MARKHEIM
'Yes,' said the dealer, 'our windfalls are of various kinds. Somecustomers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend on my superiorknowledge. Some are dishonest,' and here he held up the candle, so thatthe 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 hadnot yet grown familiar with the mingled shine and darkness in the shop.At these pointed words, and before the near presence of the flame, heblinked 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 makea point of refusing business. Well, you will have to pay for that; youwill have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be balancing mybooks; you will have to pay, besides, for a kind of manner that I remarkin you to-day very strongly. I am the essence of discretion, and ask noawkward questions; but when a customer cannot look me in the eye, he hasto pay for it.' The dealer once more chuckled; and then, changing to hisusual 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 theobject?' he continued. 'Still your uncle's cabinet? A remarkablecollector, 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 withevery mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of infinitepity, and a touch of horror.
'This time,' said he, 'you are in error. I have not come to sell, but tobuy. I have no curios to dispose of; my uncle's cabinet is bare to thewainscot; even were it still intact, I have done well on the StockExchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my errandto-day is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas present for a lady,' hecontinued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech he hadprepared; 'and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus disturbing youupon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected yesterday; I mustproduce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you very well know, arich marriage is not a thing to be neglected.'
There followed a pause, during which the dealer seemed to weigh thisstatement incredulously. The ticking of many clocks among the curiouslumber of the shop, and the faint rushing of the cabs in a nearthoroughfare, filled up the interval of silence.
'Well, sir,' said the dealer, 'be it so. You are an old customer afterall; and if, as you say, you have the chance of a good marriage, far beit from me to be an obstacle. Here is a nice thing for a lady now,' hewent on, 'this hand glass--fifteenth century, warranted; comes from agood collection, too; but I reserve the name, in the interests of mycustomer, who was just like yourself, my dear sir, the nephew and soleheir of a remarkable collector.'
The dealer, while he thus ran on in his dry and biting voice, had stoopedto take the object from its place; and, as he had done so, a shock hadpassed through Markheim, a start both of hand and foot, a sudden leap ofmany tumultuous passions to the face. It passed as swiftly as it came,and left no trace beyond a certain trembling of the hand that nowreceived the glass.
'A glass,' he said hoarsely, and then paused, and repeated it moreclearly. '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 askme why not?' he said. 'Why, look here--look in it--look at yourself! Doyou like to see it? No! nor I--nor any man.'
The little man had jumped back when Markheim had so suddenly confrontedhim with the mirror; but now, perceiving there was nothing worse on hand,he chuckled. 'Your future lady, sir, must be pretty hard favoured,' saidhe.
'I ask you,' said Markheim, 'for a Christmas present, and you give methis--this damned reminder of years, and sins and follies--thishand-conscience! Did you mean it? Had you a thought in your mind? Tellme. 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, Markheimdid not appear to be laughing; there was something in his face like aneager sparkle of hope, but nothing of mirth.
'What are you driving at?' the dealer asked.
'Not charitable?' returned the other, gloomily. Not charitable; notpious; not scrupulous; unloving, unbeloved; a hand to get money, a safeto keep it. Is that all? Dear God, man, is that all?'
'I will tell you what it is,' began the dealer, with some sharpness, andthen broke off again into a chuckle. 'But I see this is a love match ofyours, and you have been drinking the lady's health.'
'Ah!' cried Markheim, with a strange curiosity. 'Ah, have you been inlove? Tell me about that.'
'I,' cried the dealer. 'I in love! I never had the time, nor have I thetime to-day for all this nonsense. Will you take the glass?'
'Where is the hurry?' returned Markheim. 'It is very pleasant to standhere talking; and life is so short and insecure that I would not hurryaway from any pleasure--no, not even from so mild a one as this. Weshould rather cling, cling to what little we can get, like a man at acliff's edge. Every second is a cliff, if you think upon it--a cliff amile high--high enough, if we fall, to dash us out of every feature ofhumanity. Hence it is best to talk pleasantly. Let us talk of eachother: 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 yourpurchase, or walk out of my shop!'
