The Mormon Prophet Part 37

He made as yet no answer but to take her hand, grasping it with rough heartiness as if this was the first moment of their meeting.

Susannah laughed as women sometimes laugh over their cherished ones for very joy, not amus.e.m.e.nt. "Speak to me," she coaxed. "I have come back to you. Do you think we are in a dream?" She let herself kneel on the old floor of the old aisle, and, clasping both his hands, laid them against her cheek.

With his returning self, something of his habitual formality of manner would have returned had she remained in any common att.i.tude, but to this coaxing, kneeling queen Ephraim (although his whole life had pa.s.sed without caresses) could not behave with reticence.

One thing he did not do. He did not hint that it was unseemly that she should kneel at his feet. Chivalry was the very substance of the soul of this son of New England, and no outward seeming could disturb his serene reverence for the woman he loved. He stooped over her, now stroking her hair, how holding her hands close against his heart, now whispering words that in their audible pa.s.sion were new and strange to his unaccustomed lips.

"I am all alone, Ephraim. I have no money, no clothes. I have walked most of the way from Rochester to-day."

"Are you very tired?"--as if the fact that she had been walking that day was all that needed his immediate attention.

"I was forced to come suddenly. I only escaped with my life. But I have long been wearying to come to you, for since my husband and the child died I have been quite alone."

"We heard that they were dead, but that was long ago." There was no tone of reproach in his voice, only curiosity. "You never wrote, and I--I supposed that if you were alive you--you preferred to remain, Susy."

She did not enter into explanation then. After a while, when he had raised her to her feet and embraced her again, she whispered, "Why are you in the meeting-house, Ephraim?"

"We have been having a prayer meeting," he answered. "And I keep the key because--because my father used to." He gave the reason with an intonation half playful. "I do many a thing now because he did."

"I thought that you at least would never become like the others. Are they less foolish" (she made a gesture toward the pews to denote their late inmates), "less unjust than they used to be?"

As they went toward the Croom homestead he answered her words in his manner of meditative good-humour which she knew so well. "I don't know that they are less unjust and less foolish than they used to be, or that I am either, Susy, but--it is not good to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d alone."

She pressed close to his side and looked up through the honied blossom of the apple-boughs; the violet gulfs of heaven seemed to be made more homelike by his tones.

"The sun, they say, is ninety-three millions of miles away from the earth's surface, Susy; and think you that if some of us climb the mountains we are much nearer light than those in the vales?"

She remembered sentences which she had conned from his letters which ran like this, and her thought on its way was arrested for a moment by the memory of the spot where she had lost those letters, the thought of the grave by the creek at Haun's Mill and of her husband's steadfast faith.

So they walked in silence, but as they stood by the garden gate under the quince tree, she detained him a moment with a child's desire to hear a story that she knew by heart.

"Ephraim, you wrote once that you knew a man who loved--"

When he had given the answer she wanted, they went up the little brick path, and Susannah noticed that the folded tulips and waxen hyacinths flanked it in orderly ranks. Their light forms glimmered in the branch shadows of the budding quince. It was true, what people said, that Ephraim had not let his father's home decay. The door stood open, as country doors are apt to do.

There was a lack of something in the dark appointments of the sitting-room. The traces of busy domestic life were not there, and sadness filled the place of the parents whom she had unfeignedly longed to see again. Through a door ajar she saw light in the large kitchens. A candle was upon a table, and an old woman, unknown to her, sat sewing beside it. Ephraim, holding a burning match in clumsy fingers, lit a student lamp--the fire of a new hearth.

CHAPTER VII.

Two years after that, Ephraim, returning one day from the field, brought with him a poor wayfarer whom he had met upon the road.

The stranger was of middle age, with hair already gray and face deeply furrowed. In ragged garments, resting his bandaged feet, he sat propped in the sitting-room. The warm air blowing from rich harvest fields came in at open door and windows. Attentive before him, Ephraim and Susannah sat.

"You are one of the Latter-Day Saints?" Susannah asked.

"I am, ma'am, and it's real strange to hear you say them words, for it's 'Mormons' the Gentiles calls us."

Then to her questioning he told the story of the downfall of Nauvoo.

"There was two causes for the persecution; we had got too powerful and too great for the folks in Illinois, just as we had done in Missouri; but there was another thing, and that was that wickedness crept in amongst us. 'Twasn't as bad as was reported, though, but 'twas there--I'm afraid 'twas there."

The man sighed.

"It's twelve years now since I joined the Saints in Missouri and when we were driven out there I went with them to Illinois; and I can never believe other but that the Latter-Day Saints has the truth, for the power of it is always to be seen among them; and now that I've lost everything a second time, and know that I have a sickness that I'll never get the better of, I have come east to see my folks once more and to testify to them of the truth."

