Complete Works of Emile Zola (1038 page)

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 hell 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 downline, 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 1,0 — 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 I” 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 ail 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 1,0 — 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.