The house at La Croix-de-Maufras stands aslant, in a garden which the
railway has cut in two, and is so near the metals that it feels the
shock of every train passing by. A single journey suffices to bear it
away in memory. The entire multitude, who have flown along the line,
are aware of its existence at this spot, without knowing aught about
it. Always closed, it looks as if deserted in distress, with its grey
shutters turning green through the effects of the rain beating against
them from the west. Standing in a wilderness, it seems to increase the
solitude of this out-of-the-way corner, where scarcely a soul breathes
for three or four miles around.
The only other house there, is that of the gatekeeper, at the angle
where the road crosses the rails on its way to Doinville, four miles
off. Low in build, the walls seamed with cracks, the tiles of the root
devoured by moss, it lies crushed, with a neglectful aspect of poverty,
in the middle of the garden surrounding it--a garden planted with
vegetables, enclosed by a quickset hedge, and where a great well rises
almost as high as the habitation itself.
The level crossing is just half-way between the two stations of
Malaunay and Barentin, being three miles from each. It is but little
used. The old decaying gate rarely rolls back, save for the stone-drays
from the quarries at Bécourt, half a league distant in the forest.
It would be difficult to imagine a more out-of-the-way place, or one
more completely separated from humanity, for the long tunnel in
the direction of Malaunay, cuts off every road, and the only way to
communicate with Barentin is by a neglected pathway beside the line.
Visitors therefore are scarce.
On this particular evening, as night was drawing in, a traveller who
had just left a train from Havre, at Barentin, followed with long
strides the pathway of La Croix-de-Maufras. The country thereabouts
is but one uninterrupted set of hills and dales, a sort of waving of
the soil, which the railway crosses on embankments and in cuttings,
alternately. The continual unevenness of the ground, the ascents and
descents on either side of the line, make walking difficult and add
to the feeling of deep solitude. The impoverished, whitish land lies
fallow, the hillocks are crowned with small woods, while brooks, shaded
with willows, run at the bottom of the narrow ravines. Certain chalky
elevations are absolutely bare, and sterile hills succeed one another
in the silence and abandonment of death. The young, lusty traveller
hastened his steps, as if to escape from the sadness of the twilight,
falling so gently over this desolate country.
In the garden of the gatekeeper, a girl was drawing water at the well:
a tall lass of eighteen; fair, robust, with thick lips, greenish eyes,
a low forehead, and a heavy head of hair. She was not pretty, and
had the heavy hips and muscular arms of a young man. As soon as she
perceived the traveller coming down the path, she let go the pail and
ran to the garden gate, exclaiming:
"Hullo! Jacques!"
He raised his head. He had just completed his twenty-seventh year. He
also was tall, and very dark. A handsome fellow, with his round face
and regular features, which nevertheless were marred by too heavy a
jaw. His thick hair curled, as did his moustache, which was so full, so
black, that it seemed to add to the pallidness of his complexion. From
his delicate skin, carefully shaved on the cheeks, anyone would have
taken him for a gentleman, had it not been for the indelible imprint of
the workman that he bore on his engine-driver hands, which were already
turning yellow with grease, although remaining small and flexible.
"Good evening, Flore," he simply said.
But his large dark eyes, studded with golden sparks, had become
troubled with a reddish cloud, which made them dim. The lids were
blinking, the eyes turned away in sudden constraint, and he experienced
a feeling of uneasiness that went so far as to cause him suffering. His
whole frame instinctively made a movement as if to draw back.
She, standing motionless, her eyes looking straight at him, had
perceived this involuntary shudder, that came on him, and which he
endeavoured to master, each time that he approached a woman. It seemed
to make her quite serious and sad. Then, when he asked her, in view
of concealing his embarrassment, if her mother was at home, although
knowing she was unwell and unable to leave the house, the girl only
answered with a nod, standing aside so that he might come in without
touching her; and, erect and proud, she returned without a word to the
well.
Jacques crossed the small garden at his rapid stride, and entered the
dwelling. There, in the centre of the first room, a sort of large
kitchen where the family took their meals and lived, Aunt Phasie, as
he had called her from infancy, was alone, seated near the table on a
rush-bottomed chair, with her legs wrapped in an old shawl. She was
a cousin of his father, a Lantier, who had stood godmother to him;
and who, when he was no more than six, had taken care of him, at the
time when his father and mother had flown off to Paris, and there
disappeared. He had then remained at Plassans, where, later on, he had
followed the classes at the École des Arts et Métiers. He bore Aunt
Phasie great gratitude, and was in the habit of saying that if he had
made his way, it was entirely due to her.
When he became a driver of the first class in the Western Railway
Company, after passing a couple of years on the Orleans Railway, he had
found his godmother married again to a level crossing gatekeeper named
Misard, and exiled with the two daughters of her first marriage to this
out-of-the-way place, called La Croix-de-Maufras. At the present time
Aunt Phasie, although barely forty-five, and who formerly had been so
tall and strong, looked sixty. Moreover, she had grown thin and yellow,
and was a prey to constant shivers.
She welcomed Jacques with joy.
"What! is it you, Jacques?" she exclaimed. "Ah! my bonny lad, what a
surprise!"
He kissed her cheeks, explaining that he had suddenly come into a
couple of days' enforced holiday. La Lison, his engine, on reaching
Havre in the morning, had broken its connecting-rod; and as the repairs
would take four-and-twenty hours, he would not resume duty until the
following evening for the 6.40 express. So he had come over to see her.
He would sleep there, and catch the 7.26 train from Barentin in the
morning. And he kept her poor, withered hands in his own, telling her
how anxious her last letter had made him.
"Ah! yes, my lad, I am not well, I am not at all well. How nice of you
to have guessed my desire to see you! But I know what little time you
have of your own, and did not dare ask you to run over. Anyhow, here
you are, and I have so much, so much on my mind!"
She broke off to cast a timid glance out of the window. On the other
side of the metals, in the twilight, her husband could be perceived
in his box, one of those wooden huts erected every four or five miles
along the line, and connected by telegraph to ensure the satisfactory
running of the trains. While his wife, and, later on, Flore, had been
placed in charge of the gate at the level crossing, Misard had been
made a watchman of the line.
In fear of him hearing her, she lowered her voice, and said with a
shudder:
"I verily believe he is poisoning me!"
Jacques started in surprise at this disclosure, and his eyes, also
turning towards the window, were again deadened by the peculiar trouble
to which he was accustomed, that little reddish haze which dimmed their
brilliant black full of golden sparks.
"Oh! Aunt Phasie, what an idea!" he murmured. "He looks such a gentle,
weak creature."
