“We are sorry, Mr Noon, to have to call this meeting tonight to consider the subject in hand. Yesterday a formal report was made and signed in my presence which, although it does not direcdy affect the concerns of this Committee, yet may prejudice your successful work in the Haysfall Technical School seriously. Is not that so, gentlemen?”
The lobsters buzzed and nodded in the submarine glare. They no longer looked at Mr Noon, but studiously away from him. He sat looking rather wonder-stricken and stupid, with his pouting mouth a shade open.
“Therefore we have decided to put the matter before you openly, and hear your account. We are sorry to have to intrude on your private life, but we do feel that the interests of the school where you are doing such good work are at stake.”
“Quite!” said one of the lobsters distincdy and emphatically. Gilbert’s eye strayed wonderingly to him.
“We are met here in camera, even without a clerk. If we can clear the matter up satisfactorily, nothing more shall be heard of it. We are prepared to forget all about it.”
“Oh certainly, certainly,” barked a couple of lobsters.
At this time Mr Noon’s attention was interrupted by his recalling the story about a certain French poet who was seen slowly leading a lobster by a blue ribbon along one of the boulevards. When a friend asked why, why?, the poet replied wistfully: “You see they don’t bark.”
Gilbert wondered if they really did never bark, or if, underwater, they rushed out of their rock-kennels and snapped and yapped at the heels of the passing fishes. This fancy caused him to hear only a wave-lapping sound for a few moments, which wave-lapping sound was actually Mrs Britten’s going on. He came to himself when she flapped a paper to attract his rather vacant-looking attention. He stared alert at the paper, and heard her portentous reading.
“I wish to make known to the Members of the Knarborough Education Committee that Gilbert Noon, science-teacher in Haysfall Technical School, has been carrying on with my daughter, Emma Grace Bostock, and has had criminal commerce with her. He has got my daughter into trouble, and ruined her life. I wish to know whether such a man is fit to be a teacher of young boys and girls, and if nothing is going to be done in the matter by the Knarborough Education Committee. Signed Alfred Wright Bostock — ”
Mrs Britten’s level voice came coldly to an end, and she looked keenly at Mr Gilbert. He sat staring at some invisible point above the middle of the table, and was quite inscrutable.
“We feel,” said Mrs Britten, “how delicate the matter is. We wish above all things not to trespass. But we find we must have an answer from your own mouth. The meeting is private — everything will be kept in strictest privacy. Will you tell us, please, whether this statement by the man Bostock is altogether false?”
Gilbert still stared at the invisible point and looked absent. There was a dead silence which began to get awkward.
“Yes or no, Mr Noon?” said Mrs Britten gently.
Still the vacant Gilbert stared at a point in space, and the lobsters began to squiggle in their arm-chairs.
“We have your interest at heart, Mr Noon. Please believe it. But we are bound, bound to have the interest of your school and scholars also at heart. If the matter had not been formally forced upon our attention, as I may say, we might have let gossip continue its gossiping. But the man Bostock seems to be a determined individual, capable of creating considerable annoyance. We thought it best to try to settle the matter quiedy and as privately as possible. We have the greatest possible esteem for your services: we would not like to lose them. And so we are met here tonight to do what we can.
“Answer then simply, yes or no. Is this statement made by the man Bostock utterly false, or must we consider it? It is completely false? — yes? — ”
The lobsters glued their eyes on Mr Noon’s face. He looked up and along at Mrs Britten: surely she was a Jewess by birth. A thousand to one on it she was a benevolent Jewess by birth.
“All right then,” he said gruffly, leaning forward on the table and half-rising, pushing his chair scraping back: “I’ll send in my resignation.”
He stood leaning forward for one second at the table, looking at the confounded lobsters.
“No no, Mr Noon! Please! Please sit down! Please! Please! Do sit down. Please do! Please!” Mrs Britten had risen to her feet in her earnest agitation. She seemed really so concerned for his welfare that he wavered, and half sat down.
