Short Stories Old and New - Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
Mr. Oakhurst was a light sleeper. Toward morning he awoke benumbed and
cold. As he stirred the dying fire, the wind, which was now blowing
strongly, brought to his cheek that which caused the blood to leave
it,--snow!
He started to his feet with the intention of awakening the sleepers, for
there was no time to lose. But turning to where Uncle Billy had been
lying, he found him gone. A suspicion leaped to his brain and a curse to
his lips. He ran to the spot where the mules had been tethered; they
were no longer there. The tracks were already rapidly disappearing in
the snow.
The momentary excitement brought Mr. Oakhurst back to the fire with his
usual calm. He did not waken the sleepers. The Innocent slumbered
peacefully, with a smile on his good-humored, freckled face; the virgin
Piney slept beside her frailer sisters as sweetly as though attended by
celestial guardians, and Mr. Oakhurst, drawing his blanket over his
shoulders, stroked his mustaches and waited for the dawn. It came slowly
in a whirling mist of snow-flakes, that dazzled and confused the eye.
What could be seen of the landscape appeared magically changed. He
looked over the valley, and summoned up the present and future in two
words,--"snowed in!"
A careful inventory of the provisions, which, fortunately for the party,
had been stored within the hut, and so escaped the felonious fingers of
Uncle Billy, disclosed the fact that with care and prudence they might
last ten days longer. "That is," said Mr. Oakhurst, _sotto voce_ to the
Innocent, "if you're willing to board us. If you ain't--and perhaps
you'd better not--you can wait till Uncle Billy gets back with
provisions." For some occult reason, Mr. Oakhurst could not bring
himself to disclose Uncle Billy's rascality, and so offered the
hypothesis that he had wandered from the camp and had accidentally
stampeded the animals. He dropped a warning to the Duchess and Mother
Shipton, who of course knew the facts of their associate's defection.
"They'll find out the truth about us _all_ when they find out anything,"
he added, significantly, "and there's no good frightening them now."
Tom Simson not only put all his worldly store at the disposal of Mr.
Oakhurst, but seemed to enjoy the prospect of their enforced seclusion.
"We'll have a good camp for a week, and then the snow'll melt, and we'll
all go back together." The cheerful gayety of the young man, and Mr.
Oakhurst's calm infected the others. The Innocent, with the aid of
pine-boughs, extemporized a thatch for the roofless cabin, and the
Duchess directed Piney in the rearrangement of the interior with a taste
and tact that opened the blue eyes of that provincial maiden to their
fullest extent. "I reckon now you're used to fine things at Poker Flat,"
said Piney. The Duchess turned away sharply to conceal something that
reddened her cheeks through its professional tint, and Mother Shipton
requested Piney not to "chatter." But when Mr. Oakhurst returned from a
weary search for the trail, he heard the sound of happy laughter echoed
from the rocks. He stopped in some alarm, and his thoughts first
naturally reverted to the whiskey, which he had prudently _cached_. "And
yet it don't somehow sound like whiskey," said the gambler. It was not
until he caught sight of the blazing fire through the still blinding
storm and the group around it that he settled to the conviction that it
was "square fun."
Whether Mr. Oakhurst had _cached_ his cards with the whiskey as
something debarred the free access of the community, I cannot say. It
was certain that, in Mother Shipton's words, he "didn't say cards once"
during that evening. Haply the time was beguiled by an accordion,
produced somewhat ostentatiously by Tom Simson from his pack.
Notwithstanding some difficulties attending the manipulation of his
instrument, Piney Woods managed to pluck several reluctant melodies from
its keys, to an accompaniment by the Innocent on a pair of bone
castanets. But the crowning festivity of the evening was reached in a
rude camp-meeting hymn, which the lovers, joining hands, sang with great
earnestness and vociferation. I fear that a certain defiant tone and
Covenanter's swing to its chorus, rather than any devotional quality,
caused it speedily to infect the others, who at last joined in the
refrain:--
"I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
And I'm bound to die in His army."
The pines rocked, the storm eddied and whirled above the miserable
group, and the flames of their altar leaped heavenward, as if in token
of the vow.
