Kipps - H. G. Wells (best books to read non fiction .txt) 📗

a big windfall,’ said Coote presently. ‘It yields you an income—?’

‘Twelve ‘undred a year,’ said Kipps. ‘Bit over—if anything.’

‘Do you think of living in Folkestone?’

‘Don’t know ‘ardly yet. I may. Then again, I may not. I got a furnished ‘ouse, but I may let it.’

‘Your plans are undecided?’

‘That’s jest it,’ said Kipps.

‘Very beautiful sunset it was to-night,’ said Coote, and Kipps said, ‘Wasn’t it?’ and they began to talk of the merits of sunsets. Did Kipps paint? Not since he was a boy. He didn’t believe he could now. Coote said his sister was a painter, and Kipps received this intimation with respect. Coote sometimes wished he could find time to paint himself, but one couldn’t do everything, and Kipps said that was ‘jest it.’

They came out presently upon the end of the Leas, and looked down to where the squat, dark masses of the harbour and harbour station, gemmed with pin-point lights, crouched against the twilight gray of the sea. ‘If one could do that,’ said Coote; and Kipps was inspired to throw his head back, cock it on one side, regard the harbour with one eye shut, and say that it would take some doing. Then Coote said something about ‘Abend,’ which Kipps judged to be in a foreign language, and got over by lighting another cigarette from his by no means completed first one. ‘You’re right—puff, puff.’

He felt that so far he had held up his end of the conversation in a very creditable manner, but that extreme discretion was advisable.

They turned away, and Coote remarked that the sea was good for crossing, and asked Kipps if he had been over the water very much. Kipps said he hadn’t been—‘much,’ but he thought very likely he’d have a run over to Boulogne soon; and Coote proceeded to talk of the charms of foreign travel, mentioning quite a number of unheard-of places by name. He had been to them! Kipps remained on the defensive, but behind his defences his heart sank. It was all very well to pretend, but presently it was bound to come out. He didn’t know anything of all this—

So they drew near the house. At his own gate Kipps became extremely nervous. It was a fine impressive door. He knocked neither a single knock nor a double but about one and a half— an apologetic half. They were admitted by an irreproachable housemaid with a steady eye, before which Kipps cringed dreadfully. He hung up his hat and fell about over hall chairs and things. ‘There’s a fire in the study, Mary?’ he had the audacity to ask, though evidently he knew, and led the way upstairs panting. He tried to shut the door and discovered the housemaid behind him coming to light his lamp. This enfeebled him further. He said nothing until the door closed behind her. Meanwhile to show his sang-froid, he hummed and flitted towards the window and here and there.

Coote went to the big hearthrug and turned and surveyed his host. His hand went to the back of his head and patted his occiput—a gesture frequent with him.

”Ere we are,’ said Kipps, hands in his pockets, and glancing round him.

It was a gaunt, Victorian room, with a heavy, dirty cornice, and the ceiling enriched by the radiant plaster ornament of an obliterated gas chandelier. It held two large glass-fronted bookcases, one of which was surmounted by a stuffed terrier encased in glass. There was a mirror over the mantel, and hangings and curtains of magnificent crimson patternings. On the mantel were a huge black clock of classical design, vases in the Burslem Etruscan style, spills, and toothpicks in large receptacles of carved rock, large lava ash-trays, and an exceptionally big box of matches. The fender was very great and brassy. In a favourable position under the window was a spacious rosewood writing-desk, and all the chairs and other furniture were of rosewood and well stuffed.

‘This,’ said Kipps, in something near an undertone, ‘was the o’ gentleman’s study—my grandfather that was. ‘E used to sit at that desk and write.’

‘Books?’

‘No. Letters to the Times and things like that. ‘E’s got ‘em all cut out—stuck in a book… Leastways he ‘ad. It’s in that bookcase… Won’t you sit down?’

Coote did, blowing very slightly, and Kipps secured his vacated position on the extensive black-skin rug. He spread out his legs compass fashion, and tried to appear at his ease. The rug, the fender, the mantel, and mirror, conspired with great success to make him look a trivial and intrusive little creature amidst their commonplace hauteur, and his own shadow on the opposite wall seemed to think everything a great lark, and mocked and made tremendous fun of him — .

2

For a space Kipps played a defensive game, and Coote drew the lines of the conversation. They kept away from the theme of Kipps’ change of fortune, and Coote made remarks upon local and social affairs. ‘You must take an interest in these things now,’ was as much as he said in the way of personalities. But it speedily became evident that he was a person of wide and commanding social relationships. He spoke of ‘society’ being mixed in the neighbourhood, and of the difficulty of getting people to work together and ‘do’ things; they were cliquish. Incidentally he alluded quite familiarly to men with military titles and once even to some one with a title, a Lady Punnet.

Not snobbishly, you understand, nor deliberately, but quite in passing. He had, it appeared, talked to Lady Punnet about private theatricals! In connection with the hospitals. She had been reasonable, and he had put her right—gently, of course, but firmly. ‘If you stand up to these people,’ said Coote, ‘they like you all the better.’ It was also very evident he was at his ease with the clergy; ‘my friend Mr. Densmore—a curate, you know, and rather curious, the Reverend and Honourable.’ Coote grew visibly in Kipps’ eyes as he said these things; he became, not only the exponent of ‘Vagner or Vargner,’ the man whose sister had painted a picture to be exhibited at the Royal Academy, the type of the hidden thing called culture, but a delegate, as it were, or at least an intermediary from that great world ‘up there,’ where there were men-servants, where there were titles, where people dressed for dinner, drank wine at meals, wine costing very often as much as three and sixpence the bottle, and followed through a maze of etiquette, the most stupendous practices…

Coote sat back in the armchair smoking luxuriously and expanding pleasantly with the delightful sense of savoir faire; Kipps sat forward, his elbows on his chair arm, alert, and his head a little on one side. You figure him as looking little and cheap, and feeling smaller and cheaper amidst his new surroundings. But it was a most stimulating and interesting conversation. And soon it became less general, and more serious and intimate. Coote spoke of people who had got on, and of people who hadn’t; of people who seemed to be in everything, and people who seemed to be out of everything; and then he came round to Kipps.

