KIPPS

by WordFire Press

  “I often thought about what you said last time I saw you,” said Kipps.

  “I wonder what I said,” said Masterman in parenthesis. “Anyhow, you’re doing the right and sane thing, and that’s a rare spectacle. You’re going to marry your equal, and you’re going to take your own line, quite independently of what people up there, or people down there, think you ought or ought not to do. That’s about the only course one can take nowadays with everything getting more muddled and upside down every day. Make your own little world and your own house first of all, keep that right side up whatever you do, and marry your mate … That, I suppose, is what I should do—if I had a mate … But people of my sort, luckily for the world, don’t get made in pairs. No!

  “Besides—! However—” And abruptly, taking advantage of an interruption by Master Walt, he lapsed into thought.

  Presently he came out of his musings.

  “After all,” he said, “there’s hope.”

  “What about?” said Sid.

  “Everything,” said Masterman.

  “Where there’s life there’s hope,” said Mrs. Sid. “But none of you aren’t eating anything like you ought to.”

  Masterman lifted his glass. “Here’s to hope!” he said, “the light of the world!”

  Sid beamed at Kipps as who should say, “You don’t meet a character like this every dinner time.”

  “Here’s to hope,” repeated Masterman. “The best thing one can have. Hope of life—yes.” He imposed his movement of magnificent self-pity on them all. Even young Walt was impressed.

  2

  They spent the days before their marriage in a number of agreeable excursions together. One day they went to Kew by steamboat, and admired the house full of paintings of flowers extremely; and one day they went early to have a good, long day at the Crystal Palace, and enjoyed themselves very much indeed. They got there so early that nothing was open inside, all the stalls were wrappered up and all the minor exhibitions locked and barred; they seemed the minutest creatures even to themselves in that enormous empty aisle and their echoing footsteps indecently loud. They contemplated realistic groups of plaster savages, and Ann thought they’d be queer people to have about. She was glad there were none in this country. They meditated upon replicas of classical statuary without excessive comment. Kipps said at large, it must have been a queer world then, but Ann very properly doubted if they really went about like that. But the place at that early hour was really lonely. One began to fancy things. So they went out into the October sunshine of the mighty terraces, and wandered amidst miles of stucco tanks and about those quiet Gargantuan grounds. A great, grey emptiness it was, and it seemed marvelous to them, but not nearly so marvelous as it might have seemed. “I never see a finer place, never,” said Kipps, turning to survey the entirety of the enormous glass front with Paxton’s vast image in the center.

  “What it must ’ave cost to build!” said Ann, and left her sentence eloquently incomplete.

  Presently they came to a region of caves and waterways, and amidst these waterways strange reminders of the possibilities of the Creator. They passed under an arch made of a whale’s jaws, and discovered amidst herbage, as if they were browsing or standing unoccupied and staring as if amazed at themselves, huge effigies of iguanodons and deinotheria and mastodons and suchlike cattle, gloriously done in green and gold.

  “They got everything,” said Kipps. “Earl’s Court isn’t a patch on it.”

  His mind was very greatly exercised by these monsters, and he hovered about them and returned to them. “You’d wonder ’ow they ever got enough to eat,” he said several times.

  3

  It was later in the day, and upon a seat in the presence of the green and gold Labyrinthodon that looms so splendidly above the lake, that the Kippses fell into talk about their future. They had made a sufficient lunch in the palace, they had seen pictures and no end of remarkable things, and that and the amber sunlight made a mood for them, quiet and philosophical, a heaven mood. Kipps broke a contemplative silence with an abrupt allusion to one principal preoccupation. “I shall offer an ’pology and I shall offer ’er brother damages. If she likes to bring an action for Breach after that, well—I done all I can … They can’t get much out of reading my letters in court, because I didn’t write none. I dessay a thousan’ or two’ll settle all that, anyhow. I ain’t much worried about that. That don’t worry me very much, Ann—No.”

  And then, “It’s a lark, our marrying.

