Bartleby, The Scrivener | Page 8

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