[English Story] The Fall of the House of Usher

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 reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse
into everyday life--the hideous dropping off of the veil.
There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart--
an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading
of the imagination could torture into aught of the
sublime. What was it--I paused to think--what was it that
so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of
Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple
with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I
pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the
unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt,
there are combinations of very simple natural objects
which have the power of thus affecting us, still the
analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond
our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere
different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of
the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify,
or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful
impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse
to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay
in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down--but
with a shudder even more thrilling than before--upon the
remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and
the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like
windows.
Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed
to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor,
Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions
in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last
meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a
distant part of the country--a letter from him--which, in
its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other
than a personal reply. The MS. gave evidence of nervous
agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness--of a
mental disorder which oppressed him--and of an earnest
desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only
personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the
cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his
malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much
more, was said--it the apparent heart that went with his
request--which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I
accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a
very singular summons.
Although, as boys, we had been even intimate
associates, yet really knew little of my friend. His reserve
had been always excessive and habitual. I was aware,
however, that his very ancient family had been noted,
time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of
temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in
many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in
repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as
well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies,
perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily
recognisable beauties, of musical science. I had learned,
too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher
race, all time-honoured as it was, had put forth, at no
period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the
entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had
always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so
lain. It was this deficiency, I considered, while running
over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of
the premises with the accredited character of the people,
and while speculating upon the possible influence which
the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have
exercised upon the other--it was this deficiency, perhaps,
of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating
transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the
name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to
merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and
equivocal appellation of the "House of Usher" --an
appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the
peasantry who used it, both the family and the family
mansion.
I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish
experiment--that of looking down within the tarn--had
been to deepen the first singular impression. There can
be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase
of my superstition--for why should I not so term it?--
served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I
have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments
having terror as a basis. And it might have been for this
reason only, that, when I again uplifted my eyes to the
house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my
mind a strange fancy --a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that
I but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations
which oppressed me. I had so worked upon my
imagination as really to believe that about the whole
mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar
to themselves and their immediate vicinity-an
atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven,
but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the
gray wall, and the silent tarn--a pestilent and mystic
vapour, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-
hued.
Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a
dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the
building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an
excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been
great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior,
hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet
all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No
portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to
be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect
adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the
individual stones. In this there was much that reminded
me of the specious totality of old wood-work which has
rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no
disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond
this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric
gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a
scrutinising observer might have discovered a barely
perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the
building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag
direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the
tarn.
Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to
the house. A servant in waiting took my horse, and I
entered the Gothic archway of the hall. A valet, of
stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through
many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the
studio of his master. Much that I encountered on the
way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague
sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the
objects around me--while the carvings of the ceilings,
the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness
of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies
which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or
to such as which, I had been accustomed from my
infancy--while I hesitated not to acknowledge how
familiar was all this--I still wondered to find how
unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were
stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met the physician
of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a
mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. He
accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet
now threw open a door and ushered me into the
presence of his master.
The room in which I found myself was very large and
lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and
at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be
altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of
encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised
panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more
prominent objects around the eye, however, struggled in
vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the
recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark
draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was
profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books
and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed
to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an
atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and
irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.
Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he
had been lying at full length, and greeted me with a
vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought,
of an overdone cordiality--of the constrained effort of the
ennuye man of the world. A glance, however, at his
countenance, convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We
sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I
gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe.
Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so
brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with
difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of
the wan being before me with the companion of my early
boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all
times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an
eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips
somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly
beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but
with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a
finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence,
of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like
softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate
expansion above the regions of the temple, made up
altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And
now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character
of these features, and of the expression they were wont
to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to
whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and
the now miraculous lustre of the eve, above all things
startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had
been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild
gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the
face, I could not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque
expression with any idea of simple humanity.
In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an
incoherence --an inconsistency; and I soon found this to
arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to
overcome an habitual trepidancy--an excessive nervous
agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been
prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscences of
certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from
his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His
action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice
varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the
animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species
of energetic concision--that abrupt, weighty, unhurried,
and hollow-sounding enunciation--that leaden, self-
balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance,
which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the
irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his
most intense excitement.
It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his
earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he expected
me to afford him. He entered, at some length, into what
he conceived to be the nature of his malady. It was, he
said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which
he despaired to find a remedy--a mere nervous affection,
he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon
pass off. It displayed itself in a host of unnatural
sensations. Some of these, as he detailed them,
interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the
terms, and the general manner of the narration had their
weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of
the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable;
he could wear only garments of certain texture; the
odours of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were
tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar
sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did
not inspire him with horror.
