Part 8

--Oh! the poor little darlings! cried Cécile, are they pale from having been out in the cold!... Honorine, go and fetch the parcel, from the wardrobe.

The maids, too, were looking at these wretches, with the pity and the touch of anxiety of girls who were not worried about their own dinner. While the lady's maid went upstairs, the cook forgot herself, set the rest of the brioche on the table, and stood there with her hands hanging.

--Just so, Cécile went on, I still have two wool dresses and some shawls... You'll see, they'll be warm, the poor little darlings!

Then Maheude found her tongue again, stammering:

--Thank you kindly, Miss... You are all so good...

Tears had filled her eyes; she felt sure of the hundred sous, and was only concerned about how she would ask for them, if they were not offered. The lady's maid did not reappear; there was a moment of embarrassed silence. In the folds of their mother's skirts, the little ones opened wide eyes and contemplated the brioche.

--You have only these two? asked Madame Grégoire, to break the silence.

--Oh! Madame, I have seven.

M. Grégoire, who had gone back to reading his paper, gave an indignant start.

--Seven children, but why? good Lord!

--It is imprudent, murmured the old lady.

Maheude made a vague gesture of excuse. What would you have? one didn't think of it, they came naturally. And then, when they grew up, they brought something in, they kept the house going. Thus, in their family, they would have got along, if they hadn't had the grandfather who was going all stiff, and if, among the lot, only two of his boys and his eldest daughter had been old enough to go down the pit. Still had to feed the little ones who did nothing.

--Then, Madame Grégoire resumed, you have worked in the mines for a long time?

A silent laugh lit up Maheude's pale face.

--Ah! yes, ah! yes... Me, I went down till I was twenty. The doctor said I'd stay there, when I had my second confinement, because, it seems, it displaced things in my bones. Besides, it was then I got married, and I had quite enough to do at home... But, on my husband's side, you see, they've been in it since time immemorial. It goes back to the grandfather of the grandfather, in fact nobody knows, right at the beginning, when they struck the first pick blow over there, at Réquillart.

Dreamily, M. Grégoire looked at this woman and these pitiful children, with their waxen flesh, their discoloured hair, the degeneracy that shrank them, eaten up with anaemia, of a sad ugliness of the starving. A new silence fell; nothing was heard but the coal burning with a burst of gas. The damp room had that heavy air of well-being in which corners of bourgeois happiness fall asleep.

--What is she doing? cried Cécile, impatient. Mélanie, go up and tell her the parcel is at the bottom of the wardrobe, on the left.

Meanwhile, M. Grégoire spoke aloud the reflections inspired in him by the sight of these starving folk.

--One has hardship in this world, that's true enough; but, my good woman, it must also be said that the workers are hardly wise... Thus, instead of putting aside a few sous like our peasants, the miners drink, run up debts, end by having no longer the wherewithal to feed their families.

--The gentleman is right, Maheude answered composedly. One isn't always on the right road. That's what I tell the good-for-nothings, when they complain... Me, I was well off, my husband doesn't drink. All the same, on wedding Sundays, he sometimes takes too much; but it never goes further. The thing is all the nicer on his part, since before our marriage he drank like a true pig, begging your pardon... And yet, see, it doesn't get us much further, that he's reasonable. There are days, like today, when you might turn out every drawer in the house, without a farthing dropping.

She wanted to put the idea of the hundred-sous piece into their heads; she went on in her soft voice, explaining the fatal debt, timid at first, soon enlarged and devouring. One paid regularly for fortnights. But one day, one fell behind, and that was the end, it was never made up. The hole deepened, the men took a disgust to work, which didn't even let them clear themselves. Go to the devil! one was in the mess till death. Besides, one had to understand everything: a collier needed a pot of beer to sweep away the dust. It began with that, then he no longer left the tavern, when the worries came. Perhaps, without complaining of anyone, the workers nevertheless didn't earn enough.

--I thought, said Madame Grégoire, that the Company gave you rent and firing.

Maheude gave an oblique glance at the flaming coal in the fireplace.

--Yes, yes, they give us coal, not too famous, but it burns all the same... As for rent, it's only six francs a month: it doesn't look like anything, and often it's jolly hard to pay... Thus, today, me, you might cut me in pieces, you wouldn't get two sous out of me. Where there's nothing, there's nothing.

The gentleman and lady were silent, stretched out snugly, little by little bored and ill at ease, before this display of misery. She feared she had wounded them; she added in her just and calm air of a practical woman:

--Oh! it's not to complain. Things are so, one must accept them; all the more since we might struggle as we would, we'd doubtless change nothing... The best still, isn't it? Monsieur and Madame, is to try to do one's business honestly, in the place where the good God put you.

