Part 27

The last words were lost in hoots. He was threatened with clenched fists; already the women were deafening him, blowing their warm breath into his face. But he held firm, head high, with his little white beard and snow-white hair; and courage swelled his voice so that he could be heard distinctly above the uproar.

—God damn it! you shall not pass!... As surely as the sun lights us, I would rather die than let anyone touch the cables... Don't push any more, or I'll throw myself down the shaft in front of you!

A shudder ran through the crowd, which drew back, seized with fright. He went on:

—Which of you swine doesn't understand that?... I'm only a workman like the rest of you. I was told to guard, and I guard.

And his understanding went no further, old Quandieu, stiffened in his military sense of duty, narrow-skulled, his eye dimmed by the black sorrow of half a century down the pit. The comrades looked at him, moved, carrying somewhere within them the echo of what he said to them, that soldier's obedience, brotherhood and resignation in the face of danger. He thought they still hesitated, and he repeated:

—I'll throw myself down the shaft in front of you!

A great shock swept the band away. All had turned their backs, the headlong flight was resuming along the straight road, streaming away into infinity, amid the open fields. Once more, cries rose:

—To Madeleine! to Crèvecoeur! no more work! bread, bread!

But, in the centre, in the forward rush of the march, there was a scuffle. It was Chaval, they said, who had tried to take advantage of the affair to slip away. Étienne had just seized him by an arm, threatening to break his back if he was plotting any treachery. And the other struggled, protesting furiously:

—What's all this for? aren't we free any more?... I've been freezing for an hour, I need to wash the muck off. Let go of me!

He was indeed suffering from the coal dust stuck to his skin by sweat, and his knitted vest protected him poorly.

—Get moving, or it's us who'll wash you down, answered Étienne. You shouldn't have gone further and called for blood.

They kept on running. At last he turned to Catherine, who was holding her own. It drove him to despair to feel her near him, so wretched, shivering under her old man's jacket, with her muddy breeches. She must have been dead with fatigue, yet still she ran.

—You can go home, you, he said at last.

Catherine seemed not to hear. Her eyes, meeting Étienne's, had only a brief flame of reproach. And she did not stop. Why did he want her to abandon her man? Chaval was hardly kind, sure enough; he even beat her, sometimes. But he was her man, the one who had had her first; and it enraged her that people should fling themselves more than a thousand strong against him. She would have defended him, without tenderness, out of pride.

—Go away! repeated Maheu violently.

This order from her father slowed her running for a moment. She trembled, tears swelled her eyelids. Then, despite her fear, she came back, she took her place again, still running. So they let her be.

The band crossed the Joiselle road, followed the Cron road for a while, then turned up towards Cougny. On this side, factory chimneys streaked the flat horizon; wooden sheds, brick workshops with wide dusty bays, filed past along the pavement. They passed close by the low houses of two rows of cottages, that of the Hundred-and-Eighty, then that of the Seventy-Six; and, from each, at the call of the horn, at the clamour shouted by every mouth, families came out, men, women, children, running too, joining on to the tail of the comrades. When they arrived before Madeleine, they were a good fifteen hundred. The road sloped down gently, and the roaring flood of strikers had to round the slag-heap before spreading over the pit yard.

At that moment it was scarcely past two o'clock. But the deputy-overmen, warned, had just hastened the ascent; and, as the band arrived, the coming-up was finishing, only about twenty men remained below, who stepped out of the cage. They fled, and were pursued with stones. Two were beaten, another left a sleeve of his jacket behind. This man-hunt saved the plant; no one touched the cables or the boilers. Already the flood was moving away, rolling on to the neighbouring pit.

This one, Crèvecoeur, was only five hundred metres from Madeleine. There too the band fell upon the coming-up. A woman hurrier was caught and whipped by the women, her breeches split, her buttocks bare, before the men who laughed. The young boys got slaps, the hewers escaped, their ribs blue with blows, their noses bleeding. And, in this growing ferocity, in this old need for revenge whose madness unhinged every head, the cries continued, choking, the death of traitors, hatred of ill-paid toil, the roar of the belly demanding bread. They set about cutting the cables, but the file would not bite, it was too slow, now that they had the fever to go forward, ever forward. At the boilers, a tap was broken; while water, thrown in pailfuls on the fires, made the cast-iron gratings burst.

