The Mormon Prophet, Lily Dougall [young adult books to read TXT] 📗

be of anything upon a day when her heart had been set mocking.

"You have come at last," she whispered, and only knew when the words were said that she had hoped to see him before. Her whisper was broken by rising tears, which she checked in very shame.

"I want to speak to you," said Ephraim briefly.

So she rose and went out with him. She put her shawl over her head and walked upon the roadside. The day was mild, the first of the Indian summer. Ephraim had not put up his horse; he led it by the bridle as he walked.

"Sure as I'm alive, it's her uncle as has come after her at last," said the wife of John Biery, gazing through the small panes of the kitchen window. And, in truth, Ephraim did look many years older than Susannah, for his figure was bowed somewhat for lack of strength.

Susannah did not now think of Ephraim as old, neither did she think of him as young. To her he was just Ephraim, bearing no more relation of comparison to any other mortal than if his had been the only soul in the world beside her own. She was not aware of this; she was only thinking that if he had not shot Halsey she would have been able to speak freely to him now. It was so wicked of Ephraim, above all others, to do such a thing. It was, in fact, unforgivable because of the stain upon Ephraim's own character more than because of Halsey's blood. But that again she did not analyse. She only knew that her feeling kept her silent.

"I am here, Susannah"--in his battle to speak Ephraim economised words--"to ask you to come back with me."

Susannah considered. It would be perhaps the best thing that she could do after she had spoken her mind to Angel. He would not ask her to remain to join in a service she loathed. But when she thought of her aunt, and of the voice of an outraged Puritan neighbourhood, her heart naturally failed her.

"I cannot."

"Is this man more to you--I do not say than the ties of kindred, for that is natural--but more to you than the obligation to live a life of reason and duty?"

"No." Susannah spoke the answer aloud because it arose so simply and strongly within her. Had she not just come to a crisis in which her desire to abide by reason proved far stronger than the feeling which bound her to Halsey? And yet, as she thought of his love and his tenderness for her, she felt only pity for him, even if he had told a lie.

Ephraim had grown calmer, but at the clear denial his heart again beat against the breath he was trying to draw. She did not love Halsey then! she was not married to him! He could conceive of nothing that could have brought that word and tone to Susannah's lips if she were bound.

"Does not duty and reason, does not even mere sanity, call upon you to come back with me, Susannah, and spend your life where you can exercise the gifts God has given you among those who abide by law and order?"

"Perhaps, Ephraim, it is so; but I am too great a coward. Think of the shame that I should have to endure from my aunt, and all the world would taunt me with my folly and madness. I think it would kill what little good there is in me. For although I should be willing to suffer if I have done wrong, yet there would be no use in going where my punishment would be greater than I could bear."

He was shocked to think of the days that had elapsed before he had come to her. She had suffered much before she could speak in this way, and when he saw how mild and sad she was, and, above all, rational, he longed to comfort her as he would comfort a child with caresses and the promise of future joys. He could give her neither, because he believed that she cared for neither caress nor joy from his hand. There was something he could offer--all that he had to give that she could take, but the offer was so hard to make that he prefaced it.

"A way might be found by which you could return to our house, Susannah, and be troubled by no spoken reproach, and you could live down that which was unspoken." He paused a minute, and then said, "But I would know first that you leave all that pertains to your life here freely. You have found it true, what is so much reported, that the Mormons follow wicked practices?"

"No, oh no, Ephraim; that is not true--mad, deluded perhaps, but not wicked. The stories of wickedness told are malicious even where there is a colour of truth, and for the most part there is none. In the matter of daily life they abide by the laws of God and man, and nothing else is taught."

It was the thought of the sacerdotal deception that she felt had been so lately practised upon herself that caused her to put in the reserving words "in the matter of daily life"; but when she remembered the malice that had instigated report, the unlovely lives of the malicious fault-finders, the evil stains that lie even upon the best lives, she burst out, "There is not one in our community, Ephraim, who would stoop to a cruel act either in word or deed. There is not one of us, even among those who have recently repented from very wicked lives, who would try to take the life of a defenceless man when he was, at a great cost to himself, pursuing what he thought to be the path of duty--as you did, Ephraim."

