Ben Hur (74 page)

She spoke rapidly, and with animation; indeed, she had never
appeared to him so fascinating.

"You had once a friend," she continued. "It was in your boyhood.
There was a quarrel, and you and he became enemies. He did you
wrong. After many years you met him again in the Circus at Antioch."

"Messala!"

"Yes, Messala. You are his creditor. Forgive the past; admit him
to friendship again; restore the fortune he lost in the great
wager; rescue him. The six talents are as nothing to you; not so
much as a bud lost upon a tree already in full leaf; but to him—
Ah, he must go about with a broken body; wherever you meet him he
must look up to you from the ground. O Ben-Hur, noble prince! to
a Roman descended as he is beggary is the other most odious name
for death. Save him from beggary!"

If the rapidity with which she spoke was a cunning invention
to keep him from thinking, either she never knew or else had
forgotten that there are convictions which derive nothing from
thought, but drop into place without leave or notice. It seemed
to him, when at last she paused to have his answer, that he could
see Messala himself peering at him over her shoulder; and in its
expression the countenance of the Roman was not that of a mendicant
or a friend; the sneer was as patrician as ever, and the fine edge
of the hauteur as flawless and irritating.

"The appeal has been decided then, and for once a Messala takes
nothing. I must go and write it in my book of great occurrences—a
judgment by a Roman against a Roman! But did he—did Messala send
you to me with this request, O Egypt?"

"He has a noble nature, and judged you by it."

Ben-Hur took the hand upon arm.

"As you know him in such friendly way, fair Egyptian, tell me,
would he do for me, there being a reversal of the conditions,
that he asks of me? Answer, by Isis! Answer, for the truth's
sake!"

There was insistence in the touch of his hand, and in his look also.

"Oh!" she began, "he is—"

"A Roman, you were about to say; meaning that I, a Jew, must not
determine dues from me to him by any measure of dues from him
to me; being a Jew, I must forgive him my winnings because he
is a Roman. If you have more to tell me, daughter of Balthasar,
speak quickly, quickly; for by the Lord God of Israel, when this
heat of blood, hotter waxing, attains its highest, I may not be
able longer to see that you are a woman, and beautiful! I may
see but the spy of a master the more hateful because the master
is a Roman. Say on, and quickly."

She threw his hand off and stepped back into the full light,
with all the evil of her nature collected in her eyes and voice.

"Thou drinker of lees, feeder upon husks! To think I could love
thee, having seen Messala! Such as thou were born to serve him.
He would have been satisfied with release of the six talents;
but I say to the six thou shalt add twenty—twenty, dost thou
hear? The kissings of my little finger which thou hast taken
from him, though with my consent, shall be paid for; and that I
have followed thee with affection of sympathy, and endured thee
so long, enter into the account not less because I was serving
him. The merchant here is thy keeper of moneys. If by to-morrow
at noon he has not thy order acted upon in favor of my Messala
for six-and-twenty talents—mark the sum!—thou shalt settle with
the Lord Sejanus. Be wise and—farewell."

As she was going to the door, he put himself in her way.

"The old Egypt lives in you," he said. "Whether you see Messala
to-morrow or the next day, here or in Rome, give him this message.
Tell him I have back the money, even the six talents, he robbed me
of by robbing my father's estate; tell him I survived the galleys
to which he had me sent, and in my strength rejoice in his beggary
and dishonor; tell him I think the affliction of body which he has
from my hand is the curse of our Lord God of Israel upon him more
fit than death for his crimes against the helpless; tell him my
mother and sister whom he had sent to a cell in Antonia that they
might die of leprosy, are alive and well, thanks to the power of
the Nazarene whom you so despise; tell him that, to fill my measure
of happiness, they are restored to me, and that I will go hence to
their love, and find in it more than compensation for the impure
passions which you leave me to take to him; tell him—this for
your comfort, O cunning incarnate, as much as his—tell him that
when the Lord Sejanus comes to despoil me he will find nothing;
for the inheritance I had from the duumvir, including the villa
by Misenum, has been sold, and the money from the sale is out
of reach, afloat in the marts of the world as bills of exchange;
and that this house and the goods and merchandise and the ships and
caravans with which Simonides plies his commerce with such princely
profits are covered by imperial safeguards—a wise head having found
the price of the favor, and the Lord Sejanus preferring a reasonable
gain in the way of gift to much gain fished from pools of blood
and wrong; tell him if all this were not so, if the money and
property were all mine, yet should he not have the least part
of it, for when he finds our Jewish bills, and forces them to
give up their values, there is yet another resort left me—a
deed of gift to Caesar—so much, O Egypt, I found out in the
atria of the great capital; tell him that along with my defiance
I do not send him a curse in words, but, as a better expression of
my undying hate, I send him one who will prove to him the sum of
all curses; and when he looks at you repeating this my message,
daughter of Balthasar, his Roman shrewdness will tell him all I
mean. Go now—and I will go."

