Part 19 (1/2)

Etienne, forewarned, hastened to come up with Maheu. He himself was becoming intoxicated and carried away by this hot fever of revenge. He struggled, however, and entreated them to be calm, now that, with cut cables, extinguished fires, and empty boilers, work was impossible. He was not always listened to; and was again about to be carried away by the crowd, when hoots arose outside at a little low door where the ladder pa.s.sage emerged.

”Down with the traitors!--Oh! the dirty chops of the cowards!--Down with them! down with them!”

The men were beginning to come up from below. The first arrivals, blinded by the daylight, stood there with quivering eyelids. Then they moved away, trying to gain the road and flee.

”Down with the cowards! down with the traitors!”

The whole band of strikers had run up. In less than three minutes there was not a man left in the buildings; the five hundred Montsou men were ranged in two rows, and the Vandame men, who had had the treachery to go down, were forced to pa.s.s between this double hedge. And as every fresh miner appeared at the door of the pa.s.sage, covered with the black mud of work and with garments in rags, the hooting redoubled, and ferocious jokes arose. Oh! look at that one!--three inches of legs and then his a.r.s.e! and this one with his nose eaten by those Volcan girls! and this other, with eyes p.i.s.sing out enough wax to furnish ten cathedrals! and this other, the tall fellow without a rump and as long as Lent! An enormous putter-woman, who rolled out with her breast to her belly and her belly to her backside, raised a furious laugh. They wanted to handle them, the joking increased and was turning to cruelty, blows would soon have rained; while the row of poor devils came out s.h.i.+vering and silent beneath the abuse, with sidelong looks in expectation of blows, glad when they could at last rush away out of the mine.

”Hallo! how many are there in there?” asked Etienne. He was astonished to see them still coming out, and irritated at the idea that it was not a mere handful of workers, urged by hunger, terrorized by the captains. They had lied to him, then, in the forest; nearly all Jean-Bart had gone down. But a cry escaped from him and he rushed forward when he saw Chaval standing on the threshold. ”By G.o.d! is this the rendezvous you called us to?”

Imprecations broke out and there was a movement of the crowd towards the traitor. What! he had sworn with them the day before, and now they found him down below with the others! Was he, then, making fools of people?

”Off with him! To the shaft! to the shaft!”

Chaval, white with fear, stammered and tried to explain. But Etienne cut him short, carried out of himself and sharing the fury of the bank.

”You wanted to be in it, and you shall be in it. Come on! take your d.a.m.ned snout along!”

Another clamour covered his voice. Catherine, in her turn, had just appeared, dazzled by the bright sunlight, and frightened at falling into the midst of these savages. She was panting, with legs aching from the hundred and two ladders, and with bleeding palms, when Maheude, seeing her, rushed forward with her hand up.

”Ah! s.l.u.t! you, too! When your mother is dying of hunger you betray her for your bully!”

Maheu held back her arm, and stopped the blow. But he shook his daughter; he was enraged, like his wife; he threw her conduct in her face, and both lost their heads, shouting louder than their mates.

The sight of Catherine had completed Etienne's exasperation. He repeated: ”On we go to the other pits, and you come with us, you dirty devil!”

Chaval had scarcely time to get his sabots from the shed and to throw his woollen jacket over his frozen shoulders. They all dragged him on, forcing him to run in the midst of them. Catherine, bewildered, also put on her sabots, b.u.t.toning at her neck her man's old jacket, with which she kept off the cold; and she ran behind her lover, she would not leave him, for surely they were going to murder him.

Then in two minutes Jean-Bart was emptied. Jeanlin had found a horn and was blowing it, producing hoa.r.s.e sounds, as though he were gathering oxen together. The women--Mother Brule, the Levaque, and Mouquette--raised their skirts to run, while Levaque, with an axe in his hand, manipulated it like a drum-major's stick. Other men continued to arrive; they were nearly a thousand, without order, again flowing on to the road like a torrent let loose. The gates were too narrow, and the palings were broken down.

”To the pits!--Down with the traitors!--No more work!”

And Jean-Bart fell suddenly into a great silence. Not a man was left, not a breath was heard. Deneulin came out of the captains' room, and quite alone, with a gesture forbidding any one to follow him, he went over the pit. He was pale and very calm.

At first he stopped before the shaft, lifting his eyes to look at the cut cables; the steel ends hung useless, the bite of the file had left a living scar, a fresh wound which gleamed in the black grease. Afterwards he went up to the engine, and looked at the crank, which was motionless, like the joint of a colossal limb struck by paralysis. He touched the metal, which had already cooled, and the cold made him shudder as though he had touched a corpse. Then he went down to the boiler-room, walked slowly before the extinguished stoves, yawning and inundated, and struck his foot against the boilers, which sounded hollow. Well! it was quite finished; his ruin was complete. Even if he mended the cables and lit the fires, where would he find men? Another fortnight's strike and he would be bankrupt. And in this certainty of disaster he no longer felt any hatred of the Montsou brigands; he felt that all had a complicity in it, that it was a general agelong fault. They were brutes, no doubt, but brutes who could not read, and who were dying of hunger.

Chapter 4.

AND the troop went off over the flat plain, white with frost beneath the pale winter sun, and overflowed the path as they pa.s.sed through the beetroot fields.

