The french masters, p.887
The French Masters, page 887
They led him away; the hustling of the crowd had thrown the first ranks against the staircase so that the rail was twisted. It was the women who pushed and screamed and urged on the men. The door yielded at once; it was a door without a lock, simply closed by a latch. But the staircase was too narrow for the pushing crowd, which would have taken long to get in if the rear of the besiegers had not gone off to enter by other openings. Then they poured in on all sides — by the shed, the screening-place, the boiler buildings. In less than five minutes the whole pit belonged to them; they swarmed at every storey in the midst of furious gestures and cries, carried away by their victory over this master who resisted.
Maheu, in terror, had rushed forward among the first, saying to Étienne:
“They must not kill him!”
The latter was already running; then, when Étienne understood that Deneulin had barricaded himself in the captains’ room, he replied:
“Well, would it be our fault? such a madman!” He was feeling anxious, however, being still too calm to yield to this outburst of anger. His pride of leadership also suffered on seeing the band escape from his authority and become enraged, going beyond the cold execution of the will of the people, such as he had anticipated. In vain he called for coolness, shouting that they must not put right on their enemies’ side by acts of useless destruction.
“To the boilers!” shouted Mother Brulé. “Put out the fires!”
Levaque, who had found a file, was brandishing it like a dagger, dominating the tumult with a terrible cry:
“Cut the cables! cut the cables!”
Soon they all repeated this; only Étienne and Maheu continued to protest, dazed, and talking in the tumult without obtaining silence. At last the former was able to say:
“But there are men below, mates!”
The noise redoubled and voices arose from all sides:
“So much the worse! — Ought not to go down! — Serve the traitors right! — Yes, yes, let them stay there! — And then, they have the ladders!”
Then, when this idea of the ladders had made them still more obstinate, Étienne saw that he would have to yield. For fear of a greater disaster he hastened towards the engine, wishing at all events to bring the cages up, so that the cables, being cut above the shaft, should not smash them by falling down with their enormous weight. The engine-man had disappeared as well as the few daylight workers; and he took hold of the starting lever, manipulating it while Levaque and two other climbed up the metal scaffold which supported the pulleys. The cages were hardly fixed on the keeps when the strident sound was heard of the file biting into the steel. There was deep silence, and this noise seemed to fill the whole pit; all raised their heads, looking and listening, seized by emotion. In the first rank Maheu felt a fierce joy possess him, as if the teeth of the file would deliver them from misfortune by eating into the cable of one of these dens of wretchedness, into which they would never descend again.
But Mother Brulé had disappeared by the shed stairs still shouting:
“The fires must be put out! To the boilers! to the boilers!”
Some women followed her. Maheude hastened to prevent them from smashing everything, just as her husband had tried to reason with the men. She was the calmest of them; one could demand one’s rights without making a mess in people’s places. When she entered the boiler building the women were already chasing away the two stokers, and the Brulé, armed with a large shovel, and crouching down before one of the stoves, was violently emptying it, throwing the red-hot coke on to the brick floor, where it continued to burn with black smoke. There were ten stoves for the five boilers. Soon the women warmed to the work, the Levaque manipulating her shovel with both hands, Mouquette raising her clothes up to her thighs so as not to catch fire, all looking red in the reflection of the flames, sweating and dishevelled in this witch’s kitchen. The piles of coal increased, and the burning heat cracked the ceiling of the vast hall.
“Enough, now!” cried Maheude; “the store-room is afire.”
“So much the better,” replied Mother Brulé. “That will do the work. Ah, by God! haven’t I said that I would pay them out for the death of my man!”
At this moment Jeanlin’s shrill voice was heard:
“Look out! I’ll put it out, I will! I’ll let it all off!”
He had come in among the first, and had kicked his legs about among the crowd, delighted at the fray and seeking out what mischief he could do; the idea had occurred to him to turn on the discharge taps and let off the steam.
The jets came out with the violence of volleys; the five boilers were emptied with the sound of a tempest, whistling in such a roar of thunder that one’s ears seemed to bleed. Everything had disappeared in the midst of the vapour, the hot coal grew pale, and the women were nothing more than shadows with broken gestures. The child alone appeared mounted on the gallery, behind the whirlwinds of white steam, filled with delight and grinning broadly in the joy of unchaining this hurricane.
This lasted nearly a quarter of an hour. A few buckets of water had been thrown over the heaps to complete their extinction; all danger of a fire had gone by, but the anger of the crowd had not subsided; on the contrary, it had been whipped up. Men went down with hammers, even the women armed themselves with iron bars; and they talked of smashing boilers, of breaking engines, and of demolishing the mine.
Étienne, 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 passage 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 pass between this double hedge. And as every fresh miner appeared at the door of the passage, 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 arse! and this one with his nose eaten by those Volcan girls! and this other, with eyes pissing 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 shivering 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 Étienne. 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 God! 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 Étienne 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 damned 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! slut! 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 Étienne’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, buttoning 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 hoarse sounds, as though he were gathering oxen together. The women — Mother Brulé, 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 passed through the beetroot fields.
From the Fourche-aux-Boeufs, Étienne had assumed 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 Brulé, 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. Étienne, 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!”
Étienne, 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 Étienne, 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 Étienne 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 canal 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 Étienne. “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 God! you shall not pass! As true as the sun shines, I would rather die than let you touch the cables. Don’t push any more, or I’m damned 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 damned 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 Crévecoeur! 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. Étienne 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 Étienne. “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, shivering 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.
Catherine seemed not to hear. Her eyes, on meeting Étienne’s, only flamed with reproach for a moment. She did not stop. Why did he want her to leave her man? Chaval was not at all kind, it was true; he would even beat her sometimes. But he was her man, the one who had had her first; and it enraged her that they should throw themselves on him — more than a thousand of them. She would have defended him without any tenderness at all, out of pride.
