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 Neuchatel 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.
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 Neuchatel, 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 Neuchatel 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 Neuchatel,
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."
They came, at length, to the poor little town of Brieg, at the foot of
the Simplon. They came there after dark, but yet could see how dwarfed
men's works and men became with the immense mountains towering over them.
Here they must lie for the night; and here was warmth of fire, and lamp,
and dinner, and wine, and after-conference resounding, with guides and
drivers. No human creature had come across the Pass for four days. The
snow above the snow-line was too soft for wheeled carriage, and not hard
enough for sledge. There was snow in the sky. There had been snow in
the sky for days past, and the marvel was that it had not fallen, and the
certainty was that it must fall. No vehicle could cross. The journey
might be tried on mules, or it might be tried on foot; but the best
guides must be paid danger-price in either case, and that, too, whether
they succeeded in taking the two travellers across, or turned for safety
and brought them back.
In this discussion, Obenreizer bore no part whatever. He sat silently
smoking by the fire until the room was cleared and Vendale referred to
him.
"Bah! I am weary of these poor devils and their trade," he said, in
reply. "Always the same story. It is the story of their trade to-day,
as it was the story of their trade when I was a ragged boy. What do you
and I want? We want a knapsack each, and a mountain-staff each. We want
no guide; we should guide him; he would not guide us. We leave our
portmanteaus here, and we cross together. We have been on the mountains
together before now, and I am mountain-born, and I know this
Pass--Pass!--rather High Road!--by heart. We will leave these poor
devils, in pity, to trade with others; but they must not delay us to make
a pretence of earning money. Which is all they mean."
Vendale, glad to be quit of the dispute, and to cut the knot: active,
adventurous, bent on getting forward, and therefore very susceptible to
the last hint: readily assented. Within two hours, they had purchased
what they wanted for the expedition, had packed their knapsacks, and lay
down to sleep.
At break of day, they found half the town collected in the narrow street
to see them depart. The people talked together in groups; the guides and
drivers whispered apart, and looked up at the sky; no one wished them a
good journey.
As they began the ascent, a gleam of sun shone from the otherwise
unaltered sky, and for a moment turned the tin spires of the town to
silver.
"A good omen!" said Vendale (though it died out while he spoke). "Perhaps
our example will open the Pass on this side."
"No; we shall not be followed," returned Obenreizer, looking up at the
sky and back at the valley. "We shall be alone up yonder."
ON THE MOUNTAIN
The road was fair enough for stout walkers, and the air grew lighter and
easier to breathe as the two ascended. But the settled gloom remained as
it had remained for days back. Nature seemed to have come to a pause.
The sense of hearing, no less than the sense of sight, was troubled by
having to wait so long for the change, whatever it might be, that
impended. The silence was as palpable and heavy as the lowering
clouds--or rather cloud, for there seemed to be but one in all the sky,
and that one covering the whole of it.
Although the light was thus dismally shrouded, the prospect was not
obscured. Down in the valley of the Rhone behind them, the stream could
be traced through all its many windings, oppressively sombre and solemn
in its one leaden hue, a colourless waste. Far and high above them,
glaciers and suspended avalanches overhung the spots where they must
pass, by-and-by; deep and dark below them on their right, were awful
precipice and roaring torrent; tremendous mountains arose in every vista.
The gigantic landscape, uncheered by a touch of changing light or a
solitary ray of sun, was yet terribly distinct in its ferocity. The
hearts of two lonely men might shrink a little, if they had to win their
way for miles and hours among a legion of silent and motionless men--mere
men like themselves--all looking at them with fixed and frowning front.
But how much more, when the legion is of Nature's mightiest works, and
the frown may turn to fury in an instant!
As they ascended, the road became gradually more rugged and difficult.
But the spirits of Vendale rose as they mounted higher, leaving so much
more of the road behind them conquered. Obenreizer spoke little, and
held on with a determined purpose. Both, in respect of agility and
endurance, were well qualified for the expedition. Whatever the born
mountaineer read in the weather-tokens that was illegible to the other,
he kept to himself.
"Shall we get across to-day?" asked Vendale.
"No," replied the other. "You see how much deeper the snow lies here
than it lay half a league lower. The higher we mount the deeper the snow
will lie. Walking is half wading even now. And the days are so short!
If we get as high as the fifth Refuge, and lie to-night at the Hospice,
we shall do well."
"Is there no danger of the weather rising in the night," asked Vendale,
anxiously, "and snowing us up?"
"There is danger enough about us," said Obenreizer, with a cautious
glance onward and upward, "to render silence our best policy. You have
heard of the Bridge of the Ganther?"
"I have crossed it once."
"In the summer?"
"Yes; in the travelling season."
"Yes; but it is another thing at this season;" with a sneer, as though he
were out of temper. "This is not a time of year, or a state of things,
on an Alpine Pass, that you gentlemen holiday-travellers know much
about."
"You are my Guide," said Vendale, good humouredly. "I trust to you."
"I am your Guide," said Obenreizer, "and I will guide you to your
journey's end. There is the Bridge before us."
They had made a turn into a desolate and dismal ravine, where the snow
lay deep below them, deep above them, deep on every side. While
speaking, Obenreizer stood pointing at the Bridge, and observing
Vendale's face, with a very singular expression on his own.
"If I, as Guide, had sent you over there, in advance, and encouraged you
to give a shout or two, you might have brought down upon yourself tons
and tons and tons of snow, that would not only have struck you dead, but
buried you deep, at a blow."
