AT four o’clock the moon had set, and the night was very dark. Everything was still asleep at Deneulin’s; the old brick house stood mute and gloomy, with closed doors and windows, at the end of the large ill-kept garden which separated it from the Jean-Bart mine. The other frontage faced the deserted road to Vandame, a large country town, about three kilometres off, hidden behind the forest.
Deneulin, tired after a day spent in part below, was snoring with his face toward the wall, when he dreamt that he had been called. At last he awoke, and really hearing a voice, got out and opened the window. One of his captains was in the garden.
“What is it, then?” he asked.
“There’s a rebellion, sir; half the men will not work, and are preventing the others from going down.”
He scarcely understood, with head heavy and dazed with sleep, and the great cold struck him like an icy douche.
“Then make them go down, by George!” he stammered.
“It’s been going on an hour,” said the captain. “Then we thought it best to come for you. Perhaps you will be able to persuade them.”
“Very good; I’ll go.”
He quickly dressed himself, his mind quite clear now, and very anxious. The house might have been pillaged; neither the cook nor the man-servant had stirred. But from the other side of the staircase alarmed voices were whispering; and when he came out he saw his daughters’ door open, and they both appeared in white dressing-gowns, slipped on in haste.
“Father, what is it?”
Lucie, the elder, was already twenty-two, a tall dark girl, with a haughty air; while Jeanne, the younger, as yet scarcely nineteen years old, was small, with golden hair and a certain caressing grace.
“Nothing serious,” he replied, to reassure them. “It seems that some blusterers are making a disturbance down there. I am going to see.”
But they exclaimed that they would not let him go before he had taken something warm. If not, he would come back ill, with his stomach out of order, as he always did. He struggled, gave his word of honour that he was too much in a hurry.
“Listen!” said Jeanne, at last, hanging to his neck, “you must drink a little glass of rum and eat two biscuits, or I shall remain like this, and you’ll have to take me with you.”
He resigned himself, declaring that the biscuits would choke him. They had already gone down before him, each with her candlestick. In the dining-room below they hastened to serve him, one pouring out the rum, the other running to the pantry for the biscuits. Having lost their mother when very young, they had been rather badly brought up alone, spoilt by their father, the elder haunted by the dream of singing on the stage, the younger mad over painting in which she showed a singular boldness of taste. But when they had to retrench after the embarrassment in their affairs, these apparently extravagant girls had suddenly developed into very sensible and shrewd managers, with an eye for errors of centimes in accounts. Today, with their boyish and artistic demeanour, they kept the purse, were careful over sous, haggled with the tradesmen, renovated their dresses unceasingly, and in fact, succeeded in rendering decent the growing embarrassment of the house.
“Eat, papa,” repeated Lucie.
Then, remarking his silent gloomy preoccupation, she was again frightened.
“Is it serious, then, that you look at us like this? Tell us; we will stay with you, and they can do without us at that lunch.”
She was speaking of a party which had been planned for the morning, Madame Hennebeau was to go in her carriage, first for Cécile, at the Grégoires’, then to call for them, so that they could all go to Marchiennes to lunch at the Forges, where the manager’s wife had invited them. It was an opportunity to visit the workshops, the blast furnaces, and the coke ovens.
“We will certainly remain,” declared Jeanne, in her turn.
But he grew angry.
“A fine idea! I tell you that it is nothing. Just be so good as to get back into your beds again, and dress yourselves for nine o’clock, as was arranged.”
He kissed them and hastened to leave. They heard the noise of his boots vanishing over the frozen earth in the garden.
Jeanne carefully placed the stopper in the rum bottle, while Lucie locked up the biscuits. The room had the cold neatness of dining-rooms where the table is but meagrely supplied. And both of them took advantage of this early descent to see if anything had been left uncared for the evening before. A serviette lay about, the servant should be scolded. At last they were upstairs again.
