The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 5 Read online

  THOU ART THE MAN

  I will now play the Oedipus to the Rattleborough enigma. I will expoundto you--as I alone can--the secret of the enginery that effected theRattleborough miracle--the one, the true, the admitted, the undisputed,the indisputable miracle, which put a definite end to infidelity amongthe Rattleburghers and converted to the orthodoxy of the grandames allthe carnal-minded who had ventured to be sceptical before.

  This event--which I should be sorry to discuss in a tone of unsuitablelevity--occurred in the summer of 18--. Mr. Barnabas Shuttleworthy--oneof the wealthiest and most respectable citizens of the borough--hadbeen missing for several days under circumstances which gave rise tosuspicion of foul play. Mr. Shuttleworthy had set out from Rattleboroughvery early one Saturday morning, on horseback, with the avowed intentionof proceeding to the city of-, about fifteen miles distant, and ofreturning the night of the same day. Two hours after his departure,however, his horse returned without him, and without the saddle-bagswhich had been strapped on his back at starting. The animal was wounded,too, and covered with mud. These circumstances naturally gave rise tomuch alarm among the friends of the missing man; and when it was found,on Sunday morning, that he had not yet made his appearance, the wholeborough arose en masse to go and look for his body.

  The foremost and most energetic in instituting this search was the bosomfriend of Mr. Shuttleworthy--a Mr. Charles Goodfellow, or, as he wasuniversally called, "Charley Goodfellow," or "Old Charley Goodfellow."Now, whether it is a marvellous coincidence, or whether it is that thename itself has an imperceptible effect upon the character, I have neveryet been able to ascertain; but the fact is unquestionable, that therenever yet was any person named Charles who was not an open, manly,honest, good-natured, and frank-hearted fellow, with a rich, clearvoice, that did you good to hear it, and an eye that looked you alwaysstraight in the face, as much as to say: "I have a clear consciencemyself, am afraid of no man, and am altogether above doing a meanaction." And thus all the hearty, careless, "walking gentlemen" of thestage are very certain to be called Charles.

  Now, "Old Charley Goodfellow," although he had been in Rattleboroughnot longer than six months or thereabouts, and although nobody knewany thing about him before he came to settle in the neighborhood, hadexperienced no difficulty in the world in making the acquaintance of allthe respectable people in the borough. Not a man of them but would havetaken his bare word for a thousand at any moment; and as for the women,there is no saying what they would not have done to oblige him. And allthis came of his having been christened Charles, and of his possessing,in consequence, that ingenuous face which is proverbially the very "bestletter of recommendation."

  I have already said that Mr. Shuttleworthy was one of the mostrespectable and, undoubtedly, he was the most wealthy man inRattleborough, while "Old Charley Goodfellow" was upon as intimate termswith him as if he had been his own brother. The two old gentlemen werenext-door neighbours, and, although Mr. Shuttleworthy seldom, if ever,visited "Old Charley," and never was known to take a meal in his house,still this did not prevent the two friends from being exceedinglyintimate, as I have just observed; for "Old Charley" never let a daypass without stepping in three or four times to see how his neighbourcame on, and very often he would stay to breakfast or tea, and almostalways to dinner, and then the amount of wine that was made way with bythe two cronies at a sitting, it would really be a difficult thing toascertain. "Old Charleys" favorite beverage was Chateau-Margaux, andit appeared to do Mr. Shuttleworthy's heart good to see the old fellowswallow it, as he did, quart after quart; so that, one day, when thewine was in and the wit as a natural consequence, somewhat out, he saidto his crony, as he slapped him upon the back--"I tell you what it is,'Old Charley,' you are, by all odds, the heartiest old fellow I evercame across in all my born days; and, since you love to guzzle the wineat that fashion, I'll be darned if I don't have to make thee a presentof a big box of the Chateau-Margaux. Od rot me,"--(Mr. Shuttleworthy hada sad habit of swearing, although he seldom went beyond "Od rot me," or"By gosh," or "By the jolly golly,")--"Od rot me," says he, "if I don'tsend an order to town this very afternoon for a double box of the bestthat can be got, and I'll make ye a present of it, I will!--ye needn'tsay a word now--I will, I tell ye, and there's an end of it; so look outfor it--it will come to hand some of these fine days, precisely when yeare looking for it the least!" I mention this little bit of liberalityon the part of Mr. Shuttleworthy, just by way of showing you how veryintimate an understanding existed between the two friends.

