by H. G. Wells
The rest of his sentimental interests vanished altogether in this great illumination. He meditated about her when he was blocking cretonne, her image was before his eyes at teatime, and blotted out the more immediate faces and made him silent and preoccupied and so careless in his bearing that the junior apprentice, sitting beside him, mocked at and parodied his enormous bites of bread and butter unreproved. He became conspicuously less popular on the ‘fancy’ side, the ‘costumes’ was chilly with him and the ‘millinery’ cutting. But he did not care. An intermittent correspondence with Flo Bates, that had gone on since she left Mr Shalford's desk for a position at Tonbridge, ‘nearer home,’ and which had roused Kipps in its earlier stages to unparalleled heights of epistolary 19 effort, died out altogether by reason of his neglect. He heard with scarcely a pang that, as a consequence perhaps of his neglect, Flo was ‘carrying on with a chap who managed a farm.’
Every Thursday he jabbed and gouged at his wood, jabbing and gouging intersecting circles and diamond traceries, and that laboured inane which our mad world calls ornament, and he watched Miss Walshingham furtively whenever she turned away. The circles, in consequence, were jabbed crooked, and his panels, losing their symmetry, became comparatively pleasing to the untrained eye – and once he jabbed his finger. He would cheerfully have jabbed all his fingers if he could have found some means of using the opening to express himself of the vague emotions that possessed him. But he shirked conversation just as earnestly as he desired it; he feared that profound general ignorance of his might appear.
§ 3
There came a time when she could not open one of the class-room windows. The man with the black beard pored over his chipping heedlessly….
It did not take Kipps a moment to grasp his opportunity. He dropped his gouge and stepped forward. ‘Lem me,’ he said….
He could not open the window either!
‘Oh, please don't trouble,’ she said.
‘Sno trouble,’ he gasped.
Still the sash stuck. He felt his manhood was at stake. He gathered himself together for a tremendous effort, and the pane broke with a snap, and he thrust his hand into the void beyond.
‘There!’ said Miss Walshingham, and the glass fell ringing into the courtyard below.
Then Kipps made to bring his hand back and felt the keen touch of the edge of the broken glass at his wrist. He turned dolefully. ‘I'm tremendously sorry,’ he said, in answer to the accusation in Miss Walshingham's eyes. ‘I didn't think it would break like that’ – as if he had expected it to break in some quite different and entirely more satisfactory manner. The boy with the gift for woodcarving, having stared at Kipps' face for a moment, became involved in a Laocoon struggle 20 with a giggle.
‘You've cut your wrist,’ said one of the girl friends, standing up and pointing. She was a pleasant-faced, greatly freckled girl, with a helpful disposition, and she said ‘You've cut your wrist’ as brightly as if she had been a trained nurse.
Kipps looked down and saw a swift line of scarlet rush down his hand. He perceived the other man-student regarding this with magnified eyes. ‘You have cut your wrist,’ said Miss Walshingham; and Kipps regarded his damage with greater interest.
‘He's cut his wrist,’ said the maiden lady to the lodging-house keeper, and seemed in doubt what a lady should do. ‘It's—’ she hesitated at the word ‘bleeding,’ 21 and nodded to the lodging-house keeper instead.
‘Dreadfully,’ said the maiden lady, and tried to look and tried not to look at the same time.
‘Of course he's cut his wrist,’ said the lodging-house keeper, momentarily quite annoyed at Kipps; and the other young lady, who thought Kipps rather common, went on quietly with her wood-cutting with an air of its being the proper thing to do – though nobody else seemed to know it.
‘You must tie it up,’ said Miss Walshingham.
‘We must tie it up,’ said the freckled girl.
‘I’ ‘adn't the slightest idea that window was going to break like that,’ said Kipps, with candour. ‘Nort the slightest.’
He glanced again at the blood on his wrist, and it seemed to him that it was on the very point of dropping on the floor of that cultured class-room. So he very neatly licked it off, feeling at the same time for his handkerchief. ‘Oh, don't!’ said Miss Walshingham as he did so, and the girl with the freckles made a movement of horror. The giggle got the better of the boy with the gift, and celebrated its triumph by unseemly noises, in spite of which it seemed to Kipps at the moment that the act that had made Miss Walshingham say ‘Oh, don't!’ was rather a desperate and manly treatment of what was, after all, a creditable injury.
