The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

death.

“That was the man I loved then,” went on the widow of Mr Verloc.

“I suppose he could see it in my eyes too. Five and twenty

shillings a week, and his father threatened to kick him out of the

business if he made such a fool of himself as to marry a girl with

a crippled mother and a crazy idiot of a boy on her hands. But he

would hang about me, till one evening I found the courage to slam

the door in his face. I had to do it. I loved him dearly. Five

and twenty shillings a week! There was that other man – a good

lodger. What is a girl to do? Could I’ve gone on the streets? He

seemed kind. He wanted me, anyhow. What was I to do with mother

and that poor boy? Eh? I said yes. He seemed good-natured, he

was freehanded, he had money, he never said anything. Seven years

– seven years a good wife to him, the kind, the good, the generous,

the – And he loved me. Oh yes. He loved me till I sometimes

wished myself – Seven years. Seven years a wife to him. And do

you know what he was, that dear friend of yours? Do you know what

he was? He was a devil!”

The superhuman vehemence of that whispered statement completely

stunned Comrade Ossipon. Winnie Verloc turning about held him by

both arms, facing him under the falling mist in the darkness and

solitude of Brett Place, in which all sounds of life seemed lost as

if in a triangular well of asphalt and bricks, of blind houses and

unfeeling stones.

“No; I didn’t know,” he declared, with a sort of flabby stupidity,

whose comical aspect was lost upon a woman haunted by the fear of

the gallows, “but I do now. I – I understand,” he floundered on,

his mind speculating as to what sort of atrocities Verloc could

have practised under the sleepy, placid appearances of his married

estate. It was positively awful. “I understand,” he repeated, and

then by a sudden inspiration uttered an – “Unhappy woman!” of lofty

commiseration instead of the more familiar “Poor darling!” of his

usual practice. This was no usual case. He felt conscious of

something abnormal going on, while he never lost sight of the

greatness of the stake. “Unhappy, brave woman!”

He was glad to have discovered that variation; but he could

discover nothing else.

“Ah, but he is dead now,” was the best he could do. And he put a

remarkable amount of animosity into his guarded exclamation. Mrs

Verloc caught at his arm with a sort of frenzy.

“You guessed then he was dead,” she murmured, as if beside herself.

“You! You guessed what I had to do. Had to!”

There were suggestions of triumph, relief, gratitude in the

indefinable tone of these words. It engrossed the whole attention

of Ossipon to the detriment of mere literal sense. He wondered

what was up with her, why she had worked herself into this state of

wild excitement. He even began to wonder whether the hidden causes

of that Greenwich Park affair did not lie deep in the unhappy

circumstances of the Verlocs’ married life. He went so far as to

suspect Mr Verloc of having selected that extraordinary manner of

committing suicide. By Jove! that would account for the utter

inanity and wrong-headedness of the thing. No anarchist

manifestation was required by the circumstances. Quite the

contrary; and Verloc was as well aware of that as any other

revolutionist of his standing. What an immense joke if Verloc had

simply made fools of the whole of Europe, of the revolutionary

world, of the police, of the press, and of the cocksure Professor

as well. Indeed, thought Ossipon, in astonishment, it seemed

almost certain that he did! Poor beggar! It struck him as very

possible that of that household of two it wasn’t precisely the man

who was the devil.

Alexander Ossipon, nicknamed the Doctor, was naturally inclined to

think indulgently of his men friends. He eyed Mrs Verloc hanging

on his arm. Of his women friends he thought in a specially

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