'True true,' said Markheim. 'Enough, fooling. To business. Show mesomething else.'
The dealer stooped once more, this time to replace the glass upon theshelf, his thin blond hair falling over his eyes as he did so. Markheimmoved a little nearer, with one hand in the pocket of his greatcoat; hedrew himself up and filled his lungs; at the same time many differentemotions were depicted together on his face--terror, horror, and resolve,fascination and a physical repulsion; and through a haggard lift of hisupper lip, his teeth looked out.
'This, perhaps, may suit,' observed the dealer: and then, as he began tore-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 aheap.
Time had some score of small voices in that shop, some stately and slowas was becoming to their great age; others garrulous and hurried. Allthese told out the seconds in an intricate, chorus of tickings. Then thepassage of a lad's feet, heavily running on the pavement, broke in uponthese smaller voices and startled Markheim into the consciousness of hissurroundings. He looked about him awfully. The candle stood on thecounter, its flame solemnly wagging in a draught; and by thatinconsiderable movement, the whole room was filled with noiseless bustleand kept heaving like a sea: the tall shadows nodding, the gross blots ofdarkness swelling and dwindling as with respiration, the faces of theportraits and the china gods changing and wavering like images in water.The inner door stood ajar, and peered into that leaguer of shadows with along slit of daylight like a pointing finger.
From these fear-stricken rovings, Markheim's eyes returned to the body ofhis victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly small andstrangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in thatungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim hadfeared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And yet, as he gazed, thisbundle 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 directthe 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 ringover England, and fill the world with the echoes of pursuit. Ay, dead ornot, 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 thedeed was accomplished--time, which had closed for the victim, had becomeinstant and momentous for t
he slayer.
The thought was yet in his mind, when, first one and then another, withevery variety of pace and voice--one deep as the bell from a cathedralturret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a waltz-theclocks began to strike the hour of three in the afternoon.
The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb chamber staggeredhim. He began to bestir himself, going to and fro with the candle,beleaguered by moving shadows, and startled to the soul by chancereflections. In many rich mirrors, some of home design, some from Veniceor Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated and repeated, as it were an armyof spies; his own eyes met and detected him; and the sound of his ownsteps, lightly as they fell, vexed the surrounding quiet. And still, ashe continued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him with a sickeningiteration, of the thousand faults of his design. He should have chosen amore quiet hour; he should have prepared an alibi; he should not haveused a knife; he should have been more cautious, and only bound andgagged the dealer, and not killed him; he should have been more bold, andkilled the servant also; he should have done all things otherwise:poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the mind to change what wasunchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to be the architect of theirrevocable past. Meanwhile, and behind all this activity, bruteterrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted attic, filled the moreremote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand of the constable wouldfall 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, andthe black coffin.
Terror of the people in the street sat down before his mind like abesieging army. It was impossible, he thought, but that some rumour ofthe struggle must have reached their ears and set on edge theircuriosity; and now, in all the neighbouring houses, he divined themsitting motionless and with uplifted ear--solitary people, condemned tospend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past, and nowstartingly recalled from that tender exercise; happy family partiesstruck into silence round the table, the mother still with raised finger:every degree and age and humour, but all, by their own hearths, pryingand hearkening and weaving the rope that was to hang him. Sometimes itseemed to him he could not move too softly; the clink of the tallBohemian goblets rang out loudly like a bell; and alarmed by the bignessof the ticking, he was tempted to stop the clocks. And then, again, witha swift transition of his terrors, the very silence of the place appeareda source of peril, and a thing to strike and freeze the passer-by; and hewould step more boldly, and bustle aloud among the contents of the shop,and imitate, with elaborate bravado, the movements of a busy man at easein his own house.
