by H. G. Wells
‘Very likely,’ said Ann, after a long interval, ‘it isn't so bad as you think it is, Artie.’
‘It's bad,’ said Kipps.
‘Very likely, after all, it isn't quite so bad. If there's only a little—’
There came another long silence.
‘Ann,’ said Kipps, in the quiet darkness.
‘Yes,’ said Ann.
‘Ann,’ said Kipps, and stopped as though he had hastily shut a door upon speech.
‘I kep' thinking,’ he said, trying again – ‘I kep' thinking, after all, I been cross to you and a fool about things – about them cards, Ann – but' – his voice shook to pieces – ‘we 'ave been 'appy, Ann… some'ow… togever.’
And with that he and then she fell into a passion of weeping.
They clung very tightly together – closer than they had been since ever the first brightness of their married days turned to the grey of common life again….
All the disaster in the world could not prevent their going to sleep at last, with their poor little troubled heads close together on one pillow. There was nothing more to be done; there was nothing more to be thought. Time might go on with his mischiefs, but for a little while at least they still had one another.
§ 3
Kipps returned from his second interview with Mr Bean in a state of strange excitement. He let himself in with his latch-key and slammed the door. ‘Ann!’ he shouted, in an unusual note; ‘Ann!’
Ann replied distantly.
‘Something to tell you,’ said Kipps; ‘something noo!’
Ann appeared apprehensive from the kitchen.
‘Ann,’ he said, going before her into the little dining-room, for his news was too dignified for the passage, ‘very likely, Ann, o' Bean says, we shall 'ave—’ He decided to prolong the suspense. ‘Guess!’
‘I can't, Artie.’
‘Think of a lot of money!’
‘A ‘undred pounds p'r'aps?’
He spoke with immense deliberation. ‘Over a fousand pounds!’
Ann stared and said nothing, only went a shade whiter.
‘Over,’ he said. ‘A'most certainly over.’
He shut the dining-room door and came forward hastily, for Ann, it was clear, meant to take this mitigation of their disaster with a complete abandonment of her self-control. She came near flopping; she fell into his arms.
‘Artie,’ she got to at last, and began to weep, clinging tightly to him.
‘Pretty near certain,’ said Kipps, holding her. ‘A fousand pounds!’
‘I said, Artie,’ she wailed on his shoulder with the note of accumulated wrongs, ‘very likely it wasn't so bad….’
‘There's things,’ he said, when presently he came to particulars, ‘’e couldn't touch. The noo place! It's freehold and paid for, and with the bit of building on it, there's five or six 'undred pounds p'r'aps – say worf free 'undred for safety. We can't be sold up to finish it, like we thought. O' Bean says we can very likely sell it and get money. 'E says you often get a chance to sell a 'ouse lessen 'arf done, specially free'old. Very likely 'e says. Then there's Hughenden. Hughenden ‘asn't been mortgaged not for more than 'arf its value. There's a 'undred or so to be got on that, and the furniture, and the rent for the summer still coming in. 'E says there's very likely other things. A fousand pounds; that's what 'e said. 'E said it might even be more…’
They were sitting now at the table.
‘It alters everything,’ said Ann.
‘I been thinking that, Ann, all the way ‘ome. I came in the motor-car. First ride I've had since the Smash. We needn't send off Gwendolen; leastways, not till after. You know. We needn't turn out of 'ere – not for a long time. What we been doing for the o' people we can go on doing a'most as much. And your mother!… I wanted to ‘oller, coming along. I pretty near run coming down the road by the Hotel.’
‘Oh, I am glad we can stop ‘ere and be comfortable a bit,’ said Ann. ‘I am glad for that.’
‘I pretty near told the driver on the motor – only 'e was the sort won't talk…. You see, Ann, we'll be able to start a shop, we'll be able to get into something like. All about our ‘aving to go back to places and that – all that doesn't matter any more.’
For a while they abandoned themselves to ejaculating transports. Then they fell talking to shape an idea to themselves of the new prospect that opened before them.
‘We must start a sort of shop,’ said Kipps, whose imagination had been working. ‘It'll 'ave to be a shop.’
