The Rainbow · Chapter 13 (4/8)

“Who told Standard Five girls to come in like that?”

Ursula crimsoned. Her girls were glancing up at her, smirking their accusation.

“I sent them in, Mr. Harby,” she said, in a clear, struggling voice. There was a moment of silence. Then Mr. Harby roared from the distance.

“Go back to your places, Standard Five girls.”

The girls glanced up at Ursula, accusing, rather jeering, fugitive. They pushed back. Ursula’s heart hardened with ignominious pain.

“Forward⁠—march,” came Mr. Brunt’s voice, and the girls set off, keeping time with the ranks of boys.

Ursula faced her class, some fifty-five boys and girls, who stood filling the ranks of the desks. She felt utterly nonexistent. She had no place nor being there. She faced the block of children.

Down the room she heard the rapid firing of questions. She stood before her class not knowing what to do. She waited painfully. Her block of children, fifty unknown faces, watched her, hostile, ready to jeer. She felt as if she were in torture over a fire of faces. And on every side she was naked to them. Of unutterable length and torture the seconds went by.

Then she gathered courage. She heard Mr. Brunt asking questions in mental arithmetic. She stood near to her class, so that her voice need not be raised too much, and faltering, uncertain, she said:

“Seven hats at twopence ha’penny each?”

A grin went over the faces of the class, seeing her commence. She was red and suffering. Then some hands shot up like blades, and she asked for the answer.

The day passed incredibly slowly. She never knew what to do, there came horrible gaps, when she was merely exposed to the children; and when, relying on some pert little girl for information, she had started a lesson, she did not know how to go on with it properly. The children were her masters. She deferred to them. She could always hear Mr. Brunt. Like a machine, always in the same hard, high, inhuman voice he went on with his teaching, oblivious of everything. And before this inhuman number of children she was always at bay. She could not get away from it. There it was, this class of fifty collective children, depending on her for command, for command it hated and resented. It made her feel she could not breathe: she must suffocate, it was so inhuman. They were so many, that they were not children. They were a squadron. She could not speak as she would to a child, because they were not individual children, they were a collective, inhuman thing.

Dinnertime came, and stunned, bewildered, solitary, she went into the teachers’ room for dinner. Never had she felt such a stranger to life before. It seemed to her she had just disembarked from some strange horrible state where everything was as in hell, a condition of hard, malevolent system. And she was not really free. The afternoon drew at her like some bondage.

The first week passed in a blind confusion. She did not know how to teach, and she felt she never would know. Mr. Harby came down every now and then to her class, to see what she was doing. She felt so incompetent as he stood by, bullying and threatening, so unreal, that she wavered, became neutral and nonexistent. But he stood there watching with the listening-genial smile of the eyes, that was really threatening; he said nothing, he made her go on teaching, she felt she had no soul in her body. Then he went away, and his going was like a derision. The class was his class. She was a wavering substitute. He thrashed and bullied, he was hated. But he was master. Though she was gentle and always considerate of her class, yet they belonged to Mr. Harby, and they did not belong to her. Like some invincible source of the mechanism he kept all power to himself. And the class owned his power. And in school it was power, and power alone that mattered.

Soon Ursula came to dread him, and at the bottom of her dread was a seed of hate, for she despised him, yet he was master of her. Then she began to get on. All the other teachers hated him, and fanned their hatred among themselves. For he was master of them and the children, he stood like a wheel to make absolute his authority over the herd. That seemed to be his one reason in life, to hold blind authority over the school. His teachers were his subjects as much as the scholars. Only, because they had some authority, his instinct was to detest them.

Ursula could not make herself a favourite with him. From the first moment she set hard against him. She set against Violet Harby also. Mr. Harby was, however, too much for her, he was something she could not come to grips with, something too strong for her. She tried to approach him as a young, bright girl usually approaches a man, expecting a little chivalrous courtesy. But the fact that she was a girl, a woman, was ignored or used as a matter for contempt against her. She did not know what she was, nor what she must be. She wanted to remain her own responsive, personal self.

So she taught on. She made friends with the Standard Three teacher, Maggie Schofield. Miss Schofield was about twenty years old, a subdued girl who held aloof from the other teachers. She was rather beautiful, meditative, and seemed to live in another, lovelier world.

Ursula took her dinner to school, and during the second week ate it in Miss Schofield’s room. Standard Three classroom stood by itself and had windows on two sides, looking on to the playground. It was a passionate relief to find such a retreat in the jarring school. For there were pots of chrysanthemums and coloured leaves, and a big jar of berries: there were pretty little pictures on the wall, photogravure reproductions from Greuze, and Reynolds’s Age of Innocence, giving an air of intimacy; so that the room, with its window space, its smaller, tidier desks, its touch of pictures and flowers, made Ursula at once glad. Here at last was a little personal touch, to which she could respond.

