essentials of domestic propriety and domestic comfort a respectable
home. Her devoted affection missed out of it her brother Stevie,
now enjoying a damp villegiature in the Kentish lanes under the
care of Mr Michaelis. She missed him poignantly, with all the
force of her protecting passion. This was the boy’s home too – the
roof, the cupboard, the stoked grate. On this thought Mrs Verloc
rose, and walking to the other end of the table, said in the
fulness of her heart:
“And you are not tired of me.”
Mr Verloc made no sound. Winnie leaned on his shoulder from
behind, and pressed her lips to his forehead. Thus she lingered.
Not a whisper reached them from the outside world.
The sound of footsteps on the pavement died out in the discreet
dimness of the shop. Only the gas-jet above the table went on
purring equably in the brooding silence of the parlour.
During the contact of that unexpected and lingering kiss Mr Verloc,
gripping with both hands the edges of his chair, preserved a
hieratic immobility. When the pressure was removed he let go the
chair, rose, and went to stand before the fireplace. He turned no
longer his back to the room. With his features swollen and an air
of being drugged, he followed his wife’s movements with his eyes.
Mrs Verloc went about serenely, clearing up the table. Her
tranquil voice commented the idea thrown out in a reasonable and
domestic tone. It wouldn’t stand examination. She condemned it
from every point of view. But her only real concern was Stevie’s
welfare. He appeared to her thought in that connection as
sufficiently “peculiar” not to be taken rashly abroad. And that
was all. But talking round that vital point, she approached
absolute vehemence in her delivery. Meanwhile, with brusque
movements, she arrayed herself in an apron for the washing up of
cups. And as if excited by the sound of her uncontradicted voice,
she went so far as to say in a tone almost tart:
“If you go abroad you’ll have to go without me.”
“You know I wouldn’t,” said Mr Verloc huskily, and the unresonant
voice of his private life trembled with an enigmatical emotion.
Already Mrs Verloc was regretting her words. They had sounded more
unkind than she meant them to be. They had also the unwisdom of
unnecessary things. In fact, she had not meant them at all. It
was a sort of phrase that is suggested by the demon of perverse
inspiration. But she knew a way to make it as if it had not been.
She turned her head over her shoulder and gave that man planted
heavily in front of the fireplace a glance, half arch, half cruel,
out of her large eyes – a glance of which the Winnie of the
Belgravian mansion days would have been incapable, because of her
respectability and her ignorance. But the man was her husband now,
and she was no longer ignorant. She kept it on him for a whole
second, with her grave face motionless like a mask, while she said
playfully:
“You couldn’t. You would miss me too much.”
Mr Verloc started forward.
“Exactly,” he said in a louder tone, throwing his arms out and
making a step towards her. Something wild and doubtful in his
expression made it appear uncertain whether he meant to strangle or
to embrace his wife. But Mrs Verloc’s attention was called away
from that manifestation by the clatter of the shop bell.
“Shop, Adolf. You go.”
He stopped, his arms came down slowly.
“You go,” repeated Mrs Verloc. “I’ve got my apron on.”
Mr Verloc obeyed woodenly, stony-eyed, and like an automaton whose
face had been painted red. And this resemblance to a mechanical
figure went so far that he had an automaton’s absurd air of being
aware of the machinery inside of him.
He closed the parlour door, and Mrs Verloc moving briskly, carried
the tray into the kitchen. She washed the cups and some other
things before she stopped in her work to listen. No sound reached
her. The customer was a long time in the shop. It was a customer,
because if he had not been Mr Verloc would have taken him inside.