Germinal - Emile Zola [171]
He stopped. People started muttering. Some of the miners seemed to be having second thoughts, and several moved back towards the shaft.
‘At least let everyone decide for themselves,’ said one deputy. ‘Which of you wants to work?’
Catherine was one of the first to step forward. But Chaval was furious and shoved her back, shouting:
‘We’re all of one mind here. Only lousy bastards leave their comrades in the lurch!’
Thereafter all hope of compromise seemed out of the question. People started shouting again, and men were shouldered away from the shaft and nearly crushed against the wall. For a moment Deneulin tried desperately to fight the battle single-handedly and to bring the mob smartly to heel; but it was pointless folly, and he was forced to withdraw. So he went and sat for a few minutes at the far end of the checkweighman’s office. The stuffing had been knocked out of him, and he was so dazed by his powerlessness that he could not think what to do next. At length he calmed down and told a supervisor to go and fetch Chaval. Then, when the latter had agreed to the meeting, he dismissed everyone else with a wave of his hand.
– Leave us.
Deneulin’s intention was to get the measure of this character. The moment he spoke, he could sense his vanity and the desperate envy that drove him. So he tried flattery and pretended to be surprised that a worker of his calibre should jeopardize his future in this way. From the way he talked he made it sound as though he had for some time now been marking him out for rapid promotion, and eventually he ended by offering there and then to make him a deputy, when circumstances allowed. Chaval listened to him in silence and gradually unclenched his fists. He was thinking hard: if he persisted with the strike, he would always be playing second fiddle to Étienne, whereas he now began to harbour a different ambition, that of becoming one of the bosses. His face flushed with pride, and his excitement grew. Anyway, the group of strikers he’d been waiting for since early morning would not come now; they must have been held up, by the gendarmes perhaps. So it was time to yield. But this did not stop him from shaking his head and indignantly beating his breast, every inch the unbiddable man of integrity. Eventually, while omitting to mention the meeting he had arranged with the Montsou miners, he undertook to calm his comrades and persuade them to go back to work.
Deneulin kept away, and even the deputies stayed in the background. For the next hour they listened to Chaval holding forth and arguing with the miners from the top of a coal-tub. One section of men booed him, and a hundred and twenty left in disgust, determined to stick to the decision he had made them take in the first place. It had already gone seven, and the dawn was breaking on a bright and cheerful frosty day. Suddenly the pit jolted back into action, and work resumed its course. First there was the plunging of the crank-rod as it began to wind the cables on and off the drums. Then, amid a clanking of signals, came the first descent, with cages filling and vanishing and reappearing as the shaft swallowed its portion of pit-boys, hewers and putters. Meanwhile the banksmen wheeled the tubs across the iron floor with a great rumble of thunder.
‘What the bloody hell are you doing standing there?’ Chaval shouted at Catherine, who was waiting her turn. ‘Stop hanging about and get yourself down below!’
At nine o’clock, when Mme Hennebeau arrived in her carriage with Cécile, she found Lucie and Jeanne dressed and ready, a picture of elegance despite the fact that their clothes had been mended twenty times over. But Deneulin was surprised to see Négrel accompanying the carriage on horseback. Was this to be a mixed party? So Mme Hennebeau explained in her motherly way that people had been frightening her with tales about the roads being full of villainous