The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale
Michaelis wouldn’t mind giving Stevie a room to sleep in. There were no
visitors and no talk there. Michaelis was writing a book.
Mrs Verloc declared her affection for Michaelis; mentioned her abhorrence
of Karl Yundt, “nasty old man”; and of Ossipon she said nothing. As to
Stevie, he could be no other than very pleased. Mr Michaelis was always
so nice and kind to him. He seemed to like the boy. Well, the boy was a
good boy.
“You too seem to have grown quite fond of him of late,” she added, after
a pause, with her inflexible assurance.
Mr Verloc tying up the cardboard box into a parcel for the post, broke
the string by an injudicious jerk, and muttered several swear words
confidentially to himself. Then raising his tone to the usual husky
mutter, he announced his willingness to take Stevie into the country
himself, and leave him all safe with Michaelis.
He carried out this scheme on the very next day. Stevie offered no
objection. He seemed rather eager, in a bewildered sort of way. He
turned his candid gaze inquisitively to Mr Verloc’s heavy countenance at
frequent intervals, especially when his sister was not looking at him.
His expression was proud, apprehensive, and concentrated, like that of a
small child entrusted for the first time with a box of matches and the
permission to strike a light. But Mrs Verloc, gratified by her brother’s
docility, recommended him not to dirty his clothes unduly in the country.
At this Stevie gave his sister, guardian and protector a look, which for
the first time in his life seemed to lack the quality of perfect
childlike trustfulness. It was haughtily gloomy. Mrs Verloc smiled.
“Goodness me! You needn’t be offended. You know you do get yourself
very untidy when you get a chance, Stevie.”
Mr Verloc was already gone some way down the street.
Thus in consequence of her mother’s heroic proceedings, and of her
brother’s absence on this villegiature, Mrs Verloc found herself oftener
than usual all alone not only in the shop, but in the house. For Mr
Verloc had to take his walks. She was alone longer than usual on the day
of the attempted bomb outrage in Greenwich Park, because Mr Verloc went
out very early that morning and did not come back till nearly dusk. She
did not mind being alone. She had no desire to go out. The weather was
too bad, and the shop was cosier than the streets. Sitting behind the
counter with some sewing, she did not raise her eyes from her work when
Mr Verloc entered in the aggressive clatter of the bell. She had
recognised his step on the pavement outside.
She did not raise her eyes, but as Mr Verloc, silent, and with his hat
rammed down upon his forehead, made straight for the parlour door, she
said serenely:
“What a wretched day. You’ve been perhaps to see Stevie?”
“No! I haven’t,” said Mr Verloc softly, and slammed the glazed parlour
door behind him with unexpected energy.
For some time Mrs Verloc remained quiescent, with her work dropped in her
lap, before she put it away under the counter and got up to light the
gas. This done, she went into the parlour on her way to the kitchen. Mr
Verloc would want his tea presently. Confident of the power of her
charms, Winnie did not expect from her husband in the daily intercourse
of their married life a ceremonious amenity of address and courtliness of
manner; vain and antiquated forms at best, probably never very exactly
observed, discarded nowadays even in the highest spheres, and always
foreign to the standards of her class. She did not look for courtesies
from him. But he was a good husband, and she had a loyal respect for his
rights.
Mrs Verloc would have gone through the parlour and on to her domestic
duties in the kitchen with the perfect serenity of a woman sure of the
power of her charms. But a slight, very slight, and rapid rattling sound
grew upon her hearing. Bizarre and incomprehensible, it arrested Mrs
Verloc’s attention. Then as its character became plain to the ear she
stopped short, amazed and concerned. Striking a match on the box she
held in her hand, she turned on and lighted, above the parlour table, one
of the two gas-burners, which, being defective, first whistled as if
astonished, and then went on purring comfortably like a cat.
Mr Verloc, against his usual practice, had thrown off his overcoat. It
was lying on the sofa. His hat, which he must also have thrown off,
rested overturned under the edge of the sofa. He had dragged a chair in
front of the fireplace, and his feet planted inside the fender, his head
held between his hands, he was hanging low over the glowing grate. His
teeth rattled with an ungovernable violence, causing his whole enormous
back to tremble at the same rate. Mrs Verloc was startled.
“You’ve been getting wet,” she said.
“Not very,” Mr Verloc managed to falter out, in a profound shudder. By a
great effort he suppressed the rattling of his teeth.
“I’ll have you laid up on my hands,” she said, with genuine uneasiness.
“I don’t think so,” remarked Mr Verloc, snuffling huskily.
He had certainly contrived somehow to catch an abominable cold between
seven in the morning and five in the afternoon. Mrs Verloc looked at his
bowed back.
“Where have you been to-day?” she asked.
“Nowhere,” answered Mr Verloc in a low, choked nasal tone. His attitude
suggested aggrieved sulks or a severe headache. The unsufficiency and
uncandidness of his answer became painfully apparent in the dead silence
of the room. He snuffled apologetically, and added: “I’ve been to the
bank.”
Mrs Verloc became attentive.
“You have!” she said dispassionately. “What for?”
Mr Verloc mumbled, with his nose over the grate, and with marked
unwillingness.
“Draw the money out!”
“What do you mean? All of it?”
“Yes. All of it.”
