The Mormon Prophet Part 32

Leaving word that she would receive the money on her return or else call at Smith's office for it when she was ready, she went down into the cheerful noise of the street and bargained with a man who had horses and vehicles for hire. Having arranged that he should come for her at noon, she went about to make the few farewells she felt to be desirable.

Darling was now postmaster of Nauvoo and one of the first presidency. To him she went first. She shrank from him because of his coa.r.s.eness and the jocular admiration which he sometimes had the audacity to express for her, but she could not forget how a.s.siduous his kindness had been in the days of Elvira's illness. She found him sitting, his heels on the upper part of a chimney-piece with a fireless grate, reading the Millenial Star. The hot April sun, streaming through the windows of his office, had caused him to take off his coat, which was no longer thread-bare. His shirt sleeves were fine enough and white; the high hat that was pushed far on the back of his head was highly polished.

Opulence, self-indulgence, good-nature, and a certain element of fanatical fire mingled in the atmosphere of the postmaster's office, and made it somewhat turgid.

When Darling heard Susannah's errand he became serious enough. An apoplectic sort of breathlessness came over him, expressing a degree of interest which she could not understand. He settled his hat more firmly upon his head. "Does the prophet know?"

"He knows. I have said good-bye to him and to Mrs. Smith. It is sad to part with friends that I have known for so many years."

"And the prophet's going to let you go, is he?"

Darling, clumsy at all times, in this speech conveyed to Susannah the first faint suspicion that Smith might dream of detaining her by force.

Darling's youngest daughter, who had been an affectionate pupil to Susannah at Quincy, waylaid her as she came out, and clasped her about the waist with the ardour of an indulged child. She was a blithesome girl of about fourteen.

"I heard you tell father that you are going away. Is it true?" she asked impetuously.

Susannah tried to release herself from the embrace. "Yes, it is true.

Never mind, you like your new teacher, you know, just as well as you used to like me."

"I just guess I don't," cried the child defiantly. "But anyhow, if you are going away, I'm going to tell you something."

Whether the childish love of telling a secret, the girlish love of mischief, or a dawning sense of womanly responsibility was uppermost, it would be hard to tell. There, in the open square, while worthy Saints hurried to and fro on the pavement beside them, while horses jangled their harness and drivers shouted and exchanged their morning greetings, Darling's youngest daughter drew Susannah's head downward and hastily whispered to her the fate of her letters to Ephraim Croom.

"I know, for one day since we came here I heard father talking to the prophet. He said you'd written lately while you were at Quincy, and all your letters had been burned. Now that's the truth; and I said to myself 'twas a sin and a shame, and that you ought to know. Now don't go and tell tales of me, or father will be mad--at least, as mad as he ever can be with _me_." A toss of the pretty head accompanied these words, a flash of conscious power in the bright eyes, the spoilt child knowing that her father was in her toils now, as truly as any future lover would ever be. The school bell was ringing. The girl, her bag of books hanging from her arm, ran with the crowd of belated children.

Susannah walked on, almost stunned at first by the throb of intense anger that came with this surprise. Then the anger was suddenly superseded, hidden and crushed down by a rush of joy. Ephraim had not neglected her; Ephraim had given her up for dead; but she had no reason to suppose that he was dead, no reason to doubt his faithfulness.

Susannah trod the common street in love with motion as some happy woodland creature treads the dells in the hour of dawn and spring.

When Elvira looked up to see Susannah enter her gate she saw her friend transfigured in a glow of returning youth and hope. Elvira looked at her timidly; this Susannah she had never seen before. Elvira's husband was not present. The interior of the house was fantastic almost as its mistress, but sultry with luxury.

"Well now, you think you are going," said Elvira. "Who'd have thought it? And only last week General Bennet said to the prophet that if he'd marry you to him he'd send to New York for diamonds both for you and Emma Smith. He said he'd get a thousand dollars' worth of diamonds apiece for each of you; but Mr. Darling said that you ought to be married to Mr. Heber, who has just been elected an apostle, because--"

She stopped suddenly, nodding her head. "You know why--blood is blood, and we have seen it run in rivers, but we don't mention it here in Nauvoo."

Elvira set the French heel of her slipper in the centre of a rose upon her carpet and spun round upon it till her flounces stood out.

"We don't mention it here in Nauvoo."

She sang as if it were the refrain to a song.

Susannah felt from within her shield of new delight an immense pity.

Here again was a revelation of the coa.r.s.e and frivolous talk that went on at the church meetings, and Elvira was privy to it through that old fool, her husband. How could she endure him!

"O Elvira, in the last few days I have realised as I did not before that riches are making fools of these men. How glad I am that my husband died before he knew that this was to be the reward of his lifework and his prayers!"

Elvira stopped dancing. The mystical side of her character now, as ever, came forward suddenly in the midst of her other interests. The sunshine was bright in the gaudy room. A tiny spaniel, which Elvira's senile slave had procured for her, lay on a red cushion in its full beam, looking more like a toy than a living thing. When Elvira stopped dancing her flounces settled themselves with an audible rustle, and her thin delicately-cut face looked at Susannah from out its frame of curled hair and gold ornaments like the face of a spirit imprisoned in some unseemly place.

