"Rum!" said Kipps. A half-forgotten expe_Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul

know," he said, waving the reverend gentleman's card; "'e give 'em the

slip, that's what he'd done. Gone off while they was rapping before you

let 'em in. It's a fair call, any'ow." He felt a momentary base

satisfaction at his absence. "What did they talk about, Ann?"

There was a pause. "I didn't let 'em in," said Ann.

He looked up suddenly and perceived that something unusual was the

matter with Ann. Her face was flushed, her eyes were red and hard.

"Didn't let 'em in?"

"No! They didn't come in at all."

He was too astonished for words.

"I answered the door," said Ann; "I'd been upstairs 'namelling the

floor. 'Ow was I to think about Callers, Artie? We ain't never 'ad

Callers all the time we been 'ere. I'd sent Gwendolen out for a bref of

fresh air, and there I was upstairs 'namelling that floor she done so

bad, so's to get it done before she came back. I thought I'd 'namel that

floor and then get tea and 'ave it quiet with you, toce and all, before

she came back. 'Ow was I to think about Callers?"

She paused. "Well," said Kipps, "what them?"

"They came and rapped. 'Ow was I to know? I thought it was a tradesman

or something. Never took my apron off, never wiped the 'namel off my

'ands--nothing. There they was!"

She paused again. She was getting to the disagreeable part.

"Wad they say?" said Kipps.

"She says, 'Is Mrs. Kipps at home?' See? To me."

"Yes."

"And me all painty and no cap on and nothing, neither missis nor servant

like. There, Artie, I could 'a sunk through the floor with shame, I

really could. I could 'ardly get my voice. I couldn't think of nothing

to say but just 'Not at 'Ome,' and out of 'abit like I 'eld the tray.

And they give me the cards and went, and 'ow I shall ever look that lady

in the face again I don't know.... And that's all about it, Artie! They

looked me up and down, they did, and then I shut the door on 'em."

"Goo!" said Kipps.

Ann went and poked the fire needlessly with a passion quivering hand.

"I wouldn't 'ave 'ad that 'appen for five pounds," said Kipps. "A

clergyman and all!"

Ann dropped the poker into the fender with some _eclat_ and stood up and

looked at her hot face in the glass. Kipps' disappointment grew. "You

did ought to 'ave known better than that, Ann! You reely did."

He sat forward, cards in hand, with a deepening sense of social

disaster. The things were laid upon the table, toast sheltered under a

cover, at mid fender, the teapot warmed beside it, and the kettle just

lifted from the hob, sang amidst the coals. Ann glanced at him for a

moment, then stooped with the kettle-holder to wet the tea.

"Tcha!" said Kipps, with his mental state developing.

"I don't see it's any use getting in a state about it now," said Ann.

"Don't you? I do. See? 'Ere's these people, good people, want to

'sociate with us, and 'ere you go and slap 'em in the face!"

"I didn't slap 'em in the face."

"You do--practically. You slams the door in their face, and that's all

we see of 'em ever. I wouldn't 'ave 'ad this 'appen not for a ten-pound

note."

He rounded his regrets with a grunt. For a while there was silence, save

for the little stir of Ann's movements preparing the tea.

"Tea, Artie," said Ann, handing him a cup.

Kipps took it.

"I put sugar _once_," said Ann.

"Oo, dash it! Oo cares?" said Kipps, taking an extraordinarily large

additional lump with fury quivering fingers, and putting his cup with a

slight excess of force on the recess cupboard. "Oo cares?

"I wouldn't 'ave 'ad that 'appen," he said, bidding steadily against

accomplished things, "for twenty pounds."

He gloomed in silence through a long minute or so. Then Ann said the

fatal thing that exploded him. "Artie!" she said.

"What?"

"There's Buttud Toce down there! By your foot!" There was a pause,

husband and wife regarded one another.

"Buttud Toce!" he said. "You go and mess up them callers and then you

try and stuff me up with Buttud Toce! Buttud Toce indeed! 'Ere's our

first chance of knowing anyone that's at all fit to 'sociate with----.

Look 'ere, Ann! Tell you what it is--you got to return that call."

"Return that call!"

"Yes, you got to return that call. That's what you got to do! I

know----" He waved his arm vaguely towards the miscellany of books in

the recess. "It's in Manners and Rools of Good S'ity. You got to find

jest 'ow many cards to leave and you got to go and leave 'em. See?"

Ann's face expressed terror. "But, Artie, 'ow _can_ I?"

"'Ow _can_ you? 'Ow _could_ you? You got to do it, any'ow. They won't

know you--not in your Bond Street 'at! If they do, they won't say

nothing."

His voice assumed a note of entreaty. "You mus', Ann."

"I can't."

"You mus'."

"I can't and I won't. Anything in reason I'll do, but face those people

again I can't--after what 'as 'appened."

"You won't?"

"No!"...

"So there they go--orf! And we never see them again! And so it goes on!

So it goes on! We don't know nobody and we _shan't_ know anybody! And

you won't put yourself out not a little bit, or take the trouble to find

out anything 'ow it ought to be done."

Terrible pause.

"I never ought to 'ave merried you, Artie, that's the troof."

"Oh! _don't_ go into that."

"I never ought to 'ave merried you, Artie. I'm not equal to the

position. If you 'adn't said you'd drown yourself----" She choked.

"I don' see why you shouldn't _try_, Ann. _I've_ improved. Why don't

you? 'Stead of which you go sending out the servant and 'namelling

floors, and then when visitors come----"

"'Ow was _I_ to know about y'r old visitors?" cried Ann in a wail, and

suddenly got up and fled from amidst their ruined tea, the tea of which

"toce, all buttery," was to be the crown and glory.

Kipps watched her with a momentary consternation. Then he hardened his

heart. "Ought to 'ave known better," he said, "goin' on like that!" He

remained for a space rubbing his knees and muttering. He emitted

scornfully: "I carn't an' I won't." He saw her as the source of all his

shames.

Presently, quite mechanically, he stooped down and lifted the flowery

china cover. "Ter dash 'er Buttud Toce!" he shouted at the sight of it,

and clapped the cover down again hard....

When Gwendolen came back she perceived things were in a slightly unusual

poise. Kipps sat by the fire in a rigid attitude reading a casually

selected volume of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, and Ann was upstairs

and inaccessible--to reappear at a later stage with reddened eyes.

Before the fire and still in a perfectly assimilable condition was what

was evidently an untouched supply of richly buttered toast under a

cracked cover.

"They've 'ad a bit of a tiff," said Gwendolen, attending to her duties

in the kitchen, with her outdoor hat still on and her mouth full.

"They're rummuns--if ever! My eye!"

