Monomaniac (La bête humaine) — Section 2

"Already a quarter past four," murmured Séverine, standing before the cuckoo clock.

"I have a few more errands to do.

We must think about our train."

But, as if to get quite calm before making the room tidy, she went to the window and leant out of it.

Then he, leaving his knife, leaving his pipe, also rose from the table, and, approaching her, took her gently from behind in his arms; and holding her enlaced, placed his chin on her shoulder, pressing his head against her own.

Neither moved, but remained gazing at the scene below them.

The small shunting engines went and came without intermission.

Similar to sharp and prudent housewives, the activity of their movements could barely be heard as they glided along with muffled wheels and a discreet whistle.

One of them ran past, and disappeared under the Pont de l'Europe, dragging the carriages of a Trouville train to the coach-house.

Over there, beyond the bridge, it brushed by a locomotive that had come alone from the depôt, like a solitary pedestrian, with its shimmering brass and steel, fresh and smart for the journey.

This engine was standing still, and with a couple of short whistles appealed to the pointsman to open the line.

Almost immediately he switched it on to its train, which stood ready made up, beside the platform, under the marquee of the main lines.

This was the 4. 25 train for Dieppe.

A stream of passengers hurried forward.

One heard the roll of the trucks loaded with luggage, and the porters pushing the foot-warmers, one by one, into the compartments.

The engine and tender had reached the first luggage van with a hollow clash, and the head-porter could then be seen tightening the screw of the spreader.

The sky had become cloudy in the direction of Batignolles.

An ashen crepuscule, effacing the façades, seemed to be already falling on the outspread fan of railway lines; and, in this dim light, one saw in the distance, the constant departure and arrival of trains on the Banlieue and Ceinture lines.

Beyond the great sheet of span-roofing of the station, shreds of reddish smoke flew over darkened Paris.

Séverine and Roubaud had remained some minutes at the open window without speaking.

He had taken her left hand, and was playing with an old gold ring, a golden serpent with a small ruby head, which she wore on the same finger as her wedding-ring.

He had always seen it there.

"My little serpent," she murmured, in an involuntary dreamy voice, thinking he was looking at the ring, and feeling an imperative necessity to speak.

"He made me a present of it at La Croix-de-Maufras when I was sixteen."

Roubaud raised his head in surprise.

"Who was that?"

he inquired.

"The President?"

As the eyes of her husband rested on her own, she awoke, with an abrupt shock, to a sense of reality.

She felt a little chill turn her cheeks icy cold.

She wished to answer, when, choked by a sort of paralysis, she could say nothing.

"But," he continued, "you always told me it was your mother who left you that ring."

Even at this second, she could have annulled the sentence she had thoughtlessly let slip.

She had only to laugh, to play the madcap.

But, losing her self-command, unconscious of the gravity of what she was doing, she obstinately maintained her statement.

"I never told you, my dear," she replied, "that my mother left me that ring."

Thereupon, Roubaud, also turning pale, stared at her threateningly.

"What do you mean," he retorted, "by saying you never told me so?

Why, you've told it me twenty times over!

There's no harm in the President giving you a ring.

He has made you other presents of much greater value.

But what need was there to hide it from me?

Why lie, in speaking of your mother?"

"I never mentioned my mother, my darling," she persisted.

"You are mistaken."

This obstinacy was idiotic.

She was aware that she was ruining herself, that he could clearly see through her.

And she then wanted to retrieve her position, to swallow her words.

But it was too late.

She felt her features becoming discomposed.

Do what she would, the truth burst from all her being.

The chill on her cheeks had spread all over her face, and a nervous twitch dragged down her lip.

Roubaud looked frightful.

He had suddenly become red again, so red that it seemed as if his veins were about to burst.

He had grasped her by the wrists, looking close into her face so as to be better able to follow, in the terror-stricken distraction of her eyes, what she dared not utter aloud.

He stammered a great oath, which threw her into a fright, and, foreseeing a blow, she bowed her head, covering her face with her arm.

A trifling, wretched, insignificant incident--the failure to recollect the falsehood she had told about this ring--had just now, in the few words they had exchanged together, supplied evidence of a matter she had every desire to conceal.

And a minute had sufficed to bring this about.

With a jerk, he threw her across the bed, and struck her haphazard with his two fists.

