Kipps: the Story of a Simple Soul
Copyright© 2024 by H. G. Wells
Chapter 3: Terminations
§1
Next morning came a remarkable telegram from Folkestone. “Please come at once, urgent, Walshingham,” 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 Walshingham—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 passion 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!”
“But, Artie,” said Ann, trying to grasp it, “d’you mean to say he’s took our money?”
“Speckylated it!” said Kipps, with an illustrative flourish of the arm, that failed to illustrate. “Bort things dear and sold ‘em cheap, and played the ‘ankey-pankey jackass with everything we got. That’s what I mean ‘e’s done, Ann.” He repeated this last sentence with the addition of violent adverbs.
“D’you mean to say our money’s gone, Artie?”
“Ter-dash it, Yes, Ann!” swore Kipps, exploding in a shout. “Ain’t I tellin’ you?”
He was immediately sorry. “I didn’t mean to ‘oller at you, Ann,” he said, “but I’m all shook up. I don’t ‘ardly know what I’m sayin’. Ev’ry penny.”...
“But, Artie——”
Kipps grunted. He went to the window and stared for a moment at a sunlit sea. “Gord!” he swore.
“I mean,” he said, coming back to Ann and with an air of exasperation, “that he’s ‘bezzled and ‘ooked it. That’s what I mean, Ann.”
Ann put down the bib. “But wot are we going to do, Artie?”
Kipps indicated ignorance, wrath and despair with one comprehensive gesture of his hands. He caught an ornament from the mantel and replaced it. “I’m going to bang about,” he said, “if I ain’t precious careful.”
“You saw ’er, you say?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say ‘xactly?” said Ann.
“Told me to see a s’licitor—tole me to get someone to ‘elp me at once. She was there in black—like she used to be—and speaking cool and careful-like. ‘Elen! ... She’s precious ‘ard, is ‘Elen. She looked at me straight. ‘It’s my fault,’ she said, ‘I ought to ‘ave warned you ... Only under the circumstances it was a little difficult.’ Straight as anything. I didn’t ‘ardly say anything to ‘er. I didn’t seem to begin to take it in until she was showing me out. I ‘adn’t anything to say. Jest as well, perhaps. She talked like a call a’most. She said—what was it she said about her mother? ‘My mother’s overcome with grief,’ she said, ‘so naturally everything comes on me.’”
“And she told you to get someone to ‘elp you?”
“Yes. I been to old Bean.”
“O’ Bean?”
“Yes. What I took my business away from!”
“What did he say?”
“He was a bit off’and at first, but then ‘e come ‘round. He couldn’t tell me anything till ‘e knew the facts. What I know of young Walshingham, there won’t be much ‘elp in the facts. No!”
He reflected for a space. “It’s a smash-up, Ann. More likely than not, Ann, ‘e’s left us over’ead in debt. We got to get out of it just ‘ow we can...
“We got to begin again,” he went on. “’Ow, I don’t know. All the way ‘ome my ‘ead’s been going. We got to get a living some’ow or other. ‘Aving time to ourselves, and a bit of money to spend, and no hurry and worry, it’s all over for ever, Ann. We was fools, Ann. We didn’t know our benefits. We been caught. Gord! ... Gord!”
He was on the verge of “banging about” again.
They heard a jingle in the passage, the large soft impact of a servant’s indoor boots. As if she were a part, a mitigatory part of Fate, came Gwendolen to lay the midday meal. Kipps displayed self-control forthwith. Ann picked up the bib again and bent over it, and the Kippses bore themselves gloomily perhaps, but not despairfully, while their dependant was in the room. She spread the cloth and put out the cutlery with a slow inaccuracy, and Kipps, after a whisper to himself, went again to the window. Ann got up and put away her work methodically in the cheffonier.
“When I think,” said Kipps, as soon as the door closed again behind Gwendolen, “when I think of the ‘ole people and ‘aving to tell ‘em of it all—I want to smesh my ‘ead against the nearest wall. Smesh my silly brains out! And Buggins—Buggins what I’d ‘arf promised to start in a lill’ outfitting shop in Rendezvous Street.”...
Gwendolen returned and restored dignity.
