University of Virginia Library

50. CHAPTER L.
THE END OF CLOVER.

Without book, bell or prayer, unshriven, unhousled, with
no procession and no sorrow, Clover died, and was buried.

There are bad men in our world, and bad things. That
the substance of the first, or the type of the last, should
perish, can excite no regret.

Clover, if we may rely on his own account of himself,
however he possessed the first, certainly instanced the last;
— he was an embodiment of all horridness.

Not merely poetic, but historic, or, we might say, prophetic
justice, requires that he should die.

Nor, powerful as has hitherto been his influence, and
great his terror, shall we be troubled to dispose of him, —
for God took him away.

In the suburbs of the city was a tavern known as the
Bay Horse, — almost the only spot within the municipality
that had not been purged of alcoholic infection. It was
kept by Helskill, — hacking, timid Helskill, — formerly of
Quiet Arbor, who had fled thither with the relics of his
property, his disinterestedness, and his customers. It was a
stopping-place of teamsters, and the lounge of Belialism. In
the bar-room, or “office,” of this place, one night, Clover
and his confreres were met. The “office,” like many others
of its kind, was a dingy, sultry, mephitic room, and its
walls were plastered many layers deep with show-bills, circus
pictures, and lithographic battle-pieces and heads of the
Presidents. A large box of sand supported a Franklin

stove, serving to insure the house against fire, and the delicacy
of its inmates against alarm at not having a place to
dispose of tobacco-quids, and other matters that distinguish
man from the brute. Lamps burned as in a fog, the smoke
of the room and dust of the ceiling absorbing most of the
rays, and leaving the less volatile accumulations on the floor
quite in the lurch.

It was a night of pitchy darkness, and cavernous winds,
interspersed with thunder and lightning.

The fellows there assembled had been drinking, and some
of them were quite “balmy.”

There was Philemon Sweetly, whom we have before
seen at the Green Mill, so lively and reckless. Clover had
seduced him, and he was now out at his elbows, out at his
purse, out at his cheeks, out everywhere save in his invisible
tambourine. There was Weasand, an old attaché of
Quiet Arbor, who had adhered to Helskill through all
mutations of place and fortune. Mr. Serme, a broken-down
Theatre-manager, Mr. Craver, an inhabitant of the hamlet
of which the Bay Horse was the principal house, and one
or two teamsters, made up the group.

Gusts of rain smote the house; flashes of lightning, —
what perhaps nothing else would do, — revealed these men
to themselves; thunder rolled and exploded over their
heads; the windows became alternate mirrors of dismalness
within, and breaks into yawning, blazing gulfs without.

“I suppose I am Jove's bird,” said Clover, pacing the
floor. “They reckon me in the family, I think.”

“Your upper lip,” replied Philemon, “favors the idea; —
it is hooked, and dragonish.”

“That is nothing to my talons, Phil.” He clutched at
Helskill; and Helskill, being a pliant man, suffered himself

to be pulled to the floor. “But,” continued Clover, “I am
gorged. I have REPASTED on Richard.”

“And feel qualmish?”

“I shall revive,” replied Clover. “I worsted Richard,
and he capitulated. But the smothered fire of rebellion
breaks out, and that must be smothered by the fires of this
red right arm!”

“Let us be easy where we are,” said Weasand, scraping
his thumb-nail with a jack-knife; “Helskill is accommodating,
the old `Horse' is in tolerable flesh, and we can
have a few more pleasant rides before the Black Car comes
along.”

“I would n't speak of it,” said Mr. Serme, who, stretched
on a table, was trying to cover his eyes from the storm. “I
feel as if it was here now, — as if it was all around us,
and we were in it.”

“Repeat it!” said Clover.

“Let us not be too free,” said Mr. Craver, a red-visaged
but white-livered man, who preferred the Bay Horse to his
own parlor and wife and children. He occupied a corner
of the settee, and was trying very hard to locate his chin
on the knob of his cane. “I see a coffin in the lamp, and a
dead woman's eyes are looking in at the window. Let us
be as easy as we can. I never wished to wrong anybody.”

“O mighty thunderbolt!” — thus apostrophized Clover, —
“I AM THY FELLOW!”

A blinding flash, that made Helskill shriek, and cry,
“Don't! Clover, don't!”

“Say, Do!” rejoined Clover.

“O dear! yes, — do, then, do!” answered the peaceful,
willowy host.

“I smite, like thee!” continued Clover.

“I wonder if it ever gets its knuckles hurt, and bunged
in the eye?” asked Philemon.

“It is not afraid to try them,” replied Clover, aiming a
blow at Philemon, which the latter avoided by a little tambourining
of the head.

“ 'T is horrible to die so, Mr. Craver,” said Mr. Serme.
“You can't even turn on your side to get rid of it, or take
it easier.”

“There will be one less to eat corn,” observed a teamster,
who sat in a broken-bottomed chair, with his cheeks reposing
in the palms of his hands.

“I don't see why my wife takes it so hard,” marvelled
Mr. Craver. “What is she out such a night as this for? I
always said to her, says I, `Mrs. Craver, you have enough
to eat.' Need she shriek so, and my daughters hang
shrouds on the trees for me to look at?”

“I DEFY it!” said Clover.

“Please,” said Weasand, “stand out of my light, the
next time it comes; I want to get a look at Helskill's face.”

“I am awful,” continued Clover, “but useful; and, if
severe, yet just.”

“Just so, exactly,” remarked the teamster.

“Look at Clover, Helskill,” said Philemon; “I command
you to look at him!”

“I will, I will,” replied the obliging man. “Only this;”
— he shook his head as if the lightnings annoyed him.

