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_ Having infused by persistent importunities some sort of heat into
the chilly interest of several licensed victuallers (the
acquaintances once upon a time of her late unlucky husband), Mrs
Verloc's mother had at last secured her admission to certain
almshouses founded by a wealthy innkeeper for the destitute widows
of the trade.
This end, conceived in the astuteness of her uneasy heart, the old
woman had pursued with secrecy and determination. That was the
time when her daughter Winnie could not help passing a remark to Mr
Verloc that "mother has been spending half-crowns and five
shillings almost every day this last week in cab fares." But the
remark was not made grudgingly. Winnie respected her mother's
infirmities. She was only a little surprised at this sudden mania
for locomotion. Mr Verloc, who was sufficiently magnificent in his
way, had grunted the remark impatiently aside as interfering with
his meditations. These were frequent, deep, and prolonged; they
bore upon a matter more important than five shillings. Distinctly
more important, and beyond all comparison more difficult to
consider in all its aspects with philosophical serenity.
Her object attained in astute secrecy, the heroic old woman had
made a clean breast of it to Mrs Verloc. Her soul was triumphant
and her heart tremulous. Inwardly she quaked, because she dreaded
and admired the calm, self-contained character of her daughter
Winnie, whose displeasure was made redoubtable by a diversity of
dreadful silences. But she did not allow her inward apprehensions
to rob her of the advantage of venerable placidity conferred upon
her outward person by her triple chin, the floating ampleness of
her ancient form, and the impotent condition of her legs.
The shock of the information was so unexpected that Mrs Verloc,
against her usual practice when addressed, interrupted the domestic
occupation she was engaged upon. It was the dusting of the
furniture in the parlour behind the shop. She turned her head
towards her mother.
"Whatever did you want to do that for?" she exclaimed, in
scandalised astonishment.
The shock must have been severe to make her depart from that
distant and uninquiring acceptance of facts which was her force and
her safeguard in life.
"Weren't you made comfortable enough here?"
She had lapsed into these inquiries, but next moment she saved the
consistency of her conduct by resuming her dusting, while the old
woman sat scared and dumb under her dingy white cap and lustreless
dark wig.
Winnie finished the chair, and ran the duster along the mahogany at
the back of the horse-hair sofa on which Mr Verloc loved to take
his ease in hat and overcoat. She was intent on her work, but
presently she permitted herself another question.
"How in the world did you manage it, mother?"
As not affecting the inwardness of things, which it was Mrs
Verloc's principle to ignore, this curiosity was excusable. It
bore merely on the methods. The old woman welcomed it eagerly as
bringing forward something that could be talked about with much
sincerity.
She favoured her daughter by an exhaustive answer, full of names
and enriched by side comments upon the ravages of time as observed
in the alteration of human countenances. The names were
principally the names of licensed victuallers - "poor daddy's
friends, my dear." She enlarged with special appreciation on the
kindness and condescension of a large brewer, a Baronet and an M.
P., the Chairman of the Governors of the Charity. She expressed
herself thus warmly because she had been allowed to interview by
appointment his Private Secretary - "a very polite gentleman, all
in black, with a gentle, sad voice, but so very, very thin and
quiet. He was like a shadow, my dear."
Winnie, prolonging her dusting operations till the tale was told to
the end, walked out of the parlour into the kitchen (down two
steps) in her usual manner, without the slightest comment.
Shedding a few tears in sign of rejoicing at her daughter's
mansuetude in this terrible affair, Mrs Verloc's mother gave play
to her astuteness in the direction of her furniture, because it was
her own; and sometimes she wished it hadn't been. Heroism is all
very well, but there are circumstances when the disposal of a few
tables and chairs, brass bedsteads, and so on, may be big with
remote and disastrous consequences. She required a few pieces
herself, the Foundation which, after many importunities, had
gathered her to its charitable breast, giving nothing but bare
planks and cheaply papered bricks to the objects of its solicitude.
The delicacy guiding her choice to the least valuable and most
dilapidated articles passed unacknowledged, because Winnie's
philosophy consisted in not taking notice of the inside of facts;
she assumed that mother took what suited her best. As to Mr
Verloc, his intense meditation, like a sort of Chinese wall,
isolated him completely from the phenomena of this world of vain
effort and illusory appearances.
Her selection made, the disposal of the rest became a perplexing
question in a particular way. She was leaving it in Brett Street,
of course. But she had two children. Winnie was provided for by
her sensible union with that excellent husband, Mr Verloc. Stevie
was destitute - and a little peculiar. His position had to be
considered before the claims of legal justice and even the
promptings of partiality. The possession of the furniture would
not be in any sense a provision. He ought to have it - the poor
boy. But to give it to him would be like tampering with his
position of complete dependence. It was a sort of claim which she
feared to weaken. Moreover, the susceptibilities of Mr Verloc
would perhaps not brook being beholden to his brother-in-law for
the chairs he sat on. In a long experience of gentlemen lodgers,
Mrs Verloc's mother had acquired a dismal but resigned notion of
the fantastic side of human nature. What if Mr Verloc suddenly
took it into his head to tell Stevie to take his blessed sticks
somewhere out of that? A division, on the other hand, however
carefully made, might give some cause of offence to Winnie. No,
Stevie must remain destitute and dependent. And at the moment of
leaving Brett Street she had said to her daughter: "No use waiting
till I am dead, is there? Everything I leave here is altogether
your own now, my dear."