But he was now so pulled about by different alarms that, while oneportion of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trembled on thebrink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong hold onhis credulity. The neighbour hearkening with white face beside hiswindow, the passer-by arrested by a horrible surmise on thepavement--these could at worst suspect, they could not know; through thebrick walls and shuttered windows only sounds could penetrate. But here,within the house, was he alone? He knew he was; he had watched theservant set forth sweet-hearting, in her poor best, 'out for the day'written in every ribbon and smile. Yes, he was alone, of course; andyet, in the bulk of empty house above him, he could surely hear a stir ofdelicate footing--he was surely conscious, inexplicably conscious of somepresence. Ay, surely; to every room and corner of the house hisimagination followed it; and now it was a faceless thing, and yet hadeyes to see with; and again it was a shadow of himself; and yet againbehold the image of the dead dealer, reinspired with cunning and hatred.
At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at the open door whichstill seemed to repel his eyes. The house was tall, the skylight smalland dirty, the day blind with fog; and the light that filtered down tothe ground story was exceedingly faint, and showed dimly on the thresholdof the shop. And yet, in that strip of doubtful brightness, did therenot hang wavering a shadow?
Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial gentleman began to beatwith a staff on the shop-door, accompanying his blows with shouts andrailleries in which the dealer was continually called upon by name.Markheim, smitten into ice, glanced at the dead man. But no! he layquite still; he was fled away far beyond earshot of these blows andshoutings; he was sunk beneath seas of silence; and his name, which wouldonce have caught his notice above the howling of a storm, had become anempty sound. And presently the jovial gentleman desisted from hisknocking, and departed.
Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained to be done, to get forthfrom this accusing neighbourhood, to plunge into a bath of Londonmultitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, that haven of safetyand apparent innocence--his bed. One visitor had come: at any momentanother might follow and be more obstinate. To have done the deed, andyet 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 stilllingering 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. Thehuman character had quite departed. Like a suit half-stuffed with bran,the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled, on the floor; and yet thething repelled him. Although so dingy and inconsiderable to the eye, hefeared it might have more significance to the touch. He took the body bythe shoulders, and turned it on its back. It was strangely light andsupple, and the limbs, as if they had been broken, fell into the oddestpostures. The face was robbed of all expression; but it was as pale aswax, and shockingly smeared with blood about one temple. That was, forMarkheim, the one displeasing circumstance. It carried him back, uponthe instant, to a certain fair-day in a fishers' village: a gray day, apiping wind, a crowd upon the street, the blare of brasses, the boomingof 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 boothand a great screen with pictures, dismally designed, garishly coloured:Brown-rigg with her apprentice; the Mannings with their murdered guest;Weare in the death-grip of Thurtell; and a score besides of famouscrimes. The thing was as clear as an illusion; he was once again thatlittle boy; he was looking once again, and with the same sense ofphysical revolt, at these vile pictures; he was still stunned by thethumping of the drums. A bar of that day's music returned upon hismemory; and at that, for the first time, a qualm came over him, a breathof nausea, a sudden weakness of the joints, which he must instantlyresist and conquer.
He judged it more prudent to confront than to flee from theseconsiderations; looking the more hardily in the dead face, bending hismind to realise the nature and greatness of his crime. So little a whileago that face had moved with every change of sentiment, that pale mouthhad spoken, that body had been all on fire with governable energies; andnow, and by his act, that piece of life had been arrested, as thehorologist, with interjected finger, arrests the beating of the clock. Sohe 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 onewho had been endowed in vain with all those faculties that can make theworld a garden of enchantment, one who had never lived and who was nowdead. But of penitence, no, not a tremor.
