Salem Chapel · Chapter 41 (2/2)

But Arthur made no reply. His clouded face filled his mother with a host of indefinite fears. But she saw, as she had seen so often, that womanish entreaties were not practicable, and that he must be left to himself. “He will tell me as we go to Salem,” she said in her heart, to quiet its anxious throbbing. “Perhaps you would like to have the room to yourself a little, dear,” she said aloud. “I will go to Susan till it is time to leave; and I know my Arthur will ask the counsel of God,” she added softly, just touching his hand with a tender momentary clasp. It was all the minister could do to resist the look of anxious inquiry with which this little caress was accompanied; and then she left him to prepare for his meeting. Whether he asked advice or not of his Father in heaven, the widow asked it for him with tears in her anxious eyes. She had done all that she could do. When the minister was left to himself, he opened his desk and took out the manuscript with which he had been busy last night. It was the speech he had intended to deliver, and he had been pleased with it. He sat down now and read it over to himself, by the white-covered table, on which his mother’s lamp burned bright. Sheet by sheet, as he read it over, the impatient young man tossed into the fire, with hasty exclamations of disgust. He was excited; his mind was in fiery action; his heart moved to the depths. No turgid Homerton eloquence would do now. What he said must be not from the lips, but from the heart.