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 asojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had
been one ofmy boon companions in boyhood; but many years had
elapsed since ourlast meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me
in
a distantpart of the country --a letter from him --which, in its
wildlyimportunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal
reply.The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke
ofacute 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 withthe 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 houseitself, 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 within expressible 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 froth rough 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."