"Well," said Ann, "if you must call it Villa—Home Villa.... I wish it wasn't."
Kipps meditated.
"'Ow about Eureka Villa?" he said, raising his voice.
"What's Eureka?"
"It's a name," he said. "There used to be Eureka Dress Fasteners. There's lots of names, come to think of it, to be got out of a shop. There's Pyjama Villa. I remember that in the hosiery. No, come to think, that wouldn't do. But Maraposa—sort of oatmeal cloth, that was.... No! Eureka's better."
Ann meditated. "It seems silly like to 'ave a name that don't mean much."
"Perhaps it does," said Kipps. "Though it's what people 'ave to do."
He became meditative. "I got it!" he cried.
"Not Oreeka!" said Ann.
"No! There used to be a 'ouse at Hastings opposite our school—quite a big 'ouse it was—St. Ann's. Now that——"
"No," said Mrs. Kipps with decision. "Thanking you kindly, but I don't have no butcher boys making game of me."...
They consulted Carshot, who suggested after some days of reflection, Waddycombe, as a graceful reminder of Kipps' grandfather; Old Kipps, who was for "Upton Manor House," where he had once been second footman; Buggins, who favoured either a stern simple number, "Number One"—if there were no other houses there, or something patriotic, as "Empire Villa," and Pierce, who inclined to "Sandringham"; but in spite of all this help they were still undecided when, amidst violent perturbations of the soul, and after the most complex and difficult hagglings, wranglings, fears, muddles and goings to and fro, Kipps became the joyless owner of a freehold plot of three-eighths of an acre, and saw the turf being wheeled away from the site that should one day be his home.
CHAPTER II THE CALLERS
§1
The Kippses sat at their midday dinner-table and amidst the vestiges of rhubarb pie, and discussed two postcards the one o'clock post had brought. It was a rare bright moment of sunshine in a wet and windy day in the March that followed their marriage. Kipps was attired in a suit of brown, with a tie of fashionable green, while Ann wore one of those picturesque loose robes that are usually associated with sandals and advanced ideas. But there weren't any sandals on Ann or any advanced ideas, and the robe had come quite recently through the counsels of Mrs. Sid Pornick. "It's Artlike," said Kipps, giving way. "It's more comfortable," said Ann. The room looked out by French windows upon a little patch of green and the Hythe parade. The parade was all shiny wet with rain, and the green-grey sea tumbled and tumbled between parade and sky.
The Kipps' furniture, except for certain chromo lithographs of Kipps' incidental choice that struck a quiet note amidst the wall paper, had been tactfully forced by an expert salesman, and it was in a style of mediocre elegance. There was a sideboard of carved oak that had only one fault, it reminded Kipps at times of wood-carving, and its panel of bevelled glass now reflected the back of his head. On its shelf were two books from Parsons' Library, each with a "place" marked by a slip of paper; neither of the Kippses could have told you the title of either book they read, much less the author's name. There was an ebonised overmantel set with phials and pots of brilliant colour, each duplicated by looking-glass, and bearing also a pair of Chinese jars made in Birmingham, a wedding present from Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Pornick, and several sumptuous Japanese fans. And there was a Turkey carpet of great richness. In addition to these modern exploits of Messrs. Bunt and Bubble, there were two inactive tall clocks, whose extreme dilapidation appealed to the connoisseur; a terrestrial and a celestial globe, the latter deeply indented; a number of good old iron moulded and dusty books, and a stuffed owl wanting one (easily replaceable) glass eye, obtained by the exertions of Uncle Kipps. The table equipage was as much as possible like Mrs. Bindon Botting's, only more costly, and in addition there were green and crimson wine glasses—though the Kippses never drank wine.
Kipps turned to the more legible of his two postcards again.
"'Unavoidably prevented from seein' me to-day,' 'e says. I like 'is cheek. After I give 'im 'is start and everything."
He blew.
"'E certainly treats you a bit orf'and," said Ann.
Kipps gave vent to his dislike of young Walshingham. "He's getting too big for 'is britches," he said. "I'm beginning to wish she 'ad brought an action for breach. Ever since 'e said she wouldn't, 'e's seemed to think I've got no right to spend my own money."
"'E's never liked your building the 'ouse," said Ann.
Kipps displayed wrath. "What the goodness 'as it got to do wiv' 'im?"
"Overman indeed!" he added. "Overmantel!... 'E trys that on with me, I'll tell 'im something 'e won't like."
He took up the second card. "Dashed if I can read a word of it. I can jest make out Chit-low at the end and that's all."
