Roman, if he lived, would still be capable and dangerous, and follow
him unrelentingly. Revenge remained to sweeten the ruined life;
therefore the clinging to fortune lost in the wager with Sanballat.
Ben-Hur ran the ground over, with a distinct foresight of the many ways
in which it would be possible for his enemy to interfere with him in
the work he had undertaken for the King who was coming. Why not he
resort to the Roman’s methods? The man hired to kill him could be hired
to strike back. It was in his power to offer higher wages. The
temptation was strong; and, half yielding, he chanced to look down at
his late antagonist lying still, with white upturned face, so like
himself. A light came to him, and he asked, “Thord, what was Messala to
give you for killing me?”
“A thousand sestertii.”
“You shall have them yet; and so you do now what I tell you, I will add
three thousand more to the sum.”
The giant reflected aloud,
“I won five thousand yesterday; from the Roman one—six. Give me four,
good Arrius—four more—and I will stand firm for you, though old Thor,
my namesake, strike me with his hammer. Make it four, and I will kill
the lying patrician, if you say so. I have only to cover his mouth with
my hand—thus.”
He illustrated the process by clapping his hand over his own mouth.
“I see,” said Ben-Hur; “ten thousand sestertii is a fortune. It will
enable you to return to Rome, and open a wine-shop near the Great
Circus, and live as becomes the first of the lanistae.”
The very scars on the giant’s face glowed afresh with the pleasure the
picture gave him.
“I will make it four thousand,” Ben-Hur continued; “and in what you
shall do for the money there will be no blood on your hands, Thord.
Hear me now. Did not your friend here look like me?”
“I would have said he was an apple from the same tree.”
“Well, if I put on his tunic, and dress him in these clothes of mine,
and you and I go away together, leaving him here, can you not get your
sestertii from Messala all the same? You have only to make him believe
it me that is dead.”
Thord laughed till the tears ran into his mouth.
“Ha, ha, ha! Ten thousand sestertii were never won so easily. And a
wine-shop by the Great Circus!—all for a lie without blood in it! Ha,
ha, ha! Give me thy hand, O son of Arrius. Get on now, and—ha, ha,
ha!—if ever you come to Rome, fail not to ask for the wine-shop of
Thord the Northman. By the beard of Irmin, I will give you the best,
though I borrow it from Cæsar!”
They shook hands again; after which the exchange of clothes was
effected. It was arranged then that a messenger should go at night to
Thord’s lodging-place with the four thousand sestertii. When they were
done, the giant knocked at the front door; it opened to him; and,
passing out of the atrium, he led Ben-Hur into a room adjoining, where
the latter completed his attire from the coarse garments of the dead
pugilist. They separated directly in the Omphalus.
“Fail not, O son of Arrius, fail not the wine-shop near the Great
Circus! Ha, ha, ha! By the beard of Irmin, there was never fortune
gained so cheap. The gods keep you!”
Upon leaving the atrium, Ben-Hur gave a last look at the myrmidon as he
lay in the Jewish vestments, and was satisfied. The likeness was
striking. If Thord kept faith, the cheat was a secret to endure
forever.
At night, in the house of Simonides, Ben-Hur told the good man all that
had taken place in the palace of Idernee; and it was agreed that, after
a few days, public inquiry should be set afloat for the discovery of
the whereabouts of the son of Arrius. Eventually the matter was to be
carried boldly to Maxentius; then, if the mystery came not out, it was
concluded that Messala and Gratus would be at rest and happy, and
Ben-Hur free to betake himself to Jerusalem, to make search for his
lost people.
At the leave-taking, Simonides sat in his chair out on the terrace
overlooking the river, and gave his farewell and the peace of the Lord
with the impressment of a father. Esther went with the young man to the
head of the steps.
“If I find my mother, Esther, thou shalt go to her at Jerusalem, and be
a sister to Tirzah.”
And with the words he kissed her.
Was it only a kiss of peace?
He crossed the river next to the late quarters of Ilderim, where he
found the Arab who was to serve him as guide. The horses were brought
out.
“This one is thine,” said the Arab.
Ben-Hur looked, and, lo! it was Aldebaran, the swiftest and brightest
of the sons of Mira, and, next to Sirius, the beloved of the sheik; and
he knew the old man’s heart came to him along with the gift.
The corpse in the atrium was taken up and buried by night; and, as part
of Messala’s plan, a courier was sent off to Gratus to make him at rest
by the announcement of Ben-Hur’s death—this time past question.
Ere long a wine-shop was opened near the Circus Maximus, with
inscription over the door:
THORD THE NORTHMAN.
BOOK SIXTH
“Is that a Death? and are there two?
Is Death that woman’s mate?
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man’s blood with cold.”
COLERIDGE.
CHAPTER I
Our story moves forward now thirty days from the night Ben-Hur left
Antioch to go out with Sheik Ilderim into the desert.
A great change has befallen—great at least as respects the fortunes of
our hero. _Valerius Gratus has been succeeded by Pontius Pilate!_
The removal, it may be remarked, cost Simonides exactly five talents
Roman money in hand paid to Sejanus, who was then in height of power as
imperial favorite; the object being to help Ben-Hur, by lessening his
exposure while in and about Jerusalem attempting discovery of his
people. To such pious use the faithful servant put the winnings from
Drusus and his associates; all of whom, having paid their wagers,
became at once and naturally the enemies of Messala, whose repudiation
was yet an unsettled question in Rome.
Brief as the time was, already the Jews knew the change of rulers was
not for the better.
The cohorts sent to relieve the garrison of Antonia made their entry
into the city by night; next morning the first sight that greeted the
people resident in the neighborhood was the walls of the old Tower
decorated with military ensigns, which unfortunately consisted of busts
of the emperor mixed with eagles and globes. A multitude, in passion,
marched to Cæsarea, where Pilate was lingering, and implored him to
remove the detested images. Five days and nights they beset his palace
gates; at last he appointed a meeting with them in the Circus. When
they were assembled, he encircled them with soldiers; instead of
resisting, they offered him their lives, and conquered. He recalled the
images and ensigns to Cæsarea, where Gratus, with more consideration,
had kept such abominations housed during the eleven years of his reign.
The worst of men do once in a while vary their wickednesses by good
acts; so with Pilate. He ordered an inspection of all the prisons in
Judea, and a return of the names of the persons in custody, with a
statement of the crimes for which they had been committed. Doubtless,
the motive was the one so common with officials just installed—dread of
entailed responsibility; the people, however, in thought of the good
which might come of the measure, gave him credit, and, for a period,
were comforted. The revelations were astonishing. Hundreds of persons
were released against whom there were no accusations; many others came
to light who had long been accounted dead; yet more amazing, there was
opening of dungeons not merely unknown at the time by the people, but
actually forgotten by the prison authorities. With one instance of the
latter kind we have now to deal; and, strange to say, it occurred in
Jerusalem.
The Tower of Antonia, which will be remembered as occupying two thirds
of the sacred area on Mount Moriah, was originally a castle built by
the Macedonians. Afterwards, John Hyrcanus erected the castle into a
fortress for the defence of the Temple, and in his day it was
considered impregnable to assault; but when Herod came with his bolder
genius, he strengthened its walls and extended them, leaving a vast
pile which included every appurtenance necessary for the stronghold he
intended it to be forever; such as offices, barracks, armories,
magazines, cisterns, and last, though not least, prisons of all grades.
He levelled the solid rock, and tapped it with deep excavations, and
built over them; connecting the whole great mass with the Temple by a
beautiful colonnade, from the roof of which one could look down over
the courts of the sacred structure. In such condition the Tower fell at
last out of his hands into those of the Romans, who were quick to see
its strength and advantages, and convert it to uses becoming such
masters. All through the administration of Gratus it had been a
garrisoned citadel and underground prison terrible to revolutionists.
Woe when the cohorts poured from its gates to suppress disorder! Woe
not less when a Jew passed the same gates going in under arrest!
With this explanation, we hasten to our story.
The order of the new procurator requiring a report of the persons in
custody was received at the Tower of Antonia, and promptly executed;
and two days have gone since the last unfortunate was brought up for
examination. The tabulated statement, ready for forwarding, lies on the
table of the tribune in command; in five minutes more it will be on the
way to Pilate, sojourning in the palace up on Mount Zion.
The tribune’s office is spacious and cool, and furnished in a style
suitable to the dignity of the commandant of a post in every respect so
important. Looking in upon him about the seventh hour of the day, the
officer appears weary and impatient; when the report is despatched, he
will to the roof of the colonnade for air and exercise, and the
amusement to be had watching the Jews over in the courts of the Temple.
His subordinates and clerks share his impatience.
In the spell of waiting a man appeared in a doorway leading to an
adjoining apartment. He rattled a bunch of keys, each heavy as a
hammer, and at once attracted the chief’s attention.
“Ah, Gesius! come in,” the tribune said.
As the new-comer approached the table behind which the chief sat in an
easy-chair, everybody present looked at him, and, observing a certain
expression of alarm and mortification on his face, became silent that
they might hear what he had to say.
“O tribune!” he began, bending low, “I fear to tell what now I bring
you.”
“Another mistake—ha, Gesius?”
“If I could persuade myself it is but a mistake, I would not be
afraid.”
“A crime then—or, worse, a breach of duty. Thou mayst laugh at Cæsar,
or curse the gods, and live; but if the offence be to the eagles—ah,
thou knowest, Gesius—go on!”
“It is now about eight years since Valerius Gratus selected me to be
keeper of prisoners here in the Tower,” said the man, deliberately. “I
remember the morning I entered upon the duties of my office. There had
been a riot the day before, and fighting in the streets. We slew many
Jews, and suffered on our side. The affair came, it was said, of an
attempt to assassinate Gratus, who had been knocked from his horse by a
tile thrown from a roof. I found him sitting where you now sit, O
tribune, his head swathed in bandages. He told me of my selection, and
gave me these keys, numbered to correspond with the numbers of the
cells; they were the badges of my office, he said, and not to be parted
with. There was a roll of parchment on the table. Calling me to him, he
opened the roll. ‘Here are maps of the cells,’ said he. There were
three of them. ‘This one,’ he went on, ‘shows the arrangement of the
upper floor; this second one gives you the second floor; and this last
is of the lower floor. I give them to you in trust.’ I took them from
his hand, and he said, further, ‘Now you have the keys and the maps; go
immediately, and acquaint yourself with the whole arrangement; visit
each cell, and see to its condition. When anything is needed for the
security of a prisoner, order it according to your judgment, for you
are the master under me, and no other.’
“I saluted him, and turned to go away; he called me back. ‘Ah, I
forgot,’ he said. ‘Give me the map of the third floor.’ I gave it to
him, and he spread it upon the table. ‘Here, Gesius,’ he said, ‘see
this cell.’ He laid his finger on the one numbered V. ‘There are three
men confined in that cell, desperate characters, who by some means got
hold of a state secret, and suffer for their curiosity, which’—he
looked at me severely—‘in such matters is worse than a crime.
Accordingly, they are blind and tongueless, and are placed there for
life. They shall have nothing but food and drink, to be given them
through a hole, which you will find in the wall covered by a slide. Do
you hear, Gesius?’ I made him answer. ‘It is well,’ he continued. ‘One
thing more which you shall not forget, or’—he looked at me
threateningly—‘The door of their cell—cell number V. on the same
floor—this one, Gesius’—he put his finger on the particular cell to
impress my memory—‘shall never be opened for any purpose, neither to
let one in nor out, not even yourself.’ ‘But if they die?’ I asked. ‘If
they die,’ he said, ‘the cell shall be their tomb. They were put there
to die, and be lost. The cell is leprous. Do you understand?’ With that
he let me go.”
Gesius stopped, and from the breast of his tunic drew three parchments,
all much yellowed by time and use; selecting one of them, he spread it
upon the table before the tribune, saying, simply, “This is the lower
floor.”
The whole company looked at
THE MAP
__________________________________________
| |
| Passage |
| |
|--][---+---][---+---][---+---][---+---][--|
| | | | | |
| V | IV | III | II | I |
|_______|________|________|________|_______|
“This is exactly, O tribune, as I had it from Gratus. See, there is
cell number V.,” said Gesius.
