likely to ruin his business. After that altruistic exploit Stevie
was put to help wash the dishes in the basement kitchen, and to
black the boots of the gentlemen patronising the Belgravian
mansion. There was obviously no future in such work. The
gentlemen tipped him a shilling now and then. Mr Verloc showed
himself the most generous of lodgers. But altogether all that did
not amount to much either in the way of gain or prospects; so that
when Winnie announced her engagement to Mr Verloc her mother could
not help wondering, with a sigh and a glance towards the scullery,
what would become of poor Stephen now.
It appeared that Mr Verloc was ready to take him over together with
his wife’s mother and with the furniture, which was the whole
visible fortune of the family. Mr Verloc gathered everything as it
came to his broad, good-natured breast. The furniture was disposed
to the best advantage all over the house, but Mrs Verloc’s mother
was confined to two back rooms on the first floor. The luckless
Stevie slept in one of them. By this time a growth of thin fluffy
hair had come to blur, like a golden mist, the sharp line of his
small lower jaw. He helped his sister with blind love and docility
in her household duties. Mr Verloc thought that some occupation
would be good for him. His spare time he occupied by drawing
circles with compass and pencil on a piece of paper. He applied
himself to that pastime with great industry, with his elbows spread
out and bowed low over the kitchen table. Through the open door of
the parlour at the back of the shop Winnie, his sister, glanced at
him from time to time with maternal vigilance.
CHAPTER II
Such was the house, the household, and the business Mr Verloc left
behind him on his way westward at the hour of half-past ten in the
morning. It was unusually early for him; his whole person exhaled
the charm of almost dewy freshness; he wore his blue cloth overcoat
unbuttoned; his boots were shiny; his cheeks, freshly shaven, had a
sort of gloss; and even his heavy-lidded eyes, refreshed by a night
of peaceful slumber, sent out glances of comparative alertness.
Through the park railings these glances beheld men and women riding
in the Row, couples cantering past harmoniously, others advancing
sedately at a walk, loitering groups of three or four, solitary
horsemen looking unsociable, and solitary women followed at a long
distance by a groom with a cockade to his hat and a leather belt
over his tight-fitting coat. Carriages went bowling by, mostly
two-horse broughams, with here and there a victoria with the skin
of some wild beast inside and a woman’s face and hat emerging above
the folded hood. And a peculiarly London sun – against which
nothing could be said except that it looked bloodshot – glorified
all this by its stare. It hung at a moderate elevation above Hyde
Park Corner with an air of punctual and benign vigilance. The very
pavement under Mr Verloc’s feet had an old-gold tinge in that
diffused light, in which neither wall, nor tree, nor beast, nor man
cast a shadow. Mr Verloc was going westward through a town without
shadows in an atmosphere of powdered old gold. There were red,
coppery gleams on the roofs of houses, on the corners of walls, on
the panels of carriages, on the very coats of the horses, and on
the broad back of Mr Verloc’s overcoat, where they produced a dull
effect of rustiness. But Mr Verloc was not in the least conscious
of having got rusty. He surveyed through the park railings the
evidences of the town’s opulence and luxury with an approving eye.
All these people had to be protected. Protection is the first
necessity of opulence and luxury. They had to be protected; and
their horses, carriages, houses, servants had to be protected; and
the source of their wealth had to be protected in the heart of the
city and the heart of the country; the whole social order
favourable to their hygienic idleness had to be protected against
the shallow enviousness of unhygienic labour. It had to – and Mr