Ben-Hur: A tale of the Christ
“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 Cæsar—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.
CHAPTER VII
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.
CHAPTER VIII
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