return of the wandering Odysseus. Mrs Verloc, however, had done no
weaving during her husband’s absence. But she had had all the
upstairs room cleaned thoroughly, had sold some wares, had seen Mr
Michaelis several times. He had told her the last time that he was
going away to live in a cottage in the country, somewhere on the
London, Chatham, and Dover line. Karl Yundt had come too, once,
led under the arm by that “wicked old housekeeper of his.” He was
“a disgusting old man.” Of Comrade Ossipon, whom she had received
curtly, entrenched behind the counter with a stony face and a
faraway gaze, she said nothing, her mental reference to the robust
anarchist being marked by a short pause, with the faintest possible
blush. And bringing in her brother Stevie as soon as she could
into the current of domestic events, she mentioned that the boy had
moped a good deal.
“It’s all along of mother leaving us like this.”
Mr Verloc neither said, “Damn!” nor yet “Stevie be hanged!” And
Mrs Verloc, not let into the secret of his thoughts, failed to
appreciate the generosity of this restraint.
“It isn’t that he doesn’t work as well as ever,” she continued.
“He’s been making himself very useful. You’d think he couldn’t do
enough for us.”
Mr Verloc directed a casual and somnolent glance at Stevie, who sat
on his right, delicate, pale-faced, his rosy mouth open vacantly.
It was not a critical glance. It had no intention. And if Mr
Verloc thought for a moment that his wife’s brother looked
uncommonly useless, it was only a dull and fleeting thought, devoid
of that force and durability which enables sometimes a thought to
move the world. Leaning back, Mr Verloc uncovered his head.
Before his extended arm could put down the hat Stevie pounced upon
it, and bore it off reverently into the kitchen. And again Mr
Verloc was surprised.
“You could do anything with that boy, Adolf,” Mrs Verloc said, with
her best air of inflexible calmness. “He would go through fire for
you. He – ”
She paused attentive, her ear turned towards the door of the
kitchen.
There Mrs Neale was scrubbing the floor. At Stevie’s appearance
she groaned lamentably, having observed that he could be induced
easily to bestow for the benefit of her infant children the
shilling his sister Winnie presented him with from time to time.
On all fours amongst the puddles, wet and begrimed, like a sort of
amphibious and domestic animal living in ash-bins and dirty water,
she uttered the usual exordium: “It’s all very well for you, kept
doing nothing like a gentleman.” And she followed it with the
everlasting plaint of the poor, pathetically mendacious, miserably
authenticated by the horrible breath of cheap rum and soap-suds.
She scrubbed hard, snuffling all the time, and talking volubly.
And she was sincere. And on each side of her thin red nose her
bleared, misty eyes swam in tears, because she felt really the want
of some sort of stimulant in the morning.
In the parlour Mrs Verloc observed, with knowledge:
“There’s Mrs Neale at it again with her harrowing tales about her
little children. They can’t be all so little as she makes them
out. Some of them must be big enough by now to try to do something
for themselves. It only makes Stevie angry.”
These words were confirmed by a thud as of a fist striking the
kitchen table. In the normal evolution of his sympathy Stevie had
become angry on discovering that he had no shilling in his pocket.
In his inability to relieve at once Mrs Neale’s “little ‘uns’,”
privations he felt that somebody should be made to suffer for it.
Mrs Verloc rose, and went into the kitchen to “stop that nonsense.”
And she did it firmly but gently. She was well aware that directly
Mrs Neale received her money she went round the corner to drink
ardent spirits in a mean and musty public-house – the unavoidable
station on the VIA DOLOROSA of her life. Mrs Verloc’s comment upon
this practice had an unexpected profundity, as coming from a person
disinclined to look under the surface of things. “Of course, what