Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1682 page)

A slight change of place would cause it to disappear.  He made the change, and the apparition of his disturbed fancy vanished.  He now sat in the shade of a little nook beside the fire, and the door of the room was before him.

It had a long cumbrous iron latch.  He saw the latch slowly and softly rise.  The door opened a very little, and came to again, as though only the air had moved it.  But he saw that the latch was out of the hasp.

The door opened again very slowly, until it opened wide enough to admit some one.  It afterwards remained still for a while, as though cautiously held open on the other side.  The figure of a man then entered, with its face turned towards the bed, and stood quiet just within the door.  Until it said, in a low half-whisper, at the same time taking one stop forward: “Vendale!”

“What now?” he answered, springing from his seat; “who is it?”

It was Obenreizer, and he uttered a cry of surprise as Vendale came upon him from that unexpected direction.  “Not in bed?” he said, catching him by both shoulders with an instinctive tendency to a struggle.  “Then something
is
wrong!”

“What do you mean?” said Vendale, releasing himself.

“First tell me; you are not ill?”

“Ill?  No.”

“I have had a bad dream about you.  How is it that I see you up and dressed?”

“My good fellow, I may as well ask you how it is that I see
you
up and undressed?”

“I have told you why.  I have had a bad dream about you.  I tried to rest after it, but it was impossible.  I could not make up my mind to stay where I was without knowing you were safe; and yet I could not make up my mind to come in here.  I have been minutes hesitating at the door.  It is so easy to laugh at a dream that you have not dreamed.  Where is your candle?”

“Burnt out.”

“I have a whole one in my room.  Shall I fetch it?”

“Do so.”

His room was very near, and he was absent for but a few seconds.  Coming back with the candle in his hand, he kneeled down on the hearth and lighted it.  As he blew with his breath a charred billet into flame for the purpose, Vendale, looking down at him, saw that his lips were white and not easy of control.

“Yes!” said Obenreizer, setting the lighted candle on the table, “it was a bad dream.  Only look at me!”

His feet were bare; his red-flannel shirt was thrown back at the throat, and its sleeves were rolled above the elbows; his only other garment, a pair of under pantaloons or drawers, reaching to the ankles, fitted him close and tight.  A certain lithe and savage appearance was on his figure, and his eyes were very bright.

“If there had been a wrestle with a robber, as I dreamed,” said Obenreizer, “you see, I was stripped for it.”

“And armed too,” said Vendale, glancing at his girdle.

“A traveller’s dagger, that I always carry on the road,” he answered carelessly, half drawing it from its sheath with his left hand, and putting it back again.  “Do you carry no such thing?”

“Nothing of the kind.”

“No pistols?” said Obenreizer, glancing at the table, and from it to the untouched pillow.

“Nothing of the sort.”

“You Englishmen are so confident!  You wish to sleep?”

“I have wished to sleep this long time, but I can’t do it.”

“I neither, after the bad dream.  My fire has gone the way of your candle.  May I come and sit by yours?  Two o’clock!  It will so soon be four, that it is not worth the trouble to go to bed again.”

“I shall not take the trouble to go to bed at all, now,” said Vendale; “sit here and keep me company, and welcome.”

Going back to his room to arrange his dress, Obenreizer soon returned in a loose cloak and slippers, and they sat down on opposite sides of the hearth.  In the interval Vendale had replenished the fire from the wood-basket in his room, and Obenreizer had put upon the table a flask and cup from his.

“Common cabaret brandy, I am afraid,” he said, pouring out; “bought upon the road, and not like yours from Cripple Corner.  But yours is exhausted; so much the worse.  A cold night, a cold time of night, a cold country, and a cold house.  This may be better than nothing; try it.”

Vendale took the cup, and did so.

“How do you find it?”

“It has a coarse after-flavour,” said Vendale, giving back the cup with a slight shudder, “and I don’t like it.”

“You are right,” said Obenreizer, tasting, and smacking his lips; “it
has
a coarse after-flavour, and
I
don’t like it.  Booh!  It burns, though!”  He had flung what remained in the cup upon the fire.

Each of them leaned an elbow on the table, reclined his head upon his hand, and sat looking at the flaring logs.  Obenreizer remained watchful and still; but Vendale, after certain nervous twitches and starts, in one of which he rose to his feet and looked wildly about him, fell into the strangest confusion of dreams.  He carried his papers in a leather case or pocket-book, in an inner breast-pocket of his buttoned travelling-coat; and whatever he dreamed of, in the lethargy that got possession of him, something importunate in those papers called him out of that dream, though he could not wake from it.  He was berated on the steppes of Russia (some shadowy person gave that name to the place) with Marguerite; and yet the sensation of a hand at his breast, softly feeling the outline of the packet-book as he lay asleep before the fire, was present to him.  He was ship-wrecked in an open boat at sea, and having lost his clothes, had no other covering than an old sail; and yet a creeping hand, tracing outside all the other pockets of the dress he actually wore, for papers, and finding none answer its touch, warned him to rouse himself.  He was in the ancient vault at Cripple Corner, to which was transferred the very bed substantial and present in that very room at Basle; and Wilding (not dead, as he had supposed, and yet he did not wonder much) shook him, and whispered, “Look at that man!  Don’t you see he has risen, and is turning the pillow?  Why should he turn the pillow, if not to seek those papers that are in your breast?  Awake!”  And yet he slept, and wandered off into other dreams.

