Kipps

by H. G. Wells

  ‘Gollys!’12 he said at last in an awe-stricken whisper.

  It had rich-looking crimson curtains to all the lower windows, and brass-railed blinds above. There was a splendid tropical plant in a large artistic pot in the drawing-room window. There was a splendid bronzed knocker (ring also) and two bells – one marked ‘servants.’

  ‘Gollys! Servants, eh?’

  He walked past away from it with his eyes regarding it, and then turned and came back. He passed through a further indecision, and finally drifted away to the sea front, and sat down on a seat a little way along the Leas and put his arm over the back and regarded ‘Hughenden.’ He whistled an air very softly to himself, put his head first on one side and then on the other. Then for a space he scowled fixedly at it.

  A very stout old gentleman with a very red face and very protuberant eyes sat down beside Kipps, removed a Panama hat of the most abandoned desperado cut, and mopped his brow and blew. Then he began mopping the inside of his hat. Kipps watched him for a space, wondering how much he might have a year, and where he bought his hat. Then ‘Hughenden’ reasserted itself.

  An impulse overwhelmed him. ‘I say,’ he said, leaning forward to the old gentleman.

  The old gentleman started and stared.

  ‘What did you say?’ he asked fiercely.

  ‘You wouldn't think,’ said Kipps, indicating with his forefinger, ‘that that ‘ouse there belongs to me.’

  The old gentleman twisted his neck round to look at ‘Hughenden.’ Then he came back to Kipps, looked at his mean little garments with apoplectic intensity, and blew at him by way of reply.

  ‘It does,’ said Kipps, a little less confidently.

  ‘Don't be a Fool,’ said the old gentleman, and put his hat on and wiped out the corners of his eyes. ‘It's hot enough,’ panted the old gentleman, indignantly, ‘without Fools.’ Kipps looked from the old gentleman to the house, and back to the old gentleman. The old gentleman looked at Kipps, and snorted and looked out to sea, and again, snorting very contemptuously, at Kipps.

  ‘Mean to say it doesn't belong to me?’ said Kipps.

  The old gentleman just glanced over his shoulder at the house in dispute, and then fell to pretending Kipps didn't exist. ‘It's been lef' me this very morning,’ said Kipps. ‘It ain't the only one that's been lef' me, neither.’

  ‘Aw!’ said the old gentleman, like one who is sorely tried. He seemed to expect the passers-by presently to remove Kipps.

  ‘It 'as,’ said Kipps. He made no further remark to the old gentleman for a space, but looked with a little less certitude at the house….

  ‘I got—’ he said, and stopped.

  ‘It's no good telling you if you don't believe,’ he said.

  The old gentleman, after a struggle with himself, decided not to have a fit. ‘Try that game on with me,’ he panted. ‘Give you in charge.’

  ‘What game?’

  ‘Wasn't born yesterday,’ said the old gentleman, and blew. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘Look at you!…

  ‘I know you,’ said the old gentleman, and coughed shortly, and nodded to the horizon, and coughed again.

  Kipps looked dubiously from the house to the old gentleman, and back to the house. Their conversation, he gathered, was over.

  Presently he got up and went slowly across the grass to its stucco portal again. He stood, and his mouth shaped the precious word, ‘Hughenden.’ It was all right! He looked over his shoulder as if in appeal to the old gentleman, then turned and went his way. The old gentleman was so evidently past all reason!

  He hung for a moment some distance along the parade, as though some invisible string was pulling him back. When he could no longer see the house from the pavement he went out into the road. Then with an effort he snapped the string.

  He went on down a quiet side street, unbuttoned his coat furtively, took out three bank-notes in an envelope, looked at them, and replaced them. Then he fished up five new sovereigns from his trouser pocket and examined them. To such a confidence had his exact resemblance to his dead mother's portrait carried Messrs Watson and Bean.

  It was right enough.

  It really was all right.

  He replaced the coins with grave precaution, and went his way with a sudden briskness. It was all right – he had it now – he was a rich man at large. He went up a street and round a corner and along another street, and started towards the Pavilion, and changed his mind and came round back, resolved to go straight to the Emporium and tell them all.

