LONDON
Sec.1
London was Kipps' third world. There were no doubt other worlds, but
Kipps knew only these three; firstly, New Romney and the Emporium,
constituting his primary world, his world of origin, which also
contained Ann; secondly, the world of culture and refinement, the world
of which Coote was chaperon, and into which Kipps was presently to
marry, a world it was fast becoming evident absolutely incompatible with
the first, and, thirdly, a world still to a large extent unexplored,
London. London presented itself as a place of great, grey spaces and
incredible multitudes of people, centring about Charing Cross station
and the Royal Grand Hotel, and containing at unexpected arbitrary points
shops of the most amazing sort, statuary, Squares, Restaurants--where it
was possible for clever people like Walshingham to order a lunch item by
item, to the waiters' evident respect and sympathy--exhibitions of
incredible things--the Walshinghams had taken him to the Arts and
Crafts and to a picture gallery--and theatres. London, moreover, is
rendered habitable by hansom cabs. Young Walshingham was a natural cab
taker, he was an all-round large minded young man, and he had in the
course of their two days' stay taken Kipps into no less than nine, so
that Kipps was singularly not afraid of these vehicles. He knew that
whereever you were, so soon as you were thoroughly lost you said "Hi!"
to a cab, and then "Royal Grand Hotel." Day and night these trusty
conveyances are returning the strayed Londoner back to his point of
departure, and were it not for their activity in a little while the
whole population, so vast and incomprehensible is the intricate
complexity of this great city, would be hopelessly lost forever. At any
rate, that is how the thing presented itself to Kipps, and I have heard
much the same from visitors from America.
His train was composed of corridor carriages, and he forgot his trouble
for a time in the wonders of this modern substitute for railway
compartments. He went from the non-smoking to the smoking carriage and
smoked a cigarette, and strayed from his second-class carriage to a
first and back. But presently Black Care got aboard the train and came
and sat beside him. The exhilaration of escape had evaporated now, and
he was presented with a terrible picture of his Aunt and Uncle arriving
at his lodgings and finding him fled. He had left a hasty message that
he was called away suddenly on business, "ver' important business," and
they were to be sumptuously entertained. His immediate motive had been
his passionate dread of an encounter between these excellent but
unrefined old people and the Walshinghams, but now that end was secured,
he could see how thwarted and exasperated they would be.
How to explain to them?
He ought never to have written to tell them!
He ought to have got married and told them afterwards.
He ought to have consulted Helen.
"Promise me," she had said.
"Oh, _desh_!" said Kipps, and got up and walked back into the smoking
car and began to consume cigarettes.
Suppose, after all, they found out the Walshingham's address and went
there!
At Charing Cross, however, there were distractions again. He took a cab
in an entirely Walshingham manner, and was pleased to note the enhanced
respect of the cabman when he mentioned the Royal Grand. He followed
Walshingham's routine on their previous visit with perfect success. They
were very nice in the office, and gave him an excellent room at fourteen
shillings the night.
He went up and spent a considerable time in examining the furniture of
his room, scrutinising himself in its various mirrors and sitting on the
edge of the bed whistling. It was a vast and splendid apartment, and
cheap at fourteen shillings. But, finding the figure of Ann inclined to
resume possession of his mind, he roused himself and descended by the
staircase after a momentary hesitation before the lift. He had thought
of lunch, but he drifted into the great drawing-room and read a guide to
the Hotels of Europe for a space, until a doubt whether he was entitled
to use this palatial apartment without extra charge arose in his mind.
He would have liked something to eat very much now, but his inbred
terror of the table was very strong. He did at last get by a porter in
uniform towards the dining-room, but at the sight of a number of waiters
and tables, with remarkable complications of knives and glasses, terror
seized him, and he backed out again, with a mumbled remark to the waiter
in the doorway about this not being the way.
He hovered in the hall and lounge until he thought the presiding porter
regarded him with suspicion, and then went up to his room again by the
staircase, got his hat and umbrella and struck boldly across the
courtyard. He would go to a restaurant instead.
He had a moment of elation in the gateway. He felt all the Strand must
notice him as he emerged through the great gate of the Hotel. "One of
these here rich swells," they would say. "Don't they do it just!" A
cabman touched his hat. "No fear," said Kipps, pleasantly.
Then he remembered he was hungry again.
Yet he decided he was in no great hurry for lunch, in spite of an
internal protest, and turned eastward along the Strand in a leisurely
manner. He tried to find a place to suit him soon enough. He tried to
remember the sort of things Walshingham had ordered. Before all things
he didn't want to go into a place and look like a fool. Some of these
places rook you dreadful, besides making fun of you. There was a place
near Essex Street where there was a window brightly full of chops,
tomatoes and lettuce. He stopped at this and reflected for a time, and
then it occurred to him that you were expected to buy these things raw
and cook them at home. Anyhow, there was sufficient doubt in the matter
to stop him. He drifted on to a neat window with champagne bottles, a
dish of asparagus and a framed menu of a two shilling lunch. He was
about to enter, when fortunately he perceived two waiters looking at him
over the back screen of the window with a most ironical expression, and
he sheered off at once. There was a wonderful smell of hot food half way
down Fleet Street and a nice looking Tavern with several doors, but he
could not decide which door. His nerve was going under the strain.