In three years he had not given her so much as a flip, and now he was beating her black and blue, in the brutish fit of passion of a man with coarse hands, who had formerly shunted railway carriages.

Uttering another frightful oath, he exclaimed: "You did something wrong!

Something wrong!

Something wrong!"

As he repeated the words, his rage increased, and he belaboured her with his fists, each time he pronounced them, as if to drive them into her flesh.

His voice at last became so thick with anger, that it hissed, and ceased to be intelligible.

It was only then that he heard her, quite weak from his blows, saying "No." She could imagine no other defence.

She denied the accusation, so that he might not kill her.

And this utterance, this obstinate clinging to the lie, made him completely furious.

"Confess that you did something wrong," said he.

"No, no!"

she answered.

He had caught hold of her again, supporting her in his arms, preventing her from resuming her position with her face against the bed-covering, like some poor creature hiding herself.

He forced her to look him in the face.

"Confess that you did something wrong," he repeated.

But, slipping down, she escaped, and tried to gain the door.

In a bound he was upon her again, his fist raised; and furiously, at one blow, near the table, he felled her.

He threw himself beside her, he seized her by the hair to nail her to the boards.

For an instant they remained thus, on the ground, face to face, without moving.

And in the frightful silence, could be heard, ascending from the floor below, the singing and laughter of the young Dauvergnes, whose piano, fortunately, frantically poured forth its notes, stifling the sound of the struggle.

It was Claire singing nursery-rhymes, while Sophie accompanied her with all her might.

"Confess that you did something wrong," said he.

No longer daring to say no, she remained silent.

"Confess that you did something wrong," he exclaimed with an oath, "or I'll rip you open!"

He would have killed her; she could see it distinctly in his eyes.

In falling, she had perceived the knife, open on the table, and now she fancied she saw the flash of the blade again.

She thought he was extending his arm.

She was overcome by cowardice, by an abandonment of herself and everything, a necessity to have done with the matter.

"Well, yes," said she, "it's true.

Let me go."

What followed was abominable.

This avowal, which he had so violently exacted, had just come upon him, point blank, like something impossible and monstrous.

It seemed that he could never have imagined such an infamy.

He caught hold of her head, and knocked it against a leg of the table.

She struggled, and he dragged her across the room by the hair, scattering the chairs.

Each time she made an effort to rise he knocked her back on the floor by a blow from his fist.

And he did this panting, with clenched teeth, in savage and senseless fury.

The table, thrust away, almost upset the stove.

Blood and hair were sticking to a corner of the sideboard.

When they recovered breath, stupefied and reeking with this horror, weary of striking and of being struck, they had got close to the bed again; she, still stretched on the floor, he squatting down, holding her by the shoulders.

And they had breathing time.

Below, the music continued.

The laughter rippled away, sonorous, and very youthful.

Roubaud, with a jerk, raised Séverine into a sitting posture, setting her back against the bedstead.

Then, still on his knees, weighing down on her shoulders, he could at last speak.

He had ceased beating her; he tortured her with questions.

She wept.

She was so upset that she could not utter a word; and, raising his hand, he half stunned her with a blow from his palm.

Three times, at intervals, receiving no answer, he slapped her face.

Why should she struggle any longer?

She was already half dead.

He would have torn out her heart with those horny fingers of a former workman.

And so, the cross-examination proceeded, with the threatening fist uplifted, ready to strike if she hesitated in her replies.

All at once he shook her, and inquired with an oath: "Why did you marry me?

Don't you know it was infamous to deceive me in this manner?

There are thieves in prison, who have not half what you have on their conscience.

So you despised me?

You were not in love with me?

Eh!

why did you marry me?"

She gave a vague gesture.

She did not exactly know, now.

She was happy to marry him, hoping to get rid of the other.

There are so many things one would rather not do, and which one does, because they are after all the wisest.

No, she did not love him; and she carefully avoided telling him that had it not been for this business, never would she have consented to become his wife.

Séverine, by an effort, had risen to her feet.

With a vigour that was extraordinary in such a weak, vanquished creature, she had thrust Roubaud from her.

And as she freed her hand he felt the ring, the little golden serpent with the ruby head, forgotten on her finger.

He tore it off, crushed it beneath his heel in another fit of rage.

