Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (331 page)

He looked straight into his wife’s eyes.  The enlarged pupils of the woman received his stare into their unfathomable depths.

“I am too fond of you for that,” he said, with a little nervous laugh.

A faint flush coloured Mrs Verloc’s ghastly and motionless face.  Having done with the visions of the past, she had not only heard, but had also understood the words uttered by her husband.  By their extreme disaccord with her mental condition these words produced on her a slightly suffocating effect.  Mrs Verloc’s mental condition had the merit of simplicity; but it was not sound.  It was governed too much by a fixed idea.  Every nook and cranny of her brain was filled with the thought that this man, with whom she had lived without distaste for seven years, had taken the “poor boy” away from her in order to kill him — the man to whom she had grown accustomed in body and mind; the man whom she had trusted, took the boy away to kill him!  In its form, in its substance, in its effect, which was universal, altering even the aspect of inanimate things, it was a thought to sit still and marvel at for ever and ever.  Mrs Verloc sat still.  And across that thought (not across the kitchen) the form of Mr Verloc went to and fro, familiarly in hat and overcoat, stamping with his boots upon her brain.  He was probably talking too; but Mrs Verloc’s thought for the most part covered the voice.

Now and then, however, the voice would make itself heard.  Several connected words emerged at times.  Their purport was generally hopeful.  On each of these occasions Mrs Verloc’s dilated pupils, losing their far-off fixity, followed her husband’s movements with the effect of black care and impenetrable attention.  Well informed upon all matters relating to his secret calling, Mr Verloc augured well for the success of his plans and combinations.  He really believed that it would be upon the whole easy for him to escape the knife of infuriated revolutionists.  He had exaggerated the strength of their fury and the length of their arm (for professional purposes) too often to have many illusions one way or the other.  For to exaggerate with judgment one must begin by measuring with nicety.  He knew also how much virtue and how much infamy is forgotten in two years — two long years.  His first really confidential discourse to his wife was optimistic from conviction.  He also thought it good policy to display all the assurance he could muster.  It would put heart into the poor woman.  On his liberation, which, harmonising with the whole tenor of his life, would be secret, of course, they would vanish together without loss of time.  As to covering up the tracks, he begged his wife to trust him for that.  He knew how it was to be done so that the devil himself —

He waved his hand.  He seemed to boast.  He wished only to put heart into her.  It was a benevolent intention, but Mr Verloc had the misfortune not to be in accord with his audience.

The self-confident tone grew upon Mrs Verloc’s ear which let most of the words go by; for what were words to her now?  What could words do to her, for good or evil in the face of her fixed idea?  Her black glance followed that man who was asserting his impunity — the man who had taken poor Stevie from home to kill him somewhere.  Mrs Verloc could not remember exactly where, but her heart began to beat very perceptibly.

Mr Verloc, in a soft and conjugal tone, was now expressing his firm belief that there were yet a good few years of quiet life before them both.  He did not go into the question of means.  A quiet life it must be and, as it were, nestling in the shade, concealed among men whose flesh is grass; modest, like the life of violets.  The words used by Mr Verloc were: “Lie low for a bit.”  And far from England, of course.  It was not clear whether Mr Verloc had in his mind Spain or South America; but at any rate somewhere abroad.

This last word, falling into Mrs Verloc’s ear, produced a definite impression.  This man was talking of going abroad.  The impression was completely disconnected; and such is the force of mental habit that Mrs Verloc at once and automatically asked herself: “And what of Stevie?”

It was a sort of forgetfulness; but instantly she became aware that there was no longer any occasion for anxiety on that score.  There would never be any occasion any more.  The poor boy had been taken out and killed.  The poor boy was dead.

This shaking piece of forgetfulness stimulated Mrs Verloc’s intelligence.  She began to perceive certain consequences which would have surprised Mr Verloc.  There was no need for her now to stay there, in that kitchen, in that house, with that man — since the boy was gone for ever.  No need whatever.  And on that Mrs Verloc rose as if raised by a spring.  But neither could she see what there was to keep her in the world at all.  And this inability arrested her.  Mr Verloc watched her with marital solicitude.

“You’re looking more like yourself,” he said uneasily.  Something peculiar in the blackness of his wife’s eyes disturbed his optimism.  At that precise moment Mrs Verloc began to look upon herself as released from all earthly ties.

