第80章

Having infused by persistent importunities some sort of heat into the chilly interest of several licensed victuallers (the acquaintances once upon a time of her late unlucky husband), Mrs Verloc's mother had at last secured her admission to certain almshouses founded by a wealthy innkeeper for the destitute widows of the trade.

This end, conceived in the astuteness of her uneasy heart, the old woman had pursued with secrecy and determination.That was the time when her daughter Winnie could not help passing a remark to Mr Verloc that mother has been spending half-crowns and five shillings almost every day this last week in cab fares'.But the remark was not made grudgingly.Winnie respected her mother's infirmities.She was only a little surprised at this sudden mania for locomotion.Mr Verloc, who was sufficiently magnificent in his way, had grunted the remark impatiently aside as interfering with his meditations.These were frequent, deep, and prolonged; they bore upon a matter more important than five shillings.Distinctly more important, and beyond all comparison more difficult to consider in all its aspects with philosophical serenity.Her object attained in astute secrecy, the heroic old woman had made a clean breast of it to Mrs Verloc.Her soul was triumphant and her heart tremulous.Inwardly, she quaked, because she dreaded and admired the calm, self-contained character of her daughter Winnie, whose displeasure was made redoubtable by a diversity of dreadful silences.But she did not allow her inward apprehensions to rob her of the advantage of venerable placidity conferred upon her outward person by her triple chin, the floating ampleness of her ancient form, and the impotent condition of her legs.

The shock of the information was so unexpected that Mrs Verloc, against her usual practice when addressed, interrupted the domestic occupation she was engaged upon.It was the dusting of the furniture in the parlour behind the shop.She turned her head towards her mother.

`Whatever did you want to do that for?' she exclaimed, in scandalized astonishment.

The shock must have been severe to make her depart from that distant and uninquiring acceptance of facts which was her force and her safeguard in life.

`Weren't you made comfortable enough here?'

She had lapsed into these inquiries, but next moment she saved the consistency of her conduct by resuming her dusting, while the old woman sat scared and dumb under her dingy white cap and lustreless dark wig.

Winnie finished the chair, and ran the duster along the mahogany at the back of the horsehair sofa on which Mr Verloc loved to take his ease in hat and overcoat.She was intent on her work, but presently she permitted herself another question.

`How in the world did you manage it, mother?'

As not affecting the inwardness of things, which it was Mrs Verloc's principle to ignore, this curiosity was excusable.It bore merely on the methods.The old woman welcomed it eagerly as bringing forward something that could be talked about with much sincerity.

She favoured her daughter by an exhaustive answer full of names and enriched by side-comments upon the ravages of time as observed in the alteration of human countenances.The names were principally the names of licensed victuallers - `poor daddy's friends, my dear'.She enlarged with special appreciation on the kindness and condescension of a large brewer, a Baronet and an M.P., the Chairman of the Governors of the Charity.She expressed herself thus warmly because she had been allowed to interview by appointment his Private Secretary - `a very polite gentleman, all in black, with a gentle, sad voice, but so very, very thin and quiet.He was like a shadow, my dear.'

Winnie, prolonging her dusting operations till the tale was told to the end, walked out of the parlour into the kitchen (down two steps) in her usual manner, without the slightest comment.

Shedding a few tears in sign of rejoicing at her daughter's mansuetude in this terrible affair, Mrs Verloc's mother gave play to her astuteness in the direction of her furniture, because it was her own; and sometimes she wished it hadn't been.Heroism is all very well, but there are circumstances when the disposal of a few tables and chairs, brass bedsteads, and so on, may be big with remote and disastrous consequences.She required a few pieces herself, the Foundation which, after many importunities, had gathered her to its charitable breast, giving nothing but bare planks and cheaply papered bricks to the objects of its solicitude.The delicacy guiding her choice to the least valuable and most dilapidated articles passed unacknowledged, because Winnie's philosophy consisted in not taking notice of the inside of facts; she assumed that mother took what suited her best.As to Mr Verloc, his intense meditation, like a sort of Chinese wall, isolated him completely from the phenomena of this world of vain effort and illusory appearances.

Her selection made, the disposal of the rest became a perplexing question in a particular way.She was leaving it in Brett Street, of course.But she had two children.Winnie was provided for by her sensible union with that excellent husband, Mr Verloc.Stevie was destitute - and a little peculiar.His position had to be considered before the claims of legal justice and even the promptings of partiality.The possession of the furniture would not be in any sense a provision.He ought to have it - the poor boy.