I Was Lost in Clouds of Gray but Now Im Found Again

The Autumn of the House of Usher

Son cœur est united nations luth suspendu;
Sitôt qu'on le touche il rèsonne.

De Béranger.

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing lonely, 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 Firm 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, considering 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 mural features of the domain — upon the dour walls — upon the vacant eye-like windows — upon a few rank sedges — and upon a few white trunks of decayed copse — with an utter low 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-24-hour interval life — the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the centre — 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 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 autumn dorsum upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond dubiousness, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which accept the ability of thus affecting usa, still the assay of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere dissimilar organisation of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to demolish its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my equus caballus to the precipitous brink of a black and pulp tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down — but with a shudder fifty-fifty more thrilling than earlier — upon the re-modelled 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 alphabetic character, notwithstanding, had lately reached me in a afar part of the country — a letter from him — which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The MS. gave bear witness of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness — of a mental disorder which oppressed him — and of an hostage desire to see me, every bit his best, and indeed his just personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some consolation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much more than, was said — information technology was the apparentheart that went with his asking — which immune me no room for hesitation; and I appropriately obeyed forthwith what I notwithstanding considered a very atypical summons.

Although, equally boys, nosotros had been even intimate associates, withal 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 however unobtrusive charity, as well equally in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and hands recognisable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, as well, the very remarkable fact, that the stalk of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, whatever enduring branch; in other words, that the unabridged family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, and then lain. It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the grapheme of the premises with the accredited grapheme of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which the i, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other — information technology was this deficiency, perhaps, 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 two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the "Business firm of Conductor" — an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used information technology, both the family unit and the family unit mansion.

I take said that the sole effect of my somewhat kittenish experiment — that of looking downward within the tarn — had been to deepen the get-go atypical impression. There tin can be no doubtfulness that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition — for why should I not so term information technology? — served mainly to advance the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror equally a footing. And it might have been for this reason only, that, when I once more uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a foreign fancy — a fancy then ridiculous, indeed, that I only mention it to testify the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had then worked upon my imagination every bit really to believe that about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their firsthand vicinity — an temper which had no affinity with the air of heaven, just which had reeked up from the rust-covered 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 whatmust have been a dream, I scanned more than narrowly the real aspect of the edifice. Its principal characteristic seemed to exist that of an excessive antiquity.[ The discoloration of ages had been cracking. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled spider web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was autonomously from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect accommodation of parts, and the aging condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of erstwhile wood-work which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, yet, the material gave footling token of instability. Perhaps the middle of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible crack, which, extending from the roof of the building in forepart, 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 thestudio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to raise the vague sentiments of which I take already spoken. While the objects effectually 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 equally I strode, were but matters to which, or to such every bit 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 upwards. On ane of the staircases, I met the physician of the family. His eyebrow, I thought, wore a mingled expression of depression cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open up 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 and then vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their fashion through the trellissed panes, and served to return sufficiently distinct the more than prominent objects around; the eye, withal, 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, Conductor 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 offset idea, of an overdone cordiality — of the constrained endeavour of theennuyé man of the earth. 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 one-half of compassion, half of awe. Surely, man had never before then terribly contradistinct, in and so brief a menstruation, 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. All the same the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an heart large, 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 breadth of nostril unusual in like formations; a finely moulded mentum, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than spider web-similar 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 at present in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay and 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 middle, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, also, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and every bit, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell nigh the[face, I could not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any thought of simple humanity.

In the manner of my friend I was at in one case struck with an incoherence — an inconsistency; and I soon found this to ascend 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 past his letter, than by reminiscences of sure adolescent traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied speedily 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 exist observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his virtually 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. Information technology was, he said, a ramble and a family evil, and 1 for which he despaired to observe a remedy — a mere nervous amore, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon laissez passer off. Information technology 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 full general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid affectibility of the senses; the near insipid food was alone endurable; he could vesture but garments of sure texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint calorie-free; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did non inspire him with horror.

To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. "I shall perish," said he, "Imust 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 whatsoever, fifty-fifty the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I accept, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect — in terror. In this unnerved — in this pitiable status — I feel that the period volition sooner or later arrive when I must carelessness life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, Fear."

I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another atypical feature of his mental condition. He was enchained past sure superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth — in regard to an influence whose supposititious forcefulness 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 outcome which thephysique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked downwardly, had, at length, brought about upon themorale of his beingness.

He admitted, nevertheless, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more than palpable origin — to the astringent and long-continued illness — indeed to the apparently approaching dissolution — of a tenderly love sister — his sole companion for long years — his last and just relative on globe. "Her decease," he said, with a bitterness which I can never forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers." While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for then was she called) passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread — and withal I found information technology incommunicable to business relationship for such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the eyebrow of the blood brother — but he had buried his face up in his easily, and I could only perceive that a far more than than ordinary wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears.

