第 61 页

"Such a condition in a class, I can't believe it! It is

simply disgraceful! I can't think how you have been let to get

like it! Every Monday morning I shall come down and examine

these books. So don't think that because there is nobody paying

any attention to you, that you are free to unlearn everything

you ever learned, and go back till you are not fit for Standard

Three. I shall examine all books every Monday----"

Then in a rage, he went away with his cane, leaving Ursula to

confront a pale, quivering class, whose childish faces were shut

in blank resentment, fear, and bitterness, whose souls were full

of anger and contempt for her rather than of the master, whose

eyes looked at her with the cold, inhuman accusation of

children. And she could hardly make mechanical words to speak to

them. When she gave an order they obeyed with an insolent

off-handedness, as if to say: "As for you, do you think we would

obey you, but for the master?" She sent the blubbering,

caned boys to their seats, knowing that they too jeered at her

and her authority, holding her weakness responsible for what

punishment had overtaken them. And she knew the whole position,

so that even her horror of physical beating and suffering sank

to a deeper pain, and became a moral judgment upon her, worse

than any hurt.

She must, during the next week, watch over her books, and

punish any fault. Her soul decided it coldly. Her personal

desire was dead for that day at least. She must have nothing

more of herself in school. She was to be Standard Five teacher

only. That was her duty. In school, she was nothing but Standard

Five teacher. Ursula Brangwen must be excluded.

So that, pale, shut, at last distant and impersonal, she saw

no longer the child, how his eyes danced, or how he had a queer

little soul that could not be bothered with shaping handwriting

so long as he dashed down what he thought. She saw no children,

only the task that was to be done. And keeping her eyes there,

on the task, and not on the child, she was impersonal enough to

punish where she could otherwise only have sympathized,

understood, and condoned, to approve where she would have been

merely uninterested before. But her interest had no place any

more.

It was agony to the impulsive, bright girl of seventeen to

become distant and official, having no personal relationship

with the children. For a few days, after the agony of the

Monday, she succeeded, and had some success with her class. But

it was a state not natural to her, and she began to relax.

Then came another infliction. There were not enough pens to

go round the class. She sent to Mr. Harby for more. He came in

person.

"Not enough pens, Miss Brangwen?" he said, with the smile and

calm of exceeding rage against her.

"No, we are six short," she said, quaking.

"Oh, how is that?" he said, menacingly. Then, looking over

the class, he asked:

"How many are there here to-day?"

"Fifty-two," said Ursula, but he did not take any notice,

counting for himself.

"Fifty-two," he said. "And how many pens are there,

Staples?"

Ursula was now silent. He would not heed her if she answered,

since he had addressed the monitor.

"That's a very curious thing," said Mr. Harby, looking over

the silent class with a slight grin of fury. All the childish

faces looked up at him blank and exposed.

"A few days ago there were sixty pens for this

class--now there are forty-eight. What is forty-eight from

sixty, Williams?" There was a sinister suspense in the question.

A thin, ferret-faced boy in a sailor suit started up

exaggeratedly.

"Please, sir!" he said. Then a slow, sly grin came over his

face. He did not know. There was a tense silence. The boy

dropped his head. Then he looked up again, a little cunning

triumph in his eyes. "Twelve," he said.

"I would advise you to attend," said the headmaster

dangerously. The boy sat down.

"Forty-eight from sixty is twelve: so there are twelve pens

to account for. Have you looked for them, Staples?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then look again."

The scene dragged on. Two pens were found: ten were missing.

Then the storm burst.

"Am I to have you thieving, besides your dirt and bad work

and bad behaviour?" the headmaster began. "Not content with

being the worst-behaved and dirtiest class in the school, you

are thieves into the bargain, are you? It is a very funny thing!

Pens don't melt into the air: pens are not in the habit of

mizzling away into nothing. What has become of them then? They

must be somewhere. What has become of them? For they must be

found, and found by Standard Five. They were lost by Standard

Five, and they must be found."

Ursula stood and listened, her heart hard and cold. She was

so much upset, that she felt almost mad. Something in her

tempted her to turn on the headmaster and tell him to stop,

about the miserable pens. But she did not. She could not.

After every session, morning and evening, she had the pens

counted. Still they were missing. And pencils and india-rubbers

disappeared. She kept the class staying behind, till the things

were found. But as soon as Mr. Harby had gone out of the room,

the boys began to jump about and shout, and at last they bolted

in a body from the school.

This was drawing near a crisis. She could not tell Mr. Harby

because, while he would punish the class, he would make her the

cause of the punishment, and her class would pay her back with

disobedience and derision. Already there was a deadly hostility

grown up between her and the children. After keeping in the

class, at evening, to finish some work, she would find boys

dodging behind her, calling after her: "Brangwen,

Brangwen--Proud-acre."

