Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1681 page)

“I!” exclaimed Vendale, in amazement.

“Hush!” she said, “I want to whisper it.  You know the little photograph I have got of you.  This afternoon it happened to be on the chimney-piece.  He took it up and looked at it — and I saw his face in the glass.  I know you have offended him!  He is merciless; he is revengeful; he is as secret as the grave.  Don’t go with him, George — don’t go with him!”

“My own love,” returned Vendale, “you are letting your fancy frighten you!  Obenreizer and I were never better friends than we are at this moment.”

Before a word more could be said, the sudden movement of some ponderous body shook the floor of the next room.  The shock was followed by the appearance of Madame Dor.  “Obenreizer” exclaimed this excellent person in a whisper, and plumped down instantly in her regular place by the stove.

Obenreizer came in with a courier’s big strapped over his shoulder.  “Are you ready?” he asked, addressing Vendale.  “Can I take anything for you?  You have no travelling-bag.  I have got one.  Here is the compartment for papers, open at your service.”

“Thank you,” said Vendale.  “I have only one paper of importance with me; and that paper I am bound to take charge of myself.  Here it is,” he added, touching the breast-pocket of his coat, “and here it must remain till we get to Neuchâtel.”

As he said those words, Marguerite’s hand caught his, and pressed it significantly.  She was looking towards Obenreizer.  Before Vendale could look, in his turn, Obenreizer had wheeled round, and was taking leave of Madame Dor.

“Adieu, my charming niece!” he said, turning to Marguerite next.  “En route, my friend, for Neuchâtel!”  He tapped Vendale lightly over the breast-pocket of his coat and led the way to the door.

Vendale’s last look was for Marguerite.  Marguerite’s last words to him were, “Don’t go!”

ACT III.

IN THE VALLEY

It was about the middle of the month of February when Vendale and Obenreizer set forth on their expedition.  The winter being a hard one, the time was bad for travellers.  So bad was it that these two travellers, coming to Strasbourg, found its great inns almost empty.  And even the few people they did encounter in that city, who had started from England or from Paris on business journeys towards the interior of Switzerland, were turning back.

Many of the railroads in Switzerland that tourists pass easily enough now, were almost or quite impracticable then.  Some were not begun; more were not completed.  On such as were open, there were still large gaps of old road where communication in the winter season was often stopped; on others, there were weak points where the new work was not safe, either under conditions of severe frost, or of rapid thaw.  The running of trains on this last class was not to be counted on in the worst time of the year, was contingent upon weather, or was wholly abandoned through the months considered the most dangerous.

At Strasbourg there were more travellers’ stories afloat, respecting the difficulties of the way further on, than there were travellers to relate them.  Many of these tales were as wild as usual; but the more modestly marvellous did derive some colour from the circumstance that people were indisputably turning back.  However, as the road to Basle was open, Vendale’s resolution to push on was in no wise disturbed.  Obenreizer’s resolution was necessarily Vendale’s, seeing that he stood at bay thus desperately: He must be ruined, or must destroy the evidence that Vendale carried about him, even if he destroyed Vendale with it.

The state of mind of each of these two fellow-travellers towards the other was this.  Obenreizer, encircled by impending ruin through Vendale’s quickness of action, and seeing the circle narrowed every hour by Vendale’s energy, hated him with the animosity of a fierce cunning lower animal.  He had always had instinctive movements in his breast against him; perhaps, because of that old sore of gentleman and peasant; perhaps, because of the openness of his nature, perhaps, because of his better looks; perhaps, because of his success with Marguerite; perhaps, on all those grounds, the two last not the least.  And now he saw in him, besides, the hunter who was tracking him down.  Vendale, on the other hand, always contending generously against his first vague mistrust, now felt bound to contend against it more than ever: reminding himself, “He is Marguerite’s guardian.  We are on perfectly friendly terms; he is my companion of his own proposal, and can have no interested motive in sharing this undesirable journey.”  To which pleas in behalf of Obenreizer, chance added one consideration more, when they came to Basle after a journey of more than twice the average duration.

They had had a late dinner, and were alone in an inn room there, overhanging the Rhine: at that place rapid and deep, swollen and loud.  Vendale lounged upon a couch, and Obenreizer walked to and fro: now, stopping at the window, looking at the crooked reflection of the town lights in the dark water (and peradventure thinking, “If I could fling him into it!”); now, resuming his walk with his eyes upon the floor.

“Where shall I rob him, if I can?  Where shall I murder him, if I must?”  So, as he paced the room, ran the river, ran the river, ran the river.

The burden seemed to him, at last, to be growing so plain, that he stopped; thinking it as well to suggest another burden to his companion.

“The Rhine sounds to-night,” he said with a smile, “like the old waterfall at home.  That waterfall which my mother showed to travellers (I told you of it once).  The sound of it changed with the weather, as does the sound of all falling waters and flowing waters.  When I was pupil of the watchmaker, I remembered it as sometimes saying to me for whole days, ‘Who are you, my little wretch?  Who are you, my little wretch?’  I remembered it as saying, other times, when its sound was hollow, and storm was coming up the Pass: ‘Boom, boom, boom.  Beat him, beat him, beat him.’  Like my mother enraged — if she was my mother.”

“If she was?” said Vendale, gradually changing his attitude to a sitting one.  “If she was?  Why do you say ‘if’?”

