Lily Dougall - The Mormon Prophet

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"Be quiet." Her words fell sharp and quick in the midst of his gentle
tones. "Make arrangements at once for me to go peaceably, or I will go
out, if need be, to the middle of the Square and proclaim my wrongs, so
that every woman and child in Nauvoo shall know what comes of trusting
to you."

She had chosen her threat carefully. She knew well that he understood
the force of object lessons, and that to have even a suspicion against
his kindness, bred in the minds of the children would be exquisite pain
to him.

"You know that I wouldn't like that, Sister Halsey; but when you come to
think of it you'll see that it wouldn't serve your turn neither. It
would only need for a few of us to say you was crazy and the whole town
'ud see the more reason for not letting you go. Moreover, it would be a
monstrous injustice to me. When have I failed to do anything that I ever
promised you? Did I ever promise to let you apostatise? I guess, Sister
Halsey, that you're excited, and if you just think over things for a day
or two you would see that we're not so bad as you think. But, anyway,
this ain't just the place for us to have a talk together."

When Smith moved on to lead her back to her own rooms, she followed
quietly until they stood together in her parlour, the scene of their
last quarrel.

"And now," said Susannah, "you understand very well that it is no sudden
intention of mine to go, that it is my irrevocable decision. I have this
morning had my very life threatened; and I see now that unless you
command that it should be respected I should very possibly be in danger
if I went away alone. You have offered again and again to drive me in
your carriage; I will accept the offer now. Get out your own horses, and
drive me yourself to Carthage."

She saw a look of faint pleasure steal over his face. He liked to stand
there in the quiet room listening while she spoke with some evidence of
trust. The pleasure faded into embarrassment, but she had seen it.

"You have a good and a bad nature struggling within you, Mr. Smith. By
all that we have suffered, you and I, since the day that by some
mysterious power you forced me to come to your baptism" (she stammered
in her eagerness), "by all that we have suffered, by that sympathy which
we have at times felt for one another, assert yourself now. Do this one
right thing for me, and in all the future I will try to remember only
the good in your life and not the bad."

But he stood so long still looking steadfastly before him that she began
to fear that, unnerved by his last night's fit of fury, he was ready to
pass into one of those visionary trances which had been common in his
younger days.

She touched the sleeve of his coat. "I do not know if Mr. Heber's threat
could be serious, but it frightened me, and I know that I shall be safe
on the road to Carthage if you take me. Go, get your horses and take me
away yourself."

He looked at her pitifully, slipping into the style of his religious
moods. "Thou sayest truly, sister, that there is none but I who could do
this thing, for since in mine anger last night, fearing that I had no
strength of my own to keep thee by me, I denounced thee to the council,
there is no safety for thy life beyond the boundary of Nauvoo." He
winced here, as if seeing what he suggested.

Noting how the idea of her violent death wrung his heart, she went on
pleading with him. She quoted the exalted character of his early
visions, reminding him of the hour when the angel had shown him the dark
furnace of temptations through which he must pass. At this he was
visibly stirred; the angelic vision of warning seemed to be again before
his eyes. He roused himself, speaking in that tone of voice in which,
when he rarely used it, she recognised his best spirit. "Sister, thou
hast always been to me as Isaac to Abraham; for in the beginning when I
was poor and alone and had nought in the world save the revelation which
the Lord had given, and was tempted to doubt, then I saw thee and prayed
that thou shouldst be given me for a sign; and behold when I put forth
my whole strength to desire thee, thou didst come as a moth to the
light, burning thy beautiful wings of youth and joy. But I said, 'It is
well, for that which she has lost shall be restored to her with usury,'
and I knew in my heart that our brother Angel Halsey would not live
long, and that thou wouldst forget thy sorrow for him. But I swear unto
thee that thou hast never been to me as other women, but, as I said unto
thee just now, like the voice of the angel."

She never knew how far he was entirely under his own control when the
tendency to a state of trance was upon him, but she was anxious to take
advantage of the better mood.

She said, "And now what is required of you is that you should give me
up. No blessing" (she spoke strongly), "no blessing can come to you or
to your people until you do this one right thing."

He was again looking not at her but at the blank space of the shadowed
wall, and as if the wall was not there and his look went far beyond it.

