KIPPS ENTERS SOCIETY
Sec.1
Submission to Inexorable Fate took Kipps to the Anagram Tea.
At any rate he would meet Helen there in the presence of other people
and be able to carry off the worst of the difficulty of explaining his
little jaunt to London. He had not seen her since his last portentous
visit to New Romney. He was engaged to her, he would have to marry her,
and the sooner he faced her again the better. Before wild plans of
turning socialist, defying the world and repudiating all calling for
ever, his heart on second thoughts sank. He felt Helen would never
permit anything of the sort. As for the Anagrams he could do no more
than his best and that he was resolved to do. What had happened at the
Royal Grand, what had happened at New Romney, he must bury in his memory
and begin again at the reconstruction of his social position. Ann,
Buggins, Chitterlow, all these, seen in the matter-of-fact light of the
Folkestone train, stood just as they stood before; people of an inferior
social position who had to be eliminated from his world. It was a
bother about Ann, a bother and a pity. His mind rested so for a space on
Ann until the memory of these Anagrams drew him away. If he could see
Coote that evening he might, he thought, be able to arrange some sort of
connivance about the Anagrams, and his mind was chiefly busy sketching
proposals for such an arrangement. It would not, of course, be
ungentlemanly cheating, but only a little mystification. Coote very
probably might drop him a hint of the solution of one or two of the
things, not enough to win a prize, but enough to cover his shame. Or
failing that he might take a humorous, quizzical line and pretend he was
pretending to be very stupid. There were plenty of ways out of it if one
kept a sharp lookout....
The costume Kipps wore to the Anagram Tea was designed as a compromise
between the strict letter of high fashion and seaside laxity, a sort of
easy, semi-state for afternoon. Helen's first reproof had always
lingered in his mind. He wore a frock coat, but mitigated it by a Panama
hat of romantic shape with a black band, grey gloves, but for relaxation
brown button boots. The only other man besides the clergy present, a new
doctor with an attractive wife, was in full afternoon dress. Coote was
not there.
Kipps was a little pale, but quite self-possessed, as he approached Mrs.
Bindon Botting's door. He took a turn while some people went in and then
faced it manfully. The door opened and revealed--Ann!
In the background through a draped doorway behind a big fern in a great
art pot the elder Miss Botting was visible talking to two guests; the
auditory background was a froth of feminine voices....
Our two young people were much too amazed to give one another any
formula of greeting, though they had parted warmly enough. Each was
already in a state of extreme tension to meet the demands of this great
and unprecedented occasion of an Anagram Tea. "Lor'!" said Ann, her sole
remark, and then the sense of Miss Botting's eye ruled her straight
again. She became very pale, but she took his hat mechanically, and he
was already removing his gloves. "Ann," he said in a low tone, and then
"Fency!" The eldest Miss Botting knew Kipps was the sort of guest who
requires nursing, and she came forward vocalising charm. She said it was
"Awfully jolly of him to come, awfully jolly. It was awfully difficult
to get any good men!"
She handed Kipps forward, mumbling in a dazed condition, to the
drawing-room, and there he encountered Helen looking unfamiliar in an
unfamiliar hat. It was as if he had not met her for years.
She astonished him. She didn't seem to mind in the least his going to
London. She held out a shapely hand, and smiled encouragingly. "You've
faced the anagrams?" she said.
The second Miss Botting accosted them, a number of oblong pieces of
paper in her hand, mysteriously inscribed. "Take an anagram," she said;
"take an anagram," and boldly pinned one of these brief documents to
Kipps' lapel. The letters were "Cypshi," and Kipps from the very
beginning suspected this was an anagram for Cuyps. She also left a thing
like a long dance programme, from which dangled a little pencil in his
hand. He found himself being introduced to people, and then he was in a
corner with the short lady in a big bonnet, who was pelting him with
gritty little bits of small talk that were gone before you could take
hold of them and reply.
