Part 36

--And you, do you talk too of going back down into the pit, after you've thrown us all in there?... I'm not blaming you. Only, if I were in your place, I'd be dead of grief by now, for having done the comrades so much harm.

He wanted to answer, then he gave a gesture of despairing shoulders: what was the use of explaining, when she wouldn't understand, in her sorrow? And, suffering too much, he went away, he took up his frantic pacing outside again.

There again, he found the mining settlement seeming to wait for him, the men on the doorsteps, the women at the windows. As soon as he appeared, growls ran through it, the crowd grew. A breath of gossip had been swelling for four days, burst now into a universal curse. Fists were shaken at him, mothers pointed him out to their boys with a gesture of rancor, old men spat as they looked at him. It was the turnabout of the days after defeat, the fatal reverse of popularity, an execration exasperated by all the sufferings endured without result. He paid for the hunger and the death.

Zacharie, arriving with Philomène, jostled Étienne as the latter came out. And he sneered, maliciously.

--Look! he's getting fat, so he feeds on other people's skin!

Already, the Levaque woman had advanced onto her doorstep, in company with Bouteloup. She spoke of Bébert, her lad killed by a bullet, she cried:

--Yes, there are cowards who get children massacred. Let him go fetch mine out of the earth, if he wants to give her back to me!

She forgot her man was a prisoner, the household wasn't idle, since Bouteloup stayed. Yet the thought came back to her, she continued in a shrill voice:

--Go on! it's the scoundrels who walk about, when the honest folk are in the shade!

Étienne, to avoid her, had fallen upon Pierronne, who had come running across the gardens. The latter had received as a deliverance the death of her mother, whose violences threatened to get them hanged; and she scarcely wept either for Pierron's little one, that hussy Lydie, a real relief. But she was siding with the neighbors, in the idea of reconciling herself.

--And my mother, eh? and the little girl? You were seen, you were hiding behind them, when they swallowed lead in your place!

What to do? throttle Pierronne and the others, fight against the settlement? Étienne had the urge for an instant. The blood roared in his head, he now called the comrades brutes, he was irritated to see them unintelligent and barbarous, to the point of blaming himself for the logic of facts. How stupid! A disgust came to him at his powerlessness to subdue them again; and he contented himself with hastening his step, as if deaf to the insults. Soon, it was a flight, each house hooted him as he passed, they hounded his heels, a whole people cursed him with a voice gradually thundering, in the overflow of hatred. It was he, the exploiter, the assassin, the single cause of their misfortune. He left the settlement, pale, distraught, galloping, with that yelling band behind his back. At last, on the road, many let go of him; but a few persisted, when, at the bottom of the slope, in front of the Avantage, he met another group, coming out of the Voreux.

Old Mouque and Chaval were there. Since the death of the Mouquette, his daughter, and of his boy, Mouquet, the old man continued his stableman's service, without a word of regret or complaint. Suddenly, when he caught sight of Étienne, a fury shook him, and tears burst from his eyes, and a landslide of foul words sprang from his black and bleeding mouth, from chewing so much tobacco.

--Bastard! pig! son of a bitch!... Wait, you've got my poor wretches of children to pay me for, you've got to go through it!

He picked up a brick, broke it, flung the two pieces.

--Yes, yes, clean him up! cried Chaval, who sneered, very excited, delighted at this revenge. Each in his turn... There you are against the wall, dirty scum!

And he too rushed at Étienne, with stones. A savage clamor rose, all took bricks, broke them, threw them, to gut him, as they had wanted to gut the soldiers. Stunned, he no longer fled, he faced them, seeking to calm them with phrases. His old speeches, so warmly acclaimed once, came back to his lips. He repeated the words with which he had made them drunk, at the time when he held them in his hand, like a faithful flock; but his power was dead, only stones answered him; and he had just been wounded in the left arm, he was retreating, in great peril, when he found himself cornered against the façade of the Avantage.

For an instant, Rasseneur had been on his doorstep.

