She moved a step forward in the darkness. He was terrified at her.
He would not have been surprised if she had suddenly produced
another knife destined for his breast. He certainly would have
made no resistance. He had really not enough fortitude in him just
then to tell her to keep back. But he inquired in a cavernous,
strange tone: “Was he asleep?”
“No,” she cried, and went on rapidly. “He wasn’t. Not he. He had
been telling me that nothing could touch him. After taking the boy
away from under my very eyes to kill him – the loving, innocent,
harmless lad. My own, I tell you. He was lying on the couch quite
easy – after killing the boy – my boy. I would have gone on the
streets to get out of his sight. And he says to me like this:
`Come here,’ after telling me I had helped to kill the boy. You
hear, Tom? He says like this: `Come here,’ after taking my very
heart out of me along with the boy to smash in the dirt.”
She ceased, then dreamily repeated twice: “Blood and dirt. Blood
and dirt.” A great light broke upon Comrade Ossipon. It was that
half-witted lad then who had perished in the park. And the fooling
of everybody all round appeared more complete than ever – colossal.
He exclaimed scientifically, in the extremity of his astonishment:
“The degenerate – by heavens!”
“Come here.” The voice of Mrs Verloc rose again. “What did he
think I was made of? Tell me, Tom. Come here! Me! Like this! I
had been looking at the knife, and I thought I would come then if
he wanted me so much. Oh yes! I came – for the last time. . . .
With the knife.”
He was excessively terrified at her – the sister of the degenerate
– a degenerate herself of a murdering type . . . or else of the
lying type. Comrade Ossipon might have been said to be terrified
scientifically in addition to all other kinds of fear. It was an
immeasurable and composite funk, which from its very excess gave
him in the dark a false appearance of calm and thoughtful
deliberation. For he moved and spoke with difficulty, being as if
half frozen in his will and mind – and no one could see his ghastly
face. He felt half dead.
He leaped a foot high. Unexpectedly Mrs Verloc had desecrated the
unbroken reserved decency of her home by a shrill and terrible
shriek.
“Help, Tom! Save me. I won’t be hanged!”
He rushed forward, groping for her mouth with a silencing hand, and
the shriek died out. But in his rush he had knocked her over. He
felt her now clinging round his legs, and his terror reached its
culminating point, became a sort of intoxication, entertained
delusions, acquired the characteristics of delirium tremens. He
positively saw snakes now. He saw the woman twined round him like
a snake, not to be shaken off. She was not deadly. She was death
itself – the companion of life.
Mrs Verloc, as if relieved by the outburst, was very far from
behaving noisily now. She was pitiful.
“Tom, you can’t throw me off now,” she murmured from the floor.
“Not unless you crush my head under your heel. I won’t leave you.”
“Get up,” said Ossipon.
His face was so pale as to be quite visible in the profound black
darkness of the shop; while Mrs Verloc, veiled, had no face, almost
no discernible form. The trembling of something small and white, a
flower in her hat, marked her place, her movements.
It rose in the blackness. She had got up from the floor, and
Ossipon regretted not having, run out at once into the street. But
he perceived easily that it would not do. It would not do. She
would run after him. She would pursue him shrieking till she sent
every policeman within hearing in chase. And then goodness only
knew what she would say of him. He was so frightened that for a
moment the insane notion of strangling her in the dark passed
through his mind. And he became more frightened than ever! She