Part 16 (1/2)
”Exactly. We shall see them better with their masks off.”
And, with a determined step, he walked to the door, opened it and entered the room, followed by Hortense.
His advent gave rise to a feeling of stupefaction. The two women stopped yelling, but were still scarlet in the face and trembling with rage. Jean Louis, who was very pale, stood up.
Profiting by the general confusion, Renine said briskly:
”Allow me to introduce myself. I am Prince Renine. This is Madame Daniel.
We are friends of Mlle. Genevieve Aymard and we have come in her name. I have a letter from her addressed to you, monsieur.”
Jean Louis, already disconcerted by the newcomers' arrival, lost countenance entirely on hearing the name of Genevieve. Without quite knowing what he was saying and with the intention of responding to Renine's courteous behaviour, he tried in his turn to introduce the two ladies and let fall the astounding words:
”My mother, Madame d'Imbleval; my mother, Madame Vaurois.”
For some time no one spoke. Renine bowed. Hortense did not know with whom she should shake hands, with Madame d'Imbleval, the mother, or with Madame Vaurois, the mother. But what happened was that Madame d'Imbleval and Madame Vaurois both at the same time attempted to s.n.a.t.c.h the letter which Renine was holding out to Jean Louis, while both at the same time mumbled:
”Mlle. Aymard!... She has had the coolness ... she has had the audacity...!”
Then Jean Louis, recovering his self-possession, laid hold of his mother d'Imbleval and pushed her out of the room by a door on the left and next of his mother Vaurois and pushed her out of the room by a door on the right.
Then, returning to his two visitors, he opened the envelope and read, in an undertone:
”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 hara.s.sed 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 finis.h.i.+ng 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.”