Before this he had kept his eyes upon the ground; standing still now, he looked straight into hers. So for a minute they stood, the horse's head drooping beside his shoulder, the woman upon the roadside erect, passionate; around them the leafless wood through which the long straight road was cut. The long level red beams of the sun struck through between the gray trunks, burnishing the wet carpet of the fallen leaf.

"Did you think it was I who fired?" he asked.

Then he went on with the horse, and she at the side.

She was utterly astonished. "Who, Ephraim--who fired?"

He looked straight in front of him again. "It was my mother. She brandished the gun in his face. She couldn't have intended to shoot."

From Susannah's heart a great cloud was lifted. She felt no confused need to readjust her thoughts; rather it was that in a moment her apprehension of Ephraim's character slipped easily from some abnormal strain into normal pleasure.

She pressed her hands to her breast as if fondling some delight. "Forgive me," she said, "but I am so glad, oh, so very glad." She drew a long breath as if inhaling not the autumn but the new sweetness of spring.

So they went on a little way, he somewhat shy because of her emotion, she meditating again, and this question pressed.

"And you think," she asked, "that your mother would receive me if I went back with you? that I could live at peace with her?"

"Do you think that whatever I might do she would ever try to shoot _me_?" he asked with half a smile. "Do you think that she would ever, by word or deed, do anything that would hurt _me_?"

"Never." Susannah said the word as a matter of course.

"Or that my father would ever deny me anything that I seriously asked for, or that he knew my happiness depended upon?"

"No, surely not; but, Ephraim--"

"Oh," he continued, growing distress in his voice, "Susannah, is there any place else in the whole world that you can go for shelter and comfort but to our house? You have spoken of this madness and delusion; you are satisfied that you must leave--" He had meant to say "this man," but he was too shy, and he faltered--"that you must leave these people?"

She cast her eyes far in among the trunks of the close-growing trees, upon one side and then upon another, as if looking for a way of escape. Yes, surely her faith in Angel's creed had been hurt beyond recovery, and she must free herself, but how? She dallied with Ephraim's offer of asylum because she could think of no other.

"Yes," she said mechanically; "yes, but how can I?"

"Oh, my dear cousin, don't you see that it is wrong for you to stay one day longer here? If you believed at first that the bond that united you to this man was binding, you do not believe it now. You were so young when you went, yet the thing cannot be undone on that account. You were so beautiful that I had hoped a great and prosperous life lay before you. Now, of course, that cannot be, but--but--at least you can live a life of peace, live truly and nobly, using your faculties to glorify God."

She began to see that he was trying to work up to something else that he had to say. She followed him heedfully, knowing that with Ephraim the steps in an argument were important. He saw some way out which she did not see, and her whole mind paused in eager listening.

He turned and faced her again, lifting his eyes, holding out his hand; his voice, usually weak, was strong. She knew that it was a strong man who spoke to her.

"Susannah, will you take my name and protection?"

She gazed at him incredulous, and then, beginning to understand what it was that he thought, and all that he meant, she leaned against one of the cold gray tree trunks, weeping weakly like a child.

"But I am married," the words came with a long sobbing sigh.

"Not legally?" and then he added, "nor in God's sight."

"Yes, yes, oh! you are making a great mistake, Ephraim. Joseph Smith and my husband are not like that. A minister came and did it. He had his license, and we have the paper he signed."

Ephraim set his teeth hard together and kept silence. He said to himself that he might have known that the rascals would be clever enough to make the tie secure.

Susannah wept on, not loudly, but with long convulsive sighs that broke into the tears she was endeavouring to check.

"And, Ephraim, my husband is good--oh, very good, and very kind to me, and up to last night I thought that what he believed might be true. I was not sure, but I thought that Joseph Smith might be a prophet. I knew they were far, far better than the other people who despise them, and so I was glad to be with them; and up till last night" (she repeated the words, controlling herself to give them emphasis)--"up till last night I thought that they at least believed everything they said to be true."

Then, after an interval of unthinking pain, Ephraim perceived that if he had come under a mistaken belief, he had at least come at the right moment; if the bond of her marriage held, the bond of her delusion was broken; she had detected some fraud. His hope, dazed by one blow, now began to look through the circumstance more clearly. If he could lead her to renounce the religion in