第 62 页

hand she managed to hold him, and now and then the cane came

down on him. He writhed, like a mad thing. But the pain of the

strokes cut through his writhing, vicious, coward's courage, bit

deeper, till at last, with a long whimper that became a yell, he

went limp. She let him go, and he rushed at her, his teeth and

eyes glinting. There was a second of agonized terror in her

heart: he was a beast thing. Then she caught him, and the cane

came down on him. A few times, madly, in a frenzy, he lunged and

writhed, to kick her. But again the cane broke him, he sank with

a howling yell on the floor, and like a beaten beast lay there

yelling.

Mr. Harby had rushed up towards the end of this

performance.

"What's the matter?" he roared.

Ursula felt as if something were going to break in her.

"I've thrashed him," she said, her breast heaving, forcing

out the words on the last breath. The headmaster stood choked

with rage, helpless. She looked at the writhing, howling figure

on the floor.

"Get up," she said. The thing writhed away from her. She took

a step forward. She had realized the presence of the headmaster

for one second, and then she was oblivious of it again.

"Get up," she said. And with a little dart the boy was on his

feet. His yelling dropped to a mad blubber. He had been in a

frenzy.

"Go and stand by the radiator," she said.

As if mechanically, blubbering, he went.

The headmaster stood robbed of movement or speech. His face

was yellow, his hands twitched convulsively. But Ursula stood

stiff not far from him. Nothing could touch her now: she was

beyond Mr. Harby. She was as if violated to death.

The headmaster muttered something, turned, and went down the

room, whence, from the far end, he was heard roaring in a mad

rage at his own class.

The boy blubbered wildly by the radiator. Ursula looked at

the class. There were fifty pale, still faces watching her, a

hundred round eyes fixed on her in an attentive, expressionless

stare.

"Give out the history readers," she said to the monitors.

There was dead silence. As she stood there, she could hear

again the ticking of the clock, and the chock of piles of books

taken out of the low cupboard. Then came the faint flap of books

on the desks. The children passed in silence, their hands

working in unison. They were no longer a pack, but each one

separated into a silent, closed thing.

"Take page 125, and read that chapter," said Ursula.

There was a click of many books opened. The children found

the page, and bent their heads obediently to read. And they

read, mechanically.

Ursula, who was trembling violently, went and sat in her high

chair. The blubbering of the boy continued. The strident voice

of Mr. Brunt, the roar of Mr. Harby, came muffled through the

glass partition. And now and then a pair of eyes rose from the

reading-book, rested on her a moment, watchful, as if

calculating impersonally, then sank again.

She sat still without moving, her eyes watching the class,

unseeing. She was quite still, and weak. She felt that she could

not raise her hand from the desk. If she sat there for ever, she

felt she could not move again, nor utter a command. It was a

quarter-past four. She almost dreaded the closing of the school,

when she would be alone.

The class began to recover its ease, the tension relaxed.

Williams was still crying. Mr. Brunt was giving orders for the

closing of the lesson. Ursula got down.

"Take your place, Williams," she said.

He dragged his feet across the room, wiping his face on his

sleeve. As he sat down, he glanced at her furtively, his eyes

still redder. Now he looked like some beaten rat.

At last the children were gone. Mr. Harby trod by heavily,

without looking her way, or speaking. Mr. Brunt hesitated as she

was locking her cupboard.

"If you settle Clarke and Letts in the same way, Miss

Brangwen, you'll be all right," he said, his blue eyes glancing

down in a strange fellowship, his long nose pointing at her.

"Shall I?" she laughed nervously. She did not want anybody to

talk to her.

As she went along the street, clattering on the granite

pavement, she was aware of boys dodging behind her. Something

struck her hand that was carrying her bag, bruising her. As it

rolled away she saw that it was a potato. Her hand was hurt, but

she gave no sign. Soon she would take the tram.

She was afraid, and strange. It was to her quite strange and

ugly, like some dream where she was degraded. She would have

died rather than admit it to anybody. She could not look at her

swollen hand. Something had broken in her; she had passed a

crisis. Williams was beaten, but at a cost.

Feeling too much upset to go home, she rode a little farther

into the town, and got down from the tram at a small tea-shop.

There, in the dark little place behind the shop, she drank her

tea and ate bread-and-butter. She did not taste anything. The

taking of tea was just a mechanical action, to cover over her

existence. There she sat in the dark, obscure little place,

without knowing. Only unconsciously she nursed the back of her

hand, which was bruised.

When finally she took her way home, it was sunset red across

the west. She did not know why she was going home. There was

nothing for her there. She had, true, only to pretend to be

normal. There was nobody she could speak to, nowhere to go for

escape. But she must keep on, under this red sunset, alone,

knowing the horror in humanity, that would destroy her, and with

which she was at war. Yet it had to be so.

In the morning again she must go to school. She got up and

went without murmuring even to herself. She was in the hands of

some bigger, stronger, coarser will.

School was fairly quiet. But she could feel the class

watching her, ready to spring on her. Her instinct was aware of

the class instinct to catch her if she were weak. But she kept

cold and was guarded.

Williams was absent from school. In the middle of the morning

there was a knock at the door: someone wanted the headmaster.

Mr. Harby went out, heavily, angrily, nervously. He was afraid

of irate parents. After a moment in the passage, he came again

into school.

"Sturgess," he called to one of his larger boys. "Stand in

front of the class and write down the name of anyone who speaks.

Will you come this way, Miss Brangwen."

He seemed vindictively to seize upon her.

