Germinal - Emile Zola [283]
But in the vast hall still cloaked in shadow, where the guttering lamps cast an eerie light, he could not make out a single face he knew. The miners who were waiting there, barefoot and clutching their lamps, would stare at him nervously and then look down and guiltily move away. No doubt they recognized him but, far from feeling any resentment towards him, they seemed to be afraid of him and embarrassed at the thought that he might be blaming them for being cowards. This reaction made him feel proud. He forgot how the miserable brutes had stoned him, and began to dream once more about how he would make heroes of them all, how he would lead the people and direct this force of nature which all too often devoured its own.
A cage filled up with men and disappeared with its latest consignment; and as others came forward, he at last recognized a miner who had been one of his assistants during the strike, a good man who’d always sworn he would rather die than surrender.
‘You too?’ he muttered sadly.
The man turned pale, and his lips began to quiver. Then he gestured apologetically:
‘What can I do? I’ve got a wife to feed.’
He recognized everyone now among this latest group of miners coming up from the changing-room.
‘So you too! And you! And you!’
They were all shaking nervously, stammering out their replies in a strangled voice:
‘It’s my mother…I’ve got children…A person’s got to eat.’
The cage had still not reappeared, and they waited there gloomily, so pained by their defeat that they stared obstinately at the shaft rather than look one another in the eye.
‘And La Maheude?’ asked Étienne.
They didn’t answer. One of them made a sign that she was just coming. Others raised their trembling arms to show how sorry they felt for her: oh, that poor woman! What a terrible business! The silence continued, and when their comrade held out his hand to say goodbye, they all shook it firmly, putting into this silent handshake all their fury at having given in and all their fervent hopes of revenge. The cage had arrived: they got in and vanished, swallowed up by the abyss.
Pierron had appeared, with the open lamp of a deputy attached to his leather cap. It was now a week since he had been put in charge of the onsetters at pit-bottom, and the men moved aside to let him pass, for this great honour had made him stand on his dignity. He was annoyed to see Étienne there, but he came across and was eventually reassured when Étienne told him he was leaving. Pierron’s wife, it seemed, was now running the Progress, thanks to the support of the kind gentlemen who had all been very good to her. But then Pierron broke off to reprimand old Mouque angrily for not having brought up the horse-dung at the regulation hour. The old man listened to him with hunched shoulders. Then, before going down, speechless with anger at being told off like this, he too shook Étienne’s hand, and his handshake was like the others’, long, warm with the heat of his suppressed anger, and quivering with the anticipation of future rebellions. And Étienne was so moved to feel this old man’s trembling hand in his, forgiving him for the death of his children, that he watched him go without saying a word.
‘Isn’t La Maheude coming this morning?’ he asked Pierron after a while.
At first Pierron pretended not to understand, for sometimes it was bad luck just to talk about bad luck. Then, as he was moving away on the pretext of giving someone an order, he said finally:
‘What’s that? La Maheude?…Here she is.’
And indeed La Maheude was just