The Middy and the Moors: An Algerine Story, R. M. Ballantyne [most difficult books to read .TXT] 📗

Chapter Eight. A Severe Trial—Secret Communication under Difficulties, and Sudden Flight.

The devotion of our middy to the fine arts was so satisfactory in its results that Ben-Ahmed set him to work at various other apartments in his dwelling when the first drawing was nearly finished.

We say nearly finished, because, owing to some unaccountable whim, the Moor would not allow the first drawing to be completed. When Foster had finished a painting of the central court his master was so pleased with the way in which he had drawn and coloured the various shrubs and flowers which grew there, that he ordered him forthwith to commence a series of drawings of the garden from various points of view. In one of these Foster introduced such a life-like portrait of Peter the Great that Ben-Ahmed was charmed, and immediately gave orders to have most of his slaves portrayed while engaged in their various occupations.

In work of this kind many months were spent, for Foster was a painstaking worker. He finished all his paintings with minute care, having no capacity for off-hand or rapid sketching. During this period the engrossing nature of his work—of which he was extremely fond—tended to prevent his mind from dwelling too much on his condition of slavery, but it was chiefly the knowledge that Hester Sommers was under the same roof, and the expectation that at any moment he might encounter her, which reconciled him to his fate, and even made him cheerful under it.

But as week after week passed away, and month after month, without even a flutter of her dress being seen by him, his heart failed him again, and he began to fear that Ben-Ahmed’s son Osman might have returned and carried her off as his bride, or that she might have been sold to some rich Moor—even to the Dey himself! Of course his black friend comforted him with the assurance that Osman had not returned, and that Ben-Ahmed was not the man to sell a slave he was fond of; but such assurances did not afford him much comfort. His mind was also burdened with anxiety about his mother and sister.

He was sitting one day while in this state at an angle of the garden trying to devote his entire mind to the portrayal of a tree-fern, and vainly endeavouring to prevent Hester Sommers from coming between him and the paper, when he was summoned to attend upon Ben-Ahmed. As this was an event of by no means uncommon occurrence, he listlessly gathered up his materials and went into the house.

He found the Moor seated cross-legged on a carpet, smoking his hookah, with only a negress in attendance. His easel, he found, was already placed, and, to his surprise, he observed that the original drawing with which his career as a painter had commenced was placed upon it.

“I wish you to finish that picture by introducing a figure,” said Ben-Ahmed, with solemn gravity.

He spoke in Lingua Franca, which Foster understood pretty well by that time.

It now became evident to him why the drawing of the room had been left unfinished, and he thought it probable that modesty—or, perhaps, a difficulty in overcoming the Moslem’s dislike to being transferred to canvas at all—had caused the delay.

“In what attitude do you wish to be painted?” asked the middy, as he moved the easel a little, and took a professional, head-on-one-side look at his subject.

“In no attitude,” returned the Moor gravely.

“Pardon me,” said Foster in surprise. “Did you not say that—that—”

“I said that I wish you to finish the drawing by introducing a figure,” returned Ben-Ahmed, taking a long draw at the hookah.

“Just so—and may I ask—”

“The figure,” resumed the Moor, taking no notice of the interruption, “is to be one of my women slaves.”

Here he turned his head slightly and gave a brief order to the negress in waiting, who retired by the door behind her.

The middy stood silent for a minute or so, lost in wonder and expectation, when another door opened and a female entered. She was gorgeously dressed, and closely veiled, so that her face was entirely concealed; nevertheless, George Foster’s heart seemed to bound into his throat and half choke him, for he knew the size, air, and general effect of that female as well as if she had been his own mother.

The Moor rose, led her to a cushion, and bade her sit down. She did so with the grace of Venus, and then the Moor removed her veil—looking fixedly at the painter as he did so.

But the middy had recovered self-possession by that time. He was surprised as well as deeply concerned to observe that Hester’s beautiful face was very pale, and her eyes were red and swollen, as if from much crying, but not a muscle in his stolid countenance betrayed the slightest emotion. He put his head a little to one side, in the orthodox manner, and looked steadily at her. Then he looked at his painting and frowned as if considering the best spot in which to place this “figure.” Then he began to work.

Meanwhile the Moor sat down to smoke in such a position that he could see both painter and sitter.

It was a severe test of our middy’s capacity to act the “hyperkrite!” His heart was thumping at his ribs like a sledge-hammer anxious to get out. His hand trembled so that he could scarcely draw a line, and he was driven nearly mad with the necessity of presenting a calm, thoughtful exterior when the effervescence within, as he afterwards admitted, almost blew his head off like a champagne cork.

