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

able to do for him something he very much wanted done.

‘Companionship accounts for so much,’ said Coote.

‘That’s jest it,’ said Kipps. ‘Of course, you know, in my new position—That’s just the difficulty.’

He plunged boldly at his most secret trouble. He knew that he wanted refinement—culture. It was all very well—but he knew. But how was one to get it? He knew no one, knew no people—He rested on the broken sentence. The shop chaps were all very well, very good chaps and all that, but not what one wanted. ‘I feel be’ind,’ said Kipps. ‘I feel out of it. And consequently I feel it’s no good. And then if temptation comes along—’

‘Exactly,’ said Coote.

Kipps spoke of his respect for Miss Walshingham and her freckled friend. He contrived not to look too selfconscious. ‘You know, I’d like to talk to people like that, but I can’t. A chap’s afraid of giving himself away.’

‘Of course,’ said Coote, ‘of course.’

‘I went to a middle-class school, you know. You mustn’t fancy I’m one of these here board-school chaps, but you know it reely wasn’t a first-class affair. Leastways he didn’t take pains with us. If you didn’t want to learn you needn’t. I don’t believe it was much better than one of these here national schools. We wore mortar-boards, o’ course. But what’s that?

‘I’m a regular fish out of water with this money. When I got it —it’s a week ago—reely I thought I’d got everything I wanted. But I dunno what to do.’

His voice went up into a squeak. ‘Practically,’ he said, ‘it’s no good shuttin’ my eyes to things—I’m a gentleman.’

Coote indicated a serious assent.

‘And there’s the responsibilities of a gentleman,’ he remarked.

‘That’s jest it,’ said Kipps.

‘There’s calling on people,’ said Kipps. ‘If you want to go on knowing Someone you knew before, like. People that’s refined.’ He laughed nervously. ‘I’m a regular fish out of water,’ he said, with expectant eyes on Coote.

But Coote only nodded for him to go on.

‘This actor chap,’ he meditated, ‘is a good sort of chap. But ‘e isn’t what I call a gentleman. I got to ‘old myself in with ‘im. ‘E’d make me go it wild in no time. ‘E’s pretty near the on’y chap I know. Except the shop chaps. They’ve come round to ‘ave supper once already and a bit of a sing-song afterwards. I sang. I got a banjo, you know, and I vamp a bit. Vamping—you know. Haven’t got far in the book—‘Ow to Vamp—but still I’m getting on. Jolly, of course, in a way, but what does it lead to?… Besides that, there’s my aunt and uncle. They’re very good old people—very—jest a bit interfering p’r’aps, and thinking one isn’t grown up, but Right enough. Only—It isn’t what I want. I feel I’ve got be’ind with everything. I want to make it up again. I want to get with educated people who know ‘ow to do things—in the regular proper way.’

His beautiful modesty awakened nothing but benevolence in the mind of Chester Coote.

‘If I had some one like you,’ said Kipps, ‘that I knew regular like—’

From that point their course ran swift and easy. ‘If I could be of any use to you,’ said Coote…

‘But you’re so busy, and all that.’

‘Not too busy. You know, your case is a very interesting one. It was partly that made me speak to you and draw you out. Here you are with all this money and no experience, a spirited young chap—’

That’s jest it,’ said Kipps.

‘I thought I’d see what you were made of, and I must confess I’ve rarely talked to any one that I’ve found quite so interesting as you have been—’

‘I seem able to say things to you, like, somehow,’ said Kipps.

‘I’m glad. I’m tremendously glad.’

‘I want a Friend. That’s it—straight.’

‘My dear chap, if I—’

‘Yes; but—’

‘I want a Friend too.’

‘Reely?’

‘Yes. You know, my dear Kipps—if I may call you that.’

‘Go on,’ said Kipps.

‘I’m rather a lonely dog myself. This to-night—I’ve not had any one I’ve spoken to so freely of my Work for months.’

‘No?’

‘Yes. And, my dear chap, if I can do anything to guide or help you—’

Coote displayed all his teeth in a kindly tremulous smile, and his eyes were shiny. ‘Shake ‘ands,’ said Kipps, deeply moved; and he and Coote rose and clasped with mutual emotion.

‘It’s reely too good of you,’ said Kipps.

‘Whatever I can do I will,’ said Coote.

And so their compact was made. From that moment they were friends—intimate, confidential, high-thinking sotto-voce friends. All the rest of their talk (and it inclined to be interminable) was an expansion of that. For that night Kipps wallowed in self-abandonment, and Coote behaved as one who had received a great trust. That sinister passion for pedagogy to which the Good-Intentioned are so fatally liable, that passion of infinite presumption that permits one weak human being to arrogate the direction of another weak human being’s affairs, had Coote in its grip. He was to be a sort of lay confessor and director of Kipps; he was to help Kipps in a thousand ways; he was, in fact, to chaperon Kipps into the higher and better sort of English life. He was to tell him his faults, advise him about the right thing to do—

‘It’s all these things I don’t know,’ said Kipps. ‘I don’t know, for instance, what’s the right sort of dress to wear—I don’t even know if I’m dressed right now—’

‘All these things’—Coote stuck out his lips and nodded rapidly to show he understood—‘trust me for that,’ he said; ‘trust me.’