‘It ought to be tied up,’ said the lodging-house keeper, holding her chisel upright in her hand. ‘It's a bad cut to bleed like that.’
‘We must tie it up,’ said the freckled girl, and hesitated in front of Kipps. ‘Have you got a handkerchief?’ she said.
‘I dunno ‘ow I managed not to bring one,’ said Kipps.’ I—. Not ‘aving a cold, I suppose some ‘ow I didn't think—!’
He checked a further flow of blood.
The girl with the freckles caught Miss Walshingham's eye and held it for a moment. Both glanced at Kipps' injury. The boy with the gift, who had reappeared with a chastened expression from some noisy pursuit beneath his desk, made the neglected motions of one who proffers shyly. Miss Walshingham, under the spell of the freckled girl's eye, produced a handkerchief. The voice of the maiden lady could be heard in the background: ‘I've been through all the technical education ambulance classes twice, and I know you go so if it's a vein, and so if it's an artery – at least you go so for one, and so for the other, whichever it may be – but…’
‘If you will give me your hand,’ said the freckled girl; and proceeded, with Miss Walshingham's assistance, to bandage Kipps in a most businesslike way. Yes, they actually bandaged Kipps. They pulled up his cuffs – happily they were not a very frayed pair – and held his wrist and wrapped the soft handkerchief round it, and tightened the knot together. And Miss Walshingham's face, the face of that almost divine Over-human, 22 came close to the face of Kipps.
‘We're not hurting you, are we?’ she said.
‘Not a bit,’ said Kipps, as he would have said if they had been sawing his arm off.
‘We're not experts, you know,’ said the freckled girl.
‘I'm sure it's a dreadful cut,’ said Miss Walshingham.
‘It ain't much, reely,’ said Kipps; ‘and you're taking a lot of trouble. I'm sorry I broke that window. I can't think what I could have been doing.’
‘It isn't so much the cut at the time, it's the poisoning afterwards,’ came the voice of the maiden lady.
‘Of course, I'm quite willing to pay for the window,’ panted Kipps, opulently.
‘We must make it just as tight as possible to stop the bleeding,’ said the freckled girl.
‘I don't think it's much, reely,’ said Kipps. ‘I'm awful sorry I broke that window, though.’
‘Put your finger on the knot, dear,’ said the freckled girl.
‘Eh?’ said Kipps. ‘I mean—’
Both the young ladies became very intent on the knot, and Mr Kipps was very red and very intent upon the two young ladies.
‘Mortified, and had to be sawn off,’ said the maiden lady.
‘Sawn off,’ said the lodging-house keeper.
‘Sawn right off,’ said the maiden lady, and jabbed at her mangled design.
‘There,’ said the freckled girl, ‘I think that ought to do. You're sure it's not too tight?’
‘Not a bit,’ said Kipps.
He met Miss Walshingham's eyes and smiled to show how little he cared for wounds and pain. ‘It's only a little cut,’ he added.
The maiden lady appeared as an addition to their group. ‘You should have washed the wound, dear,’ she said. ‘I was just telling Miss Collis—’ She peered through her glasses at the bandage. ‘That doesn't look quite right,’ she remarked critical
ly. ‘You should have taken the ambulance classes. But I suppose it will have to do. Are you hurting?’
‘Not a bit,’ said Kipps; and smiled at them all with the air of a brave soldier in hospital.
‘I'm sure it must hurt,’ said Miss Walshingham.
‘Anyhow, you're a very good patient,’ said the girl with the freckles.
Mr Kipps became bright pink. ‘I'm only sorry I broke the window – that's all,’ he said. ‘But who would have thought it was going to break like that?’
Pause.
‘I'm afraid you won't be able to go on carving to-night,’ said Miss Walshingham.
‘I'll try,’ said Kipps. ‘It reely doesn't hurt – not anything to matter.’
