French was a Gentile's daughter, the proudest girl that ever stepped
in St. James. She didn't live on the island; she came here to visit.
And he got her. What's the matter, Cousin Emeline?”
“Some one trod on my grave; I shivered. Cousin Roxy, I want to ask you
a plain question. Do you like a man's having more than one wife?”
“No, I don't. And father doesn't either. But he was obliged to marry
again, or get into trouble with the other elders. And Aunt Mahala
is very good about the house, and minds mother. The revelation may
be plain enough, but I am not the kind of a girl,” declared Roxy,
daringly, as one might blaspheme, “that cares a straw for the
revelation.”
Emeline took hold of her arm, and they walked on with a new sense of
companionship.
“A great many of the people feel the same way about it. But when the
Prophet makes them understand it is part of the faith, they have to
keep the faith. I am a reprobate myself. But don't tell father,”
appealed Roxy, uneasily. “He is an elder.”
“My uncle Cheeseman is a good man,” said Emeline, finding comfort in
this fact. She could not explain to her cousin how hard it had been
for her to come to Beaver Island to live among Mormons. Her uncle had
insisted on giving his orphan niece a home and the protection of a
male relative, at the death of the maiden aunt by whom she had been
brought up. In that day no girl thought of living without protection.
Emeline had a few thousand dollars of her own, but her money was
invested, and he could not count on the use of it, which men assumed
a right to have when helpless women clustered to their hearths. Her
uncle Cheeseman was undeniably a good man, whatever might be said of
his religious faith.
“I like father myself,” assented Roxy. “He is never strict with us
unless the Prophet has some revelation that makes him so. Cousin
Emeline, I hope you won't grow to be taken up with Brother Strang,
like Mary French. I thought he looked at you to-day.”
Emeline's face and neck were scarlet above her black dress. The
Gentile resented as an insult what the Mormon simply foreboded as
distasteful to herself; though there was not a family of that faith on
the island who would not have felt honored in giving a daughter to the
Prophet.
“I hate him!” exclaimed Emeline, her virgin rage mingled with a kind
of sweet and sickening pain. “I'll never go to his church again.”
“Father wouldn't like that, Cousin Emeline,” observed Roxy, though her
heart leaped to such unshackled freedom. “He says we mustn't put our
hand to the plough and turn back. Everybody knows that Brother Strang
is the only person who can keep the Gentiles from driving us off the
island. They have persecuted us ever since the settlement was made.
But they are afraid of him. They cannot do anything with him. As long
as he lives he is better than an army to keep our lands and homes for
us.”
“You are in a hard case betwixt Gentiles and Prophet,” laughed Emeline.
Yet the aspects of life on Beaver Island keenly interested her. This
small world, fifteen miles in length by six in breadth, was shut off
by itself in Lake Michigan, remote from the civilization of towns.
She liked at first to feel cut loose from her past life, and would
have had the steamers touch less often at St. James, diminishing their
chances of bringing her hateful news.
There were only two roads on the island—one extending from the harbor
town in the north end to a village called Galilee at the extreme
southeast end, the other to the southwest shore. Along these roads
farms were laid out, each about eighty rods in width and a mile or two
in length, so that neighbors dwelt within call of one another, and the
colony presented a strong front. The King of Beaver could scarcely
have counselled a better division of land for the linking of families.
On one side of the Cheesemans had dwelt an excellent widow with a bag
chin, and she became Elder Cheeseman's second wife. On the other side
were the Wentworths, and Billy Wentworth courted Roxy across the fence
until it appeared that wives might continue passing over successive
boundary lines.
The billowy land was green in the morning as paradise, and Emeline
thought every day its lights and shadows were more beautiful than
the day before. Life had paused in her, and she was glad to rest her
eyes on the horizon line and take no thought about any morrow. She
helped her cousin and her legal and Mormon aunts with the children
and the cabin labor, trying to adapt herself to their habits. But her
heart-sickness and sense of fitting in her place like a princess cast
among peasants put her at a disadvantage when, the third evening, the
King of Beaver came into the garden.
He chose that primrose time of day when the world and the human spirit
should be mellowest, and walked with the farmer between garden beds to
where Emeline and Roxy were tending flowers. The entire loamy place
sent up incense. Emeline had felt at least sheltered and negatively
happy until his voice modulations strangely pierced her, and she
looked up and saw him.
