Ben Hur (58 page)

Once—she might not tell the day or the year, for down in the
haunted hell even time was lost—once the mother felt a dry scurf
in the palm of her right hand, a trifle which she tried to wash
away. It clung to the member pertinaciously; yet she thought
but little of the sign till Tirzah complained that she, too,
was attacked in the same way. The supply of water was scant,
and they denied themselves drink that they might use it as a
curative. At length the whole hand was attacked; the skin cracked
open, the fingernails loosened from the flesh. There was not much
pain withal, chiefly a steadily increasing discomfort. Later their
lips began to parch and seam. One day the mother, who was cleanly
to godliness, and struggled against the impurities of the dungeon
with all ingenuity, thinking the enemy was taking hold on Tirzah's
face, led her to the light, and, looking with the inspiration of a
terrible dread, lo! the young girl's eyebrows were white as snow.

Oh, the anguish of that assurance!

The mother sat awhile speechless, motionless, paralyzed of soul,
and capable of but one thought—leprosy, leprosy!

When she began to think, mother-like, it was not of herself, but her
child, and, mother-like, her natural tenderness turned to courage,
and she made ready for the last sacrifice of perfect heroism. She
buried her knowledge in her heart; hopeless herself, she redoubled
her devotion to Tirzah, and with wonderful ingenuity—wonderful
chiefly in its very inexhaustibility—continued to keep the
daughter ignorant of what they were beset with, and even hopeful
that it was nothing. She repeated her little games, and retold
her stories, and invented new ones, and listened with ever so
much pleasure to the songs she would have from Tirzah, while on
her own wasting lips the psalms of the singing king and their race
served to bring soothing of forgetfulness, and keep alive in them
both the recollection of the God who would seem to have abandoned
them—the world not more lightly or utterly.

Slowly, steadily, with horrible certainty, the disease spread,
after a while bleaching their heads white, eating holes in their
lips and eyelids, and covering their bodies with scales; then it
fell to their throats shrilling their voices, and to their joints,
hardening the tissues and cartilages—slowly, and, as the mother
well knew, past remedy, it was affecting their lungs and arteries
and bones, at each advance making the sufferers more and more
loathsome; and so it would continue till death, which might be
years before them.

Another day of dread at length came—the day the mother, under
impulsion of duty, at last told Tirzah the name of their ailment;
and the two, in agony of despair, prayed that the end might come
quickly.

Still, as is the force of habit, these so afflicted grew in time
not merely to speak composedly of their disease; they beheld the
hideous transformation of their persons as of course, and in despite
clung to existence. One tie to earth remained to them; unmindful of
their own loneliness, they kept up a certain spirit by talking
and dreaming of Ben-Hur. The mother promised reunion with him to
the sister, and she to the mother, not doubting, either of them,
that he was equally faithful to them, and would be equally happy of
the meeting. And with the spinning and respinning of this slender
thread they found pleasure, and excused their not dying. In such
manner as we have seen, they were solacing themselves the moment
Gesius called them, at the end of twelve hours' fasting and thirst.

The torches flashed redly through the dungeon, and liberty was come.
"God is good," the widow cried—not for what had been, O reader,
but for what was. In thankfulness for present mercy, nothing so
becomes us as losing sight of past ills.

The tribune came directly; then in the corner to which she had
fled, suddenly a sense of duty smote the elder of the women,
and straightway the awful warning—

"Unclean, unclean!"

Ah, the pang the effort to acquit herself of that duty cost the
mother! Not all the selfishness of joy over the prospect could
keep her blind to the consequences of release, now that it was
at hand. The old happy life could never be again. If she went
near the house called home, it would be to stop at the gate and
cry, "Unclean, unclean!" She must go about with the yearnings of
love alive in her breast strong as ever, and more sensitive even,
because return in kind could not be. The boy of whom she had so
constantly thought, and with all sweet promises such as mothers
find their purest delight in, must, at meeting her, stand afar
off. If he held out his hands to her, and called "Mother, mother,"
for very love of him she must answer, "Unclean, unclean!" And this
other child, before whom, in want of other covering, she was spreading
her long tangled locks, bleached unnaturally white—ah! that she was
she must continue, sole partner of her blasted remainder of life. Yet,
O reader, the brave woman accepted the lot, and took up the cry which
had been its sign immemorially, and which thenceforward was to be her
salutation without change—"Unclean, unclean!"

