Ben Hur (40 page)

Disappointment showed plainly on Ben-Hur's face—his head drooped;
and if he was not convinced, he yet felt himself incapable that
moment of disputing the opinion of the Egyptian. Not so Ilderim.

"By the splendor of God!" he cried, impulsively, "the judgment does
away with all custom. The ways of the world are fixed, and cannot
be changed. There must be a leader in every community clothed with
power, else there is no reform."

Balthasar received the burst gravely.

"Thy wisdom, good sheik, is of the world; and thou dost forget
that it is from the ways of the world we are to be redeemed.
Man as a subject is the ambition of a king; the soul of a man
for its salvation is the desire of a God."

Ilderim, though silenced, shook his head, unwilling to believe.
Ben-Hur took up the argument for him.

"Father—I call thee such by permission," he said—"for whom wert
thou required to ask at the gates of Jerusalem?"

The sheik threw him a grateful look.

"I was to ask of the people," said Balthasar, quietly, "'Where is
he that is born King of the Jews?'"

"And you saw him in the cave by Bethlehem?"

"We saw and worshipped him, and gave him presents—Melchior, gold;
Gaspar, frankincense; and I, myrrh."

"When thou dost speak of fact, O father, to hear thee is to believe,"
said Ben-Hur; "but in the matter of opinion, I cannot understand the
kind of king thou wouldst make of the Child—I cannot separate the
ruler from his powers and duties."

"Son," said Balthasar, "we have the habit of studying closely the
things which chance to lie at our feet, giving but a look at the
greater objects in the distance. Thou seest now but the title—
KING OF THE JEWS; wilt thou lift thine eyes to the mystery beyond it,
the stumbling-block will disappear. Of the title, a word. Thy Israel
hath seen better days—days in which God called thy people endearingly
his people, and dealt with them through prophets. Now, if in those
days he promised them the Savior I saw—promised him as KING OF THE
JEWS—the appearance must be according to the promise, if only for
the word's sake. Ah, thou seest the reason of my question at the
gate!—thou seest, and I will no more of it, but pass on. It may
be, next, thou art regarding the dignity of the Child; if so,
bethink thee—what is it to be a successor of Herod?—by the
world's standard of honor, what? Could not God better by his
beloved? If thou canst think of the Almighty Father in want of
a title, and stooping to borrow the inventions of men, why was
I not bidden ask for a Caesar at once? Oh, for the substance of
that whereof we speak, look higher, I pray thee! Ask rather of what
he whom we await shall be king; for I do tell, my son, that is the
key to the mystery, which no man shall understand without the key."

Balthasar raised his eyes devoutly.

"There is a kingdom on the earth, though it is not of it—a
kingdom of wider bounds than the earth—wider than the sea and
the earth, though they were rolled together as finest gold and
spread by the beating of hammers. Its existence is a fact as our
hearts are facts, and we journey through it from birth to death
without seeing it; nor shall any man see it until he hath first
known his own soul; for the kingdom is not for him, but for his
soul. And in its dominion there is glory such as hath not entered
imagination—original, incomparable, impossible of increase."

"What thou sayest, father, is a riddle to me," said Ben-Hur.
"I never heard of such a kingdom."

"Nor did I," said Ilderim.

"And I may not tell more of it," Balthasar added, humbly dropping
his eyes. "What it is, what it is for, how it may be reached,
none can know until the Child comes to take possession of it as
his own. He brings the key of the viewless gate, which he will
open for his beloved, among whom will be all who love him, for of
such only the redeemed will be."

After that there was a long silence, which Balthasar accepted as
the end of the conversation.

"Good sheik," he said, in his placid way, "to-morrow or the next
day I will go up to the city for a time. My daughter wishes to
see the preparations for the games. I will speak further about
the time of our going. And, my son, I will see you again. To you
both, peace and good-night."

They all arose from the table. The sheik and Ben-Hur remained
looking after the Egyptian until he was conducted out of the tent.

"Sheik Ilderim," said Ben-Hur then, "I have heard strange things
tonight. Give me leave, I pray, to walk by the lake that I may
think of them."

