第 十二 章 · Chapter XII
. 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.
“I could not conceal it. I was too full of you. I daresay you could not
help seeing it in my eyes. But I could not guess it. You were always so
distant. . . .”
“What else did you expect?” burst out Mrs Verloc. “I was a respectable
woman—”
She paused, then added, as if speaking to herself, in sinister
resentment: “Till he made me what I am.”
Ossipon let that pass, and took up his running. “He never did seem to me
to be quite worthy of you,” he began, throwing loyalty to the winds.
“You were worthy of a better fate.”
Mrs Verloc interrupted bitterly:
“Better fate! He cheated me out of seven years of life.”
“You seemed to live so happily with him.” Ossipon tried to exculpate the
lukewarmness of his past conduct. “It’s that what’s made me timid. You
seemed to love him. I was surprised—and jealous,” he added.
“Love him!” Mrs Verloc cried out in a whisper, full of scorn and rage.
“Love him! I was a good wife to him. I am a respectable woman. You
thought I loved him! You did! Look here, Tom—”
The sound of this name thrilled Comrade Ossipon with pride. For his name
was Alexander, and he was called Tom by arrangement with the most
familiar of his intimates. It was a name of friendship—of moments of
expansion. He had no idea that she had ever heard it used by anybody.
It was apparent that she had not only caught it, but had treasured it in
her memory—perhaps in her heart.
“Look here, Tom! I was a young girl. I was done up. I was tired. I
had two people depending on what I could do, and it did seem as if I
couldn’t do any more. Two people—mother and the boy. He was much more
mine than mother’s. I sat up nights and nights with him on my lap, all
alone upstairs, when I wasn’t more than eight years old myself. And
then—He was mine, I tell you. . . . You can’t understand that. No man
can understand it. What was I to do? There was a young fellow—”
The memory of the early romance with the young butcher survived,
tenacious, like the image of a glimpsed ideal in that heart quailing
before the fear of the gallows and full of revolt against death.
“That was the man I loved then,” went on the widow of Mr Verloc. “I
suppose he could see it in my eyes too. Five and twenty shillings a
week, and his father threatened to kick him out of the business if he
made such a fool of himself as to marry a girl with a crippled mother and
a crazy idiot of a boy on her hands. But he would hang about me, till
one evening I found the courage to slam the door in his face. I had to
do it. I loved him dearly. Five and twenty shillings a week! There was
that other man—a good lodger. What is a girl to do? Could I’ve gone on
the streets? He seemed kind. He wanted me, anyhow. What was I to do
with mother and that poor boy? Eh? I said yes. He seemed good-natured,
he was freehanded, he had money, he never said anything. Seven
years—seven years a good wife to him, the kind, the good, the generous,
the—And he loved me. Oh yes. He loved me till I sometimes wished
myself—Seven years. Seven years a wife to him. And do you know what he
was, that dear friend of yours? Do you know what he was? He was a
devil!”
The superhuman vehemence of that whispered statement completely stunned
Comrade Ossipon. Winnie Verloc turning about held him by both arms,
facing him under the falling mist in the darkness and solitude of Brett
Place, in which all sounds of life seemed lost as if in a triangular well
of asphalt and bricks, of blind houses and unfeeling stones.
“No; I didn’t know,” he declared, with a sort of flabby stupidity, whose
comical aspect was lost upon a woman haunted by the fear of the gallows,
“but I do now. I—I understand,” he floundered on, his mind speculating
as to what sort of atrocities Verloc could have practised under the
sleepy, placid appearances of his married estate. It was positively
awful. “I understand,” he repeated, and then by a sudden inspiration
uttered an—“Unhappy woman!” of lofty commiseration instead of the more
familiar “Poor darling!” of his usual practice. This was no usual case.
He felt conscious of something abnormal going on, while he never lost
sight of the greatness of the stake. “Unhappy, brave woman!”
He was glad to have discovered that variation; but he could discover
nothing else.
“Ah, but he is dead now,” was the best he could do. And he put a
remarkable amount of animosity into his guarded exclamation. Mrs Verloc
caught at his arm with a sort of frenzy.
“You guessed then he was dead,” she murmured, as if beside herself.
“You! You guessed what I had to do. Had to!”
There were suggestions of triumph, relief, gratitude in the indefinable
tone of these words. It engrossed the whole attention of Ossipon to the
detriment of mere literal sense. He wondered what was up with her, why
she had worked herself into this state of wild excitement. He even began
to wonder whether the hidden causes of that Greenwich Park affair did not
lie deep in the unhappy circumstances of the Verlocs’ married life. He
went so far as to suspect Mr Verloc of having selected that extraordinary
manner of committing suicide. By Jove! that would account for the utter
inanity and wrong-headedness of the thing. No anarchist manifestation
was required by the circumstances. Quite the contrary; and Verloc was as
well aware of that as any other revolutionist of his standing. What an
immense joke if Verloc had simply made fools of the whole of Europe, of
the revolutionary world, of the police, of the press, and of the cocksure
Professor as well. Indeed, thought Ossipon, in astonishment, it seemed
almost certain that he did! Poor beggar! It struck him as very possible
that of that household of two it wasn’t precisely the man who was the
devil.
