Chapter 9: The Labyrinthodon

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You imagine them fleeing through our complex and difficult social system, as it were, for life, first on foot and severally to the Folkestone Central Station; then in a first-class carriage, with Kipps’ bag as sole chaperone to Charing Cross, and then in a four-wheeler, a long, rumbling, palpitating, slow flight through the multitudinous swarming London streets to Sid. Kipps kept peeping out of the window. “It’s the next corner after this, I believe,” he would say. For he had a sort of feeling that at Sid’s he would be immune from the hottest pursuits. He paid the cabman in a manner adequate to the occasion and turned to his prospective brother-in-law. “Me and Ann,” he said, “we’re going to marry.”

“But I thought——” began Sid.

Kipps motioned him towards explanations in the shop...

“It’s no good, my arguing with you,” said Sid, smiling delightedly as the case unfolded. “You done it now.” And Masterman being apprised of the nature of the affair descended slowly in a state of flushed congratulation.

“I thought you might find the Higher Life a bit difficult,” said Masterman, projecting a bony hand. “But I never thought you’d have the originality to clear out ... Won’t the young lady of the superior classes swear! Never mind—it doesn’t matter anyhow.

“You were starting a climb,” he said at dinner, “that doesn’t lead anywhere. You would have clambered from one refinement of vulgarity to another and never got to any satisfactory top. There isn’t a top. It’s a squirrel’s cage. Things are out of joint, and the only top there is is a lot of blazing card playing women and betting men—you should read Modern Society—seasoned with archbishops and officials and all that sort of glossy, pandering Bosh ... You’d have hung on, a disconsolate, dismal, little figure, somewhere up the ladder, far below even the motor-car class, while your wife larked about—or fretted because she wasn’t a bit higher than she was ... I found it all out long ago. I’ve seen women of that sort. And I don’t climb any more.”

“I often thought about what you said last time I saw you,” said Kipps.

“I wonder what I said,” said Masterman in parenthesis. “Anyhow, you’re doing the right and sane thing, and that’s a rare spectacle. You’re going to marry your equal, and you’re going to take your own line, quite independently of what people up there, or people down there, think you ought or ought not to do. That’s about the only course one can take nowadays with everything getting more muddled and upside down every day. Make your own little world and your own house first of all, keep that right side up whatever you do, and marry your mate ... That, I suppose, is what I should do—if I had a mate ... But people of my sort, luckily for the world, don’t get made in pairs. No!

“Besides——! However——” And abruptly, taking advantage of an interruption by Master Walt, he lapsed into thought.

Presently he came out of his musings.

“After all,” he said, “there’s hope.”

“What about?” said Sid.

“Everything,” said Masterman.

“Where there’s life there’s hope,” said Mrs. Sid. “But none of you aren’t eating anything like you ought to.”

Masterman lifted his glass.

“Here’s to Hope!” he said, “The Light of the World!”

Sid beamed at Kipps as who should say, “You don’t meet a character like this every dinner time.”

“Here’s to Hope,” repeated Masterman. “The best thing one can have. Hope of life—yes.”

He imposed his movement of magnificent self-pity on them all. Even young Walt was impressed.

They spent the days before their marriage in a number of agreeable excursions together. One day they went to Kew by steamboat, and admired the house full of paintings of flowers extremely; and one day they went early to have a good, long day at the Crystal Palace, and enjoyed themselves very much indeed. They got there so early that nothing was open inside, all the stalls were wrappered up and all the minor exhibitions locked and barred; they seemed the minutest creatures even to themselves in that enormous empty aisle and their echoing footsteps indecently loud. They contemplated realistic groups of plaster savages, and Ann thought they’d be queer people to have about. She was glad there were none in this country. They meditated upon replicas of classical statuary without excessive comment. Kipps said at large, it must have been a queer world then, but Ann very properly doubted if they really went about like that. But the place at that early hour was really lonely. One began to fancy things. So they went out into the October sunshine of the mighty terraces, and wandered amidst miles of stucco tanks and about those quiet Gargantuan grounds. A great, grey emptiness it was, and it seemed marvellous to them, but not nearly so marvellous as it might have seemed. “I never see a finer place, never,” said Kipps, turning to survey the entirety of the enormous glass front with Paxton’s vast image in the centre.