Kipps

by H. G. Wells

  A simple but sufficient meal had been distributed with careless spontaneity over the little round table in the room with the photographs and looking-glass, and when a plate had, by Chitterlow's direction, been taken from under the marmalade in the cupboard, and the kitchen fork and a knife that was not loose in its handle had been found for Kipps, they began and made a tumultuous repast. Chitterlow ate with quiet enormity, but it did not interfere with the flow of his talk. He introduced Kipps to his wife very briefly; she had obviously heard of Kipps before, and he made it vaguely evident that the production of the comedy was the thing chiefly settled. His reach extended over the table, and he troubled nobody. When Mrs Chitterlow, who for a little while seemed socially self-conscious, reproved him for taking a potato with a jab of his fork, he answered, ‘Well, you shouldn't have married a man of Genius,’ and from a subsequent remark it was perfectly clear that Chitterlow's standing in this respect was made no secret of in his household.

  They drank old Methuselah and siphon soda, and there was no clearing away; they just sat among the plates and things, and Mrs Chitterlow took her husband's tobacco-pouch and made a cigarette and smoked, and blew smoke, and looked at Kipps with her large brown eyes. Kipps had seen cigarettes smoked by ladies before, ‘for fun,’ but this was real smoking. It frightened him rather. He felt he must not encourage this lady – at any rate, in Chitterlow's presence.

  They became very cheerful after the repast, and as there was now no waste to deplore, such as one experiences in the windy open air, Chitterlow gave his voice full vent. He fell to praising Kipps very highly and loudly. He said he had known Kipps was the right sort, he had seen it from the first, almost before he got up out of the mud on that memorable night. ‘You can,’ he said, ‘sometimes. That was why—’ He stopped, but he seemed on the verge of explaining that it was his certainty of Kipps being the right sort had led him to confer this great Fortune upon him. He left that impression. He threw out a number of long sentences and material for sentences of a highly philosophical and incoherent character about Coincidences. It became evident he considered dramatic criticism in a perilously low condition….

  About four Kipps found himself stranded, as it were, by a receding Chitterlow on a seat upon the Leas.

  He was chiefly aware that Chitterlow was an overwhelming personality. He puffed his cheeks and blew.

  No doubt this was seeing life, but had he particularly wanted to see life that day? In a way Chitterlow had interrupted him. The day he had designed for himself was altogether different from this. He had been going to read through a precious little volume called Don't21 that Coote had sent round for him – a book of invaluable hints, a summary of British deportment, that had only the one defect of being at points a little out of date.

  That reminded him he had intended to perform a difficult exercise called an Afternoon Call upon the Cootes, as a preliminary to doing it in deadly earnest upon the Walshinghams. It was no good to-day, anyhow, now.

  He came back to Chitterlow. He would have to explain to Chitterlow he was taking too much for granted – he would have to do that. It was so difficult to do in Chitterlow's presence, though; in his absence it was easy enough. This half-share, and taking a theatre and all of it, was going too far.

  The quarter share was right enough, he supposed, but even that—! A hundred pounds! What wealth is there left in the world after one has paid out a hundred pounds from it?

  He had to recall that, in a sense, Chitterlow had indeed brought him his fortune before he could face even that.

  You must not think too hardly of him. To Kipps, you see, there was as yet no such thing as proportion in these matters. A hundred pounds went to his horizon. A hundred pounds seemed to him just exactly as big as any other large sum of money.

  CHAPTER THE SECOND

  THE WALSHINGHAMS

  § 1

  The Cootes lived in a little house in Bouverie Square, with a tangle of Virginia creeper up the verandah.

  Kipps had been troubled in his mind about knocking double or single – it is these things show what a man is made of – but happily there was a bell.

