"If it had not been the Lord that was on our side."
"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."
"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 fowler: the snare is broken, and we are escaped. Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth."
"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 fowler: the snare is broken, and we are escaped. Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth."
While she was exalted by the song she saw the face of her friend the Danite for the first time since the night on which they had ridden so far together. He was standing now upon the outskirts of the crowd as one who had newly come from a solitary journey. When he met Susannah's eye his solitary look passed into one of lofty and intense comradeship. He ran to her and embraced her, and emptied an inner pocket of a purse of money which he thrust eagerly into her possession.
"I have killed one of them," he said, speaking eagerly, as a child tells of some exploit. "His pockets were fat with money, and it is yours."
"See!" He took the fragment of linen upon which the stain of Halsey's blood had turned dark with time, and showed her a new and brighter stain upon its edges.
All around them were men and women, who now, for the first time since the hour of some terrible parting, spied kindred or comrades. By a common impulse these moved toward one another, and there was an interlude in the service for sobs of joy and frantic embracings, and many men and women clasped one another who could claim no kindred, and none forbade, for tears of mutual love were in all eyes.
After that, in the streets or in chance meetings in the houses, the remembrance of this festival of rapturous comradeship gave a new standard to the manners of private life. The Saints had, as it were, passed from death unto life; former things had passed away; the praises of God were ever upon their lips; they entered with joy into a kingdom of love which they doubted not God had ordained for his elect; many a command of Scripture became illumined with a new practical meaning. "Greetallthe brethren with a holy kiss." "Greet ye one another with a kiss of charity."
Susannah was not much abroad, but she saw the new customs inaugurated. Believing that they must be transient, knowing, too, that the fierce undercurrent that they expressed must have outlet, and was not of that range of emotions which had to do with the common relationships of life, she felt no shock of offended sentiment. But in a short space of time, as Elvira grew better, Susannah perceived that the experimental nature of the new life was a dissipation to weaker minds. This grieved her because of the sacred memory of her husband's efforts for these people, and because, attuned by party spirit, she entertained a nervous personal desire that they should acquit themselves well. Just here she found occupation; she gathered the young girls about her in a temporary school, and set herself to soothe and calm the excitement of the women. The work was intended to last but a few weeks, until Ephraim's answer came.
To the unspeakable joy of his followers, Joseph Smith appeared suddenly in Quincy. It appeared to be true, as Darling said, that the Missouri authorities could in fact find no charge on which to try him.
Smith, with his brother Hyrum and their fellows, had suffered severely, but later their confinement had been more easy, and the news of the triumphant gathering of his people, together with the excitement of the escape, had induced in Smith a mood which spurned past failures with a foot that sped to a new goal. The acclamation, the sincere and touching joy, with which Smith was received by men and women and children, were enough to raise any man in his own esteem, and to set free the ambition which had been perhaps drooping in confinement.
Smith had not been in Quincy twenty-four hours before he mastered the situation there in all its details. He promptly sent out a decree against the new doctrine of what he called "lax manners." He preached a great sermon in the open air that night. "A man shall kiss his own wife and daughters and no other women," said Smith. The elders who had preached from St. Paul's texts on the subject were accused of error and called upon to recant. Smith commanded that the women should work and the children should study, and he publicly pronounced Susannah to be a fitting model for the women and a fitting teacher for the young. Susannah had not as yet met Smith face to face when she found herself made, as it were, an object of licensed admiration.
It was that same evening, after Smith's commendation of Susannah, that Darling decided to lay the destruction of her letter before the prophet, hoping for approval.
Smith was looking over Darling's accounts in the tithing office, giving voluminous and minute directions. The May night had closed in. The men were in a corner of the large shed in which the stores were kept, a corner fenced off for an office by a low wooden partition. The candle flickered on the table between them.
The business side of Smith's soul was uppermost. He had power to keep in mind a huge number of details, and to classify them, and he estimated the relative importance of the classes as no other man would have estimated it.
Darling interrupted before Smith's interest in business began to wane. He prefaced his communication concerning Susannah by speaking of the much shepherding needed by the sheep. Some, he said, had done worse than be lax in manners; some had presumed to have revelations; some had doubted the faith.
Here Darling paused, feeling sure of rousing Smith to the mood he desired.
At the mention of revelations Smith's soul took a turn, like a ball on its axis; the plain speech that he had been using about business and stores and accounts changed into phraseology of a Scriptural cast, and the shrewd glance of his blue eye into a more distraught and distant look. Heretofore, as Darling well knew, heresy had been a greater evil in his eyes than any other; but Smith had come now out of long months of prison; days and nights in which a horrible death had faced him closely had not passed over this particular soul of his dreams without moulding it. It is noticed by all his historians that after this period he spoke little "by revelation," in comparison with his former full habit in this respect. At Darling's abrupt speech he sighed heavily. He looked, not at Darling as before, but at some vague object beyond him.
"There is one lawgiver who is able to save and to destroy," he said wearily, and then, gathering himself up with more pompous unction, he asked of the surprised Darling, "Who art thou that judgest another?"
Darling had grown fatter since he came to Quincy; the lines of haggard care were still upon his face, but were modified by dimples of good cheer. Much taken aback by the unexpected rebuff, he rubbed his head.
"But, Mr. Smith, if they are all going to be allowed to think whatever they like—"
The obvious difficulty of church government under these conditions confronted the nobler impulse of humility in the visionary's mind. "When have I said, Brother Darling, that they all should think what they like? But, behold, I say unto thee, it is not with the Lord to save with many or with few, but by whom he will send."
This was a little vague as to grammar and as to sense, but Darling had not the ability to criticise. He only perceived that to secure commendation he must be tactful in the setting forth of his act.
"It was in the case of Sister Susannah Halsey—" he began again apologetically.
A more eager look came into Smith's eyes; still a third phase of his character there was, the soul of his personal affections, and this began to merge now with his religious self. "Hath she prophesied? Hath any revelation been granted to her?"