The midday meal spread itself slowly before them. Gwendolen, after her custom, left the door open and Kipps closed it carefully before sitting down.
He stood for a moment, regarding the meal doubtfully.
“I don’t feel as if I could swaller a moufful,” he said.
“You got to eat,” said Ann...
For a time they said little, and once swallowing was achieved, ate on with a sort of melancholy appetite. Each was now busy thinking.
“After all,” said Kipps, presently, “whatever ‘appens, they can’t turn us out or sell us up before nex’ quarter-day. I’m pretty sure about that.”
“Sell us up!” said Ann.
“I dessey we’re bankrup’,” said Kipps, trying to say it easily and helping himself with a trembling hand to unnecessary potatoes.
Then a long silence. Ann ceased to eat, and there were silent tears.
“More potatoes, Artie?” choked Ann.
“I couldn’t,” said Kipps. “No.”
He pushed back his plate, which was indeed replete with potatoes, got up and walked about the room. Even the dinner-table looked distraught and unusual.
“What to do, I don’t know,” he said.
“Oh, Lord!” he ejaculated, and picked up and slapped down a book.
Then his eye fell upon another postcard that had come from Chitterlow by the morning’s post, and which now lay by him on the mantel-shelf. He took it up, glanced at its imperfectly legible message, and put it down.
“Delayed!” he said, scornfully. “Not prodooced in the smalls. Or is it smells ‘e says? ‘Ow can one understand that? Any’ow ‘e’s ‘umbugging again ... Somefing about the Strand. No! Well, ‘e’s ‘ad all the money ‘e’ll ever get out of me! ... I’m done.”
He seemed to find a momentary relief in the dramatic effect of his announcement. He came near to a swagger of despair upon the hearthrug, and then suddenly came and sat down next to Ann and rested his chin on the knuckles of his two clenched hands.
“I been a fool, Ann,” he said in a gloomy monotone. “I been a brasted fool. But it’s ‘ard on us, all the same. It’s ‘ard.”
“‘Ow was you to know?” said Ann.
“I ought to ‘ave known. I did in a sort of way know. And ‘ere we are! I wouldn’t care so much if it was myself, but it’s you, Ann! ‘Ere we are! Regular smashed up! And you——” He checked at an unspeakable aggravation of their disaster. “I knew ‘e wasn’t to be depended upon and there I left it! And you got to pay ... What’s to ‘appen to us all, I don’t know.”
He thrust out his chin and glared at fate.
“‘Ow do you know ‘e’s speckylated everything?” said Ann, after a silent survey of him.
“‘E ‘as,” said Kipps, irritably, holding firm to disaster.
“She say so?”
“She don’t know, of course, but you depend upon it that’s it. She told me she knew something was on, and when she found ‘im gone and a note lef’ for her she knew it was up with ‘im. ‘E went by the night boat. She wrote that telegram off to me straight away.”
Ann surveyed his features with tender, perplexed eyes; she had never seen him so white and drawn before, and her hand rested an inch or so away from his arm. The actual loss was still, as it were, afar from her. The immediate thing was his enormous distress.
“‘Ow do you know——?” she said and stopped. It would irritate him too much.
Kipps’ imagination was going headlong.
“Sold up!” he emitted presently, and Ann flinched.
“Going back to work, day after day—I can’t stand it, Ann, I can’t. And you——”
“It don’t do to think of it,” said Ann.
Presently he came upon a resolve. “I keep on thinking of it, and thinking of it, and what’s to be done and what’s to be done. I shan’t be any good ‘ome s’arfernoon. It keeps on going ‘round and ‘round in my ‘ead, and ‘round and ‘round. I better go for a walk or something. I’d be no comfort to you, Ann. I should want to ‘owl and ‘ammer things if I ‘ung about ‘ome. My fingers is all atwitch. I shall keep on thinking ‘ow I might ‘ave stopped it and callin’ myself a fool.”...
He looked at her between pleading and shame. It seemed like deserting her.
Ann regarded him with tear-dimmed eyes.
