“’Ear, ’ear,” said Sid.
“It’s true,” said Kipps.
“I don’t climb,” said Masterman, and accepted Kipps’ silent offer of another cigarette.
“No,” he said. “This world is out of joint. It’s broken up, and I doubt if it will heal. I doubt very much if it’ll heal. We’re in the beginning of the Sickness of the World.”
He rolled his cigarette in his lean fingers and repeated with satisfaction: “The Sickness of the World.”
“It’s we’ve got to make it better,” said Sid, and looked at Kipps.
“Ah, Sid’s an optimist,” said Masterman.
“So are you, most times,” said Sid.
Kipps lit another cigarette with an air of intelligent participation.
“Frankly,” said Masterman, recrossing his legs and expelling a jet of smoke luxuriously, “frankly, I think this civilization of ours is on the topple.”
“There’s Socialism,” said Sid.
“There’s no imagination to make use of it.”
“We’ve got to make one,” said Sid.
“In a couple of centuries perhaps,” said Masterman. “But meanwhile we’re going to have a pretty acute attack of confusion. Universal confusion. Like one of those crushes when men are killed and maimed for no reason at all, going into a meeting or crowding for a train. Commercial and Industrial Stresses. Political Exploitation. Tariff Wars. Revolutions. All the bloodshed that will come of some fools calling half the white world yellow. These things alter the attitude of everybody to everybody. Everybody’s going to feel ’em. Every fool in the world panting and shoving. We’re all going to be as happy and comfortable as a household during a removal. What else can we expect?”
Kipps was moved to speak, but not in answer to Masterman’s enquiry. “I’ve never rightly got the ’eng of this Socialism,” he said. “What’s it going to do, like?”
They had been imagining that he had some elementary idea in the matter, but as soon as he had made it clear that he hadn’t, Sid plunged at exposition, and in a little while Masterman, abandoning his pose of the detached man ready to die, joined in. At first he joined in only to correct Sid’s version, but afterwards he took control. His manner changed. He sat up and rested his elbow on his knees, and his cheek flushed a little. He expanded his case against Property and the property class with such vigor that Kipps was completely carried away, and never thought of asking for a clear vision of the thing that would fill the void this abolition might create. For a time, he quite forgot his own private opulence. And it was as if something had been lit in Masterman. His languor passed. He enforced his words by gestures of his long, thin hands. And as he passed swiftly from point to point of his argument it was evident he grew angry.
“Today,” he said, “the world is ruled by rich men; they may do almost anything they like with the world. And what are they doing? Laying it waste!”
“Hear, hear!” said Sid, very sternly. Masterman stood up, gaunt and long, thrust his hands in his pockets and turned his back to the fireplace.
“Collectively, the rich today have neither heart nor imagination. No! They own machinery, they have knowledge and instruments and powers beyond all previous dreaming, and what are they doing with them? Think what they are doing with them, Kipps, and think what they might do. God gives them a power like the motorcar, and all they can do with it is to go careering about the roads in goggled masks killing children and making machinery hateful to the soul of man! (“True,” said Sid, “true.”) God gives them means of communication, power unparalleled of every sort, time and absolute liberty! They waste it all in folly! Here under their feet (and Kipps’ eyes followed the direction of a lean index finger to the hearthrug), under their accursed wheels, the great mass of men festers and breeds in darkness, darkness those others make by standing in the light. The darkness breeds and breeds. It knows no better … Unless you can crawl or pander or rob you must stay in the stew you are born in.
And those rich beasts above claw and clutch as though they had nothing! They grudge us our schools, they grudge us a gleam of light and air, they cheat us and then seek to forget us … There is no rule, no guidance, only accidents and happy flukes … Our multitudes of poverty increase, and this crew of rulers makes no provision, foresees nothing, anticipates nothing!”
He paused and made a step, and stood over Kipps in a white heat of anger. Kipps nodded in a noncommittal manner and looked hard and rather gloomily at his host’s slipper as he talked.
