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 camera. 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:
“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.