Kipps by H. G. Wells (bts books to read TXT) 📕

1

So Kipps embarked upon his engagement, steeled himself to the high enterprise of marrying above his breeding. The next morning found him dressing with a certain quiet severity of movement, and it seemed to his landlady’s housemaid that he was unusually dignified at breakfast. He meditated profoundly over his kipper and his kidney and bacon. He was going to New Romney to tell the old people what had happened and where he stood. And the love of Helen had also given him courage to do what Buggins had once suggested to him as a thing he would do were he in Kipps’ place, and that was to hire a motor-car for the afternoon. He had an early cold lunch, and then, with an air of quiet resolution, assumed a cap and coat he had purchased to this end, and, thus equipped, strolled round, blowing slightly, to the motor shop. The transaction was unexpectedly easy, and within the hour, Kipps, spectacled and wrapped about, was tootling through Dymchurch.

They came to a stop smartly and neatly outside the little toyshop. ‘Make that thing ‘oot a bit, will you?’ said Kipps. ‘Yes. That’s it.’ ‘Whup,’ said the motor-car. ‘Whurrup.’ Both his aunt and uncle came out on the pavement. ‘Why, it’s Artie!’ cried his aunt; and Kipps had a moment of triumph.

He descended to hand-claspings, removed wraps and spectacles, and the motor-driver retired to take ‘an hour off.’ Old Kipps surveyed the machinery and disconcerted Kipps for a moment by asking him, in a knowing tone, what they asked him for a thing like that. The two men stood inspecting the machine and impressing the neighbours for a time, and then they strolled through the shop into the little parlour for a drink.

‘They ain’t settled,’ old Kipps had said at the neighbours. ‘They ain’t got no further than experiments. There’s a bit of take-in about each. You take my advice and wait, me boy, even if it’s a year or two before you buy one for your own use.’

(Though Kipps had said nothing of doing anything of the sort.)

”Ow d’you like that whisky I sent?’ asked Kipps, dodging the old familiar bunch of children’s pails.

Old Kipps became tactful. ‘It’s very good whisky, my boy,’ said old Kipps. ‘I ‘aven’t the slightest doubt it’s a very good whisky, and cost you a tidy price. But—dashed if it soots me! They put this here Foozle Ile in it, my boy, and it ketches me jest ‘ere.’ He indicated his centre of figure. ‘Gives me the heartburn,’ he said, and shook his head rather sadly.

‘It’s a very good whisky,’ said Kipps. ‘It’s what the actor-manager chaps drink in London, I ‘appen to know.’

‘I dessay they do, my boy,’ said old Kipps, ‘but then they’ve ‘ad their livers burnt out—and I aven’t. They ain’t dellicat like me. My stummik always ‘as been extrydellicat. Sometimes it’s almost been as though nothing would lay on it. But that’s in passing. I liked those segars. You can send me some more of them segars…’

You cannot lead a conversation straight from the gastric consequences of Foozle Ile to Love, and so Kipps after a friendly inspection of a rare old engraving after Morland (perfect except for a hole kicked through the centre) that his Uncle had recently purchased by private haggle, came to the topic of the old people’s removal.

At the outset of Kipps’ great fortunes there had been much talk of some permanent provision for them. It had been conceded they were to be provided for comfortably, and the phrase, ‘retire from business,’ had been very much in the air. Kipps had pictured an ideal cottage with a creeper always in exuberant flower about the door, where the sun shone for ever, and the wind never blew, and a perpetual welcome hovered in the doorway. It was an agreeable dream, but when it came to the point of deciding upon this particular cottage or that, and on this particular house or that, Kipps was surprised by an unexpected clinging to the little home, which he had always understood to be the worst of all possible houses.

‘We don’t want to move in a ‘urry,’ said Mrs. Kipps.

‘When we want to move, we want to move for life. I’ve had enough moving about in my time,’ said old Kipps.

‘We can do here a bit more now we done here so long,’ said Mrs. Kipps.

‘You lemme look about a bit fust,’ said old Kipps.

And in looking about old Kipps found perhaps a finer joy than any mere possession could have given. He would shut his shop more or less effectually against the intrusion of customers, and toddle abroad seeking a new matter for his dream; no house was too small and none too large for his knowing inquiries. Occupied houses took his fancy more than vacant ones, and he would remark. ‘You won’t be a-livin’ ‘ere for ever, even if you think you will,’ when irate householders protested against the unsolicited examination of their more intimate premises…

Remarkable difficulties arose, of a totally unexpected sort.

‘If we ‘ave a larger ‘ouse,’ said Mrs. Kipps, with sudden bitterness, ‘we shall want a servant, and I don’t want no gells in the place larfin’ at me, sniggerin’ and larfin’ and prancin’ and trapesin’, lardy da!’

