Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1685 page)

The moon went down behind the mountain tops, and all the abyss lay in darkness.  The cry went down: “How goes it?”  The cry came up: “We are sinking lower, but his heart still beats against mine.”

At length the eager barking of the dogs, and a flare of light upon the snow, proclaimed that help was coming on.  Twenty or thirty men, lamps, torches, litters, ropes, blankets, wood to kindle a great fire, restoratives and stimulants, came in fast.  The dogs ran from one man to another, and from this thing to that, and ran to the edge of the abyss, dumbly entreating Speed, speed, speed!

The cry went down: “Thanks to God, all is ready.  How goes it?”

The cry came up: “We are sinking still, and we are deadly cold.  His heart no longer beats against mine.  Let no one come down, to add to our weight.  Lower the rope only.”

The fire was kindled high, a great glare of torches lighted the sides of the precipice, lamps were lowered, a strong rope was lowered.  She could be seen passing it round him, and making it secure.

The cry came up into a deathly silence: “Raise!  Softly!”  They could see her diminished figure shrink, as he was swung into the air.

They gave no shout when some of them laid him on a litter, and others lowered another strong rope.  The cry again came up into a deathly silence: “Raise!  Softly!”  But when they caught her at the brink, then they shouted, then they wept, then they gave thanks to Heaven, then they kissed her feet, then they kissed her dress, then the dogs caressed her, licked her icy hands, and with their honest faces warmed her frozen bosom!

She broke from them all, and sank over him on his litter, with both her loving hands upon the heart that stood still.

ACT IV.

THE CLOCK-LOCK

The pleasant scene was Neuchâtel; the pleasant month was April; the pleasant place was a notary’s office; the pleasant person in it was the notary: a rosy, hearty, handsome old man, chief notary of Neuchâtel, known far and wide in the canton as Maître Voigt.  Professionally and personally, the notary was a popular citizen.  His innumerable kindnesses and his innumerable oddities had for years made him one of the recognised public characters of the pleasant Swiss town.  His long brown frock-coat and his black skull-cap, were among the institutions of the place: and he carried a snuff-box which, in point of size, was popularly believed to be without a parallel in Europe.

There was another person in the notary’s office, not so pleasant as the notary.  This was Obenreizer.

An oddly pastoral kind of office it was, and one that would never have answered in England.  It stood in a neat back yard, fenced off from a pretty flower-garden.  Goats browsed in the doorway, and a cow was within half-a-dozen feet of keeping company with the clerk.  Maître Voigt’s room was a bright and varnished little room, with panelled walls, like a toy-chamber.  According to the seasons of the year, roses, sunflowers, hollyhocks, peeped in at the windows.  Maître Voigt’s bees hummed through the office all the summer, in at this window and out at that, taking it frequently in their day’s work, as if honey were to be made from Maître Voigt’s sweet disposition.  A large musical box on the chimney-piece often trilled away at the Overture to Fra Diavolo, or a Selection from William Tell, with a chirruping liveliness that had to be stopped by force on the entrance of a client, and irrepressibly broke out again the moment his back was turned.

“Courage, courage, my good fellow!” said Maître Voigt, patting Obenreizer on the knee, in a fatherly and comforting way.  “You will begin a new life to-morrow morning in my office here.”

Obenreizer — dressed in mourning, and subdued in manner — lifted his hand, with a white handkerchief in it, to the region of his heart.  “The gratitude is here,” he said.  “But the words to express it are not here.”

“Ta-ta-ta!  Don’t talk to me about gratitude!” said Maître Voigt.  “I hate to see a man oppressed.  I see you oppressed, and I hold out my hand to you by instinct.  Besides, I am not too old yet, to remember my young days.  Your father sent me my first client.  (It was on a question of half an acre of vineyard that seldom bore any grapes.)  Do I owe nothing to your father’s son?  I owe him a debt of friendly obligation, and I pay it to you.  That’s rather neatly expressed, I think,” added Maître Voigt, in high good humour with himself.  “Permit me to reward my own merit with a pinch of snuff!”

Obenreizer dropped his eyes to the ground, as though he were not even worthy to see the notary take snuff.

“Do me one last favour, sir,” he said, when he raised his eyes.  “Do not act on impulse.  Thus far, you have only a general knowledge of my position.  Hear the case for and against me, in its details, before you take me into your office.  Let my claim on your benevolence be recognised by your sound reason as well as by your excellent heart.  In
that
case, I may hold up my head against the bitterest of my enemies, and build myself a new reputation on the ruins of the character I have lost.”

“As you will,” said Maître Voigt.  “You speak well, my son.  You will be a fine lawyer one of these days.”

“The details are not many,” pursued Obenreizer.  “My troubles begin with the accidental death of my late travelling companion, my lost dear friend Mr. Vendale.”

“Mr. Vendale,” repeated the notary.  “Just so.  I have heard and read of the name, several times within these two months.  The name of the unfortunate English gentleman who was killed on the Simplon.  When you got that scar upon your cheek and neck.”

“ — From my own knife,” said Obenreizer, touching what must have been an ugly gash at the time of its infliction.

“From your own knife,” assented the notary, “and in trying to save him.  Good, good, good.  That was very good.  Vendale.  Yes.  I have several times, lately, thought it droll that I should once have had a client of that name.”

