The Beast Within - Emile Zola [204]
‘Do you think I’m a coward?’ he exclaimed. ‘This time it will be done. I’ve given my word!’
Just then the house was shaken by the noise of a train thundering past, so close that it seemed to be passing through the room itself.
‘That’s Roubaud’s train,’ he said. ‘The semi-fast for Paris. He will have got off at Barentin. He’ll be here in half an hour.’
Neither of them spoke. There was a long silence. They thought of Roubaud, out there in the night, coming along the path towards them. Jacques began to walk mechanically backwards and forwards across the bedroom, as if he were counting Roubaud’s steps, each one bringing him closer and closer. One more, and then another, and when he took the last one, he would be lying in wait behind the hall door, and the minute he walked in he would plunge the knife into his neck. Séverine lay in bed on her back, the sheet still pulled up round her chin, watching him walk up and down2 with big, staring eyes, her mind lulled by the rhythm of his steps, which came to her as an echo of the steps that were approaching from outside. One more and then another, getting relentlessly nearer! Nothing would stop them now. When they reached the house, she would jump out of bed and go downstairs in the dark in her bare feet to open the door. ‘Is that you, dear? Come in. I was in bed.’ But he wouldn’t have time to answer. He would fall to the ground in the dark, with his throat slit.
Another train went by on the down line, the stopping train which passed La Croix-de-Maufras five minutes after the semi-fast. Jacques stopped in surprise. Only five minutes! Half an hour was going to be a long time to wait! He must keep moving. He started pacing up and down the room again. He was beginning to have doubts about himself. He was getting anxious, like one of those men whose nerves affect their virility. Would he be able to do it? He knew what was happening because it had happened ten or more times before. It always started off with him being convinced he could do it and determined to kill. He would then experience a tightening in his chest, his hands and feet would go cold, and his strength would suddenly fail him completely — his muscles would simply refuse to do what he wanted them to do. He tried to strengthen his resolve, as he had so often done before, by reminding himself of what he stood to gain by getting rid of Roubaud — the fortune awaiting him in America, being together with the woman he loved. The trouble was that when, a moment before, he had found Séverine half naked, he had thought he could no longer go through with it; the minute he sensed a return of his old affliction, he was no longer his own master. For a moment, the temptation had been almost too strong; Séverine was offering herself to him, and the knife lay open on the table. But he had not succumbed. He braced himself for the final effort. He could do it. He paced backwards and forwards from the door to the window, each time passing close to the bed, which he avoided looking at. The wait continued.
Séverine lay in the bed, where, the night before, in total darkness, they had made love so passionately. She did not move; her head rested motionless on the pillow, her eyes following him backwards and forwards. She too felt anxious, afraid that tonight, as before, his courage might fail him. She simply wanted to have done with it and start afresh. Her only concern was to be loved and to surrender herself to the man who loved her. She had given herself entirely to the man who had won her heart; towards her husband, whom she had never wanted, she felt nothing. He was being got rid of because he stood in their way; it was perfectly natural. It was only when she dwelled upon it that she felt at all moved by the awfulness of the crime they were about to commit; the minute she stopped thinking about blood and the horrible practicalities of the murder, she became quite calm again, as sweet and docile as a child. Well as she thought she knew him, there was something about Jacques’s appearance that puzzled her. He had the same round,