“You’d better do what’s good for you, Artie,” she said... “I’ll be best cleaning. It’s no use sending off Gwendolen before her month, and the top room wants turning out.” She added with a sort of grim humour: “May as well turn it out now while I got it.”
“I better go for a walk,” said Kipps...
And presently our poor exploded Kipps was marching out to bear his sudden misery. Habit turned him up the road towards his growing house, and then suddenly he perceived his direction—”Oh, Lor’!”—and turned aside and went up the steep way to the hill crest and the Sandling Road, and over the line by that tree-embowered Junction, and athwart the wide fields towards Postling—a little, black, marching figure—and so up the Downs and over the hills, whither he had never gone before...
§2
He came back long after dark, and Ann met him in the passage.
“Where you been, Artie?” she asked, with a strained note in her voice.
“I been walking and walking—trying to tire myself out. All the time I been thinking what shall I do. Trying to fix something up all out of nothing.”
“I didn’t know you meant to be out all this time.”
Kipps was gripped by compunction...
“I can’t think what we ought to do,” he said, presently.
“You can’t do anything much, Artie, not till you hear from Mr. Bean.”
“No; I can’t do anything much. That’s jest it. And all this time I keep feelin’ if I don’t do something the top of my ‘ead’ll bust ... Been trying to make up advertisements ‘arf the time I been out—’bout finding a place, good salesman and stock-keeper, and good Manchester dresses, window-dressing—Lor’! Fancy that all beginning again! ... If you went to stay with Sid a bit—if I sent every penny I got to you—I dunno! I dunno!”
When they had gone to bed there was an elaborate attempt to get to sleep ... In one of their great waking pauses Kipps remarked in a muffled tone: “I didn’t mean to frighten you, Ann, being out so late. I kep’ on walking and walking, and some’ow it seemed to do me good. I went out to the ‘illtop ever so far beyond Stanford, and sat there ever so long, and it seemed to make me better. Just looking over the marsh like, and seeing the sun set.”...
“Very likely,” said Ann, after a long interval, “it isn’t so bad as you think it is, Artie.”
“It’s bad,” said Kipps.
“Very likely, after all, it isn’t quite so bad. If there’s only a little——”
There came another long silence.
“Ann,” said Kipps in the quiet darkness.
“Yes,” said Ann.
“Ann,” said Kipps, and stopped as though he had hastily shut a door upon speech.
“I kep’ thinking,” he said, trying again, “I kep’ thinking—after all—I been cross to you and a fool about things—about them cards, Ann; but”—his voice shook to pieces—”we ’ave been ‘appy, Ann ... some’ow ... togever.”
And with that he and then she fell into a passion of weeping. They clung very tightly together—closer than they had been since ever the first brightness of their married days turned to the grey of common life again.
All the disaster in the world could not prevent their going to sleep at last with their poor little troubled heads close together on one pillow. There was nothing more to be done, there was nothing more to be thought; Time might go on with his mischiefs, but for a little while at least they still had one another.
§3
Kipps returned from his second interview with Mr. Bean in a state of strange excitement. He let himself in with his latch-key and slammed the door. “Ann!” he shouted, in an unusual note; “Ann!”
Ann replied distantly.
“Something to tell you,” said Kipps; “something noo!”
Ann appeared apprehensive from the kitchen.
“Ann,” he said, going before her into the little dining-room, for his news was too dignified for the passage, “very likely, Ann, o’ Bean says, we shall ‘ave——” He decided to prolong the suspense. “Guess!”
“I can’t, Artie.”
“Think of a lot of money!”
“A ‘undred pounds p’raps?”
He spoke with immense deliberation. “O v e r a f o u s a n d p o u n d s!”
Ann stared and said nothing, only went a shade whiter.
“Over, he said. A’most certainly over.”
He shut the dining-room door and came forward hastily, for Ann, it was clear, meant to take this mitigation of their disaster with a complete abandonment of her self-control. She came near flopping; she fell into his arms.
“Artie,” she got to at last and began to weep, clinging tightly to him.
“Pretty near certain,” said Kipps, holding her. “A fousand pounds!”
“I said, Artie,” she wailed on his shoulder with the note of accumulated wrongs, “very likely it wasn’t so bad.”...
