Smith, cast out of all his shrewd calculations as to what would win this woman, fell back upon the inner genius of that priestcraft which so often surpassed his conscious intelligence.
"What would satisfy you?" It was a simple question, and he asked it with overwhelming force. "By the hand of trust and affection which your husband gave me; by the memory of the beautiful babe that he brought first to me for my blessing (and I laid my hand on its little warm head and blessed it); by these I claim the right to ask, Sister Halsey, what is it that in Nauvoo or in any other city would satisfy you?"
She was humiliated in her own eyes. Alas! she had strong evidence that Ephraim's affection, on which she had staked all earthly hope of happiness, had in some way failed. Now under Smith's eye all courage to hold the unrealised ideal was lost; as the fixed stars twinkle, so her faith went out for the moment of his interrogation. Her head sank in a shame she could not confess.
While she hesitated he was looking at her shrewdly. "You know not what. Shall I tell you? There is but one thing, and that is love—the love that works, for those who are in need. Work for the needy is love to God and man, my sister."
He paused, looking at her with a glow of enthusiasm. Whatever he might be to others, this man, coarse in his outer nature, but liable always to eruptions of the sensitive inward soul of the visionary, was in this woman's presence often merely what she compelled him to be. If she had known that this was the secret of his power over her, the spell might have been less.
"Is it not true, Sister Susannah?" he asked.
She gave the admission mechanically.
He went on, "I don't take it at all hard that you should feel that we are none of us up to you, but feel as you do that we are beneath you, for there isn't a lady in the place that's equal to you in delicate ways and sense and a mind to study books; but it seems to me that that's a reason why you should love us, Sister Halsey. There is work for you to do; we need your guiding hand. You say to me that I am content with horses and sumptuous living and fine raiment; and knowest thou not that there is upon my soul a great burden, even the burden of this great people, to go in and out before them and guide them aright? I have need of thy counsel, my sister; there's that which at this time is greatly agitating my own mind and the minds of our bishops and apostles, Sister Halsey, and it is of such nature that we cannot proclaim it openly until we know the mind of the Lord. On all other matters we have accepted the teaching of the Scriptures. For, behold, we have now the priesthood of Aaron in our midst, and the priesthood of Melchizedek, and the rites of the temple, save only the spilling of the blood of bulls and goats, which has been done away with by the Gospel. We have gone back to the first things, as is well known to you, Sister Susannah, and even here in the wilderness we have set up our theocracy, and for its civil law we have sought where alone such law can be found, in the command given unto the children of Israel before they desired a king, just as for all spiritual law we have accepted the commands given to the apostles in the new dispensation, taking them as they were, without whittling them away as a boy whittles a stick with a knife, as all those sects which will not hear our voice have done. Now, Sister Susannah, is this true?" He put his head a little on one side and looked at her with his eyes partially closed.
"You need not take very long to explain that you worship the letter of the Scriptures, for I know it already, Mr. Smith."
But he was in full tide, and went on, "When the Book says, 'Heal the sick,' we don't say that that means something else, but we set about and heal 'em." He slapped his knee with the palm of his hand. "When it says, 'Cast out devils,' we don't stare round like the other sects and say, 'There ain't no devils,' but we cast 'em out; and in the same way, when the Book says that the priesthood of Aaron and the priesthood after the order of Melchizedek shall be serving always in the church and in the temple, then we say, 'Amen, so shall it be'; and the same way with regard to tithing, for the Lord's tithes are recognised among us, and the first-fruits, and the Sabbath day, and all such ordinances, no picking and choosing as others."
Then he explained to her again, as in Kirtland, that he was in doubt concerning the marriage laws of the State. He said that, having searched the Scriptures, and learned what he could from other books, he was fully convinced that it was the modern so-called "orthodox" Christian Church (in which little else but signs of deadness and lack of faith appeared) that alone condemned the ancient usage of the patriarchs, which in the Bible was nowhere condemned. He had read in a book that many of the Jews and most of the Asiatics had more than one wife at the time of the apostles, and yet they had not preached against this as an evil.
"They did not preach against slavery," said Susannah.
"They did not," he said, "and I would say parenthetically, my sister, that it may be that our views on that subject, coming from the northern States as you and I have done, have not been according to the mind of the Lord. I would have no man a slave because of misfortune, but if a man proved himself unfit to rule himself, I'm not sure about his being free."
"Do you intend to revive slavery in our own race? Will your own people when they fail in business be sold, with their wives and children, as in the Old Testament?"
"I can't see but that it would be a deal less mean to arrange it that way than to bring a race of free blacks from their own country and make every child they have a slave because he happens to be a nigger." She remarked that his mild blue eye lit up with the true flash of the indignation of contemplative justice. "There's one thing certain," continued he, "in my Church of the Latter-Day Saints no man shall be a slave to his brother because he happens to have a black skin, for, as the Scripture says, 'Can the Ethiopian change his skin?'"
Surrounded as they were by the atmosphere of slavery, there was the resonance of true heroism, of true insight into the right, in his tone, but the reason he gave—could it be possible that he thought that the text he quoted was an authority for his instinctive justice? It was obvious to her that he was only a fool who walked by the light of sundry flashes of genius, but there was still the chance that the sum of idiocy and the genius might prove greater than the intelligence of common men.
He went on, "But, anyhow, it isn't the institootion of slavery that's come up for me to decide just here and now. Since we have been blessed with peace and prosperity, the female converts that our missionaries have been making all over the world (whom they have kept back from coming to us, letting no unmarried female come whilst the fires of persecution were passing over us) have arrived in great numbers, and the question is, Sister Susannah, how are we to steady 'em?"
What seemed so impossible to achieve in a pioneer State had in Nauvoo actually been achieved—the women were in excess of the men. He had, in sober truth, a social problem to solve, and the responsibility rested alone upon him. Brotherly love having been inculcated, the manners of the Saints were cheerful and familiar, more familiar, he said, than he desired; but after all that they had endured he was fain to lay upon them no greater burden than need be. He appealed to her, asking if on his first release from imprisonment he had not been strict in his injunctions.
"But now," he said, "who am I that I should be able to take care of all the young women that the Lord is sending to us from all parts of the world? or am I to deny to them the privilege of coming to live among the Lord's people? Am I to say to them that unless they have learning and wisdom and are perfect they shall not come? I guess that if it had been required of me to be perfect before I came to seek salvation, I wouldn't have come at all. But it's just like this—here they are! and they are nothing but poor ignorant working girls from England and Ireland and all parts of Europe. And am I to make nunneries to put them into?"
He confessed with some delicacy of language and words of bitter regret that there had been of late some cases in Nauvoo such as were common enough, alas! in Gentile society, but whose occurrence among the Saints had caused excitement. Joseph Smith paced Susannah's room; his harassment and distress on behalf of his people were either deeply felt or well feigned, and Susannah had no doubt that his feeling was true, that phase of him being for the time uppermost. When he came to sit down beside her again, it was to sketch the misery to men and women and children which existed in Gentile society from this evil, which he affirmed to run riot through the warp and woof of so-called orthodox communities.
