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

Kipps was a little pale, but quite self-possessed, as he approached Mrs. Bindon Botting’s door. He took a turn while some people went in and then faced it manfully. The door opened and revealed⁠—Ann!

In the background through a draped doorway behind a big fern in a great art pot the elder Miss Botting was visible talking to two guests; the auditory background was a froth of feminine voices.⁠ ⁠…

Our two young people were much too amazed to give one another any formula of greeting, though they had parted warmly enough. Each was already in a state of extreme tension to meet the demands of this great and unprecedented occasion of an Anagram Tea. “Lor’!” said Ann, her sole remark, and then the sense of Miss Botting’s eye ruled her straight again. She became very pale, but she took his hat mechanically, and he was already removing his gloves. “Ann,” he said in a low tone, and then “Fency!” The eldest Miss Botting knew Kipps was the sort of guest who requires nursing, and she came forward vocalising charm. She said it was “Awfully jolly of him to come, awfully jolly. It was awfully difficult to get any good men!”

She handed Kipps forward, mumbling in a dazed condition, to the drawing-room, and there he encountered Helen looking unfamiliar in an unfamiliar hat. It was as if he had not met her for years.

She astonished him. She didn’t seem to mind in the least his going to London. She held out a shapely hand, and smiled encouragingly. “You’ve faced the anagrams?” she said.

The second Miss Botting accosted them, a number of oblong pieces of paper in her hand, mysteriously inscribed. “Take an anagram,” she said; “take an anagram,” and boldly pinned one of these brief documents to Kipps’ lapel. The letters were “Cypshi,” and Kipps from the very beginning suspected this was an anagram for Cuyps. She also left a thing like a long dance programme, from which dangled a little pencil in his hand. He found himself being introduced to people, and then he was in a corner with the short lady in a big bonnet, who was pelting him with gritty little bits of small talk that were gone before you could take hold of them and reply.

“Very hot,” said this lady. “Very hot, indeed⁠—hot all the summer⁠—remarkable year⁠—all the years remarkable now⁠—don’t know what we’re coming to⁠—don’t you think so, Mr. Kipps?”

“Oo rather,” said Kipps, and wondered if Ann was still in the hall. Ann!

He ought not to have stared at her like a stuck fish and pretended not to know her. That couldn’t be right. But what was right?

The lady in the big bonnet proceeded to a second discharge. “Hope you’re fond of anagrams, Mr. Kipps⁠—difficult exercise⁠—still one must do something to bring people together⁠—better than Ludo anyhow. Don’t you think so, Mr. Kipps?”

Ann fluttered past the open door. Her eyes met his in amazed enquiry. Something had got dislocated in the world for both of them.⁠ ⁠…

He ought to have told her he was engaged. He ought to have explained things to her. Perhaps even now he might be able to drop her a hint.

“Don’t you think so, Mr. Kipps?”

“Oo rather,” said Kipps for the third time.

A lady with a tired smile, who was labelled conspicuously “Wogdelenk,” drifted towards Kipps’ interlocutor and the two fell into conversation. Kipps found himself socially aground. He looked about him. Helen was talking to a curate and laughing. Kipps was overcome by a vague desire to speak to Ann. He was for sidling doorward.

“What are you, please?” said an extraordinarily bold, tall girl, and arrested him while she took down “Cypshi.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what it means,” she explained. “I’m Sir Bubh. Don’t you think anagrams are something chronic?”

Kipps made stockish noises, and the young lady suddenly became the nucleus of a party of excited friends who were forming a syndicate to guess, and barred his escape. She took no further notice of him. He found himself jammed against an occasional table and listening to the conversation of Mrs. “Wogdelenk” and his lady with the big bonnet.

“She packed her two beauties off together,” said the lady in the big bonnet. “Time enough, too. Don’t think much of this girl; she’s got as housemaid now. Pretty, of course, but there’s no occasion for a housemaid to be pretty⁠—none whatever. And she doesn’t look particularly up to her work either. Kind of ’mazed expression.”

“You never can tell,” said the lady labelled “Wogdelenk;” “you never can tell. My wretches are big enough, Heaven knows, and do they work? Not a bit of it!”⁠ ⁠…

Kipps felt dreadfully out of it with regard to all these people, and dreadfully in it with Ann.

He scanned the back of the big bonnet and concluded it was an extremely ugly bonnet indeed. It got jerking forward as each short, dry sentence was snapped off at the end and a plume of osprey on it jerked excessively. “She hasn’t guessed even one!” followed by a shriek of girlish merriment, came from the group about the tall, bold girl. They’d shriek at him presently, perhaps. Beyond thinking his own anagram might be Cuyps, he hadn’t a notion. What a chatter they were all making! It was just like a summer sale! Just the sort of people who’d give a lot of trouble and swap you! And suddenly the smouldering fires of rebellion leapt to flame again. These were a rotten lot of people, and the anagrams were rotten nonsense, and he, Kipps, had been a rotten fool to come. There was Helen away there, still laughing, with her curate. Pity she couldn’t marry a curate and leave him (Kipps) alone! Then he’d know what to do. He disliked the whole gathering collectively and in detail. Why were they all trying to make him one of themselves? He perceived unexpected ugliness everywhere about him. There were two great pins jabbed through the tall girl’s hat, and the swirls of