'The Fall of the House of Usher,' by Edgar Allan Poe, Part Two

01The Fall of the House of Usher Part 2 Roderick Usher, whom I had known as a boy, was now ill and had asked me to come to help him.

02When I arrived I felt something strange and fearful about the great old stone house, about the lake in front of it, and about Usher himself.

03He appeared not like a human being, but like a spirit that had come back from beyond the grave.

04It was an illness, he said, from which he would surely die.

05He called his sickness fear.

06I have, he said, no fear of pain, but only the fear of its result, of terror.

07I feel that the time will soon arrive when I must lose my life, and my mind and my soul together in some last battle with that horrible enemy.

08Fear.

09I learned also, but slowly and through broken words with doubtful meaning, another strange fact about the condition of Usher's mind.

10He had certain sick fears about the house in which he lived, and he had not stepped out of it for many years.

11He felt that the house, with its gray walls and the quiet lake around it, had somehow through the long years gotten a strong hold on his spirit.

12He said, however, that much of the gloom which lay so heavily on him was probably caused by something more plainly to be seen, by the long-continued illness, indeed the coming death, of a dearly loved sister, his only company for many years.

13Except for himself, she was the last member of his family on earth.

14When she dies, he said, with a sadness which I can never forget, when she dies, I will be the last of the old, old family, the house of Usher.

15While he spoke, the Lady Madeline, for so she was called, passed slowly through a distant part of the room, and without seeing that I was there, went on.

16I looked at her with a complete and wondering surprise, and with some fear.

17And yet I found I could not explain to myself such feelings.

18My eyes followed her.

19When she came to a door and it closed behind her, my eyes turned to the face of her brother.

20But he had put his face in his hands, and I could see only that the thin fingers through which his tears were flowing were whiter than ever before.

21The illness of the Lady Madeline had long been beyond the help of her doctors.

22She seemed to care about nothing.

23Slowly her body had grown thin and weak, and often for a short period she would fall into a sleep like the sleep of the dead.

24So far she had not been forced to stay in bed, but by the evening of the day I arrived at the house.

25The power of her destroyer, as her brother told me that night, was too strong for her.

26I learned that my one sight of her would probably be the last I would have, that the Lady, at least while living, would be seen by me no more.

27For several days following, her name was not spoken by either Usher or myself, and during this period I was busy with efforts to lift my friend out of his sadness and gloom.

28We painted and read together, or listened as if in a dream to the wild music he played.

29And so, as a warmer and more loving friendship grew between us, I saw more clearly the uselessness of all attempts to bring happiness to a mind from which only darkness came, spreading upon all objects in the world its never-ending gloom.

30I shall always remember the hours I spent with the master of the house of Usher.

31Yet I would fail in any attempt to give an idea of the true character of the things we did together.

32There was a strange light over everything.

33The paintings which he made made me tremble, though I know not why.

34To tell of them is beyond the power of written words.

35If ever a man painted an idea, that man was Roderick Usher.

36For me, at least, there came out of his pictures a sense of fear and wonder.

37One of these pictures may be told, although weakly, in words.

38It showed the inside of a room where the dead might be placed, with low walls, white and plain.

39It seemed to be very deep under the earth.

40There was no door, no window, and no light or fire burned.

41Yet a river of light flowed through it, filling it with a horrible, ghastly brightness.

42I have spoken of that sickly condition of the senses, which made most music painful for Usher to hear.

43The notes he could listen to with pleasure were very few.

44It was this fact, perhaps, that made the music he played so different from most music.

45But the wild beauty of his playing could not be explained.

46The words of one of his songs called The Haunted Palace I have easily remembered.

47In it I thought I saw, and for the first time, that Usher knew very well that his mind was weakening.

48This song told of a great house where a king lived, a palace, in a green valley, where all was light and color and beauty, and the air was sweet.

49In the palace were two bright windows through which people in the happy valley could hear music and could see smiling ghosts, spirits moving around the king.

50The palace door was of the richest material, in red and white.

51Through it came other spirits whose only duty was to sing in their beautiful voices about how wise their king was.

52But a dark change came, the song continued.

53And now those who enter the valley see through the windows in a red light, shapes that move to broken music.

54While through the door, now colorless, a ghastly river of ghosts laughing but no longer smiling, rushes out forever.

55Our talk of this song led to another strange idea in Usher's mind.

56He believed that plants could feel and think, and not only plants but rocks and water as well.

57He believed that the gray stones of his house and the small plants growing on the stones and the decaying trees had a power over him that made him what he was.

58Our books, the books which for years had fed the sick man's mind, were, as might be supposed, of the same wild character.

59Some of these books Usher sat and studied for hours.

60His chief delight was found in reading one very old book, written for some forgotten church, telling of the watch over the dead.

61At last, one evening, he told me that the Lady Madeline was alive no more.

62He said he was going to keep her body for a time in one of the many vaults inside the walls of the building.

63The worldly reason he gave for this was one with which I felt I had to agree.

64He had decided to do this because of the nature of her illness, because of the strange interest and questions of her doctors, and because of the great distance to the graveyard where members of his family were placed in the earth.

65We, too, carried her body to its resting place.

66The vault in which we placed it was small and dark.

67In ages past it must have seen strange and bloody scenes.

68It lay deep below that part of the building where I myself slept.

69The thick door was of iron, and because of its great weight made a loud, hard sound when it was opened and closed.

70As we placed the Lady Madeline in this room of horror, I saw for the first time the great likeness between brother and sister.

71And Usher told me then that they were twins.

72They had been born on the same day.

73For that reason, the understanding between them had always been great, and the tie that held them together very strong.

74We looked down at the dead face one last time, and I was filled with wonder.

75As she lay there, the Lady Madeline looked not dead, but asleep, still soft and warm, though to the touch cold as the stones around us.

76ones.

77And the other