Alexander Ossipon, nicknamed the Doctor, was naturally inclined to think
indulgently of his men friends. He eyed Mrs Verloc hanging on his arm.
Of his women friends he thought in a specially practical way. Why Mrs
Verloc should exclaim at his knowledge of Mr Verloc’s death, which was no
guess at all, did not disturb him beyond measure. They often talked like
lunatics. But he was curious to know how she had been informed. The
papers could tell her nothing beyond the mere fact: the man blown to
pieces in Greenwich Park not having been identified. It was
inconceivable on any theory that Verloc should have given her an inkling
of his intention—whatever it was. This problem interested Comrade
Ossipon immensely. He stopped short. They had gone then along the three
sides of Brett Place, and were near the end of Brett Street again.
“How did you first come to hear of it?” he asked in a tone he tried to
render appropriate to the character of the revelations which had been
made to him by the woman at his side.
She shook violently for a while before she answered in a listless voice.
“From the police. A chief inspector came, Chief Inspector Heat he said
he was. He showed me—”
Mrs Verloc choked. “Oh, Tom, they had to gather him up with a shovel.”
Her breast heaved with dry sobs. In a moment Ossipon found his tongue.
“The police! Do you mean to say the police came already? That Chief
Inspector Heat himself actually came to tell you.”
“Yes,” she confirmed in the same listless tone. “He came just like this.
He came. I didn’t know. He showed me a piece of overcoat, and—just like
that. Do you know this? he says.”
“Heat! Heat! And what did he do?”
Mrs Verloc’s head dropped. “Nothing. He did nothing. He went away.
The police were on that man’s side,” she murmured tragically. “Another
one came too.”
“Another—another inspector, do you mean?” asked Ossipon, in great
excitement, and very much in the tone of a scared child.
“I don’t know. He came. He looked like a foreigner. He may have been
one of them Embassy people.”
Comrade Ossipon nearly collapsed under this new shock.
“Embassy! Are you aware what you are saying? What Embassy? What on
earth do you mean by Embassy?”
“It’s that place in Chesham Square. The people he cursed so. I don’t
know. What does it matter!”
“And that fellow, what did he do or say to you?”
“I don’t remember. . . . Nothing . . . . I don’t care. Don’t ask me,”
she pleaded in a weary voice.
“All right. I won’t,” assented Ossipon tenderly. And he meant it too,
not because he was touched by the pathos of the pleading voice, but
because he felt himself losing his footing in the depths of this
tenebrous affair. Police! Embassy! Phew! For fear of adventuring his
intelligence into ways where its natural lights might fail to guide it
safely he dismissed resolutely all suppositions, surmises, and theories
out of his mind. He had the woman there, absolutely flinging herself at
him, and that was the principal consideration. But after what he had
heard nothing could astonish him any more. And when Mrs Verloc, as if
startled suddenly out of a dream of safety, began to urge upon him wildly
the necessity of an immediate flight on the Continent, he did not exclaim
in the least. He simply said with unaffected regret that there was no
train till the morning, and stood looking thoughtfully at her face,
veiled in black net, in the light of a gas lamp veiled in a gauze of
mist.
Near him, her black form merged in the night, like a figure half
chiselled out of a block of black stone. It was impossible to say what
she knew, how deep she was involved with policemen and Embassies. But if
she wanted to get away, it was not for him to object. He was anxious to
be off himself. He felt that the business, the shop so strangely
familiar to chief inspectors and members of foreign Embassies, was not
the place for him. That must be dropped. But there was the rest. These
savings. The money!
“You must hide me till the morning somewhere,” she said in a dismayed
voice.
“Fact is, my dear, I can’t take you where I live. I share the room with
a friend.”
He was somewhat dismayed himself. In the morning the blessed ’tecs will
be out in all the stations, no doubt. And if they once got hold of her,
for one reason or another she would be lost to him indeed.
“But you must. Don’t you care for me at all—at all? What are you
thinking of?”
She said this violently, but she let her clasped hands fall in
discouragement. There was a silence, while the mist fell, and darkness
reigned undisturbed over Brett Place. Not a soul, not even the vagabond,
lawless, and amorous soul of a cat, came near the man and the woman
facing each other.
“It would be possible perhaps to find a safe lodging somewhere,” Ossipon
spoke at last. “But the truth is, my dear, I have not enough money to go
and try with—only a few pence. We revolutionists are not rich.”
He had fifteen shillings in his pocket. He added:
“And there’s the journey before us, too—first thing in the morning at
that.”
She did not move, made no sound, and Comrade Ossipon’s heart sank a
little. Apparently she had no suggestion to offer. Suddenly she
clutched at her breast, as if she had felt a sharp pain there.