And she took another piece of Ann's generously buttered toast.

Sec.4

The Kippses spoke no more that day to one another.

The squabble about cards and buttered toast was as serious to them as

the most rational of differences. It was all rational to them. Their

sense of wrong burnt within them; their sense of what was owing to

themselves, the duty of implacability, the obstinacy of pride. In the

small hours Kipps lay awake at the nadir of unhappiness and came near

groaning. He saw life as an extraordinarily desolating muddle; his

futile house, his social discredit, his bad behaviour to Helen, his low

marriage to Ann....

He became aware of something irregular in Ann's breathing....

He listened. She was awake and quietly and privately sobbing!

He hardened his heart; resolutely he hardened his heart.

The stupid little tragedies of these clipped and limited lives!

What is the good of keeping up the idyllic sham and pretending that

ill-educated, misdirected people "get along very well," and that all

this is harmlessly funny and nothing more? You think I'm going to write

fat, silly, grinning novels about half-educated, under-trained people

and keep it up all the time, that the whole thing's nothing but funny!

As I think of them lying unhappily there in the darkness, my vision

pierces the night. See what I can see! Above them, brooding over them, I

tell you there is a monster, a lumpish monster, like some great, clumsy

griffin thing, like the Crystal Palace labyrinthodon, like Coote, like

the leaden goddess Dulness Pope Abhorred, like some fat, proud flunkey,

like pride, like indolence, like all that is darkening and heavy and

obstructive in life. It is matter and darkness, it is the anti-soul,

Stupidity. My Kippses live in its shadow. Shalford and his

apprenticeship system, the Hastings Academy, the ideas of Coote, the

ideas of the old Kippses, all the ideas that have made Kipps what he is,

all these are its shadow. But for that monster they might not be groping

among false ideas and hurt one another so sorely and so stupidly; but

for that, the glowing promise of childhood and youth might have had a

happier fruition, thought might have awakened in them to meet _the_

thought of the world, the quickening sunshine of literature pierced to

the substance of their souls, their lives might not have been divorced,

as now they are divorced for ever, from the apprehension of beauty that

we favoured ones are given--the vision of the Grail that makes life fine

for ever. I have laughed, and I laugh at these two people; I have sought

to make you laugh....

But I see through the darkness the souls of my Kippses, as they are, as

little pink strips of living stuff, like the bodies of little,

ill-nourished, ailing, ignorant children, children who feel pain, who

are naughty and muddled and suffer and do not understand why. And the

claw of this Beast rests upon them!

CHAPTER III

TERMINATIONS

Sec.1

Next morning came a remarkable telegram from Folkestone. "Please come at

once, urgent, Walshingham," said the telegram, and Kipps, after an

agitated but still ample breakfast, departed....

When he returned his face was very white and his countenance disordered.

He let himself in with his latchkey and came into the dining-room where

Ann sat, affecting to work at a little thing she called a bib. She heard

his hat fall in the hall before he entered, as though he had missed the

peg. "I got something to tell you, Ann," he said, disregarding their

overnight quarrel, and went to the hearthrug and took hold of the

mantel, and stared at Ann as though the sight of her was novel.

"Well?" said Ann, not looking up and working a little faster.

"'E's gone!"

Ann looked up sharply and her hands stopped. "_Who's_ gone?" For the

first time she perceived Kipps' pallor.

"Young Walshingham--I saw 'er and she tole me."

"Gone? What d'you mean?"

"Cleared out! Gone off for good!"

"What for?"

"For 'is 'ealth," said Kipps, with sudden bitterness. "'E's been

speckylating. He's speckylated our money and 'e's speckylated their

money, and now 'e's took 'is 'ook. That's all about it, Ann."

"You mean?"

"I mean 'e's orf and our twenty-four thousand's orf, too! And 'ere we

are! Smashed up! That's all about it, Ann." He panted.

Ann had no vocabulary for such an occasion. "Oh, Lor'!" she said, and

sat still.

Kipps came about and stuck his hands deeply in his trouser pockets.

"Speckylated every penny--lorst it all--and gorn."

Even his lips were white.

"You mean we ain't got nothin' left, Artie?"

"Not a penny! Not a bloomin' penny, Ann. No!"

A gust of passion whirled across the soul of Kipps. He flung out a

knuckly fist. "If I 'ad 'im 'ere," he said, "I'd--I'd--I'd wring 'is

neck for 'im. I'd--I'd----" His voice rose to a shout. He thought of

Gwendolen in the kitchen and fell to "Ugh!"

"But, Artie," said Ann, trying to grasp it, "d'you mean to say he's

took our money?"

"Speckylated it!" said Kipps, with an illustrative flourish of the arm,

that failed to illustrate. "Bort things dear and sold 'em cheap, and

played the 'ankey-pankey jackass with everything we got. That's what I

mean 'e's done, Ann." He repeated this last sentence with the addition

of violent adverbs.

"D'you mean to say our money's _gone_, Artie?"

"Ter-dash it, _Yes_, Ann!" swore Kipps, exploding in a shout. "Ain't I

tellin' you?"

He was immediately sorry. "I didn't mean to 'oller at you, Ann," he

said, "but I'm all shook up. I don't 'ardly know what I'm sayin'. Ev'ry

penny."...

"But, Artie----"

Kipps grunted. He went to the window and stared for a moment at a sunlit

sea. "Gord!" he swore.

"I mean," he said, coming back to Ann and with an air of exasperation,

"that he's 'bezzled and 'ooked it. That's what I mean, Ann."

Ann put down the bib. "But wot are we going to _do_, Artie?"

Kipps indicated ignorance, wrath and despair with one comprehensive

gesture of his hands. He caught an ornament from the mantel and replaced

it. "I'm going to bang about," he said, "if I ain't precious careful."

"You saw _'er_, you say?"

"Yes."

"What did she say 'xactly?" said Ann.

"Told me to see a s'licitor--tole me to get someone to 'elp me at once.

She was there in black--like she used to be--and speaking cool and

careful-like. 'Elen!... She's precious 'ard, is 'Elen. She looked at me

straight. 'It's my fault,' she said, 'I ought to 'ave warned you....

Only under the circumstances it was a little difficult.' Straight as

anything. I didn't 'ardly say anything to 'er. I didn't seem to begin to

take it in until she was showing me out. I 'adn't anything to say. Jest

as well, perhaps. She talked like a call a'most. She said--what _was_ it

she said about her mother? 'My mother's overcome with grief,' she said,

'so naturally everything comes on me.'"

"And she told you to get someone to 'elp you?"

"Yes. I been to old Bean."

"O' Bean?"