He was going on into Vermont, pa.s.sing by that way that he might refresh his eyes with a view of the sacred hill, and had only remained at Ephraim's request to relate his tidings to Susannah.

"After coming out of Missouri I never lived at Nauvoo. I had a farm midways, between Nauvoo and Quincy. As near as I can make out, the scandal they've got agen us, which they've always had agen us because of the wickedness of the Gentile mind, began to have some truth in it when Rigdon came out with his teaching concerning the nonsense of spiritual wives, which wasn't new with him, for I hear that it's held among all the folks as call themselves 'Perfectionists.' Well, our prophet made pretty quick work of that doctrine, and he rebuked Rigdon in public and private, and packed him out of the place, and no one can say that our prophet has ever done otherwise with any one as has had notions about marriage."

Susannah sighed. "I have heard that he has acted the same way in several other instances."

"You have, ma'am? Well, it's strange, too, to hear a Gentile say a good word for our prophet, but perhaps, as he came from here, ma'am, you may be some relation of his; and I ask you, is it likely, as he's always acted so severe in that matter, that he should have taught a false doctrine himself? But even some of the Saints do say nowadays that he was led away by some strange doctrines before he died; but, for my own part, I believe that the tales have arisen from the sinful natures of many of the men that he trusted; for he was too trustful, and there's apostles and bishops and elders amongst us that are servants of h.e.l.l.

There's been evil work since our prophet's martyrdom, for there's thousands of our people now deluded by them and going out after Mr.

Brigham Young and his crew.

"You want to know how the prophet's death came about, and I can tell you; for when my disease came on, and the doctor told me 'twas fatal, I started to go up to Nauvoo to ask the prophet to lay his hands upon me and heal me. But when I got there the city was all in a buzz, for the cause that some of the elders had got out a paper accusing the prophet of having a lot of ladies for wives. Well now, I can tell you how that came about. When our prophet first got the charter for the Nauvoo Legion there was a man called Bennet, who had been general in the American army, and who was steeped in unbelief and ambition, and who came and offered his services to the prophet, and was allowed to build up the Nauvoo Legion. He was a most sinful man, and the prophet, he knew his sinfulness, but thought that he ought to take any help to build up an army to preserve his people from the fearful persecutions. Bennet got hold of the worst side of the worst men we had in the Church, among which was the new usurper." He paused here with ire in his eye. "I would be understood to mean Mr. Brigham Young, who has falsely usurped the prophet's place; but there are many of us who will not follow him, no, not one step. The Lord will requite him and his confederates, and will establish his true servants."

"I fear, my good friend," said Ephraim, "that although it is true that the Lord will establish his true servants, it is also true that their kingdom is not of this world."

"Well, sir, tramping along as I've done many a day, with no companion but the disease that's prevailing against me, I've thought that that may be true; but, whichever way it is, Bennet set himself to work iniquity, and they say that when the prophet could endure him no longer and gave him the sack, he had the vileness to dress himself up in the prophet's clothes and go about in disguise, talking Sydney Rigdon's rank spiritual-wife doctrine to the ladies and some of them were such fools that they thought it was the prophet, and that he disguised his voice and kept something over his face in order to work the iniquity in secret. That's what a gentleman who knew very well about it told me. But anyway, when Bennet was gone out he wrote awful things to the Gentile newspapers concerning the domestic iniquities of Nauvoo; and he had his own party in the sacred city, and they up and put their scandals in the public print in the prophet's own city.

"But the prophet he rose up and shook himself, like Samson when his arms were tied with the withes, and he denounced the wickedness, and went to the house where the paper was published, and kicked the printing press down himself, and burned the paper. And that day he preached most powerful in the Nauvoo Temple."

"We heard that it was on account of the illegality of his action in the printing office that the people of Illinois arrested him."

The stranger did not answer directly. His mind had pa.s.sed on to scenes which had stirred him more personally.

"I was in the city all the time. The Government of Illinois sent to arrest Mr. Smith, but his people rallied round him, and said that in consequence of the lawless persecutions that had pa.s.sed in Missouri they had a right to mistrust the justice of the State. They called out the Nauvoo Legion, and sent back the constables that had come from Carthage. That made the Gentiles terribly angry. The Illinois militiamen went about saying openly that they would burn down the town and kill every man, woman, and child in it. So then Governor Ford himself advised our prophet to keep the Legion under arms, for he said the Gentiles were so furious; but he asked the prophet to go to Carthage and pledge himself to appear for the trial when it came on, for it was a civil suit, and no harm could come to him and his. Governor Ford pledged his honour as the Governor of the State.

