Speaker 1: Markhaim by Robert Louis Stevenson. Yes, said the dealer. Our
windfalls are of various kinds. Some customers are ignorant, and
then I touch a dividend on my superior knowledge. Some
are dishonest. And here he held up the candle so
that the light fell strongly on his visitor. And in
that case, he continued, I profit by my virtue. Markham
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. Ere you come to
me on Christmas Day, he resumed, When you know that
I 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
asked 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 are remarkable, collector, sir, and the
little pale, ranch olded dealer stood almost on tiptoe, looking
over the top of his gold spectacles and nodding his
head with ever remark 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 cabin that is bare
to the wainscoat, 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. Uncertainly, 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
the statement incredulously. The ticking of many clocks among the
curious number of the shop on 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 reserved the name in the interest
of my customer, who was just like yourself, my dear sir,
the nephew and sole air 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 tree. Rumbling 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? Mark
Him 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 not any man. The little man had jumped
back when Markham 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 favored, said he.
I ask you, said, markueim for a Christmas present, and
you give me this, this damned the reminder of years
and sins and follies, this hand conscience? Did you mean it?
Had you a thought on your head? Tell me it
will be better for you if you do. Come. Tell
me about yourself. I hazard a guest, now that you
are in SECRETA very charitable man. The dealer looked closely
at his companion. It was very odd marchand 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.
I am 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 up again into a chuckle.
But I see this is a love match of yours,
and you have been drinking the lady's health. Ahh ah,
cried Mark. I'm with a strange curiosity. Ah have you
been in love? Tell me about that? I cried the dealer. Aye,
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 Mark, I'm 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 some mild or
one as this we should rather cling, cling to what
little we can get, like a man that a clip, said,
Every second is a clip, if you think upon it,
a clip a mile high, high enough if before 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 Mark, I'm enough fooling to business. Show me something else.
The dealer stooped once more, this time to replace the
glass upon the shelf, his thin blonde hair falling over
his eyes. As he did so, Mark I 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, Mark I'm bounded from behind
upon his victim. The long skiwer like 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 speed heavily running on the pavement, broke in
upon these smaller voices and startled markim into the consciousness
of his surroundings. He looked about him awfully. The candle
stood on the counter, its flames solemnly wagging in a draft,
And by that inconsiderable movement, the whole room was filled
with noiseless bustle, and kept heavinged 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 guards changing and wavering like images in water.
The inner door stood ajar and peered into that league
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. Marcheim 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 I and then then with this dead flesh,
lift up a cry that would ring over England and
all the world with the echoes of pursuit eye. 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 it 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 patient 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 at three in the afternoon. The sudden
outbreak of so many tongues and that dumb chamber staggered him.
He began to bestir himself, going to and fro with
the candle, beleagued by moving shadows, and startled to the
soul by chance reflections in many rich mirrors, some of
whom 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 as the
thousand faults of his design. He should have chosen a
more quiet hour. He should have prepared an alibi. He
should not abuse the knife. He should have been more
cautious and only bound and gagged the dealer and not
killed them. 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 the 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 rumor of the struggle must have reached
their ears and set on edge their curiosity. And now
in all the neighboring 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, the mother still with raised finger,
every degree, and age and humor, but all by their
own harms, 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. But he was now
so pulled about by different alarms that while one portion
of his mind was still alertent cunning, another trembled on
the brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular, took a
strong hold on his credulity. The neighbor 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 shattered windows,
only sounds could penetrate. But here within the house was
he alone. He knew he was. He had watched the
servant set forth, sweethearting 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 baseless 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 starf on
the shop door, accompanying his blows with shouts and braileries,
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 neighborhood, 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 Marquim'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 markuhin the
one displeasing circumstance, It carried him back upon the instant,
to a certain fair day in a fisher's 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 overhead 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 colored brown rig with her apprentice,
the Mannings with their murdered guest wear in the death
drip of thirtle, 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 of 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 realize 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 cabin. 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 Marqueim approached the door,
he seemed to hear, in answer to his own cautious tread,
the steps of another foot. With Drawing up the stair,
the shadow still pulpitated 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
armor poosted hal but 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 sands, 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 adure appeared to
mingle with the patter of the drupts 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 sharp 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 death, he thought,
how tranquility he would possess his soul. And then again,
and hearkening with ever fresh attention, he blessed himself with
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 ever's side and on ever 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 agones. On that first story the door 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, get 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 scision
in the tenuity 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 mold of
their succession, the like had before the 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 eye. 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 fireman evade 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 peer 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 shoretn sideboard, a cabinet at marketry, 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 neighbors. Here. Then Marqueim drew in a packing
case before the cabinet and began to search among the keys.
It was a long business, but 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 defenses. 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. Markueim 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 brook side, 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, gentee
ill 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 stairs, 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. When 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. Marchim stood
and gazed at him with all his eyes. Perhaps there
was a film upon his side, but the outlines of
the newcomer seemed to change and waver, like those of
the idols in the wavering candlelight of the shop. And
the times he thought he knew him, and the times
he thought he bore a likeness to himself, and always
like a lump of living terror that 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 commonplace as he stood looking on Marqueim
with a smile. And when he added, you are looking
for the money, I believe it was in the tones
of every day politeness. Marquim 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 mister Marqueim 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
favorite of mine, he said, and I have long observed
and often sought to help you. What are you, cried
Marquind the devil. What I may be returned the other
cannot affect the service I propose to render you, it can,
cried Markueim. It does be helped by you, know, 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 Marqueim. 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 brabos 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, and you 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 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 conscience, never blurred by any wilful soil pastry,
although too often disregarded. Can you not read me for
a thing that surely must be common as humanity? The
unwilling senner. 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 were striding towards you through the
Christmas streets. Help you, I who know all? Shall I
tell you or where to find the money? For what price?
Asked Marqueim, I offer you the service for a Christmas gift,
returned the other. Marquis 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 pitch to
my lips, I should find the carriage 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 the efficacy, Marquim cried,
I do not say, sir, returned the other. But I
look on these things from a different side. And when
the life is done, my interest fall. The man has
lived to serve me, to spread black looks under color
of religion, or to sew tears in the wheat field,
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 incompetence 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 death bed, 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 markin Do you think I have
no more generous aspirations than to sin, and sin, and sin,
and at the last sneak and to heaven? My heart
rises at the thought. Is this than 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 try 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 awe 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 offered to forward your escape.
I will lay my heart open to you, answered Marqueim.
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 had
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 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. You ought 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 Markuim. 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 Marqueim. That also
you will lose, said the other. The sweat started upon
Marqueim'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, hailing 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 childs
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 humor,
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 withal the very saints, in the
mere exercise of living, grow less dainty and take on
the tone of their surroundings. I will propoun 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 Marquim, 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. Marquis 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 Marqueim. Have you not ried 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 Markueim, 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 demeanor. The maid, he cried, she has returned as
I forewarned you, and that 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. Thence
forward 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 mark,
iim steadily regarded his Counselor. 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,
placed 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 dislambed. But Markim 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, madly a scene of defeat life.
As he thus reviewed it tempted him no longer. But
on the further 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 clamor. 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 and of Markheim by Robert Louis Ditnson