“Oh, desh!” said Kipps, in a sort of agony of indecisiveness. “The very nex’ place I see, in I go.”
The next place was a fried fish shop in a little side street, where there were also sausages on a gaslit grill.
He would have gone in, but suddenly a new scruple came to him, that he was too well dressed for the company he could see dimly through the steam sitting at the counter and eating with a sort of nonchalant speed.
2
He was half-minded to resort to a hansom and brave the terrors of the dining room of the Royal Grand—they wouldn’t know why he had gone out really—when the only person he knew in London appeared (as the only person one does know will do in London) and slapped him on the shoulder. Kipps was hovering at a window at a few yards from the fish shop, pretending to examine some really strikingly cheap pink baby-linen, and trying to settle finally about those sausages.
“Hallo, Kipps!” cried Sid, “spending the millions?”
Kipps turned, and was glad to perceive no lingering vestige of the chagrin that had been so painful at New Romney. Sid looked grave and important, and he wore a quite new silk hat that gave a commercial touch to a generally socialistic costume. For a moment, the sight of Sid uplifted Kipps wonderfully. He saw him as a friend and helper, and only presently did it come clearly into his mind that this was the brother of Ann.
He made amiable noises.
“I’ve just been up this way,” Sid explained, “buying a second-hand ’namelling stove … I’m going to ’namel myself.”
“Lor’!” said Kipps.
“Yes. Do me a lot of good. Let the customer choose his color. See? What brings you up?”
Kipps had a momentary vision of his foiled uncle and aunt. “Just a bit of a change,” he said. Sid came to a swift decision. “Come down to my little show. I got someone I’d like to see talking to you.”
Even then Kipps did not think of Ann in this connection.
“Well,” he said, trying to invent an excuse on the spur of the moment. “Fact is,” he explained, “I was just looking ’round to get a bit of lunch.”
“Dinner, we call it,” said Sid. “But that’s all right. You can’t get anything to eat hereabout. If you’re not too haughty to do a bit of slumming, there’s some mutton spoiling for me now—”
The word “mutton” affected Kipps greatly.
“It won’t take us ’arf an hour,” said Sid, and Kipps was carried.
He discovered another means of London locomotion in the Underground Railway, and recovered his self-possession in that interest. “You don’t mind going third?” asked Sid, and Kipps said, “Nort a bit of it.” They were silent in the train for a time, on account of strangers in the carriage, and then Sid began to explain who it was that he wanted Kipps to meet. “It’s a chap named Masterman—do you no end of good.
“He occupies our first-floor front room, you know. It isn’t so much for gain I let as company. We don’t want the whole ’ouse, and another, I knew the man before. Met him at our Sociological, and after a bit, he said he wasn’t comfortable where he was. That’s how it came about. He’s a first-class chap—first-class. Science! You should see his books!
“Properly he’s a sort of journalist. He’s written a lot of things, but he’s been too ill lately to do very much. Poetry he’s written, all sorts. He writes for the Commonweal sometimes, and sometimes he reviews books. ’E’s got ’eaps of books—’eaps. Besides selling a lot.
“He knows a regular lot of people and all sorts of things. He’s been a dentist, and he’s a qualified chemist, an’ I seen him often reading German and French. Taught ’imself. He was here—”
Sid indicated South Kensington, which had come opportunely outside the carriage windows, with a nod of his head, “—three years. Studying science. But you’ll see ’im. When he really gets to talking—he pours it out.”
“Ah!” said Kipps, nodding sympathetically, with his two hands on his umbrella knob.
“He’ll do big things someday,” said Sid. “He’s written a book on science already. Physiography, it’s called. Elementary Physiography! Someday he’ll write an advanced—when he gets time.”
He let this soak into Kipps.
“I can’t introduce you to Lords and swells,” he went on, “but I can show you a famous man, that’s going to be. I can do that. Leastways—unless—” Sid hesitated.
