The Middy and the Moors by Robert Michael Ballantyne (new books to read TXT) 📖

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 pride and folly. Now, if you will take a real friend's advice, you will go out to-morrow with the determination to curb yourself and refrain from taking any notice whatever of this girl, whether she turns out to be your daughter or not, and leave her to work out her plan, for you may be quite sure she has some end in view. Just consider what would be the consequence of your giving way to your feelings and embracing her. You would by so doing expose her disguise, cause her to be taken up and sent to the harem of some one of the notables, and get heavier irons put on yourself, besides another touch, perhaps, of the bastinado. Be wise, and consider well what you intend to do."

"Thank you, friend, for your warning. It is well timed. If you had not spoken I would certainly have gone forth to-morrow unprepared."

"But what is your preparation? What will you do?" persisted the Frenchman.

"What _can_ I do?" replied Sommers. "Have you not just shown me that I am utterly helpless? In such a case there is only one course left-- namely, to go to Him who can succour the helpless. I will ask counsel of God. The pride you have referred to I admit, though it is by no means confined to my own countrymen! Too long have I given way to it, and acted independently of my Maker. Perhaps God sent me here to convince me of my sin and helplessness."

"There is no God. I do not believe in a God," said Laronde calmly.

"Why not?" asked Sommers, in surprise.

"Because," replied Laronde bitterly, "if there was a God He could not stand by and see me suffering such prolonged and awful misery."

"If, instead of misery, you had been placed during the last twelve years in supreme felicity, would you have believed in a God?" asked Sommers.

Laronde was silent. He saw that the reason which he had given for disbelief was untenable, and he was too straightforward to quibble about it.

"I don't know," he said at last angrily. "No doubt there are hundreds of men in happy and favourable circumstances who say, as I do, that they don't believe in a God. I don't know. All I do know is that I am supremely miserable!"

"Now you are reasonable," returned the merchant, "for you talk of what you do know, and you admit that in regard to God you `don't know,' but you began by stating that `there is no God.' Ah, my friend, I sympathise with you in your terrible sorrow, even as you have sympathised with me in mine, but don't let us give way to despair and cast the only Refuge that remains to us behind our backs. I will not ask you to join me in praying to One, in whom you say you do not believe, but I will pray _for_ you."

Hugh Sommers got upon his knees and then and there--in the dark and dank prison-house--prayed most earnestly for guidance and spiritual light in the name of Jesus. At first the Frenchman listened with what we may style kindly contempt, and then with surprise, for the Englishman drew to the conclusion of his very brief prayer without any mention of his own name. Just at the close, however, Sommers said, "O God! show to my friend here that he is wrong, and that Thou art Love."

It was with eager and trembling heart next day that Hugh Sommers watched, during the noontide meal, for the coming of his mysterious black friend, and it was with no less anxiety and trembling of heart that Hester approached her father at the same hour.

"Now mind how you doos," said the doubtful Sally, as she glanced keenly at Hester's face. "Mind, I'll hab no marcy on you if you gibs way!"

Hester made no reply, for she was drawing near to her father, and saw that he was gazing at her with fixed intensity. She raised her heart to God and received strength to pass without a word or look, dropping the biscuits as on the previous day. The man, however, proved less