The French Masters, page 872
From this time a slow transformation took place in Étienne. Certain instincts of refinement and comfort which had slept during his poverty were now revealed. He began to buy cloth garments; he also bought a pair of elegant boots; he became a big man. The whole settlement grouped round him. The satisfaction of his self-love was delicious; he became intoxicated with this first enjoyment of popularity; to be at the head of others, to command, he who was so young, and but the day before had been a mere labourer, this filled him with pride, and enlarged his dream of an approaching revolution in which he was to play a part. His face changed: he became serious and put on airs, while his growing ambition inflamed his theories and pushed him to ideas of violence.
But autumn was advancing, and the October cold had blighted the little gardens of the settlement. Behind the thin lilacs the trammers no longer tumbled the putters over on the shed, and only the winter vegetables remained, the cabbages pearled with white frost, the leeks and the salads. Once more the rains were beating down on the red tiles and flowing down into the tubs beneath the gutters with the sound of a torrent. In every house the stove piled up with coal was never cold, and poisoned the close parlours. It was the season of wretchedness beginning once more.
In October, on one of the first frosty nights, Étienne, feverish after his conversation below, could not sleep. He had seen Catherine glide beneath the coverlet and then blow out the candle. She also appeared to be quite overcome, and tormented by one of those fits of modesty which still made her hasten sometimes, and so awkwardly that she only uncovered herself more. In the darkness she lay as though dead; but he knew that she also was awake, and he felt that she was thinking of him just as he was thinking of her: this mute exchange of their beings had never before filled them with such trouble. The minutes went by and neither he nor she moved, only their breathing was embarrassed in spite of their efforts to retain it. Twice over he was on the point of rising and taking her. It was idiotic to have such a strong desire for each other and never to satisfy it. Why should they thus sulk against what they desired? The children were asleep, she was quite willing; he was certain that she was waiting for him, stifling, and that she would close her arms round him in silence with clenched teeth. Nearly an hour passed. He did not go to take her, and she did not turn round for fear of calling him. The more they lived side by side, the more a barrier was raised of shames, repugnancies, delicacies of friendship, which they could not explain even to themselves.
CHAPTER 4
“LISTEN,” said Maheude to her man, “when you go to Montsou for the pay, just bring me back a pound of coffee and a kilo of sugar.”
He was sewing one of his shoes, in order to spare the cobbling.
“Good!” he murmured, without leaving his task.
“I should like you to go to the butcher’s too. A bit of veal, eh? It’s so long since we saw it.”
This time he raised his head.
“Do you think, then, that I’ve got thousands coming in? The fortnight’s pay is too little as it is, with their confounded idea of always stopping work.”
They were both silent. It was after breakfast, one Saturday, at the end of October. The Company, under the pretext of the derangement caused by payment, had on this day once more suspended output in all their pits. Seized by panic at the growing industrial crisis, and not wishing to augment their already considerable stock, they profited by the smallest pretexts to force their ten thousand workers to rest.
“You know that Étienne is waiting for you at Rasseneur’s,” began Maheude again. “Take him with you; he’ll be more clever than you are in clearing up matters if they haven’t counted all your hours.”
Maheu nodded approval.
“And just talk to those gentlemen about your father’s affair. The doctor’s on good terms with the directors. It’s true, isn’t it, old un, that the doctor’s mistaken, and that you can still work?”
For ten days Father Bonnemort, with benumbed paws, as he said, had remained nailed to his chair. She had to repeat her question, and he growled:
“Sure enough, I can work. One isn’t done for because one’s legs are bad. All that is just stories they make up, so as not to give the hundred-and-eighty-franc pension.”
Maheude thought of the old man’s forty sous, which he would, perhaps, never bring in any more. and she uttered a cry of anguish:
“My God! we shall soon be all dead if this goes on.”
“When one is dead,” said Maheu, “‘one doesn’t get hungry.”
He put some nails into his shoes, and decided to set out. The Deux-Cent-Quarante settlement would not be paid till towards four o’clock. The men did not hurry, therefore, but waited about, going off one by one, beset by the women, who implored them to come back at once. Many gave them commissions, to prevent them forgetting themselves in public-houses.
At Rasseneur’s Étienne had received news. Disquieting rumours were flying about; it was said that the Company were more and more discontented over the timbering. They were overwhelming the workmen with fines, and a conflict appeared inevitable. That was, however, only the avowed dispute; beneath it there were grave and secret causes of complication.
Just as Étienne arrived, a comrade, who was drinking a glass on his return from Montsou, was telling that an announcement had been stuck up at the cashier’s; but he did not quite know what was on the announcement. A second entered, then a third, and each brought a different story. It seemed certain, however, that the Company had taken a resolution.
“What do you say about it, eh?” asked Étienne, sitting down near Souvarine at a table where nothing was to be seen but a packet of tobacco.
The engine-man did not hurry, but finished rolling his cigarette.