“Certainly! Take your seat, young man,” said one of the lobsters, who evidently owned employees.
“I’ll send in my resignation,” barked Gilbert, sending his chair back with a jerk and opening the door before any lobster could disentangle himself from his lobster-pot of a round official chair.
“Oh don’t let him go!” cried Mrs Britten, with a wail of distress. There was a clinking and scraping of lobster-pots and one lobster-voice shouted — ”Here! Here you!” But Gilbert was going down the wide, dim stone stairs three at a time, not running, but lunging down, smack, smack, smack, three steps at a time. He bumped aside the porter and took his hat and coat, and in another second was going out of the front doors of the Town Hall, hearing the last of Mrs Britten’s voice wailing from the semi-darkness up aloft the stairs:
“Please, Mr Noon! Please come back!”
All her nice little game of that evening was spoilt. Oh, what a temper she was in, and how she longed to box the ears of all the lobsters, particularly the one who had “young-manned” the truant. Oh how she hated the lobsters, over whom she queened it so regally. Oh how she itched to smack their faces and tell them what she thought of them. A Jewess born!
But she did none of these things. She only said:
“He will send in his resignation tomorrow.”
“And it will be accepted,” barked a lobster.
“Sine die,” yapped another, though nobody knew what he meant by it, or whether it was English which they hadn’t quite caught.
Chapter VII.
Jaw.
Gilbert’s kettle of fish had been all lobsters but one: but that didn’t make it any the sweeter.
The next day was Saturday: half-day at school. His one fear was that Mrs Britten would pounce on him. If she did, he would put her off with vague promises and sweetnesses. For he was determined to have done with Haysfall, Whetstone, Woodhouse, Britten-women, Goddard-women, Emmie- women, all his present life and circumstance, all in one smack. Men at some times are masters of their fates, and this was one of Mr Gilbert’s times. The wonder is he did not break his neck at it, or get locked up, for he rode his motor-cycle at many forbidden miles an hour, so anxious he was to get home. He was so anxious to have between his fingers the Lachesis shears of his thread of fate, in the shape of a fountain pen. He could snip off the thread of his Haysfall life in about three strokes — ”I beg to resign my post in Haysfall Technical School, and wish to leave at the very earliest opportunity.” That was all he would say. And he was itching to say it. His motor-cycle fairly jumped over the dark roads from Knarborough to Whetstone.
He arrived, wrote out his resignation, and sat down to think.
In the first place he was clearing out. He was going to Germany, as he had often said he would, to study for his doctorate.
That was settled. But —
And there were rather serious buts.
Criminal correspondence with Emmie had got her into trouble and ruined her life. Did that mean she was going to have a baby? Lord save us, he hoped not. And even if she was, whose baby was it going to be? He felt in no mood at all for fatherhood, but decided, since he was running away, he had better see Emmie again and make it as square with her as possible.
Which meant also going to the Goddards.
And would that damned Mrs Britten fasten on him tomorrow? He knew she would on Monday if not tomorrow. Saturday morning, he knew, she was busier and fuller up than ever, if that were possible. The thing was, to get away without seeing her. Could he clear out after tomorrow morning? Not put in any furt
her appearance at the school after the morrow?
That remained to decide.
Then money. He had no money. He never had any money, though his father said that when he was his age, meaning Gilbert’s, he had saved a hundred and seventy pounds out of thirty shillings a week. Gilbert would have been glad of the hundred and seventy pounds if he’d saved them, but he hadn’t. How was he to clear out with about fifty-five shillings, which was all he had.
He must get something out of his father, that was all. And sell his motor-cycle. Ay, sell his motor-cycle. Leave that also for the morrow. Sufficient unto the day etc.
Of course he’d brought it all on himself. And he didn’t seriously care either. One must bring one thing or another on oneself.
There was his father just come in from having half a pint at the Holly Bush. Down he went. His father was sitting in the many-staved arm-chair, almost a lobster-pot, the throne of the house. Gilbert sat on the sofa opposite. The father began to unfasten his boots.
