The Mormon Prophet Part 17

There was no need in the district of Manchester for Finney to explain what hypocrite he meant. In his own country Smith was commonly held to be the arch-hypocrite.

"The devil has surely espoused that cause in earnest, for the number of deluded souls in that part of Ohio and in southern Missouri, and scattered as missionaries up and down the country, is, I hear, between three and four thousand."

"And always among those who worship the letter of the Scripture,"

remarked Ephraim, "for their missionaries give chapter and verse for all they teach."

"I was told that their customs were peculiarly evil. Even among themselves they lie and steal and are violent and licentious; and they teach openly that it is a merit to steal from the Gentiles, as they call those not of themselves; and, furthermore, they aim at nothing less than setting up a government of their own in the west."

"Who told you all this?"

"I am sorry to say that I had it on good authority. Some of the western brethren had it from a poor fellow who had been deluded into entering the Mormon community, and had barely escaped with his life when he desired to withdraw."

"Would you consider a pervert from your own sect the best witness of its tenets? But you say that you saw my cousin?"

Finney told what had led him to the village of Hiram, and said, "When I spoke of the sins of the Mormons, a young woman seated near the front of the congregation rose up. It was your cousin. I saw at once by the pallor of her face that the Lord was having direct dealing with her soul. The 'power' was indeed very great; a strong man fell as dead near her, who before the night was over gave testimony of sound conversion.

After he and your cousin had been led out, many others in different parts of the building cried to G.o.d for mercy. When the sermon was over I sought for your cousin, but when I told who she was, the people of the place said that no doubt Mormon messengers had come while she was waiting, and forced her to depart. That night there was a disturbance in the place; some of the more hot-headed men had the leaders out, and tarred and feathered them--a dastardly deed! I have been threatened myself with being rid on a rail and tarred when the devil stirred up the people against my preaching, but the Lord mercifully preserved me. 'Tis a shameful practice, but I hear it was done to these men to intimidate them from the more violent crimes which they had conspired to commit. In the morning I was forced to go, as I was advertised to preach at many stations farther on, or I would have denounced the violence from the pulpit. I could not find out anything more concerning your cousin, but the Lord has never allowed me to doubt that the many prayers which we have offered on her behalf were answered that night, for I could see by the expression of her face that she, like those upon the day of Pentecost, was cut to the heart."

At the garden gate, under the boughs of the quince-tree, which had increased its branches since the day in which Susannah had last pa.s.sed under them, Ephraim now stood in the moonlight, barring the entrance. At length with a sigh he said, "Alas! Finney, I believe that there are few souls under heaven more true and more worthy than your own; but as for the power of G.o.d, 'His way is in the sea and his path in the great waters, but his footsteps are not known.'"

Out of his breast Ephraim took a thin leather book, and from out of the book gave Finney a letter much worn with reading.

Finney took the letter reverently, and read it by the light of his bedroom candle. In those days letters were more formally written; this one from Susannah to Ephraim began with wishes concerning her aunt and uncle and the prosperity of the household. The fine flowing writing filled the large sheet.

"I write to you, my dear cousin, rather than to my aunt, to whom I fear my letter would not be acceptable, for although I can say that I regret my wilfulness and the manner of my disobedience, still I can never regret that, having been forced to choose, I threw in my lot with those who can suffer wrong rather than with those who have it in their hearts to inflict wrong, for if there be a G.o.d--ah, Ephraim, this is another reason why I address you, for I am in sore doubt concerning the knowledge of G.o.d, as to whether any knowledge is possible. My husband, who denies me nothing, has allowed me to send for some of your books whose names I remembered. I thought at first to write to you about them, but I distrust now my own understanding too much to venture. I would like you to know that they have helped me somewhat, for I do not now say to myself in hard, tearless fashion that I know there is no G.o.d, to which thought I was driven by the reflection that most of those who seek him most diligently sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.