“I see,” the tribune replied. “Go on now. The cell was leprous, he
said.”
“I would like to ask you a question,” remarked the keeper, modestly.
The tribune assented.
“Had I not a right, under the circumstances, to believe the map a true
one?”
“What else couldst thou?”
“Well, it is not a true one.”
The chief looked up surprised.
“It is not a true one,” the keeper repeated. “It shows but five cells
upon that floor, while there are six.”
“Six, sayest thou?”
“I will show you the floor as it is—or as I believe it to be.”
Upon a page of his tablets, Gesius drew the following diagram, and gave
it to the tribune:
__________________________________________
| |
|--][---+---][---+---][---+---][---+---][--|
| | | | | |
| V | IV | III | II | I |
|--][---+--------+--------+--------+-------|
| VI |
|__________________________________________|
“Thou hast done well,” said the tribune, examining the drawing, and
thinking the narrative at an end. “I will have the map corrected, or,
better, I will have a new one made, and given thee. Come for it in the
morning.”
So saying, he arose.
“But hear me further, O tribune.”
“To-morrow, Gesius, to-morrow.”
“That which I have yet to tell will not wait.”
The tribune good-naturedly resumed his chair.
“I will hurry,” said the keeper, humbly, “only let me ask another
question. Had I not a right to believe Gratus in what he further told
me as to the prisoners in cell number V.?”
“Yes, it was thy duty to believe there were three prisoners in the
cell—prisoners of state—blind and without tongues.”
“Well,” said the keeper, “that was not true either.”
“No!” said the tribune, with returning interest.
“Hear, and judge for yourself, O tribune. As required, I visited all
the cells, beginning with those on the first floor, and ending with
those on the lower. The order that the door of number V. should not be
opened had been respected; through all the eight years food and drink
for three men had been passed through a hole in the wall. I went to the
door yesterday, curious to see the wretches who, against all
expectation, had lived so long. The locks refused the key. We pulled a
little, and the door fell down, rusted from its hinges. Going in, I
found but one man, old, blind, tongueless, and naked. His hair dropped
in stiffened mats below his waist. His skin was like the parchment
there. He held his hands out, and the finger-nails curled and twisted
like the claws of a bird. I asked him where his companions were. He
shook his head in denial. Thinking to find the others, we searched the
cell. The floor was dry; so were the walls. If three men had been shut
in there, and two of them had died, at least their bones would have
endured.”
“Wherefore thou thinkest—”
“I think, O tribune, there has been but one prisoner there in the eight
years.”
The chief regarded the keeper sharply, and said, “Have a care; thou art
more than saying Valerius lied.”
Gesius bowed, but said, “He might have been mistaken.”
“No, he was right,” said the tribune, warmly. “By thine own statement
he was right. Didst thou not say but now that for eight years food and
drink had been furnished three men?”
The bystanders approved the shrewdness of their chief; yet Gesius did
not seem discomfited.
“You have but half the story, O tribune. When you have it all, you will
agree with me. You know what I did with the man: that I sent him to the
bath, and had him shorn and clothed, and then took him to the gate of
the Tower, and bade him go free. I washed my hands of him. To-day he
came back, and was brought to me. By signs and tears he at last made me
understand he wished to return to his cell, and I so ordered. As they
were leading him off, he broke away and kissed my feet, and, by piteous
dumb imploration, insisted I should go with him; and I went. The
mystery of the three men stayed in my mind. I was not satisfied about
it. Now I am glad I yielded to his entreaty.”
The whole company at this point became very still.
“When we were in the cell again, and the prisoner knew it, he caught my
hand eagerly, and led me to a hole like that through which we were
accustomed to pass him his food. Though large enough to push your
helmet through, it escaped me yesterday. Still holding my hand, he put
his face to the hole and gave a beast-like cry. A sound came faintly
back. I was astonished, and drew him away, and called out, ‘Ho, here!’
At first there was no answer. I called again, and received back these
words, ‘Be thou praised, O Lord!’ Yet more astonishing, O tribune, the
voice was a woman’s. And I asked, ‘Who are you?’ and had reply, ‘A
woman of Israel, entombed here with her daughter. Help us quickly, or
we die.’ I told them to be of cheer, and hurried here to know your
will.”
The tribune arose hastily.
“Thou wert right, Gesius,” he said, “and I see now. The map was a lie,
and so was the tale of the three men. There have been better Romans
than Valerius Gratus.”
“Yes,” said the keeper. “I gleaned from the prisoner that he had
regularly given the women of the food and drink he had received.”
“It is accounted for,” replied the tribune, and observing the
countenances of his friends, and reflecting how well it would be to
have witnesses, he added, “Let us rescue the women. Come all.”
Gesuis was pleased.
“We will have to pierce the wall,” he said. “I found where a door had
been, but it was filled solidly with stones and mortar.”
The tribune stayed to say to a clerk, “Send workmen after me with
tools. Make haste; but hold the report, for I see it will have to be
corrected.”
In a short time they were gone.
CHAPTER II
“A woman of Israel, entombed here with her daughter. Help us quickly,
or we die.”
Such was the reply Gesius, the keeper, had from the cell which appears
on his amended map as VI. The reader, when he observed the answer, knew
who the unfortunates were, and, doubtless, said to himself, “At last
the mother of Ben-Hur, and Tirzah, his sister!”
And so it was.
The morning of their seizure, eight years before, they had been carried
to the Tower, where Gratus proposed to put them out of the way. He had
chosen the Tower for the purpose as more immediately in his own
keeping, and cell VI. because, first, it could be better lost than any
other; and, secondly, it was infected with leprosy; for these prisoners
were not merely to be put in a safe place, but in a place to die. They
were, accordingly, taken down by slaves in the night-time, when there
were no witnesses of the deed; then, in completion of the savage task,
the same slaves walled up the door, after which they were themselves
separated, and sent away never to be heard of more. To save accusation,
and, in the event of discovery, to leave himself such justification as
might be allowed in a distinction between the infliction of a
punishment and the commission of a double murder, Gratus preferred
sinking his victims where natural death was certain, though slow. That
they might linger along, he selected a convict who had been made blind
and tongueless, and sank him in the only connecting cell, there to
serve them with food and drink. Under no circumstances could the poor
wretch tell the tale or identify either the prisoners or their
doomsman. So, with a cunning partly due to Messala, the Roman, under
color of punishing a brood of assassins, smoothed a path to
confiscation of the estate of the Hurs, of which no portion ever
reached the imperial coffers.
As the last step in the scheme, Gratus summarily removed the old keeper
of the prisons; not because he knew what had been done—for he did
not—but because, knowing the underground floors as he did, it would be
next to impossible to keep the transaction from him. Then, with
masterly ingenuity, the procurator had new maps drawn for delivery to a
new keeper, with the omission, as we have seen, of cell VI. The
instructions given the latter, taken with the omission on the map,
accomplished the design—the cell and its unhappy tenants were all alike
lost.
What may be thought of the life of the mother and daughter during the
eight years must have relation to their culture and previous habits.
Conditions are pleasant or grievous to us according to our
sensibilities. It is not extreme to say, if there was a sudden exit of
all men from the world, heaven, as prefigured in the Christian idea,
would not be a heaven to the majority; on the other hand, neither would
all suffer equally in the so-called Tophet. Cultivation has its
balances. As the mind is made intelligent, the capacity of the soul for
pure enjoyment is proportionally increased. Well, therefore, if it be
saved! If lost, however, alas that it ever had cultivation! its
capacity for enjoyment in the one case is the measure of its capacity
to suffer in the other. Wherefore repentance must be something more
than mere remorse for sins; it comprehends a change of nature befitting
heaven.
We repeat, to form an adequate idea of the suffering endured by the
mother of Ben-Hur, the reader must think of her spirit and its
sensibilities as much as, if not more than, of the conditions of the
immurement; the question being, not what the conditions were, but how
she was affected by them. And now we may be permitted to say it was in
anticipation of this thought that the scene in the summer-house on the
roof of the family palace was given so fully in the beginning of the
Second Book of our story. So, too, to be helpful when the inquiry
should come up, we ventured the elaborate description of the palace of
the Hurs.
In other words, let the serene, happy, luxurious life in the princely
house be recalled and contrasted with this existence in the lower
dungeon of the Tower of Antonia; then if the reader, in his effort to
realize the misery of the woman, persists in mere reference to
conditions physical, he cannot go amiss; as he is a lover of his kind,
tender of heart, he will be melted with much sympathy. But will he go
further; will he more than sympathize with her; will he share her agony
of mind and spirit; will he at least try to measure it—let him recall
her as she discoursed to her son of God and nations and heroes; one
moment a philosopher, the next a teacher, and all the time a mother.
Would you hurt a man keenest, strike at his self-love; would you hurt a
woman worst, aim at her affections.
With quickened remembrance of these unfortunates—remembrance of them as
they were—let us go down and see them as they are.
The cell VI. was in form as Gesius drew it on his map. Of its
dimensions but little idea can be had; enough that it was a roomy,
roughened interior, with ledged and broken walls and floor.
In the beginning, the site of the Macedonian Castle was separated from
the site of the Temple by a narrow but deep cliff somewhat in shape of
a wedge. The workmen, wishing to hew out a series of chambers, made
their entry in the north face of the cleft, and worked in, leaving a
ceiling of the natural stone; delving farther, they executed the cells
V., IV., III., II., I., with no connection with number VI. except
through number V. In like manner, they constructed the passage and
stairs to the floor above. The process of the work was precisely that
resorted to in carving out the Tombs of the Kings, yet to be seen a
short distance north of Jerusalem; only when the cutting was done, cell
VI. was enclosed on its outer side by a wall of prodigious stones, in
which, for ventilation, narrow apertures were left bevelled like modern
port-holes. Herod, when he took hold of the Temple and Tower, put a
facing yet more massive upon this outer wall, and shut up all the
apertures but one, which yet admitted a little vitalizing air, and a
ray of light not nearly strong enough to redeem the room from darkness.
Such was cell VI.
Startle not now!
The description of the blind and tongueless wretch just liberated from
cell V. may be accepted to break the horror of what is coming.
The two women are grouped close by the aperture; one is seated, the
other is half reclining against her; there is nothing between them and
the bare rock. The light, slanting upwards, strikes them with ghastly
effect, and we cannot avoid seeing they are without vesture or
covering. At the same time we are helped to the knowledge that love is
there yet, for the two are in each other’s arms. Riches take wings,
comforts vanish, hope withers away, but love stays with us. Love is
God.
Where the two are thus grouped the stony floor is polished shining
smooth. Who shall say how much of the eight years they have spent in
that space there in front of the aperture, nursing their hope of rescue
by that timid yet friendly ray of light? When the brightness came
creeping in, they knew it was dawn; when it began to fade, they knew
the world was hushing for the night, which could not be anywhere so
long and utterly dark as with them. The world! Through that crevice, as
if it were broad and high as a king’s gate, they went to the world in
thought, and passed the weary time going up and down as spirits go,
looking and asking, the one for her son, the other for her brother. On
the seas they sought him, and on the islands of the seas; to-day he was
in this city, to-morrow in that other; and everywhere, and at all
times, he was a flitting sojourner; for, as they lived waiting for him,
he lived looking for them. How often their thoughts passed each other
in the endless search, his coming, theirs going! It was such sweet
flattery for them to say to each other, “While he lives, we shall not
be forgotten; as long as he remembers us, there is hope!” The strength
one can eke from little, who knows till he has been subjected to the
trial?
Our recollections of them in former days enjoin us to be respectful;
their sorrows clothe them with sanctity. Without going too near, across
the dungeon, we see they have undergone a change of appearance not to
be accounted for by time or long confinement. The mother was beautiful
as a woman, the daughter beautiful as a child; not even love could say
so much now. Their hair is long, unkempt, and strangely white; they
make us shrink and shudder with an indefinable repulsion, though the
effect may be from an illusory glozing of the light glimmering dismally
through the unhealthy murk; or they may be enduring the tortures of
hunger and thirst, not having had to eat or drink since their servant,
the convict, was taken away—that is, since yesterday.
