eyes looked on, big, dry, enlarged, lightless, burnt out like two
black holes in the white, shining globes.
“There is no danger,” he said, gazing into them with an earnestness
almost rapt, which to Mrs Verloc, flying from the gallows, seemed
to be full of force and tenderness. This devotion deeply moved her
– and the adamantine face lost the stern rigidity of its terror.
Comrade Ossipon gazed at it as no lover ever gazed at his
mistress’s face. Alexander Ossipon, anarchist, nicknamed the
Doctor, author of a medical (and improper) pamphlet, late lecturer
on the social aspects of hygiene to working men’s clubs, was free
from the trammels of conventional morality – but he submitted to
the rule of science. He was scientific, and he gazed
scientifically at that woman, the sister of a degenerate, a
degenerate herself – of a murdering type. He gazed at her, and
invoked Lombroso, as an Italian peasant recommends himself to his
favourite saint. He gazed scientifically. He gazed at her cheeks,
at her nose, at her eyes, at her ears. . . . Bad! . . . Fatal! Mrs
Verloc’s pale lips parting, slightly relaxed under his passionately
attentive gaze, he gazed also at her teeth. . . . Not a doubt
remained . . . a murdering type. . . . If Comrade Ossipon did not
recommend his terrified soul to Lombroso, it was only because on
scientific grounds he could not believe that he carried about him
such a thing as a soul. But he had in him the scientific spirit,
which moved him to testify on the platform of a railway station in
nervous jerky phrases.
“He was an extraordinary lad, that brother of yours. Most
interesting to study. A perfect type in a way. Perfect!”
He spoke scientifically in his secret fear. And Mrs Verloc,
hearing these words of commendation vouchsafed to her beloved dead,
swayed forward with a flicker of light in her sombre eyes, like a
ray of sunshine heralding a tempest of rain.
“He was that indeed,” she whispered softly, with quivering lips.
“You took a lot of notice of him, Tom. I loved you for it.”
“It’s almost incredible the resemblance there was between you two,”
pursued Ossipon, giving a voice to his abiding dread, and trying to
conceal his nervous, sickening impatience for the train to start.
“Yes; he resembled you.”
These words were not especially touching or sympathetic. But the
fact of that resemblance insisted upon was enough in itself to act
upon her emotions powerfully. With a little faint cry, and
throwing her arms out, Mrs Verloc burst into tears at last.
Ossipon entered the carriage, hastily closed the door and looked
out to see the time by the station clock. Eight minutes more. For
the first three of these Mrs Verloc wept violently and helplessly
without pause or interruption. Then she recovered somewhat, and
sobbed gently in an abundant fall of tears. She tried to talk to
her saviour, to the man who was the messenger of life.
“Oh, Tom! How could I fear to die after he was taken away from me
so cruelly! How could I! How could I be such a coward!”
She lamented aloud her love of life, that life without grace or
charm, and almost without decency, but of an exalted faithfulness
of purpose, even unto murder. And, as often happens in the lament
of poor humanity, rich in suffering but indigent in words, the
truth – the very cry of truth – was found in a worn and artificial
shape picked up somewhere among the phrases of sham sentiment.
“How could I be so afraid of death! Tom, I tried. But I am
afraid. I tried to do away with myself. And I couldn’t. Am I
hard? I suppose the cup of horrors was not full enough for such as
me. Then when you came. . . . ”
She paused. Then in a gust of confidence and gratitude, “I will
live all my days for you, Tom!” she sobbed out.
“Go over into the other corner of the carriage, away from the
platform,” said Ossipon solicitously. She let her saviour settle
her comfortably, and he watched the coming on of another crisis of