It was Monday. She had been at school a week and was getting used to the surroundings, though she was still an entire foreigner in herself. She looked forward to having dinner with Maggie. That was the bright spot in the day. Maggie was so strong and remote, walking with slow, sure steps down a hard road, carrying the dream within her. Ursula went through the class teaching as through a meaningless daze.

Her class tumbled out at midday in haphazard fashion. She did not realize what host she was gathering against herself by her superior tolerance, her kindness and her laisser-aller. They were gone, and she was rid of them, and that was all. She hurried away to the teachers’ room.

Mr. Brunt was crouching at the small stove, putting a little rice pudding into the oven. He rose then, and attentively poked in a small saucepan on the hob with a fork. Then he replaced the saucepan lid.

“Aren’t they done?” asked Ursula gaily, breaking in on his tense absorption.

She always kept a bright, blithe manner, and was pleasant to all the teachers. For she felt like the swan among the geese, of superior heritage and belonging. And her pride at being the swan in this ugly school was not yet abated.

“Not yet,” replied Mr. Brunt, laconic.

“I wonder if my dish is hot,” she said, bending down at the oven. She half expected him to look for her, but he took no notice. She was hungry and she poked her finger eagerly in the pot to see if her brussels sprouts and potatoes and meat were ready. They were not.

“Don’t you think it’s rather jolly bringing dinner?” she said to Mr. Brunt.

“I don’t know as I do,” he said, spreading a serviette on a corner of the table, and not looking at her.

“I suppose it is too far for you to go home?”

“Yes,” he said. Then he rose and looked at her. He had the bluest, fiercest, most pointed eyes that she had ever met. He stared at her with growing fierceness.

“If I were you, Miss Brangwen,” he said, menacingly, “I should get a bit tighter hand over my class.”

Ursula shrank.

“Would you?” she asked, sweetly, yet in terror. “Aren’t I strict enough?”

“Because,” he repeated, taking no notice of her, “they’ll get you down if you don’t tackle ’em pretty quick. They’ll pull you down, and worry you, till Harby gets you shifted⁠—that’s how it’ll be. You won’t be here another six weeks”⁠—and he filled his mouth with food⁠—“if you don’t tackle ’em and tackle ’em quick.”

“Oh, but⁠—” Ursula said, resentfully, ruefully. The terror was deep in her.

“Harby’ll not help you. This is what he’ll do⁠—he’ll let you go on, getting worse and worse, till either you clear out or he clears you out. It doesn’t matter to me, except that you’ll leave a class behind you as I hope I shan’t have to cope with.”

She heard the accusation in the man’s voice, and felt condemned. But still, school had not yet become a definite reality to her. She was shirking it. It was reality, but it was all outside her. And she fought against Mr. Brunt’s representation. She did not want to realize.

“Will it be so terrible?” she said, quivering, rather beautiful, but with a slight touch of condescension, because she would not betray her own trepidation.

“Terrible?” said the man, turning to his potatoes again. “I dunno about terrible.”

“I do feel frightened,” said Ursula. “The children seem so⁠—”

“What?” said Miss Harby, entering at that moment.

“Why,” said Ursula, “Mr. Brunt says I ought to tackle my class,” and she laughed uneasily.

“Oh, you have to keep order if you want to teach,” said Miss Harby, hard, superior, trite.

Ursula did not answer. She felt non valid before them.

“If you want to be let to live, you have,” said Mr. Brunt.

“Well, if you can’t keep order, what good are you?” said Miss Harby.

“An’ you’ve got to do it by yourself,”⁠—his voice rose like the bitter cry of the prophets. “You’ll get no help from anybody.”

“Oh, indeed!” said Miss Harby. “Some people can’t be helped.” And she departed.

The air of hostility and disintegration, of wills working in antagonistic subordination, was hideous. Mr. Brunt, subordinate, afraid, acid with shame, frightened her. Ursula wanted to run. She only wanted to clear out, not to understand.

Then Miss Schofield came in, and with her another, more restful note. Ursula at once turned for confirmation to the newcomer. Maggie remained personal within all this unclean system of authority.

“Is the big Anderson here?” she asked of Mr. Brunt. And they spoke of some affair about two scholars, coldly, officially.

Miss Schofield took her brown dish, and Ursula followed with her own. The cloth was laid in the pleasant Standard Three room, there was a jar with two or three monthly roses on the table.