M. Grégoire highly approved.

--With such sentiments, my good woman, one is above misfortune.

Honorine and Mélanie at last brought the parcel. It was Cécile who unwrapped it and took out the two dresses. She added shawls, even stockings and mittens. All that would do wonderfully; she hurried, had the maids wrap up the chosen garments; for her piano teacher had just arrived, and she was pushing the mother and children toward the door.

--We are sorely short, stammered Maheude, if we had only a hundred-sous piece...

The sentence choked, for the Maheus were proud and did not beg. Cécile, anxious, looked at her father; but he refused flatly, with an air of duty.

--No, it isn't our custom. We cannot.

Then the young girl, moved by the mother's distraught face, wanted to fill the children. They were still staring fixedly at the brioche; she cut two portions, which she handed to them.

--Here! it's for you.

Then, she took them back, asked for an old newspaper.

--Wait, you'll share with your brothers and sisters.

And, under the softened looks of her parents, she finished pushing them outside. The poor mites, who had no bread, went off, holding this brioche respectfully, in their little hands numbed with cold.

Maheude dragged her children onto the pavement, no longer saw the deserted fields, nor the black mud, nor the great livid sky that was turning. When she crossed Montsou again, she went resolutely into Maigrat's and begged so hard that she ended by carrying off two loaves, coffee, butter, and even her hundred-sous piece, for the man also lent at the little week. It wasn't of her he wanted, it was of Catherine: she understood this, when he recommended her to send her daughter for the provisions. They'd see about that. Catherine would slap him, if he breathed too close under her nose.

III

Eleven o'clock was striking at the little church of the coron des Deux-Cent-Quarante, a brick chapel where Abbé Joire came to say mass on Sundays. Next door, in the school, also of brick, one could hear the drawling voices of the children, despite the windows shut against the outside cold. The broad paths, divided into small backed gardens, remained deserted, between the four great uniform blocks of houses; and these gardens, ravaged by winter, spread the sadness of their marly soil, humped and dirtied by the last vegetables. They were making soup, the chimneys smoked, a woman appeared now and then along the façades, opened a door, disappeared. From end to end, on the paved sidewalk, the downpipes dripped into barrels, although it was not raining, so charged with moisture was the grey sky. And this village, built at a stroke in the middle of the vast plateau, bordered by its black roads like a hem of mourning, had no other gaiety than the regular bands of its red tiles, ceaselessly washed by the showers.

When Maheude came home, she made a detour to go buy potatoes, from the wife of an overlooker, who still had some of her crop. Behind a curtain of stunted poplars, the only trees on these flat grounds, was a group of isolated buildings, houses four by four, surrounded by their gardens. As the Company reserved this new attempt for the deputy-overmen, the workers had nicknamed this corner of the hamlet the coron des Bas-de-Soie; just as they called their own coron Pay-Your-Debts, with a good-natured irony of their misery.

--Phew! here we are, said Maheude, laden with parcels, pushing Lénore and Henri in ahead of her, muddy, their legs dead.

Before the fire, Estelle howled, rocked in Alzire's arms. The latter, having no more sugar, not knowing how to silence her, had decided to pretend to give her the breast. This pretence often succeeded. But this time, though she bared her chest, stuck the child's mouth on her thin breast of an eight-year-old invalid, the baby enraged at biting the skin and drawing nothing from it.

--Pass her to me, cried the mother, as soon as she was free of her load. She won't let us say a word.

When she had taken from her bodice a breast heavy as a wineskin, and the squaller had hung at the spout, abruptly mute, they could at last talk. Besides, all was well, the little housewife had kept up the fire, swept, tidied the room. And, in the silence, one heard upstairs the grandfather snoring, with the same rhythmic snore, which had not stopped an instant.

--What things! murmured Alzire, smiling at the provisions. If you like, maman, I'll make the soup.

The table was cluttered: a parcel of clothes, two loaves, potatoes, butter, coffee, chicory and half a pound of pork cheese.

--Oh! the soup! said Maheude with a weary air, we'd have to go gather sorrel and pull up leeks... No, I'll make some later for the men... Put potatoes to boil, we'll eat them with a bit of butter... And coffee, eh? don't forget the coffee!

But suddenly the idea of the brioche came back to her. She looked at the empty hands of Lénore and Henri, who were fighting on the floor, already rested and lively. Had these gluttons, on the way, slyly eaten the brioche! She slapped them, while Alzire, who was putting the pot on the fire, tried to calm her.

--Leave them, maman. If it's for me, you know the brioche is all the same to me. They were hungry, from having gone so far on foot.

