THE LABYRINTHODON
Sec.1
You imagine them fleeing through our complex and difficult social
system, as it were, for life, first on foot and severally to the
Folkestone Central Station; then in a first-class carriage, with Kipps'
bag as sole chaperone to Charing Cross, and then in a four-wheeler, a
long, rumbling, palpitating, slow flight through the multitudinous
swarming London streets to Sid. Kipps kept peeping out of the window.
"It's the next corner after this, I believe," he would say. For he had a
sort of feeling that at Sid's he would be immune from the hottest
pursuits. He paid the cabman in a manner adequate to the occasion and
turned to his prospective brother-in-law. "Me and Ann," he said, "we're
going to marry."
"But I thought----" began Sid.
Kipps motioned him towards explanations in the shop....
"It's no good, my arguing with you," said Sid, smiling delightedly as
the case unfolded. "You done it now." And Masterman being apprised of
the nature of the affair descended slowly in a state of flushed
congratulation.
"I thought you might find the Higher Life a bit difficult," said
Masterman, projecting a bony hand. "But I never thought you'd have the
originality to clear out.... Won't the young lady of the superior
classes swear! Never mind--it doesn't matter anyhow.
"You were starting a climb," he said at dinner, "that doesn't lead
anywhere. You would have clambered from one refinement of vulgarity to
another and never got to any satisfactory top. There isn't a top. It's a
squirrel's cage. Things are out of joint, and the only top there is is a
lot of blazing card playing women and betting men--you should read
Modern Society--seasoned with archbishops and officials and all that
sort of glossy, pandering Bosh.... You'd have hung on, a disconsolate,
dismal, little figure, somewhere up the ladder, far below even the
motor-car class, while your wife larked about--or fretted because she
wasn't a bit higher than she was.... I found it all out long ago. I've
seen women of that sort. And I don't climb any more."
"I often thought about what you said last time I saw you," said Kipps.
"I wonder what I said," said Masterman in parenthesis. "Anyhow, you're
doing the right and sane thing, and that's a rare spectacle. You're
going to marry your equal, and you're going to take your own line, quite
independently of what people up there, or people down there, think you
ought or ought not to do. That's about the only course one can take
nowadays with everything getting more muddled and upside down every day.
Make your own little world and your own house first of all, keep that
right side up whatever you do, and marry your mate.... That, I suppose,
is what _I_ should do--if _I_ had a mate.... But people of my sort,
luckily for the world, don't get made in pairs. No!
"Besides----! However----" And abruptly, taking advantage of an
interruption by Master Walt, he lapsed into thought.
Presently he came out of his musings.
"After all," he said, "there's hope."
"What about?" said Sid.
"Everything," said Masterman.
"Where there's life there's hope," said Mrs. Sid. "But none of you
aren't eating anything like you ought to."
Masterman lifted his glass.
"Here's to Hope!" he said, "The Light of the World!"
Sid beamed at Kipps as who should say, "You don't meet a character like
_this_ every dinner time."
"Here's to Hope," repeated Masterman. "The best thing one can have. Hope
of life--yes."
He imposed his movement of magnificent self-pity on them all. Even young
Walt was impressed.
They spent the days before their marriage in a number of agreeable
excursions together. One day they went to Kew by steamboat, and admired
the house full of paintings of flowers extremely; and one day they went
early to have a good, long day at the Crystal Palace, and enjoyed
themselves very much indeed. They got there so early that nothing was
open inside, all the stalls were wrappered up and all the minor
exhibitions locked and barred; they seemed the minutest creatures even
to themselves in that enormous empty aisle and their echoing footsteps
indecently loud. They contemplated realistic groups of plaster savages,
and Ann thought they'd be queer people to have about. She was glad there
were none in this country. They meditated upon replicas of classical
statuary without excessive comment. Kipps said at large, it must have
been a queer world then, but Ann very properly doubted if they really
went about like that. But the place at that early hour was really
lonely. One began to fancy things. So they went out into the October
sunshine of the mighty terraces, and wandered amidst miles of stucco
tanks and about those quiet Gargantuan grounds. A great, grey emptiness
it was, and it seemed marvellous to them, but not nearly so marvellous
as it might have seemed. "I never see a finer place, never," said Kipps,
turning to survey the entirety of the enormous glass front with Paxton's
vast image in the centre.
"What it must 'ave cost to build!" said Ann, and left her sentence
eloquently incomplete.
Presently they came to a region of caves and waterways, and amidst these
waterways strange reminders of the possibilities of the Creator. They
passed under an arch made of a whale's jaws, and discovered amidst
herbage, as if they were browsing or standing unoccupied and staring as
if amazed at themselves, huge effigies of iguanodons and deinotheria and
mastodons and suchlike cattle, gloriously done in green and gold.
"They got everything," said Kipps. "Earl's Court isn't a patch on it."
His mind was very greatly exercised by these monsters, and he hovered
about them and returned to them. "You'd wonder 'ow they ever got enough
to eat," he said several times.
Sec.2
It was later in the day, and upon a seat in the presence of the green
and gold Labyrinthodon that looms so splendidly above the lake, that the
Kippses fell into talk about their future. They had made a sufficient
lunch in the palace, they had seen pictures and no end of remarkable
things, and that and the amber sunlight made a mood for them, quiet and
philosophical, a heaven mood. Kipps broke a contemplative silence with
an abrupt illusion to one principal preoccupation. "I shall offer an
'pology and I shall offer 'er brother damages. If she likes to bring an
action for Breach after that, well--I done all I can.... They can't get
much out of reading my letters in court, because I didn't write none. I
dessay a thousan' or two'll settle all that, anyhow. I ain't much
worried about that. That don't worry me very much, Ann--No."
And then, "It's a lark, our marrying. It's curious 'ow things come
about. If I 'adn't run against you, where should I 'ave been now. Eh?...
Even after we met, I didn't seem to see it like--not marrying you I
mean--until that night I came. I didn't--reely."
"I didn't neither," said Ann, with thoughtful eyes on the water.
For a time Kipps' mind was occupied by the prettiness of her thinking
face. A faint, tremulous network of lights reflected from the ripples of
a passing duck, played subtly over her cheek and faded away.
Ann reflected. "I s'pose things 'ad to be," she said.
Kipps mused. "It's curious 'ow ever I got on to be engaged to 'er."
"She wasn't suited to you," said Ann.
"Suited. No fear! That's jest it. 'Ow did it come about?"
"I expect she led you on," said Ann.
Kipps was half-minded to assent. Then he had a twinge of conscience. "It
wasn't that, Ann," he said. "It's curious. I don't know what it was, but
it wasn't that. I don't recollect.... No.... Life's jolly rum; that's
one thing any'ow. And I suppose I'm a rum sort of feller. I get excited
sometimes, and then I don't seem to care _what_ I do. That's about what
it was reely. Still----"
They meditated, Kipps with his arms folded and pulling at his scanty
moustache. Presently a faint smile came over his face.
"We'll get a nice _little_ 'ouse out Ithe way."
"It's 'omelier than Folkestone," said Ann.
"Jest a nice _little_ 'ouse," said Kipps. "There's Hughenden, of course.
But that's let. Besides being miles too big. And I wouldn't live in
Folkestone again some'ow--not for anything."
"I'd like to 'ave a 'ouse of my own," said Ann. "I've often thought,
being in service, 'ow much I'd like to manage a 'ouse of my own."
"You'd know all about what the servants was up to, anyhow," said Kipps,
amused.
