Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories Page 7

  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 seemed 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 a friend; 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; nice grounds-cool apartments-hope you’ll stay with us sometime-try to make it agreeable. What will you have for dinner to-day?’

  ‘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, ain’t 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 help pity ’em-can’t help it, sir. Did you know Monroe Edwards?’ he added, touchingly, and paused. Then, laying his hand piteously 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 today, either? Or does he live without dining?’

  ‘Lives without dining ’ said I, and closed the eyes.

  ‘Eh!-He’s asleep, ain’t he?’

  ‘With kings and counselors,’ murmured I.

  There would seem little need for proceeding further in this history. Imagination will readily supply the meagre 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 a certain suggestive interest to me, however said, 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, hardly can I 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 Piazza

  “With fairest flowers, Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele—”

  When I removed into the country, it was to occupy an old-fashioned farm-house, which had no piazza-a deficiency the more regretted, because not only did I like piazzas, as somehow combining the coziness of in-doors with the freedom of out-doors, and it is so pleasant to inspect your thermometer there, but the country round about was such a picture, that in berry time no boy climbs hill or crosses vale without coming upon easels planted in every nook, and sunburnt painters painting there. A very paradise of painters. The circle of the stars cut by the circle of the mountains. At least, so looks it from the house; though, once upon the mountains, no circle of them can you see. Had the site been chosen five rods off, this charmed ring would not have been.

  The house is old. Seventy years since, from the heart of the Hearth Stone Hills, they quarried the Kaaba, or Holy Stone, to which, each Thanksgiving, the social pilgrims used to come. So long ago, that, in digging for the foundation, the workmen used both spade and axe, fighting the Troglodytes of those subterranean parts-sturdy roots of a sturdy wood, encamped upon what is now a long land-slide of sleeping meadow, sloping away off from my poppy-bed. Of that knit wood, but one survivor stands-an elm, lonely through steadfastness.

  Whoever built the house, he builded better than he knew ; or else Orion in the zenith flashed down his Damocles’ sword to him some starry night, and said, “Build there.” For how, otherwise, could it have entered the builder’s mind, that, upon the clearing being made, such a purple prospect would be his? -nothing less than Greylock, with all his hills about him, like Charlemagne among his peers.

  Now, for a house, so situated in such a country, to have no piazza for the convenience of those who might desire to feast upon the view, and take their time and ease about it, seemed as much of an omission as if a picture-gallery should have no bench; for what but picture-galleries are the marble halls of these same limestone hills? -galleries hung, month after month anew, with pictures ever fading into pictures ever fresh. And beauty is like piety-you cannot run and read it; tranquillity and constancy, with, now-a-days, an easy chair, are needed. For though, of old, when reverence was in vogue, and indolence was not, the devot
ees of Nature, doubtless, used to stand and adore - just as, in the cathedrals of those ages, the worshipers of a higher Power did-yet, in these times of failing faith and feeble knees, we have the piazza and the pew.

  During the first year of my residence, the more leisurely to witness the coronation of Charlemagne (weather permitting, they crown him every sunrise and sunset), I chose me, on the hill-side bank near by, a royal lounge of turf-a green velvet lounge, with long, moss-padded back; while at the head, strangely enough, there grew (but, I suppose, for heraldry) three tufts of blue violets in a field-argent of wild strawberries; and a trellis, with honey-suckle, I set for canopy. Very majestical lounge, indeed. So much so, that here, as with the reclining majesty of Denmark in his orchard, a sly ear-ache invaded me. But, if damps abound at times in Westminster Abbey, because it is so old, why not within this monastery of mountains, which is older?

  A piazza must be had.

  The house was wide-my fortune narrow; so that, to build a panoramic piazza, one round and round, it could not be-although, indeed, considering the matter by rule and square, the carpenters, in the kindest way, were anxious to gratify my furthest wishes, at I’ve forgotten how much a foot.

  Upon but one of the four sides would prudence grant me what I wanted. Now, which side?

