The Mormon Prophet Part 8

"I'm dead beat," said the hotel-keeper under his breath, "if I ever seed anything like that!" But with the ready suspicion of a prudent householder he questioned her. Where had the man come by the wound? For they saw the blood-stained bandages she clasped.

Yesterday, she explained, he had received a slight bullet-wound by accident, and to-day, in their long travel, the loss of blood had disabled him.

"Does he belong to you, young lady?"

Susannah busied herself with the bandages for a moment, but terror had carried her far. She replied with gentle decision, "He is my husband."

CHAPTER IX.

"It is our fault."

That evening Ephraim Croom stood in his father's sitting-room, near the door of the dark stair that led up to his own rooms. His shoulders were drooping. His face was gray and haggard. Even his hair and beard, damp, unkempt, seemed to express remorse in their outline. He stood doggedly facing his father and mother, repeating the thing that he saw to be true, but with no further words to interpret his insight.

To his parents his opinions, his att.i.tude, appeared as an outrage upon reason. His father looked at him with greater severity than he had ever before exercised upon his only child. "I reckon, Ephraim, that you speak without using the sense that the Almighty has been mercifully pleased to give you. You know, Ephraim, the girl has been as a daughter in this house. When has it been said to her that her father, dying in his worldly follies, left her dest.i.tute, the pittance she gets needing to go for his debts? She's had about as good a home as any girl should want, and your mother and the ministers have dealt faithfully with her concerning her soul."

Ephraim made a movement of the head as if for a moment he could have stood upright, feeling in one respect innocent; then again there was nothing but the droop of shame visible.

His mother looked at him with eyes that were red with weeping. She had been wiping them with fierce furtive rubs of her handkerchief; now she was rubbing the handkerchief, a hard ball, in the palm of one hand.

Perhaps grief at Susannah's loss had been dominant until Ephraim's accusation had fanned her anger. "She'd better have gone with him openly from the baptising. I never thought then that it was love-making she was after." Deep scorn was here expressed. "Religion! 'Twasn't much religion she had in her mind. And we treated her real kindly, Ephraim, thinking 'twas the hold of delusion they had upon her. 'Twould be very small use to bring her back even if you or your father could have found out which way they'd gone. 'Tisn't likely she'd stay long if you fetched her, seeing she's that sort of a girl, with a hankering for the man. There isn't a place in this house to lock her into unless it is the cellar."

It was perhaps the thought of the unspeakable degradation it would be to the worthy house to hold a girl as prisoner in the cellar, perhaps the dismal knowledge that that which had already befallen them and her was not much better than this, that caused his mother here to lose her self-control entirely and weep bitterly. Ephraim shrank under her words as if they had been the strokes of a whip striking him. When she had ended he went on heavily up the dark stair.

Both the men were in riding-dress. The elder man, when he had comforted his wife as best he might, laid aside his boots and whip determinedly, believing that the use for them, as far as concerned the search for his niece, was at an end. Upstairs, sitting between the three windows that looked east and north and south, Ephraim sat as long as exhaustion made rest necessary. He was still equipped for the road, thinking only which way it behoved him to travel, and when.

CHAPTER X.

The next day, toward afternoon, Joseph Smith stood by the bedside of Angel Halsey. Susannah, wan and weary with a long night's nursing, was sitting beside the pillow. Smith looked upon them both benevolently. It was some minutes before he spoke. Susannah was too much in awe of him to say much, but his presence was welcome. Since Halsey's rational self had been lost in his delirium, loneliness like darkness that could be felt had pressed upon her.

"Our brother will be healed," said Smith at length. "It is given to me to know that he will be healed." He then spread his hands over the sick man and made a short prayer. There was much fervour in his words and his voice was loud.

"Give him to drink," said Smith.

"Biery's wife told me as long as he was in fever not to give him water."

Smith looked down upon her kindly, but he spoke in a tone of absolute authority. "My sister, I say unto thee give him water. It is given to me to know that he must have water and that he will do well."

"It is never done in such cases," said Susannah. "I remember when my father--" She had not the faith that Smith required of her.

Without a frown, with perfect gentleness, Smith fetched the water and, lifting the sick man's head, allowed him to drink eagerly. Halsey was obviously comforted.

Smith had something else to say. If he had not been who he was Susannah might have perceived that he was somewhat perplexed, even embarra.s.sed.

Just as a child does not easily attribute to the adult such hindering emotions, so she supposed him to be upon a plane above them.

