During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the
year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been
passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of
country ; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew
on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was
- but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable
gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable ; for the feeling was
unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment,
with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of
the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me - upon the
mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain - upon the
bleak walls - upon the vacant eye-like windows - upon a few rank sedges
- and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees - with an utter
depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more
properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium - the bitter
lapse into everyday life - the hideous dropping off of the veil. There
was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart - an unredeemed
dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture
into aught of the sublime. What was it - I paused to think - what was it
that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It
was a mystery all insoluble ; nor could I grapple with the shadowy
fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back
upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are
combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus
affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations
beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different
arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the
picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its
capacity for sorrowful impression ; and, acting upon this idea, I reined
my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in
unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down - but with a shudder
even more thrilling than before - upon the remodelled and inverted
images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and
eye-like windows.
Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a
sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of
my boon companions in boyhood ; but many years had elapsed since our
last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part
of the country - a letter from him - which, in its wildly importunate
nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The MS. gave
evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness
- of a mental disorder which oppressed him - and of an earnest desire to
see me, as his best, and indeed his only personal friend, with a view of
attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his
malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much more, was said -
it was the apparent heart that went with his request - which allowed me
no room for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still
considered a very singular summons.
Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really
knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and
habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been
noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament,
displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and
manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive
charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps
even more than to the orthodox and easily recognisable beauties, of
musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the
stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no
period, any enduring branch ; in other words, that the entire family lay
in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and
very temporary variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I considered,
while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of
the premises with the accredited character of the people, and while
speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse
of centuries, might have exercised upon the other - it was this
deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating
transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which
had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of
the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the "House of
Usher" - an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the
peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion.
I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment -
that of looking down within the tarn - had been to deepen the first
singular impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the
rapid increase of my superstition - for why should I not so term it ? -
served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long
known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a
basis. And it might have been for this reason only, that, when I again
uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there
grew in my mind a strange fancy - a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I
but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed
me. I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about
the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to
themselves and their immediate vicinity - an atmosphere which had no
affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the
decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn - a pestilent and
mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.
Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more
narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed
to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been
great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine
tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any
extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen ; and
there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect
adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual
stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality
of old wood-work which has rotted for long years in some neglected
vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond
this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little
token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might
have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the
roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag
direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.
Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A
servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of
the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence,
through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of
his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not
how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken.
While the objects around me - while the carvings of the ceilings, the
sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and
the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but
matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my
infancy - while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this
- I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which
ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met the
physician of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled
expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with
trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and ushered
me into the presence of his master.
The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows
were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black
oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams
of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellissed panes, and
served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around
; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the
chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark
draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse,
comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments
lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I
felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and
irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.
Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at
full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in
it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality - of the constrained
effort of the ennuyé ; man of the world. A glance, however, at his
countenance, convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down ; and
for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling
half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly
altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher ! It was with
difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan
being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the
character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness
of complexion ; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison ;
lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful
curve ; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril
unusual in similar formations ; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its
want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than
web-like softness and tenuity ; these features, with an inordinate
expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a
countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration
of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression
they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I
spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre
of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair,
too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild
gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could
not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of
simple humanity.
In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence - an
inconsistency ; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble
and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy - an excessive
nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been
prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish
traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical
conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and
sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the
animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic
concision - that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding
enunciation - that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly modulated
guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the
irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense
excitement.
It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest
desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He
entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his
malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for
which he despaired to find a remedy - a mere nervous affection, he
immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed
itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed
them, interested and bewildered me ; although, perhaps, the terms, and
the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much
from a morbid acuteness of the senses ; the most insipid food was alone
endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture ; the odors of
all flowers were oppressive ; his eyes were tortured by even a faint
light ; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed
instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.
To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. "I shall
perish," said he, "I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus,
and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future,
not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of
any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this
intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger,
except in its absolute effect - in terror. In this unnerved - in this
pitiable condition - I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive
when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the
grim phantasm, FEAR."
I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal
hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was
enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling
which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured
forth - in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was
conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated - an influence which
some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion,
had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit - an
effect which the physique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim
tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon
the morale of his existence.
He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the
peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more
natural and far more palpable origin - to the severe and long-continued
illness - indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution - of a
tenderly beloved sister - his sole companion for long years - his last
and only relative on earth. "Her decease," he said, with a bitterness
which I can never forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the
frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers." While he spoke, the
lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote
portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence,
disappeared. I regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled
with dread - and yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings.
A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating
steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought
instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the brother - but he had
buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more
than ordinary wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which
trickled many passionate tears.
The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her
physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and
frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical
character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne
up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself
finally to bed ; but, on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at
the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night with
inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer ; and
I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus
probably be the last I should obtain - that the lady, at least while
living, would be seen by me no more.
For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either Usher or
myself: and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavors to
alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together ; or
I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his speaking
guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more
unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I
perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which
darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all
objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing radiation
of gloom.
