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

those who deck themselves with crisping pins or are busybodies, but she is as that lady to whom John wrote (and the letter is preserved unto the edification of the Church unto this day); for it was revealed unto me in the beginning that she was the elect sister, and to sit as one who judges--as one who judges Israel." He was just going to add in the flow of his phrases "upon twelve thrones," but the words died because even he perceived the lack of sense.

Darling grew testy. "Waal, I dunno, but it seems to me that if she'd gone off by now to be Mrs. Ephraim Croom somewheres in the East there wouldn't be much more elect sister about her."

"The gentleman whose name you have just been mentioning, Mr. Darling, is the lady's uncle. I was reared alongside them, and I know." He knew that he fibbed between uncle and cousin, but the slip was so slight and the end so worthy--to silence Darling.

"'Twas no uncle that she wrote that 'ere letter to," said Darling hotly. He stuck out his legs and leant back in his chair, the picture of offence.

"You are mistaken concerning the meaning of the letter, Brother Darling, and it appears to me that in casting your eyes upon it you have gone beyond what is written concerning the duty of an elder; but as to your duty in destroying it--considering that our sister asked for money, which it is our duty and privilege to supply--But I promised Emmar to be back soon. I will consult the Lord, Brother Darling, and have a word with you in the morning."

Smith tramped with dignity over the long wooden floor of the darkened shed and let himself out with decisive clatter of the latch.

To his right lay the wooden town with twinkling lights, to his left the black prairie, and above the crystal vast a moonless night, so clear that the upward glance almost saw the perspective between nearer and farther stars innumerable.

This man was at all times possessed with the sense of otherness, sense of a presence around and above. He was no sooner beneath the stars than he hung his head as if some one saw him. With shame and pain written in the attitude of his hulking figure, he skulked out into the black fields.

Later that night, a lad, not of the Mormon brotherhood, making his way home in the dark to the town of Quincy, a little afraid of the dark, as lads are apt to be, was terrified by hearing a voice in the darkness, by dimly descrying a man's figure prostrate upon the ground. The lad shrank back to a recess of the snake fence. There, trembling, he listened.

The voice in the hoarse whisper of intensity repeated, "Give me--this woman--give--give." The breathing, like command rather than prayer, set the words grating on the air again and again. "This woman--this woman--give! give! give!"

The cause of the lad's terror was a strange conviction that the writhing creature on the earth was certainly conversing with something not of earth, whether God, or angel, or devil he did not ask. He was encompassed by the dreadful belief that the other saw and heard what he could not.

The prostrate man clenched his fists and struck the black ground on which he lay. There was an intense silence, and then again the grating breath of a hoarse throat that lay among the grass blades babbled forth a multitude of confessions and fiercely-worded supplications which the little lad could neither understand nor remember.

There was a sudden change of attitude and voice. The lad saw that the man on the grass sat up, and as if he had received an answer, spoke in reply, not now in wailing supplication, but in quick whispered argument. The lad cowered with a fresh thrill of ghostly terror which burned the mad words into his memory.

"The loss would be to thee of the fairest of thine handmaids, and to her of her own soul, and to me--" but here the words of irritable contention failed in deep choking sobs. Then, to the lad's perfect dismay, the black figure bounded to its feet and the arms were flung about in the darkness as if wrestling with an unseen enemy. Now, being desperate, the lad darted forth from his nook; passing in tip-toe rush at the back of this struggling figure, he sped home in his gust of fear, and, with the fantastic secrecy of youth, did not tell what he had heard and seen till years had come and gone.


CHAPTER XVII.

The May morning was wreathing itself with opening flowers to meet the first hour of sunlight when Susannah was startled by hearing that the prophet inquired for her. There was in the house where she lived an empty chamber, unfurnished because of poverty; it was in this that the prophet, who demanded a private audience, awaited her.

So vexed was she at the public advertisement which he had made of her, that she forgot the bereavement she had suffered since she last saw him; but when she looked up she saw that Smith's face wore signs of emotion that he was not trying to conceal.

At first he made an attempt at some unctuous form of address, an effort at formality, a mechanical tribute to habit. Failing to finish his phrase, he stood before her, not as the lauded leader, not as the interesting martyr, but claiming recognition merely as a man, a large, coarse man feeling his own coarseness in her presence, a sinful man feeling his own sinfulness, but at the same time a man with a warm heart, which was now so beating with emotions of shame and pity and glad recognition that at first he could not speak, could not raise his eyes to hers until the warmth of his feeling rid him of self-consciousness.