"Very hot," said this lady. "Very hot, indeed--hot all the
summer--remarkable year--all the years remarkable now--don't know what
we're coming to--don't you think so, Mr. Kipps?"
"Oo rather," said Kipps, and wondered if Ann was still in the hall. Ann!
He ought not to have stared at her like a stuck fish and pretended not
to know her. That couldn't be right. But what _was_ right?
The lady in the big bonnet proceeded to a second discharge. "Hope you're
fond of anagrams, Mr. Kipps--difficult exercise--still one must do
something to bring people together--better than Ludo anyhow. Don't you
think so, Mr. Kipps?"
Ann fluttered past the open door. Her eyes met his in amazed enquiry.
Something had got dislocated in the world for both of them....
He ought to have told her he was engaged. He ought to have explained
things to her. Perhaps even now he might be able to drop her a hint.
"Don't you think so, Mr. Kipps?"
"Oo rather," said Kipps for the third time.
A lady with a tired smile, who was labelled conspicuously "Wogdelenk,"
drifted towards Kipps' interlocutor and the two fell into conversation.
Kipps found himself socially aground. He looked about him. Helen was
talking to a curate and laughing. Kipps was overcome by a vague desire
to speak to Ann. He was for sidling doorward.
"What are _you_, please?" said an extraordinarily bold, tall girl, and
arrested him while she took down "Cypshi."
"I'm sure I don't know what it means," she explained. "I'm Sir Bubh.
Don't you think anagrams are something chronic?"
Kipps made stockish noises, and the young lady suddenly became the
nucleus of a party of excited friends who were forming a syndicate to
guess, and barred his escape. She took no further notice of him. He
found himself jammed against an occasional table and listening to the
conversation of Mrs. "Wogdelenk" and his lady with the big bonnet.
"She packed her two beauties off together," said the lady in the big
bonnet. "Time enough, too. Don't think much of this girl; she's got as
housemaid now. Pretty, of course, but there's no occasion for a
housemaid to be pretty--none whatever. And she doesn't look particularly
up to her work either. Kind of 'mazed expression."
"You never can tell," said the lady labelled "Wogdelenk;" "you never
can tell. My wretches are big enough, Heaven knows, and do they work?
Not a bit of it!"...
Kipps felt dreadfully out of it with regard to all these people, and
dreadfully in it with Ann.
He scanned the back of the big bonnet and concluded it was an extremely
ugly bonnet indeed. It got jerking forward as each short, dry sentence
was snapped off at the end and a plume of osprey on it jerked
excessively. "She hasn't guessed even one!" followed by a shriek of
girlish merriment, came from the group about the tall, bold girl. They'd
shriek at him presently, perhaps. Beyond thinking his own anagram might
be Cuyps, he hadn't a notion. What a chatter they were all making! It
was just like a summer sale! Just the sort of people who'd give a lot of
trouble and swap you! And suddenly the smouldering fires of rebellion
leapt to flame again. These were a rotten lot of people, and the
anagrams were rotten nonsense, and he, Kipps, had been a rotten fool to
come. There was Helen away there, still laughing, with her curate. Pity
she couldn't marry a curate and leave him (Kipps) alone! Then he'd know
what to do. He disliked the whole gathering collectively and in detail.
Why were they all trying to make him one of themselves? He perceived
unexpected ugliness everywhere about him. There were two great pins
jabbed through the tall girl's hat, and the swirls of her hair below the
brim with the minutest piece of tape tie-up showing did not repay close
examination. Mrs. "Wogdelenk" wore a sort of mumps bandage of lace, and
there was another lady perfectly dazzling with beads, and jewels and
bits of trimming. They were all flaps and angles and flounces--these
women. Not one of them looked as neat and decent a shape as Ann's clean,
trim, little figure. Echoes of Masterman woke up in him again. Ladies
indeed! Here were all these chattering people, with money, with leisure,
with every chance in the world, and all they could do was to crowd like
this into a couple of rooms and jabber nonsense about anagrams.
