KIPPS Read online

“It means,” said Chitterlow, with a momentary note of lucid exposition, “so far as I can make out, that you’re going to strike it rich. Never mind about the Waddy—that’s a detail. What does it usually mean? You’ll hear of something to your advantage—very well. I took that newspaper up to get my names by the merest chance. Directly I saw it again and read that—I knew it was you. I believe in coincidences. People say they don’t happen. I say they do. Everything’s a coincidence, seen properly. Here you are. Here’s one! Incredible? Not a bit of it! See? It’s you! Kipps! Waddy be damned! It’s a Mascot. There’s luck in my play. Bif! You’re there. I’m there. Fair in it! Snap!” And he discharged his fingers like a pistol. “Never you mind about the ‘Waddy.’”

  “Eh?” said Kipps, with a nervous eye on Chitterlow’s fingers.

  “You’re all right,” said Chitterlow; “you may bet the seat of your only breeches on that! Don’t you worry about the Waddy—that’s as clear as day. You’re about as right side up as a billiard ball—whatever you do. Don’t stand there gaping, man! Read the paper if you don’t believe me. Read it!”

  He shook it under Kipps’ nose.

  Kipps became aware of the second apprentice watching them from the shop. His air of perplexity gave place to a more confident bearing.

  “ʻ—who was born at East Grinstead.’ I certainly was born there. I’ve ’eard my aunt say—”

  “I knew it,” said Chitterlow, taking hold of one edge of the paper and bringing his face close alongside Kipps’.

  “ʻ—on September the first, eighteen hundred and seventy-eight—’”

  “That’s all right,” said Chitterlow. “It’s all, all right, and all you have to do is write to Watson and Bean and get it—”

  “Get what?”

  “Whatever it is.”

  Kipps sought his mustache. “You’d write?” he asked.

  “Rather.”

  “But what d’you think it is?”

  “That’s the fun of it!” said Chitterlow, taking three steps in some as yet uninvented dance. “That’s where the joke comes in. It may be anything—it may be a million. If so! Where does little Harry come in? Eh?”

  Kipps was trembling slightly. “But—” he said and thought. “If you was me—” he began. “About that Waddy—?”

  He glanced up and saw the second apprentice disappear with amazing swiftness from behind the goods in the window.

  “What?” asked Chitterlow, but he never had an answer.

  “Lor’! There’s the governor!” said Kipps, and made a prompt dive for the door.

  He dashed in only to discover that Shalford, with the junior apprentice in attendance, had come to mark off remnants of Kipps’ cotton dresses and was demanding him. “Hullo, Kipps,” he said, “outside—?”

  “Seein’ if the window was straight, Sir,” said Kipps.

  “Umph!” said Shalford.

  For a space, Kipps was too busily employed to think at all of Chitterlow or the crumpled bit of paper in his trouser pocket. He was, however, painfully aware of a suddenly disconcerted excitement at large in the street. There came one awful moment when Chitterlow’s nose loomed interrogatively over the ground glass of the department door, and his bright, little, red-brown eye sought for the reason of Kipps’ disappearance, and then it became evident that he saw the high light of Shalford’s baldness and grasped the situation and went away. And then Kipps (with that advertisement in his pocket) was able to come back to the business in hand.

  He became aware that Shalford had asked a question. “Yes sir, no sir, right sir. I’m sorting up zephyrs to-morrow, Sir,” said Kipps.

  Presently he had a moment to himself again, and, taking up a safe position behind a newly unpacked pile of summer lace curtains, he straightened out the piece of paper and re-perused it. It was a little perplexing. That “Arthur Waddy or Arthur Kipps”—did that imply two persons or one? He would ask Pearce or Buggins. Only—

  It had always been impressed upon him that there was something demanding secrecy about his mother.

  “Don’t you answer no questions about your mother,” his aunt had been wanting to say. “Tell them you don’t know whatever it is they ask you.”

  “Now, this—?”

  Kipps’ face became portentously careful, and he tugged at his mustache, such as it was, hard.