"Servants! We don't want no servants," said Ann, startled.
"You'll 'ave to 'ave a servant," said Kipps. "If it's only to do the
'eavy work of the 'ouse."
"What! and not be able 'ardly to go into my own kitchen?" said Ann.
"You ought to 'ave a servant," said Kipps.
"One could easy 'ave a woman in for anything that's 'eavy," said Ann.
"Besides---- If I 'ad one of the girls one sees about nowadays I should
want to be taking the broom out of 'er 'and and do it all over myself.
I'd manage better without 'er."
"We ought to 'ave one servant anyhow," said Kipps, "else 'ow should we
manage if we wanted to go out together or anything like that?"
"I might get a _young_ girl," said Ann, "and bring 'er up in my own
way."
Kipps left the matter at that and came back to the house.
"There's little 'ouses going into Hythe, just the sort we want, not too
big and not too small. We'll 'ave a kitching and a dining-room and a
little room to sit in of a night."
"It mustn't be a 'ouse with a basement," said Ann.
"What's a basement?"
"It's a downstairs, where there's not arf enough light and everything
got to be carried--up and down, up and down, all day--coals and
everything. And it's got to 'ave a watertap and sink and things
upstairs. You'd 'ardly believe, Artie, if you 'adn't been in service,
'ow cruel and silly some 'ouses are built--you'd think they 'ad a spite
against servants the way the stairs are made."
"We won't 'ave one of that sort," said Kipps....
"We'll 'ave a quiet little life. Now go out a bit--now come 'ome again.
Read a book perhaps if we got nothing else to do. 'Ave old Buggins in
for an evening at times. 'Ave Sid down. There's bicycles----"
"I don't fancy myself on a bicycle," said Ann.
"'Ave a trailer," said Kipps, "and sit like a lady. I'd take you out to
New Romney easy as anything jest to see the old people."
"I wouldn't mind that," said Ann.
"We'll jest 'ave a sensible little 'ouse, and sensible things. No art
or anything of that sort, nothing stuck-up or anything, but jest
sensible. We'll be as right as anything, Ann."
"No socialism," said Ann, starting a lurking doubt.
"No socialism," said Kipps; "just sensible, that's all."
"I dessay it's all right for them that understand it, Artie, but I don't
agree with this socialism."
"I don't neither, reely," said Kipps. "I can't argue about it, but it
don't seem real like to me. All the same Masterman's a clever fellow,
Ann."
"I didn't like 'im at first, Artie, but I do now--in a way. You don't
understand 'im all at once."
"'E's so clever," said Kipps. "Arf the time I can't make out what 'e's
up to. 'E's the cleverest chap I ever met. I never 'eard such talking.
'E ought to write a book.... It's a rum world, Ann, when a chap like
that isn't 'ardly able to earn a living."
"It's 'is 'ealth," said Ann.
"I expect it is," said Kipps, and ceased to talk for a little while.
Then he spoke with deliberation, "Sea air might be the saving of 'im,
Ann."
He glanced doubtfully at Ann, and she was looking at him even fondly.
"You think of other people a lot," said Ann. "I been looking at you
sittin' there and thinking."
"I suppose I do. I suppose when one's 'appy one does."
"_You_ do," said Ann.
"We shall be 'appy in that little 'ouse, Ann. Don't y' think?"
She met his eyes and nodded.
"I seem to see it," said Kipps, "sort of cosy like. 'Bout tea time and
muffins, kettle on the 'ob, cat on the 'earthrug. We must get a cat,
Ann, and _you_ there. Eh?"
They regarded each other with appreciative eyes and Kipps became
irrelevant.
"I don't believe, Ann," he said, "I 'aven't kissed you not for 'arf an
hour. Leastways not since we was in those caves."
For kissing had already ceased to be a matter of thrilling adventure for
them.
Ann shook her head. "You be sensible and go on talking about Mr.
Masterman," she said....
But Kipps had wandered to something else. "I like the way your 'air
turns back just there," he said, with an indicative finger. "It was like
that, I remember, when you was a girl. Sort of wavy. I've often thought
of it----.... 'Member when we raced that time--out be'ind the church?"
Then for a time they sat idly, each following out agreeable meditations.
"It's rum," said Kipps.
"What's rum?"
"'Ow everything's 'appened," said Kipps. "Who'd 'ave thought of our
being 'ere like this six weeks ago?... Who'd 'ave thought of my ever
'aving any money?"
His eyes went to the big Labyrinthodon. He looked first carelessly and
then suddenly with a growing interest in its vast face.
"I'm deshed," he murmured. Ann became interested. He laid a hand on her
arm and pointed. Ann scrutinised the Labyrinthodon and then came around
to Kipps' face in mute interrogation.
"Don't you see it?" said Kipps.
"See what?"
"'E's jest _like_ old Coote."
"It's extinct," said Ann, not clearly apprehending.
"I dessay 'e is. But 'e's jest like old Coote all the same for that."
Kipps meditated on the monstrous shapes in sight. "I wonder 'ow all
these old antediluvium animals got extinct," he asked. "No one couldn't
possibly 'ave killed 'em."
"Why! _I_ know that," said Ann. "They was overtook by the Flood...."
Kipps meditated for a while. "But I thought they had to take two of
everything there was----"
"Within reason they 'ad," said Ann....
The Kippses left it at that.
The great green and gold Labyrinthodon took no notice of their
conversation. It gazed with its wonderful eyes over their heads into the
infinite--inflexibly calm. It might indeed have been Coote himself
there, Coote, the unassuming, cutting them dead....
Sec.3
And in due course these two simple souls married, and Venus Urania, the
Goddess of Wedded Love, the Goddess of Tolerant Kindliness or Meeting
Half Way, to whom all young couples should pray and offer sacrifices of
self, who is indeed a very great and noble and kindly goddess, was in
some manner propitiated, and bent down and blessed them in their union.
END OF BOOK II.
BOOK III
KIPPSES
CHAPTER I
THE HOUSING PROBLEM
Sec.1
Honeymoons and all things come to an end, and you see at last Mr. and
Mrs. Arthur Kipps descending upon the Hythe platform--coming to Hythe to
find that nice _little_ house--to realise that bright dream of a home
they had first talked about in the grounds of the Crystal Palace. They
are a valiant couple, you perceive, but small, and the world is a large
incongruous system of complex and difficult things. Kipps wears a grey
suit, with a wing-poke collar and a neat, smart tie. Mrs. Kipps is the
same bright and healthy little girl woman you saw in the marsh; not an
inch has been added to her stature in all my voluminous narrative. Only
now she wears a hat.
It is a hat very unlike the hats she used to wear on her Sundays out, a
flourishing hat with feathers and buckle and bows and things. The price
of that hat would take many people's breath away--it cost two guineas!
Kipps chose it. Kipps paid for it. They left the shop with flushed
cheeks and smarting eyes, glad to be out of range of the condescending
saleswoman.
"Artie," said Ann, "you didn't ought to 'ave----"
That was all. And you know, the hat didn't suit Ann a bit. Her clothes
did not suit her at all. The simple, cheap, clean brightness of her
former style had given place not only to this hat, but to several other
things in the same key. And out from among these things looked her
pretty face, the face of a wise little child--an artless wonder
struggling through a preposterous dignity.
They had bought that hat one day when they had gone to see the shops in
Bond street. Kipps had looked at the passers-by and it had suddenly
occurred to him that Ann was dowdy. He had noted the hat of a very
proud-looking lady passing in an electric brougham and had resolved to
get Ann the nearest thing to that.
