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
boy who was insolent to her, over head and ears and hands. And
at length they were afraid of her, she had them in order.
But she had paid a great price out of her own soul, to do
this. It seemed as if a great flame had gone through her and
burnt her sensitive tissue. She who shrank from the thought of
physical suffering in any form, had been forced to fight and
beat with a cane and rouse all her instincts to hurt. And
afterwards she had been forced to endure the sound of their
blubbering and desolation, when she had broken them to
order.
Oh, and sometimes she felt as if she would go mad. What did
it matter, what did it matter if their books were dirty and they
did not obey? She would rather, in reality, that they disobeyed
the whole rules of the school, than that they should be beaten,
broken, reduced to this crying, hopeless state. She would rather
bear all their insults and insolences a thousand times than
reduce herself and them to this. Bitterly she repented having
got beside herself, and having tackled the boy she had
beaten.
Yet it had to be so. She did not want to do it. Yet she had
to. Oh, why, why had she leagued herself to this evil system
where she must brutalize herself to live? Why had she become a
school-teacher, why, why?
The children had forced her to the beatings. No, she did not
pity them. She had come to them full of kindness and love, and
they would have torn her to pieces. They chose Mr. Harby. Well
then, they must know her as well as Mr. Harby, they must first
be subjugate to her. For she was not going to be made nought,
no, neither by them, nor by Mr. Harby, nor by all the system
around her. She was not going to be put down, prevented from
standing free. It was not to be said of her, she could not take
her place and carry out her task. She would fight and hold her
place in this state also, in the world of work and man's
convention.