Complete Works of Emile Zola (1041 page)

“A man on the line!” he exclaimed, turning pale. “Where?”

Misard was about to relate that he was returning with a couple of eels which he had taken from his ground lines, and that he had first of all run home, as fast as he could, to hide them. But he reflected that there was no necessity to confide in this young man, and with a vague gesture he replied:

“Over there, about half a mile away. It requires a light to find out more.”

At this moment Jacques heard a thud overhead. He was so nervous that he started.

“It’s nothing,” said Misard. “It’s only Flore moving.”

And, in fact, the young man recognised the pit-pat of two naked feet on the floor. She had come to listen at the half-open door.

“I’ll go with you,” Jacques resumed. “Are you sure he’s dead?”

“Well, he looked like it,” answered the other. “We shall soon see with the lantern.”

“What’s your opinion?” inquired Jacques. “An accident?”

“Maybe,” replied Misard. “Some chap who’s got cut in two, or perhaps a passenger who jumped out of a carriage.”

Jacques shuddered.

“Come along quick, quick!” he exclaimed.

Never had he been agitated with such a fever to see and know. Outside the house, while his companion, without any concern, walked along the line swinging his lantern, he ran on ahead, irritated at the delay. It was like a physical desire, the fire within that precipitates the steps of lovers at the hour of meeting. He feared what awaited him yonder, and yet he flew there with all the muscles of his limbs. When he reached the spot, when he almost stumbled over a dark heap lying near the down-line, he remained planted where he stood with a shiver running from his heels to the nape of his neck. And, his anguish at being unable to see distinctly, turned to oaths against the other, who was loitering along, thirty paces behind.

“Come on, come on!” he shouted. “If he’s still alive, we may be able to do something for him.”

Misard waddled forward in his sluggish way. Then, when he had swung the lantern to and fro, over the body, he muttered:

“Ah! the devil take me! It’s all up with him.”

The man, no doubt tumbling out of a carriage, had fallen with his face downwards, a couple of feet at the most from the metals. Nothing could be seen of his head but a crown of thick black hair. His legs were apart. His right arm lay as if dislocated, while his left was bent under his chest. He was very well attired in a big, blue cloth overcoat, neat boots, and fine linen. The body bore no trace of having been crushed, but a quantity of blood had run from the throat, and soiled the shirt collar.

“Some gentleman whom they’ve done for,” tranquilly resumed Misard, after a few seconds’ silent inspection. Then, turning towards Jacques, who stood motionless and thunderstruck, he continued:

“He must not be touched. It’s forbidden. You will have to remain here, and watch over him, while I go to Barentin to tell the station-master about it.”

He raised his lantern, and looked at a mile-post.

“Good!” said he. “Just at post 153.” And, placing his lantern on the ground beside the corpse, he took himself off at his usual loitering gait.

Jacques, left by himself, did not move, but continued gazing at this inert mass that had fallen there, and which the uncertain light, just above the ground, only revealed indistinctly. The agitation that had made him rush forward, the horrible attraction that held him there, ended in this keen thought which burst from all his being: the other one, the man he had caught sight of with the knife in his hand had dared! He had gratified his desire! He had killed. Ah! what would he give not to be a coward, to be able to satisfy himself at last, to plunge in the knife! He, who had been tortured by this thirst for ten years! —

In his fever, he felt contempt for himself, and admiration for the other; and, above all, he felt the necessity to gaze on the victim, the quenchless thirst to feast his eyes on this human remnant, this broken dancing-Jack, this limp rag, which the stab of a knife had made of a creature. What he dreamed of, the other had realised, and it was that. If he killed, he would have that on the ground. His heart beat fit to break. His prurience for murder became violent as concupiscence, at the sight of this tragic corpse. He took a step, approached nearer, after the manner of a child making himself familiar with an object he fears. Yes, he would dare, he would dare in his turn!

But a roar behind his back, made him spring aside. A train arrived which he had not heard, being so taken up with the contemplation of the body. He would have been crushed to pieces had not the warm steam and the formidable puffing of the engine warned him in time. The train flew past in its hurricane of noise, smoke, and flame. This one also carried a great many people. The flood of travellers continued streaming towards Havre, for the fête on the morrow. A child was flattening his nose against a window, looking out at the black country; profiles of men appeared, while a young woman, lowering one of the glasses, threw out a paper stained with butter and sugar. Already the joyous train was flying away in the distance, listless of the corpse its wheels had almost grazed. And the body continued lying there on its face, indistinctly lit up by the lantern, amidst the melancholy peacefulness of night.

