Fall of the House of Usher Reading
The Autumn of the Firm of Usher
by Edgar Allan Poe(1839) Son coeur est un luth suspendu;
Sitôt qu'on le touche il résonne.
De Béranger. DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the fall 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, every bit the shades of the evening drew on, inside view of the melancholy Business firm of Usher. I know not how it was -- but, with the beginning 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 commonly receives fifty-fifty the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me -- upon the mere firm, and the elementary 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 low of soul which I tin can compare to no earthly awareness 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 center -- an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into naught of the sublime. What was it -- I paused to remember -- what was information technology 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 elementary natural objects which accept 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, interim upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and pulp tarn that lay in unruffled lustre past the dwelling, and gazed downwardly -- just with a shudder even more thrilling than earlier -- upon the remodelled and inverted images of the greyness sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.
Yet, 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 adolescence; but many years had elapsed since our final meeting. A letter of the alphabet, even so, had lately reached me in a distant part of the country -- a letter of the alphabet 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 come across me, every bit his best, and indeed his only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my gild, some consolation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much more than, 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, however I really knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I was aware, nonetheless, 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 nonetheless unobtrusive clemency, besides every bit in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than than to the orthodox and easily recognisable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stalk of the Conductor race, all time-honoured as it was, had put along, 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. Information technology was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited grapheme of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which the ane, in the long lapse of centuries, might take exercised upon the other -- it was this deficiency, possibly, of collateral issue, and the consistent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the proper name, which had, at length, so identified the 2 as to merge the original championship of the manor 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 unit and the family mansion.
I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment --that of looking downwardly within the tarn --had been to deepen the first singular impression. At that place tin be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition -- for why should I not so term it? -- served mainly to advance the increase itself. Such, I take long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a footing. And information technology might take been for this reason but, that, when I again uplifted my eyes to the firm itself, from its epitome in the puddle, there grew in my mind a strange fancy -- a fancy and then ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it to prove the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that virtually 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 grayness wall, and the silent tarn -- a pestilent and mystic vapour, wearisome, 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 edifice. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been not bad. Minute fungi overspread the whole outside, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any boggling dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its all the same perfect adaptation of parts, and the aging condition of the private stones. In this in that location was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old forest-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 disuse, however, the cloth gave little token of instability. Perhaps the center of a scrutinising observer might take discovered a barely perceptible scissure, which, extending from the roof of the edifice in front, made its way downwardly 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 business firm. A servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic entrance of the hall. A valet, of stealthy stride, thence conducted me, in silence, through many night and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his principal. 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 discover how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring upwardly. On one of the staircases, I met the dr. 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 big and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be birthday 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, still, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Nighttime draperies hung upon the walls. The general piece of furniture was profuse, inconsolable, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to requite whatever 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, Conductor arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at total 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 globe. A glance, however, at his countenance, convinced me of his perfect sincerity. Nosotros sat downward; and for some moments, while he spoke non, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of compassion, half of awe. Surely, man had never earlier so terribly altered, in and so brief a period, equally had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to acknowledge the identity of the wan existence before me with the companion of my early on boyhood. Yet the grapheme of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an heart big, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat sparse and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a latitude of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; pilus of a more spider web-similar softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, fabricated up altogether a countenance non easily to be forgotten. And at present in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay then much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the peel, and the now miraculous lustre of the centre, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, likewise, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could non, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any thought 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 of the alphabet, than past reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His vocalism varied chop-chop from a tremulous indecision (when the animate being spirits seemed utterly in cessation) to that species of energetic concision -- that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation -- that leaden, cocky-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 about intense excitement.
It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his hostage desire to encounter 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 ramble and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy -- a mere nervous amore, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon laissez passer. It displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, every bit he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, possibly, the terms, and the general mode of the narration had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the nearly insipid food was alone bearable; he could wear merely garments of sure texture; the odours of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and at that place were only peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.
To an dissonant 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 exist lost. I dread the events of the futurity, not in themselves, just in their results. I shudder at the idea of any, even the well-nigh little, 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 on arrive when I must carelessness life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, Fright."
I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through cleaved and equivocal hints, some other singular feature of his mental status. He was enchained by sure superstitious impressions in regard to the abode 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 event which the physique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked downward, had, at length, brought well-nigh upon the morale of his beingness.
