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

over, and it was chiefly present to him that he was never to go to school again. It was high summer. The ‘breaking up’ of school had been hilarious; and the excellent maxim, ‘Last Day’s Pay Day,’ had been observed by him with a scrupulous attention to his honour. He had punched the heads of all his enemies, wrung wrists and kicked shins; he had distributed all his unfinished copy-books, all his school books, his collection of marbles, and his mortar-board cap among such as loved him; and he had secretly written in obscure pages of their books ‘remember Art Kipps.’ He had also split the anaemic Woodrow’s cane, carved his own name deeply in several places about the premises, and broken the scullery window. He had told everybody so often that he was to learn to be a sea captain, that he had come almost to believe the thing himself. And now he was home, and school was at an end for him for evermore.

He was up before six on the day of his return, and out in the hot sunlight of the yard. He set himself to whistle a peculiarly penetrating arrangement of three notes, supposed by the boys of the Hastings Academy and himself and Sid Pornick, for no earthly reason whatever, to be the original Huron war-cry. As he did this he feigned not to be doing it, because of the hatred between his uncle and the Pornicks, but to be examining with respect and admiration a new wing of the dustbin recently erected by his uncle — a pretence that would not have deceived a nestling tom-tit.

Presently there came a familiar echo from the Pornick hunting-ground. Then Kipps began to sing, ‘Ar pars eight tra-la, in the lane be’ind the church.’ To which an unseen person answered, ‘Ar pars eight it is, in the lane be’ind the church.’ The ‘tra-la’ was considered to render the sentence incomprehensible to the uninitiated. In order to conceal their operations still more securely, both parties to this duet then gave vent to a vocalisation of the Huron war-cry again, and after a lingering repetition of the last and shrillest note, dispersed severally, as became boys in the enjoyment of holidays, to light the house fires for the day.

Half-past eight found Kipps sitting on the sunlit gate at the top of the long lane that runs towards the sea, clashing his boots in a slow rhythm, and whistling with great violence all that he knew of an excruciatingly pathetic air. There appeared along by the churchyard wall a girl in a short frock, brown-haired, quick-coloured, and with dark blue eyes. She had grown so that she was a little taller than Kipps, and her colour had improved. He scarcely remembered her, so changed was she since last holidays — if, indeed, he had seen her during his last holidays, a thing he could not clearly recollect.

Some vague emotion arose at the sight of her. He stopped whistling and regarded her, oddly tongue-tied.

‘He can’t come,’ said Ann, advancing boldly. ‘Not yet.’

‘What — not Sid?’

‘No. Father’s made him dust all his boxes again.’

‘What for?’

‘I dunno. Father’s in a stew’s morning.’

‘Oh!’

Pause. Kipps looked at her, and then was unable to look at her again. She regarded him with interest. ‘You left school?’ she remarked, after a pause.

‘Yes.’

‘So’s Sid.’

The conversation languished. Ann put her hands on the top of the gate, and began a stationary hopping, a sort of ineffectual gymnastic experiment.

‘Can you run?’ she said presently.

‘Run you any day,’ said Kipps.

‘Gimme a start?’

‘Where for?’ said Kipps.

Ann considered, and indicated a tree. She walked towards it and turned. ‘Gimme to here?’ she called. Kipps, standing now and touching the gate, smiled to express conscious superiority. ‘Farther!’ he said.

‘Here?’

‘Bit more!’ said Kipps; and then, repenting of his magnanimity, said ‘Orf!’ suddenly, and so recovered his lost concession.

They arrived abreast at the tree, flushed and out of breath. ‘Tie!’ said Ann, throwing her hair back from her face with her hand. ‘I won,’ panted Kipps. They disputed firmly, but quite politely. ‘Run it again then,’ said Kipps.’ I don’t mind.’

They returned towards the gate.

‘You don’t run bad,’ said Kipps, temperately, expressing sincere admiration. ‘I’m pretty good, you know.’

Ann sent her hair back by an expert toss of the head. ‘You give me a start,’ she allowed.

They became aware of Sid approaching them. ‘You better look out, young Ann’, said Sid, with that irreverent want of sympathy usual in brothers. ‘You have been out nearly ‘arf-‘ our. Nothing ain’t been done upstairs. Father said he didn’t know where you was, but when he did he’d warm y’r young ear.’

Ann prepared to go.

‘How about that race?’ asked Kipps.

‘Lor!’ cried Sid, quite shocked. ‘You ain’t been racing her!’

Ann swung herself round the end to the gate with her eyes on Kipps, and then turned away suddenly and ran off down the lane. Kipps’ eyes tried to go after her, and came back to Sid’s.

‘I give her a lot of start,’ said Kipps apologetically. ‘It wasn’t a proper race.’ And so the subject was dismissed. But Kipps was distrait for some seconds perhaps, and the mischief had begun in him.

4

They proceeded to the question of how two accomplished Hurons might most satisfactorily spend the morning. Manifestly their line lay straight along the lane to the sea. ‘There’s a new wreck,’ said Sid, ‘and my!—don’t it stink just!’

‘Stink?’

‘Fair make you sick. It’s rotten wheat.’

They fell to talking of wrecks, and so came to ironclads and wars and suchlike manly matters. Half-way to the wreck Kipps made a casual, irrelevant remark.

‘Your sister ain’t a bad sort,’ he said off-handedly.

‘I clout her a lot,’ said Sidney modestly; and, after a pause, the talk reverted to more suitable topics.