"Heaven help us, Susannah," she cried shrilly, "if you call Nauvoo the reward of Angel's prayers. Look!" she cried, pointing out of the window, "see how the new temple rises; how its white walls shine in the sun! We are putting thousands upon thousands of dollars into it. It will be the grandest building this side of the Alleghany mountains." She let her small jewelled hand, with its pointing finger, fall suddenly, "and there shall not be left one stone of it upon another, for the House of G.o.d is not made with hands."

"I see little signs of its foundations here." Susannah spoke with fire.

"Treachery and tyranny are poor bricks."

"Child, its foundations are in the whole earth, here and everywhere, in every nation and kindred. Men like Angel Halsey sow wheat; other people have sown tares. The tares happen to be in blossom just now here in Nauvoo." She seemed to forget her seriousness as suddenly, for again she spun round upon the centre of her rose, singing her little musical refrain.

Susannah made one more appeal of the sort that she had made so often before Elvira's marriage.

"You will not come away with me, Elvira? I do not like to leave you here; you have not been yourself since Angel died. You are not bound to this man because you were not sane enough to make a valid choice."

It was plain speaking, but it did not ruffle Elvira's composure in the slightest. She laughed and began to caress her spaniel. "Mad. Oh yes, we are all mad, and growing madder, but it is because they have huddled us together at the point of the sword, until now to be a Mormon means to be shut out from the world and shut in to--to what? To the prophet's dreams; and some of them are good, and some of them are bad, and some of them are mad; and let us thank Heaven that they are as good as they are, for to go back to the Gentiles who shot down Angel and the children he was teaching to pray, and your child in your arms, that would be the baddest and maddest act of life." She rose up suddenly again. "Go!" she cried. There was a flame of real anger in her eyes. "Since the wish is in your heart, go! We believe now in strange doctrines. Two new doctrines we have learned at Nauvoo. Do you know what they are? One is 'baptism of the dead.' If you get off safely, Susannah, and die in your sins, one of us must be baptized again for you, so that you will be saved in spite of yourself. But the _other_ doctrine is '_salvation by the shedding of blood_.' Do you understand _that_ doctrine?"

"Indeed I do not."

"And you speak with a tone that says that you neither know nor care what new things we have been learning. But you may have reason to care before many hours are over."

She came near and whispered, "They teach us now that if a _man_ sin wilfully and will not repent, it is better that a minister of the church should slay him, for then his blood will make atonement for his soul."

She ceased to speak until she had thrust Susannah out of her door, and her last words were in a whisper of awesome import. "Perhaps _a woman's soul can be saved in the same way_."

Susannah was out again in the cheerful busy street. She made haste to fulfil the one remaining call before she met her chaise at the hotel.

She felt that her last word was due to the member of the Danite band who had saved her in her hour of need and who had avenged her husband's blood.

To each of those who had made sacrifice for the sect, a lot of land in the best part of the city had been awarded. Heber, Danite and apostle, had built upon his lot, and there she found him at the back of the cottage feeding a mare and foal which were tied in a small plot of ragged gra.s.s. He was much older now than when she had first seen him; daring and danger can lengthen time. He had the same indomitable frankness in his dark eyes, but his face was hardened and fanaticism was stamped thereon. It was a homely precinct, with utensils of house and stable-work lying about. The mare was drinking from a bucket, her gentle head so near his shoulder that her love for him was easily seen.

"I am going away," Susannah said. "I have come to thank you for the last time for all your kindness to me and to say good-bye."

"You shall not go," he said harshly.

It was the echo of something which she had heard twice before this morning. This time it began to enter her mind with some sharpness.

"Why not?"

"If you saw a friend hastening to destruction would you not stop her? It is well known amongst us that you desire to go, and at the meeting of the presidency last night the prophet told us that you sought to apostatise. Go home, Sister Halsey, and repent, and obtain forgiveness from the Lord and from his prophet for your unbelief."

She was able to stand for a moment quietly and watch him still busy watering the mare, admiring the skill and gentleness with which he did it, thinking sadly enough that she would never see this remarkable man again, nor know to what the mingled fierceness and gentleness of his nature would grow. Then she offered him her hand in farewell without further argument.

He shook the mare's head from his shoulder and, taking her hand, held it in an iron grasp. "As your friend, and for the sake of that good man, your husband, I beseech you to repent; but if you will not repent, for his sake and for our sakes, because we have prayed for you, you shall still be saved."

Although beginning to be apprehensive of some coming evil, she smiled; and even rallied him upon one of the new doctrines to which Elvira had alluded.

"Do you believe that if I go away some one else will have to be baptized over again for me?"

He looked at her with the same steadfast glance. "It could do no good.

Such salvation is for those who die in ignorance of the truth. But for you, who have been baptized into the truth and have fallen away, there is no hope except repentance or the shedding of blood."

Over the low paling she heard the neighbours' children at their play.

Upon the other side was an open lot across which she saw the pa.s.sers in the street. She withdrew her hand from his now, but with a sinking at heart which did not appear to her reasonable because the surroundings were so tranquil.

He let her go, accompanying her, as any gentleman might, to the gate of his ground. As he opened it he had taken something from his coat, and he showed it to her. It was a knife, very bright and sharp. Its blade when drawn out had a double edge. "It will be better for you," he said mournfully, "to die than to go"; and then he hid the thing again and went back.

This time the idea that had been forcing itself into her mind took possession. For a moment all her strength forsook her; she held to the post of the gate, looking after him as he disappeared up the narrow pa.s.sage between the paling and the house, and then, hurrying onward, she found that it was only by the greatest effort she could walk with outward composure.