All the world that evening was no more than a shadowy frame of darkling sky and water and dripping bows about Helen. He seemed to see through things with an extraordinary clearness; she was revealed to him certainly, as the cause and essence of it all.
He was indeed at his Heart's Desire. It was one of those times when there seems to be no future, when Time has stopped and we are at an end. Kipps, that evening, could not have imagined a to-morrow, all that his imagination had pointed towards was attained. His mind stood still and took the moments as they came.
§4
About nine that night Coote came around to Kipps' new apartment in the Upper Sandgate Road—the house on the Leas had been let furnished—and Kipps made an effort toward realisation. He was discovered sitting at the open window and without a lamp, quite still. Coote was deeply moved, and he pressed Kipps' palm and laid a knobby, white hand on his shoulder and displayed the sort of tenderness becoming in a crisis. Kipps was too moved that night, and treated Coote like a very dear brother.
"She's splendid," said Coote, coming to it abruptly.
"Isn't she?" said Kipps.
"I couldn't help noticing her face," said Coote.... "You know, my dear Kipps, that this is better than a legacy."
"I don't deserve it," said Kipps.
"You can't say that."
"I don't. I can't 'ardly believe it. I can't believe it at all. No!"
There followed an expressive stillness.
"It's wonderful," said Kipps. "It takes me like that."
Coote made a faint blowing noise, and so again they came for a time of silence.
"And it began—before your money?"
"When I was in 'er class," said Kipps, solemnly.
Coote, speaking out of a darkness which he was illuminating strangely with efforts to strike a match, said that it was beautiful. He could not have wished Kipps a better fortune....
He lit a cigarette, and Kipps was moved to do the same, with a sacramental expression. Presently speech flowed more freely.
Coote began to praise Helen and her mother and brother. He talked of when "it" might be, he presented the thing as concrete and credible. "It's a county family, you know," he said. "She is connected, you know, with the Beaupres family—you know Lord Beaupres."
"No!" said Kipps, "reely!"
"Distantly, of course," said Coote. "Still——"
He smiled a smile that glimmered in the twilight.
"It's too much," said Kipps, overcome. "It's so all like that."
Coote exhaled. For a time Kipps listened to Helen's praises and matured a point of view.
"I say, Coote," he said. "What ought I to do now?"
"What do you mean?" said Coote.
"I mean about calling on 'er and all that."
He reflected. "Naturally, I want to do it all right."
"Of course," said Coote.
"It would be awful to go and do something—now—all wrong."
Coote's cigarette glowed as he meditated. "You must call, of course," he decided. "You'll have to speak to Mrs. Walshingham."
"'Ow?" said Kipps.
"Tell her you mean to marry her daughter."
"I dessay she knows," said Kipps, with defensive penetration.
Coote's head was visible, shaking itself judiciously.
"Then there's the ring," said Kipps. "What 'ave I to do about that?"
"What ring do you mean?"
"'Ngagement Ring. There isn't anything at all about that in 'Manners and Rules of Good Society'—not a word."
"Of course you must get something—tasteful. Yes."
"What sort of a ring?"
"Something nace. They'll show you in the shop."
"Of course. I 'spose I got to take it to 'er, eh? Put it on her finger."
"Oh, no! Send it. Much better."
"Ah!" said Kipps, for the first time, with a note of relief.
"Then, 'ow about this call—on Mrs. Walshingham, I mean. 'Ow ought one to go?"
"Rather a ceremonial occasion," reflected Coote.
"Wadyer mean? Frock coat?"
"I think so," said Coote, with discrimination.
"Light trousers and all that?"
"Yes."
"Rose?"
"I think it might run to a buttonhole."
The curtain that hung over the future became less opaque to the eyes of Kipps. To-morrow, and then other days, became perceptible at least as existing. Frock coat, silk hat and a rose! With a certain solemnity he contemplated himself in the process of slow transformation into an English gentleman, Arthur Cuyps, frock-coated on occasions of ceremony, the familiar acquaintance of Lady Punnet, the recognised wooer of a distant connection of the Earl of Beaupres.
Something like awe at the magnitude of his own fortune came upon him. He felt the world was opening out like a magic flower in a transformation scene at the touch of this wand of gold. And Helen, nestling beautiful in the red heart of the flower. Only ten weeks ago he had been no more than the shabbiest of improvers and shamefully dismissed for dissipation, the mere soil-burned seed, as it were, of these glories. He resolved the engagement ring should be of expressively excessive quality and appearance, in fact, the very best they had.
"Ought I to send 'er flowers?" he speculated.
"Not necessarily," said Coote. "Though, of course, it's an attention."...
Kipps meditated on flowers.
"When you see her," said Coote, "you'll have to ask her to name the day."
Kipps started. "That won't be just yet a bit, will it?"
"Don't know any reason for delay."
"Oo, but—a year, say."
"Rather a long time," said Coote.
"Is it?" said Kipps, turning his head sharply. "But——"
There was quite a long pause.
"I say," he said, at last, and in an unaltered voice, "you'll 'ave to 'elp me about the wedding."
"Only too happy," said Coote.
"Of course," said Kipps, "I didn't think——" He changed his line of thought. "Coote," he asked, "wot's a 'state-eh-tate'?"
"A 'tate-ah-tay'!" said Coote, improvingly, "is a conversation alone together."
"Lor'!" said Kipps, "but I thought——. It says strictly we oughtn't to enjoy a tater-tay, not sit together, walk together, ride together or meet during any part of the day. That don't leave much time for meeting, does it?"
"The books says that?" asked Coote.
"I jest learnt it by 'eart before you came. I thought that was a bit rum, but I s'pose it's all right."
"You won't find Miss Walshingham so strict as all that," said Coote. "I think that's a bit extreme. They'd only do that now in very strict old aristocratic families. Besides, the Walshinghams are so modern—advanced, you might say. I expect you'll get plenty of chances of talking together."
"There's a tremendous lot to think about," said Kipps, blowing a profound sigh. "D'you mean—p'raps we might be married in a few months or so."
"You'll have to be," said Coote. "Why not?"...
Midnight found Kipps alone, looking a little tired and turning over the leaves of the red-covered textbook with a studious expression. He paused for a moment on page 233, his eye caught by the words:
"FOR AN UNCLE OR AUNT BY MARRIAGE the period is six weeks black, with jet trimmings."
"No," said Kipps, after a vigorous mental effort. "That's not it." The pages rustled again. He stopped and flattened out the little book decisively at the beginning of the chapter on "Weddings."