"Yes. What I took my business away from!"

"What did he say?"

"He was a bit off'and at first, but then 'e come 'round. He couldn't

tell me anything till 'e knew the facts. What I know of young

Walshingham, there won't be much 'elp in the facts. No!"

He reflected for a space. "It's a smash-up, Ann. More likely than not,

Ann, 'e's left us over'ead in debt. We got to get out of it just 'ow we

can....

"We got to begin again," he went on. "_'Ow_, I don't know. All the way

'ome my 'ead's been going. We got to get a living some'ow or other.

'Aving time to ourselves, and a bit of money to spend, and no hurry and

worry, it's all over for ever, Ann. We was fools, Ann. We didn't know

our benefits. We been caught. Gord!... Gord!"

He was on the verge of "banging about" again.

They heard a jingle in the passage, the large soft impact of a servant's

indoor boots. As if she were a part, a mitigatory part of Fate, came

Gwendolen to lay the midday meal. Kipps displayed self-control

forthwith. Ann picked up the bib again and bent over it, and the Kippses

bore themselves gloomily perhaps, but not despairfully, while their

dependant was in the room. She spread the cloth and put out the cutlery

with a slow inaccuracy, and Kipps, after a whisper to himself, went

again to the window. Ann got up and put away her work methodically in

the cheffonier.

"When I think," said Kipps, as soon as the door closed again behind

Gwendolen, "when I think of the 'ole people and 'aving to tell 'em of it

all--I want to smesh my 'ead against the nearest wall. Smesh my silly

brains out! And Buggins--Buggins what I'd 'arf promised to start in a

lill' outfitting shop in Rendezvous Street."...

Gwendolen returned and restored dignity.

The midday meal spread itself slowly before them. Gwendolen, after her

custom, left the door open and Kipps closed it carefully before sitting

down.

He stood for a moment, regarding the meal doubtfully.

"I don't feel as if I could swaller a moufful," he said.

"You got to eat," said Ann....

For a time they said little, and once swallowing was achieved, ate on

with a sort of melancholy appetite. Each was now busy thinking.

"After all," said Kipps, presently, "whatever 'appens, they can't turn

us out or sell us up before nex' quarter-day. I'm pretty sure about

that."

"Sell us up!" said Ann.

"I dessey we're bankrup'," said Kipps, trying to say it easily and

helping himself with a trembling hand to unnecessary potatoes.

Then a long silence. Ann ceased to eat, and there were silent tears.

"More potatoes, Artie?" choked Ann.

"I couldn't," said Kipps. "No."

He pushed back his plate, which was indeed replete with potatoes, got up

and walked about the room. Even the dinner-table looked distraught and

unusual.

"What to do, I _don't_ know," he said.

"Oh, _Lord_!" he ejaculated, and picked up and slapped down a book.

Then his eye fell upon another postcard that had come from Chitterlow

by the morning's post, and which now lay by him on the mantel-shelf. He

took it up, glanced at its imperfectly legible message, and put it down.

"Delayed!" he said, scornfully. "Not prodooced in the smalls. Or is it

smells 'e says? 'Ow can one understand that? Any'ow 'e's 'umbugging

again.... Somefing about the Strand. No! Well, 'e's 'ad all the money

'e'll ever get out of me!... I'm done."

He seemed to find a momentary relief in the dramatic effect of his

announcement. He came near to a swagger of despair upon the hearthrug,

and then suddenly came and sat down next to Ann and rested his chin on

the knuckles of his two clenched hands.

"I been a fool, Ann," he said in a gloomy monotone. "I been a brasted

fool. But it's 'ard on us, all the same. It's 'ard."

"'Ow was you to know?" said Ann.

"I ought to 'ave known. I did in a sort of way know. And 'ere we are! I

wouldn't care so much if it was myself, but it's _you_, Ann! 'Ere we

are! Regular smashed up! And you----" He checked at an unspeakable

aggravation of their disaster. "I knew 'e wasn't to be depended upon and

there I left it! And you got to pay.... What's to 'appen to us all, I

don't know."

He thrust out his chin and glared at fate.

"'Ow do you know 'e's speckylated everything?" said Ann, after a silent

survey of him.

"'E 'as," said Kipps, irritably, holding firm to disaster.

"She say so?"

"She don't know, of course, but you depend upon it that's it. She told

me she knew something was on, and when she found 'im gone and a note

lef' for her she knew it was up with 'im. 'E went by the night boat. She

wrote that telegram off to me straight away."

Ann surveyed his features with tender, perplexed eyes; she had never

seen him so white and drawn before, and her hand rested an inch or so

away from his arm. The actual loss was still, as it were, afar from her.

The immediate thing was his enormous distress.

"'Ow do you know----?" she said and stopped. It would irritate him too

much.

Kipps' imagination was going headlong.

"Sold up!" he emitted presently, and Ann flinched.

"Going back to work, day after day--I can't stand it, Ann, I can't. And

you----"

"It don't do to think of it," said Ann.

Presently he came upon a resolve. "I keep on thinking of it, and

thinking of it, and what's to be done and what's to be done. I shan't be

any good 'ome s'arfernoon. It keeps on going 'round and 'round in my

'ead, and 'round and 'round. I better go for a walk or something. I'd be

no comfort to you, Ann. I should want to 'owl and 'ammer things if I

'ung about 'ome. My fingers is all atwitch. I shall keep on thinking

'ow I might 'ave stopped it and callin' myself a fool."...

He looked at her between pleading and shame. It seemed like deserting

her.

Ann regarded him with tear-dimmed eyes.

"You'd better do what's good for you, Artie," she said.... "_I'll_ be

best cleaning. It's no use sending off Gwendolen before her month, and

the top room wants turning out." She added with a sort of grim humour:

"May as well turn it out now while I got it."

"I _better_ go for a walk," said Kipps....

And presently our poor exploded Kipps was marching out to bear his

sudden misery. Habit turned him up the road towards his growing house,

and then suddenly he perceived his direction--"Oh, Lor'!"--and turned

aside and went up the steep way to the hill crest and the Sandling Road,

and over the line by that tree-embowered Junction, and athwart the wide

fields towards Postling--a little, black, marching figure--and so up the

Downs and over the hills, whither he had never gone before....

Sec.2

He came back long after dark, and Ann met him in the passage.

"Where you been, Artie?" she asked, with a strained note in her voice.

"I been walking and walking--trying to tire myself out. All the time I

been thinking what shall I do. Trying to fix something up all out of

nothing."

"I didn't know you meant to be out all this time."

Kipps was gripped by compunction....

"I can't think what we ought to do," he said, presently.

"You can't do anything much, Artie, not till you hear from Mr. Bean."

