"Would you like to hear something of my story?" said the negro, the expression of his eyes growing deep and stern,—his black, closely curling beard stirring with a proud smile that curved his lips. "Perhaps it will amuse you."
"Amuse me? No!" said Penn. "I know by your looks that it will not amuse: it will absorb me!"
"Well, then," said Pomp, bearing his head upon his massy and flexible neck of polished ebony like a king, yet speaking in tones very gentle and low,—and he had a most mellow, musical, deep voice,—"you are talking with one who was born a slave."
"You know what I think of that!" said Penn. "Even such a birth could not debase the manhood of one like you."
"It might have done so under different circumstances. But I was so fortunate as to be brought up by a young master who was only too kind and indulgent to me, considering my station. We were playmates when children; and we were scarcely less intimate when we had both grown up to be men. He went to Paris to study medicine, and took me with him. I passed for his body servant, but I was rather his friend. He never took any important step in life without consulting me; and I am happy to know," added Pomp, with grand simplicity, "that my counsel was always good. He acknowledged as much on his death-bed. 'If I had taken your advice oftener,' said he, 'it would have been better for me. I always meant to reward you. You are to have your freedom—your freedom, my dear boy!'"
The negro knitted his brows, his breath came thick, and there was a strange moisture in his eye.
"I loved my master," he continued, with simple pathos. "And when I saw him troubled on my account, when he ought to have been thinking of his own soul, I begged him not to let a thought of me give him any uneasiness. My free papers had not been made out, and he was for sending at once for a notary. But his younger brother was with him—he who was to be his heir. 'Don't vex yourself about Pomp, Edwin,' said he. 'I will see that justice is done him.'
"'Ah, thank you, brother!' said Edwin. 'You will set him free, and give him a few hundred dollars to begin life with. Promise that, and I will rest in peace.' For you must know Edwin had neither wife nor child, and I was the only person dependent on his bounty. He was not rich; he had spent a good part of his fortune abroad, and had but recently established himself in a successful practice in Montgomery. Yet he left enough so that his brother could have well afforded to give me my freedom, and a thousand dollars."
"And did he not promise to do so?"
"He promised readily enough. And so my master died, and was buried, and I—had another master. For a few days nothing was said about free papers; and I had been too much absorbed in grief for the only man I loved to think much about them. But when the estate was settled up, and my new master was preparing to return to his home here in Tennessee, I grew uneasy.