The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad (short books to read txt) 📕

silk dress festooned with dingy white cotton lace, were the tears of genuine distress. She had wept because she was heroic and unscrupulous and full of love for both her children. Girls frequently get sacrificed to the welfare of the boys. In this case she was sacrificing Winnie. By the suppression of truth she was slandering her. Of course, Winnie was independent, and need not care for the opinion of people that she would never see and who would never see her; whereas poor Stevie had nothing in the world he could call his own except his mother’s heroism and unscrupulousness.

The first sense of security following on Winnie’s marriage wore off in time (for nothing lasts), and Mrs. Verloc’s mother, in the seclusion of the back bedroom, had recalled the teaching of that experience which the world impresses upon a widowed woman. But she had recalled it without vain bitterness; her store of resignation amounted almost to dignity. She reflected stoically that everything decays, wears out, in this world; that the way of kindness should be made easy to the well disposed; that her daughter Winnie was a most devoted sister, and a very self-confident wife indeed. As regards Winnie’s sisterly devotion, her stoicism flinched. She excepted that sentiment from the rule of decay affecting all things human and some things divine. She could not help it; not to do so would have frightened her too much. But in considering the conditions of her daughter’s married state, she rejected firmly all flattering illusions. She took the cold and reasonable view that the less strain put on Mr. Verloc’s kindness the longer its effects were likely to last. That excellent man loved his wife, of course, but he would, no doubt, prefer to keep as few of her relations as was consistent with the proper display of that sentiment. It would be better if its whole effect were concentrated on poor Stevie. And the heroic old woman resolved on going away from her children as an act of devotion and as a move of deep policy.

The “virtue” of this policy consisted in this (Mrs. Verloc’s mother was subtle in her way), that Stevie’s moral claim would be strengthened. The poor boy⁠—a good, useful boy, if a little peculiar⁠—had not a sufficient standing. He had been taken over with his mother, somewhat in the same way as the furniture of the Belgravian mansion had been taken over, as if on the ground of belonging to her exclusively. What will happen, she asked herself (for Mrs. Verloc’s mother was in a measure imaginative), when I die? And when she asked herself that question it was with dread. It was also terrible to think that she would not then have the means of knowing what happened to the poor boy. But by making him over to his sister, by going thus away, she gave him the advantage of a directly dependent position. This was the more subtle sanction of Mrs. Verloc’s mother’s heroism and unscrupulousness. Her act of abandonment was really an arrangement for settling her son permanently in life. Other people made material sacrifices for such an object, she in that way. It was the only way. Moreover, she would be able to see how it worked. Ill or well she would avoid the horrible incertitude on the deathbed. But it was hard, hard, cruelly hard.

The cab rattled, jingled, jolted; in fact, the last was quite extraordinary. By its disproportionate violence and magnitude it obliterated every sensation of onward movement; and the effect was of being shaken in a stationary apparatus like a medieval device for the punishment of crime, or some very newfangled invention for the cure of a sluggish liver. It was extremely distressing; and the raising of Mrs. Verloc’s mother’s voice sounded like a wail of pain.

“I know, my dear, you’ll come to see me as often as you can spare the time. Won’t you?”

“Of course,” answered Winnie shortly, staring straight before her.

And the cab jolted in front of a steamy, greasy shop in a blaze of gas and in the smell of fried fish.

The old woman raised a wail again.

“And, my dear, I must see that poor boy every Sunday. He won’t mind spending the day with his old mother⁠—”

Winnie screamed out stolidly:

“Mind! I should think not. That poor boy will miss you something cruel. I wish you had thought a little of that, mother.”

Not think of it! The heroic woman swallowed a playful and inconvenient object like a billiard ball, which had tried to jump out of her throat. Winnie sat mute for a while, pouting at the front of the cab, then snapped out, which was an unusual tone with her:

“I expect I’ll have a job with him at first, he’ll be that restless⁠—”

“Whatever you do, don’t let him worry your husband, my dear.”

Thus they discussed on familiar lines the bearings of a new situation. And the cab jolted. Mrs. Verloc’s mother expressed some misgivings. Could Stevie be trusted to come all that way alone? Winnie maintained that he was much less “absentminded” now. They agreed as to that. It could not be denied. Much less⁠—hardly at all. They shouted at each other in the jingle with comparative cheerfulness. But suddenly the maternal anxiety broke out afresh. There were two omnibuses to take, and a short walk between. It was too difficult! The old woman gave way to grief and consternation.

Winnie stared forward.

“Don’t you upset yourself like this, mother. You must see him, of course.”

“No, my dear. I’ll try not to.”

She mopped her streaming eyes.

“But you can’t spare the time to come with him, and if he should forget himself and lose his way and somebody spoke to him sharply, his name and address may slip his memory, and he’ll remain lost for days and days⁠—”

The vision of a workhouse infirmary for poor Stevie⁠—if only during inquiries⁠—wrung her heart. For she was a proud woman. Winnie’s stare had grown hard, intent, inventive.

“I can’t bring him to you myself every week,” she cried. “But don’t