without beauty and almost without decency, but admirable in the
continuity of feeling and tenacity of purpose. And this last
vision has such plastic relief, such nearness of form, such a
fidelity of suggestive detail, that it wrung from Mrs Verloc an
anguished and faint murmur, reproducing the supreme illusion of her
life, an appalled murmur that died out on her blanched lips.
“Might have been father and son.”
Mr Verloc stopped, and raised a care-worn face. “Eh? What did you
say?” he asked. Receiving no reply, he resumed his sinister
tramping. Then with a menacing flourish of a thick, fleshy fist,
he burst out:
“Yes. The Embassy people. A pretty lot, ain’t they! Before a
week’s out I’ll make some of them wish themselves twenty feet
underground. Eh? What?”
He glanced sideways, with his head down. Mrs Verloc gazed at the
whitewashed wall. A blank wall – perfectly blank. A blankness to
run at and dash your head against. Mrs Verloc remained immovably
seated. She kept still as the population of half the globe would
keep still in astonishment and despair, were the sun suddenly put
out in the summer sky by the perfidy of a trusted providence.
“The Embassy,” Mr Verloc began again, after a preliminary grimace
which bared his teeth wolfishly. “I wish I could get loose in
there with a cudgel for half-an-hour. I would keep on hitting till
there wasn’t a single unbroken bone left amongst the whole lot.
But never mind, I’ll teach them yet what it means trying to throw
out a man like me to rot in the streets. I’ve a tongue in my head.
All the world shall know what I’ve done for them. I am not afraid.
I don’t care. Everything’ll come out. Every damned thing. Let
them look out!”
In these terms did Mr Verloc declare his thirst for revenge. It
was a very appropriate revenge. It was in harmony with the
promptings of Mr Verloc’s genius. It had also the advantage of
being within the range of his powers and of adjusting itself easily
to the practice of his life, which had consisted precisely in
betraying the secret and unlawful proceedings of his fellow-men.
Anarchists or diplomats were all one to him. Mr Verloc was
temperamentally no respecter of persons. His scorn was equally
distributed over the whole field of his operations. But as a
member of a revolutionary proletariat – which he undoubtedly was –
he nourished a rather inimical sentiment against social
distinction.
“Nothing on earth can stop me now,” he added, and paused, looking
fixedly at his wife, who was looking fixedly at a blank wall.
The silence in the kitchen was prolonged, and Mr Verloc felt
disappointed. He had expected his wife to say something. But Mrs
Verloc’s lips, composed in their usual form, preserved a statuesque
immobility like the rest of her face. And Mr Verloc was
disappointed. Yet the occasion did not, he recognised, demand
speech from her. She was a woman of very few words. For reasons
involved in the very foundation of his psychology, Mr Verloc was
inclined to put his trust in any woman who had given herself to
him. Therefore he trusted his wife. Their accord was perfect, but
it was not precise. It was a tacit accord, congenial to Mrs
Verloc’s incuriosity and to Mr Verloc’s habits of mind, which were
indolent and secret. They refrained from going to the bottom of
facts and motives.
This reserve, expressing, in a way, their profound confidence in
each 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