第8章 共23章

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER

Son cœur est un luth suspendu;

Sitôt qu’on le touche il résonne..

—De Béranger.

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.

* Watson, Dr. Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the Bishop of

Landaff.—See “Chemical Essays,” vol v.

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.”