He became pensive. He stared at the lamp wick. "I suppose I ought to go over and tell them," he said, at last.
§5
Kipps called on Mrs. Walshingham, attired in the proper costume for ceremonial Occasions in the Day. He carried a silk hat, and he wore a deep-skirted frock coat, his boots were patent leather and his trousers dark grey. He had generous white cuffs with gold links, and his grey gloves, one thumb in which had burst when he put them on, he held loosely in his hand. He carried a small umbrella rolled to an exquisite tightness. A sense of singular correctness pervaded his being and warred with the enormity of the occasion for possession of his soul. Anon he touched his silk cravat. The world smelt of his rosebud.
He seated himself on a new re-covered chintz armchair and stuck out the elbow of the arm that held his hat.
"I know," said Mrs. Walshingham, "I know everything," and helped him out most amazingly. She deepened the impression he had already received of her sense and refinement. She displayed an amount of tenderness that touched him.
"This is a great thing," she said, "to a mother," and her hand rested for a moment on his impeccable coat sleeve.
"A daughter, Arthur," she explained, "is so much more than a son."
Marriage, she said, was a lottery, and without love and toleration there was much unhappiness. Her life had not always been bright—there had been dark days and bright days. She smiled rather sweetly. "This is a bright one," she said.
She said very kind and flattering things to Kipps, and she thanked him for his goodness to her son. ("That wasn't anything," said Kipps.) And then she expanded upon the theme of her two children. "Both so accomplished," she said, "so clever. I call them my Twin Jewels."
She was repeating a remark that she had made at Lympne, that she always said her children needed opportunities, as other people needed air, when she was abruptly arrested by the entry of Helen. They hung on a pause, Helen perhaps surprised by Kipps' weekday magnificence. Then she advanced with outstretched hand.
Both the young people were shy. "I jest called 'round," began Kipps, and became uncertain how to end.
"Won't you have some tea?" asked Helen.
She walked to the window, looked out at the familiar outporter's barrow, turned, surveyed Kipps for a moment ambiguously, said "I will get some tea," and so departed again.
Mrs. Walshingham and Kipps looked at one another and the lady smiled indulgently. "You two young people mustn't be shy of each other," said Mrs. Walshingham, which damaged Kipps considerably.
She was explaining how sensitive Helen always had been, even about quite little things, when the servant appeared with the tea things, and then Helen followed, and taking up a secure position behind the little banboo tea table, broke the ice with officious teacup clattering. Then she introduced the topic of a forthcoming open-air performance of "As You Like It," and steered past the worst of the awkwardness. They discussed stage illusion. "I mus' say," said Kipps, "I don't quite like a play in a theayter. It seems sort of unreal, some'ow."
"But most plays are written for the stage," said Helen, looking at the sugar.
"I know," admitted Kipps.
They finished tea. "Well," said Kipps, and rose.
"You mustn't go yet," said Mrs. Walshingham, rising and taking his hand. "I'm sure you two must have heaps to say to each other," and so she escaped towards the door.
§6
Among other projects that seemed almost equally correct to Kipps at that exalted moment was one of embracing Helen with ardour as soon as the door closed behind her mother and one of headlong flight through the open window. Then he remembered he ought to hold the door open for Mrs. Walshingham, and turned from that duty to find Helen still standing, beautifully inaccessible, behind the tea things. He closed the door and advanced toward her with his arms akimbo and his hands upon his coat skirts. Then, feeling angular, he moved his right hand to his moustache. Anyhow, he was dressed all right. Somewhere at the back of his mind, dim and mingled with doubt and surprise, appeared the perception that he felt now quite differently towards her, that something between them had been blown from Lympne Keep to the four winds of heaven....
She regarded him with an eye of critical proprietorship.
"Mother has been making up to you," she said, smiling slightly.
She added, "It was nice of you to come around to see her."
They stood through a brief pause, as though each had expected something different in the other and was a little perplexed at its not being there. Kipps found he was at the corner of the brown covered table, and he picked up a little flexible book that lay upon it to occupy his mind.
"I bought you a ring to-day," he said, bending the book and speaking for the sake of saying something, and then he was moved to genuine speech. "You know," he said, "I can't 'ardly believe it."
Her face relaxed slightly again. "No?" she said, and may have breathed, "Nor I."
"No," he went on. "It's as though everything 'ad changed. More even than when I got my money. 'Ere we are going to marry. It's like being someone else. What I feel is——"
He turned a flushed and earnest face to her. He seemed to come alive to her with one natural gesture. "I don't know things. I'm not good enough. I'm not refined. The more you'll see of me the more you'll find me out."
"But I'm going to help you."
"You'll 'ave to 'elp me a fearful lot."
She walked to the window, glanced out of it, made up her mind, turned and came towards him, with her hands clasped behind her back.
"All these things that trouble you are very little things. If you don't mind—if you will let me tell you things——"
"I wish you would."
"Then I will."
"They're little things to you, but they aren't to me."
"It all depends, if you don't mind being told."
"By you?"
"I don't expect you to be told by strangers."
"Oo!" said Kipps, expressing much.
"You know, there are just a few little things. For instance, you know, you are careless with your pronunciation.... You don't mind my telling you?"
"I like it," said Kipps.
"There's aitches."
"I know," said Kipps, and then, endorsingly, "I been told. Fact is, I know a chap, a Nacter, he's told me. He's told me, and he's going to give me a lesso nor so."
"I'm glad of that. It only requires a little care."
"Of course. On the stage they got to look out. They take regular lessons."
"Of course," said Helen, a little absently.
"I dessay I shall soon get into it," said Kipps.
"And then there's dress," said Helen, taking up her thread again.
Kipps became pink, but he remained respectfully attentive.
"You don't mind?" she said.
"Oo, no."
"You mustn't be too—too dressy. It's possible to be over-conventional, over-elaborate. It makes you look like a shop—like a common, well-off person. There's a sort of easiness that is better. A real gentleman looks right, without looking as though he had tried to be right."
"Jest as though 'e'd put on what came first?" said the pupil, in a faded voice.
"Not exactly that, but a sort of ease."
Kipps nodded his head intelligently. In his heart he was kicking his silk hat about the room in an ecstasy of disappointment.
"And you must accustom yourself to be more at your ease when you are with people," said Helen. "You've only got to forget yourself a little and not be anxious——"
"I'll try," said Kipps, looking rather hard at the teapot. "I'll do my best to try."
