“Good-by, Bartleby; I am going—good-by, 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 anything; he says he prefers not to; and he refuses to
quit the premises.”
“I am very sorry, sir,” said I, with assumed tranquillity, 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.
Everybody 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 anything 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.