"Could Cypshi really mean Cuyps?" floated like a dissolving wreath of
mist across his mind.
Abruptly resolution stood armed in his heart. He was going to get out of
this!
"'Scuse me," he said, and began to wade neck deep through the bubbling
tea party.
He was going to get out of it all!
He found himself close by Helen. "I'm orf," he said, but she gave him
the briefest glance. She did not appear to hear him. "Still, Mr.
Spratlingdown, you _must_ admit there's a limit even to conformity," she
was saying....
He was in a curtained archway, and Ann was before him carrying a tray
supporting several small sugar bowls.
He was moved to speech. "_What_ a Lot!" he said, and then mysteriously,
"I'm engaged to _her_." He indicated Helen's new hat, and became aware
of a skirt he had stepped upon.
Ann stared at him helplessly, borne past in the grip of
incomprehensible imperatives.
Why shouldn't they talk together?
He was in a small room, and then at the foot of the staircase in the
hall. He heard the rustle of a dress, and what was conceivable his
hostess was upon him.
"But you're not going, Mr. Kipps?" she said.
"I must," he said; "I got to."
"But, Mr. Kipps!"
"I must," he said. "I'm not well."
"But before the guessing! Without any tea!"
Ann appeared and hovered behind him.
"I got to go," said Kipps.
If he parleyed with her Helen might awake to his desperate attempt.
"Of course if you _must_ go."
"It's something I've forgotten," said Kipps, beginning to feel regrets.
"Reely I must."
Mrs. Botting turned with a certain offended dignity, and Ann in a state
of flushed calm that evidently concealed much came forward to open the
door.
"I'm very sorry," he said; "I'm very sorry," half to his hostess and
half to her, and was swept past her by superior social forces--like a
drowning man in a mill-race--and into the Upper Sandgate Road. He half
turned upon the step, and then slam went the door....
He retreated along the Leas, a thing of shame and perplexity--Mrs.
Botting's aggrieved astonishment uppermost in his mind....
Something--reinforced by the glances of the people he was
passing--pressed its way to his attention through the tumultuous
disorder of his mind.
He became aware that he was still wearing his little placard with the
letters "Cypshi."
"Desh it!" he said, clutching off this abomination. In another moment
its several letters, their task accomplished, were scattering gleefully
before the breeze down the front of the Leas.
Sec.2
Kipps was dressed for Mrs. Wace's dinner half an hour before it was time
to start, and he sat waiting until Coote should come to take him around.
"Manners and Rules of Good Society" lay before him neglected. He had
read the polished prose of the Member of the Aristocracy, on page 96, as
far as--
"the acceptance of an invitation is in the eyes of diners out, a
binding obligation which only ill-health, family bereavement, or
some all-important reason justifies its being set on one side or
otherwise evaded"--
and then he had lapsed into gloomy thoughts.
That afternoon he had had a serious talk with Helen.
He had tried to express something of the change of heart that had
happened to him. But to broach the real state of the matter had been
altogether too terrible for him. He had sought a minor issue. "I don't
like all this Seciety," he had said.
"But you must _see_ people," said Helen.
"Yes, but----. It's the sort of people you see." He nerved himself. "I
didn't think much of that lot at the Enegram Tea."
"You have to see all sorts of people if you want to see the world," said
Helen.
Kipps was silent for a space and a little short of breath.
"My dear Arthur," she began, almost kindly, "I shouldn't ask you to go
to these affairs if I didn't think it good for you, should I?"
Kipps acquiesced in silence.
"You will find the benefit of it all when we get to London. You learn to
swim in a tank before you go out into the sea. These people here are
good enough to learn upon. They're stiff and rather silly and dreadfully
narrow and not an idea in a dozen of them, but it really doesn't matter
at all. You'll soon get Savoir Faire."
He made to speak again, and found his powers of verbal expression
lacking. Instead he blew a sigh.
