Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (333 page)

CHAPTER XII

Winnie Verloc, the widow of Mr Verloc, the sister of the late faithful Stevie (blown to fragments in a state of innocence and in the conviction of being engaged in a humanitarian enterprise), did not run beyond the door of the parlour.  She had indeed run away so far from a mere trickle of blood, but that was a movement of instinctive repulsion.  And there she had paused, with staring eyes and lowered head.  As though she had run through long years in her flight across the small parlour, Mrs Verloc by the door was quite a different person from the woman who had been leaning over the sofa, a little swimmy in her head, but otherwise free to enjoy the profound calm of idleness and irresponsibility.  Mrs Verloc was no longer giddy.  Her head was steady.  On the other hand, she was no longer calm.  She was afraid.

If she avoided looking in the direction of her reposing husband it was not because she was afraid of him.  Mr Verloc was not frightful to behold.  He looked comfortable.  Moreover, he was dead.  Mrs Verloc entertained no vain delusions on the subject of the dead.  Nothing brings them back, neither love nor hate.  They can do nothing to you.  They are as nothing.  Her mental state was tinged by a sort of austere contempt for that man who had let himself be killed so easily.  He had been the master of a house, the husband of a woman, and the murderer of her Stevie.  And now he was of no account in every respect.  He was of less practical account than the clothing on his body, than his overcoat, than his boots — than that hat lying on the floor.  He was nothing.  He was not worth looking at.  He was even no longer the murderer of poor Stevie.  The only murderer that would be found in the room when people came to look for Mr Verloc would be — herself!

Her hands shook so that she failed twice in the task of refastening her veil.  Mrs Verloc was no longer a person of leisure and responsibility.  She was afraid.  The stabbing of Mr Verloc had been only a blow.  It had relieved the pent-up agony of shrieks strangled in her throat, of tears dried up in her hot eyes, of the maddening and indignant rage at the atrocious part played by that man, who was less than nothing now, in robbing her of the boy.

It had been an obscurely prompted blow.  The blood trickling on the floor off the handle of the knife had turned it into an extremely plain case of murder.  Mrs Verloc, who always refrained from looking deep into things, was compelled to look into the very bottom of this thing.  She saw there no haunting face, no reproachful shade, no vision of remorse, no sort of ideal conception.  She saw there an object.  That object was the gallows.  Mrs Verloc was afraid of the gallows.

She was terrified of them ideally.  Having never set eyes on that last argument of men’s justice except in illustrative woodcuts to a certain type of tales, she first saw them erect against a black and stormy background, festooned with chains and human bones, circled about by birds that peck at dead men’s eyes.  This was frightful enough, but Mrs Verloc, though not a well-informed woman, had a sufficient knowledge of the institutions of her country to know that gallows are no longer erected romantically on the banks of dismal rivers or on wind-swept headlands, but in the yards of jails.  There within four high walls, as if into a pit, at dawn of day, the murderer was brought out to be executed, with a horrible quietness and, as the reports in the newspapers always said, “in the presence of the authorities.”  With her eyes staring on the floor, her nostrils quivering with anguish and shame, she imagined herself all alone amongst a lot of strange gentlemen in silk hats who were calmly proceeding about the business of hanging her by the neck.  That — never!  Never!  And how was it done?  The impossibility of imagining the details of such quiet execution added something maddening to her abstract terror.  The newspapers never gave any details except one, but that one with some affectation was always there at the end of a meagre report.  Mrs Verloc remembered its nature.  It came with a cruel burning pain into her head, as if the words “The drop given was fourteen feet” had been scratched on her brain with a hot needle.  “The drop given was fourteen feet.”

These words affected her physically too.  Her throat became convulsed in waves to resist strangulation; and the apprehension of the jerk was so vivid that she seized her head in both hands as if to save it from being torn off her shoulders.  “The drop given was fourteen feet.”  No! that must never be.  She could not stand that.  The thought of it even was not bearable.  She could not stand thinking of it.  Therefore Mrs Verloc formed the resolution to go at once and throw herself into the river off one of the bridges.

