The Rainbow

Often, oh often the tram seemed to stop, and wet, cloaked

people mounted and sat mute and grey in stiff rows opposite her,

their umbrellas between their knees. The windows of the tram

grew more steamy; opaque. She was shut in with these unliving,

spectral people. Even yet it did not occur to her that she was

one of them. The conductor came down issuing tickets. Each

little ring of his clipper sent a pang of dread through her. But

her ticket surely was different from the rest.

They were all going to work; she also was going to work. Her

ticket was the same. She sat trying to fit in with them. But

fear was at her bowels, she felt an unknown, terrible grip upon

her.

At Bath Street she must dismount and change trams. She looked

uphill. It seemed to lead to freedom. She remembered the many

Saturday afternoons she had walked up to the shops. How free and

careless she had been!

Ah, her tram was sliding gingerly downhill. She dreaded every

yard of her conveyance. The car halted, she mounted hastily.

She kept turning her head as the car ran on, because she was

uncertain of the street. At last, her heart a flame of suspense,

trembling, she rose. The conductor rang the bell brusquely.

She was walking down a small, mean, wet street, empty of

people. The school squatted low within its railed, asphalt yard,

that shone black with rain. The building was grimy, and

horrible, dry plants were shadowily looking through the

windows.

She entered the arched doorway of the porch. The whole place

seemed to have a threatening expression, imitating the church's

architecture, for the purpose of domineering, like a gesture of

vulgar authority. She saw that one pair of feet had paddled

across the flagstone floor of the porch. The place was silent,

deserted, like an empty prison waiting the return of tramping

feet.

Ursula went forward to the teachers' room that burrowed in a

gloomy hole. She knocked timidly.

"Come in!" called a surprised man's voice, as from a prison

cell. She entered the dark little room that never got any sun.

The gas was lighted naked and raw. At the table a thin man in

shirt-sleeves was rubbing a paper on a jellytray. He looked up

at Ursula with his narrow, sharp face, said "Good morning," then

turned away again, and stripped the paper off the tray, glancing

at the violet-coloured writing transferred, before he dropped

the curled sheet aside among a heap.

Ursula watched him fascinated. In the gaslight and gloom and

the narrowness of the room, all seemed unreal.

"Isn't it a nasty morning," she said.

"Yes," he said, "it's not much of weather."

But in here it seemed that neither morning nor weather really

existed. This place was timeless. He spoke in an occupied voice,

like an echo. Ursula did not know what to say. She took off her

waterproof.