The Fall of the House of Usher

her living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I nowtell you that
I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them—many,
many days ago—yet I dared not—I dared not speak! And now—to-night—
Ethelred—ha! ha!—the breaking of the hermit’s door, and the death-cry of the
dragon, and the clangor of the shield!—say, rather, the rending of her coffin,
and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the
coppered archway of the vault! Oh! whither shall I fly? Will she not be here
anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her
footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of
her heart? Madman!”—here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out
his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul—“Madman! I tell
you that she now stands without the door!”
As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the
potency of a spell, the huge antique panels 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 there did stand the lofty and
enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her
white robes, and the evidence 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—then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon
the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore
him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.
From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was still
abroad 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 see whence a gleam so
unusual could have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone
behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon
which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure of which
I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag
direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened—there came
a fierce breath 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 thousand
waters—and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently
over the fragments of the “House of Usher.”

---

Liked This Book?
For More FREE e-Books visit
Freeditorial.com