Kipps

by H. G. Wells

  CHAPTER THE SIXTH

  DISCORDS

  § 1

  One day Kipps set out upon his newly mastered bicycle to New Romney, to break the news of his engagement to his uncle and aunt – positively. He was now a finished cyclist, but as yet an unseasoned one; the south-west wind, even in its summer guise, as one meets it in the Marsh, is the equivalent of a reasonable hill, and ever and again he got off and refreshed himself by a spell of walking. He was walking just outside New Romney, preparatory to his triumphal entry (one hand off), when abruptly he came upon Ann Pornick.

  It chanced he was thinking about her at the time. He had been thinking curious things; whether, after all, the atmosphere of New Romney and the Marsh had not some difference, some faint impalpable quality that was missing in the great and fashionable world of Folkestone behind there on the hill. Here there was a homeliness, a familiarity. He had noted as he passed that old Mr Cliffordown's gate had been mended with a fresh piece of string. In Folkestone he didn't take notice, and he didn't care if they built three hundred houses. Come to think of it, that was odd. It was fine and grand to have twelve hundred a year; it was fine to go about on trams and omnibuses and think not a person aboard was as rich as one's self; it was fine to buy and order this and that and never have any work to do, and to be engaged to a girl distantly related to the Earl of Beauprés; but yet there had been a zest in the old time out here, a rare zest in the holidays, in sunlight, on the sea beach, and in the High Street, that failed from these new things. He thought of those bright windows of holiday that had seemed so glorious to him in the retrospect from his apprentice days. It was strange that now, amidst his present splendours, they were glorious still!

  All those things were over now – perhaps that was it! Something had happened to the world, and the old light had been turned out. He himself was changed, and Sid was changed, terribly changed, and Ann, no doubt, was changed.

  He thought of her with the hair blown about her flushed cheeks as they stood together after their race… .

  Certainly she must be changed, and all the magic she had been fraught with to the very hem of her short petticoats gone, no doubt, for ever. And as he thought that, or before and while he thought it – for he came to all these things in his own vague and stumbling way – he looked up, and there was Ann!

  She was seven years older, and greatly altered; yet for the moment it seemed to him that she had not changed at all. ‘Ann!’ he said; and she, with a lifting note, ‘It's Art Kipps!’

  Then he became aware of changes – improvements. She was as pretty as she had promised to be, her blue eyes as dark as his memory of them, and with a quick, high colour; but now Kipps by several inches was the taller again. She was dressed in a simple grey dress, that showed her very clearly as a straight and healthy little woman, and her hat was Sundayfied, with pink flowers. She looked soft and warm and welcoming. Her face was alight to Kipps with her artless gladness at their encounter.

  ‘It's Art Kipps!’ she said.

  ‘Rather,’ said Kipps.

  ‘You got your holidays?’

  It flashed upon Kipps that Sid had not told her of his great fortune. Much regretful meditation upon Sid's behaviour had convinced him that he himself was to blame for exasperating boastfulness in that affair, and this time he took care not to err in that direction. So he erred in the other.

  ‘I'm taking a bit of a 'oliday,’ he said.

  ‘So'm I,’ said Ann.

  ‘You been for a walk?’ asked Kipps.

  Ann showed him a bunch of wayside flowers.

  ‘It's a long time since I seen you, Ann. Why, 'ow long must it be? Seven – eight years nearly.’

  ‘It don't do to count,’ said Ann.

  ‘It don't look like it,’ said Kipps, with the slightest emphasis.

  ‘You got a moustache,’ said Ann, smelling her flowers and looking at him over them, not without admiration.

  Kipps blushed….

  Presently they came to the bifurcation of the roads.

  ‘I'm going down this way to mother's cottage,’ said Ann.

  ‘I'll come a bit your way, if I may.’

  In New Romney social distinctions that are primary realities in Folkestone are absolutely non-existent, and it seemed quite permissible for him to walk with Ann, for all that she was no more than a servant. They talked with remarkable ease to one another, they slipped into a vein of intimate reminiscence in the easiest manner. In a little while Kipps was amazed to find Ann and himself at this –

  ‘You r'member that half-sixpence? What we cut togevver?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I got it still.’

