The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

herself thus warmly because she had been allowed to interview by

appointment his Private Secretary – “a very polite gentleman, all

in black, with a gentle, sad voice, but so very, very thin and

quiet. He was like a shadow, my dear.”

Winnie, prolonging her dusting operations till the tale was told to

the end, walked out of the parlour into the kitchen (down two

steps) in her usual manner, without the slightest comment.

Shedding a few tears in sign of rejoicing at her daughter’s

mansuetude in this terrible affair, Mrs Verloc’s mother gave play

to her astuteness in the direction of her furniture, because it was

her own; and sometimes she wished it hadn’t been. Heroism is all

very well, but there are circumstances when the disposal of a few

tables and chairs, brass bedsteads, and so on, may be big with

remote and disastrous consequences. She required a few pieces

herself, the Foundation which, after many importunities, had

gathered her to its charitable breast, giving nothing but bare

planks and cheaply papered bricks to the objects of its solicitude.

The delicacy guiding her choice to the least valuable and most

dilapidated articles passed unacknowledged, because Winnie’s

philosophy consisted in not taking notice of the inside of facts;

she assumed that mother took what suited her best. As to Mr

Verloc, his intense meditation, like a sort of Chinese wall,

isolated him completely from the phenomena of this world of vain

effort and illusory appearances.

Her selection made, the disposal of the rest became a perplexing

question in a particular way. She was leaving it in Brett Street,

of course. But she had two children. Winnie was provided for by

her sensible union with that excellent husband, Mr Verloc. Stevie

was destitute – and a little peculiar. His position had to be

considered before the claims of legal justice and even the

promptings of partiality. The possession of the furniture would

not be in any sense a provision. He ought to have it – the poor

boy. But to give it to him would be like tampering with his

position of complete dependence. It was a sort of claim which she

feared to weaken. Moreover, the susceptibilities of Mr Verloc

would perhaps not brook being beholden to his brother-in-law for

the chairs he sat on. In a long experience of gentlemen lodgers,

Mrs Verloc’s mother had acquired a dismal but resigned notion of

the fantastic side of human nature. What if Mr Verloc suddenly

took it into his head to tell Stevie to take his blessed sticks

somewhere out of that? A division, on the other hand, however

carefully made, might give some cause of offence to Winnie. No,

Stevie must remain destitute and dependent. And at the moment of

leaving Brett Street she had said to her daughter: “No use waiting

till I am dead, is there? Everything I leave here is altogether

your own now, my dear.”

Winnie, with her hat on, silent behind her mother’s back, went on

arranging the collar of the old woman’s cloak. She got her hand-

bag, an umbrella, with an impassive face. The time had come for

the expenditure of the sum of three-and-sixpence on what might well

be supposed the last cab drive of Mrs Verloc’s mother’s life. They

went out at the shop door.

The conveyance awaiting them would have illustrated the proverb

that “truth can be more cruel than caricature,” if such a proverb

existed. Crawling behind an infirm horse, a metropolitan hackney

carriage drew up on wobbly wheels and with a maimed driver on the

box. This last peculiarity caused some embarrassment. Catching

sight of a hooked iron contrivance protruding from the left sleeve

of the man’s coat, Mrs Verloc’s mother lost suddenly the heroic

courage of these days. She really couldn’t trust herself. “What

do you think, Winnie?” She hung back. The passionate

expostulations of the big-faced cabman seemed to be squeezed out of

a blocked throat. Leaning over from his box, he whispered with

mysterious indignation. What was the matter now? Was it possible

to treat a man so? His enormous and unwashed countenance flamed

red in the muddy stretch of the street. Was it likely they would

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