The railway porters perceived some subtle incongruity in Ann, the knot
of cabmen in the station doorway, the two golfers and the lady with
daughters, who had also got out of the train. And Kipps, a little pale,
blowing a little, not in complete possession of himself, knew that they
noticed her and him. And Ann----. It is hard to say just what Ann
observed of these things.
"'Ere!" said Kipps to a cabman, and regretted too late a vanished "H."
"I got a trunk up there," he said to a ticket inspector, "marked A. K."
"Ask a porter," said the inspector, turning his back.
"Demn!" said Kipps, not altogether inaudibly.
Sec.2
It is all very well to sit in the sunshine and talk of the house you
will have, and another altogether to achieve it. We English--all the
world indeed to-day--live in a strange atmosphere of neglected great
issues, of insistent, triumphant petty things, we are given up to the
fine littlenesses of intercourse; table manners and small correctitudes
are the substance of our lives. You do not escape these things for long
even by so catastrophic a proceeding as flying to London with a young
lady of no wealth and inferior social position. The mists of noble
emotion swirl and pass and there you are divorced from all your deities
and grazing in the meadows under the Argus eyes of the social system,
the innumerable mean judgments you feel raining upon you, upon your
clothes and bearing, upon your pretensions and movements.
Our world to-day is a meanly conceived one--it is only an added meanness
to conceal that fact. For one consequence, it has very few nice little
houses, such things do not come for the asking, they are not to be
bought with money during ignoble times. Its houses are built on the
ground of monstrously rich, shabbily extortionate landowners, by poor,
parsimonious, greedy people in a mood of elbowing competition. What can
you expect from such ridiculous conditions? To go househunting is to spy
out the nakedness of this pretentious world, to see what our
civilization amounts to when you take away curtains and flounces and
carpets and all the fluster and distraction of people and fittings. It
is to see mean plans meanly executed for mean ends, the conventions torn
aside, the secrets stripped, the substance underlying all such Chester
Cootery, soiled and worn and left.
So you see our poor, dear Kippses going to and fro, in Hythe, in
Sandgate, in Ashford and Canterbury and Deal and Dover--at last even in
Folkestone, with "orders to view," pink and green and white and yellow
orders to view, and labelled keys in Kipps' hand and frowns and
perplexity upon their faces.... They did not clearly know what they
wanted, but whatever it was they saw, they knew they did not want that.
Always they found a confusing multitude of houses they could not take,
and none they could. Their dreams began to turn mainly on empty,
abandoned-looking rooms, with unfaded patches of paper to mark the place
of vanished pictures and doors that had lost their keys. They saw rooms
floored with boards that yawned apart and were splintered, skirtings
eloquent of the industrious mouse, kitchens with a dead black-beetle in
the empty cupboard, and a hideous variety of coal holes and dark
cupboards under the stairs. They stuck their little heads through roof
trap-doors and gazed at disorganised ball taps, at the bleak filthiness
of unstoppered roofs. There were occasions when it seemed to them that
they must be the victims of an elaborate conspiracy of house agents, so
bleak and cheerless is a second-hand empty house in comparison with the
humblest of inhabited dwellings.
Commonly the houses were too big. They had huge windows that demanded
vast curtains in mitigation, countless bedrooms, acreage of stone steps
to be cleaned, kitchens that made Ann protest. She had come so far
towards a proper conception of Kipps' social position as to admit the
prospect of one servant--"but lor'!" she would say, "you'd want a
manservant in this 'ouse." When the houses were not too big, then they
were almost invariably the product of speculative building, of that
multitudinous hasty building for the extravagant multitude of new births
that was the essential disaster of the nineteenth century. The new
houses Ann refused as damp, and even the youngest of these that had been
in use showed remarkable signs of a sickly constitution, the plaster
flaked away, the floors gaped, the paper mouldered and peeled, the doors
dropped, the bricks scaled and the railings rusted, Nature in the form
of spiders, earwigs, cockroaches, mice, rats, fungi and remarkable
smells, was already fighting her way back....
And the plan was invariably inconvenient, invariably. All the houses
they saw had a common quality for which she could find no word, but for
which the proper word is incivility. "They build these 'ouses," she
said, "as though girls wasn't 'uman beings." Sid's social democracy had
got into her blood perhaps, and anyhow they went about discovering the
most remarkable inconsiderateness in the contemporary house. "There's
kitching stairs to go up, Artie!" Ann would say. "Some poor girl's got
to go up and down, up and down, and be tired out, jest because they
haven't the sense to leave enough space to give their steps a proper
rise--and no water upstairs anywhere--every drop got to be carried! It's
'ouses like this wear girls out.
"It's 'aving 'ouses built by men, I believe, makes all the work and
trouble," said Ann....
The Kippses, you see, thought they were looking for a reasonably simple
little contemporary house, but indeed they were looking either for
dreamland or 1975 A.D. or thereabouts, and it hadn't come.
Sec.3
But it was a foolish thing of Kipps to begin building a house.
He did that out of an extraordinary animosity for house agents he had
conceived.
Everybody hates house agents just as everybody loves sailors. It is no
doubt a very wicked and unjust hatred, but the business of a novelist is
not ethical principle but facts. Everybody hates house agents because
they have everybody at a disadvantage. All other callings have a certain
amount of give and take; the house agent simply takes. All other
callings want you; your solicitor is afraid you may change him, your
doctor cannot go too far, your novelist--if only you knew it--is mutely
abject towards your unspoken wishes--and as for your tradespeople,
milkmen will fight outside your front door for you, and green-grocers
call in tears if you discard them suddenly; but who ever heard of a
house agent struggling to serve anyone? You want to get a house; you go
to him, you dishevelled and angry from travel, anxious, enquiring; he
calm, clean, inactive, reticent, quietly doing nothing. You beg him to
reduce rents, whitewash ceilings, produce other houses, combine the
summer house of No. 6 with the conservatory of No. 4--much he cares! You
want to dispose of a house; then he is just the same, serene,
indifferent--on one occasion I remember he was picking his teeth all the
time he answered me. Competition is a mockery among house agents, they
are all alike, you cannot wound them by going to the opposite office,
you cannot dismiss them, you can at most dismiss yourself. They are
invulnerably placed behind mahogany and brass, too far usually even for
a sudden swift lunge with an umbrella, and to throw away the keys they
lend you instead of returning them is larceny and punishable as such.
It was a house agent in Dover who finally decided Kipps to build.
Kipps, with a certain faltering in his voice, had delivered his
ultimatum, no basement, not more than eight rooms, hot and cold water
upstairs, coal cellar in the house but with intervening doors to keep
dust from the scullery and so forth. He stood blowing. "You'll have to
build a house," said the house agent, sighing wearily, "if you want all
that." It was rather for the sake of effective answer than with any
intention at the time that Kipps mumbled, "That's about what I shall
do--this goes on."
Whereupon the house agent smiled. He smiled!
When Kipps came to turn the thing over in his mind he was surprised to
find quite a considerable intention had germinated and was growing up in
him. After all, lots of people _have_ built houses. How could there be
so many if they hadn't? Suppose he "reely" did! Then he would go to the
house agent and say, "'Ere, while you been getting me a sootable 'ouse,
blowed if I 'aven't built one!" Go round to all of them; all the house
agents in Folkestone, in Dover, Ashford, Canterbury, Margate, Ramsgate,
saying that! Perhaps then they might be sorry. It was in the small hours
that he awoke to a realisation that he had made up his mind in the
matter.