He called her uncle Brother Cheeseman and her uncle called him Brother
Strang, but on one side was the mien of a sovereign and on the other
the deference of a subject. Again Emeline's blood rose against him,
and she took as little notice as she dared of the introduction.
The King of Beaver talked to Roxy. Billy Wentworth came to the line
fence and made a face at seeing him helping to tie up sweet-peas. Then
Billy climbed over and joined Emeline. They exchanged looks, and each
knew the mind of the other on the subject of the Prophet.
Billy was a good safe human creature, with the tang of the soil about
him, and no wizard power of making his presence felt when one's back
was turned. Emeline kept her gray eyes directed towards him, and
talked about his day's work and the trouble of ploughing with oxen.
She was delicately and sensitively made, with a beauty which came and
went like flame. Her lips were formed in scarlet on a naturally pale
face. Billy Wentworth considered her weakly. He preferred the robust
arm outlined by Roxy's homespun sleeve. And yet she had a sympathetic
knowledge of men which he felt, without being able to describe, as the
most delicate flattery.
The King of Beaver approached Emeline. She knew she could not escape
the interview, and continued tying vines to the cedar palisades while
the two young islanders drew joyfully away to another part of the
garden. The stable and barn-yard were between garden and cabin. Long
variegated fields stretched off in bands. A gate let through the
cedar pickets to a pasture where the cows came up to be milked. Bees
gathering to their straw domes for the night made a purring hum at the
other end of the garden.
“I trust you are here to stay,” said Emeline's visitor.
“I am never going back to Detroit,” she answered. He understood at
once that she had met grief in Detroit, and that it might be other
grief than the sort expressed by her black garment.
“We will be kind to you here.”
Emeline, finishing her task, glanced over her shoulder at him. She did
not know how tantalizingly her face, close and clear in skin texture
as the petal of a lily, flashed out her dislike. A heavier woman's
rudeness in her became audacious charm.
“I like Beaver Island,” she remarked, winding the remaining bits of
string into a ball. “‘Every prospect pleases, and only man is vile.’”
“You mean Gentile man,” said King Strang. “He is vile, but we hope to
get rid of him some time.”
“By breaking his fish-nets and stealing his sail-boats? Is it true
that a Gentile sail-boat was sunk in Lake Galilee and kept hidden
there until inquiry ceased, and then was raised, repainted, and
launched again, a good Mormon boat?”
He linked his hands behind him and smiled at her daring.
“How many evil stories you have heard about us! My dear young lady,
I could rejoin with truths about our persecutions. Is your uncle
Cheeseman a malefactor?”
“My uncle Cheeseman is a good man.”
“So are all my people. The island, like all young communities, is
infested with a class of camp-followers, and every depredation of
these fellows is charged to us. But we shall make it a garden—we shall
make it a garden.”
“Let me train vines over the whipping-post in your garden,” suggested
Emeline, turning back the crimson edge of her lip.
“You have heard that a man was publicly whipped on Beaver Island—and
he deserved it. Have you heard also that I myself have been imprisoned
by outsiders, and my life attempted more than once? Don't you know
that in war a leader must be stern if he would save his people from
destruction? Have you never heard a good thing of me, my child?”
Emeline, facing her adversary, was enraged at the conviction which the
moderation and gentleness of a martyr was able to work in her.
“Oh yes, indeed, I have heard one good thing of you—your undertaking
the salvation of eight or nine wives.”
“Not yet nine,” he responded, humorously. “And I am glad you mentioned
that. It is one of our mysteries that you will learn later. You have
helped me greatly by such a candid unburdening of your mind. For you
must know that you and I are to be more to each other than strangers.
The revelation was given to you when it was given to me in the
Tabernacle. I saw that.”
The air was thickening with dusky motes. Emeline fancied that living
dark atoms were pressing down upon her from infinity.
“You must know,” she said, with determination, “that I came to Beaver
Island because I hated men, and expected to see nothing but Mormons
here—”
“Not counting them men at all,” indulgently supplemented the King
of Beaver, conscious that she was struggling in the most masculine
presence she had ever encountered. He dropped his voice. “My child,
you touch me as no one has touched me yet. There is scarcely need of
words between us. I know what I am to you. You shall not stay on the
island if you do not wish it. Oh, you are going to make me do my best!”
