by H. G. Wells
§ 3
The dinner came to a crisis so far as Kipps' emotions were concerned with Mrs Bindon Botting's talk about servants, but before that there had been several things of greater or smaller magnitude to perturb and disarrange his social front. One little matter that was mildly insurgent throughout the entire meal was, if I may be permitted to mention so intimate a matter, the behaviour of his left brace. The webbing – which was of a cheerful scarlet silk – had slipped away from its buckle, fastened, no doubt, in agitation, and had developed a strong tendency to place itself obliquely, in the manner rather of an official decoration, athwart his spotless front. It first asserted itself before they went in to dinner. He replaced this ornament by a dexterous thrust when no one was looking, and thereafter the suppression of this novel innovation upon the stereotyped sombreness of evening dress became a standing preoccupation. On the whole he was inclined to think his first horror excessive; at any rate, no one remarked upon it. However, you imagine him constantly throughout the evening with one eye and one hand, whatever the rest of him might be doing, predominantly concerned with the weak corner.
But this, I say, was a little matter. What exercised him much more was to discover Helen, quite terribly in evening dress.
The young lady had let her imagination rove Londonward, and this costume was perhaps an anticipation of that clever little flat, not too far west, which was to become the centre of so delightful a literary and artistic set. It was, of all the feminine costumes present, most distinctly an evening dress. One was advised Miss Walshingham had arms and shoulders of a type by no means despicable; one was advised Miss Walshingham was capable not only of dignity but charm, even a certain glow of charm. It was, you know, her first evening dress, a tribute paid by Walshingham finance to her brightening future. Had she wanted keeping in countenance, she would have had to have fallen back upon her hostess, who was resplendent in black and steel. The other ladies had to a certain extent compromised. Mrs Walshingham had dressed with just a refined little V, and Mrs Bindon Botting, except for her dear mottled arms, confided scarcely more of her plump charm to the world. The elder Miss Botting stopped short of shoulders, and so did Miss Wace. But Helen didn't. She was – had Kipps had eyes to see it – a quite beautiful human figure; she knew it, and she met him with a radiant smile that had forgotten all the little difference of the afternoon. But to Kipps her appearance was the last release. With that she had become as remote, as foreign, as incredible as a wife and mate, as though the Cnidian Venus 6 herself, in all her simple elegance, was, before witnesses, declared to be his. If, indeed, she had ever been credible as a wife and mate!
She ascribed his confusion to modest reverence, and, having blazed smiling upon him for a moment, turned a shapely shoulder towards him and exchanged a remark with Mrs Bindon Botting. Ann's poor little half-sixpence came against Kipps' fingers in his pocket, and he clutched at it suddenly as though it was a talisman. Then he abandoned it to suppress his Order of the Brace. He was affected by a cough. ‘Miss Wace tells me Mr Revel is coming,’ Mrs Botting was saying.
‘Isn't it delightful?’ said Helen. ‘We saw him last night. He's stopped on his way to Paris. He's going to meet his wife there.’
Kipps' eyes rested for a moment on Helen's dazzling deltoid, 7 and then went inquiringly, accusingly, almost, to Coote's face. Where in the presence of this terrible emergence was the gospel of suppression now? that Furtive treatment of Religion and Politics, and Birth and Death, and Bathing and Babies and 'all those things, which constitute your True Gentleman? He had been too modest even to discuss this question with his Mentor, but surely, surely this quintessence of all that is good and nice could regard these unsolicited confidences only in one way. With something between relief and the confirmation of his worst fears he perceived, by a sort of twitching of the exceptionally abundant muscles about Coote's lower jaw, in a certain deliberate avoidance of one particular direction by those pale but resolute grey eyes, by the almost convulsive grip of the ample, greenish white gloves behind him, a grip broken at times for controlling pats at the black-bordered tie and the back of that spacious head, and by a slight but increasing disposition to cough, that Coote did not approve!
To Kipps Helen had once supplied a delicately beautiful dream, a thing of romance and unsubstantial mystery. But this was her final materialization, and the last thin wreath of glamour about her was dispelled. In some way (he had forgotten how, and it was perfectly incomprehensible) he was bound to this dark, solid and determined young person, whose shadow and suggestion he had once loved. He had to go through with the thing as a gentleman should. Still—
And when he was sacrificing Ann!
