by H. G. Wells
‘Yes.’
‘H'm. Lady, I guess, of a superior social position?’
‘Rather,’ said Kipps. ‘Cousin to the Earl of Beauprés.’
Masterman readjusted his long body with an air of having accumulated all the facts he needed. He snuggled his shoulder-blades down into the chair and raised his angular knees. ‘I doubt,’ he said, flicking cigarette ash into the atmosphere, ‘if any great gain or loss of money does – as things are at present – make more than the slightest difference in one's happiness. It ought to – if money was what it ought to be, the token given for service, one ought to get an increase in power and happiness for every pound one got. But the plain fact is, the times are out of joint, 11 and money – money, like everything else – is a deception and a disappointment.’
He turned his face to Kipps and enforced his next words with the index finger of his lean lank hand. ‘If I thought otherwise,’ he said, ‘I should exert myself to get some. But – if one sees things clearly one is so discouraged. So confoundedly discouraged… . When you first got your money you thought that it meant you might buy just anything you fancied?’
‘It was a bit that way,’ said Kipps.
‘And you found you couldn't. You found that for all sorts of things it was a question of where to buy and how to buy, and what you didn't know how to buy with your money, straight away this world planted something else upon you.’
‘I got rather done over a banjo first day,’ said Kipps. ‘Leastways, my Uncle says so.’
‘Exactly,’ said Masterman.
Sid began to speak from the bed. ‘That's all very well, Master-man, he said, ‘but after all money is Power, you know. You can do all sorts of things—’
‘I'm talking of happiness,’ said Masterman. ‘You can do all sorts of things with a loaded gun in the Hammersmith Broadway, but nothing – practically – that will make you or anyone else very happy. Nothing. Power's a different matter altogether. As for happiness, you want a world in order before money or property or any of those things have any real value, and this world, I tell you, is hopelessly out of joint. Man is a social animal with a mind nowadays that goes round the globe, and a community cannot be happy in one part and unhappy in another. It's all or nothing, no patching any more for ever. It is the standing mistake of the world not to understand that. Consequently people think there is a class or order somewhere just above them or just below them, or a country or place somewhere that is really safe and happy… . The fact is, Society is one body, and it is either well or ill. That's the law. This society we live in is ill. It's a fractious, feverish invalid, gouty, greedy, ill-nourished. You can't have a happy left leg with neuralgia, or a happy throat with a broken leg. That's my position, and that's the knowledge you'll come to. I'm so satisfied of it that I sit here and wait for my end quite calmly, sure that I can't better things by bothering – in my time and so far as I am concerned that is. I'm not even greedy any more – my egotism's at the bottom of a pond with a philosophical brick round its neck. The world is ill, my time is short, and my strength is small. I'm as happy here as anywhere.’
He coughed, was silent for a moment, then brought the index finger round to Kipps again. ‘You've had the opportunity of sampling two grades of society, and you don't find the new people you're among much better or any happier than the old?’
‘No,’ said Kipps, reflectively. ‘No. I 'aven't seen it quite like that before, but— No. They're not.’
‘And you might go all up the scale and down the scale and find the same thing. Man's a gregarious beast, a gregarious beast, and no money will buy you out of your own time – any more than out of your own skin. All the way up and all the way down the scale there's the same discontent. No one is quite sure where they stand, and everyone's fretting. The herd's uneasy and feverish. All the old tradition goes or has gone, and there's no one to make a new tradition. Where are your nobles now? Where are your gentlemen? They vanished directly the peasant found out he wasn't happy and ceased to be a peasant. There's big men and little men mixed up together, and that's all. None of us know where we are. Your cads in a bank-holiday train, and your cads on a two-thousand-pound motor, except for a difference in scale, there's not a pin to choose between them. Your smart society is as low and vulgar and uncomfortable for a balanced soul as a gin palace, no more and no less; there's no place or level of honour or fine living left in the world, so what's the good of climbing?’
‘'Ear, 'ear,’ said Sid.
‘It's true,’ said Kipps.
‘I don't climb,’ said Masterman, and accepted Kipps' silent offer of another cigarette.
‘No,’ he said. ‘This world is out of joint. It's broken up, and I doubt if it'll heal. I doubt very much if it'll heal. We're in the beginning of the Sickness of the World.’
He rolled his cigarette in his lean fingers and repeated with satisfaction, ‘The Sickness of the World.’
‘It's we've got to make it better,’ said Sid, and looked at Kipps.
