A GARDEN OF ARRAS

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 87, 7 January 1919, Page 10

A GARDEN OF ARRAS

'V —. .. , PHILOSOPHIC HEDITION IN SHELLED CITY THE ROMANCE OP A WALL L As I walked through Arms from the Spanish gale, gardens flashed ns I went, ono by one through (he houses. I stepped iu over the window-sill of one of tlm houses, attracted by the gleam of a garden seen dimly beyond; and went through the empty house, empty of people, empty, of furniture; empty of plaster, and entered' Ihn garden through an empty doorway. When I came near it seemed lew like a. garden. At firstN it hud almost seemed lo beckon io passersby in the street; so rare are gardens now in this part of Franco that it seemed to have more than a garden's share of mystery, nil in the silence there nt •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 . tho garden amongst wild shruj>s 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 windly, having ho need of man. On the other side of the small wild track that had been the garden-path tho skeletons of hot-houses stood, surrounded by nettles; their pipes lie 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 quile in vain. It hovers on wing-beats that are invisibly swift by its lonely autumn flower, then darts away over the desolation; which is no desolation to a 'moth: man has destroyed man; Nature comes back; it is well: that must be the brief philosophy of myriads of tiny things whose way of life ono seldom considered before: now that man's cities are down, now that ruin and misery confront us whatever way we turn, one notices more the small things that are left. One of the greenhouses is almost' all gone, a tumbled mass that might be a pieco of Babylon, if nrcheologists should come to study' it. But it is too sad to study, too untidy to have any interest," and alas, too common:; there are hundreds of miles of this. The other greenhouse, a sad, ungainly skeleton is possessed by grass and weeds. On'the raised centre many flower pots were neatly arranged once; tlrey stand in orderly lines, but each separate one is broken; none contain flowers any more, but only grass. And the glass of tho greenhouse, lies there in showers, all grey. No one has tidied anything up there for years. A meadow sweet had come into that greenhouse and dwelt there in that abode- of fine tropical flowers, and ono night an elder tree had entered andl is now as high as the house, and at the end of the greenhouse grass has como in like a wave; for change, and'disaster are farreaching, and arc only mirrored here. ' This desolate garden and its ruined house are a part of hundreds of thousands such, or millions. Mathematics will givo you no picture of what France has suffered. If I tell you what one garden is like, one village, one house, one cathedral, after tho German war has swept by,, and if you road my words I may help you perhaps to imagine more easily what France has-suffered than if I spoke of millions. I speak of one garden in ATras; and Lvflu might walk from there south by east I for weeks and'find no garden that had | suffered less. It ■is all weeds and. ! elders. An apple tree rises out of. a \ mass of. nettles, : but it is quite 'dead. j Wild rose trecsKshow here and there, or., roses that have run wild like the cats of No Man's Land. ■ And once I saw a I rose-bush that had been''planted in. a | pot and'still grew there' ns ; " though it still' ; remembered man; but the flower-pot v™? j shattered like all the pots in that Harden | and the roso grew wild as any in any hedge. The ivy. alone'grows on, over a inighhr wall, and seems to care not. The ivy alone seems not to mourn, but to, have added tho last four yoars to its growth ns (hough they were ordinary i ■years. That comer■■of~tr(e:.wall .alone | whispers not of disaster, it only -seems j to tell of tho passing of. years, which makes the ivy strong, and for which in peace as in war there is no cure-' All I the rest sneaks of war. of war that conies j to gardens, without, banners or trumwts.i I or splendour, and roots up everything and turns round' and smashes the house, ] ! and loaves, .it .ull .desolate,-and. forgets,.- ! and goes away. And when the historic l : j I of the war are: written,' attacks and ■'. counter-attacks, , and the .doom of. em- i I webs. And the old wall of the garden; ; | Saddest of nil, as it.seemed to •me j i watching "the ..garden'paths, were, the suiders' webs that had been spun across them, so grey and stout and strong,'fastened from weed to weed, with the spider J in their midst, 6ittiuc in obvious owner-;] ship. You knew them,,as-you-.looked I at those webs across all the paths in the ; garden, that any that you might fancy ' walking the small paths still were but ! grey ghosts gone far thence, no more j than dreams, hopes, and .imaginings. I something altogether weaker!than spiders' I webs. And the old wall of-tho ardeii. j that divides if from' its neighbour, of I solid stone and brick, over fifteen feet j high, it is that.mighty old wall that held I the romance of tho garden. not i fell the tale of that garden of Arras, for I that is conjecture, and I only tell what I saw, in order that someone perhaps in some far country may know what happened in thousands and thousands of gardens because an emperor sighed, and longed for the. splendour of war.' . The talo js but conjecture, yet all Hie. romance is there: for picture a wall-over fifteen feet high, built' as they built long ago, standing,for all those ages between two gardens. Would not thetemptation arise to peer one' day over tho' wall,,if a.young man heard perhaps.songs at evening the other side? -And at. first ho would have some pretext '-and-, after? wards nono n\j all, and the pretext would' vary wonderfully little with the genera-, tions, while > the ivy went on growing thicker and thicker. The thought might come of climbing the', wall altogether and down the other side, and'it might seem too daring and be utterly- put away. • And then one day some wonderful summer evening, the West all red and a new moon in the sky, far voices heard clearly, and white mists rising, one wonderful dny back would come that thought, to climb the great old wall' and go down the other side. Why not. in the next -door from the street," vou might say. That •would'• be different, that would bo calling; that would mean j ceremony, black hats and, awkward new ' gloves, constrained talk, and little scope for romance. It would all be the fault of the wall. ' With what diffidence, as the genera-, tions passed, would each first ipeep' over the wall be undertaken. In some years it would be scaled from one side, in some ages from another. What a barrier that-old red wall would have seemed! How new the adventure would have' seemed-i in each age to those that dared it; and how old to the wall! And in all tlioso years the elders never made a door, but kept that huge. and.haughty separation. And the ivy quietly-grew greener. And then ono day there came •a s'lell from the East, and, in a moment, without plan or diffidence v or pretext, tumbled away some'yards of the proud old wall, and the two gardens were divided no longer; but there was no ono to walk in them anv more. AVistfullv round the edyp of the huee breach of the wall a Michaelmas daisy peered into the garden iu whose ruined paths I stood..