The Mormon Prophet Part 24

There was a pause, and for the first time she was aware that there was some sentiment in the minds of her hearers which did not appear upon the surface.

She went on, "I don't know why he should trouble himself to come back for me except that--I think that he was much touched by some earnest words my husband said to him that he did not see his way to accept, and I think also that he is zealous for the Church."

Her surpa.s.sing wrongs had so far set her apart and made all that she said and did sacred. No one questioned her further.

In the beginning of February the Danite reappeared. He came under the cover of night, but showed himself only when the household was awake. He was much thinner, more gaunt than before, but in frankness and quietude the same. His first words to Susannah had an import she did not expect.

"That young lady you mentioned to me--I said she was dead because you were half crazy, and would have gone back to her, but I worked round till I found her; she got to the city of Far West right enough."

After a while he said, "That young lady and some other of our folks have got horses and they're going into Illinois now. Most of our folks are walking. It's about as bad as can be, but I guess you'll have to go.

We'll be safe enough, for as long as we go straight on the Gentiles are bound to let us pa.s.s. I tried to get some better sort of a way for you and her, but there ain't no way unless we would have sworn we weren't Saints and gone pretending to be Gentiles, but even then we haven't got the money."

Susannah was thrilled with excited distress. She was not prepared to make an abrupt decision, and it appeared that if she desired to join this company she must go that evening or not at all.

During the hours of the morning her mind cowered, dismayed. Should she now renounce her husband's sect, refusing to suffer with them? She had not as yet fort.i.tude to do this. Halsey's eyes, the touch of his hand, her baby's voice lisping the tenets of their faith in repet.i.tion of his father's solemn tones, these were sights and sounds as yet too near her.

To her shocked fancy the child and his father were only gone out of sight, but near enough to be cruelly hurt by her public perversion. And, moreover, if she should take this course she must write to Ephraim at once, for she could not well remain where she was without definite purpose in view.

Susannah had sought seclusion in which to think, and the younger son of the house intruded himself. He was perhaps about thirty years of age, a burly man, resolute and pa.s.sionate. He spoke fairly enough. The Danite himself had said that the journey to which she was haled by her friends was one of untold hardship, its end uncertain; he offered her all that an honest and prosperous man could offer, but went on to urge on his own behalf the strength of those sentiments which he had learned to entertain for her--his admiration (Susannah sickened at the word), his love (she shrank in fear).

She rose up with the moan of a hunted thing. She did not pause to make excuses for the hunter, to consider the pioneer life that wots little of sentiment in proportion to utility; she only saw again the grave at Haun's Mill and the white faces of her dead upturned to hers. It seemed that this man, with the consent of his people, was urging his suit as it were beside the very corpse of her husband. The Danite had shown Angel reverence, had shown by his every word and glance that he counted her as belonging to the dead man whose blood he carried at his heart.

Susannah rode out from that temporary home at nightfall upon the Danite's horse.

CHAPTER XIV.

It was the season of rain and sleet, of rude northerly winds. The roads, across a tract of flat fields and in among the low woods that fringed the rivers, were heavy with mud.

After riding half the night on a pillion behind the Danite, Susannah entered the Mormon camp. Up and down the sides of a dirty road, in waggons, in small tents, and in the open, men, women, and children were lying huddled in family groups. How far these crowds extended she could not see. Watch-fires were burning here and there, and in the fields on either side a patrol of Missouri militia were heard scoffing and shouting in the darkness. The Danite answered the challenge of one of these men with apparent meekness; Susannah perceived that he had gained in self-control. When they had entered the road, along the sides of which the forlorn mult.i.tude lay, they travelled for some way upon it, the Danite speaking in low tones now and then to the Mormon watchers. At length they came to a place where a few waggons of better description were standing and a number of horses were tied; here he lifted Susannah from the horse. Three of the Mormon leaders came up; they evidently knew her and her story. The eldest took her hand and spoke in broken tones of the crown which Halsey had won in the unseen city of G.o.d.

These were the first words that Susannah had heard in unison with Halsey's own thoughts, and for his sake they endeared the whole wretched Mormon encampment to her.

A woman, her head and shoulders wrapped in a shawl, sprang down from one of the waggons, and Elvira encountered Susannah.

