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

1

WHEN Kipps left New Romney, with a small yellow tin box, a still smaller portmanteau, a new umbrella, and a keepsake half-sixpence, to become a draper, he was a youngster of fourteen, thin, with whimsical drakes’-tails at the pole of his head, smallish features, and eyes that were sometimes very light and sometimes very dark, gifts those of his birth; and by the nature of his training he was indistinct in his speech, confused in his mind, and retreating in his manners. Inexorable fate had appointed him to serve his country in commerce, and the same national bias towards private enterprise and leaving bad alone, which had left his general education to Mr. Woodrow, now indentured him firmly into the hands of Mr. Shalford of the Folkestone Drapery Bazaar. Apprenticeship is still the recognised English way to the distributing branch of the social service. If Mr. Kipps had been so unfortunate as to have been born a German he might have been educated in an elaborate and costly special school (‘over-educated—crammed up’—old Kipps) to fit him for his end—such being their pedagogic way.

He might—But why make unpatriotic reflections in a novel?

There was nothing pedagogic about Mr. Shalford.

He was an irascible, energetic little man with hairy hands, for the most part under his coat-tails, a long, shiny, bald head, a pointed aquiline nose a little askew, and a neatly trimmed beard. He walked lightly and with a confident jerk, and he was given to humming. He had added to exceptional business ‘push,’ bankruptcy under the old dispensation, and judicious matrimony. His establishment was now one of the most considerable in Folkestone, and he insisted on every inch of frontage by alternate stripes of green and yellow down the house over the shops. His shops were numbered 3, 5, and 7 on the street, and on his bill-heads 3 to 7. He encountered the abashed and awe-stricken Kipps with the praises of his System and himself. He spread himself out behind his desk with a grip on the lapel of his coat, and made Kipps a sort of speech. ‘We expect y’r to work, y’r know, and we expect y’r to study our interests,’ explained Mr. Shalford, in the regal and commercial plural.

‘Our System here is the best system y’r could have. I made it, and I ought to know. I began at the very bottom of the ladder when I was fourteen, and there isn’t a step in it I don’t know. Not a step. Mr. Booch in the desk will give y’r the card of rules and fines. Jest wait a minute.’ He pretended to be busy with some dusty memoranda under a paper-weight, while Kipps stood in a sort of paralysis of awe regarding his new master’s oval baldness. ‘Two thous’n three forty-seven pounds,’ whispered Mr. Shalford audibly, feigning forgetfulness of Kipps. Clearly a place of great transactions!

Mr. Shalford rose, and, handing Kipps a blotting-pad and an inkpot to carry, mere symbols of servitude, for he made no use of them, emerged into a counting-house where three clerks had been feverishly busy ever since his door-handle had turned. ‘Booch,’ said Mr. Shalford, ”ave y’r copy of the Rules?’ and a downtrodden, shabby little old man, with a ruler in one hand and a quill pen in his mouth, silently held out a small book with green and yellow covers, mainly devoted, as Kipps presently discovered, to a voracious system of Fines. He became acutely aware that his hands were full and that everybody was staring at him. He hesitated a moment before putting the inkpot down to free a hand.

‘Mustn’t fumble like that,’ said Mr. Shalford as Kipps pocketed the Rules. ‘Won’t do here. Come along, come along,’ cocked his coat-tails high, as a lady might hold up her dress, and led the way into the shop.

A vast, interminable place it seemed to Kipps, with unending shining counters and innumerable faultlessly dressed young men and, presently, Houri-like young women staring at him. Here there was a long vista of gloves dangling from overhead rods, there ribbons and baby linen. A short young lady in black mittens was making out the account of a customer, and was clearly confused in her addition by Shalford’s eagle eye.

A thick-set young man with a bald head and a round very wise face, who was profoundly absorbed in adjusting all the empty chairs down the counter to absolutely equal distances, awoke out of his preoccupation and answered respectfully to a few Napoleonic and quite unnecessary remarks from his employer. Kipps was told that this young man’s name was Mr. Buggins, and that he was to do whatever Mr. Buggins told him to do.

They came round a corner into a new smell, which was destined to be the smell of Kipps’ life for many years, the vague, distinctive smell of Manchester goods. A fat man with a large nose jumped—actually jumped—at their appearance, and began to fold a pattern of damask in front of him exactly like an automaton that is suddenly set going. ‘Carshot, see to this boy tomorrow,’ said the master. ‘See he don’t fumble. Smart’n ‘im-up.’

‘Yussir,’ said Carshot fatly, glanced at Kipps, and resumed his pattern-folding with extreme zeal.

‘Whatever Mr. Carshot says y’r to do, ye do,’ said Mr. Shalford, trotting onward; and Carshot blew out his face with an appearance of relief.

