the part of the multitude too far removed to see and understand the
cause of the interruption. Some there were, however, near by familiar
with the nature of the man to whom the unfortunates were appealing—some
who, by long intercourse with him, had caught somewhat of his divine
compassion: they gazed at him, and were silent while, in fair view, he
rode up and stopped in front of the woman. She also beheld his
face—calm, pitiful, and of exceeding beauty, the large eyes tender with
benignant purpose.
And this was the colloquy that ensued:
“O Master, Master! Thou seest our need; thou canst make us clean. Have
mercy upon us—mercy!”
“Believest thou I am able to do this?” he asked.
“Thou art he of whom the prophets spake—thou art the Messiah!” she
replied.
His eyes grew radiant, his manner confident.
“Woman,” he said, “great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as thou
wilt.”
He lingered an instant after, apparently unconscious of the presence of
the throng—an instant—then he rode away.
To the heart divinely original, yet so human in all the better elements
of humanity, going with sure prevision to a death of all the inventions
of men the foulest and most cruel, breathing even then in the forecast
shadow of the awful event, and still as hungry and thirsty for love and
faith as in the beginning, how precious and ineffably soothing the
farewell exclamation of the grateful woman:
“To God in the highest, glory! Blessed, thrice blessed, the Son whom he
hath given us!”
Immediately both the hosts, that from the city and that from Bethphage,
closed around him with their joyous demonstrations, with hosannas and
waving of palms, and so he passed from the lepers forever. Covering her
head, the elder hastened to Tirzah, and folded her in her arms, crying,
“Daughter, look up! I have his promise; he is indeed the Messiah. We
are saved—saved!” And the two remained kneeling while the procession,
slowly going, disappeared over the mount. When the noise of its singing
afar was a sound scarcely heard the miracle began.
There was first in the hearts of the lepers a freshening of the blood;
then it flowed faster and stronger, thrilling their wasted bodies with
an infinitely sweet sense of painless healing. Each felt the scourge
going from her; their strength revived; they were returning to be
themselves. Directly, as if to make the purification complete, from
body to spirit the quickening ran, exalting them to a very fervor of
ecstasy. The power possessing them to this good end was most nearly
that of a draught of swift and happy effect; yet it was unlike and
superior in that its healing and cleansing were absolute, and not
merely a delicious consciousness while in progress, but the planting,
growing, and maturing all at once of a recollection so singular and so
holy that the simple thought of it should be of itself ever after a
formless yet perfect thanksgiving.
To this transformation—for such it may be called quite as properly as a
cure—there was a witness other than Amrah. The reader will remember the
constancy with which Ben-Hur had followed the Nazarene throughout his
wanderings; and now, recalling the conversation of the night before,
there will be little surprise at learning that the young Jew was
present when the leprous woman appeared in the path of the pilgrims. He
heard her prayer, and saw her disfigured face; he heard the answer
also, and was not so accustomed to incidents of the kind, frequent as
they had been, as to have lost interest in them. Had such thing been
possible with him, still the bitter disputation always excited by the
simplest display of the Master’s curative gift would have sufficed to
keep his curiosity alive. Besides that, if not above it as an
incentive, his hope to satisfy himself upon the vexed question of the
mission of the mysterious man was still upon him strong as in the
beginning; we might indeed say even stronger, because of a belief that
now quickly, before the sun went down, the man himself would make all
known by public proclamation. At the close of the scene, consequently,
Ben-Hur had withdrawn from the procession, and seated himself upon a
stone to wait its passage.
From his place he nodded recognition to many of the people—Galileans in
his league, carrying short swords under their long abbas. After a
little a swarthy Arab came up leading two horses; at a sign from
Ben-Hur he also drew out.
“Stay here,” the young master said, when all were gone by, even the
laggards. “I wish to be at the city early, and Aldebaran must do me
service.”
He stroked the broad forehead of the horse, now in his prime of
strength and beauty, then crossed the road towards the two women.
They were to him, it should be borne in mind, strangers in whom he felt
interest only as they were subjects of a superhuman experiment, the
result of which might possibly help him to solution of the mystery that
had so long engaged him. As he proceeded, he glanced casually at the
figure of the little woman over by the white rock, standing there, her
face hidden in her hands.
“As the Lord liveth, it is Amrah!” he said to himself.
He hurried on, and passing by the mother and daughter, still without
recognizing them, he stopped before the servant.
“Amrah,” he said to her, “Amrah, what do you here?”
She rushed forward, and fell upon her knees before him, blinded by her
tears, nigh speechless with contending joy and fear.
“O master, master! Thy God and mine, how good he is!”
The knowledge we gain from much sympathy with others passing through
trials is but vaguely understood; strangely enough, it enables us,
among other things, to merge our identity into theirs often so
completely that their sorrows and their delights become our own. So
poor Amrah, aloof and hiding her face, knew the transformation the
lepers were undergoing without a word spoken to her—knew it, and shared
all their feeling to the full. Her countenance, her words, her whole
manner, betrayed her condition; and with swift presentiment he
connected it with the women he had just passed: he felt her presence
there at that time was in some way associated with them, and turned
hastily as they arose to their feet. His heart stood still, he became
rooted in his tracks—dumb past outcry—awe-struck.
The woman he had seen before the Nazarene was standing with her hands
clasped and eyes streaming, looking towards heaven. The mere
transformation would have been a sufficient surprise; but it was the
least of the causes of his emotion. Could he be mistaken? Never was
there in life a stranger so like his mother; and like her as she was
the day the Roman snatched her from him. There was but one difference
to mar the identity—the hair of this person was a little streaked with
gray; yet that was not impossible of reconcilement, since the
intelligence which had directed the miracle might have taken into
consideration the natural effects of the passage of years. And who was
it by her side, if not Tirzah?—fair, beautiful, perfect, more mature,
but in all other respects exactly the same in appearance as when she
looked with him over the parapet the morning of the accident to Gratus.
He had given them over as dead, and time had accustomed him to the
bereavement; he had not ceased mourning for them, yet, as something
distinguishable, they had simply dropped out of his plans and dreams.
Scarcely believing his senses, he laid his hand upon the servant’s
head, and asked, tremulously,
“Amrah, Amrah—my mother! Tirzah! tell me if I see aright.”
“Speak to them, O master, speak to them!” she said.
He waited no longer, but ran, with outstretched arms, crying, “Mother!
mother! Tirzah! Here I am!”
They heard his call, and with a cry as loving started to meet him.
Suddenly the mother stopped, drew back, and uttered the old alarm,
“Stay, Judah, my son; come not nearer. Unclean, unclean!”
The utterance was not from habit, grown since the dread disease struck
her, as much as fear; and the fear was but another form of the
ever-thoughtful maternal love. Though they were healed in person, the
taint of the scourge might be in their garments ready for
communication. He had no such thought. They were before him; he had
called them, they had answered. Who or what should keep them from him
now? Next moment the three, so long separated, were mingling their
tears in each other’s arms.
The first ecstasy over, the mother said, “In this happiness, O my
children, let us not be ungrateful. Let us begin life anew by
acknowledgment of him to whom we are all so indebted.”
They fell upon their knees, Amrah with the rest; and the prayer of the
elder outspoken was as a psalm.
Tirzah repeated it word for word; so did Ben-Hur, but not with the same
clear mind and questionless faith; for when they were risen, he asked,
“In Nazareth, where the man was born, mother, they call him the son of
a carpenter. What is he?”
Her eyes rested upon him with all their old tenderness, and she
answered as she had answered the Nazarene himself—
“He is the Messiah.”
“And whence has he his power?”
“We may know by the use he makes of it. Can you tell me any ill he has
done?”
“No.”
“By that sign then I answer, He has his power from God.”
It is not an easy thing to shake off in a moment the expectations
nurtured through years until they have become essentially a part of us;
and though Ben-Hur asked himself what the vanities of the world were to
such a one, his ambition was obdurate and would not down. He persisted
as men do yet every day in measuring the Christ by himself. How much
better if we measured ourselves by the Christ!
Naturally, the mother was the first to think of the cares of life.
“What shall we do now, my son? Where shall we go?”
Then Ben-Hur, recalled to duty, observed how completely every trace of
the scourge had disappeared from his restored people; that each had
back her perfection of person; that, as with Naaman when he came up out
of the water, their flesh had come again like unto the flesh of a
little child; and he took off his cloak, and threw it over Tirzah.
“Take it,” he said, smiling; “the eye of the stranger would have
shunned you before, now it shall not offend you.”
The act exposed a sword belted to his side.
“Is it a time of war?” asked the mother, anxiously.
“No.”
“Why, then, are you armed?”
“It may be necessary to defend the Nazarene.”
Thus Ben-Hur evaded the whole truth.
“Has he enemies? Who are they?”
“Alas, mother, they are not all Romans!”
“Is he not of Israel, and a man of peace?”
“There was never one more so; but in the opinion of the rabbis and
teachers he is guilty of a great crime.”
“What crime?”
“In his eyes the uncircumcised Gentile is as worthy favor as a Jew of
the strictest habit. He preaches a new dispensation.”
The mother was silent, and they moved to the shade of the tree by the
rock. Calming his impatience to have them home again and hear their
story, he showed them the necessity of obedience to the law governing
in cases like theirs, and in conclusion called the Arab, bidding him
take the horses to the gate by Bethesda and await him there; whereupon
they set out by the way of the Mount of Offence. The return was very
different from the coming; they walked rapidly and with ease, and in
good time reached a tomb newly made near that of Absalom, overlooking
the depths of Cedron. Finding it unoccupied, the women took possession,
while he went on hastily to make the preparations required for their
new condition.
CHAPTER V
Ben-Hur pitched two tents out on the Upper Cedron east a short space of
the Tombs of the Kings, and furnished them with every comfort at his
command; and thither, without loss of time, he conducted his mother and
sister, to remain until the examining priest could certify their
perfect cleansing.
In course of the duty, the young man had subjected himself to such
serious defilement as to debar him from participation in the ceremonies
of the great feast, then near at hand. He could not enter the least
sacred of the courts of the Temple. Of necessity, not less than choice,
therefore, he stayed at the tents with his beloved people. There was a
great deal to hear from them, and a great deal to tell them of himself.
Stories such as theirs—sad experiences extending through a lapse of
years, sufferings of body, acuter sufferings of mind—are usually long
in the telling, the incidents seldom following each other in threaded
connection. He listened to the narrative and all they told him, with
outward patience masking inward feeling. In fact, his hatred of Rome
and Romans reached a higher mark than ever; his desire for vengeance
became a thirst which attempts at reflection only intensified. In the
almost savage bitterness of his humor many mad impulses took hold of
him. The opportunities of the highways presented themselves with
singular force of temptation; he thought seriously of insurrection in
Galilee; even the sea, ordinarily a retrospective horror to him,
stretched itself map-like before his fancy, laced and interlaced with
lines of passage crowded with imperial plunder and imperial travellers;
but the better judgment matured in calmer hours was happily too firmly
fixed to be supplanted by present passion however strong. Each mental
venture in reach of new expedients brought him back to the old
conclusion—that there could be no sound success except in a war
involving all Israel in solid union; and all musing upon the subject,
all inquiry, all hope, ended where they began—in the Nazarene and his
purposes.
At odd moments the excited schemer found a pleasure in fashioning a
speech for that person:
“Hear, O Israel! I am he, the promised of God, born King of the
Jews—come to you with the dominion spoken of by the prophets. Rise now,
and lay hold on the world!”
Would the Nazarene but speak these few words, what a tumult would
follow! How many mouths performing the office of trumpets would take
them up and blow them abroad for the massing of armies!
Would he speak them?
And eager to begin the work, and answering in the worldly way, Ben-Hur
lost sight of the double nature of the man, and of the other
possibility, that the divine in him might transcend the human. In the
miracle of which Tirzah and his mother were the witnesses even more
nearly than himself, he saw and set apart and dwelt upon a power ample
enough to raise and support a Jewish crown over the wrecks of the
Italian, and more than ample to remodel society, and convert mankind
into one purified happy family; and when that work was done, could any
one say the peace which might then be ordered without hindrance was not
a mission worthy a son of God? Could any one then deny the Redeemership
of the Christ? And discarding all consideration of political
consequences, what unspeakable personal glory there would then be to
him as a man? It was not in the nature of any mere mortal to refuse
such a career.
Meantime down the Cedron, and in towards Bezetha, especially on the
roadsides quite up to the Damascus Gate, the country filled rapidly
with all kinds of temporary shelters for pilgrims to the Passover.