She had her freedom.  Her contract with existence, as represented by that man standing over there, was at an end.  She was a free woman.  Had this view become in some way perceptible to Mr Verloc he would have been extremely shocked.  In his affairs of the heart Mr Verloc had been always carelessly generous, yet always with no other idea than that of being loved for himself.  Upon this matter, his ethical notions being in agreement with his vanity, he was completely incorrigible.  That this should be so in the case of his virtuous and legal connection he was perfectly certain.  He had grown older, fatter, heavier, in the belief that he lacked no fascination for being loved for his own sake.  When he saw Mrs Verloc starting to walk out of the kitchen without a word he was disappointed.

“Where are you going to?” he called out rather sharply.  “Upstairs?”

Mrs Verloc in the doorway turned at the voice.  An instinct of prudence born of fear, the excessive fear of being approached and touched by that man, induced her to nod at him slightly (from the height of two steps), with a stir of the lips which the conjugal optimism of Mr Verloc took for a wan and uncertain smile.

“That’s right,” he encouraged her gruffly.  “Rest and quiet’s what you want.  Go on.  It won’t be long before I am with you.”

Mrs Verloc, the free woman who had had really no idea where she was going to, obeyed the suggestion with rigid steadiness.

Mr Verloc watched her.  She disappeared up the stairs.  He was disappointed.  There was that within him which would have been more satisfied if she had been moved to throw herself upon his breast.  But he was generous and indulgent.  Winnie was always undemonstrative and silent.  Neither was Mr Verloc himself prodigal of endearments and words as a rule.  But this was not an ordinary evening.  It was an occasion when a man wants to be fortified and strengthened by open proofs of sympathy and affection.  Mr Verloc sighed, and put out the gas in the kitchen.  Mr Verloc’s sympathy with his wife was genuine and intense.  It almost brought tears into his eyes as he stood in the parlour reflecting on the loneliness hanging over her head.  In this mood Mr Verloc missed Stevie very much out of a difficult world.  He thought mournfully of his end.  If only that lad had not stupidly destroyed himself!

The sensation of unappeasable hunger, not unknown after the strain of a hazardous enterprise to adventurers of tougher fibre than Mr Verloc, overcame him again.  The piece of roast beef, laid out in the likeness of funereal baked meats for Stevie’s obsequies, offered itself largely to his notice.  And Mr Verloc again partook.  He partook ravenously, without restraint and decency, cutting thick slices with the sharp carving knife, and swallowing them without bread.  In the course of that refection it occurred to Mr Verloc that he was not hearing his wife move about the bedroom as he should have done.  The thought of finding her perhaps sitting on the bed in the dark not only cut Mr Verloc’s appetite, but also took from him the inclination to follow her upstairs just yet.  Laying down the carving knife, Mr Verloc listened with careworn attention.

He was comforted by hearing her move at last.  She walked suddenly across the room, and threw the window up.  After a period of stillness up there, during which he figured her to himself with her head out, he heard the sash being lowered slowly.  Then she made a few steps, and sat down.  Every resonance of his house was familiar to Mr Verloc, who was thoroughly domesticated.  When next he heard his wife’s footsteps overhead he knew, as well as if he had seen her doing it, that she had been putting on her walking shoes.  Mr Verloc wriggled his shoulders slightly at this ominous symptom, and moving away from the table, stood with his back to the fireplace, his head on one side, and gnawing perplexedly at the tips of his fingers.  He kept track of her movements by the sound.  She walked here and there violently, with abrupt stoppages, now before the chest of drawers, then in front of the wardrobe.  An immense load of weariness, the harvest of a day of shocks and surprises, weighed Mr Verloc’s energies to the ground.

He did not raise his eyes till he heard his wife descending the stairs.  It was as he had guessed.  She was dressed for going out.

