Markheim and his Conscience - RLS’s short story for all times

‘Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.’
by Shanie

"Through many changes of fortune and varieties of humour, I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen years ago you would have started at a theft. Three years back you would have blanched 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."

(October 16, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) R L Stevenson was a gifted story-teller. In fact, he had spent the last five years of his all too brief life in the Samoan Islands, where he had himself adopted the Samoan name Tusitala, meaning teller of tales. In a prolific literary career, Stevenson, among other literary works, wrote several well-known novels and short stories. One his stories was ‘Markheim’ which he published in 1885 and from which the above quotation is taken. In this story, Stevenson writes about the mental experience of Markheim, who had just committed the murder of an acquaintance with whom he had been doing business. Murder committed, Markheim is stricken with fear and is visited, whilst still in his victim’s apartment, by his guardian angel, or more rightly, his conscience. Stevenson’ story thereafter is about the confusing and fearful thoughts that passes in the mind of Markheim and the conversation he has with his visitant - his conscience.

Markheim laments to his visitant: "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......I will lay my heart open to you. The 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 have 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 today, 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 agent of good, this heart at peace. There lies my life; I have wandered a few years, but now I see once more my city of destination."

Then in response to the visitant’s fearful prediction that he was destined to lose all, Markheim is startled but goes on to exclaim, "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 trials better than myself? I pity and help them; I prize love, I love honest laughter; there is no good thing or 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."

At this, the visitant raises his finger and says the words quoted at the head of this column. "It is true," replies Markheim, "I have in some degree complied with evil. But it is with all: the very saints, in the mere exercise of living, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their surroundings."

"I will propound to you one simple question," says 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?", repeats Markheim, with an anguish of consideration. "No,", he adds with despair, "in none! I have gone down in all." "Then," says the visitor, "content yourself yourself with what you are, for you will never change; and the words of your part on this stage are irrevocably written down."

Markheim stood for a long while silent, and it was the visitor who broke the silence. "That being so," he says, "shall I show you the money (of the murdered victim)?" "And grace?", cries Markheim. "Have you not tried it?" returns 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," says Markheim, "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." Then the door-bell of the apartment rings. The maid, the mistress of the murdered victim, has returned. There was still a last temptation. He could once more commit a murder- this time of the maid and ransack the apartment of all the riches and quietly walk out into safety. But Markheim’s conscience is now determined not to yield to that temptation. "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 I can draw both energy and courage."

The conclusion of the story is best said in Stevenson’s own words: "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 dimmed. But Markheim 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-medley – a scene of defeat. Life, as he thus reviewed it, tempted him no longer; but on the farther 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 (his murdered victim) swarmed into his mind, as he stood gazing. And then 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."

Patriotism and Scoundrels

In the same year that R. L. Stevenson published Markheim, Matthew Arnold, another of Britain’s great literary figures, published ‘Discourses in America’, a collection of three speeches he had made on a visit to New York earlier. In the first of these speeches, Arnold speaks of the Majority and the Remnant and argues that progress depends on the remnant, the few who can see the truth and explain it to their fellow-men. Arnold quotes Plato in the latter’s critique of the first of the world’s democracies. "Plato’s account of the most of the most gifted and brilliant community of the ancient world, of that Athens of his to which we all owe so much, is despondent enough. ‘There is but a very small remnant,’ he says, ‘of honest followers of wisdom, and they who are of these few, and who tasted how sweet and blessed a possession is wisdom, and who can fully see, moreover, the madness of the multitude, and that there is no one, we may say, whose action in public matters is sound, and no ally for whatever would help the just; what are they to do? They may be compared to to a man who has fallen among wild beasts; he will not be one of them, but he is too unaided to make head against them; and before he can do any good to society or his friends, he will be overwhelmed and perish uselessly. When he considers this, he will resolve to keep still, and to mind his own business; as it were standing aside under a wall in a storm of dust and hurricane of driving wind; and he will endure to behold the rest filled with iniquity, if only he himself may live his life clear of injustice, and of impiety, and depart, when his time comes, in mild and gracious mood, with fair hope." Is this, Arnold asks, the best mode of life for the person who has the truth in him.

Arnold had begun his speech thus: "There is a characteristic saying of Dr Johnson: ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.’ The saying is cynical, many will even call it brutal; yet it has in it something of plain, robust sense and truth. We do often see men passing themselves off as patriots, who are in truth scoundrels; we meet with talk and proceedings laying claim to patriotism, which are these gentlemen’s last refuge. We may all of us agree in praying to be delivered from patriots and patriotism of this sort. Short of such, there is is undoubtedly, sheltering itself under the fine name of patriotism, a good deal of self-flattery and self-delusion which is mischievous... Yet, there is an honourable patriotism which we should satisfy if we can, and should seek to have on our side."

We have used this week’s column space to quote extensively from two great figures of English literature – one a short story about a man who commits a crime and is then stricken with a conscience and yields himself up in remorse at the injustice he has done; the other is a comment on a false sense of patriotism and the need for persons of truth and honour not to stand aside but to provide leadership to others (the majority) in the community by imparting truth and knowledge. Spoken and written one hundred and twenty five years ago, they have a relevance for all time.