  A queer little maid with a big cap admitted Kipps, and took him through a bead curtain and a door into a little drawing-room, with a black and gold piano, a glazed bookcase, a Moorish cosy corner, and a draped looking-glass over-mantel, bright with Regent Street ornaments and photographs of various intellectual lights. A number of cards of invitation to meetings and the match list of a Band of Hope1 cricket club were stuck into the looking-glass frame, with Coote's name as a Vice-President. There was a bust of Beethoven over the bookcase, and the walls were thick with conscientiously executed but carelessly selected ‘views’ in oil and water colours and gilt frames. At the end of the room, facing the light, was a portrait that struck Kipps at first as being Coote in spectacles and feminine costume, and that he afterwards decided must be Coote's mother. Then the original appeared, and he discovered that it was Coote's elder and only sister, who kept house for him. She wore her hair in a knob behind, and the sight of the knob suggested to Kipps an explanation for a frequent gesture of Coote's, a patting exploratory movement to the back of his head. And then it occurred to him that this was quite an absurd idea altogether.

  She said, ‘Mr Kipps, I believe,’ and Kipps laughed pleasantly, and said, ‘That's it!’ and then she told him that ‘Chester’ had gone down to the art school to see about sending off some drawings or other, and that he would be back soon. Then she asked Kipps if he painted, and showed him the pictures on the wall. Kipps asked her where each one was ‘of,’ and when she showed him some of the Leas slopes, he said he never would have recognized them. He said it was funny how things looked in a picture very often. ‘But they're awfully good,’ he said. ‘Did you do them?’ He would look at them with his neck arched like a swan's, his head back and on one side, and then suddenly peer closely into them. ‘They are good. I wish I could paint.’ ‘That's what Chester says,’ she answered. ‘I tell him he has better things to do.’ Kipps seemed to get on very well with her.

  Then Coote came in, and they left her and went upstairs together, and had a good talk about reading and the Rules of Life. Or rather Coote talked, and the praises of thought and reading were in his mouth….

  You must figure Coote's study, a little bedroom put to studious uses, and over the mantel an array of things he had been led to believe indicative of culture and refinement – an autotype of Rossetti's Annunciation, an autotype of Watts' Minotaur,2 a Swiss carved pipe with many joints and a photograph of Amiens Cathedral (these two the spoils of travel), a phrenological3 bust, and some broken fossils from the Warren. A rotating bookshelf carried the Encyclopaedia Britannica (tenth edition), and on the top of it a large official-looking, age-grubby envelope, bearing the mystic words, ‘On His Majesty's Service,’ a number or so of the Bookman,4 and a box of cigarettes were lying. A table under the window bore a little microscope, some dust in a saucer, some grimy glass slips, and broken cover glasses, for Coote had ‘gone in for' biology a little. The longer side of the room was given over to bookshelves, neatly edged with pinked American cloth,5 and with an array of books – no worse an array of books than you find in any public library; an almost haphazard accumulation of obsolete classics, contemporary successes, the Hundred Best Books (including Samuel Warren's Ten Thousand a Year), old school-books, directories, the Times Atlas, Ruskin in bulk, Tennyson complete in one volume, Longfellow, Charles Kingsley,6 Smiles, a guide-book or so, several medical pamphlets, odd magazine numbers, and much indescribable rubbish – in fact, a compendium of the contemporary British mind. And in front of this array stood Kipps, ill-taught and untrained, respectful, awe-stricken, and, for the moment at any rate, willing to learn, while Coote, the exemplary Coote, talked to him of reading and the virtue in books.

  ‘Nothing enlarges the mind,’ said Coote, ‘like Travel and Books…. And they're both so easy nowadays, and so cheap!’

  ‘I've often wanted to 'ave a goo
d go in at reading,’ Kipps replied.

  ‘You'd hardly believe,’ Coote said, ‘how much you can get out of books. Provided you avoid trashy reading, that is. You ought to make a rule, Kipps, and read one Serious Book a week. Of course we can Learn even from Novels, Nace Novels that is, but it isn't the same thing as serious reading. I made a rule, One Serious Book and One Novel – no more. There's some of the Serious Books I've been reading lately – on that table: Sartor Resartus, Mrs Twaddletome's Pond Life, The Scottish Chiefs, Life and Letters of Dean Farrar.7…’

  § 2

  There came at last the sound of a gong, and Kipps descended to tea in that state of nervous apprehension at the difficulties of eating and drinking that his Aunt's knuckle rappings had implanted in him for ever. Over Coote's shoulder he became aware of a fourth person in the Moorish cosy corner, and he turned, leaving incomplete something incoherent he was saying to Miss Coote about his modest respect and desire for literature, to discover this fourth person was Miss Helen Walshingham, hatless, and looking very much at home.

