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

selfishness to the wicked. Within a day or two both Susannah and Elvira had given up their horses entirely to women who had been taken ill by the way. At first they plodded arm in arm, thinking that merely to walk was all that their strength could endure; but there were other women who had children to carry, women even who must push hand-carts before them, and there were little children who sank one by one exhausted on the winter road, as lambs fall when their mothers are driven far.

After the march had continued for a few days there was much illness. All clothing and bedding was wet with the winter rain, chilled and stiff with the frosts. On the faces of many the unnatural flush and excitement of fever were seen, and other faces grew pallid, the lips blue or dark, and the eyes sunken. To all who retained the natural hue and pulses of health a heavier burden was added every day because of the help they must needs give if they would not bury too many of their comrades by the wayside. In that sad caravan souls were born into the world or freed from it by death almost every hour.

Susannah was greatly struck by the meek manner of the boldest and roughest of the Mormon leaders in their dealings with the parties of Missouri militia who, with the ostensible purpose of defending Missouri homesteads from Mormon violence, drove the stricken multitude as with goads. She had learned from her husband what the strength of true meekness could be, the lightness of heart which commits itself to God, who judgeth righteously, the glance of love that has no reserve of hatred, the infinite force that can afford to be gentle. Such a spirit had upheld Angel Halsey, but his widow looked in vain among the leaders of this band for a face that bespoke the same upholding. She soon perceived that there was among them a free-masonry of understanding, and that their mildness was assumed to serve the temporary purpose. By many a prayer she heard breathed, which was in truth, though not in form, a curse, she knew that in the souls of Halsey's successors there was no forgiveness, yet her heart went out in sympathy to men who were sacrificing their own sense of honour, holding in check their most delicious impulses of revenge, for the sake of being worthy shepherds to the weak.

"Do you love them the less because they are not angels?" asked Elvira. "Have you forgiven?"

Susannah shuddered at the intensity of the hard low tones, the passion in the word "love," the sneer in the word "forgive." Yet she knew that the rage against injustice which in youth had driven her forth upon this journey had, since the death of her child, changed into such fierce hatred of the persecutors that she could, except for very fear of herself, have taken upon her own soul the Danite's vow. In these days the pain of bodily suffering or heart-felt grief was as nothing compared with her agony when at times waves of this hatred passed over her heart.

The two friends were walking together, pushing before them a small cart in which, on the top of the bundles of household goods, a wretched woman and her newborn child were lying, covered under a scanty tarpauling from the driving sleet. The mud splashed beneath their feet; Susannah had little breath or strength for speech. Elvira, more slightly made, in every way more fragile, had seemed to develop, with every new phase of suffering, more strength of muscle and hatred and love.

They passed now two of the leaders. It was the custom for a certain number of these men to go forward and station themselves in pairs at intervals upon the road, cheering each group as it passed them, noting with careful eyes if any ill could be remedied by change of posture or exchange of burdens. One of them now, seeing the work to which Susannah had set herself, interfered. He was about sixty years of age, coarse in appearance, an elder whose wife and family Susannah knew by reputation. He and his fellows called a halt, looking for some man who might push the cart, but there was none within sight who was not already overburdened, nor was there a waggon that was not already overfilled with the sick and exhausted. The elder, whose name happened to be Darling, found in this particular instance reason to swerve from his position of guard. He left the post in charge of his fellow and pushed the cart. It was a habit with many of these leaders to seek to lighten the way by jocularities, and Susannah had before observed that, whether the jests arose with ease or effort from the heavy hearts of those who made them, a large proportion of the people were evidently cheered thereby. She could put aside her own tastes for the public good; she could even excuse when this rough comfort was offered to herself. Darling, labouring behind the cart, made light of the service he rendered.

He said first that the newborn babe must be called after him, and when he learned its sex he gave permission to the ladies to decide between them which should share this honour.

"Shall it be 'darling Susannah'?" he asked, making gentle his tone as he addressed the stately widow, "or shall it be 'Elvira darling'?" This time he turned his head with a broader smile toward Elvira's sharp little features.