"You'll get used to it all very soon," said Helen helpfully....
As he sat meditating over that interview and over the vistas of London
that opened before him, on the little flat, and teas and occasions and
the constant presence of Brudderkins and all the bright prospect of his
new and better life, and how he would never see Ann any more, the
housemaid entered with a little package, a small, square envelope to
"Arthur Kipps, Esquire."
"A young woman left this, Sir," said the housemaid, a little severely.
"Eh?" said Kipps; "what young woman?" and then suddenly began to
understand.
"She looked an ordinary young woman," said the housemaid coldly.
"Ah!" said Kipps. "_That's_ orlright."
He waited till the door had closed behind the girl, staring at the
envelope in his hand, and then, with a curious feeling of increasing
tension, tore it open. As he did so, some quicker sense than sight or
touch told him its contents. It was Ann's half sixpence. And, besides,
not a word!
Then she must have heard him----!
She had kept the half sixpence all these years!
He was standing with the envelope in his hand, trying to get on from
that last inference, when Coote became audible without.
Coote appeared in evening dress, a clean and radiant Coote, with large,
greenish, white gloves and a particularly large white tie, edged with
black. "For a third cousin," he presently explained. "Nace, isn't it?"
He could see Kipps was pale and disturbed and put this down to the
approaching social trial. "You keep your nerve up, Kipps, my dear chap,
and you'll be all right," said Coote, with a big, brotherly glove on
Kipps' sleeve.
Sec.3
The dinner came to a crisis so far as Kipps' emotions were concerned,
with Mrs. Bindon Botting's talk about servants, but before that there
had been several things of greater or smaller magnitude to perturb and
disarrange his social front. One little matter that was mildly insurgent
throughout the entire meal was, if I may be permitted to mention so
intimate a matter, the behaviour of his left brace. The webbing--which
was of a cheerful scarlet silk--had slipped away from its buckle,
fastened no doubt in agitation, and had developed a strong tendency to
place itself obliquely in the manner rather of an official decoration,
athwart his spotless front. It first asserted itself before they went in
to dinner. He replaced this ornament by a dexterous thrust when no one
was looking and thereafter the suppression of his novel innovation upon
the stereotyped sombreness of evening dress became a standing
preoccupation. On the whole, he was inclined to think his first horror
excessive; at any rate no one remarked upon it. However you imagine him
constantly throughout the evening, with one eye and one hand, whatever
the rest of him might be doing, predominantly concerned with the weak
corner.
But this, I say, was a little matter. What exercised him much more was
to discover Helen quite terribly in evening dress.
The young lady had let her imagination rove Londonward, and this
costume was perhaps an anticipation of that clever little flat not too
far west which was to become the centre of so delightful a literary and
artistic set. It was, of all the feminine costumes present, most
distinctly an evening dress. One was advised Miss Walshingham had arms
and shoulders of a type by no means despicable, one was advised Miss
Walshingham was capable not only of dignity but charm, even a certain
glow of charm. It was, you know, her first evening dress, a tribute paid
by Walshingham finance to her brightening future. Had she wanted keeping
in countenance, she would have had to have fallen back upon her hostess,
who was resplendent in black and steel. The other ladies had to a
certain extent compromised. Mrs. Walshingham had dressed with just a
refined, little V and Mrs. Bindon Botting, except for her dear mottled
arms, confided scarcely more of her plump charm to the world. The elder
Miss Botting stopped short of shoulders, and so did Miss Wace. But Helen
didn't. She was--had Kipps had eyes to see it--a quite beautiful human
figure; she knew it and she met him with a radiant smile that had
forgotten all the little difference of the afternoon. But to Kipps her
appearance was the last release. With that, she had become as remote, as
foreign, as incredible as a wife and mate, as though the Cnidian Venus
herself, in all her simple elegance, was before witnesses, declared to
be his. If, indeed, she had ever been credible as a wife and mate.