As the evening wore on Coote’s manner changed, became more and more the manner of a proprietor. He began to take up his role, to survey Kipps with a new, with a critical affection. It was evident the thing fell in with his ideas. ‘It will be awfully interesting,’ he said. ‘You know, Kipps, you’re really good stuff.’ (Every sentence now he said ‘Kipps,’ or ‘my dear Kipps,’ with a curiously authoritative intonation.)

‘I know,’ said Kipps, ‘only there’s such a lot of things I don’t seem to be up to some’ow. That’s where the trouble comes in.’

They talked and talked, and now Kipps was talking freely. They rambled over all sorts of things. Among others Kipps’ character was dealt with at length. Kipps gave valuable lights on it. ‘When I’m reely excited,’ he said, ‘I don’t seem to care what I do. I’m like that.’ And again, ‘I don’t like to do anything under’and. I must speak out—’

He picked a piece of cotton from his knee, the fire grimaced behind his back, and his shadow on the wall and ceiling was disrespectfully convulsed.

3

Kipps went to bed at last with an impression of important things settled, and he lay awake for quite a long time. He felt he was lucky. He had known—in fact Buggins and Carshot and Pearce had made it very clear indeed—that his status in life had changed, and that stupendous adaptations had to be achieved; but how they were to be effected had driven that adaptation into the incredible. Here, in the simplest, easiest way, was the adapter. The thing had become possible. Not, of course, easy, but possible.

There was much to learn, sheer intellectual toil, methods of address, bowing, an enormous complexity of laws. One broken, you are an outcast. How, for example, would one encounter Lady Punnet? It was quite possible some day he might really have to do that. Coote might introduce him. ‘Lord!’ he said aloud to the darkness between grinning and dismay. He figured himself going into the Emporium, to buy a tie, for example, and there in the face of Buggins, Carshot, Pearce, and the rest of them, meeting ‘my friend, Lady Punnet!’ It might not end with Lady Punnet! His imagination plunged and bolted with him, galloped, took wings, and soared to romantic, to poetical altitudes—

Suppose some day one met Royalty. By accident, say! He soared to that! After all—twelve hundred a year is a lift, a tremendous lift. How did one address Royalty? ‘Your Majesty’s Goodness’ it would be, no doubt—something like that—and on the knees. He became impersonal. Over a thousand a year made him an Esquire, didn’t it? He thought that was it. In which case, wouldn’t he have to be presented at court? Velvet breeches, like you wear cycling, and a sword! What a curious place a court must be! Kneeling and bowing; and what was it Miss Mergle used to talk about? Of course!—ladies with long trains walking about backward. Everybody walked about backward at court, he knew, when not actually on their knees. Perhaps, though, some people regular stood up to the King! Talked to him, just as one might talk to Buggins, say. Cheek, of course! Dukes, it might be, did that—by permission? Millionaires?…

From such thoughts this free citizen of our Crowned Republic passed insensibly into dreams—turgid dreams of that vast ascent which constitutes the true-born Briton’s social scheme, which terminates with retrogressive progression and a bending back.

4

The next morning he came down to breakfast looking grave —a man with much before him in the world.

Kipps made a very special thing of his breakfast. Daily once hopeless dreams came true then. It had been customary in the Emporium to supplement Shalford’s generous, indeed unlimited, supply of bread and butter-substitute by private purchases, and this had given Kipps very broad artistic conceptions of what the meal might be. Now there would be a cutlet or so or a mutton chop—this splendour Buggins had reported from the great London clubs—haddock, kipper, whiting, or fish-balls, eggs, boiled or scrambled, or eggs and bacon, kidney also frequently, and sometimes liver. Amidst a garland of such themes, sausages, black and white puddings, bubble-and-squeak, fried cabbage and scallops, came and went. Always as camp followers came potted meat in all varieties, cold bacon, German sausage, brawn, marmalade, and two sorts of jam; and when he had finished these he would sit among his plates and smoke a cigarette, and look at all these dishes crowded round him with beatific approval. It was his principal meal. He was sitting with his cigarette regarding his apartment with the complacency begotten of a generous plan of feeding successfully realised, when newspapers and post arrived.

There were several things by the post, tradesmen’s circulars and cards, and two pathetic begging letters—his luck had got into the papers—and there was a letter from a literary man and a book to enforce his request for 10s. to put down Socialism. The book made it very clear that prompt action on the part of property owners was becoming urgent, if property was to last out the year. Kipps dipped in it, and was seriously perturbed. And there was a letter from old Kipps, saying it was difficult to leave the shop and come over and see him again just yet, but that he had been to a sale at Lydd the previous day, and bought a few good old books and things it would be difficult to find the equal of in Folkestone. ‘They don’t know the value of these things out here,’ wrote old Kipps, ‘but you may depend upon it they are valuable,’ and a brief financial statement followed. ‘There is an engraving some one might come along and offer you a lot of money for one of these days. Depend upon it, these old things are about the best investment you could make…’

Old Kipps had long been addicted to sales, and his nephew’s good fortune had converted what had once been but a looking and a craving—he had rarely even bid for anything in the old days, except the garden tools or the kitchen gallipots or things