After this Susannah's attention was centred upon the coming of her first
child.
"'Tain't lucky to have a child when the leaves are falling," said Elvira
Halsey, a certain mist of far-off vision clouding her sparkling eyes.
Susannah had been greatly weighed down by depression, not fearing
ill-luck, but regretting for the first time unfeignedly that she had
ever joined herself to the sect in which her child must now be nurtured.
For herself, feeling often that all religions were equally false, it had
mattered little; with strange inconsistency she now perceived that she
would greatly prefer another faith for her child. Susannah literally
found no place for repentance; to confess her grief to Halsey would only
have been to crush out all the domestic joy of his life; she was too
courageous to do that when she saw no corresponding good to be gained.
Yet when the baby at length lay on her lap, grew and smiled, kicked and
crowed, Susannah forgot at times, for hours together, the superstitions
of the Latter-Day Saints. The motherly solicitude which she had long
exercised over Halsey changed into something more like friendship when
she saw him hang over her and her child as they played together.
Susannah had given up her school. The winter was severe, and mother and
child hibernated together by the sweet-scented pinewood fires till the
stronger sun had melted the frost flowers on the panes. Spring had
nearly come before Susannah divined that for the child's sake Halsey had
been protecting her for months from the fear of a near disaster that was
weighing upon his own heart.
This was the year of what was called in the early Mormon Church "the
great apostasy." One evening Halsey came in looking so white and ill
that Susannah drew back the baby, which she had held out for his evening
kiss.
In a few minutes she understood what had occurred. Some four or five
leaders in the Church, with their families and friends, had charged
Smith with hypocrisy and fraud.
It was not Susannah's own opinion that such a charge could be
maintained. Smith appeared to her to be like a child playing among awful
forces--clever enough often to control them, to the amazement of himself
and others, but never comprehending the force he used; often naughty; on
the whole a well-intentioned child. But she could well see that
childishness combined with power is a more difficult conception for the
common mind than rank hypocrisy.
Angel had been assisting in a solemn excommunication of the apostates.
He looked upon them as having been overcome by the devil.
After this Halsey instituted a series of unusual meetings for prayer and
revival preaching, which he held after the ordinary evening classes in
the School of the Prophets, which was now removed to the upper chambers
of the finished temple. Now, as at other times, his preaching was
successful. His power was with men rather than with women; they gathered
in excited crowds, and their prayer and praise went up in the midnight
hour.
Susannah was not in the habit of going to bed till her husband returned.
One night, after twelve had struck, while she sat warming the dimpled
feet of her restless babe at the rosy fire-light, she was greatly
astonished to hear a tapping, low but distinct, on a window that opened
to the back of the house. She lifted her head as mother animals prick
their ears above their young at the faint sound of any danger.
After an interval the tap was repeated; it was no accidental noise.
Susannah laid the child in its cradle and went nearer the window
shutters, hesitating.
She knew only too well that this secrecy was the sign of some one's dire
distress. She knew the habits of the people; a neighbour's aid was
sought freely and with confidence; doors were open at all times to need
or social intercourse.
To her intent listening the accents of a low and guarded tone came in
reply to her challenge; the voice was Joseph Smith's.
Susannah looked with anguish toward her child's cradle. Had some army of
mad persecutors invested Kirtland? Nothing less than fierce persecution
could be thus heralded.
For years Susannah had known Smith as a near neighbour, and the stuff of
which the man was at this time made is indicated by the fact that
instinctively she opened the window with noiseless haste.
Smith climbed in. "Has Halsey returned?"
The fire gave the only light in the room. Smith did not shut the window,
but remained sitting on the sill. A bake-house at the back hid the place
from neighbouring eyes.
"It's all up with our bank," said Smith.
"I feared so," said Susannah.
"The apostates took such a lot of money out of it. No bank anywhere in
this region could have stood it. You have always been down on our
management of the bank, Mrs. Halsey, but if it was not good, why then
have so many of the Gentiles put in their money, and why have they taken
our notes all over the State?"
"You never had the capital you advertised."
"We have land that stands for it."
"It is not worth half what you value it at."
Then Susannah became sorry for her sharp recrimination. Punishment had
befallen; it was a time for mutual help, not for reproach. She saw that
although Smith kept himself calm he was greatly stirred.
"Why are you here?" she asked.
Smith's huge frame was poised awkwardly on the window sill. He moved
restlessly and touched one thing and another with nervous hands. Then he
said with a short laugh, "The size of it is, I'm running away, Mrs.
Halsey. Ye may think I feel pretty mean, but ye'll do me the justice
just to think how it is. If they'd shoot me in fair fight, I'd go and,
if it were the Lord's will, be shot to-morrow, and be thankful too; but
ye know the sort of vengeance they'll take. I have been beaten time and
again before now, and covered with pitch, and I've been knocked down and
kicked and ducked in ponds a good many times, as ye know, and I ain't
ashamed to say that I'm afraid of that sort of thing and afraid of the
results on Emmar and the children. If the Lord clearly told that 'twas
his will to stay and stand it, why then I'd have no choice, but I
haven't had no word from the Lord."
