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"PIP"
A ROMANCE OF YOUTH
"PIP"
A ROMANCE OF YOUTH
BY
IAN HAY
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1917
CONTENTS
_BOOK ONE_
"FIRST, THE INFANT ..."
I. THE PHILANTHROPISTS 3
II. MR. POCKLINGTON'S 24
III. "HAM" 54
IV. PIP FINDS HIS VOCATION 74
V. LINKLATER 103
VI. PETTICOAT INFLUENCE 155
_BOOK TWO_
THE MAKING OF A MAN
VII. A CRICKET WEEK 181
VIII. LIFE AT FIRST-HAND 233
IX. THE PRINCIPAL BOY: AN INTERLUDE 256
_BOOK THREE_
THE JOURNEY'S END
X. AN ANCIENT GAME 299
XI. "_NATURAM FURCA EXPELLAS_..." 329
XII. "... _TAMEN USQUE RECURRET_" 351
"PIP"
BOOK ONE
"FIRST, THE INFANT ..."
"PIP"
CHAPTER I
THE PHILANTHROPISTS
IT was to Pipette that the idea originally occurred, but it was upon
Pip that parental retribution subsequently fell, Pipette being merely
dismissed with a caution. This clemency was due chiefly to the
intercession of Cook, who stated, in the role of principal witness,
that the "poor lamb" (Pipette) "could never have thought of such a
thing by herself." This in spite of the poor lamb's indignant protests
to the contrary. In this matter, as in many others, Cook showed both
personal bias and want of judgment; for Pipette was as sharp as a
needle, while Pip, though a willing accomplice and a philosophical
scapegoat, was lacking in constructive ability and organising power.
But we have somehow begun at the end of the story, so must make a fresh
start.
The Consulting Room, which was strictly out of bounds (and consequently
a favourite resort of the children when the big, silent man, who kissed
them twice a day, was out), contained many absorbingly interesting and
mysterious objects, whose uses Pip and Pipette were dying to know. For
instance, there was the Oven Door. It was set in the wall near the
fireplace, miles up,--quite five feet,--and was exactly like the oven in
the kitchen, except that it was green instead of black. Also, it had a
beautiful gold handle. It was not hot, though, for one day Pip climbed
on a chair to feel; neither did it open, for he was unable to turn the
handle.
They had asked Mr. Evans about it, and he had informed them that it was
a place to put bad little boys and girls in. But that was on a day when
Mr. Evans was cross, having just had words with Cook about the
disgraceful delay between the fish and joint at last night's dinner.
Pipette, therefore, outwardly incredulous but inwardly quaking, appealed
to Cook, and asked confidentially if the strange thing were not an oven;
whereupon Cook embraced her and presented her with an apple, and
wondered what the little precious would get into her poor head next,
adding as an afterthought that Mr. Evans ought to be ashamed of himself.
Pipette was so pleased with the apple and the task of conveying Cook's
message to Mr. Evans's pantry--this was the name of the place where he
lived; there was a delightful thing there called the Filter, with a
little tap that you could turn on if no one was looking--that she quite
forgot to ask what the Oven Door really was; so the mystery remained
unsolved for many a day.
There were other wonderful things lying about. Books in plenty (but
then books are dull things if you don't happen to be able to read),
and two or three curious little articles like wooden trumpets, called
"stuffyscopes." It was impossible to play tunes on these, though, and
they puzzled the children sorely, until one joyful day when Pipette
was taken with a cold on her chest, and Father--the name of the big,
silent man who kissed them twice a day--took her into the Consulting
Room and used one of those very instruments "to listen to my tummy
wiv," as she afterwards explained to the envious Pip, who had not been
permitted to be present.
"Did it hurt much?" inquired Pip.
"Not _bewwy_ much," replied Pipette, unwilling to throw away a good
chance of posing as a martyr. "He putted one end against his ear and the
other against my pinny, and said, 'Hold your breff,' and I holded it.
Pip, I've thought of a lovely game! Let's see who can hold our breff
longest."
