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Lily Dougall - The Mormon Prophet

L >> Lily Dougall >> The Mormon Prophet




"Is Mr. Halsey stopping over to Farmer Knight's?" asked Biery. "My! and
they'll be real glad to get him, ye know. Twiced they've been here fur
him. They say that Newell Knight he's possessed with a devil."

Susannah wrapped her shawl tightly across her breast, a nervous movement
caused not by cold but by the desire to withdraw her real self from the
surrounding circumstance.

A tall thin man sitting by the table set down his mug with a clatter
upon it. "Wall now, tain't my idea thet thet's exectly what's taken
Newell. I saw a case of a man thet was taken under the preacher Finney.
'Twas over to Ithica. The hull town knew about it. A lot of folks went
in. I jest looked in when I was passing, and seen the man meself. He was
lyin' on the floor. His wife was aholdin' his head, but he didn't know
her. He hedn't no knowledge of any of the folks. He jest lay there
rollin', and his eyes was rollin'. And when Finney was fetched, Finney
he said 'twas 'conviction.' I don't know what the man was convicted of,
but 'twas 'conviction' Finney called it. He didn't say nothing about
being possessed with devils."

The third speaker was a small fat man. His face was smooth and had the
peculiar boylike appearance that chubbiness gives even to the
middle-aged; he had bright black eyes, and before he spoke he glanced at
Susannah critically.

"When they're taken that way under Finney," he said, as if meditating,
"'conviction' commonly means conviction of sins--their own sins, ye
know, not other folk's; and when they git up, if they've taken anything
wrongfully they hev to restore it fourfold afore the conviction will
leave off a-worrittin' them. I don't know how 'tis among the Mormons."
The last words were said in an undertone and he had dropped his eyes. It
would have required a brave man to treat Susannah to open sarcasm.

She stood looking from one to the other. She still wore her girlish
cottage bonnet, and as its fashion was, it had slipped backwards upon
the amber ringlets that hung upon her neck; but the girlish look was
fast passing from the face, the hair parting fell on either side of pale
cheeks.

"Oh, as to thet, 's fur as I know, one religion's as good as another,"
said the politic Biery.

Susannah looked at the fat, bright-eyed man who was no longer looking at
her. "I know" (her voice fell with a strange gentleness through the
thickened atmosphere of the room) "that there are many malicious stories
abroad about the dishonesty of our people which are not true."

But as she went up the stair she remembered that she had heard of no
case where reformation of character had been followed by the returning
of the fourfold. Most of these saints of the new sect had before their
conversion been, like her husband, already God-fearing and righteous,
but in cases where, like their leader, they had been reclaimed from
evil courses, had they not been satisfied with offering the present and
future to God, leaving the past? She had heard of no case of restitution
such as Finney insisted upon.

Susannah entered the low, wide room in which she lived. The chimney from
the lower room passed up and was always warm. She went and laid her cold
hands against the rough plaster that covered its bricks, and, being
tired, she leaned, laying her cheek too against its warm surface. The
one candle cast but a faint light upon the chairs, the bed, the table.
The small panes of the window-glass were bare to the darkness without
and the empty tree-branches. The heavy latch of the closed door was
fastened crookedly for lack of good workmanship.

Her unsatisfied mind ached for counsel, and her thought, roving over the
world, could fix only on Ephraim as she had at first learned to know
him, wise and quiet and kind. The warm chimney seemed a poor thing to
lean her head against while she felt that her faith was failing. Then
the remembrance of the shot Ephraim had fired and his callousness choked
back her tears.

She waited an hour, two hours; then, becoming anxious on Halsey's
account, she borrowed a lantern and went across the fields to Knight's
farmhouse.

Quite a number of people had gathered. Susannah met some of them coming
from the house, but others were still there, standing about the fire in
the kitchen. She heard that the later arrivals had all been disappointed
of the sight of Newell Knight in his fit. Halsey had assumed authority,
stating that it was indeed a case of possession, and that none but those
who were strong in faith and in the power of prayer must come near the
possessed. The craving of the visitors for excitement was only fed by
the sound of the young man's voice, heard at short intervals.

He cried aloud, sometimes shrieking that he was being taken into "the
pit" and that Joseph Smith could alone deliver him, sometimes exclaiming
in a strange voice that he was no longer Newell Knight but a demon, and
sometimes only moaning and gibbering words that no one could understand.

