The Eight Strokes of the Clock (9 page)

Prince Rénine had listened in silence. But Hortense, as the story approached its conclusion, had given way to a hilarity which she could no longer restrain and suddenly, in spite of all her efforts, she burst into a fit of the wildest laughter:

“Forgive me,” she said, her eyes filled with tears, “do forgive me; it’s too much for my nerves …”

“Don’t apologize, madame,” said the young man, gently, in a voice free from resentment. “I warned you that my story was laughable; I, better than anyone, know how absurd, how nonsensical it is. Yes, the whole thing is perfectly grotesque. But believe me when I tell you that it was no fun in reality. It seems a humorous situation, and it remains humorous by the force of circumstances; but it is also horrible. You can see that for yourself, can’t you? The two mothers, neither of whom was certain of being a mother, but neither of whom was certain that she was not one, both clung to Jean Louis. He might be a stranger; on the other hand, he might be their own flesh and blood. They loved him to excess and fought for him furiously. And, above all, they both came to hate each other with a deadly hatred. Differing completely in character and education and obliged to live together because neither was willing to forego the advantage of her possible maternity, they lived the life of irreconcilable enemies who can never lay their weapons aside … I grew up in the midst of this hatred and had it instilled into me by both of them. When my childish heart, hungering for affection, inclined me to one of them, the other would seek to inspire me with loathing and contempt for her. In this manor house, which they bought on the old doctor’s death and to which they added the two wings, I was the involuntary torturer and their daily victim. Tormented as a child, and, as a young man, leading the most hideous of lives, I doubt if anyone on earth ever suffered more than I did.”

“You ought to have left them!” exclaimed Hortense, who had stopped laughing.

“One can’t leave one’s mother, and one of those two women was my mother. And a woman can’t abandon her son, and each of them was entitled to believe that I was her son. We were all three chained together like convicts, with chains of sorrow, compassion, doubt and also of hope that the truth might one day become apparent. And here we still are, all three, insulting one another and blaming one another for our wasted lives. Oh, what a hell! And there was no escaping it. I tried often enough … but in vain. The broken bonds became tied again. Only this summer, under the stimulus of my love for Geneviève, I tried to free myself and did my utmost to persuade the two women whom I call mother. And then … and then! I was up against their complaints, their immediate hatred of the wife, of the stranger, whom I was proposing to force upon them … I gave way. What sort of a life would Geneviève have had here, between Madame d’Imbleval and Madame Vaurois? I had no right to victimize her.”

Jean Louis, who had been gradually becoming excited, uttered these last words in a firm voice, as though he would have wished his conduct to be ascribed to conscientious motives and a sense of duty. In reality, as Rénine and Hortense clearly saw, his was an unusually weak nature, incapable of reacting against a ridiculous position from which he had suffered ever since he was a child and which he had come to look upon as final and irremediable. He endured it as a man bears a cross which he has no right to cast aside; and at the same time he was ashamed of it. He had never spoken of it to Geneviève, from dread of ridicule; and afterwards, on returning to his prison, he had remained there out of habit and weakness.

He sat down to a writing table and quickly wrote a letter, which he handed to Rénine:

“Would you be kind enough to give this note to Mlle. Aymard and beg her once more to forgive me?”

Rénine did not move and, when the other pressed the letter upon him, he took it and tore it up.

“What does this mean?” asked the young man.

“It means that I will not charge myself with any message.”

“Why?”

“Because you are coming with us.”

“I?”

“Yes. You will see Mlle. Aymard tomorrow and ask for her hand in marriage.”

Jean Louis looked at Rénine with a rather disdainful air, as though he were thinking:

“Here’s a man who has not understood a word of what I’ve been explaining to him.”

But Hortense went up to Rénine:

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it will be as I say.”

“But you must have your reasons?”

“One only, but it will be enough, provided this gentleman is so kind as to help me in my enquiries.”

“Enquiries? With what object?” asked the young man.

“With the object of proving that your story is not quite accurate.”

