Eliane let me come to-day, for the first time since her boy went, on the Tuesday. She has changed so, one can scarcely believe it, in just these few days. She does not look young any more. How badly he would feel; he always loved his pretty little mother to look young. He loved it when people took her for his sister, and how delighted he was that time she went to see him when he was in barracks, and the captain was shocked. She is no more young and pretty and she does not care.
Her eyes looked as if they never could cry again. She told me that the last night she had listened outside his door, and when she was quite sure he was asleep, she crept in, and groped for a chair at the foot of his bed, and sat there, not seeing him, just knowing him near, all night long while he slept. She went quietly out of the room before he waked, when the light began to show the oblong of the windows—she did not want him to know that she had watched. She said he slept the whole night long, never stirring, and that she had known she must not cry, for fear of waking him. She thought something had happened in that night to her throat and to her eyes, so that she could never have tears any more.
Arras, August 16th
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.