Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1684 page)

How far he had followed out of the gallery, or with what obstacles he had since contended, he knew not.  He became roused to the knowledge that Obenreizer had set upon him, and that they were struggling desperately in the snow.  He became roused to the remembrance of what his assailant carried in a girdle.  He felt for it, drew it, struck at him, struggled again, struck at him again, cast him off, and stood face to face with him.

“I promised to guide you to your journey’s end,” said Obenreizer, “and I have kept my promise.  The journey of your life ends here.  Nothing can prolong it.  You are sleeping as you stand.”

“You are a villain.  What have you done to me?”

“You are a fool.  I have drugged you.  You are doubly a fool, for I drugged you once before upon the journey, to try you.  You are trebly a fool, for I am the thief and forger, and in a few moments I shall take those proofs against the thief and forger from your insensible body.”

The entrapped man tried to throw off the lethargy, but its fatal hold upon him was so sure that, even while he heard those words, he stupidly wondered which of them had been wounded, and whose blood it was that he saw sprinkled on the snow.

“What have I done to you,” he asked, heavily and thickly, “that you should be — so base — a murderer?”

“Done to me?  You would have destroyed me, but that you have come to your journey’s end.  Your cursed activity interposed between me, and the time I had counted on in which I might have replaced the money.  Done to me?  You have come in my way — not once, not twice, but again and again and again.  Did I try to shake you off in the beginning, or no?  You were not to be shaken off.  Therefore you die here.”

Vendale tried to think coherently, tried to speak coherently, tried to pick up the iron-shod staff he had let fall; failing to touch it, tried to stagger on without its aid.  All in vain, all in vain!  He stumbled, and fell heavily forward on the brink of the deep chasm.

Stupefied, dozing, unable to stand upon his feet, a veil before his eyes, his sense of hearing deadened, he made such a vigorous rally that, supporting himself on his hands, he saw his enemy standing calmly over him, and heard him speak.  “You call me murderer,” said Obenreizer, with a grim laugh.  “The name matters very little.  But at least I have set my life against yours, for I am surrounded by dangers, and may never make my way out of this place.  The
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is rising again.  The snow is on the whirl.  I must have the papers now.  Every moment has my life in it.”

“Stop!” cried Vendale, in a terrible voice, staggering up with a last flash of fire breaking out of him, and clutching the thievish hands at his breast, in both of his.  “Stop!  Stand away from me!  God bless my Marguerite!  Happily she will never know how I died.  Stand off from me, and let me look at your murderous face.  Let it remind me — of something — left to say.”

The sight of him fighting so hard for his senses, and the doubt whether he might not for the instant be possessed by the strength of a dozen men, kept his opponent still.  Wildly glaring at him, Vendale faltered out the broken words:

“It shall not be — the trust — of the dead — betrayed by me — reputed parents — misinherited fortune — see to it!”

As his head dropped on his breast, and he stumbled on the brink of the chasm as before, the thievish hands went once more, quick and busy, to his breast.  He made a convulsive attempt to cry “No!” desperately rolled himself over into the gulf; and sank away from his enemy’s touch, like a phantom in a dreadful dream.

* * * * *

The mountain storm raged again, and passed again.  The awful mountain-voices died away, the moon rose, and the soft and silent snow fell.

Two men and two large dogs came out at the door of the Hospice.  The men looked carefully around them, and up at the sky.  The dogs rolled in the snow, and took it into their mouths, and cast it up with their paws.

One of the men said to the other: “We may venture now.  We may find them in one of the five Refuges.”  Each fastened on his back a basket; each took in his hand a strong spiked pole; each girded under his arms a looped end of a stout rope, so that they were tied together.

Suddenly the dogs desisted from their gambols in the snow, stood looking down the ascent, put their noses up, put their noses down, became greatly excited, and broke into a deep loud bay together.

The two men looked in the faces of the two dogs.  The two dogs looked, with at least equal intelligence, in the faces of the two men.

“Au secours, then!  Help!  To the rescue!” cried the two men.  The two dogs, with a glad, deep, generous bark, bounded away.

“Two more mad ones!” said the men, stricken motionless, and looking away in the moonlight.  “Is it possible in such weather!  And one of them a woman!”

Each of the dogs had the corner of a woman’s dress in its mouth, and drew her along.  She fondled their heads as she came up, and she came up through the snow with an accustomed tread.  Not so the large man with her, who was spent and winded.

“Dear guides, dear friends of travellers!  I am of your country.  We seek two gentlemen crossing the Pass, who should have reached the Hospice this evening.”

“They have reached it, ma’amselle.”

“Thank Heaven!  O thank Heaven!”

“But, unhappily, they have gone on again.  We are setting forth to seek them even now.  We had to wait until the
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passed.  It has been fearful up here.”

“Dear guides, dear friends of travellers!  Let me go with you.  Let me go with you for the love of GOD!  One of those gentlemen is to be my husband.  I love him, O, so dearly.  O so dearly!  You see I am not faint, you see I am not tired.  I am born a peasant girl.  I will show you that I know well how to fasten myself to your ropes.  I will do it with my own hands.  I will swear to be brave and good.  But let me go with you, let me go with you!  If any mischance should have befallen him, my love would find him, when nothing else could.  On my knees, dear friends of travellers!  By the love your dear mothers had for your fathers!”

