Ben Hur (57 page)

As the last step in the scheme, Gratus summarily removed the old
keeper of the prisons; not because he knew what had been done—for
he did not—but because, knowing the underground floors as he did,
it would be next to impossible to keep the transaction from him.
Then, with masterly ingenuity, the procurator had new maps drawn
for delivery to a new keeper, with the omission, as we have seen,
of cell VI. The instructions given the latter, taken with the
omission on the map, accomplished the design—the cell and its
unhappy tenants were all alike lost.

What may be thought of the life of the mother and daughter
during the eight years must have relation to their culture
and previous habits. Conditions are pleasant or grievous to
us according to our sensibilities. It is not extreme to say,
if there was a sudden exit of all men from the world, heaven,
as prefigured in the Christian idea, would not be a heaven to
the majority; on the other hand, neither would all suffer equally
in the so-called Tophet. Cultivation has its balances. As the mind
is made intelligent, the capacity of the soul for pure enjoyment
is proportionally increased. Well, therefore, if it be saved! If
lost, however, alas that it ever had cultivation! its capacity for
enjoyment in the one case is the measure of its capacity to suffer
in the other. Wherefore repentance must be something more than mere
remorse for sins; it comprehends a change of nature befitting heaven.

We repeat, to form an adequate idea of the suffering endured by
the mother of Ben-Hur, the reader must think of her spirit and its
sensibilities as much as, if not more than, of the conditions of
the immurement; the question being, not what the conditions were,
but how she was affected by them. And now we may be permitted to
say it was in anticipation of this thought that the scene in the
summer-house on the roof of the family palace was given so fully
in the beginning of the Second Book of our story. So, too, to be
helpful when the inquiry should come up, we ventured the elaborate
description of the palace of the Hurs.

In other words, let the serene, happy, luxurious life in the
princely house be recalled and contrasted with this existence
in the lower dungeon of the Tower of Antonia; then if the reader,
in his effort to realize the misery of the woman, persists in mere
reference to conditions physical, he cannot go amiss; as he is a
lover of his kind, tender of heart, he will be melted with much
sympathy. But will he go further; will he more than sympathize
with her; will he share her agony of mind and spirit; will he at
least try to measure it—let him recall her as she discoursed to
her son of God and nations and heroes; one moment a philosopher,
the next a teacher, and all the time a mother.

Would you hurt a man keenest, strike at his self-love; would you
hurt a woman worst, aim at her affections.

With quickened remembrance of these unfortunates—remembrance
of them as they were—let us go down and see them as they are.

The cell VI. was in form as Gesius drew it on his map. Of its
dimensions but little idea can be had; enough that it was
a roomy, roughened interior, with ledged and broken walls
and floor.

In the beginning, the site of the Macedonian Castle was separated
from the site of the Temple by a narrow but deep cliff somewhat
in shape of a wedge. The workmen, wishing to hew out a series
of chambers, made their entry in the north face of the cleft,
and worked in, leaving a ceiling of the natural stone; delving farther,
they executed the cells V., IV., III., II., I., with no connection with
number VI. except through number V. In like manner, they constructed the
passage and stairs to the floor above. The process of the work was
precisely that resorted to in carving out the Tombs of the Kings,
yet to be seen a short distance north of Jerusalem; only when the
cutting was done, cell VI. was enclosed on its outer side by a wall
of prodigious stones, in which, for ventilation, narrow apertures
were left bevelled like modern port-holes. Herod, when he took
hold of the Temple and Tower, put a facing yet more massive upon
this outer wall, and shut up all the apertures but one, which yet
admitted a little vitalizing air, and a ray of light not nearly
strong enough to redeem the room from darkness.

Such was cell VI.

Startle not now!

The description of the blind and tongueless wretch just liberated
from cell V. may be accepted to break the horror of what is coming.