"Ann," he said, "Ann," and also used the sharp of his elbow.
Ann was at last awakened to the pitch of an indistinct enquiry what was
the matter.
"I'm going to build a house, Ann."
"Eh?" said Ann, suddenly, as if awake.
"Build a house."
Ann said something incoherent about he'd better wait until the morning
before he did anything of the sort, and immediately with a fine
trustfulness went fast asleep again.
But Kipps lay awake for a long while building his house, and in the
morning at breakfast he made his meaning clear. He had smarted under the
indignities of house agents long enough, and this seemed to promise
revenge--a fine revenge. "And, you know, we might reely make rather a
nice little 'ouse out of it--like we want."
So resolved, it became possible for them to take a house for a year,
with a basement, no service lift, blackleading to do everywhere, no
water upstairs, no bathroom, vast sash windows to be cleaned from the
sill, stone steps with a twist and open to the rain into the coal
cellar, insufficient cupboards, unpaved path to the dustbin, no
fireplace to the servant's bedroom, no end of splintery wood to
scrub--in fact, a very typical English middle-class house. And having
added to this house some furniture, and a languid young person with
unauthentic golden hair named Gwendolen, who was engaged to a
sergeant-major and had formerly been in an hotel, having "moved in" and
spent some sleepless nights varied by nocturnal explorations in search
of burglars, because of the strangeness of being in a house for which
they were personally responsible, Kipps settled down for a time and
turned himself with considerable resolution to the project of building a
home.
Sec.4
At first Kipps had gathered advice, finding an initial difficulty in how
to begin. He went into a builder's shop at Seabrook one day, and told
the lady in charge that he wanted a house built; he was breathless but
quite determined, and he was prepared to give his order there and then,
but she temporised with him and said her husband was out, and he left
without giving his name. Also he went and talked to a man in a cart who
was pointed out to him by a workman as the builder of a new house near
Saltwood, but he found him first sceptical and then overpoweringly
sarcastic. "I suppose you build a 'ouse every 'oliday," he said, and
turned from Kipps with every symptom of contempt.
Afterwards Carshot told alarming stories about builders, and shook
Kipps' expressed resolution a good deal, and then Pierce raised the
question whether one ought to go in the first instance to a builder at
all and not rather to an architect. Pierce knew a man at Ashford whose
brother was an architect, and as it is always better in these matters to
get someone you know, the Kippses decided, before Pierce had gone, and
Carshot's warning had resumed their sway, to apply to him. They did
so--rather dubiously.
The architect who was brother of Pierce's friend appeared as a small,
alert individual with a black bag and a cylindrical silk hat, and he sat
at the dining-room table, with his hat and his bag exactly equidistant
right and left of him, and maintained a demeanour of impressive
woodenness, while Kipps on the hearthrug, with a quaking sense of
gigantic enterprise, vacillated answers to his enquiries. Ann held a
watching brief for herself, in a position she had chosen as suitable to
the occasion beside the corner of the carved oak sideboard. They felt,
in a sense, at bay.
The architect began by asking for the site, and seemed a little
discomposed to discover this had still to be found. "I thought of
building just anywhere," said Kipps. "I 'aven't made up my mind about
that yet." The architect remarked that he would have preferred to see
the site in order to know where to put what he called his "ugly side,"
but it was quite possible of course to plan a house "in the air," on the
level, "simply with back and front assumed"--if they would like to do
that. Kipps flushed slightly, and secretly hoping it would make no great
difference in the fees, said a little doubtfully that he thought that
would be all right.
The architect then marked off as it were the first section of his
subject, with a single dry cough, opened his bag, took out a spring tape
measure, some hard biscuits, a metal flask, a new pair of dogskin
gloves, a clockwork motor-car partially wrapped in paper, a bunch of
violets, a paper of small brass screws, and finally a large, distended
notebook; he replaced the other objects carefully, opened his notebook,
put a pencil to his lips and said: "And what accommodation will you
require?" To which Ann, who had followed his every movement with the
closest attention and a deepening dread, replied with the violent
suddenness of one who has long lain in wait, "Cubbuds!"
"Anyhow," she added, catching her husband's eye.
The architect wrote it down.
"And how many rooms?" he said, coming to secondary matters.
The young people regarded one another. It was dreadfully like giving an
order.
"How many bedrooms, for example?" asked the architect.
"One?" suggested Kipps, inclined now to minimise at any cost.
"There's Gwendolen," said Ann.
"Visitors perhaps," said the architect, and temperately, "You never
know."
"Two, p'raps?" said Kipps. "We don't want no more than a _little_ 'ouse,
you know."
"But the merest shooting-box----," said the architect.
They got to six; he beat them steadily from bedroom to bedroom, the word
"nursery" played across their imaginative skies--he mentioned it as the
remotest possibility--and then six being reluctantly conceded, Ann came
forward to the table, sat down and delivered herself of one of her
prepared conditions: "'Ot and cold water," she said, "laid on to each
room--any'ow."
It was an idea long since acquired from Sid.
"Yes," said Kipps, on the hearthrug, "'Ot and cold water laid on to each
bedroom--we've settled on that."
It was the first intimation to the architect that he had to deal with a
couple of exceptional originality, and as he had spent the previous
afternoon in finding three large houses in _The Builder_, which he
intended to combine into an original and copyright design of his own, he
naturally struggled against these novel requirements. He enlarged on the
extreme expensiveness of plumbing, on the extreme expensiveness of
everything not already arranged for in his scheme, and only when Ann
declared she'd as soon not have the house as not have her requirements,
and Kipps, blenching the while, had said he didn't mind what a thing
cost him so long as he got what he wanted, did he allow a kindred
originality of his own to appear beneath the acquired professionalism of
his methods. He dismissed their previous talk with his paragraphic
cough. "Of course," he said, "if you don't mind being
unconventional----"
He explained that he had been thinking of a Queen Anne style of
architecture (Ann directly she heard her name shook her head at Kipps in
an aside) so far as the exterior went. For his own part, he said, he
liked to have the exterior of a house in a style, not priggishly in a
style, but mixed, with one style uppermost, and the gables and dormers
and casements of the Queen Anne style, with a little rough cast and sham
timbering here and there and perhaps a bit of an overhang diversified a
house and made it interesting. The advantages of what he called a Queen
Anne style was that it had such a variety of features.... Still, if they
were prepared to be unconventional it could be done. A number of houses
were now built in the unconventional style and were often very pretty.
In the unconventional style one frequently had what perhaps he might
call Internal Features, for example, an Old English oak staircase and
gallery. White rough-cast and green paint were a good deal favoured in
houses of this type.
He indicated that this excursus on style was finished by a momentary use
of his cough, and reopened his notebook, which he had closed to wave
about in a moment of descriptive enthusiasm while expatiating on the
unbridled wealth of External Features associated with Queen Anne. "Six
bedrooms," he said, moistening his pencil. "One with barred windows
suitable for a nursery if required."
Kipps endorsed this huskily and reluctantly.
There followed a most interesting discussion upon house building, in
which Kipps played a minor part. They passed from bedrooms to the
kitchen and scullery, and there Ann displayed an intelligent
exactingness that won the expressed admiration of the architect. They
were particularly novel upon the position of the coal cellar, which Ann
held to be altogether too low in the ordinary house, necessitating much
heavy carrying. They dismissed as impracticable the idea of having coal
cellar and kitchen at the top of the house, because that would involve
carrying all the coal through the house, and therewith much subsequent
cleaning, and for a time they dealt with a conception of a coal cellar
on the ground floor with a light staircase running up outside to an
exterior shoot. "It might be made a Feature," said the architect, a
little doubtfully, jotting down a note of it. "It would be apt to get
black, you know."