Noon struck, one heard the clogs of the lads coming out of school. The potatoes were cooked, the coffee, thickened with a good half of chicory, was passing through the filter, with a singing noise of big drops. A corner of the table was cleared; but the mother alone ate there, the three children contented themselves with their knees; and, all the while, the little boy, who was of a mute voracity, turned without a word toward the pork cheese, whose greasy paper excited him.

Maheude was drinking her coffee in little sips, both hands around the glass to warm them, when father Bonnemort came down. Usually, he got up later, his breakfast waiting on the fire. But, that day, he began to grumble, because there was no soup. Then, when his daughter-in-law told him one didn't always do as one pleased, he ate his potatoes in silence. From time to time, he got up, went to spit in the ashes, for cleanliness; and, then huddled on his chair, he rolled the food to the back of his mouth, head low, eyes dim.

--Ah! I forgot, maman, said Alzire, the neighbour came...

Her mother interrupted her.

--She annoys me!

It was a dull grudge against Levaque, who had cried poverty the evening before, to lend her nothing; and she knew her to be just at ease, at that moment, the lodger Bouteloup having advanced her fortnight. In the coron, they rarely lent from one household to another.

--Look! you remind me, Maheude went on, wrap up a coffee mill... I'll take it back to Pierronne, to whom I owe it from the day before yesterday.

And, when her daughter had prepared the parcel, she added that she would come straight back to put the men's soup on the fire. Then, she went out with Estelle in her arms, leaving old Bonnemort slowly grinding his potatoes, while Lénore and Henri fought to eat the fallen peelings.

Maheude, instead of going round, cut straight across, through the gardens, for fear Levaque might call her. Just so, her garden backed onto that of the Pierrons; and there was, in the broken trellis separating them, a hole through which they neighboured. The common well was there, serving four households. Next, behind a clump of stunted lilacs, was the carin, a low shed, full of old tools, and where one raised, one by one, the rabbits eaten on feast days. One o'clock struck, it was the hour of coffee, not a soul showed at doors or windows. Only, a surface-worker, waiting for the descent, dug his corner of vegetables, without raising his head. But, as Maheude arrived opposite, at the other block, she was surprised to see appear, before the church, a gentleman and two ladies. She stopped a second, she recognised them: it was Madame Hennebeau, showing the coron to her guests, the decorated gentleman and the lady in a fur coat.

--Oh! why did you take that trouble? cried Pierronne, when Maheude had returned her coffee. It wasn't urgent.

She was twenty-eight, passed for the pretty woman of the coron, brunette, low forehead, large eyes, narrow mouth; and coquettish with it, of a cat's cleanliness, the bosom still fine, for she had had no child. Her mother, la Brûlé, widow of a hewer dead in the mine, after sending her daughter to work in a factory, swearing she would never marry a collier, had not ceased to rage, since the latter married late to Pierron, a widower still, who had a girl of eight. However, the household lived very happily, amid the gossip, the stories that ran on the husband's complaisance and the wife's lovers: not a debt, meat twice a week, a house so neatly kept, one would have mirrored in the saucepans. For surplus of luck, thanks to protections, the Company had authorised her to sell sweets and biscuits, which she displayed in jars on two boards, behind the window panes. It was six or seven sous gain a day, sometimes twelve on Sunday. And, in this happiness, there was only mother Brûlé who howled with her rage of an old revolutionary, having to avenge her man's death against the bosses, and little Lydie who pocketed in too frequent slaps the liveliness of the family.

--How big she already is! Pierronne went on, making faces at Estelle.

--Ah! the trouble that gives, don't speak to me of it! said Maheude. You're lucky not to have any. At least, you can keep clean.

Although, at her place, all was in order, and she washed every Saturday, she threw a jealous housewife's glance at this so bright room, where there was even coquetry, gilt vases on the buffet, a mirror, three framed engravings.

Meanwhile, Pierronne was drinking her coffee alone, all her folk being at the pit.

--You'll have a glass with me, she said.

--No, thanks, I've just swallowed mine.

--What does it matter?

Indeed, it didn't matter. And both drank slowly. Between the jars of biscuits and sweets, their looks had stopped on the houses opposite, which aligned, at the windows, their little curtains, whose more or less whiteness told the virtues of the housewives. Those of the Levaques were very dirty, true dishcloths, that seemed to have wiped the bottoms of the pots.

--If it's possible to live in such filth! murmured Pierronne.

Then Maheude left and stopped no more. Ah! if she had had a lodger like that Bouteloup, it was she who would have wanted to make her household go! When one knew how to set about it, a lodger became an excellent business. Only, one mustn't sleep with him. And then, the husband drank, beat his wife, ran after the café-concert singers of Montsou.

