Part 17 (1/2)

”Straight. I been lef' twelve 'undred pounds--twelve 'undred pounds a year!”

He moved towards the little door out of the department into the house, moving, as heralds say, _regardant pa.s.sant_. Pierce stood with mouth wide open and pin poised in air. ”No!” he said at last.

”It's right,” said Kipps, ”and I'm going.”

And he fell over the doormat into the house.

--4

It happened that Mr. Shalford was in London buying summer sale goods--and no doubt also interviewing aspirants to succeed Kipps.

So that there was positively nothing to hinder a wild rush of rumour from end to end of the Emporium. All the masculine members began their report with the same formula. ”Heard about Kipps?”

The new girl in the cash desk had had it from Pierce and had dashed out into the fancy shop to be the first with the news on the fancy side.

Kipps had been left a thousand pounds a year, twelve thousand pounds a year. Kipps had been left twelve hundred thousand pounds. The figures were uncertain, but the essential facts they had correct. Kipps had gone upstairs. Kipps was packing his box. He said he wouldn't stop another day in the old Emporium, not for a thousand pounds! It was said that he was singing ribaldry about old Shalford.

He had come down! He was in the counting house. There was a general movement thither. Poor old Buggins had a customer and couldn't make out what the deuce it was all about! Completely out of it was Buggins.

There was a sound of running to and fro and voices saying this, that and the other thing about Kipps. Ring-a-dinger, ring-a-dinger went the dinner bell all unheeded. The whole of the Emporium was suddenly bright-eyed, excited, hungry to tell somebody, to find at any cost somebody who didn't know and be first to tell them, ”Kipps has been left thirty--forty--fifty thousand pounds!”

”_What!_” cried the senior porter, ”Him!” and ran up to the counting house as eagerly as though Kipps had broken his neck.

”One of our chaps just been left sixty thousand pounds,” said the first apprentice, returning after a great absence, to his customer.

”Unexpectedly?” said the customer.

”Quite,” said the first apprentice....

”I'm sure if Anyone deserves it, it's Mr. Kipps,” said Miss Mergle, and her train rustled as she hurried to the counting house.

There stood Kipps amidst a pelting shower of congratulations. His face was flushed and his hair disordered. He still clutched his hat and best umbrella in his left hand. His right hand was anyone's to shake rather than his own. (Ring-a-dinger, ring-a-dinger ding, ding, ding, dang you!

went the neglected dinner bell.)

”Good old Kipps,” said Pierce, shaking; ”Good old Kipps.”

Booch rubbed one anaemic hand upon the other. ”You're sure it's all right, Mr. Kipps,” he said in the background.

”I'm sure we all congratulate him,” said Miss Mergle.

”Great Scott!” said the new young lady in the glove department. ”Twelve hundred a year! Great Scott! You aren't thinking of marrying anyone, are you, Mr. Kipps?”

”Three pounds, five and ninepence a day,” said Mr. Booch, working in his head almost miraculously....

Everyone, it seemed, was saying how glad they were it was Kipps, except the junior apprentice, upon whom--he being the only son of a widow and used to having the best of everything as a right--an intolerable envy, a sense of unbearable wrong, had cast its gloomy shade. All the rest were quite honestly and simply glad--gladder perhaps at that time than Kipps because they were not so overpowered....

Kipps went downstairs to dinner, emitting fragmentary, disconnected statements. ”Never expected anything of the sort.... When this here old Bean told me, you could have knocked me down with a feather.... He says, 'You b'en lef' money.' Even then I didn't expect it'd be mor'n a hundred pounds perhaps. Something like that.”

With the sitting down to dinner and the handing of plates the excitement a.s.sumed a more orderly quality. The housekeeper emitted congratulations as she carved and the maidservant became dangerous to clothes with the plates--she held them anyhow, one expected to see one upside down even--she found Kipps so fascinating to look at. Everyone was the brisker and hungrier for the news (except the junior apprentice) and the housekeeper carved with unusual liberality. It was High Old Times there under the gaslight, High Old Times. ”I'm sure if Anyone deserves it,”

said Miss Mergle--”pa.s.s the salt, please--it's Kipps.”