It hurt her to think of Raoul herded among seven hundred miserables in this endless barrack, his every movement overlooked, his smallest speech overheard, by an eaves-dropping sentry.
"I think, Endymion chimed in, my sister feels her long journey, and would be glad to get our business over."
"Ah, to be sure—a thousand pardons!"
The Commandant shut the door and piloted them across to the hospital block. Here on the threshold the same warm, acrid atmosphere assailed Dorothea's nostrils, and almost choked her breathing. Their guide led the way up a flight of stone steps to the first floor, and down a whitewashed corridor, lit along one side with narrow barred casements. A little more than half-way down the corridor the blank wall facing these casements was pierced by a low arched passage. Into this burrow the Commandant dived; and, standing outside, they heard a key turned in a lock. He reappeared and beckoned to them.
"From the gallery here," he whispered, "you look right down into the
Convalescent Ward."
Through the iron bars of the gallery Dorothea caught a glimpse of a long bare room, with twenty or thirty dejected figures in suits and caps of greyish-blue flannel, huddled about a stove. Some were playing at cards, others at dominoes. The murmur of their voices ascended and hummed in the little passage.
"Hist! Your friend is below there, if you care to have a peep at him."
But Dorothea had already drawn back. All this spying and listening revolted her. The polite Commandant noted the movement.
"You prefer that he should be fetched at once?" He stepped past them into the corridor. "Smithers!" he called. "Smithers!"
A hospital orderly appeared at a door almost opposite the passage, and saluted.