He hesitated at Farringdon Street and drifted up to St. Paul's and round
the church yard, full chiefly of dead bargains in the shop windows, to
Cheapside. But now Kipps was getting demoralised, and each house of
refreshment seemed to promise still more complicated obstacles to food.
He didn't know how you went in and what was the correct thing to do with
your hat, he didn't know what you said to the waiter or what you called
the different things; he was convinced absolutely he would "fumble," as
Shalford would have said, and look like a fool. Somebody might laugh at
him! The hungrier he got the more unendurable was the thought that
anyone should laugh at him. For a time he considered an extraordinary
expedient to account for his ignorance. He would go in and pretend to be
a foreigner and not know English. Then they might understand....
Presently he had drifted into a part of London where there did not seem
to be any refreshment places at all.
"Oh, _desh_!" said Kipps, in a sort of agony of indecisiveness. "The
very nex' place I see, in I go."
The next place was a fried fish shop in a little side street, where
there were also sausages on a gas-lit grill.
He would have gone in, but suddenly a new scruple came to him, that he
was too well dressed for the company he could see dimly through the
steam sitting at the counter and eating with a sort of nonchalant speed.
Sec.2
He was half minded to resort to a hansom and brave the terrors of the
dining-room of the Royal Grand--they wouldn't know why he had gone out
really--when the only person he knew in London appeared (as the only
person one does know will do in London) and slapped him on the
shoulder. Kipps was hovering at a window at a few yards from the fish
shop, pretending to examine some really strikingly cheap pink baby
linen, and trying to settle finally about those sausages.
"Hullo, Kipps!" cried Sid; "spending the millions?"
Kipps turned, and was glad to perceive no lingering vestige of the
chagrin that had been so painful at New Romney. Sid looked grave and
important, and he wore a quite new silk hat that gave a commercial touch
to a generally socialistic costume. For a moment the sight of Sid
uplifted Kipps wonderfully. He saw him as a friend and helper, and only
presently did it come clearly into his mind that this was the brother of
Ann.
He made amiable noises.
"I've just been up this way," Sid explained, "buying a second-hand
'namelling stove.... I'm going to 'namel myself."
"Lor'!" said Kipps.
"Yes. Do me a lot of good. Let the customer choose his colour. See? What
brings _you_ up?"
Kipps had a momentary vision of his foiled Uncle and Aunt. "Jest a bit
of a change," he said.
Sid came to a swift decision. "Come down to my little show. I got
someone I'd like to see talking to you."
Even then Kipps did not think of Ann in this connection.
"Well," he said, trying to invent an excuse on the spur of the moment.
"Fact is," he explained, "I was jest looking 'round to get a bit of
lunch."
"Dinner, we call it," said Sid. "But that's all right. You can't get
anything to eat hereabout. If you're not too haughty to do a bit of
slumming, there's some mutton spoiling for me now----"
The word "mutton" affected Kipps greatly.
"It won't take us 'arf an hour," said Sid, and Kipps was carried.
He discovered another means of London locomotion in the Underground
Railway, and recovered his self-possession in that interest. "You don't
mind going third?" asked Sid, and Kipps said, "Nort a _bit_ of it." They
were silent in the train for a time, on account of strangers in the
carriage, and then Sid began to explain who it was that he wanted Kipps
to meet. "It's a chap named Masterman--do you no end of good.
"He occupies our first floor front room, you know. It isn't so much for
gain I let as company. We don't _want_ the whole 'ouse, and another, I
knew the man before. Met him at our Sociological, and after a bit he
said he wasn't comfortable where he was. That's how it came about. He's
a first-class chap--first-class. Science! You should see his books!
"Properly he's a sort of journalist. He's written a lot of things, but
he's been too ill lately to do very much. Poetry he's written, all
sorts. He writes for the _Commonweal_ sometimes, and sometimes he
reviews books. 'E's got 'eaps of books--'eaps. Besides selling a lot.
"He knows a regular lot of people, and all sorts of things. He's been a
dentist, and he's a qualified chemist, an' I seen him often reading
German and French. Taught 'imself. He was here----"
Sid indicated South Kensington, which had come opportunely outside the
carriage windows, with a nod of his head, "--three years. Studying
science. But you'll see 'im. When he really gets to talking--he _pours_
it out."
"Ah!" said Kipps, nodding sympathetically, with his two hands on his
umbrella knob.
