"The passions of the common or house domestic," said Revel, and recovered possession of the table.
Upon the troubled disorder of Kipps' table manners there had supervented a quietness, an unusual calm. For once in his life he had distinctly made up his mind on his own account. He listened no more to Revel. He put down his knife and fork and refused anything that followed. Coote regarded him with tactful concern and Helen flushed a little.
§4
About half-past nine that night came a violent pull at the bell of Mrs. Bindon Botting, and a young man in a dress suit, a gibus and other marks of exalted social position stood without. Athwart his white expanse of breast lay a ruddy bar of patterned silk that gave him a singular distinction and minimised the glow of a few small stains of burgundy. His gibus was thrust back and exposed a disorder of hair that suggested a reckless desperation. He had, in fact, burnt his boats and refused to join the ladies. Coote, in the subsequent conversation, had protested quietly, "You're going on all right, you know," to which Kipps had answered he didn't care a "Eng" about that, and so, after a brief tussle with Walshingham's detaining arm, had got away. "I got something to do," he said. "'Ome." And here he was—panting an extraordinary resolve. The door opened, revealing the pleasantly furnished hall of Mrs. Bindon Botting, lit by rose-tinted lights, and in the centre of the picture, neat and pretty in black and white, stood Ann. At the sight of Kipps her colour vanished.
"Ann," said Kipps, "I want to speak to you. I got something to say to you right away. See? I'm——"
"This ain't the door to speak to me at," said Ann.
"But, Ann! It's something special."
"You spoke enough," said Ann.
"Ann!"
"Besides. That's my door, down there. Basement. If I was caught talking at this door——!"
"But, Ann, I'm——"
"Basement after nine. Them's my hours. I'm a servant and likely to keep one. If you're calling here, what name please? But you got your friends and I got mine and you mustn't go talking to me."
"But, Ann, I want to ask you——"
Someone appeared in the hall behind Ann. "Not here," said Ann. "Don't know anyone of that name," and incontinently slammed the door in his face.
"What was that, Ann?" said Mrs. Bindon Botting's invalid Aunt.
"Ge'm a little intoxicated, Ma'am—asking for the wrong name, Ma'am."
"What name did he want?" asked the lady, doubtfully.
"No name that we know, Ma'am," said Ann, hustling along the hall towards the kitchen stairs.
"I hope you weren't too short with him, Ann."
"No shorter than he deserved, considering 'ow he be'aved," said Ann, with her bosom heaving.
And Mrs. Bindon Botting's invalid Aunt, perceiving suddenly that this call had some relation to Ann's private and sentimental trouble, turned, after one moment of hesitating scrutiny, away.
She was an extremely sympathetic lady, was Mrs. Bindon Botting's invalid Aunt; she took an interest in the servants, imposed piety, extorted confessions and followed human nature, blushing and lying defensively, to its reluctantly revealed recesses, but Ann's sense of privacy was strong and her manner under drawing out and encouragement, sometimes even alarming....
So the poor old lady went upstairs again.
§5
The basement door opened and Kipps came into the kitchen. He was flushed and panting.
He struggled for speech.
"'Ere," he said, and held out two half sixpences.
Ann stood behind the kitchen table—face pale and eyes round, and now—and it simplified Kipps very much—he could see she had indeed been crying.
"Well?" she said.
"Don't you see?"
Ann moved her head slightly.
"I kep' it all these years."
"You kep' it too long."
His mouth closed and his flush died away. He looked at her. The amulet, it seemed, had failed to work.
"Ann!" he said.
"Well?"
"Ann."
The conversation still hung fire.
"Ann," he said, made a movement with his hands that suggested appeal, and advanced a step.
Ann shook her head more defiantly, and became defensive.
"Look here, Ann," said Kipps. "I been a fool."
They stared into each other's miserable eyes.
"Ann," he said. "I want to marry you."
Ann clutched the table edge. "You can't," she said faintly.
