Again Agatha felt a poke in the back. Again she curled her hand behind her. And again Alvina Houghton glanced round frowning coldly, while Cissie Gittens glanced inquiringly over her shoulder. The choir was beginning to concentrate upon this correspondence. Even some of the audience were noticing a new centre of disturbance. And the clergyman, poor man, was becoming decidedly irritable in delivery, fidgetting on his footstool.
Back came the paper from Agatha.
“You are an awful bad catamaran. Haven’t you seen G.N. since?”
Emmie got the paper, and industriously popped her pencil to her lips.
“No, I’ve never been out. He wouldn’t let me. Never saw you Wednesday. He’s trying his hardest to get G.N.’s name. He’s got his cap. But he’s never asked me. He bothers our mother, and the others. He’d better not ask me.”
The paper went and returned.
“This will be a lesson to you, my lady. What will he do if he gets G.N.’s name? Did they really hit one another? Didn’t he see G.N. — Oh I do think it’s awful.”
Emmie seized this message, and wrote:
“They were down in a gooseberry bush when I scooted for my life. Look at the scratches on W-W’s ear. It was pitch dark. He says I’m never going to be out again after dark. Aren’t I? I’m not frightened of him. But he’s not going to get Great Northern’s name. Our mother doesn’t know either. They’re all trying to guess. Do you think he’ll come tonight. Can’t see him if he does. You’ll have to tell him Agatha. He’s the best spoon out. But tell him not to come again — not just yet. I’m going to be a reformed character, and stick to Walter George. What? See me — ”
A poke in Agatha’s back.
And at the same time the minister raised his fat, nearsighted, pince-nezzed face, that was red as a boiled shrimp. Agatha was reading in sublime unconsciousness, when the whole congregation woke from its sermonial somnolence with a shudder as if someone had scratched on a slate a long shriek with a screeching pencil. So did the changed note in the minister’s sweet-oil voice set their teeth on edge like vinegar.
“I should be glad if the interruptions from the choir could be brought to an end. I have continued as long as I could without observation, but further continuance is impossible. Either the unseemly correspondence in the choir-gallery must cease, or I must close for this evening — ”
A moment’s pause and readjustment.
“Please let the passing of papers cease,” continued the allforgiving minister. “I should be extremely sorry to hurt any individual feelings. But I speak out of painful necessity, after considerable endurance. I cannot continue under the strain of the previous distraction.”
He was nettled, but with christian forbearance already rubbed dockleaves on the sting, adjusted his eyeglasses, looked down at his notes, and, still red as a boiled shrimp, picked up his oratorical voice, which somehow he seemed to have dropped and left in the distance. The sermon began to trickle its suave flow again.
But the congregation! The congregation was electrified. Every eye was on the choir-gallery, except only the eyes of those who sat in the rather select pews beneath the said gallery. And these, the nobs, so far forgot themselves as to screw their necks and look up at the sloping roof near above them, as if their X-ray eyes could pierce the flooring and distinguish the offender by his, or her, shoe-soles. Sternly and indignantly they stared at the little roof over their heads, above which roof, they knew, were perched the choral angels of the chapel. Fallen angels indeed.
In the choir itself consternation and indignation struggled in every breast. As the Roman emperors were jealous and suspicious of any society which leagued itself together within the body politic, so are christian ministers obliged to beware of the wheels within wheels of their church. A choir is an unpaid, independent body, highly oligarchic and given to insubordination. For music, said to be a soothing art, produces the most wayward members of the christian community. If the army caused the fall of emperor after emperor, how many christian ministers are unpleasantly thrown from the pulpit in these self-governing churches by the machinations of the obstreperous choir. So little Daddy Dixon, as he was half- affectionately called, had better beware how he rushes with his angry lamb’s bleat of expostulation into this mountainous nest of bears and she-bears.
From consternation the choir quickly passed to indignation.
