Miss Dividends Part 23

"_Because I know what you are._"

"My G.o.d! You know--" and the strong man turns from her, and hides his face in his quivering hands.

Then she goes on, faltering a little over the words, but still goes on: "Why have you disgraced our name? Why have you become a Mormon--a POLYGAMIST?"

Here he astonishes her by whispering, with white lips, these curious words: "I did it that I might settle upon you a million! For your sake I became Mormon--for your sake I became polygamist. I DID IT FOR BUSINESS PURPOSES!"

CHAPTER XII.

A DAUGHTER OF THE CHURCH.

For a moment, Erma believes this extraordinary statement, and falters, seeming almost to invite his caresses, at least not to repulse them.

Seeing this, Ralph Travenion mutters, "Thank G.o.d, you believe me!" and flies to take her in his arms; but suddenly her dead mother's face seems to the girl to rise between her father and herself. She shudders, turns away from him, and says coldly: "You ask me to believe this monstrous thing,--that for my sake you became a Mormon?"

"Yes, as G.o.d is above me!--to make you rich,--to place you above the care of poverty,--to surround you with luxury,--the thing that has been my one thought in life."

"Was that your thought?" cries the girl suddenly, with a face that to him is beautiful as an angel's, but just as that of the angel's G.o.d--"was that your thought when you entered into polygamous marriage with those women down there? Oh, don't attempt to deny it!" for he is about to open his lips. "I saw two of them. I was at the Sunday-school meeting of the Twenty-fifth Ward, and beheld your hostages to your faith--five little ones, I believe. One of them, a girl, Mr. Oliver Livingston was kind enough to say, looked like me."

To this, for a moment, he does not reply. Then suddenly, forcing his tongue to do his wish, he repeats: "For your sake I did that also!"

"For my sake?" gasps Erma, astounded, then cries out: "Absurd!

Impossible!" and having exhausted tears two days before, mocks him with unbelieving laugh.

"As G.o.d is above me!"

"Prove it!"

"I will!" And so, being driven to his defence, and knowing that he is pleading for his own happiness--for this child of his _other_ life is to Ralph Travenion, once club man of New York City, but now Mormon bishop of Salt Lake, the thing he loves best in this world--he begins to tell his story, earnestly, as a man struggling to win the lost respect and esteem of the one woman whose respect and esteem he must have,--pathetically, as a father striving to keep his daughter's love.

His voice trembles slightly as he begins: "In New York, Wall Street practically ruined me. The ample fortune that I had determined to devote to your happiness and your life, Erma, my daughter, had pa.s.sed from me.

I had, after leaving sufficient for your education, but a few thousand dollars to take with me to this Western world. I had promised my old friend to settle a million dollars on you, so that if he kept his contract to make over a like amount to his son, you could wed Oliver Livingston and take the place in New York society to which you had been born. To keep this promise, I left the old life that was pleasant to me, and came, G.o.d help me, to _this_!" He looks about the bare room, with its rough furniture, its uncarpeted floor, its pioneer discomfort, and out through the open window over the long waste that covers the West Tintic Valley. And she looks also, and sees naught but sage brush, unrelieved save by a few floating clouds of dust that, thick and heavy, mark the course of ore-teams from the Scotia mine, making their hot and alkaline way towards the furnaces in Homansville.

Then Ralph iterates, "I came to this life for your sake," a far-away look getting into his eyes, for recollections of his old club life and the friends and companions and chums of other days, and pretty yachting excursions on the Sound, and gay opera and dinner parties and _fetes_ at fashionable Newport, come to this exile.

Noting this, some idea of what is in his mind comes also to his daughter, and makes her tender to him, and this change in her face gives him courage.

He goes on, "For your sake I did this!"

"For my sake it was not necessary to be a Mormon."

"To make a fortune it was!" he cries. "I wandered about the Mississippi for a year. At the end of that time, I was poorer than when I left New York. St. Louis and Chicago did not seem to me a quick enough opportunity. I came further West. I had a wild hope of making money in furs, in some stage line, as Indian trader, but found no chance, and so, in pursuit of one will-o'-the-wisp and another, I journeyed on until I found myself in Salt Lake City. Here I saw a fortune for a man of ability. The Transcontinental Telegraph Company was building its line. A contract to supply them with telegraph poles, properly handled, would make me rich. But it could be so handled only by a Mormon, and I joined the Church of Latter-Day Saints,--a stern sect, who will have no wavering disciples, no half-way apostates in its ranks. By that contract I made a considerable sum. Then the building of the Union Pacific Railway came, and by it I made a fortune, because I was a Mormon."

"A Gentile might also have succeeded," suggests his daughter.

