"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.