"No; I can't do anything much. That's jest it. And all this time I keep

feelin' if I don't do something the top of my 'ead'll bust.... Been

trying to make up advertisements 'arf the time I been out--'bout finding

a place, good salesman and stock-keeper, and good Manchester dresses,

window-dressing--Lor'! Fancy that all beginning again!... If you went to

stay with Sid a bit--if I sent every penny I got to you--I dunno! I

dunno!"

When they had gone to bed there was an elaborate attempt to get to

sleep.... In one of their great waking pauses Kipps remarked in a

muffled tone: "I didn't mean to frighten you, Ann, being out so late. I

kep' on walking and walking, and some'ow it seemed to do me good. I went

out to the 'illtop ever so far beyond Stanford, and sat there ever so

long, and it seemed to make me better. Just looking over the marsh like,

and seeing the sun set."...

"Very likely," said Ann, after a long interval, "it isn't so bad as you

think it is, Artie."

"It's bad," said Kipps.

"Very likely, after all, it isn't quite so bad. If there's only a

little----"

There came another long silence.

"Ann," said Kipps in the quiet darkness.

"Yes," said Ann.

"Ann," said Kipps, and stopped as though he had hastily shut a door upon

speech.

"I kep' thinking," he said, trying again, "I kep' thinking--after all--I

been cross to you and a fool about things--about them cards, Ann;

but"--his voice shook to pieces--"we _'ave_ been 'appy, Ann ... some'ow

... togever."

And with that he and then she fell into a passion of weeping. They clung

very tightly together--closer than they had been since ever the first

brightness of their married days turned to the grey of common life

again.

All the disaster in the world could not prevent their going to sleep at

last with their poor little troubled heads close together on one pillow.

There was nothing more to be done, there was nothing more to be thought;

Time might go on with his mischiefs, but for a little while at least

they still had one another.

Sec.3

Kipps returned from his second interview with Mr. Bean in a state of

strange excitement. He let himself in with his latch-key and slammed the

door. "Ann!" he shouted, in an unusual note; "Ann!"

Ann replied distantly.

"Something to tell you," said Kipps; "something noo!"

Ann appeared apprehensive from the kitchen.

"Ann," he said, going before her into the little dining-room, for his

news was too dignified for the passage, "very likely, Ann, o' Bean says,

we shall 'ave----" He decided to prolong the suspense. "Guess!"

"I can't, Artie."

"Think of a lot of money!"

"A 'undred pounds p'raps?"

He spoke with immense deliberation. "O v e r a f o u s a n d p o u n d

s!"

Ann stared and said nothing, only went a shade whiter.

"Over, he said. A'most certainly over."

He shut the dining-room door and came forward hastily, for Ann, it was

clear, meant to take this mitigation of their disaster with a complete

abandonment of her self-control. She came near flopping; she fell into

his arms.

"Artie," she got to at last and began to weep, clinging tightly to him.

"Pretty near certain," said Kipps, holding her. "A fousand pounds!"

"I _said_, Artie," she wailed on his shoulder with the note of

accumulated wrongs, "very likely it wasn't so bad."...

"There's things," he said, when presently he came to particulars, "'e

couldn't touch. The noo place! It's freehold and paid for, and with the

bit of building on it, there's five or six 'undred pound p'raps--say

worf free 'undred, for safety. We can't be sold up to finish it, like we

thought. O' Bean says we can very likely sell it and get money. 'E says

you often get a chance to sell a 'ouse lessen 'arf done, 'specially

free'old. _Very_ likely, 'e say. Then there's Hughenden. Hughenden

'asn't been mortgaged not for more than 'arf its value. There's a

'undred or so to be got on that, and the furniture and the rent for the

summer still coming in. 'E says there's very likely other things. A

fousand pounds, that's what 'e said. 'E said it might even be more."...

They were sitting now at the table.

"It alters everything," said Ann.

"I been thinking that, Ann, all the way 'ome. I came in the motor car.

First ride I've 'ad since the smash. We needn't send off Gwendolen,

leastways not till _after_. You know. We needn't turn out of 'ere--not

for a long time. What we been doing for the o' people we can go on doing

a'most as much. And your mother!... I wanted to 'oller coming along. I

pretty near run coming down the road by the hotel."

"Oh, I _am_ glad we can stop 'ere and be comfortable a bit," said Ann.

"I _am_ glad for that."

"I pretty near told the driver on the motor--only 'e was the sort won't

talk.... You see, Ann, we'll be able to start a shop, we'll be able to

get _into_ something like. All about our 'aving to go back to places

and that; all that doesn't matter any more."

For a while they abandoned themselves to ejaculating transports. Then

they fell talking to shape an idea to themselves of the new prospect

that opened before them.

"We must start a sort of shop," said Kipps, whose imagination had been

working. "It'll 'ave to be a shop."

"Drapery?" said Ann.

"You want such a lot of capital for the drapery, mor'n a thousand pounds

you want by a long way--to start it anything like proper."

"Well, outfitting. Like Buggins was going to do."

Kipps glanced at that for a moment, because the idea had not occurred to

him. Then he came back to his prepossession.

"Well, I thought of something else, Ann," he said. "You see, I've always

thought a little book-shop. It isn't like the drapery--'aving to be

learnt. I thought--even before this smash-up--'ow I'd like to 'ave

something to do, instead of always 'aving 'olidays always like we 'ave

been 'aving."

He reflected.

"You don't know _much_ about books, do you, Artie?"

"You don't want to." He illustrated. "I noticed when we used to go to

that Lib'ry at Folkestone, ladies weren't anything like what they was in

a draper's--if you 'aven't got _just_ what they want it's 'Oh, no!' and

out they go. But in a book shop it's different. One book's very like

another--after all, what is it? Something to read and done with. It's

not a thing that matters like print dresses or serviettes--where you

either like 'em or don't, and people judge you by. They take what you

give 'em in books and lib'ries, and glad to be told _what_ to. See 'ow

we was--up at that lib'ry."...

He paused. "You see, Ann----

"Well, I read 'n 'dvertisement the other day. I been asking Mr. Bean. It

said--five 'undred pounds."

"What did?"

"Branches," said Kipps.

Ann failed to understand. "It's a sort of thing that gets up book shops

all over the country," said Kipps. "I didn't tell you, but I arst about

it a bit. On'y I dropped it again. Before this smash, I mean. I'd

thought I'd like to keep a shop for a lark, on'y then I thought it

silly. Besides it 'ud 'ave been beneath me."

He blushed vividly. "It was a sort of projek of mine, Ann.

"On'y it wouldn't 'ave done," he added.