Tirzah, reclining against her mother in half embrace, moans piteously.
“Be quiet, Tirzah. They will come. God is good. We have been mindful of
him, and forgotten not to pray at every sounding of the trumpets over
in the Temple. The light, you see, is still bright; the sun is standing
in the south sky yet, and it is hardly more than the seventh hour.
Somebody will come to us. Let us have faith. God is good.”
Thus the mother. The words were simple and effective, although, eight
years being now to be added to the thirteen she had attained when last
we saw her, Tirzah was no longer a child.
“I will try and be strong, mother,” she said. “Your suffering must be
as great as mine; and I do so want to live for you and my brother! But
my tongue burns, my lips scorch. I wonder where he is, and if he will
ever, ever find us!”
There is something in the voices that strikes us singularly—an
unexpected tone, sharp, dry, metallic, unnatural.
The mother draws the daughter closer to her breast, and says, “I
dreamed about him last night, and saw him as plainly, Tirzah, as I see
you. We must believe in dreams, you know, because our fathers did. The
Lord spoke to them so often in that way. I thought we were in the
Women’s Court just before the Gate Beautiful; there were many women
with us; and he came and stood in the shade of the Gate, and looked
here and there, at this one and that. My heart beat strong. I knew he
was looking for us, and stretched my arms to him, and ran, calling him.
He heard me and saw me, but he did not know me. In a moment he was
gone.”
“Would it not be so, mother, if we were to meet him in fact? We are so
changed.”
“It might be so; but—” The mother’s head droops, and her face knits as
with a wrench of pain; recovering, however, she goes on—“but we could
make ourselves known to him.”
Tirzah tossed her arms, and moaned again.
“Water, mother, water, though but a drop.”
The mother stares around in blank helplessness. She has named God so
often, and so often promised in his name, the repetition is beginning
to have a mocking effect upon herself. A shadow passes before her
dimming the dim light, and she is brought down to think of death as
very near, waiting to come in as her faith goes out. Hardly knowing
what she does, speaking aimlessly, because speak she must, she says
again,
“Patience, Tirzah; they are coming—they are almost here.”
She thought she heard a sound over by the little trap in the
partition-wall through which they held all their actual communication
with the world. And she was not mistaken. A moment, and the cry of the
convict rang through the cell. Tirzah heard it also; and they both
arose, still keeping hold of each other.
“Praised be the Lord forever!” exclaimed the mother, with the fervor of
restored faith and hope.
“Ho, there!” they heard next; and then, “Who are you?”
The voice was strange. What matter? Except from Tirzah, they were the
first and only words the mother had heard in eight years. The revulsion
was mighty—from death to life—and so instantly!
“A woman of Israel, entombed here with her daughter. Help us quickly,
or we die.”
“Be of cheer. I will return.”
The women sobbed aloud. They were found; help was coming. From wish to
wish hope flew as the twittering swallows fly. They were found; they
would be released. And restoration would follow—restoration to all they
had lost—home, society, property, son and brother! The scanty light
glozed them with the glory of day, and, forgetful of pain and thirst
and hunger, and of the menace of death, they sank upon the floor and
cried, keeping fast hold of each other the while.
And this time they had not long to wait. Gesius, the keeper, told his
tale methodically, but finished it at last. The tribune was prompt.
“Within there!” he shouted through the trap.
“Here!” said the mother, rising.
Directly she heard another sound in another place, as of blows on the
wall—blows quick, ringing, and delivered with iron tools. She did not
speak, nor did Tirzah, but they listened, well knowing the meaning of
it all—that a way to liberty was being made for them. So men a long
time buried in deep mines hear the coming of rescuers, heralded by
thrust of bar and beat of pick, and answer gratefully with
heart-throbs, their eyes fixed upon the spot whence the sounds proceed;
and they cannot look away, lest the work should cease, and they be
returned to despair.
The arms outside were strong, the hands skillful, the will good. Each
instant the blows sounded more plainly; now and then a piece fell with
a crash; and liberty came nearer and nearer. Presently the workmen
could be heard speaking. Then—O happiness!—through a crevice flashed a
red ray of torches. Into the darkness it cut incisive as diamond
brilliance, beautiful as if from a spear of the morning.
“It is he, mother, it is he! He has found us at last!” cried Tirzah,
with the quickened fancy of youth.
But the mother answered meekly, “God is good!”
A block fell inside, and another—then a great mass, and the door was
open. A man grimed with mortar and stone-dust stepped in, and stopped,
holding a torch over his head. Two or three others followed with
torches, and stood aside for the tribune to enter.
Respect for women is not all a conventionality, for it is the best
proof of their proper nature. The tribune stopped, because they fled
from him—not with fear, be it said, but shame; nor yet, O reader, from
shame alone! From the obscurity of their partial hiding he heard these
words, the saddest, most dreadful, most utterly despairing of the human
tongue:
“Come not near us—unclean, unclean!”
The men flared their torches while they stared at each other.
“Unclean, unclean!” came from the corner again, a slow tremulous wail
exceedingly sorrowful. With such a cry we can imagine a spirit
vanishing from the gates of Paradise, looking back the while.
So the widow and mother performed her duty, and in the moment realized
that the freedom she had prayed for and dreamed of, fruit of scarlet
and gold seen afar, was but an apple of Sodom in the hand.
SHE AND TIRZAH WERE—LEPERS!
Possibly the reader does not know all the word means. Let him be told
it with reference to the Law of that time, only a little modified in
this.
“These four are accounted as dead—the blind, the leper, the poor, and
the childless.” Thus the Talmud.
That is, to be a leper was to be treated as dead—to be excluded from
the city as a corpse; to be spoken to by the best beloved and most
loving only at a distance; to dwell with none but lepers; to be utterly
unprivileged; to be denied the rites of the Temple and the synagogue;
to go about in rent garments and with covered mouth, except when
crying, “Unclean, unclean!” to find home in the wilderness or in
abandoned tombs; to become a materialized specter of Hinnom and
Gehenna; to be at all times less a living offence to others than a
breathing torment to self; afraid to die, yet without hope except in
death.
Once—she might not tell the day or the year, for down in the haunted
hell even time was lost—once the mother felt a dry scurf in the palm of
her right hand, a trifle which she tried to wash away. It clung to the
member pertinaciously; yet she thought but little of the sign till
Tirzah complained that she, too, was attacked in the same way. The
supply of water was scant, and they denied themselves drink that they
might use it as a curative. At length the whole hand was attacked; the
skin cracked open, the fingernails loosened from the flesh. There was
not much pain withal, chiefly a steadily increasing discomfort. Later
their lips began to parch and seam. One day the mother, who was cleanly
to godliness, and struggled against the impurities of the dungeon with
all ingenuity, thinking the enemy was taking hold on Tirzah’s face, led
her to the light, and, looking with the inspiration of a terrible
dread, lo! the young girl’s eyebrows were white as snow.
Oh, the anguish of that assurance!
The mother sat awhile speechless, motionless, paralyzed of soul, and
capable of but one thought—leprosy, leprosy!
When she began to think, mother-like, it was not of herself, but her
child, and, mother-like, her natural tenderness turned to courage, and
she made ready for the last sacrifice of perfect heroism. She buried
her knowledge in her heart; hopeless herself, she redoubled her
devotion to Tirzah, and with wonderful ingenuity—wonderful chiefly in
its very inexhaustibility—continued to keep the daughter ignorant of
what they were beset with, and even hopeful that it was nothing. She
repeated her little games, and retold her stories, and invented new
ones, and listened with ever so much pleasure to the songs she would
have from Tirzah, while on her own wasting lips the psalms of the
singing king and their race served to bring soothing of forgetfulness,
and keep alive in them both the recollection of the God who would seem
to have abandoned them—the world not more lightly or utterly.
Slowly, steadily, with horrible certainty, the disease spread, after a
while bleaching their heads white, eating holes in their lips and
eyelids, and covering their bodies with scales; then it fell to their
throats shrilling their voices, and to their joints, hardening the
tissues and cartilages—slowly, and, as the mother well knew, past
remedy, it was affecting their lungs and arteries and bones, at each
advance making the sufferers more and more loathsome; and so it would
continue till death, which might be years before them.
Another day of dread at length came—the day the mother, under impulsion
of duty, at last told Tirzah the name of their ailment; and the two, in
agony of despair, prayed that the end might come quickly.
Still, as is the force of habit, these so afflicted grew in time not
merely to speak composedly of their disease; they beheld the hideous
transformation of their persons as of course, and in despite clung to
existence. One tie to earth remained to them; unmindful of their own
loneliness, they kept up a certain spirit by talking and dreaming of
Ben-Hur. The mother promised reunion with him to the sister, and she to
the mother, not doubting, either of them, that he was equally faithful
to them, and would be equally happy of the meeting. And with the
spinning and respinning of this slender thread they found pleasure, and
excused their not dying. In such manner as we have seen, they were
solacing themselves the moment Gesius called them, at the end of twelve
hours’ fasting and thirst.
The torches flashed redly through the dungeon, and liberty was come.
“God is good,” the widow cried—not for what had been, O reader, but for
what was. In thankfulness for present mercy, nothing so becomes us as
losing sight of past ills.
The tribune came directly; then in the corner to which she had fled,
suddenly a sense of duty smote the elder of the women, and straightway
the awful warning—
“Unclean, unclean!”
Ah, the pang the effort to acquit herself of that duty cost the mother!
Not all the selfishness of joy over the prospect could keep her blind
to the consequences of release, now that it was at hand. The old happy
life could never be again. If she went near the house called home, it
would be to stop at the gate and cry, “Unclean, unclean!” She must go
about with the yearnings of love alive in her breast strong as ever,
and more sensitive even, because return in kind could not be. The boy
of whom she had so constantly thought, and with all sweet promises such
as mothers find their purest delight in, must, at meeting her, stand
afar off. If he held out his hands to her, and called “Mother, mother,”
for very love of him she must answer, “Unclean, unclean!” And this
other child, before whom, in want of other covering, she was spreading
her long tangled locks, bleached unnaturally white—ah! that she was she
must continue, sole partner of her blasted remainder of life. Yet, O
reader, the brave woman accepted the lot, and took up the cry which had
been its sign immemorially, and which thenceforward was to be her
salutation without change—“Unclean, unclean!”
The tribune heard it with a tremor, but kept his place.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Two women dying of hunger and thirst. Yet”—the mother did not
falter—“come not near us, nor touch the floor or the wall. Unclean,
unclean!”
“Give me thy story, woman—thy name, and when thou wert put here, and by
whom, and for what.”
“There was once in this city of Jerusalem a Prince Ben-Hur, the friend
of all generous Romans, and who had Cæsar for his friend. I am his
widow, and this one with me is his child. How may I tell you for what
we were sunk here, when I do not know, unless it was because we were
rich? Valerius Gratus can tell you who our enemy was, and when our
imprisonment began. I cannot. See to what we have been reduced—oh, see,
and have pity!”
The air was heavy with the pest and the smoke of the torches, yet the
Roman called one of the torch-bearers to his side, and wrote the answer
nearly word for word. It was terse, and comprehensive, containing at
once a history, an accusation, and a prayer. No common person could
have made it, and he could not but pity and believe.
“Thou shalt have relief, woman,” he said, closing the tablets. “I will
send thee food and drink.”
“And raiment, and purifying water, we pray you, O generous Roman!”
“As thou wilt,” he replied.
“God is good,” said the widow, sobbing. “May his peace abide with you!”
“And, further,” he added, “I cannot see thee again. Make preparation,
and to-night I will have thee taken to the gate of the Tower, and set
free. Thou knowest the law. Farewell.”
He spoke to the men, and went out the door.
Very shortly some slaves came to the cell with a large gurglet of
water, a basin and napkins, a platter with bread and meat, and some
garments of women’s wear; and, setting them down within reach of the
prisoners, they ran away.
