Kipps: the Story of a Simple Soul
Copyright© 2024 by H. G. Wells
Chapter 2: The Callers
§1
The Kippses sat at their midday dinner-table and amidst the vestiges of rhubarb pie, and discussed two postcards the one o’clock post had brought. It was a rare bright moment of sunshine in a wet and windy day in the March that followed their marriage. Kipps was attired in a suit of brown, with a tie of fashionable green, while Ann wore one of those picturesque loose robes that are usually associated with sandals and advanced ideas. But there weren’t any sandals on Ann or any advanced ideas, and the robe had come quite recently through the counsels of Mrs. Sid Pornick. “It’s Artlike,” said Kipps, giving way. “It’s more comfortable,” said Ann. The room looked out by French windows upon a little patch of green and the Hythe parade. The parade was all shiny wet with rain, and the green-grey sea tumbled and tumbled between parade and sky.
The Kipps’ furniture, except for certain chromo lithographs of Kipps’ incidental choice that struck a quiet note amidst the wall paper, had been tactfully forced by an expert salesman, and it was in a style of mediocre elegance. There was a sideboard of carved oak that had only one fault, it reminded Kipps at times of wood-carving, and its panel of bevelled glass now reflected the back of his head. On its shelf were two books from Parsons’ Library, each with a “place” marked by a slip of paper; neither of the Kippses could have told you the title of either book they read, much less the author’s name. There was an ebonised overmantel set with phials and pots of brilliant colour, each duplicated by looking-glass, and bearing also a pair of Chinese jars made in Birmingham, a wedding present from Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Pornick, and several sumptuous Japanese fans. And there was a Turkey carpet of great richness. In addition to these modern exploits of Messrs. Bunt and Bubble, there were two inactive tall clocks, whose extreme dilapidation appealed to the connoisseur; a terrestrial and a celestial globe, the latter deeply indented; a number of good old iron moulded and dusty books, and a stuffed owl wanting one (easily replaceable) glass eye, obtained by the exertions of Uncle Kipps. The table equipage was as much as possible like Mrs. Bindon Botting’s, only more costly, and in addition there were green and crimson wine glasses—though the Kippses never drank wine.
Kipps turned to the more legible of his two postcards again.
“‘Unavoidably prevented from seein’ me to-day,’ ‘e says. I like ‘is cheek. After I give ‘im ‘is start and everything.”
He blew.
“‘E certainly treats you a bit orf’and,” said Ann.
Kipps gave vent to his dislike of young Walshingham. “He’s getting too big for ‘is britches,” he said. “I’m beginning to wish she ’ad brought an action for breach. Ever since ’e said she wouldn’t, ‘e’s seemed to think I’ve got no right to spend my own money.”
“‘E’s never liked your building the ‘ouse,” said Ann.
Kipps displayed wrath. “What the goodness ‘as it got to do wiv’ ‘im?”
“Overman indeed!” he added. “Overmantel!... ‘E trys that on with me, I’ll tell ‘im something ‘e won’t like.”
He took up the second card. “Dashed if I can read a word of it. I can jest make out Chit-low at the end and that’s all.”
He scrutinised it. “It’s like someone in a fit writing. This here might be W H A T—what. P R I C E—I got it! What price Harry now? It was a sort of saying of ‘is. I expect ‘e’s either done something or not done something towards starting that play, Ann.”
“I expect that’s about it,” said Ann.
Kipps grunted with effort. “I can’t read the rest,” he said at last, “nohow.”
A thoroughly annoying post. He pitched the card on the table, stood up and went to the window, where Ann, after a momentary reconnaisance at Chitterlow’s hieroglyphics, came to join him.
“Wonder what I shall do this afternoon,” said Kipps, with his hands deep in his pockets.
He produced and lit a cigarette.
“Go for a walk, I s’pose,” said Ann.
“I been for a walk this morning.
“S’pose I must go for another,” he added, after an interval.
They regarded the windy waste of sea for a space.
“Wonder why it is ‘e won’t see me,” said Kipps, returning to the problem of young Walshingham. “It’s all lies about ‘is being too busy.”
Ann offered no solution.
“Rain again!” said Kipps, as the lash of the little drops stung the window.
“Oo, bother!” said Kipps, “you got to do something. Look ‘ere, Ann! I’ll go orf for a reg’lar tramp through the rain, up by Saltwood, ‘round by Newington, over the camp, and so ‘round and back, and see ‘ow they’re getting on about the ‘ouse. See? And look ‘ere! you get Gwendolen to go out a bit before I come back. If it’s still rainy, she can easy go ‘round and see ‘er sister. Then we’ll ‘ave a bit of tea, with tea cake—all buttery, see? Toce it ourselves, p’raps. Eh?”
“I dessay I can find something to do in the ‘ouse,” said Ann, considering. “You’ll take your mackintosh and leggin’s, I s’pose. You’ll get wet without your mackintosh over those roads.”
“Righ-O,” said Kipps, and went to ask Gwendolen for his brown leggings and his other pair of boots.
§2
Things conspired to demoralise Kipps that afternoon.
