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

He called for Malluch first; that worthy being out, he sent a salutation to his friends the merchant and the Egyptian. They were being carried abroad to see the celebration. The latter, he was informed, was very feeble, and in a state of deep dejection.

Young people of that time who were supposed hardly to know their own hearts indulged the habit of politic indirection quite as much as young people in the same condition indulge it in this time; so when Ben-Hur inquired for the good Balthasar, and with grave courtesy desired to know if he would be pleased to see him, he really addressed the daughter a notice of his arrival. While the servant was answering for the elder, the curtain of the doorway was drawn aside, and the younger Egyptian came in, and walked⁠—or floated, upborne in a white cloud of the gauzy raiment she so loved and lived in⁠—to the centre of the chamber, where the light cast by lamps from the seven-armed brazen stick planted upon the floor was the strongest. With her there was no fear of light.

The servant left the two alone.

In the excitement occasioned by the events of the few days past Ben-Hur had scarcely given a thought to the fair Egyptian. If she came to his mind at all, it was merely as a briefest pleasure, a suggestion of a delight which could wait for him, and was waiting.

But now the influence of the woman revived with all its force the instant Ben-Hur beheld her. He advanced to her eagerly, but stopped and gazed. Such a change he had never seen!

Theretofore she had been a lover studious to win him⁠—in manner all warmth, each glance an admission, each action an avowal. She had showered him with incense of flattery. While he was present, she had impressed him with her admiration; going away, he carried the impression with him to remain a delicious expectancy hastening his return. It was for him the painted eyelids drooped lowest over the lustrous almond eyes; for him the love-stories caught from the professionals abounding in the streets of Alexandria were repeated with emphasis and lavishment of poetry; for him endless exclamations of sympathy, and smiles, and little privileges with hand and hair and cheek and lips, and songs of the Nile, and displays of jewelry, and subtleties of lace in veils and scarfs, and other subtleties not less exquisite in flosses of Indian silk. The idea, old as the oldest of peoples, that beauty is the reward of the hero had never such realism as she contrived for his pleasure; insomuch that he could not doubt he was her hero; she avouched it in a thousand artful ways as natural with her as her beauty⁠—winsome ways reserved, it would seem, by the passionate genius of old Egypt for its daughters.

Such the Egyptian had been to Ben-Hur from the night of the boat-ride on the lake in the Orchard of Palms. But now!

Elsewhere in this volume the reader may have observed a term of somewhat indefinite meaning used reverently in a sacred connection; we repeat it now with a general application. There are few persons who have not a double nature, the real and the acquired; the latter a kind of addendum resulting from education, which in time often perfects it into a part of the being as unquestionable as the first. Leaving the thought to the thoughtful, we proceed to say that now the real nature of the Egyptian made itself manifest.

It was not possible for her to have received a stranger with repulsion more incisive; yet she was apparently as passionless as a statue, only the small head was a little tilted, the nostrils a little drawn, and the sensuous lower lip pushed the upper the least bit out of its natural curvature.

She was the first to speak.

“Your coming is timely, O son of Hur,” she said, in a voice sharply distinct. “I wish to thank you for hospitality; after tomorrow I may not have the opportunity to do so.”

Ben-Hur bowed slightly without taking his eyes from her.

“I have heard of a custom which the dice-players observe with good result among themselves,” she continued. “When the game is over, they refer to their tablets and cast up their accounts; then they libate the gods and put a crown upon the happy winner. We have had a game⁠—it has lasted through many days and nights. Why, now that it is at an end, shall not we see to which the chaplet belongs?”

Yet very watchful, Ben-Hur answered, lightly, “A man may not balk a woman bent on having her way.”

“Tell me,” she continued, inclining her head, and permitting the sneer to become positive⁠—“tell me, O prince of Jerusalem, where is he, that son of the carpenter of Nazareth, and son not less of God, from whom so lately such mighty things were expected?”

He waved his hand impatiently, and replied, “I am not his keeper.”

The beautiful head sank forward yet lower.

“Has he broken Rome to pieces?”

Again, but with anger, Ben-Hur raised his hand in deprecation.

“Where has he seated his capital?” she proceeded. “Cannot I go see his throne and its lions of bronze? And his palace⁠—he raised the dead; and to such a one, what is it to raise a golden house? He has but to stamp his foot and say the word, and the house is, pillared like Karnak, and wanting nothing.”

There was by this time slight ground left to believe her playing; the questions were offensive, and her manner pointed with unfriendliness; seeing which, he on his side became more wary, and said, with good humor, “O Egypt, let us wait another day, even another week, for him, the lions, and the palace.”

She went on without noticing the suggestion.

“And how is it I see you in that garb? Such is not the habit of governors in India or vice-kings elsewhere. I saw the satrap of Teheran once, and he wore a turban of silk and a cloak