  She rose at once with an extended hand to meet his hesitation.

  ‘You're stopping in Folkestone, Mr Kipps?’

  ‘’Ere on a bit of business,’ said Kipps. ‘I thought you was away in Bruges.’

  ‘That's later,’ said Miss Walshingham. ‘We're stopping until my brother's holiday begins, and we're trying to let our house. Where are you staying in Folkestone?’

  ‘I got a 'ouse of mine – on the Leas.’

  ‘I've heard all about your good fortune – this afternoon.’

  ‘Isn't it a Go!’ said Kipps. ‘I 'aven't nearly got to believe it's reely 'appened yet. When that – Mr Bean told me of it, you could 'ave knocked me down with a feather…. It's a tremenjous change for me.’

  He discovered Miss Coote was asking him whether he took milk and sugar. ‘I don't mind,’ said Kipps. ‘Jest as you like.’

  Coote became active, handing tea and bread-and-butter. It was thinly cut, and the bread was rather new, and the half of the slice that Kipps took fell upon the floor. He had been holding it by the edge, for he was not used to this migratory method of taking tea without plates or table. This little incident ruled him out of the conversation for a time, and when he came to attend to it again, they were talking about something or other prodigious – a performer of some sort – that was coming, called, it seemed, ‘Padrooski!’8 So Kipps, who had dropped quietly into a chair, ate his bread-and-butter, said ‘no, thank you’ to any more, and by this discreet restraint got more freedom with his cup and saucer.

  Apart from the confusion natural to tea, he was in a state of tremulous excitement on account of the presence of Miss Walshingham. He glanced from Miss Coote to her brother, and then at Helen. He regarded her over the top of his cup as he drank. Here she was, solid and real. It was wonderful. He remarked, as he had done at times before, the easy flow of the dark hair back from her brow over her ears, the shapeliness of the white hands that came out from her simple white cuffs, the delicate pencilling of her brow.

  Presently she turned her face to him almost suddenly, and smiled with the easiest assurance of friendship.

  ‘You will go, I suppose?’ she said, and added, ‘to the Recital.’

  ‘If I'm in Folkestone I shall,’ said Kipps, clearing away a little hoarseness. ‘I don't know much about music, but what I do know I like.’

  ‘I'm sure you'll like Paderewski,’ she said.

  ‘If you do,’ he said, ‘I dessay I shall.’

  He found Coote very kindly taking his cup.

  ‘Do you think of living in Folkestone?’ asked Miss Coote, in a tone of proprietorship from the hearthrug.

  ‘No,’ said Kipps, ‘that's jest it – I hardly know.’ He also said that he wanted to look round a bit before doing anything. ‘There's so much to consider,’ said Coote, smoothing the back of his head.

  ‘I may go back to New Romney for a bit,’ said Kipps. ‘I got an uncle and aunt there. I reely don't know.’

  Helen regarded him thoughtfully for a moment.

  ‘You must come and see us,’ she said, ‘before we go to Bruges.’

  ‘Oo, rather!’ said Kipps. ‘If I may.’

  ‘Yes, do,’ she said, and suddenly stood up before Kipps could formulate an inquiry when he should call.

  ‘You're sure you can spare that drawing-board?’ she said to Miss Coote; and the conversation passed out of range.

  And when he had said ‘Good-bye’ to Miss Walshingham, and she had repeated her invitation to call, he went upstairs again with Coote to look out certain initiatory books they had had under discussion. And then Kipps, blowing very resolutely, went back to his own place, bearing in his arm (1) Sesame and Lilies, (2) Sir George Tressady, (3) an anonymous book on Vitality9 that Coote particularly esteemed. And having got to his own sitting-room, he opened Sesame and Lilies and read with ruthless determination for some time.