This time she managed to refasten her veil.  With her face as if masked, all black from head to foot except for some flowers in her hat, she looked up mechanically at the clock.  She thought it must have stopped.  She could not believe that only two minutes had passed since she had looked at it last.  Of course not.  It had been stopped all the time.  As a matter of fact, only three minutes had elapsed from the moment she had drawn the first deep, easy breath after the blow, to this moment when Mrs Verloc formed the resolution to drown herself in the Thames.  But Mrs Verloc could not believe that.  She seemed to have heard or read that clocks and watches always stopped at the moment of murder for the undoing of the murderer.  She did not care.  “To the bridge — and over I go.” . . . But her movements were slow.

She dragged herself painfully across the shop, and had to hold on to the handle of the door before she found the necessary fortitude to open it.  The street frightened her, since it led either to the gallows or to the river.  She floundered over the doorstep head forward, arms thrown out, like a person falling over the parapet of a bridge.  This entrance into the open air had a foretaste of drowning; a slimy dampness enveloped her, entered her nostrils, clung to her hair.  It was not actually raining, but each gas lamp had a rusty little halo of mist.  The van and horses were gone, and in the black street the curtained window of the carters’ eating-house made a square patch of soiled blood-red light glowing faintly very near the level of the pavement.  Mrs Verloc, dragging herself slowly towards it, thought that she was a very friendless woman.  It was true.  It was so true that, in a sudden longing to see some friendly face, she could think of no one else but of Mrs Neale, the charwoman.  She had no acquaintances of her own.  Nobody would miss her in a social way.  It must not be imagined that the Widow Verloc had forgotten her mother.  This was not so.  Winnie had been a good daughter because she had been a devoted sister.  Her mother had always leaned on her for support.  No consolation or advice could be expected there.  Now that Stevie was dead the bond seemed to be broken.  She could not face the old woman with the horrible tale.  Moreover, it was too far.  The river was her present destination.  Mrs Verloc tried to forget her mother.

Each step cost her an effort of will which seemed the last possible.  Mrs Verloc had dragged herself past the red glow of the eating-house window.  “To the bridge — and over I go,” she repeated to herself with fierce obstinacy.  She put out her hand just in time to steady herself against a lamp-post.  “I’ll never get there before morning,” she thought.  The fear of death paralysed her efforts to escape the gallows.  It seemed to her she had been staggering in that street for hours.  “I’ll never get there,” she thought.  “They’ll find me knocking about the streets.  It’s too far.”  She held on, panting under her black veil.

“The drop given was fourteen feet.”

She pushed the lamp-post away from her violently, and found herself walking.  But another wave of faintness overtook her like a great sea, washing away her heart clean out of her breast.  “I will never get there,” she muttered, suddenly arrested, swaying lightly where she stood.  “Never.”

And perceiving the utter impossibility of walking as far as the nearest bridge, Mrs Verloc thought of a flight abroad.

It came to her suddenly.  Murderers escaped.  They escaped abroad.  Spain or California.  Mere names.  The vast world created for the glory of man was only a vast blank to Mrs Verloc.  She did not know which way to turn.  Murderers had friends, relations, helpers — they had knowledge.  She had nothing.  She was the most lonely of murderers that ever struck a mortal blow.  She was alone in London: and the whole town of marvels and mud, with its maze of streets and its mass of lights, was sunk in a hopeless night, rested at the bottom of a black abyss from which no unaided woman could hope to scramble out.

She swayed forward, and made a fresh start blindly, with an awful dread of falling down; but at the end of a few steps, unexpectedly, she found a sensation of support, of security.  Raising her head, she saw a man’s face peering closely at her veil.  Comrade Ossipon was not afraid of strange women, and no feeling of false delicacy could prevent him from striking an acquaintance with a woman apparently very much intoxicated.  Comrade Ossipon was interested in women.  He held up this one between his two large palms, peering at her in a business-like way till he heard her say faintly “Mr Ossipon!” and then he very nearly let her drop to the ground.

“Mrs Verloc!” he exclaimed.  “You here!”

It seemed impossible to him that she should have been drinking.  But one never knows.  He did not go into that question, but attentive not to discourage kind fate surrendering to him the widow of Comrade Verloc, he tried to draw her to his breast.  To his astonishment she came quite easily, and even rested on his arm for a moment before she attempted to disengage herself.  Comrade Ossipon would not be brusque with kind fate.  He withdrew his arm in a natural way.