He scrutinised it. "It's like someone in a fit writing. This here might be W H A T—what. P R I C E—I got it! What price Harry now? It was a sort of saying of 'is. I expect 'e's either done something or not done something towards starting that play, Ann."
"I expect that's about it," said Ann.
Kipps grunted with effort. "I can't read the rest," he said at last, "nohow."
A thoroughly annoying post. He pitched the card on the table, stood up and went to the window, where Ann, after a momentary reconnaisance at Chitterlow's hieroglyphics, came to join him.
"Wonder what I shall do this afternoon," said Kipps, with his hands deep in his pockets.
He produced and lit a cigarette.
"Go for a walk, I s'pose," said Ann.
"I been for a walk this morning.
"S'pose I must go for another," he added, after an interval.
They regarded the windy waste of sea for a space.
"Wonder why it is 'e won't see me," said Kipps, returning to the problem of young Walshingham. "It's all lies about 'is being too busy."
Ann offered no solution.
"Rain again!" said Kipps, as the lash of the little drops stung the window.
"Oo, bother!" said Kipps, "you got to do something. Look 'ere, Ann! I'll go orf for a reg'lar tramp through the rain, up by Saltwood, 'round by Newington, over the camp, and so 'round and back, and see 'ow they're getting on about the 'ouse. See? And look 'ere! you get Gwendolen to go out a bit before I come back. If it's still rainy, she can easy go 'round and see 'er sister. Then we'll 'ave a bit of tea, with tea cake—all buttery, see? Toce it ourselves, p'raps. Eh?"
"I dessay I can find something to do in the 'ouse," said Ann, considering. "You'll take your mackintosh and leggin's, I s'pose. You'll get wet without your mackintosh over those roads."
"Righ-O," said Kipps, and went to ask Gwendolen for his brown leggings and his other pair of boots.
§2
Things conspired to demoralise Kipps that afternoon.
When he got outside the house everything looked so wet under the drive of the southwester that he abandoned the prospect of the clay lanes towards Newington altogether, and turned east to Folkestone along the Seabrook digue. His mackintosh flapped about him, the rain stung his cheek; for a time he felt a hardy man. And then as abruptly the rain ceased and the wind fell, and before he was through Sandgate High Street it was a bright spring day. And there was Kipps in his mackintosh and squeaky leggings, looking like a fool!
Inertia carried him another mile to the Leas, and there the whole world was pretending there had never been such a thing as rain—ever. There wasn't a cloud in the sky; except for an occasional puddle the asphalt paths looked as dry as a bone. A smartly dressed man in one of those overcoats that look like ordinary cloth and are really most deceitfully and unfairly waterproof, passed him and glanced at the stiff folds of his mackintosh. "Demn!" said Kipps. His mackintosh swished against his leggings, his leggings piped and whistled over his boot-tops.
"Why do I never get anything right?" Kipps asked of a bright implacable universe.
Nice old ladies passed him, refined people with tidy umbrellas, bright, beautiful, supercilious-looking children. Of course! the right thing for such a day as this was a light overcoat and an umbrella. A child might have known that. He had them at home, but how could one explain that? He decided to turn down by the Harvey monument and escape through Clifton Gardens towards the hills. And thereby he came upon Coote.
He already felt the most abject and propitiatory of social outcasts when he came upon Coote, and Coote finished him. He passed within a yard of Coote. Coote was coming along towards the Leas, and when Kipps saw him his legs hesitated about their office and he seemed to himself to stagger about all over the footpath. At the sight of him Coote started visibly. Then a sort of rigor vitae passed through his frame, his jaw protruded and errant bubbles of air seemed to escape and run about beneath his loose skin. (Seemed I say—I am perfectly well aware that there is really connective tissue in Coote as in all of us to prevent anything of the sort.) His eyes fixed themselves on the horizon and glazed. As he went by Kipps could hear his even, resolute breathing. He went by, and Kipps staggered on into a universe of dead cats and dust heaps, rind and ashes—cut! Cut!
It was part of the inexorable decrees of Providence that almost immediately afterwards the residuum of Kipps had to pass a very, very long and observant-looking girls' school.
