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"Markheim" by Robert Louis Stevenson
"Yes," said the dealer, "our windfalls are of various kinds. Some customers are ignorant,
and then I touch a dividend on my superior knowledge. Some are dishonest," and here he
held up the candle, so that the light fell strongly on his visitor, "and in that case,"
he continued, "I profit by my virtue."
Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes had not yet grown familiar
with the mingled shine and darkness in the shop. At these pointed words, and before the
near presence of the flame, he blinked painfully and looked aside.
The dealer chuckled. "You come to me on Christmas Day," he resumed, "when you know that I am
alone in my house, put up my shutters, and make a point of refusing business. Well, you
will have to pay for that; you will have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be
balancing my books; you will have to pay, besides, for a kind of manner that I remark
in you to-day very strongly. I am the essence of discretion, and ask no awkward questions;
but when a customer cannot look me in the eye, he has to pay for it." The dealer once
more chuckled; and then, changing to his usual business voice, though still with a note of
irony, "You can give, as usual, a clear account of how you came into the possession of the
object?" he continued. "Still your uncle's cabinet? A remarkable collector, sir!"
And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tip-toe, looking over the
top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with every mark of disbelief. Markheim
returned his gaze with one of infinite pity, and a touch of horror.
"This time," said he, "you are in error. I have not come to sell, but to buy. I have
no curios to dispose of; my uncle's cabinet is bare to the wainscot; even were it still
intact, I have done well on the Stock Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise,
and my errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas present for a lady," he
continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech he had prepared; "and certainly
I owe you every excuse for thus disturbing you upon so small a matter. But the thing
was neglected yesterday; I must produce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you very
well know, a rich marriage is not a thing to be neglected."
< 2 > There followed a pause, during which the dealer
seemed to weigh this statement incredulously. The ticking of many clocks among the curious
lumber of the shop, and the faint rushing of the cabs in a near thoroughfare, filled
up the interval of silence.
"Well, sir," said the dealer, "be it so. You are an old customer after all; and if, as
you say, you have the chance of a good marriage, far be it from me to be an obstacle. Here
is a nice thing for a lady now," he went on, "this hand glass - fifteenth century, warranted;
comes from a good collection, too; but I reserve the name, in the interests of my customer,
who was just like yourself, my dear sir, the nephew and sole heir of a remarkable collector."
The dealer, while he thus ran on in his dry and biting voice, had stooped to take the
object from its place; and, as he had done so, a shock had passed through Markheim, a
start both of hand and foot, a sudden leap of many tumultuous passions to the face. It
passed as swiftly as it came, and left no trace beyond a certain trembling of the hand
that now received the glass.
"A glass," he said hoarsely, and then paused, and repeated it more clearly. "A glass? For
Christmas? Surely not?"
"And why not?" cried the dealer. "Why not a glass?"
Markheim was looking upon him with an indefinable expression. "You ask me why not?" he said.
"Why, look here - look in it - look at yourself! Do you like to see it? No! nor - nor any man."
The little man had jumped back when Markheim had so suddenly confronted him with the mirror;
but now, perceiving there was nothing worse on hand, he chuckled. "Your future lady, sir,
must be pretty hard favoured," said he.
"I ask you," said Markheim, "for a Christmas present, and you give me this - this damned
reminder of years, and sins and follies - this hand-conscience! Did you mean it? Had you
a thought in your mind? Tell me. It will be better for you if you do. Come, tell me about
yourself. I hazard a guess now, that you are in secret a very charitable man?"
< 3 > The dealer looked closely at his companion.
It was very odd, Markheim did not appear to be laughing; there was something in his face
like an eager sparkle of hope, but nothing of mirth.
"What are you driving at?" the dealer asked.
"Not charitable?" returned the other gloomily. "Not charitable; not pious; not scrupulous;
unloving, unbeloved; a hand to get money, a safe to keep it. Is that all? Dear God,
man, is that all?"
"I will tell you what it is," began the dealer, with some sharpness, and then broke off again
into a chuckle. "But I see this is a love match of yours, and you have been drinking
the lady's health."
"Ah!" cried Markheim, with a strange curiosity. "Ah, have you been in love? Tell me about
that."
