Kipps Part 12

He was trying to tell her that he was utterly unworthy of Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham, when Chitterlow gave up the search and suddenly accused him of being drunk and talking "Rot----."

CHAPTER V

"SWAPPED"

--1

He awoke on the thoroughly comfortable sofa that had had all its springs removed, and although he had certainly not been intoxicated, he awoke with what Chitterlow p.r.o.nounced to be, quite indisputably, a Head and a Mouth. He had slept in his clothes and he felt stiff and uncomfortable all over, but the head and mouth insisted that he must not bother over little things like that. In the head was one large, angular idea that it was physically painful to have there. If he moved his head the angular idea s.h.i.+fted about in the most agonising way. This idea was that he had lost his situation and was utterly ruined and that it really mattered very little. Shalford was certain to hear of his escapade, and that coupled with that row about the Manchester window----!

He raised himself into a sitting position under Chitterlow's urgent encouragement.

He submitted apathetically to his host's attentions. Chitterlow, who admitted being a "bit off it" himself and in need of an egg-cupful of brandy, just an egg-cupful neat, dealt with that Head and Mouth as a mother might deal with the fall of an only child. He compared it with other Heads and Mouths that he had met, and in particular to certain experienced by the Hon. Thomas Norgate. "Right up to the last," said Chitterlow, "he couldn't stand his liquor. It happens like that at times." And after Chitterlow had pumped on the young beginner's head and given him some anchovy paste piping hot on b.u.t.tered toast, which he preferred to all the other remedies he had encountered, Kipps resumed his crumpled collar, brushed his clothes, tacked up his knee, and prepared to face Mr. Shalford and the reckoning for this wild, unprecedented night, the first "night out" that ever he had taken.

Acting on Chitterlow's advice to have a bit of a freshener before returning to the Emporium, Kipps walked some way along the Leas and back and then went down to a shop near the Harbour to get a cup of coffee. He found that extremely reinvigorating, and he went on up the High Street to face the inevitable terrors of the office, a faint touch of pride in his depravity tempering his extreme self-abas.e.m.e.nt. After all, it was not an unmanly headache; he had been out all night, and he had been drinking and his physical disorder was there to witness the fact. If it wasn't for the thought of Shalford he would have been even a proud man to discover himself at last in such a condition. But the thought of Shalford was very dreadful. He met two of the apprentices s.n.a.t.c.hing a walk before shop began. At the sight of them he pulled his spirits together, put his hat back from his pallid brow, thrust his hands into his trouser pockets and adopted an altogether more dissipated carriage; he met their innocent faces with a wan smile. Just for a moment he was glad that his patch at the knee was, after all, visible and that some at least of the mud on his clothes had refused to move at Chitterlow's brus.h.i.+ng. What wouldn't they think he had been up to? He pa.s.sed them without speaking. He could imagine how they regarded his back. Then he recollected Mr. Shalford....

The deuce of a row certainly and perhaps----! He tried to think of plausible versions of the affair. He could explain he had been run down by rather a wild sort of fellow who was riding a bicycle, almost stunned for the moment (even now he felt the effects of the concussion in his head) and had been given whiskey to restore him, and "the fact is, sir"--with an upward inflection of the voice, an upward inflection of the eyebrows and an air of its being the last thing one would have expected whiskey to do, the manifestation indeed of a practically unique physiological weakness--"it got into my _'ed_!"

Put like that it didn't look so bad.

He got to the Emporium a little before eight and the housekeeper with whom he was something of a favourite ("There's no harm in Mr. Kipps,"

she used to say) seemed to like him if anything better for having broken the rules and gave him a piece of dry toast and a good hot cup of tea.

"I suppose the G. V.----" began Kipps.

"He knows," said the housekeeper.

He went down to shop a little before time, and presently Booch summoned him to the presence.

He emerged from the private office after an interval of ten minutes.

The junior clerk scrutinised his visage. Buggins put the frank question.

Kipps answered with one word.

"Swapped!" said Kipps.

--2

Kipps leant against the fixtures with his hands in his pockets and talked to the two apprentices under him.

"I don't care if I _am_ swapped," said Kipps. "I been sick of Teddy and his System some time. I was a good mind to chuck it when my time was up.

Wish I 'ad now."

Afterwards Pierce came round and Kipps repeated this.

"What's it for?" said Pierce. "That row about the window tickets?"

"No fear!" said Kipps and sought to convey a perspective of splendid depravity. "I wasn't in las' night," he said and made even Pierce, "man about town" Pierce, open his eyes.

"Why! where did you get to?" asked Pierce.

He conveyed that he had been "fair round the town." "With a Nactor chap, I know."

"One can't _always_ be living like a curit," he said.

"No fear," said Pierce, trying to play up to him.

But Kipps had the top place in that conversation.

"My Lor'!" said Kipps, when Pierce had gone, "but wasn't my mouth and 'ed bad this morning before I 'ad a pick-me-up!"

"Whad jer 'ave?"

"Anchovy on 'ot b.u.t.tered toast. It's the very best pick-me-up there is.

You trust me, Rodgers. I never take no other and I don't advise you to.

See?"

And when pressed for further particulars, he said again he had been "fair all _round_ the town, with a Nactor chap" he knew. They asked curiously all he had done and he said, "Well, what do _you_ think?" And when they pressed for still further details he said there were things little boys ought not to know and laughed darkly and found them some huckaback to roll.

And in this manner for a s.p.a.ce did Kipps fend off the contemplation of the "key of the street" that Shalford had presented him.

--3

This sort of thing was all very well when junior apprentices were about, but when Kipps was alone with himself it served him not at all. He was uncomfortable inside and his skin was uncomfortable, and Head and Mouth palliated perhaps, but certainly not cured, were still with him. He felt, to tell the truth, nasty and dirty and extremely disgusted with himself. To work was dreadful and to stand still and think still more dreadful. His patched knee reproached him. These were the second best of his three pairs of trousers, and they had cost him thirteen and sixpence. Practically ruined they were. His dusting pair was unfit for shop and he would have to degrade his best. When he was under inspection he affected the slouch of a desperado, but directly he found himself alone, this pa.s.sed insensibly into the droop.

The financial aspect of things grew large before him. His whole capital in the world was the sum of five pounds in the Post Office Savings Bank and four and sixpence cash. Besides there would be two months' screw.

His little tin box upstairs was no longer big enough for his belongings; he would have to buy another, let alone that it was not calculated to make a good impression in a new "crib." Then there would be paper and stamps needed in some abundance for answering advertis.e.m.e.nts and railway fares when he went "crib hunting." He would have to write letters, and he never wrote letters. There was spelling for example to consider.

Probably if nothing turned up before his month was up he would have to go home to his Uncle and Aunt.

How would they take it?...

For the present at any rate he resolved not to write to them.

Such disagreeable things as this it was that lurked below the fair surface of Kipps' a.s.sertion, "I've been wanting a chance. If 'e 'adn't swapped me, I should very likely 'ave swapped _'im_."

In the perplexed privacies of his own mind he could not understand how everything had happened. He had been the Victim of Fate, or at least of one as inexorable--Chitterlow. He tried to recall the successive steps that had culminated so disastrously. They were difficult to recall....

Buggins that night abounded in counsel and reminiscence.

"Curious thing," said Buggins, "but every time I've had the swap I've never believed I should get another Crib--never. But I have," said Buggins. "Always. So don't lose heart, whatever you do....

"Whatever you do," said Buggins, "keep hold of your collars and cuffs--s.h.i.+rts if you can, but collars anyhow. Spout them last. And anyhow, it's summer!--you won't want your coat.... You got a good umbrella....