Her ignorance of the world was so great that she assumed this accusation to be of the same stuff as the anathemas he constantly cast against the integrity of the orthodox clergy. The point that she grasped was that he believed the thing that he said. She had at first assumed that should he propose to institute polygamy she would know then, once for all, that he was a villain; but now this test deserted her. He was meditating this step, and it seemed that his arguments, if the facts on which he based them were admitted, had some value.
"There's that for one thing, Sister Susannah," Smith went on in a broken voice; "it has been a mean sort of thing to have to tell you, but it had to be said, and now there's another thing to be considered. Among the Gentiles who is it that has the most children? Is it your man that's high up in the ranks of society, who has money enough to give them a good education, to feed and clothe 'em? or is it your poor man, whose children run over one another like little pigs in a sty, and he caring nothing for them, and they have rickety bones and are half starved and grow up to be idle and steal? I have noticed that a good man is apt to have good children, and a clever man is apt to have clever children, and a worthless man is apt to have worthless children. Ain't that so? And what sort of children do we want the most of? Well, in this way we wouldn't let your worthless fellow have any wife at all until he had brought forth fruit meet for repentance, and your common man only one; but I don't see but that it would be a real benefit to the State if your good, all-round man, as would be apt to have pious and clever children, had two or three or four families agrowing up to be an honour to him and to the Church, if it ain't against the command of the Lord; and in Holy Writ the Lord himself says to Solomon that he would have given him as many wives as he wanted, barring them being Gentiles."
"I will not argue about the Bible; you and I interpret it very differently," she cried. "Your social argument might be well enough if it were not that your good man when he had more than one wifewould cease to be a good man"—her voice was vibrating with faith—"and his children would therefore have the poorest chance from inheritance or training."
He was again pacing, but paused in his ponderous walk, struck by a flaw in his argument which he had not before seen. "But if it were commanded by the Lord, Sister Susannah?"
"God does not command this wickedness. What you command in his name is at your own peril, Mr. Smith."
He paused before her, asking with reflective curiosity, "Why are you so sure that it would be wickedness, sister?"
She had not arguments at command; she held fast to her assurance with the same dogged unreasoning faith with which Ephraim's mother had of old held her belief that this Smith must be an arch-villain; she had put the whole power of her volitionary nature upon the side of faith in the ideal marriage, although she was painfully conscious that she had come across no particle of evidence for the existence of such a state. Out of faith, out of mere instinct of heart, which had not worked itself out in intelligent thought, she gave her unhesitating judgment. "I say that it would be wicked because Ifeelthat it would be wicked; and any good woman," she paused and looked him straight in the eyes, "and any good man, would know its wickedness without arguments, and without weighing all possible considerations."
His eyes fell before hers. He looked not angry, but grieved. As for Susannah, in the heat of her indignation she did not know that her own long effort to resist the unreasoning acceptance of cut-and-dried doctrines and any dogmatic insistance upon opinion had here failed.
Smith stood for some moments before her, and her fire cooled. He sighed at her dictum. Then he said gently, "But your judgment in this matter has great weight with me, sister, and if I accept it you will perceive that you are indeed the elect lady, and that by living in the light of your countenance I shall obtain peace."
It was difficult for her not to suppose that her influence was beneficial. She thought at the moment that when she had left this place she might still correspond with Smith if he desired it. If it was part of his eccentricity to be willing to listen to her, why should she not be willing to speak, and thus keep his madness under control?
Smith, regarding her, caught the gracious look upon her face which had opposed to him so often only a mask of reserve. His imaginative hopes were always ready to magnify by many dimensions the smallest fact which favoured them. His unsteady mind was fired by the presumption of some triumph.
"Have not I, even the prophet of this great people, waited with great patience? As the apostle saith, 'Let patience have her perfect work.'"
Susannah started and wondered.
"For behold I did not desire that our dear brother, Angel Halsey, should go into the forefront of the battle, nor would I trouble the first grief of thy widowhood, but behold I have waited."
"For what?" Her question came sharply. His tone had changed her mood suddenly; a memory flashed on her of the ill-written letter which Emma had shown her of the phrases concerning the spiritual "bride" or "guide" who, even if all licence were denied to humbler folk, was to be a prophet's special perquisite. "What have you been waiting for, Mr. Smith?
"Nay, but I have waited, sister, until, having eyes, you should see, and ears, you should hear, till you should understand that, going in and out before this great people, it is necessary for me to seek wisdom in counsel, and, above all, of a woman who hath a finer sense than man. And it has been revealed to me, sister, that this may only be if thou shouldst give the counsels of thy mind and the smile of thy beauty to me alone and to none other, for that which is divided is not to be accepted for the building up of the Church."
"You would have me believe that you have waited many years with the virtue of patience before you say this? Understand yourself better. It was not patience; it was fear. You have known perfectly well always that I would never have listened to such a proposal for a moment. It has been fear and prudence that have hitherto kept you silent. What is it that has made you speak now?"
With sharp decisive tones she chid him as children are chidden in anger, but childish as he often was, he had yet other elements in his character; his blue eyes gave an answering flash that was ominous; the droop of his attitude stiffened.
"That which is ordained by the Lord is ordained, sister, and it causeth me grief to know that this revelation, which I told thee many years since, is yet to be received of thee as a grievous thing, nevertheless—"
"Nevertheless," she repeated in a mocking tone, as one weary of foolishness, "what nevertheless? Let us talk on some better subject, Mr. Smith, and after this be kind enough to have no dreams or revelations about me. Dream of your Church, if you like. I cannot hinder your people's credulity, and I hope that you will continue, as you have begun, to lead them in the main by righteous paths. And have your dreams and visions about yourself, if you must, for I sometimes think that you cannot be much madder than you are now, but be kind enough to leave me out of them, for I am going away."
She had now made him very angry. He was standing with flushed face, quivering with uncertain impulses of rising wrath, yet he still struggled for self-control.
"Sister Susannah Halsey, it is not meet that you should make a mock of that which is sacred"—he gave a gasp here of stifled anger, and there was a perceptible note of wounded affection beside the louder one of offended vanity—"of that which is above all sacred," he stuttered, "it is not meet—meet—to mock—to mock." The veins on his forehead were standing out and growing purple.
She had often heard of Joseph Smith's power of rage, before which all the Saints quailed. She saw it now for the first time.
She rose up, trying now a tone of gentle severity. "I spoke lightly because your words appeared to me childish and silly, but the more in earnest you were, Mr. Smith, the more need there is you should have done with a thought that could lead to no good. I am no elect lady. Why do you deceive yourself? I have told you before that I do not even believe in your religion."
As she spoke she became more and more amazed at the thought of what his self-deception must have been, for in his ever-shifting mind he knew her infidelity perfectly, and yet had persuaded himself that she would accept some fantastic position as prophetess-in-chief.
