Complete Works of Emile Zola (1078 page)

“Yes,” said he approvingly, “perfectly.”

When they at last went to sleep, it was not daylight, but a streak of dawn began to whiten the gloom that had hidden them from one another, as if both had been wrapped in a black mantle. He slept like a top until ten o’clock, without a dream; and, when he opened his eyes, he was alone. Séverine was dressing in her own apartment, on the other side of the landing. A sheet of clear sun entered through the window of the room occupied by Jacques, showing up the red curtains of the bedstead, the red paper on the walls, all that red with which the place was flaming; while the house tottered in the thunder of a train that had just sped past. It must have been this train that awakened him. Bedazzled by the glare of light, he looked at the sun, at the streaming crimson surroundings amidst which he found himself; then he recollected: the matter was settled, it was the next night that he would kill, when this great sun had disappeared.

The day passed as had been arranged by Séverine and Jacques. Before breakfast, she requested Misard to take the telegram for her husband to Doinville; and at about three o’clock, as Cabuche was there, Jacques openly made his preparations for departure. As he was leaving to catch the 4.15 train from Barentin, Cabuche, having nothing to do, feeling himself drawn to the other by his secret passion, happy to find in the sweetheart something in common with the woman he was in love with himself, accompanied the driver to the station. Jacques reached Rouen at 4.40, and, getting down, found accommodation at a small inn near the railway kept by a woman from the same neighbourhood as himself. He spoke of looking up his comrades on the morrow, before proceeding to Paris to resume duty. But he said he felt very tired, having presumed too much on his strength; and, at six o’clock, he went off to bed, in a room he had taken on the ground floor, which had a window opening on a deserted alley. Ten minutes later, he was on the road to La Croix-de-Maufras, having got out of this window without being seen, and taken good care to close the shutters, so as to be able to secretly return the same way.

It was not until a quarter after nine that Jacques found himself before the solitary house standing aslant beside the line, in the distress of its abandonment. The night was very dark, not a glimmer could be distinguished on the hermetically closed front. And Jacques again felt that painful blow in his heart, that feeling of frightful sadness which seemed like the presentiment of the evil that awaited him there.

As had been arranged with Séverine, he threw three small pebbles against a shutter of the red room; then he went to the back of the house where a door at last silently opened. Having closed it behind him, he followed the light footsteps that went feeling their way up the staircase. But when he reached the bedroom, and by the light of a large lamp burning on the corner of a table perceived the bed in disorder, the clothes of the young woman thrown on a chair, and herself in a dressing-gown, with her volume of hair arranged for the night, coiled on the top of her head, leaving her neck bare, he stood motionless with surprise.

“What!” he exclaimed; “you had gone to bed?”

“Of course,” she answered, “that is much better. An idea struck me. You see, when he arrives and I go down, as I am to open the door to him, he will have still less cause to be distrustful. I shall tell him I have a headache. Misard already knows I am not well. And this will permit me to affirm that I never left this room when they find him to-morrow, down there, on the line.”

But Jacques shuddered, and lost his temper.

“No, no,” said he, “dress yourself. You must be up. You cannot remain as you are.”

She was astonished, and began to laugh.

“But why, my darling?” she inquired. “Do not be anxious, I can assure you I do not feel at all cold. Just see how warm I am!”

She advanced towards him in a caressing manner, to take him by the shoulders, and in raising her arms displayed her bosom through the dressing-gown she had neglected to fasten, and the night-dress that had come undone. But as he drew back, in increasing irritation, she became docile.

“Do not be angry,” said she, “I will get between the sheets again, and then you will have no reason to be afraid that I shall catch cold.”

When she was in bed, with the clothes up to her chin, he seemed more calm. And she continued talking quietly, explaining how she had arranged everything in her head.

“As soon as he knocks,” she said, “I shall go down and open the door. First of all, I had the idea of letting him come up here, where you would be in waiting for him. But to get his body below again, would have caused complications; and, besides, this room has a parquetry floor, whereas the vestibule is tiled, and I shall easily be able to wash it if there should be any spots. Just before you came, as I was undressing, I thought of a novel I had read, in which the author relates that one man to kill another stripped himself. Do you understand? A wash afterwards, and the clothes are free from any spots. What do you say? Supposing we were to do the same?”