‘If we ‘ave a smaller ‘ouse,’ said Mrs. Kipps, ‘there won’t be room to swing a cat.’

Room to swing a cat, it seemed, was absolutely essential. It was an infrequent but indispensable operation.

‘When we do move,’ said old Kipps, ‘if we could get a bit of shootin’—’

‘I don’t want to sell off all this here stock for nothin’,’ said old Kipps. ‘It’s took years to ‘cumulate. I put a ticket in the winder sayin’, “sellin’ orf,” but it ‘asn’t brought nothing like a roosh. One of these ‘ere dratted visitors, pretendin’ to want an air-gun, was all me ‘ad in yesterday. Jest an excuse for spyin’ round, and then go away and larf at you. No thanky to everything, it didn’t matter what… That’s ‘ow I look at it, Artie.’

They pursued meandering fancies about the topic of their future settlement for a space, and Kipps became more and more hopeless of any proper conversational opening that would lead to his great announcement, and more and more uncertain how such an opening should be taken. Once, indeed, old Kipps, anxious to get away from this dangerous subject of removals, began, ‘And what are you a-doin’ of in Folkestone? I shall have to come over and see you one of these days,’ but before Kipps could get in upon that, his uncle had passed into a general exposition of the proper treatment of landladies and their humbugging, cheating ways, and so the opportunity vanished. It seemed to Kipps the only thing to do was to go out into the town for a stroll, compose an effectual opening at leisure, and then come back and discharge it at them in its consecutive completeness. And even out-of-doors and alone, he found his mind distracted by irrelevant thoughts.

His steps led him out of the High Street towards the church, and he leant for a time over the gate that had once been the winning-post of his race with Ann Pornick, and presently found himself in a sitting position on the top rail. He had to get things smooth again, he knew; his mind was like a mirror of water after a breeze. The image of Helen and his great future was broken and mingled into fragmentary reflections of remoter things, of the good name of Old Methuselah Three Stars, of long-dormant memories the High Street saw fit, by some trick of light and atmosphere, to arouse that afternoon…

Abruptly a fine full voice from under his elbow shouted, ‘What-o, Art!’ and behold Sid Pornick was back in his world, leaning over the gate beside him, and holding out a friendly hand.

He was oddly changed, and yet oddly like the Sid that Kipps had known. He had the old broad face and mouth, abundantly freckled, the same short nose, and the same blunt chin, the same odd suggestion of his sister Ann without a touch of her beauty; but he had quite a new voice, loud, and a little hard, and his upper lip carried a stiff and very fair moustache.

Kipps shook hands. ‘I was jest thinking of you, Sid,’ he said, ‘jest this very moment, and wondering if ever I should see you again—ever. And ‘ere you are!’

‘One likes a look round at times,’ said Sid. ‘How are you, old chap?’

‘All right,’ said Kipps. ‘I just been lef—’

‘You aren’t changed much,’ interrupted Sid.

‘Ent I?’ said Kipps, foiled.

‘I knew your back directly I came round the corner. Spite of that ‘at you got on. Hang it, I said, that’s Art Kipps or the devil. And so it was.’

Kipps made a movement of his neck as if he would look at his back and judge. Then he looked Sid in the face. ‘You got a moustache, Sid,’ he said.

‘I s’pose you’re having your holidays?’ said Sid.

‘Well, partly. But I just been lef—’

‘I’m taking a bit of a holiday,’ Sid went on. ‘But the fact is, I have to give myself holidays nowadays. I’ve set up for myself.’

‘Not down here?’

‘No fear! I’m not a turnip. I’ve started in Hammersmith, manufacturing.’ Sid spoke off-hand, as though there was no such thing as pride.

‘Not drapery?’

‘No fear! Engineer. Manufacture bicycles.’ He clapped his hand to his breast pocket and produced a number of pink handbills. He handed one to Kipps, and prevented him reading it by explanations and explanatory dabs of a pointing finger. ‘That’s our make—my make, to be exact—the Red Flag—see? I got a transfer with my name—Pantocrat tyres, eight pounds —yes, there—Clinchers ten, Dunlops eleven, Ladies’ one pound more—that’s the lady’s. Best machine at a democratic price in London. No guineas and no discounts—honest trade. I build ‘em—to order. I’ve built,’ he reflected, looking away seaward, ‘seventeen. Counting orders in ‘and…

‘Come down to look at the old place a bit,’ said Sid. ‘Mother likes it at times.’

‘Thought you’d all gone away—’

‘What! after my father’s death? No! My mother’s come back, and she’s living at Muggett’s cottages. The sea-air suits ‘er. She likes the old place better than Hammersmith… and I can