At the Mercy of Tiberius | Page 4

WHO HAS ENTERED INTO
REST.

AT THE MERCY OF TIBERIUS
CHAPTER I.
"You are obstinate and ungrateful. You would rather see me suffer and
die, than bend your stubborn pride in the effort to obtain relief for me.
You will not try to save me."
The thin, hysterically unsteady voice ended in a sob, and the frail
wasted form of the speaker leaned forward, as if the issue of life or
death hung upon an answer.
The tower clock of a neighboring church began to strike the hour of
noon, and not until the echo of the last stroke had died away, was there

a reply to the appeal.
"Mother, try to be just to me. My pride is for you, not for myself. I
shrink from seeing my mother crawl to the feet of a man, who has
disowned and spurned her; I cannot consent that she should humbly
beg for rights, so unnaturally withheld. Every instinct of my nature
revolts from the step you require of me, and I feel as if you held a hot
iron in your hand, waiting to brand me."
"Your proud sensitiveness runs in a strange groove, and it seems you
would prefer to see me a pauper in a Hospital, rather than go to your
grandfather and ask for help. Beryl, time presses, and if I die for want
of aid, you will be responsible; when it is too late, you will reproach
yourself. If I only knew where and how to reach my dear boy, I should
not importune you. Bertie would not refuse obedience to say wishes."
The silence which followed was so prolonged that a mouse crept from
its covert in some corner of the comfortless garret room, and nibbled at
the fragments of bread scattered on the table.
Beryl stood at the dormer window, holding aside the faded blue cotton
curtain, and the mid-day glare falling upon her, showed every curve of
her tall full form; every line in the calm, pale Sibylline face. The large
steel gray eyes were shaded by drooping lids, heavily fringed with
black lashes, but when raised in a steady gaze the pupils appeared
abnormally dilated; and the delicately traced black brows that
overarched them, contrasted conspicuously with the wealth of deep
auburn hair darkened by mahogany tints, which rolled back in shining
waves from her blue veined temples. While moulding the figure and
features upon a scale almost heroic, nature had jealously guarded the
symmetry of her work, and in addition to the perfect proportion of the
statuesque outlines, had bestowed upon the firm white flesh a gleaming
smoothness, suggestive of fine grained marble highly polished. Majesty
of mien implies much, which the comparatively short period of
eighteen years rarely confers, yet majestic most properly describes this
girl, whose archetype Veleda read runic myths to the Bructeri in the
twilight of history.

Beryl crossed the room, and with her hands folded tightly together,
came to the low bed, on which lay the wreck of a once beautiful woman,
and stood for a moment silent and pre-occupied. With a sudden gesture
of surrender, she stooped her noble head, as if assuming a yoke, and
drew one long deep breath. Did some prophetic intuition show her at
that instant the Phicean Hill and its dread tenant, which sooner or later
we must all confront?
"Dear mother, I submit. Obedience to your commands certainly ought
not to lead me astray; yet I feel that I stand at the cross-roads, longing
to turn and flee from the way whither your finger points. I have no hope
of accomplishing any good, and nothing but humiliation can result
from the experiment; but I will go. Sometimes I believe; that fate
maliciously hunts up the things we most bitterly abhor, and one by one
sets them down before us--labelled Duty. When do you wish me to
start?"
"To-night, at nine o'clock. In the letter which you will take to father, I
have told him our destitution; and that the money spent for your
railway ticket has been obtained by the sacrifice of the diamonds and
pearls, that were set around my mother's picture; that cameo, which he
had cut in Rome and framed in Paris. Beryl so much depends on the
impression you make upon him, that you must guard your manner
against haughtiness. Try to be patient, my daughter, and if he should
seem harsh, do not resent his words. He is old now, and proud and
bitter, but he once had a tender love for me. I was his idol, and when
my child pleads, he will relent."
Mrs. Brentano laid her thin hot fingers on her daughter's hands,
drawing her down to the edge of the bed; and Beryl saw she was
quivering with nervous excitement.
"Compose