--Come in, he said simply.

Étienne hesitated, it stifled him, to take refuge there.

--Come in, I'll talk to them.

He resigned himself, he hid at the back of the room, while the tavern-keeper blocked the door with his broad shoulders.

--Come now, friends, be reasonable... You know well I never deceived you. I was always for calm, and if you'd listened to me, you surely wouldn't be where you are.

Nodding his shoulders and his belly, he went on at length, he let flow his easy eloquence, of a soothing softness like tepid water. And all his former success returned to him, he reconquered his popularity without effort, naturally, as if the comrades hadn't hooted him and called him coward, a month earlier. Voices approved him: very good! we're with him! that's how one should talk! A thunder of applause broke out.

Behind, Étienne was fainting, his heart drowned in bitterness. He remembered Rasseneur's prediction, in the forest, when the latter had threatened him with the ingratitude of crowds. What imbecile brutality! what abominable forgetting of services rendered! It was a blind force that constantly devoured itself. And, beneath his anger at seeing these brutes spoil their cause, there was the despair of his own collapse, of the tragic end of his ambition. Eh what! was it already over? He remembered having, under the beeches, heard three thousand chests beat to the echo of his own. That day, he had held his popularity in both hands, that people belonged to him, he had felt himself its master. Mad dreams made him drunk then: Montsou at his feet, Paris over there, deputy perhaps, striking the bourgeois with a speech, the first speech pronounced by a worker from the tribune of a parliament. And it was over! he awoke wretched and hated, his people had just seen him off with bricks.

Rasseneur's voice rose.

--Violence never succeeded, you can't remake the world in a day. Those who promised you to change everything at a stroke are jokers or scoundrels!

--Bravo! bravo! cried the crowd.

Who then was the guilty one? and this question Étienne asked himself, finished overwhelming him. Truly, was it his fault, this misfortune from which he himself was bleeding, the misery of some, the throat-cutting of others, those women, those children, wasted and without bread? He had had that lamentable vision, one evening, before the catastrophes. But already a force lifted him, he found himself carried away with the comrades. Besides, he had never directed them, it was they who led him, who obliged him to do things he wouldn't have done, without the push of that mob behind him. At each violence, he had remained in stupor at the events, for he had foreseen and willed none of them. Could he have expected, for example, that his faithful of the settlement would one day stone him? Those madmen lied, when they accused him of having promised them a life of eating and idleness. And, in this justification, in the reasonings with which he tried to fight his remorse, stirred the dull unease of not having shown himself equal to his task, that doubt of the half-learned which always tormented him. But he felt out of courage, he was no longer even of one heart with the comrades, he was afraid of them, of that enormous mass, blind and irresistible of the people, passing like a force of nature, sweeping all, outside rules and theories. A repugnance had gradually detached him from it, the unease of his refined tastes, the slow rising of all his being toward a superior class.

At this moment, Rasseneur's voice was lost amid enthusiastic vociferations.

--Long live Rasseneur! he's the only one, bravo, bravo!

The tavern-keeper closed the door again, while the band dispersed; and the two men looked at each other in silence. Both shrugged their shoulders. They ended by drinking a mug together.

That same day, there was a grand dinner at the Piolaine, where the engagement of Négrel and Cécile was celebrated. The Grégoires, since the day before, had had the dining room waxed and the salon dusted. Mélanie reigned in the kitchen, watching the roasts, turning the sauces, whose smell rose even to the attics. It had been decided that the coachman Francis would help Honorine serve. The gardener's wife was to wash the dishes, the gardener would open the gate. Never had such a gala aired out the great patriarchal and well-to-do house.