“It is so nice in here, you have made it different,” said Ursula gaily. But she was afraid. The atmosphere of the school was upon her.

“The big room,” said Miss Schofield, “ha, it’s misery to be in it!”

She too spoke with bitterness. She too lived in the ignominious position of an upper servant hated by the master above and the class beneath. She was, she knew, liable to attack from either side at any minute, or from both at once, for the authorities would listen to the complaints of parents, and both would turn round on the mongrel authority, the teacher.

So there was a hard, bitter withholding in Maggie Schofield even as she poured out her savoury mess of big golden beans and brown gravy.

“It is vegetarian hotpot,” said Miss Schofield. “Would you like to try it?”

“I should love to,” said Ursula.

Her own dinner seemed coarse and ugly beside this savoury, clean dish.

“I’ve never eaten vegetarian things,” she said. “But I should think they can be good.”

“I’m not really a vegetarian,” said Maggie, “I don’t like to bring meat to school.”

“No,” said Ursula, “I don’t think I do either.”

And again her soul rang an answer to a new refinement, a new liberty. If all vegetarian things were as nice as this, she would be glad to escape the slight uncleanness of meat.

“How good!” she cried.

“Yes,” said Miss Schofield, and she proceeded to tell her the receipt. The two girls passed on to talk about themselves. Ursula told all about the High School, and about her matriculation, bragging a little. She felt so poor here, in this ugly place. Miss Schofield listened with brooding, handsome face, rather gloomy.

“Couldn’t you have got to some better place than this?” she asked at length.

“I didn’t know what it was like,” said Ursula, doubtfully.

“Ah!” said Miss Schofield, and she turned aside her head with a bitter motion.

“Is it as horrid as it seems?” asked Ursula, frowning lightly, in fear.

“It is,” said Miss Schofield, bitterly. “Ha!⁠—it is hateful!”

Ursula’s heart sank, seeing even Miss Schofield in the deadly bondage.

“It is Mr. Harby,” said Maggie Schofield, breaking forth.

“I don’t think I could live again in the big room⁠—Mr. Brunt’s voice and Mr. Harby⁠—ah⁠—”

She turned aside her head with a deep hurt. Some things she could not bear.

“Is Mr. Harby really horrid?” asked Ursula, venturing into her own dread.

“He!⁠—why, he’s just a bully,” said Miss Schofield, raising her shamed dark eyes, that flamed with tortured contempt. “He’s not bad as long as you keep in with him, and refer to him, and do everything in his way⁠—but⁠—it’s all so mean! It’s just a question of fighting on both sides⁠—and those great louts⁠—”

She spoke with difficulty and with increased bitterness. She had evidently suffered. Her soul was raw with ignominy. Ursula suffered in response.

“But why is it so horrid?” she asked, helplessly.

“You can’t do anything,” said Miss Schofield. “He’s against you on one side and he sets the children against you on the other. The children are simply awful. You’ve got to make them do everything. Everything, everything has got to come out of you. Whatever they learn, you’ve got to force it into them⁠—and that’s how it is.”

Ursula felt her heart fail inside her. Why must she grasp all this, why must she force learning on fifty-five reluctant children, having all the time an ugly, rude jealousy behind her, ready to throw her to the mercy of the herd of children, who would like to rend her as a weaker representative of authority. A great dread of her task possessed her. She saw Mr. Brunt, Miss Harby, Miss Schofield, all the schoolteachers, drudging unwillingly at the graceless task of compelling many children into one disciplined, mechanical set, reducing the whole set to an automatic state of obedience and attention, and then of commanding their acceptance of various pieces of knowledge. The first great task was to reduce sixty children to one state of mind, or being. This state must be produced automatically, through the will of the teacher, and the will of the whole school authority, imposed upon the will of the children. The point was that the headmaster and the teachers should have one will in authority, which should bring the will of the children into accord. But the headmaster was narrow and exclusive. The will of the teachers could not agree with his, their separate wills refused to be so subordinated. So there was a state of anarchy, leaving the final judgment to the children themselves, which authority should exist.

So there existed a set of separate wills, each straining itself to the utmost to exert its own authority. Children will never naturally acquiesce to sitting in a class and submitting to knowledge. They must be compelled by a stronger, wiser will. Against which will they must always strive to revolt. So that the first great effort of every teacher of a large class must be to bring the will of the children into accordance with his own will. And this he can only do by an abnegation of his personal self, and an application of a system of laws, for the purpose of achieving a certain calculable result, the imparting of certain knowledge. Whereas Ursula thought she was going to become the first wise teacher by making the whole business personal, and using no compulsion. She believed entirely in her own personality.