If Darling had not understood the prophetical vein, he did understand a certain vibration in this tone. "Ha!" thought he, "if the prophet ain't a bit soft on her himself I'm out." He had lowered his eyes, and now he said evasively, "It is our sister Elvira on whom the spirit of prophecy has fallen; you will have heard how she gave praise concerning you before the Saints upon the road and was moved to dance before the Lord."
Smith saw through the evasion, but by shrewd reading of the sanctimonious face, saw also the inward suspicion as clearly as if Darling had spoken it. His tone and manner betrayed him no more.
"The head of our sister Elvira is not always set firmly on her shoulders," he remarked, "but I am glad if the Lord has given her grace."
"I've been hoping that he'd give grace to our sister Susannah, for she's been writing a letter to say as how she was without faith and wanting to leave us."
Smith answered him now only with a cool silence that puzzled his coarser understanding.
"'Twas in our first days here, when a good many of the women were flighty, and Elvira Halsey, she was ill enough to have worked the patience out of any one as they work the milk out of butter, and Sister Susannah came with a letter. She gave it to me unsealed."
"Was she without wax to seal it?" interrupted Smith in a casual tone. Darling could not know that the thought of such poverty wrung Smith's heart.
"Waal, I dunno" (which was a lie). "Mebbe she had no wax—I didn't think of that, but anyhow she gave me the letter. 'Twas too late for the mail; 'twas too heavy for one stamp. An' I didn't like to tell her, poor thing, that we'd mighty little to spend on stamps. So after she'd gone I just had a look to see who it was to."
"The address would be on the outside?" Smith rose, hat in hand, as if to depart, but fixed his eyes on the candle till Darling should have done.
"The name gave me very little hint as to whether the matter was worth the two stamps, so I just had a glance inside. Thought it might be but a line asking money of her friends, which, under the sad circumstances, of course I knew you'd rather the Church would supply."
This drew the first spark of the approval he was expecting. "Certainly, certainly, the widows and the orphans of those who have perished for the truth must ever be our most tender care."
"Exactly so, prophet; I knew that would be your opinion; so when I saw that our sister had felt drove to asking for money from some fellow—I guess there must have been some sweethearting between him and her before she married Halsey. She said in this letter that she'd go to him if he'd send her cash. She said as how she thought the religion of the Latter-Day Saints was a lie; but of course I could see it was not her right judgment, that she was awful lonesome."
"It was taking a great liberty, Mr. Darling." Smith tapped his stick upon the floor. He was far more angry than he showed, for policy had laid a soft hand of reminder on his shoulder. "Our sister, Mrs. Halsey, is not—" he coughed slightly, and sought by prophetical phrases to explain that Susannah was not upon the level of Darling and his kind—"is not, as it would be said in the Scriptures, among 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.
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 moved; but he remained just where he first stood, strong enough to have this colloquy over without restlessness.
"I am no saint," he said, "as you know very well, and there's a lot of things I've done, thinking that my revelations told me, which I don't know whether they told me or not, for in prison I saw that the things were bad things, like that mess of the bank, and running away as I did. I guess I could not have been living right, and the devil gulled me. But that hain't got nothing to do with the times I know that the Lord spoke. You don't believe it was the Lord at all. Well, then, who was it? For it's the same as has told me not to do the lots of wicked things I might have done and didn't. As to them plates, I told you before I didn't have them as much in my hands as I said I did. I got wrong a bit there too, maybe, but it isn't easy to keep quite straight between the thing you see and the words you say it in, when you are trying to talk to people about what they don't understand. It isn't easy to do just only what is perfectly right about anything at any time, at least, if it is to you, it isn't to me; but I often thought I was born worse than most people."
"The men who were your witnesses as to the reality of the plates are apostate," she said gently.
"They are apostate," he said gloomily, "and why? Because I would not let them live upon the Lord's tithes without labouring as we all laboured."
He spoke again after a moment. "The Gentiles have spread abroad a story about one Solomon Spalding, who they say wrote the Book of Mormon, which Rigdon stole, but you know—you who have been with us from the beginning—that neither I nor your husband nor any one of us saw Rigdon until we came to Kirtland, and if his word is to be believed he never saw this Spalding or his book."
She made an impatient movement of her head. "I know," she said, "that there is no truth in that story." She moved a little away from him; she was becoming oppressed by his still earnestness.
"Isn't it any proof to you that I hadn't the wits nor the education to make the book?" His words were wistful.
She sat down on the sill of the open window, the only seat in the room, and looked out on the moist earth.
"I guess you want to get rid of me," he said, "but I can't go till I know how it is with you, for I've been wrestling in prayer this night concerning you." Then after a minute he said, "Our brother gave you the money that he found on the person of your husband's murderer?"
"I paid it into the treasury."
"But if you don't believe, maybe you are thinking of going east?"
"Do you think I could use the price of my husband's blood for that? It is not for me to know whether the avengers of blood are right or wrong in a land where there is no law, but the money belonged to your Church."
He looked at her as one who has made a study of a certain class of objects looks at a fine specimen, as a jeweller looks at a gem of the first water. This man, with the genius for priesthood, was a connoisseur in souls. "Emmar wouldn't have thought it no harm to keep the money the Danites gave her," and he added more reflectively, "nor would I." There was admiration in his tones.
He came a step nearer now. "If you went east who have you to go to? Your uncle, he's dead."
Susannah started. "How do you know?"
His manner was pitying. "I saw it last night in the way I see things, in my visions, but Emmar she heard from some of the Saints that came from Palmyra that your uncle was sick unto death, and last night the Lord told me he was dead."
She rose up suddenly. She had known too many instances of this man's curious knowledge of distant events to think of doubting. Her first thought was that if Ephraim was in this trouble she must go to him at once.
"Your aunt will be awful jealous of your cousin now she's only got him."
Then under Smith's pitying glance Susannah shrank from the first impulse to go. She felt that there was something within her that merited his pity. She could not rush to Ephraim without invitation, because it was not for his sake but for her own she wanted to go. She believed that Smith knew it. She felt thankful, as he had dared to accuse her of not loving her husband, that he had the kindness not to accuse her of this. A certain awe of Smith came over her; he could be violent with those who were violent, coarse and jocular with his public who could be worked upon thus, but to her he spoke delicately, and he had shown her at times before this that he knew her better than she knew herself.
