Читать книгу Katherine Mansfield, The Woman Behind The Books (Including Letters, Journals, Essays & Articles) - Katherine Mansfield - Страница 46

It was curious, since they were to be life-long friends, that it was Ida Baker (then living in a little high room at the college, since her mother’s death) who happened to be the Monitor called to take the three Beauchamp girls to their room. They climbed to to the top of No. 41, fumbled through the dark boot passage, on to the top floor of No. 45, above the French room, overlooking the Mews. It was next to the bath-room, convenient, if not the perfect setting, for Kathleen’s practising.

The girls found their room curtained into three divisions, but since they were sisters the curtains were not drawn to make the usual cubicles. Each girl, in her division of the room, had a bed, a washstand and mirror, and a wall space which she might decorate to her taste with photographs and postcards.

To these new girls it was thrillingly novel, at first — though they disdained to show it. Their air was considered critical; in fact, even scornful; they had their mother’s hauteur, then, with her fastidiousness; and their attitude toward the college surroundings had much to do with their popularity later. Vera was grown-up and sedate, as she would always be; Marie, glowing and cheerful, still dressed like her younger sister. She was so dissimilar in expression though in contour like her — very plump. Kathleen’s bright look was often lost in a dark brooding; but she could be madly gay — in a whirl of irresponsible happiness; and she gave herself up to this mood new — consumed with delight in the experience and the fascinating chance of creating a new life, appearing as she wished to appear among those who never had known her as Kass Beauchamp.

She threw off the big soft black velour hat which her father had just bought for a guinea to replace the Wellington sailor-straw with the Swainson school band; she threw off the nautical coat, with its pipings of red, and its brass buttons down the front and on the shoulders. Dressed in a high-necked white blouse with long sleeves protruding at the shoulders like wings, and the dark skirt pinched in at a small waist, she leaned out of the window to look over London. How often in the next three years she leaned out over Mansfield Mews. Something seemed to fly from her, escaped and free as she listened to the far-away London sounds : hurdy-gurdys, rumbling of hansom cabs, muffled call of coal and flower vendors. When it rained, she spread a towel on the sill, crying,”Don’t bother me, girls : I’m going to have a mood!”