Then Jacques had a desire to see the wound, while he was alone. But he hesitated, in the anxiety that if he touched the head, it would, perhaps, be noticed. He reckoned that Misard could not be back with the station-master before three-quarters of an hour; and as the minutes passed, he thought of this Misard, of this puny fellow, so slow, so calm, who also dared, who was killing as tranquilly as possible, with doses of poison. Then it was easy enough to kill? Everybody killed. He drew nearer the corpse, and the idea of looking at the wound stung him so sharply that he was burning all over. He wanted to see how it had been done, and what had run from it, to see the red hole! By carefully putting the head back into its position, nobody would know anything about it. But at the bottom of his hesitation was another fear which he had not owned, the dread of blood. He had still a quarter of an hour to himself, and he was on the point of making up his mind to look, when a slight sound beside him, made him start.

It was Flore, standing gazing at the corpse like himself. She was keen on accidents; as soon as ever the news arrived that an animal had been pounded to atoms, or a man cut in two by a train, she hurried to the scene of disaster. She had just dressed again, and wanted to see the corpse. Unlike Jacques, she did not hesitate. After a first glance, she stooped down, raising the lantern with one hand, while with the other she took the head, and threw it back.

“Mind what you’re doing,” murmured Jacques; “it’s forbidden.”

But she shrugged her shoulders. The face appeared in the yellow light, the face of an old man, with a large nose and the blue, wide-open eyes of one formerly fair. A frightful wound was gaping beneath the chin. The throat had been cut with a deep, jagged gash, as if the knife had been twisted round probing it. The right side of the chest was drenched in blood. On the left, in the button-hole of the great coat, the rosette of Commander of the Legion of Honour looked like a clot of blood that had spurted there.

Flore uttered an exclamation of surprise.

“Hullo! the old man!” said she.

Jacques advanced, bending forward as she was doing, mingling his hair with her hair, to see better. He was choking, gorging himself with the sight Unconsciously he repeated:

“The old man? The old man?”

“Yes, old Grandmorin, the President.”

For another moment she examined this livid face, with the distorted mouth and the great, terrifying eyes. Then she let go the head, which was beginning to turn icy cold in cadaverous rigidity, and the wound closed.

“He’s done larking with the girls!” she resumed in a lower tone. “It’s got something to do with one of them, for sure. Ah! my poor Louisette! Ah! the pig! Serve him right!”

A long silence ensued. Flore, who had set down the lantern, waited, slowly casting glances at Jacques, while he, separated from her by the corpse, did not move. He seemed as if lost, completely prostrated by what he had just seen. It must have been eleven o’clock. The embarrassment due to the scene in the evening prevented him speaking the first. But a sound of voices was heard. It was her stepfather returning with the station-master, and, not wishing to be seen, she made up her mind to break the ice.

“Aren’t you going back to bed?” she inquired.

He started, and seemed agitated by an inner struggle. Then, with an effort, with a recoil full of despair, he answered:

“No, no!”

She made no movement, but her look, with her robust arms hanging down beside her, expressed great sorrow. As if to ask pardon for her resistance of a short time before she became very humble, and added:

“Then if you are not going back to the house, I shall not see you again?”

“No, no!” he replied.

The voices approached, and without seeking to press his hand, as he seemed to purposely place this corpse between them, without even giving him the familiar good-bye of their comradeship of childhood, she withdrew, disappearing in the darkness, and breathing hard, as if to stifle her sobs.

The station-master appeared on the scene almost at once, along with Misard and a couple of porters. He also proved the identity: it was President Grandmorin sure enough. He knew him by seeing him get down at his station each time he went to Madame Bonnehon, at Doinville. The body could remain where it had fallen, but he would have it covered with the cloak a man had brought with him. One of the staff had taken the eleven o’clock train at Barentin to inform the Imperial Procurator at Rouen. But they could not count on the latter before five or six o’clock in the morning, for he would have to bring the examining-magistrate, the registrar of the Court, and a doctor with him. And so the station-master arranged for the body to be guarded. The men would take turns throughout the night, one man being constantly there on the watch, with the lantern.

