Complete Works of Emile Zola (1054 page)

He whistled at the level crossings, at the stations, at the great curves. A red light having appeared in the distance, as daylight vanished, he for a long time inquired if the road was free, and then passed like lightning. It was only from time to time that he cast a glance at the steam-gauge, turning the injector-wheel as soon as the pressure reached ten kilogrammes. But it was always to the permanent way that his eyes returned, bent on observing its smallest peculiarities, and with such attention, that he saw nothing else, and did not even feel the wind blowing a tempest. The steam-gauge falling, he opened the door of the fire-box, raising the bars; and Pecqueux, accustomed to a gesture, understood at once. He broke up coal with his hammer, and with his shovel put on an even layer. The scorching heat burnt the legs of both of them. Then, the door once closed again, they had to face the current of icy air.

When night closed in, Jacques became doubly prudent. Rarely had he found La Lison so obedient. He handled the engine as he pleased, with the absolute will of the master; and yet he did not relax his severity, but treated it as a tamed animal that must always be distrusted.

There, behind his back, in the train, whirling along at express speed, he saw a delicate, confiding, smiling face. He felt a slight shiver. With a firmer hand he grasped the reversing-wheel, piercing the increasing darkness with fixed eyes, in search of red lights. After the embranchments at Asnières and Colombes, he breathed a little. As far as Mantes all went well, the line was as a sheet of glass, and the train rolled along at ease.

After Mantes he had to urge La Lison on, so that it might ascend a rather steep incline, almost half a league long. Then, without slackening speed, he ran down the gentle slope to the Rolleboise tunnel, just about two miles in length, which he negotiated in barely three minutes. There remained but one more tunnel, that of La Roule, near Gaillon, before the station of Sotteville — a spot to be feared, for the complication of the lines, the continual shunting proceeding there, and the constant obstruction, made it exceedingly dangerous. All the strength of his being lay in his eyes which watched, in his hand which drove; and La Lison, whistling and smoking, dashed through Sotteville at full steam, only to stop at Rouen, whence it again set out, a trifle calmer, ascending more slowly the incline that extends as far as Malaunay.

A very clear moon had risen, shedding a white light, by which Jacques was able to distinguish the smallest bushes, and even the stones on the roads, in their rapid flight. As he cast a glance to the right, on leaving the tunnel of Malaunay, disturbed at the shadow cast across the line by a great tree, he recognised the out-of-the-way corner, the field full of bushes, whence he had witnessed the murder. The wild, deserted country flew past, with its continuous hills, its raw black patches of copses, its ravaged desolation. Next, at La Croix-de-Maufras, beneath the motionless moon, abruptly appeared the vision of the atrociously melancholy house set down aslant in its abandonment and distress, with its shutters everlastingly closed. And without understanding why, Jacques, this time again, and more vigorously than on previous occasions, felt a tightening at the heart as if he was passing before his doom. —

But immediately afterwards, his eyes carried another image away. Near the house of the Misards, against the gate at the level crossing, stood Flore. He now saw her at this spot at each of his journeys, awaiting, on the watch for him. She did not move, she simply turned her head so as to be able to get a longer view of him in the flash that bore him away. Her tall silhouette stood out in black, against the white light, her golden locks alone being illumined by the pale gold of the celestial body.

And Jacques, having urged on La Lison, to make it scale the ascent at Motteville, allowed the engine breathing time across the plateau of Bolbec. But he finally sent it on again, from Saint-Romain to Harfleur, down the longest incline on the line, a matter of three leagues, which the engines devour at the gallop of mad cattle sniffing the stable. And he was broken down with fatigue at Havre, when, beneath the iron marquee, full of the uproar and smoke at the arrival, Séverine, before going up to her rooms, ran to say to him, in her gay and tender manner:

“Thanks. We may see one another to-morrow.”

CHAPTER VI

A MONTH passed, and great tranquillity again pervaded the lodging occupied by the Roubauds, on the first floor of the railway station, over the waiting-rooms. With them, with their neighbours in the corridor, with all this little crowd of public servants subjected to an existence regulated by the clock, life had resumed its monotony. And it seemed as if nothing violent or abnormal had taken place.