"How mad you are," she said pityingly, "to know a thing and yet to pretend to yourself you do not know it. Go and get your supper, Mr. Smith. Emma will be waiting to give it to you. And when you have thought quietly over what I have said, you are quite clever enough to see that my way of looking at it is more sensible than yours."
She had perhaps supposed that the mention of the domestic supper would be punitive rather than soothing, but she was not prepared to find that she had displayed scarlet to the blood-shot eyes of a bull.
"Woman," his voice, deep and hoarse, was like thunder about her ears, "woman, is it not enough that the Lord has spoken?"
She saw by his purple face and parched lip, by the hard shudder that went through his frame, that his fury was stronger than he. She quailed inwardly.
"It is not enough for me that you say the Lord has spoken."
His lips worked as if in the effort to form anathemas his dry throat refused to utter. Then, regaining his loud hoarse speech, with a choking noise he lifted his hand in a gesture of sacerdotal menace.
"Woman, it is the last time. Choose ye this day between blessing and cursing, for the Lord shall send the cursing until thou be destroyed and perish quickly, because of the wickedness of thy doings whereby thou hast forsaken me."
She cried in answering excitement, "I choose your curse rather than your blessing under the conditions you propose. You are mad; go and calm yourself."
Then, having exhausted her physical courage in this last defiance, she went into her inner room, locking the door, leaving him in the manifest suffering of an almost unendurable rage.
That night Susannah packed her possessions in the smallest possible compass. The money she had lent to Emma would be sufficient for the journey to Carthage, which was the nearest Gentile town, and thither she was determined to go without an hour's delay, ready now to work or beg her way on the journey farther eastward.
As soon as the business of the next day was fairly started she went to the suite of rooms inhabited by the Smiths, confident that Joseph's excess of fury had been transient. Emma was surrounded by her children, to whom she had just given breakfast. The prophet was about to descend to his business office. They both received Susannah with moderate kindness.
The March sun shone in through the large windows upon the garish furniture of the apartment, upon Emma's gay attire, and upon the shining faces of the three children, who stood gazing upward at Susannah, quick, as children always are, to perceive signs of suppressed excitement.
Susannah explained that she had determined to go to Carthage that day, where she hoped soon to find some party of travellers in whose escort she could travel farther; she hoped that it would be quite convenient for Emma to return the money that morning.
Smith gazed at Susannah intently, but only for a few moments. It seemed that his mood had changed entirely, that he was now too much absorbed in the business of the day, whatever it might be, to care whether she went or stayed. He left them, saying that he would send money to Emma as soon as he could, that the trifling debt might be paid.
Money flowed in such easy streams through the hands of the leading men of Nauvoo, that Susannah supposed that a messenger with the required amount would come up the stairs in a few minutes. She sat with Emma in this expectation.
"You are offended with me for going?" she asked, for Emma's mask of indifference was worn obviously.
"You wish to destroy your soul," said Emma.
"Ah, but you know, you have long known, that I do not believe that salvation in this world or the next depends on the rites of Mr. Smith's Church."
"If I told this child that he would be dashed to pieces if he walked out of the window, and he did not believe me, would that save him?"
Emma made this inquiry with triumphant scorn; then she rose and began to attend to the wants of her children in a bustling manner.
Susannah sighed and smiled. "I have at least the right to reject your faith at my own peril, for there is not in the wide world, as far as I know, man or woman who cares whether I save my soul or not."
"And whose fault?" cried Emma, coarse now in her discomposure. "If you are so stuck-up that you think you can read your books and look down on us all, just because you are a beauty and the gentlemen bow down to you, 'tisn't likely that you'd have any friends acting that way. You can't even behave civil to the gentlemen when they offer you the best that's going."
It was evident that some version of Smith's interviews with her had been given to his wife. Susannah wondered how much truth, how much fiction, had been in the relation. It did not matter much to her now, since she had resolved to go at once. The whole of her life with that troublous sect seemed to be dropping from her like a dream.
Leaving word that she would receive the money on her return or else call at Smith's office for it when she was ready, she went down into the cheerful noise of the street and bargained with a man who had horses and vehicles for hire. Having arranged that he should come for her at noon, she went about to make the few farewells she felt to be desirable.
Darling was now postmaster of Nauvoo and one of the first presidency. To him she went first. She shrank from him because of his coarseness and the jocular admiration which he sometimes had the audacity to express for her, but she could not forget how assiduous his kindness had been in the days of Elvira's illness. She found him sitting, his heels on the upper part of a chimney-piece with a fireless grate, reading the Millenial Star. The hot April sun, streaming through the windows of his office, had caused him to take off his coat, which was no longer thread-bare. His shirt sleeves were fine enough and white; the high hat that was pushed far on the back of his head was highly polished. Opulence, self-indulgence, good-nature, and a certain element of fanatical fire mingled in the atmosphere of the postmaster's office, and made it somewhat turgid.
When Darling heard Susannah's errand he became serious enough. An apoplectic sort of breathlessness came over him, expressing a degree of interest which she could not understand. He settled his hat more firmly upon his head. "Does the prophet know?"
"He knows. I have said good-bye to him and to Mrs. Smith. It is sad to part with friends that I have known for so many years."
"And the prophet's going to let you go, is he?"
Darling, clumsy at all times, in this speech conveyed to Susannah the first faint suspicion that Smith might dream of detaining her by force.
Darling's youngest daughter, who had been an affectionate pupil to Susannah at Quincy, waylaid her as she came out, and clasped her about the waist with the ardour of an indulged child. She was a blithesome girl of about fourteen.
"I heard you tell father that you are going away. Is it true?" she asked impetuously.
Susannah tried to release herself from the embrace. "Yes, it is true. Never mind, you like your new teacher, you know, just as well as you used to like me."
"I just guess I don't," cried the child defiantly. "But anyhow, if you are going away, I'm going to tell you something."
Whether the childish love of telling a secret, the girlish love of mischief, or a dawning sense of womanly responsibility was uppermost, it would be hard to tell. There, in the open square, while worthy Saints hurried to and fro on the pavement beside them, while horses jangled their harness and drivers shouted and exchanged their morning greetings, Darling's youngest daughter drew Susannah's head downward and hastily whispered to her the fate of her letters to Ephraim Croom.
"I know, for one day since we came here I heard father talking to the prophet. He said you'd written lately while you were at Quincy, and all your letters had been burned. Now that's the truth; and I said to myself 'twas a sin and a shame, and that you ought to know. Now don't go and tell tales of me, or father will be mad—at least, as mad as he ever can be withme." A toss of the pretty head accompanied these words, a flash of conscious power in the bright eyes, the spoilt child knowing that her father was in her toils now, as truly as any future lover would ever be. The school bell was ringing. The girl, her bag of books hanging from her arm, ran with the crowd of belated children.
Susannah walked on, almost stunned at first by the throb of intense anger that came with this surprise. Then the anger was suddenly superseded, hidden and crushed down by a rush of joy. Ephraim had not neglected her; Ephraim had given her up for dead; but she had no reason to suppose that he was dead, no reason to doubt his faithfulness. Susannah trod the common street in love with motion as some happy woodland creature treads the dells in the hour of dawn and spring.
