The houses on both sides were low, dark, and cheerless; the doors all closed: from the roofs, occasionally, he heard women crooning to children.
The loneliness of his situation, the night, the uncertainty cloaking the object of his coming, all affected him cheerlessly.
With feelings sinking lower and lower, he came directly to the deep reservoir now known as the Pool of Bethesda, in which the water reflected the over-pending sky.
Looking up, he beheld the northern wall of the Tower of Antonia, a black frowning heap reared into the dim steel-gray sky. He halted as if challenged by a threatening sentinel.
The Tower stood up so high, and seemed so vast, resting apparently upon foundations so sure, that he was constrained to acknowledge its strength.
If his mother were there in living burial, what could he do for her?
By the strong hand, nothing.
An army might beat the stony face with ballista and ram, and be laughed at.
Against him alone, the gigantic southeast turret looked down in the self-containment of a hill.
And he thought, cunning is so easily baffled; and God, always the last resort of the helpless— God is sometimes so slow to act!
In doubt and misgiving, he turned into the street in front of the Tower, and followed it slowly on to the west.
Over in Bezetha he knew there was a khan, where it was his intention to seek lodging while in the city; but just now he could not resist the impulse to go home.
His heart drew him that way.
The old formal salutation which he received from the few people who passed him had never sounded so pleasantly.
Presently, all the eastern sky began to silver and shine, and objects before invisible in the west— chiefly the tall towers on Mount Zion— emerged as from a shadowy depth, and put on spectral distinctness, floating, as it were, above the yawning blackness of the valley below, very castles in the air.
He came, at length, to his father’s house.
Of those who read this page, some there will be to divine his feelings without prompting.
They are such as had happy homes in their youth, no matter how far that may have been back in time— homes which are now the starting-points of all recollection; paradises from which they went forth in tears, and which they would now return to, if they could, as little children; places of laughter and singing, and associations dearer than any or all the triumphs of after-life.
At the gate on the north side of the old house Ben-Hur stopped.
In the corners the wax used in the sealing-up was still plainly seen, and across the valves was the board with the inscription—
“This is the property of the emperor.”
Nobody had gone in or out the gate since the dreadful day of the separation.
Should he knock as of old?
It was useless, he knew; yet he could not resist the temptation.
Amrah might hear, and look out of one of the windows on that side.
Taking a stone, he mounted the broad stone step, and tapped three times.
A dull echo replied.
He tried again, louder than before; and again, pausing each time to listen.
The silence was mocking.
Retiring into the street, he watched the windows; but they, too, were lifeless.
The parapet on the roof was defined sharply against the brightening sky; nothing could have stirred upon it unseen by him, and nothing did stir.
From the north side he passed to the west, where there were four windows which he watched long and anxiously, but with as little effect.
At times his heart swelled with impotent wishes; at others, he trembled at the deceptions of his own fancy.
Amrah made no sign— not even a ghost stirred.
Silently, then, he stole round to the south.
There, too, the gate was sealed and inscribed.
The mellow splendor of the August moon, pouring over the crest of Olivet, since termed the Mount of Offence, brought the lettering boldly out; and he read, and was filled with rage.
All he could do was to wrench the board from its nailing, and hurl it into the ditch.
Then he sat upon the step, and prayed for the New King, and that his coming might be hastened.
As his blood cooled, insensibly he yielded to the fatigue of long travel in the summer heat, and sank down lower, and, at last, slept.
About that time two women came down the street from the direction of the Tower of Antonia, approaching the palace of the Hurs.
They advanced stealthily, with timid steps, pausing often to listen.
At the corner of the rugged pile, one said to the other, in a low voice,
“This is it, Tirzah!”
And Tirzah, after a look, caught her mother’s hand, and leaned upon her heavily, sobbing, but silent.
“Let us go on, my child, because”— the mother hesitated and trembled; then, with an effort to be calm, continued— “because when morning comes they will put us out of the gate of the city to— return no more.”
Tirzah sank almost to the stones.
“Ah, yes!” she said, between sobs; “I forgot.
I had the feeling of going home.
But we are lepers, and have no homes; we belong to the dead!”