As Ben-Hur descended the steps of the stand, an Arab arose upon the
last one at the foot, and cried out,
“Men of the East and West—hearken! The good Sheik Ilderim giveth
greeting. With four horses, sons of the favorites of Solomon the Wise,
he hath come up against the best. Needs he most a mighty man to drive
them. Whoso will take them to his satisfaction, to him he promiseth
enrichment forever. Here—there—in the city and in the Circuses, and
wherever the strong most do congregate, tell ye this his offer. So
saith my master, Sheik Ilderim the Generous.”
The proclamation awakened a great buzz among the people under the
awning. By night it would be repeated and discussed in all the sporting
circles of Antioch. Ben-Hur, hearing it, stopped and looked
hesitatingly from the herald to the sheik. Malluch thought he was about
to accept the offer, but was relieved when he presently turned to him,
and asked, “Good Malluch, where to now?”
The worthy replied, with a laugh, “Would you liken yourself to others
visiting the Grove for the first time, you will straightway to hear
your fortune told.”
“My fortune, said you? Though the suggestion has in it a flavor of
unbelief, let us to the goddess at once.”
“Nay, son of Arrius, these Apollonians have a better trick than that.
Instead of speech with a Pythia or a Sibyl, they will sell you a plain
papyrus leaf, hardly dry from the stalk, and bid you dip it in the
water of a certain fountain, when it will show you a verse in which you
may hear of your future.”
The glow of interest departed from Ben-Hur’s face.
“There are people who have no need to vex themselves about their
future,” he said, gloomily.
“Then you prefer to go to the temples?”
“The temples are Greek, are they not?”
“They call them Greek.”
“The Hellenes were masters of the beautiful in art; but in architecture
they sacrificed variety to unbending beauty. Their temples are all
alike. How call you the fountain?”
“Castalia.”
“Oh! it has repute throughout the world. Let us thither.”
Malluch kept watch on his companion as they went, and saw that for the
moment at least his good spirits were out. To the people passing he
gave no attention; over the wonders they came upon there were no
exclamations; silently, even sullenly, he kept a slow pace.
The truth was, the sight of Messala had set Ben-Hur to thinking. It
seemed scarce an hour ago that the strong hands had torn him from his
mother, scarce an hour ago that the Roman had put seal upon the gates
of his father’s house. He recounted how, in the hopeless misery of the
life—if such it might be called—in the galleys, he had had little else
to do, aside from labor, than dream dreams of vengeance, in all of
which Messala was the principal. There might be, he used to say to
himself, escape for Gratus, but for Messala—never! And to strengthen
and harden his resolution, he was accustomed to repeat over and over,
Who pointed us out to the persecutors? And when I begged him for
help—not for myself—who mocked me, and went away laughing? And always
the dream had the same ending. The day I meet him, help me, thou good
God of my people!—help me to some fitting special vengeance!
And now the meeting was at hand.
Perhaps, if he had found Messala poor and suffering, Ben-Hur’s feeling
had been different; but it was not so. He found him more than
prosperous; in the prosperity there was a dash and glitter—gleam of sun
on gilt of gold.
So it happened that what Malluch accounted a passing loss of spirit was
pondering when the meeting should be, and in what manner he could make
it most memorable.
They turned after a while into an avenue of oaks, where the people were
going and coming in groups; footmen here, and horsemen; there women in
litters borne slaves; and now and then chariots rolled by thunderously.
At the end of the avenue the road, by an easy grade, descended into a
lowland, where, on the right hand, there was a precipitous facing of
gray rock, and on the left an open meadow of vernal freshness. Then
they came in view of the famous Fountain of Castalia.
Edging through a company assembled at the point, Ben-Hur beheld a jet
of sweet water pouring from the crest of a stone into a basin of black
marble, where, after much boiling and foaming, it disappeared as
through a funnel.
By the basin, under a small portico cut in the solid wall, sat a
priest, old, bearded, wrinkled, cowled—never being more perfectly
eremitish. From the manner of the people present, hardly might one say
which was the attraction, the fountain, forever sparkling, or the
priest, forever there. He heard, saw, was seen, but never spoke.
Occasionally a visitor extended a hand to him with a coin in it. With a
cunning twinkle of the eyes, he took the money, and gave the party in
exchange a leaf of papyrus.
