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

It was part of the inexorable decrees of Providence that almost immediately afterwards the residuum of Kipps had to pass a very, very long and observant-looking girls’ school.

Kipps recovered consciousness again on the road between Shorncliffe station and Cheriton, though he cannot remember, indeed, to this day he has never attempted to remember, how he got there. And he was back at certain thoughts suggested by his last night’s novel-reading, that linked up directly with the pariah-like emotions of these last encounters. The novel lay at home upon the chiffonier; it was one about society and politics—there is no need whatever to give the title or name the author—written with a heavy-handed thoroughness that overrode any possibility of resistance on the part of the Kipps’ mind. It had crushed all his poor edifice of ideals, his dreams of a sensible, unassuming existence, of snugness, of not caring what people said, and all the rest of it, to dust; it had reinstated, squarely and strongly again, the only proper conception of English social life. There was a character in the book who trifled with Art, who was addicted to reading French novels, who dressed in a loose, careless way, who was a sorrow to his dignified, silvery haired, politico-religious mother, and met the admonitions of bishops with a front of brass. He treated a ‘nice girl,’ to whom they had got him engaged, badly; he married beneath him—some low thing or other. And sank…

Kipps could not escape the application of the case. He was enabled to see how this sort of thing looked to decent people; he was enabled to gauge the measure of the penalties due. His mind went from that to the frozen marble of Coote’s visage.

He deserved it!

That day of remorse! Later it found him upon the site of his building operations and surveying the disorder of preparation in a mood near to despair, his mackintosh over his arm.

Hardly any one was at work that day—no doubt the builders were having him in some obscure manner—and the whole place seemed a dismal and depressing litter. The builder’s shed, black lettered WILKINS, BUILDER, HYTHE, looked like a stranded thing amidst a cast-up disorder of wheelbarrows and wheeling planks, and earth, and sand, and bricks. The foundations of the walls were trenches full of damp concrete, drying in patches; the rooms—it was incredible they could ever be rooms—were shaped out as squares and oblongs of coarse wet grass and sorrel. They looked absurdly small— dishonestly small. What could you expect? Of course the builders were having him, building too small, building all wrong, using bad materials! Old Kipps had told him a wrinkle or two. The builders were having him, young Walshingham was having him, everybody was having him! They were having him and laughing at him because they didn’t respect him. They didn’t respect him because he couldn’t do things right. Who could respect him?…

He was an outcast, he had no place in the society of mankind. He had had his chance in the world and turned his back on it. He had ‘behaved badly’—that was the phrase…

Here a great house was presently to arise—a house to be paid for, a house neither he nor Ann could manage—with eleven bedrooms, and four disrespectful servants having them all the time!

How had it all happened exactly?

This was the end of his great fortune! What a chance he had had! If he had really carried out his first intentions and stuck to things, how much better everything might have been! If he had got a tutor—that had been in his mind originally— a special sort of tutor, to show him everything right. A tutor for gentlemen of neglected education. If he had read more and attended better to what Coote had said…

Coote, who had just cut him!…

Eleven bedrooms! What had possessed him? No one would ever come to see them; no one would ever have anything to do with them. Even his aunt cut him! His uncle treated him with a half-contemptuous sufferance. He had not a friend worth counting in the world! Buggins, Carshot, Pearce—shop assistants! The Pornicks—a low, Socialist lot! He stood among his foundations like a lonely figure among ruins; he stood among the ruins of his future, and owned himself a foolish and mistaken man. He saw himself and Ann living out their shameful lives in this great crazy place—as it would be—with everybody laughing secretly at them, and the eleven bedrooms and nobody approaching them—nobody nice and right, that is—for ever. And Ann!

What was the matter with Ann? She’d given up going for walks lately, got touchy and tearful, been fitful with her food. Just when she didn’t ought to. It was all a part of the judgment upon wrong-doing; it was all part of the social penalties that Juggernaut of a novel had brought home to his mind.

3

He let himself in with his latchkey. He went moodily into the dining-room and got out the plans to look at them. He had a vague hope that there would prove to be only ten bedrooms. But he found there were still eleven. He became aware of Ann standing over him. ‘Look ‘ere, Artie!’ said Ann.

He looked up and found her holding a number of white oblongs.

His eyebrows rose.

‘It’s Callers,’ said Ann.

He put his plans aside slowly, and took and read the cards in silence, with a sort of solemnity. Callers! then perhaps he wasn’t to be left out of the world after all. Mrs. G. Porrett Smith; Miss Porrett Smith; Miss Mabel Porrett Smith; and two smaller cards of the Rev. G. Porrett Smith. ‘Lor!’ he said. ‘Clergy!’

‘There was a lady,’ said Ann, ‘and two growed-up gels— all dressed up!’

‘And ‘im?’

There wasn’t no ‘im.’

‘Not—?’ He held out the little card.

‘No. There was a lady and two young ladies.’

‘But—these cards! Whad they go and leave these two little cards with the Rev. G. Smith on for? Not if ‘e wasn’t with ‘em.’

”E wasn’t with ‘em.’

‘Not a little chap—dodgin’ about be’ind the others? And didn’t come in?’

‘I didn’t see no gentleman with them at all,’ said Ann.