Jean Louis took umbrage at this:

“I must ask you to believe, monsieur, that I have not said a word which is not the exact truth.”

“I expressed myself badly,” said Rénine, with great kindliness. “Certainly you have not said a word that does not agree with what you believe to be the exact truth. But the truth is not, cannot be what you believe it to be.”

The young man folded his arms:

“In any case, monsieur, it seems likely that I should know the truth better than you do.”

“Why better? What happened on that tragic night can obviously be known to you only at secondhand. You have no proofs. Neither have Madame d’Imbleval and Madame Vaurois.”

“No proofs of what?” exclaimed Jean Louis, losing patience.

“No proofs of the confusion that took place.”

“What! Why, it’s an absolute certainty! The two children were laid in the same cradle, with no marks to distinguish one from the other; and the nurse was unable to tell …”

“At least, that’s her version of it,” interrupted Rénine.

“What’s that? Her version? But you’re accusing the woman.”

“I’m accusing her of nothing.”

“Yes, you are: you’re accusing her of lying. And why should she lie? She had no interest in doing so, and her tears and despair are so much evidence of her good faith. For, after all, the two mothers were there … they saw the woman weeping … they questioned her … And then, I repeat, what interest had she …?”

Jean Louis was greatly excited. Close beside him, Madame d’Imbleval and Madame Vaurois, who had no doubt been listening behind the doors and who had stealthily entered the room, stood stammering, in amazement:

“No, no … it’s impossible … We’ve questioned her over and over again. Why should she tell a lie? …”

“Speak, monsieur, speak,” Jean Louis enjoined. “Explain yourself. Give your reasons for trying to cast doubt upon an absolute truth!”

“Because that truth is inadmissible,” declared Rénine, raising his voice and growing excited in turn to the point of punctuating his remarks by thumping the table. “No, things don’t happen like that. No, fate does not display those refinements of cruelty and chance is not added to chance with such reckless extravagance! It was already an unprecedented chance that, on the very night on which the doctor, his manservant and his maid were out of the house, the two ladies should be seized with labour pains at the same hour and should bring two sons into the world at the same time. Don’t let us add a still more exceptional event! Enough of the uncanny! Enough of lamps that go out and candles that refuse to burn! No and again no, it is not admissible that a midwife should become confused in the essential details of her trade. However bewildered she may be by the unforeseen nature of the circumstances, a remnant of instinct is still on the alert, so that there is a place prepared for each child and each is kept distinct from the other. The first child is here, the second is there. Even if they are lying side by side, one is on the left and the other on the right. Even if they are wrapped in the same kind of binders, some little detail differs, a trifle which is recorded by the memory and which is inevitably recalled to the mind without any need of reflection. Confusion? I refuse to believe in it. Impossible to tell one from the other? It isn’t true. In the world of fiction, yes, one can imagine all sorts of fantastic accidents and heap contradiction on contradiction. But, in the world of reality, at the very heart of reality, there is always a fixed point, a solid nucleus, about which the facts group themselves in accordance with a logical order. I therefore declare most positively that Nurse Boussignol could not have mixed up the two children.”

All this he said decisively, as though he had been present during the night in question; and so great was his power of persuasion that from the very first he shook the certainty of those who for more than a quarter of a century had never doubted.

The two women and their son pressed round him and questioned him with breathless anxiety:

“Then you think that she may know … that she may be able to tell us …?”

He corrected himself:

“I don’t say yes and I don’t say no. All I say is that there was something in her behaviour during those hours that does not tally with her statements and with reality. All the vast and intolerable mystery that has weighed down upon you three arises not from a momentary lack of attention but from something of which we do not know, but of which she does. That is what I maintain; and that is what happened.”

Jean Louis said, in a husky voice:

“She is alive … She lives at Carhaix … We can send for her …”

Hortense at once proposed:

“Would you like me to go for her? I will take the motor and bring her back with me. Where does she live?”

