"Whar, oh whar am de Hebrew chilluns?
Whar, oh whar am de Hebrew chilluns?
Whar, oh whar am de Hebrew chilluns?
Way ober in de Promis' Lan'."
The song was of no avail. Natalia still gazed out of wide open eyes. Then Dicey changed the meter of her melody and began again:
"Whar was Moses when de light went out?
Whar was Moses when de light went out?
Whar was Moses when de light went out?
Settin' in de dark wid his mouf poked out."
Natalia always chuckled over the last words of the song, but that night she only stirred restlessly and stared up into the old slave's eyes. The flickering glow of the fire fell on Dicey's face, lighting up the countenance which had always been the dearest in the world to the little girl. The other slaves shunned the strange looking old woman, who had not come from San Domingo with them; and her high cheek-bones and the tinge of red beneath her brown skin gave credence to the story that her father was an Indian. Many of them had whispered to Natalia that her old Mammy was a Voodoo, and once, when two slaves had died of smallpox, a "conjure" bag and a tiny black coffin had been found on the doorstep which the others said Dicey had employed to gain a revenge.
But Natalia loved the old woman too deeply to be weaned from her. She and Zebediah and Dicey grew closer as the years sped along, the old hostler remaining faithful to his one partner who had worked side by side with him in the grand old days of Gayosa and the Spanish occupation. To them, Natalia was all that was left out of that glorious past.
The kitchen had always been Dicey's favourite resting place, and at night when the other slaves had finished their work and gone to the quarters, she would pull a little stool up to the hearth and crouch down before the dying embers, gazing intently into the glow and sometimes crooning softly to herself. It seemed to suit her—this great old room which had for a floor the hard, clean-swept earth, was ceiled with roughhewn beams and filled along one side with a wagonwide fireplace. And when not even a candle was left burning, it seemed to suit her even better, for then the four pots hanging from heavy cranes above the fire, the rows of iron ovens placed against the wall, the marble topped bread table, and the immense, copper preserving kettle in a far corner—all these became her eloquent friends of the past, and in their companionship she lived again the stories each held for her.
At the end of the song she glanced into Natalia's sleepless eyes and smiled. Even in her inexperience, the little girl knew that here was a love nearly akin to that of the mother she had never known.
"It's no use, Mammy, I can't go to sleep." Natalia slipped from Dicey's arms to the floor. "Look, it's nearly eleven o'clock. Oh! Mammy!" happily, "maybe he stayed at Uncle Felix's house in town. But he said he would come right back here." She ran to the window and peered out into the moonlight. Everything was deathly still. "Mammy," she said, coming back to Dicey and leaning against her, "can't you look into the fire and see pictures and find out if he is coming back? Clytie told me the other day that you were a Voodoo and could tell what would happen to people—can you?"
The old woman's eyes flashed into such angry brilliance that Natalia stepped back, crying out—"Mammy, what's the matter? I never saw you look that way before."
Dicey's brows wrinkled over her eyes into a sinister expression, while her fingers twisted themselves into strange shapes as she pressed them together in her lap.