able to fulfil it? You made a mistake, my dear. The test, at least at the
beginning, was easy enough, because it was based upon an undoubted fact:
the talismanic character attributed to the clasp. I had only to hunt about
and see whether among the people around you, among your servants, there was
ever any one upon whom that character may have exercised some attraction.
Now, on the list of persons which I succeeded in drawing up. I at once
noticed the name of Mlle. Lucienne, as coming from Corsica. This was my
starting-point. The rest was a mere concatenation of events."
Hortense stared at him in amazement. How was it that he was accepting his
defeat with such a careless air and even talking in a tone of triumph,
whereas really he had been soundly beaten by Pancaldi and even made to look
just a trifle ridiculous?
She could not help letting him feel this; and the fashion in which she did
so betrayed a certain disappointment, a certain humiliation:
"Everything is a concatenation of events: very well. But the chain is
broken, because, when all is said, though you know the thief, you did not
succeed in laying hands upon the stolen clasp."
The reproach was obvious. Renine had not accustomed her to failure. And
furthermore she was irritated to see how heedlessly he was accepting a
blow which, after all, entailed the ruin of any hopes that he might have
entertained.
He did not reply. He had filled their two glasses with champagne and was
slowly emptying his own, with his eyes fixed on the statuette of Mercury.
He turned it about on its pedestal and examined it with the eye of a
delighted connoisseur:
"What a beautiful thing is a harmonious line! Colour does not uplift me
so much as outline, proportion, symmetry and all the wonderful properties
of form. Look at this little statue. Pancaldi's right: it's the work of
a great artist. The legs are both slender and muscular; the whole figure
gives an impression of buoyancy and speed. It is very well done. There's
only one fault, a very slight one: perhaps you've not noticed it?"
"Yes, I have," said Hortense. "It struck me the moment I saw the sign,
outside. You mean, don't you, a certain lack of balance? The god is leaning
over too far on the leg that carries him. He looks as though he were going
to pitch forward."
"That's very clever of you," said Renine. "The fault is almost
imperceptible and it needs a trained eye to see it. Really, however, as
a matter of logic, the weight of the body ought to have its way and, in
accordance with natural laws, the little god ought to take a header."
After a pause he continued:
"I noticed that flaw on the first day. How was it that I did not draw an
inference at once? I was shocked because the artist had sinned against
an aesthetic law, whereas I ought to have been shocked because he had
overlooked a physical law. As though art and nature were not blended
together! And as though the laws of gravity could be disturbed without
some fundamental reason!"
"What do you mean?" asked Hortense, puzzled by these reflections, which
seemed so far removed from their secret thoughts. "What do you mean?"
"Oh, nothing!" he said. "I am only surprised that I didn't understand
sooner why Mercury did not plump forward, as he should have done."
"And what is the reason?"
"The reason? I imagine that Pancaldi, when pulling the statuette about to
make it serve his purpose, must have disturbed its balance, but that this
balance was restored by something which holds the little god back and which
makes up for his really too dangerous posture."
"Something, you say?"
"Yes, a counterweight."
Hortense gave a start. She too was beginning to see a little light. She
murmured:
"A counterweight?... Are you thinking that it might be ... in the
pedestal?"
"Why not?"
"Is that possible? But, if so, how did Pancaldi come to give you this
statuette?"
"He never gave me _this_ one," Renine declared. "I took this one
myself."
"But where? And when?"
"Just now, while you were in the drawing-room. I got out of that window,
which is just over the signboard and beside the niche containing the little
god. And I exchanged the two, that is to say, I took the statue which was
outside and put the one which Pancaldi gave me in its place."
"But doesn't that one lean forward?"
"No, no more than the others do, on the shelf in his shop. But Pancaldi
is not an artist. A lack of equilibrium does not impress him; he will see
nothing wrong; and he will continue to think himself favoured by luck,
which is another way of saying that luck will continue to favour him.
Meanwhile, here's the statuette, the one used for the sign. Am I to break
the pedestal and take your clasp out of the leaden sheath, soldered to the
back of the pedestal, which keeps Mercury steady?"
"No, no, there's no need for that," Hortense hurriedly murmured.
Renine's intuition, his subtlety, the skill with which he had managed the
whole business: to her, for the moment, all these things remained in the
background. But she suddenly remembered that the eighth adventure was
completed, that Renine had surmounted every obstacle, that the test had
turned to his advantage and that the extreme limit of time fixed for the
last of the adventures was not yet reached.
