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

their courts of law⁠—it’s a pos’tive fact, Kipps⁠—there’s witnesses waitin’ to be ’ired. Reg’lar trade. Touch their ’ats as you go in. Englishmen ’ave no idea, I tell you⁠—not ord’nary Englishmen. It’s in their blood. They’re too timid to be honest. Too slavish. They aren’t used to being free like we are, and if you gave ’em freedom they wouldn’t make a proper use of it. Now we⁠—. Oh, Damn!”

For the gas had suddenly gone out and Buggins had the whole column of Society Club Chat still to read.

Buggins could talk of nothing after that but Shalford’s meanness in turning off the gas, and after being extremely satirical indeed about their employer, undressed in the dark, hit his bare toe against a box and subsided after unseemly ejaculations into silent ill-temper.

Though Kipps tried to get to sleep before the affair of the letter he had just posted resumed possession of his mind he could not do so. He went over the whole thing again, quite exhaustively. Now that his first terror was abating he couldn’t quite determine whether he was glad or sorry that he had posted that letter. If it should happen to be a hundred pounds!

It must be a hundred pounds!

If it was he could hold out for a year, for a couple of years even, before he got a Crib.

Even if it was fifty pounds⁠—!

Buggins was already breathing regularly when Kipps spoke again. “Bug-gins,” he said.

Buggins pretended to be asleep, and thickened his regular breathing (a little too hastily) to a snore.

“I say Buggins,” said Kipps after an interval.

“What’s up now?” said Buggins unamiably.

“ ’Spose you saw an advertisement in a paper, with your name in it, see, asking you to come and see someone, like, so as to hear of something very much to your⁠—”

“Hide,” said Buggins shortly.

“But⁠—”

“I’d hide.”

“Er?”

“Goonight, o’ man,” said Buggins, with convincing earnestness. Kipps lay still for a long time, then blew profoundly, turned over and stared at the other side of the dark.

He had been a fool to post that letter!

Lord! Hadn’t he been a fool!

It was just five days and a half after the light had been turned out while Buggins was reading, that a young man with a white face and eyes bright and wide-open, emerged from a side road upon the Leas front. He was dressed in his best clothes, and, although the weather was fine, he carried his umbrella, just as if he had been to church. He hesitated and turned to the right. He scanned each house narrowly as he passed it, and presently came to an abrupt stop. “Hughenden,” said the gateposts in firm, black letters, and the fanlight in gold repeated “Hughenden.” It was a stucco house fit to take your breath away, and its balcony was painted a beautiful sea-green, enlivened with gilding. He stood looking up at it.

“Gollys!” he said at last in an awestricken whisper.

It had rich-looking crimson curtains to all the lower windows and brass railed blinds above. There was a splendid tropical plant in a large, artistic pot in the drawing-room window. There was a splendid bronzed knocker (ring also) and two bells⁠—one marked “servants.” Gollys! Servants, eh?

He walked past away from it, with his eyes regarding it, and then turned and came back. He passed through a further indecision, and finally drifted away to the sea front and sat down on a seat a little way along the Leas and put his arm over the back and regarded “Hughenden.” He whistled an air very softly to himself, put his head first on one side and then on the other. Then for a space he scowled fixedly at it.

A very stout old gentleman, with a very red face and very protuberant eyes, sat down beside Kipps, removed a Panama hat of the most abandoned desperado cut, and mopped his brow and blew. Then he began mopping the inside of his hat. Kipps watched him for a space, wondering how much he might have a year, and where he bought his hat. Then “Hughenden” reasserted itself.

An impulse overwhelmed him. “I say,” he said, leaning forward, to the old gentleman.

The old gentleman started and stared.

“Whad do you say?” he asked fiercely.

“You wouldn’t think,” said Kipps, indicating with his forefinger, “that that ’ouse there belongs to me.”

The old gentleman twisted his neck round to look at “Hughenden.” Then he came back to Kipps, looked at his mean, little garments with apoplectic intensity and blew at him by way of reply.

“It does,” said Kipps, a little less confidently.

“Don’t be a Fool,” said the old gentleman, and put his hat on and wiped out the corners of his eyes. “It’s hot enough,” panted the old gentleman indignantly, “without Fools.” Kipps looked from the old gentleman to the house and back to the old gentleman. The old gentleman looked at Kipps and snorted and looked out to sea, and again, snorting very contemptuously, at Kipps.

“Mean to say it doesn’t belong to me?” said Kipps.

The old gentleman just glanced over his shoulder at the house in dispute and then fell to pretending Kipps didn’t exist. “It’s been lef’ me this very morning,” said Kipps. “It ain’t the only one that’s been lef’ me, neither.”

“Aw!” said the old gentleman, like one who is sorely tried. He seemed to expect the passersby presently to remove Kipps.

“It ’as,” said Kipps. He made no further remark to the old gentleman for a space, but looked with a little less certitude at the house.⁠ ⁠…

“I got⁠—” he said and stopped.

“It’s no good telling you if you don’t believe,” he said.

The old gentleman, after a struggle with himself, decided not to have a fit. “Try that game on with me,” he panted. “Give you in charge.”

“What game?”

“Wasn’t born yesterday,” said the old gentleman, and blew. “Besides,” he added, “look at you! I know you,” and the old gentleman coughed shortly and nodded to the horizon and coughed again.

Kipps looked dubiously from the house to the old gentleman and back to the house. Their conversation, he