At midnight the storm abated, the rolling clouds parted, and the stars
glittered keenly above the sleeping camp. Mr. Oakhurst, whose
professional habits had enabled him to live on the smallest possible
amount of sleep, in dividing the watch with Tom Simson, somehow managed
to take upon himself the greater part of that duty. He excused himself
to the Innocent, by saying that he had "often been a week without
sleep." "Doing what?" asked Tom. "Poker!" replied Oakhurst,
sententiously; "when a man gets a streak of luck,--nigger-luck,--he
don't get tired. The luck gives in first. Luck," continued the gambler,
reflectively, "is a mighty queer thing. All you know about it for
certain is that it's bound to change. And it's finding out when it's
going to change that makes you. We've had a streak of bad luck since we
left Poker Flat,--you come along, and slap you get into it, too. If you
can hold your cards right along, you're all right. For," added the
gambler, with cheerful irrelevance,--
"I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
And I'm bound to die in His army."
The third day came, and the sun, looking through the white-curtained
valley, saw the outcasts divide their slowly decreasing store of
provisions for the morning meal. It was one of the peculiarities of that
mountain climate that its rays diffused a kindly warmth over the wintry
landscape, as if in regretful commiseration of the past. But it revealed
drift on drift of snow piled high around the hut,--a hopeless,
uncharted, trackless sea of white lying below the rocky shores to which
the castaways still clung. Through the marvellously clear air the smoke
of the pastoral village of Poker Flat rose miles away. Mother Shipton
saw it, and from a remote pinnacle of her rocky fastness, hurled in that
direction a final malediction. It was her last vituperative attempt, and
perhaps for that reason was invested with a certain degree of sublimity.
It did her good, she privately informed the Duchess. "Just you go out
there and cuss, and see." She then set herself to the task of amusing
"the child," as she and the Duchess were pleased to call Piney. Piney
was no chicken, but it was a soothing and original theory of the pair
thus to account for the fact that she didn't swear and wasn't improper.
When night crept up again through the gorges, the reedy notes of the
accordion rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps by the
flickering camp-fire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching void
left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was proposed by
Piney,--story-telling. Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his female companions
caring to relate their personal experiences, this plan would have
failed, too, but for the Innocent. Some months before he had chanced
upon a stray copy of Mr. Pope's ingenious translation of the Iliad. He
now proposed to narrate the principal incidents of that poem--having
thoroughly mastered the argument and fairly forgotten the words--in the
current vernacular of Sandy Bar. And so for the rest of that night the
Homeric demigods again walked the earth. Trojan bully and wily Greek
wrestled in the winds, and the great pines in the canon seemed to bow to
the wrath of the son of Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst listened with quiet
satisfaction. Most especially was he interested in the fate of
"Ash-heels," as the Innocent persisted in denominating the "swift-footed
Achilles."
So with small food and much of Homer and the accordion, a week passed
over the heads of the outcasts. The sun again forsook them, and again
from leaden skies the snow-flakes were sifted over the land. Day by day
closer around them drew the snowy circle, until at last they looked from
their prison over drifted walls of dazzling white, that towered twenty
feet above their heads. It became more and more difficult to replenish
their fires, even from the fallen trees beside them, now half hidden in
the drifts. And yet no one complained. The lovers turned from the dreary
prospect and looked into each other's eyes, and were happy. Mr. Oakhurst
settled himself coolly to the losing game before him. The Duchess, more
cheerful than she had been, assumed the care of Piney. Only Mother
Shipton--once the strongest of the party--seemed to sicken and fade. At
midnight on the tenth day she called Oakhurst to her side. "I'm going,"
she said, in a voice of querulous weakness, "but don't say anything
about it. Don't waken the kids. Take the bundle from under my head and
open it." Mr. Oakhurst did so. It contained Mother Shipton's rations for
the last week, untouched. "Give 'em to the child," she said, pointing to
the sleeping Piney. "You've starved yourself," said the gambler. "That's
what they call it," said the woman, querulously, as she lay down again,
and, turning her face to the wall, passed quietly away.
The accordion and the bones were put aside that day, and Homer was
forgotten. When the body of Mother Shipton had been committed to the
snow, Mr. Oakhurst took the Innocent aside, and showed him a pair of
snow-shoes, which he had fashioned from the old pack-saddle. "There's
one chance in a hundred to save her yet," he said, pointing to Piney;
"but it's there," he added, pointing towards Poker Flat. "If you can
reach there in two days she's safe." "And you?" asked Tom Simson. "I'll
stay here," was the curt reply.
