As for Brian, it was clear to
them that he was no stranger to trench life, and their treatment of him
was perfect. They made no fuss, as tactless folk do over blind men; but,
while feigning to regard him as one of themselves, they slily watched
and protected his movements as a proud mother might the first steps of a
child.
On we went from the _antichambre_ into a long mouldy passage dug deep
into the earth. It was the link between trenches; and now and then a
sentinel popped out from behind a queer barrier built up as a protection
against "_les eclats d'obus_." "This is the way the wounded come back,"
said one of the lieutenants, "when there _are_ any wounded. Just now (or
you would not be here, Mademoiselle) there is"--he finished in
English--"nothing doing."
I laughed. "Who taught you that?"
"You will see," he replied, making a nice little mystery. "You will see
who taught it to me--and _then_ some!"
That was a beautiful ending for the sentence, and his American accent
was perfect, even if the meaning of the poor man's quotation was a
little uncertain!
We turned several times, and I had begun to think of the Minotaur's
labyrinth, when the passage knotted itself into a low-roofed room, open
at both ends, save for bomb screens, with a trench leading dismally off
from an opposite doorway. "When is a door not a door?" was a conundrum
of my childhood, and I think the answer was: "When it's ajar." But
nowadays there is a better _replique_: A door is not a door when it's a
dug-out.
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