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

“Well done! Make the douar now as ye well know, and tonight we will sweeten the bread with arrack, and the milk with honey, and at every fire there shall be a kid. God with ye! Want of sweet water there shall not be, for the lake is our well; neither shall the bearers of burden hunger, or the least of the flock, for here is green pasture also. God with you all, my children! Go.”

And, shouting, the many happy went their ways then to pitch their own habitations. A few remained to arrange the interior for the sheik; and of these the menservants hung a curtain to the central row of pillars, making two apartments; the one on the right sacred to Ilderim himself, the other sacred to his horses⁠—his jewels of Solomon⁠—which they led in, and with kisses and love-taps set at liberty. Against the middle pillar they then erected the arms-rack, and filled it with javelins and spears, and bows, arrows, and shields; outside of them hanging the master’s sword, modelled after the new moon; and the glitter of its blade rivalled the glitter of the jewels bedded in its grip. Upon one end of the rack they hung the housings of the horses, gay some of them as the livery of a king’s servant, while on the other end they displayed the great man’s wearing apparel⁠—his robes woollen and robes linen, his tunics and trousers, and many colored kerchiefs for the head. Nor did they give over the work until he pronounced it well.

Meantime the women drew out and set up the divan, more indispensable to him than the beard down-flowing over his breast, white as Aaron’s. They put a frame together in shape of three sides of a square, the opening to the door, and covered it with cushions and base curtains, and the cushions with a changeable spread striped brown and yellow; at the corners they placed pillows and bolsters sacked in cloth blue and crimson; then around the divan they laid a margin of carpet, and the inner space they carpeted as well; and when the carpet was carried from the opening of the divan to the door of the tent, their work was done; whereupon they again waited until the master said it was good. Nothing remained then but to bring and fill the jars with water, and hang the skin bottles of arrack ready for the hand⁠—tomorrow the leben. Nor might an Arab see why Ilderim should not be both happy and generous⁠—in his tent by the lake of sweet waters, under the palms of the Orchard of Palms.

Such was the tent at the door of which we left Ben-Hur.

Servants were already waiting the master’s direction. One of them took off his sandals; another unlatched Ben-Hur’s Roman shoes; then the two exchanged their dusty outer garments for fresh ones of white linen.

“Enter⁠—in God’s name, enter, and take thy rest,” said the host, heartily, in the dialect of the Marketplace of Jerusalem; forthwith he led the way to the divan.

“I will sit here,” he said next, pointing; “and there the stranger.”

A woman⁠—in the old time she would have been called a handmaid⁠—answered, and dexterously piled the pillows and bolsters as rests for the back; after which they sat upon the side of the divan, while water was brought fresh from the lake, and their feet bathed and dried with napkins.

“We have a saying in the Desert,” Ilderim began, gathering his beard, and combing it with his slender fingers, “that a good appetite is the promise of a long life. Hast thou such?”

“By that rule, good sheik, I will live a hundred years. I am a hungry wolf at thy door,” Ben-Hur replied.

“Well, thou shalt not be sent away like a wolf. I will give thee the best of the flocks.”

Ilderim clapped his hands.

“Seek the stranger in the guest-tent, and say I, Ilderim, send him a prayer that his peace may be as incessant as the flowing of waters.”

The man in waiting bowed.

“Say, also,” Ilderim continued, “that I have returned with another for breaking of bread; and, if Balthasar the wise careth to share the loaf, three may partake of it, and the portion of the birds be none the less.”

The second servant went away.

“Let us take our rest now.”

Thereupon Ilderim settled himself upon the divan, as at this day merchants sit on their rugs in the bazaars of Damascus; and when fairly at rest, he stopped combing his beard, and said, gravely, “That thou art my guest, and hast drunk my leben, and art about to taste my salt, ought not to forbid a question: Who art thou?”

“Sheik Ilderim,” said Ben-Hur, calmly enduring his gaze, “I pray thee not to think me trifling with thy just demand; but was there never a time in thy life when to answer such a question would have been a crime to thyself?”

“By the splendor of Solomon, yes!” Ilderim answered. “Betrayal of self is at times as base as the betrayal of a tribe.”

“Thanks, thanks, good sheik!” Ben-Hur exclaimed.

“Never answer became thee better. Now I know thou dost but seek assurance to justify the trust I have come to ask, and that such assurance is of more interest to thee than the affairs of my poor life.”

The sheik in his turn bowed, and Ben-Hur hastened to pursue his advantage.

“So it please thee then,” he said, “first, I am not a Roman, as the name given thee as mine implieth.”

Ilderim clasped the beard overflowing his breast, and gazed at the speaker with eyes faintly twinkling through the shade of the heavy close-drawn brows.

“In the next place,” Ben-Hur continued, “I am an Israelite of the tribe of Judah.”

The sheik raised his brows a little.

“Nor that merely. Sheik, I am a Jew with a grievance against Rome compared with which thine is not more than a child’s trouble.”

The old man combed his beard with nervous haste, and let fall his brows until even the twinkle of the eyes went