Only the outline of passing events was reported to Susannah in her haven
of peace. The elder man took her into his courtly care, and made a point
of explaining to her what he thought she needed to know. The newspapers
were sedulously kept from her, and so reticent were the other members of
the household on the subject of their contents that her heart constantly
sickened at the thought of what she was not allowed to hear.
"You see, madam," the old man explained, "it was Major-General Atchison
that called out the militia in first defence of your people against
Gilliam's mob. Gilliam had about three hundred men, and they started in
the north of the State. Well, Parks and Doniphan, commanding the militia
called out by Atchison, seem to have set about fighting the mob
sincerely enough." The old man pushed back his spectacles and rubbed his
hair. "Then you see, madam, that didn't please Governor Boggs. Here was
the militia of his State shooting down his own good, honest Christian
voters who keep him in office, that's Gilliam's men, and all the mob; so
Boggs gets a lot of his men in all parts of the country to write him
letters saying what dreadful crimes the Mormons are committing. These
letters will no doubt pass into history as a genuine account of your
people's doings. Well! well! I wouldn't shock your prejudices, but I'd
like just to point out by the way that it's all done in the name of
religion. There's Boggs has got an old mother who spends a lot of her
time praying that the purity of the American religion may not be
corrupted by the awful doctrines of Joe Smith."
The old man shook his head and rubbed his thin gray curly hair again
with a smile of constrained patience. "You see, although I do not wish
to grieve you by saying it, if we could only get rid of religion there
would be a lot of brotherly kindness in the world that so far has never
had a chance to say 'peep' and peck its shell. Well, but here's Boggs
reading his letters, and he turns pale with horror at the thought of the
corruption that has come among his good and pious people, so he writes
off to the commanders of the militia that they are to stop fighting the
mob, to fight against the Mormons, and only against the Mormons. So then
Atchison resigns. He points out, fairly enough, that there hasn't been a
single conviction in any lawful court against the Mormons for the crimes
they are accused of. But what of that if Boggs is Governor? So they have
taken away the arms from the Mormon company of militia, and the other
day they went up to Far West with three or four thousand men, and they
got Smith and his brother Hyrum and three of the elders to come out to
them, and they court-martialled them and ordered them all to be shot the
next day.
"But it wasn't done, madam," he added hastily. "General Doniphan had the
pluck to stand out against it and say he would withdraw his troops, so
they put them in irons and sent them to the gaol in Richmond, and then
at the point of the bayonet they have forced the other leaders to bind
themselves to pay all the expenses of the war and to get every Mormon,
man, woman, and child, out of the State, or else they are all to be
shot. That is how the matter stands at present."
"Do you incur any risk by the hospitality you give to me?" asked
Susannah. She had not as yet had energy, even if she had had
inclination, to explain that the Book of Mormon was not sacred in her
eyes, nor Smith a prophet. "Do you think," she asked the old man
wistfully, "that the Mormons have ever been the aggressors, that they
have committed any of the atrocities they are accused of?"
"In some cases they have pillaged, and burned, and murdered; they
wouldn't be human if some of them hadn't got fierce under the treatment
they have been receiving; but when a man like Atchison, who has been
scouring the country and knows pretty well what has happened, prefers to
resign his honourable office rather than fight against them, you may be
sure they are not very far in the wrong. Injuries, you know, will always
set a few men mad. There is your elder, Rigdon, for instance; when he
got here and heard of some of the things your folks had suffered, he up
and made a wild oration on the 4th of July, and said that if any more
outrages were committed on the Mormons, the Mormons would up and
exterminate all the Gentiles in the State. But it has been well enough
seen by any one who had eyes to see that no such language was ever
countenanced by the real rulers of your sect."
When Susannah thanked the old man for his candour he drove his moral
once more. "You see, madam, I can look at things as they are because I
am not bound by any religion to look at them in any particular way."
Susannah rose up when the old man's story was ended, and stood for some
minutes looking wistfully out through the window panes upon the leafless
and storm-swept fields. They two were together in the long, scantily
furnished living-room at the end of the long table. Her figure was
stronger, more true in its proportions, than when she had been a girl.
Her hair, trained into smooth obedience, was fastened within the muslin
cap she had fashioned for herself, tied Quaker fashion under her chin.