The good rough fellows were moved.  “After all,” they murmured to one another, “she speaks but the truth.  She knows the ways of the mountains.  See how marvellously she has come here.  But as to Monsieur there, ma’amselle?”

“Dear Mr. Joey,” said Marguerite, addressing him in his own tongue, “you will remain at the house, and wait for me; will you not?”

“If I know’d which o’ you two recommended it,” growled Joey Ladle, eyeing the two men with great indignation, “I’d fight you for sixpence, and give you half-a-crown towards your expenses.  No, Miss.  I’ll stick by you as long as there’s any sticking left in me, and I’ll die for you when I can’t do better.”

The state of the moon rendering it highly important that no time should be lost, and the dogs showing signs of great uneasiness, the two men quickly took their resolution.  The rope that yoked them together was exchanged for a longer one; the party were secured, Marguerite second, and the Cellarman last; and they set out for the Refuges.  The actual distance of those places was nothing: the whole five, and the next Hospice to boot, being within two miles; but the ghastly way was whitened out and sheeted over.

They made no miss in reaching the Gallery where the two had taken shelter.  The second storm of wind and snow had so wildly swept over it since, that their tracks were gone.  But the dogs went to and fro with their noses down, and were confident.  The party stopping, however, at the further arch, where the second storm had been especially furious, and where the drift was deep, the dogs became troubled, and went about and about, in quest of a lost purpose.

The great abyss being known to lie on the right, they wandered too much to the left, and had to regain the way with infinite labour through a deep field of snow.  The leader of the line had stopped it, and was taking note of the landmarks, when one of the dogs fell to tearing up the snow a little before them.  Advancing and stooping to look at it, thinking that some one might be overwhelmed there, they saw that it was stained, and that the stain was red.

The other dog was now seen to look over the brink of the gulf, with his fore legs straightened out, lest he should fall into it, and to tremble in every limb.  Then the dog who had found the stained snow joined him, and then they ran to and fro, distressed and whining.  Finally, they both stopped on the brink together, and setting up their heads, howled dolefully.

“There is some one lying below,” said Marguerite.

“I think so,” said the foremost man.  “Stand well inward, the two last, and let us look over.”

The last man kindled two torches from his basket, and handed them forward.  The leader taking one, and Marguerite the other, they looked down; now shading the torches, now moving them to the right or left, now raising them, now depressing them, as moonlight far below contended with black shadows.  A piercing cry from Marguerite broke a long silence.

“My God!  On a projecting point, where a wall of ice stretches forward over the torrent, I see a human form!”

“Where, ma’amselle, where?”

“See, there!  On the shelf of ice below the dogs!”

The leader, with a sickened aspect, drew inward, and they were all silent.  But they were not all inactive, for Marguerite, with swift and skilful fingers, had detached both herself and him from the rope in a few seconds.

“Show me the baskets.  These two are the only ropes?”

“The only ropes here, ma’amselle; but at the Hospice — ”

“If he is alive — I know it is my lover — he will be dead before you can return.  Dear Guides!  Blessed friends of travellers!  Look at me.  Watch my hands.  If they falter or go wrong, make me your prisoner by force.  If they are steady and go right, help me to save him!”

She girded herself with a cord under the breast and arms, she formed it into a kind of jacket, she drew it into knots, she laid its end side by side with the end of the other cord, she twisted and twined the two together, she knotted them together, she set her foot upon the knots, she strained them, she held them for the two men to strain at.

“She is inspired,” they said to one another.

“By the Almighty’s mercy!” she exclaimed.  “You both know that I am by far the lightest here.  Give me the brandy and the wine, and lower me down to him.  Then go for assistance and a stronger rope.  You see that when it is lowered to me — look at this about me now — I can make it fast and safe to his body.  Alive or dead, I will bring him up, or die with him.  I love him passionately.  Can I say more?”

They turned to her companion, but he was lying senseless on the snow.

“Lower me down to him,” she said, taking two little kegs they had brought, and hanging them about her, “or I will dash myself to pieces!  I am a peasant, and I know no giddiness or fear; and this is nothing to me, and I passionately love him.  Lower me down!”

“Ma’amselle, ma’amselle, he must be dying or dead.”

“Dying or dead, my husband’s head shall lie upon my breast, or I will dash myself to pieces.”

They yielded, overborne.  With such precautions as their skill and the circumstances admitted, they let her slip from the summit, guiding herself down the precipitous icy wall with her hand, and they lowered down, and lowered down, and lowered down, until the cry came up: “Enough!”

“Is it really he, and is he dead?” they called down, looking over.

The cry came up: “He is insensible; but his heart beats.  It beats against mine.”

“How does he lie?”

The cry came up: “Upon a ledge of ice.  It has thawed beneath him, and it will thaw beneath me.  Hasten.  If we die, I am content.”

One of the two men hurried off with the dogs at such topmost speed as he could make; the other set up the lighted torches in the snow, and applied himself to recovering the Englishman.  Much snow-chafing and some brandy got him on his legs, but delirious and quite unconscious where he was.

The watch remained upon the brink, and his cry went down continually: “Courage!  They will soon be here.  How goes it?”  And the cry came up: “His heart still beats against mine.  I warm him in my arms.  I have cast off the rope, for the ice melts under us, and the rope would separate me from him; but I am not afraid.”