Part 7 (1/2)

And as soon as he emerged from the first effect of pure and awestricken humility--he was greatly helped to emerge from that condition to a perception of human equality by the need the lodging-house keeper was under to talk while she worked, and as she didn't like Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham and her friends very much, and the young man with spectacles was deaf, she naturally talked to Kipps--he perceived that he was in a state of adoration for Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham that it seemed almost a blasphemous familiarity to speak of us being in love.

This state, you must understand, had nothing to do with ”flirting” or ”spooning” and that superficial pa.s.sion that flashes from eye to eye upon the leas and pier--absolutely nothing. That he knew from the first.

Her rather pallid, intelligent young face, beneath those sombre clouds of hair, put her in a cla.s.s apart; towards her the thought of ”attentions” paled and vanished. To approach such a being, to perform sacrifices and to perish obviously for her, seemed the limit he might aspire to, he or any man. For if his love was abas.e.m.e.nt, at any rate it had this much of manliness, that it covered all his s.e.x. It had not yet come to Kipps to acknowledge any man as his better in his heart of hearts. When one does that the game is played and one grows old indeed.

The rest of his sentimental interests vanished altogether in this great illumination. He meditated about her when he was blocking cretonne; her image was before his eyes at tea-time, and blotted out the more immediate faces, and made him silent and preoccupied, and so careless in his bearing that the junior apprentice, sitting beside him, mocked at and parodied his enormous bites of bread and b.u.t.ter unreproved. He became conspicuously less popular on the ”fancy” side, the ”costumes”

was chilly with him and the ”millinery” cutting. But he did not care. An intermittent correspondent with Flo Bates, that had gone on since she left Mr. Shalford's desk for a position at Tunbridge ”nearer home,” and which had roused Kipps in its earlier stages to unparalleled heights of epistolatory effort, died out altogether by reason of his neglect. He heard with scarcely a pang that, as a consequence perhaps of his neglect, Flo was ”carrying on with a chap who managed a farm.”

Every Thursday he jabbed and gouged at his wood, jabbing and gouging intersecting circles and diamond traceries, and that laboured inane which our mad world calls ornament, and he watched Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham furtively whenever she turned away. The circles in consequence were jabbed crooked; and his panels, losing their symmetry, became comparatively pleasing to the untrained eye--and once he jabbed his finger. He would cheerfully have jabbed all his fingers if he could have found some means of using the opening to express himself of the vague emotions that possessed him. But he s.h.i.+rked conversation just as earnestly as he desired it; he feared that profound general ignorance of his might appear.

--3

There came a time when she could not open one of the cla.s.s-room windows.

The man with the black beard pored over his chipping heedlessly....

It did not take Kipps a moment to grasp his opportunity. He dropped his gouge and stepped forward. ”Lem _me_,” he said....

He could not open the window either!

”Oh, please don't trouble,” she said.

”'Sno trouble,” he gasped.

Still the sash stuck. He felt his manhood was at stake. He gathered himself together for a tremendous effort, and the pane broke with a snap, and he thrust his hand into the void beyond.

”_There!_” said Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham, and the gla.s.s fell ringing into the courtyard below.

Then Kipps made to bring his hand back, and felt the keen touch of the edge of the broken gla.s.s at his wrist. He turned dolefully. ”I'm tremendously sorry,” he said in answer to the accusation in Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham's eyes. ”I didn't think it would break like that,”--as if he had expected it to break in some quite different and entirely more satisfactory manner. The boy with the gift of wood-carving having stared at Kipps' face for a moment, became involved in a Laoc.o.o.n struggle with a giggle.

”You've cut your wrist,” said one of the girl friends, standing up and pointing. She was a pleasant-faced, greatly freckled girl, with a helpful disposition, and she said ”You've cut your wrist,” as brightly as if she had been a trained nurse.

Kipps looked down, and saw a swift line of scarlet rush down his hand.

He perceived the other man student regarding this with magnified eyes.

”You _have_ cut your wrist,” said Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham, and Kipps regarded his damage with greater interest.

”He's cut his wrist,” said the maiden lady to the lodging-house keeper, and seemed in doubt what a lady should do. ”It's----” she hesitated at the word ”bleeding,” and nodded to the lodging-house keeper instead.

”Dreadfully,” said the maiden lady, and tried to look and tried not to look at the same time.

”Of _course_ he's cut his wrist,” said the lodging-house keeper, momentarily quite annoyed at Kipps; and the other young lady, who thought Kipps rather common, went on quietly with her wood-cutting with an air of its being the proper thing to do--though n.o.body else seemed to know it.

”You must tie it up,” said Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham.

”We must tie it up,” said the freckled girl.

”I 'adn't the slightest idea that window was going to break like that,”

said Kipps, with candour. ”Nort the slightest.”

He glanced again at the blood on his wrist, and it seemed to him that it was on the very point of dropping on the floor of that cultured cla.s.s-room. So he very neatly licked it off, feeling at the same time for his handkerchief. ”Oh, _don't!_” said Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham as he did so, and the girl with the freckles made a movement of horror. The giggle got the better of the boy with the gift, and celebrated its triumph by unseemly noises; in spite of which it seemed to Kipps at the moment that the act that had made Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham say ”Oh, _don't!_” was rather a desperate and manly treatment of what was after all a creditable injury.