"I," cried the dealer. "I in love! I never had the time, nor have I the time today for
all this nonsense. Will you take the glass?"
"Where is the hurry?" returned Markheim. "It is very pleasant to stand here talking; and
life is so short and insecure that I would not hurry away from any pleasure - no, not
even from so mild a one as this. We should rather cling, cling to what little we can
get, like a man at a cliff's edge. Every second is a cliff, if you think upon it - a cliff
a mile high - high enough, if we fall, to dash us out of every feature of humanity.
Hence it is best to talk pleasantly. Let us talk of each other: why should we wear this
mask? Let us be confidential. Who knows, we might become friends?"
"I have just one word to say to you," said the dealer. "Either make your purchase, or
walk out of my shop!"
"True, true," said Markheim. "Enough fooling. To business. Show me something else."
The dealer stooped once more, this time to replace the glass upon the shelf, his thin
blond hair falling over his eyes as he did so. Markheim moved a little nearer, with one
hand in the pocket of his greatcoat; he drew himself up and filled his lungs; at the same
time many different emotions were depicted together on his face - terror, horror, and
resolve, fascination and a physical repulsion; and through a haggard lift of his upper lip,
his teeth looked out.
< 4 > "This, perhaps, may suit," observed the dealer:
and then, as he began to re-arise, Markheim bounded from behind upon his victim. The long,
skewerlike dagger flashed and fell. The dealer struggled like a hen, striking his temple
on the shelf, and then tumbled on the floor in a heap.
Time had some score of small voices in that shop, some stately and slow as was becoming
to their great age; others garrulous and hurried. All these told out the seconds in an intricate
chorus of tickings. Then the passage of a lad's feet, heavily running on the pavement,
broke in upon these smaller voices and startled Markheim into the consciousness of his surroundings.
He looked about him awfully. The candle stood on the counter, its flame solemnly wagging
in a draught; and by that inconsiderable movement, the whole room was filled with noiseless bustle
and kept heaving like a sea: the tall shadows nodding, the gross blots of darkness swelling
and dwindling as with respiration, the faces of the portraits and the china gods changing
and wavering like images in water. The inner door stood ajar, and peered into that leaguer
of shadows with a long slit of daylight like a pointing finger.
From these fear-stricken rovings, Markheim's eyes returned to the body of his victim, where
it lay both *** and sprawling, incredibly small and strangely meaner than in life. In
these poor, miserly clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust.
Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And yet, as he gazed, this bundle
of old clothes and pool of blood began to find eloquent voices. There it must lie; there
was none to work the cunning hinges or direct the miracle of locomotion - there it must
lie till it was found. Found! ay, and then? Then would this dead flesh lift up a cry that
would ring over England, and fill the world with the echoes of pursuit. Ay, dead or not,
this was still the enemy. "Time was that when the brains were out," he thought; and the
first word struck into his mind. Time, now that the deed was accomplished - time, which
had closed for the victim, had become instant and momentous for the slayer.
< 5 > The thought was yet in his mind, when, first
one and then another, with every variety of pace and voice - one deep as the bell from
a cathedral turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a waltz - the
clocks began to strike the hour of three in the afternoon.
The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb chamber staggered him. He began
to bestir himself, going to and fro with the candle, beleaguered by moving shadows, and
startled to the soul by chance reflections. In many rich mirrors, some of home designs,
some from Venice or Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated and repeated, as it were an
army of spies; his own eyes met and detected him; and the sound of his own steps, lightly
as they fell, vexed the surrounding quiet. And still, as he continued to fill his pockets,
his mind accused him with a sickening iteration, of the thousand faults of his design. He should
have chosen a more quiet hour; he should have prepared an alibi; he should not have used
a knife; he should have been more cautious, and only bound and gagged the dealer, and
not killed him; he should have been more bold, and killed the servant also; he should have
done all things otherwise: poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the mind to change
what was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to be the architect of the irrevocable
past. Meanwhile, and behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of rats
in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand
of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish;
or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the gallows, and the black coffin.