"Sister Susannah," said Smith humbly, "it's my fault that you've become the brainy woman that you are, for I encouraged you at book learning (knowing as how when you found your heart 'twould shine with the more lustre), but if you were to go and live along side of a man as is a bookworm you'd lose your chance of this life (let alone your soul's salvation by the apostasy which you think lightly of now). Anyhow I'd wait if I was you till his mother asks you, for she'd be in an awful taking if you and he were talk, talk, talking of what she didn't understand. And he is her only son, and she is a widow."
With this last phrase, which had a good and Scriptural sound, Smith had done.
Susannah gave him her hand in farewell, and listened gently while again he told her, as on the night of his flight from Kirtland, that his friendship and the friendship of his Church were always at her service.
The prophet walked down the street. A crowd of the Saints and a group of elders were waiting for him with impatience. Darling eyed his coming with looks gloomy and furtive, but the prophet was no longer, as on the previous night, wrathful and pompous. He spoke aside to Darling.
"I thought it right to tell our sister Susannah Halsey that her Gentile home had suffered bereavement. The uncle who has been as a father unto her is dead. I have been greatly exercised in grief for her," continued Smith, briefly and truly; and then he added, also with truth, but with subtle suggestion, "I cannot think that further dealing with that household could be of advantage to her, but having laid the matter before the Lord, I was made aware that we must seek the good of all our sisters not with regard to outward appearance or inclination of the eyes; therefore, Brother Darling, let your motive be lowly, not having respect unto persons," and he added with the simplicity of a child, "as mine is."
Susannah was left with the bad picture in her mind which Smith had sketched there. She saw herself cold to her husband, lacking in passionate motherliness to his child, eager for the society of another man not out of love but intellectual vanity, and cavilling also at all religion because faith had no good soil to rest in. She sat long on the window-sill of the empty room, looking at an uncultivated patch of ground that even in May had no beauty save for here and there the stirring of a weed in the damp scented earth. She was stunned to see her life limned in such lines, and the truth in the drawing made it at first seem wholly true.
But Fate had another messenger that morning more potent than the prophet. A girl came by on the road, stopped, looked at her window, and by some impulse such as moved the buds and birds, tripped nearer in the sunshine and offered a flower. It was a sprig of quince blossom, and the girl stood laughing on the threshold of life just as Susannah had stood when Ephraim first showed her the flower of the quince. The false lines in the picture drawn by Smith faded at the touch of the pink winged flowers. Her heart sprang into the truth.
The girl looked up to see the face of the schoolmistress flushed and shining with sudden tears.
"My dear," said Susannah gently, "when I was your age flowers were given to me, but I did not love them half enough."
The maiden tripped away, resolving at heart to heed the admonition, although she understood it very vaguely.
Susannah knelt down upon the floor behind the sill, pressing both hands upon her breast lest she should cry aloud.
"No! No! No!" she whispered, "I loved Ephraim, and it was because I left him that my heart closed up—because in insufferable pride and impatience I left him. Oh, my love, now I know that you loved me too." She rocked herself in a passionate desire for Ephraim's presence. The scene in the cold autumn wood at Fayette came back to her eyes and ears. She felt the very touch of his hand when he went. "Fool! fool!" she said, "foolish and wicked. If I Had not been proud, if I had not thought myself better than you and yours, I should have understood." For some unexplained reason her mind reverted now to Halsey and the child, and she wept for them as she had never wept before.
After these tears she stood up and stretched out her arms as if embracing a new life. Alas! around her were only the ugly walls of the poor unfurnished room. Susannah, rousing herself from the warm scenes of quickened memory, felt the contrast.
The hope of Ephraim's reply to her letter came to her smiling each morning, and, as the days passed, retired from her heart with a sigh each night.
When six weeks had gone and no reply came Susannah wrote again. This time she addressed the letter to the care of Mr. Horace Bushnell in Hartford, thinking that perhaps by some extraordinary chance Ephraim's whereabouts might not be known in Manchester. This letter was, unlike all those that had preceded it, more brief, more reserved, and more gentle. It expressed interest only in his affairs, telling little of her own except the fact that she desired to return. Autumn came, and Susannah's faith in man was tested to the utmost by the dreariness of daily disappointment.
If Ephraim were dead surely his mother or his friend would return her letters. If Ephraim were not dead what could be the explanation of this silence? Many vicissitudes of life occurred to her as possibly producing a change in him, and only one explanation of his silence was possible—that he was changed. That was a terrible belief to face. Her faith took the bit in its teeth and refused to be guided by intelligence. The whole strength of her volition abetted the revolt of faith. Anything, everything, might be true rather than that the essentials of character which went to make up Ephraim's personality should be blurred or decomposed.
Susannah wrote again to Ephraim, to his mother and to Mr. Bushnell—three separate letters. She worked with the more zeal at her self-appointed task. So cheerful and energetic was she that she appeared to her pupils and acquaintance as a radiant being, and received the most genuine honour and affection from the Mormon settlement in Quincy.
With the jubilant Saints at Quincy the prophet could not remain long. He journeyed up the banks of the Mississippi. Here and there communities of his people welcomed him with touching joy; their numbers and their faithfulness must have raised his heart. He came at last to a poor, sickly locality, around which the great river took a majestic sweep, and here the prophet saw what no one else had seen—a site of great beauty and advantage. The inhabitants were dying of malarial fever. Smith bought their lands at a low price and drained them. Thus arose the beautiful city of Nauvoo.
In the Illinois State Legislature two parties were nearly equal in strength, and both coveted the Mormon vote. When Smith applied for the city charter, for charters also for a university and a force of militia to be called "The Nauvoo Legion," they were granted, and worded to his will.