His face was livid; in the effort to make his explanation, whether
shaken by the recollections he described or by fear of her contempt,
she saw that his limbs were actually trembling as if with cold.
"There ain't many men, Mrs. Halsey, as would stay and face that sort of
music when they could get away, but if it was to do good to mortal
creature I'd think about staying, but it's t'other way. It's me and
Rigdon as has been advertised as working the bank; it's my blood and his
the Gentiles that have our notes are thirsting for. Suppose we stayed
and they took to mauling us again, wouldn't the Saints here take to
fighting to protect us? I've taught them to fight in self-defence and
they'd fight to defend me. God knows there are better men than we are
that would be killed right and left if we stayed, and 'twould be no use,
for the Gentile numbers would overpower us. 'Tain't no use. When I found
to-day that there wasn't a chance of staving off the bankruptcy I sent
Emmar and the children and Rigdon's folks off in a close waggon after
sundown. Rigdon's rid off by another road, and I've got my horse ready
and ought to be gone. And there ain't a man in Kirtland as will know
which way we've gone by to-morrow, so that no Saint will need to do any
lying on my account."
"You are very sorry for the mistakes you have made about the bank," she
said pityingly.
He gave another short laugh that, like the first, was less like a laugh
than a sob.
"I guess I'm sorry enough, but I don't know whether it's repentance, for
I thought I'd done all just what the Lord told me to do, but at times
like these I'm not so sure of the revelations I hear in my soul, but I
know I thought I was right at the time; but as for being sorry, if ye
had the burden of all these children of Israel in the desert on your
heart, knowing that ye had brought them into the desert, and brought the
hunger and the thirst and the pestilence and the enemy upon them, and
weren't quite sure at times whether the thing that ye saw leading was
the Lord's pillar of cloud or the devil's, and if ye was now being cast
out before the face of men and called a liar and a swindler, and without
a dollar in the world, I guess ye'd know what it felt like to feel
sorry."
The room was a long one; in the fore part the glow from the hearth made
clear the baby's cradle, the table set for Halsey's supper, the close
shutters of the front windows, but the red flame rays were fainter as
they came into this back portion where Susannah stood in dull distress a
few paces from the stricken intruder.
This man had always the power at close quarters of producing strange
disturbance in the emotions of his friends. Susannah was trembling, her
heart heaving, if not with pure compassion, at least with wild
excitement on his account.
With an effort Smith held himself still, but gave again the
heart-broken laugh that appealed more than all else to her woman's
heart. "'Tain't all that neither, that makes me the most 'sorry,' as ye
call it. I tried to go in and out before this people, Mrs. Halsey,
loving and serving all alike as a prophet should, but I wouldn't be
human man, no, nor fit to be chosen by God for the honour he's put upon
me, if I didn't know who amongst us was most worth care and respect, and
it's come to my soul this night, now that I can't no longer stand
between you and all the dangers that beset our people in the wilderness,
that I wasn't right, maybe, to egg on Halsey to take ye away from your
happy home, or to make a point as I did, first off, of getting ye
converted--for I was more set on it than I showed at the time. It's
because 'twas my doing you married, that I've come to say this; and I
see well enough that 'tain't love that is between you and Halsey, though
you are too tender of him to let him see."
She made a movement of the head, an effort to show reproving dignity,
while in fact taken by surprise, her nerves in distressful panic, she
had scarce the power to control herself, none to control him.
He answered her impulse, although he had not looked up to see the
gesture. "Ye haven't got any call to-night to be offended with me, for
I'm worth no more, unless the Lord see fit to lift me up agen, than the
paper our bank-notes is written on; and I have just got one more thing
to say, then I'm gone. If there's any grit in Joseph Smith, and if it
pleases God that he's not going now to his death, he'll not make another
home for himself without providing as good a place for you and the young
one. Ye may depend on it."
He rose up now. "'Tain't no use disguising facts; I'm running away, and
I'm leaving ye to dangers and privations. Your money and Halsey's is
gone the way of all the rest, and without me to stop him Halsey will fly
in the face of the first persecution that's within his reach. If I
hadn't known that there was no chance at all of your coming I'd have
asked you and the child to git into Emmar's waggon; but there's just
this to say, there ain't a tribulation that can come to you that won't
hurt me, living or dead, more than it can hurt you." Then after a pause
he added, "Emmar sent her dear love and good-bye to ye."
He stood still a moment before her in humble attitude, the words of
Emma's tender farewell lingering, as it were, in the air between them.
"Have a care what you do." (He resumed a more dignified manner of
speech.) "It's borne in upon my mind that great dangers will lie round
you. Tell brother Halsey from me that it is the will of the Lord that he
should seek first the safety of his wife and child, and to abide in a
place of safety till the child be grown."
He climbed through the window. His last act was to close the casement
behind him to save her trembling hands the exertion. His movements must
have been very stealthy, for she did not hear the sound of his steps or
the steps of his horse in the silent night.