The Rainbow

She, as teacher, must bring them all as scholars, into

subjection. And this she was going to do. All else she would

forsake. She had become hard and impersonal, almost avengeful on

herself as well as on them, since the stone throwing. She did

not want to be a person, to be herself any more, after such

humiliation. She would assert herself for mastery, be only

teacher. She was set now. She was going to fight and subdue.

She knew by now her enemies in the class. The one she hated

most was Williams. He was a sort of defective, not bad enough to

be so classed. He could read with fluency, and had plenty of

cunning intelligence. But he could not keep still. And he had a

kind of sickness very repulsive to a sensitive girl, something

cunning and etiolated and degenerate. Once he had thrown an

ink-well at her, in one of his mad little rages. Twice he had

run home out of class. He was a well-known character.

And he grinned up his sleeve at this girl-teacher, sometimes

hanging round her to fawn on her. But this made her dislike him

more. He had a kind of leech-like power.

From one of the children she took a supple cane, and this she

determined to use when real occasion came. One morning, at

composition, she said to the boy Williams: "Why have you made this blot?"

"Please, miss, it fell off my pen," he whined out, in the

mocking voice that he was so clever in using. The boys near

snorted with laughter. For Williams was an actor, he could

tickle the feelings of his hearers subtly. Particularly he could

tickle the children with him into ridiculing his teacher, or

indeed, any authority of which he was not afraid. He had that

peculiar gaol instinct.

"Then you must stay in and finish another page of

composition," said the teacher.

This was against her usual sense of justice, and the boy

resented it derisively. At twelve o'clock she caught him

slinking out.

"Williams, sit down," she said.

And there she sat, and there he sat, alone, opposite to her,

on the back desk, looking up at her with his furtive eyes every

minute.

"Please, miss, I've got to go an errand," he called out

insolently.

"Bring me your book," said Ursula.

The boy came out, flapping his book along the desks. He had

not written a line.

"Go back and do the writing you have to do," said Ursula. And

she sat at her desk, trying to correct books. She was trembling

and upset. And for an hour the miserable boy writhed and grinned

in his seat. At the end of that time he had done five lines.

"As it is so late now," said Ursula, "you will finish the

rest this evening."