It was a tortuous journey when the Kippses set out to explain anything

to each other. But through a maze of fragmentary elucidations and

questions, their minds did presently begin to approximate to a picture

of a compact, bright, little shop, as a framework for themselves.

"I thought of it one day when I was in Folkestone. I thought of it one

day when I was looking in at a window. I see a chap dressin' a window

and he was whistlin' reg'lar light-'arted.... I thought then I'd like to

keep a bookshop, any'ow, jest for something to do. And when people

weren't about, then you could sit and read the books. See? It wouldn't

be 'arf bad."...

They mused, each with elbows on table and knuckles to lips, looking with

speculative eyes at each other.

"Very likely we'll be 'appier than we should 'ave been with more money,"

said Kipps presently.

"We wasn't 'ardly suited," reflected Ann, and left her sentence

incomplete.

"Fish out of water like," said Kipps....

"You won't 'ave to return that call now," said Kipps, opening a new

branch of the question. "That's one good thing."

"Lor'!" said Ann, visibly brightening, "no more I shan't!"

"I don't s'pose they'd want you to, even if you did--with things as they

are."

A certain added brightness came into Ann's face. "Nobody won't be able

to come leaving cards on us, Artie, now, any more. We are out of

_that_!"

"There isn't no necessity for us to be stuck up," said Kipps, "any more

for ever! 'Ere we are, Ann, common people, with jest no position at all,

as you might say, to keep up. No sev'nts, not if you don't like. No

dressin' better than other people. If it wasn't we been robbed--dashed

if I'd care a rap about losing that money. I b'lieve"--his face shone

with the rare pleasure of paradox--"I reely b'lieve, Ann, it'll prove a

savin' in the end."

Sec.4

The remarkable advertisement which had fired Kipps' imagination with

this dream of a bookshop opened out in the most alluring way. It was one

little facet in a comprehensive scheme of transatlantic origin, which

was to make our old-world methods of book-selling "sit up," and it

displayed an imaginative briskness, a lucidity and promise that aroused

the profoundest scepticism in the mind of Mr. Bean. To Kipps' renewed

investigations it presented itself in an expository illustrated pamphlet

(far too well printed, Mr. Bean thought, for a reputable undertaking) of

the most convincing sort. Mr. Bean would not let him sink his capital in

shares in its projected company that was to make all things new in the

world of books, but he could not prevent Kipps becoming one of their

associated booksellers. And so when presently it became apparent that an

epoch was not to be made, and the "Associated Booksellers' Trading Union

(Limited)" receded and dissolved and liquidated (a few drops) and

vanished and went away to talk about something else, Kipps remained

floating undamaged in this interestingly uncertain universe as an

independent bookseller.

Except that it failed, the Associated Booksellers' Trading Union had all

the stigmata of success. Its fault, perhaps, was that it had them all

instead of only one or two. It was to buy wholesale for all its members

and associates and exchange stock, having a common books-in-stock list

and a common lending library, and it was to provide a uniform registered

shop front to signify all these things to the intelligent passer-by.

Except that it was controlled by buoyant young Over-men with a touch of

genius in their arithmetic, it was, I say, a most plausible and hopeful

project. Kipps went several times to London and an agent came to Hythe;

Mr. Bean made some timely interventions, and then behind a veil of

planks and an announcement in the High Street, the uniform registered

shop front came rapidly into being. "Associated Booksellers' Trading

Union," said this shop front, in a refined, artistic lettering that

bookbuyers were going to value, as wise men over forty value the proper

label for Berncasteler Doctor, and then, "Arthur Kipps."

Next to starting a haberdasher's shop I doubt if Kipps could have been

more truly happy than during those weeks of preparation.

There is, of course, nothing on earth, and I doubt at times if there is

a joy in Heaven, like starting a small haberdasher's shop. Imagine, for

example, having a drawerful of tapes (one whole piece most exquisitely

blocked of every possible width of tape), or, again, an army of neat,

large packages, each displaying one sample of hooks and eyes. Think of

your cottons, your drawer of coloured silks, the little, less, least of

the compartments and thin packets of your needle drawer! Poor princes

and wretched gentlefolk mysteriously above retail trade, may taste only

the faint unsatisfactory shadow of these delights with trays of stamps

or butterflies. I write, of course, for those to whom these things

appeal; there are clods alive who see nothing, or next to nothing, in

spools of mercerised cotton and endless bands of paper-set pins. I write

for the wise, and as I write I wonder that Kipps resisted haberdashery.

He did. Yet even starting a bookshop is at least twenty times as

interesting as building your own house to your own design in unlimited

space and time, or any possible thing people with indisputable social

position and sound securities can possibly find to do. Upon that I rest.

You figure Kipps "going to have a look to see how the little shop is

getting on," the shop that is not to be a loss and a spending of money,

but a gain. He does not walk too fast towards it; as he comes into view

of it his paces slacken and his head goes to one side. He crosses to the

pavement opposite in order to inspect the fascia better, already his

name is adumbrated in faint white lines; stops in the middle of the road

and scrutinises imaginary details for the benefit of his future next

door neighbour, the curiosity-shop man, and so at last, in.... A smell

of paint and of the shavings of imperfectly seasoned pinewood! The shop

is already glazed and a carpenter is busy over the fittings for

adjustable shelves in the side windows. A painter is busy on the

fixtures round about (shelving above and drawers below), which are to

accommodate most of the stock, and the counter--the counter and desk are

done. Kipps goes inside the desk, the desk which is to be the strategic

centre of the shop, brushes away some sawdust, and draws out the

marvellous till; here gold is to be, here silver, here copper--notes

locked up in a cash-box in the well below. Then he leans his elbows on

the desk, rests his chin on his fist and fills the shelves with

imaginary stock; books beyond reading. Every day a man who cares to wash

his hands and read uncut pages artfully may have his cake and eat it,

among that stock. Under the counter to the right, paper and string are

to lurk ready to leap up and embrace goods sold; on the table to the

left, art publications, whatever they may prove to be! He maps it out,

serves an imaginary customer, receives a dream seven and six pence,

packs, bows out. He wonders how it was he ever came to fancy a shop a

disagreeable place.

"It's different," he says at last, after musing on that difficulty,

"being your own."

It _is_ different....