“But I have,” she gasped. “I have the money. I have enough money. Tom!
Let us go from here.”
“How much have you got?” he inquired, without stirring to her tug; for he
was a cautious man.
“I have the money, I tell you. All the money.”
“What do you mean by it? All the money there was in the bank, or what?”
he asked incredulously, but ready not to be surprised at anything in the
way of luck.
“Yes, yes!” she said nervously. “All there was. I’ve it all.”
“How on earth did you manage to get hold of it already?” he marvelled.
“He gave it to me,” she murmured, suddenly subdued and trembling.
Comrade Ossipon put down his rising surprise with a firm hand.
“Why, then—we are saved,” he uttered slowly.
She leaned forward, and sank against his breast. He welcomed her there.
She had all the money. Her hat was in the way of very marked effusion;
her veil too. He was adequate in his manifestations, but no more. She
received them without resistance and without abandonment, passively, as
if only half-sensible. She freed herself from his lax embraces without
difficulty.
“You will save me, Tom,” she broke out, recoiling, but still keeping her
hold on him by the two lapels of his damp coat. “Save me. Hide me.
Don’t let them have me. You must kill me first. I couldn’t do it
myself—I couldn’t, I couldn’t—not even for what I am afraid of.”
She was confoundedly bizarre, he thought. She was beginning to inspire
him with an indefinite uneasiness. He said surlily, for he was busy with
important thoughts:
“What the devil _are_ you afraid of?”
“Haven’t you guessed what I was driven to do!” cried the woman.
Distracted by the vividness of her dreadful apprehensions, her head
ringing with forceful words, that kept the horror of her position before
her mind, she had imagined her incoherence to be clearness itself. She
had no conscience of how little she had audibly said in the disjointed
phrases completed only in her thought. She had felt the relief of a full
confession, and she gave a special meaning to every sentence spoken by
Comrade Ossipon, whose knowledge did not in the least resemble her own.
“Haven’t you guessed what I was driven to do!” Her voice fell. “You
needn’t be long in guessing then what I am afraid of,” she continued, in
a bitter and sombre murmur. “I won’t have it. I won’t. I won’t. I
won’t. You must promise to kill me first!” She shook the lapels of his
coat. “It must never be!”
He assured her curtly that no promises on his part were necessary, but he
took good care not to contradict her in set terms, because he had had
much to do with excited women, and he was inclined in general to let his
experience guide his conduct in preference to applying his sagacity to
each special case. His sagacity in this case was busy in other
directions. Women’s words fell into water, but the shortcomings of
time-tables remained. The insular nature of Great Britain obtruded
itself upon his notice in an odious form. “Might just as well be put
under lock and key every night,” he thought irritably, as nonplussed as
though he had a wall to scale with the woman on his back. Suddenly he
slapped his forehead. He had by dint of cudgelling his brains just
thought of the Southampton—St Malo service. The boat left about
midnight. There was a train at 10.30. He became cheery and ready to
act.
“From Waterloo. Plenty of time. We are all right after all. . . .
What’s the matter now? This isn’t the way,” he protested.
Mrs Verloc, having hooked her arm into his, was trying to drag him into
Brett Street again.
“I’ve forgotten to shut the shop door as I went out,” she whispered,
terribly agitated.
The shop and all that was in it had ceased to interest Comrade Ossipon.
He knew how to limit his desires. He was on the point of saying “What of
that? Let it be,” but he refrained. He disliked argument about trifles.
He even mended his pace considerably on the thought that she might have
left the money in the drawer. But his willingness lagged behind her
feverish impatience.
The shop seemed to be quite dark at first. The door stood ajar. Mrs
Verloc, leaning against the front, gasped out:
“Nobody has been in. Look! The light—the light in the parlour.”
Ossipon, stretching his head forward, saw a faint gleam in the darkness
of the shop.
“There is,” he said.
“I forgot it.” Mrs Verloc’s voice came from behind her veil faintly. And
as he stood waiting for her to enter first, she said louder: “Go in and
put it out—or I’ll go mad.”
He made no immediate objection to this proposal, so strangely motived.
“Where’s all that money?” he asked.
“On me! Go, Tom. Quick! Put it out. . . . Go in!” she cried, seizing
him by both shoulders from behind.
Not prepared for a display of physical force, Comrade Ossipon stumbled
far into the shop before her push. He was astonished at the strength of
the woman and scandalised by her proceedings. But he did not retrace his
steps in order to remonstrate with her severely in the street. He was
beginning to be disagreeably impressed by her fantastic behaviour.
Moreover, this or never was the time to humour the woman. Comrade
Ossipon avoided easily the end of the counter, and approached calmly the
glazed door of the parlour. The curtain over the panes being drawn back
a little he, by a very natural impulse, looked in, just as he made ready
to turn the handle. He looked in without a thought, without intention,
without curiosity of any sort. He looked in because he could not help
looking in. He looked in, and discovered Mr Verloc reposing quietly on
the sofa.
