The Chinese Garden Read Free

bizarre proposal that the classics mistress should take charge of the poultry. The few hens the school possessed were augmented by a large number of new pullets. In the pleasure gardens of the mansion which was our school, were huge, empty aviaries. The hens were put into these, and rooted and scratched amid the exotic shrubs and trees which had once been planted to provide a natural habitat for golden pheasants and other, even stranger, fowl. Miss Burnett’s duties with the hens, to which her Latin teaching soon became merely an interruption, allowed her the privilege of wearing breeches, and it was not long before she was wearing them all day. She sported a rather smart suit made of iron-grey heavy linen.
    The breeches were very wide, and the jacket was of the Norfolk type, having a stitched belt and pockets with buttoned flaps. In summer she wore green Aertex shirts with dark green ties, and in winter, a green polo-necked jersey.
    When she taught, she slipped a gown over her chicken suit, and would sit at her desk, with her tired, sardonic eyes surveying us all as though she hated us, her hands exuding a strong smell of chicken food and Turkish cigarettes (whichshe smoked incessantly when not actually in the form-room). At the end of a lesson, she would shut her book with a sigh of relief, slip off her gown and toss it to one of us with the curt command, ‘Take it to my room.’ Then she would slope off in her long, shambling stride, and fumble in her pocket for her cigarette case before she was out of the door.
    My ability at Latin awoke in her an old devotion, and she concentrated upon me the narrow but brilliant beam of her intelligence and enthusiasm. She inspired me with a passion for the curiosities of Latin grammar and syntax, so that I was induced to compile a vast book of these eccentricities. I developed a tremendous appetite for middle voices, modal ablatives, and exclamatory infinitives, and my reading of classical authors was considerably enlarged by this pursuit of grammatical curiosities. The passion for collecting is supposed to be very strong in children. My interest in stamps was short-lived, and I never cared for birds’ eggs or butterflies, but I would search a volume for a ‘Me miserum’!
    Looking back on the women who peopled Bampfield, I see Miss Burnett as the one least amenable to the regime, and at the same time, the one most corrupted by it. Those whose spirits were more readily assimilated took their saturation well. No awkward reaction set in. They soaked up the infection and lost their natural colour quickly, like clothes in a vat of dye. It was only Miss Burnett’s stubborn spirit which, in resisting the process, set up a fermentation which soured and spoilt her natural fabric. By a vigorous assertion of her personality, Miss Burnett retained a measure of independence, but she retained it only by virtually destroying herself. Real independence would have meant leaving theplace altogether and this she could not do. She was rooted in it. Lesser beings were gratified by finding in the regime a framework for their mild eccentricity. Only Miss Burnett knew it for what it was and was compelled to look for her own support. She found it in the cynicism which upheld her like a brace.

CHAPTER THREE

    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Now the day is over,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Night is drawing nigh,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Shadows of the evening
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Steal across the sky.
    S. B ARING -G OULD
    I T was the evening of Rachel’s birthday. Prep was over, and the cocoa and slabs of bread, grey and solid, were eaten. Nothing had been said. It was by a sixth sense that the three girls knew, as they sat round the form-room fire in silence, that one of them had withheld something. Incurious, preoccupied with