KIPPS Read online

  She diverged to talk of flowers, and Kipps’ mind was filled with the picture of Helen bending down towards him in the keep …

  They spread the tea under the trees before the little inn, and at a certain moment, Kipps became aware that everyone in the party was simultaneously and furtively glancing at him. There might have been a certain tension had it not been first of all for Coote and his tact, and afterward for a number of wasps. Coote was resolved to make this memorable day pass off well, and displayed an almost boisterous sense of fun. Then young Walshingham began talking of the Roman remains below Lympne, intending to lead up to the overman. “These old Roman chaps,” he said, and then the wasps arrived. They killed three in the jam alone.

  Kipps killed wasps, as if it were in a dream, and handed things to the wrong people, and maintained a thin surface of ordinary intelligence with the utmost difficulty. At times he became aware, aware with an extraordinary vividness, of Helen. Helen was carefully not looking at him and behaving with amazing coolness and ease. But just for that one time, there was the faintest suggestion of pink beneath the ivory of her cheeks …

  Tacitly the others conceded to Kipps the right to paddle back with Helen; he helped her into the canoe and took his paddle and, paddling slowly, dropped behind the others. And now his inner self stirred again. He said nothing to her. How could he ever say anything to her again? She spoke to him at rare intervals about reflections and the flowers and the trees, and he nodded in reply. But his mind moved very slowly forward now from the point at which it had fallen stunned in the Lympne Keep, moving forward to the beginnings of realization. As yet, he did not say even in the recesses of his heart that she was his. But he perceived that the goddess had come from her altar amazingly, and had taken him by the hand!

  The sky was a vast splendor, and then close to them were the dark, protecting trees and the shining, smooth, still water. He was an erect, black outline to her; he plied his paddle with no unskillful gesture, the water broke to snaky silver and glittered far behind his strokes. Indeed, he did not seem bad to her. Youth calls to youth the wide world through, and her soul rose in triumph over his subjection. And behind him was money and opportunity, freedom and London, a great background of seductively indistinct hopes. To him, her face was a warm dimness. In truth, he could not see her eyes, but it seemed to his love-witched brain he did and that they shone out at him like dusky stars.

  All the world that evening was no more than a shadowy frame of darkling sky and water and dripping bows about Helen. He seemed to see through things with an extraordinary clearness; she was revealed to him certainly, as the cause and essence of it all.

  He was indeed at his heart’s desire. It was one of those times when there seems to be no future, when time has stopped, and we are at an end. Kipps that evening could not have imagined a tomorrow; all that his imagination had pointed towards was attained. His mind stood still and took the moments as they came.

  4

  About nine that night, Coote came around to Kipps’ new apartment in the Upper Sandgate Road—the house on the leas had been let furnished—and Kipps made an effort toward realization. He was discovered sitting at the open window and without a lamp, quite still. Coote was deeply moved, and he pressed Kipps’ palm and laid a knobby, white hand on his shoulder and displayed the sort of tenderness becoming in a crisis. Kipps was too moved that night and treated Coote like a very dear brother.

  “She’s splendid,” said Coote, coming to it abruptly.

  “Isn’t she?” said Kipps.

  “I couldn’t help noticing her face,” said Coote … “You know, my dear Kipps, that this is better than a legacy.”

  “I don’t deserve it,” said Kipps.

  “You can’t say that.”

  “I don’t. I can’t ’ardly believe it. I can’t believe it at all. No!”

  There followed an expressive stillness.

  “It’s wonderful,” said Kipps. “It takes me like that.”

  Coote made a faint blowing noise, and so again, they came for a time of silence.

  “And it began—before your money?”

  “When I was in ’er class,” said Kipps, solemnly.

  Coote, speaking out of a darkness which he was illuminating strangely with efforts to strike a match, said that it was beautiful. He could not have wished Kipps a better fortune …

  He lit a cigarette, and Kipps was moved to do the same with a sacramental expression. Presently speech flowed more freely.