Poor Agatha sat with her crimson face buried in her bosom, screened by her broad black hat. Emmie, the impudent, sat with her nose in the air, looking guilty. Alvina Houghton and Cissie Gittens kept glancing round at her, damnatory. The other members glanced at Emmie, and then turned their indignant looks to one another, before they directed them in a volume against the little minister, perched there just beneath them on his little stool, continuing his little sermon, mildly flourishing his deprecating, plump hand out of the black wing of his gown. Emmie might be guilty of slight misdemeanour. But then, was she not an old member of the sacred choral college. And was this privileged body to be submitted to the injury and ignominy of a public rebuke from the pulpit? From Daddy Dixon, moreover, that plump lamb! Bears and she- bears uttered inaudible growls, and flounced on their seats, crackled their music sheets, and altogether behaved like a mutiny on the upper deck.
Alf Bostock, however, sat with a wolfs eye glaring greenly up at his perky daughter. Mrs Bostock’s brows were knitted with ancient perplexity as she too looked upwards, on her right. The boy Bostocks had gone red to their ears, of course. They seized every available opportunity of going red to the ears.
Came the closing hymn, sung by the choir as if they had grit between their teeth. Meanwhile the poor parson sat in the pulpit with his brow in his hand, drawing upon himself the full and viscous flow of sympathy from the congregation, the extra venom of the choir, who stood upright in their dimmish loft like a crowd of demons on the war-path.
Poor Norman Dixon prayed, in the final prayer, that hearts might be kept from anger and turned away from wrath, and oh, if we, whose sacred duty it is to guide the way along the path of Right, if we should stumble and catch our feet against the stones of passion, may we in our humble repentance before Thee, beseech that our stumblings shall not cause others to fall, but shall rather show them the difficulties of the way, and assist them to walk in uprightness and love, remembering that each has his own burden to bear along the difficult journey of life, and that he who adds weight to his brother’s burden does not thereby make lighter his own, but brings weariness and sorrow where before was joy. For oh, let us beware of our own thoughtlessness
This homily, though intended of course for the Almighty, the choir set down to their own account, and determined not to be mollified all at once. No indeed. If Norman Dixon stumbled, it was his own toe he must blame, not somebody else’s stone that lay in the way. Let him pick his way through the stones. What else was he a minister of the gospel for? — And the congregation half agreed. After all, he could have spoken later on, in private, and not have caused a public scandal. Everybody is so eager to pull the chair of authority from under the poor devil whom they have chosen to sit down in it.
Only one member of the congregation agreed and more than agreed with plump Norman in the pulpit. We know who this member was. He proceeded to gnash his teeth in preparation.
Emmie knew well enough the fat was in the fire, and therefore she was dumb when the choir rather grittily moaned the emotional vesper.
“Lord keep us safe this night Secure from all our fears May angels guard us while we sleep Till morning light appears.”
The bass curved up and the treble curved down in the luscious melody, and Emmie tried to gather her wits. Things were already at a breaking point between her and her pa.
As the choir trooped down the stairs after service, venting their indignation, Emmie hurried and caught her friend by the arm.
“Oh I say Agatha, damn Norman Dixon. What had he got to go and put his foot in it for. — I say, if he’s waiting — you know — you’ll tell him, won’t y
ou? Oh an’ I say, I’ve got a book of his. Tell him I s’ll leave it for him at Lewie Goddard’s, shall you. I fair forgot it till tonight, when I was thinking of last week. Oh I’m fair sick of things, Agatha. I’m sure I wish I was dead, I’m that persecuted. You know my Dad’s made my mother swear she’ll tell him everything what I do. She told me herself he had. And what do you think, he can wring anything out of her, the inquisition devil. He’d better not try- it on me though, or he’ll get more than he’s bargained for. I tell you what, Agatha, I could fair jump in the cut, I could, I’m that harassed and tormented. And all by that old fool. And what’s more, what right has he! I’m over twenty-one. I hope his rabbits’ll die, for I hate him. — Eh, Agatha. And tell him — you know — that I can’t get his cap back for him. My father’s got it, trying to get a clue from it. But he won’t then, because it was bought at Parkers in Knarborough, and hasn’t got a name or anything in. I got it out of my mother, all that. But Lewie Goddard’ll stand by me. An’ I shall run away to our Fan’s if he gives me any more bother — ”
They had reached the needle’s eye gate by which the choir emerged from the chapel precincts. Emmie glanced swiftly round. Yes, there was Gilbert on the opposite pavement. She pinched Agatha’s arm excitedly.
