This girl, who had killed, was his ideal. His cure seemed to him more certain every day, because he had fondled her, his lips upon her lips, absorbing her very soul, without that furious envy having been aroused, to master her by slaughtering her.
And so these happy meetings followed one upon another. The two sweethearts never wearied for a moment of seeking one another, of strolling together in the obscurity, between the great heaps of coal that deepened the darkness around them.
One night in July, Jacques, to reach Havre at 11.05, the fixed time, had to urge on La Lison, as if the stifling heat had made the engine idle. From Rouen, a storm accompanied him on the left, following the valley of the Seine, with great brilliant flashes; and, from time to time, he turned round anxiously, for Séverine was to meet him that night. He feared that if this storm burst too soon, it would prevent her going out. And so, when he had succeeded in attaining the station before the rain, he felt impatient with the passengers, who seemed as if they would never finish leaving the carriages.
Roubaud was on the platform, glued there for the night.
"The deuce!" said he, laughing. "What a hurry you're in to get off to bed! Pleasant dreams!"
"Thanks," answered Jacques.
After driving back the train, he whistled, and made his way to the depôt. The flaps of the immense door were open. La Lison penetrated the engine-house, a sort of gallery with double lines, about sixty yards long, and built to accommodate six locomotives. Within, it was very dark. Four gas-burners did not suffice to dispel the obscurity, which they seemed to deepen into four great moving shadows. But, at moments, the vivid flashes of lightning, set the glazed roof and the tall windows to right and left, ablaze; and one then distinguished, as in a flame of fire, the cracked walls, the timber black with smoke, all the tumble-down wretchedness of this out-of-date building. Two locomotives were already there, cold and slumbering.
Pecqueux at once began to put out the fire. He violently raked it, and, the live coal escaping from the cinder-box, fell into the pit below.
"I'm dying of hunger," said he. "I shall go and have a mouthful. Are you coming?"
Jacques did not reply. In spite of his hurry, he did not wish to leave La Lison before the lights had been extinguished, and the boiler emptied. This was a scruple, the habit of a good driver, wherefrom he never departed. When he had time, he remained there until he had examined and wiped everything, with all the care that is taken to groom a favourite nag.