Complete Works of Emile Zola (1068 page)

Jacques became more and more gloomy every day. On two occasions when he could have met Séverine, he invented excuses not to do so, and sometimes when he remained late at the cottage of the Sauvagnats, it was also for the purpose of avoiding her. Nevertheless, he still loved her. But now the frightful evil had returned. He suffered from terrible swimming in the head, he turned icy cold. In terror, he perceived he was no longer himself, and that the animal was there ready to bite.

He sought relief in the fatigue of long journeys, soliciting additional work, remaining twelve hours at a stretch erect on his engine, his body racked by the vacillation, his lungs scorched by the wind. His comrades complained of this hard life of a driver, which did for a man, said they, in a score of years. He would have liked to be done for at once. He was never sufficiently tired. Never did he feel so happy as when borne along by La Lison, thinking no more, and with eyes only for the signals. On reaching the end of the run sleep overpowered him, before he had even time to wash. Only, when he awoke, the torment of the fixed idea returned.

He had also endeavoured to resume his former affection for La Lison. Again he passed hours cleaning it, exacting from Pecqueux that the steel should shine like silver. The inspectors who got up beside him on the way, paid him compliments. But he only shook his head in dissatisfaction, for, he knew very well, that since the stoppage in the snow, it was not the same efficient, valiant engine as formerly. Doubtless, in the repairs to the pistons and slide-valves, it had lost some of its principal motive power — that mysterious equilibrium, due to the hazard of building. This decay caused him suffering which turned to bitter vexation, and to such a pitch that he pursued his superiors with unreasonable complaints, asking for unnecessary repairs, and suggesting improvements that were impracticable. These being refused, he became more gloomy, convinced that La Lison was out of order, and that henceforth he could do nothing decent with the engine. His affection in consequence became discouraged; what was the good of loving anything, as he would kill all he loved?

Séverine had not failed to observe the change, and she was grieved, thinking his sadness due to her, since he knew all. When she perceived him shudder on her neck, avoid her kiss by abruptly drawing back, was it not because he remembered, and she caused him horror? Never had she dared resume the conversation on the subject. She repented of having spoken, and was surprised at the way her confession had burst from her. As if satisfied at present to have him with her, at the bottom of this secret, she forgot how long she had felt the need to confide in him. She loved him more passionately since he knew everything. She only lived for Jacques, and her one dream was that he might carry her away and keep her with him.

Of the hideous drama she had merely retained the astonishment of being mixed up in it, and she would not even have felt angry with her husband, had he not been in her way. But her execration for this man increased in proportion with her passion for the other. Now that her husband was aware of her intrigue and had absolved her, the sweetheart was the master, the one she would follow, and who could dispose of her as he pleased. She had made him give her his portrait, and she took it to bed with her, falling asleep with her lips glued to the image. And she felt very much pained since she saw him unhappy, without being able to exactly understand what caused him such suffering.

Nevertheless, they continued to meet outside, until they could see one another at her home, in the new, conquered lodging. Winter approached its term, and the month of February proved very mild. They prolonged their walks, sauntering for hours over the open ground adjoining the station. Séverine continued to make her trip to Paris every Friday; and now she did not offer her husband the slightest explanation. For the neighbours, the old pretext, a bad knee sufficed; and she also said that she went to see her wet-nurse, Mother Victoire, who was a long time getting through her convalescence at the hospital. Both Séverine and Jacques still took great pleasure in these journeys. He showed himself particularly attentive to his locomotive; she, delighted to see him less gloomy, found amusement in looking out of the window, notwithstanding that she began to know every little hill and clump of trees on the way.

From Havre to Motteville were meadows, flat fields separated by green hedges and planted with apple-trees; then as far as Rouen came a stretch of irregular, desert land.

