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

cast us out destitute, but we are not destroyed."

The enthusiasm of the crowd that now pressed upon her went like wine to her head; her cheeks flamed, her eyes brightened, and she lifted her small hands in fantastic gesture and danced, crying, "We are cast down, but not destroyed, because God Almighty has given to us a prophet, and a great prophet."

And the people around her answered again, "Blessed be the name of the Lord."

It was whispered about the camp that the spirit of prophecy had fallen upon Elvira Halsey.

On the afternoon of that day they saw the ice that floated in large cakes on the breast of the Mississippi flash back the sunbeams to their straining eyes. The sight of the limits of the hostile State from which they were flying was a great joy to every one of them. Susannah felt her heart leap; Elvira, with the growing tendency to cling to her which she had displayed since their last meeting, cast her arms around her and sobbed for joy.

After this blessed glimpse of the river they went down through the recesses of a low forest, the frost and the sunshine still inspiriting them. As they went, the melody of a hymn was taken up from one end of the caravan to the other by all those well enough to join in the song. It was a swinging triumphant air, and Susannah found herself uplifted for the first time since the days of her baptism upon the party spirit of the sect, and singing with them, although she could only catch the words of the refrain often repeated,


"Missouri,
In her lawless fury,
Without judge or jury,
Drove the Saints and spilt their blood."


Again the mind of Joseph Smith had overmastered Susannah's mind. As Elvira had said, he, lying in a gaol far away, enduring hardship, imminent danger of torturing death, was by his spirit animating this motley crowd, and now at last again his will broke down the barriers of reason that Susannah had raised and fortified even against the love of her child and the long reverence she had yielded to her husband. The true secret of human leadership is, perhaps, known only to the Divine mind, perhaps also to the Satanic. It would certainly seem that the men who chance upon the power and wield it, have often little understanding of the law by which they work, and their critics less.


CHAPTER XV.

The Mississippi was filled with large cakes of floating ice. Another company which had gone out from Far West some weeks before was still encamped on the Missouri banks of the river. Yet other companies from Far West came up before the main body of the Saints with which Susannah had travelled was able to cross. The surrounding woods were cut down to make shanties; the surrounding country was scoured for food. In the intervening weeks, while they lay encamped on the banks, the last enemy to be vanquished in that region, the malarial fever, grappled with the sect and dealt deadly wounds. Illinois, shocked by the cruelty of her sister State, held out kind hands and fed the fugitives to some extent, and when April came, helped them to cross the river.

Elvira had been ill in one of the women's sheds, now shrieking in hot delirium, now shaken with ague as if by a strong beast that worried its prey. When they at last crossed the river to the city of Quincy, Susannah was established with her charge, the one legacy of relationship Halsey had left her, in a meagre home with some of the Saints who already lived there.

Within a few days Susannah went to the tithing office, which had been swiftly established for the relief of the destitute Saints, and asked for paper on which she could write a letter. It was her first chance, since leaving her last asylum, of writing the proposed letter to Ephraim Croom. Elder Darling was officiating. She fancied that he looked at her with rude curiosity.

Until this moment she had presented so sad an exterior, had seemed so indifferent to all the ills of their common lot, that Darling and the other men who had dealings with her had stood not a little in awe. As outward physical details of suffering always appeal more largely to common sympathy than inward grief, the manner of her loss had set a temporary crown upon her head, to which the elders had knelt, refusing to admonish her because she took no part in their public services, or because, except for attention to the sick, she did not give much sign of social comradeship.

Now when she asked for the paper, Darling felt that the ice was beginning to break, and gave what seemed to him genial encouragement.

"First time that you've asked for anything but daily rations, Sister Halsey; glad to see you plucking up heart. The living God giveth us all things richly to enjoy." He repeated the last words in an unctuous drawl while he was looking for the paper, "richly to--enjoy. Well now, I was thinking we had some with a black border on it, but you're more than welcome to such as there is."

The stores indeed were scanty enough; food, cloth, household utensils, a little stationery, a large pile of devotional books, were arranged in meagre order in the shed used as a warehouse. Darling had as yet scarcely respectable clothes to wear, but Susannah was astonished only at the energy that had in a few days collected so much, at the order and patient kindliness which ruled in this poverty-stricken administration. Already those who could work paid into the common store, and those who had lost all had but to state their needs to have them supplied as well as might be.