She ascribed his confusion to modest reverence, and having blazed
smiling upon him for a moment turned a shapely shoulder towards him and
exchanged a remark with Mrs. Bindon Botting. Ann's poor little half
sixpence came against Kipps' fingers in his pocket and he clutched at it
suddenly as though it was a talisman. Then he abandoned it to suppress
his Order of the Brace. He was affected by a cough. "Miss Wace tells me
Mr. Revel is coming," Mrs. Botting was saying.
"Isn't it delightful?" said Helen. "We saw him last night. He's stopped
on his way to Paris. He's going to meet his wife there."
Kipps' eyes rested for a moment on Helen's dazzling deltoid, and then
went enquiringly, accusingly almost to Coote's face. Where, in the
presence of this terrible emergency, was the gospel of suppression
now--that Furtive treatment of Religion and Politics, and Birth and
Death and Bathing and Babies, and "all those things" which constitutes
your True Gentleman? He had been too modest even to discuss this
question with his Mentor, but surely, surely this quintessence of all
that is good and nice could regard these unsolicited confidences only in
one way. With something between relief and the confirmation of his worst
fears he perceived, by a sort of twitching of the exceptionally abundant
muscles about Coote's lower jaw, in a certain deliberate avoidance of
one particular direction by these pale, but resolute, grey eyes, by the
almost convulsive grip of the ample, greenish white gloves behind him,
a grip broken at times for controlling pats at the black-bordered tie
and the back of that spacious head, and by a slight but increasing
disposition to cough, that _Coote did not approve_!
To Kipps Helen had once supplied a delicately beautiful dream, a thing
of romance and unsubstantial mystery. But this was her final
materialisation, and the last thin wreath of glamour about her was
dispelled. In some way (he had forgotten how and it was perfectly
incomprehensible) he was bound to this dark, solid and determined young
person whose shadow and suggestion he had once loved. He had to go
through with the thing as a gentleman should. Still----
And when he was sacrificing Ann!
He wouldn't stand this sort of thing, whatever else he stood.... Should
he say something about her dress to her--to-morrow?
He could put his foot down firmly. He could say, "Look 'ere. I don't
care. I ain't going to stand it. See?"
She'd say something unexpected, of course. She always did say something
unexpected.
Suppose for once he overrode what she said? Simply repeated his point?
He found these thoughts battling with certain conversational aggressions
from Mrs. Wace, and then Revel arrived and took the centre of the stage.
The author of that brilliant romance, "Red Hearts a-Beating," was a less
imposing man than Kipps had anticipated, but he speedily effaced that
disappointment by his predominating manners. Although he lived
habitually in the vivid world of London, his collar and tie were in no
way remarkable, and he was neither brilliantly handsome nor curly nor
long-haired. His personal appearance suggested arm chairs, rather than
the equestrian exercises and amorous toyings and passionate intensities
of his masterpiece; he was inclined to be fat, with whitish flesh, muddy
coloured straight hair, he had a rather shapeless and truncated nose and
his chin was asymmetrical. One eye was more inclined to stare than the
other. He might have been esteemed a little undistinguished looking were
it not for his beeswaxed moustache, which came amidst his features with
a pleasing note of incongruity, and the whimsical wrinkles above and
about his greater eye. His regard sought and found Helen's as he entered
the room and they shook hands presently with an air of intimacy Kipps,
for no clear reason, found objectionable. He saw them clasp their hands,
heard Coote's characteristic cough--a sound rather more like a very,
very old sheep, a quarter of a mile away, being blown to pieces by a
small charge of gunpowder than anything else in the world--did some
confused beginnings of a thought, and then they were all going in to
dinner and Helen's shining bare arm lay along his sleeve. Kipps was in
no state for conversation. She glanced at him, and, though he did not
know it, very slightly pressed his elbow. He struggled with strange
respiratory dislocations. Before them went Coote, discoursing in
amiable reverberations to Mrs. Walshingham, and at the head of the
procession was Mrs. Bindon Botting talking fast and brightly beside the
erect military figure of little Mr. Wace. (He was not a soldier really,
but he had caught a martinet bearing by living so close to Shorncliffe.)
