Ben Hur by Lew Wallace (best romance ebooks TXT) 📕

that he was equally faithful to them, and would be equally happy of the meeting. And with the spinning and respinning of this slender thread they found pleasure, and excused their not dying. In such manner as we have seen, they were solacing themselves the moment Gesius called them, at the end of twelve hours’ fasting and thirst.

The torches flashed redly through the dungeon, and liberty was come. “God is good,” the widow cried⁠—not for what had been, O reader, but for what was. In thankfulness for present mercy, nothing so becomes us as losing sight of past ills.

The tribune came directly; then in the corner to which she had fled, suddenly a sense of duty smote the elder of the women, and straightway the awful warning⁠—

“Unclean, unclean!”

Ah, the pang the effort to acquit herself of that duty cost the mother! Not all the selfishness of joy over the prospect could keep her blind to the consequences of release, now that it was at hand. The old happy life could never be again. If she went near the house called home, it would be to stop at the gate and cry, “Unclean, unclean!” She must go about with the yearnings of love alive in her breast strong as ever, and more sensitive even, because return in kind could not be. The boy of whom she had so constantly thought, and with all sweet promises such as mothers find their purest delight in, must, at meeting her, stand afar off. If he held out his hands to her, and called “Mother, mother,” for very love of him she must answer, “Unclean, unclean!” And this other child, before whom, in want of other covering, she was spreading her long tangled locks, bleached unnaturally white⁠—ah! that she was she must continue, sole partner of her blasted remainder of life. Yet, O reader, the brave woman accepted the lot, and took up the cry which had been its sign immemorially, and which thenceforward was to be her salutation without change⁠—“Unclean, unclean!”

The tribune heard it with a tremor, but kept his place.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Two women dying of hunger and thirst. Yet”⁠—the mother did not falter⁠—“come not near us, nor touch the floor or the wall. Unclean, unclean!”

“Give me thy story, woman⁠—thy name, and when thou wert put here, and by whom, and for what.”

“There was once in this city of Jerusalem a Prince Ben-Hur, the friend of all generous Romans, and who had Caesar for his friend. I am his widow, and this one with me is his child. How may I tell you for what we were sunk here, when I do not know, unless it was because we were rich? Valerius Gratus can tell you who our enemy was, and when our imprisonment began. I cannot. See to what we have been reduced⁠—oh, see, and have pity!”

The air was heavy with the pest and the smoke of the torches, yet the Roman called one of the torchbearers to his side, and wrote the answer nearly word for word. It was terse, and comprehensive, containing at once a history, an accusation, and a prayer. No common person could have made it, and he could not but pity and believe.

“Thou shalt have relief, woman,” he said, closing the tablets. “I will send thee food and drink.”

“And raiment, and purifying water, we pray you, O generous Roman!”

“As thou wilt,” he replied.

“God is good,” said the widow, sobbing. “May his peace abide with you!”

“And, further,” he added, “I cannot see thee again. Make preparation, and tonight I will have thee taken to the gate of the Tower, and set free. Thou knowest the law. Farewell.”

He spoke to the men, and went out the door.

Very shortly some slaves came to the cell with a large gurglet of water, a basin and napkins, a platter with bread and meat, and some garments of women’s wear; and, setting them down within reach of the prisoners, they ran away.

About the middle of the first watch, the two were conducted to the gate, and turned into the street. So the Roman quit himself of them, and in the city of their fathers they were once more free.

Up to the stars, twinkling merrily as of old, they looked; then they asked themselves,

“What next? and where to?”

III

About the hour Gesius, the keeper, made his appearance before the tribune in the Tower of Antonia, a footman was climbing the eastern face of Mount Olivet. The road was rough and dusty, and vegetation on that side burned brown, for it was the dry season in Judea. Well for the traveller that he had youth and strength, not to speak of the cool, flowing garments with which he was clothed.

He proceeded slowly, looking often to his right and left; not with the vexed, anxious expression which marks a man going forward uncertain of the way, but rather the air with which one approaches as old acquaintance after a long separation⁠—half of pleasure, half of inquiry; as if he were saying, “I am glad to be with you again; let me see in what you are changed.”

As he arose higher, he sometimes paused to look behind him over the gradually widening view terminating in the mountains of Moab; but when at length he drew near the summit, he quickened his step, unmindful of fatigue, and hurried on without pause or turning of the face. On the summit⁠—to reach which he bent his steps somewhat right of the beaten path⁠—he came to a dead stop, arrested as if by a strong hand. Then one might have seen his eyes dilate, his cheeks flush, his breath quicken, effects all of one bright sweeping glance at what lay before him.

The traveller, good reader, was no other than Ben-Hur; the spectacle, Jerusalem.

Not the Holy City of today, but the Holy City as left by Herod⁠—the Holy City of the Christ. Beautiful yet, as seen from old Olivet, what must it have been then?

Ben-Hur betook him to