It was the most unexpected thing in the world. The man was in evening dress, evening dress in that singularly crumpled state it assumes after the hour of dawn, and above his dishevelled red hair, a smallish Gibus hat tilted remarkably forward. He opened the door and stood, tall and spread, with one vast white glove flung out as if to display how burst a glove might be, his eyes bright, such wrinkling of brow and mouth as only an experienced actor can produce, and a singular radiance of emotion upon his whole being, an altogether astonishing spectacle.
It was amazing beyond the powers of Kipps. The bell jangled for a bit and then gave it up and was silent. For a long, great second everything was quietly attentive. Kipps was amazed to his uttermost; had he had ten times the capacity he would still have been fully amazed. "It's Chit'low!" he said at last, standing duster in hand.
But he doubted whether it was not a dream.
"Tzit!" gasped that most excitable and extraordinary person, still in an incredibly expanded attitude, and then with a slight forward jerk of the starry split glove, "Bif!"
He could say no more. The tremendous speech he had had ready vanished from his mind. Kipps stared at his extraordinary facial changes, vaguely conscious of the truth of the teachings of Nisbet and Lombroso concerning men of genius.
Then suddenly Chitterlow's features were convulsed, the histrionic fell from him like a garment, and he was weeping. He said something indistinct about "Old Kipps! Good old Kipps! Oh, old Kipps!" and somehow he managed to mix a chuckle and a sob in the most remarkable way. He emerged from somewhere near the middle of his original attitude, a merely life-size creature. "My play, boo-hoo!" he sobbed, clutching at his friend's arm. "My play, Kipps! (sob) You know?"
"Well?" cried Kipps, with his heart sinking in sympathy, "it ain't——"
"No," howled Chitterlow; "no. It's a success! My dear chap! my dear boy! oh! it's a—bu—boo-hoo!—a big success!" He turned away and wiped streaming tears with the back of his hand. He walked a pace or so and turned. He sat down on one of the specially designed artistic chairs of the Associated Booksellers' Trading Union and produced an exiguous lady's handkerchief, extraordinarily belaced. He choked. "My play," and covered his face here and there.
He made an unsuccessful effort to control himself, and shrank for a space to the dimensions of a small and pathetic creature. His great nose suddenly came through a careless place in the handkerchief.
"I'm knocked," he said in a muffled voice, and so remained for a space—wonderful—veiled.