Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe

by Volume 01-05 (lit)

  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 MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer

  spoke of acute bodily illness - of a mental disorder which oppressed

  him - and of an earnest desire to 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 recognisable 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 there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their

  immediate vicinity - an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air

  of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the

  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 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, 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

  trellissed 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 supposititious force

  was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated - an influence

  which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family

  mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his

  spirit - an 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.

  He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the

  peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more

  natural and far more palpable origin - to the severe and

  long-continued illness - indeed to the evidently approaching

  dissolution - of a tenderly beloved sister - his sole companion for

  long years - his last and only relative on earth. "Her decease," he