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

He found these thoughts battling with certain conversational aggressions from Mrs. Wace, and then Revel arrived and took the centre of the stage.

The author of that brilliant romance, “Red Hearts a-Beating,” was a less imposing man than Kipps had anticipated, but he speedily effaced that disappointment by his predominating manners. Although he lived habitually in the vivid world of London, his collar and tie were in no way remarkable, and he was neither brilliantly handsome nor curly nor long-haired. His personal appearance suggested arm chairs, rather than the equestrian exercises and amorous toyings and passionate intensities of his masterpiece; he was inclined to be fat, with whitish flesh, muddy coloured straight hair, he had a rather shapeless and truncated nose and his chin was asymmetrical. One eye was more inclined to stare than the other. He might have been esteemed a little undistinguished looking were it not for his beeswaxed moustache, which came amidst his features with a pleasing note of incongruity, and the whimsical wrinkles above and about his greater eye. His regard sought and found Helen’s as he entered the room and they shook hands presently with an air of intimacy Kipps, for no clear reason, found objectionable. He saw them clasp their hands, heard Coote’s characteristic cough⁠—a sound rather more like a very, very old sheep, a quarter of a mile away, being blown to pieces by a small charge of gunpowder than anything else in the world⁠—did some confused beginnings of a thought, and then they were all going in to dinner and Helen’s shining bare arm lay along his sleeve. Kipps was in no state for conversation. She glanced at him, and, though he did not know it, very slightly pressed his elbow. He struggled with strange respiratory dislocations. Before them went Coote, discoursing in amiable reverberations to Mrs. Walshingham, and at the head of the procession was Mrs. Bindon Botting talking fast and brightly beside the erect military figure of little Mr. Wace. (He was not a soldier really, but he had caught a martinet bearing by living so close to Shorncliffe.) Revel came last, in charge of Mrs. Wace’s queenly black and steel, politely admiring in a flute-like cultivated voice the mellow wall paper of the staircase. Kipps marvelled at everybody’s self-possession.

From the earliest spoonful of soup it became evident that Revel considered himself responsible for the table talk. And before the soup was over it was almost as manifest that Mrs. Bindon Botting inclined to consider his sense of responsibility excessive. In her circle Mrs. Bindon Botting was esteemed an agreeable rattle, her manner and appearance were conspicuously vivacious for one so plump, and she had an almost Irish facility for humorous description. She would keep people amused all through an afternoon call, with the story of how her jobbing gardener had got himself married and what his home was like, or how her favourite butt, Mr. Stigson Warder, had all his unfortunate children taught almost every conceivable instrument because they had the phrenological bump of music abnormally large. “They got to trombones, my dear!” she would say, with her voice coming to a climax. Usually her friends conspired to draw her out, but on this occasion they neglected to do so, a thing that militated against her keen desire to shine in Revel’s eyes. After a time she perceived that the only thing for her to do was to cut in on the talk, on her own account, and this she began to do. She made several ineffectual snatches at the general attention and then Revel drifted towards a topic she regarded as particularly her own, the ordering of households.

They came to the thing through talk about localities. “We are leaving our house in The Boltons,” said Revel, “and taking a little place at Wimbledon, and I think of having rooms in Dane’s Inn. It will be more convenient in many ways. My wife is furiously addicted to golf and exercise of all sorts, and I like to sit about in clubs⁠—I haven’t the strength necessary for these hygienic proceedings⁠—and the old arrangement suited neither of us. And, besides, no one could imagine the demoralisation the domestics of West London have undergone during the last three years.”

“It’s the same everywhere,” said Mrs. Bindon Botting.

“Very possibly it is. A friend of mine calls it the servile tradition in decay and regards it all as a most hopeful phenomenon⁠—”

“He ought to have had my last two criminals,” said Mrs. Bindon Botting.

She turned to Mrs. Wace while Revel came again a little too late with a “Possibly⁠—”

“And I haven’t told you, my dear,” she said, speaking with voluble rapidity, “I’m in trouble again.”

“The last girl?”

“The last girl. Before I can get a cook, my hard won housemaid”⁠—she paused⁠—“chucks it.”

“Panic?” asked young Walshingham.

“Mysterious grief! Everything merry as a marriage bell until my Anagram Tea! Then in the evening a portentous rigour of bearing, a word or so from my Aunt, and immediately⁠—Floods of Tears and Notice!” For a moment her eye rested thoughtfully on Kipps, as she said: “Is there anything heartrending about Anagrams?”

“I find them so,” said Revel. “I⁠—”

But Mrs. Bindon Botting got away again. “For a time it made me quite uneasy⁠—”

Kipps jabbed his lip with his fork rather painfully, and was recalled from a fascinated glare at Mrs. Botting to the immediate facts of dinner.

“⁠—whether anagrams might not have offended the good domestic’s Moral Code⁠—you never can tell. We made enquiries. No. No. No. She must go and that’s all!”

“One perceives,” said Revel, “in these disorders, dimly and distantly, the last dying glow of the age of Romance. Let us suppose, Mrs. Botting, let us at least try to suppose⁠—it is Love.”

Kipps clattered with his knife and fork.

“It’s love,” said Mrs. Botting; “what else can it be? Beneath the orderly humdrum of our lives these romances are going on, until at last they bust up and give Notice and upset our humdrum altogether. Some fatal, wonderful soldier⁠—”

“The passions of the common or house domestic,” said Revel, and recovered possession of