Or, again, you figure Kipps with something of the air of a young

sacristan, handling his brightly virginal account-books, and looking,

and looking again, and then still looking, at an unparalleled specimen

of copperplate engraving, ruled money below and above, bearing the words

"In Account with, ARTHUR KIPPS" (loud flourishes), "The Booksellers'

Trading Union" (temperate decoration). You figure Ann sitting and

stitching at one point of the circumference of the light of the lamp,

stitching queer little garments for some unknown stranger, and over

against her sits Kipps. Before him is one of those engraved memorandum

forms, a moist pad, wet with some thick and greasy greenish purple ink

that is also spreading quietly but steadily over his fingers, a

cross-nibbed pen for first-aid surgical assistance to the patient in his

hand, a dating rubber stamp. At intervals he brings down this latter

with great care and emphasis upon the paper, and when he lifts it there

appears a beautiful oval design of which "Paid, Arthur Kipps, The

Associated Booksellers' Trading Union," and a date, are the essential

ingredients, stamped in purple ink.

Anon he turns his attention to a box of small, round, yellow labels,

declaring "This book was bought from the Associated Booksellers' Trading

Union." He licks one with deliberate care, sticks it on the paper before

him and defaces it with great solemnity. "I can do it, Ann," he says,

looking up brightly. For the Associated Booksellers' Trading Union,

among other brilliant notions and inspirations, devised an ingenious

system of taking back its books again in part payment for new ones

within a specified period. When it failed, all sorts of people were left

with these unredeemed pledges in hand.

Sec.5

Amidst all this bustle and interest, all this going to and fro before

they "moved in" to the High Street, came the great crisis that hung over

the Kippses, and one morning in the small hours Ann's child was born....

Kipps was coming to manhood swiftly now. The once rabbit-like soul that

had been so amazed by the discovery of "chubes" in the human interior

and so shocked by the sight of a woman's shoulder-blades, that had found

shame and anguish in a mislaid Gibus and terror in an Anagram Tea, was

at last facing the greater realities. He came suddenly upon the master

thing in life, birth. He passed through hours of listening, hours of

impotent fear in the night and in the dawn, and then there was put into

his arms something most wonderful, a weak and wailing creature,

incredibly, heart-stirringly soft and pitiful, with minute appealing

hands that it wrung his heart to see. He held this miracle in his arms

and touched its tender cheek as if he feared his lips might injure it.

And this marvel was his Son!

And there was Ann, with a greater strangeness and a greater familiarity

in her quality than he had ever found before. There were little beads of

perspiration on her temples and her lips, and her face was flushed, not

pale as he had feared to see it. She had the look of one who emerges

from some strenuous and invigorating act. He bent down and kissed her,

and he had no words to say. She wasn't to speak much yet, but she

stroked his arm with her hand and had to tell him one thing:

"He's over nine pounds, Artie," she whispered. "Bessie's--Bessie's

wasn't no more than eight."

To have given Kipps a pound of triumph over Sid seemed to her almost to

justify Nunc Dimittis. She watched his face for a moment, then closed

her eyes in a kind of blissful exhaustion as the nurse, with something

motherly in her manner, pushed Kipps out of the room.

Sec.6

Kipps was far too much preoccupied with his own life to worry about the

further exploits of Chitterlow. The man had got his two thousand; on the

whole Kipps was glad he had had it rather than young Walshingham, and

there was an end to the matter. As for the complicated transactions he

achieved and proclaimed by mainly illegible and always incomprehensible

postcards, they were like passing voices heard in the street as one goes

about one's urgent concerns. Kipps put them aside and they got in

between the pages of the stock and were lost forever and sold in with

the goods to customers who puzzled over them mightily.

Then one morning as he was dusting round before breakfast, Chitterlow

returned, appeared suddenly in the shop doorway.

Kipps was overcome with amazement.

It was the most unexpected thing in the world. The man was in evening

dress, evening dress in that singularly crumpled state it assumes after

the hour of dawn, and above his dishevelled red hair, a smallish Gibus

hat tilted remarkably forward. He opened the door and stood, tall and

spread, with one vast white glove flung out as if to display how burst a

glove might be, his eyes bright, such wrinkling of brow and mouth as

only an experienced actor can produce, and a singular radiance of

emotion upon his whole being, an altogether astonishing spectacle.

It was amazing beyond the powers of Kipps. The bell jangled for a bit

and then gave it up and was silent. For a long, great second everything

was quietly attentive. Kipps was amazed to his uttermost; had he had ten

times the capacity he would still have been fully amazed. "It's

Chit'low!" he said at last, standing duster in hand.

But he doubted whether it was not a dream.

"Tzit!" gasped that most excitable and extraordinary person, still in an

incredibly expanded attitude, and then with a slight forward jerk of the

starry split glove, "Bif!"

He could say no more. The tremendous speech he had had ready vanished

from his mind. Kipps stared at his extraordinary facial changes, vaguely

conscious of the truth of the teachings of Nisbet and Lombroso

concerning men of genius.

Then suddenly Chitterlow's features were convulsed, the histrionic fell

from him like a garment, and he was weeping. He said something

indistinct about "Old Kipps! _Good_ old Kipps! Oh, old Kipps!" and

somehow he managed to mix a chuckle and a sob in the most remarkable

way. He emerged from somewhere near the middle of his original attitude,

a merely life-size creature. "My play, boo-hoo!" he sobbed, clutching at

his friend's arm. "My play, Kipps! (sob) You know?"

"Well?" cried Kipps, with his heart sinking in sympathy, "it ain't----"

"No," howled Chitterlow; "no. It's a success! My dear chap! my dear boy!

oh! it's a--bu--boo-hoo!--a big success!" He turned away and wiped

streaming tears with the back of his hand. He walked a pace or so and

turned. He sat down on one of the specially designed artistic chairs of

the Associated Booksellers' Trading Union and produced an exiguous

lady's handkerchief, extraordinarily belaced. He choked. "_My_ play,"

and covered his face here and there.

He made an unsuccessful effort to control himself, and shrank for a

space to the dimensions of a small and pathetic creature. His great nose

suddenly came through a careless place in the handkerchief.

"I'm knocked," he said in a muffled voice, and so remained for a

space--wonderful--veiled.

He made a gallant effort to wipe his tears away. "I had to tell you,"

he said, gulping.

"Be all right in a minute," he added, "calm," and sat still....

Kipps stared in commiseration of such success. Then he heard footsteps

and went quickly to the house doorway. "Jest a minute," he said. "Don't

go in the shop, Ann, for a minute. It's Chitterlow. He's a bit essited.

But he'll be better in a minute. It's knocked him over a bit. You

see"--his voice sank to a hushed note as one who announces death--"'e's

made a success with his play."

He pushed her back lest she should see the scandal of another male's

tears....

Soon Chitterlow felt better, but for a little while his manner was even

alarmingly subdued. "I _had_ to come and tell you," he said. "I _had_ to

astonish someone. Muriel--she'll be firstrate, of course. But she's over

at Dymchurch." He blew his nose with enormous noise, and emerged

instantly a merely garrulous optimist.

