The porter standing at the gate ignored his exit completely; and Mr Verloc retraced the path of his morning's pilgrimage as if in a dream - an angry dream.This detachment from the material world was so complete that, though the mortal envelope of Mr Verloc had not hastened unduly along the streets, that part of him to which it would be unwarrantably rude to refuse immortality, found itself at the shop door all at once, as borne from west to east on the wings of a great wind.He walked straight behind the counter, and sat down on a wooden chair that stood there.No one appeared to disturb his solitude.Stevie, put into a green baize apron, was now sweeping and dusting upstairs, intent and conscientious, as though he were playing at it; and Mrs Verloc, warned in the kitchen by the clatter of the cracked bell, had merely come to the glazed door of the parlour, and putting the curtain aside a little, had peered into the dim shop.Seeing her husband sitting there shadowy and bulky, with his hat tilted far back on his head, she had at once returned to her stove.
An hour or more later she took the green baize apron off her brother Stevie, and instructed him to wash his hands and face in the peremptory tone she had used in that connection for fifteen years or so - ever since she had, in fact, ceased to attend to the boy's hands and face herself.
She spared presently a glance away from her dishing-up for the inspection of that face and those hands which Stevie, approaching the kitchen table, offered for her approval with an air of self-assurance hiding a perpetual residue of anxiety.Formerly the anger of the father was the supremely effective sanction of these rites, but Mr Verloc's placidity in domestic life would have made all mention of anger incredible - even to poor Stevie's nervousness.The theory was that Mr Verloc would have been inexpressibly pained and shocked by any deficiency of cleanliness at meal times.Winnie after the death of her father found considerable consolation in the feeling that she need no longer tremble for poor Stevie.She could not bear to see the boy hurt.It maddened her.As a little girl she had often faced with blazing eyes the irascible licensed victualler in defence of her brother.
Nothing now in Mrs Verloc's appearance could lead one to suppose that she was capable of a passionate demonstration.
She finished her dishing-up.The table was laid in the parlour.Going to the foot of the stairs she screamed out `Mother!' Then opening the glazed door leading to the shop, `Adolf!' Mr Verloc had not changed his position;he had not apparently stirred a limb for an hour and a half.He got up heavily, and came to his dinner in his overcoat and with his hat on, without uttering a word.His silence in itself had nothing startlingly unusual in this household, hidden in the shades of the sordid street seldom touched by the sun, behind the dim shop with its wares of disreputable rubbish.
Only that day Mr Verloc's taciturnity was so obviously thoughtful that the two women were impressed by it.They sat silent themselves, keeping a watchful eye on poor Stevie, lest he should break out into one of his fits of loquacity.He faced Mr Verloc across the table, and remained very good and quiet, staring vacantly.The endeavour to keep him from making himself objectionable in any way to the master of the house put no inconsiderable anxiety into these two women's lives.`The boy,' as they alluded to him softly between themselves, had been a source of that sort of anxiety almost from the very day of his birth.The late licensed victualler's humiliation at having such a very peculiar boy for a son manifested itself by a propensity to brutal treatment; for he was a person of fine sensibilities, and his sufferings as a man and a father were perfectly genuine.Afterwards Stevie had to be kept from making himself a nuisance to the single gentlemen lodgers, who are themselves a queer lot, and are easily aggrieved.And there was always the anxiety of his mere existence to face.Visions of a workhouse infirmary for her child had haunted the old woman in the basement breakfast-room of the decayed Belgravian house.`If you had net found such a good husband, my dear,' she used to say to her daughter, `I don't know what would have become of that poor boy.
Mr Verloc extended as much recognition to Stevie as a man not particularly fond of animals may give to his wife's beloved cat; and this recognition, benevolent and perfunctory, was essentially of the same quality.Both women admitted to themselves that not much more could be reasonably expected.
It was enough to earn for Mr Verloc the old woman's reverential gratitude.
In the early days, made sceptical by the trials of friendless life, she used sometimes to ask anxiously: `You don't think, my dear, that Mr Verloc is getting tired of seeing Stevie about?' To this Winnie replied habitually by a slight toss of her head.Once, however, she retorted, with a rather grim pertness: `He'll have to get tired of me first.' A long silence ensued.
The mother, with her feet propped up on a stool, seemed to be trying to get to the bottom of that answer, whose feminine profundity had struck her all of a heap.She had never really understood why Winnie had married Mr Verloc.It was very sensible of her, and evidently had turned out for the best, but the girl might have naturally hoped to find somebody of a more suitable age.There had been a steady young fellow, only son of a butcher in the next street, helping his father in business, with whom Winnie had been walking out with obvious gusto.He was dependent on his father, it is true; but the business was good, and his prospects excellent.He took her girl to the theatre on several evenings.Then just as she began to dread to hear of their engagement (for what could she have done with that big house alone, with Stevie on her hands), that romance came to an abrupt end, and Winnie went about looking very dull.But Mr Verloc, turning up providentially to occupy the first-floor front bedroom, there had been no more question of the young butcher.It was clearly providential.
