Ben Hur (14 page)

A few steps within the second court, the lad turned to the right,
and, choosing a walk through the shrubbery, part of which was in
flower, passed to the stairway, and ascended to the terrace—a
broad pavement of white and brown flags closely laid, and much
worn. Making way under the awning to a doorway on the north side,
he entered an apartment which the dropping of the screen behind
him returned to darkness. Nevertheless, he proceeded, moving over a
tiled floor to a divan, upon which he flung himself, face downwards,
and lay at rest, his forehead upon his crossed arms.

About nightfall a woman came to the door and called; he answered,
and she went in.

"Supper is over, and it is night. Is not my son hungry?" she asked.

"No," he replied.

"Are you sick?"

"I am sleepy."

"Your mother has asked for you."

"Where is she?"

"In the summer-house on the roof."

He stirred himself, and sat up.

"Very well. Bring me something to eat."

"What do you want?"

"What you please, Amrah. I am not sick, but indifferent. Life does
not seem as pleasant as it did this morning. A new ailment, O my
Amrah; and you who know me so well, who never failed me, may think
of the things now that answer for food and medicine. Bring me what
you choose."

Amrah's questions, and the voice in which she put them—low,
sympathetic, and solicitous—were significant of an endeared
relation between the two. She laid her hand upon his forehead;
then, as satisfied, went out, saying, "I will see."

After a while she returned, bearing on a wooden platter a bowl of
milk, some thin cakes of white bread broken, a delicate paste of
brayed wheat, a bird broiled, and honey and salt. On one end of
the platter there was a silver goblet full of wine, on the other
a brazen hand-lamp lighted.

The room was then revealed: its walls smoothly plastered; the ceiling
broken by great oaken rafters, brown with rain stains and time; the
floor of small diamond-shaped white and blue tiles, very firm and
enduring; a few stools with legs carved in imitation of the legs
of lions; a divan raised a little above the floor, trimmed with
blue cloth, and partially covered by an immense striped woollen
blanket or shawl—in brief, a Hebrew bedroom.

The same light also gave the woman to view. Drawing a stool to
the divan, she placed the platter upon it, then knelt close
by ready to serve him. Her face was that of a woman of fifty,
dark-skinned, dark-eyed, and at the moment softened by a look
of tenderness almost maternal. A white turban covered her head,
leaving the lobes of the ear exposed, and in them the sign that
settled her condition—an orifice bored by a thick awl. She was
a slave, of Egyptian origin, to whom not even the sacred fiftieth
year could have brought freedom; nor would she have accepted it,
for the boy she was attending was her life. She had nursed him
through babyhood, tended him as a child, and could not break
the service. To her love he could never be a man.

He spoke but once during the meal.

"You remember, O my Amrah," he said, "the Messala who used to
visit me here days at a time."

"I remember him."

"He went to Rome some years ago, and is now back. I called upon
him to-day."

A shudder of disgust seized the lad.

"I knew something had happened," she said, deeply interested.
"I never liked the Messala. Tell me all."

But he fell into musing, and to her repeated inquiries only said,
"He is much changed, and I shall have nothing more to do with him."

When Amrah took the platter away, he also went out, and up from
the terrace to the roof.

The reader is presumed to know somewhat of the uses of the
house-top in the East. In the matter of customs, climate is a
lawgiver everywhere. The Syrian summer day drives the seeker of
comfort into the darkened lewen; night, however, calls him forth
early, and the shadows deepening over the mountain-sides seem veils
dimly covering Circean singers; but they are far off, while the
roof is close by, and raised above the level of the shimmering
plain enough for the visitation of cool airs, and sufficiently
above the trees to allure the stars down closer, down at least into
brighter shining. So the roof became a resort—became playground,
sleeping-chamber, boudoir, rendezvous for the family, place of
music, dance, conversation, reverie, and prayer.

The motive that prompts the decoration, at whatever cost,
of interiors in colder climes suggested to the Oriental the
embellishment of his house-top. The parapet ordered by Moses
became a potter's triumph; above that, later, arose towers,
plain and fantastic; still later, kings and princes crowned
their roofs with summer-houses of marble and gold. When the
Babylonian hung gardens in the air, extravagance could push
the idea no further.