White limestone, found in great abundance near the surface of the earth, served as material for the public buildings and the better houses. Wooden houses, and even log huts, were washed with white lime. On three sides of the town the air of the beautiful river blew fresh and cool from its rippling tide; the surrounding land was fertile. Fortune certainly smiled upon the sect that had borne itself so sturdily under persecution. The prophet's laws had much to do with the prosperity; neither strong drink nor tobacco were admitted within the city limit; cleanliness and thrift were enforced.
The Saints in settlement in the town of Quincy and other places remained while they could obtain lucrative employment and thus transmit the larger tithes for the building up of their future home; but from the poorer settlements artisans and farmers flocked to Nauvoo. Thither also the missionaries scattered in the eastern States, in England, and in further Europe sent the bands of converts who had been kept waiting till a city of refuge was founded. It was not long, not many months, before fifteen thousand people were hurrying up and down the broad streets of the new city.
During the rise of Nauvoo, Emma Smith was living at Quincy in a small house with her three children. She was Susannah's best neighbour. The prophet's enormous activity was fully occupied with the new city and the care of the scattered Church, so that he could not visit his wife often. Each time he came he sent for Susannah to listen with Emma to the triumphant accounts that he gave of his present successes. He was all aglow with the resurrection of his Church, tender towards its renewed enthusiasm for himself, compassionate more than ever for the pains it had endured; fixed in purpose to establish his suffering and loyal people in such a manner as might reward them for all that they had undergone. His spirit of revenge against the Gentiles, and especially against the perverts from his own sect who had sought to trample it down, was also increased; the prayers of the Hebrew Psalmist against the enemies of Israel were constantly upon his lips. More than once when at Quincy he preached to the little flock there with great effect from the blessings and cursings conditionally delivered to Israel in the Book of Deuteronomy, arguing that evils of a very material kind were to befall apostates, and blessings of a like kind were to be given to the faithful in the new city.
"It is not true," Susannah said to him defiantly. "There is no righteousness in desiring the downfall of your enemies, and earthly wealth can never have any fixed connection with spiritual blessing."
"Do I understand you, my sister, to say that the prophet Moses did not teach a true religion?" As he spoke he laid his hand upon a huge copy of the Bible, bound in velvet and gold, which lay as the only ornament upon Emma's centre table.
In these days Susannah began to have some fear of the word "apostate." Contrary to the freedom which had existed in the Kirtland community, the present Church, with its dogmas cast into iron moulds from the furnace of persecution, had begun to authorise a sentiment against perverts which differed not only in degree, but in kind, from the purely spiritual anathemas which had formerly fallen upon them. Personally she had no fear. The prophet knew of her unbelief, and his conduct was increasingly kind and deferential, but for others she disliked exceedingly the new symptoms of tyranny. Yet it was but natural, she admitted; men who had offered their own lives in sacrifice for a creed were likely to think it of more worth to the soul of another than his liberty. The sin, she thought, lay chiefly with the persecutors.
Sometimes during these visits Smith came and sat beside her in her own small room and talked to her about his plans, about new revelations which had come to him, about the future of the Church, just as if he were trying to persuade himself that she at last believed in the solemn importance of these things. He said to her that her judgment would always weigh greatly with him, that he was reserving a portion for her in the new city such as would have belonged to her husband and child if they had lived. He spoke of his pleasure in seeing the companionship between herself and Emma. He spoke also of Emma's worthiness, and of her devotion to himself.
His words about Emma were kind, but it was not thus that he had spoken of her in the first years. Susannah perceived a change analogous to that which she could not deny had taken place in Emma herself. In the beginning Emma had been slim, with a spiritual look in her eyes, giving herself to absorbed pondering over all Smith's words and ways. Now she was stout, and was given much to the practical care of her children, and, devoted as she was to her husband, she assumed often a tone of remonstrance, setting aside many of Smith's vagaries as unworthy of attention. She thought to please him and his Church by dressing well and appearing to be a person of some figure and consequence, but in private she grumbled at his personal extravagance. At both these changes Susannah smiled, but to her heart, ever weighing the chances in favour of Ephraim's constancy, they seemed an ill omen. It was because she was absorbed in the personal application of all things to her own secret case that she paid less attention to the prophet's remarks.
Once, passing through the street, when she saw him standing with Darling at the door of the tithing office, through which the mail for the Mormon settlement still went and came, she observed the two men were noticing and speaking of her; she received a disagreeable impression from their manner.
She supposed that she had found a complete explanation of this sinister parley when, the next time Smith came, he brought with him an elderly and foolish man, a new convert who had brought great wealth to the new city, whom he proposed as a suitor for Elvira's hand. Susannah was very angry.
Elvira had continued for many months in the lassitude that malarial fever leaves behind it. Susannah had need to support her, as well as herself, by the small fees which her day-scholars could afford. She had had the satisfaction of seeing Elvira restored in a great degree to health, but so capricious and fantastic were the bright little lady's words and actions that it was impossible to say whether or not she had slipped across the wavering line that separates the sane from the insane.
Susannah stood now in her small sitting-room fiercely facing Smith and his new satellite. She still adhered to the plain Quaker-like garb that her husband had liked, and the muslin kerchief crossed upon her breast was a quaint pearl-like frame to the beauty of feature which had slowly but surely, in spite of adverse circumstance, come to its prime. Smith's stalwart figure and the decrepit form of his friend were both clad in sleek broadcloth. They wore the high white collar and stock of the period. In Smith's light hair there was not a gray thread, nor were there many wrinkles in his smooth forceful face. The old man was gray and wrinkled; he cringed and leered as Susannah rated them for the proposition they had made.
But the answer to this proposition did not lie in her hands; before she could compel Smith to withdraw it, or know if his mind was tending towards that obedience, Elvira, curious to see the strangers, entered.
Elvira raised a coquettish finger and told Smith that he was a very naughty man. This was a new freak in her conduct toward the prophet. Light and frivolous as she had become, the title of prophetess, coveted among Mormon women, had been conferred upon her because some strange power of divination governed her freaks.
"A very naughty man." With her delicate prettiness, decked in what gewgaws she could afford, Elvira stood shaking her forefinger. "You don't know why? Oh, fie! you know very well, naughty, naughty creature."