  “It’s curious ’ow things come about. If I ’adn’t run against you, where should I ’ave been now. Eh? … Even after we met, I didn’t seem to see it like—not marrying you, I mean—until that night I came. I didn’t—really.”

  “I didn’t neither,” said Ann, with thoughtful eyes on the water.

  For a time Kipps’ mind was occupied by the prettiness of her thinking face. A faint, tremulous network of lights reflected from the ripples of a passing duck, played subtly over her cheek and faded away.

  Ann reflected. “I s’pose things ’ad to be,” she said.

  Kipps mused. “It’s curious ’ow ever I got on to be engaged to ’er.”

  “She wasn’t suited to you,” said Ann.

  “Suited. No fear! That’s just it. ’Ow did it come about?”

  “I expect she led you on,” said Ann. Kipps was half-minded to assent. Then he had a twinge of conscience. “It wasn’t that, Ann,” he said. “It’s curious. I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t that. I don’t recollect … No … Life’s jolly rum; that’s one thing any’ow. And I suppose I’m a rum sort of feller. I get excited sometimes, and then I don’t seem to care what I do. That’s about what it was really. Still—”

  They meditated, Kipps with his arms folded and pulling at his scanty mustache. Presently a faint smile came over his face.

  “We’ll get a nice little ’ouse out ’Ythe way.”

  “It’s ’omelier than Folkestone,” said Ann.

  “Just a nice little ’ouse,” said Kipps.

  “There’s Hughenden, of course. But that’s let. Besides being miles too big. And I wouldn’t live in Folkestone again some’ow—not for anything.”

  “I’d like to ’ave a ’ouse of my own,” said Ann. “I’ve often thought, being in service, ’ow much I’d like to manage a ’ouse of my own.”

  “You’d know all about what the servants was up to, anyhow,” said Kipps, amused.

  “Servants! We don’t want no servants,” said Ann, startled.

  “You’ll ’ave to ’ave a servant,” said Kipps. “If it’s only to do the ’eavy work of the ’ouse.”

  “What! and not be able ’ardly to go into my own kitchen?” said Ann.

  “You ought to ’ave a servant,” said Kipps.

  “One could easy ’ave a woman in for anything that’s ’eavy,” said Ann. “Besides—if I ’ad one of the girls one sees about nowadays I should want to be taking the broom out of ’er ’and and do it all over myself. I’d manage better without ’er.”

  “We ought to ’ave one servant anyhow,” said Kipps, “else ’ow should we manage if we wanted to go out together or anything like that?”

  “I might get a young girl,” said Ann, “and bring ’er up in my own way.”

  Kipps left the matter at that and came back to the house.

  “There’s little ’ouses going into Hythe, just the sort we want, not too big and not too small. We’ll ’ave a kitching and a dining room and a little room to sit in of a night.”

  “It mustn’t be a ’ouse with a basement,” said Ann.

  “What’s a basement?”

  “It’s a downstairs, where there’s not ’arf enough light and everything got to be carried—up and down, up and down, all day—coals and everything. And it’s got to ’ave a water tap and sink and things upstairs. You’d ’ardly believe, Artie, if you ’adn’t been in service, ’ow cruel and silly some ’ouses are built—you’d think they ’ad a spite against servants the way th
e stairs are made.”

  “We won’t ’ave one of that sort,” said Kipps … “We’ll ’ave a quiet little life. Now go out a bit—now come ’ome again. Read a book perhaps if we got nothing else to do. ’Ave old Buggins in for an evening at times. ’Ave Sid down. There’s bicycles—”

  “I don’t fancy myself on a bicycle,” said Ann.

  “’Ave a trailer,” said Kipps, “and sit like a lady. I’d take you out to New Romney easy as anything just to see the old people.”

  “I wouldn’t mind that,” said Ann.

  “We’ll just ’ave a sensible little ’ouse, and sensible things. No art or anything of that sort, nothing stuck-up or anything, but just sensible. We’ll be as right as anything, Ann.”

