CHAPTER V
When Ben-Hur sallied
from the great warehouse, it was with the thought that another failure was to
be added to the many he had already met in the quest for his people; and the
idea was depressing exactly in proportion as the objects of his quest were dear
to him; it curtained him round about with a sense of utter loneliness on earth,
which, more than anything else, serves to eke from a soul cast down its
remaining interest in life.
Through the
people, and the piles of goods, he made way to the edge of the landing, and was
tempted by the cool shadows darkening the river's depth. The lazy current
seemed to stop and wait for him. In counteraction of the spell, the saying of
the voyager flashed into memory -”Better be a worm, and feed upon the
mulberries of Daphne, than a king's guest." He turned, and walked rapidly
down the landing and back to the khan.
"The road to
Daphne!" the steward said, surprised at the question Ben-Hur put to him.
"You have not been here before? Well, count this the happiest day of your
life. You cannot mistake the road. The next street to the left, going south,
leads straight to Mount Sulpius, crowned by the altar of Jupiter and the
Amphitheater; keep it to the third cross street, known as Herod's Colonnade;
turn to your right there, and hold the way through the old city of Seleucus to
the bronze gates of Epiphanes. There the road to Daphne begins - and may the
gods keep you!"
A few directions
respecting his baggage, and Ben-Hur set out.
The Colonnade of
Herod was easily found; thence to the brazen gates, under a continuous marble
portico, he passed with a multitude mixed of people from all the trading
nations of the earth.
It was about the
fourth hour of the day when he passed out the gate, and found himself one of a
procession apparently interminable, moving to the famous Grove. The road was
divided into separate ways for footmen, for men on horses, and men in chariots;
and those again into separate ways for outgoers and incomers. The lines of
division were guarded by low balustrading, broken by massive pedestals, many of
which were surmounted with statuary. Right and left of the road extended
margins of sward perfectly kept, relieved at intervals by groups of oak and
sycamore trees, and vine-clad summer-houses for the accommodation of the weary,
of whom, on the return side, there were always multitudes. The ways of the
footmen were paved with red stone, and those of the riders strewn with white
sand compactly rolled, but not so solid as to give back an echo to hoof or
wheel. The number and variety of fountains at play were amazing, all gifts of
visiting kings, and called after them. Out southwest to the gates of the Grove,
the magnificent thoroughfare stretched a little over four miles from the city.
In his
wretchedness of feeling, Ben-Hur barely observed the royal liberality which
marked the construction of the road. Nor more did he at first notice the crowd
going with him. He treated the processional displays with like indifference. To
say truth, besides his self-absorption, he had not a little of the complacency
of a Roman visiting the provinces fresh from the ceremonies which daily eddied
round and round the golden pillar set up by Augustus as the centre of the
world. It was not possible for the provinces to offer anything new or superior.
He rather availed himself of every opportunity to push forward through the
companies in the way, and too slow-going for his impatience. By the time he
reached Heracleia, a suburban village intermediate the city and the Grove, he
was somewhat spent with exercise, and began to be susceptible of entertainment.
Once a pair of goats led by a beautiful woman, woman and goats alike brilliant
with ribbons and flowers, attracted his attention. Then he stopped to look at a
bull of mighty girth, and snowy white, covered with vines freshly cut, and
bearing on its broad back a naked child in a basket, the image of a young
Bacchus, squeezing the juice of ripened berries into a goblet, and drinking
with libational formulas. As he resumed his walk, he wondered whose altars
would be enriched by the offerings. A horse went by with clipped mane, after
the fashion of the time, his rider superbly dressed. He smiled to observe the
harmony of pride between the man and the brute. Often after that he turned his
head at hearing the rumble of wheels and the dull thud of hoofs; unconsciously
he was becoming interested in the styles of chariots and charioteers, as they
rustled past him going and coming. Nor was it long until he began to make notes
of the people around him. He saw they were of all ages, sexes, and conditions,
and all in holiday attire. One company was uniformed in white, another in
black; some bore flags, some smoking censers; some went slowly, singing hymns;
others stepped to the music of flutes and tabrets. If such were the going to
Daphne every day in the year, what a wondrous sight Daphne must be! At last
there was a clapping of hands, and a burst of joyous cries; following the
pointing of many fingers, he looked and saw upon the brow of a hill the templed
gate of the consecrated Grove. The hymns swelled to louder strains; the music
quickened time; and, borne along by the impulsive current, and sharing the
common eagerness, he passed in, and, Romanized in taste as he was, fell to
worshiping the place.