  Well, on the Sunday morning in question, when it came to be fairlyunderstood that Mr. Shuttleworthy had met with foul play, I never sawany one so profoundly affected as "Old Charley Goodfellow." When hefirst heard that the horse had come home without his master, and withouthis master's saddle-bags, and all bloody from a pistol-shot, that hadgone clean through and through the poor animal's chest without quitekilling him; when he heard all this, he turned as pale as if the missingman had been his own dear brother or father, and shivered and shook allover as if he had had a fit of the ague.

  At first he was too much overpowered with grief to be able to do anything at all, or to concert upon any plan of action; so that for a longtime he endeavored to dissuade Mr. Shuttleworthy's other friends frommaking a stir about the matter, thinking it best to wait awhile--say fora week or two, or a month, or two--to see if something wouldn't turn up,or if Mr. Shuttleworthy wouldn't come in the natural way, and explainhis reasons for sending his horse on before. I dare say you have oftenobserved this disposition to temporize, or to procrastinate, in peoplewho are labouring under any very poignant sorrow. Their powers of mindseem to be rendered torpid, so that they have a horror of any thing likeaction, and like nothing in the world so well as to lie quietly in bedand "nurse their grief," as the old ladies express it--that is to say,ruminate over the trouble.

  The people of Rattleborough had, indeed, so high an opinion of thewisdom and discretion of "Old Charley," that the greater part of themfelt disposed to agree with him, and not make a stir in the business"until something should turn up," as the honest old gentleman wordedit; and I believe that, after all this would have been the generaldetermination, but for the very suspicious interference of Mr.Shuttleworthy's nephew, a young man of very dissipated habits,and otherwise of rather bad character. This nephew, whose name wasPennifeather, would listen to nothing like reason in the matter of"lying quiet," but insisted upon making immediate search for the "corpseof the murdered man."--This was the expression he employed; and Mr.Goodfellow acutely remarked at the time, that it was "a singularexpression, to say no more." This remark of 'Old Charley's,' too, hadgreat effect upon the crowd; and one of the party was heard to ask,very impressively, "how it happened that young Mr. Pennifeather was sointimately cognizant of all the circumstances connected with his wealthyuncle's disappearance, as to feel authorized to assert, distinctlyand unequivocally, that his uncle was 'a murdered man.'" Hereupon somelittle squibbing and bickering occurred among various members ofthe crowd, and especially between "Old Charley" and Mr.Pennifeather--although this latter occurrence was, indeed, by no means anovelty, for no good will had subsisted between the parties for thelast three or four months; and matters had even gone so far that Mr.Pennifeather had actually knocked down his uncles friend for somealleged excess of liberty that the latter had taken in the uncle'shouse, of which the nephew was an inmate. Upon this occasion "OldCharley" is said to have behaved with exemplary moderation and Christiancharity. He arose from the blow, adjusted his clothes, and made noattempt at retaliation at all--merely muttering a few words about"taking summary vengeance at the first convenient opportunity,"--anatural and very justifiable ebullition of anger, which meant nothing,however, and, beyond doubt, was no sooner given vent to than forgotten.

  However these matters may be (which have no reference to the pointnow at issue), it is quite certain that the people of Rattleborough,principally through the persuasion of Mr. Pennifeather, came at lengthto the determination
of dispersion over the adjacent country in searchof the missing Mr. Shuttleworthy. I say they came to this determinationin the first instance. After it had been fully resolved that a searchshould be made, it was considered almost a matter of course that theseekers should disperse--that is to say, distribute themselves inparties--for the more thorough examination of the region round about. Iforget, however, by what ingenious train of reasoning it was that"Old Charley" finally convinced the assembly that this was the mostinjudicious plan that could be pursued. Convince them, however, hedid--all except Mr. Pennifeather, and, in the end, it was arranged thata search should be instituted, carefully and very thoroughly, by theburghers en masse, "Old Charley" himself leading the way.

