The early spring had begun to clothe the towering mountain steeps with
spotted robes of brown, gray and green; over the distant summits,
the fleecy wind-clouds were torn and draggled as they trailed their
white skirts across the sharp edges of the mountain tops. Out on the
hills peeped the lovely rare bulb that the pioneer children called
"sego-lily," and here and there nestled the early, pink star they
called "Sweet Williams;" and rarer still, the tall, intensely blue
bulbous flower that was known as "the blue-bell," hid its precious
beauty beneath the gray walls of its shrubby friend the sage brush.
Everywhere the sego lily nodded with its golden brown heart and its
delicate, pouting lips of creamy white; while children ran and laughed
and quarreled as they dug the mellow, luscious root they called in the
Indian tongue, "segoes."
Boys began to drive the sheep from the valley winter quarters to the
bunch-grass covered hills above; the herdsman took possession of his
mountain hut beside the cold, moss-covered spring, perched high up in
the tiny valleys of the upper mountain peaks. Out on the hills was
heard the tinkling bell of the sheep, and the call of the herders
echoed from peak to peak as they drove their hungry flocks through the
upper vales. The low, dark green pastures on the marshy lands began to
throw up their mellow juices into feathery wild oat stems, or filled
the reedy grass with thin nectar for the few and very choice cows that
waded around with slow pleasure in the Jordan meadows.
Down by the Jordan's banks the boys watched the cows through the early
spring days, occasionally plunging into the cool water for a quick
swim, longing for the hot summer days when hours could be spent in the
water of the treacherous stream. Here and there a stray fisherman threw
his rude line into the stream and occasionally caught a mountain trout,
the speckled beauty glistening like silver as he threw it upon the
bank. At break of day, the husbandman--and who was not a husbandman in
those early pioneer times in these valleys?--drove his team afield--not
in the mellow soil known to the home he had left in the East, but
in the hard, uncultivated earth of centuries of sun-baked, rainless
summers, down in the bosom of the barren valleys. He dug out the tall,
gray-spiked sage brush and huge, flaunting sunflowers, and everywhere
he trenched his land in regular lines to train down upon it the cooling
streams which gave life and fertility to the otherwise hopeless soil.
The first days of April brought the annual Conference, and everyone
in Utah laid aside work and prepared to attend the great three days'
meeting. Men in the city brought into their homes great stores of flour
and food to feed the visitors who would tarry with them during the
Conference. Women cooked meats and pastry, washed and ironed sheets and
quilts and filled the extra straw ticks to make temporary beds in every
spare corner to accommodate their usual country visitors.
For many miles on all the country roads could be seen teams of all
descriptions wending their way to Conference. A few horses, some mules,
and often great ox-teams plodded their way city-ward. Men, women and
little children cheerfully left their homes and comforts to take
chances of any kind of hospitality for the privilege of attending the
prized semi-annual religious services.
The yard of the Tithing office was filled with visiting teams and
wagons of every description, and busy women prepared food and comfort
for the hungry multitude gathered there. Children ran about, playing
at hide-and-seek, or chased each other over the ground amid wheels and
wagon tongues, grouped about in semi-confusion.
It was rather a cold and damp time, therefore the Tabernacle was well
warmed for the people gathered in happy groups for this Friday morning.
What exchanges of greetings were there as brother met brother and
sister greeted sister! Months, perhaps years had elapsed since they
had seen each other. Here was a family just come over from the "old
country" standing up between the benches to greet the throng which
crowded about them to shake their hands, for they had been good to
the "elders" in England, and every elder wanted to take them by the
hand and introduce them to his family. How quaint the old English
pronunciation sounded on those newly imported English tongues, and how
queer the children looked with their little bare, red arms, and their
low, broad-toed shoes and white "pinafores," and how it made the Utah
children laugh and stare to be told by these recent importations to
"give over now, give over;" and how the elder would smile as the jolly
mother of the new arrival would recall his words and ways while amongst
them; and how his merry eyes would sadden and fill with tears as he
heard the story of "our Mary who had died," or, far worse, perchance,
had apostatized in spite of all teachings, and who had been left behind
to her own backsliding ways! What great slaps were bestowed upon broad
backs as Brother So-and-So came up behind Brother What's-His-Name and
thus announced his pleasure at greeting his old-time friend!
