Bartleby the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street

138 THE PIAZZA TALES
servant, rose to his feet, and grasping Captain Delano's
hand, stood tremulous ; too much agitated to speak.
But the good augury hence drawn was suddenly dashed,
by his resuming all his previous reserve, with augmented
gloom, as, with half-averted eyes, he silently reseated
himself on his cushions. With a corresponding return
of his own chilled feelings, Captain Delano bowed and
withdrew.
He was hardly midway in the narrow corridor, dim as
a tunnel, leading from the cabin to the stairs, when a
sound, as of the^ollingjior execution in some jail-^ard,
fell on his ears". It was the echo^bf the ship's flawed
bell, striking the hour, drearily reverberated in this
subterranean vault. Instantly, by a fatality not to be
withstood, his mind, responsive to the portent, swarmed
with superstitious suspicions. He paused. In images
far swifter than these sentences, the minutest details
of all his former distrusts swept through him.
Hitherto, credulous good-nature had been too ready
to furnish excuses for reasonable fears. Why was the
Spaniard, so superfluously punctilious at times, now
heedless of common propriety in not accompanying to
the side his departing guest ? Did indisposition forbid ?
Indisposition had not forbidden more irksome exertion
that day. His last equivocal demeanour recurred. He
had risen to his feet, grasped his guest's hand, motioned
toward his hat ; then, in an instant, all was eclipsed in
muteness and gloom. Did this imply one brief,
repentant relenting at the final moment, from some
remorseless return to it ?
iniquitous plot,
[sinister
followed by
His last glance seemed to express a calamitous, yet
acquiescent farewell to Captain Delano forever. Why
decline the invitation to visit the sealer that evening ?
Or was the Spaniard less hardened than the Jew, who
refrained not from supping at the board of him whom