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The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe
1839
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
by Edgar Allan Poe
Son coeur est un luth suspendu;
Sitot qu'on le touche il resonne.
De Beranger.
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, 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 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 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 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-honoured 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 vapour, 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
scrutinising 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 trellised 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 ennuye 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 eve,
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 odours 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 endeavours 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 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 cars. 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 endeavour 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 canvas, 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 splendour.
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 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 odour went away. III. Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw Spirits moving musically To a lute's
well-tuned 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'Indagine, and of De la
Chambre; the Journey into the Blue Distance of Tieck; and the City of the
Sun of Campanella. One favourite volume was a small octavo edition of the
Directorium Inquisitorum, by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there
were passages in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and AEgipans,
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 Vigilae 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 stair case, 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 toll, 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
labouring 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 endeavoured 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 tremour 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, hearkened --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 endeavoured 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 demeanour. 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 vapour, 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 favourite 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 favourite 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 over-strained air of
vivacity with which he hearkened, or apparently hearkened, 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 there-with sturdily, he so
cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and
hollow-sounding wood alarumed 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 demeanour, 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 the 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 demeanour. 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
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 clangour 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 panels to which the speaker pointed,
threw slowly back, upon the instant, 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 wi 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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