Aunt Phasie died, in a final convulsion, at nine o\'clock on Thursday evening; and Misard, standing at the bedside, tried in vain to close her lids. The eyes obstinately remained open. The head had become rigid, and was slightly inclined over the shoulder, as if looking about the room, while a contraction of the lips seemed to have curled them upward in a jeering smile. A single candle, stuck on the corner of a table near her, lighted the surroundings; and the trains passing by, full speed, in ignorance of the corpse being there, made it quiver for a second or two in the vacillating light.
Misard, to get rid of Flore, at once sent her off to Doinville to apprise the authorities of the decease. She could not be back until eleven o\'clock, so that he had two hours before him. He first of all quietly cut himself a slice of bread, for he felt hungry, having gone without his dinner on account of the death agony, which seemed interminable. And he ate standing up, going and coming, arranging one thing and another about the room. Fits of coughing brought him to a standstill, bent him double. He was half dead himself. So thin, so puny, with his leaden eyes and discoloured hair, that he did not seem likely to enjoy his victory for long.
No matter, he had devoured this buxom wife, this tall, handsome woman, as the insect eats down the oak. She was on her back, polished off, reduced to nothing, and he still lasted. But why had she been so obstinate? She had tried to be cunning; so much the worse for her. When a married couple[Pg 300] play the game of seeing which shall bury the other, without putting anyone in the secret, it is necessary to keep a sharp look out. He was proud of his achievement, and chuckled to himself as if it were a good joke.
At that instant an express train swept by, enveloping the low habitation in such a gust of tempest, that in spite of his habit, he turned towards the window with a start. Ah! yes, that constant flood, that mass of people coming from every quarter, who knew nothing about what they crushed on the road, and did not care, in such a hurry were they to go to the devil! And turning round again, in the oppressive silence, he met the two wide open eyes of the corpse, whose steady pupils seemed to follow each of his movements, while the corners of the mouth curled upward in a smile.
Misard, usually so phlegmatic, made a slight movement of anger. He thoroughly understood; she was saying to him: "Search! search!" But surely she could not have taken her 1,000 frcs. away with her; and now that she no longer existed, he would end by finding them. Ought she not to have given them up willingly? It would have prevented all this annoyance. The eyes followed him everywhere. Search! search!
He now ferreted all over this room, which he had not dared rout out so long as she lived. First of all, in the cupboard. He took the keys from under the bolster, upset the shelves loaded with linen, emptied the two drawers, pulled them out even, to ascertain if they concealed a hiding-place. No, nothing! After that, he thought of the night-table. He unglued the marble top and turned it over, but to no purpose. With a flat rule he probed behind the chimney glass, one of those thin glasses sold in the fairs, that was fastened to the wall by a couple of nails; but only to draw out a cobweb black with dust. Search! search!
Then to escape those wide-open eyes which he felt resting on him, he sank down on all fours, tapping lightly[Pg 301] on the tiles with his knuckles, listening whether some resonance would not reveal a hole. Several tiles being loose, he tore them up. There was nothing, still nothing! When he rose to his feet again, the eyes once more caught him. He wheeled round, wishing to stare straight into the fixed orbs of the dead woman, who, from the corners of her curled-up lips, seemed to accentuate her terrible laugh. There could be no doubt about it, she was mocking him. Search! search!
He began to feel feverish. A suspicion came upon him, a sacrilegious idea, that made his livid countenance grow paler still, and he approached the corpse. What had made him think that she could surely not have taken her 1,000 frcs. away with her? Perhaps, after all, she was carrying them off. And he had the courage to uncover, to undress, and search the body, as she told him to search. He looked beneath her, behind the nape of her neck, everywhere. The bedding was all upset. He buried his arm in the paillasse up to the shoulder, and found nothing. Search! search! And the head of the dead woman fell back on the pillow, which was all in disorder, with the pupils of her bantering eyes still observing him.
As Misard, furious and trembling, tried to arrange the bed, Flore came in, on her return from Doinville.
"It will be for the day after to-morrow, at eleven o\'clock," said she.
She spoke of the burial. She understood at a glance what kind of work had made Misard lose his breath during her absence, and she made a gesture of disdainful indifference.
"You may just as well give it up," said she. "You\'ll never find them."
Imagining she also was braving him, he advanced towards her with set teeth.