With that, shaking himself clear of these considerations, he found thekeys and advanced towards the open door of the shop. Outside, it hadbegun to rain smartly; and the sound of the shower upon the roof hadbanished silence. Like some dripping cavern, the chambers of the housewere haunted by an incessant echoing, which filled the ear and mingledwith the ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim approached the door, heseemed to hear, in answer to his own cautious tread, the steps of anotherfoot withdrawing up the stair. The shadow still palpitated loosely onthe threshold. He threw a ton's weight of resolve upon his muscl
es, anddrew 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 theyellow panels of the wainscot. So loud was the beating of the rainthrough all the house that, in Markheim's ears, it began to bedistinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps and sighs, the treadof regiments marching in the distance, the chink of money in thecounting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar, appeared tomingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing ofthe water in the pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him tothe verge of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt bypresences. He heard them moving in the upper chambers; from the shop, heheard the dead man getting to his legs; and as he began with a greateffort to mount the stairs, feet fled quietly before him and followedstealthily behind. If he were but deaf, he thought, how tranquilly hewould possess his soul! And then again, and hearkening with ever freshattention, he blessed himself for that unresting sense which held theoutposts and stood a trusty sentinel upon his life. His head turnedcontinually on his neck; his eyes, which seemed starting from theirorbits, scouted on every side, and on every side were half-rewarded aswith the tail of something nameless vanishing. The four-and-twenty stepsto the first floor were four-and-twenty agonies.
On that first storey, the doors stood ajar, three of them like threeambushes, shaking his nerves like the throats of cannon. He could neveragain, he felt, be sufficiently immured and fortified from men'sobserving eyes, he longed to be home, girt in by walls, buried amongbedclothes, and invisible to all but God. And at that thought hewondered a little, recollecting tales of other murderers and the fearthey were said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It was not so, atleast, with him. He feared the laws of nature, lest, in their callousand immutable procedure, they should preserve some damning evidence ofhis crime. He feared tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitions terror,some scission in the continuity of man's experience, some wilfulillegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on the rules,calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as the defeatedtyrant overthrew the chess-board, should break the mould of theirsuccession? The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said) when thewinter changed the time of its appearance. The like might befallMarkheim: the solid walls might become transparent and reveal his doingslike those of bees in a glass hive; the stout planks might yield underhis foot like quicksands and detain him in their clutch; ay, and therewere soberer accidents that might destroy him: if, for instance, thehouse should fall and imprison him beside the body of his victim; or thehouse next door should fly on fire, and the firemen invade him from allsides. These things he feared; and, in a sense, these things might becalled the hands of God reached forth against sin. But about God himselfhe was at ease; his act was doubtless exceptional, but so were hisexcuses, which God knew; it was there, and not among men, that he feltsure 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 incongruousfurniture; several great pier-glasses, in which he beheld himself atvarious angles, like an actor on a stage; many pictures, framed andunframed, standing, with their faces to the wall; a fine Sheratonsideboard, a cabinet of marquetry, and a great old bed, with tapestryhangings. The windows opened to the floor; but by great good fortune thelower part of the shutters had been closed, and this concealed him fromthe neighbours. Here, then, Markheim drew in a packing case before thecabinet, and began to search among the keys. It was a long business, forthere were many; and it was irksome, besides; for, after all, there mightbe nothing in the cabinet, and time was on the wing. But the closenessof the occupation sobered him. With the tail of his eye he saw thedoor--even glanced at it from time to time directly, like a besiegedcommander pleased to verify the good estate of his defences. But intruth he was at peace. The rain falling in the street sounded naturaland pleasant. Presently, on the other side, the notes of a piano werewakened to the music of a hymn, and the voices of many children took upthe air and words. How stately, how comfortable was the melody! Howfresh the youthful voices! Markheim gave ear to it smilingly, as hesorted out the keys; and his mind was thronged with answerable ideas andimages; church-going children and the pealing of the high organ; childrenafield, bathers by the brookside, ramblers on the brambly common, kite-flyers in the windy and cloud-navigated sky; and then, at another cadenceof 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 torecall) and the painted Jacobean tombs, and the dim lettering of the TenCommandments 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 stairslowly and steadily, and presently a hand was laid upon the knob, and thelock clicked, and the door opened.
