The Pilgrims of New England by Mrs. J. B. Webb (acx book reading .TXT) 📖

and pensive expression was now changed for one of bitter disappointment, and even of ferocity, and then again animated with a look of anxious hope and inquiry.

'Yes, Jyanough,' he replied, with earnest solemnity; 'my God will hear you; but he will not give you back your brother in this world. If you learn to believe in Him; and to serve Him, and to pray to Him in sincerity, He will guide you to that blessed land where, after death, all His people meet together, and where there is neither sorrow nor separation.'

'But is Uncas there?' cried the young savage. 'Is my brother there? For I will serve no Mahneto who will not restore me to him!'

Our young theologian was disconcerted, for a moment, at this puzzling question, which has excited doubts and difficulties in wiser heads than his, end to which Scripture gives no direct reply. He paused awhile; and then he remembered that passage in the second chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, where the Apostle is speaking of the requirements of the law, and goes on to say, 'When the Gentiles which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another.' 'If St. Paul could say this of the severe and uncompromising law, surely,' thought Henrich 'the Gospel of love and mercy must hold out equal hope for those heathen who perish in involuntary ignorance, but who have acted up to that law of conscience which was their only guide.' He also recollected that Jesus himself, when on earth, declared, that 'He that _knew not,_ and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes': and, therefore, he felt justified in permitting the young Indian to hope that, hereafter, he might again behold that brother whose virtues and whose affection were the object of his pride and his regret.

'I believe,' he replied, 'that your brother--who you say was always kind, and just, and upright while he lived on earth--is now, through the mercy of God, in a state of happiness: and I believe that, if you also act up to what you know to be right, you will join him there, and dwell with him for ever. But I can tell you how to attain a more perfect happiness, and to share the highest joys of heaven in the kingdom that God has prepared for His own son. I can tell you what He has declared to be His will with regard to all His human creatures; even that they should love that Son, and look to Him as their Savior and their King. O, Jyanough, ask Oriana if she is not happier since she learnt to love and worship the God of the Christians!--the only God who can be just, and yet most merciful!'

In the vehemence of his feelings, Henrich bad rather outstripped his companion's powers of following and comprehending him. He saw this in Jyanough's wandering and incredulous eyes; and he carefully and patiently proceeded to explain to him the first rudiments of religion, as he had done to Oriana: and to reply to all his doubts and questions according to the ability that God gave him. A willing learner is generally a quick one; and Henrich was well pleased with his second pupil. If he was not ready to relinquish his old ideas and superstitions, he was, at least, well inclined to listen to the doctrines of his new friend, and even to receive them in connection with many of his heathen opinions. Time, and the grace of God, Henrich knew, could only cause these to give place to a purer belief, and entirely banish the _'unclean birds'_ that dwelt in the 'cage' of the young Indian's mind. But the fallow ground had already been, in a manner, broken up, and some good seed scattered on the surface: and Henrich lay down to rest with a fervent prayer that the dew of the Spirit might fall upon it, and cause it to grow, and to bring forth fruit.

From the time of Henrich's captivity, he bad endeavored to keep up in his own mind a remembrance of the Sabbath, or the Lord's Day (as it was always called by the Puritans); and, as far as it was in his power to do so, he observed it as a day of rest from common occupations and amusements. On that day, he invariably declined joining any hunting or fishing parties; and he also selected it as the time for his longest spiritual conversations with Oriana; as he desired that she, also, should learn to attach a peculiar feeling of reverence to a day that must be sacred to every Christian, but which was always observed with remarkable strictness by the sect to which Henrich belonged.