He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar gloom which thus affected him could exist traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin -- to the severe and long-connected affliction -- indeed to the evidently budgeted dissolution -- of a tenderly beloved sister -- his sole companion for long years -- his last and only relative on earth. "Her death," he said, with a bitterness which I can never forget, "would get out him (him the hopeless and the fragile) the last of the aboriginal race of the Ushers." While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she chosen) 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 awareness of stupor oppressed me, as my optics followed her retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the eyebrow of the blood 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 angel of a partially cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne upward 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 blood brother told me at dark 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 concluding I should obtain -- that the lady, at to the lowest degree while living, would exist seen past me no more.
For several days ensuing, her proper name was unmentioned by either Conductor or myself: and during this catamenia 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, equally 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 deport about me a retentivity of the many solemn hours I thus spent lonely with the main 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 mode. 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 concur painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and distension of the wild air of the final waltz of Von Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch past touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more than thrillingly, considering 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 pocket-size portion which should lie inside 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 thought, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me at to the lowest degree -- 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 notwithstanding 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-scale 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 world. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch, or other artificial source of low-cal was discernible; yet a inundation of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendour.
I have simply 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. Information technology 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. Merely the fervid facility of his impromptus could not be then accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, every bit well equally 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 appreciable simply in detail moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of i 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 electric current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a total 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 non accurately, thus:
By practiced angels tenanted,
Once a off-white and stately palace --
Radiant palace -- reared its caput.
In the monarch Idea's dominion --
It stood in that location!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
On its roof did float and flow;
(This -- all this -- was in the olden
Time long agone)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sugariness day,
Forth the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odour went abroad.
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute'southward well-tunèd law,
Round about a throne, where sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In land his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.
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.
Assailed the monarch's high estate;
(Ah, allow us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And, round about his habitation, the celebrity
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
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 -- simply smile no more.
I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad led us into a railroad train of thought wherein in that location became manifest an opinion of Usher's which I mention not so much on business relationship of its novelty, (for other men take 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 matted fancy, the idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under sure conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words to express the full extent, or the hostage carelessness of his persuasion. The conventionalities, however, was continued (equally I have previously hinted) with the gray stones of the dwelling house of his forefathers. The conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of these stones -- in the social club of their arrangement, equally well as in that of the many fungi which overspread them, and of the rust-covered trees which stood around -- in a higher place all, in the long undisturbed endurance of this organisation, and in its reduplication in the notwithstanding waters of the tarn. Its evidence --the evidence of the sentience --was to be seen, he said, (and I hither started as he spoke,) in the gradual notwithstanding certain condensation of an atmosphere of their ain well-nigh 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 volition make none.
Our books -- the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of the mental being of the invalid -- were, as might be supposed, in strict keeping with this grapheme 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 Altitude of Tieck; and the Metropolis of the Lord's day of Campanella. Ane favourite book was a modest octavo edition of the Directorium Inquisitorum, by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and in that location were passages in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and OEgipans, over which Conductor would sit dreaming for hours. His chief please, 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 assistance 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 inside the main walls of the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel at freedom to dispute. The brother had been led to his resolution (so he told me) by consideration of the unusual graphic symbol 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-basis of the family. I volition not deny that when I chosen to mind the sinister eyebrow of the person whom I met upon the staircase, on the mean solar day of my arrival at the firm, 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 trunk having been encoffined, we ii alone bore information technology to its rest. The vault in which nosotros placed it (and which had been so long unopened that our torches, one-half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation) was modest, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light; lying, at great depth, immediately below that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment. Information technology 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 nosotros reached it, were advisedly sheathed with copper. The door, of massive atomic number 26, had been, as well, similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually abrupt 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, withal, rested not long upon the expressionless -- for nosotros could not regard her unawed. The illness which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of youth, had left, every bit usual in all maladies of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint chroma upon the bosom and the face up, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is then terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the chapeau, 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 bedchamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless pace. The pallor of his countenance had causeless, if possible, a more ghastly hue --but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out. The one time occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his utterance. In that location were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated listen was labouring with some oppressive hole-and-corner, 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 mental attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition terrified -- that information technology infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of his ain fantastic all the same impressive superstitions.
