The Eight Strokes of the Clock by Maurice Le Blanc

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"I am to be married in a week, Jean Louis. Come to my rescue, I beseech
you. My friend Hortense and Prince Renine will help you to overcome the
obstacles that baffle you. Trust them. I love you.

"GENEVIEVE."

He was a rather dull-looking young man, whose very swarthy, lean and bony
face certainly bore the expression of melancholy and distress described by
Genevieve. Indeed, the marks of suffering were visible in all his harassed
features, as well as in his sad and anxious eyes.

He repeated Genevieve's name over and over again, while looking about him
with a distracted air. He seemed to be seeking a course of conduct.

He seemed on the point of offering an explanation but could find nothing
to say. The sudden intervention had taken him at a disadvantage, like an
unforseen attack which he did not know how to meet.

Renine felt that the adversary would capitulate at the first summons. The
man had been fighting so desperately during the last few months and had
suffered so severely in the retirement and obstinate silence in which he
had taken refuge that he was not thinking of defending himself. Moreover,
how could he do so, now that they had forced their way into the privacy of
his odious existence?

"Take my word for it, monsieur," declared Renine, "that it is in your best
interests to confide in us. We are Genevieve Aymard's friends. Do not
hesitate to speak."

"I can hardly hesitate," he said, "after what you have just heard. This is
the life I lead, monsieur. I will tell you the whole secret, so that you
may tell it to Genevieve. She will then understand why I have not gone back
to her ... and why I have not the right to do so."

He pushed a chair forward for Hortense. The two men sat down, and, without
any need of further persuasion, rather as though he himself felt a certain
relief in unburdening himself, he said:

"You must not be surprised, monsieur, if I tell my story with a certain
flippancy, for, as a matter of fact, it is a frankly comical story and
cannot fail to make you laugh. Fate often amuses itself by playing these
imbecile tricks, these monstrous farces which seem as though they must have
been invented by the brain of a madman or a drunkard. Judge for yourself.
Twenty-seven years ago, the Manoir d'Elseven, which at that time consisted
only of the main building, was occupied by an old doctor who, to increase
his modest means, used to receive one or two paying guests. In this way,
Madame d'Imbleval spent the summer here one year and Madame Vaurois the
following summer. Now these two ladies did not know each other. One of them
was married to a Breton of a merchant-vessel and the other to a commercial
traveller from the Vendee.

"It so happened that they lost their husbands at the same time, at a period
when each of them was expecting a baby. And, as they both lived in the
country, at places some distance from any town, they wrote to the old
doctor that they intended to come to his house for their confinement....
He agreed. They arrived almost on the same day, in the autumn. Two small
bedrooms were prepared for them, behind the room in which we are sitting.
The doctor had engaged a nurse, who slept in this very room. Everything
was perfectly satisfactory. The ladies were putting the finishing touches
to their baby-clothes and were getting on together splendidly. They were
determined that their children should be boys and had chosen the names of
Jean and Louis respectively.... One evening the doctor was called out to a
case and drove off in his gig with the man-servant, saying that he would
not be back till next day. In her master's absence, a little girl who
served as maid-of-all-work ran out to keep company with her sweetheart.
These accidents destiny turned to account with diabolical malignity. At
about midnight, Madame d'Imbleval was seized with the first pains. The
nurse, Mlle. Boussignol, had had some training as a midwife and did not
lose her head. But, an hour later, Madame Vaurois' turn came; and the
tragedy, or I might rather say the tragi-comedy, was enacted amid the
screams and moans of the two patients and the bewildered agitation of the
nurse running from one to the other, bewailing her fate, opening the window
to call out for the doctor or falling on her knees to implore the aid of
Providence.... Madame Vaurois was the first to bring a son into the world.
Mlle. Boussignol hurriedly carried him in here, washed and tended him and
laid him in the cradle prepared for him.... But Madame d'Imbleval was
screaming with pain; and the nurse had to attend to her while the newborn
child was yelling like a stuck pig and the terrified mother, unable to stir
from her bed, fainted.... Add to this all the wretchedness of darkness and
disorder, the only lamp, without any oil, for the servant had neglected to
fill it, the candles burning out, the moaning of the wind, the screeching
of the owls, and you will understand that Mlle. Boussignol was scared
out of her wits. However, at five o'clock in the morning, after many
tragic incidents, she came in here with the d'Imbleval baby, likewise a
boy, washed and tended him, laid him in his cradle and went off to help
Madame Vaurois, who had come to herself and was crying out, while Madame
d'Imbleval had fainted in her turn. And, when Mlle. Boussignol, having
settled the two mothers, but half-crazed with fatigue, her brain in a
whirl, returned to the new-born children, she realized with horror that she
had wrapped them in similar binders, thrust their feet into similar woolen
socks and laid them both, side by side, _in the same cradle_, so that
it was impossible to tell Louis d'Imbleval from Jean Vaurois!... To make
matters worse, when she lifted one of them out of the cradle, she found
that his hands were cold as ice and that he had ceased to breathe. He was
dead. What was his name and what the survivor's?... Three hours later, the
doctor found the two women in a condition of frenzied delirium, while the
nurse was dragging herself from one bed to the other, entreating the two
mothers to forgive her. She held me out first to one, then to the other,
to receive their caresses--for I was the surviving child--and they first
kissed me and then pushed me away; for, after all, who was I? The son of
the widowed Madame d'Imbleval and the late merchant-captain or the son of
the widowed Madame Vaurois and the late commercial traveller? There was
not a clue by which they could tell.... The doctor begged each of the two
mothers to sacrifice her rights, at least from the legal point of view,
so that I might be called either Louis d'Imbleval or Jean Vaurois. They
refused absolutely. 'Why Jean Vaurois, if he's a d'Imbleval?' protested the
one. 'Why Louis d'Imbleval, if he's a Vaurois?' retorted the other. And I
was registered under the name of Jean Louis, the son of an unknown father
and mother."

