It was that same evening, after Smith's commendation of Susannah, that
Darling decided to lay the destruction of her letter before the prophet,
hoping for approval.
Smith was looking over Darling's accounts in the tithing office, giving
voluminous and minute directions. The May night had closed in. The men
were in a corner of the large shed in which the stores were kept, a
corner fenced off for an office by a low wooden partition. The candle
flickered on the table between them.
The business side of Smith's soul was uppermost. He had power to keep in
mind a huge number of details, and to classify them, and he estimated
the relative importance of the classes as no other man would have
estimated it.
Darling interrupted before Smith's interest in business began to wane.
He prefaced his communication concerning Susannah by speaking of the
much shepherding needed by the sheep. Some, he said, had done worse than
be lax in manners; some had presumed to have revelations; some had
doubted the faith.
Here Darling paused, feeling sure of rousing Smith to the mood he
desired.
At the mention of revelations Smith's soul took a turn, like a ball on
its axis; the plain speech that he had been using about business and
stores and accounts changed into phraseology of a Scriptural cast, and
the shrewd glance of his blue eye into a more distraught and distant
look. Heretofore, as Darling well knew, heresy had been a greater evil
in his eyes than any other; but Smith had come now out of long months of
prison; days and nights in which a horrible death had faced him closely
had not passed over this particular soul of his dreams without moulding
it. It is noticed by all his historians that after this period he spoke
little "by revelation," in comparison with his former full habit in this
respect. At Darling's abrupt speech he sighed heavily. He looked, not at
Darling as before, but at some vague object beyond him.
"There is one lawgiver who is able to save and to destroy," he said
wearily, and then, gathering himself up with more pompous unction, he
asked of the surprised Darling, "Who art thou that judgest another?"
Darling had grown fatter since he came to Quincy; the lines of haggard
care were still upon his face, but were modified by dimples of good
cheer. Much taken aback by the unexpected rebuff, he rubbed his head.
"But, Mr. Smith, if they are all going to be allowed to think whatever
they like--"
The obvious difficulty of church government under these conditions
confronted the nobler impulse of humility in the visionary's mind. "When
have I said, Brother Darling, that they all should think what they like?
But, behold, I say unto thee, it is not with the Lord to save with many
or with few, but by whom he will send."
This was a little vague as to grammar and as to sense, but Darling had
not the ability to criticise. He only perceived that to secure
commendation he must be tactful in the setting forth of his act.
"It was in the case of Sister Susannah Halsey--" he began again
apologetically.
A more eager look came into Smith's eyes; still a third phase of his
character there was, the soul of his personal affections, and this began
to merge now with his religious self. "Hath she prophesied? Hath any
revelation been granted to her?"
If Darling had not understood the prophetical vein, he did understand a
certain vibration in this tone. "Ha!" thought he, "if the prophet ain't
a bit soft on her himself I'm out." He had lowered his eyes, and now he
said evasively, "It is our sister Elvira on whom the spirit of prophecy
has fallen; you will have heard how she gave praise concerning you
before the Saints upon the road and was moved to dance before the Lord."
Smith saw through the evasion, but by shrewd reading of the
sanctimonious face, saw also the inward suspicion as clearly as if
Darling had spoken it. His tone and manner betrayed him no more.
"The head of our sister Elvira is not always set firmly on her
shoulders," he remarked, "but I am glad if the Lord has given her
grace."
"I've been hoping that he'd give grace to our sister Susannah, for she's
been writing a letter to say as how she was without faith and wanting to
leave us."
Smith answered him now only with a cool silence that puzzled his coarser
understanding.
"'Twas in our first days here, when a good many of the women were
flighty, and Elvira Halsey, she was ill enough to have worked the
patience out of any one as they work the milk out of butter, and Sister
Susannah came with a letter. She gave it to me unsealed."
"Was she without wax to seal it?" interrupted Smith in a casual tone.
Darling could not know that the thought of such poverty wrung Smith's
heart.
"Waal, I dunno" (which was a lie). "Mebbe she had no wax--I didn't think
of that, but anyhow she gave me the letter. 'Twas too late for the mail;
'twas too heavy for one stamp. An' I didn't like to tell her, poor
thing, that we'd mighty little to spend on stamps. So after she'd gone I
just had a look to see who it was to."
"The address would be on the outside?" Smith rose, hat in hand, as if to
depart, but fixed his eyes on the candle till Darling should have done.
"The name gave me very little hint as to whether the matter was worth
the two stamps, so I just had a glance inside. Thought it might be but a
line asking money of her friends, which, under the sad circumstances, of
course I knew you'd rather the Church would supply."