The lovers parted with a long embrace. "You are not going, too?" said
the Duchess, as she saw Mr. Oakhurst apparently waiting to accompany
him. "As far as the canon," he replied. He turned suddenly, and kissed
the Duchess, leaving her pallid face aflame, and her trembling lips
rigid with amazement.
Night came, but not Mr. Oakhurst. It brought the storm again and the
whirling snow. Then the Duchess, feeding the fire, found that some one
had quietly piled beside the hut enough fuel to last a few days longer.
The tears rose to her eyes, but she hid them from Piney.
The women slept but little. In the morning, looking into each other's
faces, they read their fate. Neither spoke; but Piney, accepting the
position of the stronger, drew near and placed her arm around the
Duchess's waist. They kept this attitude for the rest of the day. That
night the storm reached its greatest fury, and, rending asunder the
protecting pines, invaded the very hut.
Toward morning they found themselves unable to feed the fire, which
gradually died away. As the embers slowly blackened, the Duchess crept
closer to Piney, and broke the silence of many hours: "Piney, can you
pray?" "No, dear," said Piney, simply. The Duchess, without knowing
exactly why, felt relieved, and, putting her head upon Piney's shoulder,
spoke no more. And so reclining, the younger and purer pillowing the
head of her soiled sister upon her virgin breast, they fell asleep.
The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them. Feathery drifts of snow,
shaken from the long pine-boughs, flew like white-winged birds, and
settled about them as they slept. The moon through the rifted clouds
looked down upon what had been the camp. But all human stain, all trace
of earthly travail, was hidden beneath the spotless mantle mercifully
flung from above.
They slept all that day and the next, nor did they waken when voices and
footsteps broke the silence of the camp. And when pitying fingers
brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told from
the equal peace that dwelt upon them, which was she that had sinned.
Even the law of Poker Flat recognized this, and turned away, leaving
them still locked in each other's arms.
But at the head of the gulch, on one of the largest pine-trees, they
found the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark with a bowie-knife. It bore
the following, written in pencil, in a firm hand:--
BENEATH THIS TREE
LIES THE BODY
OF
JOHN OAKHURST,
WHO STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK
ON THE 23D OF NOVEMBER, 1850,
AND
HANDED IN HIS CHECKS
ON THE 7TH DECEMBER, 1850.
And pulseless and cold, with a derringer by his side and a bullet in his
heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he who was at
once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker Flat.
IX. MARKHEIM[*] (1884)
[* From "The Merry Men." Used by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons,
authorized American publishers of Stevenson's Works.]
BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (1850-1894)
[_Setting_. There is no finer model for the study of setting than this
story affords. It is three o'clock in the afternoon of a foggy Christmas
Day in London. If Markheim's manner and the dimly lighted interior of
the antique shop suggest murder, the garrulous clocks, the nodding
shadows, and the reflecting mirrors seem almost to compel confession and
surrender. "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." So he should for the
murder; but for the self-confession, which is Stevenson's ultimate
design, no time or place could have been better.
_Plot_. There is little action in the plot. A man commits a dastardly
murder and then, being alone and undetected, begins to think, think,
think. It is the turning point in his life and he knows it. Instead of
seizing the treasure and escaping, he submits his past career to a rigid
scrutiny and review. This brooding over his past life and present
outlook becomes so absorbing that what bade fair to be a soliloquy
becomes a dialogue, a dialogue between the old self that committed the
murder and the new self that begins to revolt at it. The old self bids
him follow the line of least resistance and go on as he has begun; the
newly awakened self bids him stop at once, check the momentum of other
days, take this last chance, and be a man. His better nature wins.
Markheim finds that though his deeds have been uniformly evil, he can
still "conceive great deeds, renunciations, martyrdoms." Though the
active love of good seems too weak to be reckoned as an asset, he still
has a "hatred of evil"; and on this twin foundation, ability to think
great thoughts and to hate evil deeds, he builds at last his culminating
resolve.
The story is powerfully and yet subtly told. It sweeps the whole gamut
of the moral law. Many stories develop the same theme but none just like
this. Stevenson himself is drawn again to the same problem a little
later in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Hawthorne tried it in "Howe's
Masquerade," in which the cloaked figure is the phantom or reduplication
of Howe himself. In Poe's "William Wilson," to which Stevenson is
plainly indebted, the evil nature triumphs over the good. But
"Markheim," by touching more chords and by sounding lower depths, makes
the triumph at the end seem like a permanent victory for universal human
nature.
