Kipps by H. G. Wells (distant reading txt) 📕

high light of Shalford’s baldness and grasped the situation and went away. And then Kipps (with that advertisement in his pocket) was able to come back to the business in hand.

He became aware that Shalford had asked a question. “Yessir, nosir, rightsir. I’m sorting up zephyrs tomorrow, Sir,” said Kipps.

Presently he had a moment to himself again, and, taking up a safe position behind a newly unpacked pile of summer lace curtains, he straightened out the piece of paper and reperused it. It was a little perplexing. That “Arthur Waddy or Arthur Kipps”⁠—did that imply two persons or one? He would ask Pierce or Buggins. Only⁠—

It had always been impressed upon him that there was something demanding secrecy about his mother.

“Don’t you answer no questions about your mother,” his aunt had been wont to say. “Tell them you don’t know, whatever it is they ask you.”

“Now this⁠—?”

Kipps’ face became portentously careful and he tugged at his moustache, such as it was, hard.

He had always represented his father as being a “gentleman farmer.” “It didn’t pay,” he used to say with a picture in his own mind of a penny magazine aristocrat prematurely worn out by worry. “I’m a Norfan, both sides,” he would explain, with the air of one who had seen trouble. He said he lived with his uncle and aunt, but he did not say that they kept a toy shop, and to tell anyone that his uncle had been a butler⁠—a servant!⁠—would have seemed the maddest of indiscretions. Almost all the assistants in the Emporium were equally reticent and vague, so great is their horror of “Lowness” of any sort. To ask about this “Waddy or Kipps” would upset all these little fictions. He was not, as a matter of fact, perfectly clear about his real status in the world (he was not, as a matter of fact, perfectly clear about anything), but he knew that there was a quality about his status that was⁠—detrimental.

Under the circumstances⁠—?

It occurred to him that it would save a lot of trouble to destroy the advertisement there and then.

In which case he would have to explain to Chitterlow!

“Eng!” said Mr. Kipps.

“Kipps,” cried Carshot, who was shopwalking; “Kipps, Forward!”

He thrust back the crumpled paper into his pocket and sallied forth to the customers.

“I want,” said the customer, looking vaguely about her through glasses, “a little bit of something to cover a little stool I have. Anything would do⁠—a remnant or anything⁠—”

The matter of the advertisement remained in abeyance for half an hour, and at the end the little stool was still a candidate for covering and Kipps had a thoroughly representative collection of the textile fabrics in his department to clear away. He was so angry about the little stool that the crumpled advertisement lay for a space in his pocket, absolutely forgotten.

Kipps sat on his tin box under the gas bracket that evening, and looked up the name Euphemia and learnt what it meant in the “Enquire Within About Everything” that constituted Buggins’ reference library. He hoped Buggins, according to his habit, would ask him what he was looking for, but Buggins was busy turning out his week’s washing. “Two collars,” said Buggins, “half pair socks, two dickeys. Shirt?⁠ ⁠… M’m. There ought to be another collar somewhere.”

“Euphemia,” said Kipps at last, unable altogether to keep to himself this suspicion of a high origin that floated so delightfully about him, “Eu⁠—phemia; it isn’t a name common people would give to a girl, is it?”

“It isn’t the name any decent people would give to a girl,” said Buggins, “⁠—common or not.”

“Lor’!” said Kipps. “Why?”

“It’s giving girls names like that,” said Buggins, “that nine times out of ten makes ’em go wrong. It unsettles ’em. If ever I was to have a girl, if ever I was to have a dozen girls, I’d call ’em all Jane. Every one of ’em. You couldn’t have a better name than that. Euphemia indeed! What next?⁠ ⁠… Good Lord!⁠ ⁠… That isn’t one of my collars there, is it? under your bed?”⁠ ⁠…

Kipps got him the collar.

“I don’t see no great ’arm in Euphemia,” he said as he did so.

After that he became restless. “I’m a good mind to write that letter,” he said, and then, finding Buggins preoccupied wrapping his washing up in the “half sox,” added to himself, “a thundering good mind.”

So he got his penny bottle of ink, borrowed the pen from Buggins and with no very serious difficulty in spelling or composition, did as he had resolved.

He came back into the bedroom about an hour afterwards a little out of breath and pale. “Where you been?” said Buggins, who was now reading the Daily World Manager, which came to him in rotation from Carshot.

“Out to post some letters,” said Kipps, hanging up his hat.

“Crib hunting?”

“Mostly,” said Kipps.

“Rather,” he added, with a nervous laugh; “what else?”

Buggins went on reading. Kipps sat on his bed and regarded the back of the Daily World Manager thoughtfully.

“Buggins,” he said at last.

Buggins lowered his paper and looked.

“I say, Buggins, what do these here advertisements mean that say so-and-so will hear of something greatly to his advantage?”

“Missin’ people,” said Buggins, making to resume reading.

“How d’yer mean?” asked Kipps. “Money left and that sort of thing?”

Buggins shook his head. “Debts,” he said, “more often than not.”

“But that ain’t to his advantage.”

“They put that to get ’old of ’em,” said Buggins. “Often it’s wives.”

“What you mean?”

“Deserted wives, try and get their husbands back that way.”

“I suppose it is legacies sometimes, eh? Perhaps if someone was left a hundred pounds by someone⁠—”

“Hardly ever,” said Buggins.

“Well, ’ow⁠—?” began Kipps and hesitated.

Buggins resumed reading. He was very much excited by a leader on Indian affairs. “By Jove!” he said, “it won’t do to give these here Blacks votes.”

“No fear,” said Kipps.

“They’re different altogether,” said Buggins. “They ’aven’t the sound sense of Englishmen, and they ’aven’t the character. There’s a sort of tricky dishonesty about ’em⁠—false witness and all that⁠—of which an Englishman has no idea. Outside