KIPPS Read online

  Coote went to the big hearthrug and turned and surveyed his host. His hand went to the back of his head and patted his occiput—a gesture frequent with him.

  “’Ere we are,” said Kipps, hands in his pockets and glancing round him.

  It was a gaunt Victorian room, with a heavy, dirty cornice, and the ceiling enriched by the radiant plaster ornament of an obliterated gas chandelier. It held two large glass-fronted bookcases, one of which was surmounted by a stuffed terrier encased in glass. There was a mirror over the mantel and hangings and curtains of magnificent crimson patternings. On the mantel was a huge black clock of classical design, vases in the Burslem Etruscan style, spills and toothpicks in large receptacles of carved rock, large lava ashtrays, and an exceptionally big box of matches. The fender was very great and brassy. In a favorable position, under the window, was a spacious rosewood writing desk, and all the chairs and other furniture were of rosewood and well stuffed.

  “This,” said Kipps, in something near an undertone, “was the o’ gentleman’s study—my grandfather that was. ’E used to sit at that desk and write.”

  “Books?”

  “No. Letters to the Times, and things like that. ’E’s got ’em all cut out—stuck in a book …Leastways, he ’ad. It’s in that bookcase …Won’t you sit down?”

  Coote did, bowing very slightly, and Kipps secured his vacated position on the extensive black skin rug. He spread out his legs compass-fashion and tried to appear at his ease. The rug, the fender, the mantel, and mirror conspired with great success to make him look a trivial and intrusive little creature amidst their commonplace hauteur, and his own shadow on the opposite wall seemed to think everything a great lark and mocked and made tremendous fun of him …

  2

  For a space Kipps played a defensive game, and Coote drew the lines of the conversation. They kept away from the theme of Kipps’ change of fortune, and Coote made remarks upon local and social affairs. “You must take an interest in these things now,” was as much as he said in the way of personalities. But it speedily became evident that he was a person of wide and commanding social relationships. He spoke of “society” being mixed in the neighborhood and of the difficulty of getting people to work together, and “do” things; they were cliquish. Incidentally, he alluded quite familiarly to men with military titles, and once even to someone with a title, a Lady Punnet. Not snobbishly, you understand, nor deliberately, but quite in passing. He had, it appeared, talked to Lady Punnet about private theatricals! In connection with the hospitals. She had been unreasonable, and he had put her right, gently of course, but firmly. “If you stand up to these people,” said Coote, “they like you all the better.” It was also very evident he was at his ease with the clergy; “My friend, Mr. Densemore—a curate, you know, and rather curious, the Reverend and Honorable.” Coote grew visibly in Kipps’ eyes as he said these things; he became, not only the exponent of “Vagner or Vargner,” the man whose sister had painted a picture to be exhibited at the Royal Academy, the type of the hidden thing called culture, but a delegate, as it were, or at least an intermediary from that great world “up there,” where there were men servants, where there were titles, where people dressed for dinner, drank wine at meals, wine costing very often as much as three and sixpence the bottle, and followed, through a maze of etiquette, the most stupendous practices …

  Coote sat back in the armchair smoking luxuriously and expanding pleasantly, with the delightful sense of Savoir Faire; Kipps sat forward, his elbows on his chair arm alert, and his head a little on one side. You figure him as looking little and cheap and feeling smaller and cheaper amidst his new surroundings. But it was a most stimulating and interesting conversation. And soon, it became less general and more serious and intimate. Coote spoke of people who had got on, and of people who hadn’t, of people who seemed to be in everything and people who seemed to be out of everything, and then he came around to Kipps.

  “You’ll have a good time,” he said abruptly, with a smile that would have interested a dentist.

  “I dunno,” said Kipps.

  “There’s mistakes, of course.”

  “That’s just it.”

  Coote lit a new cigarette. “One can’t help being interested in what you will do,” he remarked. “Of course—for a young man of spirit, come suddenly into wealth—there’s temptations.”

  “I got to go careful,” said Kipps. “O’ Bean told me that at the very first.”