A yell coming from the innermost depths of his chest died out unheard and
transformed into a sort of greasy, sickly taste on his lips. At the same
time the mental personality of Comrade Ossipon executed a frantic leap
backward. But his body, left thus without intellectual guidance, held on
to the door handle with the unthinking force of an instinct. The robust
anarchist did not even totter. And he stared, his face close to the
glass, his eyes protruding out of his head. He would have given anything
to get away, but his returning reason informed him that it would not do
to let go the door handle. What was it—madness, a nightmare, or a trap
into which he had been decoyed with fiendish artfulness? Why—what for?
He did not know. Without any sense of guilt in his breast, in the full
peace of his conscience as far as these people were concerned, the idea
that he would be murdered for mysterious reasons by the couple Verloc
passed not so much across his mind as across the pit of his stomach, and
went out, leaving behind a trail of sickly faintness—an indisposition.
Comrade Ossipon did not feel very well in a very special way for a
moment—a long moment. And he stared. Mr Verloc lay very still
meanwhile, simulating sleep for reasons of his own, while that savage
woman of his was guarding the door—invisible and silent in the dark and
deserted street. Was all this a some sort of terrifying arrangement
invented by the police for his especial benefit? His modesty shrank from
that explanation.
But the true sense of the scene he was beholding came to Ossipon through
the contemplation of the hat. It seemed an extraordinary thing, an
ominous object, a sign. Black, and rim upward, it lay on the floor
before the couch as if prepared to receive the contributions of pence
from people who would come presently to behold Mr Verloc in the fullness
of his domestic ease reposing on a sofa. From the hat the eyes of the
robust anarchist wandered to the displaced table, gazed at the broken
dish for a time, received a kind of optical shock from observing a white
gleam under the imperfectly closed eyelids of the man on the couch. Mr
Verloc did not seem so much asleep now as lying down with a bent head and
looking insistently at his left breast. And when Comrade Ossipon had
made out the handle of the knife he turned away from the glazed door, and
retched violently.
The crash of the street door flung to made his very soul leap in a panic.
This house with its harmless tenant could still be made a trap of—a trap
of a terrible kind. Comrade Ossipon had no settled conception now of
what was happening to him. Catching his thigh against the end of the
counter, he spun round, staggered with a cry of pain, felt in the
distracting clatter of the bell his arms pinned to his side by a
convulsive hug, while the cold lips of a woman moved creepily on his very
ear to form the words:
“Policeman! He has seen me!”
He ceased to struggle; she never let him go. Her hands had locked
themselves with an inseparable twist of fingers on his robust back.
While the footsteps approached, they breathed quickly, breast to breast,
with hard, laboured breaths, as if theirs had been the attitude of a
deadly struggle, while, in fact, it was the attitude of deadly fear. And
the time was long.
The constable on the beat had in truth seen something of Mrs Verloc; only
coming from the lighted thoroughfare at the other end of Brett Street,
she had been no more to him than a flutter in the darkness. And he was
not even quite sure that there had been a flutter. He had no reason to
hurry up. On coming abreast of the shop he observed that it had been
closed early. There was nothing very unusual in that. The men on duty
had special instructions about that shop: what went on about there was
not to be meddled with unless absolutely disorderly, but any observations
made were to be reported. There were no observations to make; but from a
sense of duty and for the peace of his conscience, owing also to that
doubtful flutter of the darkness, the constable crossed the road, and
tried the door. The spring latch, whose key was reposing for ever off
duty in the late Mr Verloc’s waistcoat pocket, held as well as usual.
While the conscientious officer was shaking the handle, Ossipon felt the
cold lips of the woman stirring again creepily against his very ear:
“If he comes in kill me—kill me, Tom.”
The constable moved away, flashing as he passed the light of his dark
lantern, merely for form’s sake, at the shop window. For a moment longer
the man and the woman inside stood motionless, panting, breast to breast;
then her fingers came unlocked, her arms fell by her side slowly.
Ossipon leaned against the counter. The robust anarchist wanted support
badly. This was awful. He was almost too disgusted for speech. Yet he
managed to utter a plaintive thought, showing at least that he realised
his position.
“Only a couple of minutes later and you’d have made me blunder against
the fellow poking about here with his damned dark lantern.”
The widow of Mr Verloc, motionless in the middle of the shop, said
insistently:
“Go in and put that light out, Tom. It will drive me crazy.”
She saw vaguely his vehement gesture of refusal. Nothing in the world
would have induced Ossipon to go into the parlour. He was not
superstitious, but there was too much blood on the floor; a beastly pool
of it all round the hat. He judged he had been already far too near that
corpse for his peace of mind—for the safety of his neck, perhaps!
“At the meter then! There. Look. In that corner.”