“In the middle of the town, at a little draper’s shop. The chauffeur will show you. Mlle. Boussignol: everybody knows her …”

“And, whatever you do,” added Rénine, “don’t warn her in any way. If she’s uneasy, so much the better. But don’t let her know what we want with her.”

Twenty minutes passed in absolute silence. Rénine paced the room, in which the fine old furniture, the handsome tapestries, the well-bound books and pretty knickknacks denoted a love of art and a seeking after style in Jean Louis. This room was really his. In the adjoining apartments on either side, through the open doors, Rénine was able to note the bad taste of the two mothers.

He went up to Jean Louis and, in a low voice, asked:

“Are they well-off?”

“Yes.”

“And you?”

“They settled the manor house upon me, with all the land around it, which makes me quite independent.”

“Have they any relations?”

“Sisters, both of them.”

“With whom they could go to live?”

“Yes; and they have sometimes thought of doing so. But there can’t be any question of that. Once more, I assure you …”

Meantime the car had returned. The two women jumped up hurriedly, ready to speak.

“Leave it to me,” said Rénine, “and don’t be surprised by anything that I say. It’s not a matter of asking her questions but of frightening her, of flurrying her … The sudden attack,” he added between his teeth.

The car drove round the lawn and drew up outside the windows. Hortense sprang out and helped an old woman to alight, dressed in a fluted linen cap, a black velvet bodice and a heavy gathered skirt.

The old woman entered in a great state of alarm. She had a pointed face, like a weasel’s, with a prominent mouth full of protruding teeth.

“What’s the matter, Madame d’Imbleval?” she asked, timidly stepping into the room from which the doctor had once driven her. “Good day to you, Madame Vaurois.”

The ladies did not reply. Rénine came forward and said, sternly:

“Mlle. Boussignol, I have been sent by the Paris police to throw light upon a tragedy which took place here twenty-seven years ago. I have just secured evidence that you have distorted the truth and that, as the result of your false declarations, the birth certificate of one of the children born in the course of that night is inaccurate. Now false declarations in matters of birth certificates are misdemeanours punishable by law. I shall therefore be obliged to take you to Paris to be interrogated … unless you are prepared here and now to confess everything that might repair the consequences of your offence.”

The old maid was shaking in every limb. Her teeth were chattering. She was evidently incapable of opposing the least resistance to Rénine.

“Are you ready to confess everything?” he asked.

“Yes,” she panted.

“Without delay? I have to catch a train. The business must be settled immediately. If you show the least hesitation, I take you with me. Have you made up your mind to speak?”

“Yes.”

He pointed to Jean Louis:

“Whose son is this gentleman? Madame d’Imbleval’s?”

“No.”

“Madame Vaurois’, therefore?”

“No.”

A stupefied silence welcomed the two replies.

“Explain yourself,” Rénine commanded, looking at his watch.

Then Madame Boussignol fell on her knees and said, in so low and dull a voice that they had to bend over her in order to catch the sense of what she was mumbling:

“Someone came in the evening … a gentleman with a newborn baby wrapped in blankets, which he wanted the doctor to look after. As the doctor wasn’t there, he waited all night and it was he who did it all.”

“Did what?” asked Rénine. “What did he do? What happened?”

“Well, what happened was that it was not one child but the two of them that died: Madame d’Imbleval’s and Madame Vaurois’ too, both in convulsions. Then the gentleman, seeing this, said, ‘This shows me where my duty lies. I must seize this opportunity of making sure that my own boy shall be happy and well cared for. Put him in the place of one of the dead children.’ He offered me a big sum of money, saying that this one payment would save him the expense of providing for his child every month, and I accepted. Only, I did not know in whose place to put him and whether to say that the boy was Louis d’Imbleval or Jean Vaurois. The gentleman thought a moment and said neither. Then he explained to me what I was to do and what I was to say after he had gone. And, while I was dressing his boy in vest and binders the same as one of the dead children, he wrapped the other in the blankets he had brought with him and went out into the night.”

Mlle. Boussignol bent her head and wept. After a moment, Rénine said: