Lily Dougall - The Mormon Prophet

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"But it wasn't done, madam," he added hastily. "General Doniphan had the
pluck to stand out against it and say he would withdraw his troops, so
they put them in irons and sent them to the gaol in Richmond, and then
at the point of the bayonet they have forced the other leaders to bind
themselves to pay all the expenses of the war and to get every Mormon,
man, woman, and child, out of the State, or else they are all to be
shot. That is how the matter stands at present."

"Do you incur any risk by the hospitality you give to me?" asked
Susannah. She had not as yet had energy, even if she had had
inclination, to explain that the Book of Mormon was not sacred in her
eyes, nor Smith a prophet. "Do you think," she asked the old man
wistfully, "that the Mormons have ever been the aggressors, that they
have committed any of the atrocities they are accused of?"

"In some cases they have pillaged, and burned, and murdered; they
wouldn't be human if some of them hadn't got fierce under the treatment
they have been receiving; but when a man like Atchison, who has been
scouring the country and knows pretty well what has happened, prefers to
resign his honourable office rather than fight against them, you may be
sure they are not very far in the wrong. Injuries, you know, will always
set a few men mad. There is your elder, Rigdon, for instance; when he
got here and heard of some of the things your folks had suffered, he up
and made a wild oration on the 4th of July, and said that if any more
outrages were committed on the Mormons, the Mormons would up and
exterminate all the Gentiles in the State. But it has been well enough
seen by any one who had eyes to see that no such language was ever
countenanced by the real rulers of your sect."

When Susannah thanked the old man for his candour he drove his moral
once more. "You see, madam, I can look at things as they are because I
am not bound by any religion to look at them in any particular way."

Susannah rose up when the old man's story was ended, and stood for some
minutes looking wistfully out through the window panes upon the leafless
and storm-swept fields. They two were together in the long, scantily
furnished living-room at the end of the long table. Her figure was
stronger, more true in its proportions, than when she had been a girl.
Her hair, trained into smooth obedience, was fastened within the muslin
cap she had fashioned for herself, tied Quaker fashion under her chin.
Her face was very white, as if, having blanched with terror in the
tragedy of Haun's Mill, the life-blood had not as yet returned to it.

At last she said simply, "I thank you, sir."

The old man looked most approvingly at her form and at the subtle
witchery which the eagerness of imprisoned thought gave to reticent
features, at the depth of her blue eye. "I wish, my dear, that you could
see your way to give up your religion and remain with us."

"I thank you, sir," she said again, and went back to the household tasks
she had fallen into the habit of performing.

She was not eating the bread of dependence. In such a place, where
woman's work is at a premium, it was easy for her to do what was
reckoned of more value than what she received. The old man had two sons.
The elder and his wife were in the prime of life, having a large family;
the younger son was unmarried. The farm was large and prosperous. The
one woman, even had she been less amiable, would have naturally desired
to keep Susannah as a helper; being the kindly soul she was, she
reserved the more attractive tasks for her, and bade the children call
her endearing names. In her blindness, in her slow recovery from utter
exhaustion of mind and nerve, Susannah never thought of connecting this
long-continued kindness with the fact that the old man's younger son had
as yet no wife.

At first Susannah had fixed her thoughts upon an immediate return to the
east, but weeks went by and she had not written to Ephraim Croom for
the money that she needed. The whole civilised world contained for her
but one friend to whom she would write.

The Canadian farm, the remote country village of Manchester, and the
Mormon sect--these formed her whole experience. Her father, who had
scolded and played with her; Ephraim, who had understood her and had
been the authority to her heart that his parents could not be; her
husband, who had wrapped about her such close protection that she had
tottered when she thought to walk alone--these were her real world, and
of them only Ephraim was left.

It was not in her nature at any time, above all not in these stricken
months, to desire to go out into the world alone to make for herself a
sphere of usefulness and a circle of companions. Hence she thought only
of returning to Ephraim, and by his help obtaining some occupation by
which she could live simply and within his reach. But when she thought
more closely of throwing herself, as it were, penniless and desolate at
the feet of this one prized friendship, doubts arose about her path.

One thing which she had lost in the broken camp by her husband's grave,
one that if she had had greater power of recollection she would not have
left behind in that complete breaking with the past, was a packet of the
few letters which Ephraim had from time to time written to her. She did
not know whether she had thrown them into the grave with her treasure,
or whether they were left a prey to fire and theft, but in her heart she
had carried them beyond the loss of their material existence.