  “No socialism,” said Ann, starting a lurking doubt.

  “No socialism,” said Kipps; “just sensible, that’s all.”

  “I dessay it’s all right for them that understand it, Artie, but I don’t agree with this socialism.”

  “I don’t neither, really,” said Kipps. “I can’t argue about it, but it don’t seem real like to me. All the same Masterman’s a clever fellow, Ann.”

  “I didn’t like ’im at first, Artie, but I do now—in a way. You don’t understand ’im all at once.”

  “’E’s so clever,” said Kipps. “Arf the time I can’t make out what ’e’s up to. ’E’s the cleverest chap I ever met. I never ’eard such talking. ’E ought to write a book … It’s a rum world, Ann, when a chap like that isn’t ’ardly able to earn a living.”

  “It’s ’is ’ealth,” said Ann.

  “I expect it is,” said Kipps, and ceased to talk for a little while.

  Then he spoke with deliberation, “Sea air might be the saving of ’im, Ann.”

  He glanced doubtfully at Ann, and she was looking at him even fondly.

  “You think of other people a lot,” said Ann. “I been looking at you sittin' there and thinking.”

  “I suppose I do. I suppose when one's ’appy one does.”

  “You do,” said Ann.

  “We shall be ’appy in that little ’ouse, Ann. Don’t y’ think?”

  She met his eyes and nodded. “I seem to see it,” said Kipps, “sort of cosy like. ’Bout tea time and muffins, kettle on the ’ob, cat on the ’earthrug—We must get a cat, Ann—and you there. Eh?”

  They regarded each other with appreciative eyes and Kipps became irrelevant.

  “I don’t believe, Ann,” he said, “I ’aven’t kissed you not for ’arf an hour. Leastways not since we was in those caves.”

  For kissing had already ceased to be a matter of thrilling adventure for them.

  Ann shook her head. “You be sensible and go on talking about Mr. Masterman,” she said …

  But Kipps had wandered to something else. “I like the way your ’air turns back just there,” he said, with an indicative finger. “It was like that, I remember, when you was a girl. Sort of wavy. I’ve often thought of it …”

  “’Member when we raced that time—out be’ind the church?”

  Then for a time they sat idly, each following out agreeable meditations.

  “It’s rum,” said Kipps.

  “What’s rum?”

  “’Ow everything’s ’appened,” said Kipps. “Who’d ’ave thought of our being ’ere like this six weeks ago? … Who’d ’ave thought of my ever ’aving any money?”

  His eyes went to the big Labyrinthodon. He looked first carelessly, and then suddenly with a growing interest, in its vast face. “I’m deshed,” he murmured. Ann became interested. He laid a hand on her arm and pointed. Ann scrutinized the Labyrinthodon and then came around to Kipps’ face in mute interrogation.

  “Don’t you see it?” said Kipps.

  “See what?”

  “’E’s just like old Coote.”

  “It’s extinct,” said Ann, not clearly apprehending.

  “I dessay ’e is. But ’e’s just like old Coote all the same for that.”

  Kipps meditated on the monstrous shapes in sight.

  “I wonder ’ow all these old antediluvium animals got extinct,” he asked. “No one couldn’t possibly ’ave killed ’em.”

  “Why! I know that,” said Ann. “They was overtook by the flood …”

  Kipps meditated for a while. “But I thought they had to take two of everything there was—”

  “Within reason they ’ad,” said Ann …

  The Kippses left it at that.

  The great green and gold Labyrinthodon took no notice of their conversation. It gazed with its wonderful eyes over their heads into the infinite—inflexibly calm. It might indeed have been Coote himself there, Coote, the unassuming, cutting them dead.

  There was something about its serenity that suggested patience, suggested that indifference of a power that waits. In the end this quality, dimly apprehended, made the Kippses uneasy, and after a while they got up, and glancing backward, went their way.

