THE STRANGE BEHAVIOUR OF AN EXPRESS TRAIN
That profound sadness was destined to affect seriously the future of
Theophrastus. As he made his way over the roofs of Gerando Street, it
increased to such a paralysing intensity that presently he sat down on
the edge of a roof, with his legs dangling over the street, and plunged
into the bitterest reflections. The result of this unwise action was
that he caught a severe cold.
As he sat reflecting, he slowly came to himself, his modern self.
During the reading of the article which narrated the crimes of the
new Cartouche, he had displayed a carelessness airy to the point of
callousness. Now the sense of his responsibility, especially in the
matter of cutting up the butcher Houdry, weighed on him more and more
heavily. The memory of many midnight outings, by way of the chimney he
had just climbed, came into his mind; and several sanguinary crimes
filled his blinking eyes with the too tardy tears of an ineffectual
remorse.
So, in spite of all the suffering he had endured, in spite of all the
passionate prayers of M. de la Nox to Æon, Source of Æons, _Cartouche
was not dead; the Black Feather ever sprouted afresh_. This very night,
as on so many other nights of crime, he was out on the roofs of Paris
with his familiar spirit and his Black Feather. He wept. He cursed
that mysterious and irresistible force which, from the depth of the
centuries, bade him slay. He cursed the gesture which slays. He thought
of his wife and his friend. He recalled with bitter regret the hours
of happiness passed with those dear ones. He forgave them their terror
and their flight. He resolved never again henceforth to trouble their
peaceful hours with his red vagaries.
"Let us vanish!" said he. "Let us hide our shame and our original
obliquity in the heart of the desert! They will forget me!... I shall
forget myself! Let us profit by these _moments of reason_ in which my
brain, for the while free from the Past, discusses, weighs, deduces,
and forms conclusions in the _Present_. It is no longer Cartouche who
speaks. To-night it is Theophrastus who wills! Theophrastus who cries
to Cartouche: 'Let us fly! let us fly! Since I love Marceline, let
us fly! Since I love Adolphe, let us fly! One day they will be happy
without thee; with thee there is no longer any happiness!... Farewell!
Farewell, Marceline, beloved wife! Farewell, Adolphe, dear friend and
comforter!... Farewell! Theophrastus bids you farewell!'"
He wept and wept. Then he said aloud:
"Come along, Cartouche."
He plunged into the night, springing from gutter to gutter, crawling
from roof to roof, sliding from the tops of walls with the ease, the
balance, and the sureness of a somnambulist.
* * * * *
And now, who is this man who, with bowed head and stooping back, his
hands in his pockets, wanders like Fortune's step-son through the
bitter wind and the rain that falls all the dreary way? He moves along
the road which runs beside the railway, a road dismally straight,
bordered by dismal little stunted trees, the dismal ornaments of the
departmental road, the road which runs beside the railway. Whence does
this man, or rather this shadow of a man, this sad shadow of a man,
with his hands in his pockets, come? On his right and on his left
stretches the plain, without an undulation, without the bulge of a
hill, without the hollow of a river--stretches grey and gloomy under
the grey and gloomy sky.
Now and again along the railway, so painfully straight, trains
pass,--slow trains, express trains, freight trains. While they pass
the railway snores; then it is silent, and one hears, borne on the
wind, the ting-ting-ting-ting of the little electric bell in the little
railway station in front. But what little railway station? There is one
in front; there is one behind. They are three miles apart; and between
them the double line of rails runs as straight as a die. Between the
two railway stations there are no viaducts, no tunnel, no bridge, not
even a level-crossing. I dwell on these details on account of the
strange behaviour of the express train.
That sad shadow of a man is Theophrastus. He has resolved to fly, to
fly no matter where, from his wife--poor dear, unfortunate, heroic
fellow! After a night passed on the roofs of Paris, not knowing whither
to direct his steps, yet not wishing to stay them, he went into a
railway station--what railway station? Shall we ever know?--And without
a ticket he got on a train, and without a ticket somewhere he got off
it and came out of another railway station. It may be that in this
evasion of the duties of the passenger his Black Feather stood him in
good stead.
Behold him then on the road... At the entrance to a village... On the
road which runs beside the railway.
Whom does he perceive on the threshold of a cottage at the entrance to
the village?... The Signora Petito herself!
It was the first time the Signora Petito had seen M. Longuet since he
clipped her husband's ears. She fell into a fury. She ran down to the
garden gate; and her anger found vent not only in abuse, but in the
most imprudent revelations. Had Signor Petito heard what his angry
Regina said, he would have smacked her for her incredible folly. After
abusing Theophrastus for his barbarity to Signor Petito, she told him
with vindictive triumph that her husband had found the treasures of the
Chopinettes, and that those treasures were the richest in the world,
treasures worth far more than a couple of ears, were they as big as the
ears of Signor Petito. "They are quits!"
In the course of this outburst, Theophrastus with considerable
difficulty interjected a few words; but he was not at all disturbed by
it. Indeed he was grateful to the fury of Signora Petito for having
given him such important information. He said grimly:
"_I shall find my treasures, for I shall find Signor Petito._"
The Signora Petito burst into a satanic laugh, and cried:
"Signor Petito is in the train!"
"In what train?"
"_In the train which is going to pass under your nose._"
"What is the train which is going to pass under my nose?"
"The train which is carrying my husband beyond the frontier! Get into
it, M. Longuet! Get into it if you want to speak to Signor Petito. But
you'd better make haste, for it passes in less than an hour, and you
can't buy a ticket for it at any of these little stations. _It doesn't
stop at them!_"
She laughed an even more satanic laugh, so satanic that Theophrastus
longed for the moments when he was deaf. He raised his hat, and went
quickly down the road which runs beside the railway. When he was alone,
between the little trees and the telegraph posts, he said to himself:
"Come, come! I must ask news of my treasures of Signor Petito
himself... But how the deuce am I to do it? He is in the train _which
is going to pass under my nose_."
At this point it is necessary to give a map:
Station A D C Station B.
x------x----x----x
It is unnecessary to give the names of the stations, for the
demonstration is practically geometrical, and to geometry letters are
more appropriate.
Let us go to station A. The signal-man of station A hears the _ting!_
of the bell which announces that the express he is expecting has passed
station B, and is on that section of the block-system which begins at
station A and ends at station B. The express goes from B to A. It is
on the line B A. That is clear. The signal at A announces the train by
lowering its little red arm with a _ting!_
The signal-man at station A waits for the train, and waits for the
train, and waits for the train! It ought to be there. It is a train
which goes sixty miles an hour, and, if it is late, it goes seventy or
eighty. The distance between station A and station B is at the most
three miles and a furlong. Three minutes and a half is the longest an
express takes to do the distance. The signal-man, frightened to death
at not seeing the train appear, shouts to the station-master that the
train ought to have gone through! The station-master dashes to the
telegraph, and telegraphs station B: "Train signalled not arrived!"
Station B answers: "Joker!" Station A: "It's serious. What are we to
do? Horrible anxiety." Station B: "Notify Jericho!" Station A: "There
must have been an accident! We are hurrying along the line! Come and
meet us!" Station B: "What can have happened? We are coming."
Then the station-master, the porters, and the ticket-clerks of stations
A and B hurry along the line, the staff of station A going towards
station B, the staff of station B going towards station A. They hurry
along, in the full light of day, in the middle of a perfectly flat
plain, a plain without a river, without ridge, and without hollow. They
hurry along the line, and meet one another between A and B.... But they
do not meet the train!
The station-master of station A (I say particularly of station A), who
suffered from heart disease, fell down dead.