by H. G. Wells
He was up before six on the day of his return, and out in the hot sunlight of the yard. He set himself to whistle a peculiarly penetrating arrangement of three notes, supposed by the boys of the Hastings Academy and himself and Sid Pornick, for no earthly reason whatever, to be the original Huron 25 war-cry. As he did this he feigned not to be doing it, because of the hatred between his uncle and the Pornicks, but to be examining with respect and admiration a new wing of the dustbin recently erected by his uncle – a pretence that would not have deceived a nestling tomtit.
Presently there came a familiar echo from the Pornick hunting-ground. Then Kipps began to sing, ‘Ar pars eight tra-la, in the lane beind the church.’ To which an unseen person answered, ‘Ar pars eight it is, in the lane be‘ind the church.’ The ‘tra-la’ was considered to render this sentence incomprehensible to the uninitiated. In order to conceal their operations still more securely, both parties to this duet then gave vent to a vocalization of the Huron war-cry again, and after a lingering epetition of the last and shrillest note, dispersed severally, as became boys in the enjoyment of holidays, to light the house fires for the day.
Half-past eight found Kipps sitting on the sunlit gate at the top of the long lane that runs towards the sea, clashing his boots in a slow rhythm, and whistling with great violence all that he knew of an excruciatingly pathetic air. There appeared along by the churchyard wall a girl in a short frock, brown-haired, quick-coloured, and with dark blue eyes. She had grown so that she was a little taller than Kipps, and her colour had improved. He scarcely remembered her, so changed was she since last holidays – if, indeed, he had seen her during his last holidays, a thing he could not clearly recollect.
Some vague emotion arose at the sight of her. He stopped whistling and regarded her, oddly tongue-tied.
‘He can't come,’ said Ann, advancing boldly. ‘Not yet.’
‘What – not Sid?’
‘No. Father's made him dust all his boxes again.’
‘What for?’
‘I dunno. Father's in a stew ‘s morning.’
‘Oh!’
Pause. Kipps looked at her, and then was unable to look at her again. She regarded him with interest. ‘You left school?’ she remarked, after a pause.
‘Yes.’
‘So's Sid.’
The conversation languished. Ann put her hands on the top of the gate, and began a stationary hopping, a sort of ineffectual gymnastic experiment.
‘Can you run?’ she said presently.
‘Run you any day,’ said Kipps.
‘Gimme a start?’
‘Where for?’ said Kipps.
Ann considered, and indicated a tree. She walked towards it and turned. ‘Gimme to here?’ she called. Kipps, standing now and touching the gate, smiled to express conscious superiority. ‘Further!’ he said.
‘Here?’
‘Bit more!’ said Kipps; and then, repenting of his magnanimity, said ‘Orf!’ suddenly, and so recovered his lost concession.
They arrived abreast at the tree, flushed and out of breath. ‘Tie!’ said Ann, throwing her hair back from her face with her hand. ‘I won,’ panted Kipps. They disputed firmly, but quite politely. ‘Run it again, then,’ said Kipps. ‘I don't mind.’
They returned towards the gate.
‘You don't run bad,’ said Kipps, temperately, expressing sincere admiration. ‘I'm pretty good, you know.’
Ann sent her hair back by an expert toss of the head. ‘You give me a start,’ she allowed.
They became aware of Sid approaching them. ‘You better look out, young Ann,’ said Sid, with that irreverent want of sympathy usual in brothers. ‘You been out nearly ‘arf-’our. Nothing ain't been done upstairs. Father said he didn't know where you was, but when he did he'd warm y'r young ear.’
Ann prepared to go.
‘How about that race?’ asked Kipps.
‘Lor!’ cried Sid, quite shocked. ‘You ain't been racing her!’
Ann swung herself round the end of the gate with her eyes on Kipps, and then turned away suddenly and ran off down the lane. Kipps' eyes tried to go after her, and came back to Sid's.
‘I give her a lot of start,’ said Kipps, apologetically. ‘It wasn't a proper race.’ And so the subject was dismissed. But Kipps was distrait 26 for some seconds perhaps, and the mischief had begun in him.
