'Well! Well!' said the minister. 'I don't know her. I don't understand. I don't understand at all. But it is to be regretted, it is very much to be regretted. I am very sorry.'
Fanny was watching the vestry door. The gallery stairs communicated with the vestry, not with the body of the chapel. She knew the choir members had been peeping for information.
At last Harry came - rather sheepishly - with his hat in his hand.
'Well!' said Fanny, rising to her feet.
'We've had a bit of an extra,' said Harry.
'I should think so,' said Fanny.
'A most unfortunate circumstance - a most unfortunate circumstance. Do you understand it, Harry? I don't understand it at all.'
'Ah, I understand it. The daughter's goin' to have a childt, an' 'er lays it on to me.'
'And has she no occasion to?' asked Fanny, rather censorious.
'It's no more mine than it is some other chap's,' said Harry, looking aside.
There was a moment of pause.
'Which girl is it?' asked Fanny.
'Annie - the young one - '
There followed another silence.
'I don't think I know them, do I?' asked the minister.
'I shouldn't think so. Their name's Nixon - mother married old Bob for her second husband. She's a tanger - 's driven the gel to what she is. They live in Manners Road.'
'Why, what's amiss with the girl?' asked Fanny sharply. 'She was all right when I knew her.'
'Ay - she's all right. But she's always in an' out o' th' pubs, wi' th' fellows,' said Harry.
'A nice thing!' said Fanny.
Harry glanced towards the door. He wanted to get out.
'Most distressing, indeed!' The minister slowly shook his head.
'What about tonight, Mr. Enderby?' asked Harry, in rather a small voice.
'Shall you want me?'
Mr. Enderby looked up painedly, and put his hand to his brow. He studied Harry for some time, vacantly. There was the faintest sort of a resemblance between the two men.
'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, I think. I think we must take no notice, and cause as little remark as possible.'
Fanny hesitated. Then she said to Harry.
'But will you come?'
He looked at her.
'Ay, I s'll come,' he said.
Then he turned to Mr. Enderby.
'Well, good-afternoon, Mr. Enderby,' he said.
'Good-afternoon, Harry, good-afternoon,' replied the mournful minister. Fanny followed Harry to the door, and for some time they walked in silence through the late afternoon.
'And it's yours as much as anybody else's?' she said.
'Ay,' he answered shortly.
And they went without another word, for the long mile or so, till they came to the corner of the street where Harry lived. Fanny hesitated. Should she go on to her aunt's? Should she? It would mean leaving all this, for ever. Harry stood silent.
Some obstinacy made her turn with him along the road to his own home. When they entered the house-place, the whole family was there, mother and father and Jinny, with Jinny's husband and children and Harry's two brothers.
'You've been having yours ears warmed, they tell me,' said Mrs. Goodall grimly.
'Who telled thee?' asked Harry shortly.
'Maggie and Luke's both been in.'
'You look well, don't you!' said interfering Jinny.
Harry went and hung his hat up, without replying.
'Come upstairs and take your hat off,' said Mrs. Goodall to Fanny, almost kindly. It would have annoyed her very much if Fanny had dropped her son at this moment.
'What's 'er say, then?' asked the father secretly of Harry, jerking his head in the direction of the stairs whence Fanny had disappeared.
'Nowt yet,' said Harry.
'Serve you right if she chucks you now,' said Jinny. 'I'll bet it's right about Annie Nixon an' you.'
'Tha bets so much,' said Harry.
'Yi - but you can't deny it,' said Jinny.
'I can if I've a mind.'
His father looked at him inquiringly.
'It's no more mine than it is Bill Bower's, or Ted Slaney's, or six or seven on 'em,' said Harry to his father.
And the father nodded silently.
'That'll not get you out of it, in court,' said Jinny.
Upstairs Fanny evaded all the thrusts made by his mother, and did not declare her hand. She tidied her hair, washed her hands, and put the tiniest bit of powder on her face, for coolness, there in front of Mrs. Goodall's indignant gaze. It was like a declaration of independence. But the old woman said nothing.
They came down to Sunday tea, with sardines and tinned salmon and tinned peaches, besides tarts and cakes. The chatter was general. It concerned the Nixon family and the scandal.
'Oh, she's a foul-mouthed woman,' said Jinny of Mrs. Nixon. 'She may well talk about God's holy house, she had. It's first time she's set foot in it, ever since she dropped off from being converted. She's a devil and she always was one. Can't you remember how she treated Bob's children, mother, when we lived down in the Buildings? I can remember when I was a little girl she used to bathe them in the yard, in the cold, so that they shouldn't splash the house. She'd half kill them if they made a mark on the floor, and the language she'd use! And one Saturday I can remember Garry, that was Bob's own girl, she ran off when her stepmother was going to bathe her - ran off without a rag of clothes on - can you remember, mother? And she hid in Smedley's closes - it was the time of mowing-grass - and nobody could find her. She hid out there all night, didn't she, mother? Nobody could find her. My word, there was a talk. They found her on Sunday morning - '
'Fred Coutts threatened to break every bone in the woman's body, if she touched the children again,' put in the father.
'Anyhow, they frightened her,' said Jinny. 'But she was nearly as bad with her own two. And anybody can see that she's driven old Bob till he's gone soft.'
'Ah, soft as mush,' said Jack Goodall. ''E'd never addle a week's wage, nor yet a day's if th' chaps didn't make it up to him.'
'My word, if he didn't bring her a week's wage, she'd pull his head off,' said Jinny.
'But a clean woman, and respectable, except for her foul mouth,' said Mrs. Goodall. 'Keeps to herself like a bull-dog. Never lets anybody come near the house, and neighbours with nobody.'
'Wanted it thrashed out of her,' said Mr. Goodall, a silent, evasive sort of man.
'Where Bob gets the money for his drink from is a mystery,' said Jinny.
'Chaps treats him,' said Harry.
'Well, he's got the pair of frightenedest rabbit-eyes you'd wish to see,' said Jinny.
'Ay, with a drunken man's murder in them, I think,' said Mrs. Goodall.
So the talk went on after tea, till it was practically time to start off to chapel again.
'You'll have to be getting ready, Fanny,' said Mrs. Goodall.
'I'm not going tonight,' said Fanny abruptly. And there was a sudden halt in the family. 'I'll stop with you tonight, Mother,' she added.
'Best you had, my gel,' said Mrs. Goodall, flattered and assured.
D. H. Lawrence, England, My England
(Series: # )
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