The Rainbow

So the battle went on till her heart was sick. She had

several more boys to subjugate before she could establish

herself. And Mr. Harby hated her almost as if she were a man.

She knew now that nothing but a thrashing would settle some of

the big louts who wanted to play cat and mouse with her. Mr.

Harby would not give them the thrashing if he could help it. For

he hated the teacher, the stuck-up, insolent high-school miss

with her independence.

"Now, Wright, what have you done this time?" he would say

genially to the boy who was sent to him from Standard Five for

punishment. And he left the lad standing, lounging, wasting his

time.

So that Ursula would appeal no more to the headmaster, but,

when she was driven wild, she seized her cane, and slashed the

boy who was insolent to her, over head and ears and hands. And

at length they were afraid of her, she had them in order.

But she had paid a great price out of her own soul, to do

this. It seemed as if a great flame had gone through her and

burnt her sensitive tissue. She who shrank from the thought of

physical suffering in any form, had been forced to fight and

beat with a cane and rouse all her instincts to hurt. And

afterwards she had been forced to endure the sound of their

blubbering and desolation, when she had broken them to

order.

Oh, and sometimes she felt as if she would go mad. What did

it matter, what did it matter if their books were dirty and they

did not obey? She would rather, in reality, that they disobeyed

the whole rules of the school, than that they should be beaten,

broken, reduced to this crying, hopeless state. She would rather

bear all their insults and insolences a thousand times than

reduce herself and them to this. Bitterly she repented having

got beside herself, and having tackled the boy she had

beaten.

Yet it had to be so. She did not want to do it. Yet she had

to. Oh, why, why had she leagued herself to this evil system

where she must brutalize herself to live? Why had she become a

school-teacher, why, why?

The children had forced her to the beatings. No, she did not

pity them. She had come to them full of kindness and love, and

they would have torn her to pieces. They chose Mr. Harby. Well

then, they must know her as well as Mr. Harby, they must first

be subjugate to her. For she was not going to be made nought,

no, neither by them, nor by Mr. Harby, nor by all the system

around her. She was not going to be put down, prevented from

standing free. It was not to be said of her, she could not take

her place and carry out her task. She would fight and hold her

place in this state also, in the world of work and man's

convention.