While he was taking the shortest cut through the narrow paths of his kitchen garden, Deneulin was thinking of his compromised fortune, this Montsou denier, this million which he had realized, dreaming to multiply it tentold, and which was to-day running such great risks. It was an uninterrupted course of ill-luck, enormous and unforeseen repairs, ruinous conditions of exploitation, then the disaster of this industrial crisis, just when the profits were beginning to come in. If the strike broke out here, he would be overthrown. He pushed a little door: the buildings of the pit could be divined in the black night, by the deepening of the shadow, starred by a few lanterns.
Jean-Bart was not so important as the Voreux, but its renewed installation made it a pretty pit, as the engineers say. They had not been contented by enlarging the shaft one metre and a half, and deepening it to seven hundred and eight metres, they had equipped it afresh with a new engine, new cages, entirely new material, all set up according to the latest scientific improvements; and even a certain seeking for elegance was visible in the constructions, a screening-shed with carved frieze, a steeple adorned with a clock, a receiving-room and an engine-room both rounded into an apse like a Renaissance chapel, and surmounted by a chimney with a mosaic spiral made of black bricks and red bricks. The pump was placed on the other shaft of the concession, the old Gaston-Marie pit, reserved solely for this purpose. Jean-Bart, to right and left of the winding-shaft, only had two conduits, that for the steam ventilator and that for the ladders.
In the morning, ever since three o’clock, Chaval, who had arrived first, had been seducing his comrades, convincing them that they ought to imitate those at Montsou, and demand an increase of five centimes a tram. Soon four hundred workmen had passed from the shed into the receiving-room, in the midst of a tumult of gesticulation and shouting. Those who wished to work stood with their lamps, barefooted, with shovel or pick beneath their arms; while the others, still in their sabots, with their overcoats on their shoulders because of the great cold, were barring the shaft; and the captains were growing hoarse in the effort to restore order, begging them to be reasonable and not to prevent those who wanted from going down.
But Chaval was furious when he saw Catherine in her trousers and jacket, her head tied up in the blue cap. On getting up, he had roughly told her to stay in bed. In despair at this arrest of work she had followed him all the same, for he never gave her any money; she often had to pay both for herself and him; and what was to become of her if she earned nothing? She was overcome by fear, the fear of a brothel at Marchiennes, which was the end of putter-girls without bread and without lodging.
“By God!” cried Chaval, “what the devil have you come here for?”
She stammered that she had no income to live on and that she wanted to work.
“Then you put yourself against me, wench? Back you go at once, or I’ll go back with you and kick my sabots into your backside.”
She recoiled timidly but she did not leave, resolved to see how things would turn out. Deneulin had arrived by the screening-stairs. In spite of the weak light of the lanterns, with a quick look he took in the scene, with this rabble wrapt in shadow; he knew every face — the pike-men, the porters, the landers, the putters, even the trammers. In the nave, still new and clean, the arrested task was waiting; the steam in the engine, under pressure, made slight whistling sounds; the cages were hanging motionless to the cables; the trains, abandoned on the way, were encumbering the metal floors. Scarcely eighty lamps had been taken; the others were flaming in the lamp cabin. But no doubt a word from him would suffice, and the whole life of labour would begin again.
“Well, what’s going on then, my lads?” he asked in a loud voice. “What are you angry about? Just explain to me and we will see if we can agree.”
He usually behaved in a paternal way towards his men, while at the same time demanding hard work. With an authoritative, rough manner, he had tried to conquer them by a good nature which had its outbursts of passion, and he often gained their love; the men especially respected in him his courage, always in the cuttings with them, the first in danger whenever an accident terrified the pit. Twice, after fire-damp explosions, he had been let down, fastened by a rope under his armpits, when the bravest drew back.
“Now,” he began again, “you are not going to make me repent of having trusted you. You know that I have refused police protection. Talk quietly and I will hear you.”
All were now silent and awkward, moving away from him; and it was Chaval who at last said:
“Well, Monsieur Deneulin, we can’t go on working; we must have five centimes more the tram.”
He seemed surprised.
“What! five centimes! and why this demand? I don’t complain about your timbering, I don’t want to impose a new tariff on you like the Montsou directors.”
“Maybe! but the Montsou mates are right, all the same. They won’t have the tariff, and they want a rise of five centimes because it is not possible to work properly at the present rat............