Then he began striding up and down, from one end of the room to the other, mute and distracted.

She sank down, seated at the edge of the bed, staring at him with her great fixed eyes.

And a terrible silence ensued.

The fury of Roubaud was not calmed.

No sooner did it seem to moderate a little, than it returned at once in great waves of increased volume, which bore him along in their vertiginous flood.

No longer under self-control, he struck about in space, a victim to all the gusts of the violent tempest lacerating him, only to awaken to the imperative necessity of appeasing the howling brute within him.

It was a physical, an immediate necessity, a thirst for vengeance that wrung his body, and which would leave him no repose until it had been satisfied.

Without stopping in his walk, he struck his temples with his two fists, and he stammered out in a voice of anguish: "What shall I do?"

As he had not killed this woman at once, he would not kill her now.

His cowardice in allowing her to live exasperated his anger, for it was cowardly.

It was because he still cared for her that he had not strangled her.

Nevertheless, he could not keep her with him, after what he had discovered.

Then he would have to drive her out, put her into the street, never to see her again?

And at this thought, a fresh flood of suffering overwhelmed him.

He experienced an execrable feeling of disgust when he recognised that he would not even do this.

What then?

It only remained for him to accept the abomination, and to take this woman back to Havre, there to continue to live quietly together, as if nothing had occurred.

No, no!

Death rather.

Death for both of them that very instant!

He was stirred with such intense distress that his head seemed to have gone astray, and he cried out louder than before: "What shall I do?"

Séverine, from the bed, where she remained seated, continued following him with her great eyes.

She had always felt the calm affection of a comrade for him, and the excessive grief in which she now saw him plunged, aroused her pity.

The ugly words and blows she would have excused, if this wild fit of passion had caused her less surprise--a surprise that she had not yet got over.

Passive and docile, she had consented to her marriage simply from a desire to settle down, and she was at a loss to understand such an outburst of jealousy about a former error which she repented.

She watched her husband, going and coming, turning furiously round, as she would have watched a wolf, or an animal of some other species.

What was the matter with him?

There were so many husbands without anger.

The thing that terrified her was to perceive the brute, whose presence she had suspected for three years, from certain sullen growls, at this moment unchained, mad and ready to bite.

What could she say to him to avert a misfortune?

At each turn he came near the bed before her.

She awaited him there, and had sufficient courage to address him.

"My dear, listen," said she.

But he heard not.

He went back to the other end of the room, like a bit of straw beaten about in a storm.

"What shall I do?

What shall I do?"

he continued asking.

At last she seized him by the wrist, and retained him a minute.

"My dear, listen," she said.

"You know it was I who refused to go to Doinville.

I should never have gone there again.

Never!

Never!

It is you I love."

"Look here," he answered, "if I am to live, I must kill the other!

I

must kill him!

--kill him!"

His voice rose louder.

He repeated the word, erect, grown taller, as if this utterance, in bringing him to a resolution, also brought him calm.

He ceased speaking.

He walked slowly to the table, and there, with a gesture of indifference looked at the knife, whose shimmering blade was wide open.

He closed, and put it in his pocket.

Then, with his arms swinging at his sides, his eyes lost in space, he remained at the same place thinking.

Obstacles that presented themselves to some plan he was elaborating in his brain, caused two great wrinkles to appear on his forehead.

To get the better of his difficulty, he went and opened the window, standing before it with his face in the chilly air of twilight.

His wife in another fright stood up behind him; and, not daring to question him, waited with her face to the expansive sky, endeavouring to guess what was passing in that hard skull.

In the falling shades of night, the distant houses stood out black, and a violescent mist clouded the vast site of the station.

The deep cutting seemed as if smothered in dust, particularly in the direction of Batignolles, and the ironwork of the Pont de l'Europe began to fade away.

Towards Paris a final gleam of daylight whitened the windows of the great iron marquees, but within they became densely obscure.

Suddenly one saw a glitter of sparks.

The men were lighting the gas-lamps along the platforms.

Here a great white spot was formed by the lantern on the engine of the Dieppe train, crowded with passengers.

The doors of the compartments were already closed, and the driver only awaited the order of the assistant station-master on duty, to start.

But some hindrance had occurred.

The red signal of the pointsman closed the line, while a small locomotive came and picked up a few carriages, which a defective manœuvre had left behind.

