Dinner-time 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
non-existent. 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.