I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus
spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail in
any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or
of the occupations, in which he involved me, or led me the way. An
excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over
all. His long improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears. Among
other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and
amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber. From the
paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch
by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more thrillingly,
because I shuddered knowing not why ; - from these paintings (vivid as
their images now are before me) I would in vain endeavor to educe more
than a small portion which should lie within the compass of merely
written words. By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs,
he arrested and overawed attention. If ever mortal painted an idea, that
mortal was Roderick Usher. For me at least - in the circumstances then
surrounding me - there arose out of the pure abstractions which the
hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvass, an intensity of
intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the contemplation
of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of Fuseli.
One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so
rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although
feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an immensely
long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and
without interruption or device. Certain accessory points of the design
served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding
depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any
portion of its vast extent, and no torch, or other artificial source of
light was discernible ; yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout,
and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendor.
I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which
rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of
certain effects of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow
limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave
birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his performances.
But the fervid facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for.
They must have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the words of
his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with
rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that intense mental
collectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded as
observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial
excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily
remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it, as he
gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I
fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness
on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her
throne. The verses, which were entitled "The Haunted Palace," ran very
nearly, if not accurately, thus:
I.
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace -
Radiant palace - reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion -
It stood there !
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
II.
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow;
(This - all this - was in the olden
Time long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odor went away.
III.
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well-tunéd law,
Round about a throne, where sitting
(Porphyrogene !)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.
IV.
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.
V.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate ;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate !)
And, round about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
VI.
And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody ;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh - but smile no more.I well remember that suggestions arising
from this ballad, led us into a train of thought wherein there became
manifest an opinion of Usher's which I mention not so much on account of
its novelty, (for other men have thought thus,) as on account of the
pertinacity with which he maintained it. This opinion, in its general
form, was that of the sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his
disordered fancy, the idea had assumed a more daring character, and
trespassed, under certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization.
I lack words to express the full extent, or the earnest abandon of his
persuasion. The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously
hinted) with the gray stones of the home of his forefathers. The
conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the
method of collocation of these stones - in the order of their
arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which overspread them,
and of the decayed trees which stood around - above all, in the long
undisturbed endurance of this arrangement, and in its reduplication in
the still waters of the tarn. Its evidence - the evidence of the
sentience - was to be seen, he said, (and I here started as he spoke,)
in the gradual yet certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own
about the waters and the walls. The result was discoverable, he added,
in that silent, yet importunate and terrible influence which for
centuries had moulded the destinies of his family, and which made him
what I now saw him - what he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I
will make none.
Our books - the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of
the mental existence of the invalid - were, as might be supposed, in
strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over
such works as the Ververt et Chartreuse of Gresset ; the Belphegor of
Machiavelli ; the Heaven and Hell of Swedenborg ; the Subterranean
Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by Holberg ; the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of
Jean D'Indaginé, and of De la Chambre ; the Journey into the Blue
Distance of Tieck ; and the City of the Sun of Campanella. One favorite
volume was a small octavo edition of the Directorium Inquisitorium , by
the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were passages in Pomponius
Mela, about the old African Satyrs and Oegipans, over which Usher would
sit dreaming for hours. His chief delight, however, was found in the
perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book in quarto Gothic - the
manual of a forgotten church - the Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum Chorum
Ecclesiae Maguntinae .
I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its
probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having
informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his
intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight, (previously to its
final interment,) in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls of
the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular
proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The
brother had been led to his resolution (so he told me) by consideration
of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain
obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the
remote and exposed situation of the burial-ground of the family. I will
not deny that when I called to mind the sinister countenance of the
person whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of my arrival at the
house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as at best but a
harmless, and by no means an unnatural, precaution.
At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements for
the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two alone
bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which had been
so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its oppressive
atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation) was small,
damp, and entirely without means of admission for light ; lying, at
great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which
was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote
feudal times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and, in later
days, as a place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible
substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long
archway through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with
copper. The door, of massive iron, had been, also, similarly protected.
Its immense weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound, as it moved
upon its hinges.
Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region of
horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin,
and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude between
the brother and sister now first arrested my attention ; and Usher,
divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words from which I
learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that
sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between
them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead - for we could
not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed the lady in
the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly
cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and
the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so
terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the lid, and, having
secured the door of iron, made our way, with toil, into the scarcely
less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house.
And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change
came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His ordinary
manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected or
forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and
objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible,
a more ghastly hue - but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone
out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a
tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his
utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly
agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which
he struggled for the necessary courage. At times, again, I was obliged
to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness, for I
beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the
profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. It was
no wonder that his condition terrified - that it infected me. I felt
creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of
his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.
It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the
seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within the
donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep came
not near my couch - while the hours waned and waned away. I struggled to
reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavored to
believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the bewildering
influence of the gloomy furniture of the room - of the dark and tattered
draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath of a rising
tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily
about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An
irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame ; and, at length, there
sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking
this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows,
and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber,
harkened - I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me
- to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses of
the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence. Overpowered by an
intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on
my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more during the
night), and endeavored to arouse myself from the pitiable condition into
which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment.