  Coote began to praise Helen and her mother and brother. He talked of when “it” might be, he presented the thing as concrete and credible. “It’s a county family, you know,” he said. “She is connected, you know, with the Beaupres family—you know Lord Beaupres.”

  “No!” said Kipps, “really!”

  “Distantly, of course,” said Coote. “Still—”

  He smiled a smile that glimmered in the twilight.

  “It’s too much,” said Kipps, overcome. “It’s so all like that.”

  Coote exhaled. For a time, Kipps listened to Helen’s praises and matured a point of view.

  “I say, Coote,” he said. “What ought I to do now?”

  “What do you mean?” said Coote.

  “I mean about calling on ’er and all that.”

  He reflected. “Naturally, I want to do it all right.”

  “Of course,” said Coote.

  “It would be awful to go and do something—now—all wrong.”

  Coote’s cigarette glowed as he meditated. “You must call, of course,” he decided. “You’ll have to speak to Mrs. Walshingham.”

  “’Ow?” said Kipps.

  “Tell her you mean to marry her daughter.”

  “I dessay she knows,” said Kipps, with defensive penetration.

  Coote’s head was visible, shaking itself judiciously.

  “Then there’s the ring,” said Kipps. “What ’ave I to do about that?”

  “What ring do you mean?”

  “’Ngagement Ring. There isn’t anything at all about that in Manners and Rules of Good Society—not a word.”

  “Of course, you must get something—tasteful. Yes.”

  “What sort of a ring?”

  “Something nace. They’ll show you in the shop.”

  “Of course. I ’spose I got to take it to ’er, eh? Put it on her finger.”

  “Oh, no! Send it. Much better.”

  “Ah!” said Kipps, for the first time, with a note of relief.

  “Then, ’ow about this call—on Mrs. Walshingham, I mean. ’Ow ought one to go?”

  “Rather a ceremonial occasion,” reflected Coote.

  “Wadyer mean? Frock coat?”

  “I think so,” said Coote, with discrimination.

  “Light trousers and all that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Rose?”

  “I think it might run to a buttonhole.”

  The curtain that hung over the future became less opaque to the eyes of Kipps. Tomorrow, and then other days, became perceptible at least as existing. Frock coat, silk hat, and a rose! With a certain solemnity he contemplated himself in the process of slow transformation into an English gentleman, Arthur Cuyps, frock-coated on occasions of ceremony, the familiar acquaintance of Lady Punnet, the recognized wooer of a distant connection of the Earl of Beaupres.

  Something like awe at the magnitude of his own fortune came upon him. He felt the world was opening out like a magic flower in a transformation scene at the touch of this wand of gold. And Helen, nestling beautiful in the red heart of the flower. Only ten weeks ago, he had been no more than the shabbiest of improvers and shamefully dismissed for dissipation, the mere soil-burned seed, as it were, of these glories. He resolved the engagement ring should be of expressively excessive quality and appearance, in fact, the very best they had.

  “Ought I to send ’er flowers?” he speculated.

  “Not necessarily,” said Coote. “Though, of course, it’s an attention …”


  Kipps meditated on flowers.

  “When you see her,” said Coote, “you’ll have to ask her to name the day.”

  Kipps started. “That won’t be just yet a bit, will it?”

  “Don’t know any reason for delay.”

  “Oo, but—a year, say.”

  “Rather a long time,” said Coote.

  “Is it?” said Kipps, turning his head sharply. “But—”

  There was quite a long pause.

  “I say,” he said, at last, and in an unaltered voice, “you’ll ’ave to ’elp me about the wedding.”

  “Only too happy,” said Coote.

  “Of course,” said Kipps, “I didn’t think—” He changed his line of thought. “Coote,” he asked, “wot’s a ‘state-eh-tate’?”

  “A ‘tate-ah-tay’!” said Coote, improvingly, “is a conversation alone together.”

  “Lor’!” said Kipps, “but I thought—It says strictly we oughtn’t to enjoy a tater-tay, not sit together, walk together, ride together, or meet during any part of the day. That don’t leave much time for meeting, does it?”