“I wish you would go away!”
“Some Gentile has hurt you, and you are beating your bruised strength
on me.”
“Please go away! I don't like you. I am bound to another man.”
“You are bound to nobody but me. I have waited a lifetime for you.”
“How dare you talk so to me when you have eight wives already!”
“Solomon had a thousand. He was a man of God, though never in his life
was there a moment when he took to his breast a mate. I shall fare
better.”
“Did you talk to them all like this?”
“Ask them. They have their little circles beyond which they cannot go.
Have you thoughts in common with your cousin Roxy?”
“Yes, very many,” asserted Emeline, doggedly. “I am just like Cousin
Roxy.”
“You have no mind beyond the milking and churning, the sewing and
weaving?”
“No, I have no mind beyond them.”
“I kiss your hands—these little hands that were made to the finest
uses of life, and that I shall fill with honors.”
“Don't touch me,” warned Emeline. “They can scratch!”
The King of Beaver laughed aloud. With continued gentleness he
explained to her: “You will come to me. Gentile brutes may chase women
like savages, and maltreat them afterwards; but it is different with
you and me.” He brought his hands forward and folded them upright on
his breast. “I have always prayed this prayer alone and as a solitary
soul at twilight. For the first time I shall speak it aloud in the
presence of one who has often thought the same prayer: O God, since
Thou hast shut me up in this world, I will do the best I can, without
fear or favor. When my task is done, let me out!”
[Illustration: “‘I HAVE ALWAYS PRAYED THIS PRAYER ALONE’”]
He turned and left her, as if this had been a benediction on their
meeting, and went from the garden as he usually went from the
Tabernacle. Emeline's heart and eyes seemed to overflow without any
volition of her own. It was a kind of spiritual effervescence which
she could not control. She sobbed two or three times aloud, and
immediately ground her teeth at his back as it passed out of sight.
Billy and Roxy were so free from the baleful power that selected her.
They could chat in peace under the growing darkness, they who had home
and families, while she, without a relative except those on Beaver
Island, or a friend whose duty it was to shelter her, must bear the
shock of that ruinous force.
The instinct that no one could help her but herself kept her silent
when she retired with Roxy to the loft-chamber. Primitive life on
Beaver Island settled to its rest soon after the birds, and there was
not a sound outside of nature's stirrings till morning, unless some
drunken fishermen trailed down the Galilee road to see what might be
inflicted on the property of sleeping Mormons.
The northern air blew fresh through gable windows of the attic, yet
Emeline turned restlessly on her straw bed, and counted the dim
rafters while Roxy slept. Finally she could not lie still, and slipped
cautiously out of bed, feeling dire need to be abroad, running or
riding with all her might. She leaned out of a gable window, courting
the moist chill of the starless night. While the hidden landscape
seemed strangely dear to her, she was full of unspeakable homesickness
and longing for she knew not what—a life she had not known and could
not imagine, some perfect friend who called her silently through space
and was able to lift her out of the entanglements of existence.
The regular throbbing of a horse's feet approaching along the road
at a brisk walk became quite distinct. Emeline's sensations were
suspended while she listened. From the direction of St. James she saw
a figure on horseback coming between the dusky parallel fence rows.
The sound of walking ceased in front of the house, and presently
another sound crept barely as high as the attic window. It was the cry
of a violin, sweet and piercing, like some celestial voice. It took
her unawares. She fled from it to her place beside Roxy and covered
her ears with the bedclothes.
Roxy turned with a yawn and aroused from sleep. She rose to her elbow
and drew in her breath, giggling. The violin courted like an angel,
finding secret approaches to the girl who lay rigid with her ears
stopped.
“Cousin Emeline!” whispered Roxy, “do you hear that?”
“What is it?” inquired Emeline, revealing no emotion.
“It's Brother Strang serenading.”
[Illustration: “IT'S BROTHER STRANG SERENADING”]
“How do you know?”
“Because he is the only man on Beaver who can play the fiddle like
that.” Roxy gave herself over to unrestrained giggling. “A man fifty
years old!”
“I don't believe it,” responded Emeline, sharply.
“Don't believe he is nearly fifty? He told his age to the elders.”
“I haven't a word of praise for him, but he isn't an old man. He
doesn't look more than thirty-five.”
