"I'll go and keep them quiet," said Flore to Cabuche. "Don't be afraid."
She sprang forward, grasped the leader of the team by the bit, and pulled with all her strapping strength of a wrestler. The horses strained. For an instant the dray, heavy with its enormous load, oscillated without advancing; but, as if she had harnessed herself to it like an extra animal, it at last moved and came across the line. It was right on the rails as the express, a hundred yards away, issued from the cutting. Then to stop the dray, lest it should pass over, she arrested the further progress of the team with a sudden jerk requiring a superhuman effort that made her joints crack.
She who, it will be remembered, had her legend, of whom people related extraordinary feats of strength—the truck shooting down an incline, which she had brought to a standstill as it ran, the cart she had pushed across the metals, and thus saved from a train—she accomplished this action now. In her iron grip she held back those five horses, rearing and neighing with the instinct of peril.
Barely ten seconds passed, but they were seconds of inconceivable terror. The two colossal stones seemed to bar the view. The locomotive came gliding along with its pale brass and glittering steel, arriving at its smooth, fulminating pace in the golden beams of the beautiful morning. The inevitable was there, nothing in the world could now prevent the smash. And the interval seemed interminable.
Misard, who had bounded back to his box, yelled with his arms in the air, shaking his fists in the senseless determination to warn the driver and stop the train. Cabuche, who had quitted the house at the sound of the wheels and the neighing of the horses, rushed forward, also yelling, to make the animals go on. But Flore, who had flung herself on one side, restrained him, which saved his life. He fancied that she had not been strong enough to master the horses, that it was they who had dragged her along. And he taxed himself with carelessness, sobbing in a splutter of despairing terror; while she, motionless, standing at her full height, her eyes like live coal and wide open, looked on. At the same moment, as the front of the engine was about to touch the blocks of stone, when there remained perhaps only three feet to run, during this inappreciable time, she distinctly saw Jacques, with his hand on the reversing-wheel. He had turned towards her, and their eyes met in a gaze that she found inordinately long.
On that particular morning Jacques had smiled at Séverine, when she came down on to the platform at Havre for the express. What was the use of spoiling his life with nightmares? Why not take advantage of the happy days when they came? All would perhaps come right in the end. And, resolved to enjoy himself on this day, at all events, he was making plans in his head, dreaming of taking her to lunch at a restaurant. And so, as she cast him a sorrowful glance, because there was not a first-class carriage at the head of the train, and she was forced to find a seat a long way off him at the end, he wished to console her by smiling merrily. They would arrive together, and make up for being separated. Indeed, after leaning over the rail to see her enter a compartment right at the extremity of the train, he had pushed his good humour so far as to joke with the headguard, Henri Dauvergne, whom he knew to be in love with her.
The preceding week he fancied he had noticed that the guard was becoming bold, and that she encouraged him, by way of diversion, requiring relief from the atrocious existence she had formed for herself. And Jacques inquired of Henri who it was he had been sending kisses to in the air on the previous evening, when hiding behind one of the elms in the entrance yard. This elicited a loud laugh from Pecqueux, engaged in making up the fire of La Lison, which was smoking, and all ready to set out.
The express ran from Havre to Barentin at its regular speed and without incident. It was Henri who first signalled the dray across the line, from his look-out at the top of his box, on issuing from the cutting. The van next to the tender was crammed with luggage, for the train carried a large number of passengers, who had landed from a mail-boat the previous evening. The headguard, very badly off for space, in the midst of this huge pile of trunks and portmanteaux, swaying to and fro in the vibration, had been standing at his desk classing way-bills; and the small bottle of ink, suspended from a nail, never ceased swinging from side to side.
After passing the stations where he put out luggage, he had four or five minutes' writing to do. Two travellers had got down at Barentin, and he had just got his papers in order, when, ascending and seating himself in his look-out, he cast a glance back and front along the line in accordance with his custom. It was his habit to pass all his spare time seated in this glazed sentry-box on the watch. The tender hid the driver, but thanks to his elevated position, he could often see further and sooner than the latter. And so, whilst the train was still bending round in the cutting, he perceived the obstacle ahead. His astonishment was such that, in his terror, he lost command of his limbs, and, for an instant, even doubted what he saw. A few seconds were in consequence lost. The train was already out of the cutting, and a loud cry arose from the engine, when he made up his mind to pull the cord of the alarm-bell dangling in front of him.
Jacques, at this supreme moment, with his hand on the reversing-wheel, was looking without seeing, in a minute of absent-mindedness. He was thinking of confused and distant matters, from which the image of Séverine, even, had faded. The violent swinging and riot of the bell, the yells of Pecqueux behind him, brought him back to reality.