  Coote went on to speak of pitfalls, of Betting, of Bad Companions. “I know,” said Kipps, “I know.” “There’s doubt again,” said Coote. “I know a young fellow—a solicitor—handsome, gifted. And yet, you know—utterly sceptical. Practically altogether a sceptic.”

  “Lor’!” said Kipps, “not an atheist?”

  “I fear so,” said Coote. “Really, you know, an awfully fine young fellow—gifted! But full of this dreadful modern spirit—cynical! All this Overman stuff. Nietzsche and all that … I wish I could do something for him.”

  “Ah!” said Kipps and knocked the ash off his cigarette. “I know a chap—one of our apprentices he was—once. Always scoffing … He lef’!”

  He paused. “Never wrote for his refs,” he said, in the deep tone proper to a moral tragedy, and then, after a pause—“Enlisted!”

  “Ah!” said Coote.

  “And often,” he said, after a pause, “it’s just the most spirited chaps, just the chaps one likes best, who go wrong.”

  “It’s temptation,” Kipps remarked.

  He glanced at Coote, leaned forward, knocked the ash from his cigarette into the mighty fender. “That’s just it,” he said; “you get tempted. Before you know where you are.”

  “Modern life,” said Coote, “is so—complex. It isn’t everyone is strong. Half the young fellows who go wrong, aren’t really bad.”

  “That’s just it,” said Kipps.

  “One gets a tone from one’s surroundings—”

  “That’s exactly it,” said Kipps.

  He meditated. “I picked up with a chap,” he said. “A Nacter. Leastways he writes plays. Clever fellow. But—”

  He implied extensive moral obloquy by a movement of his head. “Of course, it’s seeing life,” he added.

  Coote pretended to understand the full implications of Kipps’ remark. “Is it worth it?” he asked.

  “That’s just it,” said Kipps.

  He decided to give some more. “One gets talking,” he said. “Then it’s ʻ’ave a drink!’ Old Methusaleh four stars—and where are you? I been drunk,” he said in a tone of profound humility, and added, “lots of times.”

  “Tt. Tt.,” said Coote.

  “Dozens of times,” said Kipps, smiling sadly, and added, “lately.”

  His imagination became active and seductive. “One thing leads to another. Cards, p’raps. Girls—”

  “I know,” said Coote, “I know.”

  Kipps regarded the fire and flushed slightly. He borrowed a sentence that Chitterlow had recently used. “One can’t tell tales out of school,” he said.

  “I can imagine it,” said Coote.

  Kipps looked with a confidential expression into Coote’s face. “It was bad enough when money was limited,” he remarked. “But now—” He spoke with raised eyebrows, “I got to steady down.”

  “You must,” said Coote, protruding his lips into a sort of whistling concern for a moment.

  “I must,” said Kipps, nodding his head slowly with raised eyebrows. He looked at his cigarette end and threw it into the fender. He was beginning to think he was holding his own in this conversation rather well, after all.

  Kipps was never a good liar. He was the first to break silence. “I don’t mean to say I been really bad or really bad drunk. A headache perhaps—three or four times, say. But there it is!”

  “I have never tasted alcohol in my life,” said Coote, with an immense frankness, “never!”

  “No?”

  “Never. I don’t feel I
should be likely to get drunk at all—it isn’t that. And I don’t go so far as to say even that in small quantities—at meals—it does one harm. But if I take it, someone else who doesn’t know where to stop—you see?”

  “That’s just it,” said Kipps, with admiring eyes.

  “I smoke,” admitted Coote. “One doesn’t want to be a Pharisee.”

  It struck Kipps what a tremendously good chap this Coote was, not only tremendously clever and educated and a gentleman and one knowing Lady Punnet, but good. He seemed to be giving all his time and thought to doing good things to other people. A great desire to confide certain things to him arose. At first, Kipps hesitated whether he should confide an equal desire for benevolent activities or for further depravity—either was in his mind. He rather affected the pose of the good-intentioned dog. Then suddenly his impulses took quite a different turn, fell indeed into what was a far more serious rut in his mind. It seemed to him Coote might be able to do for him something he very much wanted done.