Prince Renine 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
any one, 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 any one
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 Genevieve, 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
Genevieve 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 Renine 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 Genevieve, 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 Renine:

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

Renine 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 to-morrow and ask for her hand in
marriage."

Jean Louis looked at Renine 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 Renine:

"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 Renine, 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 Renine.

"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 Renine, 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 man-servant 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 admissable 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 Renine, "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. Renine paced the room, in which
the fine old furniture, the handsome tapestries, the well-bound books and
pretty knick-knacks 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, Renine 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 Renine, "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. Renine 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 Renine.

"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," Renine 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:

"Some one came in the evening ... a gentleman with a new-born 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 Renine. "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, Renine said:

"Your deposition agrees with the result of my investigations."

"Can I go?"

"Yes."

"And is it over, as far as I'm concerned? They won't be talking about this
all over the district?"

"No. Oh, just one more question: do you know the man's name?"

"No. He didn't tell me his name."

"Have you ever seen him since?"

"Never."

"Have you anything more to say?"

"No."

"Are you prepared to sign the written text of your confession?"

"Yes."

"Very well. I shall send for you in a week or two. Till then, not a word to
anybody."

He saw her to the door and closed it after her. When he returned, Jean
Louis was between the two old ladies and all three were holding hands. The
bond of hatred and wretchedness which had bound them had suddenly snapped;
and this rupture, without requiring them to reflect upon the matter, filled
them with a gentle tranquillity of which they were hardly conscious, but
which made them serious and thoughtful.

"Let's rush things," said Renine to Hortense. "This is the decisive moment
of the battle. We must get Jean Louis on board."

Hortense seemed preoccupied. She whispered:

"Why did you let the woman go? Were you satisfied with her statement?"

"I don't need to be satisfied. She told us what happened. What more do you
want?"

"Nothing.... I don't know...."

"We'll talk about it later, my dear. For the moment, I repeat, we must get
Jean Louis on board. And immediately.... Otherwise...."

He turned to the young man:

"You agree with me, don't you, that, things being as they are, it is best
for you and Madame Vaurois and Madame d'Imbleval to separate for a time?
That will enable you all to see matters more clearly and to decide in
perfect freedom what is to be done. Come with us, monsieur. The most
pressing thing is to save Genevieve Aymard, your _fiancee_."

Jean Louis stood perplexed and undecided. Renine turned to the two women:

"That is your opinion too, I am sure, ladies?"

They nodded.

"You see, monsieur," he said to Jean Louis, "we are all agreed. In great
crises, there is nothing like separation ... a few days' respite. Quickly
now, monsieur."

And, without giving him time to hesitate, he drove him towards his bedroom
to pack up.

Half an hour later, Jean Louis left the manor-house with his new friends.

"And he won't go back until he's married," said Renine to Hortense, as they
were waiting at Carhaix station, to which the car had taken them, while
Jean Louis was attending to his luggage. "Everything's for the best. Are
you satisfied?"

"Yes, Genevieve will be glad," she replied, absently.

When they had taken their seats in the train, Renine and she repaired to
the dining-car. Renine, who had asked Hortense several questions to which
she had replied only in monosyllables, protested:

"What's the matter with you, my child? You look worried!"

"I? Not at all!"

"Yes, yes, I know you. Now, no secrets, no mysteries!"

She smiled:

"Well, since you insist on knowing if I am satisfied, I am bound to
admit that of course I am ... as regards my friend Genevieve, but that,
in another respect--from the point of view of the adventure--I have an
uncomfortable sort of feeling...."

"To speak frankly, I haven't 'staggered' you this time?"

"Not very much."

"I seem to you to have played a secondary part. For, after all, what have I
done? We arrived. We listened to Jean Louis' tale of woe. I had a midwife
fetched. And that was all."

"Exactly. I want to know if that _was_ all; and I'm not quite sure.
To tell you the truth, our other adventures left behind them an impression
which was--how shall I put it?--more definite, clearer."

"And this one strikes you as obscure?"

"Obscure, yes, and incomplete."

"But in what way?"

"I don't know. Perhaps it has something to do with that woman's confession.
Yes, very likely that is it. It was all so unexpected and so short."

"Well, of course, I cut it short, as you can readily imagine!" said Renine,
laughing. "We didn't want too many explanations."

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