After Rouen, the Seine streamed by. They crossed it at Sotteville, at Oissel, at Pont-de-l’Arche. Now it constantly reappeared, expanding to great breadth across the vast plains. From Gaillon it was hardly once lost to view. It ran on the left, slackening in speed between its low banks, bordered with poplars and willows. The train, darting along a hillside, abandoned the river at Bonnières to abruptly meet it once more on issuing from the Rolleboise tunnel at Rosny. It seemed like a friendly companion on the journey, and was crossed three times again before reaching Paris.

As the train sped gaily on its way, Mantes appeared with its belfry amidst the trees, Triel with its white limekilns, Poissy, which the line severed in twain, in the very heart of the town. Next came the two green screens of Saint Germain forest, the slope of Colombes, bursting with lilac, and they were in the outskirts of Paris. The city could be perceived from the bridge at Asnières; the distant Arc de Triomphe, towering above sordid buildings, bristling with factory chimneys. The engine plunged beneath Batignolles, and the passengers streamed from the carriages on to the platform of the echoing station.

Until night Séverine and Jacques were free, and belonged to one another. On the return journey, it being dark, she closed her eyes, enjoying her happiness over again. But morning and night, each time she passed La Croix-de-Maufras, she advanced her head; and, without discovering herself, cast a furtive glance outside the carriage, certain that she would there find Flore, erect before the gate of the level-crossing, presenting the flag in its case, and embracing the train with her flaming eyes.

Since the snowy day when this girl had caught them kissing one another, Jacques had warned Séverine to be careful of her. He was no longer ignorant of that passion of a wild creature wherewith she had pursued him from her earliest years. He felt that she was jealous, and that she possessed virile energy, as well as unbridled and deadly rancour. Moreover, she must be well-informed in regard to matters concerning Séverine, for he remembered her allusion to the intimacy of the President with a certain young lady whom no one suspected, and for whom he had found a husband. If she knew this, she must assuredly have penetrated the mystery of the crime. Doubtless, she would be talking or writing, so as to avenge herself by a denunciation.

But days and weeks passed without anything happening. He still found her there, planted rigidly at her post beside the line, with her flag. Far away, as soon as she was able to catch sight of the locomotive, he felt the sensation of her burning eyes. She saw him, notwithstanding the smoke, and embraced all his frame in her glance, following him in the lightning flash amidst the thunder of the wheels.

And the train was scrutinised at the same time, pierced through and through, inspected from the first carriage to the last; she always discovered the other one, the rival, whom she now knew to be there every Friday. And Séverine might well advance her head but a trifle, impelled by the imperious necessity to look. She was seen. Their eyes crossed like rapiers. The train was already far away, devouring space; and one person remained on the ground, powerless to follow it, raging at the happiness it bore along. Flore seemed to be growing. Jacques found her taller at each journey, and felt uneasy at her taking no action, wondering what plan would ripen in the head of this great, gloomy girl, whose motionless apparition he could not avoid.

There was also one of the servants of the company, that headguard, Henri Dauvergne, who inconvenienced Séverine and Jacques. He happened to be in charge of this Friday train, and he displayed importunate amiability towards the young woman. The attentions of Henri became so apparent, that Roubaud observed them with sneering countenance on the mornings when he was on duty at the departure from Havre. The headguard was in the habit of reserving an entire compartment for his wife, and took pains to see she was comfortable there, feeling the foot-warmer to make sure the water was hot, and so forth. On one occasion the husband, while continuing a chat with Jacques, attracted his notice to the proceedings of the young man with a wink, as if to inquire whether he permitted that kind of thing.

In the family quarrels, Roubaud flatly accused his wife of making love to the pair. And Séverine imagined, for an instant, that Jacques also had this belief, which was the cause of his sadness. In a burst of tears, she protested her innocence, telling him to kill her if she were unfaithful. But he merely laughed, and, turning very pale, embraced her, saying he was convinced of her fidelity, and that he sincerely hoped he would never kill anybody.