The first had answered her insistent question concerning the vexed
condition of the devotees of prayer. It contained no word of criticism
of the Mormon creed, nothing that if read aloud could have disturbed
Halsey's peace. "Perchance," he had said, "as a medical man applies a
poultice or blister to a diseased body to draw out the evil, so to those
who pray and are too ignorant, _i.e._ opinionated, to follow perfectly
the greatest teacher of prayer, God may apply circumstances to bring all
the evil of heart to the surface, that in this life and the future it
may the more quickly work itself away." Susannah had so conned this
passage that she could now close her eyes and read it as written upon
the red dusk of their lids.

The next letter had been written a year later. He described a great
change in his life. He had gone to spend the winter in Hartford, on the
Connecticut River, to be under a new physician, and had there met with a
preacher called Mr. Horace Bushnell. This acquaintance was evidently
much to Ephraim. Susannah had made some complaint of the harshness of
the divine counsel in which he asked her to believe; his answer was to
send her Bushnell's sermons on the suffering of God. Ephraim had added:
"When you went from us, Susy, would you ever have been satisfied if we
had detained you by force? Yet that is what you ask of God. If you were
right in going, let the circumstance prove it; if we were right, let it
appear by time. So says God; and his friendship has eternity to work in;
so also has every human friendship. Let us wait, but in faith." This
ending, somewhat enigmatical to her, had yet recurred to her heart so
often that she knew the words by heart.

The next letter had been written more recently, after a long interval.
At the end of this letter Ephraim had said, "I am persuaded that what we
need to help our faith is never more knowledge, but always more love. I
cannot interpret this but by telling you of a fact which I feel to be
the key to a great--the greatest--truth. I know a man who believed in
God. He met a woman whom he loved, not as many love, but (I know not
why) with all the loves of his heart, as father, as mother, as brother,
friend, might love; as lover he loved her with all these loves. After
that he knew God with a knowledge that passed belief. He could argue no
more, but he _knew_. This I think is the sort of knowledge which guides
unerringly." Susannah remembered, if not the words, all that this
passage contained. She had wondered at it not a little.

Up to the time of Angel's death she had rejoiced in these letters, not
doubting that Ephraim had remained the same self-sacrificing
friend--ready out of mere but perfect kindness to befriend her to the
uttermost. She had not doubted because she had not questioned. Now
disquieting thoughts intervened, producing a new shyness. She remembered
their last interview, and wondered if Ephraim would feel the same
responsibility for her if she returned destitute. Perhaps the ardour of
his friendship had cooled. Perhaps in the last letter he had intended to
suggest to her that he thought of marriage, and this time for love, not
kindness, the lady being one of his new Hartford friends.

But no doubt the principal reason of Susannah's dalliance with time in
those first weeks of her moral freedom was the mental weakness that
succeeds shock. Every day she thought that she would soon write that
begging letter, until the day came when opportunity ceased.

When the Danite left he had promised the farmer to return as soon as it
was possible to place Susannah in safety with her Mormon friends. When
she began to speak of leaving, her host told her this for the first
time.

"And what is the young man's name?" the old man asked of Susannah. They
were in the long living-room at the mid-day meal. His sons, who were
leaving the table, waited to hear the answer; the mother, the very
children, looked at her with interest.

"I do not know," said Susannah.

There was a pause, and for the first time she was aware that there was
some sentiment in the minds of her hearers which did not appear upon the
surface.

She went on, "I don't know why he should trouble himself to come back
for me except that--I think that he was much touched by some earnest
words my husband said to him that he did not see his way to accept, and
I think also that he is zealous for the Church."

Her surpassing wrongs had so far set her apart and made all that she
said and did sacred. No one questioned her further.

In the beginning of February the Danite reappeared. He came under the
cover of night, but showed himself only when the household was awake. He
was much thinner, more gaunt than before, but in frankness and quietude
the same. His first words to Susannah had an import she did not expect.

"That young lady you mentioned to me--I said she was dead because you
were half crazy, and would have gone back to her, but I worked round
till I found her; she got to the city of Far West right enough."

After a while he said, "That young lady and some other of our folks have
got horses and they're going into Illinois now. Most of our folks are
walking. It's about as bad as can be, but I guess you'll have to go.
We'll be safe enough, for as long as we go straight on the Gentiles are
bound to let us pass. I tried to get some better sort of a way for you
and her, but there ain't no way unless we would have sworn we weren't
Saints and gone pretending to be Gentiles, but even then we haven't got
the money."

Susannah was thrilled with excited distress. She was not prepared to
make an abrupt decision, and it appeared that if she desired to join
this company she must go that evening or not at all.

During the hours of the morning her mind cowered, dismayed. Should she
now renounce her husband's sect, refusing to suffer with them? She had
not as yet fortitude to do this. Halsey's eyes, the touch of his hand,
her baby's voice lisping the tenets of their faith in repetition of his
father's solemn tones, these were sights and sounds as yet too near her.
To her shocked fancy the child and his father were only gone out of
sight, but near enough to be cruelly hurt by her public perversion. And,
moreover, if she should take this course she must write to Ephraim at
once, for she could not well remain where she was without definite
purpose in view.