“It isn’t as though they had something to show for the waste they make of us, Kipps. They haven’t. They are ugly and cowardly and mean. Look at their women! Painted, dyed and drugged, hiding their ugly shapes under a load of dress! There isn’t a woman in the swim of society at the present time, wouldn’t sell herself, body and soul, who wouldn’t lick the boots of a Jew or marry a nigger, rather than live decently on a hundred a year! On what would be wealth for you and me! They know it. They know we know it … No one believes in them. No one believes in nobility any more. Nobody believes in kingship any more. Nobody believes there is justice in the law … But people have habits, people go on in the old grooves, as long as there’s work, as long as there’s weekly money … It won’t last, Kipps.”
He coughed and paused. “Wait for the lean years,” he cried. “Wait for the lean years.” And suddenly he fell into a struggle with his cough and spat a gout of blood. “It’s nothing,” he said to Kipps’ note of startled horror.
He went on talking, and the protests of his cough interlaced with his words, and Sid beamed in an ecstasy of painful admiration.
“Look at the fraud they have let life become, the miserable mockery of the hope of one’s youth. What have I had? I found myself at thirteen being forced into a factory like a rabbit into a chloroformed box. Thirteen!—when their children are babies. But even a child of that age could see what it meant, that Hell of a factory! Monotony and toil and contempt and dishonor! And then death. So I fought—at thirteen!”
Minton’s “crawling up a drain pipe until you die” echoed in Kipps’ mind, but Masterman, instead of Minton’s growl, spoke in a high, indignant tenor.
“I got out at last—somehow,” he said, quietly, suddenly plumping back in his chair. He went on after a pause. “For a bit. Some of us get out by luck, some by cunning, and crawl on to the grass, exhausted and crippled, to die. That’s a poor man’s success, Kipps. Most of us don’t get out at all. I worked all day and studied half the night, and here I am with the common consequences. Beaten! And never once have I had a fair chance, never once!” His lean, clenched fist flew out in a gust of tremulous anger. “These Skunks shut up all the university scholarships at nineteen for fear of men like me. And then—do nothin’ … We’re wasted for nothing. By the time I’d learnt something the doors were locked. I thought knowledge would do it—I did think that! I’ve fought for knowledge as other men fight for bread. I’ve starved for knowledge. I’ve turned my back on women; I’ve done even that. I’ve burst my accursed lung …” His voice rose with impotent anger. “I’m a better man than any ten princes alive! And I’m beaten and wasted. I’ve been crushed, trampled and defiled by a drove of hogs. I’m no use to myself or the world. I’ve thrown my life away to make myself too good for use in this huckster’s scramble. If I had gone in for business, if I had gone in for plotting to cheat my fellow men—ah, well! It’s too late. It’s too late for that, anyhow. It’s too late for anything now! And I couldn’t have done it … And over in New York now there’s a pet of society making a corner in wheat!
“By God!” he cried hoarsely, with a clutch of the lean hand. “By God! If I had his throat! Even now I might do something for the world.”
He glared at Kipps, his face flushed deep, his sunken eyes glowing with passion, and then suddenly he changed altogether.
There was a sound of tea things rattling upon a tray outside the door, and Sid rose to open it.
“All of which amounts to this,” said
Masterman, suddenly quiet and again talking against time. “The world is out of joint, and there isn’t a soul alive who isn’t half waste or more. You’ll find it the same with you in the end, wherever your luck may take you … I suppose you won’t mind my having another cigarette?”
He took Kipps’ cigarette with a hand that trembled so violently it almost missed its object, and stood up, with something of guilt in his manner, as Mrs. Sid came into the room. Her eye met his and marked the flush upon his face.
“Been talking Socialism?” said Mrs. Sid, a little severely.
