A sheet of glassy ice had lain treacherously hidden under a skift of snow; when he stepped upon it, his feet shot from under him, the stick flew from his hand, and he went down. When he tried to rise, he found that he could not. Dearest had been almost frantic.
“Oh, Popsy, you must get up!” she cried. “You’ll freeze if you don’t. Come on, Popsy; try again!”
He tried, in vain. His old body would not obey his will.
“It’s no use, Dearest; I can’t. Maybe it’s just as well,” he said. “Freezing’s an easy death, and you say people live on as spirits, after they die. Maybe we can always be together, now.”
“I don’t know. I don’t want you to die yet, Popsy. I never was able to get through to a spirit, and I’m afraid. … Wait! Can you crawl a little? Enough to get over under those young pines?”
“I think so.” His left leg was numb, and he believed that it was broken. “I can try.”
He managed to roll onto his back, with his head toward the clump of pine seedlings. Using both hands and his right heel, he was able to propel himself slowly through the snow until he was out of the worst of the wind.
“That’s good; now try to cover yourself,” Dearest advised. “Put your hands in your coat pockets. And wait here; I’ll try to get help.”
Then she left him. For what seemed a long time, he lay motionless in the scant protection of the young pines, suffering miserably. He began to grow drowsy. As soon as he realized what was happening, he was frightened, and the fright pulled him awake again. Soon he felt himself drowsing again. By shifting his position, he caused a jab of pain from his broken leg, which brought him back to wakefulness. Then the deadly drowsiness returned.
This time, he was wakened by a sharp voice, mingled with a throbbing sound that seemed part of a dream of the cannonading in the Argonne.
“Dah! Look-a dah!” It was, he realized, Sergeant Williamson’s voice. “Gittin’ soft in de haid, is Ah, yo’ ol’ wuthless no-’count?”
He turned his face, to see the battered jeep from Greyrock, driven by Arthur, the stableman and gardener, with Sergeant Williamson beside him. The older Negro jumped to the ground and ran toward him. At the same time, he felt Dearest with him again.
“We made it, Popsy! We made it!” she was exulting. “I was afraid I’d never make him understand, but I did. And you should have seen him bully that other man into driving the jeep. Are you all right, Popsy?”
“Is yo’ all right, Cunnel?” Sergeant Williamson was asking.
“My leg’s broken, I think, but outside of that I’m all right,” he answered both of them. “How did you happen to find me, Sergeant?”
The old Negro soldier rolled his eyes upward. “Cunnel, hit war a mi’acle of de blessed Lawd!” he replied, solemnly. “An angel of de Lawd done appeahed unto me.” He shook his head slowly. “Ah’s a sinful man, Cunnel; Ah couldn’t see de angel face to face, but de glory of de angel was befoh me, an’ guided me.”
They used his cane and a broken-off bough to splint the leg; they wrapped him in a horse-blanket and hauled him back to Greyrock and put him to bed, with Dearest clinging solicitously to him. The fractured leg knit slowly, though the physician was amazed at the speed with which, considering his age, he made recovery, and with his unfailing cheerfulness. He did not know, of course, that he was being assisted by an invisible nurse. For all that, however, the leaves on the oaks around Greyrock were green again before Colonel Hampton could leave his bed and hobble about the house on a cane.
Arthur, the young Negro who had driven the jeep, had become one of the most solid pillars of the little A.M.E. church beyond the village, as a result. Sergeant Williamson had also become an attendant at church for a while, and then stopped. Without being able to define, or spell, or even pronounce the term, Sergeant Williamson was a strict pragmatist. Most Africans are, even five generations removed from the slave-ship that brought their forefathers from the Dark Continent. And Sergeant Williamson could not find the blessedness at the church. Instead, it seemed to center about the room where his employer and former regiment commander lay. That, to his mind, was quite reasonable. If an Angel of the Lord was going to tarry upon earth, the celestial being would naturally prefer the society of a retired U.S.A. colonel to that of a passel of triflin,’ no-’counts at an ol’ clapboard church house. Be that as it may, he could always find the blessedness in Colonel Hampton’s room, and sometimes, when the Colonel would be asleep, the blessedness would follow him out and linger with him for a while.
Colonel Hampton wondered, anxiously, where Dearest was, now. He had not felt her presence since his nephew had brought his lawyer and the psychiatrist into the house. He wondered if she had voluntarily separated herself from him for fear he might give her some sign of recognition that these harpies would fasten upon as an evidence of unsound mind. He could not believe that she had deserted him entirely, now when he needed her most. …
“Well, what can I do?” Doctor Vehrner was complaining. “You bring me here to interview him, and he just sits there and does nothing. … Will you consent to my giving him an injection of sodium pentathol?”
“Well, I don’t know, now,” T. Barnwell Powell objected. “I’ve heard of that drug—one of the so-called ‘truth-serum’ drugs. I doubt if testimony taken under its influence would be admissible in a court. …”
“This is not a court, Mr. Powell,” the doctor explained patiently. “And I am not taking testimony; I am making a diagnosis. Pentathol is a recognized diagnostic agent.”
“Go ahead,”
