She would not yet, however, let school quite overcome her.
She always said. "It is not a permanency, it will come to an
end." She could always see herself beyond the place, see the
time when she had left it. On Sundays and on holidays, when she
was away at Cossethay or in the woods where the beech-leaves
were fallen, she could think of St. Philip's Church School, and
by an effort of will put it in the picture as a dirty little
low-squatting building that made a very tiny mound under the
sky, while the great beech-woods spread immense about her, and
the afternoon was spacious and wonderful. Moreover the children,
the scholars, they were insignificant little objects far away,
oh, far away. And what power had they over her free soul? A
fleeting thought of them, as she kicked her way through the
beech-leaves, and they were gone. But her will was tense against
them all the time.
All the while, they pursued her. She had never had such a
passionate love of the beautiful things about her. Sitting on
top of the tram-car, at evening, sometimes school was swept away
as she saw a magnificent sky settling down. And her breast, her
very hands, clamoured for the lovely flare of sunset. It was
poignant almost to agony, her reaching for it. She almost cried
aloud seeing the sundown so lovely.
For she was held away. It was no matter how she said to
herself that school existed no more once she had left it. It
existed. It was within her like a dark weight, controlling her
movement. It was in vain the high-spirited, proud young girl
flung off the school and its association with her. She was Miss
Brangwen, she was Standard Five teacher, she had her most
important being in her work now.
Constantly haunting her, like a darkness hovering over her
heart and threatening to swoop down over it at every moment, was
the sense that somehow, somehow she was brought down. Bitterly
she denied unto herself that she was really a schoolteacher.
Leave that to the Violet Harbys. She herself would stand clear
of the accusation. It was in vain she denied it.
Within herself some recording hand seemed to point
mechanically to a negation. She was incapable of fulfilling her
task. She could never for a moment escape from the fatal weight
of the knowledge.
And so she felt inferior to Violet Harby. Miss Harby was a
splendid teacher. She could keep order and inflict knowledge on
a class with remarkable efficiency. It was no good Ursula's
protesting to herself that she was infinitely, infinitely the
superior of Violet Harby. She knew that Violet Harby succeeded
where she failed, and this in a task which was almost a test of
her. She felt something all the time wearing upon her, wearing
her down. She went about in these first weeks trying to deny it,
to say she was free as ever. She tried not to feel at a
disadvantage before Miss Harby, tried to keep up the effect of
her own superiority. But a great weight was on her, which Violet
Harby could bear, and she herself could not.