"I know you will," she said, and laid a hand for an instant upon his shoulder and withdrew it.
He did not perceive her caress. "One has to learn," he said. His attention was distracted by the strenuous efforts that were going on in the back of his head to translate, "I say, didn't you ought to name the day?" into easy as well as elegant English, a struggle that was still undecided when the time came for them to part....
He sat for a long time at the open window of his sitting-room with an intent face, recapitulating that interview. His eyes rested at last almost reproachfully on the silk hat beside him. "'Ow is one to know?" he asked. His attention was caught by a rubbed place in the nap, and, still thoughtful, he rolled up his handkerchief skilfully into a soft ball and began to smooth this down.
His expression changed slowly.
"'Ow the Juice is one to know?" he said, putting down the hat with some emphasis.
He rose up, went across the room to the sideboard, and, standing there, opened and began to read "Manners and Rules."
§1
So Kipps embarked upon his engagement, steeled himself to the high enterprise of marrying above his breeding. The next morning found him dressing with a certain quiet severity of movement, and it seemed to his landlady's housemaid that he was unusually dignified at breakfast. He meditated profoundly over his kipper and his kidney and bacon. He was going to New Romney to tell the old people what had happened and where he stood. And the love of Helen had also given him courage to do what Buggins had once suggested to him as a thing he would do were he in Kipps' place, and that was to hire a motor car for the afternoon. He had an early cold lunch, and then, with an air of quiet resolution, assumed a cap and coat he had purchased to this end, and thus equipped strolled around, blowing slightly, to the motor shop. The transaction was unexpectedly easy, and within the hour Kipps, spectacled and wrapped about, was tootling through Dymchurch.
They came to a stop smartly and neatly outside the little toy shop. "Make that thing 'oot a bit, will you," said Kipps. "Yes, that's it." "Whup," said the motor car. "Whurrup!"
Both his Aunt and Uncle came out on the pavement. "Why, it's Artie," cried his Aunt, and Kipps had a moment of triumph.
He descended to hand claspings, removed wraps and spectacles, and the motor driver retired to take "an hour off." Old Kipps surveyed the machinery and disconcerted Kipps for a moment by asking him in a knowing tone what they asked him for a thing like that. The two men stood inspecting the machine and impressing the neighbours for a time, and then they strolled through the shop into the little parlour for a drink.
"They ain't settled," old Kipps had said to the neighbours. "They ain't got no further than experiments. There's a bit of take-in about each. You take my advice and wait, me boy, even if it's a year or two, before you buy one for your own use."
(Though Kipps had said nothing of doing anything of the sort.)
"'Ow d'you like that whiskey I sent?" asked Kipps, dodging the old familiar bunch of children's pails.
Old Kipps became tactful. "It's a very good whiskey, my boy," said old Kipps. "I 'aven't the slightest doubt it's a very good whiskey and cost you a tidy price. But—dashed if it soots me! They put this here Foozle Ile in it, my boy, and it ketches me jest 'ere." He indicated his centre of figure. "Gives me the heartburn," he said, and shook his head rather sadly.
"It's a very good whiskey," said Kipps. "It's what the actor manager chaps drink in London, I 'appen to know."
"I dessay they do, my boy," said old Kipps, "but then they've 'ad their livers burnt out, and I 'aven't. They ain't dellicat like me. My stummik always 'as been extrey dellicat. Sometimes it's almost been as though nothing would lay on it. But that's in passing. I liked those segars. You can send me some of them segars...."
You cannot lead a conversation straight from the gastric consequences of Foozle Ile to Love, and so Kipps, after a friendly inspection of a rare old engraving after Morland (perfect except for a hole kicked through the centre) that his Uncle had recently purchased by private haggle, came to the topic of the old people's removal.
At the outset of Kipps' great fortunes there had been much talk of some permanent provision for them. It had been conceded they were to be provided for comfortably, and the phrase "retire from business" had been very much in the air. Kipps had pictured an ideal cottage, with a creeper always in exuberant flower about the door, where the sun shone forever and the wind never blew and a perpetual welcome hovered in the doorway. It was an agreeable dream, but when it came to the point of deciding upon this particular cottage or that, and on this particular house or that, Kipps was surprised by an unexpected clinging to the little home, which he had always understood to be the worst of all possible houses.
"We don't want to move in a 'urry," said Mrs. Kipps.
"When we want to move, we want to move for life. I've had enough moving about in my time," said old Kipps.
"We can do here a bit more, now we done here so long," said Mrs. Kipps.
"You lemme look about a bit fust," said old Kipps.
And in looking about old Kipps found perhaps a finer joy than any mere possession could have given. He would shut his shop more or less effectually against the intrusion of customers, and toddle abroad seeking new matter for his dream; no house was too small and none too large for his knowing enquiries. Occupied houses took his fancy more than vacancies, and he would remark, "You won't be a livin' 'ere forever, even if you think you will," when irate householders protested against the unsolicited examination of their more intimate premises....
Remarkable difficulties arose of a totally unexpected sort.
"If we 'ave a larger 'ouse," said Mrs. Kipps with sudden bitterness, "we shall want a servant, and I don't want no gells in the place larfin' at me, sniggerin' and larfin' and prancin' and trapesin', lardy da! If we 'ave a smaller 'ouse, there won't be room to swing a cat."
Room to swing a cat it seemed was absolutely essential. It was an infrequent but indispensable operation.
"When we do move," said old Kipps, "if we could get a bit of shootin'——. I don't want to sell off all this here stock for nothin'. It's took years to 'cumulate. I put a ticket in the winder sayin' 'sellin' orf,' but it 'asn't brought nothing like a roosh. One of these 'ere dratted visitors pretendin' to want an air gun, was all we 'ad in yesterday. Jest an excuse for spyin' round and then go away and larf at you. No-thanky to everything, it didn't matter what.... That's 'ow I look at it, Artie."
They pursued meandering fancies about the topic of their future settlement for a space and Kipps became more and more hopeless of any proper conversational opening that would lead to his great announcement, and more and more uncertain how such an opening should be taken. Once indeed old Kipps, anxious to get away from this dangerous subject of removals, began: "And what are you a-doin' of in Folkestone? I shall have to come over and see you one of these days," but before Kipps could get in upon that, his Uncle had passed into a general exposition of the proper treatment of landladies and their humbugging, cheating ways, and so the opportunity vanished. It seemed to Kipps the only thing to do was to go out into the town for a stroll, compose an effectual opening at leisure, and then come back and discharge it at them in its consecutive completeness. And even out of doors and alone, he found his mind distracted by irrelevant thoughts.