Ursula followed him, and found in the lobby a thin woman with

a whitish skin, not ill-dressed in a grey costume and a purple

hat.

"I called about Vernon," said the woman, speaking in a

refined accent. There was about the woman altogether an

appearance of refinement and of cleanliness, curiously

contradicted by her half beggar's deportment, and a sense of her

being unpleasant to touch, like something going bad inside. She

was neither a lady nor an ordinary working man's wife, but a

creature separate from society. By her dress she was not

poor.

Ursula knew at once that she was Williams' mother, and that

he was Vernon. She remembered that he was always clean, and

well-dressed, in a sailor suit. And he had this same peculiar,

half transparent unwholesomeness, rather like a corpse.

"I wasn't able to send him to school to-day," continued the

woman, with a false grace of manner. "He came home last night

so ill--he was violently sick--I thought I

should have to send for the doctor.--You know he has a weak

heart."

The woman looked at Ursula with her pale, dead eyes.

"No," replied the girl, "I did not know."

She stood still with repulsion and uncertainty. Mr. Harby,

large and male, with his overhanging moustache, stood by with a

slight, ugly smile at the corner of his eyes. The woman went on

insidiously, not quite human:

"Oh, yes, he has had heart disease ever since he was a child.

That is why he isn't very regular at school. And it is very bad

to beat him. He was awfully ill this morning--I shall call

on the doctor as I go back."

"Who is staying with him now, then?" put in the deep voice of

the schoolmaster, cunningly.

"Oh, I left him with a woman who comes in to help

me--and who understands him. But I shall call in the doctor

on my way home."

Ursula stood still. She felt vague threats in all this. But

the woman was so utterly strange to her, that she did not

understand.

"He told me he had been beaten," continued the woman, "and

when I undressed him to put him to bed, his body was covered

with marks--I could show them to any doctor."

Mr. Harby looked at Ursula to answer. She began to

understand. The woman was threatening to take out a charge of

assault on her son against her. Perhaps she wanted money.

"I caned him," she said. "He was so much trouble."

"I'm sorry if he was troublesome," said the woman, "but he

must have been shamefully beaten. I could show the marks to any

doctor. I'm sure it isn't allowed, if it was known."

"I caned him while he kept kicking me," said Ursula, getting

angry because she was half excusing herself, Mr. Harby standing

there with the twinkle at the side of his eyes, enjoying the

dilemma of the two women.

"I'm sure I'm sorry if he behaved badly," said the woman.

"But I can't think he deserved beating as he has been. I can't

send him to school, and really can't afford to pay the

doctor.--Is it allowed for the teachers to beat the

children like that, Mr. Harby?"

The headmaster refused to answer. Ursula loathed herself, and

loathed Mr. Harby with his twinkling cunning and malice on the

occasion. The other miserable woman watched her chance.

"It is an expense to me, and I have a great struggle to keep

my boy decent."

Ursula still would not answer. She looked out at the asphalt

yard, where a dirty rag of paper was blowing.

"And it isn't allowed to beat a child like that, I am sure,

especially when he is delicate."

Ursula stared with a set face on the yard, as if she did not

hear. She loathed all this, and had ceased to feel or to

exist.

"Though I know he is troublesome sometimes--but I think

it was too much. His body is covered with marks."

Mr. Harby stood sturdy and unmoved, waiting now to have done,

with the twinkling, tiny wrinkles of an ironical smile at the

corners of his eyes. He felt himself master of the

situation.

"And he was violently sick. I couldn't possibly send him to

school to-day. He couldn't keep his head up."

Yet she had no answer.

"You will understand, sir, why he is absent," she said,

turning to Mr. Harby.

"Oh, yes," he said, rough and off-hand. Ursula detested him

for his male triumph. And she loathed the woman. She loathed

everything.

"You will try to have it remembered, sir, that he has a weak

heart. He is so sick after these things."

"Yes," said the headmaster, "I'll see about it."

"I know he is troublesome," the woman only addressed herself

to the male now--"but if you could have him punished

without beating--he is really delicate."

Ursula was beginning to feel upset. Harby stood in rather

superb mastery, the woman cringing to him to tickle him as one

tickles trout.

"I had come to explain why he was away this morning, sir. You

will understand."

She held out her hand. Harby took it and let it go, surprised

and angry.

"Good morning," she said, and she gave her gloved, seedy hand

to Ursula. She was not ill-looking, and had a curious

insinuating way, very distasteful yet effective.

"Good morning, Mr. Harby, and thank you."

The figure in the grey costume and the purple hat was going

across the school yard with a curious lingering walk. Ursula

felt a strange pity for her, and revulsion from her. She

shuddered. She went into the school again.

The next morning Williams turned up, looking paler than ever,

very neat and nicely dressed in his sailor blouse. He glanced at

Ursula with a half-smile: cunning, subdued, ready to do as she

told him. There was something about him that made her shiver.

She loathed the idea of having laid hands on him. His elder

brother was standing outside the gate at playtime, a youth of

about fifteen, tall and thin and pale. He raised his hat, almost

like a gentleman. But there was something subdued, insidious

about him too.

"Who is it?" said Ursula.

"It's the big Williams," said Violet Harby roughly.

"She was here yesterday, wasn't she?"

"Yes."

"It's no good her coming--her character's not good

enough for her to make any trouble."

Ursula shrank from the brutality and the scandal. But it had

some vague, horrid fascination. How sordid everything seemed!

She felt sorry for the queer woman with the lingering walk, and

those queer, insidious boys. The Williams in her class was wrong

somewhere. How nasty it was altogether.

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