AS he ascended in the cage heaped up with four others, étienne resolved to continue his famished course along the roads. One might as well die at once as go down to the bottom of that hell, where it was not even possible to earn one’s bread. Catherine, in the tram above him, was no longer at his side with her pleasant enervating warmth; and he preferred to avoid foolish thoughts and to go away, for with his wider education he felt nothing of the resignation of this flock; he would end by strangling one of the masters.
Suddenly he was blinded. The ascent had been so rapid that he was stunned by the daylight, and his eyelids quivered in the brightness to which he had already grown unaccustomed. It was none the less a relief to him to feel the cage settle on to the bars. A lander opened the door, and a flood of workmen leapt out of the trams.
“I say, Mouquet,” whispered Zacharie in the lander’s ear, “are we off to the Volcan to-night?”
The Volcan was a café-concert at Montsou. Mouquet winked his left eye with a silent laugh which made his jaws gape. Short and stout like his father, he had the impudent face of a fellow who devours everything without care for the morrow. Just then Mouquette came out in her turn, and he gave her a formidable smack on the flank by way of fraternal tenderness.
étienne hardly recognized the lofty nave of the receiving-hall, which had before looked imposing in the ambiguous light of the lanterns. It was simply bare and dirty; a dull light entered through the dusty windows. The engine alone shone at the end with its copper; the well-greased steel cables moved like ribbons soaked in ink, and the pulleys above, the enormous scaffold which supported them, the cages, the trams, all this prodigality of metal made the hall look sombre with their hard grey tones of old iron. Without ceasing, the rumbling of the wheels shook the metal floor; while from the coal thus put in motion there arose a fine charcoal powder which powdered black the soil, the walls, even the joists of the steeple.
But Chaval, after glancing at the table of counters in the receiver’s little glass office, came back furious. He had discovered that two of their trains had been rejected, one because it did not contain the regulation amount, the other because the coal was not clean.
“This finishes the day,” he cried. “Twenty sous less again! This is because we take on lazy rascals who use their arms as a pig does his tail!”
And his sidelong look at étienne completed his thought.
The latter was tempted to reply by a blow. Then he asked himself what would be the use since he was going away. This decided him absolutely.
“It’s not possible to do it right the first day,” said Maheu, to restore peace; “he’ll do better to-morrow.”
They were all none the less soured, and disturbed by the need to quarrel. As they passed to the lamp cabin to give up their lamps, Levaque began to abuse the lamp-man, whom he accused of not properly cleaning his lamp. They only slackened down a little in the shed where the fire was still burning. It had even been too heavily piled up, for the stove was red and the vast room, without a window, seemed to be in flames, to such a degree did the reflection make bloody the walls. And there were grunts of joy, all the backs were roasted at a distance till they smoked like soup. When their flanks were burning they cooked their bellies. Mouquette had tranquilly let down her breeches to dry her chemise. Some lads were making fun of her; they burst out laughing because she suddenly showed them her posterior, a gesture which in her was the extreme expression of contempt.
“I’m off,” said Chaval, who had shut up his tools in his box.
No one moved. Only Mouquette hastened, and went out behind him on the pretext that they were both going back to Montsou. But the others went on joking; they knew that he would have no more to do with her.
Catherine, however, who seemed preoccupied, was speaking in a low voice to her father. The latter was surprised; then he agreed with a nod; and calling étienne to give him back his bundle:
“Listen,” he said: “you haven’t a sou; you will have time to starve before the fortnight’s out. Shall I try and get you credit somewhere?”
The young man stood for a moment confused. He had been just about to claim his thirty sous and go. But shame restrained him before the young girl. She looked at him fixedly; perhaps she would think he was shirking the work.
“You know I can promise you nothing,” Maheu went on. “They can but refuse us.”
Then étienne consented. They would refuse. Besides, it would bind him to nothing, he could still go away after having eaten something. Then he was dissatisfied at not having refused, seeing Catherine’s joy, a pretty laugh, a look of friendship, happy at having been useful to him. What was the good of it all?