Presently Miss Walshingham came to him, as he carved heroically with his hand bandaged in her handkerchief. There was a touch of novel interest in her eyes. ‘I'm afraid you're not getting on very fast,’ she said.
The freckled girl looked up and regarded Miss Walshingham.
‘I'm doing a little, anyhow,’ said Kipps. ‘I don't want to waste any time. A feller like me hasn't much time to spare.’
It struck the girls that there was a quality of modest disavowal about that ‘feller like me.’ It gave them a light into this obscure person, and Miss Walshingham ventured to commend his work as ‘promising’ and to ask whether he meant to follow it up. Kipps didn't ‘altogether know’ – ‘things depended on so much,’ but if he was in Folkestone next winter he certainly should. It did not occur to Miss Walshingham at the time to ask why his progress in art depended upon his presence in Folkestone. There were some more questions and answers – they continued to talk to him for a little time even when Mr Chester Coote had come into the room – and when at last the conversation had died out, it dawned upon Kipps just how much his cut wrist had done for him… .
He went to sleep that night revising that conversation for the twentieth time, treasuring this and expanding that, and inserting things he might have said to Miss Walshingham – things he might still say about himself – in relation, more or less explicit, to her. He wasn't quite sure if he wouldn't like his arm to mortify a bit, which would make him interesting, or to heal up absolutely, which would show the exceptional purity of his blood… .
§ 4
The affair of the broken window happened late in April, and the class came to an end in May. In that interval there were several small incidents and great developments of emotion. I have done Kipps no justice if I have made it seem that his face was unsightly. It was, as the freckled girl pointed out to Helen Walshingham, an ‘interesting’ face, and that aspect of him which presented chiefly erratic hair and glowing ears ceased to prevail.
They talked him over, and the freckled girl discovered there was something ‘wistful’ in his manner. They detected a ‘natural delicacy,’ and the freckled girl set herself to draw him out from that time forth. The freckled girl was nineteen, and very wise and motherly and benevolent, and really she greatly preferred drawing out Kipps to woodcarving. It was quite evident to her that Kipps was in love with Helen Walshingham, and it struck her as a queer and romantic and pathetic and extremely interesting phenomenon. And as at that time she regarded Helen as ‘simply lovely,’ it seemed only right and proper that she should assist Kipps in his modest efforts to place himself in a state of absolute abandon upon her altar.
Under her sympathetic management the position of Kipps was presently defined quite clearly. He was unhappy in his position – misunderstood. He told her he ‘didn't seem to get on like’ with customers, and she translated this for him as ‘too sensitive.’ The discontent with his fate in life, the dreadful feeling that Education was slipping by him, troubles that time and usage were glazing over a little, revived to their old acuteness but not to their old hopelessness. As a basis for sympathy, indeed, they were even a source of pleasure.
And one day at dinner it happened that Carshot and Buggins fell talking of ‘these here writers,’ and how Dickens had been a labeller of blacking, and Thackeray ‘an artis’ who couldn't sell a drawing,’ and how Samuel Johnson had walked to London without any boots, having thrown away his only pair ‘out of pride.’ 23 ‘It's Luck,’ said Buggins, ‘to a very large extent. They just happen to hit on something that catches on, and there you are!’
‘Nice easy life they have of it, too,’ said Miss Mergle. ‘Write just an hour or so, and done for the day! Almost like gentlefolks.’
‘There's more work in it than you'd think,’ said Carshot, stooping to a mouthful.
‘I wouldn't mind changing for all that,’ said Buggins. ‘I'd like to see one of these here authors marking off with Jimmy.’
‘I think they copy from each other a good deal,’ said Miss Mergle.
‘Even then (chup, chup, chup),’ said Carshot, ‘there's writing it out in their own hands.’
They proceeded to enlarge upon the literary life, on its ease and dignity, on the social recognition accorded to those who led it, and on the ample gratifications their vanity achieved. ‘Pictures everywhere – never get a new suit without being photographed – almost like Royalty,’ said Miss Mergle. And all this talk impressed the imagination of Kipps very greatly. Here was a class that seemed to bridge the gulf. On the one hand essentially Low, but by factitious circumstances capable of entering upon these levels of social superiority to which all true Englishmen aspire, these levels from which one may tip a butler, scorn a tailor, and even commune with those who lead ‘men’ into battle. ‘Almost like gentlefolks’ that was it! He brooded over these things in the afternoon, until they blossomed into daydreams. Suppose, for example, he had chanced to write a book, a well-known book, under an assumed name, and yet kept on being a draper all the time…. Impossible, of course; but suppose— It made quite a long dream.
