Unhappy Far-Off Things | Page 9

railway folk would have lived in. I sat down
on the railway and looked at one of these houses, for it had clearly been
a house. It was at the back of it that most remained, in what must have
been a garden. A girder torn up like a pack of cards lay on the leg of a
table amongst a brick wall by an apple-tree.
Lower down in the heap was the frame-work of a large four-poster bed;
through it all a vine came up quite green and still alive; and at the edge
of the heap lay a doll's green pram. Small though the house had been
there was evidence in that heap of some prosperity in more than one
generation. For the four-poster bed had been a fine one, good work in
sound old timber, before the bits in the girder had driven it into the wall;
and the green pram must have been the dowry of no ordinary, doll, but
one with the best yellow curls whose blue eyes could move. One blue
columbine close by mourned alone for the garden.
The wall and the vine and the bed and the girder lay in an orchard, and
some of the apple-trees were standing yet, though the orchard had been
terribly wrecked by shell fire. All that still stood were dead. Some
stood upon the very edge of craters; their leaves and twigs and bark had
been stripped by one blast in a moment; and they had tottered, with
stunted, black, gesticulating branches; and so they stood today.
The curls of a mattress lay on the ground, clipped once from a horse's
mane.
After looking for some while across the orchard one suddenly noticed
that the cathedral had stood on the other side. It was draped, when we

saw it closer, as with a huge grey cloak, the lead of its roof having
come down and covered it.
Near the house of that petted doll (as I came to think of it) a road ran by
on the other side of the railway. Great shells had dropped along it with
terrible regularity. You could imagine Death striding down it with
exact five-yard paces, on his own day, claiming his own. As I stood on
the road something whispered behind me; and I saw, stirring round
with the wind, in one of those footsteps of Death, a double page of a
book open at
Chapter II
: and
Chapter II
was headed with the proverb, "Un Malheur Ne Vient Jamais Seul;"
Misfortunes never come singly! And on that dreadful road, with
shell-holes every five yards as far as the eye could see, and fiat beyond
it the whole city in ruin. What harmless girl or old man had been
reading that dreadful prophecy when the Germans came down upon
Albert and involved it, and themselves, and that book, all except those
two pages, in such multiplication of ruin?
Surely, indeed, there is a third side to war: for what had the doll done,
that used to have a green pram, to deserve to share thus in the fall and
punishment of an Emperor?

A Garden Of Arras
As I walked through Arras from the Spanish gate, gardens flashed as I
went, one by one, through the houses.
I stepped in over the window-sill of one of the houses, attracted by the
gleam of a garden dimly beyond: and went through the empty house,
empty of people, empty of furniture, empty of plaster, and entered the
garden through an empty doorway.
When I came near it seemed less like a garden. At first it had almost
seemed to beckon to passers-by in the street, so rare are gardens now in
this part of France, that it seemed to have more than a garden's share of
mystery, all in the silence there at the back of the silent house; but
when one entered it some of the mystery went, and seemed to hide in a

further part of the garden amongst wild shrubs and innumerable weeds.
British aeroplanes frequently roared over, disturbing the congregation
of Arras Cathedral a few hundred yards away, who rose cawing and
wheeled over the garden; for only jackdaws come to Arras Cathedral
now, besides a few pigeons.
Unkempt beside me a bamboo flourished wildly, having no need of
man. On the other side of the small wild track that had been the garden
path the skeletons of hothouses stood, surrounded by nettles; their pipes
lay all about, shattered and riddled through.
Branches of rose break up through the myriad nettles, but only to be
seized and choked by columbine. A late moth looks for flowers not
quite in vain. It hovers on wing-beats that are invisibly swift by its
lonely autumn flower, then darts away over