To an anomalous species of terror I found him a
bounden slave. "I shall perish," said he, "I must perish in
this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall
I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in
themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought
of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may
operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have,
indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute
effect--in terror. In this unnerved-in this pitiable
condition--I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive
when I must abandon life and reason together, in some
struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR."

I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and
equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental
condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious
impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted,
and whence, for many years, he had never ventured
forth--in regard to an influence whose supposititious
force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-
stated--an influence which some peculiarities in the mere
form and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint
of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit-an
effect which the physique of the gray walls and turrets,
and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down,
had, at length, brought about upon the morale of his
existence.
He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that
much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him
could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable
origin--to the severe and long-continued illness --indeed
to the evidently approaching dissolution-of a tenderly
beloved sister--his sole companion for long years--his
last and only relative on earth. "Her decease," he said,
with a bitterness which I can never forget, "would leave
him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the
ancient race of the Ushers." While he spoke, the lady
Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a
remote portion of the apartment, and, without having
noticed my presence, disappeared. I regarded her with
an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread--and yet
I found it impossible to account for such feelings. A
sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed
her retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon
her, my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the
countenance of the brother--but he had buried his face in
his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than
ordinary wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers
through which trickled many passionate tears.
The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the
skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual
wasting away of the person, and frequent although
transient affections of a partially cataleptical character,
were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily
borne up against the pressure of her malady, and had
not betaken herself finally to bed; but, on the closing in
of the evening of my arrival at the house, she
succumbed (as her brother told me at night with
inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the
destroyer; and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained
of her person would thus probably be the last I should
obtain --that the lady, at least while living, would be seen
by me no more.
For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by
either Usher or myself: and during this period I was
busied in earnest endeavours to alleviate the melancholy
of my friend. We painted and read together; or I listened,
as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his
speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still intimacy
admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his
spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all
attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an
inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of
the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing
radiation of gloom.
I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn
hours I thus spent alone with the master of the House of
Usher. Yet I should fail in any attempt to convey an idea
of the exact character of the studies, or of the
occupations, in which he involved me, or led me the way.
An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a
sulphureous lustre over all. His long improvised dirges
will ring forever in my 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 endeavour to educe more than a small
portion which should lie within the compass of merely
written words. By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness
of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If
ever mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick
Usher. For me at least--in the circumstances then
surrounding me--there arose out of the pure abstractions
which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his
canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of
which felt I ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly
glowing yet too concrete reveries of Fuseli.
One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend,
partaking not so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may
be shadowed forth, although feebly, in words. A small
picture presented the interior of an immensely long and
rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth,
white, and without interruption or device. Certain
accessory points of the design served well to convey the
idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding depth below
the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any
portion of its vast extent, and no torch, or other artificial
source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense
rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly
and inappropriate splendour.
I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the
auditory nerve which rendered all music intolerable to
the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects of
stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow limits
to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which
gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of
his performances. But the fervid facility of his
impromptus could not be so accounted for. They must
have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the
words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently
accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations),
the result of that intense mental collectedness and
concentration to which I have previously alluded as
observable only in particular moments of the highest
artificial excitement. The words of one of these
rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the
more forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because,
in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied
that I perceived, and for the first time, a full
consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of
his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which were
entitled "The Haunted Palace," ran very nearly, if not
accurately, thus:
I.
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once fair and stately palace--
Radiant palace--reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion--
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
II.
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow;
(This--all this--was in the olden
Time long ago);
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odour went away.
III.
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well-tuned law,
Round about a throne, where sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.
IV.
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.
V.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And, round about his home, the glory That blushed and
bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
VI.
And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh--but smile no more.
I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad
led us into a train of thought wherein there became
manifest an opinion of Usher's which I mention not so
much on account of its novelty, (for other men have
thought thus,) as on account of the pertinacity with
which he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form,
was that of the sentience of all vegetable things. But, in
his disordered fancy, the idea had assumed a more
daring character, and trespassed, under certain
conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I lack
words to express the full extent, or the earnest abandon
of his persuasion. The belief, however, was connected
(as I have previously hinted) with the gray stones of the
home of his forefathers. The conditions of the sentience
had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of
collocation of these stones--in the order of their
arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which
overspread them, and of the decayed trees which stood
around--above all, in the long undisturbed endurance of
this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still
waters of the tarn. Its evidence--the evidence of the
sentience--was to be seen, he said, (and I here started as
he spoke,) in the gradual yet certain condensation of an
atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls.
