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Crisis Chronicles Cyber Litmag (2008-2015)

~ Contemporary Poetry and Literary Classics from Cleveland to Infinity

Crisis Chronicles Cyber Litmag (2008-2015)

Category Archives: Short Stories

Red Dust (by Ryn Cricket)

12 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by Crisis Chronicles Press in 2000s, American, Cricket (Ryn), Crisis Chronicles Press, Short Stories, Womack (Katheryn)

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Ryn Cricket head shot

Red Dust

“A rooster can eat a snake, you know.” Li told the older boy in the school yard.

“No, it can’t.” The boy countered. “The snake would kill it before it could even try.”

“Each animal has its own strength.” She insisted. “And if the rooster were provoked, it would kill a snake.”

“I don’t believe you.” The boy taunted.

“Alright, you go get a snake, and I’ll get my rooster.”

The boy ran off into the trees behind the school and Li crossed the dry, red, dirt road to her house on the other side. Her parents weren’t home, so they wouldn’t know that she had taken “Sawan,” her father’s prized rooster. She had to be right.

They met back up in the dusty school yard within minutes. “Alright,” the boy said. “When I count to three, we will both drop them in front of us. Ready? One…two…three.” And the boy almost threw the snake on the ground and it started to slither until Li released Sawan.

Sawan started squawking as if he had already been caught. He ruffled his feathers and flapped his wings in a frenzy. The snake just watched quietly and hissed; watching and waiting. Sawan almost caused himself a heart attack in his noisy display, but he must have known that if he ran away, he could be swiftly attacked.

“Come on, Sawan! Eat him!” Li half-cheered and half-pleaded. Sawan started to calm down. The snake was not attacking him. Maybe he was safe. And in that very moment, the snake lunged, biting Sawan perfectly on the neck. The rooster collapsed almost immediately into a mound of flesh and feathers.

Li fell on her knees in the dry dirt next to the bird and her little mind began to connect the dots.

They found her body floating in the river hours later because she understood that she would always be the victim of snakes.

 

* * * * *

“Red Dust” comes from Ryn Cricket’s chapbook In Circles, published in 2012 by Crisis Chronicles Press.

Ryn Cricket is a poet, teacher and mother raised in Ohio and now living in China.  For more information, please visit ryncricket.com.

Legendary (by Libby Robare)

22 Saturday Jun 2013

Posted by Crisis Chronicles Press in 2000s, American, Robare (Libby), Short Stories

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Legendary
by Libby Robare 


            Danielle stood at the bus stop at the end of a long day, trying to stop stressing. She had a mountain of homework to do, and was already exhausted from dance team practice. They were performing in two weeks, and she knew she needed to be practicing more at home. On top of that, they were supposed to go to the volleyball game on Friday, to support the team. Danni didn’t care about sports, she just liked dancing. Apparently, some of the special girls on the team were going to perform at the volleyball game, but she hadn’t been selected. In fact, she had recently heard that she’d have to show up for extra practice on Thursday nights. The email she’d received had only been sent to about five other girls, none of them very experienced. In fact, the coach had even said she “knew some people didn’t have as much training as others on the team.” Danni knew she needed some practice to help her memorize the dance—she knew she lacked focus, but that email was really a slap in the face. Sure, her mind was a bit of a mess, but they didn’t need to devalue her ten years of ballet experience. So what if she hadn’t been dancing at all since she quit ballet? So what if she’d gained a bit of weight lately? She was still fitter than most of the other girls, she still had better technique…


            When the bus pulled up, she still couldn’t stop her thoughts from racing out of control. She had never had a disciplined mind. She had a disciplined body, or at least, she thought she did…


            Home. Homework. Dinner. More homework. Dancing. How is it already midnight? She abandoned the dance and dropped into bed. She would get enough extra practice tomorrow.


            “Danni? Danni? Hello?”


            “Sorry Nick,” she sighed, “Just a bit distracted.” She tried to bring her attention back to where they were, the school cafeteria.


            “You’re always distracted,” Nick said, “Come on, I’ll buy you lunch.”


            Nick was her boyfriend, and he was probably the sweetest boy she’d ever met. She didn’t have very many close friends, but she had him, though she still wasn’t quite sure how.


            Once they had their food, they sat down in the cafeteria together. “So what’s going on?” Nick asked, “You seem really stressed.”


            “I’ll be okay,” Danni sighed.


            “I’m worried about you. You’ve been acting kinda weird lately.”


            She shrugged. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”


            “I know. Listen, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but maybe you should think about talking to someone. I saw a therapist during my entire freshman year.”


            “Really?” She was almost sure he was making it up. Nick was so normal, at least, normal in the sense that there was nothing psychologically wrong with him. Other than that, sure, he was a bit eccentric, but if he weren’t that way, he certainly wouldn’t be dating her.


            “If you want me to set up a meeting for you, I know the best counselor in the school. She’s a psychology teacher. Her name’s Amanda, and she’s seriously…” He paused a moment, searching for the right word. “Legendary.”


            Danni giggled.


            “You’ll know what I’m talking about when you meet her.”


            “I don’t know if I need counseling, Nick, but thanks. I’ll remember Amanda if I start feeling worse, but it’s just stress. It’ll pass. I’ll be fine.”


            Lunch ended before she’d had time to finish her food. History class. Homework. Free period. More homework. Then it would have been the end of the day at last, except today was Thursday.


            Her extra practice felt long and boring. The other girls were excited about the opportunity to learn the dance better, and Danni felt like the only one with a bad attitude. She tried not to show that she was offended by having to be here, but she certainly wasn’t going to get excited about it. Instead, she focused harder on her dance, determined to show them that she didn’t belong in the inexperienced group.


            After another night vanished before her eyes, Danni still hadn’t finished everything she needed to. She hadn’t been sleeping well lately, even when she had the time to try.


            She was grateful that it was Friday when she woke up that morning. The only problem was it would be another full day. There was an assembly that afternoon that the dance team was required to go to, and then the volleyball game that night. They weren’t performing, except for the special ones, the best ones. At first Danni had wondered if those girls were selected for being the best, but now she wondered if she and the inexperienced girls were the ones singled out, excluded from the performance because they were the worst.


            Morning. Breakfast. Bus stop. Algebra class. Kissing Nick. Running off to the assembly. Arriving late. Of course the dance team had to sit at the very top of the bleachers. Frustrated, Danni pushed her way through the crowd until she met her teammates.


            “We were supposed to be in costume?” she said. All the other girls were wearing their jazz pants and brightly colored tank tops with the school logo on them.


            “They said that a million times last night,” one of the girls said. Danni didn’t know if she hadn’t heard it, or had simply forgotten. She couldn’t worry for long, though. The assembly was starting, and it featured a performance from a theater group from out of town. Danni had heard they were amazing, and waited for it impatiently.


            Announcers. Talk of homecoming. Cheerleaders. Dance team. Boring, boring, boring… Danni grew more and more impatient, but at last, they announced the theater group.


            Danni was mesmerized from the moment they stepped out onto the floor. They were from somewhere out of town, she was pretty sure, and they were holding auditions at some point. She thought she’d heard that somewhere. Right now, they were dancing. They danced in a great circle around the gym, twirling in perfect rhythm. Danni wondered if they were on stilts. They seemed to be giants. Their costumes were full, beautiful dresses, and their faces were fully painted, most of them in white. One of them caught her eye, and held her gaze. Her face was huge, bigger than her body, and it was beautiful. Her hair was brown and curly, but Danni couldn’t stop staring at her eyes. They were a strange and beautiful mix of colors, and she was trying to think of a name for it when something else caught her attention.


            One of the dancers was in the middle of the floor, moving in a way Danni had never seen anyone move before. She was a giant just like the others, but she wasn’t on stilts. Her dress was white and shimmering, her skin was pale, and her hair was long and blond. She was beautiful. More than her beauty, there was something about her that Danni couldn’t place. She knew immediately that woman had that extra something Nick was talking about when he’d described Amanda. She seemed to sparkle from within. This woman was legendary. No other word could come close to an accurate description.


            Danni felt like she was seated in a high balcony. She pushed the others in front of her out of her way to get a clear view, but pulled away when she leaned to close to the edge. She didn’t want to fall off. She didn’t remember how she’d got up so high…


            In the hallway after the assembly, people were meeting the dancers from the theater troupe. Danni didn’t know how the assembly had ended, didn’t remember leaving the dance team and walking out here, but that didn’t matter, she only wanted to meet the legendary dancer. Suddenly she was in front of her, and Danni didn’t know what to say. Now that they were face to face, the woman was still as beautiful, still as legendary, but she wasn’t as tall as she’d appeared to be on stage. She was very thin. Too thin. Almost skeletal. Ghostlike.


            Smiles. Greetings. Friendship. Happiness. Was this even real? That didn’t matter. She was with her at last. Her name was Lucy.


            Was this her house? The question of where they were flashed only briefly in Danni’s mind. It was a swimming pool, but it was completely deserted but for the two of them. They began to swim together, making slow laps across the pool in opposite directions. Danni didn’t question any of it. The water felt good—calming. She needed some stress relief.


            Across the pool, Danni was a little worried for Lucy. She looked zombielike, floating in the pool in her white dress. She was alright, though. She was too perfect to drown.


            Out of the pool, the two of them sat together. Danni played with Lucy’s hair. Then she was putting her hair in her head for her. She had feathers, long, soft, colorful feathers, all of them on little earring hooks. She hooked them right into Lucy’s head where they belonged, and her hair was made of feather earrings…


            Bus stop. School was over. Had she missed dance team practice? The bus pulled up, and suddenly she realized she didn’t know if she had her pass or not. She dug in her backpack. Why did she keep so much stuff in there? Maybe the driver wouldn’t care, she decided. He’d let other people ride without a pass before.


            She got on the bus, but the driver stopped her, and asked for her pass. She dug around until she finally found it, and started searching for a seat. Apparently she wasn’t one of the special people who could ride the bus without a pass. She wasn’t special enough for anything, not even a damn seat. She walked back to the front of the bus and took a seat right behind the driver, even though the sideways-facing seats always made her carsick. There was a phone on the little ledge behind the driver’s seat. It started to ring. Other phones on the bus started to ring as well, and then she heard phone music coming from her backpack. That couldn’t be right. She’d turned her phone on vibrate mode. It couldn’t be her phone. But the music didn’t stop. She dug in her backpack to answer it.


            “Danni? Are you okay?” Nick’s voice came through the phone.


            “Danni dear, why haven’t you called me this week?” That voice was softer. It was her mother. The phone next to her was still buzzing, and suddenly the noise on the bus was overwhelming.


            “Nick?” Danni said, still hearing her mothers voice through the phone as well. “Nick, just stay on the phone with me, okay? I’m starting to freak out.”


            “I’ll stay, Danni, try to calm down.”


            “I’m hearing voices! I think I’m losing my mind!” She realized then how strange her encounter with Lucy had been. Lucy’s hair was straight, blond, and perfect, not a bizarre mess of feathers that had to be stuck into her head. How had they got to a pool, anyway? Nick was still talking to her, but he was very hard to hear. She pressed the phone closer to her ear, desperate…


            She still held the phone, but she was walking around a circular building, like a restaurant or hotel, but she couldn’t know where she was. Outside the window, she could see a reddish beach the weather was warm, much sunnier than it had been at school. Maybe they were in the south. She kept talking to Nick, though now the phone had changed form in her hand. Now it was a small microphone. She kept talking into it as she walked, ignoring the other people around her. This was it. She was facing her worst fear of losing her mind completely. She couldn’t remember how she got here, and had no idea where she was. Maybe it was all a hallucination. Maybe it was an illusion, and she was really sitting at home right now.


            She said a last few words to Nick before it hit her that he couldn’t respond. She dropped the microphone on the ground, hurrying away from the noise it made as it hit the floor. She’d been speaking into a microphone. Nick hadn’t heard her at all, he might not have ever even called her.


            What did this to me? She tried as hard as she could to remember how she got here, recall even some of what had happened to her previously. Bits of her life came back to her. I’m Danielle, I’m eighteen years old, I’m a senior in high school… She still knew who she was. She remembered her family, her childhood. So she hadn’t lost that, she’d only lost the past few hours. She’d been on a bus. After that, she had no idea. But before that…


            Lucy. Lucy had a quality about her that was just too much. It was incredibly beautiful, sure, but suddenly Danni was certain of what had made her crazy.


            “So, Danni,” Amanda said, “Tell me what’s been happening with you lately.”


            “Well, memory loss, for one thing,” Danni said. In fact, she couldn’t remember how she got here. Amanda seemed patient, though. She was blond too, with a streak of pink in her hair. She dressed colorfully, wore glasses, and had a kind smile. Danni could see why Nick would call her legendary, she picked up a similar feeling from her, but it wasn’t nearly as overwhelming as Lucy’s bizarre quality.


            “I’ve just been really stressed out lately, and I think I’m losing it.”


            “Can you identify what you’re thinking about just before you lose track of events? Before the periods of memory loss?”


            She shrugged. “Stress. Thinking about all the things I have to do.”


            Amanda talked with her about her schedule, the best ways to manage her time, and ways to relieve stress. Danni didn’t tell her about hearing voices, or about her encounters with Lucy. She was still just a stressed out high school student, not a crazy person. She wanted to graduate. She didn’t want to be locked away in a nuthouse.


            “Well, try those techniques this weekend, and we’ll talk again on Monday, okay?”


            “Okay. Thanks Amanda.”


            “Have a good weekend, Danni.”


            Home. Homework. Dinner. Bus stop. Volleyball game. This time she’d remembered to dress in costume, though she didn’t remember if she needed to or not. Probably. But it was so cold and rainy outside that she didn’t want to. It was crowded too, people were pushing and shoving each other up the ramps, trying to find a seat. Sometimes she had to wait for the ramps themselves to move, and everyone was terribly impatient. Danni just wanted to stay dry, and could hardly care about finding a good seat, until she heard the theater group was going to be performing again.


            “They are? Yes!” Danni exclaimed, “I wanted to watch them again! Those twirls and leaps just defy gravity! They’re amazing!”


            Once again, her seat was up high in a balcony. She hardly noticed the transition of the outdoor stands to a theater, and back to an indoor gym. She was mesmerized by the dancers. The only problem was the people in front of her, blocking her view. She wanted to push them out of the way, but once again feared she would fall right off the balcony. Someone next to her, a woman in a brown dress deliberately stepped off the balcony and dropped straight down, staying upright and landing on her feet to join the others in the show. She looked tiny among the other giants. At first all the dancers were all dressed in old-fashioned, modest clothes, but later they took those off, revealing colorful, glittering dresses. One of them wore a feathery black tube top, and a very narrow but long skirt of the same material. The rest of her skin was covered in glitter. The show was amazing. There was Lucy, the tallest of all of them, dancing center stage…


            She made me crazy, Danni thought. She was sitting in the counselor’s office again. Amanda was there, mixing different potions on her desk to make some kind of medicine. They drank together, though Danni didn’t know what Amanda was drinking. Her own drink reminded her of some kind of alcoholic mixed beverage, though she was sure Amanda wouldn’t be allowed to give her alcohol. Whatever it was, it wasn’t bad. And slowly, she felt her mind clearing. The fog was lifted.


            Home. Safe, calm, and peaceful. Nothing unusual was happening. She did her homework without overstressing, went to bed at a reasonable hour, and slept deeply for the first time in months. When she woke, she felt refreshed. The weekend was uneventful, but now, that was a good thing. When Monday morning came, she ate breakfast, and was off to school. Throughout the day, her mind never slipped once. Whatever Amanda had done had made her okay again. Nick was right about her. She really was legendary…


 


            Lucy swirled the liquid in her glass, adding a drop or two of various ingredients. Seated on her couch of her office was Danni, a lost, faraway look in her eyes. She had her now, living under the perfect illusion. This girl was special, she could tell as soon as she saw her. Now, she would just have to keep her mind under her control, and she’d be on the right track to having another dancer in her show.


            The phone rang. “Yes?” Lucy answered.


            “Just letting you know, one of your students is coming to see you in a few minutes so get yourself ready, and get the crazy girl out of sight.”


            “Thank you,” Lucy said, “I’ll be prepared.”


            “Thank you, Amanda.” The man hung up the phone, and Lucy turned back around to her newest dancer.


            “Danni my dear, take this,” she said, handing her a slip of paper with her address on it. “Drink your medicine, and catch the next bus home, okay?”


            “Okay,” Danni said without question. She quickly finished her drink.


            “I’ll see you tomorrow, Danni.”


            “Yes. Thank you, Amanda.” Then she was away.



[Libby Robare lives in Ashland Oregon. She recently graduated from Southern Oregon University, where she earned a degree in psychology.]

The Lightning-Rod Man (by Herman Melville)

17 Thursday Dec 2009

Posted by Crisis Chronicles Press in 1800s, American, Melville (Herman), Short Stories

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The Lightning-Rod Man
by Herman Melville
[first published in Putnam’s (Aug. 1854), collected in The Piazza Tales (1856)]

What grand irregular thunder, thought I, standing on my hearth-stone among the Acroceraunian hills, as the scattered bolts boomed overhead, and crashed down among the valleys, every bolt followed by zigzag irradiations, and swift slants of sharp rain, which audibly rang, like a charge of spear-points, on my low shingled roof. I suppose, though, that the mountains hereabouts break and churn up the thunder, so that it is far more glorious here than on the plain. Hark!–some one at the door. Who is this that chooses a time of thunder for making calls? And why don’t he, man-fashion, use the knocker, instead of making that doleful undertaker’s clatter with his fist against the hollow panel? But let him in. Ah, here he comes. “Good day, sir:” an entire stranger. “Pray be seated.” What is that strange-looking walking-stick he carries: “A fine thunder-storm, sir.”