Terror of the people in the street sat down before his mind like a besieging army. It
was impossible, he thought, but that some rumour of the struggle must have reached their
ears and set on edge their curiosity; and now, in all the neighbouring houses, he divined
them sitting motionless and with uplifted ear - solitary people, condemned to spend
Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past, and now startingly recalled from that
tender exercise; happy family parties, struck into silence round the table, the mother still
with raised finger: every degree and age and humour, but all, by their own hearths, prying
and hearkening and weaving the rope that was to hang him. Sometimes it seemed to him he
could not move too softly; the clink of the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly like
a bell; and alarmed by the bigness of the ticking, he was tempted to stop the clocks.
And then, again, with a swift transition of his terrors, the very silence of the place
appeared a source of peril, and a thing to strike and freeze the passer-by; and he would
step more boldly, and bustle aloud among the contents of the shop, and imitate, with elaborate
bravado, the movements of a busy man at ease in his own house.
< 6 > But he was now so pulled about by different
alarms that, while one portion of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trembled
on the brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong hold on his credulity.
The neighbour hearkening with white face beside his window, the passer-by arrested by a horrible
surmise on the pavement - these could at worst suspect, they could not know; through the
brick walls and shuttered windows only sounds could penetrate. But here, within the house,
was he alone? He knew he was; he had watched the servant set forth sweet-hearting, in her
poor best, "out for the day" written in every ribbon and smile. Yes, he was alone, of course;
and yet, in the bulk of empty house above him, he could surely hear a stir of delicate
footing - he was surely conscious, inexplicably conscious of some presence. Ay, surely; to
every room and corner of the house his imagination followed it; and now it was a faceless thing,
and yet had eyes to see with; and again it was a shadow of himself; and yet again behold
the image of the dead dealer, reinspired with cunning and hatred.
At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at the open door which still seemed to repel
his eyes. The house was tall, the skylight small and dirty, the day blind with fog; and
the light that filtered down to the ground story was exceedingly faint, and showed dimly
on the threshold of the shop. And yet, in that strip of doubtful brightness, did there
not hang wavering a shadow?
Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial gentleman began to beat with a staff
on the shop-door, accompanying his blows with shouts and railleries in which the dealer
was continually called upon by name. Markheim, smitten into ice, glanced at the dead man.
But no! he lay quite still; he was fled away far beyond earshot of these blows and shoutings;
he was sunk beneath seas of silence; and his name, which would once have caught his notice
above the howling of a storm, had become an empty sound. And presently the jovial gentleman
desisted from his knocking and departed.
< 7 > Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained
to be done, to get forth from this accusing neighbourhood, to plunge into a bath of London
multitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, that haven of safety and apparent
innocence - his bed. One visitor had come: at any moment another might follow and be
more obstinate. To have done the deed, and yet not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent
a failure. The money, that was now Markheim's concern; and as a means to that, the keys.
He glanced over his shoulder at the open door, where the shadow was still lingering and shivering;
and with no conscious repugnance of the mind, yet with a tremor of the belly, he drew near
the body of his victim. The human character had quite departed. Like a suit half-stuffed
with bran, the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled, on the floor; and yet the thing repelled
him. Although so dingy and inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have more significance
to the touch. He took the body by the shoulders, and turned it on its back. It was strangely
light and supple, and the limbs, as if they had been broken, fell into the oddest postures.
The face was robbed of all expression; but it was as pale as wax, and shockingly smeared
with blood about one temple. That was, for Markheim, the one displeasing circumstance.
It carried him back, upon the instant, to a certain fair-day in a fishers' village:
a gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon the street, the blare of the brasses, the booming
of drums, the nasal voice of a ballad singer; and a boy going to and fro, buried over head
in the crowd and divided between interest and fear, until, coming out upon the chief
place of concourse, he beheld a booth and a great screen with pictures, dismally designed,
garishly coloured: Brownrigg with her apprentice; the Mannings with their murdered guest; Weare
in the death-grip of Thurtell; and a score besides of famous crimes. The thing was as
clear as an illusion; he was once again that little boy; he was looking once again, and
with the same sense of physical revolt, at these vile pictures; he was still stunned
by the thumping of the drums. A bar of that day's music returned upon his memory; and
at that, for the first time, a qualm came over him, a breath of nausea, a sudden weakness
of the joints, which he must instantly resist and conquer.