A train had just passed, going in the direction of Havre, and Misard
had left his box to block the line behind it. Jacques looked at him as
he pulled up the lever to show the red signal. He was a little puny
man, with thin, discoloured hair and beard, and a lean, hollow-cheeked
face. Moreover, he was silent, retiring, never angry, and obsequiously
polite in presence of his chiefs. But he had returned to his box to
note down in his register the hour at which the train had passed, and
press the two electric buttons, one opening the line at the preceding
post, the other announcing the coming of the train at the box after his.
"Ah! you don't know him," resumed Aunt Phasie; "I tell you that he must
be giving me some filth. I, who was so strong, who would have eaten him
up; and it is he, this bit of a man, this insignificant creature, who
is devouring me!"
She was burning with concealed timorous spite, and unbosomed herself,
delighted to have at last found someone who would listen to her. What
could she have been thinking of to have married such a cunning fellow,
without a sou and miserly, she who was more than five years his senior,
with two daughters, one already eight, and the other six? It was now
close on ten years since she had done this famous business, and not an
hour had passed without her repenting it--a poverty-stricken existence,
exiled to this icy quarter in the north, where she was shivering with
cold, wearied to death at not having a soul to speak to, not a single
neighbour. He, formerly a plate-layer, now earned 1,200 frcs. a year
as watchman; she, from the commencement, had received 50 frcs. for
the gate, which was now in charge of Flore. Such was the present and
future, no other hope; the certainty of living and dying in this hole,
far away from their fellow creatures.
"I tell you," she repeated to conclude, "that it is he who is tampering
with me, and that he'll do for me, little as he is."
The sudden tinkling of an alarum made her cast the same anxious glance
outside as before. This was the preceding post informing Misard that
a train was coming in the direction of Paris, and the needle of the
apparatus, standing in front of the window, pointed that way. Stopping
the ringing, he went out to signal the train by two blasts of the
horn, while Flore, at the same moment, came and closed the gate. Then,
planting herself before it, she held the flag up straight in its
leather case. The train, an express, hidden by a curve, could be heard
advancing with a roar that grew louder as it approached. It passed like
a thunderbolt, shaking, threatening to carry away the low habitation in
a tempestuous gust of wind.
Flore returned to her vegetables; while Misard, after blocking the
up-line behind the train, went to open the down-line, by lowering the
lever to efface the red signal, for another tinkling, accompanied by
the rise of the other needle, had just warned him that the train which
had gone by five minutes previously was clear of the next post. He
returned to his box, communicated with the two watchmen, jotted down
the passing of the train, and waited. It was always the same kind of
work that he did, for twelve consecutive hours, living there, eating
there, without reading half a dozen lines of a newspaper, without
appearing even to have a single thought in his slanting skull.
"Perhaps he is jealous," suggested Jacques.
But Aunt Phasie shrugged her shoulders in pity.
"Ah! my lad, what is that you say? He jealous!"
Then, with the old shiver upon her, she added:
"No, no, he never cared for me. All he cares for is money. Why we
quarrelled, you see, was because I would not give him the 1,000 frcs. I
inherited from father last year. Then, just as he threatened me that it
would bring me bad luck, I fell ill. And the complaint has not left me
since. Yes, it is exactly from that time that I have been unwell."
The young man understood her idea; and, attributing it to the gloomy
thoughts of a sick woman, he still endeavoured to dissuade her. But she
obstinately shook her head, like a person who has made up her mind. So
that he ended by saying:
"Very well then, the remedy is as simple as can be. If you want to put
an end to the thing, give him your 1,000 frcs."
By an extraordinary effort she rose to her feet; and, resuscitated, as
it were, she violently answered:
"My 1,000 frcs.? Never! I would sooner burst. Ah! they are hidden, and
well hidden, take my word! The house may be turned upside down, but I
defy anyone to find them. And he has had a good try, the demon! I have
heard him at night time, sounding all the walls. Search, search! The
mere pleasure of watching his nose grow longer, would suffice to give
me patience. We shall see who will give up first, him or me. I am on my
guard, and swallow nothing that he touches. And if I kick the bucket,
well, he will not even then get my 1,000 frcs. I prefer leaving them to
the earth."
She sank back into the chair exhausted, shaking at another sound of the
horn. It came from Misard, who, standing at the door of his box, this
time signalled a train on its way to Havre. In spite of her obstinate
determination to withhold the legacy, she had a secret and increasing
fear of him, the same kind of fear as that of a giant, for the insect
he feels devouring him.
The train signalled, the slow train which had left Paris at 12.45, was
coming along in the distance with a dull rumble. It could be heard
issuing from the tunnel and puffing louder in the open country. Then
it passed amidst the thunder of its wheels, and its mass of carriages,
with the invincible might of a hurricane.
Jacques, with his eyes raised towards the window, had watched the small
squares of glass file past. Wishing to turn aside the gloomy ideas of
Aunt Phasie, he resumed in a joking vein:
"Godmother, you complain that you never see a soul in this hole; but
there are people for you!"
Failing, at first, to catch his meaning, she looked astounded, and
inquired:
"Where are there any people?" Then, understanding, she added: "Ah! yes,
those folk who go by. What good are they? One does not know them, one
cannot chat with them."
He continued in a merry tone:
"But me, you know me well enough; you often see me pass."
"You, that's true. I know you, and I know the time of your train," she
answered. "Only, you fly, fly along! Yesterday you did so with your
hand. I can't even answer. No, no, that's no way of seeing people."
Nevertheless, this idea of the multitude the up and down trains carried
along daily before her, amidst the deep silence of her solitude,
made her pensive, and she turned her eyes to the line where night
was drawing in. When in good health, and she went and came, planting
herself before the gate, her flag in her hand, she never thought of
such things. But since she had been remaining for days on this chair,
with naught to think of but her underhand struggle with this man,
confused reveries, barely formulated, had set her head topsy-turvy.
It seemed to her so strange that she should be living here, lost in
the depths of this desert, without a soul in whom she could confide,
when so many men and women filed past in the tempestuous blast of the
trains, shaking the house, tearing along full steam, day and night
continually. Certainly all the inhabitants of the earth went by there,
not only Frenchmen, foreigners also; persons come from the most distant
lands, as no one could now remain at home, and as all people, according
to what had been written, would soon be but one. This was progress:
brothers all, rolling along together, yonder towards a land of plenty.
She endeavoured to count them, to arrive at an average, so many for
each carriage; but there were too many, she could not manage it.