Thence they passed to the alternative of service lifts, and then by an
inspiration of the architect to the possibilities of gas heating. Kipps
did a complicated verbal fugue on the theme, "gas heating heats the
air," with variable aspirates; he became very red and was lost to the
discussion altogether for a time, though his lips kept silently on.
Subsequently the architect wrote to say that he found in his notebook
very full and explicit directions for bow windows to all rooms, for
bedrooms, for water supply, lift, height of stairs and absence of twists
therein, for a well-ventilated kitchen twenty feet square, with two
dressers and a large box-window seat, for scullery and outhouses and
offices, but nothing whatever about drawing-room, dining-room, library
or study, or approximate cost, and he awaited further instructions. He
presumed there would be a breakfast-room, dining-room, drawing-room,
and study for Mr. Kipps, at least that was his conception, and the
young couple discussed this matter long and ardently.
Ann was distinctly restrictive in this direction. "I don't see what you
want a drawin'-room and a dinin' _and_ a kitchen for. If we was going to
let in summer--well and good. But we're not going to let. Consequently
we don't want so many rooms. Then there's a 'all. What use is a 'all? It
only makes work. And a study!"
Kipps had been humming and stroking his moustache since he had read the
architect's letter. "I think I'd like a little bit of a study--not a big
one, of course, but one with a desk and book-shelves, like there was in
Hughenden. I'd like that."
It was only after they had talked to the architect again and seen how
scandalised he was at the idea of not having a drawing-room that they
consented to that Internal Feature. They consented to please him. "But
we shan't never use it," said Ann.
Kipps had his way about a study. "When I get that study," said Kipps, "I
shall do a bit of reading I've long wanted to do. I shall make a habit
of going in there and reading something an hour every day. There's
Shakespeare and a lot of things a man like me ought to read. Besides, we
got to 'ave _somewhere_ to put the Encyclopaedia. I've always thought a
study was about what I've wanted all along. You can't 'elp reading if
you got a study. If you 'aven't, there's nothing for it, so far's _I_
can see, but treshy novels."
He looked down at Ann and was surprised to see a joyless thoughtfulness
upon her face.
"Fency, Ann!" he said, not too buoyantly, "'aving a little 'ouse of our
own!"
"It won't be a little 'ouse," said Ann, "not with all them rooms."
Sec.5
Any lingering doubt in that matter was dispelled when it came to plans.
The architect drew three sets of plans on a transparent bluish sort of
paper that smelt abominably. He painted them very nicely; brick red and
ginger, and arsenic green and a leaden sort of blue, and brought them
over to show our young people. The first set were very simple, with
practically no External Features--"a plain style," he said it was--but
it looked a big sort of house nevertheless; the second had such extras
as a conservatory, bow windows of various sorts, one rough-cast gable
and one half-timbered ditto in plaster, and a sort of overhung verandah,
and was much more imposing; and the third was quite fungoid with
External Features, and honeycombed with Internal ones; it was, he said,
"practically a mansion," and altogether a very noble fruit of the
creative mind of man. It was, he admitted, perhaps almost too good for
Hythe; his art had run away with him and produced a modern mansion in
the "best Folkestone style"; it had a central hall with a staircase, a
Moorish gallery, and Tudor stained glass window, crenelated battlements
to the leading over the portico, an octagonal bulge with octagonal bay
windows, surmounted by an oriental dome of metal, lines of yellow bricks
to break up the red and many other richnesses and attractions. It was
the sort of house, ornate and in its dignified way voluptuous, that a
city magnate might build, but it seemed excessive to the Kippses. The
first plan had seven bedrooms, the second eight, the third eleven; that
had, the architect explained, "worked in" as if they were pebbles in a
mountaineer's boat.
"They're big 'ouses," said Ann directly the elevations were unrolled.
Kipps listened to the architect with round eyes and an exuberant caution
in his manner, anxious not to commit himself further than he had done to
the enterprise, and the architect pointed out the Features and other
objects of interest with the scalpel belonging to a pocket manicure set
that he carried. Ann watched Kipps' face and communicated with him
furtively over the architect's head. "_Not so big_," said Ann's lips.
"It's a bit big for what I meant," said Kipps, with a reassuring eye on
Ann.
"You won't think it big when you see it up," said the architect; "you
take my word for that."
"We don't want no more than six bedrooms," said Kipps.
"Make this one a box-room, then," said the architect.
A feeling of impotence silenced Kipps for a time.
"Now which," said the architect, spreading them out, "is it to be?"
He flattened down the plans of the most ornate mansion to show it to
better effect.
Kipps wanted to know how much each would cost "at the outside," which
led to much alarmed signalling from Ann. But the architect could
estimate only in the most general way.
They were not really committed to anything when the architect went away;
Kipps had promised to think it over, that was all.
"We can't 'ave that 'ouse," said Ann.
"They're miles too big--all of them," agreed Kipps.
"You'd want----. Four servants wouldn't be 'ardly enough," said Ann.
Kipps went to the hearthrug and spread himself. His tone was almost
offhand. "Nex' time 'e comes," said Kipps, "I'll 'splain to him. It
isn't at all the sort of thing we want. It's--it's a misunderstanding.
You got no occasion to be anxious 'bout it, Ann."
"I don't see much good reely in building an 'ouse at all," said Ann.
"Oo, we _got_ to build a 'ouse now we begun," said Kipps. "But, now,
supposin' we 'ad----."
He spread out the most modest of the three plans and scratched his
cheek.
Sec.6
It was unfortunate that old Kipps came over the next day.
Old Kipps always produced peculiar states of mind in his nephew, a rash
assertiveness, a disposition towards display unlike his usual self.
There had been great difficulty in reconciling both these old people to
the Pornick mesalliance, and at times the controversy echoed in old
Kipps' expressed thoughts. This perhaps it was, and no ignoble vanity,
that set the note of florid successfulness going in Kipps' conversation
whenever his uncle appeared. Mrs. Kipps was, as a matter of fact, not
reconciled at all, she had declined all invitations to come over on the
'bus, and was a taciturn hostess on the one occasion when the young
people called at the toy shop _en route_ for Mrs. Pornick. She displayed
a tendency to sniff that was clearly due to pride rather than catarrh,
and except for telling Ann she hoped she would not feel too "stuck up"
about her marriage, confined her conversation to her nephew or the
infinite. The call was a brief one and made up chiefly of pauses, no
refreshment was offered or asked for, and Ann departed with a singularly
high colour. For some reason she would not call at the toy shop when
they found themselves again in New Romney.
But old Kipps, having adventured over and tried the table of the new
_menage_ and found it to his taste, showed many signs of softening
towards Ann. He came again and then again. He would come over by the
'bus, and except when his mouth was absolutely full, he would give his
nephew one solid and continuous mass of advice of the most subtle and
disturbing description, until it was time to toddle back to the High
Street for the afternoon 'bus. He would walk with him to the sea front,
and commence _pourparlers_ with boatmen for the purchase of one of their
boats. "You ought to keep a boat of your own," he said, though Kipps was
a singularly poor sailor--or he would pursue a plan that was forming in
his mind in which he should own and manage what he called "weekly"
property in the less conspicuous streets of Hythe. The cream of that was
to be a weekly collection of rents in person, the nearest approach to
feudal splendour left in this democratised country. He gave no hint of
the source of the capital he designed for this investment and at times
it would appear he intended it as an occupation for his nephew rather
than himself.
