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.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 overheard 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 to 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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]