The Rainbow

Then the morning passed with a strange far-awayness and

quietness. Dinner-time came, when she and Maggie ate joyously,

with all the windows open. And then they went out into St.

Philip's churchyard, where was a shadowy corner under red

hawthorn trees. And there they talked and read Shelley or

Browning or some work about "Woman and Labour".

And when she went back to school, Ursula lived still in the

shadowy corner of the graveyard, where pink-red petals lay

scattered from the hawthorn tree, like myriad tiny shells on a

beach, and a church bell sometimes rang sonorously, and

sometimes a bird called out, whilst Maggie's voice went on low

and sweet.

These days she was happy in her soul: oh, she was so happy,

that she wished she could take her joy and scatter it in armfuls

broadcast. She made her children happy, too, with a little

tingling of delight. But to her, the children were not a school

class this afternoon. They were flowers, birds, little bright

animals, children, anything. They only were not Standard Five.

She felt no responsibility for them. It was for once a game,

this teaching. And if they got their sums wrong, what matter?

And she would take a pleasant bit of reading. And instead of

history with dates, she would tell a lovely tale. And for

grammar, they could have a bit of written analysis that was not

difficult, because they had done it before: "She shall be sportive as a fawn

That wild with glee across the lawn

Or up the mountain springs."

She wrote that from memory, because it pleased her.

So the golden afternoon passed away and she went home happy.

She had finished her day of school, and was free to plunge into

the glowing evening of Cossethay. And she loved walking home.

But it had not been school. It had been playing at school

beneath red hawthorn blossom.

She could not go on like this. The quarterly examination was

coming, and her class was not ready. It irritated her that she

must drag herself away from her happy self, and exert herself

with all her strength to force, to compel this heavy class of

children to work hard at arithmetic. They did not want to work,

she did not want to compel them. And yet, some second conscience

gnawed at her, telling her the work was not properly done. It

irritated her almost to madness, and she let loose all the

irritation in the class. Then followed a day of battle and hate

and violence, when she went home raw, feeling the golden evening

taken away from her, herself incarcerated in some dark, heavy

place, and chained there with a consciousness of having done

badly at work.

What good was it that it was summer, that right till evening,

when the corncrakes called, the larks would mount up into the

light, to sing once more before nightfall. What good was it all,

when she was out of tune, when she must only remember the burden

and shame of school that day.