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

divine counsel in which he asked her to believe; his answer was to send her Bushnell's sermons on the suffering of God. Ephraim had added: "When you went from us, Susy, would you ever have been satisfied if we had detained you by force? Yet that is what you ask of God. If you were right in going, let the circumstance prove it; if we were right, let it appear by time. So says God; and his friendship has eternity to work in; so also has every human friendship. Let us wait, but in faith." This ending, somewhat enigmatical to her, had yet recurred to her heart so often that she knew the words by heart.

The next letter had been written more recently, after a long interval. At the end of this letter Ephraim had said, "I am persuaded that what we need to help our faith is never more knowledge, but always more love. I cannot interpret this but by telling you of a fact which I feel to be the key to a great--the greatest--truth. I know a man who believed in God. He met a woman whom he loved, not as many love, but (I know not why) with all the loves of his heart, as father, as mother, as brother, friend, might love; as lover he loved her with all these loves. After that he knew God with a knowledge that passed belief. He could argue no more, but he _knew_. This I think is the sort of knowledge which guides unerringly." Susannah remembered, if not the words, all that this passage contained. She had wondered at it not a little.

Up to the time of Angel's death she had rejoiced in these letters, not doubting that Ephraim had remained the same self-sacrificing friend--ready out of mere but perfect kindness to befriend her to the uttermost. She had not doubted because she had not questioned. Now disquieting thoughts intervened, producing a new shyness. She remembered their last interview, and wondered if Ephraim would feel the same responsibility for her if she returned destitute. Perhaps the ardour of his friendship had cooled. Perhaps in the last letter he had intended to suggest to her that he thought of marriage, and this time for love, not kindness, the lady being one of his new Hartford friends.

But no doubt the principal reason of Susannah's dalliance with time in those first weeks of her moral freedom was the mental weakness that succeeds shock. Every day she thought that she would soon write that begging letter, until the day came when opportunity ceased.

When the Danite left he had promised the farmer to return as soon as it was possible to place Susannah in safety with her Mormon friends. When she began to speak of leaving, her host told her this for the first time.

"And what is the young man's name?" the old man asked of Susannah. They were in the long living-room at the mid-day meal. His sons, who were leaving the table, waited to hear the answer; the mother, the very children, looked at her with interest.

"I do not know," said Susannah.

There was a pause, and for the first time she was aware that there was some sentiment in the minds of her hearers which did not appear upon the surface.

She went on, "I don't know why he should trouble himself to come back for me except that--I think that he was much touched by some earnest words my husband said to him that he did not see his way to accept, and I think also that he is zealous for the Church."

Her surpassing wrongs had so far set her apart and made all that she said and did sacred. No one questioned her further.

In the beginning of February the Danite reappeared. He came under the cover of night, but showed himself only when the household was awake. He was much thinner, more gaunt than before, but in frankness and quietude the same. His first words to Susannah had an import she did not expect.

"That young lady you mentioned to me--I said she was dead because you were half crazy, and would have gone back to her, but I worked round till I found her; she got to the city of Far West right enough."

After a while he said, "That young lady and some other of our folks have got horses and they're going into Illinois now. Most of our folks are walking. It's about as bad as can be, but I guess you'll have to go. We'll be safe enough, for as long as we go straight on the Gentiles are bound to let us pass. I tried to get some better sort of a way for you and her, but there ain't no way unless we would have sworn we weren't Saints and gone pretending to be Gentiles, but even then we haven't got the money."

Susannah was thrilled with excited distress. She was not prepared to make an abrupt decision, and it appeared that if she desired to join this company she must go that evening or not at all.

During the hours of the morning her mind cowered, dismayed. Should she now renounce her husband's sect, refusing to suffer with them? She had not as yet fortitude to do this. Halsey's eyes, the touch of his hand, her baby's voice lisping the tenets of their faith in repetition of his father's solemn tones, these were sights and sounds as yet too near her. To her shocked fancy the child and his father were only gone out of sight, but near enough to be cruelly hurt by her public perversion. And, moreover, if she should take this course she must write to Ephraim at once, for she could not well remain where she was without definite purpose in view.