‘Drapery?’ said Ann.
‘You want such a lot of capital for the drapery; mor'n a thousand pounds you want by a long way – to start it anything like proper.’
‘Well, outfitting. Like Buggins was going to do.’
Kipps glanced at that for a moment, because the idea had not occurred to him. Then he came back to his prepossession.
‘Well, I thought of something else, Ann,’ he said. ‘You see, I've always thought a little bookshop— It isn't like the drapery – 'aving to be learnt. I thought, even before this Smash Up, ‘ow I'd like to 'ave something to do, instead of always 'aving 'olidays always like we 'ave been 'aving.’
She reflected.
‘You don't know much about books, do you, Artie?’
‘You don't want to.’ He illustrated. ‘I noticed when we used to go to that Lib'ry at Folkestone, ladies weren't anything like what they was in a draper's – if you‘aven't got just what they want, its “Oh no!” and out they go. But in a bookshop it's different. One book's very like another – after all, what is it? Something to read and done with. It's not a thing that matters like print dresses or serviettes – where you either like ‘em or don't, and people judge you by. They take what you give ‘em in books and lib'ries, and glad to be told what to. See ‘ow we was – up at that lib'ry….’
He paused. ‘You see, Ann—
‘Well, I read 'n 'dvertisement the other day— I been asking Mr Bean. It said – five 'undred pounds.’
‘What did?’
‘Branches,’ said Kipps.
Ann failed to understand. ‘It's a sort of thing that gets up bookshops all over the country,’ said Kipps. ‘I didn't tell you, but I arst about it a bit. On'y I dropped it again. Before this Smash I mean. I'd thought I'd like to keep a shop for a lark, o'ny then I thought it silly. Besides, it ‘ud ‘ave been beneath me.’
He blushed vividly. ‘It was a sort of projek of mine, Ann.
‘On'y it wouldn't ‘ave done,’ he added.
It was a tortuous journey when the Kippses set out to explain anything to each other. But through a maze of fragmentary elucidations and questions, their minds did presently begin to approximate to a picture of a compact, bright little shop, as a framework for themselves.
‘I thought of it one day when I was in Folkestone. I thought of it one day when I was looking in at a window. I see a chap dressin' a window, and he was whistlin', reg'lar light-hearted…. I thought – I'd like to keep a bookshop any'ow, jest for something to do. And when people weren't about, then you could sit and read the books. See? It wouldn't be 'arf bad… .’
They mused, each with elbows on table and knuckles to lips, looking with speculative eyes at each other.
‘Very likely we'll be 'appier than we should 'ave been with more money,’ said Kipps, presently.
‘We wasn't ‘ardly suited—’ reflected Ann, and left her sentence incomplete.
‘Fish out of water like,’ said Kipps….
‘You won't ‘ave to return that call now,’ said Kipps, opening a new branch of the question. ‘That's one good thing.’
‘Lor!’ said Ann, ‘no more I shan't!’
‘I don't s'pose they'd want you to even if you did – with things as they are.’
A certain added brightness came into Ann's face. ‘Nobody won't be able to come leaving cards on us, Artie, now, any more. We are out of that!’
‘There isn't no necessity for us to be Stuck Up,’ said Kipps, ‘any more for ever! �
��Ere we are, Ann, common people, with jest no position at all, as you might say, to keep up. No se'v'nts not if you don't like. No dressin' better than other people. If it wasn't we been robbed – dashed if I'd care a rap about losing that money. I b'lieve' – his face shone with the rare pleasure of paradox – ‘I reely b'lieve, Ann, it'll prove a savin' in the end.’
§ 4
The remarkable advertisement which had fired Kipps' imagination with this dream of a bookshop opened out in the most alluring way. It was one little facet in a comprehensive scheme of transatlantic origin, which was to make our old-world methods of book-selling ‘sit up,’ and it displayed an imaginative briskness, a lucidity and promise that aroused the profoundest scepticism in the mind of Mr Bean. To Kipps' renewed investigations it presented itself in an expository illustrated pamphlet (far too well printed, Mr Bean thought, for a reputable undertaking) of the most convincing sort. Mr Bean would not let him sink his capital in shares in its projected company that was to make all things new in the world of books, but he could not prevent Kipps becoming one of their associated booksellers. And so, when presently it became apparent that an Epoch was not to be made, and the ‘Associated Booksellers' Trading Union (Limited)’ receded and dissolved and liquidated (a few drops) and vanished and went away to talk about something else, Kipps remained floating undamaged in this interestingly uncertain universe as an independent bookseller.