This suggestion was adopted, and the new game kept them occupied for
quite ten minutes. After that Pipette surrendered unconditionally. To
hold your tongue is bad enough, but to hold your breath as well, in
competition with a small, silent boy with a solemn face, serious
eyes, and lungs apparently of gutta-percha, who seems to suffer no
inconvenience from feats of endurance that would exhaust a Red Indian,
is more than a mere daughter of Eve can compass.
They were in the Consulting Room at the time, Father having gone out, as
he always did between eleven and one; and the various unexplained
mysteries of that delightful apartment, which were becoming a serious
strain upon Pipette's feminine curiosity, once more lay before them. For
the hundredth time they made the tour of the room, gazing, fingering,
and wondering.
They merely sighed as they passed the Oven Door. That mysterious portal
was past all comprehension. They had made one last effort to obtain
first-hand information on the subject only last night, with highly
unsatisfactory results. They were always taken to the dining-room at
half-past seven to say good-night to Father, who to his numerous other
eccentricities added that of eating his dinner at an hour when properly
constituted people were going to bed. (Pip's rather hazy scheme of
theology, imbibed in scraps from Cook and others, included a private
heaven of his own construction, in which at bedtime little boys, instead
of being hustled upstairs by an under-housemaid, sat down to a heavy
dinner of several courses.) On this occasion the pair had entered the
dining-room bound by the most deadly oaths known to childhood to break
down their shyness, and ask once and for all what lay behind the Oven
Door. But alas! desire outran performance, and both--all three, in
fact--made a sorry mess of things. The big man, almost as shy of them as
they were of him, asked Pip, heavily but kindly, how he had spent the
afternoon; not because he wished to know, but because the question
afforded a conversational opening. Pip replied politely that he had been
down the street posting a letter with "one of the girls." He used the
expression in all good faith: his firm friend the milkman cried it down
the area every afternoon in some such form as, "Anything fresh to-day,
girls?" or, "Well, girls, what news?" The big man, however, frowned, and
said, "Come, come, sir, no kitchen manners here, if you please," and
turned to Pipette, who, with a boldness surprising to herself, was
endeavouring to climb on to his knee.
Having reached that eminence, Pipette, assuming a certain coaxing
expression which she had found absolutely infallible with Cook, and not
without a certain effect on Mr. Evans himself, said rather tremulously--
"Please, Father, is that oven door in the Kersultin' Room _reelly_ a
oven, or is it just--just to put bad little boys and girls in, like what
Mr. Evans says?"
Mr. Evans, who up to this point had been standing in the background,
listening to the conversation with an indulgent smile, suddenly
remembered that it was time to bring the fish up.
Her father glanced down upon Pipette curiously. He looked tired and
worried, as West-End physicians with enormous practices not infrequently
do.
"What do you mean by 'oven door'? And what's all this nonsense about
_Mr._ Evans?"
Pipette began to quail. This big man was cross about something, just
like Mr. Evans when he had "indergestion." Her lip began to tremble.
"I didn't fink it would make you angry," she said rather piteously. "It
was just that big oven door in the Kersultin' Room. Me and Pip wanted to
know so much, and there wasn't nobody to ask, exceptin' Mr.----"
Here Father, much to Pipette's surprise and embarrassment, suddenly
hugged her to his breast, murmuring the while to himself. Then he kissed
her twice,--as a rule she kissed him once,--shook hands solemnly with
Pip, and despatched them to bed.
The children had no nurse. The last holder of that position had left
soon after their mother's death, and Cook had begged so hard to be
allowed to take care of the "little dears" herself, that Father, who was
too deeply sunk in the apathy of grief to desire to haggle over
questions of domestic management, listlessly agreed. Since then Pip and
Pipette had been washed, dressed, fed, and bedded by a syndicate
composed of Cook and her myrmidons, who brought them up according to
their own notions of respectability. Emily, the kitchen-maid, for
instance, made no objection to Pip stirring his tea with the handle of
his knife; but what shocked her ideas of etiquette and deportment was
the fact that he insisted on doing so with his left hand. Somehow Pip's
left hand was always getting him into trouble. It was so officious; it
was constantly usurping the duties and privileges of its fellow, such as
cleaning his teeth, shaking hands, and blowing his nose,--literal acts
of _gaucherie_ that distressed Emily's genteel soul considerably.