The new wreck was full of rotting grain, and stank abominably, even as Sid had said. This was excellent. They had it all to themselves. They took possession of it in force, at Sid’s suggestion, and had speedily to defend it against enormous numbers of imaginary ‘natives,’ who were at last driven off by loud shouts of bang bang, and vigorous thrusting and shoving of sticks. Then, also at Sid’s direction, they sailed with it into the midst of a combined French, German, and Russian fleet, demolishing the combination unassisted, and having descended to the beach, clambered up the side and cut out their own vessel in brilliant style; they underwent a magnificent shipwreck (with vocalised thunder) and floated ‘waterlogged’—so Sid insisted—upon an exhausted sea.

These things drove Ann out of mind for a time. But at last, as they drifted without food or water upon a stagnant ocean, haggard-eyed, chins between their hands, looking in vain for a sail, she came to mind again abruptly.

‘It’s rather nice ‘aving sisters,’ remarked one perishing mariner.

Sid turned round and regarded him thoughtfully.

‘Not it!’ he said.

‘No?’

‘Not a bit of it.’

He grinned confidentially. ‘Know too much,’ he said, and afterwards, ‘get out of things.’

He resumed his gloomy scrutiny of the hopeless horizon. Presently he fell spitting jerkily between his teeth, as he had read was the way with such ripe manhood as chews its quid.

‘Sisters,’ he said, ‘is rot. That’s what sisters are. Girls, if you like, but sisters—No!’

‘But ain’t sisters girls?’

‘N-eaow!’ said Sid, with unspeakable scorn; and Kipps answered, ‘Of course, I didn’t mean—I wasn’t thinking of that.’

‘You got a girl?’ asked Sid, spitting very cleverly again.

Kipps admitted his deficiency. He felt compunction.

‘You don’t know who my girl is, Art Kipps, I bet.’

‘Who is, then?’ asked Kipps, still chiefly occupied by his own poverty.

‘Ah!’

Kipps let a moment elapse before he did his duty. ‘Tell us!’

Sid eyed him and hesitated.

‘Secret?’ he said.

‘Secret.’

‘Dying solemn?’

‘Dying solemn!’ Kipps’ self-concentration passed into curiosity.

Sid administered a terrible oath.

Sid adhered lovingly to his facts. ‘It begins with a Nem,’ he said, doling it out parsimoniously.

‘M-A-U-D,’ he spelt, with a stern eye on Kipps. ‘C-H-A-R-T-E-R-I-S.’

Now, Maud Charteris was a young person of eighteen and the daughter of the vicar of St. Bavon’s—besides which, she had a bicycle—so that as her name unfolded, the face of Kipps lengthened with respect. ‘Get out,’ he gasped incredulously. ‘She ain’t your girl, Sid Pornick.’

‘She is!’ answered Sid stoutly.

‘What—truth?’

‘Truth.’

Kipps scrutinised his face. ‘Reely?’

Sid touched wood, whistled, and repeated a binding doggerel with great solemnity.

Kipps still struggled with the amazing new light on the world about him. ‘D’you mean—she knows?’

Sid flushed deeply, and his aspect became stern and gloomy. He resumed his wistful scrutiny of the sunlit sea. ‘I’d die for that girl, Art Kipps,’ he said presently; and Kipps did not press a question he felt to be ill-timed. I’d do anything she asked me to do,’ said Sid; ‘just anything. If she was to ask me to chuck myself into the sea.’ He met Kipps’ eye. ‘I would,’ he said.

They were pensive for a space, and then Sid began to discourse in fragments of Love, a theme upon which Kipps had already in a furtive way meditated a little, but which, apart from badinage, he had never yet heard talked about in the light of day. Of course, many and various aspects of life had come to light in the muffled exchange of knowledge that went on under the shadow of Woodrow, but this of Sentimental Love was not among them. Sid, who was a boy with an imagination, having once broached this topic, opened his heart, or, at any rate, a new chamber of his heart, to Kipps, and found no fault with Kipps for a lack of return. He produced a thumbed novelette that had played a part in his sentimental awakening; he proffered it to Kipps, and confessed there was a character in it, a baronet, singularly like himself. This baronet was a person of volcanic passions, which he concealed beneath a demeanour of ‘icy cynicism.’ The utmost expression he permitted himself was to grit his teeth, and, now his attention was called to it, Kipps remarked that Sid also had a habit of gritting his teeth, and, indeed, had had all the morning. They read for a time, and presently Sid talked again. The conception of love, Sid made evident, was compact of devotion and much spirited fighting and a touch of mystery, but through all that cloud of talk there floated before Kipps a face that was flushed and hair that was tossed aside.

So they budded, sitting on the blackening old wreck in which men had lived and died, looking out to sea, talking of that other sea upon which they must presently embark.

They ceased to talk, and Sid read; but Kipps, falling behind with the reading, and not wishing to admit that he read slowlier than Sid, whose education was of the inferior Elementary School brand, lapsed into meditation.

‘I would like to ‘ave a girl,’ said Kipps.

‘I mean just to talk to, and all that—’

A floating sack distracted them at last from this obscure topic. They abandoned the wreck, and followed the new interest a mile along the beach, bombarding it with stones until it came to land. They had inclined to a view that it would contain romantic mysteries, but it was simply an ill-preserved kitten—too much even for them. And at last they were drawn dinner-ward, and went home hungry and pensive side by side.

5

But Kipps’ imagination had been warmed by that talk of love, and in the afternoon when he saw Ann Pornick in the High Street and said ‘Hallo!’ it was a different ‘hallo’ from that of their previous intercourse. And when they had passed they both looked back and caught each