Trains flew along without intermission, in the increasing darkness, over the complicated network of rails, threading their way through lines of carriages standing motionless on sidings.

One started for Argenteuil, another for Saint Germain.

A very long train arrived from Cherbourg.

Signals succeeded one another, accompanied by whistles and blasts of the horn.

Lights appeared on every side, one by one: red, green, yellow, white.

There seemed to be a regular confusion at this troubled hour when day glides into night, and it looked as if a tremendous smash would ensue.

But everything passed on.

The trains brushed by each other, detaching themselves from the entanglement, in a smooth, creeping motion that could only be perceived indistinctly in the deep crepuscule.

But the red light of the pointsman was effaced, the Dieppe train blew its whistle, and rolled off.

A few drops of rain began to fall from the wan sky.

It was going to be a wet night.

When Roubaud turned round, it was with a face cloudy and obstinate, as if overcast by the shadow of this night that was drawing in.

He had made up his mind.

His plan was formed.

In the vanishing darkness, he looked at the cuckoo clock, and exclaimed aloud: "Twenty minutes past five!"

He was astounded; one hour, barely one hour, and so much to do!

It seemed to him that they had been devouring one another there for weeks.

"Twenty minutes past five!"

he muttered.

"We shall have enough time."

Séverine, without daring to ask a question, continued following him with her anxious eyes.

She saw him rummage in the cupboard, and bring out some notepaper, a small bottle of ink, and a pen.

"What!"

she exclaimed.

"Are you going to write a letter?

To whom?"

"To him.

Sit down."

And, as she instinctively drew away from the chair, ignoring as yet what he was about to exact from her, he brought her back, and weighed her down so heavily as he seated her at the table, that she remained there.

"Write this: 'Leave to-night by the 6. 30 express, and do not show yourself before you arrive at Rouen.'

" She held the pen, but her hand trembled.

Her fright increased at the thought of all the unknown gaping before her in those two simple lines.

And she had the courage to raise her head, and say in a pleading tone: "What are you going to do, my dear?

I beg you to tell me."

He only repeated, in his loud, inexorable voice: "Write, write!"

Then, with his eyes on her eyes, without anger, without ugly words, but with such obstinacy that she felt the weight crushing and annihilating her, he answered: "What I am going to do, you will see, well enough.

And listen, what I am going to do, I mean you to do with me.

In that way we shall remain together.

There will be something binding between us."

He terrified her.

She drew back again.

"No, no; I want to know!"

she exclaimed.

"I will not write without knowing."

Then, ceasing to speak, he took her hand--the small, delicate hand of a child, and pressed it in his iron fist, with the continuous pressure of a vice, until he almost crushed it.

He was driving his will into her flesh with the pain.

She uttered a cry.

All her spirit was broken, all her will surrendered.

Ignorant creature as she had remained, in her passive gentleness, she could but obey.

Instrument of love, instrument of death.

"Write, write!"

he repeated again.

And she wrote painfully, with her poor, sore hand.

"That's all right; you are very good," said he, when he had the letter.

"Now tidy the place up a bit, and get everything ready.

I'll come back and fetch you."

He was quite calm.

He arranged the bow of his tie before the looking-glass, put on his hat, and took himself off.

She heard him double-lock the door, and remove the key.

Night was drawing in more and more.

For an instant she remained seated, her ear catching every sound outside.

A continual, low whine came from the adjoining room in occupation of the newspaper woman: no doubt a little dog forgotten by its mistress.

Below, in the apartment of the Dauvergnes, the piano had become silent.

There was now a merry clatter of stewpans and crockery.

The two little housekeepers were busy in their kitchen, Claire looking after a mutton stew, Sophie picking a salad.

And Séverine, prostrated, listened to their laughter in the frightful distress of this falling night.

At a quarter past six, the locomotive of the Havre express, issuing from the Pont de l'Europe, was switched on to its train and there secured.

Owing to the metals being occupied, they had been unable to lodge this train under the marquee of the main lines.

It waited in the open air beside a prolongation of the platform forming a sort of narrow jetty, in the gloom of an inky sky, where the poorly furnished row of gas lamps displayed but a line of smoky stars.