§ 4
They proceeded to the question of how two accomplished Hurons might most satisfactorily spend the morning. Manifestly their line lay straight along the lane to the sea. ‘There's a new wreck,’ said Sid, ‘and my! – don't it stink just!’
‘Stink?’
‘Fair make you sick. It's rotten wheat.’
They fell to talking of wrecks, and so came to ironclads 27 and wars and such-like manly matters. Halfway to the wreck Kipps made a casual irrelevant remark.
‘Your sister ain't a bad sort,’ he said offhandedly.
‘I clout her a lot,’ said Sidney, modestly; and, after a pause, the talk reverted to more suitable topics.
The new wreck was full of rotting grain, and stank abominably, even as Sid had said. This was excellent. They had it all to themselves. They took possession of it in force, at Sid's suggestion, and had speedily to defend it against enormous numbers of imaginary ‘natives,’ who were at last driven off by loud shouts of bang, bang, and vigorous thrusting and shoving of sticks. Then, also at Sid's direction, they sailed with it into the midst of a combined French, German, and Russian fleet, demolishing the combination unassisted, and having descended to the beach, clambered up the side and cut out their own vessel in brilliant style, they underwent a magnificent shipwreck (with vocalized thunder) and floated ‘water-logged’ – so Sid insisted – upon an exhausted sea.
These things drove Ann out of mind for a time. But at last, as they drifted without food or water upon a stagnant ocean, haggard-eyed, chins between their hands, looking in vain for a sail, she came to mind again abruptly.
It's rather nice ‘aving sisters,’ remarked one perishing mariner.
Sid turned round and regarded him thoughtfully.
‘Not it!’ he said.
‘No?’
‘Not a bit of it.’
He grinned confidentially. ‘Know too much,’ he said, and afterwards ‘get out of things.’
He resumed his gloomy scrutiny of the hopeless horizon. Presently he fell spitting jerkily between his teeth, as he had read was the way with such ripe manhood as chews its quid. 28
‘Sisters,’ he said, ‘is rot. That's what sisters are. Girls if you like, but sisters No!’
‘But ain't sisters girls?’
‘N-eaow!’ said Sid, with unspeakable scorn; and Kipps answered, ‘Of course. I didn't mean— I wasn't thinking of that.’
‘You got a girl?’ asked Sid, spitting very cleverly again.
Kipps admitted his deficiency. He felt compunction.
‘You don't know who my girl is, Art Kipps, I bet.’
‘Who is, then?’ asked Kipps, still chiefly occupied by his own poverty.
‘Ah!’
Kipps let a moment elapse before he did his duty. ‘Tell us!’
Sid eyed him and hesitated.
‘Secret?’ he said.
‘Secret.’
‘Dying solemn?’
‘Dying solemn!’ Kipps' self-concentration passed into curiosity.
Sid administered a terrible oath.
Sid adhered lovingly to his facts. ‘It begins with a Nem,’ he said, doling it out parsimoniously.
‘M-A-U-D,’ he spelt, with a stern eye on Kipps. ‘C-H-A-R-TE-R-I-S.’
Now, Maud Charteris was a young person of eighteen and the daughter of the vicar of St Bavon's 29 – besides which she had a bicycle – so that as her name unfolded the face of Kipps lengthened with respect. ‘Get out,’ he gasped incredulously. ‘She ain't your girl, Sid Pornick.’
‘She is!’ answered Sid, stoutly.
‘What – truth?’
‘Truth.�
��
Kipps scrutinized his face. ‘Reely?’
Sid touched wood, whistled, and repeated a binding doggerel with great solemnity.
Kipps still struggled with the amazing new light on the world about him. ‘D‘you mean – she knows?’
Sid flushed deeply, and his aspect became stern and gloomy. He resumed his wistful scrutiny of the sunlit sea. ‘I'd die for that girl, Art Kipps,’ he said presently; and Kipps did not press a question he felt to be ill-timed. ‘I'd do anything she asked me to do,’ said Sid; ‘just anything. If she was to ask me to chuck myself into the sea.’ He met Kipps' eye. ‘I would,’ he said.
