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

canoe and took his paddle, and, paddling slowly, dropped behind the others. And now his inner self stirred again. He said nothing to her. How could he ever say anything to her again? She spoke to him at rare intervals about reflections and the flowers and the trees, and he nodded in reply. But his mind moved very slowly forward now from the point at which it had fallen stunned in the Lympne Keep, moving forward to the beginnings of realisation. As yet he did not say even in the recesses of his heart that she was his. But he perceived that the goddess had come from her altar amazingly, and had taken him by the hand!

The sky was a vast splendour, and then close to them were the dark, protecting trees and the shining, smooth, still water. He was an erect, black outline to her; he plied his paddle with no unskilful gesture, the water broke to snaky silver and glittered far behind his strokes. Indeed, he did not seem bad to her. Youth calls to youth the wide world through, and her soul rose in triumph over his subjection. And behind him was money and opportunity, freedom and London, a great background of seductively indistinct hopes. To him her face was a warm dimness. In truth, he could not see her eyes, but it seemed to his love-witched brain he did and that they shone out at him like dusky stars.

All the world that evening was no more than a shadowy frame of darkling sky and water and dripping bows about Helen. He seemed to see through things with an extraordinary clearness; she was revealed to him certainly, as the cause and essence of it all.

He was indeed at his Heart’s Desire. It was one of those times when there seems to be no future, when Time has stopped and we are at an end. Kipps, that evening, could not have imagined a tomorrow, all that his imagination had pointed towards was attained. His mind stood still and took the moments as they came.

About nine that night Coote came around to Kipps’ new apartment in the Upper Sandgate Road⁠—the house on the Leas had been let furnished⁠—and Kipps made an effort toward realisation. He was discovered sitting at the open window and without a lamp, quite still. Coote was deeply moved, and he pressed Kipps’ palm and laid a knobby, white hand on his shoulder and displayed the sort of tenderness becoming in a crisis. Kipps was too moved that night, and treated Coote like a very dear brother.

“She’s splendid,” said Coote, coming to it abruptly.

“Isn’t she?” said Kipps.

“I couldn’t help noticing her face,” said Coote.⁠ ⁠… “You know, my dear Kipps, that this is better than a legacy.”

“I don’t deserve it,” said Kipps.

“You can’t say that.”

“I don’t. I can’t ’ardly believe it. I can’t believe it at all. No!”

There followed an expressive stillness.

“It’s wonderful,” said Kipps. “It takes me like that.”

Coote made a faint blowing noise, and so again they came for a time of silence.

“And it began⁠—before your money?”

“When I was in ’er class,” said Kipps, solemnly.

Coote, speaking out of a darkness which he was illuminating strangely with efforts to strike a match, said that it was beautiful. He could not have wished Kipps a better fortune.⁠ ⁠…

He lit a cigarette, and Kipps was moved to do the same, with a sacramental expression. Presently speech flowed more freely.

Coote began to praise Helen and her mother and brother. He talked of when “it” might be, he presented the thing as concrete and credible. “It’s a county family, you know,” he said. “She is connected, you know, with the Beaupres family⁠—you know Lord Beaupres.”

“No!” said Kipps, “reely!”

“Distantly, of course,” said Coote. “Still⁠—”

He smiled a smile that glimmered in the twilight.

“It’s too much,” said Kipps, overcome. “It’s so all like that.”

Coote exhaled. For a time Kipps listened to Helen’s praises and matured a point of view.

“I say, Coote,” he said. “What ought I to do now?”

“What do you mean?” said Coote.

“I mean about calling on ’er and all that.”

He reflected. “Naturally, I want to do it all right.”

“Of course,” said Coote.

“It would be awful to go and do something⁠—now⁠—all wrong.”

Coote’s cigarette glowed as he meditated. “You must call, of course,” he decided. “You’ll have to speak to Mrs. Walshingham.”

“ ’Ow?” said Kipps.

“Tell her you mean to marry her daughter.”

“I dessay she knows,” said Kipps, with defensive penetration.

Coote’s head was visible, shaking itself judiciously.

“Then there’s the ring,” said Kipps. “What ’ave I to do about that?”

“What ring do you mean?”

“ ’Ngagement Ring. There isn’t anything at all about that in Manners and Rules of Good Society⁠—not a word.”

“Of course you must get something⁠—tasteful. Yes.”

“What sort of a ring?”

“Something nace. They’ll show you in the shop.”

“Of course. I ’spose I got to take it to ’er, eh? Put it on her finger.”

“Oh, no! Send it. Much better.”

“Ah!” said Kipps, for the first time, with a note of relief.

“Then, ’ow about this call⁠—on Mrs. Walshingham, I mean. ’Ow ought one to go?”

“Rather a ceremonial occasion,” reflected Coote.

“Wadyer mean? Frock coat?”

“I think so,” said Coote, with discrimination.

“Light trousers and all that?”

“Yes.”

“Rose?”

“I think it might run to a buttonhole.”

The curtain that hung over the future became less opaque to the eyes of Kipps. Tomorrow, and then other days, became perceptible at least as existing. Frock coat, silk hat and a rose! With a certain solemnity he contemplated himself in the process of slow transformation into an English gentleman, Arthur Cuyps, frock-coated on occasions of ceremony, the familiar acquaintance of Lady Punnet, the recognised wooer of a distant connection of the Earl of Beaupres.

Something like awe at the magnitude of his own fortune came upon him. He felt the world was opening out like a magic flower in a transformation scene at the touch of this wand of gold. And Helen, nestling beautiful in the red heart of the flower. Only ten weeks ago he had been no more than the shabbiest of improvers and shamefully dismissed for dissipation, the