"He'll do big things some day," said Sid. "He's written a book on
science already. 'Physiography,' it's called. 'Elementary Physiography'!
Some day he'll write an Advanced--when he gets time."
He let this soak into Kipps.
"I can't introduce you to Lords and swells," he went on, "but I _can_
show you a Famous Man, that's going to be. I _can_ do that.
Leastways--unless----"
Sid hesitated.
"He's got a frightful cough," he said.
"He won't care to talk with me," weighed Kipps.
"That's all right; _he_ won't mind. He's fond of talking. He'd talk to
anyone," said Sid, reassuringly, and added a perplexing bit of
Londonized Latin. "He doesn't _pute_ anything, _non alienum_. You know."
"_I_ know," said Kipps, intelligently, over his umbrella knob, though
of course that was altogether untrue.
Sec.3
Kipps found Sid's shop a practical looking establishment, stocked with
the most remarkable collection of bicycles and pieces of bicycle that he
had ever beheld. "My hiring stock," said Sid, with a wave to this
ironmongery, "and there's the best machine at a democratic price in
London, The Red-Flag, built by _me_. See?"
He indicated a graceful, grey-brown framework in the window. "And
there's my stock of accessories--store prices.
"Go in for motors a bit," added Sid.
"Mutton?" said Kipps, not hearing him distinctly.
"Motors, I _said_.... 'Owever, Mutton Department 'ere," and he opened a
door that had a curtain guarded window in its upper panel, to reveal a
little room with red walls and green furniture, with a white clothed
table and the generous promise of a meal. "Fanny!" he shouted. "Here's
Art Kipps."
A bright-eyed young woman of five or six and twenty in a pink print
appeared, a little flushed from cooking, and wiped a hand on an apron
and shook hands and smiled, and said it would all be ready in a minute.
She went on to say she had heard of Kipps and his luck, and meanwhile
Sid vanished to draw the beer, and returned with two glasses for himself
and Kipps.
"Drink that," said Sid, and Kipps felt all the better for it.
"I give Mr. Masterman _'is_ upstairs a hour ago," said Mrs. Sid. "I
didn't think 'e ought to wait."
A rapid succession of brisk movements on the part of everyone, and they
were all four at dinner--the fourth person being Master Walt Whitman
Pornick, a cheerful young gentleman of one and a half, who was given a
spoon to hammer on the table with to keep him quiet, and who got "Kipps"
right at the first effort and kept it all through the meal, combining it
first with this previous acquisition, and then that. "Peacock Kipps"
said Master Walt, at which there was great laughter, and also "More
Mutton, Kipps."
"He's a regular oner," said Mrs. Sid, "for catching up words. You can't
say a word but what 'e's on to it."
There were no serviettes and less ceremony, and Kipps thought he had
never enjoyed a meal so much. Everyone was a little excited by the
meeting and chatting, and disposed to laugh, and things went off easily
from the very beginning. If there was a pause Master Walt filled it in.
Mrs. Sid, who tempered her enormous admiration for Sid's intellect and
his socialism and his severe business methods by a motherly sense of her
sex and seniority, spoke of them both as "you boys," and dilated--when
she was not urging Kipps to have some more of this or that--on the
disparity between herself and her husband.
"Shouldn't ha' thought there was a year between you," said Kipps; "you
seem jest a match."
"_I'm his_ match, anyhow," said Mrs. Sid, and no epigram of young
Walshingham's was ever better received.
"Match," said young Walt, coming in on the trail of the joke and getting
a round for himself.
Any sense of superior fortune had long vanished from Kipps' mind, and he
found himself looking at host and hostess with enormous respect. Really,
old Sid was a wonderful chap, here in his own house at two and twenty,
carving his own mutton and lording it over wife and child. No legacies
needed by him! And Mrs. Sid, so kind and bright and hearty! And the
child, old Sid's child! Old Sid had jumped round a bit. It needed the
sense of his fortune at the back of his mind to keep Kipps from feeling
abject. He resolved he'd buy young Walt something tremendous in toys at
the first opportunity.
"Drop more beer, Art?"
"Right you are, old man."
"Cut Mr. Kipps a bit more bread, Sid."
"Can't I pass _you_ a bit?"
Sid was all right, Sid was, and there was no mistake about that.
It was growing up in his mind that Sid was the brother of Ann, but he
said nothing about her for excellent reasons. After all, because he
remembered Sid's irritation at her name when they had met in New Romney
seemed to show a certain separation. They didn't tell each other
much.... He didn't know how things might be between Ann and Sid, either.
Still, for all that, Sid was Ann's brother.
