KIPPS Read online

  It was an excellent beginning. After this first encounter, the attributes of their parents and their own relative value in battle never rose between them, and if anything was wanted to complete the warmth of their regard, it was found in a joint dislike of the eldest Quodling. The eldest Quodling lisped, had a silly sort of straw hat, and a large pink face (all covered over with self-satisfaction), and he went to the National School with a green baize bag—a contemptible thing to do. They called him names and threw stones at him, and when he replied by threatening (“Look ’ere, young Art Kipth, you better thtoppit!”), they were moved to attack and put him to flight.

  And after that, they broke the head of Ann Pornick’s doll so that she went home weeping loudly—a wicked and endearing proceeding. Sid was whacked, but, as he explained, he wore a newspaper tactically adjusted during the transaction, and really, it didn’t hurt him at all …And Mrs. Pornick put her head out of the shop door suddenly and threatened Kipps as he passed.

  2

  Cavendish Academy,” the school that had won the limited choice of Kipps’ vanished mother, was established in a battered private house in the part of Hastings remotest from the sea; it was called an Academy for Young Gentlemen, and many of the young gentlemen had parents in “India,” and other unverifiable places. Others were the sons of credulous widows, anxious, as Kipps’ mother had been, to get something a little “superior” to a board school education as cheaply as possible, and others again were sent to demonstrate the dignity of their parents and guardians. And of course, there were boys from France.

  Its “principal” was a lean, long creature of indifferent digestion and temper, who proclaimed himself on a gilt-lettered board in his front garden, George Garden Woodrow, F.S.Sc., letters indicating that he had paid certain guineas for a bogus diploma. A bleak white-washed outhouse constituted his schoolroom. The scholastic quality of its carved and worn desks and forms was enhanced by a slippery blackboard and two large yellow out-of-date maps, one of Africa and the other of Wiltshire, that he had picked up cheap at a sale. There were other maps and globes in his study, where he interviewed inquiring parents, but these his pupils never saw. And in a glass cupboard in the passage were several shillings’ worth of test tubes and chemicals, a tripod, a glass retort, and a damaged Bunsen burner, manifesting that the “scientific laboratory” mentioned in the prospectus was no idle boast.

  This prospectus, which was in dignified but incorrect English, laid particular stress on the sound preparation for a commercial career given in the Academy, but the Army, Navy, and Civil Service were glanced at in an ambiguous sentence. There was something vague in the prospectus about “examinational successes”—though Woodrow, of course, disapproved of “cram”—and a declaration that the curriculum included “art,” “modern foreign languages,” and “a sound technical and scientific training.” Then came insistence upon the “moral well-being” of the pupils, and an emphatic boast of the excellence of the religious instruction, “so often neglected nowadays even in schools of wide repute.” “That’s bound to fetch ’em,” Mr. Woodrow had remarked when he drew up the prospectus. And in conjunction with the mortarboards, it certainly did. Attention was directed to the “motherly” care of Mrs. Woodrow—in reality, a small partially effaced woman with a plaintive face and a mind above cookery—and the prospectus concluded with a phrase intentionally vague, “Fare unrestricted, and our own milk and produce.”

  The memories Kipps carried from that school into after life were set in an atmosphere of stuffiness and mental muddle; and included countless pictures of sitting on creaking forms bored and idle, of blot licking and the taste of ink, of torn books with covers that set one’s teeth on edge, of the slimy surface of the labored slates, of furtive marble-playing, whispered story-telling, and of pinches, blows, and a thousand such petty annoyances being perpetually “passed on” according to the custom of the place, of standing up in class and being hit suddenly and unreasonably for imaginary misbehavior, of Mr. Woodrow’s raving days, when a scarcely sane injustice prevailed, of the cold vacuity of the hour of preparation before the bread-and-butter breakfast, and of horrible headaches and queer, unprecedented, internal feelings resulting from Mrs. Woodrow’s motherly rather than intelligent cookery. There were dreary walks, when the boys marched two by two, all dressed in the mortarboard caps that so impressed the widowed mothers; there were dismal half-holidays when the weather was wet and the spirit of evil temper and evil imagination had the pent boys to work its will on; there were unfair, dishonorable fights and miserable defeats and victories, there was bullying and being bullied. A coward boy Kipps particularly afflicted, until at last he was goaded to revolt by incessant persecution, and smote Kipps to tolerance with whirling fists. There were memories of sleeping three in a bed, of the dense, leathery smell of the schoolroom when one returned thither after ten minutes’ play, of a playground of mud and incidental sharp flints. And there was much furtive foul language.