He wouldn't stand this sort of thing, whatever else he stood… . Should he say something about her dress to her – to-morrow?
He could put his foot down firmly. He could say, ‘Look 'ere. I don't care. I ain't going to stand it. See?’
She'd say something unexpected of course. She always did say something unexpected.
Suppose for once he overrode what she said, and simply repeated his point.
He found these thoughts battling with certain conversational aggressions from Mrs Wace, and then Revel arrived and took the centre of the stage.
The author of that brilliant romance, Red Hearts a-Beating, was a less imposing man than Kipps had anticipated, but he speedily effaced that disappointment by his predominating manners. Although he lived habitually in the vivid world of London, his collar and tie were in no way remarkable, and he was neither brilliantly handsome, nor curly, nor long-haired. His personal appearance suggested armchairs rather than the equestrian exercises and amorous toyings and passionate intensities of his masterpiece; he was inclined to be fat, with whitish flesh, muddy-coloured straight hair; he had a rather shapeless and truncated nose, and his chin was asymmetrical. One eye was more inclined to stare than the other. He might have been esteemed a little undistinguished-looking were it not for his beeswaxed moustache, which came amidst his features with a pleasing note of incongruity, and the whimsical wrinkles above and about his greater eye. His regard sought and found Helen's as he entered the room, and they shook hands presently with an air of intimacy Kipps, for no clear reason, found objectionable. He saw them clasp their hands, heard Coote's characteristic cough – a sound rather more like a very, very old sheep a quarter of a mile away being blown to pieces by a small charge of gunpowder than anything else in the world did some confused beginnings of a thought, and then they were all going in to dinner, and Helen's shining bare arm lay along his sleeve. Kipps was in no state for conversation. She glanced at him, and, though he did not know it, very slightly pressed his elbow. He struggled with strange respiratory dislocations. Before them went Coote, discoursing in amiable reverberations to Mrs Walshingham, and at the head of the procession was Mrs Bindon Botting, talking fast and brightly beside the erect military figure of little Mr Wace. (He was not a soldier really, but he had caught a martinet bearing by living so close to Shorncliffe. 8 ) Revel came last, in charge of Mrs Wace's queenly black and steel, politely admiring in a flute-like cultivated voice the mellow wall-paper of the staircase. Kipps marvelled at everybody's self-possession.
From the earliest spoonful of soup it became evident that Revel considered himself responsible for the table-talk. And before the soup was over it was almost as manifest that Mrs Bindon Botting inclined to consider his sense of responsibility excessive. In her circle Mrs Bindon Botting was esteemed an agreeable rattle, her manner and appearance were conspicuously vivacious for one so plump, and she had an almost Irish facility for humorous description. She would keep people amused all through an afternoon call with the story of how her jobbing gardener had got himself married and what his home was like, or how her favourite butt, Mr Stigson Warder, had all his unfortunate children taught almost every conceivable instrument because they had the phrenological bump of music abnormally large. The family itself was also abnormally large. ‘They got to trombones, my dear!’ s
he would say, with her voice coming to a climax. Usually her friends conspired to draw her out, but on this occasion they neglected to do so, a thing that militated against her keen desire to shine in Revel's eyes. After a time she perceived that the only thing for her to do was to cut in on the talk, on her own account, and this she began to do. She made several ineffectual snatches at the general attention, and then Revel drifted towards a topic she regarded as particularly her own – the ordering of households.
They came to the thing through talk about localities. ‘We are leaving our house in The Boltons,’ said Revel, ‘and taking a little place at Wimbledon, and I think of having rooms in Dane's Inn. It will be more convenient in many ways. My wife is furiously addicted to golf and exercise of all sorts, and I like to sit about in clubs – I haven't the strength necessary for these hygienic proceedings – and the old arrangement suited neither of us. And besides, no one could imagine the demoralization the domestics of West London have undergone during the last three years.’