“He’s got a frightful cough,” he said.
“He won’t care to talk with me,” weighed Kipps.
“That’s all right; he won’t mind. He’s fond of talking. He’d talk to anyone,” said Sid, reassuringly, and added a perplexing bit of Londonized Latin.
“He doesn’t pute anything, non alienum. You know.”
“I know,” said Kipps, intelligently, over his umbrella knob, though, of course, that was altogether untrue.
3
Kipps found Sid’s shop a practical looking establishment, stocked with the most remarkable collection of bicycles and pieces of bicycle that he had ever beheld. “My hiring stock,” said Sid, with a wave to this ironmongery, “and there’s the best machine at a democratic price in London, The Red Flag, built by me. See?”
He indicated a graceful, grey-brown framework in the window. “And there’s my stock of accessories—store prices.
“Go in for motors a bit,” added Sid.
“Mutton?” said Kipps, not hearing him distinctly.
“Motors, I said … ’Owever, Mutton Department ’ere,” and he opened a door that had a curtain guarded window in its upper panel, to reveal a little room with red walls and green furniture, with a white clothed table and the generous promise of a meal.
“Fanny!” he shouted. “Here’s Art Kipps.”
A bright-eyed young woman of five or six and twenty in a pink print appeared, a little flushed from cooking, and wiped a hand on an apron and shook hands and smiled, and said it would all be ready in a minute. She went on to say she had heard of Kipps and his luck, and meanwhile Sid vanished to draw the beer, and returned with two glasses for himself and Kipps.
“Drink that,” said Sid, and Kipps felt all the better for it.
“I give Mr. Masterman ’is upstairs an hour ago,” said Mrs. Sid. “I didn’t think ’e ought to wait.”
A rapid succession of brisk movements on the part of everyone, and they were all four at dinner—the fourth person being Master Walt Whitman Pornick, a cheerful young gentleman of one and a half, who was given a spoon to hammer on the table with to keep him quiet, and who got “Kipps” right at the first effort and kept it all through the meal, combining it first with this previous acquisition, and then that. “Peacock Kipps,” said Master Walt, at which there was great laughter, and also “More Mutton, Kipps.”
“He’s a regular oner,” said Mrs. Sid, “for catching up words. You can’t say a word but what ’e’s on to it.”
There were no serviettes and less ceremony, and Kipps thought he had never enjoyed a meal so much. Everyone was a little excited by the meeting and chatting, and disposed to laugh, and things went off easily from the very beginning. If there was a pause Master Walt filled it in. Mrs. Sid, who tempered her enormous admiration for Sid’s intellect and his socialism and his severe business methods by a motherly sense of her sex and seniority, spoke of them both as “you boys,” and dilated—when she was not urging Kipps to have some more of this or that—on the disparity between herself and her husband.
“Shouldn’t ha’ thought there was a year between you,” said Kipps; “you seem just a match.”
“I’m his match, anyhow,” said Mrs. Sid, and no epigram of young Walshingham’s was ever better received. “Match,” said young Walt, coming in on the trail of the joke and getting a round for himself.
Any sense of superior fortune had long vanished from Kipps’ mind, and he found himself looking at host and hostess with enormous respect. Really, old Sid was a wonderful chap, here in his own house at two and twenty, carving his own mutton and lording it over wif
e and child. No legacies needed by him! And Mrs. Sid, so kind and bright and hearty! And the child, old Sid’s child! Old Sid had jumped round a bit. It needed the sense of his fortune at the back of his mind to keep Kipps from feeling abject. He resolved he’d buy young Walt something tremendous in toys at the first opportunity.
“Drop more beer, Art?”
“Right you are, old man.”
“Cut Mr. Kipps a bit more bread, Sid.”
“Can’t I pass you a bit?”
Sid was all right, Sid was, and there was no mistake about that.