The furniture of the room did not assert itself very much above the
cheerful business at the table, but Kipps was impressed with the idea
that it was pretty. There was a dresser at the end with a number of gay
plates and a mug or so, a Labour Day poster, by Walter Crane, on the
wall, and through the glass and over the blind of the shop door one had
a glimpse of the bright coloured advertisement cards of bicycle dealers,
and a shelfful of boxes labelled, The Paragon Bell, The Scarum Bell, and
The Patent Omi! Horn....
It seemed incredible that he had been in Folkestone that morning, and
even now his Aunt and Uncle----!
Brrr. It didn't do to think of his Aunt and Uncle.
Sec.4
When Sid repeated his invitation to come and see Masterman, Kipps, now
flushed with beer and Irish stew, said he didn't mind if he did, and
after a preliminary shout from Sid that was answered by a voice and a
cough, the two went upstairs.
"Masterman's a rare one," said Sid over his arm and in an undertone.
"You should hear him speak at a meeting.... If he's in form, that is."
He rapped and went into a large, untidy room.
"This is Kipps," he said. "You know. The chap I told you of. With twelve
'undred a year."
Masterman sat gnawing at an empty pipe and as close to the fire as
though it was alight and the season midwinter. Kipps concentrated upon
him for a space, and only later took in something of the frowsy
furniture, the little bed half behind, and evidently supposed to be
wholly behind, a careless screen, the spittoon by the fender, the
remains of a dinner on the chest of drawers and the scattered books and
papers. Masterman's face showed him a man of forty or more, with curious
hollows at the side of his forehead and about his eyes. His eyes were
very bright; there was a spot of red in his cheeks, and the wiry black
moustache under his short, red nose had been trimmed with scissors into
a sort of brush along his upper lip. His teeth were darkened ruins. His
jacket collar was turned up about a knitted white neck wrap, and his
sleeves betrayed no cuffs. He did not rise to greet Kipps, but held out
a thin wristed hand and pointed with the other to a bedroom arm chair.
"Glad to see you," he said. "Sit down and make yourself at home. Will
you smoke?"
Kipps said he would, and produced his store. He was about to take one,
and then, with a civil afterthought, handed the packet first to
Masterman and Sid. Masterman pretended surprise to find his pipe out
before he took one. There was an interlude of matches. Sid pushed the
end of the screen out of his way, sat down on the bed thus frankly
admitted, and prepared, with a certain quiet satisfaction of manner, to
witness Masterman's treatment of Kipps.
"And how does it feel to have twelve hundred a year?" asked Masterman,
holding his cigarette to his nose tip in a curious manner.
"It's rum," confided Kipps, after a reflective interval. "It feels
juiced rum."
"I never felt it," said Masterman.
"It takes a bit of getting into," said Kipps. "I can tell you that."
Masterman smoked and regarded Kipps with curious eyes.
"I expect it does," he said presently.
"And has it made you perfectly happy?" he asked, abruptly.
"I couldn't 'ardly say _that_," said Kipps.
Masterman smiled. "No," he said. "Has it made you much happier?"
"It did at first."
"Yes. But you got used to it. How long, for example, did the real
delirious excitement last?"
"Oo, _that_! Perhaps a week," said Kipps.
Masterman nodded his head. "That's what discourages _me_ from amassing
wealth," he said to Sid. "You adjust yourself. It doesn't last. I've
always had an inkling of that, and it's interesting to get it confirmed.
I shall go on sponging for a bit longer on _you_, I think."
"You don't," said Sid. "No fear."
"Twenty-four thousand pounds," said Masterman, and blew a cloud of
smoke. "Lord! Doesn't it worry you?"
"It is a bit worrying at times.... Things 'appen."
"Going to marry?"
"Yes."
"H'm. Lady, I guess, of a superior social position?"
"Rather," said Kipps. "Cousin to the Earl of Beaupres."
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 for
given 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,
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?"
"I was a bit that way," said Kipps.
"And you found that 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."
"Exactly," said Masterman.
Sid began to speak from the bed. "That's all very well, Masterman," 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 any one 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
that 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 around
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 and 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 around its neck. The world
is ill, my time is short and my strength is small. I'm as happy here as
anywhere."
He coughed and was silent for a moment, then brought the index finger
around 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 skill. 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, 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 will 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 are you, 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 civilisation 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 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 enquiry.
"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 of 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-commital 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, 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 and 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 drain pipe until 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 _nothin'_.... 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 huckster's 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!
"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 and again
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.
Sec.5
Six o'clock that day found Kipps drifting eastward along the southward
margin of Rotten Row. You figure him a small, respectably attired
figure 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 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 he 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 I 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, off-hand letter,
to say that 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 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. Swells! 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 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 from a corpulent, osculatory Uncle, or
Chitterlow, or the dangerously insignificant eye of Pierce.
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 as 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!
What queer encounters were possible in the world!
Thank goodness, they were going to live in London!