Except that it failed, the Associated Booksellers' Trading Union had all the stigmata of success. Its fault, perhaps, was that it had them all instead of only one or two. It was to buy wholesale for all its members and associates and exchange stock, having a common books-in-stock list and a common lending library, and it was to provide a uniform registered shop-front to signify all these things to the intelligent passer-by. Except that it was controlled by buoyant young Overmen, with a touch of genius in their arithmetic, it was, I say, a most plausible and hopeful project. Kipps went several times to London, and an agent came to Hythe, Mr Bean made some timely interventions, and then behind a veil of planks and an announcement in the High Street, the uniform registered shop-front came rapidly into being. ‘Associated Booksellers' Trading Union,' said this shop-front, in a refined artistic lettering that bookbuyers were going to value, as wise men over forty value the proper label for Berncasteler Doctor,2 and then, ‘Arthur Kipps.’
Next to starting a haberdasher's shop, I doubt if Kipps could have been more truly happy than during those weeks of preparation.
There is, of course, nothing on earth, and I doubt at times if there is a joy in heaven, like starting a small haberdasher's shop. Imagine, for example, having a drawerful of tapes (one whole piece most exquisitely blocked of every possible width of tape), or again, an army of neat, large packages, each displaying one sample of hooks and eyes. Think of your cottons, your drawer of coloured silks, the little, less, least of the compartments and thin packets of your needle-drawer! Poor princes and wretched gentlefolk, mysteriously above retail trade, may taste only the faint unsatisfactory shadow of these delights with trays of stamps or butterflies. I write, of course, for those to whom these things appeal; there are clods alive who see nothing, or next to nothing, in spools of mercerized cotton3 and endless bands of paper-set pins. I write for the wise, and as I write I wonder that Kipps resisted haberdashery. He did. Yet even starting a bookshop is at least twenty times as interesting as building your own house to your own design in unlimited space and time, or any possible thing people with indisputable social position and sound securities can possibly find to do. Upon that I rest.
You figure Kipps ‘going to have a look to see how the little shop is getting on,’ the shop that is not to be a loss and a spending of money, but a gain. He does not walk too fast towards it; as he comes into view of it his paces slacken and his head goes to one side. He crosses to the pavement opposite in order to inspect the fascia better, already his name is adumbrated in faint white lines; stops in the middle of the road and scrutinizes imaginary details, for the benefit of his future next-door neighbour, the curiosity-shop man, and so at last, in…. A smell of paint and of the shavings of imperfectly seasoned pinewood! The shop is already glazed, and a carpenter is busy over the fittings for adjustable shelves in the side windows. A painter is busy on the fixtures round about (shelving above and drawers below), which are to accommodate most of the stock, and the counter – the counter and desk are done. Kipps goes inside the desk, the desk which is to be the strategic centre of the shop, brushes away some sawdust, and draws out the marvellous till; here gold is to be, here silver, here copper – notes locked up in a cash-box in the well below. Then he leans his elbows on the desk, rests his chin on his fist and fills the shelves with imaginary stock; books beyond reading. Every day a man who cares to wash his hands and read uncut pages4 artfully may have his cake and eat it, among that stock. Under the counter to the right paper and string are to lurk, ready to leap up and embrace goods sold; on the table to the left, art publications – whatever they may prove to be. He maps it out, serves an imaginary customer, receives a dream seven-and-sixpence, packs, bows out. He wonders how it was he ever came to fancy a shop a disagreeable place.
‘It's different,’ he says at last, after musing on that difficulty, ‘being your own.’
It is different….