As John Stevens entered the well-warmed and cosy building, a few
minutes before the meeting was called to order, his eye involuntarily
became brighter in sympathy with the merry confusion and bustle which
he witnessed all around him. Everybody was standing up and talking to
everybody else, while on the distant "stand" the elders were indulging
in the same friendly and informal greetings. Crops, the weather,
babies, death, marriage, sermons, soldiers, war, the millennium, new
homespun coats, the possible advent of a woolen mill in the Territory,
carpet looms, shoe lasts, prospective sawmills, and the best recipe
for cooking dried service-berries, all these topics buzzed in endless
variety and confusion around the well-filled hall.
But hark! all eyes are turned to the stand, as Brigham Young is heard
calling the people to come "to order," and instantly all voices are
stilled; the groups at once settle down into regularity, and the
thoughts of the congregation are fixed upon the words of the heartfelt
opening prayer of Elder Chas. C. Rich.
As the choir began its second hymn, John turned in his seat to see
if Diantha and Ellen were in their seats in the choir. Yes, Diantha
stood there with her lovely form clad in its classical, simple gown of
homespun, fitting her like a molded glove, while the glorious eyes and
scarlet lips were as beautiful as ever. He looked at her so long, and
as she was unconscious of his gaze, so earnestly, that he forgot to
look for Ellen.
After the hymn was over, however, he remembered Ellen and he soon
saw that her place among the altos was vacant. Where was Ellen? he
wondered; she was always at meeting.
John addressed to himself some very severe reflections, and as his mind
left his own affairs and became partly absorbed in the sermon which
Elder Orson Hyde was preaching, he gradually became conscious that he
had formed a resolution. That resolution was to forget Diantha Winthrop
as speedily as possible.
Now, this was a thing which John had never before contemplated. In all
his past associations with the girl, no matter what coldness, neglect
or discouragements he had experienced, he had never for one moment
despaired of some day winning her for his wife. He knew intuitively
something of human nature, and besides that he had felt in the depths
of his own soul a whispering assurance that the girl belonged to him,
and that his claim to her was one which had existed before they came
to this earth. Therefore he had quietly gone along, never seeking to
urge himself or his attentions upon her nor indeed upon any girl;
he had concealed from her as from everyone else the secret of his
preference, and he had lived for years with the hope in his heart which
made his daily sunshine and sweetened his every night vision. Yet now,
with awakened consciousness on his part, he found himself forming an
invincible resolution never again to permit his thoughts or his love to
go out to this girl who had given him at one time plain encouragement,
and who had since, for no reason whatever, turned upon him a colder,
prouder face than she had ever done in the old days before she had
guessed his secret.
He sought, with the old Puritanic inheritance of self-investigation, to
fathom the cause of this resolution. He found his mind distracted from
the sermon which had been so interesting, and involuntarily he turned
around to look at Dian herself to see what expression she had now upon
her face, and to see if perchance her looks might have had something to
do with this strange decision. She looked as serene, as unconscious,
as a statue. Her face looked slightly weary, as if she, too, had lost
interest in the sermon, and her thoughts were on something else. But
she did not look at John, and even if she knew where he sat, she seemed
to avoid meeting his eyes.
As John's gaze left her witching face, and his eyes traveled over the
choir seats, he observed Ellie's vacant seat, and he felt suddenly
that Ellie had something to do with this decision. What and how did
Ellie effect this? John was not an impulsive man, his thoughts were
deep and rather slow in forming. He allowed his mind to play upon this
thought which had come to him, and it seemed to him that a veritable
inspiration flashed upon him that Ellie was in danger, and that she
needed him. He had no superstitious notion that he could hear Ellen
calling him, that is the way he would have put it to himself; yet if he
had been a more imaginative man, he would have said that he could hear
her voice in his soul pleading for help in her hour of extremest peril.
However it was, he was so strongly impressed that he struggled as long
as he could to restrain the feeling which gave him no peace, until he
finally arose and went out of the meeting, and hastened down to the
home of the Tylers, and inquired for Ellen. Aunt Clara was at home,
getting dinner for the rest of the folks who had gone to meeting, and
she answered his knock at the door.
"Ellie, why, she is not well this morning, and she is still in bed.
She did not sleep much last night, and I told her to lie still this
morning, and she could perhaps go to meeting this afternoon."
John sat and chatted a while with his old friend, Aunt Clara, but he
did not mention the dreadful impression which he had felt that morning,
and he told himself again and again what a silly thing it was for him
to give way to such notions.
He heard later from Tom Allen that Ellen was at the afternoon meeting
and he added that fact to the scolding he had administered that morning
to himself, and assured himself that there was plenty of time to try
and persuade pretty Ellen Tyler to accept him and his home as her
future destiny.