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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I

Sunday — January 13, 1918

Sunday
January 13, 1918

I got so cold yesterday that I decided, willy-nilly, to take a small walk and try to ‘warm up’ before the evening. So I made myself into a bundle, and started off. First I went to the Mairie to be registered. The old secretary was there at one desk in his braided cap; the drum stood in a corner. He was very solemnly engaged in cutting a Spanish beauty's picture off a card and gumming the same on to the back of a pocket-book, breathing like a grampus. The Mayor did not (as usual) want to have anything to do with my passport. However, I persuaded him that it really was necessary, and when he did make up his mind, he went very thoroughly into the affair. Result. I am written in the book as Kadreen, fille d'Arnold Beaucamp et Anne Dysa de Nouvelle Zélande, etc. I could not make him get anything more accurate, so I just let him go on. Then I saw that the Meynets' blind was up and went page 98 in. M. only was there. He sat on a stool stitching a long red leather boot, more X-eyed than ever. Didn't remember me. Madame is away but he expects her back. “Marie est allée à Marseille il y a deux ans, et puis—elle n'est pas revenue! Voilá! “Did I want a villa? And he began to press villas de quatre pieces on me, but I felt a bit sick and went off. I then decided to go and see Ma'am Allègre. The afternoon was very cold and grey and just growing dusky. The sea was high and made a loud noise. When I passed the vineyard where the two little boys used to work I realised suddenly that I was suffering—terribly, terribly, and was quite faint with this emotion. Then came at last the road with Gravier 2K written on the post. And then came our little home in sight. I went on, though I don't know how, pushed open the Allegres' singing gate, walked over those crunching round stones…. The outer door of our villa was open. When I reached the stone verandah and looked again upon the almond tree, the little garden, the round stone table, the seat scooped out of stone, the steps leading down to the cave, and then looked up at our pink house, with the swags of shells painted over the windows and the strange blue-grey shutters, I thought I had never, in my happiest memories, realised all its beauty. I could not get any answer from the Allègres, but I felt certain I heard someone moving in our villa, so finally I knocked on our door. You remember how hard it was to open. It tugged open and there stood Ma'am Allègre, in the same little black shawl, lean and grey as ever.

“Vous désirez, Madame?” said she. I just managed to say, “Bon jour, Madame. Vous m'avez oubliée?” And then she cried, “Ah! Ah! I know your voice. Come in, come in! I am just airing the villa. Come into the little salon. Comment ca va? Et votre mari? etc., etc.”

I crossed the hall; she opened one half of the persiennes and we sat on either side of the table, she in your place, I with my back to the fire in mine, and had a long talk. She page 99 remembers us well. Many times her husband and she have talked of us and wished to have us back again. Her husband always wondered what had happened to us. We were like “deux enfants,” said she, and it was a happiness to them to know that we were there. Her son is wounded and is now on the Swiss frontier in a post office. They went all the way to Paris to see him. I asked her what had happened to the flowers; for there is not a single flower—not a jonquil, not a geranium, not a rose, not an orange—and she promised they would all be here “plus tar', plustar'. C'est la faute du mauvais temps, vous sa-avez!”

But oh, as we sat there talking and I felt myself answer and smile and stroke my muff and discuss the meat shortage and the horrid bread and the high prices and cette guerre, I felt that somewhere, upstairs, you and I lay like the little Babes in the Tower, smothered under pillows, and she and I were keeping watch like any two old gnomes. I could hardly look at the room. When I saw my photograph, that you had left on the wall, I nearly broke down, and finally I came away and leaned a long time on the wall at the bottom of our little road, looking at the violet sea that beat up high and loud against those strange dark clots of sea-weed. As I came down your beautiful narrow steps, it began to rain. Big soft reluctant drops fell on my hands and face. The light was flashing through the dusk from the lighthouse, and a swarm of black soldiers was kicking something about on the sand among the palm-trees—a dead dog perhaps, or a little tied-up kitten.

It is so quiet to-day. I remember Sundays like this here. Not a hint of sun. A leaden sky. A sea like oil…. I had a very bad night, coughing and sweating so that I had to keep sponging my face and kept thinking, “It must be five o'clock,” and finding it was only a quarter past one. Oh, these long, long, lonely nights when one is ill! They are unforgettable! But after breakfast this morning I slept till eleven o'clock. I heard all the noises in the corridor, but still I was fast asleep…