  He was aware of someone crossing a road far off ahead of him, someone curiously relevant to his present extraordinary state of mind. It was Chitterlow. Of course, it was Chitterlow who had told him first of the whole thing! The playwright was marching buoyantly along a cross street. His nose was in the air, the yachting cap was on the back of his head, and the large freckled hand grasped two novels from the library, a morning newspaper, a new hat done up in paper, and a lady's net bag full of onions and tomatoes….

  He passed out of sight behind the wine-merchant's at the corner, as Kipps decided to hurry forward and tell him of the amazing change in the Order of the Universe that had just occurred.

  Kipps uttered a feeble shout, arrested as it began, and waved his umbrella. Then he set off at a smart pace in pursuit. He came round the corner, and Chitterlow had gone; he hurried to the next, and there was no Chitterlow; he turned back unavailingly, and his eyes sought some other possible corner. His hand fluttered to his mouth, and he stood for a space on the pavement edge, staring about him. No good!

  But the sight of Chitterlow was a wholesome thing, it connected events together, joined him on again to the past at a new point, and that was what he so badly needed….

  It was all right – all right.

  He became suddenly very anxious to tell everybody at the Emporium, absolutely everybody, all about it. That was what wanted doing. He felt that telling was the thing to make this business real. He gripped his umbrella about the middle, and walked very eagerly.

  He entered the Emporium through the Manchester department. He flung open the door (over whose ground glass he had so recently, in infinite apprehension, watched the nose of Chitterlow), and discovered the second apprentice and Pearce in conversation. Pearce was prodding his hollow tooth with a pin and talking in fragments about the distinctive characteristics of Good Style.

  Kipps came up in front of the counter.

  ‘I say,’ he said. ‘What d‘yer think?’

  ‘What?’ said Pearce over the pin.

  ‘Guess.’

  ‘You've slipped out because Teddy's in London.’

  ‘Something more.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Been left a fortune.’

  ‘Garn!’

  ‘I ‘ave.’

  ‘Get out!’

  ‘Straight. I been lef' twelve ‘undred pounds – twelve ’undred pounds a year!’

  He moved towards the little door out of the department into the house, moving, as heralds say, regardant passant.13 Pearce stood with mouth wide open and pin poised in air. ‘No!’ he said at last.

  ‘It's right,’ said Kipps, ‘and I'm going.’

  And he fell over the doormat into the house.

  § 4

  It happened that Mr Shalford was in London buying summer sale goods, and, no doubt, also interviewing aspirants to succeed Kipps.

  So that there was positively nothing to hinder a wild rush of rumour from end to end of the Emporium. All the masculine members began their report with the same formula. ‘Heard about Kipps?’

  The new girl in the cash desk had had it from Pearce, and had dashed out into the fancy shop14 to be the first with the news on the fancy side. Kipps had been left a thousand pounds a year – twelve thousand pounds a year. Kipps had been left twelve hundred thousand pounds. The figures were uncertain, but the essential facts they had correct. Kipps had gone upstairs. Kipps was packing his box. He said he wouldn't stop another day in the old Emporium not for a th
ousand pounds! It was said that he was singing ribaldry about old Shalford.

  He had come down! He was in the counting-house. There was a general movement thither. (Poor old Buggins had a customer, and couldn't make out what the deuce it was all about! Completely out of it, was Buggins.)

  There was a sound of running to and fro, and voices saying this, that, and the other thing about Kipps. Ring-a-dinger, ring-a-dinger went the dinner-bell, all unheeded. The whole of the Emporium was suddenly bright-eyed, excited, hungry to tell somebody, to find at any cost somebody who didn't know, and be first to tell them, ‘Kipps has been left thirty – forty – fifty thousand pounds!’

  ‘What!’ cried the senior porter, ‘Him!’ and ran up to the counting-house as eagerly as though Kipps had broken his neck.

  ‘One of our chaps just been left sixty thousand pounds,’ said the first apprentice, returning after a great absence, to his customer.

  ‘Unexpectedly?’ said the customer.

  ‘Quite,’ said the first apprentice… .

  ‘I'm sure if Anyone deserves it, it's Mr Kipps,’ said Miss Mergle; and her train rustled as she hurried to the counting-house.

  There stood Kipps amidst a pelting shower of congratulations. His face was flushed, and his hair disordered. He still clutched his hat and best umbrella in his left hand. His right hand was anyone's to shake rather than his own. (‘Ring-a-dinger, ring-a-dinger ding, ding, ding, dang you!’ went the neglected dinner-bell.)

