by H. G. Wells
He repeated, ‘Twelve hundred pounds a year!’
At the sight of Kipps' face he relented slightly.
‘It's not you I'm thinking of, o' man; it's the system. Better you than most people. Still—’
He laid both hands on the gate and repeated to himself, ‘Twelve 'undred a year…. Gee-whizz, Kipps! You'll be a swell!’ 5
‘I shan't,’ said Kipps, with imperfect conviction. ‘No fear.’
‘You can't 'ave money like that and not swell out. You'll soon be too big to speak to –’ow do they put it? – a mere mechanic like me.’
‘No fear, Siddee,’ said Kipps, with conviction. ‘I ain't that sort.’
‘Ah!’ said Sid, with a sort of unwilling scepticism, ‘money'11 be too much for you. Besides – you're caught by a swell already.’
‘Ow d'yer mean?’
‘That girl you're going to marry. Masterman says—’
‘Oo's Masterman?’
‘Rare good chap, I know – takes my first-floor front room. Masterman says it's always the wife pitches the key. Always. There's no social differences – till women come in.’
‘Ah!’ said Kipps, profoundly. ‘You don't know.’
Sid shook his head. ‘Fancy!’ he reflected, ‘Art Kipps!… Twelve 'Undred a Year!’
Kipps tried to bridge that opening gulf. ‘Remember the Hurons, Sid?’
‘Rather,’ said Sid.
‘Remember that wreck?’
‘I can smell it now – sort of sour smell.’
Kipps was silent for a moment, with reminiscent eyes on Sid's still troubled face.
‘I say, Sid, 'ow's Ann?’
‘She's all right,’ said Sid.
‘Where is she now?’
‘In a place… Ashford.’
‘Oh!’
Sid's face had become a shade sulkier than before.
‘The fact is,’ he said, ‘we don't get on very well together. don't hold with service. We're common people, I suppose, but I don't like it. I don't see why a sister of mine should wait at other people's tables. No. Not even if they got Twelve 'Undred a Year.’
Kipps tried to change the point of application. ‘Remember 'ow you came out once when we were racing here?… She didn't run bad for a girl.’
And his own words raised an image brighter than he could have supposed, so bright it seemed to breathe before him, and did not fade altogether, even when he was back in Folkestone an hour or so later.
But Sid was not to be deflected from that other rankling theme by any reminiscences of Ann.
‘I wonder what you will do with all that money,’ he speculated. ‘I wonder if you will do any good at all. I wonder what you coulddo. You should hear Masterman. He'd tell you things. Suppose it came to me; what should I do? It's no good giving it back to the State as things are. Start an Owenite profit-sharing factory 6 perhaps. Or a new Socialist paper. We want a new Socialist paper.’
He tried to drown his personal chagrin in elaborate exemplary suggestions….
§3
‘I must be gettin' on to my motor,’ said Kipps at last, having to a large extent heard him out.
‘What! Got a motor?’
‘No!’ said Kipps, apologetically. ‘Only jobbed for the day.’
“Ow much?’
‘Five pounds.’
‘Keep five families for a week! Good Lord!’ That seemed to crown Sid's disgust.
Yet drawn by a sort of fascination, he came with Kipps and assisted at the mounting of the motor. He was pleased to note it was not the most modern of motors, but that was the only grain of comfort. Kipps mounted at once, after one violent agitation of the little shop-door to set the bell ajangle and warn his uncle and aunt. Sid assisted with the great fur-lined overcoat and examined the spectacles. 7
‘Good-bye, o' chap!’ said Kipps.
‘Good-bye, o' chap!’ said Sid.
The old people came out to say good-bye.
Old Kipps was radiant with triumph. ‘’Pon my sammy, 8 Artie! I'm a goo' mind to come with you,’ he shouted; and then, ‘I got something you might take with you!’
He dodged back into the shop and returned with the perforated engraving after Morland.
‘You stick to this, my boy,’ he said. ‘You get it repaired by someone who knows. It's the most vallyble thing I got you so far – you take my word.’