  “Our Sundays are our happiest days,” was one of Woodrow’s formulae with the inquiring parent, but Kipps was not called in evidence. They were to him terrible gaps of inanity—no work, no play, a dreary expanse of time with the mystery of church twice, and plum duff once in the middle. The afternoon was given up to furtive relaxations, among which “Torture Chamber” games with the less agreeable, weaker boys figured. It was from the difference between this day and common days that Kipps derived his first definite conceptions of the nature of God and heaven. His instinct was to evade any closer acquaintance as long as he could.

  The solid work varied, according to the prevailing mood of Mr. Woodrow. Sometimes that was a despondent lethargy; copy-books were distributed, or sums were “set,” or the great mystery of bookkeeping was declared in being, and beneath these superficial activities, lengthy conversations, and interminable guessing games with marbles went on while Mr. Woodrow sat inanimate at his desk heedless of school affairs, staring in front of him at unseen things. At times his face was utterly inane; at times, it had an expression of stagnant amazement as if he saw before his eyes with pitiless clearness the dishonor and mischief of his being …

  At other times the F.S.Sc. roused himself to action, and would stand up a wavering class and teach it, goading it with bitter mockery and blows through a chapter of Ann’s “First French Course,” or “France and the French,” or a Dialogue about a traveler’s washing, or the parts of an opera house. His own knowledge of French had been obtained years ago in another English private school, and he had refreshed it by occasional weeks of loafing and mean adventure in Dieppe. He would sometimes in their lessons hit upon some reminiscence of these brighter days, and then he would laugh inexplicably and repeat French phrases of an unfamiliar type.

  Among the commoner exercises, he prescribed the learning of long passages of poetry from a “Poetry Book,” which he would delegate an elder boy to “hear,” and there was reading aloud from the Holy Bible, verse by verse—it was none of your “godless” schools!—so that you counted the verses up to your turn and then gave yourself to the conversation—and sometimes one read from a cheap history of this land. They did, as Kipps reported, “loads of catechism.” Also, there was much learning of geographical names and lists, and sometimes Woodrow, in an outbreak of energy, would see these names were actually found on a map. And once, just once, there was a chemistry lesson—a lesson of indescribable excitement—glass things of the strangest shape, a smell like bad eggs, something bubbling in something, a smash and stench. Mr. Woodrow saying quite distinctly—they thrashed it out in the dormitory afterward—“Damn!” followed by the whole school being kept in, with extraordinary severities, for an hour …

  But interspersed with the memories of this grey routine were certain patches of brilliant color—the holidays, his holidays, which in spite of the feud between their seniors, he spent as much as possible with Sid Pornick, the son of the irascible black-bearded haberdasher next door. They seemed to be memories of a different world. The
re were glorious days of “mucking about” along the beach, the siege of unresisting Martello towers, the incessant interest of the mystery and motion of windmills, the windy excursions with boarded feet over the yielding shingle to Dungeness lighthouse—Sid Pornick and he far adrift from reality, smugglers and armed men from the moment they left Great Stone behind them—wanderings in the hedgeless reedy marsh, long excursions reaching even to Hythe, where the machine guns of the Empire are forever whirling and tapping, and to Rye and Winchelsea, perched like dream-cities on their little hills. The sky in these memories was the blazing hemisphere of the marsh heavens in summer or its wintry tumult of sky and sea; and there were wrecks, real wrecks, in it (near Dymchurch pitched high and blackened and rotting were the ribs of a fishing smack flung aside like an empty basket when the sea had devoured its crew); and there was bathing all naked in the sea, bathing to one’s armpits and even trying to swim in the warm seawater (in spite of his aunt’s prohibition), and (with her indulgence) the rare eating of dinner from a paper parcel miles away from home. Toke and cold ground rice pudding with plums it used to be—there is no better food at all. And for the background, in the place of Woodrow’s mean, fretting rule, were his aunt’s spare but frequently quite amiable figure—for though she insisted on his repeating the English Church Catechism every Sunday, she had an easy way over dinners that one wanted to take abroad—and his uncle, corpulent and irascible, but sedentary and easily escaped. And freedom!