§2
His steps led him out of the High Street towards the church, and he leant for a time over the gate that had once been the winning post of his race with Ann Pornick, and presently found himself in a sitting position on the top rail. He had to get things smooth again, he knew; his mind was like a mirror of water after a breeze. The image of Helen and his great future was broken and mingled into fragmentary reflections of remoter things, of the good name of Old Methusaleh Three Stars, of long dormant memories the High Street saw fit, by some trick of light and atmosphere, to arouse that afternoon....
Abruptly a fine, full voice from under his elbow shouted, "What—O Art!" and, behold, Sid Pornick was back in his world, leaning over the gate beside him, and holding out a friendly hand.
He was oddly changed and yet oddly like the Sid that Kipps had known. He had the old broad face and mouth, abundantly freckled, the same short nose, and the same blunt chin, the same odd suggestion of his sister Ann without a touch of her beauty; but he had quite a new voice, loud and a little hard, and his upper lip carried a stiff and very fair moustache.
Kipps shook hands. "I was jest thinking of you, Sid," he said, "jest this very moment and wondering if ever I should see you again, ever. And 'ere you are!"
"One likes a look 'round at times," said Sid. "How are you, old chap?"
"All right," said Kipps. "I just been lef'——"
"You aren't changed much," interrupted Sid.
"Ent I?" said Kipps, foiled.
"I knew your back directly I came 'round the corner. Spite of that 'at you got on. Hang it, I said, that's Art Kipps or the devil. And so it was."
Kipps made a movement of his neck as if he would look at his back and judge. Then he looked Sid in the face. "You got a moustache, Sid," he said.
"I s'pose you're having your holidays?" said Sid.
"Well, partly. But I just been lef'——"
"I'm taking a bit of a holiday," Sid went on. "But the fact is, I have to give myself holidays nowadays. I've set up for myself."
"Not down here?"
"No fear! I'm not a turnip. I've started in Hammersmith, manufacturing." Sid spoke offhand as though there was no such thing as pride.
"Not drapery?"
"No fear! Engineer. Manufacture bicycles." He clapped his hand to his breast pocket and produced a number of pink handbills. He handed one to Kipps and prevented him reading it by explanations and explanatory dabs of a pointing finger. "That's our make, my make to be exact, The Red Flag, see?—I got a transfer with my name—Pantocrat tyres, eight pounds—yes, there—Clinchers ten, Dunlop's eleven, Ladies' one pound more—that's the lady's. Best machine at a democratic price in London. No guineas and no discounts—honest trade. I build 'em—to order. I've built," he reflected, looking away seaward—"seventeen. Counting orders in 'and.... Come down to look at the old place a bit. Mother likes it at times."
"Thought you'd all gone away——"
"What! after my father's death? No! My mother's come back, and she's living at Muggett's cottages. The sea air suits 'er. She likes the old place better than Hammersmith ... and I can afford it. Got an old crony or so here.... Gossip ... have tea.... S'pose you ain't married, Kipps?"
Kipps shook his head, "I——" he began.
"I am," said Sid. "Married these two years and got a nipper. Proper little chap."
Kipps got his word in at last. "I got engaged day before yesterday," he said.
"Ah!" said Sid airily. "That's all right. Who's the fortunate lady?"
Kipps tried to speak in an offhand way. He stuck his hands in his pockets as he spoke. "She's a solicitor's daughter," he said, "in Folkestone. Rather'r nice set. County family. Related to the Earl of Beaupres——"
"Steady on!" cried Sid.
"You see, I've 'ad a bit of luck, Sid. Been lef' money."
Sid's eye travelled instinctively to mark Kipps' garments. "How much?" he asked.
"'Bout twelve 'undred a year," said Kipps, more offhandedly than ever.
"Lord!" said Sid, with a note of positive dismay, and stepped back a pace or two.
"My granfaver it was," said Kipps, trying hard to be calm and simple. "'Ardly knew I 'ad a granfaver. And then—bang! When o' Bean, the solicitor, told me of it, you could 'ave knocked me down——"
"'Ow much?" demanded Sid, with a sharp note in his voice.
"Twelve 'undred pound a year—'proximately, that is...."
Sid's attempt at genial unenvious congratulation did not last a minute. He shook hands with an unreal heartiness and said he was jolly glad. "It's a blooming stroke of Luck," he said.
"It's a bloomin' stroke of Luck," he repeated; "that's what it is," with the smile fading from his face. "Of course, better you 'ave it than me, o' chap. So I don't envy you, anyhow. I couldn't keep it, if I did 'ave it."
"'Ow's that?" said Kipps, a little hipped by Sid's patent chagrin.
"I'm a Socialist, you see," said Sid. "I don't 'old with Wealth. What is Wealth? Labour robbed out of the poor. At most it's only yours in Trust. Leastways, that 'ow I should take it." He reflected. "The Present distribution of Wealth," he said and stopped.
Then he let himself go, with unmasked bitterness. "It's no sense at all. It's jest damn foolishness. Who's going to work and care in a muddle like this? Here first you do—something anyhow—of the world's work, and it pays you hardly anything, and then it invites you to do nothing, nothing whatever, and pays you twelve hundred pounds a year. Who's going to respect laws and customs when they come to damn silliness like that?" He repeated, "Twelve hundred pounds a year!"
At the sight of Kipps' face he relented slightly.
"It's not you I'm thinking of, o' man; it's the system. Better you than most people. Still——"
He laid both hands on the gate and repeated to himself, "Twelve 'undred a year.... Gee-Whizz, Kipps! You'll be a swell!"
"I shan't," said Kipps with imperfect conviction. "No fear."
"You can't 'ave money like that and not swell out. You'll soon be too big to speak to—'ow do they put it?—a mere mechanic like me."
"No fear, Siddee," said Kipps with conviction. "I ain't that sort."
"Ah!" said Sid, with a sort of unwilling scepticism, "money'll be too much for you. Besides—you're caught by a swell already."
"'Ow d'you mean?"
"That girl you're going to marry. Masterman says——"
"Oo's Masterman?"
"Rare good chap I know—takes my first floor front room. Masterson says it's always the wife pitches the key. Always. There's no social differences—till women come in."
"Ah!" said Kipps profoundly. "You don't know."