< 8 > He judged it more prudent to confront than
to flee from these considerations; looking the more hardily in the dead face, bending
his mind to realise the nature and greatness of his crime. So little a while ago that face
had moved with every change of sentiment, that pale mouth had spoken, that body had
been all on fire with governable energies; and now, and by his act, that piece of life
had been arrested as the horologist, with interjected finger, arrests the beating of
the clock. So he reasoned in vain; he could rise to no more remorseful consciousness;
the same heart which had shuddered before the painted effigies of crime, looked on its
reality unmoved. At best, he felt a gleam of pity for one who had been endowed in vain
with all those faculties that can make the world a garden of enchantment, one who had
never lived and who was now dead. But of penitence, no, not a tremor.
With that, shaking himself clear of these considerations, he found the keys and advanced
towards the open door of the shop. Outside, it had begun to rain smartly; and the sound
of the shower upon the roof had banished silence. Like some dripping cavern, the chambers of
the house were haunted by an incessant echoing, which filled the ear and mingled with the
ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim approached the door, he seemed to hear, in answer to
his own cautious tread, the steps of another foot withdrawing up the stair. The shadow
still palpitated loosely on the threshold. He threw a ton's weight of resolve upon his
muscles, and drew back the door.
The faint, foggy daylight glimmered dimly on the bare floor and stairs; on the bright
suit of armour posted, halbert in hand, upon the landing; and on the dark wood-carvings,
and framed pictures that hung against the yellow panels of the wainscot. So loud was
the beating of the rain through all the house that, in Markheim's ears, it began to be distinguished
into many different sounds. Footsteps and sighs, the tread of regiments marching in
the distance, the *** of money in the counting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily
ajar, appeared to mingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing
of the water in the pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him to the verge
of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt by presences. He heard them moving
in the upper chambers; from the shop, he heard the dead man getting to his legs; and as he
began with a
great effort to mount the stairs, feet fled quietly before him and followed stealthily
behind. If he were but deaf, he thought, how tranquilly he would posses his soul! And then
again, and hearkening with ever fresh attention, he blessed himself for that unresting sense
which held the outposts and stood a trusty sentinel upon his life. His head turned continually
on his neck; his eyes, which seemed starting from their orbits, scouted on every side,
and on every side were half-rewarded as with the tail of something nameless vanishing.
The four-and-twenty steps to the first floor were four-and-twenty agonies.
< 9 > On that first story, the doors stood ajar,
three of them like three ambushes, shaking his nerves like the throats of cannon. He
could never again, he felt, be sufficiently immured and fortified from men's observing
eyes; he longed to be home, girt in by walls, buried among bedclothes, and invisible to
all but God. And at that thought he wondered a little, recollecting tales of other murderers
and the fear they were said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It was not so, at least,
with him. He feared the laws of nature, lest, in their callous and immutable procedure,
they should preserve some damning evidence of his crime. He feared tenfold more, with
a slavish, superstitious terror, some scission in the continuity of man's experience, some
wilful illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on the rules, calculating
consequence from cause; and what if nature, as the defeated tyrant overthrew the chessboard,
should break the mould of their succession? The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers
said) when the winter changed the time of its appearance. The like might befall Markheim:
the solid walls might become transparent and reveal his doings like those of bees in a
glass hive; the stout planks might yield under his foot like quicksands and detain him in
their clutch; ay, and there were soberer accidents that might destroy him: if, for instance,
the house should fall and imprison him beside the body of his victim; or the house next
door should fly on fire, and the firemen invade him from all sides. These things he feared;
and, in a sense, these things might be called the hands of God reached forth against sin.
But about God Himself he was at ease; his act was doubtless exceptional, but so were
his excuses, which God knew; it was there, and not among men, that he felt sure of justice.
