by Lew Wallace
CHAPTER VII
In front of Ben-Hur there was a forest of cypress-trees, each acolumn tall and straight as a mast. Venturing into the shadyprecinct, he heard a trumpet gayly blown, and an instant aftersaw lying upon the grass close by the countryman whom he had runupon in the road going to the temples. The man arose, and cameto him.
"I give you peace again," he said, pleasantly.
"Thank you," Ben-Hur replied, then asked, "Go you my way?"
"I am for the stadium, if that is your way."
"The stadium!"
"Yes. The trumpet you heard but now was a call for the competitors."
"Good friend," said Ben-Hur, frankly, "I admit my ignorance ofthe Grove; and if you will let me be your follower, I will beglad."
"That will delight me. Hark! I hear the wheels of the chariots.They are taking the track."
Ben-Hur listened a moment, then completed the introduction bylaying his hand upon the man's arm, and saying, "I am the sonof Arrius, the duumvir, and thou?"
"I am Malluch, a merchant of Antioch."
"Well, good Malluch, the trumpet, and the gride of wheels, and theprospect of diversion excite me. I have some skill in the exercises.In the palaestrae of Rome I am not unknown. Let us to the course."
Malluch lingered to say, quickly, "The duumvir was a Roman, yet Isee his son in the garments of a Jew."
"The noble Arrius was my father by adoption," Ben-Hur answered.
"Ah! I see, and beg pardon."
Passing through the belt of forest, they came to a field with atrack laid out upon it, in shape and extent exactly like thoseof the stadia. The course, or track proper, was of soft earth,rolled and sprinkled, and on both sides defined by ropes,stretched loosely upon upright javelins. For the accommodationof spectators, and such as had interests reaching forward of themere practise, there were several stands shaded by substantialawnings, and provided with seats in rising rows. In one of thestands the two new-comers found places.
Ben-Hur counted the chariots as they went by--nine in all.
"I commend the fellows," he said, with good-will. "Here in theEast, I thought they aspired to nothing better than the two;but they are ambitious, and play with royal fours. Let us studytheir performance."
Eight of the fours passed the stand, some walking, others on thetrot, and all unexceptionably handled; then the ninth one came onthe gallop. Ben-Hur burst into exclamation.
"I have been in the stables of the emperor, Malluch, but, by ourfather Abraham of blessed memory! I never saw the like of these."
The last four was then sweeping past. All at once they fellinto confusion. Some one on the stand uttered a sharp cry.Ben-Hur turned, and saw an old man half-risen from an upper seat,his hands clenched and raised, his eyes fiercely bright, his longwhite beard fairly quivering. Some of the spectators nearest himbegan to laugh.
"They should respect his beard at least. Who is he?" asked Ben-Hur.
"A mighty man from the Desert, somewhere beyond Moab, and owner ofcamels in herds, and horses descended, they say, from the racers ofthe first Pharaoh--Sheik Ilderim by name and title."
Thus Malluch replied.
The driver meanwhile exerted himself to quiet the four, but without avail.Each ineffectual effort excited the sheik the more.
"Abaddon seize him!" yelled the patriarch, shrilly. "Run! fly!do you hear, my children?" The question was to his attendants,apparently of the tribe. "Do you hear? They are Desert-born,like yourselves. Catch them--quick!"
The plunging of the animals increased.
"Accursed Roman!" and the sheik shook his fist at the driver. "Did henot swear he could drive them--swear it by all his brood of bastardLatin gods? Nay, hands off me--off, I say! They should run swiftas eagles, and with the temper of hand-bred lambs, he swore.Cursed be he--cursed the mother of liars who calls him son!See them, the priceless! Let him touch one of them with a lash,and"--the rest of the sentence was lost in a furious grinding ofhis teeth. "To their heads, some of you, and speak them--a word,one is enough, from the tent-song your mothers sang you. Oh, fool,fool that I was to put trust in a Roman!"
Some of the shrewder of the old man's friends planted themselvesbetween him and the horses. An opportune failure of breath on hispart helped the stratagem.
Ben-Hur, thinking he comprehended the sheik, sympathized with him.Far more than mere pride of property--more than anxiety for theresult of the race--in his view it was within the possible forthe patriarch, according to his habits of thought and his ideasof the inestimable, to love such animals with a tenderness akinto the most sensitive passion.
They were all bright bays, unspotted, perfectly matched, and soproportioned as to seem less than they really were. Delicate earspointed small heads; the faces were broad and full between the eyes;the nostrils in expansion disclosed membrane so deeply red as tosuggest the flashing of flame; the necks were arches, overlaid withfine mane so abundant as to drape the shoulders and breast, while inhappy consonance the forelocks were like ravellings of silken veils;between the knees and the fetlocks the legs were flat as an openhand, but above the knees they were rounded with mighty muscles,needful to upbear the shapely close-knit bodies; the hoofs werelike cups of polished agate; and in rearing and plunging theywhipped the air, and sometimes the earth, with tails glossy-blackand thick and long. The sheik spoke of them as the priceless, and itwas a good saying.