He lingered by the bedside, apparently watching the sufferer. At length he said, "You set out with this young man--yesterday morning?"

"Yes, very early."

There was another pause, then he said, "Did you go before a justice of the peace?"

"A justice of the peace?" Then she added inconsequently, "My uncle is a justice of the peace." She had never heard of a civil marriage; she did not know in the least what he meant.

"Or--or a minister?"

She began to understand now.

"I married you myself, sister, and it was sealed in heaven, but I haven't got a license to marry, so that the Gentiles would say--that the knot wasn't tied, ye know." The last words were a lapse into common parlance. She had grown accustomed to the hybrid nature of his mannerism.

He had expected and feared to see her white face flame into excitement, but to Susannah it seemed a small thing now what the Gentiles might say.

If the marriage was indeed sealed in heaven, then all was well. And if it was not, worse could not be. She was too weary now to respond to the prophet's worldly solicitude for her. Looking at the still unconscious Halsey, she felt that there was time enough for further action.

Smith said, "Emma would have come, but the child has spasms."

"We meant to go to you," said Susannah. "We lost our way. I only heard to-day where you were."

After a while he said, "I might stop here with our sick brother and send you to Emma, but there is a congregation called for to-night. Mr.

Cowdery would have come, but he was at the baptising."

"Did you leave the baptising just to come and see us?" It occurred to her that from his point of view two stray disciples such as herself and Halsey could be of little importance compared with his appearance at the solemn function.

Smith busied himself giving Halsey more water. That done, he went away without further words. Susannah heard his horse gallop from the door.

She knew that he had travelled some five miles to pay this visit, and she supposed that he desired to return if possible before the converts had come up from the water. His visit had undoubtedly brought her comfort. His response to her message had been prompt and kind. She knew now that his thoughts and Emma's were busy concerning her. And then, too, the sick man was better. He had gone quietly to sleep.

The woman of the house brought her for food an unusual delicacy. Smith had ordered this. Mrs. Biery made some remarks concerning him. She said that his coat seemed very old, but that he had given her money and bid her attend diligently upon the sick man and his wife. Susannah, who knew how little money the Smiths had hitherto possessed, how many things they must want for themselves, was touched.

As her spirits revived, her faith and hope in the new sect revived also.

She looked among the few possessions Halsey had brought with him for the precious copy of the Book of Mormon, and sat reading it by Angel's bedside while the autumn sun was sinking.

Sometimes she heard a traveller stop at the inn door and pa.s.s on again.

At dusk there was a sounds of horses coming with speed. To her surprise Joseph Smith came into the room again. He looked as if he had been riding hard, but he spoke as quietly as though he had gone only from that room to the next.

"I have brought a gentleman who can marry you according to the law of the State." Susannah had gone forward to greet him, but now she looked suddenly back toward the unconscious man, whose form was almost indistinguishable in the dusk.

Smith brought candles and set them at the foot of the bed. He took Halsey by the hand and lifted him to a sitting posture, telling him in clear strong tones what was required of him. Halsey understood. He became completely conscious under Smith's influence, and for the hour almost strong. He would know where he was and how he came there, who the minister was that had come. He even required that this stranger should show his license to marry.

The minister was a common-looking man, small, s.h.a.ggy as to the beard, business-like. He knew nothing of Joseph Smith's prophetical claims, and cared only to know that Susannah was over eighteen years of age.

Marriage was a thing easily accomplished in that day and region. A few minutes more and Susannah was a wife.

In after years, when she used to think of Angel Halsey as having gone before her into the unseen, Susannah held the belief that the part of him which she would meet there would be that which shone out in the rare half-playful smiles he gave, in the glance which, at the moment of smiling, he bent on her. He was a very grave man, shrewd, in many ways, in others as simple as a child, but above all greatly religious. His religion, however deep might be its root, was also always upon the surface. Only now and then, when, as at their first meeting, he recognised in his serious way that something else was required if he would truly hold communion with Susannah, the smile would come as from some inward part of his spirit, like a dawning light slowly breaking through the surface, soon withdrawn again by the power of custom. When he thus smiled, Susannah in those days trusted him absolutely, avowed herself entirely to his service, and felt within her heart a large measure of affection.

Halsey's was the first case of illness in the newly-formed sect that called itself already "_The_ Church of Christ." Joseph Smith and Cowdery and a man named Whitmer, with whom the Smiths were now housed, having consulted upon it, decided that they must begin at once to carry out the commands of Scripture. They came together, therefore, and anointed Halsey with oil, laying their hands upon him and praying fervently.