‘It's the same everywhere,’ said Mrs Bindon Botting.
‘Very possibly it is. A friend of mine calls it the servile tradition in decay, and regards it all as a most hopeful phenomenon—’
‘He ought to have had my last two criminals,’ said Mrs Bindon Botting.
She turned to Mrs Wace, while Revel came again a little too late with a ‘Possibly—’
‘And I haven't told you, my dear,’ she said, speaking with voluble rapidity, ‘I'm in trouble again.’
‘That last girl?’
‘The last girl. Before I can get a cook, my hard-won housemaid' – she paused – 'chucks it.’
‘Panic?’ asked young Walshingham.
‘Mysterious grief! Everything merry as a marriage-bell until my Anagram Tea! Then in the evening a portentous rigour of bearing, a word or so from my Aunt, and immediately – Floods of Tears and Notice!’ For a moment her eye rested thoughtfully on Kipps as she said, ‘Is there anything heart-rending about Anagrams?’
‘I find them so,’ said Revel. ‘I—’
But Mrs Bindon Botting got away again. ‘For a time it made me quite uneasy—’
Kipps jabbed his lip with his fork rather painfully, and was recalled from a fascinated glare at Mrs Botting to the immediate facts of dinner.
‘—whether anagrams might not have offended the good domestic's Moral Code – you never can tell. We made inquiries. No. No. No. She must go, and that's all!’
‘One perceives,’ said Revel, ‘in these disorders, dimly and distantly, the last dying glow of the age of Romance. Let us suppose, Mrs Botting, let us at least try to suppose – it is Love.’
Kipps clattered with his knife and fork.
‘It's love,’ said Mrs Botting; ‘what else can it be? Beneath the orderly humdrum of our lives these romances are going on, until at last they bust up and give Notice and upset our humdrum altogether. Some fatal, wonderful soldier—’
‘The passions of the common or house-domestic –’ began Revel, and recovered possession of the table.
Upon the troubled disorder of Kipps' table manners there had supervened a quietness, an unusual calm. For once in his life he had distinctly made up his mind on his own account. He listened no more to Revel. He put down his knife and fork and refused everything that followed. Coote regarded him with tactful concern, and Helen flushed a little.
§4
About half-past nine that night there came a violent pull at the bell of Mrs Bindon Botting, and a young man in a dress-suit and a gibus and other marks of exalted social position stood without. Athwart his white expanse of breast lay a ruddy bar of patterned silk that gave him a singular distinction and minimized the glow of a few small stains of Burgundy. His gibus was thrust back, and exposed a disorder of hair that suggested a reckless desperation. He had, in fact, burnt his boats and refused to join the ladies. Coote, in the subsequent conversation, had protested quietly, ‘You're going on all right, you know,’ to which Kipps had answered he didn't care a ‘Eng’ about that, and so, after a brief tussle with Walshingham's detaining arm, had got away. ‘I got something to do,’ he said. ‘'Ome.’ And here he was – panting an extraordinary resolve. The door opened, revealing the pleasantly furnished hall of Mrs Bindon Botting, lit by rose-tinted lights, and in the centre of the picture, neat and pretty in black and white, stood Ann. At the sight of Kipps her colour vanished.
‘Ann,’ said Kipps, ‘I want to speak to you. I got something to say to you right away. See? I'm—’
‘This ain't the door to speak to me at,’ said Ann.
‘But, Ann! It's something special.’
‘You spoke enough,’ said Ann.
‘Ann!’
‘Besides, that's my door, down there. Basement. If I was caught talking at this door—!’
‘But, Ann, I'm—’
‘Basement after nine. Them's my hours. I'm a servant, and likely to keep one. If you're calling here, what name, please? But you got your friends and I got mine, and you mustn't go talking to me.’
‘But, Ann, I want to ask you—’
Someone appeared in the hall behind Ann. ‘Not here,’ said Ann. ‘Don't know anyone of that name,’ and incontinently slammed the door in his face.
‘What was that, Ann?’ said Mrs Bindon Botting's invalid aunt.
‘Ge'm a little intoxicated, Ma'am – asking for the wrong name, Ma'am.’