"No doubt," said Vendale.
"No doubt. But that is not what I have to do, as Guide. So pass
silently. Or, going as we go, our indiscretion might else crush and bury
_me_. Let us get on!"
There was a great accumulation of snow on the Bridge; and such enormous
accumulations of snow overhung them from protecting masses of rock, that
they might have been making their way through a stormy sky of white
clouds. Using his staff skilfully, sounding as he went, and looking
upward, with bent shoulders, as it were to resist the mere idea of a fall
from above, Obenreizer softly led. Vendale closely followed. They were
yet in the midst of their dangerous way, when there came a mighty rush,
followed by a sound as of thunder. Obenreizer clapped his hand on
Vendale's mouth and pointed to the track behind them. Its aspect had
been wholly changed in a moment. An avalanche had swept over it, and
plunged into the torrent at the bottom of the gulf below.
Their appearance at the solitary Inn not far beyond this terrible Bridge,
elicited many expressions of astonishment from the people shut up in the
house. "We stay but to rest," said Obenreizer, shaking the snow from his
dress at the fire. "This gentleman has very pressing occasion to get
across; tell them, Vendale."
"Assuredly, I have very pressing occasion. I must cross."
"You hear, all of you. My friend has very pressing occasion to get
across, and we want no advice and no help. I am as good a guide, my
fellow-countrymen, as any of you. Now, give us to eat and drink."
In exactly the same way, and in nearly the same words, when it was coming
on dark and they had struggled through the greatly increased difficulties
of the road, and had at last reached their destination for the night,
Obenreizer said to the astonished people of the Hospice, gathering about
them at the fire, while they were yet in the act of getting their wet
shoes off, and shaking the snow from their clothes:
"It is well to understand one another, friends all. This gentleman--"
"--Has," said Vendale, readily taking him up with a smile, "very pressing
occasion to get across. Must cross."
"You hear?--has very pressing occasion to get across, must cross. We
want no advice and no help. I am mountain-born, and act as Guide. Do
not worry us by talking about it, but let us have supper, and wine, and
bed."
All through the intense cold of the night, the same awful stillness.
Again at sunrise, no sunny tinge to gild or redden the snow. The same
interminable waste of deathly white; the same immovable air; the same
monotonous gloom in the sky.
"Travellers!" a friendly voice called to them from the door, after they
were afoot, knapsack on back and staff in hand, as yesterday; "recollect!
There are five places of shelter, near together, on the dangerous road
before you; and there is the wooden cross, and there is the next Hospice.
Do not stray from the track. If the _Tourmente_ comes on, take shelter
instantly!"
"The trade of these poor devils!" said Obenreizer to his friend, with a
contemptuous backward wave of his hand towards the voice. "How they
stick to their trade! You Englishmen say we Swiss are mercenary. Truly,
it does look like it."
They had divided between the two knapsacks such refreshments as they had
been able to obtain that morning, and as they deemed it prudent to take.
Obenreizer carried the wine as his share of the burden; Vendale, the
bread and meat and cheese, and the flask of brandy.
They had for some time laboured upward and onward through the snow--which
was now above their knees in the track, and of unknown depth
elsewhere--and they were still labouring upward and onward through the
most frightful part of that tremendous desolation, when snow begin to
fall. At first, but a few flakes descended slowly and steadily. After a
little while the fall grew much denser, and suddenly it began without
apparent cause to whirl itself into spiral shapes. Instantly ensuing
upon this last change, an icy blast came roaring at them, and every sound
and force imprisoned until now was let loose.
One of the dismal galleries through which the road is carried at that
perilous point, a cave eked out by arches of great strength, was near at
hand. They struggled into it, and the storm raged wildly. The noise of
the wind, the noise of the water, the thundering down of displaced masses
of rock and snow, the awful voices with which not only that gorge but
every gorge in the whole monstrous range seemed to be suddenly endowed,
the darkness as of night, the violent revolving of the snow which beat
and broke it into spray and blinded them, the madness of everything
around insatiate for destruction, the rapid substitution of furious
violence for unnatural calm, and hosts of appalling sounds for silence:
these were things, on the edge of a deep abyss, to chill the blood,
though the fierce wind, made actually solid by ice and snow, had failed
to chill it.
Obenreizer, walking to and fro in the gallery without ceasing, signed to
Vendale to help him unbuckle his knapsack. They could see each other,
but could not have heard each other speak. Vendale complying, Obenreizer
produced his bottle of wine, and poured some out, motioning Vendale to
take that for warmth's sake, and not brandy. Vendale again complying,
Obenreizer seemed to drink after him, and the two walked backwards and
forwards side by side; both well knowing that to rest or sleep would be
to die.
The snow came driving heavily into the gallery by the upper end at which
they would pass out of it, if they ever passed out; for greater dangers
lay on the road behind them than before. The snow soon began to choke
the arch. An hour more, and it lay so high as to block out half the
returning daylight. But it froze hard now, as it fell, and could be
clambered through or over. The violence of the mountain storm was
gradually yielding to steady snowfall. The wind still raged at
intervals, but not incessantly; and when it paused, the snow fell in
heavy flakes.
They might have been two hours in their frightful prison, when
Obenreizer, now crunching into the mound, now creeping over it with his
head bowed down and his body touching the top of the arch, made his way
out. Vendale followed close upon him, but followed without clear motive
or calculation. For the lethargy of Basle was creeping over him again,
and mastering his senses.
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 _Tourmente_ 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 _Tourmente_ 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."
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.