He was on the verge of “banging about” again.
They heard a jingle in the passage, the large soft impact of a servant’s indoor boots. As if she were a part, a mitigatory part of Fate, came Gwendolen to lay the midday meal. Kipps displayed self-control forthwith. Ann picked up the bib again and bent over it, and the Kippses bore themselves gloomily perhaps, but not despairfully, while their dependant was in the room. She spread the cloth and put out the cutlery with a slow inaccuracy, and Kipps, after a whisper to himself, went again to the window. Ann got up and put away her work methodically in the cheffonier.
“When I think,” said Kipps, as soon as the door closed again behind Gwendolen, “when I think of the ’ole people and ’aving to tell ’em of it all—I want to smesh my ’ead against the nearest wall. Smesh my silly brains out! And Buggins—Buggins what I’d ’arf promised to start in a lill’ outfitting shop in Rendezvous Street.” …
Gwendolen returned and restored dignity.
The midday meal spread itself slowly before them. Gwendolen, after her custom, left the door open and Kipps closed it carefully before sitting down.
He stood for a moment, regarding the meal doubtfully.
“I don’t feel as if I could swaller a moufful,” he said.
“You got to eat,” said Ann. …
For a time they said little, and once swallowing was achieved, ate on with a sort of melancholy appetite. Each was now busy thinking.
“After all,” said Kipps, presently, “whatever ’appens, they can’t turn us out or sell us up before nex’ quarter-day. I’m pretty sure about that.”
“Sell us up!” said Ann.
“I dessey we’re bankrup’,” said Kipps, trying to say it easily and helping himself with a trembling hand to unnecessary potatoes.
Then a long silence. Ann ceased to eat, and there were silent tears.
“More potatoes, Artie?” choked Ann.
“I couldn’t,” said Kipps. “No.”
He pushed back his plate, which was indeed replete with potatoes, got up and walked about the room. Even the dinner-table looked distraught and unusual.
“What to do, I don’t know,” he said.
“Oh, Lord!” he ejaculated, and picked up and slapped down a book.
Then his eye fell upon another postcard that had come from Chitterlow by the morning’s post, and which now lay by him on the mantel-shelf. He took it up, glanced at its imperfectly legible message, and put it down.
“Delayed!” he said, scornfully. “Not prodooced in the smalls. Or is it smells ’e says? ’Ow can one understand that? Any’ow ’e’s ’umbugging again. … Somefing about the Strand. No! Well, ’e’s ’ad all the money ’e’ll ever get out of me! … I’m done.”
He seemed to find a momentary relief in the dramatic effect of his announcement. He came near to a swagger of despair upon the hearthrug, and then suddenly came and sat down next to Ann and rested his chin on the knuckles of his two clenched hands.
“I been a fool, Ann,” he said in a gloomy monotone. “I been a brasted fool. But it’s ’ard on us, all the same. It’s ’ard.”
“ ’Ow was you to know?” said Ann.
“I ought to ’ave known. I did in a sort of way know. And ’ere we are! I wouldn’t care so much if it was myself, but it’s you, Ann! ’Ere we are! Regular smashed up! And you—” He checked at an unspeakable aggravation of their disaster. “I knew ’e wasn’t to be depended upon and there I left it! And you got to pay. … What’s to ’appen to us all, I don’t know.”
He thrust out his chin and glared at fate.
“ ’Ow do you know ’e’s speckylated everything?” said Ann, after a silent survey of him.
“ ’E ’as,” said Kipps, irritably, holding firm to disaster.
“She say so?”
“She don’t know, of course, but you depend upon it that’s it. She told me she knew something was on, and when she found ’im gone and a note lef’ for her she knew it was up with ’im. ’E went by the night boat. She wrote that telegram off to me straight away.”
Ann surveyed his features with tender, perplexed eyes; she had never seen him so white and drawn before, and her hand rested an inch or so away from his arm. The actual loss was still, as it were, afar from her. The immediate thing was his enormous distress.
“ ’Ow do you know—?” she said and stopped. It would irritate him too much.
Kipps’ imagination was going headlong.
“Sold up!” he emitted presently, and Ann flinched.
“Going back to work, day after day—I can’t stand it, Ann, I can’t. And you—”
“It don’t do to think of it,” said Ann.
Presently he came upon a resolve. “I keep on thinking of it, and thinking of it, and what’s to be done and what’s to be done. I shan’t be any good ’ome s’arfernoon. It keeps on going ’round and ’round in my ’ead, and ’round and ’round. I better go for a walk or something. I’d be no comfort to you, Ann. I should want to ’owl and ’ammer things if I ’ung about ’ome. My fingers is all atwitch. I shall keep on thinking ’ow I might ’ave stopped it and callin’ myself a fool.” …
He looked at her between pleading and shame. It seemed like deserting her.
Ann regarded him with tear-dimmed eyes.
“You’d better do what’s good for you, Artie,” she said. … “I’ll be best cleaning. It’s no use sending off Gwendolen before her month, and the top room wants turning out.” She added with a sort of grim humour: “May as well turn it out now while I got it.”
“I better go for a walk,” said Kipps. …
And presently our poor exploded Kipps was marching out to bear his sudden misery. Habit turned him up the road towards his growing house, and then suddenly he perceived his direction—“Oh, Lor’!”—and turned aside and went up