“Fine?–Awful!”


“You are wet. Stand here on the hearth before the fire.”


“Not for worlds!”


The stranger still stood in the exact middle of the cottage, where he had first planted himself. His singularity impelled a closer scrutiny. A lean, gloomy figure. Hair dark and lank, mattedly streaked over his brow. His sunken pitfalls of eyes were ringed by indigo halos, and played with an innocuous sort of lightning: the gleam without the bolt. The whole man was dripping. He stood in a puddle on the bare oak floor: his strange walking-stick vertically resting at his side.


It was a polished copper rod, four feet long, lengthwise attached to a neat wooden staff, by insertion into two balls of greenish glass, ringed with copper bands. The metal rod terminated at the top tripodwise, in three keen tines, brightly gilt. He held the thing by the wooden part alone.


“Sir,” said I, bowing politely, “have I the honour of a visit from that illustrious god, Jupiter Tonans? So stood he in the Greek statue of old, grasping the lightning-bolt. If you be he, or his viceroy, I have to thank you for this noble storm you have brewed among our mountains. Listen: that was a glorious peal. Ah, to a lover of the majestic, it is a good thing to have the Thunderer himself in one’s cottage. The thunder grows finer for that. But pray be seated. This old rush-bottomed arm-chair, I grant, is a poor substitute for your evergreen throne on Olympus; but, condescend to be seated.”


While I thus pleasantly spoke, the stranger eyed me, half in wonder, and half in a strange sort of horror; but did not move a foot.


“Do, sir, be seated; you need to be dried ere going forth again.”


I planted the chair invitingly on the broad hearth, where a little fire had been kindled that afternoon to dissipate the dampness, not the cold; for it was early in the month of September.


But without heeding my solicitation, and still standing in the middle of the floor, the stranger gazed at me portentously and spoke.


“Sir,” said he, “excuse me; but instead of my accepting your invitation to be seated on the hearth there, I solemnly warn you, that you had best accept mine, and stand with me in the middle of the room. Good Heavens!” he cried, starting – “there is another of those awful crashes. I warn you, sir, quit the hearth.”


“Mr. Jupiter Tonans,” said I, quietly rolling my body on the stone, “I stand very well here.”


“Are you so horridly ignorant, then,” he cried, “as not to know, that by far the most dangerous part of a house, during such a terrific tempest as this, is the fire-place?”


“Nay, I did not know that,” involuntarily stepping upon the first board next to the stone.


The stranger now assumed such an unpleasant air of successful admonition, that–quite involuntarily again–I stepped back upon the hearth, and threw myself into the erectest, proudest posture I could command. But I said nothing.


“For Heaven’s sake,” he cried, with a strange mixture of alarm and intimidation–“for Heaven’s sake, get off the hearth! Know you not, that the heated air and soot are conductors;–to say nothing of those immense iron fire-dogs? Quit the spot–I conjure –I command you.”


“Mr. Jupiter Tonans, I am not accustomed to be commanded in my own house.”


“Call me not by that pagan name. You are profane in this time of terror.”


“Sir, will you be so good as to tell me your business? If you seek shelter from the storm, you are welcome, so long as you be civil; but if you come on business, open it forthwith. Who are you?”


“I am a dealer in lightning-rods,” said the stranger, softening his tone; “my special business is – Merciful Heaven! what a crash! – Have you ever been struck–your premises I mean? No? It’s best to be provided,” significantly rattling his metallic staff on the floor,– “by nature, there are no castles in thunderstorms; yet, say but the word, and of this cottage I can make a Gibraltar by a few waves of this wand. Hark, what Himalayas of concussions!”


“You interrupted yourself; your special business you were about to speak of.”


“My special business is to travel the country for orders for lightning-rods. This is my specimen rod;” tapping his staff; “I have the best of references”–fumbling in his pockets. “In Criggan last month, I put up three-and-twenty rods on only five buildings.”


“Let me see. Was it not at Criggan last week, about midnight on Saturday, that the steeple, the big elm, and the assemblyroom cupola were struck? Any of your rods there?”


“Not on the tree and cupola, but the steeple”


“Of what use is your rod, then?”


“Of life-and-death use. But my workman was heedless. In fitting the rod at top to the steeple, he allowed a part of the metal to graze the tin sheeting. Hence the accident. Not my fault, but his. Hark!”


“Never mind. That clap burst quite loud enough to be heard without finger- pointing. Did you hear of the event at Montreal last year? A servant girl struck at her bed-side with a rosary in her hand; the beads being metal. Does your beat extend into the Canadas?”


“No. And I hear that there, iron rods only are in use. They should have mine, which are copper. Iron is easily fused. Then they draw out the rod so slender, that it has not body enough to conduct the full electric current. The metal melts; the building is destroyed. My copper rods never act so. Those Canadians are fools. Some of them knob the rod at the top, which risks a deadly explosion, instead of imperceptibly carrying down the current into the earth, as this sort of rod does. Mine is the only true rod. Look at it. Only one dollar a foot”


“This abuse of your own calling in another might make one distrustful with respect to yourself.”


“Hark! The thunder becomes less muttering. It is nearing us, and nearing the earth, too. Hark! One crammed crash! All the vibrations made one by nearness. Another flash. Hold.”


“What do you?” I said, seeing him now instantaneously relinquishing his staff, lean intently forward towards the window, with his right fore and middle fingers on his left wrist.


But ere the words had well escaped me, another exclamation escaped him.


“Crash! only three pulses–less than a third of a mile off – yonder, somewhere in that wood. I passed three stricken oaks there, ripped out new and glittering. The oak draws lightning more than other timber, having iron in solution in its sap. Your floor here seems oak.


“Heart-of-oak. From the peculiar time of your call upon me, I suppose you purposely select stormy weather for your journeys. When the thunder is roaring, you deem it an hour peculiarly favourable for producing impressions favourable to your trade.”


“Hark!–Awful!”


“For one who would arm others with fearlessness, you seem unbeseemingly timorous yourself. Common men choose fair weather for their travels you choose thunder- storms; and yet—”


“That I travel in thunder-storms, I grant; but not without particular precautions, such as only a lightning-rod man may know. Hark! Quick–look at my specimen rod. Only one dollar a foot.”


“A very fine rod, I dare say. But what are these particular precautions of yours? Yet first let me close yonder shutters; the slanting rain is beating through the sash. I will bar up.”


“Are you mad? Know you not that yon iron bar is a swift conductor? Desist.”


“I will simply close the shutters, then, and call my boy to bring me a wooden bar. Pray, touch the bell-pull there.”


“Are you frantic? That bell-wire might blast you. Never touch bell-wire in a thunder-storm, nor ring a bell of any sort.”


“Nor those in belfries? Pray, will you tell me where and how one may be safe in a time like this? Is there any part of my house I may touch with hopes of my life?”


“There is; but not where you now stand. Come away from the wall. The current will sometimes run down a wall, and – a man being a better conductor than a wall – it would leave the wall and run into him. Swoop! That must have fallen very nigh. That must have been globular lightning.”


“Very probably. Tell me at once, which is, in your opinion, the safest part of this house?”


“This room, and this one spot in it where I stand. Come hither.”


“The reasons first.”


“Hark!–after the flash the gust–the sashes shiver–the house, the house!–Come hither to me!”


“The reasons, if you please.”


“Come hither to me!”


“Thank you again, I think I will try my old stand–the hearth. And now, Mr. Lightning-rod man, in the pauses of the thunder, be so good as to tell me your reasons for esteeming this one room of the house the safest, and your own one standpoint there the safest spot in it.”


There was now a little cessation of the storm for a while. The Lightning-rod man seemed relieved, and replied:–


“Your house is a one-storied house, with an attic and a cellar; this room is between. Hence its comparative safety. Because lightning sometimes passes from the clouds to the earth, and sometimes from the earth to the clouds. Do you comprehend? – and I choose the middle of the room, because, if the lightning should strike the house at all, it would come down the chimney or walls; so, obviously, the further you are from them, the better. Come hither to me, now.”


“Presently. Something you just said, instead of alarming me, has strangely inspired confidence.”


“What have I said?”


“You said that sometimes lightning flashes from the earth to the clouds.”


“Aye, the returning-stroke, as it is called; when the earth, being overcharged with the fluid, flashes its surplus upward.”


“The returning-stroke; that is, from earth to sky. Better and better. But come here on the hearth and dry yourself.”


“I am better here, and better wet.”


“How?”


“It is the safest thing you can do–Hark, again!–to get yourself thoroughly drenched in a thunder-storm. Wet clothes are better conductors than the body; and so, if the lightning strike, it might pass down the wet clothes without touching the body. The storm deepens again. Have you a rug in the house? Rugs are non-conductors. Get one, that I may stand on it here, and you, too. The skies blacken – it is dusk at noon. Hark! – the rug, the rug!”


I gave him one; while the hooded mountains seemed closing and tumbling into the cottage.


“And now, since our being dumb will not help us,” said I, resuming my place, “let me hear your precautions in travelling during thunder-storms.”


“Wait till this one is passed.”


“Nay, proceed with the precautions. You stand in the safest possible place according to your own account. Go on.”


“Briefly, then. I avoid pine-trees, high houses, lonely barns, upland pastures, running water, flocks of cattle and sheep, a crowd of men. If I travel on foot–as to-day–I do not walk fast; if in my buggy, I touch not its back or sides; if on horseback, I dismount and lead the horse. But of all things, I avoid tall men.”


“Do I dream? Man avoid man? and in danger-time, too.”


“Tall men in a thunder-storm I avoid. Are you so grossly ignorant as not to know, that the height of a six-footer is sufficient to discharge an electric cloud upon him? Are not lonely Kentuckians, ploughing, smit in the unfinished furrow? Nay, if the six-footer stand by running water, the cloud will sometimes select him as its conductor to that running water. Hark! Sure, yon black pinnacle is split. Yes, a man is a good conductor. The lightning goes through and through a man, but only peels a tree. But sir, you have kept me so long answering your questions, that I have not yet come to business. Will you order one of my rods? Look at this specimen one? See: it is of the best of copper. Copper’s the best conductor. Your house is low; but being upon the mountains, that lowness does not one whit depress it. You mountaineers are most exposed. In mountainous countries the lightning-rod man should have most business. Look at the specimen, sir. One rod will answer for a house so small as this. Look over these recommendations. Only one rod, sir; cost, only twenty dollars. Hark! There go all the granite Taconics and Hoosics dashed together like pebbles. By the sound, that must have struck something. An elevation of five feet above the house, will protect twenty feet radius all about the rod. Only twenty dollars, sir – a dollar a foot. Hark!–Dreadful!–Will you order? Will you buy? Shall I put down your name? Think of being a heap of charred offal, like a haltered horse burnt in his stall; and all in one flash!”


“You pretended envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to and from Jupiter Tonans,” laughed I; “you mere man who come here to put you and your pipestem between clay and sky, do you think that because you can strike a bit of green light from the Leyden jar, that you can thoroughly avert the supernal bolt? Your rod rusts, or breaks, and where are you? Who has empowered you, you Tetzel, to peddle round your indulgences from divine ordinations? The hairs of our heads are numbered, and the days of our lives. In thunder as in sunshine, I stand at ease in the hands of my God. False negotiator, away! See, the scroll of the storm is rolled back; the house is unharmed; and in the blue heavens I read in the rainbow, that the Deity will not, of purpose, make war on man’s earth.”


“Impious wretch!” foamed the stranger, blackening in the face as the rainbow beamed, “I will publish your infidel notions.”


“Begone! move quickly! if quickly you can, you that shine forth into sight in moist times like the worm.”


The scowl grew blacker on his face; the indigo-circles enlarged round his eyes as the storm-rings round the midnight moon. He sprang upon me, his tri-forked thing at my heart.


I seized it; I snapped it; I dashed it; I trod it; and dragging the dark lightning-king out of my door, flung his elbowed, copper sceptre after him.


But spite of my treatment, and spite of my dissuasive talk of him to my neighbours, the Lightning-rod man still dwells in the land; still travels in storm-time, and drives a brave trade with the fears of man.



    

Bartleby, the Scrivener (by Herman Melville)

17 Thursday Dec 2009

Posted by Crisis Chronicles Press in 1800s, American, Melville (Herman), Short Stories

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Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street
by Herman Melville
[first published in Putnam’s (Nov. 1853), collected in The Piazza Tales (1856)]


I am a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the last thirty years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom as yet nothing that I know of has ever been written:—I mean the law-copyists or scriveners. I have known very many of them, professionally and privately, and if I pleased, could relate divers histories, at which good-natured gentlemen might smile, and sentimental souls might weep. But I waive the biographies of all other scriveners for a few passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener of the strangest I ever saw or heard of. While of other law-copyists I might write the complete life, of Bartleby nothing of that sort can be done. I believe that no materials exist for a full and satisfactory biography of this man. It is an irreparable loss to literature. Bartleby was one of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable, except from the original sources, and in his case those are very small. What my own astonished eyes saw of Bartleby, that is all I know of him, except, indeed, one vague report which will appear in the sequel.


Ere introducing the scrivener, as he first appeared to me, it is fit I make some mention of myself, my employees, my business, my chambers, and general surroundings; because some such description is indispensable to an adequate understanding of the chief character about to be presented.


Imprimis: I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. Hence, though I belong to a profession proverbially energetic and nervous, even to turbulence, at times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace. I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury, or in any way draws down public applause; but in the cool tranquility of a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men’s bonds and mortgages and title-deeds. All who know me, consider me an eminently safe man. The late John Jacob Astor, a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next, method. I do not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact, that I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. I will freely add, that I was not insensible to the late John Jacob Astor’s good opinion.


Some time prior to the period at which this little history begins, my avocations had been largely increased. The good old office, now extinct in the State of New York, of a Master in Chancery, had been conferred upon me. It was not a very arduous office, but very pleasantly remunerative. I seldom lose my temper; much more seldom indulge in dangerous indignation at wrongs and outrages; but I must be permitted to be rash here and declare, that I consider the sudden and violent abrogation of the office of Master in Chancery, by the new Constitution, as a—premature act; inasmuch as I had counted upon a life-lease of the profits, whereas I only received those of a few short years. But this is by the way.


My chambers were up stairs at No. — Wall-street. At one end they looked upon the white wall of the interior of a spacious sky-light shaft, penetrating the building from top to bottom. This view might have been considered rather tame than otherwise, deficient in what landscape painters call “life.” But if so, the view from the other end of my chambers offered, at least, a contrast, if nothing more. In that direction my windows commanded an unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade; which wall required no spy-glass to bring out its lurking beauties, but for the benefit of all near-sighted spectators, was pushed up to within ten feet of my window panes. Owing to the great height of the surrounding buildings, and my chambers being on the second floor, the interval between this wall and mine not a little resembled a huge square cistern.


At the period just preceding the advent of Bartleby, I had two persons as copyists in my employment, and a promising lad as an office-boy. First, Turkey; second, Nippers; third, Ginger Nut. These may seem names, the like of which are not usually found in the Directory. In truth they were nicknames, mutually conferred upon each other by my three clerks, and were deemed expressive of their respective persons or characters. Turkey was a short, pursy Englishman of about my own age, that is, somewhere not far from sixty. In the morning, one might say, his face was of a fine florid hue, but after twelve o’clock, meridian—his dinner hour—it blazed like a grate full of Christmas coals; and continued blazing—but, as it were, with a gradual wane—till 6 o’clock, P.M. or thereabouts, after which I saw no more of the proprietor of the face, which gaining its meridian with the sun, seemed to set with it, to rise, culminate, and decline the following day, with the like regularity and undiminished glory. There are many singular coincidences I have known in the course of my life, not the least among which was the fact, that exactly when Turkey displayed his fullest beams from his red and radiant countenance, just then, too, at that critical moment, began the daily period when I considered his business capacities as seriously disturbed for the remainder of the twenty-four hours. Not that he was absolutely idle, or averse to business then; far from it. The difficulty was, he was apt to be altogether too energetic. There was a strange, inflamed, flurried, flighty recklessness of activity about him. He would be incautious in dipping his pen into his inkstand. All his blots upon my documents, were dropped there after twelve o’clock, meridian. Indeed, not only would he be reckless and sadly given to making blots in the afternoon, but some days he went further, and was rather noisy. At such times, too, his face flamed with augmented blazonry, as if cannel coal had been heaped on anthracite. He made an unpleasant racket with his chair; spilled his sand-box; in mending his pens, impatiently split them all to pieces, and threw them on the floor in a sudden passion; stood up and leaned over his table, boxing his papers about in a most indecorous manner, very sad to behold in an elderly man like him. Nevertheless, as he was in many ways a most valuable person to me, and all the time before twelve o’clock, meridian, was the quickest, steadiest creature too, accomplishing a great deal of work in a style not easy to be matched—for these reasons, I was willing to overlook his eccentricities, though indeed, occasionally, I remonstrated with him. I did this very gently, however, because, though the civilest, nay, the blandest and most reverential of men in the morning, yet in the afternoon he was disposed, upon provocation, to be slightly rash with his tongue, in fact, insolent. Now, valuing his morning services as I did, and resolved not to lose them; yet, at the same time made uncomfortable by his inflamed ways after twelve o’clock; and being a man of peace, unwilling by my admonitions to call forth unseemly retorts from him; I took upon me, one Saturday noon (he was always worse on Saturdays), to hint to him, very kindly, that perhaps now that he was growing old, it might be well to abridge his labors; in short, he need not come to my chambers after twelve o’clock, but, dinner over, had best go home to his lodgings and rest himself till teatime. But no; he insisted upon his afternoon devotions. His countenance became intolerably fervid, as he oratorically assured me—gesticulating with a long ruler at the other end of the room—that if his services in the morning were useful, how indispensable, then, in the afternoon?