When he had got safe into the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him, he was aware
of a respite from alarms. The room was quite dismantled, uncarpeted besides, and strewn
with packing cases and incongruous furniture; several great pier-glasses, in which he beheld
himself at various angles, like an actor on a stage; many pictures, framed and unframed,
standing, with their faces to the wall; a fine Sheraton sideboard, a cabinet of marquetry,
and a great old bed, with tapestry hangings. The windows opened to the floor; but by great
good fortune the lower part of the shutters had been closed, and this concealed him from
the neighbours. Here, then, Markheim drew in a packing case before the cabinet, and
began to search among the keys. It was a long business, for there were many; and it was
irksome, besides; for, after all, there might be nothing in the cabinet, and time was on
the wing. But the closeness of the occupation sobered him. With the tail of his eye he saw
the door - even glanced at it from time to time directly, like a besieged commander pleased
to verify the good estate of his defences. But in truth he was at peace. The rain falling
in the street sounded natural and pleasant. Presently, on the other side, the notes of
a piano were wakened to the music of a hymn, and the voices of many children took up the
air and words. How stately, how comfortable was the melody! How fresh the youthful voices!
Markheim gave ear to it smilingly, as he sorted out the keys; and his mind was thronged with
answerable ideas and images; church-going children and the pealing of the high organ;
children afield, bathers by the brookside, ramblers on the brambly common, kite-flyers
in the windy and cloud navigated sky; and then, at another cadence of the hymn, back
again to church, and the somnolence of summer Sundays, and the high genteel voice of the
parson (which he smiled a little to recall) and the painted Jacobean tombs, and the dim
lettering of the Ten Commandments in the chancel.
< 10 > And as he sat thus, at once busy and absent,
he was startled to his feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire, a bursting gush of blood,
went over him, and then he stood transfixed and thrilling. A step mounted the stair slowly
and steadily, and presently a hand was laid upon the ***, and the lock clicked, and the
door opened.
Fear held Markheim in a vice. What to expect he knew not, whether the dead man walking,
or the official ministers of human justice, or some chance witness blindly stumbling in
to consign him to the gallows. But when a face was thrust into the aperture, glanced
round the room, looked at him, nodded and smiled as if in friendly recognition, and
then withdrew again, and the door closed behind it, his fear broke loose from his control
in a hoarse cry. At the sound of this the visitant returned.
"Did you call me?" he asked pleasantly, and with that he entered the room and closed the
door behind him.
Markheim stood and gazed at him with all his eyes. Perhaps there was a film upon his sight,
but the outlines of the newcomer seemed to change and waver like those of the idols in
the wavering candlelight of the shop; and at times he thought he knew him; and at times
he thought he bore a likeness to himself; and always, like a lump of living terror,
there lay in his *** the conviction that this thing was not of the earth and not of
God.
And yet the creature had a strange air of the commonplace, as he stood looking on Markheim
with a smile; and when he added: "You are looking for the money, I believe?" it was
in the tones of everyday politeness.
Markheim made no answer.
"I should warn you," resumed the other, "that the maid has left her sweetheart earlier than
usual and will soon be here. If Mr. Markheim be found in this house, I need not describe
to him the consequences."
< 11 > "You know me?" cried the murderer.
The visitor smiled. "You have long been a favourite of mine," he said; "and I have long
observed and often sought to help you."
"What are you?" cried Markheim: "the devil?"
"What I may be," returned the other, "cannot affect the service I propose to render you."
"It can," cried Markheim; "it does! Be helped by you? No, never; not by you! You do not
know me yet; thank God, you do not know me!"
"I know you," replied the visitant, with a sort of kind severity or rather firmness.
"I know you to the soul."
"Know me!" cried Markheim. "Who can do so? My life is but a travesty and slander on myself.
I have lived to belie my nature. All men do; all men are better than this disguise that
grows about and stifles them. You see each dragged away by life, like one whom bravos
have seized and muffled in a cloak. If they had their own control - if you could see their
faces, they would be altogether different, they would shine out for heroes and saints!
I am worse than most; myself is more overlaid; my excuse is known to men and God. But, had
I the time, I could disclose myself."
"To me?" inquired the visitant.
"To you before all," returned the murderer. "I supposed you were intelligent. I thought
- since you exist - you could prove a reader of the heart. And yet you would propose to
judge me by my acts! Think of it; my acts! I was born and I have lived in a land of giants;
giants have dragged me by the wrists since I was born out of my mother - the giants of
circumstance. And you would judge me by my acts! But can you not look within? Can you
not understand that evil is hateful to me? Can you not see within me the clear writing
of conscience, never blurred by any wilful sophistry, although too often disregarded?