But there remained something in his manner towards Ann; in the glances
of scrutiny he gave her unawares, that kept Kipps alertly expansive
whenever he was about. And in all sorts of ways. It was on account of
old Kipps, for example, that our Kipps plunged one day, a golden plunge,
and brought home a box of cummerbundy ninepenny cigars, and substituted
blue label old Methusaleh Four Stars for the common and generally
satisfactory white brand.
"Some of this is whiskey, my boy," said old Kipps when he tasted it,
smacking critical lips.
"Saw a lot of young officer fellers coming along," said old Kipps. "You
ought to join the volunteers, my boy, and get to know a few."
"I dessay I shall," said Kipps. "Later."
"They'd make you an officer, you know, 'n no time. They want officers,"
said old Kipps. "It isn't everyone can afford it. They'd be regular glad
to 'ave you.... Ain't bort a dog yet?"
"Not yet, uncle. 'Ave a segar?"
"Not a moty car?"
"Not yet, uncle."
"There's no 'urry 'bout that. And don't get one of these 'ere trashy
cheap ones when you do get it, my boy. Get one as'll last a lifetime....
I'm surprised you don't 'ire a bit more."
"Ann don't seem to fency a moty car," said Kipps.
"Ah!" said old Kipps, "I expect not," and glanced a comment at the door.
"She ain't used to going out," he said. "More at 'ome indoors."
"Fact is," said Kipps, hastily, "we're thinking of building a 'ouse."
"I wouldn't do that, my boy," began old Kipps, but his nephew was
routing in the cheffonier drawer amidst the plans. He got them in time
to check some further comment on Ann. "Um," said the old gentleman, a
little impressed by the extraordinary odour and the unusual transparency
of the tracing paper Kipps put into his hands. "Thinking of building a
'ouse, are you?"
Kipps began with the most modest of the three projects.
Old Kipps read slowly through his silver-rimmed spectacles: "Plan of a
'ouse for Arthur Kipps Esquire--Um."
He didn't warm to the project all at once, and Ann drifted into the room
to find him still scrutinising the architect's proposals a little
doubtfully.
"We couldn't find a decent 'ouse anywhere," said Kipps, leaning against
the table and assuming an offhand note. "I didn't see why we shouldn't
run up one for ourselves." Old Kipps could not help liking the tone of
that.
"We thought we might see----" said Ann.
"It's a spekerlation, of course," said old Kipps, and held the plan at a
distance of two feet or more from his glasses and frowned. "This isn't
exactly the 'ouse I should expect you to 'ave thought of, though," he
said. "Practically it's a villa. It's the sort of 'ouse a bank clerk
might 'ave. 'Tisn't what I should call a gentleman's 'ouse, Artie."
"It's plain, of course," said Kipps, standing beside his uncle and
looking down at this plan, which certainly did seem a little less
magnificent now than it had at the first encounter.
"You mustn't 'ave it too plain," said old Kipps.
"If it's comfortable----," Ann hazarded.
Old Kipps glanced at her over his spectacles. "You ain't comfortable,
my gal, in this world, not if you don't live up to your position," so
putting compactly into contemporary English that fine old phrase,
_noblesse oblige_. "A 'ouse of this sort is what a retired tradesman
might 'ave, or some little whippersnapper of a s'liciter. But _you_----"
"Course that isn't the o'ny plan," said Kipps, and tried the middle one.
But it was the third one which won over old Kipps. "Now that's a
_'ouse_, my boy," he said at the sight of it.
Ann came and stood just behind her husband's shoulder while old Kipps
expanded upon the desirability of the larger scheme. "You ought to 'ave
a billiard-room," he said; "I don't see that, but all the rest's all
right. A lot of these 'ere officers 'ere 'ud be glad of a game of
billiards."...
"What's all these dots?" said old Kipps.
"S'rubbery," said Kipps. "Flow'ing s'rubs."
"There's eleven bedrooms in that 'ouse," said Ann. "It's a bit of a lot,
ain't it, uncle?"
"You'll want 'em, my girl. As you get on, you'll be 'aving visitors.
Friends of your 'usband, p'raps, from the School of Musketry, what you
want 'im to get on with. You can't never tell."
"If we 'ave a great s'rubbery," Ann ventured, "we shall 'ave to keep a
gardener."
"If you don't 'ave a s'rubbery," said old Kipps, with a note of patient
reasoning, "'ow are you to prevent every jackanapes that goes by,
starin' into your drorin'-room winder--p'raps when you get someone a
bit special to entertain?"
"We ain't _used_ to a s'rubbery," said Ann, mulishly; "we get on very
well 'ere."
"It isn't what you're used to," said old Kipps, "it's what you ought to
'ave _now_." And with that Ann dropped out of the discussion.
"Study and lib'ry," old Kipps read. "That's right. I see a Tantalus the
other day over Brookland, the very thing for a gentleman's study. I'll
try and get over and bid for it."...
By 'bus time old Kipps was quite enthusiastic about the house building,
and it seemed to be definitely settled that the largest plan was the one
decided upon. But Ann had said nothing further in the matter.
Sec.7
When Kipps returned from seeing his uncle into the 'bus--there always
seemed a certain doubt whether that portly figure would go into the
little red "Tip-Top" box--he found Ann still standing by the table,
looking with an expression of comprehensive disapproval at the three
plans.
"There don't seem much the matter with uncle," said Kipps, assuming the
hearthrug, "spite of 'is 'eartburn. 'E 'opped up them steps like a
bird."
Ann remained staring at the plans.
"You don't like them plans?" hazarded Kipps.
"No, I don't, Artie."
"We got to build somethin' now."
"But--it's a gentleman's 'ouse, Artie!"
"It's--it's a decent size, o' course."
Kipps took a flirting look at the drawing and went to the window.
"Look at the cleanin'. Free servants'll be lost in that 'ouse, Artie."
"We must _'ave_ servants," said Kipps.
Ann looked despondently at her future residence.
"We got to keep up our position, any'ow," said Kipps, turning towards
her. "It stands to reason, Ann, we got a position. Very well! I can't
'ave you scrubbin' floors. You got to 'ave a servant and you got to
manage a 'ouse. You wouldn't 'ave me ashamed----"
Ann opened her lips and did not speak.
"What?" asked Kipps.
"Nothing," said Ann, "only I did want it to be a _little_ 'ouse, Artie.
I wanted it to be a 'andy little 'ouse, jest for us."
Kipps' face was suddenly flushed and mulish. He took up the curiously
smelling tracings again. "I'm not a-going to be looked down upon," he
said. "It's not only Uncle I'm thinking of!"
Ann stared at him.
Kipps went on. "I won't 'ave that young Walshingham f'r instance,
sneering and sniffling at me. Making out as if we was all wrong. I see
'im yesterday.... Nor Coote neether. I'm as good--we're as good.
Whatever's 'appened."
Silence and the rustle of plans.
He looked up and saw Ann's eyes bright with tears. For a moment the two
stared at one another.
"We'll 'ave the big 'ouse," said Ann, with a gulp. "I didn't think of
that, Artie."
Her aspect was fierce and resolute, and she struggled with emotion.
"We'll 'ave the big 'ouse," she repeated. "They shan't say I dragged you
down wiv' me--none of them shan't say that. I've thought--I've always
been afraid of that."