  “Companionship accounts for so much,” said Coote.

  “That’s just it,” said Kipps. “Of course, you know, in my new position—That’s just the difficulty.”

  He plunged boldly at his most secret trouble. He knew that he wanted refinement—culture. It was all very well—but he knew. But how was one to get it? He knew no one, knew no people. He rested on the broken sentence. The shop chaps were all very well, very good chaps and all that, but not what one wanted. “I feel be’ind,” said Kipps. “I feel out of it. And consequently, I feel it’s no good. And then if temptation comes along—”

  “Exactly,” said Coote.

  Kipps spoke of his respect for Miss Walshingham and her freckled friend. He contrived not to look too self-conscious. “You know, I’d like to talk to people like that, but I can’t. A chap’s afraid of giving himself away.”

  “Of course,” said Coote, “of course.”

  “I went to a middle-class school, you know. You mustn’t fancy I’m one of these here board school chaps, but you know it really wasn’t a first-class affair. Leastways he didn’t take pains with us. If you didn’t want to learn you needn’t—I don’t believe it was much better than one of these here national schools. We wore mortarboards, o’course. But what’s that?

  “I’m a regular fish out of water with this money. When I got it—it’s a week ago—really I thought I’d got everything I wanted. But I dunno what to do.”

  His voice went up into a squeak. “Practically,” he said, “it’s no good shuttin’ my eyes to things—I’m a gentleman.”

  Coote indicated a serious assent.

  “And there’s the responsibilities of a gentleman,” he remarked.

  “That’s just it,” said Kipps.

  “There’s calling on people,” said Kipps. “If you want to go on knowing someone you knew before like. People that’s refined.” He laughed nervously. “I’m a regular fish out of water,” he said, with expectant eyes on Coote.

  But Coote only nodded for him to go on.

  “This actor chap,” he meditated, “is a good sort of chap. But ’e isn’t what I call a gentleman. I got to ’old myself in with ’im. ’E’d make me go it wild in no time. ’E’s pretty near the on’y chap I know. Except the shop chaps. They’ve come round to ’ave supper once already and a bit of a sing-song afterwards. I sang. I got a banjo, you know, and I vamp a bit. Vamping—you know. Haven’t got far in the book—’Ow to Vamp—but still I’m getting on. Jolly, of course, in a way, but what does it lead to? … Besides that, there’s my aunt and uncle. They’re very good old people—very—just a bit interfering p’r’aps and thinking one isn’t grown up, but right enough. Only—It isn’t what I want. I feel I’ve got be’ind with everything. I want to make it up again. I want to get with educated people who know ’ow to do things—in the regular, proper way.”

  His beautiful modesty awakened nothing but benevolence in the mind of Chester Coote.

  “If I had someone like you,” said Kipps, “that I knew regular like—”

  From that point, their course ran swift and easy. “If I could be of any use to you,” said Coote …

  “But you’re so busy and all that.”

  “Not too busy. You know, your case is a very interesting one. It was partly that made me speak to you and draw you out. Here you are with all this money and no experience, a spirited young chap—”

  “That’s just it,” said Kipps.

  “I thought I’d see what you were made of, and I must confess I’ve rarely talked to anyone that I’ve found quite so interesting as you have been—”

  “I seem able to say things to you like somehow,” said Kipps.

  “I’m glad. I’m tremendously glad.”

  “I want a friend. That’s it—straight.”

  “My dear chap, if I—”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I want a friend, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. You know, my dear Kipps—if I may call you that.”

  “Go on,” said Kipps.

  “I’m rather a lonely dog myself. This to-night—I’ve not had anyone I’ve spoken to so freely of my work for months.”

  “No?”

  “You. And, my dear chap, if I can do anything to guide or help you—”

  Coote displayed all his teeth in a kindly tremulous smile, and his eyes were shiny. “Shake ’ands,” said Kipps, deeply moved, and he and Coote rose and clasped with mutual emotion.