I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an
adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognised it as
that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle touch,
at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual,
cadaverously wan - but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in
his eyes - an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanor. His
air appalled me - but anything was preferable to the solitude which I
had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a relief.
"And you have not seen it ?" he said abruptly, after having stared about
him for some moments in silence - "you have not then seen it ? - but,
stay ! you shall." Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp,
he hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open to the
storm.
The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet.
It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one
wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had apparently
collected its force in our vicinity ; for there were frequent and
violent alterations in the direction of the wind ; and the exceeding
density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon the turrets of
the house) did not prevent our perceiving the life-like velocity with
which they flew careering from all points against each other, without
passing away into the distance. I say that even their exceeding density
did not prevent our perceiving this - yet we had no glimpse of the moon
or stars - nor was there any flashing forth of the lightning. But the
under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapor, as well as all
terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in the unnatural
light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation
which hung about and enshrouded the mansion.
"You must not - you shall not behold this !" said I, shudderingly, to
Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a seat.
"These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical phenomena
not uncommon - or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in the
rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement ; - the air is
chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your favorite
romances. I will read, and you shall listen ; - and so we will pass away
this terrible night together."
The antique volume which I had taken up was the "Mad Trist" of Sir
Launcelot Canning ; but I had called it a favorite of Usher's more in
sad jest than in earnest ; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth
and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty
and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the only book
immediately at hand ; and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement
which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history
of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even in the extremeness
of the folly which I should read. Could I have judged, indeed, by the
wild overstrained air of vivacity with which he harkened, or apparently
harkened, to the words of the tale, I might well have congratulated
myself upon the success of my design.
I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred,
the hero of the Trist, having sought in vain for peaceable admission
into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by
force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run thus:
"And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now
mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had
drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in sooth,
was of an obstinate and maliceful turn, but, feeling the rain upon his
shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted his mace
outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings of the
door for his gauntleted hand ; and now pulling therewith sturdily, he so
cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and
hollow-sounding wood alarummed and reverberated throughout the forest."
At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment, paused
; for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my excited
fancy had deceived me) - it appeared to me that, from some very remote
portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might
have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled
and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound which Sir
Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond doubt, the
coincidence alone which had arrested my attention ; for, amid the
rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary commingled
noises of the still increasing storm, the sound, in itself, had nothing,
surely, which should have interested or disturbed me. I continued the
story:
"But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore
enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit ; but,
in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanor, and
of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a
floor of silver ; and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass
with this legend enwritten -
Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin ;
Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;And Ethelred uplifted
his mace, and struck upon the head of the dragon, which fell before him,
and gave up his pesty breath, with a shriek so horrid and harsh, and
withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to close his ears with his
hands against the dreadful noise of it, the like whereof was never
before heard."
Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild amazement -
for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this instance, I did
actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I found it
impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted,
and most unusual screaming or grating sound - the exact counterpart of
what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon's unnatural shriek
as described by the romancer.
Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second and
most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations, in
which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained
sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the
sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that he
had noticed the sounds in question ; although, assuredly, a strange
alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his
demeanor. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought
round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the chamber ;
and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I saw
that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had
dropped upon his breast - yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the
wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a glance of it in profile.
The motion of his body, too, was at variance with this idea - for he
rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway.
Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir
Launcelot, which thus proceeded:
"And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the
dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up
of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of
the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver pavement
of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall ; which in sooth
tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon the
silver floor, with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound."
No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than - as if a shield of
brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of silver -
I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous, yet
apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to my
feet ; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I
rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before
him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony
rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a
strong shudder over his whole person ; a sickly smile quivered about his
lips ; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur,
as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length
drank in the hideous import of his words.
"Not hear it ? - yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long - long - long -
many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it - yet I dared not -
oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am ! - I dared not - I dared not
speak ! We have put her living in the tomb ! Said I not that my senses
were acute ? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in
the hollow coffin. I heard them - many, many days ago - yet I dared not
- I dared not speak ! And now - to-night - Ethelred - ha ! ha ! - the
breaking of the hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the
clangor of the shield ! - say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and
the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within
the coppered archway of the vault ! Oh whither shall I fly ? Will she
not be here anon ? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste ? Have
I not heard her footstep on the stair ? Do I not distinguish that heavy
and horrible beating of her heart ? Madman !" - here he sprang furiously
to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were
giving up his soul - " Madman ! I tell you that she now stands without
the door ! "
As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the
potency of a spell - the huge antique pannels to which the speaker
pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony
jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust - but then without those doors
there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of
Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some
bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment
she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold - then,
with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her
brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the
floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.
From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was
still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old
causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned
to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued ; for the vast house
and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full,
setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once
barely-discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as extending
from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While
I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened - there came a fierce breath of
the whirlwind - the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my
sight - my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder -
there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand
waters - and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and
silently over the fragments of the "House of Usher ."
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