“With submission, sir,” said Turkey on his occasion, “I consider myself your right-hand man. In the morning I but marshal and deploy my columns; but in the afternoon I put myself at their head, and gallantly charge the foe, thus!”—and he made a violent thrust with the ruler.


“But the blots, Turkey,” intimated I.


“True,—but, with submission, sir, behold these hairs! I am getting old. Surely, sir, a blot or two of a warm afternoon is not to be severely urged against gray hairs. Old age—even if it blot the page—is honorable. With submission, sir, we both are getting old.”


This appeal to my fellow-feeling was hardly to be resisted. At all events, I saw that go he would not. So I made up my mind to let him stay, resolving, nevertheless, to see to it, that during the afternoon he had to do with my less important papers.


Nippers, the second on my list, was a whiskered, sallow, and, upon the whole, rather piratical-looking young man of about five and twenty. I always deemed him the victim of two evil powers—ambition and indigestion. The ambition was evinced by a certain impatience of the duties of a mere copyist, an unwarrantable usurpation of strictly professional affairs, such as the original drawing up of legal documents. The indigestion seemed betokened in an occasional nervous testiness and grinning irritability, causing the teeth to audibly grind together over mistakes committed in copying; unnecessary maledictions, hissed, rather than spoken, in the heat of business; and especially by a continual discontent with the height of the table where he worked. Though of a very ingenious mechanical turn, Nippers could never get this table to suit him. He put chips under it, blocks of various sorts, bits of pasteboard, and at last went so far as to attempt an exquisite adjustment by final pieces of folded blotting paper. But no invention would answer. If, for the sake of easing his back, he brought the table lid at a sharp angle well up towards his chin, and wrote there like a man using the steep roof of a Dutch house for his desk:—then he declared that it stopped the circulation in his arms. If now he lowered the table to his waistbands, and stooped over it in writing, then there was a sore aching in his back. In short, the truth of the matter was, Nippers knew not what he wanted. Or, if he wanted any thing, it was to be rid of a scrivener’s table altogether. Among the manifestations of his diseased ambition was a fondness he had for receiving visits from certain ambiguous-looking fellows in seedy coats, whom he called his clients. Indeed I was aware that not only was he, at times, considerable of a ward-politician, but he occasionally did a little business at the Justices’ courts, and was not unknown on the steps of the Tombs. I have good reason to believe, however, that one individual who called upon him at my chambers, and who, with a grand air, he insisted was his client, was no other than a dun, and the alleged title-deed, a bill. But with all his failings, and the annoyances he caused me, Nippers, like his compatriot Turkey, was a very useful man to me; wrote a neat, swift hand; and, when he chose, was not deficient in a gentlemanly sort of deportment. Added to this, he always dressed in a gentlemanly sort of way; and so, incidentally, reflected credit upon my chambers. Whereas with respect to Turkey, I had much ado to keep him from being a reproach to me. His clothes were apt to look oily and smell of eating-houses. He wore his pantaloons very loose and baggy in summer. His coats were execrable; his hat not to be handled. But while the hat was a thing of indifference to me, inasmuch as his natural civility and deference, as a dependent Englishman, always led him to doff it the moment he entered the room, yet his coat was another matter. Concerning his coats, I reasoned with him; but with no effect. The truth was, I suppose, that a man of so small an income, could not afford to sport such a lustrous face and a lustrous coat at one and the same time. As Nippers once observed, Turkey’s money went chiefly for red ink. One winter day I presented Turkey with a highly-respectable looking coat of my own, a padded gray coat, of a most comfortable warmth, and which buttoned straight up from the knee to the neck. I thought Turkey would appreciate the favor, and abate his rashness and obstreperousness of afternoons. But no. I verily believe that buttoning himself up in so downy and blanket-like a coat had a pernicious effect upon him; upon the same principle that too much oats are bad for horses. In fact, precisely as a rash, restive horse is said to feel his oats, so Turkey felt his coat. It made him insolent. He was a man whom prosperity harmed.


Though concerning the self-indulgent habits of Turkey I had my own private surmises, yet touching Nippers I was well persuaded that whatever might by his faults in other respects, he was, at least, a temperate young man. But indeed, nature herself seemed to have been his vintner, and at his birth charged him so thoroughly with an irritable, brandy-like disposition, that all subsequent potations were needless. When I consider how, amid the stillness of my chambers, Nippers would sometimes impatiently rise from his seat, and stooping over his table, spread his arms wide apart, seize the whole desk, and move it, and jerk it, with a grim, grinding motion on the floor, as if the table were a perverse voluntary agent, intent on thwarting and vexing him; I plainly perceive that for Nippers, brandy and water were altogether superfluous.


It was fortunate for me that, owing to its peculiar cause—indigestion—the irritability and consequent nervousness of Nippers, were mainly observable in the morning, while in the afternoon he was comparatively mild. So that Turkey’s paroxysms only coming on about twelve o’clock, I never had to do with their eccentricities at one time. Their fits relieved each other like guards. When Nippers’ was on, Turkey’s was off; and vice versa. This was a good natural arrangement under the circumstances.


Ginger Nut, the third on my list, was a lad some twelve years old. His father was a carman, ambitious of seeing his son on the bench instead of a cart, before he died. So he sent him to my office as student at law, errand boy, and cleaner and sweeper, at the rate of one dollar a week. He had a little desk to himself, but he did not use it much. Upon inspection, the drawer exhibited a great array of the shells of various sorts of nuts. Indeed, to this quick-witted youth the whole noble science of the law was contained in a nut-shell. Not the least among the employments of Ginger Nut, as well as one which he discharged with the most alacrity, was his duty as cake and apple purveyor for Turkey and Nippers. Copying law papers being proverbially dry, husky sort of business, my two scriveners were fain to moisten their mouths very often with Spitzenbergs to be had at the numerous stalls night the Custom House and Post Office. Also, they sent Ginger Nut very frequently for that peculiar cake—small, flat, round, and very spicy—after which he had been named by them. Of a cold morning when business was but dull, Turkey would gobble up scores of these cakes, as if they were mere wafers—indeed they sell them at the rate of six or eight for a penny—the scrape of his pen blending with the crunching of the crisp particles in his mouth. Of all the fiery afternoon blunders and flurried rashnesses of Turkey, was his once moistening a ginger-cake between his lips, and clapping it on to a mortgage for a seal. I came within an ace of dismissing him then. But he mollified me by making an oriental bow, and saying—“With submission, sir, it was generous of me to find you in stationery on my own account.”


Now my original business—that of a conveyancer and title hunter, and drawer-up of recondite documents of all sorts—was considerably increased by receiving the master’s office. There was now great work for scriveners. Not only must I push the clerks already with me, but I must have additional help. In answer to my advertisement, a motionless young man one morning, stood upon my office threshold, the door being open, for it was summer. I can see that figure now—pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn! It was Bartleby.


After a few words touching his qualifications, I engaged him, glad to have among my corps of copyists a man of so singularly sedate an aspect, which I thought might operate beneficially upon the flighty temper of Turkey, and the fiery one of Nippers.


I should have stated before that ground glass folding-doors divided my premises into two parts, one of which was occupied by my scriveners, the other by myself. According to my humor I threw open these doors, or closed them. I resolved to assign Bartleby a corner by the folding-doors, but on my side of them, so as to have this quiet man within easy call, in case any trifling thing was to be done. I placed his desk close up to a small side-window in that part of the room, a window which originally had afforded a lateral view of certain grimy back-yards and bricks, but which, owing to subsequent erections, commanded at present no view at all, though it gave some light. Within three feet of the panes was a wall, and the light came down from far above, between two lofty buildings, as from a very small opening in a dome. Still further to a satisfactory arrangement, I procured a high green folding screen, which might entirely isolate Bartleby from my sight, though not remove him from my voice. And thus, in a manner, privacy and society were conjoined.


At first Bartleby did an extraordinary quantity of writing. As if long famishing for something to copy, he seemed to gorge himself on my documents. There was no pause for digestion. He ran a day and night line, copying by sun-light and by candle-light. I should have been quite delighted with his application, had he been cheerfully industrious. But he wrote on silently, palely, mechanically.


It is, of course, an indispensable part of a scrivener’s business to verify the accuracy of his copy, word by word. Where there are two or more scriveners in an office, they assist each other in this examination, one reading from the copy, the other holding the original. It is a very dull, wearisome, and lethargic affair. I can readily imagine that to some sanguine temperaments it would be altogether intolerable. For example, I cannot credit that the mettlesome poet Byron would have contentedly sat down with Bartleby to examine a law document of, say five hundred pages, closely written in a crimpy hand.


Now and then, in the haste of business, it had been my habit to assist in comparing some brief document myself, calling Turkey or Nippers for this purpose. One object I had in placing Bartleby so handy to me behind the screen, was to avail myself of his services on such trivial occasions. It was on the third day, I think, of his being with me, and before any necessity had arisen for having his own writing examined, that, being much hurried to complete a small affair I had in hand, I abruptly called to Bartleby. In my haste and natural expectancy of instant compliance, I sat with my head bent over the original on my desk, and my right hand sideways, and somewhat nervously extended with the copy, so that immediately upon emerging from his retreat, Bartleby might snatch it and proceed to business without the least delay.


In this very attitude did I sit when I called to him, rapidly stating what it was I wanted him to do—namely, to examine a small paper with me. Imagine my surprise, nay, my consternation, when without moving from his privacy, Bartleby in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied, “I would prefer not to.”


I sat awhile in perfect silence, rallying my stunned faculties. Immediately it occurred to me that my ears had deceived me, or Bartleby had entirely misunderstood my meaning. I repeated my request in the clearest tone I could assume. But in quite as clear a one came the previous reply, “I would prefer not to.”


“Prefer not to,” echoed I, rising in high excitement, and crossing the room with a stride. “What do you mean? Are you moon-struck? I want you to help me compare this sheet here—take it,” and I thrust it towards him.


“I would prefer not to,” said he.


I looked at him steadfastly. His face was leanly composed; his gray eye dimly calm. Not a wrinkle of agitation rippled him. Had there been the least uneasiness, anger, impatience or impertinence in his manner; in other words, had there been any thing ordinarily human about him, doubtless I should have violently dismissed him from the premises. But as it was, I should have as soon thought of turning my pale plaster-of-paris bust of Cicero out of doors. I stood gazing at him awhile, as he went on with his own writing, and then reseated myself at my desk. This is very strange, thought I. What had one best do? But my business hurried me. I concluded to forget the matter for the present, reserving it for my future leisure. So calling Nippers from the other room, the paper was speedily examined.


A few days after this, Bartleby concluded four lengthy documents, being quadruplicates of a week’s testimony taken before me in my High Court of Chancery. It became necessary to examine them. It was an important suit, and great accuracy was imperative. Having all things arranged I called Turkey, Nippers and Ginger Nut from the next room, meaning to place the four copies in the hands of my four clerks, while I should read from the original. Accordingly Turkey, Nippers and Ginger Nut had taken their seats in a row, each with his document in hand, when I called to Bartleby to join this interesting group.


“Bartleby! quick, I am waiting.”


I heard a slow scrape of his chair legs on the uncarpeted floor, and soon he appeared standing at the entrance of his hermitage.


“What is wanted?” said he mildly.


“The copies, the copies,” said I hurriedly. “We are going to examine them. There”—and I held towards him the fourth quadruplicate.


“I would prefer not to,” he said, and gently disappeared behind the screen.


For a few moments I was turned into a pillar of salt, standing at the head of my seated column of clerks. Recovering myself, I advanced towards the screen, and demanded the reason for such extraordinary conduct.


“Why do you refuse?”


“I would prefer not to.”


With any other man I should have flown outright into a dreadful passion, scorned all further words, and thrust him ignominiously from my presence. But there was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but in a wonderful manner touched and disconcerted me. I began to reason with him.


“These are your own copies we are about to examine. It is labor saving to you, because one examination will answer for your four papers. It is common usage. Every copyist is bound to help examine his copy. Is it not so? Will you not speak? Answer!”


“I prefer not to,” he replied in a flute-like tone. It seemed to me that while I had been addressing him, he carefully revolved every statement that I made; fully comprehended the meaning; could not gainsay the irresistible conclusions; but, at the same time, some paramount consideration prevailed with him to reply as he did.


“You are decided, then, not to comply with my request—a request made according to common usage and common sense?”


He briefly gave me to understand that on that point my judgment was sound. Yes: his decision was irreversible.


It is not seldom the case that when a man is browbeaten in some unprecedented and violently unreasonable way, he begins to stagger in his own plainest faith. He begins, as it were, vaguely to surmise that, wonderful as it may be, all the justice and all the reason is on the other side. Accordingly, if any disinterested persons are present, he turns to them for some reinforcement for his own faltering mind.


“Turkey,” said I, “what do you think of this? Am I not right?”


“With submission, sir,” said Turkey, with his blandest tone, “I think that you are.”


“Nippers,” said I, “what do you think of it?”


“I think I should kick him out of the office.”


(The reader of nice perceptions will here perceive that, it being morning, Turkey’s answer is couched in polite and tranquil terms, but Nippers replies in ill-tempered ones. Or, to repeat a previous sentence, Nippers’ ugly mood was on duty and Turkey’s off.)


“Ginger Nut,” said I, willing to enlist the smallest suffrage in my behalf, “what do you think of it?”


“I think, sir, he’s a little luny,” replied Ginger Nut with a grin.


“You hear what they say,” said I, turning towards the screen, “come forth and do your duty.”


But he vouchsafed no reply. I pondered a moment in sore perplexity. But once more business hurried me. I determined again to postpone the consideration of this dilemma to my future leisure. With a little trouble we made out to examine the papers without Bartleby, though at every page or two, Turkey deferentially dropped his opinion that this proceeding was quite out of the common; while Nippers, twitching in his chair with a dyspeptic nervousness, ground out between his set teeth occasional hissing maledictions against the stubborn oaf behind the screen. And for his (Nippers’) part, this was the first and the last time he would do another man’s business without pay.


Meanwhile Bartleby sat in his hermitage, oblivious to every thing but his own peculiar business there.


Some days passed, the scrivener being employed upon another lengthy work. His late remarkable conduct led me to regard his ways narrowly. I observed that he never went to dinner; indeed that he never went any where. As yet I had never of my personal knowledge known him to be outside of my office. He was a perpetual sentry in the corner. At about eleven o’clock though, in the morning, I noticed that Ginger Nut would advance toward the opening in Bartleby’s screen, as if silently beckoned thither by a gesture invisible to me where I sat. The boy would then leave the office jingling a few pence, and reappear with a handful of ginger-nuts which he delivered in the hermitage, receiving two of the cakes for his trouble.


He lives, then, on ginger-nuts, thought I; never eats a dinner, properly speaking; he must be a vegetarian then; but no; he never eats even vegetables, he eats nothing but ginger-nuts. My mind then ran on in reveries concerning the probable effects upon the human constitution of living entirely on ginger-nuts. Ginger-nuts are so called because they contain ginger as one of their peculiar constituents, and the final flavoring one. Now what was ginger? A hot, spicy thing. Was Bartleby hot and spicy? Not at all. Ginger, then, had no effect upon Bartleby. Probably he preferred it should have none.


Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance. If the individual so resisted be of a not inhumane temper, and the resisting one perfectly harmless in his passivity; then, in the better moods of the former, he will endeavor charitably to construe to his imagination what proves impossible to be solved by his judgment. Even so, for the most part, I regarded Bartleby and his ways. Poor fellow! thought I, he means no mischief; it is plain he intends no insolence; his aspect sufficiently evinces that his eccentricities are involuntary. He is useful to me. I can get along with him. If I turn him away, the chances are he will fall in with some less indulgent employer, and then he will be rudely treated, and perhaps driven forth miserably to starve. Yes. Here I can cheaply purchase a delicious self-approval. To befriend Bartleby; to humor him in his strange willfulness, will cost me little or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my conscience. But this mood was not invariable with me. The passiveness of Bartleby sometimes irritated me. I felt strangely goaded on to encounter him in new opposition, to elicit some angry spark from him answerable to my own. But indeed I might as well have essayed to strike fire with my knuckles against a bit of Windsor soap. But one afternoon the evil impulse in me mastered me, and the following little scene ensued:


“Bartleby,” said I, “when those papers are all copied, I will compare them with you.”


“I would prefer not to.”


“How? Surely you do not mean to persist in that mulish vagary?”


No answer.


I threw open the folding-doors near by, and turning upon Turkey and Nippers, exclaimed in an excited manner—


“He says, a second time, he won’t examine his papers. What do you think of it, Turkey?”


It was afternoon, be it remembered. Turkey sat glowing like a brass boiler, his bald head steaming, his hands reeling among his blotted papers.


