The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale
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 cafés 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?”