Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (61 page)

But then, her husband was
always a perplexing writer. He alternated good novels with weak ones throughout
his career. He wrote knowingly and feelingly about the special world of
children while turning out “shilling shockers” about demonic possession and
murder at the same time. He once wrote a piece denouncing adultery while
carrying on an affair with a married woman. Some of his sunniest pieces were
written in the throes of tuberculosis. He was a complex character, though his
writing does not always reflect it.

Stevenson’s mysteries are
two-dimensional. Good struggles against evil. There are no gradations between.
It is a child’s view of life, an unsophisticated one, because Stevenson clung
tightly to childhood all his life. What redeems his outmoded view of life is
his sweeping romantic style. He knew how to catch up his reader in words and
carry him wherever he pleased.

In “Markheim,” he
transports us to the twisted inner world of the holiday shopper. Interestingly,
the first rustlings of consumer advocacy may be found here. Caveat vendor!

“Yes,”
said the dealer, “our
windfalls are of various kinds. Some customers are ignorant, and then I touch a
dividend on my superior knowledge. Some are dishonest,” and here he held up the
candle, so that the light fell strongly on his visitor, “and in that case,” he
continued, “I profit by my virtue.”

Markheim had but just
entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes had not yet grown familiar with
the mingled shine and darkness in the shop. At these pointed words, and before
the near presence of the flame, he blinked painfully and looked aside.

The dealer chuckled. “You
come to me on Christmas Day,” he resumed, “when you know that I am alone in my
house, put up my shutters, and make a point of refusing business. Well, you
will have to pay for that; you will have to pay for my loss of time, when I should
be balancing my books; you will have to pay, besides, for a kind of manner that
I remark in you today 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 stopped to take the object from its
place; and, as he had done so, a shock had passed through Markheim, a start
both of hand and foot, a sudden leap of many tumultuous passions to the face.
It passed as swiftly as it came, and left no trace beyond a certain trembling
of the hand that now received the glass.

“A glass,” he said
hoarsely, and then paused, and repeated it more clearly. “A glass? For
Christmas? Surely not?”

“And why not?” cried the
dealer. “Why not a glass?”

Markheim was looking upon
him with an indefinable expression. “You ask me why not?” he said. “Why, look
here—look in it—look at yourself! Do you like to see it? No! nor—nor any man.”

The little man had jumped
back when Markheim had so suddenly confronted him with the mirror; but now,
perceiving there was nothing worse on hand, he chuckled. “Your future lady,
sir, must be pretty hard-favoured,” said he.

“
I ask you,” said Markheim, “for a
Christmas present, and you give me this—this damned reminder of years, and sins
and follies—this hand-conscience? Did you mean it? Had you a thought in your
mind? Tell me. It will be better for you if you do. Come, tell me about
yourself. I hazard a guess now, that you are in secret a very charitable man?”

The dealer looked closely
at his companion. It was very odd, Markheim did not appear to be laughing;
there was something in his face like an eager sparkle of hope, but nothing of
mirth.

“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 of each other:
why should we wear this mask? Let us be confidential. Who knows, we might
become friends?”

“I have just one word to
say to you,” said the dealer. “Either make your purchase, or walk out of my
shop!”

“True, true,” said
Markheim. “Enough fooling. To business. Show me something else.”

The dealer stooped once
more, this time to replace the glass upon the shelf, his thin blond hair
falling over his eyes as he did so. Markheim moved a little nearer, with one
hand in the pocket of his greatcoat; he drew himself up and filled his lungs;
at the same time many different emotions were depicted together on his
face—terror, horror, and resolve, fascination and a physical repulsion; and
through a haggard lift of his upper lip, his teeth looked out.

“This, perhaps, may suit,”
observed the dealer: and then, as he began to re-arise, Markheim bounded from
behind upon his victim. The long, skewerlike dagger flashed and fell. The
dealer struggled like a hen, striking his temple on the shelf, and then tumbled
on the floor in a heap.

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 designs,
some from Venice or Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated and repeated, as it
were an army of spies; his own eyes met and detected him; and the sound of his
own steps, lightly as they fell, vexed the surrounding quiet.

And still, as he
continued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him with a sickening iteration,
of the thousand faults of his design. He should have chosen a more quiet hour;
he should have prepared an alibi; he should not have used a knife; he should
have been more cautious, and only bound and gagged the dealer, and not killed
him; he should have been more bold, and killed the servant also; he should have
done all things otherwise—poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the
mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to be the
architect of the irrevocable past.

Meanwhile, and behind all
this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted attic,
filled the more remote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand of the
constable would fall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would jerk like a
hooked fish; or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the
gallows, and the black coffin.

Terror of the people in
the street sat down before his mind like a besieging army. It was impossible,
he thought, but that some rumour of the struggle must have reached their ears
and set on edge their curiosity; and now, in all the neighbouring houses, he
divined them sitting motionless and with uplifted ear—solitary people,
condemned to spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past, and now
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 humour, but all, by their own hearths, prying and hearkening and
weaving the rope that was to hang him.