“Think of it?” roared Turkey; “I think I’ll just step behind his screen, and black his eyes for him!”


So saying, Turkey rose to his feet and threw his arms into a pugilistic position. He was hurrying away to make good his promise, when I detained him, alarmed at the effect of incautiously rousing Turkey’s combativeness after dinner.


“Sit down, Turkey,” said I, “and hear what Nippers has to say. What do you think of it, Nippers? Would I not be justified in immediately dismissing Bartleby?”


“Excuse me, that is for you to decide, sir. I think his conduct quite unusual, and indeed unjust, as regards Turkey and myself. But it may only be a passing whim.”


“Ah,” exclaimed I, “you have strangely changed your mind then—you speak very gently of him now.”


“All beer,” cried Turkey; “gentleness is effects of beer—Nippers and I dined together to-day. You see how gentle I am, sir. Shall I go and black his eyes?”


“You refer to Bartleby, I suppose. No, not to-day, Turkey,” I replied; “pray, put up your fists.”


I closed the doors, and again advanced towards Bartleby. I felt additional incentives tempting me to my fate. I burned to be rebelled against again. I remembered that Bartleby never left the office.


“Bartleby,” said I, “Ginger Nut is away; just step round to the Post Office, won’t you? (it was but a three minute walk,) and see if there is any thing for me.”


“I would prefer not to.”


“You will not?”


“I prefer not.”


I staggered to my desk, and sat there in a deep study. My blind inveteracy returned. Was there any other thing in which I could procure myself to be ignominiously repulsed by this lean, penniless wight?—my hired clerk? What added thing is there, perfectly reasonable, that he will be sure to refuse to do?


“Bartleby!”


No answer.


“Bartleby,” in a louder tone.


No answer.


“Bartleby,” I roared.


Like a very ghost, agreeably to the laws of magical invocation, at the third summons, he appeared at the entrance of his hermitage.


“Go to the next room, and tell Nippers to come to me.”


“I prefer not to,” he respectfully and slowly said, and mildly disappeared.


“Very good, Bartleby,” said I, in a quiet sort of serenely severe self-possessed tone, intimating the unalterable purpose of some terrible retribution very close at hand. At the moment I half intended something of the kind. But upon the whole, as it was drawing towards my dinner-hour, I thought it best to put on my hat and walk home for the day, suffering much from perplexity and distress of mind.


Shall I acknowledge it? The conclusion of this while business was, that it soon became a fixed fact of my chambers, that a pale young scrivener, by the name of Bartleby, and a desk there; that he copied for me at the usual rate of four cents a folio (one hundred words); but he was permanently exempt from examining the work done by him, that duty being transferred to Turkey and Nippers, one of compliment doubtless to their superior acuteness; moreover, said Bartleby was never on any account to be dispatched on the most trivial errand of any sort; and that even if entreated to take upon him such a matter, it was generally understood that he would prefer not to—in other words, that he would refuse pointblank.


As days passed on, I became considerably reconciled to Bartleby. His steadiness, his freedom from all dissipation, his incessant industry (except when he chose to throw himself into a standing revery behind his screen), his great, stillness, his unalterableness of demeanor under all circumstances, made him a valuable acquisition. One prime thing was this,—he was always there;—first in the morning, continually through the day, and the last at night. I had a singular confidence in his honesty. I felt my most precious papers perfectly safe in his hands. Sometimes to be sure I could not, for the very soul of me, avoid falling into sudden spasmodic passions with him. For it was exceeding difficult to bear in mind all the time those strange peculiarities, privileges, and unheard of exemptions, forming the tacit stipulations on Bartleby’s part under which he remained in my office. Now and then, in the eagerness of dispatching pressing business, I would inadvertently summon Bartleby, in a short, rapid tone, to put his finger, say, on the incipient tie of a bit of red tape with which I was about compressing some papers. Of course, from behind the screen the usual answer, “I prefer not to,” was sure to come; and then, how could a human creature with the common infirmities of our nature, refrain from bitterly exclaiming upon such perverseness—such unreasonableness. However, every added repulse of this sort which I received only tended to lessen the probability of my repeating the inadvertence.


Here it must be said, that according to the custom of most legal gentlemen occupying chambers in densely-populated law buildings, there were several keys to my door. One was kept by a woman residing in the attic, which person weekly scrubbed and daily swept and dusted my apartments. Another was kept by Turkey for convenience sake. The third I sometimes carried in my own pocket. The fourth I knew not who had.


Now, one Sunday morning I happened to go to Trinity Church, to hear a celebrated preacher, and finding myself rather early on the ground, I thought I would walk around to my chambers for a while. Luckily I had my key with me; but upon applying it to the lock, I found it resisted by something inserted from the inside. Quite surprised, I called out; when to my consternation a key was turned from within; and thrusting his lean visage at me, and holding the door ajar, the apparition of Bartleby appeared, in his shirt sleeves, and otherwise in a strangely tattered dishabille, saying quietly that he was sorry, but he was deeply engaged just then, and—preferred not admitting me at present. In a brief word or two, he moreover added, that perhaps I had better walk round the block two or three times, and by that time he would probably have concluded his affairs.


Now, the utterly unsurmised appearance of Bartleby, tenanting my law-chambers of a Sunday morning, with his cadaverously gentlemanly nonchalance, yet withal firm and self-possessed, had such a strange effect upon me, that incontinently I slunk away from my own door, and did as desired. But not without sundry twinges of impotent rebellion against the mild effrontery of this unaccountable scrivener. Indeed, it was his wonderful mildness chiefly, which not only disarmed me, but unmanned me, as it were. For I consider that one, for the time, is a sort of unmanned when he tranquilly permits his hired clerk to dictate to him, and order him away from his own premises. Furthermore, I was full of uneasiness as to what Bartleby could possibly be doing in my office in his shirt sleeves, and in an otherwise dismantled condition of a Sunday morning. Was any thing amiss going on? Nay, that was out of the question. It was not to be thought of for a moment that Bartleby was an immoral person. But what could he be doing there?—copying? Nay again, whatever might be his eccentricities, Bartleby was an eminently decorous person. He would be the last man to sit down to his desk in any state approaching to nudity. Besides, it was Sunday; and there was something about Bartleby that forbade the supposition that he would be any secular occupation violate the proprieties of the day.


Nevertheless, my mind was not pacified; and full of a restless curiosity, at last I returned to the door. Without hindrance I inserted my key, opened it, and entered. Bartleby was not to be seen. I looked round anxiously, peeped behind his screen; but it was very plain that he was gone. Upon more closely examining the place, I surmised that for an indefinite period Bartleby must have ate, dressed, and slept in my office, and that too without plate, mirror, or bed. The cushioned seat of a rickety old sofa in one corner bore the faint impress of a lean, reclining form. Rolled away under his desk, I found a blanket; under the empty grate, a blacking box and brush; on a chair, a tin basin, with soap and a ragged towel; in a newspaper a few crumbs of ginger-nuts and a morsel of cheese. Yes, thought I, it is evident enough that Bartleby has been making his home here, keeping bachelor’s hall all by himself. Immediately then the thought came sweeping across me, What miserable friendlessness and loneliness are here revealed! His poverty is great; but his solitude, how horrible! Think of it. Of a Sunday, Wall-street is deserted as Petra; and every night of every day it is an emptiness. This building too, which of week-days hums with industry and life, at nightfall echoes with sheer vacancy, and all through Sunday is forlorn. And here Bartleby makes his home; sole spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous—a sort of innocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!


For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized me. Before, I had never experienced aught but a not-unpleasing sadness. The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam. I remembered the bright silks and sparkling faces I had seen that day, in gala trim, swan-like sailing down the Mississippi of Broadway; and I contrasted them with the pallid copyist, and thought to myself, Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none. These sad fancyings—chimeras, doubtless, of a sick and silly brain—led on to other and more special thoughts, concerning the eccentricities of Bartleby. Presentiments of strange discoveries hovered round me. The scrivener’s pale form appeared to me laid out, among uncaring strangers, in its shivering winding sheet.


Suddenly I was attracted by Bartleby’s closed desk, the key in open sight left in the lock.


I mean no mischief, seek the gratification of no heartless curiosity, thought I; besides, the desk is mine, and its contents too, so I will make bold to look within. Every thing was methodically arranged, the papers smoothly placed. The pigeon holes were deep, and removing the files of documents, I groped into their recesses. Presently I felt something there, and dragged it out. It was an old bandanna handkerchief, heavy and knotted. I opened it, and saw it was a savings’ bank.


I now recalled all the quiet mysteries which I had noted in the man. I remembered that he never spoke but to answer; that though at intervals he had considerable time to himself, yet I had never seen him reading—no, not even a newspaper; that for long periods he would stand looking out, at his pale window behind the screen, upon the dead brick wall; I was quite sure he never visited any refectory or eating house; while his pale face clearly indicated that he never drank beer like Turkey, or tea and coffee even, like other men; that he never went any where in particular that I could learn’ never went out for a walk, unless indeed that was the case at present; that he had declined telling who he was, or whence he came, or whether he had any relatives in the world; that though so thin and pale, he never complained of ill health. And more than all, I remembered a certain unconscious air of pallid—how shall I call it?—of pallid haughtiness, say, or rather an austere reserve about him, which had positively awed me into my tame compliance with his eccentricities, when I had feared to ask him to do the slightest incidental thing for me, even though I might know, from his long-continued motionlessness, that behind his screen he must be standing in one of those dead-wall reveries of his.


Revolving all these things, and coupling them with the recently discovered fact that he made my office his constant abiding place and home, and not forgetful of his morbid moodiness; revolving all these things, a prudential feeling began to steal over me. My first emotions had been those of pure melancholy and sincerest pity; but just in proportion as the forlornness of Bartleby grew and grew to my imagination, did that same melancholy merge into fear, that pity into repulsion. So true it is, and so terrible too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul rid of it. What I saw that morning persuaded me that the scrivener was the victim of innate and incurable disorder. I might give alms to his body; but his body did not pain him; it was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach.


I did not accomplish the purpose of going to Trinity Church that morning. Somehow, the things I had seen disqualified me for the time from church-going. I walked homeward, thinking what I would do with Bartleby. Finally, I resolved upon this;—I would put certain calm questions to him the next morning, touching his history, etc., and if he declined to answer them openly and unreservedly (and I supposed he would prefer not), then to give him a twenty dollar bill over and above whatever I might owe him, and tell him his services were no longer required; but that if in any other way I could assist him, I would be happy to do so, especially if he desired to return to his native place, wherever that might be, I would willingly help to defray the expenses. Moreover, if, after reaching home, he found himself at any time in want of aid, a letter from him would be sure of a reply.


The next morning came.


“Bartleby,” said I, gently calling to him behind his screen.


No reply.


“Bartleby,” said I, in a still gentler tone, “come here; I am not going to ask you to do any thing you would prefer not to do—I simply wish to speak to you.”


Upon this he noiselessly slid into view.


“Will you tell me, Bartleby, where you were born?”


“I would prefer not to.”


“Will you tell me any thing about yourself?”


“I would prefer not to.”


“But what reasonable objection can you have to speak to me? I feel friendly towards you.”


He did not look at me while I spoke, but kept his glance fixed upon my bust of Cicero, which as I then sat, was directly behind me, some six inches above my head.


“What is your answer, Bartleby?” said I, after waiting a considerable time for a reply, during which his countenance remained immovable, only there was the faintest conceivable tremor of the white attenuated mouth.


“At present I prefer to give no answer,” he said, and retired into his hermitage.


It was rather weak in me I confess, but his manner on this occasion nettled me. Not only did there seem to lurk in it a certain calm disdain, but his perverseness seemed ungrateful, considering the undeniable good usage and indulgence he had received from me.


Again I sat ruminating what I should do. Mortified as I was at his behavior, and resolved as I had been to dismiss him when I entered my offices, nevertheless I strangely felt something superstitious knocking at my heart, and forbidding me to carry out my purpose, and denouncing me for a villain if I dared to breathe one bitter word against this forlornest of mankind. At last, familiarly drawing my chair behind his screen, I sat down and said: “Bartleby, never mind then about revealing your history; but let me entreat you, as a friend, to comply as far as may be with the usages of this office. Say now you will help to examine papers to-morrow or next day: in short, say now that in a day or two you will begin to be a little reasonable:—say so, Bartleby.”


“At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable,” was his mildly cadaverous reply.


Just then the folding-doors opened, and Nippers approached. He seemed suffering from an unusually bad night’s rest, induced by severer indigestion then common. He overheard those final words of Bartleby.


“Prefer not, eh?” gritted Nippers—“I’d prefer him, if I were you, sir,” addressing me—“I’d prefer him; I’d give him preferences, the stubborn mule! What is it, sir, pray, that he prefers not to do now?”


Bartleby moved not a limb.


“Mr. Nippers,” said I, “I’d prefer that you would withdraw for the present.”


Somehow, of late I had got into the way of involuntarily using this word “prefer” upon all sorts of not exactly suitable occasions. And I trembled to think that my contact with the scrivener had already and seriously affected me in a mental way. And what further and deeper aberration might it not yet produce? This apprehension had not been without efficacy in determining me to summary means.


As Nippers, looking very sour and sulky, was departing, Turkey blandly and deferentially approached.


“With submission, sir,” said he, “yesterday I was thinking about Bartleby here, and I think that if he would but prefer to take a quart of good ale every day, it would do much towards mending him, and enabling him to assist in examining his papers.”


“So you have got the word too,” said I, slightly excited.


“With submission, what word, sir,” asked Turkey, respectfully crowding himself into the contracted space behind the screen, and by so doing, making me jostle the scrivener. “What word, sir?”


“I would prefer to be left alone here,” said Bartleby, as if offended at being mobbed in his privacy.


“That’s the word, Turkey,” said I—“that’s it.”


“Oh, prefer? oh yes—queer word. I never use it myself. But, sir, as I was saying, if he would but prefer—”


“Turkey,” interrupted I, “you will please withdraw.”


“Oh certainly, sir, if you prefer that I should.”


As he opened the folding-door to retire, Nippers at his desk caught a glimpse of me, and asked whether I would prefer to have a certain paper copied on blue paper or white. He did not in the least roguishly accent the word prefer. It was plain that it involuntarily rolled form his tongue. I thought to myself, surely I must get rid of a demented man, who already has in some degree turned the tongues, if not the heads of myself and clerks. But I thought it prudent not to break the dismission at once.


The next day I noticed that Bartleby did nothing but stand at his window in his dead-wall revery. Upon asking him why he did not write, he said that he had decided upon doing no more writing.


“Why, how now? what next?” exclaimed I, “do no more writing?”


“No more.”


“And what is the reason?”


“Do you not see the reason for yourself,” he indifferently replied.


I looked steadfastly at him, and perceived that his eyes looked dull and glazed. Instantly it occurred to me, that his unexampled diligence in copying by his dim window for the first few weeks of his stay with me might have temporarily impaired his vision.


I was touched. I said something in condolence with him. I hinted that of course he did wisely in abstaining from writing for a while; and urged him to embrace that opportunity of taking wholesome exercise in the open air. This, however, he did not do. A few days after this, my other clerks being absent, and being in a great hurry to dispatch certain letters by the mail, I thought that, having nothing else earthly to do, Bartleby would surely be less inflexible than usual, and carry these letters to the post-office. But he blankly declined. So, much to my inconvenience, I went myself.


Still added days went by. Whether Bartleby’s eyes improved or not, I could not say. To all appearance, I thought they did. But when I asked him if they did, he vouchsafed no answer. At all events, he would do no copying. At last, in reply to my urgings, he informed me that he had permanently given up copying.


“What!” exclaimed I; “suppose your eyes should get entirely well—better than ever before—would you not copy then?”


“I have given up copying,” he answered, and slid aside.


He remained as ever, a fixture in my chamber. Nay—if that were possible—he became still more of a fixture than before. What was to be done? He would do nothing in the office: why should he stay there? In plain fact, he had now become a millstone to me, not only useless as a necklace, but afflictive to bear. Yet I was sorry for him. I speak less than truth when I say that, on his own account, he occasioned me uneasiness. If he would but have named a single relative or friend, I would instantly have written, and urged their taking the poor fellow away to some convenient retreat. But he seemed alone, absolutely alone in the universe. A bit of wreck in the mid Atlantic. At length, necessities connected with my business tyrannized over all other considerations. Decently as I could, I told Bartleby that in six days’ time he must unconditionally leave the office. I warned him to take measures, in the interval, for procuring some other abode. I offered to assist him in this endeavor, if he himself would but take the first step towards a removal. “And when you finally quit me, Bartleby,” added I, “I shall see that you go not away entirely unprovided. Six days from this hour, remember.”


At the expiration of that period, I peeped behind the screen, and lo! Bartleby was there.


I buttoned up my coat, balanced myself; advanced slowly towards him, touched his shoulder, and said, “The time has come; you must quit this place; I am sorry for you; here is money; but you must go.”


“I would prefer not,” he replied, with his back still towards me.


“You must.”


He remained silent.


Now I had an unbounded confidence in this man’s common honesty. He had frequently restored to me sixpences and shillings carelessly dropped upon the floor, for I am apt to be very reckless in such shirt-button affairs. The proceeding then which followed will not be deemed extraordinary.


“Bartleby,” said I, “I owe you twelve dollars on account; here are thirty-two; the odd twenty are yours.—Will you take it?” and I handed the bills towards him.