Revel came last, in charge of Mrs. Wace's queenly black and steel,
politely admiring in a flute-like cultivated voice the mellow wall paper
of the staircase. Kipps marvelled at everybody's self-possession.
From the earliest spoonful of soup it became evident that Revel
considered himself responsible for the table talk. And before the soup
was over it was almost as manifest that Mrs. Bindon Botting inclined to
consider his sense of responsibility excessive. In her circle Mrs.
Bindon Botting was esteemed an agreeable rattle, her manner and
appearance were conspicuously vivacious for one so plump, and she had an
almost Irish facility for humorous description. She would keep people
amused all through an afternoon call, with the story of how her jobbing
gardener had got himself married and what his home was like, or how her
favourite butt, Mr. Stigson Warder, had all his unfortunate children
taught almost every conceivable instrument because they had the
phrenological bump of music abnormally large. "They got to trombones, my
dear!" she would say, with her voice coming to a climax. Usually her
friends conspired to draw her out, but on this occasion they neglected
to do so, a thing that militated against her keen desire to shine in
Revel's eyes. After a time she perceived that the only thing for her to
do was to cut in on the talk, on her own account, and this she began to
do. She made several ineffectual snatches at the general attention and
then Revel drifted towards a topic she regarded as particularly her own,
the ordering of households.
They came to the thing through talk about localities. "We are leaving
our house in The Boltons," said Revel, "and taking a little place at
Wimbledon, and I think of having rooms in Dane's Inn. It will be more
convenient in many ways. My wife is furiously addicted to golf and
exercise of all sorts, and I like to sit about in clubs--I haven't the
strength necessary for these hygienic proceedings--and the old
arrangement suited neither of us. And, besides, no one could imagine the
demoralisation the domestics of West London have undergone during the
last three years."
"It's the same everywhere," said Mrs. Bindon Botting.
"Very possibly it is. A friend of mine calls it the servile tradition in
decay and regards it all as a most hopeful phenomenon----"
"He ought to have had my last two criminals," said Mrs. Bindon Botting.
She turned to Mrs. Wace while Revel came again a little too late with a
"Possibly----"
"And I haven't told you, my dear," she said, speaking with voluble
rapidity, "I'm in trouble again."
"The last girl?"
"The last girl. Before I can get a cook, my hard won housemaid"--she
paused--"chucks it."
"Panic?" asked young Walshingham.
"Mysterious grief! Everything merry as a marriage bell until my Anagram
Tea! Then in the evening a portentous rigour of bearing, a word or so
from my Aunt, and immediately--Floods of Tears and Notice!" For a moment
her eye rested thoughtfully on Kipps, as she said: "Is there anything
heartrending about Anagrams?"
"I find them so," said Revel. "I----"
But Mrs. Bindon Botting got away again. "For a time it made me quite
uneasy----"
Kipps jabbed his lip with his fork rather painfully, and was recalled
from a fascinated glare at Mrs. Botting to the immediate facts of
dinner.
"----whether anagrams might not have offended the good domestic's Moral
Code--you never can tell. We made enquiries. No. No. No. She _must_ go
and that's all!"
"One perceives," said Revel, "in these disorders, dimly and distantly,
the last dying glow of the age of Romance. Let us suppose, Mrs. Botting,
let us at least try to suppose--it is Love."
Kipps clattered with his knife and fork.
"It's love," said Mrs. Botting; "what else can it be? Beneath the
orderly humdrum of our lives these romances are going on, until at last
they bust up and give Notice and upset our humdrum altogether. Some
fatal, wonderful soldier----"
"The passions of the common or house domestic," said Revel, and
recovered possession of the table.