‘Rum!’ said Kipps. A half-forgotten experience came back to him. ‘I know,’ he said, waving the reverend gentleman’s card, ”e give ‘em the slip; that’s what he’d done. Gone off while they was rapping before you let ‘em in. It’s a fair call any’ow.’ He felt a momentary base satisfaction at his absence. ‘What did they talk about, Ann?’

There was a pause. ‘I didn’t let ‘em in,’ said Ann.

He looked up suddenly and perceived that something unusual was the matter with Ann. Her face was flushed, her eyes were red and hard.

‘Didn’t let ‘em in?’

‘No! They didn’t come in at all.’

He was too astonished for words.

‘I answered the door,’ said Ann. ‘I’d been upstairs, ‘namelling the floor. ‘Ow was I to think about Callers, Artie? We ain’t never ‘ad Callers, all the time we been ‘ere. I’d sent Gwendolen out for a bref of fresh air, and there I was upstairs, ‘namelling that floor she done so bad, so’s to get it done before she came back. I thought I’d ‘namel that floor and then get tea, and ‘ave it quiet with you, toce and all, before she came back. ‘Ow was I to think about Callers?’

She paused. ‘Well,’ said Kipps, ‘what then?’

‘They came and rapped. ‘Ow was I to know? I thought it was a tradesman or something. Never took my apron off, never wiped the ‘namel off my ‘ands—nothin’. There they was!’

She paused again. She was getting to the disagreeable part.

‘Wad they say?’ said Kipps.

‘She says, ‘Is Mrs. Kipps at home?’ See? To me.’

‘Yes.’

‘And me all painty and no cap on and nothing, neither missis nor servant like. There, Artie, I could ‘a sunk through the floor with shame, I really could. I could ‘ardly get my voice. I couldn’t think of nothing to say but just ‘Not at ‘Ome,’ and out of ‘abit like I ‘eld the tray. And they give me the cards and went, and ‘ow I shall ever look that lady in the face again I don’t know… And that’s all about it, Artie! They looked me up and down they did, and then I shut the door on ‘em.’

‘Goo!’ said Kipps.

Ann went and poked the fire needlessly with a passion-quivering hand.

‘I wouldn’t ‘ave ‘ad that ‘appen for five pounds,’ said Kipps. ‘Clergyman and all!’

Ann dropped the poker into the fender with some ��clat, and stood up and looked at her hot face in the glass. Kipps’ disappointment grew. ‘You did ought to ‘ave known better than that, Ann! You reely did.’

He sat forward, cards in hand, with a deepening sense of social disaster. The plates were laid upon the table, toast sheltered under a cover at mid-fender, the teapot warmed beside it, and the kettle, just lifted from the hob, sang amidst the coals. Ann glanced at him for a moment, then stooped with the kettle-holder to wet the tea.

‘Tcha!’ said Kipps, with his mental state developing.

‘I don’t see it’s any use getting in a state about it now,’ said Ann.

‘Don’t you! I do. See? ‘Ere’s these peoples, good people, want to ‘ssociate with us, and ‘ere you go and slap ‘em in the face!’

‘I didn’t slap ‘em in the face.’

‘You do—practically. You slams the door in their face, and that’s all we see of ‘em ever! I wouldn’t ‘ave ‘ad this ‘appen not for a ten-pound note.’

He rounded his regrets with a grunt. For a while there was silence, save for the little stir of Ann’s few movements preparing tea.

‘Tea, Artie,’ said Ann, handing him a cup.

Kipps took it.

‘I put sugar once,’ said Ann.

‘Oo, dash it! Oo cares?’ said Kipps, taking an extraordinarily large additional lump with fury-quivering fingers, and putting his cup, with a slight excess of force on the recess cupboard. ‘Oo cares?’

‘I wouldn’t ‘ave ‘ad that ‘appen,’ he said, bidding steadily against accomplished things, ‘for twenty pounds.’

He gloomed in silence through a long minute or so.

Then Ann said the fatal thing that exploded him. ‘Artie!’ she said.

‘What?’

‘There’s Buttud Toce down there! By your foot!’

There was a pause, husband and wife regarded one another.

‘Buttud Toce, indeed!’ he said. ‘You go and mess up them callers, and then you try and stuff me up with Buttud Toce! Buttud Toce, indeed! ‘Ere’s our first chance of knowing anyone that’s at all fit to ‘sociate with—Look ‘ere, Ann! Tell you what it is—you got to return that call.’

‘Return that call!’

‘Yes—you got to return that call. That’s what you got to do! I know—’ He waved his arm vaguely towards the miscellany of books in the recess. ‘It’s in Manners and Rools of Good S’ity. You got to find jest ‘ow many cards to leave, and you got to go and leave ‘em. See?’

Ann’s face expressed terror. ‘But, Artie!’ ‘Ow can I?’

”Ow can you?’ ‘Ow could you? You got to do it, any’ow. They won’t know you—not in your Bond Street ‘At! If they do, they won’t say nothing.’

His voice assumed a note of entreaty. ‘You mus’, Ann.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You mus’.’

‘I can’t, and I won’t. Anything in reason I’ll do, but face those people again I can’t—after what ‘as ‘appened.’

‘You won’t?’

‘No!’…

‘So there they go—orf! And we never see them again! And so it goes on! So it goes on! We don’t know nobody, and