The lad whom we are following walked slowly across the house-top
to a tower built over the northwest corner of the palace. Had he
been a stranger, he might have bestowed a glance upon the structure
as he drew nigh it, and seen all the dimness permitted—a darkened
mass, low, latticed, pillared, and domed. He entered, passing under
a half-raised curtain. The interior was all darkness, except that on
four sides there were arched openings like doorways, through which
the sky, lighted with stars, was visible. In one of the openings,
reclining against a cushion from a divan, he saw the figure of a
woman, indistinct even in white floating drapery. At the sound of
his steps upon the floor, the fan in her hand stopped, glistening
where the starlight struck the jewels with which it was sprinkled,
and she sat up, and called his name.

"Judah, my son!"

"It is I, mother," he answered, quickening his approach.

Going to her, he knelt, and she put her arms around him, and with
kisses pressed him to her bosom.

The mother resumed her easy position against the cushion, while the
son took place on the divan, his head in her lap. Both of them,
looking out of the opening, could see a stretch of lower house-tops
in the vicinity, a bank of blue-blackness over in the west which they
knew to be mountains, and the sky, its shadowy depths brilliant with
stars. The city was still. Only the winds stirred.

"Amrah tells me something has happened to you," she said, caressing
his cheek. "When my Judah was a child, I allowed small things to
trouble him, but he is now a man. He must not forget"— her voice
became very soft—"that one day he is to be my hero."

She spoke in the language almost lost in the land, but which a
few—and they were always as rich in blood as in possessions—
cherished in its purity, that they might be more certainly
distinguished from Gentile peoples—the language in which
the loved Rebekah and Rachel sang to Benjamin.

The words appeared to set him thinking anew; after a while, however,
he caught the hand with which she fanned him, and said, "Today, O my
mother, I have been made to think of many things that never had place
in my mind before. Tell me, first, what am I to be?"

"Have I not told you? You are to be my hero."

He could not see her face, yet he knew she was in play. He became
more serious.

"You are very good, very kind, O my mother. No one will ever love
me as you do."

He kissed the hand over and over again.

"I think I understand why you would have me put off the question,"
he continued. "Thus far my life has belonged to you. How gentle,
how sweet your control has been! I wish it could last forever.
But that may not be. It is the Lord's will that I shall one
day become owner of myself—a day of separation, and therefore a
dreadful day to you. Let us be brave and serious. I will be your
hero, but you must put me in the way. You know the law—every son
of Israel must have some occupation. I am not exempt, and ask now,
shall I tend the herds? or till the soil? or drive the saw? or be
a clerk or lawyer? What shall I be? Dear, good mother, help me to
an answer."

"Gamaliel has been lecturing today," she said, thoughtfully.

"If so, I did not hear him."

"Then you have been walking with Simeon, who, they tell me,
inherits the genius of his family."

"No, I have not seen him. I have been up on the Market-place,
not to the Temple. I visited the young Messala."

A certain change in his voice attracted the mother's attention.
A presentiment quickened the beating of her heart; the fan became
motionless again.

"The Messala!" she said. "What could he say to so trouble you?"

"He is very much changed."

"You mean he has come back a Roman."

"Yes."

"Roman!" she continued, half to herself. "To all the world the
word means master. How long has he been away?"

"Five years."

She raised her head, and looked off into the night.

"The airs of the Via Sacra are well enough in the streets of the
Egyptian and in Babylon; but in Jerusalem—our Jerusalem—the
covenant abides."

And, full of the thought, she settled back into her easy place.
He was first to speak.

"What Messala said, my mother, was sharp enough in itself; but,
taken with the manner, some of the sayings were intolerable."

"I think I understand you. Rome, her poets, orators, senators,
courtiers, are mad with affectation of what they call satire."

"I suppose all great peoples are proud," he went on, scarcely
noticing the interruption; "but the pride of that people is
unlike all others; in these latter days it is so grown the
gods barely escape it."