Sid shook his head. "Fancy!" he reflected, "Art Kipps!... Twelve 'Undred a Year!"
Kipps tried to bridge that opening gulf. "Remember the Hurons, Sid?"
"Rather," said Sid.
"Remember that wreck?"
"I can smell it now—sort of sour smell."
Kipps was silent for a moment with reminiscent eyes on Sid's still troubled face.
"I say, Sid, 'ow's Ann?"
"She's all right," said Sid.
"Where is she now?"
"In a place ... Ashford."
"Oh!"
Sid's face had become a shade sulkier than before.
"The fact is," he said, "we don't get on very well together. I don't hold with service. We're common people, I suppose, but I don't like it. I don't see why a sister of mine should wait at other people's tables. No. Not even if they got Twelve 'Undred a Year."
Kipps tried to change the point of application. "Remember 'ow you came out once when we were racing here?... She didn't run bad for a girl."
And his own words raised an image brighter than he could have supposed, so bright it seemed to breathe before him and did not fade altogether, even when he was back in Folkestone an hour or so later.
But Sid was not to be deflected from that other rankling theme by any reminiscences of Ann.
"I wonder what you will do with all that money," he speculated. "I wonder if you will do any good at all. I wonder what you could do. You should hear Masterman. He'd tell you things. Suppose it came to me, what should I do? It's no good giving it back to the state as things are. Start an Owenite profit-sharing factory perhaps. Or a new Socialist paper. We want a new Socialist paper."
He tried to drown his personal chagrin in elaborate exemplary suggestions....
§3
"I must be gettin' on to my motor," said Kipps at last, having to a large extent heard him out.
"What! Got a motor?"
"No!" said Kipps apologetically. "Only jobbed for the day."
"'Ow much?"
"Five pounds."
"Keep five families for a week! Good Lord!" That seemed to crown Sid's disgust.
Yet drawn by a sort of fascination he came with Kipps and assisted at the mounting of the motor. He was pleased to note it was not the most modern of motors, but that was the only grain of comfort. Kipps mounted at once, after one violent agitation of the little shop-door to set the bell a-jingle and warn his Uncle and Aunt. Sid assisted with the great furlined overcoat and examined the spectacles.
"Good-bye, o' chap!" said Kipps.
"Good-bye, o' chap!" said Sid.
The old people came out to say good-bye.
Old Kipps was radiant with triumph. "'Pon my Sammy, Artie! I'm a goo' mind to come with you," he shouted, and then, "I got something you might take with you!"
He dodged back into the shop and returned with the perforated engraving after Morland.
"You stick to this, my boy," he said. "You get it repaired by someone who knows. It's the most vallyble thing I got you so far, you take my word."
"Warrup!" said the motor, and tuff, tuff, tuff, and backed and snorted while old Kipps danced about on the pavement as if foreseeing complex catastrophes, and told the driver, "That's all right."
He waved his stout stick to his receding nephew. Then he turned to Sid. "Now, if you could make something like that, young Pornick, you might blow a bit!"
"I'll make a doocid sight better than that before I done," said Sid, hands deep in his pockets.
"Not you," said old Kipps.
The motor set up a prolonged sobbing moan and vanished around the corner. Sid stood motionless for a space, unheeding some further remark from old Kipps. The young mechanic had just discovered that to have manufactured seventeen bicycles, including orders in hand, is not so big a thing as he had supposed, and such discoveries try one's manhood....
"Oh well!" said Sid at last, and turned his face towards his mother's cottage.
She had got a hot teacake for him, and she was a little hurt that he was dark and preoccupied as he consumed it. He had always been such a boy for teacake, and then when one went out specially and got him one——!
He did not tell her—he did not tell anyone—he had seen young Kipps. He did not want to talk about Kipps for a bit to anyone at all.
§1
When Kipps came to reflect upon his afternoon's work he had his first inkling of certain comprehensive incompatibilities lying about the course of true love in his particular case. He had felt without understanding the incongruity between the announcement he had failed to make and the circle of ideas of his Aunt and Uncle. It was this rather than the want of a specific intention that had silenced him, the perception that when he travelled from Folkestone to New Romney he travelled from an atmosphere where his engagement to Helen was sane and excellent to an atmosphere where it was only to be regarded with incredulous suspicion. Coupled and associated with this jar was his sense of the altered behaviour of Sid Pornick, the evident shock to that ancient alliance caused by the fact of his enrichment, the touch of hostility in his "You'll soon be swelled too big to speak to a poor mechanic like me." Kipps was unprepared for the unpleasant truth; that the path of social advancement is and must be strewn with broken friendships. This first protrusion of that fact caused a painful confusion in his mind. It was speedily to protrude in a far more serious fashion in relation to the "hands" from the Emporium, and Chitterlow.
From the day at Lympne Castle his relations with Helen had entered upon a new footing. He had prayed for Helen as good souls pray for Heaven, with as little understanding of what it was he prayed for. And now that period of standing humbly in the shadows before the shrine was over, and the Goddess, her veil of mystery flung aside, had come down to him and taken hold of him, a good, strong, firm hold, and walked by his side.... She liked him. What was singular was that very soon she had kissed him thrice, whimsically upon the brow, and he had never kissed her at all. He could not analyse his feelings, only he knew the world was wonderfully changed about them, but the truth was that, though he still worshipped and feared her, though his pride in his engagement was ridiculously vast, he loved her now no more. That subtle something woven of the most delicate strands of self-love and tenderness and desire, had vanished imperceptibly; and was gone now for ever. But that she did not suspect in him, nor as a matter of fact did he.
She took him in hand in perfect good faith. She told him things about his accent, she told him things about his bearing, about his costume and his way of looking at things. She thrust the blade of her intelligence into the tenderest corners of Kipps' secret vanity, she slashed his most intimate pride to bleeding tatters. He sought very diligently to anticipate some at least of these informing thrusts by making great use of Coote. But the unanticipated made a brave number....
She found his simple willingness a very lovable thing.
Indeed she liked him more and more. There was a touch of motherliness in her feelings towards him. But his upbringing and his associations had been, she diagnosed, "awful." At New Romney she glanced but little; that was remote. But in her inventory—she went over him as one might go over a newly taken house, with impartial thoroughness—she discovered more proximate influences, surprising intimations of nocturnal "sing-songs"—she pictured it as almost shocking that Kipps should sing to the banjo—much low-grade wisdom treasured from a person called Buggins—"Who is Buggins?" said Helen—vague figures of indisputable vulgarity, Pierce and Carshot, and more particularly, a very terrible social phenomenon, Chitterlow.