But that brought him around to Chitterlow. The Chitterlows were coming
to London, too. If they didn't get money they'd come after it; they
weren't the sort of people to be choked off easily, and if they did
they'd come to London to produce their play. He tried to imagine some
seemly social occasion invaded by Chitterlow and his rhetoric, by his
torrential thunder of self-assertion, the whole company flattened
thereunder like wheat under a hurricane.
Confound and hang Chitterlow! Yet, somehow, somewhen, one would have to
settle accounts with him! And there was Sid! Sid was Ann's brother. He
realised with sudden horror the social indiscretion of accepting Sid's
invitation to dinner.
Sid wasn't the sort of chap one could snub or cut, and besides--Ann's
brother! He didn't want to cut him. It would be worse than cutting
Buggins and Pierce--a sight worse. And after that lunch!
It would be the next thing to cutting Ann herself. And even as to Ann!
Suppose he was with Helen or Coote!...
"Oh, Blow!" he said, at last, and then, viciously, "_Blow!_" and so rose
and flung away his cigarette end, and pursued his reluctant, dubiating
way towards the really quite uncongenial splendours of the Royal
Grand....
And it is vulgarly imagined that to have money is to have no troubles
at all!
Sec.6
Kipps endured splendour at the Royal Grand Hotel for three nights and
days, and then he retreated in disorder. The Royal Grand defeated and
overcame and routed Kipps, not of intention, but by sheer royal
grandeur, grandeur combined with an organisation for his comfort carried
to excess. On his return he came upon a difficulty; he had lost his
circular piece of cardboard with the number of his room, and he drifted
about the hall and passages in a state of perplexity for some time,
until he thought all the porters and officials in gold lace caps must be
watching him and jesting to one another about him. Finally, in a quiet
corner, down below the hairdresser's shop, he found a kindly looking
personage in bottle green, to whom he broached his difficulty. "I say,"
he said, with a pleasant smile, "I can't find my room nohow." The
personage in bottle green, instead of laughing in a nasty way, as he
might well have done, became extremely helpful, showed Kipps what to do,
got his key, and conducted him by lift and passage to his chamber. Kipps
tipped him half a crown.
Safe in his room, Kipps pulled himself together for dinner. He had
learnt enough from young Walshingham to bring his dress clothes, and now
he began to assume them. Unfortunately, in the excitement of his flight
from his Aunt and Uncle, he had forgotten to put in his other boots, and
he was some time deciding between his purple cloth slippers, with a
golden marigold, and the prospect of cleaning the boots he was wearing
with the towel, but finally, being a little footsore, he took the
slippers.
Afterwards, when he saw the porters and waiters and the other guests
catch a sight of the slippers, he was sorry he had not chosen the boots.
However, to make up for any want of style at that end, he had his crush
hat under his arm.
He found the dining-room without excessive trouble. It was a vast and
splendidly decorated place, and a number of people, evidently quite _au
fait_, were dining there at little tables lit with electric, red shaded
candles, gentlemen in evening dress, and ladies with dazzling,
astonishing necks. Kipps had never seen evening dress in full vigour
before, and he doubted his eyes. And there were also people not in
evening dress who, no doubt, wondered what noble family Kipps
represented. There was a band in a decorated recess, and the band looked
collectively at the purple slippers, and so lost any chance they may
have had of a collection, so far as Kipps was concerned. The chief
drawback to this magnificent place was the excessive space of floor that
had to be crossed before you got your purple slippers hid in under a
table.
He selected a little table--not the one where a rather impudent looking
waiter held a chair, but another--sat down, and finding his gibus in
his hand, decided after a moment of thought to rise slightly and sit on
it. (It was discovered in his abandoned chair at a late hour by a supper
party, and restored to him next day.)
He put the napkin carefully on one side, selected his soup without
difficulty, "Clear, please," but he was rather floored by the
presentation of a quite splendidly bound wine card. He turned it over,
discovered a section devoted to whiskey, and had a bright idea.
"'Ere," he said to the waiter, with an encouraging movement of his head,
and then in a confidential manner, "you haven't any Old Methuselah Three
Stars, 'ave you?"
The waiter went away to enquire, and Kipps went on with his soup with an
enhanced self-respect. Finally, Old Methuselah being unobtainable, he
ordered a claret from about the middle of the list. "Let's 'ave some of
this," he said. He knew claret was a good sort of wine.
"A half bottle?" said the waiter.
"Right you are," said Kipps.
He felt he was getting on. He leant back after his soup, a man of the
world, and then slowly brought his eyes around to the ladies in evening
dress on his right....
He couldn't have thought it!
They were scorchers. Jest a bit of black velvet over the shoulders!
He looked again. One of them was laughing with a glass of wine half
raised--wicked-looking woman she was--the other, the black velvet one,
was eating bits of bread with nervous quickness and talking fast.
He wished old Buggins could see them.
