Letters to Helen | Page 2

and polish, spit and polish all the time since August, 1914.
We are all getting cramp, and have to stand up occasionally. Toby has smoked his fourteenth pipe.
Oh, look! What a lovely rainbow! Treble. And under it a village with an estaminet, a dozen slate-roofed houses, and a very new chateau, hideous with scarlet bricks and chocolate draw-bridge and pepper-pot turrets. Poplars and more poplars. Still we rumble along through symmetrical France.
_June 7._
We are in one of the most lovely old French chateaux I have ever imagined. Half chateau, half farm, fifteen miles behind the line. We remain here for two or three days. Arrived late last night, tired and grubby. But, O ye gods, when dawn began to reveal this old courtyard with its hens and chickens and pigeons! On one side the old house with its faded shutters. On the other side the old gateway with a square tower and a pigeon-cote above. Along the other sides old barns. The country round we have hardly seen, but it looks exquisite. There are several most attractive foals in a field close by.
And inside the chateau funny old-fashioned things--old beds with frowsty canopies, and old wall-papers with large designs in ferns and cornucopias. Imitation marble in the hall. Gilded tassels. Alas! my kit has not yet arrived. It's awful. And the anxiety to draw these things is feverish. We go so soon.
When you look out of the rooms into the courtyard, you see our waggons and draft-horses, and the men eating bully-beef like wolves. Some of them (including Sergeant Cart) are shaving and washing stripped to the waist. The others just tear at the bread and beef and munch without speaking. Corporal Nutley and Corporal Field are pointing with their tea-mugs to the old gateway and the ducks and things. They all evidently love it. They sleep in the barns amongst the hay. The sun is warm and sleepy.
_June 8._
[Sidenote: THE CHATEAU-FARM]
Still at this lovely chateau-farm, and Life seems to have gone into a trance. I wake up and look out into the courtyard and the sunlight, on geese, Muscovy ducks, pigs, and pigeons, and it all feels like a half-forgotten story. There are traces of the Huns, but all that seems unreal. You hear the boom! boom! boom! of the guns all day, and more so at night; but nothing can disturb the extraordinary remote peace of this chateau. The very stones in the courtyard look more friendly and more countrified than ordinary stones, as if some ancient fairy lived here. There's no doubt at all that the men feel it. Several of them have said how they like the place. They think it's a little bit like ----shire. I think I know what they mean.
After the war perhaps we may visit the place together: I should love showing it to you. I'm not at all sure that it's really very beautiful. The architecture isn't good when you consider it. But somehow....
_June 10._
The same chateau. We are living a simple and brainless life. No field-days, of course, and for this relief much thanks. We don't know in the least what is happening. Troops come and troops go, and guns go by during the night, and Red Cross waggons go hither and thither, and the old turkey gobbles.
Yesterday I was out with my troop, quite uninteresting. But what do you think? Something exploded not 100 yards away from Rinaldo. I was much farther off, dismounted. He didn't turn a hair, but only looked round and watched the smoke. Whereas, as you know, a little bit of paper blown across the road sends him into paroxysms of terror.
[Illustration: A CONFERENCE IN THE CHATEAU DE FEBVIN-PALFART There are many of these old chateaux-farms in Northern France. The beds are under great frowsy canopies and all the curtains are looped up with heavy tassels.]
_June 11._
I went into an old church in a large town ten miles from here to-day with Sergeant Hodge. There were the usual tinsel things and red baize and sham flowers. Sergeant Hodge much impressed. He said after we emerged: "You know, sir, it's very fine indeed. It puts me in mind of a bazaar." This was in all good faith, and was intended as a great compliment to the church! We are having lots of rain, which is bad for the horses, who are picketed in the open. And thunder. It's often extremely difficult to tell whether, when the thunder is far away, it is thunder or guns. Quite a novel experience, and quite pleasant after the long period of make-believe in England. Discipline. So salutary and so irksome. Now for the battle. I own I long to get into the thick of it soon. We see infantry returning and going up, and we feel sick, somehow, to be still