Mrs Verloc spread out with care the scanty table-cloth, got two knives
and two forks out of the table drawer, and suddenly stopped in her
methodical proceedings.
“What did you do that for?”
“May want it soon,” snuffled vaguely Mr Verloc, who was coming to the end
of his calculated indiscretions.
“I don’t know what you mean,” remarked his wife in a tone perfectly
casual, but standing stock still between the table and the cupboard.
“You know you can trust me,” Mr Verloc remarked to the grate, with hoarse
feeling.
Mrs Verloc turned slowly towards the cupboard, saying with deliberation:
“Oh yes. I can trust you.”
And she went on with her methodical proceedings. She laid two plates,
got the bread, the butter, going to and fro quietly between the table and
the cupboard in the peace and silence of her home. On the point of
taking out the jam, she reflected practically: “He will be feeling
hungry, having been away all day,” and she returned to the cupboard once
more to get the cold beef. She set it under the purring gas-jet, and
with a passing glance at her motionless husband hugging the fire, she
went (down two steps) into the kitchen. It was only when coming back,
carving knife and fork in hand, that she spoke again.
“If I hadn’t trusted you I wouldn’t have married you.”
Bowed under the overmantel, Mr Verloc, holding his head in both hands,
seemed to have gone to sleep. Winnie made the tea, and called out in an
undertone:
“Adolf.”
Mr Verloc got up at once, and staggered a little before he sat down at
the table. His wife examining the sharp edge of the carving knife,
placed it on the dish, and called his attention to the cold beef. He
remained insensible to the suggestion, with his chin on his breast.
“You should feed your cold,” Mrs Verloc said dogmatically.
He looked up, and shook his head. His eyes were bloodshot and his face
red. His fingers had ruffled his hair into a dissipated untidiness.
Altogether he had a disreputable aspect, expressive of the discomfort,
the irritation and the gloom following a heavy debauch. But Mr Verloc
was not a debauched man. In his conduct he was respectable. His
appearance might have been the effect of a feverish cold. He drank three
cups of tea, but abstained from food entirely. He recoiled from it with
sombre aversion when urged by Mrs Verloc, who said at last:
“Aren’t your feet wet? You had better put on your slippers. You aren’t
going out any more this evening.”
Mr Verloc intimated by morose grunts and signs that his feet were not
wet, and that anyhow he did not care. The proposal as to slippers was
disregarded as beneath his notice. But the question of going out in the
evening received an unexpected development. It was not of going out in
the evening that Mr Verloc was thinking. His thoughts embraced a vaster
scheme. From moody and incomplete phrases it became apparent that Mr
Verloc had been considering the expediency of emigrating. It was not
very clear whether he had in his mind France or California.
The utter unexpectedness, improbability, and inconceivableness of such an
event robbed this vague declaration of all its effect. Mrs Verloc, as
placidly as if her husband had been threatening her with the end of the
world, said:
“The idea!”
Mr Verloc declared himself sick and tired of everything, and besides—She
interrupted him.
“You’ve a bad cold.”
It was indeed obvious that Mr Verloc was not in his usual state,
physically and even mentally. A sombre irresolution held him silent for
a while. Then he murmured a few ominous generalities on the theme of
necessity.
“Will have to,” repeated Winnie, sitting calmly back, with folded arms,
opposite her husband. “I should like to know who’s to make you. You
ain’t a slave. No one need be a slave in this country—and don’t you make
yourself one.” She paused, and with invincible and steady candour. “The
business isn’t so bad,” she went on. “You’ve a comfortable home.”
She glanced all round the parlour, from the corner cupboard to the good
fire in the grate. Ensconced cosily behind the shop of doubtful wares,
with the mysteriously dim window, and its door suspiciously ajar in the
obscure and narrow street, it was in all essentials of domestic propriety
and domestic comfort a respectable home. Her devoted affection missed
out of it her brother Stevie, now enjoying a damp villegiature in the
Kentish lanes under the care of Mr Michaelis. She missed him poignantly,
with all the force of her protecting passion. This was the boy’s home
too—the roof, the cupboard, the stoked grate. On this thought Mrs Verloc
rose, and walking to the other end of the table, said in the fulness of
her heart:
“And you are not tired of me.”
Mr Verloc made no sound. Winnie leaned on his shoulder from behind, and
pressed her lips to his forehead. Thus she lingered. Not a whisper
reached them from the outside world.
The sound of footsteps on the pavement died out in the discreet dimness
of the shop. Only the gas-jet above the table went on purring equably in
the brooding silence of the parlour.
During the contact of that unexpected and lingering kiss Mr Verloc,
gripping with both hands the edges of his chair, preserved a hieratic
immobility. When the pressure was removed he let go the chair, rose, and
went to stand before the fireplace. He turned no longer his back to the
room. With his features swollen and an air of being drugged, he followed
his wife’s movements with his eyes.
Mrs Verloc went about serenely, clearing up the table. Her tranquil
voice commented the idea thrown out in a reasonable and domestic tone.
It wouldn’t stand examination. She condemned it from every point of
view. But her only real concern was Stevie’s welfare. He appeared to
her thought in that connection as sufficiently “peculiar” not to be taken
rashly abroad. And that was all. But talking round that vital point,