He looked at her in bewilderment But she had her gentle face, her clear eyes of a little girl, and was simply thinking of arranging the plan perfectly, in order to ensure success. All this passed through his head. But her suggestion, the idea of being bespattered with the blood of the murder, brought on his abominable shiver which shook him to the bones.

“No, no!” he answered. “Do you wish us to act like savages? Why not devour his heart as well? How you must hate him!”

Her face suddenly became clouded. This remark took her from her thoughts of prudent preparation, to reveal to her the horror of the deed. Her eyes filled with tears, and she said:

“I have suffered too much for the last few months, to have much affection for him. I have repeated a hundred times over: anything rather than remain another week with this man. But you are right. It is frightful to come to that, we really must want to be happy together. Anyhow, we will go down without a light You will stand behind the door, and when I have opened, and he has come in, you will do what you like. If I interfere, it is only to help you; it is so that you may not have all the trouble yourself. I am arranging the thing as well as I can.”

He went to the table where he saw the knife, the weapon that had already been used by the husband, and which she had evidently placed there, so that he might strike him in his turn with it. The wide open blade shone beneath the lamp. Jacques took it up and examined it. She watched him, but said nothing. As he held the weapon in his hand there was no need to speak to him about it. And she only opened her lips when he had laid it down again on the table.

“Listen, my darling,” she continued, “I am not urging you on to it, am I? There is still time. Go away, if you do not feel you can do it.”

But he became obstinate, and with a violent gesture exclaimed:

“Do you take me for a coward? This time it is settled. I have sworn.”

At that moment, the house was set rocking by the thunder of a train, which passed like a thunder-bolt, and so close to the room that it seemed to go through it in its roar, and Jacques added:

“There is his train. The through train to Paris. He got down at Barentin, and will be here in half an hour.”

Neither Jacques nor Séverine made any further remark for some time. In their minds they saw this man advancing through the night along the narrow paths. Jacques had begun to walk up and down the room, as if counting the steps of the other whom each stride brought a little nearer. Another, another; and, at the last one, he would be in ambush behind the vestibule door, and would drive the knife into his neck the moment he entered Séverine, still with the bedclothes up to her chin, lying on her back, with her great eyes motionless, watched him going and coming, her mind lulled by the cadence of his walk, which reached her like the echo of distant footsteps over there. They came without pause, one after the other, and nothing would now stop them. When the sufficient number had been taken, she would spring out of bed, and go down to open the door, with bare feet and without a light. “Is it you, my dear? Come in, I went to bed!” she would say. And he would not even answer. He would sink down in the obscurity with his throat gashed open.

Again a train went by. One on the down-line this time, the slow train which passed La Croix-de-Maufras five minutes after the other. Jacques stopped in his walk, surprised. Only five minutes had expired! How long the half hour would be! He experienced the necessity of keeping on the move, and resumed striding from one end of the room to the other. He began to feel anxious, and was already communing with himself: would he be able to do it? He was familiar with the progress of the phenomenon within him, from having followed it on more than ten different occasions; first of all a certainty, an absolute resolution to kill; then a weight in the hollow of the chest, a chill in feet and hands; and all at once the loss of vigour, the impotence of the will to act upon the muscles which had become inert.

In order to gain energy by reasoning, he repeated what he had said to himself so often: it was his interest to suppress this man — the fortune awaiting him in America, the possession of the woman he loved. The worst of it was, that on finding the latter so scantily clothed a few moments before, he verily believed the enterprise would again come to naught; for, as soon as the old shiver returned, he ceased to have command over himself. For an instant he had trembled in presence of the temptation which became too great: she offering herself, and the open knife lying there. But now he felt strong, girded for the effort. He could do it. And he continued waiting for the man, striding up and down the apartment from door to window, passing at each turn beside the bed which he would not look at.