Kipps looked again at the plan, and suddenly the grand house had become
very grand indeed. He blew.
"No, Artie, none of them shan't say that," and with something blind in
her motions Ann tried to turn the plan round to her....
After all, Kipps thought there might be something to say for the milder
project.... But he had gone so far that now he did not know how to say
it.
And so the plans went out to the builders, and in a little while Kipps
was committed to two thousand five hundred pounds worth of building. But
then, you know, he had an income of twelve hundred a year.
Sec.8
It is extraordinary what minor difficulties cluster about house
building.
"I say, Ann," remarked Kipps one day, "we shall 'ave to call this little
'ouse by a name. I was thinking of 'Ome Cottage. But I dunno whether
'Ome Cottage is quite the thing like. All these little fishermen's
places are called Cottages."
"I like cottage," said Ann.
"It's got eleven bedrooms, d'see," said Kipps. "I don't see 'ow you can
call it a cottage with more bedrooms than four. Prop'ly speaking, it's a
Large Villa. Prop'ly, it's almost a Big 'Ouse. Leastways a 'Ouse."
"Well," said Ann, "if you must call it Villa--Home Villa.... I wish it
wasn't."
Kipps meditated.
"'Ow about Eureka Villa?" he said, raising his voice.
"What's Eureka?"
"It's a name," he said. "There used to be Eureka Dress Fasteners.
There's lots of names, come to think of it, to be got out of a shop.
There's Pyjama Villa. I remember that in the hosiery. No, come to think,
that wouldn't do. But Maraposa--sort of oatmeal cloth, that was.... No!
Eureka's better."
Ann meditated. "It seems silly like to 'ave a name that don't mean
much."
"Perhaps it does," said Kipps. "Though it's what people 'ave to do."
He became meditative. "I got it!" he cried.
"Not Oreeka!" said Ann.
"No! There used to be a 'ouse at Hastings opposite our school--quite a
big 'ouse it was--St. Ann's. Now _that_----"
"No," said Mrs. Kipps with decision. "Thanking you kindly, but I don't
have no butcher boys making game of me."...
They consulted Carshot, who suggested after some days of reflection,
Waddycombe, as a graceful reminder of Kipps' grandfather; Old Kipps, who
was for "Upton Manor House," where he had once been second footman;
Buggins, who favoured either a stern simple number, "Number One"--if
there were no other houses there, or something patriotic, as "Empire
Villa," and Pierce, who inclined to "Sandringham"; but in spite of all
this help they were still undecided when, amidst violent perturbations
of the soul, and after the most complex and difficult hagglings,
wranglings, fears, muddles and goings to and fro, Kipps became the
joyless owner of a freehold plot of three-eighths of an acre, and saw
the turf being wheeled away from the site that should one day be his
home.
CHAPTER II
THE CALLERS
Sec.1
The Kippses sat at their midday dinner-table and amidst the vestiges of
rhubarb pie, and discussed two postcards the one o'clock post had
brought. It was a rare bright moment of sunshine in a wet and windy day
in the March that followed their marriage. Kipps was attired in a suit
of brown, with a tie of fashionable green, while Ann wore one of those
picturesque loose robes that are usually associated with sandals and
advanced ideas. But there weren't any sandals on Ann or any advanced
ideas, and the robe had come quite recently through the counsels of Mrs.
Sid Pornick. "It's Artlike," said Kipps, giving way. "It's more
comfortable," said Ann. The room looked out by French windows upon a
little patch of green and the Hythe parade. The parade was all shiny wet
with rain, and the green-grey sea tumbled and tumbled between parade and
sky.
The Kipps' furniture, except for certain chromo lithographs of Kipps'
incidental choice that struck a quiet note amidst the wall paper, had
been tactfully forced by an expert salesman, and it was in a style of
mediocre elegance. There was a sideboard of carved oak that had only one
fault, it reminded Kipps at times of wood-carving, and its panel of
bevelled glass now reflected the back of his head. On its shelf were two
books from Parsons' Library, each with a "place" marked by a slip of
paper; neither of the Kippses could have told you the title of either
book they read, much less the author's name. There was an ebonised
overmantel set with phials and pots of brilliant colour, each duplicated
by looking-glass, and bearing also a pair of Chinese jars made in
Birmingham, a wedding present from Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Pornick, and
several sumptuous Japanese fans. And there was a Turkey carpet of great
richness. In addition to these modern exploits of Messrs. Bunt and
Bubble, there were two inactive tall clocks, whose extreme dilapidation
appealed to the connoisseur; a terrestrial and a celestial globe, the
latter deeply indented; a number of good old iron moulded and dusty
books, and a stuffed owl wanting one (easily replaceable) glass eye,
obtained by the exertions of Uncle Kipps. The table equipage was as much
as possible like Mrs. Bindon Botting's, only more costly, and in
addition there were green and crimson wine glasses--though the Kippses
never drank wine.
Kipps turned to the more legible of his two postcards again.
"'Unavoidably prevented from seein' me to-day,' 'e says. I like 'is
cheek. After I give 'im 'is start and everything."
He blew.
"'E certainly treats you a bit orf'and," said Ann.
Kipps gave vent to his dislike of young Walshingham. "He's getting too
big for 'is britches," he said. "I'm beginning to wish she _'ad_ brought
an action for breach. Ever since _'e_ said she wouldn't, 'e's seemed to
think I've got no right to spend my own money."
"'E's never liked your building the 'ouse," said Ann.
Kipps displayed wrath. "What the goodness 'as it got to do wiv' 'im?"
"Overman indeed!" he added. "Overmantel!... 'E trys that on with me,
I'll tell 'im something 'e won't like."
He took up the second card. "Dashed if I can read a word of it. I can
jest make out Chit-low at the end and that's all."
He scrutinised it. "It's like someone in a fit writing. This here might
be W H A T--_what_. P R I C E--_I_ got it! What price Harry now? It was
a sort of saying of 'is. I expect 'e's either done something or not done
something towards starting that play, Ann."
"I expect that's about it," said Ann.
Kipps grunted with effort. "I can't read the rest," he said at last,
"nohow."
A thoroughly annoying post. He pitched the card on the table, stood up
and went to the window, where Ann, after a momentary reconnaisance at
Chitterlow's hieroglyphics, came to join him.
"Wonder what I shall do this afternoon," said Kipps, with his hands deep
in his pockets.
He produced and lit a cigarette.
"Go for a walk, I s'pose," said Ann.
"I _been_ for a walk this morning.
"S'pose I must go for another," he added, after an interval.
They regarded the windy waste of sea for a space.
"Wonder why it is 'e won't see me," said Kipps, returning to the problem
of young Walshingham. "It's all lies about 'is being too busy."
Ann offered no solution.
"Rain again!" said Kipps, as the lash of the little drops stung the
window.
"Oo, bother!" said Kipps, "you got to do something. Look 'ere, Ann! I'll
go orf for a reg'lar tramp through the rain, up by Saltwood, 'round by
Newington, over the camp, and so 'round and back, and see 'ow they're
getting on about the 'ouse. See? And look 'ere! you get Gwendolen to go
out a bit before I come back. If it's still rainy, she can easy go
'round and see 'er sister. Then we'll 'ave a bit of tea, with tea
cake--all buttery, see? Toce it ourselves, p'raps. Eh?"
"I dessay I can find something to do in the 'ouse," said Ann,
considering. "You'll take your mackintosh and leggin's, I s'pose. You'll
get wet without your mackintosh over those roads."