Frequently she fancied she recognised faces: that of a gentleman with
a light beard, doubtless an Englishman who travelled to Paris every
week; that of a little dark lady, who went by regularly on Wednesday
and Saturday. But the flash bore them off, and she was not quite sure
she had seen them. All the faces became confused, blended together, as
if alike, disappearing one in the other. The torrent ran on, leaving
nothing of itself behind. And what made her sad at the sight of this
constant movement, amid so much well-being and so much money, was to
feel that this panting multitude was ignorant of her being there, in
danger of death, so that if her husband some night polished her off,
the trains would continue passing one another, close to her corpse,
without anyone even suspecting the crime within the solitary habitation.
Aunt Phasie had remained with her eyes on the window, and she summed
up what she felt; but her feelings were too vague to be explained at
length.
"Ah! it's a fine invention, there's no doubt of it. People go along
quick, and become more learned. But wild beasts remain wild beasts,
and people may invent even finer machines still; but, nevertheless,
there will be wild beasts in spite of all."
Jacques tossed his head to say that he thought as she did. For a few
moments he had been watching Flore, who had opened the gate for a
quarry dray loaded with two enormous blocks of stone. The road only
served for the Bécourt quarries, so that the gate was padlocked at
night, and Flore rarely had to get up to unlock it. Observing her
chatting familiarly with the quarryman, a dark young fellow, Jacques
exclaimed:
"Hullo! Cabuche must be ill, as his cousin Louis is in charge of the
horses. Poor Cabuche! Do you often see him, godmother?"
She raised her hands without answering, heaving a great sigh.
The previous autumn there had been a regular drama which had not
contributed to improve her health. Her younger daughter, Louisette,
in service as housemaid with Madame Bonnehon at Doinville, had ran
away at night, half crazy and black and blue, to go and die at the hut
which her sweetheart, Cabuche, occupied in the middle of the forest.
All manner of tales had got about reflecting on President Grandmorin;
but no one dared repeat them aloud. Even her mother, who knew what had
happened, did not like returning to the subject. Nevertheless, she
ended by saying:
"No. He never looks in. He is becoming as shy as a wolf. Poor
Louisette, who was such a pet, so white, so sweet! She really loved
me, and would have nursed me, she would! Whereas Flore, well, I don't
complain of her, but she has certainly something wrong with her head,
always doing just as she likes, disappearing for hours together. And
then proud and violent! It is all very sad, very sad."
Jacques, while listening, continued following the stone-dray with his
eyes. It was now crossing the line, but the wheels had got clogged by
the metals, and the driver had to clack his whip, while Flore shouted
to excite the horses.
"The deuce!" exclaimed the young man, "it wouldn't do for a train to
come along now. There would be a smash!"
"Oh! there is no fear of that," replied Aunt Phasie. "Flore is
sometimes funny, but she knows her business. She keeps her eyes open.
It is now five years since we had an accident, thank God. A long time
back a man was cut to pieces. We have only had a cow, which almost
upset a train. Ah! the poor creature! We found its body here, and its
head over there, near the tunnel. With Flore one can sleep soundly."
The stone-dray had passed on. The loud shocks of the wheels in the ruts
could be heard growing less distinct in the distance. Then Aunt Phasie
returned to the subject that constantly occupied her thoughts--the
question of health, in regard to others as much as herself.
"And you," she inquired, "are you quite well now? You remember, when
you were with us, that complaint you suffered from, and of which the
doctor could make neither head nor tail?"
His eyes became restless.
"I am very well, godmother," said he.
"Truly? It has all disappeared?" she inquired again. "That pain boring
into your skull behind the ears, and the abrupt strokes of fever, and
those periods of sadness, which made you hide yourself like an animal
at the bottom of a hole?"
As she proceeded, he became more and more troubled, and got so
dreadfully uneasy that, at last, he interrupted her, saying in a brief
tone:
"I assure you I am very well. I feel nothing of all that. Nothing at
all."
"Well, so much the better, my lad," said she. "The fact of you being
ill would not cure me. And then, you're of an age to enjoy good health.
Ah! health! there is nothing like it. It is all the same very kind of
you to have come to see me, when you could have been enjoying yourself
somewhere else. You'll have dinner with us, won't you? And you'll sleep
up there in the loft, next to the room Flore occupies?"
But another blare of the horn interrupted her. Night had closed in,
and, turning towards the window, they could only confusedly distinguish
Misard talking with another man. Six o'clock had just struck, and he
was giving over his service to the night watchman. At length he was
about to be free after twelve hours passed in this hut, furnished only
with a small table under the shelf supporting the apparatus, a stool,
and a stove which threw out so much heat, that he was obliged to almost
constantly keep the door open.
"Ah! here he is, he is returning home," murmured Aunt Phasie, in a
fright again.
The train signalled was coming, very heavy, very long, roaring louder
and louder as it approached, and the young man had to bend forward to
hear what the invalid said, feeling pained at the wretched state she
was putting herself in, and anxious to relieve her.
"Listen, godmother, if he really has bad intentions, perhaps it would
stop him if he was to know that I have taken up the matter. You would
do well to entrust your 1,000 frcs. to me."
She gave a final outburst.
"My 1,000 frcs.!" she exclaimed. "Not to you any more than to him! I
tell you I'd sooner die!"
At this moment the train passed in its storm-like violence, as if
it would sweep everything before it. The house shook, enveloped in a
gust of wind. This particular train, on its way to Havre, was very
crowded, for there was to be a fête on the following day, a Sunday,
in connection with a launch. Notwithstanding the speed, by the lit-up
glass of the doors one caught sight of the full compartments, of the
lines of heads side by side, close together, each with its particular
profile. They followed one another and disappeared.
What a multitude! The crowd again, the crowd without end, amidst
the rolling of the carriages, the whistling of the locomotives,
the tinkling of the telegraph, the ringing of bells! It was like a
huge body, a gigantic being stretched across the earth, the head at
Paris, the vertebræ all along the line, the limbs expanding with the
embranchments, the feet and hands at Havre and at the other termini.
And it passed, passed, mechanically, triumphant, advancing to the
future with mathematical precision, careless as to what remained of man
on either side of it, who, although concealed, was still replete with
life, the embodiment of eternal passion and eternal love.
Flore came in first, and lit the lamp, a small petroleum lamp without
a shade, and laid the table. Not a word did they exchange. She barely
threw a glance at Jacques, who stood before the window with his back
turned. A _soupe-aux-choux_ was being kept warm on the stove. When
Misard made his appearance she was serving it. He showed no surprise
to find the young man there. Perhaps he had seen him arrive. He
displayed no curiosity to know what had brought him there, and asked no
questions. A pressure of the hand, three brief words, and nothing more.
Jacques had to take the initiative of repeating the tale about the
broken connecting-rod, and how he had then thought of running over to
kiss his aunt. Misard was content to gently toss his head, as if to say
he considered this quite proper, and they sat down, eating slowly, and,
at first, in silence.