After the children had gone Father sat staring at his untasted dinner.
Occasionally his gaze travelled to the opposite end of the table, where
some one used to sit,--some one who had been taken from him by an
inscrutable Providence five years before. Had she lived, Pip would not
have referred to the kitchen-maid as "one of the girls," nor would
Pipette be calling the butler "Mr. Evans." All these years he had been
trying to hide his desolation by burying himself in his work, with the
result that he now found himself busy,--overworked, in fact,--rich, and
famous, a man at the head of his profession. _Cui bono?_ His children,
whom he had promised his dying Dorothea to love and cherish, were
learning to venerate the butler and to converse in the jargon of the
scullery!
So the Oven Door had to remain an unsolved mystery, and Pip and Pipette
were compelled to comfort themselves with the Talking-Hole. This was a
most absorbing affair, and, thank goodness! it was no mystery.
The Talking-Hole was carefully plugged with a whistle; and whenever a
visitor came to see Father,--they came in shoals between one o'clock and
three,--Mr. Evans would uncork a similar hole in the wall of the hall,
and after blowing up it vigorously, would murmur the name of the
visitor; and his words, owing to the fact that the Talking-Hole in the
hall was in some mysterious way connected with the Talking-Hole in the
Consulting Room, were conveyed to Father's ear. The conversation as a
rule was of a formal and fragmentary nature, limited on Mr. Evans's part
to the announcement of the visitor's name and some such remark as
"Special appointment," or "No appointment," and occasionally, "Urgent
case,"--always concluding with "Very good, sir." After that Mr. Evans
would conduct the visitor up the three carpeted stairs which led to the
Consulting Room.
Pip and Pipette loved the Talking-Hole. It was almost their only toy,
and it was the more precious to them because they could not use it
except when Father was out and Mr. Evans taking his afternoon siesta.
Their one child-friend, Tattie Fowler, who was occasionally brought to
spend the afternoon with them when her nurse had made arrangements to
spend it elsewhere, was always regaled with a full-dress performance
whenever she came.
The method of procedure was invariably the same. The children knew every
move by heart. The moment that Mr. Evans, having closed the front door
on Father, had closed his bedroom door upon himself, Pip would stalk
with much majesty into the Consulting Room, shutting the door carefully
behind him.
After an interval of about one second, Tattie, endeavouring faithfully
to imitate Mr. Evans's stately tread,--have you ever seen a kitten
trying to walk like an elephant, reader?--would approach the
Talking-Hole in the hall, uncork the tube, and despatch an excited
hurricane on its way to the Consulting Room. The following dialogue
would then ensue:--
_A gruff voice down the tube._ Well?
_Tattie_ [_reading from an imaginary card_]. Mr. Henry Hatkins,
sir! (This, by the way, happened to be the name of Tattie's
nurse's "young man.")
_The Voice._ Any appointment?
_Tattie._ None, sir.
_The Voice._ What's the matter wiv him?
_Tattie._ Infruenza, _he_ thinks, sir.
_The Voice._ Send him up.
_Tattie._ Very good, sir.
Then Tattie would cork up the tube and conduct Pipette, who had been
sitting patiently in the Waiting Room, up the three stairs to the
Consulting Room. Here she abruptly dropped the role of Mr. Evans, and
announced firmly--
"Now, Pip, it's my turn to be Father!"
(Tattie had no father of her own, and imagined that the term merely
implied a large, silent man who lived in a room full of fascinating
playthings, opening Oven Doors and blowing down Talking-Holes.)
After that Pip would be the patient, Pipette Mr. Evans, and Tattie
Father, and the performance was repeated _in extenso_. Pipette, as the
youngest, succeeded to the proud position of "Father" last of all.
