The Rainbow

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.