Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 July 1884 — The CLERK’S. TALE. [ARTICLE]

The CLERK’S. TALE.

It was a suffocating evening early in August, and I left my work at the foreign office to plod home to dinner through the dusty parks in the worst spirits. The wrongs of a junior clerk whose long-promised holiday had just been snatched away from him on the eve of fulfillment were boiling in me; I felt that they cried out for justice in a free country. Everything was prepared for this month’s leave which was to have begun the next day. My father had taken a house on one of the most attractive slopes above Grasmere, and the family residence in Lancaster Gate already bore that denuded and forlorn appearance which precedes a general family flight. We had breakfasted gaily, picnic fashion, with old and inadequate implements; we had -prophesied with unabated cheerfulness dining with still fewer of the appliances of civilization, the family plate being not lost but gone before to Grasmere. The house was in as uncomfortable a state as much packing and putting away could make it, for my people intended to spend between two and three months at ‘Emerald Bank.’ Here was I, with my wings outspread for flight, caught back and doomed to remain in solitude, with dismantled rooms and furniture lurking under dust sheets for company and all because an unstable senior clerk suddenly declared that his health demanded instant change of air, instead of waiting to take his holiday later on, as he had intended. The tale of woe is not complete, for Olga Field - ing, to whom I had been but three weeks betrothed, was coming with us to Grasmere, and we had promised ourselves a month of unalloyed bliss among the Westmoreland hills before she was obliged to go back to her filial duties in Copenhagen. There, as her mother was dead, she had to preside over all matters, social and domestic, in her father’s extensive establishment. Gracious heavens! what an ill-ar-ranged planet is this, and what a disorganized constitution was that miserable T.’s, to choose such a moment to be out of repair! In the first week in September Olga would have to follow her father, who had returned to Copenhagen, and we should meet no more till after Christmas. Was it not enough to make a worm blaspheme? and the bang I gave the hall door on entering covered a vigorous expression of feeling.

Well, the news was broken to a dismayed and sympathetic circle. Olga, who had hitherto professed to consider me as likely to prove a very small addition to the natural features of the lake scenery, was quite overcome; there was some small balm in that. My mother was very unhappy. Even Barbara, the youngest of the family, and strong in the scorn of seventeen for matters of sentiment, forbore to jibe, and gave utterance to violent exclamations of regret, coupled with equally violent abuse of vague persons unknown. My father, after the first natural shock of disgust, endeavored to console me with .unpalatable philosophy and the cool light of reason, remedies which always seefcn an insult offered to affliction, when applied to one’s own case. “It’s har<| on you, Harry, my boy, no doubt, and I’m sorry for it," he said, in that sobering tone which strikes a chill through the greatest moments <|f excitement\and makes all previous emotion appear annoyingly ridiculous; “but now you have entered on the serious duties of life, you can't learn too soon that work and not play is the object of a man’s life. I’m not at all sure that—” “Ah! how hor-r-r-rible,’’ broke in the soft voice of my betrothed, with the pretty careful intonation, and longdrawn ripple of the *r* which she had inherited from her Danish mother. “Dear Mr. Richardson, do not let us be reasonable to-night. What is the use of being British subjects if we may not have a great grumble ? No, that poor boy is very badly treated, and it is all fur-rightful!" And my lady unclasped her eloquent hands, approached the iron-gray parent for whom our affection had always been largely tempered with respect, and. flinging one arm tightly around his neck, laid her pretty head with its crown of bronze rippless confidingly on his robust' black-cloth shoulder. My fathen, no doubt, experienced a alight shock; he was unaccustomed to such audacious treatment from the young. Rut he liked it, he certainly liked it; and planting firm parental salute on the breezy coils he left us to pour put our mutual woe at leisure. * That night I found it impossible to sleep. The atmosphere was so close •nd oppressive there seemed to be no air to breathe, and a dull feeling of undefined apprehension haunted me persistently through long hours of wakefulness and miserable brief dozes, refusing to be oharmed away by the voice of reason. Haggard, unrefreshed, and still conscious of the same vague foreboding clawing at my heart, I left that bed of suffering at an unwonted hour in the morning, and dein.——. ....... „ # I

