Markheim E-book

                                      1886 
                                    MARKHEIM

                           by Robert Louis Stevenson









Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)


                               MARKHEIM
-
  "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 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."
  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 I- 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. "Our 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.
  "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 to-day 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 to 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.
  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.
  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 design, 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
startlingly recalled from that tender exercise; happy family
parties, struck into silence round the table, and mother still with
raised finger: every degree and age and humour, but all, by their
own hearths, prying the 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.
  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 my 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.
  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 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.
                                                    
  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 possess his soul! And then again, and
hearkening with every 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 storey, 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 chess-board,
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 I 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.
                                                    
  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 new-comer 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 every-day
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 me 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 would 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 circumstances. 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 wheat-fields, 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 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."
  "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 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 was not so: I had a thirst of
pleasure. But to-day, 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, these hands the agents of good, this heart of 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."
                                                    
  "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 nor
true thing on earth but I love it from my heart. And are my vices only
to direct my life, and my virtues to lie 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?"
  "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 overacting, 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."
  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."
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                               THE END