Ben-Hur visited the strangers, and talked with them; and returning to
his tents, he was each time more and more astonished at the vastness of
their numbers. And when he further discovered that every part of the
world was represented among them—cities upon both shores of the
Mediterranean far off as the Pillars of the West, river-towns in
distant India, provinces in northernmost Europe; and that, though they
frequently saluted him with tongues unacquainted with a syllable of the
old Hebrew of the fathers, these representatives had all the same
object—celebration of the notable feast—an idea tinged mistily with
superstitious fancy forced itself upon him. Might he not after all have
misunderstood the Nazarene? Might not that person by patient waiting be
covering silent preparation, and proving his fitness for the glorious
task before him? How much better this time for the movement than that
other when, by Gennesaret, the Galileans would have forced assumption
of the crown? Then the support would have been limited to a few
thousands; now his proclamation would be responded to by millions—who
could say how many? Pursuing this theory to its conclusions, Ben-Hur
moved amidst brilliant promises, and glowed with the thought that the
melancholy man, under gentle seeming and wondrous self-denial, was in
fact carrying in disguise the subtlety of a politician and the genius
of a soldier.
Several times also, in the meanwhile, low-set, brawny men, bareheaded
and black-bearded, came and asked for Ben-Hur at the tent; his
interviews with them were always apart; and to his mother’s question
who they were he answered,
“Some good friends of mine from Galilee.”
Through them he kept informed of the movements of the Nazarene, and of
the schemes of the Nazarene’s enemies, Rabbinical and Roman. That the
good man’s life was in danger, he knew; but that there were any bold
enough to attempt to take it at that time, he could not believe. It
seemed too securely intrenched in a great fame and an assured
popularity. The very vastness of the attendance in and about the city
brought with it a seeming guaranty of safety. And yet, to say truth,
Ben-Hur’s confidence rested most certainly upon the miraculous power of
the Christ. Pondering the subject in the purely human view, that the
master of such authority over life and death, used so frequently for
the good of others, would not exert it in care of himself was simply as
much past belief as it was past understanding.
Nor should it be forgotten that all these were incidents of occurrence
between the twenty-first day of March—counting by the modern
calendar—and the twenty-fifth. The evening of the latter day Ben-Hur
yielded to his impatience, and rode to the city, leaving behind him a
promise to return in the night.
The horse was fresh, and choosing his own gait, sped swiftly. The eyes
of the clambering vines winked at the rider from the garden fences on
the way; there was nothing else to see him, nor child nor woman nor
man. Through the rocky float in the hollows of the road the agate hoofs
drummed, ringing like cups of steel; but without notice from any
stranger. In the houses passed there were no tenants; the fires by the
tent-doors were out; the road was deserted; for this was the first
Passover eve, and the hour “between the evenings” when the visiting
millions crowded the city, and the slaughter of lambs in offering
reeked the fore-courts of the Temple, and the priests in ordered lines
caught the flowing blood and carried it swiftly to the dripping
altars—when all was haste and hurry, racing with the stars fast coming
with the signal after which the roasting and the eating and the singing
might go on, but not the preparation more.
Through the great northern gate the rider rode, and lo! Jerusalem
before the fall, in ripeness of glory, illuminated for the Lord.
CHAPTER VI
Ben-Hur alighted at the gate of the khan from which the three Wise Men
more than thirty years before departed, going down to Bethlehem. There,
in keeping of his Arab followers, he left the horse, and shortly after
was at the wicket of his father’s house, and in a yet briefer space in
the great chamber. He called for Malluch first; that worthy being out,
he sent a salutation to his friends the merchant and the Egyptian. They
were being carried abroad to see the celebration. The latter, he was
informed, was very feeble, and in a state of deep dejection.
Young people of that time who were supposed hardly to know their own
hearts indulged the habit of politic indirection quite as much as young
people in the same condition indulge it in this time; so when Ben-Hur
inquired for the good Balthasar, and with grave courtesy desired to
know if he would be pleased to see him, he really addressed the
daughter a notice of his arrival. While the servant was answering for
the elder, the curtain of the doorway was drawn aside, and the younger
Egyptian came in, and walked—or floated, upborne in a white cloud of
the gauzy raiment she so loved and lived in—to the centre of the
chamber, where the light cast by lamps from the seven-armed brazen
stick planted upon the floor was the strongest. With her there was no
fear of light.
The servant left the two alone.
In the excitement occasioned by the events of the few days past Ben-Hur
had scarcely given a thought to the fair Egyptian. If she came to his
mind at all, it was merely as a briefest pleasure, a suggestion of a
delight which could wait for him, and was waiting.
But now the influence of the woman revived with all its force the
instant Ben-Hur beheld her. He advanced to her eagerly, but stopped and
gazed. Such a change he had never seen!
Theretofore she had been a lover studious to win him—in manner all
warmth, each glance an admission, each action an avowal. She had
showered him with incense of flattery. While he was present, she had
impressed him with her admiration; going away, he carried the
impression with him to remain a delicious expectancy hastening his
return. It was for him the painted eyelids drooped lowest over the
lustrous almond eyes; for him the love-stories caught from the
professionals abounding in the streets of Alexandria were repeated with
emphasis and lavishment of poetry; for him endless exclamations of
sympathy, and smiles, and little privileges with hand and hair and
cheek and lips, and songs of the Nile, and displays of jewelry, and
subtleties of lace in veils and scarfs, and other subtleties not less
exquisite in flosses of Indian silk. The idea, old as the oldest of
peoples, that beauty is the reward of the hero had never such realism
as she contrived for his pleasure; insomuch that he could not doubt he
was her hero; she avouched it in a thousand artful ways as natural with
her as her beauty—winsome ways reserved, it would seem, by the
passionate genius of old Egypt for its daughters.
Such the Egyptian had been to Ben-Hur from the night of the boat-ride
on the lake in the Orchard of Palms. But now!
Elsewhere in this volume the reader may have observed a term of
somewhat indefinite meaning used reverently in a sacred connection; we
repeat it now with a general application. There are few persons who
have not a double nature, the real and the acquired; the latter a kind
of addendum resulting from education, which in time often perfects it
into a part of the being as unquestionable as the first. Leaving the
thought to the thoughtful, we proceed to say that now the real nature
of the Egyptian made itself manifest.
It was not possible for her to have received a stranger with repulsion
more incisive; yet she was apparently as passionless as a statue, only
the small head was a little tilted, the nostrils a little drawn, and
the sensuous lower lip pushed the upper the least bit out of its
natural curvature.
She was the first to speak.
“Your coming is timely, O son of Hur,” she said, in a voice sharply
distinct. “I wish to thank you for hospitality; after to-morrow I may
not have the opportunity to do so.”
Ben-Hur bowed slightly without taking his eyes from her.
“I have heard of a custom which the dice-players observe with good
result among themselves,” she continued. “When the game is over, they
refer to their tablets and cast up their accounts; then they libate the
gods and put a crown upon the happy winner. We have had a game—it has
lasted through many days and nights. Why, now that it is at an end,
shall not we see to which the chaplet belongs?”
Yet very watchful, Ben-Hur answered, lightly, “A man may not balk a
woman bent on having her way.”
“Tell me,” she continued, inclining her head, and permitting the sneer
to become positive—“tell me, O prince of Jerusalem, where is he, that
son of the carpenter of Nazareth, and son not less of God, from whom so
lately such mighty things were expected?”
He waved his hand impatiently, and replied, “I am not his keeper.”
The beautiful head sank forward yet lower.
“Has he broken Rome to pieces?”
Again, but with anger, Ben-Hur raised his hand in deprecation.
“Where has he seated his capital?” she proceeded. “Cannot I go see his
throne and its lions of bronze? And his palace—he raised the dead; and
to such a one, what is it to raise a golden house? He has but to stamp
his foot and say the word, and the house is, pillared like Karnak, and
wanting nothing.”
There was by this time slight ground left to believe her playing; the
questions were offensive, and her manner pointed with unfriendliness;
seeing which, he on his side became more wary, and said, with good
humor, “O Egypt, let us wait another day, even another week, for him,
the lions, and the palace.”
She went on without noticing the suggestion.
“And how is it I see you in that garb? Such is not the habit of
governors in India or vice-kings elsewhere. I saw the satrap of Teheran
once, and he wore a turban of silk and a cloak of cloth of gold, and
the hilt and scabbard of his sword made me dizzy with their splendor of
precious stones. I thought Osiris had lent him a glory from the sun. I
fear you have not entered upon your kingdom—the kingdom I was to share
with you.”
“The daughter of my wise guest is kinder than she imagines herself; she
is teaching me that Isis may kiss a heart without making it better.”
Ben-Hur spoke with cold courtesy, and Iras, after playing with the
pendent solitaire of her necklace of coins, rejoined, “For a Jew, the
son of Hur is clever. I saw your dreaming Cæsar make his entry into
Jerusalem. You told us he would that day proclaim himself King of the
Jews from the steps of the Temple. I beheld the procession descend the
mountain bringing him. I heard their singing. They were beautiful with
palms in motion. I looked everywhere among them for a figure with a
promise of royalty—a horseman in purple, a chariot with a driver in
shining brass, a stately warrior behind an orbed shield, rivalling his
spear in stature. I looked for his guard. It would have been pleasant
to have seen a prince of Jerusalem and a cohort of the legions of
Galilee.”
She flung her listener a glance of provoking disdain, then laughed
heartily, as if the ludicrousness of the picture in her mind were too
strong for contempt.
“Instead of a Sesostris returning in triumph or a Cæsar helmed and
sworded—ha, ha, ha!—I saw a man with a woman’s face and hair, riding an
ass’s colt, and in tears. The King! the Son of God! the Redeemer of the
world! Ha, ha, ha!”
In spite of himself, Ben-Hur winced.
“I did not quit my place, O prince of Jerusalem,” she said, before he
could recover. “I did not laugh. I said to myself, ‘Wait. In the Temple
he will glorify himself as becomes a hero about to take possession of
the world.’ I saw him enter the Gate of Shushan and the Court of the
Women. I saw him stop and stand before the Gate Beautiful. There were
people with me on the porch and in the courts, and on the cloisters and
on the steps of the three sides of the Temple there were other people—I
will say a million of people, all waiting breathlessly to hear his
proclamation. The pillars were not more still than we. Ha, ha, ha! I
fancied I heard the axles of the mighty Roman machine begin to crack.
Ha, ha, ha! O prince, by the soul of Solomon, your King of the World
drew his gown about him and walked away, and out by the farthest gate,
nor opened his mouth to say a word; and—the Roman machine is running
yet!”
In simple homage to a hope that instant lost—a hope which, as it began
to fall and while it was falling, he unconsciously followed with a
parting look down to its disappearance—Ben-Hur lowered his eyes.
At no previous time, whether when Balthasar was plying him with
arguments, or when miracles were being done before his face, had the
disputed nature of the Nazarene been so plainly set before him. The
best way, after all, to reach an understanding of the divine is by
study of the human. In the things superior to men we may always look to
find God. So with the picture given by the Egyptian of the scene when
the Nazarene turned from the Gate Beautiful; its central theme was an
act utterly beyond performance by a man under control of merely human
inspirations. A parable to a parable-loving people, it taught what the
Christ had so often asserted—that his mission was not political. There
was not much more time for thought of all this than that allowed for a
common respiration; yet the idea took fast hold of Ben-Hur, and in the
same instant he followed his hope of vengeance out of sight, and the
man with the woman’s face and hair, and in tears, came near to him—near
enough to leave something of his spirit behind.
“Daughter of Balthasar,” he said, with dignity, “if this be the game of
which you spoke to me, take the chaplet—I accord it yours. Only let us
make an end of words. That you have a purpose I am sure. To it, I pray,
and I will answer you; then let us go our several ways, and forget we
ever met. Say on; I will listen, but not to more of that which you have
given me.”
She regarded him intently a moment, as if determining what to
do—possibly she might have been measuring his will—then she said,
coldly, “You have my leave—go.”
“Peace to you,” he responded, and walked away.
As he was about passing out of the door, she called to him.
“A word.”
He stopped where he was, and looked back.
“Consider all I know about you.”
“O most fair Egyptian,” he said, returning, “what all do you know about
me?”
She looked at him absently.
“You are more of a Roman, son of Hur, then any of your Hebrew
brethren.”
“Am I so unlike my countrymen?” he asked, indifferently.