When he got outside the house everything looked so wet under the drive of the southwester that he abandoned the prospect of the clay lanes towards Newington altogether, and turned east to Folkestone along the Seabrook digue. His mackintosh flapped about him, the rain stung his cheek; for a time he felt a hardy man. And then as abruptly the rain ceased and the wind fell, and before he was through Sandgate High Street it was a bright spring day. And there was Kipps in his mackintosh and squeaky leggings, looking like a fool!
Inertia carried him another mile to the Leas, and there the whole world was pretending there had never been such a thing as rain—ever. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky; except for an occasional puddle the asphalt paths looked as dry as a bone. A smartly dressed man in one of those overcoats that look like ordinary cloth and are really most deceitfully and unfairly waterproof, passed him and glanced at the stiff folds of his mackintosh. “Demn!” said Kipps. His mackintosh swished against his leggings, his leggings piped and whistled over his boot-tops.
“Why do I never get anything right?” Kipps asked of a bright implacable universe.
Nice old ladies passed him, refined people with tidy umbrellas, bright, beautiful, supercilious-looking children. Of course! the right thing for such a day as this was a light overcoat and an umbrella. A child might have known that. He had them at home, but how could one explain that? He decided to turn down by the Harvey monument and escape through Clifton Gardens towards the hills. And thereby he came upon Coote.
He already felt the most abject and propitiatory of social outcasts when he came upon Coote, and Coote finished him. He passed within a yard of Coote. Coote was coming along towards the Leas, and when Kipps saw him his legs hesitated about their office and he seemed to himself to stagger about all over the footpath. At the sight of him Coote started visibly. Then a sort of rigor vitae passed through his frame, his jaw protruded and errant bubbles of air seemed to escape and run about beneath his loose skin. (Seemed I say—I am perfectly well aware that there is really connective tissue in Coote as in all of us to prevent anything of the sort.) His eyes fixed themselves on the horizon and glazed. As he went by Kipps could hear his even, resolute breathing. He went by, and Kipps staggered on into a universe of dead cats and dust heaps, rind and ashes—cut! Cut!
It was part of the inexorable decrees of Providence that almost immediately afterwards the residuum of Kipps had to pass a very, very long and observant-looking girls’ school.
Kipps recovered consciousness again on the road between Shorncliffe Station and Cheriton, though he cannot remember, indeed to this day he has never attempted to remember, how he got there. And he was back at certain thoughts suggested by his last night’s novel reading, that linked up directly with the pariah-like emotions of these last encounters. The novel lay at home upon the cheffonier; it was one of society and politics—there is no need whatever to give the title or name the author—written with a heavy-handed thoroughness that overrode any possibility of resistance on the part of the Kipps mind. It had crushed all his poor little edifice of ideals, his dreams of a sensible, unassuming existence, of snugness, of not caring what people said and all the rest of it, to dust; it had reinstated, squarely and strongly again, the only proper conception of English social life. There was a character in the book who trifled with Art, who was addicted to reading French novels, who dressed in a loose, careless way, who was a sorrow to his dignified, silvery-haired, politico-religious mother, and met the admonitions of bishops with a front of brass. He treated a “nice girl,” to whom they had got him engaged, badly; he married beneath him—some low thing or other. And sank...
Kipps could not escape the application of the case. He was enabled to see how this sort of thing looked to decent people; he was enabled to gauge the measure of the penalties due. His mind went from that to the frozen marble of Coote’s visage.
He deserved it!...
That day of remorse! Later it found him coming upon the site of his building operations and surveying it in a mood near to despair, his mackintosh over his arm.
Hardly anyone was at work that day—no doubt the builders were having him in some obscure manner—and the whole place seemed a dismal and depressing litter. The builder’s shed, black-lettered Wilkins, Builder, Hythe, looked like a stranded thing amidst a cast-up disorder of wheelbarrows and wheeling planks, and earth and sand and bricks. The foundations of the walls were trenches full of damp concrete, drying in patches; the rooms—it was incredible they could ever be rooms—were shaped out as squares and oblongs of coarse, wet grass and sorrel. They looked absurdly small—dishonestly small. What could you expect? Of course the builders were having him, building too small, building all wrong, using bad materials! Old Kipps had told him a wrinkle or two. The builders were having him, young Walshingham was having him, everybody was having him! They were having him and laughing at him because they didn’t respect him. They didn’t respect him because he couldn’t do things right. Who could respect him?...
He was an outcast, he had no place in the world. He had had his chance in the world and turned his back on it. He had “behaved badly”—that was the phrase...
Here a great house was presently to arise, a house to be paid for, a house neither he nor Ann could manage—with eleven bedrooms, and four disrespectful servants having them all the time!
How had it all happened exactly?
This was the end of his great fortune! What a chance he had had! If he had really carried out his first intentions and stuck to things, how much better everything might have been! If he had got a tutor—that had been in his mind originally—a special sort of tutor to show him everything right; a tutor for gentlemen of neglected education. If he had read more and attended better to what Coote had said!
Coote, who had just cut him!...
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