He found a waiter regarding him and blushed deeply. He did not look
again for some time, and became confused about his knife and fork over
the fish. Presently he remarked a lady in pink to the left of him eating
the fish with an entirely different implement.
It was over the _vol au vent_ that he began to go to pieces. He took a
knife to it; then saw the lady in pink was using a fork only, and
hastily put down his knife, with a considerable amount of rich
creaminess on the blade, upon the cloth. Then he found that a fork in
his inexperienced hand was an instrument of chase rather than capture.
His ears became violently red, and then he looked up, to discover the
lady in pink glancing at him and then smiling as she spoke to the man
beside her.
He hated the lady in pink very much.
He stabbed a large piece of the _vol au vent_ at last, and was too glad
of his luck not to take a mouthful of it. But it was an extensive
fragment, and pieces escaped him. Shirt front! "Desh it!" he said, and
had resort to his spoon. His waiter went and spoke to two other waiters,
no doubt jeering at him. He became very fierce suddenly. "Ere!" he said,
gesticulating, and then, "clear this away!"
The entire dinner party on his right, the party of the ladies in
advanced evening dress, looked at him.... He felt that everyone was
watching him and making fun of him, and the injustice of this angered
him. After all, they had every advantage he hadn't. And then, when they
got him there doing his best, what must they do but glance and sneer and
nudge one another. He tried to catch them at it, and then took refuge in
a second glass of wine.
Suddenly and extraordinarily he found himself a socialist. He did not
care how close it was to the lean years when all these things would end.
Mutton came with peas. He arrested the hand of the waiter. "No peas," he
said. He knew something of the difficulty and danger of eating peas.
Then, when the peas went away again he was embittered again.... Echoes
of Masterman's burning rhetoric began to reverberate in his mind. Nice
lot of people these were to laugh at anyone! Women half undressed. It
was that made him so beastly uncomfortable. How could one eat one's
dinner with people about him like that? Nice lot they were. He was glad
he wasn't one of them, anyhow. Yes, they might look. He resolved if they
looked at him again he would ask one of the men who he was staring at.
His perturbed and angry face would have concerned anyone. The band by an
unfortunate accident was playing truculent military music. The mental
change Kipps underwent was, in its way, what psychologists call a
conversion. In a few moments all Kipps' ideals were changed. He who had
been "practically a gentleman," the sedulous pupil of Coote, the
punctilious raiser of hats, was instantly a rebel, an outcast, the hater
of everything "stuck up," the foe of Society and the social order of
to-day. Here they were among the profits of their robbery, these people
who might do anything with the world....
"No, thenks," he said to a dish.
He addressed a scornful eye at the shoulders of the lady to his left.
Presently he was refusing another dish. He didn't like it--fussed up
food! Probably cooked by some foreigner. He finished up his wine and his
bread.
"No, thenks."
"No, thenks."...
He discovered the eye of a diner fixed curiously upon his flushed face.
He responded with a glare. Couldn't he go without things if he liked?
"What's this?" said Kipps to a great green cone.
"Ice," said the waiter.
"I'll 'ave some," said Kipps.
He seized a fork and spoon and assailed the bombe. It cut rather
stiffly. "Come up!" said Kipps, with concentrated bitterness, and the
truncated summit of the bombe flew off suddenly, travelling eastward
with remarkable velocity. Flop, it went upon the floor a yard away, and
for awhile time seemed empty.
At the adjacent table they were laughing together.
Shy the rest of the bombe at them?
Flight?
At any rate a dignified withdrawal.
"No!" said Kipps, "no more," arresting the polite attempt of the waiter
to serve him with another piece. He had a vague idea he might carry off
the affair as though he had meant the ice to go on the floor--not liking
ice, for example, and being annoyed at the badness of his dinner. He put
both hands on the table, thrust back his chair, disengaged a purple
slipper from his napkin, and rose. He stepped carefully over the
prostrate ice, kicked the napkin under the table, thrust his hands deep
into his pockets, and marched out--shaking the dust of the place, as it
were, from his feet. He left behind him a melting fragment of ice upon
the floor, his gibus hat, warm and compressed in his chair, and in
addition every social ambition he had ever entertained in the world.
Sec.7
Kipps went back to Folkestone in time for the Anagram Tea. But you must
not imagine that the change of heart that came to him in the dining-room
of the Royal Grand Hotel involved any change of attitude toward this
promised social and intellectual treat. He went back because the Royal
Grand was too much for him.
Outwardly calm, or at most a little flushed and ruffled, inwardly Kipps
was a horrible, tormented battleground of scruples, doubts, shames and
self-assertions during that three days of silent, desperate grappling
with the big hotel. He did not intend the monstrosity should beat him
without a struggle, but at last he had sullenly to admit himself
overcome. The odds were terrific. On the one hand himself--with, among
other things, only one pair of boots; on the other a vast wilderness of
rooms, covering several acres, and with over a thousand people, staff
and visitors, all chiefly occupied in looking queerly at Kipps, in
laughing at him behind his back, in watching for difficult corners at
which to confront and perplex him, and inflict humiliations upon him.