  ‘Good old Kipps!’ said Pearce, shaking. ‘Good old Kipps!’

  Booch rubbed one anaemic hand upon the other. ‘You're sure it's all right, Mr Kipps?’ he said in the background.

  ‘I'm sure we all congratulate him,’ said Miss Mergle.

  ‘Great Scott!’ said the new young lady in the glove department. ‘Twelve hundred a year! Great Scott! You aren't thinking of marrying anyone, are you, Mr Kipps?’

  ‘Three pounds five and ninepence a day,’ *aid Mr Booch, working in his head almost miraculously….

  Everyone, it seemed, was saying how glad they were it was Kipps, except the junior apprentice, upon whom – he being the only son of a widow, and used to having the best of everything as a right – an intolerable envy, a sense of unbearable wrong, had cast its gloomy shade. All the rest were quite honestly and simply glad – gladder, perhaps, at that time than Kipps, because they were not so overpowered….

  Kipps went downstairs to dinner, emitting fragmentary disconnected statements. ‘Never expected anything of the sort…. When this here old Bean told me, you could have knocked me down with a feather…. He says, “You ben lef' money.” Even then I didn't expect it'd be mor'n a hundred pounds, perhaps. Something like that.’

  With the sitting down to dinner and the handing of plates, the excitement assumed a more orderly quality. The housekeeper emitted congratulations as she carved, and the maidservant became dangerous to clothes with the plates – she held them anyhow; one expected to see one upside-down, even – she found Kipps so fascinating to look at. Everyone was the brisker and hungrier for the news (except the junior apprentice), and the housekeeper carved with unusual liberality. It was High Old Times there under the gaslight, High Old Times. ‘I'm sure if Anyone deserves it,’ said Miss Mergle – ‘pass the salt, please – it's Mr Kipps.’

  The babble died away a little as Carshot began barking across the table at Kipps. ‘You'll be a bit of a Swell, Kipps,’ he said. ‘You won't hardly know yourself.’

  ‘Quite the gentleman,’ said Miss Mergle.

  ‘Many real gentlemen's families,’ said the housekeeper, ‘have to do with less.’

  ‘See you on the Leas,’ said Carshot. ‘My—!’ He met the housekeeper's eye. She had spoken about that expression before. ‘My eye!’ he said, tamely, lest words should mar the day.

  ‘You'll go to London, I reckon,’ said Pearce. ‘You'll be a man about town. We shall see you mashing ‘em, with violets in your button 'ole, down the Burlington Arcade.’15

  ‘One of these West End Flats. That'd be my style,’ said Pearce. ‘And a first-class club.’

  ‘Aren't these Clubs a bit ’ard to get into?’ asked Kipps, open-eyed over a mouthful of potato.

  ‘No fear. Not for Money,’ said Pearce. And the girl in the laces, who had acquired a cynical view of Modern Society from the fearless exposures of Miss Marie Corelli,16 said, ‘Money goes everywhere nowadays, Mr Kipps.’

  But Carshot showed the true British strain.

  ‘If I was Kipps,’ he said, pausing momentarily for a knifeful of gravy, ‘I should go to the Rockies and shoot bears.’

  ‘I'd certainly 'ave a run over to Boulogne,’ said Pearce, ‘and look about a bit. I'm going to do that next Easter myself, anyhow – see if I don't.’

  ‘Go to Oireland, Mr Kipps,’ came the soft insistence of Biddy Murphy, who managed the big workroom, flushed and shining in the Irish way as she spoke. ‘Go to Oireland. Ut's the loveliest country in the world. Outside currs.17 Fishin', shootin', huntin'. An' pretty gals! Eh! You should see the Lakes of Killarney, Mr Kipps!’ And she expressed ecstasy by a facial pantomime, and smacked her lips.

  And presently they crowned the event.

  It was Pearce who said, ‘Kipps, you ought to stand Sham!’

  And it was Carshot who found the more poetical word ‘Champagne.’

