seemed cast out into the gutter on account of irremediable decay.
Mrs Verloc recognised the conveyance. Its aspect was so profoundly
lamentable, with such a perfection of grotesque misery and
weirdness of macabre detail, as if it were the Cab of Death itself,
that Mrs Verloc, with that ready compassion of a woman for a horse
(when she is not sitting behind him), exclaimed vaguely:
“Poor brute:”
Hanging back suddenly, Stevie inflicted an arresting jerk upon his
sister.
“Poor! Poor!” he ejaculated appreciatively. “Cabman poor too. He
told me himself.”
The contemplation of the infirm and lonely steed overcame him.
Jostled, but obstinate, he would remain there, trying to express
the view newly opened to his sympathies of the human and equine
misery in close association. But it was very difficult. “Poor
brute, poor people!” was all he could repeat. It did not seem
forcible enough, and he came to a stop with an angry splutter:
“Shame!” Stevie was no master of phrases, and perhaps for that
very reason his thoughts lacked clearness and precision. But he
felt with greater completeness and some profundity. That little
word contained all his sense of indignation and horror at one sort
of wretchedness having to feed upon the anguish of the other – at
the poor cabman beating the poor horse in the name, as it were, of
his poor kids at home. And Stevie knew what it was to be beaten.
He knew it from experience. It was a bad world. Bad! Bad!
Mrs Verloc, his only sister, guardian, and protector, could not
pretend to such depths of insight. Moreover, she had not
experienced the magic of the cabman’s eloquence. She was in the
dark as to the inwardness of the word “Shame.” And she said
placidly:
“Come along, Stevie. You can’t help that.”
The docile Stevie went along; but now he went along without pride,
shamblingly, and muttering half words, and even words that would
have been whole if they had not been made up of halves that did not
belong to each other. It was as though he had been trying to fit
all the words he could remember to his sentiments in order to get
some sort of corresponding idea. And, as a matter of fact, he got
it at last. He hung back to utter it at once.
“Bad world for poor people.”
Directly he had expressed that thought he became aware that it was
familiar to him already in all its consequences. This circumstance
strengthened his conviction immensely, but also augmented his
indignation. Somebody, he felt, ought to be punished for it –
punished with great severity. Being no sceptic, but a moral
creature, he was in a manner at the mercy of his righteous
passions.
“Beastly!” he added concisely.
It was clear to Mrs Verloc that he was greatly excited.
“Nobody can help that,” she said. “Do come along. Is that the way
you’re taking care of me?”
Stevie mended his pace obediently. He prided himself on being a
good brother. His morality, which was very complete, demanded that
from him. Yet he was pained at the information imparted by his
sister Winnie who was good. Nobody could help that! He came along
gloomily, but presently he brightened up. Like the rest of
mankind, perplexed by the mystery of the universe, he had his
moments of consoling trust in the organised powers of the earth.
“Police,” he suggested confidently.
“The police aren’t for that,” observed Mrs Verloc cursorily,
hurrying on her way.
Stevie’s face lengthened considerably. He was thinking. The more
intense his thinking, the slacker was the droop of his lower jaw.
And it was with an aspect of hopeless vacancy that he gave up his
intellectual enterprise.
“Not for that?” he mumbled, resigned but surprised. “Not for
that?” He had formed for himself an ideal conception of the
metropolitan police as a sort of benevolent institution for the
suppression of evil. The notion of benevolence especially was very
closely associated with his sense of the power of the men in blue.
He had liked all police constables tenderly, with a guileless
trustfulness. And he was pained. He was irritated, too, by a
suspicion of duplicity in the members of the force. For Stevie was
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