Pierronne took an air profoundly disgusted. Those singers, they gave all the diseases. There was one, at Joiselle, who had poisoned a pit.

--What astonishes me, is that you let your son go with their girl.

--Ah! yes, just try to stop that!... Their garden is against ours. In summer, Zacharie was always with Philomène behind the lilacs, and they didn't spare themselves on the carin, one couldn't draw water at the well without surprising them.

It was the common story of the coron's promiscuities, the boys and girls rotting together, throwing themselves arse over, as they said, on the low sloping roof of the carin, as soon as night fell. All the putters made there their first child, when they didn't take the trouble to go make it at Réquillart or in the corn. It didn't come to much, they married afterwards, only the mothers got angry, when the boys began too soon, for a boy who married no longer brought in to the family.

--In your place, I'd rather finish it, Pierronne resumed wisely. Your Zacharie has already filled her twice, and they'll go further to stick together... Anyway, the money's lost.

Maheude, furious, spread her hands.

--Listen to that: I curse them, if they stick together... Doesn't Zacharie owe us respect? He's cost us, hasn't he? well! he must pay us back, before burdening himself with a woman... What would become of us, eh? if our children worked right away for others? Might as well die then!

However, she calmed.

--I speak generally, we'll see later... He's jolly strong, your coffee: you put the right amount.

And, after a quarter-hour of other talk, she fled, crying that her men's soup wasn't made. Outside, the children were going back to school, a few women showed at the doors, looked at Madame Hennebeau, who was skirting one of the façades, explaining the coron with her finger to her guests. This visit was beginning to stir the village. The surface-man stopped a moment from digging, two worried hens startled in the gardens.

As Maheude came in, she stumbled on Levaque, who had come out to jump at the passing of Doctor Vanderhaghen, a Company doctor, little hurried man, crushed with work, who gave his consultations on the run.

--Monsieur, she said, I don't sleep any more, I ache all over... We should talk of it though.

He tutoyed them all, he answered without stopping:

--Leave me alone! you drink too much coffee.

--And my husband, Monsieur, said in her turn Maheude, you were to come see him... He still has his leg pains.

--It's you who wear him out, leave me alone!

The two women remained planted, watching the doctor's back flee.

--Come in, Levaque went on, when she had exchanged with her neighbour a despairing shrug. You know there's news... And you'll take a bit of coffee. It's quite fresh.

Maheude, who was struggling, was without strength. Come! a drop all the same, not to offend her. And she went in.

The room was of a black filth, the floor and walls stained with grease, the buffet and table smeared with grime; and a stench of ill-kept household took the throat. Near the fire, elbows on the table, nose sunk in his plate, Bouteloup, still young for his thirty-five years, finished a remnant of boiled beef, with his thick build of a placid big lad; while, standing against him, little Achille, the first-born of Philomène, who was already entering his three years, looked at him with the suppliant and mute air of a greedy beast. The lodger, very tender under a great brown beard, from time to time stuffed a bit of his meat into the child's mouth.

--Wait till I sugar it, said Levaque, putting the brown sugar in the coffee-pot beforehand.

She, older than him by six years, was frightful, worn, the bosom on the belly and the belly on the thighs, with a flattened muzzle of greyish hairs, always uncombed. He had taken her naturally, without peeling her more than his soup, where he found hairs, and than his bed, whose sheets served three months. She entered into the board; the husband liked to repeat that good accounts make good friends.

--So, it was to tell you, she continued, that they saw last evening Pierronne prowling toward the Bas-de-Soie. The gentleman you know was waiting for her behind Rasseneur, and they slipped away together along the canal... Eh? it's nice, a married woman!

--Lord! said Maheude, Pierron before marrying her gave rabbits to the deputy-overman, now it costs him less to lend his wife.

Bouteloup burst into an enormous laugh and threw a sopped crumb of bread into Achille's mouth. The two women were finishing relieving themselves on Pierronne's account, a coquette no prettier than another, but always busy visiting the pores of her skin, washing, putting on pomade. Finally, it concerned the husband, if he liked that bread. There were men so ambitious they would have wiped the chiefs, just to hear them say thank you. And they were interrupted only by the arrival of a neighbour who brought back a nine-month brat, Désirée, the last of Philomène: the latter, breakfasting at the screening, arranged for her little one to be brought there, and she suckled her, seated a moment in the coal.

--Mine, I can't leave her a minute, she squalls right off, said Maheude looking at Estelle, who had fallen asleep on her arms.

But she did not succeed in avoiding the demand which she had for a moment read in Levaque's eyes.

--Say, we'd ought to think of finishing it though.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”