Her face was very white, as if, having blanched with terror in the
tragedy of Haun's Mill, the life-blood had not as yet returned to it.
At last she said simply, "I thank you, sir."
The old man looked most approvingly at her form and at the subtle
witchery which the eagerness of imprisoned thought gave to reticent
features, at the depth of her blue eye. "I wish, my dear, that you could
see your way to give up your religion and remain with us."
"I thank you, sir," she said again, and went back to the household tasks
she had fallen into the habit of performing.
She was not eating the bread of dependence. In such a place, where
woman's work is at a premium, it was easy for her to do what was
reckoned of more value than what she received. The old man had two sons.
The elder and his wife were in the prime of life, having a large family;
the younger son was unmarried. The farm was large and prosperous. The
one woman, even had she been less amiable, would have naturally desired
to keep Susannah as a helper; being the kindly soul she was, she
reserved the more attractive tasks for her, and bade the children call
her endearing names. In her blindness, in her slow recovery from utter
exhaustion of mind and nerve, Susannah never thought of connecting this
long-continued kindness with the fact that the old man's younger son had
as yet no wife.
At first Susannah had fixed her thoughts upon an immediate return to the
east, but weeks went by and she had not written to Ephraim Croom for
the money that she needed. The whole civilised world contained for her
but one friend to whom she would write.
The Canadian farm, the remote country village of Manchester, and the
Mormon sect--these formed her whole experience. Her father, who had
scolded and played with her; Ephraim, who had understood her and had
been the authority to her heart that his parents could not be; her
husband, who had wrapped about her such close protection that she had
tottered when she thought to walk alone--these were her real world, and
of them only Ephraim was left.
It was not in her nature at any time, above all not in these stricken
months, to desire to go out into the world alone to make for herself a
sphere of usefulness and a circle of companions. Hence she thought only
of returning to Ephraim, and by his help obtaining some occupation by
which she could live simply and within his reach. But when she thought
more closely of throwing herself, as it were, penniless and desolate at
the feet of this one prized friendship, doubts arose about her path.
One thing which she had lost in the broken camp by her husband's grave,
one that if she had had greater power of recollection she would not have
left behind in that complete breaking with the past, was a packet of the
few letters which Ephraim had from time to time written to her. She did
not know whether she had thrown them into the grave with her treasure,
or whether they were left a prey to fire and theft, but in her heart she
had carried them beyond the loss of their material existence.
The first had answered her insistent question concerning the vexed
condition of the devotees of prayer. It contained no word of criticism
of the Mormon creed, nothing that if read aloud could have disturbed
Halsey's peace. "Perchance," he had said, "as a medical man applies a
poultice or blister to a diseased body to draw out the evil, so to those
who pray and are too ignorant, _i.e._ opinionated, to follow perfectly
the greatest teacher of prayer, God may apply circumstances to bring all
the evil of heart to the surface, that in this life and the future it
may the more quickly work itself away." Susannah had so conned this
passage that she could now close her eyes and read it as written upon
the red dusk of their lids.
The next letter had been written a year later. He described a great
change in his life. He had gone to spend the winter in Hartford, on the
Connecticut River, to be under a new physician, and had there met with a
preacher called Mr. Horace Bushnell. This acquaintance was evidently
much to Ephraim. Susannah had made some complaint of the harshness of
the divine counsel in which he asked her to believe; his answer was to
send her Bushnell's sermons on the suffering of God. Ephraim had added:
"When you went from us, Susy, would you ever have been satisfied if we
had detained you by force? Yet that is what you ask of God. If you were
right in going, let the circumstance prove it; if we were right, let it
appear by time. So says God; and his friendship has eternity to work in;
so also has every human friendship. Let us wait, but in faith." This
ending, somewhat enigmatical to her, had yet recurred to her heart so
often that she knew the words by heart.
The next letter had been written more recently, after a long interval.
At the end of this letter Ephraim had said, "I am persuaded that what we
need to help our faith is never more knowledge, but always more love. I
cannot interpret this but by telling you of a fact which I feel to be
the key to a great--the greatest--truth. I know a man who believed in
God. He met a woman whom he loved, not as many love, but (I know not
why) with all the loves of his heart, as father, as mother, as brother,
friend, might love; as lover he loved her with all these loves. After
that he knew God with a knowledge that passed belief. He could argue no
more, but he _knew_. This I think is the sort of knowledge which guides
unerringly." Susannah remembered, if not the words, all that this
passage contained. She had wondered at it not a little.
