Читать книгу Journal of Small Things - Helen Mackay - Страница 22

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It was a heavy grey day, very still. People were telling one another that all the news was good. The first German flag taken had been brought to Paris: one could go that day to the Ministry of War to see it. I wished I could have waited in Paris over a day to go to see it. I thought, it will be the first thing I do, to go to see it, when I come back next week.

It was interesting to think that we went around by Arras because British troops were detraining at Amiens.

It was all of it splendid, and one was proud and eager.

But the fields of France frightened me. They looked stricken. They lay under the soft, grey, close-pressing hours, so strangely empty. Everywhere the fields lay empty. The fields were ripe with harvest. The wheat was burnt amber, and fallen by its own heaviness. The wide swathes lay low along the ground, like the ground-swell of tired seas. The harvest was left, abandoned. Sometimes one saw troops moving along the white roads.

The towns had an odd stir of troops in the streets.

At Arras, coming into the town, we saw that droves of cattle had been herded into a big enclosure, and that soldiers were guarding them. We saw tents pitched in the fields. It was Sunday. The women of Arras were out in their Sunday dresses. They seemed all to have come down to the railroad to watch the trains pass and to have brought all the children. There were only very old or very young men, except the soldiers. There were many soldiers. All their képis were covered with blue. They were come with the others to watch the trains pass.

In the deep cut beyond the station it seemed as if the whole town were come out to sit on the banks and just look.

They were like children, I thought, not understanding, helpless, waiting for something that was going to happen.