Kipps Part 8

He met Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham's eye, and smiled to show how little he cared for wounds and pain. "It's only a little cut," he added.

The maiden lady appeared as an addition to their group. "You should have washed the wound, dear," she said. "I was just telling Miss Collis." She peered through her gla.s.ses at the bandage. "That doesn't look _quite_ right," she remarked critically. "You should have taken the ambulance cla.s.ses. But I suppose it will have to do. Are you hurting?"

"Not a bit," said Kipps, and he smiled at them all with the air of a brave soldier in hospital.

"I'm sure it _must_ hurt," said Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham.

"Anyhow, you're a very good patient," said the girl with the freckles.

Mr. Kipps became quite pink. "I'm only sorry I broke the window--that's all," he said. "But who would have thought it was going to break like that?"

Pause.

"I'm afraid you won't be able to go on carving to-night," said Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham.

"I'll try," said Kipps. "It reelly doesn't hurt--not anything to matter."

Presently Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham came to him as he carved heroically with his hand bandaged in her handkerchief. There was a touch of a novel interest in her eyes. "I'm afraid you're not getting on very fast," she said.

The freckled girl looked up and regarded Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham.

"I'm doing a little, anyhow," said Kipps. "I don't want to waste any time. A feller like me hasn't much time to spare."

It struck the girls that there was a quality of modest disavowal about that "feller like me." It gave them a light into this obscure person, and Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham ventured to commend his work as "promising" and to ask whether he meant to follow it up. Kipps didn't "altogether know"--"things depended on so much," but if he was in Folkestone next winter he certainly should. It did not occur to Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham at the time to ask why his progress in art depended upon his presence in Folkestone. There was some more questions and answers--they continued to talk to him for a little time, even when Mr. Chester Coote had come into the room--and when at last the conversation had died out it dawned upon Kipps just how much his cut wrist had done for him....

He went to sleep that night revising that conversation for the twentieth time, treasuring this and expanding that, and inserting things he might have said to Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham, things he might still say about himself--in relation more or less explicit to her. He wasn't quite sure if he wouldn't like his arm to mortify a bit, which would make him interesting, or to heal up absolutely, which would show the exceptional purity of his blood.

--4

The affair of the broken window happened late in April, and the cla.s.s came to an end in May. In that interval there were several small incidents and great developments of emotion. I have done Kipps no justice if I have made it seem that his face was unsightly. It was, as the freckled girl pointed out to Helen Wals.h.i.+ngham, an "interesting"

face, and that aspect of him which presented chiefly erratic hair and glowing ears ceased to prevail.

They talked him over, and the freckled girl discovered there was something "wistful" in his manner. They detected a "natural delicacy,"

and the freckled girl set herself to draw him out from that time forth.

The freckled girl was nineteen, and very wise and motherly and benevolent, and really she greatly preferred drawing out Kipps to wood-carving. It was quite evident to her that Kipps was in love with Helen Wals.h.i.+ngham, and it struck her as a queer and romantic and pathetic and extremely interesting phenomenon. And as at that time she regarded Helen as "simply lovely," it seemed only right and proper that she should a.s.sist Kipps in his modest efforts to place himself in a state of absolute _abandon_ upon her altar.

Under her sympathetic management the position of Kipps was presently defined quite clearly. He was unhappy in his position--misunderstood. He told her he "didn't seem to get on like" with customers, and she translated this for him as "too sensitive." The discontent with his fate in life, the dreadful feeling that education was slipping by him, troubles that time and usage were glazing over a little, revived to their old acuteness but not to their old hopelessness. As a basis for sympathy indeed they were even a source of pleasure.

And one day at dinner it happened that Carshot and Buggins fell talking of "these here writers," and how d.i.c.kens had been a labeller of blacking and Thackeray "an artist who couldn't sell a drawing," and how Samuel Johnson had walked to London without any boots, having thrown away his only pair "out of pride." "It's luck," said Buggins, "to a very large extent. They just happen to hit on something that catches on, and there you are!"

"Nice easy life they have of it, too," said Miss Mergle. "Write just an hour or so, and done for the day! Almost like gentlefolks."

"There's more work in it than you'd think," said Carshot, stooping to a mouthful.

"I wouldn't mind changing, for all that," said Buggins. "I'd like to see one of these here authors marking off with Jimmy."

"I think they copy from each other a good deal," said Miss Mergle.

"Even then (chup, chup, chup)," said Carshot, "there's writing it out in their own hands."

They proceeded to enlarge upon the literary life, on its ease and dignity, on the social recognition accorded to those who led it, and on the ample gratifications their vanity achieved. "Pictures everywhere--never get a new suit without being photographed--almost like Royalty," said Miss Mergle.