"She gave them you, or you know where they are?" said he inquiringly.
[Pg 302]
The idea that her mother could have given her 1,000 frcs. to anyone, even to her daughter, made her shrug her shoulders.
"Ah! to blazes! gave them," she replied; "yes, gave them to the earth! Look, they are there! You can search."
And, with a broad gesture, she indicated the entire house, the garden with its well, the metal way, all the vast country. Yes, somewhere about there, at the bottom of a hole, in a place where none would ever find them. Then, while Misard, beside himself with anxiety, began twisting and turning the furniture about again, sounding the walls, without showing any constraint at her presence, the young girl, standing before the window, continued in a subdued voice:
"Oh! it is so mild outside. Such a lovely night! I walked quick. The stars make it like broad daylight. To-morrow, how beautiful it will be at sunrise!"
Flore remained for an instant at the window, with her eyes on the serene country, stirred by this first gentle warmth of April, from which she had just returned thoughtful, and suffering more acutely from her vivified torment. But when she heard Misard leave the apartment, and continue his tenacious search in the adjoining rooms, she, in her turn, approached the bed, seating herself with her eyes on her mother. The candle continued burning at the corner of the table, with a long, motionless flame. A passing train jolted the house.
Flore had resolved to remain there all night, and she sat pondering. First of all, the sight of the dead woman drew her from her fixed idea, from the thing that haunted her, which she had been debating in her mind beneath the stars, in the peaceful obscurity, all the way from Doinville. Surprise now set her suffering at rest. Why had she not displayed more grief at the death of her mother? And why, at this moment even, did she not shed tears?
Indeed, she loved her well, notwithstanding her shyness of a great, silent girl, who was for ever breaking away[Pg 303] beating about the fields, as soon as released from duty. Twenty times over during the last crisis which was to kill her mother, she had come and sat there to implore her to call in a doctor; for she guessed what Misard was after, and was in hopes that fear would stop him. But she had never been able to obtain anything more from the invalid than a furious No. It seemed as if her mother took pride in accepting no assistance in the struggle, certain of the victory in spite of everything, as she carried off the cash; and then Flore ceased to interfere. Beset by her own chagrin, she disappeared, careering hither and thither to forget.
Assuredly this was what barred her heart. When a person has too keen a trouble, there is no room for another. Her mother had gone; she saw her there, destroyed, and so pallid, without being able to feel any more sad, notwithstanding her efforts. Call in the gendarmes! Denounce Misard! What would be the use of it, as there was about to be a general upheaval? And, little by little, invincibly, although her eyes remained fixed on the dead body, she ceased to perceive it. She returned to her own inner vision, occupied entirely by the idea that had planted itself in her brain, alive to nothing but the heavy shock of the trains, whose passage told her the time.
The approaching thunder of a slow train from Paris could be heard for an instant or two in the distance. When the locomotive at last flew by before the window, with its light, there came a flash, a perfect blaze in the room.
"Eighteen minutes past one," thought Flore. "Seven hours more. This morning at 8.16 they will come past."
Every week for months she had been worried by this expectation. She knew that on Friday morning the express driven by Jacques also took Séverine to Paris, and tortured by jealousy, she only lived, as it were, to watch them. Oh! that train flying along, and the abominable sensation she felt[Pg 304] at being unable to cling on to the last carriage, so as to be also borne away! She fancied that all these wheels were cutting up her heart. She suffered so keenly that one night, having hidden herself, she prepared to write to the judicial authorities; for it would be all over if she could get this woman arrested. But, with the pen in her hand, she could never set the matter down. And, besides, would the authorities listen to her? All those fine people must be working together. Perhaps they would even put her in prison, as they had done with Cabuche.
No; she wanted to avenge herself, and she would do so alone, without the assistance of anyone. It was not even a thought of vengeance, as she understood the word, the idea of doing injury to cure herself. She felt the need of finishing with the matter, of upsetting everything, as if thunder and lightning had swept the couple away. Being very proud, more solidly built, and handsomer than the other, she felt convinced of her firm right to be loved; and when she went off alone along the paths of this abandoned district, with her heavy helmet of light hair, ever bare, she would have liked to come face to face with that other one, so as to settle their quarrel at the corner of a wood, after the manner of two hostile warrior women. Never yet had a man touched her; she thrashed the males, and that constituted her invincible strength. Therefore, she would be victorious.