"You have loosened the bloodhounds and set them on my track," she cried.

He did not speak.

"You--you alone will be guilty of my murder, for, I tell you, if you do
not take me, I will go alone and meet my death."

His head sank upon his breast with a groan such as a dumb creature in
the utmost pain might give. Almost immediately, to her surprise, he went
out.

She was left alone. She was under the impression that Smith had gone to
do her bidding, but she could not be sure. No faith in angelic vision,
no spell of psychic warfare, relieved the situation for her. The
external evidences of some crisis which he had undergone only produced
in her repulsion. Now, as ever since the temporary delusion that
accompanied her baptism, Susannah endeavoured to possess her soul free
from that sense of touch with mysterious powers which had worked such
havoc with the sanity of the members of this sect.

From the window she saw the prophet crossing the road in the direction
of his stables. He went, it was true, with slow, dreamy gait, but
steadily. Strange mixture that he was of sanity and shrewdness,
mysticism and grosser evil, he was at that moment her only star of hope.
She paced the room unable to forecast the happenings of the next hour,
yet supposing that her very life depended upon its content. The sudden
joy that had come to her this morning joined with her fear, and produced
panic of heart.

She computed the time it might take to harness the gay steeds, and tried
to give the rein of her expectation the utmost length. To her delight
she saw the prophet's horses and the light vehicle he drove upon long
journeys emerge into the square. A servant led them up and down. At
length she saw Smith returning, not with hasty steps, but as if against
his will, walking again through the crowded place like a man in a dream.
Men greeted him, but for once he gave no sign of seeing them. She heard
his footstep on the stair. When he reached her door he almost fell
against it in the opening, and staggered as he entered the room as if
his self-control had just lasted so far. He knelt down by one of the
fashionable marble-topped tables with which he had graced her room, and,
like an ill-conditioned soul, burst into tears and broken complaints.

"But I cannot do it," he gasped. "I cannot."

In her hour of miserable waiting Susannah had thought of many things
that might occur, and nerved herself to meet them, but this distemper of
soul, this failure of will in the man who had been undaunted through
years of persecuting torture, was so wholly unexpected that she stood
aghast.

He clenched his hands as they lay helpless on the white table. "O Lord!"
he cried, and she could not tell from the tone whether the words were
oath or prayer. "O Lord, I cannot let her go." His thick tears muffled
his voice, and still again and again during the paroxysm she caught the
words as if reiterated in choking anger, "O Lord, I cannot."

His tears, however evil their source, laid hold of her woman's
sensibility; she was no longer a critical observer. She no longer set
aside his strange inward conflict as a delusion of madness. She
participated in his consciousness so far as to think that she was
actually witnessing the despair of a soul repulsing an opportunity of
righteousness, and yet not so far dead as not to know its worth. She
tried to speak, but found herself, as at other times, so affected by
his overlapping emotion that she was trembling and had neither courage
nor voice.

Smith lifted his head, looking with terror into vacant spaces of the dim
room, as if following with his eyes some menacing form. He whined
piteously. "I have purposed to be faithful"; he put up his hand as if to
ward off a blow. "Thou knowest! thou knowest!" His voice was like a
whispering shriek. The terror of his face and gestures was appalling to
see.

Susannah was infected with fear of an apparition so evidently visible to
him. Her mind swung, as it were, out of material limitations. She was
overcome with the belief that a third person was with them, and her
heart went out in gratitude to that mysterious other for taking her
part.

But the gilt clock on the marble mantelshelf ticked on; Susannah felt
herself aware that the person of Smith's vision was withdrawing,
repulsed. She almost cried aloud to the invisible, but checked the
prayer, holding on, as it were, to her own sanity with both hands. Smith
writhed continually, moaning.

When at length she succeeded in telling him faintly that if he refused
this opportunity he must fall lower and lower and lose even the desire
for good, she found that her words had no longer any power to influence.
He had passed beyond into some region of outer darkness, where the
things of sense did not seem to penetrate, and where, if the actions of
his body were the expression of his soul, there was literally "wailing
and gnashing of teeth."