“The demi-gods are all Roman now,” she rejoined.
“And therefore you will tell me what more you know about me?”
“The likeness is not lost upon me. It might induce me to save you.”
“Save me!”
The pink-stained fingers toyed daintily with the lustrous pendant at
the throat, and her voice was exceeding low and soft; only a tapping on
the floor with her silken sandal admonished him to have a care.
“There was a Jew, an escaped galley-slave, who killed a man in the
Palace of Idernee,” she began, slowly.
Ben-Hur was startled.
“The same Jew slew a Roman soldier before the Market-place here in
Jerusalem; the same Jew has three trained legions from Galilee to seize
the Roman governor to-night; the same Jew has alliances perfected for
war upon Rome, and Ilderim the Sheik is one of his partners.”
Drawing nearer him, she almost whispered,
“You have lived in Rome. Suppose these things repeated in ears we know
of. Ah! you change color.”
He drew back from her with somewhat of the look which may be imagined
upon the face of a man who, thinking to play with a kitten, has run
upon a tiger; and she proceeded:
“You are acquainted in the antechamber, and know the Lord Sejanus.
Suppose it were told him with the proofs in hand—or without the
proofs—that the same Jew is the richest man in the East—nay, in all the
empire. The fishes of the Tiber would have fattening other than that
they dig out of its ooze, would they not? And while they were
feeding—ha! son of Hur!—what splendor there would be on exhibition in
the Circus! Amusing the Roman people is a fine art; getting the money
to keep them amused is another art even finer; and was there ever an
artist the equal of the Lord Sejanus?”
Ben-Hur was not too much stirred by the evident baseness of the woman
for recollection. Not unfrequently when all the other faculties are
numb and failing memory does its offices with the greatest fidelity.
The scene at the spring on the way to the Jordan reproduced itself; and
he remembered thinking then that Esther had betrayed him, and thinking
so now, he said calmly as he could,
“To give you pleasure, daughter of Egypt, I acknowledge your cunning,
and that I am at your mercy. It may also please you to hear me
acknowledge I have no hope of your favor. I could kill you, but you are
a woman. The Desert is open to receive me; and though Rome is a good
hunter of men, there she would follow long and far before she caught
me, for in its heart there are wildernesses of spears as well as
wildernesses of sand, and it is not unlovely to the unconquered
Parthian. In the toils as I am—dupe that I have been—yet there is one
thing my due: who told you all you know about me? In flight or
captivity, dying even, there will be consolation in leaving the traitor
the curse of a man who has lived knowing nothing but wretchedness. Who
told you all you know about me?”
It might have been a touch of art, or might have been sincere—that as
it may—the expression of the Egyptian’s face became sympathetic.
“There are in my country, O son of Hur,” she said, presently, “workmen
who make pictures by gathering vari-colored shells here and there on
the sea-shore after storms, and cutting them up, and patching the
pieces as inlaying on marble slabs. Can you not see the hint there is
in the practice to such as go searching for secrets? Enough that from
this person I gathered a handful of little circumstances, and from that
other yet another handful, and that afterwhile I put them together, and
was happy as a woman can be who has at disposal the fortune and life of
a man whom”—she stopped, and beat the floor with her foot, and looked
away as if to hide a sudden emotion from him; with an air of even
painful resolution she presently finished the sentence—“whom she is at
loss what to do with.”
“No, it is not enough,” Ben-Hur said, unmoved by the play—“it is not
enough. To-morrow you will determine what to do with me. I may die.”
“True,” she rejoined quickly and with emphasis, “I had something from
Sheik Ilderim as he lay with my father in a grove out in the Desert.
The night was still, very still, and the walls of the tent, sooth to
say, were poor ward against ears outside listening to—birds and beetles
flying through the air.”
She smiled at the conceit, but proceeded:
“Some other things—bits of shell for the picture—I had from—”
“Whom?”
“The son of Hur himself.”
“Was there no other who contributed?”
“No, not one.”
Hur drew a breath of relief, and said, lightly, “Thanks. It were not
well to keep the Lord Sejanus waiting for you. The Desert is not so
sensitive. Again, O Egypt, peace!”
To this time he had been standing uncovered; now he took the
handkerchief from his arm where it had been hanging, and adjusting it
upon his head, turned to depart. But she arrested him; in her
eagerness, she even reached a hand to him.
“Stay,” she said.
He looked back at her, but without taking the hand, though it was very
noticeable for its sparkling of jewels; and he knew by her manner that
the reserved point of the scene which was so surprising to him was now
to come.
“Stay, and do not distrust me, O son of Hur, if I declare I know why
the noble Arrius took you for his heir. And, by Isis! by all the gods
of Egypt! I swear I tremble to think of you, so brave and generous,
under the hand of the remorseless minister. You have left a portion of
your youth in the atria of the great capital; consider, as I do, what
the Desert will be to you in contrast of life. Oh, I give you
pity—pity! And if you but do what I say, I will save you. That, also, I
swear, by our holy Isis!”
Words of entreaty and prayer these, poured forth volubly and with
earnestness and the mighty sanction of beauty.
“Almost—almost I believe you,” Ben-Hur said, yet hesitatingly, and in a
voice low and indistinct; for a doubt remained with him grumbling
against the yielding tendency of the man—a good sturdy doubt, such a
one as has saved many a life and fortune.
“The perfect life for a woman is to live in love; the greatest
happiness for a man is the conquest of himself; and that, O prince, is
what I have to ask of you.”
She spoke rapidly, and with animation; indeed, she had never appeared
to him so fascinating.
“You had once a friend,” she continued. “It was in your boyhood. There
was a quarrel, and you and he became enemies. He did you wrong. After
many years you met him again in the Circus at Antioch.”
“Messala!”
“Yes, Messala. You are his creditor. Forgive the past; admit him to
friendship again; restore the fortune he lost in the great wager;
rescue him. The six talents are as nothing to you; not so much as a bud
lost upon a tree already in full leaf; but to him— Ah, he must go about
with a broken body; wherever you meet him he must look up to you from
the ground. O Ben-Hur, noble prince! to a Roman descended as he is
beggary is the other most odious name for death. Save him from
beggary!”
If the rapidity with which she spoke was a cunning invention to keep
him from thinking, either she never knew or else had forgotten that
there are convictions which derive nothing from thought, but drop into
place without leave or notice. It seemed to him, when at last she
paused to have his answer, that he could see Messala himself peering at
him over her shoulder; and in its expression the countenance of the
Roman was not that of a mendicant or a friend; the sneer was as
patrician as ever, and the fine edge of the hauteur as flawless and
irritating.
“The appeal has been decided then, and for once a Messala takes
nothing. I must go and write it in my book of great occurrences—a
judgment by a Roman against a Roman! But did he—did Messala send you to
me with this request, O Egypt?”
“He has a noble nature, and judged you by it.”
Ben-Hur took the hand upon arm.
“As you know him in such friendly way, fair Egyptian, tell me, would he
do for me, there being a reversal of the conditions, that he asks of
me? Answer, by Isis! Answer, for the truth’s sake!”
There was insistence in the touch of his hand, and in his look also.
“Oh!” she began, “he is—”
“A Roman, you were about to say; meaning that I, a Jew, must not
determine dues from me to him by any measure of dues from him to me;
being a Jew, I must forgive him my winnings because he is a Roman. If
you have more to tell me, daughter of Balthasar, speak quickly,
quickly; for by the Lord God of Israel, when this heat of blood, hotter
waxing, attains its highest, I may not be able longer to see that you
are a woman, and beautiful! I may see but the spy of a master the more
hateful because the master is a Roman. Say on, and quickly.”
She threw his hand off and stepped back into the full light, with all
the evil of her nature collected in her eyes and voice.
“Thou drinker of lees, feeder upon husks! To think I could love thee,
having seen Messala! Such as thou were born to serve him. He would have
been satisfied with release of the six talents; but I say to the six
thou shalt add twenty—twenty, dost thou hear? The kissings of my little
finger which thou hast taken from him, though with my consent, shall be
paid for; and that I have followed thee with affection of sympathy, and
endured thee so long, enter into the account not less because I was
serving him. The merchant here is thy keeper of moneys. If by to-morrow
at noon he has not thy order acted upon in favor of my Messala for
six-and-twenty talents—mark the sum!—thou shalt settle with the Lord
Sejanus. Be wise and—farewell.”
As she was going to the door, he put himself in her way.
“The old Egypt lives in you,” he said. “Whether you see Messala
to-morrow or the next day, here or in Rome, give him this message. Tell
him I have back the money, even the six talents, he robbed me of by
robbing my father’s estate; tell him I survived the galleys to which he
had me sent, and in my strength rejoice in his beggary and dishonor;
tell him I think the affliction of body which he has from my hand is
the curse of our Lord God of Israel upon him more fit than death for
his crimes against the helpless; tell him my mother and sister whom he
had sent to a cell in Antonia that they might die of leprosy, are alive
and well, thanks to the power of the Nazarene whom you so despise; tell
him that, to fill my measure of happiness, they are restored to me, and
that I will go hence to their love, and find in it more than
compensation for the impure passions which you leave me to take to him;
tell him—this for your comfort, O cunning incarnate, as much as
his—tell him that when the Lord Sejanus comes to despoil me he will
find nothing; for the inheritance I had from the duumvir, including the
villa by Misenum, has been sold, and the money from the sale is out of
reach, afloat in the marts of the world as bills of exchange; and that
this house and the goods and merchandise and the ships and caravans
with which Simonides plies his commerce with such princely profits are
covered by imperial safeguards—a wise head having found the price of
the favor, and the Lord Sejanus preferring a reasonable gain in the way
of gift to much gain fished from pools of blood and wrong; tell him if
all this were not so, if the money and property were all mine, yet
should he not have the least part of it, for when he finds our Jewish
bills, and forces them to give up their values, there is yet another
resort left me—a deed of gift to Cæsar—so much, O Egypt, I found out
in the atria of the great capital; tell him that along with my defiance
I do not send him a curse in words, but, as a better expression of my
undying hate, I send him one who will prove to him the sum of all
curses; and when he looks at you repeating this my message, daughter of
Balthasar, his Roman shrewdness will tell him all I mean. Go now—and I
will go.”
He conducted her to the door, and, with ceremonious politeness, held
back the curtain while she passed out.
“Peace to you,” he said, as she disappeared.
CHAPTER VII
When Ben-Hur left the guest-chamber, there was not nearly so much life
in his action as when he entered it; his steps were slower, and he went
along with his head quite upon his breast. Having made discovery that a
man with a broken back may yet have a sound brain, he was reflecting
upon the discovery.
Forasmuch as it is easy after a calamity has befallen to look back and
see the proofs of its coming strewn along the way, the thought that he
had not even suspected the Egyptian as in Messala’s interest, but had
gone blindly on through whole years putting himself and his friends
more and more at her mercy, was a sore wound to the young man’s vanity.
“I remember,” he said to himself, “she had no word of indignation for
the perfidious Roman at the Fountain of Castalia! I remember she
extolled him at the boat-ride on the lake in the Orchard of Palms! And,
ah!”—he stopped, and beat his left hand violently with his right—“ah!
that mystery about the appointment she made with me at the Palace of
Idernee is no mystery now!”
The wound, it should be observed, was to his vanity; and fortunately it
is not often that people die of such hurts, or even continue a long
time sick. In Ben-Hur’s case, moreover, there was a compensation; for
presently he exclaimed aloud, “Praised be the Lord God that the woman
took not a more lasting hold on me! I see I did not love her.”
Then, as if he had already parted with not a little of the weight on
his mind, he stepped forward more lightly; and, coming to the place on
the terrace where one stairway led down to the court-yard below, and
another ascended to the roof, he took the latter and began to climb. As
he made the last step in the flight he stopped again.
“Can Balthasar have been her partner in the long mask she has been
playing? No, no. Hypocrisy seldom goes with wrinkled age like that.
Balthasar is a good man.”
With this decided opinion he stepped upon the roof. There was a full
moon overhead, yet the vault of the sky at the moment was lurid with
light cast up from the fires burning in the streets and open places of
the city, and the chanting and chorusing of the old psalmody of Israel
filled it with plaintive harmonies to which he could not but listen.
The countless voices bearing the burden seemed to say, “Thus, O son of
Judah, we prove our worshipfulness of the Lord God, and our loyalty to
the land he gave us. Let a Gideon appear, or a David, or a Maccabaeus,
and we are ready.”
That seemed an introduction; for next he saw the man of Nazareth.