  He had always represented his father as being a “gentleman farmer.” “It didn’t pay,” he used to say with a picture in his own mind of a penny magazine aristocrat prematurely worn out by worry. “I’m a Norfan, both sides,” he would explain, with the air of one who had seen trouble. He said he lived with his uncle and aunt, but he did not say that they kept a toy shop, and to tell anyone that his uncle had been a butler—a servant!—would have seemed the maddest of indiscretions. Almost all the assistants in the Emporium were equally reticent and vague, so great is their horror of “Lowness” of any sort. To ask about this “Waddy or Kipps” would upset all these little fictions. He was not, as a matter of fact, perfectly clear about his real status in the world (he was not, as a matter of fact, perfectly clear about anything), but he knew that there was a quality about his status that was—detrimental.

  Under the circumstances—?

  It occurred to him that it would save a lot of trouble to destroy the advertisement there and then.

  In which case, he would have to explain to Chitterlow!

  “Eng!” said Mr. Kipps.

  “Kipps,” cried Carshot, who was shopwalking, “Kipps, Forward!”

  He thrust back the crumpled paper into his pocket and sallied forth to the customers.

  “I want,” said the customer, looking vaguely about her through glasses, “a little bit of something to cover a little stool I have. Anything would do—a remnant or anything—”

  The matter of the advertisement remained in abeyance for half an hour, and at the end, the little stool was still a candidate for covering, and Kipps had a thoroughly representative collection of the textile fabrics in his department to clear away. He was so angry about the little stool that the crumpled advertisement lay for a space in his pocket, absolutely forgotten.

  2

  Kipps sat on his tin box under the gas bracket that evening, and looked up the name Euphemia and learned what it meant in the “Enquire Within About Everything” that constituted Buggins’ reference library. He hoped Buggins, according to his habit, would ask him what he was looking for, but Buggins was busy turning out his week’s washing. “Two collars,” said Buggins, “half pair socks, two dickeys. Shirt? M’m. There ought to be another collar somewhere.”

  “Euphemia,” said Kipps at last, unable altogether to keep to himself this suspicion of a high origin that floated so delightfully about him, “Eu-phemia; it isn’t a name common people would give to a girl, is it?”

  “It isn’t the name any decent people would give to a girl,” said Buggins “—common or not.”

  “Lor’!” said Kipps. “Why?”

  “It’s giving girls names like that,” said Buggins, “that nine times out of ten makes ’em go wrong. It unsettles ’em. If ever I was to have a girl, if ever I was to have a dozen girls, I’d call ’em all Jane. Every one of ’em. You couldn’t have a better name than that. Euphemia indeed! What next? … Good Lord! … That isn’t one of my collars there, is it? under your bed …?”

  Kipps got him the collar.

  “I don’t see no great ’arm in Euphemia,” he said as he did so.

  After that, he became restless. “I’m a good mind to write that letter,” he said, and then, finding Buggins preoccupied wrapping his washing up in the “half sox,” added to himself, “a thundering good mind.”

  So he got his penny bottle of ink, borrowed the pen from Buggins and, with no very serious difficulty in spelling or composition, did as he had resolved.

  He came back into the bedroom about an hour afterward, a little out of breath and pale. “Where you been?” said Buggins, who was now reading the Daily World Manager, which
came to him in rotation from Carshot.

  “Out to post some letters,” said Kipps, hanging up his hat.

  “Crib hunting?”

  “Mostly,” said Kipps.

  “Rather,” he added, with a nervous laugh, “what else?”

  Buggins went on reading. Kipps sat on his bed and regarded the back of the Daily World Manager thoughtfully.

  “Buggins,” he said at last.

  Buggins lowered his paper and looked.

  “I say, Buggins, what do these here advertisements mean that say so-and-so will hear of something greatly to his advantage?”

  “Missin’ people,” said Buggins, making to resume reading.

  “How d’yer mean?” asked Kipps. “Money left and that sort of thing?”

  Buggins shook his head. “Debts,” he said, “more often than not.”

  “But that ain’t to his advantage.”

  “They put that to get ’old of ’em,” said Buggins. “Often, it’s wives.”