He conducted her to the door, and, with ceremonious politeness,
held back the curtain while she passed out.

"Peace to you," he said, as she disappeared.

When Ben-Hur left the guest-chamber, there was not nearly so much
life in his action as when he entered it; his steps were slower,
and he went along with his head quite upon his breast. Having made
discovery that a man with a broken back may yet have a sound brain,
he was reflecting upon the discovery.

Forasmuch as it is easy after a calamity has befallen to look back
and see the proofs of its coming strewn along the way, the thought
that he had not even suspected the Egyptian as in Messala's interest,
but had gone blindly on through whole years putting himself and
his friends more and more at her mercy, was a sore wound to the
young man's vanity. "I remember," he said to himself, "she had
no word of indignation for the perfidious Roman at the Fountain
of Castalia! I remember she extolled him at the boat-ride on the
lake in the Orchard of Palms! And, ah!"—he stopped, and beat
his left hand violently with his right—"ah! that mystery about
the appointment she made with me at the Palace of Idernee is no
mystery now!"

The wound, it should be observed, was to his vanity; and fortunately
it is not often that people die of such hurts, or even continue a long
time sick. In Ben-Hur's case, moreover, there was a compensation;
for presently he exclaimed aloud, "Praised be the Lord God that the
woman took not a more lasting hold on me! I see I did not love her."

Then, as if he had already parted with not a little of the weight
on his mind, he stepped forward more lightly; and, coming to the
place on the terrace where one stairway led down to the court-yard
below, and another ascended to the roof, he took the latter and
began to climb. As he made the last step in the flight he stopped
again.

"Can Balthasar have been her partner in the long mask she has been
playing? No, no. Hypocrisy seldom goes with wrinkled age like that.
Balthasar is a good man."

With this decided opinion he stepped upon the roof. There was a
full moon overhead, yet the vault of the sky at the moment was
lurid with light cast up from the fires burning in the streets
and open places of the city, and the chanting and chorusing of
the old psalmody of Israel filled it with plaintive harmonies
to which he could not but listen. The countless voices bearing
the burden seemed to say, "Thus, O son of Judah, we prove our
worshipfulness of the Lord God, and our loyalty to the land he
gave us. Let a Gideon appear, or a David, or a Maccabaeus, and we
are ready."

That seemed an introduction; for next he saw the man of Nazareth.

In certain moods the mind is disposed to mock itself with inapposite
fancies.

The tearful woman-like face of the Christ stayed with him while he
crossed the roof to the parapet above the street on the north side
of the house, and there was in it no sign of war; but rather as the
heavens of calm evenings look peace upon everything, so it looked,
provoking the old question, What manner of man is he?

Ben-Hur permitted himself one glance over the parapet, then turned
and walked mechanically towards the summer-house.

"Let them do their worst," he said, as he went slowly on. "I will
not forgive the Roman. I will not divide my fortune with him, nor
will I fly from this city of my fathers. I will call on Galilee
first, and here make the fight. By brave deeds I will bring the
tribes to our side. He who raised up Moses will find us a leader,
if I fail. If not the Nazarene, then some other of the many ready
to die for freedom."

