Ben-Hur: A tale of the Christ
frequent of a figure tall, slender, graceful, refined, wrapped in rich
and floating drapery, wanting nothing but a fitting mind to make her,
like the Shulamite, and in the same sense, terrible as an army with
banners. In other words, as she returned to his fancy, the whole
passionate Song of Solomon came with her, inspired by her presence.
With this sentiment and that feeling, he was going to see if she
actually justified them. It was not love that was taking him, but
admiration and curiosity, which might be the heralds of love.
The landing was a simple affair, consisting of a short stairway, and a
platform garnished by some lamp-posts; yet at the top of the steps he
paused, arrested by what he beheld.
There was a shallop resting upon the clear water lightly as an
egg-shell. An Ethiop—the camel-driver at the Castalian fount—occupied
the rower’s place, his blackness intensified by a livery of shining
white. All the boat aft was cushioned and carpeted with stuffs
brilliant with Tyrian red. On the rudder seat sat the Egyptian herself,
sunk in Indian shawls and a very vapor of most delicate veils and
scarfs. Her arms were bare to the shoulders; and, not merely faultless
in shape, they had the effect of compelling attention to them—their
pose, their action, their expression; the hands, the fingers even,
seemed endowed with graces and meaning; each was an object of beauty.
The shoulders and neck were protected from the evening air by an ample
scarf, which yet did not hide them.
In the glance he gave her, Ben-Hur paid no attention to these details.
There was simply an impression made upon him; and, like strong light,
it was a sensation, not a thing of sight or enumeration. Thy lips are
like a thread of scarlet; thy temples are like a piece of pomegranate
within thy locks. Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away; for,
lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear
on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice
of the turtle is heard in the land—such was the impression she made
upon him translated into words.
“Come,” she said, observing him stop, “come, or I shall think you a
poor sailor.”
The red of his cheek deepened. Did she know anything of his life upon
the sea? He descended to the platform at once.
“I was afraid,” he said, as he took the vacant seat before her.
“Of what?”
“Of sinking the boat,” he replied, smiling.
“Wait until we are in deeper water,” she said, giving a signal to the
black, who dipped the oars, and they were off.
If love and Ben-Hur were enemies, the latter was never more at mercy.
The Egyptian sat where he could not but see her; she, whom he had
already engrossed in memory as his ideal of the Shulamite. With her
eyes giving light to his, the stars might come out, and he not see
them; and so they did. The night might fall with unrelieved darkness
everywhere else; her look would make illumination for him. And then, as
everybody knows, given youth and such companionship, there is no
situation in which the fancy takes such complete control as upon
tranquil waters under a calm night sky, warm with summer. It is so easy
at such time to glide imperceptibly out of the commonplace into the
ideal.
“Give me the rudder,” he said.
“No,” she replied, “that were to reverse the relation. Did I not ask
you to ride with me? I am indebted to you, and would begin payment. You
may talk and I will listen, or I will talk and you will listen: that
choice is yours; but it shall be mine to choose where we go, and the
way thither.”
“And where may that be?”
“You are alarmed again.”
“O fair Egyptian, I but asked you the first question of every captive.”
“Call me Egypt.”
“I would rather call you Iras.”
“You may think of me by that name, but call me Egypt.”
“Egypt is a country, and means many people.”
“Yes, yes! And such a country!”
“I see; it is to Egypt we are going.”
“Would we were! I would be so glad.”
She sighed as she spoke.
“You have no care for me, then,” he said.
“Ah, by that I know you were never there.”
“I never was.”
“Oh, it is the land where there are no unhappy people, the desired of
all the rest of the earth, the mother of all the gods, and therefore
supremely blest. There, O son of Arrius, there the happy find increase
of happiness, and the wretched, going, drink once of the sweet water of
the sacred river, and laugh and sing, rejoicing like children.”
“Are not the very poor with you there as elsewhere?”
“The very poor in Egypt are the very simple in wants and ways,” she
replied. “They have no wish beyond enough, and how little that is, a
Greek or a Roman cannot know.”
“But I am neither Greek nor Roman.”
She laughed.
“I have a garden of roses, and in the midst of it is a tree, and its
bloom is the richest of all. Whence came it, think you?”
“From Persia, the home of the rose.”
“No.”
“From India, then.”
“No.”
“Ah! one of the isles of Greece.”
“I will tell you,” she said: “a traveller found it perishing by the
roadside on the plain of Rephaim.”
“Oh, in Judea!”
“I put it in the earth left bare by the receding Nile, and the soft
south wind blew over the desert and nursed it, and the sun kissed it in
pity; after which it could not else than grow and flourish. I stand in
its shade now, and it thanks me with much perfume. As with the roses,
so with the men of Israel. Where shall they reach perfection but in
Egypt?”
“Moses was but one of millions.”
“Nay, there was a reader of dreams. Will you forget him?”
“The friendly Pharaohs are dead.”
“Ah, yes! The river by which they dwelt sings to them in their tombs;
yet the same sun tempers the same air to the same people.”
“Alexandria is but a Roman town.”