"Go; and I will come after you."

They washed their hands again; after which, at a sign from the
master, a servant brought Ben-Hur his shoes, and directly he
went out.

Up a little way from the dower there was a cluster of palms,
which threw its shade half in the water, half on the land. A bulbul
sang from the branches a song of invitation. Ben-Hur stopped beneath
to listen. At any other time the notes of the bird would have driven
thought away; but the story of the Egyptian was a burden of wonder,
and he was a laborer carrying it, and, like other laborers, there was
to him no music in the sweetest music until mind and body were happily
attuned by rest.

The night was quiet. Not a ripple broke upon the shore. The old
stars of the old East were all out, each in its accustomed place;
and there was summer everywhere—on land, on lake, in the sky.

Ben-Hur's imagination was heated, his feelings aroused, his will
all unsettled.

So the palms, the sky, the air, seemed to him of the far south
zone into which Balthasar had been driven by despair for men;
the lake, with its motionless surface, was a suggestion of the
Nilotic mother by which the good man stood praying when the
Spirit made its radiant appearance. Had all these accessories
of the miracle come to Ben-Hur? or had he been transferred to
them? And what if the miracle should be repeated—and to him? He
feared, yet wished, and even waited for the vision. When at last
his feverish mood was cooled, permitting him to become himself,
he was able to think.

His scheme of life has been explained. In all reflection about it
heretofore there had been one hiatus which he had not been able to
bridge or fill up—one so broad he could see but vaguely to the
other side of it. When, finally, he was graduated a captain as
well as a soldier, to what object should he address his efforts?
Revolution he contemplated, of course; but the processes of
revolution have always been the same, and to lead men into
them there have always been required, first, a cause or presence
to enlist adherents; second, an end, or something as a practical
achievement. As a rule he fights well who has wrongs to redress;
but vastly better fights he who, with wrongs as a spur, has also
steadily before him a glorious result in prospect—a result in
which he can discern balm for wounds, compensation for valor,
remembrance and gratitude in the event of death.

To determine the sufficiency of either the cause or the end, it was
needful that Ben-Hur should study the adherents to whom he looked when
all was ready for action. Very naturally, they were his countrymen.
The wrongs of Israel were to every son of Abraham, and each one was
a cause vastly holy, vastly inspiring.

Ay, the cause was there; but the end—what should it be?

The hours and days he had given this branch of his scheme were
past calculation—all with the same conclusion—a dim, uncertain,
general idea of national liberty. Was it sufficient? He could not
say no, for that would have been the death of his hope; he shrank
from saying yes, because his judgment taught him better. He could
not assure himself even that Israel was able single-handed to
successfully combat Rome. He knew the resources of that great
enemy; he knew her art was superior to her resources. A universal
alliance might suffice, but, alas! that was impossible, except— and
upon the exception how long and earnestly he had dwelt!— except a
hero would come from one of the suffering nations, and by martial
successes accomplish a renown to fill the whole earth. What glory
to Judea could she prove the Macedonia of the new

Alexander! Alas, again! Under the rabbis valor was possible, but not
discipline. And then the taunt of Messala in the garden of Herod—
"All you conquer in the six days, you lose on the seventh."

So it happened he never approached the chasm thinking to surmount
it, but he was beaten back; and so incessantly had he failed in
the object that he had about given it over, except as a thing of
chance. The hero might be discovered in his day, or he might not.
God only knew. Such his state of mind, there need be no lingering
upon the effect of Malluch's skeleton recital of the story of
Balthasar. He heard it with a bewildering satisfaction—a feeling
that here was the solution of the trouble—here was the requisite
hero found at last; and he a son of the Lion tribe, and King of
the Jews! Behind the hero, lo! the world in arms.

The king implied a kingdom; he was to be a warrior glorious as David,
a ruler wise and magnificent as Solomon; the kingdom was to be a
power against which Rome was to dash itself to pieces. There would
be colossal war, and the agonies of death and birth— then peace,
meaning, of course, Judean dominion forever.