“History,” Clover went on, “makes more mention of me
than of any other living man. Art adores me, — lo!” He
pointed to the pictures on the walls. There was a battle of
the Florida War, supported by a figure of Liberty on one
side of the piece, and Justice on the other. “O, reverend
gods!” he exclaimed; “ye know, ye appreciate my worth!

O Divine Providence, how couldst thou get on without
me?”

“Devils and damned spirits!” groaned Mr. Serme; “I
am not ready. Hell opens to receive me! Mr. Craver, take
my conscience, — cut it out, — hide it, — burn it! Quick!
— they are after it.”

“A man has a right to drink,” replied Mr. Craver; “I
always told Mrs. Craver so.”

“What hands the flies are to get into things!” remarked
the teamster; “here is one crawling under my shirt
sleeve.”

“Good Helskill, — kind, hospitable Helskill, — would you
let a dry, a very dry man, have something to moisten himself?”
asked Weasand.

A vivid and deafening bolt, that silenced them all.

“Appalling!” said Clover; “but sweet, and refreshing,
like glory.”

“Clover is a knowing 'un,” said Philemon. “I wonder
if he would n't like to go up among the lightnings, about
this time, and touch them off, — perhaps ram cartridges for
some of the big guns.”

“Would they dare to touch me off!! Compeer of the
Almighty, I, Clover, am; — the first and last resort of kings!
I am lightnings! I wish I could fall to-night on two devoted
heads. It is with difficulty, with self-denial, my friends,
that I restrain myself.”

“Folderol!” answered Philemon; “let them sleep.
They are just married. You have done mischief enough.”

“Mischief! If it was not you, Phil, — if you was anybody
else, I would kill you, Phil. Thr'pence a pound on
tea is nothing to what I feel. I can feel, — I can feel an
insult. I can feel an invasion of my rights, — the rights
of all governments, — the rights of the stronger. Mischief!

You have not heard of Trajan's column, or Nelson's monument,
or the Temple of Fame? Lie still, puppy! I dare
Almighty God!”

“Not that; — don't say that; — we are not quite up to
that,” said Philemon.

“God says,” continued Clover, “Thou shalt not kill; — I
kill. He says, Keep the Sabbath; — I never yet kept one.
He says, Love your enemy; — now it strikes one it is
rather presumptuous to say that to ME! Why, I suppose I
am the only regular, Old Line, opposition left. If I were
out of the way, these numbskulls of humanity would have
a great time. My ancestors lived to a good old age, and I
shall do the same. Consult the Clover genealogy!”

“Drink, Clover, and sit down.”

“Not while you try to cow me, Phil. Not till my power
is acknowledged.”

Another flash.

“Ha! ha! that's some. They smell me! They know
I am up and dressed! I defy the storm! I challenge all
the fires of heaven! Meet ME, YE DREAD MINISTERS, WHERE
YE WILL, — I AM READY!!”

“Don't!” cried Helskill.

“Mercy! Clover, God, Devil!” agonized Mr. Serme.

“It is n't best,” said Mr. Craver. “If the children would
go to bed, and not be rummaging gullies so. It is n't best,
Mr. Clover. I hold to moderation. If Mrs. Craver —[a
flash]—wife, don't sweep that rock; — put up your broom!
Take in more sewing.”

“I'll stump him to do it!” exclaimed the teamster.

“Yes,” said Philemon, “let him do it, — he wants to so
much.”

“Do is the word!” responded Clover. “I will meet
them at the Old Oak in the Stone Pasture! I will meet

their Goliath, the lightnings, there! I will tweak the nose
of Vengeance! Come, boys, — FOLLOW ME!”

He seized his hat, and rushed out of doors, followed by
the rest. Neither Mr. Serme nor Mr. Craver dared be left
alone; and they went too. Helskill, whom no emergency
could deter from the systematic pursuit of his business, ran
after, with a bottle in each hand.

It was a fearful hour; — gutters running in torrents,
winds whisking the helpless trees, the wizard glare of the
lightnings, the thunder bellowing a call to some unheard-of
catastrophe, filled them with excitement and forebodings.
On they went, across brook and bog, over fences and rock,
dripping, blaspheming, headed by the satanic Clover.

They reached the Old Oak, a large, skeleton-like, wiry
tree, whose stubborn branches unbent to the storm, and only
the leaves were shaken, even as moss on a rock twinkles in
the wind.

Clover smote his fist on the tree, and, looking up, said,
“Ye powers of heaven, or hell, I HAVE COME!!!”

A flash of lightning struck him dead! It stunned his
comrades, who recovered to find their old leader, whose last
impious attitude the blaze at the same instant revealed and
extinguished, prostrate and dishevelled at the foot of the
tree.

That steel-nerved arm was wilted; — those scorn-glancing
eyes were upturned in glassy impotence; — that redoubtable
chest should heave no more. His long red locks seemed to
sweal in the pouring rain; — his trunk and limbs dammed
a brief rivulet that hasted to bury him.

Alarm of conscience crowding upon the shock of incident,
these infatuated men knew not what to do. They consulted
hurriedly and wildly, and proceeded to bury the carcass
where it lay.

Turf, swale grass, stones, stumps, were brought together,
and piled upon it. Philemon, snatching the bottles of Helskill,
threw them upon the body of this wickedness, and
they were buried, too.

Through long hours these men worked.

The rain chilled and impeded exertion; the lightning displayed
a ghastly object to their eyes, and quickened more
ghastly apprehensions in their bosoms; unrelenting thunders
rung out a judgment-day alarum; Terror seemed to
winnow with its wings the air they breathed.

Their task done, they returned to the tavern soberer, and
we will hope, better men.