Winnie, with her hat on, silent behind her mother's back, went on
arranging the collar of the old woman's cloak. She got her hand-
bag, an umbrella, with an impassive face. The time had come for
the expenditure of the sum of three-and-sixpence on what might well
be supposed the last cab drive of Mrs Verloc's mother's life. They
went out at the shop door.
The conveyance awaiting them would have illustrated the proverb
that "truth can be more cruel than caricature," if such a proverb
existed. Crawling behind an infirm horse, a metropolitan hackney
carriage drew up on wobbly wheels and with a maimed driver on the
box. This last peculiarity caused some embarrassment. Catching
sight of a hooked iron contrivance protruding from the left sleeve
of the man's coat, Mrs Verloc's mother lost suddenly the heroic
courage of these days. She really couldn't trust herself. "What
do you think, Winnie?" She hung back. The passionate
expostulations of the big-faced cabman seemed to be squeezed out of
a blocked throat. Leaning over from his box, he whispered with
mysterious indignation. What was the matter now? Was it possible
to treat a man so? His enormous and unwashed countenance flamed
red in the muddy stretch of the street. Was it likely they would
have given him a licence, he inquired desperately, if -
The police constable of the locality quieted him by a friendly
glance; then addressing himself to the two women without marked
consideration, said:
"He's been driving a cab for twenty years. I never knew him to
have an accident."
"Accident!" shouted the driver in a scornful whisper.
The policeman's testimony settled it. The modest assemblage of
seven people, mostly under age, dispersed. Winnie followed her
mother into the cab. Stevie climbed on the box. His vacant mouth
and distressed eyes depicted the state of his mind in regard to the
transactions which were taking place. In the narrow streets the
progress of the journey was made sensible to those within by the
near fronts of the houses gliding past slowly and shakily, with a
great rattle and jingling of glass, as if about to collapse behind
the cab; and the infirm horse, with the harness hung over his sharp
backbone flapping very loose about his thighs, appeared to be
dancing mincingly on his toes with infinite patience. Later on, in
the wider space of Whitehall, all visual evidences of motion became
imperceptible. The rattle and jingle of glass went on indefinitely
in front of the long Treasury building - and time itself seemed to
stand still.
At last Winnie observed: "This isn't a very good horse."
Her eyes gleamed in the shadow of the cab straight ahead,
immovable. On the box, Stevie shut his vacant mouth first, in
order to ejaculate earnestly: "Don't."
The driver, holding high the reins twisted around the hook, took no
notice. Perhaps he had not heard. Stevie's breast heaved.
"Don't whip."
The man turned slowly his bloated and sodden face of many colours
bristling with white hairs. His little red eyes glistened with
moisture. His big lips had a violet tint. They remained closed.
With the dirty back of his whip-hand he rubbed the stubble
sprouting on his enormous chin.
"You mustn't," stammered out Stevie violently. "It hurts."
"Mustn't whip," queried the other in a thoughtful whisper, and
immediately whipped. He did this, not because his soul was cruel
and his heart evil, but because he had to earn his fare. And for a
time the walls of St Stephen's, with its towers and pinnacles,
contemplated in immobility and silence a cab that jingled. It
rolled too, however. But on the bridge there was a commotion.
Stevie suddenly proceeded to get down from the box. There were
shouts on the pavement, people ran forward, the driver pulled up,
whispering curses of indignation and astonishment. Winnie lowered
the window, and put her head out, white as a ghost. In the depths
of the cab, her mother was exclaiming, in tones of anguish: "Is
that boy hurt? Is that boy hurt?"
Stevie was not hurt, he had not even fallen, but excitement as
usual had robbed him of the power of connected speech. He could do
no more than stammer at the window. "Too heavy. Too heavy."
Winnie put out her hand on to his shoulder.
"Stevie! Get up on the box directly, and don't try to get down
again."
"No. No. Walk. Must walk."
In trying to state the nature of that necessity he stammered
himself into utter incoherence. No physical impossibility stood in
the way of his whim. Stevie could have managed easily to keep pace
with the infirm, dancing horse without getting out of breath. But
his sister withheld her consent decisively. "The idea! Whoever
heard of such a thing! Run after a cab!" Her mother, frightened
and helpless in the depths of the conveyance, entreated: "Oh, don't
let him, Winnie. He'll get lost. Don't let him."
"Certainly not. What next! Mr Verloc will be sorry to hear of
this nonsense, Stevie, - I can tell you. He won't be happy at
all."
The idea of Mr. Verloc's grief and unhappiness acting as usual
powerfully upon Stevie's fundamentally docile disposition, he
abandoned all resistance, and climbed up again on the box, with a
face of despair.
The cabby turned at him his enormous and inflamed countenance
truculently. "Don't you go for trying this silly game again, young
fellow."
After delivering himself thus in a stern whisper, strained almost
to extinction, he drove on, ruminating solemnly. To his mind the
incident remained somewhat obscure. But his intellect, though it
had lost its pristine vivacity in the benumbing years of sedentary
exposure to the weather, lacked not independence or sanity.
Gravely he dismissed the hypothesis of Stevie being a drunken young
nipper.
Inside the cab the spell of silence, in which the two women had
endured shoulder to shoulder the jolting, rattling, and jingling of
the journey, had been broken by Stevie's outbreak. Winnie raised
her voice.
"You've done what you wanted, mother. You'll have only yourself to
thank for it if you aren't happy afterwards. And I don't think
you'll be. That I don't. Weren't you comfortable enough in the
house? Whatever people'll think of us - you throwing yourself like
this on a Charity?"