  The holidays were indeed very different from school. They were free, they were spacious, and though he never knew it in these words—they had an element of beauty. In his memory of his boyhood, they shone like strips of a stained glass window in a dreary waste of scholastic wall; they grew brighter and brighter as they grew remoter. There came a time at last and moods when he could look back to them with a feeling akin to tears.

  The last of these windows was the brightest, and instead of the kaleidoscopic effects of its predecessors, its glory was a single figure. For in the last of his holidays, before the Moloch of Retail Trade got hold of him, Kipps made his first tentative essays at the mysterious shrine of Love. Very tentative, they were, for he had become a boy of subdued passions and potential rather than actual affectionateness.

  And the object of these first stirrings of the great desire was no other than Ann Pornick, the head of whose doll he and Sid had broken long ago, and rejoiced over long ago, in the days when he had yet to learn the meaning of a heart.

  3

  Negotiations were already on foot to make Kipps into a draper before he discovered the lights that lurked in Ann Pornick’s eyes. School was over, absolutely over, and it was chiefly present to him that he was never to go to school again. It was high summer. The “breaking up” of school had been hilarious; and the excellent maxim, “Last Day’s Pay Day,” had been observed by him with a scrupulous attention to his honor. He had punched the heads of all his enemies, wrung wrists and kicked shins; he had distributed all his unfinished copybooks, all his school books, his collection of marbles and his mortarboard cap among such as loved him; and he had secretly written in obscure pages of their books, “remember Art Kipps.” He had also split the anemic Woodrow’s cane, carved his own name deeply in several places about the premises, and broken the scullery window. He had told everybody so often that he was to learn to be a sea captain that he had come almost to believe the thing himself. And now he was home, and school was at an end for him forevermore.

  He was up before six on the day of his return, and out in the hot sunlight of the yard. He set himself to whistle a peculiarly penetrating arrangement of three notes supposed by the boys of the Hastings Academy and himself and Sid Pornick, for no earthly reason whatever, to be the original Huron war cry. As he did this, he feigned not to be doing it, because of the hatred between his uncle and the Pornicks, but to be examining with respect and admiration a new wing of the dustbin recently erected by his uncle—a pretense that would not have deceived a nestling tomtit.

  Presently there came a familiar echo from the Pornick hunting ground. Then Kipps began to sing, “Ar pars eight tra-la, in the lane be’ind the church.” To which an unseen person answered, “Ar pars eight it is, in the lane be’ind the church.” The “tra-la” was considered to render this sentence incomprehensible to the uninitiated. In order to conceal their operations still more securely, both parties to this duet then gave vent to a vocalization of the Huron war cry again, and after a lingering repetition of the last and shrillest note, dispersed severally, as became boys in the enjoyment of holidays, to light the house fires for the day.

  Half past eight found Kipps sitting on the sunlit gate at the top of the long lane that runs towards the sea, clashing his boots in a slow rhythm, and whistling with great violence all that he knew of an excruciatingly pathetic air. There appeared along by the churchyard wall a girl in a short frock, brown-haired, quick-colored, and with dark blue eyes. She had grown so that she was a little taller than Kipps, and her color had improved. He scarcely remembered her, so changed was she since last holidays—if indeed he had seen her last holidays, a thing he could not clearly remember. Some vague emotions arose at the sight of her. He stopped whistling and regarded her, oddly tongue-tied.

  “He can’t come,” said Ann, advancing boldly. “Not yet.”

  “What—not Sid?”

  “No. Father’s made him dust all his boxes again.”

  “What for?”

