Kipps

Until he was nearly arrived at adolescence it did not become clear to Kipps how it was that he was under the care of an aunt and uncle instead of having a father and mother like other boys. Yet he had vague memories of a somewhere else that was not New Romney⁠—of a dim room, a window looking down on white buildings⁠—and of a someone else who talked to forgotten people, and who was his mother. He could not recall her features very distinctly, but he remembered with extreme definition a white dress she wore, with a pattern of little sprigs of flowers and little bows of ribbon upon it, and a girdle of straight-ribbed white ribbon about the waist. Linked with this, he knew not how, were clouded half-obliterated recollections of scenes in which there was weeping, weeping in which he was inscrutably moved to join. Some terrible tall man with a loud voice played a part in these scenes, and either before or after them there were impressions of looking for interminable periods out of the windows of railway trains in the company of these two people.⁠ ⁠…

He knew, though he could not remember that he had ever been told, that a certain faded, wistful face, that looked at him from a plush and gilt framed daguerreotype above the mantel of the “sitting-room,” was the face of his mother. But that knowledge did not touch his dim memories with any elucidation. In that photograph she was a girlish figure, leaning against a photographer’s stile, and with all the self-conscious shrinking natural to that position. She had curly hair and a face far younger and prettier than any other mother in his experience. She swung a Dolly Varden hat by the string, and looked with obedient respectful eyes on the photographer-gentleman who had commanded the pose.

“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.”

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.

The driver handed down the banjo and the portmanteau, and Kipps having paid him⁠—“That’s aw right,” he said to the change, as a gentleman should⁠—turned about and ran the portmanteau smartly into Old Kipps, whom the sound of the stopping of the bus had brought to the door of the shop in an aggressive mood and with his mouth full of supper.

“Ullo, Uncle, didn’t see you,” said Kipps.

“Blunderin’ ninny,” said Old Kipps. “What’s brought you here? Ain’t early closing, is it? Not Toosday?”

“Got some news for you, Uncle,” said Kipps, dropping the portmanteau.

“Ain’t lost your situation, ’ave you? What’s that you got there? I’m blowed if it ain’t a banjo. Goo-lord! Spendin’ your money on banjoes! Don’t put down your portmanty there⁠—anyhow. Right in the way of everybody. I’m blowed if ever I saw such a boy as you’ve got lately. Here! Molly! And, look here! What you got a portmanty for? Why! Goo-lord! You ain’t really lost your place, ’ave you?”

“Somethin’s happened,” said Kipps slightly dashed. “It’s all right, Uncle. I’ll tell you in a minute.”

Old Kipps took the banjo as his nephew picked up the portmanteau again.

He put the napkin carefully on one side, selected his soup without difficulty, “Clear, please,” but he was rather floored by the presentation of a quite splendidly bound wine card. He turned it over, discovered a section devoted to whiskey, and had a bright idea.

“ ’Ere,” he said to the waiter, with an encouraging movement of his head, and then in a confidential manner, “you haven’t any Old Methuselah Three Stars, ’ave you?”

The waiter went away to enquire, and Kipps went on with his soup with an enhanced self-respect. Finally, Old Methuselah being unobtainable, he ordered a claret from about the middle of the list. “Let’s ’ave some of this,” he said. He knew claret was a good sort of wine.

“A half bottle?” said the waiter.

“Right you are,” said Kipps.

He felt he was getting on. He leant back after his soup, a man of the world, and then slowly brought his eyes around to the ladies in evening dress on his right.⁠ ⁠…

He couldn’t have thought it!

They were scorchers. Jest a bit of black velvet over the shoulders!

He looked again. One of them was laughing with a glass of wine half raised⁠—wicked-looking woman she was⁠—the other, the black velvet one, was eating bits of bread with nervous quickness and talking fast.

He wished old Buggins could see them.

He found a waiter regarding him and blushed deeply. He did not look again for some time, and became confused about his knife and fork over the fish.