Christian fiction; City and town life -- Fiction; Clergy -- Fiction; Ozark Mountains -- Fiction
Left alone when Deborah had gone to call Miss Farwell, Charity had
examined the nurse's room with interest and surprise. The apartment
bore no testimony to an unholy life. Save that it was in every way a
poorer place than any room in the Jordan house, it might have been
Charity's own. There was even a Bible, well worn at that, lying on a
table by which a chair was drawn as if the reader had but just laid the
book aside.
And now this woman stood before her. This woman with the deep, kind eyes,
the soft, calm voice, her cheeks glowing with healthful outdoor exercise,
and her air of sweet womanliness.
The nurse spoke the second time.
"I am Miss Farwell. You are Miss Jordan, I believe. I see you pass the
house frequently. Won't you be seated, please, you seem to be in
trouble."
Poor Charity! Dropping weakly into a chair she burst into bitter tears.
Then before Miss Farwell could recover from her surprise, the caller
exclaimed, "I came to see you about our minister, Reverend Matthews."
The color in the nurse's cheeks deepened.
"But why should you come to me about Mr. Matthews? I know nothing of
your church affairs, Miss Jordan."
"I know that you do not," the other returned bitterly. "You have never
been to hear him preach. You know nothing--nothing of what it means to
him--to me, to all of us, I mean. How could you know anything about it?"
This passionate outburst and the sight of Charity's crimson face and
embarrassed manner caused the color to disappear from the nurse's cheeks.
After a moment she said coolly, "Do you not think it would be well for
you to explain clearly just what you mean and why you come to me?"
In her effort to explain Charity's words came tumbling recklessly,
impetuously out, in all sorts of disorder. She charged the nurse with
ruining the minister's work, with alienating him from his people, with
injuring the Memorial Church and the cause of Christ in Corinth, with
making him the talk of the town.
"What is he to you," she finished. "What can he ever be to you? You
would not dare to think of marrying a minister of the gospel--you a woman
of the world. He belongs to us, he does not belong to you, and you have
no right to take him from us." Then she pleaded with her to--as she put
it--let their pastor alone, to permit him to stay in Corinth and go on to
the great future that she was so sure awaited him.
As the girl talked the other woman sat very still with downcast face,
save now and then when Charity's disordered words seemed to carry a
deeper meaning than appeared upon the surface. Then the gray eyes were
lifted to study the speaker's face, doubtfully, wonderingly,
questioningly.
In her painful excitement Charity was telling much more than she
realized. And more, Charity was not only laying bare her own heart to
the nurse, but she was revealing Hope Farwell to herself. That young
woman was stirred as she had never been before.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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