He made as if to approach her around the table, and she took a step that restored their distance.
"I must," he said.
"You can't."
"I must. You got to marry me, Ann."
"You can't go marrying everybody. You got to marry 'er."
"I shan't."
Ann shook her head. "You're engaged to that girl. Lady, rather. You can't be engaged to me."
"I don't want to be engaged to you. I been engaged. I want to be married to you. See? Rightaway."
Ann turned a shade paler. "But what d'you mean?" she asked.
"Come right off to London and marry me. Now."
"What d'you mean?"
Kipps became extremely lucid and earnest.
"I mean come right off and marry me now before anyone else can. See?"
"In London?"
"In London."
They stared at one another again. They took things for granted in the most amazing way.
"I couldn't," said Ann. "For one thing my month's not up for mor'n free weeks yet."
They hung before that for a moment as though it was insurmountable.
"Look 'ere, Ann! Arst to go. Arst to go!"
"She wouldn't," said Ann.
"Then come without arsting," said Kipps.
"She's keep my box——"
"She won't."
"She will."
"She won't."
"You don't know 'er."
"Well, desh'er—let'er! Let'er! Who cares? I'll buy you a 'undred boxes if you'll come."
"It wouldn't be right towards Her."
"It isn't Her you got to think about, Ann. It's me."
"And you 'aven't treated me properly," she said. "You 'aven't treated me properly, Artie. You didn't ought to 'ave——"
"I didn't say I 'ad," he interrupted, "did I, Ann?" he appealed. "I didn't come to arguefy. I'm all wrong. I never said I wasn't. It's yes or no. Me or not.... I been a fool. There! See? I been a fool. Ain't that enough? I got myself all tied up with everyone and made a fool of myself all around...."
He pleaded, "It isn't as if we didn't care for one another, Ann."
She seemed impassive and he resumed his discourse.
"I thought I wasn't likely ever to see you again, Ann. I reely did. It isn't as though I was seein' you all the time. I didn't know what I wanted, and I went and be'aved like a fool—jest as anyone might. I know what I want and I know what I don't want now."
"Ann!"
"Well?"
"Will you come?... Will you come?..."
Silence.
"If you don't answer me, Ann—I'm desprit—if you don't answer me now, if you don't say you'll come I'll go right out now——"
He turned doorward passionately as he spoke, with his threat incomplete.
"I'll go," he said; "I 'aven't a friend in the world! I been and throwed everything away. I don't know why I done things and why I 'aven't. All I know is I can't stand nothing in the world any more." He choked. "The pier," he said.
He fumbled with the door latch, grumbling some inarticulate self-pity, as if he sought a handle, and then he had it open.
Clearly he was going.
"Artie!" said Ann, sharply.
He turned about and the two hung, white and tense.
"I'll do it," said Ann.
His face began to work, he shut the door and came a step back to her, staring; his face became pitiful and then suddenly they moved together. "Artie!" she cried, "don't go!" and held out her arms, weeping.
They clung close to one another....
"Oh! I been so mis'bel," cried Kipps, clinging to this lifebuoy, and suddenly his emotion, having no further serious work in hand, burst its way to a loud boohoo! His fashionable and expensive gibus flopped off and fell and rolled and lay neglected on the floor.
"I been so mis'bel," said Kipps, giving himself vent. "Oh! I been so mis'bel, Ann."
"Be quiet," said Ann, holding his poor, blubbering head tightly to her heaving shoulder, and herself all a-quiver; "be quiet. She's there! Listenin'. She'll 'ear you, Artie, on the stairs...."
§6
Ann's last words when, an hour later, they parted, Mrs. and Miss Bindon Botting having returned very audibly upstairs, deserve a section to themselves.
"I wouldn't do this for everyone, mind you," whispered Ann.
CHAPTER IX THE LABYRINTHODON
§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.
§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....
§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
§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.
§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.
§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.
§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 Encyclopædia. 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."
§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.
§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.
§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.
§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."