The first evenings of March were frightful, and they were obliged to interrupt their meetings. The trips to Paris, the few hours of freedom sought so far away, were no longer enough for Séverine. She experienced an increasing desire to have Jacques with her, always with her, to live together, without ever leaving one another. And her execration for her husband increased. The mere presence of this man threw her into an unhealthy and intolerable state of excitement. She so docile, with all the complacence of a tenderhearted woman, became irritated as soon as it was a question of Roubaud, flying into a passion at the least opposition he made to her will.

On such occasions the shade of her raven hair seemed to darken the limpid blue of her eyes. She became fierce, accusing him of having so thoroughly spoilt her existence that henceforth it would be impossible to live together. Had not he done it all? If they were no longer as man and wife, if she had a sweetheart, was it not his own fault? His sluggish tranquillity, the look of indifference with which he met her anger, his round shoulders, his enlarged stomach, all that dreadful fat, resembling happiness, completed her exasperation, she who suffered. Her one thought, now, was to break with him, to get away, to go and begin life again elsewhere. Oh! could she but commence again, wipe out the past, return to the life she led previous to all these abominations, find herself as she was at fifteen, and love, and be loved, and live as she dreamed of living then!

For a week, she courted the idea of taking flight: she would leave with Jacques, they would conceal themselves in Belgium, where they would set up housekeeping as a hard-working young couple. But she had not spoken to him on the subject. Obstacles had at once come in the way: their irregular position, the constant anxiety in which they would find themselves, and particularly the annoyance of leaving her fortune to her husband — the money, La Croix-de-Maufras.

By a donation to the survivor of the pair — which is possible in France, and cannot be revoked without the consent of both parties — they had willed everything away; and she found herself in his power, in that legal tutelage of a wife which tied her hands. Rather than leave, and abandon even a sou, she would have preferred to die there. One day when he came up, livid, to say that crossing the line in front of a locomotive he had felt the buffer graze his elbow, she reflected that if he had been killed, she would have been free. She observed him with her great staring eyes; why on earth did he not die, since she had ceased to love him, and he was now in the way of everyone?

From that moment the dream of Séverine changed: Roubaud had been killed in an accident, and she left with Jacques for America. But they were married. They had sold La Croix-de-Maufras, and realised all the fortune. Behind them they left nothing they were afraid of. If they emigrated, it was to be born again in the arms of one another. Over there, naught would exist of the events she wished to forget, and she could imagine she was beginning a new life. As she had made a mistake, she would engage in the experience of happiness again at the commencement. He would find employment; she could undertake something else. They would make their fortune. Perhaps children might come, and there would be a new existence of labour and felicity.

As soon as she was alone in bed in the morning, and while engaged on her embroidery in the daytime, she resumed the construction of this castle in the air, modifying, enlarging, ceaselessly adding delightful details to it, and ended by imagining herself overwhelmed with joy and riches. She, who formerly went out so rarely, had now a passion for going to see the mail-steamers put to sea: she ran down to the jetty, leant over the balustrade, followed the smoke of the vessel until it became lost in the haze of the offing; and she fancied herself on deck with Jacques, already far from France, steaming for the paradise of her dreams.

One evening in the month of March, Jacques having taken the risk of going up to see her, related that he had brought one of his old schoolfellows in his train from Paris, who was leaving for New York, to bring out a new invention, a machine for making buttons; and, as he wanted an engineer as partner, he had offered to take the driver with him. Oh! it was a magnificent enterprise, only requiring the investment of 30,000 frcs., a matter of £1,200, and in which there were perhaps millions to be made. Jacques merely mentioned the subject casually, and concluded by saying that he had of course refused the offer. Nevertheless, he felt a bit sorry, for it is hard to turn the back on fortune when it comes to one.

Séverine, on her feet, listened to him with vacant eyes. Was not this her dream which was going to be realised?

“Ah!” murmured she at last, “we would start to morrow—”

He raised his head in surprise, and interrupted her with the inquiry:

“What do you mean by we would start?”

“Yes, if he were dead,” she replied.

She had not named Roubaud, but he understood, and gave a vague gesture to say that, unfortunately, he was not dead.