The atrium seemed profaned by their presence.
At the same time, their leisurely manner and the assurance with which they proceeded pointed to some right or business; if business, with whom?
With much jargon they sauntered this way and that, all the time gradually approaching the pillar by which Ben-Hur was standing.
Off a little way, where a slanted gleam of the sun fell with a glare upon the mosaic of the floor, there was a statue which attracted their notice.
In examining it, they stopped in the light.
The mystery surrounding his own presence in the palace tended, as we have seen, to make Ben-Hur nervous; so now, when in the tall stout stranger he recognized the Northman whom he had known in Rome, and seen crowned only the day before in the Circus as the winning pugilist; when he saw the man’s face, scarred with the wounds of many battles, and imbruted by ferocious passions; when he surveyed the fellow’s naked limbs, very marvels of exercise and training, and his shoulders of Herculean breadth, a thought of personal danger started a chill along every vein.
A sure instinct warned him that the opportunity for murder was too perfect to have come by chance; and here now were the myrmidons, and their business was with him.
He turned an anxious eye upon the Northman’s comrade—young, black-eyed, black-haired, and altogether Jewish in appearance; he observed, also, that both the men were in costume exactly such as professionals of their class were in the habit of wearing in the arena.
Putting the several circumstances together, Ben-Hur could not be longer in doubt: he had been lured into the palace with design.
Out of reach of aid, in this splendid privacy, he was to die!
At a loss what to do, he gazed from man to man, while there was enacted within him that miracle of mind by which life is passed before us in awful detail, to be looked at by ourselves as if it were another’s; and from the evolvement, from a hidden depth, cast up, as it were, by a hidden hand, he was given to see that he had entered upon a new life, different from the old one in this: whereas, in that, he had been the victim of violences done to him, henceforth he was to be the aggressor.
Only yesterday he had found his first victim!
To the purely Christian nature the presentation would have brought the weakness of remorse.
Not so with Ben-Hur; his spirit had its emotions from the teachings of the first lawgiver, not the last and greatest one.
He had dealt punishment, not wrong, to Messala.
By permission of the Lord, he had triumphed; and he derived faith from the circumstance— faith the source of all rational strength, especially strength in peril.
Nor did the influence stop there.
The new life was made appear to him a mission just begun, and holy as the King to come was holy, and certain as the coming of the King was certain— a mission in which force was lawful if only because it was unavoidable.
Should he, on the very threshold of such an errand, be afraid?
He undid the sash around his waist, and, baring his head and casting off his white Jewish gown, stood forth in an undertunic not unlike those of the enemy, and was ready, body and mind.
Folding his arms, he placed his back against the pillar, and calmly waited.
The examination of the statue was brief.
Directly the Northman turned, and said something in the unknown tongue; then both looked at Ben-Hur.
A few more words, and they advanced towards him.
“Who are you?” he asked, in Latin.
The Northman fetched a smile which did not relieve his face of its brutalism, and answered,
“Barbarians.”
“This is the palace of Idernee.
Whom seek you?
Stand and answer.”
The words were spoken with earnestness.
The strangers stopped; and in his turn the Northman asked,
“Who are you?”
“A Roman.”
The giant laid his head back upon his shoulders.
“Ha, ha, ha!
I have heard how a god once came from a cow licking a salted stone; but not even a god can make a Roman of a Jew.”
The laugh over, he spoke to his companion again, and they moved nearer.
“Hold!” said Ben-Hur, quitting the pillar. “One word.”
They stopped again.
“A word!” replied the Saxon, folding his immense arms across his breast, and relaxing the menace beginning to blacken his face. “A word!
Speak.”
“You are Thord the Northman.”
The giant opened his blue eyes.
“You were lanista in Rome.”
Thord nodded.
“I was your scholar.”
“No,” said Thord, shaking his head. “By the beard of Irmin, I had never a Jew to make a fighting-man of.”
“But I will prove my saying.”
“How?”