When Elvira looked up to see Susannah enter her gate she saw her friend transfigured in a glow of returning youth and hope. Elvira looked at her timidly; this Susannah she had never seen before. Elvira's husband was not present. The interior of the house was fantastic almost as its mistress, but sultry with luxury.
"Well now, you think you are going," said Elvira. "Who'd have thought it? And only last week General Bennet said to the prophet that if he'd marry you to him he'd send to New York for diamonds both for you and Emma Smith. He said he'd get a thousand dollars' worth of diamonds apiece for each of you; but Mr. Darling said that you ought to be married to Mr. Heber, who has just been elected an apostle, because—" She stopped suddenly, nodding her head. "You know why—blood is blood, and we have seen it run in rivers, but we don't mention it here in Nauvoo."
Elvira set the French heel of her slipper in the centre of a rose upon her carpet and spun round upon it till her flounces stood out.
"We don't mention it here in Nauvoo."
"We don't mention it here in Nauvoo."
She sang as if it were the refrain to a song.
Susannah felt from within her shield of new delight an immense pity. Here again was a revelation of the coarse and frivolous talk that went on at the church meetings, and Elvira was privy to it through that old fool, her husband. How could she endure him!
"O Elvira, in the last few days I have realised as I did not before that riches are making fools of these men. How glad I am that my husband died before he knew that this was to be the reward of his lifework and his prayers!"
Elvira stopped dancing. The mystical side of her character now, as ever, came forward suddenly in the midst of her other interests. The sunshine was bright in the gaudy room. A tiny spaniel, which Elvira's senile slave had procured for her, lay on a red cushion in its full beam, looking more like a toy than a living thing. When Elvira stopped dancing her flounces settled themselves with an audible rustle, and her thin delicately-cut face looked at Susannah from out its frame of curled hair and gold ornaments like the face of a spirit imprisoned in some unseemly place.
"Heaven help us, Susannah," she cried shrilly, "if you call Nauvoo the reward of Angel's prayers. Look!" she cried, pointing out of the window, "see how the new temple rises; how its white walls shine in the sun! We are putting thousands upon thousands of dollars into it. It will be the grandest building this side of the Alleghany mountains." She let her small jewelled hand, with its pointing finger, fall suddenly, "and there shall not be left one stone of it upon another, for the House of God is not made with hands."
"I see little signs of its foundations here." Susannah spoke with fire. "Treachery and tyranny are poor bricks."
"Child, its foundations are in the whole earth, here and everywhere, in every nation and kindred. Men like Angel Halsey sow wheat; other people have sown tares. The tares happen to be in blossom just now here in Nauvoo." She seemed to forget her seriousness as suddenly, for again she spun round upon the centre of her rose, singing her little musical refrain.
Susannah made one more appeal of the sort that she had made so often before Elvira's marriage.
"You will not come away with me, Elvira? I do not like to leave you here; you have not been yourself since Angel died. You are not bound to this man because you were not sane enough to make a valid choice."
It was plain speaking, but it did not ruffle Elvira's composure in the slightest. She laughed and began to caress her spaniel. "Mad. Oh yes, we are all mad, and growing madder, but it is because they have huddled us together at the point of the sword, until now to be a Mormon means to be shut out from the world and shut in to—to what? To the prophet's dreams; and some of them are good, and some of them are bad, and some of them are mad; and let us thank Heaven that they are as good as they are, for to go back to the Gentiles who shot down Angel and the children he was teaching to pray, and your child in your arms, that would be the baddest and maddest act of life." She rose up suddenly again. "Go!" she cried. There was a flame of real anger in her eyes. "Since the wish is in your heart, go! We believe now in strange doctrines. Two new doctrines we have learned at Nauvoo. Do you know what they are? One is 'baptism of the dead.' If you get off safely, Susannah, and die in your sins, one of us must be baptized again for you, so that you will be saved in spite of yourself. But theotherdoctrine is 'salvation by the shedding of blood.' Do you understandthatdoctrine?"
"Indeed I do not."
"And you speak with a tone that says that you neither know nor care what new things we have been learning. But you may have reason to care before many hours are over."
She came near and whispered, "They teach us now that if amansin wilfully and will not repent, it is better that a minister of the church should slay him, for then his blood will make atonement for his soul." She ceased to speak until she had thrust Susannah out of her door, and her last words were in a whisper of awesome import. "Perhapsa woman's soul can be saved in the same way."
Susannah was out again in the cheerful busy street. She made haste to fulfil the one remaining call before she met her chaise at the hotel. She felt that her last word was due to the member of the Danite band who had saved her in her hour of need and who had avenged her husband's blood.
To each of those who had made sacrifice for the sect, a lot of land in the best part of the city had been awarded. Heber, Danite and apostle, had built upon his lot, and there she found him at the back of the cottage feeding a mare and foal which were tied in a small plot of ragged grass. He was much older now than when she had first seen him; daring and danger can lengthen time. He had the same indomitable frankness in his dark eyes, but his face was hardened and fanaticism was stamped thereon. It was a homely precinct, with utensils of house and stable-work lying about. The mare was drinking from a bucket, her gentle head so near his shoulder that her love for him was easily seen.
"I am going away," Susannah said. "I have come to thank you for the last time for all your kindness to me and to say good-bye."
"You shall not go," he said harshly.
It was the echo of something which she had heard twice before this morning. This time it began to enter her mind with some sharpness.
"Why not?"
"If you saw a friend hastening to destruction would you not stop her? It is well known amongst us that you desire to go, and at the meeting of the presidency last night the prophet told us that you sought to apostatise. Go home, Sister Halsey, and repent, and obtain forgiveness from the Lord and from his prophet for your unbelief."
She was able to stand for a moment quietly and watch him still busy watering the mare, admiring the skill and gentleness with which he did it, thinking sadly enough that she would never see this remarkable man again, nor know to what the mingled fierceness and gentleness of his nature would grow. Then she offered him her hand in farewell without further argument.
He shook the mare's head from his shoulder and, taking her hand, held it in an iron grasp. "As your friend, and for the sake of that good man, your husband, I beseech you to repent; but if you will not repent, for his sake and for our sakes, because we have prayed for you, you shall still be saved."
Although beginning to be apprehensive of some coming evil, she smiled; and even rallied him upon one of the new doctrines to which Elvira had alluded.
"Do you believe that if I go away some one else will have to be baptized over again for me?"
He looked at her with the same steadfast glance. "It could do no good. Such salvation is for those who die in ignorance of the truth. But for you, who have been baptized into the truth and have fallen away, there is no hope except repentance or the shedding of blood."
Over the low paling she heard the neighbours' children at their play. Upon the other side was an open lot across which she saw the passers in the street. She withdrew her hand from his now, but with a sinking at heart which did not appear to her reasonable because the surroundings were so tranquil.
He let her go, accompanying her, as any gentleman might, to the gate of his ground. As he opened it he had taken something from his coat, and he showed it to her. It was a knife, very bright and sharp. Its blade when drawn out had a double edge. "It will be better for you," he said mournfully, "to die than to go"; and then he hid the thing again and went back.