  “The book says that?” asked Coote.

  “I just learnt it by ’eart before you came. I thought that was a bit rum, but I s’pose it’s all right.”

  “You won’t find Miss Walshingham so strict as all that,” said Coote. “I think that’s a bit extreme. They’d only do that now in very strict old aristocratic families. Besides, the Walshinghams are so modern—advanced, you might say. I expect you’ll get plenty of chances of talking together.”

  “There’s a tremendous lot to think about,” said Kipps, blowing a profound sigh. “D’you mean—p’raps we might be married in a few months or so.”

  “You’ll have to be,” said Coote. “Why not?”

  Midnight found Kipps alone, looking a little tired and turning over the leaves of the red-covered textbook with a studious expression. He paused for a moment on page 233, his eye caught by the words:

  “FOR AN UNCLE OR AUNT BY MARRIAGE, the period is six weeks black, with jet trimmings.”

  “No,” said Kipps, after a vigorous mental effort. “That’s not it.” The pages rustled again. He stopped and flattened out the little book decisively at the beginning of the chapter on “Weddings.”

  He became pensive. He stared at the lamp wick. “I suppose I ought to go over and tell them,” he said, at last.

  5

  Kipps called on Mrs. Walshingham, attired in the proper costume for ceremonial occasions in the day. He carried a silk hat, and he wore a deep-skirted frock coat, his boots were patent leather and his trousers dark grey. He had generous white cuffs with gold links, and his grey gloves, one thumb in which had burst when he put them on, he held loosely in his hand. He carried a small umbrella rolled to an exquisite tightness. A sense of singular correctness pervaded his being and warred with the enormity of the occasion for possession of his soul. Anon, he touched his silk cravat. The world smelled of his rosebud.

  He seated himself on a new re-covered chintz armchair and stuck out the elbow of the arm that held his hat.

  “I know,” said Mrs. Walshingham, “I know everything,” and helped him out most amazingly. She deepened the impression he had already received of her sense and refinement. She displayed an amount of tenderness that touched him.

  “This is a great thing,” she said, “to a mother,” and her hand rested for a moment on his impeccable coat sleeve.

  “A daughter, Arthur,” she explained, “is so much more than a son.”

  Marriage, she said, was a lottery, and without love and toleration, there was much unhappiness. Her life had not always been bright—there had been dark days and bright days. She smiled rather sweetly. “This is a bright one,” she said.

  She said very kind and flattering things to Kipps, and she thanked him for his goodness to her son. (“That wasn’t anything,” said Kipps.) And then, she expanded upon the theme of her two children. “Both so accomplished,” she said, “so clever. I call them my twin jewels.”

  She was repeating a remark that she had made at Lympne, that she always said her children needed opportunities, as other people needed air, when she was abruptly arrested by the entry of Helen. They hung on a pause. Helen perhaps surprised by Kipps’ weekday magnificence. Then she advanced with outstretched hand.

  Both the young people were shy. “I just called ’round,” began Kipps, and became uncertain how to end.

  “Won’t you have some tea?” asked Helen.

  She walked to the window, looked out at the familiar outporter’s barrow, turned, surveyed Kipps for a moment ambiguously, said, “I will get some tea,” and so departed again.

  Mrs. Walshingham and Kipps looked at one another, and the lady smiled indulgently. “You two young people mustn’t be shy of each other,” said Mrs. Walshingham, which damaged Kipps considerably.

  She was explaining how sensitive Helen always had been, even about quite little things, when the servant appeared with the tea things, and then Helen followed, and, taking up a secure position behind the little bamboo tea table, broke the ice with officious teacup clattering. Then she introduced the topic of a forthcoming open-air performance of “As You Like It,” and steered past the worst of the awkwardness. They discussed stage illusion. “I mus’ say,” said Kipps, “I don’t quite like a play in a theater. It seems sort of unreal, some’ow.”

  “But most plays are written for the stage,” said Helen, looking at the sugar.

