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.
The night Ian went out was pretty bad. There were several other officers with him, and their wives and mothers and sisters and children all came to see them off.
Every one knew quite well what it meant, and every one pretended not to know.
I had come to feel, like the rest of them, that one has simply got to pretend.
We all pretended as hard as we could that it was splendid.
There was a woman on the platform who must have been crazy, I think.
She did not belong to any one going out. She was one of those dreadful things you see in London, with a big hat heaped with feathers, and draggled tails of hair. I think she had a red dress.
She came up to us under the windows of the train, and stood nodding her dreadful feathers and waving her dreadful hands and calling things out.
She called out, "Oh, it's all very fine now, you laugh now--but you won't laugh long. You won't laugh out there. And who of you'll come back and laugh, my pretty boys, my gay boys?"