“What do I know?” replied the other negligently, throwing up his hands and letting them fall as they would.  “What would you have?  I am so obscurely born, that how can I say?  I was very young, and all the rest of the family were men and women, and my so-called parents were old.  Anything is possible of a case like that.”

“Did you ever doubt — ”

“I told you once, I doubt the marriage of those two,” he replied, throwing up his hands again, as if he were throwing the unprofitable subject away.  “But here I am in Creation. 
I
come of no fine family.  What does it matter?”

“At least you are Swiss,” said Vendale, after following him with his eyes to and fro.

“How do I know?” he retorted abruptly, and stopping to look back over his shoulder.  “I say to you, at least you are English.  How do you know?”

“By what I have been told from infancy.”

“Ah!  I know of myself that way.”

“And,” added Vendale, pursuing the thought that he could not drive back, “by my earliest recollections.”

“I also.  I know of myself that way — if that way satisfies.”

“Does it not satisfy you?”

“It must.  There is nothing like ‘it must’ in this little world.  It must.  Two short words those, but stronger than long proof or reasoning.”

“You and poor Wilding were born in the same year.  You were nearly of an age,” said Vendale, again thoughtfully looking after him as he resumed his pacing up and down.

“Yes.  Very nearly.”

Could Obenreizer be the missing man?  In the unknown associations of things, was there a subtler meaning than he himself thought, in that theory so often on his lips about the smallness of the world?  Had the Swiss letter presenting him followed so close on Mrs. Goldstraw’s revelation concerning the infant who had been taken away to Switzerland, because he was that infant grown a man?  In a world where so many depths lie unsounded, it might be.  The chances, or the laws — call them either — that had wrought out the revival of Vendale’s own acquaintance with Obenreizer, and had ripened it into intimacy, and had brought them here together this present winter night, were hardly less curious; while read by such a light, they were seen to cohere towards the furtherance of a continuous and an intelligible purpose.

Vendale’s awakened thoughts ran high while his eyes musingly followed Obenreizer pacing up and down the room, the river ever running to the tune: “Where shall I rob him, if I can?  Where shall I murder him, if I must?”  The secret of his dead friend was in no hazard from Vendale’s lips; but just as his friend had died of its weight, so did he in his lighter succession feel the burden of the trust, and the obligation to follow any clue, however obscure.  He rapidly asked himself, would he like this man to be the real Wilding?  No.  Argue down his mistrust as he might, he was unwilling to put such a substitute in the place of his late guileless, outspoken childlike partner.  He rapidly asked himself, would he like this man to be rich?  No.  He had more power than enough over Marguerite as it was, and wealth might invest him with more.  Would he like this man to be Marguerite’s Guardian, and yet proved to stand in no degree of relationship towards her, however disconnected and distant?  No.  But these were not considerations to come between him and fidelity to the dead.  Let him see to it that they passed him with no other notice than the knowledge that they
had
passed him, and left him bent on the discharge of a solemn duty.  And he did see to it, so soon that he followed his companion with ungrudging eyes, while he still paced the room; that companion, whom he supposed to be moodily reflecting on his own birth, and not on another man’s — least of all what man’s — violent Death.

The road in advance from Basle to Neuchâtel was better than had been represented.  The latest weather had done it good.  Drivers, both of horses and mules, had come in that evening after dark, and had reported nothing more difficult to be overcome than trials of patience, harness, wheels, axles, and whipcord.  A bargain was soon struck for a carriage and horses, to take them on in the morning, and to start before daylight.

“Do you lock your door at night when travelling?” asked Obenreizer, standing warming his hands by the wood fire in Vendale’s chamber, before going to his own.

“Not I.  I sleep too soundly.”

“You are so sound a sleeper?” he retorted, with an admiring look.  “What a blessing!”

“Anything but a blessing to the rest of the house,” rejoined Vendale, “if I had to be knocked up in the morning from the outside of my bedroom door.”

“I, too,” said Obenreizer, “leave open my room.  But let me advise you, as a Swiss who knows: always, when you travel in my country, put your papers — and, of course, your money — under your pillow.  Always the same place.”

“You are not complimentary to your countrymen,” laughed Vendale.

“My countrymen,” said Obenreizer, with that light touch of his friend’s elbows by way of Good-Night and benediction, “I suppose are like the majority of men.  And the majority of men will take what they can get.  Adieu!  At four in the morning.”

“Adieu!  At four.”

Left to himself, Vendale raked the logs together, sprinkled over them the white wood-ashes lying on the hearth, and sat down to compose his thoughts.  But they still ran high on their latest theme, and the running of the river tended to agitate rather than to quiet them.  As he sat thinking, what little disposition he had had to sleep departed.  He felt it hopeless to lie down yet, and sat dressed by the fire.  Marguerite, Wilding, Obenreizer, the business he was then upon, and a thousand hopes and doubts that had nothing to do with it, occupied his mind at once.  Everything seemed to have power over him but slumber.  The departed disposition to sleep kept far away.

He had sat for a long time thinking, on the hearth, when his candle burned down and its light went out.  It was of little moment; there was light enough in the fire.  He changed his attitude, and, leaning his arm on the chair-back, and his chin upon that hand, sat thinking still.

But he sat between the fire and the bed, and, as the fire flickered in the play of air from the fast-flowing river, his enlarged shadow fluttered on the white wall by the bedside.  His attitude gave it an air, half of mourning and half of bending over the bed imploring.  His eyes were observant of it, when he became troubled by the disagreeable fancy that it was like Wilding’s shadow, and not his own.