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

and you know very well that there's nobody in the world that he thinks so much of as you." She did not say all she thought. She considered Emma to be Smith's superior, but that opinion would have given acute pain.

The young church worked upon Smith's principles of thrift, temperance, and co-operation, and Kirtland rapidly assumed the proportions of a town. Susannah became the mistress of the children's school. Smith was a good economist; although he helped the needy, nothing that his converts could pay for was given to them for nothing. Hence it was that Susannah's private purse was well filled with tuition fees.

She had already in mind what she would do with this money; she would write to the booksellers in Boston who fulfilled Ephraim's orders, and obtain from them some of the books whose names she remembered to have seen on his shelves. She knew nothing of their contents, she hardly knew whether she wanted them more for the sake of their contents or for their familiar appearance, but she thought that if she did not understand them when reading, she could write to Ephraim and ask for an explanation. She could not think of any other excuse for writing to him again. It had taken her a good many months to think of this one.

Halsey, who had learned to drop the Quaker forms of speech when speaking to others, still, moved by the remembrances of his early home, used them in speech to Susannah. He inquired somewhat anxiously concerning the proposed purchase.

"Dost think that they will contain what the prophet has called 'sound learning,' and that there will be nothing in them to distract thy soul?"

"How can I tell when I do not know what is in them?" She did not speak with impatience.

"Art wise, dear heart, in this longing?" he asked wistfully.

Then he carried away her order and despatched it.

In the meantime Smith had returned from Missouri, his mind filled and, as it were, enlarged by the new land which he said was appointed by revelation as the site of the New Jerusalem. Jackson County, on the south bank of the Missouri River, was the place. He had already gathered four or five hundred new converts there, and he was now possessed with the desire for money to build the new city, and for a million proselytes to dwell in it. In spite of this, after sending out new relays of missionaries in all directions, he settled down to the most sober routine of study. Hebrew was the new language he wished to acquire, and he felt the call to revise the Old Testament.


CHAPTER II.

Only one unusual incident occurred in Susannah's presently peaceful life. One day in the golden October she set out to walk some distance up the valley of the Chagrin River. The object of the walk was a visit to one of the outlying farmhouses occupied by a family of the Saints; but Susannah, as was her wont, found more joy in the walk than in the visit. When she had passed beyond the meeting of the waters, the valley lay long before her, about a mile in width and quite flat. The stream was scarcely seen; the ground was covered with flowery weeds, white asters with their myriad tiny stars, the pale seed feathers of the golden rod, high grasses, and wild things innumerable which had been turned brown and gray by the autumn sun, pink clumps of the rice weed, and small groves of the scarlet stalks of the wild buckwheat. This level sea of weeds stood so high that when she threaded the narrow path they reached above her waist. The bees in the white asters were humming as they hum in apple bloom. The blue jays were calling and flying in low horizontal flights. The valley stretched to the south-east, then curved; a little mountain barred the view, upon whose pine-trees the distant air began to tinge with blue. On the curving bluffs on either side the trees stood in stately crowds; hardly a leaf had fallen, except from the golden walnut-trees; the colour of the foliage was for the most part like the plumage of some green southern bird, iridescence of gold and red shot through. To her right, where a part of the long hill had been cleared of trees, the sun shone upon bare gullies in the soap-stone cliffs, making the colour of that particular brown bit of earth very vivid. Everywhere a soft autumn haze was lying, and above white clouds were swinging across the pale blue sky.

After threading the valley path for a mile Susannah was ascending the bluff to get to the level of the upper farms, when, much to her surprise, she came, as once before upon the hill Cumorah, upon Joseph Smith. He was lying under a group of giant walnut-trees, whose boles were sheltered from the road by a natural hedge of red dogwood and brambles. He had apparently been occupied at his devotions, but she only saw him arising hastily. This time there was no peep-stone; it had long since been discarded. The prophet had a Bible in his hand, and it was evident that he had been weeping. It was in those lands the habit of religious men of all sects to make oratories of the woods. Susannah's only desire was to pass and leave him undisturbed, but he spoke.

He began severely, "Sister Susannah Halsey, it is not meet that a woman should stray so far from home and without companions."

For a moment Susannah stood abashed. Unaccustomed to censure, she supposed that she must have done wrong. "I have walked this way before," she began meekly, "but if--" She stopped here, her own judgment in the matter beginning to assert itself.

