Datasets:
VivldArc
/
VISTA

Dataset card Data Studio Files
xet
Community
1
text
stringlengths
1
1.59k
The shop was small , and so was the house .
It was one of those grimy brick houses which existed in large quantities before the era of reconstruction dawned upon London .
The shop was a square box of a place , with the front glazed in small panes .
In the daytime the door remained closed ; in the evening it stood discreetly but suspiciously ajar .
The window contained photographs of more or less undressed dancing girls ; nondescript packages in wrappers like patent medicines ; closed yellow paper envelopes , very flimsy , and marked two-and-six in heavy black figures ; a few numbers of ancient French comic publications hung across a string as if to dry ; a dingy blue china bowl , a casket of black wood , bottles of marking ink , and rubber stamps ; a few books , with titles hinting at impropriety ; a few apparently old copies of obscure newspapers , badly printed , with titles like _ The Torch _ , _ The Gong _ — rousing titles .
And the two gas jets inside the panes were always turned low , either for economy ’s sake or for the sake of the customers .
These customers were either very young men , who hung about the window for a time before slipping in suddenly ; or men of a more mature age , but looking generally as if they were not in funds .
Some of that last kind had the collars of their overcoats turned right up to their moustaches , and traces of mud on the bottom of their nether garments , which had the appearance of being much worn and not very valuable .
And the legs inside them did not , as a general rule , seem of much account either .
With their hands plunged deep in the side pockets of their coats , they dodged in sideways , one shoulder first , as if afraid to start the bell going .
The bell , hung on the door by means of a curved ribbon of steel , was difficult to circumvent .
It was hopelessly cracked ; but of an evening , at the slightest provocation , it clattered behind the customer with impudent virulence .
It clattered ; and at that signal , through the dusty glass door behind the painted deal counter , Mr Verloc would issue hastily from the parlour at the back .
His eyes were naturally heavy ; he had an air of having wallowed , fully dressed , all day on an unmade bed .
Another man would have felt such an appearance a distinct disadvantage .
In a commercial transaction of the retail order much depends on the seller ’s engaging and amiable aspect .
But Mr Verloc knew his business , and remained undisturbed by any sort of æsthetic doubt about his appearance .
With a firm , steady-eyed impudence , which seemed to hold back the threat of some abominable menace , he would proceed to sell over the counter some object looking obviously and scandalously not worth the money which passed in the transaction : a small cardboard box with apparently nothing inside , for instance , or one of those carefully closed yellow flimsy envelopes , or a soiled volume in paper covers with a promising title .
Now and then it happened that one of the faded , yellow dancing girls would get sold to an amateur , as though she had been alive and young .
Sometimes it was Mrs Verloc who would appear at the call of the cracked bell .
Winnie Verloc was a young woman with a full bust , in a tight bodice , and with broad hips .
Her hair was very tidy .
Steady-eyed like her husband , she preserved an air of unfathomable indifference behind the rampart of the counter .
Then the customer of comparatively tender years would get suddenly disconcerted at having to deal with a woman , and with rage in his heart would proffer a request for a bottle of marking ink , retail value sixpence ( price in Verloc ’s shop one-and-sixpence ) , which , once outside , he would drop stealthily into the gutter .
The evening visitors — the men with collars turned up and soft hats rammed down — nodded familiarly to Mrs Verloc , and with a muttered greeting , lifted up the flap at the end of the counter in order to pass into the back parlour , which gave access to a passage and to a steep flight of stairs .
The door of the shop was the only means of entrance to the house in which Mr Verloc carried on his business of a seller of shady wares , exercised his vocation of a protector of society , and cultivated his domestic virtues .
These last were pronounced .
He was thoroughly domesticated .
Neither his spiritual , nor his mental , nor his physical needs were of the kind to take him much abroad .
He found at home the ease of his body and the peace of his conscience , together with Mrs Verloc ’s wifely attentions and Mrs Verloc ’s mother ’s deferential regard .
Winnie ’s mother was a stout , wheezy woman , with a large brown face .
She wore a black wig under a white cap .
Her swollen legs rendered her inactive .
She considered herself to be of French descent , which might have been true ; and after a good many years of married life with a licensed victualler of the more common sort , she provided for the years of widowhood by letting furnished apartments for gentlemen near Vauxhall Bridge Road in a square once of some splendour and still included in the district of Belgravia .
This topographical fact was of some advantage in advertising her rooms ; but the patrons of the worthy widow were not exactly of the fashionable kind .
Such as they were , her daughter Winnie helped to look after them .
Traces of the French descent which the widow boasted of were apparent in Winnie too .
They were apparent in the extremely neat and artistic arrangement of her glossy dark hair .
Winnie had also other charms : her youth ; her full , rounded form ; her clear complexion ; the provocation of her unfathomable reserve , which never went so far as to prevent conversation , carried on on the lodgers ’ part with animation , and on hers with an equable amiability .
It must be that Mr Verloc was susceptible to these fascinations .
Mr Verloc was an intermittent patron .
He came and went without any very apparent reason .
He generally arrived in London ( like the influenza ) from the Continent , only he arrived unheralded by the Press ; and his visitations set in with great severity .
He breakfasted in bed , and remained wallowing there with an air of quiet enjoyment till noon every day — and sometimes even to a later hour .