"I had been waiting about the town until the prophet should be less bothered before asking him to heal my sickness, but when I heard that he was going away, then I mis...o...b..ed that it would be long before he came back. I thought I'd make a push for it, so I went and hung round the door of the prophet's house. I was only a poor man and I did not like to go in, for the bishops and elders and all the grand folks were going in and out all that day. I heard the things they said, and most of them were saying that the prophet had had a vision, and that if he went to Carthage he would never come back alive. They said too that if he stayed, the town would be sacked, and I understood that they were asking him to run away. Towards evening I saw a buggy draw up at the back door of the hotel, and all the elders seemed to be holding a meeting, for they were singing hymns; so then it just come to me that they were going to get the prophet off, and I ran down the road to the ferry, for I knew he would have to go that way. I waited in the boat, and the same buggy came down to it, and a man with a cloak on and his hat over his eyes came out and sat in the corner of the boat, and we all knew that it was the prophet, and none of us durst speak to him. But I went over in the boat, for I hoped I'd get up courage to ask him when we came to the other side. When he stood on the sh.o.r.e he seemed like a man that didn't know what to do, although there was horses there for him to take, and he turned round and went off the road up on to a little hill; and I went after him a bit of the way behind, and I came and found him just standing looking at the city, for the river swept round two sides of it so n.o.ble like, and blue as the sky above, and the city stood all white, and the temple stood high in the middle, and all of it glistened in the sun. The prophet had taken off his hat, and he stood with his hands folded on the stick he carried, and he just looked and looked at the city. I had never seen a man look like that but once before, and then it was a man I knew whose wife died, and he looked at her face just steadfast like that. I couldn't think to speak to him about myself just then, although I'd got him alone, for my heart was just broke to see how sad he looked, and him just in the prime of life; for it was his own city, and the sound of all its work came over to us as we stood there, and the thousands and thousands of happy homes in it belonged to his own people.

"But when I moved a bit he saw me, and he started at first as if I'd been going to shoot him, thinking no doubt that I was an enemy spying on him. At that, because my disease had weakened me, and because I seemed to feel nothing all through me but the grief that he was bearing, I began to cry like a child.

"Then he stretched out his hands towards the city and I heard him say, 'My Lord, thou hast given me this people, and if I leave them without a shepherd they will be stricken and scattered and robbed by the destroyer.'

"So then in a few minutes he held out his hand to me, so gentlemanlike, as if I was as good as him, and he said, 'Come, my friend, let us go back, and let G.o.d determine what we shall do or suffer.' So we went and got on the ferry-boat and went back, and I never spoke to him; but I went with him all the way to his house.

"The next morning I heard that he and Mr. Hyrum were going to set off for Carthage to be tried. So I got a horse and went to Carthage before them, for I felt then that I cared for nothing but to see the prophet again. But I heard tell how, as they went along, their wives and their friends went with them part way, and they turned back two or three times as they were parting from them, for the prophet said that they would never see his face again.

"Governor Ford he met them at Carthage with a great to-do. He pledged the honour of the State that they should be safe, and he had the troops drawn upon either side, and he pa.s.sed down between them with the prophet and Mr. Hyrum and showed them himself into the gaol. The prophet said that it was illegal to put them in the gaol, for it was a civil matter, and Governor Ford said, for I heard him, that it was because they would be safer there. I was standing just behind the line of soldiers jostling up with the crowd, and I heard the Governor say, 'I pledge you my honour, and the faith and honour of this State, that no harm shall come to you while undergoing this imprisonment.' So then they were shut in; but the crowd and the soldiers remained in the streets, and I heard enough to know that harm would come.

"The next morning the Governor went away from Carthage, to be out of it, and that day, in the afternoon, a mob of men with faces painted like Indians came out with guns, and we knew that their purpose was to murder the prophet. I went to the gaol and sat upon the steps, and the militia, which was called the Carthage Greys, came out, and halted, about eight rods from the gaol, and I thought at first that they would fire on the mob when they came, but they never moved, but stood and looked on. So the murder was done by them all in cold blood as well as by the mob."

"Did you see him die?" asked Susannah with white lips.

"If he was a relation of yours, ma'am, I can tell you that he died like a man. First I thought that I would spend what little strength I had left in fighting the mob at the door, and that they should not go in except over my body; but the gaoler opened the door in pretence of finding out what was the matter, for he was in the plot; so I thought that I would run up and give warning. But by the time I got to the door of the upper room where the prophet was, the mob was up behind me, so I never rightly knew what I did, for they knocked me down just within the room. There were four or five men with the prophet and Mr. Hyrum, and these kept the mob back for a few minutes at the door, but a bullet hit Mr. Hyrum in the head, and I saw the prophet leaning over him, and he said in a voice that was very sad, 'My dear, dear brother!'