Smith had the air of some unwieldy animal trying to adapt itself to the unexpected gambols of a light one. The first supposition was that Elvira had in some way learnt the object of his mission, so he began to declare it with a reproachful look at Susannah. "Our sister Halsey," he said, "does not wish you to wear jewels and beautiful clothes, and yet it is said in the Scripture that the clothing of ladies should be even of wrought gold."
"Naughty creature," she cried, "don't quote the Scriptures to me. I am not the lady you are thinking about. I am not the lady that you come here to see."
So intent they all were upon her and her affairs that this statement was somewhat puzzling. The only sign that Smith gave that he gathered any sense out of the vivacious nonsense she was pleased to talk was that he precipitated his explanation.
The brother by his side was very rich; it had been foretold him in a vision of the night that when he had professed the Mormon faith a pretty wife would be his reward. Smith had had it borne in upon his mind that Elvira was the lady designed by the vision. "For," said he unctuously; "the Holy Scripture saith that the solitary shall be set in families."
Elvira laughed. "How very amusing," she cried. "And into what family shall our sister Susannah be set?"
Smith frowned. "Our sister Susannah," he said, "is not solitary, but is surrounded by her spiritual children, to whom she imparts her own learning and goodness, to the great benefit of the Church; and I cannot but think, Sister Elvira"—the severity in his voice was growing—"that you are a great care to her, for she toils hard to give you even such poor raiment as you are now wearing, not wishing to accept of the bounty of the Church, while she would be an example of industry to others."
The hard truth of this statement, combined with the commanding voice and manner he now assumed, controlled Elvira. She stood for some minutes meekly contemplating her senile and smirking suitor. Susannah protested and warned her, but in caprice, as sudden as it was unexpected, Elvira decided to comply with the prophet's request without further persuasion or command.
When left alone with Susannah she only shrugged her shoulders and said, "I saw that I should lose my soul if I didn't; the prophet was so determined. Why should we bicker and consider, and why should I fly round and round, like a bird round the green eyes of a cat, or try to escape half a dozen times like a mouse when it is once caught, when I know from the beginning that Joe Smith will curse me if I don't do his will?"
"You are quite mistaken. He was not determined; he told me that he only wished to lay the matter before you and let you decide for yourself."
Elvira let her white eyelids droop until but a narrow slit of the dark eye was visible. "La! child," she said.
"And you cannot seriously think that Smith's curse, even if he were barbarous enough to denounce you, could make the slightest difference to your soul's salvation. You often talk that way, but you cannot seriously think it, Elvira."
But here Susannah struck against a vein of darkness in her companion's mind which it seemed to her had lain there like a black incomprehensible streak since the awful day of anguish and massacre at Haun's Mill.
"Don't speak of it," cried Elvira with a shudder. "Don't you know that Joe Smith is our prophet, and that he holds the keys of life and death? Didn't Angel Halsey die to teach us that? Weren't we baptized into it by being dipped in blood?"
She sat shuddering in the dusk and repeating at intervals "dipped in blood," "dipped in blood."
Whether Elvira was mad or not, Susannah had no power to stop this nefarious marriage. The prophet had departed hastily out of reach of her indignant appeals, and there was no one whose interference she could seek. In vain she besought Elvira, using both argument and passionate entreaty. With precipitate waywardness the strange girl was married by Elder Darling, in the shed of the tithing house.
No letter came from Ephraim Croom or from his friends.
After Elvira's departure Susannah began to save out of her little income, trying to put by enough dollars not only for the eastern journey, but to give her respectable support afterwards until she could obtain employment. She had little heart for the object of her saving; she might, she knew, be going to ignominy and starvation, for with the stigma of Mormonism upon her, she felt that it was unlikely that she would be received with credit in any town where she was friendless and unknown.
Although the community prospered greatly, Smith did not again interfere to increase Susannah's school fees. Emma began to talk largely of the splendour of Nauvoo, reading from her husband's letters of the Nauvoo House, a huge hotel, which was being rapidly and grandly built for the perpetual occupation of himself and family and the entertainment of all such as the Church of the Saints should delight to honour.
Susannah found it hard to understand why Emma was not taken to Nauvoo even before the great house was built for her reception. It was indeed commonly reported among the Gentiles at this time that the prophet had secretly espoused other wives; but a malignant report of this nature, together with accusations of drunkenness and rank dishonesty, had persistently followed the sect from its beginning, and, as far as Susannah knew, were now, as before, totally untrue. This special report, however, reached Emma in an hour of depression, and she came to Susannah for sympathy, shaken with grief and indignation.
"What does it mean that they always say that of him when the one thing that he's done has been to excommunicate any of the brethren that taught any such thing? And there's just been an awful row on in the Council of Nauvoo against Sydney Rigdon and some pamphlet he's written on a doctrine he calls 'Spiritual Wives,' and Joseph has risen up and cast him out, even though he was his best friend."
The reason of the calumny seemed to Susannah clear enough; it was a natural one for low-minded politicians who hated Smith to formulate, and the religious world outside thought they were doing God service by believing any ill of a blasphemer; but this charge was an old one, and she probed further to-day for the real cause of Emma's excitement. She was first given a letter in which Smith told of Rigdon's excommunication.
"Rigdon's doctrine," wrote Smith, "is a vile one because it is held by the whole sect of Perfectionists which are now scattered through the Churches of the eastern States, and is a proof that the glory of the Lord is departed from them, for they say that a man may be married to one wife in an earthly manner, and she who is to be his in a spiritual and eternal manner may be another woman, and this is vile; therefore I've cast out Sydney Rigdon and called him apostate. But it seems to me in this matter and in the perpetual slander of the Gentiles it may be that it is being shown to us, even as things were shown by outward signs at times to the ancient prophets, that there is somewhat concerning the existing form of marriage that it would be well to reconsider, for I perceive that the more my revelations cause a difference to be set between our people and the Gentiles, the more shall we be bound closely together, which unity is undoubtedly of the Lord."