The week before, this idea had suddenly been planted, driven into her head as by the blow of a hammer, come from she knew not where: kill them, so that they might no longer pass by, no longer go there together. She did not reason, she obeyed the savage instinct of destruction. When a thorn entered her flesh, she plucked it out. She would have cut off her finger. Kill them, kill them the first time they passed; and to do that, upset the train, drag a sleeper across the line, tear up a rail, smash everything. He, on his engine, would certainly remain there, stretched out;[Pg 305] the woman, always in the first carriage, so as to be nearer to him, could not escape; as for the others, that constant stream of passengers, she had not even a thought. They did not count, she did not know them! And at every hour she was beset by this idea of destroying the train, of making this huge sacrifice of lives. What she desired was an unique catastrophe, sufficiently great, sufficiently deep in human gore and suffering, for her to bathe therein her enormous heart swollen with tears.
Nevertheless, on the Friday morning, she had given way, not having yet decided at what spot nor in what manner she would remove a rail. But the same night, being off duty, she had an idea, and went prowling through the tunnel as far as the Dieppe embranchment. This was one of her walks, this trip through the subterranean passage, a good half league in length, along this vaulted avenue, quite straight, where she felt the emotion of trains with their blinding lights rolling over her. Each time, she had a narrow escape of being cut to pieces, and it must have been the peril that attracted her there in a spirit of bravado.
But on this particular night, having escaped the vigilance of the watchman and advanced to the middle of the tunnel, keeping to the left, so as to make sure that any train coming towards her would pass on her right, she had the imprudence to face about, just to follow the lights of a train on the way to Havre; and when she resumed walking, a false step having made her swing round again, she lost all knowledge of the direction in which the red lights had just disappeared.
Notwithstanding her courage, she stopped, still dizzy with the clatter of the wheels, her hands cold, her bare hair starting up in a breath of terror. She now imagined that when another train came along, she would not know whether it was an up or a down train. With an effort she endeavoured to retain her reason, to remember, to think the matter[Pg 306] over. Then, all at once, terror sent her along, haphazard, straight before her, at a frantic pace. No, no! she would not be killed before she had killed the other two!
Her feet were caught in the rails, she slipped, fell, rose up, and ran faster than before. She became affected with tunnel madness. The walls seemed drawing close to one another to squeeze her, the vaulted roof echoed imaginary sounds, menacing utterances, formidable roars. At every moment she turned her head, fancying she felt the burning steam of an engine on her neck. Twice the sudden conviction that she had made a mistake, that she would be killed from the end she was fleeing to, made her at a bound change the direction of her flight.
And she was tearing onward, onward, when in front of her, in the distance, appeared a star, a round flaming eye, increasing in size. But she resisted the intense temptation to again retrace her steps. The eye became a lighted brazier, the mouth of a devouring furnace. Blinded, she sprang to the left, at hazard; and the train passed, like a clap of thunder, doing nothing more than beat her cheek with its tempestuous blast of wind. Five minutes later, she issued from the Malaunay end of the tunnel safe and sound.
It was then nine o\'clock, a few minutes more and the Paris express would be there. She immediately continued her excursion at a walking pace, to the Dieppe embranchment, a matter of two hundred yards or so further on, examining the metals in search of something that might serve her purpose. It so happened that her friend Ozil had just switched a ballast train on to the Dieppe line, which was undergoing repair, and it was standing there. In a sudden flash of enlightenment she conceived a plan: simply prevent the pointsman from putting the switch-tongue back on the Havre line, so that the express would dash into the ballast train.
[Pg 307]
She felt a friendship for this Ozil since the day she had nearly broken his head with a blow from a stick, and she was fond of paying him unexpected visits like this, running through the tunnel after the fashion of a goat escaped from its mountain. An old soldier, very thin and little talkative, a slave to duty, his eyes ever on the look-out, day and night, he had not yet been guilty of a single act of negligence. Only this wild creature, who had beaten him, sturdy as a young man, could make him do what she pleased merely by beckoning to him with her little finger.