In this second and closer look at the horses, Ben-Hur read the storyof their relation to their master. They had grown up under his eyes,objects of his special care in the day, his visions of pride inthe night, with his family at home in the black tent out on theshadeless bosom of the desert, as his children beloved. That theymight win him a triumph over the haughty and hated Roman, the oldman had brought his loves to the city, never doubting they wouldwin, if only he could find a trusty expert to take them in hand;not merely one with skill, but of a spirit which their spiritswould acknowledge. Unlike the colder people of the West, he couldnot protest the driver's inability, and dismiss him civilly;an Arab and a sheik, he had to explode, and rive the air abouthim with clamor.
Before the patriarch was done with his expletives, a dozen handswere at the bits of the horses, and their quiet assured. About thattime, another chariot appeared upon the track; and, unlike theothers, driver, vehicle, and races were precisely as they wouldbe presented in the Circus the day of final trial. For a reasonwhich will presently be more apparent, it is desirable now togive this turnout plainly to the reader.
There should be no difficulty in understanding the carriage knownto us all as the chariot of classical renown. One has but to pictureto himself a dray with low wheels and broad axle, surmounted by a boxopen at the tail end. Such was the primitive pattern. Artistic geniuscame along in time, and, touching the rude machine, raised it intoa thing of beauty--that, for instance, in which Aurora, riding inadvance of the dawn, is given to our fancy.
The jockeys of the ancients, quite as shrewd and ambitious as theirsuccessors of the present, called their humblest turnout a two,and their best in grade a four; in the latter, they contested theOlympics and the other festal shows founded in imitation of them.
The same sharp gamesters preferred to put their horses to the chariotall abreast; and for distinction they termed the two next the poleyoke-steeds, and those on the right and left outside trace-mates.It was their judgment, also, that, by allowing the fullest freedomof action, the greatest speed was attainable; accordingly, the harnessresorted to was peculiarly simple; in fact, there was nothing ofit save a collar round the animal's neck, and a trace fixed tothe collar, unless the lines and a halter fall within the term.Wanting to hitch up, the masters pinned a narrow wooden yoke,or cross-tree, near the end of the pole, and, by straps passedthrough rings at the end of the yoke, buckled the latter to thecollar. The traces of the yokesteeds they hitched to the axle;those of the trace-mates to the top rim of the chariot-bed.There remained then but the adjustment of the lines, which,judged by the modern devices, was not the least cu
rious part ofthe method. For this there was a large ring at the forward extremityof the pole; securing the ends to that ring first, they parted thelines so as to give one to each horse, and proceeded to pass themto the driver, slipping them separately through rings on the innerside of the halters at the mouth.
With this plain generalization in mind, all further desirableknowledge upon the subject can be had by following the incidentsof the scene occurring.
The other contestants had been received in silence; the last comerwas more fortunate. While moving towards the stand from which we areviewing the scene, his progress was signalized by loud demonstrations,by clapping of hands and cheers, the effect of which was to centreattention upon him exclusively. His yoke-steeds, it was observed,were black, while the trace-mates were snow-white. In conformityto the exacting canons of Roman taste, they had all four beenmutilated; that is to say, their tails had been clipped, and,to complete the barbarity, their shorn manes were divided intoknots tied with flaring red and yellow ribbons.
In advancing, the stranger at length reached a point where thechariot came into view from the stand, and its appearance would ofitself have justified the shouting. The wheels were very marvels ofconstruction. Stout bands of burnished bronze reinforced the hubs,otherwise very light; the spokes were sections of ivory tusks,set in with the natural curve outward to perfect the dishing,considered important then as now; bronze tires held the fellies,which were of shining ebony. The axle, in keeping with the wheels,was tipped with heads of snarling tigers done in brass, and the bedwas woven of willow wands gilded with gold.
The coming of the beautiful horses and resplendent chariot drewBen-Hur to look at the driver with increased interest.
Who was he?
When Ben-Hur asked himself the question first, he could not seethe man's face, or even his full figure; yet the air and mannerwere familiar, and pricked him keenly with a reminder of a periodlong gone.
Who could it be?
Nearer now, and the horses approaching at a trot. From the shoutingand the gorgeousness of the turnout, it was thought he might besome official favorite or famous prince. Such an appearance was notinconsistent with exalted rank. Kings often struggled for the crownof leaves which was the prize of victory. Nero and Commodus, it willbe remembered, devoted themselves to the chariot. Ben-Hur aroseand forced a passage down nearly to the railing in front of thelower seat of the stand. His face was earnest, his manner eager.
And directly the whole person of the driver was in view. A companionrode with him, in classic description a Myrtilus, permitted men of highestate indulging their passion for the race-course. Ben-Hur could seeonly the driver, standing erect in the chariot, with the reins passedseveral times round his body--a handsome figure, scantily covered bya tunic of light-red cloth; in the right hand a whip; in the other,the arm raised and lightly extended, the four lines. The pose wasexceedingly graceful and animated. The cheers and clapping ofhands were received with statuesque indifference. Ben-Hur stoodtransfixed--his instinct and memory had served him faithfully--THEDRIVER WAS MESSALA.
By the selection of horses, the magnificence of the chariot, theattitude, and display of person--above all, by the expression ofthe cold, sharp, eagle features, imperialized in his countrymen bysway of the world through so many generations, Ben-Hur knew Messalaunchanged, as haughty, confident, and audacious as ever, the samein ambition, cynicism, and mocking insouciance.