Rearward of the
structure which graced the entrance-way - a purely Grecian pile - he stood upon
a broad esplanade paved with polished stone; around him a restless exclamatory
multitude, in gayest colors, relieved against the iridescent spray flying
crystal-white from fountains; before him, off to the southwest, dustless paths
radiated out into a garden, and beyond that into a forest, over which rested a
veil of pale-blue vapor. Ben-Hur gazed wistfully, uncertain where to go. A
woman that moment exclaimed,
"Beautiful!
But where to now?"
Her companion,
wearing a chaplet of bays, laughed and answered, "Go to, thou pretty
barbarian! The question implies an earthly fear; and did we not agree to leave
all such behind in Antioch with the rusty earth? The winds which blow here are
respirations of the gods. Let us give ourselves to waftage of the winds."
"But if we
should get lost?"
"O thou
timid! No one was ever lost in Daphne, except those on whom her gates close
forever."
"And who are
they?" she asked, still fearful.
"Such as
have yielded to the charms of the place and chosen it for life and death. Hark!
Stand we here, and I will show you of whom I speak."
Upon the marble
pavement there was a scurry of sandalled feet; the crowd opened, and a party of
girls rushed about the speaker and his fair friend, and began singing and
dancing to the tabrets they themselves touched. The woman, scared, clung to the
man, who put an arm about her, and, with kindled face, kept time to the music
with the other hand overhead. The hair of the dancers floated free, and their
limbs blushed through the robes of gauze which scarcely draped them. Words may
not be used to tell of the voluptuousness of the dance. One brief round, and
they darted off through the yielding crowd lightly as they had come.
"Now what think
you?" cried the man to the woman.
"Who are
they?" she asked.
"Devadasi -
priestesses devoted to the Temple of Apollo. There is an army of them. They
make the chorus in celebrations. This is their home. Sometimes they wander off
to other cities, but all they make is brought here to enrich the house of the
divine musician. Shall we go now?"
Next minute the
two were gone.
Ben-Hur took
comfort in the assurance that no one was ever lost in Daphne, and he, too, set
out - where, he knew not.
A sculpture
reared upon a beautiful pedestal in the garden attracted him first. It proved
to be the statue of a centaur. An inscription informed the unlearned visitor
that it exactly represented Chiron, the beloved of Apollo and Diana, instructed
by them in the mysteries of hunting, medicine, music, and prophecy. The
inscription also bade the stranger look out at a certain part of the heavens,
at a certain hour of the clear night, and he would behold the dead alive among
the stars, whither Jupiter had transferred the good genius.
The wisest of the
centaurs continued, nevertheless, in the service of mankind. In his hand he
held a scroll, on which, graven in Greek, were paragraphs of a notice:
"O
Traveller!
"Art thou a stranger?
"I. Hearken
to the singing of the brooks, and fear not the rain of the fountains; so will
the Naiades learn to love thee.
"II. The
invited breezes of Daphne are Zephyrus and Auster; gentle ministers of life,
they will gather sweets for thee; when Eurus blows, Diana is elsewhere hunting;
when Boreas blusters, go hide, for Apollo is angry.
"III. The
shades of the Grove are thine in the day; at night they belong to Pan and his
Dryades. Disturb them not.
"IV. Eat of
the Lotus by the brooksides sparingly, unless thou wouldst have surcease of
memory, which is to become a child of Daphne.
"V. Walk
thou round the weaving spider - 'tis Arachne at work for Minerva.
"VI. Wouldst
thou behold the tears of Daphne, break but a bud from a laurel bough - and die.
"Heed thou!
"And stay and be happy."
Ben-Hur left the
interpretation of the mystic notice to others fast enclosing him, and turned
away as the white bull was led by. The boy sat in the basket, followed by a
procession; after them again, the woman with the goats; and behind her the
flute and tabret players, and another procession of gift-bringers.
"Whither go
they?" asked a bystander.
Another made
answer, "The bull to Father Jove; the goat -”
"Did not
Apollo once keep the flocks of Admetus?"
"Ay, the
goat to Apollo!"
The goodness of
the reader is again besought in favor of an explanation. A certain facility of
accommodation in the matter of religion comes to us after much intercourse with
people of a different faith; gradually we attain the truth that every creed is
illustrated by good men who are entitled to our respect, but whom we cannot
respect without courtesy to their creed. To this point Ben-Hur had arrived.
Neither the years in Rome nor those in the galley had made any impression upon
his religious faith; he was yet a Jew. In his view, nevertheless, it was not an
impiety to look for the beautiful in the Grove of Daphne.