“Father,” said Gilbert. “I’m chucking Haysfall Technical.”
“Oh ay,” replied his parent.
“I’m thinking of going to Germany.”
“Are you!”
“I’m going to work there for my doctorate.”
“Doctorate? Oh yes.”
“Doctor of Science, you know.”
“Ay! Ay!”
“It would do me a lot of good, you know.”
“It would, would it?”
“I should get a much better job than ever I can get now.”
“Yes — yes.”
“The only thing is funds.”
“Funds. Yes.”
“It’ll cost me a bit at first, only at first.”
“Where? In Germany? Oh yes.”
“Yes.”
“Ay.”
This passionate conversation between father and son was drawing to an inevitable close.
“You don’t see your way to helping me a bit, Dad?”
“Helping you, child! I’m always helping you.”
“Yes, but a bit extra.”
“Nay, how can I help you if you go to foreign parts.”
“By setting me up with a few quid.”
“A few quid. Why — you can stop at home an’ have board an’ lodging for nothing. What’st want to be goin’ to Geermany for!”
“For my doctorate.”
“Doctrat be — hanged.”
“Nay father.”
“Thou’rt doin’ right enough as t’art.”
“No, I’m going to Germany.”
“Tha art?”
“Yes.”
“Oh — all right.”
“You see father, I want a few quid to start off with.”
“Save ‘em then, my boy.”
“I haven’t saved them, Dad, and you have. So you give me a few.”
“Tha does talk.”
“Ay — what else should I do!”
“Save thy wind.”
“Like you save your money?”
“Ay — t’same.”
“And you won’t give me any?”
“Tha’lt get th’ lot when I’m gone.”
“But I don’t want you gone, and I want a little money.”
“Want. Want. What art doin’ wi’ wants? Tha should ha’e th’ fulness, not th’ want.”
“So I should if you’d give it me.”
“Nay, I can niver put th’ fat off my own belly on to thine.”
“I don’t want your fat — I want about fifty pounds.”
“That is my fat.”
“You know it isn’t.”
“I know it is.”
“Won’t you give them me?”
“Tha’lt get all when I’ve gone.”
“I want it now.”
“Ay, me an’ all. I want it now.”
Whereupon Gilbert rose and went upstairs again. His father was a lobster.
The next morning passed without any descent of Mrs Britten. He got on his bicycle and left Haysfall for good, taking his few personal possessions with him from the big red school.
Arriving at Whetstone at one o’clock, he immediately went and bargained with an acquaintance who, he knew, wanted his motor-cycle. The man offered fifteen pounds. The thing was worth a good forty.
“Give me twenty, or I’ll ride it to London and sell it there.”
It was agreed he was to have his twenty, and hand over the cycle the next day, Sunday. So he went home for dinner, did not speak to his father, with whom he was angry, hurried through his meal, and shoved off with his motor-bike again.
Chapter VIII.
His Might-have-been Mother-in-law.
At Woodhouse, Patty opened the door to him. She started, and looked embarrassed.
“Is it you Mr Noon! Come in.” Then in a lower tone: “I’ve got Mrs Bostock here. Poor thing, I’m sorry for her. But perhaps you’d rather not see her?”
“What do you think?” he said.
Patty pursed up her mouth.
“Oh — as you please. She’s quite harmless.”
“All right.”
He took off his hat and marched into the room. Mrs Bostock fluttered from her chair. Patty came in wagging herself fussily as she walked, and arching her eyebrows with her conspicuously subtle smile.
“What a coincidence, Mrs Bostock! This is Mr Noon.”
Mrs Bostock, who at a nearer view was seen to have a slipshod, amiable cunning in her eyes, shook hands and said she hoped she saw him well. Patty settled herself with her ivory hands in her dark-brown lap, and her ivory face flickering its important smile, and looked from one to the other of her guests.
“How remarkable you should have come just at this minute, Mr Noon! Mrs Bostock has just brought this book of yours. I believe you lent it Emmie.”
Gilbert eyed the treatise on conic sections.
