pg28948 [191]
"I suppose it is too far for you to go home?"
"Yes," he said. Then he rose and looked at her. He had the bluest, fiercest, most pointed eyes that she had ever met. He stared at her with growing fierceness.
"If I were you, Miss Brangwen," he said, menacingly, "I should get a bit tighter hand over my class."
Ursula shrank.
"Would you?" she asked, sweetly, yet in terror. "Aren't I strict enough?"
"Because," he repeated, taking no notice of her, "they'll get you down if you don't tackle 'em pretty quick. They'll pull you down, and worry you, till Harby gets you shifted—that's how it'll be. You won't be here another six weeks"—and he filled his mouth with food—"if you don't tackle 'em and tackle 'em quick."
"Oh, but——" Ursula said, resentfully, ruefully. The terror was deep in her.
"Harby'll not help you. This is what he'll do—he'll let you go on, getting worse and worse, till either you clear out or he clears you out. It doesn't matter to me, except that you'll leave a class behind you as I hope I shan't have to cope with."
She heard the accusation in the man's voice, and felt condemned. But still, school had not yet become a definite reality to her. She was shirking it. It was reality, but it was all outside her. And she fought against Mr. Brunt's representation. She did not want to realize.
"Will it be so terrible?" she said, quivering, rather beautiful, but with a slight touch of condescension, because she would not betray her own trepidation.
"Terrible?" said the man, turning to his potatoes again. "I dunno about terrible."
"I do feel frightened," said Ursula. "The children seem so——"
"What?" said Miss Harby, entering at that moment.
"Why," said Ursula, "Mr. Brunt says I ought to tackle my class," and she laughed uneasily.
"Oh, you have to keep order if you want to teach," said Miss Harby, hard, superior, trite.
Ursula did not answer. She felt non valid before them.
"If you want to be let to live, you have," said Mr. Brunt.
"Well, if you can't keep order, what good are you?" said Miss Harby.
"An' you've got to do it by yourself,"—his voice rose like the bitter cry of the prophets. "You'll get no help from anybody."
"Oh, indeed!" said Miss Harby. "Some people can't be helped." And she departed.
The air of hostility and disintegration, of wills working in antagonistic subordination, was hideous. Mr. Brunt, subordinate, afraid, acid with shame, frightened her. Ursula wanted to run. She only wanted to clear out, not to understand.
Then Miss Schofield came in, and with her another, more restful note. Ursula at once turned for confirmation to the newcomer. Maggie remained personal within all this unclean system of authority.
"Is the big Anderson here?" she asked of Mr. Brunt. And they spoke of some affair about two scholars, coldly, officially.
Miss Schofield took her brown dish, and Ursula followed with her own. The cloth was laid in the pleasant Standard Three room, there was a jar with two or three monthly roses on the table.
"It is so nice in here, you have made it different," said Ursula gaily. But she was afraid. The atmosphere of the school was upon her.
"The big room," said Miss Schofield, "ha, it's misery to be in it!"
She too spoke with bitterness. She too lived in the ignominious position of an upper servant hated by the master above and the class beneath. She was, she knew, liable to attack from either side at any minute, or from both at once, for the authorities would listen to the complaints of parents, and both would turn round on the mongrel authority, the teacher.
So there was a hard, bitter withholding in Maggie Schofield even as she poured out her savoury mess of big golden beans and brown gravy.
"It is vegetarian hot-pot," said Miss Schofield. "Would you like to try it?"
"I should love to," said Ursula.
Her own dinner seemed coarse and ugly beside this savoury, clean dish.
"I've never eaten vegetarian things," she said. "But I should think they can be good."
"I'm not really a vegetarian," said Maggie, "I don't like to bring meat to school."
"No,"