Madame Decrucq came home, her hands and face black. At first she did not recognize Vincent through his filth. She ran to the little box that hid her provisions, and put some coffee on the stove. It was colder than tepid when she handed it to him, black, bitter and woody, but he drank it to please the good woman.
“The terril is bad these days, Monsieur Vincent,” she complained. “The company lets nothing through, not even little grains. How am I to keep the babies warm? I have no clothes for them, only those little shirts and some sacking. The burlap gives them sores and rubs their skin off. If I keep them in bed all day, how will they grow?”
Vincent choked with unshed tears, but he could say nothing. He had never seen such abject personal misery. For the first time he wondered of what benefit prayers and the Gospel would be to this woman when her babies were freezing to death. Where was God in all this? He had a few francs in his pocket; he gave them to Madame Decrucq.
“Please buy woollen drawers for the children,” he said.
It was a futile gesture, he knew; there were hundreds of other babies freezing in the Borinage. The Decrucq children would freeze again as soon as these drawers wore out.
He walked up the hill to the Denises’. The bakery kitchen was warm and cosy. Madame Denis heated him some water to wash in, and prepared him a nice lunch of the rabbit stew that had been left over from the night before. She saw that he was tired and overstrung from his experience so she put a trifle of butter out for his bread.
Vincent walked upstairs to his room. His stomach was warm and full. The bed was wide and comfortable; the sheets were clean, and on the pillow was a white pillow case. On the walls were prints by the great masters of the world. He opened his bureau and surveyed the rows of shirts, underclothes, socks, and vests. He went to the wardrobe and looked at his two extra pairs of shoes, his warm overcoat, and the suits of clothes hanging there. At last he realized that he was a liar and a coward. He preached the virtues of poverty to the miners but he himself lived in comfort and plenty. He was nothing more than a hypocritical slinger of words. His religion was an idle, useless thing. The miners ought to despise him and run him out of the Borinage. He pretended to share their lot, and here he had warm, beautiful clothes, a comfortable bed to sleep in, and more food in one meal than the miners had in a week. He did not even work for his ease and luxuries. He just went about telling glib lies and posing as a good man. The Borains ought not to believe a word he said; they ought not to come to his sermons or accept his leadership. His whole easy life gave the lie to his words. He had failed again, more miserably than ever before!
Well, he had only two choices; he could get out of the Borinage, run under the cover of night before they realized what a lying, weak-livered dog he was, or he could make use of the knowledge to which his eyes had been opened that day and really become a man of God.
He took all the clothes out of the bureau and packed them quickly into his bag. He also put in his suits, shoes, books, and prints, and closed the valise. He let it sit on the chair for the time being, and ran buoyantly out the front door.
At the bottom of the ravine there was a little creek. Just beyond that, the pine woods began the ascent of the other slope. In this woods there were scattered a few miners’ cabins. After some inquiry, Vincent found one that was unoccupied. It was a board shanty without a window, built on a rather steep slope. The floor was the native earth trod down by long usage; the melting snow ran under the boards at the high end. Overhead there were rough beams holding the roof in place, and since the shack had not been used all winter, the knotholes and cracks between the boards let in icy blasts of air.
“Who owns this place?” Vincent demanded of the woman who had accompanied him.
“One of the business men in Wasmes.”
“Do you know the rent?”
“Five francs a month.”
“Very well, I’ll take it.”
“But Monsieur Vincent, you can’t live here.”
“Why not?”
“But. . . but. . . it is wretched. It is even worse than my place. It is the most wretched shack in Petit Wasmes!”
“That is exactly why I want it!”
He climbed up the hill again. A new feeling of peace had come into his heart. Madame Denis had gone to his room on some errand during his absence and had seen the packed valise.
“Monsieur Vincent,” she cried when he came in, “what has gone wrong? Why are you going back to Holland so suddenly?”
“I am not going away, Madame Denise. I am staying in the Borinage.”
“Then why. . .?” A puzzled expression came over her face.
When Vincent explained, she said softly. “Believe me, Monsieur Vincent, you cannot live like that; you are not used to it. Times have changed since Jesus Christ; nowadays we must all live as best we can. The people know from your work that you are a good man.”
Vincent was not to be dissuaded. He saw the merchant in Wasmes, rented the shack, and moved in. When his first salary cheque of fifty francs arrived a few days later, he bought himself a little wooden bed and a second-hand stove. After these expenditures he had just enough francs left to secure him bread, sour cheese, and coffee for the rest of the month. He piled dirt against the top wall of the cabin to keep the water out, stuffed the cracks and knotholes with sacking. He now lived in the same kind of house as the miners, ate the identical food, and slept in the identical bed. He was one of them. He had the right to bring them the Word of God.
13
THE MANAGER OF the Charbonnages Belgique, which controlled the four mines in the vicinity of Wasmes, was not at all the sort of voracious animal that Vincent had been prepared to find. True, he was a bit stoutish, but he had kindly, sympathetic eyes and the manner of one who had done a little suffering on his own accord.
“I know, Monsieur Van Gogh,” he said, after listening attentively while Vincent poured out the tale of woe of the miner. “It is an old story. The men think we are purposely starving them to death so that we can earn greater profits. But believe me, Monsieur, nothing could be farther from the truth. Here, let me show you some charts from the International Bureau of Mines in Paris.”
He laid a large chart out on the table and indicated a blue line at the bottom with his finger.
“Look, Monsieur,” he said, “the Belgian coal mines are the poorest in the world. The coal is so difficult for us to reach that it is almost impossible to sell it in the open market for a profit. Our operating expenses are the highest of any coal mine in Europe, and our profits are the lowest! For you see, we must sell our coal at the same price as the mines which produce at the lowest ton cost. We are on the margin of bankruptcy every day of our lives. Do you follow me?”
“I believe so.”
“If we paid the miners one frank more a day our production costs would rise above the market price of coal. We would have to shut down altogether. And then they would really starve to death.”
“Couldn’t the owners take a little less profit? Then there would be more for the workers.”
The manager shook his head sadly. “No, Monsieur, for do you know what coal mines run on? Capital. Like every other industry. And capital must receive its return or it will go elsewhere. The stocks of the Charbonnages Belgique pay only three per cent dividends today. If they were reduced half of a percent the owners would withdraw their money. If they do that our mines will have to shut down, for we cannot operate without capital. And again the miners would starve. So you see, Monsieur, it is not the owners or managers who create this horrible condition in the Borinage. It is the unsatisfactory lay of the couches. And that condition, I suppose, we will have to blame on God!”