When they had put on their sabots and shut their boxes, the Maheus left the shed, following their comrades, who were leaving one by one after they had warmed themselves. étienne went behind. Levaque and his urchin joined the band. But as they crossed the screening place a scene of violence stopped them.
It was in a vast shed, with beams blackened by the powder, and large shutters, through which blew a constant current of air. The coal trains arrived straight from the receiving-room, and were then overturned by the tipping-cradles on to hoppers, long iron slides; and to right and to left of these the screeners, mounted on steps and armed with shovels and rakes, separated the stone and swept together the clean coal, which afterwards fell through funnels into the railway wagons beneath the shed.
Philoméne Levaque was there, thin and pale, with the sheep-like face of a girl who spat blood. With head protected by a fragment of blue wool, and hands and arms black to the elbows, she was screening beneath an old witch, the mother of Pierronne, the Brulé, as she was called, with terrible owl’s eyes, and a mouth drawn in like a miser’s purse. They were abusing each other, the young one accusing the elder of raking her stones so that she could not get a basketful in ten minutes. They were paid by the basket, and these quarrels were constantly arising. Hair was flying, and hands were making black marks on red faces.
“Give it her bloody well!” cried Zacharie, from above, to his mistress.
All the screeners laughed. But the Brulé turned snappishly on the young man.
“Now, then, dirty beast! You’d better to own the two kids you have filled her with. Fancy that, a slip of eighteen, who can’t stand straight!”
Maheu had to prevent his son from descending to see, as he said, the colour of this carcass’s skin.
A foreman came up and the rakes again began to move the coal. One could only see, all along the hoppers, the round backs of women squabbling incessantly over the stones.
Outside, the wind had suddenly quieted; a moist cold was falling from a grey sky. The colliers thrust out their shoulders, folded their arms, and set forth irregularly, with a rolling gait which made their large bones stand out beneath their thin garments. In the daylight they looked like a band of Negroes thrown into the mud. Some of them had not finished their briquets; and the remains of the bread carried between the shirt and the jacket made them humpbacked.
“Hallo! there’s Bouteloup.” said Zacharie, grinning.
Levaque without stopping exchanged two sentences with his lodger, a big dark fellow of thirty-five with a placid, honest air:
“Is the soup ready, Louis?”
“I believe it is.”
“Then the wife is good-humoured to-day.”
“Yes, I believe she is.”
Other miners bound for the earth-cutting came up, new bands which one by one were engulfed in the pit. It was the three o’clock descent, more men for the pit to devour, the gangs who would replace the sets of the pike. men at the bottom of the passages. The mine never rested; day and night human insects were digging out the rock six hundred metres below the beetroot fields.
However, the youngsters went ahead. Jeanlin confided to Bébert a complicated plan for getting four sous’ worth of tobacco on credit, while Lydie followed respectfully at a distance. Catherine came with Zacharie and étienne. None of them spoke. And it was only in front of the Avantage Inn that Maheu and Levaque rejoined them.
“Here we are,” said the former to étienne; “will you come in?”
They separated. Catherine had stood a moment motionless, gazing once more at the young man with her large eyes full of greenish limpidity like spring water, the crystal deepened the more by her black face. She smiled and disappeared with the others on the road that led up to the settlement.
The inn was situated between the village and the mine, at the crossing of two roads. It was a two-storied brick house, whitewashed from top to bottom, enlivened around the windows by a broad pale-blue border. On a square sign-board nailed above the door, one read in yellow letters: A l’Avantage, licensed to Rasseneur. Behind stretched a skittle-ground enclosed by a hedge. The Company, who had done everything to buy up the property placed within its vast territory, was in despair over this inn in the open fields, at the very entrance of the Voreux.
“Go in,” said Maheu to étienne.
The little parlour was quite bare with its white walls, its three tables and its dozen chairs, its deal counter about the size of a kitchen dresser. There were a dozen glasses at most, three bottles of liqueur, a decanter, a small zinc tank with a pewter tap to hold the beer; and nothing else — not a figure, not a little table, not a game. In the metal f............