Fear held Markheim in a vice. What to expect he knew not, whether thedead man walking, or the official ministers of human justice, or somechance witness blindly stumbling in to consign him to the gallows. Butwhen a face was thrust into the aperture, glanced round the room, lookedat him, nodded and smiled as if in friendly recognition, and thenwithdrew again, and the door closed behind it, his fear broke loose fromhis 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 theroom and closed the door behind him.
Markheim stood and gazed at him with all his eyes. Perhaps there was afilm upon his sight, but the outlines of the new comer seemed to changeand waver like those of the idols in the wavering candle-light of theshop; and at times he thought he knew him; and at times he thought hebore 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 theearth and not of God.
And yet the creature had a strange air of the commonplace, as he stoodlooking on Markheim with a smile; and when he added: 'You are looking forthe 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 hersweetheart earlier than usual and will soon be here. If Mr. Markheim befound 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 proposeto render you.'
'It can,' cried Markheim; 'it does! Be helped by you? No, never; not byyou! 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 orrather firmness. 'I know you to the soul.'
'Know me!' cried Markheim. 'Who can do so? My life is but a travestyand slander on myself. I have lived to belie my nature. All men do; allmen are better than this disguise that grows about and stifles them. Yousee each dragged away by life, like one whom bravos have seized andmuffled in a cloak. If they had their own control--if you could seetheir faces, they would be altogether different, they would shine out forheroes and saints! I am worse than most; myself is more overlaid; myexcuse is known to me and God. But, had I the time, I could disclosemyself.'
'To me?' inquired the visitant.
'To you before all,' returned the murderer. 'I supposed you wereintelligent. I thought--since you exist--you would prove a reader of theheart. 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 havedragged me by the wrists since I was born out of my mother--the giants ofcir
cumstance. And you would judge me by my acts! But can you not lookwithin? Can you not understand that evil is hateful to me? Can you notsee within me the clear writing of conscience, never blurred by anywilful sophistry, although too often disregarded? Can you not read mefor a thing that surely must be common as humanity--the unwillingsinner?'
'All this is very feelingly expressed,' was the reply, 'but it regards menot. These points of consistency are beyond my province, and I care notin the least by what compulsion you may have been dragged away, so as youare but carried in the right direction. But time flies; the servantdelays, looking in the faces of the crowd and at the pictures on thehoardings, but still she keeps moving nearer; and remember, it is as ifthe gallows itself was striding towards you through the Christmasstreets! Shall I help you; I, who know all? Shall I tell you where tofind 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 ofthirst, and it was your hand that put the pitcher to my lips, I shouldfind the courage to refuse. It may be credulous, but I will do nothingto commit myself to evil.'
'I have no objection to a death-bed 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 adifferent side, and when the life is done my interest falls. The man haslived to serve me, to spread black looks under colour of religion, or tosow tares in the wheat-field, as you do, in a course of weak compliancewith desire. Now that he draws so near to his deliverance, he can addbut one act of service--to repent, to die smiling, and thus to build upin confidence and hope the more timorous of my surviving followers. I amnot so hard a master. Try me. Accept my help. Please yourself in lifeas you have done hitherto; please yourself more amply, spread your elbowsat the board; and when the night begins to fall and the curtains to bedrawn, I tell you, for your greater comfort, that you will find it eveneasy to compound your quarrel with your conscience, and to make atruckling peace with God. I came but now from such a deathbed, and theroom was full of sincere mourners, listening to the man's last words: andwhen I looked into that face, which had been set as a flint againstmercy, I found it smiling with hope.'
'And do you, then, suppose me such a creature?' asked Markheim. 'Do youthink 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. Isthis, then, your experience of mankind? or is it because you find me withred hands that you presume such baseness? and is this crime of murderindeed so impious as to dry up the very springs of good?'
