“Yes.”
“And do you know what my trouble is?” she whispered with strange
intensity.
“Ten minutes after seeing the evening paper,” explained Ossipon
with ardour, “I met a fellow whom you may have seen once or twice
at the shop perhaps, and I had a talk with him which left no doubt
whatever in my mind. Then I started for here, wondering whether
you – I’ve been fond of you beyond words ever since I set eyes on
your face,” he cried, as if unable to command his feelings.
Comrade Ossipon assumed correctly that no woman was capable of
wholly disbelieving such a statement. But he did not know that Mrs
Verloc accepted it with all the fierceness the instinct of self-
preservation puts into the grip of a drowning person. To the widow
of Mr Verloc the robust anarchist was like a radiant messenger of
life.
They walked slowly, in step. “I thought so,” Mrs Verloc murmured
faintly.
“You’ve read it in my eyes,” suggested Ossipon with great
assurance.
“Yes,” she breathed out into his inclined ear.
“A love like mine could not be concealed from a woman like you,” he
went on, trying to detach his mind from material considerations
such as the business value of the shop, and the amount of money Mr
Verloc might have left in the bank. He applied himself to the
sentimental side of the affair. In his heart of hearts he was a
little shocked at his success. Verloc had been a good fellow, and
certainly a very decent husband as far as one could see. However,
Comrade Ossipon was not going to quarrel with his luck for the sake
of a dead man. Resolutely he suppressed his sympathy for the ghost
of Comrade Verloc, and went on.
“I could not conceal it. I was too full of you. I daresay you
could not help seeing it in my eyes. But I could not guess it.
You were always so distant. . . .”
“What else did you expect?” burst out Mrs Verloc. “I was a
respectable woman – ”
She paused, then added, as if speaking to herself, in sinister
resentment: “Till he made me what I am.”
Ossipon let that pass, and took up his running. “He never did seem
to me to be quite worthy of you,” he began, throwing loyalty to the
winds. “You were worthy of a better fate.”
Mrs Verloc interrupted bitterly:
“Better fate! He cheated me out of seven years of life.”
“You seemed to live so happily with him.” Ossipon tried to
exculpate the lukewarmness of his past conduct. “It’s that what’s
made me timid. You seemed to love him. I was surprised – and
jealous,” he added.
“Love him!” Mrs Verloc cried out in a whisper, full of scorn and
rage. “Love him! I was a good wife to him. I am a respectable
woman. You thought I loved him! You did! Look here, Tom – ”
The sound of this name thrilled Comrade Ossipon with pride. For
his name was Alexander, and he was called Tom by arrangement with
the most familiar of his intimates. It was a name of friendship –
of moments of expansion. He had no idea that she had ever heard it
used by anybody. It was apparent that she had not only caught it,
but had treasured it in her memory – perhaps in her heart.
“Look here, Tom! I was a young girl. I was done up. I was tired.
I had two people depending on what I could do, and it did seem as
if I couldn’t do any more. Two people – mother and the boy. He
was much more mine than mother’s. I sat up nights and nights with
him on my lap, all alone upstairs, when I wasn’t more than eight
years old myself. And then – He was mine, I tell you. . . . You
can’t understand that. No man can understand it. What was I to
do? There was a young fellow – ”
The memory of the early romance with the young butcher survived,
tenacious, like the image of a glimpsed ideal in that heart
quailing before the fear of the gallows and full of revolt against