This drew the first spark of the approval he was expecting. "Certainly,
certainly, the widows and the orphans of those who have perished for the
truth must ever be our most tender care."
"Exactly so, prophet; I knew that would be your opinion; so when I saw
that our sister had felt drove to asking for money from some fellow--I
guess there must have been some sweethearting between him and her before
she married Halsey. She said in this letter that she'd go to him if he'd
send her cash. She said as how she thought the religion of the
Latter-Day Saints was a lie; but of course I could see it was not her
right judgment, that she was awful lonesome."
"It was taking a great liberty, Mr. Darling." Smith tapped his stick
upon the floor. He was far more angry than he showed, for policy had
laid a soft hand of reminder on his shoulder. "Our sister, Mrs. Halsey,
is not--" he coughed slightly, and sought by prophetical phrases to
explain that Susannah was not upon the level of Darling and his
kind--"is not, as it would be said in the Scriptures, among those who
deck themselves with crisping pins or are busybodies, but she is as that
lady to whom John wrote (and the letter is preserved unto the
edification of the Church unto this day); for it was revealed unto me in
the beginning that she was the elect sister, and to sit as one who
judges--as one who judges Israel." He was just going to add in the flow
of his phrases "upon twelve thrones," but the words died because even he
perceived the lack of sense.
Darling grew testy. "Waal, I dunno, but it seems to me that if she'd
gone off by now to be Mrs. Ephraim Croom somewheres in the East there
wouldn't be much more elect sister about her."
"The gentleman whose name you have just been mentioning, Mr. Darling, is
the lady's uncle. I was reared alongside them, and I know." He knew that
he fibbed between uncle and cousin, but the slip was so slight and the
end so worthy--to silence Darling.
"'Twas no uncle that she wrote that 'ere letter to," said Darling hotly.
He stuck out his legs and leant back in his chair, the picture of
offence.
"You are mistaken concerning the meaning of the letter, Brother Darling,
and it appears to me that in casting your eyes upon it you have gone
beyond what is written concerning the duty of an elder; but as to your
duty in destroying it--considering that our sister asked for money,
which it is our duty and privilege to supply--But I promised Emmar to be
back soon. I will consult the Lord, Brother Darling, and have a word
with you in the morning."
Smith tramped with dignity over the long wooden floor of the darkened
shed and let himself out with decisive clatter of the latch.
To his right lay the wooden town with twinkling lights, to his left the
black prairie, and above the crystal vast a moonless night, so clear
that the upward glance almost saw the perspective between nearer and
farther stars innumerable.
This man was at all times possessed with the sense of otherness, sense
of a presence around and above. He was no sooner beneath the stars than
he hung his head as if some one saw him. With shame and pain written in
the attitude of his hulking figure, he skulked out into the black
fields.
Later that night, a lad, not of the Mormon brotherhood, making his way
home in the dark to the town of Quincy, a little afraid of the dark, as
lads are apt to be, was terrified by hearing a voice in the darkness, by
dimly descrying a man's figure prostrate upon the ground. The lad shrank
back to a recess of the snake fence. There, trembling, he listened.
The voice in the hoarse whisper of intensity repeated, "Give me--this
woman--give--give." The breathing, like command rather than prayer, set
the words grating on the air again and again. "This woman--this
woman--give! give! give!"
The cause of the lad's terror was a strange conviction that the writhing
creature on the earth was certainly conversing with something not of
earth, whether God, or angel, or devil he did not ask. He was
encompassed by the dreadful belief that the other saw and heard what he
could not.
The prostrate man clenched his fists and struck the black ground on
which he lay. There was an intense silence, and then again the grating
breath of a hoarse throat that lay among the grass blades babbled forth
a multitude of confessions and fiercely-worded supplications which the
little lad could neither understand nor remember.
There was a sudden change of attitude and voice. The lad saw that the
man on the grass sat up, and as if he had received an answer, spoke in
reply, not now in wailing supplication, but in quick whispered argument.
The lad cowered with a fresh thrill of ghostly terror which burned the
mad words into his memory.
"The loss would be to thee of the fairest of thine handmaids, and to her
of her own soul, and to me--" but here the words of irritable contention
failed in deep choking sobs. Then, to the lad's perfect dismay, the
black figure bounded to its feet and the arms were flung about in the
darkness as if wrestling with an unseen enemy. Now, being desperate, the
lad darted forth from his nook; passing in tip-toe rush at the back of
this struggling figure, he sped home in his gust of fear, and, with the
fantastic secrecy of youth, did not tell what he had heard and seen till
years had come and gone.