"My dear," screamed the old woman earnestly above the noise,
"you've been the best of daughters to me. As to Mr Verloc - there
- "
Words failing her on the subject of Mr Verloc's excellence, she
turned her old tearful eyes to the roof of the cab. Then she
averted her head on the pretence of looking out of the window, as
if to judge of their progress. It was insignificant, and went on
close to the curbstone. Night, the early dirty night, the
sinister, noisy, hopeless and rowdy night of South London, had
overtaken her on her last cab drive. In the gas-light of the low-
fronted shops her big cheeks glowed with an orange hue under a
black and mauve bonnet.
Mrs Verloc's mother's complexion had become yellow by the effect of
age and from a natural predisposition to biliousness, favoured by
the trials of a difficult and worried existence, first as wife,
then as widow. It was a complexion, that under the influence of a
blush would take on an orange tint. And this woman, modest indeed
but hardened in the fires of adversity, of an age, moreover, when
blushes are not expected, had positively blushed before her
daughter. In the privacy of a four-wheeler, on her way to a
charity cottage (one of a row) which by the exiguity of its
dimensions and the simplicity of its accommodation, might well have
been devised in kindness as a place of training for the still more
straitened circumstances of the grave, she was forced to hid from
her own child a blush of remorse and shame.
Whatever people will think? She knew very well what they did
think, the people Winnie had in her mind - the old friends of her
husband, and others too, whose interest she had solicited with such
flattering success. She had not known before what a good beggar
she could be. But she guessed very well what inference was drawn
from her application. On account of that shrinking delicacy, which
exists side by side with aggressive brutality in masculine nature,
the inquiries into her circumstances had not been pushed very far.
She had checked them by a visible compression of the lips and some
display of an emotion determined to be eloquently silent. And the
men would become suddenly incurious, after the manner of their
kind. She congratulated herself more than once on having nothing
to do with women, who being naturally more callous and avid of
details, would have been anxious to be exactly informed by what
sort of unkind conduct her daughter and son-in-law had driven her
to that sad extremity. It was only before the Secretary of the
great brewer M. P. and Chairman of the Charity, who, acting for his
principal, felt bound to be conscientiously inquisitive as to the
real circumstances of the applicant, that she had burst into tears
outright and aloud, as a cornered woman will weep. The thin and
polite gentleman, after contemplating her with an air of being
"struck all of a heap," abandoned his position under the cover of
soothing remarks. She must not distress herself. The deed of the
Charity did not absolutely specify "childless widows." In fact, it
did not by any means disqualify her. But the discretion of the
Committee must be an informed discretion. One could understand
very well her unwillingness to be a burden, etc. etc. Thereupon,
to his profound disappointment, Mrs Verloc's mother wept some more
with an augmented vehemence.
The tears of that large female in a dark, dusty wig, and ancient
silk dress festooned with dingy white cotton lace, were the tears
of genuine distress. She had wept because she was heroic and
unscrupulous and full of love for both her children. Girls
frequently get sacrificed to the welfare of the boys. In this case
she was sacrificing Winnie. By the suppression of truth she was
slandering her. Of course, Winnie was independent, and need not
care for the opinion of people that she would never see and who
would never see her; whereas poor Stevie had nothing in the world
he could call his own except his mother's heroism and
unscrupulousness.
The first sense of security following on Winnie's marriage wore off
in time (for nothing lasts), and Mrs Verloc's mother, in the
seclusion of the back bedroom, had recalled the teaching of that
experience which the world impresses upon a widowed woman. But she
had recalled it without vain bitterness; her store of resignation
amounted almost to dignity. She reflected stoically that
everything decays, wears out, in this world; that the way of
kindness should be made easy to the well disposed; that her
daughter Winnie was a most devoted sister, and a very self-
confident wife indeed. As regards Winnie's sisterly devotion, her
stoicism flinched. She excepted that sentiment from the rule of
decay affecting all things human and some things divine. She could
not help it; not to do so would have frightened her too much. But
in considering the conditions of her daughter's married state, she
rejected firmly all flattering illusions. She took the cold and
reasonable view that the less strain put on Mr Verloc's kindness
the longer its effects were likely to last. That excellent man
loved his wife, of course, but he would, no doubt, prefer to keep
as few of her relations as was consistent with the proper display
of that sentiment. It would be better if its whole effect were
concentrated on poor Stevie. And the heroic old woman resolved on
going away from her children as an act of devotion and as a move of
deep policy.
The "virtue" of this policy consisted in this (Mrs Verloc's mother
was subtle in her way), that Stevie's moral claim would be
strengthened. The poor boy - a good, useful boy, if a little
peculiar - had not a sufficient standing. He had been taken over
with his mother, somewhat in the same way as the furniture of the
Belgravian mansion had been taken over, as if on the ground of
belonging to her exclusively. What will happen, she asked herself
(for Mrs Verloc's mother was in a measure imaginative), when I die?
And when she asked herself that question it was with dread. It was
also terrible to think that she would not then have the means of
knowing what happened to the poor boy. But by making him over to
his sister, by going thus away, she gave him the advantage of a
directly dependent position. This was the more subtle sanction of
Mrs Verloc's mother's heroism and unscrupulousness. Her act of
abandonment was really an arrangement for settling her son
permanently in life. Other people made material sacrifices for
such an object, she in that way. It was the only way. Moreover,
she would be able to see how it worked. Ill or well she would
avoid the horrible incertitude on the death-bed. But it was hard,
hard, cruelly hard.