  She hesitated. ‘Funny, wasn't it?’ she said, and then, ‘You got yours, Artie?’

  ‘Rather,’ said Kipps. ‘What do you think?’ and wondered in his heart of hearts why he had never looked at that sixpence for so long.

  Ann smiled at him frankly.

  ‘I didn't expect you'd keep it,’ she said. ‘I thought often – it was silly to keep mine.

  ‘Besides,’ she reflected, ‘it didn't mean anything really.’

  She glanced at him as she spoke and met his eye.

  ‘Oh, didn't it!’ said Kipps, a little late with his response, and realizing his infidelity to Helen even as he spoke.

  ‘It didn't mean much anyhow,’ said Ann. ‘You still in the drapery?’

  ‘I'm living at Folkestone,’ began Kipps, and decided that that sufficed. ‘Didn't Sid tell you he met me?’

  ‘No! Here?’

  ‘Yes. The other day. 'Bout a week or more ago.’

  ‘That was before I came.’

  ‘Ah, that was it,’ said Kipps.

  ‘'E's got on,’ said Ann. ‘Got 'is own shop now, Artie.’

  ‘'E tole me.’

  They found themselves outside Muggett'ss cottages. ‘You going in?’ said Kipps.

  ‘I s'pose so,’ said Ann.

  They both hung upon the pause. Ann took a plunge.

  ‘D'you often come to New Romney?’ she asked.

  ‘I ride over a bit at times,’ said Kipps.

  Another pause. Ann held out her hand.

  ‘I'm glad I seen you,’ she said.

  Extraordinary impulses arose in neglected parts of Kipps' being. ‘Ann,’ he said, and stopped.

  ‘Yes,’ said she, and was bright to him.

  They looked at one another.

  All, and more than all, of those first emotions of his adolescence had come back to him. Her presence banished a multitude of countervailing considerations. It was Ann more than ever. She stood breathing close to him with her soft-looking lips a little apart and gladness in her eyes.

  ‘I'm awful glad to see you again,’ he said; ‘it brings back old times.’

  ‘Doesn't it?’

  Another pause. He would have liked to have had a long talk to her, to have gone for a walk with her or something, to have drawn nearer to her in any conceivable way, and above all to have had some more of the appreciation that shone in her eyes, but a vestige of Folkestone, still clinging to him, told him it ‘wouldn't do.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I must be getting on,’ and turned away reluctantly, with a will under compulsion… .

  When he looked back from the corner she was still at the gate. She was perhaps a little disconcerted by his retreat. He felt that. He hesitated for a moment, half turned, stood, and suddenly did great things with his hat. That hat! The wonderful hat of our civilization!…

  In another minute he was engaged in a singularly absent-minded conversation with his uncle about the usual topics.

  His uncle was very anxious to buy him a few upright clocks as an investment for subsequent sale. And there were also some very nice globes, one terrestrial and the other celestial, in a shop at Lydd that would look well in a drawing-room, and inevitably increase in value…. Kipps either did or did not agree to this purchase, he was unable to recollect.

  The south-west wind perhaps helped him back; at any rate he found hims
elf through Dymchurch without having noticed the place. There came an odd effect as he drew near Hythe. The hills on the left and the trees on the right seemed to draw together and close in upon him until his way was straight and narrow. He could not turn round on that treacherous half-tamed machine, but he knew that behind him, he knew so well, spread the wide vast flatness of the Marsh shining under the afternoon sky. In some way this was material to his thoughts. And as he rode through Hythe he came upon the idea that there was a considerable amount of incompatibility between the existence of one who was practically a gentleman and of Ann.

  In the neighbourhood of Seabrook he began to think he had, in some subtle way, lowered himself by walking along by the side of Ann…. After all, she was only a servant.

  Ann!

