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 every-day 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 recognizable 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 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 rose
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 vagueness 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 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 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 the
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-tunèd 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’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 Œgipans, 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
Vigiliæ Mortuorum Secundum Chorum Ecclesiæ Maguntinæ.
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, 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 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 recognized 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, shuddering, 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 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 therewith 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 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 panels 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.”
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