Séverine shuddered.
"Hold your tongue, hold your tongue!" said she. "You will drive me crazy."
She left the room, and he heard her go downstairs to the other invalid.
Jacques, who had remained at the window, was again lost in the contemplation of the line, of the small habitation of the gatekeeper, with its great well, of the signal-box, that wooden hut where Misard seemed to be dozing over his regular, monotonous work. Jacques became absorbed by these things now for hours, as if poring over some problem he could not solve, and the solution of which, nevertheless, concerned his safety.
He never felt tired of watching Misard, that puny creature, gentle and pallid, everlastingly disturbed by a nasty little cough, who had poisoned his wife, who had got the better of that strapping woman, like a rodent insect obstinately pursuing its passion. He could certainly not have had any other idea in his head for years, day and night, during the twelve interminable hours he remained on duty. At each electric tinkle, announcing a train, he blew the horn; then, when the train had passed and he had blocked the line, he pressed an electric knob to warn the next signalman of its arrival, afterwards touching a second knob to open the line at the preceding signal-box. These simple mechanical movements had, in the end, entered into his vegetative life, as bodily habits.
Untutored and obtuse he never read anything, but between the calls of his apparatus remained with his arms hanging down beside him, and his eyes gazing vaguely into space. Being almost always seated in his box, he had no other diversion than that of dawdling as long as possible over his lunch. When this was finished he fell into his doltishness again with a skull quite empty, without a thought; and he was particularly tormented with terrible drowsiness, sometimes sleeping with his eyes open. At night-time, if he wished to avoid giving way to this irresistible torpor, he had to get up and walk with unsteady legs like a drunken man. And it was thus that the struggle with his wife, that secret combat as to who should have the concealed 1,000 frcs. after the death of the other, must for months and months have been the sole reflection in the benumbed brain of this solitary being.
When he blew his horn; when he manœuvred his signals, watching in automatic fashion over the safety of so many lives, he thought of the poison; and when he waited with idle arms, his eyes moving from side to side with sleep, he still thought of it. Of nothing did he think but that: he would kill her, he would search, it was he who would have the money.
At present, Jacques was astonished to find Misard had not changed. It was possible then to kill without any trouble, and life continue as before. After the feverishness, attending the first rummages for the money-bag, he had just resumed his usual indifference, the cunning, gentle manner of a feeble being who shunned a shock. As a matter of fact, he might well have put an end to his wife, but she triumphed notwithstanding; for he was beaten. He had turned the house upside down without discovering anything, not a centime; and his looks alone, those anxious ferreting looks, revealed on his sallow countenance how busy was his mind.
Everlastingly he saw the wide open eyes of the dead woman, the hideous smile on her lips which seemed to repeat: "Search! search!" He sought. He could not give his brain one minute of rest now. It worked, worked incessantly in quest of the spot where the treasure was buried, thinking over the possible hiding-places, rejecting those where he had already rummaged, bursting into feverish excitement as soon as he imagined a new one; and then, burning with such haste, that he abandoned everything to run off there to no purpose. This, in the end, became an intolerable torment, an avenging torture, a sort of cerebral insomnia which kept him awake, stupid and reflecting in spite of himself, in the tic-tac of the pendulum of his fixed idea.
When he blew his horn, once for the down-trains, twice for the up trains, he sought; when he answered the ringing, when he pressed the knobs of his apparatus, closing, opening the line, he sought. He sought, sought, bewilderingly, ceaselessly. In the daytime, during the long period of waiting, heavy with idleness; at night, tormented with sleep as if exiled to the other end of the world, in the silence of the great black country. And the woman Ducloux, who at present looked after the gate, actuated by the desire to become his wife, showed him every possible attention, and was alarmed to see that he never closed his eyes.