But Susannah hovered over him, not so much angry as pitiful, her own
agony of mere physical sympathy increasing. Terrified to be near him,
too compassionate to withdraw, she watched till at last the veins in his
hands and his face became swollen and knotted. She was unwilling to lose
the hope of her sole influence over him, and yet was about to call for
help, when almost suddenly he seemed to become conscious of his
surroundings again and shake himself free from the distress.

In a little while he was sitting on one of the chairs, wiping his purple
face and swollen eyes with the large silken pocket-handkerchief that was
one of the signs of his recent opulence. She saw the large ring on his
swollen finger gradually loosen, and the hand return to its normal shape
and colour. She felt convinced that his pulses had gone back to their
common flow, because his whole volition had returned peacefully to its
low ambitions and self-indulgence. She knew instinctively that it was
not thus opulent and fierce that he would have looked had he come out on
the other side of his temptation. She stood, outwardly patient, waiting
helpless till he should speak.

"Sit down, sister," he panted condescendingly. He was fanning himself
with the handkerchief now, as a man might who felt injured by undue
heat in the atmosphere.

Her refusal was concise and severe.

He looked at her boldly, with no apprehension now in his eyes, not even
the former conciliatory desire to receive her with fair words. She felt
appalled. Could it be that his angel in deserting him had deserted her?
Was there a devil strong enough to give her to him? It was perhaps only
his belief which overshadowed hers, it was perhaps only, as she thought,
a sickness of nerve but the impression that unseen personalities had
been contending here was stronger upon her even than her anger and fear.

Smith got up and went to the window. His horses and buggy were still
parading.

"I guess I've changed my mind," he said. He did not care, it seemed, to
delude her, but he must still deceive himself. "I couldn't go against
the voice of the church council to that extent; it wouldn't be safe for
you or me; and besides, 'tisn't the Lord's will that you should go."

She recoiled, looking at him in steady reproach.

"Well, as I said before, I guess you can think it over for a few days."
This was his easy answer to her look, and he went out, slamming the
door.

CHAPTER V.

When that day began to wane Susannah was still sitting in the empty
curtained room. No plan which offered even a fair hope of escape had
occurred to her mind. Although in pictures of adventure her imagination
had been fertile, throwing out suggestions unbidden, her judgment would
have none of them. No one disturbed her. She was left in isolation, a
prey to dismal thoughts.

She saw the happy crowds dispersing in the Square from evening
recreation. There was nothing to hinder her from joining them. Sometimes
her sense of imprisonment seemed only a morbid dream, for on all sides
of the fair white city there was open ingress and egress for the
faithful and the stranger. It was hard to believe that at wharfs and on
the high roads fanatics watched for her, and yet after Smith's reluctant
avowal she dare not doubt it.

She saw evening fade over the broad semi-circle of the river, over the
multitude of cheerful homes that sloped to its edge. When darkness came
she found herself more than ever pressed and tormented by the grim
shapes of fear and remorse and despair. She had terrible reason to
fear, and felt as never before that she had brought this horrid
situation upon herself by joining and rejoining the prophet's following.
She had no hope now that Smith would relent.

Beyond the city, eastward toward the sun-rising, lay the home of
Ephraim's friendship, whither in the morning she had thought to bend her
steps. She saw it through the glad glamour of her recent knowledge that
he had not neglected her letters. All her desires fled to this thought
of his friendship, like birds flying home. All her fancies clustered
round it, like climbing flowers that caress and kiss the object they
enfold when some rude wind disturbs. Whenever she withdrew her mind from
its contemplation, the circumstances on which she looked were the more
revolting.

Ever since Smith left she had been more or less under the impression
that an unseen person there in that very room had contended with him.
Again and again she had swept it aside as an infectious madness that she
was catching from the fanatics about her, but it had recurred; and now
as, not caring to light her lamps, she sat alone in the darkness by the
very table against which Smith had writhed and wailed, she felt pressed
upon by a spiritual life external to her own.

Within her soul from some unknown depth the word arose distinctly as if
spoken, "Pray. You cannot save yourself. Pray."

"I am going mad." Susannah whispered the words audibly. It was a
comfort to her even to hear her own voice. But when her whisper was past
she again listened involuntarily.

The words within her rose again. "Even so. Pray. If you are going mad,
you have the more need."

