第26章

She remained silent by his side for a 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 in parts to 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.`Isuppose 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!'