GERMINAL
space, her breast open; while her infant, Estelle, without letting it go, had fallen asleep on her knees. And Étienne, also absorbed in thought, had his eyes fixed on this enormous breast, of which the soft whiteness contrasted with the muddy yellowish complexion of her face.
"Not a farthing," she murmured, "nothing to put between one's teeth, and all the pits stopped. Just the same destruction of poor people as to-day."
But at that moment the door opened, and they remained mute with surprise before Catherine, who then came in. Since her flight with Chaval she had not reappeared at the settlement. Her emotion was so great that, trembling and silent, she forgot to shut the door. She expected to find her mother alone, and the sight of the young man put out of her head the phrases she had prepared on the way.
"What on earth have you come here for?" cried Maheude, without even moving from her chair. "I don't want to have anything more to do with you; get along."
Then Catherine tried to find words:
"Mother, it's some coffee and sugar; yes, for the children. I've been thinking of them and done over-time."
She drew out of her pockets a pound of coffee and a pound of sugar, and took courage to place them on the table. The strike at the Voreux troubled her while she was working at Jean-Bart, and she had only been able to think of this way of helping her parents a little, under the pretext of caring for the little ones. But her good-nature did not disarm her mother, who replied:
"Instead of bringing us sweets, you would have done better to stay and earn bread for us."
She overwhelmed her with abuse, relieving herself by throwing in her daughter's face all that she had been saying against her for the past month. To go off with a man, to hang on to him at sixteen, when the family was in want! Only the most degraded of unnatural children could do it. One could forgive a folly, but a mother never forgot a trick like that. There might have been some excuse if they had held her tightly. Not at all; she was as free as air, and they only asked her to come in to sleep.
"Tell me, what have you got in your skin, at your age?"
[204]
