(For it is
absolutely true that when a man sells his soul to the devil he
does it for the price of half nothing.)
WATCHING THE GUN-FIRE
It must have been a hot fight. A village, wrecked as is usual
along this line, opened on it from a hillside that overlooked
an Italian landscape of carefully drawn hills studded with
small villages--a plain with a road and a river in the
foreground, and an all-revealing afternoon light upon
everything. The hills smoked and shook and bellowed. An
observation-balloon climbed up to see; while an aeroplane
which had nothing to do with the strife, but was merely
training a beginner, ducked and swooped on the edge of the
plain. Two rose-pink pillars of crumbled masonry, guarding
some carefully trimmed evergreens on a lawn half buried in
rubbish, represented an hotel where the Crown Prince had once
stayed. All up the hillside to our right the foundations of
houses lay out, like a bit of tripe, with the sunshine in
their square hollows. Suddenly a band began to play up the
hill among some trees; and an officer of local Guards in the
new steel anti-shrapnel helmet, which is like the seventeenth
century sallet, suggested that we should climb and get a
better view. He was a kindly man, and in speaking English had
discovered (as I do when speaking French) that it is simpler
to stick to one gender.
Pages:
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39