to his profound disappointment, Mrs Verloc’s mother wept some more
with an augmented vehemence.
The tears of that large female in a dark, dusty wig, and ancient
silk dress festooned with dingy white cotton lace, were the tears
of genuine distress. She had wept because she was heroic and
unscrupulous and full of love for both her children. Girls
frequently get sacrificed to the welfare of the boys. In this case
she was sacrificing Winnie. By the suppression of truth she was
slandering her. Of course, Winnie was independent, and need not
care for the opinion of people that she would never see and who
would never see her; whereas poor Stevie had nothing in the world
he could call his own except his mother’s heroism and
unscrupulousness.
The first sense of security following on Winnie’s marriage wore off
in time (for nothing lasts), and Mrs Verloc’s mother, in the
seclusion of the back bedroom, had recalled the teaching of that
experience which the world impresses upon a widowed woman. But she
had recalled it without vain bitterness; her store of resignation
amounted almost to dignity. She reflected stoically that
everything decays, wears out, in this world; that the way of
kindness should be made easy to the well disposed; that her
daughter Winnie was a most devoted sister, and a very self-
confident wife indeed. As regards Winnie’s sisterly devotion, her
stoicism flinched. She excepted that sentiment from the rule of
decay affecting all things human and some things divine. She could
not help it; not to do so would have frightened her too much. But
in considering the conditions of her daughter’s married state, she
rejected firmly all flattering illusions. She took the cold and
reasonable view that the less strain put on Mr Verloc’s kindness
the longer its effects were likely to last. That excellent man
loved his wife, of course, but he would, no doubt, prefer to keep
as few of her relations as was consistent with the proper display
of that sentiment. It would be better if its whole effect were
concentrated on poor Stevie. And the heroic old woman resolved on
going away from her children as an act of devotion and as a move of
deep policy.
The “virtue” of this policy consisted in this (Mrs Verloc’s mother
was subtle in her way), that Stevie’s moral claim would be
strengthened. The poor boy – a good, useful boy, if a little
peculiar – had not a sufficient standing. He had been taken over
with his mother, somewhat in the same way as the furniture of the
Belgravian mansion had been taken over, as if on the ground of
belonging to her exclusively. What will happen, she asked herself
(for Mrs Verloc’s mother was in a measure imaginative), when I die?
And when she asked herself that question it was with dread. It was
also terrible to think that she would not then have the means of
knowing what happened to the poor boy. But by making him over to
his sister, by going thus away, she gave him the advantage of a
directly dependent position. This was the more subtle sanction of
Mrs Verloc’s mother’s heroism and unscrupulousness. Her act of
abandonment was really an arrangement for settling her son
permanently in life. Other people made material sacrifices for
such an object, she in that way. It was the only way. Moreover,
she would be able to see how it worked. Ill or well she would
avoid the horrible incertitude on the death-bed. But it was hard,
hard, cruelly hard.
The cab rattled, jingled, jolted; in fact, the last was quite
extraordinary. By its disproportionate violence and magnitude it
obliterated every sensation of onward movement; and the effect was
of being shaken in a stationary apparatus like a mediaeval device
for the punishment of crime, or some very newfangled invention for
the cure of a sluggish liver. It was extremely distressing; and
the raising of Mrs Verloc’s mother’s voice sounded like a wail of
pain.
“I know, my dear, you’ll come to see me as often as you can spare
the time. Won’t you?”
“Of course,” answered Winnie shortly, staring straight before her.
And the cab jolted in front of a steamy, greasy shop in a blaze of