Everything went for the best in the world. Madame Hennebeau showed herself charming to Cécile, and she smiled at Négrel, when the notary of Montsou, gallantly, proposed to drink to the happiness of the future household. M. Hennebeau was also very amiable. His laughing air struck the guests, the rumor ran that, back in favor near the Management, he would soon be made officer of the Legion of Honor, for the energetic way in which he had tamed the strike. They avoided speaking of the latest events, but there was triumph in the general joy, the dinner turned to the official celebration of a victory. At last, one was delivered, one began again to eat and sleep in peace! A discreet allusion was made to the dead whose blood the mud of the Voreux had scarcely drunk: it was a necessary lesson, and all were moved, when the Grégoires added that, now, each one's duty was to go dress the wounds, in the settlements. They, had resumed their benevolent placidity, excusing their brave miners, seeing them already, at the bottom of the pits, giving the good example of a secular resignation. The notables of Montsou, who no longer trembled, agreed that the question of wages demanded to be studied prudently. At the roast, the victory became complete, when M. Hennebeau read a letter from the bishop, where the latter announced the transfer of the abbé Ranvier. All the bourgeoisie of the province commented with passion the story of this priest, who called the soldiers assassins. And the notary, as dessert appeared, very resolutely posed as a free thinker.

Deneulin was there, with his two daughters. In the midst of this rejoicing, he strove to hide the melancholy of his ruin. That very morning, he had signed the sale of his Vandame concession to the Montsou Company. Cornered, gutted, he had submitted to the demands of the managers, finally loosening them this prey so long watched, barely drawing from them the money necessary to pay his creditors. Even he had accepted, at the last moment, as a happy chance, their offer to keep him on as division engineer, resigned to thus supervise, as a simple wage-earner, this pit where he had engulfed his fortune. It was the death-knell of small personal enterprises, the near disappearance of the masters, eaten one by one by the ever-hungry ogre of capital, drowned in the rising flood of the great Companies. He alone paid the costs of the strike, he felt well that they drank to his disaster, in drinking to M. Hennebeau's rosette; and he consoled himself a little only before the fine pluck of Lucie and Jeanne, charming in their refitted dresses, laughing at the rout, as pretty tomboy girls, disdainful of money.

When they passed to the salon for coffee, M. Grégoire took his cousin aside and congratulated him on the courage of his decision.

--What would you have? your only fault was to risk at Vandame the million of your Montsou capital. You gave yourself terrible trouble, and there it is melted in that dog's work, while mine, which hasn't budged from my drawer, still feeds me sensibly doing nothing, as it will feed the children of my grandchildren.

II

On Sunday, Étienne slipped out of the settlement, as soon as night fell. A very pure sky, studded with stars, lit the earth with a blue dusk clarity. He went down toward the canal, he followed the bank slowly, going up on the Marchiennes side. It was his favorite walk, a grassy path of two leagues, running straight, along that geometrical water, which unrolled like an endless ingot of molten silver.

Never did he meet anyone there. But, that day, he was put out, seeing a man come toward him. And, under the pale starlight, the two solitary walkers recognized each other only face to face.

--Well! it's you, murmured Étienne.

Souvarine nodded his head without answering. For an instant, they remained motionless; then, side by side, they set off again toward Marchiennes. Each seemed to continue his reflections, as if very far from the other.

--Did you see in the paper Pluchart's success in Paris? asked Étienne at last. They expected him on the sidewalk, they gave him an ovation, coming out of that Belleville meeting... Oh! there he's launched, despite his cold. He'll go where he wants, from now on.

The engine-man shrugged his shoulders. He had the contempt of fine talkers, of fellows who enter politics as one enters the bar, to win rents there, with phrases.

Étienne, now, was onto Darwin. He had read fragments, summarized and vulgarized in a five-sou volume; and, from this misunderstood reading, he made himself a revolutionary idea of the struggle for existence, the lean eating the fat, the strong people devouring the pale bourgeoisie. But Souvarine grew angry, poured out on the stupidity of the socialists who accept Darwin, that apostle of scientific inequality, whose famous selection was good only for aristocratic philosophers. However, the comrade persisted, wanted to reason, and he expressed his doubts by a hypothesis: the old society no longer existed, one had swept away even the crumbs; well, was it not to be feared that the new world would slowly grow back spoiled with the same injustices, some sick and others hearty, some more skillful, more intelligent, fattening on everything, and the others imbecile and lazy, becoming slaves again? Then, before this vision of eternal misery, the engine-man cried in a fierce voice that, if justice was not possible with man, man must disappear. As many rotten societies, as many massacres, until the extermination of the last being. And silence fell again.