bare boards, dotted about with precipitous islands under dusty cloths. Here a pipe, that unfailing comforter of dejected manhood, restored some balance to my disordered mind, but I still felt very depressed, and was preparfng to go forth and seek the restorative dear to every unhinged 4 Briton, an early swim, when the door opened, and to my amazement Olga glided into the room, pale and drooping, with dark lines under her brown eyes. After •mutual exclamations and greetings, I demanded the reason of her wan and dejected appearance. She did not answer at first, but turned her face away and tormented the braid on her travel-ing-dress in silence. “Well, if you will know', dear friend,” she said at last, with a charming gesture of resignation, “I think your old foreign office has bewitched me. No, it is that unhappy T., who has the evil eye, for I have a feeling as if some danger was hanging over you, and I could not sleep all night for it. O Harry!” continued the impetuous damsel, suddenly throwing aside the dignity with which she was wont to treat me, now that the worst was out, “come away with us to-day. Never mind a thousand governments and clerkships! I will not go without you. Something dreadful will happen; you feel it too. You look fit for the hangman yourself. ” It took me a long while to restore Olga to calmness. I laughed at her prognostications and W’as careful to betray no similar fe<jlings on my own part. She was mor? or less convinced at last of the utter ruin it would be to my future prospects to desert my post, and we were reasonably resigned if not cheered by breakfast time. Well, I saw them all off from Euston Station, and trailed away a hapless victim, to my dreary task in the exalted gloom of White Hall. That day seemed interminable; yet there -was nothing to look forward to at the end of it, and still with the previous night’s weight on my spirits, I started on my way back to the howling wilderness in Lancaster Gate. Near Hyde Park corner, where very few carriages remained to make hay of the dust, I was startled from melancholy reflection by a great bang on the back. Turning sharply round I confronted that atheletic giant, Jack Oliver, who had been at the same college as my self, and whom I had not met since we took our respective degrees at Oxford three years before. At Oriel I had been wont to write Jack down an ass, because his invariably boisterous spirits and perpetual athe•letics were at times a perfect nuisance, but in my present forlorn condition his jolly face and infectious laugh were a real God send.

We dined at the club together, and afterward went to the theater, then smoked a pipe or two in company at Oliver’s lodgings, so that it was towardl o'clock when 1 left him to return to Lancaster Gate. Walking along under the park railings, the trees made occasionally ghostly rustlings over head; the air was very still and heavy, in expectation of a traveling thunder storm. The tall shut up houses 'facing the park looked as forbidding as so many mausoleums in the moonlight, and only the footsteps of a stray wayfarer here and there, or the welcome rattle of an occasional hansom, broke the strange stillness. All the uncomfortable feelings of the last twenty-four hours, temporarily., thrust back by Oliver's cheerful company, returned with overwhelming force. Indignant at being so befooled by what I declared to myself must be a dyspeptic imagination (though my acquaintance with dyspepsia was happily of the slightest), I argued fiercely with my own folly; but all in vain, that indescribable dead weight of apprehension still crushed my spirits. The senseless sense of unseen danger grew stronger at every yard. I was ready to roar for very disquietude of spirit, “confound it all,” I almost shouted, “this is beyond a joke! What an abject piece of imbecility, for a man who has always flattered himself on having too much reason to fall a prey to any superstitious delusions whatever! I must be ill; if things go on 1 ke this to-mor-row I shall give in, and go to old Burrows (the family 2Esculapius) to be put together again." Meanwhile every step forward appeared to grow more and more difficult. A sudden sound of footsteps close behind most unaccountably paralyzed my powers of locomotion, and filled me with horrible dread. This was monstrous ; with a kind of groan of disgust mid misery over my |own decrepitude, T resolutely turned round and waited till the steps reached me.