This time the idea that had been forcing itself into her mind took possession. For a moment all her strength forsook her; she held to the post of the gate, looking after him as he disappeared up the narrow passage between the paling and the house, and then, hurrying onward, she found that it was only by the greatest effort she could walk with outward composure.
Susannah found her rooms as she had left them. Emma was not there to bid her good-bye, nor did any messenger wait with the money. She set her parcels ready for the driver to lift and waited until after the hour, but the chaise did not come.
At last she went down again to the livery stable, hoping, as against vague but almost overpowering fears, that mere delay was the cause. The man told her that he understood that she had countermanded her order. She gave the order again, but now he said that he could not go for the price named, and when she offered a larger sum, he assured her that his horses were all out. She knew now that her order had indeed been countermanded, and by an authority higher than hers. She went back and boldly entered the prophet's public office.
There were five men in the office. Joseph Smith sat in an elbow-chair before a central table. His secretary, a middle-aged man, sat at a small table beside him. Two of the leaders of the Church happened to be waiting upon some business, and a fresh convert was standing with them, a well-dressed English artisan but newly arrived. Susannah walked up to the table and addressed Smith.
"Will you go down to the stable and bring me up a travelling-chaise?"
Smith rose with mechanical politeness, or perhaps with a feint of politeness. "My dear madam," he expostulated, "I must say—"
"I am sorry," she replied, "that I have not time to hear what you would like to say. I must ask you to be quick and get me the chaise."
By this time she perceived that his companions were looking at her with ill-concealed curiosity and excitement, which proved to her that she was a marked woman. Her bosom dilated with a wilder anger as she looked at Smith expectantly; he returned the gaze sheepishly, as if dazzled by the audacity of her command. His face after last night's passion had an exhausted look like that of a man recovering from an illness.
"You also owe me money," she proclaimed clearly. "Your wife borrowed all that I had of the money I earned by my school. When you have brought the chaise you can give me the money."
One of the elders, a sleek man, thinking the prophet at a loss, now made a wily comment. "Has Sister Halsey paid anything for living in the House this month back?"
At the insinuation that her money might be justly kept in payment of this debt if she spurned the Church's hospitality, Susannah's heart sank. She admitted its justice. It was part of her character to admit all possible claim against her.
The sleek elder, following his advantage, spoke again. "The money given for tuition was given because of the ordinance of the prophet, and should in any case hardly belong to this lady if she is apostate."
Smith had the tact to see his opportunity, and, moreover, it hurt him sharply, hurt him far more than it hurt Susannah, to hear her right to the privileges of the place called in question, to hear the opprobrious term "apostate" cast at her. There were unbelievers in his community with whose hypocrisy or apostasy he could trifle, but he still had his faith and his inner circle of affections. Susannah, standing friendless and penniless, appealed to all that was sacred in the memory of early days, while her beauty, her courage, her unbounded wrath, stimulated his love of power. He spoke to the sleek elder in what was commonly called the prophet's "awful voice," rising, his blue eyes becoming black in their authoritative flash.
"Our sister Susannah Halsey, because of faithfulness when the Church was yet poor and unknown, and because of the faithfulness of her husband, who wears the martyr's crown—our sister Susannah Halsey, I say, is welcome to the hospitality of the Nauvoo House as long as she has remained and shall remain; and the money which has been given to her for the school shall be returned to her, and more shall be added to it, for she laboured faithfully."
He had left behind his moment of sheepish distress; with the return of his formal phrases he assumed full prophetical state and escorted Susannah out of the office with a manner of pompous deference. When they two stood alone together Susannah was aware that, although circumstances had not altered in the slightest, although she had just as much reason for extreme anger as a minute before, yet she could not summon the same haughty air of command.
"Will you get me the chaise and the money and let me go?"
"But in Carthage," he asked kindly, "who will attend to your wants there and protect you? I guess, sister, you haven't much notion how difficult a lady like yourself travelling alone might find it to get along. It isn't among the Gentiles as with the Saints, where brotherly-kindness is the rule. I guess you'd better go back to your room and think it over a day or two longer," he said soothingly. "I'd be very glad to take you and Emma out for a ride this afternoon if you'd be willing to go—"
"Be quiet." Her words fell sharp and quick in the midst of his gentle tones. "Make arrangements at once for me to go peaceably, or I will go out, if need be, to the middle of the Square and proclaim my wrongs, so that every woman and child in Nauvoo shall know what comes of trusting to you."
She had chosen her threat carefully. She knew well that he understood the force of object lessons, and that to have even a suspicion against his kindness, bred in the minds of the children would be exquisite pain to him.
"You know that I wouldn't like that, Sister Halsey; but when you come to think of it you'll see that it wouldn't serve your turn neither. It would only need for a few of us to say you was crazy and the whole town 'ud see the more reason for not letting you go. Moreover, it would be a monstrous injustice to me. When have I failed to do anything that I ever promised you? Did I ever promise to let you apostatise? I guess, Sister Halsey, that you're excited, and if you just think over things for a day or two you would see that we're not so bad as you think. But, anyway, this ain't just the place for us to have a talk together."
When Smith moved on to lead her back to her own rooms, she followed quietly until they stood together in her parlour, the scene of their last quarrel.
"And now," said Susannah, "you understand very well that it is no sudden intention of mine to go, that it is my irrevocable decision. I have this morning had my very life threatened; and I see now that unless you command that it should be respected I should very possibly be in danger if I went away alone. You have offered again and again to drive me in your carriage; I will accept the offer now. Get out your own horses, and drive me yourself to Carthage."
She saw a look of faint pleasure steal over his face. He liked to stand there in the quiet room listening while she spoke with some evidence of trust. The pleasure faded into embarrassment, but she had seen it.
"You have a good and a bad nature struggling within you, Mr. Smith. By all that we have suffered, you and I, since the day that by some mysterious power you forced me to come to your baptism" (she stammered in her eagerness), "by all that we have suffered, by that sympathy which we have at times felt for one another, assert yourself now. Do this one right thing for me, and in all the future I will try to remember only the good in your life and not the bad."
But he stood so long still looking steadfastly before him that she began to fear that, unnerved by his last night's fit of fury, he was ready to pass into one of those visionary trances which had been common in his younger days.
She touched the sleeve of his coat. "I do not know if Mr. Heber's threat could be serious, but it frightened me, and I know that I shall be safe on the road to Carthage if you take me. Go, get your horses and take me away yourself."
He looked at her pitifully, slipping into the style of his religious moods. "Thou sayest truly, sister, that there is none but I who could do this thing, for since in mine anger last night, fearing that I had no strength of my own to keep thee by me, I denounced thee to the council, there is no safety for thy life beyond the boundary of Nauvoo." He winced here, as if seeing what he suggested.
