The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale
other, introduced at the same time a certain element of vagueness into
their intimacy. No system of conjugal relations is perfect. Mr Verloc
presumed that his wife had understood him, but he would have been glad to
hear her say what she thought at the moment. It would have been a
comfort.
There were several reasons why this comfort was denied him. There was a
physical obstacle: Mrs Verloc had no sufficient command over her voice.
She did not see any alternative between screaming and silence, and
instinctively she chose the silence. Winnie Verloc was temperamentally a
silent person. And there was the paralysing atrocity of the thought
which occupied her. Her cheeks were blanched, her lips ashy, her
immobility amazing. And she thought without looking at Mr Verloc: “This
man took the boy away to murder him. He took the boy away from his home
to murder him. He took the boy away from me to murder him!”
Mrs Verloc’s whole being was racked by that inconclusive and maddening
thought. It was in her veins, in her bones, in the roots of her hair.
Mentally she assumed the biblical attitude of mourning—the covered face,
the rent garments; the sound of wailing and lamentation filled her head.
But her teeth were violently clenched, and her tearless eyes were hot
with rage, because she was not a submissive creature. The protection she
had extended over her brother had been in its origin of a fierce and
indignant complexion. She had to love him with a militant love. She had
battled for him—even against herself. His loss had the bitterness of
defeat, with the anguish of a baffled passion. It was not an ordinary
stroke of death. Moreover, it was not death that took Stevie from her.
It was Mr Verloc who took him away. She had seen him. She had watched
him, without raising a hand, take the boy away. And she had let him go,
like—like a fool—a blind fool. Then after he had murdered the boy he
came home to her. Just came home like any other man would come home to
his wife. . . .
Through her set teeth Mrs Verloc muttered at the wall:
“And I thought he had caught a cold.”
Mr Verloc heard these words and appropriated them.
“It was nothing,” he said moodily. “I was upset. I was upset on your
account.”
Mrs Verloc, turning her head slowly, transferred her stare from the wall
to her husband’s person. Mr Verloc, with the tips of his fingers between
his lips, was looking on the ground.
“Can’t be helped,” he mumbled, letting his hand fall. “You must pull
yourself together. You’ll want all your wits about you. It is you who
brought the police about our ears. Never mind, I won’t say anything more
about it,” continued Mr Verloc magnanimously. “You couldn’t know.”
“I couldn’t,” breathed out Mrs Verloc. It was as if a corpse had spoken.
Mr Verloc took up the thread of his discourse.
“I don’t blame you. I’ll make them sit up. Once under lock and key it
will be safe enough for me to talk—you understand. You must reckon on me
being two years away from you,” he continued, in a tone of sincere
concern. “It will be easier for you than for me. You’ll have something
to do, while I—Look here, Winnie, what you must do is to keep this
business going for two years. You know enough for that. You’ve a good
head on you. I’ll send you word when it’s time to go about trying to
sell. You’ll have to be extra careful. The comrades will be keeping an
eye on you all the time. You’ll have to be as artful as you know how,
and as close as the grave. No one must know what you are going to do. I
have no mind to get a knock on the head or a stab in the back directly I
am let out.”
Thus spoke Mr Verloc, applying his mind with ingenuity and forethought to
the problems of the future. His voice was sombre, because he had a
correct sentiment of the situation. Everything which he did not wish to
pass had come to pass. The future had become precarious. His judgment,
perhaps, had been momentarily obscured by his dread of Mr Vladimir’s
truculent folly. A man somewhat over forty may be excusably thrown into
considerable disorder by the prospect of losing his employment,
especially if the man is a secret agent of political police, dwelling
secure in the consciousness of his high value and in the esteem of high
personages. He was excusable.
Now the thing had ended in a crash. Mr Verloc was cool; but he was not
cheerful. A secret agent who throws his secrecy to the winds from desire
of vengeance, and flaunts his achievements before the public eye, becomes
the mark for desperate and bloodthirsty indignations. Without unduly
exaggerating the danger, Mr Verloc tried to bring it clearly before his
wife’s mind. He repeated that he had no intention to let the
revolutionists do away with him.
He looked straight into his wife’s eyes. The enlarged pupils of the
woman received his stare into their unfathomable depths.
“I am too fond of you for that,” he said, with a little nervous laugh.
A faint flush coloured Mrs Verloc’s ghastly and motionless face. Having
done with the visions of the past, she had not only heard, but had also
understood the words uttered by her husband. By their extreme disaccord
with her mental condition these words produced on her a slightly
suffocating effect. Mrs Verloc’s mental condition had the merit of
simplicity; but it was not sound. It was governed too much by a fixed
idea. Every nook and cranny of her brain was filled with the thought
that this man, with whom she had lived without distaste for seven years,
had taken the “poor boy” away from her in order to kill him—the man to
whom she had grown accustomed in body and mind; the man whom she had
trusted, took the boy away to kill him! In its form, in its substance,
in its effect, which was universal, altering even the aspect of inanimate
things, it was a thought to sit still and marvel at for ever and ever.