Outside, they spoke of marching on Saint-Thomas. That pit was the best disciplined, the strike had not reached it, nearly seven hundred men must have gone down; and this exasperated them, they would wait for them with cudgels, in battle array, to see who stayed on the ground. But a rumour ran that there were gendarmes at Saint-Thomas, the gendarmes of the morning, whom they had mocked. How did they know? no one could say. No matter! fear took them, and they decided on Feutry-Cantel. And the vertigo swept them away, all found themselves on the road again, clattering with sabots, hurling themselves: to Feutry-Cantel! to Feutry-Cantel! the cowards were still there, a good four hundred, they would have a laugh! Situated three kilometres off, the pit hid in a fold of the ground, near the Scarpe. Already they were climbing the slope of the Plaster-Works, beyond the Beaugnies path, when a voice, never identified, flung out the notion that the dragoons might be there, at Feutry-Cantel. Then, from one end of the column to the other, they repeated that the dragoons were there. A hesitation slowed the march; panic little by little breathed, in this country lulled to sleep by unemployment, that they had been beating for hours. Why had they not stumbled against soldiers? This immunity troubled them, at the thought of the repression they felt coming.

Without anyone knowing where it started, a new order flung them at another pit.

—To the Victoire! to the Victoire!

So there were neither dragoons nor gendarmes at the Victoire? They did not know. All seemed reassured. And, wheeling about, they went down towards Beaumont, cutting across the fields, to regain the Joiselle road. The railway line barred their passage, they crossed it, overturning the fences. Now they were drawing near Montsou, the slow undulation of the ground sank, widening the sea of beetroot fields, far off, to the black houses of Marchiennes.

This time it was a run of five long kilometres. Such a rush bore them along that they did not feel the atrocious fatigue, their feet broken and bruised. Ever the tail lengthened, swelled by comrades picked up on the way, in the cottages. When they had crossed the canal at the Magache bridge, and presented themselves before the Victoire, they were two thousand. But three o'clock had struck, the coming-up was done, not a man remained below. Their disappointment exhaled in vain threats; they could only receive with broken bricks the surface-cutters, who were arriving to take up their work. There was a scatter, the deserted pit belonged to them. And, in their rage at having no traitor's face to slap, they fell upon things. A pocket of resentment was bursting in them, a poisoned pocket, slowly swollen. Years and years of hunger tortured them with a craving for massacre and destruction.

Behind a shed, Étienne caught sight of loaders filling a trolley with coal.

—Will you clear off! he cried. Not a lump shall leave!

At his orders, a hundred strikers came running; and the loaders had only time to get away. Men unharnessed the horses, which took fright and went off, pricked in the thighs; while others, overturning the trolley, broke the shafts.

Levaque, with violent blows of an axe, had flung himself on the trestles, to bring down the footbridges. They resisted, and he had the idea of tearing up the rails, of cutting the line, from one end to the other of the yard. Soon the whole band set to this task. Maheu blew up cast-iron chairs, armed with his iron bar, which he used as a lever. Meanwhile, la Brûlé, dragging the women with her, invaded the lamp-room, where the sticks, swung at random, covered the floor with a slaughter of lamps. La Maheude, beside herself, hit as hard as Levaque. All soaked themselves in oil; la Mouquette wiped her hands on her petticoat, laughing to be so dirty. For a joke, Jeanlin had emptied a lamp down her neck.

But these revenges gave no food. The bellies cried louder. And the great lamentation dominated again:

—Bread! bread! bread!

Just then, at the Victoire, a former deputy-overman kept a canteen. No doubt he had taken fright, his hut was abandoned. When the women came back and the men had finished breaking up the line, they besieged the canteen, whose shutters gave way at once. No bread was found there, only two pieces of raw meat and a sack of potatoes. Only, in the pillage, they discovered some fifty bottles of gin, which vanished like a drop of water drunk by sand.

Étienne, having emptied his flask, was able to fill it. Little by little, an evil drunkenness, the drunkenness of the starving, bloodshot his eyes, made wolf's teeth jut between his pale lips. And, suddenly, he noticed that Chaval had slipped away, in the midst of the tumult. He swore, men ran, they seized the fugitive, who was hiding with Catherine, behind the wood-pile.

—Ah! you bloody bastard, you're afraid to commit yourself! yelled Étienne. It was you, in the forest, who called for the engine-men's strike, to stop the pumps, and now you're trying to piss us about!... Well! God damn it! we're going back to Gaston-Marie, I want you to break the pump. Yes, God damn it! you'll break it!

He was drunk, he was hurling his men themselves against that pump, which he had saved a few hours earlier.

—To Gaston-Marie! to Gaston-Marie!

All acclaimed him, rushed forward; while Chaval, seized by the shoulders, dragged, violently pushed, still asked to be let go and wash.

—Go away then! cried Maheu to Catherine, who too had taken up her running.

This time she did not even draw back; she lifted on her father burning eyes, and went on running.

The band, once more, ploughed across the bare plain. It was retracing its steps, by the long straight roads, by the ever-widening fields. It was four o'clock, the sun, sinking to the horizon, lengthened over the frozen ground the shadows of this horde, with its great furious gestures.

