Complete Works of Emile Zola (1071 page)

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.

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 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 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; 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 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.

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 manoeuvre 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.

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, who was there in this room, blow on the line and sweep the people away.