About the middle of the first watch, the two were conducted to the
gate, and turned into the street. So the Roman quit himself of them,
and in the city of their fathers they were once more free.
Up to the stars, twinkling merrily as of old, they looked; then they
asked themselves,
“What next? and where to?”
CHAPTER III
About the hour Gesius, the keeper, made his appearance before the
tribune in the Tower of Antonia, a footman was climbing the eastern
face of Mount Olivet. The road was rough and dusty, and vegetation on
that side burned brown, for it was the dry season in Judea. Well for
the traveller that he had youth and strength, not to speak of the cool,
flowing garments with which he was clothed.
He proceeded slowly, looking often to his right and left; not with the
vexed, anxious expression which marks a man going forward uncertain of
the way, but rather the air with which one approaches as old
acquaintance after a long separation—half of pleasure, half of inquiry;
as if he were saying, “I am glad to be with you again; let me see in
what you are changed.”
As he arose higher, he sometimes paused to look behind him over the
gradually widening view terminating in the mountains of Moab; but when
at length he drew near the summit, he quickened his step, unmindful of
fatigue, and hurried on without pause or turning of the face. On the
summit—to reach which he bent his steps somewhat right of the beaten
path—he came to a dead stop, arrested as if by a strong hand. Then one
might have seen his eyes dilate, his cheeks flush, his breath quicken,
effects all of one bright sweeping glance at what lay before him.
The traveller, good reader, was no other than Ben-Hur; the spectacle,
Jerusalem.
Not the Holy City of to-day, but the Holy City as left by Herod—the
Holy City of the Christ. Beautiful yet, as seen from old Olivet, what
must it have been then?
Ben-Hur betook him to a stone and sat down, and, stripping his head of
the close white handkerchief which served it for covering, made the
survey at leisure.
The same has been done often since by a great variety of persons, under
circumstances surpassingly singular—by the son of Vespasian, by the
Islamite, by the Crusader, conquerors all of them; by many a pilgrim
from the great New World, which waited discovery nearly fifteen hundred
years after the time of our story; but of the multitude probably not
one has taken that view with sensations more keenly poignant, more
sadly sweet, more proudly bitter, than Ben-Hur. He was stirred by
recollections of his countrymen, their triumphs and vicissitudes, their
history the history of God. The city was of their building, at once a
lasting testimony of their crimes and devotion, their weakness and
genius, their religion and their irreligion. Though he had seen Rome to
familiarity, he was gratified. The sight filled a measure of pride
which would have made him drunk with vainglory but for the thought,
princely as the property was, it did not any longer belong to his
countrymen; the worship in the Temple was by permission of strangers;
the hill where David dwelt was a marbled cheat—an office in which the
chosen of the Lord were wrung and wrung for taxes, and scourged for
very deathlessness of faith. These, however, were pleasures and griefs
of patriotism common to every Jew of the period; in addition, Ben-Hur
brought with him a personal history which would not out of mind for
other consideration whatever, which the spectacle served only to
freshen and vivify.
A country of hills changes but little; where the hills are of rock, it
changes not at all. The scene Ben-Hur beheld is the same now, except as
respects the city. The failure is in the handiwork of man alone.
The sun dealt more kindly by the west side of Olivet than by the east,
and men were certainly more loving towards it. The vines with which it
was partially clad, and the sprinkling of trees, chiefly figs and old
wild olives, were comparatively green. Down to the dry bed of the
Cedron the verdure extended, a refreshment to the vision; there Olivet
ceased and Moriah began—a wall of bluff boldness, white as snow,
founded by Solomon, completed by Herod. Up, up the wall the eye climbed
course by course of the ponderous rocks composing it—up to Solomon’s
Porch, which was as the pedestal of the monument, the hill being the
plinth. Lingering there a moment, the eye resumed its climbing, going
next to the Gentiles’ Court, then to the Israelites’ Court, then to the
Women’s Court, then to the Court of the Priests, each a pillared tier
of white marble, one above the other in terraced retrocession; over
them all a crown of crowns infinitely sacred, infinitely beautiful,
majestic in proportions, effulgent with beaten gold—lo! the Tent, the
Tabernacle, the Holy of Holies. The Ark was not there, but Jehovah
was—in the faith of every child of Israel he was there a personal
Presence. As a temple, as a monument, there was nowhere anything of
man’s building to approach that superlative apparition. Now, not a
stone of it remains above another. Who shall rebuild that building?
When shall the rebuilding be begun? So asks every pilgrim who has stood
where Ben-Hur was—he asks, knowing the answer is in the bosom of God,
whose secrets are not least marvellous in their well-keeping. And then
the third question, What of him who foretold the ruin which has so
certainly befallen? God? Or man of God? Or—enough that the question is
for us to answer.
And still Ben-Hur’s eyes climbed on and up—up over the roof of the
Temple, to the hill Zion, consecrated to sacred memories, inseparable
from the anointed kings. He knew the Cheesemonger’s Valley dipped deep
down between Moriah and Zion; that it was spanned by the Xystus; that
there were gardens and palaces in its depths; but over them all his
thoughts soared with his vision to the great grouping on the royal
hill—the house of Caiaphas, the Central Synagogue, the Roman
Praetorium, Hippicus the eternal, and the sad but mighty cenotaphs
Phasaelus and Mariamne—all relieved against Gareb, purpling in the
distance. And when midst them he singled out the palace of Herod, what
could he but think of the King Who Was Coming, to whom he was himself
devoted, whose path he had undertaken to smooth, whose empty hands he
dreamed of filling? And forward ran his fancy to the day the new King
should come to claim his own and take possession of it—of Moriah and
its Temple; of Zion and its towers and palaces; of Antonia, frowning
darkly there just to the right of the Temple; of the new unwalled city
of Bezetha; of the millions of Israel to assemble with palm-branches
and banners, to sing rejoicing because the Lord had conquered and given
them the world.
Men speak of dreaming as if it were a phenomenon of night and sleep.
They should know better. All results achieved by us are self-promised,
and all self-promises are made in dreams awake. Dreaming is the relief
of labor, the wine that sustains us in act. We learn to love labor, not
for itself, but for the opportunity it furnishes for dreaming, which is
the great under-monotone of real life, unheard, unnoticed, because of
its constancy. Living is dreaming. Only in the grave are there no
dreams. Let no one smile at Ben-Hur for doing that which he himself
would have done at that time and place under the same circumstances.
The sun stooped low in its course. Awhile the flaring disk seemed to
perch itself on the far summit of the mountains in the west, brazening
all the sky above the city, and rimming the walls and towers with the
brightness of gold. Then it disappeared as with a plunge. The quiet
turned Ben-Hur’s thought homeward. There was a point in the sky a
little north of the peerless front of the Holy of Holies upon which he
fixed his gaze: under it, straight as a leadline would have dropped,
lay his father’s house, if yet the house endured.
The mellowing influences of the evening mellowed his feelings, and,
putting his ambitions aside, he thought of the duty that was bringing
him to Jerusalem.
Out in the desert while with Ilderim, looking for strong places and
acquainting himself with it generally, as a soldier studies a country
in which he has projected a campaign, a messenger came one evening with
the news that Gratus was removed, and Pontius Pilate sent to take his
place.
Messala was disabled and believed him dead; Gratus was powerless and
gone; why should Ben-Hur longer defer the search for his mother and
sister? There was nothing to fear now. If he could not himself see into
the prisons of Judea, he could examine them with the eyes of others. If
the lost were found, Pilate could have no motive in holding them in
custody—none, at least, which could not be overcome by purchase. If
found, he would carry them to a place of safety, and then, in calmer
mind, his conscience at rest, this one first duty done, he could give
himself more entirely to the King Who Was Coming. He resolved at once.
That night he counselled with Ilderim, and obtained his assent. Three
Arabs came with him to Jericho, where he left them and the horses, and
proceeded alone and on foot. Malluch was to meet him in Jerusalem.
Ben-Hur’s scheme, be it observed, was as yet a generality.
In view of the future, it was advisable to keep himself in hiding from
the authorities, particularly the Romans. Malluch was shrewd and
trusty; the very man to charge with the conduct of the investigation.
Where to begin was the first point. He had no clear idea about it. His
wish was to commence with the Tower of Antonia. Tradition not of long
standing planted the gloomy pile over a labyrinth of prison-cells,
which, more even than the strong garrison, kept it a terror to the
Jewish fancy. A burial, such as his people had been subjected to, might
be possible there. Besides, in such a strait, the natural inclination
is to start search at the place where the loss occurred, and he could
not forget that his last sight of the loved ones was as the guard
pushed them along the street in the direction to the Tower. If they
were not there now, but had been, some record of the fact must remain,
a clew which had only to be followed faithfully to the end.
Under this inclination, moreover, there was a hope which he could not
forego. From Simonides he knew Amrah, the Egyptian nurse, was living.
It will be remembered, doubtless, that the faithful creature, the
morning the calamity overtook the Hurs, broke from the guard and ran
back into the palace, where, along with other chattels, she had been
sealed up. During the years following, Simonides kept her supplied; so
she was there now, sole occupant of the great house, which, with all
his offers, Gratus had not been able to sell. The story of its rightful
owners sufficed to secure the property from strangers, whether
purchasers or mere occupants. People going to and fro passed it with
whispers. Its reputation was that of a haunted house; derived probably
from the infrequent glimpses of poor old Amrah, sometimes on the roof,
sometimes in a latticed window. Certainly no more constant spirit ever
abided than she; nor was there ever a tenement so shunned and fitted
for ghostly habitation. Now, if he could get to her, Ben-Hur fancied
she could help him to knowledge which, though faint, might yet be
serviceable. Anyhow, sight of her in that place, so endeared by
recollection, would be to him a pleasure next to finding the objects of
his solicitude.
So, first of all things, he would go to the old house, and look for
Amrah.
Thus resolved, he arose shortly after the going-down of the sun, and
began descent of the Mount by the road which, from the summit, bends a
little north of east. Down nearly at the foot, close by the bed of the
Cedron, he came to the intersection with the road leading south to the
village of Siloam and the pool of that name. There he fell in with a
herdsman driving some sheep to market. He spoke to the man, and joined
him, and in his company passed by Gethsemane on into the city through
the Fish Gate.
CHAPTER IV
It was dark when, parting with the drover inside the gate, Ben-Hur
turned into a narrow lane leading to the south. A few of the people
whom he met saluted him. The bouldering of the pavement was rough. The
houses on both sides were low, dark, and cheerless; the doors all
closed: from the roofs, occasionally, he heard women crooning to
children. The loneliness of his situation, the night, the uncertainty
cloaking the object of his coming, all affected him cheerlessly. With
feelings sinking lower and lower, he came directly to the deep
reservoir now known as the Pool of Bethesda, in which the water
reflected the over-pending sky. Looking up, he beheld the northern wall
of the Tower of Antonia, a black frowning heap reared into the dim
steel-gray sky. He halted as if challenged by a threatening sentinel.
The Tower stood up so high, and seemed so vast, resting apparently upon
foundations so sure, that he was constrained to acknowledge its
strength. If his mother were there in living burial, what could he do
for her? By the strong hand, nothing. An army might beat the stony face
with ballista and ram, and be laughed at. Against him alone, the
gigantic southeast turret looked down in the self-containment of a
hill. And he thought, cunning is so easily baffled; and God, always the
last resort of the helpless—God is sometimes so slow to act!
In doubt and misgiving, he turned into the street in front of the
Tower, and followed it slowly on to the west.
Over in Bezetha he knew there was a khan, where it was his intention to
seek lodging while in the city; but just now he could not resist the
impulse to go home. His heart drew him that way.
The old formal salutation which he received from the few people who
passed him had never sounded so pleasantly. Presently, all the eastern
sky began to silver and shine, and objects before invisible in the
west—chiefly the tall towers on Mount Zion—emerged as from a shadowy
depth, and put on spectral distinctness, floating, as it were, above
the yawning blackness of the valley below, very castles in the air.
He came, at length, to his father’s house.