Mrs Verloc was a free woman.  She had thrown open the window of the bedroom either with the intention of screaming Murder!  Help! or of throwing herself out.  For she did not exactly know what use to make of her freedom.  Her personality seemed to have been torn into two pieces, whose mental operations did not adjust themselves very well to each other.  The street, silent and deserted from end to end, repelled her by taking sides with that man who was so certain of his impunity.  She was afraid to shout lest no one should come.  Obviously no one would come.  Her instinct of self-preservation recoiled from the depth of the fall into that sort of slimy, deep trench.  Mrs Verloc closed the window, and dressed herself to go out into the street by another way.  She was a free woman.  She had dressed herself thoroughly, down to the tying of a black veil over her face.  As she appeared before him in the light of the parlour, Mr Verloc observed that she had even her little handbag hanging from her left wrist. . . . Flying off to her mother, of course.

The thought that women were wearisome creatures after all presented itself to his fatigued brain.  But he was too generous to harbour it for more than an instant.  This man, hurt cruelly in his vanity, remained magnanimous in his conduct, allowing himself no satisfaction of a bitter smile or of a contemptuous gesture.  With true greatness of soul, he only glanced at the wooden clock on the wall, and said in a perfectly calm but forcible manner:

“Five and twenty minutes past eight, Winnie.  There’s no sense in going over there so late.  You will never manage to get back to-night.”

Before his extended hand Mrs Verloc had stopped short.  He added heavily: “Your mother will be gone to bed before you get there.  This is the sort of news that can wait.”

Nothing was further from Mrs Verloc’s thoughts than going to her mother.  She recoiled at the mere idea, and feeling a chair behind her, she obeyed the suggestion of the touch, and sat down.  Her intention had been simply to get outside the door for ever.  And if this feeling was correct, its mental form took an unrefined shape corresponding to her origin and station.  “I would rather walk the streets all the days of my life,” she thought.  But this creature, whose moral nature had been subjected to a shock of which, in the physical order, the most violent earthquake of history could only be a faint and languid rendering, was at the mercy of mere trifles, of casual contacts.  She sat down.  With her hat and veil she had the air of a visitor, of having looked in on Mr Verloc for a moment.  Her instant docility encouraged him, whilst her aspect of only temporary and silent acquiescence provoked him a little.

“Let me tell you, Winnie,” he said with authority, “that your place is here this evening.  Hang it all! you brought the damned police high and low about my ears.  I don’t blame you — but it’s your doing all the same.  You’d better take this confounded hat off.  I can’t let you go out, old girl,” he added in a softened voice.

Mrs Verloc’s mind got hold of that declaration with morbid tenacity.  The man who had taken Stevie out from under her very eyes to murder him in a locality whose name was at the moment not present to her memory would not allow her go out.  Of course he wouldn’t.

Now he had murdered Stevie he would never let her go.  He would want to keep her for nothing.  And on this characteristic reasoning, having all the force of insane logic, Mrs Verloc’s disconnected wits went to work practically.  She could slip by him, open the door, run out.  But he would dash out after her, seize her round the body, drag her back into the shop.  She could scratch, kick, and bite — and stab too; but for stabbing she wanted a knife.  Mrs Verloc sat still under her black veil, in her own house, like a masked and mysterious visitor of impenetrable intentions.

Mr Verloc’s magnanimity was not more than human.  She had exasperated him at last.

“Can’t you say something?  You have your own dodges for vexing a man.  Oh yes!  I know your deaf-and-dumb trick.  I’ve seen you at it before to-day.  But just now it won’t do.  And to begin with, take this damned thing off.  One can’t tell whether one is talking to a dummy or to a live woman.”

He advanced, and stretching out his hand, dragged the veil off, unmasking a still, unreadable face, against which his nervous exasperation was shattered like a glass bubble flung against a rock.  “That’s better,” he said, to cover his momentary uneasiness, and retreated back to his old station by the mantelpiece.  It never entered his head that his wife could give him up.  He felt a little ashamed of himself, for he was fond and generous.  What could he do?  Everything had been said already.  He protested vehemently.

“By heavens!  You know that I hunted high and low.  I ran the risk of giving myself away to find somebody for that accursed job.  And I tell you again I couldn’t find anyone crazy enough or hungry enough.  What do you take me for — a murderer, or what?  The boy is gone.  Do you think I wanted him to blow himself up?  He’s gone.  His troubles are over.  Ours are just going to begin, I tell you, precisely because he did blow himself.  I don’t blame you.  But just try to understand that it was a pure accident; as much an accident as if he had been run over by a ‘bus while crossing the street.”