But when he went out he seemed to experience a great difficulty in finding his way back to his temporary home in the Belgravian square .
He left it late , and returned to it early — as early as three or four in the morning ; and on waking up at ten addressed Winnie , bringing in the breakfast tray , with jocular , exhausted civility , in the hoarse , failing tones of a man who had been talking vehemently for many hours together .
His prominent , heavy-lidded eyes rolled sideways amorously and languidly , the bedclothes were pulled up to his chin , and his dark smooth moustache covered his thick lips capable of much honeyed banter .
In Winnie ’s mother ’s opinion Mr Verloc was a very nice gentleman .
From her life ’s experience gathered in various “ business houses ” the good woman had taken into her retirement an ideal of gentlemanliness as exhibited by the patrons of private-saloon bars .
Mr Verloc approached that ideal ; he attained it , in fact .
“ Of course , we ’ll take over your furniture , mother , ” Winnie had remarked .
The lodging-house was to be given up .
It seems it would not answer to carry it on .
It would have been too much trouble for Mr Verloc .
It would not have been convenient for his other business .
What his business was he did not say ; but after his engagement to Winnie he took the trouble to get up before noon , and descending the basement stairs , make himself pleasant to Winnie ’s mother in the breakfast-room downstairs where she had her motionless being .
He stroked the cat , poked the fire , had his lunch served to him there .
He left its slightly stuffy cosiness with evident reluctance , but , all the same , remained out till the night was far advanced .
He never offered to take Winnie to theatres , as such a nice gentleman ought to have done .
His evenings were occupied .
His work was in a way political , he told Winnie once .
She would have , he warned her , to be very nice to his political friends .
And with her straight , unfathomable glance she answered that she would be so , of course .
How much more he told her as to his occupation it was impossible for Winnie ’s mother to discover .
The married couple took her over with the furniture .
The mean aspect of the shop surprised her .
The change from the Belgravian square to the narrow street in Soho affected her legs adversely .
They became of an enormous size .
On the other hand , she experienced a complete relief from material cares .
Her son-in-law ’s heavy good nature inspired her with a sense of absolute safety .
Her daughter ’s future was obviously assured , and even as to her son Stevie she need have no anxiety .
She had not been able to conceal from herself that he was a terrible encumbrance , that poor Stevie .
But in view of Winnie ’s fondness for her delicate brother , and of Mr Verloc ’s kind and generous disposition , she felt that the poor boy was pretty safe in this rough world .
And in her heart of hearts she was not perhaps displeased that the Verlocs had no children .
As that circumstance seemed perfectly indifferent to Mr Verloc , and as Winnie found an object of quasi-maternal affection in her brother , perhaps this was just as well for poor Stevie .
For he was difficult to dispose of , that boy .
He was delicate and , in a frail way , good-looking too , except for the vacant droop of his lower lip .
Under our excellent system of compulsory education he had learned to read and write , notwithstanding the unfavourable aspect of the lower lip .
But as errand-boy he did not turn out a great success .
He forgot his messages ; he was easily diverted from the straight path of duty by the attractions of stray cats and dogs , which he followed down narrow alleys into unsavoury courts ; by the comedies of the streets , which he contemplated open-mouthed , to the detriment of his employer ’s interests ; or by the dramas of fallen horses , whose pathos and violence induced him sometimes to shriek pierceingly in a crowd , which disliked to be disturbed by sounds of distress in its quiet enjoyment of the national spectacle .
When led away by a grave and protecting policeman , it would often become apparent that poor Stevie had forgotten his address — at least for a time .
A brusque question caused him to stutter to the point of suffocation .
When startled by anything perplexing he used to squint horribly .
However , he never had any fits ( which was encouraging ) ; and before the natural outbursts of impatience on the part of his father he could always , in his childhood ’s days , run for protection behind the short skirts of his sister Winnie .
On the other hand , he might have been suspected of hiding a fund of reckless naughtiness .
When he had reached the age of fourteen a friend of his late father , an agent for a foreign preserved milk firm , having given him an opening as office-boy , he was discovered one foggy afternoon , in his chief ’s absence , busy letting off fireworks on the staircase .
He touched off in quick succession a set of fierce rockets , angry catherine wheels , loudly exploding squibs — and the matter might have turned out very serious .
An awful panic spread through the whole building .
Wild-eyed , choking clerks stampeded through the passages full of smoke , silk hats and elderly business men could be seen rolling independently down the stairs .
Stevie did not seem to derive any personal gratification from what he had done .
His motives for this stroke of originality were difficult to discover .
It was only later on that Winnie obtained from him a misty and confused confession .
It seems that two other office-boys in the building had worked upon his feelings by tales of injustice and oppression till they had wrought his compassion to the pitch of that frenzy .
But his father ’s friend , of course , dismissed him summarily as likely to ruin his business .
After that altruistic exploit Stevie was put to help wash the dishes in the basement kitchen , and to black the boots of the gentlemen patronising the Belgravian mansion .
There was obviously no future in such work .
The gentlemen tipped him a shilling now and then .
Mr Verloc showed himself the most generous of lodgers .
But altogether all that did not amount to much either in the way of gain or prospects ; so that when Winnie announced her engagement to Mr Verloc her mother could not help wondering , with a sigh and a glance towards the scullery , what would become of poor Stephen now .