Each of them played the leading part in different fashion. Pip, enjoying
every moment of his impersonation, always sat solemnly in the big
swivel-chair at the table until the whistle blew, when he would lounge
across to the Talking-Hole and conduct the conversation as deliberately
as possible. Pipette, on the other hand, possessed none of this artistic
restraint, and was always standing on a chair, with her small ear
ecstatically pressed against the mouth of the tube, by the time that
Pip, in the character of Mr. Evans, was ready to converse with her.
Consequently his withering blast, when it arrived, impinged straight
upon Pipette's eardrum, frequently knocking her off her chair and
invariably dulling her hearing for the afternoon.
Considerable freedom, too, was permitted in the interpretation of the
part of Mr. Evans, especially in describing the patients' symptoms. In
this respect the children were compelled to draw chiefly upon their own
somewhat slight experience; for Mr. Evans, though he invariably gave the
patients' names, was not as a rule entrusted with their complaints as
well. Consequently the maladies which were shrieked up the tube so
gleefully were those indigenous to small children, cooks and the like.
When introduced by Pipette, the patient was usually suffering from
"palpurtations, that bad!" (an echo of Cook); Tattie, whose pretty and
interesting mamma affected fashionable complaints, would diagnose the
case in hand as "nerves all in a jangle again"; while Pip, who was
lacking in imagination but possessed a retentive memory, invariably
announced, with feeling, that the visitor was a victim of a "_fearful_
pain in his (or her) tummy!"
Near the Talking-Hole, on a small table, stood "The Terriphone." This,
they gathered, was a sort of long-distance talking-hole. You turned a
little handle, and, taking a queer, cup-shaped arrangement off a hook,
conversed affably through it with unseen people, situated somewhere at
the back of beyond. The children had seen Mr. Evans use it for sending
messages to Father _via_ Mr. Pipes. Mr. Pipes was a great friend of
Pipette's. In the first place, he wore a uniform, which always appeals
to the feminine mind. Then he lived in a fascinating little glass house
at the gates of a great building called "The Orspital," where Father
apparently spent much of his time. In the courtyard inside the gates
bareheaded young men passed to and fro, discoursing learnedly of
mysterious things called "Ops." Mr. Pipes wore two medals on his
uniform, but beyond these there was nothing very attractive in the glass
house excepting the Terriphone, which stood on a little ledge beside the
pigeon-hole. Mr. Pipes, being attached to Emily, the under-housemaid,
was always glad to see the children when it was that engaging damsel's
turn to take them for a walk. From him they learned one day that his
Terriphone communicated with the one at home, quite three streets away.
"It must be a long hole," remarked Pip reflectively to his sister.
The conversation then turned upon the weather. Mr. Pipes announced to
the sympathetic Emily that, as a result of having to sit all day in a
blooming greenhouse, his feet were slowly turning to ice. The
authorities of the Orspital, he added bitterly, declined to allow him a
fire, alleging that an oil-stove was sufficient for his needs.
"What a shime!" said pretty Emily.
"Something crool!" exclaimed sympathetic Pipette. (She had picked up
this expression from Susan, the kitchen-maid, who was regarded by her
colleagues as being somewhat "common in her talk.")
"Pore devil!" remarked Pip dispassionately.
"Master Pip!" cried the scandalised Emily, blushing in a manner which
Mr. Pipes thought most becoming.
Pip, who had just gathered this pearl of speech from the lips of one of
the hatless young gentlemen who talked of "Ops," turned his steady and
inscrutable gaze upon Emily, beneath which that damsel's fetching frown
faded, as it always did, into an uneasy smirk.
"There is something about that child," she once confided to Cook, "that
makes me feel as weak as water. Looks at you as though your 'air was
coming down on your face smudged. Says nothink, but he's a masterful
one. Be a terror some day!"
Meanwhile Pipette, in whose charitable little soul a new and splendid
scheme of outdoor relief had just sprung into being, asked, in a tone of
suppressed excitement--
"Mr. Pipes, _please_, does your Terriphone go straight to our house?"
