"Edgar Allan Poe. The Tell-Tale Heart" - читать интересную книгу автора

moved on the bed suddenly as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back
- but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness (for the
shutters were close fastened through fear of robbers), and so I knew that he
could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily,
steadily.
I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb
slipped upon the tin fastening , and the old man sprang up in the bed,
crying out, "Who's there?"
I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a
muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still
sitting up in the bed, listening; just as I have done night after night
hearkening to the death watches in the wall.
Presently, I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of
mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief - oh, no! It was the
low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged
with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all
the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its
dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew
what the old man felt, and pitied him although I chuckled at heart. I knew
that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise when he had
turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had
been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to
himself, "It is nothing but the wind in the chimney, it is only a mouse
crossing the floor," or, "It is merely a cricket which has made a single
chirp." Yes he has been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions ;
but he had found all in vain. ALL IN VAIN, because Death in approaching him
had stalked with his black shadow before him and enveloped the victim. And
it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to
feel, although he neither saw nor heard, to feel the presence of my head
within the room.
When I had waited a long time very patiently without hearing him lie
down, I resolved to open a little - a very, very little crevice in the
lantern. So I opened it - you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily -
until at length a single dim ray like the thread of the spider shot out from
the crevice and fell upon the vulture eye.
It was open, wide, wide open, and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I
saw it with perfect distinctness - all a dull blue with a hideous veil over
it that chilled the very marrow in my bones, but I could see nothing else of
the old man's face or person, for I had directed the ray as if by instinct
precisely upon the damned spot.
And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but
over-acuteness of the senses? now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull,
quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that
sound well too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my
fury as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.
But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held
the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon
the eye. Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker
and quicker, and louder and louder, every instant. The old man's terror must
have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment! - do you