The remark does
not interdict the further saying, if his scruples had been ever so extreme, not
improbably he would at this time have smothered them. He was angry; not as the
irritable, from chafing of a trifle; nor was his anger like the fool's, pumped
from the wells of nothing, to be dissipated by a reproach or a curse; it was
the wrath peculiar to ardent natures rudely awakened by the sudden annihilation
of a hope - dream, if you will - in which the choicest happinesses were thought
to be certainly in reach. In such case nothing intermediate will carry off the
passion - the quarrel is with Fate.
Let us follow the
philosophy a little further, and say to ourselves, it were well in such
quarrels if Fate were something tangible, to be despatched with a look or a
blow, or a speaking personage with whom high words were possible; then the
unhappy mortal would not always end the affair by punishing himself.
In ordinary mood,
Ben-Hur would not have come to the Grove alone, or, coming alone, he would have
availed himself of his position in the consul's family, and made provision
against wandering idly about, unknowing and unknown; he would have had all the
points of interest in mind, and gone to them under guidance, as in the despatch
of business; or, wishing to squander days of leisure in the beautiful place, he
would have had in hand a letter to the master of it all, whoever he might be.
This would have made him a sightseer, like the shouting herd he was
accompanying; whereas he had no reverence for the deities of the Grove, nor
curiosity; a man in the blindness of bitter disappointment, he was adrift, not
waiting for Fate, but seeking it as a desperate challenger.
Every one has known
this condition of mind, though perhaps not all in the same degree; every one
will recognize it as the condition in which he has done brave things with
apparent serenity; and every one reading will say, Fortunate for Ben-Hur if the
folly which now catches him is but a friendly harlequin with whistle and
painted cap, and not some Violence with a pointed sword pitiless.
CHAPTER VI
Ben-Hur entered
the woods with the processions. He had not interest enough at first to ask
where they were going; yet, to relieve him from absolute indifference, he had a
vague impression that they were in movement to the temples, which were the
central objects of the Grove, supreme in attractions.
Presently, as
singers dreamfully play with a flitting chorus, he began repeating to himself,
"Better be a worm, and feed on the mulberries of Daphne, than a king's
guest." Then of the much repetition arose questions importunate of answer.
Was life in the Grove so very sweet? Wherein was the charm? Did it lie in some
tangled depth of philosophy? Or was it something in fact, something on the
surface, discernible to every-day wakeful senses? Every year thousands,
forswearing the world, gave themselves to service here. Did they find the
charm? And was it sufficient, when found, to induce forgetfulness profound
enough to shut out of mind the infinitely diverse things of life? those that
sweeten and those that embitter? hopes hovering in the near future as well as
sorrows born of the past? If the Grove were so good for them, why should it not
be good for him? He was a Jew; could it be that the excellences were for all
the world but children of Abraham? Forthwith he bent all his faculties to the
task of discovery, unmindful of the singing of the gift-bringers and the quips
of his associates.
In the quest, the
sky yielded him nothing; it was blue, very blue, and full of twittering
swallows - so was the sky over the city.
Further on, out
of the woods at his right hand, a breeze poured across the road, splashing him
with a wave of sweet smells, blent of roses and consuming spices. He stopped,
as did others, looking the way the breeze came.
"A garden
over there?" he said, to a man at his elbow.
"Rather some
priestly ceremony in performance - something to Diana, or Pan, or a deity of
the woods."
The answer was in
his mother tongue. Ben-Hur gave the speaker a surprised look.
"A
Hebrew?" he asked him.
The man replied
with a deferential smile,
"I was born
within a stone's-throw of the market-place in Jerusalem."
Ben-Hur was
proceeding to further speech, when the crowd surged forward, thrusting him out
on the side of the walk next the woods, and carrying the stranger away. The
customary gown and staff, a brown cloth on the head tied by a yellow rope, and
a strong Judean face to avouch the garments of honest right, remained in the
young man's mind, a kind of summary of the man.
This took place
at a point where a path into the woods began, offering a happy escape from the
noisy processions. Ben-Hur availed himself of the offer.
He walked first
into a thicket which, from the road, appeared in a state of nature, close,
impenetrable, a nesting-place for wild birds. A few steps, however, gave him to
see the master's hand even there. The shrubs were flowering or fruit-bearing;
under the bending branches the ground was pranked with brightest blooms; over
them the jasmine stretched its delicate bonds. From lilac and rose, and lily
and tulip, from oleander and strawberry-tree, all old friends in the gardens of
the valleys about the city of David, the air, lingering or in haste, loaded
itself with exhalations day and night; and that nothing might be wanting to the
happiness of the nymphs and naiads, down through the flower-lighted shadows of
the mass a brook went its course gently, and by many winding ways.
