Only one unusual incident occurred in Susannah's presently peaceful
life. One day in the golden October she set out to walk some distance up
the valley of the Chagrin River. The object of the walk was a visit to
one of the outlying farmhouses occupied by a family of the Saints; but
Susannah, as was her wont, found more joy in the walk than in the visit.
When she had passed beyond the meeting of the waters, the valley lay
long before her, about a mile in width and quite flat. The stream was
scarcely seen; the ground was covered with flowery weeds, white asters
with their myriad tiny stars, the pale seed feathers of the golden rod,
high grasses, and wild things innumerable which had been turned brown
and gray by the autumn sun, pink clumps of the rice weed, and small
groves of the scarlet stalks of the wild buckwheat. This level sea of
weeds stood so high that when she threaded the narrow path they reached
above her waist. The bees in the white asters were humming as they hum
in apple bloom. The blue jays were calling and flying in low horizontal
flights. The valley stretched to the south-east, then curved; a little
mountain barred the view, upon whose pine-trees the distant air began to
tinge with blue. On the curving bluffs on either side the trees stood in
stately crowds; hardly a leaf had fallen, except from the golden
walnut-trees; the colour of the foliage was for the most part like the
plumage of some green southern bird, iridescence of gold and red shot
through. To her right, where a part of the long hill had been cleared of
trees, the sun shone upon bare gullies in the soap-stone cliffs, making
the colour of that particular brown bit of earth very vivid. Everywhere
a soft autumn haze was lying, and above white clouds were swinging
across the pale blue sky.
After threading the valley path for a mile Susannah was ascending the
bluff to get to the level of the upper farms, when, much to her
surprise, she came, as once before upon the hill Cumorah, upon Joseph
Smith. He was lying under a group of giant walnut-trees, whose boles
were sheltered from the road by a natural hedge of red dogwood and
brambles. He had apparently been occupied at his devotions, but she only
saw him arising hastily. This time there was no peep-stone; it had long
since been discarded. The prophet had a Bible in his hand, and it was
evident that he had been weeping. It was in those lands the habit of
religious men of all sects to make oratories of the woods. Susannah's
only desire was to pass and leave him undisturbed, but he spoke.
He began severely, "Sister Susannah Halsey, it is not meet that a woman
should stray so far from home and without companions."
For a moment Susannah stood abashed. Unaccustomed to censure, she
supposed that she must have done wrong. "I have walked this way before,"
she began meekly, "but if--" She stopped here, her own judgment in the
matter beginning to assert itself.
The prophet had forgotten his reproof. At all times his conversation was
apt to reveal that sudden changes of mental phase took place within him
apparently without conscious volition. He now exclaimed with more modest
mien, "It is, no doubt, by the will of the Lord that you are come, for I
stood in sore need of comfort, for the revelation of the truth is a
trial hard to endure, and at times very bitter."
"Is it?" asked Susannah intently. It was impossible but that her long
curiosity should find some vent, and yet she shrank inwardly from her
own prying.
The prophet leaned against a huge bole. The ground at his feet was
covered with yellow walnut leaves and the olive-coloured nuts. The
sunlight fell upon him in patches of yellow light. He opened the Bible,
turning over the leaves of the Old Testament as if making a rapid survey
of its history in his mind.
"Sister Halsey," he began, "when the favour of the Lord rested chiefly
upon the Jewish nation, at the times of the patriarchs and David, and
when Solomon, arrayed in all his glory and in the greatness of his
wisdom, reigned from Dan to Beersheba, mustn't those have been the times
when the people walked most closely with the Lord?"
"I suppose so, Mr. Smith."
"It is not enough to suppose, Sister Halsey, for it is clearly written
that when the Jews went contrary to the will of the Lord they were given
over into the hands of their enemies."
Susannah endeavoured to give a more unqualified assent.
"Sister Halsey, there has come to my soul in reading this book in these
last days a word, and I know not if it be the word of the Lord or no."
She saw with astonishment that his whole frame was trembling now. She
began to realise that he was truly in trouble, whether because of the
greatness of the revelation or because of private distress she could not
tell. She became more pitiful.
"I hope you are well, Mr. Smith, and that Emma is well. There is nothing
to really distress you, is there?"
In hearing the increased gentleness of her tone he seemed to find a more
easy expression for his pent-up feeling. "It's come upon me in a very
cutting way, truly as the prophets said like a two-edged sword, and at
the time too when I was inquiring of the Lord concerning--" He stopped
here, and she felt that his manner grew more confidential, but he did
not look at her, his eyes sought the ground--"concerning a matter which
has given me no little heart searching." He stopped again, she listening
with a good deal of interest.
"It's come to me to observe that among the chosen people--there ain't no
gainsayin' it, Sister Halsey, though I trust you to be discreet and not
mention the matter, but in the days when the divine favour rested on
Israel each man had more than one wife; and the Lord Himself says He
give them to Solomon, the only objection being to heathen partners."
