa- thy of her sisters, who only give her scorn or a Beat. I must trust somebody. distant pity which makes her but the more an How truly is here expressed the wilderness outcast. How more ennobling and worthy of of bleak loneliness into which guilt drives those us, it is to seek out and cherish the soiled it possesses, forcing them, when that sweet remnant of an angelic nature in the lepers of spring of peacefulness, which bubbles up so sin against whom the hard world has shut its freshly in the open confidingness of joy, is cut iron doors, than to worship it (which we are not off, to seek a sympathy in their degradation, over-ready to do) where it shines unclouded in and in the bewildering darkness of doubt and the noble and the wise. suspicion, to ¢rust some one, even though it be This modesty of Beatrice is one of the most only with the story of their shame. In its lowest touchingly natural traits in her character. De and most fallen estate, the spirit of man cannot Flores spurned it as he would a worthless shake off its inborn feeling of brotherhood, which flower, whispers it to seek for that sympathy which in happier days it was perhaps too slow to grant. Pish! you forget yourself ; It is sorrow which teaches us most nearly how A woman dipped in blood, and talk of modesty ! full of sustainment and help we may be to our Beat. O, misery of sin! would I’d been bound fellows, and how much we in our turn stand in Perpetually unto my living hate need of them; and that when once selfishness In that Piracquo, than to hear these words ! has rusted apart that chain which binds us so Think but upon the distance that creation Set ’twixt thy blood and mine, and keep thee there. closely to man, it has also broken the support- ing tie which links us with uplifting trustfulness She shrinks behind her pride, but the next to the all-enfolding sympathy of God. speech of De Flores drives her forth from her In the last act Beatrice confesses her crime flimsy shelter. ‘The speech is a very vigorous to her husband, and he cries bitterly one and full of moral truth. O, thou art all deformed! De F’. Look but into your conscience, read me Beat. Forget not, sir, there, It for your sake was done: shall greater dangers 'T is a true book; you ’ll ‘' me there your equal : Make the less welcome ? Pish! fly not to your birth, but settle you Als. O, thou should’st have gone In what the act has made you, you’re no more now ; A thousand leagues about to have avoided This dangerous bridge of blood! here we are lost! * This bodily feeling is painted with a terrible truth There is a sternly truthful naturalness in these and distinctness of coloring in Hood’s “Dream of Eugene Aram,” and with no less strength by the words of Alsemero. ‘To a soul highly wrought powerful imagination of Mr. Poe, in his story of the up, language resolves itself into its original ele- “ Tell-tale heart,” on page 29 of the present number. ments, and the relations and resemblances of  38 THE PIONEER. things present themselves to it rather than the electric sympathy we feel the bewilderment of things themselves, so that the language of pas- our guide’s mind through the hand with which sion, in which conventionality is overwhelmed he leads us, and refuse to go farther, when, if by the bursting forth of the original savage left to ourselves, our very doubt would have nature, is always metaphorical.* enticed us onward. aan The tragic depth of the climax of this drama To show our author’s more graceful and can only be thoroughly felt in a perusal of the delicate powers, we copy the following from whole. We can only quote a few sentences. another tragedy : There is much pathos in what the broken-hearted Beatrice says to her father, as she is dying. How near am I now to a happiness The earth exceeds not! not another like it ; O, come not near me, sir, I shali defile you! The treasures of the deep are not so precious As the concealed comforts of a man I am that of your blood was taken from you Locked up in woman’s love. I scent the air For your better health; look no more upon it, Of blessings when I come but near the house : But cast it to the ground regardlessly, What a delicious breath marriage sends forth ! Let the common sewer take it from distinction, The violet-bed's not sweeter. Honest wedlock Beneath the stars, upon yon meteor Is like a banqueting house built in a garden Ever hung my fate, ’mongst things corruptible ; On which the spring’s chaste flowers take delight (Pointing to De Flores.) To cast their modest odors ; when base lust I ne’er could pluck it from him; my loathing With all her powders, paintings, and best pride, Was prophet to the rest, but ne’er believed: Is but a fair house built by a ditch side. Mine honor fell with him, and now my life. ‘ . : Now for a welcome Able to draw men’s envies upon man ; The concluding words of the play which A kiss now that shall hang upon my lip Alsemero addresses to his bereaved father-in- As sweet as morning dew upon a rose, law, are fragrant with beautiful and sincere And full as long. humanity. Another, from the same play : Sir, you have yet a son’s duty living, Please you, accept it; let that your sorrow, O, hast thou left me, then, Bianca, utterly ? As it goes from your eye, go from your heart; Bianca, now I miss thee! O, return, Man and his sorrow at the grave must part. And save the faith of woman! I ne’er felt — All we can do to comfort one another, The loss of thee till now ; ’tis an affliction To stay a brother's sorrow for a brother, Of greater weight than youth was made to bear; To dry a child from the kind father’s eyes, As if apunishment of after-life Is to no purpose, it rather multiplies: Were fallen upon man here, so new it is Your only smiles have power to cause re-live To flesh and blood, so strange, so insupportable ! The dead again, or in their rooms to give ‘ ‘ , Can’st thou forget Brother a new brother, father a child; The dear pains my love took ? how it has watched If these appear, all griefs are reconciled. Whole nights together, in all weathers, for thee, Yet stood in heart more merry than the tempest The dramatic power of Middleton is rather of That sung about mine ears ? the suggestive kind, than of that elaborately We shall copy a few scattered passages, and minute and finished order, which can trust conclude. wholly to its own completeness for effect. Only Shakspeare can so ‘‘ on horror’s head THE SINS OF GREAT MEN. horrors accumulate,’’ as to make the o’er- Every sin thou commit’st shows like a flame charged heart stand aghast and turn back with Upon a mountain ; ‘tis seen far about, trembling haste from the drear abyss in which And, with a big wind made of popular breath, it