“There’s things,” he said, when presently he came to particulars, “‘e couldn’t touch. The noo place! It’s freehold and paid for, and with the bit of building on it, there’s five or six ‘undred pound p’raps—say worf free ‘undred, for safety. We can’t be sold up to finish it, like we thought. O’ Bean says we can very likely sell it and get money. ‘E says you often get a chance to sell a ‘ouse lessen ‘arf done, ‘specially free’old. Very likely, ‘e say. Then there’s Hughenden. Hughenden ‘asn’t been mortgaged not for more than ‘arf its value. There’s a ‘undred or so to be got on that, and the furniture and the rent for the summer still coming in. ‘E says there’s very likely other things. A fousand pounds, that’s what ‘e said. ‘E said it might even be more.”...
They were sitting now at the table.
“It alters everything,” said Ann.
“I been thinking that, Ann, all the way ‘ome. I came in the motor car. First ride I’ve ‘ad since the smash. We needn’t send off Gwendolen, leastways not till after. You know. We needn’t turn out of ‘ere—not for a long time. What we been doing for the o’ people we can go on doing a’most as much. And your mother! ... I wanted to ‘oller coming along. I pretty near run coming down the road by the hotel.”
“Oh, I am glad we can stop ‘ere and be comfortable a bit,” said Ann. “I am glad for that.”
“I pretty near told the driver on the motor—only ‘e was the sort won’t talk ... You see, Ann, we’ll be able to start a shop, we’ll be able to get into something like. All about our ‘aving to go back to places and that; all that doesn’t matter any more.”
For a while they abandoned themselves to ejaculating transports. Then they fell talking to shape an idea to themselves of the new prospect that opened before them.
“We must start a sort of shop,” said Kipps, whose imagination had been working. “It’ll ‘ave to be a shop.”
“Drapery?” said Ann.
“You want such a lot of capital for the drapery, mor’n a thousand pounds you want by a long way—to start it anything like proper.”
“Well, outfitting. Like Buggins was going to do.”
Kipps glanced at that for a moment, because the idea had not occurred to him. Then he came back to his prepossession.
“Well, I thought of something else, Ann,” he said. “You see, I’ve always thought a little book-shop. It isn’t like the drapery—’aving to be learnt. I thought—even before this smash-up—’ow I’d like to ‘ave something to do, instead of always ‘aving ‘olidays always like we ‘ave been ‘aving.”
He reflected.
“You don’t know much about books, do you, Artie?”
“You don’t want to.” He illustrated. “I noticed when we used to go to that Lib’ry at Folkestone, ladies weren’t anything like what they was in a draper’s—if you ‘aven’t got just what they want it’s ‘Oh, no!’ and out they go. But in a book shop it’s different. One book’s very like another—after all, what is it? Something to read and done with. It’s not a thing that matters like print dresses or serviettes—where you either like ‘em or don’t, and people judge you by. They take what you give ‘em in books and lib’ries, and glad to be told what to. See ‘ow we was—up at that lib’ry.”...
He paused. “You see, Ann——
“Well, I read ‘n ‘dvertisement the other day. I been asking Mr. Bean. It said—five ‘undred pounds.”
“What did?”
“Branches,” said Kipps.
Ann failed to understand. “It’s a sort of thing that gets up book shops all over the country,” said Kipps. “I didn’t tell you, but I arst about it a bit. On’y I dropped it again. Before this smash, I mean. I’d thought I’d like to keep a shop for a lark, on’y then I thought it silly. Besides it ‘ud ‘ave been beneath me.”
He blushed vividly. “It was a sort of projek of mine, Ann.
“On’y it wouldn’t ‘ave done,” he added.
It was a tortuous journey when the Kippses set out to explain anything to each other. But through a maze of fragmentary elucidations and questions, their minds did presently begin to approximate to a picture of a compact, bright, little shop, as a framework for themselves.
“I thought of it one day when I was in Folkestone. I thought of it one day when I was looking in at a window. I see a chap dressin’ a window and he was whistlin’ reg’lar light-’arted ... I thought then I’d like to keep a bookshop, any’ow, jest for something to do. And when people weren’t about, then you could sit and read the books. See? It wouldn’t be ‘arf bad.”...