The tribune heard it with a tremor, but kept his place.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Two women dying of hunger and thirst. Yet"—the mother did not
falter—"come not near us, nor touch the floor or the wall. Unclean,
unclean!"

"Give me thy story, woman—thy name, and when thou wert put here,
and by whom, and for what."

"There was once in this city of Jerusalem a Prince Ben-Hur, the
friend of all generous Romans, and who had Caesar for his friend.
I am his widow, and this one with me is his child. How may I tell
you for what we were sunk here, when I do not know, unless it was
because we were rich? Valerius Gratus can tell you who our enemy
was, and when our imprisonment began. I cannot. See to what we
have been reduced—oh, see, and have pity!"

The air was heavy with the pest and the smoke of the torches, yet
the Roman called one of the torch-bearers to his side, and wrote
the answer nearly word for word. It was terse, and comprehensive,
containing at once a history, an accusation, and a prayer. No common
person could have made it, and he could not but pity and believe.

"Thou shalt have relief, woman," he said, closing the tablets.
"I will send thee food and drink."

"And raiment, and purifying water, we pray you, O generous Roman!"

"As thou wilt," he replied.

"God is good," said the widow, sobbing. "May his peace abide with
you!"

"And, further," he added, "I cannot see thee again. Make preparation,
and to-night I will have thee taken to the gate of the Tower, and set
free. Thou knowest the law. Farewell."

He spoke to the men, and went out the door.

Very shortly some slaves came to the cell with a large gurglet
of water, a basin and napkins, a platter with bread and meat,
and some garments of women's wear; and, setting them down within
reach of the prisoners, they ran away.

About the middle of the first watch, the two were conducted to
the gate, and turned into the street. So the Roman quit himself
of them, and in the city of their fathers they were once more free.

Up to the stars, twinkling merrily as of old, they looked; then they
asked themselves,

"What next? and where to?"

About the hour Gesius, the keeper, made his appearance before the
tribune in the Tower of Antonia, a footman was climbing the eastern
face of Mount Olivet. The road was rough and dusty, and vegetation
on that side burned brown, for it was the dry season in Judea.
Well for the traveller that he had youth and strength, not to
speak of the cool, flowing garments with which he was clothed.

He proceeded slowly, looking often to his right and left;
not with the vexed, anxious expression which marks a man going
forward uncertain of the way, but rather the air with which one
approaches as old acquaintance after a long separation—half of
pleasure, half of inquiry; as if he were saying, "I am glad to be
with you again; let me see in what you are changed."

As he arose higher, he sometimes paused to look behind him over
the gradually widening view terminating in the mountains of Moab;
but when at length he drew near the summit, he quickened his step,
unmindful of fatigue, and hurried on without pause or turning of
the face. On the summit—to reach which he bent his steps somewhat
right of the beaten path—he came to a dead stop, arrested as if by
a strong hand. Then one might have seen his eyes dilate, his cheeks
flush, his breath quicken, effects all of one bright sweeping glance
at what lay before him.

The traveller, good reader, was no other than Ben-Hur; the spectacle,
Jerusalem.

Not the Holy City of to-day, but the Holy City as left by Herod—the
Holy City of the Christ. Beautiful yet, as seen from old Olivet,
what must it have been then?

Ben-Hur betook him to a stone and sat down, and, stripping his
head of the close white handkerchief which served it for covering,
made the survey at leisure.

