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

by the morning’s post, and which now lay by him on the mantelshelf. He took it up, glanced at its imperfectly legible message, and put it down.

‘Delayed!’ he said scornfully. ‘Not produced in the smalls. Or is it smells ‘e says? ‘Ow can one understand that? Any’ow, ‘e’s ‘umbugging again. Somefing about the Strand. No!… Well, ‘e’s ‘ad all the money ‘e’ll ever get out of me!… I’m done.’

He seemed to find a momentary relief in the dramatic effect of his announcement. He came near to a swagger of despair upon the hearthrug, and then suddenly came and sat down next to Ann, and rested his chin on the knuckles of his two clenched hands.

‘I been a fool, Ann,’ he said in a gloomy monotone. ‘I been a brasted fool. But it’s ‘ard on us, all the same. It’s ‘ard.’

”Ow was you to know?’ said Ann.

‘ I ought to ‘ave known. I did in a sort of way know. And ‘ere we are! I wouldn’t care so much if it was myself, but it’s you, Ann! ‘Ere we are! Regular smashed up! And you—’

He checked at an unspeakable aggravation of their disaster. ‘I knew ‘e wasn’t to be depended upon, and there I left it! And you got pay… What’s to ‘appen to us all, I don’t know.’

He thrust out his chin and glared at fate.

”Ow do you know ‘e’s specklated everything?’ said Ann, after a silent survey of him.

”E ‘as,’ said Kipps, irritably, holding firm to disaster.

‘She say so?’

‘She don’t know, of course; but you depend upon it, that’s it. She told me she knew something was on, and when she found ‘im gone and a note lef for her, she knew it was up with ‘im. ‘E went by the night boat. She wrote that telegrarf off to me straight away.’

Ann surveyed his features with tender, perplexed eyes; she had never seen him so white and drawn before, and her hand rested an inch or so away from his arm. The actual loss was still, as it were, afar from her. The immediate thing was his enormous distress.

”Ow do you know—?’ she said, and stopped. It would irritate him too much.

Kipps’ imagination was going headlong.

‘Sold up!’ he emitted presently, and Ann flinched.

‘Going back to work, day after day. I can’t stand it, Ann, I can’t. And you—’

‘It don’t do to think of it,’ said Ann.

Presently he came upon a resolve. ‘I keep on thinking of it, and thinking of it, and what’s to be done, and what’s to be done. I shan’t be any good ‘ome’s’arfernoon. It keeps on going round and round in my ‘ead, and round and round. I better go for a walk or something. I’d be no comfort to you, Ann. I should want to ‘owl and ‘ammer things if I ‘ung about ‘ome. My fingers ‘r all atwitch. I shall keep on thinking ‘ow I might ‘ave stopped it, and callin’ myself a fool…’

He looked at her between pleading and shame. It seemed like deserting her.

Ann regarded him with tear-dimmed eyes.

‘You’d better do what’s good for you, Artie,’ she said… ‘I’ll be best cleaning. It’s no use sending off Gwendolen before her month, and the top room wants turning out.’ She added with a sort of grim humour, ‘May as well turn it out now while I got it.’

‘I better go for a walk,’ said Kipps…

And presently our poor, exploded Kipps was marching out to bear his sudden misery. Habit turned him up the road towards his growing house, and then suddenly he perceived his direction—‘Oh, Lor!’—and turned aside and went up the steep way to the hill-crest and the Sandling Road, and over the line by that tree-embowered Junction, and athwart the wide fields towards Postling—a little, black, marching figure—and so up the Downs and over the hills, whither he had never gone before…

2

He came back long after dark, and Ann met him in the passage.

‘Where you been, Artie?’ she asked, with a strained note in her voice.

‘I been walking and walking—trying to tire myself out. All the time I been thinking, what shall I do? Trying to fix something up, all out of nothing.’

‘I didn’t know you meant to be out all this time.’

Kipps was gripped by compunction…

‘I can’t think what we ought to do,’ he said presently.

‘You can’t do anything much, Artie, not till you hear from Mr. Bean.’

‘No. I can’t do anything much. That’s jest it. And all this time I keep feelin’ if I don’t do something the top of my ‘ead’ll bust… Been trying to make up advertisements ‘arf the time I been out—‘bout finding a place; good salesman and stockkeeper, good Manchester dresses, window-dressing—Lor! Fancy that all beginning again!… If you went to stay with Sid a bit—If I sent every penny I got to you—I dunno! I dunno!’

When they had gone to bed there was an elaborate attempt to get to sleep… In one of their great waking pauses Kipps remarked in a muffled tone, ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you, Ann, being out so late. I kep’ on walking and walking, and some ‘ow it seemed to do me good. I went out to the ‘ill-top ever so far beyond Stanford, and sat there ever so long, and it seemed to make me better. Jest looking over the marsh like, and seeing the sunset…’

‘Very likely,’ said Ann, after a long interval, ‘it isn’t so bad as you think it is, Artie.’

‘It’s bad,’ said Kipps.

‘Very likely, after all, it isn’t quite so bad. If there’s only a little—’

There came another long silence.

‘Ann,’ said Kipps, in the quiet darkness.

‘Yes,’ said Ann.

‘Ann,’ said Kipps, and stopped as though he had hastily shut a door upon speech.

‘I kep’ thinking,’ he said, trying again—‘kep’ thinking, after all, I been cross to you and a fool about things— about them cards, Ann—but’—his voice shook to pieces— ‘we ‘ave been ‘appy, Ann… some’ow… togever.’