The cab rattled, jingled, jolted; in fact, the last was quite
extraordinary. By its disproportionate violence and magnitude it
obliterated every sensation of onward movement; and the effect was
of being shaken in a stationary apparatus like a mediaeval device
for the punishment of crime, or some very newfangled invention for
the cure of a sluggish liver. It was extremely distressing; and
the raising of Mrs Verloc's mother's voice sounded like a wail of
pain.
"I know, my dear, you'll come to see me as often as you can spare
the time. Won't you?"
"Of course," answered Winnie shortly, staring straight before her.
And the cab jolted in front of a steamy, greasy shop in a blaze of
gas and in the smell of fried fish.
The old woman raised a wail again.
"And, my dear, I must see that poor boy every Sunday. He won't
mind spending the day with his old mother - "
Winnie screamed out stolidly:
"Mind! I should think not. That poor boy will miss you something
cruel. I wish you had thought a little of that, mother."
Not think of it! The heroic woman swallowed a playful and
inconvenient object like a billiard ball, which had tried to jump
out of her throat. Winnie sat mute for a while, pouting at the
front of the cab, then snapped out, which was an unusual tone with
her:
"I expect I'll have a job with him at first, he'll be that restless
- "
"Whatever you do, don't let him worry your husband, my dear."
Thus they discussed on familiar lines the bearings of a new
situation. And the cab jolted. Mrs Verloc's mother expressed some
misgivings. Could Stevie be trusted to come all that way alone?
Winnie maintained that he was much less "absent-minded" now. They
agreed as to that. It could not be denied. Much less - hardly at
all. They shouted at each other in the jingle with comparative
cheerfulness. But suddenly the maternal anxiety broke out afresh.
There were two omnibuses to take, and a short walk between. It was
too difficult! The old woman gave way to grief and consternation.
Winnie stared forward.
"Don't you upset yourself like this, mother. You must see him, of
course."
"No, my dear. I'll try not to."
She mopped her streaming eyes.
"But you can't spare the time to come with him, and if he should
forget himself and lose his way and somebody spoke to him sharply,
his name and address may slip his memory, and he'll remain lost for
days and days - "
The vision of a workhouse infirmary for poor Stevie - if only
during inquiries - wrung her heart. For she was a proud woman.
Winnie's stare had grown hard, intent, inventive.
"I can't bring him to you myself every week," she cried. "But
don't you worry, mother. I'll see to it that he don't get lost for
long."
They felt a peculiar bump; a vision of brick pillars lingered
before the rattling windows of the cab; a sudden cessation of
atrocious jolting and uproarious jingling dazed the two women.
What had happened? They sat motionless and scared in the profound
stillness, till the door came open, and a rough, strained
whispering was heard:
"Here you are!"
A range of gabled little houses, each with one dim yellow window,
on the ground floor, surrounded the dark open space of a grass plot
planted with shrubs and railed off from the patchwork of lights and
shadows in the wide road, resounding with the dull rumble of
traffic. Before the door of one of these tiny houses - one without
a light in the little downstairs window - the cab had come to a
standstill. Mrs Verloc's mother got out first, backwards, with a
key in her hand. Winnie lingered on the flagstone path to pay the
cabman. Stevie, after helping to carry inside a lot of small
parcels, came out and stood under the light of a gas-lamp belonging
to the Charity. The cabman looked at the pieces of silver, which,
appearing very minute in his big, grimy palm, symbolised the
insignificant results which reward the ambitious courage and toil
of a mankind whose day is short on this earth of evil.
He had been paid decently - four one-shilling pieces - and he
contemplated them in perfect stillness, as if they had been the
surprising terms of a melancholy problem. The slow transfer of
that treasure to an inner pocket demanded much laborious groping in
the depths of decayed clothing. His form was squat and without
flexibility. Stevie, slender, his shoulders a little up, and his
hands thrust deep in the side pockets of his warm overcoat, stood
at the edge of the path, pouting.
The cabman, pausing in his deliberate movements, seemed struck by
some misty recollection.
"Oh! `Ere you are, young fellow," he whispered. "You'll know him
again - won't you?"
Stevie was staring at the horse, whose hind quarters appeared
unduly elevated by the effect of emaciation. The little stiff tail
seemed to have been fitted in for a heartless joke; and at the
other end the thin, flat neck, like a plank covered with old horse-
hide, drooped to the ground under the weight of an enormous bony
head. The ears hung at different angles, negligently; and the
macabre figure of that mute dweller on the earth steamed straight
up from ribs and backbone in the muggy stillness of the air.
The cabman struck lightly Stevie's breast with the iron hook
protruding from a ragged, greasy sleeve.
"Look `ere, young feller. `Ow'd YOU like to sit behind this `oss
up to two o'clock in the morning p'raps?"
Stevie looked vacantly into the fierce little eyes with red-edged
lids.
"He ain't lame," pursued the other, whispering with energy. "He
ain't got no sore places on `im. `Ere he is. `Ow would YOU like -
"
His strained, extinct voice invested his utterance with a character
of vehement secrecy. Stevie's vacant gaze was changing slowly into
dread.
"You may well look! Till three and four o'clock in the morning.
Cold and `ungry. Looking for fares. Drunks."
His jovial purple cheeks bristled with white hairs; and like
Virgil's Silenus, who, his face smeared with the juice of berries,
discoursed of Olympian Gods to the innocent shepherds of Sicily, he
talked to Stevie of domestic matters and the affairs of men whose
sufferings are great and immortality by no means assured.
