... mehr dazu:
Edgar Allan Poe, the fall of the house of usher
Son cœur est un luth suspendu;
Sitôt qu'on le touche il résonne.
[His heart is a suspended lute;
as soon as it is touched, it resounds.]
De Béranger
DURING the whole of a
dull, dark, and soundless day in the
autumn of the year, when the clouds
hung oppressively low in the heavens, I
had been passing alone, on horseback,
through a singularly dreary tract of
country; and at length found myself, as
the shades of the evening drew on,
within view of the melancholy House of
Usher. I know not how it was — but,
with the first glimpse of the building,
a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded
my spirit. I say insufferable; for the
feeling was unrelieved by any of that
half-pleasurable, because poetic,
sentiment, with which the mind usually
receives even the sternest natural
images of the desolate or terrible. I
looked upon the scene before me — upon
the mere house, and the simple
landscape features of the domain —
upon the bleak walls — upon the vacant
eye-like windows — upon a few rank
sedges — and upon a few white trunks
of decayed trees — with an utter
depression of soul which I can compare
to no earthly sensation more properly
than to the after-dream of the reveller
upon opium — the bitter lapse into
everyday life — the hideous dropping
off of the veil. There was an iciness,
a sinking, a sickening of the heart —
an unredeemed dreariness of thought
which no goading of the imagination
could torture into aught of the
sublime. What was it — I paused to
think — what was it that so unnerved
me in the contemplation of the House of
Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble;
nor could I grapple with the shadowy
fancies that crowded upon me as I
pondered. I was forced to fall back
upon the unsatisfactory conclusion,
that while, beyond doubt, there are
combinations of very simple natural
objects which have the power of thus
affecting us, still the analysis of
this power lies among considerations
beyond our depth. It was possible, I
reflected, that a mere different
arrangement of the particulars of the
scene, of the details of the picture,
would be sufficient to modify, or
perhaps to annihilate its capacity for
sorrowful impression; and, acting upon
this idea, I reined my horse to the
precipitous brink of a black and lurid
tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by
the dwelling, and gazed down — but
with a shudder even more thrilling than
before — upon the remodelled and
inverted images of the grey sedge, and
the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant
and eye-like windows.
Nevertheless, in this
mansion of gloom I now proposed to
myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its
proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been
one of my boon companions in boyhood;
but many years had elapsed since our
last meeting. A letter, however, had
lately reached me in a distant part of
the country — a letter from him —
which, in its wildly importunate
nature, had admitted of no other than a
personal reply. The MS gave evidence of
nervous agitation. The writer spoke of
acute bodily illness — of a mental
disorder which oppressed him — and of
an earnest desire to see me, as his
best, and indeed his only personal
friend, with a view of attempting, by
the cheerfulness of my society, some
alleviation of his malady. It was the
manner in which all this, and much
more, was said — it was the apparent
heart that went with his request —
which allowed me no room for
hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed
forthwith what I still considered a
very singular summons.
Although, as boys, we
had been even intimate associates, yet
I really knew little of my friend. His
reserve had been always excessive and
habitual. I was aware, however, that
his very ancient family had been noted,
time out of mind, for a peculiar
sensibility of temperament, displaying
itself, through long ages, in many
works of exalted art, and manifested,
of late, in repeated deeds of
munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as
well as in a passionate devotion to the
intricacies, perhaps even more than to
the orthodox and easily recognisable
beauties of musical science. I had
learned, too, the very remarkable fact,
that the stem of the Usher race, all
time-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 grey 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 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 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 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 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 grey 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 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 for ever 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 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
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 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 by
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 OEgipans, over which Usher
would sit dreaming for hours. His chief
delight, however, was found in the
perusal of an exceedingly rare and
curious book in quarto Gothic — the
manual of a forgotten church — the
Vigiliae Mortuorum Secundum Chorum
Ecclesiae Maguntinae.
I could not help
thinking of the wild ritual of this
work, and of its probable influence
upon the hypochondriac, when, one
evening, having informed me abruptly
that the lady Madeline was no more, he
stated his intention of preserving her
corpse for a fortnight, (previously to
its final interment), in one of the
numerous vaults within the main walls
of the building. The worldly reason,
however, assigned for this singular
proceeding, was one which I did not
feel at liberty to dispute. The brother
had been led to his resolution (so he
told me) by consideration of the
unusual character of the malady of the
deceased, of certain obtrusive and
eager inquiries on the part of her
medical men, and of the remote and
exposed situation of the burial-ground
of the family. I will not deny that
when I called to mind the sinister
countenance of the person whom I met
upon the staircase, on the day of my
arrival at the house, I had no desire
to oppose what I regarded as at best
but a harmless, and by no means an
unnatural, precaution.
At the request of Usher,
I personally aided him in the
arrangements for the temporary
entombment. The body having been
encoffined, we two alone bore it to its
rest. The vault in which we placed it
(and which had been so long unopened
that our torches, half smothered in its
oppressive atmosphere, gave us little
opportunity for investigation) was
small, damp, and entirely without means
of admission for light; lying, at great
depth, immediately beneath that portion
of the building in which was my own
sleeping apartment. It had been used,
apparently, in remote feudal times, for
the worst purposes of a donjon-keep,
and, in later days, as a place of
deposit for powder, or some other
highly combustible substance, as a
portion of its floor, and the whole
interior of a long archway through
which we reached it, were carefully
sheathed with copper. The door, of
massive iron, had been, also, similarly
protected. Its immense weight caused an
unusually sharp grating sound, as it
moved upon its hinges.
Having deposited our
mournful burden upon tressels within
this region of horror, we partially
turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of
the coffin, and looked upon the face of
the tenant. A striking similitude
between the brother and sister now
first arrested my attention; and Usher,
divining, perhaps, my thoughts,
murmured out some few words from which
I learned that the deceased and himself
had been twins, and that sympathies of
a scarcely intelligible nature had
always existed between them. Our
glances, however, rested not long upon
the dead — for we could not regard her
unawed. The disease which had thus
entombed the lady in the maturity of
youth, had left, as usual in all
maladies of a strictly cataleptical
character, the mockery of a faint blush
upon the bosom and the face, and that
suspiciously lingering smile upon the
lip which is so terrible in death. We
replaced and screwed down the lid, and,
having secured the door of iron, made
our way, with toil, into the scarcely
less gloomy apartments of the upper
portion of the house.
And now, some days of
bitter grief having elapsed, an
observable change came over the
features of the mental disorder of my
friend. His ordinary manner had
vanished. His ordinary occupations were
neglected or forgotten. He roamed from
chamber to chamber with hurried,
unequal, and objectless step. The
pallor of his countenance had assumed,
if possible, a more ghastly hue — but
the luminousness of his eye had utterly
gone out. The once occasional huskiness
of his tone was heard no more; and a
tremulous quaver, as if of extreme
terror, habitually characterized his
utterance. There were times, indeed,
when I thought his unceasingly agitated
mind was 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 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 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 recognized it as
that of Usher. In an instant afterwards
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 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.
"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 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 alarmed 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 conquerer 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 — 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 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 footsteps 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«.
|