  “What you mean?”

  “Deserted wives, try and get their husbands back that way.”

  “I suppose it is legacies sometimes, eh? Perhaps if someone was left a hundred pounds by someone—”

  “Hardly ever,” said Buggins.

  “Well, ’ow—?” began Kipps and hesitated.

  Buggins resumed reading. He was very much excited by a leader on Indian affairs. “By Jove!” he said, “it won’t do to give these here Blacks votes.”

  “No fear,” said Kipps.

  “They’re different altogether,” said Buggins. “They ’aven’t the sound sense of Englishmen, and they ’aven’t the character. There’s a sort of tricky dishonesty about ’em—false witness and all that—of which an Englishman has no idea. Outside their courts of law—it’s a pos’tive fact, Kipps—there’s witnesses waiting to be ’ired. Reg’lar trade. Touch their ’ats as you go in. Englishmen ’ave no idea, I tell you—not ord’nary Englishmen. It’s in their blood. They’re too timid, to be honest. Too slavish. They aren’t used to being free like we are, and if you gave ’em freedom, they wouldn’t make a proper use of it. Now we—Oh, Damn!”

  For the gas had suddenly gone out, and Buggins had the whole column of Society Club Chat still to read.

  Buggins could talk of nothing after that but Shalford’s meanness in turning off the gas, and after being extremely satirical indeed about their employer, undressed in the dark, hit his bare toe against a box and subsided after unseemly ejaculations into silent ill temper.

  Though Kipps tried to get to sleep before the affair of the letter he had just posted resumed possession of his mind, he could not do so. He went over the whole thing again, quite exhaustively. Now that his first terror was abating he couldn’t quite determine whether he was glad or sorry that he had posted that letter. If it should happen to be a hundred pounds!

  It must be a hundred pounds!

  If it was he could hold out for a year, for a couple of years even, before he got a crib.

  Even if it was fifty pounds—! Buggins was already breathing regularly when Kipps spoke again. “Buggins,” he said.

  Buggins pretended to be asleep and thickened his regular breathing (a little too hastily) to a snore.

  “I say, Buggins,” said Kipps after an interval.

  “What’s up now?” said Buggins unamiably.

  “Suppose you saw an advertisement in a paper, with your name in it, see, asking you to come and see someone, like, so as to hear of something very much to your—”

  “Hide,” said Buggins shortly.

  “But—”

  “I’d hide.”

  “Er?”

  “Goodnight, o’man,” said Buggins, with convincing earnestness. Kipps lay still for a long time, then blew profoundly, turned over, and stared at the other side of the dark.

  He had been a fool to post that letter!

  Lord! Hadn’t he been a fool!

  3

  It was just five days and a half after the light had been turned out while Buggins was reading, that a young man with a white face and eyes bright and wide-open emerged from a side road upon the leas front. He was dressed in his best clothes, and, although the weather was fine, he carried his umbrella, just as if he had been to church. He hesitated and turned to the right. He scanned each house narrowly as he passed it and presently came to an abrupt stop. “Hughenden,” said the gateposts in firm, black letters, and the fanlight in gold repeated “Hughenden.” It was a stucco house fit to take your breath away, and its balcony was painted a beautiful sea-green, enlivened with gilding. He stood looking up at it.

  “Gollys!” he said at last in an awestricken whisper.

  It had rich-looking crimson curtains to all the lower windows and brass railed blinds above. There was a splendid tropical plant in a large, artistic pot in the drawing room window. There was a splendid bronzed knocker (ring also) and two bells—one marked “servants.”

  “Gollys! Servants, eh?”

  He walked past away from it, with his eyes regarding it, and then turned and came back. He passed through a further indecision, and finally drifted away to the seafront and sat down on a seat a little way along the leas and put his arm over the back and regarded “Hughenden.” He whistled an air very softly to himself, put his head first on one side, and then on the other. Then for a space, he scowled fixedly at it.