Out of the
thicket, as he proceeded, on his right and left, issued the cry of the pigeon
and the cooing of turtle-doves; blackbirds waited for him, and bided his coming
close; a nightingale kept its place fearless, though he passed in arm's-length;
a quail ran before him at his feet, whistling to the brood she was leading, and
as he paused for them to get out of his way, a figure crawled from a bed of
honeyed musk brilliant with balls of golden blossoms. Ben-Hur was startled. Had
he, indeed, been permitted to see a satyr at home? The creature looked up at
him, and showed in its teeth a hooked pruning-knife; he smiled at his own
scare, and, lo! the charm was evolved! Peace without fear - peace a universal
condition - that it was!
He sat upon the
ground beneath a citron-tree, which spread its gray roots sprawling to receive
a branch of the brook. The nest of a titmouse hung close to the bubbling water,
and the tiny creature looked out of the door of the nest into his eyes.
"Verily, the bird is interpreting to me," he thought. "It says,
'I am not afraid of you, for the law of this happy place is Love.'"
The charm of the
Grove seemed plain to him; he was glad, and determined to render himself one of
the lost in Daphne. In charge of the flowers and shrubs, and watching the
growth of all the dumb excellences everywhere to be seen, could not he, like
the man with the pruning-knife in his mouth, forego the days of his troubled
life - forego them forgetting and forgotten?
But by-and-by his
Jewish nature began to stir within him.
The charm might
be sufficient for some people. Of what kind were they?
Love is
delightful - ah! how pleasant as a successor to wretchedness like his. But was
it all there was of life? All?
There was an
unlikeness between him and those who buried themselves contentedly here. They
had no duties - they could not have had; but he -
"God of
Israel!" he cried aloud, springing to his feet, with burning cheeks
-”Mother! Tirzah! Cursed be the moment, cursed the place, in which I yield
myself happy in your loss!"
He hurried away
through the thicket, and came to a stream flowing with the volume of a river
between banks of masonry, broken at intervals by gated sluiceways. A bridge
carried the path he was traversing across the stream; and, standing upon it, he
saw other bridges, no two of them alike. Under him the water was lying in a
deep pool, clear as a shadow; down a little way it tumbled with a roar over
rocks; then there was another pool, and another cascade; and so on, out of
view; and bridges and pools and resounding cascades said, plainly as
inarticulate things can tell a story, the river was running by permission of a
master, exactly as the master would have it, tractable as became a servant of
the gods.
Forward from the
bridge he beheld a landscape of wide valleys and irregular heights, with groves
and lakes and fanciful houses linked together by white paths and shining
streams. The valleys were spread below, that the river might be poured upon
them for refreshment in days of drought, and they were as green carpets figured
with beds and fields of flowers, and flecked with flocks of sheep white as
balls of snow; and the voices of shepherds following the flocks were heard
afar. As if to tell him of the pious inscription of all he beheld, the altars
out under the open sky seemed countless, each with a white-gowned figure
attending it, while processions in white went slowly hither and thither between
them; and the smoke of the altars half-risen hung collected in pale clouds over
the devoted places.
Here, there,
happy in flight, intoxicated in pause, from object to object, point to point,
now in the meadow, now on the heights, now lingering to penetrate the groves
and observe the processions, then lost in efforts to pursue the paths and
streams which trended mazily into dim perspectives to end finally in - Ah, what might be a fitting end to scene so
beautiful! What adequate mysteries were hidden behind an introduction so
marvellous! Here and there, the speech was beginning, his gaze wandered, so he
could not help the conviction, forced by the view, and as the sum of it all,
that there was peace in the air and on the earth, and invitation everywhere to
come and lie down here and be at rest.
Suddenly a
revelation dawned upon him - the Grove was, in fact, a temple - one
far-reaching, wall-less temple!
Never anything
like it!
The architect had
not stopped to pother about columns and porticos, proportions or interiors, or
any limitation upon the epic he sought to materialize; he had simply made a
servant of Nature - art can go no further. So the cunning son of Jupiter and
Callisto built the old Arcadia; and in this, as in that, the genius was Greek.
From the bridge
Ben-Hur went forward into the nearest valley.