"I am a night cabby, I am," he whispered, with a sort of boastful
exasperation. "I've got to take out what they will blooming well
give me at the yard. I've got my missus and four kids at `ome."
The monstrous nature of that declaration of paternity seemed to
strike the world dumb. A silence reigned during which the flanks
of the old horse, the steed of apocalyptic misery, smoked upwards
in the light of the charitable gas-lamp.
The cabman grunted, then added in his mysterious whisper:
"This ain't an easy world." Stevie's face had been twitching for
some time, and at last his feelings burst out in their usual
concise form.
"Bad! Bad!"
His gaze remained fixed on the ribs of the horse, self-conscious
and sombre, as though he were afraid to look about him at the
badness of the world. And his slenderness, his rosy lips and pale,
clear complexion, gave him the aspect of a delicate boy,
notwithstanding the fluffy growth of golden hair on his cheeks. He
pouted in a scared way like a child. The cabman, short and broad,
eyed him with his fierce little eyes that seemed to smart in a
clear and corroding liquid.
"'Ard on `osses, but dam' sight `arder on poor chaps like me," he
wheezed just audibly.
"Poor! Poor!" stammered out Stevie, pushing his hands deeper into
his pockets with convulsive sympathy. He could say nothing; for
the tenderness to all pain and all misery, the desire to make the
horse happy and the cabman happy, had reached the point of a
bizarre longing to take them to bed with him. And that, he knew,
was impossible. For Stevie was not mad. It was, as it were, a
symbolic longing; and at the same time it was very distinct,
because springing from experience, the mother of wisdom. Thus when
as a child he cowered in a dark corner scared, wretched, sore, and
miserable with the black, black misery of the soul, his sister
Winnie used to come along, and carry him off to bed with her, as
into a heaven of consoling peace. Stevie, though apt to forget
mere facts, such as his name and address for instance, had a
faithful memory of sensations. To be taken into a bed of
compassion was the supreme remedy, with the only one disadvantage
of being difficult of application on a large scale. And looking at
the cabman, Stevie perceived this clearly, because he was
reasonable.
The cabman went on with his leisurely preparations as if Stevie had
not existed. He made as if to hoist himself on the box, but at the
last moment from some obscure motive, perhaps merely from disgust
with carriage exercise, desisted. He approached instead the
motionless partner of his labours, and stooping to seize the
bridle, lifted up the big, weary head to the height of his shoulder
with one effort of his right arm, like a feat of strength.
"Come on," he whispered secretly.
Limping, he led the cab away. There was an air of austerity in
this departure, the scrunched gravel of the drive crying out under
the slowly turning wheels, the horse's lean thighs moving with
ascetic deliberation away from the light into the obscurity of the
open space bordered dimly by the pointed roofs and the feebly
shining windows of the little alms-houses. The plaint of the
gravel travelled slowly all round the drive. Between the lamps of
the charitable gateway the slow cortege reappeared, lighted up for
a moment, the short, thick man limping busily, with the horse's
head held aloft in his fist, the lank animal walking in stiff and
forlorn dignity, the dark, low box on wheels rolling behind
comically with an air of waddling. They turned to the left. There
was a pub down the street, within fifty yards of the gate.
Stevie left alone beside the private lamp-post of the Charity, his
hands thrust deep into his pockets, glared with vacant sulkiness.
At the bottom of his pockets his incapable weak hands were clinched
hard into a pair of angry fists. In the face of anything which
affected directly or indirectly his morbid dread of pain, Stevie
ended by turning vicious. A magnanimous indignation swelled his
frail chest to bursting, and caused his candid eyes to squint.
Supremely wise in knowing his own powerlessness, Stevie was not
wise enough to restrain his passions. The tenderness of his
universal charity had two phases as indissolubly joined and
connected as the reverse and obverse sides of a medal. The anguish
of immoderate compassion was succeeded by the pain of an innocent
but pitiless rage. Those two states expressing themselves
outwardly by the same signs of futile bodily agitation, his sister
Winnie soothed his excitement without ever fathoming its twofold
character. Mrs Verloc wasted no portion of this transient life in
seeking for fundamental information. This is a sort of economy
having all the appearances and some of the advantages of prudence.
Obviously it may be good for one not to know too much. And such a
view accords very well with constitutional indolence.
On that evening on which it may be said that Mrs Verloc's mother
having parted for good from her children had also departed this
life, Winnie Verloc did not investigate her brother's psychology.
The poor boy was excited, of course. After once more assuring the
old woman on the threshold that she would know how to guard against
the risk of Stevie losing himself for very long on his pilgrimages
of filial piety, she took her brother's arm to walk away. Stevie
did not even mutter to himself, but with the special sense of
sisterly devotion developed in her earliest infancy, she felt that
the boy was very much excited indeed. Holding tight to his arm,
under the appearance of leaning on it, she thought of some words
suitable to the occasion.
"Now, Stevie, you must look well after me at the crossings, and get
first into the `bus, like a good brother."
This appeal to manly protection was received by Stevie with his
usual docility. It flattered him. He raised his head and threw
out his chest.
"Don't be nervous, Winnie. Mustn't be nervous! `Bus all right,"
he answered in a brusque, slurring stammer partaking of the
timorousness of a child and the resolution of a man. He advanced
fearlessly with the woman on his arm, but his lower lip dropped.
