Читать книгу Journal of Small Things - Helen Mackay - Страница 9

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Early in the morning a friend of mine telephoned from her people's château across the two forests, to tell me that her husband was arranging for her to take the babies to-morrow up to Paris.

He said that in '70 the Germans had come that way, by the grand old historic road, down upon Paris. The château had then passed through dreadful times. If there were war he would have to go out on the first day. He would have his babies then far off from the danger he did not, of course, believe in.

She told me all he said. She thought it was a great bother. Would we come over that afternoon to tea?

I picked sweet-peas and raspberries down by the well, and wrote a lot of letters in my north-tower room.

That her husband felt like that about it, filled me with a sense of disaster—like the thunder and red I kept dreaming of.

We motored over after lunch, through the soft, vague, intimate country that has no especial beauty and that is so beautiful.

Some one called to us from the children's wing. It was "Miss," and she said, "No one will come to the door; go straight in, Madame is there. We are leaving, now, in five minutes."

The children's mother stood half-way down the long white gallery.

She looked very small and young.

She said, "He won't let us wait till to-morrow. He has telephoned. We are going now, in five minutes."

Down the long white length of the gallery, we saw the children's grandmother in the billiard-room, sitting against the big south window.

She had the little baby in her arms, and the two bigger ones stood close against her.

I went to her.

She said, "You see, I am minding the babies."

She said that just because one had to say something and not cry.

We went away quickly.

Wide misty fields under another red war sunset. I thought, how one felt war in the sunset.

As we went, dusk came, gathering, deepening, very soft and kind. The fields and sky were darkly blue. There was a clear edge of the world, between the fields and the sky. And over the edge of the world there was a slim little new white moon.

There was a small clear singing of field birds in the dusk, and there were bats abroad, and swallows.