The Mormon Prophet Part 28

Susannah knelt down upon the floor behind the sill, pressing both hands upon her breast lest she should cry aloud.

"No! No! No!" she whispered, "I loved Ephraim, and it was because I left him that my heart closed up--because in insufferable pride and impatience I left him. Oh, my love, now I know that you loved me too."

She rocked herself in a pa.s.sionate desire for Ephraim's presence. The scene in the cold autumn wood at Fayette came back to her eyes and ears.

She felt the very touch of his hand when he went. "Fool! fool!" she said, "foolish and wicked. If I Had not been proud, if I had not thought myself better than you and yours, I should have understood." For some unexplained reason her mind reverted now to Halsey and the child, and she wept for them as she had never wept before.

After these tears she stood up and stretched out her arms as if embracing a new life. Alas! around her were only the ugly walls of the poor unfurnished room. Susannah, rousing herself from the warm scenes of quickened memory, felt the contrast.

The hope of Ephraim's reply to her letter came to her smiling each morning, and, as the days pa.s.sed, retired from her heart with a sigh each night.

When six weeks had gone and no reply came Susannah wrote again. This time she addressed the letter to the care of Mr. Horace Bushnell in Hartford, thinking that perhaps by some extraordinary chance Ephraim's whereabouts might not be known in Manchester. This letter was, unlike all those that had preceded it, more brief, more reserved, and more gentle. It expressed interest only in his affairs, telling little of her own except the fact that she desired to return. Autumn came, and Susannah's faith in man was tested to the utmost by the dreariness of daily disappointment.

If Ephraim were dead surely his mother or his friend would return her letters. If Ephraim were not dead what could be the explanation of this silence? Many vicissitudes of life occurred to her as possibly producing a change in him, and only one explanation of his silence was possible--that he was changed. That was a terrible belief to face. Her faith took the bit in its teeth and refused to be guided by intelligence. The whole strength of her volition abetted the revolt of faith. Anything, everything, might be true rather than that the essentials of character which went to make up Ephraim's personality should be blurred or decomposed.

Susannah wrote again to Ephraim, to his mother and to Mr.

Bushnell--three separate letters. She worked with the more zeal at her self-appointed task. So cheerful and energetic was she that she appeared to her pupils and acquaintance as a radiant being, and received the most genuine honour and affection from the Mormon settlement in Quincy.

CHAPTER XVIII.

With the jubilant Saints at Quincy the prophet could not remain long. He journeyed up the banks of the Mississippi. Here and there communities of his people welcomed him with touching joy; their numbers and their faithfulness must have raised his heart. He came at last to a poor, sickly locality, around which the great river took a majestic sweep, and here the prophet saw what no one else had seen--a site of great beauty and advantage. The inhabitants were dying of malarial fever. Smith bought their lands at a low price and drained them. Thus arose the beautiful city of Nauvoo.

In the Illinois State Legislature two parties were nearly equal in strength, and both coveted the Mormon vote. When Smith applied for the city charter, for charters also for a university and a force of militia to be called "The Nauvoo Legion," they were granted, and worded to his will.

White limestone, found in great abundance near the surface of the earth, served as material for the public buildings and the better houses.

Wooden houses, and even log huts, were washed with white lime. On three sides of the town the air of the beautiful river blew fresh and cool from its rippling tide; the surrounding land was fertile. Fortune certainly smiled upon the sect that had borne itself so st.u.r.dily under persecution. The prophet's laws had much to do with the prosperity; neither strong drink nor tobacco were admitted within the city limit; cleanliness and thrift were enforced.

The Saints in settlement in the town of Quincy and other places remained while they could obtain lucrative employment and thus transmit the larger t.i.thes for the building up of their future home; but from the poorer settlements artisans and farmers flocked to Nauvoo. Thither also the missionaries scattered in the eastern States, in England, and in further Europe sent the bands of converts who had been kept waiting till a city of refuge was founded. It was not long, not many months, before fifteen thousand people were hurrying up and down the broad streets of the new city.

During the rise of Nauvoo, Emma Smith was living at Quincy in a small house with her three children. She was Susannah's best neighbour. The prophet's enormous activity was fully occupied with the new city and the care of the scattered Church, so that he could not visit his wife often.

Each time he came he sent for Susannah to listen with Emma to the triumphant accounts that he gave of his present successes. He was all aglow with the resurrection of his Church, tender towards its renewed enthusiasm for himself, compa.s.sionate more than ever for the pains it had endured; fixed in purpose to establish his suffering and loyal people in such a manner as might reward them for all that they had undergone. His spirit of revenge against the Gentiles, and especially against the perverts from his own sect who had sought to trample it down, was also increased; the prayers of the Hebrew Psalmist against the enemies of Israel were constantly upon his lips. More than once when at Quincy he preached to the little flock there with great effect from the blessings and cursings conditionally delivered to Israel in the Book of Deuteronomy, arguing that evils of a very material kind were to befall apostates, and blessings of a like kind were to be given to the faithful in the new city.

"It is not true," Susannah said to him defiantly. "There is no righteousness in desiring the downfall of your enemies, and earthly wealth can never have any fixed connection with spiritual blessing."

"Do I understand you, my sister, to say that the prophet Moses did not teach a true religion?" As he spoke he laid his hand upon a huge copy of the Bible, bound in velvet and gold, which lay as the only ornament upon Emma's centre table.

In these days Susannah began to have some fear of the word "apostate."

Contrary to the freedom which had existed in the Kirtland community, the present Church, with its dogmas cast into iron moulds from the furnace of persecution, had begun to authorise a sentiment against perverts which differed not only in degree, but in kind, from the purely spiritual anathemas which had formerly fallen upon them. Personally she had no fear. The prophet knew of her unbelief, and his conduct was increasingly kind and deferential, but for others she disliked exceedingly the new symptoms of tyranny. Yet it was but natural, she admitted; men who had offered their own lives in sacrifice for a creed were likely to think it of more worth to the soul of another than his liberty. The sin, she thought, lay chiefly with the persecutors.

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 companions.h.i.+p 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 a.n.a.logous 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 a.s.sumed 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, pa.s.sing through the street, when she saw him standing with Darling at the door of the t.i.thing 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 la.s.situde 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 circ.u.mstance, 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 t.i.tle 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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sumed, 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 ma.s.sacre 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 pa.s.sionate entreaty. With precipitate waywardness the strange girl was married by Elder Darling, in the shed of the t.i.thing 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.