Kipps by H. G. Wells (the chimp paradox TXT) 📖

afford it. Got an old crony or so here… Gossip—have tea… S’pose you ain’t married, Kipps?

Kipps shook his head. ‘I—’ he began.

‘I am,’ said Sid. ‘Married these two years, and got a nipper. Proper little chap.’

Kipps got his word in at last. ‘I got engaged day before yesterday,’ he said.

‘Ah!’ said Sid airily. ‘That’s all right. Who’s the fortunate lady!’

Kipps tried to speak in an off-hand way. He stuck his hands in his pockets as he spoke. ‘She’s a solicitor’s daughter,’ he said, ‘in Folkestone. Rather’r nice set. County family. Related to the Earl of Beaupr��s—’

‘Steady on!’ cried Sid.

‘You see, I’ve ‘ad a bit of luck, Sid. Been lef money.’

Sid’s eye travelled instinctively to mark Kipps’ garments. ‘How much?’ he asked.

”Bout twelve ‘undred a year,’ said Kipps, more off-handedly than ever.

‘Lord!’ said Sid, with a note of positive dismay, and stepped back a pace or two.

‘My granfaver it was,’ said Kipps, trying hard to be calm and simple. ”Ardly knew I ‘ad a granfaver. And then bang! When o’ Bean, the solicitor, told me of it, you could ‘ave knocked me down—’

‘Ow much?’ demanded Sid, with a sharp note in his voice.

Twelve ‘undred pound a year—proximately, that is…’

Sid’s attempt at genial unenvious congratulation did not last a minute. He shook hands with an unreal heartiness, and said he was jolly glad. ‘It’s a blooming stroke of Luck,’ he said.

‘It’s a blooming’ stroke of Luck,’ he repeated, ‘that’s what it is,’ with the smile fading from his face. ‘Of course, better you ‘ave it than me, o’ chap. So I don’t envy you, anyhow. I couldn’t keep it if I did ‘ave it.’

‘Ow’s that?’ said Kipps, a little hipped by Sid’s patent chagrin.

‘I’m a Socialist, you see,’ said Sid. ‘I don’t ‘old with Wealth. What is Wealth? Labour robbed out of the poor. At most it’s only yours in trust. Leastways, that’s ‘ow I should take it.’

He reflected. The Present distribution of Wealth,’ he said, and stopped.

Then he let himself go, with unmasked bitterness. ‘It’s no sense at all. It’s jest damn foolishness. Who’s going to work and care in a muddle like this? Here first you do—something anyhow—of the world’s work and it pays you hardly anything, and then it invites you to do nothing, nothing whatever, and pays you twelve hundred pounds a year. Who’s going to respect laws and customs when they come to damn silliness like that?’

He repeated, ‘Twelve hundred pounds a year!’

At the sight of Kipps’ face he relented slightly.

‘It’s not you I’m thinking of, o’ man; it’s the system. Better you than most people. Still—’

He laid both hands on the gate and repeated to himself, ‘Twelve ‘undred a year—Gee-whiz, Kipps! You’ll be a swell!’

‘I shan’t,’ said Kipps, with imperfect conviction. ‘No fear.’

‘You can’t ‘ave money like that and not swell out. You’ll soon be too big to speak to—‘ow do they put it?—a mere mechanic like me.’

‘No fear, Siddee,’ said Kipps, with conviction. ‘I ain’t that sort.’

‘Ah!’ said Sid, with a sort of unwilling scepticism, ‘money’ll be too much for you. Besides—you’re caught by a swell already.’

”Ow d’yer mean?’

‘That girl you’re going to marry. Masterman says—’

‘Oo’s Masterman?’

‘Rare good chap, I know—takes my first-floor front room. Masterman says it’s always the wife pitches the key. Always. There’s no social differences—till women come in.’

‘Ah!’ said Kipps profoundly. ‘You don’t know.’

Sid shook his head. ‘Fancy!’ he reflected, ‘Art Kipps!… Twelve ‘Undred a Year!’