And so, on this particular night, when she approached his box in the dark, calling him outside, he went to her, forgetting everything. She made his head swim as she led him out into the country, relating complicated tales about her mother being ill, and that she would not remain at La Croix-de-Maufras if she lost her. Her ear caught the roar of the express in the distance, leaving Malaunay, approaching at full speed. And when she felt it hard by, she turned round to look. But she had been reckoning without the new connecting apparatus: the locomotive, in passing on to the Dieppe line, had itself just caused the danger signal to be displayed; and the driver was able to stop at a few paces from the ballast train.
Ozil, with the shout of a man awakened in a house tumbling down, regained his box at a run; while Flore, stiff and motionless, watched the man?uvre necessitated by the accident in the darkness of night. Two days later, the pointsman, who had been removed, having no suspicion of her duplicity, called to bid her farewell, imploring her to join him as soon as she lost her mother. So her plot came to nothing, and she would have to think of something else.
At this moment, under the influence of the recollection she had evoked, the mist of reverie clouding her eyes disappeared, and again she perceived the corpse in the light of the yellow flame of the candle. Her mother was no more.[Pg 308] Should she leave, and wed Ozil, who wanted her, and would perhaps make her happy? All her being revolted at the idea. No, no. If she had the cowardice to allow the other two to live and to live herself, she would prefer to tramp the roads, to take a situation as servant, rather than belong to a man she did not love. And a sound, to which she was unaccustomed, having caused her to listen, she understood that Misard with a mattock was engaged in excavating the beaten earth floor of the kitchen. He was going mad in his search for the hoard; he would have gutted the house. No, she would not remain with this one either. What was she going to do? There came a blast of wind, the walls vibrated, and on the pallid countenance of the corpse passed the reflex of a furnace, conveying a blood-like hue to the open eyes, and to the ironic rictus of the lips. It was the last slow train from Paris, with its ponderous, sluggish engine.
Flore had turned her head, and looked at the stars shining in the serenity of this spring night.
"Ten minutes past three," she murmured. "Another five hours, and they will pass."
She would begin over again; her suffering was too great. To see them like this each week was more than her strength could bear. Now that she was sure of not having Jacques to herself alone, she preferred that he should no longer exist, that there should be nothing. And the aspect of this lugubrious room, where she sat watching, imbued her with mournful suffering, and made her feel an increasing need to annihilate everything. As there remained no one who loved her, the others could go with her mother. As for corpses, there would be more and more still, and they could carry them all away at the same time. Her sister was dead, her mother was dead, her love was dead. What could she do? Remain alone? Whether she stayed or left, she would always be alone, while the others would be two together. No, no! let everything go to smash rather than that. Let death,[Pg 309] who was there in this room, blow on the line and sweep the people away.
Then, with her mind made up after this long debate with herself, she proceeded to think out the best way of putting her design into execution. And she returned to the idea of removing a rail. This would be the surest and most practical plan, and could be easily carried out; she had only to drive away the chairs with a hammer, and then raise the rail from the sleepers. She had the tools. Nobody would see her in this deserted district. A good spot to select would certainly be beyond the cutting, on the way to Barentin, at the curve which crossed a dale on an embankment thirty or thirty-five feet high. There the train would for sure run off the line, and the fall would be terrible.
But the calculation of time, which then occupied her, made her anxious. On the up-line, before the Havre express came by at 8.16, there was only a slow train at 7.55. This would therefore give her twenty minutes to do the work, which was sufficient. Only, between the regular trains, they often dispatched others that were unforeseen, loaded with goods, particularly at moments when quantities of cargo arrived. Then what a useless risk she would be incurring! How could she tell beforehand whether it would be the express that would come to smash there? For a long time she turned the probabilities over in her head. It was still night. The candle continued to burn, bathed in tallow, with a long, smutty wick which she had ceased to snuff.
Just as a goods train arrived from Rouen, Misard returned. His hands were covered with dirt, for he had been rummaging in the woodhouse, and he was out of breath, distracted at his vain efforts to lay hands on the treasure. He had become so feverish with impotent rage, that he renewed his search under the articles of furniture, up the chimney, everywhere. There was no end to the interminable train, with the regular fracas of its great wheels, which at each shock jolted the[Pg 310] dead woman in her bed. Misard, stretching out his arm to take down a small picture, hanging against the wall, again met the open eyes following his motions, while the lips seemed to move with their laugh.
He became livid. He was shivering, and stuttered out in terrific anger:
"Yes, yes; search! search! Never mind, I shall find it, even if I have to turn over every stone in the house, and every clod of ground in the neighbourhood!"
