V
I was aroused in the night by a growling in Miss Fielding's room. Wide awake in an instant, I sat up in bed and listened intently, but I had not had time to get up before I heard a short, angry yelp, and then Nokomis' footsteps pattering out of the room and going down-stairs in hasty jumps. I struck a match and looked at my watch. It was a quarter past two o'clock. I knew well enough, then, that Edna would take Miss Fielding's place in the morning. It was much as if a ghost had entered the house and lurked in the darkness. For a long time I was too agitated to sleep.
The next day was cool and cloudy. I found a fire burning in the library when I went down-stairs and Leah was there, putting the room to rights. She looked up at me gratefully, as if it were a consolation to her to have some one to depend upon.
Leah had, by this time, begun to treat me quite as if I were her master. I had always tried to meet her upon terms which would prove that I had no prejudice on account of her color, but that very attitude of mine seemed to make her more willing to do me unlooked-for service. I am told that this is not, as a rule, true of negroes, and the Southerners, who by sentiment and tradition hold themselves as superior in virtue of their birth, keep the respect of colored folk and receive a willing acceptation of subservience that no Northerner, capable of no such race feeling, can achieve. That Leah's gratitude for my consideration did express itself in such devotion proves, perhaps, only that she was intrinsically finer—that she was, as I have already expressed it, ahead of her time. There was much pathos in it, nevertheless, for I was quite ready to regard her as a social, as she was, undoubtedly, a moral equal.
"Did you hear Nokomis?" she asked immediately.
"I should say! Didn't it awaken Miss Fielding?"
"Oh, no, she sleeps heavily at these times. But it awakened me—wasn't it horrible! It was Miss Edna coming in! Think of it!"
"How is she this morning?"
"Fretful and irritable—to me, at least. She asked for you, and she has been telephoning to the doctor again. Oh, I wish you might prevent that. What does she do it for, Mr. Castle?"
"He is probably making her do it," I replied. "You see, he has attained a sort of power over her, I suspect. Just how much, we must try to find out. Have you any idea what she said?"