Susannah had come to class all search for definite and material answer
to prayer as one of the superstitions of false religion. In this
category stood also the hearing of voices and obedience to monitions
from the unseen. Now she reproached herself because she could not
immediately silence this fancy of disturbed nerves.

Long sad thoughts of all her reasons against prayer, strongest among
them the futility of her husband's prayers, passed through her mind with
their train of haunting memories, but in the cessation from argument
which these pictures of the past produced, the words arose again dearly
within her soul, like airdrops rising from the depths of a well and
expanding into momentary iridescence on the surface, "Pray for help. If
you have no faith in God's arm, you have the more need to seek it."

Stung by the fear that she was losing her mind, she rose as she would
have faced a human antagonist.

"God's arm!" she said aloud, "my husband prayed such prayers, but I will
ask nothing till I see his request fulfilled."

She spoke the quick words with an almost reckless sense of experiment.
Her thought was that before she could honestly think of such prayer she
must see some fruit of Angel's petitions for this man Smith and for her
own safety.

"Save Smith from further degradation," she said, her breath coming
sharply. "Save me now, if that sort of prayer is right. Do this in
answer to my husband's prayers. Remember his prayers."

She had begun recklessly, supposing that she was contending only with
her own sick fancy; she was astonished that a few swift moments had
involved her in an increasing sense of personal contact, and she became
awed by the strength of the encounter.

"My husband prayed for my safety," she repeated with softened attitude;
then, as if seeking for the protection which had died with him, she
repeated again and again, "Remember his prayers."

She left the challenge at last apparently to die where she had breathed
it in the dark cold air of her lonely room. The tension of her mind
relaxed.

She sat down again, not knowing whether anything had occurred, but a
crisis in the morbid working of her strained nerves had in some way
relieved her.

She was curiously unable to go back to her former agonised anxieties.
Natural fatigue, even sleepiness, came over her, but not her fears,
even though she wooed them.

"Ah, well," she said within herself, "it is quite true that it is
useless to consider when I can give myself no help."

The habits of the Saints were early. When she heard silence fall upon
the great house she went into her sleeping-room and lay down upon the
bed. Sleep came quickly.

With the early dawn she opened her eyes. In the first moments of
half-awaked consciousness she was aware that one thought lay alone in
the empty horizon of her mind, like a trace left by a dream that had
passed, as a wisp of cloud may be left in an empty sky.

This thought was that she would at once go down to the river bank upon
the southwest of the town.

When other thoughts awoke and crowded within her ken this thought
appeared foolish, and still more so the strong influence it had left
upon her will, for in the momentum of this influence she had risen
without debating the point.

She was not aware that she had moved in her sleep or dreamed. She was
greatly refreshed and again unreasonably light-hearted. She opened her
shutters and saw that the dawn was calm and fair. As yet the sleeping
town had scarcely stirred.

"It is better to go out than to stay in," she said to herself as she
remembered that this hour would be her one chance of taking air and
exercise unobserved. She heard the main door of the house open and,
looking over the banister, saw a slattern with bucket and mop passing
into some back passage. She went lightly down and out into the fresh
frosty air.

What had that dream been concerning the river bank on the south-western
side? She could not recall it, nor had she ever explored the streets of
white wooden villas and cottages that lay upon that side. She went
thither now. There was no reason why she should not go, no reason to go
elsewhere. It was a pleasant walk. When she had passed the last house,
the bank sloped in open uncared-for grass where cows were grazing. Only
here and there she had seen a house-door open, and as yet in this place
no one was abroad except a boy who was playing idly in a boat, which was
drawn half up on the muddy bank.

The broad river, milk-white under a dappled sky, stretched south and
west. The other side was dim and blue in the faint vapour of the
relaxing frost. The air was sweet and still. The sunbeams, imprisoned in
eastern vapour, shone through the white veil with soft glow that cast no
shadow but comforted the earth with hope.

Susannah had a further thought in her mind now, but she felt no haste or
impatience of excitement.

The boy was of an active, restless disposition or he would hardly have
been out so early. Lithe and idle, he sat see-sawing in the floating
end of the boat, uncertain how to amuse himself. He returned Susannah's
greeting with a lively flow of talk.

"You don't know how to row," said Susannah.

