Ben Hur (61 page)

That the mistress she loved! whose hand she had so often kissed
in gratitude! whose image of matronly loveliness she had treasured
in memory so faithfully! And that the Tirzah she had nursed through
babyhood! whose pains she had soothed, whose sports she had shared!
that the smiling, sweet-faced, songful Tirzah, the light of the
great house, the promised blessing of her old age! Her mistress,
her darling— they? The soul of the woman sickened at the sight.

"These are old women," she said to herself. "I never saw them
before. I will go back."

She turned away.

"Amrah," said one of the lepers.

The Egyptian dropped the jar, and looked back, trembling.

"Who called me?" she asked.

"Amrah."

The servant's wondering eyes settled upon the speaker's face.

"Who are you?" she cried.

"We are they you are seeking."

Amrah fell upon her knees.

"O my mistress, my mistress! As I have made your God my God, be he
praised that he has led me to you!"

And upon her knees the poor overwhelmed creature began moving
forward.

"Stay, Amrah! Come not nearer. Unclean, unclean!"

The words sufficed. Amrah fell upon her face, sobbing so loud
the people at the well heard her. Suddenly she arose upon her
knees again.

"O my mistress, where is Tirzah?"

"Here I am, Amrah, here! Will you not bring me a little water?"

The habit of the servant renewed itself. Putting back the coarse
hair fallen over her face, Amrah arose and went to the basket and
uncovered it.

"See," she said, "here are bread and meat."

She would have spread the napkin upon the ground, but the mistress
spoke again,

"Do not so, Amrah. Those yonder may stone you, and refuse us drink.
Leave the basket with me. Take up the jar and fill it, and bring it
here. We will carry them to the tomb with us. For this day you will
then have rendered all the service that is lawful. Haste, Amrah."

The people under whose eyes all this had passed made way for the
servant, and even helped her fill the jar, so piteous was the
grief her countenance showed.

"Who are they?" a woman asked.

Amrah meekly answered, "They used to be good to me."

Raising the jar upon her shoulder, she hurried back. In forgetfulness,
she would have gone to them, but the cry "Unclean, unclean! Beware!"
arrested her. Placing the water by the basket, she stepped back,
and stood off a little way.

"Thank you, Amrah," said the mistress, taking the articles into
possession. "This is very good of you."

"Is there nothing more I can do?" asked Amrah.

The mother's hand was upon the jar, and she was fevered with thirst;
yet she paused, and rising, said firmly, "Yes, I know that Judah
has come home. I saw him at the gate night before last asleep on
the step. I saw you wake him."

Amrah clasped her hands.

"O my mistress! You saw it, and did not come!"

"That would have been to kill him. I can never take him in my arms
again. I can never kiss him more. O Amrah, Amrah, you love him,
I know!"

"Yes," said the true heart, bursting into tears again, and kneeling.
"I would die for him."

"Prove to me what you say, Amrah."

"I am ready."

"Then you shall not tell him where we are or that you have seen
us—only that, Amrah."

"But he is looking for you. He has come from afar to find you."

"He must not find us. He shall not become what we are. Hear, Amrah.
You shall serve us as you have this day. You shall bring us the
little we need—not long now—not long. You shall come every morning
and evening thus, and—and"—the voice trembled, the strong will
almost broke down—"and you shall tell us of him, Amrah; but to
him you shall say nothing of us. Hear you?"

"Oh, it will be so hard to hear him speak of you, and see him
going about looking for you—to see all his love, and not tell
him so much as that you are alive!"

"Can you tell him we are well, Amrah?"

The servant bowed her head in her arms.

"No," the mistress continued; "wherefore to be silent altogether.
Go now, and come this evening. We will look for you. Till then,
farewell."

"The burden will be heavy, O my mistress, and hard to bear,"
said Amrah, falling upon her face.

"How much harder would it be to see him as we are," the mother
answered as she gave the basket to Tirzah. "Come again this
evening," she repeated, taking up the water, and starting for
the tomb.