Aunt Phasie, who since the morning had not taken her eyes from the pot
where the _soupe-aux-choux_ was simmering, accepted a plateful. But her
husband having risen to give her the iron-water forgotten by Flore,
a decanter in which a few nails were rusting, she did not touch it.
He, humble, puny, coughing with a nasty little cough, did not seem to
remark the anxious look with which she followed his slightest movement.
When she asked for salt, there being none on the table, he told her she
would repent of eating so much, that it was this that made her ill;
and he rose to take some, bringing her a pinch in a spoon, which she
accepted without distrust, salt purifying everything, as she said. Then
they spoke of the really mild weather that had prevailed for some days,
and of a train that had run off the rails at Maromme. Jacques began to
think that his godmother must suffer from nightmare while wide awake,
for he could see nothing suspicious about this bit of a man, who was
so civil, and had such expressionless eyes. They remained more than
an hour at table. Twice Flore disappeared, for a few moments, at the
signal of the horn. The trains went by, making the glasses ring on the
table; but no one paid the least attention.
Another blare of the horn, and Flore, who had just cleared the cloth,
withdrew and did not return. She left her mother and the two men seated
at table before a bottle of cider brandy. All three remained thus
another half hour. Then Misard, whose ferreting eyes had been resting
for a minute or two on a corner of the room, took his cap and went out,
with a simple good-night. He was in the habit of poaching in the little
neighbouring brooks, which harboured superb eels, and never went to bed
without examining his lines.
As soon as he had gone, Aunt Phasie looked fixedly at her godson, and
exclaimed:
"Eh! What do you think of that? Did you see him searching over there
with his eyes in that corner? He has got an idea that I have hidden my
hoard behind the butter-jar. Ah! I know him, I am certain he will move
the jar to-night to have a look."
But she began perspiring, and trembling from head to foot.
"You see, there it is again! He must have drugged me. My mouth is as
bitter as if I had been swallowing old sous, though God knows I have
taken nothing from his hand! It's enough to make one drown oneself. I
can't sit up any longer to-night. It's better for me to go to bed. So
good-bye, my lad, because if you leave at 7.26 it will be too early for
me. And come again, won't you? And let's hope I shall still be here."
He had to assist her to her room, where she got into bed, and went off
to sleep, exhausted. Left by himself, he hesitated, thinking whether
it would not be as well if he were to retire for the night also, and
stretch himself out on the hay awaiting him upstairs in the loft. But
it was only ten minutes to eight; he had plenty of time for sleep. And
so, he too went out, leaving the little petroleum lamp alight in the
empty, slumbering house, shaken ever and anon by the abrupt thunder of
a train.
Jacques was surprised at the mildness of the air outside. No doubt it
would rain again. A uniform milky cloud had spread over the sky, and
the full moon, concealed behind it, lit up the whole vault of heaven
with a reddish reflex. He could clearly distinguish the country. The
land around him, the hills, the trees stood out in black against this
equal, deadened light, soft as that of a night lamp. He walked round
the little kitchen garden. Then he thought of going towards Doinville,
as the road in that direction was not so steep as the other way. But
the sight of the solitary house planted aslant on the opposite side of
the line having caught his attention, he crossed the metals, passing by
the side gate, the big one being already closed for the night.
He knew this house very well. He gazed at it on each of his journeys,
amid the roar and jolting of his engine. It haunted him, without him
being able to understand why, save for a confused sensation that it
had something to do with his existence. Each time he went up and down
the line, he first of all experienced a sort of dread lest he should
find it no longer there, then he felt a kind of uneasiness when he
perceived it still in the same place. He had never seen either the
doors or windows open. All he had learnt about it was that it belonged
to President Grandmorin, and on this particular night he was beset by
an irresistible desire to wander round about it, so as to ascertain
something more.
Jacques remained a long time on the road, facing the iron railings. He
stepped back, raised himself on his toes, endeavouring to form some
idea of the place. The railway, in cutting through the garden, had only
left a small plot enclosed by walls in front of the house; while behind
was a rather large piece of ground, simply surrounded by a quickset
hedge. The dwelling, with its distressful-looking appearance, had an
air of lugubrious sadness in the red reflex of this fumy night; and
Jacques was about to leave it, with a shiver running over his skin,
when he noticed a hole in the hedge. The idea that it would be cowardly
not to go in, made him push through. His heart was beating; but,
immediately, as he passed beside a greenhouse in ruins, he stopped at
the sight of something dark, in a heap at the door.
"What! Is that you?" he exclaimed, astonished, recognising Flore. "What
are you doing here?"
She also started with surprise. Then she answered tranquilly:
"You can see; I'm taking cords. They have left a heap there, that are
rotting, without being used by anybody, and as I am always in need of
them, I run over and take them."
And, indeed, seated on the ground, with a stout pair of scissors in her
hand, she was undoing the bits of cord, cutting the knots, when she
failed to get them apart.
"Doesn't the owner come here any more, then?" inquired the young man.
She began laughing.
"Oh! since that affair of Louisette," she replied, "there's no fear of
the President risking the tip of his nose at La Croix-de-Maufras. I can
pick up his cords without fear."
He remained silent for a moment, and seemed troubled by the thought of
the tragic adventure she alluded to.
"And do you believe what Louisette said?" he asked.
Ceasing to laugh, she suddenly became violent, and exclaimed:
"Louisette never lied, nor did Cabuche. He is my friend."
"Perhaps your sweetheart?" suggested Jacques.
"He, indeed!" she replied. "No, no; he is my friend. I have no
sweetheart, and I don't want one."
She raised her powerful head, with its thick yellow mane curling very
low on the forehead, and from all her massive, supple body, burst a
savage energy of will. Already a legend was growing up about her in
the neighbourhood. Stories were related of heroic deeds of salvage: a
cart torn with a mighty jerk from before a train; a railway carriage
stopped while descending the declivity at Barentin alone, like some
furious beast bounding along to encounter an express. Then there was
the tale of her adventure with a pointsman at the Dieppe embranchment,
at the other end of the tunnel, a certain Ozil, a man about thirty,
whom she seemed to have encouraged for a short time, but who having
been so ill-advised as to attempt to take a liberty, had almost met his
death from a blow she dealt him with a club. Virgin and warlike, she
disdained the male, which finally convinced people that she certainly
had something wrong with her head.
Jacques, hearing her declare that she did not want a sweetheart,
continued his fun:
"Then your marriage with Ozil can't be in a good way? Yet I've heard it
said that you run to meet him every day through the tunnel."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Ah! To Jericho, my marriage!" she retorted. "What you say about the
tunnel makes me laugh. Two miles to gallop over in the darkness, with
the thought that you may get cut in two by a train if you don't keep
your eyes open. You should hear them snorting in there! But Ozil
worried me. He's not the one I want."