Halsey came out to Susannah. "Wouldst thou see him?" he asked tenderly.
"The sight will distress thee, for it is truly terrible to see with the
eye of flesh the power of hell, and yet I cannot forbid thee if thou
wouldst come, for perchance the Lord may mean it for our edification."

Susannah went with him into the inner room, hardly knowing why she went,
but probably impelled by the instinctive desire to relieve suffering
which was part of her womanhood. The young man's father and mother,
together with two or three Mormon converts, were kneeling upon the
floor, saying prayers for the sufferer in more or less audible, more or
less agonised tones.

The young man lay upon a pallet-bed, in what would have been called by
the medical science of the time "convulsions." His eyeballs were rolled
upwards in a manner most disfiguring to his face. His hands were
clenched. Halsey no sooner entered the room than he, too, fell upon his
knees, lifting his face upward as if in silent and fervent prayer.

For a moment Susannah felt impelled to follow his example. "But
perhaps," she thought to herself, "cold water upon the patient's head,
or a warm foot-bath--" Such suggestions caused her to resist the impulse
to join the praying band, and, having resisted it, she suddenly
experienced, as one feels a fresh breeze entering a close room, a
strong, clear sense of knowledge that in this matter, at least, her
husband was deluded, that the friends had better rise from their knees
and betake themselves to ruder remedies.

Susannah had never learned to command; she had never even learned to
advise. She had too much reverence to speak aloud, disturbing those who
were at prayer. She stood hesitating, and then, in very low tones,
whispered her belief in her husband's ear.

No doubt Halsey was shocked at his wife's unbelief; perhaps by the law
of telepathy, for whose existence some psychical experts vouch, his
thought penetrated the mind of the sensitive upon the bed. Whatever the
cause, Newell Knight sat up and pointed at Susannah, crying aloud that
he saw the devil about to seize upon her. So excited was the mental
atmosphere, so vivid were the sufferer's words and the effect of his
pointing finger, or, perhaps, so substantial was his vision, that more
than one of the saints afterwards averred that they had seen the Evil
One about to embrace Susannah. But they did not agree in the description
of his form.

Halsey wrapped his arms about his wife, and led her like a child from
the room and from the house. She hardly had time to speak before she saw
the night again about her. He set her down upon an old log that chanced
to lie against Knight's barn, kneeling beside her. There, when they were
alone in the darkness, he invoked that name to which throughout all
Christendom the devils are believed to be subject.

"Angel," she said gently, "stop praying and listen to me. If you can
command the devil in the name of our Lord, why don't you do that to poor
Newell Knight?" She felt strong sympathy for the young man; she was
moved almost to tears to think they were taking the wrong way with him.

"I have tried and failed. We have sent for Joseph Smith. My faith is not
strong enough," he added humbly. "This cometh not forth but by prayer
and by fasting. Look! I am even now unfaithful to my charge because I
love thee, friend, more, I fear, than the work of the Lord."

They were left alone because Halsey in passing out had left the door of
the sick room open to the eager neighbours. Now reluctantly he went back
to his task of guarding the patient, and Susannah, after assuring his
anxious soul that she felt no ill effects whatever from the dire
proximity, went home again across the dark frozen fields with her
lantern. She sat half the night watching and waiting.

It was in the darkest hour before the dawn that she heard Halsey's step
and crept down through the black house to unlock the door for him. When
they had come again into the room she saw that he was greatly excited,
filled with apparent calm of an exalted mood.

"We have beheld a most glorious victory, friend; and truly we have been
shown signs and wonders, and a very great miracle has been wrought. I
wish thou couldst have seen with thine own eyes, and yet--"

She thought that he had been going to say that her lack of faith had
made it more expedient for her to be away, but that he had checked in
himself even the thought that he was more worthy of privilege than she.

It seemed that Joseph Smith, having been preaching the evening before at
a place some twenty miles away, had not been able to reach Knight's
house until nearly two in the morning.

"He rode all night," said Halsey, "and lost not a moment in coming to
the inner room; it was like him."

"Yes," said Susannah, "it was like him; he is very kind."

Halsey went on. "He spread his hands over Newell and commanded the
devils to come out of him."