The receiver made haste to plunge the papyrus into the basin; then,
holding the dripping leaf in the sunlight, he would be rewarded with a
versified inscription upon its face; and the fame of the fountain
seldom suffered loss by poverty of merit in the poetry. Before Ben-Hur
could test the oracle, some other visitors were seen approaching across
the meadow, and their appearance piqued the curiosity of the company,
his not less than theirs.
He saw first a camel, very tall and very white, in leading of a driver
on horseback. A houdah on the animal, besides being unusually large,
was of crimson and gold. Two other horsemen followed the camel with
tall spears in hand.
“What a wonderful camel!” said one of the company.
“A prince from afar,” another one suggested.
“More likely a king.”
“If he were on an elephant, I would say he was a king.”
A third man had a very different opinion.
“A camel—and a white camel!” he said, authoritatively. “By Apollo,
friends, they who come yonder—you can see there are two of them—are
neither kings nor princes; they are women!”
In the midst of the dispute the strangers arrived.
The camel seen at hand did not belie his appearance afar. A taller,
statelier brute of his kind no traveller at the fountain, though from
the remotest parts, had ever beheld. Such great black eyes! such
exceedingly fine white hair! feet so contractile when raised, so
soundless in planting, so broad when set!—nobody had ever seen the peer
of this camel. And how well he became his housing of silk, and all its
frippery of gold in fringe and gold in tassel! The tinkling of silver
bells went before him, and he moved lightly, as if unknowing of his
burden.
But who were the man and woman under the houdah?
Every eye saluted them with the inquiry.
If the former were a prince or a king, the philosophers of the crowd
might not deny the impartiality of Time. When they saw the thin,
shrunken face buried under an immense turban, the skin of the hue of a
mummy, making it impossible to form an idea of his nationality, they
were pleased to think the limit of life was for the great as well as
the small. They saw about his person nothing so enviable as the shawl
which draped him.
The woman was seated in the manner of the East, amidst veils and laces
of surpassing fineness. Above her elbows she wore armlets fashioned
like coiled asps, and linked to bracelets at the wrists by strands of
gold; otherwise the arms were bare and of singular natural grace,
complemented with hands modelled daintily as a child’s. One of the
hands rested upon the side of the carriage, showing tapered fingers
glittering with rings, and stained at the tips till they blushed like
the pink of mother-of-pearl. She wore an open caul upon her head,
sprinkled with beads of coral, and strung with coin-pieces called
sunlets, some of which were carried across her forehead, while others
fell down her back, half-smothered in the mass of her straight
blue-black hair, of itself an incomparable ornament, not needing the
veil which covered it, except as a protection against sun and dust.
From her elevated seat she looked upon the people calmly, pleasantly,
and apparently so intent upon studying them as to be unconscious of the
interest she herself was exciting; and, what was unusual—nay, in
violent contravention of the custom among women of rank in public—she
looked at them with an open face.
It was a fair face to see; quite youthful; in form, oval: complexion
not white, like the Greek; nor brunet, like the Roman; nor blond, like
the Gaul; but rather the tinting of the sun of the Upper Nile upon a
skin of such transparency that the blood shone through it on cheek and
brow with nigh the ruddiness of lamplight. The eyes, naturally large,
were touched along the lids with the black paint immemorial throughout
the East. The lips were slightly parted, disclosing, through their
scarlet lake, teeth of glistening whiteness. To all these excellences
of countenance the reader is finally besought to superadd the air
derived from the pose of a small head, classic in shape, set upon a
neck long, drooping, and graceful—the air, we may fancy, happily
described by the word queenly.
As if satisfied with the survey of people and locality, the fair
creature spoke to the driver—an Ethiopian of vast brawn, naked to the
waist—who led the camel nearer the fountain, and caused it to kneel;
after which he received from her hand a cup, and proceeded to fill it
at the basin. That instant the sound of wheels and the trampling of
horses in rapid motion broke the silence her beauty had imposed, and,
with a great outcry, the bystanders parted in every direction, hurrying
to get away.
“The Roman has a mind to ride us down. Look out!” Malluch shouted to
Ben-Hur, setting him at the same time an example of hasty flight.