Noting how the idea of her violent death wrung his heart, she went on pleading with him. She quoted the exalted character of his early visions, reminding him of the hour when the angel had shown him the dark furnace of temptations through which he must pass. At this he was visibly stirred; the angelic vision of warning seemed to be again before his eyes. He roused himself, speaking in that tone of voice in which, when he rarely used it, she recognised his best spirit. "Sister, thou hast always been to me as Isaac to Abraham; for in the beginning when I was poor and alone and had nought in the world save the revelation which the Lord had given, and was tempted to doubt, then I saw thee and prayed that thou shouldst be given me for a sign; and behold when I put forth my whole strength to desire thee, thou didst come as a moth to the light, burning thy beautiful wings of youth and joy. But I said, 'It is well, for that which she has lost shall be restored to her with usury,' and I knew in my heart that our brother Angel Halsey would not live long, and that thou wouldst forget thy sorrow for him. But I swear unto thee that thou hast never been to me as other women, but, as I said unto thee just now, like the voice of the angel."
She never knew how far he was entirely under his own control when the tendency to a state of trance was upon him, but she was anxious to take advantage of the better mood.
She said, "And now what is required of you is that you should give me up. No blessing" (she spoke strongly), "no blessing can come to you or to your people until you do this one right thing."
He was again looking not at her but at the blank space of the shadowed wall, and as if the wall was not there and his look went far beyond it.
"You have loosened the bloodhounds and set them on my track," she cried.
He did not speak.
"You—you alone will be guilty of my murder, for, I tell you, if you do not take me, I will go alone and meet my death."
His head sank upon his breast with a groan such as a dumb creature in the utmost pain might give. Almost immediately, to her surprise, he went out.
She was left alone. She was under the impression that Smith had gone to do her bidding, but she could not be sure. No faith in angelic vision, no spell of psychic warfare, relieved the situation for her. The external evidences of some crisis which he had undergone only produced in her repulsion. Now, as ever since the temporary delusion that accompanied her baptism, Susannah endeavoured to possess her soul free from that sense of touch with mysterious powers which had worked such havoc with the sanity of the members of this sect.
From the window she saw the prophet crossing the road in the direction of his stables. He went, it was true, with slow, dreamy gait, but steadily. Strange mixture that he was of sanity and shrewdness, mysticism and grosser evil, he was at that moment her only star of hope. She paced the room unable to forecast the happenings of the next hour, yet supposing that her very life depended upon its content. The sudden joy that had come to her this morning joined with her fear, and produced panic of heart.
She computed the time it might take to harness the gay steeds, and tried to give the rein of her expectation the utmost length. To her delight she saw the prophet's horses and the light vehicle he drove upon long journeys emerge into the square. A servant led them up and down. At length she saw Smith returning, not with hasty steps, but as if against his will, walking again through the crowded place like a man in a dream. Men greeted him, but for once he gave no sign of seeing them. She heard his footstep on the stair. When he reached her door he almost fell against it in the opening, and staggered as he entered the room as if his self-control had just lasted so far. He knelt down by one of the fashionable marble-topped tables with which he had graced her room, and, like an ill-conditioned soul, burst into tears and broken complaints.
"But I cannot do it," he gasped. "I cannot."
In her hour of miserable waiting Susannah had thought of many things that might occur, and nerved herself to meet them, but this distemper of soul, this failure of will in the man who had been undaunted through years of persecuting torture, was so wholly unexpected that she stood aghast.
He clenched his hands as they lay helpless on the white table. "O Lord!" he cried, and she could not tell from the tone whether the words were oath or prayer. "O Lord, I cannot let her go." His thick tears muffled his voice, and still again and again during the paroxysm she caught the words as if reiterated in choking anger, "O Lord, I cannot."
His tears, however evil their source, laid hold of her woman's sensibility; she was no longer a critical observer. She no longer set aside his strange inward conflict as a delusion of madness. She participated in his consciousness so far as to think that she was actually witnessing the despair of a soul repulsing an opportunity of righteousness, and yet not so far dead as not to know its worth. She tried to speak, but found herself, as at other times, so affected by his overlapping emotion that she was trembling and had neither courage nor voice.
Smith lifted his head, looking with terror into vacant spaces of the dim room, as if following with his eyes some menacing form. He whined piteously. "I have purposed to be faithful"; he put up his hand as if to ward off a blow. "Thou knowest! thou knowest!" His voice was like a whispering shriek. The terror of his face and gestures was appalling to see.
Susannah was infected with fear of an apparition so evidently visible to him. Her mind swung, as it were, out of material limitations. She was overcome with the belief that a third person was with them, and her heart went out in gratitude to that mysterious other for taking her part.
But the gilt clock on the marble mantelshelf ticked on; Susannah felt herself aware that the person of Smith's vision was withdrawing, repulsed. She almost cried aloud to the invisible, but checked the prayer, holding on, as it were, to her own sanity with both hands. Smith writhed continually, moaning.
When at length she succeeded in telling him faintly that if he refused this opportunity he must fall lower and lower and lose even the desire for good, she found that her words had no longer any power to influence. He had passed beyond into some region of outer darkness, where the things of sense did not seem to penetrate, and where, if the actions of his body were the expression of his soul, there was literally "wailing and gnashing of teeth."
But Susannah hovered over him, not so much angry as pitiful, her own agony of mere physical sympathy increasing. Terrified to be near him, too compassionate to withdraw, she watched till at last the veins in his hands and his face became swollen and knotted. She was unwilling to lose the hope of her sole influence over him, and yet was about to call for help, when almost suddenly he seemed to become conscious of his surroundings again and shake himself free from the distress.
In a little while he was sitting on one of the chairs, wiping his purple face and swollen eyes with the large silken pocket-handkerchief that was one of the signs of his recent opulence. She saw the large ring on his swollen finger gradually loosen, and the hand return to its normal shape and colour. She felt convinced that his pulses had gone back to their common flow, because his whole volition had returned peacefully to its low ambitions and self-indulgence. She knew instinctively that it was not thus opulent and fierce that he would have looked had he come out on the other side of his temptation. She stood, outwardly patient, waiting helpless till he should speak.
"Sit down, sister," he panted condescendingly. He was fanning himself with the handkerchief now, as a man might who felt injured by undue heat in the atmosphere.
Her refusal was concise and severe.
He looked at her boldly, with no apprehension now in his eyes, not even the former conciliatory desire to receive her with fair words. She felt appalled. Could it be that his angel in deserting him had deserted her? Was there a devil strong enough to give her to him? It was perhaps only his belief which overshadowed hers, it was perhaps only, as she thought, a sickness of nerve but the impression that unseen personalities had been contending here was stronger upon her even than her anger and fear.
Smith got up and went to the window. His horses and buggy were still parading.
"I guess I've changed my mind," he said. He did not care, it seemed, to delude her, but he must still deceive himself. "I couldn't go against the voice of the church council to that extent; it wouldn't be safe for you or me; and besides, 'tisn't the Lord's will that you should go."
She recoiled, looking at him in steady reproach.
"Well, as I said before, I guess you can think it over for a few days." This was his easy answer to her look, and he went out, slamming the door.