Upon the troubled disorder of Kipps' table manners there had supervented
a quietness, an unusual calm. For once in his life he had distinctly
made up his mind on his own account. He listened no more to Revel. He
put down his knife and fork and refused anything that followed. Coote
regarded him with tactful concern and Helen flushed a little.
Sec.4
About half-past nine that night came a violent pull at the bell of Mrs.
Bindon Botting, and a young man in a dress suit, a gibus and other marks
of exalted social position stood without. Athwart his white expanse of
breast lay a ruddy bar of patterned silk that gave him a singular
distinction and minimised the glow of a few small stains of burgundy.
His gibus was thrust back and exposed a disorder of hair that suggested
a reckless desperation. He had, in fact, burnt his boats and refused to
join the ladies. Coote, in the subsequent conversation, had protested
quietly, "You're going on all right, you know," to which Kipps had
answered he didn't care a "Eng" about that, and so, after a brief tussle
with Walshingham's detaining arm, had got away. "I got something to do,"
he said. "'Ome." And here he was--panting an extraordinary resolve. The
door opened, revealing the pleasantly furnished hall of Mrs. Bindon
Botting, lit by rose-tinted lights, and in the centre of the picture,
neat and pretty in black and white, stood Ann. At the sight of Kipps her
colour vanished.
"Ann," said Kipps, "I want to speak to you. I got something to say to
you right away. See? I'm----"
"This ain't the door to speak to me at," said Ann.
"But, Ann! It's something special."
"You spoke enough," said Ann.
"Ann!"
"Besides. That's my door, down there. Basement. If I was caught talking
at _this_ door----!"
"But, Ann, _I'm_----"
"Basement after nine. Them's my hours. I'm a servant and likely to keep
one. If you're calling here, what name please? But you got your friends
and I got mine and you mustn't go talking to _me_."
"But, Ann, I want to ask you----"
Someone appeared in the hall behind Ann. "Not here," said Ann. "Don't
know anyone of that name," and incontinently slammed the door in his
face.
"What was that, Ann?" said Mrs. Bindon Botting's invalid Aunt.
"Ge'm a little intoxicated, Ma'am--asking for the wrong name, Ma'am."
"What name did he want?" asked the lady, doubtfully.
"No name that _we_ know, Ma'am," said Ann, hustling along the hall
towards the kitchen stairs.
"I hope you weren't too short with him, Ann."
"No shorter than he deserved, considering 'ow he be'aved," said Ann,
with her bosom heaving.
And Mrs. Bindon Botting's invalid Aunt, perceiving suddenly that this
call had some relation to Ann's private and sentimental trouble, turned,
after one moment of hesitating scrutiny, away.
She was an extremely sympathetic lady, was Mrs. Bindon Botting's invalid
Aunt; she took an interest in the servants, imposed piety, extorted
confessions and followed human nature, blushing and lying defensively,
to its reluctantly revealed recesses, but Ann's sense of privacy was
strong and her manner under drawing out and encouragement, sometimes
even alarming....
So the poor old lady went upstairs again.
Sec.5
The basement door opened and Kipps came into the kitchen. He was flushed
and panting.
He struggled for speech.
"'Ere," he said, and held out two half sixpences.
Ann stood behind the kitchen table--face pale and eyes round, and
now--and it simplified Kipps very much--he could see she had indeed been
crying.
"Well?" she said.
"Don't you see?"
Ann moved her head slightly.
"I kep' it all these years."
"You kep' it too long."
His mouth closed and his flush died away. He looked at her. The amulet,
it seemed, had failed to work.
"Ann!" he said.
"Well?"
"Ann."
The conversation still hung fire.
"Ann," he said, made a movement with his hands that suggested appeal,
and advanced a step.
Ann shook her head more defiantly, and became defensive.
"Look here, Ann," said Kipps. "I been a fool."
They stared into each other's miserable eyes.
"Ann," he said. "I want to marry you."
Ann clutched the table edge. "You can't," she said faintly.