"Righ-O," said Kipps, and went to ask Gwendolen for his brown leggings
and his other pair of boots.
Sec.2
Things conspired to demoralise Kipps that afternoon.
When he got outside the house everything looked so wet under the drive
of the southwester that he abandoned the prospect of the clay lanes
towards Newington altogether, and turned east to Folkestone along the
Seabrook digue. His mackintosh flapped about him, the rain stung his
cheek; for a time he felt a hardy man. And then as abruptly the rain
ceased and the wind fell, and before he was through Sandgate High Street
it was a bright spring day. And there was Kipps in his mackintosh and
squeaky leggings, looking like a fool!
Inertia carried him another mile to the Leas, and there the whole world
was pretending there had never been such a thing as rain--ever. There
wasn't a cloud in the sky; except for an occasional puddle the asphalt
paths looked as dry as a bone. A smartly dressed man in one of those
overcoats that look like ordinary cloth and are really most deceitfully
and unfairly waterproof, passed him and glanced at the stiff folds of
his mackintosh. "Demn!" said Kipps. His mackintosh swished against his
leggings, his leggings piped and whistled over his boot-tops.
"Why do I never get anything right?" Kipps asked of a bright implacable
universe.
Nice old ladies passed him, refined people with tidy umbrellas, bright,
beautiful, supercilious-looking children. Of course! the right thing for
such a day as this was a light overcoat and an umbrella. A child might
have known that. He had them at home, but how could one explain that? He
decided to turn down by the Harvey monument and escape through Clifton
Gardens towards the hills. And thereby he came upon Coote.
He already felt the most abject and propitiatory of social outcasts when
he came upon Coote, and Coote finished him. He passed within a yard of
Coote. Coote was coming along towards the Leas, and when Kipps saw him
his legs hesitated about their office and he seemed to himself to
stagger about all over the footpath. At the sight of him Coote started
visibly. Then a sort of _rigor vitae_ passed through his frame, his jaw
protruded and errant bubbles of air seemed to escape and run about
beneath his loose skin. (Seemed I say--I am perfectly well aware that
there is really connective tissue in Coote as in all of us to prevent
anything of the sort.) His eyes fixed themselves on the horizon and
glazed. As he went by Kipps could hear his even, resolute breathing. He
went by, and Kipps staggered on into a universe of dead cats and dust
heaps, rind and ashes--_cut!_ Cut!
It was part of the inexorable decrees of Providence that almost
immediately afterwards the residuum of Kipps had to pass a very, very
long and observant-looking girls' school.
Kipps recovered consciousness again on the road between Shorncliffe
Station and Cheriton, though he cannot remember, indeed to this day he
has never attempted to remember, how he got there. And he was back at
certain thoughts suggested by his last night's novel reading, that
linked up directly with the pariah-like emotions of these last
encounters. The novel lay at home upon the cheffonier; it was one of
society and politics--there is no need whatever to give the title or
name the author--written with a heavy-handed thoroughness that overrode
any possibility of resistance on the part of the Kipps mind. It had
crushed all his poor little edifice of ideals, his dreams of a sensible,
unassuming existence, of snugness, of not caring what people said and
all the rest of it, to dust; it had reinstated, squarely and strongly
again, the only proper conception of English social life. There was a
character in the book who trifled with Art, who was addicted to reading
French novels, who dressed in a loose, careless way, who was a sorrow to
his dignified, silvery-haired, politico-religious mother, and met the
admonitions of bishops with a front of brass. He treated a "nice girl,"
to whom they had got him engaged, badly; he married beneath him--some
low thing or other. And sank....
Kipps could not escape the application of the case. He was enabled to
see how this sort of thing looked to decent people; he was enabled to
gauge the measure of the penalties due. His mind went from that to the
frozen marble of Coote's visage.
_He deserved it!_...
That day of remorse! Later it found him coming upon the site of his
building operations and surveying it in a mood near to despair, his
mackintosh over his arm.
Hardly anyone was at work that day--no doubt the builders were having
him in some obscure manner--and the whole place seemed a dismal and
depressing litter. The builder's shed, black-lettered WILKINS, BUILDER,
HYTHE, looked like a stranded thing amidst a cast-up disorder of
wheelbarrows and wheeling planks, and earth and sand and bricks. The
foundations of the walls were trenches full of damp concrete, drying in
patches; the rooms--it was incredible they could ever be rooms--were
shaped out as squares and oblongs of coarse, wet grass and sorrel. They
looked absurdly small--dishonestly small. What could you expect? Of
course the builders were having him, building too small, building all
wrong, using bad materials! Old Kipps had told him a wrinkle or two. The
builders were having him, young Walshingham was having him, everybody
was having him! They were having him and laughing at him because they
didn't respect him. They didn't respect him because he couldn't do
things right. Who could respect him?...
He was an outcast, he had no place in the world. He had had his chance
in the world and turned his back on it. He had "behaved badly"--that was
the phrase....
Here a great house was presently to arise, a house to be paid for, a
house neither he nor Ann could manage--with eleven bedrooms, and four
disrespectful servants having them all the time!
How had it all happened exactly?
This was the end of his great fortune! What a chance he had had! If he
had really carried out his first intentions and stuck to things, how
much better everything might have been! If he had got a tutor--that had
been in his mind originally--a special sort of tutor to show him
everything right; a tutor for gentlemen of neglected education. If he
had read more and attended better to what Coote had said!
Coote, who had just cut him!...
Eleven bedrooms! What had possessed him? No one would ever come to see
them, no one would ever have anything to do with them. Even his aunt cut
him! His uncle treated him with a half-contemptuous sufferance. He had
not a friend worth counting in the world! Buggins, Carshot, Pierce; shop
assistants! The Pornicks--a low socialist lot! He stood among his
foundations like a lonely figure among ruins; he stood among the ruins
of his future, and owned himself a foolish and mistaken man. He saw
himself and Ann living out their shameful lives in this great crazy
place--as it would be--with everybody laughing secretly at them and
their eleven rooms, and nobody approaching them--nobody nice and right
that is, for ever. And Ann!
What was the matter with Ann? She'd given up going for walks lately, got
touchy and tearful, been fitful with her food. Just when she didn't
ought to. It was all a part of the judgment upon wrongdoing, it was all
part of the social penalties that Juggernaut of a novel had brought home
to his mind.
Sec.3
He let himself in with his latchkey. He went moodily into the
dining-room and got out the plans to look at them. He had a vague hope
that there would prove to be only ten bedrooms. But he found there were
still eleven. He became aware of Ann standing over him. "Look 'ere,
Artie!" said Ann.
He looked up and found her holding a number of white oblongs. His
eyebrows rose.
"It's Callers," said Ann.
He put his plans aside slowly and took and read the cards in silence,
with a sort of solemnity. Callers after all! Then perhaps he wasn't to
be left out of the world after all. Mrs. G. Porrett Smith, Miss Porrett
Smith, Miss Mabel Porrett Smith, and two smaller cards of the Rev. G.
Porrett Smith. "Lor'!" he said, "_Clergy!_"
"There was a lady," said Ann, "and two growed-up gals--all dressed up!"
"And 'im?"
"There wasn't no _'im_."
"Not----?" He held out the little card.
"No; there was a lady and two young ladies."
"But--these cards! Wad they go and leave these two little cards with the
Rev. G. Smith on for? Not if 'e wasn't with 'em."
"'E wasn't with 'em."
"Not a little chap--dodgin' about be'ind the others? And didn't come
in?"
"I didn't see no gentleman with them at all," said Ann.