The robust form of Comrade Ossipon, striding brusque and shadowy across
the shop, squatted in a corner obediently; but this obedience was without
grace. He fumbled nervously—and suddenly in the sound of a muttered
curse the light behind the glazed door flicked out to a gasping,
hysterical sigh of a woman. Night, the inevitable reward of men’s
faithful labours on this earth, night had fallen on Mr Verloc, the tried
revolutionist—“one of the old lot”—the humble guardian of society; the
invaluable Secret Agent [delta] of Baron Stott-Wartenheim’s despatches; a
servant of law and order, faithful, trusted, accurate, admirable, with
perhaps one single amiable weakness: the idealistic belief in being loved
for himself.
Ossipon groped his way back through the stuffy atmosphere, as black as
ink now, to the counter. The voice of Mrs Verloc, standing in the middle
of the shop, vibrated after him in that blackness with a desperate
protest.
“I will not be hanged, Tom. I will not—”
She broke off. Ossipon from the counter issued a warning: “Don’t shout
like this,” then seemed to reflect profoundly. “You did this thing quite
by yourself?” he inquired in a hollow voice, but with an appearance of
masterful calmness which filled Mrs Verloc’s heart with grateful
confidence in his protecting strength.
“Yes,” she whispered, invisible.
“I wouldn’t have believed it possible,” he muttered. “Nobody would.”
She heard him move about and the snapping of a lock in the parlour door.
Comrade Ossipon had turned the key on Mr Verloc’s repose; and this he did
not from reverence for its eternal nature or any other obscurely
sentimental consideration, but for the precise reason that he was not at
all sure that there was not someone else hiding somewhere in the house.
He did not believe the woman, or rather he was incapable by now of
judging what could be true, possible, or even probable in this astounding
universe. He was terrified out of all capacity for belief or disbelief
in regard of this extraordinary affair, which began with police
inspectors and Embassies and would end goodness knows where—on the
scaffold for someone. He was terrified at the thought that he could not
prove the use he made of his time ever since seven o’clock, for he had
been skulking about Brett Street. He was terrified at this savage woman
who had brought him in there, and would probably saddle him with
complicity, at least if he were not careful. He was terrified at the
rapidity with which he had been involved in such dangers—decoyed into it.
It was some twenty minutes since he had met her—not more.
The voice of Mrs Verloc rose subdued, pleading piteously: “Don’t let them
hang me, Tom! Take me out of the country. I’ll work for you. I’ll
slave for you. I’ll love you. I’ve no one in the world. . . . Who
would look at me if you don’t!” She ceased for a moment; then in the
depths of the loneliness made round her by an insignificant thread of
blood trickling off the handle of a knife, she found a dreadful
inspiration to her—who had been the respectable girl of the Belgravian
mansion, the loyal, respectable wife of Mr Verloc. “I won’t ask you to
marry me,” she breathed out in shame-faced accents.
She moved a step forward in the darkness. He was terrified at her. He
would not have been surprised if she had suddenly produced another knife
destined for his breast. He certainly would have made no resistance. He
had really not enough fortitude in him just then to tell her to keep
back. But he inquired in a cavernous, strange tone: “Was he asleep?”
“No,” she cried, and went on rapidly. “He wasn’t. Not he. He had been
telling me that nothing could touch him. After taking the boy away from
under my very eyes to kill him—the loving, innocent, harmless lad. My
own, I tell you. He was lying on the couch quite easy—after killing the
boy—my boy. I would have gone on the streets to get out of his sight.
And he says to me like this: ‘Come here,’ after telling me I had helped
to kill the boy. You hear, Tom? He says like this: ‘Come here,’ after
taking my very heart out of me along with the boy to smash in the dirt.”
She ceased, then dreamily repeated twice: “Blood and dirt. Blood and
dirt.” A great light broke upon Comrade Ossipon. It was that
half-witted lad then who had perished in the park. And the fooling of
everybody all round appeared more complete than ever—colossal. He
exclaimed scientifically, in the extremity of his astonishment: “The
degenerate—by heavens!”
“Come here.” The voice of Mrs Verloc rose again. “What did he think I
was made of? Tell me, Tom. Come here! Me! Like this! I had been
looking at the knife, and I thought I would come then if he wanted me so
much. Oh yes! I came—for the last time. . . . With the knife.”
He was excessively terrified at her—the sister of the degenerate—a
degenerate herself of a murdering type . . . or else of the lying type.
Comrade Ossipon might have been said to be terrified scientifically in
addition to all other kinds of fear. It was an immeasurable and
composite funk, which from its very excess gave him in the dark a false
appearance of calm and thoughtful deliberation. For he moved and spoke
with difficulty, being as if half frozen in his will and mind—and no one
could see his ghastly face. He felt half dead.
He leaped a foot high. Unexpectedly Mrs Verloc had desecrated the
unbroken reserved decency of her home by a shrill and terrible shriek.
“Help, Tom! Save me. I won’t be hanged!”
