Say on; I will listen, but not to more of that which you have given me.”
She regarded him intently a moment, as if determining what to do— possibly she might have been measuring his will— then she said, coldly,
“You have my leave—go.”
“Peace to you,” he responded, and walked away.
As he was about passing out of the door, she called to him.
“A word.”
He stopped where he was, and looked back.
“Consider all I know about you.”
“O most fair Egyptian,” he said, returning, “what all do you know about me?”
She looked at him absently.
“You are more of a Roman, son of Hur, then any of your Hebrew brethren.”
“Am I so unlike my countrymen?” he asked, indifferently.
“The demi-gods are all Roman now,” she rejoined.
“And therefore you will tell me what more you know about me?”
“The likeness is not lost upon me.
It might induce me to save you.”
“Save me!”
The pink-stained fingers toyed daintily with the lustrous pendant at the throat, and her voice was exceeding low and soft; only a tapping on the floor with her silken sandal admonished him to have a care.
“There was a Jew, an escaped galley-slave, who killed a man in the Palace of Idernee,” she began, slowly.
Ben-Hur was startled.
“The same Jew slew a Roman soldier before the Market-place here in Jerusalem; the same Jew has three trained legions from Galilee to seize the Roman governor to-night; the same Jew has alliances perfected for war upon Rome, and Ilderim the Sheik is one of his partners.”
Drawing nearer him, she almost whispered,
“You have lived in Rome.
Suppose these things repeated in ears we know of.
Ah! you change color.”
He drew back from her with somewhat of the look which may be imagined upon the face of a man who, thinking to play with a kitten, has run upon a tiger; and she proceeded:
“You are acquainted in the antechamber, and know the Lord Sejanus.
Suppose it were told him with the proofs in hand— or without the proofs— that the same Jew is the richest man in the East— nay, in all the empire.
The fishes of the Tiber would have fattening other than that they dig out of its ooze, would they not?
And while they were feeding— ha! son of Hur!— what splendor there would be on exhibition in the Circus!
Amusing the Roman people is a fine art; getting the money to keep them amused is another art even finer; and was there ever an artist the equal of the Lord Sejanus?”
Ben-Hur was not too much stirred by the evident baseness of the woman for recollection. Not unfrequently when all the other faculties are numb and failing memory does its offices with the greatest fidelity. The scene at the spring on the way to the Jordan reproduced itself; and he remembered thinking then that Esther had betrayed him, and thinking so now, he said calmly as he could,
“To give you pleasure, daughter of Egypt, I acknowledge your cunning, and that I am at your mercy.
It may also please you to hear me acknowledge I have no hope of your favor.
I could kill you, but you are a woman.
The Desert is open to receive me; and though Rome is a good hunter of men, there she would follow long and far before she caught me, for in its heart there are wildernesses of spears as well as wildernesses of sand, and it is not unlovely to the unconquered Parthian.
In the toils as I am— dupe that I have been— yet there is one thing my due: who told you all you know about me?
In flight or captivity, dying even, there will be consolation in leaving the traitor the curse of a man who has lived knowing nothing but wretchedness.
Who told you all you know about me?”
It might have been a touch of art, or might have been sincere— that as it may— the expression of the Egyptian’s face became sympathetic.
“There are in my country, O son of Hur,” she said, presently, “workmen who make pictures by gathering vari-colored shells here and there on the sea-shore after storms, and cutting them up, and patching the pieces as inlaying on marble slabs.
Can you not see the hint there is in the practice to such as go searching for secrets?
Enough that from this person I gathered a handful of little circumstances, and from that other yet another handful, and that afterwhile I put them together, and was happy as a woman can be who has at disposal the fortune and life of a man whom”— she stopped, and beat the floor with her foot, and looked away as if to hide a sudden emotion from him; with an air of even painful resolution she presently finished the sentence— “whom she is at loss what to do with.”
“No, it is not enough,” Ben-Hur said, unmoved by the play— “it is not enough.
To-morrow you will determine what to do with me.
I may die.”
“True,” she rejoined quickly and with emphasis, “I had something from Sheik Ilderim as he lay with my father in a grove out in the Desert.
The night was still, very still, and the walls of the tent, sooth to say, were poor ward against ears outside listening to— birds and beetles flying through the air.”
She smiled at the conceit, but proceeded: “Some other things— bits of shell for the picture— I had from— ”
“Whom?”