Can you not read me for a thing that surely must be common as humanity - the unwilling
sinner?"
< 12 > "All this is very feelingly expressed," was
the reply, "but it regards me not. These points of consistency are beyond my province, and
I care not in the least by what compulsion you may have been dragged away, so as you
are but carried in the right direction. But time flies; the servant delays, looking in
the faces of the crowd and at the pictures on the hoardings, but still she keeps moving
nearer; and remember, it is as if the gallows itself was striding towards you through the
Christmas streets! Shall I help you; I, who know all? Shall I tell you where to find the
money?"
"For what price?" asked Markheim.
"I offer you the service for a Christmas gift," returned the other.
Markheim could not refrain from smiling with a kind of bitter triumph. "No," said he, "I
will take nothing at your hands; if I were dying of thirst, and it was your hand that
put the pitcher to my lips, I should find the courage to refuse. It may be credulous,
but I will do nothing to commit myself to evil."
"I have no objection to a deathbed repentance," observed the visitant.
"Because you disbelieve their efficacy!" Markheim cried.
"I do not say so," returned the other; "but I look on these things from a different side,
and when the life is done my interest falls. The man has lived to serve me, to spread black
looks under colour of religion, or to sow tares in the wheatfield, as you do, in a course
of weak compliance with desire. Now that he draws so near to his deliverance, he can add
but one act of service - to repent, to die smiling, and thus to build up in confidence
and hope the more timorous of my surviving followers. I am not so hard a master. Try
me. Accept my help. Please yourself in life as you have done hitherto; please yourself
more amply, spread your elbows at the board; and when the night begins to fall and the
curtains to be drawn, I tell you, for your greater comfort, that you will find it even
easy to compound your quarrel with your conscience, and to make a truckling peace with God. I
came but now from such a deathbed, and the room was full of sincere mourners, listening
to the man's last words: and when I looked into that face, which had been set as a flint
against mercy, I found it smiling with hope."
< 13 > "And do you, then, suppose me such a creature?"
asked Markheim. "Do you think I have no more generous aspirations than to sin, and sin,
and, at the last, sneak into heaven? My heart rises at the thought. Is this, then, your
experience of mankind? or is it because you find me with red hands that you presume such
baseness? and is this crime of *** indeed so impious as to dry up the very springs of
good?"
"*** is to me no special category," replied the other.
"All sins are ***, even as all life is war. I behold your race, like starving mariners
on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of famine and feeding on each other's lives.
I follow sins beyond the moment of their acting; I find in all that the last consequence is
death; and to my eyes, the pretty maid who thwarts her mother with such taking graces
on a question of a ball, drips no less visibly with human gore than such a murderer as yourself.
Do I say that I follow sins? I follow virtues also; they differ not by the thickness of
a nail, they are both scythes for the reaping angel of Death. Evil, for which I live, consists
not in action but in character. The bad man is dear to me; not the bad act, whose fruits,
if we could follow them far enough down the hurtling cataract of the ages, might yet be
found more blessed than those of the rarest virtues. And it is not because you have killed
a dealer, but because you are Markheim, that I offer to forward your escape."
"I will lay my heart open to you," answered Markheim. "This crime on which you find me
is my last. On my way to it I have learned many lessons; itself is a lesson, a momentous
lesson. Hitherto I have been driven with revolt to what I would not; I was a bond-slave to
poverty, driven and scourged. There are robust virtues that can stand in these temptations;
mine are not so: I had a thirst of pleasure. But today, and out of this deed, I pluck both
warning and riches - both the power and a fresh resolve to be myself. I become in all
things a free actor in the world; I begin to see myself all changed, hands the agents
of good, this heart at peace. Something comes over me out of the past; something of what
I have dreamed on Sabbath evenings to the sound of the church organ, of what I forecast
when I shed tears over noble books, or talked, an innocent child, with my mother. There lies
my life; I have wandered a few years, but now I see once more my city of destination."
< 14 > "You are to use this money on the Stock Exchange,
I think?" remarked the visitor; "and there, if I mistake not, you have already lost some
thousands?"
"Ah," said Markheim, "but this time I have a sure thing."
