pg974 [67]
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 “absent-minded” 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 you worry, mother. I’ll see to it that he don’t get lost for long.”
They felt a peculiar bump; a vision of brick pillars lingered before the rattling windows of the cab; a sudden cessation of atrocious jolting and uproarious jingling dazed the two women. What had happened? They sat motionless and scared in the profound stillness, till the door came open, and a rough, strained whispering was heard:
“Here you are!”
A range of gabled little houses, each with one dim yellow window, on the ground floor, surrounded the dark open space of a grass plot planted with shrubs and railed off from the patchwork of lights and shadows in the wide road, resounding with the dull rumble of traffic. Before the door of one of these tiny houses—one without a light in the little downstairs window—the cab had come to a standstill. Mrs Verloc’s mother got out first, backwards, with a key in her hand. Winnie lingered on the flagstone path to pay the cabman. Stevie, after helping to carry inside a lot of small parcels, came out and stood under the light of a gas-lamp belonging to the Charity. The cabman looked at the pieces of silver, which, appearing very minute in his big, grimy palm, symbolised the insignificant results which reward the ambitious courage and toil of a mankind whose day is short on this earth of evil.
He had been paid decently—four one-shilling pieces—and he contemplated them in perfect stillness, as if they had been the surprising terms of a melancholy problem. The slow transfer of that treasure to an inner pocket demanded much laborious groping in the depths of decayed clothing. His form was squat and without flexibility. Stevie, slender, his shoulders a little up, and his hands thrust deep in the side pockets of his warm overcoat, stood at the edge of the path, pouting.
The cabman, pausing in his deliberate movements, seemed struck by some misty recollection.
“Oh! ’Ere you are, young fellow,” he whispered. “You’ll know him again—won’t you?”
Stevie was staring at the horse, whose hind quarters appeared unduly