Kipps Part 51

"She won't."

"She will."

"She won't."

"You don't know 'er."

"Well, desh'er--let'er! LET'ER! Who cares? I'll buy you a 'undred boxes if you'll come."

"It wouldn't be right towards Her."

"It isn't Her you got to think about, Ann. It's me."

"And you 'aven't treated me properly," she said. "You 'aven't treated me properly, Artie. You didn't ought to 'ave----"

"I didn't say I _'ad_," he interrupted, "did I, Ann?" he appealed. "I didn't come to arguefy. I'm all wrong. I never said I wasn't. It's yes or no. Me or not.... I been a fool. There! See? I been a fool. Ain't that enough? I got myself all tied up with everyone and made a fool of myself all around...."

He pleaded, "It isn't as if we didn't care for one another, Ann."

She seemed impa.s.sive and he resumed his discourse.

"I thought I wasn't likely ever to see you again, Ann. I reely did. It isn't as though I was seein' you all the time. I didn't know what I wanted, and I went and be'aved like a fool--jest as anyone might. I know what I want and I know what I don't want now."

"Ann!"

"Well?"

"Will you come?... Will you come?..."

Silence.

"If you don't answer me, Ann--I'm desprit--if you don't answer me now, if you don't say you'll come I'll go right out now----"

He turned doorward pa.s.sionately as he spoke, with his threat incomplete.

"I'll go," he said; "I 'aven't a friend in the world! I been and throwed everything away. I don't know why I done things and why I 'aven't. All I know is I can't stand nothing in the world any more." He choked. "The pier," he said.

He fumbled with the door latch, grumbling some inarticulate self-pity, as if he sought a handle, and then he had it open.

Clearly he was going.

"Artie!" said Ann, sharply.

He turned about and the two hung, white and tense.

"I'll do it," said Ann.

His face began to work, he shut the door and came a step back to her, staring; his face became pitiful and then suddenly they moved together.

"Artie!" she cried, "don't go!" and held out her arms, weeping.

They clung close to one another....

"Oh! I _been_ so mis'bel," cried Kipps, clinging to this lifebuoy, and suddenly his emotion, having no further serious work in hand, burst its way to a loud _boohoo_! His fashionable and expensive gibus flopped off and fell and rolled and lay neglected on the floor.

"I been so mis'bel," said Kipps, giving himself vent. "Oh! I _been_ so mis'bel, Ann."

"Be quiet," said Ann, holding his poor, blubbering head tightly to her heaving shoulder, and herself all a-quiver; "be quiet. She's there!

Listenin'. She'll 'ear you, Artie, on the stairs...."

--6

Ann's last words when, an hour later, they parted, Mrs. and Miss Bindon Botting having returned very audibly upstairs, deserve a section to themselves.

"I wouldn't do this for everyone, mind you," whispered Ann.

CHAPTER IX

THE LABYRINTHODON

--1

You imagine them fleeing through our complex and difficult social system, as it were, for life, first on foot and severally to the Folkestone Central Station; then in a first-cla.s.s carriage, with Kipps'

bag as sole chaperone to Charing Cross, and then in a four-wheeler, a long, rumbling, palpitating, slow flight through the mult.i.tudinous swarming London streets to Sid. Kipps kept peeping out of the window.

"It's the next corner after this, I believe," he would say. For he had a sort of feeling that at Sid's he would be immune from the hottest pursuits. He paid the cabman in a manner adequate to the occasion and turned to his prospective brother-in-law. "Me and Ann," he said, "we're going to marry."

"But I thought----" began Sid.

Kipps motioned him towards explanations in the shop....

"It's no good, my arguing with you," said Sid, smiling delightedly as the case unfolded. "You done it now." And Masterman being apprised of the nature of the affair descended slowly in a state of flushed congratulation.

"I thought you might find the Higher Life a bit difficult," said Masterman, projecting a bony hand. "But I never thought you'd have the originality to clear out.... Won't the young lady of the superior cla.s.ses swear! Never mind--it doesn't matter anyhow.

"You were starting a climb," he said at dinner, "that doesn't lead anywhere. You would have clambered from one refinement of vulgarity to another and never got to any satisfactory top. There isn't a top. It's a squirrel's cage. Things are out of joint, and the only top there is is a lot of blazing card playing women and betting men--you should read Modern Society--seasoned with archbishops and officials and all that sort of glossy, pandering Bosh.... You'd have hung on, a disconsolate, dismal, little figure, somewhere up the ladder, far below even the motor-car cla.s.s, while your wife larked about--or fretted because she wasn't a bit higher than she was.... I found it all out long ago. I've seen women of that sort. And I don't climb any more."

"I often thought about what you said last time I saw you," said Kipps.

"I wonder what I said," said Masterman in parenthesis. "Anyhow, you're doing the right and sane thing, and that's a rare spectacle. You're going to marry your equal, and you're going to take your own line, quite independently of what people up there, or people down there, think you ought or ought not to do. That's about the only course one can take nowadays with everything getting more muddled and upside down every day.

Make your own little world and your own house first of all, keep that right side up whatever you do, and marry your mate.... That, I suppose, is what _I_ should do--if _I_ had a mate.... But people of my sort, luckily for the world, don't get made in pairs. No!

"Besides----! However----" And abruptly, taking advantage of an interruption by Master Walt, he lapsed into thought.

Presently he came out of his musings.