  “It’s really too good of you,” said Kipps.

  “Whatever I can do I will,” said Coote.

  And so their compact was made. From that moment they were friends, intimate, confidential, high-thinking, sotto voce friends. All the rest of their talk (and it inclined to be interminable) was an expansion of that. For that night Kipps wallowed in self-abandonment and Coote behaved as one who had received a great trust. That sinister passion for pedagogy to which the good-intentioned are so fatally liable, that passion of infinite presumption that permits one weak human being to arrogate the direction of another weak human being’s affairs, had Coote in its grip. He was to be a sort of lay confessor and director of Kipps, he was to help Kipps in a thousand ways, he was, in fact, to chaperon Kipps into the higher and better sort of English life. He was to tell him his faults, advise him about the right thing to do—

  “It’s all these things I don’t know,” said Kipps. “I don’t know, for instance, what’s the right sort of dress to wear—I don’t even know if I’m dressed right now—”

  “All these things”—Coote stuck out his lips and nodded rapidly to show he understood— “Trust me for that,” he said, “trust me.”

  As the evening wore on Coote’s manner changed, became more and more the manner of a proprietor. He began to take up his role, to survey Kipps with a new, with a critical affection. It was evident the thing fell in with his ideas. “It will be awfully interesting,” he said. “You know, Kipps, you’re really good stuff.” (Every sentence now he said “Kipps” or “my dear Kipps” with a curiously authoritative intonation.)

  “I know,” said Kipps, “only there’s such a lot of things I don’t seem to be up to some’ow. That’s where the trouble comes in.”

  They talked and talked, and now Kipps was talking freely. They rambled over all sorts of things. Among others Kipps’ character was dealt with at length. Kipps gave valuable lights on it. “When I’m really excited,” he said, “I don’t seem to care what I do. I’m like that.” And again, “I don’t like to do anything under’and. I must speak out …”

  He picked a piece of cotton from his knee, the fire grimaced behind his back, and his shadow on the wall and ceiling was disrespectfully convulsed.

  3

  Kipps went to bed at last with an impression of important things settled, and he lay awake for quite a long time. He felt he was lucky. He had known—in fact, Buggins, Carshot, and Pearce had made it very clear indeed—that his status in life had changed and that stupendous adapta
tions had to be achieved, but how they were to be affected had driven that adaptation into the incredible. Here in the simplest, easiest way was the adapter. The thing had become possible. Not, of course, easy, but possible.

  There was much to learn, sheer intellectual toil, methods of address, bowing, an enormous complexity of laws. One broken, you are an outcast. How, for example, would one encounter Lady Punnet? It was quite possible someday he might really have to do that. Coote might introduce him. “Lord!” he said aloud to the darkness between grinning and dismay. He figured himself going into the Emporium to buy a tie, for example, and there in the face of Buggins, Carshot, Pearce, and the rest of them, meeting “my friend, Lady Punnet!” It might not end with Lady Punnet! His imagination plunged and bolted with him, galloped, took wings, and soared to romantic, to poetical altitudes …

  Suppose someday one met royalty. By accident, say! He soared to that! After all—twelve hundred a year is a lift, a tremendous lift. How did one address royalty? “Your Majesty’s Goodness,” it will be, no doubt—something like that—and on the knees. He became impersonal. Over a thousand a year made him an esquire, didn’t it? He thought that was it. In which case, wouldn’t he have to be presented at court? Velvet cycling breeches like you wear cycling and a sword! What a curious place a court must be! Kneeling and bowing, and what was it Miss Mergle used to talk about? Of course!—Ladies with long trains walking about backward. Everybody walked about backward at court, he knew, when not actually on their knees. Perhaps, though, some people regular stood up to the King! Talked to him, just as one might talk to Buggins, say. Cheek, of course! Dukes, it might be, did that—by permission? Millionaires…?

  From such thoughts, this free citizen of our Crowned Republic passed insensibly into dreams, turgid dreams of that vast ascent, which constitutes the true-born Briton’s social scheme, which terminates with retrogressive progression and a bending back.