He had the cruelty to call attention to the fact:
"A quarter to eight," he said.
An oppressive silence fell between them. Both felt its discomfort to such
a degree that they hesitated to make the least movement. In order to break
it, Renine jested:
"That worthy M. Pancaldi, how good it was of him to tell me what I wished
to know! I knew, however, that by exasperating him, I should end by picking
up the missing clue in what he said. It was just as though one were to hand
some one a flint and steel and suggest to him that he was to use it. In the
end, the spark is obtained. In my case, what produced the spark was the
unconscious but inevitable comparison which he drew between the cornelian
clasp, the element of luck, and Mercury, the god of luck. That was enough.
I understood that this association of ideas arose from his having actually
associated the two factors of luck by embodying one in the other, or, to
speak more plainly, by hiding the trinket in the statuette. And I at once
remembered the Mercury outside the door and its defective poise...."
Renine suddenly interrupted himself. It seemed to him that all his remarks
were falling on deaf ears. Hortense had put her hand to her forehead and,
thus veiling her eyes, sat motionless and remote.
She was indeed not listening. The end of this particular adventure and the
manner in which Renine had acted on this occasion no longer interested her.
What she was thinking of was the complex series of adventures amid which
she had been living for the past three months and the wonderful behaviour
of the man who had offered her his devotion. She saw, as in a magic
picture, the fabulous deeds performed by him, all the good that he had
done, the lives saved, the sorrows assuaged, the order restored wherever
his masterly will had been brought to bear. Nothing was impossible to
him. What he undertook to do he did. Every aim that he set before him
was attained in advance. And all this without excessive effort, with the
calmness of one who knows his own strength and knows that nothing can
resist it.
Then what could she do against him? Why should she defend herself and how?
If he demanded that she should yield, would he not know how to make her do
so and would this last adventure be any more difficult for him than the
others? Supposing that she ran away: did the wide world contain a retreat
in which she would be safe from his pursuit? From the first moment of their
first meeting, the end was certain, since Renine had decreed that it should
be so.
However, she still cast about for weapons, for protection of some sort; and
she said to herself that, though he had fulfilled the eight conditions and
restored the cornelian clasp to her before the eighth hour had struck, she
was nevertheless protected by the fact that this eighth hour was to strike
on the clock of the Chateau de Halingre and not elsewhere. It was a formal
compact. Renine had said that day, gazing on the lips which he longed to
kiss:
"The old brass pendulum will start swinging again; and, when, on the fixed
date, the clock once more strikes eight, then...."
She looked up. He was not moving either, but sat solemnly, patiently
waiting.
She was on the point of saying, she was even preparing her words:
"You know, our agreement says it must be the Halingre clock. All the other
conditions have been fulfilled ... but not this one. So I am free, am I
not? I am entitled not to keep my promise, which, moreover, I never made,
but which in any case falls to the ground?... And I am perfectly free ...
released from any scruple of conscience?..."
She had not time to speak. At that precise moment, there was a click behind
her, like that of a clock about to strike.
A first stroke sounded, then a second, then a third.
Hortense moaned. She had recognized the very sound of the old clock, the
Halingre clock, which three months ago, by breaking in a supernatural
manner the silence of the deserted chateau, had set both of them on the
road of the eight adventures.
She counted the strokes. The clock struck eight.
"Ah!" she murmured, half swooning and hiding her face in her hands. "The
clock ... the clock is here ... the one from over there ... I recognize its
voice...."
She said no more. She felt that Renine had his eyes fixed upon her and this
sapped all her energies. Besides, had she been able to recover them, she
would have been no better off nor sought to offer him the least resistance,
for the reason that she did not wish to resist. All the adventures were
over, but one remained to be undertaken, the anticipation of which wiped
out the memory of all the rest. It was the adventure of love, the most
delightful, the most bewildering, the most adorable of all adventures. She
accepted fate's decree, rejoicing in all that might come, because she was
in love. She smiled in spite of herself, as she reflected that happiness
was again to enter her life at the very moment when her well-beloved was
bringing her the cornelian clasp.
The clock struck the hour for the second time.
Hortense raised her eyes to Renine. She struggled a few seconds longer. But
she was like a charmed bird, incapable of any movement of revolt; and at
the eighth stroke she fell upon his breast and offered him her lips....
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Eight Strokes of the Clock, by Maurice Le Blanc