  As for the matter of that, there could have been no better pioneerthan "Old Charley," whom everybody knew to have the eye of a lynx;but, although he led them into all manner of out-of-the-way holes andcorners, by routes that nobody had ever suspected of existing in theneighbourhood, and although the search was incessantly kept up day andnight for nearly a week, still no trace of Mr. Shuttleworthy could bediscovered. When I say no trace, however, I must not be understood tospeak literally, for trace, to some extent, there certainly was.The poor gentleman had been tracked, by his horses shoes (which werepeculiar), to a spot about three miles to the east of the borough,on the main road leading to the city. Here the track made off into aby-path through a piece of woodland--the path coming out again into themain road, and cutting off about half a mile of the regular distance.Following the shoe-marks down this lane, the party came at length to apool of stagnant water, half hidden by the brambles, to the right of thelane, and opposite this pool all vestige of the track was lost sightof. It appeared, however, that a struggle of some nature had here takenplace, and it seemed as if some large and heavy body, much larger andheavier than a man, had been drawn from the by-path to the pool. Thislatter was carefully dragged twice, but nothing was found; and the partywas upon the point of going away, in despair of coming to any result,when Providence suggested to Mr. Goodfellow the expediency of drainingthe water off altogether. This project was received with cheers,and many high compliments to "Old Charley" upon his sagacity andconsideration. As many of the burghers had brought spades with them,supposing that they might possibly be called upon to disinter a corpse,the drain was easily and speedily effected; and no sooner was thebottom visible, than right in the middle of the mud that remained wasdiscovered a black silk velvet waistcoat, which nearly every onepresent immediately recognized as the property of Mr. Pennifeather. Thiswaistcoat was much torn and stained with blood, and there were severalpersons among the party who had a distinct remembrance of its havingbeen worn by its owner on the very morning of Mr. Shuttleworthy'sdeparture for the city; while there were others, again, ready to testifyupon oath, if required, that Mr. P. did not wear the garment in questionat any period during the remainder of that memorable day, nor couldany one be found to say that he had seen it upon Mr. P.'s person at anyperiod at all subsequent to Mr. Shuttleworthy's disappearance.

  Matters now wore a very serious aspect for Mr. Pennifeather, and it wasobserved, as an indubitable confirmation of the suspicions which wereexcited against him, that he grew exceedingly pale, and when askedwhat he had to say for himself, was utterly incapable of saying a word.Hereupon, the few friends his riotous mode of living had left him,deserted him at once to a man, and were even more clamorous than hisancient and avowed enemies for his instantaneous arrest. But, on theother hand, the magnanimity of Mr. Goodfellow shone forth with only themore brilliant lustre through contrast. He made a warm and intenselyeloquent defence of Mr. Pennifeather, in which he alluded more than onceto his own sincere forgiveness of that wild young gentleman--"the heirof the worthy Mr. Shuttleworthy,"--for the insult which he (the younggentleman) had, no doubt in the heat of passion, thought proper to putupon him (Mr. Goodfellow). "He forgave him for it," he said, "from thevery bottom of his heart; and for himself (Mr. Goodfellow), so far frompushing the suspicious circumstances to extremity, which he was sorryto say, really had arisen against Mr. Pennifeather, he (Mr. Goodfellow)would make every exertion in his power, would employ all the littleeloquence in his possession to--to--to--soften down, as much as he couldconscientiously do so, the worst features of this really exceedinglyperplexing piece of business."

  Mr. Goodfellow went on for some half hour longer in this strain,very much to the credit both of his head and of his heart; but yourwarm-hearted people are seldom apposite in their observations--they runinto all sorts of blunders, contre-temps and mal apropos-isms, in thehot-headedness of their zeal to serve a friend--thus, often with thekindest intentions in the world, doing infinitely more to prejudice hiscause than to advance it.

  So, in the present instance, it turned out with all the eloquence of"Old Charley"; for, although he laboured earnestly in behalf of thesuspected, yet it so happened, somehow or other, that every syllable heuttered of which the direct but unwitting tendency was not to exalt thespeaker in the good opinion of his audience, had the effect to deepenthe suspicion already attached to the individual whose cause he pleaded,and to arouse against him the fury of the mob.

