till each one shone like the great star that hung its blue lamp in the
zenith that night when they were lost upon the mountain. “Perhaps I
cannot read my heart; but does a woman really love that which is less
strong than herself? I must lean upon my husband, not he on me.”
“Am I so weak?” asked Reymund, with some bitterness, and a quiver on his
lip. “Consider. If your own nature had been invested with a coarser
flesh, left out thereby to coarser temptations,--since passions are
things of the flesh,--what would have come of it? Then, if thrown in the
midst of the revel, loving the flash of merriment, the excitement of
chance, and wine and dice were going round--But, no! such speech is
profanity. Yet, Orient, under all habit, under all action, I think there
is that in my soul akin to yours, made to rule it and absorb it, hidden
by the body; but there,--made to be loved by you, as you, all of you,
flaws and beauties, are loved by me!”
“If I could only _see_ your soul,” said Orient, half yielding, contrite,
yet uncertain.
“One day perhaps you will,” answered Reymund, his repeater giving the
hour to his finger-pressure. “Now I must go.”
He rose, stooped again and touched her smooth, cold forehead with his
mouth. The touch sent the blood back to his heart. “With time,” he
murmured. “O, with time! she shall yet--she shall! Good by,--till
Saturday again at five o’clock!” and then was gone.
All that week Reymund walked through his work with an absent mind, as
if his spirit had half left his body, disengaging itself from the
automaton of bone and muscle, as one might say; abstracted and lost in
his thoughts, his wishes, his absolute resolutions. Old haunts had no
attraction for him, old faces brought him no satisfaction, he sought no
pleasure but such as was to be found on the back of that horse possessed
by the spirit of Satan. And so he existed till the sunrise of Saturday,
when, before it should be quite time for the train, he had the horse
brought round for a gallop, as if he would ride the wind and tame the
whirlwind.
In the mean time Orient pursued her way in what, for her, was
perturbation. There seemed to be a riddle in these days beyond her
reading. Penitent over her pride in presuming herself to be stronger
than her lover, conscious that she could not dispense with him, yet full
as sure that she felt no perfect passion for him, there was nothing to
do but marvel what it meant. “I am drawn to him,” she said to herself.
“Ah, I know that well enough! But have I any right to be? If there were
something to confirm me! If I thought the good and beautiful part were
any abiding principle, were anything but love of me! If I could only see
his soul!”
She was walking that Saturday afternoon in the woods that could be seen
from her garden across the meadows. It was a clear October afternoon,
the red leaves were dropping round her and leaving the bright blue sky
more bare with every gentle gust that brought them to her feet; a
bracing day of early autumn, when the wind fainted with the sweet
freight of balsam from the pines, and all things only prophesied hope
and lightsomeness. In spite of this, Orient could not tell why she had
a constant sensation of gray and misty horizons, of marshy air and cold
sea-wind all day; as she walked now, the fitful breeze in the tree-tops
seemed the muffled murmur of waves on the distant beach, and once in a
while she shivered as if a cold foam-wreath were flying by her face. She
thought at first that all this damp and drear sensation was some
sympathy with Reymund, now travelling along the sea-coast on his way to
her. “But what absurdity!” she said. “Where the track lies, the sky is
as blue as this one; the wind is scarcely more chilly there than here.
Reymund is rolling along, comfortable among his cushions and books; and
not a naked spirit all abroad in the sea-scented air!”
She went home on the causeway that was laid along the meadows,--hurrying
a little, for she judged by the sinking sun that it must be nearly time
for the arrival of the train. As she went, she heard her name called.
She turned, for the voice seemed to come from the woods. But seeing no
one, she fancied the note of some bird had followed her.
Again the sound. Her name; and Reymund’s voice. “He has come,” thought
Orient, with a thrill of unsuspected pleasure, “and he is calling me
from the garden.” And she made all haste to answer the summons in
person. Going along, then, with her boughs of bright leaves, she wished
she had not delayed so long in the woods,--her dress so soiled, and her
hands, her hair so disordered; she resolved to steal in at the side door
and freshen her toilet before greeting him. As the door was opened to
her, “Mr. Reymund has come,” said the maid, gleefully. “I have just let
him in. He is waiting in the drawing-room.”
“Very well,” answered Orient. “Tell him I will be there directly.”
She hastened towards the staircase, boughs in hand.
“You haven’t seen your friend?” asked her aunt, passing her on the
landing as she sped up.
“No,” replied Orient again; “have you?”
“I just met him in the hall as he was entering the drawing-room,” said
the good woman, calling over the balusters and going her way.
Orient hurried at her bath, clad herself with all despatch, and put on a
garment whose airy frills and ruffles made her look like a white rose.
As she went by her mother’s room, the mother looked out and said,
lightly, “Reymund has come. Did you know it?”
“Yes, mamma,” she answered. “Why didn’t you go and make him welcome?”
“O, my hair was all down!” said the other. “I just caught a glimpse of
him, passing the foot of the stairs as he went into the drawing-room.”
