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Lily Dougall - The Mormon Prophet

L >> Lily Dougall >> The Mormon Prophet




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.




_Book III._




CHAPTER I.


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 manoeuvring 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 fetes 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
social _debut_ of 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 for _us 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.

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