The new wreck was full of rotting grain, and smelt abominably, even as Sid had said. This was excellent. They had it all to themselves. They took possession of it in force, at Sid’s suggestion, and had speedily to defend it against enormous numbers of imaginary “natives,” who were at last driven off by loud shouts of bang, bang, and vigorous thrusting and shoving of sticks. Then, also at Sid’s direction, they sailed with it into the midst of a combined French, German and Russian fleet, demolishing the combination unassisted, and having descended to the beach, clambered up the side and cut out their own vessel in brilliant style, they underwent a magnificent shipwreck (with vocalised thunder) and floated “waterlogged”—so Sid insisted—upon an exhausted sea.
These things drove Ann out of mind for a time. But at last, as they drifted without food or water upon a stagnant ocean, haggard-eyed, chins between their hands, looking in vain for a sail, she came to mind again abruptly.
“It’s rather nice ’aving sisters,” remarked one perishing mariner.
Sid turned round and regarded him thoughtfully. “Not it!” he said.
“No?”
“Not a bit of it.” He grinned confidentially. “Know too much,” he said; and afterwards, “Get out of things.”
He resumed his gloomy scrutiny of the hopeless horizon. Presently he fell to spitting jerkily between his teeth, as he had read was the way with such ripe manhood as chews its quid.
“Sisters,” he said, “is rot. That’s what sisters are. Girls if you like, but sisters—no!”
“But ain’t sisters girls?”
“N-eaow!” said Sid, with unspeakable scorn.
And Kipps answered, “Of course. I didn’t—I wasn’t thinking of that.”
“You got a girl?” asked Sid, spitting very cleverly again.
Kipps admitted his deficiency. He felt compunction.
“You don’t know who my girl is, Art Kipps—I bet.”
“Who is, then?” asked Kipps, still chiefly occupied by his own poverty.
“Ah!”
Kipps let a moment elapse before he did his duty. “Tell us!”
Sid eyed him and hesitated. “Secret?” he said.
“Secret.”
“Dying solemn?”
“Dying solemn!” Kipps’ self-concentration passed into curiosity.
Sid administered a terrible oath. Even after that precaution he adhered lovingly to his facts. “It begins with a Nem,” he said, doling them out parsimoniously. “M A U D,” he spelt, with a stern eye on Kipps, “C H A R T E R I S.”
Now, Maud Charteris was a young person of eighteen and the daughter of the vicar of St. Bavon’s—besides which she had a bicycle—so that as her name unfolded the face of Kipps lengthened with respect. “Get out!” he gasped incredulously. “She ain’t your girl, Sid Pornick.”
“She is!” answered Sid, stoutly.
“What—truth?”
“Truth.”
Kipps scrutinised his face. “Reely?”
Sid touched wood, whistled, and repeated a binding doggerel with great solemnity.
Kipps still struggled with the amazing new light on the world about him. “D’you mean—she knows?”
Sid flushed deeply, and his aspect became stern and gloomy. He resumed his wistful scrutiny of the sunlit sea. “I’d die for that girl, Art Kipps,” he said presently, and Kipps did not press a question he felt to be ill timed. “I’d do anything she asked me to do,” said Sid—“just anything. If she was to ask me to chuck myself into the sea.” He met Kipps’ eye. “I would,” he said.
They were pensive for a space, and then Sid began to discourse in fragments of Love, a theme upon which Kipps had already in a furtive way meditated a little, but which, apart from badinage, he had never yet heard talked about in the light of day. Of course many and various aspects of life had come to light in the muffled exchange of knowledge that went on under the shadow of Woodrow, but this of Sentimental Love was not among them. Sid, who was a boy with an imagination, having once broached this topic, opened his heart, or at any rate a new wing of his heart, to Kipps, and found no fault with Kipps for a lack of return. He produced a thumbed novelette that had played a part in his sentimental awakening; he proffered it to Kipps, and confessed there was a character in it, a baronet, singularly like himself. This baronet was a person of volcanic passions which he concealed beneath a demeanour of “icy cynicism.” The utmost expression he permitted himself was to grit his teeth; and now his attention was called to it, Kipps remarked that Sid also had a habit of gritting his teeth—and indeed had had all the morning. They read for a time, and presently Sid talked again. The conception of love Sid made evident was compact of devotion and much spirited fighting and a touch of mystery; but through all that cloud of talk there floated before Kipps a face that was flushed and hair that was tossed aside.
So they budded, sitting on the blackening old wreck in which men had lived and died, looking out to sea, talking of that other sea upon which they must presently embark. …
They ceased to talk, and Sid read; but Kipps falling behind with the reading and not wishing to admit that he read slowlier than Sid, whose education was of the inferior elementary school brand, lapsed into meditation.
“I would like to ’ave a girl,” said Kipps. “I mean just to talk to and all that. …”
A floating object distracted them at last from this obscure topic. They abandoned the wreck and followed the new interest a mile along the beach, bombarding it with stones until it came to land. They had inclined to a view that it would contain romantic mysteries, but it was simply an ill-preserved kitten—too much even for them. And at last they were drawn dinnerward and went home hungry and pensive side by side.
But Kipps’ imagination had been warmed by that talk of love, and in the afternoon, when he saw Ann Pornick in the High Street and said “Hello!” it was a different “hello” from that of their previous intercourse. And when they had passed they both looked back and caught each other doing so. Yes, he did want a girl badly. …
Afterwards he was distracted