“You recognised me,” she faltered out, standing before him, fairly steady on her legs.

“Of course I did,” said Ossipon with perfect readiness.  “I was afraid you were going to fall.  I’ve thought of you too often lately not to recognise you anywhere, at any time.  I’ve always thought of you — ever since I first set eyes on you.”

Mrs Verloc seemed not to hear.  “You were coming to the shop?” she said nervously.

“Yes; at once,” answered Ossipon.  “Directly I read the paper.”

In fact, Comrade Ossipon had been skulking for a good two hours in the neighbourhood of Brett Street, unable to make up his mind for a bold move.  The robust anarchist was not exactly a bold conqueror.  He remembered that Mrs Verloc had never responded to his glances by the slightest sign of encouragement.  Besides, he thought the shop might be watched by the police, and Comrade Ossipon did not wish the police to form an exaggerated notion of his revolutionary sympathies.  Even now he did not know precisely what to do.  In comparison with his usual amatory speculations this was a big and serious undertaking.  He ignored how much there was in it and how far he would have to go in order to get hold of what there was to get — supposing there was a chance at all.  These perplexities checking his elation imparted to his tone a soberness well in keeping with the circumstances.

“May I ask you where you were going?” he inquired in a subdued voice.

“Don’t ask me!” cried Mrs Verloc with a shuddering, repressed violence.  All her strong vitality recoiled from the idea of death.  “Never mind where I was going. . . .”

Ossipon concluded that she was very much excited but perfectly sober.  She remained silent by his side for moment, then all at once she did something which he did not expect.  She slipped her hand under his arm.  He was startled by the act itself certainly, and quite as much too by the palpably resolute character of this movement.  But this being a delicate affair, Comrade Ossipon behaved with delicacy.  He contented himself by pressing the hand slightly against his robust ribs.  At the same time he felt himself being impelled forward, and yielded to the impulse.  At the end of Brett Street he became aware of being directed to the left.  He submitted.

The fruiterer at the corner had put out the blazing glory of his oranges and lemons, and Brett Place was all darkness, interspersed with the misty halos of the few lamps defining its triangular shape, with a cluster of three lights on one stand in the middle.  The dark forms of the man and woman glided slowly arm in arm along the walls with a loverlike and homeless aspect in the miserable night.

“What would you say if I were to tell you that I was going to find you?” Mrs Verloc asked, gripping his arm with force.

“I would say that you couldn’t find anyone more ready to help you in your trouble,” answered Ossipon, with a notion of making tremendous headway.  In fact, the progress of this delicate affair was almost taking his breath away.

“In my trouble!” Mrs Verloc repeated slowly.

“Yes.”

“And do you know what my trouble is?” she whispered with strange intensity.

“Ten minutes after seeing the evening paper,” explained Ossipon with ardour, “I met a fellow whom you may have seen once or twice at the shop perhaps, and I had a talk with him which left no doubt whatever in my mind.  Then I started for here, wondering whether you — I’ve been fond of you beyond words ever since I set eyes on your face,” he cried, as if unable to command his feelings.

Comrade Ossipon assumed correctly that no woman was capable of wholly disbelieving such a statement.  But he did not know that Mrs Verloc accepted it with all the fierceness the instinct of self-preservation puts into the grip of a drowning person.  To the widow of Mr Verloc the robust anarchist was like a radiant messenger of life.

They walked slowly, in step.  “I thought so,” Mrs Verloc murmured faintly.

“You’ve read it in my eyes,” suggested Ossipon with great assurance.

“Yes,” she breathed out into his inclined ear.

“A love like mine could not be concealed from a woman like you,” he went on, trying to detach his mind from material considerations such as the business value of the shop, and the amount of money Mr Verloc might have left in the bank.  He applied himself to the sentimental side of the affair.  In his heart of hearts he was a little shocked at his success.  Verloc had been a good fellow, and certainly a very decent husband as far as one could see.  However, Comrade Ossipon was not going to quarrel with his luck for the sake of a dead man.  Resolutely he suppressed his sympathy for the ghost of Comrade Verloc, and went on.