"Impossible! As a Mormon, and only as a Mormon, I could hire thousands of Mormon laborers at one dollar and fifty cents per day,--and pay them by store orders on Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Inst.i.tution, who liquidated them in goods at, practically, fifty cents on the dollar.

Mormon labor cost me seventy-five cents per day against Gentile labor at three or four dollars; as a Latter-Day Saint I could command the cheap article. That is why I joined the Mormon Church--for your fortune and your happiness."

"Was it for my happiness that you accepted their infamous creed for the degradation of my s.e.x--that you entered into plural marriage--that you are now surrounded by children of polygamy?" asks the girl, a bitter sarcasm dominating her voice.

"THAT WAS TO SAVE MY LIFE!"

"To save your life? What nonsense!"

"Hush! Listen to me!" and Ralph Travenion speaks very low, as if he almost feared the walls would hear him. "A year after I had joined it, it was spoken unto me by the President that the Church doubted my sincerity because I had not entered into polygamy. To be doubted in those days,--in 1865 and '66,--meant the atonement of blood, such as was carried out on Almon, Babbitt and the Parrishes--it meant being cut off 'below the ears.' Had I died here then, my fortune would have never been acc.u.mulated for you. You would not now have a million to give you prestige,--to give you power,--to make you reign beauty as you are. You would not now be called Miss Dividends," and the old man would put his arms about his daughter to caress her, and take her to his heart--for her loveliness has made him, her father, very proud.

But Erma cries to him hoa.r.s.ely, "What kind of a dividend have you given me? _The dividend of shame!_ Society shudders and turns from me. The Livingstons have already done so."

To this he answers, "My G.o.d, what do you mean?" sinking upon a candle-box that does duty as a chair in this uncouth department.

"I mean this," cries Erma, "that when they discovered that I was the daughter of a Mormon, that I had little illegitimate half-brothers and sisters, they fled from me as if I were tainted and left me to the kindness of Bishop Kruger."

"KRUGER KNOWS YOU ARE HERE?" This is a wail of anguish from Travenion that makes his daughter start.

She answers him, though the old man's agitation frightens her.

"Certainly. He learnt of my coming in New York, and returned on the same train with the Livingstons and myself to Salt Lake City. He----"

But Erma pauses, astonished and horrified, the effect of her simple words upon her father is so tremendous.

He is wringing his hands and muttering, "They have me now. My heart is in their hands!" Then he steps quickly to the door, and she hears him speak to the man who has driven her from Salt Lake. "Take your horses to the stable at Eureka. Feed and water them and be ready to return this evening at seven o'clock."

"I don't see as I can, bishop," answers the driver. "The team won't stand it. They are putty nigh tuckered out now."

"Then be ready to-morrow morning," he says hurriedly, and returns to the room where Erma still sits, and sighs to himself, "I don't suppose it would be much use. If they know you are here, they know that they have my heart in their hands."

"Your heart in their hands? What do you mean by that?" whispers the young lady.

"I mean _you_! You are my heart,--YOU. My darling! My pet! My treasure!

Who has put peril upon herself because she loved her old papa!" and before she can prevent it, he has her in his arms and is pressing her to his heart, and caressing her, and crying over her the tears of a strong man in his extremity.

And now she struggles not, for his kisses bring remembrance of his other kisses in happier days, in far-away New York, when she has looked for his coming at her school, and afterwards as a young lady has flown to this heart, that she knows has always beat for her.

After a moment, his agitation and words make her ask, "What latent danger is there to me?"

"Nothing immediate," he answers. "Perhaps none at all--perhaps I am a fool; for in 1871 there are many Gentiles in this Territory, and United States troops at Camp Douglas. _But I remember!_ And the thought of what once was, makes me fear what may now be." Then he says suddenly and impressively, as if some new idea alarmed him, "Tell me about your trip from New York. Omit no details. _Minutiae_ may mean safety for us both.

But first--" And it now being the dusk of the evening, he illuminates the room with the flicker of a coal-oil lamp and the yellow glow of a tallow dip, and places her very tenderly on the only chair in the room.

Seated on this, she tells him her story, he interrupting her now and then to ask pertinent questions, most of them in regard to the actions of Kruger. And getting answers that he doesn't like, he seems to grow more despondent the more her words indicate the Mormon bishop has taken interest in her movements.

But as she tells about Harry Lawrence, and the trouble the injunction on his mine has brought upon the young man, the old man's eyes gleam and he chuckles: "Yes, I rather think I have put that bantam into a business hole he won't get out of!"

He seems so happy and so triumphant over this affair, that Erma, his daughter as she is, almost hates him.

This brings her to her contribution to Harry's bank account, to defeat Bishop Tranyon of Salt Lake and Zion's Co-operative Mining Inst.i.tution, and telling this with some embarra.s.sment and pauses and blushes, she notes her father's face grow long and his features puzzled.