Of those who read this page, some there will be to divine his feelings
without prompting. They are such as had happy homes in their youth, no
matter how far that may have been back in time—homes which are now the
starting-points of all recollection; paradises from which they went
forth in tears, and which they would now return to, if they could, as
little children; places of laughter and singing, and associations
dearer than any or all the triumphs of after-life.
At the gate on the north side of the old house Ben-Hur stopped. In the
corners the wax used in the sealing-up was still plainly seen, and
across the valves was the board with the inscription—
“THIS IS THE PROPERTY OF
THE EMPEROR.”
Nobody had gone in or out the gate since the dreadful day of the
separation. Should he knock as of old? It was useless, he knew; yet he
could not resist the temptation. Amrah might hear, and look out of one
of the windows on that side. Taking a stone, he mounted the broad stone
step, and tapped three times. A dull echo replied. He tried again,
louder than before; and again, pausing each time to listen. The silence
was mocking. Retiring into the street, he watched the windows; but
they, too, were lifeless. The parapet on the roof was defined sharply
against the brightening sky; nothing could have stirred upon it unseen
by him, and nothing did stir.
From the north side he passed to the west, where there were four
windows which he watched long and anxiously, but with as little effect.
At times his heart swelled with impotent wishes; at others, he trembled
at the deceptions of his own fancy. Amrah made no sign—not even a ghost
stirred.
Silently, then, he stole round to the south. There, too, the gate was
sealed and inscribed. The mellow splendor of the August moon, pouring
over the crest of Olivet, since termed the Mount of Offence, brought
the lettering boldly out; and he read, and was filled with rage. All he
could do was to wrench the board from its nailing, and hurl it into the
ditch. Then he sat upon the step, and prayed for the New King, and that
his coming might be hastened. As his blood cooled, insensibly he
yielded to the fatigue of long travel in the summer heat, and sank down
lower, and, at last, slept.
About that time two women came down the street from the direction of
the Tower of Antonia, approaching the palace of the Hurs. They advanced
stealthily, with timid steps, pausing often to listen. At the corner of
the rugged pile, one said to the other, in a low voice,
“This is it, Tirzah!”
And Tirzah, after a look, caught her mother’s hand, and leaned upon her
heavily, sobbing, but silent.
“Let us go on, my child, because”—the mother hesitated and trembled;
then, with an effort to be calm, continued—“because when morning comes
they will put us out of the gate of the city to—return no more.”
Tirzah sank almost to the stones.
“Ah, yes!” she said, between sobs; “I forgot. I had the feeling of
going home. But we are lepers, and have no homes; we belong to the
dead!”
The mother stooped and raised her tenderly, saying, “We have nothing to
fear. Let us go on.”
Indeed, lifting their empty hands, they could have run upon a legion
and put it to flight.
And, creeping in close to the rough wall, they glided on, like two
ghosts, till they came to the gate, before which they also paused.
Seeing the board, they stepped upon the stone in the scarce cold tracks
of Ben-Hur, and read the inscription—“This is the Property of the
Emperor.”
Then the mother clasped her hands, and, with upraised eyes, moaned in
unutterable anguish.
“What now, mother? You scare me!”
And the answer was, presently, “Oh, Tirzah, the poor are dead! He is
dead!”
“Who, mother?”
“Your brother! They took everything from him—everything—even this
house!”
“Poor!” said Tirzah, vacantly.
“He will never be able to help us.”
“And then, mother?”
“To-morrow—to-morrow, my child, we must find a seat by the wayside, and
beg alms as the lepers do; beg, or—”
Tirzah leaned upon her again, and said, whispering, “Let us—let us
die!”
“No!” the mother said, firmly. “The Lord has appointed our times, and
we are believers in the Lord. We will wait on him even in this. Come
away!”
She caught Tirzah’s hand as she spoke, and hastened to the west corner
of the house, keeping close to the wall. No one being in sight there,
they kept on to the next corner, and shrank from the moonlight, which
lay exceedingly bright over the whole south front, and along a part of
the street. The mother’s will was strong. Casting one look back and up
to the windows on the west side, she stepped out into the light,
drawing Tirzah after her; and the extent of their affliction was then
to be seen—on their lips and cheeks, in their bleared eyes, in their
cracked hands; especially in the long, snaky locks, stiff with
loathsome ichor, and, like their eyebrows, ghastly white. Nor was it
possible to have told which was mother, which daughter; both alike
seemed witch-like old.
“Hist!” said the mother. “There is some one lying upon the step—a man.
Let us go round him.”
They crossed to the opposite side of the street quickly, and, in the
shade there, moved on till before the gate, where they stopped.
“He is asleep, Tirzah!”
The man was very still.
“Stay here, and I will try the gate.”
So saying, the mother stole noiselessly across, and ventured to touch
the wicket; she never knew if it yielded, for that moment the man
sighed, and, turning restlessly, shifted the handkerchief on his head
in such manner that the face was left upturned and fair in the broad
moonlight. She looked down at it and started; then looked again,
stooping a little, and arose and clasped her hands and raised her eyes
to heaven in mute appeal. An instant so, and she ran back to Tirzah.
“As the Lord liveth, the man is my son—thy brother!” she said, in an
awe-inspiring whisper.
“My brother?—Judah?”
The mother caught her hand eagerly.
“Come!” she said, in the same enforced whisper, “let us look at him
together—once more—only once—then help thou thy servants, Lord!”
They crossed the street hand in hand ghostly-quick, ghostly-still. When
their shadows fell upon him, they stopped. One of his hands was lying
out upon the step palm up. Tirzah fell upon her knees, and would have
kissed it; but the mother drew her back.
“Not for thy life; not for thy life! Unclean, unclean!” she whispered.
Tirzah shrank from him, as if he were the leprous one.
Ben-Hur was handsome as the manly are. His cheeks and forehead were
swarthy from exposure to the desert sun and air; yet under the light
mustache the lips were red, and the teeth shone white, and the soft
beard did not hide the full roundness of chin and throat. How beautiful
he appeared to the mother’s eyes! How mightily she yearned to put her
arms about him, and take his head upon her bosom and kiss him, as had
been her wont in his happy childhood! Where got she the strength to
resist the impulse? From her love, O, reader!—her mother-love, which,
if thou wilt observe well, hath this unlikeness to any other love:
tender to the object, it can be infinitely tyrannical to itself, and
thence all its power of self-sacrifice. Not for restoration to health
and fortune, not for any blessing of life, not for life itself, would
she have left her leprous kiss upon his cheek! Yet touch him she must;
in that instant of finding him she must renounce him forever! How
bitter, bitter hard it was, let some other mother say! She knelt down,
and, crawling to his feet, touched the sole of one of his sandals with
her lips, yellow though it was with the dust of the street—and touched
it again and again; and her very soul was in the kisses.
He stirred, and tossed his hand. They moved back, but heard him mutter
in his dream,
“Mother! Amrah! Where is—”
He fell off into the deep sleep.
Tirzah stared wistfully. The mother put her face in the dust,
struggling to suppress a sob so deep and strong it seemed her heart was
bursting. Almost she wished he might waken.
He had asked for her; she was not forgotten; in his sleep he was
thinking of her. Was it not enough?
Presently mother beckoned to Tirzah, and they arose, and taking one
more look, as if to print his image past fading, hand in hand they
recrossed the street. Back in the shade of the wall there, they retired
and knelt, looking at him, waiting for him to wake—waiting some
revelation, they knew not what. Nobody has yet given us a measure for
the patience of a love like theirs.
By-and-by, the sleep being yet upon him, another woman appeared at the
corner of the palace. The two in the shade saw her plainly in the
light; a small figure, much bent, dark-skinned, gray-haired, dressed
neatly in servant’s garb, and carrying a basket full of vegetables.
At sight of the man upon the step the new-comer stopped; then, as if
decided, she walked on—very lightly as she drew near the sleeper.
Passing round him, she went to the gate, slid the wicket latch easily
to one side, and put her hand in the opening. One of the broad boards
in the left valve swung ajar without noise. She put the basket through,
and was about to follow, when, yielding to curiosity, she lingered to
have one look at the stranger whose face was below her in open view.
The spectators across the street heard a low exclamation, and saw the
woman rub her eyes as if to renew their power, bend closer down, clasp
her hands, gaze wildly around, look at the sleeper, stoop and raise the
outlying hand, and kiss it fondly—that which they wished so mightily to
do, but dared not.
Awakened by the action, Ben-Hur instinctively withdrew the hand; as he
did so, his eyes met the woman’s.
“Amrah! O Amrah, is it thou?” he said.
The good heart made no answer in words, but fell upon his neck, crying
for joy.
Gently he put her arms away, and lifting the dark face wet with tears,
kissed it, his joy only a little less than hers. Then those across the
way heard him say,
“Mother—Tirzah—O Amrah, tell me of them! Speak, speak, I pray thee!”
Amrah only cried afresh.
“Thou has seen them, Amrah. Thou knowest where they are; tell me they
are at home.”
Tirzah moved, but her mother, divining her purpose, caught her and
whispered, “Do not go—not for life. Unclean, unclean!”
Her love was in tyrannical mood. Though both their hearts broke, he
should not become what they were; and she conquered.
Meantime, Amrah, so entreated, only wept the more.
“Wert thou going in?” he asked, presently, seeing the board swung back.
“Come, then. I will go with thee.” He arose as he spoke. “The Romans—be
the curse of the Lord upon them!—the Romans lied. The house is mine.
Rise, Amrah, and let us go in.” A moment and they were gone, leaving
the two in the shade to behold the gate staring blankly at them—the
gate which they might not ever enter more. They nestled together in the
dust.
They had done their duty.
Their love was proven.
Next morning they were found, and driven out the city with stones.
“Begone! Ye are of the dead; go to the dead!”
With the doom ringing in their ears, they went forth.
CHAPTER V
Nowadays travellers in the Holy Land looking for the famous place with
the beautiful name, the King’s Garden, descend the bed of the Cedron or
the curve of Gihon and Hinnom as far as the old well En-rogel, take a
drink of the sweet living water, and stop, having reached the limit of
the interesting in that direction. They look at the great stones with
which the well is curbed, ask its depth, smile at the primitive mode of
drawing the purling treasure, and waste some pity on the ragged wretch
who presides over it; then, facing about, they are enraptured with the
mounts Moriah and Zion, both of which slope towards them from the
north, one terminating in Ophel, the other in what used to be the site
of the city of David. In the background, up far in the sky, the
garniture of the sacred places is visible: here the Haram, with its
graceful dome; yonder the stalward remains of Hippicus, defiant even in
ruins. When that view has been enjoyed, and is sufficiently impressed
upon the memory, the travellers glance at the Mount of Offence standing
in rugged stateliness at their right hand, and then at the Hill of Evil
Counsel over on the left, in which, if they be well up in Scriptural
history and in the traditions rabbinical and monkish, they will find a
certain interest not to be overcome by superstitious horror.
It were long to tell all the points of interest grouped around that
hill; for the present purpose, enough that its feet are planted in the
veritable orthodox Hell of the moderns—the Hell of brimstone and
fire—in the old nomenclature Gehenna; and that now, as in the days of
Christ, its bluff face opposite the city on the south and southeast is
seamed and pitted with tombs which have been immemorially the
dwelling-places of lepers, not singly, but collectively. There they set
up their government and established their society; there they founded a
city and dwelt by themselves, avoided as the accursed of God.
The second morning after the incidents of the preceding chapter, Amrah
drew near the well En-rogel, and seated herself upon a stone. One
familiar with Jerusalem, looking at her, would have said she was the
favorite servant of some well-to-do family. She brought with her a
water-jar and a basket, the contents of the latter covered with a
snow-white napkin. Placing them on the ground at her side, she loosened
the shawl which fell from her head, knit her fingers together in her
lap, and gazed demurely up to where the hill drops steeply down into
Aceldama and the Potter’s Field.
It was very early, and she was the first to arrive at the well. Soon,
however, a man came bringing a rope and a leathern bucket. Saluting the
little dark-faced woman, he undid the rope, fixed it to the bucket, and
waited customers. Others who chose to do so might draw water for
themselves, he was a professional in the business, and would fill the
largest jar the stoutest woman could carry for a gerah.