  “I know,” admitted Kipps.

  They got through tea. “Well,” said Kipps, and rose.

  “You mustn’t go yet,” said Mrs. Walshingham, rising and taking his hand. “I’m sure you two must have heaps to say to each other,” and so she escaped towards the door.

  6

  Among other projects that seemed almost equally correct to Kipps at that exalted moment was one of embracing Helen with ardor as soon as the door closed behind her mother, and one of headlong flight through the open window. Then he remembered he ought to hold the door open for Mrs. Walshingham, and turned from that duty to find Helen still standing, beautifully inaccessible, behind the tea things. He closed the door and advanced toward her with his arms akimbo and his hands upon his coat skirts. Then, feeling angular, he moved his right hand to his mustache. Anyhow, he was dressed all right. Somewhere at the back of his mind, dim and mingled with doubt and surprise, appeared the perception that he felt now quite differently towards her, that something between them had been blown from Lympne Keep to the four winds of heaven …

  She regarded him with an eye of critical proprietorship.

  “Mother has been making up to you,” she said, smiling slightly.

  She added, “It was nice of you to come around to see her.”

  They stood through a brief pause, as though each had expected something different in the other and was a little perplexed at its not being there. Kipps found he was at the corner of the brown covered table, and he picked up a little flexible book that lay upon it to occupy his mind.

  “I bought you a ring today,” he said, bending the book and speaking for the sake of saying something, and then he was moved to genuine speech. “You know,” he said, “I can’t ’ardly believe it.”

  Her face relaxed slightly again. “No?” she said, and may have breathed, “Nor I.”

  “No,” he went on. “It’s as though everything ’ad changed. More even than when I got my money. ’Ere we are going to marry. It’s like being someone else. What I feel is—”

  He turned a flushed and earnest face to her. He seemed to come alive to her with one natural gesture. “I don’t know things. I’m not good enough. I’m not refined. The more you’ll see of me the more you’ll find me out.”

  “But I’m going to help you.”

  “You’ll ’ave to ’elp me a fearful lot.”

  She walked to the window, glanced out of it, made up her mind, turned and came towards him, with her hands clasped behind her back.

&nbs
p; “All these things that trouble you are very little things. If you don’t mind—if you will let me tell you things—”

  “I wish you would.”

  “Then I will.”

  “They’re little things to you, but they aren’t to me.”

  “It all depends if you don’t mind being told.”

  “By you?”

  “I don’t expect you to be told by strangers.”

  “Oo!” said Kipps, expressing much.

  “You know, there are just a few little things. For instance, you know, you are careless with your pronunciation … You don’t mind my telling you?”

  “I like it,” said Kipps.

  “There’s aitches.”

  “I know,” said Kipps, and then, endorsingly, “I been told. Fact is, I know a chap, a Nacter, he’s told me. He’s told me, and he’s going to give me a lesson or so.”

  “I’m glad of that. It only requires a little care.”

  “Of course. On the stage, they got to look out. They take regular lessons.”

  “Of course,” said Helen, a little absently.

  “I dessay I shall soon get into it,” said Kipps.

  “And then there’s dress,” said Helen, taking up her thread again.

  Kipps became pink, but he remained respectfully attentive.

  “You don’t mind?” she said.

  “Oo, no.”

  “You mustn’t be too—too dressy. It’s possible to be over-conventional, over-elaborate. It makes you look like a shop … like a common, well-off person. There’s a sort of easiness that is better. A real gentleman looks right, without looking as though he had tried to be right.”

  “Just as though ’e’d put on what came first?” said the pupil, in a faded voice.

  “Not exactly that, but a sort of ease.”

  Kipps nodded his head intelligently. In his heart, he was kicking his silk hat about the room in an ecstasy of disappointment.

  “And you must accustom yourself to be more at your ease when you are with people,” said Helen. “You’ve only got to forget yourself a little and not be anxious—”

  “I’ll try,” said Kipps, looking rather hard at the teapot. “I’ll do my best to try.”