It was growing up in his mind that Sid was the brother of Ann, but he said nothing about her for excellent reasons. After all, because he remembered Sid’s irritation at her name when they had met in New Romney seemed to show a certain separation. They didn’t tell each other much … He didn’t know how things might be between Ann and Sid, either.
Still, for all that, Sid was Ann’s brother.
The furniture of the room did not assert itself very much above the cheerful business at the table, but Kipps was impressed with the idea that it was pretty. There was a dresser at the end with a number of gay plates and a mug or so, a Labor Day poster, by Walter Crane, on the wall, and through the glass and over the blind of the shop door one had a glimpse of the bright colored advertisement cards of bicycle dealers, and a shelf-ful of boxes labelled, The Paragon Bell, The Scarum Bell, and The Patent Omi! Horn …
It seemed incredible that he had been in Folkestone that morning, and even now his aunt and uncle—!
Brrr. It didn’t do to think of his aunt and uncle.
4
When Sid repeated his invitation to come and see Masterman, Kipps, now flushed with beer and Irish stew, said he didn’t mind if he did, and after a preliminary shout from Sid that was answered by a voice and a cough, the two went upstairs.
“Masterman’s a rare one,” said Sid over his arm and in an undertone. “You should hear him speak at a meeting … If he’s in form, that is.”
He rapped and went into a large, untidy room.
“This is Kipps,” he said. “You know. The chap I told you of. With twelve ’undred a year.”
Masterman sat gnawing at an empty pipe and as close to the fire as though it was alight and the season midwinter. Kipps concentrated upon him for a space, and only later took in something of the frowsy furniture, the little bed half behind, and evidently supposed to be wholly behind, a careless screen, the spittoon by the fender, the remains of a dinner on the chest of drawers and the scattered books and papers. Masterman’s face showed him a man of forty or more, with curious hollows at the side of his forehead and about his eyes. His eyes were very bright; there was a spot of red in his cheeks, and the wiry black mustache under his short, red nose had been trimmed with scissors into a sort of brush along his upper lip. His teeth were darkened ruins. His jacket collar was turned up about a knitted white neck wrap, and his sleeves betrayed no cuffs. He did not rise to greet Kipps, but held out a thin wristed hand and pointed with the other to a bedroom armchair.
“Glad to see you,” he said. “Sit down and make yourself at home. Will you smoke?”
Kipps said he would, and produced his store. He was about to take one, and then, with a civil afterthought, handed the packet first to Masterman and Sid. Masterman pretended surprise to find his pipe out before he took one. There was an interlude of matches. Sid pushed the end of the screen out of his way, sat down on the bed thus frankly admitted, and prepared, with a certain quiet satisfaction of manner, to witness Masterman’s treatment of Kipps.
“And how does it feel to have twelve hundred a year?” asked Masterman, holding his cigarette to his nose tip in a curious manner.
“It’s rum,” confided Kipps, after a reflective interval. “It feels juiced rum.”
“I never felt it,” said Masterman.
“It takes a bit of getting into,” said Kipps. “I can tell you that.”
Masterman smoked and regarded Kipps with curious eyes.
“I expect it does,” he said presently. “And has it made you perfectly happy?” he asked, abruptly.
“I couldn’t ’ardly say that,” said Kipps.
Masterman smiled. “No,” he said. “Has it made you much happier?”
“It did at first.”
“Yes. But you got used to it. How long, for example, did the real delirious excitement last?”
“Oo, that! Perhaps a week,” said Kipps.
Masterman nodded his head. “That’s what discourages me from amassing wealth,” he said to Sid. “You adjust yourself. It doesn’t last. I’ve always had an inkling of that, and it’s interesting to get it confirmed. I shall go on sponging for a bit longer on you, I think.”
“You don’t,” said Sid. “No fear.”
“Twenty-four thousand pounds,” said Masterman, and blew a cloud of smoke. “Lord! Doesn’t it worry you?”
“It is a bit worrying at times … Things ’appen.”