Nevertheless, on the pavement of the squalid and wide thoroughfare,
whose poverty in all the amenities of life stood foolishly exposed
by a mad profusion of gas-lights, their resemblance to each other
was so pronounced as to strike the casual passers-by.
Before the doors of the public-house at the corner, where the
profusion of gas-light reached the height of positive wickedness, a
four-wheeled cab standing by the curbstone with no one on the box,
seemed cast out into the gutter on account of irremediable decay.
Mrs Verloc recognised the conveyance. Its aspect was so profoundly
lamentable, with such a perfection of grotesque misery and
weirdness of macabre detail, as if it were the Cab of Death itself,
that Mrs Verloc, with that ready compassion of a woman for a horse
(when she is not sitting behind him), exclaimed vaguely:
"Poor brute:"
Hanging back suddenly, Stevie inflicted an arresting jerk upon his
sister.
"Poor! Poor!" he ejaculated appreciatively. "Cabman poor too. He
told me himself."
The contemplation of the infirm and lonely steed overcame him.
Jostled, but obstinate, he would remain there, trying to express
the view newly opened to his sympathies of the human and equine
misery in close association. But it was very difficult. "Poor
brute, poor people!" was all he could repeat. It did not seem
forcible enough, and he came to a stop with an angry splutter:
"Shame!" Stevie was no master of phrases, and perhaps for that
very reason his thoughts lacked clearness and precision. But he
felt with greater completeness and some profundity. That little
word contained all his sense of indignation and horror at one sort
of wretchedness having to feed upon the anguish of the other - at
the poor cabman beating the poor horse in the name, as it were, of
his poor kids at home. And Stevie knew what it was to be beaten.
He knew it from experience. It was a bad world. Bad! Bad!
Mrs Verloc, his only sister, guardian, and protector, could not
pretend to such depths of insight. Moreover, she had not
experienced the magic of the cabman's eloquence. She was in the
dark as to the inwardness of the word "Shame." And she said
placidly:
"Come along, Stevie. You can't help that."
The docile Stevie went along; but now he went along without pride,
shamblingly, and muttering half words, and even words that would
have been whole if they had not been made up of halves that did not
belong to each other. It was as though he had been trying to fit
all the words he could remember to his sentiments in order to get
some sort of corresponding idea. And, as a matter of fact, he got
it at last. He hung back to utter it at once.
"Bad world for poor people."
Directly he had expressed that thought he became aware that it was
familiar to him already in all its consequences. This circumstance
strengthened his conviction immensely, but also augmented his
indignation. Somebody, he felt, ought to be punished for it -
punished with great severity. Being no sceptic, but a moral
creature, he was in a manner at the mercy of his righteous
passions.
"Beastly!" he added concisely.
It was clear to Mrs Verloc that he was greatly excited.
"Nobody can help that," she said. "Do come along. Is that the way
you're taking care of me?"
Stevie mended his pace obediently. He prided himself on being a
good brother. His morality, which was very complete, demanded that
from him. Yet he was pained at the information imparted by his
sister Winnie who was good. Nobody could help that! He came along
gloomily, but presently he brightened up. Like the rest of
mankind, perplexed by the mystery of the universe, he had his
moments of consoling trust in the organised powers of the earth.
"Police," he suggested confidently.
"The police aren't for that," observed Mrs Verloc cursorily,
hurrying on her way.
Stevie's face lengthened considerably. He was thinking. The more
intense his thinking, the slacker was the droop of his lower jaw.
And it was with an aspect of hopeless vacancy that he gave up his
intellectual enterprise.
"Not for that?" he mumbled, resigned but surprised. "Not for
that?" He had formed for himself an ideal conception of the
metropolitan police as a sort of benevolent institution for the
suppression of evil. The notion of benevolence especially was very
closely associated with his sense of the power of the men in blue.
He had liked all police constables tenderly, with a guileless
trustfulness. And he was pained. He was irritated, too, by a
suspicion of duplicity in the members of the force. For Stevie was
frank and as open as the day himself. What did they mean by
pretending then? Unlike his sister, who put her trust in face
values, he wished to go to the bottom of the matter. He carried on
his inquiry by means of an angry challenge.
"What for are they then, Winn? What are they for? Tell me."
Winnie disliked controversy. But fearing most a fit of black
depression consequent on Stevie missing his mother very much at
first, she did not altogether decline the discussion. Guiltless of
all irony, she answered yet in a form which was not perhaps
unnatural in the wife of Mr Verloc, Delegate of the Central Red
Committee, personal friend of certain anarchists, and a votary of
social revolution.
"Don't you know what the police are for, Stevie? They are there so
that them as have nothing shouldn't take anything away from them
who have."
She avoided using the verb "to steal," because it always made her
brother uncomfortable. For Stevie was delicately honest. Certain
simple principles had been instilled into him so anxiously (on
account of his "queerness") that the mere names of certain
transgressions filled him with horror. He had been always easily
impressed by speeches. He was impressed and startled now, and his
intelligence was very alert.
"What?" he asked at once anxiously. "Not even if they were hungry?
Mustn't they?"
The two had paused in their walk.
"Not if they were ever so," said Mrs Verloc, with the equanimity of
a person untroubled by the problem of the distribution of wealth,
and exploring the perspective of the roadway for an omnibus of the
right colour. "Certainly not. But what's the use of talking about
all that? You aren't ever hungry."
She cast a swift glance at the boy, like a young man, by her side.
