"The Oblong Box" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

neither brought him a dollar nor had any expectations from any
source whatever. "He had married," he said, "for love, and for love
only; and his bride was far more than worthy of his love." When I
thought of these expressions, on the part of my friend, I confess that
I felt indescribably puzzled. Could it be possible that he was
taking leave of his senses? What else could I think? He, so refined,
so intellectual, so fastidious, with so exquisite a perception of
the faulty, and so keen an appreciation of the beautiful! To be
sure, the lady seemed especially fond of him- particularly so in his
absence- when she made herself ridiculous by frequent quotations of
what had been said by her "beloved husband, Mr. Wyatt." The word
"husband" seemed forever- to use one of her own delicate
expressions- forever "on the tip of her tongue." In the meantime, it
was observed by all on board, that he avoided her in the most
pointed manner, and, for the most part, shut himself up alone in his
state-room, where, in fact, he might have been said to live
altogether, leaving his wife at full liberty to amuse herself as she
thought best, in the public society of the main cabin.
My conclusion, from what I saw and heard, was, that, the artist,
by some unaccountable freak of fate, or perhaps in some fit of
enthusiastic and fanciful passion, had been induced to unite himself
with a person altogether beneath him, and that the natural result,
entire and speedy disgust, had ensued. I pitied him from the bottom of
my heart- but could not, for that reason, quite forgive his
incommunicativeness in the matter of the "Last Supper." For this I
resolved to have my revenge.
One day he came upon deck, and, taking his arm as had been my
wont, I sauntered with him backward and forward. His gloom, however
(which I considered quite natural under the circumstances), seemed
entirely unabated. He said little, and that moodily, and with
evident effort. I ventured a jest or two, and he made a sickening
attempt at a smile. Poor fellow!- as I thought of his wife, I wondered
that he could have heart to put on even the semblance of mirth. I
determined to commence a series of covert insinuations, or innuendoes,
about the oblong box- just to let him perceive, gradually, that I
was not altogether the butt, or victim, of his little bit of
pleasant mystification. My first observation was by way of opening a
masked battery. I said something about the "peculiar shape of that
box-," and, as I spoke the words, I smiled knowingly, winked, and
touched him gently with my forefinger in the ribs.
The manner in which Wyatt received this harmless pleasantry
convinced me, at once, that he was mad. At first he stared at me as if
he found it impossible to comprehend the witticism of my remark; but
as its point seemed slowly to make its way into his brain, his eyes,
in the same proportion, seemed protruding from their sockets. Then
he grew very red- then hideously pale- then, as if highly amused
with what I had insinuated, he began a loud and boisterous laugh,
which, to my astonishment, he kept up, with gradually increasing
vigor, for ten minutes or more. In conclusion, he fell flat and
heavily upon the deck. When I ran to uplift him, to all appearance