Page:The Black Cat v01no01 (1895-10).pdf/17

 tress of the Chateau Blanc. She had died, it appeared, just at midnight between the 19th and 20th of August. After giving me this information, she said good-evening and left me to the reflections which it aroused.

I can scarcely call them reflections. They took the form, rather, of a sort of compulsion that was laid upon me to obey a certain force by which I felt myself suddenly dominated.

It was the picture that did it; this was certain, for, as often as I faltered, one look into that insistent, commanding, coercing face compelled me to go on. In obedience to its bidding, I did as follows:—

I went to an old desk in the room, and took from it some simple carpenters' tools, with which I deliberately cut through, first, the wall-papering, and then a thin boarding, which covered all the space between a door and window opposite the picture. When this was done I saw—I cannot say whether most to my satisfaction or my horror, that I stood opposite a door,—a regular, ordinary door, with panels, hinges, and, more than all, a keyhole. I glanced at the picture. It seemed to me that the canvas positively lived with expression.

The eyes commanded me to get the rusty key. I got it, fitted it in the lock, in which it turned with difficulty, and then, with my heart almost choking me with its throbs, my knees shaking under me, my body covered with a cold sweat, and my tongue dry in my mouth, I opened the door.

As it creaked on its rusty hinges, I saw, by the light of the candle which I held in my hand, a mass of cobwebs, heavily weighted with the dust of years, and, through these, a woman's figure.

It was clad—for I obeyed the eyes, which commanded me to examine it, though my heart was cold with terror—in what I made out to be a white silk gown, above which was the face, withered and awfully livid, as I had heard the faces of embalmed corpses appear years after death. Still, it was recognizable as a real human face, and was surrounded by masses of yellow hair, which, even through the dust and cobwebs, gleamed with the brightness of gold. The hands held something in their shrunken fingers,—a white ribbon, with the date of her marriage and