The two women are grouped close by the aperture; one is seated,
the other is half reclining against her; there is nothing between
them and the bare rock. The light, slanting upwards, strikes them
with ghastly effect, and we cannot avoid seeing they are without
vesture or covering. At the same time we are helped to the knowledge
that love is there yet, for the two are in each other's arms.
Riches take wings, comforts vanish, hope withers away, but love
stays with us. Love is God.

Where the two are thus grouped the stony floor is polished shining
smooth. Who shall say how much of the eight years they have spent
in that space there in front of the aperture, nursing their hope
of rescue by that timid yet friendly ray of light? When the
brightness came creeping in, they knew it was dawn; when it
began to fade, they knew the world was hushing for the night,
which could not be anywhere so long and utterly dark as with them.
The world! Through that crevice, as if it were broad and high as
a king's gate, they went to the world in thought, and passed the
weary time going up and down as spirits go, looking and asking,
the one for her son, the other for her brother. On the seas they
sought him, and on the islands of the seas; to-day he was in this
city, to-morrow in that other; and everywhere, and at all times,
he was a flitting sojourner; for, as they lived waiting for him,
he lived looking for them. How often their thoughts passed each
other in the endless search, his coming, theirs going! It was such
sweet flattery for them to say to each other, 'While he lives,
we shall not be forgotten; as long as he remembers us, there is
hope!" The strength one can eke from little, who knows till he
has been subjected to the trial?

Our recollections of them in former days enjoin us to be respectful;
their sorrows clothe them with sanctity. Without going too near,
across the dungeon, we see they have undergone a change of
appearance not to be accounted for by time or long confinement.
The mother was beautiful as a woman, the daughter beautiful as a
child; not even love could say so much now. Their hair is long,
unkempt, and strangely white; they make us shrink and shudder
with an indefinable repulsion, though the effect may be from an
illusory glozing of the light glimmering dismally through the
unhealthy murk; or they may be enduring the tortures of hunger
and thirst, not having had to eat or drink since their servant,
the convict, was taken away—that is, since yesterday.

Tirzah, reclining against her mother in half embrace, moans piteously.

"Be quiet, Tirzah. They will come. God is good. We have been mindful
of him, and forgotten not to pray at every sounding of the trumpets
over in the Temple. The light, you see, is still bright; the sun
is standing in the south sky yet, and it is hardly more than the
seventh hour. Somebody will come to us. Let us have faith. God is
good."

Thus the mother. The words were simple and effective, although,
eight years being now to be added to the thirteen she had attained
when last we saw her, Tirzah was no longer a child.

"I will try and be strong, mother," she said. "Your suffering
must be as great as mine; and I do so want to live for you and
my brother! But my tongue burns, my lips scorch. I wonder where
he is, and if he will ever, ever find us!"

There is something in the voices that strikes us singularly—an
unexpected tone, sharp, dry, metallic, unnatural.

The mother draws the daughter closer to her breast, and says, "I
dreamed about him last night, and saw him as plainly, Tirzah, as I
see you. We must believe in dreams, you know, because our fathers
did. The Lord spoke to them so often in that way. I thought we were
in the Women's Court just before the Gate Beautiful; there were
many women with us; and he came and stood in the shade of the
Gate, and looked here and there, at this one and that. My heart
beat strong. I knew he was looking for us, and stretched my arms
to him, and ran, calling him. He heard me and saw me, but he did
not know me. In a moment he was gone."

"Would it not be so, mother, if we were to meet him in fact? We
are so changed."

"It might be so; but—" The mother's head droops, and her face
knits as with a wrench of pain; recovering, however, she goes
on—"but we could make ourselves known to him."

Tirzah tossed her arms, and moaned again.

"Water, mother, water, though but a drop."

The mother stares around in blank helplessness. She has named God
so often, and so often promised in his name, the repetition is
beginning to have a mocking effect upon herself. A shadow passes
before her dimming the dim light, and she is brought down to think
of death as very near, waiting to come in as her faith goes out.
Hardly knowing what she does, speaking aimlessly, because speak
she must, she says again,

"Patience, Tirzah; they are coming—they are almost here."