"As straight as straight, me lady," replied Mr. Pipes, who affected an
easy jocularity when conversing with Pipette.
"Ooh!" Pipette turned to her brother.
"Pip, amind me to tell you somethin' when we get home."
Pip turned a cold glance upon her.
"You'll tell me all about it on the way there, I expect."
"I _won't_!" cried Pipette indignantly.
"Oh, yes, you will. Women can't keep nothin' to theirselves."
This pronouncement, delivered in Mr. Evans's most impressive manner,
roused Emily and Mr. Pipes to unseemly mirth, and nearly reduced Pipette
to tears. Mr. Pipes remarked that Pip was a "caution," while Emily
summed him up as a "cure." Shortly after that, Emily and Mr. Pipes
having made a now familiar reference to "the same old spot at half-past
four on Sunday," the visit terminated with the usual expressions of
good-will, and the children were taken home to tea.
Pipette's offended dignity held out till next morning, when, as soon as
the banging of the front door announced that Father had gone off in his
brougham for his daily round, she proposed a visit to the Consulting
Room.
"In the morning? What for?" said Pip.
Pipette was positively heaving with suppressed excitement.
"You go there and wait," she said, "and I'll run down to Cook a minute,
and then we'll--no, I _won't_ tell you yet! Go on!"
Fearful of letting her precious secret escape too soon, she gave Pip a
push in the direction of the Consulting Room and danced off to the
kitchen, leaving that impassive philosopher to ruminate upon the
volatile temperament of the female sex. However, he departed as bidden,
and amused himself by sitting in the swing-chair, and endeavouring
without success, for the hundredth time, to play a tune on a
stethoscope.
Presently Pipette returned, carrying two little basins of the soup which
usually served to span the yawning gulf between their breakfast and
dinner.
Pip took his soup, and began to drink it.
"Stop a minute, Pip!" screamed Pipette.
Pip put down his basin.
"Well, what is it now?" he remarked.
Pipette at last unfolded her plan.
"Pip," she began a little shyly,--like all inventors, she dreaded
criticism,--"you 'member poor Mr. Pipes saying how cold he was?"
"Yes."
"Well, let's send him this nice hot soup, Pip,--by Terriphone!"
The last words came with a rush. Then Pipette, heaving such a sigh as
Sinbad must have emitted when he had got rid of the Old Man of the Sea,
awaited her brother's reply.
Pip smiled indulgently.
"Silly kid!" he remarked.
Pipette had expected this.
"Yes," she said; "but, Pip, wouldn't it be _loverly_ to do it?"
Pip's practical mind began to evolve difficulties.
"_How_ are you goin' to do it?"
Pipette projected upon him a glance in which artless surprise,
deferential admiration, and simple faith were exquisitely mingled,--a
glance which, in after years, her husband once ruefully described as
"good for a ten-pound note at any hour of the day,"--and replied
simply--
"I thought _you_ would manage all that, Pip. You're so bewwy clever!"
"All right," said Pip. "Let's do it."
Thus it is that women make fools of the strongest men.
They carried their soup carefully over to the little table beside the
telephone.
"I say," said Pip suddenly, "is he to have both basins?"
Pipette's bounteous nature would gladly have sacrificed both Pip's lunch
and her own, but she thought it wiser to concede this point.
"No; one will do, I fink," she replied.
"All right. You can drink half mine," said Pip.
They gravely drank Pip's soup, turn about, and then applied themselves
to the matter in hand.
First, they lifted the receiver of the telephone from its rest and
surveyed it doubtfully. There was a cup-shaped receptacle at one end
into which soup could easily be poured, but the "tube" which connected
it to the instrument was of very meagre dimensions.
"Are you sure there's a pipe all the way?" inquired Pip doubtfully.
"Certain. It's just the same as the Talking-Hole, only thinner. And the
Talking-Hole has got a pipe all the way, 'cause don't you remember you
put a glass marble in one day when I told you not to, and it fell out in
the hall?"