Susannah always found it difficult to gather much information from the prophet's vague and incoherent style. "Has he ever written anything else about this affair of Rigdon's?" she asked.
Then it transpired that another letter had that day arrived, giving another and more graphic account of Rigdon's rebellion and overthrow, after which Joseph inconsistently wrote:
"Yet with regard to the matter of his heresy it remains undoubtedly true for men who are called to some great and special work one woman may be needed as a bride upon earth and another woman may be called as a spiritual bride" (this word "bride" was crossed out, though left legible enough, and "guide" written above it) "to lead him into higher and heavenly places prepared of the Lord for this purpose."
After perusing this passage carefully, and with inward laughter at its inconsistency, she gave the letter back, endeavouring to render some help.
"Have you not observed that your husband's mind is very peculiar? When any idea is forcibly suggested to him, all his thoughts seem to eddy round it until he thinks that the whole world is to be revolutionised by it, and then when diverted to something else he forgets all about it like a child, and never thinks of it again perhaps for years."
Emma, unable to comprehend the analysis, drew back offended.
"Joseph has a great deal finer mind than any person I know." The last words were levelled with a nettled glance at Susannah.
On Emma's behalf Susannah confidently hoped that the prophet would forget this theory, as he had apparently forgotten the many theories which had ere now proposed themselves to his excitable brain, and which he had found unworkable. His practical shrewdness acted as a critic on his visionary notions—never in thought, for he did not seem able to exercise the two phases of his mind at once, but always in practice—and Susannah could not conceive that a new order of marriage would appear feasible, even though it would certainly raise a new barrier around the fold, and in consequence draw its votaries closer together.
Soon after this Emma was greatly comforted by a summons to Nauvoo. She could now enter in triumph upon the more glorious stage of her chequered career.
For a few days Susannah worked on still with a sense of mission towards her pupils, but of necessity also, for her work meant daily bread. It produced little more than that.
But at Nauvoo new schools in emulation of the State schools of other towns had been set up, and now a teacher with certificates of the latest style of education arrived in the Mormon settlement at Quincy, commissioned by the prophet to gather all the Mormon youth there into a new school under the direction of the Church. Susannah's mission and her means of livelihood were alike gone.
The change was made. It was not until Susannah had passed the first desolate day of her dethronement that Darling came to her, sent with profuse apologies from the prophet and the explanation that the chief motive of the change had been to relieve her from labour now that the Church was in a position to offer her adequate support. The message was accompanied by many compliments upon her work and her fidelity, and a document officially signed, in which it was set forth that the part and lot which would have pertained to Halsey in the Holy City was considered as hers; rooms and entertainment at the Nauvoo House were offered. It was handsomely done. Smith in his poverty had been no niggard, and of his wealth he was lavish. The documents explained what rooms, size and position given, should be hers, what furniture at her disposal, what ailment, what allowance from the Treasury for clothing and charity. The scale was magnificent. Darling was also commissioned to offer her a ticket on one of the river boats to Nauvoo, and his own escort. He urged her instant acceptance. Darling had been promoted from his post at Quincy to that of postmaster at Nauvoo, and he could not delay his journey.
Susannah sat long into the night and counted her little hoard, and figured to herself what the long-eastward journey, then a matter of great expense, would cost. Since Elvira left her she had with all her efforts saved hardly fifty dollars. No course lay open to her but to go first to Nauvoo, and there compound with Smith for a sum of money to be given in return for the relinquishment of all further claim upon the Church.
In a suite in the pretentious Nauvoo House Susannah found herself established.
She stood at her windows and looked east and west upon the fair white city, and more immediately upon the broad public square in which well-dressed people and handsome equipages were constantly seen. In this square a man called Bennet drilled the Nauvoo Legion in the cool of the evenings. This man had served in the regular army and had a native genius for soldiery. Smith, alive always to the educational importance of shows, now provided money lavishly for uniforms, horses, and accoutrements, and the Nauvoo Legion formed a much grander spectacle than any body of State militia.
Twice a day under Susannah's windows Smith's carriage drew up, a pair of fine gray horses carrying the prophet to and fro upon the affairs of Church and State. When he took Emma with him Susannah observed that she was always richly attired, and the other members of the Mormon hierarchy resident in Nauvoo, "bishops," "elders," "apostles," "prophets," passed constantly in and out of the house, positively shining in broadcloth and silken hats, their wives and daughters also in brilliant array.
Externally the success appeared to be complete, and beyond even the visionary's most glorious dreams. In the whole of the city no one was poor, no one ignorant of such knowledge as school-books could afford, no one drunken. Every one was uplifted and animated beyond their ordinary capacity for effort and enjoyment by this material fulfilment of prophecy and the more glorious future hope which it involved. Susannah was not well rested after her journey when Emma descended upon her with lavish gifts of silks and fine feathers. Emma, grown patronising with prosperity, always plain and maternal, displayed her gifts and argued for their acceptance with broad satisfaction.
"Joseph says now that the Lord has given us freedom as touching wealth and plenty, it looks real mean, when your husband gave all he had to the Church in her tribulation, for you to be wearing plain clothes when you're riding out with us. What will the folks say? Joseph says it looks to him as if you were real offended at being left so long up to Quincy when he was only waiting to get your rooms finished."
Carried away, as was only natural, by her husband's doctrine that the era of indulgence was ordained and not to be rejected, there was temporary deterioration in the fibre of Emma's character.
Susannah would gladly have walked out and seen the beauty of the city and its surroundings alone, but she did not think it kind or polite to resist the good-natured importunity of her friends. She was invited to drive with Smith to a grand review of the Nauvoo Legion which was to take place outside the town; then, finding that Emma and the children were to occupy another carriage, she made objection. It ended in Susannah being driven alone in a very fine carriage. Smith, resplendent in uniform and seated upon a very fine charger, rode in his capacity of Commander-in-Chief. Several other men whom she had known first in homespun, and latterly in cloth, were also riding in bedizened uniforms. The scene was very perplexing to Susannah. Elvira, with great display of dress and equipage, was not far from her, and waved her hand with patronising encouragement. The coach in which were Emma and her children presented also a very smart appearance. All the town drove to the scene of the review in what splendour they could afford.