'Murder is to me no special category,' replied the other. 'All sins aremurder, even as all life is war. I behold your race, like starvingmariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of famine andfeeding on each other's lives. I follow sins beyond the moment of theiracting; 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 aquestion of a ball, drips no less visibly with human gore than such amurderer as yourself. Do I say that I follow sins? I follow virtuesalso; they differ not by the thickness of a nail, they are both scythesfor the reaping angel of Death. Evil, for which I live, consists not inaction 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 hurtlingcataract of the ages, might yet be found more blessed than those of therarest virtues. And it is not because you have killed a dealer, butbecause you are Markheim, that I offer to forward your escape.'
'I will lay my heart open to you,' answered Markheim. 'This crime onwhich you find me is my last. On my way to it I have learned manylessons; itself is a lesson, a momentous lesson. Hitherto I have beendriven 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 thesetemptations; 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 anda fresh resolve to be myself. I become in all things a free actor in theworld; I begin to see myself all changed, these hands the agents of good,this heart at peace. Something comes over me out of the past; somethingof what I have dreamed on Sabbath evenings to the sound of the churchorgan, 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 afew years, but now I see once more my city of destination.'
'You are to use this money on the Stock Exchange, I think?' remarked thevisitor; 'and there, if I mistake not, you have already lost somethousands?'
'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?' heexclaimed. 'Say it be lost, say I am plunged again in poverty, shall onepart of me, and that the worse, continue until the end to override thebetter? Evil and good run strong in me, haling me both ways. I do notlove the one thing, I love all. I can conceive great deeds,renunciations, martyrdoms; and though I be fallen to such a crime asmurder, pity is no stranger to my thoughts. I pity the poor; who knowstheir trials better than myself? I pity and help them; I prize love, Ilove honest laughter; there is no good thing nor true thing on earth butI love it from my heart. And are my vices only to direct my life, and myvirtues to lie without effect, like some passive lumber of the mind? Notso; good, also, is a spring of acts.'
But the visitant raised his finger. 'For six-and-thirty years that youhave been in this world,' said be, 'through many changes of fortune andvarieties of humour, I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen years agoyou would have started at a theft. Three years back you would haveblenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is there any crueltyor meanness, from which you still recoil?--five years from now I shalldetect you in the fact! Downward, downward, lies your way; nor cananything but death avail to stop you.'
'It is true,' Markheim said huskily, 'I have in some degree complied withevil. But it is so with all: the very saints, in the mere exercise ofliving, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their surroundings.'
'I will propound to you one simple question,' said the other; 'and as youanswer, I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have grown in manythings more lax; possibly you do right to be so--and at any account, itis the same with all men. But granting that, are you in any oneparticular, however trifling, more difficult to please with your ownconduct, 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 youwill never change; and the words of your part on this stage areirrevocably written down.'
Markheim stood for a long while silent, and indeed it was the visitor whofirst broke the silence. 'That being so,' he said, 'shall I show you themoney?'
'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 yourvoice the loudest in the hymn?'
'It is true,' said Markheim; 'and I see clearly what remains for me byway of duty. I thank you for these lessons from my soul; my eyes areopened, 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 hehad been waiting, changed at once in his demeanour.
'The maid!' he cried. 'She has returned, as I forewarned you, and thereis now before you one more difficult passage. Her mas
ter, you must say,is ill; you must let her in, with an assured but rather seriouscountenance--no smiles, no overacting, and I promise you success! Oncethe girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity that has alreadyrid 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--toransack the treasures of the house and to make good your safety. This ishelp 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 evilacts,' he said, 'there is still one door of freedom open--I can ceasefrom action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though Ibe, 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 loveof good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let it be! But I have stillmy hatred of evil; and from that, to your galling disappointment, youshall see that I can draw both energy and courage.'
The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful and lovelychange: they brightened and softened with a tender triumph, and, even asthey brightened, faded and dislimned. But Markheim did not pause towatch or understand the transformation. He opened the door and wentdownstairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His past went soberlybefore 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 reviewedit, tempted him no longer; but on the further side he perceived a quiethaven 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. Andthen 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.'