5
Six o’clock that day found Kipps drifting eastward along the southward margin of Rotten Row. You figure him a small, respectably attired figure going slowly through a sometimes immensely difficult and always immense world. At times he becomes pensive and whistles softly. At times he looks about him. There are a few riders in the Row, a carriage flashes by every now and then along the roadway, and among the great rhododendrons and laurels and upon the greensward there are a few groups and isolated people dressed in the style Kipps adopted to call upon the Walshinghams when first he was engaged. Amid the complicated confusion of Kipps’ mind was a regret that he had not worn his other things …
Presently he perceived that he would like to sit down; a green chair tempted him. He hesitated at it, took possession of it, and leant back and crossed one leg over the other.
He rubbed his under lip with his umbrella handle and reflected upon Masterman and his denunciation of the world.
“Bit orf ’is ’ead, poor chap,” said Kipps, and added: “I wonder—”
He thought intently for a space.
“I wonder what he meant by the lean years.”
The world seemed a very solid and prosperous concern just here, and well out of reach of Masterman’s dying clutch. And yet—
It was curious he should have been reminded of Minton.
His mind turned to a far more important matter. Just at the end Sid had said to him, “Seen Ann?” and as he was about to answer, “You’ll see a bit more of her now. She’s got a place in Folkestone.”
It had brought him back from any concern about the world being out of joint or anything of that sort.
Ann!
One might run against her any day.
He tugged at his little mustache.
He would like to run against Ann very much …
And it would be juiced awkward if I did!
In Folkestone! It was a jolly sight too close …
Then, at the thought that he might run against Ann in his beautiful evening dress on the way to the band, he fluttered into a momentary dream, that jumped abruptly into a nightmare.
Suppose he met her when he was out with Helen! “Oh, Lor’!” said Kipps. Life had developed a new complication that would go on and go on. For some time he wished with the utmost fervor that he had not kissed Ann, that he had not gone to New Romney the second time. He marveled at his amazing forgetfulness of Helen on that occasion. Helen took possession of his mind. He would have to write to Helen, an easy, offhand letter, to say that he had come to London for a day or so. He tried to imagine her reading it. He would write just such another letter to the old people, and say he had had to come up on business. That might do for them all right, but Helen was different. She would insist on explanations.
He wished he could never go back to Folkestone again. That would settle the whole affair. A passing group attracted his attention, two faultlessly dressed gentlemen and a radiantly expensive lady. They were talking, no doubt, very brilliantly. His eyes followed them. The lady tapped the arm of the left hand gentleman with a daintily tinted glove. Swells! No end …
His soul looked out upon life in general as a very small nestling might peep out of its nest. What an extraordinary thing life was, to be sure, and what a remarkable variety of people there were in it!
He lit a cigarette and speculated upon that receding group of three, and blew smoke and watched them. They seemed to do it all right. Probably they all had incomes of very much over twelve hundred a year. Perhaps not. Probably none of them suspected, as they went past, that he, too, was a gentleman of independent means, dressed, as he was, without distinction. Of course things were easier for them. They were brought up always to dress well and do the right thing from their very earliest years; they started clear of all his perplexities; they had never got mixed up with all sorts of different people who didn’t go together. If, for example, that lady there got engaged to that gentleman, she would be quite safe from any encounter from a corpulent, osculatory uncle, or Chitterlow, or the dangerously insignificant eye of Pearce.
His thoughts came round to Helen.
When they were married and Cuyps, or Cuyp—Coote had failed to justify his “s”—and in that West End flat and shaken free of all these low-class associations, would he and she parade here of an afternoon dressed like that? It would be rather fine to do so. If one’s dress was all right.
Helen!
She was difficult to understand at times.
He blew extensive clouds of cigarette smoke.
There would be teas, there would be dinners, there would be calls. Of course, he would get into the way of it.
But Anagrams were a bit stiff to begin with! It was beastly confusing at first to know when to use your fork at dinner, and all that. Still—
He felt an extraordinary doubt whether he would get into the way of it. He was interested for a space by a girl and groom on horseback, and then he came back to his personal preoccupations.
