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

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 judicially.

‘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 ring?’

‘Something nace. They’ll show you in the shop.’

‘O’ course. I s’pose I got to take it to ‘er, eh? Put it on ‘er 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. Tomorrow, 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, frockcoated on occasions of ceremony, the familiar acquaintance of Lady Punnet, the recognised wooer of a distant connection of the Earl of Beaupr��s.

Something like awe at the magnitude of his own fortunes 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-buried seed, as it were, of these glories. He resolved the engagement ring should be of impressively 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 taime,’ 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 altered voice, ‘you’ll ‘ave to ‘elp me about the wedding.’

‘Only too happy!’ said Coote.

‘O’ course,’ said Kipps. ‘I didn’t think—’ He changed his line of thought. ‘Coote,’ he asked, ‘wot’s a ‘tate-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, or meet during any part of the day. That don’t leave much time for meeting, does it?’

‘The book says that?’ asked Coote.

‘I jest learn it by ‘eart before you came. I thought that was a bit rum, but I ‘spose it’s all right.’

‘You won’t find Mrs. 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 text-book with a studious expression. He paused for a moment at 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 frockcoat; his boots were patent leather, and his trousers a dark gray. He had generous white cuffs with gold links, and his gray gloves, one thumb of 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 newly recovered 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 exclaimed, ‘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 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’ week-day 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 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 bamboo 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 got through 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 so 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 towards 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 round 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 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 that 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 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 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 lesson or 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