Part 22 (1/2)

”I know,” said Coote; ”I know.”

Kipps regarded the fire and flushed slightly. He borrowed a sentence that Chitterlow had recently used. ”One can't tell tales out of school,”

he said.

”I can imagine it,” said Coote.

Kipps looked with a confidential expression into Coote's face. ”It was bad enough when money was limited,” he remarked. ”But now----” He spoke with raised eyebrows, ”I got to steady down.”

”You _must_,” said Coote, protruding his lips into a sort of whistling concern for a moment.

”I must,” said Kipps, nodding his head slowly with raised eyebrows. He looked at his cigarette end and threw it into the fender. He was beginning to think he was holding his own in this conversation rather well, after all.

Kipps was never a good liar. He was the first to break silence. ”I don't mean to say I been reely bad or reely bad drunk. A 'eadache perhaps--three or four times, say. But there it is!”

”I have never tasted alcohol in my life,” said Coote, with an immense frankness, ”never!”

”No?”

”Never. I don't feel _I_ should be likely to get drunk at all--it isn't that. And I don't go so far as to say even that in small quant.i.ties--at meals--it does one harm. But if I take it, someone else who doesn't know where to stop--you see?”

”That's jest it,” said Kipps, with admiring eyes.

”I smoke,” admitted Coote. ”One doesn't want to be a Pharisee.”

It struck Kipps what a tremendously Good chap this Coote was, not only tremendously clever and educated and a gentleman and one knowing Lady Punnet, but Good. He seemed to be giving all his time and thought to doing good things to other people. A great desire to confide certain things to him arose. At first Kipps hesitated whether he should confide an equal desire for Benevolent activities or for further Depravity--either was in his mind. He rather affected the pose of the Good Intentioned Dog. Then suddenly his impulses took quite a different turn, fell indeed into what was a far more serious rut in his mind. It seemed to him Coote might be able to do for him something he very much wanted done.

”Companions.h.i.+p accounts for so much,” said Coote.

”That's jest it,” said Kipps. ”Of course, you know, in my new position----. That's just the difficulty.”

He plunged boldly at his most secret trouble. He knew that he wanted refinement--culture. It was all very well--but he knew. But how was one to get it? He knew no one, knew no people----. He rested on the broken sentence. The shop chaps were all very well, very good chaps and all that, but not what one wanted. ”I feel be'ind,” said Kipps. ”I feel out of it. And consequently I feel it's no good. And then if temptation comes along----”

”Exactly,” said Coote.

Kipps spoke of his respect for Miss Wals.h.i.+ngham and her freckled friend.

He contrived not to look too self-conscious. ”You know, I'd like to talk to people like that, but I can't. A chap's afraid of giving himself away.”

”Of course,” said Coote, ”of course.”

”I went to a middle-cla.s.s school, you know. You mustn't fancy I'm one of these here board-school chaps, but you know it reely wasn't a first-cla.s.s affair. Leastways he didn't take pains with us. If you didn't want to learn you needn't--I don't believe it was _much_ better than one of these here national schools. We wore mortarboards, o'

course. But what's _that_?

”I'm a regular fish out of water with this money. When I got it--it's a week ago--reely I thought I'd got everything I wanted. But I dunno what to _do_.”

His voice went up into a squeak. ”Practically,” he said, ”it's no good shuttin' my eyes to things--I'm a gentleman.”

Coote indicated a serious a.s.sent.

”And there's the responsibilities of a gentleman,” he remarked.