THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF

USHER
By Edgar Allan Poe - Published 1839
Son coeur est un luth suspendu;
Sitot qu'on le touche il resonne.
De Beranger.
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, 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 cars. 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.
"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
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 wi
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."