The interior of the summer-house, when Ben-Hur, slow sauntering,
came to it, was murkily lighted. The faintest of shadows lay along
the floor from the pillars on the north and west sides. Looking in,
he saw the arm-chair usually occupied by Simonides drawn to a spot
from which a view of the city over towards the Market-place could
be best had.

"The good man is returned. I will speak with him, unless he be
asleep."

He walked in, and with a quiet step approached the chair.
Peering over the high back, he beheld Esther nestled in the seat
asleep—a small figure snugged away under her father's lap-robe.
The hair dishevelled fell over her face. Her breathing was low
and irregular. Once it was broken by a long sigh, ending in a sob.
Something—it might have been the sigh or the loneliness in which
he found her—imparted to him the idea that the sleep was a rest
from sorrow rather than fatigue. Nature kindly sends such relief
to children, and he was used to thinking Esther scarcely more than
a child. He put his arms upon the back of the chair, and thought.

"I will not wake her. I have nothing to tell her—nothing
unless—unless it be my love. . . . She is a daughter of
Judah, and beautiful, and so unlike the Egyptian; for there
it is all vanity, here all truth; there ambition, here duty;
there selfishness, here self-sacrifice. . . . Nay, the question
is not do I love her, but does she love me? She was my friend from
the beginning. The night on the terrace at Antioch, how child-like
she begged me not to make Rome my enemy, and had me tell her of
the villa by Misenum, and of the life there! That she should not
see I saw her cunning drift I kissed her. Can she have forgotten
the kiss! I have not. I love her. . . . They do not know in the
city that I have back my people. I shrank from telling it to
the Egyptian; but this little one will rejoice with me over their
restoration, and welcome them with love and sweet services of hand
and heart. She will be to my mother another daughter; in Tirzah
she will find her other self. I would wake her and tell her these
things, but—out on the sorceress of Egypt! Of that folly I could
not command myself to speak. I will go away, and wait another and
a better time. I will wait. Fair Esther, dutiful child, daughter of
Judah!"

He retired silently as he came.

The streets were full of people going and coming, or grouped about
the fires roasting meat, and feasting and singing, and happy.
The odor of scorching flesh mixed with the odor of cedar-wood
aflame and smoking loaded the air; and as this was the occasion
when every son of Israel was full brother to every other son of
Israel, and hospitality was without bounds, Ben-Hur was saluted
at every step, while the groups by the fires insisted, "Stay and
partake with us. We are brethren in the love of the Lord." But with
thanks to them he hurried on, intending to take horse at the khan
and return to the tents on the Cedron.

To make the place, it was necessary for him to cross the
thoroughfare so soon to receive sorrowful Christian perpetuation.
There also the pious celebration was at its height. Looking up
the street, he noticed the flames of torches in motion streaming
out like pennons; then he observed that the singing ceased where
the torches came. His wonder rose to its highest, however, when he
became certain that amidst the smoke and dancing sparks he saw the
keener sparkling of burnished spear-tips, arguing the presence of
Roman soldiers. What were they, the scoffing legionaries, doing in
a Jewish religious procession? The circumstance was unheard of,
and he stayed to see the meaning of it.

The moon was shining its best; yet, as if the moon and the torches,
and the fires in the street, and the rays streaming from windows
and open doors were not enough to make the way clear, some of the
processionists carried lighted lanterns; and fancying he discovered
a special purpose in the use of such equipments, Ben-Hur stepped
into the street so close to the line of march as to bring every
one of the company under view while passing. The torches and the
lanterns were being borne by servants, each of whom was armed with
a bludgeon or a sharpened stave. Their present duty seemed to be
to pick out the smoothest paths among the rocks in the street for
certain dignitaries among them—elders and priests; rabbis with long
beards, heavy brows, and beaked noses; men of the class potential in
the councils of Caiaphas and Hannas. Where could they be going?
Not to the Temple, certainly, for the route to the sacred house
from Zion, whence these appeared to be coming, was by the Xystus.
And their business—if peaceful, why the soldiers?