The Outsider Read Online Free Page A

questions and doubts this morning where none had ever been before.
    Sister Mercy knocked softly on the sleeping room’s door and called Gabrielle’s name. Gabrielle turned away from the mirror. She would talk to Sister Mercy before she went to the schoolroom. Sins only multiplied and darkened one’s soul if hidden and not confessed.
    “Sister Mercy,” Gabrielle said as she opened the door. “Do you have a few minutes to talk with me?” Sister Mercy inclined her head and without a word led the way to a small room with only two chairs and a table. Sister Mercy sat in one of the small straight chairs, and Gabrielle dropped to her knees beside her. Sister Mercy touched Gabrielle’s head lightly. “Ye may sit in the chair, Sister Gabrielle.”
    Gabrielle got off her knees, but after she sat down the words wouldn’t come. She didn’t know what to say that Sister Mercy might understand. Sister Mercy had been like a mother to her ever since they’d come together at Harmony Hill. She was a small, neat woman who never seemed to have so much as a thought out of place. She moved calmly and surely through each of her duties with a quick, youthful ease even though she was past her middle years.
    Sister Mercy had joined the New Lebanon Society of Believers in New York more than thirty years ago without the sin of marriage to cleanse from her spirit. When the western colonies were formed, she volunteered to come help with the ministry and leadership. She found her place of service with the children who were gathered into their family, loving them while at the same time demanding they learn and abide by the rules of the Believers. The eternal salvation and the souls of the children in her charge were at stake.
    She often spoke to Gabrielle of her need to grow in pureness of spirit and intelligence so that perhaps someday Gabrielle could take a leadership role in the Society of Believers. But now she looked troubled as she asked, “What is it, my child?”
    “You knew I stayed with Brother Nathan through the night.”
    Sister Mercy bent her head forward slightly. “Under the circumstances, that was the good and proper thing to do.”
    “He said he thought he had died and gone to hell.”
    “Brother Nathan is often a careless boy and too obstinate to accept the truth. Perhaps his guilt brought forth the thought.”
    Gabrielle was stricken by her words. “Nay,” she said. “Surely it was the fire that made him have such thoughts. And the pain. His pain is terrible to see.”
    Sister Mercy reached over and patted Gabrielle’s hand. “I didn’t mean to upset you, child. It is possible you are right. Is he better now?”
    “I think so. Dr. Scott put something on his legs to bring the fire out.”
    “Ah, Dr. Scott. I have heard of him. He lives near here, does he not?”
    “I have heard he does. I suppose that is why he was here. He must have seen the flames.” Gabrielle took a deep breath and pushed out her next words all in a bunch. “I was alone with him.”
    Sister Mercy spoke calmly. “I knew it to be so.”
    Gabrielle looked at her in surprise, but then she understood. “Sister Helen has already been to you.”
    “She thought I should know.”
    “She doesn’t like me.”
    Sister Mercy smiled. “But of course she does, child. Ye are sisters.”
    “Yea,” Gabrielle answered, but she remembered the look in Sister Helen’s eyes the night before.
    “It was only her concern for you that brought her to me. She said Dr. Scott forced her to leave you alone with him, and she was fearful of what might have happened after she left. She thought him a worldly man with no honor.”
    Gabrielle defended him at once. “Nay, she is wrong. He is surely a good, kind man who worked a near miracle to keep Nathan alive through the night.”
    Sister Mercy’s voice was reproving. “If there was a miracle, it was of the Lord’s or Mother Ann’s doing and none of Dr. Scott’s.”
    “Yea, of course you are right, Sister Mercy.