"Then you want someone else?"
"Ah! I don't know. Ah! faith, no!"
She had burst into a laugh again, while a slight embarrassment made her
give her attention to a knot in the cords which she could not manage to
undo. Then, without raising her head, as if very much absorbed by her
occupation, she said:
"And you, have you no sweetheart?"
Jacques, in his turn, became serious. He avoided looking at her, his
eyes moved restlessly from side to side, and were at last fixed on
space in the night. Abruptly he answered:
"No."
"Just so," she continued; "they told me you held women in abomination.
And, besides, I've known you for a very long time, and you have never
said anything nice. Why? Tell me."
As he gave no answer, she made up her mind to leave the knot, and look
at him.
"Do you only love your engine?" she inquired. "People joke about it,
you know. They pretend you are always polishing, and making it shine,
as though you had caresses for nothing else. If I tell you this, it is
because I am your friend."
He looked at her, now, in the pale light of the fumy sky. And he
remembered her when she was a child. Even then, she was violent and
self-willed, but she sprang to his neck, as soon as he entered the
house, with all the passionate impulse of a madcap. Later on, having
frequently lost sight of her, he had found her grown taller each time
he saw her. She continued to put her arms round his neck, troubling
him, more and more, by the flame of her great light eyes.
She was now a superb woman, and no doubt she had loved him a long
time--from childhood. His heart began to beat. A sudden sensation told
him that he was the one she awaited. He felt a swimming in the head,
his first impulse, in the anguish he experienced, was to flee. Love had
always made him mad, and he felt bent on murder.
"What are you doing there, on your feet?" she resumed. "Why don't you
sit down?"
Again he hesitated. Then, his legs suddenly becoming very tired, and
himself vanquished by the desire to try love once more, he sank down
beside her on the heap of cords. But he said nothing; his throat was
quite dry. It was she, now, the proud, the silent one, who chattered
merrily until she lost breath, deafening herself with her own verbosity.
"You see, the mistake mamma made was to marry Misard," she began.
"He'll play her a nasty trick. I don't care a fig, because one has
quite enough to do with one's own business. Don't you think so? And,
besides, mamma sends me off to bed as soon as I want to cut in. So she
must do the best she can by herself! I pass my time outside the house,
I do. I am thinking of things for later on. Ah! you know, I saw you go
by this morning, on your engine. Look! over there, from those bushes,
where I was seated. But you, you never look--I'll tell you the things
I'm thinking of, but not now, later, when we have quite become good
friends."
She had let the scissors slip away from her, and he, still silent, had
caught hold of her two hands. Delighted, she abandoned them to him. But
when he carried them to his burning lips, she gave an affrighted start.
The warrior woman awoke, prepared, and warlike.
"No, no! Leave me alone!" she exclaimed. "I won't have it. Keep quiet.
Let's talk."
Without heeding her, without hearing what she said, he grasped her
brutally in his arms, crushing her lips beneath his own. She uttered
a feeble cry, which was more like a moan, so deep, so sweet, that
it revealed the tenderness she had so long concealed. Then, as he,
breathless, ceased his kisses and looked at her, he was all at once
seized with frenzy, with such frightful ferocity, that he glanced round
about him in search of a weapon, a stone, something, in fact, to kill
her with. His eyes fell upon the scissors, shining among the bits of
cord. At a bound, he secured them, and he would have buried them in her
bosom had not an icy chill brought him suddenly to his senses. Casting
the scissors from him, he fled, distracted, while she imagined he had
left her because she had resisted his caress.
Jacques fled in the melancholy night. He ascended at full speed a path
on the hillside, which brought him down to a little dale. The stones he
scattered beneath his feet, alarmed him, and he tore off to the left
among the bushes, there he bent round to the right, and came to a bare
plateau. Abruptly descending from the high ground, he fell into the
hedge bordering the line; a train flew along, roaring and flaming. At
first he failed to understand what it could be, and felt terrified. Ah!
yes, all this multitude that was passing, the continual flood, while he
stood there in anguish!
He started off once more, climbing the hill and descending again. He
now constantly encountered the railway line, either at the bottom of
deep cuttings, resembling unfathomable depths, or else on embankments
that shut out the horizon with gigantic barricades. This desert
country, broken up into hillocks, was like a labyrinth without issue,
where he, in his folly, wheeled round and round in the mournful
desolation of the fallow land. And he had been beating up and down the
inclines a long time, when before him he perceived the round opening,
the black jaw of the tunnel. An up-train plunged into it, howling and
whistling, leaving behind, when it had disappeared, absorbed by the
earth, a prolonged concussion that made the ground quake.
Then, Jacques, with weary feet fell down beside the line; and,
grovelling on the ground, his face buried in the long grass, he burst
into convulsive sobs. Great God! So this abominable complaint of
which he fancied himself cured, had returned! He had wanted to murder
that girl. Kill a woman, kill a woman! This had been ringing in his
ears from his earliest youth. He could not deny that he had taken the
scissors to stab her. And it was not because she had resisted his
embrace. No; it was for the pleasure of the thing, because he had a
desire to do so, such a strong desire, that if he had not clutched the
grass, he would have returned there, as fast as he could, to butcher
her. Her, great God! That Flore whom he had seen grow up, that wild
child by whom he had just felt himself so fondly loved! His twisted
fingers tore the ground, his sobs rent his throat in a horrifying
rattle of despair.
Nevertheless, he did his utmost to become calm. He wanted to understand
it all. When he compared himself with others, how did he differ from
them? Down there at Plassans, in his youth, he had frequently asked
himself the same question. It is true that his mother Gervaise was
very young at the time of his birth, barely fifteen and a half; but
he was the second. She had only just entered her fourteenth year when
his elder brother Claude made his appearance; and neither Claude nor
Etienne, who came later, seemed to suffer from having such a child
for a mother, or a father as young as herself--that handsome Lantier,
whose heartlessness was to cost Gervaise so many tears. Perhaps his
two brothers also had his complaint, and said nothing about it.
Particularly the elder one, who was dying with such incensement to
become painter, that people said he had gone half crazy over his genius.
The family was not at all right, several of its members were wrong
in the head. Himself, at certain hours, felt this hereditary flaw.
Not that he had bad health, for it was only the apprehension and
shame of his attacks that formerly had made him thin. But he was apt
to suddenly lose his equilibrium, as if there existed broken places,
holes in his being, by which his own self escaped from him amidst a
sort of great cloud of smoke that disfigured everything. Then, losing
his self-control, he obeyed his muscles, listening to the mad animal
within him. Nevertheless, he did not drink, he even deprived himself of
an occasional dram of brandy, having remarked that the least drop of
alcohol drove him mad. And he began to think that he must be paying for
others, the fathers, the grandfathers who had drunk, the generations of
drunkards, whose vitiated blood he had inherited. It seemed like slow
poison, which reduced him to savagery, taking him back to the depths of
the woods, among the wolves, devourers of women.