“He’s come, Agatha. You tell him. And if he wants to see me, tell him — ”
“You’re coming, there, aren’t you?” said a policeman-like voice. We know whose.
“Yes I am,” said Emmie sullenly. Then: “Goodnight Agatha. Hope I shall see you Wednesday.”
And she followed her irate parent, who joined her forlorn mother at the big gate, and the family trailed off in a disconsolate Sunday-night crowd.
Agatha meanwhile went across the road.
“Good-evening Mr Noon. Excuse me. Emmie can’t come tonight. She told me about last week. You know, don’t you — ?”
“Yes,” said Gilbert. “Mr Goddard told me about it. Hasn’t she been to Chapel then? Wasn’t that she?”
“Yes. Her father made her go home. He’s in another of his tantrums now. Oh — here’s my boy! Can I introduce you — ?”
And Agatha went on to communicate all Emmie’s commissions.
“All right,” said Gilbert. “Give her these when you see her. I shall go to Goddards’ for the book.”
He gave Agatha the inevitable packet of chocolates, and turned away. Ah spoony chocolates! ‘Tis you who have made the cocoa fortunes. And now Gilbert will buy no more. Lewie had given him a lively description of Emmie’s plight on the previous Sunday night, how she had seemed to be losing her reason; and all the things he, Lewie, had said to her father, first oil then vinegar; and how Bostock had been brought to promise to say nothing to the girl; how he had kept his promise, but had been up to Patty to find out if she could tell him what the fellow’s name was. Of course she couldn’t. Of course Emmie hadn’t mentioned the name to them. — This with one of Lewie’s side-looks, which told Gilbert that the Goddards knew only too well. Moreover he remembered that Emmie was going to leave the book, for him, at Lewie’s. Whereupon he had something else to put in his pipe and smoke. — And Alf Bostock was a nasty customer, Lewie said, one of your reformed ones.
Chapter VI.
The Sack.
Meanwhile a pretty kettle of fish was preparing for Mr Noon. He smelled nothing of it for some days. Neither did he go over to Woodhouse, but let matters remain where they were. He was annoyed and irritated by the whole business. The thought of Emmie now gave him a prickly unpleasant sensation in his skin, and made him knit his brows irritably. He had been relieved that he could not see her on the Sunday evening, and after receiving her message he hoped the whole affair was finished. Never would he start such a mess again: never. For the whole world of spooning, bits of fluff, jolly good sports, bits of hot stuff and the like he now felt a prickly repulsion, an irritable distaste. No more of that for him.
But wait a bit. Let him not holloa till he is out of the wood.
He did not go to the Goddards’ either, because he felt that Patty had been making a butt of him. Yes, while he was feeling such a hero in the park, she was laughing up her sleeve at him.
“While from the dark park, hark “
The ridiculous Tom Hood line ran in his mind. Yes, he was a fool, a born fool and a made fool, both, and he felt in a state of intense irritation against everybody he knew and the whole circumstance of his life.
To crown which, on Thursday he received a note, at school, requesting him to attend a meeting in camera of the Higher Grade Committee, at Knarborough, at seven in the evening — signed M. Britten.
Haysfall Technical School was under the control of the Education Committee, which had its seat in the county town of Knarborough. M. Britten was Minnie Britten, secretary for the above: and secretary for everything else into which she could poke her nose. Gilbert knew her: a woman with grey hair and a black hat, in a tremendous hurry of mental responsibility and importance, always scuffling in when she wasn’t wanted and setting all the leaves fluttering with her strained sense of duty and her exaggerated sense of importance. Heaven knows how much she cost the County in petrol, for she was not out of the official motor-car ever for a longer space than half-an-hour. Her superior, Jimmy Blount, a youngish bald man with an eyeglass, Clerk for Education for the county, let her flutter the dovecotes at will. He, poor devil, was harassed by the officious interference of the innumerable little gods who have education at heart and can make an official’s chair uncomfortable. Mrs Britten then — we forgot to mention she was married — darted about the county wherever she felt she was in request, like some spider dashing from the centre of its web along the lines every time it feels or imagines it feels a disturbance. Of course Mrs Britten did actually rush into a lot of educational bothers: which proves, of course, that the bothers existed. Whether her rushes made matters any better, we leave to the imagination of any individual who has ever had the misfortune and humiliation to be connected with our educational system.
