The Mormon Prophet Part 3

His tone carried conviction. After a while grat.i.tude again stirred her into speech.

"I'm afraid you find it awfully hard holding up the umbrella."

He gave a glance downward at her as she toiled by his side. "Why you're most blown away as it is. You couldn't get along without the umbrellar."

Regarding her attentively for a minute, he added, "Emmar will be vexed when she hears that your dress got so splashed."

They were both bending somewhat forward against the wind; the road beneath them was glistening with standing water. When they pa.s.sed by the woods the trees were creaking and cracking, and over the meadows hung shifting veils of clouds and rain.

"I guess I'd better not take you farther than Sharon Peck's. Your folks would be pretty mad if you walked through the village with Joe Smith."

The lines round Susannah's mouth strengthened themselves; she felt herself superior to those whose att.i.tude of mind he had thus described.

"You have been very kind to come with me. I'd like better to go home than stop, if it isn't too far."

"I guess not. If you'd lived here longer you'd know that there was all manner of evil said about me, and the worst of it is that some of it's true. I've been a pretty low sort of fellow, and I hain't got any education to speak of."

She looked up at him in astonishment; the expression of his face was peaceful and kindly. "Then why do you go about preaching and saying--"

"I hain't got nothing to do with that at all. If an angel comes from heaven and gives me a partic'lar revelation, calling me by name, namely, 'Joseph Smith, Junior,' tain't for me to say he's made a mistake and come to the wrong man, though goodness knows I hev said it to the Lord often enough; but now I've come to see that it's my business just to do what I'm told. But as to the low ways I hed--why, I've repented and give them up, and as to the education, I'm trying to get that, but it won't come in a minute."

Her conscience was not at rest; to be silent was like telling a lie, and from motives of fear, too! At length she burst out, "I don't believe you ever saw an angel, Mr. Smith. I think it's very wicked of you to have made it up, and about the gold Bible too."

They were still half a mile from the nearest house. Susannah gasped.

When she had spoken her defiance she realised that if she had nothing worse to fear, she at least deserved to be left alone among the raging elements. She staggered somewhat, expecting a rebuff.

"I guess you'd better take my arm," he said. "It ain't no sort of a day for a woman to be out."

When she hesitated, flushed and frightened, a smile came for the first time across his face. "You're almost beat back by the wind. It won't hurt you to grip hold of my sleeve, you know, even if I am a thundering big liar. I don't know as I can expect you to believe anything else.

Emmar didn't for a long time, but then, after a spell, she gave up all the comforts of her father's house just to stand by me, and no one's ever had a word to say against Emmar."

They stopped at a farmhouse on the outskirts of the village.

Smith had said to Susannah, "There's a gentleman I know stopping at Sharon Peck's. I'll pa.s.s the umbrellar on to him, and he'll take you home. He's been a Quaker, but I guess you'll find him a pretty nice young gentleman. Mrs. Peck, she isn't to home."

He left Susannah standing upon the lee side of a wooden house amid treeless fields. The eaves sheltered her. She stooped down and with both hands wrung the water from her skirts. She was busy over this when the promised escort joined her.

The remnants of his forsaken Quakerism hung around him; his coat was buff, his hat straight in the brim, his manner prim, and when he spoke it was in the speech of his people. His complexion was very light, hair, eyebrows and lashes, and the down on his chin--almost flaxen; his face was browned by exposure to the weather, but so well formed that Susannah found him very good to look upon, the features pointed and delicate, but not without strength.

"Thou wilt walk as far as thy home with me?" he asked.

He held Smith's huge umbrella, but he did not hold it with the same strength, nor did he show the same skill in keeping it against the wind.

He spoke as they walked. "Thou hast walked a long way. Art weary?"

"Yes--no--I don't know." What did it matter whether she was tired or not? Baffled curiosity was exciting her. "You are a stranger here. Are you a friend of the Smiths?"

"I have experienced the great benefit of being acquainted with the prophet for the last fourteen days."

"But he's not a prophet," said Susannah resentfully.

"Did'st thou never find thyself to be mistaken when thou wast most sure?

Hast thou not perceived that thy Bible tells thee in many different ways that G.o.d chooses not as men choose?"

