Kipps Part 23

"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 pa.s.sion for pedagoguery to which the Good Intentioned are so fatally liable, that pa.s.sion 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 reely 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 and Carshot and Pierce had made it very clear indeed--that his status in life had changed and that stupendous adaptations had to be achieved, but how they were to be effected 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 some day 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, Pierce 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 alt.i.tudes....

Suppose some day 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?

Millionnaires?...

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

--4

The next morning he came down to breakfast looking grave--a man with much before him in the world....

Kipps made a very special thing of his breakfast. Daily once hopeless dreams came true then. It had been customary in the Emporium to supplement Shalford's generous, indeed unlimited, supply of bread and b.u.t.ter-subst.i.tute, by private purchases, and this had given Kipps very broad, artistic conceptions of what the meal might be. Now there would be a cutlet or so or a mutton chop--this splendour Buggins had reported from the great London clubs--haddock, kipper, whiting or fish-b.a.l.l.s, eggs, boiled or scrambled, or eggs and bacon, kidney also frequently and sometimes liver. Amidst a garland of such themes, sausages, black and white puddings, bubble-and-squeak, fried cabbage and scallops came and went. Always as camp followers came potted meat in all varieties, cold bacon, German sausage, brawn, marmalade and two sorts of jam, and when he had finished these he would sit among his plates and smoke a cigarette and look at all these dishes crowded round him with a beatific approval. It was his princ.i.p.al meal. He was sitting with his cigarette regarding his apartment with that complacency begotten of a generous plan of feeding successfully realized, when newspapers and post arrived.

There were several things by the post, tradesmen's circulars and cards and two pathetic begging letters--his luck had got into the papers--and there was a letter from a literary man and a book to enforce his request for 10/--to put down Socialism. The book made it very clear that prompt action on the part of property owners was becoming urgent, if property was to last out the year. Kipps dipped in it and was seriously perturbed. And there was a letter from old Kipps saying it was difficult to leave the shop and come over and see him again just yet, but that he had been to a sale at Lydd the previous day and bought a few good old books and things it would be difficult to find the equal of in Folkestone. "They don't know the value of these things out here," wrote old Kipps, "but you may depend upon it they are valuable," and a brief financial statement followed. "There is an engraving someone might come along and offer you a lot of money for one of these days. Depend upon it, these old things are about the best investment you could make...."

Old Kipps had long been addicted to sales, and his nephew's good fortune had converted what had once been but a looking and a craving--he had rarely even bid for anything in the old days except the garden tools or the kitchen gallipots or things like that, things one gets for sixpence and finds a use for--into a very active pleasure. Sage and penetrating inspection, a certain mystery of bearing, tactical bids and Purchase!--Purchase!--the old man had had a good time.

While Kipps was rereading the begging letters and wis.h.i.+ng he had the sound, clear common sense of Buggins to help him a little, the Parcels Post brought along the box from his uncle. It was a large, insecure looking case held together by a few still loyal nails, and by what the British War Office would have recognised at once as an Army Corps of string, rags and odds and ends tied together. Kipps unpacked it with a table knife, a.s.sisted at a critical point by the poker, and found a number of books and other objects of an antique type.

There were three bound volumes of early issues of Chambers' Journal, a copy of Punch's Pocket Book for 1875, Sturm's Reflections, an early version of Gill's Geography (slightly torn), an ill.u.s.trated work on Spinal Curvature, an early edition of Kirke's Human Physiology, The Scottish Chiefs and a little volume on the Language of Flowers. There was a fine steel engraving, oak-framed and with some rusty spots, done in the Colossal style and representing the Handwriting on the Wall.

There were also a copper kettle, a pair of candle snuffers, a bra.s.s shoehorn, a tea caddy to lock, two decanters (one stoppered) and what was probably a portion of an eighteenth century child's rattle.

Kipps examined these objects one by one and wished he knew more about them. Turning over the pages of the Physiology again he came upon a striking plate in which a youth of agreeable profile displayed his interior in an unstinted manner to the startled eye. It was a new view of humanity altogether for Kipps, and it arrested his mind.