And at the next woodcarving class he let it be drawn from him that his real choice in life was to be a Nawther – ‘only one doesn't get a chance.’
After this there were times when Kipps had that pleasant sense that comes of attracting interest. He was a mute inglorious 24 Dickens, or at any rate something of the sort, and they were all taking him at that. The discovery of this indefinable ‘something in’ him, the development of which was now painfully restricted and impossible, did much to bridge the gulf between himself and Miss Walshingham. He was unfortunate, he was futile, but he was not ‘common.’ Even now with help—? The two girls, and the freckled girl in particular, tried to ‘stir him up’ to some effort to do his imputed potentialities justice. They were still young enough to believe that to nice and niceish members of the male sex – more especially when under the stimulus of feminine encouragement – nothing is finally impossible.
The freckled girl was, I say, the stage manager of this affair, but Miss Walshingham was the presiding divinity. A touch of proprietorship came in her eyes at times when she looked at him. He was hers – unconditionally – and she knew it.
To her directly, Kipps scarcely ever made a speech. The enterprising things that he was continually devising to say to her, he usually did not say, or said, with a suitable modification, to the girl with the freckles. And one day the girl with the freckles smote him to the heart. She said to him, looking across the class-room to where her friend reached a cast from the shelf, ‘I do think Helen Walshingham is sometimes the most lovely person in the world. Look at her now!’
Kipps gasped for a moment. The moment lengthened, and she regarded him as an intelligent young surgeon might regard an operation without anaesthetics. ‘You're right,’ he said, and then looked at her with an entire abandonment of visage.
She coloured under his glare of silent avowal, and he blushed brightly. ‘I think so too,’ he said hoarsely, cleared his throat, and, after a meditative moment, proceeded sacramentally with his woodcarving.
‘You are wonderful,’ said the freckled girl to Miss Walshingham, apropos of nothing as they went on their way home together. ‘He simply adores you.’
‘But, my dear, what have I
done?’ said Helen.
‘That's just it,’ said the freckled girl. ‘What have you done?’
And then with a terrible swiftness came the last class of the course to terminate this relationship altogether. Kipps was careless of dates, and the thing came upon him with an effect of abrupt surprise. Just as his petals were expanding so hopefully, ‘Finis,’ and the thing was at an end. But Kipps did not fully appreciate that the end was indeed and really and truly the end until he was back in the Emporium after the end was over.
The end began practically in the middle of the last class, when the freckled girl broached the topic of terminations. She developed the question of just how he was going on after the class ended. She hoped he would stick to certain resolutions of self-improvement he had breathed. She said quite honestly that he owed it to himself to develop his possibilities. He expressed firm resolve, but dwelt on difficulties. He had no books. She instructed him how to get books from the public library. 25 He was to get a form of application for a ticket signed by a ratepayer, and he said ‘of course’ when she said Mr Shalford would do that, though all the time he knew perfectly well it would ‘never do’ to ask Mr Shalford for anything of the sort. She explained that she was going to North Wales for the summer, information he received without immediate regret. At intervals he expressed his intention of going on with woodcarving when the summer was over, and once he added, ‘if—’
She considered herself extremely delicate not to press for the completion of that ‘if—’
After that talk there was an interval of languid woodcarving and watching Miss Walshingham.
Then presently there came a bustle of packing, a great ceremony of handshaking all round by Miss Collis and the maiden lady of ripe years, and then Kipps found himself outside the class-room, on the landing with his two friends. It seemed to him he had only just learnt that this was the last class of all. There came a little pause, and the freckled girl suddenly went back into the class-room, and left Kipps and Miss Walshingham alone together for the first time. Kipps was instantly breathless. She looked at his face with a glance that mingled sympathy and curiosity, and held out her white hand.