"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?" 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.
(3)
"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. "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.
(4)
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 humped 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. 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.
(5)
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. 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.
(7)
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. 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.
(8)
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 chink 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. 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.
(9)
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. 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 knob, and the lock clicked, and the door opened.
(10)
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 bosom 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." "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."
(11)
"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?" "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."
(12)
"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 murder indeed so impious as to dry up the very springs of
good?" "Murder is to me no special category," replied the other. "All sins are
murder, 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."
(13)
"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 murder, 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 murder. 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." "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?"
(14)
"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!" 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."
(15)
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."
by Robert Louis Stevenson
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