Part 18

Others, without speaking, gave their assent with a nod. The luxurious room had vanished, with its gilding and embroideries, its mysterious heap of old curiosities; and they no longer even felt the carpet, which they crushed beneath their heavy boots.

“Let me answer, then,” cried M. Hennebeau at last, losing his temper. “First of all, it is not true that the Company makes two centimes per tub… Let us look at the figures.”

A confused discussion followed. The manager, trying to divide them, addressed Pierron, who slipped away, stammering. On the contrary, Levaque was at the head of the most aggressive, muddling matters, asserting facts of which he was ignorant. The heavy murmur of voices was stifled beneath the hangings, in the greenhouse heat.

“If you all speak at once,” resumed M. Hennebeau, “we shall never understand each other.”

He had recovered his calm, his rough politeness, without bitterness, of a manager who has received orders and means to have them respected. From the first words, he had not taken his eyes off Étienne, manoeuvring to draw him out of the silence in which the young man had shut himself. So, abandoning the discussion of the two centimes, he suddenly broadened the question.

“No, come, admit the truth, you are obeying detestable incitements. It is a plague, now, that blows upon all the workmen and corrupts the best… Oh! I need no one’s confession; I see well enough that you are changed, you who were so quiet formerly. Isn’t that so? They have promised you more butter than bread, they have told you that your turn had come to be the masters… In short, they are regimenting you in that famous International, that army of brigands whose dream is the destruction of society…”

Then Étienne interrupted him.

“You are mistaken, Mr. Manager. Not a single collier of Montsou has yet joined. But if they are pushed to it, all the pits will enlist. That depends on the Company.”

From that moment, the struggle continued between M. Hennebeau and him, as if the other miners had no longer been there.

“The Company is a providence for its men, you are wrong to threaten it. This year, it has spent three hundred thousand francs in building the corons, which do not bring it two per cent, and I say nothing of the pensions it pays, nor of the coal, nor of the medicines it gives… You who seem intelligent, who have become in a few months one of our most skilful workmen, would you not do better to spread such truths as those than to ruin yourself, by frequenting people of bad reputation? Yes, I mean Rasseneur, from whom we had to separate, in order to save our pits from socialist rot… You are always seen at his house, and it is assuredly he who urged you to create this provident fund, which we would willingly tolerate if it were only a saving, but in which we feel a weapon against us, a reserve fund to pay the costs of war. And, on this subject, I must add that the Company intends to have a control over this fund.”

Étienne let him go on, his eyes upon his, his lips agitated by a little nervous twitching. He smiled at the last phrase, and answered simply:

“That is then a new demand, for Mr. Manager has hitherto neglected to claim this control… Our wish, unhappily, is that the Company should concern itself less with us, and that instead of playing the role of providence, it should show itself plainly just, in giving us what belongs to us, our earnings which it shares. Is it honest, at each crisis, to let the workers die of hunger to save the shareholders’ dividends?… Mr. Manager may say what he will, the new system is a disguised wage cut, and that is what revolts us, for if the Company has economies to make, it acts very wrongly in realising them solely upon the workman.”

“Ah! there we are!” cried M. Hennebeau. “I was expecting it, that accusation of starving the people and living off their sweat! How can you say such nonsense, you who should know the enormous risks that capital runs in industry, in mines for example? A fully equipped pit, today, costs from fifteen hundred thousand francs to two millions; and what trouble before drawing a mediocre interest from such a sum engulfed! Almost half the mining companies in France fail… Besides, it is stupid to accuse of cruelty those which succeed. When their workmen suffer, they suffer themselves. Do you believe the Company has not as much to lose as you, in the present crisis? It is not the master of wages, it obeys competition, on pain of ruin. Blame the facts, and not it… But you will not hear, you will not understand!”

“Yes,” said the young man, “we understand very well that there is no possible improvement for us, so long as things go as they go, and it is even because of that that the workers will end, one day or another, by arranging matters so that they go otherwise.”

This word, so moderate in form, was pronounced in a half-voice, with such conviction, trembling with menace, that a great silence fell. An uneasiness, a breath of fear passed through the stillness of the salon. The other delegates, who understood poorly, yet felt that the comrade had just claimed their share, amid this well-being; and they began again to cast sidelong glances at the warm hangings, at the comfortable seats, at all this luxury whose least trifle would have paid their soup for a month.

At last, M. Hennebeau, who had remained thoughtful, rose, to dismiss them. All imitated him. Étienne, lightly, had nudged Maheu’s elbow; and the latter resumed, his tongue already thick and clumsy:

“So, sir, that is all you answer… We are going to tell the others that you reject our conditions.”