Chitterlow blazed upon them with unheralded oppressive brilliance the first time they were abroad together.
They were going along the front of the Leas to see a school play in Sandgate—at the last moment Mrs. Walshingham had been unable to come with them—when Chitterlow loomed up into the new world. He was wearing the suit of striped flannel and the straw hat that had followed Kipps' payment in advance for his course in elocution, his hands were deep in his side pockets and animated the corners of his jacket, and his attentive gaze at the passing loungers, the faint smile under his boldly drawn nose, showed him engaged in studying character—no doubt for some forthcoming play.
"What HO!" said he, at the sight of Kipps, and swept off the straw hat with so ample a clutch of his great, flat hand that it suggested to Helen's startled mind a conjurer about to palm a half-penny.
"'Ello, Chitt'low," said Kipps a little awkwardly and not saluting.
Chitterlow hesitated. "Half a mo', my boy," he said, and arrested Kipps by extending a large hand over his chest. "Excuse me, my dear," he said, bowing like his Russian count by way of apology to Helen and with a smile that would have killed at a hundred yards. He affected a semi-confidential grouping of himself and Kipps while Helen stood in white amazement.
"About that play," he said.
"'Ow about it?" asked Kipps, acutely aware of Helen.
"It's all right," said Chitterlow. "There's a strong smell of syndicate in the air, I may tell you—Strong."
"That's aw right," said Kipps.
"You needn't tell everybody," said Chitterlow with a transitory, confidential hand to his mouth, which pointed the application of the "everybody" just a trifle too strongly. "But I think it's coming off. However——. I mustn't detain you now. So long. You'll come 'round, eh?"
"Right you are," said Kipps.
"To-night?"
"At eight."
And then, and more in the manner of a Russian prince than any common count, Chitterlow bowed and withdrew. Just for a moment he allowed a conquering eye to challenge Helen's and noted her for a girl of quality....
There was a silence between our lovers for a space.
"That," said Kipps with an allusive movement of the head, "was Chitterlow."
"Is he—a friend of yours?"
"In a way.... You see—I met 'im. Leastways 'e met me. Run into me with a bicycle, 'e did, and so we got talking together."
He tried to appear at his ease. The young lady scrutinised his profile.
"What is he?"
"'E's a Nacter chap," said Kipps. "Leastways 'e writes plays."
"And sells them?"
"Partly."
"Whom to?"
"Different people. Shares he sells.... It's all right, reely—I meant to tell you about him before."
Helen looked over her shoulder to catch a view of Chitterlow's retreating aspect. It did not compel her complete confidence.
She turned to her lover and said in a tone of quiet authority, "You must tell me all about Chitterlow. Now."
The explanation began....
The School Play came almost as a relief to Kipps. In the flusterment of going in he could almost forget for a time his Laocoon struggle to explain, and in the intervals he did his best to keep forgetting. But Helen, with a gentle insistence, resumed the explanation of Chitterlow as they returned towards Folkestone.
Chitterlow was confoundedly difficult to explain. You could hardly imagine!
There was an almost motherly anxiety in Helen's manner, blended with the resolution of a schoolmistress to get to the bottom of the affair. Kipps' ears were soon quite brightly red.
"Have you seen one of his plays?"
"'E's tole me about one."
"But on the stage."
"No. He 'asn't 'ad any on the stage yet. That's all coming...."
"Promise me," she said in conclusion, "you won't do anything without consulting me."
And of course Kipps promised. "Oo—no!"
They went on their way in silence.
"One can't know everybody," said Helen in general.
"Of course," said Kipps; "in a sort of way it was him that helped me to my money." And he indicated in a confused manner the story of the advertisement. "I don't like to drop 'im all at once," he added.
Helen was silent for a space, and when she spoke she went off at a tangent. "We shall live in London—soon," she remarked. "It's only while we are here."
It was the first intimation she gave him of their post-nuptial prospects.
"We shall have a nice little flat somewhere, not too far west, and there we shall build up a circle of our own."
§2
All that declining summer Kipps was the pupil lover. He made an extraordinarily open secret of his desire for self-improvement; indeed Helen had to hint once or twice that his modest frankness was excessive, and all this new circle of friends did, each after his or her manner, everything that was possible to supplement Helen's efforts and help him to ease and skill in the more cultivated circles to which he had come. Coote was still the chief teacher, the tutor—there are so many little difficulties that a man may take to another man that he would not care to propound to the woman he loves—but they were all, so to speak, upon the staff. Even the freckled girl said to him once in a pleasant way, "You mustn't say "contre temps," you must say "contraytom,"" when he borrowed that expression from "Manners and Rules," and she tried at his own suggestion to give him clear ideas upon the subject of "as" and "has." A certain confusion between these words was becoming evident, the first fruits of a lesson from Chitterlow on the aspirate. Hitherto he had discarded that dangerous letter almost altogether, but now he would pull up at words beginning with "h" and draw a sawing breath—rather like a startled kitten—and then aspirate with vigour.
Said Kipps one day, "As 'e?—I should say, ah—Has 'e? Ye know I got a lot of difficulty over them two words, which is which?"
"Well, 'as' is a conjunction and 'has' is a verb."
"I know," said Kipps, "but when is 'has' a conjunction and when is 'as' a verb?"
"Well," said the freckled girl, preparing to be very lucid. "It's has when it means one has, meaning having, but if it isn't it's as. As for instance one says 'e—I mean he—He has. But one says 'as he has.'"
"I see," said Kipps. "So I ought to say 'as 'e?'"
"No, if you are asking a question you say has 'e—I mean he—'as he?" She blushed quite brightly, but still clung to her air of lucidity.
"I see," said Kipps. He was about to say something further, but he desisted. "I got it much clearer now. Has 'e? Has 'e as. Yes."
"If you remember about having."
"Oo I will," said Kipps.
Miss Coote specialised in Kipps' artistic development. She had early found an opinion that he had considerable artistic sensibility, his remarks on her work had struck her as decidedly intelligent, and whenever he called around to see them she would show him some work of art, now an illustrated book, now perhaps a colour print of a Botticelli, now the Hundred Best Paintings, now "Academy Pictures," now a German art handbook and now some magazine of furniture and design. "I know you like these things," she used to say, and Kipps said, "Oo I do." He soon acquired a little armoury of appreciative sayings. When presently the Walshinghams took him up to the Arts and Crafts, his deportment was intelligent in the extreme. For a time he kept a wary silence and suddenly pitched upon a colour print. "That's rather nace," he said to Mrs. Walshingham. "That lill' thing. There." He always said things like that by preference to the mother rather than the daughter unless he was perfectly sure.