Up to the time of Angel's death she had rejoiced in these letters, not
doubting that Ephraim had remained the same self-sacrificing
friend--ready out of mere but perfect kindness to befriend her to the
uttermost. She had not doubted because she had not questioned. Now
disquieting thoughts intervened, producing a new shyness. She remembered
their last interview, and wondered if Ephraim would feel the same
responsibility for her if she returned destitute. Perhaps the ardour of
his friendship had cooled. Perhaps in the last letter he had intended to
suggest to her that he thought of marriage, and this time for love, not
kindness, the lady being one of his new Hartford friends.
But no doubt the principal reason of Susannah's dalliance with time in
those first weeks of her moral freedom was the mental weakness that
succeeds shock. Every day she thought that she would soon write that
begging letter, until the day came when opportunity ceased.
When the Danite left he had promised the farmer to return as soon as it
was possible to place Susannah in safety with her Mormon friends. When
she began to speak of leaving, her host told her this for the first
time.
"And what is the young man's name?" the old man asked of Susannah. They
were in the long living-room at the mid-day meal. His sons, who were
leaving the table, waited to hear the answer; the mother, the very
children, looked at her with interest.
"I do not know," said Susannah.
There was a pause, and for the first time she was aware that there was
some sentiment in the minds of her hearers which did not appear upon the
surface.
She went on, "I don't know why he should trouble himself to come back
for me except that--I think that he was much touched by some earnest
words my husband said to him that he did not see his way to accept, and
I think also that he is zealous for the Church."
Her surpassing wrongs had so far set her apart and made all that she
said and did sacred. No one questioned her further.
In the beginning of February the Danite reappeared. He came under the
cover of night, but showed himself only when the household was awake. He
was much thinner, more gaunt than before, but in frankness and quietude
the same. His first words to Susannah had an import she did not expect.
"That young lady you mentioned to me--I said she was dead because you
were half crazy, and would have gone back to her, but I worked round
till I found her; she got to the city of Far West right enough."
After a while he said, "That young lady and some other of our folks have
got horses and they're going into Illinois now. Most of our folks are
walking. It's about as bad as can be, but I guess you'll have to go.
We'll be safe enough, for as long as we go straight on the Gentiles are
bound to let us pass. I tried to get some better sort of a way for you
and her, but there ain't no way unless we would have sworn we weren't
Saints and gone pretending to be Gentiles, but even then we haven't got
the money."
Susannah was thrilled with excited distress. She was not prepared to
make an abrupt decision, and it appeared that if she desired to join
this company she must go that evening or not at all.
During the hours of the morning her mind cowered, dismayed. Should she
now renounce her husband's sect, refusing to suffer with them? She had
not as yet fortitude to do this. Halsey's eyes, the touch of his hand,
her baby's voice lisping the tenets of their faith in repetition of his
father's solemn tones, these were sights and sounds as yet too near her.
To her shocked fancy the child and his father were only gone out of
sight, but near enough to be cruelly hurt by her public perversion. And,
moreover, if she should take this course she must write to Ephraim at
once, for she could not well remain where she was without definite
purpose in view.
Susannah had sought seclusion in which to think, and the younger son of
the house intruded himself. He was perhaps about thirty years of age, a
burly man, resolute and passionate. He spoke fairly enough. The Danite
himself had said that the journey to which she was haled by her friends
was one of untold hardship, its end uncertain; he offered her all that
an honest and prosperous man could offer, but went on to urge on his own
behalf the strength of those sentiments which he had learned to
entertain for her--his admiration (Susannah sickened at the word), his
love (she shrank in fear).
She rose up with the moan of a hunted thing. She did not pause to make
excuses for the hunter, to consider the pioneer life that wots little of
sentiment in proportion to utility; she only saw again the grave at
Haun's Mill and the white faces of her dead upturned to hers. It seemed
that this man, with the consent of his people, was urging his suit as it
were beside the very corpse of her husband. The Danite had shown Angel
reverence, had shown by his every word and glance that he counted her as
belonging to the dead man whose blood he carried at his heart.
Susannah rode out from that temporary home at nightfall upon the
Danite's horse.