Amrah sat still, and had nothing to say. Seeing the jar, the man asked
after a while if she wished it filled; she answered him civilly, “Not
now;” whereupon he gave her no more attention. When the dawn was fairly
defined over Olivet, his patrons began to arrive, and he had all he
could do to attend to them. All the time she kept her seat, looking
intently up at the hill.
The sun made its appearance, yet she sat watching and waiting; and
while she thus waits, let us see what her purpose is.
Her custom had been to go to market after nightfall. Stealing out
unobserved, she would seek the shops in the Tyropoeon, or those over by
the Fish Gate in the east, make her purchases of meat and vegetables,
and return and shut herself up again.
The pleasure she derived from the presence of Ben-Hur in the old house
once more may be imagined. She had nothing to tell him of her mistress
or Tirzah—nothing. He would have had her move to a place not so
lonesome; she refused. She would have had him take his own room again,
which was just as he had left it; but the danger of discovery was too
great, and he wished above all things to avoid inquiry. He would come
and see her often as possible. Coming in the night, he would also go
away in the night. She was compelled to be satisfied, and at once
occupied herself contriving ways to make him happy. That he was a man
now did not occur to her; nor did it enter her mind that he might have
put by or lost his boyish tastes; to please him, she thought to go on
her old round of services. He used to be fond of confections; she
remembered the things in that line which delighted him most, and
resolved to make them, and have a supply always ready when he came.
Could anything be happier? So next night, earlier than usual, she stole
out with her basket, and went over to the Fish Gate Market. Wandering
about, seeking the best honey, she chanced to hear a man telling a
story.
What the story was the reader can arrive at with sufficient certainty
when told that the narrator was one of the men who had held torches for
the commandant of the Tower of Antonia when, down in cell VI., the Hurs
were found. The particulars of the finding were all told, and she heard
them, with the names of the prisoners, and the widow’s account of
herself.
The feelings with which Amrah listened to the recital were such as
became the devoted creature she was. She made her purchases, and
returned home in a dream. What a happiness she had in store for her
boy! She had found his mother!
She put the basket away, now laughing, now crying. Suddenly she stopped
and thought. It would kill him to be told that his mother and Tirzah
were lepers. He would go through the awful city over on the Hill of
Evil Counsel—into each infected tomb he would go without rest, asking
for them, and the disease would catch him, and their fate would be his.
She wrung her hands. What should she do?
Like many a one before her, and many a one since, she derived
inspiration, if not wisdom, from her affection, and came to a singular
conclusion.
The lepers, she knew, were accustomed of mornings to come down from
their sepulchral abodes in the hill, and take a supply of water for the
day from the well En-rogel. Bringing their jars, they would set them on
the ground and wait, standing afar until they were filled. To that the
mistress and Tirzah must come; for the law was inexorable, and admitted
no distinction. A rich leper was no better than a poor one.
So Amrah decided not to speak to Ben-Hur of the story she had heard,
but go alone to the well and wait. Hunger and thirst would drive the
unfortunates thither, and she believed she could recognize them at
sight; if not, they might recognize her.
Meantime Ben-Hur came, and they talked much. To-morrow Malluch would
arrive; then the search should be immediately begun. He was impatient
to be about it. To amuse himself he would visit the sacred places in
the vicinity. The secret, we may be sure, weighed heavily on the woman,
but she held her peace.
When he was gone she busied herself in the preparation of things good
to eat, applying her utmost skill to the work. At the approach of day,
as signalled by the stars, she filled the basket, selected a jar, and
took the road to En-rogel, going out by the Fish Gate which was
earliest open, and arriving as we have seen.
Shortly after sunrise, when business at the well was most pressing, and
the drawer of water most hurried; when, in fact, half a dozen buckets
were in use at the same time, everybody making haste to get away before
the cool of the morning melted into the heat of the day, the tenantry
of the hill began to appear and move about the doors of their tombs.
Somewhat later they were discernible in groups, of which not a few were
children so young that they suggested the holiest relation. Numbers
came momentarily around the turn of the bluff—women with jars upon
their shoulders, old and very feeble men hobbling along on staffs and
crutches. Some leaned upon the shoulders of others; a few—the utterly
helpless—lay, like heaps of rags, upon litters. Even that community of
superlative sorrow had its love-light to make life endurable and
attractive. Distance softened without entirely veiling the misery of
the outcasts.
From her seat by the well Amrah kept watch upon the spectral groups.
She scarcely moved. More than once she imagined she saw those she
sought. That they were there upon the hill she had no doubt; that they
must come down and near she knew; when the people at the well were all
served they would come.
Now, quite at the base of the bluff there was a tomb which had more
than once attracted Amrah by its wide gaping. A stone of large
dimensions stood near its mouth. The sun looked into it through the
hottest hours of the day, and altogether it seemed uninhabitable by
anything living, unless, perchance, by some wild dogs returning from
scavenger duty down in Gehenna. Thence, however, and greatly to her
surprise, the patient Egyptian beheld two women come, one half
supporting, half leading, the other. They were both white-haired; both
looked old; but their garments were not rent, and they gazed about them
as if the locality were new. The witness below thought she even saw
them shrink terrified at the spectacle offered by the hideous
assemblage of which they found themselves part. Slight reasons,
certainly, to make her heart beat faster, and draw her attention to
them exclusively; but so they did.
The two remained by the stone awhile; then they moved slowly,
painfully, and with much fear towards the well, whereat several voices
were raised to stop them; yet they kept on. The drawer of water picked
up some pebbles, and made ready to drive them back. The company cursed
them. The greater company on the hill shouted shrilly, “Unclean,
unclean!”
“Surely,” thought Amrah of the two, as they kept coming—“surely, they
are strangers to the usage of lepers.”
She arose, and went to meet them, taking the basket and jar. The alarm
at the well immediately subsided.
“What a fool,” said one, laughing, “what a fool to give good bread to
the dead in that way!”
“And to think of her coming so far!” said another. “I would at least
make them meet me at the gate.”
Amrah, with better impulse, proceeded. If she should be mistaken! Her
heart arose into her throat. And the farther she went the more doubtful
and confused she became. Four or five yards from where they stood
waiting for her she stopped.
That the mistress she loved! whose hand she had so often kissed in
gratitude! whose image of matronly loveliness she had treasured in
memory so faithfully! And that the Tirzah she had nursed through
babyhood! whose pains she had soothed, whose sports she had shared!
that the smiling, sweet-faced, songful Tirzah, the light of the great
house, the promised blessing of her old age! Her mistress, her
darling—they? The soul of the woman sickened at the sight.
“These are old women,” she said to herself. “I never saw them before. I
will go back.”
She turned away.
“Amrah,” said one of the lepers.
The Egyptian dropped the jar, and looked back, trembling.
“Who called me?” she asked.
“Amrah.”
The servant’s wondering eyes settled upon the speaker’s face.
“Who are you?” she cried.
“We are they you are seeking.”
Amrah fell upon her knees.
“O my mistress, my mistress! As I have made your God my God, be he
praised that he has led me to you!”
And upon her knees the poor overwhelmed creature began moving forward.
“Stay, Amrah! Come not nearer. Unclean, unclean!”
The words sufficed. Amrah fell upon her face, sobbing so loud the
people at the well heard her. Suddenly she arose upon her knees again.
“O my mistress, where is Tirzah?”
“Here I am, Amrah, here! Will you not bring me a little water?”
The habit of the servant renewed itself. Putting back the coarse hair
fallen over her face, Amrah arose and went to the basket and uncovered
it.
“See,” she said, “here are bread and meat.”
She would have spread the napkin upon the ground, but the mistress
spoke again,
“Do not so, Amrah. Those yonder may stone you, and refuse us drink.
Leave the basket with me. Take up the jar and fill it, and bring it
here. We will carry them to the tomb with us. For this day you will
then have rendered all the service that is lawful. Haste, Amrah.”
The people under whose eyes all this had passed made way for the
servant, and even helped her fill the jar, so piteous was the grief her
countenance showed.
“Who are they?” a woman asked.
Amrah meekly answered, “They used to be good to me.”
Raising the jar upon her shoulder, she hurried back. In forgetfulness,
she would have gone to them, but the cry “Unclean, unclean! Beware!”
arrested her. Placing the water by the basket, she stepped back, and
stood off a little way.
“Thank you, Amrah,” said the mistress, taking the articles into
possession. “This is very good of you.”
“Is there nothing more I can do?” asked Amrah.
The mother’s hand was upon the jar, and she was fevered with thirst;
yet she paused, and rising, said firmly, “Yes, I know that Judah has
come home. I saw him at the gate night before last asleep on the step.
I saw you wake him.”
Amrah clasped her hands.
“O my mistress! You saw it, and did not come!”
“That would have been to kill him. I can never take him in my arms
again. I can never kiss him more. O Amrah, Amrah, you love him, I
know!”
“Yes,” said the true heart, bursting into tears again, and kneeling. “I
would die for him.”
“Prove to me what you say, Amrah.”
“I am ready.”
“Then you shall not tell him where we are or that you have seen us—only
that, Amrah.”
“But he is looking for you. He has come from afar to find you.”
“He must not find us. He shall not become what we are. Hear, Amrah. You
shall serve us as you have this day. You shall bring us the little we
need—not long now—not long. You shall come every morning and evening
thus, and—and”—the voice trembled, the strong will almost broke
down—“and you shall tell us of him, Amrah; but to him you shall say
nothing of us. Hear you?”
“Oh, it will be so hard to hear him speak of you, and see him going
about looking for you—to see all his love, and not tell him so much as
that you are alive!”
“Can you tell him we are well, Amrah?”
The servant bowed her head in her arms.
“No,” the mistress continued; “wherefore to be silent altogether. Go
now, and come this evening. We will look for you. Till then, farewell.”
“The burden will be heavy, O my mistress, and hard to bear,” said
Amrah, falling upon her face.
“How much harder would it be to see him as we are,” the mother answered
as she gave the basket to Tirzah. “Come again this evening,” she
repeated, taking up the water, and starting for the tomb.
Amrah waited kneeling until they had disappeared; then she took the
road sorrowfully home.
In the evening she returned; and thereafter it became her custom to
serve them in the morning and evening, so that they wanted for nothing
needful. The tomb, though ever so stony and desolate, was less
cheerless than the cell in the Tower had been. Daylight gilded its
door, and it was in the beautiful world. Then, one can wait death with
so much more faith out under the open sky.
CHAPTER VI
The morning of the first day of the seventh month—Tishri in the Hebrew,
October in English—Ben-Hur arose from his couch in the khan ill
satisfied with the whole world.
Little time had been lost in consultation upon the arrival of Malluch.
The latter began the search at the Tower of Antonia, and began it
boldly, by a direct inquiry of the tribune commanding. He gave the
officer a history of the Hurs, and all the particulars of the accident
to Gratus, describing the affair as wholly without criminality. The
object of the quest now, he said, was if any of the unhappy family were
discovered alive to carry a petition to the feet of Cæsar, praying
restitution of the estate and return to their civil rights. Such a
petition, he had no doubt, would result in an investigation by the
imperial order, a proceeding of which the friends of the family had no
fear.
In reply the tribune stated circumstantially the discovery of the women
in the Tower, and permitted a reading of the memorandum he had taken of
their account of themselves; when leave to copy it was prayed, he even
permitted that.
Malluch thereupon hurried to Ben-Hur.
It were useless to attempt description of the effect the terrible story
had upon the young man. The pain was not relieved by tears or
passionate outcries; it was too deep for any expression. He sat still a
long time, with pallid face and laboring heart. Now and then, as if to
show the thoughts which were most poignant, he muttered,
“Lepers, lepers! They—my mother and Tirzah—they lepers! How long, how
long, O Lord!”
One moment he was torn by a virtuous rage of sorrow, next by a longing
for vengeance which, it must be admitted, was scarcely less virtuous.
At length he arose.
“I must look for them. They may be dying.”
“Where will you look?” asked Malluch.
“There is but one place for them to go.”