Watchful and still, with his elbow on the table, and his head upon that hand, his companion at length said: “Vendale!  We are called.  Past Four!”  Then, opening his eyes, he saw, turned sideways on him, the filmy face of Obenreizer.

“You have been in a heavy sleep,” he said.  “The fatigue of constant travelling and the cold!”

“I am broad awake now,” cried Vendale, springing up, but with an unsteady footing.  “Haven’t you slept at all?”

“I may have dozed, but I seem to have been patiently looking at the fire.  Whether or no, we must wash, and breakfast, and turn out.  Past four, Vendale; past four!”

It was said in a tone to rouse him, for already he was half asleep again.  In his preparation for the day, too, and at his breakfast, he was often virtually asleep while in mechanical action.  It was not until the cold dark day was closing in, that he had any distincter impressions of the ride than jingling bells, bitter weather, slipping horses, frowning hill-sides, bleak woods, and a stoppage at some wayside house of entertainment, where they had passed through a cow-house to reach the travellers’ room above.  He had been conscious of little more, except of Obenreizer sitting thoughtful at his side all day, and eyeing him much.

But when he shook off his stupor, Obenreizer was not at his side.  The carriage was stopping to bait at another wayside house; and a line of long narrow carts, laden with casks of wine, and drawn by horses with a quantity of blue collar and head-gear, were baiting too.  These came from the direction in which the travellers were going, and Obenreizer (not thoughtful now, but cheerful and alert) was talking with the foremost driver.  As Vendale stretched his limbs, circulated his blood, and cleared off the lees of his lethargy, with a sharp run to and fro in the bracing air, the line of carts moved on: the drivers all saluting Obenreizer as they passed him.

“Who are those?” asked Vendale.

“They are our carriers — Defresnier and Company’s,” replied Obenreizer.  “Those are our casks of wine.”  He was singing to himself, and lighting a cigar.

“I have been drearily dull company to-day,” said Vendale.  “I don’t know what has been the matter with me.”

“You had no sleep last night; and a kind of brain-congestion frequently comes, at first, of such cold,” said Obenreizer.  “I have seen it often.  After all, we shall have our journey for nothing, it seems.”

“How for nothing?”

“The House is at Milan.  You know, we are a Wine House at Neuchâtel, and a Silk House at Milan?  Well, Silk happening to press of a sudden, more than Wine, Defresnier was summoned to Milan.  Rolland, the other partner, has been taken ill since his departure, and the doctors will allow him to see no one.  A letter awaits you at Neuchâtel to tell you so.  I have it from our chief carrier whom you saw me talking with.  He was surprised to see me, and said he had that word for you if he met you.  What do you do?  Go back?”

“Go on,” said Vendale.

“On?”

“On?  Yes.  Across the Alps, and down to Milan.”

Obenreizer stopped in his smoking to look at Vendale, and then smoked heavily, looked up the road, looked down the road, looked down at the stones in the road at his feet.

“I have a very serious matter in charge,” said Vendale; “more of these missing forms may be turned to as bad account, or worse: I am urged to lose no time in helping the House to take the thief; and nothing shall turn me back.”

“No?” cried Obenreizer, taking out his cigar to smile, and giving his hand to his fellow-traveller.  “Then nothing shall turn
me
back.  Ho, driver!  Despatch.  Quick there!  Let us push on!”

They travelled through the night.  There had been snow, and there was a partial thaw, and they mostly travelled at a foot-pace, and always with many stoppages to breathe the splashed and floundering horses.  After an hour’s broad daylight, they drew rein at the inn-door at Neuchâtel, having been some eight-and-twenty hours in conquering some eighty English miles.

When they had hurriedly refreshed and changed, they went together to the house of business of Defresnier and Company.  There they found the letter which the wine-carrier had described, enclosing the tests and comparisons of handwriting essential to the discovery of the Forger.  Vendale’s determination to press forward, without resting, being already taken, the only question to delay them was by what Pass could they cross the Alps?  Respecting the state of the two Passes of the St. Gotthard and the Simplon, the guides and mule-drivers differed greatly; and both passes were still far enough off, to prevent the travellers from having the benefit of any recent experience of either.  Besides which, they well knew that a fall of snow might altogether change the described conditions in a single hour, even if they were correctly stated.  But, on the whole, the Simplon appearing to be the hopefuller route, Vendale decided to take it.  Obenreizer bore little or no part in the discussion, and scarcely spoke.

To Geneva, to Lausanne, along the level margin of the lake to Vevay, so into the winding valley between the spurs of the mountains, and into the valley of the Rhone.  The sound of the carriage-wheels, as they rattled on, through the day, through the night, became as the wheels of a great clock, recording the hours.  No change of weather varied the journey, after it had hardened into a sullen frost.  In a sombre-yellow sky, they saw the Alpine ranges; and they saw enough of snow on nearer and much lower hill-tops and hill-sides, to sully, by contrast, the purity of lake, torrent, and waterfall, and make the villages look discoloured and dirty.  But no snow fell, nor was there any snow-drift on the road.  The stalking along the valley of more or less of white mist, changing on their hair and dress into icicles, was the only variety between them and the gloomy sky.  And still by day, and still by night, the wheels.  And still they rolled, in the hearing of one of them, to the burden, altered from the burden of the Rhine: “The time is gone for robbing him alive, and I must murder him.”