“I, my good fellow,” cried the manager, “but I reject nothing!… I am a wage-earner like you, I have no more will here than the last of your pit-boys. I am given orders, and my only role is to see to their good execution. I have told you what I thought I ought to tell you, but I should carefully avoid deciding… You bring me your demands, I shall make them known to the Board, then I shall transmit the answer to you.”

He spoke with his correct air of a high official, avoiding passion in questions, with the courteous dryness of a simple instrument of authority. And the miners, now, looked at him with distrust, wondering where he came from, what interest he could have in lying, what he must steal, in thus placing himself between them and the true masters. An intriguer perhaps, a man paid like a workman, and who lived so well!

Étienne dared again to intervene.

“See, Mr. Manager, how regrettable it is that we cannot plead our cause in person. We should explain many things, we should find reasons that necessarily escape you… If we only knew where to address ourselves!”

M. Hennebeau did not grow angry. He even smiled.

“Ah! well! that complicates matters, from the moment you have no confidence in me… One must go over there.”

The delegates had followed his vague gesture, his hand stretched towards one of the windows. Where was it, over there? Paris no doubt. But they did not know exactly, it receded into a terrifying distance, into an inaccessible and religious region, where throned the unknown god, crouched at the bottom of his tabernacle. Never should they see him, they only felt him as a force which, from afar, weighed upon the ten thousand colliers of Montsou. And, when the manager spoke, it was this force that he had behind him, hidden and rendering oracles.

A discouragement overwhelmed them, Étienne himself gave a shrug of the shoulders to tell them that the best was to go away; while M. Hennebeau tapped Maheu amicably on the arm, asking him news of Jeanlin.

“There is a hard lesson however, and it is you who defend the bad timbering!… You will reflect, my friends, you will understand that a strike would be a disaster for everyone. Before a week, you will die of hunger: what will you do?… I count on your wisdom besides, and I am convinced that you will go down again Monday at the latest.”

All were leaving, quitting the salon in a trampling of herd, backs rounded, without answering a word to this hope of submission. The manager, who accompanied them, was obliged to sum up the interview: the Company on one side with its new tariff, the workmen on the other with their demand for an increase of five centimes per tub. To leave them no illusion, he thought he ought to warn them that their conditions would certainly be rejected by the Board.

“Reflect before doing foolish things,” he repeated, uneasy at their silence.

In the vestibule, Pierron bowed very low, while Levaque affected to put on his cap. Maheu sought a word for leaving, when Étienne, again, touched him with the elbow. And all went away, amid that threatening silence. The door alone fell shut, with great noise.

When M. Hennebeau returned to the dining-room, he found his guests immobile and mute, before the liqueurs. In two words, he informed Deneulin, whose face finished darkening. Then, while he drank his cold coffee, they tried to speak of something else. But the Grégroires themselves came back to the strike, astonished that there were not laws to forbid the workmen to leave their work. Paul reassured Cécile, affirmed that the gendarmes were expected.

At last, Madame Hennebeau called the servant.

“Hippolyte, before we go to the salon, open the windows and give some air.”

III

A fortnight had passed; and, on the Monday of the third week, the attendance sheets, sent to the Management, indicated a fresh diminution in the number of workmen who had gone down. That morning, a resumption of work was counted on; but the obstinacy of the Board in not yielding exasperated the miners. The Voreux, Crèvecoeur, Mirou, Madeleine were no longer the only ones idle; at the Victoire and at Feutry-Cantel, the descent now counted scarcely a quarter of the men; and Saint-Thomas itself was affected. Little by little, the strike became general.

At the Voreux, a heavy silence weighed upon the pit-bank. It was the dead works, that emptiness and abandonment of the great yards, where labour sleeps. In the grey December sky, along the high footbridges, three or four forgotten tubs had the mute sadness of things. Below, between the thin legs of the trestles, the coal stock was exhausting itself, leaving the earth bare and black; while the provision of timber rotted under the showers. At the canal wharf, there had remained a barge half loaded, as if dozing in the troubled water; and, on the deserted spoil-heap, whose decomposed sulphurs smoked despite the rain, a cart melancholically reared its shafts. But the buildings especially were numbing, the screening-shed with closed shutters, the headframe where no longer mounted the rumblings of the winding, and the cooled generator room, and the giant chimney too wide for the rare smokes. They only heated the drawing engine in the morning. The stablemen took down the horses’ food, the putters worked alone below, become workmen again, watching for the disasters which damage the roads, as soon as one ceases to maintain them; then, from nine o’clock, the rest of the service was done by the ladders. And, above this death of the buildings buried in their shroud of black dust, there was still only the escape of the pump blowing its thick and long breath, the remainder of life of the pit, which the waters would have destroyed, if the breath had stopped.