Pip's doubts were not quite satisfied even with this brilliant parallel.
"It'll take a long time to get through," he said. He was fingering the
silk-coated wire. "This pipe's awful thin. A marble would never get down
_it_."
"No, but the soup will twickle down all right," said Pipette, whose
mind, busy with works of mercy, soared far above these utilitarian
details. (In later years she was a confirmed bazaar organiser.)
"We'll ring and tell him first, shall we?" suggested Pip.
"Yes, let's!" murmured Pipette joyfully.
She turned the call-handle, and Pip held the receiver, just as he had
seen Mr. Evans do. After a decent interval he remarked into the cup--
"Are you there, Mr. Pipes? This is us."
This highly illuminating statement met with no response.
"I suppose he can hear you," said Pipette anxiously.
"Oh, yes. I'm talkin' just as loud as Mr. Evans does."
"I suppose you'll be able to hear him, then?"
"I expect so. But it's a long way. Ring again."
This time, in turning the call-handle, Pipette accidentally placed her
hand on the receiver-hook, with the result that she actually rang up the
Exchange Office.
Presently a voice inquired brusquely of Pip what he wanted. His reply
was a delighted yell, and an announcement to Mr. Pipes that he had
something for him. Further revelations were frustrated by Pipette, who
tore the receiver from his grasp, and, holding her hand over the opening
to prevent eavesdropping on the part of the _beneficiaire_, whispered
excitedly in his ear--
"Don't tell him any more! We'll just pour it in now, and give him such a
surprise!"
Consequently the young lady in the Exchange Office was soon compelled to
relinquish her languid efforts to find out what No. 015273 really
wanted, and incontinently switched him off, recking little of the way in
which two small philanthropists at the other end of the wire were
treating the property of the National Telephone Company.
Very carefully Pip poured the soup into the cup-shaped receiver of the
telephone, which Pipette held as steadily as her excitement would
permit.
From the first it became obvious that soup-delivery by telephone was
going to be a slow business, for the cup transmitted the generous fluid
most reluctantly.
"It's such a _very_ thin pipe," they explained to each other hopefully.
At length Pip remarked--
"I should think some of it had got there by now."
"Not bewwy much, I don't fink," said Pipette; "this handle thing's still
pretty full."
"But the basin's nearly empty," said Pip. "The stuff must have gone
somewhere."
"Some of it has gone on the floor," said Pipette truthfully.
At this moment the clock struck one.
"Father will be in soon," said Pip. "We'd better wipe up."
They propped the telephone receiver on the little table between the
directory and a bookstand, and cleared up the mess on the floor with a
handkerchief--Pipette's. As they finished they heard the brougham drive
up.
"It isn't nearly all gone," said Pip gloomily, peering into the
receiver. "If we hang it up on its hook the stuff will all fall out.
Let's leave it like it is. Father doesn't never use the Terriphone till
after lunch, and it will be all gone by then. Come on, Pipette."
The two Samaritans turned their backs upon the telephone and stole out
of the room, leaving that sorely tried instrument to digest its
unaccustomed luncheon as best it might.
It was Mr. Evans who suffered most. He was sent into the Consulting Room
just before dinner to telephone a message to a patient. The telephone
stood in a dark corner, and the gas in the room was turned low. Mr.
Evans was surprised to find that the receiver, instead of hanging on its
hook, was lying on the little table, carefully propped between the
directory and a bookstand.
On lifting it up he was surprised by an unwonted feeling of stickiness;
but when he held the instrument to the light, the reason revealed itself
to him immediately in the form of a dollop of congealed chicken-broth,
nicely rounded to the shape of the cup, which shot from its
resting-place, with a clammy thud, on to his clean shirtfront, and then
proceeded to slide rapidly down inside his dress waistcoat, leaving a
snail-like track, dotted with grains of rice, behind it.
Pip was sent supperless to bed, where Pipette, completely broken down by
remorse and sisterly affection, voluntarily joined him not much later.
The following week they were sent to school.