"I expect she'll be precious glad."

"She doesn't know yet, my dear boy. She's at Dymchurch--with a friend.

She's seen some of my first nights before.... Better out of it.... I'm

going to her now. I've been up all night--talking to the boys and all

that. I'm a bit off it just for a bit. But--it Knocked 'em. It Knocked

everybody."

He stared at the floor and went on in a monotone. "They laughed a bit at

the beginning--but nothing like a settled laugh--not until the second

act--you know--the chap with the beetle down his neck. Little Chisholme

did that bit to rights. Then they began--_to_ rights." His voice warmed

and increased. "Laughing! It made _me_ laugh! We jumped 'em into the

third act before they had time to cool. Everybody was on it. I never saw

a first night go so fast. Laugh, laugh, laugh, LAUGH, LAUGH, LAUGH" (he

howled the last word with stupendous violence). Everything they laughed

at. They laughed at things that we hadn't meant to be funny--not for one

moment. Bif! Bizz! Curtain. A Fair Knock-Out!... I went on--but I didn't

say a word. Chisholme did the patter. Shouting! It was like walking

under Niagara--going across that stage. It was like never having seen an

audience before....

"Then afterwards--the Boys!"

His emotion held him for a space. "Dear old Boys!" he murmured.

His words multiplied, his importance increased. In a little while he was

restored to something of his old self. He was enormously excited. He

seemed unable to sit down anywhere. He came into the breakfast-room so

soon as Kipps was sure of him, shook hands with Mrs. Kipps

parenthetically, sat down and immediately got up again. He went to the

bassinette in the corner and looked absentmindedly at Kipps, junior, and

said he was glad if only for the youngster's sake. He immediately

resumed the thread of his discourse.... He drank a cup of coffee

noisily and walked up and down the room talking, while they attempted

breakfast amidst the gale of his excitement. The infant slept

marvellously through it all.

"You won't mind my sitting down, Mrs. Kipps. I couldn't sit down for

anyone, or I'd do it for you. It's you I'm thinking of more than anyone,

you and Muriel, and all Old Pals and Good Friends. It means wealth, it

means money--hundreds and thousands.... If you'd heard 'em, _you'd

know_."

He was silent through a portentous moment while topics battled for him

and finally he burst and talked of them all together. It was like the

rush of water when a dam bursts and washes out a fair-sized provincial

town; all sorts of things floated along on the swirl. For example, he

was discussing his future behaviour. "I'm glad it's come now. Not

before. I've had my lesson. I shall be very discreet now, trust me.

We've learnt the value of money." He discussed the possibility of a

country house, of taking a Martello tower as a swimming-box (as one

might say a shooting-box) of living in Venice because of its artistic

associations and scenic possibilities, of a flat in Westminster or a

house in the West End. He also raised the question of giving up smoking

and drinking, and what classes of drink were especially noxious to a man

of his constitution. But discourses on all this did not prevent a

parenthetical computation of the probable profits on the supposition of

a thousand nights here and in America, nor did it ignore the share

Kipps was to have, nor the gladness with which Chitterlow would pay that

share, nor the surprise and regret with which he had learnt, through an

indirect source which awakened many associations, of the turpitude of

young Walshingham, nor the distaste Chitterlow had always felt for young

Walshingham and men of his type. An excursus upon Napoleon had got into

the torrent somehow and kept bobbing up and down. The whole thing was

thrown into the form of a single complex sentence, with parenthetical

and subordinate clauses fitting one into the other like Chinese boxes,

and from first to last it never even had an air of approaching anything

in the remotest degree partaking of the nature of a full stop.

Into this deluge came the _Daily News_, like the gleam of light in

Watts' picture, the waters were assuaged while its sheet was opened, and

it had a column, a whole column, of praise. Chitterlow held the paper

and Kipps read over his left hand, and Ann under his right. It made the

affair more real to Kipps; it seemed even to confirm Chitterlow against

lurking doubts he had been concealing. But it took him away. He departed

in a whirl, to secure a copy of every morning paper, every blessed rag

there is, and take them all to Dymchurch and Muriel forthwith. It had

been the send-off the Boys had given him that had prevented his doing as

much at Charing Cross--let alone that he only caught it by the skin of

his teeth.... Besides which the bookstall wasn't open. His white face,

lit by a vast excitement, bid them a tremendous farewell, and he

departed through the sunlight, with his buoyant walk, buoyant almost to

the tottering pitch. His hair, as one got it sunlit in the street,

seemed to have grown in the night.

They saw him stop a newsboy.

"Every blessed rag," floated to them on the notes of that gorgeous

voice.

The newsboy, too, had happened on luck. Something like a faint cheer

from the newsboy came down the air to terminate that transaction.

Chitterlow went on his way swinging a great budget of papers, a figure

of merited success. The newsboy recovered from his emotion with a jerk,

examined something in his hand again, transferred it to his pocket,

watched Chitterlow for a space, and then in a sort of hushed silence

resumed his daily routine....

Ann and Kipps watched that receding happiness in silence, until he

vanished round the bend of the road.

"I _am_ glad," said Ann at last, speaking with a little sigh.

"So'm I," said Kipps, with emphasis. "For if ever a feller 'as worked

and waited--it's 'im."...

They went back through the shop rather thoughtfully, and after a peep at

the sleeping baby, resumed their interrupted breakfast. "If ever a

feller 'as worked and waited, it's 'im," said Kipps, cutting bread.

"Very likely it's true," said Ann, a little wistfully.

"What's true?"

"About all that money coming."

Kipps meditated. "I don't see why it shouldn't be," he decided, and

handed Ann a piece of bread on the tip of his knife.

"But we'll keep on the shop," he said after an interval for further

reflection, "all the same.... I 'aven't much trust in money after the

things we've seen."

Sec.7

That was two years ago, and as the whole world knows, the "Pestered

Butterfly" is running still. It _was_ true. It has made the fortune of a

once declining little theatre in the Strand, night after night the great

beetle scene draws happy tears from a house packed to repletion, and

Kipps--for all that Chitterlow is not what one might call a business

man--is almost as rich as he was in the beginning. People in Australia,

people in Lancashire, Scotland, Ireland, in New Orleans, in Jamaica, in

New York and Montreal, have crowded through doorways to Kipps'

enrichment, lured by the hitherto unsuspected humours of the

entomological drama. Wealth rises like an exhalation all over our little

planet, and condenses, or at least some of it does, in the pockets of

Kipps.

"It's rum," said Kipps.

