The Fall of the House of Usher | Page 6

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 grey 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 dis- solution--of a tenderly
beloved sister--his sole companion for long years--his last and only
relative on earth. "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 so 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
yet I found it impossible to account 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 countenance of the brother--but he had buried his face in his
hands, and I could only perceive that a far more 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 pressure 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 brother told me at night with
inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power 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 least while living,
would be seen by 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 endeavours to
alleviate 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 physical universe, in one unceasing radiation
of gloom.
I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus
spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail in
any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or of
the occupations, in which he involved me, or led me the way. An
excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over
all. His long improvised dirges will ring for ever in my ears. Among
other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular 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 vagueness at which I shuddered the more
thrillingly, because I shuddered knowing not why;--from these
paintings (vivid as their images now are before me) I would in vain
endeavour to educe more than a small portion which should lie within
the compass of merely written words. By the utter simplicity, by the