But he made no motion.


“I will leave them here then,” putting them under a weight on the table. Then taking my hat and cane and going to the door I tranquilly turned and added—“After you have removed your things from these offices, Bartleby, you will of course lock the door—since every one is now gone for the day but you—and if you please, slip your key underneath the mat, so that I may have it in the morning. I shall not see you again; so good-bye to you. If hereafter in your new place of abode I can be of any service to you, do not fail to advise me by letter. Good-bye, Bartleby, and fare you well.”


But he answered not a word; like the last column of some ruined temple, he remained standing mute and solitary in the middle of the otherwise deserted room.


As I walked home in a pensive mood, my vanity got the better of my pity. I could not but highly plume myself on my masterly management in getting rid of Bartleby. Masterly I call it, and such it must appear to any dispassionate thinker. The beauty of my procedure seemed to consist in its perfect quietness. There was no vulgar bullying, no bravado of any sort, no choleric hectoring, and striding to and fro across the apartment, jerking out vehement commands for Bartleby to bundle himself off with his beggarly traps. Nothing of the kind. Without loudly bidding Bartleby depart—as an inferior genius might have done—I assumed the ground that depart he must; and upon that assumption built all I had to say. The more I thought over my procedure, the more I was charmed with it. Nevertheless, next morning, upon awakening, I had my doubts,—I had somehow slept off the fumes of vanity. One of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes in the morning. My procedure seemed as sagacious as ever.—but only in theory. How it would prove in practice—there was the rub. It was truly a beautiful thought to have assumed Bartleby’s departure; but, after all, that assumption was simply my own, and none of Bartleby’s. The great point was, not whether I had assumed that he would quit me, but whether he would prefer so to do. He was more a man of preferences than assumptions.


After breakfast, I walked down town, arguing the probabilities pro and con. One moment I thought it would prove a miserable failure, and Bartleby would be found all alive at my office as usual; the next moment it seemed certain that I should see his chair empty. And so I kept veering about. At the corner of Broadway and Canal-street, I saw quite an excited group of people standing in earnest conversation.


“I’ll take odds he doesn’t,” said a voice as I passed.


“Doesn’t go?—done!” said I, “put up your money.”


I was instinctively putting my hand in my pocket to produce my own, when I remembered that this was an election day. The words I had overheard bore no reference to Bartleby, but to the success or non-success of some candidate for the mayoralty. In my intent frame of mind, I had, as it were, imagined that all Broadway shared in my excitement, and were debating the same question with me. I passed on, very thankful that the uproar of the street screened my momentary absent-mindedness.


As I had intended, I was earlier than usual at my office door. I stood listening for a moment. All was still. He must be gone. I tried the knob. The door was locked. Yes, my procedure had worked to a charm; he indeed must be vanished. Yet a certain melancholy mixed with this: I was almost sorry for my brilliant success. I was fumbling under the door mat for the key, which Bartleby was to have left there for me, when accidentally my knee knocked against a panel, producing a summoning sound, and in response a voice came to me from within—“Not yet; I am occupied.”


It was Bartleby.


I was thunderstruck. For an instant I stood like the man who, pipe in mouth, was killed one cloudless afternoon long ago in Virginia, by a summer lightning; at his own warm open window he was killed, and remained leaning out there upon the dreamy afternoon, till some one touched him, when he fell.


“Not gone!” I murmured at last. But again obeying that wondrous ascendancy which the inscrutable scrivener had over me, and from which ascendancy, for all my chafling, I could not completely escape, I slowly went down stairs and out into the street, and while walking round the block, considered what I should next do in this unheard-of perplexity. Turn the man out by an actual thrusting I could not; to drive him away by calling him hard names would not do; calling in the police was an unpleasant idea; and yet, permit him to enjoy his cadaverous triumph over me,—this too I could not think of. What was to be done? or, if nothing could be done, was there any thing further that I could assume in the matter? Yes, as before I had prospectively assumed that Bartleby would depart, so now I might retrospectively assume that departed he was. In the legitimate carrying out of this assumption, I might enter my office in a great hurry, and pretending not to see Bartleby at all, walk straight against him as if he were air. Such a proceeding would in a singular degree have the appearance of a home-thrust. It was hardly possible that Bartleby could withstand such an application of the doctrine of assumptions. But upon second thoughts the success of the plan seemed rather dubious. I resolved to argue the matter over with him again.


“Bartleby,” said I, entering the office, with a quietly severe expression, “I am seriously displeased. I am pained, Bartleby. I had thought better of you. I had imagined you of such a gentlemanly organization, that in any delicate dilemma a slight hint would have suffice—in short, an assumption. But it appears I am deceived. Why,” I added, unaffectedly starting, “you have not even touched that money yet,” pointing to it, just where I had left it the evening previous.


He answered nothing.


“Will you, or will you not, quit me?” I now demanded in a sudden passion, advancing close to him.


“I would prefer not to quit you,” he replied, gently emphasizing the not.


“What earthly right have you to stay here? Do you pay any rent? Do you pay my taxes? Or is this property yours?”


He answered nothing.


“Are you ready to go on and write now? Are your eyes recovered? Could you copy a small paper for me this morning? or help examine a few lines? or step round to the post-office? In a word, will you do any thing at all, to give a coloring to your refusal to depart the premises?”


He silently retired into his hermitage.


I was now in such a state of nervous resentment that I thought it but prudent to check myself at present from further demonstrations. Bartleby and I were alone. I remembered the tragedy of the unfortunate Adams and the still more unfortunate Colt in the solitary office of the latter; and how poor Colt, being dreadfully incensed by Adams, and imprudently permitting himself to get wildly excited, was at unawares hurried into his fatal act—an act which certainly no man could possibly deplore more than the actor himself. Often it had occurred to me in my ponderings upon the subject, that had that altercation taken place in the public street, or at a private residence, it would not have terminated as it did. It was the circumstance of being alone in a solitary office, up stairs, of a building entirely unhallowed by humanizing domestic associations—an uncarpeted office, doubtless, of a dusty, haggard sort of appearance;—this it must have been, which greatly helped to enhance the irritable desperation of the hapless Colt.


But when this old Adam of resentment rose in me and tempted me concerning Bartleby, I grappled him and threw him. How? Why, simply by recalling the divine injunction: “A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one another.” Yes, this it was that saved me. Aside from higher considerations, charity often operates as a vastly wise and prudent principle—a great safeguard to its possessor. Men have committed murder for jealousy’s sake, and anger’s sake, and hatred’s sake, and selfishness’ sake, and spiritual pride’s sake; but no man that ever I heard of, ever committed a diabolical murder for sweet charity’s sake. Mere self-interest, then, if no better motive can be enlisted, should, especially with high-tempered men, prompt all beings to charity and philanthropy. At any rate, upon the occasion in question, I strove to drown my exasperated feelings towards the scrivener by benevolently construing his conduct. Poor fellow, poor fellow! thought I, he don’t mean any thing; and besides, he has seen hard times, and ought to be indulged.


I endeavored also immediately to occupy myself, and at the same time to comfort my despondency. I tried to fancy that in the course of the morning, at such time as might prove agreeable to him. Bartleby, of his own free accord, would emerge from his hermitage, and take up some decided line of march in the direction of the door. But no. Half-past twelve o’clock came; Turkey began to glow in the face, overturn his inkstand, and become generally obstreperous; Nippers abated down into quietude and courtesy; Ginger Nut munched his noon apple; and Bartleby remained standing at his window in one of his profoundest dead-wall reveries. Will it be credited? Ought I to acknowledge it? That afternoon I left the office without saying one further word to him.


Some days now passed, during which, at leisure intervals I looked a little into “Edwards on the Will,” and “Priestly on Necessity.” Under the circumstances, those books induced a salutary feeling. Gradually I slid into the persuasion that these troubles of mine touching the scrivener, had been all predestinated from eternity, and Bartleby was billeted upon me for some mysterious purpose of an all-wise Providence, which it was not for a mere mortal like me to fathom. Yes, Bartleby, stay there behind your screen, thought I; I shall persecute you no more; you are harmless and noiseless as any of these old chairs; in short, I never feel so private as when I know you are here. At least I see it, I feel it; I penetrate to the predestinated purpose of my life. I am content. Others may have loftier parts to enact; but my mission in this world, Bartleby, is to furnish you with office-room for such period as you may see fit to remain.


I believe that this wise and blessed frame of mind would have continued with me, had it not been for the unsolicited and uncharitable remarks obtruded upon me by my professional friends who visited the rooms. But thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous. Though to be sure, when I reflected upon it, it was not strange that people entering my office should be struck by the peculiar aspect of the unaccountable Bartleby, and so be tempted to throw out some sinister observations concerning him. Sometimes an attorney having business with me, and calling at my office and finding no one but the scrivener there, would undertake to obtain some sort of precise information from him touching my whereabouts; but without heeding his idle talk, Bartleby would remain standing immovable in the middle of the room. So after contemplating him in that position for a time, the attorney would depart, no wiser than he came.


Also, when a Reference was going on, and the room full of lawyers and witnesses and business was driving fast; some deeply occupied legal gentleman present, seeing Bartleby wholly unemployed, would request him to run round to his (the legal gentleman’s) office and fetch some papers for him. Thereupon, Bartleby would tranquilly decline, and yet remain idle as before. Then the lawyer would give a great stare, and turn to me. And what could I say? At last I was made aware that all through the circle of my professional acquaintance, a whisper of wonder was running round, having reference to the strange creature I kept at my office. This worried me very much. And as the idea came upon me of his possibly turning out a long-lived man, and keep occupying my chambers, and denying my authority; and perplexing my visitors; and scandalizing my professional reputation; and casting a general gloom over the premises; keeping soul and body together to the last upon his savings (for doubtless he spent but half a dime a day), and in the end perhaps outlive me, and claim possession of my office by right of his perpetual occupancy: as all these dark anticipations crowded upon me more and more, and my friends continually intruded their relentless remarks upon the apparition in my room; a great change was wrought in me. I resolved to gather all my faculties together, and for ever rid me of this intolerable incubus.


Ere revolving any complicated project, however, adapted to this end, I first simply suggested to Bartleby the propriety of his permanent departure. In a calm and serious tone, I commended the idea to his careful and mature consideration. But having taken three days to meditate upon it, he apprised me that his original determination remained the same in short, that he still preferred to abide with me.


What shall I do? I now said to myself, buttoning up my coat to the last button. What shall I do? what ought I to do? what does conscience say I should do with this man, or rather ghost. Rid myself of him, I must; go, he shall. But how? You will not thrust him, the poor, pale, passive mortal,—you will not thrust such a helpless creature out of your door? you will not dishonor yourself by such cruelty? No, I will not, I cannot do that. Rather would I let him live and die here, and then mason up his remains in the wall. What then will you do? For all your coaxing, he will not budge. Bribes he leaves under your own paperweight on your table; in short, it is quite plain that he prefers to cling to you.


Then something severe, something unusual must be done. What! surely you will not have him collared by a constable, and commit his innocent pallor to the common jail? And upon what ground could you procure such a thing to be done?—a vagrant, is he? What! he a vagrant, a wanderer, who refuses to budge? It is because he will not be a vagrant, then, that you seek to count him as a vagrant. That is too absurd. No visible means of support: there I have him. Wrong again: for indubitably he does support himself, and that is the only unanswerable proof that any man can show of his possessing the means so to do. No more then. Since he will not quit me, I must quit him. I will change my offices; I will move elsewhere; and give him fair notice, that if I find him on my new premises I will then proceed against him as a common trespasser.


Acting accordingly, next day I thus addressed him: “I find these chambers too far from the City Hall; the air is unwholesome. In a word, I propose to remove my offices next week, and shall no longer require your services. I tell you this now, in order that you may seek another place.”


He made no reply, and nothing more was said.


On the appointed day I engaged carts and men, proceeded to my chambers, and having but little furniture, every thing was removed in a few hours. Throughout, the scrivener remained standing behind the screen, which I directed to be removed the last thing. It was withdrawn; and being folded up like a huge folio, left him the motionless occupant of a naked room. I stood in the entry watching him a moment, while something from within me upbraided me.


I re-entered, with my hand in my pocket—and—and my heart in my mouth.


“Good-bye, Bartleby; I am going—good-bye, and God some way bless you; and take that,” slipping something in his hand. But it dropped upon the floor, and then,—strange to say—I tore myself from him whom I had so longed to be rid of.


Established in my new quarters, for a day or two I kept the door locked, and started at every footfall in the passages. When I returned to my rooms after any little absence, I would pause at the threshold for an instant, and attentively listen, ere applying my key. But these fears were needless. Bartleby never came nigh me.


I thought all was going well, when a perturbed looking stranger visited me, inquiring whether I was the person who had recently occupied rooms at No.—Wall-street.


Full of forebodings, I replied that I was.


“Then sir,” said the stranger, who proved a lawyer, “you are responsible for the man you left there. He refuses to do any copying; he refuses to do any thing; he says he prefers not to; and he refuses to quit the premises.”


“I am very sorry, sir,” said I, with assumed tranquility, but an inward tremor, “but, really, the man you allude to is nothing to me—he is no relation or apprentice of mine, that you should hold me responsible for him.”


“In mercy’s name, who is he?”


“I certainly cannot inform you. I know nothing about him. Formerly I employed him as a copyist; but he has done nothing for me now for some time past.”


“I shall settle him then,—good morning, sir.”


Several days passed, and I heard nothing more; and though I often felt a charitable prompting to call at the place and see poor Bartleby, yet a certain squeamishness of I know not what withheld me.


All is over with him, by this time, thought I at last, when through another week no further intelligence reached me. But coming to my room the day after, I found several persons waiting at my door in a high state of nervous excitement.


“That’s the man—here he comes,” cried the foremost one, whom I recognized as the lawyer who had previously called upon me alone.


“You must take him away, sir, at once,” cried a portly person among them, advancing upon me, and whom I knew to be the landlord of No.—Wall-street. “These gentlemen, my tenants, cannot stand it any longer; Mr. B—” pointing to the lawyer, “has turned him out of his room, and he now persists in haunting the building generally, sitting upon the banisters of the stairs by day, and sleeping in the entry by night. Every body is concerned; clients are leaving the offices; some fears are entertained of a mob; something you must do, and that without delay.”


Aghast at this torrent, I fell back before it, and would fain have locked myself in my new quarters. In vain I persisted that Bartleby was nothing to me—no more than to any one else. In vain:—I was the last person known to have any thing to do with him, and they held me to the terrible account. Fearful then of being exposed in the papers (as one person present obscurely threatened) I considered the matter, and at length said, that if the lawyer would give me a confidential interview with the scrivener, in his (the lawyer’s) own room, I would that afternoon strive my best to rid them of the nuisance they complained of.


Going up stairs to my old haunt, there was Bartleby silently sitting upon the banister at the landing.


“What are you doing here, Bartleby?” said I.


“Sitting upon the banister,” he mildly replied.


I motioned him into the lawyer’s room, who then left us.


“Bartleby,” said I, “are you aware that you are the cause of great tribulation to me, by persisting in occupying the entry after being dismissed from the office?”


No answer.


“Now one of two things must take place. Either you must do something, or something must be done to you. Now what sort of business would you like to engage in? Would you like to re-engage in copying for some one?”


“No; I would prefer not to make any change.”


“Would you like a clerkship in a dry-goods store?”


“There is too much confinement about that. No, I would not like a clerkship; but I am not particular.”


“Too much confinement,” I cried, “why you keep yourself confined all the time!”


“I would prefer not to take a clerkship,” he rejoined, as if to settle that little item at once.


“How would a bar-tender’s business suit you? There is no trying of the eyesight in that.”


“I would not like it at all; though, as I said before, I am not particular.”


His unwonted wordiness inspirited me. I returned to the charge.


“Well then, would you like to travel through the country collecting bills for the merchants? That would improve your health.”


“No, I would prefer to be doing something else.”


“How then would going as a companion to Europe, to entertain some young gentleman with your conversation,—how would that suit you?”


“Not at all. It does not strike me that there is any thing definite about that. I like to be stationary. But I am not particular.”


“Stationary you shall be then,” I cried, now losing all patience, and for the first time in all my exasperating connection with him fairly flying into a passion. “If you do not go away from these premises before night, I shall feel bound—indeed I am bound—to—to—to quit the premises myself!” I rather absurdly concluded, knowing not with what possible threat to try to frighten his immobility into compliance Despairing of all further efforts, I was precipitately leaving him, when a final thought occurred to me—one which had not been wholly unindulged before.


“Bartleby,” said I, in the kindest tone I could assume under such exciting circumstances, “will you go home with me now—not to my office, but my dwelling—and remain there till we can conclude upon some convenient arrangement for you at our leisure? Come, let us start now, right away.”


“No: at present I would prefer not to make any change at all.”


I answered nothing; but effectually dodging every one by the suddenness and rapidity of my flight, rushed from the building, ran up Wall-street towards Broadway, and jumping into the first omnibus was soon removed from pursuit. As soon as tranquility returned I distinctly perceived that I had now done all that I possibly could, both in respect to the demands of the landlord and his tenants, and with regard to my own desire and sense of duty, to benefit Bartleby, and shield him from rude persecution. I now strove to be entirely care-free and quiescent; and my conscience justified me in the attempt; though indeed it was not so successful as I could have wished. So fearful was I of being again hunted out by the incensed landlord and his exasperated tenants, that, surrendering my business to Nippers, for a few days I drove about the upper part of the town and through the suburbs, in my rockaway; crossed over to Jersey City and Hoboken, and paid fugitive visits to Manhattanville and Astoria. In fact I almost lived in my rockaway for the time.