They crossed a large room full of the strangest things Kipps had ever seen. Ladylike figures, surmounted by black, wooden knobs in the place of the refined heads one might have reasonably expected stood about with a lifelike air of conscious fashion. ‘Costume Room,’ said Shalford. Two voices engaged in some sort of argument— ‘I can assure you, Miss Mergle, you are entirely mistaken—entirely, in supposing I should do anything so unwomanly,’—sank abruptly, and they discovered two young ladies, taller and fairer than any of the other young ladies, and with black trains to their dresses, who were engaged in writing at a little table. Whatever they told him to do Kipps gathered he was to do. He was also, he understood, to do whatever Carshot and Booch told him to do. And there were also Buggins and Mr. Shalford. And not to forget or fumble!

They descended into a cellar called The Warehouse, and Kipps had an optical illusion of errand-boys fighting. Some aerial voice said ‘Teddy!’ and the illusion passed. He looked again, and saw quite clearly that they were packing parcels, and always would be, and that the last thing in the world that they would or could possibly do was to fight. Yet he gathered from the remarks Mr. Shalford addressed to their busy backs that they had been fighting—no doubt at some past period of their lives.

Emerging in the shop again among a litter of toys and what are called ‘fancy articles,’ Shalford withdrew a hand from beneath his coat-tails to indicate an overhead change carrier. He entered into elaborate calculations to show how many minutes in one year were saved thereby, and lost himself among the figures. ‘Seven turns eight seven nine—was it? Or seven eight nine? Now, now! Why, when I was a boy your age I c’d do a sum like that as soon as hear it. We’ll soon get y’r into better shape than that. Make you Fishent. Well, y’r must take my word it comes to pounds and pounds saved in the year—pounds and pounds. System! System everywhere. Fishency.’ He went on murmuring ‘Fishency’ and ‘System’ at intervals for some time. They passed into a yard, and Mr. Shalford waved his hand to his three delivery vans, all striped green and yellow—‘uniform—green, yell’r —System.’ All over the premises were pinned absurd little cards, ‘This door locked after 7.30. By order, Edwin Shalford,’ and the like.

Mr. Shalford always wrote ‘By Order,’ though it conveyed no earthly meaning to him. He was one of those people who collect technicalities upon them as the Reduvius bug collects dirt. He was the sort of man who is not only ignorant but absolutely incapable of English. When he wanted to say he had a sixpenny-ha’penny longcloth to sell, he put it thus to startled customers: ‘Can DO you one six half, if y’like.’ He always omitted pronouns and articles and so forth; it seemed to him the very essence of the efficiently businesslike. His only preposition was ‘as’ or the compound ‘as per.’ He abbreviated every word he could; he would have considered himself the laughingstock of Wood Street if he had chanced to spell socks in any way but ‘sox.’ But, on the other hand, if he saved words here he wasted them there; he never acknowledged an order that was not an esteemed favour, nor sent a pattern without begging to submit it. He never stipulated for so many months’ credit, but bought in November ‘as Jan.’ It was not only words he abbreviated in his London communications. In paying his wholesalers his ‘System’ admitted of a constant error in the discount of a penny or twopence, and it ‘facilitated business,’ he alleged, to ignore odd pence in the cheques he wrote. His ledger clerk was so struck with the beauty of this part of the System that he started a private one on his own account with the stampbox that never came to Shalford’s knowledge.

This admirable British merchant would glow with a particular pride of intellect when writing his London orders.

‘Ah! do y’r think you’ll ever be able to write London orders?’ he would say with honest pride to Kipps, waiting impatiently long after closing-time to take these triumphs of commercial efficiency to post, and so end the interminable day.

Kipps shook his head, anxious for Mr. Shalford to get on.

‘Now, here, f’example, I’ve written—see? ‘1 piece 1 in, cott blk elas 1/or’ ; what do I mean by that or—eh? d’ye know?’

Kipps promptly hadn’t the faintest idea.

‘And then, ‘2 ea silk net as per patts herewith’; ea—eh?’

‘Dunno, sir.’

It was not Mr. Shalford’s way to explain things. ‘Dear, dear!

Pity you couldn’t get some c’mercial education at your school. ‘Stid of all this lit’ry stuff. Well, my boy, if y’r not a bit sharper, y’ll never write London orders, that’s pretty plain. Jest stick stamps on all those letters and mind y’r stick ‘em right way up, and try and profit a little more by the opportunities your aunt and uncle have provided ye. Can’t say what’ll happen t’ye if ye don’t.’ And Kipps, tired, hungry, and belated, set about stamping with vigour and dispatch.

‘Lick the envelope,’ said Mr. Shalford, ‘lick the envelope, as though he grudged the youngster the postage-stamp gum. ‘It’s the little things mount up,’ he would say and, indeed, that was his philosophy of life—to hustle and save, always to hustle and save. His political creed linked Reform, which meant nothing, with Peace and Economy, which meant a sweated expenditure, and his conception of a satisfactory municipal life was to ‘keep down the rates.’ Even his religion was to save his soul and to preach a similar cheeseparing