He quite took to Mrs. Walshingham. He was impressed by her conspicuous tact and refinement; it seemed to him that the ladylike could go no further. She was always dressed with a delicate fussiness that was never disarranged and even a sort of faded quality about her hair and face and bearing and emotions contributed to her effect. Kipps was not a big man, and commonly he did not feel a big man, but with Mrs. Walshingham he always felt enormous and distended, as though he was a navvy who had taken some disagreeable poison which puffed him up inside his skin as a preliminary to bursting. He felt, too, as though he had been rolled in clay and his hair dressed with gum. And he felt that his voice was strident and his accent like somebody swinging a crowded pig's pail in a free and careless manner. All this increased and enforced his respect for her. Her hand, which flitted often and again to his hand and arm, was singularly well shaped and cool. "Arthur," she called him from the very beginning.
She did not so much positively teach and tell him as tactfully guide and infect him. Her conversation was not so much didactic as exemplary. She would say, "I do like people to do" so and so. She would tell him anecdotes of nice things done, of gentlemanly feats of graceful consideration; she would record her neat observations of people in trains and omnibuses; how, for example, a man had passed her change to the conductor, "quite a common man he looked," but he had lifted his hat. She stamped Kipps so deeply with the hat-raising habit that he would uncover if he found himself in the same railway ticket office with a lady had to stand ceremoniously until the difficulties of change drove him to an apologetic provisional oblique resumption of his headgear.... And robbing these things of any air of personal application, she threw about them an abundant talk about her two children—she called them her Twin Jewels quite frequently—about their gifts, their temperaments, their ambition, their need of opportunity. They needed opportunity, she would say, as other people needed air....
In his conversations with her Kipps always assumed, and she seemed to assume, that she was to join that home in London Helen foreshadowed, but he was surprised one day to gather that this was not to be the case. "It wouldn't do," said Helen, with decision. "We want to make a circle of our own."
"But won't she be a bit lonely down here?" asked Kipps.
"There's the Waces, and Mrs. Prebble and Mrs. Bindon Botting and—lots of people she knows." And Helen dismissed this possibility....
Young Walshingham's share in the educational syndicate was smaller. But he shone out when they went to London on that Arts and Crafts expedition. Then this rising man of affairs showed Kipps how to buy the more theatrical weeklies for consumption in the train, how to buy and what to buy in the way of cigarettes with gold tips and shilling cigars, and how to order hock for lunch and sparkling Moselle for dinner, how to calculate the fare of a hansom cab—penny a minute while he goes—how to look intelligently at an hotel tape, and how to sit still in a train like a thoughtful man instead of talking like a fool and giving yourself away. And he, too, would glance at the good time coming when they were to be in London for good and all.
That prospect expanded and developed particulars. It presently took up a large part of Helen's conversation. Her conversations with Kipps were never of a grossly sentimental sort; there was a shyness of speech in that matter with both of them, but these new adumbrations were at least as interesting and not so directly disagreeable as the clear-cut intimations of personal defect that for a time had so greatly chastened Kipps' delight in her presence. The future presented itself with an almost perfect frankness as a joint campaign of Mrs. Walshingham's Twin Jewels upon the Great World, with Kipps in the capacity of baggage and supply. They would still be dreadfully poor, of course—this amazed Kipps, but he said nothing—until "Brudderkins" began to succeed, but if they were clever and lucky they might do a great deal.
When Helen spoke of London a brooding look, as of one who contemplates a distant country, came into her eyes. Already it seemed they had the nucleus of a set. Brudderkins was a member of the Theatrical Judges, an excellent and influential little club of journalists and literary people, and he knew Shimer and Stargate and Whiffle, of the "Red Dragon," and besides these were the Revels. They knew the Revels quite well. Sidney Revel before his rapid rise to prominence as a writer of epigrammatic essays that were quite above the ordinary public, had been an assistant master at one of the best Folkestone schools, Brudderkins had brought him home to tea several times, and it was he had first suggested Helen should try and write. "It's perfectly easy," Sidney had said. He had been writing occasional things for the evening papers, and for the weekly reviews even at that time. Then he had gone up to London and had almost unavoidedly become a dramatic critic. Those brilliant essays had followed, and then "Red Hearts a-Beating," the romance that had made him. It was a tale of spirited adventure, full of youth and beauty and naïve passion and generous devotion, bold, as the Bookman said, and frank in places, but never in the slightest degree morbid. He had met and married an American widow with quite a lot of money, and they had made a very distinct place for themselves, Kipps learnt, in the literary and artistic society of London. Helen seemed to dwell on the Revels a great deal; it was her exemplary story, and when she spoke of Sidney—she often called him Sidney—she would become thoughtful. She spoke most of him naturally because she had still to meet Mrs. Revel.... Certainly they would be in the world in no time, even if the distant connection with the Beaupres family came to nothing.
Kipps gathered that with his marriage and the movement to London they were to undergo that subtle change of name Coote had first adumbrated. They were to become "Cuyps," Mr. and Mrs. Cuyps. Or, was it Cuyp?
"It'll be rum at first," said Kipps. "I dessay I shall soon get into it."...
So in their several ways they all contributed to enlarge and refine and exercise the intelligence of Kipps. And behind all these other influences, and, as it were, presiding over and correcting these influences, was Kipps' nearest friend, Coote, a sort of master of the ceremonies. You figure his face, blowing slightly with solicitude, his slate coloured, projecting but not unkindly eye intent upon our hero. The thing he thought was going off admirably. He studied Kipps' character immensely. He would discuss him with his sister, with Mrs. Walshingham, with the freckled girl, with anyone who would stand it. "He is an interesting character," he would say, "likable—a sort of gentleman by instinct. He takes to all these things. He improves every day. He'll soon get Sang Froid. We took him up just in time. He wants now—well——. Next year, perhaps, if there is a good Extension Literature course, he might go in for it. He wants to go in for something like that."
"He's going in for his bicycle now," said Mrs. Walshingham.
"That's all right for summer," said Coote, "but he wants to go in for some serious, intellectual interest, something to take him out of himself a little more. Savoir Faire and self-forgetfulness is more than half the secret of Sang Froid."