He rushed forward, groping for her mouth with a silencing hand, and the
shriek died out. But in his rush he had knocked her over. He felt her
now clinging round his legs, and his terror reached its culminating
point, became a sort of intoxication, entertained delusions, acquired the
characteristics of delirium tremens. He positively saw snakes now. He
saw the woman twined round him like a snake, not to be shaken off. She
was not deadly. She was death itself—the companion of life.
Mrs Verloc, as if relieved by the outburst, was very far from behaving
noisily now. She was pitiful.
“Tom, you can’t throw me off now,” she murmured from the floor. “Not
unless you crush my head under your heel. I won’t leave you.”
“Get up,” said Ossipon.
His face was so pale as to be quite visible in the profound black
darkness of the shop; while Mrs Verloc, veiled, had no face, almost no
discernible form. The trembling of something small and white, a flower
in her hat, marked her place, her movements.
It rose in the blackness. She had got up from the floor, and Ossipon
regretted not having run out at once into the street. But he perceived
easily that it would not do. It would not do. She would run after him.
She would pursue him shrieking till she sent every policeman within
hearing in chase. And then goodness only knew what she would say of him.
He was so frightened that for a moment the insane notion of strangling
her in the dark passed through his mind. And he became more frightened
than ever! She had him! He saw himself living in abject terror in some
obscure hamlet in Spain or Italy; till some fine morning they found him
dead too, with a knife in his breast—like Mr Verloc. He sighed deeply.
He dared not move. And Mrs Verloc waited in silence the good pleasure of
her saviour, deriving comfort from his reflective silence.
Suddenly he spoke up in an almost natural voice. His reflections had
come to an end.
“Let’s get out, or we will lose the train.”
“Where are we going to, Tom?” she asked timidly. Mrs Verloc was no
longer a free woman.
“Let’s get to Paris first, the best way we can. . . . Go out first, and
see if the way’s clear.”
She obeyed. Her voice came subdued through the cautiously opened door.
“It’s all right.”
Ossipon came out. Notwithstanding his endeavours to be gentle, the
cracked bell clattered behind the closed door in the empty shop, as if
trying in vain to warn the reposing Mr Verloc of the final departure of
his wife—accompanied by his friend.
In the hansom they presently picked up, the robust anarchist became
explanatory. He was still awfully pale, with eyes that seemed to have
sunk a whole half-inch into his tense face. But he seemed to have
thought of everything with extraordinary method.
“When we arrive,” he discoursed in a queer, monotonous tone, “you must go
into the station ahead of me, as if we did not know each other. I will
take the tickets, and slip in yours into your hand as I pass you. Then
you will go into the first-class ladies’ waiting-room, and sit there till
ten minutes before the train starts. Then you come out. I will be
outside. You go in first on the platform, as if you did not know me.
There may be eyes watching there that know what’s what. Alone you are
only a woman going off by train. I am known. With me, you may be
guessed at as Mrs Verloc running away. Do you understand, my dear?” he
added, with an effort.
“Yes,” said Mrs Verloc, sitting there against him in the hansom all rigid
with the dread of the gallows and the fear of death. “Yes, Tom.” And
she added to herself, like an awful refrain: “The drop given was fourteen
feet.”
Ossipon, not looking at her, and with a face like a fresh plaster cast of
himself after a wasting illness, said: “By-the-by, I ought to have the
money for the tickets now.”
Mrs Verloc, undoing some hooks of her bodice, while she went on staring
ahead beyond the splashboard, handed over to him the new pigskin
pocket-book. He received it without a word, and seemed to plunge it deep
somewhere into his very breast. Then he slapped his coat on the outside.
All this was done without the exchange of a single glance; they were like
two people looking out for the first sight of a desired goal. It was not
till the hansom swung round a corner and towards the bridge that Ossipon
opened his lips again.
“Do you know how much money there is in that thing?” he asked, as if
addressing slowly some hobgoblin sitting between the ears of the horse.
“No,” said Mrs Verloc. “He gave it to me. I didn’t count. I thought
nothing of it at the time. Afterwards—”
She moved her right hand a little. It was so expressive that little
movement of that right hand which had struck the deadly blow into a man’s
heart less than an hour before that Ossipon could not repress a shudder.
He exaggerated it then purposely, and muttered:
“I am cold. I got chilled through.”
Mrs Verloc looked straight ahead at the perspective of her escape. Now
and then, like a sable streamer blown across a road, the words “The drop
given was fourteen feet” got in the way of her tense stare. Through her
black veil the whites of her big eyes gleamed lustrously like the eyes of
a masked woman.
Ossipon’s rigidity had something business-like, a queer official
expression. He was heard again all of a sudden, as though he had
released a catch in order to speak.
“Look here! Do you know whether your—whether he kept his account at the
bank in his own name or in some other name.”
Mrs Verloc turned upon him her masked face and the big white gleam of her
eyes.
“Other name?” she said thoughtfully.
“Be exact in what you say,” Ossipon lectured in the swift motion of the
hansom. “It’s extremely important. I will explain to you. The bank has
the numbers of these notes. If they were paid to him in his own name,
then when his—his death becomes known, the notes may serve to track us
since we have no other money. You have no other money on you?”
