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[12] have thought thus) as on account of the pertinacity with which
he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the
sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the
idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under certain
conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words to express
the full extent or the earnest _abandon_ of his persuasion. The belief,
however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with the gray
stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions of the sentience
had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of
these stones—in the order of their arrangement, as well as in that of
the many _fungi_ which overspread them, and of the decayed trees which
stood around—above all, in the long-undisturbed endurance of this
arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn.
Its evidence—the evidence of the sentience—was to be seen, he said (and
I here started as he spoke), in the gradual yet certain condensation of
an atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls. The result
was discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet importunate and
terrible influence which for centuries had molded the destinies of his
family, and which made _him_ what I now saw him—what he was. Such
opinions need no comment, and I will make none.
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_[13] of Gresset; the
_Belphegor_[14] of Machiavelli; the _Heaven and Hell_[15] of
Swedenborg; the _Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm_[16] by Holberg;
the _Chiromancy_[17] of Robert Flud, of Jean D'lndaginé, and of De la
Chambre[18]; the _Journey into the Blue Distance_ of Tieck[19]; and the
_City of the Sun_[20] of Campanella. One favorite volume was a small
octavo edition of the _Directorium Inquisitorium_[21] by the Dominican
Eymeric de Cironne; and there were passages in _Pomponius Mela_,[22]
about the old African Satyrs and Oegipans,[23] 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_.[24]
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 line—but the luminousness of his eye had
utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard
no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually
characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought
his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive secret,
to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times,
again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries
of madness; for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an
attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some
imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition terrified—that it
infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the
wild influence of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.
It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the
seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within the
donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep came
not near my couch, while the hours waned and waned away, I struggled to
reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavored to
believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the
bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room—of the dark
and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath of a
rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled
uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were
fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at
length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless
alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself
upon the pillows, and peering earnestly within the intense darkness of
the chamber, hearkened—I know not why, except that an instinctive
spirit prompted me—to certain low and indefinite sounds which came,
through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence.
Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet
unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should
sleep no more during the night), and endeavored to arouse myself from
the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to
and fro through the apartment.
I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an
adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognized it as
that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle touch,
at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual,
cadaverously wan—but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in
his eyes—and evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanor. His
air appalled me—but anything was preferable to the solitude which I had
so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a relief.
"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 favorite romances. I
will read and you shall listen; and so we will pass away this terrible
night together."
The antique volume which I had taken up was the _Mad Trist_ of Sir
Launcelot Canning[25]; but I had called it a favorite of Usher's more
in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its
uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for
the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the
only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the
excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for
the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even in
the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have judged,
indeed, by the wild, overstrained air of vivacity with which he
hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I might
well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design.
I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred,
the hero of the "Trist," having sought in vain for peaceable admission
into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by
force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run
thus:—
"And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now
mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had
drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in
sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn; but, feeling the rain
upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted his
mace outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings of
the door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling therewith sturdily,
he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the
dry and hollow-sounding wood alarummed[26] and reverberated throughout
the forest."
At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment paused;
for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my excited
fancy had deceived me)—it appeared to me that, from some very remote
portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears what might
have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo (but a
stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound
which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond
doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for, amid
the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary
commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the sound, in itself,
had nothing, surely, which should have interested or disturbed, me. I
continued the story:—
"But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore
enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but,
in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanor, and
of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a
floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass
with this legend enwritten:—
Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath been;
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[27] to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of
it, the like whereof was never before heard."
Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild
amazement—for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this instance,
I did actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I found
it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh,
protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound—the exact
counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon's
unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.
Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second and
most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations,
in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained
sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the
sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that
he had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a strange
alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his
demeanor. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought
round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the chamber;
and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I saw
that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had
dropped upon his breast—yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the
wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a glance of it in
profile. The motion of his body, too, was at variance with this
idea—for he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and
uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the
narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus proceeded:—
"And now the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the
dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up
of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of
the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver pavement
of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth
tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon the
silver floor, with a mighty, great and terrible ringing sound."
No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than—as if a shield of
brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of
silver—I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic and clangorous,
yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to
my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I
rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before
him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony
rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a
strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his
lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur,
as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length
drank in the hideous import of his words.
"Not hear it?—yes, I hear it, and _have_ heard it. Long—long—long—many
minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it—yet I dared not—oh,
pity me, miserable wretch that I am!—I dared not—I _dared_ not speak!
_We have put her living in the tomb!_ Said I not that my senses were
acute? I _now_ tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the
hollow coffin. I heard them—many, many days ago—yet I dared not—_I
dared not speak!_ And now—to-night—Ethelred—ha! ha!—-the breaking of
the hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of
the shield!—say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of
the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered
archway of the vault! Oh, whither shall I fly? Will she not be here
anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard
her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible
beating of her heart? Madman!"—here he sprang furiously to his feet,
and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up
his soul—"_Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!_"
As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found
the potency of a spell—the huge antique panels to which the speaker
pointed threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony
jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust—but then without those doors
there _did_ stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline
of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of
some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a
moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the
threshold—then, with a low, moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the
person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies,
bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had
anticipated.
From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was
still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old
causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned
to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house
and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the
full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that
once barely discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as
extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the
base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened—there came a fierce
breath of the whirlwind—the entire orb of the satellite burst at once
upon my sight—my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing
asunder—there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a
thousand waters—and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly
and silently over the fragments of the "_House of Usher_."