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

fascinated glare at Mrs. Botting to the immediate facts of dinner.

‘—whether anagrams might not have offended the good domestic’s Moral Code—you never can tell. We made inquiries. No. No. No. She must go, and that’s all!’

‘One perceives,’ said Revel, ‘in these disorders, dimly and distantly, the last dying glow of the age of Romance. Let us suppose, Mrs. Botting, let us at least try to suppose—it is Love.’

Kipps clattered with his knife and fork.

‘It’s love,’ said Mrs. Botting; what else can it be? Beneath the orderly humdrum of our lives these romances are going on, until at last they bust up and give Notice and upset our humdrum altogether. Some fatal, wonderful soldier—’

‘The passions of the common or house-domestic—’ began Revel, and recovered possession of the table.

Upon the troubled disorder of Kipps’ table manners, there had supervened a quietness, an unusual calm. For once in his life he had distinctly made up his mind on his own account. He listened no more to Revel. He put down his knife and fork and refused everything that followed. Coote regarded him with tactful concern and Helen flushed a little.

4

About half-past nine that night there came a violent pull at the bell of Mrs. Bindon Botting, and a young man in a dress-suit and a gibus and other marks of exalted social position stood without. Athwart his white expanse of breast lay a ruddy bar of patterned silk that gave him a singular distinction and minimised the glow of a few small stains of Burgundy. His gibus was thrust back, and exposed a disorder of hair that suggested a reckless desperation. He had, in fact, burnt his boats and refused to join the ladies. Coote, in the subsequent conversation, had protested quietly, ‘You’re going on all right, you know,’ to which Kipps had answered he didn’t care a ‘Eng’ about that, and so, after a brief tussle with Walshingham’s detaining arm, had got away. ‘I got something to do,’ he said. ”Ome.’ And here he was—panting an extraordinary resolve. The door opened, revealing the pleasantly furnished hall of Mrs. Bindon Botting, lit by rose-tinted lights, and in the centre of the picture, neat and pretty in black and white, stood Ann. At the sight of Kipps her colour vanished.

‘Ann,’ said Kipps, ‘ I want to speak to you. I got something to say to you right away. See? I’m—’

‘This ain’t the door to speak to me at,’ said Ann.

‘But, Ann! It’s something special.’

‘You spoke enough,’ said Ann.

‘Ann!’

‘Besides, that’s my door, down there. Basement. If I was caught talking at this door—!’

‘But, Ann, I’m—’

‘Basement after nine. Them’s my hours. I’m a servant, and likely to keep one. If you’re calling here, what name, please? But you got your friends and I got mine, and you mustn’t go talking to me.’

‘But, Ann, I want to ask you—’

Some one appeared in the hall behind Ann. ‘Not here,’ said Ann. ‘Don’t know any one of that name,’ and incontinently slammed the door in his face.

‘What was that, Ann?’ said Mrs. Bindon Botting’s invalid aunt.

‘Ge’m a little intoxicated, Ma’am—asking for the wrong name, Ma’am.’

‘What name did he want?’ asked the lady doubtfully.

‘No name that we know, Ma’am’ said Ann, hustling along the hall towards the kitchen stairs.

‘I hope you weren’t too short with him, Ann.’

‘No shorter than he deserved, considering ‘ow he be’aved,’ said Ann, with her bosom heaving.

And Mrs. Bindon Botting’s invalid aunt, perceiving suddenly that this call had some relation to Ann’s private and sentimental trouble, turned, after one moment of hesitating scrutiny, away.

She was an extremely sympathetic lady was Mrs. Bindon Botting’s invalid aunt; she look an interest in the servants, imposed piety, extorted confessions and followed human nature, blushing and lying defensively to its reluctantly revealed recesses; but Ann’s sense of privacy was strong, and her manner, under drawing-out and encouragement, sometimes even alarming…

So the poor old lady went upstairs again.

5

The basement door opened, and Kipps came into the kitchen. He was flushed and panting.

He struggled for speech.

”Ere,’ he said, and held out two half-sixpences.

Ann stood behind the kitchen table—face pale and eyes round, and now—and it simplified Kipps very much—he could see she had indeed been crying.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘Don’t you see?’

Ann moved her head slightly.

‘I kep’ it all these years.’

‘You kep’ it too long.’

His mouth closed and his flush died away. He looked at her. The amulet, it seemed, had failed to work.

‘Ann!’ he said.

‘Well?’

‘Ann.’

The conversation still hung fire.

‘Ann,’ he said; made a movement with his hands that suggested appeal and advanced a step.

