“Well, well, massa—it will come, bym’by, I tell you.”
The peaceful, gentle manners of Mr. Harris had their effect upon Pompey’s movements, but not to the extent which the master desired. The servant was honest, industrious, and did all the work that was required at his hands, but he could not pretermit his sport. The day of gloom closed with Pompey when Mr. Harris saved him from the sale to the South and the separation from his wife, and Pompey felt a sort of devotion in his wild, irregular dances and his loud, shrill singing. His spirits rose with every recollection of the kindness, and, as he broke into a verse of some favorite song or shuffled out upon the hard earth with bare heels the time of a quickly moving tune, he felt that he was only giving expression to gratitude for his kind master; and who shall say that the offering of the joyous black was not made acceptable above, by the sincerity of the feelings in which it was presented?
It was a clear star-light evening of July, the moon had not risen, and the planetary worlds above seemed to magnify themselves in the absence of the great source of day; a gentle draft of air down the stream was felt, and occasionally a rustling among the foliage was caused by the wind, augmented into a temporary breeze. The whole bank of the river was covered with tall forest trees, save where Mr. Harris’s little settlement was placed. On a bold bluff, now washed away, but which then jutted out into the stream, as if for the site of some defensive works, stood a female. She had been long looking up into the firmament, and then casting her eyes around, as if expecting some one to share with her the “contemplation of the starry heavens.”
The young woman stepped forward and looked down upon the waters below her for some time, and then murmured: “They are now, as in years past, above and below—the glorious constellations shining on, and year after year returning, with all their train rich in their lustre, and surveying themselves in the waters beneath. But we change. Year after year passes, and my fathers’ race, if they appear at all, present themselves in diminished numbers and in wasting forms. The foot of the white man is on the soil, and he treats us as he does the forest trees. Where he finds our race convenient, he leaves them to perish for want of communion with their like; where he needs their lands, he strikes them down as cumberers of the ground; and I, who love the race—I dwell among the pale faces, in peace; nay, I dwell among them of choice. I love their people, and I reverence the precepts by which some of them are governed—by which all profess to be guided. Oh, spirit of my fathers! must all pass away like the wreaths of mountain mist, and, as they fall, shall it be the disgrace of their name that vice, and not vengeance, swept them from the earth?
“Oh, what is this new principle which the whites have infused into my soul—the means and condition of future happiness? What is it that bids me forbear the wish that I was a man—a chief among my fathers’ people, that I might chase the intruder from our hunting-grounds, and restore to our nation the land which was purchased by trinkets and baubles, costless to the whites and useless to the red men? What is that principle that bids me, nay makes me, pray for the good of the whites around me, and look to the destruction of my father’s race as a means of that good?
“I cannot tell. And the teachings of the whites concerning the requirements of their own religion, become dark and confused when they attempt to reconcile their practice with their precepts; at least, those who teach most do most confound. But Father Harris, who has little to say, how good are all his deeds! how like the shining of those stars upon the water is his benevolence to my race! beautiful in itself, and reflected in the hearts of the red men with constant lustre. Oh, if all were like him! but then—”
“Then what, Dahona?”
The interruption was caused by a young man who had followed the speaker to a place of frequent resort.
“Then what, Dahona?”
“Nay, William, nay, do not call me Dahona; at least, do not call me thus in this place—do not call me thus when you find me alone—when the wildness of the scene begets wildness of thought, and the breeze which comes down from the hunting-grounds of my fathers, seems to fan into a flame the lingering sparks of native fire which civilization, as yet, has not quenched. Do not, by such a name, call up my almost buried thoughts of those who owned these lands when the white men were enjoying that which they stole from their conquered enemies; do not tell me, in the midst of these returning pangs of pride and regret—do not by that name tell me, that I am the daughter of a chief killed upon his own hills; and when I would calm down those feelings of vengeance, which come with longer intervals, do not, with the name of Dahona, goad me on to those wishes which must be sinful, for they are unjust to Father Harris.”