She shook her head negatively.
“None whatever?” he insisted.
“A few coppers.”
“It would be dangerous in that case. The money would have then to be
dealt specially with. Very specially. We’d have perhaps to lose more
than half the amount in order to get these notes changed in a certain
safe place I know of in Paris. In the other case I mean if he had his
account and got paid out under some other name—say Smith, for
instance—the money is perfectly safe to use. You understand? The bank
has no means of knowing that Mr Verloc and, say, Smith are one and the
same person. Do you see how important it is that you should make no
mistake in answering me? Can you answer that query at all? Perhaps not.
Eh?”
She said composedly:
“I remember now! He didn’t bank in his own name. He told me once that
it was on deposit in the name of Prozor.”
“You are sure?”
“Certain.”
“You don’t think the bank had any knowledge of his real name? Or anybody
in the bank or—”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“How can I know? Is it likely, Tom?
“No. I suppose it’s not likely. It would have been more comfortable to
know. . . . Here we are. Get out first, and walk straight in. Move
smartly.”
He remained behind, and paid the cabman out of his own loose silver. The
programme traced by his minute foresight was carried out. When Mrs
Verloc, with her ticket for St Malo in her hand, entered the ladies’
waiting-room, Comrade Ossipon walked into the bar, and in seven minutes
absorbed three goes of hot brandy and water.
“Trying to drive out a cold,” he explained to the barmaid, with a
friendly nod and a grimacing smile. Then he came out, bringing out from
that festive interlude the face of a man who had drunk at the very
Fountain of Sorrow. He raised his eyes to the clock. It was time. He
waited.
Punctual, Mrs Verloc came out, with her veil down, and all black—black as
commonplace death itself, crowned with a few cheap and pale flowers. She
passed close to a little group of men who were laughing, but whose
laughter could have been struck dead by a single word. Her walk was
indolent, but her back was straight, and Comrade Ossipon looked after it
in terror before making a start himself.
The train was drawn up, with hardly anybody about its row of open doors.
Owing to the time of the year and to the abominable weather there were
hardly any passengers. Mrs Verloc walked slowly along the line of empty
compartments till Ossipon touched her elbow from behind.
“In here.”
She got in, and he remained on the platform looking about. She bent
forward, and in a whisper:
“What is it, Tom? Is there any danger? Wait a moment. There’s the
guard.”
She saw him accost the man in uniform. They talked for a while. She
heard the guard say “Very well, sir,” and saw him touch his cap. Then
Ossipon came back, saying: “I told him not to let anybody get into our
compartment.”
She was leaning forward on her seat. “You think of everything. . . .
You’ll get me off, Tom?” she asked in a gust of anguish, lifting her veil
brusquely to look at her saviour.
She had uncovered a face like adamant. And out of this face the eyes
looked on, big, dry, enlarged, lightless, burnt out like two black holes
in the white, shining globes.
“There is no danger,” he said, gazing into them with an earnestness
almost rapt, which to Mrs Verloc, flying from the gallows, seemed to be
full of force and tenderness. This devotion deeply moved her—and the
adamantine face lost the stern rigidity of its terror. Comrade Ossipon
gazed at it as no lover ever gazed at his mistress’s face. Alexander
Ossipon, anarchist, nicknamed the Doctor, author of a medical (and
improper) pamphlet, late lecturer on the social aspects of hygiene to
working men’s clubs, was free from the trammels of conventional
morality—but he submitted to the rule of science. He was scientific, and
he gazed scientifically at that woman, the sister of a degenerate, a
degenerate herself—of a murdering type. He gazed at her, and invoked
Lombroso, as an Italian peasant recommends himself to his favourite
saint. He gazed scientifically. He gazed at her cheeks, at her nose, at
her eyes, at her ears. . . . Bad! . . . Fatal! Mrs Verloc’s pale lips
parting, slightly relaxed under his passionately attentive gaze, he gazed
also at her teeth. . . . Not a doubt remained . . . a murdering type. . . .
If Comrade Ossipon did not recommend his terrified soul to Lombroso, it
was only because on scientific grounds he could not believe that he
carried about him such a thing as a soul. But he had in him the
scientific spirit, which moved him to testify on the platform of a
railway station in nervous jerky phrases.
“He was an extraordinary lad, that brother of yours. Most interesting to
study. A perfect type in a way. Perfect!”
He spoke scientifically in his secret fear. And Mrs Verloc, hearing
these words of commendation vouchsafed to her beloved dead, swayed
forward with a flicker of light in her sombre eyes, like a ray of
sunshine heralding a tempest of rain.
“He was that indeed,” she whispered softly, with quivering lips. “You
took a lot of notice of him, Tom. I loved you for it.”
“It’s almost incredible the resemblance there was between you two,”
pursued Ossipon, giving a voice to his abiding dread, and trying to
conceal his nervous, sickening impatience for the train to start. “Yes;
he resembled you.”
