two mornings after my meeting with colonel, a visitor pounded at the kith hen door ... the noise near gave me a apoplexy. from this passage, apoplexy might mean

What the speaker tries to convey with the word apoplexy which is now commonly called a Stroke is that given the situation he/she was in was quite delicate, as soon as he/she heard a strong noise he/she was startled enough to think he/she may get a stroke or maybe its just a figure of speech and was used to express the state he/she was after the meeting with the colonel