When again I entered my office, lo, a note from the landlord lay upon the desk. I opened it with trembling hands. It informed me that the writer had sent to the police, and had Bartleby removed to the Tombs as a vagrant. Moreover, since I knew more about him than any one else, he wished me to appear at that place, and make a suitable statement of the facts. These tidings had a conflicting effect upon me. At first I was indignant; but at last almost approved. The landlord’s energetic, summary disposition had led him to adopt a procedure which I do not think I would have decided upon myself; and yet as a last resort, under such peculiar circumstances, it seemed the only plan.


As I afterwards learned, the poor scrivener, when told that he must be conducted to the Tombs, offered not the slightest obstacle, but in his pale unmoving way, silently acquiesced.


Some of the compassionate and curious bystanders joined the party; and headed by one of the constables arm in arm with Bartleby, the silent procession filed its way through all the noise, and heat, and joy of the roaring thoroughfares at noon.


The same day I received the note I went to the Tombs, or to speak more properly, the Halls of Justice. Seeking the right officer, I stated the purpose of my call, and was informed that the individual I described was indeed within. I then assured the functionary that Bartleby was a perfectly honest man, and greatly to be compassionated, however unaccountably eccentric. I narrated all I knew, and closed by suggesting the idea of letting him remain in as indulgent confinement as possible till something less harsh might be done—though indeed I hardly knew what. At all events, if nothing else could be decided upon, the alms-house must receive him. I then begged to have an interview.


Being under no disgraceful charge, and quite serene and harmless in all his ways, they had permitted him freely to wander about the prison, and especially in the inclosed grass-platted yard thereof. And so I found him there, standing all alone in the quietest of the yards, his face towards a high wall, while all around, from the narrow slits of the jail windows, I thought I saw peering out upon him the eyes of murderers and thieves.


“Bartleby!”


“I know you,” he said, without looking round,—“and I want nothing to say to you.”


“It was not I that brought you here, Bartleby,” said I, keenly pained at his implied suspicion. “And to you, this should not be so vile a place. Nothing reproachful attaches to you by being here. And see, it is not so sad a place as one might think. Look, there is the sky, and here is the grass.”


“I know where I am,” he replied, but would say nothing more, and so I left him.


As I entered the corridor again, a broad meat-like man, in an apron, accosted me, and jerking his thumb over his shoulder said—“Is that your friend?”


“Yes.”


“Does he want to starve? If he does, let him live on the prison fare, that’s all.”


“Who are you?” asked I, not knowing what to make of such an unofficially speaking person in such a place.


“I am the grub-man. Such gentlemen as have friends here, hire me to provide them with something good to eat.”


“Is this so?” said I, turning to the turnkey.


He said it was.


“Well then,” said I, slipping some silver into the grub-man’s hands (for so they called him). “I want you to give particular attention to my friend there; let him have the best dinner you can get. And you must be as polite to him as possible.”


“Introduce me, will you?” said the grub-man, looking at me with an expression which seem to say he was all impatience for an opportunity to give a specimen of his breeding.


Thinking it would prove of benefit to the scrivener, I acquiesced; and asking the grub-man his name, went up with him to Bartleby.


“Bartleby, this is Mr. Cutlets; you will find him very useful to you.”


“Your sarvant, sir, your sarvant,” said the grub-man, making a low salutation behind his apron. “Hope you find it pleasant here, sir;—spacious grounds—cool apartments, sir—hope you’ll stay with us some time—try to make it agreeable. May Mrs. Cutlets and I have the pleasure of your company to dinner, sir, in Mrs. Cutlets’ private room?”


“I prefer not to dine to-day,” said Bartleby, turning away. “It would disagree with me; I am unused to dinners.” So saying he slowly moved to the other side of the inclosure, and took up a position fronting the dead-wall.


“How’s this?” said the grub-man, addressing me with a stare of astonishment. “He’s odd, aint he?”


“I think he is a little deranged,” said I, sadly.


“Deranged? deranged is it? Well now, upon my word, I thought that friend of yourn was a gentleman forger; they are always pale and genteel-like, them forgers. I can’t pity’em—can’t help it, sir. Did you know Monroe Edwards?” he added touchingly, and paused. Then, laying his hand pityingly on my shoulder, sighed, “he died of consumption at Sing-Sing. So you weren’t acquainted with Monroe?”


“No, I was never socially acquainted with any forgers. But I cannot stop longer. Look to my friend yonder. You will not lose by it. I will see you again.”


Some few days after this, I again obtained admission to the Tombs, and went through the corridors in quest of Bartleby; but without finding him.


“I saw him coming from his cell not long ago,” said a turnkey, “may be he’s gone to loiter in the yards.”


So I went in that direction.


“Are you looking for the silent man?” said another turnkey passing me. “Yonder he lies—sleeping in the yard there. ‘Tis not twenty minutes since I saw him lie down.”


The yard was entirely quiet. It was not accessible to the common prisoners. The surrounding walls, of amazing thickness, kept off all sounds behind them. The Egyptian character of the masonry weighed upon me with its gloom. But a soft imprisoned turf grew under foot. The heart of the eternal pyramids, it seemed, wherein, by some strange magic, through the clefts, grass-seed, dropped by birds, had sprung.


Strangely huddled at the base of the wall, his knees drawn up, and lying on his side, his head touching the cold stones, I saw the wasted Bartleby. But nothing stirred. I paused; then went close up to him; stooped over, and saw that his dim eyes were open; otherwise he seemed profoundly sleeping. Something prompted me to touch him. I felt his hand, when a tingling shiver ran up my arm and down my spine to my feet.


The round face of the grub-man peered upon me now. “His dinner is ready. Won’t he dine to-day, either? Or does he live without dining?”


“Lives without dining,” said I, and closed his eyes.


“Eh!—He’s asleep, aint he?”


“With kings and counselors,” murmured I.


* * * * * * * *

There would seem little need for proceeding further in this history. Imagination will readily supply the meager recital of poor Bartleby’s interment. But ere parting with the reader, let me say, that if this little narrative has sufficiently interested him, to awaken curiosity as to who Bartleby was, and what manner of life he led prior to the present narrator’s making his acquaintance, I can only reply, that in such curiosity I fully share, but am wholly unable to gratify it. Yet here I hardly know whether I should divulge one little item of rumor, which came to my ear a few months after the scrivener’s decease. Upon what basis it rested, I could never ascertain; and hence, how true it is I cannot now tell. But inasmuch as this vague report has not been without certain strange suggestive interest to me, however sad, it may prove the same with some others; and so I will briefly mention it. The report was this: that Bartleby had been a subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter Office at Washington, from which he had been suddenly removed by a change in the administration. When I think over this rumor, I cannot adequately express the emotions which seize me. Dead letters! does it not sound like dead men? Conceive a man by nature and misfortune prone to a pallid hopelessness, can any business seem more fitted to heighten it than that of continually handling these dead letters, and assorting them for the flames? For by the cart-load they are annually burned. Sometimes from out the folded paper the pale clerk takes a ring:—the finger it was meant for, perhaps, moulders in the grave; a bank-note sent in swiftest charity:—he whom it would relieve, nor eats nor hungers any more; pardon for those who died despairing; hope for those who died unhoping; good tidings for those who died stifled by unrelieved calamities. On errands of life, these letters speed to death.


Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!


    

The White Stocking (by D.H. Lawrence)

13 Friday Nov 2009

Posted by Crisis Chronicles Press in 1900s, British, Lawrence (D.H), Short Stories

≈ 6 Comments

D.H. Lawrence

The White Stocking
by D.H. Lawrence
from The Prussian Officer and Other Stories (1914)

I

“I’m getting up, Teddilinks,” said Mrs Whiston, and she sprang out of bed briskly.


“What the Hanover’s got you?” asked Whiston.


“Nothing. Can’t I get up?” she replied animatedly.


It was about seven o’clock, scarcely light yet in the cold bedroom. Whiston lay still and looked at his wife. She was a pretty little thing, with her fleecy, short black hair all tousled … He watched her as she dressed quickly, flicking her small, delightful limbs, throwing her clothes about her. Her slovenliness and untidiness did not trouble him. When she picked up the edge of her petticoat, ripped off a torn string of white lace, and flung it on the dressing-table, her careless abandon made his spirit glow. She stood before the mirror and roughly scrambled together her profuse little mane of hair. He watched the quickness and softness of her young shoulders, calmly, like a husband, and appreciatively.


“Rise up,” she cried, turning to him with a quick wave of her arm— “and shine forth.”


They had been married two years. But still, when she had gone out of the room, he felt as if all his light and warmth were taken away, he became aware of the raw, cold morning. So he rose himself, wondering casually what had roused her so early. Usually she lay in bed as late as she could.


Whiston fastened a belt round his loins and went downstairs in shirt and trousers. He heard her singing in her snatchy fashion. The stairs creaked under his weight. He passed down the narrow little passage, which she called a hall, of the seven and sixpenny house which was his first home.


He was a shapely young fellow of about twenty-eight, sleepy now and easy with well-being. He heard the water drumming into the kettle, and she began to whistle. He loved the quick way she dodged the supper cups under the tap to wash them for breakfast. She looked an untidy minx, but she was quick and handy enough.


“Teddilinks,” she cried.


“What?”


“Light a fire, quick.”


She wore an old, sack-like dressing-jacket of black silk pinned across her breast. But one of the sleeves, coming unfastened, showed some delightful pink upper-arm.


“Why don’t you sew your sleeve up?” he said, suffering from the sight of the exposed soft flesh.


“Where?” she cried, peering round. “Nuisance,” she said, seeing the gap, then with light fingers went on drying the cups.


The kitchen was of fair size, but gloomy. Whiston poked out the dead ashes.


Suddenly a thud was heard at the door down the passage.


“I’ll go,” cried Mrs Whiston, and she was gone down the hall.


The postman was a ruddy-faced man who had been a soldier. He smiled broadly, handing her some packages.


“They’ve not forgot you,” he said impudently.


“No—lucky for them,” she said, with a toss of the head. But she was interested only in her envelopes this morning. The postman waited inquisitively, smiling in an ingratiating fashion. She slowly, abstractedly, as if she did not know anyone was there, closed the door in his face, continuing to look at the addresses on her letters.


She tore open the thin envelope. There was a long, hideous, cartoon valentine. She smiled briefly and dropped it on the floor. Struggling with the string of a packet, she opened a white cardboard box, and there lay a white silk handkerchief packed neatly under the paper lace of the box, and her initial, worked in heliotrope, fully displayed. She smiled pleasantly, and gently put the box aside. The third envelope contained another white packet— apparently a cotton handkerchief neatly folded. She shook it out. It was a long white stocking, but there was a little weight in the toe. Quickly, she thrust down her arm, wriggling her fingers into the toe of the stocking, and brought out a small box. She peeped inside the box, then hastily opened a door on her left hand, and went into the little, cold sitting-room. She had her lower lip caught earnestly between her teeth.


With a little flash of triumph, she lifted a pair of pearl ear-rings from the small box, and she went to the mirror. There, earnestly, she began to hook them through her ears, looking at herself sideways in the glass. Curiously concentrated and intent she seemed as she fingered the lobes of her ears, her head bent on one side.


Then the pearl ear-rings dangled under her rosy, small ears. She shook her head sharply, to see the swing of the drops. They went chill against her neck, in little, sharp touches. Then she stood still to look at herself, bridling her head in the dignified fashion. Then she simpered at herself. Catching her own eye, she could not help winking at herself and laughing.


She turned to look at the box. There was a scrap of paper with this posy:


“Pearls may be fair, but thou art fairer.
Wear these for me, and I’ll love the wearer.”


She made a grimace and a grin. But she was drawn to the mirror again, to look at her ear-rings.


Whiston had made the fire burn, so he came to look for her. When she heard him, she started round quickly, guiltily. She was watching him with intent blue eyes when he appeared.


He did not see much, in his morning-drowsy warmth. He gave her, as ever, a feeling of warmth and slowness. His eyes were very blue, very kind, his manner simple.


“What ha’ you got?” he asked.


“Valentines,” she said briskly, ostentatiously turning to show him the silk handkerchief. She thrust it under his nose. “Smell how good,” she said.


“Who’s that from?” he replied, without smelling.


“It’s a valentine,” she cried. “How da I know who it’s from?”


“I’ll bet you know,” he said.


“Ted!—I don’t!” she cried, beginning to shake her head, then stopping because of the ear-rings.


He stood still a moment, displeased.


“They’ve no right to send you valentines, now,” he said.


“Ted!—Why not? You’re not jealous, are you? I haven’t the least idea who it’s from. Look—there’s my initial”—she pointed with an emphatic finger at the heliotrope embroidery—


“E for Elsie,
Nice little gelsie,”
she sang.


“Get out,” he said. “You know who it’s from.”


“Truth, I don’t,” she cried.


He looked round, and saw the white stocking lying on a chair.


“Is this another?” he said.


“No, that’s a sample,” she said. “There’s only a comic.” And she fetched in the long cartoon.


He stretched it out and looked at it solemnly.


“Fools!” he said, and went out of the room.


She flew upstairs and took off the ear-rings. When she returned, he was crouched before the fire blowing the coals. The skin of his face was flushed, and slightly pitted, as if he had had small-pox. But his neck was white and smooth and goodly. She hung her arms round his neck as he crouched there, and clung to him. He balanced on his toes.


“This fire’s a slow-coach,” he said.


“And who else is a slow-coach?” she said.


“One of us two, I know,” he said, and he rose carefully. She remained clinging round his neck, so that she was lifted off her feet.


“Ha!—swing me,” she cried.


He lowered his head, and she hung in the air, swinging from his neck, laughing. Then she slipped off.


“The kettle is singing,” she sang, flying for the teapot. He bent down again to blow the fire. The veins in his neck stood out, his shirt collar seemed too tight.


“Doctor Wyer,
Blow the fire,
Puff! puff! puff!”
she sang, laughing.


He smiled at her.


She was so glad because of her pearl ear-rings.


Over the breakfast she grew serious. He did not notice. She became portentous in her gravity. Almost it penetrated through his steady good-humour to irritate him.


“Teddy!” she said at last.


“What?” he asked.


“I told you a lie,” she said, humbly tragic.


His soul stirred uneasily.


“Oh aye?” he said casually.


She was not satisfied. He ought to be more moved.


“Yes,” she said.


He cut a piece of bread.


“Was it a good one?” he asked.


She was piqued. Then she considered—WAS it a good one? Then she laughed.


“No,” she said, “it wasn’t up to much.”


“Ah!” he said easily, but with a steady strength of fondness for her in his tone. “Get it out then.”


It became a little more difficult.


“You know that white stocking,” she said earnestly. “I told you a lie. It wasn’t a sample. It was a valentine.”


A little frown came on his brow.


“Then what did you invent it as a sample for?” he said. But he knew this weakness of hers. The touch of anger in his voice frightened her.


“I was afraid you’d be cross,” she said pathetically.


“I’ll bet you were vastly afraid,” he said.


“I WAS, Teddy.”


There was a pause. He was resolving one or two things in his mind.


“And who sent it?” he asked.


“I can guess,” she said, “though there wasn’t a word with it— except—”


She ran to the sitting-room and returned with a slip of paper.


“Pearls may be fair, but thou art fairer.
Wear these for me, and I’ll love the wearer.”


He read it twice, then a dull red flush came on his face.


“And WHO do you guess it is?” he asked, with a ringing of anger in his voice.


“I suspect it’s Sam Adams,” she said, with a little virtuous indignation.


Whiston was silent for a moment.


“Fool!” he said. “An’ what’s it got to do with pearls?—and how can he say ‘wear these for me’ when there’s only one? He hasn’t got the brain to invent a proper verse.”


He screwed the sup of paper into a ball and flung it into the fire.


“I suppose he thinks it’ll make a pair with the one last year,” she said.


“Why, did he send one then?”


“Yes. I thought you’d be wild if you knew.”


His jaw set rather sullenly.


Presently he rose, and went to wash himself, rolling back his sleeves and pulling open his shirt at the breast. It was as if his fine, clear-cut temples and steady eyes were degraded by the lower, rather brutal part of his face. But she loved it. As she whisked about, clearing the table, she loved the way in which he stood washing himself. He was such a man. She liked to see his neck glistening with water as he swilled it. It amused her and pleased her and thrilled her. He was so sure, so permanent, he had her so utterly in his power. It gave her a delightful, mischievous sense of liberty. Within his grasp, she could dart about excitingly.


He turned round to her, his face red from the cold water, his eyes fresh and very blue.


“You haven’t been seeing anything of him, have you?” he asked roughly.


“Yes,” she answered, after a moment, as if caught guilty. “He got into the tram with me, and he asked me to drink a coffee and a Benedictine in the Royal.”


“You’ve got it off fine and glib,” he said sullenly. “And did you?”


“Yes,” she replied, with the air of a traitor before the rack.


The blood came up into his neck and face, he stood motionless, dangerous.


“It was cold, and it was such fun to go into the Royal,” she said.


“You’d go off with a nigger for a packet of chocolate,” he said, in anger and contempt, and some bitterness. Queer how he drew away from her, cut her off from him.