The black train had passed by in the obscurity, with painful slowness, and the dead woman, who had become motionless again, continued looking at her husband so jeeringly, so certain of conquering, that he disappeared a second time, leaving the door open. Flore, wandering in her reflections, had risen and closed the door, so that this man might not return to disturb her mother; and she felt astonished to hear herself saying aloud:
"Ten minutes beforehand will do."
In fact, she would have time in ten minutes. If no train was signalled ten minutes before the express, she could set to work. The matter being now settled, certain, her anxiety ceased, and she was very calm.
Day broke at about five o\'clock, a fresh dawn, of pure limpidity. In spite of the slightly sharp cold, she set the window wide open, and the delicious morning air entered the lugubrious room, full of smoke and an odour of the dead. The sun was still below the horizon, behind a hillock crowned by trees; but it appeared with a rosy tint, streaming over the slopes, pouring into the deep roads, amidst the lively gaiety of the earth at each new spring. She had not been mistaken on the previous evening: it would be fine on that particular morning, one of those days of youth and radiant health on which one delights in life. How lovely it would be to set out along the goat paths at her own free will, in this deserted country among the continuous hills cut[Pg 311] up by narrow dales! And when she turned round, facing the room, she was surprised to see the candle looking almost as if gone out, and with naught but a pale tear forming a spot in the broad daylight. The dead woman seemed now to be gazing on the line where the trains continued crossing one another, without even noticing this wan glimmer of a taper beside the corpse.
It was not until daylight that Flore resumed duty, and she only quitted the room for the slow train from Paris at 6.12. Misard, at six o\'clock, had also relieved his colleague, the night signalman. It was at the sound of his horn that she had come and placed herself before the gate, the flag in her hand. She followed the train an instant with her eyes.
"Another two hours," thought she aloud.
Her mother had no further need of anybody, and henceforth she experienced invincible repugnance to return to the room. It was all over, she had kissed her, and now she could dispose of her own existence and the lives of others. Usually, between the trains, she escaped and disappeared; but on this particular morning a feeling of interest seemed to keep her at her post near the gate on a bench—a simple plank that happened to be beside the line. The sun was ascending on the horizon, a warm shower of gold fell into the pure air; and she did not move, but sat there wrapped in this sweetness, in the midst of the vast country all thrilling with the sap of April.
For a moment she watched Misard in his wooden hut, on the other side of the line. He was visibly agitated, not having had his customary sleep. He went out, went in, worked his apparatus with a nervous hand, casting constant glances towards the house, as if his spirit had remained there and was still searching. Then she forgot him, was unaware even of him being there. She was all expectant, absorbed, her lips speechless, her face rigid, her eyes fixed on the end of the line in the direction of Barentin. And[Pg 312] over there, in the gaiety of the sun, a vision must have risen up for her, on which the stubborn savageness of her look obstinately dwelt.
Minutes slipped away, but Flore did not move. At last, at 7.55, when Misard with a couple of blasts from his horn signalled the slow train from Havre on the up-line, she rose, closed the gate, and planted herself before it, her flag in her fist. The train was already fading away in the distance, after sending a tremor through the ground; and it could be heard plunging into the tunnel, where the sound ceased. She had not gone back to the bench, but remained on her feet again counting each minute. If no goods train was signalled within ten minutes, she would run over there beyond the cutting, and remove a rail.
She was very calm, only her chest felt a little tight under the enormous weight of the deed. But, at this moment, the thought that Jacques and Séverine were approaching, that they would pass by again if she did not stop them, sufficed to make her inexorably blind and deaf in her resolution, without even giving the matter any further consideration; it was the irrevocable, the blow from the paw of the she-wolf that breaks the back of the prey on the way. In the egotism of her vengeance, she saw only the two mutilated bodies, without troubling about the crowd, that stream of unknown people who had been filing past before her for years. There would be dead bodies, blood, the sun would perhaps be obscured by them, that sun whose tender gaiety irritated her.
Two minutes more, one minute more, and she would be starting. Indeed, she was starting, when some heavy jolting on the Bécourt road stopped her. A cart, no doubt a stone dray; the carter would ask her to let him through. She would have to open the gate, engage in conversation, and remain there: it would be impossible for her to act, and she would miss her chance. With an enraged gesture of[Pg 313] indifference, she ran off, leaving her post, abandoning the carter with his dray to do the best he could. But the lash of a whip cracked in the matutinal air, and a voice cried out gaily:
"Hey! Flore!"
