Ben-Hur: A tale of the Christ
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.
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