Susannah felt that her hypersensitive nerves could almost have called his smile a leer; but she looked at the man's broad face, whose lines told of no resources of thought, no great natural capacity for heroism, and yet were furrowed by the sharpness of this persecution. The face would have been fat had it not been half-starved. It was pale now under the ill-kempt hair, and the set purpose of helpfulness was stamped upon it. She took back the word "leer" out of mere respect. Darling had given away his shoes; he was walking barefoot; he had given away coat and vest also, and the rotund lines of his figure were unpleasantly obvious under the wet shirt, and yet Susannah knew and bowed to the fact that some sick man or little child was wrapped in the garments that were gone.

But Elvira was expressing with hysterical warmth the same sentiments.

"I guess I'll feel it an honour to have my name joined with yours. I haven't got the length of taking off my shoes yet."

Darling began to sing one of the inspiriting Mormon hymns.


"When Joseph to Cumorah came."


"Poor Joe!" Elvira spoke to the elder in a confidential whisper, "when he cheated over the bank I thought some fiend had put a ring in his nose, and was leading him out to dance, and that I should be able to sit and laugh. Now he's lying upon straw in the gaol. What will they do to him if they lynch him?"

"Tear him limb from limb," whispered Darling, also under his breath. He was probably shrewd enough to know the force of Smith's suffering in stimulating the piety of the faithful, but truth, and grief concerning the truth, were in his words also. He sighed a big sincere sigh, and repeated sadly, "Tear him limb from limb, or burn him to death by a slow fire." Such atrocities, as practised upon criminal negroes, were not unknown in the locality, which gave the elder's words a graphic power, but Elvira's answer was wholly unexpected.

"How droll!" she returned.

The elder was annoyed. He had not refined susceptibilities which sought immediate relief from the dreadful pictures he had suggested, nor did he at all comprehend that her rippling smile was hysterical. "I don't see anything droll about it, sister," he said sulkily.

"Don't you? Now, it all seems to me very droll--you splashing along there barefoot, why" (she drew back a little to get the better view, laughing excitedly), "you've no idea how ridiculous you look; and Mrs. Halsey stalking along like a dignified ghost, afraid that you and I will kiss one another if we take to whispering, and this woman dying here with her head resting on a sack of potatoes, and the impudent little person you've just christened intruding herself upon the world only to go out of it again, and all these fine people in Missouri rubbing their hands and thinking they have done such a noble deed. I think," she added, laughing more loudly, "that they are the drollest part of it all."

"This nation will find that there's a sequel to it that they won't laugh at." These words of Darling came from some region underneath that of his ordinary conversation, as a man takes a dagger from under his cloak and lets it flash ere he hides it again. "The government of these United States that has laughed at our sufferings will rue the day."

"Even your saying that is very droll, but I love you for it." Elvira lifted both her hands as if testifying to her own sincerity. "I love you for it."

The elder thought it needful here to be again jocose. "Oh, come now, I am married."

Elvira did not feel herself insulted. "These United States," she cried, "they cackle over the word 'freedom' like so many hens that have each of them laid an egg and go strutting and boasting while the housewife empties their nests. The housewife represents the natural course of events, and in this case her name is 'Mrs. Mobocracy.'"

At other times, after a long period of silence, Elvira would burst forth in excited soliloquy audible to Susannah and others about her. On the last day when they were descending the hills to the Mississippi her increasing excitement culminated in a greater demonstration. The sun was shining, and a clear frost had hardened the roads. Elvira broke forth thus--

"It is Joe Smith who is conducting this march. We say that he is lying in gaol," she laughed. "In gaol is he? Have they got him safe? But it was he who taught all these men to work together, one under the other, and none of them kicking; and it was he who taught these women and children to do as they are bid--a wonderful thing that in the land of the free. It was he who taught one and all of us to be kind to each other, to the poor and the sick and the young, to the very beasts. Do you remember that when they caught our prophet at Hiram and dragged him out to be beaten and insulted, they had first to take from his arms a sick motherless baby that he was sitting up all night to nurse? Do you remember how he gave commandment about the animals? how he said that any man striking a beast in anger was thrown so far back on his road to heaven?" She paused when she had thrown out this question, and the men and women within hearing answered in broken chorus, "Yes, blessed be the Lord; we do remember."

"And who was it that taught us to give up the filthy Gentile habits of strong drink and tobacco?" (Again in the pause the chorus of thanksgiving to Heaven was heard.) "It was Joe Smith," Elvira cried more loudly. "And when the Gentiles thought that we would be scattered and separated and ruined, his spirit has gone like a banner before us. Twice they have taken our lands that we bought with our own money and cleared with our own hands, and the houses that we have built, and