When she went into Ilkeston of a Saturday morning with

Gudrun, she heard again the voices yelling after her:

"Brangwen, Brangwen."

She pretended to take no notice, but she coloured with shame

at being held up to derision in the public street. She, Ursula

Brangwen of Cossethay, could not escape from the Standard Five

teacher which she was. In vain she went out to buy ribbon for

her hat. They called after her, the boys she tried to teach.

And one evening, as she went from the edge of the town into

the country, stones came flying at her. Then the passion of

shame and anger surpassed her. She walked on unheeding, beside

herself. Because of the darkness she could not see who were

those that threw. But she did not want to know.

Only in her soul a change took place. Never more, and never

more would she give herself as individual to her class. Never

would she, Ursula Brangwen, the girl she was, the person she

was, come into contact with those boys. She would be Standard

Five teacher, as far away personally from her class as if she

had never set foot in St. Philip's school. She would just

obliterate them all, and keep herself apart, take them as

scholars only.

So her face grew more and more shut, and over her flayed,

exposed soul of a young girl who had gone open and warm to give

herself to the children, there set a hard, insentient thing,

that worked mechanically according to a system imposed.

It seemed she scarcely saw her class the next day. She could

only feel her will, and what she would have of this class which

she must grasp into subjection. It was no good, any more, to

appeal, to play upon the better feelings of the class. Her

swift-working soul realized this.

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."

The boy kicked his way insolently down the passage.

The afternoon came again. Williams was there, glancing at

her, and her heart beat thick, for she knew it was a fight

between them. She watched him.

During the geography lesson, as she was pointing to the map

with her cane, the boy continually ducked his whitish head under

the desk, and attracted the attention of other boys.

"Williams," she said, gathering her courage, for it was

critical now to speak to him, "what are you doing?"

He lifted his face, the sore-rimmed eyes half smiling. There

was something intrinsically indecent about him. Ursula shrank

away.

"Nothing," he replied, feeling a triumph.

"What are you doing?" she repeated, her heart-beat

suffocating her.

"Nothing," replied the boy, insolently, aggrieved, comic.

"If I speak to you again, you must go down to Mr. Harby," she

said.

But this boy was a match even for Mr. Harby. He was so

persistent, so cringing, and flexible, he howled so when he was

hurt, that the master hated more the teacher who sent him than

he hated the boy himself. For of the boy he was sick of the

sight. Which Williams knew. He grinned visibly.

Ursula turned to the map again, to go on with the geography

lesson. But there was a little ferment in the class. Williams'

spirit infected them all. She heard a scuffle, and then she

trembled inwardly. If they all turned on her this time, she was

beaten.

"Please, miss----" called a voice in distress.

She turned round. One of the boys she liked was ruefully

holding out a torn celluloid collar. She heard the complaint,

feeling futile.

"Go in front, Wright," she said.

She was trembling in every fibre. A big, sullen boy, not bad

but very difficult, slouched out to the front. She went on with

the lesson, aware that Williams was making faces at Wright, and

that Wright was grinning behind her. She was afraid. She turned

to the map again. And she was afraid.

"Please, miss, Williams----" came a sharp cry, and

a boy on the back row was standing up, with drawn, pained brows,

half a mocking grin on his pain, half real resentment against

Williams--"Please, miss, he's nipped me,"--and he

rubbed his leg ruefully.

"Come in front, Williams," she said.

The rat-like boy sat with his pale smile and did not

move.

"Come in front," she repeated, definite now.

"I shan't," he cried, snarling, rat-like, grinning. Something

went click in Ursula's soul. Her face and eyes set, she went

through the class straight. The boy cowered before her

glowering, fixed eyes. But she advanced on him, seized him by

the arm, and dragged him from his seat. He clung to the form. It

was the battle between him and her. Her instinct had suddenly

become calm and quick. She jerked him from his grip, and dragged

him, struggling and kicking, to the front. He kicked her several

times, and clung to the forms as he passed, but she went on. The

class was on its feet in excitement. She saw it, and made no

move.

She knew if she let go the boy he would dash to the door.

Already he had run home once out of her class. So she snatched

her cane from the desk, and brought it down on him. He was

writhing and kicking. She saw his face beneath her, white, with

eyes like the eyes of a fish, stony, yet full of hate and

horrible fear. And she loathed him, the hideous writhing thing

that was nearly too much for her. In horror lest he should

overcome her, and yet at the heart quite calm, she brought down

the cane again and again, whilst he struggled making

inarticulate noises, and lunging vicious kicks at her. With one