They mused, each with elbows on table and knuckles to lips, looking with speculative eyes at each other.
“Very likely we’ll be ‘appier than we should ‘ave been with more money,” said Kipps presently.
“We wasn’t ‘ardly suited,” reflected Ann, and left her sentence incomplete.
“Fish out of water like,” said Kipps...
“You won’t ‘ave to return that call now,” said Kipps, opening a new branch of the question. “That’s one good thing.”
“Lor’!” said Ann, visibly brightening, “no more I shan’t!”
“I don’t s’pose they’d want you to, even if you did—with things as they are.”
A certain added brightness came into Ann’s face. “Nobody won’t be able to come leaving cards on us, Artie, now, any more. We are out of that!”
“There isn’t no necessity for us to be stuck up,” said Kipps, “any more for ever! ‘Ere we are, Ann, common people, with jest no position at all, as you might say, to keep up. No sev’nts, not if you don’t like. No dressin’ better than other people. If it wasn’t we been robbed—dashed if I’d care a rap about losing that money. I b’lieve”—his face shone with the rare pleasure of paradox—”I reely b’lieve, Ann, it’ll prove a savin’ in the end.”
§4
The remarkable advertisement which had fired Kipps’ imagination with this dream of a bookshop opened out in the most alluring way. It was one little facet in a comprehensive scheme of transatlantic origin, which was to make our old-world methods of book-selling “sit up,” and it displayed an imaginative briskness, a lucidity and promise that aroused the profoundest scepticism in the mind of Mr. Bean. To Kipps’ renewed investigations it presented itself in an expository illustrated pamphlet (far too well printed, Mr. Bean thought, for a reputable undertaking) of the most convincing sort. Mr. Bean would not let him sink his capital in shares in its projected company that was to make all things new in the world of books, but he could not prevent Kipps becoming one of their associated booksellers. And so when presently it became apparent that an epoch was not to be made, and the “Associated Booksellers’ Trading Union (Limited)” receded and dissolved and liquidated (a few drops) and vanished and went away to talk about something else, Kipps remained floating undamaged in this interestingly uncertain universe as an independent bookseller.
Except that it failed, the Associated Booksellers’ Trading Union had all the stigmata of success. Its fault, perhaps, was that it had them all instead of only one or two. It was to buy wholesale for all its members and associates and exchange stock, having a common books-in-stock list and a common lending library, and it was to provide a uniform registered shop front to signify all these things to the intelligent passer-by. Except that it was controlled by buoyant young Over-men with a touch of genius in their arithmetic, it was, I say, a most plausible and hopeful project. Kipps went several times to London and an agent came to Hythe; Mr. Bean made some timely interventions, and then behind a veil of planks and an announcement in the High Street, the uniform registered shop front came rapidly into being. “Associated Booksellers’ Trading Union,” said this shop front, in a refined, artistic lettering that bookbuyers were going to value, as wise men over forty value the proper label for Berncasteler Doctor, and then, “Arthur Kipps.”
Next to starting a haberdasher’s shop I doubt if Kipps could have been more truly happy than during those weeks of preparation.
There is, of course, nothing on earth, and I doubt at times if there is a joy in Heaven, like starting a small haberdasher’s shop. Imagine, for example, having a drawerful of tapes (one whole piece most exquisitely blocked of every possible width of tape), or, again, an army of neat, large packages, each displaying one sample of hooks and eyes. Think of your cottons, your drawer of coloured silks, the little, less, least of the compartments and thin packets of your needle drawer! Poor princes and wretched gentlefolk mysteriously above retail trade, may taste only the faint unsatisfactory shadow of these delights with trays of stamps or butterflies. I write, of course, for those to whom these things appeal; there are clods alive who see nothing, or next to nothing, in spools of mercerised cotton and endless bands of paper-set pins. I write for the wise, and as I write I wonder that Kipps resisted haberdashery. He did. Yet even starting a bookshop is at least twenty times as interesting as building your own house to your own design in unlimited space and time, or any possible thing people with indisputable social position and sound securities can possibly find to do. Upon that I rest.