She thought she heard a sound over by the little trap in the
partition-wall through which they held all their actual communication
with the world. And she was not mistaken. A moment, and the cry of
the convict rang through the cell. Tirzah heard it also; and they
both arose, still keeping hold of each other.

"Praised be the Lord forever!" exclaimed the mother, with the
fervor of restored faith and hope.

"Ho, there!" they heard next; and then, "Who are you?"

The voice was strange. What matter? Except from Tirzah, they were
the first and only words the mother had heard in eight years.
The revulsion was mighty—from death to life—and so instantly!

"A woman of Israel, entombed here with her daughter. Help us quickly,
or we die."

"Be of cheer. I will return."

The women sobbed aloud. They were found; help was coming. From wish
to wish hope flew as the twittering swallows fly. They were found;
they would be released. And restoration would follow—restoration
to all they had lost—home, society, property, son and brother! The
scanty light glozed them with the glory of day, and, forgetful of
pain and thirst and hunger, and of the menace of death, they sank
upon the floor and cried, keeping fast hold of each other the while.

And this time they had not long to wait. Gesius, the keeper,
told his tale methodically, but finished it at last. The tribune
was prompt.

"Within there!" he shouted through the trap.

"Here!" said the mother, rising.

Directly she heard another sound in another place, as of blows
on the wall—blows quick, ringing, and delivered with iron tools.
She did not speak, nor did Tirzah, but they listened, well knowing
the meaning of it all—that a way to liberty was being made for
them. So men a long time buried in deep mines hear the coming of
rescuers, heralded by thrust of bar and beat of pick, and answer
gratefully with heart-throbs, their eyes fixed upon the spot whence
the sounds proceed; and they cannot look away, lest the work should
cease, and they be returned to despair.

The arms outside were strong, the hands skillful, the will good.
Each instant the blows sounded more plainly; now and then a piece
fell with a crash; and liberty came nearer and nearer. Presently
the workmen could be heard speaking. Then—O happiness!—through
a crevice flashed a red ray of torches. Into the darkness it cut
incisive as diamond brilliance, beautiful as if from a spear of
the morning.

"It is he, mother, it is he! He has found us at last!" cried Tirzah,
with the quickened fancy of youth.

But the mother answered meekly, "God is good!"

A block fell inside, and another—then a great mass, and the door
was open. A man grimed with mortar and stone-dust stepped in,
and stopped, holding a torch over his head. Two or three others
followed with torches, and stood aside for the tribune to enter.

Respect for women is not all a conventionality, for it is the best
proof of their proper nature. The tribune stopped, because they fled
from him—not with fear, be it said, but shame; nor yet, O reader,
from shame alone! From the obscurity of their partial hiding he heard
these words, the saddest, most dreadful, most utterly despairing of
the human tongue:

"Come not near us—unclean, unclean!"

The men flared their torches while they stared at each other.

"Unclean, unclean!" came from the corner again, a slow tremulous
wail exceedingly sorrowful. With such a cry we can imagine a
spirit vanishing from the gates of Paradise, looking back the
while.

So the widow and mother performed her duty, and in the moment
realized that the freedom she had prayed for and dreamed of,
fruit of scarlet and gold seen afar, was but an apple of Sodom
in the hand.

SHE AND TIRZAH WERE—LEPERS!

Possibly the reader does not know all the word means. Let him be
told it with reference to the Law of that time, only a little
modified in this.

"These four are accounted as dead—the blind, the leper, the poor,
and the childless." Thus the Talmud.

That is, to be a leper was to be treated as dead—to be excluded
from the city as a corpse; to be spoken to by the best beloved
and most loving only at a distance; to dwell with none but lepers;
to be utterly unprivileged; to be denied the rites of the Temple
and the synagogue; to go about in rent garments and with covered
mouth, except when crying, "Unclean, unclean!" to find home in the
wilderness or in abandoned tombs; to become a materialized specter
of Hinnom and Gehenna; to be at all times less a living offence to
others than a breathing torment to self; afraid to die, yet without
hope except in death.