Then with great ardour he preached to her the doctrine of this new Christian sect. He was a convert; his preaching was rather the eager recital of his own experience, which would out, like some dynamic force within him, than pressure brought wilfully to bear upon her.

He said, "I do not ask thee, friend, if thou art Methodist or Baptist or Presbyterian, but I do ask thee, canst thou read the promises of thy Lord to his church and be content with its present low estate?"

Susannah was habituated to some recognition of her beauty; she missed it here, not knowing what she missed. Smith had known that it was important for her to be sheltered from the wind; he was sorry that her skirts were splashed; his manner, casual as it had been, had at least had in it that element of "because you are you," the first essential of any human relationship. But Susannah liked the young Quaker much better than Smith; he was of finer fibre, and her heart was agape for young companionship; so, unconsciously, she resented his indifference, not only as to her sect but as to her s.e.x.

"My father was an Englishman," she replied with dignity, not knowing why this seemed sufficient answer.

The Quaker proceeded eagerly with his own story. He had searched the Scriptures diligently, and found in them no warrant for believing that the age of miracles and direct revelations would ever pa.s.s from the church. Then upon the gloom of his deep despondency a star had arisen.

He had heard of a young man, poor, obscure, illiterate, who had dared to come forth saying again, as St. Peter had once said, "This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel." He had come far to hear the word, and, upon hearing it, he had found rest for himself and a hope for the world.

His ardour was beginning to tell upon Susannah's mind. The desire awoke within her for some fellowship with his enthusiasm. Stronger was the desire to receive personal recognition from the fair-faced youth.

"I am English," she repeated, "and of course I think it very wicked to add anything to the Bible; it says so in the Revelation."

"That to me also was a stumbling-block for a short time; but if thou wilt consider, friend, that the Book of Mormon is the history of G.o.d's dealing with the wild races of our own continent from the time of Noah until the time of Maroni, which would be about three hundred years after the first coming of the Lord, and that this sacred history, so necessary for the instruction of us who must now dwell in the same land, could not be given until this continent was known to the world, thou wilt cease to cavil, and wilt in all humility believe that that which is done of the hand of the Lord cannot be wrong."

Faith begging the question is a sight to which the eye of experience becomes accustomed, but Susannah, standing upon the threshold of life, blinked and failed to focus her vision, feeling vaguely that during the last phrase some one had turned a somersault, and that too quickly to be watched.

"Thou wilt think upon these things?" The young Quaker stood in the storm and looked earnestly upon Susannah, who was upon her uncle's doorstep, within shelter of the brown pent house.

Susannah smiled. It was a perfectly instinctive smile, not one self-conscious thought went behind or before. She smiled because the young man was comely, and because she was young and wanted companionship.

"I don't know," she said with perfect frankness; "my aunt will be so vexed with me when she hears that I've been to the Smiths that I don't believe I'll be allowed to think of anything this good while."

Her smile, her girlishness, seemed at last to pierce beneath the armour of his devout abstraction. Fortune at work chooses her a fine-edged instrument, and Joseph Smith, with unerring but probably half conscious instinct, had sent the right messenger. The cloud of serious intent on the youth's face broke now into a sudden admiring glance, half playful yet fully earnest. His gray eyes held for a moment gracious parley with hers. "Wilt thou," he asked, still smiling, "give it as excuse in the day of judgment that they would not let thee think?"

"N-n-no." She was more struck with the inadequacy of the excuse than with the fact that she had a better one if she had chosen to give it.

He was again grave, but he was not now unappreciative. "Thou art very fair, and beauty to a young woman is, no doubt, a great snare. I will wrestle in prayer for thee."

He was going down the brick walk between the ma.s.ses of drenched flowers.

"Don't," cried Susannah faintly, "don't do that." But he did not hear her.

CHAPTER IV.

The wind that in the hurly-burly out of doors had been a cheerful if boisterous enemy, seemed suddenly transformed into a wailing spirit when Susannah was making her way up the stairs of the darkening wooden house.

Its master and mistress had not yet returned from burying the dead. The girl made her way up to Ephraim's room. The books were left open upon the table; no one was there.

It was a new thing that Ephraim should breast a storm.

Susannah trudged downstairs again and dried her bedraggled skirts at the fire--an empty house, a dreary wailing wind, and gathering twilight for her sole companions.