The Rainbow

Dinner-time came, and stunned, bewildered, solitary, she went

into the teachers' room for dinner. Never had she felt such a

stranger to life before. It seemed to her she had just

disembarked from some strange horrible state where everything

was as in hell, a condition of hard, malevolent system. And she

was not really free. The afternoon drew at her like some

bondage.

The first week passed in a blind confusion. She did not know

how to teach, and she felt she never would know. Mr. Harby came

down every now and then to her class, to see what she was doing.

She felt so incompetent as he stood by, bullying and

threatening, so unreal, that she wavered, became neutral and

non-existent. But he stood there watching with the

listening-genial smile of the eyes, that was really threatening;

he said nothing, he made her go on teaching, she felt she had no

soul in her body. Then he went away, and his going was like a

derision. The class was his class. She was a wavering

substitute. He thrashed and bullied, he was hated. But he was

master. Though she was gentle and always considerate of her

class, yet they belonged to Mr. Harby, and they did not belong

to her. Like some invincible source of the mechanism he kept all

power to himself. And the class owned his power. And in school

it was power, and power alone that mattered.

Soon Ursula came to dread him, and at the bottom of her dread

was a seed of hate, for she despised him, yet he was master of

her. Then she began to get on. All the other teachers hated him,

and fanned their hatred among themselves. For he was master of

them and the children, he stood like a wheel to make absolute

his authority over the herd. That seemed to be his one reason in

life, to hold blind authority over the school. His teachers were

his subjects as much as the scholars. Only, because they had

some authority, his instinct was to detest them.

Ursula could not make herself a favourite with him. From the

first moment she set hard against him. She set against Violet

Harby also. Mr. Harby was, however, too much for her, he was

something she could not come to grips with, something too strong

for her. She tried to approach him as a young, bright girl

usually approaches a man, expecting a little chivalrous

courtesy. But the fact that she was a girl, a woman, was ignored

or used as a matter for contempt against her. She did not know

what she was, nor what she must be. She wanted to remain her own

responsive, personal self.

So she taught on. She made friends with the Standard Three

teacher, Maggie Schofield. Miss Schofield was about twenty years

old, a subdued girl who held aloof from the other teachers. She

was rather beautiful, meditative, and seemed to live in another,

lovelier world.