‘Ah, Sid's an optimist,’ said Masterman.
‘So you are, most times,’ said Sid.
Kipps lit another cigarette with an air of intelligent participation.
‘Frankly,’ said Masterman, recrossing his legs and expelling a jet of smoke luxuriously, ‘frankly, I think this civilization of ours is on the topple.’
‘There's Socialism,’ said Sid.
‘There's no imagination to make use of it.’
‘We've got to make one,’ said Sid.
‘In a couple of centuries, perhaps,’ said Masterman. ‘But meanwhile we're going to have a pretty acute attack of universal confusion. Universal confusion. Like one of those crushes when men are killed and maimed for no reason at all, going into a meeting or crowding for a train. Commercial and Industrial Stresses. Political Exploitation. Tariff Wars. Revolutions. All the bloodshed that will come of some fools calling half the white world yellow. These things alter the attitude of everybody to everybody. Everybody's going to feel 'em. Every fool in the world panting and shoving. We're all going to be as happy and comfortable as a household during a removal. What else can we expect?’
Kipps was moved to speak, but not in answer to Masterman's inquiry. ‘I've never rightly got the 'eng of this Socialism,’ he said. ‘What's it going to do, like?’
They had been imagining that he had some elementary idea in the matter, but as soon as he had made it clear that he hadn't, Sid plunged at exposition, and in a little while Masterman, abandoning his pose of the detached man ready to die, joined in. At first he joined in only to correct Sid's version, but afterwards he took control. His manner changed. He sat up and rested his elbow on his knees, and his cheek flushed a little. He expanded his case against property and the property class with such vigour that Kipps was completely carried away, and never thought of asking for a clear vision of the thing that would fill the void this abolition might create. For a time he quite forgot his own private opulence. And it was as if something had been lit in Masterman. His languor passed. He enforced his words by gestures of his long thin hands. And as he passed swiftly from point to point of his argument, it was evident he grew angry.
‘To-day,’ he said, ‘the world is ruled by rich men; they may do almost anything they like with the world. And what are they doing? Laying it waste!’
‘Hear, hear!’ said Sid, very sternly.
Masterman stood up, gaunt and long, thrust his hands in his pockets, and turned his back to the fireplace.
‘Collectively, the rich to-day have neither heart nor imagination. No! They own machinery, they have knowledge and instruments and powers beyond all previous dreaming, and what are they doing with them? Think what they are doing with them, Kipps, and think what they might do. God gives them a power like the motor-car, and all they can do with it is to go careering about the roads in goggled masks, killing children and making machinery hateful to the soul of man! (“True,” said Sid, “true.”) God gives them means of communication, power unparalleled o
f every sort, time, and absolute liberty! They waste it all in folly! Here under their feet (and Kipps' eyes followed the direction of a lean index finger to the hearthrug), under their accursed wheels, the great mass of men festers and breeds in darkness, darkness those others make by standing in the light. The darkness breeds and breeds. It knows no better…. Unless you can crawl or pander or rob you must stay in the stew you are born in. And those rich beasts above claw and clutch as though they had nothing! They grudge us our schools, they grudge us a gleam of light and air, they cheat us, and then seek to forget us…. There is no rule, no guidance, only accidents and happy flukes…. Our multitudes of poverty increase, and this crew of rulers makes no provision, foresees nothing, anticipates nothing!’
He paused, and made a step, and stood over Kipps in a white heat of anger. Kipps nodded in a non-committal manner, and looked hard and rather gloomily at his host's slipper as he talked.
‘It isn't as though they had something to show for the waste they make of us, Kipps. They haven't. They are ugly and cowardly and mean. Look at their women! Painted, dyed, and drugged, hiding their ugly shapes under a load of dress! There isn't a woman in the swim of society at the present time who wouldn't sell herself body and soul, who wouldn't lick the boots of a Jew or marry a nigger, rather than live decently on a hundred a year! On what would be wealth for you or me! They know it. They know we know it…. No one believes in them. No one believes in nobility any more. Nobody believes in kingship any more. Nobody believes there is justice in the law…. But people have habits, people go on in the old grooves, as long as there's work, as long as there's weekly money…. It won't last, Kipps.’
He coughed and paused. ‘Wait for the lean years,’ he cried. ‘Wait for the lean years.’ And suddenly he fell into a struggle with his cough, and spat a gout of blood. ‘It's nothing,’ he said to Kipps' note of startled horror.
He went on talking, and the protests of his cough interlaced with his words, and Sid beamed in an ecstasy of painful admiration.