Amrah waited kneeling until they had disappeared; then she took
the road sorrowfully home.

In the evening she returned; and thereafter it became her custom
to serve them in the morning and evening, so that they wanted for
nothing needful. The tomb, though ever so stony and desolate, was
less cheerless than the cell in the Tower had been. Daylight gilded
its door, and it was in the beautiful world. Then, one can wait
death with so much more faith out under the open sky.

The morning of the first day of the seventh month—Tishri in the
Hebrew, October in English—Ben-Hur arose from his couch in the
khan ill satisfied with the whole world.

Little time had been lost in consultation upon the arrival of
Malluch. The latter began the search at the Tower of Antonia,
and began it boldly, by a direct inquiry of the tribune commanding.
He gave the officer a history of the Hurs, and all the particulars
of the accident to Gratus, describing the affair as wholly without
criminality. The object of the quest now, he said, was if any of
the unhappy family were discovered alive to carry a petition to
the feet of Caesar, praying restitution of the estate and return to
their civil rights. Such a petition, he had no doubt, would result
in an investigation by the imperial order, a proceeding of which
the friends of the family had no fear.

In reply the tribune stated circumstantially the discovery of the
women in the Tower, and permitted a reading of the memorandum he
had taken of their account of themselves; when leave to copy it
was prayed, he even permitted that.

Malluch thereupon hurried to Ben-Hur.

It were useless to attempt description of the effect the terrible
story had upon the young man. The pain was not relieved by tears
or passionate outcries; it was too deep for any expression. He sat
still a long time, with pallid face and laboring heart. Now and then,
as if to show the thoughts which were most poignant, he muttered,

"Lepers, lepers! They—my mother and Tirzah—they lepers! How long,
how long, O Lord!"

One moment he was torn by a virtuous rage of sorrow, next by a
longing for vengeance which, it must be admitted, was scarcely
less virtuous.

At length he arose.

"I must look for them. They may be dying."

"Where will you look?" asked Malluch.

"There is but one place for them to go."

Malluch interposed, and finally prevailed so far as to have the
management of the further attempt intrusted to him. Together they
went to the gate over on the side opposite the Hill of Evil Counsel,
immemorially the lepers' begging-ground. There they stayed all
day, giving alms, asking for the two women, and offering rich
rewards for their discovery. So they did in repetition day after
day through the remainder of the fifth month, and all the sixth.
There was diligent scouring of the dread city on the hill by lepers
to whom the rewards offered were mighty incentives, for they were
only dead in law. Over and over again the gaping tomb down by the
well was invaded, and its tenants subjected to inquiry; but they
kept their secret fast. The result was failure. And now, the morning
of the first day of the seventh month, the extent of the additional
information gained was that not long before two leprous women had been
stoned from the Fish Gate by the authorities. A little pressing of
the clew, together with some shrewd comparison of dates, led to the
sad assurance that the sufferers were the Hurs, and left the old
questions darker than ever. Where were they? And what had become
of them?

"It was not enough that my people should be made lepers," said the
son, over and over again, with what intensity of bitterness the
reader may imagine; "that was not enough. Oh no! They must be stoned
from their native city! My mother is dead! she has wandered to the
wilderness! she is dead! Tirzah is dead! I alone am left. And for
what? How long, O God, thou Lord God of my fathers, how long shall
this Rome endure?"

Angry, hopeless, vengeful, he entered the court of the khan, and
found it crowded with people come in during the night. While he
ate his breakfast, he listened to some of them. To one party he
was specially attracted. They were mostly young, stout, active,
hardy men, in manner and speech provincial. In their look, the certain
indefinable air, the pose of the head, glance of the eye, there was
a spirit which did not, as a rule, belong to the outward seeming
of the lower orders of Jerusalem; the spirit thought by some to
be a peculiarity of life in mountainous districts, but which may
be more surely traced to a life of healthful freedom. In a short
time he ascertained they were Galileans, in the city for various
purposes, but chiefly to take part in the Feast of Trumpets, set for
that day. They became to him at once objects of interest, as hailing
from the region in which he hoped to find readiest support in the
work he was shortly to set about.

