Kipps Part 60

"You won't?"

"No!"...

"So there they go--orf! And we never see them again! And so it goes on!

So it goes on! We don't know n.o.body and we _shan't_ know anybody! And you won't put yourself out not a little bit, or take the trouble to find out anything 'ow it ought to be done."

Terrible pause.

"I never ought to 'ave merried you, Artie, that's the troof."

"Oh! _don't_ go into that."

"I never ought to 'ave merried you, Artie. I'm not equal to the position. If you 'adn't said you'd drown yourself----" She choked.

"I don' see why you shouldn't _try_, Ann. _I've_ improved. Why don't you? 'Stead of which you go sending out the servant and 'namelling floors, and then when visitors come----"

"'Ow was _I_ to know about y'r old visitors?" cried Ann in a wail, and suddenly got up and fled from amidst their ruined tea, the tea of which "toce, all b.u.t.tery," was to be the crown and glory.

Kipps watched her with a momentary consternation. Then he hardened his heart. "Ought to 'ave known better," he said, "goin' on like that!" He remained for a s.p.a.ce rubbing his knees and muttering. He emitted scornfully: "I carn't an' I won't." He saw her as the source of all his shames.

Presently, quite mechanically, he stooped down and lifted the flowery china cover. "Ter dash 'er b.u.t.tud Toce!" he shouted at the sight of it, and clapped the cover down again hard....

When Gwendolen came back she perceived things were in a slightly unusual poise. Kipps sat by the fire in a rigid att.i.tude reading a casually selected volume of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, and Ann was upstairs and inaccessible--to reappear at a later stage with reddened eyes.

Before the fire and still in a perfectly a.s.similable condition was what was evidently an untouched supply of richly b.u.t.tered toast under a cracked cover.

"They've 'ad a bit of a tiff," said Gwendolen, attending to her duties in the kitchen, with her outdoor hat still on and her mouth full.

"They're rummuns--if ever! My eye!"

And she took another piece of Ann's generously b.u.t.tered toast.

--4

The Kippses spoke no more that day to one another.

The squabble about cards and b.u.t.tered toast was as serious to them as the most rational of differences. It was all rational to them. Their sense of wrong burnt within them; their sense of what was owing to themselves, the duty of implacability, the obstinacy of pride. In the small hours Kipps lay awake at the nadir of unhappiness and came near groaning. He saw life as an extraordinarily desolating muddle; his futile house, his social discredit, his bad behaviour to Helen, his low marriage to Ann....

He became aware of something irregular in Ann's breathing....

He listened. She was awake and quietly and privately sobbing!

He hardened his heart; resolutely he hardened his heart.

The stupid little tragedies of these clipped and limited lives!

What is the good of keeping up the idyllic sham and pretending that ill-educated, misdirected people "get along very well," and that all this is harmlessly funny and nothing more? You think I'm going to write fat, silly, grinning novels about half-educated, under-trained people and keep it up all the time, that the whole thing's nothing but funny!

As I think of them lying unhappily there in the darkness, my vision pierces the night. See what I can see! Above them, brooding over them, I tell you there is a monster, a lumpish monster, like some great, clumsy griffin thing, like the Crystal Palace labyrinthodon, like Coote, like the leaden G.o.ddess Dulness Pope Abhorred, like some fat, proud flunkey, like pride, like indolence, like all that is darkening and heavy and obstructive in life. It is matter and darkness, it is the anti-soul, Stupidity. My Kippses live in its shadow. Shalford and his apprentices.h.i.+p system, the Hastings Academy, the ideas of Coote, the ideas of the old Kippses, all the ideas that have made Kipps what he is, all these are its shadow. But for that monster they might not be groping among false ideas and hurt one another so sorely and so stupidly; but for that, the glowing promise of childhood and youth might have had a happier fruition, thought might have awakened in them to meet _the_ thought of the world, the quickening suns.h.i.+ne of literature pierced to the substance of their souls, their lives might not have been divorced, as now they are divorced for ever, from the apprehension of beauty that we favoured ones are given--the vision of the Grail that makes life fine for ever. I have laughed, and I laugh at these two people; I have sought to make you laugh....

But I see through the darkness the souls of my Kippses, as they are, as little pink strips of living stuff, like the bodies of little, ill-nourished, ailing, ignorant children, children who feel pain, who are naughty and muddled and suffer and do not understand why. And the claw of this Beast rests upon them!

CHAPTER III

TERMINATIONS

--1

Next morning came a remarkable telegram from Folkestone. "Please come at once, urgent, Wals.h.i.+ngham," said the telegram, and Kipps, after an agitated but still ample breakfast, departed....

When he returned his face was very white and his countenance disordered.

He let himself in with his latchkey and came into the dining-room where Ann sat, affecting to work at a little thing she called a bib. She heard his hat fall in the hall before he entered, as though he had missed the peg. "I got something to tell you, Ann," he said, disregarding their overnight quarrel, and went to the hearthrug and took hold of the mantel, and stared at Ann as though the sight of her was novel.

"Well?" said Ann, not looking up and working a little faster.

"'E's gone!"

Ann looked up sharply and her hands stopped. "_Who's_ gone?" For the first time she perceived Kipps' pallor.

"Young Wals.h.i.+ngham--I saw 'er and she tole me."

"Gone? What d'you mean?"

"Cleared out! Gone off for good!"

"What for?"

"For 'is 'ealth," said Kipps, with sudden bitterness. "'E's been speckylating. He's speckylated our money and 'e's speckylated their money, and now 'e's took 'is 'ook. That's all about it, Ann."

"You mean?"

"I mean 'e's orf and our twenty-four thousand's orf, too! And 'ere we are! Smashed up! That's all about it, Ann." He panted.

Ann had no vocabulary for such an occasion. "Oh, Lor'!" she said, and sat still.

Kipps came about and stuck his hands deeply in his trouser pockets.

"Speckylated every penny--lorst it all--and gorn."

Even his lips were white.

"You mean we ain't got nothin' left, Artie?"

"Not a penny! Not a bloomin' penny, Ann. No!"

A gust of pa.s.sion whirled across the soul of Kipps. He flung out a knuckly fist. "If I 'ad 'im 'ere," he said, "I'd--I'd--I'd wring 'is neck for 'im. I'd--I'd----" His voice rose to a shout. He thought of Gwendolen in the kitchen and fell to "Ugh!"