From the Fourche-aux-Boeufs, Etienne had a.s.sumed command. He cried his orders while the crowd moved on, and organized the march. Jeanlin galloped at the head, performing barbarous music on his horn. Then the women came in the first ranks, some of them armed with sticks: Maheude, with wild eyes seemed to be seeking afar for the promised city of justice, Mother Brule, the Levaque woman, Mouquette, striding along beneath their rags, like soldiers setting out for the seat of war. If they had any encounters, we should see if the police dared to strike women. And the men followed in a confused flock, a stream that grew larger and larger, bristling with iron bars and dominated by Levaque's single axe, with its blade glistening in the sun. Etienne, in the middle, kept Chaval in sight, forcing him to walk before him; while Maheu, behind, gloomily kept an eye on Catherine, the only woman among these men, obstinately trotting near her lover for fear that he would be hurt. Bare heads were dishevelled in the air; only the clank of sabots could be heard, like the movement of released cattle, carried away by Jeanlin's wild trumpeting.

But suddenly a new cry arose: ”Bread! bread! bread!”

It was midday; the hunger of six weeks on strike was awaking in these empty stomachs, whipped up by this race across the fields. The few crusts of the morning and Mouquette's chestnuts had long been forgotten; their stomachs were crying out, and this suffering was added to their fury against the traitors.

”To the pits! No more work! Bread!”

Etienne, who had refused to eat his share at the settlement, felt an unbearable tearing sensation in his chest. He made no complaint, but mechanically took his tin from time to time and swallowed a gulp of gin, shaking so much that he thought he needed it to carry him to the end. His cheeks were heated and his eyes inflamed. He kept his head, however, and still wished to avoid needless destruction.

As they arrived at the Joiselle road a Vandame pike-man, who had joined the band for revenge on his master, impelled the men towards the right, shouting: ”To Gaston-Marie! Must stop the pump! Let the water ruin Jean-Bart!”

The mob was already turning, in spite of the protests of Etienne, who begged them to let the pumping continue. What was the good of destroying the galleries? It offended his workman's heart, in spite of his resentment. Maheu also thought it unjust to take revenge on a machine. But the pikeman still shouted his cry of vengeance, and Etienne had to cry still louder: ”To Mirou! There are traitors down there! To Mirou! to Mirou!”

With a gesture, he had turned the crowd towards the left road; while Jeanlin, going ahead, was blowing louder than ever. An eddy was produced in the crowd; this time Gaston-Marie was saved.

And the four kilometres which separated them from Mirou were traversed in half an hour, almost at running pace, across the interminable plain. The ca.n.a.l on this side cut it with a long icy ribbon. The leafless trees on the banks, changed by the frost into giant candelabra, alone broke this pale uniformity, prolonged and lost in the sky at the horizon as in a sea. An undulation of the ground hid Montsou and Marchiennes; there was nothing but bare immensity.

They reached the pit, and found a captain standing on a footbridge at the screening-shed to receive them. They all well knew Father Quandieu, the doyen of the Montsou captains, an old man whose skin and hair were quite white, and who was in his seventies, a miracle of fine health in the mines.

”What have you come after here, you pack of meddlers?” he shouted.

The band stopped. It was no longer a master, it was a mate; and a certain respect held them back before this old workman.

”There are men down below,” said Etienne. ”Make them come up.”

”Yes, there are men there,” said Father Quandieu, ”some six dozen; the others were afraid of you evil beggars! But I warn you that not one comes up, or you will have to deal with me!”

Exclamations arose, the men pushed, the women advanced. Quickly coming down from the footbridge, the captain now barred the door.

Then Maheu tried to interfere.

”It is our right, old man. How can we make the strike general if we don't force all the mates to be on our side?”

The old man was silent a moment. Evidently his ignorance on the subject of coalition equalled the pike-man's. At last he replied: ”It may be your right, I don't say. But I only know my orders. I am alone here; the men are down till three, and they shall stay there till three.”

The last words were lost in hooting. Fists were threateningly advanced, the women deafened him, and their hot breath blew in his face. But he still held out, his head erect, and his beard and hair white as snow; his courage had so swollen his voice that he could be heard distinctly over the tumult.

”By G.o.d! you shall not pa.s.s! As true as the sun s.h.i.+nes, I would rather die than let you touch the cables. Don't push any more, or I'm d.a.m.ned if I don't fling myself down the shaft before you!”

The crowd drew back shuddering and impressed. He went on: ”Where is the beast who does not understand that? I am only a workman like you others. I have been told to guard here, and I'm guarding.”

That was as far as Father Quandieu's intelligence went, stiffened by his obstinacy of military duty, his narrow skull, and eyes dimmed by the black melancholy of half a century spent underground. The men looked at him moved, feeling within them an echo of what he said, this military obedience, the sense of fraternity and resignation in danger. He saw that they were hesitating still, and repeated: ”I'm d.a.m.ned if I don't fling myself down the shaft before you!”

A great recoil carried away the mob. They all turned, and in the rush took the right-hand road, which stretched far away through the fields. Again cries arose: ”To Madelaine! To Crevecoeur! no more work! Bread! bread!”

But in the centre, as they went on, there was hustling. It was Chaval, they said, who was trying to take advantage of an opportunity to escape. Etienne had seized him by the arm, threatening to do for him if he was planning some treachery. And the other struggled and protested furiously: ”What's all this for? Isn't a man free? I've been freezing the last hour. I want to clean myself. Let me go!”

He was, in fact, suffering from the coal glued to his skin by sweat, and his woollen garment was no protection.

”On you go, or we'll clean you,” replied Etienne. ”Don't expect to get your life at a bargain.”

They were still running, and he turned towards Catherine, who was keeping up well. It annoyed him to feel her so near him, so miserable, s.h.i.+vering beneath her man's old jacket and her muddy trousers. She must be nearly dead of fatigue, she was running all the same.

”You can go off, you can,” he said at last.