She showed no eagerness, for she felt none. The hope she had just formed
was most uncertain, for it appeared not at all likely that she could
escape in this way without being molested.

"I bet I can row," said the boy, "as well as any man in town."

"That isn't saying much," said Susannah. "The men about here have very
few boats, and they are most of them afraid to go on anything smaller
than the steamer."

"I could row t'other side and back," bragged the boy. "I could row
t'other side and back three times in the day."

"You couldn't."

"I couldn't! What will you bet?"

"I suppose your father wouldn't allow you to go, anyway."

He was a fresh-faced, mischievous, eager young rascal, and he found
Susannah's manner pleasant and provoking.

"Will you lay five dollars on it?" he cried. "Pap is away down to
Quincy. If you'll lay five dollars on it I'll do it."

"But I won't."

The gambling spirit of the young pioneer was aroused.

"What will you lay on it, then?"

"I don't believe you could row once to the other side."

He bragged loudly and with much exaggeration of what he had done and
what he could do, and began pushing off the boat to show her his speed.

The boat was a rude craft, unpainted, flat-bottomed, but light enough,
and not badly formed for speed. Susannah stepped into it without much
hope, scarcely caring what she did, but still provoking the young
boatman to attempt the crossing.

"I shan't give you any money," she said, "but you can row me a bit if
you like till I see how fast you can go. You don't understand the
currents, I am sure."

"Currents!" said the boy, "I guess I understand all there is to know
about them."

Talking thus in light banter, they actually proceeded out onto the bosom
of the milky flood without hearing any cry from the shore or seeing any
one who took note of their departure. The pellucid and comforting light
of the blinded sun grew warmer; the hum of industry in the town behind
rose cheerfully upon the quiet air, and as the calling of the April
bluebird in the fields grew more faint, the splash of the oars and the
whirr of the gray water-fowl began to be accompanied by a low distant
sound as of a watermill.

"It's the excursion steamer," said the boy. "We'll get in her waves and
you'll be scared. Ladies is always scared of waves."

She asked if the steam-boat would stop at the Nauvoo wharf, but he
explained, with the knowledge that boys are apt to have of such details,
that this steamer was coming from Fort Madison, and would keep to the
Missouri side, that he had heard that there were some State officials on
board her, escorting the Governor of Kentucky, who was prospecting for a
Land Company.

They saw the white hulk of the steam-boat looming upon the water to the
north. Her side paddle-wheels churned the flood. A strong purpose took
possession of Susannah; she knew what she was going to do.

She said to the boy, "No one could stop a steamer when she once starts
until she gets to her next port."

"I bet the engineman could stop her just as easy as that." The boy
backed water with his oars suddenly.

"But no one on the river could make him stop and get aboard."

"Yes, they could. My pap stopped one once. We was living down near
Cairo, but not near a wharf."

"How did he do it?" she asked, and her interest was intense.

"Why, you just put up your hands like a trumpet and yell through them as
loud as you can, and you go on waving and hollering. My pap said the
best plan was to call out 'Runaway nigger! Large reward!' They'd be sure
to stop then to know all about it, and when they'd once stopped they
don't mind your clambering up, if you can pay the fare."

Susannah felt herself wholly unequal to the loud task described.

"They would never stop for you," she, said. "You are only a boy, and
they would know 'twas only mischief."

His reply was as before. He would lay five dollars on it that he could
stop the boat.

She incited him to do this thing also. What faculty of caution the boy
possessed was not as yet developed; he left the care for consequences to
the sedate lady in the stern, and forgetting his quest of the Missouri
shore, lay in the path of the steam-boat and howled unmusically, and
marred the peace of the placid morning by shouting concerning a runaway
slave and a fabulous reward that was offered for him taken alive or
dead.

It is probable that what he said never rightly reached the ears of the
men on the deck, but that they regarded the lady as a possible
passenger; the engine was stopped.

"We'd better cut now as fast as we can," said the boy, somewhat
frightened. He seized his oars excitedly. "Or shall I tell them a big
yarn about the nigger?"

They were but slightly to one side. The prow of the steam-boat, which
drew but little water, had already passed below them. A small crowd on
the vessel's deck leaned over the paddle-box. Standing up in the boat,
Susannah searched the faces of the men looking down. They all looked at
her.

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