‘Warrup!’ said the motor, and tuff, tuff, tuff, and backed and snorted, while old Kipps danced about on the pavement as if foreseeing complex catastrophes, and told the driver, ‘That's all right.’
He waved his stout stick to his receding nephew. Then he turned to Sid. ‘Now, if you could make something like that, young Pornick, you might blow a bit!’
‘I’ll make a doocid 9 sight better than that before I done,’ said Sid, hands deep in his pockets.
‘Not you,’ said old Kipps.
The motor set up a prolonged sobbing moan and vanished round the corner. Sid stood motionless for a space, unheeding some further remark from old Kipps. The young mechanic had just discovered that to have manufactured seventeen bicycles, including orders in hand, is not so big a thing as he had supposed, and such discoveries try one's manhood….
‘Oh, well!’ said Sid, at last, and turned his face towards his mother's cottage.
She had got a hot teacake for him, and she was a little hurt that he was dark and preoccupied as he consumed it. He had always been such a boy for teacake, and then when one went out specially and got him one—!
He did not tell her – he did not tell anyone – he had seen young Kipps. He did not want to talk about Kipps for a bit to anyone at all.
CHAPTER THE FIFTH
THE PUPIL LOVER
§ 1
When Kipps came to reflect upon his afternoon's work, he had his first inkling of certain comprehensive incompatibilities lying about the course of true love in his particular case. He had felt without understanding the incongruity between the announcement he had failed to make and the circle of ideas of his aunt and uncle. It was this rather than the want of a specific intention that had silenced him, the perception that when he travelled from Folkestone to New Romney he travelled from an atmosphere where his engagement to Helen was sane and excellent to an atmosphere where it was only to be regarded with incredulous suspicion. Coupled and associated with this jar was his sense of the altered behaviour of Sid Pornick, the evident shock to that ancient alliance caused by the fact of his enrichment, the touch of hostility in his ‘You'll soon be swelled too big to speak to a poor mechanic like me.’ Kipps was unprepared for the unpleasant truth – that the path of social advancement is, and must be, strewn with broken friendships. This first protrusion of that fact caused a painful confusion in his mind. It was speedily to protrude in a far more serious fashion in relation to the ‘hands’ from the Emporium, and Chitterlow.
From the day at Lympne Castle his relations with Helen had entered upon a new footing. He had prayed for Helen as good souls pray for heaven, with as little understanding of what it was he prayed for. And now that period of standing humbly in the shadows before the shrine was over, and the goddess, her veil of mystery flung aside, had come down to him and taken hold of him, a good strong firm hold, and walked by his side… . She liked him. What was singular was that very soon she had kissed him thrice, whimsically upon the brow, and he had never kissed her at all. He could not analyze his feelings, only he knew the world was wonderfully changed about them; but the truth was that, though he still worshipped and feared her, though his pride in his engagement was ridiculously vast, he loved her now no more. That subtle something, woven of the most delicate strands of self-love and tenderness and desire, had vanished imperceptibly, and was gone now for ever. But that she did not suspect in him, nor, as a matter of fact, did he.
She took him in hand in perfect good faith. She told him things about his accent; she told him things about his bearing, about his costume and his way of looking at things. She thrust the blade of her intelligence into t
he tenderest corners of Kipps' secret vanity; she slashed his most intimate pride to bleeding tatters. He sought very diligently to anticipate some at least of these informing thrusts by making great use of Coote. But the unanticipated made a brave number…
She found his simple willingness a very lovable thing.
Indeed, she liked him more and more. There was a touch of motherliness in her feelings towards him. But his upbringing and his associations had been, she diagnosed, ‘awful.’ At New Romney she glanced but little – that was remote. But in her inventory – she went over him as one might go over a newly taken house, with impartial thoroughness – she discovered more proximate influences, surprising intimations of nocturnal ‘sing-songs,’ – she pictured it as almost shocking that Kipps should sing to the banjo – much low-grade wisdom treasured from a person called Buggins – ‘Who is Buggins?’ said Helen – vague figures of indisputable vulgarity – Pearce and Carshot – and more particularly a very terrible social phenomenon – Chitterlow.