  § 3

  Presently he leant back and gave himself up to the business of trying to imagine just exactly what Miss Walshingham could have thought of him when she saw him. Doubts about the precise effect of the grey flannel suit began to trouble him. He turned to the mirror over the mantel, and then got into a chair to study the hang of the trousers. It looked all right. Luckily she had not seen the Panama hat. He knew he had the brim turned up wrong, but he could not find out which way the brim was right. However, that she had not seen. He might, perhaps, ask at the shop where he bought it.

  He meditated for a while on his reflected face – doubtful whether he liked it or not – and then got down again and flitted across to the sideboard where there lay two little books, one in a cheap magnificent cover of red and gold, and the other in green canvas. The former was called, as its cover witnessed, Manners and Rules of Good Society, by a Member of the Aristocracy, and after the cover had indulged in a band of gilded decoration, light-hearted, but natural under the circumstances, it added, ‘TWENTY-FIRST EDITION.’ The second was that admirable classic, The Art of Conversing.10 Kipps returned with these to his seat, placed the two before him, opened the latter with a sigh, and flattened it under his hand.

  Then with knitted brows he began to read onward from a mark, his lips moving.

  ‘Having thus acquired possession of an idea, the little ship should not be abruptly launched into deep waters, but should be first permitted to glide gently and smoothly into the shallows; that is to say, the conversation should not be commenced by broadly and roundly stating a fact, or didactically expressing an opinion, as the subject would be thus virtually or summarily disposed of, or perhaps be met with a “Really” or “Indeed,” or some equally brief monosyllabic reply. If an opposite opinion were held by the person to whom the remark were addressed, he might not, if a stranger, care to express it in the form of a direct contradiction or actual dissent. To glide imperceptibly into conversation is the object to be attained—’

  At this point Mr Kipps rubbed his fingers through his hair with an expression of some perplexity, and went back to the beginning.

  § 4

  When Kipps made his call on the Walshinghams, it all happened so differently from the Manners and Rules prescription (‘Paying Calls’) that he was quite lost from the very outset. Instead of the footman or maidservant proper in these cases, Miss Walshingham opened the door to him herself. ‘I'm so glad you've come,’ she said, with one of her rare smiles.

  She stood aside for him to enter the rather narrow passage.

  ‘I thought I'd call,’ he said, retaining his hat and stick.

  She closed the door and led the way to a little drawing-room, which impressed Kipps as being smaller and less emphatically coloured than that of the Cootes, and in which, at first, only a copper bowl of white poppies upon the brown table-cloth caught his particular attention.

  ‘You won't think it unconventional to come in, Mr Kipps, will you?’ she remarked. ‘Mother is out.’

  ‘I don't mind,’ he said, smiling amiably, ‘if you don't.�
��

  She walked round the table and stood regarding him across it, with that same look between speculative curiosity and appreciation that he remembered from the last of the art-class meetings.

  ‘I wondered whether you would call or whether you wouldn't before you left Folkestone.’

  ‘I'm not leaving Folkestone for a bit, and any'ow I should have called on you.’

  ‘Mother will be sorry she was out. I've told her about you, and she wants, I know, to meet you.’

  ‘I saw 'er – if that was 'er – in the shop,’ said Kipps.

  ‘Yes – you did, didn't you?… She has gone out to make some duty calls, and I didn't go. I had something to write. I write a little, you know.’

  ‘Reely!’ said Kipps.

  ‘It's nothing much,’ she said, ‘and it comes to nothing.’ She glanced at a little desk near the window, on which there lay some paper. ‘One must do something.’ She broke off abruptly. ‘Have you seen our outlook?’ she asked, and walked to the window, and Kipps came and stood beside her. ‘We look on the Square. It might be worse, you know. That out-porter's truck there is horrid – and the railings, but it's better than staring one's social replica in the face, isn't it? It's pleasant in early spring – bright green laid on with a dry brush – and it's pleasant in autumn.’

  ‘I like it,’ said Kipps. ‘That laylock11 there is pretty, isn't it?’

  ‘Children come and pick it at times,’ she remarked.

  ‘I dessay they do,’ said Kipps.