"And did they come?"

"They left him. Joseph said that it was given to him to see that there
were three of them; but they departed, going out into the darkness."

The wind moaned against the window near which Susannah sat.

"They left Newell very weak, but at peace like an infant sleeping. But
at first I feared that he was as one dead, for I could not see him
breathe; but Joseph's faith was strong, for he lifted up his voice and
began to give praise, and he took Newell by the hand and bade him rise,
but his hand fell back as if there was no life in it. Then Joseph Smith
knelt with us upon the floor, and Newell lay smiling, but his eyes were
closed, and he seemed dead to this world, although the body was warm.
Afterwards he told us that at the time he was seeing a vision of
unspeakable light and glory. And then, as we watched him, I fearing
because my faith was weak, a marvel happened as a sign and seal to our
faith that Joseph is indeed called to be a great prophet. I wish that
thou couldst have seen it, Susannah, for the miracle has given me a
great uplifting in spirit, but I am come to bear witness to it, that
thou, too, mayest rejoice in the marvel."

There was a few moments' pause. "What was it?" she asked.

"Newell began to rise from the bed. He did not sit up or move himself,
but he was raised slowly into the air, still reclining as though upon
his pillow. The invisible hands of angels bore him upwards."

Susannah knit her brows. "Did you see the angels? I don't understand."
And then more vehemently she asked, "What was it that you did see?"

"Nay, friend, it was not vouchsafed to us to see the blessed spirits,
but surely they must have lifted him, for he rose, soaring upwards, as
thou hast seen the thistledown ascend gently, almost as high as the roof
of the room. As we gazed in great astonishment, and the women fainted
for fear, he sank again as slowly till he rested upon his bed, and he
opened his eyes and spoke to us of the wonderful vision of light which
he had seen, and then he arose in perfect health and walked."

Susannah sat silent for a minute or two. Her husband was also silent,
wrapped in contemplation. Then Susannah said, "You are very tired,
Angel. You were overwrought last night, even before you were called to
the Knights'; you had better go to sleep now."

She darkened the window against the coming of the dawn that her husband
might sleep in the day instead of the night. She herself went downstairs
with the earliest stir of footsteps. Because of a whim that seized her,
she helped to prepare the breakfast that was to be served to the
household at sunrise, and then she partook of it heartily, looking out
of a southern window as she ate, watching the red sun ascend behind the
naked boles of the elms. She was glad that the new day had come. Her
heart ached not so much with pure grief now as with mocking laughter.
Her husband was mad, quite mad, or else--and this was the more bitter
belief--he had seen that she was in danger of disaffection, and had told
this lie to dupe her, thinking that because she was a woman she would be
impressed by it. As the sincerity of Angel's look came before her she
said to herself that if that were the case no doubt Joseph Smith had
invented the story, and laid it upon Angel's conscience to tell it. That
or madness was the only explanation.




CHAPTER XII.


It was long after the day of her departure before Ephraim again set out
to find Susannah. An illness to which he was subject first came upon
him, and then, when days were past and he was able to leave his bed,
conflicting reports concerning Susannah had been brought to the house,
and Ephraim's courage failed. Why should he go if by seeing her he could
neither give her pleasure nor do her good? It was natural that report,
dwelling on what it could understand rather than on what was
incomprehensible, should magnify Susannah's love for Halsey. No man in
New Manchester who in the past month had chanced to catch sight of any
maid holding secret parlance with any lover but now swore stoutly that
that maid had been Susannah.

It often happens that schemes least calculated to succeed attain
success. Susannah and Halsey had not gone far, nor had they gone with
great secrecy, yet it had happened that no one had observed them as they
travelled, and as there was at that time of the year little
communication between the towns to the east and west of Geneva Market,
it was long before real news concerning them transpired.

At length, when many days had passed, it was told in Manchester where
Susannah really was; and as if the mischief Rumour was ashamed of being
caught telling the truth, she hastily added a lie, and one that had a
fair show of evidence in its favour. She declared that Susannah had not
been married except by some mystical Mormon ceremony which was void in
law.

When Ephraim heard this circumstantial story, and with it many new tales
concerning wicked mysteries practised by the Mormons in Fayette, he
threw down his books, as long ago the fabled fruit that had turned to
ashes was thrown down, and prepared for the road.