"One, two, three--will three sheets be enough, Sister Halsey? You've been hearing, I suppose, that Mr. Smith is going to be moved to the town of Boome, and that he is going to be allowed to get his letters now? He'd be real cheered to hear from you, although"--he added this with decent haste--"it will be a great grief to him to hear of your loss!"

"Is he well?" she asked.

"The State authorities are in a fine to-do about him, I suppose you know, sister, for they can't find a single charge to bring him to trial on. You bet the trial would have been on long ago if they'd had a single leg to stand on. Anything else that I can serve you with to-day? We've got some new women's shawls and hats come in. Won't you just step here and have a look at them? No? Well, next time; but there ain't one of our women as doesn't want one of them new bonnets."

Susannah went out into the spring on the outskirts of the town. The birds were singing; everywhere the dandelions swelled out their happy tufted breasts to the sunshine; even a long worm that she noticed crawling lazily in the heat spoke to her of enjoyment of some sort. Her own heart leaped, and she thought it was in answer to the spring. She forgot the dire fates with which she had been grappling, forgot to hate and to grieve.

In the small wooden room that she shared with Elvira, while the invalid slept, she wrote to Ephraim, telling him all that had befallen her. She confessed to Ephraim the passion of hatred which had long tormented her, but she added, "To-day I do not feel it; to-day, with the sweet voices of the birds everywhere in my ears, I feel that if I could be beside you again you could teach me to forgive as my husband forgave, for I do know to-day that in forgiveness alone is the true triumph, the only healing. I am more one with my husband's sect now than I ever was in heart and hope. I long to see it triumphant; I long to see its enemies abashed; but I will leave this people and come back to you, if you will have me, for with regard to their religious faith my life with them is a lie."

The writing took so long that when she carried the letter again to the tithing office to be stamped and sent, the post-bag of that day had already gone. Later, when the office was closed to the public and Elder Darling was alone, he took up the letter which Susannah had brought and looked at it curiously. His eyes had caught the address. He was not sure that he would have put it in the bag even if it had been in time, and now it was clearly his duty to consider. His was a mind in which there was no place for platonic friendship, and Susannah was obviously a most desirable piece of property to the struggling Church. The Church had provided the paper for this letter, must needs provide the stamp; he was officially responsible to the Church. The elder had been an honest man according to the average notions of honesty until within the last weeks, when stress of circumstance had made him reconsider, not for himself but for others, more than one rule of life, and obtain larger latitude. The building up of the Church in her present sore strait was surely an end to override small scruples. He acted now as an official, as a priest, when, after a good many painful qualms of conscience, he opened the letter. After having read its contents, he became convinced that it was for the good of Susannah's own soul that it should not go.

The ground about Quincy had been drained; the town was comparatively healthy; in a few days more some two thousand of the fugitives felt again the pulse of life in their veins. Then they looked abroad and clasped every man the hand of his neighbour, and said "Thanks be to God," and even embraced one another in the joy of relief. History often shows how exuberant is the joy of human nature at escape, and that the impulse of joy is almost one with the impulse of affection. At the abatement of the London plague we see Britons kiss each other in the streets, and at the relief of besieged towns, in our own day, staid persons have caressed one another, unmindful of what they did. So it was now with the members of this driven sect. The spirit of joy and a closer bond of affection went infectiously through the gathering Church. Upon the first Sunday they met together in the open air, and sang words that they verily believed had been written in particular prophecy for themselves at this very hour.


"If it had not been the Lord that was on our side."


The psalm rose from every throat with the swelling tide of joy.


"If it had not been the Lord that was on our side when men rose up
against us."


Susannah, advancing, a little belated, to the rural preaching which was held in a dip of the plain, heard the lusty chant of irrepressible gladness rising to the blue heavens, and quickened her steps. In spite of herself she was carried into song by the enthusiasm which seemed to dart like a flame from the assembled multitude and enveloped her.


"Blessed be the Lord who hath not given us as a prey to their
teeth. Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the