Ben-Hur's heart beat hard as for an instant he had a vision of
Jerusalem the capital of the world, and Zion, the site of the
throne of the Universal Master.

It seemed to the enthusiast rare fortune that the man who had
seen the king was at the tent to which he was going. He could
see him there, and hear him, and learn of him what all he knew
of the coming change, especially all he knew of the time of its
happening. If it were at hand, the campaign with Maxentius should
be abandoned; and he would go and set about organizing and arming
the tribes, that Israel might be ready when the great day of the
restoration began to break.

Now, as we have seen, from Balthasar himself Ben-Hur had the
marvelous story. Was he satisfied?

There was a shadow upon him deeper than that of the cluster of
palms—the shadow of a great uncertainty, which—take note,
O reader! which pertained more to the kingdom than the king.

"What of this kingdom? And what is it to be?" Ben-Hur asked himself
in thought.

Thus early arose the questions which were to follow the Child to
his end, and survive him on earth—incomprehensible in his day,
a dispute in this—an enigma to all who do not or cannot understand
that every man is two in one—a deathless Soul and a mortal Body.

"What is it to be?" he asked.

For us, O reader, the Child himself has answered; but for Ben-Hur
there were only the words of Balthasar, "On the earth, yet not of
it—not for men, but for their souls—a dominion, nevertheless,
of unimaginable glory."

What wonder the hapless youth found the phrases but the darkening
of a riddle?

"The hand of man is not in it," he said, despairingly. "Nor has the
king of such a kingdom use for men; neither toilers, nor councillors,
nor soldiers. The earth must die or be made anew, and for government new
principles must be discovered—something besides armed hands—something
in place of Force. But what?"

Again, O reader!

That which we will not see, he could not. The power there is in
Love had not yet occurred to any man; much less had one come saying
directly that for government and its objects—peace and order—Love
is better and mightier than Force.

In the midst of his reverie a hand was laid upon his shoulder.

"I have a word to say, O son of Arrius," said Ilderim, stopping by
his side—"a word, and then I must return, for the night is going."

"I give you welcome, sheik."

"As to the things you have heard but now," said Ilderim, almost without
pause, "take in belief all save that relating to the kind of kingdom
the Child will set up when he comes; as to so much keep virgin mind
until you hear Simonides the merchant—a good man here in Antioch,
to whom I will make you known. The Egyptian gives you coinage of his
dreams which are too good for the earth; Simonides is wiser; he will
ring you the sayings of your prophets, giving book and page, so you
cannot deny that the Child will be King of the Jews in fact—ay,
by the splendor of God! a king as Herod was, only better and far
more magnificent. And then, see you, we will taste the sweetness
of vengeance. I have said. Peace to you!"

"Stay—sheik!"

If Ilderim heard his call, he did not stay.

"Simonides again!" said Ben-Hur, bitterly. "Simonides here,
Simonides there; from this one now, then from that! I am like
to be well ridden by my father's servant, who knows at least to
hold fast that which is mine; wherefore he is richer, if indeed
he be not wiser, than the Egyptian. By the covenant! it is not
to the faithless a man should go to find a faith to keep—and
I will not. But, hark! singing—and the voice a woman's—or an
angel's! It comes this way."

Down the lake towards the dower came a woman singing. Her voice
floated along the hushed water melodious as a flute, and louder
growing each instant. Directly the dipping of oars was heard in
slow measure; a little later the words were distinguishable—words
in purest Greek, best fitted of all the tongues of the day for the
expression of passionate grief.

THE LAMENT.
(Egyptian.)

I sigh as I sing for the story land
Across the Syrian sea.
The odorous winds from the musky sand
Were breaths of life to me.
They play with the plumes of the whispering palm
For me, alas! no more;
Nor more does the Nile in the moonlit calm
Moan past the Memphian shore.

O Nilus! thou god of my fainting soul!
In dreams thou comest to me;
And, dreaming, I play with the lotus bowl,
And sing old songs to thee;
And hear from afar the Memnonian strain,
And calls from dear Simbel;
And wake to a passion of grief and pain
That e'er I said—Farewell!