The noisy and scandalous Grandmorin case was quietly being forgotten, was about to be shelved, owing to the apparent inability of the authorities to discover the criminal. After Cabuche had been locked up a fortnight, the examining-magistrate, Denizet, had ordered his discharge, on the ground that there was not sufficient evidence against him. And a romantic fable was now being arranged by the police: that of an unknown murderer on whom it was impossible to lay hands, a criminal adventurer, who was everywhere at the same time, who was accused of all the murders, and who vanished in smoke, at the mere sight of the officers.

It was now only at long intervals that a few jokes about this fabulous murderer were revived in the opposition press, which became intensely excited as the general elections drew near. The pressure of the government, the violence of the prefects, every day furnished other subjects for indignant articles; and the newspapers were so busy with these matters that they gave no further attention to the case. It had ceased to interest the public, who no longer even spoke on the subject.

What had completed the tranquillity of the Roubauds was the happy way in which the other difficulty, connected with the will of President Grandmorin, had been smoothed over.

On the advice of Madame Bonnehon, the Lachesnayes had at last consented to accept the will, partly because they did not wish to revive the scandal, and also because they were very uncertain as to the result of an action. And the Roubauds, placed in possession of their legacy, had for the past week been the owners of La Croix-de-Maufras, house and garden, estimated to be worth about 40,000 frcs., a matter of £1,600.

They had immediately decided on selling the place, which haunted them like a nightmare, and on selling it in a lump, with the furniture, just as it stood, without repairing it, and without even sweeping out the dust. But, as it would not have fetched anything like its value at an auction, there being few purchasers who would consent to retire to such solitude, they had resolved to await an amateur, and had nailed up an immense board on the front of the house, setting forth that it was for sale, which could easily be read by persons in the frequent trains that passed.

This notice in great letters, this desolation to be disposed of, added to the sadness of the closed shutters, and of the garden invaded with briars. Roubaud, having absolutely refused to go there, even to take a look round, and make certain necessary arrangements, Séverine had paid a visit to the house one afternoon, and had left the keys with the Misards, telling them to show any possible purchasers who might make inquiries, over the property. Possession could be arranged in a couple of hours, for there was even linen in the cupboards.

And from that moment, there being nothing further to trouble the Roubauds, they passed each day in blissful expectation of the morrow. The house would end by being sold, they would invest the money, and everything would go on very well. Besides, they forgot all about it, living as if they were never going to quit the three rooms they occupied: the dining-room, with the door opening on the corridor; the bedroom, fairly large, on the right; the small, stuffy kitchen on the left.

Even the roofing over the platforms, before their windows, that zinc slope shutting out the view like the wall of a prison, instead of exasperating them, as formerly, seemed to bring calm, increasing that sensation of infinite repose, of recomforting peace, wherein they felt secure. In any case, the neighbours could not see them, there were no prying eyes always in front of them peering into their home; and, spring having set in, they now only complained of the stifling heat, of the blinding reflex from the zinc, fired by the first rays of the sun.

After that frightful shock, which for two months had caused them to live in a constant tremble, they enjoyed this reaction of absorbing insensibility, in perfect bliss. They only desired never to move again, happy to be simply alive, without trembling and without suffering.

Never had Roubaud been so exact and conscientious. During the week of day duty, he was on the platform at five in the morning. He did not go up to breakfast until ten, and came down again an hour later, remaining there until five in the evening — eleven hours full of work. During the week of night duty, he had not even the brief rest afforded by a meal at home, for he supped in his office. He bore this hard servitude with a sort of satisfaction, seeming to take pleasure in it, entering into details, wishing to see to everything, to do everything, as if he found oblivion in fatigue; the return of a well-balanced, normal life.

Séverine, for her part, almost always alone, a widow one week out of two, and who during the other week, only saw her husband at luncheon and dinner-time, displayed all the energy of a good housewife. She had been in the habit of sitting down to embroidery, detesting to put her hand to household work, which an old woman, called Mother Simon, came to do, from nine to twelve. But since she had recovered tranquillity at home, and felt certain of remaining there, she had been occupied with ideas of cleaning and arranging things; and she now only seated herself, after rummaging everywhere in the apartment. Both slept soundly. In their rare conversations at meal-times, as on the nights which they passed together, they never once alluded to the case, considering it at an end, and buried.