Mrs Verloc sat still. And across that thought (not across the kitchen)
the form of Mr Verloc went to and fro, familiarly in hat and overcoat,
stamping with his boots upon her brain. He was probably talking too; but
Mrs Verloc’s thought for the most part covered the voice.
Now and then, however, the voice would make itself heard. Several
connected words emerged at times. Their purport was generally hopeful.
On each of these occasions Mrs Verloc’s dilated pupils, losing their
far-off fixity, followed her husband’s movements with the effect of black
care and impenetrable attention. Well informed upon all matters relating
to his secret calling, Mr Verloc augured well for the success of his
plans and combinations. He really believed that it would be upon the
whole easy for him to escape the knife of infuriated revolutionists. He
had exaggerated the strength of their fury and the length of their arm
(for professional purposes) too often to have many illusions one way or
the other. For to exaggerate with judgment one must begin by measuring
with nicety. He knew also how much virtue and how much infamy is
forgotten in two years—two long years. His first really confidential
discourse to his wife was optimistic from conviction. He also thought it
good policy to display all the assurance he could muster. It would put
heart into the poor woman. On his liberation, which, harmonising with
the whole tenor of his life, would be secret, of course, they would
vanish together without loss of time. As to covering up the tracks, he
begged his wife to trust him for that. He knew how it was to be done so
that the devil himself—
He waved his hand. He seemed to boast. He wished only to put heart into
her. It was a benevolent intention, but Mr Verloc had the misfortune not
to be in accord with his audience.
The self-confident tone grew upon Mrs Verloc’s ear which let most of the
words go by; for what were words to her now? What could words do to her,
for good or evil in the face of her fixed idea? Her black glance
followed that man who was asserting his impunity—the man who had taken
poor Stevie from home to kill him somewhere. Mrs Verloc could not
remember exactly where, but her heart began to beat very perceptibly.
Mr Verloc, in a soft and conjugal tone, was now expressing his firm
belief that there were yet a good few years of quiet life before them
both. He did not go into the question of means. A quiet life it must be
and, as it were, nestling in the shade, concealed among men whose flesh
is grass; modest, like the life of violets. The words used by Mr Verloc
were: “Lie low for a bit.” And far from England, of course. It was not
clear whether Mr Verloc had in his mind Spain or South America; but at
any rate somewhere abroad.
This last word, falling into Mrs Verloc’s ear, produced a definite
impression. This man was talking of going abroad. The impression was
completely disconnected; and such is the force of mental habit that Mrs
Verloc at once and automatically asked herself: “And what of Stevie?”
It was a sort of forgetfulness; but instantly she became aware that there
was no longer any occasion for anxiety on that score. There would never
be any occasion any more. The poor boy had been taken out and killed.
The poor boy was dead.
This shaking piece of forgetfulness stimulated Mrs Verloc’s intelligence.
She began to perceive certain consequences which would have surprised Mr
Verloc. There was no need for her now to stay there, in that kitchen, in
that house, with that man—since the boy was gone for ever. No need
whatever. And on that Mrs Verloc rose as if raised by a spring. But
neither could she see what there was to keep her in the world at all.
And this inability arrested her. Mr Verloc watched her with marital
solicitude.
“You’re looking more like yourself,” he said uneasily. Something
peculiar in the blackness of his wife’s eyes disturbed his optimism. At
that precise moment Mrs Verloc began to look upon herself as released
from all earthly ties.
She had her freedom. Her contract with existence, as represented by that
man standing over there, was at an end. She was a free woman. Had this
view become in some way perceptible to Mr Verloc he would have been
extremely shocked. In his affairs of the heart Mr Verloc had been always
carelessly generous, yet always with no other idea than that of being
loved for himself. Upon this matter, his ethical notions being in
agreement with his vanity, he was completely incorrigible. That this
should be so in the case of his virtuous and legal connection he was
perfectly certain. He had grown older, fatter, heavier, in the belief
that he lacked no fascination for being loved for his own sake. When he
saw Mrs Verloc starting to walk out of the kitchen without a word he was
disappointed.
“Where are you going to?” he called out rather sharply. “Upstairs?”
Mrs Verloc in the doorway turned at the voice. An instinct of prudence
born of fear, the excessive fear of being approached and touched by that
man, induced her to nod at him slightly (from the height of two steps),
with a stir of the lips which the conjugal optimism of Mr Verloc took for
a wan and uncertain smile.
“That’s right,” he encouraged her gruffly. “Rest and quiet’s what you
want. Go on. It won’t be long before I am with you.”
Mrs Verloc, the free woman who had had really no idea where she was going
to, obeyed the suggestion with rigid steadiness.
Mr Verloc watched her. She disappeared up the stairs. He was
disappointed. There was that within him which would have been more
satisfied if she had been moved to throw herself upon his breast. But he
was generous and indulgent. Winnie was always undemonstrative and
silent. Neither was Mr Verloc himself prodigal of endearments and words
as a rule. But this was not an ordinary evening. It was an occasion