Lily Dougall - The Mormon Prophet

L >> Lily Dougall >> The Mormon Prophet

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22

"This nation will find that there's a sequel to it that they won't laugh
at." These words of Darling came from some region underneath that of his
ordinary conversation, as a man takes a dagger from under his cloak and
lets it flash ere he hides it again. "The government of these United
States that has laughed at our sufferings will rue the day."

"Even your saying that is very droll, but I love you for it." Elvira
lifted both her hands as if testifying to her own sincerity. "I love you
for it."

The elder thought it needful here to be again jocose. "Oh, come now, I
am married."

Elvira did not feel herself insulted. "These United States," she cried,
"they cackle over the word 'freedom' like so many hens that have each of
them laid an egg and go strutting and boasting while the housewife
empties their nests. The housewife represents the natural course of
events, and in this case her name is 'Mrs. Mobocracy.'"

At other times, after a long period of silence, Elvira would burst forth
in excited soliloquy audible to Susannah and others about her. On the
last day when they were descending the hills to the Mississippi her
increasing excitement culminated in a greater demonstration. The sun was
shining, and a clear frost had hardened the roads. Elvira broke forth
thus--

"It is Joe Smith who is conducting this march. We say that he is lying
in gaol," she laughed. "In gaol is he? Have they got him safe? But it
was he who taught all these men to work together, one under the other,
and none of them kicking; and it was he who taught these women and
children to do as they are bid--a wonderful thing that in the land of
the free. It was he who taught one and all of us to be kind to each
other, to the poor and the sick and the young, to the very beasts. Do
you remember that when they caught our prophet at Hiram and dragged him
out to be beaten and insulted, they had first to take from his arms a
sick motherless baby that he was sitting up all night to nurse? Do you
remember how he gave commandment about the animals? how he said that any
man striking a beast in anger was thrown so far back on his road to
heaven?" She paused when she had thrown out this question, and the men
and women within hearing answered in broken chorus, "Yes, blessed be the
Lord; we do remember."

"And who was it that taught us to give up the filthy Gentile habits of
strong drink and tobacco?" (Again in the pause the chorus of
thanksgiving to Heaven was heard.) "It was Joe Smith," Elvira cried more
loudly. "And when the Gentiles thought that we would be scattered and
separated and ruined, his spirit has gone like a banner before us.
Twice they have taken our lands that we bought with our own money and
cleared with our own hands, and the houses that we have built, and cast
us out destitute, but we are not destroyed."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XV.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Is he well?" she asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XVI.

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.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22