killed so easily. He had been the master of a house, the husband
of a woman, and the murderer of her Stevie. And now he was of no
account in every respect. He was of less practical account than
the clothing on his body, than his overcoat, than his boots – than
that hat lying on the floor. He was nothing. He was not worth
looking at. He was even no longer the murderer of poor Stevie.
The only murderer that would be found in the room when people came
to look for Mr Verloc would be – herself!
Her hands shook so that she failed twice in the task of refastening
her veil. Mrs Verloc was no longer a person of leisure and
responsibility. She was afraid. The stabbing of Mr Verloc had
been only a blow. It had relieved the pent-up agony of shrieks
strangled in her throat, of tears dried up in her hot eyes, of the
maddening and indignant rage at the atrocious part played by that
man, who was less than nothing now, in robbing her of the boy.
It had been an obscurely prompted blow. The blood trickling on the
floor off the handle of the knife had turned it into an extremely
plain case of murder. Mrs Verloc, who always refrained from
looking deep into things, was compelled to look into the very
bottom of this thing. She saw there no haunting face, no
reproachful shade, no vision of remorse, no sort of ideal
conception. She saw there an object. That object was the gallows.
Mrs Verloc was afraid of the gallows.
She was terrified of them ideally. Having never set eyes on that
last argument of men’s justice except in illustrative woodcuts to a
certain type of tales, she first saw them erect against a black and
stormy background, festooned with chains and human bones, circled
about by birds that peck at dead men’s eyes. This was frightful
enough, but Mrs Verloc, though not a well-informed woman, had a
sufficient knowledge of the institutions of her country to know
that gallows are no longer erected romantically on the banks of
dismal rivers or on wind-swept headlands, but in the yards of
jails. There within four high walls, as if into a pit, at dawn of
day, the murderer was brought out to be executed, with a horrible
quietness and, as the reports in the newspapers always said, “in
the presence of the authorities.” With her eyes staring on the
floor, her nostrils quivering with anguish and shame, she imagined
herself all alone amongst a lot of strange gentlemen in silk hats
who were calmly proceeding about the business of hanging her by the
neck. That – never! Never! And how was it done? The
impossibility of imagining the details of such quiet execution
added something maddening to her abstract terror. The newspapers
never gave any details except one, but that one with some
affectation was always there at the end of a meagre report. Mrs
Verloc remembered its nature. It came with a cruel burning pain
into her head, as if the words “The drop given was fourteen feet”
had been scratched on her brain with a hot needle. “The drop given
was fourteen feet.”
These words affected her physically too. Her throat became
convulsed in waves to resist strangulation; and the apprehension of
the jerk was so vivid that she seized her head in both hands as if
to save it from being torn off her shoulders. “The drop given was
fourteen feet.” No! that must never be. She could not stand THAT.
The thought of it even was not bearable. She could not stand
thinking of it. Therefore Mrs Verloc formed the resolution to go
at once and throw herself into the river off one of the bridges.
This time she managed to refasten her veil. With her face as if
masked, all black from head to foot except for some flowers in her
hat, she looked up mechanically at the clock. She thought it must
have stopped. She could not believe that only two minutes had
passed since she had looked at it last. Of course not. It had
been stopped all the time. As a matter of fact, only three minutes