Ben Hur (27 page)

The voice was sweet as that of Rebekah offering drink at the well
near Nahor the city; he saw there were tears in her eyes, and he
drank, saying, "Daughter of Simonides, thy heart is full of goodness;
and merciful art thou to let the stranger share it with thy father.
Be thou blessed of our God! I thank thee."

Then he addressed himself to the merchant again:

"As I have no proof that I am my father's son, I will withdraw
that I demanded of thee, O Simonides, and go hence to trouble you
no more; only let me say I did not seek thy return to servitude nor
account of thy fortune; in any event, I would have said, as now I
say, that all which is product of thy labor and genius is thine;
keep it in welcome. I have no need of any part thereof. When the
good Quintus, my second father, sailed on the voyage which was his
last, he left me his heir, princely rich. If, therefore, thou cost
think of me again, be it with remembrance of this question, which,
as I do swear by the prophets and Jehovah, thy God and mine, was the
chief purpose of my coming here: What cost thou know—what canst thou
tell me—of my mother and Tirzah, my sister—she who should be in
beauty and grace even as this one, thy sweetness of life, if not
thy very life? Oh! what canst thou tell me of them?"

The tears ran down Esther's cheeks; but the man was wilful: in a
clear voice, he replied,

"I have said I knew the Prince Ben-Hur. I remember hearing of the
misfortune which overtook his family. I remember the bitterness
with which I heard it. He who wrought such misery to the widow of
my friend is the same who, in the same spirit, hath since wrought
upon me. I will go further, and say to you, I have made diligent
quest concerning the family, but—I have nothing to tell you of
them. They are lost."

Ben-Hur uttered a great groan.

"Then—then it is another hope broken!" he said, struggling with
his feelings. "I am used to disappointments. I pray you pardon
my intrusion; and if I have occasioned you annoyance, forgive it
because of my sorrow. I have nothing now to live for but vengeance.
Farewell."

At the curtain he turned, and said, simply, "I thank you both."

"Peace go with you," the merchant said.

Esther could not speak for sobbing.

And so he departed.

Scarcely was Ben-Hur gone, when Simonides seemed to wake as from
sleep: his countenance flushed; the sullen light of his eyes
changed to brightness; and he said, cheerily,

"Esther, ring—quick!"

She went to the table, and rang a service-bell.

One of the panels in the wall swung back, exposing a doorway which
gave admittance to a man who passed round to the merchant's front,
and saluted him with a half-salaam.

"Malluch, here—nearer—to the chair," the master said, imperiously.
"I have a mission which shall not fail though the sun should. Hearken! A
young man is now descending to the store-room—tall, comely, and in the
garb of Israel; follow him, his shadow not more faithful; and every
night send me report of where he is, what he does, and the company
he keeps; and if, without discovery, you overhear his conversations,
report them word for word, together with whatever will serve to
expose him, his habits, motives, life. Understand you? Go quickly!
Stay, Malluch: if he leave the city, go after him—and, mark you,
Malluch, be as a friend. If he bespeak you, tell him what you will
to the occasion most suited, except that you are in my service,
of that, not a word. Haste—make haste!"

The man saluted as before, and was gone.

Then Simonides rubbed his wan hands together, and laughed.

"What is the day, daughter?" he said, in the midst of the mood.
"What is the day? I wish to remember it for happiness come.
See, and look for it laughing, and laughing tell me, Esther."

The merriment seemed unnatural to her; and, as if to entreat him
from it, she answered, sorrowfully, "Woe's me, father, that I
should ever forget this day!"

His hands fell down the instant, and his chin, dropping upon his
breast, lost itself in the muffling folds of flesh composing his
lower face.

"True, most true, my daughter!" he said, without looking up. "This
is the twentieth day of the fourth month. To-day, five years ago,
my Rachel, thy mother, fell down and died. They brought me home
broken as thou seest me, and we found her dead of grief. Oh, to
me she was a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of En-Gedi! I
have gathered my myrrh with my spice. I have eaten my honeycomb
with my honey. We laid her away in a lonely place—in a tomb cut
in the mountain; no one near her. Yet in the darkness she left me
a little light, which the years have increased to a brightness of
morning." He raised his hand and rested it upon his daughter's head.
"Dear Lord, I thank thee that now in my Esther my lost Rachel liveth
again!"

