had elapsed from the moment she had drawn the first deep, easy
breath after the blow, to this moment when Mrs Verloc formed the
resolution to drown herself in the Thames. But Mrs Verloc could
not believe that. She seemed to have heard or read that clocks and
watches always stopped at the moment of murder for the undoing of
the murderer. She did not care. “To the bridge – and over I go.”
. . . But her movements were slow.
She dragged herself painfully across the shop, and had to hold on
to the handle of the door before she found the necessary fortitude
to open it. The street frightened her, since it led either to the
gallows or to the river. She floundered over the doorstep head
forward, arms thrown out, like a person falling over the parapet of
a bridge. This entrance into the open air had a foretaste of
drowning; a slimy dampness enveloped her, entered her nostrils,
clung to her hair. It was not actually raining, but each gas lamp
had a rusty little halo of mist. The van and horses were gone, and
in the black street the curtained window of the carters’ eating-
house made a square patch of soiled blood-red light glowing faintly
very near the level of the pavement. Mrs Verloc, dragging herself
slowly towards it, thought that she was a very friendless woman.
It was true. It was so true that, in a sudden longing to see some
friendly face, she could think of no one else but of Mrs Neale, the
charwoman. She had no acquaintances of her own. Nobody would miss
her in a social way. It must not be imagined that the Widow Verloc
had forgotten her mother. This was not so. Winnie had been a good
daughter because she had been a devoted sister. Her mother had
always leaned on her for support. No consolation or advice could
be expected there. Now that Stevie was dead the bond seemed to be
broken. She could not face the old woman with the horrible tale.
Moreover, it was too far. The river was her present destination.
Mrs Verloc tried to forget her mother.
Each step cost her an effort of will which seemed the last
possible. Mrs Verloc had dragged herself past the red glow of the
eating-house window. “To the bridge – and over I go,” she repeated
to herself with fierce obstinacy. She put out her hand just in
time to steady herself against a lamp-post. “I’ll never get there
before morning,” she thought. The fear of death paralysed her
efforts to escape the gallows. It seemed to her she had been
staggering in that street for hours. “I’ll never get there,” she
thought. “They’ll find me knocking about the streets. It’s too
far.” She held on, panting under her black veil.
“The drop given was fourteen feet.”
She pushed the lamp-post away from her violently, and found herself
walking. But another wave of faintness overtook her like a great
sea, washing away her heart clean out of her breast. “I will never
get there,” she muttered, suddenly arrested, swaying lightly where
she stood. “Never.”
And perceiving the utter impossibility of walking as far as the
nearest bridge, Mrs Verloc thought of a flight abroad.
It came to her suddenly. Murderers escaped. They escaped abroad.
Spain or California. Mere names. The vast world created for the
glory of man was only a vast blank to Mrs Verloc. She did not know
which way to turn. Murderers had friends, relations, helpers –
they had knowledge. She had nothing. She was the most lonely of
murderers that ever struck a mortal blow. She was alone in London:
and the whole town of marvels and mud, with its maze of streets and
its mass of lights, was sunk in a hopeless night, rested at the
bottom of a black abyss from which no unaided woman could hope to
scramble out.
She swayed forward, and made a fresh start blindly, with an awful
dread of falling down; but at the end of a few steps, unexpectedly,
she found a sensation of support, of security. Raising her head,
she saw a man’s face peering closely at her veil. Comrade Ossipon