“To hear that fiddle you'd think he wasn't twenty,” chuckled Roxy.
“It's the first time Brother Strang ever came serenading down this
road.”
He did not stay long, but went, trailing music deliciously into the
distance. Emeline knew how he rode, with the bridle looped over his
bow arm. She was quieted and lay in peace, sinking to sleep almost
before the faint, far notes could no longer be heard.
From that night her uncle Cheeseman's family changed their attitude
towards her. She felt it as a withdrawal of intimacy, though it
expressed reverential awe. Especially did her Mormon aunt Mahala take
little tasks out of her hands and wait upon her, while her legal aunt
looked at her curiously. It was natural for Roxy to talk to Billy
Wentworth across the fence, but it was not natural for them to share
so much furtive laughter, which ceased when Emeline approached. Uncle
Cheeseman himself paid more attention to his niece and spent much time
at the table explaining to her the Mormon situation on Beaver Island,
tracing the colony back to its secession from Brigham Young's party in
Illinois.
“Brother Strang was too large for them,” said her uncle. “He can do
anything he undertakes to do.”
The next Saturday Emeline refused to go to the Tabernacle. She gave no
reason and the family asked for none. Her caprices were as the gambols
of the paschal lamb, to be indulged and overlooked. Roxy offered to
stay with her, but she rejected companionship, promising her uncle
and aunts to lock herself within the cabin and hide if she saw men
approaching from any direction. The day was sultry for that climate,
and of a vivid clearness, and the sky dazzled. Emeline had never met
any terrifying Gentiles during her stay on the island, and she felt
quite secure in crossing the pasture and taking to the farm woods
beyond. Her uncle's cows had worn a path which descended to a run
with partially grass-lined channel. Beaver Island was full of brooks
and springs. The children had placed stepping-stones across this one.
She was vaguely happy, seeing the water swirl below her feet, hearing
the cattle breathe at their grazing; though in the path or on the log
which she found at the edge of the woods her face kept turning towards
the town of St. James, as the faces of the faithful turn towards
Mecca. It was childish to think of escaping the King of Beaver by
merely staying away from his exhortations. Emeline knew she was only
parleying.
The green silence should have helped her to think, but she found
herself waiting—and doing nothing but waiting—for what might happen
next. She likened herself to a hunted rabbit palpitating in cover,
unable to reach any place of safety yet grateful for a moment's
breathing. Wheels rolled southward along the Galilee road. Meeting was
out. She had the caprice to remain where she was when the family wagon
arrived, for it had been too warm to walk to the Tabernacle. Roxy's
voice called her, and as she answered, Roxy skipped across the brook
and ran to her.
“Cousin Emeline,” the breathless girl announced, “here comes Mary
French to see you!”
Emeline stiffened upon the log.
“Where?”
Roxy glanced behind at a figure following her across the meadow.
“What does she want of me?” inquired Emeline. “If she came home with
the family, it was not necessary to call me.”
“She drove by herself. She says Brother Strang sent her to you.”
Emeline stood up as the Prophet's youngest wife entered that leafy
silence. Roxy, forgetting that these two had never met before, slipped
away and left them. They looked at each other.
“How do you do, Mrs. Strang?” spoke Emeline.
“How do you do, Miss Cheeseman?” spoke Mary French.
“Will you sit down on this log?”
“Thank you.”
Mary French had more flesh and blood than Emeline. She was larger and
of a warmer and browner tint—that type of brunette with startling
black hair which breaks into a floss of little curls, and with
unexpected blue eyes. Her full lips made a bud, and it only half
bloomed when she smiled. From crown to slipper she was a ripe and
supple woman. Though clad, like Emeline, in black, her garment was a
transparent texture over white, and she held a parasol with crimson
lining behind her head. She had left her bonnet in her conveyance.
“My husband,” said Mary French, quiet and smiling, “sent me to tell
you that you will be welcomed into our family.”
Emeline looked her in the eyes. The Prophet's wife had the most
unblenching smiling gaze she had ever encountered.
“I do not wish to enter your family. I am not a Mormon.”
“He will make you wish it. I was not a Mormon.”
They sat silent, the trees stirring around them.
“I do not understand it,” said Emeline. “How can you come to me with
such a message?”
“I can do it as you can do it when your turn comes.”
Emeline looked at Mary French as if she had been stabbed.