“Going to marry?”
“Yes.”
“H’m. Lady, I guess, of a superior social position?”
“Rather,” said Kipps. “Cousin to the Earl of Beaupres.”
Masterman readjusted his long body with an air of having accumulated all the facts he needed. He snuggled his shoulder blades down into the chair and raised his angular knees. “I doubt,” he said, flicking cigarette ash into the atmosphere, “if any great gain or loss of money does—as things are at present—make more than the slightest difference in one’s happiness. It ought to—if money was what it ought to be, the token for given service; one ought to get an increase in power and happiness for every pound one got. But the plain fact is the times are out of joint, and money—money, like everything else, is a deception and a disappointment.”
He turned his face to Kipps and enforced his next words with the index finger of his lean, lank hand. “If I thought otherwise,” he said, “I should exert myself to get some. But, if one sees things clearly, one is so discouraged. So confoundedly discouraged …When you first got your money, you thought that it meant you might buy just anything you fancied?”
“I was a bit that way,” said Kipps.
“And you found that you couldn’t. You found that for all sorts of things it was a question of where to buy and how to buy, and what you didn’t know how to buy with your money, straight away this world planted something else upon you.”
“I got rather done over a banjo first day,” said Kipps. “Leastways, my uncle says.”
“Exactly,” said Masterman.
Sid began to speak from the bed.
“That’s all very well, Masterman,” he said, “but, after all, money is power, you know. You can do all sorts of things—”
“I’m talking of happiness,” said Masterman. “You can do all sorts of things with a loaded gun in the Hammersmith Broadway, but nothing—practically—that will make you or any one else very happy. Nothing. Power’s a different matter altogether. As for happiness, you want a world in order before money or property, or any of those things that have any real value, and this world, I tell you, is hopelessly out of joint. Man is a social animal with a mind nowadays that goes around the globe, and a community cannot be happy in one part and unhappy in another. It’s all or nothing, no patching anymore forever. It is the standing mistake of the world not to understand that. Consequently people think there is a class or order somewhere, just above them or just below them, or a country or place somewhere, that is really safe and happy. The fact is, society is one body, and it is either well or ill. That’s the law. This society we live in is ill. It’s a fractious, feverish invalid, gouty, greedy and ill-nourished. You can’t have a happy left leg with neuralgia, or a happy throat with a broken leg. That’s my position, and that’s the knowledge you’ll come to. I’m so satisfied of it that I sit here and wait for my end quite calmly, sure that I can’t better things by bothering—in my time, and so far as I am concerned, that is. I’m not even greedy anymore—my egotism�
�s at the bottom of a pond, with a philosophical brick around its neck. The world is ill, my time is short and my strength is small. I’m as happy here as anywhere.”
He coughed and was silent for a moment, then brought the index finger around to Kipps again. “You’ve had the opportunity of sampling two grades of society, and you don’t find the new people you’re among much better or any happier than the old?”
“No,” said Kipps, reflectively. “No. I ’aven’t seen it quite like that before, but—No. They’re not.”
“And you might go all up the scale and down the scale and find the same thing. Man’s a gregarious beast, a gregarious beast, and no money will buy you out of your own time—any more than out of your own skill. All the way up and all the way down the scale there’s the same discontent. No one is quite sure where they stand, and everyone’s fretting. The herd’s uneasy and feverish. All the old tradition goes or has gone, and there’s no one to make a new tradition. Where are your nobles now? Where are your gentlemen? They vanished directly the peasant found out he wasn’t happy and ceased to be a peasant. There’s big men and little men mixed up together, that’s all. None of us know where we are. Your cads in a bank holiday train and your cads on a two-thousand-pound motor; except for a difference in scale, there’s not a pin to choose between them. Your smart society is as low and vulgar and uncomfortable for a balanced soul as a gin palace, no more and no less; there’s no place or level of honor or fine living left in the world; so what’s the good of climbing?”
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