Mr Verloc, going out in the morning, left his shop nominally
in charge of his brother-in-law. It could be done, because
there was very little business at any time, and practically none at
all before the evening. Mr Verloc cared but little about his
ostensible business. And, moreover, his wife was in charge of
his brother-in-law.
The shop was small, and so was the house. It was one of
those grimy brick houses which existed in large quantities before
the era of reconstruction dawned upon London. The shop was a
square box of a place, with the front glazed in small panes.
In the daytime the door remained closed; in the evening it stood
discreetly but suspiciously ajar.
The window contained photographs of more or less undressed
dancing girls; nondescript packages in wrappers like patent
medicines; closed yellow paper envelopes, very flimsy, and marked
two-and-six in heavy black figures; a few numbers of ancient French
comic publications hung across a string as if to dry; a dingy blue
china bowl, a casket of black wood, bottles of marking ink, and
rubber stamps; a few books, with titles hinting at impropriety; a
few apparently old copies of obscure newspapers, badly printed,
with titles like The Torch
, The Gong —rousing
titles. And the two gas jets inside the panes were always
turned low, either for economy’s sake or for the sake of the
customers.
These customers were either very young men, who hung about
the window for a time before slipping in suddenly; or men of a more
mature age, but looking generally as if they were not in
funds. Some of that last kind had the collars of their
overcoats turned right up to their moustaches, and traces of mud on
the bottom of their nether garments, which had the appearance of
being much worn and not very valuable. And the legs inside
them did not, as a general rule, seem of much account either.
With their hands plunged deep in the side pockets of their coats,
they dodged in sideways, one shoulder first, as if afraid to start
the bell going.
The bell, hung on the door by means of a curved ribbon of
steel, was difficult to circumvent. It was hopelessly
cracked; but of an evening, at the slightest provocation, it
clattered behind the customer with impudent virulence.
It clattered; and at that signal, through the dusty glass
door behind the painted deal counter, Mr Verloc would issue hastily
from the parlour at the back. His eyes were naturally heavy;
he had an air of having wallowed, fully dressed, all day on an
unmade bed. Another man would have felt such an appearance a
distinct disadvantage. In a commercial transaction of the
retail order much depends on the seller’s engaging and amiable
aspect. But Mr Verloc knew his business, and remained
undisturbed by any sort of æsthetic doubt about his
appearance. With a firm, steady-eyed impudence, which seemed
to hold back the threat of some abominable menace, he would proceed
to sell over the counter some object looking obviously and
scandalously not worth the money which passed in the transaction: a
small cardboard box with apparently nothing inside, for instance,
or one of those carefully closed yellow flimsy envelopes, or a
soiled volume in paper covers with a promising title. Now and
then it happened that one of the faded, yellow dancing girls would
get sold to an amateur, as though she had been alive and
young.
Sometimes it was Mrs Verloc who would appear at the call of
the cracked bell. Winnie Verloc was a young woman with a full
bust, in a tight bodice, and with broad hips. Her hair was
very tidy. Steady-eyed like her husband, she preserved an air
of unfathomable indifference behind the rampart of the
counter. Then the customer of comparatively tender years
would get suddenly disconcerted at having to deal with a woman, and
with rage in his heart would proffer a request for a bottle of
marking ink, retail value sixpence (price in Verloc’s shop
one-and-sixpence), which, once outside, he would drop stealthily
into the gutter.
The evening visitors—the men with collars turned up and soft
hats rammed down—nodded familiarly to Mrs Verloc, and with a
muttered greeting, lifted up the flap at the end of the counter in
order to pass into the back parlour, which gave access to a passage
and to a steep flight of stairs. The door of the shop was the
only means of entrance to the house in which Mr Verloc carried on
his business of a seller of shady wares, exercised his vocation of
a protector of society, and cultivated his domestic virtues.