“I say that it was easy to foresee. They want to push you to extremes.”
He alone had a sufficiently keen intelligence to analyse the situation. He explained it in his quiet way. The Company, suffering from the crisis, had been forced to reduce their expenses if they were not to succumb, and it was naturally the workers who would have to tighten their bellies; under some pretext or another the Company would nibble at their wages. For two months the coal had been remaining at the surface of their pits, and nearly all the workshops were resting. As the Company did not dare to rest in this way, terrified at the ruinous inaction, they were meditating a middle course, perhaps a strike, from which the miners would come out crushed and worse paid. Then the new provident fund was disturbing them, as it was a threat for the future, while a strike would relieve them of it, by exhausting it when it was still small.
Rasseneur had seated himself beside Étienne, and both of them were listening in consternation. They could talk aloud, because there was no one there but Madame Rasseneur, seated at the counter.
“What an idea!” murmured the innkeeper; “what’s the good of it? The Company has no interest in a strike, nor the men either. It would be best to come to an understanding.”
This was very sensible. He was always on the side of reasonable demands. Since the rapid popularity of his old lodger, he had even exaggerated this system of possible progress, saying they would obtain nothing if they wished to have everything at once. In his fat, good-humoured nature, nourished on beer, a secret jealousy was forming, increased by the desertion of his bar, into which the workmen from the Voreux now came more rarely to drink and to listen; and he thus sometimes even began to defend the Company, forgetting the rancour of an old miner who had been turned off.
“Then you are against the strike?” cried Madame Rasseneur, without leaving the counter.
And as he energetically replied, “Yes!” she made him hold his tongue.
“Bah! you have no courage; let these gentlemen speak.”
Étienne was meditating, with his eyes fixed on the glass which she had served to him. At last he raised his head.
“I dare say it’s all true what our mate tells us, and we must get resigned to this strike if they force it on us. Pluchart has just written me some very sensible things on this matter. He’s against the strike too, for the men would suffer as much as the masters, and it wouldn’t come to anything decisive. Only it seems to him a capital chance to get our men to make up their minds to go into his big machine. Here’s his letter.”
In fact, Pluchart, in despair at the suspicion which the International aroused among the miners at Montsou, was hoping to see them enter in a mass if they were forced to fight against the Company. In spite of his efforts, Étienne had not been able to place a single member’s card, and he had given his best efforts to his provident fund, which was much better received. But this fund was still so small that it would be quickly exhausted, as Souvarine said, and the strikers would then inevitably throw themselves into the Working Men’s Association so that their brothers in every country could come to their aid.
“How much have you in the fund?” asked Rasseneur. “Hardly three thousand francs,” replied Étienne, “and you know that the directors sent for me yesterday. Oh! they were very polite; they repeated that they wouldn’t prevent their men from forming a reserve fund. But I quite understood that they wanted to control it. We are bound to have a struggle over that.”
The innkeeper was walking up and down, whistling contemptuously. “Three thousand francs! what can you do with that! It wouldn’t yield six days’ bread; and if we counted on foreigners, such as the people in England, one might go to bed at once and turn up one’s toes. No, it was too foolish, this strike!”
Then for the first time bitter words passed between these two men who usually agreed together at last, in their common hatred of capital.
“We shall see! and you, what do you say about it?” repeated Étienne, turning towards Souvarine.
The latter replied with his usual phrase of habitual contempt.
“A strike? Foolery!”
Then, in the midst of the angry silence, he added gently:
“On the whole, I shouldn’t say no if it amuses you; it ruins the one side and kills the other, and that is always so much cleared away. Only in that way it will take quite a thousand years to renew the world. Just begin by blowing up this prison in which you are all being done to death!”
With his delicate hand he pointed out the Voreux, the buildings of which could be seen through the open door. But an unforeseen drama interrupted him: Poland, the big tame rabbit, which had ventured outside, came bounding back, fleeing from the stones of a band of trammers; and in her terror, with fallen ears and raised tail, she took refuge against his legs, scratching and imploring him to take her up. When he had placed her on his knees, he sheltered her with both hands, and fell into that kind of dreamy somnolence into which the caress of this soft warm fur always plunged him.
Almost at the same time Maheu came in. He would drink nothing, in spite of the polite insistence of Madame Rasseneur, who sold her beer as though she made a present of it. Étienne had risen, and both of them set out for Montsou.
On pay-day at the Company’s Yards, Montsou seemed to be in the midst of a fete as on fine Sunday feast-days. Bands of miners arrived from all the settlements. The cashier’s office being very small, they preferred to wait at the door, stationed in groups on the pavement, barring the way in a crowd that was constantly renewed. Hucksters profited by the occasion and installed themselves with their movable stalls that sold even pottery and cooked meats. But it was especially the estaminets and the bars which did a good trade, for the miners before being paid went to the counters to get patience, and returned to them to wet their pay as soon as they had it in their pockets. But they were very sensible, except when they finished it at the Volcan. As Maheu and Étienne advanced among the groups they felt that on that day a deep exasperation was rising up. It was not the ordinary indifference with which the money was taken and spent at the publics. Fists were clenched and violent words were passing from mouth to mouth.
