same, remained out till the night was far advanced. He never
offered to take Winnie to theatres, as such a nice gentleman ought
to have done. His evenings were occupied. His work was in a way
political, he told Winnie once. She would have, he warned her, to
be very nice to his political friends.
And with her straight, unfathomable glance she answered that she
would be so, of course.
How much more he told her as to his occupation it was impossible
for Winnie’s mother to discover. The married couple took her over
with the furniture. The mean aspect of the shop surprised her.
The change from the Belgravian square to the narrow street in Soho
affected her legs adversely. They became of an enormous size. On
the other hand, she experienced a complete relief from material
cares. Her son-in-law’s heavy good nature inspired her with a
sense of absolute safety. Her daughter’s future was obviously
assured, and even as to her son Stevie she need have no anxiety.
She had not been able to conceal from herself that he was a
terrible encumbrance, that poor Stevie. But in view of Winnie’s
fondness for her delicate brother, and of Mr Verloc’s kind and
generous disposition, she felt that the poor boy was pretty safe in
this rough world. And in her heart of hearts she was not perhaps
displeased that the Verlocs had no children. As that circumstance
seemed perfectly indifferent to Mr Verloc, and as Winnie found an
object of quasi-maternal affection in her brother, perhaps this was
just as well for poor Stevie.
For he was difficult to dispose of, that boy. He was delicate and,
in a frail way, good-looking too, except for the vacant droop of
his lower lip. Under our excellent system of compulsory education
he had learned to read and write, notwithstanding the unfavourable
aspect of the lower lip. But as errand-boy he did not turn out a
great success. He forgot his messages; he was easily diverted from
the straight path of duty by the attractions of stray cats and
dogs, which he followed down narrow alleys into unsavoury courts;
by the comedies of the streets, which he contemplated open-mouthed,
to the detriment of his employer’s interests; or by the dramas of
fallen horses, whose pathos and violence induced him sometimes to
shriek pierceingly in a crowd, which disliked to be disturbed by
sounds of distress in its quiet enjoyment of the national
spectacle. When led away by a grave and protecting policeman, it
would often become apparent that poor Stevie had forgotten his
address – at least for a time. A brusque question caused him to
stutter to the point of suffocation. When startled by anything
perplexing he used to squint horribly. However, he never had any
fits (which was encouraging); and before the natural outbursts of
impatience on the part of his father he could always, in his
childhood’s days, run for protection behind the short skirts of his
sister Winnie. On the other hand, he might have been suspected of
hiding a fund of reckless naughtiness. When he had reached the age
of fourteen a friend of his late father, an agent for a foreign
preserved milk firm, having given him an opening as office-boy, he
was discovered one foggy afternoon, in his chief’s absence, busy
letting off fireworks on the staircase. He touched off in quick
succession a set of fierce rockets, angry catherine wheels, loudly
exploding squibs – and the matter might have turned out very
serious. An awful panic spread through the whole building. Wild-
eyed, choking clerks stampeded through the passages full of smoke,
silk hats and elderly business men could be seen rolling
independently down the stairs. Stevie did not seem to derive any
personal gratification from what he had done. His motives for this
stroke of originality were difficult to discover. It was only
later on that Winnie obtained from him a misty and confused
confession. It seems that two other office-boys in the building
had worked upon his feelings by tales of injustice and oppression
till they had wrought his compassion to the pitch of that frenzy.
But his father’s friend, of course, dismissed him summarily as