These last were pronounced. He was thoroughly
domesticated. Neither his spiritual, nor his mental, nor his
physical needs were of the kind to take him much abroad. He
found at home the ease of his body and the peace of his conscience,
together with Mrs Verloc’s wifely attentions and Mrs Verloc’s
mother’s deferential regard.
Winnie’s mother was a stout, wheezy woman, with a large brown
face. She wore a black wig under a white cap. Her
swollen legs rendered her inactive. She considered herself to
be of French descent, which might have been true; and after a good
many years of married life with a licensed victualler of the more
common sort, she provided for the years of widowhood by letting
furnished apartments for gentlemen near Vauxhall Bridge Road in a
square once of some splendour and still included in the district of
Belgravia. This topographical fact was of some advantage in
advertising her rooms; but the patrons of the worthy widow were not
exactly of the fashionable kind. Such as they were, her
daughter Winnie helped to look after them. Traces of the
French descent which the widow boasted of were apparent in Winnie
too. They were apparent in the extremely neat and artistic
arrangement of her glossy dark hair. Winnie had also other
charms: her youth; her full, rounded form; her clear complexion;
the provocation of her unfathomable reserve, which never went so
far as to prevent conversation, carried on on the lodgers’ part
with animation, and on hers with an equable amiability. It
must be that Mr Verloc was susceptible to these fascinations.
Mr Verloc was an intermittent patron. He came and went
without any very apparent reason. He generally arrived in
London (like the influenza) from the Continent, only he arrived
unheralded by the Press; and his visitations set in with great
severity. He breakfasted in bed, and remained wallowing there
with an air of quiet enjoyment till noon every day—and sometimes
even to a later hour. But when he went out he seemed to
experience a great difficulty in finding his way back to his
temporary home in the Belgravian square. He left it late, and
returned to it early—as early as three or four in the morning; and
on waking up at ten addressed Winnie, bringing in the breakfast
tray, with jocular, exhausted civility, in the hoarse, failing
tones of a man who had been talking vehemently for many hours
together. His prominent, heavy-lidded eyes rolled sideways
amorously and languidly, the bedclothes were pulled up to his chin,
and his dark smooth moustache covered his thick lips capable of
much honeyed banter.
In Winnie’s mother’s opinion Mr Verloc was a very nice
gentleman. From her life’s experience gathered in various
“business houses” the good woman had taken into her retirement an
ideal of gentlemanliness as exhibited by the patrons of
private-saloon bars. Mr Verloc approached that ideal; he
attained it, in fact.
“Of course, we’ll take over your furniture, mother,” Winnie
had remarked.
The lodging-house was to be given up. It seems it would
not answer to carry it on. It would have been too much
trouble for Mr Verloc. It would not have been convenient for
his other business. What his business was he did not say; but
after his engagement to Winnie he took the trouble to get up before
noon, and descending the basement stairs, make himself pleasant to
Winnie’s mother in the breakfast-room downstairs where she had her
motionless being. He stroked the cat, poked the fire, had his
lunch served to him there. He left its slightly stuffy
cosiness with evident reluctance, but, all the same, remained out
till the night was far advanced. He never offered to take
Winnie to theatres, as such a nice gentleman ought to have
done. His evenings were occupied. His work was in a way
political, he told Winnie once. She would have, he warned
her, to be very nice to his political friends.
And with her straight, unfathomable glance she answered that
she would be so, of course.
How much more he told her as to his occupation it was
impossible for Winnie’s mother to discover. The married
couple took her over with the furniture. The mean aspect of
the shop surprised her. The change from the Belgravian square
to the narrow street in Soho affected her legs adversely.
They became of an enormous size. On the other hand, she
experienced a complete relief from material cares. Her
son-in-law’s heavy good nature inspired her with a sense of
absolute safety. Her daughter’s future was obviously assured,
and even as to her son Stevie she need have no anxiety. She
had not been able to conceal from herself that he was a terrible
encumbrance, that poor Stevie. But in view of Winnie’s
fondness for her delicate brother, and of Mr Verloc’s kind and
generous disposition, she felt that the poor boy was pretty safe in
this rough world. And in her heart of hearts she was not
perhaps displeased that the Verlocs had no children. As that
circumstance seemed perfectly indifferent to Mr Verloc, and as
Winnie found an object of quasi-maternal affection in her brother,
perhaps this was just as well for poor Stevie.
