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.
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