Opposite, on the plateau, the coron of the Two Hundred and Forty, it too, seemed dead. The prefect of Lille had hurried up, gendarmes had beaten the roads; but, before the calm of the strikers, prefect and gendarmes had decided to go home. Never had the coron given so fine an example, in the vast plain. The men, to avoid going to the cabaret, slept the whole day; the women, rationing themselves with coffee, became reasonable, less enraged with gossip and quarrels; and even the bands of children who seemed to understand, from such wisdom, that they ran barefoot and slapped themselves without noise. It was the word of order, repeated, circulating from mouth to mouth: they wished to be wise.

Yet, a continual coming and going filled the Maheu house with people. Étienne, as secretary, had there shared the three thousand francs of the provident fund, among the needy families; afterwards, from divers sides, had arrived some hundreds of francs, produced by subscriptions and collections. But, today, all resources were exhausting themselves, the miners had no more money to support the strike, and hunger was there, threatening. Maigrat, after having promised a credit of a fortnight, had suddenly thought better of it at the end of eight days, cutting off supplies. Usually, he took the Company’s orders; perhaps the latter desired to finish at once, by starving the corons. He acted besides as a capricious tyrant, gave or refused bread, according to the face of the girl that the parents sent for provisions; and he especially shut his door to the Maheude, full of rancour, wishing to punish her for not having had Catherine. To crown the misery, it froze very hard, the women saw their heap of coal diminish, with the uneasy thought that it would no longer be renewed at the pits, so long as the men did not go down again. It was not enough to burst of hunger, one was also going to burst of cold.

At the Maheus’, already everything failed. The Levaques still ate, on a twenty-franc piece lent by Bouteloup. As for the Pierrons, they always had money; but, to seem as starved as the others, in fear of loans, they supplied themselves on credit at Maigrat’s, who would have thrown his shop at the Pierronne, had she lifted her skirt. From Saturday, many families had gone to bed without supper. And, facing the terrible days that were beginning, not a complaint was heard, all obeyed the word of order, with a tranquil courage.

It was nevertheless an absolute confidence, a religious faith, the blind gift of a population of believers. Since the era of justice had been promised them, they were ready to suffer for the conquest of universal happiness. Hunger exalted the heads, never had the closed horizon opened a wider beyond to these hallucinated of misery. They saw again yonder, when their eyes grew troubled with weakness, the ideal city of their dream, but near at this hour and as if real, with its people of brothers, its golden age of work and common meals. Nothing shook the conviction they had of entering it at last. The fund had exhausted itself, the Company would not yield, each day must aggravate the situation, and they kept their hope, and they showed the smiling contempt of facts. If the earth cracked beneath them, a miracle would save them. This faith replaced bread and warmed the belly. When the Maheus and the others had too quickly digested their soup of clear water, they thus mounted in a half-dizziness, the ecstasy of a better life which threw the martyrs to the beasts.

Henceforth, Étienne was the uncontested chief. In the evening conversations, he rendered oracles, as study refined him and made him decide in all things. He spent the nights reading, he received a greater number of letters; even he had subscribed to the Vengeur, a socialist sheet of Belgium, and this newspaper, the first that entered the coron, had attracted to him, from the comrades, an extraordinary consideration. His growing popularity overexcited him more and more each day. To keep up an extended correspondence, to discuss the lot of the workers at the four corners of the province, to give consultations to the miners of the Voreux, above all to become a centre, to feel the world roll around oneself, was a continual swelling of vanity, for him, the former mechanic, the hewer with greasy and black hands. He mounted a rung, he entered this execrated bourgeoisie, with satisfactions of intelligence and well-being, which he did not avow to himself. Only one uneasiness remained to him, the conscience of his lack of education, which made him embarrassed and timid, as soon as he found himself before a gentleman in frock-coat. If he continued to instruct himself, devouring all, the lack of method rendered assimilation very slow, such a confusion was produced, that he finished by knowing things he had not understood. Also, at certain hours of good sense, he felt an uneasiness about his mission, the fear of not being the expected man. Perhaps an advocate would have been needed, a scholar capable of speaking and acting, without compromising the comrades? But a revolt soon set him straight again. No, no, no advocates! they are all scoundrels, they profit from their knowledge to fatten themselves with the people! It would turn as it would turn, the workers must do their affairs among themselves. And his dream of popular chief rocked him anew: Montsou at his feet, Paris in a distant haze, who knows? the deputation one day, the tribune of a rich hall, where he saw himself fulminating the bourgeois with the first speech pronounced by a workman in a Parliament.

For some days, Étienne had been perplexed. Pluchart wrote letter upon letter, offering to come to Montsou, to heat the zeal of the strikers. It was a question of organising a private meeting, which the mechanic would preside; and there was, under this project, the idea of exploiting the strike, of winning the miners to the International, who, until then, had shown mistrustful. Étienne dreaded a commotion, but he would nevertheless have let Pluchart come, if Rasseneur had not violently blamed this intervention. Despite his power, the young man had to reckon with the tavern-keeper, whose services were older, and who kept faithful ones among his clients. So he still hesitated, not knowing what to answer.