And Jacques, before making up his mind to go and stretch himself under some shed at the Barentin station, whence he would not set out for Havre before 7.20, remained for a long time where he stood, motionless, and worried. Then he became troubled at the idea of the examining-magistrate who was expected, as if he felt himself an accomplice. Should he say what he had seen as the train went by? At first he resolved to speak, as, after all, he had nothing to fear. Moreover, there could be no doubt as to his duty. But, then, he asked himself, what was the good of it? he could not bring one single, decisive fact to bear on the matter, he would not dare affirm any detail respecting the murderer. It would be idiotic to mix himself up in the business, to lose his time, and worry himself, without profit to anyone.

No, no, he would say nothing! At last, he took himself off, but he turned round twice, to see the black heap the body made on the ground, in the circle of yellow light shed by the lantern. Sharper cold fell from the fumy sky, on the desolation of this desert with arid hills. More trains had passed. Another, a very long one, arrived for Paris. All crossed in their inexorable mechanic might, flying to their distant goal, to the future, almost grazing, without taking heed of it, the half-severed head of this man whom another man had slaughtered.

CHAPTER III

THE following day, a Sunday, five o’clock in the morning had just struck from all the belfries of Havre, when Roubaud came down under the iron marquee of the station, to resume duty. It was still pitch dark; but the wind, blowing from the sea, had increased, and drove along the haze, smothering the hills which extend from Saint-Adresse to Tourneville; while westward, above the offing, appeared a bright opening, a strip of sky, where shone the last stars. The gas-lamps under the marquee were still alight, but looking pale in the damp chill of this matutinal hour. Shunters were engaged in making-up the first train for Montivilliers, under the orders of the assistant station-master on night duty. The doors of the waiting-rooms had not yet been opened, and the platforms stretched forward, deserted, in this drowsy awakening of the station.

As Roubaud left his apartments, upstairs, over the waiting-rooms, he found Madame Lebleu, the wife of the cashier, standing motionless in the middle of the central corridor, on which the lodgings of the members of the staff opened. For weeks past this lady had been in the habit of getting up during the night to watch Mademoiselle Guichon, the office-keeper, whom she suspected of carrying on an intrigue with M. Dabadie, the station-master. As a matter of fact, she had never surprised the least thing, not a shadow, not a breath. And, again on this particular morning, she had quickly returned to her own quarters, taking no news back with her, save the expression of her astonishment at what she had caught sight of in the rooms occupied by the Roubauds, during the two or three seconds the husband had required to open and shut the door. There she had seen the beautiful Séverine, who was in the habit of lying abed until nine o’clock in the morning, standing up in the dining-room dressed, combed, and booted. And she had roused Lebleu to tell him of this extraordinary occurrence.

On the previous night they sat up until the arrival of the Paris express at 11.5, burning to learn what had become of the affair with the sub-prefect. But they were unable to read anything in the attitude of the Roubauds, who returned with faces wearing their everyday expression; and in vain did they listen until midnight: not a sound came from the rooms occupied by their neighbours, who must have gone to bed at once, and fallen fast asleep. Their journey could certainly not have been attended with a good result, otherwise Séverine would not have risen at such an early hour. The cashier having inquired how she looked, his wife had been at pains to describe her: very stiff, very pale, with her great blue eyes appearing so bright against her black hair; she was standing quite still, and had the aspect of a somnambulist. But they would find out all about it in the course of the day.

Down below, Roubaud found his colleague Moulin, who had been on duty during the night; and as he took over the service, Moulin walked along with him for a minute or two, posting him up in the few small events that had occurred since the previous evening: some vagrants had been surprised as they were effecting an entrance into the cloakroom; three porters had been reprimanded for indiscipline; a coupling-hook had just broken while the Montivilliers train was being made-up. Roubaud listened in silence, and with calm countenance. He was only a trifle pale, due no doubt to a remainder of fatigue, which was also visible in his heavy eyes. When his colleague ceased speaking, he still seemed to look at him inquiringly, as if he expected something more. But what he had heard was all, and he bent his head, gazing for an instant on the ground.