For Séverine, particularly, life once more became extremely pleasant. Her idleness returned. Again she abandoned the housework to Mother Simon, like a young lady brought up for no greater exertion than fine needlework. She had commenced an interminable task, consisting in embroidering an entire bedcover, which threatened to occupy her to the end of her days. She rose rather late, delighted to remain alone in bed, rocked by the trains leaving and coming in, which told her how the hours fled, as exactly as if her eyes had been on a clock.

In the early days of her married life, these violent sounds in the station — the whistling, the shocks of turn-tables, the rolls of thunder, the abrupt oscillations, like earthquakes, which made both her and the furniture totter — had driven her half crazy. Then, by degrees, she had become accustomed to them; the sonorous and vibrating railway station formed part of her existence; and, now, she liked it, finding tranquillity in all this bustle and uproar.

Until lunch-time, she went from one room to another, talking to the charwoman, with her hands idle. Then, she passed the long afternoons, seated before the dining-room window, with her work generally on her lap, delighted at doing nothing. During the weeks when her husband came up at daylight, to go to bed, she heard him snoring until dark; and these had become her good weeks — those during which she lived as formerly, before her marriage, having the whole bed to herself, enjoying her time after rising, as she thought proper, with the entire day before her, to do as she liked.

She rarely went out. All she could see of Havre, was the smoke of the neighbouring factories, whose great turbillions of black stained the sky above the zinc roof, which shut out the view at a few yards from her eyes.

The city was there, behind this perpetual wall; she always felt its presence, and her annoyance at being unable to see it had, in the end, subsided. Five or six pots of wallflowers and verbenas, which she cultivated in the gutter, gave her a small garden to enliven her solitude. At times she spoke of herself as of a recluse in the depths of a wood. Roubaud, in his moments of idleness, would get out of the window, then, passing to the end of the gutter, would ascend the zinc slope, seating himself on the top of the gable, overlooking the Cours Napoleon. There he smoked his pipe, in the open air, towering above the city that lay spread out at his feet, above the docks planted with tall masts, and the pale green sea, expanding as far as the eye could roam.

It seemed that the same somnolence had gained the other households, near the Roubauds. This corridor, where generally whistled such a terrible gale of gossip, was also wrapt in slumber. When Philomène paid a visit to Madame Lebleu, barely a slight murmur could be heard. Both of them, surprised at the turn matters had taken, now spoke of the assistant station-master with disdainful commiseration, convinced that his wife, to keep him in his post, had been up to her games at Paris.

He was now a man with a slur upon him, who would never free himself of certain suspicions. And, as the wife of the cashier felt convinced that, henceforth, her neighbours would not have the power to take her lodging from her, she simply treated them with contempt, stiffening herself when she passed them, and neglecting to bow. This behaviour even estranged Philomène, who called on her less and less frequently. She considered her too proud, and no longer found amusement in her company.

Madame Lebleu, in order to have something to occupy her, continued to watch the intrigue between Mademoiselle Guichon and the station-master, M. Dabadie, but without ever surprising them. The almost imperceptible brush of his felt slippers along the corridor, could alone be heard. Everything having thus settled down, a month of supreme peacefulness ensued, similar to the great calm that follows great catastrophes.

But one painful, anxious matter remained, to occasionally worry the Roubauds. There was a particular part of the parquetry in the dining-room, whereon their eyes never chanced to rest, without an uncomfortable feeling again troubling them. This spot was to the left of the window. There they had taken up and put in place again, a piece of the pattern in the oak flooring, to hide beneath it the watch, and the 10,000 frcs. (£400) which they had taken from the body of Grandmorin, as well as a purse containing about 300 frcs. (
£12)
in gold. Roubaud had only drawn the watch and money from the pockets of the victim, to convey the impression that the motive of the crime was robbery.