Susannah had sought seclusion in which to think, and the younger son of the house intruded himself. He was perhaps about thirty years of age, a burly man, resolute and passionate. He spoke fairly enough. The Danite himself had said that the journey to which she was haled by her friends was one of untold hardship, its end uncertain; he offered her all that an honest and prosperous man could offer, but went on to urge on his own behalf the strength of those sentiments which he had learned to entertain for her--his admiration (Susannah sickened at the word), his love (she shrank in fear).

She rose up with the moan of a hunted thing. She did not pause to make excuses for the hunter, to consider the pioneer life that wots little of sentiment in proportion to utility; she only saw again the grave at Haun's Mill and the white faces of her dead upturned to hers. It seemed that this man, with the consent of his people, was urging his suit as it were beside the very corpse of her husband. The Danite had shown Angel reverence, had shown by his every word and glance that he counted her as belonging to the dead man whose blood he carried at his heart.

Susannah rode out from that temporary home at nightfall upon the Danite's horse.


CHAPTER XIV.

It was the season of rain and sleet, of rude northerly winds. The roads, across a tract of flat fields and in among the low woods that fringed the rivers, were heavy with mud.

After riding half the night on a pillion behind the Danite, Susannah entered the Mormon camp. Up and down the sides of a dirty road, in waggons, in small tents, and in the open, men, women, and children were lying huddled in family groups. How far these crowds extended she could not see. Watch-fires were burning here and there, and in the fields on either side a patrol of Missouri militia were heard scoffing and shouting in the darkness. The Danite answered the challenge of one of these men with apparent meekness; Susannah perceived that he had gained in self-control. When they had entered the road, along the sides of which the forlorn multitude lay, they travelled for some way upon it, the Danite speaking in low tones now and then to the Mormon watchers. At length they came to a place where a few waggons of better description were standing and a number of horses were tied; here he lifted Susannah from the horse. Three of the Mormon leaders came up; they evidently knew her and her story. The eldest took her hand and spoke in broken tones of the crown which Halsey had won in the unseen city of God.

These were the first words that Susannah had heard in unison with Halsey's own thoughts, and for his sake they endeared the whole wretched Mormon encampment to her.

A woman, her head and shoulders wrapped in a shawl, sprang down from one of the waggons, and Elvira encountered Susannah.

"You expect me to say that I am sorry for you," she said hurriedly; "I will not. It is not a time for grief. We each of us have just so much power of being sorry and no more, and the well has gone dry. I am glad you have come. There are a great many things that one can yet be a little glad for; but you must make haste to lie down, for we shall soon enough be called to the march."

The beds shaken down on the floor of the waggon were covered with reclining women. Some of them squeezed themselves together to make the place Elvira had vacated large enough for two. Susannah stretched herself out, loathing with her senses the crowded bed, but with a tender heart for her fellow-sufferers. After the long dumb weeks of her stern sorrow, after that day's revolt of injured sentiment, she felt that it was worth while to have come here if only to have made some one else, as Elvira had said, "a little glad."

The dawn came sighing fitfully, long sighs that rose in the distant fields to the east meeting them in their pilgrimage and dying away westward; the dawn wept also, scattering her tears upon them in like transient showers.

Elvira found her own horse. The Danite had used yesterday the animal he had provided for Susannah.

"But what right have I to his horse?" Susannah began her question impetuously, but Elvira silenced her.

"Hush! Don't let the other women know that it isn't yours. Poor things, they will begin to ask why it isn't theirs. Do you think that we are living on bowing terms, curtseying to each other and saying, 'After you, madam, if you please'?"

Elvira was changed. Terror had at last done its work. Her pretty features were drawn with anxiety; her eye glittered.

"I have been baptized," she said to Susannah in hard tones. "When I saw the water red with blood I went down into it."

Eastward, facing the gusty sobs of the winter morning, they went. The road was soft, and hundreds of feet treading in front of them had kneaded water and earth together into a slippery mass. As far as could be seen in front and behind, the line of the pilgrimage stretched, women and children plodding with burdens on their backs, men pushing hand-carts before them, only here and there a waggon or a group of horses.

Elvira took up several children on her horse, and pointed out to Susannah a sickly woman to whom she could give a turn upon the pillion that she herself had ridden during the night. So they began one of many weary days.

To the good the necessities of compassion are as strong as are the necessities of