Kipps tried to bridge that opening gulf. ‘Remember the Hurons, Sid?’

‘Rather,’ said Sid.

‘Remember that wreck?’

‘I can smell it now—sort of sour smell.’

Kipps was silent for a moment, with reminiscent eyes on Sid’s still troubled face.

‘I say, Sid, ‘ow’s Ann?’

‘She’s all right,’ said Sid.

‘Where is she now?’

‘In a place… Ashford.’

‘Oh!’

Sid’s face had became a shade sulkier than before.

‘The fact is,’ he said, ‘we don’t get on very well together. I don’t hold with service. We’re common people, I suppose, but I don’t like it. I don’t see why a sister of mine should wait at other people’s tables. No. Not even if they got Twelve ‘Undred a Year.’

Kipps tried to change the point of application. ‘Remember ‘ow you came out once when we were racing here?… She didn’t run bad for a girl.’

And his own words raised an image brighter than he could have supposed, so bright it seemed to breathe before him, and did not fade altogether, even when he was back in Folkestone an hour or so later.

But Sid was not to be deflected from that other rankling theme by any reminiscences of Ann.

‘I wonder what you will do with all that money,’ he speculated. ‘I wonder if you will do any good at all. I wonder what you could do. You should hear Masterman. He’d tell you things. Suppose it came to me; what should I do? It’s no good giving it back to the State as things are. Start an Owenite profit-sharing factory perhaps. Or a new Socialist paper. We want a new Socialist paper.’

He tried to drown his personal chagrin in elaborate exemplary suggestions…

3

‘I must be gettin’ on to my motor,’ said Kipps at last, having to a large extent heard him out.

‘What! Got a motor?’

‘No,’ said Kipps apologetically. ‘Only jobbed for the day.’

”Ow much?’

‘Five pounds.’

‘Keep five families for a week! Good Lord!’ That seemed to crown Sid’s disgust.

Yet drawn by a sort of fascination, he came with Kipps and assisted at the mounting of the motor. He was pleased to note it was not the most modern of motors, but that was the only grain of comfort. Kipps mounted at once, after one violent agitation of the little shop-door to set the bell ajangle and warn his uncle and aunt. Sid assisted with the great fur-lined overcoat and examined the spectacles.

‘Good-bye, o’ chap!’ said Kipps.

‘Good-bye, o’ chap!’ said Sid.

The old people came out to say good-bye.

Old Kipps was radiant with triumph. ”Pon my sammy, Artie! I’m a goo’ mind to come with you,’ he shouted; and then, ‘I got something you might take with you!’

He dodged back into the shop and returned with the perforated engraving after Morland.

‘You stick to this, my boy,’ he said. ‘You get it repaired by some one who knows. It’s the most vallyble thing I got you so far—you take my word.’

‘Warrup!’ said the motor, and tuff, tuff, tuff, and backed and snorted, while old Kipps danced about on the pavement as if foreseeing complex catastrophes, and told the driver, ‘That’s all right.’

He waved his stout stick to his receding nephew. Then he turned to Sid. ‘Now if you could make something like that, young Pornick, you might blow a bit!’

‘I’ll make a doocid sight better than that before I done,’ said Sid, hands deep in his pockets.

‘Not you,’ said old Kipps.

The motor set up a prolonged sobbing moan and vanished round the corner. Sid stood motionless for a space, unheeding some further remark from old Kipps. The young mechanic had just discovered that to have manufactured seventeen bicycles, including orders in hand, is not so big a thing as he had supposed, and such discoveries try one’s manhood…

‘Oh, well!’ said Sid at last, and turned his face towards his mother’s cottage.

She had got a hot teacake for him, and she was a little hurt that he was dark and preoccupied as he consumed it. He had always been such a boy for teacake, and then when one went out specially and got him one—!

He did not tell her—he did not tell any one—he had seen young Kipps. He did not want to talk about Kipps for a bit to any one at all.