"You expect me to say that I am sorry for you," she said hurriedly; "I will not. It is not a time for grief. We each of us have just so much power of being sorry and no more, and the well has gone dry. I am glad you have come. There are a great many things that one can yet be a little glad for; but you must make haste to lie down, for we shall soon enough be called to the march."

The beds shaken down on the floor of the waggon were covered with reclining women. Some of them squeezed themselves together to make the place Elvira had vacated large enough for two. Susannah stretched herself out, loathing with her senses the crowded bed, but with a tender heart for her fellow-sufferers. After the long dumb weeks of her stern sorrow, after that day's revolt of injured sentiment, she felt that it was worth while to have come here if only to have made some one else, as Elvira had said, "a little glad."

The dawn came sighing fitfully, long sighs that rose in the distant fields to the east meeting them in their pilgrimage and dying away westward; the dawn wept also, scattering her tears upon them in like transient showers.

Elvira found her own horse. The Danite had used yesterday the animal he had provided for Susannah.

"But what right have I to his horse?" Susannah began her question impetuously, but Elvira silenced her.

"Hush! Don't let the other women know that it isn't yours. Poor things, they will begin to ask why it isn't theirs. Do you think that we are living on bowing terms, curtseying to each other and saying, 'After you, madam, if you please'?"

Elvira was changed. Terror had at last done its work. Her pretty features were drawn with anxiety; her eye glittered.

"I have been baptized," she said to Susannah in hard tones. "When I saw the water red with blood I went down into it."

Eastward, facing the gusty sobs of the winter morning, they went. The road was soft, and hundreds of feet treading in front of them had kneaded water and earth together into a slippery ma.s.s. As far as could be seen in front and behind, the line of the pilgrimage stretched, women and children plodding with burdens on their backs, men pushing hand-carts before them, only here and there a waggon or a group of horses.

Elvira took up several children on her horse, and pointed out to Susannah a sickly woman to whom she could give a turn upon the pillion that she herself had ridden during the night. So they began one of many weary days.

To the good the necessities of compa.s.sion are as strong as are the necessities of selfishness to the wicked. Within a day or two both Susannah and Elvira had given up their horses entirely to women who had been taken ill by the way. At first they plodded arm in arm, thinking that merely to walk was all that their strength could endure; but there were other women who had children to carry, women even who must push hand-carts before them, and there were little children who sank one by one exhausted on the winter road, as lambs fall when their mothers are driven far.

After the march had continued for a few days there was much illness. All clothing and bedding was wet with the winter rain, chilled and stiff with the frosts. On the faces of many the unnatural flush and excitement of fever were seen, and other faces grew pallid, the lips blue or dark, and the eyes sunken. To all who retained the natural hue and pulses of health a heavier burden was added every day because of the help they must needs give if they would not bury too many of their comrades by the wayside. In that sad caravan souls were born into the world or freed from it by death almost every hour.

Susannah was greatly struck by the meek manner of the boldest and roughest of the Mormon leaders in their dealings with the parties of Missouri militia who, with the ostensible purpose of defending Missouri homesteads from Mormon violence, drove the stricken mult.i.tude as with goads. She had learned from her husband what the strength of true meekness could be, the lightness of heart which commits itself to G.o.d, who judgeth righteously, the glance of love that has no reserve of hatred, the infinite force that can afford to be gentle. Such a spirit had upheld Angel Halsey, but his widow looked in vain among the leaders of this band for a face that bespoke the same upholding. She soon perceived that there was among them a free-masonry of understanding, and that their mildness was a.s.sumed to serve the temporary purpose. By many a prayer she heard breathed, which was in truth, though not in form, a curse, she knew that in the souls of Halsey's successors there was no forgiveness, yet her heart went out in sympathy to men who were sacrificing their own sense of honour, holding in check their most delicious impulses of revenge, for the sake of being worthy shepherds to the weak.

"Do you love them the less because they are not angels?" asked Elvira.

"Have you forgiven?"

Susannah shuddered at the intensity of the hard low tones, the pa.s.sion in the word "love," the sneer in the word "forgive." Yet she knew that the rage against injustice which in youth had driven her forth upon this journey had, since the death of her child, changed into such fierce hatred of the persecutors that she could, except for very fear of herself, have taken upon her own soul the Danite's vow. In these days the pain of bodily suffering or heart-felt grief was as nothing compared with her agony when at times waves of this hatred pa.s.sed over her heart.

