It was about this time that he had begun to call her Dearest. She had given him no name, and seemed quite satisfied with that one.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said, “I ought to have a name for you, too. Do you mind if I call you Popsy?”
“Huh?” He had been really startled at that. If he needed any further proof of Dearest’s independent existence, that was it. Never, in the uttermost depths of his subconscious, would he have been likely to label himself Popsy. “Know what they used to call me in the Army?” he asked. “Slaughterhouse Hampton. They claimed I needed a truckload of sawdust to follow me around and cover up the blood.” He chuckled. “Nobody but you would think of calling me Popsy.”
There was a price, he found, that he must pay for Dearest’s companionship—the price of eternal vigilance. He found that he was acquiring the habit of opening doors and then needlessly standing aside to allow her to precede him. And, although she insisted that he need not speak aloud to her, that she could understand any thought which he directed to her, he could not help actually pronouncing the words, if only in a faint whisper. He was glad that he had learned, before the end of his plebe year at West Point, to speak without moving his lips.
Besides himself and the kitten, Smokeball, there was one other at Greyrock who was aware, if only faintly, of Dearest’s presence. That was old Sergeant Williamson, the Colonel’s Negro servant, a retired first sergeant from the regiment he had last commanded. With increasing frequency, he would notice the old Negro pause in his work, as though trying to identify something too subtle for his senses, and then shake his head in bewilderment.
One afternoon in early October—just about a year ago—he had been reclining in a chair on the west veranda, smoking a cigar and trying to recreate, for his companion, a mental picture of an Indian camp as he had seen it in Wyoming in the middle ’90’s, when Sergeant Williamson came out from the house, carrying a pair of the Colonel’s field-boots and a polishing-kit. Unaware of the Colonel’s presence, he set down his burden, squatted on the floor and began polishing the boots, humming softly to himself. Then he must have caught a whiff of the Colonel’s cigar. Raising his head, he saw the Colonel, and made as though to pick up the boots and polishing equipment.
“Oh, that’s all right, Sergeant,” the Colonel told him. “Carry on with what you’re doing. There’s room enough for both of us here.”
“Yessuh; thank yo,’ suh.” The old ex-sergeant resumed his soft humming, keeping time with the brush in his hand.
“You know, Popsy, I think he knows I’m here,” Dearest said. “Nothing definite, of course; he just feels there’s something here that he can’t see.”
“I wonder. I’ve noticed something like that. Funny, he doesn’t seem to mind, either. Colored people are usually scary about ghosts and spirits and the like. … I’m going to ask him.” He raised his voice. “Sergeant, do you seem to notice anything peculiar around here, lately?”
The repetitious little two-tone melody broke off short. The soldier-servant lifted his face and looked into the Colonel’s. His brow wrinkled, as though he were trying to express a thought for which he had no words.
“Yo’ notice dat, too, suh?” he asked. “Why, yessuh, Cunnel; Ah don’ know ’zackly how t’ say hit, but dey is som’n, at dat. Hit seems like … like a kinda … a kinda blessedness.” He chuckled. “Dat’s hit, Cunnel; dey’s a blessedness. Wondeh iffen Ah’s gittin’ r’ligion, now?”
“Well, all this is very interesting, I’m sure, Doctor,” T. Barnwell Powell was saying, polishing his glasses on a piece of tissue and keeping one elbow on his briefcase at the same time. “But really, it’s not getting us anywhere, so to say. You know, we must have that commitment signed by you. Now, is it or is it not your opinion that this man is of unsound mind?”
“Now, have patience, Mr. Powell,” the psychiatrist soothed him. “You must admit that as long as this gentleman refuses to talk, I cannot be said to have interviewed him.”
“What if he won’t talk?” Stephen Hampton burst out. “We’ve told you about his behavior; how he sits for hours mumbling to this imaginary person he thinks is with him, and how he always steps aside when he opens a door, to let somebody who isn’t there go through ahead of him, and how. … Oh, hell, what’s the use? If he were in his right mind, he’d speak up and try to prove it, wouldn’t he? What do you say, Myra?”
Myra was silent, and Colonel Hampton found himself watching her with interest. Her mouth had twisted into a wry grimace, and she was clutching the arms of her chair until her knuckles whitened. She seemed to be in some intense pain. Colonel Hampton hoped she were; preferably with something slightly fatal.
Sergeant Williamson’s suspicion that he might be getting religion became a reality, for a time, that winter, after The Miracle.
It had been a blustery day in mid-January, with a high wind driving swirls of snow across the fields, and Colonel Hampton, fretting indoors for several days, decided to go out and fill his lungs with fresh air. Bundled warmly, swinging his blackthorn cane, he had set out, accompanied by Dearest, to tramp cross-country to the village, three miles from Greyrock. They had enjoyed the walk through the white windswept