  To the east, that long camp of the Hearth Stone Hills, fading far away towards Quito; and every fall, a small white flake of something peering suddenly, of a coolish morning, from the topmost cliff-the season’s new-dropped lamb, its earliest fleece; and then the Christmas dawn, draping those dun highlands with redbarred plaids and tartans-goodly sight from your piazza, that. Goodly sight; but, to the north is Charlemagne-can’t have the Hearth Stone Hills with Charlemagne.

  Well, the south side. Apple-trees are there. Pleasant, of a balmy morning, in the month of May, to sit and see that orchard, white-budded, as for a bridal; and, in October, one green arsenal yard; such piles of ruddy shot. Very fine, I grant; but, to the north is Charlemagne.

  The west side, look. An upland pasture, alleying away into a maple wood at top. Sweet, in opening spring, to trace upon the hill-side, otherwise gray and bare-to trace, I say, the oldest paths by their streaks of earliest green. Sweet, indeed, I can’t deny; but to the north is Charlemagne.

  So Charlemagne, he carried it. It was not long after 1848; and, somehow, about that time, all round the world, these kings, they had the casting vote, and voted for themselves.

  No sooner was ground broken, than all the neighborhood, neighbor Dives, in particular, broke, too-into a laugh. Piazza to the north! Winter piazza! Wants, of winter midnights, to watch the Aurora Borealis, I suppose; hope he’s laid in good store of Polar muffs and mittens.

  That was in the lion month of March. Not forgotten are the blue noses of the carpenters, and how they scouted at the greenness of the cit, who would build his sole piazza to the north. But March don’t last forever; patience, and August comes. And then, in the cool elysium of my northern bower, I, Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom, cast down the hill a pitying glance on poor old Dives, tormented in the purgatory of his piazza to the south.

  But, even in December, this northern piazza does not repel-nipping cold and gusty though it be, and the north wind, like any miller, bolting by the snow, in finest flour-for then, once more, with frosted beard, I pace the sleety deck, weathering Cape Horn.

  In summer, too, Canute-like; sitting here, one is often reminded of the sea. For not only do long ground-swells roll the slanting grain, and little wavelets of the grass ripple over upon the low piazza, as their beach, and the blown down of dandelions is wafted like the spray, and the purple of the mountains is just the purple of the billows, and a still August noon broods upon the deep meadows, as a calm upon the Line; but the vastness and the lonesomeness are so oceanic, and the silence and the sameness, too, that the first peep of a strange house, rising beyond the trees, is for all the world like spying, on the Barbary coast, an unknown sail.

  And this recalls my inland voyage to fairy-land. A true voyage; but, take it all in all, interesting as if invented.

  From the piazza, some uncertain object I had caught, mysteriously snugged away, to all appearance, in a sort of purpled breast-pocket, high up in a hopper-like hollow, or sunken angle, among the northwestern mountains-yet, whether, really, it was on a mountain-side, or a mountain-top, could not be determined; because, though viewed from favorable points, a blue summit, peering up away behind the rest, will, as it were, talk to you over their heads, and plainly tell you, that though he (the blue summit) seems among them, he is not of them (God forbid!), and, indeed, would have you know that he considers himself-as, to say truth, he has good right-by several cubits their superior, nevertheless, certain ranges, here and there double-filed, as in platoons, so shoulder and follow up upon one another, with their irregular shapes and heights, that, from the piazza, a nigher and lower mountain will, in most states of the atmosphere, effacingly shade itself away into a higher and further one; that an object, bleak on the former’s crest, will, for all that, appear nested in the latter’s flank. These mountains, somehow, they play at hide-and-seek, and all before one’s eyes.

  But, be that as it may, the spot in question was, at all events, so situated as to be only visible, and then but vaguely, under certain witching conditions of light and shadow.