She saw him amiable, attractive, affectionate, and only a little, a
very little, peculiar. And she could not see him otherwise, for he
was connected with what there was of the salt of passion in her
tasteless life - the passion of indignation, of courage, of pity,
and even of self-sacrifice. She did not add: "And you aren't
likely ever to be as long as I live." But she might very well have
done so, since she had taken effectual steps to that end. Mr
Verloc was a very good husband. It was her honest impression that
nobody could help liking the boy. She cried out suddenly:
"Quick, Stevie. Stop that green `bus."
And Stevie, tremulous and important with his sister Winnie on his
arm, flung up the other high above his head at the approaching
`bus, with complete success.
An hour afterwards Mr Verloc raised his eyes from a newspaper he
was reading, or at any rate looking at, behind the counter, and in
the expiring clatter of the door-bell beheld Winnie, his wife,
enter and cross the shop on her way upstairs, followed by Stevie,
his brother-in-law. The sight of his wife was agreeable to Mr
Verloc. It was his idiosyncrasy. The figure of his brother-in-law
remained imperceptible to him because of the morose thoughtfulness
that lately had fallen like a veil between Mr Verloc and the
appearances of the world of senses. He looked after his wife
fixedly, without a word, as though she had been a phantom. His
voice for home use was husky and placid, but now it was heard not
at all. It was not heard at supper, to which he was called by his
wife in the usual brief manner: "Adolf." He sat down to consume it
without conviction, wearing his hat pushed far back on his head.
It was not devotion to an outdoor life, but the frequentation of
foreign cafes which was responsible for that habit, investing with
a character of unceremonious impermanency Mr Verloc's steady
fidelity to his own fireside. Twice at the clatter of the cracked
bell he arose without a word, disappeared into the shop, and came
back silently. During these absences Mrs Verloc, becoming acutely
aware of the vacant place at her right hand, missed her mother very
much, and stared stonily; while Stevie, from the same reason, kept
on shuffling his feet, as though the floor under the table were
uncomfortably hot. When Mr Verloc returned to sit in his place,
like the very embodiment of silence, the character of Mrs Verloc's
stare underwent a subtle change, and Stevie ceased to fidget with
his feet, because of his great and awed regard for his sister's
husband. He directed at him glances of respectful compassion. Mr
Verloc was sorry. His sister Winnie had impressed upon him (in the
omnibus) that Mr Verloc would be found at home in a state of
sorrow, and must not be worried. His father's anger, the
irritability of gentlemen lodgers, and Mr Verloc's predisposition
to immoderate grief, had been the main sanctions of Stevie's self-
restraint. Of these sentiments, all easily provoked, but not
always easy to understand, the last had the greatest moral
efficiency - because Mr Verloc was GOOD. His mother and his sister
had established that ethical fact on an unshakable foundation.
They had established, erected, consecrated it behind Mr Verloc's
back, for reasons that had nothing to do with abstract morality.
And Mr Verloc was not aware of it. It is but bare justice to him
to say that he had no notion of appearing good to Stevie. Yet so
it was. He was even the only man so qualified in Stevie's
knowledge, because the gentlemen lodgers had been too transient and
too remote to have anything very distinct about them but perhaps
their boots; and as regards the disciplinary measures of his
father, the desolation of his mother and sister shrank from setting
up a theory of goodness before the victim. It would have been too
cruel. And it was even possible that Stevie would not have
believed them. As far as Mr Verloc was concerned, nothing could
stand in the way of Stevie's belief. Mr Verloc was obviously yet
mysteriously GOOD. And the grief of a good man is august.
Stevie gave glances of reverential compassion to his brother-in-
law. Mr Verloc was sorry. The brother of Winnie had never before
felt himself in such close communion with the mystery of that man's
goodness. It was an understandable sorrow. And Stevie himself was
sorry. He was very sorry. The same sort of sorrow. And his
attention being drawn to this unpleasant state, Stevie shuffled his
feet. His feelings were habitually manifested by the agitation of
his limbs.
"Keep your feet quiet, dear," said Mrs Verloc, with authority and
tenderness; then turning towards her husband in an indifferent
voice, the masterly achievement of instinctive tact: "Are you going
out to-night?" she asked.
The mere suggestion seemed repugnant to Mr Verloc. He shook his
head moodily, and then sat still with downcast eyes, looking at the
piece of cheese on his plate for a whole minute. At the end of
that time he got up, and went out - went right out in the clatter
of the shop-door bell. He acted thus inconsistently, not from any
desire to make himself unpleasant, but because of an unconquerable
restlessness. It was no earthly good going out. He could not find
anywhere in London what he wanted. But he went out. He led a
cortege of dismal thoughts along dark streets, through lighted
streets, in and out of two flash bars, as if in a half-hearted
attempt to make a night of it, and finally back again to his
menaced home, where he sat down fatigued behind the counter, and
they crowded urgently round him, like a pack of hungry black
hounds. After locking up the house and putting out the gas he took
them upstairs with him - a dreadful escort for a man going to bed.
His wife had preceded him some time before, and with her ample form
defined vaguely under the counterpane, her head on the pillow, and
a hand under the cheek offered to his distraction the view of early
drowsiness arguing the possession of an equable soul. Her big eyes
stared wide open, inert and dark against the snowy whiteness of the
linen. She did not move.