“But the world, sir,” returned Obenreizer, “is
so
small!”  Nevertheless he made a mental note that the notary had once had a client of that name.

“As I was saying, sir, the death of that dear travelling comrade begins my troubles.  What follows?  I save myself.  I go down to Milan.  I am received with coldness by Defresnier and Company.  Shortly afterwards, I am discharged by Defresnier and Company.  Why?  They give no reason why.  I ask, do they assail my honour?  No answer.  I ask, what is the imputation against me?  No answer.  I ask, where are their proofs against me?  No answer.  I ask, what am I to think?  The reply is, ‘M. Obenreizer is free to think what he will.  What M. Obenreizer thinks, is of no importance to Defresnier and Company.’  And that is all.”

“Perfectly.  That is all,” asserted the notary, taking a large pinch of snuff.

“But is that enough, sir?”

“That is not enough,” said Maître Voigt.  “The House of Defresnier are my fellow townsmen — much respected, much esteemed — but the House of Defresnier must not silently destroy a man’s character.  You can rebut assertion.  But how can you rebut silence?”

“Your sense of justice, my dear patron,” answered Obenreizer, “states in a word the cruelty of the case.  Does it stop there?  No.  For, what follows upon that?”

“True, my poor boy,” said the notary, with a comforting nod or two; “your ward rebels upon that.”

“Rebels is too soft a word,” retorted Obenreizer.  “My ward revolts from me with horror.  My ward defies me.  My ward withdraws herself from my authority, and takes shelter (Madame Dor with her) in the house of that English lawyer, Mr. Bintrey, who replies to your summons to her to submit herself to my authority, that she will not do so.”

“ — And who afterwards writes,” said the notary, moving his large snuff-box to look among the papers underneath it for the letter, “that he is coming to confer with me.”

“Indeed?” replied Obenreizer, rather checked.  “Well, sir.  Have I no legal rights?”

“Assuredly, my poor boy,” returned the notary.  “All but felons have their legal rights.”

“And who calls me felon?” said Obenreizer, fiercely.

“No one.  Be calm under your wrongs.  If the House of Defresnier would call you felon, indeed, we should know how to deal with them.”

While saying these words, he had handed Bintrey’s very short letter to Obenreizer, who now read it and gave it back.

“In saying,” observed Obenreizer, with recovered composure, “that he is coming to confer with you, this English lawyer means that he is coming to deny my authority over my ward.”

“You think so?”

“I am sure of it.  I know him.  He is obstinate and contentious.  You will tell me, my dear sir, whether my authority is unassailable, until my ward is of age?”

“Absolutely unassailable.”

“I will enforce it.  I will make her submit herself to it.  For,” said Obenreizer, changing his angry tone to one of grateful submission, “I owe it to you, sir; to you, who have so confidingly taken an injured man under your protection, and into your employment.”

“Make your mind easy,” said Maître Voigt.  “No more of this now, and no thanks!  Be here to-morrow morning, before the other clerk comes — between seven and eight.  You will find me in this room; and I will myself initiate you in your work.  Go away! go away!  I have letters to write.  I won’t hear a word more.”

Dismissed with this generous abruptness, and satisfied with the favourable impression he had left on the old man’s mind, Obenreizer was at leisure to revert to the mental note he had made that Maître Voigt once had a client whose name was Vendale.

“I ought to know England well enough by this time;” so his meditations ran, as he sat on a bench in the yard; “and it is not a name I ever encountered there, except — ” he looked involuntarily over his shoulder — ”as
his
name.  Is the world so small that I cannot get away from him, even now when he is dead?  He confessed at the last that he had betrayed the trust of the dead, and misinherited a fortune.  And I was to see to it.  And I was to stand off, that my face might remind him of it.  Why
my
face, unless it concerned
me
?  I am sure of his words, for they have been in my ears ever since.  Can there be anything bearing on them, in the keeping of this old idiot?  Anything to repair my fortunes, and blacken his memory?  He dwelt upon my earliest remembrances, that night at Basle.  Why, unless he had a purpose in it?”

Maître Voigt’s two largest he-goats were butting at him to butt him out of the place, as if for that disrespectful mention of their master.  So he got up and left the place.  But he walked alone for a long time on the border of the lake, with his head drooped in deep thought.

Between seven and eight next morning, he presented himself again at the office.  He found the notary ready for him, at work on some papers which had come in on the previous evening.  In a few clear words, Maître Voigt explained the routine of the office, and the duties Obenreizer would be expected to perform.  It still wanted five minutes to eight, when the preliminary instructions were declared to be complete.

“I will show you over the house and the offices,” said Maître Voigt, “but I must put away these papers first.  They come from the municipal authorities, and they must be taken special care of.”

Obenreizer saw his chance, here, of finding out the repository in which his employer’s private papers were kept.

“Can’t I save you the trouble, sir?” he asked.  “Can’t I put those documents away under your directions?”

Maître Voigt laughed softly to himself; closed the portfolio in which the papers had been sent to him; handed it to Obenreizer.

“Suppose you try,” he said.  “All my papers of importance are kept yonder.”

He pointed to a heavy oaken door, thickly studded with nails, at the lower end of the room.  Approaching the door, with the portfolio, Obenreizer discovered, to his astonishment, that there were no means whatever of opening it from the outside.  There was no handle, no bolt, no key, and (climax of passive obstruction!) no keyhole.