Chitterlow blazed upon them with unheralded oppressive brilliance, the first time they were abroad together.
They were going along the front of the Leas to see a school play in Sandgate – at the last moment Mrs Walshingham had been unable to come with them – when Chitterlow loomed up into the new world. He was wearing the suit of striped flannel and the straw hat that had followed Kipps' payment in advance for his course in elocution, his hands were deep in his side-pockets and animated the corners of his jacket, and his attentive gaze at the passing loungers, the faint smile under his boldly drawn nose, showed him engaged in studying character – no doubt for some forthcoming play.
‘What HO!’ said he, at the sight of Kipps, and swept off the straw hat with so ample a clutch of his great flat hand that it suggested to Helen's startled mind a conjuror about to palm a halfpenny.
‘Ello, Chitt'low,’ said Kipps, a little awkwardly, and not saluting.
Chitterlow hesitated. ‘Half a mo', my boy,’ he said, and arrested Kipps by extending a large hand over his chest. ‘Excuse me, my dear,’ he said, bowing like his Russian count by way of apology to Helen, and with a smile that would have killed at a hundred yards. He effected a semi-confidential grouping of himself and Kipps, while Helen stood in white amazement.
‘About that play,’ he said.
‘’Ow about it?’ asked Kipps, acutely aware of Helen.
‘It's all right,’ said Chitterlow. ‘There's a strong smell of syndicate in the air, I may tell you. Strong.’
‘That's aw right,’ said Kipps.
‘You needn't tell everybody,’ said Chitterlow, with a transitory confidential hand to his mouth, which pointed the application of the ‘everybody’ just a trifle too strongly. ‘But I think it's coming off. However—I mustn't detain you now. So long. You'll come round, eh?’
‘Right you are,’ said Kipps.
‘To-night?’
‘At eight.’
And then, and more in the manner of a Russian prince than any common count, Chitterlow bowed and withdrew. Just for a moment he allowed a conquering eye to challenge Helen's, and noted her for a girl of quality…
There was a silence between our lovers for a space.
‘That,’ said Kipps, with an allusive movement of the head, ‘was Chitt'low.’
‘Is he – a friend of yours?’
‘In a way… . You see, I met 'im. Leastways 'e met me. Run into me with a bicycle, 'e did, and so we got talking together.’
He tried to appear at his ease. The young lady scrutinized his profile.
‘What is he?’
‘’E's a Nacter chap,’ said Kipps. ‘Leastways 'e writes plays.’
‘And sells them?’
‘Partly.’
‘To whom?’
‘Different people. Shares he sells… It's all right, reely – I meant to tell you about him before.’
Helen looked over her shoulder to catch a view of Chitterlow's retreating aspect. It did not compel her complete confidence.
She turned to her lover, and said in a tone of quiet authority, ‘You must tell me all about Chitterlow. Now.’
The explanation began… .
The School Play came almost as a relief to Kipps. In the flusterment of going in he could almost forget, for a time, his Laocoon struggle to explain, and in the intervals he did his best to keep forgetting. But Helen, with a gentle insistence, resumed the explanation of Chitterlow as they returned towards Folkestone.
Chitterlow was confoundedly difficult to explain. You could hardly imagine!
There was an almost motherly anxiety in Helen's manner, blended with the resolution of a schoolmistress to get to the bottom of the affair. Kipps' ears were soon quite brightly red.
‘Have you seen one of his plays?’
‘’E's tole me about one.’
‘But on the stage.’
‘No. He 'asn't 'ad any on the stage yet. That's all coming…. ’
‘Promise me,’ she said in conclusion, ‘you won't do anything without consulting me.’
And, of course, Kipps promised. ‘Oo no!’
They went on their way in silence.
‘One can't know everybody,’ said Helen in general.
‘Of course,’ said Kipps, ‘in a sort of way it was him that helped me to my money.’ And he indicated in a confused manner the story of the advertisement. ‘I don't like to drop 'im all at once,’ he added.
