Читать книгу Katherine Mansfield, The Woman Behind The Books (Including Letters, Journals, Essays & Articles) - Katherine Mansfield - Страница 39

There was one other at the Terrace School who claimed Kathleen’s special notice. Martha-Grace,”Princess Maata” among her own people, was a half-caste Maori girl a form or two above Kass at school.

The Maoris, from the first, had been accepted in New Zealand on an equal social basis with the English, and were absorbed into the white population. They became a kindly, a courteous and an amiable people, with a leaning toward beauty, a flair for fantasy, a greater receptivity. They took on most of the physical characteristics of the English — a fair skin, blue eyes, often — but their eyes were limpid; they had a softer, warmer look — a look of kindliness and sympathy and humour. It was by this that the Maori blood might be detected as well as by deep kindness, gentleness and sweetness of nature and instinctive courtesy.

Maata was not typical, either of the Maoris or the blending of Maori and English blood; partly, perhaps, because her social position was unique. Maata was said to be a Maori princess in her own right, as well as heiress to Maori holding, and very wealthy. She had lived in the city, and had been educated as an English girl; yet there was little of the English in Maata’s assured presence; and none of the English in her hot, glowing eyes.

They were wide-set, amazing in their dark fiery beauty. She knew how to use them, too. Something in the way her lips curved upward when she smiled was very telling. She appeared rather Spanish with her warm skin, and nose a trifle spatulate, yet fine; and the rich, bright colours she wore. A glowing, passionate stream coursed through her veins; her skin looked warm; it was hot to the touch from the secret fire that flashed so beautifully in her eyes. The Maoris would have said she possessed mana— “personal magnetism.”

To all the girls there was something romantic about Maata — something in herself, even apart from the title of “Princess.” And Kathleen loved her. Maata imparted to her a warmth as no one else could at that time. She caught some of the fire and felt it fly through her own blood. She felt ardent toward Maata — she felt she adored her— “she worshipped her.”

Yet because Kathleen had been conventionally brought up, the girls were forced to keep their meetings clandestine.

Years after — in the autumn of 1913 — Katherine Mansfield drafted a novel with Maata, for its central character. In Paris that winter she wrote the first chapters of Maata, catching something of the flame and the passion — something of the Maata of those days when they both were in their teens; but her writing was interrupted unexpectedly, and she never was able to complete the “novel.”

Maata, herself, despite her fiery beauty and her expensive education in “town” — or perhaps because of these things — lived a brief and varied and unhappy life. Her conjugal history was not unlike that of Armena down in the country of Marlborough Sounds.