正文
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_.”