Merciful heaven! What was this that came up, brushed past me, and went on ? My brain reeled, a cold perspiration broke out on my forehead, for, frantic as it may sound, it was myself that I saw go by. My exact image and counterpart came toward me, looked me full in the face with cold, indifferent eyes, differing from mine only in their expression at the moment/and passed on, brushing me with the sleeve of a light over-coat exactly like the one I wore. I noted with despairing recognition on the creature’s left hand, which was raised, holding the unbuttoned flap of his coat in front of him (a favorite trick of mine), the very ring Olga had given me a week ago, and which was also on my finger at that moment For one long minute I sood stupefied with horror, the next I darted forward after that terrible familiar form, which crossed the street and went on toward our door. I felt sure that I must be mad, or in the clutches of some hideous nightmare. Oh! for some power to shake it off and awake. But no! the area railings had a firm and chill reality when I touched them. My footsteps and those others sounded all too solidly on the deserted pavement I even caught myself deliriously smiling ata peculiar trick of walking in the thing in front, with which Barbara had often taunted me. It was an extraordinary opportunity of seeing oneself as others 'see one, but what mortal conld have availed himself of it under such circumstances? r . I, staggered on behind him, unable to diminish the twenty yards or so that separated us. Would he stop at No. 264? The suspense was almost intolerable. He-did. ' He disappeared.

through the door, though the onjy surviving latchkey was in my hand. When I reached the door it was shut and bore no signs of any unusual treatment. I could not go in; I could not follow into the house and run the risk of meeting that on the dark stairs. A horror unspeakable had taken possession of my senses; I turned and fled, and spent uncounted hours in walkin g about the silent streets and squares, unconscious of the lapse of time. The early sunshine aroused ami cheered my scatted wits. Gradually the sounds of common life awakening brought back my reasoning faculties; the discordant cry of that bird of dawn the early sweep, was as music in my ears, and seemed f to make the dreadful night fade into remoteness and unreality, I made my way back to Lancaster Gate, footsore and exhausted. The milkman was driving merrily up and down; when I reached our door steps it seemed a year since I had last ascended them. I rushed to my room; it was, of course, empty, the bed untouched. But on the pillow and turned down sheet, exactly where my head and shoulders would have been in the natural course of things, lay the ruins of a large bust, the Hermes, which had been wont to stand on a bracket over the head of the bed. This bracket my mother had frequently enti eated me to replace by a firmer suppert; it had given awav at last under the ponderous weight of the bust, which, striking against the iron rail of the bed, had broken into two or three murderous portions that reposed on the pillow and sheet, the bracket only having chosen to glance off on to the floor. Had I been there Hermes must certainly have crushed my skull.

Thrilled with fresh emotion, but too exhausted then to meditate long over the event, I went slowly down to the dining room, and fell asleep on the sofa. The old charwoman x _who appeared later with my breakfast, told me she had been startled by hearing a loud, crash in the night, soon after the clock had struck 1, but having been only half awake at the time she concluded it was the thunder of my boots being thrown out to await the morning’s cleaning. She was now, however, much excited about it, and disposed to revel in a tragedy. I told her that I found the statue fallen on my bed, and that, as it took three men to move it in a general way, I had been obliged to content myself with the sofa. The brief and matter of-fact tone of my explanations quite failed to quell her exclamations of wonder and amazement, and she was not to be debarred from the pleasure of gloating over all the details of the tragedy which had been averted.

Since that nigjit all has gone well with us. My blessed chief found means to let me go in a day or two, and our time at Grasmere was all we had expected it. to be. After Christmas, to bur great joy, Mr. Fielding gave up his house at Copenhagen, and canle to live in London.- Olga and I were married the following summer, and we have never again been disturbed by presentiments, apparitions, or any other subjects worthy to exercise the industry of the Society for Psychical Research.— M. (7. Vachell, in Longman’s Magazine.