By degrees he calmed down, ceased breaking the point of his pencil, and used his india-rubber less frequently. Then he took to colour and the brush, and here the tide began to turn in his favour. Such a subject surely never before sat to painter since the world began! He became engrossed in his work. The eyes became intent, the hand steady, the heart regular, the whole man intense, while a tremendous frown and compressed lips told that he “meant business!”

Not less intense was the attention of the Moor. Of course we cannot tell what his thoughts were, but it seemed not improbable that his eccentric recklessness in violating all his Mohammedan habits and traditions as to the seclusion of women, by thus exposing Hester to the gaze of a young infidel, had aroused feelings of jealousy and suspicion, which were not natural to his kindly and un-Moorish cast of soul.

But while young Foster was employed in the application of his powers to energetic labour, the old Moor was engaged in the devotion of his powers to the consumption of smoke. The natural results followed. While the painter became more and more absorbed, so as to forget all around save his sitter and his work, the Moor became more and more devoted to his hookah, till he forgot all around save the soporific influences of smoke. An almost oppressive silence ensued, broken only by the soft puffing of Ben-Ahmed’s lips, and an occasional change in the attitude of the painter. And oh! how earnestly did that painter wish that Ben-Ahmed would retire—even for a minute—to give him a chance of exchanging a word or two with his subject.

But the Moor was steady as a rock. Indeed he was too steady, for the curtains of his eyes suddenly fell, and shut in the owlish glare with which he had been regarding the middy. At the same moment a sharp click and clatter sent an electric thrill to the hearts of all. The Moor’s mouthpiece had fallen on the marble floor! Ben-Ahmed picked it up and replaced it with severe gravity, yet a faint flicker of red in his cheek, and a very slight air of confusion, showed that even a magnificent Moor objects to be caught napping by his slaves.

This incident turned Foster’s thoughts into a new channel. If the Moor should again succumb to the demands of nature—or the influence of tobacco—how could he best make use of the opportunity? It was a puzzling question. To speak—in a whisper or otherwise—was not to be thought of. Detection would follow almost certainly. The dumb alphabet would have been splendid, though dangerous, but neither he nor Hester understood it. Signs might do. He would try signs, though he had never tried them before. What then? Did not “Never venture, never win,” “Faint heart never won,” etcetera, and a host of similar proverbs assure him that a midshipman, of all men, should “never say die.”

A few minutes more gave him the chance. Again the mouthpiece fell, but this time it dropped on the folds of the Moor’s dress, and in another minute steady breathing told that Ben-Ahmed was in the land of Nod—if not of dreams.

A sort of lightning change took place in the expressions of the young people. Hester’s face beamed with intelligence. Foster’s blazed with mute interrogation. The little maid clasped her little hands, gazed upwards anxiously, looked at the painter entreatingly, and glanced at the Moor dubiously.

Foster tried hard to talk to her “only with his eyes.” He even added some amazing motions of the lips which were meant to convey— “What’s the matter with you?” but they conveyed nothing, for Hester only shook her head and looked miserable.

A mild choke at that moment caused the maid to fall into statuesque composure, and the painter to put his frowning head tremendously to one side as he stepped back in order to make quite sure that the last touch was really equal, if not superior, to Michael Angelo himself!

The Moor resumed his mouthpiece with a suspicious glance at both slaves, and Foster, with the air of a man who feels that Michael was fairly overthrown, stepped forward to continue his work. Truly, if Peter the Great had been there at the time he might have felt that he also was fairly eclipsed in his own particular line!

Foster now became desperate, and his active mind began to rush wildly about in quest of useful ideas, while his steady hand pursued its labour until the Moor smoked himself into another slumber.

Availing himself of the renewed opportunity, the middy wrapped a small piece of pencil in a little bit of paper, and, with the reckless daring of a man who had boarded a pirate single-handed, flung it at his lady-love.

His aim was true—as that of a midshipman should be. The little bomb struck Hester on the nose and fell into her lap. She unrolled it quickly, and an expression of blank disappointment was the result, for the paper was blank and she had expected a communication. She looked up inquiringly, and beaming intelligence displaced the blank when she saw that Foster made as though he were writing large text on his drawing. She at once flattened the bit of paper on her knee—eyeing the Moor anxiously the while—and scribbled a few words on the paper.

A loud cough from Foster, followed by a violent sneeze, caused her to crush the paper in her hand and again become intensely statuesque. Prompt though she was, this would not have saved her from detection if the violence of Foster’s sneeze had not drawn the Moor’s first glance away from her and towards himself.

“Pardon me,” said the middy, with a deprecatory air, “a sneeze is sometimes difficult to repress.”

“Does painting give Englishmen colds?” asked the Moor sternly.

“Sometimes it does—especially if practised out of doors