Often, oh often the tram seemed to stop, and wet, cloaked
people mounted and sat mute and grey in stiff rows opposite her,
their umbrellas between their knees. The windows of the tram
grew more steamy; opaque. She was shut in with these unliving,
spectral people. Even yet it did not occur to her that she was
one of them. The conductor came down issuing tickets. Each
little ring of his clipper sent a pang of dread through her. But
her ticket surely was different from the rest.
They were all going to work; she also was going to work. Her
ticket was the same. She sat trying to fit in with them. But
fear was at her bowels, she felt an unknown, terrible grip upon
her.
At Bath Street she must dismount and change trams. She looked
uphill. It seemed to lead to freedom. She remembered the many
Saturday afternoons she had walked up to the shops. How free and
careless she had been!
Ah, her tram was sliding gingerly downhill. She dreaded every
yard of her conveyance. The car halted, she mounted hastily.
She kept turning her head as the car ran on, because she was
uncertain of the street. At last, her heart a flame of suspense,
trembling, she rose. The conductor rang the bell brusquely.
She was walking down a small, mean, wet street, empty of
people. The school squatted low within its railed, asphalt yard,
that shone black with rain. The building was grimy, and
horrible, dry plants were shadowily looking through the
windows.
She entered the arched doorway of the porch. The whole place
seemed to have a threatening expression, imitating the church's
architecture, for the purpose of domineering, like a gesture of
vulgar authority. She saw that one pair of feet had paddled
across the flagstone floor of the porch. The place was silent,
deserted, like an empty prison waiting the return of tramping
feet.
Ursula went forward to the teachers' room that burrowed in a
gloomy hole. She knocked timidly.
"Come in!" called a surprised man's voice, as from a prison
cell. She entered the dark little room that never got any sun.
The gas was lighted naked and raw. At the table a thin man in
shirt-sleeves was rubbing a paper on a jellytray. He looked up
at Ursula with his narrow, sharp face, said "Good morning," then
turned away again, and stripped the paper off the tray, glancing
at the violet-coloured writing transferred, before he dropped
the curled sheet aside among a heap.
Ursula watched him fascinated. In the gaslight and gloom and
the narrowness of the room, all seemed unreal.
"Isn't it a nasty morning," she said.
"Yes," he said, "it's not much of weather."
But in here it seemed that neither morning nor weather really
existed. This place was timeless. He spoke in an occupied voice,
like an echo. Ursula did not know what to say. She took off her
waterproof.