Kipps, H. G. Wells [uplifting book club books TXT] 📗

class of all. There came a little pause, and the freckled girl suddenly went back into the classroom, and left Kipps and Miss Walshingham alone together for the first time. Kipps was instantly breathless. She looked at his face with a glance that mingled sympathy and curiosity, and held out her white hand.

“Well, goodbye, Mr. Kipps,” she said.

He took her hand and held it. “I’d do anything,” said Kipps, and had not the temerity to add, “for you.” He stopped awkwardly. He shook her hand and said, “Goodbye.”

There was a little pause.

“I hope you will have a pleasant holiday,” she said.

“I shall come back to the class next year, anyhow,” said Kipps valiantly, and turned abruptly to the stairs.

“I hope you will,” said Miss Walshingham.

He turned back towards her. “Reelly?” he said.

“I hope everybody will come back.”

“I will⁠—anyhow,” said Kipps. “You may count on that,” and he tried to make his tones significant.

They looked at one another through a little pause.

“Goodbye,” she said.

Kipps lifted his hat. She turned towards the classroom.

“Well?” said the freckled girl, coming back towards her.

“Nothing,” said Helen. “At least⁠—presently.” And she became very energetic about some scattered tools on a desk.

The freckled girl went out and stood for a moment at the head of the stairs. When she came back she looked very hard at her friend. The incident struck her as important⁠—wonderfully important. It was unassimilable, of course, and absurd, but there it was, the thing that is so cardinal to a girl, the emotion, the subservience, the crowning triumph of her sex. She could not help feeling that Helen took it, on the whole, a little too hardly.

IV Chitterlow

The hour of the class on the following Thursday found Kipps in a state of nearly incredible despondency. He was sitting with his eyes on the reading room clock, his chin resting on his fists and his elbows on the accumulated comic papers that were comic alas! in vain! He paid no heed to the little man in spectacles glaring opposite to him, famishing for Fun. In this place it was he had sat night after night, each night more blissful than the last, waiting until it should be time to go to Her! And then⁠—bliss! And now the hour had come and there was no class! There would be no class now until next October; it might be there would never be a class so far as he was concerned again.

It might be there would never be a class again, for Shalford, taking exception at a certain absentmindedness that led to mistakes and more particularly to the ticketing of several articles in Kipps’ Manchester window upside down, had been “on to” him for the past few days in an exceedingly onerous manner.⁠ ⁠…

He sighed profoundly, pushed the comic papers back⁠—they were rent away from him instantly by the little man in spectacles⁠—and tried the old engravings of Folkestone in the past, that hang about the room. But these, too, failed to minister to his bruised heart. He wandered about the corridors for a time and watched the library indicator for awhile. Wonderful thing that! But it did not hold him for long. People came and laughed near him and that jarred with him dreadfully. He went out of the building and a beastly cheerful barrel organ mocked him in the street. He was moved to a desperate resolve to go down to the beach. There it might be he would be alone. The sea might be rough⁠—and attuned to him. It would certainly be dark.

“If I ’ad a penny I’m blest if I wouldn’t go and chuck myself off the end of the pier.⁠ ⁠… She’d never miss me.⁠ ⁠…” He followed a deepening vein of thought.

“Penny though! It’s tuppence,” he said after a space.

He went down Dover Street in a state of profound melancholia⁠—at the pace and mood as it were of his own funeral procession⁠—and he crossed at the corner of Tontine Street heedless of all mundane things. And there it was that Fortune came upon him, in disguise and with a loud shout, the shout of a person endowed with an unusually rich, full voice, followed immediately by a violent blow in the back.

His hat was over his eyes and an enormous weight rested on his shoulders and something kicked him in the back of his calf.

Then he was on all fours in some mud that Fortune, in conjunction with the Folkestone corporation and in the pursuit of equally mysterious ends, had heaped together even lavishly for his reception.

He remained in that position for some seconds awaiting further developments and believing almost anything broken before his heart. Gathering at last that this temporary violence of things in general was over, and being perhaps assisted by a clutching hand, he arose, and found himself confronting a figure holding a bicycle and thrusting forward a dark face in anxious scrutiny.

“You aren’t hurt, Matey?” gasped the figure.

“Was that you ’it me?” said Kipps.

“It’s these handles, you know,” said the figure with an air of being a fellow sufferer. “They’re too low. And when I go to turn, if I don’t remember, Bif!⁠—and I’m in to something.”

“Well⁠—you give me a oner in the back⁠—anyhow,” said Kipps, taking stock of his damages.

“I was coming down hill, you know,” explained the bicyclist. “These little Folkestone hills are a Fair Treat. It isn’t as though I’d been on the level. I came rather a whop.”

“You did that,” said Kipps.

“I was back pedalling for all I was worth anyhow,” said the bicyclist. “Not that I am worth much back pedalling.”

He glanced round and made a sudden movement almost as if to mount his machine. Then he turned as rapidly to Kipps again, who was now stooping down, pursuing the tale of his injuries.

“Here’s the back of my trouser leg all tore down,” said Kipps, “and I believe I’m bleeding. You reely ought to be more careful⁠—”

The stranger investigated the damage with a rapid movement. “Holy Smoke, so you are!” He