The Rainbow

"And why not?"

"They're bagatelle," she said, using one of her mother's rare

phrases.

"Bagatelles or billiards, it makes no matter, they're nice

young lasses enough."

But Anna was not to be won over. She had a curious shrinking

from commonplace people, and particularly from the young lady of

her day. She would not go into company because of the

ill-at-ease feeling other people brought upon her. And she never

could decide whether it were her fault or theirs. She half

respected these other people, and continuous disillusion

maddened her. She wanted to respect them. Still she thought the

people she did not know were wonderful. Those she knew seemed

always to be limiting her, tying her up in little falsities that

irritated her beyond bearing. She would rather stay at home and

avoid the rest of the world, leaving it illusory.

For at the Marsh life had indeed a certain freedom and

largeness. There was no fret about money, no mean little

precedence, nor care for what other people thought, because

neither Mrs. Brangwen nor Brangwen could be sensible of any

judgment passed on them from outside. Their lives were too

separate.

So Anna was only easy at home, where the common sense and the

supreme relation between her parents produced a freer standard

of being than she could find outside. Where, outside the Marsh,

could she find the tolerant dignity she had been brought up in?

Her parents stood undiminished and unaware of criticism. The

people she met outside seemed to begrudge her her very

existence. They seemed to want to belittle her also. She was

exceedingly reluctant to go amongst them. She depended upon her

mother and her father. And yet she wanted to go out.

At school, or in the world, she was usually at fault, she

felt usually that she ought to be slinking in disgrace. She

never felt quite sure, in herself, whether she were wrong, or

whether the others were wrong. She had not done her lessons:

well, she did not see any reason why she should do her

lessons, if she did not want to. Was there some occult reason

why she should? Were these people, schoolmistresses,

representatives of some mystic Right, some Higher Good? They

seemed to think so themselves. But she could not for her life

see why a woman should bully and insult her because she did not

know thirty lines of As You Like It. After all, what did

it matter if she knew them or not? Nothing could persuade her

that it was of the slightest importance. Because she despised

inwardly the coarsely working nature of the mistress. Therefore

she was always at outs with authority. From constant telling,

she came almost to believe in her own badness, her own intrinsic

inferiority. She felt that she ought always to be in a state of

slinking disgrace, if she fulfilled what was expected of her.

But she rebelled. She never really believed in her own badness.

At the bottom of her heart she despised the other people, who

carped and were loud over trifles. She despised them, and wanted

revenge on them. She hated them whilst they had power over

her.