“She has but exchanged sceptres. Cæsar took from her that of the
sword, and in its place left that of learning. Go with me to the
Brucheium, and I will show you the college of nations; to the
Serapeion, and see the perfection of architecture; to the Library, and
read the immortals; to the theatre, and hear the heroics of the Greeks
and Hindoos; to the quay, and count the triumphs of commerce; descend
with me into the streets, O son of Arrius, and, when the philosophers
have dispersed, and taken with them the masters of all the arts, and
all the gods have home their votaries, and nothing remains of the day
but its pleasures, you shall hear the stories that have amused men from
the beginning, and the songs which will never, never die.”
As he listened, Ben-Hur was carried back to the night when, in the
summer-house in Jerusalem, his mother, in much the same poetry of
patriotism, declaimed the departed glories of Israel.
“I see now why you wish to be called Egypt. Will you sing me a song if
I call you by that name? I heard you last night.”
“That was a hymn of the Nile,” she answered, “a lament which I sing
when I would fancy I smell the breath of the desert, and hear the surge
of the dear old river; let me rather give you a piece of the Indian
mind. When we get to Alexandria, I will take you to the corner of the
street where you can hear it from the daughter of the Ganga, who taught
it to me. Kapila, you should know, was one of the most revered of the
Hindoo sages.”
Then, as if it were a natural mode of expression, she began the song.
KAPILA.
I.
“Kapila, Kapila, so young and true,
I yearn for a glory like thine,
And hail thee from battle to ask anew,
Can ever thy Valor be mine?
“Kapila sat on his charger dun,
A hero never so grave:
‘Who loveth all things hath fear of none,
’Tis love that maketh me brave.
A woman gave me her soul one day,
The soul of my soul to be alway;
Thence came my Valor to me,
Go try it—try it—and see.’
II.
“Kapila, Kapila, so old and gray,
The queen is calling for me;
But ere I go hence, I wish thou wouldst say,
How Wisdom first came to thee.
“Kapila stood in his temple door,
A priest in eremite guise:
‘It did not come as men get their lore,
’Tis faith that maketh me wise.
A woman gave me her heart one day,
The heart of my heart to be alway;
Thence came my Wisdom to me,
Go try it—try it—and see.’”
Ben-Hur had not time to express his thanks for the song before the keel
of the boat grated upon the underlying sand, and, next moment, the bow
ran upon the shore.
“A quick voyage, O Egypt!” he cried.
“And a briefer stay!” she replied, as, with a strong push, the black
sent them shooting into the open water again.
“You will give me the rudder now.”
“Oh no,” said she, laughing. “To you, the chariot; to me, the boat. We
are merely at the lake’s end, and the lesson is that I must not sing
any more. Having been to Egypt, let us now to the Grove of Daphne.”
“Without a song on the way?” he said, in deprecation.
“Tell me something of the Roman from whom you saved us to-day,” she
asked.
The request struck Ben-Hur unpleasantly.
“I wish this were the Nile,” he said, evasively. “The kings and queens,
having slept so long, might come down from their tombs, and ride with
us.”
“They were of the colossi, and would sink our boat. The pygmies would
be preferable. But tell me of the Roman. He is very wicked, is he not?”
“I cannot say.”
“Is he of noble family, and rich?”
“I cannot speak of his riches.”
“How beautiful his horses were! and the bed of his chariot was gold,
and the wheels ivory. And his audacity! The bystanders laughed as he
rode away; they, who were so nearly under his wheels!”
She laughed at the recollection.
“They were rabble,” said Ben-Hur, bitterly.
“He must be one of the monsters who are said to be growing up in
Rome—Apollos ravenous as Cerberus. Does he reside in Antioch?”
“He is of the East somewhere.”
“Egypt would suit him better than Syria.”
“Hardly,” Ben-Hur replied. “Cleopatra is dead.”
That instant the lamps burning before the door of the tent came into
view.
“The dowar!” she cried.
“Ah, then, we have not been to Egypt. I have not seen Karnak or Philae
or Abydos. This is not the Nile. I have but heard a song of India, and
been boating in a dream.”
“Philae—Karnak. Mourn rather that you have not seen the Rameses at Aboo
Simbel, looking at which makes it so easy to think of God, the maker of
the heavens and earth. Or why should you mourn at all? Let us go on to
the river; and if I cannot sing”—she laughed—“because I have said I
would not, yet I can tell you stories of Egypt.”
“Go on! Ay, till morning comes, and the evening, and the next morning!”
he said, vehemently.
“Of what shall my stories be? Of the mathematicians?”
“Oh no.”
“Of the philosophers?”
“No, no.”
“Of the magicians and genii?”
“If you will.”
“Of war?”
“Yes.”
“Of love?”
“Yes.”
“I will tell you a cure for love. It is the story of a queen. Listen
reverently. The papyrus from which it was taken by the priests of
Philae was wrested from the hand of the heroine herself. It is correct
in form, and must be true:
NE-NE-HOFRA.
I.
“There is no parallelism in human lives.
“No life runs a straight line.
“The most perfect life develops as a circle, and terminates in its
beginning, making it impossible to say, This is the commencement, that
the end.
“Perfect lives are the treasures of God; of great days he wears them on
the ring-finger of his heart hand.”
II.
“Ne-ne-hofra dwelt in a house close by Essouan, yet closer to the first
cataract—so close, indeed, that the sound of the eternal battle waged
there between river and rocks was of the place a part.
“She grew in beauty day by day, so that it was said of her, as of the
poppies in her father’s garden, What will she not be in the time of
blooming?
“Each year of her life was the beginning of a new song more delightful