He would have to write to Helen. What could he say to explain his absence from the Anagram Tea? She had been pretty clear she wanted him to come. He recalled her resolute face without any great tenderness. He knew he would look like a silly ass at that confounded tea! Suppose he shirked it and went back in time for the dinner! Dinners were beastly difficult, too, but not as bad as Anagrams. The very first thing that might happen when he got back to Folkestone would be to run against Ann. Suppose, after all, he did meet Ann when he was with Helen!
What queer encounters were possible in the world!
Thank goodness, they were going to live in London!
But that brought him around to Chitterlow. The Chitterlows were coming to London, too. If they didn’t get money they’d come after it; they weren’t the sort of people to be choked off easily, and if they did they’d come to London to produce their play. He tried to imagine some seemly social occasion invaded by Chitterlow and his rhetoric, by his torrential thunder of self-assertion, the whole company flattened thereunder like wheat under a hurricane.
Confound and hang Chitterlow! Yet, somehow, somewhen, one would have to settle accounts with him! And there was Sid! Sid was Ann’s brother. He realized with sudden horror the social indiscretion of accepting Sid’s invitation to dinner.
Sid wasn’t the sort of chap one could snub or cut, and besides—Ann’s brother! He didn’t want to cut him. It would be worse than cutting Buggins and Pearce—a sight worse. And after that lunch! It would be the next thing to cutting Ann herself. And even as to Ann! Suppose he was with Helen or Coote!…
“Oh, Blow!” he said, at last, and then, viciously, “Blow!” and so rose and flung away his cigarette end, and pursued his reluctant, dubiating way towards the really quite uncongenial splendors of the Royal Grand …
And it is vulgarly imagined that to have money is to have no troubles at all!
6
Kipps endured splendor at the Royal Grand Hotel for three nights and days, and then he retreated in disorder. The Royal Grand defeated and overcame and routed Kipps, not of intention, but by sheer royal grandeur, grandeur combined with an organization for his comfort carried to excess. On his return he came upon a difficulty; he had lost his circular piece of cardboard with the number of his room, and he drifted about the hall and passages in a state of perplexity for some time, until he thought all the porters and officials in gold lace caps must be watching him and justing to one another about him
. Finally, in a quiet corner, down below the hairdresser’s shop, he found a kindly looking personage in bottle green, to whom he broached his difficulty. “I say,” he said, with a pleasant smile, “I can’t find my room nohow.” The personage in bottle green, instead of laughing in a nasty way, as he might well have done, became extremely helpful, showed Kipps what to do, got his key, and conducted him by lift and passage to his chamber. Kipps tipped him half a crown.
Safe in his room, Kipps pulled himself together for dinner. He had learnt enough from young Walshingham to bring his dress clothes, and now he began to assume them. Unfortunately, in the excitement of his flight from his aunt and uncle, he had forgotten to put in his other boots, and he was some time deciding between his purple cloth slippers, with a golden marigold, and the prospect of cleaning the boots he was wearing with the towel, but finally, being a little footsore, he took the slippers.
Afterwards, when he saw the porters and waiters and the other guests catch a sight of the slippers, he was sorry he had not chosen the boots. However, to make up for any want of style at that end, he had his crush hat under his arm.
He found the dining room without excessive trouble. It was a vast and splendidly decorated place, and a number of people, evidently quite au fait, were dining there at little tables lit with electric, red shaded candles, gentlemen in evening dress, and ladies with dazzling, astonishing necks. Kipps had never seen evening dress in full vigor before, and he doubted his eyes. And there were also people not in evening dress who, no doubt, wondered what noble family Kipps represented. There was a band in a decorated recess, and the band looked collectively at the purple slippers, and so lost any chance they may have had of a collection, so far as Kipps was concerned. The chief drawback to this magnificent place was the excessive space of floor that had to be crossed before you got your purple slippers hid in under a table.
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