“It hurts, doesn't it?” said Mary French. “But wait till he seems to
you a great strong archangel—an archangel with only the weakness of
dabbling his wings in the dirt—and you will withhold from him nothing,
no one, that may be of use to him. If he wants to put me by for a
while, it is his will. You cannot take my place. I cannot fill yours.”
“Oh, don't!” gasped Emeline. “I am not that sort of woman—I should
kill!”
“That is because you have not lived with him. I would rather have him
make me suffer than not have him at all.”
“Oh, don't! I can't bear it! Help me!” prayed Emeline, stretching her
hands to the wife.
Mary French met her with one hand and the unflinching smile. Her flesh
was firm and warm, while Emeline's was cold and quivering.
“You have never loved anybody, have you?”
“No.”
“But you have thought you did?”
“I was engaged before I came here.”
“And the engagement is broken?”
“We quarrelled.”
Mary French breathed deeply.
“You will forget it here. He can draw the very soul out of your body.”
“He cannot!” flashed Emeline.
“Some one will kill him yet. He is not understood at his best, and he
cannot endure defeat of any kind. When you come into the family you
must guard him from his enemies as I have constantly guarded him. If
you ever let a hair of his head be harmed—then I shall hate you!”
“Mrs. Strang, do you come here to push me too? My uncle's family,
everything, all are closing around me! Why don't you help me? I
loathe—I loathe your husband!”
Mary French rose, her smile changing only to express deep tenderness.
“You are a good girl, dear. I can myself feel your charm. I was not
so self-denying. In my fierce young girlhood I would have removed a
rival. But since you ask me, I will do all I can for you in the way
you desire. My errand is done. Good-by.”
“Good-by,” said Emeline, restraining herself.
She sat watching the elastic shape under the parasol move with its
shadow across the field. She had not a doubt until Mary French was
gone; then the deep skill of the Prophet's wife with rivals sprung out
like a distortion of nature.
Emeline had nearly three weeks in which to intrench herself with
doubts and defences. She felt at first surprised and relieved. When
her second absence from the Tabernacle was passed over in silence she
found in her nature an unaccountable pique, which steadily grew to
unrest. She ventured and turned back on the woods path leading to St.
James many times, each time daring farther. The impulse to go to St.
James came on her at waking, and she resisted through busy hours of
the day. But the family often had tasks from which Emeline was free,
and when the desire grew unendurable she knelt at her secluded bedside
in the loft, trying to bring order out of her confused thoughts. She
reviewed her quarrel with her lover, and took blame for his desertion.
The grievance which had seemed so great to her before she came to
Beaver Island dwindled, and his personality with it. In self-defence
she coaxed her fancy, pretending that James Arnold was too good for
her. It was well he had found it out. But because he was too good
for her she ought to go on being fond of him at a safe distance,
undetected by him, and discreetly cherishing his large blond image as
her ideal of manhood. If she had not been bred in horror of Catholics,
the cloister at this time would have occurred to her as her only safe
refuge.
These secret rites in her bedroom being ended, and Roxy diverted from
her movements, she slipped off into the woods path, sometimes running
breathlessly towards St. James.
The impetus which carried Emeline increased with each journey. At
first she was able to check it in the woods depths, but it finally
drove her until the village houses were in sight.
When this at last happened, and she stood gazing, fascinated, down the
tunnel of forest path, the King of Beaver spoke behind her.
Emeline screamed in terror and took hold of a bush, to make it a
support and a veil.
“Have I been a patient man?” he inquired, standing between her and her
uncle's house. “I waited for you to come to me.”
“I am obliged to go somewhere,” said Emeline, plucking the leaves and
unsteadily shifting her eyes about his feet. “I cannot stay on the
farm all the time.” Through numbness she felt the pricking of a sharp
rapture.
The King of Beaver smiled, seeing betrayed in her face the very
vertigo of joy.
“You will give yourself to me now?” he winningly begged, venturing
out-stretched hands. “You have felt the need as I have? Do you
think the days have been easy to me? When you were on your knees I was
on my knees too. Every day you came in this direction I came as far as
I dared, to meet you. Are the obstacles all passed?”
[Illustration: “‘YOU WILL GIVE YOURSELF TO ME NOW?’”]
“No,” said Emeline.
He was making her ask herself that most insidious question, “Why could
not the other have been like this?”