Directly he lifted his head, and said, as with a sudden thought,
"Is it not clear day outside?"

"It was, when the young man came in."

"Then let Abimelech come and take me to the garden, where I can
see the river and the ships, and I will tell thee, dear Esther,
why but now my mouth filled with laughter, and my tongue with
singing, and my spirit was like to a roe or to a young hart upon
the mountains of spices."

In answer to the bell a servant came, and at her bidding pushed
the chair, set on little wheels for the purpose, out of the room to
the roof of the lower house, called by him his garden. Out through
the roses, and by beds of lesser flowers, all triumphs of careful
attendance, but now unnoticed, he was rolled to a position from
which he could view the palace-tops over against him on the island,
the bridge in lessening perspective to the farther shore, and the
river below the bridge crowded with vessels, all swimming amidst
the dancing splendors of the early sun upon the rippling water.
There the servant left him with Esther.

The much shouting of laborers, and their beating and pounding,
did not disturb him any more than the tramping of people on the
bridge floor almost overhead, being as familiar to his ear as the
view before him to his eye, and therefore unnoticeable, except as
suggestions of profits in promise.

Esther sat on the arm of the chair nursing his hand, and waiting
his speech, which came at length in the calm way, the mighty will
having carried him back to himself.

"When the young man was speaking, Esther, I observed thee,
and thought thou wert won by him."

Her eyes fell as she replied,

"Speak you of faith, father, I believed him."

"In thy eyes, then, he is the lost son of the Prince Hur?"

"If he is not—" She hesitated.

"And if he is not, Esther?"

"I have been thy handmaiden, father, since my mother answered the
call of the Lord God; by thy side I have heard and seen thee deal
in wise ways with all manner of men seeking profit, holy and unholy;
and now I say, if indeed the young man be not the prince he claims
to be, then before me falsehood never played so well the part of
righteous truth."

"By the glory of Solomon, daughter, thou speakest earnestly.
Dost thou believe thy father his father's servant?"

"I understood him to ask of that as something he had but heard."

For a time Simonides' gaze swam among his swimming ships, though
they had no place in his mind.

"Well, thou art a good child, Esther, of genuine Jewish shrewdness,
and of years and strength to hear a sorrowful tale. Wherefore give
me heed, and I will tell you of myself, and of thy mother, and of
many things pertaining to the past not in thy knowledge or thy
dreams—things withheld from the persecuting Romans for a hope's
sake, and from thee that thy nature should grow towards the Lord
straight as the reed to the sun. . . . I was born in a tomb in the
valley of Hinnom, on the south side of Zion. My father and mother
were Hebrew bond-servants, tenders of the fig and olive trees
growing, with many vines, in the King's Garden hard by Siloam;
and in my boyhood I helped them. They were of the class bound
to serve forever. They sold me to the Prince Hur, then, next to
Herod the King, the richest man in Jerusalem. From the garden he
transferred me to his storehouse in Alexandria of Egypt, where I
came of age. I served him six years, and in the seventh, by the
law of Moses, I went free."

Esther clapped her hands lightly.

"Oh, then, thou art not his father's servant!"

"Nay, daughter, hear. Now, in those days there were lawyers in
the cloisters of the Temple who disputed vehemently, saying the
children of servants bound forever took the condition of their
parents; but the Prince Hur was a man righteous in all things,
and an interpreter of the law after the straitest sect, though not
of them. He said I was a Hebrew servant bought, in the true meaning
of the great lawgiver, and, by sealed writings, which I yet have,
he set me free."

"And my mother?" Esther asked.