And all this talk impressed the imagination of Kipps very greatly. Here was a cla.s.s that seemed to bridge the gulf. On the one hand essentially Low, but by fact.i.tious circ.u.mstances capable of entering upon those levels of social superiority to which all true Englishmen aspire, those levels from which one may tip a butler, scorn a tailor, and even commune with those who lead "men" into battle. "Almost like gentlefolks"--that was it! He brooded over these things in the afternoon, until they blossomed into daydreams. Suppose, for example, he had chanced to write a book, a well-known book, under an a.s.sumed name, and yet kept on being a draper all the time.... Impossible, of course, but _suppose_--it made quite a long dream.

And at the next wood-carving cla.s.s he let it be drawn from him that his real choice in life was to be a Nawther--"only one doesn't get a chance."

After that there were times when Kipps had that pleasant sense that comes of attracting interest. He was a mute, inglorious d.i.c.kens, or at any rate something of that sort, and they were all taking him at that.

The discovery of this indefinable "something in" him, the development of which was now painfully restricted and impossible, did much to bridge the gulf between himself and Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham. He was unfortunate, he was futile, but he was not "common." Even now with help...? The two girls, and the freckled girl in particular, tried to "stir him up" to some effort to do his imputed potentialities justice. They were still young enough to believe that to nice and niceish members of the male s.e.x--more especially when under the stimulus of feminine encouragement--nothing is finally impossible.

The freckled girl was, I say, the stage manager of this affair, but Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham was the presiding divinity. A touch of proprietors.h.i.+p came in her eyes at times when she looked at him. He was hers--unconditionally--and she knew it.

To her directly Kipps scarcely ever made a speech. The enterprising things that he was continually devising to say to her, he usually did not say, or he said them in a suitably modified form to the girl with the freckles. And one day the girl with the freckles smote him to the heart. She said to him, with the faintest indication of her head across the cla.s.s-room to where her friend reached a cast from the shelf, "I do think Helen Wals.h.i.+ngham is sometimes the most lovely person in the world. Look at her now!"

Kipps gasped for a moment. The moment lengthened, and she regarded him as an intelligent young surgeon might regard an operation without anaesthetics.

"You're right," he said, and then looked at her with an entire abandonment of visage.

She coloured under his glare of silent avowal, and he blushed brightly.

"I think so, too," he said hoa.r.s.ely, cleared his throat, and after a meditative moment proceeded sacramentally with his wood-carving.

"You _are_ wonderful," said the freckled girl to Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham, apropos of nothing, as they went on their way home together. "He simply adores you."

"But, my dear, what have I done?" said Helen.

"That's just it," said the freckled girl. "What _have_ you done?"

And then with a terrible swiftness came the last cla.s.s of the course, to terminate this relations.h.i.+p altogether. Kipps was careless of dates, and the thing came upon him with an effect of abrupt surprise. Just as his petals were expanding so hopefully, "Finis," and the thing was at an end. But Kipps did not fully appreciate that the end was indeed and really and truly the end, until he was back in the Emporium after the end was over.

The end began practically in the middle of the last cla.s.s, when the freckled girl broached the topic of terminations. She developed the question of just how he was going on after the cla.s.s ended. She hoped he would stick to certain resolutions of self-improvement he had breathed.

She said quite honestly that he owed it to himself to develop his possibilities. He expressed firm resolve, but dwelt on difficulties. He had no books. She instructed him how to get books from the public library. He was to get a form of application for a ticket signed by a ratepayer; and he said "of course," when she said Mr. Shalford would do that, though all the time he knew perfectly well it would "never do" to ask Mr. Shalford for anything of the sort. She explained that she was going to North Wales for the summer, information he received without immediate regret. At intervals he expressed his intention of going on with wood-carving when the summer was over, and once he added "If----"

She considered herself extremely delicate not to press for the completion of that "if----"

After that talk there was an interval of languid wood-carving and watching Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham.

Then presently there came a bustle of packing, a great ceremony of hand-shaking all round by Miss Collis and the maiden lady of ripe years, and then Kipps found himself outside the cla.s.s-room, on the landing with his two friends. It seemed to him he had only just learnt that this was the last cla.s.s of all. There came a little pause, and the freckled girl suddenly went back into the cla.s.s-room, and left Kipps and Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham 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, good-bye, 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, "Good-bye."

There was a little pause.

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

"I shall come back to the cla.s.s next year, anyhow," said Kipps valiantly, and turned abruptly to the stairs.