Ann stared at him helplessly, borne past in the grip of incomprehensible imperatives.
Why shouldn"t they talk together?
He was in a small room, and then at the foot of the staircase in the hall. He heard the rustle of a dress, and what was conceivable his hostess was upon him.
"But you"re not going, Mr. Kipps?" she said.
"I must," he said; "I got to."
"But, Mr. Kipps!"
"I must," he said. "I"m not well."
"But before the guessing! Without any tea!"
Ann appeared and hovered behind him.
"I got to go," said Kipps.
If he parleyed with her Helen might awake to his desperate attempt.
"Of course if you _must_ go."
"It"s something I"ve forgotten," said Kipps, beginning to feel regrets.
"Reely I must."
Mrs. Botting turned with a certain offended dignity, and Ann in a state of flushed calm that evidently concealed much came forward to open the door.
"I"m very sorry," he said; "I"m very sorry," half to his hostess and half to her, and was swept past her by superior social forces--like a drowning man in a mill-race--and into the Upper Sandgate Road. He half turned upon the step, and then slam went the door....
He retreated along the Leas, a thing of shame and perplexity--Mrs.
Botting"s aggrieved astonishment uppermost in his mind....
Something--reinforced by the glances of the people he was pa.s.sing--pressed its way to his attention through the tumultuous disorder of his mind.
He became aware that he was still wearing his little placard with the letters "Cypshi."
"Desh it!" he said, clutching off this abomination. In another moment its several letters, their task accomplished, were scattering gleefully before the breeze down the front of the Leas.
--2
Kipps was dressed for Mrs. Wace"s dinner half an hour before it was time to start, and he sat waiting until Coote should come to take him around.
"Manners and Rules of Good Society" lay before him neglected. He had read the polished prose of the Member of the Aristocracy, on page 96, as far as--
"the acceptance of an invitation is in the eyes of diners out, a binding obligation which only ill-health, family bereavement, or some all-important reason justifies its being set on one side or otherwise evaded"--
and then he had lapsed into gloomy thoughts.
That afternoon he had had a serious talk with Helen.
He had tried to express something of the change of heart that had happened to him. But to broach the real state of the matter had been altogether too terrible for him. He had sought a minor issue. "I don"t like all this Seciety," he had said.
"But you must _see_ people," said Helen.
"Yes, but----. It"s the sort of people you see." He nerved himself. "I didn"t think much of that lot at the Enegram Tea."
"You have to see all sorts of people if you want to see the world," said Helen.
Kipps was silent for a s.p.a.ce and a little short of breath.
"My dear Arthur," she began, almost kindly, "I shouldn"t ask you to go to these affairs if I didn"t think it good for you, should I?"
Kipps acquiesced in silence.
"You will find the benefit of it all when we get to London. You learn to swim in a tank before you go out into the sea. These people here are good enough to learn upon. They"re stiff and rather silly and dreadfully narrow and not an idea in a dozen of them, but it really doesn"t matter at all. You"ll soon get Savoir Faire."
He made to speak again, and found his powers of verbal expression lacking. Instead he blew a sigh.
"You"ll get used to it all very soon," said Helen helpfully....
As he sat meditating over that interview and over the vistas of London that opened before him, on the little flat, and teas and occasions and the constant presence of Brudderkins and all the bright prospect of his new and better life, and how he would never see Ann any more, the housemaid entered with a little package, a small, square envelope to "Arthur Kipps, Esquire."
"A young woman left this, Sir," said the housemaid, a little severely.
"Eh?" said Kipps; "what young woman?" and then suddenly began to understand.
"She looked an ordinary young woman," said the housemaid coldly.
"Ah!" said Kipps. "_That"s_ orlright."
He waited till the door had closed behind the girl, staring at the envelope in his hand, and then, with a curious feeling of increasing tension, tore it open. As he did so, some quicker sense than sight or touch told him its contents. It was Ann"s half sixpence. And, besides, not a word!
Then she must have heard him----!
She had kept the half sixpence all these years!
He was standing with the envelope in his hand, trying to get on from that last inference, when Coote became audible without.
Coote appeared in evening dress, a clean and radiant Coote, with large, greenish, white gloves and a particularly large white tie, edged with black. "For a third cousin," he presently explained. "Nace, isn"t it?"
He could see Kipps was pale and disturbed and put this down to the approaching social trial. "You keep your nerve up, Kipps, my dear chap, and you"ll be all right," said Coote, with a big, brotherly glove on Kipps" sleeve.
--3
The dinner came to a crisis so far as Kipps" emotions were concerned, with Mrs. Bindon Botting"s talk about servants, but before that there had been several things of greater or smaller magnitude to perturb and disarrange his social front. One little matter that was mildly insurgent throughout the entire meal was, if I may be permitted to mention so intimate a matter, the behaviour of his left brace. The webbing--which was of a cheerful scarlet silk--had slipped away from its buckle, fastened no doubt in agitation, and had developed a strong tendency to place itself obliquely in the manner rather of an official decoration, athwart his spotless front. It first a.s.serted itself before they went in to dinner. He replaced this ornament by a dexterous thrust when no one was looking and thereafter the suppression of his novel innovation upon the stereotyped sombreness of evening dress became a standing preoccupation. On the whole, he was inclined to think his first horror excessive; at any rate no one remarked upon it. However you imagine him constantly throughout the evening, with one eye and one hand, whatever the rest of him might be doing, predominantly concerned with the weak corner.