A shower had just ceased, leaving behind a trace of icy dampness spread over this vast uncovered space, which the mist threw back as far as the pale glimmers on the façades in the Rue de Rome.

This immense, dreary expanse, bathed in water, here and there studded with a gory light, was broken up by opaque lumps, engines, and solitary carriages, parts of trains in repose on the shunting lines.

And from the depths of this sheet of darkness came sounds,--giant-like respirations, breathless with fever, whistles resembling the piercing shrieks of women, distant, lamentable blasts of horns mingled with a rumble in the adjoining streets.

Orders were shouted out to add on a carriage.

The engine of the express stood motionless, losing by a valve a great jet of steam, which ascended into all this obscurity to spread into small clouds and sprinkle the boundless veil of mourning drawn across the sky with white tears.

At twenty minutes past six, Roubaud and Séverine appeared.

She had just returned the key to Mother Victoire, as she passed by the lavatory, near the waiting-rooms.

And Roubaud, impatient and blunt, his hat on the back of his head, urged her on, after the fashion of a husband with no time to lose, who is being delayed by his wife; while she, with her veil drawn tight over her face, advanced slowly as if broken down with fatigue.

Joining the flood of passengers streaming along the platform, they followed the line of carriages, on the look-out for an empty first-class compartment.

The footway became alive with porters rolling trucks of luggage to the van at the head of the train.

An inspector was busy finding seats for a numerous family, the assistant station-master on duty, with his signal lantern in his hand, glanced at the couplings, to see that the spreaders had been properly screwed up.

And Roubaud, having at length found an empty compartment, was about to assist Séverine to get in, when he perceived M. Vandorpe, the head-station-master, strolling along in company with M. Dauvergne, his deputy-chief of the main lines, both watching the manœuvre connected with the carriage that was being added to the train.

Roubaud, exchanging greetings with them, found it necessary to stop and have a chat.

First of all they spoke of the business with the sub-prefect, which had terminated to the satisfaction of everyone.

Then the conversation turned to an accident that had happened in the morning at Havre, the news having come by telegraph.

A locomotive, called La Lison, which on Thursday and Saturday took the 6. 30 express, had broken its connecting-rod, just as the train entered the station; and the repairs would give two days' holiday to Jacques Lantier, the driver, who came from the same part of the country as Roubaud, and to his fireman, Pecqueux, the husband of Mother Victoire.

Séverine remained standing before the door of the compartment, while her husband affected great freedom of mind in conversation with these gentlemen, raising his voice and laughing.

But there came a shock, and the train recoiled a few yards.

It was the locomotive, driving back the first carriages to the one that had just been added on, the No. 293, so as to have a reserved coupé.

And Henri Dauvergne, the son, who accompanied the train as headguard, having recognised Séverine through her veil, had prevented her from receiving a knock from the wide-open door, by pulling her away without ceremony.

Then, excusing himself, smiling, very amiable, he explained that the coupé was for one of the directors of the company, who had sent to ask for it half an hour before the time for the train to start.

She gave a little, senseless laugh, and he ran off to attend to his work.

The clock marked 6. 27. Three minutes more.

Roubaud, who was watching the doors of the waiting-rooms in the distance, while chatting with the station-master, suddenly left the latter to return to Séverine.

But the carriage having moved back, they had to make their way to the empty compartment a few paces off.

Roubaud pushed his wife along, and with an effort of the wrist, made her get into the carriage; while she, in her anxious docility, looked instinctively behind her, to see what was going on.

A passenger behind time had just arrived, carrying only a rug in his hand.

He had the broad collar of his blue top-coat turned up, and the rim of his bowler hat brought down so low over his eyebrows that nothing could be seen of his face, in the vacillating gaslight, but a bit of white beard.

M.

Vandorpe and M. Dauvergne advanced and followed the passenger, notwithstanding his evident desire to avoid being seen.

He only greeted them three carriages further on, when in front of the reserved coupé, in which he hurriedly took a seat.

It was the President.

Séverine, in a tremble, sank down on a seat, her husband bruised her arm in his grasp, as if in a final act of taking possession of her, exulting, now that he was certain of doing the thing he had thought out in his mind.

A minute later the half hour would strike.

A newspaper seller stubbornly offered the evening editions, a few passengers still strolled along the platform finishing cigarettes.

But all took their seats.