He sat in the little kitchen out behind the bookshop and philosophised

and smiled, while Ann gave Arthur Waddy Kipps his evening tub before

the fire. Kipps was always present at this ceremony unless customers

prevented; there was something in the mixture of the odours of tobacco,

soap and domesticity that charmed him unspeakably.

"Chuckerdee, o' man," he said, affably, wagging his pipe at his son, and

thought incidentally, after the manner of all parents, that very few

children could have so straight and clean a body.

"Dadda's got a cheque," said Arthur Waddy Kipps, emerging for a moment

from the towel.

"'E gets 'old of everything," said Ann. "You can't say a word----"

"Dadda got a cheque," this marvellous child repeated.

"Yes, o' man, I got a cheque. And it's got to go into a bank for you,

against when you got to go to school. See? So's you'll grow up knowing

your way about a bit."

"Dadda's got a cheque," said the wonder son, and then gave his mind to

making mighty splashes with his foot. Every time he splashed, laughter

overcame him, and he had to be held up for fear he should tumble out of

the tub in his merriment. Finally he was towelled to his toe-tips,

wrapped up in warm flannel, and kissed, and carried off to bed by Ann's

cousin and lady help, Emma. And then after Ann had carried away the bath

into the scullery, she returned to find her husband with his pipe

extinct and the cheque still in his hand.

"Two fousand pounds," he said. "It's dashed rum. Wot 'ave _I_ done to

get two fousand pounds, Ann?"

"What 'aven't you--not to?" said Ann.

He reflected upon this view of the case.

"I shan't never give up this shop," he said at last.

"We're very 'appy 'ere," said Ann.

"Not if I 'ad _fifty_ fousand pounds."

"No fear," said Ann.

"You got a shop," said Kipps, "and you come along in a year's time and

there it is. But money--look 'ow it come and goes! There's no sense in

money. You may kill yourself trying to get it, and then it comes when

you aren't looking. There's my 'riginal money! Where is it now? Gone!

And it's took young Walshingham with it, and 'e's gone, too. It's like

playing skittles. 'Long comes the ball, right and left you fly, and

there it is rolling away and not changed a bit. No sense in it! 'E's

gone, and she's gone--gone off with that chap Revel, that sat with me at

dinner. Merried man! And Chit'low rich! Lor'!--what a fine place that

Gerrik Club is, to be sure, where I 'ad lunch wiv' 'im! Better'n _any_

'otel. Footmen in powder they got--not waiters, Ann--footmen! 'E's rich

and me rich--in a sort of way.... Don't seem much sense in it, Ann,

'owever you look at it." He shook his head.

"I know one thing," said Kipps.

"What?"

"I'm going to put it in jest as many different banks as I can. See?

Fifty 'ere, fifty there. 'Posit. I'm not going to 'nvest it--no fear."

"It's only frowing money away," said Ann.

"I'm 'arf a mind to bury some of it under the shop. Only I expect one

'ud always be coming down at nights to make sure it was there.... I

don't seem to trust anyone--not with money." He put the cheque on the

table corner and smiled and tapped his pipe on the grate with his eyes

on that wonderful document. "S'pose old Bean started orf," he

reflected.... "One thing, 'e _is_ a bit lame."

"'E wouldn't," said Ann; "not 'im."

"I was only joking like." He stood up, put his pipe among the

candlesticks on the mantel, took up the cheque and began folding it

carefully to put it back in his pocket-book.

A little bell jangled.

"Shop!" said Kipps. "That's right. Keep a shop and the shop'll keep you.

That's 'ow I look at it, Ann."

He drove his pocket-book securely into his breast pocket before he

opened the living-room door....

But whether indeed it is the bookshop that keeps Kipps or whether it is

Kipps who keeps the bookshop is just one of those commercial mysteries

people of my unarithmetical temperament are never able to solve. They do

very well, the dears, anyhow, thank Heaven!

The bookshop of Kipps is on the left-hand side of the Hythe High Street

coming from Folkestone, between the yard of the livery stable and the

shop-window full of old silver and such like things--it is quite easy to

find--and there you may see him for yourself and speak to him and buy

this book of him if you like. He has it in stock, I know. Very

delicately I've seen to that. His name is not Kipps, of course, you must

understand that, but everything else is exactly as I have told you. You

can talk to him about books, about politics, about going to Boulogne,

about life, and the ups and downs of life. Perhaps he will quote you

Buggins--from whom, by the bye, one can now buy everything a gentleman's

wardrobe should contain at the little shop in Rendezvous Street,

Folkestone. If you are fortunate to find Kipps in a good mood he may

even let you know how he inherited a fortune "once." "Run froo it,"

he'll say with a not unhappy smile. "Got another

afterwards--speckylating in plays. Needn't keep this shop if I didn't

like. But it's something to do."...

Or he may be even more intimate. "I seen some things," he said to me

once. "Raver! Life! Why! once I--I _'loped_! I did--reely!"

(Of course you will not tell Kipps that he _is_ "Kipps," or that I have

put him in this book. He does not know. And you know, one never knows

how people are going to take that sort of thing. I am an old and trusted

customer now, and for many amiable reasons I should prefer that things

remained exactly on their present footing.)

Sec.8

One early-closing evening in July they left the baby to the servant

cousin, and Kipps took Ann for a row on the Hythe canal. It was a

glorious evening, and the sun set in a mighty blaze and left a world

warm, and very still. The twilight came. And there was the water,

shining bright, and the sky a deepening blue, and the great trees that

dipped their boughs towards the water, exactly as it had been when he

paddled home with Helen, when her eyes had seemed to him like dusky

stars. He had ceased from rowing and rested on his oars, and suddenly he

was touched by the wonder of life, the strangeness that is a presence

stood again by his side.

Out of the darknesses beneath the shallow, weedy stream of his being

rose a question, a question that looked up dimly and never reached the

surface. It was the question of the wonder of the beauty, the

purposeless, inconsecutive beauty, that falls so strangely among the

happenings and memories of life. It never reached the surface of his

mind, it never took to itself substance or form, it looked up merely as

the phantom of a face might look, out of deep waters, and sank again to

nothingness.

"Artie," said Ann.

He woke up and pulled a stroke. "What?" he said.

"Penny for your thoughts, Artie."

He considered.

"I reely don't think I was thinking of anything," he said at last with a

smile. "No."

He still rested on his oars.

"I expect," he said, "I was thinking jest what a Rum Go everything is. I

expect it was something like that."

"Queer old Artie!"

"Ain't I? I don't suppose there ever was a chap quite like me before."

He reflected for just another minute. "Oo! I dunno," he said, and roused

himself to pull.

THE END

"Rum!" said Kipps. A half-forgotten experience came back to him. "_I_