This anatomised figure made him forget for a s.p.a.ce that he was "practically a gentleman" altogether, and he was still surveying its extraordinary complications when another reminder of a world quite outside those spheres of ordered gentility into which his dreams had carried him overnight, arrived (following the servant) in the person of Chitterlow.

--5

"Ul-_lo_!" said Kipps, rising.

"Not busy?" said Chitterlow, enveloping Kipps' hand for a moment in one of his own and tossing the yachting cap upon the monumental carved oak sideboard.

"Only a bit of reading," said Kipps.

"Reading, eh?" Chitterlow c.o.c.ked the red eye at the books and other properties for a moment and then, "I've been expecting you 'round again one night."

"I been coming 'round," said Kipps. "On'y there's a chap 'ere----. I was coming 'round last night on'y I met 'im."

He walked to the hearthrug. Chitterlow drifted around the room for a time, glancing at things as he talked. "I've altered that play tremendously since I saw you," he said. "Pulled it all to pieces."

"What play's that, Chit'low?"

"The one we were talking about. You know. You said something--I don't know if you meant it--about buying half of it. Not the tragedy. I wouldn't sell my twin brother a share in that. That's my investment.

That's my Serious Work. No! I mean that new farce I've been on to. Thing with the business about a beetle."

"Oo yes," said Kipps. "_I_ remember."

"I thought you would. Said you'd take a fourth share for a hundred pounds. _You_ know."

"I seem to remember something----"

"Well, it's all different. Every bit of it. I'll tell you. You remember what you said about a b.u.t.terfly? You got confused, you know--Old Meth.

Kept calling the beetle a b.u.t.terfly and that set me off. I've made it quite different. Quite different. Instead of Popplewaddle--thundering good farce name that, you know; for all that it came from a Visitors'

List--instead of Popplewaddle getting a beetle down his neck and rus.h.i.+ng about, I've made him a collector--collects b.u.t.terflies, and this one you know's a rare one. Comes in at window, centre." Chitterlow began to ill.u.s.trate with appropriate gestures. "Pop rushes about after it.

Forgets he mustn't let on he's in the house. After that----. Tells 'em.

Rare b.u.t.terfly, worth lots of money. Some are, you know. Everyone's on to it after that. b.u.t.terfly can't get out of room, every time it comes out to have a try, rush and scurry. Well, I've worked on that. Only----"

He came very close to Kipps. He held up one hand horizontally and tapped it in a striking and confidential manner with the fingers of the other.

"Something else," he said. "That's given me a Real Ibsenish Touch--like the Wild Duck. You know that woman--I've made her lighter--and she sees it. When they're chasing the b.u.t.terfly the third time, she's on! She looks. 'That's me!' she says. Bif! Pestered b.u.t.terfly. _She's_ the Pestered b.u.t.terfly. It's legitimate. Much more legitimate than the Wild Duck--where there isn't a duck!

"Knock 'em! The very t.i.tle ought to knock 'em. I've been working like a horse at it.... You'll have a gold mine in that quarter share, Kipps....

_I_ don't mind. It's suited me to sell it, and suited you to buy. Bif!"

Chitterlow interrupted his discourse to ask, "You haven't any brandy in the house, have you? Not to drink, you know. But I want just an eggcupful to pull me steady. My liver's a bit queer.... It doesn't matter, if you haven't. Not a bit. I'm like that. Yes, whiskey'll do.

Better!"

Kipps hesitated for a moment, then turned and fumbled in the cupboard of his sideboard. Presently he disinterred a bottle of whiskey and placed it on the table. Then he put out first one bottle of soda water and after the hesitation of a moment another. Chitterlow picked up the bottle and read the label. "Good old Methusaleh," he said. Kipps handed him the corkscrew and then his hand fluttered up to his mouth. "I'll have to ring now," he said, "to get gla.s.ses." He hesitated for a moment before doing so, leaning doubtfully as it were towards the bell.

When the housemaid appeared he was standing on the hearthrug with his legs wide apart, with the bearing of a desperate fellow. And after they had both had whiskeys--"You know a decent whiskey," Chitterlow remarked and took another "just to drink."--Kipps produced cigarettes and the conversation flowed again.