For example, the hotel scored over its electric light. After the dinner
the chambermaid, a hard, unsympathetic young woman with a superior
manner, was summoned by a bell Kipps had rung under the impression the
button was the electric light switch. "Look 'ere," said Kipps, rubbing a
shin that had suffered during his search in the dark, "why aren't there
any candles or matches?" The hotel explained and scored heavily.
"It isn't everyone is up to these things," said Kipps.
"No, it isn't," said the chambermaid, with ill-concealed scorn, and
slammed the door at him.
"S'pose I ought to have tipped her," said Kipps.
After that Kipps cleaned his boots with a pocket-handkerchief and went
for a long walk and got home in a hansom, but the hotel scored again by
his not putting out his boots and so having to clean them again in the
morning. The hotel also snubbed him by bringing him hot water when he
was fully dressed and looking surprised at his collar, but he got a
breakfast, I must admit, with scarcely any difficulty.
After that the hotel scored heavily by the fact that there are
twenty-four hours in the day and Kipps had nothing to do in any of them.
He was a little footsore from his previous day's pedestrianism, and he
could make up his mind for no long excursions. He flitted in and out of
the hotel several times, and it was the polite porter who touched his
hat every time that first set Kipps tipping.
"What 'e wants is a tip," said Kipps.
So at the next opportunity he gave the man an unexpected shilling, and
having once put his hand in his pocket, there was no reason why he
should not go on. He bought a newspaper at the book-stall and tipped the
boy the rest of the shilling, and then went up by the lift and tipped
the man a sixpence, leaving his newspaper inadvertently in the lift. He
met his chambermaid in the passage and gave her half a crown. He
resolved to demonstrate his position to the entire establishment in this
way. He didn't like the place; he disapproved of it politically,
socially, morally, but he resolved no taint of meanness should disfigure
his sojourn in its luxurious halls. He went down by the lift (tipping
again), and, being accosted by a waiter with his gibus, tipped the
finder half a crown. He had a vague sense that he was making a flank
movement upon the hotel and buying over its staff. They would regard him
as a character. They would get to like him. He found his stock of small
silver diminishing, and replenished it at a desk in the hall. He tipped
a man in bottle green who looked like the man who had shown him his room
the day before, and then he saw a visitor eyeing him, and doubted
whether he was in this instance doing right. Finally he went out and
took chance 'buses to their destinations, and wandered a little in
remote, wonderful suburbs and returned. He lunched at a chop house in
Islington, and found himself back in the Royal Grand, now unmistakably
footsore and London weary, about three. He was drawn towards the
drawing-room by a neat placard about afternoon tea.
It occurred to him that the campaign of tipping upon which he had
embarked was perhaps after all a mistake. He was confirmed in this by
observing that the hotel officials were watching him, not respectfully,
but with a sort of amused wonder, as if to see whom he would tip next.
However, if he backed out now, they would think him an awful fool.
Everyone wasn't so rich as he was. It was his way to tip. Still----
He grew more certain the hotel had scored again.
He pretended to be lost in thought and so drifted by, and having put hat
and umbrella in the cloak-room went into the drawing-room for afternoon
tea.
There he did get what for a time he held to be a point in his favour.
The room was large and quiet at first, and he sat back restfully until
it occurred to him that his attitude brought his extremely dusty boots
too prominently into the light, so instead he sat up, and then people
of the upper and upper middle classes began to come and group themselves
about him and have tea likewise, and so revive the class animosities of
the previous day.
Presently a fluffy, fair-haired lady came into prominent existence a few
yards away. She was talking to a respectful, low-voiced clergyman, whom
she was possibly entertaining at tea. "No," she said, "dear Lady Jane
wouldn't like that!"
"Mumble, mumble, mumble," from the clergyman.
"Poor dear Lady Jane was always so sensitive," the voice of the lady
sang out clear and emphatic.
A fat, hairless, important-looking man joined this group, took a chair
and planted it firmly with its back in the face of Kipps, a thing that
offended Kipps mightily. "Are you telling him," gurgled the fat,
hairless man, "about dear Lady Jane's affliction?" A young couple, lady
brilliantly attired and the man in a magnificently cut frock coat,
arranged themselves to the right, also with an air of exclusion towards
Kipps. "I've told him," said the gentleman in a flat, abundant voice.
"My!" said the young lady, with an American smile. No doubt they all
thought Kipps was out of it. A great desire to assert himself in some
way surged up in his heart. He felt he would like to cut in on the
conversation in some dramatic way. A monologue something in the manner
of Masterman? At any rate, abandoning that as impossible, he would like
to appear self-centred and at ease. His eyes, wandering over the black
surfaces of a noble architectural mass close by, discovered a slot--an
enamelled plaque of directions.