The two friends were walking together, pushing before them a small cart in which, on the top of the bundles of household goods, a wretched woman and her newborn child were lying, covered under a scanty tarpauling from the driving sleet. The mud splashed beneath their feet; Susannah had little breath or strength for speech. Elvira, more slightly made, in every way more fragile, had seemed to develop, with every new phase of suffering, more strength of muscle and hatred and love.

They pa.s.sed now two of the leaders. It was the custom for a certain number of these men to go forward and station themselves in pairs at intervals upon the road, cheering each group as it pa.s.sed them, noting with careful eyes if any ill could be remedied by change of posture or exchange of burdens. One of them now, seeing the work to which Susannah had set herself, interfered. He was about sixty years of age, coa.r.s.e in appearance, an elder whose wife and family Susannah knew by reputation.

He and his fellows called a halt, looking for some man who might push the cart, but there was none within sight who was not already overburdened, nor was there a waggon that was not already overfilled with the sick and exhausted. The elder, whose name happened to be Darling, found in this particular instance reason to swerve from his position of guard. He left the post in charge of his fellow and pushed the cart. It was a habit with many of these leaders to seek to lighten the way by jocularities, and Susannah had before observed that, whether the jests arose with ease or effort from the heavy hearts of those who made them, a large proportion of the people were evidently cheered thereby. She could put aside her own tastes for the public good; she could even excuse when this rough comfort was offered to herself.

Darling, labouring behind the cart, made light of the service he rendered.

He said first that the newborn babe must be called after him, and when he learned its s.e.x he gave permission to the ladies to decide between them which should share this honour.

"Shall it be 'darling Susannah'?" he asked, making gentle his tone as he addressed the stately widow, "or shall it be 'Elvira darling'?" This time he turned his head with a broader smile toward Elvira's sharp little features.

Susannah felt that her hypersensitive nerves could almost have called his smile a leer; but she looked at the man's broad face, whose lines told of no resources of thought, no great natural capacity for heroism, and yet were furrowed by the sharpness of this persecution. The face would have been fat had it not been half-starved. It was pale now under the ill-kempt hair, and the set purpose of helpfulness was stamped upon it. She took back the word "leer" out of mere respect. Darling had given away his shoes; he was walking barefoot; he had given away coat and vest also, and the rotund lines of his figure were unpleasantly obvious under the wet shirt, and yet Susannah knew and bowed to the fact that some sick man or little child was wrapped in the garments that were gone.

But Elvira was expressing with hysterical warmth the same sentiments.

"I guess I'll feel it an honour to have my name joined with yours. I haven't got the length of taking off my shoes yet."

Darling began to sing one of the inspiriting Mormon hymns.

"When Joseph to c.u.morah came."

"Poor Joe!" Elvira spoke to the elder in a confidential whisper, "when he cheated over the bank I thought some fiend had put a ring in his nose, and was leading him out to dance, and that I should be able to sit and laugh. Now he's lying upon straw in the gaol. What will they do to him if they lynch him?"

"Tear him limb from limb," whispered Darling, also under his breath. He was probably shrewd enough to know the force of Smith's suffering in stimulating the piety of the faithful, but truth, and grief concerning the truth, were in his words also. He sighed a big sincere sigh, and repeated sadly, "Tear him limb from limb, or burn him to death by a slow fire." Such atrocities, as practised upon criminal negroes, were not unknown in the locality, which gave the elder's words a graphic power, but Elvira's answer was wholly unexpected.

"How droll!" she returned.

The elder was annoyed. He had not refined susceptibilities which sought immediate relief from the dreadful pictures he had suggested, nor did he at all comprehend that her rippling smile was hysterical. "I don't see anything droll about it, sister," he said sulkily.

"Don't you? Now, it all seems to me very droll--you splashing along there barefoot, why" (she drew back a little to get the better view, laughing excitedly), "you've no idea how ridiculous you look; and Mrs.

Halsey stalking along like a dignified ghost, afraid that you and I will kiss one another if we take to whispering, and this woman dying here with her head resting on a sack of potatoes, and the impudent little person you've just christened intruding herself upon the world only to go out of it again, and all these fine people in Missouri rubbing their hands and thinking they have done such a n.o.ble deed. I think," she added, laughing more loudly, "that they are the drollest part of it all."