Part 58 (2/2)

Nice old ladies pa.s.sed him, refined people with tidy umbrellas, bright, beautiful, supercilious-looking children. Of course! the right thing for such a day as this was a light overcoat and an umbrella. A child might have known that. He had them at home, but how could one explain that? He decided to turn down by the Harvey monument and escape through Clifton Gardens towards the hills. And thereby he came upon Coote.

He already felt the most abject and propitiatory of social outcasts when he came upon Coote, and Coote finished him. He pa.s.sed within a yard of Coote. Coote was coming along towards the Leas, and when Kipps saw him his legs hesitated about their office and he seemed to himself to stagger about all over the footpath. At the sight of him Coote started visibly. Then a sort of _rigor vitae_ pa.s.sed through his frame, his jaw protruded and errant bubbles of air seemed to escape and run about beneath his loose skin. (Seemed I say--I am perfectly well aware that there is really connective tissue in Coote as in all of us to prevent anything of the sort.) His eyes fixed themselves on the horizon and glazed. As he went by Kipps could hear his even, resolute breathing. He went by, and Kipps staggered on into a universe of dead cats and dust heaps, rind and ashes--_cut!_ Cut!

It was part of the inexorable decrees of Providence that almost immediately afterwards the residuum of Kipps had to pa.s.s a very, very long and observant-looking girls' school.

Kipps recovered consciousness again on the road between Shorncliffe Station and Cheriton, though he cannot remember, indeed to this day he has never attempted to remember, how he got there. And he was back at certain thoughts suggested by his last night's novel reading, that linked up directly with the pariah-like emotions of these last encounters. The novel lay at home upon the cheffonier; it was one of society and politics--there is no need whatever to give the t.i.tle or name the author--written with a heavy-handed thoroughness that overrode any possibility of resistance on the part of the Kipps mind. It had crushed all his poor little edifice of ideals, his dreams of a sensible, una.s.suming existence, of snugness, of not caring what people said and all the rest of it, to dust; it had reinstated, squarely and strongly again, the only proper conception of English social life. There was a character in the book who trifled with Art, who was addicted to reading French novels, who dressed in a loose, careless way, who was a sorrow to his dignified, silvery-haired, politico-religious mother, and met the admonitions of bishops with a front of bra.s.s. He treated a ”nice girl,”

to whom they had got him engaged, badly; he married beneath him--some low thing or other. And sank....

Kipps could not escape the application of the case. He was enabled to see how this sort of thing looked to decent people; he was enabled to gauge the measure of the penalties due. His mind went from that to the frozen marble of Coote's visage.

_He deserved it!_...

That day of remorse! Later it found him coming upon the site of his building operations and surveying it in a mood near to despair, his mackintosh over his arm.

Hardly anyone was at work that day--no doubt the builders were having him in some obscure manner--and the whole place seemed a dismal and depressing litter. The builder's shed, black-lettered WILKINS, BUILDER, HYTHE, looked like a stranded thing amidst a cast-up disorder of wheelbarrows and wheeling planks, and earth and sand and bricks. The foundations of the walls were trenches full of damp concrete, drying in patches; the rooms--it was incredible they could ever be rooms--were shaped out as squares and oblongs of coa.r.s.e, wet gra.s.s and sorrel. They looked absurdly small--dishonestly small. What could you expect? Of course the builders were having him, building too small, building all wrong, using bad materials! Old Kipps had told him a wrinkle or two. The builders were having him, young Wals.h.i.+ngham was having him, everybody was having him! They were having him and laughing at him because they didn't respect him. They didn't respect him because he couldn't do things right. Who could respect him?...

He was an outcast, he had no place in the world. He had had his chance in the world and turned his back on it. He had ”behaved badly”--that was the phrase....

Here a great house was presently to arise, a house to be paid for, a house neither he nor Ann could manage--with eleven bedrooms, and four disrespectful servants having them all the time!

How had it all happened exactly?

This was the end of his great fortune! What a chance he had had! If he had really carried out his first intentions and stuck to things, how much better everything might have been! If he had got a tutor--that had been in his mind originally--a special sort of tutor to show him everything right; a tutor for gentlemen of neglected education. If he had read more and attended better to what Coote had said!

Coote, who had just cut him!...

Eleven bedrooms! What had possessed him? No one would ever come to see them, no one would ever have anything to do with them. Even his aunt cut him! His uncle treated him with a half-contemptuous sufferance. He had not a friend worth counting in the world! Buggins, Carshot, Pierce; shop a.s.sistants! The p.o.r.nicks--a low socialist lot! He stood among his foundations like a lonely figure among ruins; he stood among the ruins of his future, and owned himself a foolish and mistaken man. He saw himself and Ann living out their shameful lives in this great crazy place--as it would be--with everybody laughing secretly at them and their eleven rooms, and n.o.body approaching them--n.o.body nice and right that is, for ever. And Ann!

What was the matter with Ann? She'd given up going for walks lately, got touchy and tearful, been fitful with her food. Just when she didn't ought to. It was all a part of the judgment upon wrongdoing, it was all part of the social penalties that Juggernaut of a novel had brought home to his mind.

--3

He let himself in with his latchkey. He went moodily into the dining-room and got out the plans to look at them. He had a vague hope that there would prove to be only ten bedrooms. But he found there were still eleven. He became aware of Ann standing over him. ”Look 'ere, Artie!” said Ann.

He looked up and found her holding a number of white oblongs. His eyebrows rose.

”It's Callers,” said Ann.

He put his plans aside slowly and took and read the cards in silence, with a sort of solemnity. Callers after all! Then perhaps he wasn't to be left out of the world after all. Mrs. G. Porrett Smith, Miss Porrett Smith, Miss Mabel Porrett Smith, and two smaller cards of the Rev. G.

Porrett Smith. ”Lor'!” he said, ”_Clergy!_”

”There was a lady,” said Ann, ”and two growed-up gals--all dressed up!”

”And 'im?”

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