Monomaniac (La bête humaine) — Section 3

CHAPTER II

The house at La Croix-de-Maufras stands aslant, in a garden which the railway has cut in two, and is so near the metals that it feels the shock of every train passing by.

A single journey suffices to bear it away in memory.

The entire multitude, who have flown along the line, are aware of its existence at this spot, without knowing aught about it.

Always closed, it looks as if deserted in distress, with its grey shutters turning green through the effects of the rain beating against them from the west.

Standing in a wilderness, it seems to increase the solitude of this out-of-the-way corner, where scarcely a soul breathes for three or four miles around.

The only other house there, is that of the gatekeeper, at the angle where the road crosses the rails on its way to Doinville, four miles off.

Low in build, the walls seamed with cracks, the tiles of the root devoured by moss, it lies crushed, with a neglectful aspect of poverty, in the middle of the garden surrounding it--a garden planted with vegetables, enclosed by a quickset hedge, and where a great well rises almost as high as the habitation itself.

The level crossing is just half-way between the two stations of Malaunay and Barentin, being three miles from each.

It is but little used.

The old decaying gate rarely rolls back, save for the stone-drays from the quarries at Bécourt, half a league distant in the forest.

It would be difficult to imagine a more out-of-the-way place, or one more completely separated from humanity, for the long tunnel in the direction of Malaunay, cuts off every road, and the only way to communicate with Barentin is by a neglected pathway beside the line.

Visitors therefore are scarce.

On this particular evening, as night was drawing in, a traveller who had just left a train from Havre, at Barentin, followed with long strides the pathway of La Croix-de-Maufras.

The country thereabouts is but one uninterrupted set of hills and dales, a sort of waving of the soil, which the railway crosses on embankments and in cuttings, alternately.

The continual unevenness of the ground, the ascents and descents on either side of the line, make walking difficult and add to the feeling of deep solitude.

The impoverished, whitish land lies fallow, the hillocks are crowned with small woods, while brooks, shaded with willows, run at the bottom of the narrow ravines.

Certain chalky elevations are absolutely bare, and sterile hills succeed one another in the silence and abandonment of death.

The young, lusty traveller hastened his steps, as if to escape from the sadness of the twilight, falling so gently over this desolate country.

In the garden of the gatekeeper, a girl was drawing water at the well: a tall lass of eighteen; fair, robust, with thick lips, greenish eyes, a low forehead, and a heavy head of hair.

She was not pretty, and had the heavy hips and muscular arms of a young man.

As soon as she perceived the traveller coming down the path, she let go the pail and ran to the garden gate, exclaiming: "Hullo!

Jacques!"

He raised his head.

He had just completed his twenty-seventh year.

He also was tall, and very dark.

A handsome fellow, with his round face and regular features, which nevertheless were marred by too heavy a jaw.

His thick hair curled, as did his moustache, which was so full, so black, that it seemed to add to the pallidness of his complexion.

From his delicate skin, carefully shaved on the cheeks, anyone would have taken him for a gentleman, had it not been for the indelible imprint of the workman that he bore on his engine-driver hands, which were already turning yellow with grease, although remaining small and flexible.

"Good evening, Flore," he simply said.

But his large dark eyes, studded with golden sparks, had become troubled with a reddish cloud, which made them dim.

The lids were blinking, the eyes turned away in sudden constraint, and he experienced a feeling of uneasiness that went so far as to cause him suffering.

His whole frame instinctively made a movement as if to draw back.

She, standing motionless, her eyes looking straight at him, had perceived this involuntary shudder, that came on him, and which he endeavoured to master, each time that he approached a woman.

It seemed to make her quite serious and sad.

Then, when he asked her, in view of concealing his embarrassment, if her mother was at home, although knowing she was unwell and unable to leave the house, the girl only answered with a nod, standing aside so that he might come in without touching her; and, erect and proud, she returned without a word to the well.

Jacques crossed the small garden at his rapid stride, and entered the dwelling.

There, in the centre of the first room, a sort of large kitchen where the family took their meals and lived, Aunt Phasie, as he had called her from infancy, was alone, seated near the table on a rush-bottomed chair, with her legs wrapped in an old shawl.

She was a cousin of his father, a Lantier, who had stood godmother to him;

and who, when he was no more than six, had taken care of him, at the time when his father and mother had flown off to Paris, and there disappeared.

He had then remained at Plassans, where, later on, he had followed the classes at the École des Arts et Métiers.

He bore Aunt Phasie great gratitude, and was in the habit of saying that if he had made his way, it was entirely due to her.

When he became a driver of the first class in the Western Railway Company, after passing a couple of years on the Orleans Railway, he had found his godmother married again to a level crossing gatekeeper named Misard, and exiled with the two daughters of her first marriage to this out-of-the-way place, called La Croix-de-Maufras.

At the present time Aunt Phasie, although barely forty-five, and who formerly had been so tall and strong, looked sixty.

Moreover, she had grown thin and yellow, and was a prey to constant shivers.

She welcomed Jacques with joy.

"What!

is it you, Jacques?"

she exclaimed.

"Ah!

my bonny lad, what a surprise!"

He kissed her cheeks, explaining that he had suddenly come into a couple of days' enforced holiday.