“Yes,” he said, “I did.”
“It was my mistake as did it,” said Mrs Bostock, with that slip-shod repentance of her nature. “I picked it up and said ‘Whose is this book about Comic Sections?’ I thought it was a comic, you see, not noticing. And our Dad twigged it at once. ‘Give it here,’ he said. And he opened it and saw the name. If I’d seen it I should have put it back on the shelf and said nothing.”
“How very unfortunate,” Patty said. “May I see?”
She took the book, read the title, and laughed sharply.
“A mathematical work?” she said, wrinkling up her eyes at Gilbert. Not that she knew any more about it, really, than Mrs Bostock did. She saw the Trinity College stamp, and the name, Gilbert Noon, written on the fly leaf.
“What a curious handwriting you have, Mr Noon,” she said, looking up at him from under her dark brows. He did not answer. People had said it so often. He wrote in an odd, upright manner, rather as if his letters were made up out of crochets and quavers and semibreves, very picturesque and neat.
“If I’d opened it I should have guessed, though I didn’t know the name any more than he did. But our Dad was too sharp for me. I tried to pass it off. It was no good though,” said Mrs Bostock. She had a half-amused look, as if the intrigue pleased her.
“So it all came out?” asked Patty.
“Ay, I’m sorry to say. As soon as our Emmie come in he showed it her and said ‘I’m goin’ to Haysfall Technical with this.’ And she, silly like, instead of passing it off, flew at him and tried to snatch it from him. That just pleased our Dad. I said to her after: ‘Why you silly thing, what did you let on for? Why didn’t y.ou make out you knew nothing!’ And then she flew at me.”
“You must have had a trying time between the two,” said Patty, wrinkling her brows at Noon.
“Oh, I have, I can tell you. He vowed he’d go up to the Tech. with the book, and she said if he did she’d jump in th’ cut. I kept saying to her, why don’t you pass it off with a laugh. But she seemed as if she’d gone beyond it. So he kept the book till this morning. She told me she’d promised to leave it here.”
“You knew,” said Patty; “that Emmie had run away?”
“No,” said Gilbert.
“Gone to our Fanny’s at Eakrast,” said Mrs Bostock. “I had a letter from our Fanny next day, saying she was bad in bed. I should have gone over but I’ve got Elsie with measles.”
“You have your hands full,” said Patty.
“I have, I tell you. I said to our Dad, you can do nothing but drive things from bad to worse. Our Fanny had had the doctor in to her, and he says it’s neuralgia of the stomach. Awful, isn’t it! I know neuralgia of the face is bad enough. I said to our Dad, well, I said, I don’t know whether she’s paying for her own wickedness or for your nasty temper to her, but she’s paying, anyhow.”
“Poor Emmie. And she’s such a gay young thing by nature,” said Patty.
“Oh, she’s full of life. But a wilful young madam, and can be snappy enough with the children. I’ve said to her many a time, you’re like your Dad, you keep your smiles in the crown of your hat, and only put ‘em on when you’re going out. She can be a cat, I tell you, at home. She makes her father worse than he would be.”
“I suppose she does,” said Patty.
“Oh, he gets fair wild, and then tries to blame me. I say to him, she’s your daughter, I didn’t whistle her out o’ th’ moon. He’s not bad, you know, if you let him be. He wants managing, then he’s all right. Men doesn’t have to be told too much, and it’s no good standing up to them. That’s where our Emmie makes her mistake. She will fly back at him, instead of keeping quiet. I’m sure, if you answer him back, it’s like pouring paraffin to put a fire out. He flares up till I’m frightened.”
“I’m afraid,” laughed Patty grimly, “I should have to stand up to him.”
“That’s our Emmie. I tell him, if he will make schoolteachers of them, he must expect them to have tongues in their heads. — ” Then she turned to Gilbert. “He never did nothing about your book, did he?”
“Yes,” said Gilbert. “I’ve got the sack.”
“Oh how disgusting!” cried Patty.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 274