Verloc, overcame him again. The piece of roast beef, laid out in
the likeness of funereal baked meats for Stevie’s obsequies,
offered itself largely to his notice. And Mr Verloc again partook.
He partook ravenously, without restraint and decency, cutting thick
slices with the sharp carving knife, and swallowing them without
bread. In the course of that refection it occurred to Mr Verloc
that he was not hearing his wife move about the bedroom as he
should have done. The thought of finding her perhaps sitting on
the bed in the dark not only cut Mr Verloc’s appetite, but also
took from him the inclination to follow her upstairs just yet.
Laying down the carving knife, Mr Verloc listened with careworn
attention.
He was comforted by hearing her move at last. She walked suddenly
across the room, and threw the window up. After a period of
stillness up there, during which he figured her to himself with her
head out, he heard the sash being lowered slowly. Then she made a
few steps, and sat down. Every resonance of his house was familiar
to Mr Verloc, who was thoroughly domesticated. When next he heard
his wife’s footsteps overhead he knew, as well as if he had seen
her doing it, that she had been putting on her walking shoes. Mr
Verloc wriggled his shoulders slightly at this ominous symptom, and
moving away from the table, stood with his back to the fireplace,
his head on one side, and gnawing perplexedly at the tips of his
fingers. He kept track of her movements by the sound. She walked
here and there violently, with abrupt stoppages, now before the
chest of drawers, then in front of the wardrobe. An immense load
of weariness, the harvest of a day of shocks and surprises, weighed
Mr Verloc’s energies to the ground.
He did not raise his eyes till he heard his wife descending the
stairs. It was as he had guessed. She was dressed for going out.
Mrs Verloc was a free woman. She had thrown open the window of the
bedroom either with the intention of screaming Murder! Help! or of
throwing herself out. For she did not exactly know what use to
make of her freedom. Her personality seemed to have been torn into
two pieces, whose mental operations did not adjust themselves very
well to each other. The street, silent and deserted from end to
end, repelled her by taking sides with that man who was so certain
of his impunity. She was afraid to shout lest no one should come.
Obviously no one would come. Her instinct of self-preservation
recoiled from the depth of the fall into that sort of slimy, deep
trench. Mrs Verloc closed the window, and dressed herself to go
out into the street by another way. She was a free woman. She had
dressed herself thoroughly, down to the tying of a black veil over
her face. As she appeared before him in the light of the parlour,
Mr Verloc observed that she had even her little handbag hanging
from her left wrist. . . . Flying off to her mother, of course.
The thought that women were wearisome creatures after all presented
itself to his fatigued brain. But he was too generous to harbour
it for more than an instant. This man, hurt cruelly in his vanity,
remained magnanimous in his conduct, allowing himself no
satisfaction of a bitter smile or of a contemptuous gesture. With
true greatness of soul, he only glanced at the wooden clock on the
wall, and said in a perfectly calm but forcible manner:
“Five and twenty minutes past eight, Winnie. There’s no sense in
going over there so late. You will never manage to get back to-
night.”
Before his extended hand Mrs Verloc had stopped short. He added
heavily: “Your mother will be gone to bed before you get there.
This is the sort of news that can wait.”
Nothing was further from Mrs Verloc’s thoughts than going to her
mother. She recoiled at the mere idea, and feeling a chair behind
her, she obeyed the suggestion of the touch, and sat down. Her
intention had been simply to get outside the door for ever. And if