"The gods escape!" said the mother, quickly. "More than one Roman
has accepted worship as his divine right."

"Well, Messala always had his share of the disagreeable quality.
When he was a child, I have seen him mock strangers whom even Herod
condescended to receive with honors; yet he always spared Judea.
For the first time, in conversation with me to-day, he trifled
with our customs and God. As you would have had me do, I parted
with him finally. And now, O my dear mother, I would know with more
certainty if there be just ground for the Roman's contempt. In what
am I his inferior? Is ours a lower order of people? Why should I,
even in Caesar's presence; feel the shrinking of a slave? Tell me
especially why, if I have the soul, and so choose, I may not hunt
the honors of the world in all its fields? Why may not I take sword
and indulge the passion of war? As a poet, why may not I sing of all
themes? I can be a worker in metals, a keeper of flocks, a merchant,
why not an artist like the Greek? Tell me, O my mother—and this is
the sum of my trouble—why may not a son of Israel do all a Roman
may?"

The reader will refer these questions back to the conversation in
the Market-place; the mother, listening with all her faculties
awake, from something which would have been lost upon one less
interested in him—from the connections of the subject, the pointing
of the questions, possibly his accent and tone—was not less swift
in making the same reference. She sat up, and in a voice quick and
sharp as his own, replied, "I see, I see! From association Messala,
in boyhood, was almost a Jew; had he remained here, he might have
become a proselyte, so much do we all borrow from the influences
that ripen our lives; but the years in Rome have been too much for
him. I do not wonder at the change; yet"—her voice fell—"he might
have dealt tenderly at least with you. It is a hard, cruel nature
which in youth can forget its first loves."

Her hand dropped lightly upon his forehead, and the fingers caught
in his hair and lingered there lovingly, while her eyes sought
the highest stars in view. Her pride responded to his, not merely
in echo, but in the unison of perfect sympathy. She would answer
him; at the same time, not for the world would she have had the
answer unsatisfactory: an admission of inferiority might weaken
his spirit for life. She faltered with misgivings of her own powers.

"What you propose, O my Judah, is not a subject for treatment by
a woman. Let me put its consideration off till to-morrow, and I
will have the wise Simeon—"

"Do not send me to the Rector," he said, abruptly.

"I will have him come to us."

"No, I seek more than information; while he might give me that
better than you, O my mother, you can do better by giving me
what he cannot—the resolution which is the soul of a man's soul."

She swept the heavens with a rapid glance, trying to compass all
the meaning of his questions.

"While craving justice for ourselves, it is never wise to be
unjust to others. To deny valor in the enemy we have conquered is
to underrate our victory; and if the enemy be strong enough to hold
us at bay, much more to conquer us"—she hesitated— "self-respect
bids us seek some other explanation of our misfortunes than accusing
him of qualities inferior to our own."

Thus, speaking to herself rather than to him, she began:

"Take heart, O my son. The Messala is nobly descended; his family
has been illustrious through many generations. In the days of
Republican Rome—how far back I cannot tell—they were famous,
some as soldiers, some as civilians. I can recall but one consul of
the name; their rank was senatorial, and their patronage always sought
because they were always rich. Yet if to-day your friend boasted
of his ancestry, you might have shamed him by recounting yours.
If he referred to the ages through which the line is traceable,
or to deeds, rank, or wealth—such allusions, except when great
occasion demands them, are tokens of small minds—if he mentioned
them in proof of his superiority, then without dread, and standing
on each particular, you might have challenged him to a comparison
of records."

Taking a moment's thought, the mother proceeded:

"One of the ideas of fast hold now is that time has much to do with
the nobility of races and families. A Roman boasting his superiority
on that account over a son of Israel will always fail when put to
the proof. The founding of Rome was his beginning; the very best
of them cannot trace their descent beyond that period; few of them
pretend to do so; and of such as do, I say not one could make good
his claim except by resort to tradition. Messala certainly could
not. Let us look now to ourselves. Could we better?"