The result was discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet
importunate and terrible influence which for centuries
had moulded the destinies of his family, and which made
him what I now saw him--what he was. Such opinions
need no comment, and I will make none.
Our books--the books which, for years, had formed no
small portion of the mental existence of the invalid--
were, as might be supposed, in strict keeping with this
character of phantasm. We pored together over such
works as the Ververt et Chartreuse of Gresset; the
Belphegor of Machiavelli; the Heaven and Hell of
Swedenborg; the Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm
by Holberg; the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean
D'Indagine, and of De la Chambre; the Journey into the
Blue Distance of Tieck; and the City of the Sun of
Campanella. One favourite volume was a small octavo
edition of the Directorium Inquisitorum, by the
Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were passages
in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and
AEgipans, over which Usher would sit dreaming for
hours. His chief delight, however, was found in the
perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book in
quarto Gothic--the manual of a forgotten church--the
Vigilae Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiae
Maguntinae.
I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work,
and of its probable influence upon the hypochondriac,
when, one evening, having informed me abruptly that the
lady Madeline was no more, he stated his intention of
preserving her corpse for a fortnight, (previously to its
final interment,) in one of the numerous vaults within the
main walls of the building. The worldly reason, however,
assigned for this singular proceeding, was one which I
did not feel at liberty to dispute. The brother had been
led to his resolution (so he told me) by consideration of
the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of
certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her
medical men, and of the remote and exposed situation
of the burial-ground of the family. I will not deny that
when I called to mind the sinister countenance of the
person whom I met upon the stair case, on the day of
my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose what I
regarded as at best but a harmless, and by no means an
unnatural, precaution.
At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the
arrangements for the temporary entombment. The body
having been encoffined, we two alone bore it to its rest.
The vault in which we placed it (and which had been so
long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its
oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for
investigation) was small, damp, and entirely without
means of admission for light; lying, at great depth,
immediately beneath that portion of the building in which
was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used,
apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst
purposes of a donjon-keep, and, in later days, as a place
of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible
substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole
interior of a long archway through which we reached it,
were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of
massive iron, had been, also, similarly protected. Its
immense weight caused an unusually sharp grating
sound, as it moved upon its hinges.
Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels
within this region of horror, we partially turned aside the
yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked upon the face
of the tenant. A striking similitude between the brother
and sister now first arrested my attention; and Usher,
divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few
words from which I learned that the deceased and
himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a
scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between
them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the
dead--for we could not regard her unawed. The disease
which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of
youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly
cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon
the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering
smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We
replaced and screwed down the lid, and, having secured
the door of iron, made our way, with toll, into the
scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of
the house.
And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an
observable change came over the features of the mental
disorder of my friend. His ordinary manner had vanished.
His ordinary occupations were neglected or forgotten. He
roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal,
and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had
assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue--but the
luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out. The once
occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and
a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually
characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed,
when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was
labouring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which
he struggled for the necessary courage. At times, again,
I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable
vagaries of madness, for I beheld him gazing upon
vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest
attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. It was
no wonder that his condition terrified-that it infected me.
I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the
wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive
superstitions.
It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of
the seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady
Madeline within the donjon, that I experienced the full
power of such feelings. Sleep came not near my couch--
while the hours waned and waned away. I struggled to
reason off the nervousness which had dominion over
me. I endeavoured to believe that much, if not all of what
I felt, was due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy
furniture of the room--of the dark and tattered draperies,
which, tortured into motion by the breath of a rising
tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and
rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But
my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremour
gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat
upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless
alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I
uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly
within the intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened--I
know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted
me--to certain low and indefinite sounds which came,
through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I
knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment
of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my
clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more
during the night), and endeavoured to arouse myself
from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by
pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment.
I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light
step on an adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I
presently recognised it as that of Usher. In an instant
afterward he rapped, with a gentle touch, at my door,
and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as
usual, cadaverously wan--but, moreover, there was a
species of mad hilarity in his eyes--an evidently
restrained hysteria in his whole demeanour. His air
appalled me--but anything was preferable to the solitude
which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his
presence as a relief.
