Part 40 (1/2)

Kipps H. G. Wells 39480K 2022-07-22

--6

Four days after this it was that Kipps got up so late. He got up late, cut his chin while shaving, kicked a slipper into his sponge bath and said, ”Des.h.!.+”

Perhaps you know those intolerable mornings, dear Reader, when you seem to have neither the heart nor the strength to rise, and your nervous adjustments are all wrong and your fingers thumbs, and you hate the very birds for singing. You feel inadequate to any demand whatever. Often such awakenings follow a poor night's rest, and commonly they mean indiscriminate eating, or those subtle mental influences old Kipps ascribed to ”Foozle Ile” in the system, or worry. And with Kipps--albeit Chitterlow had again been his guest overnight--a.s.suredly worry had played a leading role. Troubles had been gathering upon him for days, there had been a sort of concentration of these hosts of Midian overnight, and in the grey small hours Kipps had held his review.

The predominating trouble marched under this banner:

MR. KIPPS

MRS. BINDON BOTTING

At Home

Thursday, September 16th

Anagrams, 4 to 6:30 R. S. V. P.

a banner that was the fac-simile of a card upon his looking gla.s.s in the room below. And in relation to this terribly significant doc.u.ment things had come to a pa.s.s with Helen that he could only describe in his own expressive idiom as ”words.”

It had long been a smouldering issue between them that Kipps was not availing himself with any energy or freedom of the opportunities he had of social exercises, much less was he seeking additional opportunities.

He had, it was evident, a peculiar dread of that universal afternoon enjoyment, the Call, and Helen made it unambiguously evident that this dread was ”silly” and had to be overcome. His first display of this unmanly weakness occurred at the Coote's on the day before he kissed Ann. They were all there, chatting very pleasantly, when the little servant with the big cap announced the younger Miss Wace.

Whereupon Kipps manifested a lively horror and rose partially from his chair. ”O Gum!” he protested. ”Carn't I go upstairs?”

Then he sank back, for it was too late. Very probably the younger Miss Wace had heard him as she came in.

Helen said nothing of that, though her manner may have shown her surprise, but afterwards she told Kipps he must get used to seeing people, and suggested that he should pay a series of calls with Mrs.

Wals.h.i.+ngham and herself. Kipps gave a reluctant a.s.sent at the time and afterwards displayed a talent for evasion that she had not suspected in him. At last she did succeed in securing him for a call upon Miss Punchafer, of Radnor Park--a particularly easy call because Miss Punchafer being so deaf one could say practically what one liked--and then outside the gate he s.h.i.+rked again. ”I can't go in,” he said in a faded voice.

”You _must_,” said Helen, beautiful as ever, but even more than a little hard and forbidding.

”I can't.”

He produced his handkerchief hastily, thrust it to his face, and regarded her over it with rounded, hostile eyes.

”'Possible,” he said in a hoa.r.s.e, strange voice out of the handkerchief.

”Nozzez bleedin'.”

But that was the end of his power of resistance, and when the rally for the Anagram Tea occurred she bore down his feeble protests altogether.

She insisted. She said frankly, ”I am going to give you a good talking to about this,” and she did....

From Coote he gathered something of the nature of Anagrams and Anagram parties. An anagram, Coote explained, was a word spelt the same way as another, only differently arranged, as, for instance, T. O. C. O. E.

would be an anagram for his own name, Coote.

”T. O. C. O. E.,” repeated Kipps very carefully.