It was, specially, upon retiring to bed belatedly in the night of the seventh or 8th day after the placing of the lady Madeline within the donjon, that I experienced the full ability of such feelings. Sleep came not about my couch -- while the hours waned and waned away. I struggled to reason off the nervousness which had rule 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 nighttime and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion past 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 middle 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 past an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable all the same 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 apace to and fro through the apartment.
I had taken just few turns in this way, when a light step on an bordering staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognised it as that of Conductor. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle bear upon, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual, cadaverously wan -- merely, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes -- an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanour. His air appalled me -- only anything was preferable to the solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a relief.
"And y'all have not seen information technology?" he said abruptly, after having stared about him for some moments in silence -- "yous take 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 up to the storm.
The impetuous fury of the inbound gust near 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 nerveless its force in our vicinity; for at that place were frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low every bit to printing upon the turrets of the house) did non forbid 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 forbid our perceiving this -- yet we had no glimpse of the moon or stars -- nor was there whatsoever flashing forth of the lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapour, equally 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 Conductor, 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 exist that they take their ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement; -- the air is chilling and dangerous to your frame. Hither is ane of your favourite romances. I volition read, and you shall listen; -- and so we volition pass abroad 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'due south more than in distressing jest than in earnest; for, in truth, at that place is petty in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could take had involvement for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. Information technology was, however, the only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might observe 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, past the wild over-strained air of vivacity with which he hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I might well accept 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 house of the hermit, proceeds to brand skilful an entrance by forcefulness. Hither, it volition be remembered, the words of the narrative run thus:
"And Ethelred, who was past 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 croaky, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarummed 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 accept been, in its verbal similarity of character, the echo (merely a stifled and dull ane certainly) of the very slap-up and ripping audio which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. Information technology was, beyond uncertainty, 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 yet increasing storm, the audio, in itself, had nothing, surely, which should have interested or disturbed me. I continued the story:
"But the proficient 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 biggy 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 contumely 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 easily against the dreadful racket of it, the like whereof was never earlier heard."
Here once again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild amazement -- for at that place could be no doubt whatever that, in this case, I did really hear (although from what direction information technology proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and patently distant, only harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound -- the verbal counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon'southward unnatural shriek equally described by the romancer.
Oppressed, equally I certainly was, upon the occurrence of the 2d and most boggling coincidence, by a chiliad conflicting sensations, in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I nonetheless retained sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was past no ways certain that he had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a foreign amending had, during the terminal few minutes, taken identify in his demeanour. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought round his chair, so as to sit down with his face to the door of the sleeping room; and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I saw that his lips trembled equally if he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his chest -- yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I defenseless a glance of it in profile. The motility 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 apace taken notice of all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus proceeded:
"And at present, 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 fashion earlier him, and approached valorously over the argent pavement of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth tarried not for his full coming, but cruel down at his feet upon the silver flooring, with a mighty bully 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 singled-out, hollow, metallic, and cavernous, notwithstanding apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to my feet; simply the measured rocking movement of Conductor was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly earlier him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, equally I placed my paw upon his shoulder, there came a stiff shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered nearly 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, accept I heard information technology -- however 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 at present 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 non speak! And now -- to-nighttime -- Ethelred -- ha! ha! -- the breaking of the hermit'southward door, and the expiry-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 inside the coppered archway of the vault! Oh whither shall I wing? Will she not be hither anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Accept I not heard her stride on the stair? Do I non distinguish that heavy and horrible chirapsia of her heart? Madman!" -- hither he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, equally if in the attempt he were giving upwards his soul -- "Madman! I tell you lot that she now stands without the door!"
As if in the superhuman free energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell -- the huge antique pannels 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. At that place was claret 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 depression moaning weep, fell heavily inward upon the person of her blood brother, and in her fierce and now last decease-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 tempest was still abroad in all its wrath equally I found myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly at that place shot forth the path a wild light, and I turned to run into 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-cherry-red moon which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible cleft, of which I take before spoken every bit extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened -- there came a vehement breath of the whirlwind -- the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight -- my brain reeled equally I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder -- at that place was a long tumultuous shouting audio similar the voice of a thousand waters -- and the deep and dank tarn at my feet airtight sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "House of Usher."
Source: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/POE/fall.html
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