In the first day's journey he reached Geneva, and setting out again
before it was light, he came to John Biery's hotel when the sun was
rising red beyond the gray elm boughs on the morning on which Susannah
breakfasted alone.

Susannah looked up from her breakfast and saw Ephraim standing beside
her. It was his way to look calm outwardly, but she could see that he
was struggling with the nervous untoward beating of his heart, so that
he could not speak. Susannah did not understand why she could not
immediately rise and speak. She was conscious of a red flush that rose
and mantled her face, but she did not understand the emotion from which
it arose. She only knew that she was glad to see Ephraim, more glad than
she could have thought to be of anything upon a day when her heart had
been set mocking.

"You have come at last," she whispered, and only knew when the words
were said that she had hoped to see him before. Her whisper was broken
by rising tears, which she checked in very shame.

"I want to speak to you," said Ephraim briefly.

So she rose and went out with him. She put her shawl over her head and
walked upon the roadside. The day was mild, the first of the Indian
summer. Ephraim had not put up his horse; he led it by the bridle as he
walked.

"Sure as I'm alive, it's her uncle as has come after her at last," said
the wife of John Biery, gazing through the small panes of the kitchen
window. And, in truth, Ephraim did look many years older than Susannah,
for his figure was bowed somewhat for lack of strength.

Susannah did not now think of Ephraim as old, neither did she think of
him as young. To her he was just Ephraim, bearing no more relation of
comparison to any other mortal than if his had been the only soul in the
world beside her own. She was not aware of this; she was only thinking
that if he had not shot Halsey she would have been able to speak freely
to him now. It was so wicked of Ephraim, above all others, to do such a
thing. It was, in fact, unforgivable because of the stain upon Ephraim's
own character more than because of Halsey's blood. But that again she
did not analyse. She only knew that her feeling kept her silent.

"I am here, Susannah"--in his battle to speak Ephraim economised
words--"to ask you to come back with me."

Susannah considered. It would be perhaps the best thing that she could
do after she had spoken her mind to Angel. He would not ask her to
remain to join in a service she loathed. But when she thought of her
aunt, and of the voice of an outraged Puritan neighbourhood, her heart
naturally failed her.

"I cannot."

"Is this man more to you--I do not say than the ties of kindred, for
that is natural--but more to you than the obligation to live a life of
reason and duty?"

"No." Susannah spoke the answer aloud because it arose so simply and
strongly within her. Had she not just come to a crisis in which her
desire to abide by reason proved far stronger than the feeling which
bound her to Halsey? And yet, as she thought of his love and his
tenderness for her, she felt only pity for him, even if he had told a
lie.

Ephraim had grown calmer, but at the clear denial his heart again beat
against the breath he was trying to draw. She did not love Halsey then!
she was not married to him! He could conceive of nothing that could have
brought that word and tone to Susannah's lips if she were bound.

"Does not duty and reason, does not even mere sanity, call upon you to
come back with me, Susannah, and spend your life where you can exercise
the gifts God has given you among those who abide by law and order?"

"Perhaps, Ephraim, it is so; but I am too great a coward. Think of the
shame that I should have to endure from my aunt, and all the world would
taunt me with my folly and madness. I think it would kill what little
good there is in me. For although I should be willing to suffer if I
have done wrong, yet there would be no use in going where my punishment
would be greater than I could bear."

He was shocked to think of the days that had elapsed before he had come
to her. She had suffered much before she could speak in this way, and
when he saw how mild and sad she was, and, above all, rational, he
longed to comfort her as he would comfort a child with caresses and the
promise of future joys. He could give her neither, because he believed
that she cared for neither caress nor joy from his hand. There was
something he could offer--all that he had to give that she could take,
but the offer was so hard to make that he prefaced it.

"A way might be found by which you could return to our house, Susannah,
and be troubled by no spoken reproach, and you could live down that
which was unspoken." He paused a minute, and then said, "But I would
know first that you leave all that pertains to your life here freely.
You have found it true, what is so much reported, that the Mormons
follow wicked practices?"

"No, oh no, Ephraim; that is not true--mad, deluded perhaps, but not
wicked. The stories of wickedness told are malicious even where there is
a colour of truth, and for the most part there is none. In the matter of
daily life they abide by the laws of God and man, and nothing else is
taught."