La Lison, his engine, on reaching Havre in the morning, had broken its connecting-rod; and as the repairs would take four-and-twenty hours, he would not resume duty until the following evening for the 6. 40 express.

So he had come over to see her.

He would sleep there, and catch the 7. 26 train from Barentin in the morning.

And he kept her poor, withered hands in his own, telling her how anxious her last letter had made him.

"Ah!

yes, my lad, I am not well, I am not at all well.

How nice of you to have guessed my desire to see you!

But I know what little time you have of your own, and did not dare ask you to run over.

Anyhow, here you are, and I have so much, so much on my mind!"

She broke off to cast a timid glance out of the window.

On the other side of the metals, in the twilight, her husband could be perceived in his box, one of those wooden huts erected every four or five miles along the line, and connected by telegraph to ensure the satisfactory running of the trains.

While his wife, and, later on, Flore, had been placed in charge of the gate at the level crossing, Misard had been made a watchman of the line.

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 he'll 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 down-line, 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 1,000 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!"

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 all 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 1,000 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.

What a multitude!

The crowd again, the crowd without end, amidst the rolling of the carriages, the whistling of the locomotives, the tinkling of the telegraph, the ringing of bells!

It was like a huge body, a gigantic being stretched across the earth, the head at Paris, the vertebræ all along the line, the limbs expanding with the embranchments, the feet and hands at Havre and at the other termini.

And it passed, passed, mechanically, triumphant, advancing to the future with mathematical precision, careless as to what remained of man on either side of it, who, although concealed, was still replete with life, the embodiment of eternal passion and eternal love.

Flore came in first, and lit the lamp, a small petroleum lamp without a shade, and laid the table.

Not a word did they exchange.

She barely threw a glance at Jacques, who stood before the window with his back turned.

A _soupe-aux-choux_ was being kept warm on the stove.

When Misard made his appearance she was serving it.

He showed no surprise to find the young man there.

Perhaps he had seen him arrive.

He displayed no curiosity to know what had brought him there, and asked no questions.

A pressure of the hand, three brief words, and nothing more.

Jacques had to take the initiative of repeating the tale about the broken connecting-rod, and how he had then thought of running over to kiss his aunt.

Misard was content to gently toss his head, as if to say he considered this quite proper, and they sat down, eating slowly, and, at first, in silence.

Aunt Phasie, who since the morning had not taken her eyes from the pot where the _soupe-aux-choux_ was simmering, accepted a plateful.

But her husband having risen to give her the iron-water forgotten by Flore, a decanter in which a few nails were rusting, she did not touch it.

He, humble, puny, coughing with a nasty little cough, did not seem to remark the anxious look with which she followed his slightest movement.

When she asked for salt, there being none on the table, he told her she would repent of eating so much, that it was this that made her ill;

and he rose to take some, bringing her a pinch in a spoon, which she accepted without distrust, salt purifying everything, as she said.

Then they spoke of the really mild weather that had prevailed for some days, and of a train that had run off the rails at Maromme.

Jacques began to think that his godmother must suffer from nightmare while wide awake, for he could see nothing suspicious about this bit of a man, who was so civil, and had such expressionless eyes.

They remained more than an hour at table.

Twice Flore disappeared, for a few moments, at the signal of the horn.

The trains went by, making the glasses ring on the table; but no one paid the least attention.

Another blare of the horn, and Flore, who had just cleared the cloth, withdrew and did not return.

She left her mother and the two men seated at table before a bottle of cider brandy.

All three remained thus another half hour.

Then Misard, whose ferreting eyes had been resting for a minute or two on a corner of the room, took his cap and went out, with a simple good-night.

He was in the habit of poaching in the little neighbouring brooks, which harboured superb eels, and never went to bed without examining his lines.

As soon as he had gone, Aunt Phasie looked fixedly at her godson, and exclaimed: "Eh!

What do you think of that?

Did you see him searching over there with his eyes in that corner?

He has got an idea that I have hidden my hoard behind the butter-jar.

Ah!

I know him, I am certain he will move the jar to-night to have a look."

But she began perspiring, and trembling from head to foot.

"You see, there it is again!

He must have drugged me.

My mouth is as bitter as if I had been swallowing old sous, though God knows I have taken nothing from his hand!

It's enough to make one drown oneself.

I

can't sit up any longer to-night.

It's better for me to go to bed.

So good-bye, my lad, because if you leave at 7. 26 it will be too early for me.

And come again, won't you?

And let's hope I shall still be here."

He had to assist her to her room, where she got into bed, and went off to sleep, exhausted.

Left by himself, he hesitated, thinking whether it would not be as well if he were to retire for the night also, and stretch himself out on the hay awaiting him upstairs in the loft.

But it was only ten minutes to eight; he had plenty of time for sleep.

And so, he too went out, leaving the little petroleum lamp alight in the empty, slumbering house, shaken ever and anon by the abrupt thunder of a train.

Jacques was surprised at the mildness of the air outside.

No doubt it would rain again.

A uniform milky cloud had spread over the sky, and the full moon, concealed behind it, lit up the whole vault of heaven with a reddish reflex.

He could clearly distinguish the country.

The land around him, the hills, the trees stood out in black against this equal, deadened light, soft as that of a night lamp.

He walked round the little kitchen garden.