In certain moods the mind is disposed to mock itself with inapposite
fancies.
The tearful woman-like face of the Christ stayed with him while he
crossed the roof to the parapet above the street on the north side of
the house, and there was in it no sign of war; but rather as the
heavens of calm evenings look peace upon everything, so it looked,
provoking the old question, What manner of man is he?
Ben-Hur permitted himself one glance over the parapet, then turned and
walked mechanically towards the summer-house.
“Let them do their worst,” he said, as he went slowly on. “I will not
forgive the Roman. I will not divide my fortune with him, nor will I
fly from this city of my fathers. I will call on Galilee first, and
here make the fight. By brave deeds I will bring the tribes to our
side. He who raised up Moses will find us a leader, if I fail. If not
the Nazarene, then some other of the many ready to die for freedom.”
The interior of the summer-house, when Ben-Hur, slow sauntering, came
to it, was murkily lighted. The faintest of shadows lay along the floor
from the pillars on the north and west sides. Looking in, he saw the
arm-chair usually occupied by Simonides drawn to a spot from which a
view of the city over towards the Market-place could be best had.
“The good man is returned. I will speak with him, unless he be asleep.”
He walked in, and with a quiet step approached the chair. Peering over
the high back, he beheld Esther nestled in the seat asleep—a small
figure snugged away under her father’s lap-robe. The hair dishevelled
fell over her face. Her breathing was low and irregular. Once it was
broken by a long sigh, ending in a sob. Something—it might have been
the sigh or the loneliness in which he found her—imparted to him the
idea that the sleep was a rest from sorrow rather than fatigue. Nature
kindly sends such relief to children, and he was used to thinking
Esther scarcely more than a child. He put his arms upon the back of the
chair, and thought.
“I will not wake her. I have nothing to tell her—nothing unless—unless
it be my love.... She is a daughter of Judah, and beautiful, and so
unlike the Egyptian; for there it is all vanity, here all truth; there
ambition, here duty; there selfishness, here self-sacrifice.... Nay,
the question is not do I love her, but does she love me? She was my
friend from the beginning. The night on the terrace at Antioch, how
child-like she begged me not to make Rome my enemy, and had me tell her
of the villa by Misenum, and of the life there! That she should not see
I saw her cunning drift I kissed her. Can she have forgotten the kiss!
I have not. I love her.... They do not know in the city that I have
back my people. I shrank from telling it to the Egyptian; but this
little one will rejoice with me over their restoration, and welcome
them with love and sweet services of hand and heart. She will be to my
mother another daughter; in Tirzah she will find her other self. I
would wake her and tell her these things, but—out on the sorceress of
Egypt! Of that folly I could not command myself to speak. I will go
away, and wait another and a better time. I will wait. Fair Esther,
dutiful child, daughter of Judah!”
He retired silently as he came.
CHAPTER VIII
The streets were full of people going and coming, or grouped about the
fires roasting meat, and feasting and singing, and happy. The odor of
scorching flesh mixed with the odor of cedar-wood aflame and smoking
loaded the air; and as this was the occasion when every son of Israel
was full brother to every other son of Israel, and hospitality was
without bounds, Ben-Hur was saluted at every step, while the groups by
the fires insisted, “Stay and partake with us. We are brethren in the
love of the Lord.” But with thanks to them he hurried on, intending to
take horse at the khan and return to the tents on the Cedron.
To make the place, it was necessary for him to cross the thoroughfare
so soon to receive sorrowful Christian perpetuation. There also the
pious celebration was at its height. Looking up the street, he noticed
the flames of torches in motion streaming out like pennons; then he
observed that the singing ceased where the torches came. His wonder
rose to its highest, however, when he became certain that amidst the
smoke and dancing sparks he saw the keener sparkling of burnished
spear-tips, arguing the presence of Roman soldiers. What were they, the
scoffing legionaries, doing in a Jewish religious procession? The
circumstance was unheard of, and he stayed to see the meaning of it.
The moon was shining its best; yet, as if the moon and the torches, and
the fires in the street, and the rays streaming from windows and open
doors were not enough to make the way clear, some of the processionists
carried lighted lanterns; and fancying he discovered a special purpose
in the use of such equipments, Ben-Hur stepped into the street so close
to the line of march as to bring every one of the company under view
while passing. The torches and the lanterns were being borne by
servants, each of whom was armed with a bludgeon or a sharpened stave.
Their present duty seemed to be to pick out the smoothest paths among
the rocks in the street for certain dignitaries among them—elders and
priests; rabbis with long beards, heavy brows, and beaked noses; men of
the class potential in the councils of Caiaphas and Hannas. Where could
they be going? Not to the Temple, certainly, for the route to the
sacred house from Zion, whence these appeared to be coming, was by the
Xystus. And their business—if peaceful, why the soldiers?
As the procession began to go by Ben-Hur, his attention was
particularly called to three persons walking together. They were well
towards the front, and the servants who went before them with lanterns
appeared unusually careful in the service. In the person moving on the
left of this group he recognized a chief policeman of the Temple; the
one on the right was a priest; the middle man was not at first so
easily placed, as he walked leaning heavily upon the arms of the
others, and carried his head so low upon his breast as to hide his
face. His appearance was that of a prisoner not yet recovered from the
fright of arrest, or being taken to something dreadful—to torture or
death. The dignitaries helping him on the right and left, and the
attention they gave him, made it clear that if he were not himself the
object moving the party, he was at least in some way connected with the
object—a witness or a guide, possibly an informer. So if it could be
found who he was the business in hand might be shrewdly guessed. With
great assurance, Ben-Hur fell in on the right of the priest, and walked
along with him. Now if the man would lift his head! And presently he
did so, letting the light of the lanterns strike full in his face,
pale, dazed, pinched with dread; the beard roughed; the eyes filmy,
sunken, and despairing. In much going about following the Nazarene,
Ben-Hur had come to know his disciples as well as the Master; and now,
at sight of the dismal countenance, he cried out,
“The ’Scariot!”
Slowly the head of the man turned until his eyes settled upon Ben-Hur,
and his lips moved as if he were about to speak; but the priest
interfered.
“Who art thou? Begone!” he said to Ben-Hur, pushing him away.
The young man took the push good-naturedly, and, waiting an
opportunity, fell into the procession again. Thus he was carried
passively along down the street, through the crowded lowlands between
the hill Bezetha and the Castle of Antonia, and on by the Bethesda
reservoir to the Sheep Gate. There were people everywhere, and
everywhere the people were engaged in sacred observances.
It being Passover night, the valves of the Gate stood open. The keepers
were off somewhere feasting. In front of the procession as it passed
out unchallenged was the deep gorge of the Cedron, with Olivet beyond,
its dressing of cedar and olive trees darker of the moonlight silvering
all the heavens. Two roads met and merged into the street at the
gate—one from the northeast, the other from Bethany. Ere Ben-Hur could
finish wondering whether he were to go farther, and if so, which road
was to be taken, he was led off down into the gorge. And still no hint
of the purpose of the midnight march.
Down the gorge and over the bridge at the bottom of it. There was a
great clatter on the floor as the crowd, now a straggling rabble,
passed over beating and pounding with their clubs and staves. A little
farther, and they turned off to the left in the direction of an olive
orchard enclosed by a stone wall in view from the road. Ben-Hur knew
there was nothing in the place but old gnarled trees, the grass, and a
trough hewn out of a rock for the treading of oil after the fashion of
the country. While, yet more wonder-struck, he was thinking what could
bring such a company at such an hour to a quarter so lonesome, they
were all brought to a standstill. Voices called out excitedly in front;
a chill sensation ran from man to man; there was a rapid falling-back,
and a blind stumbling over each other. The soldiers alone kept their
order.
It took Ben-Hur but a moment to disengage himself from the mob and run
forward. There he found a gateway without a gate admitting to the
orchard, and he halted to take in the scene.
A man in white clothes, and bareheaded, was standing outside the
entrance, his hands crossed before him—a slender, stooping figure, with
long hair and thin face—in an attitude of resignation and waiting.
It was the Nazarene!
Behind him, next the gateway, were the disciples in a group; they were
excited, but no man was ever calmer than he. The torchlight beat redly
upon him, giving his hair a tint ruddier than was natural to it; yet
the expression of the countenance was as usual all gentleness and pity.
Opposite this most unmartial figure stood the rabble, gaping, silent,
awed, cowering—ready at a sign of anger from him to break and run. And
from him to them—then at Judas, conspicuous in their midst—Ben-Hur
looked—one quick glance, and the object of the visit lay open to his
understanding. Here was the betrayer, there the betrayed; and these
with clubs and staves, and the legionaries, were brought to take him.
A man may not always tell what he will do until the trial is upon him.
This was the emergency for which Ben-Hur had been for years preparing.
The man to whose security he had devoted himself, and upon whose life
he had been building so largely, was in personal peril; yet he stood
still. Such contradictions are there in human nature! To say truth, O
reader, he was not entirely recovered from the picture of the Christ
before the Gate Beautiful as it had been given by the Egyptian; and,
besides that, the very calmness with which the mysterious person
confronted the mob held him in restraint by suggesting the possession
of a power in reserve more than sufficient for the peril. Peace and
good-will, and love and non-resistance, had been the burden of the
Nazarene’s teaching; would he put his preaching into practice? He was
master of life; he could restore it when lost; he could take it at
pleasure. What use would he make of the power now? Defend himself? And
how? A word—a breath—a thought were sufficient. That there would be
some signal exhibition of astonishing force beyond the natural Ben-Hur
believed, and in that faith waited. And in all this he was still
measuring the Nazarene by himself—by the human standard.
Presently the clear voice of the Christ arose.
“Whom seek ye?”
“Jesus of Nazareth,” the priest replied.
“I am he.”
At these simplest of words, spoken without passion or alarm, the
assailants fell back several steps, the timid among them cowering to
the ground; and they might have let him alone and gone away had not
Judas walked over to him.
“Hail, master!”
With this friendly speech, he kissed him.
“Judas,” said the Nazarene, mildly, “betrayest thou the Son of man with
a kiss? Wherefore art thou come?”
Receiving no reply, the Master spoke to the crowd again.
“Whom seek ye?”
“Jesus of Nazareth.”
“I have told you that I am he. If, therefore, you seek me, let these go
their way.”
At these words of entreaty the rabbis advanced upon him; and, seeing
their intent, some of the disciples for whom he interceded drew nearer;
one of them cut off a man’s ear, but without saving the Master from
being taken. And yet Ben-Hur stood still! Nay, while the officers were
making ready with their ropes the Nazarene was doing his greatest
charity—not the greatest in deed, but the very greatest in illustration
of his forbearance, so far surpassing that of men.
“Suffer ye thus far,” he said to the wounded man, and healed him with a
touch.
Both friends and enemies were confounded—one side that he could do such
a thing, the other that he would do it under the circumstances.
“Surely he will not allow them to bind him!”
Thus thought Ben-Hur.
“Put up thy sword into the sheath; the cup which my Father hath given
me, shall I not drink it?” From the offending follower, the Nazarene
turned to his captors. “Are you come out as against a thief, with
swords and staves to take me? I was daily with you in the Temple, and
you took me not; but this is your hour, and the power of darkness.”
The posse plucked up courage and closed about him; and when Ben-Hur
looked for the faithful they were gone—not one of them remained.
The crowd about the deserted man seemed very busy with tongue, hand,
and foot. Over their heads, between the torch-sticks, through the
smoke, sometimes in openings between the restless men, Ben-Hur caught
momentary glimpses of the prisoner. Never had anything struck him as so
piteous, so unfriended, so forsaken! Yet, he thought, the man could
have defended himself—he could have slain his enemies with a breath,
but he would not. What was the cup his father had given him to drink?
And who was the father to be so obeyed? Mystery upon mystery—not one,
but many.
Directly the mob started in return to the city, the soldiers in the
lead. Ben-Hur became anxious; he was not satisfied with himself. Where
the torches were in the midst of the rabble he knew the Nazarene was to
be found. Suddenly he resolved to see him again. He would ask him one
question.
Taking off his long outer garment and the handkerchief from his head,
he threw them upon the orchard wall, and started after the posse, which
he boldly joined. Through the stragglers he made way, and by littles at
length reached the man who carried the ends of the rope with which the
prisoner was bound.
The Nazarene was walking slowly, his head down, his hands bound behind
him; the hair fell thickly over his face, and he stooped more than
usual; apparently he was oblivious to all going on around him. In
advance a few steps were priests and elders talking and occasionally
looking back. When, at length, they were all near the bridge in the
gorge, Ben-Hur took the rope from the servant who had it, and stepped
past him.
