Public-domain ebook
Journal of Small Things
by Helen Mackay
Language: en483 downloads on Project Gutenberg
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Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #51245.
The opening · free to read
Sunday, July 26th, 1914
When we came back from Mass, up from the village by the rue du Château and through the park and the garden, the yesterday's papers were arrived from Paris.
I delayed down in the parterres, it was so beautiful. There had been rain, and the sunshine was golden and thick on all the wet sweet things, the earth of the paths, the box edges, the clipped yews, the grass of the lawns, the roses and heliotrope and petunias in the stately garden beds.
There is a certain smell in old formal gardens, that seems to me always to mean France. It is like the stab of an arrow. I feel it, swiftly, in my heart, and stop and hold my breath, and say, "This is France."
The news in the papers was strange.
We thought we would go to the village, to the Place, and feel what the village felt.
We went along the terrace and around between the south tower and the moat to the entrance court, and across the moat bridge, where the watch-dogs were chained one on either side, to the green court, and out of the big wrought-iron, vine-covered gates, to the Place aux Armes.
All the village was there in its Sunday dress, under the lime trees.
The swallows were flying, high about the Dungeon Tower and low across the big old grassy cobbles of the Place. They were crying their strange little cry. I thought, "They are calling for storm." And yet the sky was blue and gold behind the Dungeon Tower.
We went to get the papers in the little dark shop that smells of spices and beeswax and shoe leather.
I asked: What did Monsieur Créty think of the chances of war?
He shrugged his old shoulders, and said he had some fine fresh chocolate and nougat out from Paris.
We went back and read the papers and ate the chocolates and nougat on the terrace.
A host of little white butterflies kept clouding over the terrace steps, between the pots of roses and heliotrope.
There was a great brief thunderstorm while we were at lunch, and then the sun came out.
We motored through the wet sunshiny country, softly dipped and softly lifted, blue-green forest and wide ripe harvest fields, blue and purple and crimson beet fields, long low brown and rust-red towns with square church towers, Sunday people out in the doorways, and swallows always flying low and crying.
We had tea in Soissons, at Maurizi's, and went to the cathedral, where the offices were over, and to the pastrycook's, Monsieur Pigot's, to buy some cherry tarts.
Home by the long straight road between the poplars.
It was so cold suddenly that one imagined autumn. There was a wind come up, and some yellow leaves were flying with it.
After dinner we had a fire lighted in the tiled room. The heat brought out all the sweetness of the roses in the blue bowls, and the flames sent lovely lights and shadows to play along the old stone walls.
I do not think I would be afraid if it were not for my dreams.
Every night I have dreamed of galloping horses and thunder--or cannon, I don't know which--and of blood, dripping and dripping down the château stairs. I see the blood in red pools on the worn old grey stones of the stairs, and in black stains on the new carpet. Some of the nights I have stayed up, walking the floor of my room that I might not sleep and dream so horribly.
In the afternoon some neighbors came to tea. They came from quite far, motoring across the forests, and none of them had known the house.
I loved showing them the old place that is not mine, the colours that are faded and worn till they have become beautiful, the things that by much belonging together are fallen into harmony.
I do not believe that the people of these old houses can love them quite as hopelessly as strangers do.
There is a certain special peculiar château smell, that trails down long galleries, and lingers on the stairs, that lurks in far corners of the rooms, and abides in all the cupboards, and behind the tapestries, and in the big carved chests, that clings to wood and waxed floors and stone, and stirs along the heavy sombre walls, and that means France, like the smell of old gardens of box and yew. It stabs one--always the arrowy perfume--and makes one feel France with an odd intensity. From a far way off one would be homesick remembering it.
We had Monsieur Pigot's tarts for tea, and sat for a long time about the dining-room table, talking of how afraid we had been of war, yesterday.
We went up into the Dungeon Tower and down into the souterrains, and then all along the rampart walls.
I love the way the little town crowds up close to the ramparts, the cobbled grass-grown streets, the roofs all softened and coloured by ages and weathers.
A child laughed down in the street; a woman called to it; there was a scamper of little feet, and the two of them were laughing together.
Off beyond the roofs we could see the blonde of the ripe grain fields, and the purple of the forests.
I had so intensely a sense of its all being for the last time. I said to Manon, "It can't last, it is too beautiful."
Tuesday, July 28th
One feels, in all these days, as if there were a great storm coming up. I keep thinking all of the time, there is a great storm coming up. That is an absurd thing to make note of, as if it had some strange meaning, as if it were not just that in all these days, really, always there is a storm coming up.
I never have known such storms, nor yet such sunsets. The sunsets are like the reflection of great battlefields beyond the world. One is frightened because of the sunsets, more than because of the storms. Every day while the sun shines there is the rumble of thunder about all the horizon. It is like the cannon of my dreams. All the time, while the sun shines, great thunder-clouds are gathering upon the horizon, mounting up from the horizon, white and yellow, and purple and black. The sunshine is heavy, and thick; you do not know if the sky is dark blue or purple, and at sunset the dark cloud-shapes threaten and menace.
Whatever one does, one has the feeling of doing it before the storm, in the teeth of the storm. When the storm does come, with its crashing and blinding, it brings no relief. It is as if these midsummer storms meant something for which the whole world waited.
And that feeling of the end of things grows always stronger. There is no reason. Nobody, here at least, troubles about war.
This morning we were caught by a wonderful thunderstorm out in the fields.
Now from the terrace we are watching the sunset, all of thunder-clouds, purple and blue and black, and of fire.
Three of the white peacocks have come up to tea with us, under the big cedar.
Wednesday, July 29th, late of the night
I went up to Paris. I thought if I could feel how Paris felt to-day, I would know if the menace is real. Here one knows nothing.
There is sunshine and rain, and the fields are white to the harvest, the heat hangs over the long white roads, and the shade of the forests is grateful.
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