Malluch interposed, and finally prevailed so far as to have the
management of the further attempt intrusted to him. Together they went
to the gate over on the side opposite the Hill of Evil Counsel,
immemorially the lepers’ begging-ground. There they stayed all day,
giving alms, asking for the two women, and offering rich rewards for
their discovery. So they did in repetition day after day through the
remainder of the fifth month, and all the sixth. There was diligent
scouring of the dread city on the hill by lepers to whom the rewards
offered were mighty incentives, for they were only dead in law. Over
and over again the gaping tomb down by the well was invaded, and its
tenants subjected to inquiry; but they kept their secret fast. The
result was failure. And now, the morning of the first day of the
seventh month, the extent of the additional information gained was that
not long before two leprous women had been stoned from the Fish Gate by
the authorities. A little pressing of the clew, together with some
shrewd comparison of dates, led to the sad assurance that the sufferers
were the Hurs, and left the old questions darker than ever. Where were
they? And what had become of them?
“It was not enough that my people should be made lepers,” said the son,
over and over again, with what intensity of bitterness the reader may
imagine; “that was not enough. Oh no! They must be stoned from their
native city! My mother is dead! she has wandered to the wilderness! she
is dead! Tirzah is dead! I alone am left. And for what? How long, O
God, thou Lord God of my fathers, how long shall this Rome endure?”
Angry, hopeless, vengeful, he entered the court of the khan, and found
it crowded with people come in during the night. While he ate his
breakfast, he listened to some of them. To one party he was specially
attracted. They were mostly young, stout, active, hardy men, in manner
and speech provincial. In their look, the certain indefinable air, the
pose of the head, glance of the eye, there was a spirit which did not,
as a rule, belong to the outward seeming of the lower orders of
Jerusalem; the spirit thought by some to be a peculiarity of life in
mountainous districts, but which may be more surely traced to a life of
healthful freedom. In a short time he ascertained they were Galileans,
in the city for various purposes, but chiefly to take part in the Feast
of Trumpets, set for that day. They became to him at once objects of
interest, as hailing from the region in which he hoped to find readiest
support in the work he was shortly to set about.
While observing them, his mind running ahead in thought of achievements
possible to a legion of such spirits disciplined after the severe Roman
style, a man came into the court, his face much flushed, his eyes
bright with excitement.
“Why are you here?” he said to the Galileans. “The rabbis and elders
are going from the Temple to see Pilate. Come, make haste, and let us
go with them.”
They surrounded him in a moment.
“To see Pilate! For what?”
“They have discovered a conspiracy. Pilate’s new aqueduct is to be paid
for with money of the Temple.”
“What, with the sacred treasure?”
They repeated the question to each other with flashing eyes.
“It is Corban—money of God. Let him touch a shekel of it if he dare!”
“Come,” cried the messenger. “The procession is by this time across the
bridge. The whole city is pouring after. We may be needed. Make haste!”
As if the thought and the act were one, there was quick putting away of
useless garments, and the party stood forth bareheaded, and in the
short sleeveless under-tunics they were used to wearing as reapers in
the field and boatmen on the lake—the garb in which they climbed the
hills following the herds, and plucked the ripened vintage, careless of
the sun. Lingering only to tighten their girdles, they said, “We are
ready.”
Then Ben-Hur spoke to them.
“Men of Galilee,” he said, “I am a son of Judah. Will you take me in
your company?”
“We may have to fight,” they replied.
“Oh, then, I will not be first to run away!”
They took the retort in good humor, and the messenger said, “You seem
stout enough. Come along.”
Ben-Hur put off his outer garments.
“You think there may be fighting?” he asked, quietly, as he tightened
his girdle.
“Yes.”
“With whom?”
“The guard.”
“Legionaries?”
“Whom else can a Roman trust?”
“What have you to fight with?”
They looked at him silently.
“Well,” he continued, “we will have to do the best we can; but had we
not better choose a leader? The legionaries always have one, and so are
able to act with one mind.”
The Galileans stared more curiously, as if the idea were new to them.
“Let us at least agree to stay together,” he said. “Now I am ready, if
you are.”
“Yes, let us go.”
The khan, it should not be forgotten, was in Bezetha, the new town; and
to get to the Praetorium, as the Romans resonantly styled the palace of
Herod on Mount Zion, the party had to cross the lowlands north and west
of the Temple. By streets—if they may be so called—trending north and
south, with intersections hardly up to the dignity of alleys, they
passed rapidly round the Akra district to the Tower of Mariamne, from
which the way was short to the grand gate of the walled heights. In
going, they overtook, or were overtaken by, people like themselves
stirred to wrath by news of the proposed desecration. When, at length,
they reached the gate of the Praetorium, the procession of elders and
rabbis had passed in with a great following, leaving a greater crowd
clamoring outside.
A centurion kept the entrance with a guard drawn up full armed under
the beautiful marble battlements. The sun struck the soldiers fervidly
on helm and shield; but they kept their ranks indifferent alike to its
dazzle and to the mouthings of the rabble. Through the open bronze
gates a current of citizens poured in, while a much lesser one poured
out.
“What is going on?” one of the Galileans asked an outcomer.
“Nothing,” was the reply. “The rabbis are before the door of the palace
asking to see Pilate. He has refused to come out. They have sent one to
tell him they will not go away till he has heard them. They are
waiting.”
“Let us go in,” said Ben-Hur, in his quiet way, seeing what his
companions probably did not, that there was not only a disagreement
between the suitors and the governor, but an issue joined, and a
serious question as to who should have his will.
Inside the gate there was a row of trees in leaf, with seats under
them. The people, whether going or coming, carefully avoided the shade
cast gratefully upon the white, clean-swept pavement; for, strange as
it may seem, a rabbinical ordinance, alleged to have been derived from
the law, permitted no green thing to be grown within the walls of
Jerusalem. Even the wise king, it was said, wanting a garden for his
Egyptian bride, was constrained to found it down in the meeting-place
of the valleys above En-rogel.
Through the tree-tops shone the outer fronts of the palace. Turning to
the right, the party proceeded a short distance to a spacious square,
on the west side of which stood the residence of the governor. An
excited multitude filled the square. Every face was directed towards a
portico built over a broad doorway which was closed. Under the portico
there was another array of legionaries.
The throng was so close the friends could not well have advanced if
such had been their desire; they remained therefore in the rear,
observers of what was going on. About the portico they could see the
high turbans of the rabbis, whose impatience communicated at times to
the mass behind them; a cry was frequent to the effect “Pilate, if thou
be a governor, come forth, come forth!”
Once a man coming out pushed through the crowd, his face red with
anger.
“Israel is of no account here,” he said, in a loud voice. “On this holy
ground we are no better than dogs of Rome.”
“Will he not come out, think you?”
“Come? Has he not thrice refused?”
“What will the rabbis do?”
“As at Cæsarea—camp here till he gives them ear.”
“He will not dare touch the treasure, will he?” asked one of the
Galileans.
“Who can say? Did not a Roman profane the Holy of Holies? Is there
anything sacred from Romans?”
An hour passed, and though Pilate deigned them no answer, the rabbis
and crowd remained. Noon came, bringing a shower from the west, but no
change in the situation, except that the multitude was larger and much
noisier, and the feeling more decidedly angry. The shouting was almost
continuous, Come forth, come forth! The cry was sometimes with
disrespectful variations. Meanwhile Ben-Hur held his Galilean friends
together. He judged the pride of the Roman would eventually get the
better of his discretion, and that the end could not be far off. Pilate
was but waiting for the people to furnish him an excuse for resort to
violence.
And at last the end came. In the midst of the assemblage there was
heard the sound of blows, succeeded instantly by yells of pain and
rage, and a most furious commotion. The venerable men in front of the
portico faced about aghast. The common people in the rear at first
pushed forward; in the centre, the effort was to get out; and for a
short time the pressure of opposing forces was terrible. A thousand
voices made inquiry, raised all at once; as no one had time to answer,
the surprise speedily became a panic.
Ben-Hur kept his senses.
“You cannot see?” he said to one of the Galileans.
“No.”
“I will raise you up.”
He caught the man about the middle, and lifted him bodily.
“What is it?”
“I see now,” said the man. “There are some armed with clubs, and they
are beating the people. They are dressed like Jews.”
“Who are they?”
“Romans, as the Lord liveth! Romans in disguise. Their clubs fly like
flails! There, I saw a rabbi struck down—an old man! They spare
nobody!”
Ben-Hur let the man down.
“Men of Galilee,” he said, “it is a trick of Pilate’s. Now, will you do
what I say, we will get even with the club-men.”
The Galilean spirit arose.
“Yes, yes!” they answered.
“Let us go back to the trees by the gate, and we may find the planting
of Herod, though unlawful, has some good in it after all. Come!”
They ran back all of them fast as they could; and, by throwing their
united weight upon the limbs, tore them from the trunks. In a brief
time they, too, were armed. Returning, at the corner of the square they
met the crowd rushing madly for the gate. Behind, the clamor
continued—a medley of shrieks, groans, and execrations.
“To the wall!” Ben-Hur shouted. “To the wall!—and let the herd go by!”
So, clinging to the masonry at their right hand, they escaped the might
of the rush, and little by little made headway until, at last, the
square was reached.
“Keep together now, and follow me!”
By this time Ben-Hur’s leadership was perfect; and as he pushed into
the seething mob his party closed after him in a body. And when the
Romans, clubbing the people and making merry as they struck them down,
came hand to hand with the Galileans, lithe of limb, eager for the
fray, and equally armed, they were in turn surprised. Then the shouting
was close and fierce; the crash of sticks rapid and deadly; the advance
furious as hate could make it. No one performed his part as well as
Ben-Hur, whose training served him admirably; for, not merely he knew
to strike and guard; his long arm, perfect action, and incomparable
strength helped him, also, to success in every encounter. He was at the
same time fighting-man and leader. The club he wielded was of goodly
length and weighty, so he had need to strike a man but once. He seemed,
moreover, to have eyes for each combat of his friends, and the faculty
of being at the right moment exactly where he was most needed. In his
fighting cry there were inspiration for his party and alarm for his
enemies. Thus surprised and equally matched, the Romans at first
retired, but finally turned their backs and fled to the portico. The
impetuous Galileans would have pursued them to the steps, but Ben-Hur
wisely restrained them.
“Stay, my men!” he said. “The centurion yonder is coming with the
guard. They have swords and shields; we cannot fight them. We have done
well; let us get back and out of the gate while we may.”
They obeyed him, though slowly; for they had frequently to step over
their countrymen lying where they had been felled; some writhing and
groaning, some praying help, others mute as the dead. But the fallen
were not all Jews. In that there was consolation.
The centurion shouted to them as they went off; Ben-Hur laughed at him,
and replied in his own tongue, “If we are dogs of Israel, you are
jackals of Rome. Remain here, and we will come again.”
The Galileans cheered, and laughing went on.
Outside the gate there was a multitude the like of which Ben-Hur had
never seen, not even in the circus at Antioch. The house-tops, the
streets, the slope of the hill, appeared densely covered with people
wailing and praying. The air was filled with their cries and
imprecations.
The party were permitted to pass without challenge by the outer guard.
But hardly were they out before the centurion in charge at the portico
appeared, and in the gateway called to Ben-Hur,
“Ho, insolent! Art thou a Roman or a Jew?”
Ben-Hur answered, “I am a son of Judah, born here. What wouldst thou
with me?”
“Stay and fight.”
“Singly?”
“As thou wilt!”
Ben-Hur laughed derisively.
“O brave Roman! Worthy son of the bastard Roman Jove! I have no arms.”
“Thou shalt have mine,” the centurion answered. “I will borrow of the
guard here.”
The people in hearing of the colloquy became silent; and from them the
hush spread afar. But lately Ben-Hur had beaten a Roman under the eyes
of Antioch and the Farther East; now, could he beat another one under
the eyes of Jerusalem, the honor might be vastly profitable to the
cause of the New King. He did not hesitate. Going frankly to the
centurion, he said, “I am willing. Lend me thy sword and shield.”