Séverine continued to lie still in that bed. With her head motionless on the pillow, she now watched him come and go in a seesaw motion of the eyes. She also felt anxious, agitated with the fear that this night his courage again would fail him. Polish off this business and begin anew, that was all she wanted. She was entirely for the one who held her, and heartless for the other whom she had never cared for. They were getting rid of him because he was in the way. Nothing could be more natural; and she had to reflect, to be touched by the abomination of the crime. As soon as the vision of blood and the horrible complications disappeared, she resumed her smiling serenity with her innocent, tender, and docile face.

Nevertheless, she, who thought she knew Jacques, was astonished at what she observed. He had his round head of a handsome young man, his curly hair, his coal black moustache, his brown eyes sparkling with gold; but his lower jaw advanced so prominently, with a sort of biting expression, that it disfigured him. He had just now looked at her as he passed, as if in spite of himself; and the brilliancy of his eyes became deadened with a ruddy cloud, while at the same time he started backward in a recoil of all his frame.

Why did he avoid her? Could it be because he was losing his courage, once more? Latterly, ignorant of the constant danger of death threatening her while in his company, she had attributed her instinctive fright, for which there was no apparent cause, to the presentiment of an approaching rupture. The conviction abruptly took firm hold of her, that if presently he found himself unable to strike, he would flee never to return. After that she made up her mind that he would kill, and that she would know how to give him strength, should he need it.

At this moment another train passed: an interminably long goods train, whose extensive string of trucks seemed to be rolling on for ever in the oppressive silence that reigned in the apartment. And, leaning on her elbow, she waited until this tempestuous disturbance became lost in the depth of the slumbering country.

“Another quarter of an hour,” said Jacques, aloud. “He has passed Bécourt Wood and is half-way. Ah! how long it is to wait!”

But, as he returned towards the window, he found Séverine standing in front of the bed.

“Suppose we go down with the lamp?” she suggested. “You can see the spot where you will place yourself. I will show you how I shall open the door, and the movement you will have to make.”

He drew back, trembling.

“No, no!” he exclaimed. “No lamp!”

“But just listen,” she continued, “we will hide it afterwards. You see we must form an idea of the position.”

“No, no!” he repeated. “Get into bed again.”

Instead of obeying, she advanced towards him with the invincible, despotic smile of the woman who knows herself to be all powerful. When she held him in her arms, he would give way, he would do as she desired; and she continued talking in a caressing voice to conquer him.

“Come, my darling,” she said, “what is the matter with you? One would think you were afraid of me. As soon as I approach you seem to avoid me. But if you only knew how much I need to lean on you at this time, to feel you there, that we are absolutely of the same mind for ever and ever. Do you understand?”

She at last made him retreat with his back to the table, and he could not flee further. He looked at her in the bright light of the lamp. Never had he seen her as she was then, with the front of her night-dress in disorder, and her hair coiled up so high that her neck was quite bare. He was choking, struggling, already in a fury, quite giddy with the flood of blood that rushed to his head, at the same moment as the abominable shiver fell upon him. And he remembered that the knife was there behind him, on the table. He instinctively felt it there, he had only to stretch out his hand.

By an effort he still managed to stammer:

“Go back to bed, I implore you.”

But she continued to approach until she came close to him.

“Kiss me,” she exclaimed, “kiss me with all the love you feel for me! That will give us courage. Ah! yes, courage, we are in need of it! We must love in a different way to others, stronger than others to do what we are about to do. Kiss me with all your heart, with all your soul!”

He no longer breathed. He felt as if he was being strangled. The clamour of a multitude in his brain prevented him from hearing; while biting fire behind the ears burnt holes in his head, gained his arms, his legs, drove him from his own body, in the frantic rush of that other one — the invading brute. His hands were about to escape from his control in the frenzy excited by this feminine semi nudity. The bare bosom pressing against his clothes, the neck so white, so delicate, extended in irresistible temptation, at last plunged him into a state of furious giddiness, overpowering, tearing away, annihilating his will.