He came to a
flock of sheep. The shepherd was a girl, and she beckoned him,
"Come!"
Farther on, the
path was divided by an altar - a pedestal of black gneiss, capped with a slab
of white marble deftly foliated, and on that a brazier of bronze holding a
fire. Close by it, a woman, seeing him, waved a wand of willow, and as he
passed called him, "Stay!" And the temptation in her smile was that
of passionate youth.
On yet further,
he met one of the processions; at its head a troop of little girls, nude except
as they were covered with garlands, piped their shrill voices into a song; then
a troop of boys, also nude, their bodies deeply sun-browned, came dancing to
the song of the girls; behind them the procession, all women, bearing baskets
of spices and sweets to the altars - women clad in simple robes, careless of
exposure. As he went by they held their hands to him, and said, "Stay, and
go with us." One, a Greek, sang a verse from Anacreon:
"For to-day I
take or give;
For to-day I drink
and live;
For to-day I beg
or borrow;
Who knows about
the silent morrow?"
But he pursued his way indifferent, and came next
to a grove luxuriant, in the heart of the vale at the point where it would be
most attractive to the observing eye. As it came close to the path he was
travelling, there was a seduction in its shade, and through the foliage he
caught the shining of what appeared a pretentious statue; so he turned aside,
and entered the cool retreat.
The grass was
fresh and clean. The trees did not crowd each other; and they were of every
kind native to the East, blended well with strangers adopted from far quarters;
here grouped in exclusive companionship palm-trees plumed like queens; there
sycamores, overtopping laurels of darker foliage; and evergreen oaks rising
verdantly, with cedars vast enough to be kings on Lebanon; and mulberries; and
terebinths so beautiful it is not hyperbole to speak of them as blown from the
orchards of Paradise.
The statue proved
to be a Daphne of wondrous beauty. Hardly, however, had he time to more than
glance at her face: at the base of the pedestal a girl and a youth were lying
upon a tiger's skin asleep in each other's arms; close by them the implements
of their service - his axe and sickle, her basket - flung carelessly upon a heap
of fading roses.
The exposure
startled him. Back in the hush of the perfumed thicket he discovered, as he
thought, that the charm of the great Grove was peace without fear, and almost
yielded to it; now, in this sleep in the day's broad glare - this sleep at the
feet of Daphne - he read a further chapter to which only the vaguest allusion
is sufferable. The law of the place was Love, but Love without Law.
And this was the
sweet peace of Daphne!
This the life's
end of her ministers!
For this kings and
princes gave of their revenues!
For this a crafty
priesthood subordinated nature - her birds and brooks and lilies, the river,
the labor of many hands, the sanctity of altars, the fertile power of the sun!
It would be
pleasant now to record that as Ben-Hur pursued his walk assailed by such
reflections, he yielded somewhat to sorrow for the votaries of the great
outdoor temple; especially for those who, by personal service, kept it in a
state so surpassingly lovely. How they came to the condition was not any longer
a mystery; the motive, the influence, the inducement, were before him. Some
there were, no doubt, caught by the promise held out to their troubled spirits
of endless peace in a consecrated abode, to the beauty of which, if they had
not money, they could contribute their labor; this class implied intellect
peculiarly subject to hope and fear; but the great body of the faithful could
not be classed with such. Apollo's nets were wide, and their meshes small; and
hardly may one tell what all his fishermen landed: this less for that they
cannot be described than because they ought not to be. Enough that the mass
were of the sybarites of the world, and of the herds in number vaster and in
degree lower - devotees of the unmixed sensualism to which the East was almost
wholly given. Not to any of the exaltations - not to the singing-god, or his
unhappy mistress; not to any philosophy requiring for its enjoyment the calm of
retirement, nor to any service for the comfort there is in religion, nor to
love in its holier sense - were they abiding their vows. Good reader, why shall
not the truth be told here? Why not learn that, at this age, there were in all
earth but two peoples capable of exaltations of the kind referred to - those
who lived by the law of Moses, and those who lived by the law of Brahma. They
alone could have cried you, Better a law without love than a love without law.
Besides that,
sympathy is in great degree a result of the mood we are in at the moment: anger
forbids the emotion. On the other hand, it is easiest taken on when we are in a
state of most absolute self-satisfaction. Ben-Hur walked with a quicker step,
holding his head higher; and, while not less sensitive to the delightfulness of
all about him, he made his survey with calmer spirit, though sometimes with
curling lip; that is to say, he could not so soon forget how nearly he himself
had been imposed upon.