The same has been done often since by a great variety of persons,
under circumstances surpassingly singular—by the son of Vespasian,
by the Islamite, by the Crusader, conquerors all of them; by many
a pilgrim from the great New World, which waited discovery nearly
fifteen hundred years after the time of our story; but of the
multitude probably not one has taken that view with sensations
more keenly poignant, more sadly sweet, more proudly bitter,
than Ben-Hur. He was stirred by recollections of his countrymen,
their triumphs and vicissitudes, their history the history of God.
The city was of their building, at once a lasting testimony of their
crimes and devotion, their weakness and genius, their religion and
their irreligion. Though he had seen Rome to familiarity, he was
gratified. The sight filled a measure of pride which would have
made him drunk with vainglory but for the thought, princely as
the property was, it did not any longer belong to his countrymen;
the worship in the Temple was by permission of strangers; the hill
where David dwelt was a marbled cheat—an office in which the chosen
of the Lord were wrung and wrung for taxes, and scourged for very
deathlessness of faith. These, however, were pleasures and griefs
of patriotism common to every Jew of the period; in addition,
Ben-Hur brought with him a personal history which would not out
of mind for other consideration whatever, which the spectacle
served only to freshen and vivify.

A country of hills changes but little; where the hills are of rock,
it changes not at all. The scene Ben-Hur beheld is the same now,
except as respects the city. The failure is in the handiwork of
man alone.

The sun dealt more kindly by the west side of Olivet than by the
east, and men were certainly more loving towards it. The vines
with which it was partially clad, and the sprinkling of trees,
chiefly figs and old wild olives, were comparatively green. Down to
the dry bed of the Cedron the verdure extended, a refreshment to
the vision; there Olivet ceased and Moriah began—a wall of bluff
boldness, white as snow, founded by Solomon, completed by Herod. Up,
up the wall the eye climbed course by course of the ponderous rocks
composing it—up to Solomon's Porch, which was as the pedestal of
the monument, the hill being the plinth. Lingering there a moment,
the eye resumed its climbing, going next to the Gentiles' Court,
then to the Israelites' Court, then to the Women's Court, then to
the Court of the Priests, each a pillared tier of white marble,
one above the other in terraced retrocession; over them all a
crown of crowns infinitely sacred, infinitely beautiful, majestic in
proportions, effulgent with beaten gold—lo! the Tent, the Tabernacle,
the Holy of Holies. The Ark was not there, but Jehovah was—in the
faith of every child of Israel he was there a personal Presence.
As a temple, as a monument, there was nowhere anything of man's
building to approach that superlative apparition. Now, not a stone
of it remains above another. Who shall rebuild that building? When
shall the rebuilding be begun? So asks every pilgrim who has stood
where Ben-Hur was—he asks, knowing the answer is in the bosom of
God, whose secrets are not least marvellous in their well-keeping.
And then the third question, What of him who foretold the ruin
which has so certainly befallen? God? Or man of God? Or—enough
that the question is for us to answer.

And still Ben-Hur's eyes climbed on and up—up over the roof of
the Temple, to the hill Zion, consecrated to sacred memories,
inseparable from the anointed kings. He knew the Cheesemonger's
Valley dipped deep down between Moriah and Zion; that it was spanned
by the Xystus; that there were gardens and palaces in its depths;
but over them all his thoughts soared with his vision to the great
grouping on the royal hill—the house of Caiaphas, the Central
Synagogue, the Roman Praetorium, Hippicus the eternal, and the
sad but mighty cenotaphs Phasaelus and Mariamne—all relieved
against Gareb, purpling in the distance. And when midst them he
singled out the palace of Herod, what could he but think of the
King Who Was Coming, to whom he was himself devoted, whose path he
had undertaken to smooth, whose empty hands he dreamed of filling?
And forward ran his fancy to the day the new King should come to
claim his own and take possession of it—of Moriah and its Temple;
of Zion and its towers and palaces; of Antonia, frowning darkly
there just to the right of the Temple; of the new unwalled city of
Bezetha; of the millions of Israel to assemble with palm-branches
and banners, to sing rejoicing because the Lord had conquered and
given them the world.

Men speak of dreaming as if it were a phenomenon of night and sleep.
They should know better. All results achieved by us are self-promised,
and all self-promises are made in dreams awake. Dreaming is the relief
of labor, the wine that sustains us in act. We learn to love labor,
not for itself, but for the opportunity it furnishes for dreaming,
which is the great under-monotone of real life, unheard, unnoticed,
because of its constancy. Living is dreaming. Only in the grave
are there no dreams. Let no one smile at Ben-Hur for doing that
which he himself would have done at that time and place under the
same circumstances.