Germinal - Emile Zola [131]
When M. Hennebeau came back into the dining-room, he found his guests sitting silent and motionless in front of their liqueurs. He quickly briefed Deneulin, whose expression grew even more sombre. Then, as he drank his cold coffee, everyone tried to talk about something else. But the Grégoires themselves returned to the subject of the strike and expressed their astonishment that there were no laws preventing the workers from leaving their work. Paul tried to reassure Cécile, saying that the gendarmes were on their way.
Finally Mme Hennebeau summoned her servant:
‘Hippolyte, would you open the windows before we go into the drawing-room and let some fresh air in?’
III
A fortnight had elapsed, and on the Monday of the third week the attendance lists sent to management indicated a further reduction in the number of men working underground. They had been counting on a general return to work that morning, but because of the Board’s intransigence the miners’ resistance was hardening. Le Voreux, Crèecœur, Mirou and Madeleine were no longer the only pits out on strike; at La Victoire and Feutry-Cantel barely a quarter of the colliers were going down; and even Saint-Thomas was now affected. Gradually the strike was spreading.
At Le Voreux a heavy silence hung over the pit-yard with that hushed vacancy of a deserted workplace where labour has ceased and life departed. Along the overhead railway, etched against the grey December sky, three or four abandoned tubs sat with the mute dejection of mere things. Underneath, between the trestle-supports, the dwindling coal-piles had left the ground bare and black; and the stock of timbering stood rotting in the rain. At the canal jetty a half-laden barge lay abandoned, as though dozing on the murky water; while up on the deserted spoil-heap, where decomposing sulphide continued to smoke despite the wet, the shafts of a solitary cart rose forlornly into the air. But it was the buildings especially that seemed to be sinking into torpor: the screening-shed with its closed shutters, the headgear that had ceased to echo with the rumble of the pit-head beneath, and the boiler-house where the fire-grates had cooled and whose huge chimney now seemed excessively wide for the occasional wisp of smoke. The winding-engine was fired up only in the mornings. The stablemen delivered fodder to the horses down the pit, where the sole people working were the deputies, miners once more as they endeavoured to prevent the damage to the roads that inevitably occurs when these are no longer properly maintained. From nine o’clock onwards any further maintenance work had to be carried out by using the ladders for access. And over these lifeless buildings, wrapped in their black shroud of coal-dust, hung the steam from the drainage-pump as it continued its slow, heavy panting, the last vestiges of life in a pit, which would be destroyed by flooding if this panting should ever stop.
Opposite, on its plateau, Village Two Hundred and Forty seemed dead also. The Prefect had hastened from Lille to visit the scene, and gendarmes had patrolled the roads; but with the strikers remaining perfectly calm, Prefect and gendarmes alike had decided to return home. Never had the village set a better example throughout the vast plain. The men would sleep all day to avoid going drinking; the women rationed their consumption of coffee and became more reasonable, less obsessed with gossip and feuding; and even the gangs of children seemed to understand, so well behaved that they ran about barefoot and scrapped without making a noise. The watchword, repeated and passed on from person to person, was simple: there was to be no trouble.
Nevertheless the Maheus’ house was constantly full of people coming and going. It was here that Étienne, as secretary, had shared out the three thousand francs in the provident fund among the most needy families. After that a few hundred francs more had come in from various sources, some as