The Fall of the House of Usher Page 4

strong shudder over hiswhole person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I sawthat he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as ifunconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I atlength 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 heardit--yet I dared not--oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!--Idared not--I dared not speak! We have put her living inthe tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tellyou that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin.I heard them--many, many days ago--yet I dared not--I darednot speak! And now--to-night--Ethelred--ha! ha!--the breakingof the hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and theclangour of the shield!--say, rather, the rending of her coffin,and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and herstruggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh whithershall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying toupbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footsteps on thestair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating ofher heart? Madman!" here he sprang furiously to his feet, andshrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving uphis soul--"Madman! I tell you that she now stands without thedoor!"

  As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there hadbeen found the potency of a spell--the huge antique panels towhich the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant,their ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of therushing gust--but then without those doors there DID stand thelofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. Therewas blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitterstruggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a momentshe remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold,--then,with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the personof her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies,bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors hehad anticipated.

  From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast.The storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myselfcrossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path awild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual couldhave issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behindme. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-redmoon which now shone vividly through that once barely-discerniblefissure of which I have before spoken as extending from the roofof the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While Igazed, this fissure rapidly widened--there came a fierce breathof the whirlwind--the entire orb of the satellite burst at onceupon my sight--my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushingasunder--there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like thevoice of a thousand waters--and the deep and dank tarn at my feetclosed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "House ofUsher".

  * Watson, Dr Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the Bishop of Landaff.