They were pensive for a space, and then Sid began to discourse in fragments of Love, a theme upon which Kipps had already in a furtive way meditated a little, but which, apart from badinage, he had never yet heard talked about in the light of day. Of course, many and various aspects of life had come to light in the muffled exchange of knowledge that went on under the shadow of Woodrow, but this of Sentimental Love was not among them. Sid, who was a boy with an imagination, having once broached this topic, opened his heart, or, at any rate, a new chamber of his heart, to Kipps, and found no fault with Kipps for a lack of return. He produced a thumbed novelette that had played a part in his sentimental awakening; he proffered it to Kipps, and confessed there was a character in it, a baronet, singularly like himself. This baronet was a person of volcanic passions, which he concealed beneath a demeanour of ‘icy cynicism.’ The utmost expression he permitted himself was to grit his teeth, and, now his attention was called to it, Kipps remarked that Sid also had a habit of gritting his teeth, and, indeed, had had all the morning. They read for a time, and presently Sid talked again. The conception of love Sid made evident, was compact of devotion and much spirited fighting and a touch of mystery, but through all that cloud of talk there floated before Kipps a face that was flushed and hair that was tossed aside.
So they budded, 30 sitting on the blackening old wreck in which men had lived and died, looking out to sea, talking of that other sea upon which they must presently embark….
They ceased to talk, and Sid read; but Kipps, falling behind with the reading, and not wishing to admit that he read slowlier than Sid, whose education was of the inferior Elementary School brand, lapsed into meditation.
I would like to ‘ave a girl,’ said Kipps.
‘I mean just to talk to, and all that…’
A floating sack distracted them at last from this obscure topic. They abandoned the wreck, and followed the new interest a mile along the beach, bombarding it with stones until it came to land. They had inclined to a view that it would contain romantic mysteries, but it was simply an ill-preserved kitten – too much even for them. And at last they were drawn dinnerward, and went home hungry and pensive side by side.
§ 5
But Kipps' imagination had been warmed by that talk of love, and in the afternoon when he saw Ann Pornick in the High Street and said ‘Hello!’ it was a different ‘hello’ from that of their previous intercourse. And when they had passed they both looked back and caught each other doing so. Yes, he did want a girl badly….
Afterwards he was distracted by a traction engine going through the town, and his aunt had got some sprats for supper. When he was in bed, however, sentiment came upon him again in a torrent quite abruptly and abundantly, and he put his head under the pillow and whispered very softly, ‘I love Ann Pornick,’ as a sort of supplementary devotion.
In his subsequent dreams he ran races with Ann, and they lived in a wreck together, and always her face was flushed and her hair about her face. They just lived in a wreck and ran races, and were very, very fond of one another. And their favourite food was rock chocolate, 31 dates, such as one buys off barrows, and sprats – fried sprats….
In the morning he could hear Ann singing in the scullery next door. He listened to her for some time, and it was clear to him that he must put things before her.
Towards dusk that evening they chanced on one another out by the gate by the church, but though there was much in his mind, it stopped there with a resolute shyness until he and Ann were out of breath catching cockchafers 32 and were sitting on that gate of theirs again. Ann sat up upon the gate, dark against vast masses of flaming crimson and darkling purple, and her eyes looked at Kipps from a shadowed face. There came a stillness between them, and quite abruptly he was moved to tell his love.
‘Ann,’ he said, ‘I do like you. I wish you was my girl…’
‘I say, Ann. Will you be my girl?’
Ann made no pretence of astonishment. She weighed the proposal for a moment with her eyes on Kipps. ‘If you like, Artie,’ she said lightly. ‘I don't mind if I am.’
‘All right,’ said Kipps, breathless with excitement, ‘then you are.’
‘All right,’ said Ann.
Something seemed to fall between them, they no longer looked openly at one another. ‘Lor!’ cried Ann, suddenly, ‘see that one!’ and jumped down and darted after a cockchafer that had boomed within a yard of her face. And with that they were girl and boy again….
They avoided their new relationship painfully.
