"
No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than--as if a shield of
brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of
silver--I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic and clangorous,
yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to
my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I
rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before
him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony
rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a
strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about
his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering
murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I
at length 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 heard
it--yet I dared not--oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!--I dared
not--I _dared_ not speak! _We have put her living in the tomb!_ Said I
not that my senses were acute? I _now_ tell 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.
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