It was Cabuche. She stopped short, in her first spring, before the gate itself.
"What\'s up?" he continued. "Are you still asleep with this beautiful sun shining? Quick! let me get through before the express!"
She was completely undone. It was all over. The other two would proceed to their happiness without her being able to find any means to crush them here. And as she slowly opened the old, half-rotten gate, whose iron-work grated in its rust, she looked about her furiously for an object, something she could cast across the line; and she was in such despair, that she would have stretched her own self there, had she thought her bones hard enough to send the engine off the metals.
But her glance had just fallen on the dray, a heavy, low conveyance, loaded with two blocks of stone, which five strong horses found difficulty in drawing. These two enormous masses, high and broad, a colossal lump fit to bar the line, stood there before her; and abruptly a look of covetousness came into her eyes, accompanied by a mad desire to take and place them on the rails. The gate was wide open, the five steaming, panting cattle were there waiting.
"What is the matter with you this morning?" resumed Cabuche. "You look quite funny."
Then Flore spoke.
"My mother died last night," said she.
He uttered a friendly exclamation of grief, and putting down his whip, took both her hands and pressed them in his own.
"Oh! my poor Flore!" he sighed. "It is only what one[Pg 314] might have expected for a long time, but it is hard all the same. Then she is there. I will go and look at her, for we should have ended by agreeing, but for this misfortune."
He walked slowly with her to the house, but on the threshold he cast a glance towards his horses. In one sentence she set his mind at rest.
"There is no fear of them moving," she said. "And, besides, the express is a long way off."
She lied. Her experienced ear had just caught, in the gentle rustle of the country, the sound of the express leaving Barentin station. Another five minutes, and it would be there. It would issue from the cutting at a hundred yards from the level crossing.
While the quarryman stood in the room of the dead woman, feeling very much affected, with his thoughts adverting to Louisette and oblivious of everything else, Flore remained outside, in front of the window, listening to the distant regular puffing of the engine as it approached nearer and nearer. Suddenly she remembered Misard: he would see her, he would prevent her; and she felt a pang in the chest when, turning round, she could not perceive him in his box. But she discovered him on the other side of the house, digging up the ground at the foot of the masonry round the well, unable to overcome his searching mania, and doubtless all at once taken with the conviction that the hoard must be there. Entirely absorbed by his blind, sullen passion, he searched, searched. And this was her last excitation. Events themselves urged her on. One of the horses began to neigh, while the locomotive, at the other end of the cutting, puffed very loudly, like a person hastening along in a hurry.
"I\'ll go and keep them quiet," said Flore to Cabuche. "Don\'t be afraid."
She sprang forward, grasped the leader of the team by the bit, and pulled with all her strapping strength of a[Pg 315] wrestler. The horses strained. For an instant the dray, heavy with its enormous load, oscillated without advancing; but, as if she had harnessed herself to it like an extra animal, it at last moved and came across the line. It was right on the rails as the express, a hundred yards away, issued from the cutting. Then to stop the dray, lest it should pass over, she arrested the further progress of the team with a sudden jerk requiring a superhuman effort that made her joints crack.
She who, it will be remembered, had her legend, of whom people related extraordinary feats of strength—the truck shooting down an incline, which she had brought to a standstill as it ran, the cart she had pushed across the metals, and thus saved from a train—she accomplished this action now. In her iron grip she held back those five horses, rearing and neighing with the instinct of peril.
Barely ten seconds passed, but they were seconds of inconceivable terror. The two colossal stones seemed to bar the view. The locomotive came gliding along with its pale brass and glittering steel, arriving at its smooth, fulminating pace in the golden beams of the beautiful morning. The inevitable was there, nothing in the world could now prevent the smash. And the interval seemed interminable.