“Master, master!” he said, hurriedly, speaking close to the Nazarene’s
ear. “Dost thou hear, master? A word—one word. Tell me—”
The fellow from whom he had taken the rope now claimed it.
“Tell me,” Ben-Hur continued, “goest thou with these of thine own
accord?”
The people were come up now, and in his own ears asking angrily, “Who
art thou, man?”
“O master,” Ben-Hur made haste to say, his voice sharp with anxiety, “I
am thy friend and lover. Tell me, I pray thee, if I bring rescue, wilt
thou accept it?”
The Nazarene never so much as looked up or allowed the slightest sign
of recognition; yet the something which when we are suffering is always
telling it to such as look at us, though they be strangers, failed not
now. “Let him alone,” it seemed to say; “he has been abandoned by his
friends; the world has denied him; in bitterness of spirit, he has
taken farewell of men; he is going he knows not where, and he cares
not. Let him alone.”
And to that Ben-Hur was now driven. A dozen hands were upon him, and
from all sides there was shouting, “He is one of them. Bring him along;
club him—kill him!”
With a gust of passion which gave him many times his ordinary force,
Ben-Hur raised himself, turned once about with arms outstretched, shook
the hands off, and rushed through the circle which was fast hemming him
in. The hands snatching at him as he passed tore his garments from his
back, so he ran off the road naked; and the gorge, in keeping of the
friendly darkness, darker there than elsewhere, received him safe.
Reclaiming his handkerchief and outer garments from the orchard wall,
he followed back to the city gate; thence he went to the khan, and on
the good horse rode to the tents of his people out by the Tombs of the
Kings.
As he rode, he promised himself to see the Nazarene on the
morrow—promised it, not knowing that the unfriended man was taken
straightway to the house of Hannas to be tried that night.
The heart the young man carried to his couch beat so heavily he could
not sleep; for now clearly his renewed Judean kingdom resolved itself
into what it was—only a dream. It is bad enough to see our castles
overthrown one after another with an interval between in which to
recover from the shock, or at least let the echoes of the fall die
away; but when they go altogether—go as ships sink, as houses tumble in
earthquakes—the spirits which endure it calmly are made of stuffs
sterner than common, and Ben-Hur’s was not of them. Through vistas in
the future, he began to catch glimpses of a life serenely beautiful,
with a home instead of a palace of state, and Esther its mistress.
Again and again through the leaden-footed hours of the night he saw the
villa by Misenum, and with his little countrywoman strolled through the
garden, and rested in the panelled atrium; overhead the Neapolitan sky,
at their feet the sunniest of sun-lands and the bluest of bays.
In plainest speech, he was entering upon a crisis with which to-morrow
and the Nazarene will have everything to do.
CHAPTER IX
Next morning, about the second hour, two men rode full speed to the
doors of Ben-Hur’s tents, and dismounting, asked to see him. He was not
yet risen, but gave directions for their admission.
“Peace to you, brethren,” he said, for they were of his Galileans, and
trusted officers. “Will you be seated?”
“Nay,” the senior replied, bluntly, “to sit and be at ease is to let
the Nazarene die. Rise, son of Judah, and go with us. The judgment has
been given. The tree of the cross is already at Golgotha.”
Ben-Hur stared at them.
“The cross!” was all he could for the moment say.
“They took him last night, and tried him,” the man continued. “At dawn
they led him before Pilate. Twice the Roman denied his guilt; twice he
refused to give him over. At last he washed his hands, and said, ‘Be it
upon you then;’ and they answered—”
“Who answered?”
“They—the priests and people—‘His blood be upon us and our children.’”
“Holy father Abraham!” cried Ben-Hur; “a Roman kinder to an Israelite
than his own kin! And if—ah, if he should indeed be the son of God,
what shall ever wash his blood from their children? It must not be—’tis
time to fight!”
His face brightened with resolution, and he clapped his hands.
“The horses—and quickly!” he said to the Arab who answered the signal.
“And bid Amrah send me fresh garments, and bring my sword! It is time
to die for Israel, my friends. Tarry without till I come.”
He ate a crust, drank a cup of wine, and was soon upon the road.
“Whither would you go first?” asked the Galilean.
“To collect the legions.”
“Alas!” the man replied, throwing up his hands.
“Why alas?”
“Master”—the man spoke with shame—“master, I and my friend here are all
that are faithful. The rest do follow the priests.”
“Seeking what?” and Ben-Hur drew rein.
“To kill him.”
“Not the Nazarene?”
“You have said it.”
Ben-Hur looked slowly from one man to the other. He was hearing again
the question of the night before: “The cup my Father hath given me,
shall I not drink it?” In the ear of the Nazarene he was putting his
own question, “If I bring thee rescue, wilt thou accept it?” He was
saying to himself, “This death may not be averted. The man has been
travelling towards it with full knowledge from the day he began his
mission: it is imposed by a will higher than his; whose but the Lord’s!
If he is consenting, if he goes to it voluntarily, what shall another
do?” Nor less did Ben-Hur see the failure of the scheme he had built
upon the fidelity of the Galileans; their desertion, in fact, left
nothing more of it. But how singular it should happen that morning of
all others! A dread seized him. It was possible his scheming, and
labor, and expenditure of treasure might have been but blasphemous
contention with God. When he picked up the reins and said, “Let us go,
brethren,” all before him was uncertainty. The faculty of resolving
quickly, without which one cannot be a hero in the midst of stirring
scenes, was numb within him.
“Let us go, brethren; let us to Golgotha.”
They passed through excited crowds of people going south, like
themselves. All the country north of the city seemed aroused and in
motion.
Hearing that the procession with the condemned might be met with
somewhere near the great white towers left by Herod, the three friends
rode thither, passing round southeast of Akra. In the valley below the
Pool of Hezekiah, passage-way against the multitude became impossible,
and they were compelled to dismount, and take shelter behind the corner
of a house and wait.
The waiting was as if they were on a river bank, watching a flood go
by, for such the people seemed.
There are certain chapters in the First Book of this story which were
written to give the reader an idea of the composition of the Jewish
nationality as it was in the time of Christ. They were also written in
anticipation of this hour and scene; so that he who has read them with
attention can now see all Ben-Hur saw of the going to the crucifixion—a
rare and wonderful sight!
Half an hour—an hour—the flood surged by Ben-Hur and his companions,
within arm’s reach, incessant, undiminished. At the end of that time he
could have said, “I have seen all the castes of Jerusalem, all the
sects of Judea, all the tribes of Israel, and all the nationalities of
earth represented by them.” The Libyan Jew went by, and the Jew of
Egypt, and the Jew from the Rhine; in short, Jews from all East
countries and all West countries, and all islands within commercial
connection; they went by on foot, on horseback, on camels, in litters
and chariots, and with an infinite variety of costumes, yet with the
same marvellous similitude of features which to-day particularizes the
children of Israel, tried as they have been by climates and modes of
life; they went by speaking all known tongues, for by that means only
were they distinguishable group from group; they went by in
haste—eager, anxious, crowding—all to behold one poor Nazarene die, a
felon between felons.
These were the many, but they were not all.
Borne along with the stream were thousands not Jews—thousands hating
and despising them—Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Syrians, Africans, Egyptians,
Easterns. So that, studying the mass, it seemed the whole world was to
be represented, and, in that sense, present at the crucifixion.
The going was singularly quiet. A hoof-stroke upon a rock, the glide
and rattle of revolving wheels, voices in conversation, and now and
then a calling voice, were all the sounds heard above the rustle of the
mighty movement. Yet was there upon every countenance the look with
which men make haste to see some dreadful sight, some sudden wreck, or
ruin, or calamity of war. And by such signs Ben-Hur judged that these
were the strangers in the city come up to the Passover, who had had no
part in the trial of the Nazarene, and might be his friends.
At length, from the direction of the great towers, Ben-Hur heard, at
first faint in the distance, a shouting of many men.
“Hark! they are coming now,” said one of his friends.
The people in the street halted to hear; but as the cry rang on over
their heads, they looked at each other, and in shuddering silence moved
along.
The shouting drew nearer each moment; and the air was already full of
it and trembling, when Ben-Hur saw the servants of Simonides coming
with their master in his chair, and Esther walking by his side; a
covered litter was next behind them.
“Peace to you, O Simonides—and to you, Esther,” said Ben-Hur, meeting
them. “If you are for Golgotha, stay until the procession passes; I
will then go with you. There is room to turn in by the house here.”
The merchant’s large head rested heavily upon his breast; rousing
himself, he answered, “Speak to Balthasar; his pleasure will be mine.
He is in the litter.”
Ben-Hur hastened to draw aside the curtain. The Egyptian was lying
within, his wan face so pinched as to appear like a dead man’s. The
proposal was submitted to him.
“Can we see him?” he inquired, faintly.
“The Nazarene? yes; he must pass within a few feet of us.”
“Dear Lord!” the old man cried, fervently. “Once more, once more! Oh,
it is a dreadful day for the world!”
Shortly the whole party were in waiting under shelter of the house.
They said but little, afraid, probably, to trust their thoughts to each
other; everything was uncertain, and nothing so much so as opinions.
Balthasar drew himself feebly from the litter, and stood supported by a
servant; Esther and Ben-Hur kept Simonides company.
Meantime the flood poured along, if anything, more densely than before;
and the shouting came nearer, shrill up in the air, hoarse along the
earth, and cruel. At last the procession was up.
“See!” said Ben-Hur, bitterly; “that which cometh now is Jerusalem.”
The advance was in possession of an army of boys, hooting and
screaming, “The King of the Jews! Room, room for the King of the Jews!”
Simonides watched them as they whirled and danced along, like a cloud
of summer insects, and said, gravely, “When these come to their
inheritance, son of Hur, alas for the city of Solomon!”
A band of legionaries fully armed followed next, marching in sturdy
indifference, the glory of burnished brass about them the while.
Then came the NAZARENE!
He was nearly dead. Every few steps he staggered as if he would fall. A
stained gown badly torn hung from his shoulders over a seamless
undertunic. His bare feet left red splotches upon the stones. An
inscription on a board was tied to his neck. A crown of thorns had been
crushed hard down upon his head, making cruel wounds from which streams
of blood, now dry and blackened, had run over his face and neck. The
long hair, tangled in the thorns, was clotted thick. The skin, where it
could be seen, was ghastly white. His hands were tied before him. Back
somewhere in the city he had fallen exhausted under the transverse beam
of his cross, which, as a condemned person, custom required him to bear
to the place of execution; now a countryman carried the burden in his
stead. Four soldiers went with him as a guard against the mob, who
sometimes, nevertheless, broke through, and struck him with sticks, and
spit upon him. Yet no sound escaped him, neither remonstrance nor
groan; nor did he look up until he was nearly in front of the house
sheltering Ben-Hur and his friends, all of whom were moved with quick
compassion. Esther clung to her father; and he, strong of will as he
was, trembled. Balthasar fell down speechless. Even Ben-Hur cried out,
“O my God! my God!” Then, as if he divined their feelings or heard the
exclamation, the Nazarene turned his wan face towards the party, and
looked at them each one, so they carried the look in memory through
life. They could see he was thinking of them, not himself, and the
dying eyes gave them the blessing he was not permitted to speak.
“Where are thy legions, son of Hur?” asked Simonides, aroused.
“Hannas can tell thee better than I.”
“What, faithless?”
“All but these two.”
“Then all is lost, and this good man must die!”
The face of the merchant knit convulsively as he spoke, and his head
sank upon his breast. He had borne his part in Ben-Hur’s labors well,
and he had been inspired by the same hopes, now blown out never to be
rekindled.
Two other men succeeded the Nazarene bearing cross-beams.
“Who are these?” Ben-Hur asked of the Galileans.
“Thieves appointed to die with the Nazarene,” they replied.
Next in the procession stalked a mitred figure clad all in the golden
vestments of the high-priest. Policemen from the Temple curtained him
round about; and after him, in order, strode the sanhedrim, and a long
array of priests, the latter in their plain white garments, overwrapped
by abnets of many folds and gorgeous colors.
“The son-in-law of Hannas,” said Ben-Hur, in a low voice.