Or, again, you figure Kipps with something of the air of a young sacristan,5 handling his brightly virginal account books, and looking and looking again, and then still looking, at an unparalleled specimen of copperplate engraving, ruled money below, and above bearing the words, ‘In Account with ARTHUR KIPPS (loud flourishes), The Booksellers' Trading Union' (temperate decoration). You figure Ann sitting and stitching at one point of the circumference of the light of the lamp, stitching queer little garments for some unknown stranger, and over against her sits Kipps. Before him is one of those engraved memorandum forms, a moist pad, wet with some thick and greasy, greenish purple ink, that is also spreading quietly but steadily over his fingers, a cross-nibbed pen for first-aid surgical assistance to the patient in his hand, a dating rubber stamp. At intervals he brings down this latter with great care and emphasis upon the paper, and when he lifts it there appears a beautiful oval design, of which ‘Paid, Arthur Kipps, The Associated Booksellers' Trading Union,’ and a date, are the essential ingredients, stamped in purple ink.
Anon he turns his attention to a box of small, round yellow labels, declaring ‘This book was bought from the Associated Booksellers' Trading Union.’ He licks one with deliberate care, sticks it on the paper before him and defaces it with great solemnity. ‘I can do it, Ann,’ he says, looking up brightly. For the Associated Booksellers' Trading Union, among other brilliant notions and inspirations, devised an ingenious system of taking back its books again in part payment for new ones within a specified period. When it failed all sorts of people were left with these unredeemed pledges in hand.
§ 5
Amidst all this bustle and interest, all this going to and fro before they ‘moved in' to the High Street, came the great crisis that hung over the Kippses, and one morning in the small hours Ann's child was born… .
Kipps was coming to manhood swiftly now. The once rabbit-like soul that had been so amazed by the discovery of ‘chubes' in the human interior and so shocked by the sight of a woman's shoulder-blades, that had found shame and anguish in a mislaid Gibus and terror in an Anagram Tea, was at last facing the greater realities. He came suddenly upon the master thing in life – birth. He passed through hours of listening, hours of impotent fear in the night and in the dawn, and then there was put into his arms something most wonderful, a weak and wailing creature, incredibly, heart-stirringly soft and pitiful, with minute appealing hands that it wrung his heart to see. He held it in his arms and touched its tender cheek as if he feared his lips might injure it. And this marvel was his Son!
And there was Ann, with a greater strangeness and a greater familiarity in her quality than he had ever found before. There were little b
eads of perspiration on her temples and her lips, and her face was flushed, not pale, as he had feared to see it. She had the look of one who emerges from some strenuous and invigorating act. He bent down and kissed her, and he had no words to say. She wasn't to speak much yet, but she stroked his arm with her hand and had to tell him one thing.
‘He's over nine pounds, Artie,’ she whispered. ‘Bessie's— Bessie's wasn't no more than eight.’
To have given Kipps a pound of triumph over Sid seemed to her almost to justify Nunc Dimittis.6 She watched his face for a moment, then closed her eyes in a kind of blissful exhaustion as the nurse, with something motherly in her manner, pushed Kipps out of the room.
§6
Kipps was far too much preoccupied with his own life to worry about the further exploits of Chitterlow. The man had got his two thousand; on the whole Kipps was glad he had had it rather than young Walshingham, and there was an end to the matter. As for the complicated transactions he achieved and proclaimed by mainly illegible and always incomprehensible postcards, they were like passing voices heard in the street as one goes about one's urgent concerns. Kipps put them aside, and they got in between the pages of the stock and were lost for ever, and sold in with the goods to customers, who puzzled over them mightily.
Then one morning as our bookseller was dusting round before breakfast, Chitterlow returned, appeared suddenly in the shop doorway.
It was the most unexpected thing in the world. The man was in evening dress, evening dress in that singularly crumpled state it assumes after the hour of dawn, and above his dishevelled red hair a smallish Gibus hat tilted remarkably forward. He opened the door and stood tall and spread, with one vast white glove flung out, as if to display how burst a glove might be, his eyes bright, such wrinkling of brow and mouth as only an experienced actor can produce, and a singular radiance of emotion upon his whole being – an altogether astonishing spectacle.
