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 ghastly rapid 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[1] haye 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 fore-fathers. 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.

[Footnote 1: Watson, Dr. Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the

Bishop of Landaff.--See "Chemical Essays," Vol. V.]

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 and Chartreuse of Gresset; the Belphegor of

Machiavelli; the Heaven and Hell of Swedenborg; the Subterranean

Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by Holberg; the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of

Jean D'Indaginé, and of De la Chambre; the Journey into the Blue

Distance of Tieck; and the City of the Sun of Campanella. One favorite

volume was a small octavo edition of the _Directorium

Inquisitorum_, by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were

passages in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and Ægipans,

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

_Vigilice Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiæ Maguntinæ_.

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 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 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

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--an 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 life-like

velocity with which they flew careering from all points against each

other, without passing away into the distance. I say that even their

exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this; yet we had no

glimpse of the moon or stars, nor was there any flashing forth of the

lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated

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; 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 alarumed and reverberated

throughout the forest."

At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment

paused; for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my

excited fancy had deceived me)--it appeared to me that from some very

remote portion of the mansion there came, indistinctly, to my ears,

what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo

(but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and

ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It

was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my

attention; for, amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and

the ordinary commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the

sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which should have interested or

disturbed me. I continued the story:--

"But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was

sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit;

but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious

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 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 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 hich 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_."