The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne up against the force per unit area 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 night with inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating ability of the destroyer; and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus probably be the last I should obtain — that the lady, at to the lowest degree while living, would be seen past me no more.

For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either Usher or myself: and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavors to convalesce the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together; or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and concrete universe, in one unceasing radiation of gloom.

I shall e'er bear about me a retentivity of the many solemn hours I thus spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Even so I should fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact grapheme of the studies, or of the occupations, in which he involved me, or led me the fashion. An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over all. His long improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in listen a certain atypical perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more thrillingly, considering I shuddered knowing not why; — from these paintings (brilliant as their images now are before me) I would in vain endeavor to educe more than a small portion which should lie within the compass of merely written  words. By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If e'er mortal painted an thought, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me at least — in the circumstances and so surrounding me — there arose out of the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvass, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I always yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of Fuseli.

One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not and so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed along, although feebly, in words. A modest picture presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without break or device. Certain accessory points of the design served well to convey the thought that this earthworks lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch, or other artificial source of light was discernible; however a flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendor.

I have just spoken of that morbid status of the auditory nerve which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects of stringed instruments. Information technology was, peradventure, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave birth, in smashing measure out, to the fantastic grapheme of his performances. But the fervidfacility of hisimpromptus could not exist so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, as well every bit 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 take previously alluded as observable simply in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I accept easily remembered. I was, perchance, the more forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its significant, I fancied that I perceived, and for the start fourth dimension, a full consciousness on the role 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:

I.

In the greenest of our valleys,

By expert angels tenanted,

Once a fair and stately palace —

Radiant palace — reared its head.

In the monarch Idea's rule —

It stood there!

Never seraph spread a pinion

Over fabric half then off-white.

II.

Banners yellow, glorious, golden,

On its roof did float and period;

(This — all this — was in the olden

Fourth dimension long ago)

And every gentle air that dallied,

In that sweet twenty-four hours,

Forth the ramparts plumed and pallid,

A winged odour went away.

III.

Wanderers in that happy valley

Through two luminous windows saw

Spirits moving musically

To a lute's well-tunéd constabulary,

Round about a throne, where sitting

(Porphyrogene!)

In state his glory well befitting,

The ruler of the realm was seen.

IV.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing

Was the fair palace door,

Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,

And sparkling evermore,

A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty

Was just to sing,

In voices of surpassing beauty,

The wit and wisdom of their king.

5.

Only evil things, in robes of sorrow,

Assailed the monarch'south high manor;

(Ah, allow us mourn, for never morrow

Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)

And, round about his home, the glory

That blushed and bloomed

Is but a dim-remembered story

Of the quondam time entombed.

Half dozen.

And travellers at present within that valley,

Through the red-litten windows, see

Vast forms that movement fantastically

To a discordant tune;

While, like a rapid ghastly river,

Through the stake door,

A hideous throng blitz out forever,

And laugh — just smile no more.

I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad, led us into a train of idea wherein there became manifest an opinion of Conductor'south which I mention not so much on account of its novelty, (for other men take thought thus,) as on account of the pertinacity with which he maintained information technology. 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, nether certain weather, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words to express the full extent, or the earnest abandon of his persuasion. The belief, however, was continued (as I have previously hinted) with the grey stones of the home of his forefathers. The atmospheric condition of the sentience had been hither, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of these stones — in the order of their system, besides every bit in that of the manyfungi 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 exist seen, he said, (and I here started every bit he spoke,) in the gradual yet certain condensation of an atmosphere of their ain nearly 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 madehim what I at present 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 being of the invalid — were, as might be supposed, in strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over such works every bit the Ververt et Chartreuse of Gresset; the Belphegor of Machiavelli; the Sky and Hell of Swedenborg; the Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm past Holberg; the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean D'Indaginé, and of De la Chambre; the Journeying into the Blue Distance of Tieck; and the City of the Dominicus of Campanella. One favorite volume was a small octavo edition of theDirectorium Inquisitorium , by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were passages in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and œgipans, over which Usher would sit down dreaming for hours. His chief delight, nevertheless, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious volume in quarto Gothic — the manual of a forgotten church — theVigiliae Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae.

I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight, (previously to its final interment,) in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls of the edifice. The worldly reason, nevertheless, 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 burying-ground of the family. I will non 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 want to oppose what I regarded as at all-time 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 ii lone diameter it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which had been so long unopened that our torches, one-half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave the states little opportunity for investigation) was modest, clammy, and entirely without means of access for light; lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my ain sleeping apartment. It had been used, obviously, in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-continue, and, in afterwards days, as a identify of eolith for pulverization, or another highly combustible substance, as a portion of its flooring, and the whole interior of a long entrance through which we reached information technology, were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had been, also, similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually abrupt grating sound, every bit it moved upon its hinges.