"But the more immediate occasion of this letter is to tell you that a month since Mr. Finney held a meeting not far from us. I went, thinking to gain some help from him, and to hear news of you, but I was greatly disappointed, and made very angry. He preached as my husband and many of our elders preach, and there were among the crowd the same signs of excitement and peculiar manifestations that we have constantly among us.

But toward the end of his sermon Mr. Finney spoke of my husband's Church, and he lent the weight of his influence to very evil slanders that are constantly repeated about us by those who have not sought to know the truth. He did us great injury by stirring up the roughest of the people to violence. Mr. Finney will, I suppose, visit you and repeat those lies, which no doubt he believes, but is most culpable in believing, because he has not investigated the scandal against us as he would have investigated scandal against any who are orthodox. I write now to tell you that that which he says is not true. For although there are a few criminals amongst us, as in every community, evil is not taught or condoned."

As Finney read this letter by his lonely candle he was so far stirred by what he deemed the merely human side of the incident as to say to himself, "Poor Ephraim! She has never even known that he loved her." But next day, in speaking to Ephraim, he pointed out that in the worst communities there were always pure-minded women who knew little or nothing of the evil around them, and said he believed that his message would still be the means of bringing home the truth to Susannah's heart.

CHAPTER VI.

In the meantime an interval of comparative peace had come to Kirtland.

The Gentiles, because they discovered that the town was a good market for the produce of more fields than the Saints could till, allowed their religious zeal to slumber.

A female relative of Halsey, having lost her friends by death, came from the east to Kirtland upon his invitation.

Susannah went down the hill one summer day to meet the travelling company of new converts which brought Elvira Halsey. That young lady had seen about twenty-five years of life's vicissitudes, and had sharpened her wits thereon. Slight, pretty, and dressed with an effort at fashion that was quite astonishing in the Kirtland settlement, Elvira sprang from the waggon.

"I've come to be a Mormon. How do you begin?" With these words she presented to Susannah a new type of character, fresh, and in some ways delightful.

There was quite a crowd at the stopping place of the waggons. Halsey, with other elders and Smith, came to welcome the newcomer. Elvira stood on tip-toe, peeping about, pressing Susannah's arm with whispers.

"Which is Joe Smith, do tell me? Do you go down on your knees to him, and does he pat your head?"

Guided by keen instinct, Elvira did not make remarks in Halsey's hearing which would have shocked him, but perhaps by the same instinct she at once claimed Susannah as a confidante in spite of some feeble remonstrance.

"Are you not wrong to speak so lightly of our religion?" asked Susannah, feeling that she was an elder's wife.

"First let me be sure that you have any religion to speak of." She looked up prettily in Susannah's face. "What a beautiful creature you are!" she cried. "And is it to please my cousin Angel that you wear a snuff-coloured dress and a white cap and a neckerchief like an old lady of seventy?"

As they proceeded together up the white curving road, over the crest of the verdant bluff, Elvira announced her further intentions.

"I am not going to live with you. I am going to board with the Smiths. I want to get to the bottom of this business, and see the apparitions myself."

"There are no apparitions," said Susannah gently.

"Gold books, you know, flying about in the air, and the angel Maroni and hosts of the slain Lamanites."

"You expect too much. Such visions as Mr. Smith had came but at the beginning to attest his mission and give him confidence."

"Tut! I should think he had sufficient of that commodity. It is I who require the confidence, and have I come too late?"

"I would question, if it did not appear unkind, why you have come at all?"

"Bless you, it's relations, not revelations, that I came after."

"I fear that Angel will not be satisfied with that att.i.tude," Susannah sighed. She supposed that Elvira represented all too well the att.i.tude of educated minds in that far-off world whose existence she tried to forget.

"Therefore," said Elvira, "I will board with the Smiths."

Elvira's whim to be received into the prophet's family could not be carried out, but by persistency she succeeded in establishing herself in the household of Hyrum Smith, where she distinguished herself by two peculiarities--a refusal to marry any of the saintly bachelors who were proposed to her, and a perpetual good-natured delight in all that she saw and heard. She resisted baptism, but to Susannah's surprise, remained on perfectly friendly terms with the leaders of the sect.