It was the thought of the sacerdotal deception that she felt had been so
lately practised upon herself that caused her to put in the reserving
words "in the matter of daily life"; but when she remembered the malice
that had instigated report, the unlovely lives of the malicious
fault-finders, the evil stains that lie even upon the best lives, she
burst out, "There is not one in our community, Ephraim, who would stoop
to a cruel act either in word or deed. There is not one of us, even
among those who have recently repented from very wicked lives, who would
try to take the life of a defenceless man when he was, at a great cost
to himself, pursuing what he thought to be the path of duty--as you did,
Ephraim."

Before this he had kept his eyes upon the ground; standing still now, he
looked straight into hers. So for a minute they stood, the horse's head
drooping beside his shoulder, the woman upon the roadside erect,
passionate; around them the leafless wood through which the long
straight road was cut. The long level red beams of the sun struck
through between the gray trunks, burnishing the wet carpet of the fallen
leaf.

"Did you think it was I who fired?" he asked.

Then he went on with the horse, and she at the side.

She was utterly astonished. "Who, Ephraim--who fired?"

He looked straight in front of him again. "It was my mother. She
brandished the gun in his face. She couldn't have intended to shoot."

From Susannah's heart a great cloud was lifted. She felt no confused
need to readjust her thoughts; rather it was that in a moment her
apprehension of Ephraim's character slipped easily from some abnormal
strain into normal pleasure.

She pressed her hands to her breast as if fondling some delight.
"Forgive me," she said, "but I am so glad, oh, so very glad." She drew a
long breath as if inhaling not the autumn but the new sweetness of
spring.

So they went on a little way, he somewhat shy because of her emotion,
she meditating again, and this question pressed.

"And you think," she asked, "that your mother would receive me if I went
back with you? that I could live at peace with her?"

"Do you think that whatever I might do she would ever try to shoot
_me_?" he asked with half a smile. "Do you think that she would ever, by
word or deed, do anything that would hurt _me_?"

"Never." Susannah said the word as a matter of course.

"Or that my father would ever deny me anything that I seriously asked
for, or that he knew my happiness depended upon?"

"No, surely not; but, Ephraim--"

"Oh," he continued, growing distress in his voice, "Susannah, is there
any place else in the whole world that you can go for shelter and
comfort but to our house? You have spoken of this madness and delusion;
you are satisfied that you must leave--" He had meant to say "this man,"
but he was too shy, and he faltered--"that you must leave these people?"

She cast her eyes far in among the trunks of the close-growing trees,
upon one side and then upon another, as if looking for a way of escape.
Yes, surely her faith in Angel's creed had been hurt beyond recovery,
and she must free herself, but how? She dallied with Ephraim's offer of
asylum because she could think of no other.

"Yes," she said mechanically; "yes, but how can I?"

"Oh, my dear cousin, don't you see that it is wrong for you to stay one
day longer here? If you believed at first that the bond that united you
to this man was binding, you do not believe it now. You were so young
when you went, yet the thing cannot be undone on that account. You were
so beautiful that I had hoped a great and prosperous life lay before
you. Now, of course, that cannot be, but--but--at least you can live a
life of peace, live truly and nobly, using your faculties to glorify
God."

She began to see that he was trying to work up to something else that he
had to say. She followed him heedfully, knowing that with Ephraim the
steps in an argument were important. He saw some way out which she did
not see, and her whole mind paused in eager listening.

He turned and faced her again, lifting his eyes, holding out his hand;
his voice, usually weak, was strong. She knew that it was a strong man
who spoke to her.

"Susannah, will you take my name and protection?"

She gazed at him incredulous, and then, beginning to understand what it
was that he thought, and all that he meant, she leaned against one of
the cold gray tree trunks, weeping weakly like a child.

"But I am married," the words came with a long sobbing sigh.

"Not legally?" and then he added, "nor in God's sight."

"Yes, yes, oh! you are making a great mistake, Ephraim. Joseph Smith and
my husband are not like that. A minister came and did it. He had his
license, and we have the paper he signed."

Ephraim set his teeth hard together and kept silence. He said to himself
that he might have known that the rascals would be clever enough to make
the tie secure.

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