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

He tugged at his little moustache.

He would like to run against Ann very much.⁠ ⁠…

“And it would be juiced awkward if I did!”

In Folkestone! It was a jolly sight too close.⁠ ⁠…

Then, at the thought that he might run against Ann in his beautiful evening dress on the way to the band, he fluttered into a momentary dream, that jumped abruptly into a nightmare.

Suppose he met her when he was out with Helen! “Oh, Lor’!” said Kipps. Life had developed a new complication that would go on and go on. For some time he wished with the utmost fervour that he had not kissed Ann, that he had not gone to New Romney the second time. He marvelled at his amazing forgetfulness of Helen on that occasion. Helen took possession of his mind. He would have to write to Helen, an easy, offhand letter, to say that he had come to London for a day or so. He tried to imagine her reading it. He would write just such another letter to the old people, and say he had had to come up on business. That might do for them all right, but Helen was different. She would insist on explanations.

He wished he could never go back to Folkestone again. That would settle the whole affair.

A passing group attracted his attention, two faultlessly dressed gentlemen and a radiantly expensive lady. They were talking, no doubt, very brilliantly. His eyes followed them. The lady tapped the arm of the left hand gentleman with a daintily tinted glove. Swells! No end.⁠ ⁠…

His soul looked out upon life in general as a very small nestling might peep out of its nest. What an extraordinary thing life was, to be sure, and what a remarkable variety of people there were in it!

He lit a cigarette and speculated upon that receding group of three, and blew smoke and watched them. They seemed to do it all right. Probably they all had incomes of very much over twelve hundred a year. Perhaps not. Probably none of them suspected, as they went past, that he, too, was a gentleman of independent means, dressed, as he was, without distinction. Of course things were easier for them. They were brought up always to dress well and do the right thing from their very earliest years; they started clear of all his perplexities; they had never got mixed up with all sorts of different people who didn’t go together. If, for example, that lady there got engaged to that gentleman, she would be quite safe from any encounter from a corpulent, osculatory Uncle, or Chitterlow, or the dangerously insignificant eye of Pierce.

His thoughts came round to Helen.

When they were married and Cuyps, or Cuyp⁠—Coote had failed to justify his “s”⁠—and in that west end flat and shaken free of all these low class associations, would he and she parade here of an afternoon dressed like that? It would be rather fine to do so. If one’s dress was all right.

Helen!

She was difficult to understand at times.

He blew extensive clouds of cigarette smoke.

There would be teas, there would be dinners, there would be calls. Of course he would get into the way of it.

But Anagrams were a bit stiff to begin with!

It was beastly confusing at first to know when to use your fork at dinner, and all that. Still⁠—

He felt an extraordinary doubt whether he would get into the way of it. He was interested for a space by a girl and groom on horseback, and then he came back to his personal preoccupations.

He would have to write to Helen. What could he say to explain his absence from the Anagram Tea? She had been pretty clear she wanted him to come. He recalled her resolute face without any great tenderness. He knew he would look like a silly ass at that confounded tea! Suppose he shirked it and went back in time for the dinner! Dinners were beastly difficult, too, but not as bad as Anagrams. The very first thing that might happen when he got back to Folkestone would be to run against Ann. Suppose, after all, he did meet Ann when he was with Helen!

What queer encounters were possible in the world!

Thank goodness, they were going to live in London!

But that brought him around to Chitterlow. The Chitterlows were coming to London, too. If they didn’t get money they’d come after it; they weren’t the sort of people to be choked off easily, and if they did they’d come to London to produce their play. He tried to imagine some seemly social occasion invaded by Chitterlow and his rhetoric, by his torrential thunder of self-assertion, the whole company flattened thereunder like wheat under a hurricane.

Confound and hang Chitterlow! Yet, somehow, somewhen, one would have to settle accounts with him! And there was Sid! Sid was Ann’s brother. He realised with sudden horror the social indiscretion of accepting Sid’s invitation to dinner.

Sid wasn’t the sort of chap one could snub or cut, and besides⁠—Ann’s brother! He didn’t want to cut him. It would be worse than cutting Buggins and Pierce⁠—a sight worse. And after that lunch!

It would be the next thing to cutting Ann herself. And even as to Ann!

Suppose he was with Helen or Coote!⁠ ⁠…

“Oh, Blow!” he said, at last, and then, viciously, “Blow!” and so rose and flung away his cigarette end, and pursued his reluctant, dubiating way towards the really quite uncongenial splendours of the Royal Grand.⁠ ⁠…

And it is vulgarly imagined that to have money is to have no troubles at all!

Kipps endured splendour at the Royal Grand Hotel for three nights and days, and then he retreated in disorder. The Royal Grand defeated and overcame and routed Kipps, not of intention, but by sheer royal grandeur, grandeur combined with an organisation for his comfort carried to excess. On his return he came upon a difficulty; he had lost his circular piece of cardboard with the number of his room, and he drifted about the