“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?”