He made as if to approach her around the table, and she took a step that
restored their distance.
"I must," he said.
"You can't."
"I must. You _got_ to marry me, Ann."
"You can't go marrying everybody. You got to marry 'er."
"I shan't."
Ann shook her head. "You're engaged to that girl. Lady, rather. You
can't be engaged to me."
"I don't want to be engaged to you. I _been_ engaged. I want to be
married to you. See? Rightaway."
Ann turned a shade paler. "But what d'you mean?" she asked.
"Come right off to London and marry me. Now."
"What d'you mean?"
Kipps became extremely lucid and earnest.
"I mean come right off and marry me now before anyone else can. _See?_"
"In London?"
"In London."
They stared at one another again. They took things for granted in the
most amazing way.
"I couldn't," said Ann. "For one thing my month's not up for mor'n free
weeks yet."
They hung before that for a moment as though it was insurmountable.
"Look 'ere, Ann! Arst to go. Arst to go!"
"_She_ wouldn't," said Ann.
"Then come without arsting," said Kipps.
"She's keep my box----"
"She won't."
"She will."
"She won't."
"You don't know 'er."
"Well, desh'er--let'er! LET'ER! Who cares? I'll buy you a 'undred boxes
if you'll come."
"It wouldn't be right towards Her."
"It isn't Her you got to think about, Ann. It's me."
"And you 'aven't treated me properly," she said. "You 'aven't treated me
properly, Artie. You didn't ought to 'ave----"
"I didn't say I _'ad_," he interrupted, "did I, Ann?" he appealed. "I
didn't come to arguefy. I'm all wrong. I never said I wasn't. It's yes
or no. Me or not.... I been a fool. There! See? I been a fool. Ain't
that enough? I got myself all tied up with everyone and made a fool of
myself all around...."
He pleaded, "It isn't as if we didn't care for one another, Ann."
She seemed impassive and he resumed his discourse.
"I thought I wasn't likely ever to see you again, Ann. I reely did. It
isn't as though I was seein' you all the time. I didn't know what I
wanted, and I went and be'aved like a fool--jest as anyone might. I know
what I want and I know what I don't want now."
"Ann!"
"Well?"
"Will you come?... Will you come?..."
Silence.
"If you don't answer me, Ann--I'm desprit--if you don't answer me now,
if you don't say you'll come I'll go right out now----"
He turned doorward passionately as he spoke, with his threat incomplete.
"I'll go," he said; "I 'aven't a friend in the world! I been and throwed
everything away. I don't know why I done things and why I 'aven't. All I
know is I can't stand nothing in the world any more." He choked. "The
pier," he said.
He fumbled with the door latch, grumbling some inarticulate self-pity,
as if he sought a handle, and then he had it open.
Clearly he was going.
"Artie!" said Ann, sharply.
He turned about and the two hung, white and tense.
"I'll do it," said Ann.
His face began to work, he shut the door and came a step back to her,
staring; his face became pitiful and then suddenly they moved together.
"Artie!" she cried, "don't go!" and held out her arms, weeping.
They clung close to one another....
"Oh! I _been_ so mis'bel," cried Kipps, clinging to this lifebuoy, and
suddenly his emotion, having no further serious work in hand, burst its
way to a loud _boohoo_! His fashionable and expensive gibus flopped off
and fell and rolled and lay neglected on the floor.
"I been so mis'bel," said Kipps, giving himself vent. "Oh! I _been_ so
mis'bel, Ann."
"Be quiet," said Ann, holding his poor, blubbering head tightly to her
heaving shoulder, and herself all a-quiver; "be quiet. She's there!
Listenin'. She'll 'ear you, Artie, on the stairs...."
Sec.6
Ann's last words when, an hour later, they parted, Mrs. and Miss Bindon
Botting having returned very audibly upstairs, deserve a section to
themselves.
"I wouldn't do this for everyone, mind you," whispered Ann.