Jacques had raised himself on an elbow, reflecting, watching the dark
entrance to the tunnel. Heaving another great sob, he sank down again,
rolling his head on the ground, crying out with grief. That girl, that
girl he had wanted to kill! The incident returned to him, acute and
frightful, as if the scissors had penetrated his own flesh.
No reasoning appeased him. He had wanted to kill her, he would kill
her now, if she happened to be there. He remembered the first time the
complaint had shown itself. He was barely sixteen, and one evening,
while playing with a young girl, a relative, his junior by a couple
of years, she happened to fall, and he at once sprang at her. In the
following year he recollected sharpening a knife to bury it in the neck
of another girl, a little blonde, whom he noticed pass before his door
every morning. This one had a very fat, rosy neck, and he had already
selected the place, a beauty spot under one of the ears. Then, there
were others, and others still, quite a procession of nightmares, all
those whom he had glanced at, with an abrupt desire to murder them.
Women he had brushed against in the street, women whom accident made
his neighbours, one particularly, a newly married bride seated beside
him at the theatre, who laughed very loud, and from whom he had to run
away in the middle of an act, so as not to rip her open.
As he did not know them, why was he so furious against them? For,
each occasion, it seemed like a sudden outburst of blind rage, an
ever-recurring thirst to avenge some very ancient offences, the exact
recollection of which escaped him. Did it date from so far back, from
the harm women had done to his race, from the rancour laid up from male
to male since the first deceptions at the bottom of the caverns? And,
in his access, he also felt the necessity to fight, in order to conquer
and subjugate the female, the perverted necessity to throw her dead on
his back, like a prey torn from others for ever. His head was bursting
in the effort to understand. He could find no answer to his inquiry.
Too ignorant, the brain too sluggish, thought he, in this anguish of a
man urged to acts wherein his will stood for nothing, and the reason
whereof had disappeared from his mind.
A train again passed by with the flash of its lights, and plunged
like a thunderbolt that roars and expires, into the mouth of the
tunnel; and Jacques, as if this anonymous, indifferent, and hasty
crowd had been able to hear him, stood up, swallowing his sobs and
taking an innocent attitude. How many times at the end of one of his
attacks, had he started thus, like the guilty, at the least sound? He
only lived tranquil and happy, when detached from the world on his
locomotive. When the engine bore him along in the trepidation of its
wheels at express speed, when he had his hand on the reversing-wheel,
and was entirely engaged in watching the metals and looking out for
the signals, he ceased thinking, and took deep draughts of the pure
air, which always blew a gale. And this was why he was so fond of his
engine.
On leaving the École des Arts et Métiers, he selected this occupation
of engine-driver, notwithstanding his bright intelligence, for the
solitude and distraction it gave him. Without ambition, having in
four years attained the position of driver of the first class, he
already earned 2,800 frcs. a year, which, coupled with the gratuities
he received for economy in fuel and grease, brought the annual amount
of his wages up to more than 4,000 frcs., and that satisfied him. He
saw his comrades of the second and third class, those instructed by
the company, the engine-fitters they took as pupils, he saw almost all
of them marry work-girls, women who kept in the background, whom one
only occasionally caught sight of at the hour of departure, when they
brought the little baskets of provisions; while the ambitious comrades,
particularly those who came from a school, waited until they were heads
of depôts to get married, in the hope of meeting with someone of the
middle class, a lady who wore a hat. For his part, he avoided women.
What did he care? He would never marry. His only future was to roll
along alone, to roll along always, always, without stay.
His chiefs pointed him out as a model driver, who did not drink and
who did not run after petticoats. His tipsy comrades made fun of his
exaggeration of good conduct, and the others were secretly alarmed when
they saw him fall into his silent, melancholy fits, with eyes dim and
ashy countenance. How many hours did he recollect having passed, all
those hours of freedom, shut up like a monk in his cell, in that little
room in the Rue Cardinet, whence the depôt at Batignolles, to which his
engine belonged, could be seen.
Jacques made an effort to rise. What was he doing there in the grass,
on this mild and hazy winter night? The country remained plunged in
shadow. There was only light above, where the moon lit up the thin
fog, the immense ground-glass-like cupola which concealed it from
view, with a pale yellow reflex. Below, the black earth slumbered in
the immobility of death. Come! it must be near nine o'clock. The best
thing to do would be to return to the house, and go to bed. But, in his
torpor, he saw himself back at the Misards, ascending the staircase to
the loft, stretching himself on the hay against the plank partition
separating him from the room occupied by Flore. She would be there, he
would hear her breathing; and, as he was aware that she never locked
her door, he would be able to join her. His shivering fit returned. He
was racked again with such a violent sob at the image of this girl,
that he once more sank to the ground.
He had wanted to kill her--wanted to kill her! Great God! He was
choking in anguish at the thought that he would go and kill her in her
bed, presently, if he returned to the house. He might well be without
a weapon; he might cover his head with his two arms to render himself
powerless, but he felt that the male, independent of his own will,
would thrust open the door and strangle the girl, urged to the crime by
a thirst to avenge the ancient wrong. No, no! He had better pass the
night beating about the neighbourhood, than return there. Bounding to
his feet he fled again.
Then, once more, for half an hour, he tore across the dark country
as if an unchained pack of devils followed howling at his heels. He
ascended the hills, he plunged down into the narrow gorges. He went
through two streams, one after the other, drenching himself to the
hips. A bush, barring his progress, exasperated him. His only thought
was to go straight on, further, still further, to flee, to flee from
the other one, the mad animal he felt within him; but the beast
accompanied him, it flew along as fast as he did. For months he had
fancied he had driven it from him; he had pursued the same life as
other people; and, now, he had to begin again, he would have to resume
the struggle to prevent the brute leaping upon the first woman he
chanced to brush against in the street.
Nevertheless, the intense silence and vast solitude appeased him
a little, and made him dream of a life as mute and lonely as this
desolate land, where he would stroll about always, without ever meeting
a soul. He must have turned round without noticing it, for he found
himself kicking against the metals on the opposite side of the line,
after describing a wide circle among the slopes, bristling with bushes,
above the tunnel. He started back in the irritable uneasiness of once
more falling upon the living. Then, with the intention of taking a
short cut behind a hillock, he lost his way, to find it again before
the railway hedge, just at the exit from the tunnel on the down-line,
opposite the field where he had been sobbing a short time previously;
and, tired to death, he remained motionless, when the thunder of a
train issuing from the bowels of the earth, at first slight, but
becoming louder and louder every second, attracted his attention. It
was the Havre express which had left Paris at 6.30 and passed by there
at 9.25; the train he drove every two days.