‘Look at the fraud they have let life become, the miserable mockery of the hope of one's youth. What have I had? I found myself at thirteen being forced into a factory like a rabbit into a chloroformed box. Thirteen! – when their children are babies. But even a child of that age could see what it meant, that Hell of a factory! Monotony and toil and contempt and dishonour! And then death. So I fought – at thirteen!’
Minton's ‘crawling up a drainpipe till you die' echoed in Kipps' mind, but Masterman, instead of Minton's growl, spoke in a high indignant tenor.
‘I got out at last – somehow,’ he said quietly, suddenly plumping back in his chair. He went on after a pause. ‘For a bit. Some of us get out by luck, some by cunning, and crawl on to the grass, exhausted and crippled, to die. That's a poor man's success, Kipps. Most of us don't get out at all. I worked all day, and studied half the night, and here I am with the common consequences. Beaten! And never once have I had a fair chance, never once! His lean clenched fist flew out in a gust of tremulous anger. ‘These Skunks shut up all the university scholarships at nineteen for fear of men like me. And then – do nothing…. We're wasted for nothing. By the time I'd learnt something the doors were locked. I thought knowledge would do it – I did think that! I've fought for knowledge as other men fight for bread. I've starved for knowledge. I've turned my back on women; I've done even that. I've burst my accursed lung….' His voice rose with impotent anger. ‘I'm a better man than any ten princes alive. And I'm beaten and wasted. I've been crushed, trampled, and defiled by a drove of hogs. I'm no use to myself or the world. I've thrown my life away to make myself too good for use in this hucksters' scramble. If I had gone in for business, if I had gone in for plotting to cheat my fellow-men…. Ah, well! It's too late. It's too late for that, anyhow. It's too late for anything now! And I couldn't have done it…. And over in New York now there's a pet of society making a corner in wheat! 12
‘By God!’ he cried hoarsely, with a clutch of the lean hand. ‘By God! if I had his throat! Even now! I might do something for the world.’
He glared at Kipps, his face flushed deep, his sunken eyes glowing with passion, and then suddenly he changed altogether.
There was a sound of tea-things rattling upon a tray outside the door, and Sid rose to open it.
‘All of which amounts to this,’ said Masterman, suddenly quiet again and talking against time. ‘The world is out of joint, and there isn't a soul alive who isn't half waste or more. You'll find it the same with you in the end, wherever your luck may take you…. I suppose you won't mind my having another cigarette?’
He took Kipps' cigarette with a hand that trembled so violently it almost missed its object, and stood up, with something of guilt in his manner, as Mrs Sid came into the room.
Her eye met his, and marked the flush upon his face.
‘Been talking Socialism?’ said Mrs Sid, a little severely.
§ 5
Six o'clock that day found Kipps drifting eastward along the southward margin of Rotten Row. 13 You figure him a small respectably attired person going slowly through a sometimes immensely difficult and always immense world. At times he becomes pensive, and whistles softly; at times he looks about him. There are a few riders in the Row; a carriage flashes by every now and then along the roadway, and among the great rhododendrons and laurels and upon the greensward 14 there are a few groups and isolated people dressed – in the style Kipps adopted to call upon the Walshinghams when first he was engaged. Amid the complicated confusion of Kipps' mind was a regret that he had not worn his other things… .
Presently he perceived that he would like to sit down; a green chair tempted him. He hesitated at it, took possession of it, and leant back and crossed one leg over the other.
He rubbed his under lip with his umbrella handle, and reflected upon Masterman and his denunciation of the world.
‘Bit orf 'is 'ead, poor chap,’ said Kipps; and added, ‘I wonder—’
He thought intently for a space.
‘I wonder what 'e meant by the lean years.’…
The world seemed a very solid and prosperous concern just here, and well out of reach of Masterman's dying clutch. And yet—
It was curious he should have been reminded of Minton.
His mind turned to a far more important matter. Just at the end Sid had said to him, ‘Seen Ann?’ and as he was about to answer, ‘You'll see a bit more of her now. She's got a place in Folkestone.’
It had brought him back from any concern about the world being out of joint or anything of that sort.
Ann!
One might run against her any day.
He tugged at his little moustache.
He would like to run against Ann very much… .
And it would be juiced awkward if he 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 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 about 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. wells’S! 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 they 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 with a corpulent, osculatory 15 uncle, or Chitterlow, or the dangerously significant eye of Pearce.
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 so 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!