“Ted—how beastly!” she cried. “You know quite well—” She caught her lip, flushed, and the tears came to her eyes.


He turned away, to put on his necktie. She went about her work, making a queer pathetic little mouth, down which occasionally dripped a tear.


He was ready to go. With his hat jammed down on his head, and his overcoat buttoned up to his chin, he came to kiss her. He would be miserable all the day if he went without. She allowed herself to be kissed. Her cheek was wet under his lips, and his heart burned. She hurt him so deeply. And she felt aggrieved, and did not quite forgive him.


In a moment she went upstairs to her ear-rings. Sweet they looked nestling in the little drawer—sweet! She examined them with voluptuous pleasure, she threaded them in her ears, she looked at herself, she posed and postured and smiled, and looked sad and tragic and winning and appealing, all in turn before the mirror. And she was happy, and very pretty.


She wore her ear-rings all morning, in the house. She was self-conscious, and quite brilliantly winsome, when the baker came, wondering if he would notice. All the tradesmen left her door with a glow in them, feeling elated, and unconsciously favouring the delightful little creature, though there had been nothing to notice in her behaviour.


She was stimulated all the day. She did not think about her husband. He was the permanent basis from which she took these giddy little flights into nowhere. At night, like chickens and curses, she would come home to him, to roost.


Meanwhile Whiston, a traveller and confidential support of a small firm, hastened about his work, his heart all the while anxious for her, yearning for surety, and kept tense by not getting it.


II


She had been a warehouse girl in Adams’s lace factory before she was married. Sam Adams was her employer. He was a bachelor of forty, growing stout, a man well dressed and florid, with a large brown moustache and thin hair. From the rest of his well-groomed, showy appearance, it was evident his baldness was a chagrin to him. He had a good presence, and some Irish blood in his veins.


His fondness for the girls, or the fondness of the girls for him, was notorious. And Elsie, quick, pretty, almost witty little thing—she SEEMED witty, although, when her sayings were repeated, they were entirely trivial—she had a great attraction for him. He would come into the warehouse dressed in a rather sporting reefer coat, of fawn colour, and trousers of fine black-and-white check, a cap with a big peak and a scarlet carnation in his button-hole, to impress her. She was only half impressed. He was too loud for her good taste. Instinctively perceiving this, he sobered down to navy blue. Then a well-built man, florid, with large brown whiskers, smart navy blue suit, fashionable boots, and manly hat, he was the irreproachable. Elsie was impressed.


But meanwhile Whiston was courting her, and she made splendid little gestures, before her bedroom mirror, of the constant-and-true sort.


“True, true till death—”


That was her song. Whiston was made that way, so there was no need to take thought for him.


Every Christmas Sam Adams gave a party at his house, to which he invited his superior work-people—not factory hands and labourers, but those above. He was a generous man in his way, with a real warm feeling for giving pleasure.


Two years ago Elsie had attended this Christmas-party for the last time. Whiston had accompanied her. At that time he worked for Sam Adams.


She had been very proud of herself, in her close-fitting, full-skirted dress of blue silk. Whiston called for her. Then she tripped beside him, holding her large cashmere shawl across her breast. He strode with long strides, his trousers handsomely strapped under his boots, and her silk shoes bulging the pockets of his full-skirted overcoat.


They passed through the park gates, and her spirits rose. Above them the Castle Rock looked grandly in the night, the naked trees stood still and dark in the frost, along the boulevard.


They were rather late. Agitated with anticipation, in the cloak-room she gave up her shawl, donned her silk shoes, and looked at herself in the mirror. The loose bunches of curls on either side her face danced prettily, her mouth smiled.


She hung a moment in the door of the brilliantly lighted room. Many people were moving within the blaze of lamps, under the crystal chandeliers, the full skirts of the women balancing and floating, the side-whiskers and white cravats of the men bowing above. Then she entered the light.


In an instant Sam Adams was coming forward, lifting both his arms in boisterous welcome. There was a constant red laugh on his face.


“Come late, would you,” he shouted, “like royalty.”


He seized her hands and led her forward. He opened his mouth wide when he spoke, and the effect of the warm, dark opening behind the brown whiskers was disturbing. But she was floating into the throng on his arm. He was very gallant.


“Now then,” he said, taking her card to write down the dances, “I’ve got carte blanche, haven’t I?”


“Mr Whiston doesn’t dance,” she said.


“I am a lucky man!” he said, scribbling his initials. “I was born with an amourette in my mouth.”


He wrote on, quietly. She blushed and laughed, not knowing what it meant.


“Why, what is that?” she said.


“It’s you, even littler than you are, dressed in little wings,” he said.


“I should have to be pretty small to get in your mouth,” she said.


“You think you’re too big, do you!” he said easily.


He handed her her card, with a bow.


“Now I’m set up, my darling, for this evening,” he said.


Then, quick, always at his ease, he looked over the room. She waited in front of him. He was ready. Catching the eye of the band, he nodded. In a moment, the music began. He seemed to relax, giving himself up.


“Now then, Elsie,” he said, with a curious caress in his voice that seemed to lap the outside of her body in a warm glow, delicious. She gave herself to it. She liked it.


He was an excellent dancer. He seemed to draw her close in to him by some male warmth of attraction, so that she became all soft and pliant to him, flowing to his form, whilst he united her with him and they lapsed along in one movement. She was just carried in a kind of strong, warm flood, her feet moved of themselves, and only the music threw her away from him, threw her back to him, to his clasp, in his strong form moving against her, rhythmically, deliriously.


When it was over, he was pleased and his eyes had a curious gleam which thrilled her and yet had nothing to do with her. Yet it held her. He did not speak to her. He only looked straight into her eyes with a curious, gleaming look that disturbed her fearfully and deliriously. But also there was in his look some of the automatic irony of the roué. It left her partly cold. She was not carried away.


She went, driven by an opposite, heavier impulse, to Whiston. He stood looking gloomy, trying to admit that she had a perfect right to enjoy herself apart from him. He received her with rather grudging kindliness.


“Aren’t you going to play whist?” she asked.


“Aye,” he said. “Directly.”


“I do wish you could dance.”


“Well, I can’t,” he said. “So you enjoy yourself.”


“But I should enjoy it better if I could dance with you.”


“Nay, you’re all right,” he said. “I’m not made that way.”


“Then you ought to be!” she cried.


“Well, it’s my fault, not yours. You enjoy yourself,” he bade her. Which she proceeded to do, a little bit irked.


She went with anticipation to the arms of Sam Adams, when the time came to dance with him. It WAS so gratifying, irrespective of the man. And she felt a little grudge against Whiston, soon forgotten when her host was holding her near to him, in a delicious embrace. And she watched his eyes, to meet the gleam in them, which gratified her.


She was getting warmed right through, the glow was penetrating into her, driving away everything else. Only in her heart was a little tightness, like conscience.


When she got a chance, she escaped from the dancing-room to the card-room. There, in a cloud of smoke, she found Whiston playing cribbage. Radiant, roused, animated, she came up to him and greeted him. She was too strong, too vibrant a note in the quiet room. He lifted his head, and a frown knitted his gloomy forehead.


“Are you playing cribbage? Is it exciting? How are you getting on?” she chattered.


He looked at her. None of these questions needed answering, and he did not feel in touch with her. She turned to the cribbage-board.


“Are you white or red?” she asked.


“He’s red,” replied the partner.


“Then you’re losing,” she said, still to Whiston. And she lifted the red peg from the board. “One—two—three—four—five—six— seven—eight—Right up there you ought to jump—”


“Now put it back in its right place,” said Whiston.


“Where was it?” she asked gaily, knowing her transgression. He took the little red peg away from her and stuck it in its hole.


The cards were shuffled.


“What a shame you’re losing!” said Elsie.


“You’d better cut for him,” said the partner.


She did so, hastily. The cards were dealt. She put her hand on his shoulder, looking at his cards.


“It’s good,” she cried, “isn’t it?”


He did not answer, but threw down two cards. It moved him more strongly than was comfortable, to have her hand on his shoulder, her curls dangling and touching his ears, whilst she was roused to another man. It made the blood flame over him.


At that moment Sam Adams appeared, florid and boisterous, intoxicated more with himself, with the dancing, than with wine. In his eyes the curious, impersonal light gleamed.


“I thought I should find you here, Elsie,” he cried boisterously, a disturbing, high note in his voice.


“What made you think so?” she replied, the mischief rousing in her.


The florid, well-built man narrowed his eyes to a smile.


“I should never look for you among the ladies,” he said, with a kind of intimate, animal call to her. He laughed, bowed, and offered her his arm.


“Madam, the music waits.”


She went almost helplessly, carried along with him, unwilling, yet delighted.


That dance was an intoxication to her. After the first few steps, she felt herself slipping away from herself. She almost knew she was going, she did not even want to go. Yet she must have chosen to go. She lay in the arm of the steady, close man with whom she was dancing, and she seemed to swim away out of contact with the room, into him. She had passed into another, denser element of him, an essential privacy. The room was all vague around her, like an atmosphere, like under sea, with a flow of ghostly, dumb movements. But she herself was held real against her partner, and it seemed she was connected with him, as if the movements of his body and limbs were her own movements, yet not her own movements— and oh, delicious! He also was given up, oblivious, concentrated, into the dance. His eye was unseeing. Only his large, voluptuous body gave off a subtle activity. His fingers seemed to search into her flesh. Every moment, and every moment, she felt she would give way utterly, and sink molten: the fusion point was coming when she would fuse down into perfect unconsciousness at his feet and knees. But he bore her round the room in the dance, and he seemed to sustain all her body with his limbs, his body, and his warmth seemed to come closer into her, nearer, till it would fuse right through her, and she would be as liquid to him, as an intoxication only.


It was exquisite. When it was over, she was dazed, and was scarcely breathing. She stood with him in the middle of the room as if she were alone in a remote place. He bent over her. She expected his lips on her bare shoulder, and waited. Yet they were not alone, they were not alone. It was cruel.


“’Twas good, wasn’t it, my darling?” he said to her, low and delighted. There was a strange impersonality about his low, exultant call that appealed to her irresistibly. Yet why was she aware of some part shut off in her? She pressed his arm, and he led her towards the door.


She was not aware of what she was doing, only a little grain of resistant trouble was in her. The man, possessed, yet with a superficial presence of mind, made way to the dining-room, as if to give her refreshment, cunningly working to his own escape with her. He was molten hot, filmed over with presence of mind, and bottomed with cold disbelief.


In the dining-room was Whiston, carrying coffee to the plain, neglected ladies. Elsie saw him, but felt as if he could not see her. She was beyond his reach and ken. A sort of fusion existed between her and the large man at her side. She ate her custard, but an incomplete fusion all the while sustained and contained her within the being of her employer.


But she was growing cooler. Whiston came up. She looked at him, and saw him with different eyes. She saw his slim, young man’s figure real and enduring before her. That was he. But she was in the spell with the other man, fused with him, and she could not be taken away.


“Have you finished your cribbage?” she asked, with hasty evasion of him.


“Yes,” he replied. “Aren’t you getting tired of dancing?”


“Not a bit,” she said.


“Not she,” said Adams heartily. “No girl with any spirit gets tired of dancing.—Have something else, Elsie. Come—sherry. Have a glass of sherry with us, Whiston.”


Whilst they sipped the wine, Adams watched Whiston almost cunningly, to find his advantage.


“We’d better be getting back—there’s the music,” he said. “See the women get something to eat, Whiston, will you, there’s a good chap.”


And he began to draw away. Elsie was drifting helplessly with him. But Whiston put himself beside them, and went along with them. In silence they passed through to the dancing-room. There Adams hesitated, and looked round the room. It was as if he could not see.


A man came hurrying forward, claiming Elsie, and Adams went to his other partner. Whiston stood watching during the dance. She was conscious of him standing there observant of her, like a ghost, or a judgment, or a guardian angel. She was also conscious, much more intimately and impersonally, of the body of the other man moving somewhere in the room. She still belonged to him, but a feeling of distraction possessed her, and helplessness. Adams danced on, adhering to Elsie, waiting his time, with the persistence of cynicism.


The dance was over. Adams was detained. Elsie found herself beside Whiston. There was something shapely about him as he sat, about his knees and his distinct figure, that she clung to. It was as if he had enduring form. She put her hand on his knee.


“Are you enjoying yourself?” he asked.


“EVER so,” she replied, with a fervent, yet detached tone.


“It’s going on for one o’clock,” he said.


“Is it?” she answered. It meant nothing to her.


“Should we be going?” he said.


She was silent. For the first time for an hour or more an inkling of her normal consciousness returned. She resented it.


“What for?” she said.


“I thought you might have had enough,” he said.


A slight soberness came over her, an irritation at being frustrated of her illusion.


“Why?” she said.


“We’ve been here since nine,” he said.


That was no answer, no reason. It conveyed nothing to her. She sat detached from him. Across the room Sam Adams glanced at her. She sat there exposed for him.


“You don’t want to be too free with Sam Adams,” said Whiston cautiously, suffering. “You know what he is.”


“How, free?” she asked.


“Why—you don’t want to have too much to do with him.”


She sat silent. He was forcing her into consciousness of her position. But he could not get hold of her feelings, to change them. She had a curious, perverse desire that he should not.


“I like him,” she said.


“What do you find to like in him?” he said, with a hot heart.


“I don’t know—but I like him,” she said.


She was immutable. He sat feeling heavy and dulled with rage. He was not clear as to what he felt. He sat there unliving whilst she danced. And she, distracted, lost to herself between the opposing forces of the two men, drifted. Between the dances, Whiston kept near to her. She was scarcely conscious. She glanced repeatedly at her card, to see when she would dance again with Adams, half in desire, half in dread. Sometimes she met his steady, glaucous eye as she passed him in the dance. Sometimes she saw the steadiness of his flank as he danced. And it was always as if she rested on his arm, were borne along, upborne by him, away from herself. And always there was present the other’s antagonism. She was divided.


The time came for her to dance with Adams. Oh, the delicious closing of contact with him, of his limbs touching her limbs, his arm supporting her. She seemed to resolve. Whiston had not made himself real to her. He was only a heavy place in her consciousness.


But she breathed heavily, beginning to suffer from the closeness of strain. She was nervous. Adams also was constrained. A tightness, a tension was coming over them all. And he was exasperated, feeling something counteracting physical magnetism, feeling a will stronger with her than his own, intervening in what was becoming a vital necessity to him.


Elsie was almost lost to her own control. As she went forward with him to take her place at the dance, she stooped for her pocket-handkerchief. The music sounded for quadrilles. Everybody was ready. Adams stood with his body near her, exerting his attraction over her. He was tense and fighting. She stooped for her pocket-handkerchief, and shook it as she rose. It shook out and fell from her hand. With agony, she saw she had taken a white stocking instead of a handkerchief. For a second it lay on the floor, a twist of white stocking. Then, in an instant, Adams picked it up, with a little, surprised laugh of triumph.


“That’ll do for me,” he whispered—seeming to take possession of her. And he stuffed the stocking in his trousers pocket, and quickly offered her his handkerchief.


The dance began. She felt weak and faint, as if her will were turned to water. A heavy sense of loss came over her. She could not help herself anymore. But it was peace.


When the dance was over, Adams yielded her up. Whiston came to her.


“What was it as you dropped?” Whiston asked.


“I thought it was my handkerchief—I’d taken a stocking by mistake,” she said, detached and muted.


“And he’s got it?”


“Yes.”


“What does he mean by that?”


She lifted her shoulders.


“Are you going to let him keep it?” he asked.


“I don’t let him.”


There was a long pause.


“Am I to go and have it out with him?” he asked, his face flushed, his blue eyes going hard with opposition.


“No,” she said, pale.


“Why?”


“No—I don’t want to say anything about it.”


He sat exasperated and nonplussed.


“You’ll let him keep it, then?” he asked.


She sat silent and made no form of answer.


“What do you mean by it?” he said, dark with fury. And he started up.


“No!” she cried. “Ted!” And she caught hold of him, sharply detaining him.


It made him black with rage.


“Why?” he said.


Then something about her mouth was pitiful to him. He did not understand, but he felt she must have her reasons.


“Then I’m not stopping here,” he said. “Are you coming with me?”


She rose mutely, and they went out of the room. Adams had not noticed.


In a few moments they were in the street.


“What the hell do you mean?” he said, in a black fury.


She went at his side, in silence, neutral.


“That great hog, an’ all,” he added.


Then they went a long time in silence through the frozen, deserted darkness of the town. She felt she could not go indoors. They were drawing near her house.


“I don’t want to go home,” she suddenly cried in distress and anguish. “I don’t want to go home.”


He looked at her.


“Why don’t you?” he said.


“I don’t want to go home,” was all she could sob.


He heard somebody coming.


“Well, we can walk a bit further,” he said.


She was silent again. They passed out of the town into the fields. He held her by the arm—they could not speak.


“What’s a-matter?” he asked at length, puzzled.


She began to cry again.


At last he took her in his arms, to soothe her. She sobbed by herself, almost unaware of him.


“Tell me what’s a-matter, Elsie,” he said. “Tell me what’s a-matter—my dear—tell me, then—”


He kissed her wet face, and caressed her. She made no response. He was puzzled and tender and miserable.


At length she became quiet. Then he kissed her, and she put her arms round him, and clung to him very tight, as if for fear and anguish. He held her in his arms, wondering.