Helen was silent for a space, and when she spoke she went off at a tangent. ‘We shall live in London – soon,’ she remarked. ‘It's only while we are here.’
It was the first intimation she gave him of their post-nuptial prospects.
‘We shall have a nice little flat somewhere, not too far west, and there we shall build up a circle of our own.’
§ 2
All that declining summer Kipps was the pupil lover. He made an extraordinarily open secret of his desire for self-improvement; indeed Helen had to hint once or twice that his modest frankness was excessive, and all this new circle of friends did, each after his or her manner, everything that was possible to supplement Helen's efforts and help him to ease and skill in the more cultivated circles to which he had come. Coote was still the chief teacher, the tutor – there are so many little difficulties that a man may take to another man that he would not care to propound to the woman he loves – but they were all, so to speak, upon the staff. Even the freckled girl said to him once in a pleasant way, ‘You mustn't say “contre temps,”1 you must say “contraytom,”’ when he borrowed that expression from Manners and Rules, and she tried, at his own suggestion, to give him clear ideas upon the subject of ‘as’ and ‘has.’ A certain confusion between these words was becoming evident, the first fruits of a lesson from Chitterlow on the aspirate. Hitherto he had discarded that dangerous letter almost altogether, but now he would pull up at words beginning with ‘h’ and draw a sawing breath – rather like a startled kitten – and then aspirate with vigour.
Said Kipps one day, ‘As ‘e? – I should say, ah – Has 'e? Ye know I got a lot of difficulty over them two words, which is which?
‘Well, “as” is a conjunction, and “has” is a verb.’
‘I know,’ said Kipps, ‘but when is “has” a conjunction and when is “as” a verb?’
‘Well,’ said the freckled girl, preparing to be very lucid. ‘It's has when it means one has, meaning having, but if it isn't it's as. As, for instance, one says 'e – I mean he – He has. But one says “as he has.”’
‘I see,’ said Kipps. ‘So I ought to say “as ‘e“?’
‘No, if you are asking a question you say has ‘e – I mean he –’ 'as he?’ She blushed quite brightly, but still clung to her air of lucidity.
‘I see,’ said Kipps. He was about to say something further, but he desisted. ‘I got it much clearer now. Has 'e? Has ‘e as. Yes.’
‘If you remember about having.’
‘Oo, I will,’ said Kipps….
Miss Coote
specialized in Kipps' artistic development. She had early formed an opinion that he had considerable artistic sensibility; his remarks on her work had struck her as decidedly intelligent, and whenever he called round to see them she would show him some work of art – now an illustrated book, now perhaps a colour print of a Botticelli,2 now the Hundred Best Paintings, now ‘Academy Pictures,’ now a German art handbook, and now some magazine of furniture and design. ‘I know you like these things,’ she used to say, and Kipps said, ‘Oo I do.’ He soon acquired a little armoury of appreciative sayings. When presently the Walshinghams took him up to the Arts and Crafts,3 his deportment was intelligent in the extreme. For a time he kept a wary silence and suddenly pitched upon a colour print. ‘That's rather nace,’ he said to Mrs Walshingham. ‘That lill' thing. There.’ He always said things like that by preference to the mother rather than the daughter unless he was perfectly sure.
He quite took to Mrs Walshingham. He was impressed by her conspicuous tact and refinement; it seemed to him that the ladylike could go no further. She was always dressed with a delicate fussiness that was never disarranged, and even a sort of faded quality about her hair, and face, and bearing, and emotions, contributed to her effect. Kipps was not a big man, and commonly he did not feel a big man, but with Mrs Walsh-ngham he always felt enormous and distended, as though he was a navvy4 who had taken some disagreeable poison which puffed him up inside his skin as a preliminary to bursting. He felt, too, as though he had been rolled in clay and his hair dressed with gum. And he felt that his voice was strident and his accent like somebody swinging a crowded pig's-pail in a free and careless manner. All this increased and enforced his respect for her. Her hand, which flitted often and again to his hand and arm, was singularly well shaped and cool. ‘Arthur’ she called him from the very beginning.