“And the helm and breastplate?” asked the Roman.
“Keep them. They might not fit me.”
The arms were as frankly delivered, and directly the centurion was
ready. All this time the soldiers in rank close by the gate never
moved; they simply listened. As to the multitude, only when the
combatants advanced to begin the fight the question sped from mouth to
mouth, “Who is he?” And no one knew.
Now the Roman supremacy in arms lay in three things—submission to
discipline, the legionary formation of battle, and a peculiar use of
the short sword. In combat, they never struck or cut; from first to
last they thrust—they advanced thrusting, they retired thrusting; and
generally their aim was at the foeman’s face. All this was well known
to Ben-Hur. As they were about to engage he said,
“I told thee I was a son of Judah; but I did not tell that I am
lanista-taught. Defend thyself!”
At the last word Ben-Hur closed with his antagonist. A moment, standing
foot to foot, they glared at each other over the rims of their embossed
shields; then the Roman pushed forward and feinted an under-thrust. The
Jew laughed at him. A thrust at the face followed. The Jew stepped
lightly to the left; quick as the thrust was, the step was quicker.
Under the lifted arm of the foe he slid his shield, advancing it until
the sword and sword-arm were both caught on its upper surface; another
step, this time forward and left, and the man’s whole right side was
offered to the point. The centurion fell heavily on his breast,
clanging the pavement, and Ben-Hur had won. With his foot upon his
enemy’s back, he raised his shield overhead after a gladiatorial
custom, and saluted the imperturbable soldiers by the gate.
When the people realized the victory they behaved like mad. On the
houses far as the Xystus, fast as the word could fly, they waved their
shawls and handkerchiefs and shouted; and if he had consented, the
Galileans would have carried Ben-Hur off upon their shoulders.
To a petty officer who then advanced from the gate he said, “Thy
comrade died like a soldier. I leave him undespoiled. Only his sword
and shield are mine.”
With that, he walked away. Off a little he spoke to the Galileans.
“Brethren, you have behaved well. Let us now separate, lest we be
pursued. Meet me to-night at the khan in Bethany. I have something to
propose to you of great interest to Israel.”
“Who are you?” they asked him.
“A son of Judah,” he answered, simply.
A throng eager to see him surged around the party.
“Will you come to Bethany?” he asked.
“Yes, we will come.”
“Then bring with you this sword and shield that I may know you.”
Pushing brusquely through the increasing crowd, he speedily
disappeared.
At the instance of Pilate, the people went up from the city, and
carried off their dead and wounded, and there was much mourning for
them; but the grief was greatly lightened by the victory of the unknown
champion, who was everywhere sought, and by every one extolled. The
fainting spirit of the nation was revived by the brave deed; insomuch
that in the streets and up in the Temple even, amidst the solemnities
of the feast, old tales of the Maccabees were told again, and thousands
shook their heads whispering wisely,
“A little longer, only a little longer, brethren, and Israel will come
to her own. Let there be faith in the Lord, and patience.”
In such manner Ben-Hur obtained hold on Galilee, and paved the way to
greater services in the cause of the King Who Was Coming.
And with what result we shall see.
BOOK SEVENTH
“And, waking, I beheld her there
Sea-dreaming in the moted air,
A siren lithe and debonair,
With wristlets woven of scarlet weeds,
And oblong lucent amber beads
Of sea-kelp shining in her hair.”
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.
CHAPTER I
The meeting took place in the khan of Bethany as appointed. Thence
Ben-Hur went with the Galileans into their country, where his exploits
up in the old Market-place gave him fame and influence. Before the
winter was gone he raised three legions, and organized them after the
Roman pattern. He could have had as many more, for the martial spirit
of that gallant people never slept. The proceeding, however, required
careful guarding as against both Rome and Herod Antipas. Contenting
himself for the present with the three, he strove to train and educate
them for systematic action. For that purpose he carried the officers
over into the lava-beds of Trachonitis, and taught them the use of
arms, particularly the javelin and sword, and the manoeuvering peculiar
to the legionary formation; after which he sent them home as teachers.
And soon the training became a pastime of the people.
As may be thought, the task called for patience, skill, zeal, faith,
and devotion on his part—qualities into which the power of inspiring
others in matters of difficulty is always resolvable; and never man
possessed them in greater degree or used them to better effect. How he
labored! And with utter denial of self! Yet withal he would have failed
but for the support he had from Simonides, who furnished him arms and
money, and from Ilderim, who kept watch and brought him supplies. And
still he would have failed but for the genius of the Galileans.
Under that name were comprehended the four tribes—Asher, Zebulon,
Issachar, and Naphthali—and the districts originally set apart to them.
The Jew born in sight of the Temple despised these brethren of the
north; but the Talmud itself has said, “The Galilean loves honor, and
the Jew money.”
Hating Rome fervidly as they loved their own country, in every revolt
they were first in the field and last to leave it. One hundred and
fifty thousand Galilean youths perished in the final war with Rome. For
the great festal days, they went up to Jerusalem marching and camping
like armies; yet they were liberal in sentiment, and even tolerant to
heathenism. In Herod’s beautiful cities, which were Roman in all
things, in Sepphoris and Tiberias especially, they took pride, and in
the building them gave loyal support. They had for fellow-citizens men
from the outside world everywhere, and lived in peace with them. To the
glory of the Hebrew name they contributed poets like the singer of the
Song of Songs and prophets like Hosea.
Upon such a people, so quick, so proud, so brave, so devoted, so
imaginative, a tale like that of the coming of the King was
all-powerful. That he was coming to put Rome down would have been
sufficient to enlist them in the scheme proposed by Ben-Hur; but when,
besides, they were assured he was to rule the world, more mighty than
Cæsar, more magnificent than Solomon, and that the rule was to last
forever, the appeal was irresistible, and they vowed themselves to the
cause body and soul. They asked Ben-Hur his authority for the sayings,
and he quoted the prophets, and told them of Balthasar in waiting over
in Antioch; and they were satisfied, for it was the old much-loved
legend of the Messiah, familiar to them almost as the name of the Lord;
the long-cherished dream with a time fixed for its realization. The
King was not merely coming now; he was at hand.
So with Ben-Hur the winter months rolled by, and spring came, with
gladdening showers blown over from the summering sea in the west; and
by that time so earnestly and successfully had he toiled that he could
say to himself and his followers, “Let the good King come. He has only
to tell us where he will have his throne set up. We have the
sword-hands to keep it for him.”
And in all his dealings with the many men they knew him only as a son
of Judah, and by that name.
One evening, over in Trachonitis, Ben-Hur was sitting with some of his
Galileans at the mouth of the cave in which he quartered, when an Arab
courier rode to him, and delivered a letter. Breaking the package, he
read,
“Jerusalem, Nisan IV.
“A prophet has appeared who men say is Elias. He has been in the
wilderness for years, and to our eyes he is a prophet; and such also is
his speech, the burden of which is of one much greater than himself,
who, he says, is to come presently, and for whom he is now waiting on
the eastern shore of the River Jordan. I have been to see and hear him,
and the one he is waiting for is certainly the King you are awaiting.
Come and judge for yourself.
“All Jerusalem is going out to the prophet, and with many people else
the shore on which he abides is like Mount Olivet in the last days of
the Passover.
“MALLUCH.”
Ben-Hur’s face flushed with joy.
“By this word, O my friends,” he said—“by this word, our waiting is at
end. The herald of the King has appeared and announced him.”
Upon hearing the letter read, they also rejoiced at the promise it held
out.
“Get ready now,” he added, “and in the morning set your faces homeward;
when arrived there, send word to those under you, and bid them be ready
to assemble as I may direct. For myself and you, I will go see if the
King be indeed at hand, and send you report. Let us, in the meantime,
live in the pleasure of the promise.”
Going into the cave, he addressed a letter to Ilderim, and another to
Simonides, giving notice of the news received, and of his purpose to go
up immediately to Jerusalem. The letters he despatched by swift
messengers. When night fell, and the stars of direction came out, he
mounted, and with an Arab guide set out for the Jordan, intending to
strike the track of the caravans between Rabbath-Ammon and Damascus.
The guide was sure, and Aldebaran swift; so by midnight the two were
out of the lava fastness speeding southward.
CHAPTER II
It was Ben-Hur’s purpose to turn aside at the break of day, and find a
safe place in which to rest; but the dawn overtook him while out in the
Desert, and he kept on, the guide promising to bring him afterwhile to
a vale shut in by great rocks, where there were a spring, some
mulberry-trees, and herbage in plenty for the horses.
As he rode thinking of the wondrous events so soon to happen, and of
the changes they were to bring about in the affairs of men and nations,
the guide, ever on the alert, called attention to an appearance of
strangers behind them. Everywhere around the Desert stretched away in
waves of sand, slowly yellowing in the growing light, and without any
green thing visible. Over on the left, but still far off, a range of
low mountains extended, apparently interminable. In the vacancy of such
a waste an object in motion could not long continue a mystery.
“It is a camel with riders,” the guide said, directly.
“Are there others behind?” said Ben-Hur.
“It is alone. No, there is a man on horseback—the driver, probably.”
A little later Ben-Hur himself could see the camel was white and
unusually large, reminding him of the wonderful animal he had seen
bring Balthasar and Iras to the fountain in the Grove of Daphne. There
could be no other like it. Thinking then of the fair Egyptian,
insensibly his gait became slower, and at length fell into the merest
loiter, until finally he could discern a curtained houdah, and two
persons seated within it. If they were Balthasar and Iras! Should he
make himself known to them? But it could not be: this was the
Desert—and they were alone. But while he debated the question the long
swinging stride of the camel brought its riders up to him. He heard the
ringing of the tiny bells, and beheld the rich housings which had been
so attractive to the crowd at the Castalian fount. He beheld also the
Ethiopian, always attendant upon the Egyptians. The tall brute stopped
close by his horse, and Ben-Hur, looking up, lo! Iras herself under the
raised curtain looking down at him, her great swimming eyes bright with
astonishment and inquiry!
“The blessing of the true God upon you!” said Balthasar, in his
tremulous voice.
“And to thee and thine be the peace of the Lord,” Ben-Hur replied.
“My eyes are weak with years,” said Balthasar; “but they approve you
that son of Hur whom lately I knew an honored guest in the tent of
Ilderim the Generous.”
“And thou art that Balthasar, the wise Egyptian, whose speech
concerning certain holy things in expectation is having so much to do
with the finding me in this waste place. What dost thou here?”
“He is never alone who is where God is—and God is everywhere,”
Balthasar answered, gravely; “but in the sense of your asking, there is
a caravan short way behind us going to Alexandria; and as it is to pass
through Jerusalem, I thought best to avail myself of its company as far
as the Holy City, whither I am journeying. This morning, however, in
discontent with its slow movement—slower because of a Roman cohort in
attendance upon it—we rose early, and ventured thus far in advance. As
to robbers along the way, we are not afraid, for I have here a signet
of Sheik Ilderim; against beasts of prey, God is our sufficient trust.”
Ben-Hur bowed and said, “The good sheik’s signet is a safeguard
wherever the wilderness extends, and the lion shall be swift that
overtakes this king of his kind.”
He patted the neck of the camel as he spoke.
“Yet,” said Iras, with a smile which was not lost upon the youth, whose
eyes, it must be admitted, had several times turned to her during the
interchange of speeches with the elder—“Yet even he would be better if
his fast were broken. Kings have hunger and headaches. If you be,
indeed, the Ben-Hur of whom my father has spoken, and whom it was my
pleasure to have known as well, you will be happy, I am sure, to show
us some near path to living water, that with its sparkle we may grace a
morning’s meal in the Desert.”
Ben-Hur, nothing loath, hastened to answer.
“Fair Egyptian, I give you sympathy. Can you bear suffering a little
longer, we will find the spring you ask for, and I promise that its
draught shall be as sweet and cooling as that of the more famous
Castalia. With leave, we will make haste.”
“I give you the blessing of the thirsty,” she replied; “and offer you
in return a bit of bread from the city ovens, dipped in fresh butter
from the dewy meadows of Damascus.”