  4

  And in due course these two simple souls married, and Venus Urania, the Goddess of Wedded Love, the Goddess of Tolerant Kindliness or Meeting Half-way, to whom all young couples should pray and offer sacrifices of self, who is indeed a very great and noble and kindly goddess, was in some manner propitiated, and bent down and blessed them in their union.

  Book III

  Kippses

  Chapter the First

  The Housing Problem

  Honeymoons and all things come to an end, and you see at last Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Kipps descending upon the Hythe platform—coming to Hythe to find that nice little house—to realize that bright dream of a home they had first talked about in the grounds of the Crystal Palace. They are a valiant couple, you perceive, but small, and the world is a large incongruous system of complex and difficult things. Kipps wears a grey suit, with a wing-poke collar and a neat, smart tie. Mrs. Kipps is the same bright and healthy little girl woman you saw in the marsh; not an inch has been added to her stature in all my voluminous narrative. Only now she wears a hat.

  It is a hat very unlike the hats she used to wear on her Sundays out, a flourishing hat with feathers and buckle and bows and things. The price of that hat would take many people’s breath away—it cost two guineas! Kipps chose it. Kipps paid for it. They left the shop with flushed cheeks and smarting eyes, glad to be out of range of the condescending saleswoman.

  “Artie,” said Ann, “you didn’t ought to ’ave—” That was all. And you know, the hat didn’t suit Ann a bit. Her clothes did not suit her at all. The simple, cheap, clean brightness of her former style had given place not only to this hat, but to several other things in the same key. And out from among these things looked her pretty face, the face of a wise little child—an artless wonder struggling through a preposterous dignity.

  They had bought that hat one day when they had gone to see the shops in Bond Street. Kipps had looked at the passers-by and it had suddenly occurred to him that Ann was dowdy. He had noted the hat of a very proud-looking lady passing in an electric brougham and had resolved to get Ann the nearest thing to that.

  The railway porters perceived some subtle incongruity in Ann, the knot of cabmen in the station doorway, the two golfers and the lady with daughters, who had also got out of the train. And Kipps, a little pale, blowing a little, not in complete possession of himself, knew that they noticed her and him. And Ann—It is hard to say just what Ann observed of these things.

  “’Ere!” said Kipps to a cabman, and regretted too late a vanished “H.”

  “I got a trunk up there,” he said to a ticket inspector, “marked A.K.”

  “Ask a porter,” said the inspector, turning his back.

  “Demn!” said Kipps, not altogether inaudibly.

  2

  It is all very well to sit in the sunshine and talk of the house you will have, and another altogether to achieve it. We English—all the world indeed today—live in a strange atmosphere of neglected great issues, of insistent, triumphant petty things, we
are given up to the fine littlenesses of intercourse; table manners and small correctitudes are the substance of our lives. You do not escape these things for long even by so catastrophic a proceeding as flying to London with a young lady of no wealth and inferior social position. The mists of noble emotion swirl and pass and there you are divorced from all your deities and grazing in the meadows under the Argus eyes of the social system, the innumerable mean judgments you feel raining upon you, upon your clothes and bearing, upon your pretensions and movements.

  Our world today is a meanly conceived one—it is only an added meanness to conceal that fact. For one consequence, it has very few nice little houses; such things do not come for the asking, they are not to be bought with money during ignoble times. Its houses are built on the ground of monstrously rich, shabbily extortionate landowners, by poor, parsimonious, greedy people in a mood of elbowing competition. What can you expect from such ridiculous conditions? To go house hunting is to spy out the nakedness of this pretentious world, to see what our civilization amounts to when you take away curtains and flounces and carpets and all the fluster and distraction of people and fittings. It is to see mean plans meanly executed for mean ends, the conventions torn aside, the secrets stripped, the substance underlying all such Chester Cootery, soiled and worn and left.

  So you see our poor, dear Kippses going to and fro, in Hythe, in Sandgate, in Ashford and Canterbury and Deal and Dover—at last even in Folkestone, with “orders to view,” pink and green and white and yellow orders to view, and labelled keys in Kipps’ hand and frowns and perplexity upon their faces …