A colored woman, in a crisp white turban, with a strained face more gray
than brown, suddenly advanced holding before her in both hands a heavy
revolver of an outworn pattern. Elim Meikeljohn could see by her drawn
features that she was about to pull the trigger, and he said fretfully:
“Don't! The thing will explode. One of us will get hurt.” She closed
her eyes, Elim threw up his arm, and an amazingly loud report crashed
through the entry. He stood swaying weakly, with hanging palms, while
the woman dropped the revolver with a gasp. Elim Meikeljohn began to cry
with short dry sobs.... It was incredible that any one should discharge
a big revolver directly at his head. He sank limply against a chest at
the wall.
“Oh, Indy!” a shaken voice exclaimed. “Do you think he's dying?” The
colored woman went reluctantly forward and peered at Elim. She touched
him on a shoulder.
“'Deed, Miss Rosemary,” she replied, relieved and angry, “that shot
didn't touch a hair. He's just crying like a big old nothing.” She
grasped him more firmly, gave him a shake. “Dressed like a soldier,” she
proceeded scornfully, “and scaring us out of our wits. What did you want
to come here for anyhow calling out names?”
Elim's head rolled forward and back. The hall seemed full of flaming
arrows, and he collapsed slowly on the polished floor. He was moved; he
was half-conscious of his heels dragging upstairs, of frequent pauses,
voices expostulating and directing thinly. Finally he sank into a
sublimated peace in, apparently, a floating white cloud.
He awoke refreshed, mentally clear, but absurdly weak--he was lying in
the middle of a four-posted bed, a bed with posts so massive and tall
that they resembled smooth towering trees. Beyond them he could see
a marble mantel; a grate filled with softly smoldering coals, and a
gleaming brass hod; a highboy with a dark lustrous surface; oval gold
frames; and muslin curtains in an open window, stirring in an air that
moved the fluted valance at the top of the bed. It was late afternoon,
the light was fading, the interior wavering in a clear shadow filled
with the faint fat odor of the soft coal.
The immaculate bed linen bore an elusive cool scent, into which he
relapsed with profound delight. The personality of the room, somber and
still, flowed about him with a magical release from the inferno of
the past years, the last hours. He heard a movement at a door, and the
colored woman in the white turban moved to the side of the bed.
“I told her,” she said in an aggrieved voice, “there wasn't nothing at
all wrong with you. I reckon now you're all ready to fight again or eat.
Why did you stir things all up in Richmond and kill good folks?”
“To set you free!” Elim Meikeljohn replied.
She gazed at him thoughtfully.
“Capt'n,” she asked finally, “are you free?”
“Why, certainly----” he began, and then stopped abruptly, lost in the
memory of the dour past. He recalled his father, with a passion for
learning, imprisoned in the narrow poverty of his circumstances and
surroundings; he remembered Hester, with her wishful gaze in the
confines of her invalid chair; his own laborious lonely days. Freedom,
a high and difficult term, he saw concerned regions of the spirit not
liberated--solved--by a simple declaration on the body. The war had been
but the initial, most facile step. The woman had silenced his sounding
assertion, humiliated him, by a word. He gazed at her with a new, less
confident interest. The mental effort brought a momentary recurrence of
fever; he flushed and muttered: “Freedom ... spirit.”
“You're not as wholesome as you appeared,” the woman judged. “You can't
have nothing beside a glass of milk.” She crossed the room and, stirring
the fire, put on fresh coal that ignited with an oily crackle. Again at
the door she paused. “Don't you try to move about,” she directed; “you
stay right in this room. Mr. Roselle, he's downstairs, and Mr. McCall,
and--” her voice took on a faint insistent note of warning. He paid
little heed to her; he was lost in a wave of weariness.
The following morning, stronger, he rose and tentatively trying the
door found it locked. The colored woman appeared soon after with a
tray which, when he had performed a meager toilet, he attacked with a
pleasant zest.
“The city's just burning right up,” she informed him, standing in the
middle of the floor; “the boats on the river caught fire and their
camions banged into Canal Street.” She had a pale even color, a straight
delicate nose and sensitive lips.
“Are the Union troops in charge?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. They got some of the fire out, I heard tell. But that's not
the worst now--a body can't set her foot in the street, it's so full of
drunken roaring trash, black and white. It's good Mr. Roselle and Mr.
McCall and Mr. John are here,” she declared again; “they could just
finish off anybody that offered to turn a bad hand.”
This, Elim felt, was incongruous with his reception yesterday.
Still he made no inquiry. The breakfast finished, he relapsed once more
on his pillows and heard the key stealthily turn in the door from the
outside.
He told himself, without conviction, that he must rise and join his
command. The war, he knew, was over; the courage that had sustained him
during the struggle died. The simple question of the colored woman had
largely slain it. His own personality, the vision of his forthcoming
life and necessity, rose to the surface of his consciousness. Elim
realized what had drawn, him to his present situation--it had, of
course, been the memory of Rosemary Roselle. The days when he--an
assistant to a professor of philosophy and letters--had read and marked
her essays seemed to lie in another existence, infinitely remote. How
would he excuse his presence, the calling of her name before the house?
This was an inopportune--a fatal--moment for a man in the blue of the
North to make his bow to a Richmond girl, in the midst of her wasted and
burning place of home. He decided reluctantly that it would be best to
say nothing of his connection with her academic labors, but to depart
as soon as possible and without explanation of his first summons....
Rosemary Roselle--the name had clung persistently to his memory. It was
probable that he would see her--once. That alone was extraordinary. He
marveled at the grim humor of circumstance that had granted him such a
wildly improbable wish, and at the same time made it humanly impossible
for him to benefit from it.