Precisely, on Monday, towards four o’clock, a new letter arrived from Lille, as Étienne found himself alone, with the Maheude, in the lower room. Maheu, unnerved by idleness, had gone fishing: if he had the luck to catch a fine fish, below the canal lock, it would be sold and bread bought. Old Bonnemort and little Jeanlin had just slipped away, to try their legs renewed; while the children had gone out with Alzire, who spent hours on the spoil-heap, gathering cinders. Seated near the meagre fire, which one no longer dared feed, the Maheude, unbuttoned, a breast out of her bodice and falling to the belly, was giving Estelle the breast.

When the young man folded the letter, she questioned him.

“Is it good news? Are they going to send us money?”

He answered no with a gesture, and she continued:

“This week, I don’t know how we shall manage… Well, we shall hold out all the same. When one has right on one’s side, isn’t it? that gives you heart, one always ends by being the stronger.”

At this hour, she was for the strike, reasonably. It would have been better to force the Company to be just, without leaving work. But, since it had been left, one must not take it up again, before obtaining justice. On this, she showed an intractable energy. Rather burst than seem to have been wrong, when one was right!

“Ah!” cried Étienne, “if a good cholera would break out, to rid us of all those Company exploiters!”

“No, no,” she answered, “one must not wish death on anyone. That would scarcely advance us, others would spring up… Me, I only ask that those there return to more sensible ideas, and I await that, for there are brave folk everywhere… You know I am not at all for your politics.”

Indeed, she usually blamed his violences of speech, she found him quarrelsome. That one should wish to be paid one’s work what it was worth, was good; but why occupy oneself with a heap of things, with the bourgeois and the government? why meddle in others’ affairs, where there were only bad blows to catch? And she kept her esteem for him, because he did not get drunk and paid her regularly her forty-five francs of pension. When a man had conduct, one could pardon him the rest.

Then Étienne spoke of the Republic, which would give bread to everyone. But the Maheude shook her head, for she remembered ’48, a dog of a year, which had left her and her man naked as worms, in the first times of their household. She forgot herself in telling the bothers of it in a dull voice, lost eyes, breast in the air, while her daughter Estelle, without releasing the breast, fell asleep on her knees. And, absorbed himself too, Étienne looked fixedly at this enormous breast, whose soft whiteness contrasted with the battered and yellowed complexion of the face.

“Not a farthing,” she murmured, “nothing to put under the tooth, and all the pits stopping. In short, what! the bursting of poor folk, like today!”

But, at this moment, the door opened, and they remained mute with surprise before Catherine who entered. Since her flight with Chaval, she had no longer reappeared at the coron. Her trouble was so great, that she did not close the door, trembling and mute. She counted on finding her mother alone, the sight of the young man disturbed the phrase prepared on the way.

“What are you coming to do here?” cried the Maheude, without even leaving her chair. “I want no more of you, go away!”

Then Catherine tried to recover words.

“Mamma, it’s coffee and sugar… Yes, for the children… I have done hours, I thought of them…”

She drew from her pockets a pound of coffee and a pound of sugar, which she ventured to place on the table. The strike of the Voreux tormented her, while she worked at Jean-Bart, and she had found only this way to help her parents a little, under the pretext of thinking of the little ones. But her good heart did not disarm her mother, who replied:

“Instead of bringing us sweets, you would have done better to stay and earn our bread.”

She overwhelmed her, she relieved herself, by throwing in her face all she had repeated against her, for a month. Running off with a man, sticking to him at sixteen, when one had a family in need! One had to be the last of unnatural girls. One could pardon a folly, but a mother never forgot such a trick. And still if one had kept her tied! Not at all, she was free as the air, one only asked her to come home to sleep.

“Tell me? what have you got in your skin, at your age?”

Catherine, motionless near the table, listened, head low. A quivering agitated her thin body of a late girl, and she tried to answer, in broken words.

“Oh! if it were only me, for what amusement it is!… It’s him. When he wants, I’m well forced to want, isn’t it? because, see, he is the stronger… Does one know how things turn? In short, it’s done, and it’s not to undo, for as good him as another, now. He must marry me.”

She defended herself without revolt, with the passive resignation of girls who submit to the male early. Was it not the common law? Never had she dreamed otherwise, a violence behind the spoil-heap, a child at sixteen, then misery in the household, if her sweetheart married her. And she did not redden with shame, she did not tremble thus, but distraught at being treated as a tramp before this boy, whose presence oppressed and despaired her.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”