The Rainbow
Page 294Though she did not give in, she never succeeded. Her class
was getting in worse condition, she knew herself less and less
secure in teaching it. Ought she to withdraw and go home again?
Ought she to say she had come to the wrong place, and so retire?
Her very life was at test.
She went on doggedly, blindly, waiting for a crisis. Mr.
Harby had now begun to persecute her. Her dread and hatred of
him grew and loomed larger and larger. She was afraid he was
going to bully her and destroy her. He began to persecute her
because she could not keep her class in proper condition,
because her class was the weak link in the chain which made up
the school.
One of the offences was that her class was noisy and
disturbed Mr. Harby, as he took Standard Seven at the other end
walking in among the scholars. Some of the boys had dirty ears
and necks, their clothing smelled unpleasantly, but she could
ignore it. She corrected the writing as she went.
"When you say 'their fur is brown', how do you write
'their'?" she asked.
There was a little pause; the boys were always jeeringly
backward in answering. They had begun to jeer at her authority
altogether.
"Please, miss, t-h-e-i-r", spelled a lad, loudly, with a note
of mockery.
At that moment Mr. Harby was passing.
"Stand up, Hill!" he called, in a big voice.
Everybody started. Ursula watched the boy. He was evidently
his forehead, the rest fitted close to his meagre head. He was
pale and colourless.
"Who told you to call out?" thundered Mr. Harby.
The boy looked up and down, with a guilty air, and a cunning,
cynical reserve.
"Please, sir, I was answering," he replied, with the same
humble insolence.
"Go to my desk."
The boy set off down the room, the big black jacket hanging
in dejected folds about him, his thin legs, rather knocked at
the knees, going already with the pauper's crawl, his feet in
their big boots scarcely lifted. Ursula watched him in his
crawling, slinking progress down the room. He was one of her
with a sort of cunning grin and a pathetic leer at the big boys
in Standard VII. Then, pitiable, pale, in his dejected garments,
he lounged under the menace of the headmaster's desk, with one
thin leg crooked at the knee and the foot struck out sideways
his hands in the low-hanging pockets of his man's jacket.
Ursula tried to get her attention back to the class. The boy
gave her a little horror, and she was at the same time hot with
pity for him. She felt she wanted to scream. She was responsible
for the boy's punishment. Mr. Harby was looking at her
handwriting on the board. He turned to the class.