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1 |
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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. |
2 |
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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. |
3 |
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I
have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment 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. |
4 |
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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 woodwork which has rotted for
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. |
5 |
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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 somber 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. |
6 |
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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. |
7 |
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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 molded 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 luster
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. |
8 |
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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. |
9 |
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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. |
10 |
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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.” |
11 |
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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
restated—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. |
12 |
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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; 1
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. |
13 |
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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. |
14 |
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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. |
15 |
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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 sulphurous luster 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 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. |
16 |
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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. |
17 |
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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 rimed 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:—
|
18 |
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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 2 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 molded 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. |
19 |
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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 Cironne; and there
were passages in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and ťgipans,
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 “Vigilić Mortuorum secundum
Chorum Ecclesić Maguntinć.” |
20 |
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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. |
21 |
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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. |
22 |
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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. |
23 |
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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 influence of his
own fantastic yet impressive superstitions. |
24 |
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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. |
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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—and 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. |
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“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. |
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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 lifelike 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. |
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“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.” |
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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 harkened, to the words of the tale, I
might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design. |
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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:— |
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“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.” |
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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:— |
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“But
the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was soar 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:—
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.” |
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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. |
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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:— |
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“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.” |
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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. |
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“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—1 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!” |
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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. |
40 |
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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.” |
41 |