Jacques first of all saw the dark mouth of the tunnel lit up, like the
opening to an oven ablaze with faggots. Then the engine burst out with
a tremendous crash amidst the dazzling splendour of its great round eye
the lantern in front whose fire bored into the country, illuminating
the metals for a long way ahead, with a double line of flame. It came
like a thunderbolt; the carriages followed one another immediately
afterwards, the small square windows of the doors, brilliant with
luminosity, displayed compartments full of travellers, flying past at
such a whirling speed, that there afterwards remained a doubt in the
mind of the spectator, as to what the eye had seen.
And Jacques, very distinctly, at that precise quarter of a second,
perceived through the flaming glass of a coupé window, one man holding
another down on the seat, and plunging a knife into his throat; while
a dark heap, perhaps a third person, perhaps some articles of luggage
fallen from the rack, weighed with all its weight on the convulsed
legs of the victim. But the train had already dashed past, and was
disappearing in the direction of La Croix-de-Maufras, displaying naught
of itself in the dense obscurity, but the three lights at the back--the
red triangle.
The young man, riveted to the spot, followed the train with his eyes
as its thunder gradually died away, leaving the deathlike peacefulness
of the surroundings undisturbed. Was he sure he had seen what he
thought? And now he hesitated. He no longer dared affirm the reality
of this vision which came and went in a flash. Not one single feature
of the two actors in the drama remained vivid. The dark heap must have
been a travelling-rug that had fallen across the body of the victim.
Nevertheless, he thought he had first of all caught sight of a pale
profile beneath waves of thick hair. But all this became confused, and
evaporated as in a dream. For an instant, the profile he had evoked
reappeared, and then definitely vanished. Doubtless it was nothing more
than imagination; and all this gave him an icy chill. It seemed to
him so extraordinary, that at last he admitted he must have been the
victim of hallucination, due to the frightful crisis he had just passed
through.
Jacques walked about for nearly another hour, his head loaded with
confused thoughts. He felt broken down, but relief came, and his fever
left him. He ended by turning in the direction of La Croix-de-Maufras,
but without having decided to do so. Then when he found himself before
the house of the gatekeeper, he was determined he would not go in,
that he would sleep in the little shed built against one of the walls.
But a ray of light passed under the door, and pushing it open, without
giving a thought to what he was doing, a strange sight stopped him on
the threshold.
Misard had disturbed the butter-jar in the corner, and, on the ground
on all fours, a lighted lantern beside him, he was sounding the wall
with little taps of the knuckle, searching. The noise made by the door
opening, made him stand up, but he did not show the least confusion. He
merely remarked in the most natural tone of voice imaginable:
"Some matches have fallen down."
And when he had put the butter-jar back in its place, he added:
"I came to fetch my lantern, because a little while ago, as I came
along, I perceived a man stretched across the line, and I believe he's
dead."
Jacques, at first struck at the idea of surprising Misard searching
for the hoard of Aunt Phasie, which abruptly transformed his doubt
respecting the accusations of the latter into certainty, was then so
violently upset by this news of the discovery of a corpse, that he
forgot the other drama--the one that was being performed there, in
this little out-of-the-way dwelling. The scene in the coupé, the brief
vision of one man slaughtering another, returned to him in a vivid
flash.
"A man on the line!" he exclaimed, turning pale. "Where?"
Misard was about to relate that he was returning with a couple of eels
which he had taken from his ground lines, and that he had first of all
run home, as fast as he could, to hide them. But he reflected that
there was no necessity to confide in this young man, and with a vague
gesture he replied:
"Over there, about half a mile away. It requires a light to find out
more."
At this moment Jacques heard a thud overhead. He was so nervous that he
started.
"It's nothing," said Misard. "It's only Flore moving."
And, in fact, the young man recognised the pit-pat of two naked feet on
the floor. She had come to listen at the half-open door.
"I'll go with you," Jacques resumed. "Are you sure he's dead?"
"Well, he looked like it," answered the other. "We shall soon see with
the lantern."
"What's your opinion?" inquired Jacques. "An accident?"
"Maybe," replied Misard. "Some chap who's got cut in two, or perhaps a
passenger who jumped out of a carriage."
Jacques shuddered.
"Come along quick, quick!" he exclaimed.
Never had he been agitated with such a fever to see and know. Outside
the house, while his companion, without any concern, walked along the
line swinging his lantern, he ran on ahead, irritated at the delay.
It was like a physical desire, the fire within that precipitates the
steps of lovers at the hour of meeting. He feared what awaited him
yonder, and yet he flew there with all the muscles of his limbs. When
he reached the spot, when he almost stumbled over a dark heap lying
near the down-line, he remained planted where he stood with a shiver
running from his heels to the nape of his neck. And, his anguish at
being unable to see distinctly, turned to oaths against the other, who
was loitering along, thirty paces behind.
"Come on, come on!" he shouted. "If he's still alive, we may be able to
do something for him."
Misard waddled forward in his sluggish way. Then, when he had swung the
lantern to and fro, over the body, he muttered:
"Ah! the devil take me! It's all up with him."
The man, no doubt tumbling out of a carriage, had fallen with his
face downwards, a couple of feet at the most from the metals. Nothing
could be seen of his head but a crown of thick black hair. His legs
were apart. His right arm lay as if dislocated, while his left was
bent under his chest. He was very well attired in a big, blue cloth
overcoat, neat boots, and fine linen. The body bore no trace of having
been crushed, but a quantity of blood had run from the throat, and
soiled the shirt collar.
"Some gentleman whom they've done for," tranquilly resumed Misard,
after a few seconds' silent inspection. Then, turning towards Jacques,
who stood motionless and thunderstruck, he continued:
"He must not be touched. It's forbidden. You will have to remain here,
and watch over him, while I go to Barentin to tell the station-master
about it."
He raised his lantern, and looked at a mile-post.
"Good!" said he. "Just at post 153." And, placing his lantern on the
ground beside the corpse, he took himself off at his usual loitering
gait.
Jacques, left by himself, did not move, but continued gazing at this
inert mass that had fallen there, and which the uncertain light, just
above the ground, only revealed indistinctly. The agitation that had
made him rush forward, the horrible attraction that held him there,
ended in this keen thought which burst from all his being: the other
one, the man he had caught sight of with the knife in his hand had
dared! He had gratified his desire! He had killed. Ah! what would he
give not to be a coward, to be able to satisfy himself at last, to
plunge in the knife! He, who had been tortured by this thirst for ten
years!
