Complete Works of Emile Zola (1074 page)

Cabuche, Pecqueux, and Misard worked behind her, while Séverine, enfeebled by standing so long on her feet, had just seated herself on the bench of a shattered carriage. But Misard, gentle and indifferent, again overcome by his sluggishness, anxious to avoid too much fatigue, was always ready to carry away the bodies. And both he and Flore looked at the corpses, as if they hoped to recognise them from among the multitude of thousands and thousands of faces who, in ten years, had filed past before their eyes at full steam, leaving only the confused recollection of a crowd conveyed there and borne away in a flash.

No; it was still that unknown wave of the advancing world, as anonymous in brutal, accidental death, as in that hasty life which brought it tearing past them onward to the future; and they could not name, they could give no information about the heads, furrowed with horror, of these poor creatures struck down on their road, trampled under foot, similar to those soldiers whose bodies fill the trenches in opposing the charge of an enemy ascending to the assault. Nevertheless, Flore fancied she had found one person to whom she had spoken on the day the train was blocked in the snow: that American whose profile she had at last come to know familiarly, without being aware of his name, or anything about him or his. Misard carried him along with the other dead bodies, come no one knew whence, bound for no one knew where, and stopped there.

Then came a heartrending scene: in a first-class compartment turned topsy-turvy they had just discovered a young couple, doubtless newly married, thrown one upon the other in such an unfortunate position that the woman, who was uppermost, crushed the man, and could not make a movement to relieve him. He was choking, he already had the death rattle in his throat; while she, in terror, with her mouth free, her heart rent asunder at the thought that she was killing him, distractedly implored the relief party to make haste. And when they had delivered both, it was she who all at once breathed her last, a blow from one of the buffers having ripped open her side. And the man, coming to himself again, clamoured with grief, kneeling beside the dead body whose eyes remained full of tears.

A dozen corpses and about thirty wounded passengers had now been removed. The workers were setting the tender free. Flore paused, ever and anon, thrusting her head among the splintered wood, the twisted iron, searching ardently with her eyes to see if she could perceive the driver. Suddenly she uttered a loud cry.

“I can see him!” she exclaimed. “He is under here. Look! There is his arm, with his blue woollen jacket. He doesn’t move; he doesn’t breathe!”

And, rising from her recumbent position, she swore like a man.

“Be quick!” she shouted with an oath. “Get him out from there!”

She made a fruitless effort with both hands to tear away a plank belonging to one of the carriages, which other pieces of wreckage prevented coming towards her. So, running off, she returned with the hatchet that served to chop the wood at home; and brandishing it as a woodcutter wields his axe in the middle of an oak-tree forest, she fell upon the plank with a volley of furious blows. The men, standing aside, allowed her to do as she would, while shouting to her to be careful. But Jacques was the only wounded person there, and he lay sheltered under an entanglement of axle-trees and wheels. Moreover, she paid no attention to what was said. Her spirit being fairly roused, certain of herself, she proceeded with irresistible determination. Each stroke battered down the wood, cut through an obstacle. With her fair hair streaming free, her bodice torn open displaying her bare arms, she resembled some terrible reaper cleaving a way through the destruction she had wrought. The final blow falling upon an axletree, broke the iron of the hatchet in two. Then, assisted by the others, she put aside the wheels which had protected the young man from being crushed to death, and she was the first to seize him and bear him away in her arms.

“Jacques, Jacques!” she cried. “He is alive; he is breathing. Ah! Great God! he lives. I knew I saw him fall, and that he was there!”

Séverine, who was distracted, followed her. Between them they laid him down at the foot of the hedge beside Henri, who continued gazing, stupefied, as if not understanding where he was, nor what went on around him. Pecqueux, who had approached, remained standing before his driver quite unhinged at seeing him in this deplorable state; while the two women, now kneeling down, one to the right the other to the left, supported the head of the poor fellow, watching in anguish for the slightest shiver on his face.