Ann shook her head more definitely, and became defensive.

‘Look here, Ann,’ said Kipps. ‘I been a fool.’

They stared into each other’s miserable eyes.

‘Ann,’ he said. ‘I want to marry you.’

Ann clutched the table edge. ‘You can’t,’ she said faintly.

He made as if to approach her round the table, and she took a step that restored their distance.

‘I must,’ he said.

‘You can’t.’

‘I must. You got to marry me, Ann.’

‘You can’t go marrying everybody. You got to marry ‘er.’

‘I shan’t.’

Ann shook her head. ‘You’re engaged to that girl. Lady, rather. You can’t be engaged to me.’

‘I don’t want to be engaged to you. I been engaged. I want to be married to you. See? Right away.’

Ann turned a shade paler. ‘But what d’you mean?’ she asked.

‘Come right off to London and marry me. Now.’

‘What d’you mean?’

Kipps became extremely lucid and earnest.

‘I mean, come right off and marry me now before any one else can. See?’

‘In London?’

‘In London.’

They stared at one another again. They took things for granted in the most amazing way.

‘I couldn’t,’ said Ann. ‘For one thing, my month’s not up for mor’n free weeks yet.’

They hung before that for a moment as though it was insurmountable.

‘Look ‘ere, Ann! Arst to go. Arst to go!”

‘She wouldn’t,’ said Ann.

‘Then come without arsting,’ said Kipps.

‘She’d keep my box—’

‘She won’t.’

‘She will.’

‘She won’t.’

‘You don’t know ‘er.’

‘Well, desh ‘er—let ‘er! LET ‘ER! Who cares? I’ll buy you a ‘undred boxes if you’ll come.’

‘It wouldn’t be right towards Her.’

‘It isn’t Her you got to think about, Ann. It’s me.’

‘And you ‘aven’t treated me properly,’ she said. ‘You ‘aven’t treated me properly, Artie. You didn’t ought to ‘ave—’

‘I didn’t say I ‘ad,’ he interrupted, ‘did I? Ann,’ he appealed, ‘I didn’t come to arguefy. I’m all wrong. I never said I wasn’t. It’s yes or no. Me or not… I been a fool. There! See? I been a fool. Ain’t that enough? I got myself all tied up with every one and made a fool of myself all round…’

He pleaded, ‘It isn’t as if we didn’t care for one another, Ann.’

She seemed impassive, and he resumed his discourse.

‘I thought I wasn’t likely ever to see you again, Ann. I reely did. It isn’t as though I was seein’ you all the time. I didn’t know what I wanted, and I went and be’aved like a fool—jest as any one might. I know what I want, and I know what I don’t want now.

‘Ann!’

‘Well?’

‘Will you come?… Will you come?…’

Silence.

‘If you don’t answer me, Ann— I’m desprit—if you don’t answer me now, if you don’t say you’ll come, I’ll go right out now—’

He turned doorward passionately as he spoke, with his threat incomplete.

‘I’ll go,’ he said. ‘I ‘aven’t a friend in the world! I been and throwed everything away. I don’t know why I done things and why I ‘aven’t. All I know is I can’t stand nothing in the world any more.’ He choked. ‘The pier,’ he said.

He fumbled with the door-latch, grumbling some inarticulate self-pity, as if he sought a handle, and then he had it open.

Clearly he was going.

‘Artie!‘said Ann sharply.

He turned about, and the two hung white and tense.

‘I’ll do it,’ said Ann.

His face began to work, he shut the door and came a step back to her, staring; his face became pitiful, and then suddenly they moved together. ‘Artie!’ she cried, ‘don’t go!’ and held out her arms, weeping. They clung close to one another…

‘Oh, I been so mis’bel!’ cried Kipps, clinging to his lifebuoy; and suddenly his emotion, having no further serious work in hand, burst its way to a loud boohoo! His fashionable and expensive gibus flopped off, and fell and rolled and lay neglected on the floor.

‘I been so mis’bel,’ said Kipps, giving himself vent, ‘Oh, I been so mis’bel, Ann!’

‘Be quiet,’ said Ann, holding his poor blubbering head tightly to her heaving shoulder, herself all a-quiver; ‘be quiet. She’s there! Listenin’. She’ll ‘ear you, Artie, on the stairs…’

6

Ann’s last words when, an hour later, they parted—Mrs. and Miss Bindon Botting having returned very audibly upstairs— deserve a section to themselves.

‘I wouldn’t do this for every one, mind you,’ whispered Ann.