"This time, again, you will lose," replied the visitor quietly.
"Ah, but I keep back the half!" cried Markheim.
"That also you will lose," said the other.
The sweat started upon Markheim's brow. "Well, then, what matter?" he exclaimed. "Say it
be lost, say I am plunged again in poverty, shall one part of me, and that the worse,
continue until the end to override the better? Evil and good run strong in me, haling me
both ways. I do not love the one thing, I love all. I can conceive great deeds, renunciations,
martyrdoms; and though I be fallen to such a crime as ***, pity is no stranger to
my thoughts. I pity the poor; who knows their trials better than myself? I pity and help
them; I prize love, I love honest laughter; there is no good thing not true thing on earth
but I love it from my heart. And are my vices only to direct my life, and my virtues without
effect, like some passive lumber of the mind? Not so; good, also, is a spring of acts."
But the visitant raised his finger. "For six-and-thirty years that you have been in this world," said
he, "through many changes of fortune and varieties of humour, I have watched you steadily fall.
Fifteen years ago you would have started at a theft. Three years back you would have blenched
at the name of ***. Is there any crime, is there any cruelty or meanness, from which
you still recoil? - five years from now I shall detect you in the fact! Downward, downward,
lies your way; nor can anything but death avail to stop you."
"It is true," Markheim said huskily, "I have in some degree complied with evil. But it
is so with all: the very saints, in the mere exercise of living, grow less dainty, and
take on the tone of their surroundings."
< 15 > "I will propound to you one simple question,"
said the other; "and as you answer, I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have
grown in many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so; and at any account, it
is the same with all men. But granting that, are you in any one particular, however trifling,
more difficult to please with your own conduct, or do you go in all things with a looser rein?"
"In any one?" repeated Markheim, with an anguish of consideration. "No," he added, with despair,
"in none! I have gone down in all."
"Then," said the visitor, "content yourself with what you are, for you will never change;
and the words of your part on this stage are irrevocably written down."
Markheim stood for a long while silent, and indeed it was the visitor who first broke
the silence. "That being so," he said, "shall I show you the money?"
"And grace?" cried Markheim.
"Have you not tried it?" returned the other. "Two or three years ago. did I not see you
on the platform of revival meetings, and was not your voice the loudest in the hymn?"
"It is true," said Markheim; "and I see clearly what remains for me by way of duty. I thank
you for these lessons from my soul; my eyes are opened, and I behold myself at last for
what I am."
At this moment, the sharp note of the door-bell rang through the house; and the visitant,
as though this were some concerted signal for which he had been waiting, changed at
once in his demeanour.
"The maid!" he cried. "She has returned, as I forewarned you, and there is now before
you one more difficult passage. Her master, you must say, is ill; you must let her in,
with an assured but rather serious countenance - no smiles, no over-acting, and I promise
you success! Once the girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity that has already
rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last danger in your path. Thenceforward
you have the whole evening - the whole night, if needful - to ransack the treasures of the
house and to make good your safety. This is help that comes to you with the mask of danger.
Up!" he cried; "up, friend; your life hangs trembling in the scales: up, and act!"
< 16 > Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor.
"If I be condemned to evil acts," he said, "there is still one door of freedom open - I
can cease from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though I be, as
you say truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I can yet, by one decisive gesture,
place myself beyond the reach of all. My love of good is damned to barrenness; it may, and
let it be! But I have still my hatred of evil; and from that, to your galling disappointment,
you shall see that I can draw both energy and courage."
The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful and lovely change: they brightened
and softened with a tender triumph, and, even as they brightened, faded and dislimned. But
Markheim did not pause to watch or understand the transformation. He opened the door and
went downstairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His past went soberly before him; he beheld
it as it was, ugly and strenuous like a dream, random as chance-medley - a scene of defeat.
Life, as he thus reviewed it, tempted him no longer; but on the farther side he perceived
a quiet haven for his bark. He paused in the passage, and looked into the shop, where the
candle still burned by the dead body. It was strangely silent. Thoughts of the dealer swarmed
into his mind, as he stood gazing. And then the bell once more broke out into impatient
clamour.
He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a smile.
"You had better go for the police," said he: "I have killed your master."