  A very stout old gentleman, with a very red face and very protuberant eyes, sat down beside Kipps, removed a Panama hat of the most abandoned desperado cut, and mopped his brow and blew. Then he began mopping the inside of his hat. Kipps watched him for a space, wondering how much he might have a year, and where he bought his hat. Then “Hughenden” reasserted itself.

  An impulse overwhelmed him. “I say,” he said, leaning forward to the old gentleman.

  The old gentleman stared and stared.

  “What do you say?” he asked fiercely.

  “You wouldn’t think,” said Kipps, indicating with his forefinger, “that that ’ouse there belongs to me.”

  The old gentleman twisted his neck round to look at “Hughenden.” Then he came back to Kipps, looked at his mean, little garments with apoplectic intensity, and blew at him by way of reply.

  “It does,” said Kipps, a little less confidently.

  “Don’t be a fool,” said the old gentleman, and put his hat on and wiped out the corners of his eyes. “It’s hot enough,” panted the old gentleman indignantly, “without fools.” Kipps looked from the old gentleman to the house and back to the old gentleman. The old gentleman looked at Kipps and snorted and looked out to sea, and again, snorting very contemptuously, at Kipps.

  “Mean to say it doesn’t belong to me?” said Kipps.

  The old gentleman just glanced over his shoulder at the house in dispute and then fell to pretending Kipps didn’t exist. “It’s been lef’ me this very morning,” said Kipps. “It ain’t the only one that’s been lef’ me, neither.”

  “Aw!” said the old gentleman, like one who is sorely tried. He seemed to expect the passersby presently to remove Kipps.

  “It ’as,” said Kipps. He made no further remark to the old gentleman for a space but looked with a little less certitude at the house …

  “I got—” he said and stopped.

  “It’s no good telling you if you don’t believe,” he said.

  The old gentleman, after a struggle with himself, decided not to have a fit. “Try that game on with me,” he panted. “Give you in charge.”

  “What game?”

  “Wasn’t born yesterday,” said the old gentleman, and blew. “Besides,” he added, “look at you! I know you,” said the old gentleman, and coughed shortly and nodded to the horizon and coughed again.

  Kipps looked dubiously from the house to the old gentleman and back to the house. Their conversation, he gathered, was over.

  Presently he got up and went slowly across the grass to its stucco portal again. He stood, and his mouth shaped the precious word, “Hughen
den.” It was all right! He looked over his shoulder as if in appeal to the old gentleman, then turned and went his way. The old gentleman was so evidently past all reason!

  He hung for a moment some distance along the parade, as though some invisible string was pulling him back. When he could no longer see the house from the pavement, he went out into the road. Then with an effort, he snapped the string.

  He went on down a quiet side street, unbuttoned his coat furtively, took out three banknotes in an envelope, looked at them, and replaced them. Then he fished up five new sovereigns from his trouser pocket and examined them. To such a confidence had his exact resemblance to his dead mother’s portrait carried Messrs. Watson and Bean.

  It was right enough.

  It really was all right.

  He replaced the coins with grave precaution and went his way with a sudden briskness. It was all right—he had it now—he was a rich man at large. He went up a street and around a corner and along another street, and started towards the Pavilion and changed his mind and came around back, resolved to go straight to the Emporium and tell them all.

  He was aware of someone crossing a road far off ahead of him, someone curiously relevant to his present extraordinary state of mind. It was Chitterlow. Of course, it was Chitterlow who had told him first of the whole thing! The playwright was marching buoyantly along a cross street. His nose was in the air, the yachting cap was on the back of his head, and the large freckled hand grasped two novels from the library, a morning newspaper, a new hat done up in paper and a lady’s net bag full of onions and tomatoes …

  He passed out of sight behind the wine merchant’s at the corner, as Kipps decided to hurry forward and tell him of the amazing change in the order of the universe that had just occurred.

  Kipps uttered a feeble shout, arrested as it began, and waved his umbrella. Then he set off at a smart pace in pursuit. He came around the corner, and Chitterlow had gone; he hurried to the next, and there was no Chitterlow, he turned back unavailingly, and his eyes sought some other possible corner. His hand fluttered to his mouth, and he stood for a space at the pavement edge, staring about him. No good!