For a long time, head low, Souvarine walked on the fine grass, so absorbed, that he followed the extreme edge of the water, with the tranquil certainty of a sleeping man, dreaming along the gutters. Then, he started without cause, as if he had bumped against a shadow. His eyes lifted, his face appeared, very pale; and he said softly to his companion:

--Did I ever tell you how she died?

--Who?

--My wife, over there, in Russia.

Étienne made a vague gesture, surprised at the trembling of the voice, at this sudden need for confidence, in this boy usually impassive, in his stoic detachment from others and himself. He only knew that the woman was a mistress, and that she had been hanged, at Moscow.

--The affair hadn't gone, told Souvarine, his eyes now lost on the white flight of the canal, between the blued colonnades of the great trees. We had stayed fourteen days at the bottom of a hole, mining the railway track; and it wasn't the imperial train, it was a passenger train that blew up... Then, they arrested Annouchka. She brought us bread every evening, disguised as a peasant woman. It was she too who had lit the fuse, because a man might have been noticed... I followed the trial, hidden in the crowd, for six long days...

His voice entangled, he was taken with a fit of coughing, as if he were choking.

--Twice, I had the urge to cry out, to leap over the heads, to join her. But what for? one man less, is one soldier less; and I guessed well that she was saying no to me, with her great fixed eyes, when hers met mine.

He coughed again.

--The last day, on the square, I was there... It was raining, the clumsy ones lost their heads, disturbed by the driving rain. They had taken twenty minutes, to hang four others: the rope broke, they couldn't finish the fourth... Annouchka was standing upright, waiting. She didn't see me, she was searching for me in the crowd. I climbed on a stone block, and she saw me, our eyes no longer left each other. When she was dead, she was still looking at me... I waved my hat, I left.

There was a new silence. The white alley of the canal unrolled to infinity, both walked with the same muffled step, as if fallen back each into his isolation. At the bottom of the horizon, the pale water seemed to open the sky with a thin gap of light.

--It was our punishment, continued Souvarine harshly. We were guilty of loving each other... Yes, it is good that she is dead, heroes will be born of her blood, and I, I have no more cowardice in my heart... Ah! nothing, neither parents, nor wife, nor friend! nothing that makes the hand tremble, the day one must take others' lives or give one's own!

Étienne had stopped, shivering, under the cool night. He didn't argue, he simply said:

--We are far, do you want us to go back?

They came back toward the Voreux, with slowness, and he added, after a few steps:

--Did you see the new posters?

They were great yellow placards that the Company had again had pasted in the morning. It showed itself there more clear and more conciliatory, it promised to take back the book of the miners who would go down again the next day. All would be forgotten, pardon was offered even to the most compromised.

--Yes, I saw, answered the engine-man.

--Well! what do you think of it?

--I think, that it's over... The flock will go down again. You are all too cowardly.

Étienne, feverishly, excused the comrades: a man can be brave, a crowd dying of hunger is without strength. Step by step, they had come back to the Voreux; and, before the black mass of the pit, he continued, he swore never to go down again, he; but he forgave those who would go down again. Then, as the rumor ran that the carpenters hadn't had time to repair the tubbing, he wanted to know. Was it true? the pressure of the grounds against the wood which made a timber jacket for the shaft, had it so swollen them inward, that one of the cages scraped in passing, over a length of more than five meters? Souvarine, become silent again, answered briefly. He had still worked the day before, the cage did scrape indeed, the engine-men even had to double the speed, to pass at that spot. But all the heads received the observations with the same irritated phrase: it was coal they wanted, they would consolidate better later.

--See it burst! murmured Étienne. We'd be at the feast.