“Ted!” she whispered, frantic. “Ted!”


“What, my love?” he answered, becoming also afraid.


“Be good to me,” she cried. “Don’t be cruel to me.”


“No, my pet,” he said, amazed and grieved. “Why?”


“Oh, be good to me,” she sobbed.


And he held her very safe, and his heart was white-hot with love for her. His mind was amazed. He could only hold her against his chest that was white-hot with love and belief in her. So she was restored at last.


III


She refused to go to her work at Adams’s any more. Her father had to submit and she sent in her notice—she was not well. Sam Adams was ironical. But he had a curious patience. He did not fight.


In a few weeks, she and Whiston were married. She loved him with passion and worship, a fierce little abandon of love that moved him to the depths of his being, and gave him a permanent surety and sense of realness in himself. He did not trouble about himself any more: he felt he was fulfilled and now he had only the many things in the world to busy himself about. Whatever troubled him, at the bottom was surety. He had found himself in this love.


They spoke once or twice of the white stocking.


“Ah!” Whiston exclaimed. “What does it matter?”


He was impatient and angry, and could not bear to consider the matter. So it was left unresolved.


She was quite happy at first, carried away by her adoration of her husband. Then gradually she got used to him. He always was the ground of her happiness, but she got used to him, as to the air she breathed. He never got used to her in the same way.


Inside of marriage she found her liberty. She was rid of the responsibility of herself. Her husband must look after that. She was free to get what she could out of her time.


So that, when, after some months, she met Sam Adams, she was not quite as unkind to him as she might have been. With a young wife’s new and exciting knowledge of men, she perceived he was in love with her, she knew he had always kept an unsatisfied desire for her. And, sportive, she could not help playing a little with this, though she cared not one jot for the man himself.


When Valentine’s day came, which was near the first anniversary of her wedding day, there arrived a white stocking with a little amethyst brooch. Luckily Whiston did not see it, so she said nothing of it to him. She had not the faintest intention of having anything to do with Sam Adams, but once a little brooch was in her possession, it was hers, and she did not trouble her head for a moment how she had come by it. She kept it.


Now she had the pearl ear-rings. They were a more valuable and a more conspicuous present. She would have to ask her mother to give them to her, to explain their presence. She made a little plan in her head. And she was extraordinarily pleased. As for Sam Adams, even if he saw her wearing them, he would not give her away. What fun, if he saw her wearing his ear-rings! She would pretend she had inherited them from her grandmother, her mother’s mother. She laughed to herself as she went down town in the afternoon, the pretty drops dangling in front of her curls. But she saw no one of importance.


Whiston came home tired and depressed. All day the male in him had been uneasy, and this had fatigued him. She was curiously against him, inclined, as she sometimes was nowadays, to make mock of him and jeer at him and cut him off. He did not understand this, and it angered him deeply. She was uneasy before him.


She knew he was in a state of suppressed irritation. The veins stood out on the backs of his hands, his brow was drawn stiffly. Yet she could not help goading him.


“What did you do wi’ that white stocking?” he asked, out of a gloomy silence, his voice strong and brutal.


“I put it in a drawer—why?” she replied flippantly.


“Why didn’t you put it on the fire back?” he said harshly. “What are you hoarding it up for?”


“I’m not hoarding it up,” she said. “I’ve got a pair.”


He relapsed into gloomy silence. She, unable to move him, ran away upstairs, leaving him smoking by the fire. Again she tried on the earrings. Then another little inspiration came to her. She drew on the white stockings, both of them.


Presently she came down in them. Her husband still sat immovable and glowering by the fire.


“Look!” she said. “They’ll do beautifully.”


And she picked up her skirts to her knees, and twisted round, looking at her pretty legs in the neat stockings.


He filled with unreasonable rage, and took the pipe from his mouth.


“Don’t they look nice?” she said. “One from last year and one from this, they just do. Save you buying a pair.”


And she looked over her shoulders at her pretty calves, and the dangling frills of her knickers.


“Put your skirts down and don’t make a fool of yourself,” he said.


“Why a fool of myself?” she asked.


And she began to dance slowly round the room, kicking up her feet half reckless, half jeering, in a ballet-dancer’s fashion. Almost fearfully, yet in defiance, she kicked up her legs at him, singing as she did so. She resented him.


“You little fool, ha’ done with it,” he said. “And you’ll backfire them stockings, I’m telling you.” He was angry. His face flushed dark, he kept his head bent. She ceased to dance.


“I shan’t,” she said. “They’ll come in very useful.”


He lifted his head and watched her, with lighted, dangerous eyes.


“You’ll put ’em on the fire back, I tell you,” he said.


It was a war now. She bent forward, in a ballet-dancer’s fashion, and put her tongue between her teeth.


“I shan’t backfire them stockings,” she sang, repeating his words, “I shan’t, I shan’t, I shan’t.”


And she danced round the room doing a high kick to the tune of her words. There was a real biting indifference in her behaviour.


“We’ll see whether you will or not,” he said, “trollops! You’d like Sam Adams to know you was wearing ’em, wouldn’t you? That’s what would please you.”


“Yes, I’d like him to see how nicely they fit me, he might give me some more then.”


And she looked down at her pretty legs.


He knew somehow that she WOULD like Sam Adams to see how pretty her legs looked in the white stockings. It made his anger go deep, almost to hatred.


“Yer nasty trolley,” he cried. “Put yer petticoats down, and stop being so foul-minded.”


“I’m not foul-minded,” she said. “My legs are my own. And why shouldn’t Sam Adams think they’re nice?”


There was a pause. He watched her with eyes glittering to a point.


“Have you been havin’ owt to do with him?” he asked.


“I’ve just spoken to him when I’ve seen him,” she said. “He’s not as bad as you would make out.”


“Isn’t he?” he cried, a certain wakefulness in his voice. “Them who has anything to do wi’ him is too bad for me, I tell you.”


“Why, what are you frightened of him for?” she mocked.


She was rousing all his uncontrollable anger. He sat glowering. Every one of her sentences stirred him up like a red-hot iron. Soon it would be too much. And she was afraid herself; but she was neither conquered nor convinced.


A curious little grin of hate came on his face. He had a long score against her.


“What am I frightened of him for?” he repeated automatically. “What am I frightened of him for? Why, for you, you stray-running little bitch.”


She flushed. The insult went deep into her, right home.


“Well, if you’re so dull—” she said, lowering her eyelids, and speaking coldly, haughtily.


“If I’m so dull I’ll break your neck the first word you speak to him,” he said, tense.


“Pf!” she sneered. “Do you think I’m frightened of you?” She spoke coldly, detached.


She was frightened, for all that, white round the mouth.


His heart was getting hotter.


“You WILL be frightened of me, the next time you have anything to do with him,” he said.


“Do you think YOU’D ever be told—ha!”


Her jeering scorn made him go white-hot, molten. He knew he was incoherent, scarcely responsible for what he might do. Slowly, unseeing, he rose and went out of doors, stifled, moved to kill her.


He stood leaning against the garden fence, unable either to see or hear. Below him, far off, fumed the lights of the town. He stood still, unconscious with a black storm of rage, his face lifted to the night.


Presently, still unconscious of what he was doing, he went indoors again. She stood, a small stubborn figure with tight-pressed lips and big, sullen, childish eyes, watching him, white with fear. He went heavily across the floor and dropped into his chair.


There was a silence.


“YOU’RE not going to tell me everything I shall do, and everything I shan’t,” she broke out at last.


He lifted his head.


“I tell you THIS,” he said, low and intense. “Have anything to do with Sam Adams, and I’ll break your neck.”


She laughed, shrill and false.


“How I hate your word ‘break your neck’,” she said, with a grimace of the mouth. “It sounds so common and beastly. Can’t you say something else—”


There was a dead silence.


“And besides,” she said, with a queer chirrup of mocking laughter, “what do you know about anything? He sent me an amethyst brooch and a pair of pearl ear-rings.”


“He what?” said Whiston, in a suddenly normal voice. His eyes were fixed on her.


“Sent me a pair of pearl ear-rings, and an amethyst brooch,” she repeated, mechanically, pale to the lips.


And her big, black, childish eyes watched him, fascinated, held in her spell.


He seemed to thrust his face and his eyes forward at her, as he rose slowly and came to her. She watched transfixed in terror. Her throat made a small sound, as she tried to scream.


Then, quick as lightning, the back of his hand struck her with a crash across the mouth, and she was flung back blinded against the wall. The shock shook a queer sound out of her. And then she saw him still coming on, his eyes holding her, his fist drawn back, advancing slowly. At any instant the blow might crash into her.


Mad with terror, she raised her hands with a queer clawing movement to cover her eyes and her temples, opening her mouth in a dumb shriek. There was no sound. But the sight of her slowly arrested him. He hung before her, looking at her fixedly, as she stood crouched against the wall with open, bleeding mouth, and wide-staring eyes, and two hands clawing over her temples. And his lust to see her bleed, to break her and destroy her, rose from an old source against her. It carried him. He wanted satisfaction.


But he had seen her standing there, a piteous, horrified thing, and he turned his face aside in shame and nausea. He went and sat heavily in his chair, and a curious ease, almost like sleep, came over his brain.


She walked away from the wall towards the fire, dizzy, white to the lips, mechanically wiping her small, bleeding mouth. He sat motionless. Then, gradually, her breath began to hiss, she shook, and was sobbing silently, in grief for herself. Without looking, he saw. It made his mad desire to destroy her come back.


At length he lifted his head. His eyes were glowing again, fixed on her.


“And what did he give them you for?” he asked, in a steady, unyielding voice.


Her crying dried up in a second. She also was tense.


“They came as valentines,” she replied, still not subjugated, even if beaten.


“When, today?”


“The pearl ear-rings today—the amethyst brooch last year.”


“You’ve had it a year?”


“Yes.”


She felt that now nothing would prevent him if he rose to kill her. She could not prevent him any more. She was yielded up to him. They both trembled in the balance, unconscious.


“What have you had to do with him?” he asked, in a barren voice.


“I’ve not had anything to do with him,” she quavered.


“You just kept ’em because they were jewellery?” he said.


A weariness came over him. What was the worth of speaking any more of it? He did not care any more. He was dreary and sick.


She began to cry again, but he took no notice. She kept wiping her mouth on her handkerchief. He could see it, the blood-mark. It made him only more sick and tired of the responsibility of it, the violence, the shame.


When she began to move about again, he raised his head once more from his dead, motionless position.


“Where are the things?” he said.


“They are upstairs,” she quavered. She knew the passion had gone down in him.


“Bring them down,” he said.


“I won’t,” she wept, with rage. “You’re not going to bully me and hit me like that on the mouth.”


And she sobbed again. He looked at her in contempt and compassion and in rising anger.


“Where are they?” he said.


“They’re in the little drawer under the looking-glass,” she sobbed.


He went slowly upstairs, struck a match, and found the trinkets. He brought them downstairs in his hand.


“These?” he said, looking at them as they lay in his palm.


She looked at them without answering. She was not interested in them any more.


He looked at the little jewels. They were pretty.


“It’s none of their fault,” he said to himself.


And he searched round slowly, persistently, for a box. He tied the things up and addressed them to Sam Adams. Then he went out in his slippers to post the little package.


When he came back she was still sitting crying.


“You’d better go to bed,” he said.


She paid no attention. He sat by the fire. She still cried.


“I’m sleeping down here,” he said. “Go you to bed.”


In a few moments she lifted her tear-stained, swollen face and looked at him with eyes all forlorn and pathetic. A great flash of anguish went over his body. He went over, slowly, and very gently took her in his hands. She let herself be taken. Then as she lay against his shoulder, she sobbed aloud:


“I never meant—”


“My love—my little love—” he cried, in anguish of spirit, holding her in his arms.


 




     

 


 

Spirits of the Dead (by Edgar Allan Poe)

01 Sunday Nov 2009

Posted by Crisis Chronicles Press in 1800s, American, Poe (Edgar Allan), Short Stories

≈ Leave a comment

Poe
Spirits of the Dead
by Edgar Allan Poe
[From Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems, 1829]

Thy soul shall find itself alone
‘Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone;
Not one, of all the crowd, to pry
Into thine hour of secrecy.

Be silent in that solitude,
Which is not loneliness—for then
The spirits of the dead, who stood
In life before thee, are again
In death around thee, and their will
Shall overshadow thee; be still.

The night, though clear, shall frown,
And the stars shall not look down
From their high thrones in the Heaven
With light like hope to mortals given,
But their red orbs, without beam,
To thy weariness shall seem
As a burning and a fever
Which would cling to thee for ever.

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish,
Now are visions ne’er to vanish;
From thy spirit shall they pass
No more, like dew-drop from the grass.

The breeze, the breath of God, is still,
And the mist upon the hill
Shadowy, shadowy, yet unbroken,
Is a symbol and a token.
How it hangs upon the trees,
A mystery of mysteries!

* * * * *

A Dream Within a Dream (by Edgar Allan Poe)

01 Sunday Nov 2009

Posted by Crisis Chronicles Press in 1800s, American, Poe (Edgar Allan), Short Stories

≈ 1 Comment

Poe
A Dream Within a Dream
by Edgar Allan Poe
[First published in 1849]

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow—
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand—
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep—while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

* * * * *

To Helen (1848, by Edgar Allan Poe)

31 Saturday Oct 2009

Posted by Crisis Chronicles Press in 1800s, American, Poe (Edgar Allan), Short Stories

≈ 1 Comment

Poe
To Helen
by Edgar Allan Poe

I saw thee once–once only–years ago:
I must not say how many–but not many.
It was a July midnight; and from out
A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,
Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,
With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber,
Upon the upturned faces of a thousand
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe–
Fell on the upturn’d faces of these roses
That gave out, in return for the love-light,
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death–
Fell on the upturn’d faces of these roses
That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted
By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.

Clad all in white, upon a violet bank
I saw thee half reclining; while the moon
Fell on the upturn’d faces of the roses,
And on thine own, upturn’d–alas, in sorrow!

Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight–
Was it not Fate, (whose name is also Sorrow,)
That bade me pause before that garden-gate,
To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?
No footstep stirred: the hated world all slept,
Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven!- oh, God!
How my heart beats in coupling those two words!)
Save only thee and me. I paused–I looked–
And in an instant all things disappeared.
(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!)

The pearly lustre of the moon went out:
The mossy banks and the meandering paths,
The happy flowers and the repining trees,
Were seen no more: the very roses’ odours
Died in the arms of the adoring airs.
All–all expired save thee–save less than thou:
Save only the divine light in thine eyes–
Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.
I saw but them–they were the world to me!
I saw but them–saw only them for hours,
Saw only them until the moon went down.
What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten
Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres!
How dark a woe, yet how sublime a hope!
How silently serene a sea of pride!
How daring an ambition; yet how deep-
How fathomless a capacity for love!

But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight,
Into a western couch of thunder-cloud;
And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees
Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained;
They would not go–they never yet have gone;
Lighting my lonely pathway home that night,
They have not left me (as my hopes have) since;
They follow me–they lead me through the years.
They are my ministers–yet I their slave.
Their office is to illumine and enkindle-
My duty, to be saved by their bright light,
And purified in their electric fire,
And sanctified in their elysian fire.

They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope),
And are far up in Heaven–the stars I kneel to
In the sad, silent watches of my night;
While even in the meridian glare of day
I see them still–two sweetly scintillant
Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!

* * * * *

Lenore (by Edgar Allan Poe)

31 Saturday Oct 2009

Posted by Crisis Chronicles Press in 1800s, American, Poe (Edgar Allan), Short Stories

≈ 4 Comments

Poe
Lenore
by Edgar Allan Poe
[first published in 1843]

Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!
Let the bell toll!—a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river;
And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear?—weep now or nevermore!
See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!
Come! let the burial rite be read–the funeral song be sung!—
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young—
A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.

“Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride,
And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her–that she died!
How shall the ritual, then, be read?—the requiem how be sung
By you—by yours, the evil eye,—by yours, the slanderous tongue
That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?”

Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song
Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong
The sweet Lenore hath “gone before,” with Hope, that flew beside,
Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride–
For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies,
The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes–
The life still there, upon her hair—the death upon her eyes.

“Avaunt! avaunt! from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven—
From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven—
From grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King of Heaven!
Let no bell toll, then,—lest her soul, amid its hallowed mirth,
Should catch the note as it doth float up from the damnèd Earth!
And I!—to-night my heart is light!—no dirge will I upraise,
But waft the angel on her flight with a Pæan of old days!”

* * * * *

Eulalie–A Song (by Edgar Allan Poe)

31 Saturday Oct 2009

Posted by Crisis Chronicles Press in 1800s, American, Poe (Edgar Allan), Short Stories

≈ Leave a comment

Poe
Eulalie–A Song
by Edgar Allan Poe
[first published in 1843]

                   I dwelt alone
                   In a world of moan,
         And my soul was a stagnant tide,
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride–
Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride.

                   Ah, less–less bright
                   The stars of the night
         Than the eyes of the radiant girl!
                   And never a flake
                   That the vapor can make
         With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,
Can vie with the modest Eulalie’s most unregarded curl–
Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie’s most humble and careless curl.

                   Now Doubt–now Pain
                   Come never again,
         For her soul gives me sigh for sigh,
                   And all day long
                   Shines, bright and strong,
         Astarté within the sky,
While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye–
While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye.

* * * * *

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