Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (62 page)

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 by name. Markheim, smitten into ice, glanced at the
dead man. But no! he lay quite still; he was fled away far beyond earshot of
these blows and shoutings; he was sunk beneath seas of silence; and his name,
which would once have caught his notice above the howling of a storm, had
become an empty sound. And presently the jovial gentleman desisted from his
knocking and departed.

Here was a broad hint to
hurry what remained to be done, to get forth from this accusing neighbourhood,
to plunge into a bath of London multitudes, and to reach, on the other side of
day, that haven of safety and apparent innocence—his bed. One visitor had come;
at any moment another might follow and be more obstinate. To have done the
deed, and yet not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent a failure. The
money, that was now Markheim’s concern; and as a means to that, the keys.

He glanced over his
shoulder at the open door, where the shadow was still lingering and shivering;
and with no conscious repugnance of the mind, yet with a tremor of the belly,
he drew near the body of his victim. The human character had quite departed.
Like a suit half-stuffed with bran, the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled,
on the floor; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and
inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have more significance to the
touch.

He took the body by the
shoulders, and turned it on its back. It was strangely light and supple, and
the limbs, as if they had been broken, fell into the oddest postures. The face
was robbed of all expression; but it was as pale as wax, and shockingly smeared
with blood about one temple. That was, for Markheim, the one displeasing
circumstance. It carried him back, upon the instant, to a certain fair-day in a
fishers’ village: a gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon the street, the blare
of the brasses, the booming of drums, the nasal voice of a ballad singer; and a
boy going to and fro, buried over head in the crowd and divided between interest
and fear, until, coming out upon the chief place of concourse, he beheld a
booth and a great screen with pictures, dismally designed, garishly coloured:
Brownrigg with her apprentice; the Mannings with their murdered guest; Weare in
the death-grip of Thurtell; and a score besides of famous crimes.

The thing was as clear as
an illusion; he was once again that little boy; he was looking once again, and
with the same sense of physical revolt, at these vile pictures; he was still
stunned by the thumping of the drums. A bar of that day’s music returned upon
his memory; and at that, for the first time, a qualm came over him, a breath of
nausea, a sudden weakness of the joints, which he must instantly resist and
conquer.

He judged it more prudent
to confront than to flee from these considerations; looking the more hardily in
the dead face, bending his mind to realise the nature and greatness of his
crime. So little a while ago that face had moved with every change of
sentiment, that pale mouth had spoken, that body had been on fire with
governable energies; and now, 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, halberd 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 ever fresh attention, he blessed
himself for that unresting sense which held the outposts and stood a trusty
sentinel upon his life. His head turned continually on his neck; his eyes,
which seemed starting from their orbits, scouted on every side, and on every
side were half-rewarded as with the tail of something nameless vanishing. The
four-and-twenty steps to the first floor were four-and-twenty agonies.

On that first story, the
doors stood ajar, three of them like three ambushes, shaking his nerves like
the throats of cannon. He could never again, he felt, be sufficiently immured
and fortified from men’s observing eyes; he longed to be home, girt in by
walls, buried among bedclothes, and invisible to all but God. And at that
thought he wondered a little, recollecting tales of other murderers and the
fear they were said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It was not so, at least,
with him. He feared the laws of nature, lest, in their callous and immutable
procedure, they should preserve some damning evidence of his crime. He feared
tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitious terror, some scission in the
continuity of man’s experience, some wilful illegality of nature. He played a
game of skill, depending on the rules, calculating consequence from cause; and
what if nature, as the defeated tyrant overthrew the chessboard, should break
the mould of their succession?

The like had befallen
Napoleon (so writers said) when the winter changed the time of its appearance.
The like might befall Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent and
reveal his doings like those of bees in a glass hive; the stout planks might
yield under his foot like quicksands and detain him in their clutch; ay, and
there were soberer accidents that might destroy him: if, for instance, the
house should fall and imprison him beside the body of his victim; or the house
next door should fly on fire, and the firemen invade him from all sides. These
things he feared; and, in a sense, these things might be called the hands of
God reached forth against sin. But about God Himself he was at ease; his act
was doubtless exceptional, but so were his excuses, which God knew; it was
there, and not among men, that he felt sure of justice.

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 floors; but by great good fortune the lower part of
the shutters had been closed, and this concealed him from the neighbours. Here,
then, Markheim drew in a packing case before the cabinet, and began to search
among the keys.

It was a long business,
for there were many; and it was irksome, besides; for after all there might be
nothing in the cabinet, and time was on the wing. But the closeness of the
occupation sobered him. With the tail of his eye he saw the door—even glanced
at it from time to time directly, like a besieged commander pleased to verify
the good estate of his defences. But in truth he was at peace. The rain falling
in the street sounded natural and pleasant. Presently, on the other side, the
notes of a piano were wakened to the music of a hymn, and the voices of many
children took up the air and words. How stately, how comfortable was the
melody! How fresh the youthful voices!

Markheim gave ear to it
smilingly, as he sorted out the keys; and his mind was thronged with answerable
ideas and images; church-going children and the pealing of the high organ;
children afield, bathers by the brookside, ramblers on the brambly common,
kite-flyers in the windy and cloud-navigated sky; and then, at another cadence
of the hymn, back again to church, and the somnolence of summer Sundays, and
the high genteel voice of the parson (which he smiled a little to recall) and
the painted Jacobean tombs, and the dim lettering of the Ten Commandments in
the chancel.

And as he sat thus, at
once busy and absent, he was startled to his feet. A flash of ice, a flash of
fire, a bursting gush of blood, went over him, and then he stood transfixed and
thrilling. A step mounted the stair slowly and steadily and presently a hand
was laid upon the knob, and the lock clicked, and the door opened.

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 thrust into the aperture, glanced
round the room, looked at him, nodded and smiled as if in friendly recognition,
and then withdrew again, and the door closed behind it, his fear broke loose
from his control in a hoarse cry. At the sound of this the visitant returned.

“Did you call me?” he
asked pleasantly, and with that he entered the room and closed the door behind
him.

Markheim stood and gazed
at him with all his eyes. Perhaps there was a film upon his sight, but the
outlines of the newcomer seemed to change and waver like those of the idols in
the wavering candlelight of the shop; and at times he thought he knew him; and
at times he thought he bore a likeness to himself; and always, like a lump of
living terror, there lay in his bosom the conviction that this thing was not of
the earth and not of God.

And yet the creature had
a strange air of the commonplace, as he stood looking on Markheim with a smile;
and when he added: “You are looking for the money, I believe?” it was in the
tones of everyday politeness.