Читать книгу Katherine Mansfield, The Woman Behind The Books (Including Letters, Journals, Essays & Articles) - Katherine Mansfield - Страница 36

WHEN the three Beauchamps entered the School in Fitzherbert Terrace, in June, 1900, their Wellington High School friends felt that “the girls looked down on them.” Miss Swainson’s Terrace School was a step up the social ladder. Also, it was an advance to a new terror.

“Ole Underwood” would come singing from Wadestown, hide behind the wind-blown evergreens that lined the centre of Fitzherbert Terrace, and jump out at the children, chasing them shrieking into school. He was a prospector — a gold-hunter from early settlement days — no one knew just what. Swarthy — more like an Italian than an Englishman — he always wore a postman’s cap; and gleaming out from his long black hair was a pair of little gold earrings. While he was let alone he paid scant attention to other people — just drifted down from the hills, through the town to the Chinaman’s Shop, where he sat among cases of fruit and argued in a loud voice with the quiet, discreet Chinamen. He had one sensitive point: he couldn’t endure a whistle. Yet he seemed magnetised back and back again to the Terrace where the small brothers of the Terrace School girls: Leslie Beauchamp, Cheviot Bell (who were in the Primary School) strolled along nonchalantly, whistling to themselves. Then with a howl of rage he would tear bark, twigs, anything, from the trees that concealed him, and rush after them. In consequence the girls arrived at this “exclusive” school flushed and panting and dishevelled, until Mr. Beauchamp — who was a visiting Justice of Peace — had him “charged as a rogue and a vagabond to serve some time in jail.”

The school had been built at 20 Fitzherbert Terrace in 1878 by Mrs. Swainson. Three years before the Beauchamp girls entered, Miss Mary Swainson had taken charge of it, but she was not the stuff of which Head Mistresses are made; and the following year she engaged Mrs. Henry Smith as Head Mistress. Mr. Robert Parker taught music — though Miss Swainson, herself, led the singing — and Eva Butts taught elocution, arithmetic and geography.

Two of these served Katherine Mansfield as characters later. All four were distinctive individuals; and — as afterward at Queen’s College in London — Kathleen Beauchamp was more interested in their individuality than she was in the instruction they dispensed. She easily pierced through to their “secret” as she sat in the Form, gazing up at them while they taught.

Eva Butts was a young school-mistress at the age when she would be “just one of the girls” — a trifle out of their ken, of course — a leader, glamourous, radiating light. She was one of those who must hold court, must have an entourage.

Often she arrived a trifle late in the morning — late to prayers and to class. She made an entrance, sweeping her train behind her. Her purple tweed was flecked with white, giving it a dusty look; it fitted close, showing her figure.”Figures” were in style then; and though she was thin, her tweed was cut to rise and fall in the proper places. Her long strands of hair were wound round and round and round about her head; and very light eyelashes gave her blue eyes a wide child-like candour in surprising contrast to the studied sophistication. She was one of the few people to whom light eyelashes can add distinctiveness.

A certain Mary — who was “the model pupil” while Kass was “the rebel” — looked discreetly down at her paper as she sat at “attention.” Though her expression would never have betrayed her, she was thinking privately that she didn’t believe Eva Butts knew much, or that her mind was on her teaching; she went out to dances in the evening; her mind must be on them — not her work.

Kass was leaning on her elbows, chin in her hand, looking up through her lashes at Miss Butts. She didn’t trouble to veil her slightly ironic smile; she scorned “attention” as humiliating.

Yet she tolerated — even sometimes liked — Miss Butts, who didn’t attempt to make her conform, like Mrs. Henry Smith. Miss Butts “tried to correct her comps” and told her “they never are on the subject assigned”; yet she was sometimes amused by them, though she thought Kass untidy and careless and lacking concentration. Kass was one of her “circle” — rebellious spirits, six or eight — rebelling against what they considered narrowness and provincialism.

Kathleen and her friend “Diddy” (Hilda) Nathan tried to “reform” the girls at the Terrace School. Diddy had entered from the Convent on the rise above Hill Street, and Kass came up from the Girls’ High School. They felt there were too many “barbarians” in Miss Swainson’s. Diddy was a sweet-looking girl, rather chunky, like Kass. Unlike Kass, however, she took many things for granted. She had a fund of sympathetic and romantic feeling, and this drew the two together; though Kass sometimes hurt her by unexpected changes in attitude which she was unable to understand.

Diddy hadn’t noticed what Miss Butts did when the last bell rang at school; but Kass threw a little sidelong glance at Mary. Mary looked away; she was thinking privately that Kass wasn’t bright — that she never could spell. She must be difficult to teach, just sitting, wondering whether to agree, or not; it was disconcerting to the teachers.

Kass was watching Miss Butts who had changed into a riding habit. A horse was waiting at the door. She mounted, and rode grandly up and down Fitzherbert Terrace before everyone.