For he was difficult to dispose of, that boy. He was
delicate and, in a frail way, good-looking too, except for the
vacant droop of his lower lip. Under our excellent system of
compulsory education he had learned to read and write,
notwithstanding the unfavourable aspect of the lower lip. But
as errand-boy he did not turn out a great success. He forgot
his messages; he was easily diverted from the straight path of duty
by the attractions of stray cats and dogs, which he followed down
narrow alleys into unsavoury courts; by the comedies of the
streets, which he contemplated open-mouthed, to the detriment of
his employer’s interests; or by the dramas of fallen horses, whose
pathos and violence induced him sometimes to shriek pierceingly in
a crowd, which disliked to be disturbed by sounds of distress in
its quiet enjoyment of the national spectacle. When led away
by a grave and protecting policeman, it would often become apparent
that poor Stevie had forgotten his address—at least for a
time. A brusque question caused him to stutter to the point
of suffocation. When startled by anything perplexing he used
to squint horribly. However, he never had any fits (which was
encouraging); and before the natural outbursts of impatience on the
part of his father he could always, in his childhood’s days, run
for protection behind the short skirts of his sister Winnie.
On the other hand, he might have been suspected of hiding a fund of
reckless naughtiness. When he had reached the age of fourteen
a friend of his late father, an agent for a foreign preserved milk
firm, having given him an opening as office-boy, he was discovered
one foggy afternoon, in his chief’s absence, busy letting off
fireworks on the staircase. He touched off in quick
succession a set of fierce rockets, angry catherine wheels, loudly
exploding squibs—and the matter might have turned out very
serious. An awful panic spread through the whole
building. Wild-eyed, choking clerks stampeded through the
passages full of smoke, silk hats and elderly business men could be
seen rolling independently down the stairs. Stevie did not
seem to derive any personal gratification from what he had
done. His motives for this stroke of originality were
difficult to discover. It was only later on that Winnie
obtained from him a misty and confused confession. It seems
that two other office-boys in the building had worked upon his
feelings by tales of injustice and oppression till they had wrought
his compassion to the pitch of that frenzy. But his father’s
friend, of course, dismissed him summarily as likely to ruin his
business. After that altruistic exploit Stevie was put to
help wash the dishes in the basement kitchen, and to black the
boots of the gentlemen patronising the Belgravian mansion.
There was obviously no future in such work. The gentlemen
tipped him a shilling now and then. Mr Verloc showed himself
the most generous of lodgers. But altogether all that did not
amount to much either in the way of gain or prospects; so that when
Winnie announced her engagement to Mr Verloc her mother could not
help wondering, with a sigh and a glance towards the scullery, what
would become of poor Stephen now.
It appeared that Mr Verloc was ready to take him over
together with his wife’s mother and with the furniture, which was
the whole visible fortune of the family. Mr Verloc gathered
everything as it came to his broad, good-natured breast. The
furniture was disposed to the best advantage all over the house,
but Mrs Verloc’s mother was confined to two back rooms on the first
floor. The luckless Stevie slept in one of them. By
this time a growth of thin fluffy hair had come to blur, like a
golden mist, the sharp line of his small lower jaw. He helped
his sister with blind love and docility in her household
duties. Mr Verloc thought that some occupation would be good
for him. His spare time he occupied by drawing circles with
compass and pencil on a piece of paper. He applied himself to
that pastime with great industry, with his elbows spread out and
bowed low over the kitchen table. Through the open door of
the parlour at the back of the shop Winnie, his sister, glanced at
him from time to time with maternal vigilance.