"Do you mean, Mr. Smith, that I'm not to mention what everybody knows
already, that in the Old Testament times polygamy was practised?"
The now entire lack of sympathy in her tone affected him as an
intentional act of rudeness would affect an ordinary man. The tissue of
his mind, which had relaxed into confidence, grew visibly firmer. He
assumed the teaching tone.
"No, Mrs. Halsey, the only thing that I asked you not to mention was
that I had any light of revelation on a point on which most of our minds
is already made up."
"Mr. Smith, you can't possibly be in the slightest doubt but that it
would be very wicked for any man now to have more than one wife."
"I've heard a great many of the ministers who in times past, in the time
of our bondage we heard and believed, say as it would be very wicked for
any one nowadays to take God at His word and expect Him to do a miracle
or heal the sick; but I've come to the conclusion, Mrs. Halsey, that it
isn't a question of what we in our ignorance and prejudice might think
wicked, but it's a question of what's taught in this book, looked at
without the eye of prejudice and tradition. What we call civilisation is
too often devilisation--_devilisation_, Mrs. Halsey."
He tapped the book. He was becoming oratorical. "The idea of one wife
came in with the Romans. 'Twas no institution of Jehovah, Mrs. Halsey."
Susannah, more accustomed to his oratorical vein than to private
conference, became now more frank and at ease.
"You said you didn't know that the idea was from the Lord, Mr. Smith,
and I don't think it is. I don't think you'll entertain it very long,
and I don't think, if you did, many of the Saints would stay in your
church."
She bade him good-day, and went on up the slope. When she was walking
along the brink of the bluff in the open beyond the nut-trees she heard
him call. He came after her with hastened gait, Bible still in hand. She
was surprised to find that what he had to say was very simple, but not
the less dignified for that.
"I sometimes think, Sister Halsey, that you look down on us all as if we
weren't good enough for you, although you're too kindly to let it be
seen. According to the ways of the world, of course, it's so. If I'm as
rough and uneducated as most of our folks, at least I can think in my
mind what it would be not to be rough, and I can think sometimes how it
all seems to you."
His words appealed directly to strong private feeling which had no
outlet. While she stood seeking a reply the natural power that he had of
working upon the feelings of others, vulgarly called magnetism, so far
worked in connection with his words that tears came to her eyes.
"I don't often think about my old life," she said with brief pathos.
Smith was looking at the ground, as a huge, shy boy might stand when
anxious to express sympathy of which he was somewhat ashamed. "I know it
must be a sort of abiding trial to you." After a moment he added, "I
wouldn't like to make it worse by having you think that I was goin' to
preach any strange doctrine. I'd sometimes give a good deal if the Lord
would raise me up a friend that I could speak to concerning the lights
that come to me that I know that it wouldn't do to speak of in the
public congregations, because of their upsetting nature, and likewise
because I doubt concerning their meaning. And of this matter there was
no thought in my mind to speak in public, for it is for the future to
declare whether it be of the darkness or of the light; but to you I
spoke, almost unwittingly, and perhaps in disobedience to the dictates
of wisdom."
He looked at her wistfully.
Susannah leaned her arm upon the topmost log of the snake fence and
looked down the slope. His insight into her own trials caused her to
sympathise with him in spite of his absurdity. She made an honest effort
to assist him to self-analysis. She said, "A great many things come into
our minds at times, Mr. Smith, that seem important, but, as you say, if
we do not speak about them, afterwards we see that they are silly. Of
course with you, if you think some of your thoughts are revelations, it
must make you often fancy that the others may be very important too, but
it does not follow that they are, and, as you say, time will weed them
out if you are trying to do right." She wondered if he would resent her
_ifs_. She stood looking down the bank in the short silence that
followed, feeling somewhat timorous. The steep ground was covered with
the feathery sprays of asters, seen through a velvety host of gray
teasles which grew to greater height. Through the teasles the white and
purple flowers showed as colours reflected in rippled water--rich, soft,
vague in outline. At one side, by an old stump, there was a splendid
feather, yellow and green, of fading golden rod; yellow butterflies,
that looked as if they had dyed their wings in the light reflected from
this flower, repeated its gold in glint and gleam over all the gray
hillside, shot with the white and the blue. At the foot of the bank lay
the flat valley, and from this vantage ground the river could be seen.
The soft musical chat of its waters ascended to her ears, and among the
huge bronze-leafed nut-trees, whose shelter she had just left, the
woodpeckers were tapping and whistling to one another.
At length Smith sighed deeply, but without affectation. "Yes, I reckon
that's a good deal how it is. It ain't easy, Mrs. Halsey--I hope in your
thoughts when judgin' of me you'll always remember that it ain't easy to
be a prophet."
When he had gone, Susannah found herself laughing, but for Halsey's sake
the laughter was akin to tears.