"And you have not seen it?" he said abruptly, after having
stared about him for some moments in silence--"you
have not then seen it?--but, stay! you shall." Thus
speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp, he
hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open
to the storm.
The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us
from our feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly
beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and
its beauty. A whirlwind had apparently collected its force
in our vicinity; for there were frequent and violent
alterations in the direction of the wind; and the
exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as
to press upon the turrets of the house) did not prevent
our perceiving the life-like velocity with which they flew
careering from all points against each other, without
passing away into the distance. I say that even their
exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this--yet
we had no glimpse of the moon or stars--nor was there
any flashing forth of the lightning. But the under
surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapour, as well
as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were
glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and
distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung about
and enshrouded the mansion.
"You must not--you shall not behold this!" said I,
shudderingly, to Usher, as I led him, with a gentle
violence, from the window to a seat. "These
appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical
phenomena not uncommon--or it may be that they have
their ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. Let us
close this casement;--the air is chilling and dangerous to
your frame. Here is one of your favourite romances. I will
read, and you shall listen;--and so we will pass away this
terrible night together."
The antique volume which I had taken up was the "Mad
Trist" of Sir Launcelot Canning; but I had called it a
favourite of Usher's more in sad jest than in earnest; for,
in truth, there is little in its uncouth and unimaginative
prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and
spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the only
book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope
that the excitement which now agitated the
hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history of
mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even in the
extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I
have judged, indeed, by the wild over-strained air of
vivacity with which he hearkened, or apparently
hearkened, to the words of the tale, I might well have
congratulated myself upon the success of my design.
I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story
where Ethelred, the hero of the Trist, having sought in
vain for peaceable admission into the dwelling of the
hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by force.
Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative
run thus:
"And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart,
and who was now mighty withal, on account of the
powerfulness of the wine which he had drunken, waited
no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in sooth,
was of an obstinate and maliceful turn, but, feeling the
rain upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the
tempest, uplifted his mace outright, and, with blows,
made quickly room in the plankings of the door for his
gauntleted hand; and now pulling there-with sturdily, he
so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the
noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarumed
and reverberated throughout the forest."
At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a
moment, paused; for it appeared to me (although I at
once concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me)
--it appeared to me that, from some very remote portion
of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears,
what might have been, in its exact similarity of character,
the echo (but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very
cracking and ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so
particularly described. It was, beyond doubt, the
coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for,
amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and
the ordinary commingled noises of the still increasing
storm, the sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which
should have interested or disturbed me. I continued the
story:
"But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within
the door, was sore enraged and amazed to perceive no
signal of the maliceful hermit; but, in the stead thereof, a
dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanour, and of a
fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold,
with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a
shield of shining brass with this legend enwritten--
Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;
Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win...
And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the
head of the dragon, which fell before him, and gave up
his pesty breath, with a shriek so horrid and harsh, and
withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to close his
ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of it, the
like whereof was never before heard."
Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of
wild amazement --for there could be no doubt whatever
that, in this instance, I did actually hear (although from
what direction it proceeded I found it impossible to say)
a low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted, and
most unusual screaming or grating sound--the exact
counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up
for the dragon's unnatural shriek as described by the
romancer.
Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of
the second and most extraordinary coincidence, by a
thousand conflicting sensations, in which wonder and
extreme terror were predominant, I still retained
sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any
observation, the sensitive nervousness of my
companion. I was by no means certain that he had
noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a
strange alteration had, during the last few minutes,
taken place in his demeanour. From a position fronting
my own, he had gradually brought round his chair, so as
to sit with his face to the door of the chamber; and thus
I could but partially perceive his features, although I saw
that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly.
His head had dropped upon his breast--yet I knew that
he was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of
the eye as I caught a glance of it in profile. The motion
of his body, too, was at variance with this idea--for he
rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and
uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I
resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus
proceeded:
"And now, the champion, having escaped from the
terrible fury of the dragon, bethinking himself of the
brazen shield, and of the breaking up of the
enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass
from out of the way before him, and approached
valorously over the silver pavement of the castle to
where the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth
tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet
upon the silver floor, with a mighty great and terrible
ringing sound."
No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than--as if
a shield of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen
heavily upon a floor of silver became aware of a distinct,
hollow, metallic, and clangorous, yet apparently muffled
reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to my feet;
but the measured rocking movement of Usher was
undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His
eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his
whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as
I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong
shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered
about his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried,
and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my
presence. Bending closely over him, I at length drank in
the hideous import of his words.
"Now 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 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."