They avoided Montsou, fell back higher up on the Joiselle road; and, to spare themselves the detour of the Ox-Fork, they passed under the walls of the Piolaine. The Grégoires, precisely, had just come out of it, having to pay a visit to the notary, before going to dine with the Hennebeaus, where they were to meet Cécile. The property seemed asleep, with its avenue of deserted lime-trees, its kitchen-garden and orchard bared by winter. Nothing moved in the house, whose closed windows dimmed with the warm inner steam; and, from the deep silence, came an impression of kindliness and well-being, the patriarchal sense of good beds and a good table, of wise happiness, where the life of the owners flowed.

Without stopping, the band cast dark glances through the railings, along the protecting walls, bristling with bottle-ends. The cry began again:

—Bread! bread! bread!

Only the dogs answered with fierce barks, a pair of great fawn-coated Danes, which reared up, mouth open. And, behind a closed shutter, there were only the two maids, Mélanie the cook and Honorine the chambermaid, drawn by the cry, sweating with fear, quite pale at seeing these savages file past. They fell on their knees, thought themselves dead, on hearing a stone, a single stone, break a pane of a neighbouring window. It was a prank of Jeanlin's: he had made a sling with a bit of string, and as he passed left a small greeting for the Grégoires. Already he had gone back to blowing his horn, the band was losing itself afar, with the weakening cry:

—Bread! bread! bread!

They arrived at Gaston-Marie, in a mass swollen still further, more than two thousand five hundred madmen, breaking all, sweeping all, with the increased force of the rolling torrent. Gendarmes had passed there an hour earlier, and had gone off towards Saint-Thomas, misled by peasants, without even having the precaution, in their haste, to leave a post of a few men, to guard the pit. In less than a quarter of an hour, the fires were overturned, the boilers emptied, the buildings invaded and devastated. But it was above all the pump that was threatened. It was not enough that it should stop at the last expiring breath of steam; they flung themselves on it as on a living person, whose life they wanted.

—Your first blow! repeated Étienne, putting a hammer into Chaval's fist. Come on! you swore with the others!

Chaval trembled, drew back; and, in the scuffle, the hammer fell, while the comrades, without waiting, massacred the pump with iron bars, with bricks, with whatever they found under their hands. Some even broke sticks on it. The nuts flew, the steel and copper parts dislocated, like limbs torn off. A blow of a pick swung with full force smashed the cast-iron body, and the water escaped, emptied, and there was a supreme gurgle, like a death-rattle.

It was the end; the band found itself outside, mad, crushing behind Étienne, who did not let go of Chaval.

—Death to the traitor! to the shaft! to the shaft!

The wretch, livid, stammered, came back, with the imbecile obstinacy of a fixed idea, to his need to wash the muck off.

—Wait, if it bothers you, said la Levaque. Here! there's the tub!

There was a pool there, a seepage from the pump water. It was white with a thick layer of ice; and they pushed him in, broke this ice, forced him to dip his head in that so cold water.

—Duck now! repeated la Brûlé. God damn it! if you don't duck, we'll shove you in... And now you're going to drink a drop, yes, yes! like the beasts, your snout in the trough!

He had to drink, on all fours. All laughed, with a laugh of cruelty. A woman pulled his ears, another threw in his face a handful of dung, found fresh on the road. His old knitted vest would no longer hold, in rags. And, haggard, he stumbled, gave kicks of his rump to flee.

Maheu had pushed him, la Maheude was among those who harried him, both satisfying their old grudge; and la Mouquette herself, who usually remained the good comrade of her sweethearts, was enraged at this one, called him good-for-nothing, spoke of taking his breeches down, to see if he was still a man.

Étienne silenced her.

—That's enough! There's no need for everyone to join in... If you want, you and I, we'll settle this together.

His fists closed, his eyes lit with a homicidal fury, the drunkenness turning in him into a need to kill.

—Are you ready? One of us two must stay... Give him a knife. I have mine.

Catherine, exhausted, terrified, looked at him. She remembered his confidences, his wish to eat a man, when he drank, poisoned from the third glass onward, so much had his drunkard parents put that filth in his body. Suddenly she sprang forward, slapped him with both her woman's hands, cried in his face, choking with indignation:

—Coward! coward! coward!... Isn't all this abomination enough? You want to murder him now that he can't stand! She turned to her father and mother, she turned to the others.

—You are cowards! cowards!... Kill me with him then. I'll fly at your faces, I will! if you touch him again. Oh! cowards!

And she had planted herself before her man, defending him, forgetting the blows, forgetting the life of misery, lifted up in the idea that she belonged to him, since he had taken her, and that it was a shame for her, when he was damaged thus.

Étienne, under the slaps of this girl, had gone pale. At first he had nearly knocked her senseless. Then, after wiping his face, in the gesture of a man sobering up, he said to Chaval, in a great silence:

—She's right, that's enough... Clear off!