In this, as in all other customs that the young pale-face wished to follow, he was unopposed by Tisquantum; who seemed entirely indifferent as to the religious feelings or social habits of his adopted son, so long as he acquired a skill in the arts of war and hunting: and, in these respects, Henrich's progress fully answered his expectations. He was, like most youths of his age, extremely fond of every kind of sport; and his strength and activity--which had greatly increased since he had adopted the wild life of the Indians--rendered every active exercise easy and delightful to him. He consequently grew rapidly in the Sachem's favor, and in that of all his companions, who learnt to love his kind and courteous manners, as much as they admired his courage and address. One only of the red men envied him the esteem that he gained, and hated him for it. This was Coubitant--the aspirant for the chief place in Tisquantum's favor, and for the honor of one day becoming his son-in-law. From the moment that the captor's life had been spared by the Sachem, and he had been disappointed of his expected vengeance for the death of his friend Tekoa, the savage had harbored in his breast a feeling of hatred towards the son of the slayer, and had burned with a malicious desire for Henrich s destruction. This feeling he was compelled, as we have observed, to conceal from Tisquantum; but it only gained strength by the restraint imposed on its outward expression, and many were the schemes that he devised for its gratification. At present, however, he found it impossible to execute any of them; and the object of his hate and jealousy was happily unconscious that he had so deadly an enemy continually near him. An instinctive feeling had, indeed, caused Henrich to shun the fierce young Indian, and to be less at ease in his company than in that of the other red warriors; but his own generous and forgiving nature forbade his suspecting the real sentiments entertained towards him by Coubitant, or even supposing that his expressions of approval and encouragement were all feigned to suit his own evil purposes.

Oriana had never liked him; and time only strengthened the prejudice she felt against him. She knew that he hoped eventually to make her his wife--or rather his slave--for Coubitant was not a man to relax from any of the domestic tyranny of his race; and the more she saw of her 'white brother,' and the more she heard from him of the habits and manners of his countrymen, and of their treatment of their women, the more she felt the usual life of an Indian squaw to be intolerable. Even the companionship of the young females of her own race became distasteful to her; for their ignorance, and utter want of civilization, struck painfully on her now partially cultivated and awakened mind, and made her feel ashamed of the coarseness of taste and manners occasionally displayed by her former friends and associates. In the Christian captive alone had she found, since her mother's death, a companion who could sympathize in her tastes and feelings, which had ever been above the standard of any others with whom she was acquainted. And Henrich could do more than sympathize in her aspirations--he could instruct her how they might be fully realized in the attainment of divine knowledge, and the experience of Christian love. No wonder, then, that Henrich held already the first place in her heart and imagination, and was endowed by her lively fancy with every quality and every perfection, both of mind and body, that she could conceive to herself.

The simple-minded girl made no concealment of her preference for the young stranger, whom she regarded as a brother--but a brother in every way immeasurably her superior--and her father never checked her growing attachment. The youth of both parties, the position that Henrich occupied in his family as his adopted son, and the difference of race and color, prevented him from even anticipating that a warmer sentiment than fraternal affection could arise between them; and he fully regarded his daughter as the future inmate and mistress of an Indian warrior's lodge--whether that of Coubitant or of some other brave, would, he considered, entirely depend on the comparative prowess in war and hunting, and the value of the presents that would be the offering of those who claimed her hand. That she should exercise any choice in the matter never occurred to him; and, probably, had he foreseen that such would be the case, and that the choice would fill on the son of a stranger--on the pale-faced captive whose father had slain her only brother--he would have removed her from such dangerous influence. But he thought not of such consequences resulting from the intimacy of Henrich and Oriana: he only saw that his child was happy, and that she daily improved in grace and intelligence, and in the skilful and punctual performance of all her domestic duties; and he was well satisfied that he had not shed the blood of the Christian youth on the grave of his lost Tekoa. His own esteem and affection for his adopted son also continued to increase; and, young as Henrich was, the influence of his superior cultivation of mind, and rectitude of principle, was felt even by the aged Chief, and caused him to treat him, at times, with a degree of respect that added bitterness to Coubitant's malicious feelings.

He saw how fondly Oriana regarded her adopted brother, and personal jealousy made him more clear-sighted as to the possibility of her affection ripening into love than her father had as yet become; and gladly would the rival of the unsuspecting Henrich have blackened him in the eyes of the Chieftain, and caused him to be banished from the lodge, had he been able to find any accusation against him. But in this he invariably failed; for the pale-face was brave, honest, and truthful, to a degree that baffled the ingenuity of his wily foe: and Coubitant found that, instead of lowering Henrich in the regard of the Sachem, he only excited him to take his part still more, and also ran a great risk of losing all the favor which he had himself attained in Tisquantum's eyes.

The sudden friendship that the young Jyanough had conceived for the white stranger, and the consequent favor with which he was looked upon by Oriana, tended still more to irritate the malignant savage; and when, a few days after the arrival of Tisquantum's party at the Cree village, he saw the three young friends seated amicably together beneath a shadowing tree, and evidently engaged in earnest conversation, he could not resist stealing silently behind them, and lurking in the underwood that formed a thick background to