The Rainbow

And till college, she must go on with this teaching in St.

Philip's School, which was always destroying her, but which she

could now manage, without spoiling all her life. She would

submit to it for a time, since the time had a definite

limit.

The class-teaching itself at last became almost mechanical.

It was a strain on her, an exhausting wearying strain, always

unnatural. But there was a certain amount of pleasure in the

sheer oblivion of teaching, so much work to do, so many children

to see after, so much to be done, that one's self was forgotten.

When the work had become like habit to her, and her individual

soul was left out, had its growth elsewhere, then she could be

almost happy.

Her real, individual self drew together and became more

coherent during these two years of teaching, during the struggle

against the odds of class teaching. It was always a prison to

her, the school. But it was a prison where her wild, chaotic

soul became hard and independent. When she was well enough and

not tired, then she did not hate the teaching. She enjoyed

getting into the swing of work of a morning, putting forth all

her strength, making the thing go. It was for her a strenuous

form of exercise. And her soul was left to rest, it had the time

of torpor in which to gather itself together in strength again.

But the teaching hours were too long, the tasks too heavy, and

the disciplinary condition of the school too unnatural for her.

She was worn very thin and quivering.

She came to school in the morning seeing the hawthorn flowers

wet, the little, rosy grains swimming in a bowl of dew. The

larks quivered their song up into the new sunshine, and the

country was so glad. It was a violation to plunge into the dust

and greyness of the town.

So that she stood before her class unwilling to give herself

up to the activity of teaching, to turn her energy, that longed

for the country and for joy of early summer, into the dominating

of fifty children and the transferring to them some morsels of

arithmetic. There was a little absentness about her. She could

not force herself into forgetfulness. A jar of buttercups and

fool's-parsley in the window-bottom kept her away in the

meadows, where in the lush grass the moon-daisies were

half-submerged, and a spray of pink ragged robin. Yet before her

were faces of fifty children. They were almost like big daisies

in a dimness of the grass.

A brightness was on her face, a little unreality in her

teaching. She could not quite see her children. She was

struggling between two worlds, her own world of young summer and

flowers, and this other world of work. And the glimmer of her

own sunlight was between her and her class.