They did not recur to it for several days, though they met twice. Both felt that there remained something before this great experience was to be regarded as complete; but there was an infinite diffidence about the next step. Kipps talked in fragments of all sorts of matters, telling particularly of the great things that were being done to make a man and a draper of him; how he had two new pairs of trousers and a black coat and four new shirts. And all the while his imagination was urging him to that unknown next step, and when he was alone and in the dark he became even an enterprising wooer. It became evident to him that it would be nice to take Ann by the hand; even the decorous novelettes Sid affected egged him on to that greater nearness of intimacy.
Then a great idea came to him, in a paragraph called ‘Lover's Tokens’ that he read in a torn fragment of Tit-Bits. 33 It fell in to the measure of his courage – a divided sixpence! He secured his aunt's best scissors, fished a sixpence out of his jejune 34 tin money-box, and jabbed his finger in a varied series of attempts to get it in half. When they met again the sixpence was still undivided. He had not intended to mention the matter to her at that stage, but it came up spontaneously. He endeavoured to explain the theory of broken sixpences and his unexpected failure to break one.
‘But what you break it for?’ said Ann. ‘It's no good if it's broke.’
‘It's a Token,’ and Kipps.
‘Like—?’
‘Oh, you keep half and I keep half, and when we're sep'rated, you look at your half and I look at mine – see? Then we think of each other.’
‘Oh!’ said Ann, and appeared to assimilate this information.
‘Only, I can't get it in ‘arf nohow,’ said Kipps.
They discussed this difficulty for some time without illumination. Then Ann had a happy thought.
‘Tell you what,’ she said, starting away from him abruptly and laying a hand on his arm, ‘you let me ave it, Artie. I know where father keeps his file.’
Kipps handed her the sixpence, and they came upon a pause. ‘I'll easy do it,’ said Ann.
In considering the sixpence side by side, his head had come near her cheek. Quite abruptly he was moved to take his next step into the unknown mysteries of love.
‘Ann,’ he said, and gulped at his temerity, ‘I do love you. Straight. I'd do anything for you, Ann. Reely – I would.’
He paused for breath. She answered nothing, but she was no doubt enjoying herself. He came yet closer to her, his shoulder touched hers. ‘Ann, I wish you'd—’
He stopped.
‘What?’ said Ann.
‘Ann – lemme kiss you.’
Things seemed to hang for a space; his tone, the drop of his courage made the thing incredible as he spoke. Kipps was not of that bold order of wooers who impose conditions.
Ann perceived that she was not prepared f
or kissing after all. Kissing, she said, was silly, and when Kipps would have displayed a belated enterprise she flung away from him. He essayed argument. He stood afar off as it were – the better part of a yard – and said she might let him kiss her, and then that he didn't see what good it was for her to be his girl if he couldn't kiss her…
She repeated that kissing was silly. A certain estrangement took them homeward. They arrived in the dusky High Street not exactly together, and not exactly apart, but straggling. They had not kissed, but all the guilt of kissing was between them. When Kipps saw the portly contours of his uncle standing dimly in the shop doorway his footsteps faltered, and the space between our young couple increased. Above, the window over Pornick's shop was open, and Mrs Pornick was visible, taking the air. Kipps assumed an expression of extreme innocence. He found himself face to face with his uncle's advanced outposts of waistcoat buttons.
‘Where ye bin, my boy?’
‘Bin for a walk, Uncle.’
‘Not along of that brat of Pornick's?’
‘Along of who?’
‘That gell’ – indicating Ann with his pipe.
‘Oh no, Uncle!’ – very faintl.
‘Run in, my boy.’ Old Kipps stood aside, with an oblique glance upward, and his nephew brushed clumsily by him and vanished out of sight of the street into the vague obscurity of the little shop. The door closed behind old Kipps with a nervous jangle of its bell, and he set himself to light the single oil-lamp that illuminated his shop at nights. It was an operation requiring care and watching, or else it flared and ‘smelt.’ Often it smelt after all. Kipps, for some reason, found the dusky living-room with his aunt in it too populous for his feelings, and went upstairs.
‘That brat of Pornick's!’ It seemed to him that a horrible catastrophe had occurred. He felt he had identified himself inextricably with his uncle and cut himself off from her for ever by saying ‘Oh no!’ At supper he was so visibly depressed that his aunt asked him if he wasn't feeling well. Under this imminent threat of medicine he assumed an unnatural cheerfulness….