§3
The world as Coote presented it was in part an endorsement, in part an amplification and in part a rectification of the world of Kipps, the world that derived from the old couple in New Romney and had been developed in the Emporium; the world, in fact, of common British life. There was the same subtle sense of social graduation that had moved Mrs. Kipps to prohibit intercourse with labourers' children and the same dread of anything "common" that had kept the personal quality of Mr. Shalford's establishment so high. But now a certain disagreeable doubt about Kipps' own position was removed and he stood with Coote inside the sphere of gentlemen assured. Within the sphere of gentlemen there are distinctions of rank indeed, but none of class; there are the Big People and the modest, refined, gentlemanly little people like Coote, who may even dabble in the professions and counterless trades; there are lords and magnificences, and there are gentle folk who have to manage, but they can all call on one another, they preserve a general equality of deportment throughout, they constitute that great state within the state, Society, or at any rate they make believe they do.
"But reely," said the Pupil, "not what you call being in Society?"
"Yes," said Coote. "Of course, down here one doesn't see much of it, but there's local society. It has the same rules."
"Calling and all that?"
"Precisely," said Coote.
Kipps thought, whistled a bar, and suddenly broached a question of conscience. "I often wonder," he said, "whether I oughtn't to dress for dinner—when I'm alone 'ere."
Coote protruded his lips and reflected. "Not full dress," he adjudicated; "that would be a little excessive. But you should change, you know. Put on a mess jacket and that sort of thing—easy dress. That is what I should do, certainly, if I wasn't in harness—and poor."
He coughed modestly and patted his hair behind.
And after that the washing bill of Kipps quadrupled, and he was to be seen at times by the bandstand with his light summer overcoat unbuttoned to give a glimpse of his nice white tie. He and Coote would be smoking the gold-tipped cigarettes young Walshingham had prescribed as chic, and appreciating the music highly. "That's—puff—a very nice bit," Kipps would say, or better, "That's nace." And at the first grunts of the loyal anthem up they stood with religiously uplifted hats. Whatever else you might call them, you could never call them disloyal.
The boundary of Society was admittedly very close to Coote and Kipps, and a leading solicitude of the true gentleman was to detect clearly those "beneath" him, and to behave towards them in a proper spirit. "It's jest there it's so 'ard for me," said Kipps. He had to cultivate a certain "distance," to acquire altogether the art of checking the presumption of bounders and old friends. It was difficult, Coote admitted. "That's what, so harkward—I mean awkward."
"I got mixed up with this lot 'ere," said Kipps.
"You could give them a hint," said Coote.
"'Ow?"
"Oh!—the occasion will suggest something."
The occasion came one early closing night when Kipps was sitting in a canopy chair near the bandstand, with his summer overcoat fully open and a new Gibus pulled slightly forward over his brow, waiting for Coote. They were to hear the band for an hour and then go down to assist Miss Coote and the freckled girl in trying over some of Beethoven's duets, if they remembered them, that is, sufficiently well. And as Kipps lounged back in his chair and occupied his mind with his favourite amusement on such evenings, which consisted chiefly in supposing that everyone about him was wondering who he was, came a rude rap at the canvas back and the voice of Pierce.
"It's nice to be a gentleman," said Pierce, and swung a penny chair into position while Buggins appeared smiling agreeably on the other side and leant upon his stick. He was smoking a common briar pipe!
Two real ladies, very fashionably dressed and sitting close at hand, glanced quickly at Pierce, and then away again, and it was evident their wonder was at an end.
"He's all right," said Buggins, removing his pipe and surveying Kipps.
"'Ello, Buggins!" said Kipps, not too cordially. "'Ow goes it?"
"All right. Holiday's next week. If you don't look out, Kipps, I shall be on the Continong before you. Eh?"
"You going t' Boologne?"
"Ra-ther. Parley vous Francey. You bet."
"I shall 'ave a bit of a run over there one of these days," said Kipps.
There came a pause. Pierce applied the top of his stick to his mouth for a space and regarded Kipps. Then he glanced at the people about them.
"I say, Kipps," he said in a distinct, loud voice, "see 'er Ladyship lately?"
Kipps perceived the audience was to be impressed, but he responded half-heartedly, "No, I 'aven't," he said.
"She was along of Sir William the other night," said Pierce, still loud and clear, "and she asked to be remembered to you."
It seemed to Kipps that one of the two ladies smiled faintly and said something to the other, and then certainly they glanced at Pierce. Kipps flushed scarlet. "Did she?" he answered.
Buggins laughed good-humouredly over his pipe.
"Sir William suffers a lot from his gout," Pierce continued unabashed.
(Buggins much amused with his pipe between his teeth.)
Kipps became aware of Coote at hand.
Coote nodded rather distantly to Pierce. "Hope I haven't kept you waiting, Kipps," he said.
"I kep' a chair for you," said Kipps and removed a guardian foot.
"But you've got your friends," said Coote.
"Oh! we don't mind," said Pierce cordially, "the more the merrier," and, "why don't you get a chair, Buggins?" Buggins shook his head in a sort of aside to Pierce and Coote coughed behind his hand.
"Been kep' late at business?" asked Pierce.
Coote turned quite pale and pretended not to hear. His eyes sought in space for a time and with a convulsive movement he recognised a distant acquaintance and raised his hat.
Pierce had also become a little pale. He addressed himself to Kipps in an undertone.
"Mr. Coote, isn't he?" he asked.
Coote addressed himself to Kipps directly and exclusively. His manner had the calm of extreme tension.
"I'm rather late," he said. "I think we ought almost to be going on now."
Kipps stood up. "That's all right," he said.
"Which way are you going?" said Pierce, standing also, and brushing some crumbs of cigarette ash from his sleeve.
For a moment Coote was breathless. "Thank you," he said, and gasped. Then he delivered the necessary blow; "I don't think we're in need of your society, you know," and turned away.
Kipps found himself falling over chairs and things in the wake of Coote, and then they were clear of the crowd.
For a space Coote said nothing; then he remarked abruptly and quite angrily for him, "I think that was awful Cheek!"
Kipps made no reply....
The whole thing was an interesting little object lesson in distance, and it stuck in the front of Kipps' mind for a long time. He had particularly vivid the face of Pierce, with an expression between astonishment and anger. He felt as though he had struck Pierce in the face under circumstances that gave Pierce no power to reply. He did not attend very much to the duets and even forgot at the end of one of them to say how perfectly lovely it was.