_Characters_. If the story is the study of a given situation, Markheim,
who is another type of the developing character, is the central factor
in the situation. We see and interpret the situation only through the
personality of Markheim himself. Another murderer might have acted
differently, even with those clamorous clocks and accusing mirrors
around him, but not this murderer. There is nothing abnormal about him,
however, as a criminal. He is thirty-six years old and through sheer
weakness has gone steadily downward, but he has never before done a deed
approaching this in horror or in the power of sudden self-revelation. He
sees himself now as he never saw himself before and begins to take stock
of his moral assets. They are pitifully meager, though his opportunities
for character building have been good. He has even had emotional
revivals, which did not, however, issue in good deeds. But with it all,
Markheim illustrates the nobility of human nature rather than its
essential depravity. I do not doubt his complete and permanent
conversion. When the terrible last question is put to him--or when he
puts it to himself--whether he is better now in any one particular than
he was, and when he is forced to say, "No, in none! I have gone down in
all," the moral resources of human nature itself seem to be exhausted.
But they are not. "I see clearly what remains for me," said Markheim,
"by way of _duty_." This word, not used before, sounds a new challenge
and marks the crisis of the story. Duty can fight without calling in
reserves from the past and without the vision of victory in the future.
I don't wonder that the features of the visitant "softened with a tender
triumph." The visitant was neither "the devil" as Markheim first thought
him nor "the Saviour of men" as a recent editor pronounces him. He is
only Markheim's old self, the self that entered the antique shop, that
with fear and trembling committed the deed, and that now, half-conscious
all the time of inherent falseness, urges the old arguments and tries to
energize the old purposes. It is this visitant that every man meets and
overthrows when he comes to himself, when he breaks sharply with the old
life and enters resolutely upon the new.]
"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 to-day very strongly. I am the essence of discretion, and ask no
awkward questions; but when a customer can not 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 clean account of how you came into the possession of
the object?" he continued. "Still your uncle's cabinet? A remarkable
collector, sir!"
And the little, pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tip-toe,
looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with
every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of infinite
pity, and a touch of horror.
"This time," said he, "you are in error. I have not come to sell, but to
buy. I have no curios to dispose of; my uncle's cabinet is bare to the
wainscot; even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock
Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my errand
to-day is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas-present for a lady," he
continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech he had
prepared; "and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus disturbing you
upon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected yesterday; I must
produce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you very well know, a
rich marriage is not a thing to be neglected."
There followed a pause, during which the dealer seemed to weigh this
statement incredulously. The ticking of many clocks among the curious
lumber of the shop, and the faint rushing of the cabs in a near
thoroughfare, filled up the interval of silence.
"Well, sir," said the dealer, "be it so. You are an old customer after
all; and if, as you say, you have the chance of a good marriage, far be
it from me to be an obstacle. Here is a nice thing for a lady now," he
went on, "this hand-glass--fifteenth century, warranted; comes from a
good collection, too; but I reserve the name, in the interests of my
customer, who was just like yourself, my dear sir, the nephew and sole
heir of a remarkable collector."
The dealer, while he thus ran on in his dry and biting voice, had
stooped to take the object from its place; and, as he had done so, a
shock had passed through Markheim, a start both of hand and foot, a
sudden leap of many tumultuous passions to the face. It passed as
swiftly as it came, and left no trace beyond a certain trembling of the
hand that now received the glass.
"A glass," he said, hoarsely, and then paused, and repeated it more
clearly. "A glass? For Christmas? Surely not?"
"And why not?" cried the dealer. "Why not a glass?"
Markheim was looking upon him with an indefinable expression. "You ask
me why not?" he said. "Why, look here--look in it--look at yourself! Do
you like to see it? No! nor I--nor any man."
The little man had jumped back when Markheim had so suddenly confronted
him with the mirror; but now, perceiving there was nothing worse on
hand, he chuckled. "Your future lady, sir, must be pretty hard favored,"
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 blonde hair falling over his eyes as he did so. Markheim
moved a little nearer, with one hand in the pocket of his great-coat; 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,
skewer-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'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.