in her methodical proceedings.
“What did you do that for?”
“May want it soon,” snuffled vaguely Mr Verloc, who was coming to
the end of his calculated indiscretions.
“I don’t know what you mean,” remarked his wife in a tone perfectly
casual, but standing stock still between the table and the
cupboard.
“You know you can trust me,” Mr Verloc remarked to the grate, with
hoarse feeling.
Mrs Verloc turned slowly towards the cupboard, saying with
deliberation:
“Oh yes. I can trust you.”
And she went on with her methodical proceedings. She laid two
plates, got the bread, the butter, going to and fro quietly between
the table and the cupboard in the peace and silence of her home.
On the point of taking out the jam, she reflected practically: “He
will be feeling hungry, having been away all day,” and she returned
to the cupboard once more to get the cold beef. She set it under
the purring gas-jet, and with a passing glance at her motionless
husband hugging the fire, she went (down two steps) into the
kitchen. It was only when coming back, carving knife and fork in
hand, that she spoke again.
“If I hadn’t trusted you I wouldn’t have married you.”
Bowed under the overmantel, Mr Verloc, holding his head in both
hands, seemed to have gone to sleep. Winnie made the tea, and
called out in an undertone:
“Adolf.”
Mr Verloc got up at once, and staggered a little before he sat down
at the table. His wife examining the sharp edge of the carving
knife, placed it on the dish, and called his attention to the cold
beef. He remained insensible to the suggestion, with his chin on
his breast.
“You should feed your cold,” Mrs Verloc said dogmatically.
He looked up, and shook his head. His eyes were bloodshot and his
face red. His fingers had ruffled his hair into a dissipated
untidiness. Altogether he had a disreputable aspect, expressive of
the discomfort, the irritation and the gloom following a heavy
debauch. But Mr Verloc was not a debauched man. In his conduct he
was respectable. His appearance might have been the effect of a
feverish cold. He drank three cups of tea, but abstained from food
entirely. He recoiled from it with sombre aversion when urged by
Mrs Verloc, who said at last:
“Aren’t your feet wet? You had better put on your slippers. You
aren’t going out any more this evening.”
Mr Verloc intimated by morose grunts and signs that his feet were
not wet, and that anyhow he did not care. The proposal as to
slippers was disregarded as beneath his notice. But the question
of going out in the evening received an unexpected development. It
was not of going out in the evening that Mr Verloc was thinking.
His thoughts embraced a vaster scheme. From moody and incomplete
phrases it became apparent that Mr Verloc had been considering the
expediency of emigrating. It was not very clear whether he had in
his mind France or California.
The utter unexpectedness, improbability, and inconceivableness of
such an event robbed this vague declaration of all its effect. Mrs
Verloc, as placidly as if her husband had been threatening her with
the end of the world, said:
“The idea!”
Mr Verloc declared himself sick and tired of everything, and
besides – She interrupted him.
“You’ve a bad cold.”
It was indeed obvious that Mr Verloc was not in his usual state,
physically and even mentally. A sombre irresolution held him
silent for a while. Then he murmured a few ominous generalities on
the theme of necessity.
“Will have to,” repeated Winnie, sitting calmly back, with folded
arms, opposite her husband. “I should like to know who’s to make
you. You ain’t a slave. No one need be a slave in this country –
and don’t you make yourself one.” She paused, and with invincible
and steady candour. “The business isn’t so bad,” she went on.
“You’ve a comfortable home.”
She glanced all round the parlour, from the corner cupboard to the
good fire in the grate. Ensconced cosily behind the shop of
doubtful wares, with the mysteriously dim window, and its door
suspiciously ajar in the obscure and narrow street, it was in all