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Page 9
At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the
arrangements for the temporary entombment. The body having been
encoffined, we two alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which
we placed it (and which had been so long unopened that our
torches, half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us
little opportunity for investigation) was small, damp, and
entirely without means of admission for light; lying, at great
depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which
was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently, in
remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and,
in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or some other
highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor,
and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached
it, were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive
iron, had been, also, similarly protected. Its immense weight
caused an unusually sharp grating sound, as it moved upon its hinges.
Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within
this region of horror, we partially turned aside the yet
unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked upon the face of the
tenant. A striking similitude between the brother and sister now
first arrested my attention; and Usher, 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 between them.
Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead--for we could
not regard her unawed. The disease 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
blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously
lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We
replaced and screwed down the lid, 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 now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an
observable change 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 chamber
to chamber 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; 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 labouring with some
oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the
necessary courage. 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. It was no wonder that his condition terrified--that it
infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain
degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive
superstitions.
It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night
of the seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady
Madeline within the donjon, that I experienced the full power of
such feelings. Sleep came not near my couch--while the hours
waned and waned away. I struggled to reason off the nervousness
which had dominion over me. I endeavoured to believe that much,
if not all of what I felt, was due to the bewildering influence
of the gloomy furniture of the room--of the dark and tattered
draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath of a rising
tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled
uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were
fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame;
and, at length, there sat 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, hearkened--
I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me--to
certain low 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 yet unendurable,
I threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep
no more during the night,) and endeavoured to arouse myself from
the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly
to and fro through the apartment.
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