‘What name did he want?’ asked the lady, doubtfully.
‘No name that we know, Ma'am,’ said Ann, hustling along the hall towards the kitchen stairs.
‘I hope you weren't too short with him, Ann.’
‘No shorter than he deserved, considering 'ow he be'aved,’ said Ann, with her bosom heaving.
And Mrs Bindon Botting's invalid Aunt, perceiving suddenly that this call had some relation to Ann's private and sentimental trouble, turned, after one moment of hesitating scrutiny, away.
She was an extremely sympathetic lady was Mrs Bindon Botting's invalid Aunt; she took an interest in the servants, imposed piety, extorted confessions and followed human nature, blushing and lying defensively to its reluctantly revealed recesses; but Ann's sense of privacy was strong, and her manner, under drawing-out and encouragement, sometimes even alarming….
So the poor old lady went upstairs again.
§ 5
The basement door opened, and Kipps came into the kitchen. He was flushed and panting.
He struggled for speech.
‘'Ere,’ he said, and held out two half-sixpences.
Ann stood behind the kitchen table – face pale and eyes round, and now – and it simplified Kipps very much – he could see she had indeed been crying.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘Don't you see?’
Ann moved her head slightly.
‘I kep' it all these years.’
‘You kep' it too long.’
His mouth closed and his flush died away. He looked at her. The amulet, it seemed, had failed to work.
‘Ann!’ he said.
‘Well?’
‘Ann.’
The conversation still hung fire.
‘Ann,’ he said, made a movement with his hands that suggested appeal, and advanced a step.
Ann shook her head more definitely, and became defensive.
‘Look here, Ann,’ said Kipps. ‘I been a fool.’
They stared into each other's miserable eyes.
‘Ann,’ he said. ‘I want to marry you.’
Ann clutched the table edge. ‘You can't,’ she said faintly.
He made as if to approach her round the table, and she took a step that restored their distance.
‘I must,’ he said.
‘You can't.’
‘I must. You got to marry me, Ann.’
‘You can't go marrying everybody. You got to marry 'er.’
‘I shan't.’
Ann shook her head. ‘You're engaged to that girl. Lady, rather. You can't be engaged to me.’
&nb
sp; ‘I don't want to be engaged to you. I been engaged. I want to be married to you. See? Right away.’
Ann turned a shade paler. ‘But what d'you mean?’ she asked.
‘Come right off to London and marry me. Now.’
‘What d'you mean?’
Kipps became extremely lucid and earnest.
‘I mean, come right off and marry me now before anyone else can. See?’
‘In London?’
‘In London.’
They stared at one another again. They took things for granted in the most amazing way.
‘I couldn't,’ said Ann. ‘For one thing, my month's not up for mor'n free weeks yet.’
They hung before that for a moment as though it was insurmountable.
‘Look 'ere, Ann! Arst to go. Arst to go!’
‘She wouldn't,’ said Ann.
‘Then come without arsting,’ said Kipps.
‘She'd keep my box—’
‘She won't.’
‘She will.’
‘She won't.’
‘You don't know 'er.’
‘Well, desh 'er – let ' LET 'ER! Who cares? I'll buy you a 'undred boxes if you'll come.’
‘It wouldn't be right towards Her.’
‘It isn't Her you got to think about, Ann. It's me.’
‘And you 'aven't treated me properly,’ she said. ‘You 'aven't treated me properly, Artie. You didn't ought to ‘ave—’
‘I didn't say I 'ad,’ he interrupted, ‘did I? Ann,’ he appealed, ‘I didn't come to arguefy. I'm all wrong. I never said I wasn't. It's yes or no. Me or not…. I been a fool. There! See? I been a fool. Ain't that enough? I got myself all tied up with everyone and made a fool of myself all round….’
He pleaded, ‘It isn't as if we didn't care for one another, Ann.’
She seemed impassive, and he resumed his discourse.
‘I thought I wasn't likely ever to see you again, Ann. I reely did. It isn't as though I was seein' you all the time. I didn't know what I wanted, and I went and be'aved like a fool – jest as anyone might. I know what I want, and I know what I don't want now.