I could hear
voices, and the murmurs of the sleeping men and the groans of the
wounded. The scene closed. There was space and light, and a gorgeous
figure, stiff with the splendour of his robes, talked in a dark garden
with his lady. Their voices murmured, a lute was played, some one sang,
and through the thread of it all I saw that moment when, packed together
on our cart, we hung for an instant on the top of the hill and looked
back to a country that had suddenly crackled into flame. There was that
terrific crash as of the smashing of a world of china, the fierce
crackle of the machine-guns, and then the boom of the cannon from under
our very feet... the garden was filled with revellers, laughing,
dancing, singing, the air was filled again with the air of gold paint,
the tenor's voice rose higher and higher, the golden screens closed--the
act was ended.
It was as though I had received, in some dim, bewildered fashion, a
warning. When the lights went up, it was some moments before I realised
that the Baron was speaking to me, that a babel of chatter, like a
sudden rain storm on a glass roof, had burst on every side of us, and
that a huge Jewess, all bare back and sham pearls, was trying to pass me
on her way to the corridor.
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