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

The merchant’s right hand lay outside the robe⁠—a long, thin hand, articulate to deformity with suffering. It closed tightly; otherwise there was not the slightest expression of feeling of any kind on his part; nothing to warrant an inference of surprise or interest; nothing but this calm answer,

“The princes of Jerusalem, of the pure blood, are always welcome in my house; you are welcome. Give the young man a seat, Esther.”

The girl took an ottoman near by, and carried it to Ben-Hur. As she arose from placing the seat, their eyes met.

“The peace of our Lord with you,” she said, modestly. “Be seated and at rest.”

When she resumed her place by the chair, she had not divined his purpose. The powers of woman go not so far: if the matter is of finer feeling, such as pity, mercy, sympathy, that she detects; and therein is a difference between her and man which will endure as long as she remains, by nature, alive to such feelings. She was simply sure he brought some wound of life for healing.

Ben-Hur did not take the offered seat, but said, deferentially, “I pray the good master Simonides that he will not hold me an intruder. Coming up the river yesterday, I heard he knew my father.”

“I knew the Prince Hur. We were associated in some enterprises lawful to merchants who find profit in lands beyond the sea and the desert. But sit, I pray you⁠—and, Esther, some wine for the young man. Nehemiah speaks of a son of Hur who once ruled the half part of Jerusalem; an old house; very old, by the faith! In the days of Moses and Joshua even some of them found favor in the sight of the Lord, and divided honors with those princes among men. It can hardly be that their descendant, lineally come to us, will refuse a cup of wine-fat of the genuine vine of Sorek, grown on the south hillsides of Hebron.”

By the time of the conclusion of this speech, Esther was before Ben-Hur with a silver cup filled from a vase upon a table a little removed from the chair. She offered the drink with downcast face. He touched her hand gently to put it away. Again their eyes met; whereat he noticed that she was small, not nearly to his shoulder in height; but very graceful, and fair and sweet of face, with eyes black and inexpressibly soft. She is kind and pretty, he thought, and looks as Tirzah would were she living. Poor Tirzah! Then he said aloud,

“No, thy father⁠—if he is thy father?”⁠—he paused.

“I am Esther, the daughter of Simonides,” she said, with dignity.

“Then, fair Esther, thy father, when he has heard my further speech, will not think worse of me if yet I am slow to take his wine of famous extract; nor less I hope not to lose grace in thy sight. Stand thou here with me a moment!”

Both of them, as in common cause, turned to the merchant. “Simonides!” he said, firmly, “my father, at his death, had a trusted servant of thy name, and it has been told me that thou art the man!”

There was a sudden start of the wrenched limbs under the robe, and the thin hand clenched.

“Esther, Esther!” the man called, sternly; “here, not there, as thou art thy mother’s child and mine⁠—here, not there, I say!”

The girl looked once from father to visitor; then she replaced the cup upon the table, and went dutifully to the chair. Her countenance sufficiently expressed her wonder and alarm.

Simonides lifted his left hand, and gave it into hers, lying lovingly upon his shoulder, and said, dispassionately, “I have grown old in dealing with men⁠—old before my time. If he who told thee that whereof thou speakest was a friend acquainted with my history, and spoke of it not harshly, he must have persuaded thee that I could not be else than a man distrustful of my kind. The God of Israel help him who, at the end of life, is constrained to acknowledge so much! My loves are few, but they are. One of them is a soul which”⁠—he carried the hand holding his to his lips, in manner unmistakable⁠—“a soul which to this time has been unselfishly mine, and such sweet comfort that, were it taken from me, I would die.”

Esther’s head drooped until her cheek touched his.

“The other love is but a memory; of which I will say further that, like a benison of the Lord, it hath a compass to contain a whole family, if only”⁠—his voice lowered and trembled⁠—“if only I knew where they were.”

Ben-Hur’s face suffused, and, advancing a step, he cried, impulsively, “My mother and sister! Oh, it is of them you speak!”

Esther, as if spoken to, raised her head; but Simonides returned to his calm, and answered, coldly, “Hear me to the end. Because I am that I am, and because of the loves of which I have spoken, before I make return to thy demand touching my relations to the Prince Hur, and as something which of right should come first, do thou show me proofs of who thou art. Is thy witness in writing? Or cometh it in person?”

The demand was plain, and the right of it indisputable. Ben-Hur blushed, clasped his hands, stammered, and turned away at loss. Simonides pressed him.

“The proofs, the proofs, I say! Set them before me⁠—lay them in my hands!”

Yet Ben-Hur had no answer. He had not anticipated the requirement; and, now that it was made, to him as never before came the awful fact that the three years in the galley had carried away all the proofs of his identity; mother and sister gone, he did not live in the knowledge of any human being. Many there were acquainted with him, but that was all. Had Quintus Arrius been present, what could he have said more than where he found him, and that he believed the pretender to be the son of