So Orient stepped slowly down, adjusting her bracelets as she went. She
saw Reymund a second, as the winding way of the stairs for that space
allowed her, standing in the bay-window and looking out. She did not
know what made her so hesitate to enter. She paused a moment longer in
the doorway, gazing in.
The room was very gay with bunches of deep-blue and scarlet salvia, and
drooping clusters of barberry boughs stringing their splendid pendants
all along most graceful curves; but there was another brightness than
that in the room. It was where Reymund stood in the embrasure of the
window, with the late sunlight falling all over him. She wondered that
he did not advance to meet her; but, as she wondered, went up the room
toward him.
“Something must have happened to make him very happy,” thought Orient.
“I never saw such a smile!”
Perhaps it was this smile that so transfigured him; a plain man
commonly, the sunshine now seemed to bring out rich, dark tints on the
countenance, the eyes overflowed with light, and whether it were grace
of posture, overlying sunshine, or beaming smile, features and face and
figure expressed a subtle harmony, and the man was beautiful,--beautiful
as a strong angel pictured in some instant of stooping flight.
“He does not mean to speak till I do,” thought Orient again.
But as she drew near, the smile changed to a look of utter melancholy,
as a shining cloud melts into rain,--a melancholy gaze that pierced her
through and through. She put out her hand, nevertheless, to take his
extended grasp.
And there was nothing there!
In the same instant, with a loud and terrible voice, crying,
“Orient!”--a voice as if it were the voice of death, the tomb, and all
corruption,--the thing had vanished; the place was empty!
That cry rang through the house, that loud and terrible voice. Maid and
mother rushed into the room; and they found no one there but Orient,
fallen unconscious to the floor.
It did not take long to revive the child. “Something has happened to
Reymund,” she said, upon lifting her head. “We must go to him at once!”
“My love!” cried her mother. “The idea of the thing. The--”
But expostulations were wasted breath; while they were being made,
Orient was calmly getting on her travelling-gown, and, seeing herself
powerless, the mother--with her heart palpitating in the ends of her
fingers through awe and through alarm, and interweaving with the
ejaculations that escaped her chattering teeth a thousand instructions
to her quaking maid and sister--hastened to do likewise and be off with
her.
Thus it happened that the telegram from Reymund’s brother crossed the
travellers on their way; and they reached his brother’s house in the
gray of the shivering morning.
It was just as Orient’s heart had told her. Reymund had been thrown from
his horse on the previous morning, striking his head on a curbstone’s
edge; he had been taken up senseless, and had lain since then in a
stupor only broken by his twice calling her name in the afternoon. At a
little after five o’clock he had risen on the pillow, and in a loud and
terrible voice had called Orient again, and then had fallen back; and
whether he were dead or alive there was no one able to say.
Orient threw off her hat and shawl and stole into the apartment where
Reymund had been placed. The white face that fastened her eye was still
as a mask of clay, and there was stamped upon it that look of
unutterable melancholy into which she had seen the smile fade
yesterday,--the linen where it lay was less white, a marble image had
been less still. As Orient bent there her breath stirred the dark lock
of hair on the brow, and the slight and airy motion of itself brought
into forceful being all the awful immobility and silence of death.
“He does not breathe! His heart does not beat! Will he never open his
eyes again?” she said. “O Reymund, Reymund, I love you!”
She bent nearer as she sighed the words, and her lips were sealed to
his.
A quiver ran through all the frozen frame reposing there beside her, a
pulse of warmth, perhaps, played in the hand hers clasped; the eyelids
shook and lifted and unveiled the dark and woful eyes.
“You have seen my soul, Orient,” said Reymund. “Good by.”
The dark and woful eyes were veiled again. And this time Reymund’s soul
was gone beyond recall.
[Illustration: text decoration]
[Illustration: text decoration]
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE.
Son cœur est un luth suspendu;
Sitôt qu’on le touche il rèsonne.
DE BERANGER.
During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the
year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, 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 every-day life,--the hideous dropping off of the veil. There
was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart,--an unredeemed
dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture
into aught of the sublime. What was it,--I paused to think,--what was it
that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a
mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that
crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the
unsatisfactory conclusion that, while, beyond doubt, there _are_
combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus
affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations
beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different
arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the
picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate, its
capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined
my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in
unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down--but with a shudder
even more thrilling than before--upon the remodelled and inverted images
of the gray sedge and the ghastly tree-stems and the vacant and eye-like
windows.
Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a
sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of
my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last
meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of
the country,--a letter from him,--which, in its wildly importunate
nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The manuscript
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 recognizable beauties, of musical
science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact that the stem of
the Usher race, all time-honored 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 hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves
and their immediate vicinity,--an atmosphere which had no affinity with
the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees and
the gray wall and the silent tarn,--a pestilent and mystic vapor, 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 woodwork 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 arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at
full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in
it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality,--of the constrained
effort of the _ennuyé_ 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 odors 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 suposititious force was conveyed
in terms too shadowy here to be restated,--an influence which some
peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion had,
by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit,--an
effect which the _physique_ of the gray walls and turrets, and of the
dim tarn into which they all looked down, had at length brought about
upon the _morale_ of his existence.