Kipps H. G. Wells (best thriller novels to read .txt) 📖

’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’you mean?”

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

“Oo’s Masterman?”

“Rare good chap I know⁠—takes my first floor front room. Masterson 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 become 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.⁠ ⁠…

“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 a-jingle and warn his Uncle and Aunt. Sid assisted with the great furlined overcoat and examined the spectacles.

“Goodbye, o’ chap!” said Kipps.

“Goodbye, o’ chap!” said Sid.

The old people came out to say goodbye.

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 someone 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 around 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 anyone⁠—he had seen young Kipps. He did not want to talk about Kipps for a bit to anyone at all.

V The Pupil Lover

When Kipps came to reflect upon his afternoon’s work he had his first inkling of certain comprehensive incompatibilities lying about the course of true love in his particular case. He had felt without understanding the incongruity between the announcement he had failed to make and the circle of ideas of his Aunt and Uncle. It was this rather than the want of a specific intention that had silenced him, the perception that when he travelled from Folkestone to New Romney he travelled from an atmosphere where his engagement to Helen was sane and excellent to an atmosphere where it was only to be regarded with incredulous suspicion. Coupled and associated with this jar was his sense of the altered behaviour of Sid Pornick, the evident shock to that ancient alliance caused by the fact of his enrichment, the touch of hostility in his “You’ll soon be swelled too big to speak to a poor mechanic like me.” Kipps was unprepared for the unpleasant truth; that the path of social advancement is and must be strewn with broken friendships. This first protrusion of that fact caused a painful confusion in his mind. It was speedily to