Susannah had sought seclusion in which to think, and the younger son of
the house intruded himself. He was perhaps about thirty years of age, a
burly man, resolute and passionate. He spoke fairly enough. The Danite
himself had said that the journey to which she was haled by her friends
was one of untold hardship, its end uncertain; he offered her all that
an honest and prosperous man could offer, but went on to urge on his own
behalf the strength of those sentiments which he had learned to
entertain for her--his admiration (Susannah sickened at the word), his
love (she shrank in fear).

She rose up with the moan of a hunted thing. She did not pause to make
excuses for the hunter, to consider the pioneer life that wots little of
sentiment in proportion to utility; she only saw again the grave at
Haun's Mill and the white faces of her dead upturned to hers. It seemed
that this man, with the consent of his people, was urging his suit as it
were beside the very corpse of her husband. The Danite had shown Angel
reverence, had shown by his every word and glance that he counted her as
belonging to the dead man whose blood he carried at his heart.

Susannah rode out from that temporary home at nightfall upon the
Danite's horse.

CHAPTER XIV.

It was the season of rain and sleet, of rude northerly winds. The roads,
across a tract of flat fields and in among the low woods that fringed
the rivers, were heavy with mud.

After riding half the night on a pillion behind the Danite, Susannah
entered the Mormon camp. Up and down the sides of a dirty road, in
waggons, in small tents, and in the open, men, women, and children were
lying huddled in family groups. How far these crowds extended she could
not see. Watch-fires were burning here and there, and in the fields on
either side a patrol of Missouri militia were heard scoffing and
shouting in the darkness. The Danite answered the challenge of one of
these men with apparent meekness; Susannah perceived that he had gained
in self-control. When they had entered the road, along the sides of
which the forlorn multitude lay, they travelled for some way upon it,
the Danite speaking in low tones now and then to the Mormon watchers. At
length they came to a place where a few waggons of better description
were standing and a number of horses were tied; here he lifted Susannah
from the horse. Three of the Mormon leaders came up; they evidently
knew her and her story. The eldest took her hand and spoke in broken
tones of the crown which Halsey had won in the unseen city of God.

These were the first words that Susannah had heard in unison with
Halsey's own thoughts, and for his sake they endeared the whole wretched
Mormon encampment to her.

A woman, her head and shoulders wrapped in a shawl, sprang down from one
of the waggons, and Elvira encountered Susannah.

"You expect me to say that I am sorry for you," she said hurriedly; "I
will not. It is not a time for grief. We each of us have just so much
power of being sorry and no more, and the well has gone dry. I am glad
you have come. There are a great many things that one can yet be a
little glad for; but you must make haste to lie down, for we shall soon
enough be called to the march."

The beds shaken down on the floor of the waggon were covered with
reclining women. Some of them squeezed themselves together to make the
place Elvira had vacated large enough for two. Susannah stretched
herself out, loathing with her senses the crowded bed, but with a tender
heart for her fellow-sufferers. After the long dumb weeks of her stern
sorrow, after that day's revolt of injured sentiment, she felt that it
was worth while to have come here if only to have made some one else, as
Elvira had said, "a little glad."

The dawn came sighing fitfully, long sighs that rose in the distant
fields to the east meeting them in their pilgrimage and dying away
westward; the dawn wept also, scattering her tears upon them in like
transient showers.

Elvira found her own horse. The Danite had used yesterday the animal he
had provided for Susannah.

"But what right have I to his horse?" Susannah began her question
impetuously, but Elvira silenced her.

"Hush! Don't let the other women know that it isn't yours. Poor things,
they will begin to ask why it isn't theirs. Do you think that we are
living on bowing terms, curtseying to each other and saying, 'After you,
madam, if you please'?"

Elvira was changed. Terror had at last done its work. Her pretty
features were drawn with anxiety; her eye glittered.

"I have been baptized," she said to Susannah in hard tones. "When I saw
the water red with blood I went down into it."

Eastward, facing the gusty sobs of the winter morning, they went. The
road was soft, and hundreds of feet treading in front of them had
kneaded water and earth together into a slippery mass. As far as could
be seen in front and behind, the line of the pilgrimage stretched, women
and children plodding with burdens on their backs, men pushing
hand-carts before them, only here and there a waggon or a group of
horses.

Elvira took up several children on her horse, and pointed out to
Susannah a sickly woman to whom she could give a turn upon the pillion
that she herself had ridden during the night. So they began one of many
weary days.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But Elvira was expressing with hysterical warmth the same sentiments.

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

Darling began to sing one of the inspiriting Mormon hymns.

"When Joseph to Cumorah came."

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

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

"How droll!" she returned.

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

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

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