“Caiaphas! I have seen him,” Simonides replied, adding, after a pause
during which he thoughtfully watched the haughty pontiff, “And now am I
convinced. With such assurance as proceeds from clear enlightenment of
the spirit—with absolute assurance—now know I that he who first goes
yonder with the inscription about his neck is what the inscription
proclaims him—KING OF THE JEWS. A common man, an impostor, a felon, was
never thus waited upon. For look! Here are the nations—Jerusalem,
Israel. Here is the ephod, here the blue robe with its fringe, and
purple pomegranates, and golden bells, not seen in the street since the
day Jaddua went out to meet the Macedonian—proofs all that this
Nazarene is King. Would I could rise and go after him!”
Ben-Hur listened surprised; and directly, as if himself awakening to
his unusual display of feeling, Simonides said, impatiently,
“Speak to Balthasar, I pray you, and let us begone. The vomit of
Jerusalem is coming.”
Then Esther spoke.
“I see some women there, and they are weeping. Who are they?”
Following the pointing of her hand, the party beheld four women in
tears; one of them leaned upon the arm of a man of aspect not unlike
the Nazarene’s. Presently Ben-Hur answered,
“The man is the disciple whom the Nazarene loves the best of all; she
who leans upon his arm is Mary, the Master’s mother; the others are
friendly women of Galilee.”
Esther pursued the mourners with glistening eyes until the multitude
received them out of sight.
It may be the reader will fancy the foregoing snatches of conversation
were had in quiet; but it was not so. The talking was, for the most
part, like that indulged by people at the seaside under the sound of
the surf; for to nothing else can the clamor of this division of the
mob be so well likened.
The demonstration was the forerunner of those in which, scarce thirty
years later, under rule of the factions, the Holy City was torn to
pieces; it was quite as great in numbers, as fanatical and
bloodthirsty; boiled and raved, and had in it exactly the same
elements—servants, camel-drivers, marketmen, gate-keepers, gardeners,
dealers in fruits and wines, proselytes, and foreigners not proselytes,
watchmen and menials from the Temple, thieves, robbers, and the myriad
not assignable to any class, but who, on such occasions as this,
appeared no one could say whence, hungry and smelling of caves and old
tombs—bareheaded wretches with naked arms and legs, hair and beard in
uncombed mats, and each with one garment the color of clay; beasts with
abysmal mouths, in outcry effective as lions calling each other across
desert spaces. Some of them had swords; a greater number flourished
spears and javelins; though the weapons of the many were staves and
knotted clubs, and slings, for which latter selected stones were stored
in scrips, and sometimes in sacks improvised from the foreskirts of
their dirty tunics. Among the mass here and there appeared persons of
high degree—scribes, elders, rabbis, Pharisees with broad fringing,
Sadducees in fine cloaks—serving for the time as prompters and
directors. If a throat tired of one cry, they invented another for it;
if brassy lungs showed signs of collapse, they set them going again;
and yet the clamor, loud and continuous as it was, could have been
reduced to a few syllables—King of the Jews! Room for the King of the
Jews!—Defiler of the Temple!—Blasphemer of God!—Crucify him, crucify
him! And of these cries the last one seemed in greatest favor, because,
doubtless, it was more directly expressive of the wish of the mob, and
helped to better articulate its hatred of the Nazarene.
“Come,” said Simonides, when Balthasar was ready to proceed—“come, let
us forward.”
Ben-Hur did not hear the call. The appearance of the part of the
procession then passing, its brutality and hunger for life, were
reminding him of the Nazarene—his gentleness, and the many charities he
had seen him do for suffering men. Suggestions beget suggestions; so he
remembered suddenly his own great indebtedness to the man; the time he
himself was in the hands of a Roman guard going, as was supposed, to a
death as certain and almost as terrible as this one of the cross; the
cooling drink he had at the well by Nazareth, and the divine expression
of the face of him who gave it; the later goodness, the miracle of
Palm-Sunday; and with these recollections, the thought of his present
powerlessness to give back help for help or make return in kind stung
him keenly, and he accused himself. He had not done all he might; he
could have watched with the Galileans, and kept them true and ready;
and this—ah! this was the moment to strike! A blow well given now would
not merely disperse the mob and set the Nazarene free; it would be a
trumpet-call to Israel, and precipitate the long-dreamt-of war for
freedom. The opportunity was going; the minutes were bearing it away;
and if lost! God of Abraham! Was there nothing to be done—nothing?
That instant a party of Galileans caught his eye. He rushed through the
press and overtook them.
“Follow me,” he said. “I would have speech with you.”
The men obeyed him, and when they were under shelter of the house, he
spoke again:
“You are of those who took my swords, and agreed with me to strike for
freedom and the King who was coming. You have the swords now, and now
is the time to strike with them. Go, look everywhere, and find our
brethren, and tell them to meet me at the tree of the cross making
ready for the Nazarene. Haste all of you! Nay, stand not so! The
Nazarene is the King, and freedom dies with him.”
They looked at him respectfully, but did not move.
“Hear you?” he asked.
Then one of them replied,
“Son of Judah”—by that name they knew him—“son of Judah, it is you who
are deceived, not we or our brethren who have your swords. The Nazarene
is not the King; neither has he the spirit of a king. We were with him
when he came into Jerusalem; we saw him in the Temple; he failed
himself, and us, and Israel; at the Gate Beautiful he turned his back
upon God and refused the throne of David. He is not King, and Galilee
is not with him. He shall die the death. But hear you, son of Judah. We
have your swords, and we are ready now to draw them and strike for
freedom; and so is Galilee. Be it for freedom, O son of Judah, for
freedom! and we will meet you at the tree of the cross.”
The sovereign moment of his life was upon Ben-Hur. Could he have taken
the offer and said the word, history might have been other than it is;
but then it would have been history ordered by men, not God—something
that never was, and never will be. A confusion fell upon him; he knew
not how, though afterwards he attributed it to the Nazarene; for when
the Nazarene was risen, he understood the death was necessary to faith
in the resurrection, without which Christianity would be an empty husk.
The confusion, as has been said, left him without the faculty of
decision; he stood helpless—wordless even. Covering his face with his
hand, he shook with the conflict between his wish, which was what he
would have ordered, and the power that was upon him.
“Come; we are waiting for you,” said Simonides, the fourth time.
Thereupon he walked mechanically after the chair and the litter. Esther
walked with him. Like Balthasar and his friends, the Wise Men, the day
they went to the meeting in the desert, he was being led along the way.
CHAPTER X
When the party—Balthasar, Simonides, Ben-Hur, Esther, and the two
faithful Galileans—reached the place of crucifixion, Ben-Hur was in
advance leading them. How they had been able to make way through the
great press of excited people, he never knew; no more did he know the
road by which they came or the time it took them to come. He had walked
in total unconsciousness, neither hearing nor seeing anybody or
anything, and without a thought of where he was going, or the
ghostliest semblance of a purpose in his mind. In such condition a
little child could have done as much as he to prevent the awful crime
he was about to witness. The intentions of God are always strange to
us; but not more so than the means by which they are wrought out, and
at last made plain to our belief.
Ben-Hur came to a stop; those following him also stopped. As a curtain
rises before an audience, the spell holding him in its sleep-awake
rose, and he saw with a clear understanding.
There was a space upon the top of a low knoll rounded like a skull, and
dry, dusty, and without vegetation, except some scrubby hyssop. The
boundary of the space was a living wall of men, with men behind
struggling, some to look over, others to look through it. An inner wall
of Roman soldiery held the dense outer wall rigidly to its place. A
centurion kept eye upon the soldiers. Up to the very line so vigilantly
guarded Ben-Hur had been led; at the line he now stood, his face to the
northwest. The knoll was the old Aramaic Golgotha—in Latin, Calvaria;
anglicized, Calvary; translated, The Skull.
On its slopes, in the low places, on the swells and higher hills, the
earth sparkled with a strange enamelling. Look where he would outside
the walled space, he saw no patch of brown soil, no rock, no green
thing; he saw only thousands of eyes in ruddy faces; off a little way
in the perspective only ruddy faces without eyes; off a little farther
only a broad, broad circle, which the nearer view instructed him was
also of faces. And this was the ensemble of three millions of people;
under it three millions of hearts throbbing with passionate interest in
what was taking place upon the knoll; indifferent as to the thieves,
caring only for the Nazarene, and for him only as he was an object of
hate or fear or curiosity—he who loved them all, and was about to die
for them.
In the spectacle of a great assemblage of people there are always the
bewilderment and fascination one feels while looking over a stretch of
sea in agitation, and never had this one been exceeded; yet Ben-Hur
gave it but a passing glance, for that which was going on in the space
described would permit no division of his interest.
Up on the knoll so high as to be above the living wall, and visible
over the heads of an attending company of notables, conspicuous because
of his mitre and vestments and his haughty air, stood the high priest.
Up the knoll still higher, up quite to the round summit, so as to be
seen far and near, was the Nazarene, stooped and suffering, but silent.
The wit among the guard had complemented the crown upon his head by
putting a reed in his hand for a sceptre. Clamors blew upon him like
blasts—laughter—execrations—sometimes both together indistinguishably.
A man—ONLY a man, O reader, would have charged the blasts with the
remainder of his love for the race, and let it go forever.
All the eyes then looking were fixed upon the Nazarene. It may have
been pity with which he was moved; whatever the cause, Ben-Hur was
conscious of a change in his feelings. A conception of something better
than the best of this life—something so much better that it could serve
a weak man with strength to endure agonies of spirit as well as of
body; something to make death welcome—perhaps another life purer than
this one—perhaps the spirit-life which Balthasar held to so fast, began
to dawn upon his mind clearer and clearer, bringing to him a certain
sense that, after all, the mission of the Nazarene was that of guide
across the boundary for such as loved him; across the boundary to where
his kingdom was set up and waiting for him. Then, as something borne
through the air out of the almost forgotten, he heard again, or seemed
to hear, the saying of the Nazarene,
“I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE.”
And the words repeated themselves over and over, and took form, and the
dawn touched them with its light, and filled them with a new meaning.
And as men repeat a question to grasp and fix the meaning, he asked,
gazing at the figure on the hill fainting under its crown, Who the
Resurrection? and who the Life?
“I AM,”
the figure seemed to say—and say it for him; for instantly he was
sensible of a peace such as he had never known—the peace which is the
end of doubt and mystery, and the beginning of faith and love and clear
understanding.
From this dreamy state Ben-Hur was aroused by the sound of hammering.
On the summit of the knoll he observed then what had escaped him
before—some soldiers and workmen preparing the crosses. The holes for
planting the trees were ready, and now the transverse beams were being
fitted to their places.
“Bid the men make haste,” said the high-priest to the centurion.
“These”—and he pointed to the Nazarene—“must be dead by the going-down
of the sun, and buried that the land may not be defiled. Such is the
Law.”
With a better mind, a soldier went to the Nazarene and offered him
something to drink, but he refused the cup. Then another went to him
and took from his neck the board with the inscription upon it, which he
nailed to the tree of the cross—and the preparation was complete.
“The crosses are ready,” said the centurion to the pontiff, who
received the report with a wave of the hand and the reply,
“Let the blasphemer go first. The Son of God should be able to save
himself. We will see.”
The people to whom the preparation in its several stages was visible,
and who to this time had assailed the hill with incessant cries of
impatience, permitted a lull which directly became a universal hush.
The part of the infliction most shocking, at least to the thought, was
reached—the men were to be nailed to their crosses. When for that
purpose the soldiers laid their hands upon the Nazarene first, a
shudder passed through the great concourse; the most brutalized shrank
with dread. Afterwards there were those who said the air suddenly
chilled and made them shiver.
“How very still it is!” Esther said, as she put her arm about her
father’s neck.
And remembering the torture he himself had suffered, he drew her face
down upon his breast, and sat trembling.
“Avoid it, Esther, avoid it!” he said. “I know not but all who stand
and see it—the innocent as well as the guilty—may be cursed from this
hour.”
Balthasar sank upon his knees.
“Son of Hur,” said Simonides, with increasing excitement—“son of Hur,
if Jehovah stretch not forth his hand, and quickly, Israel is lost—and
we are lost.”
Ben-Hur answered, calmly, “I have been in a dream, Simonides, and heard
in it why all this should be, and why it should go on. It is the will
of the Nazarene—it is God’s will. Let us do as the Egyptian here—let us
hold our peace and pray.”
As he looked up on the knoll again, the words were wafted to him
through the awful stillness—
“I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE.”
He bowed reverently as to a person speaking.