  She called out all the least gentlemanly instincts of his nature. There had been a moment in their conversation when he had quite distinctly thought it would really be an extremely nice thing for someone to kiss her lips…. There was something warming about Ann – at least for Kipps. She impressed him as having, somewhen during their vast interval of separation, contrived to make herself in some distinctive way his.

  Fancy keeping that half-sixpence all this time!

  It was the most flattering thing that ever happened to Kipps.

  § 2

  He found himself presently sitting over The Art of Conversing, lost in the strangest musings. He got up, walked about, became stagnant at the window for a space, roused himself, and by way of something lighter tried Sesame and Lilies. From that too his attention wandered. He sat back. Anon he smiled, anon sighed. He arose, pulled his keys from his pocket, looked at them, decided, and went upstairs. He opened the little yellow box that had been the nucleus of all his possessions in the world, and took out a small ‘Escritoire,’1 the very humblest sort of present, and opened it – kneeling. And there in the corner was a little packet of paper, sealed as a last defence against any prying invader with red sealing-wax. It had gone untouched for years. He held this little packet between finger and thumb for a moment, regarding it, and then put down the escritoire and broke the seal….

  As he was getting into bed that night he remembered something for the first time!

  ‘Dash it!’ he said. ‘Deshed if I told 'em this time….Well!

  ‘I shall 'ave to go over to New Romney again!’

  He got into bed, and remained sitting pensively on the pillow for a space.

  ‘Rum world,’ he reflected, after a vast interval.

  Then he recalled that she had noticed his moustache. He embarked upon a sea of egotistical musing.

  He imagined himself telling Ann how rich he was. What a surprise that would be for her!

  Finally he sighed profoundly, blew out his candle, and snuggled down, and in a little while he was asleep….

  But the next morning, and at intervals afterwards, he found himself thinking of Ann, – Ann the bright, the desirable, the welcoming, and with an extraordinary streakiness2 he wanted quite badly to go, and then as badly not to go, over to New Romney again.

  Sitting on the Leas in the afternoon, he had an idea. ‘I ought to 'ave told 'er, I suppose, about my being engaged.

  ‘Ann!’

  All sorts of dreams and impressions that had gone clean out of his mental existence came back to him, changed and brought up-to-date to fit her altered presence. He thought of how he had gone back to New Romney for his Christmas holidays, determined to kiss her, and of the awful blankness of the discovery that she had gone away.

  It seemed incredible now, and yet not wholly incredible, that he had cried real tears for her, – how many years was it ago?

  § 3

  Daily I should thank my Maker that He did not delegate to me the Censorship of the world of men. I should temper a fierce injustice with a spasmodic indecision, that would prolong rather than mitigate the bitterness of the Day.3 For human dignity, for all conscious human superiority I should lack the beginnings of charity; for bishops, prosperous schoolmasters, judges, and all large respect-pampered souls. And more especially bishops, towards whom I bear an atavistic Viking grudge,4 dreaming not infrequently and with invariable zest of galleys and landings, and well-known living ornaments of the episcopal bench sprinting inland on twinkling gaiters5 before my thirsty blade – all these people, I say, I should treat below their deserts; but, on the other hand, for such as Kipps — There the exasperating indecisions would come in. The Judgment would be arrested at Kipps. Everyone and everything would wait. The balance would sway and sway, and whenever it heeled towards an adverse decision, my finger would set it swaying again. Kings, warriors, statesmen, brilliant women, ‘personalities’ panting with indignation, headline humanity in general, would stand undamned, unheeded, or be damned in the most casual manner for their importunity, while my eye went about for anything possible that could be said on behalf of Kipps…. Albeit I fear nothing can save him from condemnation upon this present score, that within two days he was talking to Ann again.