Susannah was greatly occupied in looking from face to face, striving, to recognise some of her husband's friends of earlier days. She fully expected to see Smith or some of his friends fall from their saddles, as they could be little accustomed to manœuvring such light-footed steeds, but she was forced to admit that Smith rode well and his officers kept their seats. She had so much to observe, so much to think about, she hardly noticed that Smith rode constantly by her carriage, pointing out the beauties of the road.
When they stopped at the place of parade, many of the gentlemen in uniform approached her, and as this was her first appearance in public, Smith performed the introductions. Among them was the Rev. General John Bennet, a man who had "knave" written on his countenance, but who appeared to have duped Smith, for, as Lieutenant-General of the forces, he was actually in command. Her old friend the Danite also came, older than when she had seen him last by the hardships of an arduous missionary journey. He passed now by the name of "Apostle Heber." Susannah was so glad to be able to inquire concerning his welfare, so curious to speak with him again and judge of his development, that her manner gained the appearance of animation.
After some time Susannah perceived that she was, as it were, holding court. In their carriages the other women sat comparatively neglected. It was in vain that she tried to put a quick end to this curious and undesirable state of things. Smith continued to bring to her side all those whom he delighted to honour.
And this was only one of several fêtes which took place in rapid succession, to all of which Susannah was by some persuasion taken. At each she found herself an object of public attention. She was told that this occurred because she was a stranger, or out of respect to her husband's memory, and she placed more trust at first in these statements than a less modest or more worldly-wise woman would have done.
Soon her credulity ceased. She despised her own beauty because it was made a gazing stock. An article in the Nauvoo newspaper, officially inspired, spoke of her as a "Venus in appearance and an angel at heart." She was elsewhere publicly mentioned as the "Venus of Nauvoo."
It was indeed a strange experience, a strange time and place for the socialdébutof this beautiful woman. Smith had calculated well when in her youth he had told her that her beauty would not diminish but increase until her prime was past, but she very modestly inferred that she might have passed, as heretofore, without much notice, if an agitation concerning her had not urged to admiration a band of men who were fast growing luxurious and pleasure-loving, and she knew that Smith was the author of that agitation.
It appeared to Susannah more dignified to ignore than to upbraid. She secretly laughed, she secretly cried with vexation, but she desired to leave the place without betraying her recognition of the homage offered.
She sought to discuss her plan for departure with Emma, but Emma's manner had changed to her. It was not jealousy so much as constraint that she showed, as if secretly persuaded into unusual reticence. Susannah then asked Smith for such a sum of money as he should consider to be a right acknowledgment of the property Halsey had given to the Church. At this Smith looked greatly aggrieved, and withdrew muttering that he would consider her request.
The only sign of this consideration which she immediately received was a gift of showily-bound books, and a rich shawl which he had fetched from New York.
Susannah's career as the queen of Nauvoo society came to a swift end, for she determinedly retired into seclusion. This was not because the men who paid court to her were all ignoble. Among the officers of the Church or of the Legion there were not few who were wholesome and friendly companions, or who, like her early Danite friend, the Apostle Heber, had frank modest eyes, incapable of any enthusiasms that were not religious. But in her long companionship with Angel Halsey Susannah had had her soul deep dyed in a delicate hue of Quaker sentiment. She could not admit for a moment that conscious display of personal charm was consonant with dignity.
She again sought friendly intercourse with Emma.
"There ain't no use in opposing the Lord," said Emma excitedly. "If the Lord, as Joseph says, has given you beauty and wants to set you to be a star, or a Venus; or whatever he calls it, in Nauvoo, I don't see that there's any good your talking of going away. I guess the Lord'll have his own way."
Susannah remembered how before her marriage the bigness of the authority quoted had confused her as to the truth of the message. "Ah! Emma, Emma," she cried, taking the fat, comfortable hand in her own, "if in the first days I had offered a little more humility, a little more love, to those to whom I owed duty, I should never have believed what you told me about the 'Lord's way,' but I have learned by hard experience, and I do not believe you now, Emma." She spoke the name in quicker tone, as if recalling her companion to common sense. "Emma," she repeated the name with all the tenderness she could muster, "don't you know that it is better for me to go away—better for you, better forus all?"
But Emma was obstinately evasive. She seemed almost like one possessed by a hardened spirit, not her own. On the afternoon of that same day she bustled cheerfully into Susannah's room asking the loan of what money she had to meet a temporary call.
Susannah never had the slightest reason to suspect Emma's good faith and good nature. She gave her money without a thought.
The parlour which Joseph Smith had provided for Susannah was large and high. On its Brussels carpet immense vases of flowers and peacock's feathers sprawled; stiff and gaudy furniture was ranged round the painted walls; stiff window curtains fell from stiff borders of tasteless upholstery. Susannah, long ignorant of anything but deal and rag carpets, knew hardly more than Smith how to criticise, and her taste was only above his in the fact that she did not admire.
Smith came to reason with the rebellious woman.
Susannah no sooner saw him than she knew that he had come braced to try the conclusion with her. He sat himself before her in silence. His waistcoat was white, his neck-cloth white, his collar starched and high; his thick light hair was carefully oiled according to the fashion of the day, and brushed with curling locks upon the sides of the brow. At this critical hour Susannah observed him more narrowly than ever before. His smooth-shaven face, in spite of all his prosperity, was not so stout now as she had seen it in more troublous years; the accentuated arch of the eyebrows was more distinct, the beak line of the nose cut more finely. She noted certain lines of thickness about the nape of the neck and the jaw which in former years had always spoken to her of the self-indulgence of which she now accused him; yet she could not see that they were more accentuated. She had been schooling her heart to remember that Smith had been her husband's friend; Angel Halsey had loved him, had daily prayed for his faults and failings, and thanked God for his every virtue and success. Through the medium of these memories now Susannah looked upon him with the clearness of insight which the more divine attitude of mind will always give, the insight which penetrates through the evil and is focussed only on the good.