The latter faced to the direction the sounds came from, and beheld
Messala in his chariot pushing the four straight at the crowd. This
time the view was near and distinct.
The parting of the company uncovered the camel, which might have been
more agile than his kind generally; yet the hoofs were almost upon him,
and he resting with closed eyes, chewing the endless cud with such
sense of security as long favoritism may be supposed to have bred in
him. The Ethiopian wrung his hands afraid. In the houdah, the old man
moved to escape; but he was hampered with age, and could not, even in
the face of danger, forget the dignity which was plainly his habit. It
was too late for the woman to save herself. Ben-Hur stood nearest them,
and he called to Messala,
“Hold! Look where thou goest! Back, back!”
The patrician was laughing in hearty good-humor; and, seeing there was
but one chance of rescue, Ben-Hur stepped in, and caught the bits of
the left yoke-steed and his mate. “Dog of a Roman! Carest thou so
little for life?” he cried, putting forth all his strength. The two
horses reared, and drew the others round; the tilting of the pole
tilted the chariot; Messala barely escaped a fall, while his complacent
Myrtilus rolled back like a clod to the ground. Seeing the peril past,
all the bystanders burst into derisive laughter.
The matchless audacity of the Roman then manifested itself. Loosing the
lines from his body, he tossed them to one side, dismounted, walked
round the camel, looked at Ben-Hur, and spoke partly to the old man and
partly to the woman.
“Pardon, I pray you—I pray you both. I am Messala,” he said; “and, by
the old Mother of the earth, I swear I did not see you or your camel!
As to these good people—perhaps I trusted too much to my skill. I
sought a laugh at them—the laugh is theirs. Good may it do them!”
The good-natured, careless look and gesture he threw the bystanders
accorded well with the speech. To hear what more he had to say, they
became quiet. Assured of victory over the body of the offended, he
signed his companion to take the chariot to a safer distance, and
addressed himself boldly to the woman.
“Thou hast interest in the good man here, whose pardon, if not granted
now, I shall seek with the greater diligence hereafter; his daughter, I
should say.”
She made him no reply.
“By Pallas, thou art beautiful! Beware Apollo mistake thee not for his
lost love. I wonder what land can boast herself thy mother. Turn not
away. A truce! a truce! There is the sun of India in thine eyes; in the
corners of thy mouth, Egypt hath set her love-signs. Perpol! Turn not
to that slave, fair mistress, before proving merciful to this one. Tell
me at least that I am pardoned.”
At this point she broke in upon him.
“Wilt thou come here?” she asked, smiling, and with gracious bend of
the head to Ben-Hur.
“Take the cup and fill it, I pray thee,” she said to the latter. “My
father is thirsty.”
“I am thy most willing servant!”
Ben-Hur turned about to do the favor, and was face to face with
Messala. Their glances met; the Jew’s defiant; the Roman’s sparkling
with humor.
“O stranger, beautiful as cruel!” Messala said, waving his hand to her.
“If Apollo get thee not, thou shalt see me again. Not knowing thy
country, I cannot name a god to commend thee to; so, by all the gods, I
will commend thee to—myself!”
Seeing that Myrtilus had the four composed and ready, he returned to
the chariot. The woman looked after him as he moved away, and whatever
else there was in her look, there was no displeasure. Presently she
received the water; her father drank; then she raised the cup to her
lips, and, leaning down, gave it to Ben-Hur; never action more graceful
and gracious.
“Keep it, we pray of thee! It is full of blessings—all thine!”
Immediately the camel was aroused, and on his feet, and about to go,
when the old man called,
“Stand thou here.”
Ben-Hur went to him respectfully.
“Thou hast served the stranger well to-day. There is but one God. In
his holy name I thank thee. I am Balthasar, the Egyptian. In the Great
Orchard of Palms, beyond the village of Daphne, in the shade of the
palms, Sheik Ilderim the Generous abideth in his tents, and we are his
guests. Seek us there. Thou shalt have welcome sweet with the savor of
the grateful.”
Ben-Hur was left in wonder at the old man’s clear voice and reverend
manner. As he gazed after the two departing, he caught sight of Messala
going as he had come, joyous, indifferent, and with a mocking laugh.