Misard, who had bounded back to his box, yelled with his arms in the air, shaking his fists in the senseless determination to warn the driver and stop the train. Cabuche, who had quitted the house at the sound of the wheels and the neighing of the horses, rushed forward, also yelling, to make the animals go on. But Flore, who had flung herself on one side, restrained him, which saved his life. He fancied that she had not been strong enough to master the horses, that it was they who had dragged her along. And he taxed himself with carelessness, sobbing in a splutter of despairing terror; while she, motionless, standing at her full height, her eyes like live coal and wide open, looked on. At the same moment, as the front of the engine was about[Pg 316] to touch the blocks of stone, when there remained perhaps only three feet to run, during this inappreciable time, she distinctly saw Jacques, with his hand on the reversing-wheel. He had turned towards her, and their eyes met in a gaze that she found inordinately long.
On that particular morning Jacques had smiled at Séverine, when she came down on to the platform at Havre for the express. What was the use of spoiling his life with nightmares? Why not take advantage of the happy days when they came? All would perhaps come right in the end. And, resolved to enjoy himself on this day, at all events, he was making plans in his head, dreaming of taking her to lunch at a restaurant. And so, as she cast him a sorrowful glance, because there was not a first-class carriage at the head of the train, and she was forced to find a seat a long way off him at the end, he wished to console her by smiling merrily. They would arrive together, and make up for being separated. Indeed, after leaning over the rail to see her enter a compartment right at the extremity of the train, he had pushed his good humour so far as to joke with the headguard, Henri Dauvergne, whom he knew to be in love with her.
The preceding week he fancied he had noticed that the guard was becoming bold, and that she encouraged him, by way of diversion, requiring relief from the atrocious existence she had formed for herself. And Jacques inquired of Henri who it was he had been sending kisses to in the air on the previous evening, when hiding behind one of the elms in the entrance yard. This elicited a loud laugh from Pecqueux, engaged in making up the fire of La Lison, which was smoking, and all ready to set out.
The express ran from Havre to Barentin at its regular speed and without incident. It was Henri who first signalled the dray across the line, from his look-out at the top of his box, on issuing from the cutting. The van next to the tender was crammed with luggage, for the train carried a large[Pg 317] number of passengers, who had landed from a mail-boat the previous evening. The headguard, very badly off for space, in the midst of this huge pile of trunks and portmanteaux, swaying to and fro in the vibration, had been standing at his desk classing way-bills; and the small bottle of ink, suspended from a nail, never ceased swinging from side to side.
After passing the stations where he put out luggage, he had four or five minutes\' writing to do. Two travellers had got down at Barentin, and he had just got his papers in order, when, ascending and seating himself in his look-out, he cast a glance back and front along the line in accordance with his custom. It was his habit to pass all his spare time seated in this glazed sentry-box on the watch. The tender hid the driver, but thanks to his elevated position, he could often see further and sooner than the latter. And so, whilst the train was still bending round in the cutting, he perceived the obstacle ahead. His astonishment was such that, in his terror, he lost command of his limbs, and, for an instant, even doubted what he saw. A few seconds were in consequence lost. The train was already out of the cutting, and a loud cry arose from the engine, when he made up his mind to pull the cord of the alarm-bell dangling in front of him.
Jacques, at this supreme moment, with his hand on the reversing-wheel, was looking without seeing, in a minute of absent-mindedness. He was thinking of confused and distant matters, from which the image of Séverine, even, had faded. The violent swinging and riot of the bell, the yells of Pecqueux behind him, brought him back to reality.
Pecqueux, who had raised the rod of the ash-pan, being dissatisfied with the draught, had caught sight of the scene on ahead as he leant over the rail to make sure of the speed. And Jacques, pale as death, saw and understood everything: the stone dray across the line, the engine tearing along, the frightful shock; and he witnessed it all with such penetrating distinctness, that he could even distinguish the[Pg 318] grain in the two stones, while he already felt the concussion of the smash in his bones. He had violently turned round the reversing-wheel, closed the regulator, tightened the brake. He had reversed the engine, and was hanging unconsciously with one hand to the whistle handle, in the furious, but impotent determination to give warning, to have the colossal barricade in front removed.
But in the middle of this terrible scream of distress that rent the air, La Lison refused to obey. It continued its course in spite of all, barely slackening in speed. Since it had lost its power of starting off smoothly and its excellent vaporisation, in the snowstorm, it was no longer the docile engine of former days. It had now become whimsical and intractable, like an old woman with her chest ruined by a chill. It panted, resisted the brake, and still went on and on, in the ponderous obstinacy of its huge mass. Pecqueux, maddened with fright, sprang off. Jacques waited, inflexible, at his post, with the fingers of his right hand clutc............