The Fall of the House of Usher: Selected Stories / Падение дома Ашеров: Избранные рассказы. Эдгар Аллан По
n minds, under certain conditions, it becomes absolutely irresistible. I believe that the assurance of the wrong or error of any action is often the only unconquerable force which impels us to do it. This tendency to do wrong for the wrong's sake[2] does not admit analysis.
We stand on the edge of a cliff. We look into the abyss – we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to step back. Inexplicably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness and dizziness, and horror combine in a cloud of unnamable feeling. Gradually this cloud takes shape. It is just a thought, although a fearful one. It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the fall from such a height. And this fall – for the very reason that it involves the most frightening of all images of death and suffering in our imagination – we now desire it. And because our reason violently demands that we step back from the edge, we approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him who, shuddering on the edge of a cliff, thus meditates a plunge. If there is no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to jump backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.
Examining such actions, we find that they result only from the spirit of the Perverse. We commit them because we feel that we should not. Beyond or behind this there is no intelligible principle; and we might consider this perverseness as a direct provocation of the archfiend[3], if it did not do good from time to time.
I have said so much to explain to you why I am here, why I am in this cell of the condemned. Now, you will easily see that I am one of the many uncounted victims of the Imp of the Perverse.
I thoroughly prepared the crime. For weeks, for months, I thought about the means of the murder. I rejected a thousand schemes, because their accomplishment involved a chance of detection. At length,[4] reading some French memoirs, I found a story of a nearly fatal illness that occurred to Madame Pilau, through the agency[5] of a candle accidentally poisoned. The idea struck my fancy at once. I knew my victim's habit of reading in bed. I knew, too, that his apartment was narrow and ill- ventilated. But I need not annoy you with details. I need not describe the easy tricks by which I substituted, in his bedroom candle-stand, a wax candle of my own making, for the one which I there found. The next morning he was discovered dead in his bed, and the Coroner's verdict was – “Death by the visitation of God.[6]”
I have inherited his estate, and all went well with me for years. The idea of detection never entered my brain. I had left no shadow of a clue by which it would be possible to convict, or even to suspect me of the crime. As I reflected upon my absolute security, a sense of deep satisfaction arose in my bosom. For a very long time, I was accustomed to enjoy this sentiment. It afforded me more real delight than all the mere worldly advantages received from my sin. However, at length, there arrived an epoch, from which the pleasurable feeling gradually turned into a haunting and annoying thought. It annoyed because it haunted. I could not get rid of it even for an instant. It is quite a common thing to be thus annoyed with the ringing in our ears, or rather in our memories, of some unimpressive parts from an opera. In this manner, I constantly caught myself thinking about my security, and repeating the phrase, “I am safe.”
One day, walking along the streets, I stopped myself in the act of murmuring, half aloud, these customary words. In a fit of petulance[7], I changed them thus: “I am safe – I am safe – yes – if I am not fool enough to make open confession!”
As soon as I spoke these words, I felt an icy chill creep to my heart. I had had some experience in these fits of perversity, (whose nature I have explained), and I remembered well that I had never resisted their attacks successfully. And now my own casual suggestion that I might possibly be fool enough to confess the murder, confronted me, as if the ghost of my victim.
At first, I made an effort to shake off this nightmare of the soul. I walked vigorously – faster – still faster – at length I ran. I felt a maddening desire to shriek aloud. Every succeeding wave of thought overwhelmed me with new terror, for, I well understood that to think, in my situation, was to be lost. I still quickened my pace. I ran like a madman through the crowded streets. At length, the people became alarmed and pursued me. I felt then my fate. A rough voice resounded in my ears – a rougher grasp seized me by the shoulder. I turned – I gasped for breath. For a moment I experienced all the pangs of suffocation; I became blind, and deaf, and giddy; and then some invisible fiend, I thought, struck me upon the back. The long imprisoned secret burst forth from my soul.
They say that I spoke distinctly, but with passionate hurry, as if in dread of interruption before concluding the brief, but expressive sentences that handed me over to the hangman and to hell.
I told the people all that was necessary for the death sentence[8], and then I fainted.
But why shall I say more? Today I wear these chains, and am here! Tomorrow I shall be free! – but where?
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
During the dark and soundless day in the autumn of the year, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a dreary country area; and at last found myself not far from the melancholy House of Usher. With the first sight of the building, I had a sense of unbearable gloom. I looked upon the scene before me – upon the house, its bleak walls, and the vacant eye-like windows – with an utter depression of soul. I rode to the steep shore of a small black lake that lay by the dwelling, and looked down – but with a shudder even more thrilling than before – upon the inverted images of the frightening tree stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.
Nevertheless, I was going to spend some weeks in this mansion of gloom. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my good friends in boyhood; but many years had passed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of the country – a letter from him – which had admitted only a personal reply. The writer spoke of a mental disorder which oppressed him, and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only friend. The manner in which all this was said allowed me no hesitation, and I went to see him.
Although, as boys, we had been close friends, yet I really knew little of Roderick Usher, because he was very reserved. I was aware, however, that his family was very ancient and noted for its love for music and, lately, repeated deeds of charity. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact that his entire family lay in the direct line of descent[9].
Now I scanned more closely the building. It was very old and the whole exterior was covered with web hanging from the eaves. There was a barely visible crack, 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 waters of the small lake.
Noticing these things, I rode over a short path to the house. A servant took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of the hall. Then a valet conducted me, in silence, through many dark passages to the studio of his master. Much that I saw on the way heightened, I know not how, my vague anxiety. The carvings of the ceilings, the somber tapestries of the walls, the ebon[10] blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric trophies which rattled as I walked, were the things to which I had been accustomed from my childhood. But those ordinary images provoked unfamiliar fancies. On one of the staircases, I met the doctor of the family. He nervously greeted me and passed on. The valet now opened a door and led me to his master.
The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty[11]. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed. Dark draperies hung on the walls. The furniture was comfortless, antique, and shabby. Many books and musical instruments lay about, but they did not give any vitality
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