Up on the summit meantime the work went on. The guard took the
Nazarene’s clothes from him; so that he stood before the millions
naked. The stripes of the scourging he had received in the early
morning were still bloody upon his back; yet he was laid pitilessly
down, and stretched upon the cross—first, the arms upon the transverse
beam; the spikes were sharp—a few blows, and they were driven through
the tender palms; next, they drew his knees up until the soles of the
feet rested flat upon the tree; then they placed one foot upon the
other, and one spike fixed both of them fast. The dulled sound of the
hammering was heard outside the guarded space; and such as could not
hear, yet saw the hammer as it fell, shivered with fear. And withal not
a groan, or cry, or word of remonstrance from the sufferer: nothing at
which an enemy could laugh; nothing a lover could regret.
“Which way wilt thou have him faced?” asked a soldier, bluntly.
“Towards the Temple,” the pontiff replied. “In dying I would have him
see the holy house hath not suffered by him.”
The workmen put their hands to the cross, and carried it, burden and
all, to the place of planting. At a word, they dropped the tree into
the hole; and the body of the Nazarene also dropped heavily, and hung
by the bleeding hands. Still no cry of pain—only the exclamation
divinest of all recorded exclamations,
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
The cross, reared now above all other objects, and standing singly out
against the sky, was greeted with a burst of delight; and all who could
see and read the writing upon the board over the Nazarene’s head made
haste to decipher it. Soon as read, the legend was adopted by them and
communicated, and presently the whole mighty concourse was ringing the
salutation from side to side, and repeating it with laughter and
groans,
“King of the Jews! Hail, King of the Jews!”
The pontiff, with a clearer idea of the import of the inscription,
protested against it, but in vain; so the titled King, looking from the
knoll with dying eyes, must have had the city of his fathers at rest
below him—she who had so ignominiously cast him out.
The sun was rising rapidly to noon; the hills bared their brown breasts
lovingly to it; the more distant mountains rejoiced in the purple with
which it so regally dressed them. In the city, the temples, palaces,
towers, pinnacles, and all points of beauty and prominence seemed to
lift themselves into the unrivalled brilliance, as if they knew the
pride they were giving the many who from time to time turned to look at
them. Suddenly a dimness began to fill the sky and cover the earth—at
first no more than a scarce perceptible fading of the day; a twilight
out of time; an evening gliding in upon the splendors of noon. But it
deepened, and directly drew attention; whereat the noise of the
shouting and laughter fell off, and men, doubting their senses, gazed
at each other curiously: then they looked to the sun again; then at the
mountains, getting farther away; at the sky and the near landscape,
sinking in shadow; at the hill upon which the tragedy was enacting; and
from all these they gazed at each other again, and turned pale, and
held their peace.
“It is only a mist or passing cloud,” Simonides said soothingly to
Esther, who was alarmed. “It will brighten presently.”
Ben-Hur did not think so.
“It is not a mist or a cloud,” he said. “The spirits who live in the
air—the prophets and saints—are at work in mercy to themselves and
nature. I say to you, O Simonides, truly as God lives, he who hangs
yonder is the Son of God.”
And leaving Simonides lost in wonder at such a speech from him, he went
where Balthasar was kneeling near by, and laid his hand upon the good
man’s shoulder.
“O wise Egyptian, hearken! Thou alone wert right—the Nazarene is indeed
the Son of God.”
Balthasar drew him down to him, and replied, feebly, “I saw him a child
in the manger where he was first laid; it is not strange that I knew
him sooner than thou; but oh that I should live to see this day! Would
I had died with my brethren! Happy Melchior! Happy, happy Gaspar!”
“Comfort thee!” said Ben-Hur. “Doubtless they too are here.”
The dimness went on deepening into obscurity, and that into positive
darkness, but without deterring the bolder spirits upon the knoll. One
after the other the thieves were raised on their crosses, and the
crosses planted. The guard was then withdrawn, and the people set free
closed in upon the height, and surged up it, like a converging wave. A
man might take a look, when a new-comer would push him on, and take his
place, to be in turn pushed on—and there were laughter and ribaldry and
revilements, all for the Nazarene.
“Ha, ha! If thou be King of the Jews, save thyself,” a soldier shouted.
“Ay,” said a priest, “if he will come down to us now, we will believe
in him.”
Others wagged their heads wisely, saying, “He would destroy the Temple,
and rebuild it in three days, but cannot save himself.”
Others still: “He called himself the Son of God; let us see if God will
have him.”
What all there is in prejudice no one has ever said. The Nazarene had
never harmed the people; far the greater part of them had never seen
him except in this his hour of calamity; yet—singular contrariety!—they
loaded him with their curses, and gave their sympathy to the thieves.
The supernatural night, dropped thus from the heavens, affected Esther
as it began to affect thousands of others braver and stronger.
“Let us go home,” she prayed—twice, three times—saying, “It is the
frown of God, father. What other dreadful things may happen, who can
tell? I am afraid.”
Simonides was obstinate. He said little, but was plainly under great
excitement. Observing, about the end of the first hour, that the
violence of the crowding up on the knoll was somewhat abated, at his
suggestion the party advanced to take position nearer the crosses.
Ben-Hur gave his arm to Balthasar; yet the Egyptian made the ascent
with difficulty. From their new stand, the Nazarene was imperfectly
visible, appearing to them not more than a dark suspended figure. They
could hear him, however—hear his sighing, which showed an endurance or
exhaustion greater than that of his fellow-sufferers; for they filled
every lull in the noises with their groans and entreaties.
The second hour after the suspension passed like the first one. To the
Nazarene they were hours of insult, provocation, and slow dying. He
spoke but once in the time. Some women came and knelt at the foot of
his cross. Among them he recognized his mother with the beloved
disciple.
“Woman,” he said, raising his voice, “behold thy son!” And to the
disciple, “Behold thy mother!”
The third hour came, and still the people surged round the hill, held
to it by some strange attraction, with which, in probability, the night
in midday had much to do. They were quieter than in the preceding hour;
yet at intervals they could be heard off in the darkness shouting to
each other, multitude calling unto multitude. It was noticeable, also,
that coming now to the Nazarene, they approached his cross in silence,
took the look in silence, and so departed. This change extended even to
the guard, who so shortly before had cast lots for the clothes of the
crucified; they stood with their officers a little apart, more watchful
of the one convict than of the throngs coming and going. If he but
breathed heavily, or tossed his head in a paroxysm of pain, they were
instantly on the alert. Most marvellous of all, however, was the
altered behavior of the high-priest and his following, the wise men who
had assisted him in the trial in the night, and, in the victim’s face,
kept place by him with zealous approval. When the darkness began to
fall, they began to lose their confidence. There were among them many
learned in astronomy, and familiar with the apparitions so terrible in
those days to the masses; much of the knowledge was descended to them
from their fathers far back; some of it had been brought away at the
end of the Captivity; and the necessities of the Temple service kept it
all bright. These closed together when the sun commenced to fade before
their eyes, and the mountains and hills to recede; they drew together
in a group around their pontiff, and debated what they saw. “The moon
is at its full,” they said, with truth, “and this cannot be an
eclipse.” Then, as no one could answer the question common with them
all—as no one could account for the darkness, or for its occurrence at
that particular time, in their secret hearts they associated it with
the Nazarene, and yielded to an alarm which the long continuance of the
phenomenon steadily increased. In their place behind the soldiers, they
noted every word and motion of the Nazarene, and hung with fear upon
his sighs, and talked in whispers. The man might be the Messiah, and
then— But they would wait and see!
In the meantime Ben-Hur was not once visited by the old spirit. The
perfect peace abode with him. He prayed simply that the end might be
hastened. He knew the condition of Simonides’ mind—that he was
hesitating on the verge of belief. He could see the massive face
weighed down by solemn reflection. He noticed him casting inquiring
glances at the sun, as seeking the cause of the darkness. Nor did he
fail to notice the solicitude with which Esther clung to him,
smothering her fears to accommodate his wishes.
“Be not afraid,” he heard him say to her; “but stay and watch with me.
Thou mayst live twice the span of my life, and see nothing of human
interest equal to this; and there may be revelations more. Let us stay
to the close.”
When the third hour was about half gone, some men of the rudest
class—wretches from the tombs about the city—came and stopped in front
of the centre cross.
“This is he, the new King of the Jews,” said one of them.
The others cried, with laughter, “Hail, all hail, King of the Jews!”
Receiving no reply, they went closer.
“If thou be King of the Jews, or Son of God, come down,” they said,
loudly.
At this, one of the thieves quit groaning, and called to the Nazarene,
“Yes, if thou be Christ, save thyself and us.”
The people laughed and applauded; then, while they were listening for a
reply, the other felon was heard to say to the first one, “Dost thou
not fear God? We receive the due rewards of our deeds; but this man
hath done nothing amiss.”
The bystanders were astonished; in the midst of the hush which ensued,
the second felon spoke again, but this time to the Nazarene:
“Lord,” he said, “remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.”
Simonides gave a great start. “When thou comest into thy kingdom!” It
was the very point of doubt in his mind; the point he had so often
debated with Balthasar.
“Didst thou hear?” said Ben-Hur to him. “The kingdom cannot be of this
world. Yon witness saith the King is but going to his kingdom; and, in
effect, I heard the same in my dream.”
“Hush!” said Simonides, more imperiously than ever before in speech to
Ben-Hur. “Hush, I pray thee! If the Nazarene should answer—”
And as he spoke the Nazarene did answer, in a clear voice, full of
confidence:
“Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise!”
Simonides waited to hear if that were all; then he folded his hands and
said, “No more, no more, Lord! The darkness is gone; I see with other
eyes—even as Balthasar, I see with eyes of perfect faith.”
The faithful servant had at last his fitting reward. His broken body
might never be restored; nor was there riddance of the recollection of
his sufferings, or recall of the years embittered by them; but suddenly
a new life was shown him, with assurance that it was for him—a new life
lying just beyond this one—and its name was Paradise. There he would
find the Kingdom of which he had been dreaming, and the King. A perfect
peace fell upon him.
Over the way, in front of the cross, however, there were surprise and
consternation. The cunning casuists there put the assumption underlying
the question and the admission underlying the answer together. For
saying through the land that he was the Messiah, they had brought the
Nazarene to the cross; and, lo! on the cross, more confidently than
ever, he had not only reasserted himself, but promised enjoyment of his
Paradise to a malefactor. They trembled at what they were doing. The
pontiff, with all his pride, was afraid. Where got the man his
confidence except from Truth? And what should the Truth be but God? A
very little now would put them all to flight.
The breathing of the Nazarene grew harder, his sighs became great
gasps. Only three hours upon the cross, and he was dying!
The intelligence was carried from man to man, until every one knew it;
and then everything hushed; the breeze faltered and died; a stifling
vapor loaded the air; heat was superadded to darkness; nor might any
one unknowing the fact have thought that off the hill, out under the
overhanging pall, there were three millions of people waiting
awe-struck what should happen next—they were so still!
Then there went out through the gloom, over the heads of such as were
on the hill within hearing of the dying man, a cry of despair, if not
reproach:
“My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?”
The voice startled all who heard it. One it touched uncontrollably.
The soldiers in coming had brought with them a vessel of wine and
water, and set it down a little way from Ben-Hur. With a sponge dipped
into the liquor, and put on the end of a stick, they could moisten the
tongue of a sufferer at their pleasure. Ben-Hur thought of the draught
he had had at the well near Nazareth; an impulse seized him; catching
up the sponge, he dipped it into the vessel, and started for the cross.
“Let him be!” the people in the way shouted, angrily. “Let him be!”
Without minding them, he ran on, and put the sponge to the Nazarene’s
lips.
Too late, too late!
The face then plainly seen by Ben-Hur, bruised and black with blood and
dust as it was, lighted nevertheless with a sudden glow; the eyes
opened wide, and fixed upon some one visible to them alone in the far
heavens; and there were content and relief, even triumph, in the shout
the victim gave.
“It is finished! It is finished!”
So a hero, dying in the doing a great deed, celebrates his success with
a last cheer.
The light in the eyes went out; slowly the crowned head sank upon the
laboring breast. Ben-Hur thought the struggle over; but the fainting
soul recollected itself, so that he and those around him caught the
other and last words, spoken in a low voice, as if to one listening
close by:
“Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”
A tremor shook the tortured body; there was a scream of fiercest
anguish, and the mission and the earthly life were over at once. The
heart, with all its love, was broken; for of that, O reader, the man
died!
Ben-Hur went back to his friends, saying, simply, “It is over; he is
dead.”