It was some sort of musical box! As a matter of fact, it was the very
best sort of Harmonicon and specially made to the scale of the Hotel.
He scrutinised the plaque with his head at various angles and glanced
about him at his neighbours.
It occurred to Kipps that he would like some music, that to inaugurate
some would show him a man of taste and at his ease at the same time. He
rose, read over a list of tunes, selected one haphazard, pressed his
sixpence--it was sixpence!--home, and prepared for a confidential,
refined little melody.
Considering the high social tone of the Royal Grand, it was really a
very loud instrument indeed. It gave vent to three deafening brays and
so burst the dam of silence that had long pent it in. It seemed to be
chiefly full of the greatuncles of trumpets, megalo-trombones and
railway brakes. It made sounds like shunting trains. It did not so much
begin as blow up your counter-scarp or rush forward to storm under cover
of melodious shrapnel. It had not so much an air as a _ricochette_. The
music had, in short, the inimitable quality of Sousa. It swept down upon
the friend of Lady Jane and carried away something socially striking
into the eternal night of the unheard; the American girl to the left of
it was borne shrieking into the inaudible. "HIGH cockalorum Tootletootle
tootle loo. HIGH cockalorum tootle lootle loo. BUMP, bump, bump--BUMP."
Joyous, exorbitant music it was from the gigantic nursery of the
Future, bearing the hearer along upon its torrential succession of
sounds, as if he was in a cask on Niagara. Whiroo! Yah and have at you!
The strenuous Life! Yaha! Stop! A Reprieve! A Reprieve! No! Bang! Bump!
Everybody looked around, conversation ceased and gave place to gestures.
The friend of Lady Jane became terribly agitated.
"Can't it be stopped?" she vociferated, pointing a gloved finger and
saying something to the waiter about "That dreadful young man."
"Ought not to be working," said the clerical friend of Lady Jane.
The waiter shook his head at the fat, hairless gentleman. People began
to move away. Kipps leant back luxurious, and then tipped with a half
crown to pay. He paid, tipped like a gentleman, rose with an easy
gesture, and strolled towards the door. His retreat evidently completed
the indignation of the friend of Lady Jane, and from the door he could
still discern her gestures as asking, "Can't it be stopped?" The music
followed him into the passage and pursued him to the lift and only died
away completely in the quiet of his own room, and afterwards from his
window he saw the friend of Lady Jane and her party having their tea
carried out to a little table in the court. BUMP, bump, bump, BUMP
floated up to him, and certainly that was a point to him. But it was his
only score; all the rest of the game lay in the hands of the upper
classes and the big hotel. And presently he was doubting whether even
this was really a point. It seemed a trifle vulgar, come to think it
over, to interrupt people when they were talking.
He saw a clerk peering at him from the office, and suddenly it occurred
to him that the place might get back at him tremendously over the bill.
They would probably take it out of him by charging pounds and pounds.
Suppose they charged more than he had!
The clerk had a particularly nasty face, just the face to take advantage
of a vacillating Kipps.
He became aware of a man in a cap touching it, and produced his shilling
automatically, but the strain was beginning to tell. It was a deuce and
all of an expense--this tipping.
If the hotel chose to stick it on to the bill something tremendous what
was Kipps to do? Refuse to pay? Make a row?
If he did he couldn't fight all these men in bottle green....
He went out about seven and walked for a long time and dined at last
upon a chop in the Euston Road; then he walked along to the Edgeware
Road and sat and rested in the Metropolitan Music Hall for a time until
a trapeze performance unnerved him and finally he came back to bed. He
tipped the lift man sixpence and wished him good-night. In the silent
watches of the night he reviewed the tale of the day's tipping, went
over the horrors of the previous night's dinner, and heard again the
triumphant bray of the harmonicon devil released from its long
imprisonment. Everyone would be told about him to-morrow. He couldn't go
on! He admitted his defeat. Never in their whole lives had any of these
people seen such a Fool as he! Ugh!...
His method of announcing his withdrawal to the clerk was touched with
bitterness.
"I'm going to get out of this," said Kipps, blowing windily. "Let's see
what you got on my bill."
"One breakfast?" asked the clerk.
"Do I _look_ as if I'd ate two?"...
At his departure Kipps, with a hot face, convulsive gestures and an
embittered heart, tipped everyone who did not promptly and actively
resist, including an absent-minded South African diamond merchant, who
was waiting in the hall for his wife and succumbed to old habit. He paid
his cabman a four shilling piece at Charing Cross, having no smaller
change, and wished he could burn him alive. Then in a sudden reaction of
economy he refused the proffered help of a porter and carried his bag
quite violently to the train.