"Thou shalt hear all, Esther; be patient. Before I am through thou
shalt see it were easier for me to forget myself than thy mother. .
. . At the end of my service, I came up to Jerusalem to the Passover.
My master entertained me. I was in love with him already, and I prayed
to be continued in his service. He consented, and I served him yet
another seven years, but as a hired son of Israel. In his behalf
I had charge of ventures on the sea by ships, and of ventures on
land by caravans eastward to Susa and Persepolis, and the lands
of silk beyond them. Perilous passages were they, my daughter;
but the Lord blessed all I undertook. I brought home vast gains
for the prince, and richer knowledge for myself, without which
I could not have mastered the charges since fallen to me. . . .
One day I was a guest in his house in Jerusalem. A servant entered
with some sliced bread on a platter. She came to me first. It was
then I saw thy mother, and loved her, and took her away in my secret
heart. After a while a time came when I sought the prince to make
her my wife. He told me she was bond-servant forever; but if she
wished, he would set her free that I might be gratified. She gave
me love for love, but was happy where she was, and refused her
freedom. I prayed and besought, going again and again after long
intervals. She would be my wife, she all the time said, if I would
become her fellow in servitude. Our father Jacob served yet other
seven years for his Rachel. Could I not as much for mine? But thy
mother said I must become as she, to serve forever. I came away,
but went back. Look, Esther, look here."

He pulled out the lobe of his left ear.

"See you not the scar of the awl?"

"I see it," she said; "and, oh, I see how thou didst love my
mother!"

"Love her, Esther! She was to me more than the Shulamite to the
singing king, fairer, more spotless; a fountain of gardens, a well
of living waters, and streams from Lebanon. The master, even as I
required him, took me to the judges, and back to his door, and thrust
the awl through my ear into the door, and I was his servant forever.
So I won my Rachel. And was ever love like mine?"

Esther stooped and kissed him, and they were silent, thinking of
the dead.

"My master was drowned at sea, the first sorrow that ever fell
upon me," the merchant continued. "There was mourning in his
house, and in mine here in Antioch, my abiding-place at the time.
Now, Esther, mark you! When the good prince was lost, I had risen
to be his chief steward, with everything of property belonging to
him in my management and control. Judge you how much he loved and
trusted me! I hastened to Jerusalem to render account to the
widow. She continued me in the stewardship. I applied myself
with greater diligence. The business prospered, and grew year
by year. Ten years passed; then came the blow which you heard
the young man tell about—the accident, as he called it, to the
Procurator Gratus. The Roman gave it out an attempt to assassinate
him. Under that pretext, by leave from Rome, he confiscated to his
own use the immense fortune of the widow and children. Nor stopped
he there. That there might be no reversal of the judgment, he removed
all the parties interested. From that dreadful day to this the family of
Hur have been lost. The son, whom I had seen as a child, was sentenced
to the galleys. The widow and daughter are supposed to have been
buried in some of the many dungeons of Judea, which, once closed
upon the doomed, are like sepulchers sealed and locked. They passed
from the knowledge of men as utterly as if the sea had swallowed
them unseen. We could not hear how they died—nay, not even that
they were dead."

Esther's eyes were dewy with tears.

"Thy heart is good, Esther, good as thy mother's was; and I pray
it have not the fate of most good hearts—to be trampled upon
by the unmerciful and blind. But hearken further. I went up
to Jerusalem to give help to my benefactress, and was seized
at the gate of the city and carried to the sunken cells of the
Tower of Antonia; why, I knew not, until Gratus himself came and
demanded of me the moneys of the House of Hur, which he knew,
after our Jewish custom of exchange, were subject to my draft
in the different marts of the world. He required me to sign to
his order. I refused. He had the houses, lands, goods, ships,
and movable property of those I served; he had not their moneys.
I saw, if I kept favor in the sight of the Lord, I could rebuild
their broken fortunes. I refused the tyrant's demands. He put me
to torture; my will held good, and he set me free, nothing gained.
I came home and began again, in the name of Simonides of Antioch,
instead of the Prince Hur of Jerusalem. Thou knowest, Esther,
how I have prospered; that the increase of the millions of the
prince in my hands was miraculous; thou knowest how, at the end of
three years, while going up to Caesarea, I was taken and a second
time tortured by Gratus to compel a confession that my goods and
moneys were subject to his order of confiscation; thou knowest he
failed as before. Broken in body, I came home and found my Rachel
dead of fear and grief for me. The Lord our God reigned, and I
lived. From the emperor himself I bought immunity and license to
trade throughout the world. To-day—praised be He who maketh the
clouds his chariot and walketh upon the winds!—to-day, Esther,
that which was in my hands for stewardship is multiplied into
talents sufficient to enrich a Caesar."