At length Jacques opened his lids. His troubled look fell upon Flore and Séverine, one after the other, but he did not appear to recognise them. They failed to arouse his interest. But his eyes having encountered the expiring locomotive, a few feet away, first of all assumed a wild expression, then, settling on the object, vacillated with increasing emotion.

He recognised La Lison well, and the sight brought everything back to him: the two blocks of stone across the rails, the abominable shock, the crushing sensation he had experienced, at the same moment, within both the engine and himself, and from which he had emerged alive, while the locomotive had assuredly come to an end. It was not the fault of the engine if it had been intractable; for it had always felt the effects of the accident in the snow; without counting, that age makes limbs heavy and joints stiff, which is as applicable to machinery as to living creatures. And so, overwhelmed with grief at seeing La Lison direfully wounded, in the last throes of death, he readily forgave.

Poor La Lison had but a few minutes more. It was becoming cold. The live coal in the fire-box was turning into cinders, the. steam that had escaped in such violence from its open flanks, was exhausting itself with the low moan of a weeping child. The locomotive always so bright, now lay on its back in a black bed of coal, soiled with earth and foam. It had met with the tragic end of a costly animal struck down in the public street. At one moment, it had been possible to perceive its mechanism at work through its shattered plates: the pistons beating like twin-hearts, the steam circulating in the slide valves as the blood of its veins; but the connecting-rods merely moved in a jerky fashion, after the manner of convulsive human arms, and constituted the final efforts of life.

Its spirit was ebbing away along with the power that gave it life, that huge breath whereof it could not absolutely free itself. The eviscerated giantess sank lower still, passing little by little into very gentle slumber, and ended by emitting not a sound. La Lison was dead. And the heap of iron, steel, and copper, lying there, this pounded colossal mass with the barrel ripped asunder, the scattered limbs, the interior mechanism smashed, exposed to broad daylight, displayed the frightfully mournful aspect of some enormous human corpse, of a whole world that had lived, and from which life had just been tom in anguish.

Then Jacques, understanding that La Lison was no more, closed his eyes, desiring to die also; moreover, he was so weak that he fancied himself borne away in the final little puff of the engine; and tears, trickling from his closed lids, drenched his cheeks. This was too much for Pecqueux who had remained there motionless with a lump in his throat. Their dear friend had gone, and here was his driver wishing to follow. So the happy family of three was at an end. All over those journeys of hundreds of leagues they made together without exchanging a word, and yet all three understanding one another so well, that they had no need to make even a sign to comprehend. Ah! poor La Lison, as gentle as strong, so beautiful when sparkling in the sun! And Pecqueux, who, nevertheless, had not been drinking, burst into violent sobs, unable to master the hiccoughs that agitated his huge frame.

Séverine and Flore were also in despair at this fresh fainting fit of Jacques. The latter of the two women running home, returned with camphorated spirit, and began to friction him for the sake of doing something. But amidst their anguish they were exasperated by the interminable death agony of the horse, who had his two fore-hoofs cut off, the only survivor of the team of five. He lay close to them, uttering a constant neigh, a cry that sounded almost human. It was so shrill and so expressive of frightful pain, that two of the wounded gained by the contagion, also began howling like animals.

Never had a death-cry rent the air in such a deep, ever memorable complaint. It made the blood run icy cold. The torture became atrocious. Voices, trembling with pity and anger, inveighed against it, beseeching the rescue party to put an end to the misery of this wretched horse, who was in such terrible suffering, and whose endless death rattle, now that the engine had expired, continued like the final lamentation of the catastrophe. Then Pecqueux, still sobbing, picked up the hatchet with the shattered steel head, and at a single blow, right in front of the skull, pole-axed him. Silence now fell on the scene of massacre.

Assistance came at last, after waiting a couple of hours. In the shock of the collision the carriages had all been thrown to the left, so that the down line could be cleared in a few hours. A train from Rouen, consisting of three carriages and a pilot-engine, had just brought the chief-secretary to the Prefect and the Imperial Procurator, along with some engineers and doctors of the company — quite a swarm of active, busy personages; while M. Bessière, the station-master at Barentin, was already attacking the wreckage with a gang of workmen.