  One of the most unaccountable errors committed by the orator was hisallusion to the suspected as "the heir of the worthy old gentleman Mr.Shuttleworthy." The people had really never thought of this before. Theyhad only remembered certain threats of disinheritance uttered a yearor two previously by the uncle (who had no living relative except thenephew), and they had, therefore, always looked upon this disinheritanceas a matter that was settled--so single-minded a race of beings were theRattleburghers; but the remark of "Old Charley" brought them at once toa consideration of this point, and thus gave them to see the possibilityof the threats having been nothing more than a threat. And straightwayhereupon, arose the natural question of cui bono?--a question thattended even more than the waistcoat to fasten the terrible crime uponthe young man. And here, lest I may be misunderstood, permit me todigress for one moment merely to observe that the exceedingly brief andsimple Latin phrase which I have employed, is invariably mistranslatedand misconceived. "Cui bono?" in all the crack novels and elsewhere,--inthose of Mrs. Gore, for example, (the author of "Cecil,") a lady whoquotes all tongues from the Chaldaean to Chickasaw, and is helped to herlearning, "as needed," upon a systematic plan, by Mr. Beckford,--in allthe crack novels, I say, from those of Bulwer and Dickens to those ofBulwer and Dickens to those of Turnapenny and Ainsworth, the two littleLatin words cui bono are rendered "to what purpose?" or, (as if quobono,) "to what good." Their true meaning, nevertheless, is "for whoseadvantage." Cui, to whom; bono, is it for a benefit. It is a purelylegal phrase, and applicable precisely in cases such as we have nowunder consideration, where the probability of the doer of a deed hingesupon the probability of the benefit accruing to this individual or tothat from the deed's accomplishment. Now in the present instance, thequestion cui bono? very pointedly implicated Mr. Pennifeather. Hisuncle had threatened him, after making a will in his favour, withdisinheritance. But the threat had not been actually kept; the originalwill, it appeared, had not been altered. Had it been altered, the onlysupposable motive for murder on the part of the suspected wouldhave been the ordinary one of revenge; and even this would have beencounteracted by the hope of reinstation into the good graces of theuncle. But the will being unaltered, while the threat to alter remainedsuspended over the nephew's head, there appears at once the verystrongest possible inducement for the atrocity, and so concluded, verysagaciously, the worthy citizens of the borough of Rattle.

  Mr. Pennifeather was, accordingly, arrested upon the spot, and thecrowd, after some further search, proceeded homeward, having him incustody. On the route, however, another circumstance occurred tending toconfirm the suspicion entertained. Mr. Goodfellow, whose zeal led himto be always a little in advance of the party, was seen suddenly to runforward a few paces, stoop, and then apparently to pick up some smallobject from the grass. Having quickly examined it he was observed, too,to make a so
rt of half attempt at concealing it in his coat pocket; butthis action was noticed, as I say, and consequently prevented, when theobject picked up was found to be a Spanish knife which a dozen personsat once recognized as belonging to Mr. Pennifeather. Moreover, hisinitials were engraved upon the handle. The blade of this knife was openand bloody.

  No doubt now remained of the guilt of the nephew, and immediately uponreaching Rattleborough he was taken before a magistrate for examination.

  Here matters again took a most unfavourable turn. The prisoner, beingquestioned as to his whereabouts on the morning of Mr. Shuttleworthy'sdisappearance, had absolutely the audacity to acknowledge that onthat very morning he had been out with his rifle deer-stalking, in theimmediate neighbourhood of the pool where the blood-stained waistcoathad been discovered through the sagacity of Mr. Goodfellow.

  This latter now came forward, and, with tears in his eyes, askedpermission to be examined. He said that a stern sense of the duty heowed his Maker, not less than his fellow-men, would permit him no longerto remain silent. Hitherto, the sincerest affection for the young man(notwithstanding the latter's ill-treatment of himself, Mr. Goodfellow)had induced him to make every hypothesis which imagination couldsuggest, by way of endeavoring to account for what appeared suspiciousin the circumstances that told so seriously against Mr. Pennifeather,but these circumstances were now altogether too convincing--too damning,he would hesitate no longer--he would tell all he knew, although hisheart (Mr. Goodfellow's) should absolutely burst asunder in the effort.He then went on to state that, on the afternoon of the day previous toMr. Shuttleworthy's departure for the city, that worthy old gentlemanhad mentioned to his nephew, in his hearing (Mr. Goodfellow's), thathis object in going to town on the morrow was to make a deposit of anunusually large sum of money in the "Farmers and Mechanics' Bank," andthat, then and there, the said Mr. Shuttleworthy had distinctly avowedto the said nephew his irrevocable determination of rescinding thewill originally made, and of cutting him off with a shilling. He (thewitness) now solemnly called upon the accused to state whether whathe (the witness) had just stated was or was not the truth in everysubstantial particular. Much to the astonishment of every one present,Mr. Pennifeather frankly admitted that it was.