The prophet's breath came quickly, making his words a little thick. "Emmar tells me that you have some thoughts of wanting to leave us."
"You know that very well, for I have told you so myself. I want you to give me money for my journey. If I can I will repay it, as you well know; if not, I will take it instead of all this finery you offer."
He had folded a newspaper in his hand, and now he unfolded it. She was surprised to see that his hands trembled slightly as he did so, for she had seen him act in many a tragic scene with iron nerve.
"'Tain't often that the Gentile newspapers have a word of justice to say about us," he observed. "This is a number of the St. Louis Atlas. It seems there's one man on it can speak the truth." He gave forth the name of the newspaper as if expecting her to be duly impressed by its importance, and she looked at the outspread sheet amazed.
He went on, "There's an article here entitled, 'The City of Nauvoo. The Holy City. The City of Joseph.' I'd like to read it to you if you don't object, Sister Halsey."
The pronunciation of the last title seemed to inflate him; his hands ceased to tremble. A flicker of amusement lighted the gravity of Susannah's mind.
Joseph read, "'The city is laid out in streets of convenient width, along which are built good houses, and around every good-sized house are grounds and gardens. It is incorporated by charter, and contains the best institutions of the latest civilisation.'" He gave this the emphasis of pause. "Is that true. Sister Halsey, or is it not?"
She smiled as upon a child. "Yes, Mr. Smith, it is true."
"'Most conspicuous among the buildings of the Holy City is the temple built of white stone upon the hill-top. It is intended as a shrine in the western wilderness whereat all nations of the earth may worship, for on March 1, 1841, the prophet gave it as an ordinance that people of all sects and religions should live and worship in the City if they would, and that any person guilty of ridiculing or otherwise deprecating another in consequence of his religion should be imprisoned.' Is that true?" Smith inquired again. His questions came in the tone of a pompous refrain.
"Except in the case of those who have joined you and gone back from your doctrine," she said, but not thinking of herself.
He read on: "'Here, as elsewhere, Mr. Smith has attended first to the education of his people. The president of the Nauvoo University is Professor James Kelly, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and a ripe scholar; the professor of English literature is Professor Orson Pratte, a man of pure mind and high order of ability, who without early advantages has had to educate himself amid great difficulties and has achieved learning. The professor of languages is Professor Orson Spencer, graduate of Union College, New York, and of the Baptist theological seminary of that city. No expense has been spared upon school buildings for the youth of both sexes, and the curriculum is good.' Is that true?"
"Yes," she replied.
He read on: "'The population is made up chiefly from the labouring classes of the United States and the manufacturing districts of England. They have been grossly misunderstood and shamefully libelled. They are at least quite as honest as the rest of us, in this part of the world or any other. Ardent spirits as a drink; are not in use among them; tobacco is a weed which they almost universally despise. There is not an oath to be heard in the city; everywhere the people are cheerful and polite; there is not a lounger in the streets. Industry is insisted upon, and with the hum of industry the voice of innocent merriment is everywhere heard. Now, as to their morality, if you should throw cold water upon melted iron, the scene would be terrific because the contrast would be so great; so it is with the Saints; if a small portion of wickedness happens among them, the contrast between the spirit of holiness, and the spirit of darkness is so great that it makes a great up-stir and excitement. In other communities the same amount of crime would hardly be noticed.'" Again he asked, "Sister Halsey, does this evidence of an impartial witness coincide with your observation?"
"Of the people it is undoubtedly true," she said. There was a reservation in her mind concerning certain leaders in the Church, but she did not make it in words.
He read on: "'With a shrewd head like that of the prophet to direct, with a spiritual power like his to say "do" and it is done, what wonder that this thrifty and virtuous people should have made Nauvoo that which its name denotes—the Beautiful City, the home of peace and joy.'"
He laid down the newspaper upon the marble-topped table, his large hand outspread upon it. "My sister, why do you wish to leave this beautiful city? It is a place where each may have home and part and lot in its delights, but to youallits wealth and power and beauty is offered. Did I not say unto you, when as a beautiful damsel you gave up home and kindred for the sake of the Church, that you should be as a queen among its elect women, riding as in a carriage drawn by white horses and receiving the elect from among the nations?"
The recollection of the prophecy which he had delivered concerning her upon the desolate autumn road at Fayette brought with it another recollection—that of her parting with Ephraim the same morning—so vividly that her eyes filled with tears. Yet she marvelled too, with inquisitive recognition of the miracle, that the words of the visionary, then a beggar, should have been so nearly fulfilled.
"It is quite true, Mr. Smith, and very marvellous that what you promised me should almost be literally fulfilled. We have come to it, as you also foretold, by a path most terrible, and now we arrive at the consummation. We live in a palace, and at its doors pilgrims from England and all parts of Europe are arriving every day, and the richest of gowns, the grandest of carriages, and the whitest of horses are truly at my disposal. But there is one discrepancy between your vision and the fact—I will not wear the silk robes, nor welcome the pilgrims with the assurance that they have here reached the City of God. I will not because I cannot. I refuse to accept from the hand of God such paltry things as money and display, or even the honest affluence of our people, as compensation for the fire and blood through which we have waded. If there be a God who is the shepherd of those who seek him, this is not the sort of table that he spreads, this is not the cup which he causes to run over"—she had begun lightly, but her voice became more earnest. "Mr. Smith, we have walked through the shadow of death together; if you would be exalted in the presence of your enemies, have done with your childish delight in such toys."
Smith moved uneasily on his velvet-covered chair, and it, being of a rather cheap sort, creaked under his bulk.
"What says it in the end of the Book of Job, Sister Halsey? and what compensation did the Lord give for the sore temptations with which he had allowed the devil to tempt his servant? As I read, it was fourteen thousand sheep and six thousand camels, and—"
She gave him credit for knowing the passage by heart; she had the rudeness to interrupt. She rose and stood before him. All the long latent defiance which her heart had treasured against him found vent in her tone, "Very well, Mr. Smith, if that satisfied Job, it will not satisfy me."