  ‘Rather!’ said Kipps, hilariously; and the rest was a question of detail and willing emissaries. ‘Here it comes!’ they said, as the apprentice came down the staircase. ‘How about the shop?’ said someone. ‘Oh, hang the shop!’ said Carshot; and made gruntulous18 demands for a corkscrew with a thing to cut the wire. Pearce, the dog! had a wire-cutter in his pocket-knife. How Shalford would have stared at the gold-tipped bottles if he had chanced to take an early train! Bang went the corks, and bang! Gluck, gluck, gluck, and sizzle!

  When Kipps found them all standing about him under the gas flare, saying almost solemnly ‘Kipps!’ with tumblers upheld, ‘Have it in tumblers,’ Carshot had said, ‘have it in tumblers. It isn't a wine like you have in glasses. Not like port and sherry. It cheers you up, but you don't get drunk. It isn't hardly stronger than lemonade. They drink it at dinner, some of ‘em, every day.’

  ‘What! At three and six a bottle!’ said the housekeeper, incredulously.

  ‘They don't stick at that,’ said Carshot. ‘Not the champagne sort.’

  The housekeeper pursed her lips and shook her head….

  When Kipps, I say, found them all standing up to toast him in that manner, there came such a feeling in his throat and face that for the life of him he scarcely knew for a moment whether he was not going to cry. ‘Kipps!’ they all said, with kindly eyes. It was very good of them, and hard there wasn't a stroke of luck for them all!

  But the sight of upturned chins and glasses pulled him together again….

  They did him honour. Unenviously and freely they did him honour.

  For example, Carshot, being subsequently engaged in serving cretonne,19 and desiring to push a number of rejected blocks up the counter in order to have space for measuring, swept them by a powerful and ill-calculated movement of the arm, with a noise like thunder, partly on to the floor, and partly on to the foot of the still gloomily preoccupied junior apprentice. And Buggins, whose place it was to shopwalk while Carshot served, shopwalked with quite unparalleled dignity, dangling a new season's sunshade with a crooked handle on one finger. He arrested each customer who came down the shop with a grave and penetrating look. ‘Showing very tractive line new sheasons shunshade,’ he would remark; and after a suitable pause, ‘’Markable thing, one our 'sistant leg'sy twelve ‘undred a year. Very tractive. Nothing more to-day, mum? No!’ And he would then go and hold the door open for them with perfect decorum, and with the sunshade dangling elegantly from his left hand… .

  And the second apprentice, serving a customer with cheap ticking,20 and being asked suddenly if it was strong, answered remarkably –

  ‘Oo, no, mum! Strong! Why, it ain't ‘ard
ly stronger than lemonade.’…

  The head porter, moreover, was filled with a virtuous resolve to break the record as a lightning packer, and make up for lost time. Mr Swaffenham of the Sandgate Riviera, for example, who was going out to dinner that night at seven, received at half-past six, instead of the urgently needed dress shirt he expected, a corset specially adapted to the needs of persons inclined to embonpoint.21 A parcel of summer underclothing selected by the elder Miss Waldershawe was somehow distributed in the form of gratis additions throughout a number of parcels of a less intimate nature, and a box of millinery on approval to Lady Pamshort (at Wampachs) was enriched by the addition of the junior porter's cap….

  These little things, slight in themselves, witness perhaps none the less eloquently to the unselfish exhilaration felt throughout the Emporium at the extraordinary and unexpected enrichment of Mr Kipps.

  §5

  The bus that plies between New Romney and Folkestone is painted a British red, and inscribed on either side with the word ‘Tip-top’ in gold amidst voluptuous scrolls. It is a slow and portly bus; even as a young bus it must have been slow and portly. Below it swings a sort of hold, hung by chains between the wheels, and in the summertime the top has garden seats. The front over those two dauntless unhurrying horses rises in tiers like a theatre; there is first a seat for the driver and his company, and above that a seat, and above that, unless my memory plays me false, a seat. You sit in a sort of composition by some Italian painter – a celestial group of you. There are days when this bus goes, and days when it doesn't go – you have to find out. And so you get to New Romney. So you will continue to get to New Romney for many years, for the light railway concession along the coast is happily in the South Eastern Railway Company's keeping, and the peace of the marsh is kept inviolate save for the bicycle bells of such as Kipps and I. This bus it was, this ruddy, venerable and, under God's mercy, immortal bus, that came down the Folkestone hill with unflinching deliberation, and trundled through Sandgate and Hythe, and out into the windy spaces of the Marsh, with Kipps and all his fortunes on its brow.