Mrs Britten then: she was a B.A. also, and felt that her education was unquestionable. She wrote pamphlets on Education, and was surprised, yes surprised, if at least every head teacher in every school did not show an acquaintance with their contents. She was Secretary for the Children’s Holiday Fund, and an assiduous collector therefor. A footpad, even a burglar with a revolver is answerable. But Mrs Britten was unanswerable, especially to poor quaking elementary school-teachers, to whom she was the Dea ex machina. She forced the reluctant sixpences out of them, and let her sun shine on schools whose contribution to the Fund was highest. She was an opponent of Feeding the Children — we must refer to her pamphlet on the subject for the reason why. In fact she was for or against innumerable things, so that it was a wonder her hair hadn’t all disappeared, instead of being merely stone grey at forty. She was honest, of course. She was kind, as goes without saying. She had lots of brains. She was hard and straightforward and downright enough. Wonderful what a lot of virtues she managed to have in a hurry. Though she wasn’t at all a new broom, she swept the dust from pillar to post, and left everybody spitting, till some poor devil got the dust-pan and collected the dirt.
Mr Noon knew her. We’ve all known her. Such conscientious people don’t let themselves remain unknown. She rather approved of Mr Noon — because he was so clever, and had brought the remnants of such a reputation with him from Cambridge. She even rather toadied to him — in a mental kind of way. Spiteful female teachers said she wouldn’t at all mind setting her black hat at him: but this isn’t true. Mrs Britten was merely Minerva extending her grace and craving a little adulation in return. She heard — oh yes, she heard of his peccadilloes. What escaped her? But, curiously enough, she was rather more indulgent to him because of them. If he had been so brilliant and impregnable, her wing might not have covered him. But if not her intellectual, at least he might be her moral chicken.
Therefore Gilbert felt no particular qualm when he received the note summoning him to the meeting in camer
a. Rather he poured a little ointment on his prickly, nettle-rashed vanity, and concluded they were going to consult him, privately, upon some matter connected with the school, probably the fitting up of a laboratory for technical chemistry.
So he put his best suit on, tied his tie to his taste, and whizzed over on the motor-cycle to the county town. When he arrived at the town hall, the porter told him the meeting was already sitting. He went to the waiting-room, and there sat cooling his heels. Doubtful if even now he smelled the above-mentioned fish, which were stewed and nearly ready for him in the next room.
A bell rang. A clerk went into the meeting-room, returned, and ushered in Mr Noon. Mrs Britten was at the head of a long table round which were seated the various members of the committee, mostly fat fossils and important persons of complete insignificance. Mrs Britten rose to her feet.
“Ah, good-evening Mr Noon. Will you sit there — !” — and she indicated a chair at the doorwards end of the table, opposite herself. Gilbert said Good-evening, and looking very fresh and spruce, seated himself in the chair indicated. Meanwhile, down either side of the black-leathered table the members of the committee, their faces very distinct owing to the shaded lights that hung over the table and cast all the glow down on them, looked steadfastly and mutely at Mr Noon, as if they had expected some inhabitant of Mars to make his appearance. Gilbert suddenly felt like a baby that has fallen to the bottom of the sea and finds all the lobsters staring at him in the under-sea light. So they stared, like inquiring lobsters, and he felt like a baby, with his fresh face and pouting mouth.
But Mrs Britten had seated herself once more, and stretching out her arms on the table in a very-much-herself fashion, she held certain papers within the full glare of the lamp, and began:
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 273