And with that he and then she fell into a passion of weeping.

They clung very tightly together—closer than they had been since ever the first brightness of their married days turned to the gray of common life again…

All the disaster in the world could not prevent their going to sleep at last with their poor little troubled heads close together on one pillow. There was nothing more to be done; there was nothing more to be thought. Time might go on with his mischiefs, but for a little while at least they still had one another.

3

Kipps returned from his second interview with Mr. Bean in a state of strange excitement. He let himself in with his latchkey and slammed the door. ‘Ann!’ he shouted, in an unusual note; ‘Ann!’

Ann replied distantly.

‘Something to tell you,’ said Kipps; ‘something noo!’

Ann appeared apprehensive from the kitchen.

‘Ann,’ he said, going before her into the little dining-room, for his news was too dignified for the passage, ‘very likely, Ann, o’ Bean says, we shall ‘ave—’ He decided to prolong the suspense. ‘Guess!’

‘I can’t, Artie.’

‘Think of a lot of money!’

‘A ‘undred pounds p’r’aps?’

He spoke with immense deliberation. ‘Over a fousand pounds!’

Ann stared and said nothing, only went a shade whiter.

‘Over,’ he said. ‘A’most certainly over.’

He shut the dining-room door and came forward hastily, for Ann, it was clear, meant to take this mitigation of their disaster with a complete abandonment of her self-control. She came near flopping; she fell into his arms.

‘Artie,’ she got to at last, and began to weep, clinging tightly to him.

‘Pretty near certain,’ said Kipps, holding her. ‘A fousand pounds!’

‘I said, Artie,’ she wailed on his shoulder with the note of accumulated wrongs, ‘very likely it wasn’t so bad—’

‘There’s things,’ he said, when presently he came to particulars, ”e couldn’t touch. The noo place! It’s freehold and paid for, and with the bit of building on it, there’s five or six ‘undred pounds p’r’aps—say worf free ‘undred for safety.

We can’t be sold up to finish it, like we thought. O’ Bean says we can very likely sell it and get money. ‘E says you often get a chance to sell a ‘ouse lessen ‘arf done, specially free-old. Very likely, ‘e says. Then there’s Hughenden. Hughenden ‘asn’t been mortgaged not for more than ‘arf its value. There’s a ‘undred or so to be got on that, and the furniture, and the rent for the summer still coming in. ‘E says there’s very likely other things. A fousand pounds; that’s what ‘e said. ‘E said it might even be more…’

They were sitting now at the table.

‘It alters everything,’ said Ann.

‘I been thinking that, Ann, all the way ‘ome. I came in the motor-car. First ride I’ve had since the Smash. We needn’t send off Gwendolen; leastways, not till after. You know. We needn’t turn out of ‘ere—not for a long time. What we been doing for the o’ people we can go on doing a’most as much. And your mother!… I wanted to ‘oller, coming along. I pretty near run coming down the road by the Hotel.’

‘Oh, I am glad we can stop ‘ere and be comfortable a bit,’ said Ann. ‘I am glad for that.’

‘I pretty near told the driver on the motor—only ‘e was the sort won’t talk—You see, Ann, we’ll be able to start a shop, we’ll be able to get into something like. All about our ‘aving to go back to places and that—all that doesn’t matter any more.’

For a while they abandoned themselves to ejaculating transports. Then they fell talking to shape an idea to themselves of the new prospect that opened before them.

‘We must start a sort of shop,’ said Kipps, whose imagination had been working. ‘It’ll ‘ave to be a shop.’

‘Drapery?’ said Ann.

‘You want such a lot of capital for the drapery; mor’n a thousand pounds you want by a long way—to start it anything like proper.’

‘Well, outfitting. Like Buggins was going to do.’

Kipps glanced at that for a moment, because the idea had not occurred to him. Then he came back to his prepossession.

‘Well, I thought of something else, Ann,’ he said. ‘You see, I’ve always thought a little bookshop—It isn’t like drapery—‘aving to be learnt. I thought even before this Smash Up, ‘ow I’d like to ‘ave something to do, instead of always ‘aving ‘olidays always like we ‘ave been ‘aving.’

She reflected.

‘You don’t know much about books, do you, Artie?’

‘You don’t want to.’ He illustrated. ‘I noticed when we used to go to that Lib’ry at Folkestone, ladies weren’t anything like what they was in a draper’s—if you ‘aven’t got just what they want, it’s ‘Oh, no!’ and out they go. But in a bookshop it’s different. One book’s very like another—after all, what is it? Something to read and done with. It’s not a thing that matters like print dresses or serviettes—where you either like ‘em or don’t, and people judge you by. They take what you give ‘em in books and lib’ries, and glad to be told what to. See ‘ow we was—up at that lib’ry…’

He paused. ‘You see, Ann—’

‘Well, I read ‘n ‘dvertisement the other day— I been asking Mr. Bean. It said—five ‘undred pounds.’

‘What did?’

‘Branches,’ said Kipps.

Ann failed to understand. ‘It’s a sort of thing that gets up bookshops all over the country,’ said Kipps. ‘I didn’t tell you, but I arst about it a bit. On’y I dropped it again. Before this Smash, I mean. I’d thought I’d like to keep a shop for a lark, on’y then I thought it silly. Besides, it ‘ud ‘ave been beneath me.’

He blushed vividly. ‘It was a sort