Having deposited our mournful brunt upon tressels inside this region of horror, we partially turned aside the even so unscrewed lid of the bury, and looked upon the face up of the tenant. A hit similitude between the blood brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and Conductor, 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 betwixt them. Our glances, all the same, rested not long upon the dead — for we could not regard her unawed. The illness 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 chroma upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is and so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the hat, 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 at present, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable alter 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 bedroom to sleeping room 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 than; 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 backbone. 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. Information technology was no wonder that his status terrified — that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, past tedious yet certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.

It was, particularly, upon retiring to bed tardily in the night of the 7th or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within the donjon, that I experienced the full ability of such feelings. Sleep came not well-nigh 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 non all of what I felt, was due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy article of furniture of the room — of the nighttime and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion past the breath of a ascension tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily nigh the decorations of the bed. Just my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, at that place sabbatum 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, harkened — I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me — to certain depression 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 notwithstanding unendurable, I threw on my dress with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more during the night), and endeavored to agitate 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 calorie-free step on an adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognised information technology equally that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped,[with a gentle bear upon, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, every bit usual, cadaverously wan — simply, moreover, at that place was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes — an evidently restrainedhysteria in his whole demeanor. His air appalled me — merely anything was preferable to the confinement which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a relief.

"And you take non seen it?" he said abruptly, afterward having stared about him for some moments in silence — "you have not and then seen it? — but, stay! you shall." Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and threw information technology freely open to the storm.

The impetuous fury of the inbound gust nearly lifted united states from our feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly cute dark, and 1 wildly singular in its terror and its dazzler. A whirlwind had patently collected its force in our vicinity; for there were frequent and trigger-happy 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 abroad into the distance. I say that fifty-fifty their exceeding density did not foreclose our perceiving this — yet we had no glimpse of the moon or stars — nor was there whatever flashing along of the lightning. Merely 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, every bit I led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a seat. "These appearances, which bewilder you lot, are just electric phenomena not uncommon — or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. Allow 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 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 chosen it a favorite of Usher's more than in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is piffling in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had involvement for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, withal, the just book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague promise that the excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might notice 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 harkened, or apparently harkened, to the words of the tale, I might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my pattern.

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 brand expert an entrance by force. Here, information technology 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 vino 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 rise of the storm, 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 disconnected, that the racket of the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarummed and reverberated throughout the wood."

At the termination of this judgement I started, and for a moment, paused; for it appeared to me (although I at in one case concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me) — information technology appeared to me that, from some very remote portion of the mansion, at that place came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might take been, in its verbal similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled and ho-hum one certainly) of the very swell and ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so peculiarly described. Information technology was, beyond uncertainty, the coincidence alone which had arrested my attending; for, among the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary commingled noises of the notwithstanding increasing storm, the audio, in itself, had zip,[surely, which should take 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; simply, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and biggy 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 caput of the dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a shriek so horrid and harsh, and notwithstanding so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful dissonance of it, the similar whereof was never before heard."

Hither again I paused abruptly, and at present 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 it proceeded I found it incommunicable to say) a depression 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 equally described by the romancer.

Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this 2d 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 heady, by whatever 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 every bit to sit with his face up to the door of the sleeping room; 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 move 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 non for his full coming, simply brutal down at his anxiety upon the silver floor, with a mighty keen 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 flooring of argent — I became aware of a singled-out, hollow, metallic, and cavernous, nonetheless evidently deadened 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 eyebrow there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, at that place came a strong 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 information technology? — yes, I hear information technology, andtake heard it. Long — long — long — many minutes, many hours, many days, accept I heard it — notwithstanding I dared not — oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am! — I dared non — Idared non speak!We take put her living in the tomb! Said I non that my senses were acute? Inow tell yous that I heard her start feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them — many, many days ago — yet I dared non —I dared non speak! And now — to-night — Ethelred — ha! ha! — the breaking of the hermit's door, and the decease-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield! — say, rather, the rending of her bury, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison house, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh whither shall I wing? Volition she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her stride on the stair? Practice I non distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!" — hither he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the endeavour he were giving upwardly his soul — "Madman! I tell y'all that she now stands without the door!"

Every bit if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the authorisation of a spell — the huge antiquarian 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 in that locationdid stand up the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the bear witness 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 — and so, with a low moaning weep, fell heavily inward upon the person of her blood brother, and in her violent and now terminal death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had predictable.

From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was notwithstanding away 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 run across whence a gleam so unusual could take issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the total, setting, and blood-ruby-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken equally extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base of operations. While I gazed, this cleft apace widened — in that location came a trigger-happy jiff 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 g waters — and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "Business firm of Conductor."

---

Edgar Allan Poe

Published in 1839

Image by Byam Shaw

wennertroarat.blogspot.com

Source: https://poemuseum.org/the-fall-of-the-house-of-usher/

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