Susannah had not expected to awake this emotion. She desired nothing less than condolence; and yet she was touched by seeing his huge strength broken down for the moment by her appearing. When he spoke his voice was hoarse.

"I--I told him--it was my earnest command to him not to go where there was danger."

Halsey's name was not spoken, but all through that interview Smith appeared to be haunted by his presence. "He was the best man amongst us," he said.

"My husband is gone." Susannah hoped by the reticence of her tone to ward off further excess of sympathy. "I am no longer bound to your Church, Mr. Smith. I should not be honest if I did not tell you that I hold myself free."

He faced her frankly, but with a glance of searching pain. "It must seem a rather poor trade I've chosen if there ain't no truth in it."

"But I did not accuse you of not believing it, Mr. Smith."

"Do you think I do?"

She remembered the day that he had first shown her his peep-stone with simple, childlike importance. How young they had both been! The sunshine on the hill, the voice of the golden woodpecker, the scent of the fallen beech leaves, came back to her. A decade of terrible years had passed over them both, and he stood seeking her faith just as simply.

"I have tried very hard to understand you, Mr. Smith, but I do not. I think you must believe most of what you claim for yourself, if not all. If you had made your story up for the love of power you wouldn't always be wanting the people to get a better education; you would, as they say of the Roman Catholic priests, want to keep the people ignorant."

"Go on," he said. She found that he was looking at her with intense sadness, but there was not a shadow of evasion in the eager look that met her steadily.

She went on, looking gravely into his face. "I do not believe that your story was false, Mr. Smith, but it seems to me that you must suspect now that your visions and the gold plates were hallucination, not reality." She paused, eager question in tone and look, but the question was of the head, not of the heart.

He knew that; he knew that it did not matter greatly to this thoughtful and beautiful woman whether he had sunk to the deepest degradation or not. Suddenly he answered her, but not as one who stood at her judgment bar.

"Where is your heart? Didn't you see how that man Angel--angel of purity if ever one walked in human form--kissed every day the ground you walked upon? And you did not love him. The child--you thought you cared for the child: I tell you if I had had a child like that, with eyes like the stars and a little mind so untainted, I had laid myself down on his grave and died there. There's Emmar and me, we'd be in more trouble if you lost one of your pretty fingers than you would have been in if they had taken and killed us over there in Missouri." He added, "If you were another woman, and had not the power to do more than just have a little shallow caring for one and another, where would be your sin?"

Something that she had dimly suspected of herself flashed into apparent truth. Ephraim, too, had perhaps intended to tell her this when he had said that love, not knowledge, was needed. She had not loved Halsey and his child as she might have loved.

Susannah had always recognised a certain bigness in Smith's character because of the power he had of giving himself to man, woman, and child; now she felt her own inferiority. Was she to stand babbling to him about hallucinations and gold plates? The man in him had flashed out at her, and because she was not without the heart whose whereabouts he had demanded, the flash awakened an answering fire. Her cheeks flushed, not with self-consciousness, but with the slow gathering of heart-stricken tears.

"And you," she said slowly, "you have poured out blood and soul for us all freely, but why?" The imperious need of truth awoke again. "Why have you let yourself be beaten and shot at and imprisoned and horribly threatened, to lead us all to this new Zion, wherever it may be?" She repeated the question. "If it was ambition, why did you hold to it when there did not seem to be the slightest chance that your sect could survive, or that you would escape death?"

She was asking with more heart in her tone now that she had been made to realise what she had of respect and friendship for this man.

"I hain't got the courage most people think I have," he replied sadly; "I am scared enough; I am scared sometimes of the very water I go into to baptize in, let alone men that want to murder me; but I am more afraid to go against my revelations, for I know if I went against them there would be nothing for me but the pit and eternal fire. I don't say that it would be the same for any of you. I used to preach that it would, but in prison, when I thought of my folks standing up to be killed, I thought perhaps I had gone beyond what was told me in preaching that way; but as for me, I've seen and I've heard."

He did not turn or take restless steps upon the floor. It would have been a relief to her if he had