When that day began to wane Susannah was still sitting in the empty curtained room. No plan which offered even a fair hope of escape had occurred to her mind. Although in pictures of adventure her imagination had been fertile, throwing out suggestions unbidden, her judgment would have none of them. No one disturbed her. She was left in isolation, a prey to dismal thoughts.
She saw the happy crowds dispersing in the Square from evening recreation. There was nothing to hinder her from joining them. Sometimes her sense of imprisonment seemed only a morbid dream, for on all sides of the fair white city there was open ingress and egress for the faithful and the stranger. It was hard to believe that at wharfs and on the high roads fanatics watched for her, and yet after Smith's reluctant avowal she dare not doubt it.
She saw evening fade over the broad semi-circle of the river, over the multitude of cheerful homes that sloped to its edge. When darkness came she found herself more than ever pressed and tormented by the grim shapes of fear and remorse and despair. She had terrible reason to fear, and felt as never before that she had brought this horrid situation upon herself by joining and rejoining the prophet's following. She had no hope now that Smith would relent.
Beyond the city, eastward toward the sun-rising, lay the home of Ephraim's friendship, whither in the morning she had thought to bend her steps. She saw it through the glad glamour of her recent knowledge that he had not neglected her letters. All her desires fled to this thought of his friendship, like birds flying home. All her fancies clustered round it, like climbing flowers that caress and kiss the object they enfold when some rude wind disturbs. Whenever she withdrew her mind from its contemplation, the circumstances on which she looked were the more revolting.
Ever since Smith left she had been more or less under the impression that an unseen person there in that very room had contended with him. Again and again she had swept it aside as an infectious madness that she was catching from the fanatics about her, but it had recurred; and now as, not caring to light her lamps, she sat alone in the darkness by the very table against which Smith had writhed and wailed, she felt pressed upon by a spiritual life external to her own.
Within her soul from some unknown depth the word arose distinctly as if spoken, "Pray. You cannot save yourself. Pray."
"I am going mad." Susannah whispered the words audibly. It was a comfort to her even to hear her own voice. But when her whisper was past she again listened involuntarily.
The words within her rose again. "Even so. Pray. If you are going mad, you have the more need."
Susannah had come to class all search for definite and material answer to prayer as one of the superstitions of false religion. In this category stood also the hearing of voices and obedience to monitions from the unseen. Now she reproached herself because she could not immediately silence this fancy of disturbed nerves.
Long sad thoughts of all her reasons against prayer, strongest among them the futility of her husband's prayers, passed through her mind with their train of haunting memories, but in the cessation from argument which these pictures of the past produced, the words arose again dearly within her soul, like airdrops rising from the depths of a well and expanding into momentary iridescence on the surface, "Pray for help. If you have no faith in God's arm, you have the more need to seek it."
Stung by the fear that she was losing her mind, she rose as she would have faced a human antagonist.
"God's arm!" she said aloud, "my husband prayed such prayers, but I will ask nothing till I see his request fulfilled."
She spoke the quick words with an almost reckless sense of experiment. Her thought was that before she could honestly think of such prayer she must see some fruit of Angel's petitions for this man Smith and for her own safety.
"Save Smith from further degradation," she said, her breath coming sharply. "Save me now, if that sort of prayer is right. Do this in answer to my husband's prayers. Remember his prayers."
She had begun recklessly, supposing that she was contending only with her own sick fancy; she was astonished that a few swift moments had involved her in an increasing sense of personal contact, and she became awed by the strength of the encounter.
"My husband prayed for my safety," she repeated with softened attitude; then, as if seeking for the protection which had died with him, she repeated again and again, "Remember his prayers."
She left the challenge at last apparently to die where she had breathed it in the dark cold air of her lonely room. The tension of her mind relaxed.
She sat down again, not knowing whether anything had occurred, but a crisis in the morbid working of her strained nerves had in some way relieved her.
She was curiously unable to go back to her former agonised anxieties. Natural fatigue, even sleepiness, came over her, but not her fears, even though she wooed them.
"Ah, well," she said within herself, "it is quite true that it is useless to consider when I can give myself no help."
The habits of the Saints were early. When she heard silence fall upon the great house she went into her sleeping-room and lay down upon the bed. Sleep came quickly.
With the early dawn she opened her eyes. In the first moments of half-awaked consciousness she was aware that one thought lay alone in the empty horizon of her mind, like a trace left by a dream that had passed, as a wisp of cloud may be left in an empty sky.
This thought was that she would at once go down to the river bank upon the southwest of the town.
When other thoughts awoke and crowded within her ken this thought appeared foolish, and still more so the strong influence it had left upon her will, for in the momentum of this influence she had risen without debating the point.
She was not aware that she had moved in her sleep or dreamed. She was greatly refreshed and again unreasonably light-hearted. She opened her shutters and saw that the dawn was calm and fair. As yet the sleeping town had scarcely stirred.
"It is better to go out than to stay in," she said to herself as she remembered that this hour would be her one chance of taking air and exercise unobserved. She heard the main door of the house open and, looking over the banister, saw a slattern with bucket and mop passing into some back passage. She went lightly down and out into the fresh frosty air.
What had that dream been concerning the river bank on the south-western side? She could not recall it, nor had she ever explored the streets of white wooden villas and cottages that lay upon that side. She went thither now. There was no reason why she should not go, no reason to go elsewhere. It was a pleasant walk. When she had passed the last house, the bank sloped in open uncared-for grass where cows were grazing. Only here and there she had seen a house-door open, and as yet in this place no one was abroad except a boy who was playing idly in a boat, which was drawn half up on the muddy bank.
The broad river, milk-white under a dappled sky, stretched south and west. The other side was dim and blue in the faint vapour of the relaxing frost. The air was sweet and still. The sunbeams, imprisoned in eastern vapour, shone through the white veil with soft glow that cast no shadow but comforted the earth with hope.
Susannah had a further thought in her mind now, but she felt no haste or impatience of excitement.
The boy was of an active, restless disposition or he would hardly have been out so early. Lithe and idle, he sat see-sawing in the floating end of the boat, uncertain how to amuse himself. He returned Susannah's greeting with a lively flow of talk.
"You don't know how to row," said Susannah.
She showed no eagerness, for she felt none. The hope she had just formed was most uncertain, for it appeared not at all likely that she could escape in this way without being molested.
"I bet I can row," said the boy, "as well as any man in town."
"That isn't saying much," said Susannah. "The men about here have very few boats, and they are most of them afraid to go on anything smaller than the steamer."
"I could row t'other side and back," bragged the boy. "I could row t'other side and back three times in the day."
"You couldn't."
"I couldn't! What will you bet?"
"I suppose your father wouldn't allow you to go, anyway."
He was a fresh-faced, mischievous, eager young rascal, and he found Susannah's manner pleasant and provoking.
"Will you lay five dollars on it?" he cried. "Pap is away down to Quincy. If you'll lay five dollars on it I'll do it."
"But I won't."
The gambling spirit of the young pioneer was aroused.
"What will you lay on it, then?"
