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