‘You’ll have a good time,’ he said abruptly, with a smile that would have interested a dentist.

‘I dunno,’ said Kipps.

‘There’s mistakes, of course.’

‘That’s jest it.’

Coote lit a new cigarette. ‘One can’t help being interested in what you will do,’ he remarked. ‘Of course—for a young man of spirit, come suddenly into wealth—there’s temptations.’

‘I got to go careful,’ said Kipps. ‘O’ Bean told me that at the very first.’

Coote went on to speak of pitfalls, of Betting, of Bad Companions. ‘I know,’ said Kipps, ‘I know.’

‘There’s Doubt again,’ said Coote. ‘I know a young fellow— a solicitor—handsome, gifted. And yet, you know—utterly sceptical. Practically altogether a Sceptic.’

‘Lor!’ said Kipps, ‘not a Natheist?’

‘I fear so,’ said Coote. ‘Really, you know, an awfully fine young fellow—Gifted! But full of this dreadful Modern Spirit —Cynical! All this Overman stuff. Nietzsche and all that… I wish I could do something for him.’

‘Ah!’ said Kipps, and knocked the ash off his cigarette. ‘I know a chap—one of our apprentices he was—once. Always scoffing… He lef.’

He paused. ‘Never wrote for his refs,’ he said, in the deep tone proper to a moral tragedy; and then, after a pause, ‘Enlisted!’

‘Ah!’ said Coote.

‘And often,’ he said, after a pause, ‘it’s just the most spirited chaps, just the chaps one likes best, who Go Wrong.’

‘It’s temptation,’ Kipps remarked.

He glanced at Coote, leant forward, knocked the ash from his cigarette into the mighty fender. ‘That’s jest it,’ he said, ‘you get tempted. Before you know where you are.’

‘Modern life,’ said Coote, ‘is so—complex. It isn’t every one is Strong. Half the young fellows who go wrong aren’t really bad.’

‘That’s jest it,’ said Kipps.

‘One gets a tone from one’s surroundings—’

‘That’s exactly it,’ said Kipps.

He meditated. ‘I picked up with a chap,’ he said. ‘A Nacter. Leastways, he writes plays. Clever feller. But—’

He implied extensive moral obloquy by a movement of his head. ‘Of course it’s seeing life,’ he added.

Coote pretended to understand the full implications of Kipps’ remark. ‘Is it worth it?’ he asked.

‘That’s jest it,’ said Kipps.

He decided to give some more. ‘One gets talking,’ he said. Then it’s ”Ave a drink!’ Old Methuselah three stars—and where are you? ‘I been drunk,’ he said, in a tone of profound humility, and added, ‘lots of times.’

‘Tt—tt,’ said Coote.

‘Dozens of times,’ said Kipps, smiling sadly; and added, ‘lately.’

His imagination became active and seductive. ‘One thing leads to another. Cards, p’raps. Girls—’

‘I know,’ said Coote, ‘I know.’

Kipps regarded the fire, and flushed slightly. He borrowed a sentence that Chitterlow had recently used. ‘One can’t tell tales out of school,’ he said.

‘I can imagine it,’ said Coote.

Kipps looked with a confidential expression into Coote’s face. ‘It was bad enough when money was limited,’ he remarked. ‘But now’—he spoke with raised eyebrows—‘I got to steady down.’

‘You must’ said Coote, protruding his lips into a sort of whistling concern for a moment.

‘I must,’ said Kipps, nodding his head slowly, with raised eyebrows. He looked at his cigarette end and threw it into the fender. He was beginning to think he was holding his own in this conversation rather well after all.

Kipps was never a good liar. He was the first to break silence. ‘I don’t mean to say I been reely bad or reely bad drunk. A ‘eadache, perhaps—three or four times, say. But there it is!’

‘I have never tasted alcohol in my life,’ said Coote, with an immense frankness, ‘never!’

‘No?’

‘Never. I don’t feel I should be likely to get drunk at all— it isn’t that. And I don’t go so far as to say even that in small quantities—at meals—it does one harm. But if I take it, some one else who doesn’t know where to stop—you see?’

‘That’s jest it,’ said Kipps, with admiring eyes.

‘I smoke,’ admitted Coote. ‘One doesn’t want to be a Pharisee.’

It struck Kipps what a tremendously Good chap this Coote was, not only tremendously clever and educated and a gentleman, and one knowing Lady Punnet, but Good. He seemed to be giving all his time and thought to doing good things to other people. A great desire to confide certain things to him arose. At first Kipps hesitated whether he should confide an equal desire for Benevolent activities or for further Depravity —either was in his mind. He rather affected the pose of the Good Intentioned Dog. Then suddenly his impulses took quite a different turn—fell, indeed, into what was a far more serious rut in his mind. It seemed to him Coote might be