"I don't believe you could row once to the other side."
He bragged loudly and with much exaggeration of what he had done and what he could do, and began pushing off the boat to show her his speed.
The boat was a rude craft, unpainted, flat-bottomed, but light enough, and not badly formed for speed. Susannah stepped into it without much hope, scarcely caring what she did, but still provoking the young boatman to attempt the crossing.
"I shan't give you any money," she said, "but you can row me a bit if you like till I see how fast you can go. You don't understand the currents, I am sure."
"Currents!" said the boy, "I guess I understand all there is to know about them."
Talking thus in light banter, they actually proceeded out onto the bosom of the milky flood without hearing any cry from the shore or seeing any one who took note of their departure. The pellucid and comforting light of the blinded sun grew warmer; the hum of industry in the town behind rose cheerfully upon the quiet air, and as the calling of the April bluebird in the fields grew more faint, the splash of the oars and the whirr of the gray water-fowl began to be accompanied by a low distant sound as of a watermill.
"It's the excursion steamer," said the boy. "We'll get in her waves and you'll be scared. Ladies is always scared of waves."
She asked if the steam-boat would stop at the Nauvoo wharf, but he explained, with the knowledge that boys are apt to have of such details, that this steamer was coming from Fort Madison, and would keep to the Missouri side, that he had heard that there were some State officials on board her, escorting the Governor of Kentucky, who was prospecting for a Land Company.
They saw the white hulk of the steam-boat looming upon the water to the north. Her side paddle-wheels churned the flood. A strong purpose took possession of Susannah; she knew what she was going to do.
She said to the boy, "No one could stop a steamer when she once starts until she gets to her next port."
"I bet the engineman could stop her just as easy as that." The boy backed water with his oars suddenly.
"But no one on the river could make him stop and get aboard."
"Yes, they could. My pap stopped one once. We was living down near Cairo, but not near a wharf."
"How did he do it?" she asked, and her interest was intense.
"Why, you just put up your hands like a trumpet and yell through them as loud as you can, and you go on waving and hollering. My pap said the best plan was to call out 'Runaway nigger! Large reward!' They'd be sure to stop then to know all about it, and when they'd once stopped they don't mind your clambering up, if you can pay the fare."
Susannah felt herself wholly unequal to the loud task described.
"They would never stop for you," she, said. "You are only a boy, and they would know 'twas only mischief."
His reply was as before. He would lay five dollars on it that he could stop the boat.
She incited him to do this thing also. What faculty of caution the boy possessed was not as yet developed; he left the care for consequences to the sedate lady in the stern, and forgetting his quest of the Missouri shore, lay in the path of the steam-boat and howled unmusically, and marred the peace of the placid morning by shouting concerning a runaway slave and a fabulous reward that was offered for him taken alive or dead.
It is probable that what he said never rightly reached the ears of the men on the deck, but that they regarded the lady as a possible passenger; the engine was stopped.
"We'd better cut now as fast as we can," said the boy, somewhat frightened. He seized his oars excitedly. "Or shall I tell them a big yarn about the nigger?"
They were but slightly to one side. The prow of the steam-boat, which drew but little water, had already passed below them. A small crowd on the vessel's deck leaned over the paddle-box. Standing up in the boat, Susannah searched the faces of the men looking down. They all looked at her.
She singled out the captain by some sign in his dress, and pleaded urgent necessity for travelling with him.
"Look here," said the boy, looking up at her from beneath, "I call that a low-down, mean sort of thing to do. Why didn't you tell me square? I'd have brought you if you wanted do come."
She pleaded with the boy too. "It was better for you not to know my secrets. If they ask you in the city you can say that you didn't know."
A dozen hands were held out to help her to climb the ladder on the shelving paddle-box. "Keep off," they cried to the boy, and he swung away from the churning wheel.
Susannah stood upon the deck pale and trembling. The magnitude of the step came upon her, and she was beset by natural timidity and the painfulness of her dependence. The men who stood around her with the right to question were not of a low class. The captain, brawny and respectable, spoke for the group. Behind him was a short but dignified gray-haired gentleman whom she took to be the present or former Governor of the State of Kentucky, of whom the boy had spoken. With him were several men who appeared to have some fair title to gentility. Other passengers pressed in an outer circle.
She would fain have explained herself more privately, but she could not endure to accept the privileges of the boat without explaining first that she was not able to pay for them. "Gentlemen, I have no money. I am entirely unprotected. I have escaped in fear of my life from Nauvoo."
She spoke instinctively, only desiring to set herself right, but when the words were said she knew that she had helped to heap opprobrium on the sect in whose cause so short a time ago she would have died. The passengers were Missourians, as was the captain. Among them went a whisper of chivalrous pity for her and of execration for the prophet and his followers.
"Madam," said the captain, "any lady as is escaping from those devils has the freedom of this boat, and no ticket required, as long as I'm in command. Isn't that so?" he asked of the crowd.
The murmur broke into an open chorus of enthusiastic speech.
Wild and deep as was her panting anger against Smith's oppression, Susannah shrank. The thought of profiting by this spirit of partisan hatred scorched her heart.
The Kentucky Governor, a dapper man, who had been regarding her with a temperate and critical eye, now, urged by her obvious distressed timidity, came forward.
"How did you get among the Mormons, may I ask?"
"My husband," faltered Susannah, "but he is dead."
It would appear that her words tallied with some conclusion he had been drawing concerning her, for without further parley Susannah found herself being led in a formal manner down the companion-way. The brief report which she had given of herself had preceded her through the boat. She heard the passengers whom she left on the deck making sentimental remarks. Two coloured girls who were washing dishes in a pantry came to its door and gasped with emotion as they stared at her. In the saloon the coloured waiters gaped.
At the farther end of the saloon a stout and magnificent lady in silk and diamonds was seated before innumerable viands which were spread in circles around her plate. She stopped eating while her husband presented Susannah. She alone of all upon the boat seemed to be overburdened by no surge of sentiment or curiosity. She was a most comfortable person.
Seated in safety beside her, Susannah could indulge the pent-up indignation of her outraged spirit in silent musings upon Smith's degradation and, the certain downfall of all righteousness under the new tyranny. And yet—and yet—the shock of the last few days, forcibly as it vibrated through all her nature, could not eradicate the sympathy of years—the memories of Hiram and Kirtland, Haun's Mill and the desperate winter's march. Justice, her old friend, now her inquisitor, said sternly, "It was in these scenes in which some lost life and some reason that these men lost their moral standards." But her heart cried, "Now thatIam insulted, I cannot forgive."
The words of the Governor's wife, cheerful, continuous, and not without diverting sparkle, were an unspeakable rest to Susannah, weary above all things of herself. Whether because of a strong undercurrent of tactful kindness, or in mere garrulity, the good lady's talk for some time flowed on concerning all things small, and nothing great, like the lapping of the river against the vessel's bows.
But at last her companion's situation grew upon her; she enlarged more than once upon her surprise at Susannah's advent, and her feelings of extreme relief that she was safely there.