While observing them, his mind running ahead in thought of
achievements possible to a legion of such spirits disciplined
after the severe Roman style, a man came into the court, his face
much flushed, his eyes bright with excitement.

"Why are you here?" he said to the Galileans. "The rabbis and
elders are going from the Temple to see Pilate. Come, make haste,
and let us go with them."

They surrounded him in a moment.

"To see Pilate! For what?"

"They have discovered a conspiracy. Pilate's new aqueduct is to
be paid for with money of the Temple."

"What, with the sacred treasure?"

They repeated the question to each other with flashing eyes.

"It is Corban—money of God. Let him touch a shekel of it if he
dare!"

"Come," cried the messenger. "The procession is by this time across
the bridge. The whole city is pouring after. We may be needed.
Make haste!"

As if the thought and the act were one, there was quick putting
away of useless garments, and the party stood forth bareheaded,
and in the short sleeveless under-tunics they were used to wearing
as reapers in the field and boatmen on the lake—the garb in which
they climbed the hills following the herds, and plucked the ripened
vintage, careless of the sun. Lingering only to tighten their girdles,
they said, "We are ready."

Then Ben-Hur spoke to them.

"Men of Galilee," he said, "I am a son of Judah. Will you take me
in your company?"

"We may have to fight," they replied.

"Oh, then, I will not be first to run away!"

They took the retort in good humor, and the messenger said,
"You seem stout enough. Come along."

Ben-Hur put off his outer garments.

"You think there may be fighting?" he asked, quietly, as he
tightened his girdle.

"Yes."

"With whom?"

"The guard."

"Legionaries?"

"Whom else can a Roman trust?"

"What have you to fight with?"

They looked at him silently.

"Well," he continued, "we will have to do the best we can; but had
we not better choose a leader? The legionaries always have one,
and so are able to act with one mind."

The Galileans stared more curiously, as if the idea were new to
them.

"Let us at least agree to stay together," he said. "Now I am ready,
if you are."

"Yes, let us go."

The khan, it should not be forgotten, was in Bezetha, the new
town; and to get to the Praetorium, as the Romans resonantly
styled the palace of Herod on Mount Zion, the party had to cross
the lowlands north and west of the Temple. By streets—if they may
be so called—trending north and south, with intersections hardly
up to the dignity of alleys, they passed rapidly round the Akra
district to the Tower of Mariamne, from which the way was short
to the grand gate of the walled heights. In going, they overtook,
or were overtaken by, people like themselves stirred to wrath by
news of the proposed desecration. When, at length, they reached
the gate of the Praetorium, the procession of elders and rabbis
had passed in with a great following, leaving a greater crowd
clamoring outside.

A centurion kept the entrance with a guard drawn up full armed
under the beautiful marble battlements. The sun struck the soldiers
fervidly on helm and shield; but they kept their ranks indifferent
alike to its dazzle and to the mouthings of the rabble. Through the
open bronze gates a current of citizens poured in, while a much
lesser one poured out.

"What is going on?" one of the Galileans asked an outcomer.

"Nothing," was the reply. "The rabbis are before the door of the
palace asking to see Pilate. He has refused to come out. They have
sent one to tell him they will not go away till he has heard them.
They are waiting."

"Let us go in," said Ben-Hur, in his quiet way, seeing what his
companions probably did not, that there was not only a disagreement
between the suitors and the governor, but an issue joined, and a
serious question as to who should have his will.

Inside the gate there was a row of trees in leaf, with seats under
them. The people, whether going or coming, carefully avoided the
shade cast gratefully upon the white, clean-swept pavement; for,
strange as it may seem, a rabbinical ordinance, alleged to have been
derived from the law, permitted no green thing to be grown within
the walls of Jerusalem. Even the wise king, it was said, wanting a
garden for his Egyptian bride, was constrained to found it down in
the meeting-place of the valleys above En-rogel.