The next two years pa.s.sed quietly in Kirtland. Susannah, imbued, as indeed were all Smith's friends, with his belief that the peace was but for a time, cherished her husband as though death were near, and grieved him by no outward nonconformity to pious practices. Many chance comments which she made were straws which might have shown him the way the current of her thought tended underneath her habitual silence, but they showed him nothing. It was mortifying to her to observe that Smith, rarely as he saw her, was always cognisant of her mental att.i.tude, while her husband remained ignorant.

Susannah gave up the girlish habit of fencing with facts that it appeared modest to ignore. She was perfectly aware that she exercised a distinct influence over the prophet, of what sort or degree she could not determine. Little as she desired this influence, she could not withhold a puzzled admiration for Smith's conduct. He rarely spoke to her except in the most meagre and formal way, and all his decrees which tended for her elevation in the eyes of the community or for her personal comfort were so expressed that no personal bias could be detected.

She asked herself if Smith practised this self-restraint for conscience'

sake, or from motives of policy, or whether it was that several distinct selves were living together within him, and that what appeared restraint was in reality the usual predominance of a part of him to which she bore little or no relation. There was much else in his character to admire and much to condemn. He had steadily improved himself in education, in mental discipline, and in personal appearance and address. He could hardly now be thought the same man as when he had first preached the new doctrine in Manchester. This bespoke an intense and unresting ambition, and yet the selfishness that is the natural result of such ambition was absent. As far as his arduous work would permit, he gave himself lavishly to wife and child, to all the brethren, rich and poor, when they asked for his ministrations. The motherless babies whom he had helped Emma to nurse through their infancy had gone back to their father's care, but there was never a time when some poor child or dest.i.tute woman was not a member of his household. On the other hand, many of the actions of his public life were questionable. He had established a bank in Kirtland, of which he was the president. Even Halsey admitted to Susannah that this was a great mistake, that the bank ought to have been under the control of some one who understood money matters; the prophet did not. He had also set up a cloth mill, and undertaken to farm a large tract of land in the public interest. The prophet showed to much better advantage when inst.i.tuting new religious ceremonies, of which there were now many and curious, or when giving forth "revelations" which had to do with the principles of economy rather than its practical details. Susannah thought that the voice of the Gentiles all around them, shouting false accusations of greed and dishonesty, would sooner or later find much apparent confirmation if no financier could be found to lay a firm hand upon the prophet's sanguine tendency toward business speculation.

CHAPTER VII.

In the bleak December two elders came from Zion, the holy city in Missouri, bringing the history of dire tribulation.

It was a cold night; the first snow was falling upon the wings of a gale. Susannah was sitting alone quietly working out problems in algebra, in which study Smith had desired that her elder pupils should advance. The storm beat upon the window pane, and set the bright logs of the fireplace now flaming and now smoking, the varnished wooden walls dimly reflecting light and shadow.

Halsey had been out to see the newcomers, who were staying at the prophet's house. It was late when she heard his tread, m.u.f.fled in the drifted snow. He hardly paused to shake it from his clothes before he came near. She saw that he was in a mood of strong grief and excitement.

"Angel," she spoke pityingly, "you have had a hard, hard day; you have stayed so very late at this evening's conference." She held out her hand to him. "Do not tell me to-night if you can rest before telling." Young as she was, her countenance, as she lifted it toward him, was motherly.

She remembered what a mere boy he was, fair and hopeful, when she had first seen him three years before, and now strong lines of purpose and endurance were written upon the face that was thin and pale, the paler, it seemed, because of the transient colour that the storm had given a moment since to the clear skin.

"I would that thou didst not need to hear, but it is not for us to turn our eyes from that which the Lord hath written for our instruction in the suffering of our brethren." Then he added, "The elders from Zion have told us all. There was great joy and prosperity among them, and the more foolish boasted of their wealth to the Gentiles, saying also that the Lord had given the whole land to them for an inheritance."