Eyes fixed on the pit, vague in the shadow, Souvarine concluded quietly:

--If it bursts, the comrades will know it, since you advise going back down.

Nine o'clock was striking at the steeple of Montsou; and, his companion having said he was going back to bed, he added, without even holding out his hand:

--Well! goodbye. I'm leaving.

--How, you're leaving?

--Yes, I asked for my book again, I'm going elsewhere.

Étienne, stupefied, moved, looked at him. It was after two hours of walking, that he told him this, and in so calm a voice, when the mere announcement of this sudden separation tightened his own heart. They had known each other, they had toiled together: it always makes one sad, the idea of never seeing each other again.

--You're leaving, and where are you going?

--Over there, I don't know.

--But will I see you again?

--No, I don't think so.

They were silent, they remained a moment face to face, without finding anything else to say to each other.

--Then, goodbye.

--Goodbye.

While Étienne went up to the settlement, Souvarine turned his back, returned to the bank of the canal; and there, alone now, he walked endlessly, head low, so drowned in darkness, that he was no more than a moving shadow of the night. At times, he stopped, he counted the hours, in the distance. When midnight struck, he left the bank and directed himself toward the Voreux.

At that moment, the pit was empty, he met there only a foreman, eyes heavy with sleep. They were only to fire up at two o'clock, for the resumption of work. First, he went up to take from the bottom of a cupboard a jacket which he pretended to have forgotten. Tools, a brace armed with its bit, a very strong small saw, a hammer and a chisel, were rolled in this jacket. Then, he set off again. But, instead of leaving by the shack, he slipped into the narrow corridor leading to the ladder shaft. And, his jacket under his arm, he descended softly, without lamp, measuring the depth by counting the ladders. He knew that the cage scraped at three hundred seventy-four meters, against the fifth course of the lower tubbing. When he had counted fifty-four ladders, he felt with his hand, he felt the swelling of the timber pieces. It was there.

Then, with the skill and coolness of a good workman who has long meditated on his task, he set to work. Right away, he began by sawing a panel in the partition of the ladder shaft, so as to communicate with the extraction compartment. And, by means of matches quickly lit and extinguished, he could make out the state of the tubbing and the recent repairs that had been made to it.

Between Calais and Valenciennes, the sinking of mine shafts met unheard-of difficulties, to cross the masses of water staying underground, in immense sheets, at the level of the lowest valleys. Only, the construction of tubbings, of those timber pieces joined together like the staves of a barrel, managed to contain the inflowing sources, to isolate the shafts, amid the lakes whose deep and obscure waves beat their walls. It had been necessary, in sinking the Voreux, to establish two tubbings: that of the upper level, in the slipping sands and white clays neighboring the cretaceous terrain, fissured everywhere, swollen with water like a sponge; then, that of the lower level, directly above the coal terrain, in a yellow sand of a fineness of flour, flowing with a liquid fluidity; and it was there that the Torrent was found, that subterranean sea, the terror of the northern coal mines, a sea with its storms and its shipwrecks, an unknown sea, unfathomable, rolling its black waves, more than three hundred meters from the sun. Usually, the tubbings held good, under the enormous pressure. They feared little but the settling of the neighboring grounds, shaken by the continuous work of the old exploitation galleries, which were filling up. In this descent of rocks, sometimes lines of fracture occurred, propagated slowly to the timbers, which they deformed in the long run, pushing them back inside the shaft; and the great danger was there, a threat of cave-in and inundation, the pit filled with the avalanche of earth and the deluge of sources.

Souvarine, astride in the opening made by him, noted a very grave deformation of the fifth course of the tubbing. The timber pieces bellied out, outside the frames; several even had come out of their shoulder. Abundant filtrations, "pichoux" as the miners say, sprang from the joints, through the tarred oakum packing with which they were stuffed. And the carpenters, pressed for time, had contented themselves with placing iron brackets at the angles, with such carelessness, that all the screws were not put in. A considerable movement was evidently producing itself behind, in the sands of the Torrent.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”