At once Chaval took to his heels, and Catherine galloped behind him. The crowd, seized, watched them disappear round the bend of the road. Only la Maheude murmured:

—You're wrong, you should have kept him. He'll surely do some treachery.

But the band had set off again. Five o'clock was about to strike, the sun of a brazier-redness, at the edge of the horizon, was setting the immense plain on fire. A pedlar passing told them that the dragoons were coming down towards Crèvecoeur. Then they fell back, an order ran.

—To Montsou! to the Management!... Bread! bread! bread!

V

M. Hennebeau had placed himself before the window of his study, to watch the calèche depart that was taking his wife to dine at Marchiennes. He had followed for a moment Négrel trotting beside the door; then he had come back quietly to sit at his desk. When neither his wife nor his nephew animated the house with the noise of their existence, it seemed empty. Precisely, that day, the coachman was driving Madame; Rose, the new chambermaid, had leave until five o'clock; and there remained only Hippolyte, the valet, dragging in slippers through the rooms, and the cook, busy since dawn fighting with her saucepans, wholly taken up with the dinner her masters gave that evening. So M. Hennebeau promised himself a day of hard work, in this great calm of the deserted house.

Towards nine o'clock, though he had given orders to turn everyone away, Hippolyte ventured to announce Dansaert, who brought news. The manager then learned only of the meeting held the evening before, in the forest; and the details were so clear that he listened thinking of the love-affair with Pierronne, so well known, which two or three anonymous letters a week denounced as the excesses of the head-overman: evidently the husband had talked, that sort of police smelt of the pillow. He even seized the occasion, he let it be understood that he knew all, and contented himself with recommending prudence, for fear of scandal. Alarmed at these reproaches, amid his report, Dansaert denied, stammered excuses, while his great nose confessed the crime, by its sudden redness. Besides, he did not insist, happy to get off so cheaply; for, usually, the manager showed an implacable severity as a pure man, as soon as an employee treated himself to a pretty girl, in a pit. The conversation continued on the strike; this forest meeting was still only a braggart's bluster, nothing seriously threatened. In any case, the cottages would surely not stir for some days, under the impression of respectful fear that the military walk of the morning must have produced.

When M. Hennebeau found himself alone again, he was yet on the point of sending a wire to the prefect. The fear of giving this needless proof of anxiety held him back. He already could not forgive himself for having lacked flair, to the point of saying everywhere, even writing to the Board, that the strike would last at most a fortnight. It had dragged on for nearly two months, to his great surprise; and he despaired of it, felt himself diminished daily, compromised, forced to imagine a coup, if he wanted to regain favour with the managers. He had just asked them for orders, in the event of a row. The reply was late, he expected it by the afternoon post. And he told himself that it would then be time to launch telegrams, to have the pits militarily occupied, if such was the opinion of those gentlemen. In his view, it would be battle, blood and death, surely. Such a responsibility troubled him, despite his habitual energy.

Until eleven o'clock he worked peaceably, with no other noise, in the dead house, than Hippolyte's polishing-stick, which, very far off, on the first floor, was rubbing a room. Then, one after another, he received two dispatches, the first announcing the invasion of Jean-Bart by the Montsou band, the second relating the cables cut, the fires overturned, all the ravage. He did not understand. What had the strikers gone to do at Deneulin's, instead of attacking a Compagnie pit? Besides, they might well sack Vandame, that ripened the plan of conquest he was meditating. And, at noon, he lunched, alone in the vast room, served in silence by the servant, whose slippers he did not even hear. This solitude darkened his preoccupations still more, he felt cold at heart, when a deputy-overman, come at a run, was shown in and told him of the band's march on Mirou. Almost at once, as he finished his coffee, a telegram informed him that Madeleine and Crèvecoeur were threatened in their turn. Then his perplexity became extreme. He expected the post at two o'clock: should he at once ask for troops? was it better to wait, so as not to act before knowing the Board's orders? He went back into his study, he wanted to read a note he had asked Négrel to draft the day before for the prefect. But he could not lay hand on it, he reflected that perhaps the young man had left it in his room, where he often wrote at night. And, without taking a decision, pursued by the thought of this note, he went quickly up to fetch it, in the room.

On entering, M. Hennebeau had a surprise: the room was not made up, no doubt an oversight or laziness of Hippolyte's. A damp heat reigned there, the enclosed heat of a whole night, made heavier by the mouth of the radiator, left open; and his nostrils were taken, he suffocated in a penetrating perfume, which he thought was the smell of the toilet waters, of which the basin was full. A great disorder cluttered the room, scattered clothes, wet towels thrown over the backs of seats, the bed gaping, a sheet torn off, trailing on to the carpet. Besides, he had at first only a distracted glance, he had gone towards a table covered with papers, and there sought the note that could not be found. Twice he examined the papers one by one, it was decidedly not there. Where the devil could that scatter-brained Paul have stuffed it?

“Stories of the world, in your language.”