At the Mercy of TiberiusEvans, Augusta J. (Augusta Jane)
History
At the Mercy of Tiberius
Evans, Augusta J. (Augusta Jane)
Rome -- History -- Tiberius, 14-37 -- Fiction
Coming softly to the door, the doctor looked in through the iron
lattice, saw the figure of the nurse kneeling on the sanded floor, with
her bronzed head close to the pillow where the moaning victim's lay;
and involuntarily he took off his cloth cap, and bowed his gray head to
listen to the brief but solemn petition that went up from the dungeon
to the supreme and unerring Judge.
When he returned to the same spot an hour later, Beryl sat on the side
of the cot, with one hand clasping the brown wrist thrown across her
lap, the other pressed gently over the sufferer's hot, aching eyes; and
wonderfully sweet was the rich voice that chanted low:
"Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me.
And that Thou bidd'st me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God! I come, I come!
Just as I am, and waiting not
To rid my soul of one dark blot,
To Thee, whose blood can cleanse each spot,
O Lamb of God! I come, I come!"
The noon sun was shining over a wet world, kindling into diamonds the
crystal fringe of rain drops hanging from the green lances of willows,
where a tufted red bird arched his scarlet throat in madrigal--when
four men lifted a cot, and bore it with its apparently dying burden to
a spot upon which the warm light fell in a golden flood.
Between the Destroying Angel and his gasping prey, stepped two,
anointed with the chrism of the Priesthood of Cure; and undismayed by
the strident, sibilant, fitful breath that distorted the blue lips of
the victim, they parried the sweep of the scythe of death, with the
tiny, glittering steel blade surgery cunningly fashions; and through
its silver canula, tracheotomy recalled the vanishing spirit,
triumphantly renewed the lease of life.
At sunset on the same day, Beryl followed the warden to the door of the
large hospital.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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