The Middy and the Moors by Robert Michael Ballantyne (free e books to read .txt) 📕

Chapter Thirteen. Hester and her Father severely Tested.

The very next day, accordingly, Hester Sommers and her friend sallied forth to present Hugh Sommers with a couple of biscuits!

It was arranged that the two girls should carry baskets of fruit on their heads, and that Hester should have the biscuits conveniently in her right hand, so as to be able to drop them into her father’s lap without stopping or even checking her pace as they passed.

Of course, Hester was by this time thoroughly alive to the danger of her intended proceedings, both to herself and her father, and was firmly resolved to restrain her feelings. Nevertheless, she could not help trembling when she came in sight of the gang with which her father worked.

Sally observed this and grasped her by the arm.

“Geo’giana,” she said, “if you gibs way, or speaks, or trembles, or busts up in any way, I grips you by de neck, as I once did before, an’ shobes you along wid scolds and whacks—so you look out!”

“Anxiety for my darling father will be a much more powerful restraint, Sally, than your threats,” replied the poor girl.

Nevertheless, the threat was not without its effect, for it showed Hester that she must have been on the point of giving way, and impressed on her more than ever the necessity of self-restraint.

“W’ich am him? I don’t see him,” said the negress as they advanced.

“There he is, don’t you see, just before us,” replied Hester, in a low, hurried voice.

“No, I’s growin’ blind, I t’ink.”

“There—look! by himself, on the stone. He seems always to sit on the same spot at dinner-time.”

“Oh yes, I sees. Now you go on—stiddy. Mind what you’s about!”

With a brief prayer for help to control herself, Hester went straight to where her father sat. He was languidly chewing a piece of the regulation black bread at the time, and looked up at her with the vacant indifference born of despair.

The desire to fall on his neck and kiss him was, need we say, almost irresistible, but the poor girl had received strength for the duty in hand. She went close to him—even brushed past him—and dropped the biscuits into his lap.

At first the poor man was so astonished that he gazed after the retiring figure and made no effort to conceal this unexpected addition to his meal. Fortunately, his wits revived before any of the guards observed him. He slid the biscuits into his shirt bosom with conjurer-like facility, and at the same moment broke off a large bit of one, which he devoured with unwonted satisfaction. The addition did not indeed furnish the unfortunate slave with a full meal, but it at least tended towards that desirable end, and sent him to work with a full heart, because of the assurance that there was in the city, at all events, one human being—and that being, strange to say, a negress!—who pitied him in his forlorn condition.

During the remainder of that day Hugh Sommers almost forgot his toils in consequence of his mind being so thoroughly taken up with meditation on the wonderful incident. At night, although wearied, almost worn out, and anxious to sleep, he found it impossible to rest in the dismal Bagnio. It chanced that he occupied the cell which had formerly been apportioned to George Foster on the occasion of his first visit to that cheerless prison, and his next neighbour was the despairing Frenchman who had given such poor comfort to the middy in his distress. Finding that this Frenchman spoke English so well, and that they worked together in the same gang during the day, Hugh Sommers had struck up an acquaintance with him, which, after they had spent some weeks together in toiling by day and groaning side by side at night, ripened into a curious sort of growling friendship.

This friendship began with a quarrel. The night in which they were first placed in neighbouring cells, or niches, followed a day in which Sommers had received an application of the bastinado, and been put into irons for fierce rebellion. Being a man of strong emotions, he had groaned a little as he lay trying to sleep in spite of his suffering feet. Failing of his purpose, he took to thinking about Hester, and the groans which had been but feeble for himself became more intense on her account.

“Can you not stop that noise?” growled the irate Frenchman, who was kept awake by it.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, friend,” said Sommers gently, for he was really an unselfish man; “but if you knew all I’ve had to suffer you would excuse me.”

“Oh, I know what you have had to suffer!” said his comrade testily. “I saw you get the bastinado; I’ve had it often myself, but—it is bearable!”

“It’s not that, man!” returned the Englishman, with a touch of indignation. “If I had nothing to worry me but the pain of my feet I’d have been asleep by now. I have worse things to groan about than you can guess, maybe.”

“Well, well, monsieur,” said the Frenchman, in a resigned tone, as he raised himself on one elbow and leaned his back against the stone wall, “since you have driven sleep from my eyes, perhaps you will give employment to my ears by telling me for what it is that you groan?”

There was something so peculiar in the tone and manner in which this was said—so cool and off-hand, yet withal so kind—that Sommers at once agreed.

“I’ll do it,” he said, “if you will treat me to the same thing in return. Fair exchange! You see, I am by profession a merchant, and must have value for what I give.”

And thus on that night the two unfortunates had exchanged confidences, and formed the friendship to which we have referred.

To this man, then—whose name was Edouard Laronde—Sommers related the incident that had occurred that day during the noontide period of rest.

“It is strange. I know not what to think,” said Laronde, when his friend concluded. “If it had been a white girl I could have understood that it might be your daughter in disguise, though even in this case there would have been several reasons against the theory, for, in the first place, you tell me that your daughter—your Hester—is very pretty, and no pretty English girl could go about this city in any disguise without being discovered at once. Now you tell me that this girl was black—a negress?”

“Ay, as black as a coal,” responded the merchant.

“Well, if, as you say, your Hester is pretty—”

“Pretty, man! She’s not pretty,” interrupted the Englishman impatiently; “I tell you she is beautiful!”

“Of course, I understand,” returned the other, with a smile that the darkness of the place concealed, “I should have said beautiful! Well, thick lips and flat nose and high cheek-bones and woolly hair are, you know, incompatible with beauty as understood by Englishmen—”

“Or Frenchmen either,” added Sommers. “That’s quite true, Laronde, though I must confess that I paid no attention to her face when she was approaching me, and after she dropped the biscuits in my lap she was so far past that I only saw a bit of her black cheek and her back, which latter, you know, was enveloped from head to foot in that loose blue cotton thing which does not tell much about the wearer.”

“True, true,” returned the Frenchman; “and, after all, even if the girl’s features had not been negro-like, you could not have been sure that it was her, for some of the blacks who come from the interior of Africa have features quite as classical as our own.”

“Laronde,” said the merchant impressively, “I wonder to hear you, who have a daughter of your own, suggest that I could fail to recognise my Hester in any disguise. Why, if she were to paint her face scarlet and her nose pea-green I’d see through it by the beautiful shape of the features and the sweet expression of her face.”

“Forgive me, Monsieur Sommers, I doubt not that you would. As to your reference to my daughter, you forget that she was a little child when I last saw her, so I have no experience of a father’s powers of penetrating disguises.”

Laronde sighed deeply at this point, and then hurriedly continued, as if to prevent further reference to his own sorrows.

“It is possible, however,” he said, “that she may pass you again to-morrow, and so give you another opportunity of seeing her features. But let me ask, my friend, what will you do if you discover that she is your Hester?”

“Do?” exclaimed the merchant, with an energetic action that caused his fetters to rattle. “I—I—I’ll—well—I don’t know what I’ll do!”

“Of course you don’t!” returned Laronde, with something of the old cynicism in his tone. “You Englishmen are always so cock-sure—as you express it—of success that you make no provision for defeat or failure. It may seem very heroic, but it is mere