The prophet had forgotten his reproof. At all times his conversation was apt to reveal that sudden changes of mental phase took place within him apparently without conscious volition. He now exclaimed with more modest mien, "It is, no doubt, by the will of the Lord that you are come, for I stood in sore need of comfort, for the revelation of the truth is a trial hard to endure, and at times very bitter."

"Is it?" asked Susannah intently. It was impossible but that her long curiosity should find some vent, and yet she shrank inwardly from her own prying.

The prophet leaned against a huge bole. The ground at his feet was covered with yellow walnut leaves and the olive-coloured nuts. The sunlight fell upon him in patches of yellow light. He opened the Bible, turning over the leaves of the Old Testament as if making a rapid survey of its history in his mind.

"Sister Halsey," he began, "when the favour of the Lord rested chiefly upon the Jewish nation, at the times of the patriarchs and David, and when Solomon, arrayed in all his glory and in the greatness of his wisdom, reigned from Dan to Beersheba, mustn't those have been the times when the people walked most closely with the Lord?"

"I suppose so, Mr. Smith."

"It is not enough to suppose, Sister Halsey, for it is clearly written that when the Jews went contrary to the will of the Lord they were given over into the hands of their enemies."

Susannah endeavoured to give a more unqualified assent.

"Sister Halsey, there has come to my soul in reading this book in these last days a word, and I know not if it be the word of the Lord or no."

She saw with astonishment that his whole frame was trembling now. She began to realise that he was truly in trouble, whether because of the greatness of the revelation or because of private distress she could not tell. She became more pitiful.

"I hope you are well, Mr. Smith, and that Emma is well. There is nothing to really distress you, is there?"

In hearing the increased gentleness of her tone he seemed to find a more easy expression for his pent-up feeling. "It's come upon me in a very cutting way, truly as the prophets said like a two-edged sword, and at the time too when I was inquiring of the Lord concerning--" He stopped here, and she felt that his manner grew more confidential, but he did not look at her, his eyes sought the ground--"concerning a matter which has given me no little heart searching." He stopped again, she listening with a good deal of interest.

"It's come to me to observe that among the chosen people--there ain't no gainsayin' it, Sister Halsey, though I trust you to be discreet and not mention the matter, but in the days when the divine favour rested on Israel each man had more than one wife; and the Lord Himself says He give them to Solomon, the only objection being to heathen partners."

"Do you mean, Mr. Smith, that I'm not to mention what everybody knows already, that in the Old Testament times polygamy was practised?"

The now entire lack of sympathy in her tone affected him as an intentional act of rudeness would affect an ordinary man. The tissue of his mind, which had relaxed into confidence, grew visibly firmer. He assumed the teaching tone.

"No, Mrs. Halsey, the only thing that I asked you not to mention was that I had any light of revelation on a point on which most of our minds is already made up."

"Mr. Smith, you can't possibly be in the slightest doubt but that it would be very wicked for any man now to have more than one wife."

"I've heard a great many of the ministers who in times past, in the time of our bondage we heard and believed, say as it would be very wicked for any one nowadays to take God at His word and expect Him to do a miracle or heal the sick; but I've come to the conclusion, Mrs. Halsey, that it isn't a question of what we in our ignorance and prejudice might think wicked, but it's a question of what's taught in this book, looked at without the eye of prejudice and tradition. What we call civilisation is too often devilisation--_devilisation_, Mrs. Halsey."

He tapped the book. He was becoming oratorical. "The idea of one wife came in with the Romans. 'Twas no institution of Jehovah, Mrs. Halsey."

Susannah, more accustomed to his oratorical vein than to private conference, became now more frank and at ease.

"You said you didn't know that the idea was from the Lord, Mr. Smith, and I don't think it is. I don't think you'll entertain it very long, and I don't think, if you did, many of the Saints would stay in your church."

She bade him good-day, and went on up the slope. When she was walking along the brink of the bluff in the open beyond the nut-trees she heard him call. He came after her with hastened gait, Bible still in hand. She was surprised to find that what he had to say was very simple, but not the less dignified for that.

"I sometimes think, Sister Halsey, that you look down on us all as if we weren't good enough for you, although you're too kindly to let it be seen. According to the ways of the world, of course, it's so. If I'm as rough and uneducated as most of our folks, at least I can think in my mind what it would be not to be rough, and I can think sometimes how it all seems to you."

His words appealed directly to strong private feeling which had no outlet. While