These words were not especially touching or sympathetic. But the fact of
that resemblance insisted upon was enough in itself to act upon her
emotions powerfully. With a little faint cry, and throwing her arms out,
Mrs Verloc burst into tears at last.
Ossipon entered the carriage, hastily closed the door and looked out to
see the time by the station clock. Eight minutes more. For the first
three of these Mrs Verloc wept violently and helplessly without pause or
interruption. Then she recovered somewhat, and sobbed gently in an
abundant fall of tears. She tried to talk to her saviour, to the man who
was the messenger of life.
“Oh, Tom! How could I fear to die after he was taken away from me so
cruelly! How could I! How could I be such a coward!”
She lamented aloud her love of life, that life without grace or charm,
and almost without decency, but of an exalted faithfulness of purpose,
even unto murder. And, as often happens in the lament of poor humanity,
rich in suffering but indigent in words, the truth—the very cry of
truth—was found in a worn and artificial shape picked up somewhere among
the phrases of sham sentiment.
“How could I be so afraid of death! Tom, I tried. But I am afraid. I
tried to do away with myself. And I couldn’t. Am I hard? I suppose the
cup of horrors was not full enough for such as me. Then when you came. . . . ”
She paused. Then in a gust of confidence and gratitude, “I will live all
my days for you, Tom!” she sobbed out.
“Go over into the other corner of the carriage, away from the platform,”
said Ossipon solicitously. She let her saviour settle her comfortably,
and he watched the coming on of another crisis of weeping, still more
violent than the first. He watched the symptoms with a sort of medical
air, as if counting seconds. He heard the guard’s whistle at last. An
involuntary contraction of the upper lip bared his teeth with all the
aspect of savage resolution as he felt the train beginning to move. Mrs
Verloc heard and felt nothing, and Ossipon, her saviour, stood still. He
felt the train roll quicker, rumbling heavily to the sound of the woman’s
loud sobs, and then crossing the carriage in two long strides he opened
the door deliberately, and leaped out.
He had leaped out at the very end of the platform; and such was his
determination in sticking to his desperate plan that he managed by a sort
of miracle, performed almost in the air, to slam to the door of the
carriage. Only then did he find himself rolling head over heels like a
shot rabbit. He was bruised, shaken, pale as death, and out of breath
when he got up. But he was calm, and perfectly able to meet the excited
crowd of railway men who had gathered round him in a moment. He
explained, in gentle and convincing tones, that his wife had started at a
moment’s notice for Brittany to her dying mother; that, of course, she
was greatly up-set, and he considerably concerned at her state; that he
was trying to cheer her up, and had absolutely failed to notice at first
that the train was moving out. To the general exclamation, “Why didn’t
you go on to Southampton, then, sir?” he objected the inexperience of a
young sister-in-law left alone in the house with three small children,
and her alarm at his absence, the telegraph offices being closed. He had
acted on impulse. “But I don’t think I’ll ever try that again,” he
concluded; smiled all round; distributed some small change, and marched
without a limp out of the station.
Outside, Comrade Ossipon, flush of safe banknotes as never before in his
life, refused the offer of a cab.
“I can walk,” he said, with a little friendly laugh to the civil driver.
He could walk. He walked. He crossed the bridge. Later on the towers
of the Abbey saw in their massive immobility the yellow bush of his hair
passing under the lamps. The lights of Victoria saw him too, and Sloane
Square, and the railings of the park. And Comrade Ossipon once more
found himself on a bridge. The river, a sinister marvel of still shadows
and flowing gleams mingling below in a black silence, arrested his
attention. He stood looking over the parapet for a long time. The clock
tower boomed a brazen blast above his drooping head. He looked up at the
dial. . . . Half-past twelve of a wild night in the Channel.
And again Comrade Ossipon walked. His robust form was seen that night in
distant parts of the enormous town slumbering monstrously on a carpet of
mud under a veil of raw mist. It was seen crossing the streets without
life and sound, or diminishing in the interminable straight perspectives
of shadowy houses bordering empty roadways lined by strings of gas lamps.
He walked through Squares, Places, Ovals, Commons, through monotonous
streets with unknown names where the dust of humanity settles inert and
hopeless out of the stream of life. He walked. And suddenly turning
into a strip of a front garden with a mangy grass plot, he let himself
into a small grimy house with a latch-key he took out of his pocket.
He threw himself down on his bed all dressed, and lay still for a whole
quarter of an hour. Then he sat up suddenly, drawing up his knees, and
clasping his legs. The first dawn found him open-eyed, in that same
posture. This man who could walk so long, so far, so aimlessly, without
showing a sign of fatigue, could also remain sitting still for hours
without stirring a limb or an eyelid. But when the late sun sent its
rays into the room he unclasped his hands, and fell back on the pillow.
His eyes stared at the ceiling. And suddenly they closed. Comrade
Ossipon slept in the sunlight.