In his fever, he felt contempt for himself, and admiration for the
other; and, above all, he felt the necessity to gaze on the victim, the
quenchless thirst to feast his eyes on this human remnant, this broken
dancing-Jack, this limp rag, which the stab of a knife had made of a
creature. What he dreamed of, the other had realised, and it was that.
If he killed, he would have that on the ground. His heart beat fit to
break. His prurience for murder became violent as concupiscence, at the
sight of this tragic corpse. He took a step, approached nearer, after
the manner of a child making himself familiar with an object he fears.
Yes, he would dare, he would dare in his turn!
But a roar behind his back, made him spring aside. A train arrived
which he had not heard, being so taken up with the contemplation of the
body. He would have been crushed to pieces had not the warm steam and
the formidable puffing of the engine warned him in time. The train flew
past in its hurricane of noise, smoke, and flame. This one also carried
a great many people. The flood of travellers continued streaming
towards Havre, for the fête on the morrow. A child was flattening his
nose against a window, looking out at the black country; profiles of
men appeared, while a young woman, lowering one of the glasses, threw
out a paper stained with butter and sugar. Already the joyous train
was flying away in the distance, listless of the corpse its wheels
had almost grazed. And the body continued lying there on its face,
indistinctly lit up by the lantern, amidst the melancholy peacefulness
of night.
Then Jacques had a desire to see the wound, while he was alone. But
he hesitated, in the anxiety that if he touched the head, it would,
perhaps, be noticed. He reckoned that Misard could not be back with the
station-master before three-quarters of an hour; and as the minutes
passed, he thought of this Misard, of this puny fellow, so slow, so
calm, who also dared, who was killing as tranquilly as possible, with
doses of poison. Then it was easy enough to kill? Everybody killed. He
drew nearer the corpse, and the idea of looking at the wound stung him
so sharply that he was burning all over. He wanted to see how it had
been done, and what had run from it, to see the red hole! By carefully
putting the head back into its position, nobody would know anything
about it. But at the bottom of his hesitation was another fear which he
had not owned, the dread of blood. He had still a quarter of an hour to
himself, and he was on the point of making up his mind to look, when a
slight sound beside him, made him start.
It was Flore, standing gazing at the corpse like himself. She was keen
on accidents; as soon as ever the news arrived that an animal had been
pounded to atoms, or a man cut in two by a train, she hurried to the
scene of disaster. She had just dressed again, and wanted to see the
corpse. Unlike Jacques, she did not hesitate. After a first glance, she
stooped down, raising the lantern with one hand, while with the other
she took the head, and threw it back.
"Mind what you're doing," murmured Jacques; "it's forbidden."
But she shrugged her shoulders. The face appeared in the yellow light,
the face of an old man, with a large nose and the blue, wide-open eyes
of one formerly fair. A frightful wound was gaping beneath the chin.
The throat had been cut with a deep, jagged gash, as if the knife
had been twisted round probing it. The right side of the chest was
drenched in blood. On the left, in the button-hole of the great coat,
the rosette of Commander of the Legion of Honour looked like a clot of
blood that had spurted there.
Flore uttered an exclamation of surprise.
"Hullo! the old man!" said she.
Jacques advanced, bending forward as she was doing, mingling his hair
with her hair, to see better. He was choking, gorging himself with the
sight. Unconsciously he repeated:
"The old man? The old man?"
"Yes, old Grandmorin, the President."
For another moment she examined this livid face, with the distorted
mouth and the great, terrifying eyes. Then she let go the head, which
was beginning to turn icy cold in cadaverous rigidity, and the wound
closed.
"He's done larking with the girls!" she resumed in a lower tone. "It's
got something to do with one of them, for sure. Ah! my poor Louisette!
Ah! the pig! Serve him right!"
A long silence ensued. Flore, who had set down the lantern, waited,
slowly casting glances at Jacques, while he, separated from her by
the corpse, did not move. He seemed as if lost, completely prostrated
by what he had just seen. It must have been eleven o'clock. The
embarrassment due to the scene in the evening prevented him speaking
the first. But a sound of voices was heard. It was her stepfather
returning with the station-master, and, not wishing to be seen, she
made up her mind to break the ice.
"Aren't you going back to bed?" she inquired.
He started, and seemed agitated by an inner struggle. Then, with an
effort, with a recoil full of despair, he answered:
"No, no!"
She made no movement, but her look, with her robust arms hanging
down beside her, expressed great sorrow. As if to ask pardon for her
resistance of a short time before she became very humble, and added:
"Then if you are not going back to the house, I shall not see you
again?"
"No, no!" he replied.
The voices approached, and without seeking to press his hand, as he
seemed to purposely place this corpse between them, without even giving
him the familiar good-bye of their comradeship of childhood, she
withdrew, disappearing in the darkness, and breathing hard, as if to
stifle her sobs.
The station-master appeared on the scene almost at once, along with
Misard and a couple of porters. He also proved the identity: it was
President Grandmorin sure enough. He knew him by seeing him get down
at his station each time he went to Madame Bonnehon, at Doinville. The
body could remain where it had fallen, but he would have it covered
with the cloak a man had brought with him. One of the staff had
taken the eleven o'clock train at Barentin to inform the Imperial
Procurator at Rouen. But they could not count on the latter before
five or six o'clock in the morning, for he would have to bring the
examining-magistrate, the registrar of the Court, and a doctor with
him. And so the station-master arranged for the body to be guarded. The
men would take turns throughout the night, one man being constantly
there on the watch, with the lantern.
And Jacques, before making up his mind to go and stretch himself
under some shed at the Barentin station, whence he would not set
out for Havre before 7.20, remained for a long time where he stood,
motionless, and worried. Then he became troubled at the idea of the
examining-magistrate who was expected, as if he felt himself an
accomplice. Should he say what he had seen as the train went by? At
first he resolved to speak, as, after all, he had nothing to fear.
Moreover, there could be no doubt as to his duty. But, then, he asked
himself, what was the good of it? he could not bring one single,
decisive fact to bear on the matter, he would not dare affirm any
detail respecting the murderer. It would be idiotic to mix himself up
in the business, to lose his time, and worry himself, without profit to
anyone.
No, no, he would say nothing! At last, he took himself off, but he
turned round twice, to see the black heap the body made on the ground,
in the circle of yellow light shed by the lantern. Sharper cold fell
from the fumy sky, on the desolation of this desert with arid hills.
More trains had passed. Another, a very long one, arrived for Paris.
All crossed in their inexorable mechanic might, flying to their distant
goal, to the future, almost grazing, without taking heed of it, the
half-severed head of this man whom another man had slaughtered.