  Indeed, for a year or more, I knew not there was such a spot, and might, perhaps, have never known, had it not been for a wizard afternoon in autumn-late in autumn-a mad poet’s afternoon; when the turned maple woods in the broad basin below me, having lost their first vermilion tint, dully smoked, like smouldering towns, when flames expire upon their prey; and rumor had it, that this smokiness in the general air was not all Indian summer-which was not used to be so sick a thing, however mild-but, in great part, was blown from far-off forests, for weeks on fire, in Vermont; so that no wonder the sky was ominous as Hecate’s cauldron-and two sportsmen, crossing a red stubble buck-wheat field, seemed guilty Macbeth and foreboding Banquo; and the hermit-sun, hutted in an Adullam cave, well towards the south, according to his season, did little else but, by indirect reflection of narrow rays shot down a Simplon pass among the clouds, just steadily paint one small, round, strawberry mole upon the wan cheek of Northwestern hills. Signal as a candle. One spot of radiance, where all else was shade.

  Fairies there, thought I; some haunted ring where fairies dance.

  Time passed; and the following May, after a gentle shower upon the mountains-a little shower islanded in misty seas of sunshine; such a distant shower-and sometimes two, and three, and four of them, all visible together in different parts-as I love to watch from the piazza, instead of thunderstorms, as I used to, which wrap old Greylock, like a Sinai, till one thinks swart Moses must be climbing among scathed hemlocks there; after, I say, that gentle shower, I saw a rainbow, resting its further end just where, in autumn, I had marked the mole. Fairies there, thought I; remembering that rainbows bring out the blooms, and that, if one can but get to the rainbow’s end, his fortune is made in a bag of gold. Yon rainbow’s end, would I were there, thought I. And none the less I wished it, for now first noticing what seemed some sort of glen, or grotto, in the mountain side; at least, whatever it was, viewed through the rainbow’s medium, it glowed like the Potosi mine. But a work-a-day neighbor said, no doubt it was but some old barn-an abandoned one, its broadside beaten in, the acclivity its background. But I, though I had never been there, I knew better.

  A few days after, a cheery sunrise kindled a golden sparkle in the same spot as before. The sparkle was of that vividness, it seemed as if it could only come from glass. The building, then-if building, after all, it was-could, at least, not be a barn, much less an abandoned one; stale hay ten years musting in it. No; if aught built by mortal, it must be a cottage; perhaps long vacant and dismantled, but this very spring magically fitted up and glazed.

  Again, one noon, in the same direction, I marked, over dimmed tops of terraced foliage, a broader gleam, a
s of a silver buckler, held sunwards over some croucher’s head; which gleam, experience in like cases taught, must come from a roof newly shingled. This, to me, made pretty sure the recent occupancy of that far cot in fairy-land.

  Day after day, now, full of interest in my discovery, what time I could spare from reading the Midsummer-Night’s Dream, and all about Titania, wishfully I gazed off towards the hills; but in vain. Either troops of shadows, an imperial guard, with slow pace and solemn, defiled along the steeps; or, routed by pursuing light, fled broadcast from east to west-old wars of Lucifer and Michael; or the mountains, though unvexed by these mirrored sham fights in the sky, had an atmosphere otherwise unfavorable for fairy views. I was sorry; the more so, because I had to keep my chamber for some time after-which chamber did not face those hills.

  At length, when pretty well again, and sitting out, in the September morning, upon the piazza, and thinking to myself, when, just after a little flock of sheep, the farmer’s banded children passed, a-nutting, and said, ‘How sweet a day’- it was, after all, but what their fathers call a weather-breeder-and, indeed, was become so sensitive through my illness, as that I could not bear to look upon a Chinese creeper of my adoption, and which, to my delight, climbing a post of the piazza, had burst out in starry bloom, but now, if you removed the leaves a little, showed millions of strange, cankerous worms, which, feeding upon those blossoms, so shared their blessed hue, as to make it unblessed evermore-worms, whose germs had doubtless lurked in the very bulb which, so hopefully, I had planted: in this ingrate peevishness of my weary convalescence, was I sitting there; when, suddenly looking off, I saw the golden mountain-window, dazzling like a deep-sea dolphin. Fairies there, thought I, once more; the queen of fairies at her fairy window; at any rate, some glad mountain-girl; it will do me good, it will cure this weariness, to look on her. No more; I’ll launch my yawl-ho, cheerly, heart! and push away for fairy-land-for rainbow’s end, in fairy-land.