“Is it true, then,” asked Maheu of Chaval, whom he met before the Estaminet Piquette, “That they’ve played the dirty trick?”
But Chaval contented himself by replying with a furious growl, throwing a sidelong look on Étienne. Since the working had been renewed he had hired himself on with others, more and more bitten by envy against this comrade, the new-comer who posed as a boss and whose boots, as he said, were licked by the whole settlement. This was complicated by a lover’s jealousy. He never took Catherine to Réquillart now or behind the pit-bank without accusing her in abominable language of sleeping with her mother’s lodger; then, seized by savage desire, he would stifle her with caresses.
Maheu asked him another question:
“Is it the Voreux’s turn now?”
And when he turned his back after nodding affirmatively, both men decided to enter the Yards.
The counting-house was a small rectangular room, divided in two by a grating. On the forms along the wall five or six miners were waiting; while the cashier assisted by a clerk was paying another who stood before the wicket with his cap in his hand. Above the form on the left, a yellow placard was stuck up, quite fresh against the smoky grey of the plaster, and it was in front of this that the men had been constantly passing all the morning. They entered two or three at a time, stood in front of it, and then went away without a word, shrugging their shoulders as if their backs were crushed.
Two colliers were just then standing in front of the announcement, a young one with a square brutish head and a very thin old one, his face dull with age. Neither of them could read; the young one spelt, moving his lips, the old one contented himself with gazing stupidly. Many came in thus to look, without understanding.
“Read us that there!” said Maheu, who was not very strong either in reading, to his companion.
Then Étienne began to read him the announcement. It was a notice from the Company to the miners of all the pits, informing them that in consequence of the lack of care bestowed on the timbering, and being weary of inflicting useless fines, the Company had resolved to apply a new method of payment for the extraction of coal. Henceforward they would pay for the timbering separately, by the cubic metre of wood taken down and used, based on the quantity necessary for good work. The price of the tub of coal extracted would naturally be lowered, in the proportion of fifty centimes to forty, according to the nature and distance of the cuttings, and a somewhat obscure calculation endeavoured to show that this diminution of ten centimes would be exactly compensated by the price of the timbering. The Company added also that, wishing to leave every one time to convince himself of the advantages presented by this new scheme, they did not propose to apply it till Monday, the 1st of December.
“Don’t read so loud over there,” shouted the cashier. “We can’t hear what we are saying.”
Étienne finished reading without paying attention to this observation. His voice trembled, and when he had reached the end they all continued to gaze steadily at the placard. The old miner and the young one looked as though they expected something more; then they went away with depressed shoulders.
“Good God!” muttered Maheu.
He and his companions sat down absorbed, with lowered heads, and while files of men continued to pass before the yellow paper they made calculations. Were they being made fun of? They could never make up with the timbering for the ten centimes taken off the tram. At most they could only get to eight centimes, so the Company would be robbing them of two centimes, without counting the time taken by careful work. This, then, was what this disguised lowering of wages really came to. The Company was economizing out of the miners’ pockets.
“Good Lord! Good Lord!” repeated Maheu, raising his head. ‘“We should be bloody fools if we took that.”
But the wicket being free he went up to be paid. The heads only of the workings presented themselves at the desk and then divided the money between their men to save time.
“Maheu and associates,” said the clerk, “Filonniére seam, cutting No. 7.”
He searched through the lists which were prepared from the inspection of the tickets on which the captains stated every day for each stall the number of trains extracted. Then he repeated:
“Maheu and associates, Filonniére seam, cutting No. 7. One hundred and thirty-five francs.”
The cashier paid.
“Beg pardon, sir,” stammered the pikeman in surprise. “Are you sure you have not made a mistake?”
He looked at this small sum of money without picking it up, frozen by a shudder which went to his heart. It was true he was expecting bad payment, but it could not come to so little or he must have calculated wrong. When he had given their shares to Zacharie, Étienne, and the other mate who replaced Chaval, there would remain at most fifty francs for himself, his father, Catherine, and Jeanlin.
“No, no, I’ve made no mistake,” replied the clerk. “There are two Sundays and four rest days to be taken off; that makes nine days of work.” Maheu followed this calculation in a low voice: nine days gave him about thirty francs, eighteen to Catherine, nine to Jeanlin. As to Father Bonnemort, he only had three days. No matter, by adding the ninety francs of Zacharie and the two mates, that would surely make more.
“And don’t forget the fines,” added the clerk. “Twenty francs for fines for defective timbering.”
The pikeman made a gesture of despair. Twenty francs of fines, four days of rest! That made out the account. To think that he had once brought back a fortnight’s pay of full a hundred and fifty francs when Father Bonnemort was working and Zacharie had not yet set up house for himself!
