Kabanata Kabanata 1 · Chapter I

. Chapter I

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.