Kipps recovered consciousness again on the road between Shorncliffe Station and Cheriton, though he cannot remember, indeed to this day he has never attempted to remember, how he got there. And he was back at certain thoughts suggested by his last night's novel reading, that linked up directly with the pariah-like emotions of these last encounters. The novel lay at home upon the cheffonier; it was one of society and politics—there is no need whatever to give the title or name the author—written with a heavy-handed thoroughness that overrode any possibility of resistance on the part of the Kipps mind. It had crushed all his poor little edifice of ideals, his dreams of a sensible, unassuming existence, of snugness, of not caring what people said and all the rest of it, to dust; it had reinstated, squarely and strongly again, the only proper conception of English social life. There was a character in the book who trifled with Art, who was addicted to reading French novels, who dressed in a loose, careless way, who was a sorrow to his dignified, silvery-haired, politico-religious mother, and met the admonitions of bishops with a front of brass. He treated a "nice girl," to whom they had got him engaged, badly; he married beneath him—some low thing or other. And sank....
Kipps could not escape the application of the case. He was enabled to see how this sort of thing looked to decent people; he was enabled to gauge the measure of the penalties due. His mind went from that to the frozen marble of Coote's visage.
He deserved it!...
That day of remorse! Later it found him coming upon the site of his building operations and surveying it in a mood near to despair, his mackintosh over his arm.
Hardly anyone was at work that day—no doubt the builders were having him in some obscure manner—and the whole place seemed a dismal and depressing litter. The builder's shed, black-lettered Wilkins, Builder, Hythe, looked like a stranded thing amidst a cast-up disorder of wheelbarrows and wheeling planks, and earth and sand and bricks. The foundations of the walls were trenches full of damp concrete, drying in patches; the rooms—it was incredible they could ever be rooms—were shaped out as squares and oblongs of coarse, wet grass and sorrel. They looked absurdly small—dishonestly small. What could you expect? Of course the builders were having him, building too small, building all wrong, using bad materials! Old Kipps had told him a wrinkle or two. The builders were having him, young Walshingham was having him, everybody was having him! They were having him and laughing at him because they didn't respect him. They didn't respect him because he couldn't do things right. Who could respect him?...
He was an outcast, he had no place in the world. He had had his chance in the world and turned his back on it. He had "behaved badly"—that was the phrase....
Here a great house was presently to arise, a house to be paid for, a house neither he nor Ann could manage—with eleven bedrooms, and four disrespectful servants having them all the time!
How had it all happened exactly?
This was the end of his great fortune! What a chance he had had! If he had really carried out his first intentions and stuck to things, how much better everything might have been! If he had got a tutor—that had been in his mind originally—a special sort of tutor to show him everything right; a tutor for gentlemen of neglected education. If he had read more and attended better to what Coote had said!
Coote, who had just cut him!...
Eleven bedrooms! What had possessed him? No one would ever come to see them, no one would ever have anything to do with them. Even his aunt cut him! His uncle treated him with a half-contemptuous sufferance. He had not a friend worth counting in the world! Buggins, Carshot, Pierce; shop assistants! The Pornicks—a low socialist lot! He stood among his foundations like a lonely figure among ruins; he stood among the ruins of his future, and owned himself a foolish and mistaken man. He saw himself and Ann living out their shameful lives in this great crazy place—as it would be—with everybody laughing secretly at them and their eleven rooms, and nobody approaching them—nobody nice and right that is, for ever. And Ann!
What was the matter with Ann? She'd given up going for walks lately, got touchy and tearful, been fitful with her food. Just when she didn't ought to. It was all a part of the judgment upon wrongdoing, it was all part of the social penalties that Juggernaut of a novel had brought home to his mind.
§3
He let himself in with his latchkey. He went moodily into the dining-room and got out the plans to look at them. He had a vague hope that there would prove to be only ten bedrooms. But he found there were still eleven. He became aware of Ann standing over him. "Look 'ere, Artie!" said Ann.
He looked up and found her holding a number of white oblongs. His eyebrows rose.
"It's Callers," said Ann.
He put his plans aside slowly and took and read the cards in silence, with a sort of solemnity. Callers after all! Then perhaps he wasn't to be left out of the world after all. Mrs. G. Porrett Smith, Miss Porrett Smith, Miss Mabel Porrett Smith, and two smaller cards of the Rev. G. Porrett Smith. "Lor'!" he said, "Clergy!"
"There was a lady," said Ann, "and two growed-up gals—all dressed up!"
"And 'im?"
"There wasn't no 'im."
"Not——?" He held out the little card.
"No; there was a lady and two young ladies."
"But—these cards! Wad they go and leave these two little cards with the Rev. G. Smith on for? Not if 'e wasn't with 'em."
"'E wasn't with 'em."
"Not a little chap—dodgin' about be'ind the others? And didn't come in?"
"I didn't see no gentleman with them at all," said Ann.
"Rum!" said Kipps. A half-forgotten experience came back to him. "I 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 éclat 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.
§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
§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....
§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.
§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."
§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.
§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.
§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.