She had an equable soul. She felt profoundly that things do not
stand much looking into. She made her force and her wisdom of that
instinct. But the taciturnity of Mr Verloc had been lying heavily
upon her for a good many days. It was, as a matter of fact,
affecting her nerves. Recumbent and motionless, she said placidly:
"You'll catch cold walking about in your socks like this."
This speech, becoming the solicitude of the wife and the prudence
of the woman, took Mr Verloc unawares. He had left his boots
downstairs, but he had forgotten to put on his slippers, and he had
been turning about the bedroom on noiseless pads like a bear in a
cage. At the sound of his wife's voice he stopped and stared at
her with a somnambulistic, expressionless gaze so long that Mrs
Verloc moved her limbs slightly under the bed-clothes. But she did
not move her black head sunk in the white pillow one hand under her
cheek and the big, dark, unwinking eyes.
Under her husband's expressionless stare, and remembering her
mother's empty room across the landing, she felt an acute pang of
loneliness. She had never been parted from her mother before.
They had stood by each other. She felt that they had, and she said
to herself that now mother was gone - gone for good. Mrs Verloc
had no illusions. Stevie remained, however. And she said:
"Mother's done what she wanted to do. There's no sense in it that
I can see. I'm sure she couldn't have thought you had enough of
her. It's perfectly wicked, leaving us like that."
Mr Verloc was not a well-read person; his range of allusive phrases
was limited, but there was a peculiar aptness in circumstances
which made him think of rats leaving a doomed ship. He very nearly
said so. He had grown suspicious and embittered. Could it be that
the old woman had such an excellent nose? But the unreasonableness
of such a suspicion was patent, and Mr Verloc held his tongue. Not
altogether, however. He muttered heavily:
"Perhaps it's just as well."
He began to undress. Mrs Verloc kept very still, perfectly still,
with her eyes fixed in a dreamy, quiet stare. And her heart for
the fraction of a second seemed to stand still too. That night she
was "not quite herself," as the saying is, and it was borne upon
her with some force that a simple sentence may hold several diverse
meanings - mostly disagreeable. How was it just as well? And why?
But she did not allow herself to fall into the idleness of barren
speculation. She was rather confirmed in her belief that things
did not stand being looked into. Practical and subtle in her way,
she brought Stevie to the front without loss of time, because in
her the singleness of purpose had the unerring nature and the force
of an instinct.
"What I am going to do to cheer up that boy for the first few days
I'm sure I don't know. He'll be worrying himself from morning till
night before he gets used to mother being away. And he's such a
good boy. I couldn't do without him."
Mr Verloc went on divesting himself of his clothing with the
unnoticing inward concentration of a man undressing in the solitude
of a vast and hopeless desert. For thus inhospitably did this fair
earth, our common inheritance, present itself to the mental vision
of Mr Verloc. All was so still without and within that the lonely
ticking of the clock on the landing stole into the room as if for
the sake of company.
Mr Verloc, getting into bed on his own side, remained prone and
mute behind Mrs Verloc's back. His thick arms rested abandoned on
the outside of the counterpane like dropped weapons, like discarded
tools. At that moment he was within a hair's breadth of making a
clean breast of it all to his wife. The moment seemed propitious.
Looking out of the corners of his eyes, he saw her ample shoulders
draped in white, the back of her head, with the hair done for the
night in three plaits tied up with black tapes at the ends. And he
forbore. Mr Verloc loved his wife as a wife should be loved - that
is, maritally, with the regard one has for one's chief possession.
This head arranged for the night, those ample shoulders, had an
aspect of familiar sacredness - the sacredness of domestic peace.
She moved not, massive and shapeless like a recumbent statue in the
rough; he remembered her wide-open eyes looking into the empty
room. She was mysterious, with the mysteriousness of living
beings. The far-famed secret agent [delta] of the late Baron
Stott-Wartenheim's alarmist despatches was not the man to break
into such mysteries. He was easily intimidated. And he was also
indolent, with the indolence which is so often the secret of good
nature. He forbore touching that mystery out of love, timidity,
and indolence. There would be always time enough. For several
minutes he bore his sufferings silently in the drowsy silence of
the room. And then he disturbed it by a resolute declaration.
"I am going on the Continent to-morrow."
His wife might have fallen asleep already. He could not tell. As
a matter of fact, Mrs Verloc had heard him. Her eyes remained very
wide open, and she lay very still, confirmed in her instinctive
conviction that things don't bear looking into very much. And yet
it was nothing very unusual for Mr Verloc to take such a trip. He
renewed his stock from Paris and Brussels. Often he went over to
make his purchases personally. A little select connection of
amateurs was forming around the shop in Brett Street, a secret
connection eminently proper for any business undertaken by Mr
Verloc, who, by a mystic accord of temperament and necessity, had
been set apart to be a secret agent all his life.
He waited for a while, then added: "I'll be away a week or perhaps
a fortnight. Get Mrs Neale to come for the day."
Mrs Neale was the charwoman of Brett Street. Victim of her
marriage with a debauched joiner, she was oppressed by the needs of
many infant children. Red-armed, and aproned in coarse sacking up
to the arm-pits, she exhaled the anguish of the poor in a breath of
soap-suds and rum, in the uproar of scrubbing, in the clatter of
tin pails.
Mrs Verloc, full of deep purpose, spoke in the tone of the
shallowest indifference.
"There is no need to have the woman here all day. I shall do very
well with Stevie."
She let the lonely clock on the landing count off fifteen ticks
into the abyss of eternity, and asked:
"Shall I put the light out?"
Mr Verloc snapped at his wife huskily.
"Put it out." _
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