In a space incredibly short the multitude was informed of the
circumstance. No one repeated it aloud; there was a murmur which spread
from the knoll in every direction; a murmur that was little more than a
whispering, “He is dead! he is dead!” and that was all. The people had
their wish; the Nazarene was dead; yet they stared at each other
aghast. His blood was upon them! And while they stood staring at each
other, the ground commenced to shake; each man took hold of his
neighbor to support himself; in a twinkling the darkness disappeared,
and the sun came out; and everybody, as with the same glance, beheld
the crosses upon the hill all reeling drunken-like in the earthquake.
They beheld all three of them; but the one in the centre was arbitrary;
it alone would be seen; and for that it seemed to extend itself
upwards, and lift its burden, and swing it to and fro higher and higher
in the blue of the sky. And every man among them who had jeered at the
Nazarene; every one who had struck him; every one who had voted to
crucify him; every one who had marched in the procession from the city;
every one who had in his heart wished him dead, and they were as ten to
one, felt that he was in some way individually singled out from the
many, and that if he would live he must get away quickly as possible
from that menace in the sky. They started to run; they ran with all
their might; on horseback, and camels, and in chariots they ran, as
well as on foot; but then as if it were mad at them for what they had
done, and had taken up the cause of the unoffending and friendless
dead, the earthquake pursued them, and tossed them about, and flung
them down, and terrified them yet more by the horrible noise of great
rocks grinding and rending beneath them. They beat their breasts and
shrieked with fear. His blood was upon them! The home-bred and the
foreign, priest and layman, beggar, Sadducee, Pharisee, were overtaken
in the race, and tumbled about indiscriminately. If they called on the
Lord, the outraged earth answered for him in fury, and dealt them all
alike. It did not even know wherein the high-priest was better than his
guilty brethren; overtaking him, it tripped him up also, and smirched
the fringing of his robe, and filled the golden bells with sand, and
his mouth with dust. He and his people were alike in the one thing at
least—the blood of the Nazarene was upon them all!
When the sunlight broke upon the crucifixion, the mother of the
Nazarene, the disciple, and the faithful women of Galilee, the
centurion and his soldiers, and Ben-Hur and his party, were all who
remained upon the hill. These had not time to observe the flight of the
multitude; they were too loudly called upon to take care of themselves.
“Seat thyself here,” said Ben-Hur to Esther, making a place for her at
her father’s feet. “Now cover thine eyes and look not up; but put thy
trust in God, and the spirit of yon just man so foully slain.”
“Nay,” said Simonides, reverently, “let us henceforth speak of him as
the Christ.”
“Be it so,” said Ben-Hur.
Presently a wave of the earthquake struck the hill. The shrieks of the
thieves upon the reeling crosses were terrible to hear. Though giddy
with the movements of the ground, Ben-Hur had time to look at
Balthasar, and beheld him prostrate and still. He ran to him and
called—there was no reply. The good man was dead! Then Ben-Hur
remembered to have heard a cry in answer, as it were, to the scream of
the Nazarene in his last moment; but he had not looked to see from whom
it had proceeded; and ever after he believed the spirit of the Egyptian
accompanied that of his Master over the boundary into the kingdom of
Paradise. The idea rested not only upon the cry heard, but upon the
exceeding fitness of the distinction. If faith were worthy reward in
the person of Gaspar, and love in that of Melchior, surely he should
have some special meed who through a long life and so excellently
illustrated the three virtues in combination—Faith, Love, and Good
Works.
The servants of Balthasar had deserted their master; but when all was
over, the two Galileans bore the old man in his litter back to the
city.
It was a sorrowful procession that entered the south gate of the palace
of the Hurs about the set of sun that memorable day. About the same
hour the body of the Christ was taken down from the cross.
The remains of Balthasar were carried to the guest-chamber. All the
servants hastened weeping to see him; for he had the love of every
living thing with which he had in anywise to do; but when they beheld
his face, and the smile upon it, they dried their tears, saying, “It is
well. He is happier this evening than when he went out in the morning.”
Ben-Hur would not trust a servant to inform Iras what had befallen her
father. He went himself to see her and bring her to the body. He
imagined her grief; she would now be alone in the world; it was a time
to forgive and pity her. He remembered he had not asked why she was not
of the party in the morning, or where she was; he remembered he had not
thought of her; and, from shame, he was ready to make any amends, the
more so as he was about to plunge her into such acute grief.
He shook the curtains of her door; and though he heard the ringing of
the little bells echoing within, he had no response; he called her
name, and again he called—still no answer. He drew the curtain aside
and went into the room; she was not there. He ascended hastily to the
roof in search of her; nor was she there. He questioned the servants;
none of them had seen her during the day. After a long quest everywhere
through the house, Ben-Hur returned to the guest-chamber, and took the
place by the dead which should have been hers; and he bethought him
there how merciful the Christ had been to his aged servant. At the gate
of the kingdom of Paradise happily the afflictions of this life, even
its desertions, are left behind and forgotten by those who go in and
rest.
When the gloom of the burial was nigh gone, on the ninth day after the
healing, the law being fulfilled, Ben-Hur brought his mother and Tirzah
home; and from that day, in that house the most sacred names possible
of utterance by men were always coupled worshipfully together,
GOD THE FATHER AND CHRIST THE SON.
————
About five years after the crucifixion, Esther, the wife of Ben-Hur,
sat in her room in the beautiful villa by Misenum. It was noon, with a
warm Italian sun making summer for the roses and vines outside.
Everything in the apartment was Roman, except that Esther wore the
garments of a Jewish matron. Tirzah and two children at play upon a
lion skin on the floor were her companions; and one had only to observe
how carefully she watched them to know that the little ones were hers.
Time had treated her generously. She was more than ever beautiful, and
in becoming mistress of the villa, she had realized one of her
cherished dreams.
In the midst of this simple, home-like scene, a servant appeared in the
doorway, and spoke to her.
“A woman in the atrium to speak with the mistress.”
“Let her come. I will receive her here.”
Presently the stranger entered. At sight of her the Jewess arose, and
was about to speak; then she hesitated, changed color, and finally drew
back, saying, “I have known you, good woman. You are—”
“I was Iras, the daughter of Balthasar.”
Esther conquered her surprise, and bade the servant bring the Egyptian
a seat.
“No,” said Iras, coldly. “I will retire directly.”
The two gazed at each other. We know what Esther presented—a beautiful
woman, a happy mother, a contented wife. On the other side, it was very
plain that fortune had not dealt so gently with her former rival. The
tall figure remained with some of its grace; but an evil life had
tainted the whole person. The face was coarse; the large eyes were red
and pursed beneath the lower lids; there was no color in her cheeks.
The lips were cynical and hard, and general neglect was leading rapidly
to premature old age. Her attire was ill chosen and draggled. The mud
of the road clung to her sandals. Iras broke the painful silence.
“These are thy children?”
Esther looked at them, and smiled.
“Yes. Will you not speak to them?”
“I would scare them,” Iras replied. Then she drew closer to Esther, and
seeing her shrink, said, “Be not afraid. Give thy husband a message for
me. Tell him his enemy is dead, and that for the much misery he brought
me I slew him.”
“His enemy!”
“The Messala. Further, tell thy husband that for the harm I sought to
do him I have been punished until even he would pity me.”
Tears arose in Esther’s eyes, and she was about to speak.
“Nay,” said Iras, “I do not want pity or tears. Tell him, finally, I
have found that to be a Roman is to be a brute. Farewell.”
She moved to go. Esther followed her.
“Stay, and see my husband. He has no feeling against you. He sought for
you everywhere. He will be your friend. I will be your friend. We are
Christians.”
The other was firm.
“No; I am what I am of choice. It will be over shortly.”
“But”—Esther hesitated—“have we nothing you would wish; nothing to—to—”
The countenance of the Egyptian softened; something like a smile played
about her lips. She looked at the children upon the floor.
“There is something,” she said.
Esther followed her eyes, and with quick perception answered, “It is
yours.”
Iras went to them, and knelt on the lion’s skin, and kissed them both.
Rising slowly, she looked at them; then passed to the door and out of
it without a parting word. She walked rapidly, and was gone before
Esther could decide what to do.
Ben-Hur, when he was told of the visit, knew certainly what he had long
surmised—that on the day of the crucifixion Iras had deserted her
father for Messala. Nevertheless, he set out immediately and hunted for
her vainly; they never saw her more, or heard of her. The blue bay,
with all its laughing under the sun, has yet its dark secrets. Had it a
tongue, it might tell us of the Egyptian.
Simonides lived to be a very old man. In the tenth year of Nero’s
reign, he gave up the business so long centred in the warehouse at
Antioch. To the last he kept a clear head and a good heart, and was
successful.
One evening, in the year named, he sat in his arm-chair on the terrace
of the warehouse. Ben-Hur and Esther, and their three children, were
with him. The last of the ships swung at mooring in the current of the
river; all the rest had been sold. In the long interval between this
and the day of the crucifixion but one sorrow had befallen them: that
was when the mother of Ben-Hur died; and then and now their grief would
have been greater but for their Christian faith.
The ship spoken of had arrived only the day before, bringing
intelligence of the persecution of Christians begun by Nero in Rome,
and the party on the terrace were talking of the news when Malluch, who
was still in their service, approached and delivered a package to
Ben-Hur.
“Who brings this?” the latter asked, after reading.
“An Arab.”
“Where is he?”
“He left immediately.”
“Listen,” said Ben-Hur to Simonides.
He read then the following letter:
“I, Ilderim, the son of Ilderim the Generous, and sheik of the tribe of
Ilderim, to Judah, son of Hur.
“Know, O friend of my father’s, how my father loved you. Read what is
herewith sent, and you will know. His will is my will; therefore what
he gave is thine.
“All the Parthians took from him in the great battle in which they slew
him I have retaken—this writing, with other things, and vengeance, and
all the brood of that Mira who in his time was mother of so many stars.
“Peace be to you and all yours.
“This voice out of the desert is the voice of
“Ilderim, Shiek.”
Ben-Hur next unrolled a scrap of papyrus yellow as a withered mulberry
leaf. It required the daintiest handling. Proceeding, he read:
“Ilderim, surnamed the Generous, sheik of the tribe of Ilderim, to the
son who succeeds me.
“All I have, O son, shall be thine in the day of thy succession, except
that property by Antioch known as the Orchard of Palms; and it shall be
to the son of Hur who brought us such glory in the Circus—to him and
his forever.
“Dishonor not thy father. ILDERIM THE GENEROUS, Sheik.”
“What say you?” asked Ben-Hur, of Simonides.
Esther took the papers pleased, and read them to herself. Simonides
remained silent. His eyes were upon the ship; but he was thinking. At
length he spoke.
“Son of Hur,” he said, gravely, “the Lord has been good to you in these
later years. You have much to be thankful for. Is it not time to decide
finally the meaning of the gift of the great fortune now all in your
hand, and growing?”
“I decided that long ago. The fortune was meant for the service of the
Giver; not a part, Simonides, but all of it. The question with me has
been, How can I make it most useful in his cause? And of that tell me,
I pray you.”
Simonides answered,
“The great sums you have given to the Church here in Antioch, I am
witness to. Now, instantly almost with this gift of the generous
sheik’s, comes the news of the persecution of the brethren in Rome. It
is the opening of a new field. The light must not go out in the
capital.”
“Tell me how I can keep it alive.”
“I will tell you. The Romans, even this Nero, hold two things sacred—I
know of no others they so hold—they are the ashes of the dead and all
places of burial. If you cannot build temples for the worship of the
Lord above ground, then build them below the ground; and to keep them
from profanation, carry to them the bodies of all who die in the
faith.”
Ben-Hur arose excitedly.
“It is a great idea,” he said. “I will not wait to begin it. Time
forbids waiting. The ship that brought the news of the suffering of our
brethren shall take me to Rome. I will sail to-morrow.”
He turned to Malluch.
“Get the ship ready, Malluch, and be thou ready to go with me.”
“It is well,” said Simonides.
“And thou, Esther, what sayest thou?” asked Ben-Hur.
Esther came to his side, and put her hand on his arm, and answered,
“So wilt thou best serve the Christ. O my husband, let me not hinder,
but go with thee and help.”
If any of my readers, visiting Rome, will make the short journey to the
Catacomb of San Calixto, which is more ancient than that of San
Sebastiano, he will see what became of the fortune of Ben-Hur, and give
him thanks. Out of that vast tomb Christianity issued to supersede the
Cæsars.