Extraordinary bustle and excitement prevailed in this out-of-the-way place, usually so silent and deserted. The travellers, who had issued from the accident safe and sound, had not yet lost the frenzy of their panic, which asserted itself in a febrile necessity to keep on the move. Some, terrified at the idea of again seating themselves in a railway carriage, endeavoured to hire vehicles; others, seeing it was impossible to find even a wheel-barrow, already became anxious about eating and sleeping. Everybody wished to send off telegrams, and several people set out for Barentin on foot taking messages with them.

While the representatives of the government, assisted by the servants of the railway company, commenced an inquiry, the doctors hastily proceeded to dress the wounds of the injured. Many had lost consciousness and lay in pools of blood. Others, tortured by tweezers and needles, murmured in feeble voices. Altogether there were fifteen passengers killed and thirty-two seriously hurt. The corpses remained in a row on the ground at the foot of the hedge, with their faces to the sky pending identification.

No one, save a little substitute, a fair and rosy young man full of zeal, troubled about them. And he searched their pockets to see if he could find any papers, visiting-cards, or letters, which would enable him to ticket each of them with a name and address. Meanwhile, a gaping crowd had gathered about him; for, although there was no house within a league around, a number of idlers had arrived, no one could say whence — some thirty men, women, and children, who simply stood in the way without lending any assistance. And the black dust, the veil of smoke and vapour that had enveloped everything, having dispersed, the radiant April morning burst triumphant upon the scene of massacre, bathing the dead and dying, the ripped-up La Lison, and the pile of wreckage, in gentle, gay streams of bright sun; while the gang of workmen engaged in clearing the line reminded one of ants repairing the damage done’ to their hill by the feet of a thoughtless passer-by.

Jacques continued unconscious, and Séverine, stopping a doctor as he came along, besought his assistance. The latter examined the young man without discovering any visible wound, but fearing internal lesions on account of the thin streaks of blood that appeared between his lips, he declined to express a formal opinion, but advised that Jacques should be removed as speedily, and with as little jolting as possible, and put to bed.

Jacques, at the touch of hands passing over him, had again opened his eyes with a suppressed ejaculation of pain. This time he recognised Séverine, and stammered in a wandering manner:

“Take me away — take me away!”

Flore bent forward, and Jacques moving his head recognised her also. His eyes at once took the terrified expression of a child, and he turned back towards Séverine, shrinking from the other with a look of hatred and horror.

“Take me away, immediately, immediately!” said he.

Then Séverine, troubling no more about Flore than if she had not been present, inquired in a most affectionate tone:

“Will you let me take you to La Croix-de-Maufras? It is just opposite; and if you consent we shall be at home there.”

And still agitated, with his eyes fixed on the other, he acquiesced.

“Anywhere you please, immediately,” said he.

Flore, who remained motionless, turned pale as death at his look of terrified execration. And so, in this carnage of innocent people, she had not succeeded in killing them, neither the one nor the other: the woman had come out of it without a scratch; and now he would perhaps escape. She had only succeeded in throwing them together all alone in this solitary house. She saw them comfortable there, the sweetheart recovered, convalescent; the girl full of attention, recompensed for her vigils by continual caresses, both prolonging the honeymoon of the catastrophe in absolute liberty and far from the world. She turned icy cold, and cast her eyes on the dead she had slaughtered to no purpose.

At this moment, Flore, in the glance she had given to the butchery, perceived Misard and Cabuche, who were being questioned by some gentlemen — the judicial authorities assuredly. In fact, the Imperial Procurator and the chief secretary to the Prefect were endeavouring to ascertain how this stone dray had got across the line. Misard maintained that he had not left his post, while at the same time, he was unable to give any precise information as to what had happened. He really knew nothing, so he pretended he had been busy with his apparatus, and had his back turned.

Cabuche, who had not yet recovered his composure, related a long? confused story about how he had committed the imprudence of leaving his team, in order to take a look at the corpse of the dead woman, how the horses had moved on alone, and how the young girl had been unable to stop them. Embroiling himself, he began again without succeeding in making himself understood.