  “I dunno. Father’s in a stew ’smorning.”

  “Oh!”

  Pause. Kipps looked at her and then was unable to look at her again. She regarded him with interest. “You left school?” she remarked after a pause.

  “Yes.”

  “So’s Sid.”

  The conversation languished. Ann put her hands on the top of the gate and began a stationary hopping, a sort of ineffectual gymnastic experiment.

  “Can you run?” she said presently.

  “Run you any day,” said Kipps.

  “Gimme a start?”

  “Where for?” said Kipps.

  Ann considered and indicated a tree. She walked towards it and turned. “Gimme to here?” she called.

  Kipps, standing now and touching the gate, smiled to express conscious superiority. “Further!” he said.

  “Here?”

  “Bit more!” said Kipps, and then, repenting of his magnanimity, said, “Orf!” suddenly, and so recovered his lost concession.

  They arrived abreast at the tree, flushed and out of breath.

  “Tie!” said Ann, throwing her hair back from her face with her hand.

  “I won,” panted Kipps.

  They disputed firmly but quite politely.

  “Run it again, then,” said Kipps. “I don’t mind.”

  They returned towards the gate.

  “You don’t run bad,” said Kipps, temperately expressing sincere admiration. “I’m pretty good, you know.”

  Ann sent her hair back by an expert toss of the head. “You give me a start,” she allowed.

  They became aware of Sid approaching them.

  “You better look out, young Ann,” said Sid, with that irreverent want of sympathy usual in brothers. “You been out nearly ’arf-hour. Nothing ain’t been done upstairs. Father said he didn’t know where you were, but when he did, he’d warm y’r young ear.”

  Ann prepared to go.

  “How about that race?” asked Kipps.

  “Lor!” cried Sid, quite shocked. “You ain’t been racing her!”

  Ann swung herself round the end of the gate with her eyes on Kipps, and then turned away suddenly and ran off down the lane. Kipps’ eyes tried to go after her and came back to Sid’s.

  “I give her a lot of start,” said Kipps apologetically. “It wasn’t a proper race.” And so the subject was dismissed. But Kipps was distrait for some seconds, perhaps, and the mischief had begun in him.

  4

  They proceeded to the question of how two accomplished Hurons mig
ht most satisfactorily spend the morning. Manifestly their line lay straight along the lane to the sea.

  “There’s a new wreck,” said Sid, “and my!—don’t it smell just!”

  “Smell?”

  “Fair make you sick. It’s rotten wheat.”

  They fell to talking of wrecks, and so came to ironclads and wars and suchlike manly matters.

  Halfway to the wreck, Kipps made a casual irrelevant remark. “Your sister ain’t a bad sort,” he said offhandedly.

  “I clout her a lot,” said Sidney modestly, and after a pause, the talk reverted to more suitable topics.

  The new wreck was full of rotting grain, and smelt abominably, even as Sid had said. This was excellent. They had it all to themselves. They took possession of it in force, at Sid’s suggestion, and had speedily to defend it against enormous numbers of imaginary “natives,” who were at last driven off by loud shouts of “bang, bang”, and vigorous thrusting and shoving of sticks. Then, also at Sid’s direction, they sailed with it into the midst of a combined French, German, and Russian fleet, demolishing the combination unassisted, and having descended to the beach, clambered up the side and cut out their own vessel in brilliant style, they underwent a magnificent shipwreck (with vocalized thunder) and floated “waterlogged”—so Sid insisted—upon an exhausted sea.

  These things drove Ann out of mind for a time. But at last, as they drifted without food or water upon a stagnant ocean, haggard-eyed, chins between their hands, looking in vain for a sail, she came to mind again abruptly.

  “It’s rather nice having sisters,” remarked one perishing mariner.

  Sid turned around and regarded him thoughtfully. “Not it!” he said.

  “No?”

  “Not a bit of it.” He grinned confidentially. “Know too much,” he said, and afterward, “Get out of things.”

  He resumed his gloomy scrutiny of the hopeless horizon. Presently he fell to spitting jerkily between his teeth, as he had read the way with such ripe manhood as chews its quid.