  One seeks excuses. Overnight there had been an encounter of Chitterlow and young Walshingham in his presence that had certainly warped his standards. They had called within a few minutes of each other, and the two, swayed by virile attentions to Old Methuselah Three Stars, had talked against each other, over and at the hospitable presence of Kipps. Walshingham had seemed to win at the beginning, but finally Chitterlow had made a magnificent display of vociferation and swept him out of existence. At the beginning Chitterlow had opened upon the great profits of playwrights, and young Walshingham had capped him at once with a cynical but impressive display of knowledge of the High Finance. If Chitterlow boasted his thousands, young Walshingham boasted his hundreds of thousands,6 and was for a space left in sole possession of the stage, juggling with the wealth of nations. He was going on by way of Financial Politics to the Overman, before Chitterlow recovered from his first check, and came back to victory. ‘Talking of Women,’ said Chitterlow, coming in abruptly upon some things not generally known, beyond Walshingham's more immediate circle, about a recently departed Empire-builder; ‘Talking of Women and the way they Get at a man—’

  (Though, as a matter of fact, they had been talking of the Corruption of Society by Speculation.)

  Upon this new topic Chitterlow was soon manifestly invincible. He knew so much, he had known so many. Young Walshingham did his best with epigrams and reservations, but even to Kipps it was evident that this was a book-learned depravity. One felt Walshingham had never known the inner realities of passion. But Chitterlow convinced and amazed. He had run away with girls, he had been run away with by girls, he had been in love with several at a time – ‘not counting Bessie’ – he had loved and lost, he had loved and refrained, and he had loved and failed. He threw remarkable lights upon the moral state of America – in which country he had toured with great success. He set his talk to the tune of one of Mr Kipling's best-known songs. He told an incident of simple romantic passion, a delirious dream of love and beauty in a Saturday to Monday steamboat trip up the Hudson, and tagged his end with ‘I learnt about women from 'er!’ After that he adopted the refrain, and then lapsed into the praises of Kipling. ‘Little Kipling,’ said Chitterlow, with the familiarity of affection, ‘he knows,’ and broke into quotation –

  ‘I've taken my fun where I've found it;

  I've rogued and I've ranged in my time;

  I've 'ad my picking of sweet'earts,

  An' four of the lot was Prime.’7

  (These things, I say, affect the moral standards of the best of us.)

  ‘I'd have liked to have written that,’ said Chitterlow. ‘That's Life, that is! But go and put it on the Stage, put even a bit of the Realities of Life on the Stage and see what they'll do to you! Only Kipling could venture on a job like that. That Poem KNOCKED me! I won't say Kipling hasn't knocked me before and since, but that was a Fair Knock Out. And yet – you know – there's one thing in it… this –

  ‘I've taken my fun where I've found
it,

  And now I must pay for my fun,

  For the more you 'ave known o' the others,

  The less will you settle to one.’

  Well. In my case anyhow – I don't know how much that proves, seeing I'm exceptional in so many things and there's no good denying it – but so far as I'm concerned – I tell you two, but, of course, you needn't let it go any farther – I've been perfectly faithful to Muriel ever since I married her – ever since…. Not once. Not even by accident have I ever said or done anything in the slightest—’ His little brown eye became pensive after this flattering intimacy, and the gorgeous draperies of his abundant voice fell into graver folds. ‘I learnt about women from 'er,’ he said impressively.

  ‘Yes,’ said Walshingham, getting into the hinder spaces of that splendid pause, ‘a man must know about women. And the only sound way of learning is the experimental method.’

  ‘If you want to know about the experimental method, my boy,’ said Chitterlow, resuming….

  So they talked. Ex pede Herculem,8 as Coote, that cultivated polyglot, would have put it. And in the small hours Kipps went to bed, with his brain whirling with words and whiskey, and sat for an unconscionable time upon his bed edge, musing sadly upon the unmanly monogamy that had cast its shadow upon his career, musing with his thoughts pointing round more and more certainly to the possibility of at least duplicity with Ann.

  § 4

  For some days he had been refraining with some insistence from going off to New Romney again… .

  I do not know if this may count in palliation of his misconduct. Men, real Strong-Souled, Healthy Men, should be, I suppose, impervious to conversational atmospheres, but I have never claimed for Kipps a place at these high levels. The fact remains, that next day he spent the afternoon with Ann, and found no scruple in displaying himself a budding lover.